I can easily distinguish the difference between 720p and 1080i programming
Exactly. So your easy answer should be "yes, you can see the difference." And you'll be able to distinguish between 1080i and 1080p just as easily. If you have a display that can do 1080p, there is no reason you wouldn't want a 1080p player, becuase you WILL see the difference.
Have you studied any constitutional law? Your question leads me to believe that you have not.
Are there any SCOTUS decisions since 1776 in which the court has specifically defined the scope of Congressional power to regulate commerce between the states?
If there are then the earliest ones are most likely to be most closely aligned with the original intent of the Constitution without the bias of political and financial strings.
Even if that were true, it's not relevant. While appeals to the "original intent" of the drafters of the Constitution is fashionable in some circles, that doesn't automatically make it the right answer. We live in 2007, not 1776. As new modes of commerce have been created since the document was drafted (think airplanes... or think about ordering something from Amazon.com), the power of Congress has expanded to encompass them. Any other outcome would be ridiculous.
As an example, you could make an original intent argument that the Framers had no concept of airplanes. Therefore, they could not have intended the grant of power in the Commerce Clause to apply to airplanes. So, since the Framers had no intent to allow Congress to regulate airplanes, Congress is not empowered to regulate air traffic in the United States. By this logic, if there is a Federal law that prohibits interstate sales of alcohol, that law can apply to sellers who ship via horse-drawn wagons, and MAYBE to trucks (similar to wagons), but not via airplanes, because Congress has no power to regulate air traffic.
In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the power to regulate interstate commerce also included the power to regulate interstate navigation: "Commerce, undoubtedly is traffic, but it is something more--it is intercourse... [A] power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted, as if that term had been added to the word 'commerce'... [T]he power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states. It would be a very useless power if it could not pass those lines."
While there may be some situations where the "original intent" argument is interesting or persuasive, the commerce clause jurisprudence isn't it (despite what Justice Thomas is in the habit of writing in his dissents).
This sounds good, until you know the name of the case you're quoting:
If the transportation of a slave across state lines wasn't eligible for interstate commerce in 1857 then what has changed since then? A Constitutional Amendment was required, even a Civil War wasn't enough, for the slave trade to be considered "commerce".
If this is a troll, it's a clever one: you're using the Dredd Scott decision to support your argument that Congress can't use the Commerce Clause to justify the EPA. But Dredd Scott was famously overturned. You should know better than to base an argument on an overturned decision, which is the only reason I question your intent in making the parent post.
Where does the EPA derive its power from?
The EPA derives its power from the Commerce Clause, like many other Federal agencies created by Act of Congress. And I won't argue interstate jurisdictional hooks or necessary and proper or rational basis with you here. I think you're taking an argument that was crafted to oppose Roe v. Wade by comparing it to Dredd Scott, and trying to apply it to this case. Write me up for No Sale.
I do agree with CJ Roberts' dissent(pdf, the Roberts dissent starts on page 39) in this case, that the Court should have declined to hear it in the first place becuase the state of Massachusetts lacks standing, which is not at all the same thing as lacking power under the Commerce Clause.
OK, it's pretty old by now, but I was a big fan of Perfect Dark. The AI robots had difficulty settings AND personalities. If you were running deathmatch games against the AI, you could set AI's to have various behavior attributes:
PeaceSim:As the name implies, this Sim hates violence. In fact, the PeaceSim will go
around hoarding weapons so people don't pick them up, and disarm people for
their weapons. Therefore, they'll drop a payload of weapons when you kill
them. Just don't let them sneak up on you...
ShieldSim:Like some human players I know, this Sim is a shield addict. It will always
go for the shield, even if it has no weapons! In fact, if you damage its
shield in the least bit, it will retreat to get another shield! My advice
is don't let it.
RocketSim:This is the pyromaniac of the Simulants! The RocketSim will always pursue
the explosive weapons, and will set them off, even if doing so would spell
death for itself! Avoid this Sim, or kill it before it can get an
explosive.
KazeSim:This is fearless, suicidal menace. It will make suicidal runs, even with no
weapons, to try and destroy you. It fears nothing, and that makes it a
dangerous enemy.
FistSim:
Unlike the PeaceSim, the FistSim is violent. Like the PeaceSim, though, it
will hoard weapons and try to engage you in hand-to-hand combat. It won't
use weapons, but it will do good damage with its hands.
PreySim:
This Sim truly feels that honor is a minor detail in a fight to the death.
The PreySim dislikes competition, so it will hunt down the easiest targets
to gain an easy kill. Its favorite targets include weakened opponents that are
unarmed or armed with a weak weapon, and enemies that have just spawned.
The PreySim also loves to cloak, so beware.
CowardSim:
This is the SimWussy. It flees to safety at the mere sign of confrontation,
and will only confront you if it has a superior weapon. Carry a big gun,
and you will rarely meet this Sim. Hide out and try to catch the coward off its
guard.
