Just a quick caveat: If you write, make sure you write your STATE representatives, and not your Federal reps. This measure has to be passed by the individual state legislatures, and not Congress.
When writing any elected rep, it also helps to make sure you include your postal address to prove that you're from their district. Generally, mail from people outside the district gets pitched, FWIW.
While in college, I worked at the helpdesk in a computer cluster (~30 machines in the library, full access to the web, word processing, university file servers, etc.) The computers had no dividers between them -- you could easily see what the person next to you (or across the aisle) was working on.
There was this one guy who came in pretty much like clockwork. He'd sit down, fire up a newsreader, and start viewing porn. Lots of it. For hours on end. In our shift reports, we called him "Pornoman".
There was some talk about trying to get him to stop -- not because of free speech or access questions, but because he was creating a "hostile working environment" for the other users of the cluster.
I wouldn't worry too much about any predatory pricing claims against Linux. Successful predatory pricing claims are extremely rare.
Essentially, the government (or plaintiff) has to prove that the price you're selling your product at is less than it costs to make it. So if my widget costs $5 and it takes $10 to make, it's bad. But you ALSO have to show that the pricing is calculated to drive the competition out of business so you can raise the price of your product above the market rate. (You need a reasonable chance of success for a conviction. IIRC the leading case in this vein is Matsushita, but Antitrust is a faint haze right now.)
Because of the GPL, Linux will always remain free (as in beer). It would be impossible to charge a monopolist's price for Linux, as long as anyone else could take the source and distribute it for essentially nothing.
The only way I could see problems in the far future is for value-added companies developing proprietary elements that become essential to businesses. But all of Redhat's products are pretty much GPL'ed also.
* AOL Subscribers probably explicitly consent to jurisdiction in Virginia as part of their subscription agreement.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the case in question. In the AOL terms-of-service (ie, your use contract with AOL), you can consent to jurisdiction in Virginia for disputes arising out of your contract with AOL.
This case is about a third party suing someone for comments posted through AOL. AFAIK, AOL isn't even a party to the litigation.
I'd have to agree that the encryption debate is far from over.
This case was heard by a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, and one of the judges dissented. Furthermore, any of the other circuits could come to a different conclusion -- the law's far from settled. As a matter of fact, the dissenting judge approvingly quotes Judge Gwin's decision in Junger v. Daley -- that's the decision that said that encryption source code cannot be categorized as pure speech and that the functional aspects of encryption source code cannot be easily ignored or put aside. Junger still remains good law in most of the country...
If and when this case is appealed, remember, the Supreme Court doesn't even have to hear the case. In fact, for most cases appealed to the Supreme Court, cert's denied.
OTOH, the judge who concurred specifically wrote, "The importance of this case suggests that it may be appropriate for review by the United States Supreme Court." That's no guarantee that the Supreme Court will take the case, though.
Adding fuel to the fire, here...Yet another reason why the decision in the Umbro case was ill-conceived.
The way I read the article, it looks like Umbro is trying to get whatever they can out of the domain name "pirates". They sued, and got a default judgment (ie, won the domain umbro.com) PLUS $25,000 in attorneys fees. But, the only assets Umbro could find to cover the attorneys fees were the defendant's other domain name registrations. The judge buys the argument that the domain names are "assets", and orders them garnished. But that's not the end of the story.
What if the Canada company registered domain names for trademarks it legally possessed? Under the court's ruling, these domain names are to be seized and auctioned off to the highest bidder. Thus, the Canada company would lose its right to use THEIR OWN TRADEMARK as a domain name.
Imagine suing Amazon.com, and winning a trillion dollar award that puts the company nearly out of business. Under the Umbro decision, the court could seize amazon.com, and sell it to the highest bidder. Amazon wouldn't be able to use its trademark name anymore (even if the company survived). Is this the result the court wants?
I think this result is what Umbro's lawyers intended. Quoting from their press release referenced in the article: "The decision provides significant leverage for trademark owners by imposing a real financial risk on the domain name pirate, who now faces the risk of losing not just the specific infringing or dilutive domain name registration at issue, but also every other domain name registration it owns."
The problem is, the ruling affects more people than naughty domain name pirates. I see a far broader reading of the Umbro case: Trademarks are property. While this statement might meet with agreement from many trademark scholars, to have it so bluntly stated is a bit disturbing. One of the big issues in trademark law today is whether we consider the trademark as merely an identifier of goods used in commerce, or as a property interest in and of itself.
Clearly, we know what the judge in the Umbro case thinks...I'd love to read the full decision, but couldn't find it on Lexis or Westlaw. Anyone have a cite?
