If you create something for a company while being paid by the company, the company owns it,
It's usually a little more nuanced than that.
If you are talking about copyright, where a protectable work is made by an employee in the course of his employment, the employer is the owner. However, if you create the work as a contractor, the law makes you the first owner, although you may agree contractually to assign ownership to the company.
For patents, ownership of an invention by an employee in the course of performance of his duties, where that employee's normal duties include the expectation of invention or else because the employee had a special duty to further the employer's interests, rests with the employer (although, where the invention is of "outstanding benefit", compensation may be payable to the employee notwithstanding that he is being paid to invent). Any other invention made by an employee is owned by the employee.
The court did not hold that "email are not owned by firms" as such. Rather, it was a more nuanced (and, in my opinion, very sensible) ruling, albeit one which does not seem to me to extend established law very much.
The ruling essentially holds that only property is capable of ownership — an established position, although, confusingly, capability of being owned is one of the tests as to whether something is capable of being property; defining "property" is no easy task. The court considered whether an email constituted "property" or not, and held that, unless the content of an email was the subject of copyright (a property right), or else constituted confidential information, an email is not intrinsically property — an established position again, to my mind.
The court also held that, even where there was no property in an email, an agreement as to how something should be treated could be binding — I can agree that I must deliver to you any email originating from you which I have on my computer, irrespective of the issue of property and ownership.
If nothing else, this seems to me to be a pretty common sense outcome. If employment contracts do not already reflect this position, I would expect employers to look to amending them pretty quickly.
I think that's where I struggle as, to me, that's not possible - something is either extinct or not. Attempting to qualify extinction negates the meaning of extinction, to my understanding of term.
To me, it's a bit like saying "after surgery, he recovered from the fatal gunshot."
Yes, financially penalising your early supporters seems like a brilliant marketing move
I can see why someone might view it as a financial penalty for early adoption if they were somehow upset that they had had to pay and others had not. For some people, sure, I can understand that they might feel that way. For others, perhaps not so much:
One person's "financial penalty for being an early adopter" is another's chance to help get a book/game/film/whatever created, which would otherwise not exist. If I want that thing to exist enough — if someone is proposing to write a book which particularly interests me, for example — I am likely willing to pay towards its creation. For me, that's not a financial penalty, that's me helping get something which I would not otherwise have had available to me.
Those who see contributing as a financial penalty wait until — or perhaps if — it is created, and then get it for free. Those who really want it, and are in a position to do so, contribute to help make it happen, just paying up front rather than after publication.
Bonus marks to creators who agree to make the work available permissively upon release — the creator already has the money which they wanted, and so can release the work to anyone who wants it. I lose nothing — I got what I wanted from my contribution, which was the existence of the book. The author loses nothing — s/he gets what s/he stated up front as her price for the writing.
9. Initially sell the ebook only, and then unlock it for free for all people after $xxxx has been raised
I like this idea very much — although I wonder if this is akin to what the Kickstarter model was meant to achieve. The author can set the reward he wants to receive for writing the book — he knows, before he starts writing too much, how much he can expect as a payment. This is his incentive to write. If he has enough people willing to pay for the work to be created, it gets funded. If not, back to the drawing board, so it does not necessarily work for "socially beneficial" works (as opposed to those which are desirable by those with the ability to pay), nor works which need long term sustained funding (such as something which needs to remain current)...
Here, it seems that the author named his price, got it, and realised it is not enough, which seems unfortunate.
A great list of suggestions, there — thank you for taking the time to post!
My view is that, if the book is the only thing you have, then, no, you cannot give it away in a way which makes money, other than asking (hoping) for donations. You may be able to ask in such a way that it encourages donations — I've no idea, but perhaps there's some research / advice on this — but, at the end of the day, you are still only requesting. Where you need to look, in my opinion, is how you could use your book to make money. If the book was one part of a wider means of making money, then you may well be able to make money from the wider model whilst giving the book away for free — the book becomes a piece of marketing for your actual revenue-making products / services.
Could you offer a printed version, at a price? Would some people pay for a hard copy version, rather than be reliant on something on their computer? If so, is there enough scope in the price of a printed version that, once set, produced, printed and shipped, there's still some money in it for you?
Does someone wishing to implement your book need any consumables which you could sell? Printed templates for class activities and so on? Access to a downloadable library of customisable templates, if not physical templates to be shipped to them?
Could you make money if the book was less free? Rather than releasing it "for free," you could release it under a partly-free licence (such as the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND), and charge for commercial re-use of the work (e.g. someone using excerpts in other textbooks and so on (where this would be more than non-infringing / fair use))?
