Actually, it's called pointing out the significant information in the article. If you think this article is about baseball, you're not paying attention.
The Appeals court specifically indicated how this ruling should be applied to cases you'd probably be more interested in, such as if Google's servers were searched.
If anything, cnn.com is pandering to its audience by focusing on the baseball aspects of a story that's really about the legal bounds of search where databases are involved; and while the court reached its conclusion via a line of logic I don't care for (essentially an appeal to force - "if I decide this way, the consequences would be harmful, so I'll decide a different way"), it is a pro-privacy conclusion that a lot of folks around here are probably interested in.
But by all means, argue that the information shouldn't be made available here because it happens to come from a case that deals with sports and I suppose you think nerds don't do sports.
...which is utterly useless when you in fact needed just one baby, but needed it on a deadline of "one month". That's why "project manager" and "statistician" are spelled differently.
(If I comment on the ways in which the two are similar, I will surely offend one or both...)
There are many skills that used to be required learning for all, that are now known only to a handful of hobbiests. I guess I'm not sure why it's a "problem" that handwriting should be one of them. For that matter, handwriting as a universal skill has had a pretty short run if you put it in historical perspective.
When I have reason to set pen to paper, I'm still able to convey my meaning. It may not be as pretty as if I still "wrote" instead of "printing" (or then again... my penmanship was never that great), but so what? When I need my message to look pretty - i.e. because it's for a prospective employer - the person receiving it is going to have a definition of "pretty" that requires me to use a computer anyway.
If for some reason I'm caught without a washing machine I find that frustrating, too, but I don't lament the lost art of beating clothes on the rocks.
That's a fascinating opinion. The legal fact is, you would not be immune from prosecution.
What matters isn't whether you claim the statement is one of opinion vs. fact. What matters is whether the statement itself conveys a matter of opinion or a matter of fact.
I do believe that the vast majority of ideas you might want to express can be framed properly as an opinion, but starting your sentence with "it is my opinion" isn't enough to keep you safe.
"It is my opinion that John Smith is a terrible businessman" may be safe; "it is my opinion that John Smith loses money for all of his clients" probably isn't.
The line is blurry, of course, which means even if you're on the right side of it, you may end up in court. So perhaps instead of trying to be coy, you should just consider not slandering those you dislike. It's just another approach you might consider.
"Ship the PC back to us on your own dime, include a self-addressed stamped envelope for the paper refund check, allow six to eight weeks for the refund to arrive"
If the consumer protection laws in your area don't prohibit that behavior, and the company's normal return policy puts you on the hook for shipping and providing an SASE for them to send you a check, yes.
Of cousre, nobody actually does business that way, and if they did their only customers would be people who didn't read the return policy (which is frnakly their own fault IMO, but since opininos on that vary, that's why there are consumer protection laws).
"and pay your bank's check cashing fee"
Your bank charges you a fee to cash a check? You should get a better bank. Your failure to do so is not the fault of anyone trying to send you money.
"Then buy another of our PCs"
And why would the PC you purchase as a replacement come from them? Mine sure as hell wouldn't.
In short, you're trying to pretend that a company refunding your purchase price in some way wouldn't be sufficient remedy for a transaction in which you were not harmed but simply didn't like the product. Grow up.
While I personally find the basis for EULA to be questionable, my lawyer friends tell me that US courts have indeed held them to be binding.
The double-edged nature of this is exactly why Lenovo should give the guy a refund. The fact that the software trades under the EULA makes the claim that it's "part of the computer" or even "part of the same sale as the computer" suspect to me. The software industry has changed the nature of the "sale" for the software, and the courts (at least in the US) have let them get by with it; so retailers should have to live with the inconvenience of those terms just like end users (as they're a party to the modified "sale" as well).
That said, the EULA also acknowledges that you may be unable to get your refund from the retailer and gives you instructions to follow in that event. So while I think Lenovo should give the refund, I don't think they have to.
As another poster alluded, my other question is whether they offered him a full refund for the entire computer. If so, I'd say they're in the clear (but rather foolish) and that he'd do himself a favor to take the money and buy something else.
