Slashdot Mirror
Obama DoJ Goes Against Film Companies
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "If one attempted to distill a single prevailing emotion or attitude about government on Slashdot, I think it is fairly arguable that the winner would be cynicism or skepticism. Well here's a story that could make us skeptical and/or cynical about our skepticism and/or cynicism. Chalk one up for those who like to point out that, occasionally, the system does work. You may recall that the US Supreme Court has been mulling over whether to grant the film industry's petition for certiorari seeking to overturn the important Cartoon Networks v. CSC Holdings decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. This was the case which held that Cablevision's allowing its customers to make copies of shows and store them on Cablevision's servers for later viewing did not constitute a direct copyright infringement by Cablevision, there being no 'copy' made since the files were in RAM and buffered for only a 'transitory' duration. The Supreme Court asked the Obama DoJ to submit an amicus curiae brief, giving its opinion on whether or not the film companies' petition for review should be granted. The government did indeed file such a brief, but the content of the brief (PDF) is probably not what the film companies were expecting. They probably thought they had this one in the bag, since some of the very lawyers who have been representing them have been appointed to the highest echelons of the Obama DoJ. Instead, however, the brief eloquently argued against the film companies' position, dismembering with surgical accuracy each and every argument the film companies had advanced."
He knows the opposition's position as well as his so he can counter it up front. If he can't put himself in the opposition's shoes and argue against them, then they're going to suck.
These guys argued the other side forever, they *should* know how to tear that apart now.
Can someone mod those lawyers up? +1 insightful.
paul reinheimer
I know it isn't likely, but I would love to see this evolve into a situation where I could time shift my MythTV recordings with other users over BitTorrent.
coffee | nose > keyboard
It's nice to see things happening the way they are meant to happen. While the DoJ employees are not elected by the people, they are appointed by people who are. They are, in theory, supposed to represent the will and needs of the people, not corporations or lobbyists with money. Hopefully this will open up the debate about rewriting copyright and property laws in the age of information and the internet.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Sounds like non intervention is good policy.
See what it did to the banking system and global economy?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
"since some of the very lawyers who have been representing them have been appointed to the highest echelons of the Obama DoJ."
Sometimes people just need a reminder that there is no grouping of people with less principles than Lawyers. We made the assumption that, since RIAA lawyers were hired to the DOJ, that they would find in favor of the RIAA. But it seems that lawyers are almost always megaphones for who is signing their paycheck.
And in this situation, it worked out in our favor.
They probably thought they had this one in the bag, since some of the very lawyers who have been representing them have been appointed to the highest echelons of the Obama DoJ. Instead, however, the brief eloquently argued against the film companies' position, dismembering with surgical accuracy each and every argument the film companies had advanced."
Thus demonstrating again why you should never trust a lawyer. Unless you are still paying him, of course. (sorry nycLawyer)
Qxe4
I believe you're trying to be a bit snarky, but you are close to the mark. Try some Greecian Philosophy. Thesis / antithesis is one of the bases of legal argument.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That is like blaming car accident deaths on seat belts(not wearing them/them not existing) rather than bad driving. Lack of regulation is not what killed the global economy. Regulation could prevent it from happening again, maybe, but that doesn't mean a lack of regulation caused anything.
If everyone involved in the lending crisis had done a little homework before buying the loan packages they would have realized that they were paying too much. It was their own free will to buy the crappy loans, no one forced them. Regulation is just forcing people to do the homework + making people jump through more hoops.
NewYorkCountryLawyer said:
Well here's a story that could make us skeptical and/or cynical about our skepticism and/or cynicism.
It's way too early on a Sunday morning and/or afternoon for me to ponder and/or grok the in and/or out of the and/or in that sentence.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
That's a really good point. That's why I advocate turning over all economic policy making to hyper-intelligent, omniscient, perfectly altruistic robot overlords.
Oh, we don't have those yet? Guess we better go with that "regulation" thing.
So far, at least on the surface, Obama is mostly keeping his hands off the DoJ and letting them do their thing independently. Perhaps it is a misperception on my part. And Obama seems to be at least trying to be his own president. It seems pretty obvious that he has capitulated on quite a few important issues and hasn't had quite the smooth ride he might have expected, but I don't think Obama cares much about the whole copyright thing right now.
Why can't we nail the Govt for Copyright Infringement of our audio phone works?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
No, blaming the market rather then those who abused the market is like blaming a perfectly good road to cover up for a drivers incompetence.
Well I suppose it is those who took advantage of the lack of regulation.
Like regulation prevented the GFC from becoming a major issue in Australia? Banks being forced by the government to maintain a certain percentage of liquidity to prevent them running entirely on credit, or interest rates that reflected the true growth of the market?
