The ad litem attorneys were two public interest groups--Public Citizen and the EFF. Most of the attorneys there work there for well below what they would command on the private market.
Actually, the appellate court didn't agree--they just said that the attorney suing the does had waived his right to make the arguments he made on appeal, because he hadn't made them below and on-time.
In other words, he lost the appeal on a technicality. He might well have lost it on the merits as well, but it never got that far.
The only especially notable thing about this is a circuit court on record talking about the pattern of abusive litigation in mass-porn lawsuits.
There are thousands of people doing everything from volunteering to help at the local soup kitchen to working for change on massive human rights abuses to defending the wrongly accused.
Charity is a field with far more available in the way of hands than in the way of money. Could it use more hands? Sure. But there still isn't enough money to fund all the people that want to do the work, even at the low salaries most people who work in the related fields accept because that's what they want to be doing.
No, generally courts won't allow double recovery--negligence would be a backup theory in case you didn't win the statutory damages, since you'd have to prove actual harm, which would be much smaller than statutory damages. But if you got them, they wouldn't let you also get negligence damages.
The negligence/willfulness distinction I also think doesn't work, though it sounds intuitively good. IIRC, civil copyright uses willfulness to increase damages, but actually has strict liability. You're right that the double jeopardy thing doesn't apply because it's a civil case.
People get accused of negligence all the time--getting in an accident, not maintaining a sidewalk, pretty much anything.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a negligence claim here, it would just be a hard sell. Negligence arises when someone has a duty, they breach the duty, and the breach is the cause of a forseeable harm to the plaintiff.
It doesn't have to involve nukes, and usually it doesn't.
So there would be two big hurdles for a plaintiff here: (1) a duty to keep one's internet connection secure and (2) the idea that there has actually been harm.
The judge bought an argument that the copyright law created a way for people to recover for the harm involved here, so the copyright statute overrules the ability to file a common-law negligence action. (Statutes trump common law). It's not a bad argument, although it's also not a surefire-win. (And as an on-point district court decision, the ruling is persuasive, but not binding on other courts.)
Disclaimer: IANAL, this isn't legal advice, laws vary by state, and you and I are both partially wrong.
They may be going faster than you when they pass, but their behavior can result in an accident where you hit them anyway. This occurs where they are slowing down or you are speeding up, meaning it is possible for the vehicles to collide despite the fact that they are passing you. This frequently occurs when you are overtaking a vehicle in the lane next to you moving more slowly than yours (usually the right lane in the United States), and someone behind that vehicle in that lane comes up and slips into your lane in front of you, relying on you to change your velocity or acceleration in order not to be hit, or allowing an unacceptably thin margin of error.
How is stealing a keyless car possible unless they don't bother to spend a few bucks on implementing a good friend-or-foe system? (Which would be much cheaper then what they charge for an electronic "key")
We used to believe the sun was powered by gravitational potential energy, giving us 10K years or so of solar system life. Then a geologist and and astronomer were chatting one day, and the geologist asked about the age of the solar system...
As it turns out, the rocks were all older than the solar system. So they knew something was weird.
The distinction between taking more money from someone and giving them less money is not a meaningful one, once the authority to take and give money has been determined.
Its primary utility is to reduce the political cost of expenditures by calling them tax cuts. In effect, to lie.
You're right; It came to mind as an example of something that will be demonized as a tax increase, and it is a tax increase, but it isn't as thoroughly on party lines as to be a good example.
Basically, it's the only way they could come closer to federal healthcare without the insurance companies deciding they didn't want the bill, and therefore vetoing it.
IIRC, Bush expanded the EITC because of the economic collapse; but the rhetoric and weight of his party is against welfare programs including the EITC. How "little" people with virtually no money pay in taxes is a talking point on the right, because people with more feel that it's unfair that they pay so much more.
Actually, each party is happy to raise taxes on the other party, they just don't call it raising taxes.
Democrats are happy to raise taxes on rich people who are unlikely to vote democrat. The individual mandate is an example, as well as the fight over raising taxes during the budget struggles last year.
Republicans are happy to raise taxes on poor people. This is what ending welfare and reducing EITC do. They call it ending subsidies or socialism or welfare instead of raising taxes, but they're happy to do it.
Better connected people will just swipe your idea and present it as theirs, with an option to blame you if it fails. That's how they become better connected.
First, the right well-connected people will usually give you some credit even if it works--and even if they don't, they remember you, so you have a great connection if it works. Second, wouldn't you rather work at a company that works right, even if you don't get the credit for it?
From the summary, it sounds like Twitter's efforts--purportedly to clamp down on abuse--can be easily bypassed by setting up two accounts instead of one, and entering a few fake fields.