1) Let's see here... I have done none of the following:
- Taken the course in question - Spoken to anyone with knowledge of the course about its content - Chosen to assume, as you have, the position to be taken by the opponant
So I couldn't really tell you what standards would be applied to grading the posts. Again, that doesn't mean there are none, and your use of more condescending terms to claim that it does has no bearing on that.
I can tell you that, being a theological course at a seminary, it is surely not a science course; so the criteria you want to apply about "making predictions", while importrant to viability of a scientific theory, probably have no relevance at all.
2) If you're on a public forum, you don't get to choose whether you "consent" to people disagreeing with you on that forum. If the moderators of the forum wish to set policy that restricts the ID point of view, that is certainly within their power; outside of that, there is nothing that need be "excused". (I sure hope slashdot remembers to cry "censorship" each time that happens, though.)
What you are claiming is that stating a minorty position is "trolling". You are incorrect and should educate yourself as to what trolling actually means. You also might want to rethink why it is you want freedom from hearing the voices of those who think differently than you.
Yes, it is very convenient to assume that everyone who disagrees with your view simply doesn't understand and, since they are arguing without understanding, is just trolling.
Not effective (outside of preaching to the choir and possibly making yourself feel good), but convenient.
Not interested in betting. There's a huge leap between "the course doesn't teach evolution" (what you're asserting now) and "the posts don't have to demonstrate knowledge of evolution and therefore are pure trolls" (what you asserted earlier).
Both you and the submitter assume that because the course summary doesn't specify the standards by which the posts will be graded, that means there are no standards. Unless you've taken the course, neither of us is in a position to know if that's true - which suggests to me that you are assuming what you want to believe about those who disagree with you.
Considering that this assignment is 20% of the grade, and (in at least one of the courses) is one of only three assignments for the semester (including the final exam), the instructor could impose very rigerous standards when he grades the posts. Whatever standards may or may not exist, detailed assignment instructions would likely be given in the lecture rather than the course summary; so again I can only think of one reason people rush to assume there are none.
...and I know really it's too early to know, but the big question on my mind is: what sort of treatment are we talking about here?
Can a cure for AIDS be derived from this? Or will it be a matter of "if we catch an HIV infection early, we can clear it up and minimize the damage"? Or is it only useful as a preventative measure, which seems to be where the quote in TFS is headed?
If it's only useful as a preventative measure, then there are two big issues.
One is how prone it would be to user error. If it's a "follow these steps every time you're going to put yourself at risk" kind of thing, then there's a concern that the increase in people's willingness to put themselves at risk exceeds the practical efficacy of the prevention. OTOH, if it's a "go to your doctor once (or once every X time period) for a professioally-administered round of protection", then that's probably less an issue.
The other is... look, I'm all for scientific progress, and I think we should research the hell out of this, but let's not jump the gun. As evidenced by the fact that we call potentially-functional strecthes of DNA "junk", we do not understand what they do. If prehistoric animals used this sequence and we don't, there is probably a reason, be it small or large. Maybe it's as simple as "it takes cellular resources and the risk of an HIV-like attack had subsided below the break-even point" - and if that turns out to be the case, FULL SPEED AHEAD! Or maybe evolutionary pressures put the protein in disfavor because it interferes with some other aspect of modern human biology, or has some secondary effect that is harmful. Now it's hard to imagine that would weigh in as "more severe than an active HIV infection", so it might still be a useful treatment for a known case of AIDS if it can be used in that way (depending on cost/benefit vs. other AIDS treatments); but not necessarily a good preventative measure if that were to turn out to be the case.
Did you read the patent, or are you trusting TFS when it says that "markup languages" are prior art for this patent? Because that'a a bit like saying that a new type of metal fastener can't be patented due to all the prior art in making things out of metal.
IMO the patent has problems, but off hand I can't think of actual prior art for this patent - a word processor using a single XML document to represent all of its features, which must include a certain (albeit not terribly impressive) list of features, represented in particular ways, with some sort of "hinting" mechanism (though I really don't see where they're going with that) for other apps using the format...
The two problems I see are: (1) I don't see anything non-obvious about the way they're mapping word processing features to XML tags, and (2) after reading the patent, I don't know that I have enough information to produce an embodiment of the invention, which given the purpose of patents should be an issue.
We aren't talking about whether they do. We are talking about whether they should.
