On information and belief, until earlier this year, defendants embedded "meta tags" in their website software to attract individuals searching the internet for keywords such as "SCRABBLE online", "play SCRABBLE online," and "free online SCRABBLE."
IANAL, but isn't that comparable to a common practice of generic cereal brands of using advertising that says things like "If you like Captain Crunch®, try this!"?
Perhaps. There are meta tag cases going both ways and the success a plaintiff has in making this claim will depend on which circuit of the Federal Court the case is filed in.
The same could be said for a song, or a novel, and I never stated different. The GP said "The look of the board, unlike the rules of the game, CAN be copyrighted." That is not correct. The rules can be copyrighted just like any other written work.
You may well be aware of this (and I am assuming you are since your comments are a lot more accurate than some of the other garbage being uttered in this thread) but it is important to be clear: the text of the rules of the game is protected by copyright, but the ideas described by that text are not. If the rules are expressed in new text that is not derivative of the words in the original rules, then they are protected. Most people will have an idea of the rules of SCRABBLE without looking and could write down a new set of rules without even looking at the original, and such rules would be free of being treated as a derivative work.
Well, as long as you're too lazy to go through the post tree, to the places where I cite the US government sites which write out, clear as day, what copyright protects, then I guess I can't fault you for assuming that non-legally-trained staff writers make small mistakes in reporting.
Leaving aside the fact that Governments get the law wrong and misstate it often (which is what is dealt with in the whole branches of administrative law and constitutional law), secondary sources such as this almost always give a misleading impression of the true state of the law, which is why first year law students are clearly urged to confirm legal principles from secondary sources by going back to primary sources (that is, going back to the wording of the statute and the principles expounded in case law
I do, however, find it amusing that you've managed to miss that all lawsuits for either copyright or trademark are filed as "copyright and trademark."
What? Perhaps you are referring to a division of the Federal Court, but a suit in copyright alone is not going to claim to be in trademark, and since the Exxon case it would be a brave (in the "Yes, Minister" sense) lawyer who filed a purely trademark suit claiming it to also be in copyright.
If you bother to look into the lawsuit, there are no copyright claims.
I have looked at the claims, and the copyright claims are actually the first ones they make.
Go look up the history of Teeko.
It is quite dangerous to attempt to derive principles of law from an outcome without looking at the stated reasons (the "ratio decidendi") in a case (assuming there is a case). In the case of Teeko it is difficult to identify any protected elements - this is quite different to the case of Scrabble.
As a professional game developer, I've spent dozens of hours talking about this with lawyers.
Ah. Not a lawyer. IAAL. Please don't assume that just because you have discussed these things with lawyers you have a full understanding of the law (or the chance of even evaluating whether your lawyer is any good - this is a huge problem for people seeking legal advice). Any legal advice you are given is going to be strictly confined to the particular facts that have been provided. Usually the legal advice will restate the questions you asked and information you provided, together with any assumptions the lawyer has made, as a CYA move by the lawyer since a change in any one of these things may radically alter the advice given.
Yeah, maybe you should go look up the ramifications of the lawsuit filed by the Campbell's Soup Company against Andy Warhol, where they argued literally the exact same thing to prevent their inclusion in his famous pop art. The courts said they were wrong.
Again you're looking at the outcome, not the reasons for the decision (in fact in that case there were no reasons for the decision since the suit was dropped on the back of bad publicity for the plaintiff). Warhol might (or might not) have succeeded in a defence on the grounds of "fair use", however. The makers of Scrabulous are going to have a hard time making out a defence of "fair use".
The soup cans themselves are branding, and therefore trademark. That's why they're subject to fair use, when paintings are not.
That's not correct. Firstly, the soup cans are protected by both copyright and trademark. Secondly, fair use is a very important part of US copyright law. In the case of the Warhol paintings, the question of fair use does not arise on the trademark side because there was no overlap in the field of use.
I direct you to paragraph 24, sub-paragraph B, paragraph 36, paragraphs 43-46 in relation to a copyright claim on the game board layout.
The have also included facts setting up a passing off claim (often loosely referred to as a common law trademark claim), and for this see paragraph 27, paragraph 36, paragraph 37, and paragraphs 56-59 (which describe the "passing off" action in the terminology common in some places where it is part of a collection of torts known as "unfair competition").
There is a lot of stuff in there that is being thrown at the wall to see what sticks, but the copyright claim on the game board is not one of them. In fact the passing off claim is, in my opinion, weaker than the copyright claim, because the defendants appear to have gone to some lengths to ensure people are not misled into believing there is a connection. The trademark claim is not overly strong either since it is not merely a question of whether the names are similar, but whether they are deceptively similar so that people are likely to be misled into believing there is a connection between the makers of "Scrabulous" and the makers of "SCRABBLE".