Is there any value in offering your time/services to readers? Much like the open source support model, the code/book is there for free, but, if you need a hand with something in particular, such as working out how to implement your technique in a particular environment, or designing something for a particular school, even devising a taught course to train teachers, you pay for support. A consultation via Skype may well be desirable to some people, even running an actual course in person?
and attempting to speak with the ISP has not worked (it's not clear if you have tried to inform them that the bug remains on this, and likely other, servers, and given them the chance to fix it (albeit a second chance)), call up your data protection regulator on Monday morning, and explain the nature of the issue and its impact?
What would help, is legislation that would make any contract or legal document not drawn up to be comprehensible by the "target audience" null and void.
In Europe, see Article 5, directive 93/13/EC, on unfair terms in consumer contracts:
In the case of contracts where all or certain terms offered to the consumer are in writing, these terms must always be drafted in plain, intelligible language. Where there is doubt about the meaning of a term, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer shall prevail.
That should teach lawyers and companies to keep things clear, simple and understandable
Absolutely. Although contracts are rather like code in many respect (in my opinion, at least) — clear, simple and understandable may not mean short / succinct, and, to expect consumers to read something, it needs to be pretty short...
Interesting link — although the content seems not to bear out the headline.
It looks like a disagreement over stance to me, with some parts highlighted in bold to emphasise the author's point that Eben held a different view to him. There's one "," but no "" or "" — it's not as if Eben was even saying something stupid or irrelevant, just seemingly not what the author wanted to hear for his article, and characterised Eben's answers as "yelling."
It's a good question, and I do not know the answer — my gut feeling would be that the title deed establishes title to the land and that, if ownership of the land on which an item was found is sufficient, I would have expected (perhaps too much to expect) that the code of practice would make it clear that ownership of land constituted a relevant prior interest. Similarly, since property must always have an owner under English law (it reverts to the Crown if no other owner is traceable, via bona vacantia, from memory), if ownership of the land did count as a prior interest, treasure would never go to the Crown as it would always be owned by the landowner, making the provisions redundant?
However, some of the material in the document you cited suggested that ownership of the land is indeed relevant, so it sounds as if further research is needed!
The search was on private land. So they person that owns the land owns the stuff
My feeling is that, in the UK, there is a reasonably large exception to this, which is where the find constitutes "treasure" for the purposes of the Treasure Act 1996 (which has been extended by the Treasure (Designation) Order 2002).
Where a find is classified as treasure, it belongs to the Crown (or its franchisee, where there is one), "subject to prior interests and rights." (s4). Ownership of the *land* is not necessarily a sufficient prior interest or right here — to override the Crown's ownership, one would need to establish a right coming from the original owner of the treasure, such as being an heir to the treasure. (Paragraph 19 to The Treasure Act 1996 Code of Practice.)
The Act includes a duty to notify, within 14 days (s8).
asking a lawyer about this in an interview is exactly what flamebait is.
Really? I think it's a very fair question to ask a lawyer — not all of whom think that the status quo is desirable. Eben is perhaps a particularly good candidate for such a question, as he's clearly a thinker, and is involved in both teaching students and the practice of law.
I could be wrong, and Eben, if asked, may spew all-caps vitriol in response to this, but I reckon he'd treat it as an interesting question.
Eben — we spoke about FreedomBox at the FSFE conference in Amsterdam a couple of years back now. It sounded then, just as it does not, an interesting project. I've kept an eye on it over the last couple of years, and am pleased to see it's got to a developer release; I've ordered a plug server to be able to test it out. I'm keen to understand how you plan on turning it from a niche project for geeks into something in the mass market. I know you are working on making the GUI user-friendly, so it is suitable for consumers, but do you have any thoughts on how you would get this in the hands of those consumers?
I'm qualified as a lawyer (and employed as one, but I'm not your lawyer, this is not legal advice etc.) and it's a subject close to my heart. Were I in your position — I wish I were as talented to be able to write a video game — I would ask myself what I was hoping to achieve with the EULA. Is it because other games flash something up in front of a user that you feel you should have one too?
I'd ask myself what is it that I was looking to achieve with it? Some sort of financial / legal protection? Wording to prevent people from copying / distributing my game (not worth the (digital) ink it's written on; those who want to share it will)? Attempting to legitimise sending people marketing email?
Once I'd worked out what I wanted, I'd just try writing it in plain English — if a lawyer writes it, there's a high chance it's going to suck from a readability point of view and, unless it's a game designed for lawyers, if you are hoping *anyone* will read it, being in normal English would be helpful.
