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Their unconstitutional extension of copyrights in perpetuity has made them about as evil of a corporation as I can think of today.

While I'm in your camp about the decay of the commons by copyright power grabs, I'm afraid it's not unconstitutional:

Official text of the decision upholding the copyright extension act, in PDF format.

You must be referring to Veeck vs. SBCCI, wherein a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that "the law" is in the public domain, including such portions of a model code as are incorporated by reference. (The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.) Note that the model codes still retain their copyright as model codes, but once incorporated into "the law" (even by reference), the incorporated portions are in the public domain as "the law" of that jurisdiction. (I am not a lawyer, but I did read the full text of the decision.)

It's significant to note that this was an en banc review of the case, and the earlier 3-judge panel had come to the opposite conclusion, upholding the copyright. Be thankful that the full appeals court reached the correct public policy conclusion!

Note that the important point was that the model codes had been adopted as law, not the fact that SBCCI had encouraged such adoption. The latter fact was what kept it from being a "takings" case. As I read the decision, the incorporated model codes would have still become public domain as "the law", even if incorporated by reference without permission, but SBCCI presumably would have had grounds to sue the government for damages in a "takings" case, for the impact on the value of their copyright...

It's also important to note that this case does not place standards referenced by "the law" into the public domain. It specifically distinguishes such cases from this one, where a model code was written for the express purpose of being enacted into law.

Readers of Bodrell's comment above can see the relevant Supreme Court decision here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-55 54.pdf It is as he has stated.

Agreed; but with on-line sales, this has the potential to be a major source of revenue. I refer you to Wired's excellent article about the "Long Tail", which was previously covered in Slashdot. Without spending a lot of time, I would trust that the implications of this are obvious to anyone who has read Lessig's discussions of copyright getting "eternity on the installment plan", and Spider Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants" : the enjoyment of music in modern society is in for a major change unprecedented in history due to the diminished information costs of modern computer search aggregation techniques.

Adding the ability to have such a "bargain bin" to iTunes might be a good thing for everyone... at least until creativity runs out.

They are not concerned with expanding the volume of music sold. [...] Apple has the right idea, in that they are trying to grow the music market.

Also, agreed. More exactly, I believe that Steve Jobs has a better understanding of the elasticity of the demand curve, and that there will be more money made at lower prices. But you're right, far to many of the studio executives think that "we want to make more money" means "we want to be able to raise prices."

It might be interesting for someone to do a study to actually measure the elasticity of the demand curve, and try to determine where songs "should" be priced. However, doing so would be a non-trivial experiment to design and perfom.

I know he's not popular with a lot of people, but in his dissent on the issue (starting page 170) Justice Scalia wrote that this "cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government."

Actually, SCOTUS already killed the First Amendment with respect to political speech, when they upheld the BCRA (aka McCain/Feingold, Campaign Finance Reform) back in 2003. But don't take my word for it. Here is part of the opinion from Justice Kennedy:

Although today's opinion does not expressly strip the press of First Amendment protection, there is no principal of law or logic that would prevent the application of the Court's reasoning in that setting. The press now operates at the whim of Congress.

In other words, we're screwed; Congress gave the FEC juris diction over these matters back in 1974, and SCOTUS says by 5 to 4 that almost everything about McCain/Feingold is kosher.

I may not like spam, but I realize that the First Amendment was designed to protect speech I don't like.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in their 1978 decision FCC vs. Pacifica Radio Network, found that freedom of speech does not imply freedom of volume. That pretty much covers spam, spim, telemarketing, and junk faxes, as far as I'm concerned, but for some reason the law isn't enforced like that.

That doesn't mean you can't use it! I've cited that Supreme Court decision when writing to ISPs regarding trolls and other net.miscreants, and have had accounts revoked.

The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

Almost none are granted cert.

Oral arguments will be heard in about 100 cases.

About 50-60 cases will be disposed of without argument. The Justices Caseload

The probability that Disney Inc. get$ it i$ very high.

I disagree. The Court held in Eldred that "[n]othing before this Court warrants construction of the CTEA's 20-year term extension as a congressional attempt to evade or override the 'limited Times' constraint." Notice that it says "the CTEA's 20-year term extension" not *"any copyright term extension". This shows that the Supreme Court may have left the door wide open to find a second successive term extension (i.e. the CTEA) constitutional but to overturn a third strike as a clearer evasion of "limited Times".

