I worked for a DoD contractor in 1999. Our customer had a piece of ground support software for the A-10 that they wanted to make Y2K compliant. Of course, we had to write up a detailed description of the problem and what it might affect so the customer could justify the expenditure to the bean counters. Then we had to write up a preliminary design review to get approval at the high level for what we were going to do. Then we had a critical design review so they could sign off on the detailed implementation of how we were supposed to implement the changes. I based my CDR on the code I had already written to fix the problem. Then I had to put together a testing specification so that we could prove that our date fix didn't destroy the functionality of completely unrelated code. Then we had to go test it on site, do a test report and a final project report.
Nine month project. I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure that the government spent half a million on the entire program. I was the sole technical actor. I changed something like 20 lines of Pascal code, which took me maybe a week or two. I think I spent more time figuring out how to put together their ancient tool chain than writing actual code. Your government dollars at work.
You are referring to the.NET Base Class Library, which is completely independent from the language.
The Federal District Court for the Northern District of California disagrees with you. This was one of the major factors in holding for Google that the APIs are not copyrightable. Java isn't Java without core class libraries.
I don't watch all the RIAA cases closely, but at least in the Jammie Thomas case, the labels have been seeking statutory damages, and it's the jury that keeps nailing her with huge statutory damages for willful infringement. The judge actually tried to reduce it, then got smacked down on appeal, then there was a new trial and the jury nailed her with an even bigger judgment.
(a) Except for an action brought for a violation of the rights of the author under section 106A (a), and subject to the provisions of subsection (b), [1] no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.
The fact that you have a copyright doesn't mean you can sue on it. If you want to sue, you have to register it.
For that matter, why should his viewpoint be held as superior to the viewpoint of anyone else who is not a nuclear physicist?
Shhhh! You're not supposed to say things like that while we're worshipping at the altar of the ill-defined gods of "science." "Scientists" just know. Because they're "scientists."
You are correct that anything with more than "de minimis" creativity can be considered a separate copyrighted work. Your comment, for example, would be a "work" under the copyright law, and copyright automatically attached to it as soon as you typed it. But before you can sue somebody on that work in federal court, you have to register it. As I said, the catch is that you have to decide what to register before infringement starts if you want statutory damages. If you wait until after infringement has already started, you can only get actual damages (if you prove them). In that case, it's not so important how many distinct works you have, though it can still matter for some other purposes.
If the corporation has provable damages, why shouldn't it get the damages it can prove? That's not a double standard. It applies to anybody. Either prove your damages, or seek statutory damages if you qualify.
Nobody got rid of actual copyright damages. Statutory damages are just easier to get if you qualify for them. It's the plaintiff's choice whether to seek actual damages or not. If you can prove them, they might be much more than statutory damages. Or they might be next to nothing and impossible to prove.
A single "work" is whatever is registered at the Copyright office. If you have 100 photographs and register each one separately, then you have 100 separate works. If you register them all together as a collection, you have one work. The catch is, to get statutory damages, you have to register before infringement starts or within 3 months of first publication. So you have to decide in advance whether it's worth it to pay 100 separate $40 registration fees or one single registration fee.
Specifically, within three months of publication or before the first act of infringement by the defendant. I don't know if Twitter photos were timely registered, but the songs file sharers are getting sued on certainly were.
The absolute minimum that can be awarded per infringed work is $200, and that's if you can convince the fact finder that you infringed without knowing. For a file sharer, that's a hard case to make. Damages can go up to $150,000 per infringed work if it was willful. Also remember that in the Jammie Thomas case, it's the jury that keeps awarding huge damages. The judge has actually tried to cut it down and been reversed on appeal, only to have the next jury award an even bigger number. I get the feeling that Jammie Thomas doesn't play well to a jury.
If an individual were to tweet an image originally made available on a large corporation's website, you can bet the Judge would rule that damages would be granted per each viewing of it.
No they wouldn't. Statutory damages for copyrights are always awarded per infringed work. The only discretion for the fact finder is the amount, which can vary anywhere between $200 for innocent infringement to $150,000 for willful infringement. But it is always per work, which means that it doesn't matter if two people saw it or ten million. This is exactly what is happening in the RIAA file sharing cases, by the way. The damages are so large because there are lots of infringed works (e.g., if you shared 10 songs, damages could be up to $1.5 million).
If you want damages based on how many people saw the picture, you would have to prove those as actual damages, either by proving that there is a profit per view attributable to the infringer, or that there is a profit you lost per infringing view. That's a lot harder than just collecting statutory damages.
Deliberately engaging in an act that foreseeably results in the death of another person is murder, even if your subjective intent is not to kill that person. For example, if you are deer hunting, and you see a marvelous buck, but some other hunter happens to be standing between you and the deer, and you decide to shoot anyway because you really, really want those antlers on your wall, you're guilty of murder. It doesn't matter that you were indifferent to whether the other hunter lived or died.
Whatever McVeigh's imaginary persecutions were, the fact is that he deliberately blew up a building, knowing it was full of people, not one of which was an immediate threat to him or his safety. You don't get to do that and be a hero. The guy was just evil.