If I were to still think I needed something, I'd see if there was a better way of achieving the end than flashing up text which just destroys the user experience — for example, if I wanted to ask people's permission to market to them, could I do this actually in the UI, in a transparent and friendly way?
If it's limitation of liability and such like, then talking to a lawyer may be a plan — but I would want to ask upfront how much everything would cost, what my exposure was, and what the likelihood of whatever the lawyer did reducing that exposure, so I could make a realistic risk assessment before spending my money. And I'd ask for a fixed price, rather than an hourly rate.
... law is as far as possible from something the common man is able to understand and defend himself with... In short, by studying the law I was giving myself an advantage which every citizen should already have.
I'm not sure why this is modded as flamebait — I'm qualified as a lawyer (although don't really think of myself as "a lawyer"), and I think there's a huge amount of merit in this. I wouldn't claim that law in Europe (or, perhaps more properly, any of the different states, since legal systems are not harmonised) is perfect, nor necessarily better, since I don't know the US system, but I do certainly agree that, if ignorance of the law is to be no defence, there needs to be fewer laws, more easily understood.
That being said, I studied law because I thought I would enjoy it, and that's what I keep on studying, researching, writing and thinking — becoming a law student as the shortest / cheapest route to becoming a lawyer perhaps makes sense, but it would be a tough three years without *wanting* to study it, I'd have thought.
This is better because you have a online course with a decent curriculum, assignments and exams. I wouldnt say this is better because it is from Stanford.
It sounds like we are in violent agreement, to be honest — that was the point I was trying to make too, in that, whilst it might not confer all the benefits of studying in person at Stanford, it should still be a high quality learning resource in its own right.
Slashdot Mirror
If you create something for a company while being paid by the company, the company owns it,
It's usually a little more nuanced than that.
If you are talking about copyright, where a protectable work is made by an employee in the course of his employment, the employer is the owner. However, if you create the work as a contractor, the law makes you the first owner, although you may agree contractually to assign ownership to the company.
For patents, ownership of an invention by an employee in the course of performance of his duties, where that employee's normal duties include the expectation of invention or else because the employee had a special duty to further the employer's interests, rests with the employer (although, where the invention is of "outstanding benefit", compensation may be payable to the employee notwithstanding that he is being paid to invent). Any other invention made by an employee is owned by the employee.
The court did not hold that "email are not owned by firms" as such. Rather, it was a more nuanced (and, in my opinion, very sensible) ruling, albeit one which does not seem to me to extend established law very much.
The ruling essentially holds that only property is capable of ownership — an established position, although, confusingly, capability of being owned is one of the tests as to whether something is capable of being property; defining "property" is no easy task. The court considered whether an email constituted "property" or not, and held that, unless the content of an email was the subject of copyright (a property right), or else constituted confidential information, an email is not intrinsically property — an established position again, to my mind.
The court also held that, even where there was no property in an email, an agreement as to how something should be treated could be binding — I can agree that I must deliver to you any email originating from you which I have on my computer, irrespective of the issue of property and ownership.
If nothing else, this seems to me to be a pretty common sense outcome. If employment contracts do not already reflect this position, I would expect employers to look to amending them pretty quickly.
Interesting — thank you.
Does the additional weight of a smartphone count as one little thing?
It's an official IUCN category
Interesting - thanks!
so it seems you've lost the fight.
Perhaps more "been given some helpful information" — are conversations really fights?!
RTFA: "extinct int he wild"
I think that's where I struggle as, to me, that's not possible - something is either extinct or not. Attempting to qualify extinction negates the meaning of extinction, to my understanding of term.
To me, it's a bit like saying "after surgery, he recovered from the fatal gunshot."
Indangered yes
"Endangered," or "in danger," but not "indangered" :)
In case seeing Dan's Kickstarter listing might help inform the debate.
Yes, financially penalising your early supporters seems like a brilliant marketing move
I can see why someone might view it as a financial penalty for early adoption if they were somehow upset that they had had to pay and others had not. For some people, sure, I can understand that they might feel that way. For others, perhaps not so much:
One person's "financial penalty for being an early adopter" is another's chance to help get a book/game/film/whatever created, which would otherwise not exist. If I want that thing to exist enough — if someone is proposing to write a book which particularly interests me, for example — I am likely willing to pay towards its creation. For me, that's not a financial penalty, that's me helping get something which I would not otherwise have had available to me.
