The idea of a value-based tax on IP isn't that good an idea. First off, we already have one - the income tax. Second, how do you value it - presumed value? potential value? actual value? What about unutilized IP, where the IP has no value since it isn't being used, do you pay zero tax?
Maintenance fees are a better idea, and they exist in Patents (and are very expensive - so much so that many individual inventors may not be able to pay them). In Copyright, they are explicitly banned by the Berne convention, and was the result of European (not US) government interests.
But how do you ensure that the maint. fees are sufficient to prevent the hoarding of unutilized IP by corporations, yet allow individuals to own their IP without undue burden? Very difficult.
Perhaps a lawsuit against the state of Ohio, by an out of state person, who was "harmed" by not being able to buy from the Ohio market... use the dormant commerce clause against the law...
This isn't totally accurate. Yes, corporations are legal entities, but in the absence of corporate law, you'd just have a regime of interlocking indemnifications - generating a consruct very similar to a corporation...
Your next step would be to say that contract law is just a construct regulating free markets - well maybe so, but contract law is at base determined between the two actors voluntarily binding themselves together... and hence is not an external regulation.
-- If you manage to get a hybrid of two species, the offspring are sterile, so the strain acnnot ontinue beyond a first generation fo offspring (cf. mules).
Well, not totally... lateral gene transfer (transfer of genes from one speicies to another) has been hapening for millenia - bacteria do it, yeasts do it, and viruses allow higher organisms to do it.
Therefore, anyone who has been making cheese, alcohol, or any fermented food has been engaging in GM for a long time.
PLoS Biology and the other PLoS journals are good, but even though they're open access, they're not repsected the way Nature is. In addition, Nature is a general subject journal, and has a huge readership - more akin to a magazine than a journal. Putting their article in Nature, while reserving the power to distribute it freely on their site, was probably the best way to have impact. And generating news is something that Robert Jefferson is pretty good at.
Do I need to cite surveys confirming widely held beliefs among Americans in various notorious items of misinformation?
Well, aren't beliefs opinions? The belief itself is not a fact, just look at the theist/atheist debate for an example of this.
Later, you desire the ability to moderate the public media - aside from the fact that this can already be done (you don't have to read National Review or the NYT, watch Fox News or CBS)... no, wait, that is the point - we can already screen our news to get what we want.
You ask how come different forms of speech have different levels of protection? Simple example: shouting fire in a crowded theater is a crime, but it's also speech. It has much less protection due to the potential injury. The first amendment is balanced against the rights of others, with the presumption that speech is ok. However, this does not mean that all speech is ok. See Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir. 2001).
The suits claim damages of $150,000 per song.... The problem is, they are holding EVERY FILESHARER liable for the entire amount of lost sales.
That's not the case at all. They're suing for statutory damages not lost profits. The difference is that while lost profits are actual damages, statutory damages are punative damages. Please see 18 USC Sec. 504(c)(2).
I have ADD (w/out hyperactivity) and found that by taking B6 along with the ritalin, I needed a smaller dose. Also, I found that cutting back on sugars helped significantly.
Bootlegging a concert is NOT a violation of copyright law. In order to violate copyright law, you must copy a work that the author has fixed, and performances are not considered fixation. Fixation must be by the original artists intent, therefore, unauthorized bootlegging dos not constitute fixation by the artist. In fact, the bootlegger might hold the copyright in that recording.
There might be some way to argue derivative works here, but a deravitive work requires an initial copyright, and as I said above, without fixation there is no copyright.
There is an anti-bootlegging law, however. It is in the criminal code, Title 18, Section 2319A. It says:
Whoever, without the consent of the performer or performers involved, knowingly and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain fixes the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance in a copy or phonorecord, or reproduces copies or phonorecords of such a performance from an unauthorized fixation... shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, or if the offense is a second or subsequent offense, shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both.
So, for Clear Channel to do this, they must have the permission of the performers. If they have a monopoly over venue, that may not be a problem.
One note, only the recording and trading of bootlegs is criminalized, not the posession.
IANAL, but I know a thing or two. It's a legal theory called respondeat superior, the employer is responsible for the bad acts of the employee. Similar to why you can sue UPS if a UPS driver hits your car.
Hey, I have a BS in Bio, and I am about to complete my law degree. I will soon be practicing patent law, which has always been a secure field. I know how bad the general/. community feels about patents, but they are a fact of life, and I for one think they are very important for technological advancement. (Are scientists worse in the EU? No? Then why is US consistantly leader in innovation: liberal patent system)
Why slave away at a lab bench for $30k when you can make $100k starting as a patent lawyer?
These things are so weak that even a sheet of paper will block them. These things will probably be encased in metal and plastic. Everyone who is concerned about radation near their bodies should be more worried about the antennas than the isotopes. If these things can be shown to be safer than Lead, or Nickel-Cadmium (both extremely toxic, even in miniscule amounts), then these may be the next wave of power generation...
