Frankly, Hasbro is basically right with regards to the name -- it might be possible to show that the name is generic, but it'd be difficult and seems somewhat unlikely.
They're also probably right with regards to the game board and the description of the rules.
However, game rules -- i.e. the system by which a game is played -- are not copyrightable. They're patentable, but any patent on scrabble probably expired long ago. Only a particular written expression of game rules are. And even the expressions aren't particularly strong, given the merger doctrine.
It might be a good idea to come up with a completely new board graphic that still functionally was the same, and to rewrite the rules from scratch, making sure that they didn't match the language in the official rules, and to come up with a completely unrelated name. Just as scrabble is a made up word, just make up a totally new word.
Of course, past infringements may still be litigable, but there's nothing to be done about them other than to a) wait out the statute of limitations, or b) get Hasbro to agree not to sue.
You're absolutely right -- signatures are not proof of identity, but rather proof of agreement.
However, the natural consequence of this is that ANY marking made with the requisite intent to agree and for the mark to serve as proof of agreement constitutes a signature. Certainly this is how this pretty much always works out in court.
Thus, I signed my credit cards 'Please See ID,' and it's a valid signature. Of course, I still want people to request to look at the ID of the person presenting the card -- not the signature part, but the photo part.
For example, works created prior to January 1, 1978 and not published prior to January 1, 2003, are in the public domain per 17 USC 303(a). Works published and not copyrighted prior to January 1, 1978 are in the public domain. Works published and copyrighted prior to January 1, 1923 are in the public domain.
You get the idea.
So a work that was published 120 years ago is in the public domain. Works created 120 years ago might not be, but they'd have to be published by now.
You might enjoy reading the Bridgeman case. It mostly focuses on visual art, but the import of the case is clear enough:
In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create "slavish copies" of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances.
Layout and typesetting can only be copyrighted to the extent that they are original works of authorship. They almost never ever are. Maybe if you let the mid-90's designers from Wired at it, you'd have something. Conventional work, however, is simply not original.
Fonts arguably are copyrightable, but they're claimed to be computer programs. The characters that are output by a font are not copyrightable due to the utility doctrine.
IP lawyers aren't god's gift, either. No smarter, but perhaps a little squirrelier from not having a liberal arts background.
As an IP lawyer, I assure you that IP lawyers are God's gift to mankind. And some of us do have liberal arts backgrounds. It's the patent lawyers specifically that usually don't.
The Chinese, for instance, have not historically respected copyright. I've got Chinese friends who have a thousand dollars worth of physics textbooks they paid about twenty bucks for (and the authors got none of that $20 either).
I don't see what the problem is there. Copyright exists to serve the public interest. If the Chinese feel that their interests are best served with less copyright than the US has, or no copyright at all, then that's their decision to make. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with other countries having more copyright than we have. What's important is that each looks to its own relevant public interest in setting up its laws.
The Internet may be global, but copyright law deals with a lot more than the net, and nations remain distinct and independent.
Fair Use doctrine says that I should be able to make copies of copywritten material for my own personal use.
The word you want is 'copyrighted,' and no, fair use doesn't say anything of the sort. It leaves open the potential, but that's all.
All media has a limited lifespan. I should be able to make backups so that if my CD gets left in the sun, I can still listen to the music that I've licensed. The *IAA wants to force me to buy a new copy anytime my copy is ruined.
You didn't license it, you bought the CD, and that's sufficient. But since reproduction is generally prohibited, yes, you might have to buy a new copy.
No, a copyright regime was set up under Queen Mary, but it was basically a system of censorship. It evolved into a monopoly for the stationers, but died out about 150 years later. It was replaced with the utilitarian system under Queen Anne, and the Statute of Anne remains the first modern copyright law. It granted copyrights to authors.
No, copyright law was created to break the stationers' monopoly, and serve the public interest. It's not intended to protect creators (and didn't protect anyone other than authors for a long time).
Furthermore, copyright terms were flat terms of years, basically unrelated to whether the author lived or not, which is sensible since it's far more predictable and easy to keep track of.
Plus, copyright law traditionally has not allowed for quotations; that was imposed by courts to remedy the failure of lawmakers to make copyright less than fairly absolute.
The sorts of myths and misinformation you're spreading about copyright's purpose and origins doesn't help.
Are you kidding? International copyright laws would be the worst thing ever. We need to abandon all of them, and leave only two principles in place: unilateral national treatment, and to not act in a way that authors could not, if they chose, obtain a copyright in multiple countries.
Substantive copyright law, however, should be completely left to each nation. Some will want a lot, others less, or very little, or none at all. These are all perfectly valid options.
Nothing good has ever come of copyright law that was not wholly inwardly focused.
For a minimally qualified lawyer that works in the appropriate field, rates are probably in the neighborhood of $100 - 200 hour.
I'd love to know who it is that you've seen charge five grand an hour. He must have the best clients ever.
Re:Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coerci
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Tracking GPL Violators
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We also need a generally accepted registry for public domain works so that it is provable who the first creator of a work is (that's also necessary as a defense to make sure other people don't claim copyright and sue people for using a work that's in the public domain).
Copyright does not require novelty, so I'm not sure what you'd gain by this. Of course, meaningful deposit is an important thing, and ought to be manditory for copyrighted works and optional for public domain works.
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD
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Tracking GPL Violators
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think that what he means is not so much that it is impossible, but that where there is BSD software, no one is going to bother getting a different arrangement from the developer. The GPL forces them to either accept it under the GPL or negotiate or go without.
I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.
Because it's not. It's illegal, it's just not stealing. Arson isn't stealing. Trespassing isn't stealing. Murder isn't stealing. If they're wrong, they need to be wrong for reasons that stand on their own, rather than by trying to stuff them into a category in which they don't belong.
