I'm not sure if you're kidding, but since your silly linkage is absurd and what you're trying to imply with it is so so misguided, I've got to put in my thoughts on it.
I fully realize that malaria and a couple of other awful tropical diseases are completely off the personal radar of most of the world's population of computer users, and thus of slashdot readers, and so I apologize to one and all for sounding pedantic, but this inane statement needs to be put down hard.
While drug companies have developed vaccines for some diseases that once upon a time plagued populations that could pay for the drugs, Malaria, Cholera, and Dengue Fever, to name just three, continue to kill millions of people every year. Research into vaccines which could save these millions of poor folks lives has been very slow, simply because there is no money to be made in it. Basicly it's an altruistic enterprise, so vaccine research does attract funding from rich donors, concerned governments, and international organizations.
But what it does not attract in any significant amount whatsoever, is research funding from pharmaceutical companies. Money spent on Viagra does not go to research a malaria vaccine, or a cholera vaccine, or a dengue fever vaccine.
Personally, my experience has been with Malaria. Having spent a considerable amount of time in certain parts of the world where that nasty disease is endemic, I can assure you there is no "cure" for it. There are prophylactic measures that can be taken, among them some expensive drugs. By expensive I'm thinking of Lariam, which costs $US5 to $US10 for a week. Protection with Lariam is not a reasonable notion when you are talking about preventing malaria in a population of folks who earn one dollar a day if they're lucky. Lariam or one of the other drugs will work on the individual scale, but not on the population scale. And there are also treatments which can ameliorate the syptoms of the infection, but in most cases the disease doesn't really ever go away completely. Certainly there are traditional herbal remedies used by people for thousands of years, and I'm sure some of these work to an extent, but they are no substitute for a vaccine. A vaccine is the only real cure for the malaria problem, and that is what Jello Biafra is talking about.
What's needed is basic vaccine research. With a vaccine you can protect a whole population in the cheapest and (hopefully) most effective manner.
Not really meaning to say a nice word about that man in Redmond, but Bill Gates's philanthropic work is the way to go. If the the market won't fix this problem (and this is a problem where the market does not provide incentives) then people and governments, and maybe some of those corporations, need to step up to the plate, and make up for this particular deficiency of the market.
I've gone on long enough. If anybody cares enough and wants me to dig up links, say so and I'll post later, but a decent google search will supply you with all the info you could ever want on these issues and then some.
In Bexar County, Texas, you can look in the records, and see if any particular voter voted in any particular election. You certainly can't tell who they vote for in particular. Party affiliation is also given, in that to vote in a particular party's primary elections, you must state your affiliation with that party, and get it stamped on your voter card.
I agree with all the others that this Denton County story is a nothing story. There is a legitimate public interest in allowing wide scrutiny of the information on the voter registration rolls. Having all sorts of folks looking at the entries helps to discourage intentional errors, and helps to correct unintentional ones.
Besides, there is much more sensitive info out there on the web. Like property ownership records. Like phone book entries. Like what's turned up in a quotationed google search.
Compared to that sort of info, the Denton County thing is trivial. And allowing wider public access allows for more scrutiny of errors in the info.
Well, if there was ever a balanced budget made in Washington, that would be so. However, there sure is not. Any parallel between revenues and expenditures in Washington is purely coincidental, or is explicable by way of phenomena completely outside the legislative budget cycle, phenomena such as, say, the general state of the nation's economy.
The clever 1040 scheme for budgeting the matching funds is one example of very very few where our legislators have delegated the budgeting power back to us. (The only parallel in the budget I can think of are where farmers get to vote on how much to tax themselves to fund subsidy programs.)
I do happen to agree with much of what you're saying. For various reasons, however, I think Nader espouses a point of view that is worthy of inclusion and support in the national discourse, though I personally agree with not a whole lot of the specific policy proposals the man is going around promoting. It doesn't matter though, in the short term, as he will never be elected. But that is not the point.
That's cool. I don't expect many to agree with my suggestion.
But I got to comment on your aside about your tax dollars being used to fund Federal Matching Funds.
It is true that they are funded out of federal tax dollars, and whether or not there should be federal taxes or a federal government for that matter really are interesting issues, but neither here nor there in the context of a federal election. Rather, those would be issues for a constitutiona l convention or perhaps some other forum advocating change.
