The tax code repeatedly defers to regulations, which are made by the IRS.
The IRS staff is as invested as anyone in the complexity of the tax code
Second: Irrelevant.
If you'd rather blame Congress instead of the IRS, blame Congress instead of the IRS. In the context of this conversation, the degree to which you're wrong won't matter. What matters is OP blaming the company that is following the law as written.
If ever the phrase "citation needed" applied... especially as you imply knowledge of the case beyond waht was proven (i.e. you imply that the kid didn't buy it from "some guy")...
But that doesn't really matter. Eevn if the kid is lying and stole it himself, if his story is that he bought it from some guy, then his testimony to that effect is evidence. Not the strongest evidence, but if there's no evidence to the contrary, then his story is what the judge has to go by in determining probation terms. So the question still stands: how (in the story as the kid told it) did he meet "some guy" and arrange to receive the motorcycle?
If it works out that he's finding his probation overly restrictive due to details of a lie he told to try to mitigate his responsiblity, well that's just poetic justice.
Yeah, but that's just the thing - by what standard do you get to claim they're "cheating" the system, when they are following the rules that are written? I take a deduction for mortgage interest; is that "cheating" becasue it reduces what I pay, or is it just making use of the favorable (to me) provisions of the law? If it's the latter (and I fail to see how it could be otherwise), then how is what Google is doing any different?
If the IRS doesn't intend this to be legal, then they need to change the statutes and/or regulations; otherwise any money "lost" in this way is their fault.
At least to me, TFA's mention of the rather large budget gap faced by the U.S. backfired. I suppose it was meant to say "why are they avoiding making payments that are so badly needed", but what it really conveys is "this is a meaningless drop in the bucket compared to the overall problem, and the government needs to focus on the real issues that have it so short-funded". I mean really, if you subtract 60B from 1.4T, do you know what you get? You get 1.4T.
It's tough to research this case based on the information given, so I suppose we'll all just have to guess; but I don't believe the judge just arbitrarily decided to put these restrictions on the kid if they were truly unrelated to the crime.
How did he arrange to receive the stolen motorcycle (which, btw, is not a bicycle; it's likely a lot more valuable and the crimes involved in stealing it were likely a lot more serious in nature)? I bet his end of the deal was brokered over the Internet.
Does that make the restrictions "reasonable"? Well, there's two sides to that. Any probation is still less restrictive than imprisonment, which would be a legitimate option. But if you argue that the court might not realize just how much restriction it's imposing, that may be so.
Either way, I fail to be outraged at the level TFA is trying to incite through its selective reporting of information on a topic where I can't research the missing details myself.
I'll lead by saying that I don't really support the Pirate Party's agenda of setting up a copyright haven, but if you want to understand their strategy here:
They could set up a full bank of modems cheaper, but then those modems are in a country where what they are being used for is illegal. The point of a move like this is to make a single, centralized raid to disable the entire system impossible (assuming the authorities constrain themselves to legal means). Just because a modem bank isn't on the Internet doesn't mean the facility can't be raided, the server shut down and seized, etc.
Also, anyone who sets up a dish (essentially adding the sat to their network) can then connect their network to the Internet, and voila, the sat is on the Internet. Yes, each person doing that is likely doing something illegal, but a given raid can then only take out one of many possible access paths - not the entire operation at one stroke. Really, that's the nature of this type of operation anyway - the end users are most likely violating their local laws to the extent that they transfer copyright-protected material, but to do anything about it you have to go after them one by one a la the RIAA cases in the U.S.A.
Right, the problem in a nutshell is one of cost-benefit.
It's pretty clear to most of us that the cost of a "just drop it" approach on vaccines outweighs the benefits. It may depend on the school's situation, but it appears the immediate costs of a "just drop it" approach on WiFi are not so significant as the benefits (especially if we weigh in the arguably self-inflicted psychosomatic effects on those who believe Wi-Fi or similar radiation sources are dangerous). It's possible that some other issue will come up in the future that's somewhere in between, and that may be a tough one.
