Through the Communications Act of 1934 as amended over the decades Congress has given the Commission express and expansive authority to regulate common carrier services, including landline telephony; radio transmissions, including broadcast television, radio, and cellular telephony; and “cable services,” including cable television. In this case, the Commission does not claim that Congress has given it express authority to regulate Comcast’s Internet service. Indeed, in its still-binding 2002 Cable Modem Order, the Commission ruled that cable Internet service is neither a “telecommunications service” covered by Title II of the Communications Act nor a “cable service” covered by Title VI. The Commission therefore rests its assertion of authority over Comcast’s network management practices on the broad language of section 4(i) of the Act [which the courts have come to call ancillary jurisdiction] [citations omitted]
Yes, the DC Cir. ruled that the FCC didn't have ancillary jurisdiction. But way up at the top of the opinion is the bit quoted above, where the court recognizes that this issue is raised because the FCC determined, in a still binding order, that internet service was not a telecom service, which it can regulate under title II, common carriage.
If the FCC determines that internet access is a telecom service - which they have the authority to do - then it can enforce net neutrality using its normal common carriage authority. No new laws from Congress required.
Do you really want federal judges who are going to allow federal agencies to do whatever they want, even when the law says they can't?
The problem the FCC had wasn't that the law said they can't enforce net neutrality. The problem was that their prior interpretations (i.e., the laws they made up previously, in their rule and order Computer II.) are inconsistent with what they want to do now.
The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.
The fairness doctrine promotes more speech. More accurately, it promotes availability of more viewpoints.
The fairness doctrine doesn't suppress speech - its a mechanism for forcing people/corporations with a megaphone to hand the megaphone over to to the people they talk about. Since the megaphone is government sponsored, this is entirely reasonable.
In a world where people's voices are equally strong, you can't just ignore what your enemies say. You have to actually engage them if you want to win an argument. In this world, broadcasters can just say whatever they want and ignore the response. Nobody (or at least, very few people) hears the response, so broadcasters don't have to engage it. This is not healthy for democracy.
I don't get it. The man's doctor recommended he use a wii. Why shouldn't the government or insurance pay for it as part of his workers comp? If they're gunna pay for him to receive treatment, why are they making such a big fuss about something his doctor recommended?
They are spending way more money (time and resources) on fighting it than they would if they just bought the damn thing. Seriously, a Wii and a Wii Fit are equivalent dollar-wise to probably between one and two hours of lawyer-time. The cost of having various flackeys come up with reasons why not paying for the wii is the right thing to do, writing that out for the rejection letter, press releases, internal memos, etc. all adds up too.
Frankly, the AU government and/or the insurance company is wasting its money - not only in fighting the payment for a wii, but in the way it approves or rejects payments. The process should be really simple: Did the doctor recommend it? Do we have any reason to suspect the doctor? Is there a clearly less expensive substitute that still fulfills the doctor's recommendation (i.e., a Wii not custom fabricated out of gold)? Is the payment less than x (x being the cost of rejecting the payment and winning a typical subsequent legal challenge)?
All of these questions are really easy and would take up less than 5 minutes of a reviewers time. They would also weed out most fraud.
I was told by a lawyer that if I in any way censored or limited speech on a web site I used to run then I could've been construed as the 'Editor/Publisher', and could've be held liable for the content. If I took no action, I was in the clear.
It's not enough to say, "He said bad things about me." You also have to show financial harm has been caused, and if you can't do that then the anonymous poster, or google.com which allowed the post, would be held blameless and protected by the First Amendment...
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Essentially this means that Google cannot be held liable for defamation, since Google would have to be treated like a speaker or publisher in order to be liable for defamation. All Google has to do to be immune to defamation suits (and privacy violations, and threats, and nearly every other cause of action that's based on a speech act) is show that it didn't actively influence the content of the speech.
This is essentially a far-reaching libel claim. This means that two things have to be proven: first, that the National Post made a deliberate misrepresentation; second, that the Post did so with malice - they did it specifically to cause harm. If both can't be proven, the claim doesn't stand in court.
Yeah, thats the of the United States, but this suit was brought in Canada. Canadian defamation law doesn't require a showing of malice, because intent to harm is presumed.
Network neutrality means ISPs being neutral about the content flowing through their pipes. Open access means owners of the pipes allowing others to provide internet service on that infrastructure for a fee.
But man, what an idea... imagine a world where the pipe owners competed for ISPs as customers, and ISPs competed for subscribers...
Last time I went to Europe... they were a bit shocked that my friend and I weren't the stereotypes they expected. We were conservatives (my friend, Republican, me, more Libertarian) but failed to meet the expectation of being war mongering, European hating, Imperialistic thinking Americans that television portrays....What shocked them is that we can disagree, without being disagreeable, and had actual logical reasons for our opinions.
Americans are good people, especially face to face. It's our politicians (Palin, etc.) and media stars (Beck, etc.) who are always on TV and always make news by being unreasonable that give Americans the reputation for being "war mongering, European hating, Imperialistic thinking."
