Slashdot Mirror

A simple search turned up this.

At the end of a trial that began Jan. 25 in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., a jury returned the following verdicts:

Alfred Anaya, 39, San Fernando, Calif., guilty on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, as well as methamphetamine and marijuana, and guilty on two counts of attempting to intimidate a witness.
James Anthony Clark, Overland Park, guilty on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine as well as methamphetamine and marijuana.
Justin Selby, 34, Excelsior Springs, Mo., guilty on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine as well as methamphetamine and marijuana.

The article seems to have left out the 'attempting to intimidate a witness' business. Two counts is potentially 40 extra years, which is why his sentence is longer. It seems he was never charged with the California law regarding secret compartments. The court case is United States of America v. Alfred Anaya, in United States District Court in Kansas but I don't have a PACER account.

I like how tripe like this gets moderated up as insightful. It is nothing of the sort. If you go and read the actual decision, which you can easily find, and other people have linked to you will see that indeed it was just a normal person. It gets rather tiring to see this continual whining on Slashdot that is completely unfounded and gets moderated up as "insightful."

If you wanted to criticize this decision, there are some legitimate grounds. It still allows for quite wide latitude in searches at the border. For that matter the conviction in this case was upheld. The court ruled that the search was reasonable, just that it would not have been in more narrow circumstances. However rather than read the actual decision, you decided to simply spout off.

Attention moderators: Something is not insightful simply because it is a narrative you agree with. Please do at least a minimal amount of research to see if a comment is actually insightful. It is rather hard for something to be both insightful and wrong at the same time.

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/03/08/09-10139.pdf

Sorry to break this to you, no matter what Rush Limbaugh thinks, the Ninth Circuit is still** part of the United States.

** Yes, Virginia - California, Washington, Hawaii and Oregon are included within the legal and political boundaries of the United States. We're not so sure of Alaska, but since the Canadians don't want it and you can't see Russia from there, it appears we're stuck with it.

Wow. You go out of your way to bash Rush and Palin, and show your ignorance of basic geography. I would leave this one alone, but some gullible people might actually believe you without fact-checking your statement, and I don't want them to be misinformed.

Sorry to break this to you, no matter what Rush Limbaugh thinks, the Ninth Circuit is still** part of the United States.

** Yes, Virginia - California, Washington, Hawaii and Oregon are included within the legal and political boundaries of the United States. We're not so sure of Alaska, but since the Canadians don't want it and you can't see Russia from there, it appears we're stuck with it.

Can you point to the 120 day rule you're claiming?

Sure thing:

armfor.uscourts.gov

Speedy Trial: Rule for Courts-Martial 707

65 M.J. 69 (the regulatory speedy trial standard set forth in RCM 707 requires that an accused be brought to trial within 120 days of preferral of charges, imposition of restraint, or entry onto active duty, whichever is earliest; an accused is brought to trial within the meaning of the Rule at arraignment; if charges are dismissed, the clock stops and a new 120-day period begins upon re-preferral of charges).

Support PUBPAT. In regards to Monsanto...here are details of a case filed by PUBPAT....Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association et al. v. Monsanto

This could be a very large case for US law. Oral arguments were on January 10, 2013. You can download recording from US Court of Appeals (Federal).

When in the recent past have you seen a court rule on copyright with common sense?

I'm not sure that Usedsoft applied common sense, but rather some convoluted reasoning, but the outcome seems sensible enough. Picking on rulings relevant here, I think the US court's decision in Wallace v. IBM was common sense, as was the finding of the German court in Welte v. Skype.

Perhaps look also at Griggs v. Evans — a pragmatic decision on the facts, to my mind.

Sure, there are some odd judgments, but there are some sensible, practical judges out there too.

You are absolutely right, the UCMJ has rules above and beyond what a civilian population has to deal with.