Since the designers have been dead for (at least) centuries, they are public domain. However the shape of a particular design of chess pieces may be copyright as sculptures or as a preceding drawing.
if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble
The use of circles rather than squares is not the thing that saves this new version. The changed layout is. When I first looked at Wordscraper I thought the changes might be borderline - there is a grey area between taking inspiration from a prior work and creating a derivative work. On closer inspection it looks like they may have gone further than they needed to and taken away any doubt that there could be copyright infringement.
To answer your question though, the reasons there haven't been competitive cheap crossword style games in stores is because of some combination of: (a) nobody ever thought of it; and (b) Scrabble's market mindshare was too formidable to overcome with a competitor.
It may be apparent from the above that Wordscraper changes both of these. It is conceivable that it could overtake Scrabble in market mindshare, leading to a real world version could seriously attack Scrabble sales. Sometimes it's just better to leave a copyright infringement alone.
Computer Associates v. Altai is a good case for looking at what parts of works (in this case software) are copyrightable, when functional concerns have informed the writing of those works.
I read it years ago and have often had cause to apply it to software copyright questions, and that case is best understood in the context of software which is at the intersection of expressive content and functional mechanisms. In my view it is a phenomenal stretch to extrapolate it to the case of a game board at all. It is an even greater stretch to say that the colours and positions of the squares on the board are dictated by functional requirements.
If the authors had made their own board layout, with the bonus squares in different positions and with different colours, they certainly would not have reproduced any protected expression, but that is not what they did. They copied the whole thing (dragging out the physical board here, comparing to Scrabulous on my wife's system since I refuse to join Facebook)... yes, the bonus squares use exactly the same colouring and positioning.
I have to say I'm surprised, although I have seen enough dim-witted lawyers in practice to say not "shockingly" surprised. His argument was so ass-backwards that it looked like it came from a 15 year old whose legal training consisted of the delusional rantings of his demented grandmother.
It's pretty straight forward - the question is not whether the content is associated with some other content that is not protected. The question is whether the specific content is protected. The board layout is a protected image and anything that reproduces it will be a derivative work.
You have things rather backwards. The fact that the thing you are looking at is "rules of a game" does not prevent the thing from being protected by copyright. The thing is not protected by copyright because it contains no "work" that is subject to copyright protection. Even if we accept your argument that the placement of the squares form part of the rules of the game, that does not mean the placement of the squares is not protected by copyright. The question is not whether the thing you are looking at is part of something that, aside from the particular thing, would not be protected. The question is whether the particular thing is protected.
The particular thing, the board, is an image. Images are protected. There has been some creative choice in the layout of the image and this will make the image an original work of somebody. It will therefore be protected by copyright. It doesn't matter that it may also be part of some set of rules.
Our company forwards email to google (MX record in the DNS), where it runs through the spam filter and then a forwarding rule (an anything-but-spam rule) sends it on to our mailboxes.
Or you could just use Spamassassin, which properly configured is every bit as good as commercial offerings (and I have actually trialled them to do the comparison). If you put MAIA Mailguard on top of it, you have a solution that leaves the commercial offerings for dead - per user, server based sensitivity settings, quarantine, anti-virus and most importantly, no stupid bounces to the sender address of spam, since the sender address is almost always forged and if you are sending those stupid bounces you are the spammer.
are google abusing gMove's trade secrets? not possible, unless there was a contract between gMove and google.
Not true. While I don't have any relevant facts on the case at hand and really couldn't be stuffed to RTFA, courts will enforce confidentiality without a contract in the right circumstances. In fact most confidentiality deeds you see really do no more than restate what the court would do anyway. As one lawyer said to me (IAAL) when negotiating a deal that included a confidentiality clause "I know including a confidentiality clause in an agreement with a lawyer is like telling him how to suck eggs, but we're making several of these at once and we want to make sure they contain the same terms." Most of the time the confidentiality agreement does little more than ensure the person giving the undertaking knows of their obligations.
There are at least 6 billion people on that planet and more than 50% of them are female. That means I have the potential to sleep with more than 3 billion women. There is a big difference between having potential and actually closing the deal.
True, because if you go within a mile of my daughter I'll fix it so you're never capable of "closing the deal" with anybody else, ever.
I think it somewhat telling that the code of conduct does not include a section titled "responsibilities to society" or "responsibilities to humanity". Other than "comply with the law", every single one of those principles is about furthering Google's interests, not about constraining Google for the benefit of others. Even the ones that are about equal opportunity and confidentiality can be seen through a self-interest prism.
There is a large amount of time difference in the time a 'nice' guy will spend trying to seduce... and the amount of time a 'bad' guy will take to brush off the one who's not putting out.