We have a deservedly bad reputation for choosing our leaders. I think Obama's okay (and so does Europe!), but Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer, Boehner, McConnell, McCain, Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Lieberman, Kerry, and most other national politicians or politician-wannabes are terrible leaders and bad for our country and bad for our reputation.
What are Europeans supposed to infer when they read or hear about our politicians?
The US train system is excellent if you are coal...
Not so much. I know what you mean - coal plants rely on the railroad system for the delivery of coal, and as a natural consequence, the railroad system is tailored for delivering coal. But, nevertheless, the coal plant owners are not happy with the US railroad system, and it is far from "excellent" to them.
Coal plants are completely hostage to whomever owns the railroad that goes up to their plant. For some plants, the last 10 miles or so is owned by a different railroad company than the one that provides most of the shipping, and the owner of that "last mile" has absolutely no competition in delivering coal to that one plant. And naturally, they charge an enormous premium, as compared to plants that receive their coal from other railways or other delivery methods (barge, or even trucking).
The US train system is like any other network infrastructure, including the internet - a robust "last mile" is just as important as a robust "backbone." And competition at each segment is a good thing, but rare because such capital-heavy infrastructure is extremely prone to consolidation, monopolies, and rent-seeking - all of which lead to stagnation, and all of which need to be regulated for the public (and economic!) good. In some ways, this might be one explanation as to why the airline industry is doing better than passenger trains - they rely on a completely different (almost "peer to peer," as in, airport to airport) infrastructure that allows competition; and despite the heavy capital investment required, its much harder to exclusively own part of the network and lock out competition.
This is all based on some readings I did in college on the American energy infrastructure. I don't still have those books, so I don't guarantee the accuracy of everything said here, but, consider this article a citation.
If science is a socialist thing, then it is about the research and the ability to do something, rather than the added complexity of having what you find to be applicable to your sponsor.
I think most innovation occurs without a "sponsor" of the sort you're talking about. That is to say, I think most innovation happens when the source material (the ideas, research, infrastructure, etc.) is cheap or free, as would occur inside an existing organization, but importantly, there also needs to be no imposed mission other than to make money. An enterprise (almost) always wants innovative ideas/applications to fit their current business model, and this means the vast majority of workable innovative ideas/applications are discarded.
Entrepreneurship, however, is all about creating a workable business model around innovative products or services. To foster entrepreneurship, the initial costs must be inversely proportional to the risk - the more money needed to start a business in any given field, the less risk there must be that it'll pay off. Since entrepreneurship typically occurs outside of an existing enterprise (Google and its 20% time may be an exception; I don't know enough about it to say really) where the initial inputs are essentially free, that means that, in the tech field where necessarily everything is expensive to develop at first, but is cheap to copy afterwards except for restrictions due to IP laws, innovation occurs when you can steal ideas and employees as well as appropriate existing infrastructure. See Apple stealing from Xerox, Microsoft stealing from Apple, internet businesses relying on customers to pay their ISPs for access, and ISPs to pay for network infrastructure, etc. etc.
So, you argued that having a paying sponsor for research adds complexities that slows down innovation (well, you said science, but the article is about Russia wanting its own Silicon Valley, and I dare say Silicon Valley is about innovation and not basic science). I think that's true, but the answer isn't socialism/communism,* because while that might lower the initial costs, it doesn't provide a big enough payout in the end to justify the risk. Entrepreneurs aren't going to risk years of their lives recklessly chasing their dreams to be rich, if "rich" is only marginally better off than they would be if they followed the easy path and took a job with a guaranteed career path and salary.
Whether or not Russia counts as a socialist/communist state anymore is a different question. The summary indicating that "Property will not be owned, but rented" is not an encouraging sign, though.
* I'm very gung-ho socialist when it comes to things like basic science, healthcare, labor conditions, reigning in too-big-to-fail businesses, limiting commercial speech, etc., but when it comes to sussing out what people want to consume, you really can't beat the market.
The FCC doesn't currently have jurisdiction over internet access service, because of the way it interpreted certain definitions in the telecommunications act. A pretty good argument could be made that it interpreted those definitions in a certain way in order to prevent "open access" requirements on cable ISPs (i.e., requiring cable providers to allow third party ISPs to use their cable infrastructure). But, now the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality, and those interpretations have come back to bite them. So, they probably have to go through a formal rule-making procedure and announce a re-interpretation of those definitions in order to legitimately claim that they can regulate ISPs and enforce net neutrality.
Let me restate that in a way that sounds absolutely crazy: The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction because it used to say it didn't have jurisdiction. The FCC can get jurisdiction by saying it has jurisdiction.
And now, to blow your mind: The FCC has jurisdiction to say what its jurisdiction is. (obviously this is limited to what congress delegated to it, but the FCC can say what congress delegated to it.)
If the FCC follows the proper rule making procedures, it would still be possible for a future court to rule that the FCC does not have that authority.
