Slashback: Disney Copyright, Alaa Freed, Kelo Repealed

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: Egyptian blogger Alaa freed from jail, Executive order repeals Kelo decision, Disney's trouble with Pooh bear, NASA engineer fired for opposing shuttle launch, Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance, open source Java months away, and the net neutrality amendment defeated in committee -- Read on for details.

Egyptian blogger Alaa freed from jail. FleaPlus writes "Egyptian blogger, open source advocate, and Slashdot interviewee Alaa Abd El-Fatah has been released from jail. He had been imprisoned for 45 days after being arrested (along with several others) for taking part in a pro-democracy election reform rally, on charges which included "insulting the Egyptian president." In a blog post Alaa describes the conditions he was subjected to in the jail, as well as his worry about the hundreds of other activists who are still in prison."

Executive order defuses Kelo decision. physicsphairy writes "President Bush has issued an executive order whose effect is to undo the previous Kelo decision of the Supreme Court. From the article: 'It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.' The downside is that what was once affirmed consitutionally is now affirmed only in federal law."

Disney's trouble with Pooh bear. bbernard writes "It seems that the same laws that allow the Mouse to continue generating money for Disney have prevented Disney from taking control of Winny the Pooh. The Supreme Court has denied Clare Milne's bid to get the rights back for Pooh and his buddies. Clare is A.A. Milne's granddaughter, and her court battle was funded by Disney, as she was going to reassign the rights to them. Interesting to see a company foiled by the laws they insisted on in the first place, isn't it?"

NASA engineer fired for opposing shuttle launch. quad4b writes to tell us The New York Daily News reports that Charlie Camarda was has been removed from his post at NASA for questioning the safety of this Saturday's launch. From the article: "Camarda's removal heightened the turmoil over NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's decision to take the 'acceptable risk' of launching the Discovery orbiter despite warnings of potentially fatal blastoff debris. Camarda, who flew aboard the troubled flight of Discovery last July, told colleagues in an e-mail that he was fired from his post as chief engineer at Houston's Johnson Space Center and given another NASA engineering job."

Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance. An anonymous reader writes "A new insurance company in Sweden is offering a new policy to protect you from the RIAA [Swedish]. For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing. Interesting development in Sweden indeed."

Open source Java months away? bl8n8r writes "A Sun Microsystems Inc. executive said Tuesday said the company is "months" away from releasing its trademark Java programming language under an open-source license. Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer for Sun, said the company is ruminating over two major issues: how to keep Java compatible and ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's "write once, run anywhere" mantra."

Net neutrality amendment defeated in committee. DeathPooky writes "While not the end of the road for net neutrality, the latest vote isn't a good sign. From the article: 'The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday rejected a network neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users. The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.' All 10 Democrats on the committee, as well as Republican co-sponsor Sen. Snowe, voted for the amendment. The other 11 Republicans voted against."

Comments

Kelo Untouched

[blamanj]

While the executive order makes for nice PR, it has no effect on Kelo or any other action taken by local governments. Bush's order only applies to Federal emiment domain. Furthermore, it's probably really only good as "advice" to the Attorney General. If you want to get a law passed, you actually have to go through Congress, not that the Bush administration cares to bother with respectin separation of powers.

Re:Kelo Untouched

[anaesthetica]

Executive Orders function as law until repealed by the President, overruled by subsequent Congressional legislation, or perhaps overturned by the Supreme Court (although I'm unaware of the Supreme Court ever hearing a case to decide the constitutionality of a specific Executive Order). They are most certainly legally-binding on the actions of the federal government and not just "good advice."

Re:Kelo Untouched

[Tx]

Well, wikipedia disagrees with you, FWIW.

Presidents of the United States have issued executive orders since 1789. There is no United States Constitution provision or statute that explicitly permits this, aside from the vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and the statement "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" in Article II, Section 3.

Most executive orders are orders issued by the President to United States executive officers to help direct their operation, the result of failing to comply being removal from office. Some orders do have the force of law when made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress due to those acts giving the President discretionary powers.

If wikipedia is accurate, then an executive order only has force of law if made with the backing of a congressional act. Also sounds like you couldn't be jailed or fined for ignoring it.

Re:Kelo Untouched

[Dachannien]

The Executive Branch is unilaterally responsible for engaging in executive functions (including those which invoke the Eminent Domain clause of the Constitution), pursuant to the powers granted to it by the Constitution and those granted in statute by the Legislature. Therefore, if the head of the Executive Branch says in an executive order that his government shall not do X, and X is not otherwise required by legislation, then X will not happen (under penalty of being fired - and possibly civil or criminal penalty if an agent of the government does not comply with the executive order, depending on the circumstances). (Obviously, this ignores cases where the executive branch doesn't follow up on violations of the order, in particular when X might be something done in secret.)