He was incarcerated and killed for his beliefs. Funny how all those pro-gun people who trot out the "we need to defend ourselves agaisnt the government" revile Mcveigh rather than actually look up to him for doing exactly what they claim they need their guns for!
Wow, this is truly one of the stupidest things I have ever read in my life. Timothy McVeigh was incarcerated and "killed" (as you put it) for murdering 168 innocent people. He was not defending himself or his beliefs. He was not engaged in combat. He just drove a bomb up and killed them. That is not something people should "look up to him" for. I would assume you're a troll if you had posted AC. Since you logged in, perhaps you are just crazy?
All increased profits from cutting costs should go to the shareholders/company if that is truly who/what is top priority.
Perhaps, but that is not a hard and fast rule. If the shareholders believe that the directors have done something like pay an exorbitant and unnecessary bonus to a CEO, they can sue. It's called a "derivative suit."
I would assume then that not going bankrupt and losing all your customers money comes under the general contractual and legal duties and above the duties to shareholders?
AIG has no contractual obligation to not go bankrupt or to not lose your money. Ordinary care means that if one of their employees negligently rear ends you in the course and scope of employment, you can sue AIG for your injuries. The gap between "fiduciary duty" and "ordinary care" is about as wide as the gap between x86 machine code and Visual Basic.
A companies first and foremost responsibility is to it's customers, 2nd to it's employees and finally 3rd to it's shareholders.
Um, no. At least in Texas, the directors, officers, and employees owe fiduciary duties to the company (shareholders). The company owes nothing to the customers and employees outside of any contractual duties they assume and the general legal duties like ordinary care and non-discrimination. I assume it's the same in most other states.
What we need is a "Law XYZ was total bullshit, even when it was still on the books, and prosecutions for violation of it, however formally correct, are similarly unjust."
It's called "changing the law." Like, "Hey, you know how we used to think it was a good idea to say that X was against the law? Well, we changed our minds. We are repealing the law that makes X illegal. You can X all the livelong day if you please. You can X your friggin' brains out. We won't bother you about it. So if anything, good or bad, happens because you just go nuts X-ing from sunrise to sunset and into the dark of the night, c'est la vie and all that. We are OUT of the business of policing X." How much more repudiation of the former law do you need?
Slashdot Mirror
There was nothing classified about this system.
I worked for a DoD contractor in 1999. Our customer had a piece of ground support software for the A-10 that they wanted to make Y2K compliant. Of course, we had to write up a detailed description of the problem and what it might affect so the customer could justify the expenditure to the bean counters. Then we had to write up a preliminary design review to get approval at the high level for what we were going to do. Then we had a critical design review so they could sign off on the detailed implementation of how we were supposed to implement the changes. I based my CDR on the code I had already written to fix the problem. Then I had to put together a testing specification so that we could prove that our date fix didn't destroy the functionality of completely unrelated code. Then we had to go test it on site, do a test report and a final project report.
Nine month project. I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure that the government spent half a million on the entire program. I was the sole technical actor. I changed something like 20 lines of Pascal code, which took me maybe a week or two. I think I spent more time figuring out how to put together their ancient tool chain than writing actual code. Your government dollars at work.
In the 64-bit ABI, a long is 64-bits, so the 2038 time issue does not exist for 64-bit apps.
Perhaps not, but that Y292e9 bug is going to cause some serious headaches for the Pang-Galactic Empire.
You are referring to the .NET Base Class Library, which is completely independent from the language.
The Federal District Court for the Northern District of California disagrees with you. This was one of the major factors in holding for Google that the APIs are not copyrightable. Java isn't Java without core class libraries.
I don't watch all the RIAA cases closely, but at least in the Jammie Thomas case, the labels have been seeking statutory damages, and it's the jury that keeps nailing her with huge statutory damages for willful infringement. The judge actually tried to reduce it, then got smacked down on appeal, then there was a new trial and the jury nailed her with an even bigger judgment.
(a) Except for an action brought for a violation of the rights of the author under section 106A (a), and subject to the provisions of subsection (b), [1] no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.
The fact that you have a copyright doesn't mean you can sue on it. If you want to sue, you have to register it.
Having a copyright and being registered are not the same thing.
Since when do 5 year olds nap? Mine (apparently) runs on a fission generator in overdrive from 7:00 a.m. to about 10:00 p.m.
For that matter, why should his viewpoint be held as superior to the viewpoint of anyone else who is not a nuclear physicist?
Shhhh! You're not supposed to say things like that while we're worshipping at the altar of the ill-defined gods of "science." "Scientists" just know. Because they're "scientists."
You are correct that anything with more than "de minimis" creativity can be considered a separate copyrighted work. Your comment, for example, would be a "work" under the copyright law, and copyright automatically attached to it as soon as you typed it. But before you can sue somebody on that work in federal court, you have to register it. As I said, the catch is that you have to decide what to register before infringement starts if you want statutory damages. If you wait until after infringement has already started, you can only get actual damages (if you prove them). In that case, it's not so important how many distinct works you have, though it can still matter for some other purposes.
If the corporation has provable damages, why shouldn't it get the damages it can prove? That's not a double standard. It applies to anybody. Either prove your damages, or seek statutory damages if you qualify.