Indeed. Many years ago I had a friend who was not what one would call handsome, but was one of these "bad boys" who slept with many, many, women. He even revealed one how he did it - if he asked 50 women in a night, he knew he'd get at least one. Clearly he was not in the least bit emotionally invested, and to cover that number of women he'd be spending maybe 5 minutes on each one before moving on.
The "nice" guy on the other hand is more likely to obsess on one woman the entire night (if he gets that far), and might cover 50 women in a year or two. He gets emotionally invested very quickly.
Of course the "nice guy" might not find it particularly appealing to succeed in the same manner the "bad boy" does since the "nice guy" may be more about quality rather than quantity. The number of diseased, drug-f***ed women and emotional wrecks he got involved with was scary.
This is not to say you need to adopt the "bad boy" approach if you want to succeed either. Merely adjusting expectations can do wonders - think of the person as just a person rather than as a prospective mate.
That reasoning bodes well for copyright freedom as well...
Reason has no place in a legal proceeding.
I agree that the reasoning does not bode anything for copyright freedom, but not for the reasons you indicate. Reasoning is actually very important to legal proceedings. Evidential issues can often get in the way, but if the evidence produces a clear set of facts then with very few exceptions, reasoning will provide a clear answer. It's comparatively rare to see this in court because usually when a case makes it all the way to a court decision the reason is that either there is a dispute about the evidence or the case is one that is close to the boundaries. In the remaining cases you have a butthead litigant with a butthead lawyer who is happy to use the court procedure as a weapon to drain and defeat their opponent even though their opponent should clearly win on the facts and the evidence.
The reason this doesn't mean anything for copyright freedom (at least in the way the summary suggests) is that the "licensed vs sold" distinction isn't as great as it might seem. You own the physical copy you buy, but you have to have a license to make copies of that. When you run software in (or install software on) a computer the computer makes copies, and you need a licence to do that. This is really not legally controversial. There may be an implied license in the circumstances, but it is quite possible for the implied license to be excluded, depending on all the circumstances.
Does it mean anything for the first sale doctrine in the US as it applies to copyright? Maybe, maybe not. Ask an American lawyer. From my antipodeon viewpoint it seems that first sale doctrine is really just a rule of interpreting licences and determining the existence of and scope of implied licences. This case dealt with a situation where Intel was granted a license and a separate agreement between Intel and the plaintiffs purported to restrict any implied licenses associated with it. It seems, from reading the headnotes, that this is a case that really revolved around its circumstances and if the plaintiff had limited the scope of the original license the outcome might be different.
I can start my own payment processing company this afternoon if I wanted to.
You might be able to start the company this afternoon, but not the business. Payments systems are heavily regulated and you are likely to require approvals in many jurisdictions you would be operating in.
Nevertheless the arrangement does decrease the ability to compete in payments systems because it prevents other payments systems providers from competing for the business of the buyer and seller in the transaction. eBay is not a party to that transaction - they may have facilitated it, but they are not (and for their own protection want to make absolutely certain they are not) a party to it.
This is no different than stores that don't take certain credit cards.
Actually it's not because eBay is neither the buyer nor the seller. The correct analogy would be the owner of 90% of all malls in the world (presumably Westfield, at some time in the future) imposing a condition on shops in the mall that they only accept payments by American Express, banning Visa, Mastercard (etc), cash or cheque.
it's hardly illegal
The ACCC investigation is taking place because the conduct is, at least arguably, illegal. I suspect the ACCC know a bit more about Australian competition law than you do. See my previous comment for details.
Don't mistake me for a Google apologist, though, as far as I am concerned both Google and eBay are evil and I'd rather not have to deal with either.
How is it unethical to use your own checkout system?
Actually in Australia what eBay is doing is (at least arguably) illegal, that's why the ACCC are looking into it. It is illegal in Australia to use a position of substantial market power in one market to:
damage a competitor in another market;
prevent the entry of somebody into another market; OR
deter or prevent somebody from engaging in competitive conduct in another market.
I doubt many would argue eBay does not have substantial market power in the online auctions market. I also doubt many would argue that forcing users to use Paypal rather than other payments systems amounts to damaging competitors in the payments systems market. I also doubt that many would argue that this does not prevent competitive conduct in that market.
For the law on this affecting eBay, see the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) s46
On top of this, if Paypal is owned through a corporation rather than held by the same company that conducts the eBay business, eBay is arguably engaging in third line forcing, which is also illegal. Third line forcing is the use of arrangements forcing people you trade with to use the services of a particular third party. Unless the PayPal and eBay companies are one and the same (not just related), then PayPal is a third party. As to this, see s47.
