It is poorly organized, but there are copies of prior US federal copyright laws (and colonial laws, and the Statute of Anne), here.
As for vesting, I think that it should be more like patents. Upon creating a work, you can get a copyright, but that window of opportunity swiftly expires. Thus, authors that don't care (such as most of us here vis-a-vis our posts) can take no action and no copyright will ensue, but authors that do care can engage in a token action so that they are identifying themselves and the relevant works, and can get rights in them. For patents, it's a year from the time when the invention becomes publicly known (paraphrased). I figure that's a good span of time.
And with regard to int'l copyright, the only treaty obligations I will tolerate are 1) national treatment (that is, a country treats foreigners just the same as it treats its own people), and 2) an agreement that whatever conditions various states set on copyright, they work to avoid conflicts such that it would be impossible for an author to simultaneously get copyrights in various countries. (e.g. if the US said that you had to get the copies made in the US, and China said you had to get them made in China, you'd have to pick one, and I would be opposed to that)
Any particular minimum standards, however, I disagree with. Each country should do what it feels is best for its own people and goals.
Here is a list of bestsellers in the 20th century. I doubt that you'll recognize many works or names that aren't pretty recent. This is because the main thing authors compete with are not old books, they're new books. Everyone wants to read the new Harry Potter, rather than the old Tom Brown. Novelty tends to drive sales. And old works which were quite popular for a time tend to fade not only in the face of newer works but also because they may not have been all that great anyhow.
I mean honestly, do you think that the crowds going to see the latest Star Wars would have even possibly preferred to see Destination Moon if it had also been in theaters? No. Most audiences like whatever's new, and that's where the money is. Older works also have their fans and benefit from being culled over the years so that it's easy to know what's good, but they're really never more popular.
Also, why should the public, which vastly outnumbers artists, care what artists think? If we can get them to create just as much with less copyright (which we can be pretty sure of, given historical example), then why shouldn't we? That kind of frugality is just common sense.
Why not? In the US we got rid of things like the fee tail in order to ensure that property could be conveyed around freely, and thus reach its greatest potential. If you have property that cannot be transferred then it will only be exploited to the degree that you yourself have the resources to do it. It's unlikely that you can exploit the work for all the possible value, and unlikely that you can convince someone else to help you unless there's something in it for them. If you want me to invest a hundred million dollars into your movie, then I want a damn big return on my investment. Your job becomes to not only make the movie, but to make me very happy, lest the movie not get made at all. That means I get most of the profits, just like I take most of the risk. That means I get to make business decisions that involve how my money is spent, rather than letting you do as you like. And it may mean that I insist that you sign over the underlying rights to the work in exchange for the money to finance it and some profit for you. If you don't like it, you can go see if you can get a better deal down the road, but I bet you can't.
Basically, publishers are more important than authors. Authors are a dime a dozen, but investing in them so they have the time and tools to create, printing up copies of whatever they made, advertising it so that people know to buy it, and shipping copies to stores and such, that's where most of the value comes from. So it's appropriate for publishers to make most of the profit.
Besides -- the law you cite doesn't mean what you think. Copyright law prior to the Constitution allowed authors to assign away their rights, just as the first federal copyright law did, and all our copyright laws afterward. It just means that the rights have to vest initially in the author. After that, it's up to the author to decide what he wants to do.
And BTW, lots of rights can be signed away. Just because a contract can be void because it's fraudulent doesn't mean it can be void just because it's one-sided though not unconscionable. People make craptastic deals all the time. They should be free to do so.
Actually, yeah. Real property is just as utilitarian a system as copyright, but it's a lot older and developed more organically without awareness of what it was. Basically, if everything were owned in common, it would be annoying and difficult to get things done. So private ownership was developed since it's more efficient. It's just a convenience, however. This has been fairly well known for a while.
Tom Jefferson, who was also instrumental in developing our copyright and patent system, had no problem pointing out that the only natural right to property was the right to own whatever you could personally grab and defend. Everything else has to arise out of common agreement: I'll respect your right to own plot A, but only because I want you to respect my right to own plot B. Not for some ideological reason that happens to favor you over others. Better to just put land to maximally productive uses (n.b. that even fallow land can be productive -- pave over too much stuff and it's bad for the environment that supports everyone's lives) and have a system such that people don't fight too much and can get things done. God talk, whether it's 'God gave the land to the king who parcels it out to his vassals and so on down the chain' or 'God gave me a right to own stuff I can't actually defend unless other, equally self-interested people help me to do it' often tends to muddle things.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee.