But anyways, as to the notion that they would be your tax dollars being used to fund candidates, you might have missed the little box on your 1040 where you can designate that an amount of your tax dollars is to be used to fund the Presidential Matching Funds.
Presidential Matching Funds only come out of an amount of money in the federal budget each year equal to the amount of money designated on 1040s of individual taxpayers for use for Presidential Matching Funds. It's called the Presidential Elections Campaign Fund.
So in that sense, it wouldn't be your money used to fund these folks.
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
The District of Columbia gets Electors, too, because of the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment:
The District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--
That is a catch to my notion. That's why I wouldn't recommend it unless the voter were in one of the fair number of states where Bush is for certain going to win.
As far as whether or not the polls themselves are correct, you can always go look at the methodologies used themselves and see what you think for yourself. Most of the reputable ones are pretty open about that, even if the news media doesn't communicate it. On a nation-wide basis in the presidential race, with the electoral college skewing things, a popular poll is fairly meaningless, but on a state basis, where it a majority of the popular vote that decides the state's electoral college votes, they can be of help in figuring out what would happen were the vote on the day of the poll.
For instance, I have absolutely no doubt that George W. Bush will win my state with twenty or thirty percent margin. I, of course, live in Texas, though, where a large majority know and like the man (or at least want to get him out of Austin). So, I feel no reluctance in urging my fellow Texans to be a bit more intelligent in how they cast their votes. A number of other states are also sure-winners for Bush, and the folks in those states who vote, are surely aware of that fact.
All Nader needs is 5% on a nation-wide popular basis, and that'll give him and the Greens a real incentive to come back in four years for another go at it. The guy's PIRGs are already real efficient at covering the nation with the money they scavenge going door-to-door. Imagine that energy with a small chunk of seed money to put to use in politics. It would make things interesting to say the least.
Certainly, if campaign finance law were different, or if the method for electing the president were different, my suggestion would be silly, maybe even dangerous, but we got to play by the rules they give us. Or at least we do until sometime past this coming Tuesday.
Under the Constitution, the electors of the Electoral College are empowered to vote for whomever they wish. They usually do vote for the candidates for whom they were elected by the voters to cast their electoral vote, but there is no requirement that they vote for those two candidates.
But it is the individual elector's constitutional right to vote for whomever they they wish (subject to the Constitution's limitations on who can be president and vice president).
The last time it happened was in 1988, when an elector, as a protest against the electoral college system, cast her presidential electoral vote for Lloyd Bentsen, and her vice-presidential electoral vote for Michael Dukakis.
Personally, I would go check the latest polls and see if you're in one of the states where Bush is way ahead. If that's so, and that describes a good one-third of the states, then go vote for Ralph Nader.
If Nader gets 5% of the popular vote, the Green Party will get Federal Matching Funds. For a grass-roots party like the Greens, that $7 million would be mighty important. The Greens certainly do not have many big campaign contributors funding them, folks.
In the long term, such as the next four or fifteen years or so, I think Nader, or whoever succeeds Nader as the Green candidate, has real potential to add to the quadrennial political discourse in the United States.
Of course if you're not in a solid Bush state, then you would have to vote more tactically, maybe by your own political beliefs, and maybe still for Nader, but I've nothing to suggest there.
But despite his quasi-socialist notions about progressive taxation and wealth, I think it's worth it to vote for the guy, especially if you're in one of those states where your vote won't make one bit of difference one way or another in the overall outcome next Tuesday.
I mean, I don't recall either of the others even mentioning Open Source, or taking a rational position on IP issues.
Well, I don't know about other slashdot readers, but this North American registered to be an ICANN voter after seeing the article here in the spring about registration.
I did get a snail mail letter from them telling me about it, and saying I would hear more from them about registering to vote and how to do that, but that letter never came. I was mildly frustrated at this when they had the vote confirmation period a couple of months ago, and I couldn't confirm my registration. So I ended up not being able to vote in these elections though possibly I was counted in the overall numbers. I'll try and go through the process again for next time. I'd be curious to know how common this kind of situation might have been, and how much it might have contributed to voter turnout, and especially with regards to the folks who registered en masse after seeing the slashdot piece, and I think there might have been a few of us.
