You're being rather smug for an anonymous coward who doesn't know I'm a lawyer who specializes in IP law. (But, please don't take any of the following as legal advice; seek your own counsel.)
First of all, you're taking quite the 'natural rights' view to the law. But, that's really a philosophical question about the true nature of law, and not one which is generally agreed upon. The natural rights view has been in decline for at least 100 years.
Of course laws grant rights. Consider the following in Section 106: ". . . the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize the following. .." If that's not an explicit grant of a right, I don't know what is. The concept of "Intellectual Property" doesn't even exist in natural law, so there can be no natural grant of a "copyright" (the right to exclude others from using your work.)
And, you're right that the 4-factor Section 107 analysis is not intended to be complete. But, I never said it was. I did say that the '76 act specifies that fair use is a defense to infringement, not a "right." If you can find me a single US court case since 1978 (the effective date of the '76 Copyright act), that refers positively to "Fair Use Rights," I'd be interested in seeing it.
First of all, there are no such thing as "Fair use rights." Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement; it is not a stand-alone right. (Don't believe me? Go look up Section 107 yourself.)
Second of all, "It shall be illegal to design . . .." Is this really what you want?
Third of all, herein WHAT? Herein title 17? Herein Chapter 1?
Fourth of all, you haven't defined what an "audiovisual" or "software" product is. Does it include CDs? What about soft copies of books? Does it include still pictures?
But, most importantly, Section 17 doesn't grant individual purchasers ANY RIGHTS. So, the phrase "any rights to which they are entitled herein" is empty. (This isn't completely true, but is true enough for what you're thinking.)
That's my point. It isn't the RIAA going after on-line posting of song lyrics; it's one of the other agencies, probably the Harry Fox agency. (The RIAA may catch some song lyrics posters in its overly-aggressive enforcement, but that's presumably unintentional.)
Not exactly. There is a difference between the copyright in the recording and the copyright in the underlying musical work. So, if I write a song and you record it (with my permission), then there are two copyrighted works in the recording: my song and your performance of it. So, Bob Dylan owns the rights to the song "All Along the Watchtower," but Jimi Hendrix's estate owns the rights to his recording of the song.
The RIAA goes after those who infringe on the copyright of the recording. The Harry Fox Agency, BMI and ASCAP typically handle the rights to the musical composition.
In the US, yes, assuming the dialog itself was original and not otherwise exempt from copyright. The transcript would be considered a derivative work, the preparation and distribution of which is an infringement. You can't just do an English transcript of the dialog -- why would you be able to do a translation of that transcript into a different language?
Funny. I just did it. Of course, my file is compressed -- the decompression program takes FOREVER, but it's pretty easy to tell it to skip to the Nth entry.
Please go back and re-read the original question. It was about how the user of an infringing patented article could be liable for patent infringement. And, I think I answered that question: by practicing the patent without a license to do so.
Now, I suppose I could have been more precise: "by practicing the patent without a license, from either the original patent holder or somebody who holding a license allowing the sublicense of the patent, such license either having been received directly from the original patent holder or from somebody in a chain of sub-licensees from said patent holder (or such patent holder's predecessor-in-interest), each such sub-licensee having the right to further sublicense such patent and each such sublicense in such patent chain having been validly licensed under the terms of such sublicensor's sublicense."
But, none of that would have helped answer the question.
This isn't copyright -- you infringe a patent by practicing it. So, if you have a computer doing X and X is validly patented and you don't have a license to do X, you're infringing, regardless of whether somebody else gave you the software to do X or not.
My point wasn't that there are none, just that there aren't many. SCO is such big news simply because it's short on merit. Your argument is sort of like saying that there must be a lot of ex-presidents because everybody knows of at least one.
In any case, the SCO cast wasn't completely without merit. The fact that you've filed a case that, later, completely falls apart, doesn't mean that it was frivolous when it was filed. Even so, they may be yet be hit with Rule 11 sanctions.
Well, more precisely, judges make the determination. But, they do so under a written standard, which is also contained in Rule 11. But, this standard is fairly low:
(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law;
(3) the allegations and other factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, are likely to have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery;
So, if you can make a good case that even if current law doesn't allow something, it should, and even if you don't currently have evidence backing up your claims, you think you probably will, you're good.
If you don't like these rules, get Congress to change them -- they're written into a federal statute. But, recognize that by doing so, some meritorious claims won't be heard.