First, as others have noted, copyright is the compromise, if you can call it that. The default situation is for copyright to not exist at all. Ideally, copyright should be totally one-sided, favoring the public. Artists will tend to benefit as well but that's not the goal (much like a working dairy farm exists to produce milk, and as a secondary benefit the cows get to not get eaten).
Second, you're describing how copyright worked traditionally in the US until the late 70's. The goddamn Berne Convention crap that Congress, in a fit of stupidity finally agreed to, is why we don't have that anymore.
But I would like to suggest one further refinement that would make it fair, any application for extension would automatically make ownership revert to the original creator or their heirs.
Again, that's how it works. Personally, I don't like it. If an artist was willing to sign away all his rights, forever, then I am inclined to enforce that agreement. It's not like he didn't have a choice. But having made his choice, everyone should have to live with it. It's no different than how, if you sell me your house, and I discover buried treasure there, you don't get to come back and claim it.
If they are going to continue in perpetuity, then fair selling price needs to be renegotiated.
Well, the Constitution explicitly prohibits this, so no, they won't, provided that the law is respected for a change.
No, not really. It's a bit short, but not ridiculously so.
Most creative works have no copyright-related economic value at all. Slashdot posts fall into this category; no one is publishing compilations of their best posts and selling them because they'd never make money at it.
Of the small fraction of works that have such value, the value usually is front-loaded. That is, the vast majority of all the value the work will ever have is realizable right away. For example, a movie makes most of the money it will ever make from theatrical releases on opening weekend. When it hits pay-per-view, it again makes most of its money on the first weekend. Ditto for when it becomes available to rent or buy. The amount of money that can be extracted later on typically declines, and is pretty small compared to the initial amount. We're talking about 70-90% up front, you see.
Of course there are exceptions, but remember that they are tremendously rare. It is foolish to design copyright policy around aberrations. For an author to make a work like that is on par with winning the lottery. They would make a lot of money even with short terms. We don't need to help them. Rather, help should be tailored around the needs of more common artists. After all, copyright is a subsidy in the form of a monopoly on commodity goods and it's just dumb to give subsidies to the people that need them the least.
Some studies have been done as to the economic life expectancy of works. IIRC, the number tends to be 10-20 years. For some works, such as software, I can easily imagine the number being a lot shorter.
Life terms are totally unacceptable. They make the system unpredictable: author A could have a copyright that lasts fifty years, and author B could have a copyright that lasts one. Adding yet more time doesn't help. And as already noted, the economic worth to authors is usually minimal. The CTEA extension was valued on average at about a nickel, IIRC, and that was 20 years more. Better to have a fixed length term (or better still, to make it granular with many short terms that need to be renewed) so that artists know that there is a time limit, and the public can anticipate the regular release of works into the public domain and act accordingly. (E.g. you can run a business when you know that you can reprint a book in 20 years, but you can't when it could be any damn time in the future)
Long copyrights do not help provide for artists in their old age, or for their families, except in the rare cases mentioned above (in which case it is almost certain that the author already got a lot of money). This is because old copyrights are usually not valuable. If artists want to be secure in the future, they should rely on the same things everyone else relies on: savings, investments, pensions, social security, life insurance, etc. Not only is it more fair, but artists have far, far better odds of being better off with these things than betting that their book will still sell very well decades in the future and against all odds.
Long copyrights as a widows and orphans fund is as irresponsible as giving them scratch off lottery tickets would be. The only people who do tend to come out well are the ones that got rich right at the beginning, and they don't really need our help to become much more rich, do they? They're not going to be struggling in their old age, unless they're crazy irresponsible, right? Why are we treating them specially then?
FYI, the USC is a subset of federal law. Federal law also encompasses the Constitution, federal case law, administrative regulations and decisions, executive orders, etc. The material compiled in the USC are statutes, and are of great importance, but there is more to the law than just statutes.
In any event, corporate law is mostly at the state level, but there are plenty of federal laws and other state laws that businesses need to work within, such as securities regulation, taxation, employment and labor relations, etc.