My main concern with ICANN is a personal one kind of, which is what they can do about the problem of domain squatting by nonusing registrants, a practice which really limits the domains usable by the public, and annoys me no end in one particular obnoxious case impacting me. (If they were to just put up some nothing pages using Frontpage, or one with a metareferral to another site, I wouldn't mind it quite so much, but when they just hang on to them and you can't even ping it, it makes me a bit mad. And no, I won't say what domain it is, as I am biding my time either for swift action with new TLDs or for their failure to pay up to NSI.)
While Blizzard may have backed down on this confrontation for the sake of fan relations, it's just as likely their lawyers backed down because of the general unenforceability of shrink-wrap licenses in the consumer retail context. (I don't know, as I don't know about the controversy other than what you've written.) Under Article 2 of the UCC as enacted in most American jurisdictions, shrink-wrap licenses are simply not sufficient to change the terms of a transaction already performed at the cash register in the store.
If someone reverse engineered the battle.net protocol simply from what's on the retail copy of Starcraft, then Blizzard didn't have anything except the expense of lawyering on their side of the legal argument. They didn't have law on their side.
All this would have been different now, in the year 2000, with the DMCA in effect, of course. And it will be different in UCITA jurisdictions, removing the law of sales obstacle to "license" enforcement against retail consumers of software. The UCITA just went into effect October First in Maryland, the first state, so look for interesting developments.
Note, though, that the enforceability of downloaded software licenses is a different matter, becuase there the downloader typically has to click through a license agreement, getting full prior notice, before the transaction is completed. Or if there is no sales transaction, but it's instead "just" a patch to the battle.net protocol which is being reverse engineered, then the issue of enforceability would also probably be very different too, not just because of the click-through license, but becuase there would then be no annoying contract formation analysis under the law of sales to prevent enforcement.
Again, though, results would be different under either the DMCA or UCITA.
Electrons on a hard disk ARE fixed in a tangible medium. And thus are covered by Federal copyright. And thus states are preempted from passing their own copyright laws covering that subject matter.
However, the California legislation protecting the professors' lectures specifically limits its scope to works which are NOT fixed in a tangible medium. Thus, it is not preempted by Federal Copyright. Look at Sec 302(b) of the FCA to see what I'm talking about.
Now, just how many professors fail to commit their lectures to writing or typing prior to presenting them to their classes I can't say. And thus the practical impact of the California legislation is unclear to me. If those profs were to write down their lectures beforehand, they fix it in a tangible medium, thus they can't use the California law to protect their rights. But then they can go on ahead and use Federal Copyright to prevent the lecture note sellers from infringing on whatever IP rights the profs may have in their lectures.
By the way, California has had legislation on the books for many many years which already grants copyright-like status to the the author of any kind of authorial work which is not otherwise protected under Federal Copyright law (i.e any work that is NOT fixed in a tangible medium). This lecture note law is aimed at adding new protections and procedures to a specific kind of un-fixed work, a category which would have already been protected to an extant under the prior California law.
Just for your info, examples of authorial works which are NOT covered by the FCA, because they are not fixed in a tangible medium are things like impromptu sermons or speeches, improvised dance choreography or jazz music, improv comedy routines, lectures composed in the prof's head, musical arrangements or compositions which have not yet been put down on tape or in writing, improvised poetry or raps such as are comon at Poetry Slams, radio talk show banter if they're not being recorded on tape, and on and on. If it's not written or recorded down, Federal Copyright does not protect it, and thus Federal law can't preempt a state law protecting it.
Another common kind of quasi-copyright state law are state laws prohibiting bootlegging of live concerts without the permission of the performers; the live performance itself might not be being recorded at the time of performance, thus is not fixed in a tangible medium, and thus the performers' rights under copyright to be protected as authors of the live performance will not be protected by Federal Copyright.) The composers of the songs would still have rights, so long as they had written down or recorded the pieces before the performance.) So there's all these state laws on the books to protect musicians from being bootlegged, and they fit into the same copyright preemeption loophole that the California lecture notes law does.
I think it's fair to say that the enforceability of such "license" agreements is very far from a sure thing, in the absence of a state's passage of UCITA, especially in the context of the consumer retail transaction (which I would asume is the kind of transaction the MS naked pc page is aimed at). The notion that a shrink-wrap or click-through agreement can modify the terms of an already completed consumer retail purchase is very much not a settled issue of law.
One case has enforced a shrink-wrap agreement, ProCD v Zeidenburg, but I think the case is plain wrong on the issues of contract formation, and many other courts have refused to enforce the agreements.