"They don't enforce ones that they don't agree with, or will get them in trouble with their superiors"
You're half right. Individuals not enforcing laws they "don't agree with" get disciplined, and rightly so. Individuals following department policy (i.e. not enforcing laws if it "will get them in trouble") is a different story, and becomes the department's responsibility.
No, I didn't forget that legislators are human. I did remember that we have a system of government that addresses this concern (albeit imperfectly) and we are nonetheless a nation of laws.
There were cities in which you could not find anyone to enforce most civil rights laws in the 60's. I'm sorry to hear you think those laws shouldn't have existed for residents of those cities.
Actually that would be a matter of department policy.
Or again, along the lines of my previous post (which you didn't address): do you equally think it's ok for the officer to take a pass on some guy committing battery because the victim happens to belong to a minority the cop doesn't like? Maybe he thinks his resources could be better used elsewhere, dealing with crimes whose victims he respects.
You're confusing the attack with the symptom. The symptom is a DoS because the attacker is an idiot, but
1) A more savvy attacker could actually issue legitimate-sounding instructions that might get followed
2) The attacker probably wouldn't find it nearly as entertaining if he/she knew that nothing said was actually being heard by anyone. "Oh, look at me, I'm holding down a PTT key and maybe making it hard for someone else's transmissiont to get through!" As an amateur radio operator, or heard deliberate interferance on many occasions, and that's pretty much never what it sounds like.
So encryption may not solve every possible problem, but it would help with a lot of practical ones. That said, you certainly could focus on a protocol more resistant to jamming. A good start would be to go to digital, so you can do more with less bandwidth and have automatic error recovery - which points out that sometimes more complex is more resistant to DoS, because sometimes more complex systems are more efficient.
when we don't like a law, a violation is described in the most vauge terms possible so as to make it sound even more inane than it really is.
I don't believe the DMCA anti-circumvention clause is a good law. I'm also disinclined to believe that this guy's clients were on the up-and-up, though I'd have a hard time finding evidence that meets the criminal standard of proof to convince me one way or the other. As it stands, the criminal law doesn't hinge on that quesiton, though.
Regardless of my personal view of the law, what I really want to rant about at the moment, is this ridiculous description of the act in question - he just modified some hardware! Gee, O.J. Simpson probably just flailed his arms around a bit, and he was found liable for wrongful deaths. Bernie Madhoff just provided a financial service, and look what happened to him!
The details and the context are everything. Don't discredit those who oppose the current law by misrepresenting what the law addresses.
You forget the enforcers are human, and have their own idea of what is unfair, unjust, or just plain disproportionate.
If you allow that a police officer should, at his discretion, refuse to sieze a computer because he doesn't believe in the DMCA, then you accept that another officer might just refuse to enforce an anti-discrimination law.
The police have a job, and it isn't "deciding what the law should be".
Right, and that's why glasses never caught on in the first place until frame-makers started thinking 'fashion' and high-index lenses came around. Oh, wait...
Some people actually care about the functional aspect of the device. If these work well, I'd say they're likely to find a market.
1) Is it practical? Aren't there cases where, to be useful, network traffic shaping takes place well upstream of a specific end user's broadband link? Can that always be translated into "you have x MB with which to do as you please?"
2) What about companies that want to sell services that aren't technically "neutral" but which differentiate them in ways that some customers want? Under the proposed law, I guess they can't. Under this proposal, I guess they can, but have to advertise 0MB/s as that's the total amount of "neutral" bandwidth.
3) If an area is effectively monopolized by a single broadband provider, then changing the rules for how they advertise won't accomplish much.
You can address the 2nd concern just by making it a more comprehensive "labeling law" - you have to clearly tell the user how much of their bandwidth is "neutral", and maybe if you advertise additional bandwidth in terms of Gb/sec (or Mb/sec, or whatever) then you have to give certain information about how you shape that traffic.
That alone would probably keep legislators occupied for a while (not necessarily a bad thing), but I don't know how you'd deal with the other issues.
What a lot of people aren't getting is the role the legal system is playing here.
If this were merely a "refund" as you suggest, the courts wouldn't be involved at all. They are, becasue it's a settlement agreement. Apple is trying to get by with their end of the settlement being a refund of the purchase price, which is insane... but then the family doens't have to accept the settlement, do they?