Nobody got rid of actual copyright damages. Statutory damages are just easier to get if you qualify for them. It's the plaintiff's choice whether to seek actual damages or not. If you can prove them, they might be much more than statutory damages. Or they might be next to nothing and impossible to prove.
A single "work" is whatever is registered at the Copyright office. If you have 100 photographs and register each one separately, then you have 100 separate works. If you register them all together as a collection, you have one work. The catch is, to get statutory damages, you have to register before infringement starts or within 3 months of first publication. So you have to decide in advance whether it's worth it to pay 100 separate $40 registration fees or one single registration fee.
Specifically, within three months of publication or before the first act of infringement by the defendant. I don't know if Twitter photos were timely registered, but the songs file sharers are getting sued on certainly were.
Also, the judge applied the same rule of statutory damages (per infringed work) that is being used in the file sharing cases.
The absolute minimum that can be awarded per infringed work is $200, and that's if you can convince the fact finder that you infringed without knowing. For a file sharer, that's a hard case to make. Damages can go up to $150,000 per infringed work if it was willful. Also remember that in the Jammie Thomas case, it's the jury that keeps awarding huge damages. The judge has actually tried to cut it down and been reversed on appeal, only to have the next jury award an even bigger number. I get the feeling that Jammie Thomas doesn't play well to a jury.
If an individual were to tweet an image originally made available on a large corporation's website, you can bet the Judge would rule that damages would be granted per each viewing of it.
No they wouldn't. Statutory damages for copyrights are always awarded per infringed work. The only discretion for the fact finder is the amount, which can vary anywhere between $200 for innocent infringement to $150,000 for willful infringement. But it is always per work, which means that it doesn't matter if two people saw it or ten million. This is exactly what is happening in the RIAA file sharing cases, by the way. The damages are so large because there are lots of infringed works (e.g., if you shared 10 songs, damages could be up to $1.5 million).
If you want damages based on how many people saw the picture, you would have to prove those as actual damages, either by proving that there is a profit per view attributable to the infringer, or that there is a profit you lost per infringing view. That's a lot harder than just collecting statutory damages.
Deliberately engaging in an act that foreseeably results in the death of another person is murder, even if your subjective intent is not to kill that person. For example, if you are deer hunting, and you see a marvelous buck, but some other hunter happens to be standing between you and the deer, and you decide to shoot anyway because you really, really want those antlers on your wall, you're guilty of murder. It doesn't matter that you were indifferent to whether the other hunter lived or died.
Whatever McVeigh's imaginary persecutions were, the fact is that he deliberately blew up a building, knowing it was full of people, not one of which was an immediate threat to him or his safety. You don't get to do that and be a hero. The guy was just evil.
He was incarcerated and killed for his beliefs. Funny how all those pro-gun people who trot out the "we need to defend ourselves agaisnt the government" revile Mcveigh rather than actually look up to him for doing exactly what they claim they need their guns for!
Wow, this is truly one of the stupidest things I have ever read in my life. Timothy McVeigh was incarcerated and "killed" (as you put it) for murdering 168 innocent people. He was not defending himself or his beliefs. He was not engaged in combat. He just drove a bomb up and killed them. That is not something people should "look up to him" for. I would assume you're a troll if you had posted AC. Since you logged in, perhaps you are just crazy?
All increased profits from cutting costs should go to the shareholders/company if that is truly who/what is top priority.
Perhaps, but that is not a hard and fast rule. If the shareholders believe that the directors have done something like pay an exorbitant and unnecessary bonus to a CEO, they can sue. It's called a "derivative suit."
I would assume then that not going bankrupt and losing all your customers money comes under the general contractual and legal duties and above the duties to shareholders?
AIG has no contractual obligation to not go bankrupt or to not lose your money. Ordinary care means that if one of their employees negligently rear ends you in the course and scope of employment, you can sue AIG for your injuries. The gap between "fiduciary duty" and "ordinary care" is about as wide as the gap between x86 machine code and Visual Basic.
A companies first and foremost responsibility is to it's customers, 2nd to it's employees and finally 3rd to it's shareholders.
Um, no. At least in Texas, the directors, officers, and employees owe fiduciary duties to the company (shareholders). The company owes nothing to the customers and employees outside of any contractual duties they assume and the general legal duties like ordinary care and non-discrimination. I assume it's the same in most other states.
(More than usual, this is not legal advice.
"(Score:5, Redundant)"
Why yes, I think you do win.
What we need is a "Law XYZ was total bullshit, even when it was still on the books, and prosecutions for violation of it, however formally correct, are similarly unjust."
It's called "changing the law." Like, "Hey, you know how we used to think it was a good idea to say that X was against the law? Well, we changed our minds. We are repealing the law that makes X illegal. You can X all the livelong day if you please. You can X your friggin' brains out. We won't bother you about it. So if anything, good or bad, happens because you just go nuts X-ing from sunrise to sunset and into the dark of the night, c'est la vie and all that. We are OUT of the business of policing X." How much more repudiation of the former law do you need?
old Dr. Who at best
My desire to see The Hobbit just multiplied ten-fold.