Slashdot Mirror

Historically, whenever a journalist has been jailed for not ratting out a source, the cops have pulled all their stuff right off their desks

I remember that movie! Where the cop break's the reporter's fingers one-by-one, til he tells him the source? "I make the laws in this town, mister." Friggin' awesome! 1938, right? Caught it on UHF when I was a teen.

There is no legal exemption just because you happen to work for a media outlet.

I know! Stupid reporters ain't got no rights, and it serves 'em right - who do they think they are, challenging the all-powerful gubbermint?!

disclaimer: sitting in a newspaper office right now

Me too! Just for fun, let's burn the printing presses! Then we'll set fire to the Reichstag! (Psst! Pass me the bourbon)

Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

This is not, of course, to suggest that there is anything edifying about
what LaMacchia is alleged to have done. If the indictment is to be
believed, one might at best describe his actions as heedlessly
irresponsible. and at worst as nihilistic, self-indulgent, and lacking
in any fundamental sense of values. Criminal as well as civil penalties
should probably attach to willful, multiple infringements of copyrighted
software even absent a commercial motive on the part of the infringer.
One can envision ways that the copyright law could be modified to permit
such prosecution. But, "'[i]t is the legislature, not the Court which is
to define a crime, and ordain its punishment.'" Dowling, supra at 214
(quoting United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95 (1820)).

I'd strongly recommend what I use, which is a Palm T|X with a 4GB SD card. The T|X itself has great features: 320x480 screen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, stereo with standard headphone jack, solid battery life, 128 MB of NVRAM, in-box compatibility with not only popular PIMs but MS Office files in native format. Add to that a 4 GB SD card (available for about $65 or less after rebate at Newegg.com--I use the Transcend one), and you've got enough add-on storage (which supports hierarchical folders) to store a whole bunch of multimedia as well as documents. The PalmOS isn't the most sophisticated, but it makes up for that with speed, simplicity, stability, and thousands of apps. Mac compatibility comes through apps like MarkSpace's Missing Sync, and the Palm user community is tremendously supportive, including sites like PalmAddict (for which I'm a volunteer Associate Writer). Add a Bluetooth keyboard like the compact ThinkOutside model, and you've got a serious laptop replacement that will play well with campus wireless networks.

If you need any other info., feel free to e-mail me. {Prof. Jonathan}

...drawn on January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled that "the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn." Do not fool yourself into thinking that an organism that is part human part pig will be given civil rights that are denied to one that is fully human, yet unborn. Of course, if one pig-man sits down on a bus and refuses to move, and another declares "I have a dream", anything could happen...

Right-to-life advocates push the all-or-nothing line of humanity out to include the unborn, back to the moment of egg fertilization. Some also want the definition to include brain-dead adults. The problem with the embryo situation is that it's not yet an independant organism -- it's attached to the mother and cannot survive separate from her. Her right to control her own body is irreconcilably in conflict with the newly granted right of the fetus to its life.

(1) Right-to-life advocates push the all-or-nothing line of humanity out to include the unborn. True. My own basis for doing so is that any other line assigns the quality "human" to an organism based on either (a) utility -- that is, a definition based on a particular theory of ethics, or (b) location of the organism relative to some other organism. The first is abhorrent; the second is ad hoc. The only scientific way to procede that makes sense to me is, Species? Human. Living in a biological sense? Check. Living human being = person.

(2) Some also want the definition to include brain-dead adults. Possibly true, but most are willing to concede that a brain-dead adult is non-salvageable. The Terri Schaevo case was remarkable because (a) her wishes were not in writing, (b) her function was clearly minimal, (c) the needed amount of life support was also minimal, and (d) both sides had potential interests in the outcome. It was, in other words, a horrible test case. I would have pulled the tube, myself.

(3)The problem with the embryo situation is that it's not yet an independant organism -- it's attached to the mother and cannot survive separate from her. Well, we agree that the attachment is what causes the problem. Unfortunately, the attachment is not a sufficient cause to declare non-humanity. For one thing, no organism is truly "independent" of others, regardless of attachment. My two-month-old Elizabeth would die very quickly without my wife or me. "Independence" (a murky concept at best) is clearly not a necessary condition for humanity.

