That's a poor analogy. The screwdriver isn't copyrighted. The manufacturer isn't selling a "license" to the screwdriver or a "copy" of the screwdriver. He's selling you a screwdriver. The screwdriver has intrinsic value as an object. It's a chattel.
In contrast, the physical media the game comes on has little intrinsic value. And to the extent that it does, nobody can complain about you using the install disc as a coaster. The real value is in the copy of the software, and many courts allow parties to contract around copyright (even things like fair use, or not copying things that are in the public domain). Lookup the ProCD case out of the Seventh Circuit. Not everybody agrees with it, but many courts have followed it. The question is tougher when it's a "click-wrap," but many courts will even uphold those. The fact pattern is not unique: A sells a copy of a work to B under a contractual license. B breaches the contract. A sues for copyright infringement, because B only received a copy under the terms of the license. When B breached, his license was invalid, so his rights to the copy are lost. A wins. If it didn't work like this, you could never license anything to anybody except under the existing copyright language. Meaning, for example, that the GPL would not be valid, nor would any software license. So based on precedent, this is not an absurd case.
I'm not saying it has to be that way. Nimmer on Copyright is very critical of ProCD, and some courts have declined to follow it. Nimmer would prevent parties from contracting around some fundamental copyright policy. The problem with that approach is "fundamental policy" is very dependent on who's defining it. So many courts (probably a majority) just don't go there. They uphold the contract, period. If you don't like the result, really the only way to change it is to encourage Congress to pass a version of 17 U.S.C. 301 that expressly preempts some contractual provisions, but leaves the rest undisturbed.
Disclaimer: I don't represent anybody here. This post is not legal advice. Don't rely on it for any reason.
Actually, yes, I do have to. My firm requires me to. But hey, if you are a lawyer and you practice law in a state where lawyers are immune from negligent misrepresentation suits, Enjoy the feeling, man. Also, let me know which state it is so I can move there. In Texas, lawyers are about the only people left that you still can sue.
Actually, a defense attorney almost never wants his client to testify, because---to be frank---most of them are guilty as sin and lousy liars. But a lot of them are really arrogant and think they'll have the jury eating out of their hands. Those guys are a prosecutor's dream. You can have the toughest case in the world, and then the defendant gets on the stand, and makes your case for you (kind of like Hans Reiser did).
And just because I have to (yes, I really do)... Yes, IAAL, but I don't represent you, and this is not legal advice. If you are charged with a crime and you rely on this post as legal advice, you are a moron. Actually, if you rely on any post on Slashdot as legal advice for any reason, you are a moron. Also, I do patents, copyrights and trademark, not murder. So assume I don't know what I'm talking about.
If you're actually attempting to prove you own a patent on the RCA connector... Actually, they're not. All they asserted were design patents, which are flimsy little patents drawn to the ornamental design of the product. They're actually a sort of bastard child you'd get from a weird threesome between copyright, trademark and patent laws. You infringe a design patent by selling a product that looks like the patented design. It has nothing to do with the technology. The fact that they sent five (essentially saying, "You're too close to all five of these different ornamental designs") is pretty good evidence that this was just anti-competitive grand standing. They were just hoping that Blue Jeans would see the word "patent" and think $4M litigation and roll over and stop competing.
Let's be honest. What he said was basically, "I left because my wife gave me permission to." Those who are married know exactly what he's talking about.
Most of them do. I'm not a stellar student. My undergrad GPA was around a 3.0 or 3.1 in EE. The average for my entering class was something over 3.7 or so. Despite having probably one of the lowest undergrad GPAs of the entering class, I still made Law Review and got a job with a big firm. It helped that I passed the patent bar before I interviewed for jobs.
I graduated with a pretty good job while the liberal arts guys were thinking, "Maybe I need to go ahead and get that teaching cert."
But then I went to law school, and now the guys with degrees in art history who couldn't even sit for the patent bar are making as much as I do. So take from that what you will.
Seriously guys, with basically a carte blance from both major parties at every level from local to state to federal, with a huge budget and the latest technological advances at your fingertips, you still can't plausibly rig an election? I tell you, the art sure has fallen from the glory days of LBJ. It really makes you wonder what has become of our once-great nation.
