How far does this "character" concept extend? Do you need permission to sell your home-made stormtrooper costume? Do stealth airplanes and the "invisible" flying aircraft carrier violate the "character" of Wonder Woman's invisible airplane? Are you allowed to sell your Pontiac Firebird after installing a K.I.T.T. kit?
If you're selling a one-off home-made Storm Trooper armor set, I doubt Disney cares. That happens all the time.
If you're selling thousands of machine made Storm Trooper armor sets that you had imported form China, you're going to lose.
If you get a early 80's GMC van, paint it black on the bottom, gray on the top (it wasn't all black), put a red stripe on it, put the red wheels on it, and put a red spoiler on it, then yea, it is a copy of the A-Team van.
How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
Exactly...
Fining VW a billion, 10 billion, or even everything they've got, does nothing.
The CEO got his money, what difference does it make to him what happens to VW in the future?
That is why punishing VW to the point of bankruptcy is pointless. Find and punish those people who made this decision, find a reasonable compromise for VW to provide solutions that are affordable, and move on.
Hurting a million employees who did nothing wrong, hurting shareholders who did nothing wrong, doesn't help anyone.
Don't equivocate these two. Banning them from selling cars here for 5 years would harm the public, auto dealers create a lot of jobs. Requiring them to buy back every car at the full sales price if the customer isn't satisfied with a reflash is only reasonable. Anyone should have to do this if they defraud the customer. Anyone. A person, a corporation, a co-op, anyone.
The problem is that requiring them to buy back every car at full sales price may well bankrupt them.
Which defeats the point.
Ford faced a similar problem in the 90s with the Explorer. Those who remember and were paying attention will tell you that the tires were only part of it, the vehicle had a design flaw that was not really fixable. Ford should have bought them all back, but that would have simply bankrupted them, so Firestone was made the bad guys.
VW probably will end up paying out several thousand dollars to each affected VW owner, but of course that hurts the VW employees and shareholders, it does not actually hurt the people who did this.
That is the key problem with all this clamoring, it want to punish the innocent and let the guilty go free.
Do they? Frankly I have found the quality of Ford vehicles to have jumped leaps and bounds over 10 years ago. Their decision to start bringing in their European designs shows.
GM isn't there yet, but they are making progress. The stuff they build today is also better than it used to be.
The irony is the real fall off in quality is Japan. Toyota and Honda aren't what they used to be.
Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
^ That is the part that needs to stop, actual specific people who profit from/make decisions to profit from such things, need to go to prison.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
I'm not at all convinced that even the above will deter companies from doing this.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
At the point, there is no sane reason to buy a fossil-fuel car, it simply cannot compete.
Actually that statement isn't true, but I see it written all the time by people sitting in front of their keyboards assuming that all driving is like theirs.:)
The really sad thing is that I have seen a lot of people, in a lot of places, suggest punishments in the extreme.
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
And so on. At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
You of course made my point... It is all clear when typing about such a situation in hindsight on Slashdot...
Which was my point... but you're kidding yourself if you think day to day it is so clear when there are 100 hands in the pot and it isn't hindsight...
Oh sure, there may well be a manager somewhere who did commit a crime, but that doesn't mean the engineers had a choice, knew about it, or even should have known about it.
So many people here think they will get to engage in some debate or back and forth with their boss, to "trap them into documenting a fraud or crime".
The boss may well call you into his office and say, "you have been given your instructions, please carry them out.". Then he goes back to what he was doing, dismissing you.
The boss doesn't have to debate it with you, this is not high school debate team, he is the boss, you work for him, end of discussion.
but "just following orders" isn't a valid defense. The Germans of all people ought to know that by now.
Nonsense, that is a perfectly valid defense... only people who are armchair judgmental nuts who don't understand that the world doesn't always work like they want it to say that.
SS officers in WWII who refused to carry out some orders that were crimes against humanity were shot themselves.
If the defense of "following orders" is because your other option was to have your brains blown out, or worse, your family killed, then you can't fault the person for doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
even something as silly as a 10 year old kid making one out of cardboard
That is covered under fair use, it would not be infringing...
How far does this "character" concept extend? Do you need permission to sell your home-made stormtrooper costume? Do stealth airplanes and the "invisible" flying aircraft carrier violate the "character" of Wonder Woman's invisible airplane? Are you allowed to sell your Pontiac Firebird after installing a K.I.T.T. kit?
If you're selling a one-off home-made Storm Trooper armor set, I doubt Disney cares. That happens all the time.
If you're selling thousands of machine made Storm Trooper armor sets that you had imported form China, you're going to lose.
Keep in mind that the early Mickey works may well enter the public domain, but that doesn't mean anyone can make a Mickey Cartoon.
It only means that someone can copy the old Mickey Cartoons.
Mickey is trademarked, the image and brand of the mouse is clearly property of the Walt Disney Company and will remain so as long as they exist.
