The problem with a restraining order is that at the time it's served, it's not established whether or not the subject is illegal. In your case, if you take down a legitimate video then you are censoring freedom of speech. If you don't then you are permitting continuing damage my whetever illegal stuff the video is doing.
So the court considers which action does the most harm. Taking it down will harm Hotz. It will not benefit Sony in any significant way at all. At least that's what Hotz's legal team are arguing and I agree with them.
Free speech doesn't give you the right to publish copyrighted information without permission of the copyright holder.
I don't know if that includes this, but I would be extremely surprised if the matter of whether this is considered copyrighted information doesn't come up.
Isn't that a problem for the 360 and (to a slightly lesser extent) the PC too?
Yes, but it affects Sony more. Most PCs are connected to the internet. It's not an unreasonable requirement for most people. Those that object are such a tiny segment of the market that the loss of sales won't be noticed.
It's currently seen as not all that reasonable for consoles. But Microsoft's online offering is considerably better than Sony's. It's actually a valid reason to buy the console. An XBox 360 is still quite usable without the online connection, otherwise modchips wouldn't sell, but its utility is reduced.
Search for "Quotes to search an exact phrase works fine for me" in google. It gives results that are similar but not quite the same. Perhaps when your comment is indexed it will be at the top, but similarity is just one factor in the pagerank algorithm rather than a requirement.
Pretty much. Ideas and game mechanics can't be copyrighted. Which is a good thing. Very few games are particulrly original, but a lot of them have original twists that then become the standard. Graphics, code and data are copyrighted. Level design probably is (I doubt there's been a ruling on the matter but I see no argument that there shouldn't be).
Some aspects can be trademarked. A Pac-man clone with the same main character would be a trademark infringemnt. Actually so would the character in a completelty different type of game. Some aspects can even be patented. Fortunately this is not a common practice. Such things have the be explicitly applied for any the concepts involved in this particular game may not apply.
What would be useful for determining this properly would be a website or just a search plug-in that uses both search engines and presents both sets of results in a split screen, choosing which side each is on at random. Find a few hundred volunteers to install this for a month and log which site is chosen most often.
This way we'd get a non-biased set of results based on real world searching. All of this is technically quite simple for a competent web programmer (a term which really does not apply to me), it just needs someone to actually be bothered enough to try it.
Actually we'd rather they didn't. While most of this was promotional material, that didn't add anything new, and there would have been minimal harm if it was released, it just would have been unprofessional to release it without our partner's explicit permission.
You'd need to convince a jury that this was the case, and you'd need to convince them beyond reasonable doubt. Beyond reasonable doubt isn't 100% certainty but it's pretty close.
If I repeatedly threaten to kill you, have a history of carrying out other threats, have been seen stalking you, have acquired a rifle, have been researching ways to kill you, and had fired at you but missed, then my defence of "I didn't want to kill you" probably isn't going to save me from being convicted of attempted murder.
My last job, we were regularly sending several gigabytes of HD video between London and Detroit. We didn't actually use Rapidshare for this, but we could have done (We used dropbox because it was more convenient). There would have been about 5 people with access to those files and, no offense intended, but we certainly wouldn't have told you.
It's possible that most users are doing pretty much the same thing. Legitimate:illegitimate ration is going to be near imposible to judge here.
If it's a major hollywood movie then it's extremely likely that the distributor doesn't have permission. At least enough for the purpose of this discussion.
It's more that the US itself is committing a dipomatic faux pas. They are effectively spying on EU citizens. The EU expects other nations to respect the sovereignity of EU nations and not to use their laws to end run around EU laws.
Some of their users are in the EU and they have no obligation to offer their serrvices in the EU if they don't want to follow EU law. since they are offering their services in the EU they must also abide by EU law. If following US law prevents them from follwing EU law then they must stop operating in the EU.
Why is that a problem? I'd hate to see anyoneone unfortunate enough to accidentally hit someone with their car charged with murder or attempted murder, but I don't think someone who deliberately does so should be charged only with dangerous driving.
And would they want to work for Sony? I imagine they're likely to have ethical issues with developing DRM, and a belief that effective measures are impossible.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00001201----000-.html
(A) to "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
The work is not descrambled or decrypted without permission of the copyright holder (unless someone does use this for piracy, but the defendant is actively discouraging this) and I'm not sure this is circumventing a technological measure as per this definition. Although my skill at legalese simply isn't up to the task. There are also exceptions for reverse engineering "interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs". Once again lack of legalese skill means I have no idea whether this applies.