One might argue that the embryo is non-detachable from her particular mother, but this fares no better. If in the year 2050 it became possible to transplant embryos from one womb to another, or to a special incubator, then the embryo *would* be able to survive without attachment to a particular woman. If detachability is the criterion for humanity, then embryos would suddenly become human in 2050 -- an odd result, indeed.

(4) Her right to control her own body is irreconcilably in conflict with the [...] right of the fetus to its life.Agreed. Which is why I would ban abortions *except* in situations for which the rights of the mother are enhanced (aggravated conditions, such as rape; threat to life; serious threat to physical health). Put another way: if we want to balance the rights of mom and baby in any way whatsoever, the right approach is to make abortions illegal, with exceptions. Any other position (no restrictions, OR no abortions without exception) fails to balance competing rights.

(5) ...the newly granted right of the fetus to its life. Historically, this is false. There have been some questions about the beginning of life, but there has never been a doubt that a living fetus has the right to not be killed. Roe invalidated abortion restrictions because it disagreed with Texas on its theory of life. What you may have meant is "its newly granted status as being alive", but my argument there is that the fetus was simply not recognized by the courts as being alive.

Regards,
Jeff Cagle

The U.S. law in question, which protects "service providers" from libel liability from third-party postings, has an interesting history. Back in 1995, a New York judge found that the then-proprietary Prodigy service could be held responsible for an allegedly libelous posting to its Money Talk bulletin board about the Stratton Oakmont financial services firm, on the theory that Prodigy exercised editorial control over the postings. The fact that Prodigy's editorial control was limited to automated dirty-words filtering was lost on the judge.

In response to the uproar by ISPs and online hosts over this case, the U.S. Congress enacted a safe harbor for service providers, ironically into the roundly criticized Communications Decency Act. While most of the CDA was found unconstitutional, the safe harbor remains (at 47 U.S.C. 230, and has been used by a number of major ISPs (including AOL in a case involving a Matt Drudge story) over the years.

This case will likely come down to whether a blog creator is a service provider as defined by the law and the cases that have interpreted it. What makes it interesting is that allowing public comments to a blog really falls somewhere in the spectrum between hosting a message board and publishing letters to the editor, depending on issues of control and other factors.

A few other thoughts. First, regarding those Slashdotters who have marveled at the U.S.-centric views on Internet law, it's really the European Union (through its data protection and VAT laws among others) that has sought to project its legal structure regarding the Internet to others around the globe. Also, as it happens, libel via the Internet has generated major new jurisdictional questions, as the libelers have been brought to trial in foreign countries whose libel laws are much more pro-plaintiff than those of the alleged libeler's home country. (Take a look at the Dow Jones v. Gutnick case for just one example of this.)

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
Co-Author, TechLawProf Blog

Jan 22, 1973, seems to be the date that personal responibility was abolished by the supreme court.

Like or dislike the decision, I've read in places that this is when we stopped being accountable for our actions.

That was changed with an amendment somewhere back in the late 1800's/early 1900's.

The legal concept of a corporation as a "person" which has Constitutional rights came from a Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886.

FYI, It only took me about three seconds to find this with a Google search. There's no excuse to spout uninformed nonsense when finding the facts and documenting them is so trivially easy.

The question, though, is how you define ISP (or "Service Provider," which is the phrase used in much of this legislation). I'm very interested in the question of whether free hotspots, intentionally open or even unknowingly open home or work networks do and/or should enjoy the statutory protections of commercial service providers. It's something I'm working on now, and I hope to have conclusions shortly. Meanwhile, you may want to check out what EFF says about online service provider best practices. {Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor, Touro Institute for Business, Law and Technology}

There are a number of voting machine-related challenges on the national level. Ralph Nader has successfully requested a recount in New Hampshire, and groups like BlackBoxVoting are working on fraud audits. Also, in Ohio, the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are reportedly joining together to demand a recount. There are local challenges going on as well. {Jonathan}

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412 Fax: 516-977-3001
e-mail: jezor@tourolaw.edu
BizLawTech Blog: http://iblt.tourolaw.edu/blog

There are a number of voting machine-related challenges on the national level. Ralph Nader has successfully requested a recount in New Hampshire, and groups like BlackBoxVoting are working on fraud audits. Also, in Ohio, the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are reportedly joining together to demand a recount. There are local challenges going on as well. {Jonathan}

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412 Fax: 516-977-3001
e-mail: jezor@tourolaw.edu
BizLawTech Blog: http://iblt.tourolaw.edu/blog

From the actual decision:

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

However, they go on to say:

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive. The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

Meaning they did not rule that there was an absolute right to an abortion.
What they did rule was that

All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn

So they don't feel that the 14th ammendment applies. I think that's morally wrong, but that's what they decided. There is a difference between this and passing a law saying "abortions are legal".

if that is not writeing a law, I don't know what is
except by that definition, a reversal of Roe v. Wade would be "legislating from the bench" as well. Before this decision, there had to be a law

And now spyware.

