Sounds like a long and fairly useless exercise in common sense. People who succeed are those who work hard and are lucky to be in the right place at the right time... wow, real work of genius, somebody submit this piece for the nobel prize.
I do congratulate the guy on being a skilled enough writer to convince large amounts of people that it's worth buying a book that simply restates what 90% of humanity already knows.
No offense, but your response makes little sense, probably because you don't understand the rules governing jurisdiction.
If a Court "rejects" a case generally that means the case is over, period, and can't just be re-filed in another court. Of course it depends on how the court "rejects" the case because there are numerous ways a court can dispose of a case, a very few of which would allow refiling the case elsewhere.
Jursidictional rules are complicated and there are already means for transfering the venue of the case when it makes more sense to litigate in a specific location. But when you're a company that sells software everywhere in the U.S., currently, you can be sued anywhere in the U.S.
To solve the problem of forum shopping all you need to do is change the rule with respect to where the Plaintiff can file his case (e.g. change the rule so he can file either only in his home state or the defendant's home state). Of course there would be consequences to that kind of rule, pros and cons, etc., but it could be done.
Biliski was about the patent office rejecting a patent appliation, not an invalidation of any existing patent. As such, Biliski stands for the proposition that the Patent Office can reject certain types of patents that are like the one considered in Biliski. Apparently the patent in question in TFA was filed and granted long before Biliski came out, so Biliski has no practical effect on that patent directly.
Indirectly, one might argue that the patent should be invalid because of its nature, i.e. it never should have been granted. But that has to be done on a case-by-case basis for patents already granted.
The question of which jurisdiction a business can be sued in is complicated, and depends on a lot of factors and tests. But basically, in federal court, you can generally sue a business wherever it does business, or whever the incident giving rise to the litigation occurred. The party being sued can try to change the venue, but the grounds would be something like, there's a better venue where more witnesses are located or something like that. Arguing that the jurisdiction is "plaintiff's paradise" won't pass muster.
If you're a large software company and you sell your software in every state in the union, you can be sued in ever state in the union, basically.
Actually you're 100% wrong. If a jury knowingly disregards the law, it is a basis for overturning the verdict on appeal in the U.S.
There is a thing called "jury nullification" but it's not technically allowed by the law. It's just really hard to prove that is what a jury is doing when they do it.
Waaa, my kindle 2 screen got scratched, and amazon.com needs better customer service!
Oh yeah, and reading the times on it is ok, so long as the articles aren't boring.
I see the rationale, and I certainly won't criticize it one some sort of normative grounds, but I just don't think it will work.
Two examples:
The New York Times, THE newspaper of record for the United States, was once subscription-based for online content, but they now offer everything up on an advertising-supported model. If THE top newspapers of record in the U.S. can't pull off pay-per-content for online offerings, what makes the AP think they can?
Now some will point to the wall street journal, but it's the only major newspaper in the U.S. that is pay-per-content. It's also got a large portion of content offered for free. And, it's catered toward people with lots of disposable income, and happens to be THE paper of record for executives. I'm not sure the AP can boast of those advantages.
The only way I see this working is if they go back to their ap-wire roots, and just sell wire news articles to people who pay. To do that though, they'd have to restrict newspapers from offering their stuff online for free, otherwise people are going to go for the free stuff methinks. I'm not sure that's going to work unless they decide to completely change their market base and sell to individuals only.
Although the email is humorous, I really think it's important to note that Micro$oft has a certain philosophy toward usability that I think is what's behind its market dominance. In a nutshell, microsoft tries to make things as easy as possible for the user, above of all else.
Yeah, some of MS's stuff is bloated and annoying. But one thing they get right, or at least get right more often than most, is usability - their products are easily the most user-friendly software on the market. (that's not to say they're perfect, or as user-friendly as they should be, they're just better than the competition, mostly)
I wish the OSS would pay a bit more attention to that end of things. While I've used lots of great and user-friendly OSS products, anything remotely complicated in the OSS world is either annoyingly hard to learn/use (e.g. thegimp), or is basically a knock-off of MS (or some other) software interface (e.g. openoffice). I know that people mostly aren't interested in doing usability testing for open-source because it's boring, and mundane work, but it's really work microsoft kicks everyone's ass.