It's an offence when you're doing so primarily in order to facilitate a further criminal act. There are a lot of situations where this is the case, although it being explicitly spelled out as in the DMCA is less common. For example, drawing maps of banks, and collecting firearms, and acquiring a high performance car is perectly legal. Doing so in order to rob a bank is not, even if you don't actually get round to robbing the bank.
So the defence in this case is for the defendant to show that the purpose of publishing this information is not primarily to facilitate crime but for legal purposes such as alllowing homebrew development.
I, for one, will be boycotting Sony. Who's with me?
Sorry. Already boycotted after the rootkit thing. I want them to do something that's actually positive for society at some point. I'd love to buy some of their products.
That's what I was thinking. The 60's TV Batmobile is iconic, the '89 movie version looked like it meant business, the animated version was clearly designed to work with the style of the series, and the Begins version is so radically different from all the others that you have to be impressed.
The DC artists seemed to have a sort of childish dream car thing going on.
No. It's a different Canadian law that covers damages for copyright, rather than one that applies a levy in order to roughly compensate for the damage caused.
Yes and no. The legal difference matters, and semantics ae important legally. If there's an agreement to remain with the company for a certain time and a separate agreement to pay a rental fee for the phone, then legally cancelling one does not automatically mean the other is cancelled.
If they give you a "free" phone, then all payments are for the contract, and if they terminate the contract they can't ask you to pay for the phone because you never agreed to. It was "free". They may be entitled to ask for the return of the phone depending on the nature of the agreement.
You know - I don't know if anyone has tried... Considering the screwy UK libel laws it's possible. You can certanly prove damages, and they can't prove truth. The factors against are that you are entitled to add essentially any additional information at the top of the credit report, and they don't give an opinion, so much as a "score". I think it's just a series of numbers.
Once upon a time, you were entitled to be removed from any database on demand. Those with really bad credit scores would simply ask to be deleted from the credit databases and have their credit score reset.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're not creative works, are they even speech? There's the question of whether freedom of speech even applies.
I'm sure the leqal teams have already gone through dozens of variations of this argument, and would consider both our viewpoints hopelessly naive.
The problem with a restraining order is that at the time it's served, it's not established whether or not the subject is illegal. In your case, if you take down a legitimate video then you are censoring freedom of speech. If you don't then you are permitting continuing damage my whetever illegal stuff the video is doing.
So the court considers which action does the most harm. Taking it down will harm Hotz. It will not benefit Sony in any significant way at all. At least that's what Hotz's legal team are arguing and I agree with them.
I think publicly releasing the jailbreak and taking credit for it might be as well.
Free speech doesn't give you the right to publish copyrighted information without permission of the copyright holder.
I don't know if that includes this, but I would be extremely surprised if the matter of whether this is considered copyrighted information doesn't come up.
Isn't that a problem for the 360 and (to a slightly lesser extent) the PC too?
Yes, but it affects Sony more. Most PCs are connected to the internet. It's not an unreasonable requirement for most people. Those that object are such a tiny segment of the market that the loss of sales won't be noticed.
It's currently seen as not all that reasonable for consoles. But Microsoft's online offering is considerably better than Sony's. It's actually a valid reason to buy the console. An XBox 360 is still quite usable without the online connection, otherwise modchips wouldn't sell, but its utility is reduced.
Alcohol barometers!? Do you mean thermometers, because for a barometer you want a dense liquid. An alcohol barometer would need to be about 10m high.
Search for "Quotes to search an exact phrase works fine for me" in google. It gives results that are similar but not quite the same. Perhaps when your comment is indexed it will be at the top, but similarity is just one factor in the pagerank algorithm rather than a requirement.
Pretty much. Ideas and game mechanics can't be copyrighted. Which is a good thing. Very few games are particulrly original, but a lot of them have original twists that then become the standard. Graphics, code and data are copyrighted. Level design probably is (I doubt there's been a ruling on the matter but I see no argument that there shouldn't be).
Some aspects can be trademarked. A Pac-man clone with the same main character would be a trademark infringemnt. Actually so would the character in a completelty different type of game. Some aspects can even be patented. Fortunately this is not a common practice. Such things have the be explicitly applied for any the concepts involved in this particular game may not apply.
What would be useful for determining this properly would be a website or just a search plug-in that uses both search engines and presents both sets of results in a split screen, choosing which side each is on at random. Find a few hundred volunteers to install this for a month and log which site is chosen most often.