Completely frivolous lawsuits really aren't really that big a problem. The bigger problem is lawsuits which have some slim amount of merit, so they aren't technically frivolous, but which are brought mainly for harassment purposes. You're not really allowed to do that, but it's exceptionally hard to ascribe motive. We do have anti-SLAPP laws to address some of these problems.
Reform #1: In the US, Rule 11 sanctions are available if you institute a frivolous lawsuit. The exact sanction is determined by the judge on a case-by-case basis, and may be against the party, his lawyer, the lawyer's firm or any combination thereof. It can be monetary or non-monetary.
Reform #2: Why? If they persist, there'll be another Rule 11 sanction, which would probably be worse.
Reform #3: I don't think you need this. Lawsuits are expensive enough, as-is. If you're forced to pay the other side's fees (see #1), you'll stop quick enough.
Reform #4: This just isn't a problem. How many lawyers do you know who have even filed one frivolous lawsuit?
If this story isn't a complete farce, then there are probably some important details that we're missing.
Why can a fake ID not be protected? If it's an original work of authorship, fixed in a tangible medium of expression, it's protected by copyright. I don't remember where the DMCA exempts fake IDs or other "illegal documents" as you call them.
Every rewind backwards by 10 minutes so you could compare what you just watched with what happened earlier? If they disable fast-forward, you'll have to watch those 10 minutes over again.
I wonder if it will be possible to reinstate the fast-forward button by running the on-demand movie through a DVR.
First of all, IIRC, the EPA's statement is based on a combination of "clean" (western) and "dirty" (eastern) coal-burning plants. "Clean" coal plants do not emit nearly as much mercury. In addition, we get power from many sources, not just coal-fired plants. If, for example, your home happens to draw power from a nuclear or hydroelectric plant, then shifting to CFL bulbs probably causes a net increase in atmospheric mercury.
In addition, recognize that most coal-fired power plants put their emissions into the atmosphere, where they are widely dispersed. Breaking a CFL bulb in your living room will produce a much higher local concentration of mercury. (God help you if you accidentally break several at once.)
A person commits disorderly conduct when he knowingly . . . does any act in such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace
The fact that the teacher was disturbed is not enough. He also had to "provoke a breach of the peace." But, there was no breach of the peace. Ergo, he didn't commit disorderly conduct.
Now, it's been years since I've done this level of math. BUT, the first question on the Chinese test seems impossible -- it asks you to prove that two lines are perpendicular even though they don't intersect. The third question has a similar problem -- it asks you to find the angle between two lines when the lines aren't on the same plane.
I think I now know why none of my kid's made-in-China toys fit together correctly.
It seems to me, however, that the entire premise behind flat-rate royalties is slowly disintegrating. The original idea was that it's too difficult for each station to contract with each rights-holder. So, a flat rate was set which, while not perfect, at least allowed those transactions to go through. The songs that are played are sampled, and then the royalties are divided among the rights holders according to the sample.
But, on the Internet, why can't you just have a big database tracking every song? The head-end software looks at how many listeners there are, looks up the song in the database and reports to the station "If you want to play this song right now, it will cost you $$$$"? Then, when it gets played, it tracks exactly who is supposed to get what royalties.
This model has a number of benefits: first, it's more accurate: each rights holder gets paid when their music is played. Even the guy whose song is only played to twelve people will get compensated, whereas he never would have made that 'sample' before. And, second, it allows each individual artist to set the rates for their own music -- if you want to give your music out for free, do it. And, third, it would allow low-cost Internet radio to thrive.
So, if you have VoIP at home, you might be able to recognize this issue and deal with it. The bigger problem comes in when carriers replace their long-haul circuit-switched networks with private packet-switched networks. Then, your customer doesn't even know, or care, that their data is going over VoIP. And, as a result, you might end up customers trying to send regular modem traffic over your VoIP network. And, worse, it's harder to catch than it would if you had VoIP to the home, since you can't just say "Well, that's a fax line" -- you actually have to listen to the call to see if it's a fax.
There's also a backwards way of doing this as well: VoIP over an analog modem. Scarily, it works if you compress the audio enough.
First of all, everybody should recognize that most Fax-over-IP use a different codec (typical T.38, if I recall) for encoding the fax signal. If you just plug your fax machine into a plain-old VoIP port, there's a good chance that your gateway will do some lossy audio compression that isn't noticable for speech, but destroys a fax signal. That's one of the reasons that Vonage sells fax as a separate type of line.