Here's another area where geeks have a basic misunderstanding of the law, which reminds me of that vapid and stupid article recently posted to slashdot that didn't contain much useful info.
In any event, most of the posts here about EULA's not presenting a "meeting of the minds" is nonsense. If you're even a moderately sophisticated computer user, you should be familiar with software licensing. The fundamental misunderstanding that geeks (and many non-geeks) have is what they are actually buying when they buy software. You're not buying a disk, or code, or even software, in most cases. You're buying a license to use someone else's intellectual property. The license agreement, unsurprisingly, is documented in the EULA.
The click-through isn't looking for your agreement, really (even though that's what it says), what it is really doing is making sure you know about the license agreement. You agree to it just by using the software, so long as you know the EULA exists. And if you're a moderately sophisticated computer user, you likely know one exists even if you haven't seen the click-through. This set-up makes a lot of sense, too, because you've got a choice here: either use the software under the terms offered by the seller, or return it for a refund.
Now you don't get to modify a EULA, or impose one on the seller. That's not how it works because it's their property you're using. If you don't agree to the EULA, you can't use the software, but you've got a right to get your money back. You don't have a right to use the software and disgregard what the property owner wants, nor do you have a right to impose your will in some retarded manner on the owner of the software. So sorry, this cat trick isn't going work, and no lawyer is going to sweat over it. Nor is your silly text file left in the root directory.
A more justified case of "OMG user rights being violated!" would be if someone tried to get a refund after refusing to accept the license, and not getting one. But that's a lot more boring, I suppose, than cats accepting EULA's.
Here's a crazy idea. Instead of raising taxes in a tough economy, how about you do what everyone else is doing and tighten belt and reduce spending?
Nah, you're right, that will never work...
Most of it is the way it is because it evolved that way, and because of the laws/rules under which it all evolved. You paint with too broad a brush when you say that the vast majority of today's financial instruments have been created out of thin air. That's nonsense spoken out of ignorance, the same way a non-geek might say, "why can't software designers create programs without bugs?"
Commercial paper is a very broad term and encompasses everything from promissory notes to normal consumer checks. Just about any transaction not involving cash or electronic transfer is done with commercial paper. A huge portion of financial transactions are still done with commercial paper. So in the general sense of the term, it is still very, very necessary.
Now if you want to start examining specific financial instruments, like the derivatives backed by (partially) crap mortgages, we can have a conversation. I think the idea behind those instruments was basically sound, but the things ended up being a lot more complicated than people thought. It makes sense that if you lump a bunch of mortgages together, only a small percentage of those will default, thereby distributing your risk. But in a climate where fraud was rampant and the people signing people up for mortgages had no incentive to make sure people could actually pay those mortgages back, your lump of mortgages has a much higher chance of containing too many bad mortgages to make the resulting instrument profitable.
The derivatives market had the perverse effect of creating and encouraging that climate, because the mortgage buyers would buy without enough questions because they knew there were buyers who would buy the derivatives without too many questions. The fundamental problem with the whole concept, it seems to me, is that the derivative buyers and sellers forgot to insist on and question the credentials of the individual mortgagees they were investing in. Had they done a little bit of verification there, we might not be in this place right now.
Funny I always thought exactly the opposite. It never made sense to me that the child of the rape victim, who is completely innocent of all wrongdoing, should be killed in cold blood, while the perpetrator of a vicious crime should be protected.
I get paid when I work. I don't get paid today because I worked 4 years ago for one week, and people still benefit [sic] from what I did. Violation of copyright says "You did you job, good job. Now get over it and get BACK to work like the rest of mankind!" and not "I don't think you should get paid for what you do."
The problem with this logic is that without copyright protection in some form, it would be much harder to be a self-sufficient producer of original work whether that be writing, movies, etc. Without copyright, you could spend years working on a novel, and only sell a few copies, since someone could legally reproduce your novel, distribute it, and not give you a dime.
