why would you make lawyers out to be good for anything, much less the "most suitable people." Can't imagine.
Because it's true. What group of people has more experience with law than lawyers? Who would be better suited to studying, interpreting, and writing law than lawyers? And doesn't the government function largely by means of laws, which it creates, modifies, abolishes, and enforces?
When that "field" centers around dirty tricks, dishonesty, and "war chests" more than any actual concept of "truth" and "justice," one has to wonder just how much we should be trusting into those who know how to "work in their field."
It doesn't. Most legal disputes are pretty cut and dried and don't involve malfeasance.
These two cases present the narrow but important question whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.
...
[T]his Court has recognized the federal courts' power to review applications for habeas relief in a wide variety of cases involving Executive detention, in wartime as well as in times of peace.
...
By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises "complete jurisdiction and control" over the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and may continue to exercise such control permanently if it so chooses. 1903 Lease Agreement, Art. III; 1934 Treaty, Art. III. Respondents themselves concede that the habeas statute would create federal-court jurisdiction over the claims of an American citizen held at the base. Tr. of Oral Arg. 27. Considering that the statute draws no distinction between Americans and aliens held in federal custody, there is little reason to think that Congress intended the geographical coverage of the statute to vary depending on the detainee's citizenship. Aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority under 2241.
Application of the habeas statute to persons detained at the base is consistent with the historical reach of the writ of habeas corpus. At common law, courts exercised habeas jurisdiction over the claims of aliens detained within sovereign territory of the realm, as well as the claims of persons detained in the so-called "exempt jurisdictions," where ordinary writs did not run, and all other dominions under the sovereign's control. As Lord Mansfield wrote in 1759, even if a territory was "no part of the realm," there was "no doubt" as to the court's power to issue writs of habeas corpus if the territory was "under the subjection of the Crown." King v. Cowle, 2 Burr. 834, 854--855, 97 Eng. Rep. 587, 598--599 (K. B.). Later cases confirmed that the reach of the writ depended not on formal notions of territorial sovereignty, but rather on the practical question of "the exact extent and nature of the jurisdiction or dominion exercised in fact by the Crown." Ex parte Mwenya, [1960] 1 Q. B. 241, 303 (C. A.) (Lord Evershed, M. R.).
In the end, the answer to the question presented is clear. Petitioners contend that they are being held in federal custody in violation of the laws of the United States. No party questions the District Court's jurisdiction over petitioners' custodians. Cf. Braden, 410 U.S., at 495. Section 2241, by its terms, requires nothing more. We therefore hold that 2241 confers on the District Court jurisdiction to hear petitioners' habeas corpus challenges to the legality of their detention at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (US 2004).
You might want to sit in on a high school civics class before you post again.
It takes an awful lot to see that suspended. Basically, the judicial system would have to be shut down due to the crisis at hand. Lincoln tried to suspend the writ during the Civil War and failed. If we get that far, we'll basically be running directly into the possibility of losing the entire government.
writing impenetrable laws to help his crooked cronies extort money from honest citizens
You say that like it's a bad thing.;)
Truth be told, your position is pretty dumb.
The reason that there are a lot of lawyers involved with government is because the government is a government of laws, and lawyers are experts with laws. Having a government with lawyers in it is like having a school system run by teachers or hospitals run by doctors or armies run by soldiers; they are the people who best know how to work in their field.
I cannot fathom why you would want to deprive yourself -- and others -- of having a government that can draw upon the most suitable people. Then again, it appears that you have a childlishly simplistic idea of how government works, how the law works, or what would actually happen if but a single of your asinine ideas came to pass.
[A]n alien is surely a "person" in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as "persons" guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 210 (1982).
So please, try reading the Constitution, instead of just going and making stuff up.
It is very clear in being for people of the United states.
No, it is very clear in being done by the people of the United States.