Second, IIRC, the initial part of a fax call does some measurement and negotiation -- this is where the two endpoints determine how fast they'll communicate, exactly which protocol they'll use, what capabilities each other have and (most importantly here) test their connection, including round-trip time. But, this negotiation assumes a circuit-switched network, not a packet-switched network.
One of the core things about IP is that the round-trip time can change. Normally, each side would put in a buffer to balance it out, but if the delay changes, the buffer may need to be increased. For people, that's not a big deal -- add an additional 10ms delay midway though a call, and we don't even notice. But, that increase will kill a fax machine.
Think about what you're doing with fax: you are scanning an image, converting into data, then encoding that data as analog, which then gets re-encoded as data for transmission over IP. On the other end, just the reverse happens. Why not skip the extra steps by getting a scanner and emailing it? Or, subscribe to efax, which does it for you.
But, since a lot of people still have fax machines, a better technological solution might be to have your gateway decode the fax signal to get to the underlying image data, and then just transmit THAT to the other end. This is approximately what the T.37 fax standard does (again, IIRC). Unfortunately, it's not particularly well supported anywhere yet.
Well, first of all, recognize that there is often a gap between what the law requires and actual practice. People tend to err on the side of caution. For example, there is no requirement that emails regarding the White House NCAA pool be retained. But, if they were sent through the White House system, they were retained anyway.
The retention requirement does not depend on where the mail originates. If (1) it's from a covered person and (2) it's about a covered matter, then it has to be retained, whether it's on the White House servers, the RNC servers or elsewhere.
Far too many people are reading the law too broadly. They think that everything needs to be retained, so if something is missing, there was automatically a violation. My main point is that this view is incorrect--we don't have proof yet that the missing emails were both from a covered person and about a covered matter. It wouldn't be too hard to prove that, since there are always at least two copies of an email: the sender's copy and the recipient's copy. All you need to do is find the other side.
That's circular reasoning. Read the Act. The Act doesn't specifically talk about email servers -- it talks about preserving specific information. Outside servers are fine and have been used in other administrations to avoid archiving material that wasn't required to be archived. If the required information wasn't preserved, that's a violation. If information was destroyed, but it wasn't required to be preserved, that's not a violation.
First of all, he's only been the deputy chief of staff since 2005 -- before that, he was Bush's campaign manager. Some of the complained-about records date back to the '04 campaign.
Being a "senior adviser" does not necessarily make you covered by the Act. It's not a real title -- he was also considered a "senior adviser" when he ran the Bush campaign.
There's a catch-22 here: you claim that he used non-governmental equipment to send messages that should have been kept under the act. But, the only way to prove that they should have been kept is to get a copy of the email. And, since those records weren't kept, that's a lot harder to do. Effectively, you're asking the Bush administration to prove a negative.
In any case, my point is that the issue is not as black-and-white as the OP makes it out to be, not that every single email sent through the RNC server was OK.
Required by what? Certainly not by the act. Can you prove that any of the deleted emails had anything to do with the US attorneys? And, if they did pertain to that, are you sure that they had a direct effect?
There are two hoops to jump through:
(1) the subject matter (2) the source
Even if the emails were directly related to the President's duties, if they did not originate from a member of his immediate staff or from a member of the executive office, they were excluded from the act.
This is a mountain out of a molehill. Read the Presidential Records Act, at least.
The law specifically excludes "materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President;"
The last I checked, Rove was a political advisor, NOT a cabinet member and did not have any official policy-making power. He might have had an indirect effect on policy, but certainly did not have a direct effect. Heck, it's not even completely clear that his emails are covered -- the act only applies to the President, his immediate staff and units of the Executive Office. Do we know for a fact that Rove is in this category?
And, there's also the problem that the Hatch Act forbids using government-owned equipment for political purposes. Political emails are SUPPOSED to be off the While House mail system.
While it is certainly possible that some material which should have been kept wasn't kept. However, there's a large body of material which is not required to be kept. The Clinton administration also used outside mail servers to avoid the archiving of political information.
This is just a witch-hunt: the Democratic Congress is engaged in a Karl Rove witch-hunt and is trying to snoop into his political activities. They're not doing it as legitimate oversight, but just to help their own political ends. And, now they're making an issue that they can't get to Rove's email. But, this is a catch-22: if he had done what the democrats think he should have, they'd be complaining about Rove using the official While House server for political purposes.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike this administration. This is not one of them.