Actually, yes, that was the plan. A few Japanese might have hoped for Japan to conquer the western US, but the plan was basically to deprive the US of its strength in the Pacific so that it would have to come to a truce with Japan quickly in order to forestall further aggression. The truce would include letting them control East Asia and trading with them. Of course, that plan relied on us being scared into submission, which didn't happen. Instead, we got really pissed off.
Oh, it's pretty certainly illegal -- at least in certain cases. I'd say 18 USC 1030(a)(5). But I suspect that the actionable bits of what Sony did could be argued to be due to negligence, and so it might avoid the tort remedy in 1030(g).
I agree that we're not really talking about the same thing. However, I would caution against as narrow a view of fair use as you have taken here.
Fair use is meant to encompass all actions which are prima facie infringement but not specifically excepted in which prohibiting those actions would be contrary to the goals of copyright (which involve serving the public interest, not authors' interests, though sometimes you have win-win situations).
So for example, if you don't buy a Harry Potter book, you can still make a parody of it, and exploit that parody commercially (i.e. sell copies of it) and given the overall circumstances, fair use may protect you.
What you're talking about is more along the lines of suggesting that there should be an exception for households or something. An interesting idea, but we haven't got it. While fair use may cover household uses (such as ripping CDs), given the right circumstances, it just as easily may not cover the same uses. Each case has to be determined on its own merits. This provides tremendous flexibility, which is particularly useful for unanticipated uses (who would've predicted ripping CDs back in 1976 when the current law was written?), but isn't solidly predictable since there's no bright-line rule.
Personally, I'd like to see us not only having fair use, but also a broad exception allowing anything noncommercial engaged in by natural persons. Thus, so long as you weren't trying to make money at it, you'd never have to worry about copyright. Businesses and industry groups, OTOH, would still need to think about it. This would more or less be a return to the old days, when copyright was only the concern of the relevant industries.
The 117 exception is like that, but I don't see any reason why fair use would have such a requirement. Remember, copies don't infringe, people's actions are what are infringing. If it is lawful to create a copy under fair use, later events won't make the continued existence of that copy infringing; at most they could just cast a shadow on whether the original creation was lawful or not.
I would suggest that you look at 17 USC 501 and 106. If an otherwise infringing act qualifies for the 107 exception, how will one of the 106 rights be infringed upon later on?
In US copyright law, a copy* is defined as a material object, per 17 USC 101. It's impossible to send one over the Internet. A CD can be a copy. A hard drive can be a copy. RAM can be a copy. But network packets cannot be.
So when you download something, you are necessarily making one, probably several, more copies. This is a settled point of law, with several cases on point, ranging from Intellectual Reserve, to NAFED-FL, to Napster.
*For sound recordings, their physical embodiments are phonorecords, not copies, but it doesn't alter the outcome for our purposes.
That doesn't really make sense. Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. So the question becomes whether or not there is a potentially infringing use. Making a copy can be infringing, as can distributing a copy or publicly performing a work. Merely possessing something is not infringing.
Thus, if you make a copy, it might need to be fair use in order for that copy to be lawfully made. But after that, the fact that you sell the master doesn't cause any infringing acts to occur, and thus there's no need for a fair use defense.
Whether or not the making of the 2d copy was fair may depend on a number of factors, including whether or not you intended at the time to sell the original when you were done making the 2d copy, such that the 2d copy would be a substitute for the original. But in other circumstances (possibly where intent is imputed due to the length of time) it could be perfectly lawful.
And then of course, there's 1008, but that's not used much due to some specific requirements that people don't usually try to meet.
Well, energy crises could easily cause food and water crises. We rely on fossil fuels for most of our energy, and we need that energy to pump, purify, desalinate, etc. water. We also need energy to plant, maintain, and harvest crops, as well as to move food from where it comes from to where it's consumed. Also, many fertilizers are made out of petroleum, so the amount of food we can grow -- aside from the need to run farm machinery -- is dependent on fossil fuel supplies.
We have a big enough population that a food crisis is possible if the infrastructure for making and delivering food begins to break down.
Except that there is no such thing as DMCA 512A; you mean 17 USC 512(a). And that's wrong too, since the applicable subsection is 512(c), not (a). And in any event, that only applies to copyright infringement, which has nothing at all to do with this matter.