However, the Constitution is equally clear when it says things like "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," since the word 'person' is broader than the word 'citizen,' and the authors knew what they meant when they used one or the other. Constitutional protections have long and routinely been held to apply to non-citizens.
Furthermore, what kind of moron would wish otherwise? The blessings of liberty are not something you hoard -- they're something that everyone should wish everyone to enjoy. Your position seems awfully unamerican to me.
Loads of cookiecutter "bands" and "artists" who have never written an original word or note.
Well, I don't know. It doesn't bother me that someone might be a good songwriter, but not a good performer, or vice versa. As long as the end product is good, it's okay for it to have been a team effort.
What we're seeing now though, are end products that aren't that good.
And the 9th Circuit has also been upheld more times than any other federal circuit court. This is because the 9th Circuit is huge, and has more cases go to the Supreme Court than any other circuit. In terms of actual percentage of reversals, which is the important thing, they're actually quite average.
If you really want to badmouth the 9th Circuit, can you at least complain about something real, instead of your latest delusion?
In that case, the publisher asserted that their copyright gave them the power to control resale; it did not. As the Court noted, there was no issue of whether there was a contract at work in the case, which might have produced a different result:
The precise question, therefore, in this case is, Does the sole right to vend (named in 4952) secure to the owner of the copyright the right, after a sale of the book to a purchaser, to restrict future sales of the book at retail, to the right to sell it at a certain price per copy, because of a notice in the book that a sale at a different price will be treated as an infringement, which notice has been brought home to one undertaking to sell for less than the named sum? We do not think the statute can be given such a construction, and it is to be remembered that this is purely a question of statutory construction. There is no claim in this case of contract limitation, nor license agreement controlling the subsequent sales of the book.
In our view the copyright statutes, while protecting the owner of the copyright in his right to multiply and sell his production, do not create the right to impose, by notice, such as is disclosed in this case, a limitation at which the book shall be sold at retail by future purchasers, with whom there is no privity of contract.
Where there is a contract -- which is what many courts have been finding in EULA cases -- then limits on first sale and so forth are entirely acceptable. In fact, the seminal EULA case, ProCD, dealt with public domain data, which as it was uncopyrightable, had to be protected by contract or not at all.
EULA cases have nothing to do with machine-readable formats. They're more common in the software industry (despite typically being utterly pointless) more out of historical accident than anything else. But you can use them with paper, or other consumer goods, just as much as you please, as far as the courts seem to be saying lately.
We'd be better off abolishing the practice altogether, however. It's dangerous.
Bush gets two appointments now? How screwed are we.
Though I was not a big fan of Rhenquist -- many of his positions on the Court, his work in the Nixon administration, his fashion sense -- he surely will be better than whoever we get next.
In the US, costs and fees can be awarded to the winning party in a copyright suit per 17 USC 505.
Additionally, while the common law system does involve a lot of precedent, it's not all that counts. Though you can always have disputes over the meaning of statutes, many of them are clear enough that they're predictable as is. And since courts follow their own and superior precedents, they make things pretty clear too.
Personally, I can't really wrap my head around how a judicial system in a civil law country could really operate and do a good job.
And where rental stores pay extra for copies of movies, the reason is not so that they can rent them. It's legal to rent lawfully made copies of movies, period. The reason is because they want them before they're for sale in stores, so that people who want to watch the movie on that critical first weekend have to go to the rental store, and can't just buy it.
Lots of anime fans do this, not just the ones that like piracy anime. Piracy anime is pretty good though. There's Captain Harlock,Teki wa Kaizoku, arguably Tenchi Muyo (Ryoko is a pirate), One Piece, Sol Bianca, Porco Rosso (not about pirates per se, but there are a ton of pirates in it), and many more.
It's sad that Hollywood doesn't do as many pirate movies as they used to.
They don't insist this, with regards to normal CD purchases. It's only people on the Internet, confused by the practice of end user software licensing (which is not needed, btw, and only serves to confuse people) who think this.
One thing though, would this be admissible with regards to hearsay laws?