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You're being rather smug for an anonymous coward who doesn't know I'm a lawyer who specializes in IP law. (But, please don't take any of the following as legal advice; seek your own counsel.)
." If that's not an explicit grant of a right, I don't know what is. The concept of "Intellectual Property" doesn't even exist in natural law, so there can be no natural grant of a "copyright" (the right to exclude others from using your work.)
First of all, you're taking quite the 'natural rights' view to the law. But, that's really a philosophical question about the true nature of law, and not one which is generally agreed upon. The natural rights view has been in decline for at least 100 years.
Of course laws grant rights. Consider the following in Section 106: ". . . the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize the following. .
And, you're right that the 4-factor Section 107 analysis is not intended to be complete. But, I never said it was. I did say that the '76 act specifies that fair use is a defense to infringement, not a "right." If you can find me a single US court case since 1978 (the effective date of the '76 Copyright act), that refers positively to "Fair Use Rights," I'd be interested in seeing it.
HA!
." Is this really what you want?
First of all, there are no such thing as "Fair use rights." Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement; it is not a stand-alone right. (Don't believe me? Go look up Section 107 yourself.)
Second of all, "It shall be illegal to design . . .
Third of all, herein WHAT? Herein title 17? Herein Chapter 1?
Fourth of all, you haven't defined what an "audiovisual" or "software" product is. Does it include CDs? What about soft copies of books? Does it include still pictures?
But, most importantly, Section 17 doesn't grant individual purchasers ANY RIGHTS. So, the phrase "any rights to which they are entitled herein" is empty. (This isn't completely true, but is true enough for what you're thinking.)
That's my point. It isn't the RIAA going after on-line posting of song lyrics; it's one of the other agencies, probably the Harry Fox agency. (The RIAA may catch some song lyrics posters in its overly-aggressive enforcement, but that's presumably unintentional.)
Not exactly. There is a difference between the copyright in the recording and the copyright in the underlying musical work. So, if I write a song and you record it (with my permission), then there are two copyrighted works in the recording: my song and your performance of it. So, Bob Dylan owns the rights to the song "All Along the Watchtower," but Jimi Hendrix's estate owns the rights to his recording of the song.
The RIAA goes after those who infringe on the copyright of the recording. The Harry Fox Agency, BMI and ASCAP typically handle the rights to the musical composition.
In the US, yes, assuming the dialog itself was original and not otherwise exempt from copyright. The transcript would be considered a derivative work, the preparation and distribution of which is an infringement. You can't just do an English transcript of the dialog -- why would you be able to do a translation of that transcript into a different language?
Funny. I just did it. Of course, my file is compressed -- the decompression program takes FOREVER, but it's pretty easy to tell it to skip to the Nth entry.
I wonder how many people checked that link of yours. It has precious little to do with fingerprinting.
Please go back and re-read the original question. It was about how the user of an infringing patented article could be liable for patent infringement. And, I think I answered that question: by practicing the patent without a license to do so.
Now, I suppose I could have been more precise: "by practicing the patent without a license, from either the original patent holder or somebody who holding a license allowing the sublicense of the patent, such license either having been received directly from the original patent holder or from somebody in a chain of sub-licensees from said patent holder (or such patent holder's predecessor-in-interest), each such sub-licensee having the right to further sublicense such patent and each such sublicense in such patent chain having been validly licensed under the terms of such sublicensor's sublicense."
But, none of that would have helped answer the question.
This isn't copyright -- you infringe a patent by practicing it. So, if you have a computer doing X and X is validly patented and you don't have a license to do X, you're infringing, regardless of whether somebody else gave you the software to do X or not.
My point wasn't that there are none, just that there aren't many. SCO is such big news simply because it's short on merit. Your argument is sort of like saying that there must be a lot of ex-presidents because everybody knows of at least one.
In any case, the SCO cast wasn't completely without merit. The fact that you've filed a case that, later, completely falls apart, doesn't mean that it was frivolous when it was filed. Even so, they may be yet be hit with Rule 11 sanctions.
So, if you can make a good case that even if current law doesn't allow something, it should, and even if you don't currently have evidence backing up your claims, you think you probably will, you're good.
If you don't like these rules, get Congress to change them -- they're written into a federal statute. But, recognize that by doing so, some meritorious claims won't be heard.
