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It wouldn't surprise me if the legal situation at YouTube was that they yank any clip against which there is a properly filed copyright complaint, and that they follow up later on the actual applicability of copyright law.

It's hard to see, though, where the copyright claim comes in. The Olympic logo is trademarked, but copyright law doesn't apply, so it's not clear to me how a DMCA notice could be served, since the DMCA strictly deals with copyright and not trademark law. Maybe if the video in question uses elements from Olympic theme music. But even then, the SCOTUS has ruled that satire is a completely and absolutely protected form of speech, and this protest video surely qualifies -- even to the point of modifying the Olympic logo to turn the interlocking rings into handcuffs.

I think the telling point as to whether they cave to pressure from the IOC and China will be when their lawyers have a chance to review the footage and determine that there is nothing infringing going on, if they put the video back.

But it's not really up to Google's or YouTube's lawyers to do this. The people who posted the video in the first place have to file a DMCA counter-claim, either claiming that they do in fact own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice themselves do not own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice do not otherwise have the right to issue a take-down notice.

The DMCA has provisions to sanction those who issue false take-down notices. Specifically, filing a false notice opens one up to being sued for damages by the party affected by the take-down. Now, apparently a copyright holder doesn't have to take fair use into account when filing a take-down notice, but they open themselves up to all kinds of liability if the other party can make a valid fair use defense.

Standard "I am not a lawyer" disclaimers apply.

English not your native language? Sec 8 says:

"The Congress shall have Power" is a lot different than "must". If the Founding Fathers wanted it they would have said must. As it is, not all of them believed in either copyrights or patents. From Thomas Jefferson: "He who receives an idea from me, receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine." Eventually TJ's friend James Madison convinced him copyrights and patents granted for a short period of tyme could mean more progress than without them. Once so convinced TJ calculated how long their terms should be, using an actuarial table he calculated they should only last 14 years, with one 14 year extension possible. And eventually he got some patents himself.

Falcon

Copyright ensures that the work of art stays in control of the family who actually created it...

Just as the forefathers had intended

The author of the blog post referenced by this article exhibits a conservative bias, and doesn't disclose a conflict of interest. Others have called him on it. But, it's his blog, isn't it.
Nevertheless, the post replies are interesting reading with passionate arguments on all sides, some of whom are ACTUAL PATENT ATTORNEYS!

The first thing IBM, Google, Microsoft, and a gaggle of companies will do is march right over to congress and say that the earth will implode if this is allowed.

Maybe, maybe not; some big software companies may love software patents, some may hate the expense they have to go through to patent things defensively. While TFA paints Google is threatened by this, the presentation is somewhat slanted. A different perspective is here.

Here's what I've found so far:

• Software Patent Supporter Tries to Pretend Google Harmed without Software Patents
• United States: Federal Circuit To Re-Assess Standards For Patent-Eligible Subject Matter - 2008-04-07

And, the original article: The Death of Google's Patents?

The only times this would ever occur is because a lot of people are retarded when it comes to computers. The proof of how people hate it is that the minute you show them, the lightbulb goes off and they instantly refuse it. The only ones who accept it are those with the wool over their eyes in the first place.

This has been shown time and time and time again. People don't know how to make things that are worth your time, so they think some magic ad is going to get clicks. Google's cost per action was an example of showing when advertisements really work. I guess a lot of people don't realize there are plenty of website scanners that check things such as advertising links...lots of traffic comes that way.

... they were only sued in the court that they were because it is notoriously biased in favor of patent trolls.

That's right. TFS and TFA don't mention it, but checking other outlets like Techdirt, the lawsuit was really filed in the district of East Texas which is notorious for awarding big money to the patent trolls.

I'll take the guess work out of it. The link to the Philadelphia Inquirer article that I was talking about is in it too. Here:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080201/021626147.shtml

The writer of the article is exactly right. The suit is stupid, and the state should be punished for bringing it. Figures that it was Pennsylvania; of course it'd be some stupid northeastern state that would do such a thing.