Under NCTA v. Brand X and the Chevron Doctrine courts have very little power to overrule agency interpretations of vague statutes. Under Brand X itself, the Supreme Court found that the telecom act was vague on whether internet access service was or was not a "telecommunications service" (versus a "information service"), and therefore, the FCC's interpretation was valid unless it was not a reasonable policy choice. It seems pretty clear that if the FCC changed its mind, and enacted a new policy that found internet access was a telecommunications service and therefore potentially subject to common carriage regulation, the courts would have to accept that (because it's a reasonable policy choice). So long as the FCC followed the proper rule-making process.
Add an amendment to the constitution granting power to Congress to regulate commerce INSIDE the states. That appears to be the only way they (and the FCC) can regulate a company like Comcast of Baltimore, or Comcast of Oklahoma, or other wholly intrastate companies.
The FCC can regulate intrastate companies, especially when they're subsidiaries of an interstate company. To be more accurate, the FCC could regulate those intrastate companies if Congress empowered it to. The fact of the matter is that Congress chose not to preempt state public utility commissions. The interstate commerce clause has been interpreted so expansively that there is very little economic regulation that Congress can't enact or delegate to an agency (the only examples that come to mind are gun restrictions in/around schools (US v. Lopez) and enabling women to seek civil remedies under the violence against women act (US v. Morrison)
Anyway, the FCC's net neutrality order against Comcast wasn't slapped down by the DC Circuit because it lacked constitutional authority. It was because the FCC's action wasn't reasonably ancillary to a specific grant of jurisdiction. In other words, the FCC can't enforce net neutrality unless it can better explain which of its specific powers authorized by Congress net neutrality would fall under. Let me reiterate - the problem isn't that the FCC lacks the power to enforce net neutrality, the problem is that the FCC hasn't given a sufficient, consistent explanation of why it can enforce net neutrality.
The easiest way for the FCC to respond to the DC Circuit's ruling, assuming it still wants to enforce net neutrality, is issue a new rule that finds internet access service to be regulated under Title II of the Telecom Act. That would enable the FCC to regulate ISPs as common carriers.
You're right. Freedom from prior restraint is a long standing American principle.
"Here, then, is to be discerned the genuine meaning of this section in the bill of rights... Every man may publish what he pleases; but, it is at his peril, if he publishes any thing which violates the rights of another, or interrupts the peace and order of society; as every man may keep poisons in his closet, but who will assert that he may vend them to the public for cordials? If, indeed, this section of the bill of rights had not circumscribed the authority of the legislature, this house, being a single branch, might in a despotic paroxism, revive all the odious restraints, which disgraced the early annals of the British government. Hence, arises the great fundamental advantage of the provision, which the authors of the constitution have wisely interwoven with our political system; not, it appears, to tolerate and indulge the passions and animosities of individuals, but effectually to protect the citizens from the encroachments of men in power."
This is the earliest American case I could find on prior restraints. It's published in the United States Reports, which is supposed to be United States Supreme Court decisions, but this particular case seems to be from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. It is referring to the freedom of the press provision in the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights in the 1776 Constitution - it read "That the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing, and publishing their sentiments; therefore the freedom of the press ought not to be restrained."
Check out the PA 1776 Constitution. It's an amazingly democratic document. The fifth article of the bill of rights read: "That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community; and not for the particular emolument or advantage of any single man, family, or soft of men, who are a part only of that community, And that the community hath an indubitable, unalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish government in such manner as shall be by that community judged most conducive to the public weal. "
a big problem is that if you pick up a rock, you own it. In the western US mining districts, those rocks are laden with natural concentrations of all sorts of low-value heavy minerals that are magically transformed into "toxic waste" the minute you touch it.
the mineral complexes are intrinsically "toxic waste"
the environment is naturally full of heavy minerals.
I don't see the problem. Nature has some naturally occurring toxic sites. Okay, I buy that. If you go out there and move the toxic materials around, you're responsible for the toxicity. I buy that too.
The problem you seem to have is that, by your facts, there's no causal connection between the mining and the toxicity. I'll take this as true. Nevertheless, SOMEONE has to deal with the toxicity. Its either the government (i.e., the public, i.e., taxpayers) or its the people who profit from extracting value out of the toxic site.
I don't have a natural preference for either option - sometimes its best for the government to handle problems (national security? public roads? health care?), and sometimes its better for the landowner / profit maker. It depends on the situation; it depends on the arguments on either side.
So, please, present your argument why the government should bear the cost to clean up mine tailings, and not the company making money.
Nasa is a government agency. By definition, it is a bureaucracy. By definition, all its employees are government officials... aka, bureaucrats. That includes all the scientists and engineers, in addition to their managers.
The tone of your post suggests you disapprove of middle management, red tape, and government administration.
You need to realize that the more a government agency contracts out its tasks, the more and more the agency becomes comprised of the red tape machine, and less and less of it are people who do the agency's work. To the extent that privatization or contracting out "reduces" the size of an agency, it means that whats left is the clerical management everyone hates.
Will the bureaucracy be reduced? Yes, because the space shuttle program involved massive amounts of contracting, with NASA supervising and running the program. The new plan calls for NASA "buying rides" from private companies - this means the companies can eat the management costs and personnel burden of developing and maintaining the rockets.