I think we need some form of copyright protection to encourage people to create, but I would agree that what we have now is protection that lasts too long and is a bit too onerous.
Automated killing machines were banned at the Geneva convention
Don't cruise missiles, fire-and-forget missiles, aerial drones, and other computerized/autonomous weapons fall into the category of automated killing machines? Perhaps your understanding of the Geneva convention is flawed?
Also, I think the major premise of the article is flawed. There's no such thing as a humane war, only winners and losers. I think soldiers are correct to treat all non-combatants as potential insurgents, since they could all be insurgents. That doesn't mean to shoot them all dead, but it also doesn't mean you should consider them not to be a threat since we know the enemy often masquerades in civilian clothes.
I'm of the opinion that when the enemy refuses to wear uniforms and purposely tries to blend in with civilians, the enemy should be blamed for the resulting and potential civilian casualties.
I've always wondered what would happen if computer scientists/programmers ever realized the economic impact of free, open-source programming on their job market.
I could be wrong here as my field is not economics, but it seems to me that any contributions made by computer scientists/programmers for free to the marketplace would tend to reduce salaries and jobs for paid programmers. For instance, take linux. If people have a high quality, free, open-source program like linux to use in many different applications, undoubtedly such a program would be used by at least some customers who would have paid for a different alternative. To the extent that programmers contributed their time for free to the development of linux, they have reduced the money that would otherwise have flowed to paid developers. Ultimately, this has to result in fewer paid jobs and/or lower salaries for developers, as businesses realize that they do not have to send as much on technology.
I understand the value that people get from contributing to open-source software, whether it be the joy of a hobby, gaining experience, or simply the desire to see a better product than what currently can be purchased. I also understand the values of open-source and open standards. What I have trouble with is the notion that so many should give so much of their labor away for free, when those same folks are having to compete for jobs and salary in an ever more difficult and tight market, especially in this economy.
Please allow me to correct what I believe is your misunderstanding of the legal system, at least in the U.S. There is no law against releasing any information about a trial to the public before or after the trial. What is illegal is jury tampering. Unlike the Roman Catholic church, in the U.S. we have a jury system and it is possible to taint the jury pool by attempting to generate press coverage in one party's favor. In such cases, a judge can do a couple of different things to protect the intergity of the system, such as a gag order to prevent release of information until the trial ends, or transfer the case to a different jurisdiction (i.e. different jury pool). There is absolutely no bar against releasing information after the trial is over. And nothing has to be translated into Latin.
I believe that part of your problem appears to be that you don't know what "contempt of court" means. It means that the judge gave you an order and you disobeyed it. It is also subject to review by a court of appeals, so it's not like a judge can just order you to do whatever he damn well pleases.
Once you are out of the courtroom, you can say whatever you want about the judge, make fun of his hair, or misquote him to your heart's content. None of that is contempt of court.
In regards to a reporter being ordered by a court to name it's source, well yeah, that's contempt of court. But don't blame the judge, he's just doing his job by following the law. The problem is that your Congress, duly elected by you, has not seen fit to pass any law protecting a reporter from having to reveal his sources. So yes, a court can order a report to reveal his source, just like a court can order any party to turn over information relevant to ongoing litigation. If the court didn't have that power, nobody would be able to litigate anything, because everyone would just refuse to testify.
In short, none of your examples are anything like what happened to Galileo, though they are interesting non-sequiturs.
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir., 1996). I believe that is the principal case and often cited, and I don't believe the US Supreme Court has yet ruled on this issue.
this link cited in the wikipedia article also provides some interesting discussion.
See my additional post also, where I acknowledge a mistake in my above post. It is also important to note that this is still a bit of a nebulous area of the law, so the blizzard case could have far-reaching impacts.
Replying to myself, bad form, I know, but I didn't quite get it right in my initial post.