The last thing you want is for judges to have to pander to public opinion in order to secure reelection. It's not good for keeping the judiciary unbiased and focused on the law.

Thank goodness we have judges who don't play politics.

. . . so it is impossible to go back and 'recreate the voters intent' as you can with paper/optical scan systems.

Most states have drawn up new laws for their electronic voting systems, and these laws tend to lean heavily on technical compliance with the law, and less so with what the voter intended.

Baum v.Arntz is a case that the Supreme Court may take. The director of elections in San Francisco threw out 14% of the votes for Terry Baum because while the voters wrote her name in, they failed to connect the arrow for the optical scanners.

The votes were tossed out based on the new law for the optical scanners, with any other voting system the votes would have counted (at least in California, as the laws currently are). Interestingly, if the voters that did not connect the arrows next to the name they wrote in had torn their ballots, an old section of the elections code that was not rewritten would have come into effect, and the ballots would have been counted.

The moral? The laws that are being implemented with these machines are even scarier than the machines.

As quoted in this Salon.com article Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refers to himself as a lawyer:

In a speech last month in New Orleans, Scalia contrasted his easy ride to confirmation with the tough sledding some of Bush's nominees have faced. "Eighteen years ago, I was confirmed 98-0," Scalia said. "I was considered a good lawyer and an honest man. Those qualities carried the day."

Petitioner Sony Corp. manufactures home video tape recorders (VTR's), and markets them through retail establishments, some of which are also petitioners. Respondents own the copyrights on some of the television programs that are broadcast on the public airwaves. Respondents brought an action against petitioners in Federal District Court, alleging that VTR consumers had been recording some of respondents' copy-righted works that had been exhibited on commercially sponsored television and thereby infringed respondents' copyrights, and further that petitioners were liable for such copyright infringement because of their marketing of the VTR's. Respondents sought money damages, an equitable accounting of profits, and an injunction against the manufacture and marketing of the VTR's. The District Court denied respondents all relief, holding that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement, and that petitioners could not be held liable as contributory infringers even if the home use of a VTR was considered an infringing use. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding petitioners liable for contributory infringement and ordering the District Court to fashion appropriate relief. [Emphasis added].

Held:

The sale of the VTR's to the general public does not constitute contributory infringement of respondents' copyrights. [In other words, told Universal to go stuff themselves.]

527's are pumped full of money by large corporations as well; because they are allowed to accept unlimited amounts of money and basically side-step the issue of CFR.

The Supreme Court already decided the First Amendment issue as it applies to CFR (for the most part) last year. Namely, that it is necessary in order to reduce real or apparent corruption in the government to restrict freedom of speech. It isn't being done to silence people as much as it is being done in order to protect our democracy from corruption by corporations and other groups.

A while back, a town in Missouri wanted to offer telecommunications as a public service. A bunch of lobbyists for the telecommunications industry perceived this as a threat and got the state legislature to pass a law forbidding any local government from offering telecommunications as a public service. The Missouri Municipal League sued claiming that federal law pre-empted the states from prohibiting the cities. The case was agued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was decided in favor of the state (and telecommunications industry). The case is "Nixon, Attorney General Of Missouri V. Missouri Municipal League Et Al." and a PDF of the decision can be found here At least 11 other states have similar laws to prevent local governments from "competing" with private telecommunications businesses.

The upshot is that if Verizon (or the industry generally) feels threatened, they will just buy some state legislators and pass a state law prohibiting it.

The ACLU?
Get real, get a flashlight and purchase a clue...
They're even worse than the S.C.O.T.U.S..

Definitely *NOT* even a piece of the solution.

I used to support the ACLU when I was young and foolish, funny how things change...

Here. It's a long read, but even in skimming you can get far more detail than any Fox or CNN report. In fact, find more detail than the government or media really wants you to know at: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/. The relevant link ('Recent Decisions') is near the top just above the pretty picture of the courthouse itself.

I'd maintain that it's a necessary condition of freedom in a state where government power is limited; certainly the wording of the 2nd Amendment in the US lays it out that way.

Canadians certainly have guns: my Canadian relatives grew up hunting their own meat and the ones in rural areas still do.