Of course, I said the immediate costs are low to highlight the point where I disagree with the OP. In the long term, dropping the Wi-Fi issue avoids addressing the education problem, which can make future battles that much harder.
Re:Rational decision by school administration?
on
Ontario School Bans Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You think school WiFi is as important to the childrens' well-being (and/or that of their society) as immunications?
Uh... it's a bit unclear if you're understanding the situation here.
"If my doctor was that stupid I wouldn't listen to them either."
If your doctor were how stupid? The only mention of doctors here is that the doctors say there is no medical basis for a ban. Based on the rest of your post, surely you mean to criticize the people who ignore the doctors' advice and ban WiFi anyway - which is exactly what GP said - right?
Oh, and for the record, doctors do advise strict limits on sun exposure now. That's what sunscreen is for.
When challenged, retreat to a technically correct (but contextually meaningless) position and pretend that was all you meant in the first place (even though it would've been entirely off topic)
In the course of the retreat, preemptively cast aspersions on any possible reply
???
Profit!
Too bad, because right up until then you seemed like a reasonable, if perhaps misinformed, individual; but now you come across as an anti-IP troll with a revisionist agenda.
Your selective quoting notwithstanding, the 1790 copyright act specifically prescribes liability for various not-for-profit copying actions, as has every copyright act since.
You're the one who tried to mince words about "intent", and you're the one who's trying to pretend that the distinction of criminal remedies matters in this conversation, so don't tell me you're not interested in drawing those distinctions. If you can't be bothered to recognize that copyright historically implemented virtually all of its intent through civil, rather than criminal, remedies, then you shouldn't be making statements of fact about the history of copyright law.
In your attempt not to conflate things, you're drawing nonexistant distinctions. You can't separate licenses from copyright. If not for copyright I wouldn't need a license, and if I don't have a license I'm at risk of violating copyright.
Copyright law doesn't specify the terms under which you may distribute my work other than to say that you need to license the work from me. I do have a lot of flexibility to put terms in the license agreement, though, which effectively have the force of copyright law behind them. If you don't like, or can't technically implement, the terms of my license, then you don't sign on. If you do sign on, then failure to adhere to the license will lead to liability under copyright law.
The reason you don't see regional restrictions on licenses involving a broadcast antenna is that nobody in their right mind would license content under those terms; they'd have no way to comply. The limitation is technical, not legal, in nature.
But when the medium does allow for regional control - such as cable, sat, or (most notably for this conversation) the Internet - regional licensing is not rare at all, and it absolutely does carry the force of copyright law (since distributing outside your region would mean distributing without a valid license from the copyright holder).
First thigns first - you're using the term "anticompetitive", which comes from antitrust law, so let's analyze this from that standponit. Now you claimed that
"Leveraging your power in one market in order to influence a related market is anticompetitive"
But in fact what the law says is that leveraging monopoly power in one market in order to boost the market share of your own offerings in another market (related or otherwise) is anticompetitive; and Fox was doing no such thing.
I can't think why anyone who believes in private property would think that a supplier of any product or service would be required to work with any given distributor. If I make a power tool and don't want to sell it at Home Depot, I don't have to. If I make printer paper and don't want to sell it at OfficeMax, I don't have to. If I make a light bulb and don't want to sell it at WalMart, I don't have to. So why on Earth would an online content provider be required to accept the services of a given ISP as a conduit for their content?
If you want to attack this behavior, forget about coming at it from the ISP's point of view. If anyone has a claim of action against Fox, it's because they are paid subscribers who were denied access in a manner contrary to some term in the service agreement. This has nothing at all to do with Net Neutrality.
(Which is just as well, because Net Neutrality is the wrong approach to every problem.)
Well, I don't think you understand my objection to your position. I'm not interested in splitting hairs over what 'intent' means.
Prior to the DMCA, copyright did already apply to not-for-profit copying; I don't know where you're getting information to the contrary, but making a profit from your copy was never a required element of infringement in U.S. copyright law.
"the original intent of the law was to stop for-profit copying of 'intellectual property'"
You are factually mistaken. The purpose of IP law is and always was to promote the creative and useful arts by preserving the interests of the rights-holder, regardless of any commercial interest on the part of a potential infringer. You can go all the way back to the Constitution and you will find no mention of this notion that copyright were only to keep other people from profitting.