The actual answer is that Craigslist is protected under 47 USC 230(c)(1). No applicable exception exists under 230(e).
No, this is useful. Let's say that there is a library that infringes on a patent, and that the library is more or less freely redistributable, and that many third party developers distribute the library with their software, and that many users use the library in the course of running software.
Patent suits can be brought against not only the library developer, but the third parties that have been making copies of it, and the end users that have been using it. As a practical matter, the patent holder will tend to limit his suit to the deep pocket, since there's not much point in suing someone who hasn't got much money to pay damages. But they are all liable.
You really ought to read 35 USC 271 for what constitutes infringement of a patent. It is very broad. Paraphrased, the highlights are: using, making, offering to sell, selling, and importing things that embody an invention are infringements; inducing someone to infringe is an infringement; offering to sell, selling, or importing something essentially to be used in an infringement is an infringement; etc.
So yeah, this indemnification, while limited in a reasonable manner (why should MS pick up the bill for things unrelated to them?), is quite useful.
Well then, you would like 36 USC 220506, which basically gave the US Olympic Committe control over the word Olympic, their symbols, etc. There's a bunch of these statutory marks in 36 USC. I was actually surprised that the Red Cross wasn't in there. The cite in 18 USC is a criminal statute, not a civil one. (Well, technically, they're also in there, but they don't have a relevant civil statute AFAIK)
Sonny Bono had to do with copyright law, not trademark law.
Also, there is no requirement that a trademark originate with the user of the mark. You could use a ten-thousand year old symbol if you like, provided that you meet the actual requirements for trademarkability. Basically, if the mark identifies goods and services as having a particular origin, it'll work.
FYI, in the US at least, people who are otherwise uninvolved are not obligated to report crimes or help save people from injury. There are exceptions, but they're limited, and generally arise out of some sort of relationship between the parties (e.g. if you created a hazard, you have a duty to save people who fall victim to it).
So yeah, if I see someone getting attacked on the street, or falling in an open manhole, I can just keep on keepin' on and it's okay for me to do so.
Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods.
The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world.
A trademark has to identify the origin of a good or service so marked and has to indiciate that the quality of that good or service is consistant with others that bear the same mark.
If the mark, in the minds of the relevant consumers, doesn't distinguish the origin from competitors (e.g. if people think that Google and Yahoo are the same) then the mark can no longer function as a trademark and will suffer from genericide.
It is okay for a mark to be a word in common usage -- e.g. apple the fruit, and Apple for computers -- but not in the field where it is being put to use as a trademark. No one can get a trademark on apple for fruit, but they can use it in totally different fields, which is how we get Apple for computers.
So if you have googol used generically only in mathematics, then that's fine. But when people use it generically to refer to any old search engine, that's when Google stops being a protectable mark. Xerox has been fighting this fight for decades, trying to prevent people from using the word xerox as a noun (for either photocopiers or their output) or a verb (for when you make photocopies on a photocopier). If they stop, or their efforts are shown to have been ineffective, then everyone gets to use the word xerox when referring to their machines.
Just like escalator, elevator, thermos, shredded wheat, trampoline, cellophane, and so on. The public can kill trademarks casually.
Personally, I think that anyone trying to make BitTorrent a mark will have a tough time of it. They've been idle too long.
Classification isn't always so easy, because, you see, the object itself keeps insisting that it, as it is, is the only reality, not its classification.
Well that's why we need the space program: so that someday we can get out there and move, alter, and demolish various bodies until the Solar System conforms to what we think it ought to be.
All the planets through Saturn have been known since antiquity. Uranus was found in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930. That's about 75 years on average between finding new planets, which means that we're due for a new one now anyway. But rather than name it for a Roman god, I say we call it Planet X. That's a lot cooler.
Which bring us back to Rule 6.4, which covers just that kind of situation.
Just because you have to represent your client zealously doesn't mean you have to actually agree with them or even always support them.
For example, if you represent a client in a case where he had a dog that got loose and bit someone, and you live in a one bite jurisdiction, it is entirely possible to, on the one hand represent the client and use the one bite rule to get him off the hook, while also lobbying to change to a no bite rule. You wouldn't do them both at the same time in court, but so long as your lobbying doesn't prevent you from doing a good job for your client, it's fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I know about Hugo.