One of those is Article 10. http://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/newcaaf/digest/VB3.htm

Article 10 creates a more exacting, more rigorous requirement for a speedy trial than the 6th Amendment alone. United States v. Thompson, 68 M.J. 308

Mr. Manning has spent nearly 1000 days in pretrial confinement. The UN special rapporteur on torture has also found his treatment to be cruel and inhumane.

The government has broken many rules in their treatment of Mr. Manning (using a dentist as a psychiatrist? LOL!) It would be fair punishment for the government if the charges Mr. Manning has not yet pleaded guilty to are dismissed. Perhaps then the government would remember that it, too, has rules that it must abide by.

"SHARON PROST, Circuit Judge
SHARON PROST was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/sharon-prost-circuit-judge.html

"KIMBERLY A. MOORE, Circuit Judge
KIMBERLY A. MOORE was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/kimberly-a-moore-circuit-judge.html

"JIMMIE V. REYNA, Circuit Judge
Jimmie V. Reyna was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2011."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/jimmie-v-reyna-circuit-judge.html

"SHARON PROST, Circuit Judge
SHARON PROST was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/sharon-prost-circuit-judge.html

"KIMBERLY A. MOORE, Circuit Judge
KIMBERLY A. MOORE was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/kimberly-a-moore-circuit-judge.html

"JIMMIE V. REYNA, Circuit Judge
Jimmie V. Reyna was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2011."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/jimmie-v-reyna-circuit-judge.html

"SHARON PROST, Circuit Judge
SHARON PROST was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/sharon-prost-circuit-judge.html

"KIMBERLY A. MOORE, Circuit Judge
KIMBERLY A. MOORE was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/kimberly-a-moore-circuit-judge.html

"JIMMIE V. REYNA, Circuit Judge
Jimmie V. Reyna was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2011."
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/jimmie-v-reyna-circuit-judge.html

The affirmative defense of the patent exhaustion stems from the fact that a) Monsanto explicitely allows the sale of Roundup Ready soybeans to grain elevators as commodity and b) he bought the seeds from the grain elevators als commodity seeds. So he argues that if the exhaustion doctrine does not cover this case, there is no point in even having an exhaustion doctrine in the first place:

Bowman further argues that if the right to use pat-ented seeds does not include the unlimited right to grow subsequent generations free of liability for patent in-fringement, then any exhaustion determination “is use-less.”

(quoting the CAFC opinion)

And I think what you are not getting is that it's Motorola's *option* to have the injunction enforced (or as the 9th circuit said, the injunction is "not self-enforcing" as Morotola has to put up a $300M bond to cover damages to Microsoft in the event it's reversed). And the US court absolutely has a right to tell *Motorola* not to enforce it *if* they feel doing so, as they said, "frustrated [the district court’s] ability to adjudicate issues properly before it”.

Actually, another poster already provided a reasonable analogy: if a child's mom forbids him from doing something and he goes over to a friend's house where his friend's mother ignores that and allows it, that doesn't mean his mother isn't going to punish him for breaking her rule when he gets home. If it's "my house, my rules" you're best off obeying the rules where you live.

In case you want to RTFO (I thought it was interesting): http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/09/28/1235352.pdf

It's a private dispute between Motorola (and hence Google) and Microsoft. But it's a cross-jurisdictional one, with lawsuits being filed all over the place (as with the Apple v Samsung fight). Yes, some of the cases involve various subsidiaries, including national branches, but there is enough cross-over between the cases that is isn't an issue, and both sides seem to have agreed that they were the same parties involved in both cases.

From footnote 7, page 10 of the US Court of Appeal's judgment:

The plaintiff in the German suit is General Instrument Corporation, a defendant in [the US] case and a subsidiary of the Motorola Group. The defendants in the German suit are Microsoft Corporation, the plaintiff in this case, as well as Microsoft Deutschland GmbH and Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd.

For more details, see the argument in IV A, starting at page 18. Basically, the parties agreed that they were the same.