When you buy software, you do actually buy a copy, what is on the CD or whatever. But when you load it onto a computer, you make a copy of it, and that's where copywright law comes in. You wouldn't have a right to make that copy and run it on your computer without a license to do so form the holder of the copyright of the software. To run the software in violation of the license (i.e. the EULA) is a violation of copyright. That is why this is a copyright law case.
So while you actually do buy a copy of the software the same way as a CD or book, that isn't the important part of what you buy. The important part of what you buy is the license, and the terms of the license govern what you can effectively do with the software in terms of running it on your PC. To violate the license is therefore akin to violating copyright law.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Summary Judgment. Summary Judgment is merely a way for attorneys to resolve a case when there are no factual issues in dispute. The sole purpose of a jury, and the only thing a jury can do, is determine factual questions. E.g., a jury question would be what color was the stoplight when the Defendant went through it. Juries cannot and are not allowed to answer legal questions. E.g., a legal question would be what does a section of a statute mean and does it apply to this case.
Summary judgment is only allowed when there are no material factual issues in dispute. Basically, that means it is only allowed when there are no fact questions for a jury to consider, meaning there is no need for a jury.
There are rules that allow for sanctions to be filed in cases where litigation is misused. See Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and 26, among others. This is not one of those cases.
There is a very important legal distinction between what you get when you purchase software and what you get when you purchase a book or CD. When you buy a book or CD, you buy a copy of it, to use in whatever way you like. Copyright law restricts you from making unauthorized copies of the work and redistributing them, but that is the only restriction.
When you buy software, you don't actually buy a copy. What you buy is a license to use the software. All a license is, is a contractual right to do something. This is why Oracle can restrict you from running their software on more than one CPU if you only bought a single-cpu license. When you "bought" the software under a single-cpu license, you get a complete copy of the software on some media, cd or whatever. But what you paid for, and what you actually own, is the contractual right to use the software on a single CPU. The terms of that contract are governed by the license agreement (the EULA). You don't own the copy, and you can't use it in any way you see fit, like you would a book or CD. Therefore the company has the right to restrict you from running the software on more than one CPU, because the license that you bought only allows you to run it on one CPU. This is essentially indistinguishable from what Blizzard is trying to do.
The article is arguing that Blizzard is wrong because the people who bought the software are "owners" rather than "licensees" but from a strictly legal perspective, I don't believe the author is correct. Unfortunately, software isn't sold the way books and CDs are. You don't own the software, blizzard does, and they won't sell you the software. What they will sell you, is a license to use it.
To use a bad car analogy, buying software is like leasing car. If the lease says you can't go over a certain amount of milage without paying a penalty, the lease controls - it prevents you from doing whatever you want with the car. Same for Blizzard and its software license.
People who make posts like this are to me, anti-heroes. Heroes are people who are humble and unassuming and don't tell other people how to live their lives. You subject others to your own self-righteous judgments so that you can feel better about your own fat ass and all of your high-minded yet impractical ideals (although most people who buy into your ideas have no clue about the real world 99% of the time, and no practical thinking is typically involved). I am really disgusted with how many anti-heroes the USA has. I think the self-righteous attitude of so many Americans is what is leading to this country's continued decline and eventual collapse.
You actually sound like a very good candidate for bankruptcy. Seriously, you should consult a bankruptcy attorney. You might be able to walk away from all or most of those CC loans without paying a DIME on them. You also might work out better rates of repayment. Bankruptcy isn't necessarily the stain that everyone thinks it is. It sounds to me like bankruptcy might actually improve your credit in the long run (it will discharge loans that you can't pay, and get you on the road to building better credit).
It might just grant you the ability to get back on track toward retirement.
Disclaimer: I am not a bankruptcy attorney, seek qualified legal advice.
If you have that much credit card debt, you should seriously consider bankruptcy. I know that sounds scary but in many cases you get to keep the house, most of your assets (including 401k/etc), and the credit card companies get left holding the bag on the irresponsible loans they made.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a long and fairly useless exercise in common sense. People who succeed are those who work hard and are lucky to be in the right place at the right time... wow, real work of genius, somebody submit this piece for the nobel prize.