Which brings us to why this is not, as the headline, summary, and article all try to mislead you into thinking, a gag order. I do find it interesting that none of them actually use the phrase "gag order" - choosing instead "tries to gag" and "a gagging order" - strongly suggesting IMO that the author knows full well that it isn't a gag order, but is deliberately trying to mislead readers.
Again this is because of the role of the court. A gag order is imposed unilaterally. The party subject to it doens't get to agree or disagree; they obey or they are in violation of a court order. If the family had agreed to and accepted the settlement (which they apparently didn't), then the court would enforce the terms they agreed to. If they tried to violate the confidentiality terms, then a gag order might be issued.
Being offered a settlement you don't like is a world different from being silenced by an order of the court. It's also a world different from negotiating a refund without court involvement.
Er, no... distribution is not the only reserved right under copyright. It just happens to be the one most closely applicable to the facts the RIAA keeps bringing to the table.
If I provide a copy of a protected work and you receive it, we can both be liable. (Depending of course on circumstances such as fair use.)
They had more practical ability to "recall" the book than in traditional cases.
That does not mean that it was legal to do so. If, as I and many other believe, they did not have the ability to legally "recall" the book, then the situation is the same as if they were technologically unable to do so. They are the ones who made an error, they are the ones who should be liable.
This solution is unacceptable to the buyer. Refunding the purchase price doesn't automatically make up for having the product yanked back out from under you. As this instance shows, buyers acting in good faith put themselves in a position of dependence on having the product as a consequence of Amazon's (incidentally illegal) actions. If nothing else, that should be grounds for estoppal of any remedy that involves summary deletion of copies bought by people who had every reason and right to expect the transaction was legal.
That this means Amazon would be stuck paying the copyright holder is just too bad for Amazon, just as it would've been were they printing and selling paperback copies in-house only to find out they were in violation of copyright.
Frankly I don't even know why the copyright owner would consider this "solution" acceptable. They still likely lost sales. (I download, I read, you delete, I say "meh, I already read it".)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's called pointing out the significant information in the article. If you think this article is about baseball, you're not paying attention.
The Appeals court specifically indicated how this ruling should be applied to cases you'd probably be more interested in, such as if Google's servers were searched.
If anything, cnn.com is pandering to its audience by focusing on the baseball aspects of a story that's really about the legal bounds of search where databases are involved; and while the court reached its conclusion via a line of logic I don't care for (essentially an appeal to force - "if I decide this way, the consequences would be harmful, so I'll decide a different way"), it is a pro-privacy conclusion that a lot of folks around here are probably interested in.
But by all means, argue that the information shouldn't be made available here because it happens to come from a case that deals with sports and I suppose you think nerds don't do sports.
...which is utterly useless when you in fact needed just one baby, but needed it on a deadline of "one month". That's why "project manager" and "statistician" are spelled differently.
(If I comment on the ways in which the two are similar, I will surely offend one or both...)
There are many skills that used to be required learning for all, that are now known only to a handful of hobbiests. I guess I'm not sure why it's a "problem" that handwriting should be one of them. For that matter, handwriting as a universal skill has had a pretty short run if you put it in historical perspective.
When I have reason to set pen to paper, I'm still able to convey my meaning. It may not be as pretty as if I still "wrote" instead of "printing" (or then again... my penmanship was never that great), but so what? When I need my message to look pretty - i.e. because it's for a prospective employer - the person receiving it is going to have a definition of "pretty" that requires me to use a computer anyway.
If for some reason I'm caught without a washing machine I find that frustrating, too, but I don't lament the lost art of beating clothes on the rocks.
That's a fascinating opinion. The legal fact is, you would not be immune from prosecution.
What matters isn't whether you claim the statement is one of opinion vs. fact. What matters is whether the statement itself conveys a matter of opinion or a matter of fact.
I do believe that the vast majority of ideas you might want to express can be framed properly as an opinion, but starting your sentence with "it is my opinion" isn't enough to keep you safe.
"It is my opinion that John Smith is a terrible businessman" may be safe; "it is my opinion that John Smith loses money for all of his clients" probably isn't.
The line is blurry, of course, which means even if you're on the right side of it, you may end up in court. So perhaps instead of trying to be coy, you should just consider not slandering those you dislike. It's just another approach you might consider.