Gun ownership is about more than putting meat on the table (not that there's anything wrong with that); what about people who want to be able to defend themselves, and not rely on the state for protection? In any event, all gun ownership in Canada is subject to registration, which has been eventually used throughout the Commonwealth to eventually consfiscate long guns in Australia, as well as the UK itself. If the government knows who's packing, that also dramatically reduces the worth of gun ownership in limiting the power of government.

On the other hand Canadians get to use strong language or show nudity on broadcast TV without pixelation or 3 million dollar fines.

True enough, but on cable or satellite (which the vast majority of people in the US have), I can see all the cussin' and boobies I want. *And*, I can see thugs blown away and other violent/un-PC material that one cannot see on CBC.

[And equal rights = the right to go topless in Ontario (+lots for Ontario)]

Okay, having seen the "Canadian Ballet" in Toronto, I'll grant you that one.

Canadians aren't required to carry identification at all times, or to identify themselves on demand: better than the US on that regard (+1 Canada).

Neither are people in the US; please, please, read the Supreme Court opinion bandied about in this august forum.

'1.totalitarian - characterized by a government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control;

You mean like, say, The Queen? Look, for example, at the previously mentioned cite, and you'll see that The Queen is the source of your ability to bring a matter to justice.

Honest, we like Canadians down here, but we'll have a heck of a lot more respect as soon as you Ditch The uh, er, Queen...

Once again, /. has almost reported the news.

The case does not require any person to identify themselves to any police officer at any time. Reading from the court's opinion, you see that identification is only required when "a person [is] detained by an officer under suspicious circumstances". Civil liberties advocates should be further relieved by the court's affirmation of Brown v. Texas that the detention of a person must satisfy Fourth Amendment requirements. Even in the absence of a court-issued warrant, Terry v. Ohio affirmed "an officer's reasonable suspicion that a person may be involved in criminal activity permits the officer to stop the person for a brief time and take additional steps to investigate further" and further, "an officer may ask a suspect to identify himself during a Terry stop".

Answering the obvious question, the court notes: "Hiibel argues unpersuasively that the statute circumvents the probable-cause requirement by al-lowing an officer to arrest a person for being suspicious, thereby creating an impermissible risk of arbitrary police conduct. These fa-miliar concerns underlay Kolender [v. Lawson], Brown [v. Texas], and Papachristou [v. Jacksonville]. They are met by the requirement that a Terry stop be justified at its inception and be 'reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified' the initial stop."

And on one last note pertaining to the Fifth Amendment: "Hiibel's contention that his conviction violates the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on self-incrimination fails because disclosure of his name and identity presented no reasonable danger of incrimination."

/. is great for getting an overview of the news, but sometimes the story isn't quite right. Remember to check your sources!

Posted by michael on Monday May 23, @01:25PM
from the we-miss-the-dmca dept.

The RIAA announced today that they have secured the exclusive right to the key of G-flat.

Previously, the key of G-flat was a popular key among independant Open Music authors, as the RIAA had neglected to secure rights to it during the Commercial Copyright Reforms of 2016.

RIAA spokesman Darl Hollingsworth explained, "After CCR/2016, the RIAA secured the rights to all keys in which music can be composed. Traditional music theory, dating back to the 15th century, stipulates that there is no such key signature as G-flat major. Unfortunately, Open Music pirates have discovered a way to represent the key of G-flat; however, G-flat major is simply an isomorph of F-sharp. The court rightly recognized this equivalence and the blatent theft of musical keys by Open Music pirates everywhere. In accordance with the law, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has assigned us the world-wide copyright to these songs."

While timing is expected to vary from state to state, all residents of the USA will have their CRMIs (Cranial Rights Management Implants) updated by the end of 2023. The levy for mentally accessing a song written in G-flat will begin at twice the regular rate, to make up for nearly a decade of Note Piracy. The levy will be scaled back to the regular rate of $19.84 per thought once the new CRMI software has been uploaded for two years. Residents of the so-called "Oil States" of Iraq and Saudi America will continue to receive the Western Culture subsidy.

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to your jurisdiction's bar. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything in reliance upon it, you are a blithering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.

Okay, now that the requisite idiot-proofing is out of the way . . .