I do congratulate the guy on being a skilled enough writer to convince large amounts of people that it's worth buying a book that simply restates what 90% of humanity already knows.
No offense, but your response makes little sense, probably because you don't understand the rules governing jurisdiction.
If a Court "rejects" a case generally that means the case is over, period, and can't just be re-filed in another court. Of course it depends on how the court "rejects" the case because there are numerous ways a court can dispose of a case, a very few of which would allow refiling the case elsewhere.
Jursidictional rules are complicated and there are already means for transfering the venue of the case when it makes more sense to litigate in a specific location. But when you're a company that sells software everywhere in the U.S., currently, you can be sued anywhere in the U.S.
To solve the problem of forum shopping all you need to do is change the rule with respect to where the Plaintiff can file his case (e.g. change the rule so he can file either only in his home state or the defendant's home state). Of course there would be consequences to that kind of rule, pros and cons, etc., but it could be done.
Biliski was about the patent office rejecting a patent appliation, not an invalidation of any existing patent. As such, Biliski stands for the proposition that the Patent Office can reject certain types of patents that are like the one considered in Biliski. Apparently the patent in question in TFA was filed and granted long before Biliski came out, so Biliski has no practical effect on that patent directly.
Indirectly, one might argue that the patent should be invalid because of its nature, i.e. it never should have been granted. But that has to be done on a case-by-case basis for patents already granted.
So the short answer is, no.
The question of which jurisdiction a business can be sued in is complicated, and depends on a lot of factors and tests. But basically, in federal court, you can generally sue a business wherever it does business, or whever the incident giving rise to the litigation occurred. The party being sued can try to change the venue, but the grounds would be something like, there's a better venue where more witnesses are located or something like that. Arguing that the jurisdiction is "plaintiff's paradise" won't pass muster.
If you're a large software company and you sell your software in every state in the union, you can be sued in ever state in the union, basically.
Actually you're 100% wrong. If a jury knowingly disregards the law, it is a basis for overturning the verdict on appeal in the U.S. There is a thing called "jury nullification" but it's not technically allowed by the law. It's just really hard to prove that is what a jury is doing when they do it.
Waaa, my kindle 2 screen got scratched, and amazon.com needs better customer service! Oh yeah, and reading the times on it is ok, so long as the articles aren't boring.
Are you crazy? Get a lawyer, now. If you've got any documentation at all, most would take your case on a contingency fee basis.
I see the rationale, and I certainly won't criticize it one some sort of normative grounds, but I just don't think it will work.
Two examples:
The New York Times, THE newspaper of record for the United States, was once subscription-based for online content, but they now offer everything up on an advertising-supported model. If THE top newspapers of record in the U.S. can't pull off pay-per-content for online offerings, what makes the AP think they can?
Now some will point to the wall street journal, but it's the only major newspaper in the U.S. that is pay-per-content. It's also got a large portion of content offered for free. And, it's catered toward people with lots of disposable income, and happens to be THE paper of record for executives. I'm not sure the AP can boast of those advantages.
The only way I see this working is if they go back to their ap-wire roots, and just sell wire news articles to people who pay. To do that though, they'd have to restrict newspapers from offering their stuff online for free, otherwise people are going to go for the free stuff methinks. I'm not sure that's going to work unless they decide to completely change their market base and sell to individuals only.
Although the email is humorous, I really think it's important to note that Micro$oft has a certain philosophy toward usability that I think is what's behind its market dominance. In a nutshell, microsoft tries to make things as easy as possible for the user, above of all else. Yeah, some of MS's stuff is bloated and annoying. But one thing they get right, or at least get right more often than most, is usability - their products are easily the most user-friendly software on the market. (that's not to say they're perfect, or as user-friendly as they should be, they're just better than the competition, mostly) I wish the OSS would pay a bit more attention to that end of things. While I've used lots of great and user-friendly OSS products, anything remotely complicated in the OSS world is either annoyingly hard to learn/use (e.g. thegimp), or is basically a knock-off of MS (or some other) software interface (e.g. openoffice). I know that people mostly aren't interested in doing usability testing for open-source because it's boring, and mundane work, but it's really work microsoft kicks everyone's ass.
