The judge ruled that the US had to supply Dotcom's legal team with all the evidence they had collected so he could use it to defend himself at the extradition hearing. The US want to appeal that ruling, and have said they will take it to the New Zealand Supreme Court if necessary. The delay is to give that appeal time to happen. Kim is saying that they are jerking him around by refusing to hand over the evidence to the defense.
Kim knows that - he''s just savvy enough to call them on it and get the positive press. "Kim? yeah he's not a criminal, he totally offered to just go over and sort it out - but the DOJ turned him down".
I have to agree. What will be most interesting for me is the discussion around MegaUpload paying 'popular' users. If they reasonably knew user X was uploading Dexter episodes, and they paid that user money because their uploads were popular, did they have the responsibility to ensure that user was legally entitles to distribute that content?.
I hope the answer is 'no' - as long as there is some plausible scenario where the user might be entitled to do so, it should not be up to the infrastructure provider to check. Indeed, how could they? - start calling the studios and saying "hey, do you have a staff member with an account called "jose4452" on megaupload and do they have permission to promote Dexter by uploading episodes?". Would they be expected to work out that an obscure b-grade movie was in fact owned by a guy in Detroit and get hold of him to ask?
Once you add in factors such as countries where time/format shifting is legal, and that just because it's called "Dexter.avi" doesn't mean it's actually a popular TV show, and it would be insane to feel that the burden of checking falls upon them. The safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are there for this exact reason.
I can see that you might struggle to understand why you shouldn't get a cut every time something you once produced is re-sold. After all, when you buy a used book you send some money to the original publisher right?. And every time you sell your used car, you are happy to make sure a percentage makes its way to the original manufacturer don't you?.
Just think, that beautiful antique Ming vase you brought, the original effort and creativity that went into the painting. It's unique, some Chinese artisan spent months, or even years, of their life making it. They would never do that if they didn't know that hundreds of years later when you bought it at an auction in New York, they were not going to get a cut of that.
Yes, I see your problem. Your problem is that an item's value consists of it's useful value (the value of actually using it), plus the residual value. The residual value is the amount the owner can get by selling the item once they have no further use for it. You are attempting to reduce the residual value artificially. Your problem is that reduces the actual value of the game over all. So guess what? people won't pay you as much for it.
Your other problem is that you really don't understand the above.
I agree, it absolutely should not be. But you have to admit, that's what it is basically coming down to now. This is why it will be interesting to see what other companies such as Rapidshare and Dropbox do in response to this case. As it stands, the content industry is pushing the line that you must proactively assist them, and prefer their interests over your customers.
I predict a big loss here for MU, while the other companies whistle and look the other way. But I could be wrong, maybe given the increased tension over SOPA/PIPPA some of the tech giants will realize they need to stop bowing to the wishes of the relatively small media industry.
Megaupload was targeted because they did the absolute minimum they could to comply with the DMCA and other US legislation. It's probably true that they quietly encouraged uploading digital copies, even when they knew that material was illegal, and they were slow in taking it down. Things such as having de-duplication in place, but only removing the one specific link to a file, not removing all the copies, when a takedown notice was sent. It's those actions that will mean they might lose in court unfortunately.
I'm sure Dotcom is hoping to get other tech companies to support his case though. Dropbox, Amazon, even Google will be asking "First they came for the dodgy upload sites.... will we say nothing and hope they don't come for us too?"
What happens (hopefully) is that next month when there is another peaceful sit-in and the university staff call the police and say "hey I don't like how those poor students are complaining in public, it makes me look bad to my wealthy friends, get rid of them for me", the police say "sorry no - if I do that I will lose my job".
Actually, it's entirely possible and sensible. In order for a law to be effective it just has to REDUCE the risk, so for your example it just has to be the case that occasional sudden braking for police causes less accidents than unrestricted speed. Ths is particularly true when matched with laws and education about safe following distances. Now, what the article is suggesting is that having a few distracted drivers who are also attempting to conceal their texting is actually causing more accidents than having a higher number of distracted drivers who don't need to conceal what they are doing. I'd stamp it 'plausable, needs further study'. Of course, it doesn't mean the law should be revoked. Maybe there are other things we can do to supppliment it, just like with the minimum following distance example above.
Flash memory? You mean like the SD card slot on the front of the machine? Did you totally miss that?. Since the Wii Menu 4.0 update you can use SDHD cards for up to 32GB per card, and you can have as many cards as you want.
It's even worse, you should have a look at the patents themselves, such as the '507 patent...
We claim:
1. A system for acquiring and reviewing a body of information, wherein the body of information includes a plurality of segments, each segment representing a defined set of information in the body of information, the system comprising:
means for acquiring data representing the body of information;
means for storing the acquired data;
first display means for generating a display of a first segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data;
means for comparing data representing a segment of the body of information to data representing a different segment of the body of information to determine whether, according to one or more predetermined criteria, the compared segments are related; and
second display means for generating a display of a portion of, or a representation of, a second segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data, wherein the second display means displays the portion or representation of the second segment in response to the display by the first display means of a first segment to which the second segment is related.