We must not let google publish these books, because they might make choices about which ones to spend their resources publishing!
Far better that nobody can get copies of any of them.
</sarcasm>
"Ship the PC back to us on your own dime, include a self-addressed stamped envelope for the paper refund check, allow six to eight weeks for the refund to arrive"
If the consumer protection laws in your area don't prohibit that behavior, and the company's normal return policy puts you on the hook for shipping and providing an SASE for them to send you a check, yes.
Of cousre, nobody actually does business that way, and if they did their only customers would be people who didn't read the return policy (which is frnakly their own fault IMO, but since opininos on that vary, that's why there are consumer protection laws).
"and pay your bank's check cashing fee"
Your bank charges you a fee to cash a check? You should get a better bank. Your failure to do so is not the fault of anyone trying to send you money.
"Then buy another of our PCs"
And why would the PC you purchase as a replacement come from them? Mine sure as hell wouldn't.
In short, you're trying to pretend that a company refunding your purchase price in some way wouldn't be sufficient remedy for a transaction in which you were not harmed but simply didn't like the product. Grow up.
While I personally find the basis for EULA to be questionable, my lawyer friends tell me that US courts have indeed held them to be binding.
The double-edged nature of this is exactly why Lenovo should give the guy a refund. The fact that the software trades under the EULA makes the claim that it's "part of the computer" or even "part of the same sale as the computer" suspect to me. The software industry has changed the nature of the "sale" for the software, and the courts (at least in the US) have let them get by with it; so retailers should have to live with the inconvenience of those terms just like end users (as they're a party to the modified "sale" as well).
That said, the EULA also acknowledges that you may be unable to get your refund from the retailer and gives you instructions to follow in that event. So while I think Lenovo should give the refund, I don't think they have to.
As another poster alluded, my other question is whether they offered him a full refund for the entire computer. If so, I'd say they're in the clear (but rather foolish) and that he'd do himself a favor to take the money and buy something else.
1) Let's see here... I have done none of the following:
- Taken the course in question
- Spoken to anyone with knowledge of the course about its content
- Chosen to assume, as you have, the position to be taken by the opponant
So I couldn't really tell you what standards would be applied to grading the posts. Again, that doesn't mean there are none, and your use of more condescending terms to claim that it does has no bearing on that.
I can tell you that, being a theological course at a seminary, it is surely not a science course; so the criteria you want to apply about "making predictions", while importrant to viability of a scientific theory, probably have no relevance at all.
2) If you're on a public forum, you don't get to choose whether you "consent" to people disagreeing with you on that forum. If the moderators of the forum wish to set policy that restricts the ID point of view, that is certainly within their power; outside of that, there is nothing that need be "excused". (I sure hope slashdot remembers to cry "censorship" each time that happens, though.)
What you are claiming is that stating a minorty position is "trolling". You are incorrect and should educate yourself as to what trolling actually means. You also might want to rethink why it is you want freedom from hearing the voices of those who think differently than you.
Yes, it is very convenient to assume that everyone who disagrees with your view simply doesn't understand and, since they are arguing without understanding, is just trolling.
Not effective (outside of preaching to the choir and possibly making yourself feel good), but convenient.
Not interested in betting. There's a huge leap between "the course doesn't teach evolution" (what you're asserting now) and "the posts don't have to demonstrate knowledge of evolution and therefore are pure trolls" (what you asserted earlier).
Both you and the submitter assume that because the course summary doesn't specify the standards by which the posts will be graded, that means there are no standards. Unless you've taken the course, neither of us is in a position to know if that's true - which suggests to me that you are assuming what you want to believe about those who disagree with you.
Considering that this assignment is 20% of the grade, and (in at least one of the courses) is one of only three assignments for the semester (including the final exam), the instructor could impose very rigerous standards when he grades the posts. Whatever standards may or may not exist, detailed assignment instructions would likely be given in the lecture rather than the course summary; so again I can only think of one reason people rush to assume there are none.
...and I know really it's too early to know, but the big question on my mind is: what sort of treatment are we talking about here?
Can a cure for AIDS be derived from this? Or will it be a matter of "if we catch an HIV infection early, we can clear it up and minimize the damage"? Or is it only useful as a preventative measure, which seems to be where the quote in TFS is headed?