In this case, since the federal government, per executive order, is not to take property via eminent domain when the property won't be used specifically for the public good, the federal government simply won't do it. No other part of the federal government has the capability to exercise such power, so the order is as good as law until a subsequent president revokes the policy, even though it's not statute.

It's essentially the same thing as a federal regulation - these are things defined not in statute, but rather by the Executive Branch of the government. Some things in the CFR are there because the legislature specifically requires them, while others are regulations crafted under the broad discretion that Congress sometimes gives. In the case of the anti-Kelo executive order, (fairly) broad discretion is granted by the Constitution, and the executive order sets a specific procedure under which that power is exercised. The entirety of the federal Executive Branch must abide by that order (under penalty of at least getting fired, and possibly incurring substantial civil damages against oneself if one attempts to bypass the order), and so it's as good as law as long as it's not revoked.

Try "double-digit" months away

[-benjy]

The source of the Java release estimate, Simon Phipps, indicated that he was misinterpreted:

I replied as I usually do, indicating it's "months rather than years", making it clear that the way to interpret that comment is that it's double-digit months and not September!"

Re:More Disney details please

[glowworm]

The Washington Times has a slightly better writeup. Not exact but way better than that poor link.

By the way - to the editors.... It's Winnie not Winny.

Re:More Disney details please

[novus ordo]

Look into apellate ruling summary. Intro:

This copyright action arises from a termination notice sent by the appellant to the appellee, seeking to recapture rights to various characters created by her grandfather, Alan Alexander Milne, who authored the "Winnie-the-Pooh" children's books. Milne originally granted various rights in those works to the appellee in 1930. Then, in 1983, due to a change in copyright law in 1976, Milne's heirs considered terminating the 1930 grant outright, but instead entered into a new agreement that revoked the original grant and re-issued rights in the works to the appellee. The appellant seeks to invalidate the 1983 agreement based on 1998 legislation. The 1998 legislation only authorizes the termination of copyright agreements executed before 1978. Because the 1983 revocation and re-grant were valid, we affirm the district court's decision.

Not only net neutrality

[Wylfing]

My submission got rejected, but net neutrality is not the only bad thing on the way via bill S.2686. This is the same bill that grants the FCC the power to require audio and video broadcast flag recognition on every device made or sold. This is one of the last opportunities you have to contact your Senators to let them know you are opposed to this bill before it gets voted through in the middle of the night.

Kelo as viewed from the perspective of a local

[Shrithe]

I'm not from New London, but a neighboring town, and I feel obliged to point out that there's a lot of general support around here for what New London has done. It's still controversial, but the general feeling is that it's overall a good thing.

See, the thing is, New London is dirt poor. It's been in decline since it's peak in the 1800s, ever since whaling and fishing stopped being a reasonable basis for a small New England city's economy. For a long time now New London has been the poorest town in the area, with the most densely packed suburban sprawl, and a small downtown area which is mostly boarded up. Over the past twenty or thirty years, New London has been slowly building itself back up. They've cleaned up a lot of the bad crime that was going on, and businesses have been moving back in to areas that had lain dormant. They're developing themselves as a cultural center for the area, and doing a good job of it.

Now, with the whole eminent domain issue, here's the thing: It didn't particularly benefit the company much at all. Pfizer was going to build in the area, at comparable price, regardless, just not in New London. The government of New London saw the opportunity to bring that economic boon into their own town, and jumped on it. Now, there was no readily available area to give to Pfizer. New London is very small, with a high population for it's size. They had to move some people in order to make this go through, or they'd lose the tax base of having that industry to a neighboring, richer town.

The money generated for the town by having Pfizer there is going to allow them to increase the quality of their public services greatly. The school system is going to improve, the police effectiveness is going to improve, the quality of life for the entire town going up as a result of this. It's unfortunate that some people had to be removed for this to happen, and even more unfortunate is the level of malcontent some have felt over this act, but the town and it's inhabitants are going to benefit tangibly. The business received some benefit in order to entice them to the town, but that's a marginal amount. Big Business didn't trump the people here. The town made a heavily debated and difficult decision, and made it for the benefit of it's residents as a group.

Now, as a precedent, Kelo is undeniably dangerous. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that in the particular case of New London, it was the right choice to make.