Another obstacle to enforcement of these license terms is provision in the UCC on adhesion contracts, and an adhesion contract is almost certainly what the license agreement amounts to in the context of the consumer retail computer purchases to which I've been a party.
UCITA changes this, and would prevent the application of sales law to the formation of such "license" agreements and would allow these terms to be enforced. In Maryland, by the way, the first state implementation of UCITA just went into effect on October First. I look forward to the cases. I anticipate some copyright preemption problems for the enforcement of certain common "license" terms, especially with regard to those which purport to take away fair use and first sale rights.
Ed
You've missed part of the legislation. It only applies to lectures not fixed in a tangible medium. This limitation is aimed at keeping it from being preempted by Federal law. You are right that in general states are preempted by the Federal Copyright Act from making a copyright or quasi-copyright law, but that does not apply here. Federal copyright only applies to works fixed in a tangible medium. States are free to create copyright-style laws, so long as they only apply to works not protected under Federal copyright. Thus, this law only applies to lectures not fixed in a tangible medium. A professor, if his works were fixed in a tangible medium, such as if he wrote the lecture down before delivering it, has the protection of Federal Copyright law. But for those cases where the prof doesn't have it written down, the work isn't protected by Federal Copyright. Thus there is a loophole in IP protection that the State of California is stepping in to fill. After a cursory examination of the legislation I don't see a preemption problem here.
Ed
That book publishers have not taken advantage of the potential of the electronic medium is obvious. Like all the intellectual property rent-takers, the publishing houses have viewed electronic distribution as dangerous. But now, it might be a new, very lucrative, profit center.
After the attention of the King novella, publishers will jump in to electronic distribution, and if they don't, their authors will. With the profits to be made with electronic distribution, publishers will have to take it into account when planning the distibution of works. If they don't, they'll see their authors move on to others who will distribute works via the very profitable model of electronic distribution. They may still view on-line distribution as disquieting to their sense of control over copyright, but the potential profits will force them to do it.
I understand that Stephen King is going to be paid a 50% royalty on the amounts paid for this novella. Contrast this amount with the ten or fifteen percent of wholesale that a top-shelf author can normally extract in negotiations with their publishing house. An author is lucky if they get paid a five or ten thousand dollar advance against royalties for a full-length book (though the select few like King demand and get far higher advances). Contrast this even more with the advances fatbrain.com paid its authors for the Bill of Rights essays ($100,000 each).
Any author in their right mind has spent at least a bit of time the past week reviewing their contracts to see what they are allowed to do electronically by their publishing houses. And I would imagine that many authors have been in contact with their editors to see what their publishers have in store for them.
After the King novella and after the fatbrain advances, all publishers will be forced to move into electronic distribution, if not by consumer demand, then by the demands of their authors. If not, those authors will know where to move themselves.
I can't imagine that "e-publishing" will replace the paper sort any time soon, but it will very quickly become an important ajunct. The lower costs and higher profits will almost require it.
Maybe one day then, the works published will take advantage of the new medium, and the publishers and authors (if there's any distinction by that point) will have an incentive to take the time to implement such interactivity, whatever it might be, that the new medium can allow.
Slashdot Mirror
I fully realize that malaria and a couple of other awful tropical diseases are completely off the personal radar of most of the world's population of computer users, and thus of slashdot readers, and so I apologize to one and all for sounding pedantic, but this inane statement needs to be put down hard.
While drug companies have developed vaccines for some diseases that once upon a time plagued populations that could pay for the drugs, Malaria, Cholera, and Dengue Fever, to name just three, continue to kill millions of people every year. Research into vaccines which could save these millions of poor folks lives has been very slow, simply because there is no money to be made in it. Basicly it's an altruistic enterprise, so vaccine research does attract funding from rich donors, concerned governments, and international organizations.
But what it does not attract in any significant amount whatsoever, is research funding from pharmaceutical companies. Money spent on Viagra does not go to research a malaria vaccine, or a cholera vaccine, or a dengue fever vaccine.
