I hope this doesn't encourage would-be censors to restrict the kinds of content allowed in non-xxx domains. Not all content fits neatly into an XXX designation, and even if it did it is simply not right to restrict XXX content to XXX domains. Having an XXX domain has always struck me as either pointless (insofar as XXX content might continue to be hosted on non-XXX domains) or otherwise a really bad idea (insofar as no XXX content may be allowed outside of XXX domains).
The collections (real-life) I've seen don't need blood. They just swab the inside of your mouth.
Cheek swabs are certainly an option, but that doesn't rule out the drawing of blood as an alternative (possibly at the arresting officer's discretion) unless it's explicitly forbidden by law.
GP didn't ask how it was different from fingerprints. Having said that, DNA conveys information that fingerprints do not. Fingerprints can't be matched against your relatives, nor do they reveal information about a person's genetic makeup. Finally, fingerprint collection is less invasive than DNA collection, especially when DNA is obtained via needles.
If police can gain an advantage by enforcing laws against minor and/or discretionary offenses, you can be sure they will take full advantage by enforcing such laws more often. It's been known to happen, and it will happen again if this abominable bill is turned into law.
Just a question to naysayers: how is this different from the state wanting to know where you live, or wanting your name on record?
- It uniquely identifies a person. - It may be used against that person in the future, even if the person was innocent at the time of collection. - It may require drawing blood. Some people are very afraid of needles and should not be forced to submit to a blood test unless the person is to stand trial for a crime where drawing blood makes legal sense (as opposed to it just being something the government thinks would be nice to have).
Not only should YouTube not be liable for what its users choose to post online, YouTube shouldn't even have to provide copyright holders with any special tools for handling infringing content.
If we as citizens are required to live with the DMCA's restrictions, it is only fair that courts give Viacom no special treatment either. Google's only responsibility is to take down infringing content when properly requested to do so by copyright holders. As long as it continues to do that according to the terms of the DMCA, YouTube should not be expected to do anything more. Viacom should consider itself lucky that YouTube goes beyond the DMCA's requirements and provides them tools such as content detection and a streamlined process for getting rid of allegedly infringing content -- they are not entitled to any of that under the law.
I didn't feel like reading the government's plan, partly out of laziness and partly due to not wanting to get even more pissed off about the current state of US Copyright law. I expected the worst from reading the/. summary, but Techdirt's writeup has appeased those fears -- at least for now.
One problem is that the SCOTUS has already rejected the idea that repeated retroactive term increases don't contradict the notion of "limited".
Possibly, but it seems to me the Eldred precedent should only apply to works that are still under copyright. Once the copyright term has in fact expired, it is rather disingenuous to say that extending it still constitutes a limited term. Then again, the reasoning in Eldred was itself rather disingenuous.
We weren't talking about Shakespeare in the ark. We were talking about First Amendment vs. Copyright.
You weren't talking about Shakespeare in the {ark, but GP was and did so in order to illustrate the fact that extending copyright to public domain works does indeed restrict the people's ability to speak freely.
The Constitution does direct Congress to create a copyright law (explicitly making Copyright a Federal issue), but it does not state the form or manner of Copyright protection.
The words "for limited times" do dictate, to some extent, the form and manner of copyright protection.
Section 514 restores copyright to the works/that should have been copyrighted to begin with/.
According to the Berne Convention, but not according to US law at the time those works entered the public domain. I happen to be one of those people who believe that treaties should never be allowed to act as straitjackets to its signatory countries, being instead incorporated into each country's law only to the extent that the treaty's terms are (1) approved by each country's legislature, and (2) not in conflict with that country's constitution or with its approach to law.
... there is no particular legal reason to presume that once something is in the public domain, it can never be returned to being copyrighted.
Sure there is. It says so right in the US Constitution: "... by securing, for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Free Speech isn't about publishing other people's works; it's about protecting people's right to disagree with the government.
Bullshit. Free speech is about protecting people's rights to speak, period. This "disagree with the government" qualification is your own invention and has no basis in law.
Copyright law is not part of the Constitution, so Congress has every right to change it as they see fit.