Without getting into the details of what hearsay is and isn't, I'd say that your typical everyday logs will likely fall within the business records exception to the hearsay rule, and be admissible for the truth of their contents. Depends on the circumstances surrounding their making, of course.
If you're in a situation to make logs of this sort of activity, however, you might want to reconsider whether or not you want to do so.
Where's the proof? Does there need to be any? I understand that civil cases have a lower standard of guilt, but does anyone know for sure?
Well, evidentiary issues (such as whether the logs are inadmissible hearsay) deal with whether the jury ever gets to know the logs exist, and gets to know what they say. If they're inadmissible, the jury doesn't get to know about them, and can't make a decision based on them.
If they are admitted, however, the jury gets to decide for themselves whether or not they trust them. They can always disbelieve them.
However, the burden of persuasion in civil cases (i.e. any case brought by RIAA, MPAA, etc.) is one of a preponderance of the evidence. If it is at all more likely that something is true than it is false (a 51% rule) then it's considered to be true.
Trademark law is different from copyright law. The fact that in the US the same governmental agency handles both doesn't make them the same.
The same governmental agency handles both trademarks and copyrights? Which agency is that, exactly? Is it the US Patent and Trademark Office, or the US Copyright Office, or something else?
I only disagree with one thing: A trademark does not garantee quality at the moment of rewarding the trademark. You only know that the product sucked when the trademark is revoked because of bad quality.
No, a trademark is essentially a stand-in for quality. A customer can know, based on the mark, that drinks branded as Coke will have a particular taste; that cars branded as Yugos will suck.
If these expectations aren't met, due to quality standards that vary (either way) among identically-branded goods, then the trademark is no longer serving its purpose. Then bad things happen to the mark holder's rights.
This is why it is critical that trademark licenses include quality control standards and auditing. If Linus isn't spot-checking licensees, and making sure that their software is still basically Linux, and not significantly different, and revoking licenses where these standards aren't met, his rights are in jeopardy. In fact, failure to include provisions for doing this will harm him right off the bat.
Patents are intended to promote invention of patentable subject matter, disclosure, and bringing-to-market.
There is a financial incentive provided for inventing something novel and nonobvious; we want to encourage this more than inventing other things. As you note, disclosure is key. And because the incentives are in the form of monopolies in the marketplace, capitalizing on them requires some commercializiation of the invention, which is what most directly helps the public (knowing how it works is great, but getting to use it is more practical).
Well, actually copyrights are national too. Berne -- which is amazingly awful -- basically sets up a system whereby if you create a work, each country grants a copyright pertaining to it. The various copyrights themselves can differ, however.
Now, as for "first to invent", that's just bad policy.
Not at all. The Constitution mandates that protection vest in inventors, not first filers; anything other than first to invent is probably unconstitutional.
Additionally, the patent system is intended to encourage invention, disclosure, and bringing inventions to market. The current system does an excellent job, though I think that a better answer would be to just strengthen disclosure requirements to encompass licensees and later-discovered or alternate best modes.
Slashdot Mirror
why would you make lawyers out to be good for anything, much less the "most suitable people." Can't imagine.
Because it's true. What group of people has more experience with law than lawyers? Who would be better suited to studying, interpreting, and writing law than lawyers? And doesn't the government function largely by means of laws, which it creates, modifies, abolishes, and enforces?
When that "field" centers around dirty tricks, dishonesty, and "war chests" more than any actual concept of "truth" and "justice," one has to wonder just how much we should be trusting into those who know how to "work in their field."
It doesn't. Most legal disputes are pretty cut and dried and don't involve malfeasance.
Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (US 2004).
You might want to sit in on a high school civics class before you post again.
It takes an awful lot to see that suspended. Basically, the judicial system would have to be shut down due to the crisis at hand. Lincoln tried to suspend the writ during the Civil War and failed. If we get that far, we'll basically be running directly into the possibility of losing the entire government.
writing impenetrable laws to help his crooked cronies extort money from honest citizens
;)
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Truth be told, your position is pretty dumb.