Personally, my experience has been with Malaria. Having spent a considerable amount of time in certain parts of the world where that nasty disease is endemic, I can assure you there is no "cure" for it. There are prophylactic measures that can be taken, among them some expensive drugs. By expensive I'm thinking of Lariam, which costs $US5 to $US10 for a week. Protection with Lariam is not a reasonable notion when you are talking about preventing malaria in a population of folks who earn one dollar a day if they're lucky. Lariam or one of the other drugs will work on the individual scale, but not on the population scale. And there are also treatments which can ameliorate the syptoms of the infection, but in most cases the disease doesn't really ever go away completely. Certainly there are traditional herbal remedies used by people for thousands of years, and I'm sure some of these work to an extent, but they are no substitute for a vaccine. A vaccine is the only real cure for the malaria problem, and that is what Jello Biafra is talking about.
What's needed is basic vaccine research. With a vaccine you can protect a whole population in the cheapest and (hopefully) most effective manner.
Not really meaning to say a nice word about that man in Redmond, but Bill Gates's philanthropic work is the way to go. If the the market won't fix this problem (and this is a problem where the market does not provide incentives) then people and governments, and maybe some of those corporations, need to step up to the plate, and make up for this particular deficiency of the market.
I've gone on long enough. If anybody cares enough and wants me to dig up links, say so and I'll post later, but a decent google search will supply you with all the info you could ever want on these issues and then some.
Ed
Up dat ed latest polls
EdI agree with all the others that this Denton County story is a nothing story. There is a legitimate public interest in allowing wide scrutiny of the information on the voter registration rolls. Having all sorts of folks looking at the entries helps to discourage intentional errors, and helps to correct unintentional ones.
Besides, there is much more sensitive info out there on the web. Like property ownership records. Like phone book entries. Like what's turned up in a quotationed google search.
Compared to that sort of info, the Denton County thing is trivial. And allowing wider public access allows for more scrutiny of errors in the info.
Ed
The clever 1040 scheme for budgeting the matching funds is one example of very very few where our legislators have delegated the budgeting power back to us. (The only parallel in the budget I can think of are where farmers get to vote on how much to tax themselves to fund subsidy programs.)
I do happen to agree with much of what you're saying. For various reasons, however, I think Nader espouses a point of view that is worthy of inclusion and support in the national discourse, though I personally agree with not a whole lot of the specific policy proposals the man is going around promoting. It doesn't matter though, in the short term, as he will never be elected. But that is not the point.
Comprendé?
Ed
That's cool. I don't expect many to agree with my suggestion.
But I got to comment on your aside about your tax dollars being used to fund Federal Matching Funds.
It is true that they are funded out of federal tax dollars, and whether or not there should be federal taxes or a federal government for that matter really are interesting issues, but neither here nor there in the context of a federal election. Rather, those would be issues for a constitutiona l convention or perhaps some other forum advocating change.
But anyways, as to the notion that they would be your tax dollars being used to fund candidates, you might have missed the little box on your 1040 where you can designate that an amount of your tax dollars is to be used to fund the Presidential Matching Funds.
Presidential Matching Funds only come out of an amount of money in the federal budget each year equal to the amount of money designated on 1040s of individual taxpayers for use for Presidential Matching Funds. It's called the Presidential Elections Campaign Fund.So in that sense, it wouldn't be your money used to fund these folks.
EdArticle II, Sec 1 of the Constitution lays out the apportionment of electors:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
The District of Columbia gets Electors, too, because of the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment:The District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
The Electoral College operates according to the Twelfth Amendment:
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--
EdAs far as whether or not the polls themselves are correct, you can always go look at the methodologies used themselves and see what you think for yourself. Most of the reputable ones are pretty open about that, even if the news media doesn't communicate it. On a nation-wide basis in the presidential race, with the electoral college skewing things, a popular poll is fairly meaningless, but on a state basis, where it a majority of the popular vote that decides the state's electoral college votes, they can be of help in figuring out what would happen were the vote on the day of the poll.
For instance, I have absolutely no doubt that George W. Bush will win my state with twenty or thirty percent margin. I, of course, live in Texas, though, where a large majority know and like the man (or at least want to get him out of Austin). So, I feel no reluctance in urging my fellow Texans to be a bit more intelligent in how they cast their votes. A number of other states are also sure-winners for Bush, and the folks in those states who vote, are surely aware of that fact.
All Nader needs is 5% on a nation-wide popular basis, and that'll give him and the Greens a real incentive to come back in four years for another go at it. The guy's PIRGs are already real efficient at covering the nation with the money they scavenge going door-to-door. Imagine that energy with a small chunk of seed money to put to use in politics. It would make things interesting to say the least.