Also, as a Court of Appeal case, there were three judges involved, not just one, and just because someone gives a ruling you disagree with (perhaps based on factual misunderstandings), that doesn't make them morons.

How can a court in one country overturn a ruling from another sovereign nation's court?

tl;dr; they're not. Under German law, injunctions are enforced by the party, not the court. The US court has ordered that Motorola not enforce it until they've come to a conclusion in their case (which could affect the German court decision).

Long version, based on the CoA's judgment, available here:

Motorola claims to have patents in various jurisdictions covering vital steps of the H.264 video compression standard. When the ITU established H.264 as a standard, Motorola had to agree to license all relevant patents at RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) rates.

Back in 2010, Motorola asked Microsoft to licence its H.264 patents (for use in the various Windows and X-Box software) at what MS described as an unreasonable royalty rate. MS sued Motorola for breach of contract, on the grounds that Motorola's agreement with the ITU was a contract, which gave MS third-party benefits (and thus the right to sue to enforce it). [Third-party contract rights are an interesting area of law; some jurisdictions have them (e.g. the US), in some they are optional (e.g. England+Wales) and in others they don't exist (e.g. Germany).] Motorola responded by suing for patent infringement, and the cases were combined.

In 2011, while the US contract/patent case was going on, Motorola then filed a claim against MS for patent infringement in Germany, specifically for the two H.264 patents. As part of their claim, Motorola wanted an injunction banning the sale of Windows and X-Boxes in Germany. In May 2012, the German Court found in favour of Motorola and granted the injunction. However, as noted in the US CoA's judgment:

[t]he German injunction is not self-enforcing. ... to enforce the German patent injunction, Motorola would have to post a security bond covering potential damages to Microsoft should the infringement ruling be reversed on appeal.

Under German law, if a party is given an injunction, they get to decide whether or not to enforce it, and if they do and it is subsequently overturned, they have to pay the other side damages to cover any losses.

So the question before the US CoA was whether or not the US courts could issue their own injunction ordering that Motorola not enforce the German injunction (Motorola, being a US-based company, is obviously within the court's jurisdiction). The District Court said they could, and the Court of Appeal have confirmed this. Their reasoning seems to be that *if* Motorola was in breach of contract by not licensing its patents to MS at RAND rates, then one remedy for MS would be a compulsory licence at such a rate. But such a licence would necessarily include *all* of Motorola's relevant patents, including the German ones. Thus MS would no longer be committing patent infringement in Germany, and the German injunction would be wrongly granted.

The US CoA's options were: allow Motorola to enforce the German injunction, and if the injunction were overturned (due to US rulings on the contract), Motorola would have to pay MS to compensate for any losses, *or* block Motorola from enforcing the German injunction and, if the injunction was not overturned (due to the US ruling), MS would have to pay Motorola to compensate for the losses.

The CoA seems to have sided with MS rather than Motorola, possibly because they felt Motorola had been a bit vexatious by suing in Germany while the US case was happening (it comes across as them trying to "forum shop" for the most friendly jurisdiction). So the CoA upheld the District Court's decision that, as the German injunction is sort of dependent on the US breach of contract case, Motorola shouldn't be allowed to enforce it until that case is over (some time in early 2013, possibly).

But IANAL, nor an expert in US or German patent

The vast majority of defendants settle because patent litigation is risky, disruptive, and expensive, regardless of the merits

Note that patent cases are not unique in this regard. In 2011, only 1.1% of civil cases in federal district court reached trial. Some of the other 98.9% were disposed of through summary judgment or involuntary dismissal, but the great majority settled. The statistics are not skewed by a large number of patent cases, either. In 2011 there were only 3,337 patent suits filed, compared to 301,474 total civil cases. In other words, patent cases made up 1.1% of federal civil cases. And of that 3,337, 868 (26%!) of them didn't involve any court action past filing the suit.