FeudSim:
Stay out of this Sim's way! If the FeudSim goes after you, it will hunt you
until the end of the game! It will mercilessly hunt its target, even if you
kill it.
SpeedSim:
As the name suggests, this Sim is extremely fast. It's definitely faster
than you, so it's difficult to hit with standard weaponry. It's impossible
to flee, so stand and fight like a man.
TurtleSim:
This Sim is the opposite of the SpeedSim. It moves at a much slower rate
than most players, but it has a shield that is twice as strong as the
standard shield! Fortunately for you, it has restricted mobility due to its
shield.
VengeSim:
This is a psychopathic Sim! This Sim will completely ignore other players
just to attack the player that last killed it! It attacks with a vicious
rage; so to avoid its rage, just leave it alone.
JudgeSim:
This is the only decent Sim. The JudgeSim acts like the judge of the
battlefield, going after the winning player to even out the odds. That
means if you are an expert playing against some young rookies, expect this Sim to
come after you!
The variety of personalities gave the game infinite multiplayer replay value, and made it easer for beginners to get into the game. You could pick simulants that would ingore a newbie human player and attack only the players with more kills, so the good players can run around slaughtering AI's on the difficult setting in the same game that a newbie is just exploring the level and figuring out how to reload. The experts still have fun while the newbies don't get instantly killed every time they spawn.
I think you may be conflating to distinct concepts: copyright applies to information or data, like the bits on your DVD. trademarks and patents can apply to physical representations or implementations of ideas.
If I buy a piece of furniture and I want another one like it for another room, should it be illegal for me to pull out my tape measure, buy some wood, and build myself another one just like it?
Depends. Has the chair design been trademarked? Is the design "in the public domain?" Is the design obvious? If the answer to these questions is "no," then the answer to your question might be "no" as well. I bet everyone has seen one of the classic Eames lounge chairs, but just because you've seen one doesn't give you the automatic right to copy their design. And if you start making Noguchi table knockoffs, Herman Miller will probably ask the courts to make you stop.
If I buy a small print from a local artist to hang in my bedroom, should it be illegal for me to scan it, manipulate the colors, and print another copy that matches the decor in the guest room?
This is more of a borderline case. The act you've described is a clear violation of the artist's copyright. But it's not "illegal," in the sense that the cops will show up and arrest you or confiscate the copy if they find out about it. The proper method to enforce a copyright is for the rightsholder to sue the infringer in federal court. So the local artist would have to sue you and claim that she suffered damages becuase if you hadn't made your copy, she could have sold you one that matched your guest room.
You'd be in more trouble if you copied her print, and then started selling different colors on the internet, but since that's not part of your hypo, we don't need to go into that.
If I have a VHS tape that I'd like to preserve, should it be illegal for me to capture it [...] and burn it to DVD? And if I have a shelf of DVDs, should it be illegal to rip them and stick them on a server in my own home?
These are both examples of format-shifting, and I agree that they should absolutely be 100% legal. So far courts have mostly agreed with you also. The outcome in this case affirms that idea. It would be nice to have this method of use explicitly permitted by US law, so that people wouldn't have to keep fighting about it in court.
It's not "illegal," in the sense that they can be arrested for it. But unless you license your writing to them, they're violating your copyright if they store your paper in their database. And if you're under 18, you can't enter into a binding contract anyhow- your parents have to sign for you. It's generally up to the copyright owner to enforce her copyright, which you would do in this case by filing a lawsuit in federal court. If you're under 18, again, your parents might even have a persuasive claim that the copyright in your papers belong to them, therefore they can sue in their own interest.
You should sue them. I hear the going rate is $150,000. Better get on that bus fast, becuase once word gets out, everyone is going to do it- and it's going to put these shitheels out of business. You might even be able to find an attorney to take this on contingency. If they go under before they pay out, it's too late for you.
I had about 2000 students in my high school at any given time. $150k per student, for every student in school, works out to $300,000,000. Three hundred MILLION dollars, for one year's worth of students, at one high school. How many high schools are there in the US? Hell, make the per-paper damages $1000 and I would still sign up to take the case for a 20% cut of the winnings, if I could sign up enough plaintiffs. And the problem for Turnitin is, if the students win one of these cases, they win all of them- for every public school in the country that is using the service.
I find it bitterly ironic that a company which provides a service to punish people for copying other people's work is only able to operate their business because... they are copying other people's work. Their whole business plan is "do as I say, not as I do." I don't think the courts will be persuaded by that argument.
I'll 2nd $space6host's concept, with a bit of emphasis on the artist's role. The labels have been very successful in getting these stories printed with a "Poor little record label sues big bad music pirate" slant. That's one of the reasons there is such outrage when they sue little kids: it doesn't fit their PR message; "Big Bad record label sues poor 10-yr-old girl" goes against the grain of what the labels have been telling everyone for the last 5 years.
