Likelihood of confusion, anyone? (Pretty much the basis for traditional trademark law.) If they're putting other companies' ads on identifiable property in such a way as to imply that there's a non-fictional relationship between the companies (which I'd probably make if I didn't live in NYC, the shot was supposed to be of Times Square, and there was no in-story reason why the ads should be different), you might run into trouble.
And knock it off with the slippery-slope legal arguments, people; they only make you look like idiots.
Opt-in/opt-out actually mean the opposite in this case from what they mean in most spam discussions. What you're opting into is the privacy protections, not the disclosure.
The government can require them to keep track of the information as part of an investigation. But they need a warrant, court order or subpoena to ask for it. (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 USC 2701 et seq.)
The big problem is that the ECPA specifically allows electronic communications services to give this information to non-government entities without the subscriber's permission. Eliminating that provision on the federal level (making it illegal to give out that information absent either the subscriber's permission or a subpoena/court order) would be easily done and give a heck of a lot more privacy to users.
So what you're saying is that it's illegal for you and your spouse (or other live-in companion) to listen to the same CD? You both have to own a copy? Or that you can't lend a CD out to a friend and let them listen to it? Or plop it on a tape to have an alternate storage location? Or even lend that tape out to a friend?
These aren't the same thing.
A group of friends listening to the same CD doesn't constitute a public performance, but a group of employees listening to it in the workplace does. The definition of public performance includes anywhere "where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered."
Lending out a CD is permitted under the first sale doctrine.
I'm not familiar with the Home Audio Recording Act, so I can't really comment on "archival" copies. But I really doubt giving cassette copies out to your friends falls under the scope of the act.
(No, this isn't legal advice, and you're not a client.)
Allow a few minutes for people composing witty replies to finish up, then let it coast to a stop.
Note to the editors: when you write up an article in such a way as to invite an easy joke response, serious discussion gets crowded out (not to mention wittier humour than what I and everyone else posted).
Anyone know if they're doing the entire series, or just the first five?
I think it would be a better series if they stuck to Corwin's story. It's more complete (was the tenth book supposed to be the last? If so, it's the worst ending to a series I've ever read), and it's easier to produce (sure, you've got the Trump effect and the shadow creatures and the Pattern, but all that Logrus/Ghostweel crap is gone). Besides, it's just a better story that way. Merlin's story has always seemed tacked on, and the second-generation characters are far less interesting.
Well, duh. But if people have the choice, then almost nobody will use it. The people who know they suck, and care about it, don't sing in the first place.
Sure, this corrects people who are off-key, but what about those of us who intentionally change notes or tempo? I don't want to have my choices vetoed by vocoder.
I thought the hyperbole was obvious. I forgot about the literalmindedness of the Slashdot reader. (Yeah, smartass, I know there's more than one. It's a figure of speech.)
Agreed. I get the impression most of the "it was funny, you just have something up your ass" posters are between thirteen and twenty, and think of Slashdot as more of a social outlet than a news site. No way of proving it, of course; it's just the way the posts read to me.
It's not enough that the court didn't follow procedure. You also have to show that the departure from procedure could have affected the outcome of the case. (And if it works, why would a lawyer be disbarred for what is probably the most valid grounds for appeal imaginable?)
Smaller states are still disproportionately represented. From the 2000 census reapportionment figures at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/tab01.txt:
Population of CA: 33,930,798 Electoral votes: 55 People per electoral vote: 616,923.6
Population of WY: 495,304 Electoral votes: 3 People per electoral vote: 165,101.3
Ratio of WY voting power to CA voting power: 3.7:1
It gets even worse when you realize that almost every state has a winner-take-all system. So when FL is won by a few votes, the electoral vote goes 27-0 rather than 14-13. On the other hand, a vote in a landslide state like MA or UT is pretty much useless. Last election, a UT vote had around 1/900 the decisionmaking power of a FL vote, even before looking at the overall vote totals.