Hopefully, the actual number of people at NASA won't change, though their jobs should. They can move away from administration and contractor compliance, and doing the real work of NASA - aeronautics and space research. From middle management to scientists and engineers.
But... American copyright law doesn't apply outside America...
Are you sure? I recommend you read Prof. Neil Netanel's paper, Why Has Copyright Expanded?. In part he argues that the US trade representative (heavily influenced by US content industry lobbyists) has used its significant leverage in the shaping of international IP treaties (such as TRIPS and WIPO) to greatly expand copyright protections in countries around the world (and, sinisterly, to expand the US's own copyright regime).
To the extent that the United States is the content-capital of the world (yeah, I know that's highly debatable), other countries should take note of US copyright policy and politics. If Australia adopts (more) draconian copyright rules - that sucks, especially for Australians. If the US adopts (more) draconian copyright rules, that's probably the harbinger of ever more draconian international treaties, which often economically coerce countries into changing their own laws.
Some quotes from Netanel's article:
"[C]opyright and other intellectual property lobbyists have also exerted extraordinary influence on the US position in international treaty and trade agreement negotiations. The industries have regularly used their political muscle to lead US negotiators to initiate treaty negotiations and sponsor provisions requiring other countries to expand their copyright protection...
"TRIPs requires WTO member countries to comply with prescribed standards for intellectual property protection and authorizes the imposition of trade sanctions against countries that fail to do so. In its initial submission to the TRIPs negotiations, the US delegation, working closely with copyright industry associations, proposed language on the permissible scope of countries’ limitations to copyright holder rights that would have made all but a highly crabbed, market-centered version of fair use a violation of the agreement.
"[T]he industry has continued adeptly to use international treaty negotiations as part of its domestic legislative strategy. The ‘paracopyright’ anti-circumvention provisions enacted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 are another case in point.... [A]dministration officials, led by former software-industry lobbyist Bruce Lehman, brought the copyright industry-backed digital agenda to the World Intellectual Property Organization and urged that it be incorporated into new intellectual property treaties then under consideration.
"In December 1996 a WIPO-sponsored diplomatic conference adopted two of those treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty."
I think the issue would actually be whether the underlying architectural work is copyrighted (or copyrightable) or not. An exact (as opposed to stylized) 3d model of the Washington Monument might not be copyrightable because the Washington Monument, insofar as it as an architectural or artistic work is in the public domain, is not copyrightable. No matter the effort in making the model, there would have to be a nominal amount of creativity differentiating the model and the original monument. To the extent that the making of the model required some elements of craft or skill or judgment, that would merely represent a "mere demonstration of physical skill or special training," and the exactness of the model would represent "a form of slavish copying that is the antithesis of originality." These quotes are from ATC Distrib. Group v. Whatever It Takes Transmissions & Parts (6th Cir. 2005) at 712 (the court was describing illustrations of actual auto parts in a catalog).
A 3d model of a copyrighted building or sculpture would be copyrightable, I would think, as a derivative work of the original. The creativity required of the 3d model would be derived from the creativity of the original. This means that the making of such a model without the copyright owner's permission would be an infringement.
The case on point is ProCD v. Zeidenberg (1996), which is of additional note because it accepts shrink-wrap/click-wrap licenses as valid and enforceable.
The database owner may also prevent additional copying of the database (ie, if the database is "leaked" somehow) through trade secret laws, or through encryption and the DMCA's prohibition on bypassing such protections.
As others in this thread have pointed out, "facts" concerning a copyrighted work are just as protected as the work itself. As in, the facts concerning the position of a dancer at various times during a performance are as protected as the whole choreography of the performance.
The issue with athletic events is whether or not the actual event ("performance") is copyrightable. If it is copyrightable, then such things as the unauthorized republishing of final scores, descriptions of plays or strategies, etc. might well be copyright infringement, unless saved by fair use. If athletic events are not copyrightable, then those same republished scores and descriptions are not infringements (though the video broadcast would probably still be copyrightable, as there was a director making creative choices about which video feeds to use for the broadcast, and the cameramen practicing their craft as well). In other words, the key issue isn't the uncopyrightability of facts, but whether the athletic event itself is subject to copyright.
The 2nd Circuit, at least, believes that athletic events like basketball games are not copyrightable. See NBA v. Motorola (1997) at 846. This seems to be the majority position, but there is however contrary case law from the 7th circuit: Baltimore Orioles v. Major League Baseball Players (1986). Nimmer, the preeminent legal scholar on copyright, argues that athletic events should not be copyrightable in his treatise, at 2.09(F).
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Perhaps I should remind you that we live in a Democratic Republic where only elected representatives are to make the laws, not government agencies.
Allow me to introduce you to administrative law. I think you'll get a real kick out of agency rulemaking.
