Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disney Copyright, Alaa Freed, Kelo Repealed
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."
Why does this remind me of Volcano Insurance from family guy?
the infallibility of karma. It is not so forgiving...
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.
... so that I can personally add the 'unsigned' keyword.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It comes from mixing peanut butter with saliva then kissing. And kicking orphans to the ground and stealing their iPod. And putting SCO on your grandma's PC. And setting her up with Kazaa and no firewall then anonymously emailing the RIAA. That's the starter list.
All 10 Democrats on the committee, as well as Republican co-sponsor Sen. Snowe, voted for the amendment. The other 11 Republicans voted against."
It is clear here that the Democrats are on the side of the average person on a straightforward issue which is easy to explain and easy to get people excited about-- and the issue is framed in a way which makes it clear that a slight change in the partisan balance of power would have a direct effect on how Congress treats the issue.
With the upcoming Congressional elections, this represents a wonderful opportunity for the Democrats to completely fail at either communicating a message to the American people or presenting a credible alternative to the Republicans. I am sure that Democratic strategists are as we speak working around the clock trying to find some way to fumble this opportunity which has been dropped into their laps.
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.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
Copyright infringement is a crime in Sweden as well, AFAIK. What isn't a crime is distributing torrent files, which link to the material in question that is actually provided by other users, not the site from which you downloaded the torrent.
This is why sites like The Pirate Bay are able to stay alive; they aren't actually infringing copyright, they're simply indexing user-uploaded torrents.
In the US, this would count as contributory infringement I believe, and would be shut down.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Interesting to see a company foiled by the laws they insisted on in the first place, isn't it?
Well it would be, but the Disney case is all about Milne selling the merchandising rights back in the 30's and the daughter basically wanting to back out of that contract. What does that have to do with copyright again?
I don't think it's right of Milne (or Disney) to try and break this contract either but you have to feel a little sorry for Milne who had her grandfather basically give away a vast fortune in return for some smaller sum. Still, I think she's doing well just with her contract to Disney...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I got convicted for file-sharing and all i got was this lousy T-shirt!!!
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
When Nasser became president, he sought someone less intelligent than he to be the vice president. He found Sadat. Sadat did the same and found Mubarak.
Mubarak still doesn't have a vice president.
I heard that joke in the El Maadi district of Cairo.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
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.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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.
There's plenty said about them. The CIA has been in the news an awful lot recently, as I recall. Even the dingy old U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is getting a suprising amount of ink these days.
The reason they're not discussed more is because their functions are pretty mundane. The public doesn't care how the NIH decides to award federal grants, or how the SEC polices the stock market. Just printing the letters "IRS" in an article headline will guarantee that the public ignores it.
This is an extremely deleterious consequence of America's love of drama - the undramatic goes unmonitored. Meanwhile, our politicians keep us amused (and distracted from their actions) by waving flags and conjuring images of terr'ists.
What are the alphabet agencies -- FDA, EPA, OSHA, and so on -- doing when they pass laws? And, while these laws are called regulations, so as not to upset anyone who might actually read the Constitution, the Webster's dictionary defines regulation as a rule, ordinance or law.
Agency regulations are not laws. Laws are rules that apply to your actions: things that you may do, or must do, or must not do. Agency regulations are rules that apply to the actions of an agency: how it can utilize a power (that has already been given to it by the Executive or Legislative), how it cannot utilize a power, etc.
It's true that an agency sometimes relies on its own regulations to determine how to treat you. But the agency's power to deal with you in such a way was given to it by a law. And if the agency oversteps its legal authority, then a regulation won't save it.
Example: The IRS has many regulations that dictate how you must pay your federal taxes. Yet, these regulations aren't laws - the law passed by Congress is that:
- You must submit an annual federal income tax payment; and
- The IRS is responsible for creating a tax formula that adheres to the dictates of the legislature; and
- You must use the IRS formula, and follow the IRS submission procedures, to prove that you're paying the correct amount.
Now, what happens if the IRS believes that you've failed your legal duties under #1 or #3? It can't do anything to you! It has no such power. It merely tells the executive branch that you've violated the tax laws, and the executive prosecutes you for evasion - under the general tax laws passed by Congress.- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
The problem with these sort of things is that NASA is placed in an absolutely impossible situation if someone cries wolf to the press, and there isn't a wolf to be found. The same sort of thing happened with the A380.
This engineer felt that there was a fundamental design issue with an IC used in the pressurization system of an airliner. His bosses and fellow engineers, all the way up the chain felt otherwise. This has been an absolute nightmare for Airbus, and even if we assume that the directors have no sense of morals and are just looking at the bottom line, it would likely have been cheaper just to fix whatever problem was there than deal with the aftermath of some engineer writing to any newspaper that'll print him, so they looked. And, in the opinion of all the other engineers in the program, there wasn't a problem. Now what? You either keep him on and let this guy spout off forever about how dangerous your product is, likely causing the shareholders to demand a vendor switch even with nothing at all wrong just because it will look bad for the airframe, a hugely expensive gamble for the Airbus group, or you fire him and try to shut him up, and now everybody screams cover-up.
I'm not necessarily saying this is an analogous situation. I don't know what went on in the meetings where he got transferred, or what he said to piss people off. I am saying that it's not always as simple as people think.
-twb