So.... they appear to claim they invented diff in 1996. All other claims are based from this claim. Unfortunatly for them diff was invented in the early 1970s.
Actually, I believe you are fundamentally wrong about the 'privilege' vs 'right' distinction. In the USA the legal system is based on a set of laws that restrict what you are allowed to do. The fundamental premise of the system is that you are allowed to do anything that is not forbidden by law. That means that *everything* is a 'right', and those 'rights' are restricted or removed by the passing of a law stating so.
Nothing is a 'privilege', and I don't know of any countries that operate a privilege based system, although there might be a few dictatorships where everything is illegal unless there is a law allowing it.
So, while you appear to agree that offering a higher wage results will result in better teachers (since it will increase the number of people willing to to the job, and thus increase competition and quality), you think we shouldn't do it because it will take a while to work??
They reverse-engineer it and make cheap local copies. Fortunately people in developing countries have realized that IP laws are being pushed by developed nations to retain their economic dominance - and so they ignore them.
Only the people who comment don't read the article. This is mostly because of the moderation system - if you stop to read the article then your comment will appear to late to gather any mod points - thus you are lost in the +1 noise. Only by jumping in as soon as you see something posted and saying something pointless, uninformed, and inane will you have a chance of getting moded to +5 by your peers - who also didn't read the article.
This is true, which leads me to think that how 'strong' an opponent is (hp, ep, etc) is not a very good measure of how much experience you get from fighting them.
It would seeme that a system measuring the length of the fight, how much damage each participant took, if the fight was balanced, and how close you came to losing would e a much better way to calculate experience gained.
So, you start a level, battle your way through it for hours, nearly die several times, and of course you get a ton of experience. Or, you throw fire at everything, run from start to finish in five minutes, and get almost nothing.
FunkWorks appears to be an almost identical case to this, they are copying simple facts that are arranged in chronological order, where that order is the natural and obvious order for such facts.
They might have a bit of a problem in that they are copying a large part of the timetable (all weekdays I beleive, but not weekends), but I can't really see RailCorp being able to claim that they put much effort into compiling the timetable - it's not that big.
Interestingly, one of the deciding factors in this case was that Nine claimed the copyright of their weekly schedules was being infringed, not the copyright of the database as a whole. The court then decided that only a small part of any schedule was being copied, and that part had little originality.
It might have been different if they had considered it as copying the scheduling database as a whole, since it might have ammounted to a substantial part then (but I doubt it).
Reading the full decision from the High Court is actually (for a change) worth while. It's in pretty plain English, and is very well written.
It correctly identifies that facts can not be copyright, even when "colocated" with original material that can be. However, the "original material" may consist of the presentation of those facts, such as their order. Consider a poem that consists of well know facts, but presented in a dramatic and original order.
They determined that IceTV had indeed copied facts, and that there was minimal originality in the ordering of those facts because they were simply presented in chronological order - which is both obvious and necessary for their intended function.
Finally, they also noted that Nine Networks had probably not expended much effort to arrange the information, which could also be a factor in such cases.
Ahh, but the great thing here is, any original work you do is copyright. All you have to do is create something suitably awww-ish, and then email it to someone you don't like. Include the usual 'this email is copyright' footer that companies add, and that everyone ignores.
The chances are that person will forward the email to friends and bingo, you can make a complaint.
Section 92 of the copyright ammendment act was written at the prompting of the entertainment industry. It was then widely criticised during public review of the proposed law, and removed. But, surprise suprise, it was magically re-inserted after the public consultation period ended.
Yo Dawg, we heard you like LCD screens, so we've put an LCD screen inside your LCD screen. So now you can look at things while you look at other things.
We also heard you like pointing devices, so this baby has three of them!, with two sets of buttons!
a few hundred kilos of oxidiser
The oxidiser weighs a lot. Take the shuttle for instance, at take-off the shuttle proper weighs 109,000 kg, the external LOX tank? 629,340 kg (just the LOX, not the LH2).
On the ground they won't be moving fast enough to scoop oxygen out of the air
"The Sabre engine is essentially a closed cycle rocket engine with an additional precooled turbo-compressor to provide a high pressure air supply to the combustion chamber. This allows operation from zero forward speed on the runway and up to Mach 5.5 in air breathing mode during ascent."
Slashdot Mirror
The judge ruled that the US had to supply Dotcom's legal team with all the evidence they had collected so he could use it to defend himself at the extradition hearing. The US want to appeal that ruling, and have said they will take it to the New Zealand Supreme Court if necessary. The delay is to give that appeal time to happen. Kim is saying that they are jerking him around by refusing to hand over the evidence to the defense.