So, to really attack the messaging, we should start writing headlines that explicitly name the artists. Yes, it's the labels that are driving these suits. But Sony-BMG doesn't care if people are angry with BMG records. They have a much bigger problem if people are picketing at Alan Jackson shows. And you can bet that Alan will have a problem when he starts seeing his name in headlines: "Alan Jackson sues his listeners!"
I hate responding to AC, but you raise an interesting point:
if he doesn't allow people to use personal accounts for personal email, they'll just use the company email for that. Does he want that to happen?
Depending on where you are, the answer is "Yes, he absolutely does." If you work anywhere that trade secrets matter, or anywhere with access to financial or business information about publicly traded companies, you best be damn sure your users aren't sharing that information through another channel. That means no IM, no outside email, no web posting on Yahoo forums, no Google Groups, no Slashdot. Tell employees that you're reading and archiving all email, and that limited messages to family is OK, but that anyone sending sensitive information outside the company will immediately be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.
It sure would suck to have to explain to the SEC and the FBI that your employee could use Hotmail to feed info to his insider-trading buddies becuase you wanted him to feel like he was trusted. Even worse to explain the FBI/SEC investigation to your shareholders. If you've got 20 employees and your mailserver is in the closet next to the receptionist, do whatever you want. If you have 15,000 employees and handle trillions of dollars of investments, you just can't take the risk.
Much better to just lock everything down on the company boxes. If somone really wants to cheat, they'll find a way to do it: text messages on personal cell phones, EDGE connections on that second laptop. But that's one bad seed, and you can cut that assh*le loose when the SEC comes calling. If he's using company equipment and the company network, you've just cost yourself and your company a world of hurt UNLESS you can reliably catch him and turn him in yourself... and the only way to do that reliably is if you control the channels he uses to communicate when he's using the company network.
Remember: your primary loyalty is not to your users. It's to your shareholders.
Anyone else think this is Viacom's way of putting on that sexy dress, just hoping that Google will take her to the dance? What's to prevent Google from settling this lawsuit by just purchasing Viacom outright (and firing all of their employees)?
You don't have to license the content when you own it outright.
In no intentional order (except, perhaps, population? I don't know anymore, and I'm too lazy to pull up the CIA factbook)
1. China 2. India 3. Brazil 4. Thailand 5. Turkey
I could go on, but these are the 5 where general and pervasive disregard for US and international IP law has the largest financial impact on global markets. At least one or two of those countries have some pretty smart people living there. And I treasure the "Mouth Face EXPETITION DANGER" (North Face counterfeit) backpacks my little brother brought back for me from Thailand:-D
Also, in some circumstances, you might want to think about
6. Israel, which is home to several generic-label pharma companies which don't respect pharmaceutical company IP, and the US and EU allow them to do pretty much as they please. I can't help thinking that if they're cheating in pharma, they've got to be cheating in the electronics and software domains as well.
the DMCA attempts to make cracking DRM illegal... in the United States. Fortunately, there are still many places around the world that are not part of the United States.
They're not going to just TALK to you about this. Why not? Because either you or your homeowner's insurance is eventually going to sue them for the damage caused by their negligent product design. Anything they say to you will be admissible in that lawsuit as evidence.
I have a proposal for you. Not fully formed yet, but I've been thinking about this for a couple of months now and your post crystallized it for me.
Q: Where is the largest repository of pro bono legal labor in the US? A: Law schools. Q: Have you ever looked at partnering with a pro bono program to farm out some of the work?
I'm a 1L right now, getting ready for my first set of exams. I'd love to take 6 minutes of your time to chat about whether or not you might have any use for for me and some of my classmates, and if so, how we might go about setting up a relationship. What we lacked in competence, perhaps we could make up in numbers and enthusiasm... and if these lawsuits are as similar as you suggest, at some point it just becomes a numbers game. I'd like to add some more people to your team.
It would seem that if the victims of these lawsuits could afford the time and effort to hire competant counsel, the RIAA would lose most of them. Especially if, as they imply at Recording Industy vs. The People, there is no personal jurisdiction over the defendants in the courts where the lawsuits are filed.
It's also very interesting that the RIAA are able to conflate the civil and criminal penalties together in their theory of these cases... I would think that the court would eventually force them to choose one or the other.
When I was at CalTech, I had the honor of firing the cannon to mark the end of classes each term. This story hit me right in the gut, even though I haven't seen that damn gun in person for like 10 years.
If MIT's objective was to draw CalTech's alumni into the battle, they've succeeded.
Grandparent poster is essentially correct- you made the error of assuming that this purchasing guy is a serious user. I tend to disagree- if this guy had ever been good for anything, he wouldn't be in purchasing. You still did the right thing by giving up on him- this is a perfect example of that old chestnut "Never argue with an idiot, becuase he will drag you down to his level and then beat you with experience."