Antitrust is a special case, because the free market is compromised. In most cases, a company conforms to the law of the jurisdiction or doesn't do business there. If there are multiple companies, some will conform in order to profit form that market, while others won't in order to profit more in other markets.
This doesn't work in the De Beers case because there aren't really multiple companies. Thus the U.S. and anywhere else they've violated antitrust law are forced to choose between compromising their laws or forgoing the product altogether. Since the latter just leads to black markets, they've opted for the former. Moral of the story: it's nice to have a ridiculous amount of market power propped up by a government willing to keep you in place.
In most cases, though, the concept of "if you do business with us, you abide by our laws" holds.
If they lose, it means that being on the Internet holds you liable to *any* countries' commercial laws (this is a commercial case) if one of their residents buys one of your businesses' products.
I wonder if U.S. businesses would enjoy being constrained to French, Chinese or Uzbekistani commercial law if a resident there buys their product.
What makes you think that they aren't? Of course if you sell in France, China, or Uzbekistan those sales are going to be governed by the laws of the country. Sales to other countries, on the other hand, aren't so constrained.
This admittedly gets interesting on the Internet, where you may not be aware where you're selling to. A race to the bottom can be avoided, though, since an offended country has to sue in the jurisdiction where the business is located for their judgment to have any effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Likelihood of confusion, anyone? (Pretty much the basis for traditional trademark law.) If they're putting other companies' ads on identifiable property in such a way as to imply that there's a non-fictional relationship between the companies (which I'd probably make if I didn't live in NYC, the shot was supposed to be of Times Square, and there was no in-story reason why the ads should be different), you might run into trouble.
And knock it off with the slippery-slope legal arguments, people; they only make you look like idiots.
Whoops... I misread the phrasing of the article summary. My bad.
Opt-in/opt-out actually mean the opposite in this case from what they mean in most spam discussions. What you're opting into is the privacy protections, not the disclosure.
The government can require them to keep track of the information as part of an investigation. But they need a warrant, court order or subpoena to ask for it. (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 USC 2701 et seq.)
The big problem is that the ECPA specifically allows electronic communications services to give this information to non-government entities without the subscriber's permission. Eliminating that provision on the federal level (making it illegal to give out that information absent either the subscriber's permission or a subpoena/court order) would be easily done and give a heck of a lot more privacy to users.
So what you're saying is that it's illegal for you and your spouse (or other live-in companion) to listen to the same CD? You both have to own a copy? Or that you can't lend a CD out to a friend and let them listen to it? Or plop it on a tape to have an alternate storage location? Or even lend that tape out to a friend?
These aren't the same thing.
A group of friends listening to the same CD doesn't constitute a public performance, but a group of employees listening to it in the workplace does. The definition of public performance includes anywhere "where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered."
Lending out a CD is permitted under the first sale doctrine.
I'm not familiar with the Home Audio Recording Act, so I can't really comment on "archival" copies. But I really doubt giving cassette copies out to your friends falls under the scope of the act.
(No, this isn't legal advice, and you're not a client.)
Allow a few minutes for people composing witty replies to finish up, then let it coast to a stop.
Note to the editors: when you write up an article in such a way as to invite an easy joke response, serious discussion gets crowded out (not to mention wittier humour than what I and everyone else posted).
Get them? You produce them constantly.
Anyone know if they're doing the entire series, or just the first five?
I think it would be a better series if they stuck to Corwin's story. It's more complete (was the tenth book supposed to be the last? If so, it's the worst ending to a series I've ever read), and it's easier to produce (sure, you've got the Trump effect and the shadow creatures and the Pattern, but all that Logrus/Ghostweel crap is gone). Besides, it's just a better story that way. Merlin's story has always seemed tacked on, and the second-generation characters are far less interesting.
Yep. It's a substitute for perfect pitch. (Not relative, as it apparently transposes too.)
