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Why haven't sesame street sued over Bert Is Evil? Maybe they are too busy laughing at it....

Conversely, and more likely: Would he be held liable if he installed IE and it contained a leak?

Bert
Who loves living in a country where blaming others rarely goes with sueing them
Who also believes that it would be more appropriate if the person who breached would be sued

Make some some characters to plop in this world of disaffection, and I think you have a concept for a comic strip!

Just don't give half the characters names ending in -bert. You might get sued.

"new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path"

What is the origin of that? I can speculate:
1) English origin: Very polite. You just don't go around the corner, you politely ask under what conditions it is allowed. "I beg your pardon, dear corner. Would it be inconvenient to you if we continue our way as indicated by you?
2) American origin: Don't take anything for granted. You may be sued by a corner before you know it. Call your lawyer. He'll do the negotiations. Oh boy, I hope he is tough, as this corner hasn't moved his position since I started talking to and yelling at it.

Bert

Sorry, I have learned on slashdot to be brief, I should explain:
For a start off the publisher when they sign the deal for the first book would write in to the contract the rights to the rest of the series of those characters.
No problem, says the author on Book 4, I'll not call it book 4 of the adventures of Bert the Hypnotist. I'll call it a new series George the Sorcerer. However if she did this she would be sued for infringement of the original property.
So the only way she can move to a different publisher is to either get out of her original contract with the rights to carry on using the characters or to find herself a new audience and create a new world. All they have to do is not let her out of that contract under terms she likes and she finds herself in the situation where she is better making some money off the first publisher than moving on.
It's worth pointing out in this situation I'm alluding to here is the story of J. K Rowling and one of the many reasons Harry Potter was so successful. From what I have gathered the contract she originally signed was under far better terms than most first time authors manage. Not because she was successful at the time, just that she was patient, confident and to some extent lucky. This meant in subsequent books and negotiations she did even better still. Another author would almost certainly have been under much greater control from their publishers and the books and films would have suffered for this.
One of the reasons the HP films are arguably better than similar book to film translations (Eragon springs to mind, but there are many many other books that had excellent books and average at best films) is that the author retained creative control during the film making process. Without a strong negotiating position it's easy to image the HP films being much much worse; likewise her strong position meant books 4 onwards could be such massive volumes where an editor would have demanded more cutting for mood and pacing.

I think it is relevant because it is an example of the usefulness of recording by the public as part of the deal between a creator and society. A copyright holder has the right to stop anyone from using the material for a (ridiculous long) period of time. The reward for society of giving a copyright holder this power, is that in the end the work enters the public domain. What you see here, is that the copyright holder got his end of the bargain from society (it is not relevant whether he actually ever sued over it; he had the right to), society doesn't get anything once the copyright holder loses interest (or trashes the recording).

People should make a mental note of this when it comes to arguing the duration of copyright, and also when it comes to DRM. I don't think that copyright should apply to DRM material because there obviously is no guarantee that the work could end up in the public domain. More likely the DRM technique used is likely to be abandoned before the copyright expires.

Bert
Who refuses to buy anything Blue-ray because of this.

"So it seems to me there's a pretty strong logical case to be made that you should calculate the damages like this: 24x$1xNxBxLxD. N is the total number of people who downloaded the song (and, as argued above, not just the number who got a copy directly from the ones Thomas put up). "

OK, but that would also mean that a person who downloaded a song from her cannot be sued by the RIAA because it already received the damages for that. It seems fair to me that Jammie has a right of recourse on the downloader, although I doubt that would make her happy.

I think it is also fair that the RIAA proves that the 24 songs were not already paid for by someone else they had sued.

Bert
Who no longer has any illegitimate songs (and movies), but does have CDs now from several of the tapes he had when he was a student. If that makes the RIAA happy, I've bad news. iTunes allowed me to buy several songs for which I'd never bought the CD, but now I've effectively stopped buying music.