The US Supreme Court passed on this issue a long time ago. The case was Brady v. Maryland 373 US 83 (1963). Quoth the headnote from the opinion:

Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution. Pp. 86-88.

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to your jurisdiction's bar. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything in reliance upon it, you are a blithering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.

Okay, now that the requisite idiot-proofing is out of the way . . .

The US Supreme Court passed on this issue a long time ago. The case was Brady v. Maryland 373 US 83 (1963). Quoth the headnote from the opinion:

Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution. Pp. 86-88.

They can get away with it because they are the highest court in the state and no one can appeal to a higher judicial authority.

Such as the Supreme Court of the United States?

Not anymore.

The US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal (warning: pdf) (denied a petition for a writ of certiorari) of the US 5th Circuit's en banc ruling in SOUTHERN BUILDING CODE V. VEECK, PETER that re-decided the 5th Circuit's previous panel decision that affirmed the District Courts's summary judgment in favor of defendant Southern Building Code Congress International Inc, reversing the District Court and remanding the case to it for dismissal of SBCCI's claims.

Or to be less concise:

A three-judge panel, with one judge dissenting, of the 5th Circuit initially found that Souther Building Code Congress International Inc. retained copyright to its codes even though those codes were incorporated by reference in the law of, among other places, two Texas towns, Anna and Savoy. The majority's decison laregly rested on findings of other Circuit Courts, and explcitly said that "We decline to create a circuit split by reaching the opposite conclusion today." The majority's opinion held that the Supreme Court's finding in Banks v. Manchester didn't apply to the controversy at hand.

Then one of the judges of the 5th Circuit asked that the all the judges in the 5th Circuit decide the case -- this is called the circuit sitting en banc -- and a majority of the 5th Circuits judges agreed to hear the case en banc.

The decision of the majority (9-6, with the Chief Judge dissenting) of the entire 5th Cirucit took a diferent view of Banks v. Manchester, and so reversed the Distruct's Court's summary judgment in favor of SBCCI's claim that Veeck had violated SBCCI"s copyright to the building codes at issue, by posting them on his web site.

Thanks for providing a link to The Supreme Court. Now I can visit its site to find out what it is. Good thing posters on on Slashdot privide hyperlinks to every page on the World Wide Web that they reference. Otherwise we'd all be confused idiots.

Well, there it is - my first rudely sarcastic post.

That is correct. The Supreme Court docket is public, and oral arguments are open to the public. Go here for some info. The press usually attends these sessions and reports on them. Also, I don't think that argument has anything to do with why Diebold is abusing copyright law to subvert the US political system.

/* DISCLAIMER

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to the bar in your jurisdiction. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything based on it, you are a blitering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.

DISCLAIMER */

Now that that's out of the way . . .

The US Supreme Court passed on this issue long ago. In the case of Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L'Anza Research International, Inc.. Apparently, Quality King Distributors was re-importing hair care products that were sold by US manufacturers overseas at a deep discount. Quality King got sued, and the US Supreme Court unanimously told them tough shinksi. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Stevens explained that

Indeed, we first endorsed the first sale doctrine in a case involving a claim by a publisher that the resale of its books at discounted prices infringed its copyright on the books. Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908). In that case, the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, had inserted a notice in its books that any retail sale at a price under $1.00 would constitute an infringement of its copyright. The defendants, who owned Macy's department store, disregarded the notice and sold the books at a lower price without Bobbs-Merrill's consent. We held that the exclusive statutory right to "vend" applied only to the first sale of the copyrighted work . . .

So these guys don't have a leg to stand on and any case brought to enforce it would be laughed out of court. It was probably ginned up by some semi-literate shyster attorney who thought "it work fuh that sofweah, by golly dag gum it'll wuk fuh us!" Sorry.

"The pundits ... are looking at number of cases selected by the Supreme Court, not percentages"

This is a very good point but maybe I think it ought to be said more bluntly.

The 75% overturn rate is NOT 75% of the cases decided by 9th circuit cases. It is 75% of those cases the Supreme Court decides to review.

If you lose in the 9th, you get to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. If the SC refuses, it is a silent affirmation. In fact, it is even used in citations - if you see "cert. denied" after a cite, it means it was appealed to the SC and rejected (implying that the case was decided just fine at the circuit level).