The "how do we divvy up the loot" question is the worst one. Do we put one group in charge (like the RIAA)? Do we really expect them to be fair to all the artists who aren't a member of their group? Or do only they get paid, thus effectively making the a de-facto monopoly? Does that mean there are "good" artists (who my fee pays for) and "bad" artists (who my fee doesn't, thus I can't download their stuff)? Should we let the government run it, thus making it an entitlement bureaucracy? Does every artist get an even share (good for little guys), or do the big artists get more (they are more popular... after all). Does the medium matter? Does my fee pay for me to have the rights to get free sheet music? Why not? If I'm an artist, can I opt out of this saying "no one downloads my music, despite the fee"?
You're making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. This is actually very simple. The money goes directly to the guys who paid for the law, to do with as they please (and preferably tax free, while we're at it). How else do we reimburse them for all that money they spent bribing Congress to pass it?
This guy deserves to be prosecuted under anti-hacking statutes. Exactly. I mean, he was using a debugger! Doesn't he know that violates the DMCA? No doubt he'll be hearing from the G-Archiver lawyers AND the DoJ soon. It's time to show this clown that, in America, we don't put up with these kinds of shenanigans. And somebody call the copyright lobby. This is exactly the story they've been looking for to justify increasing the penalties for violating copyright to capital punishment.
Harry Nilsson wrote "One", Three Dog Night merely covered it... WITHOUT ASKING!!! Which is perfectly legal if you pay the mechanical royalties (and meet some other requirements).
Some of these guys are hand-picked by the very same administration, did you expect these shrewd men and women to bite the very hand that feeds them? Don't expect any real change unless there are fundamental changes to the whole administrative. Yeah, just look at John Paul Stevens and David Souter. Nothing but a couple of lap dogs for the Republicans.
The same guy who sponsored the McCain-Feingold immigration bill that was almost (maybe is) political suicide for a conservative?
Wrong act. McCain-Feingold was the Wipe-Our-Butts-with-the-First-Amendment It's-Now-Illegal-to-Criticize-the-Incumbent-The-Month-Before-The-Election
You'll-Never-Kick-Us-Out-Of-Office-Now-Suckers! "Campaign Finance Reform" Act (informally called the "Bite Me James Madison!" Act). It's one of the reasons I absolutely will not vote for McCain under any circumstances.
I think what he describes sounds a lot more like continental (and Louisiana) Civil Law. In civil law, supposedly everything is in the statutes, so courts don't get to make new law. At common law, judges writing law is not a bug, it's a feature. It's been like that for many centuries, and for the most part, it works pretty well. Judges can protect rights that the drafters of the law didn't foresee. That's a good thing (though I hasten to point out that this is not the same thing as using non-textual constitutional rights to strike down what the legislators did write).
Actually, I think that Romney's specific patent reform proposal (as on Dennis Crouch's Patently-O blog) was the best. He wanted to put people with a clue in charge of the USPTO and appoint judges with a clue to the Federal Circuit. That would go a LONG way to cleaning up the patent system. I really didn't care much for Romney until I read that (and I'm a practicing Mormon). I was actually planning to vote for him in the Texas primaries March 4, but now that he's dropped out, I'm thinking I may go with the Democratic primary and vote for Obama. His "reform" is much more vague, but he seems to be smart and genuine, which is more than I can say for McCain, Clinton or Huckabee.
DISCLAIMER (Yes, I really do have to say this): I am a patent attorney, but I don't represent you. This post is just my personal opinion, and is not endorsed by Jackson Walker LLP, its partners, or its agents. This post should not be relied on by anyone for any reason whatsoever.
This article is ridiculous. Some noob spouting about anecdotal problems he had with a Circuit City computer does not inspire respect. His biggest issue? Facebook doesnt work because facebook's website is broken. But its Vista's fault. Is this some sort of joke?
Has the slashdot demographic decayed this much? :s/decayed/evolved
Ok, let's review the discussion. A poster points out that you vote for electors, who behave and vote according to the mandate of those who elected them to the college. Anything else would be flagrant and obvious. You respond that the poster is naive, and seem to think that there is some systemic chicanery in the electoral college. So I challenge you to point to so much as a single instance where an elector has defected and changed the outcome of an election. Before you can have systemic abuse, you have to have at least a single abuse. And again, if the electors were voting contrary to their mandates, it would be blatantly obvious, because people usually know the morning after the election how many electoral votes to expect for each candidate.