I guess you were asleep when they showed that "how a bill becomes law" video. The California state legislature hasn't even voted on this, and I doubt that it ever will. Like it says in TFA, this is a proposal by a one particular member, and will never be more than that unless he gets a lot of other assemblymen and state senators to back it.
I guess you fell asleep before reading the sentence in TFA that says the bill "passed unanimously through the Senate last month"? The Senate is part of the Legislature, you know.
Fortunately it doesn't work that way, courts have found these contracts to be unconscionable even if the fault was made by those who'd lose on it, as long as no reasonable person would have given or accepted the contract that way.
The key term here being "no reasonable person". When I walk into a casino and a slot machine promises me a prize of X million dollars in exchange for my money, it is not at all unreasonable to conclude that such an amount is what the casino would pay me should I ever hit the jackpot. Unless there are sufficient clues to suggest the amount is in error, the casino should have to pay the advertised amount.
If a construction crane malfunctions and ends up killing a bunch of people, should the construction company get to avoid liability simply because the machine malfunctioned?
In this case it involves money rather than lives, but I see no reason why casinos should not be liable for problems with the machines they operate.
It's disappointing for the people that they didn't win their jackpot, but the rules are presented very clearly beforehand.
Saying all transactions are void in case of a malfunction does not make things any clearer for the customer. The customer has no knowledge of the machine's inner workings and therefore has absolutely no idea how likely it is for the machine to malfunction. Far from making things clearer, the presence of such a label makes things more uncertain due to the player's inability to figure out the odds in light of the hidden information of the machine's potential for malfunction.
Pedophiles use children for their own self-serving purposes, and now the government wants in on the "fun". They're using these poor children to achieve the government's broader political goals, getting away with things they otherwise could not. "Think of the children", the oldest trick in the book since the Victorian era.
Perverts and legislators -- it's like they're made for each other.
And how does that stop me from copying your fingerprint data onto other devices, not to duplicate your fingerprint but to duplicate the data that allows me to identify a particular fingerprint as belonging to you?
How will ISPs be able to tell the difference between infringing and non infringing transfers of copyrighted material? Do they intend to log everything a user downloads and let the copyright holders decide for themselves which downloads and uploads are infringing and which are not? Considering the large number of legitimate downloads and uploads, this would doubtless be a huge privacy violation. Or perhaps they intend to flag only those works that are listed somewhere as "do not distribute except through [domain list]"? Such a system could easily be foiled by encryption and would increase ISP computing costs (to be passed on to customers) as every single download is checked for infringing content.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope this doesn't encourage would-be censors to restrict the kinds of content allowed in non-xxx domains. Not all content fits neatly into an XXX designation, and even if it did it is simply not right to restrict XXX content to XXX domains. Having an XXX domain has always struck me as either pointless (insofar as XXX content might continue to be hosted on non-XXX domains) or otherwise a really bad idea (insofar as no XXX content may be allowed outside of XXX domains).
And here is the full score, so you can play it at home.
Vuvuzela Concerto in B Flat.
Cheek swabs are certainly an option, but that doesn't rule out the drawing of blood as an alternative (possibly at the arresting officer's discretion) unless it's explicitly forbidden by law.
GP didn't ask how it was different from fingerprints. Having said that, DNA conveys information that fingerprints do not. Fingerprints can't be matched against your relatives, nor do they reveal information about a person's genetic makeup. Finally, fingerprint collection is less invasive than DNA collection, especially when DNA is obtained via needles.
If police can gain an advantage by enforcing laws against minor and/or discretionary offenses, you can be sure they will take full advantage by enforcing such laws more often. It's been known to happen, and it will happen again if this abominable bill is turned into law.
- It uniquely identifies a person.
- It may be used against that person in the future, even if the person was innocent at the time of collection.
- It may require drawing blood. Some people are very afraid of needles and should not be forced to submit to a blood test unless the person is to stand trial for a crime where drawing blood makes legal sense (as opposed to it just being something the government thinks would be nice to have).
Not only should YouTube not be liable for what its users choose to post online, YouTube shouldn't even have to provide copyright holders with any special tools for handling infringing content.
