In PA. Big time corruption trial of a state legislator.
The motion should have been resolved by now, but I'm not sure what happened. The verdict (guilty) came down today. If the juror wasn't removed, it's very possible that an appeal could argue this very issue. Fumo's attorney has already said he is going to appeal.
It's a valid question. If Valve goes bankrupt, would a bankruptcy judge allow Valve to deploy their "kill switch"?
In bankruptcy, the creditors are in charge, and I find it likely that the creditors would object.
That said, I love steam and I'm willing to bet that valve will be around for a long time. When I get a new computer, I just install steam, and all my games are right there. No hunting for CDs, and then having the pain of changing multiple CDs mid install, etc. Plus an integrated friends list and achievements. I've never been big on selling my games, so that detriment doesn't affect me much.
GDP is not the end-all of economic analysis. Just because an action or a policy increases GDP does not mean that the nation is better off for it. Paying workers to dig ditches and then fill them in again will likely displace workers from projects that are actually useful. By artificially increasing the demand for labor, the supply of labor available to useful projects is diminished. By increasing the cost of an important input (labor), the number of useful projects will be diminished. The country will be worse off as a result.
No one has ever tried anything like the spending bill on such a large scale before. The coming years will provide huge amounts of interesting data for macroeconomists. I don't appreciate being a labrat in the largest macroeconomic experiment in history, but part of me is very interested in seeing the eventual results.
The carriers spend tons of money on buying spectrum. All this money goes to the government and is spent on who-knows-what. The owners of the spectrum then have much less money to invest in actually using the spectrum.
Don't get me wrong. I am all in favor of spectrum auctions. However, the bids should not be money. A bid should consist of what service will be provided, how much consumers will be charged for the service, and what areas the service will be provided in. The FCC can then pick winners based on who will provide the most efficient service. If a company doesn't live up to their bid, they lose their spectrum. This bidding process should be automatically repeated every 20 years. There's no reason an incumbent service should be able to hog spectrum that would be better used by a new service, or maybe even an entirely new technology.
You mean to say that all the money the government put into public works like roads, power, and telecomm shouldn't be compensated by the people that use it the most?
If corporate taxes were based on the amount of government services consumed by corporations, then you might have a point. As is, the corporate tax rate is a simple tax on yearly profits. I suspect there is little correlation between taxes paid and services used. A corporation could use tons of government services and then not pay corporate taxes simply by failing to make a profit.
How often do you think that fair use is going to apply to software modification? Do you have any case law that even discusses this issue?
Do you even realize that fair use is an affirmative defense against copyright infringement? Do you even know what that means?
I fill you in. It means that if you are accused of copyright infringement, you will have to prove, in court, that fair use applies by preponderance of the evidence.
Do you have the money that it would take to mount such a defense? Is it really worth it?
Sorry, the term "fair use" gets thrown around here a lot. Most/.ers, including you, have no idea what it actually means. Unless you are working in an area with well settled case law, it is going to be very expensive to prove fair use. Software is not such an area.
Furthermore, I highly doubt that most software modifications will fall under a fair use defense even if you are willing to spend the money to get to that point.
There's a reason I didn't mention fair use in my post. It's because I didn't particularly feel like writing a book. The parent of my post was wrong. I corrected him. I'm fairly certain that fair use doesn't apply in the situation we are talking about, so I didn't bring it up.
If you think it does apply, you are going to have to do more than simply scream 'Fair Use!' A court would ask you to prove it. I pointed out a statute and case law in my post. What do you have?
Aren't we talking about software here? What does Disney have to do with software?
Fair use is complex. Is there a fair use right to modify software? I have no idea. I am aware of no case law on the subject. My gut instinct is that it depends on what modifications are done. I highly doubt that a court would find that there is a blanket fair use right to modify software.
Even law concerning derivative works is complex. I really wasn't trying to address what is and what is not a derivative work. I was just trying to correct the misstatement that derivative works can be created at will, and there will not be copyright infringement as long as there is no distribution. That's just not true. It doesn't reflect the law, and it doesn't reflect the cases. If a court finds that a derivative work has been created, there will be liability for copyright infringement unless fair use or some other affirmative defense applies.
