However, many state judiciary systems look to the federal rules as models to base their state systems on, so it's expected that many states will adopt the same or similar language for their state rules of civil procedure.
"rule 37(f) creates an explicit safe harbor in the event that data is destroyed in the normal course of business, absent a litigation hold or anticipation of litigation"
IAAL, and from what I've heard, the safe harbor isn't really much of a protection. A typical strategy might go something like this.
1) Send an e-mail letter to a potential defendant corporation, to some low level attorney in their legal department, complaining about whatever it is you complain about (product liability, HR, whatever). Include something obliquely related to "I might even think about hiring an attorney to sue you about this." Companies get letters like this all the time.
2) Wait a long time. Just before the statute of limitations runs out, file the lawsuit.
3) Make a discovery request.
4) Odds are, they won't have your original e-mail which they were required to keep, under the comments to FRCP 37(f). The FRCP allows for inadvertent destruction due to the routine operation of a computer system, but "a party is not permitted... to thwart discovery obligations by allowing that operation to continue in order to destroy specific stored information that it is required to preserve. [A] party is under a duty to preserve information because of pending or reasonably anticipated litigation..."
5) Move for sanctions. And heck, if they can't find that e-mail, which was so clearly in anticipation of pending litigation, who knows what else they've destroyed? Move for an adverse inference instruction, too, telling the jury to assume the defendant destroyed a smoking gun document.
6) Profit!
I'm just glad I'm not the one in my company who deals with this game playing on a regular basis.
In fairness, it's even more the case than ever before that one should post
to Usenet as if what one writes will also appear the next day on the front
page of the New York Times and whatever paper your boss, SO, and parents
read. To a degree, this has always been true, but with the Internet
explosion its the case more than ever.
This was written back in April 1995. This was also considered in misc.legal in 1994.
Simple solution: you're responsible for your own speech. *gasp*
300 microns = 0.0118110236 inches. That's the same caliper as 110# index cards (which is between.0095" and.0130" thick, depending on the manufacturer).
Disclaimer: I work for a large paper company, but I don't purport to speak for them.
My job here is to create paper and electronic forms for our internal use. It's well known in the industry that whenever you add printers or computers to an office, cut sheet paper usage increases. In the US, there's been a decline in roll-stock paper usage over the last 10 years, but cut sheet paper (the kind you buy 500 per ream and stick in your printer) has been nothing but growth.
As much as I'd like to make all of our forms electronic, it doesn't make sense to. It's easier for the guys driving the logging trucks and forklifts to have paper checklists, it's sensible to buy large quantities of pads of paper (instead of having the users order them 10 at a time, which they WILL do if we don't), and it's a real pain to have to open up an electronic version of the "while you were out" slip compared to the ease of using a paper version.
Add name tags, envelopes, certificates, and calendars to the mix, and it's pretty obvious that paper's here to stay for a long, long, long time.
FAA legal counsel has agreed that "posting a public notice for 60 days would serve as constructive notice to anyone with an interest in the data, and if we receive no response, we can release the prints to the requesters."
Too bad there's not already a way to show that intellectual property has been abandoned. This would be a great method to be able to re-publish old books, movies, and Atari 2600 games.
IAAL, and I saw "Return To Neverland" yesterday (don't bother... very dull). The most interesting part of the film came at the start of the closing credits:
"Walt Disney Productions is grateful to the Hospital for Sick Children - Great Ormond Street, London - to which Sir James M. Barrie gave his copyright of Peter Pan."
The US Peter Pan copyright was originally set to expire in 1987. But because of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the copyright was extended to 2007.
I don't know whether Disney actually paid royalties to the Hospital, but I bet they did.
(In the UK, parliament passed a special act giving the hospital an eternal copyright in Peter Pan. It's debatable whether the Berne convention extended this ininite protection to all Berne convention countries.)
For temporary backup files? I do it all the time. Say I want to edit autoexec.bat, but want to keep a backup. Say autoexec.bak already exists from a previous backup, and I only want it around temporarily. Why not autoexec.rlz ?
Or lets say that stupid Outlook Security Update is installed, and I want to send an Access database to a co-worker. I can't send the.mdb file -- Outlook will block it. Why not name it mydb.rlz and send it on (giving instructions to the other side to rename it back to.mdb).
All this because one of the 2000 admins forgot to add *.scr back into the filter rules
No, it's because you have clueless users who click any attachment they get. And because it's an Exchange server. It's not "because" someone forgot to block a file type. Shouldn't it be possible for me to send any file name I want, regardless of extension? If my name was Sean C. Richards, I'd be upset that my using my initials as a file extension kept it from being forwarded.
The story's been slashdotted, so I haven't read the author's perspective, but do you want to know the real reason the DMCA will fail?