It is poorly organized, but there are copies of prior US federal copyright laws (and colonial laws, and the Statute of Anne), here.
As for vesting, I think that it should be more like patents. Upon creating a work, you can get a copyright, but that window of opportunity swiftly expires. Thus, authors that don't care (such as most of us here vis-a-vis our posts) can take no action and no copyright will ensue, but authors that do care can engage in a token action so that they are identifying themselves and the relevant works, and can get rights in them. For patents, it's a year from the time when the invention becomes publicly known (paraphrased). I figure that's a good span of time.
And with regard to int'l copyright, the only treaty obligations I will tolerate are 1) national treatment (that is, a country treats foreigners just the same as it treats its own people), and 2) an agreement that whatever conditions various states set on copyright, they work to avoid conflicts such that it would be impossible for an author to simultaneously get copyrights in various countries. (e.g. if the US said that you had to get the copies made in the US, and China said you had to get them made in China, you'd have to pick one, and I would be opposed to that)
Any particular minimum standards, however, I disagree with. Each country should do what it feels is best for its own people and goals.
No, not really.
Here is a list of bestsellers in the 20th century. I doubt that you'll recognize many works or names that aren't pretty recent. This is because the main thing authors compete with are not old books, they're new books. Everyone wants to read the new Harry Potter, rather than the old Tom Brown. Novelty tends to drive sales. And old works which were quite popular for a time tend to fade not only in the face of newer works but also because they may not have been all that great anyhow.
I mean honestly, do you think that the crowds going to see the latest Star Wars would have even possibly preferred to see Destination Moon if it had also been in theaters? No. Most audiences like whatever's new, and that's where the money is. Older works also have their fans and benefit from being culled over the years so that it's easy to know what's good, but they're really never more popular.
Also, why should the public, which vastly outnumbers artists, care what artists think? If we can get them to create just as much with less copyright (which we can be pretty sure of, given historical example), then why shouldn't we? That kind of frugality is just common sense.
Why not? In the US we got rid of things like the fee tail in order to ensure that property could be conveyed around freely, and thus reach its greatest potential. If you have property that cannot be transferred then it will only be exploited to the degree that you yourself have the resources to do it. It's unlikely that you can exploit the work for all the possible value, and unlikely that you can convince someone else to help you unless there's something in it for them. If you want me to invest a hundred million dollars into your movie, then I want a damn big return on my investment. Your job becomes to not only make the movie, but to make me very happy, lest the movie not get made at all. That means I get most of the profits, just like I take most of the risk. That means I get to make business decisions that involve how my money is spent, rather than letting you do as you like. And it may mean that I insist that you sign over the underlying rights to the work in exchange for the money to finance it and some profit for you. If you don't like it, you can go see if you can get a better deal down the road, but I bet you can't.
Basically, publishers are more important than authors. Authors are a dime a dozen, but investing in them so they have the time and tools to create, printing up copies of whatever they made, advertising it so that people know to buy it, and shipping copies to stores and such, that's where most of the value comes from. So it's appropriate for publishers to make most of the profit.
Besides -- the law you cite doesn't mean what you think. Copyright law prior to the Constitution allowed authors to assign away their rights, just as the first federal copyright law did, and all our copyright laws afterward. It just means that the rights have to vest initially in the author. After that, it's up to the author to decide what he wants to do.
And BTW, lots of rights can be signed away. Just because a contract can be void because it's fraudulent doesn't mean it can be void just because it's one-sided though not unconscionable. People make craptastic deals all the time. They should be free to do so.
Actually, yeah. Real property is just as utilitarian a system as copyright, but it's a lot older and developed more organically without awareness of what it was. Basically, if everything were owned in common, it would be annoying and difficult to get things done. So private ownership was developed since it's more efficient. It's just a convenience, however. This has been fairly well known for a while.
Tom Jefferson, who was also instrumental in developing our copyright and patent system, had no problem pointing out that the only natural right to property was the right to own whatever you could personally grab and defend. Everything else has to arise out of common agreement: I'll respect your right to own plot A, but only because I want you to respect my right to own plot B. Not for some ideological reason that happens to favor you over others. Better to just put land to maximally productive uses (n.b. that even fallow land can be productive -- pave over too much stuff and it's bad for the environment that supports everyone's lives) and have a system such that people don't fight too much and can get things done. God talk, whether it's 'God gave the land to the king who parcels it out to his vassals and so on down the chain' or 'God gave me a right to own stuff I can't actually defend unless other, equally self-interested people help me to do it' often tends to muddle things.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee.