Please note that neither this post nor my previous post reflect my own personal views. I am just trying to explain the law.
And this is why it's not a good idea to get legal advice on slashdot...
let's review:
The exclusive rights granted in copyright law are detailed in 17 USC S 106:
17 USC S 106 Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
The statute uses the word prepare. You will be in violation even if you don't distribute your derivative work. For a case dealing with this specific subject, see Walt Disney Productions v Filmation Associates, at 628 F.Supp. 871. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a copy of it online.
Yes. Patents give the right to exclude. There is no compulsory license for patents. And there are no antitrust penalties for simply refusing to license patents.
Yes. The US Legal system believes that they are valid. Does anyone else matter? I know its "common knowledge" on slashdot that they aren't valid, but find one US case that says they aren't valid. There are many that say they are...
The Allies decided before the fall of Germany that they would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. If the Japanese were not yet willing to accept unconditional surrender after the first bomb, then the war wasn't over yet.
That's not to say that the second bomb was justified, but politically, the Allies were not going to accept anything less than unconditional surrender.
The only reason to finish the patent process would be to establish your freedom to continue down that path without anyone else patenting your own technology, and then blocking your from using it.
Not true. A patent does not give you the right to practice the invention. A patent only gives you the right to exclude others from the invention. If someone else has a prior patent, you might still be prevented from practicing your invention.
Most of the $10,000 is the cost of preparing the application. The actual filing fees are a small fraction of that. They might be even smaller in this case, as it sounds like the LLC qualifies for small entity status. Small entities qualify for reduced fees (50% off) for many things at the patent office.
I don't like EULAs, but the terms of use for World of Warcraft are a far different thing. WoW subscribers pay a monthly fee. It's difficult to imagine that Blizzard shouldn't be able to form a contract with subscribers...
paranoid person: The LHC is going to cause a black hole! scientist: No, the LHC is not going to cause a black hole. paranoid person: The chances of a scientist being wrong is 10%, therefore there is a 10% chance that the LHC will cause a black hole!
$200B is the tax savings that the telecoms got in exchange for building out high speed Internet to the entire country. Changing the depreciation rules for the telecoms allowed them to pay less taxes.
Cringely didn't come up with the figure, it came from teletruth.org. They have a 400 page ebook detailing the entire scam. The scam is far better documented than anything the RIAA has ever put forth.
If you set the minimum speed at 1.5Mbps, the network will be outdated by the time its built. Set the definition at least to 10Mbps, and even that is pathetic compared to other first world countries. Why not 50? 100? The technology exists...
Your information is dated. The TARP program never bought any "troubled assets." The TARP program directly invested in banks by buying newly issued preferred shares.
The TARP program originally sold to Congress was to buy troubled assets. That plan was quickly abandoned after the program was passed. See the "changes to the initial program" section from your wikipedia link.
Really, its not very limiting. If the police have a warrant to look for, say, marijuana joints, they can look anywhere that a marijuana joint could be hidden. On that warrant, they could look practically everywhere, and anything they found would be admissible.
The unrealistic example that is an actual limited warrant: If the police have a warrant to look for stolen grand pianos, they can't go rifling through all your drawers, and anything they find in your drawers is going to be inadmissible.
While I'm certainly not an expert on bars, I have never seen anyone puke in a bar. That includes several Dave & Buster's, several other D&B type places, and several other non-arcade bars. That doesn't mean that no one ever pukes, but it's not the common occurrence that you are imagining. The vast majority of people who go to bars know their limit, at least to the extent that they aren't going to drink enough to make them puke.
Also, if there is the occasional incident, I have never seen any evidence of it. All the D&Bs and other barcades that I have been in are kept very clean.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/03/fumo_jurors_online_discussion.html
In PA. Big time corruption trial of a state legislator.
The motion should have been resolved by now, but I'm not sure what happened. The verdict (guilty) came down today. If the juror wasn't removed, it's very possible that an appeal could argue this very issue. Fumo's attorney has already said he is going to appeal.
It's a valid question. If Valve goes bankrupt, would a bankruptcy judge allow Valve to deploy their "kill switch"?