So basically, it sounds like a way to artificially bump the number of accounts. So they may be looking to sell the company, or someone may be looking to artificially pad their resume.
Agreed. The US Navy does a lot of great things (some of their disaster work is first-rate, for example, and they also do anti-piracy work and help ensure free navigation), but our armed forces and military policy have also been responsible for a lot of really bad things (allying with armed forces that place zero value on human life, adding to demand for forced prostitution, propping up oppressive regimes).
It's not black and white, and talking points on both sides (insofar as there are only two) have some truth to them.
The memo points out that the plaintiff here did not even allege that the accused Does passed data between each other. They may have downloaded the porn at different times.
The memo also calls foul on a hashtag argument. I haven't seen the opposing memo, though, to know if it was any good.
The issue is that when two satellites collide, they tend to create more junk--it's not just unplanned orbits, it's stuff breaking apart and going in lots of different directions.
"Several Nations" pretty much means China, at least in recent history. But their test of their anti-satellite weapon actually did set us back decades.
Basically, a lot of stuff falls to earth slowly, so lower orbits empty of old junk over time. When stuff collides and shatters into lots of pieces, all going every which way, it undoes a huge amount of the clearer orbits we gain from stuff falling.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, one collision can set us back *decades* in terms of the Kessler effect (i.e. space junk that makes it harder to launch/maintain orbit without more collisions).
If you can spend $20M on litigation and it gives you a monopoly over a key feature in a market worth even a few billion, it may well be worth it.
Whether it's worth it to *society* is a different question, one that has to do with when and to what extent patents actually do their job of promoting innovation.
Absolutely, The Hobbit. At eight it should be easy. We were reading LOTR by eight. The Narnian Chronicles are also good for children and easy reads. (Some people hate them as inherently religious--kids don't notice.)
Harry Potter, though reductive and non-classic, is also easy and can be fun.
The Dark is Rising Sequence is a slightly tougher read, but also uses much better language.
Most importantly, turn off the TV/Computer/Videogames. Books get MUCH more interesting when there isn't something around that gives faster rewards.
Slashdot Mirror
The ad litem attorneys were two public interest groups--Public Citizen and the EFF. Most of the attorneys there work there for well below what they would command on the private market.
Actually, the appellate court didn't agree--they just said that the attorney suing the does had waived his right to make the arguments he made on appeal, because he hadn't made them below and on-time.
In other words, he lost the appeal on a technicality. He might well have lost it on the merits as well, but it never got that far.
The only especially notable thing about this is a circuit court on record talking about the pattern of abusive litigation in mass-porn lawsuits.
There are thousands of people doing everything from volunteering to help at the local soup kitchen to working for change on massive human rights abuses to defending the wrongly accused.
Charity is a field with far more available in the way of hands than in the way of money. Could it use more hands? Sure. But there still isn't enough money to fund all the people that want to do the work, even at the low salaries most people who work in the related fields accept because that's what they want to be doing.
*shrugs* Certainly there's nothing *preventing* it from involving nukes. It's just unlikely. :)
No, generally courts won't allow double recovery--negligence would be a backup theory in case you didn't win the statutory damages, since you'd have to prove actual harm, which would be much smaller than statutory damages. But if you got them, they wouldn't let you also get negligence damages.
The negligence/willfulness distinction I also think doesn't work, though it sounds intuitively good. IIRC, civil copyright uses willfulness to increase damages, but actually has strict liability. You're right that the double jeopardy thing doesn't apply because it's a civil case.
People get accused of negligence all the time--getting in an accident, not maintaining a sidewalk, pretty much anything.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a negligence claim here, it would just be a hard sell. Negligence arises when someone has a duty, they breach the duty, and the breach is the cause of a forseeable harm to the plaintiff.
It doesn't have to involve nukes, and usually it doesn't.
So there would be two big hurdles for a plaintiff here: (1) a duty to keep one's internet connection secure and (2) the idea that there has actually been harm.
The judge bought an argument that the copyright law created a way for people to recover for the harm involved here, so the copyright statute overrules the ability to file a common-law negligence action. (Statutes trump common law). It's not a bad argument, although it's also not a surefire-win. (And as an on-point district court decision, the ruling is persuasive, but not binding on other courts.)
Disclaimer: IANAL, this isn't legal advice, laws vary by state, and you and I are both partially wrong.
They may be going faster than you when they pass, but their behavior can result in an accident where you hit them anyway. This occurs where they are slowing down or you are speeding up, meaning it is possible for the vehicles to collide despite the fact that they are passing you. This frequently occurs when you are overtaking a vehicle in the lane next to you moving more slowly than yours (usually the right lane in the United States), and someone behind that vehicle in that lane comes up and slips into your lane in front of you, relying on you to change your velocity or acceleration in order not to be hit, or allowing an unacceptably thin margin of error.