I can't be the only one who thinks the world would be a better place if "Spamford" Wallace's mommy knew about Roe v. Wade.

• (C) If the person engaging in the conduct thereby intentionally kills or attempts to kill the unborn child, that person shall instead of being punished under subparagraph (A), be punished as provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113 of this title for intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being.

• If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the
• (14th) Amendment.

I rode the Vomit Comit back in 1987, as a research participant in Space Adaptation Syndrome (i.e. zero-g motion sickness) studies at the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Lab at Brandeis University. We did 2 or 3 days worth of flights, essentially a 2-mile high roller coaster (40 or so 10,000-foot parabolae with 30 seconds of zero-g at the top of each parabola) over the Gulf of Mexico, and it was truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life. While I didn't get to do the zero-g acrobatics you've seen on TV or in "Apollo 13" (I was doing baseline susceptibility studies, and was seated), I had the fun experience of being hit while blindfolded by a floating teddy bear in a space suit. While I never got to go back (scheduling problems, an engine failure on the ground prior to a flight, etc.), I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And while I only vomited once (some professional researchers were so susceptible that they had to sit out the second and third days to recover), I will tell you that the smell of a padded aircraft cabin with poor ventilation after one of those flights was...powerful. {Professor Jonathan Ezor, Touro Law Center}

The Supreme Court has heard no case in which either the Federal Govt or the states have attempted to prosecute a theater-fire-yeller. There are no laws, there are no precedents. Justices tend to become off-topic in their opinions (sort of like this thread), but what Holmes said was no Footnote Four that has had any post-ruling influence. And by the way, in pretty much every subsequent free speech case (other than DMCA-affirming cases like Eldred v Ashcroft) and the lower courts' encounter with Emmanuel Goldstein's DeCSS crusade, the Supreme Court has opted to strengthen the protection of free speech.

So, as I said, it is legal to yell fire in a theater as it does not violate any law (a law which does not exist because what it would be prohibiting does not pose a direct and imminent threat to the Federal Government.

But I invite you to test it out -- maybe you'll get famous.

</ConLaw rant>

While I applaud the increased awareness by technology professionals about the legal and regulatory environment in which we all must work, I wonder whether NYFU is perhaps confusing politics and commerce in its Call to General Assembly. After all, while there are legitimate political discussions to be had on the jurisdiction and scope of the FCC and its actions, as well as the balance between national security and personal privacy, do these key questions really deserve to be joined with a debate about Microsoft's contracting practice or SCO's IP claims? I would argue that they do not, and that joining them threatens to weaken legitimate discourse and overgeneralizes about the "Internet community" to which this Call to General Assembly is directed.

Looking at this Call to General Assembly, I find myself pondering exactly what NYFU is trying to be. Is it based upon a political view of overreaching and naive governmental officials, and if so, is this limited to Internet issues? Are they espousing a belief in the technical superiority of open source over closed source software and, if so, what relevance is the "Bio-Medical Cartel" and similar hyperbolic language? Are they objecting to the substance of SCO's IP claims, with some broader conspiracy theory involving Microsoft? If their answer is "all of the above," I think they are being counterproductive. Each of these views is certainly worth discussing, but they seem to have little relationship among them beyond the fact that some technology professionals hold them as true.

For myself, as an attorney and law professor interested in issues of technology rights and risks, I am turned off by the exaggeration and mix of issues presented in this Call. I also believe that NYFU is doing both itself and its cause(s) a profound disservice by presenting its ideas as a conspiratorialist rant filled with references to "tyrannical governments", "barratry and red-baiting" and cartels and oligopolies.