Through the Communications Act of 1934 as amended over the decades Congress has given the Commission express and expansive authority to regulate common carrier services, including landline telephony; radio transmissions, including broadcast television, radio, and cellular telephony; and “cable services,” including cable television. In this case, the Commission does not claim that Congress has given it express authority to regulate Comcast’s Internet service. Indeed, in its still-binding 2002 Cable Modem Order, the Commission ruled that cable Internet service is neither a “telecommunications service” covered by Title II of the Communications Act nor a “cable service” covered by Title VI. The Commission therefore rests its assertion of authority over Comcast’s network management practices on the broad language of section 4(i) of the Act [which the courts have come to call ancillary jurisdiction] [citations omitted]
Yes, the DC Cir. ruled that the FCC didn't have ancillary jurisdiction. But way up at the top of the opinion is the bit quoted above, where the court recognizes that this issue is raised because the FCC determined, in a still binding order, that internet service was not a telecom service, which it can regulate under title II, common carriage.
If the FCC determines that internet access is a telecom service - which they have the authority to do - then it can enforce net neutrality using its normal common carriage authority. No new laws from Congress required.
Do you really want federal judges who are going to allow federal agencies to do whatever they want, even when the law says they can't?
The problem the FCC had wasn't that the law said they can't enforce net neutrality. The problem was that their prior interpretations (i.e., the laws they made up previously, in their rule and order Computer II.) are inconsistent with what they want to do now.
The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.
The fairness doctrine promotes more speech. More accurately, it promotes availability of more viewpoints.
The fairness doctrine doesn't suppress speech - its a mechanism for forcing people/corporations with a megaphone to hand the megaphone over to to the people they talk about. Since the megaphone is government sponsored, this is entirely reasonable.
In a world where people's voices are equally strong, you can't just ignore what your enemies say. You have to actually engage them if you want to win an argument. In this world, broadcasters can just say whatever they want and ignore the response. Nobody (or at least, very few people) hears the response, so broadcasters don't have to engage it. This is not healthy for democracy.
I don't get it. The man's doctor recommended he use a wii. Why shouldn't the government or insurance pay for it as part of his workers comp? If they're gunna pay for him to receive treatment, why are they making such a big fuss about something his doctor recommended?
They are spending way more money (time and resources) on fighting it than they would if they just bought the damn thing. Seriously, a Wii and a Wii Fit are equivalent dollar-wise to probably between one and two hours of lawyer-time. The cost of having various flackeys come up with reasons why not paying for the wii is the right thing to do, writing that out for the rejection letter, press releases, internal memos, etc. all adds up too.
Frankly, the AU government and/or the insurance company is wasting its money - not only in fighting the payment for a wii, but in the way it approves or rejects payments. The process should be really simple: Did the doctor recommend it? Do we have any reason to suspect the doctor? Is there a clearly less expensive substitute that still fulfills the doctor's recommendation (i.e., a Wii not custom fabricated out of gold)? Is the payment less than x (x being the cost of rejecting the payment and winning a typical subsequent legal challenge)?
All of these questions are really easy and would take up less than 5 minutes of a reviewers time. They would also weed out most fraud.
I was told by a lawyer that if I in any way censored or limited speech on a web site I used to run then I could've been construed as the 'Editor/Publisher', and could've be held liable for the content. If I took no action, I was in the clear.
This is due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
It's not enough to say, "He said bad things about me." You also have to show financial harm has been caused, and if you can't do that then the anonymous poster, or google.com which allowed the post, would be held blameless and protected by the First Amendment...
Actually, even if you showed financial harm, Google would be immune to liability, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which reads:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Essentially this means that Google cannot be held liable for defamation, since Google would have to be treated like a speaker or publisher in order to be liable for defamation. All Google has to do to be immune to defamation suits (and privacy violations, and threats, and nearly every other cause of action that's based on a speech act) is show that it didn't actively influence the content of the speech.
This is essentially a far-reaching libel claim. This means that two things have to be proven: first, that the National Post made a deliberate misrepresentation; second, that the Post did so with malice - they did it specifically to cause harm. If both can't be proven, the claim doesn't stand in court.
Yeah, thats the of the United States, but this suit was brought in Canada. Canadian defamation law doesn't require a showing of malice, because intent to harm is presumed.
Net Neutrality? You mean, Open Access.
Network neutrality means ISPs being neutral about the content flowing through their pipes. Open access means owners of the pipes allowing others to provide internet service on that infrastructure for a fee.
But man, what an idea... imagine a world where the pipe owners competed for ISPs as customers, and ISPs competed for subscribers...
Last time I went to Europe... they were a bit shocked that my friend and I weren't the stereotypes they expected. We were conservatives (my friend, Republican, me, more Libertarian) but failed to meet the expectation of being war mongering, European hating, Imperialistic thinking Americans that television portrays. ...What shocked them is that we can disagree, without being disagreeable, and had actual logical reasons for our opinions.
Americans are good people, especially face to face. It's our politicians (Palin, etc.) and media stars (Beck, etc.) who are always on TV and always make news by being unreasonable that give Americans the reputation for being "war mongering, European hating, Imperialistic thinking."