Well, empirical evidence suggests otherwise, the AUD is at .78 USD, it was about this during Australia mining boom. +1 for Australia's overly regulated banking system (none of whom have required bailing out BTW).
B-b-b-but it I'm able to sell a predatory loan shouldn't I be entitled to profit on it.
The blame here lies not on those who were sold the bad loans but on those who were selling the bad loans, this goes all the way back to the government whom would not allow interest rates to reveal the true state of the economy although it also includes those bankers who knew better but did not act against it as there was profit to be made in the mean time.
Remember that the economy relies upon those who are not experts at economics as much as the car industry relies upon those of us who cannot strip a six cylinder car engine blindfolded.
So, you're saying that regulation gives people more time to decide weather a large debt is feasable or not. But isnt regulation a bad thing(TM).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I suggest you go look up the definition, history, and maybe some examples of fascism, having somebody help you when you stumble over the hard words. Because calling the Republicans "fascists" (at least, while giving the "hey GM CEO, you be fired now, k?" Democrats a pass) is pretty silly.
An accusation made against one party is typically defended by pointing out that the other party is no better. I have a way of neatly avoiding such bickering. For all practical purposes, whether this was intentional or accidental, the USA has one party that happens to be composed of two factions. They're both rotten bastards and the continued dominance of politics by the Democrats and the Republicans guarantees that nothing really changes. They're both leading us to a fascist nanny-state or whatever you care to call it and they'll blame each other for it the whole time that they are taking us there. For those who don't want to live in a modern police state, this is nothing to celebrate.
I mean, this news is good and it's a step in the right direction, but it's a tiny little baby-step that's barely even measurable compared to all of the other things that need to change if the USA is going to once again become a sustainable country (financially and otherwise) that really celebrates freedom instead of paying lip service to it. A good start would be to implement the single transferrable vote, this would go a long way towards breaking the two-party duopoly and allowing more third parties to actually stand any chance of winning elections (or at least, to lose elections because the people know about them and disagree with them and not because a duopoly has made them obscure).
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I was initially skeptical about the alleged, lauded virtue of Barrack Obama, but the more I see of his actions, the more I'm forced to concede that I was wrong, and that in this case, water genuinely has flowed uphill, to use that analogy.
Obama's level of integrity is genuinely intimidating, for the simple reason that an American President is, at this point in history, expected to be a thoroughly amoral and corrupt human being. That he isn't, is rightfully seen almost as a violation of physical law. Bush's degree of evil had almost become reassuring, purely because of its' level of routine familiarity. When he attempted to do something monstrous, it was entirely expected.
Even with Bush aside, it is also a paradox when considered in light of the dynamics of political power in general. Reading Machiavelli and virtually every other treatise on the subject, one is left with the overwhelming conclusion that the single greatest prerequisite of political power is amorality, to the extent that it can be said that an individual's degree of political power will be directly proportional to their level of amorality.
Given this, Dick Cheney is perhaps a more likely example of who we would ordinarily expect to hold the office of President, morally speaking, than Obama. Cheney is, according to virtually every depiction of him, a consciously, willingly, and indeed enthusiastically evil individual. He is, therefore, far more consistent, both from study of political theory in general, and observation of American political history in particular, with the type of individual who I would expect to hold the office of the Presidency.
It is said that within a democracy, a people get the leader they deserve. I'm not entirely sure what Americans have done recently to deserve a leader with Obama's comparitive level of decency, especially given that Bush was so far to the opposite, but even for us outside America, Obama's integrity is certainly very welcome.
It will be fascinating to observe just how far outside of the established, conventional rules Obama is permitted to go.
If one attempted to distill a single prevailing emotion or attitude about government on Slashdot, I think it is fairly arguable that the winner would be cynicism or skepticism.
Yeah right. Like we're expected to believe what you think about slashdot's opinion. You know, it's summaries like this that prove we can't expect much change either from the government OR slashdot... PS: For the HUMOR impaired, the above was meant to be a skeptical, cynical comment. But THIS bit is actually sarcasm.
I am "humor impaired", and you had me there.
But seriously, the comments to my story so far demonstrate that this welcome bit of good news does nothing at all to dampen the raging cynicism and skepticism which seem to be the prevailing winds of Slashdot.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Fascism is supreme belief in the power of the state and/or the party and that if you're "against them" you're "against ."
If you're not with us, you're AGAINST US!
If you don't like Bush, GET THE FUCK OUT OF AMERICA!
If you don't like the Patriot Act, MOVE TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY!
If you're against the war, YOU'RE AGAINST THE TROOPS!