Now, it is true that patent litigation is one of the more expensive kinds of litigation, and I favor a strong fee-shifting policy in order to reduce the leverage that plaintiffs have to extract nuisance settlements (i.e. settling for just under the cost of litigation). But it's not as though patent defendants are unusually likely to settle rather than go to trial. In fact, the patent trial rate is one of the highest in federal litigation, at 3.2%.

Maybe not, but the vaccine companies won't tell you the truth of the matter either. The company that makes the popular MMR vaccine was just discovered to have been lying about it's effectiveness for the last several decades. They ran tests in faulty ways to exaggerate the effectiveness score. You think they won't lie about any side effects or problems that it causes also.

If only there was a government agency that told you about diseases, vaccines, and risks.

They are immune from lawsuits if there is anything wrong with the vaccine, so what do they care.

If only Congress created a special court to deal with vaccines and side effects. You know one that would streamline the process and gets victims compensation quicker than multi-year lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies.

Some of the vaccines stop super rare diseases that are no worse than getting a cold. Yeah, stopping polio is great. Give them the shot at 3 or 5 years old, not at one day old.

First of all, some of the diseases are rare because of vaccinations. The whole point of this article is that vaccinating less is bringing them back. The vaccine schedule clearly shows the vaccines are given over a period of time starting at 1 month old. Newborns should have acquired immunities from their mothers only for a short while after birth. Waiting till children 3 or 5 years old, puts them at serious risk.

And don't give 1001 shots for all kinds of pointless things. They want to give infants shots to prevent sexually transmitted disease (one of the hepatitus versions). Sure, that would be bad if they got it, but I don't think my 2 year old is having sex yet!

Hepatitis B is not strictly a sexually transmitted disease. "The virus is transmitted by exposure to infectious blood or body fluids such as semen and vaginal fluids, while viral DNA has been detected in the saliva, tears, and urine of chronic carriers.

See above comments about unkown risks due to company testing their own vaccines in secret.

[Citation needed] The CDC vaccine testing process disagrees with you.

Somethink like 80% of the cases of Whooping Cough are for vaccinated people. The unvaccinated are much less likely to get it. In the past, before vaccination, more people would have gotten the real disease and been immune for life.

[Citation needed]

Yes the vaccine has shown to lose effectiveness over time. More boosters may be needed.

No, but many devices before the iPad did.

So why didn't Samsung's lawyers present them instead of Fidler's? It seems they know more about design patents than you do (big surprise). Too bad the PHB that decided to copy Apple didn't listen.

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/06-1562.pdf - read it before you make any more claims about "prior art". EGYPTIAN GODDESS, INC., vs. SWISA, INC. is the precedent case for prior art for design patents.

Regarding Judge Lourie from http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/judges/alan-d-lourie-circuit-judge.html:

Before being appointed to the court, Judge Lourie had been President of the Philadelphia Patent Law Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (formerly American Patent Law Association), treasurer of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel, and a member of the board of directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association. He was also Vice Chairman of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC 3) for the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on the Revision of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, held in Geneva in October and November 1982, and in March 1984. He was chairman of the Patent Committee of the Law Section of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association from 1980 to 1985.

Judge Lourie was awarded the Jefferson Medal of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association for extraordinary contributions to the field of intellectual property law in 1998; was a recipient of the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation Distinguished Intellectual Property Professional Award for extraordinary leadership in the intellectual property community and a lifetime commitment to invention and innovation in 2008; was a recipient of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association’s Award for outstanding IP achievement in 2010; was a recipient of the Boston Patent Law Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 2011...

Good to know that these cases go to truly impartial judges.

http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/lhk

I'd be tempted to create a Judge Hall of Fame for judges that just plain "get it." For ones who have an understanding of the philosophy and content of the fields upon which they are judging. And produce decisions based upon sound reason.

Judge Posner.

Judge John Jones (Dover: Intelligent Design, everyone should read this at least once a year.

Comments requested: who else should be on this list?