We have a deservedly bad reputation for choosing our leaders. I think Obama's okay (and so does Europe!), but Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer, Boehner, McConnell, McCain, Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Lieberman, Kerry, and most other national politicians or politician-wannabes are terrible leaders and bad for our country and bad for our reputation.
What are Europeans supposed to infer when they read or hear about our politicians?
The US train system is excellent if you are coal...
Not so much. I know what you mean - coal plants rely on the railroad system for the delivery of coal, and as a natural consequence, the railroad system is tailored for delivering coal. But, nevertheless, the coal plant owners are not happy with the US railroad system, and it is far from "excellent" to them.
Coal plants are completely hostage to whomever owns the railroad that goes up to their plant. For some plants, the last 10 miles or so is owned by a different railroad company than the one that provides most of the shipping, and the owner of that "last mile" has absolutely no competition in delivering coal to that one plant. And naturally, they charge an enormous premium, as compared to plants that receive their coal from other railways or other delivery methods (barge, or even trucking).
The US train system is like any other network infrastructure, including the internet - a robust "last mile" is just as important as a robust "backbone." And competition at each segment is a good thing, but rare because such capital-heavy infrastructure is extremely prone to consolidation, monopolies, and rent-seeking - all of which lead to stagnation, and all of which need to be regulated for the public (and economic!) good. In some ways, this might be one explanation as to why the airline industry is doing better than passenger trains - they rely on a completely different (almost "peer to peer," as in, airport to airport) infrastructure that allows competition; and despite the heavy capital investment required, its much harder to exclusively own part of the network and lock out competition.
This is all based on some readings I did in college on the American energy infrastructure. I don't still have those books, so I don't guarantee the accuracy of everything said here, but, consider this article a citation.
If science is a socialist thing, then it is about the research and the ability to do something, rather than the added complexity of having what you find to be applicable to your sponsor.
I think most innovation occurs without a "sponsor" of the sort you're talking about. That is to say, I think most innovation happens when the source material (the ideas, research, infrastructure, etc.) is cheap or free, as would occur inside an existing organization, but importantly, there also needs to be no imposed mission other than to make money. An enterprise (almost) always wants innovative ideas/applications to fit their current business model, and this means the vast majority of workable innovative ideas/applications are discarded.
Entrepreneurship, however, is all about creating a workable business model around innovative products or services. To foster entrepreneurship, the initial costs must be inversely proportional to the risk - the more money needed to start a business in any given field, the less risk there must be that it'll pay off. Since entrepreneurship typically occurs outside of an existing enterprise (Google and its 20% time may be an exception; I don't know enough about it to say really) where the initial inputs are essentially free, that means that, in the tech field where necessarily everything is expensive to develop at first, but is cheap to copy afterwards except for restrictions due to IP laws, innovation occurs when you can steal ideas and employees as well as appropriate existing infrastructure. See Apple stealing from Xerox, Microsoft stealing from Apple, internet businesses relying on customers to pay their ISPs for access, and ISPs to pay for network infrastructure, etc. etc.
So, you argued that having a paying sponsor for research adds complexities that slows down innovation (well, you said science, but the article is about Russia wanting its own Silicon Valley, and I dare say Silicon Valley is about innovation and not basic science). I think that's true, but the answer isn't socialism/communism,* because while that might lower the initial costs, it doesn't provide a big enough payout in the end to justify the risk. Entrepreneurs aren't going to risk years of their lives recklessly chasing their dreams to be rich, if "rich" is only marginally better off than they would be if they followed the easy path and took a job with a guaranteed career path and salary.
Whether or not Russia counts as a socialist/communist state anymore is a different question. The summary indicating that "Property will not be owned, but rented" is not an encouraging sign, though.
* I'm very gung-ho socialist when it comes to things like basic science, healthcare, labor conditions, reigning in too-big-to-fail businesses, limiting commercial speech, etc., but when it comes to sussing out what people want to consume, you really can't beat the market.
This is somewhat simplified, but:
The FCC doesn't currently have jurisdiction over internet access service, because of the way it interpreted certain definitions in the telecommunications act. A pretty good argument could be made that it interpreted those definitions in a certain way in order to prevent "open access" requirements on cable ISPs (i.e., requiring cable providers to allow third party ISPs to use their cable infrastructure). But, now the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality, and those interpretations have come back to bite them. So, they probably have to go through a formal rule-making procedure and announce a re-interpretation of those definitions in order to legitimately claim that they can regulate ISPs and enforce net neutrality.
Let me restate that in a way that sounds absolutely crazy: The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction because it used to say it didn't have jurisdiction. The FCC can get jurisdiction by saying it has jurisdiction.
And now, to blow your mind: The FCC has jurisdiction to say what its jurisdiction is. (obviously this is limited to what congress delegated to it, but the FCC can say what congress delegated to it.)
If the FCC follows the proper rule making procedures, it would still be possible for a future court to rule that the FCC does not have that authority.