Those who see contributing as a financial penalty wait until — or perhaps if — it is created, and then get it for free. Those who really want it, and are in a position to do so, contribute to help make it happen, just paying up front rather than after publication.
Bonus marks to creators who agree to make the work available permissively upon release — the creator already has the money which they wanted, and so can release the work to anyone who wants it. I lose nothing — I got what I wanted from my contribution, which was the existence of the book. The author loses nothing — s/he gets what s/he stated up front as her price for the writing.
9. Initially sell the ebook only, and then unlock it for free for all people after $xxxx has been raised
I like this idea very much — although I wonder if this is akin to what the Kickstarter model was meant to achieve. The author can set the reward he wants to receive for writing the book — he knows, before he starts writing too much, how much he can expect as a payment. This is his incentive to write. If he has enough people willing to pay for the work to be created, it gets funded. If not, back to the drawing board, so it does not necessarily work for "socially beneficial" works (as opposed to those which are desirable by those with the ability to pay), nor works which need long term sustained funding (such as something which needs to remain current)...
Here, it seems that the author named his price, got it, and realised it is not enough, which seems unfortunate.
A great list of suggestions, there — thank you for taking the time to post!
My view is that, if the book is the only thing you have, then, no, you cannot give it away in a way which makes money, other than asking (hoping) for donations. You may be able to ask in such a way that it encourages donations — I've no idea, but perhaps there's some research / advice on this — but, at the end of the day, you are still only requesting. Where you need to look, in my opinion, is how you could use your book to make money. If the book was one part of a wider means of making money, then you may well be able to make money from the wider model whilst giving the book away for free — the book becomes a piece of marketing for your actual revenue-making products / services.
Could you offer a printed version, at a price? Would some people pay for a hard copy version, rather than be reliant on something on their computer? If so, is there enough scope in the price of a printed version that, once set, produced, printed and shipped, there's still some money in it for you?
Does someone wishing to implement your book need any consumables which you could sell? Printed templates for class activities and so on? Access to a downloadable library of customisable templates, if not physical templates to be shipped to them?
Could you make money if the book was less free? Rather than releasing it "for free," you could release it under a partly-free licence (such as the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND), and charge for commercial re-use of the work (e.g. someone using excerpts in other textbooks and so on (where this would be more than non-infringing / fair use))?
Is there any value in offering your time/services to readers? Much like the open source support model, the code/book is there for free, but, if you need a hand with something in particular, such as working out how to implement your technique in a particular environment, or designing something for a particular school, even devising a taught course to train teachers, you pay for support. A consultation via Skype may well be desirable to some people, even running an actual course in person?
and attempting to speak with the ISP has not worked (it's not clear if you have tried to inform them that the bug remains on this, and likely other, servers, and given them the chance to fix it (albeit a second chance)), call up your data protection regulator on Monday morning, and explain the nature of the issue and its impact?
that Swordfish was a premonition — Hugh Jackman really does crack encryption...
What would help, is legislation that would make any contract or legal document not drawn up to be comprehensible by the "target audience" null and void.
In Europe, see Article 5, directive 93/13/EC, on unfair terms in consumer contracts:
In the case of contracts where all or certain terms offered to the consumer are in writing, these terms must always be drafted in plain, intelligible language. Where there is doubt about the meaning of a term, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer shall prevail.
That should teach lawyers and companies to keep things clear, simple and understandable
Absolutely. Although contracts are rather like code in many respect (in my opinion, at least) — clear, simple and understandable may not mean short / succinct, and, to expect consumers to read something, it needs to be pretty short...
Interesting link — although the content seems not to bear out the headline.
It looks like a disagreement over stance to me, with some parts highlighted in bold to emphasise the author's point that Eben held a different view to him. There's one "," but no "" or "" — it's not as if Eben was even saying something stupid or irrelevant, just seemingly not what the author wanted to hear for his article, and characterised Eben's answers as "yelling."
Does the title deed not establish a right?
It's a good question, and I do not know the answer — my gut feeling would be that the title deed establishes title to the land and that, if ownership of the land on which an item was found is sufficient, I would have expected (perhaps too much to expect) that the code of practice would make it clear that ownership of land constituted a relevant prior interest. Similarly, since property must always have an owner under English law (it reverts to the Crown if no other owner is traceable, via bona vacantia, from memory), if ownership of the land did count as a prior interest, treasure would never go to the Crown as it would always be owned by the landowner, making the provisions redundant?
However, some of the material in the document you cited suggested that ownership of the land is indeed relevant, so it sounds as if further research is needed!