In your theory, MS just wants to prevent NGO's from converting to free software. There is no evidence that the NGO's in question were considering such a switch; a number of them were just saying "screw it" and using illegal copies of the MS software. But, it does suit your preconceptions about MS, so it has that going for it.
The other theory is that they actually don't want to participate in human rights violations. There is actual evidence for that, and it's not like we'd have to paint them as revolutionary heroes (since obviously it did take media exposure before they got interested), but if that's still too positive a light for some/. folks to cast on MS, I'm not surprised.
Even if you were right, so what? It is not at all uncommon for companies to manage their philanthropy in ways where the value is more than the cost. People do it, too. (Do you donate old clothes you aren't going to use any more, or do you run out to the store and buy new clothes to donate? Or are you the sort of asshat that doesn't donate at all yet feels entitled to badger MS's efforts?)
TFA doesn't address the issue of support, but I've worked with charitable organizations with discounted or free MS licenses in the past, and at least in those cases they do have the use of MS support services. Pirates don't. How is that zero cost again?
From TFA: "Ms. Anderson of Microsoft said the company was trying to quickly prepare the automatic licenses for the 12 countries, a process that includes translating them, ensuring that they comply with local laws and disseminating them to the authorities." Yeah, international legal research doesn't cost anything at all.
MS is taking a stand in explicit opposition to the activities of these governments in countries where they try to do business. The risks and costs associated with that are considerably more than the license fees anyway.
So, we already can see that your standard for identifying philanthropy is ignorant; now let's see if it's also hipocrisy. What have you been up to that's more generous than what MS is doing?
I'm curious why you think a law's intent includes a list of those against whom it may be used. Have you not heard the phrase "equal in the eyes of the law?"
Not so much "pedantic" as "meaningless". There is no measure by which to assess the wellbeing of the Earth; only its suitability to a purpose. The phrase "threat to the Earth", when used by a human, means "theat to the Earth's suitablity as our home".
Just because your target mass is large, doesn't mean you need a lot of mass to change its course. If you have a spaceship "heavy enough" to move a 1-ton rock, then it's also "heavy enough" to move a 100-ton rock because an object's deflection in a gravitational field is independent of that object's own mass.
This is an extension of an experiment you've probably seen in high school physics. Drop a tennis ball and a bowling ball, and they move just the same under gravity's influence.
But that's not to say that moving a larger mass is "free"; it does require more energy. As your tractor exerts 100x more force on the larger asteroid, it will also suffer 100x more force pulling it back toward the asteroid. Since your tractor isn't your impactor, it will have to spend energy fighting that force.
Now I have no idea what sort of propulsion you would use to maintain the tractor's position relative to the asteroid. If you used a chemical rocket then "more energy" requires "more mass", but that would seem to have a problem anyway in that you'd be throwing your exhaust right at the asteroid, pushing against your own gravitational pull.
In any case, remember that the Earth is a relatively small target, and the courses would have to intersect in 4 dimensions (don't foret time) to cause a collision. Given years of lead time, the "push" required wouldn't be as much as you may think.
The abstract is always bs. The patent has to describe the invention, but the fact that it requires the patience of actually reading the claims and background before you know anything useful is not enough to make it invalid.
Having read the claims, I would have to say there's enough information to build something. I haven't taken the time to read the background, so whether I would build what the inventor was thinking of is still a matter of question. So maybe the patent is valid, or maybe it's not, but:
1) even though every patent story on/. gets a response from someone trying to evaluate the patent by its abstract, this is not a valid practice, and
2) more specifically, if you want to counter the US-PTO finding that it is valid, you need a bit more than "I don't think this describes anything; just look how crappy the abstract is"
Uh, sorry, no. For a=b to imply sqrt(a)=sqrt(b) you do have to interpert sqrt() as the principle square root, because otherwise there are two possible roots.