Well, duh. But if people have the choice, then almost nobody will use it. The people who know they suck, and care about it, don't sing in the first place.
Laws are neither computer programs nor mathematical theorems.
HaHa. I don't think the founding fathers would find it funny, and I use the word "execute" because they did.
Whoops. Forgot I still had that sig, as I read with sigs turned off for that very purpose (I always thought that they were part of the message body).
Sure, this corrects people who are off-key, but what about those of us who intentionally change notes or tempo? I don't want to have my choices vetoed by vocoder.
I thought the hyperbole was obvious. I forgot about the literalmindedness of the Slashdot reader. (Yeah, smartass, I know there's more than one. It's a figure of speech.)
Agreed. I get the impression most of the "it was funny, you just have something up your ass" posters are between thirteen and twenty, and think of Slashdot as more of a social outlet than a news site. No way of proving it, of course; it's just the way the posts read to me.
You know, you're not obligated to report on every single April Fools' link on the web. Give it up.
That's what, five straight April Fools' stories, and seven on the day? (Possibly more if there are any in topics I filter out.)
One is cute. Two is annoying. Seven is just lame.
It seems clear to me that with the DMCA Congress attempts to execute copyright law via a protected technology.
If Congress gets away with usurping the president's power to execute laws, what chance that the rest of the US Constitution will be enforced?
Two questions:
How exactly is Congress executing the DMCA?
How does a technology execute a law?
It's not enough that the court didn't follow procedure. You also have to show that the departure from procedure could have affected the outcome of the case. (And if it works, why would a lawyer be disbarred for what is probably the most valid grounds for appeal imaginable?)
When did common sense stop being a part of intelligence? There's more to being smart than your SAT math score.
Simple, but wrong. Life plus thirty was never the law in the U.S.
Smaller states are still disproportionately represented. From the 2000 census reapportionment figures at http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/tab01.txt :
Population of CA: 33,930,798
Electoral votes: 55
People per electoral vote: 616,923.6
Population of WY: 495,304
Electoral votes: 3
People per electoral vote: 165,101.3
Ratio of WY voting power to CA voting power: 3.7:1
It gets even worse when you realize that almost every state has a winner-take-all system. So when FL is won by a few votes, the electoral vote goes 27-0 rather than 14-13. On the other hand, a vote in a landslide state like MA or UT is pretty much useless. Last election, a UT vote had around 1/900 the decisionmaking power of a FL vote, even before looking at the overall vote totals.
The fact that ElcomSoft's argument is tenuous doesn't make DMCA a good law either.
Excuse me, but did anyone make that claim?
Antitrust is a special case, because the free market is compromised. In most cases, a company conforms to the law of the jurisdiction or doesn't do business there. If there are multiple companies, some will conform in order to profit form that market, while others won't in order to profit more in other markets.
This doesn't work in the De Beers case because there aren't really multiple companies. Thus the U.S. and anywhere else they've violated antitrust law are forced to choose between compromising their laws or forgoing the product altogether. Since the latter just leads to black markets, they've opted for the former. Moral of the story: it's nice to have a ridiculous amount of market power propped up by a government willing to keep you in place.
In most cases, though, the concept of "if you do business with us, you abide by our laws" holds.
The fact that the DMCA is a bad law doesn't make ElcomSoft's argument good.
If they lose, it means that being on the Internet holds you liable to *any* countries' commercial laws (this is a commercial case) if one of their residents buys one of your businesses' products.
I wonder if U.S. businesses would enjoy being constrained to French, Chinese or Uzbekistani commercial law if a resident there buys their product.
What makes you think that they aren't? Of course if you sell in France, China, or Uzbekistan those sales are going to be governed by the laws of the country. Sales to other countries, on the other hand, aren't so constrained.
This admittedly gets interesting on the Internet, where you may not be aware where you're selling to. A race to the bottom can be avoided, though, since an offended country has to sue in the jurisdiction where the business is located for their judgment to have any effect.