Simple. They either don't know the laws or don't report! I'm not saying that they got hit with extra taxes from the government. It's just that they may have been paying no taxes at all.

Not paying taxes has nothing to do with being an auctioneer or not. If someone isn't paying taxes on their income, that's tax evasion. There's already laws against that. Punishing everyone who sells on ebay for it is stupid and wrongheaded. It doesn't matter to the IRS where your income comes from, as long as it's reported properly. They certainly don't care if you have a license to auction goods (which any sane individual would know you don't need for using ebay, since as I said before, Ebay is the auctioneer, not the sellers). Next thing you know, some farmer selling his tractor at auction is going to be sued by Pennsylvania for not having an auctioneer's license, even though he didn't conduct the auction.

Actually, it's easy to argue with. If I list an item on Ebay, that doesn't make me an auctioneer, it makes me a seller. Ebay is the auctioneer. It's no different than giving a bunch of items to an old-fashioned auctioneer to sell. You're not the one up there auctioning them; he is. This just sounds like more local and state governments trying to collect money for nothing.

I'll take the guess work out of it. The link to the Philadelphia Inquirer article that I was talking about is in it too. Here:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080201/021626147.shtml

How are eBayers not paying taxes? If you derive income from selling things online, you're legally obligated to report that income on your income tax form and pay taxes for it. If you do it as a business, your business has to keep records and pay taxes. There's nothing fair about adding extra taxes on something just because it's on the internet.

Simple. They either don't know the laws or don't report! I'm not saying that they got hit with extra taxes from the government. It's just that they may have been paying no taxes at all.

It appears all they're doing is not hosting in their local NNTP cache the listed newsgroups

That's what I've gathered also. Cuomo's (D., NY State AG) people have lists of groups and sites they've identified according to some criteria and those groups and sites will be blocked and dehosted.

You have to click through link in this Slashdot story and the link in the first TechDirt story to another TechDirt story before you discover that specific usenet groups are being targetted. Characterizing this as "turn off Usenet access" is a lie and the referrers, including Slashdot, are lying.

The related story linked earlier today by Slashdot makes it clear that the websites being targetted (as opposed to newsgroups) are those actually hosted by the ISPs involved; no "firewall for the children". They are dehosting sites they host, not filtering. Right or wrong this is an enforcement of their existing "acceptable use policies", which Cuomo claims they have neglected.

The ISPs are being browbeat by a politician that is threatening fines. Don't like it? Vote the Fuck out of office. ISPs aren't at fault here.

Slashdot editors: I decline to assume the intended level of apoplexy based on your lies. Sorry to disappoint.

A state could pass a law that prohibits you from having child pornography on your computer, but I don't think it could pass a law prohibiting that traffic from entering the state.

Pennsylvania is the most recent state I recall hearing about, but I know there have been others as well. So far, the attempts to initiate these blocks have been shut down in court battles, but if one should eventually stick, it could present some interesting challenges.

As a hypothetical, the mere existence of 4chan is not illegal, nor is it inherently illegal to access it, but it has been blocked before by ISPs - notably in Europe, but it's a potential here as well - on the grounds that the content on 4chan is not acceptable to the communities those ISPs serve.

A community or state may pass a law to block 4chan, deeming it inappropriate by the standards of the community, and this FCC ruling may wind up in contention with that blocking as the ISPs would need to notify their customers and ensure that complying with the community law wouldn't clash with the FCC's regulatory ruling.

I can see the ruling going different ways. Existing demands to block content have already been ruled on, and the ruling has been that ISPs cannot be held responsible for not delivering illicit content into a community when a member of that community is actively requesting it, but legislators are a tricky bunch and continue to try and press laws that circumvent the court's findings. This FCC ruling would seem to throw yet another wrench in the gears.

"( but I typically only buy used CDs because I am more willing to pay the discounted, still marked up price when I know the profit goes to the small business, so suck on that secondary market RIAA )"

Never fear, that's next on the agenda

Indeed. Techdirt had an article about this two days ago.