In any case, I didn't define sqrt() in the proof because it isn't necessary to define notation in a proof. sqrt() means the prniciple square root function, period. In a hand-written proof, I'd have used a radical sign, which also means the priniple square root without that being called out in the proof. If you didn't understand the notation until I pointed it out... well, that's about 50% of the point: people tend to miss that.
Slashdot Mirror
First: False.
Second: Irrelevant.
If you'd rather blame Congress instead of the IRS, blame Congress instead of the IRS. In the context of this conversation, the degree to which you're wrong won't matter. What matters is OP blaming the company that is following the law as written.
If ever the phrase "citation needed" applied... especially as you imply knowledge of the case beyond waht was proven (i.e. you imply that the kid didn't buy it from "some guy")...
But that doesn't really matter. Eevn if the kid is lying and stole it himself, if his story is that he bought it from some guy, then his testimony to that effect is evidence. Not the strongest evidence, but if there's no evidence to the contrary, then his story is what the judge has to go by in determining probation terms. So the question still stands: how (in the story as the kid told it) did he meet "some guy" and arrange to receive the motorcycle?
If it works out that he's finding his probation overly restrictive due to details of a lie he told to try to mitigate his responsiblity, well that's just poetic justice.
Yeah, but that's just the thing - by what standard do you get to claim they're "cheating" the system, when they are following the rules that are written? I take a deduction for mortgage interest; is that "cheating" becasue it reduces what I pay, or is it just making use of the favorable (to me) provisions of the law? If it's the latter (and I fail to see how it could be otherwise), then how is what Google is doing any different?
If the IRS doesn't intend this to be legal, then they need to change the statutes and/or regulations; otherwise any money "lost" in this way is their fault.
At least to me, TFA's mention of the rather large budget gap faced by the U.S. backfired. I suppose it was meant to say "why are they avoiding making payments that are so badly needed", but what it really conveys is "this is a meaningless drop in the bucket compared to the overall problem, and the government needs to focus on the real issues that have it so short-funded". I mean really, if you subtract 60B from 1.4T, do you know what you get? You get 1.4T.
It's tough to research this case based on the information given, so I suppose we'll all just have to guess; but I don't believe the judge just arbitrarily decided to put these restrictions on the kid if they were truly unrelated to the crime.
How did he arrange to receive the stolen motorcycle (which, btw, is not a bicycle; it's likely a lot more valuable and the crimes involved in stealing it were likely a lot more serious in nature)? I bet his end of the deal was brokered over the Internet.
Does that make the restrictions "reasonable"? Well, there's two sides to that. Any probation is still less restrictive than imprisonment, which would be a legitimate option. But if you argue that the court might not realize just how much restriction it's imposing, that may be so.
Either way, I fail to be outraged at the level TFA is trying to incite through its selective reporting of information on a topic where I can't research the missing details myself.
I'll lead by saying that I don't really support the Pirate Party's agenda of setting up a copyright haven, but if you want to understand their strategy here:
They could set up a full bank of modems cheaper, but then those modems are in a country where what they are being used for is illegal. The point of a move like this is to make a single, centralized raid to disable the entire system impossible (assuming the authorities constrain themselves to legal means). Just because a modem bank isn't on the Internet doesn't mean the facility can't be raided, the server shut down and seized, etc.
Also, anyone who sets up a dish (essentially adding the sat to their network) can then connect their network to the Internet, and voila, the sat is on the Internet. Yes, each person doing that is likely doing something illegal, but a given raid can then only take out one of many possible access paths - not the entire operation at one stroke. Really, that's the nature of this type of operation anyway - the end users are most likely violating their local laws to the extent that they transfer copyright-protected material, but to do anything about it you have to go after them one by one a la the RIAA cases in the U.S.A.
Right, the problem in a nutshell is one of cost-benefit.
It's pretty clear to most of us that the cost of a "just drop it" approach on vaccines outweighs the benefits. It may depend on the school's situation, but it appears the immediate costs of a "just drop it" approach on WiFi are not so significant as the benefits (especially if we weigh in the arguably self-inflicted psychosomatic effects on those who believe Wi-Fi or similar radiation sources are dangerous). It's possible that some other issue will come up in the future that's somewhere in between, and that may be a tough one.