For those who would like to read the actual 68 page ruling from Judge Katherine Forrest.

They were bound by normal copyright law, sure, but I'm not aware that they were ever accused of violating copyright.

Use of copyrighted software in excess or violation of license is copyright infringement. And the suit was explicitly about copyright infingement (see First Claim, Paragraph 25)

So, yeah, at the end of the day, what Psystar did boils down to copyright infringement. Quoting the 9th Circuit's ruling (which stands because the Supremes denied cert):

Psystar's [Copyright] Misuse Defense fails because it is an attempt to apply the First Sale Doctrine to a valid licensing agreement.

Yaaaay. Another affirmation that you never really buy software, you license it and have no say in what you can do with it. OTOH, at least that continues to support GPL and copyleft's basis of control: you can't distribute GPL software in violation of its license terms without infringing on the copyright.

http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/General_Information/Court_Phone_Book/Magistrate-Judges/GRB/grb.html

I'd be mad as hell if I was on that jury for weeks or months and got some stipend like $50 day, parking tickets not included.

Jurors are paid an attendance fee of $40.00 per day. Regardless of means of travel, jurors also receive round-trip mileage from their home to the courthouse at the rate currently authorized by the Internal Revenue Service. The court validates juror parking at specific parking lots near the courthouse and reimburses bridge tolls when applicable.
Source:http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/juryfaq#question_6

If you mean "go the distance" as in set a precedent, then this case already did.

Early in the trial, the city attempted a motion to dismiss on the ground of limited immunity(i.e. can't sue police for doing thier job in good faith). The Citiy's argument was that the wiretap law says you "can't record in secret" and since it wasn't clear that the phone was recording audio, then the audio part of the recording was secret, and therefore the was probable cause for the arrest, and thus limited immunity applied. The appeals court handed down a decision(pdf) in 2011 that drew on over 10 years of precedents that said in no uncertain terms that it wasn't a secret recording, that Mr Glik had the right to record police in public and that any resonable person would have known this. Therefore the police cannot claim llimited immunity.

Faced with such a strong appeals court ruling on the motion to dismiss, it was clear any trial would be lost by the City. So they settled.

The 2011 dismissal appeal decision is a precedent, and has already been used as binding precedent in 1st circut, and as non-binding precedent in all of the other circuits on similar cases. There is one case, I have misplaced the link, where the lawsuit is for an incident that happened before the 2011 glik decision and the police are claiming that since the incident happened before the glik decision, they couldn't know that it was a civil rights violation to arrest someone for this. As far as I can tell, they aren't getting anywhere with that argument. The language of the glik decision makes it clear that it has always been a civil rights violation to arrest someone for openly recording the police in a public space.

The guy is a family court lawyer. The settlement is $50,000 + lawyers fees (he was represented by the ACLU). The case is decisive in that Boston attempted to have the case dismissed base on limited immunity(i.e. can't sue police for doing their job). The trial court ruled against them (i..e. lawsuit can go ahead). The ruling was appealed and the appeal court handed down a ruling (pdf) that left little doubt how the rest of the trial would go. The appeal court ruling said, in no uncertain terms, that the recording was legal, that it was not secret and Mr. Gliks rights were violated. Given that ruling on a motion to dismiss, there is no way the city would go ahead with a lower trial that would just confirm what the appeals court already said, so they settled.

It took five years because the party that was guilty of violating citizen's rights was stubbornly insisting that they "didn't do anything wrong", and then later on that they "didn't know it was wrong", and the court was forced to not only find whether there is any truth to their claims, but whether it can even serve as a plausible excuse - i.e. whether they could have reasonably not understood their obligations under the 1st Amendment. And the court, basically, ruled that they did not, and that the right that was infringed was clear and unambiguous. From the ruling:

In summary, though not unqualified, a citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment. Accordingly, we hold that the district court did not err in denying qualified immunity to the appellants on Glik's First Amendment claim.