The reason that there are a lot of lawyers involved with government is because the government is a government of laws, and lawyers are experts with laws. Having a government with lawyers in it is like having a school system run by teachers or hospitals run by doctors or armies run by soldiers; they are the people who best know how to work in their field.
I cannot fathom why you would want to deprive yourself -- and others -- of having a government that can draw upon the most suitable people. Then again, it appears that you have a childlishly simplistic idea of how government works, how the law works, or what would actually happen if but a single of your asinine ideas came to pass.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 210 (1982).
So please, try reading the Constitution, instead of just going and making stuff up.
It is very clear in being for people of the United states.
... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," since the word 'person' is broader than the word 'citizen,' and the authors knew what they meant when they used one or the other. Constitutional protections have long and routinely been held to apply to non-citizens.
No, it is very clear in being done by the people of the United States.
However, the Constitution is equally clear when it says things like "No person shall
Furthermore, what kind of moron would wish otherwise? The blessings of liberty are not something you hoard -- they're something that everyone should wish everyone to enjoy. Your position seems awfully unamerican to me.
Trom? Do you mean Rom: Spaceknight? I don't remember a comic or character named Trom, though.
That depends on the law of his jurisdiction.
For example, depending on the precise circumstances, burning those CDs would be legal (technically, nonactionable) in the US.
Loads of cookiecutter "bands" and "artists" who have never written an original word or note.
Well, I don't know. It doesn't bother me that someone might be a good songwriter, but not a good performer, or vice versa. As long as the end product is good, it's okay for it to have been a team effort.
What we're seeing now though, are end products that aren't that good.
And the 9th Circuit has also been upheld more times than any other federal circuit court. This is because the 9th Circuit is huge, and has more cases go to the Supreme Court than any other circuit. In terms of actual percentage of reversals, which is the important thing, they're actually quite average.
If you really want to badmouth the 9th Circuit, can you at least complain about something real, instead of your latest delusion?
In that case, the publisher asserted that their copyright gave them the power to control resale; it did not. As the Court noted, there was no issue of whether there was a contract at work in the case, which might have produced a different result:
Where there is a contract -- which is what many courts have been finding in EULA cases -- then limits on first sale and so forth are entirely acceptable. In fact, the seminal EULA case, ProCD, dealt with public domain data, which as it was uncopyrightable, had to be protected by contract or not at all.
EULA cases have nothing to do with machine-readable formats. They're more common in the software industry (despite typically being utterly pointless) more out of historical accident than anything else. But you can use them with paper, or other consumer goods, just as much as you please, as far as the courts seem to be saying lately.
We'd be better off abolishing the practice altogether, however. It's dangerous.
and they pumped up the size of the SC to get their majority reflected in the SC
FDR's attempt to pack the Court never actually happened. The Court has had 9 seats since the 19th century. He was going for 15, IIRC.
So before you get pissy, at least be pissy over actual history, not fictional history.
Bush gets two appointments now? How screwed are we.
Though I was not a big fan of Rhenquist -- many of his positions on the Court, his work in the Nixon administration, his fashion sense -- he surely will be better than whoever we get next.
In the US, costs and fees can be awarded to the winning party in a copyright suit per 17 USC 505.
Additionally, while the common law system does involve a lot of precedent, it's not all that counts. Though you can always have disputes over the meaning of statutes, many of them are clear enough that they're predictable as is. And since courts follow their own and superior precedents, they make things pretty clear too.
Personally, I can't really wrap my head around how a judicial system in a civil law country could really operate and do a good job.
No, buying DVDs really does involve buying them.
And where rental stores pay extra for copies of movies, the reason is not so that they can rent them. It's legal to rent lawfully made copies of movies, period. The reason is because they want them before they're for sale in stores, so that people who want to watch the movie on that critical first weekend have to go to the rental store, and can't just buy it.