Of course, I said the immediate costs are low to highlight the point where I disagree with the OP. In the long term, dropping the Wi-Fi issue avoids addressing the education problem, which can make future battles that much harder.
You think school WiFi is as important to the childrens' well-being (and/or that of their society) as immunications?
If not, find a better argument.
Uh... it's a bit unclear if you're understanding the situation here.
"If my doctor was that stupid I wouldn't listen to them either."
If your doctor were how stupid? The only mention of doctors here is that the doctors say there is no medical basis for a ban. Based on the rest of your post, surely you mean to criticize the people who ignore the doctors' advice and ban WiFi anyway - which is exactly what GP said - right?
Oh, and for the record, doctors do advise strict limits on sun exposure now. That's what sunscreen is for.
Interesting game plan.
Too bad, because right up until then you seemed like a reasonable, if perhaps misinformed, individual; but now you come across as an anti-IP troll with a revisionist agenda.
Your selective quoting notwithstanding, the 1790 copyright act specifically prescribes liability for various not-for-profit copying actions, as has every copyright act since.
You're the one who tried to mince words about "intent", and you're the one who's trying to pretend that the distinction of criminal remedies matters in this conversation, so don't tell me you're not interested in drawing those distinctions. If you can't be bothered to recognize that copyright historically implemented virtually all of its intent through civil, rather than criminal, remedies, then you shouldn't be making statements of fact about the history of copyright law.
In your attempt not to conflate things, you're drawing nonexistant distinctions. You can't separate licenses from copyright. If not for copyright I wouldn't need a license, and if I don't have a license I'm at risk of violating copyright.
Copyright law doesn't specify the terms under which you may distribute my work other than to say that you need to license the work from me. I do have a lot of flexibility to put terms in the license agreement, though, which effectively have the force of copyright law behind them. If you don't like, or can't technically implement, the terms of my license, then you don't sign on. If you do sign on, then failure to adhere to the license will lead to liability under copyright law.
The reason you don't see regional restrictions on licenses involving a broadcast antenna is that nobody in their right mind would license content under those terms; they'd have no way to comply. The limitation is technical, not legal, in nature.
But when the medium does allow for regional control - such as cable, sat, or (most notably for this conversation) the Internet - regional licensing is not rare at all, and it absolutely does carry the force of copyright law (since distributing outside your region would mean distributing without a valid license from the copyright holder).
Whoa, there, chief. That's a bold statement.
First thigns first - you're using the term "anticompetitive", which comes from antitrust law, so let's analyze this from that standponit. Now you claimed that
"Leveraging your power in one market in order to influence a related market is anticompetitive"
But in fact what the law says is that leveraging monopoly power in one market in order to boost the market share of your own offerings in another market (related or otherwise) is anticompetitive; and Fox was doing no such thing.
I can't think why anyone who believes in private property would think that a supplier of any product or service would be required to work with any given distributor. If I make a power tool and don't want to sell it at Home Depot, I don't have to. If I make printer paper and don't want to sell it at OfficeMax, I don't have to. If I make a light bulb and don't want to sell it at WalMart, I don't have to. So why on Earth would an online content provider be required to accept the services of a given ISP as a conduit for their content?
If you want to attack this behavior, forget about coming at it from the ISP's point of view. If anyone has a claim of action against Fox, it's because they are paid subscribers who were denied access in a manner contrary to some term in the service agreement. This has nothing at all to do with Net Neutrality.
(Which is just as well, because Net Neutrality is the wrong approach to every problem.)
'but it did say "hey, we are only making it illegal to copy for profit".'
You keep saying so, but I've not found any version of the law that agrees with you. Can you provide a citation?
Well, I don't think you understand my objection to your position. I'm not interested in splitting hairs over what 'intent' means.
Prior to the DMCA, copyright did already apply to not-for-profit copying; I don't know where you're getting information to the contrary, but making a profit from your copy was never a required element of infringement in U.S. copyright law.
Have a look over the first Federal Copyright Statue of the United States of America; can you point out where it says anything about non-commercial copying being exempt?