(I recommend you actually read the full text of the ruling - it's not all that long, and the arguments are surprisingly clear and easy to follow)

The ACLU routinely wins these cases. See "A federal judge today ruled that a local school district violated the free speech rights of a student when it kicked him off the volleyball team because he posted an Internet message from home criticizing an art teacher." The controlling Supreme Court decision is Tinker vs. Des Moines.

In his testimony on cross-examination by Doe, however, McCrohan [FBI forensics] conceded that, although encrypted, it was possible that the hard drives contain nothing. Doe asked McCrohan, "So if a forensic examiner were to look at an external hard drive and just see encryption, does the possibility exist that there actually is nothing on there other than encryption? In other words, if the volume was mounted, all you would see is blank. Does that possibility exist?" McCrohan responded: "Well, you would see random characters, but you wouldn't know necessarily whether it was blank."

When pressed by Doe to explain why investigators believed something may be hidden, McCrohan replied, "The scope of my examination didn't go that far." In response to further prodding, "What makes you think that there are still portions that have data[?]," McCrohan responded, "We couldn't get into them, so we can't make that call." Finally, when asked whether "random data is just random data," McCrohan concluded that "anything is possible." At the conclusion of the hearing, the district court held Doe in contempt and committed him to the custody of the United States Marshal.

So in spite of the admission that the drive may have simply contained random stuff, Doe was still held in contempt. Source: http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201112268.pdf (also cited in the /. submission)

So, there are 5 links in the summary. One is a previous slashdot story, one is ReDigi's homepage, two are just links to law texts, and the last one is, I guess, TFA. So I followed it, and found a shady ass blog post hosted on some random site on port 82. It had links though, mostly the same links as TFS, but it added what seemed like a source hosted on a Yahoo blog. Better, but still not really reliable, and the facts were starting to change. So I followed that blogs source, and got to Ars. OK, now something vaguely reliable. But the facts were a lot murkier, and it sounded a lot like the same story from two days ago, linked in TFS. Ars has two relevant, recent links. One is to Wired, so now it really starts to sound legit, except the Wired article is from February 2nd, and says "a ruling could come any day now". The other Ars link is to a pdf ruling. Finally, the truth will be revealed. Here is the text of the brief, in it's entirety:

RICHARD J. SULLIVAN, District Judge:
For the reasons stated on the record at today's conference, Plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction is HEREBY DENIED.
As directed by the Court at today's conference, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT, by Monday, February 20, 2012 at 4:00 p.m., the parties shall submit a proposed case management plan and scheduling to my chambers at the following email address: sullivannysdchambers@nysd.uscourts.gov. A template for the order is available at http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=judge_info&id=347. SO ORDERED.
Dated: February 6, 2012 New York, New York

Isn't Internet news great?

Oh, here's one more reference... http://www.mdd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Opinions/gravityopinion3.pdf 2nd page, footnote...clearly notes that this action continued after 99.

So it appears to me, that you are trying to draw a distinction between a semi-private performance vs some sort of more one-time public performance of subject material. Would you agree if they had "tickets" to attend the speech, then it would be protected? If a movie was shot in front of the Lincoln Memorial would that make the film (or at least that scene of the film), required to be in the public domain?

As it turns out, there is specific case law that tried to make that determination. As CBS apparently had one of the most extensive collection of audio-visual camera there at the time and therefore had the copyright to their interpretation of events. They tried to use these archives w/o the permission of MLK's estate and the estate sued them. AFAIK, lawsuit addressed the specific issue of the speech on the lincoln memorial being considered a "limited-performance" (where copyright was not forfieted) as opposed to a public performance (which would have kicked it to the public domain). You can read the details here...

Short answer, the press coverage of the speech did not invalidate the copyright, it requires distribution to "go beyond customary sources of press or broadcasting" to put things in the public domain. E.g., if they had printed pamphlets of the speech and distributed them outside the channels of the press, they would have lost protection to the public domain. However, copyright common law does not force authors whose message happens to be newsworthy to choose between press coverage and protecting their copyright.