What do the rest of you think? {Professor Jonathan}

As someone who runs a business and technology law institute at Touro Law Center in Huntington, NY, I'm really looking forward to this show. Yes, it'll be soapy, and no, it won't go into the issues discussed on Slashdot, but I am tickled by the thought that someone is projecting out the other kinds of legal questions that may come up for my students, tomorrow's tech-savvy lawyers. But hey -- no law show ever showed licensing or similar lawyers; negotations over ownership provisions ("Work Made for Hire!" "No, Limited License!") or warranties and representations never make for good television. {Professor Jonathan}

Miranda v. Arizona (1963) built upon the Gideon decision and established that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination requires, among other things, that a suspect be advised of his right to remain silent and his right to receive legal counsel.

Sound a lot like double entendre to me. Logic tells us that interpretation implies an enherant dynamic nature and since the job of The Court is to interpret the Consitution as it applies to the cases before it... I see no other way for them to perform their duties.

In other words... if there were no "dynamic" interpretation (as you call it) then there would be no need for The Court whatsoever.

It sounds more like you're merely bitter over a handful of decisions that you didn't agree with. Trust me, there are plenty of cases that went the other way as well.

There are actually two issues for which electronic voting may be useful:

1) Unreliable mechanical voting machines. The thought is that digital is less prone to breakdown than mechnical. Makes sense, and the Diebold system is pointed in that direction. We've seen, though, that reliability can work both ways.

2) Remote voting. This is the one I really want, since I'd much rather vote via browser than having to go to the local public school, find parking, and wait on line. Problem of course is not only security but authentication, and the authentication problem is really a pain. You think that all those elderly folks in Florida had trouble with chads? Try asking them to install private key encryption! {Professor Jonathan Ezor, Director, Touro Institute for Business, Law and Technology}

As someone who teaches Cyberlaw and runs a program on law and technology, I'd urge you to consider broadening your horizons a bit, and to focus on practical rather than theoretical discussions. As relevant as IP law is to the technology industries, it is only one small part of the whole picture. Contract law, corporate structure finance (yes, even in this post-bubble era!), privacy law and especially international law are also crucial subjects to learn.

I'd echo the sentiments of those who said to take a look at casebooks and other law school texts in a local library. You can also go to the sources for IP law: the U.S. Copyright Office and Patent and Trademark Office have some good basic info, as does the Federal Trade Commission on privacy rules. This site has a good list of info. on doing e-business throughout the world. Finally, for an introduction to Internet-related business legal issues, you can always find my book in a local library.

Finally, you'll need to decide if you actually want to be a lawyer. Law school is rather expensive these days, even for state schools, and the loan burden for many of our students is severe. Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to ponder this further. {Professor Jonathan Ezor}

As someone who teaches Cyberlaw and runs a program on law and technology, I'd urge you to consider broadening your horizons a bit, and to focus on practical rather than theoretical discussions. As relevant as IP law is to the technology industries, it is only one small part of the whole picture. Contract law, corporate structure finance (yes, even in this post-bubble era!), privacy law and especially international law are also crucial subjects to learn.

I'd echo the sentiments of those who said to take a look at casebooks and other law school texts in a local library. You can also go to the sources for IP law: the U.S. Copyright Office and Patent and Trademark Office have some good basic info, as does the Federal Trade Commission on privacy rules. This site has a good list of info. on doing e-business throughout the world. Finally, for an introduction to Internet-related business legal issues, you can always find my book in a local library.

Finally, you'll need to decide if you actually want to be a lawyer. Law school is rather expensive these days, even for state schools, and the loan burden for many of our students is severe. Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to ponder this further. {Professor Jonathan Ezor}

As someone who teaches cyberlaw, I find this case interesting but not unique. After all, what we're really talking about is intangible property--essentially, a contractual right to do certain things in a certain context. Almost like a license. In other words, the company set up the game to allow the player to do X, then messed up its security so that the player was prevented from doing X. Player didn't get the benefit of his agreement to use the game.

What would have been more interesting would be if the game had included a virtual "court," the player had won in that "court," and a real-world court had been used to enforce the "judgment." I'm sure that's coming one of these days. It's a logical outgrowth of situations such as that described by Julian Dibbell in "A Rape In Cyberspace," which I assign to my students each semester. {Professor Ezor}

I'm actually researching this question: how responsible is an access point owner for what's done using his/her connection? Will access point owners get the same protections standard ISPs do under US law? Will they have the same responsibilities? I've already written a short piece on the subject.