Here's another area where geeks have a basic misunderstanding of the law, which reminds me of that vapid and stupid article recently posted to slashdot that didn't contain much useful info.
In any event, most of the posts here about EULA's not presenting a "meeting of the minds" is nonsense. If you're even a moderately sophisticated computer user, you should be familiar with software licensing. The fundamental misunderstanding that geeks (and many non-geeks) have is what they are actually buying when they buy software. You're not buying a disk, or code, or even software, in most cases. You're buying a license to use someone else's intellectual property. The license agreement, unsurprisingly, is documented in the EULA.
The click-through isn't looking for your agreement, really (even though that's what it says), what it is really doing is making sure you know about the license agreement. You agree to it just by using the software, so long as you know the EULA exists. And if you're a moderately sophisticated computer user, you likely know one exists even if you haven't seen the click-through. This set-up makes a lot of sense, too, because you've got a choice here: either use the software under the terms offered by the seller, or return it for a refund.
Now you don't get to modify a EULA, or impose one on the seller. That's not how it works because it's their property you're using. If you don't agree to the EULA, you can't use the software, but you've got a right to get your money back. You don't have a right to use the software and disgregard what the property owner wants, nor do you have a right to impose your will in some retarded manner on the owner of the software. So sorry, this cat trick isn't going work, and no lawyer is going to sweat over it. Nor is your silly text file left in the root directory.
A more justified case of "OMG user rights being violated!" would be if someone tried to get a refund after refusing to accept the license, and not getting one. But that's a lot more boring, I suppose, than cats accepting EULA's.
and btw, IAAL
minimal heat my ass. Every lefty and/or democrat-leaning person in media constantly accused and berated him about that connection.
Don't give obama's people a pass just because you're sympathetic to his politics.
The proper remedy here is not disclosure, it is recusing the person with the conflict of interest from participating in the decision.
Here's a crazy idea. Instead of raising taxes in a tough economy, how about you do what everyone else is doing and tighten belt and reduce spending? Nah, you're right, that will never work...
Most of it is the way it is because it evolved that way, and because of the laws/rules under which it all evolved. You paint with too broad a brush when you say that the vast majority of today's financial instruments have been created out of thin air. That's nonsense spoken out of ignorance, the same way a non-geek might say, "why can't software designers create programs without bugs?"
Commercial paper is a very broad term and encompasses everything from promissory notes to normal consumer checks. Just about any transaction not involving cash or electronic transfer is done with commercial paper. A huge portion of financial transactions are still done with commercial paper. So in the general sense of the term, it is still very, very necessary.
Now if you want to start examining specific financial instruments, like the derivatives backed by (partially) crap mortgages, we can have a conversation. I think the idea behind those instruments was basically sound, but the things ended up being a lot more complicated than people thought. It makes sense that if you lump a bunch of mortgages together, only a small percentage of those will default, thereby distributing your risk. But in a climate where fraud was rampant and the people signing people up for mortgages had no incentive to make sure people could actually pay those mortgages back, your lump of mortgages has a much higher chance of containing too many bad mortgages to make the resulting instrument profitable.
The derivatives market had the perverse effect of creating and encouraging that climate, because the mortgage buyers would buy without enough questions because they knew there were buyers who would buy the derivatives without too many questions. The fundamental problem with the whole concept, it seems to me, is that the derivative buyers and sellers forgot to insist on and question the credentials of the individual mortgagees they were investing in. Had they done a little bit of verification there, we might not be in this place right now.
Funny I always thought exactly the opposite. It never made sense to me that the child of the rape victim, who is completely innocent of all wrongdoing, should be killed in cold blood, while the perpetrator of a vicious crime should be protected.
I get paid when I work. I don't get paid today because I worked 4 years ago for one week, and people still benefit [sic] from what I did. Violation of copyright says "You did you job, good job. Now get over it and get BACK to work like the rest of mankind!" and not "I don't think you should get paid for what you do."
