The EFF's client did not stand to win a judgement.
In fact, I don't believe the procedure in question involves a civil suit being filed at all; the DMCA's notice/counter-notice provisions are intended to settle disputes without a lawsuit when possible.
In short - what does your reply have to do with the case at hand?
The fact remains that when I hired a lawyer a few years back, he wrote two - count them, two - letters on my behalf, and the total bill was only a couple hundred bucks. The issue was considerably more complex than an "obvious" abuse of copyright on fair use grounds.
Note - I put "obvious" in quotes because I don't believe fair use as a defense is often all that clear-cut. This comes down to you can't have it both ways. If they claim the case is obvious enough that Universal was abusing the system - i.e. that the "obvious misrepresentation" clause comes into effect - then it must also be obvious enough that they shouldn't have racked up major research hours on it. That means they only get to bill for the time it took to literally write the letter.
They are trying to stick it to the man, end of story. To get a feel for how outraged you should be, ask yourself whether the EFF will charge their client $400,000 should the award be denied. If so, they'd be screwing the little guy; if not, then requesting the award is an abuse of the system.
Inserting random errors is a bad idea. Entrapment, even.
Stating up front "these are the types of information we pre-fill; if you had other forms of income, we might know about them, but we won't pre-fill them, so evade taxes at your own risk", on the other hand, is honest and preserves the uncertainty the dishonest among the rich might need to feel about non-reporting.
You do understand that if the information you manually enter doesn't match the info the IRS has, on a consistent and significant basis, then they have the power to audit you, right?
In other words, if they're as bad at keeping track of data as you claim, then you're already subject to the same negative consequences as if they told you up front "this is what we think we know". The difference is, if they gave you the option of looking at a pre-filled form, you'd have some warning about discrepancies.
It's a shame the summary doesn't somehow provide you with access to more detailed information on the topic, like an article or something. If it did, you could read that and find out that there is no longer a master password (or at least, so they claim), as they've replaced that concept with a newer admin tool.
However, I disagree; in the context of FB, the idea of a master password is not scary.
Yeah, that's why you should probably not rely on the summary to be accurate.
The password was not 'Chuck Norris'. It was a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that, were you to see them typed out, would "look like" it said Chuck Norris. Like maybe they replaced the o with a zero, or a *, or something else. Maybe the N was an N, an n, a series of symbols like/\/... no idea.
In other words, they used a lengthy password (presumably at least 11 characters) with a mix of alphanumerics and symbols and a simple mnemonic that would allow anyone who had seen the password to remember it. That sounds pretty damned good to me.
This is a deprecated access mechanism. As the service grew up to be a "site with hundreds of millions of users", they got rid of it. I don't mean they chagned the password; they threw out the ability to use such a password entirely, having replaced it with an audited feature of the app when viewed on their internal network.
Even when this password worked, you had to be on their network to use it. It filled an administrative and technical need. The only problem I see with this approach, especially when the site was small and didn't know how big it would be, was that they apparently didn't have much control to prevent an employee from stumbing on the password.
I have a dim view of the "privacy" of information on FaceBook, but this story isn't even a blip on that radar. If you don't already know that information you post to a social networking site is available to the company that runs that site, you need to wake up.
The formula for coke isn't, and never was, protected by copyright. It is protected as a trade secret, which is an entirely separate matter. Lack of publication is necessary, but not sufficient, to maintain trade secret status. The episodes in question in TFA are not trade secrets, so the formula to coke is a meaningless example. None of this has anything to do with a work protected by copyright entering the public domain.
Trade secret protection cannot be described as a "monopoly on copying", by the way. If I somehow get my hands on the formula for coke, there is absolutely nothing that would prevent me from distributing it. By the time I get my hands on it, its status as a "secret" has already been broken.
Just because you don't understand the law, doesn't mean that an explanation of how the law works is "my logic". The problem is, you still don't seem to know the difference between "public domain" and "information the public has a right to make you give them".
1) Owning a copyright isn't like owning a tangible good. Copyright doens't grant a right to view or possess a copy of the work. If you record a song and give me a copy, and then you destroy your copy, you still have rights spelled out in copyright law that would prevent me from making new copies, playing the recording in public, etc. without your permission; but if you want a copy for yourself, you're S.O.L. It was up to you to preserve a copy for yourself.
2) It doesn't matter, because TFA asserts that the shows are public domain - i.e. they have no "owner" under copyright law anyway.
I'm not clear on your definition of "public domain". You seem to think that soemthing has to be publically available to be in the public domain; that is not so.