The burden of proof is on you. Show me some evidence of this systemic problem in the electoral college, where apparently they get together in a secret back room and secretly throw the election after the people have already voted and expect a certain candidate to win. This is truly a new conspiracy theory for me.
So, I'm assuming that you can point to some instance in recent history where an elector flagrantly voted against his or her state and changed the outcome of the election (and no, Florida in 2000 doesn't count, no matter how bitter the whiny Democrats still are about it; the Republican electors all voted for Bush like they were supposed to after the election was certified).
Slashdot Mirror
That's a poor analogy. The screwdriver isn't copyrighted. The manufacturer isn't selling a "license" to the screwdriver or a "copy" of the screwdriver. He's selling you a screwdriver. The screwdriver has intrinsic value as an object. It's a chattel.
In contrast, the physical media the game comes on has little intrinsic value. And to the extent that it does, nobody can complain about you using the install disc as a coaster. The real value is in the copy of the software, and many courts allow parties to contract around copyright (even things like fair use, or not copying things that are in the public domain). Lookup the ProCD case out of the Seventh Circuit. Not everybody agrees with it, but many courts have followed it. The question is tougher when it's a "click-wrap," but many courts will even uphold those. The fact pattern is not unique: A sells a copy of a work to B under a contractual license. B breaches the contract. A sues for copyright infringement, because B only received a copy under the terms of the license. When B breached, his license was invalid, so his rights to the copy are lost. A wins. If it didn't work like this, you could never license anything to anybody except under the existing copyright language. Meaning, for example, that the GPL would not be valid, nor would any software license. So based on precedent, this is not an absurd case.
I'm not saying it has to be that way. Nimmer on Copyright is very critical of ProCD, and some courts have declined to follow it. Nimmer would prevent parties from contracting around some fundamental copyright policy. The problem with that approach is "fundamental policy" is very dependent on who's defining it. So many courts (probably a majority) just don't go there. They uphold the contract, period. If you don't like the result, really the only way to change it is to encourage Congress to pass a version of 17 U.S.C. 301 that expressly preempts some contractual provisions, but leaves the rest undisturbed.
Disclaimer: I don't represent anybody here. This post is not legal advice. Don't rely on it for any reason.I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog.
Actually, yes, I do have to. My firm requires me to. But hey, if you are a lawyer and you practice law in a state where lawyers are immune from negligent misrepresentation suits, Enjoy the feeling, man. Also, let me know which state it is so I can move there. In Texas, lawyers are about the only people left that you still can sue.
Actually, a defense attorney almost never wants his client to testify, because---to be frank---most of them are guilty as sin and lousy liars. But a lot of them are really arrogant and think they'll have the jury eating out of their hands. Those guys are a prosecutor's dream. You can have the toughest case in the world, and then the defendant gets on the stand, and makes your case for you (kind of like Hans Reiser did).
And just because I have to (yes, I really do)... Yes, IAAL, but I don't represent you, and this is not legal advice. If you are charged with a crime and you rely on this post as legal advice, you are a moron. Actually, if you rely on any post on Slashdot as legal advice for any reason, you are a moron. Also, I do patents, copyrights and trademark, not murder. So assume I don't know what I'm talking about.
Let's be honest. What he said was basically, "I left because my wife gave me permission to." Those who are married know exactly what he's talking about.
Most of them do. I'm not a stellar student. My undergrad GPA was around a 3.0 or 3.1 in EE. The average for my entering class was something over 3.7 or so. Despite having probably one of the lowest undergrad GPAs of the entering class, I still made Law Review and got a job with a big firm. It helped that I passed the patent bar before I interviewed for jobs.
I graduated with a pretty good job while the liberal arts guys were thinking, "Maybe I need to go ahead and get that teaching cert."
But then I went to law school, and now the guys with degrees in art history who couldn't even sit for the patent bar are making as much as I do. So take from that what you will.
Seriously guys, with basically a carte blance from both major parties at every level from local to state to federal, with a huge budget and the latest technological advances at your fingertips, you still can't plausibly rig an election? I tell you, the art sure has fallen from the glory days of LBJ. It really makes you wonder what has become of our once-great nation.