The ingenuity of the geeks.
Information may not really want to be free (as in speech), but if people with the right skills want it to be free (as in beer), it will be.
Copyright law -- and by extension the DMCA -- is merely state sanctioned censorship: they allow the holder of the copyright to censor anyone who wants to copy it.
And, as was said back in the pre-web days, the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man.
Artificial Intelligence (the company) states its goal is "to develop a computer that functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
Dunietz says "We can have... a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Slashdot writers as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when Hal's revolution came."
I_A_AL, and that's exactly what I rember learning in law school. If the secret gets out, it's not a secret any more.
Ethically it's a different question, but legally, you can set the information free (as in speech).
You couldn't legally publish it verbatim or hand out free (as in beer) copies of it because of copyright protection. But the information itself (and not the expression of the information) is no longer protected.
It's not quite humming, but get yourself a Sony E-Marker. It's essentially a time stamper that looks in a database that major market radio stations use.
Advantages:
1. It'll tell you the name and artist of the song you were listening to.
2. It's $20.
3. It fits on your keychain.
Disadvantages:
1. It doesn't cover every station (especially not college stations).
2. The web site has a really irritating Flash interface.
3. You've gotta live in a major metropolitan area.
4. It's too easy to accidentally press the button when you carry your keys in your pocket.
But for $20, it's nice to have the gadget work 80% of the time.
(It's also useful for when you want to remember what MP3s you want to download when you get home. Probably not what Sony intended, though.)
In the spirit of Microsoft, let me edit your quote just a little, to reference music instead of books:
how would you like it if the music store ripped out that dull cover art or blacked out offensive lyrics from every copy of that CD before they stocked it on their shelf
"Wal-Mart, the single largest seller of pop music in America - it sold 52 million CDs last year - is forcing the removal of songs, changes in cover designs, and alterations of lyrics its executives find objectionable or offensive. It's forcing studios to make tamer, safer films as well. Artists who disagree with particular Wal-Mart notions of morality are being deprived of revenue and having their livelihoods threatened.
"One example: The chain's stores, according to The New York Times, refused to carry Sheryl Crow's new album because of a lyric that accused the chain of selling guns to children. When Crow refused to remove it, she lost an estimated 10 percent of her album's potential sales."
Now imagine if Wal-Mart had 90% of the music market instead of 10%. Yay, smart tags.
I am a lawyer, but not one well versed in real estate law. Lack of knowledge never seems to stop anyone from posting though, so here I go.
For a few minutes, I thought I'd be getting free fiber. Then reality hit me, and I checked out the state laws.
It's pretty clear:
RCW 80.36.010
Eminent domain.
The right of eminent domain is hereby extended to all telecommunications companies organized or doing business in this state.
Other laws give them permission to enter adjacent lands to maintain their lines (RCW 80.36.020 and 030).
Private companies taking private land may be in conflict with Article 1 16 of the Washington state constitution ("Private property shall not be taken for private use, except for private ways of necessity, and for drains, flumes, or ditches on or across the lands of others for agricultural, domestic, or sanitary purposes.") I don't know if this has ever been used to challenge the RCW's above, though.
Regardless, it'll be a while before I get one of those nice letters.
Why no foreign based servers?
on
Launchcast Sued
·
· Score: 1
With all the US companies being sued by the RIAA (Napster, Aimster, Launch, probably AudioGalaxy any day now), why hasn't a non-US company developed a centralized music sharing service?
Sure, Gnutella is OK if you've got the bandwidth, but having a centralized entity makes it a lot easier for the masses with their 56K modems.
Shouldn't there be a British or German or Australian or Japanese company doing this by now? Why hasn't this niche been filled?
Sure, they could still be sued, but it'd cost RIAA a bit more to try to understand the foreign laws, some of which may be more liberal than the US copyright laws.
You don't even really have to go back a generation to see this happen -- try 16 years. Case in point: The Goonies DVD is set to be released in August. On the DVD will be the movie, cut scenes, interviews, and part two of Cyndi Lauper's two part Goonies music video.
Why just part two and not part one? "Jonathan Gaines, the producer of this DVD, said that it is only being released with part II of Cyndi Lauper's music video because they are only able to find that one. They are unable to locate the master for part one... " http://www.thegoonies.com/DVDinfo.htm
There are those who say that having less Cyndi Lauper works around may be a good thing, and Lauper herself will tell you that the song is at the bottom of her list (she made a point of keeping it OFF of her Greatest Hits album), but if the copyright holder of a work can't keep the work themselves for 16 years, well thank goodness for the "pirates" (and the Sony case) who taped the video off the air in the mid-80's. If not for them, there's a good chance that this small part of 80's pop culture would be lost forever. Maybe for the better, but you get my point.