If it's only useful as a preventative measure, then there are two big issues.
One is how prone it would be to user error. If it's a "follow these steps every time you're going to put yourself at risk" kind of thing, then there's a concern that the increase in people's willingness to put themselves at risk exceeds the practical efficacy of the prevention. OTOH, if it's a "go to your doctor once (or once every X time period) for a professioally-administered round of protection", then that's probably less an issue.
The other is... look, I'm all for scientific progress, and I think we should research the hell out of this, but let's not jump the gun. As evidenced by the fact that we call potentially-functional strecthes of DNA "junk", we do not understand what they do. If prehistoric animals used this sequence and we don't, there is probably a reason, be it small or large. Maybe it's as simple as "it takes cellular resources and the risk of an HIV-like attack had subsided below the break-even point" - and if that turns out to be the case, FULL SPEED AHEAD! Or maybe evolutionary pressures put the protein in disfavor because it interferes with some other aspect of modern human biology, or has some secondary effect that is harmful. Now it's hard to imagine that would weigh in as "more severe than an active HIV infection", so it might still be a useful treatment for a known case of AIDS if it can be used in that way (depending on cost/benefit vs. other AIDS treatments); but not necessarily a good preventative measure if that were to turn out to be the case.
Did you read the patent, or are you trusting TFS when it says that "markup languages" are prior art for this patent? Because that'a a bit like saying that a new type of metal fastener can't be patented due to all the prior art in making things out of metal.
IMO the patent has problems, but off hand I can't think of actual prior art for this patent - a word processor using a single XML document to represent all of its features, which must include a certain (albeit not terribly impressive) list of features, represented in particular ways, with some sort of "hinting" mechanism (though I really don't see where they're going with that) for other apps using the format...
The two problems I see are: (1) I don't see anything non-obvious about the way they're mapping word processing features to XML tags, and (2) after reading the patent, I don't know that I have enough information to produce an embodiment of the invention, which given the purpose of patents should be an issue.
"The fact is, police enforce do laws arbitrarily"
We aren't talking about whether they do. We are talking about whether they should.
"They don't enforce ones that they don't agree with, or will get them in trouble with their superiors"
You're half right. Individuals not enforcing laws they "don't agree with" get disciplined, and rightly so. Individuals following department policy (i.e. not enforcing laws if it "will get them in trouble") is a different story, and becomes the department's responsibility.
No, I didn't forget that legislators are human. I did remember that we have a system of government that addresses this concern (albeit imperfectly) and we are nonetheless a nation of laws.
There were cities in which you could not find anyone to enforce most civil rights laws in the 60's. I'm sorry to hear you think those laws shouldn't have existed for residents of those cities.
Actually that would be a matter of department policy.
Or again, along the lines of my previous post (which you didn't address): do you equally think it's ok for the officer to take a pass on some guy committing battery because the victim happens to belong to a minority the cop doesn't like? Maybe he thinks his resources could be better used elsewhere, dealing with crimes whose victims he respects.
You're confusing the attack with the symptom. The symptom is a DoS because the attacker is an idiot, but
1) A more savvy attacker could actually issue legitimate-sounding instructions that might get followed
2) The attacker probably wouldn't find it nearly as entertaining if he/she knew that nothing said was actually being heard by anyone. "Oh, look at me, I'm holding down a PTT key and maybe making it hard for someone else's transmissiont to get through!" As an amateur radio operator, or heard deliberate interferance on many occasions, and that's pretty much never what it sounds like.
So encryption may not solve every possible problem, but it would help with a lot of practical ones. That said, you certainly could focus on a protocol more resistant to jamming. A good start would be to go to digital, so you can do more with less bandwidth and have automatic error recovery - which points out that sometimes more complex is more resistant to DoS, because sometimes more complex systems are more efficient.
when we don't like a law, a violation is described in the most vauge terms possible so as to make it sound even more inane than it really is.
I don't believe the DMCA anti-circumvention clause is a good law. I'm also disinclined to believe that this guy's clients were on the up-and-up, though I'd have a hard time finding evidence that meets the criminal standard of proof to convince me one way or the other. As it stands, the criminal law doesn't hinge on that quesiton, though.