The "how do we divvy up the loot" question is the worst one. Do we put one group in charge (like the RIAA)? Do we really expect them to be fair to all the artists who aren't a member of their group? Or do only they get paid, thus effectively making the a de-facto monopoly? Does that mean there are "good" artists (who my fee pays for) and "bad" artists (who my fee doesn't, thus I can't download their stuff)? Should we let the government run it, thus making it an entitlement bureaucracy? Does every artist get an even share (good for little guys), or do the big artists get more (they are more popular... after all). Does the medium matter? Does my fee pay for me to have the rights to get free sheet music? Why not? If I'm an artist, can I opt out of this saying "no one downloads my music, despite the fee"?
You're making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. This is actually very simple. The money goes directly to the guys who paid for the law, to do with as they please (and preferably tax free, while we're at it). How else do we reimburse them for all that money they spent bribing Congress to pass it?If it was just a little scratch, some Bond-O and polish oughtta do the trick.
Hmmm, maybe I should have used explicit sarcasm tags.
I'm always careful to run potentially vulnerable applications like this in a secure virtual environment.
I'm still waiting for the invention that they use to get the kimchi scent out of the ISS fridge.
The same guy who sponsored the McCain-Feingold immigration bill that was almost (maybe is) political suicide for a conservative?
Wrong act. McCain-Feingold was the Wipe-Our-Butts-with-the-First-Amendment It's-Now-Illegal-to-Criticize-the-Incumbent-The-Month-Before-The-Election You'll-Never-Kick-Us-Out-Of-Office-Now-Suckers! "Campaign Finance Reform" Act (informally called the "Bite Me James Madison!" Act). It's one of the reasons I absolutely will not vote for McCain under any circumstances.I think what he describes sounds a lot more like continental (and Louisiana) Civil Law. In civil law, supposedly everything is in the statutes, so courts don't get to make new law. At common law, judges writing law is not a bug, it's a feature. It's been like that for many centuries, and for the most part, it works pretty well. Judges can protect rights that the drafters of the law didn't foresee. That's a good thing (though I hasten to point out that this is not the same thing as using non-textual constitutional rights to strike down what the legislators did write).
Actually, I think that Romney's specific patent reform proposal (as on Dennis Crouch's Patently-O blog) was the best. He wanted to put people with a clue in charge of the USPTO and appoint judges with a clue to the Federal Circuit. That would go a LONG way to cleaning up the patent system. I really didn't care much for Romney until I read that (and I'm a practicing Mormon). I was actually planning to vote for him in the Texas primaries March 4, but now that he's dropped out, I'm thinking I may go with the Democratic primary and vote for Obama. His "reform" is much more vague, but he seems to be smart and genuine, which is more than I can say for McCain, Clinton or Huckabee.
DISCLAIMER (Yes, I really do have to say this): I am a patent attorney, but I don't represent you. This post is just my personal opinion, and is not endorsed by Jackson Walker LLP, its partners, or its agents. This post should not be relied on by anyone for any reason whatsoever.Has the slashdot demographic decayed this much? :s/decayed/evolved
There, fixed it for ya.
What's 26% of 0?
Ok, let's review the discussion. A poster points out that you vote for electors, who behave and vote according to the mandate of those who elected them to the college. Anything else would be flagrant and obvious. You respond that the poster is naive, and seem to think that there is some systemic chicanery in the electoral college. So I challenge you to point to so much as a single instance where an elector has defected and changed the outcome of an election. Before you can have systemic abuse, you have to have at least a single abuse. And again, if the electors were voting contrary to their mandates, it would be blatantly obvious, because people usually know the morning after the election how many electoral votes to expect for each candidate.
The burden of proof is on you. Show me some evidence of this systemic problem in the electoral college, where apparently they get together in a secret back room and secretly throw the election after the people have already voted and expect a certain candidate to win. This is truly a new conspiracy theory for me.So, I'm assuming that you can point to some instance in recent history where an elector flagrantly voted against his or her state and changed the outcome of the election (and no, Florida in 2000 doesn't count, no matter how bitter the whiny Democrats still are about it; the Republican electors all voted for Bush like they were supposed to after the election was certified).