Kim knows that - he''s just savvy enough to call them on it and get the positive press. "Kim? yeah he's not a criminal, he totally offered to just go over and sort it out - but the DOJ turned him down".
I have to agree. What will be most interesting for me is the discussion around MegaUpload paying 'popular' users. If they reasonably knew user X was uploading Dexter episodes, and they paid that user money because their uploads were popular, did they have the responsibility to ensure that user was legally entitles to distribute that content?.
I hope the answer is 'no' - as long as there is some plausible scenario where the user might be entitled to do so, it should not be up to the infrastructure provider to check. Indeed, how could they? - start calling the studios and saying "hey, do you have a staff member with an account called "jose4452" on megaupload and do they have permission to promote Dexter by uploading episodes?". Would they be expected to work out that an obscure b-grade movie was in fact owned by a guy in Detroit and get hold of him to ask?
Once you add in factors such as countries where time/format shifting is legal, and that just because it's called "Dexter.avi" doesn't mean it's actually a popular TV show, and it would be insane to feel that the burden of checking falls upon them. The safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are there for this exact reason.
http://www.slashgear.com/megaupload-claims-us-military-uploaded-94245-gigabytes-26220037/
[citation provided]
Of course, just because the user had a govt address doesn't really means it was government data.
Curt
I can see that you might struggle to understand why you shouldn't get a cut every time something you once produced is re-sold. After all, when you buy a used book you send some money to the original publisher right?. And every time you sell your used car, you are happy to make sure a percentage makes its way to the original manufacturer don't you?.
Just think, that beautiful antique Ming vase you brought, the original effort and creativity that went into the painting. It's unique, some Chinese artisan spent months, or even years, of their life making it. They would never do that if they didn't know that hundreds of years later when you bought it at an auction in New York, they were not going to get a cut of that.
Yes, I see your problem. Your problem is that an item's value consists of it's useful value (the value of actually using it), plus the residual value. The residual value is the amount the owner can get by selling the item once they have no further use for it. You are attempting to reduce the residual value artificially. Your problem is that reduces the actual value of the game over all. So guess what? people won't pay you as much for it.
Your other problem is that you really don't understand the above.
I agree, it absolutely should not be. But you have to admit, that's what it is basically coming down to now. This is why it will be interesting to see what other companies such as Rapidshare and Dropbox do in response to this case. As it stands, the content industry is pushing the line that you must proactively assist them, and prefer their interests over your customers.
I predict a big loss here for MU, while the other companies whistle and look the other way. But I could be wrong, maybe given the increased tension over SOPA/PIPPA some of the tech giants will realize they need to stop bowing to the wishes of the relatively small media industry.
Megaupload was targeted because they did the absolute minimum they could to comply with the DMCA and other US legislation. It's probably true that they quietly encouraged uploading digital copies, even when they knew that material was illegal, and they were slow in taking it down. Things such as having de-duplication in place, but only removing the one specific link to a file, not removing all the copies, when a takedown notice was sent. It's those actions that will mean they might lose in court unfortunately.
.... will we say nothing and hope they don't come for us too?"
I'm sure Dotcom is hoping to get other tech companies to support his case though. Dropbox, Amazon, even Google will be asking "First they came for the dodgy upload sites
What happens (hopefully) is that next month when there is another peaceful sit-in and the university staff call the police and say "hey I don't like how those poor students are complaining in public, it makes me look bad to my wealthy friends, get rid of them for me", the police say "sorry no - if I do that I will lose my job".
Actually 'Pop Idol' was a rip-off of a Kiwi show, 'Popstars'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popstars
New Zealand would like to take this opportunity to apologize.
Actually, it's entirely possible and sensible. In order for a law to be effective it just has to REDUCE the risk, so for your example it just has to be the case that occasional sudden braking for police causes less accidents than unrestricted speed. Ths is particularly true when matched with laws and education about safe following distances.
Now, what the article is suggesting is that having a few distracted drivers who are also attempting to conceal their texting is actually causing more accidents than having a higher number of distracted drivers who don't need to conceal what they are doing. I'd stamp it 'plausable, needs further study'.
Of course, it doesn't mean the law should be revoked. Maybe there are other things we can do to supppliment it, just like with the minimum following distance example above.
Flash memory? You mean like the SD card slot on the front of the machine? Did you totally miss that?. Since the Wii Menu 4.0 update you can use SDHD cards for up to 32GB per card, and you can have as many cards as you want.
It's even worse, you should have a look at the patents themselves, such as the '507 patent...
.... they appear to claim they invented diff in 1996. All other claims are based from this claim. Unfortunatly for them diff was invented in the early 1970s.