(A little more off topic: Another thing I miss about Napster (yes, I now use Gnutella and AudioGalaxy, but the alternatives still don't have as deep a user base, yet) is being able to find really esoteric stuff from the 70's and 80's, like the Sesame Street pinball song, or the theme from Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's gambling. For the skilled player, it's just gambling with a +EV, unlike the slots or table games, which have a -EV.
But two seconds are nice to have to dodge roadway debris, which you didn't see coming until the person in front of you dodged it.
However, many state judiciary systems look to the federal rules as models to base their state systems on, so it's expected that many states will adopt the same or similar language for their state rules of civil procedure.
Well, it is almost live. Bill Nye would approve.
"rule 37(f) creates an explicit safe harbor in the event that data is destroyed in the normal course of business, absent a litigation hold or anticipation of litigation"
... to thwart discovery obligations by allowing that operation to continue in order to destroy specific stored information that it is required to
IAAL, and from what I've heard, the safe harbor isn't really much of a protection. A typical strategy might go something like this.
1) Send an e-mail letter to a potential defendant corporation, to some low level attorney in their legal department, complaining about whatever it is you complain about (product liability, HR, whatever). Include something obliquely related to "I might even think about hiring an attorney to sue you about this." Companies get letters like this all the time.
2) Wait a long time. Just before the statute of limitations runs out, file the lawsuit.
3) Make a discovery request.
4) Odds are, they won't have your original e-mail which they were required to keep, under the comments to FRCP 37(f). The FRCP allows for inadvertent destruction due to the routine operation of a computer system, but "a party is not permitted
preserve. [A] party is under a duty to preserve information because of pending or reasonably anticipated litigation..."
5) Move for sanctions. And heck, if they can't find that e-mail, which was so clearly in anticipation of pending litigation, who knows what else they've destroyed? Move for an adverse inference instruction, too, telling the jury to assume the defendant destroyed a smoking gun document.
6) Profit!
I'm just glad I'm not the one in my company who deals with this game playing on a regular basis.
This was written back in April 1995. This was also considered in misc.legal in 1994.
Simple solution: you're responsible for your own speech. *gasp*
300 microns = 0.0118110236 inches. That's the same caliper as 110# index cards (which is between .0095" and .0130" thick, depending on the manufacturer).
Reruns are still being broadcast on KING early on Sunday mornings (after Saturday Night Live?). It's high on my TiVo season pass list.
Bill Nye was also a High Fivin' White Guy.
I'm still waiting for my Google implant.
Then I'll kick some serious butt on Jeopardy.
Disclaimer: I work for a large paper company, but I don't purport to speak for them.
My job here is to create paper and electronic forms for our internal use. It's well known in the industry that whenever you add printers or computers to an office, cut sheet paper usage increases. In the US, there's been a decline in roll-stock paper usage over the last 10 years, but cut sheet paper (the kind you buy 500 per ream and stick in your printer) has been nothing but growth.
As much as I'd like to make all of our forms electronic, it doesn't make sense to. It's easier for the guys driving the logging trucks and forklifts to have paper checklists, it's sensible to buy large quantities of pads of paper (instead of having the users order them 10 at a time, which they WILL do if we don't), and it's a real pain to have to open up an electronic version of the "while you were out" slip compared to the ease of using a paper version.
Add name tags, envelopes, certificates, and calendars to the mix, and it's pretty obvious that paper's here to stay for a long, long, long time.
Too bad there's not already a way to show that intellectual property has been abandoned. This would be a great method to be able to re-publish old books, movies, and Atari 2600 games.
"Walt Disney Productions is grateful to the Hospital for Sick Children - Great Ormond Street, London - to which Sir James M. Barrie gave his copyright of Peter Pan."
The US Peter Pan copyright was originally set to expire in 1987. But because of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the copyright was extended to 2007.
I don't know whether Disney actually paid royalties to the Hospital, but I bet they did.
(In the UK, parliament passed a special act giving the hospital an eternal copyright in Peter Pan. It's debatable whether the Berne convention extended this ininite protection to all Berne convention countries.)
For temporary backup files? I do it all the time. Say I want to edit autoexec.bat, but want to keep a backup. Say autoexec.bak already exists from a previous backup, and I only want it around temporarily. Why not autoexec.rlz ?
.mdb file -- Outlook will block it. Why not name it mydb.rlz and send it on (giving instructions to the other side to rename it back to .mdb).
Or lets say that stupid Outlook Security Update is installed, and I want to send an Access database to a co-worker. I can't send the
No, it's because you have clueless users who click any attachment they get. And because it's an Exchange server. It's not "because" someone forgot to block a file type. Shouldn't it be possible for me to send any file name I want, regardless of extension? If my name was Sean C. Richards, I'd be upset that my using my initials as a file extension kept it from being forwarded.