The problem with this logic is that without copyright protection in some form, it would be much harder to be a self-sufficient producer of original work whether that be writing, movies, etc. Without copyright, you could spend years working on a novel, and only sell a few copies, since someone could legally reproduce your novel, distribute it, and not give you a dime.
I think we need some form of copyright protection to encourage people to create, but I would agree that what we have now is protection that lasts too long and is a bit too onerous.
Automated killing machines were banned at the Geneva convention
Don't cruise missiles, fire-and-forget missiles, aerial drones, and other computerized/autonomous weapons fall into the category of automated killing machines? Perhaps your understanding of the Geneva convention is flawed?
Also, I think the major premise of the article is flawed. There's no such thing as a humane war, only winners and losers. I think soldiers are correct to treat all non-combatants as potential insurgents, since they could all be insurgents. That doesn't mean to shoot them all dead, but it also doesn't mean you should consider them not to be a threat since we know the enemy often masquerades in civilian clothes.
I'm of the opinion that when the enemy refuses to wear uniforms and purposely tries to blend in with civilians, the enemy should be blamed for the resulting and potential civilian casualties.
I've always wondered what would happen if computer scientists/programmers ever realized the economic impact of free, open-source programming on their job market.
I could be wrong here as my field is not economics, but it seems to me that any contributions made by computer scientists/programmers for free to the marketplace would tend to reduce salaries and jobs for paid programmers. For instance, take linux. If people have a high quality, free, open-source program like linux to use in many different applications, undoubtedly such a program would be used by at least some customers who would have paid for a different alternative. To the extent that programmers contributed their time for free to the development of linux, they have reduced the money that would otherwise have flowed to paid developers. Ultimately, this has to result in fewer paid jobs and/or lower salaries for developers, as businesses realize that they do not have to send as much on technology.
I understand the value that people get from contributing to open-source software, whether it be the joy of a hobby, gaining experience, or simply the desire to see a better product than what currently can be purchased. I also understand the values of open-source and open standards. What I have trouble with is the notion that so many should give so much of their labor away for free, when those same folks are having to compete for jobs and salary in an ever more difficult and tight market, especially in this economy.
Please allow me to correct what I believe is your misunderstanding of the legal system, at least in the U.S. There is no law against releasing any information about a trial to the public before or after the trial. What is illegal is jury tampering. Unlike the Roman Catholic church, in the U.S. we have a jury system and it is possible to taint the jury pool by attempting to generate press coverage in one party's favor. In such cases, a judge can do a couple of different things to protect the intergity of the system, such as a gag order to prevent release of information until the trial ends, or transfer the case to a different jurisdiction (i.e. different jury pool). There is absolutely no bar against releasing information after the trial is over. And nothing has to be translated into Latin.
I believe that part of your problem appears to be that you don't know what "contempt of court" means. It means that the judge gave you an order and you disobeyed it. It is also subject to review by a court of appeals, so it's not like a judge can just order you to do whatever he damn well pleases.
Once you are out of the courtroom, you can say whatever you want about the judge, make fun of his hair, or misquote him to your heart's content. None of that is contempt of court.
In regards to a reporter being ordered by a court to name it's source, well yeah, that's contempt of court. But don't blame the judge, he's just doing his job by following the law. The problem is that your Congress, duly elected by you, has not seen fit to pass any law protecting a reporter from having to reveal his sources. So yes, a court can order a report to reveal his source, just like a court can order any party to turn over information relevant to ongoing litigation. If the court didn't have that power, nobody would be able to litigate anything, because everyone would just refuse to testify.
In short, none of your examples are anything like what happened to Galileo, though they are interesting non-sequiturs.
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir., 1996). I believe that is the principal case and often cited, and I don't believe the US Supreme Court has yet ruled on this issue.
this link cited in the wikipedia article also provides some interesting discussion.
See my additional post also, where I acknowledge a mistake in my above post. It is also important to note that this is still a bit of a nebulous area of the law, so the blizzard case could have far-reaching impacts.