Under NCTA v. Brand X and the Chevron Doctrine courts have very little power to overrule agency interpretations of vague statutes. Under Brand X itself, the Supreme Court found that the telecom act was vague on whether internet access service was or was not a "telecommunications service" (versus a "information service"), and therefore, the FCC's interpretation was valid unless it was not a reasonable policy choice. It seems pretty clear that if the FCC changed its mind, and enacted a new policy that found internet access was a telecommunications service and therefore potentially subject to common carriage regulation, the courts would have to accept that (because it's a reasonable policy choice). So long as the FCC followed the proper rule-making process.
Add an amendment to the constitution granting power to Congress to regulate commerce INSIDE the states. That appears to be the only way they (and the FCC) can regulate a company like Comcast of Baltimore, or Comcast of Oklahoma, or other wholly intrastate companies.
The FCC can regulate intrastate companies, especially when they're subsidiaries of an interstate company. To be more accurate, the FCC could regulate those intrastate companies if Congress empowered it to. The fact of the matter is that Congress chose not to preempt state public utility commissions. The interstate commerce clause has been interpreted so expansively that there is very little economic regulation that Congress can't enact or delegate to an agency (the only examples that come to mind are gun restrictions in/around schools (US v. Lopez) and enabling women to seek civil remedies under the violence against women act (US v. Morrison)
Anyway, the FCC's net neutrality order against Comcast wasn't slapped down by the DC Circuit because it lacked constitutional authority. It was because the FCC's action wasn't reasonably ancillary to a specific grant of jurisdiction. In other words, the FCC can't enforce net neutrality unless it can better explain which of its specific powers authorized by Congress net neutrality would fall under. Let me reiterate - the problem isn't that the FCC lacks the power to enforce net neutrality, the problem is that the FCC hasn't given a sufficient, consistent explanation of why it can enforce net neutrality.
The easiest way for the FCC to respond to the DC Circuit's ruling, assuming it still wants to enforce net neutrality, is issue a new rule that finds internet access service to be regulated under Title II of the Telecom Act. That would enable the FCC to regulate ISPs as common carriers.
You're right. Freedom from prior restraint is a long standing American principle.
"Here, then, is to be discerned the genuine meaning of this section in the bill of rights... Every man may publish what he pleases; but, it is at his peril, if he publishes any thing which violates the rights of another, or interrupts the peace and order of society; as every man may keep poisons in his closet, but who will assert that he may vend them to the public for cordials? If, indeed, this section of the bill of rights had not circumscribed the authority of the legislature, this house, being a single branch, might in a despotic paroxism, revive all the odious restraints, which disgraced the early annals of the British government. Hence, arises the great fundamental advantage of the provision, which the authors of the constitution have wisely interwoven with our political system; not, it appears, to tolerate and indulge the passions and animosities of individuals, but effectually to protect the citizens from the encroachments of men in power."
Respublica v. Oswald, 1 U.S. 319, 1 Dall. 319 (1788) (cited in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931))
This is the earliest American case I could find on prior restraints. It's published in the United States Reports, which is supposed to be United States Supreme Court decisions, but this particular case seems to be from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. It is referring to the freedom of the press provision in the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights in the 1776 Constitution - it read "That the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing, and publishing their sentiments; therefore the freedom of the press ought not to be restrained."
Check out the PA 1776 Constitution. It's an amazingly democratic document. The fifth article of the bill of rights read: "That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community; and not for the particular emolument or advantage of any single man, family, or soft of men, who are a part only of that community, And that the community hath an indubitable, unalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish government in such manner as shall be by that community judged most conducive to the public weal. "
a big problem is that if you pick up a rock, you own it. In the western US mining districts, those rocks are laden with natural concentrations of all sorts of low-value heavy minerals that are magically transformed into "toxic waste" the minute you touch it.
the mineral complexes are intrinsically "toxic waste"
the environment is naturally full of heavy minerals.
I don't see the problem. Nature has some naturally occurring toxic sites. Okay, I buy that. If you go out there and move the toxic materials around, you're responsible for the toxicity. I buy that too.
The problem you seem to have is that, by your facts, there's no causal connection between the mining and the toxicity. I'll take this as true. Nevertheless, SOMEONE has to deal with the toxicity. Its either the government (i.e., the public, i.e., taxpayers) or its the people who profit from extracting value out of the toxic site.
I don't have a natural preference for either option - sometimes its best for the government to handle problems (national security? public roads? health care?), and sometimes its better for the landowner / profit maker. It depends on the situation; it depends on the arguments on either side.
So, please, present your argument why the government should bear the cost to clean up mine tailings, and not the company making money.
1) Will the bureaucracy actually be reduced?
Nasa is a government agency. By definition, it is a bureaucracy. By definition, all its employees are government officials... aka, bureaucrats. That includes all the scientists and engineers, in addition to their managers.
The tone of your post suggests you disapprove of middle management, red tape, and government administration.
You need to realize that the more a government agency contracts out its tasks, the more and more the agency becomes comprised of the red tape machine, and less and less of it are people who do the agency's work. To the extent that privatization or contracting out "reduces" the size of an agency, it means that whats left is the clerical management everyone hates.