How is stealing a keyless car possible unless they don't bother to spend a few bucks on implementing a good friend-or-foe system? (Which would be much cheaper then what they charge for an electronic "key")
We used to believe the sun was powered by gravitational potential energy, giving us 10K years or so of solar system life. Then a geologist and and astronomer were chatting one day, and the geologist asked about the age of the solar system...
As it turns out, the rocks were all older than the solar system. So they knew something was weird.
The distinction between taking more money from someone and giving them less money is not a meaningful one, once the authority to take and give money has been determined.
Its primary utility is to reduce the political cost of expenditures by calling them tax cuts. In effect, to lie.
You're right; It came to mind as an example of something that will be demonized as a tax increase, and it is a tax increase, but it isn't as thoroughly on party lines as to be a good example.
Basically, it's the only way they could come closer to federal healthcare without the insurance companies deciding they didn't want the bill, and therefore vetoing it.
IIRC, Bush expanded the EITC because of the economic collapse; but the rhetoric and weight of his party is against welfare programs including the EITC. How "little" people with virtually no money pay in taxes is a talking point on the right, because people with more feel that it's unfair that they pay so much more.
Actually, each party is happy to raise taxes on the other party, they just don't call it raising taxes.
Democrats are happy to raise taxes on rich people who are unlikely to vote democrat. The individual mandate is an example, as well as the fight over raising taxes during the budget struggles last year.
Republicans are happy to raise taxes on poor people. This is what ending welfare and reducing EITC do. They call it ending subsidies or socialism or welfare instead of raising taxes, but they're happy to do it.
Better connected people will just swipe your idea and present it as theirs, with an option to blame you if it fails. That's how they become better connected.
First, the right well-connected people will usually give you some credit even if it works--and even if they don't, they remember you, so you have a great connection if it works. Second, wouldn't you rather work at a company that works right, even if you don't get the credit for it?
Network.
Find the smarter people who are better-connected than you, ask if they know why your idea is dumb. Get them thinking about it. Let it percolate.
From the summary, it sounds like Twitter's efforts--purportedly to clamp down on abuse--can be easily bypassed by setting up two accounts instead of one, and entering a few fake fields.
So basically, it sounds like a way to artificially bump the number of accounts. So they may be looking to sell the company, or someone may be looking to artificially pad their resume.
Agreed. The US Navy does a lot of great things (some of their disaster work is first-rate, for example, and they also do anti-piracy work and help ensure free navigation), but our armed forces and military policy have also been responsible for a lot of really bad things (allying with armed forces that place zero value on human life, adding to demand for forced prostitution, propping up oppressive regimes).
It's not black and white, and talking points on both sides (insofar as there are only two) have some truth to them.
http://www.pepco.com/home/emergency/maps/stormcenter/
The memo points out that the plaintiff here did not even allege that the accused Does passed data between each other. They may have downloaded the porn at different times.
The memo also calls foul on a hashtag argument. I haven't seen the opposing memo, though, to know if it was any good.
The issue is that when two satellites collide, they tend to create more junk--it's not just unplanned orbits, it's stuff breaking apart and going in lots of different directions.
"Several Nations" pretty much means China, at least in recent history. But their test of their anti-satellite weapon actually did set us back decades.
Basically, a lot of stuff falls to earth slowly, so lower orbits empty of old junk over time. When stuff collides and shatters into lots of pieces, all going every which way, it undoes a huge amount of the clearer orbits we gain from stuff falling.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, one collision can set us back *decades* in terms of the Kessler effect (i.e. space junk that makes it harder to launch/maintain orbit without more collisions).
Oh no! There goes my mojo...
If you can spend $20M on litigation and it gives you a monopoly over a key feature in a market worth even a few billion, it may well be worth it.
Whether it's worth it to *society* is a different question, one that has to do with when and to what extent patents actually do their job of promoting innovation.
If it's from Canada, it's from the Ministry of Justice, not the Department of Justice. The DOJ is in the US.
Ministry of Justice... I hope their office is the MOJO...
Absolutely, The Hobbit. At eight it should be easy. We were reading LOTR by eight. The Narnian Chronicles are also good for children and easy reads. (Some people hate them as inherently religious--kids don't notice.)
Harry Potter, though reductive and non-classic, is also easy and can be fun.
The Dark is Rising Sequence is a slightly tougher read, but also uses much better language.
Most importantly, turn off the TV/Computer/Videogames. Books get MUCH more interesting when there isn't something around that gives faster rewards.