Only shocking if you think Google is the sort of company that takes a stand on principle. They are not. Hell, a Sydney newspaper recently interviewed a senior executive at Google who was visiting the Sydney offices of Google at the time. In the article this senior executive denied the "do no evil" motto. The story, so she claimed, was that an engineer wrote it on a whiteboard in a meeting room used by the marketing division shortly after Google established one, fearing that Google would become evil. The motto was never, apparently, adopted as a corporate creed of any kind.
I understand it is common for engineers within Google to subscribe to the motto (and in evaluating this you need to take into account the fact that Google engineers have to be willing, as a condition of employment, to participate in applying for software and business method patents), but beyond the engineers it is nothing, not even an aspiration.
There is no need for that engineer to fear the possibility of Google becoming evil now, of course. It is pointless to fear that which has already occurred.
I've been waiting for this, because what I have always really wanted was to combine the application compatibility of Linux with the operating system reliability of Windows.
He cuts the engines and opens a parachute. The more concerning issue is the major bane of jet powered flight - bird hits. At the speed they are talking about, a bird hitting this guy in the head, even with a helmet, stands a good chance of knocking him out. Then you're going to have a dead bird as well as a dead wing-rider.
He wanted to make sure we knew that Iran's Defense Minister went on tour of the facility with Mahmoud.
More to the point, that's not even something that ought to raise suspicion. In a region where terrorism is a real, daily threat, you want the military to be looking after security issues at an enrichment plant even if it is only being used for civilian purposes - you want them to be making absolutely sure that the facility is not open to abuse by those who would use it for more nefarious purposes.
That's not to say this is evidence that the enrichment plant is not being used for military purposes, it's just that the presence of the Defence Minister is not evidence for or against.
This illustrates why most lawyers should NOT be involved in running companies because their natural orientation is not toward creating products but rather toward, well, practicing law, which usually translates into litigation.
Only bad lawyers reach for the litigation stick all the time. The sign of a good lawyer is that they prevent the litigation from ever arising in the first place. In 90% or more of cases it is quite clear who is in the right from the outset, and if their client is right they should be able to convince the other side (without threats), and if the other side is right they should be able to explain this to their client and persuade their client to STFU (not only can lawyers do this, but they have an obligation to the court to do this).
If litigation starts, the lawyer on one side has usually failed to do their job. There are borderline cases, but it is usually best to settle those without litigation too - the number of cases where litigation is the appropriate response is tiny.
A lawyer who resorts to litigation without exploring other options first is invariably (and yes, I mean "invariably") incompetent.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out he average competency of their local legal profession given those principles.
I still say using the term 'civil trespass' is misleading. The common parlance is to say that no it isn't breaking the law there, but it may be grounds for a lawsuit.
That is firstly, not correct. It is not even close. Even some crimes are only crimes at common law, but you break the law any time you breach one of its rules, and if you commit a trespass at common law (civil trespass), you breach its rules break the law just the same. But let's look at the whole chain here shall we?
lwsimon: They have no right to be on private property.
lwsimon was absolutely correct in the present case. The law of trespass (common law, civil trespass) determines the rights of the parties here. This is basic first year law stuff. The right of the owner of the land is not to have others enter without his consent. The rights of others with respect of the land only goes as far as the person consents. There is no implied consent for entering to take photos that could not be taken from the street.
you: Actually, this varies a lot by jurisdiction. For example, in both my state and in Pittsburgh where the event took place, it is only illegal to be on private property if their are posted "no trespassing" signs or if they are asked to leave and refuse (or are asked to leave and return).
me: I strongly suspect you are confusing criminal trespass and civil trespass here. They are different things and may well have different rules, although something amounting to criminal trespass will almost always also be civil trespass.
Here I point out to you that there are different rules for civil trespass and criminal trespass.
You: I think you are the one who is confused. My understanding is that trespassing is covered by the criminal code (a misdemeanor almost everywhere, usually covered by a fine). So called "civil trespass" would simply be suing someone one in civil court for something you refer to as trespassing.
Here you claim that trespass is covered by the rules of criminal law. You call civil trespass 'So called "civil trespass"', thereby denying that there is such a thing. You also claimed it was misleading to talk about "civil trespass", to back up this denial of the existence of such a thing. You also sought to demean the concept of the tory of trespass to land by saying "You can sue someone for absolutely anything you want, you just aren't likely to win in many cases."
me: Trespass has been a civil tort since the common law started about a thousand years ago.