The downside is it's often impossible to get rid of these people because they've been around so long. I suggest buying him outright- baseball tickets, steak dinners, strip clubs. He doesn't understand the product he's responsible for anymore- he's just parroting the MS talking points that were shoveled into him along with the filet at his last 3-martini "business review" meeting with his current MS vendor. If you want to make your point, you're going to have to bribe it into him, just like the last guy did.
As far as selling something to his company- if you're talking to someone in purchasing, you're talking to the wrong guy.
whoa whoa whoa, ease back there. I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the silly chip marketing garbage that we all have to put up with. Just because I'm typing this on a machine that's running a P3600MHz on a 440BX chipset doesn't mean I'm a luddite or a troll. And yes, I have an Athlon 900MHz box right next to it. Yes, I agree that Intel and MS are both evil and that Dell is propping up both of their illegal monopolies.
The problem is that Dell doesn't have a social conscience. What they do have is a very successful business model, built in part on top of very rigorous control of their supply chain. It would be downright irresponsible of Dell to jeopardize that business by making a decision based on some trendy marketing gimmick- whether that gimmick is called "HyperThreading" or "Predictive Poopchute Execution." Yes, I'm being glib with my choice of terms, but the point is that when an enterprise is making a long-term technology decision, the detailed implementation of that technology is often transparent to the ultimate decision-makers. Dell knows this and has accepted that sometimes technical superiority plays second fiddle to production capacity.
As a for-example, consider a large business deciding to buy ERP software- do they buy Oracle or do they buy SAP? Let's look at this from 3 levels- end user, technology architecture, and CIO. The end-users don't care whether the code runs on IBM, Dell, or HP- and they shouldn't need to care. The hardware layer is ideally transparent to them. All the end-user should care about is whether the application does the job they need it to do without getting in the way of actual work.
Zoom out to a different level: the architecture guys probably care a lot about whether it's IBM or Dell, but they probably don't worry too much about what chip is inside that box as long as the box has the cojones to support the load of running the application. All they care about is if the application goes down becuase there are too many concurrent users, or someone at the colo kicks the plug out, or someone ouside the datacenter digs up the cable with a backhoe. As long as ther are no bugs in the chips, the actual chips inside the boxes running the application are transparent to them.
Now, zoom way out to the CIO level: the CIO cares about overall cost, and he cares about perception of success. The CIO's job is to make sure that the technology STAYS transparent to the end users. Now, he knows that if there are delays in implementation or roll-out, his team will take the blame and probably bear the cost. So his biggest concern after the initial choice is made is keeping the project running on schedule, to avoid the perception of delay and cost overruns due to techology complications. Assuming for the moment that SAP and Oracle are equally easy to roll-out, inservice, and admin, and equally easy for the end-users to use, the CIO's biggest concern is picking a server vendor who delivers products on schedule without any hiccups. He knows that HP is all fucked up from a corporate perspective, and they need 5+ weeks lead time on new boxes, and they're having delivery problems, so he's not picking HP. That leaves Dell and IBM as serious contenders.
He doesn't give a shit about Hyperthreading or Intel vs. AMD because it doesn't impact his decision at all... that is, unless he picks Dell, and Dell pushes boxes with AMD, and then AMD has supply problems and Dell can't ship his boxes on time... Dell knows from experience that the CIO won't blame AMD, he'll blame Dell. It only takes one story about a project that's 6 months late and $5 million overbudget because of the missed Dell delivery timelines, and all those CIO's out there go back to IBM as a default choice.
That's why Dell can't run with AMD in ANY of their boxes- Dell is still trying to prove to John Q.CIO that they're a serious player in the enterprise space. There is still a widely-held perception that Dell computers are, as a whole, a bunch of s
In sales meetings with Dell enterprise reps, when they present product roadmaps, there is always some young turk who wants to impress the boss with how cutting edge he is. He's the one who asks "Well, are you going to offer these with the new AMD chip? It has SEVENTEEN superpoop pipelines and HyperMondo logic AND it measures your pupil dialation and then makes coffee if it senses that you're too tired to read one more page of slashdot. Well, are you going to offer it?"
For as long as I've been going to these meetings, the answer from Dell has been the same: "We'll offer AMD when they can support our production volume and comply with our JIT order process." For five years now they've been saying the same thing. Dell got the message- they don't care about the GHz battle. They don't care how many superpoop pipelines the chip has. They don't care about whether or not it implements the latest instruction set tweaks.
All Dell cares about is that when they place an order, the order gets filled, immediately, no questions asked- which is important, becuase Dell assembly plants sit on less than 24 hours of inventory for any given part. AMD doesn't have the fab capacity or logistics systems to meet that demand criteria, and Intel does. End of story.
google them and see what comes up. Or you could just click i'm feeling lucky We DID kick him out. They rigged the election results. Still our fault for not rioting in the streets, but cheap hamburger and fear of perpetual incarceration goes a long way towards keeping the population docile.