As detailed on techdirt:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080708/1602521624.shtml

This is patently false, and is being spread by Republican Congressman Culbertson as an election year stunt. There is no plan from Pelosi to require such ridiculous approvals.

This actually looks like an attempt to loosen the restrictions on representatives. http://techdirt.com/articles/20080708/1602521624.shtml

The case law for online anonymity is currently unsettled (yes, I know some of those are incompatible jurisdictions.)

As much as we don't like Lori Drew and her despicable, possibly criminal behavior, this isn't the way to go about it (from the posts so far, seems most here agree that way.)

No anonymity would lead to a boring internet... people would begin to resort (more) to (ab)using open proxies to get the job done.

But this system still won't help to sink patent trolls, moreso it would actually give an incentive to patent trolls:

File or buy Patent A, but then don't have any revenue on it, because this is taxed.

I covered this when I said "require patent holders to release a product utilizing the patents within a couple of years of the issue of them." If they don't sell a product using a patent then they loose that patent. Then a proper financial analysis should show they'd make more money by selling as much as they could with a decent profit margin than by setting a high price.

Taxes on patents related to revenue are a boon to submarine patents.

Submarine patents are avoided by this requirement as well.

(On the other hand taxes which aren't related to revenue are a problem for small companies with minimal revenue because they wouldn't be able to finance holding a patent).

Ah, I address this by saying the patent holder pay a royalty on the revenue. Anybody who can't afford to manufacture the item itself could in one way or another, say with a fixed cost or profit margin, pay a generic or no name fabricator. From what I understand this is pretty standard in electronics with components and ICs. Heck not even Apple builds their own equipment, my MacBook Pro was shipped from a third party factory in Shanghai. Apple designs things then has someone else actually build them.

Falcon

PS: Actually at first Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed them. Eventually TJ was convinced they could help and he sat down with an Actuary table and calculated a term of 14 year with one 14 extension possible. Adam Smith thought they were a necessary evil.

did you get linked to the same links that the post linked me to!?...

Just to make sure, here's all the links that the post refers to:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/16/apples_open_secret_sproutcore_is_cocoa_for_the_web.html
http://www.sproutit.com/
http://www.sproutcore.com/
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080530/0022021266.shtml


...I read the article as linked, and just to make sure, I ran some text searches across them, and neither "ruby" or "rails" came up in the article content. From a goodly amount of reading, I didn't come across Rails being put forward as the big platform choice to warrant the tagging. So once again... the ruby/rails crowd seem to be shills, or at least certainly eager to grass-roots their little world into existence; because a packaging system isn't enough to be tagging the article as if it's the main technology.

Almost the opposite it looks like: "lawyers sending threat letters sometimes claim that the recipient would violate the firm's copyright by posting it online"

Richard and I got into a Net Neutrality 'Discussion' in the comment section of Techdirt last year. I have a feeling he is some how benefits from the Pro Net neutrality side of the debate, although I have no proof. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070319/121200.shtml Judge for yourself. I did turn into a screaming little douche at the end though...but it was for the Love of a Free Internet.

There are lots of other benefits of doing this, from law enforcement (in a non-Orwellian way) automation, to the relaxation of the executive branch

The "free" model is breaking down for Craigslist. I just wrote an article about this on Techdirt. Craigslist allows free ads, but not unlimited free ads. The intent is to allow individuals to post a few ads a week. But for some advertisers, that's not enough.

Craigslist has all the usual defenses. They have limits on how much each account can post. They have a CAPTCHA. They have E-mail account validation. They check for excessive posting from one IP address. And they have a flagging system to catch any remaining spam.

All those defenses have been breached. There are power tools for Craiglist spammers. Commercially available power tools. Multiple accounts are created for ad spamming. OCR is used to break the CAPTCHA. Jiffy Gmail Creator ("Who Else Wants to Create Unlimited Gmail Accounts in Seconds Flat Without Breaking a Sweat?") is used to create vast numbers of GMail accounts to receive the account validation replies. IP proxies are used to get around per-IP limitations. Postings flagged off are automatically reposted.