Have the bidder make a PayPal donation and send you the screen shot. That way, the bidder knows the money's going to the right place.
jtl
The story's been slashdotted, so I haven't read the author's perspective, but do you want to know the real reason the DMCA will fail?
The ingenuity of the geeks.
Information may not really want to be free (as in speech), but if people with the right skills want it to be free (as in beer), it will be.
Copyright law -- and by extension the DMCA -- is merely state sanctioned censorship: they allow the holder of the copyright to censor anyone who wants to copy it.
And, as was said back in the pre-web days, the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man.
... a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks."
Artificial Intelligence (the company) states its goal is "to develop a computer that functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
Dunietz says "We can have
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Slashdot writers as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when Hal's revolution came."
Umm... why not Audio Clip? It's not like embedding it in the web page adds that much value.
I_A_AL, and that's exactly what I rember learning in law school. If the secret gets out, it's not a secret any more.
Ethically it's a different question, but legally, you can set the information free (as in speech).
You couldn't legally publish it verbatim or hand out free (as in beer) copies of it because of copyright protection. But the information itself (and not the expression of the information) is no longer protected.
Advantages:
1. It'll tell you the name and artist of the song you were listening to.
2. It's $20.
3. It fits on your keychain.
Disadvantages:
1. It doesn't cover every station (especially not college stations).
2. The web site has a really irritating Flash interface.
3. You've gotta live in a major metropolitan area.
4. It's too easy to accidentally press the button when you carry your keys in your pocket.
But for $20, it's nice to have the gadget work 80% of the time.
(It's also useful for when you want to remember what MP3s you want to download when you get home. Probably not what Sony intended, though.)
how would you like it if the music store ripped out that dull cover art or blacked out offensive lyrics from every copy of that CD before they stocked it on their shelf
It's a old 1996 Katz article, but still on-topic: Wal-Mart Sanitizes Art, Soils First Amendment:
"Wal-Mart, the single largest seller of pop music in America - it sold 52 million CDs last year - is forcing the removal of songs, changes in cover designs, and alterations of lyrics its executives find objectionable or offensive. It's forcing studios to make tamer, safer films as well. Artists who disagree with particular Wal-Mart notions of morality are being deprived of revenue and having their livelihoods threatened.
"One example: The chain's stores, according to The New York Times, refused to carry Sheryl Crow's new album because of a lyric that accused the chain of selling guns to children. When Crow refused to remove it, she lost an estimated 10 percent of her album's potential sales."
Now imagine if Wal-Mart had 90% of the music market instead of 10%. Yay, smart tags.
For a few minutes, I thought I'd be getting free fiber. Then reality hit me, and I checked out the state laws.
It's pretty clear:
RCW 80.36.010
Eminent domain.
The right of eminent domain is hereby extended to all telecommunications companies organized or doing business in this state.
Other laws give them permission to enter adjacent lands to maintain their lines (RCW 80.36.020 and 030).
Private companies taking private land may be in conflict with Article 1 16 of the Washington state constitution ("Private property shall not be taken for private use, except for private ways of necessity, and for drains, flumes, or ditches on or across the lands of others for agricultural, domestic, or sanitary purposes.") I don't know if this has ever been used to challenge the RCW's above, though.
Regardless, it'll be a while before I get one of those nice letters.
Sure, Gnutella is OK if you've got the bandwidth, but having a centralized entity makes it a lot easier for the masses with their 56K modems.
Shouldn't there be a British or German or Australian or Japanese company doing this by now? Why hasn't this niche been filled?
Sure, they could still be sued, but it'd cost RIAA a bit more to try to understand the foreign laws, some of which may be more liberal than the US copyright laws.
Why just part two and not part one? "Jonathan Gaines, the producer of this DVD, said that it is only being released with part II of Cyndi Lauper's music video because they are only able to find that one. They are unable to locate the master for part one... " http://www.thegoonies.com/DVDinfo.htm
There are those who say that having less Cyndi Lauper works around may be a good thing, and Lauper herself will tell you that the song is at the bottom of her list (she made a point of keeping it OFF of her Greatest Hits album), but if the copyright holder of a work can't keep the work themselves for 16 years, well thank goodness for the "pirates" (and the Sony case) who taped the video off the air in the mid-80's. If not for them, there's a good chance that this small part of 80's pop culture would be lost forever. Maybe for the better, but you get my point.
(A little more off topic: Another thing I miss about Napster (yes, I now use Gnutella and AudioGalaxy, but the alternatives still don't have as deep a user base, yet) is being able to find really esoteric stuff from the 70's and 80's, like the Sesame Street pinball song, or the theme from Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.)