That's fascism, and those are all quotes I've heard from Republicans, either personally or have seen at demonstrations on YouTube. None of those quotes is made up.
That's fascism, FishWithAHammer. Obama asked GM's CEO to step down and be replaced. It wasn't forced, just like we weren't forcing them to take billions of dollars of funds that would protect America's stake in the international automotive industry. But hey, if they wanted it, they had to make some concessions.
Unlike Bush, who was totally in favor of just giving away ten times as much money with no accountability whatsoever.
Maybe we should appoint the judge whose opinion this is?
We?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Any argument that requires a strong majority of the populace to be an intelligent and rational actor is flawed. At least half of the human race falls below the mean intelligence level. When was the last time high school taught a course that detailed how to get a loan in a safe way, or how to sensibly manage credit? Many high schools don't even require civics courses, preferring instead a selection of "multicultural studies", "introduction to computers", and "remedial English grammar".
Any argument that requires a strong majority of businesses to act in a completely ethical fashion, without external pressures, is flawed. Corporations exist only to extract wealth. Thanks to the de-regulation of the last couple of decades, businesses have been free to take any action that improves the bottom line. They loaned to people with no income verification, to people who were blatantly unable to repay the loans. Predictably, many of these people defaulted on their loans. The credit industry cannot function when the default rate erases any possible profits, and eats into capital besides. This is a case of individual businesses acting to harm the environment (the industry in which they work) for their own selfish gains, a true "tragedy of the commons".
A rational and educated actor would have been able to see 5 years into the future, and know that their income would not suffice for them to manage the repayment.
A rational and educated government would have been able to look back to 1929, and draw lessons from the boom time immediately before the crash that spawned the great depression.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Dude, are you serious?
The government does something bad, and it's out to get you.
The government does something good, and it's a "tactical deception", designed to lull you into a false sense of security, and it's out to get you.
Your theory is not falsifiable. And you get a 4, insightful? This is supposed to be a science-oriented discussion board; we should know better.
Are you joking? Let me fill you in... Obama doesn't give a rat's ass about copyright legislation. He has a nuclear-armed Korea threatening war, a nuclear-armed Pakistan fighting for its life against the Taliban, extreme tensions between Israel and Iran (one of which has nukes, and the other's probably working on it), two wars of our own to deal with, a collapsed global economy, and on top of that, he still probably wants to get his universal health care plan rolling.
He's not in bed with the **AA the way a lot of Slashdotters like to think. He's not out to get them either. He's simply got bigger things to worry about. This decision was undoubtedly made at a lower level. If anything, he glanced over it quickly and agreed to the arguments put forth by his lawyers.
A PayPal "Donate" button goes a long way..
Well the last time we mentioned my PayPal button, some contributions came rolling in. So if you insist it's here.
Thing is, what I like about the affiliate advertising idea is I'm not asking for a handout, and it's not costing you anything. You buy stuff on the internet anyway. So why not check and see if you can buy it through one of my links and help ol' NewYorkCountryLawyer out, without it costing you a dime?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Big government is bad.
That's the Reagan myth which has been handed down, and which has caused our present crisis, that it's okay to have big corporations but not big government. It doesn't work that way. If you're going to have mega-corporations running business, you need big government to regulate them.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It is not so much Obama that we are concerned about, but rather his Vice President, Joe Biden, who has a long history of close and loyal support of entertainment industry interests and presently holds an office which, at least historically, doesn't have too many responsibilities (he breaks tie votes in the Senate). We are concerned that someone like Biden, who has time on his hands to introduce legislation and has the ear of the President, might use his position and the fact that the President is preoccupied with more pressing business to push through some really awful legislation. This is not an illegitimate or merely theoretical concern.
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS327US327&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define:fascism
A lot of people disagree with you. Fascism is not "primarily" an economic descriptor. Fascism has in fact, little to do with socialism or capitalism. It's a political ideology that the government is best and that they can cure our ills. This can take the form of extreme pressure or crimes against political dissidents, or it can take the form of state-owned monopolies, or other things. Fascism starts with a single kernel of an ideology: our way is best, you aren't part of us, so get the fuck out of our way or join us.
That's it. It's patriotism taken to its most extreme. In Italy, it meant if Benito Mussolini contradicted himself, he was right both times. It means that whatever the government does is right, and if you aren't for it, you're against it and you're hurting (pick at least one): progress, the future, the children, democracy, the nation, the system... Etc.
The extreme nationalism encourages people to accept things like government ownership of things, because after all, if you're not with them, you're against them. And the troops. And the flag. And whatever else.
And let's be honest, Bush's supporters (note I did not say Bush himself) were the closest to fascists this nation has ever had. They were those hyper-nationalistic people you refer to.