Regardless of my personal view of the law, what I really want to rant about at the moment, is this ridiculous description of the act in question - he just modified some hardware! Gee, O.J. Simpson probably just flailed his arms around a bit, and he was found liable for wrongful deaths. Bernie Madhoff just provided a financial service, and look what happened to him!
The details and the context are everything. Don't discredit those who oppose the current law by misrepresenting what the law addresses.
You forget the enforcers are human, and have their own idea of what is unfair, unjust, or just plain disproportionate.
If you allow that a police officer should, at his discretion, refuse to sieze a computer because he doesn't believe in the DMCA, then you accept that another officer might just refuse to enforce an anti-discrimination law.
The police have a job, and it isn't "deciding what the law should be".
Right, and that's why glasses never caught on in the first place until frame-makers started thinking 'fashion' and high-index lenses came around. Oh, wait...
Some people actually care about the functional aspect of the device. If these work well, I'd say they're likely to find a market.
Not bad, but three things:
1) Is it practical? Aren't there cases where, to be useful, network traffic shaping takes place well upstream of a specific end user's broadband link? Can that always be translated into "you have x MB with which to do as you please?"
2) What about companies that want to sell services that aren't technically "neutral" but which differentiate them in ways that some customers want? Under the proposed law, I guess they can't. Under this proposal, I guess they can, but have to advertise 0MB/s as that's the total amount of "neutral" bandwidth.
3) If an area is effectively monopolized by a single broadband provider, then changing the rules for how they advertise won't accomplish much.
You can address the 2nd concern just by making it a more comprehensive "labeling law" - you have to clearly tell the user how much of their bandwidth is "neutral", and maybe if you advertise additional bandwidth in terms of Gb/sec (or Mb/sec, or whatever) then you have to give certain information about how you shape that traffic.
That alone would probably keep legislators occupied for a while (not necessarily a bad thing), but I don't know how you'd deal with the other issues.
What a lot of people aren't getting is the role the legal system is playing here.
If this were merely a "refund" as you suggest, the courts wouldn't be involved at all. They are, becasue it's a settlement agreement. Apple is trying to get by with their end of the settlement being a refund of the purchase price, which is insane... but then the family doens't have to accept the settlement, do they?
Which brings us to why this is not, as the headline, summary, and article all try to mislead you into thinking, a gag order. I do find it interesting that none of them actually use the phrase "gag order" - choosing instead "tries to gag" and "a gagging order" - strongly suggesting IMO that the author knows full well that it isn't a gag order, but is deliberately trying to mislead readers.
Again this is because of the role of the court. A gag order is imposed unilaterally. The party subject to it doens't get to agree or disagree; they obey or they are in violation of a court order. If the family had agreed to and accepted the settlement (which they apparently didn't), then the court would enforce the terms they agreed to. If they tried to violate the confidentiality terms, then a gag order might be issued.
Being offered a settlement you don't like is a world different from being silenced by an order of the court. It's also a world different from negotiating a refund without court involvement.
Er, no... distribution is not the only reserved right under copyright. It just happens to be the one most closely applicable to the facts the RIAA keeps bringing to the table.
If I provide a copy of a protected work and you receive it, we can both be liable. (Depending of course on circumstances such as fair use.)
I went to public school and 1984 was assigned reading.
Perhaps you should blame the quality of your reading list on your public school (or maybe even on your teachers), rather than on public schools.
They had more practical ability to "recall" the book than in traditional cases.
That does not mean that it was legal to do so. If, as I and many other believe, they did not have the ability to legally "recall" the book, then the situation is the same as if they were technologically unable to do so. They are the ones who made an error, they are the ones who should be liable.
This solution is unacceptable to the buyer. Refunding the purchase price doesn't automatically make up for having the product yanked back out from under you. As this instance shows, buyers acting in good faith put themselves in a position of dependence on having the product as a consequence of Amazon's (incidentally illegal) actions. If nothing else, that should be grounds for estoppal of any remedy that involves summary deletion of copies bought by people who had every reason and right to expect the transaction was legal.
That this means Amazon would be stuck paying the copyright holder is just too bad for Amazon, just as it would've been were they printing and selling paperback copies in-house only to find out they were in violation of copyright.
Frankly I don't even know why the copyright owner would consider this "solution" acceptable. They still likely lost sales. (I download, I read, you delete, I say "meh, I already read it".)