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Just a quick caveat: If you write, make sure you write your STATE representatives, and not your Federal reps. This measure has to be passed by the individual state legislatures, and not Congress.
When writing any elected rep, it also helps to make sure you include your postal address to prove that you're from their district. Generally, mail from people outside the district gets pitched, FWIW.
While in college, I worked at the helpdesk in a computer cluster (~30 machines in the library, full access to the web, word processing, university file servers, etc.) The computers had no dividers between them -- you could easily see what the person next to you (or across the aisle) was working on.
There was this one guy who came in pretty much like clockwork. He'd sit down, fire up a newsreader, and start viewing porn. Lots of it. For hours on end. In our shift reports, we called him "Pornoman".
There was some talk about trying to get him to stop -- not because of free speech or access questions, but because he was creating a "hostile working environment" for the other users of the cluster.
I wouldn't worry too much about any predatory pricing claims against Linux. Successful predatory pricing claims are extremely rare.
Essentially, the government (or plaintiff) has to prove that the price you're selling your product at is less than it costs to make it. So if my widget costs $5 and it takes $10 to make, it's bad. But you ALSO have to show that the pricing is calculated to drive the competition out of business so you can raise the price of your product above the market rate. (You need a reasonable chance of success for a conviction. IIRC the leading case in this vein is Matsushita, but Antitrust is a faint haze right now.)
Because of the GPL, Linux will always remain free (as in beer). It would be impossible to charge a monopolist's price for Linux, as long as anyone else could take the source and distribute it for essentially nothing.
The only way I could see problems in the far future is for value-added companies developing proprietary elements that become essential to businesses. But all of Redhat's products are pretty much GPL'ed also.
Disclaimer: IANAL (yet).
* AOL Subscribers probably explicitly consent to jurisdiction in Virginia as part of their subscription agreement.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the case in question. In the AOL terms-of-service (ie, your use contract with AOL), you can consent to jurisdiction in Virginia for disputes arising out of your contract with AOL.
This case is about a third party suing someone for comments posted through AOL. AFAIK, AOL isn't even a party to the litigation.
This case was heard by a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, and one of the judges dissented. Furthermore, any of the other circuits could come to a different conclusion -- the law's far from settled. As a matter of fact, the dissenting judge approvingly quotes Judge Gwin's decision in Junger v. Daley -- that's the decision that said that encryption source code cannot be categorized as pure speech and that the functional aspects of encryption source code cannot be easily ignored or put aside. Junger still remains good law in most of the country...
If and when this case is appealed, remember, the Supreme Court doesn't even have to hear the case. In fact, for most cases appealed to the Supreme Court, cert's denied.
OTOH, the judge who concurred specifically wrote, "The importance of this case suggests that it may be appropriate for review by the United States Supreme Court." That's no guarantee that the Supreme Court will take the case, though.
The way I read the article, it looks like Umbro is trying to get whatever they can out of the domain name "pirates". They sued, and got a default judgment (ie, won the domain umbro.com) PLUS $25,000 in attorneys fees. But, the only assets Umbro could find to cover the attorneys fees were the defendant's other domain name registrations. The judge buys the argument that the domain names are "assets", and orders them garnished. But that's not the end of the story.
What if the Canada company registered domain names for trademarks it legally possessed? Under the court's ruling, these domain names are to be seized and auctioned off to the highest bidder. Thus, the Canada company would lose its right to use THEIR OWN TRADEMARK as a domain name.
Imagine suing Amazon.com, and winning a trillion dollar award that puts the company nearly out of business. Under the Umbro decision, the court could seize amazon.com, and sell it to the highest bidder. Amazon wouldn't be able to use its trademark name anymore (even if the company survived). Is this the result the court wants?
I think this result is what Umbro's lawyers intended. Quoting from their press release referenced in the article: "The decision provides significant leverage for trademark owners by imposing a real financial risk on the domain name pirate, who now faces the risk of losing not just the specific infringing or dilutive domain name registration at issue, but also every other domain name registration it owns."
The problem is, the ruling affects more people than naughty domain name pirates. I see a far broader reading of the Umbro case: Trademarks are property. While this statement might meet with agreement from many trademark scholars, to have it so bluntly stated is a bit disturbing. One of the big issues in trademark law today is whether we consider the trademark as merely an identifier of goods used in commerce, or as a property interest in and of itself.
Clearly, we know what the judge in the Umbro case thinks...I'd love to read the full decision, but couldn't find it on Lexis or Westlaw. Anyone have a cite?