I think you're confusing "car insurance company" with "auto shop." One of them fixes your car, the other one pays to have your car fixed. If the adjuster never looks at your car, your auto shop should repaint the whole damn thing with purple sparkle-coat and install a new stereo, hydraulics, tinted windows, and anything else you want- and send Geico the bill for it.
If the shop didn't fix your car, you need a new auto shop, not a new insurance company.
It's unfortunate that the President of a developed country who is in direct charge of some of the most powerful and awesome technologies created by scientists continues to push an agenda that is anti-science.
parent says:
I'm glad you're so righteously smug in your ethical beliefs regarding what can and can't be done with embryos, since that is almost certainly to what you're referring.
Not being the OP I can't be 100% confident I'm representing his statement correctly, but what if he's referring to nuclear bombs? Or DU conventional weapons? Or some kind of transgenic smallpox supervirus out of a Stephen King novel? All of these technologies were created by science, and I think that a 100-megaton fusion device is a helluva lot more "awesome and powerful" than a microfuge tube full of frozen embryos.
This is the root concern that many people have about the current American President- he does not seem to be capable of logic-based critical thinking. He routinely makes statements that betray a deep lack of understanding, such as the one about ID that prompted this whole thread. And he's got his finger on the fucking button.
this isn't about embryos, or stem cells, or abortion, except in the sense that the people who opposed to using human embryotic tissue for stem cell research are generally also opposed to legal abortions, laws that recognize homosexuality, France, and any number of other activities or circumstances that are inconvenient to their world-view.
It's about the man who is the diplomatic face of my nation announcing to the world that he can't reliably tell the difference between fact and fiction. Imagine if, instead of this comment about ID, he said "I don't want to make an issue out of this, but I think the earth is the center of the universe. It sits perfectly still and everything else rotates around us. I understand that there is some debate about this, but let's present both sides and let people decide for themselves." Comparing ID vs. evolutionary theory is not a question of ethics- it's putting a falsehood on equal footing with a fact, and hoping that if you tell the lie enough times that people will start to believe it. People are upset about this because apparently it's working.
Slashdot Mirror
I can easily distinguish the difference between 720p and 1080i programming
Exactly. So your easy answer should be "yes, you can see the difference." And you'll be able to distinguish between 1080i and 1080p just as easily. If you have a display that can do 1080p, there is no reason you wouldn't want a 1080p player, becuase you WILL see the difference.
Even if that were true, it's not relevant. While appeals to the "original intent" of the drafters of the Constitution is fashionable in some circles, that doesn't automatically make it the right answer. We live in 2007, not 1776. As new modes of commerce have been created since the document was drafted (think airplanes... or think about ordering something from Amazon.com), the power of Congress has expanded to encompass them. Any other outcome would be ridiculous.
As an example, you could make an original intent argument that the Framers had no concept of airplanes. Therefore, they could not have intended the grant of power in the Commerce Clause to apply to airplanes. So, since the Framers had no intent to allow Congress to regulate airplanes, Congress is not empowered to regulate air traffic in the United States. By this logic, if there is a Federal law that prohibits interstate sales of alcohol, that law can apply to sellers who ship via horse-drawn wagons, and MAYBE to trucks (similar to wagons), but not via airplanes, because Congress has no power to regulate air traffic.
That's clearly nonsense. In fact, it's so clearly nonsense that the Court ruled on a very similar case involving shipping traffic in 1824, and that case is still good law some 183 years later.
While there may be some situations where the "original intent" argument is interesting or persuasive, the commerce clause jurisprudence isn't it (despite what Justice Thomas is in the habit of writing in his dissents).The EPA derives its power from the Commerce Clause, like many other Federal agencies created by Act of Congress. And I won't argue interstate jurisdictional hooks or necessary and proper or rational basis with you here. I think you're taking an argument that was crafted to oppose Roe v. Wade by comparing it to Dredd Scott, and trying to apply it to this case. Write me up for No Sale.
I do agree with CJ Roberts' dissent(pdf, the Roberts dissent starts on page 39) in this case, that the Court should have declined to hear it in the first place becuase the state of Massachusetts lacks standing, which is not at all the same thing as lacking power under the Commerce Clause.
I think you may be conflating to distinct concepts: copyright applies to information or data, like the bits on your DVD. trademarks and patents can apply to physical representations or implementations of ideas.
If I buy a piece of furniture and I want another one like it for another room, should it be illegal for me to pull out my tape measure, buy some wood, and build myself another one just like it?
Depends. Has the chair design been trademarked? Is the design "in the public domain?" Is the design obvious? If the answer to these questions is "no," then the answer to your question might be "no" as well. I bet everyone has seen one of the classic Eames lounge chairs, but just because you've seen one doesn't give you the automatic right to copy their design. And if you start making Noguchi table knockoffs, Herman Miller will probably ask the courts to make you stop.