Now, the SC is busy - it isn't going to spend its time patting the circuits on the back and saying "nice job". Instead, when a case is accepted for review by the SC, it is going to be a case in which the Court has some serious questions/doubts. It should therefor being pretty unsurprising that the cases accepted for review (which is far below the number appealed), stand a good chance of being overturned.

According the SC, they receive 7000 cases per year. They only write 80-90 opinions, and decide an additional 50-60 cases. At most, 150 cases are actually decided. This is 2.1% of the appeals to the court. Assuming 100% are overturned, the Circuits get it right 98 times in a hundred. If only 50% of a circuits decisions were overturned, they would get it right 99 times in a hundred. I personally doubt that the difference is significant. So you see, this "most overturned court" thing, aside from being wrong, is one of those statistics/damn lies things.

You're right: I failed to specify that I was referring to the US. The Supreme Court recently decided Eldred v. Ashcroft (PDF), in which it said that if Congress was increasing the term for new copyrights, it could extend the term of existing copyrights to match it. I consider that to be "a clever trick", but of course Congress would disagree.

Recently, the US Supreme Court denied his appeal, with the notion that obscenity is a state-level affair, despite the First Amendment being a Federal law.

But the Supreme Court didn't actually say that, or anything of the kind. Read the linked article. Castillo thinks the Supreme Court refused to hear his case because Castillo thinks the Court thinks it's a question for the states. But the Court itself didn't say one word about why it refused to hear Castillo's case, so we have no way to know whether his belief about their reasons is an accurate belief or not. The Court gets asked to hear thousands of cases every year and actually hears fewer than a hundred of them. The Court generally doesn't offer any explanation of why it takes, or fails to take, any particular case -- and its order denying Castillo's petition says nothing about why they decided not to hear it.

Not that it would make any difference. There's a similar principle that applies: Congress is only allowed to grant copyrights and patents for limited periods. One would think that extending the period every time it expires effectively negates this requirement. But in the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision (warning, big PDF file), the majority said otherwise. I suspect that they'll change their minds when Congress extends the expiration yet again, as I'm sure they will. But that's in the far future.

I would have no problem if Hormel went after XYZ Meat Corporation for naming their meat product "Spam". In this case, Spam Arrest refers to an entirely different market and the term "spam" has passed into common use as unsolicited email.

As for your "Coke" example, if somebody started a rehab clinic named "Coke User's Anonymous", Coca-Cola could try to sue, but they would lose as "coke" refers to cocaine.

This year the Supreme Court has ruled on the limitations of trademark in the Victoria's Secret case. Two important points of their decision was:
1) No one is likely to confuse the sex shop with the catalogue store. Dilution is not a factor in different markets.
2) Plaintiffs must actually prove damage in trademark infringement. If there was dilution, companies must prove it in order to collect.

Oh? Show me where it says in the (US) Constitution you are entitled to unconditional privacy?

I wouldn't dream of showing you, since nine of the best legal minds in the nation have already created a detailed document doing exactly that. I couldn't hope to compete.

It's not unconditional privacy (nothing in law is "unconditional"), but I think it's what you're looking for.

The case is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and it unambiguously establishes a Constitutional right to privacy. It figured prominently in the much more famous Roe v. Wade decision. Read it; it might make you smarter.

IANAL. The ruling was discussed yesterday in the copyright victories story.

On page 2 of the syllabus, the court says, "Held: Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act does not prevent the unaccredited copying of an uncopyrighted work"

On page 7 of the opinion (page 10 of the PDF), the court says:

That [false designation of origin] claim would undoubtedly be sustained if Dastar had bought some of New Line's Crusade videotapes and merely repackaged them as its own. Dastar's alleged wrongdoing, however, is vastly different: it took a creative work in the public domain--the Crusade television series--copied it, made modifications (arguably minor), and produced its very own series of videotapes.

The court then goes on to describe how Dastar became the original source because it produced its own product. The court implies that if Dastar had not made any changes, then it would have been selling Fox's product.

The distinction would be comparable to Coca-Cola taking Pepsi and selling it as a Coke product. If Coke took Pepsi, made some changes, and sold the new product as its own, Coke would presumably be in the clear.

Um, no. Everyone may thank five citizens and an obsolete and outmoded Consitutional body for the current leadership. See what you get when you let democracy break down, people?