Will the bureaucracy be reduced? Yes, because the space shuttle program involved massive amounts of contracting, with NASA supervising and running the program. The new plan calls for NASA "buying rides" from private companies - this means the companies can eat the management costs and personnel burden of developing and maintaining the rockets.
Hopefully, the actual number of people at NASA won't change, though their jobs should. They can move away from administration and contractor compliance, and doing the real work of NASA - aeronautics and space research. From middle management to scientists and engineers.
But they'll still be bureaucrats.
I used to come here to get the lates tech news.
Yeah, okay, grandpa. Did you have to trudge uphill through the snow to get here too?
I bet you liked it then.
But ... American copyright law doesn't apply outside America...
Are you sure? I recommend you read Prof. Neil Netanel's paper, Why Has Copyright Expanded?. In part he argues that the US trade representative (heavily influenced by US content industry lobbyists) has used its significant leverage in the shaping of international IP treaties (such as TRIPS and WIPO) to greatly expand copyright protections in countries around the world (and, sinisterly, to expand the US's own copyright regime).
To the extent that the United States is the content-capital of the world (yeah, I know that's highly debatable), other countries should take note of US copyright policy and politics. If Australia adopts (more) draconian copyright rules - that sucks, especially for Australians. If the US adopts (more) draconian copyright rules, that's probably the harbinger of ever more draconian international treaties, which often economically coerce countries into changing their own laws.
Some quotes from Netanel's article:
"[C]opyright and other intellectual property lobbyists have also exerted extraordinary influence on the US position in international treaty and trade agreement negotiations. The industries have regularly used their political muscle to lead US negotiators to initiate treaty negotiations and sponsor provisions requiring other countries to expand their copyright protection...
"TRIPs requires WTO member countries to comply with prescribed standards for intellectual property protection and authorizes the imposition of trade sanctions against countries that fail to do so. In its initial submission to the TRIPs negotiations, the US delegation, working closely with copyright industry associations, proposed language on the permissible scope of countries’ limitations to copyright holder rights that would have made all but a highly crabbed, market-centered version of fair use a violation of the agreement.
"[T]he industry has continued adeptly to use international treaty negotiations as part of its domestic legislative strategy. The ‘paracopyright’ anti-circumvention provisions enacted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 are another case in point.... [A]dministration officials, led by former software-industry lobbyist Bruce Lehman, brought the copyright industry-backed digital agenda to the World Intellectual Property Organization and urged that it be incorporated into new intellectual property treaties then under consideration.
"In December 1996 a WIPO-sponsored diplomatic conference adopted two of those treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty."
I think the issue would actually be whether the underlying architectural work is copyrighted (or copyrightable) or not. An exact (as opposed to stylized) 3d model of the Washington Monument might not be copyrightable because the Washington Monument, insofar as it as an architectural or artistic work is in the public domain, is not copyrightable. No matter the effort in making the model, there would have to be a nominal amount of creativity differentiating the model and the original monument. To the extent that the making of the model required some elements of craft or skill or judgment, that would merely represent a "mere demonstration of physical skill or special training," and the exactness of the model would represent "a form of slavish copying that is the antithesis of originality." These quotes are from ATC Distrib. Group v. Whatever It Takes Transmissions & Parts (6th Cir. 2005) at 712 (the court was describing illustrations of actual auto parts in a catalog).
A 3d model of a copyrighted building or sculpture would be copyrightable, I would think, as a derivative work of the original. The creativity required of the 3d model would be derived from the creativity of the original. This means that the making of such a model without the copyright owner's permission would be an infringement.
The case on point is ProCD v. Zeidenberg (1996), which is of additional note because it accepts shrink-wrap/click-wrap licenses as valid and enforceable.
The database owner may also prevent additional copying of the database (ie, if the database is "leaked" somehow) through trade secret laws, or through encryption and the DMCA's prohibition on bypassing such protections.
As others in this thread have pointed out, "facts" concerning a copyrighted work are just as protected as the work itself. As in, the facts concerning the position of a dancer at various times during a performance are as protected as the whole choreography of the performance.
The issue with athletic events is whether or not the actual event ("performance") is copyrightable. If it is copyrightable, then such things as the unauthorized republishing of final scores, descriptions of plays or strategies, etc. might well be copyright infringement, unless saved by fair use. If athletic events are not copyrightable, then those same republished scores and descriptions are not infringements (though the video broadcast would probably still be copyrightable, as there was a director making creative choices about which video feeds to use for the broadcast, and the cameramen practicing their craft as well). In other words, the key issue isn't the uncopyrightability of facts, but whether the athletic event itself is subject to copyright.
The 2nd Circuit, at least, believes that athletic events like basketball games are not copyrightable. See NBA v. Motorola (1997) at 846. This seems to be the majority position, but there is however contrary case law from the 7th circuit: Baltimore Orioles v. Major League Baseball Players (1986). Nimmer, the preeminent legal scholar on copyright, argues that athletic events should not be copyrightable in his treatise, at 2.09(F).
This has been settled law in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling in Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (1991). You can read the whole opinion on Google Scholar. I highly recommend reading it, it's a classic in American copyright law.