Public domain is what happens when copyright expires. Copyright is tied to creation - not publication - of a work. What makes you think that lack of broadcast would change the copyright status of the work?
Now you are correct that the physical media are private property - and that would be true of those particular media even if the work had been broadcast. The rights to the physical property have nothing to do with the IP rights, and you are conflating the two.
I'm not sure what you mean by asserting that an unbroadcast work is private property. A work itself is property only to the extent that IP laws say it is property - i.e. in the case of a TV show, it is property for the duration of copyright only. If copyright has expired, then the work is not anybody's property (even though the media containing particular copies of it may be).
If the argument were "this work is in the public domain, so you must release it", then your "not a library" argument would have some meaning; but I don't see anyone saying that. What I see people saying is, "there is no copyright to prevent CBS releasing this or to allow CBS to monetize it if they don't release it; so why are they being jerks?"
The fact is, TFA doesn't tell us what the complex issues are that CBS is unwilling to work through. Maybe CBS didn't tell them, or maybe they don't want to tell us because they know the reasons are legitimate and would weaken the public outcry. We can only speculate.
As a person with a natural nystagmus, I'm skeptical of profiling based on eye movements. However, for you to assume that their profiling technique will generate a false positive on anyone afraid of flying - especially when you have no idea what patterns of eye movement they're looking for - is nonsense. Trying to predict specific failure modes for security theater is one of the more ironic failures of debating technique I can think of.
Your profiling method is less expensive, but it is not more reliable as you suggest. It, too, will generate a lot of false positives; and once the terrorist organizations know what you're looking for, it will start generating false negatives as well.
Profiling is just an attempt to stop the attack you saw last time. It does nothing to stop the attack that comes next.
Re:Great, still doesn't fix the Houston problem.
on
The Year of the E-Bicycle
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Because you've seen some people on bikes violating traffic rules, it's ok to attempt to murder any cyclist you see? Because that's what you're doing when you throw something at an unprotected cyclist in traffic, in case you're unaware.
Two arguments were raised:
That cyclists should pay to accont for increased road maintenance is an interesting argument. Let's see some hard numbers. What is the marginal increase in road maintenance costs due to cyclists. What are the budget allocations that pay for that maintenance, and how do they align with various taxes - many of which cyclists do in fact pay. Show me the numbers, and if they show that cyclists are underpaying I'll buy that something needs to be done to tax cyclists. Oh, but if they show that cyclists are overpaying (which I bet they will), I don't suppose you'll support giving them a credit, will you?
The second argument had to do with some recent state law that protects pedestrians, cyclists, etc. His argument is that this unbalances the risks and burdens and cycilsts should pay more for the greater protection. First of all, this clearly comes from someone who has never been vulnerable on the road. A car that decides to ram a bicycle stands to lose nothing unless caught by law enforcement; the cyclist stands to lose his life. The law works toward establishing balance; it is not something from which balance needs to be restored. Second: why single out cyclists? Register every pair of walking shoes.
Make all the excuses you want; laws like this are aimed at nothing other than trying to keep people from exercising rights you find inconvenient.
Ok, we can pretend that a viewfinder does the same thing as the digital preview. It doesn't matter. I don't know why people can't grasp this, but you do not patent "doing something"; you patent a method of doing something, or a device that does something, etc.
I'm reasonably certain that there is no similarity between a viewfinder and the patented material related to digital preview when it comes to their structure and how they operate.
In short, it may be obvious that you would want a digital preview feature, but that has nothing to do with patentability. The question would have to be, is the method of providing that feature obvious. To say that an optical viewfinder makes the process of producing a digital preview "obvious" is clearly nonsense.
The point I think you (and GP, and the submitter, and many others) are missing is, photosynthesis does not remove the need to eat. Energy isn't the only thing you get from food. If you had vitamin pills so effective that you could live on them, plus sugar, plus water - and nothing else - then you could replace the sugar with the ability to perform photosynthesis. Such pills do not exist.
In case you're wondering, plants do indeed "eat". That's why they need roots in fertile soil.
If you think about the laws of thermodynamics, you will realize that "uses the energy to produce an energy source" is just a confusing way to say "cnoverts the energy to another form and stores it".
DLP sets use moving components, often including a rotating "color wheel". I've never heard of an audible "whir" being a problem there, so I'll hold off on speculating whether there would be one here.
I also know of no reason the screen couldn't be as thin as a notebook LED. I would think the laser's beam thickness would be the limiting factor (since it would govern how shallow an angle the beam could use to approach the screen without spilling across pixels).