First, as others have noted, copyright is the compromise, if you can call it that. The default situation is for copyright to not exist at all. Ideally, copyright should be totally one-sided, favoring the public. Artists will tend to benefit as well but that's not the goal (much like a working dairy farm exists to produce milk, and as a secondary benefit the cows get to not get eaten).
Second, you're describing how copyright worked traditionally in the US until the late 70's. The goddamn Berne Convention crap that Congress, in a fit of stupidity finally agreed to, is why we don't have that anymore.
But I would like to suggest one further refinement that would make it fair, any application for extension would automatically make ownership revert to the original creator or their heirs.
Again, that's how it works. Personally, I don't like it. If an artist was willing to sign away all his rights, forever, then I am inclined to enforce that agreement. It's not like he didn't have a choice. But having made his choice, everyone should have to live with it. It's no different than how, if you sell me your house, and I discover buried treasure there, you don't get to come back and claim it.
If they are going to continue in perpetuity, then fair selling price needs to be renegotiated.
Well, the Constitution explicitly prohibits this, so no, they won't, provided that the law is respected for a change.
No, not really. It's a bit short, but not ridiculously so.
Most creative works have no copyright-related economic value at all. Slashdot posts fall into this category; no one is publishing compilations of their best posts and selling them because they'd never make money at it.
Of the small fraction of works that have such value, the value usually is front-loaded. That is, the vast majority of all the value the work will ever have is realizable right away. For example, a movie makes most of the money it will ever make from theatrical releases on opening weekend. When it hits pay-per-view, it again makes most of its money on the first weekend. Ditto for when it becomes available to rent or buy. The amount of money that can be extracted later on typically declines, and is pretty small compared to the initial amount. We're talking about 70-90% up front, you see.
Of course there are exceptions, but remember that they are tremendously rare. It is foolish to design copyright policy around aberrations. For an author to make a work like that is on par with winning the lottery. They would make a lot of money even with short terms. We don't need to help them. Rather, help should be tailored around the needs of more common artists. After all, copyright is a subsidy in the form of a monopoly on commodity goods and it's just dumb to give subsidies to the people that need them the least.
Some studies have been done as to the economic life expectancy of works. IIRC, the number tends to be 10-20 years. For some works, such as software, I can easily imagine the number being a lot shorter.
Life terms are totally unacceptable. They make the system unpredictable: author A could have a copyright that lasts fifty years, and author B could have a copyright that lasts one. Adding yet more time doesn't help. And as already noted, the economic worth to authors is usually minimal. The CTEA extension was valued on average at about a nickel, IIRC, and that was 20 years more. Better to have a fixed length term (or better still, to make it granular with many short terms that need to be renewed) so that artists know that there is a time limit, and the public can anticipate the regular release of works into the public domain and act accordingly. (E.g. you can run a business when you know that you can reprint a book in 20 years, but you can't when it could be any damn time in the future)
Long copyrights do not help provide for artists in their old age, or for their families, except in the rare cases mentioned above (in which case it is almost certain that the author already got a lot of money). This is because old copyrights are usually not valuable. If artists want to be secure in the future, they should rely on the same things everyone else relies on: savings, investments, pensions, social security, life insurance, etc. Not only is it more fair, but artists have far, far better odds of being better off with these things than betting that their book will still sell very well decades in the future and against all odds.
Long copyrights as a widows and orphans fund is as irresponsible as giving them scratch off lottery tickets would be. The only people who do tend to come out well are the ones that got rich right at the beginning, and they don't really need our help to become much more rich, do they? They're not going to be struggling in their old age, unless they're crazy irresponsible, right? Why are we treating them specially then?
FYI, the USC is a subset of federal law. Federal law also encompasses the Constitution, federal case law, administrative regulations and decisions, executive orders, etc. The material compiled in the USC are statutes, and are of great importance, but there is more to the law than just statutes.
In any event, corporate law is mostly at the state level, but there are plenty of federal laws and other state laws that businesses need to work within, such as securities regulation, taxation, employment and labor relations, etc.