In bankruptcy, the creditors are in charge, and I find it likely that the creditors would object.
That said, I love steam and I'm willing to bet that valve will be around for a long time. When I get a new computer, I just install steam, and all my games are right there. No hunting for CDs, and then having the pain of changing multiple CDs mid install, etc. Plus an integrated friends list and achievements. I've never been big on selling my games, so that detriment doesn't affect me much.
Ahh yes. The classic broken window fallacy.
GDP is not the end-all of economic analysis. Just because an action or a policy increases GDP does not mean that the nation is better off for it. Paying workers to dig ditches and then fill them in again will likely displace workers from projects that are actually useful. By artificially increasing the demand for labor, the supply of labor available to useful projects is diminished. By increasing the cost of an important input (labor), the number of useful projects will be diminished. The country will be worse off as a result.
No one has ever tried anything like the spending bill on such a large scale before. The coming years will provide huge amounts of interesting data for macroeconomists. I don't appreciate being a labrat in the largest macroeconomic experiment in history, but part of me is very interested in seeing the eventual results.
The carriers spend tons of money on buying spectrum. All this money goes to the government and is spent on who-knows-what. The owners of the spectrum then have much less money to invest in actually using the spectrum.
Don't get me wrong. I am all in favor of spectrum auctions. However, the bids should not be money. A bid should consist of what service will be provided, how much consumers will be charged for the service, and what areas the service will be provided in. The FCC can then pick winners based on who will provide the most efficient service. If a company doesn't live up to their bid, they lose their spectrum. This bidding process should be automatically repeated every 20 years. There's no reason an incumbent service should be able to hog spectrum that would be better used by a new service, or maybe even an entirely new technology.
You mean to say that all the money the government put into public works like roads, power, and telecomm shouldn't be compensated by the people that use it the most?
If corporate taxes were based on the amount of government services consumed by corporations, then you might have a point. As is, the corporate tax rate is a simple tax on yearly profits. I suspect there is little correlation between taxes paid and services used. A corporation could use tons of government services and then not pay corporate taxes simply by failing to make a profit.
How often do you think that fair use is going to apply to software modification? Do you have any case law that even discusses this issue?
Do you even realize that fair use is an affirmative defense against copyright infringement? Do you even know what that means?
I fill you in. It means that if you are accused of copyright infringement, you will have to prove, in court, that fair use applies by preponderance of the evidence.
Do you have the money that it would take to mount such a defense? Is it really worth it?
Sorry, the term "fair use" gets thrown around here a lot. Most /.ers, including you, have no idea what it actually means. Unless you are working in an area with well settled case law, it is going to be very expensive to prove fair use. Software is not such an area.
Furthermore, I highly doubt that most software modifications will fall under a fair use defense even if you are willing to spend the money to get to that point.
There's a reason I didn't mention fair use in my post. It's because I didn't particularly feel like writing a book. The parent of my post was wrong. I corrected him. I'm fairly certain that fair use doesn't apply in the situation we are talking about, so I didn't bring it up.
If you think it does apply, you are going to have to do more than simply scream 'Fair Use!' A court would ask you to prove it. I pointed out a statute and case law in my post. What do you have?
Aren't we talking about software here? What does Disney have to do with software?
Fair use is complex. Is there a fair use right to modify software? I have no idea. I am aware of no case law on the subject. My gut instinct is that it depends on what modifications are done. I highly doubt that a court would find that there is a blanket fair use right to modify software.
Even law concerning derivative works is complex. I really wasn't trying to address what is and what is not a derivative work. I was just trying to correct the misstatement that derivative works can be created at will, and there will not be copyright infringement as long as there is no distribution. That's just not true. It doesn't reflect the law, and it doesn't reflect the cases. If a court finds that a derivative work has been created, there will be liability for copyright infringement unless fair use or some other affirmative defense applies.
Please note that neither this post nor my previous post reflect my own personal views. I am just trying to explain the law.