If we as citizens are required to live with the DMCA's restrictions, it is only fair that courts give Viacom no special treatment either. Google's only responsibility is to take down infringing content when properly requested to do so by copyright holders. As long as it continues to do that according to the terms of the DMCA, YouTube should not be expected to do anything more. Viacom should consider itself lucky that YouTube goes beyond the DMCA's requirements and provides them tools such as content detection and a streamlined process for getting rid of allegedly infringing content -- they are not entitled to any of that under the law.
I didn't feel like reading the government's plan, partly out of laziness and partly due to not wanting to get even more pissed off about the current state of US Copyright law. I expected the worst from reading the /. summary, but Techdirt's writeup has appeased those fears -- at least for now.
Possibly, but it seems to me the Eldred precedent should only apply to works that are still under copyright. Once the copyright term has in fact expired, it is rather disingenuous to say that extending it still constitutes a limited term. Then again, the reasoning in Eldred was itself rather disingenuous.
You weren't talking about Shakespeare in the {ark, but GP was and did so in order to illustrate the fact that extending copyright to public domain works does indeed restrict the people's ability to speak freely.
The words "for limited times" do dictate, to some extent, the form and manner of copyright protection.
According to the Berne Convention, but not according to US law at the time those works entered the public domain. I happen to be one of those people who believe that treaties should never be allowed to act as straitjackets to its signatory countries, being instead incorporated into each country's law only to the extent that the treaty's terms are (1) approved by each country's legislature, and (2) not in conflict with that country's constitution or with its approach to law.
Sure there is. It says so right in the US Constitution: "... by securing, for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Bullshit. Free speech is about protecting people's rights to speak, period. This "disagree with the government" qualification is your own invention and has no basis in law.
Wrong again.
I guess you fell asleep before reading the sentence in TFA that says the bill "passed unanimously through the Senate last month"? The Senate is part of the Legislature, you know.
There's a university with far too much power.
The key term here being "no reasonable person". When I walk into a casino and a slot machine promises me a prize of X million dollars in exchange for my money, it is not at all unreasonable to conclude that such an amount is what the casino would pay me should I ever hit the jackpot. Unless there are sufficient clues to suggest the amount is in error, the casino should have to pay the advertised amount.
If a construction crane malfunctions and ends up killing a bunch of people, should the construction company get to avoid liability simply because the machine malfunctioned?
In this case it involves money rather than lives, but I see no reason why casinos should not be liable for problems with the machines they operate.
Saying all transactions are void in case of a malfunction does not make things any clearer for the customer. The customer has no knowledge of the machine's inner workings and therefore has absolutely no idea how likely it is for the machine to malfunction. Far from making things clearer, the presence of such a label makes things more uncertain due to the player's inability to figure out the odds in light of the hidden information of the machine's potential for malfunction.
Pedophiles use children for their own self-serving purposes, and now the government wants in on the "fun". They're using these poor children to achieve the government's broader political goals, getting away with things they otherwise could not. "Think of the children", the oldest trick in the book since the Victorian era.
Perverts and legislators -- it's like they're made for each other.
I guess your algorithm has magical properties that prevent other programmers from using the same algorithm to check against people's fingerprints?
And how does that stop me from copying your fingerprint data onto other devices, not to duplicate your fingerprint but to duplicate the data that allows me to identify a particular fingerprint as belonging to you?
Given the UK's general attitude toward its citizens' privacy, saying UK schools have been doing this for ages doesn't exactly support your position.
How will ISPs be able to tell the difference between infringing and non infringing transfers of copyrighted material? Do they intend to log everything a user downloads and let the copyright holders decide for themselves which downloads and uploads are infringing and which are not? Considering the large number of legitimate downloads and uploads, this would doubtless be a huge privacy violation. Or perhaps they intend to flag only those works that are listed somewhere as "do not distribute except through [domain list]"? Such a system could easily be foiled by encryption and would increase ISP computing costs (to be passed on to customers) as every single download is checked for infringing content.
Any way you slice it, it's simply a bad idea.
The law does something good for a change. Hope they get convicted.