The search was on private land. So they person that owns the land owns the stuff
My feeling is that, in the UK, there is a reasonably large exception to this, which is where the find constitutes "treasure" for the purposes of the Treasure Act 1996 (which has been extended by the Treasure (Designation) Order 2002).
Where a find is classified as treasure, it belongs to the Crown (or its franchisee, where there is one), "subject to prior interests and rights." (s4). Ownership of the *land* is not necessarily a sufficient prior interest or right here — to override the Crown's ownership, one would need to establish a right coming from the original owner of the treasure, such as being an heir to the treasure. (Paragraph 19 to The Treasure Act 1996 Code of Practice.)
The Act includes a duty to notify, within 14 days (s8).
Linux Mint is way more legitimate in every way... UBUNTU IS NOT RELEVANT
It may have changed — my last install of Mint was Helena — but is Mint not based on Ubuntu?
For Mint, I'd have thought Ubuntu was very relevant indeed.
asking a lawyer about this in an interview is exactly what flamebait is.
Really? I think it's a very fair question to ask a lawyer — not all of whom think that the status quo is desirable. Eben is perhaps a particularly good candidate for such a question, as he's clearly a thinker, and is involved in both teaching students and the practice of law.
I could be wrong, and Eben, if asked, may spew all-caps vitriol in response to this, but I reckon he'd treat it as an interesting question.
Eben — we spoke about FreedomBox at the FSFE conference in Amsterdam a couple of years back now. It sounded then, just as it does not, an interesting project. I've kept an eye on it over the last couple of years, and am pleased to see it's got to a developer release; I've ordered a plug server to be able to test it out. I'm keen to understand how you plan on turning it from a niche project for geeks into something in the mass market. I know you are working on making the GUI user-friendly, so it is suitable for consumers, but do you have any thoughts on how you would get this in the hands of those consumers?
Not legal advice, but some thoughts:
I'm qualified as a lawyer (and employed as one, but I'm not your lawyer, this is not legal advice etc.) and it's a subject close to my heart. Were I in your position — I wish I were as talented to be able to write a video game — I would ask myself what I was hoping to achieve with the EULA. Is it because other games flash something up in front of a user that you feel you should have one too?
I'd ask myself what is it that I was looking to achieve with it? Some sort of financial / legal protection? Wording to prevent people from copying / distributing my game (not worth the (digital) ink it's written on; those who want to share it will)? Attempting to legitimise sending people marketing email?
Once I'd worked out what I wanted, I'd just try writing it in plain English — if a lawyer writes it, there's a high chance it's going to suck from a readability point of view and, unless it's a game designed for lawyers, if you are hoping *anyone* will read it, being in normal English would be helpful.
If I were to still think I needed something, I'd see if there was a better way of achieving the end than flashing up text which just destroys the user experience — for example, if I wanted to ask people's permission to market to them, could I do this actually in the UI, in a transparent and friendly way?
If it's limitation of liability and such like, then talking to a lawyer may be a plan — but I would want to ask upfront how much everything would cost, what my exposure was, and what the likelihood of whatever the lawyer did reducing that exposure, so I could make a realistic risk assessment before spending my money. And I'd ask for a fixed price, rather than an hourly rate.
Anyway — just my thoughts :)
... law is as far as possible from something the common man is able to understand and defend himself with ... In short, by studying the law I was giving myself an advantage which every citizen should already have.
I'm not sure why this is modded as flamebait — I'm qualified as a lawyer (although don't really think of myself as "a lawyer"), and I think there's a huge amount of merit in this. I wouldn't claim that law in Europe (or, perhaps more properly, any of the different states, since legal systems are not harmonised) is perfect, nor necessarily better, since I don't know the US system, but I do certainly agree that, if ignorance of the law is to be no defence, there needs to be fewer laws, more easily understood.
That being said, I studied law because I thought I would enjoy it, and that's what I keep on studying, researching, writing and thinking — becoming a law student as the shortest / cheapest route to becoming a lawyer perhaps makes sense, but it would be a tough three years without *wanting* to study it, I'd have thought.
for rectangles with rounded corners.
This is better because you have a online course with a decent curriculum, assignments and exams. I wouldnt say this is better because it is from Stanford.
It sounds like we are in violent agreement, to be honest — that was the point I was trying to make too, in that, whilst it might not confer all the benefits of studying in person at Stanford, it should still be a high quality learning resource in its own right.
But for those who cannot make it to Stanford, for whatever reason, this is (likely to be) considerably better than nothing, I would have thought?