We claim:
1. A system for acquiring and reviewing a body of information, wherein the body of information includes a plurality of segments, each segment representing a defined set of information in the body of information, the system comprising:
means for acquiring data representing the body of information;
means for storing the acquired data;
first display means for generating a display of a first segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data; means for comparing data representing a segment of the body of information to data representing a different segment of the body of information to determine whether, according to one or more predetermined criteria, the compared segments are related; and
second display means for generating a display of a portion of, or a representation of, a second segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data, wherein the second display means displays the portion or representation of the second segment in response to the display by the first display means of a first segment to which the second segment is related.
So
Actually, I believe you are fundamentally wrong about the 'privilege' vs 'right' distinction. In the USA the legal system is based on a set of laws that restrict what you are allowed to do. The fundamental premise of the system is that you are allowed to do anything that is not forbidden by law. That means that *everything* is a 'right', and those 'rights' are restricted or removed by the passing of a law stating so.
Nothing is a 'privilege', and I don't know of any countries that operate a privilege based system, although there might be a few dictatorships where everything is illegal unless there is a law allowing it.
So, while you appear to agree that offering a higher wage results will result in better teachers (since it will increase the number of people willing to to the job, and thus increase competition and quality), you think we shouldn't do it because it will take a while to work??
I'm not about to claim the US went to war over access to natural gas, but you might want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline.
They reverse-engineer it and make cheap local copies. Fortunately people in developing countries have realized that IP laws are being pushed by developed nations to retain their economic dominance - and so they ignore them.
Only the people who comment don't read the article. This is mostly because of the moderation system - if you stop to read the article then your comment will appear to late to gather any mod points - thus you are lost in the +1 noise. Only by jumping in as soon as you see something posted and saying something pointless, uninformed, and inane will you have a chance of getting moded to +5 by your peers - who also didn't read the article.
This is true, which leads me to think that how 'strong' an opponent is (hp, ep, etc) is not a very good measure of how much experience you get from fighting them.
It would seeme that a system measuring the length of the fight, how much damage each participant took, if the fight was balanced, and how close you came to losing would e a much better way to calculate experience gained.
So, you start a level, battle your way through it for hours, nearly die several times, and of course you get a ton of experience. Or, you throw fire at everything, run from start to finish in five minutes, and get almost nothing.
IANAL ... But I've at least read the court ruling
FunkWorks appears to be an almost identical case to this, they are copying simple facts that are arranged in chronological order, where that order is the natural and obvious order for such facts.
They might have a bit of a problem in that they are copying a large part of the timetable (all weekdays I beleive, but not weekends), but I can't really see RailCorp being able to claim that they put much effort into compiling the timetable - it's not that big.
Interestingly, one of the deciding factors in this case was that Nine claimed the copyright of their weekly schedules was being infringed, not the copyright of the database as a whole. The court then decided that only a small part of any schedule was being copied, and that part had little originality.
It might have been different if they had considered it as copying the scheduling database as a whole, since it might have ammounted to a substantial part then (but I doubt it).
Reading the full decision from the High Court is actually (for a change) worth while. It's in pretty plain English, and is very well written.
It correctly identifies that facts can not be copyright, even when "colocated" with original material that can be. However, the "original material" may consist of the presentation of those facts, such as their order. Consider a poem that consists of well know facts, but presented in a dramatic and original order.
They determined that IceTV had indeed copied facts, and that there was minimal originality in the ordering of those facts because they were simply presented in chronological order - which is both obvious and necessary for their intended function.
Finally, they also noted that Nine Networks had probably not expended much effort to arrange the information, which could also be a factor in such cases.
Ahh, but the great thing here is, any original work you do is copyright. All you have to do is create something suitably awww-ish, and then email it to someone you don't like. Include the usual 'this email is copyright' footer that companies add, and that everyone ignores.
The chances are that person will forward the email to friends and bingo, you can make a complaint.
Sorry, but this was blatent corruption.
Section 92 of the copyright ammendment act was written at the prompting of the entertainment industry. It was then widely criticised during public review of the proposed law, and removed. But, surprise suprise, it was magically re-inserted after the public consultation period ended.
Yo Dawg, we heard you like LCD screens, so we've put an LCD screen inside your LCD screen. So now you can look at things while you look at other things.
We also heard you like pointing devices, so this baby has three of them!, with two sets of buttons!
a few hundred kilos of oxidiser
The oxidiser weighs a lot. Take the shuttle for instance, at take-off the shuttle proper weighs 109,000 kg, the external LOX tank? 629,340 kg (just the LOX, not the LH2).
On the ground they won't be moving fast enough to scoop oxygen out of the air
"The Sabre engine is essentially a closed cycle rocket engine with an additional precooled turbo-compressor to provide a high pressure air supply to the combustion chamber. This allows operation from zero forward speed on the runway and up to Mach 5.5 in air breathing mode during ascent."