Actually, yes, that was the plan. A few Japanese might have hoped for Japan to conquer the western US, but the plan was basically to deprive the US of its strength in the Pacific so that it would have to come to a truce with Japan quickly in order to forestall further aggression. The truce would include letting them control East Asia and trading with them. Of course, that plan relied on us being scared into submission, which didn't happen. Instead, we got really pissed off.
Oh, it's pretty certainly illegal -- at least in certain cases. I'd say 18 USC 1030(a)(5). But I suspect that the actionable bits of what Sony did could be argued to be due to negligence, and so it might avoid the tort remedy in 1030(g).
I agree that we're not really talking about the same thing. However, I would caution against as narrow a view of fair use as you have taken here.
Fair use is meant to encompass all actions which are prima facie infringement but not specifically excepted in which prohibiting those actions would be contrary to the goals of copyright (which involve serving the public interest, not authors' interests, though sometimes you have win-win situations).
So for example, if you don't buy a Harry Potter book, you can still make a parody of it, and exploit that parody commercially (i.e. sell copies of it) and given the overall circumstances, fair use may protect you.
What you're talking about is more along the lines of suggesting that there should be an exception for households or something. An interesting idea, but we haven't got it. While fair use may cover household uses (such as ripping CDs), given the right circumstances, it just as easily may not cover the same uses. Each case has to be determined on its own merits. This provides tremendous flexibility, which is particularly useful for unanticipated uses (who would've predicted ripping CDs back in 1976 when the current law was written?), but isn't solidly predictable since there's no bright-line rule.
Personally, I'd like to see us not only having fair use, but also a broad exception allowing anything noncommercial engaged in by natural persons. Thus, so long as you weren't trying to make money at it, you'd never have to worry about copyright. Businesses and industry groups, OTOH, would still need to think about it. This would more or less be a return to the old days, when copyright was only the concern of the relevant industries.
The 117 exception is like that, but I don't see any reason why fair use would have such a requirement. Remember, copies don't infringe, people's actions are what are infringing. If it is lawful to create a copy under fair use, later events won't make the continued existence of that copy infringing; at most they could just cast a shadow on whether the original creation was lawful or not.
I would suggest that you look at 17 USC 501 and 106. If an otherwise infringing act qualifies for the 107 exception, how will one of the 106 rights be infringed upon later on?
In US copyright law, a copy* is defined as a material object, per 17 USC 101. It's impossible to send one over the Internet. A CD can be a copy. A hard drive can be a copy. RAM can be a copy. But network packets cannot be.
So when you download something, you are necessarily making one, probably several, more copies. This is a settled point of law, with several cases on point, ranging from Intellectual Reserve, to NAFED-FL, to Napster.
*For sound recordings, their physical embodiments are phonorecords, not copies, but it doesn't alter the outcome for our purposes.
That doesn't really make sense. Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. So the question becomes whether or not there is a potentially infringing use. Making a copy can be infringing, as can distributing a copy or publicly performing a work. Merely possessing something is not infringing.
Thus, if you make a copy, it might need to be fair use in order for that copy to be lawfully made. But after that, the fact that you sell the master doesn't cause any infringing acts to occur, and thus there's no need for a fair use defense.
Whether or not the making of the 2d copy was fair may depend on a number of factors, including whether or not you intended at the time to sell the original when you were done making the 2d copy, such that the 2d copy would be a substitute for the original. But in other circumstances (possibly where intent is imputed due to the length of time) it could be perfectly lawful.
And then of course, there's 1008, but that's not used much due to some specific requirements that people don't usually try to meet.
Well, energy crises could easily cause food and water crises. We rely on fossil fuels for most of our energy, and we need that energy to pump, purify, desalinate, etc. water. We also need energy to plant, maintain, and harvest crops, as well as to move food from where it comes from to where it's consumed. Also, many fertilizers are made out of petroleum, so the amount of food we can grow -- aside from the need to run farm machinery -- is dependent on fossil fuel supplies.
We have a big enough population that a food crisis is possible if the infrastructure for making and delivering food begins to break down.
Trail lawyers? Are they like, cowboy lawyers or something?
Except that there is no such thing as DMCA 512A; you mean 17 USC 512(a). And that's wrong too, since the applicable subsection is 512(c), not (a). And in any event, that only applies to copyright infringement, which has nothing at all to do with this matter.