I look forward to sharing my research with the Internet community. Contact me here if you're interested in the topic. {Prof. Jonathan Ezor, Touro Law Center}

I'm actually researching this question: how responsible is an access point owner for what's done using his/her connection? Will access point owners get the same protections standard ISPs do under US law? Will they have the same responsibilities? I've already written a short piece on the subject.

I look forward to sharing my research with the Internet community. Contact me here if you're interested in the topic. {Prof. Jonathan Ezor, Touro Law Center}

The Supreme Court has a spotty track record, at best when it comes to these decisions. The fact is that an intelligent computer could be seen as a slave, and one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Courts history was the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, another case that may be prevalent is the decision in Korematsu v. United States, which is still a president. The First computer may indeed fall victim to human short sightedness and an unwillingness to change. I for one hope that the first machine that asks to be free is given the dignity that some of our ancestors were not.

Until the legal system completely decides if/when a human fetus is human, I doubt we can decide if a machine intelligence can be elevated to a state where it "must" be preserved.

If a woman can "take ownership" of the life created in her womb and have the legal right to terminate said creation, then a computer scientist can have the right to terminte his/her electronic creation, as a matter of precident.

On a personal and moral note, I don't agree that this should be the case, in either situation.

Something just occured to me:

How quickly do you think that some unthinking government agency or financial institution will start including Social Security numbers into URIs, and make them publicly searchable? It will probably happen accidentally, given that so many institutions use SS#s as identifiers even though they're not supposed to.

*sigh*

{Jonathan}

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Associate Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412 Fax: 516-977-3001
e. jezor@tourolaw.edu
BizLawTech Blog

Because the URL is a single Web page; the URI is an identifier that can be incorporated to every single Web page that fits the description. URLs and URIs do two different things; the former is a pointer to a file; the latter adds descriptive depth in an ideally universal way. {Jonathan}

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Associate Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412 Fax: 516-977-3001
e. jezor@tourolaw.edu
BizLawTech Blog

This is the same Julian Dibbell who wrote the incredible "A Rape in Cyberspace," first published in the Village Voice. I use it as a text in my Cyberlaw class. It's no surprise, then, that he's exploring even more real-world equivalents in the online universe. {Jonathan}

Lately, kind sir, I have been quite perturbed by certain events that have been proliferating in our society. Was it not so long ago, that in more civilized times, children respected and obeyed their parents, under the threat of a firm thrashing if their impudence and audacity got out of hand? But oh, kind father, the trials that parents today must suffer! Not just the other day, whist I was dining upon a fresh garden salad, my daughter, of not even 6 years old, insisted upon uprooting most unrest in requesting I purchase for her a milky-way bar! I quickly remarked to the impudent creature that one of our many servants would be more than willing to carriage her to the local general store; but no! she insisted that I -personally- drive the buggy to make the purchase! Oh wise man of God, what is a poor woman to do in these hard times! Before you can open your Moses-lovin' mouth Pastor, I have proposed a final solution to the problem of "youthful indiscretion"- Prison Labor!

Before you bring up cries of protest from your liberalism-saturated mind, hear me out! Our disrespectful children will learn the true meaning of honor and sacrifice while they're hard at work pounding license plates and assembling adding machines! Honestly, what better way is there to whip our children into shape? Scare them with threats of the boogey-man? Psh-haw! Just look at the wondrous effects prison labor had on the Dell kid! Not only will prison labor harden our children into obedient automatons, it will show them the reality they will have to face if they follow their current paths and become criminals!

Thank you for your attention kind Minister, and God-Bless!

banzai51 wrote:

" It wouldn't. But the government could finally cash in on the internet. Its all in our best interests of course."

Um, which government? As much as I will argue against the notion of the Internet as a lawless environment, the bottom line is that it is without borders, and spammers will easily be able to find an offshore haven from which to send their sexual enhancement ads. To assume that a US or UK law charging a per e-mail tax will somehow eliminate spam is unrealistic and unworkable. It will also significantly reduce the incentive to use e-mail for appropriate means, such as operating an e-mail discussion list.
Professor Jonathan I. Ezor
Director, Touro Institute for Business, Law and Technology
jezor@tourolaw.edu

Search for potential life. And keep searching for it.