Certainly, if campaign finance law were different, or if the method for electing the president were different, my suggestion would be silly, maybe even dangerous, but we got to play by the rules they give us. Or at least we do until sometime past this coming Tuesday.
Ed
But it is the individual elector's constitutional right to vote for whomever they they wish (subject to the Constitution's limitations on who can be president and vice president).
The last time it happened was in 1988, when an elector, as a protest against the electoral college system, cast her presidential electoral vote for Lloyd Bentsen, and her vice-presidential electoral vote for Michael Dukakis.
It is not frequent, but it does happen.
Ed
If Nader gets 5% of the popular vote, the Green Party will get Federal Matching Funds. For a grass-roots party like the Greens, that $7 million would be mighty important. The Greens certainly do not have many big campaign contributors funding them, folks.
In the long term, such as the next four or fifteen years or so, I think Nader, or whoever succeeds Nader as the Green candidate, has real potential to add to the quadrennial political discourse in the United States.
Of course if you're not in a solid Bush state, then you would have to vote more tactically, maybe by your own political beliefs, and maybe still for Nader, but I've nothing to suggest there.
But despite his quasi-socialist notions about progressive taxation and wealth, I think it's worth it to vote for the guy, especially if you're in one of those states where your vote won't make one bit of difference one way or another in the overall outcome next Tuesday.
I mean, I don't recall either of the others even mentioning Open Source, or taking a rational position on IP issues.
Ed
I did get a snail mail letter from them telling me about it, and saying I would hear more from them about registering to vote and how to do that, but that letter never came. I was mildly frustrated at this when they had the vote confirmation period a couple of months ago, and I couldn't confirm my registration. So I ended up not being able to vote in these elections though possibly I was counted in the overall numbers. I'll try and go through the process again for next time. I'd be curious to know how common this kind of situation might have been, and how much it might have contributed to voter turnout, and especially with regards to the folks who registered en masse after seeing the slashdot piece, and I think there might have been a few of us.
My main concern with ICANN is a personal one kind of, which is what they can do about the problem of domain squatting by nonusing registrants, a practice which really limits the domains usable by the public, and annoys me no end in one particular obnoxious case impacting me. (If they were to just put up some nothing pages using Frontpage, or one with a metareferral to another site, I wouldn't mind it quite so much, but when they just hang on to them and you can't even ping it, it makes me a bit mad. And no, I won't say what domain it is, as I am biding my time either for swift action with new TLDs or for their failure to pay up to NSI.)
Ed
Ed
If someone reverse engineered the battle.net protocol simply from what's on the retail copy of Starcraft, then Blizzard didn't have anything except the expense of lawyering on their side of the legal argument. They didn't have law on their side.
All this would have been different now, in the year 2000, with the DMCA in effect, of course. And it will be different in UCITA jurisdictions, removing the law of sales obstacle to "license" enforcement against retail consumers of software. The UCITA just went into effect October First in Maryland, the first state, so look for interesting developments.
Note, though, that the enforceability of downloaded software licenses is a different matter, becuase there the downloader typically has to click through a license agreement, getting full prior notice, before the transaction is completed. Or if there is no sales transaction, but it's instead "just" a patch to the battle.net protocol which is being reverse engineered, then the issue of enforceability would also probably be very different too, not just because of the click-through license, but becuase there would then be no annoying contract formation analysis under the law of sales to prevent enforcement.
Again, though, results would be different under either the DMCA or UCITA.
Ed
However, the California legislation protecting the professors' lectures specifically limits its scope to works which are NOT fixed in a tangible medium. Thus, it is not preempted by Federal Copyright. Look at Sec 302(b) of the FCA to see what I'm talking about.
Now, just how many professors fail to commit their lectures to writing or typing prior to presenting them to their classes I can't say. And thus the practical impact of the California legislation is unclear to me. If those profs were to write down their lectures beforehand, they fix it in a tangible medium, thus they can't use the California law to protect their rights. But then they can go on ahead and use Federal Copyright to prevent the lecture note sellers from infringing on whatever IP rights the profs may have in their lectures.
By the way, California has had legislation on the books for many many years which already grants copyright-like status to the the author of any kind of authorial work which is not otherwise protected under Federal Copyright law (i.e any work that is NOT fixed in a tangible medium). This lecture note law is aimed at adding new protections and procedures to a specific kind of un-fixed work, a category which would have already been protected to an extant under the prior California law.