If I buy a small print from a local artist to hang in my bedroom, should it be illegal for me to scan it, manipulate the colors, and print another copy that matches the decor in the guest room?
This is more of a borderline case. The act you've described is a clear violation of the artist's copyright. But it's not "illegal," in the sense that the cops will show up and arrest you or confiscate the copy if they find out about it. The proper method to enforce a copyright is for the rightsholder to sue the infringer in federal court. So the local artist would have to sue you and claim that she suffered damages becuase if you hadn't made your copy, she could have sold you one that matched your guest room.
You'd be in more trouble if you copied her print, and then started selling different colors on the internet, but since that's not part of your hypo, we don't need to go into that.
If I have a VHS tape that I'd like to preserve, should it be illegal for me to capture it [...] and burn it to DVD? And if I have a shelf of DVDs, should it be illegal to rip them and stick them on a server in my own home?
These are both examples of format-shifting, and I agree that they should absolutely be 100% legal. So far courts have mostly agreed with you also. The outcome in this case affirms that idea. It would be nice to have this method of use explicitly permitted by US law, so that people wouldn't have to keep fighting about it in court.
It's not "illegal," in the sense that they can be arrested for it. But unless you license your writing to them, they're violating your copyright if they store your paper in their database. And if you're under 18, you can't enter into a binding contract anyhow- your parents have to sign for you. It's generally up to the copyright owner to enforce her copyright, which you would do in this case by filing a lawsuit in federal court. If you're under 18, again, your parents might even have a persuasive claim that the copyright in your papers belong to them, therefore they can sue in their own interest.
You should sue them. I hear the going rate is $150,000. Better get on that bus fast, becuase once word gets out, everyone is going to do it- and it's going to put these shitheels out of business. You might even be able to find an attorney to take this on contingency. If they go under before they pay out, it's too late for you.
I had about 2000 students in my high school at any given time. $150k per student, for every student in school, works out to $300,000,000. Three hundred MILLION dollars, for one year's worth of students, at one high school. How many high schools are there in the US? Hell, make the per-paper damages $1000 and I would still sign up to take the case for a 20% cut of the winnings, if I could sign up enough plaintiffs. And the problem for Turnitin is, if the students win one of these cases, they win all of them- for every public school in the country that is using the service.
I find it bitterly ironic that a company which provides a service to punish people for copying other people's work is only able to operate their business because... they are copying other people's work. Their whole business plan is "do as I say, not as I do." I don't think the courts will be persuaded by that argument.
Forget poisoning your lunch. As of today, if you're in Texas, you can legally just shoot him dead. I think this is a huge improvement.
I'm a 1L at the University of Oregon. I'll repost this on our school mailing list.
I'll 2nd $space6host's concept, with a bit of emphasis on the artist's role. The labels have been very successful in getting these stories printed with a "Poor little record label sues big bad music pirate" slant. That's one of the reasons there is such outrage when they sue little kids: it doesn't fit their PR message; "Big Bad record label sues poor 10-yr-old girl" goes against the grain of what the labels have been telling everyone for the last 5 years.
So, to really attack the messaging, we should start writing headlines that explicitly name the artists. Yes, it's the labels that are driving these suits. But Sony-BMG doesn't care if people are angry with BMG records. They have a much bigger problem if people are picketing at Alan Jackson shows. And you can bet that Alan will have a problem when he starts seeing his name in headlines: "Alan Jackson sues his listeners!"
I hate responding to AC, but you raise an interesting point:
if he doesn't allow people to use personal accounts for personal email, they'll just use the company email for that. Does he want that to happen?
Depending on where you are, the answer is "Yes, he absolutely does." If you work anywhere that trade secrets matter, or anywhere with access to financial or business information about publicly traded companies, you best be damn sure your users aren't sharing that information through another channel. That means no IM, no outside email, no web posting on Yahoo forums, no Google Groups, no Slashdot. Tell employees that you're reading and archiving all email, and that limited messages to family is OK, but that anyone sending sensitive information outside the company will immediately be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.
It sure would suck to have to explain to the SEC and the FBI that your employee could use Hotmail to feed info to his insider-trading buddies becuase you wanted him to feel like he was trusted. Even worse to explain the FBI/SEC investigation to your shareholders. If you've got 20 employees and your mailserver is in the closet next to the receptionist, do whatever you want. If you have 15,000 employees and handle trillions of dollars of investments, you just can't take the risk.
Much better to just lock everything down on the company boxes. If somone really wants to cheat, they'll find a way to do it: text messages on personal cell phones, EDGE connections on that second laptop. But that's one bad seed, and you can cut that assh*le loose when the SEC comes calling. If he's using company equipment and the company network, you've just cost yourself and your company a world of hurt UNLESS you can reliably catch him and turn him in yourself... and the only way to do that reliably is if you control the channels he uses to communicate when he's using the company network.