The actual answer is that Craigslist is protected under 47 USC 230(c)(1). No applicable exception exists under 230(e).
No, this is useful. Let's say that there is a library that infringes on a patent, and that the library is more or less freely redistributable, and that many third party developers distribute the library with their software, and that many users use the library in the course of running software.
Patent suits can be brought against not only the library developer, but the third parties that have been making copies of it, and the end users that have been using it. As a practical matter, the patent holder will tend to limit his suit to the deep pocket, since there's not much point in suing someone who hasn't got much money to pay damages. But they are all liable.
You really ought to read 35 USC 271 for what constitutes infringement of a patent. It is very broad. Paraphrased, the highlights are: using, making, offering to sell, selling, and importing things that embody an invention are infringements; inducing someone to infringe is an infringement; offering to sell, selling, or importing something essentially to be used in an infringement is an infringement; etc.
So yeah, this indemnification, while limited in a reasonable manner (why should MS pick up the bill for things unrelated to them?), is quite useful.
Well then, you would like 36 USC 220506, which basically gave the US Olympic Committe control over the word Olympic, their symbols, etc. There's a bunch of these statutory marks in 36 USC. I was actually surprised that the Red Cross wasn't in there. The cite in 18 USC is a criminal statute, not a civil one. (Well, technically, they're also in there, but they don't have a relevant civil statute AFAIK)
Sonny Bono had to do with copyright law, not trademark law.
Also, there is no requirement that a trademark originate with the user of the mark. You could use a ten-thousand year old symbol if you like, provided that you meet the actual requirements for trademarkability. Basically, if the mark identifies goods and services as having a particular origin, it'll work.
FYI, in the US at least, people who are otherwise uninvolved are not obligated to report crimes or help save people from injury. There are exceptions, but they're limited, and generally arise out of some sort of relationship between the parties (e.g. if you created a hazard, you have a duty to save people who fall victim to it).
So yeah, if I see someone getting attacked on the street, or falling in an open manhole, I can just keep on keepin' on and it's okay for me to do so.
Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods.
The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world.
Are not.
I don't think so.
A trademark has to identify the origin of a good or service so marked and has to indiciate that the quality of that good or service is consistant with others that bear the same mark.
If the mark, in the minds of the relevant consumers, doesn't distinguish the origin from competitors (e.g. if people think that Google and Yahoo are the same) then the mark can no longer function as a trademark and will suffer from genericide.
It is okay for a mark to be a word in common usage -- e.g. apple the fruit, and Apple for computers -- but not in the field where it is being put to use as a trademark. No one can get a trademark on apple for fruit, but they can use it in totally different fields, which is how we get Apple for computers.
So if you have googol used generically only in mathematics, then that's fine. But when people use it generically to refer to any old search engine, that's when Google stops being a protectable mark. Xerox has been fighting this fight for decades, trying to prevent people from using the word xerox as a noun (for either photocopiers or their output) or a verb (for when you make photocopies on a photocopier). If they stop, or their efforts are shown to have been ineffective, then everyone gets to use the word xerox when referring to their machines.
Just like escalator, elevator, thermos, shredded wheat, trampoline, cellophane, and so on. The public can kill trademarks casually.
Personally, I think that anyone trying to make BitTorrent a mark will have a tough time of it. They've been idle too long.
Classification isn't always so easy, because, you see, the object itself keeps insisting that it, as it is, is the only reality, not its classification.
Well that's why we need the space program: so that someday we can get out there and move, alter, and demolish various bodies until the Solar System conforms to what we think it ought to be.
All the planets through Saturn have been known since antiquity. Uranus was found in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930. That's about 75 years on average between finding new planets, which means that we're due for a new one now anyway. But rather than name it for a Roman god, I say we call it Planet X. That's a lot cooler.
Which bring us back to Rule 6.4, which covers just that kind of situation.
Just because you have to represent your client zealously doesn't mean you have to actually agree with them or even always support them.
For example, if you represent a client in a case where he had a dog that got loose and bit someone, and you live in a one bite jurisdiction, it is entirely possible to, on the one hand represent the client and use the one bite rule to get him off the hook, while also lobbying to change to a no bite rule. You wouldn't do them both at the same time in court, but so long as your lobbying doesn't prevent you from doing a good job for your client, it's fine.