I'm a patent attorney and I think software patents are a bad idea, for many reasons. One is that coming up with an idea is easy in software, it is the implementing that takes the time and money. I have software developed for my own company. I think up what I want (and I'm not a software engineer, just a user), and tell the programmer. He tells me one of two things: That is easy (meaning that there are tools called APIs available. It is like programmers never having to write a lot of code to display a window on your screen. Just one of two lines, and everything including the close button etc. is there) or it is going to cost me (the APIs aren't there). He never tells me that it is impossible or that he has to do an invention for it. So, it is not the ideas that is the bottleneck for the progress of , but just the plain labour. Like you can sketch your ideal house in 5 minutes, and it takes years to build if you could afford to pay the people to do that for you. (With software, the cost is not in the raw materials, it is just man-hours). When I use my program, I use the ideas of thousands of people (who came up with the way the disk is formatted, how a character is displayed on a screen, and a gazillion other details). I don't want progress to halt because a programmer has to do a search in the patent literature whether someone else came up with such an idea earlier. Or worse, not for progress to halt but that I'm not allowed to use my own program because of some detail I'm not even interested in (the way the disk is formatted, for example). The good thing about no software patents is that companies are free to innovate. Yes, investors like it when a company has patents, but they would also like it if they knew 100% certain that the company is not going to be sued over a software patent.

I want to discuss another argument with you. You're talking about spending lots of money at the university. What you learn there is knowledge shared by others, that often took them years to figure out. You are not paying those people. You're just paying for the professor and the university building and facilities. If you had to pay for the KNOWLEDGE/IDEAS, you'd quit the university in a week or so, completely broke.

Bert

True story, around 1993 when Streetfighter II came out for the Amiga, some minor nerd wrote in to CU Amiga magazine not only stating but complaining he couldn't understand the obviously foreign and low-quality speech samples, notably the swearing he passionately remembered *even though he couldn't understand a word?*

So in response, CU Amiga announced quite funnily, the Capcom Translation MIDI Kit, plug in to the serial port of any Amiga computer and hear Ryu in his new found English!

This was 1993 remember

So in their dozens, people then wrote in asking prices, availability, specifications etc... CU Amiga were nearly sued for false advertisement

The moral of the story kids?

One pixallated characters swear word is anothers sweet whisper

Q*Bert was fantastic for it's alien swearing though, I'm sure he said Fcuk, must sample and slow it

...they are being sued because they sell products/list information...

Yeah, I got a good giggle when I saw the word "sell". I never payed spamhaus.org nor Steve Linford a penny in return for his spare time. Likewise for Joe Jared. As to the other named defendants, I know them by reputation and none of the defendants ever solicited money from me. The only money I ever spent on anti-spam efforts was for legal defense funds, and I'm darn sure the only folks profiting from that were the legal beagles.

As far as I can tell, the only folks making a profit out of spam, apart from the spammers obviously, are the commercial anti-spam services -- who are conspicously absent from the suit.

If this thing actually goes to court, it's gonna be fun to see the ISP's mentioned in the suit present their side of the contract. "You see, y'r honor, we signed on these respectable businessman, but SPEWS strongarmed us into disconnecting them. We didn't mean to deprive the short shlonged population of this country of the critical information about helpful products!"

Hey! Wait a minute!

IANAL but...

Bert images are copyrighted. Bert images cannot be used without express authorisation (and royalties money exchanging hands) of Bert's creator and/or his descendants.

Bert images, including all pictures, sounds, AquaBert Themes, KBert applications .... are the own propierty of a Big Nasty Corporation that goes for RIAA, DMCA and PYOAH (Put Your Own Acronym Here)!

So, now Bin Ladin is in deep trouble!

According to tomorrow's edition of The Walled Street Joornal , Bin Ladin has been sued:

"...Our Big & Mean Entertainment Corporation(TM) Cannot and Will Not Rest(TM) until the defendant, alledgedly Bin Laden, gets dragged into Court to defend himself for alledged copyright violation of the DMCA law. "

"(...) I don't know what those terrorists were thinking, an unknown VP commented. We offer [terrorism] prime time coverage of their activities [see 20010911 news] for a fee, as stated in the Chapter 17, Title 4, Point 3B of the DMCA) and what do we get in return? Copyright Infringement! Make No Mistake, He Will Be Sued. And the same holds true for his associates, The Taliban Trust For International Terrorism and Women Repression Inc. "

"(...) They [Bin Laden and the Talibans] will all pay *Huge* fines thay lay in the billions and billions (Carl Sagan's trademarked voice goes here) of Good Old American Dolars..."