I had this happen to me. I have a pretty strong mandrake-linux system that I use for a broadband NAT/firewall at home. While it was down for maintanence, my roommate (who runs windows XP) needed to be online. So I hooked him up, and within 5 minutes, he had been WinPOPup spammed. It is actually frightening to know that they had noticed us that quickly.
Since the 'False Positives' section seems to make it clear that all the MPAA is doing is looking at filenames, wouldn't it be trivial to use some sort of '133t' type phonetic coding to mess with the search algorithms that they are running?
Unfortunatly, these practices are within their rights. I wonder what will happen when there is a file-swapping system that requires one to break some sort of encryption to determine the IP addresses of hosts. Will the RIAA/MPAA be liable for DMCA violations in that case?
Where gene patents are still most relevant is where they are most needed, over sequences not occuring in nature. If I design a gene, and then you use these techniques to circumvent my patent, you still must have my patented gene in your system somewhere. But if the gene is naturally occuring, then a patent shouldn't have been granted in the first place (non-novel/obvious). So this merely makes gene patents fall more in line with traditional patents. Not bad, but not totally destructive of the system either.
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
The RIAA is an illegal trust. However only the Attorneys General can bring an action against it/them. Petition your attorneys general. They took down big tobacco, MSFT is feeling their ire, bring it home to the RIAA.
should be property rights held by individuals. This allows a more perfect market, because the information would be more closely protected than this bill provides. As Larry Lessig explains in his book Code, Privacy as a property right allows those who don't care about privacy to get what they want, while those who have considerable concerns to seriously protect themselves. Any other scheme will deny the fact that privacy concerns differ between different segments of society.
Ok, the "prefered form" posts appeared while I was typing my comment. The "prefered form" requirement is substantial, but it is definitly something that could go to litigation, with all the less-than-desirable results that will ensue. But it may be the way to prevent this obsfucation abuse.
and so this is NOT legal advice. But here's how the GPL works:
1. every contributer to the code has a copyright in their seperate piece
2. everyone who wishes to use the code is bound by the GPL to release their "new version" under the GPL
3. if you don't do this, or you place more restrictions on the code than expressly authorized by the GPL, the licence becomes void
4. then you are open to copyright violoation, and the statutory damages that apply.
Now, what this company is about to do may not feel right, but obsfucation does not seem to violate the GPL. BUT, they will have to go about that obsfucation carefully, and they must release their software under the GPL too. Because of that, I have a feeling that the community will react to decompile their code and rebuild it so that there is a readable version out there.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of a value-based tax on IP isn't that good an idea. First off, we already have one - the income tax. Second, how do you value it - presumed value? potential value? actual value? What about unutilized IP, where the IP has no value since it isn't being used, do you pay zero tax?
Maintenance fees are a better idea, and they exist in Patents (and are very expensive - so much so that many individual inventors may not be able to pay them). In Copyright, they are explicitly banned by the Berne convention, and was the result of European (not US) government interests.
But how do you ensure that the maint. fees are sufficient to prevent the hoarding of unutilized IP by corporations, yet allow individuals to own their IP without undue burden? Very difficult.
Perhaps a lawsuit against the state of Ohio, by an out of state person, who was "harmed" by not being able to buy from the Ohio market... use the dormant commerce clause against the law...
This isn't totally accurate. Yes, corporations are legal entities, but in the absence of corporate law, you'd just have a regime of interlocking indemnifications - generating a consruct very similar to a corporation ...
Your next step would be to say that contract law is just a construct regulating free markets - well maybe so, but contract law is at base determined between the two actors voluntarily binding themselves together... and hence is not an external regulation.
-- If you manage to get a hybrid of two species, the offspring are sterile, so the strain acnnot ontinue beyond a first generation fo offspring (cf. mules).
Well, not totally... lateral gene transfer (transfer of genes from one speicies to another) has been hapening for millenia - bacteria do it, yeasts do it, and viruses allow higher organisms to do it.
Therefore, anyone who has been making cheese, alcohol, or any fermented food has been engaging in GM for a long time.
PLoS Biology and the other PLoS journals are good, but even though they're open access, they're not repsected the way Nature is. In addition, Nature is a general subject journal, and has a huge readership - more akin to a magazine than a journal. Putting their article in Nature, while reserving the power to distribute it freely on their site, was probably the best way to have impact. And generating news is something that Robert Jefferson is pretty good at.
[in a discussion of Fact vs. Opinion]
Do I need to cite surveys confirming widely held beliefs among Americans in various notorious items of misinformation?
Well, aren't beliefs opinions? The belief itself is not a fact, just look at the theist/atheist debate for an example of this.
Later, you desire the ability to moderate the public media - aside from the fact that this can already be done (you don't have to read National Review or the NYT, watch Fox News or CBS)... no, wait, that is the point - we can already screen our news to get what we want.
"We're designing the system in such a way that the barrels are very stupid
Great, more union road workers... now nothing will ever get done!
so that they are very reliable and inexpensive.
Psahw!
There is NO GROUND PLANE
At least, unless something goes horribly wrong...
You are correct. What matters is the citizenship of the person, not their country of residence. Not that passports can't be faked, of course.