Which is true. Originally this was the only kind of trespass - there were no criminal trespass statutes back then, although in those days they might lock you up for committing trespass, this was because you breached the rights of the plaintiff. The tort of trespass to land is not some obscure rule of law, it is one of the most important laws in common law jurisdictions and forms the basis for a significant chunk of the law. The tort is actually far, far more important than the criminal laws you refer to, which came much later. When most people talk about trespass, they are actually talking about the tort since they are talking about their rights against others (such as to keep others out), not the rights of others against the State. In some places (and in most of English and derivative law history since 1066) there are actually no statutes establishing trespass, but people will (correctly) talk about trespass using that word just the same. Your right to eject somebody from your land does not come from the statute, and if
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps. There are meta tag cases going both ways and the success a plaintiff has in making this claim will depend on which circuit of the Federal Court the case is filed in.
The same could be said for a song, or a novel, and I never stated different. The GP said "The look of the board, unlike the rules of the game, CAN be copyrighted." That is not correct. The rules can be copyrighted just like any other written work.
You may well be aware of this (and I am assuming you are since your comments are a lot more accurate than some of the other garbage being uttered in this thread) but it is important to be clear: the text of the rules of the game is protected by copyright, but the ideas described by that text are not. If the rules are expressed in new text that is not derivative of the words in the original rules, then they are protected. Most people will have an idea of the rules of SCRABBLE without looking and could write down a new set of rules without even looking at the original, and such rules would be free of being treated as a derivative work.
Well, as long as you're too lazy to go through the post tree, to the places where I cite the US government sites which write out, clear as day, what copyright protects, then I guess I can't fault you for assuming that non-legally-trained staff writers make small mistakes in reporting.
Leaving aside the fact that Governments get the law wrong and misstate it often (which is what is dealt with in the whole branches of administrative law and constitutional law), secondary sources such as this almost always give a misleading impression of the true state of the law, which is why first year law students are clearly urged to confirm legal principles from secondary sources by going back to primary sources (that is, going back to the wording of the statute and the principles expounded in case law
I do, however, find it amusing that you've managed to miss that all lawsuits for either copyright or trademark are filed as "copyright and trademark."
What? Perhaps you are referring to a division of the Federal Court, but a suit in copyright alone is not going to claim to be in trademark, and since the Exxon case it would be a brave (in the "Yes, Minister" sense) lawyer who filed a purely trademark suit claiming it to also be in copyright.
If you bother to look into the lawsuit, there are no copyright claims.
I have looked at the claims, and the copyright claims are actually the first ones they make.
Go look up the history of Teeko.
It is quite dangerous to attempt to derive principles of law from an outcome without looking at the stated reasons (the "ratio decidendi") in a case (assuming there is a case). In the case of Teeko it is difficult to identify any protected elements - this is quite different to the case of Scrabble.
As a professional game developer, I've spent dozens of hours talking about this with lawyers.
Ah. Not a lawyer. IAAL. Please don't assume that just because you have discussed these things with lawyers you have a full understanding of the law (or the chance of even evaluating whether your lawyer is any good - this is a huge problem for people seeking legal advice). Any legal advice you are given is going to be strictly confined to the particular facts that have been provided. Usually the legal advice will restate the questions you asked and information you provided, together with any assumptions the lawyer has made, as a CYA move by the lawyer since a change in any one of these things may radically alter the advice given.
Yeah, maybe you should go look up the ramifications of the lawsuit filed by the Campbell's Soup Company against Andy Warhol, where they argued literally the exact same thing to prevent their inclusion in his famous pop art. The courts said they were wrong.
Again you're looking at the outcome, not the reasons for the decision (in fact in that case there were no reasons for the decision since the suit was dropped on the back of bad publicity for the plaintiff). Warhol might (or might not) have succeeded in a defence on the grounds of "fair use", however. The makers of Scrabulous are going to have a hard time making out a defence of "fair use".
The soup cans themselves are branding, and therefore trademark. That's why they're subject to fair use, when paintings are not.
That's not correct. Firstly, the soup cans are protected by both copyright and trademark. Secondly, fair use is a very important part of US copyright law. In the case of the Warhol paintings, the question of fair use does not arise on the trademark side because there was no overlap in the field of use.
I direct you to paragraph 24, sub-paragraph B, paragraph 36, paragraphs 43-46 in relation to a copyright claim on the game board layout.
The have also included facts setting up a passing off claim (often loosely referred to as a common law trademark claim), and for this see paragraph 27, paragraph 36, paragraph 37, and paragraphs 56-59 (which describe the "passing off" action in the terminology common in some places where it is part of a collection of torts known as "unfair competition").
There is a lot of stuff in there that is being thrown at the wall to see what sticks, but the copyright claim on the game board is not one of them. In fact the passing off claim is, in my opinion, weaker than the copyright claim, because the defendants appear to have gone to some lengths to ensure people are not misled into believing there is a connection. The trademark claim is not overly strong either since it is not merely a question of whether the names are similar, but whether they are deceptively similar so that people are likely to be misled into believing there is a connection between the makers of "Scrabulous" and the makers of "SCRABBLE".
so, who owns chess, and who owns shogi?