Copylefts are interesting, but in the end they're really not a substitute for having material that is utterly unencumbered by restrictions.
Lots of anime fans do this, not just the ones that like piracy anime. Piracy anime is pretty good though. There's Captain Harlock, Teki wa Kaizoku, arguably Tenchi Muyo (Ryoko is a pirate), One Piece, Sol Bianca, Porco Rosso (not about pirates per se, but there are a ton of pirates in it), and many more.
It's sad that Hollywood doesn't do as many pirate movies as they used to.
They don't insist this, with regards to normal CD purchases. It's only people on the Internet, confused by the practice of end user software licensing (which is not needed, btw, and only serves to confuse people) who think this.
One thing though, would this be admissible with regards to hearsay laws?
Without getting into the details of what hearsay is and isn't, I'd say that your typical everyday logs will likely fall within the business records exception to the hearsay rule, and be admissible for the truth of their contents. Depends on the circumstances surrounding their making, of course.
If you're in a situation to make logs of this sort of activity, however, you might want to reconsider whether or not you want to do so.
Where's the proof? Does there need to be any? I understand that civil cases have a lower standard of guilt, but does anyone know for sure?
Well, evidentiary issues (such as whether the logs are inadmissible hearsay) deal with whether the jury ever gets to know the logs exist, and gets to know what they say. If they're inadmissible, the jury doesn't get to know about them, and can't make a decision based on them.
If they are admitted, however, the jury gets to decide for themselves whether or not they trust them. They can always disbelieve them.
However, the burden of persuasion in civil cases (i.e. any case brought by RIAA, MPAA, etc.) is one of a preponderance of the evidence. If it is at all more likely that something is true than it is false (a 51% rule) then it's considered to be true.
What Would You Like to See in an Op Center?
Tom Clancy. So that we can deride him for his crappy books.
Trademark law is different from copyright law. The fact that in the US the same governmental agency handles both doesn't make them the same.
The same governmental agency handles both trademarks and copyrights? Which agency is that, exactly? Is it the US Patent and Trademark Office, or the US Copyright Office, or something else?
I only disagree with one thing: A trademark does not garantee quality at the moment of rewarding the trademark. You only know that the product sucked when the trademark is revoked because of bad quality.
No, a trademark is essentially a stand-in for quality. A customer can know, based on the mark, that drinks branded as Coke will have a particular taste; that cars branded as Yugos will suck.
If these expectations aren't met, due to quality standards that vary (either way) among identically-branded goods, then the trademark is no longer serving its purpose. Then bad things happen to the mark holder's rights.
This is why it is critical that trademark licenses include quality control standards and auditing. If Linus isn't spot-checking licensees, and making sure that their software is still basically Linux, and not significantly different, and revoking licenses where these standards aren't met, his rights are in jeopardy. In fact, failure to include provisions for doing this will harm him right off the bat.
Patents are intended to promote invention of patentable subject matter, disclosure, and bringing-to-market.
There is a financial incentive provided for inventing something novel and nonobvious; we want to encourage this more than inventing other things. As you note, disclosure is key. And because the incentives are in the form of monopolies in the marketplace, capitalizing on them requires some commercializiation of the invention, which is what most directly helps the public (knowing how it works is great, but getting to use it is more practical).
They're all important goals of the system.
Well, actually copyrights are national too. Berne -- which is amazingly awful -- basically sets up a system whereby if you create a work, each country grants a copyright pertaining to it. The various copyrights themselves can differ, however.
Now, as for "first to invent", that's just bad policy.
Not at all. The Constitution mandates that protection vest in inventors, not first filers; anything other than first to invent is probably unconstitutional.
Additionally, the patent system is intended to encourage invention, disclosure, and bringing inventions to market. The current system does an excellent job, though I think that a better answer would be to just strengthen disclosure requirements to encompass licensees and later-discovered or alternate best modes.
This is a terrible bill, and needs to get killed.