Use IE. IE is tollerable at version 9 and is the most supported intranet browser which is only updated annually.

Not exactly a workable solution on my Macintosh and Linux workstations, but, thanks for the suggestion.

Except, MSIE is only supported up to version 8: "CM/ECF has been tested and works correctly with Firefox 3.5, and Internet Explorer 7 and 8." https://ecf.cacd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl

Pretty easy to find his schedule, including the case numbers and names...

http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/CEO/cfd.aspx?7137

People sue the government all the time:
Google Sued the US Government
ACLU Sues the NSA for domestic spying
Suits against the Federal Government are handled in The US Court of Federal Claims

New York's court of appeals has already determined that GPS tracking by law enforcement is illegal without a warrant. Since the powers of cops are a superset of the powers of an individual, this case should be a slam dunk for the plaintiff.

Unfortunately, federal courts have disagreed. In particular, the 7th Circuit Court of appeals ruled in United States vs. Garcia (Case no. 06-2741), that police don't need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspects car.

Here you go. Now use pdftotext and read it however you like.

The above link is the argument in Jewel. Here is the audio of the arguments in the Hepting case (wma).

The audio recording of the oral arguments are now available (.wma).

Anything appellate level and above is binding precedent as long as it is from the same circuit. If it's from a different circuit then it's just persuasive authority. In this case it's the The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit so it's a little different from the common 7th or 10th etc. Court of Appeals. Here's a link to the jurisdiction of this court.

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/the-court/court-jurisdiction.html

Basically, this is a national appellate precedent applicable in all circuits.

HTH.

Not if it's a U.S. district court. CA and WA are both in the 9th.

It is not the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It's the King County Superior Court of King County, WA.

well, the E.D. Tex. is chosen by plaintiffs least as much for the speed at which litigation is resolved (which is nominally a good thing and a function of judges) as for the jury pool. Additionally while E.D. Tex. has very knowledgeable judges on patent issues, if you are a senior user it is very open to debate whether you want E.D. Tex.'s particular variety of knowledgeable judge.

Full opinion, from the 9th Circuit, here: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/04/11/08-16745.pdf.

The actual opinion is published at http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/03/30/09-10139.pdf . Pretty calm and sensible, actually. Search of laptops falls under border doctrine. Issue was whether border doctrine extended to a place 170 miles away, and over a period of time. The reason they shipped the laptop to a forensic facility was because they had a known sex offender with portions of his hard drive encrypted. Unlike a suitcase, which can easily be searched at the Port of Entry, an encrypted laptop cannot be. Pedophilic images are evidence of a crime against children. Where there are pictures of children being abused, there's a child who's been abused. Seeking and trading such images create demand for someone to abuse a child. The pedophile sought to have the evidence on his laptop suppressed. The Ninth District said No. From the opinion: "Today we examine a question of first impression in the Ninth Circuit: whether the search of a laptop computer that begins at the border and ends two days later in a Government forensic computer laboratory almost 170 miles away can still fall within the border search doctrine. The district court considered the issue to be a simple matter of time and space. It concluded that the search of property seized at an international border and moved 170 miles from that border for further search cannot be justified by the border search doctrine. We disagree. We find no basis under the law to distinguish the border search power merely because logic and practicality may require some property presented for entry—and not yet admitted or released from the sovereign’s control—to be transported to a secondary site for adequate inspection. The border search doctrine is not so rigid as to require the United States to equip every entry point—no matter how desolate or infrequently traveled—with inspectors and sophisticated forensic equipment capable of searching whatever property an individual may wish to bring within our borders or be otherwise precluded from exercising its right to protect our nation absent some heightened suspicion. Still, the line we draw stops far short of “anything goes” at the border. The Government cannot simply seize property under its border search power and hold it for weeks, months, or years on a whim. Rather, we continue to scrutinize searches and seizures effectuated under the longstanding border search power on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the manner of the search and seizure was so egregious as to render it unreasonable."