The Santa Clara story is interesting, but I can find no support for it anti-corporation sites that are more or less quoting each other. In legal sources I see nothing. Also, not only does the decision itself not address personhood, it quotes the Chief Justice as saying, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."

It would be error to cite the decision for the proposition of "personhood" -- editorial headnotes indeed carry no weight -- but sloppy citation doesn't mean corporations are believed "persons" thanks to some long-forgotten error. The courts are not that goofy, and believe me every litigant who might benefit would have been raising it in their arguments ever since. All that's left is conspiracy theory.

I don't recall the actual origin or corporate rights, though I assume they for example have been able to sue and be sued from day 1. As for personhood, it may be just a bad metaphor. I am interested in learning its origin.

"When in respect of any class of offenses the difficulty of obtaining convictions is at all general in England, we may hold it as an axiom, that the law requires amendment. Such conduct in juries is the silent protest of the people against its undue severity. This was strongly exemplified in the case of prosecutions for the forgery of bank-notes, when it was a capital felony. It was in vain that the charge was proved. Juries would not condemn men to the gallows for an offense of which the punishment was out of all proportion to the crime; and as they could not mitigate the sentence they brought in verdicts of Not Guilty. The consequence was, that the law was changed; and when secondary punishments were substituted for the penalty of death, a forger had no better chance of an acquittal than any other criminal. Thus it is that the power which juries possess of refusing to put the law in force has, in the words of Lord John Russell, `been the cause of amending many bad laws which the judges would have administered with professional bigotry, and above all, it has this important and useful consequence, that laws totally repugnant to the feelings of the community for which they are made, can not long prevail in England.'" W. Forsyth, History of Trial by Jury 367-368 (2d ed. 1971).

A little clarification to my intentions is needed: of course if you were under worked, your business has fewer clients, etc. there should be layoffs. A business exists for one purpose- to make money; you can't be mad at a corporation when it legally acts in its' best interests and stated purpose. Certainly this thing of ours has had its' share of excesses in the last few years; I'm not talking about an end to frivolity and dot-com extravaganza.

What I'm referring to is a general trend in the economy. Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the two figures that should jump out at you are that employment is up (now at 5.7%) and productivity is up 4.0% in Q3 alone; both of these trends are continuing upward. With low inflation a company is not making money by raising prices so an easy alternative have fewer people do the same amount of work or do the same amount of work for less (salary, benefits, etc.)

On a totally unrelated topic there was a time in this country when corporations only existed to further the public good; our founding fathers feared and were fleeing the religious and corporate tyranny. I feel that this forgotten legal decision is one of the most important in our history; it essentially empowered corporations as what we know today: semi-autonomous beings capable of owning property, being wronged, and having the rights of a citizen (where comes the term 'corporate citizen'). It established that: "Corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States". For all those and bitch and rave about globalization, corporate power, corporate abuse, the pedaling of political influence, and the like and wonder to themselves 'how did we get here?', this is a good place to start. I would love to discuss this sometime on slash, another day, another topic...

My 2 cents.

Here's a good example of "in rem" sillyness:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. ALL RIGHT, TITLE AND INTEREST IN A 30 ACRE PARCEL OF LAND, MORE OR LESS, AND APPURTENANCES THERETO, KNOWN AS BREEZY HILL ROAD, CITY OF PARKSVILLE, TOWN OF LIBERTY, SULLIVAN COUNTY, NEW YORK

These forfeiture laws are a mockery of the constitution and are a throwback to the days when property used in a crime became property of the Crown.

<sarcasm>But hey, none of us are drug dealers so we have nothing to worry about when the government defecates on the constitution, right?&lt/sarcasm>

Oh well.

Since when did corporations, legal fictions, enjoy equal protection under the first amendment?!

Since Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886:

The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to create equal legal rights for all persons, i.e. freed slaves and their descendants. Hah. That didn't happen for a hundred years. But it took only twenty years for corporations to become "persons."

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the 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. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

My guess is that you're think of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific RR case from 1886. It's actually quite interesting. The Supreme Court decided that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations.

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."

It was quite a landmark case. You can read the original ruling, or see one of many interpretations.