Since the designers have been dead for (at least) centuries, they are public domain. However the shape of a particular design of chess pieces may be copyright as sculptures or as a preceding drawing.
if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble
The use of circles rather than squares is not the thing that saves this new version. The changed layout is. When I first looked at Wordscraper I thought the changes might be borderline - there is a grey area between taking inspiration from a prior work and creating a derivative work. On closer inspection it looks like they may have gone further than they needed to and taken away any doubt that there could be copyright infringement.
To answer your question though, the reasons there haven't been competitive cheap crossword style games in stores is because of some combination of: (a) nobody ever thought of it; and (b) Scrabble's market mindshare was too formidable to overcome with a competitor.
It may be apparent from the above that Wordscraper changes both of these. It is conceivable that it could overtake Scrabble in market mindshare, leading to a real world version could seriously attack Scrabble sales. Sometimes it's just better to leave a copyright infringement alone.
Computer Associates v. Altai is a good case for looking at what parts of works (in this case software) are copyrightable, when functional concerns have informed the writing of those works.
I read it years ago and have often had cause to apply it to software copyright questions, and that case is best understood in the context of software which is at the intersection of expressive content and functional mechanisms. In my view it is a phenomenal stretch to extrapolate it to the case of a game board at all. It is an even greater stretch to say that the colours and positions of the squares on the board are dictated by functional requirements.
If the authors had made their own board layout, with the bonus squares in different positions and with different colours, they certainly would not have reproduced any protected expression, but that is not what they did. They copied the whole thing (dragging out the physical board here, comparing to Scrabulous on my wife's system since I refuse to join Facebook)... yes, the bonus squares use exactly the same colouring and positioning.
Are you an IP lawyer?
Yes
.
Do you know that you are arguing with one?
I have to say I'm surprised, although I have seen enough dim-witted lawyers in practice to say not "shockingly" surprised. His argument was so ass-backwards that it looked like it came from a 15 year old whose legal training consisted of the delusional rantings of his demented grandmother.
It's pretty straight forward - the question is not whether the content is associated with some other content that is not protected. The question is whether the specific content is protected. The board layout is a protected image and anything that reproduces it will be a derivative work.
You have things rather backwards. The fact that the thing you are looking at is "rules of a game" does not prevent the thing from being protected by copyright. The thing is not protected by copyright because it contains no "work" that is subject to copyright protection. Even if we accept your argument that the placement of the squares form part of the rules of the game, that does not mean the placement of the squares is not protected by copyright. The question is not whether the thing you are looking at is part of something that, aside from the particular thing, would not be protected. The question is whether the particular thing is protected. The particular thing, the board, is an image. Images are protected. There has been some creative choice in the layout of the image and this will make the image an original work of somebody. It will therefore be protected by copyright. It doesn't matter that it may also be part of some set of rules.
Our company forwards email to google (MX record in the DNS), where it runs through the spam filter and then a forwarding rule (an anything-but-spam rule) sends it on to our mailboxes.
Or you could just use Spamassassin, which properly configured is every bit as good as commercial offerings (and I have actually trialled them to do the comparison). If you put MAIA Mailguard on top of it, you have a solution that leaves the commercial offerings for dead - per user, server based sensitivity settings, quarantine, anti-virus and most importantly, no stupid bounces to the sender address of spam, since the sender address is almost always forged and if you are sending those stupid bounces you are the spammer.
Yes, I am sick of Messagelabs spamming me.
are google abusing gMove's trade secrets? not possible, unless there was a contract between gMove and google.
Not true. While I don't have any relevant facts on the case at hand and really couldn't be stuffed to RTFA, courts will enforce confidentiality without a contract in the right circumstances. In fact most confidentiality deeds you see really do no more than restate what the court would do anyway. As one lawyer said to me (IAAL) when negotiating a deal that included a confidentiality clause "I know including a confidentiality clause in an agreement with a lawyer is like telling him how to suck eggs, but we're making several of these at once and we want to make sure they contain the same terms." Most of the time the confidentiality agreement does little more than ensure the person giving the undertaking knows of their obligations.
There are at least 6 billion people on that planet and more than 50% of them are female. That means I have the potential to sleep with more than 3 billion women. There is a big difference between having potential and actually closing the deal.
True, because if you go within a mile of my daughter I'll fix it so you're never capable of "closing the deal" with anybody else, ever.
I think it somewhat telling that the code of conduct does not include a section titled "responsibilities to society" or "responsibilities to humanity". Other than "comply with the law", every single one of those principles is about furthering Google's interests, not about constraining Google for the benefit of others. Even the ones that are about equal opportunity and confidentiality can be seen through a self-interest prism.