Completely frivolous lawsuits really aren't really that big a problem. The bigger problem is lawsuits which have some slim amount of merit, so they aren't technically frivolous, but which are brought mainly for harassment purposes. You're not really allowed to do that, but it's exceptionally hard to ascribe motive. We do have anti-SLAPP laws to address some of these problems.
Reform #1: In the US, Rule 11 sanctions are available if you institute a frivolous lawsuit. The exact sanction is determined by the judge on a case-by-case basis, and may be against the party, his lawyer, the lawyer's firm or any combination thereof. It can be monetary or non-monetary.
Reform #2: Why? If they persist, there'll be another Rule 11 sanction, which would probably be worse.
Reform #3: I don't think you need this. Lawsuits are expensive enough, as-is. If you're forced to pay the other side's fees (see #1), you'll stop quick enough.
Reform #4: This just isn't a problem. How many lawyers do you know who have even filed one frivolous lawsuit?
If this story isn't a complete farce, then there are probably some important details that we're missing.
Why can a fake ID not be protected? If it's an original work of authorship, fixed in a tangible medium of expression, it's protected by copyright. I don't remember where the DMCA exempts fake IDs or other "illegal documents" as you call them.
Every rewind backwards by 10 minutes so you could compare what you just watched with what happened earlier? If they disable fast-forward, you'll have to watch those 10 minutes over again.
I wonder if it will be possible to reinstate the fast-forward button by running the on-demand movie through a DVR.
First of all, IIRC, the EPA's statement is based on a combination of "clean" (western) and "dirty" (eastern) coal-burning plants. "Clean" coal plants do not emit nearly as much mercury. In addition, we get power from many sources, not just coal-fired plants. If, for example, your home happens to draw power from a nuclear or hydroelectric plant, then shifting to CFL bulbs probably causes a net increase in atmospheric mercury.
In addition, recognize that most coal-fired power plants put their emissions into the atmosphere, where they are widely dispersed. Breaking a CFL bulb in your living room will produce a much higher local concentration of mercury. (God help you if you accidentally break several at once.)
We already know enough about what he wrote.
The relevant part of the Illinois statute is:
A person commits disorderly conduct when he knowingly . . .
does any act in such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace
The fact that the teacher was disturbed is not enough. He also had to "provoke a breach of the peace." But, there was no breach of the peace. Ergo, he didn't commit disorderly conduct.
Now, it's been years since I've done this level of math. BUT, the first question on the Chinese test seems impossible -- it asks you to prove that two lines are perpendicular even though they don't intersect. The third question has a similar problem -- it asks you to find the angle between two lines when the lines aren't on the same plane.
I think I now know why none of my kid's made-in-China toys fit together correctly.
This is a great idea.
It seems to me, however, that the entire premise behind flat-rate royalties is slowly disintegrating. The original idea was that it's too difficult for each station to contract with each rights-holder. So, a flat rate was set which, while not perfect, at least allowed those transactions to go through. The songs that are played are sampled, and then the royalties are divided among the rights holders according to the sample.
But, on the Internet, why can't you just have a big database tracking every song? The head-end software looks at how many listeners there are, looks up the song in the database and reports to the station "If you want to play this song right now, it will cost you $$$$"? Then, when it gets played, it tracks exactly who is supposed to get what royalties.
This model has a number of benefits: first, it's more accurate: each rights holder gets paid when their music is played. Even the guy whose song is only played to twelve people will get compensated, whereas he never would have made that 'sample' before. And, second, it allows each individual artist to set the rates for their own music -- if you want to give your music out for free, do it. And, third, it would allow low-cost Internet radio to thrive.
So, if you have VoIP at home, you might be able to recognize this issue and deal with it. The bigger problem comes in when carriers replace their long-haul circuit-switched networks with private packet-switched networks. Then, your customer doesn't even know, or care, that their data is going over VoIP. And, as a result, you might end up customers trying to send regular modem traffic over your VoIP network. And, worse, it's harder to catch than it would if you had VoIP to the home, since you can't just say "Well, that's a fax line" -- you actually have to listen to the call to see if it's a fax.
There's also a backwards way of doing this as well: VoIP over an analog modem. Scarily, it works if you compress the audio enough.
First of all, everybody should recognize that most Fax-over-IP use a different codec (typical T.38, if I recall) for encoding the fax signal. If you just plug your fax machine into a plain-old VoIP port, there's a good chance that your gateway will do some lossy audio compression that isn't noticable for speech, but destroys a fax signal. That's one of the reasons that Vonage sells fax as a separate type of line.