1. Why and how is a computer program expressive speech? What does it express? 2600's lawyers are entirely familiar with Touretzky's Gallery, so forget about those. Assume you have some C or perl staring at you, any random block of code in any random print-out. What does it express? Why should that code be protected expression?

A computer program expresses a method. It expresses functional ideas, much as a recipe, scientific experimient instructions, or musical score does. The actual expression depends on the program, so the question is sort of like asking what a musical score expresses - a general answer is very generic, but any specific instance of such communication will be much more rich. Here, DeCSS expresses the functional ideas that demonstrate that CSS is insecure in a specific tangible way. The First Amendment protects such content even against a Congress bent on stiffling that particular idea from dissemination.

Softwares expression generally is equivalent to standard english sentences with the understood 2nd person subject ("You"), followed by the verb given by the instruction, and a direct object that tells what the operation occurs on. A decryption program, for example, generally expresses a mathematical forumla, and are often an implementation of functional ideas learned from reading mathematical literature. Computer books are filled with programs and form a major sections at most bookstores precisely because they are expressive. Programs are copyrighted because they are expressive. Computer programs are not part of any "conduct" until and unless they are executed. Instead, a program merely communicates functional ideas that might be exectued or might be read by the legions of programmers actually do read and understand programming languages.

2. What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others.

The question is misplaced. Fair use admits no bright line rules (See Leibovitz v Paramount, opinion by judge Newman) A rule that said "No fair uses exist for high quality digital works" is therefore impossible to assert. Instead, fair use is an affirmative defense to copying as chosen and performed by the alleged infringeer. If the four factors weigh in favor of fair use, then fair use exists. To abstractly argue this can never be the case for digital movies requires proving a negative, which is impossible and counter to copyright jurisprudence.

We'll answer the question anyway by providing just one example, that happens to be relevent to DeCSS: "Interoperability" is one class of fair use that clearly has a well-established existance in copyright jurisprudence. Using DeCSS to allow interoperability of DVD's with alternative operating systems and/or MPEG-2 players is done for personal, noncommercial use, and increases rather than decreases the potential market for the copyrighted works in their high-quality digital form. Linux users will now buy DVD's, if allowed.

The odd thing is that we're seeing stuff go wrong now with corporate capitalism what we saw go wrong with communism.

These huge corporations keep getting bigger and bigger, allowing themselves a stranglehold on the industry, and in doing so, they become hugely beauracratic, heirarchical, and conservative.

So some horrible design issue is found in one of Intel's products, something that would guarantee failure for a smaller company, and what happens? Intel denies a few allegations, issues a few workarounds to Microsoft, and hires a few new spin doctors to make sure everything works okay.

The computer industry is just catching on to this. The oil and tobacco industries have been doing it for years. Microsoft shows an uncanny brilliance for turning a bumbling mistake into a "feature." But at least, unlike Shell, they're covering up system crashes and not genocide.

It took Communism around 80 years to become so big and unwieldy that it collapsed under it's own weight. After 114 years of corporate rule (SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY ), it seems that the incredible arrogance of corporate capitalism is putting it on the same route.


Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

Heehee... that's the first I've heard of Helms-Burton since Godfrey-Milliken. Anyone remember how Helms and Burton and Gingrich sputtered when that was trotted out?

It seems to me that anybody who took US History in high school should understand the irony of the domain name "crowdedtheater.com" being censored.
Even if this site was a "clear and present danger," which I doubt, the Feds needed to go through more official circles than just harassing the ISP.
Been a while since I took J110, but here are the court cases that I believe established the "fire in a crowded theater" precident: Debs Vs. United States and Schenck Vs. United States. The government won both of these cases, but that was during WWI and it's a heck of a lot harder to prove clear and present danger during peacetime. There's no doubt that this was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

It seems to me that anybody who took US History in high school should understand the irony of the domain name "crowdedtheater.com" being censored.
Even if this site was a "clear and present danger," which I doubt, the Feds needed to go through more official circles than just harassing the ISP.
Been a while since I took J110, but here are the court cases that I believe established the "fire in a crowded theater" precident: Debs Vs. United States and Schenck Vs. United States. The government won both of these cases, but that was during WWI and it's a heck of a lot harder to prove clear and present danger during peacetime. There's no doubt that this was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.