There is a large amount of time difference in the time a 'nice' guy will spend trying to seduce... and the amount of time a 'bad' guy will take to brush off the one who's not putting out.
Indeed. Many years ago I had a friend who was not what one would call handsome, but was one of these "bad boys" who slept with many, many, women. He even revealed one how he did it - if he asked 50 women in a night, he knew he'd get at least one. Clearly he was not in the least bit emotionally invested, and to cover that number of women he'd be spending maybe 5 minutes on each one before moving on.
The "nice" guy on the other hand is more likely to obsess on one woman the entire night (if he gets that far), and might cover 50 women in a year or two. He gets emotionally invested very quickly.
Of course the "nice guy" might not find it particularly appealing to succeed in the same manner the "bad boy" does since the "nice guy" may be more about quality rather than quantity. The number of diseased, drug-f***ed women and emotional wrecks he got involved with was scary.
This is not to say you need to adopt the "bad boy" approach if you want to succeed either. Merely adjusting expectations can do wonders - think of the person as just a person rather than as a prospective mate.
I agree that the reasoning does not bode anything for copyright freedom, but not for the reasons you indicate. Reasoning is actually very important to legal proceedings. Evidential issues can often get in the way, but if the evidence produces a clear set of facts then with very few exceptions, reasoning will provide a clear answer. It's comparatively rare to see this in court because usually when a case makes it all the way to a court decision the reason is that either there is a dispute about the evidence or the case is one that is close to the boundaries. In the remaining cases you have a butthead litigant with a butthead lawyer who is happy to use the court procedure as a weapon to drain and defeat their opponent even though their opponent should clearly win on the facts and the evidence.
The reason this doesn't mean anything for copyright freedom (at least in the way the summary suggests) is that the "licensed vs sold" distinction isn't as great as it might seem. You own the physical copy you buy, but you have to have a license to make copies of that. When you run software in (or install software on) a computer the computer makes copies, and you need a licence to do that. This is really not legally controversial. There may be an implied license in the circumstances, but it is quite possible for the implied license to be excluded, depending on all the circumstances.
Does it mean anything for the first sale doctrine in the US as it applies to copyright? Maybe, maybe not. Ask an American lawyer. From my antipodeon viewpoint it seems that first sale doctrine is really just a rule of interpreting licences and determining the existence of and scope of implied licences. This case dealt with a situation where Intel was granted a license and a separate agreement between Intel and the plaintiffs purported to restrict any implied licenses associated with it. It seems, from reading the headnotes, that this is a case that really revolved around its circumstances and if the plaintiff had limited the scope of the original license the outcome might be different.
"Newbie"? You calling someone "newbie"?!? That's rich.
I'n fairly certain the GP poster has been reading /. for much longer than his UID would suggest.
I can start my own payment processing company this afternoon if I wanted to.
You might be able to start the company this afternoon, but not the business. Payments systems are heavily regulated and you are likely to require approvals in many jurisdictions you would be operating in.
Nevertheless the arrangement does decrease the ability to compete in payments systems because it prevents other payments systems providers from competing for the business of the buyer and seller in the transaction. eBay is not a party to that transaction - they may have facilitated it, but they are not (and for their own protection want to make absolutely certain they are not) a party to it.
This is no different than stores that don't take certain credit cards.
Actually it's not because eBay is neither the buyer nor the seller. The correct analogy would be the owner of 90% of all malls in the world (presumably Westfield, at some time in the future) imposing a condition on shops in the mall that they only accept payments by American Express, banning Visa, Mastercard (etc), cash or cheque.
it's hardly illegal
The ACCC investigation is taking place because the conduct is, at least arguably, illegal. I suspect the ACCC know a bit more about Australian competition law than you do. See my previous comment for details.
Don't mistake me for a Google apologist, though, as far as I am concerned both Google and eBay are evil and I'd rather not have to deal with either.
How is it unethical to use your own checkout system?
Actually in Australia what eBay is doing is (at least arguably) illegal, that's why the ACCC are looking into it. It is illegal in Australia to use a position of substantial market power in one market to:
I doubt many would argue eBay does not have substantial market power in the online auctions market. I also doubt many would argue that forcing users to use Paypal rather than other payments systems amounts to damaging competitors in the payments systems market. I also doubt that many would argue that this does not prevent competitive conduct in that market.
For the law on this affecting eBay, see the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) s46
On top of this, if Paypal is owned through a corporation rather than held by the same company that conducts the eBay business, eBay is arguably engaging in third line forcing, which is also illegal. Third line forcing is the use of arrangements forcing people you trade with to use the services of a particular third party. Unless the PayPal and eBay companies are one and the same (not just related), then PayPal is a third party. As to this, see s47.