Replying to myself, bad form, I know, but I didn't quite get it right in my initial post. When you buy software, you do actually buy a copy, what is on the CD or whatever. But when you load it onto a computer, you make a copy of it, and that's where copywright law comes in. You wouldn't have a right to make that copy and run it on your computer without a license to do so form the holder of the copyright of the software. To run the software in violation of the license (i.e. the EULA) is a violation of copyright. That is why this is a copyright law case. So while you actually do buy a copy of the software the same way as a CD or book, that isn't the important part of what you buy. The important part of what you buy is the license, and the terms of the license govern what you can effectively do with the software in terms of running it on your PC. To violate the license is therefore akin to violating copyright law.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Summary Judgment. Summary Judgment is merely a way for attorneys to resolve a case when there are no factual issues in dispute. The sole purpose of a jury, and the only thing a jury can do, is determine factual questions. E.g., a jury question would be what color was the stoplight when the Defendant went through it. Juries cannot and are not allowed to answer legal questions. E.g., a legal question would be what does a section of a statute mean and does it apply to this case.
Summary judgment is only allowed when there are no material factual issues in dispute. Basically, that means it is only allowed when there are no fact questions for a jury to consider, meaning there is no need for a jury.
There are rules that allow for sanctions to be filed in cases where litigation is misused. See Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and 26, among others. This is not one of those cases.
There is a very important legal distinction between what you get when you purchase software and what you get when you purchase a book or CD. When you buy a book or CD, you buy a copy of it, to use in whatever way you like. Copyright law restricts you from making unauthorized copies of the work and redistributing them, but that is the only restriction.
When you buy software, you don't actually buy a copy. What you buy is a license to use the software. All a license is, is a contractual right to do something. This is why Oracle can restrict you from running their software on more than one CPU if you only bought a single-cpu license. When you "bought" the software under a single-cpu license, you get a complete copy of the software on some media, cd or whatever. But what you paid for, and what you actually own, is the contractual right to use the software on a single CPU. The terms of that contract are governed by the license agreement (the EULA). You don't own the copy, and you can't use it in any way you see fit, like you would a book or CD. Therefore the company has the right to restrict you from running the software on more than one CPU, because the license that you bought only allows you to run it on one CPU. This is essentially indistinguishable from what Blizzard is trying to do.
The article is arguing that Blizzard is wrong because the people who bought the software are "owners" rather than "licensees" but from a strictly legal perspective, I don't believe the author is correct. Unfortunately, software isn't sold the way books and CDs are. You don't own the software, blizzard does, and they won't sell you the software. What they will sell you, is a license to use it.
To use a bad car analogy, buying software is like leasing car. If the lease says you can't go over a certain amount of milage without paying a penalty, the lease controls - it prevents you from doing whatever you want with the car. Same for Blizzard and its software license.
People who make posts like this are to me, anti-heroes. Heroes are people who are humble and unassuming and don't tell other people how to live their lives. You subject others to your own self-righteous judgments so that you can feel better about your own fat ass and all of your high-minded yet impractical ideals (although most people who buy into your ideas have no clue about the real world 99% of the time, and no practical thinking is typically involved). I am really disgusted with how many anti-heroes the USA has. I think the self-righteous attitude of so many Americans is what is leading to this country's continued decline and eventual collapse.
You see what I did there?
You actually sound like a very good candidate for bankruptcy. Seriously, you should consult a bankruptcy attorney. You might be able to walk away from all or most of those CC loans without paying a DIME on them. You also might work out better rates of repayment. Bankruptcy isn't necessarily the stain that everyone thinks it is. It sounds to me like bankruptcy might actually improve your credit in the long run (it will discharge loans that you can't pay, and get you on the road to building better credit). It might just grant you the ability to get back on track toward retirement. Disclaimer: I am not a bankruptcy attorney, seek qualified legal advice.
If you have that much credit card debt, you should seriously consider bankruptcy. I know that sounds scary but in many cases you get to keep the house, most of your assets (including 401k/etc), and the credit card companies get left holding the bag on the irresponsible loans they made.