Second, IIRC, the initial part of a fax call does some measurement and negotiation -- this is where the two endpoints determine how fast they'll communicate, exactly which protocol they'll use, what capabilities each other have and (most importantly here) test their connection, including round-trip time. But, this negotiation assumes a circuit-switched network, not a packet-switched network.
One of the core things about IP is that the round-trip time can change. Normally, each side would put in a buffer to balance it out, but if the delay changes, the buffer may need to be increased. For people, that's not a big deal -- add an additional 10ms delay midway though a call, and we don't even notice. But, that increase will kill a fax machine.
Think about what you're doing with fax: you are scanning an image, converting into data, then encoding that data as analog, which then gets re-encoded as data for transmission over IP. On the other end, just the reverse happens. Why not skip the extra steps by getting a scanner and emailing it? Or, subscribe to efax, which does it for you.
But, since a lot of people still have fax machines, a better technological solution might be to have your gateway decode the fax signal to get to the underlying image data, and then just transmit THAT to the other end. This is approximately what the T.37 fax standard does (again, IIRC). Unfortunately, it's not particularly well supported anywhere yet.
Well, first of all, recognize that there is often a gap between what the law requires and actual practice. People tend to err on the side of caution. For example, there is no requirement that emails regarding the White House NCAA pool be retained. But, if they were sent through the White House system, they were retained anyway.
The retention requirement does not depend on where the mail originates. If (1) it's from a covered person and (2) it's about a covered matter, then it has to be retained, whether it's on the White House servers, the RNC servers or elsewhere.
Far too many people are reading the law too broadly. They think that everything needs to be retained, so if something is missing, there was automatically a violation. My main point is that this view is incorrect--we don't have proof yet that the missing emails were both from a covered person and about a covered matter. It wouldn't be too hard to prove that, since there are always at least two copies of an email: the sender's copy and the recipient's copy. All you need to do is find the other side.
That's circular reasoning. Read the Act. The Act doesn't specifically talk about email servers -- it talks about preserving specific information. Outside servers are fine and have been used in other administrations to avoid archiving material that wasn't required to be archived. If the required information wasn't preserved, that's a violation. If information was destroyed, but it wasn't required to be preserved, that's not a violation.
First of all, he's only been the deputy chief of staff since 2005 -- before that, he was Bush's campaign manager. Some of the complained-about records date back to the '04 campaign.
Being a "senior adviser" does not necessarily make you covered by the Act. It's not a real title -- he was also considered a "senior adviser" when he ran the Bush campaign.
There's a catch-22 here: you claim that he used non-governmental equipment to send messages that should have been kept under the act. But, the only way to prove that they should have been kept is to get a copy of the email. And, since those records weren't kept, that's a lot harder to do. Effectively, you're asking the Bush administration to prove a negative.
In any case, my point is that the issue is not as black-and-white as the OP makes it out to be, not that every single email sent through the RNC server was OK.
Required by what? Certainly not by the act. Can you prove that any of the deleted emails had anything to do with the US attorneys? And, if they did pertain to that, are you sure that they had a direct effect?
There are two hoops to jump through:
(1) the subject matter
(2) the source
Even if the emails were directly related to the President's duties, if they did not originate from a member of his immediate staff or from a member of the executive office, they were excluded from the act.
This is a mountain out of a molehill. Read the Presidential Records Act, at least.
The law specifically excludes "materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President;"
The last I checked, Rove was a political advisor, NOT a cabinet member and did not have any official policy-making power. He might have had an indirect effect on policy, but certainly did not have a direct effect. Heck, it's not even completely clear that his emails are covered -- the act only applies to the President, his immediate staff and units of the Executive Office. Do we know for a fact that Rove is in this category?
And, there's also the problem that the Hatch Act forbids using government-owned equipment for political purposes. Political emails are SUPPOSED to be off the While House mail system.
While it is certainly possible that some material which should have been kept wasn't kept. However, there's a large body of material which is not required to be kept. The Clinton administration also used outside mail servers to avoid the archiving of political information.
This is just a witch-hunt: the Democratic Congress is engaged in a Karl Rove witch-hunt and is trying to snoop into his political activities. They're not doing it as legitimate oversight, but just to help their own political ends. And, now they're making an issue that they can't get to Rove's email. But, this is a catch-22: if he had done what the democrats think he should have, they'd be complaining about Rove using the official While House server for political purposes.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike this administration. This is not one of them.