There goes cosplay.
No, you're allowed to make your own costume for your own private use.
That is "fair use".
What you aren't allowed to do is make 50,000 of them and sell them. That requires permission.
If you get a early 80's GMC van, paint it black on the bottom, gray on the top (it wasn't all black), put a red stripe on it, put the red wheels on it, and put a red spoiler on it, then yea, it is a copy of the A-Team van.
Ecto-1 is totally copyrightable...
If you see it, it is clear and obvious what it is...
The time machine version of the DMC-12 is the same thing, it is clear and obvious what it is...
How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
Exactly...
Fining VW a billion, 10 billion, or even everything they've got, does nothing.
The CEO got his money, what difference does it make to him what happens to VW in the future?
That is why punishing VW to the point of bankruptcy is pointless. Find and punish those people who made this decision, find a reasonable compromise for VW to provide solutions that are affordable, and move on.
Hurting a million employees who did nothing wrong, hurting shareholders who did nothing wrong, doesn't help anyone.
Don't equivocate these two. Banning them from selling cars here for 5 years would harm the public, auto dealers create a lot of jobs. Requiring them to buy back every car at the full sales price if the customer isn't satisfied with a reflash is only reasonable. Anyone should have to do this if they defraud the customer. Anyone. A person, a corporation, a co-op, anyone.
The problem is that requiring them to buy back every car at full sales price may well bankrupt them.
Which defeats the point.
Ford faced a similar problem in the 90s with the Explorer. Those who remember and were paying attention will tell you that the tires were only part of it, the vehicle had a design flaw that was not really fixable. Ford should have bought them all back, but that would have simply bankrupted them, so Firestone was made the bad guys.
VW probably will end up paying out several thousand dollars to each affected VW owner, but of course that hurts the VW employees and shareholders, it does not actually hurt the people who did this.
That is the key problem with all this clamoring, it want to punish the innocent and let the guilty go free.
Do they? Frankly I have found the quality of Ford vehicles to have jumped leaps and bounds over 10 years ago. Their decision to start bringing in their European designs shows.
GM isn't there yet, but they are making progress. The stuff they build today is also better than it used to be.
The irony is the real fall off in quality is Japan. Toyota and Honda aren't what they used to be.
Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
^ That is the part that needs to stop, actual specific people who profit from/make decisions to profit from such things, need to go to prison.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
I'm not at all convinced that even the above will deter companies from doing this.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
Are you suggesting we allow corporations to exhibit epic levels of malfeasance and NOT have any punishment?
No, and I didn't say that either...
But you also shouldn't destroy a company that employs millions of people because 20 of them were stupid/evil/criminals...
There has to be a middle ground...
At the point, there is no sane reason to buy a fossil-fuel car, it simply cannot compete.
Actually that statement isn't true, but I see it written all the time by people sitting in front of their keyboards assuming that all driving is like theirs. :)
The really sad thing is that I have seen a lot of people, in a lot of places, suggest punishments in the extreme.
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
And so on. At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
You of course made my point... It is all clear when typing about such a situation in hindsight on Slashdot...
Which was my point... but you're kidding yourself if you think day to day it is so clear when there are 100 hands in the pot and it isn't hindsight...
Oh sure, there may well be a manager somewhere who did commit a crime, but that doesn't mean the engineers had a choice, knew about it, or even should have known about it.
Exactly... I'd rather let a thousand guilty go free than put an innocent person in prison...
So rather than having a point to make, you resort to insults...
You're making an assumption that isn't supported by any known facts.
It just "makes sense to you" so you believe it.
That may well be what comes out of the investigation, but we don't know that today.
The same side of the moon points towards Earth all the time. If you don't know that, the rest of your post is rather equally useless. :)
Yes, you know that when you're talking about it on Slashdot... Such emails happen all the time in the real world.
Yes, but most people are not going to do that, and you should know it.
Exacly...
So many people here think they will get to engage in some debate or back and forth with their boss, to "trap them into documenting a fraud or crime".
The boss may well call you into his office and say, "you have been given your instructions, please carry them out.". Then he goes back to what he was doing, dismissing you.
The boss doesn't have to debate it with you, this is not high school debate team, he is the boss, you work for him, end of discussion.
And the email reply might be, "come see me in my office".
And if you act ignorant, then maybe you're the wrong person for the job.
That sounds very ideal, and it is the kind of comment that people make when talking about such situations in the hypothetical.
The real world is never that black and white.
but "just following orders" isn't a valid defense. The Germans of all people ought to know that by now.
Nonsense, that is a perfectly valid defense... only people who are armchair judgmental nuts who don't understand that the world doesn't always work like they want it to say that.
SS officers in WWII who refused to carry out some orders that were crimes against humanity were shot themselves.
If the defense of "following orders" is because your other option was to have your brains blown out, or worse, your family killed, then you can't fault the person for doing it.