Against these industrial strength automated posting tools, Craigslist is losing. Major areas of the site are over 90% spam, and angry users are deserting the site. Craigslist is trying phone verification, but even that has been broken. (Read the Techdirt article and the Black Hat SEO forums for how that's done.)

Craigslist is being hit because it's the biggest free ad site, but attack tools are available for other ad and social networking sites. You can read about it on the "Black Hat SEO" forums.

People, mod this up! This needs to be visible to everyone, so more people can read that book. I loved it. It is quite insightful. (You can even download the whole book as a PDF and read it off a portable device.) They also have a blog, Against Monopoly. After that, read Techdirt, which is regularly insightful on how business models can actually be more successful when you don't enforce artificial scaricity.

article & bigger video can be found here

There's an rather insightful comment by Mike Masnick at techdirt.com about this New Yorker story.

As he notes, the story first tries to show that many important ideas are invented simultaneously by multiple parties ... but then completely fails to ask the obvious question: If such ideas' "time has come", so to speak, why are we granting a legal monopoly to someone who has no intention of developing them?

These three links should get you started:

eBay Sues Craigslist, As Craig And Jim Dilute eBay's Share
Details Come Out On eBay/Craigslist Fight
Craigslist Responds To eBay: I Know You Are, But What Am I?

These three links should get you started:

eBay Sues Craigslist, As Craig And Jim Dilute eBay's Share
Details Come Out On eBay/Craigslist Fight
Craigslist Responds To eBay: I Know You Are, But What Am I?

These three links should get you started:

eBay Sues Craigslist, As Craig And Jim Dilute eBay's Share
Details Come Out On eBay/Craigslist Fight
Craigslist Responds To eBay: I Know You Are, But What Am I?

However, since most of the infringement taking place over P2P is of relatively new material that certainly would fall within a reasonable period of copyright rather than older works that would have become public domain by now without the extensions, there's not much practical connection between them.

I give it a month, max. However, any halfway decent security guru knows that without some sort of (non-windows) encryption scheme, such as a True Crypt volume or whatnot is generally very easy to break into without these tools from Microsoft. All they are doing is allowing Mr. Joe Blow cop to look through your computer as soon as they bust into your house with a search warrant. If they had reason to suspect you were a REAL terrorist, or a child pornographer ring leader, then it would be the FBI knocking on your door, and they don't need that anyways. No, all the concerns raised here, I'm not so much worried about. Only thing I'm worried about is the fact that customs can search your laptop for no reason. That's a violation of privacy, IMO. If you are a suspected terrorist, sure, sure, they should be able to search your computer, and tools to make that process easier are great. But how much you wanna bet these tools are going to stay exclusively in law enforcment (or even government agencies)?

Proving, contrary to prior indications, that "free" really does mean "worthless."

like the problem that occurs when people focus too hard on the idea that economics is the study of resource allocation in the presence of scarcity.

Or the researcher who did the work on people willing to waste time for a free ice cream cone over paying for one with no line? Seeing how much of a loss their willing to take (in time, because we know our worth in time thanks to hourly wages) for "free"?

Of course those infrastructure improvements forced by the high bandwidth users benefit everyone as well. The solution to the bandwidth crisis really is better infrastructure. We've already paid for it even.

You might have mentioned that reality doesn't work out like that.

What I mean is, the bandwidth scarcity is artificial by design. The resources have already been collected and allocated, all that's left is for the *sniffle* poor poor communications companies to perform the work for which they have already been paid. This may not DIRECTLY apply to Comcast (though I would wager a small amount that it does) it nonetheless remains a strong point of contention in this debate.

P.S. The article I linked to above is simply the first result I got by googling "already paid for fiber", many more (and probably better) articles exist on the subject.

So, not to be ad hominem, but lets use your own analogy.

The difference here is between choosing to go to Disneyland (and pay it or not), and being forced to pay for Disneyland. It's not a question of where the money goes, its whether you have the choice of how to spend it. The system doesn't work because the cost will be passed to the consumer, not the ones tossing aside their liability. Additionally, what does this do for non-label artists? There are issues on both sides of the table and why this doesn't work.