This way we'd get a non-biased set of results based on real world searching. All of this is technically quite simple for a competent web programmer (a term which really does not apply to me), it just needs someone to actually be bothered enough to try it.
Actually we'd rather they didn't. While most of this was promotional material, that didn't add anything new, and there would have been minimal harm if it was released, it just would have been unprofessional to release it without our partner's explicit permission.
You'd need to convince a jury that this was the case, and you'd need to convince them beyond reasonable doubt. Beyond reasonable doubt isn't 100% certainty but it's pretty close.
If I repeatedly threaten to kill you, have a history of carrying out other threats, have been seen stalking you, have acquired a rifle, have been researching ways to kill you, and had fired at you but missed, then my defence of "I didn't want to kill you" probably isn't going to save me from being convicted of attempted murder.
My last job, we were regularly sending several gigabytes of HD video between London and Detroit. We didn't actually use Rapidshare for this, but we could have done (We used dropbox because it was more convenient). There would have been about 5 people with access to those files and, no offense intended, but we certainly wouldn't have told you.
It's possible that most users are doing pretty much the same thing. Legitimate:illegitimate ration is going to be near imposible to judge here.
Chances are they are.
If it's a major hollywood movie then it's extremely likely that the distributor doesn't have permission. At least enough for the purpose of this discussion.
It's more that the US itself is committing a dipomatic faux pas. They are effectively spying on EU citizens. The EU expects other nations to respect the sovereignity of EU nations and not to use their laws to end run around EU laws.
Some of their users are in the EU and they have no obligation to offer their serrvices in the EU if they don't want to follow EU law. since they are offering their services in the EU they must also abide by EU law. If following US law prevents them from follwing EU law then they must stop operating in the EU.
I quite like some of the Sony-ericsson phones and their e-reader is tempting.
Why is that a problem? I'd hate to see anyoneone unfortunate enough to accidentally hit someone with their car charged with murder or attempted murder, but I don't think someone who deliberately does so should be charged only with dangerous driving.
And would they want to work for Sony? I imagine they're likely to have ethical issues with developing DRM, and a belief that effective measures are impossible.
The work is not descrambled or decrypted without permission of the copyright holder (unless someone does use this for piracy, but the defendant is actively discouraging this) and I'm not sure this is circumventing a technological measure as per this definition. Although my skill at legalese simply isn't up to the task. There are also exceptions for reverse engineering "interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs". Once again lack of legalese skill means I have no idea whether this applies.
It's an offence when you're doing so primarily in order to facilitate a further criminal act. There are a lot of situations where this is the case, although it being explicitly spelled out as in the DMCA is less common. For example, drawing maps of banks, and collecting firearms, and acquiring a high performance car is perectly legal. Doing so in order to rob a bank is not, even if you don't actually get round to robbing the bank.
So the defence in this case is for the defendant to show that the purpose of publishing this information is not primarily to facilitate crime but for legal purposes such as alllowing homebrew development.
I, for one, will be boycotting Sony. Who's with me?
Sorry. Already boycotted after the rootkit thing. I want them to do something that's actually positive for society at some point. I'd love to buy some of their products.
That's what I was thinking. The 60's TV Batmobile is iconic, the '89 movie version looked like it meant business, the animated version was clearly designed to work with the style of the series, and the Begins version is so radically different from all the others that you have to be impressed.
The DC artists seemed to have a sort of childish dream car thing going on.
No. It's a different Canadian law that covers damages for copyright, rather than one that applies a levy in order to roughly compensate for the damage caused.
I'm not quite sure I see your point here though.
That's just symantics.
Yes and no. The legal difference matters, and semantics ae important legally. If there's an agreement to remain with the company for a certain time and a separate agreement to pay a rental fee for the phone, then legally cancelling one does not automatically mean the other is cancelled.
If they give you a "free" phone, then all payments are for the contract, and if they terminate the contract they can't ask you to pay for the phone because you never agreed to. It was "free". They may be entitled to ask for the return of the phone depending on the nature of the agreement.
You know - I don't know if anyone has tried... Considering the screwy UK libel laws it's possible. You can certanly prove damages, and they can't prove truth. The factors against are that you are entitled to add essentially any additional information at the top of the credit report, and they don't give an opinion, so much as a "score". I think it's just a series of numbers.
Once upon a time, you were entitled to be removed from any database on demand. Those with really bad credit scores would simply ask to be deleted from the credit databases and have their credit score reset.