Can someone find me a link to the case in question? I've noticed that the particulars that would help find the case's information on http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ [uscourts.gov] are absent from this article's summary and the articles it references. Why should I even believe this is a real case without undeniable proof? It wouldn't be the first time that a false, misleading and/or scare-mongering summary has been posted on slashdot.

Can someone find me a link to the case in question? I've noticed that the particulars that would help find the case's information on http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ are absent from this article's summary and the articles it references.

Why should I even believe this is a real case without proof? It wouldn't be the first time that a false and/or misleading summary has been posted here.

I call bullshit.

1) ID is not Young Earth Creationism (YEC), though it is primarily used as a smokescreen by YECs.

2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.

No. While not specific to Young Earth Creationism, ID is creationism. Go read the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision. ID is not an attempt to augment scientific knowledge with a more holistic worldview. It is traditional Christian creationism, pure and simple. If you look at the history of the ID movement, there is very clear evidence that it they just substituted "intelligent designer" where they would traditionally say "God." To suggest otherwise is revisionist history.

3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.

Those aren't probabilistic terms. Those are analogies. If you want to use probabilistic terms, then you'll talk about things like distributions, random variables, and events.

4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots [emph. added] / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.

5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.

One very important point that got lost in all the noise is this: we will need a statistical method to determine intelligent design no matter what. Ignore the whole evolution thing - as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.

No, no, no, no, no. You're seriously attempting to conflate ID with genetic engineering? As I said before, ID has a very specific meaning. It is the belief that life is too complex to have emerged naturally, and that a supernatural entity must have interfered or guided the process. It is inherently unmeasurable. How can you possibly build a model, based on the historical record, to determine if a species evolved as the result of a being operating outside of the laws of nature? In the case of genetic engineering, yes, it is possible to build limited models based on our understanding of current environmental conditions. You can look at genetic sequences and identify patterns, etc. But that is not intelligent design.

Look. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're being sincere in your argument for statistical models of evolution as it is happening today. But you need to use a new term. Intelligent design has a very specific meaning based on its history. It is inherently not falsifiable, because it specifically involves the presence of a being (i.e., NOT measurable or provable) acting outside of the laws of nature. Humans are natural beings, so when we perform genetic engineering, that's still a natural event.

Butâ"Betty Boop 1930s movie posters were not copyrighted (or not renewed?) as standalone items, so are public domain.

Actually it's not even that good. According to the decision (pdf) it's a question that the chain of rights was not established by the modern-day Fleischers and therefore they can not enforce the copyright. The fact that Betty Boop was on an old poster was/is irrelevant. The trademark issue was secondary (though important). But that has been decided previously and is not new law. Most (if not all?) Warner Brother cartoons are under copyright because they have not expired yet.

The bigger issue for me at least is that copyrights are no longer allowed to expire via any mechanism, and this political philosophy is being exported worldwide - let alone the fact that they last too long in the first place.

Seriously, it's right there on the affidavit. On top of that you can let the court know in a (circa 1993) web form what you think or contact Nagle's Deputy Courtroom Clerk yourself. Case number 10-2822M for your reference since the affidavit seems to be unable to be viewed by some.

You're an American citizen and you have the right to know who these people are that are making these decisions whether it be a judge or special agent. And they shouldn't have any fear of putting their name on these documents if they think it's right. I agree with you though that maybe it's not within their capacity to serve this position should they get something so painfully wrong.

I want countersuits and I want liabilities awarded to the defendants that rival the bullshit astronomical numbers that the court sends out to NASA for computation when the MPAA/RIAA wins. I hate that if the MPAA/RIAA wins it's eighty billion dollars but if the individual is exonerated it's a benjamin tops for having their webserver down. That is bullshit.