Old news, but so was Washington's, and the US Supreme Court let it stand.

OT, but the Microsoft-sponsored gutting of Washington's antispam law is all but dead.

they lost, the court case. thus, they don't have the right to lie...they just wanted it.

They lost in CA, at least. They're scheduled to argue before the US Supreme Court on April 23.

..this conversation takes place.

Check out the oral argument pdf, page 8, at the bottom.

It reads:

[Justice Breyer]
"...if we agree with you, does that mean, in principal, [we] have to hold the 1976 extension unconstitutional? I mean, in 1976, Congress extended the term from 28 years, renewable once, to life of the author plus 50 years. Now they're extending [copyright to] life of the author plus 70 years. If the latter is unconstituional in your theory, how could the former not be? And if the former is, the chaos that would ensue would be horrendous."

[Eldred Lawyer]
"Justice Breyer, under our theory as we've advanced it, you're right."

Right there he lost the argument, in my opinion. If you say one is unconstitutional, all of them are. The congress screwed up passing it (and Clinton for signing it), but once you've taken that toothpaste out of the tube, it's too late to backup. The lawyer goes on and tries to renig his statement, but the case was lost.

I don't know why everyone is freaking out here, it's another twenty years from what I can tell. Life will go on.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer disagreed with their colleagues.

Stevens wrote that the court was "failing to protect the public interest in free access to the products of inventive and artistic genius."The case is Eldred v. Ashcroft, 01-618.

Writing for a unanimous Court in 1964, Justice Black stated that it is obvious that a State could not "extend the life of a patent beyond its expiration date," Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225, 231 (1964).1 As I shall explain, the reasons why a State may not extend the life of a patent apply to Congress as well. If Congress may not expand the scope of a patent monopoly, it also may not extend the life of a copyright beyond its expiration date. Accordingly, insofar as the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 112 Stat. 2827, purported to extend the life of unexpired copyrights, it is invalid.

It doesn't take any special qualifications to be admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court. Get your application here. I've seen these certificates on the walls of many law offices in Washington, D.C. There are about 180,000 lawyers who are members of the Bar of the Supreme Court.

So including information for someone else's benefit, that would have to be researched anyway in order to understand a subject, is unimportant now, just because I'm a busy man?

American Library Association v. United States (01-CV-1322) is the latest case to challenge mandatory internet filters at public libraries. The Library Association brief in a lower court case can be found here. The Pennsylvania court recognized the proper weight of the First Amendment issues in the case, finding that the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) infringed on protected speech. The government appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Arguments are expected to take place this winter or early spring.

-R

So you've seen people in the visitors' gallery, (not the press area), take notes? interesting if they realize that forbidding notes seems so, hmmmm what's the term... unconstitutional?

The Supreme Court evidently expects you to pay money to read it now, rather than waiting a few weeks/months. The SCofUS gives Alderson a SCotUS recording monopoly and first dibs on publishing. Based on other transcript prices, you would pay about $200. As discussed on Copyfight, a legal blog, Alderson doesn't allow purchasers to publish on the web. So while we can get next-day transcripts of late night TV shows, we're expected to wait weeks to read the arguments of our most influential legal employees. Thank you Aaron Swartz for putting this up.

One tiny little word, with only seven syllables, says it all. In the past, if the Supreme Court handed down a controversial decision, ordinary folks read about it in the newspapers. Now they go to the Court and read the Judges' own words. Journalists are right to be scared of the internet.

I find the actual text of the decision to be suprisingly readable. It's not just a bunch of legal obscuritanism, such as I've gotten used to out of lawyers by reading too many EULAs.

I find that the justices do understand the technology pretty well. They understand the difference between web and email. They understand that you can't determine geography on the Internet.

The key to the decision seems to be that they feel that the material covers a narrow enough range of stuff that the definition of "community" is not problematic. Art, for example, would be considered to have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors" and is therefore OK, no matter what it depicts. The CDA lacked this clause, and that's why they struck it down.

In a sense, they want to define a "national community" where the really obscene stuff can be restricted. Obscenity has long been considered to be unprotected speech, and even if they rule against COPA it won't change that. It's just that the Web for the first time gives us the opportunity to be obscene on a national scale.