Or analogy two: Your choice to buy the swiss army knife or not, are you saying that you should just pay the fee for it, or you can choose to buy it? That is the bigger deal here. It's not where the magic marketing numbers are (which are shown that most people don't click advertising)

I hate to say it, but I would be seriously offended by a "pay for being a criminal" type subscription charge for the reasons above, what it implies, and all it is doing is degrading service. I really hate to support big business but by increasing the cost for the same service that is the same thing as degrading it due to lack of efficiency. Sometimes this happens naturally but artificially like this is just lining MPAA/RIAA/IFPI pockets at the simultaneous expense of every consumer who is legitimately or not using a service.

May as well just label it a "profit charge" and put that into your service bill for anything...except for the reality of just how much backlash that would create. Or maybe they'll try to get it passed by calling it "opt-out" or some garbage.

There are plenty of articles out there about ad revenue, associating things like "just because you watch TV" = money in a media associates pocket are unaccurate as far as ad revenue. Unless someone explicitly provides you a way to track a sale back to a TV ad, you can't really associate a sales increase from strictly an ad (especially if there is more than 1 source of adds, and even with fairly stable business). Reason here is that markets are volatile, and sales is just as volatile. People can change on the drop of a hat, because the sky is blue today, etc in the same way that a stock does. http://techdirt.com/articles/20060504/1941211.shtml provides a decent example of that.

because there are far fewer "real" jobs to go around thanks to H1B stuff. Ignoring resources is harmful.

For the record I'm British, and not working in the US, or for a US company. But, there's two responses to your comment; the first is that 'ignoring resources' is not harmful, it's a violation of the H1B program; foreign workers are allowed into the US only if workers with a similar skill set cannot be found locally (I suspect that this doesn't take into account the cost of labour, but I'm not sure).

My second response regards the comment of 'fewer "real" jobs to go around.' First of all: what's a real job, as opposed to a 'non-real' job? But most importantly if a successful programmer (occupation chosen because of the primary audience of Slashdot) is brought into America surely that serves not to 'take' a job from an American (since a comparably skilled American couldn't be found) but to support the economy and, consequently create jobs? That person is going to take the wages and contribute to the local economy in some way, from buying/renting a house/apartment to using the local gym, to dining at a local restaurant. These 'service' jobs might be the 'non-real' jobs you refer to, but they provide employment and allow others to live in the local area as opposed to having to move elsewhere to find jobs/cheaper housing.

I'm not saying that everyone with a CS degree should be imported to a particular area to support an economy, but, if a company can't find someone to do the job they need to be done, why shouldn't they go elsewhere to look for their employees?

Perhaps I've mis-read your comments and, if I have, I apologise; assuming that I got it right, then I had to respond.

While this would get a lot of attention, you only get access to the music for the lifetime of the device or subscription (if you didn't pay a lump sum). While there's a small concession that you'd get to keep 40 to 50 songs after the device died or the subscription ended, you'd lose the rest of the songs. In other words, despite Steve Jobs' supposed dislike for DRM, this music would be quite DRM'd. Limited subscription plans have been around for ages and they've never gone very far because of those limitations. People know better by now, and so should Steve Jobs.

Rick Cotton is also the one who claimed that Piracy hurts Corn growers because -- without piracy -- theaters would sell more tickets and thus more popcorn. Don't you see what you're doing all you P2P users?!! You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer. And his family. Won't someone think of the popcorn farmer's children?

Only if we stop using the phrase, or using an "anti-phrase"(see link below), will people wake up to the fraud brought upon the rest of humanity by these IP abusers. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/003240458.shtml

It's not odd at all. "Owning" software and selling it as if it were a scarce good is no less artificial than the communist economy he lived under in the Soviet Union. What he wants is not capitalism, but the power to control all Tetris-like products and to force people to pay him for their use. That's a government monopoly--the antithesis of the Free Market. The market around Free Software is the result of removing classical copyrights/monopolies and allowing Free Market dynamics to to take over.