You equate the failure of the FDA to properly deal with something they are tasked wtih regulating (safety of food) with an economic mindset regarding the proper regulation of comporate financial conduct?
At the end of TFA, they claim that conceptually it would work for a laptop display; so it must be pretty thin. The reason to target big displays before worrying about home TV's seems to be that the cost of manufacture is less an issue there. Until they can do relatively cheap mass-production, they won't be able to address the TV market.
Also, the headline notwithstanding, this may face tough competition in the TV market from advances in LED-type displays.
I agree, except you also have to realize that they're using "move forward" idiomatically, in that this idea may keep the rover functioning longer but will increase the chance that it is stationary for the remainder of its functional lifetime.
Yes, that is likely what would happen. What they're saying is, they may not be able to get the rover out, and if not this will provide the longest lifetime for observations from the now-stationary rover.
I agree, but GP has a point even if he asked the wrong question.
Would I hire him? Sure - or at least, this wouldn't weigh against him. The guy I worry about has the same skills, but doesn't advertise them by participating in this contest because he intends to actually use them.
But whould a lot of IT managers see it as a negative and decide not to hire him? Yes, they would. Like it or not, a lot of perfectly good jobs (and remember, for a couple years out of any given decade, "perfectly good" is likely to just mean "paying") are controlled by people who will not understand the contest's purpose or the positives that are implied by doing well at it.
I don't know what you mean trying to distinguish copyright from DMCA. DMCA is a particular batch of revisions to the copyright law. To pursue the matter under DMCA means exactly the same thing in the US as to pursue the matter under copyright.
If you would bother to RTFA, you would see that they are asserting copyright. TFA doesn't say whether they formally issued a DMCA takedown notice (as they would to properly suppress distribution of copyrighted material); my guess is that they did not. A DMCA takedown notice would not have resulted in the entire domain being shut down in any case. That was a separate matter related to the libel assertions.
It appears the copyright assertion is being used as grounds to find the identity of the person who posted the material - as in, "I want to know who did this so I can sue them".
Your comments on trade secrets, and your thoughts on which IP laws would cover contracts, have nothing to do with anything, so I assume you're just using them to try to sound smart in spite of being unable to discern that there is more than one legal issue being discussed in the article.
Slashdot Mirror
The EFF was not plaintif's council.
The EFF's client did not stand to win a judgement.
In fact, I don't believe the procedure in question involves a civil suit being filed at all; the DMCA's notice/counter-notice provisions are intended to settle disputes without a lawsuit when possible.
In short - what does your reply have to do with the case at hand?
The fact remains that when I hired a lawyer a few years back, he wrote two - count them, two - letters on my behalf, and the total bill was only a couple hundred bucks. The issue was considerably more complex than an "obvious" abuse of copyright on fair use grounds.
Note - I put "obvious" in quotes because I don't believe fair use as a defense is often all that clear-cut. This comes down to you can't have it both ways. If they claim the case is obvious enough that Universal was abusing the system - i.e. that the "obvious misrepresentation" clause comes into effect - then it must also be obvious enough that they shouldn't have racked up major research hours on it. That means they only get to bill for the time it took to literally write the letter.
They are trying to stick it to the man, end of story. To get a feel for how outraged you should be, ask yourself whether the EFF will charge their client $400,000 should the award be denied. If so, they'd be screwing the little guy; if not, then requesting the award is an abuse of the system.
Inserting random errors is a bad idea. Entrapment, even.
Stating up front "these are the types of information we pre-fill; if you had other forms of income, we might know about them, but we won't pre-fill them, so evade taxes at your own risk", on the other hand, is honest and preserves the uncertainty the dishonest among the rich might need to feel about non-reporting.
You do understand that if the information you manually enter doesn't match the info the IRS has, on a consistent and significant basis, then they have the power to audit you, right?
In other words, if they're as bad at keeping track of data as you claim, then you're already subject to the same negative consequences as if they told you up front "this is what we think we know". The difference is, if they gave you the option of looking at a pre-filled form, you'd have some warning about discrepancies.
It's a shame the summary doesn't somehow provide you with access to more detailed information on the topic, like an article or something. If it did, you could read that and find out that there is no longer a master password (or at least, so they claim), as they've replaced that concept with a newer admin tool.
However, I disagree; in the context of FB, the idea of a master password is not scary.
Yeah, that's why you should probably not rely on the summary to be accurate.