Google is still evil though.
Three shocking things about this story
Only shocking if you think Google is the sort of company that takes a stand on principle. They are not. Hell, a Sydney newspaper recently interviewed a senior executive at Google who was visiting the Sydney offices of Google at the time. In the article this senior executive denied the "do no evil" motto. The story, so she claimed, was that an engineer wrote it on a whiteboard in a meeting room used by the marketing division shortly after Google established one, fearing that Google would become evil. The motto was never, apparently, adopted as a corporate creed of any kind.
I understand it is common for engineers within Google to subscribe to the motto (and in evaluating this you need to take into account the fact that Google engineers have to be willing, as a condition of employment, to participate in applying for software and business method patents), but beyond the engineers it is nothing, not even an aspiration.
There is no need for that engineer to fear the possibility of Google becoming evil now, of course. It is pointless to fear that which has already occurred.
I've been waiting for this, because what I have always really wanted was to combine the application compatibility of Linux with the operating system reliability of Windows.
how exactly does this guy land?
He cuts the engines and opens a parachute. The more concerning issue is the major bane of jet powered flight - bird hits. At the speed they are talking about, a bird hitting this guy in the head, even with a helmet, stands a good chance of knocking him out. Then you're going to have a dead bird as well as a dead wing-rider.
being considered a 1.0 version seems to me like it shouldn't happen until it can at least come close to running most everything thrown at it.
Nah, it just has to run more old Windows apps than the latest version of Vista. I think Wine as it was 10 years ago met that requirement.
He wanted to make sure we knew that Iran's Defense Minister went on tour of the facility with Mahmoud.
More to the point, that's not even something that ought to raise suspicion. In a region where terrorism is a real, daily threat, you want the military to be looking after security issues at an enrichment plant even if it is only being used for civilian purposes - you want them to be making absolutely sure that the facility is not open to abuse by those who would use it for more nefarious purposes.
That's not to say this is evidence that the enrichment plant is not being used for military purposes, it's just that the presence of the Defence Minister is not evidence for or against.
This illustrates why most lawyers should NOT be involved in running companies because their natural orientation is not toward creating products but rather toward, well, practicing law, which usually translates into litigation.
Only bad lawyers reach for the litigation stick all the time. The sign of a good lawyer is that they prevent the litigation from ever arising in the first place. In 90% or more of cases it is quite clear who is in the right from the outset, and if their client is right they should be able to convince the other side (without threats), and if the other side is right they should be able to explain this to their client and persuade their client to STFU (not only can lawyers do this, but they have an obligation to the court to do this).
If litigation starts, the lawyer on one side has usually failed to do their job. There are borderline cases, but it is usually best to settle those without litigation too - the number of cases where litigation is the appropriate response is tiny.
A lawyer who resorts to litigation without exploring other options first is invariably (and yes, I mean "invariably") incompetent.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out he average competency of their local legal profession given those principles.
That is firstly, not correct. It is not even close. Even some crimes are only crimes at common law, but you break the law any time you breach one of its rules, and if you commit a trespass at common law (civil trespass), you breach its rules break the law just the same. But let's look at the whole chain here shall we?
lwsimon was absolutely correct in the present case. The law of trespass (common law, civil trespass) determines the rights of the parties here. This is basic first year law stuff. The right of the owner of the land is not to have others enter without his consent. The rights of others with respect of the land only goes as far as the person consents. There is no implied consent for entering to take photos that could not be taken from the street.
Here I point out to you that there are different rules for civil trespass and criminal trespass.
Here you claim that trespass is covered by the rules of criminal law. You call civil trespass 'So called "civil trespass"', thereby denying that there is such a thing. You also claimed it was misleading to talk about "civil trespass", to back up this denial of the existence of such a thing. You also sought to demean the concept of the tory of trespass to land by saying "You can sue someone for absolutely anything you want, you just aren't likely to win in many cases."
Which is true. Originally this was the only kind of trespass - there were no criminal trespass statutes back then, although in those days they might lock you up for committing trespass, this was because you breached the rights of the plaintiff. The tort of trespass to land is not some obscure rule of law, it is one of the most important laws in common law jurisdictions and forms the basis for a significant chunk of the law. The tort is actually far, far more important than the criminal laws you refer to, which came much later. When most people talk about trespass, they are actually talking about the tort since they are talking about their rights against others (such as to keep others out), not the rights of others against the State. In some places (and in most of English and derivative law history since 1066) there are actually no statutes establishing trespass, but people will (correctly) talk about trespass using that word just the same. Your right to eject somebody from your land does not come from the statute, and if
You are sadly, sadly deluded. There is nobody more deserving of contempt than the wilfully ignorant.