Of course, now you just get off into a definition of "art". Like most law, despite pages and pages of text, at the root it seems to be up to a judgment call by a judge and/or jury as to what is acceptable. So it may well still be considered overbroad, and that is the real news today: this one attack on the law is invalid, but there are plenty of others.

If you object to the decision, I highly recommend Justice Stevens' dissent, at the tail end. He finds the explanations I gave above unconvincing, as do I.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

The exemptions in the DMCA are useless ... "Summary judgement for plaintiff" overrides [the right to a jury trial] ...

We'll see what the Supremes have to say about that. They can't just deny cert to every single copyright-related case that comes up in the United States court system.

Besides, I have another attack on the 17 USC 1201 that exploits the exemption for works that don't entirely fall into its "work protected under this title" scope. If even one of Charlie Chaplin's silent films (pre-1923 so it doesn't fall under perpetual copyright) is sold on DVD with CSS encryption, it may be possible to make a CSS decryptor that's marketed only for purposes of decrypting public domain content from a DVD (even though the rest of the DVD may be copyrighted under the compilation provisions).

Copyright © 2001 Michael D. Crawford. Permission is granted to reproduce this document provided it is copied verbatim, in its entirety and that this copyright statement is preserved.

I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.

I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.

In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.

I loved America for what it stood for.

I was told that things like political persecution, detainment without trial, and beating of prisoners were things that happened in other countries, that they would never happen in America. I was told that we fought the American Revolution and wrote the Constitution specifically to ensure such things would never again happen in America.

But today I see the ugly face of repression rising in America. And it is brought to you by the United States Government.

I am not proud to be an American today. I understand well why people in many other countries hate America. I love America, but I despise what it is rapidly becoming.

Something must be done about this.

There are many things that move me to write this, but what moved to me write this right now is that a member of a registered political party was singled out for harassment, first by American Airlines and then by the United States National Guard because of the opinions she holds.

Nancy Oden, one of the U.S. Green Party's top officials, was traveling to a Green Party national meeting from her hometown airport in Bangor, Maine. She had published a statement that calls for Universal Health Care, limitations on free trade, and a stop to the bombing of Afghanistan.

When she got to the American Airlines ticket counter she was told that there was a record in AA's computer indicating that she should be searched anytime she tried to fly.

During the search, she tried to help the security agent with a stuck zipper. The agent grabbed her arm and she pulled it away. The National Guard instructed the airline not to let her fly. The airline told all the other airlines not to let her fly. She was unable to attend the Green Party meeting.

So an official of a registered political party in the supposedly democratic United States was prevented from participating in the political process because her name had been recorded in a computer as someone who should be treated with suspicion.

I fear what America has become.

Also upsetting to me is the recent decision of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to allow eavesdropping on attorney-client conversations as well as opening of their mail. Read the ACLU press release opposing this.

From the Washington Post article U.S. Will Monitor Calls to Lawyers:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft approved the eavesdropping rule on an emergency basis last week, without the usual waiting period for public comment. It went into effect immediately, permitting the government to monitor conversations and intercept mail between people in custody and their attorneys for up to a year at a time.

The right to a vigorous legal defense is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. It is one of the bulwarks that comes between official repression and those who are repressed, underprivileged, despised, outcast, or working for legitimate political change. You can read about the guarantee of legal representation in our Constitution:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

I don't have a URL to link you to ( mail me one), but I read that among the hundreds of "suspects" and "material witnesses" rounded up in the days after September 11, many were held without charge and some were beaten by their jailers. Also some were held without being given access to attorneys or their families. I thought that could not happen here...

The recently signed USA PATRIOT act is an assault on our civil liberties the likes of which have not been seen in decades.

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act, which largely discusses the law's impact on online activities - did you know that the government can now spy on the key words you search for at search engines like Google and AltaVista? Because computer cracking is now considered terrorism, searching for exploitz can result in your lengthy imprisonment.

The truth is the first victim of war.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, President Bush said something to the effect that the reason the U.S. was attacked was because the terrorists hated our freedom, and that we must fight the terrorists in order to preserve it.