In other words, they used a lengthy password (presumably at least 11 characters) with a mix of alphanumerics and symbols and a simple mnemonic that would allow anyone who had seen the password to remember it. That sounds pretty damned good to me.
I have a dim view of the "privacy" of information on FaceBook, but this story isn't even a blip on that radar. If you don't already know that information you post to a social networking site is available to the company that runs that site, you need to wake up.
The formula for coke isn't, and never was, protected by copyright. It is protected as a trade secret, which is an entirely separate matter. Lack of publication is necessary, but not sufficient, to maintain trade secret status. The episodes in question in TFA are not trade secrets, so the formula to coke is a meaningless example. None of this has anything to do with a work protected by copyright entering the public domain.
Trade secret protection cannot be described as a "monopoly on copying", by the way. If I somehow get my hands on the formula for coke, there is absolutely nothing that would prevent me from distributing it. By the time I get my hands on it, its status as a "secret" has already been broken.
Just because you don't understand the law, doesn't mean that an explanation of how the law works is "my logic". The problem is, you still don't seem to know the difference between "public domain" and "information the public has a right to make you give them".
Two things:
1) Owning a copyright isn't like owning a tangible good. Copyright doens't grant a right to view or possess a copy of the work. If you record a song and give me a copy, and then you destroy your copy, you still have rights spelled out in copyright law that would prevent me from making new copies, playing the recording in public, etc. without your permission; but if you want a copy for yourself, you're S.O.L. It was up to you to preserve a copy for yourself.
2) It doesn't matter, because TFA asserts that the shows are public domain - i.e. they have no "owner" under copyright law anyway.
I'm not clear on your definition of "public domain". You seem to think that soemthing has to be publically available to be in the public domain; that is not so.
Public domain is what happens when copyright expires. Copyright is tied to creation - not publication - of a work. What makes you think that lack of broadcast would change the copyright status of the work?
Now you are correct that the physical media are private property - and that would be true of those particular media even if the work had been broadcast. The rights to the physical property have nothing to do with the IP rights, and you are conflating the two.
I'm not sure what you mean by asserting that an unbroadcast work is private property. A work itself is property only to the extent that IP laws say it is property - i.e. in the case of a TV show, it is property for the duration of copyright only. If copyright has expired, then the work is not anybody's property (even though the media containing particular copies of it may be).
If the argument were "this work is in the public domain, so you must release it", then your "not a library" argument would have some meaning; but I don't see anyone saying that. What I see people saying is, "there is no copyright to prevent CBS releasing this or to allow CBS to monetize it if they don't release it; so why are they being jerks?"
The fact is, TFA doesn't tell us what the complex issues are that CBS is unwilling to work through. Maybe CBS didn't tell them, or maybe they don't want to tell us because they know the reasons are legitimate and would weaken the public outcry. We can only speculate.
As a person with a natural nystagmus, I'm skeptical of profiling based on eye movements. However, for you to assume that their profiling technique will generate a false positive on anyone afraid of flying - especially when you have no idea what patterns of eye movement they're looking for - is nonsense. Trying to predict specific failure modes for security theater is one of the more ironic failures of debating technique I can think of.
Your profiling method is less expensive, but it is not more reliable as you suggest. It, too, will generate a lot of false positives; and once the terrorist organizations know what you're looking for, it will start generating false negatives as well.
Profiling is just an attempt to stop the attack you saw last time. It does nothing to stop the attack that comes next.
Because you've seen some people on bikes violating traffic rules, it's ok to attempt to murder any cyclist you see? Because that's what you're doing when you throw something at an unprotected cyclist in traffic, in case you're unaware.
Two arguments were raised:
That cyclists should pay to accont for increased road maintenance is an interesting argument. Let's see some hard numbers. What is the marginal increase in road maintenance costs due to cyclists. What are the budget allocations that pay for that maintenance, and how do they align with various taxes - many of which cyclists do in fact pay. Show me the numbers, and if they show that cyclists are underpaying I'll buy that something needs to be done to tax cyclists. Oh, but if they show that cyclists are overpaying (which I bet they will), I don't suppose you'll support giving them a credit, will you?
The second argument had to do with some recent state law that protects pedestrians, cyclists, etc. His argument is that this unbalances the risks and burdens and cycilsts should pay more for the greater protection. First of all, this clearly comes from someone who has never been vulnerable on the road. A car that decides to ram a bicycle stands to lose nothing unless caught by law enforcement; the cyclist stands to lose his life. The law works toward establishing balance; it is not something from which balance needs to be restored. Second: why single out cyclists? Register every pair of walking shoes.