Remember: your primary loyalty is not to your users. It's to your shareholders.
you know, some of us are both. I made a lot of money shorting SCOX the summer after the lawsuit was announced...
Anyone else think this is Viacom's way of putting on that sexy dress, just hoping that Google will take her to the dance? What's to prevent Google from settling this lawsuit by just purchasing Viacom outright (and firing all of their employees)?
You don't have to license the content when you own it outright.
In no intentional order (except, perhaps, population? I don't know anymore, and I'm too lazy to pull up the CIA factbook)
:-D
1. China
2. India
3. Brazil
4. Thailand
5. Turkey
I could go on, but these are the 5 where general and pervasive disregard for US and international IP law has the largest financial impact on global markets. At least one or two of those countries have some pretty smart people living there. And I treasure the "Mouth Face EXPETITION DANGER" (North Face counterfeit) backpacks my little brother brought back for me from Thailand
Also, in some circumstances, you might want to think about
6. Israel, which is home to several generic-label pharma companies which don't respect pharmaceutical company IP, and the US and EU allow them to do pretty much as they please. I can't help thinking that if they're cheating in pharma, they've got to be cheating in the electronics and software domains as well.
the DMCA attempts to make cracking DRM illegal... in the United States. Fortunately, there are still many places around the world that are not part of the United States.
They're not going to just TALK to you about this. Why not? Because either you or your homeowner's insurance is eventually going to sue them for the damage caused by their negligent product design. Anything they say to you will be admissible in that lawsuit as evidence.
So don't sit waiting by the phone.
I have a proposal for you. Not fully formed yet, but I've been thinking about this for a couple of months now and your post crystallized it for me.
Q: Where is the largest repository of pro bono legal labor in the US? A: Law schools.
Q: Have you ever looked at partnering with a pro bono program to farm out some of the work?
I'm a 1L right now, getting ready for my first set of exams. I'd love to take 6 minutes of your time to chat about whether or not you might have any use for for me and some of my classmates, and if so, how we might go about setting up a relationship. What we lacked in competence, perhaps we could make up in numbers and enthusiasm... and if these lawsuits are as similar as you suggest, at some point it just becomes a numbers game. I'd like to add some more people to your team.
grym, I agree.
It would seem that if the victims of these lawsuits could afford the time and effort to hire competant counsel, the RIAA would lose most of them. Especially if, as they imply at Recording Industy vs. The People, there is no personal jurisdiction over the defendants in the courts where the lawsuits are filed.
It's also very interesting that the RIAA are able to conflate the civil and criminal penalties together in their theory of these cases... I would think that the court would eventually force them to choose one or the other.
When I was at CalTech, I had the honor of firing the cannon to mark the end of classes each term. This story hit me right in the gut, even though I haven't seen that damn gun in person for like 10 years.
If MIT's objective was to draw CalTech's alumni into the battle, they've succeeded.
Grandparent poster is essentially correct- you made the error of assuming that this purchasing guy is a serious user. I tend to disagree- if this guy had ever been good for anything, he wouldn't be in purchasing. You still did the right thing by giving up on him- this is a perfect example of that old chestnut "Never argue with an idiot, becuase he will drag you down to his level and then beat you with experience."
The downside is it's often impossible to get rid of these people because they've been around so long. I suggest buying him outright- baseball tickets, steak dinners, strip clubs. He doesn't understand the product he's responsible for anymore- he's just parroting the MS talking points that were shoveled into him along with the filet at his last 3-martini "business review" meeting with his current MS vendor. If you want to make your point, you're going to have to bribe it into him, just like the last guy did.
As far as selling something to his company- if you're talking to someone in purchasing, you're talking to the wrong guy.
whoa whoa whoa, ease back there. I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the silly chip marketing garbage that we all have to put up with. Just because I'm typing this on a machine that's running a P3600MHz on a 440BX chipset doesn't mean I'm a luddite or a troll. And yes, I have an Athlon 900MHz box right next to it. Yes, I agree that Intel and MS are both evil and that Dell is propping up both of their illegal monopolies.
The problem is that Dell doesn't have a social conscience. What they do have is a very successful business model, built in part on top of very rigorous control of their supply chain. It would be downright irresponsible of Dell to jeopardize that business by making a decision based on some trendy marketing gimmick- whether that gimmick is called "HyperThreading" or "Predictive Poopchute Execution." Yes, I'm being glib with my choice of terms, but the point is that when an enterprise is making a long-term technology decision, the detailed implementation of that technology is often transparent to the ultimate decision-makers. Dell knows this and has accepted that sometimes technical superiority plays second fiddle to production capacity.