Just for your info, examples of authorial works which are NOT covered by the FCA, because they are not fixed in a tangible medium are things like impromptu sermons or speeches, improvised dance choreography or jazz music, improv comedy routines, lectures composed in the prof's head, musical arrangements or compositions which have not yet been put down on tape or in writing, improvised poetry or raps such as are comon at Poetry Slams, radio talk show banter if they're not being recorded on tape, and on and on. If it's not written or recorded down, Federal Copyright does not protect it, and thus Federal law can't preempt a state law protecting it.
Another common kind of quasi-copyright state law are state laws prohibiting bootlegging of live concerts without the permission of the performers; the live performance itself might not be being recorded at the time of performance, thus is not fixed in a tangible medium, and thus the performers' rights under copyright to be protected as authors of the live performance will not be protected by Federal Copyright.) The composers of the songs would still have rights, so long as they had written down or recorded the pieces before the performance.) So there's all these state laws on the books to protect musicians from being bootlegged, and they fit into the same copyright preemeption loophole that the California lecture notes law does.
Have at it. Enough.
Ed
One case has enforced a shrink-wrap agreement, ProCD v Zeidenburg, but I think the case is plain wrong on the issues of contract formation, and many other courts have refused to enforce the agreements.
Another obstacle to enforcement of these license terms is provision in the UCC on adhesion contracts, and an adhesion contract is almost certainly what the license agreement amounts to in the context of the consumer retail computer purchases to which I've been a party.
UCITA changes this, and would prevent the application of sales law to the formation of such "license" agreements and would allow these terms to be enforced. In Maryland, by the way, the first state implementation of UCITA just went into effect on October First. I look forward to the cases. I anticipate some copyright preemption problems for the enforcement of certain common "license" terms, especially with regard to those which purport to take away fair use and first sale rights. Ed
You've missed part of the legislation. It only applies to lectures not fixed in a tangible medium. This limitation is aimed at keeping it from being preempted by Federal law. You are right that in general states are preempted by the Federal Copyright Act from making a copyright or quasi-copyright law, but that does not apply here. Federal copyright only applies to works fixed in a tangible medium. States are free to create copyright-style laws, so long as they only apply to works not protected under Federal copyright. Thus, this law only applies to lectures not fixed in a tangible medium. A professor, if his works were fixed in a tangible medium, such as if he wrote the lecture down before delivering it, has the protection of Federal Copyright law. But for those cases where the prof doesn't have it written down, the work isn't protected by Federal Copyright. Thus there is a loophole in IP protection that the State of California is stepping in to fill. After a cursory examination of the legislation I don't see a preemption problem here. Ed
After the attention of the King novella, publishers will jump in to electronic distribution, and if they don't, their authors will. With the profits to be made with electronic distribution, publishers will have to take it into account when planning the distibution of works. If they don't, they'll see their authors move on to others who will distribute works via the very profitable model of electronic distribution. They may still view on-line distribution as disquieting to their sense of control over copyright, but the potential profits will force them to do it.
I understand that Stephen King is going to be paid a 50% royalty on the amounts paid for this novella. Contrast this amount with the ten or fifteen percent of wholesale that a top-shelf author can normally extract in negotiations with their publishing house. An author is lucky if they get paid a five or ten thousand dollar advance against royalties for a full-length book (though the select few like King demand and get far higher advances). Contrast this even more with the advances fatbrain.com paid its authors for the Bill of Rights essays ($100,000 each).
Any author in their right mind has spent at least a bit of time the past week reviewing their contracts to see what they are allowed to do electronically by their publishing houses. And I would imagine that many authors have been in contact with their editors to see what their publishers have in store for them.
After the King novella and after the fatbrain advances, all publishers will be forced to move into electronic distribution, if not by consumer demand, then by the demands of their authors. If not, those authors will know where to move themselves.
I can't imagine that "e-publishing" will replace the paper sort any time soon, but it will very quickly become an important ajunct. The lower costs and higher profits will almost require it.
Maybe one day then, the works published will take advantage of the new medium, and the publishers and authors (if there's any distinction by that point) will have an incentive to take the time to implement such interactivity, whatever it might be, that the new medium can allow.