Make all the excuses you want; laws like this are aimed at nothing other than trying to keep people from exercising rights you find inconvenient.
Ok, we can pretend that a viewfinder does the same thing as the digital preview. It doesn't matter. I don't know why people can't grasp this, but you do not patent "doing something"; you patent a method of doing something, or a device that does something, etc.
I'm reasonably certain that there is no similarity between a viewfinder and the patented material related to digital preview when it comes to their structure and how they operate.
In short, it may be obvious that you would want a digital preview feature, but that has nothing to do with patentability. The question would have to be, is the method of providing that feature obvious. To say that an optical viewfinder makes the process of producing a digital preview "obvious" is clearly nonsense.
The point I think you (and GP, and the submitter, and many others) are missing is, photosynthesis does not remove the need to eat. Energy isn't the only thing you get from food. If you had vitamin pills so effective that you could live on them, plus sugar, plus water - and nothing else - then you could replace the sugar with the ability to perform photosynthesis. Such pills do not exist.
In case you're wondering, plants do indeed "eat". That's why they need roots in fertile soil.
If you think about the laws of thermodynamics, you will realize that "uses the energy to produce an energy source" is just a confusing way to say "cnoverts the energy to another form and stores it".
I think you might want to double check your math. Even if 1 revolution of the wheel per frame were typical (it's not), that would still be 1800RMP.
Interesting assertions.
DLP sets use moving components, often including a rotating "color wheel". I've never heard of an audible "whir" being a problem there, so I'll hold off on speculating whether there would be one here.
I also know of no reason the screen couldn't be as thin as a notebook LED. I would think the laser's beam thickness would be the limiting factor (since it would govern how shallow an angle the beam could use to approach the screen without spilling across pixels).
Really?
You equate the failure of the FDA to properly deal with something they are tasked wtih regulating (safety of food) with an economic mindset regarding the proper regulation of comporate financial conduct?
I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you there.
At the end of TFA, they claim that conceptually it would work for a laptop display; so it must be pretty thin. The reason to target big displays before worrying about home TV's seems to be that the cost of manufacture is less an issue there. Until they can do relatively cheap mass-production, they won't be able to address the TV market.
Also, the headline notwithstanding, this may face tough competition in the TV market from advances in LED-type displays.
Glad to hear your advanced research is going so well. So you'll be able to move out of your mom's basement soon?
And as far as it's sense of sight is concerned, the rest of the world would not exist.
Douglas Adams had a jump on this one... "a beast so stupid it believed that if you cannot see it, it cannot see you"
I agree, except you also have to realize that they're using "move forward" idiomatically, in that this idea may keep the rover functioning longer but will increase the chance that it is stationary for the remainder of its functional lifetime.
Yes, that is likely what would happen. What they're saying is, they may not be able to get the rover out, and if not this will provide the longest lifetime for observations from the now-stationary rover.
I agree, but GP has a point even if he asked the wrong question.
Would I hire him? Sure - or at least, this wouldn't weigh against him. The guy I worry about has the same skills, but doesn't advertise them by participating in this contest because he intends to actually use them.
But whould a lot of IT managers see it as a negative and decide not to hire him? Yes, they would. Like it or not, a lot of perfectly good jobs (and remember, for a couple years out of any given decade, "perfectly good" is likely to just mean "paying") are controlled by people who will not understand the contest's purpose or the positives that are implied by doing well at it.
Being a developer has as much to do with real estate, as being a published security expert has to do with security?
Ok.
Don't know why I'm responding to an AC, but ok...
I don't know what you mean trying to distinguish copyright from DMCA. DMCA is a particular batch of revisions to the copyright law. To pursue the matter under DMCA means exactly the same thing in the US as to pursue the matter under copyright.
If you would bother to RTFA, you would see that they are asserting copyright. TFA doesn't say whether they formally issued a DMCA takedown notice (as they would to properly suppress distribution of copyrighted material); my guess is that they did not. A DMCA takedown notice would not have resulted in the entire domain being shut down in any case. That was a separate matter related to the libel assertions.
It appears the copyright assertion is being used as grounds to find the identity of the person who posted the material - as in, "I want to know who did this so I can sue them".
Your comments on trade secrets, and your thoughts on which IP laws would cover contracts, have nothing to do with anything, so I assume you're just using them to try to sound smart in spite of being unable to discern that there is more than one legal issue being discussed in the article.