He's not in bed with the **AA the way a lot of Slashdotters like to think.
Evidence indicates otherwise.
I have been quick to point out 'tea leaves' suggesting that he was being overly generous to the content cartel in his appointments. And I pointed out the 2 misguided, fervently pro-RIAA, briefs his DOJ filed in 2 'RIAA v. End User' cases (if I weren't a professional I would call them "dumbass", but of course I would never use such a term). But fairmindedness requires us to see this new filing, which is at the United States Supreme Court level, as evidence to the contrary. This brief directly contradicts the things the pro-RIAA appointees argued in this very case.
As far as I am concerned, if every brief Obama's DOJ files is as fair minded and scholarly as this one was, I will not care if the conclusions drawn by the brief agree with, or disagree with, the conclusions I have drawn.
All I ask for is fairness. A lawyer who disagrees with me, but does so with integrity and honor, is okay in my book.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What we probably really need is smaller corporations. Another part of the Reagan legacy was to relegate antitrust enforcement and securities law enforcement to a back seat. We need a strong dose of government to start moving away from monopolization, anticompetitive practices, and financial gamesmanship. And to move towards investment in the people who live here, with health care, education, child care, housing for the homeless, etc. Then when we have made some progress in those areas, we can start talking about reducing the size of government. But not until then.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If you mean that treaties have the same force as statutes enacted by Congress that do not violate the Constitution, then you are right.
That's not exactly correct. If a treaty provision conflicts with, or expands upon, an existing statute, it is invalid. See, e.g., Elektra v. Barker, which held that the WIPO copyright treaty could not vary the terms of the Copyright Act.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I wish I had mod points. This weak minded PC world of moral relativism must be abolished. Copyright holders demand to be taken seriously and insist others listen to their arguments. I DONT NEED TO, your arguments are worthless because the position you already occupy is outrageous. The stated intent of the law was to promote innovation. Being able to profit from one work for a life time does not do that, it eliminates the need for innovation almost entirely.
Return to the bright bright line and we can have an intelligent discussion listen to each other and hash out the specifics, till then I am for damaging the strength of copyright law in any possible way, including making completely impossible to enforce on a technical level such that everyone is a violator and the entire concept becomes a sad joke. Chances are that we can't come back from that point, which does not bother people like me much so maybe you pro IP types aught to think about giving us some concessions because there are more of us and eventually we will defeat you; yes some of us are willing to whip others into what amounts to an unruly mod to do that.
A power struggle is an awful hard fight to win, once one side has excepted anarchy as satisfactory outcome, and a large enough group of people start to fell that would be preferable to your continued control; that is whats happening slowing in the world of IP. "Information wants to be free," is catching on.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Perhaps the real bread and circuses is all this whining about copyright while your nation fights two wars, has out of control military spending, locks up non-violent drug offenders, arrests medical marijuana growers, denies rights to gays, is in the middle of an economic meltdown, has out of control gun laws, etc etc etc, yet here we are arguing the minutia of copyright law. If anyone is guilty of deceiving the public with inconsequential shit, its us geeks, not Obama. Whining about copyright and quoting Ayn Rand is not how you fix things. Bread and circuses indeed!
When Obama was elected, one of the things that was most apparent was his understanding of technology and related issues. When he appointed the ??AA lawyers to the DOJ, there was a large outcry from people who believed he was being influenced by his party's traditional media kowtowing.
The specific lawyers who represented the RIAA and MPAA, and are now in the DOJ, are recused for two years from working on any of these types of matters. So they are not supposed to have had anything whatsoever to do with this brief. And from all appearances they did not
I'm wondering if the ??AA lawyer appointments weren't designed to "take them out of the game". If so, it's a brilliant move, IMHO. :)
He cares enough about copyright to appoint former RIAA lawyers to the DOJ
The guy he appointed to the top spot was a law school chum, and headed the Obama transition team. Even I do not think he was appointed because he represented the content cartel in copyright infringement cases. He was hired because of their relationship and because Obama obviously placed great trust in him.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Good job. Dismiss his bullshit logic with some even worse false logic of your own.
You're suggesting that if we all drop everything else, we will be able to solve all the major problems in the world, and just work our way down the list... Reality is quite the opposite, really.
You can stop bathing until you've achieved world peace, but the time saved won't gain you world peace, and you'll just go around stinking.
Try this... Don't bother changing the oil in your car. It's not important enough. Just keep going until your car blows up. THEN your car blowing up will be important enough to merit your attention.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Maybe so. Dick Morris argues that this is exactly how he's neutralized Hillary Clinton:
http://thehill.com/dick-morris/the-incredible-shrinking-clintons-2009-05-26.html
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org