What you're describing is the tendency of the price of all products in a market to approach marginal cost (which, with software, is effectively 0). Mike Masnick at Techdirt does a great job explaining these concepts.

It seems that these patent trolls didn't know enough to sue in Marshall, Texas, where all the professionals go.

It seems obvious to me that if you some rural location with a low cost of living was wired it could allow those areas to be more competitive with outsourcing overseas or south of the border.

Most of those jobs don't pay much though, and they don't create new jobs. At most they bring back jobs that were outsourced to begin with. Like what Dell did. At first Dell sent support to India but ended up relocating support to Carolina, I don't recall whether North or South. Outsourcing to India didn't really work for them.

And then there are the entrepreneurs that we dont know about...

And all the unknown jobs. However seeing as how TFA was about new jobs it would of been nice if they had said somethng about what sort of jobs they would be.

There is distance learning which would help educate those in more rural areas who cannot reach a community college.

Some people find distance learning helpful but others need someone physically present. I learned this a long tyme ago when I used to tutor. Since then I relearned, because of an injury I survived, yes survived as I wasn't expected to live, that. After struggling in classes I realized I needed that person aid. Heck, after my injury for a while I had an ILS, Independent Living Skills, nurse help me.

Yet we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And based on a a lot of the comments here on Slashdot there is not the appreciation or the willpower to do it. Probably because most of you posting already have your fast connection. If just those digital 'have nots' would pull themselves up by their tin can straps...

I don't know where this comes from. Other /.ers have, as I have myself, railed against Cablecos and Telcos for not expanding, building out, the infrastructure for broadband. And yet they have already been paid billions of dollars to do so. There's the "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", "Pennsylvania Broadband Fraud", and "You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get". And those are from the still good bookmarks I have. Googling /. for broadband cableco OR telco" returns 1250 results. Admittedly not all are where /.ers complain about broadband not being rolled out but a good percentage should be. I don't recall how many tymes, but it's been a bunch, I've posted about the Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah and have said that though I consider myself libertarian I like that the infrastructure here is owned by the communities involved, who then allow anyone to use it to provide any services it can deliver, and not some for profit monopoly. However it doesn't have to be owned by government as in this case, actually I'd rather it be owned by a coop.

Had I been responsible for her or not I'd have wanted more details. Don't toss the baby out with the bathwater with blanket expressions like this. This is like a "if you support gun control you're a republican". Not everything is so black and white.

I had interaction for as short a time as possible, and left it all up to the kid. Nobody continued to monitor her or worry of keeping her safe. If you have a kid raised with actual common sense you typically don't have to worry about the rest. I agree each case is different, but the level of control should always be minimized, not simply deemed "acceptable".

In effect, I was not lucky. There happen to be a few recently convicted child molesters in her area that were convicted for doing things around her area during the age when she would have been vulnerable. I'm not breaking a sweat, because she developed her own judgement. I made a decision based on my information, and I went with it. Going on the internet is by no means whatsoever a necessarily dangerous endeavor by any means. Predators are not in abundance, you know. Statistics of stuff like that are totally bogus.

I wouldn't overthink the situation with the kid for the basis of this article. Simply put, kids aren't great with passwords, no less than adults are. I think that was the basic summary of the situation was "how to deal with that" not "the internet is dangerousssss".

Techdirt claims it (probably) ain't so.

"With OIX and Webwise, consumers are in control: they can switch relevance 'off' or 'on' at any time at Webwise.com. There's no small print and no catches: it's completely up to the consumer."

In the comments on the Techdirt article somebody is saying that Phorm are the latest incarnation of 121media which made the contextplus rootkit. A quick search later and indeed they are the same company.

Anybody got any more dirt on them?

According to TechDirt at least. Seems they're just going to allow a choice, rather than replace T-Mobile with AT&T. But why let the facts get in the way of a good headline...

The authors of the white paper paint a dreary future where "copyright trolls" file lawsuits in order to rake in massive amounts of statutory damages

The authors of the white paper paint a dreary future where "copyright trolls" file lawsuits in order to rake in massive amounts of statutory damages