Talibans, be warned!

If you thought that the US Air Force & Cruise Missile Delivery Co. was a bunch of bad ' n ' nasty guys, well, now you are beign confronted by the Entertainment Industry!

Of course, you're always worse off than before if you're on the receiving end of a frivolous suit, even if the other party has to pay the costs. No lawyer will work for the money that you get awarded, and forget about getting your vacation day you had to take reimbursed. Etcetera.

The perceived advantages of any legal system over another are immaterial in patent law cases.

Obviously, the company that holds those frivolous patents is not going to be deterred from a pretty safe gamble just by the prospect of having to reimburse the opponent some costs, especially if from all appearances they're just out to nail the guy anyway.

I wouldn't mind a provision in patent law that outlaws using frivolous patents for extortion. I believe that a legal case could be made for that interpretation.

Remember the "unobvious to a craftsman skilled in the trade" requirement, and the obvious fact that none of the parties sued could reasonably have suspected that they used a patented procedure; also a point could be made of their total absence of an effort to reach a substantial portion of alleged infringers to negociate fees rather than sue, which would weaken the "vigorous defense" requirement.

Oh, and the kicker is that the court documents apparently make it clear that reimbursement for the usage of their "invention" is totally subordinate to getting back. I loved the Forbes coverage of this lawsuit; they're up two marks in my book now!

Oh well, I am not a patent attorney. I work for my money.

ok, here is the URL from the German forum where the comment from CMG was posted yesterday.

http: //www.heise.de/newsticker/forum/go.shtml?read=1&g= 20000803odi000&msg=227

For those of you, who don't understand German it says the following:

CMG has not sued 'everyone' but one company who offers commercial support for SAMBA (the UNIX smb-Server).
They don't want to continue suing and don't want to harm the OpenSource Community nor the SAMBA-Project itself. It's just for the name.
CMG has located the name owner in Australia and wants to contact him for negotiating about the name.

BTW, CMG is not only a German company, but a European one, so it sells it's products not only in Germany but in wide parts of Europe. Their trademark 'SAMBA' however is a trademark only in Germany.

--

regards,
MaDMaik

--
Be Ernie, Be Bert - Just Be

ICQ# 8537082

While I agree with a lot of what you say, I think your analogy is a bit flawed.

When a script kiddie breaks into your system could it not also be like someone entering your house (or business) through an open door and using all the tools (the phone, for instance) in your house to call up old ladies and defraud them of their life savings? Open door or not, in most common law countries, entering someone's house without permission to commit a crime is still break and enter (and at the very least trespass). Does that mean that people who left the door open are liable for having their home burglarized? What if the door was not open, just unlocked? Or locked but the key hidden under the mat? See what I mean.

In a real court of law, I suspect Bert would be seen as a victim as well and thus not held liable. Al maybe liable if he told Bert that the box was secure when in fact it wasn't (to follow my analogy, the lock company that installed a defective deadbolt could probably get sued). And I don't think there is any legal ground for holding me even partly responsible if a third party uses my property (phone, car, what ever) to commit a crime. In my above example, I could not be held liable even in civil court for the losses of the bilked old ladies.

The "law" probably won't work in this case.

That's not to say that that security isn't every sysadmin's responisiblity. But if I leave my door open I shouldn't be surprised if I'm burglarized.
And my niegbours won't talk to me or do business with me if they get affected by it.

If I leave my door open, stick a poster on it saying "Lot's a money inside! Don't open this door unless you sign a form promising not to take it!", I'm not only rather stupid, but I think I'd be open to a countersuit by a captured intruder or possibly even the government for solliciting a crime.

This line of thinking is always on my mind when I see letters such as this one.

If I were to ROT13 my trade secrets, publish them in the New York Times in that format, and then started suing, isn't there a legal way to nail me?

I'd certainly deserve it :-)