You ask how come different forms of speech have different levels of protection? Simple example: shouting fire in a crowded theater is a crime, but it's also speech. It has much less protection due to the potential injury. The first amendment is balanced against the rights of others, with the presumption that speech is ok. However, this does not mean that all speech is ok. See Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir. 2001).
That's not the case at all. They're suing for statutory damages not lost profits. The difference is that while lost profits are actual damages, statutory damages are punative damages. Please see 18 USC Sec. 504(c)(2).
I have ADD (w/out hyperactivity) and found that by taking B6 along with the ritalin, I needed a smaller dose. Also, I found that cutting back on sugars helped significantly.
Bootlegging a concert is NOT a violation of copyright law. In order to violate copyright law, you must copy a work that the author has fixed, and performances are not considered fixation. Fixation must be by the original artists intent, therefore, unauthorized bootlegging dos not constitute fixation by the artist. In fact, the bootlegger might hold the copyright in that recording.
... shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, or if the offense is a second or subsequent offense, shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both.
There might be some way to argue derivative works here, but a deravitive work requires an initial copyright, and as I said above, without fixation there is no copyright.
There is an anti-bootlegging law, however. It is in the criminal code, Title 18, Section 2319A. It says:
Whoever, without the consent of the performer or performers involved, knowingly and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain fixes the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance in a copy or phonorecord, or reproduces copies or phonorecords of such a performance from an unauthorized fixation
So, for Clear Channel to do this, they must have the permission of the performers. If they have a monopoly over venue, that may not be a problem.
One note, only the recording and trading of bootlegs is criminalized, not the posession.
IANAL, but I know a thing or two. It's a legal theory called respondeat superior, the employer is responsible for the bad acts of the employee. Similar to why you can sue UPS if a UPS driver hits your car.
Hey, I have a BS in Bio, and I am about to complete my law degree. I will soon be practicing patent law, which has always been a secure field. I know how bad the general /. community feels about patents, but they are a fact of life, and I for one think they are very important for technological advancement. (Are scientists worse in the EU? No? Then why is US consistantly leader in innovation: liberal patent system)
Why slave away at a lab bench for $30k when you can make $100k starting as a patent lawyer?
These things are so weak that even a sheet of paper will block them. These things will probably be encased in metal and plastic. Everyone who is concerned about radation near their bodies should be more worried about the antennas than the isotopes. If these things can be shown to be safer than Lead, or Nickel-Cadmium (both extremely toxic, even in miniscule amounts), then these may be the next wave of power generation...
I had this happen to me. I have a pretty strong mandrake-linux system that I use for a broadband NAT/firewall at home. While it was down for maintanence, my roommate (who runs windows XP) needed to be online. So I hooked him up, and within 5 minutes, he had been WinPOPup spammed. It is actually frightening to know that they had noticed us that quickly.
Which is it, 12 inches or 12 cm?
Since the 'False Positives' section seems to make it clear that all the MPAA is doing is looking at filenames, wouldn't it be trivial to use some sort of '133t' type phonetic coding to mess with the search algorithms that they are running?
Unfortunatly, these practices are within their rights. I wonder what will happen when there is a file-swapping system that requires one to break some sort of encryption to determine the IP addresses of hosts. Will the RIAA/MPAA be liable for DMCA violations in that case?
Where gene patents are still most relevant is where they are most needed, over sequences not occuring in nature. If I design a gene, and then you use these techniques to circumvent my patent, you still must have my patented gene in your system somewhere. But if the gene is naturally occuring, then a patent shouldn't have been granted in the first place (non-novel/obvious). So this merely makes gene patents fall more in line with traditional patents. Not bad, but not totally destructive of the system either.
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
The RIAA is an illegal trust. However only the Attorneys General can bring an action against it/them. Petition your attorneys general. They took down big tobacco, MSFT is feeling their ire, bring it home to the RIAA.
should be property rights held by individuals. This allows a more perfect market, because the information would be more closely protected than this bill provides. As Larry Lessig explains in his book Code, Privacy as a property right allows those who don't care about privacy to get what they want, while those who have considerable concerns to seriously protect themselves. Any other scheme will deny the fact that privacy concerns differ between different segments of society.
Ok, the "prefered form" posts appeared while I was typing my comment. The "prefered form" requirement is substantial, but it is definitly something that could go to litigation, with all the less-than-desirable results that will ensue. But it may be the way to prevent this obsfucation abuse.
and so this is NOT legal advice. But here's how the GPL works:
1. every contributer to the code has a copyright in their seperate piece
2. everyone who wishes to use the code is bound by the GPL to release their "new version" under the GPL
3. if you don't do this, or you place more restrictions on the code than expressly authorized by the GPL, the licence becomes void
4. then you are open to copyright violoation, and the statutory damages that apply.
Now, what this company is about to do may not feel right, but obsfucation does not seem to violate the GPL. BUT, they will have to go about that obsfucation carefully, and they must release their software under the GPL too. Because of that, I have a feeling that the community will react to decompile their code and rebuild it so that there is a readable version out there.
Lesson of the day: we need to update the GPL!