And this is why it's not a good idea to get legal advice on slashdot...
let's review:
The exclusive rights granted in copyright law are detailed in 17 USC S 106:
17 USC S 106 Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
The statute uses the word prepare. You will be in violation even if you don't distribute your derivative work. For a case dealing with this specific subject, see Walt Disney Productions v Filmation Associates, at 628 F.Supp. 871. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a copy of it online.
IANAL
It's not against antitrust laws to simply be a large company. And it's not against antitrust laws for a large company to simply grow either.
It's quite possible they sold the foreign rights to Trek long before the Internet came along...
Yes. Patents give the right to exclude. There is no compulsory license for patents. And there are no antitrust penalties for simply refusing to license patents.
Yes. The US Legal system believes that they are valid. Does anyone else matter? I know its "common knowledge" on slashdot that they aren't valid, but find one US case that says they aren't valid. There are many that say they are...
The Allies decided before the fall of Germany that they would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. If the Japanese were not yet willing to accept unconditional surrender after the first bomb, then the war wasn't over yet.
That's not to say that the second bomb was justified, but politically, the Allies were not going to accept anything less than unconditional surrender.
The only reason to finish the patent process would be to establish your freedom to continue down that path without anyone else patenting your own technology, and then blocking your from using it.
Not true. A patent does not give you the right to practice the invention. A patent only gives you the right to exclude others from the invention. If someone else has a prior patent, you might still be prevented from practicing your invention.
IANAL.
Most of the $10,000 is the cost of preparing the application. The actual filing fees are a small fraction of that. They might be even smaller in this case, as it sounds like the LLC qualifies for small entity status. Small entities qualify for reduced fees (50% off) for many things at the patent office.
I am a Registered Patent Agent.
I don't like EULAs, but the terms of use for World of Warcraft are a far different thing. WoW subscribers pay a monthly fee. It's difficult to imagine that Blizzard shouldn't be able to form a contract with subscribers...
paranoid person: The LHC is going to cause a black hole!
scientist: No, the LHC is not going to cause a black hole.
paranoid person: The chances of a scientist being wrong is 10%, therefore there is a 10% chance that the LHC will cause a black hole!
You mean like the US? Where the "amount and substantiality of the portion used" is just one of four factors used for fair use analysis?
$200B is the tax savings that the telecoms got in exchange for building out high speed Internet to the entire country. Changing the depreciation rules for the telecoms allowed them to pay less taxes.
Cringely didn't come up with the figure, it came from teletruth.org. They have a 400 page ebook detailing the entire scam. The scam is far better documented than anything the RIAA has ever put forth.
If you set the minimum speed at 1.5Mbps, the network will be outdated by the time its built. Set the definition at least to 10Mbps, and even that is pathetic compared to other first world countries. Why not 50? 100? The technology exists...
Your information is dated. The TARP program never bought any "troubled assets." The TARP program directly invested in banks by buying newly issued preferred shares.
The TARP program originally sold to Congress was to buy troubled assets. That plan was quickly abandoned after the program was passed. See the "changes to the initial program" section from your wikipedia link.
The government didn't buy loans. The government bought preferred shares ie an ownership stake in the banks.
Really, it was the Federal Reserve's fault. Trying to fight inflation in a recession is stupid. But that was long before Milton Friedman's monetarism.
Of course, Hoover's protectionist policies didn't help. Hopefully Obama listens to his well chosen economic advisers and doesn't follow the same path.
Really, its not very limiting. If the police have a warrant to look for, say, marijuana joints, they can look anywhere that a marijuana joint could be hidden. On that warrant, they could look practically everywhere, and anything they found would be admissible.
The unrealistic example that is an actual limited warrant: If the police have a warrant to look for stolen grand pianos, they can't go rifling through all your drawers, and anything they find in your drawers is going to be inadmissible.
While I'm certainly not an expert on bars, I have never seen anyone puke in a bar. That includes several Dave & Buster's, several other D&B type places, and several other non-arcade bars. That doesn't mean that no one ever pukes, but it's not the common occurrence that you are imagining. The vast majority of people who go to bars know their limit, at least to the extent that they aren't going to drink enough to make them puke.
Also, if there is the occasional incident, I have never seen any evidence of it. All the D&Bs and other barcades that I have been in are kept very clean.