It's also hard to argue that zebras can fly, but what does that have to do with the conversation at hand?
"the original intent of the law was to stop for-profit copying of 'intellectual property'"
You are factually mistaken. The purpose of IP law is and always was to promote the creative and useful arts by preserving the interests of the rights-holder, regardless of any commercial interest on the part of a potential infringer. You can go all the way back to the Constitution and you will find no mention of this notion that copyright were only to keep other people from profitting.
So we have two motive theories:
In your theory, MS just wants to prevent NGO's from converting to free software. There is no evidence that the NGO's in question were considering such a switch; a number of them were just saying "screw it" and using illegal copies of the MS software. But, it does suit your preconceptions about MS, so it has that going for it.
The other theory is that they actually don't want to participate in human rights violations. There is actual evidence for that, and it's not like we'd have to paint them as revolutionary heroes (since obviously it did take media exposure before they got interested), but if that's still too positive a light for some /. folks to cast on MS, I'm not surprised.
Doesn't cost MS anything? LOL. Where to begin?
So, we already can see that your standard for identifying philanthropy is ignorant; now let's see if it's also hipocrisy. What have you been up to that's more generous than what MS is doing?
I'm curious why you think a law's intent includes a list of those against whom it may be used. Have you not heard the phrase "equal in the eyes of the law?"
In a world without trade treaties or the possibility of retalliation from China, that would be a possible solution.
Not a popular one, though. Tho dollars that pay those tarrifs end up coming out of consumers' pockets.
Not so much "pedantic" as "meaningless". There is no measure by which to assess the wellbeing of the Earth; only its suitability to a purpose. The phrase "threat to the Earth", when used by a human, means "theat to the Earth's suitablity as our home".
Just because your target mass is large, doesn't mean you need a lot of mass to change its course. If you have a spaceship "heavy enough" to move a 1-ton rock, then it's also "heavy enough" to move a 100-ton rock because an object's deflection in a gravitational field is independent of that object's own mass.
This is an extension of an experiment you've probably seen in high school physics. Drop a tennis ball and a bowling ball, and they move just the same under gravity's influence.
But that's not to say that moving a larger mass is "free"; it does require more energy. As your tractor exerts 100x more force on the larger asteroid, it will also suffer 100x more force pulling it back toward the asteroid. Since your tractor isn't your impactor, it will have to spend energy fighting that force.
Now I have no idea what sort of propulsion you would use to maintain the tractor's position relative to the asteroid. If you used a chemical rocket then "more energy" requires "more mass", but that would seem to have a problem anyway in that you'd be throwing your exhaust right at the asteroid, pushing against your own gravitational pull.
In any case, remember that the Earth is a relatively small target, and the courses would have to intersect in 4 dimensions (don't foret time) to cause a collision. Given years of lead time, the "push" required wouldn't be as much as you may think.
RTFA. Or educate yourself generally on how the IT security industry operates. Either way works.
The abstract is always bs. The patent has to describe the invention, but the fact that it requires the patience of actually reading the claims and background before you know anything useful is not enough to make it invalid.
Having read the claims, I would have to say there's enough information to build something. I haven't taken the time to read the background, so whether I would build what the inventor was thinking of is still a matter of question. So maybe the patent is valid, or maybe it's not, but:
1) even though every patent story on /. gets a response from someone trying to evaluate the patent by its abstract, this is not a valid practice, and
2) more specifically, if you want to counter the US-PTO finding that it is valid, you need a bit more than "I don't think this describes anything; just look how crappy the abstract is"
Can you cite any case history where this defense was successful? I bet not.
Uh, sorry, no. For a=b to imply sqrt(a)=sqrt(b) you do have to interpert sqrt() as the principle square root, because otherwise there are two possible roots.
In any case, I didn't define sqrt() in the proof because it isn't necessary to define notation in a proof. sqrt() means the prniciple square root function, period. In a hand-written proof, I'd have used a radical sign, which also means the priniple square root without that being called out in the proof. If you didn't understand the notation until I pointed it out... well, that's about 50% of the point: people tend to miss that.