As a for-example, consider a large business deciding to buy ERP software- do they buy Oracle or do they buy SAP? Let's look at this from 3 levels- end user, technology architecture, and CIO. The end-users don't care whether the code runs on IBM, Dell, or HP- and they shouldn't need to care. The hardware layer is ideally transparent to them. All the end-user should care about is whether the application does the job they need it to do without getting in the way of actual work.
Zoom out to a different level: the architecture guys probably care a lot about whether it's IBM or Dell, but they probably don't worry too much about what chip is inside that box as long as the box has the cojones to support the load of running the application. All they care about is if the application goes down becuase there are too many concurrent users, or someone at the colo kicks the plug out, or someone ouside the datacenter digs up the cable with a backhoe. As long as ther are no bugs in the chips, the actual chips inside the boxes running the application are transparent to them.
Now, zoom way out to the CIO level: the CIO cares about overall cost, and he cares about perception of success. The CIO's job is to make sure that the technology STAYS transparent to the end users. Now, he knows that if there are delays in implementation or roll-out, his team will take the blame and probably bear the cost. So his biggest concern after the initial choice is made is keeping the project running on schedule, to avoid the perception of delay and cost overruns due to techology complications. Assuming for the moment that SAP and Oracle are equally easy to roll-out, inservice, and admin, and equally easy for the end-users to use, the CIO's biggest concern is picking a server vendor who delivers products on schedule without any hiccups. He knows that HP is all fucked up from a corporate perspective, and they need 5+ weeks lead time on new boxes, and they're having delivery problems, so he's not picking HP. That leaves Dell and IBM as serious contenders.
He doesn't give a shit about Hyperthreading or Intel vs. AMD because it doesn't impact his decision at all... that is, unless he picks Dell, and Dell pushes boxes with AMD, and then AMD has supply problems and Dell can't ship his boxes on time... Dell knows from experience that the CIO won't blame AMD, he'll blame Dell. It only takes one story about a project that's 6 months late and $5 million overbudget because of the missed Dell delivery timelines, and all those CIO's out there go back to IBM as a default choice.
That's why Dell can't run with AMD in ANY of their boxes- Dell is still trying to prove to John Q.CIO that they're a serious player in the enterprise space. There is still a widely-held perception that Dell computers are, as a whole, a bunch of s
In sales meetings with Dell enterprise reps, when they present product roadmaps, there is always some young turk who wants to impress the boss with how cutting edge he is. He's the one who asks "Well, are you going to offer these with the new AMD chip? It has SEVENTEEN superpoop pipelines and HyperMondo logic AND it measures your pupil dialation and then makes coffee if it senses that you're too tired to read one more page of slashdot. Well, are you going to offer it?"
For as long as I've been going to these meetings, the answer from Dell has been the same: "We'll offer AMD when they can support our production volume and comply with our JIT order process." For five years now they've been saying the same thing. Dell got the message- they don't care about the GHz battle. They don't care how many superpoop pipelines the chip has. They don't care about whether or not it implements the latest instruction set tweaks.
All Dell cares about is that when they place an order, the order gets filled, immediately, no questions asked- which is important, becuase Dell assembly plants sit on less than 24 hours of inventory for any given part. AMD doesn't have the fab capacity or logistics systems to meet that demand criteria, and Intel does. End of story.
google them and see what comes up. Or you could just click i'm feeling lucky We DID kick him out. They rigged the election results. Still our fault for not rioting in the streets, but cheap hamburger and fear of perpetual incarceration goes a long way towards keeping the population docile.
If the shop didn't fix your car, you need a new auto shop, not a new insurance company.
I for one welcome our new wireless overlords.
parent says:
Not being the OP I can't be 100% confident I'm representing his statement correctly, but what if he's referring to nuclear bombs? Or DU conventional weapons? Or some kind of transgenic smallpox supervirus out of a Stephen King novel? All of these technologies were created by science, and I think that a 100-megaton fusion device is a helluva lot more "awesome and powerful" than a microfuge tube full of frozen embryos.
This is the root concern that many people have about the current American President- he does not seem to be capable of logic-based critical thinking. He routinely makes statements that betray a deep lack of understanding, such as the one about ID that prompted this whole thread. And he's got his finger on the fucking button.
this isn't about embryos, or stem cells, or abortion, except in the sense that the people who opposed to using human embryotic tissue for stem cell research are generally also opposed to legal abortions, laws that recognize homosexuality, France, and any number of other activities or circumstances that are inconvenient to their world-view.
It's about the man who is the diplomatic face of my nation announcing to the world that he can't reliably tell the difference between fact and fiction. Imagine if, instead of this comment about ID, he said "I don't want to make an issue out of this, but I think the earth is the center of the universe. It sits perfectly still and everything else rotates around us. I understand that there is some debate about this, but let's present both sides and let people decide for themselves." Comparing ID vs. evolutionary theory is not a question of ethics- it's putting a falsehood on equal footing with a fact, and hoping that if you tell the lie enough times that people will start to believe it. People are upset about this because apparently it's working.