But Osama bin Laden does not care either way about our freedom. He has made it very clear why he hates the U.S., and none of this has been acknowledged by any official statements that I have heard. What bin Laden objects to are the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the holy city of Mecca, U.S. support for Israel's repression of the Palestinians, and the continued U.S. bombing of Iraq. More than anything, he feels that the presence of U.S. troops in the Islamic Holy Land is a sacrilege.

Whatever your position is on bin Laden's objections to the U.S., you must agree that it is wrong for our President to lie to us. Get informed, and work to understand the complexities behind the enmity between the Islamic and Western world. It's not as simple as our government would have us believe.

You might be interested to know what the Pentagon is doing to improve the United States' image in the Islamic world. Well, I'll tell you. It has taken out a $400,000 contract with Madison Avenue public relations firm The Rendon Group in an effort to help it "orient to the challenge of communication to a wide range of groups around the world". In addition, former advertising executive Charlotte Beers has been apointed to the post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a position she qualifies for because of her previous work promoting such products as Head & Shoulders shampoo.

Read about it in Propaganda Wars.

Well, its comforting to know that we'll be winning friends in Central Asia by showing professionally produced TV commercials depicting friendly Americans in between the news reports of mutilated and starving Afghani children.

If you, like myself, feel that something is wrong with America these days, or with whatever country you find yourself in, speak out about it.

In this troubled times, speaking openly to inform others of injustice or to protest may result in a backlash against you from government officials or others. Please read this speech on the importance of speaking your mind. Have courage - it is only by having the courage to speak and to work against injustice that we can prevent it from getting a lot worse.

Among the ways you can speak out

• Participate in online communities
• Send email to people you know
• Write web pages like this one and post the URL around
• Write letters to the editors of your local newspapers
• Staple leaflets to bulletin boards in your community
• Pass out leaflets in public places
• Call in to talk radio shows

Secondly, participate in what we have left of the democratic process. Our government has at least the appearance of having been elected, and the easiest way to make a change is to vote out the ones who have brought this upon us.

• Volunteer for political candidates you believe in
• Get a bunch of voter registration cards and stand in a public place to register voters
• Donate money to political candidates and parties who respect civil liberties
• Vote
• Write letters to your elected representatives. While you can send email, Congress gets so much spam that they pretty much ignore email these days. Instead, you can find your Congressperson's postal address at www.congress.org - write them a paper letter.

Use encryption to protect your privacy. Please read my page Why You Should Use Encryption as well as my letter Protect Your Rights with Encryption.

You can get encryption software for free - you can use either Pretty Good Privacy or The GNU Privacy Guard. Both offer excellent, military strength protection of your data, and the source code to each is freely available so that programmers are able to inspect it for security defects and back doors.

Teach the people you correspond with to use encryption.

Teach people who work for political change to use encryption. If you don't think political candidates and their staff need to use encryption, you're too young to remember Nixon's Plumbers getting caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel to wiretap the Democratic National Committe.

Join organizations that work to protect civil liberties. Among these are:

• The American Civil Liberties Union - Join Here
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation - Join Here - the EFF works to protect our civil liberties in the online world, including working to ensure that the work of computer programmers is protected as free speech under the First Amendment, thereby ensuring you access to software that guards your security and privacy.
• The Center for Democracy and Technology - Get Involved - working "to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age"
• The Electronic Privacy Information Center - Donate Here - "established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.

One might think, and one certainly hopes, that the ultimate safeguard against these threats to our civil liberties lies with the Supreme Court of the United States. But I am not so certain myself. The Supreme Court has ruled against the dictates of law and the Constitution during other troubled periods in our nation's history.

And we should remember that the current President received a minority of the popular vote and was only declared to have a majority of the Electoral Vote after an obviously politically motivated ruling by the Supreme Court, a decision that has few pretenses of being based on the rule of law. Even had all the ballots been counted, enough Black Florida citizens were prevented from going to the polls that the election would clearly have gone for Gore had they been allowed to exercise their right to vote.

As said in the dissenting opinion by Justices Stevens, Ginsberg and Breyer in Bush v. Gore (note - this is an Adobe Acrobat document):

What must underlie petitioners' (nb. - George W. Bush') entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

We must work together to restore the rule of law in our country - or we shall surely suffer for it. If you do not agree that Fascism can arise in the United States, take heed of the fact that Adolf Hitler was elected as the leader of his country too.

November 12, 2001