Generally, I find that there are good reasons for copyright infringement to be illegal, but that most people who throw around loaded terms like 'stealing' don't know what they are, and can't actually make a good argument for their position. They're just appealing to emotion. Don't do that. Appeal to reason.
Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software.
Heh. You should take a look at 17 USC 504. The level of damages you suggest are tremendously low (and kind of vague) in comparison.
Is it actually legal to download a copy of something you taped or not? In Australia it could be an issue, but what about in the States?
In the US it is illegal to violate the exclusivity of any of the rights of copyright holders enumerated, among other places, in 17 USC 106. One of these is reproduction, which is what occurs when you tape something off of TV, and also when you download.
However, it is possible that this conduct may, in some or all cases, fall under an exception in the law. One such exception is fair use (section 107), which may apply in some cases. However, it's also possible that in some situations, fair use won't apply. It's impossible to say that, e.g. all home taping is fair use. It depends on the specifics, so one instance of home taping, by one person, might be treated differently than another instance, perhaps by another person.
It's difficult to say that courts would allow downloading as a fair use, since it has little in its favor. That home taping has been known to be a fair use is in fact pretty surprising.
Of course, one good thing to note is that distribution, which is what you do when you upload, is a separate right, and thus a separate infringement, and likely much harder to defend.
The Lisa mouse is easily recognized by having a beige color scheme similar to the original Macintosh mouse, but with a different connector, a wider, shorter button, and somewhat different case styling.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, Hasbro is basically right with regards to the name -- it might be possible to show that the name is generic, but it'd be difficult and seems somewhat unlikely.
They're also probably right with regards to the game board and the description of the rules.
However, game rules -- i.e. the system by which a game is played -- are not copyrightable. They're patentable, but any patent on scrabble probably expired long ago. Only a particular written expression of game rules are. And even the expressions aren't particularly strong, given the merger doctrine.
It might be a good idea to come up with a completely new board graphic that still functionally was the same, and to rewrite the rules from scratch, making sure that they didn't match the language in the official rules, and to come up with a completely unrelated name. Just as scrabble is a made up word, just make up a totally new word.
Of course, past infringements may still be litigable, but there's nothing to be done about them other than to a) wait out the statute of limitations, or b) get Hasbro to agree not to sue.
You're absolutely right -- signatures are not proof of identity, but rather proof of agreement.
However, the natural consequence of this is that ANY marking made with the requisite intent to agree and for the mark to serve as proof of agreement constitutes a signature. Certainly this is how this pretty much always works out in court.
Thus, I signed my credit cards 'Please See ID,' and it's a valid signature. Of course, I still want people to request to look at the ID of the person presenting the card -- not the signature part, but the photo part.
No, stopping distributing copies or derivatives of GPLed works, and possibly destroying extant unlawfully made articles, would suffice.
Date of publication is still relevant in the US.
For example, works created prior to January 1, 1978 and not published prior to January 1, 2003, are in the public domain per 17 USC 303(a). Works published and not copyrighted prior to January 1, 1978 are in the public domain. Works published and copyrighted prior to January 1, 1923 are in the public domain.
You get the idea.
So a work that was published 120 years ago is in the public domain. Works created 120 years ago might not be, but they'd have to be published by now.
Who did you go to, out of curiosity?
Nice try, but not really.
New illustrations may be copyrightable.
Layout and typesetting can only be copyrighted to the extent that they are original works of authorship. They almost never ever are. Maybe if you let the mid-90's designers from Wired at it, you'd have something. Conventional work, however, is simply not original.
Fonts arguably are copyrightable, but they're claimed to be computer programs. The characters that are output by a font are not copyrightable due to the utility doctrine.
The text is not copyrighted... but when someone takes a public domain text and publishes it, the resulting book IS copyrighted.
That's not true. Per 17 USC 102, copyright only subsists as to original works of authorship.
IP lawyers aren't god's gift, either. No smarter, but perhaps a little squirrelier from not having a liberal arts background.
As an IP lawyer, I assure you that IP lawyers are God's gift to mankind. And some of us do have liberal arts backgrounds. It's the patent lawyers specifically that usually don't.
IIRC, in Windows Minesweeper, the first square you click will always be bomb free. It avoids having people lose on the first click.
So you didn't challenge yourself at all. If you want a challenge, use 98 mines on a 10x10 grid.
The Chinese, for instance, have not historically respected copyright. I've got Chinese friends who have a thousand dollars worth of physics textbooks they paid about twenty bucks for (and the authors got none of that $20 either).
I don't see what the problem is there. Copyright exists to serve the public interest. If the Chinese feel that their interests are best served with less copyright than the US has, or no copyright at all, then that's their decision to make. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with other countries having more copyright than we have. What's important is that each looks to its own relevant public interest in setting up its laws.
The Internet may be global, but copyright law deals with a lot more than the net, and nations remain distinct and independent.
Fair Use doctrine says that I should be able to make copies of copywritten material for my own personal use.
The word you want is 'copyrighted,' and no, fair use doesn't say anything of the sort. It leaves open the potential, but that's all.
All media has a limited lifespan. I should be able to make backups so that if my CD gets left in the sun, I can still listen to the music that I've licensed. The *IAA wants to force me to buy a new copy anytime my copy is ruined.
You didn't license it, you bought the CD, and that's sufficient. But since reproduction is generally prohibited, yes, you might have to buy a new copy.
No, a copyright regime was set up under Queen Mary, but it was basically a system of censorship. It evolved into a monopoly for the stationers, but died out about 150 years later. It was replaced with the utilitarian system under Queen Anne, and the Statute of Anne remains the first modern copyright law. It granted copyrights to authors.
No, copyright law was created to break the stationers' monopoly, and serve the public interest. It's not intended to protect creators (and didn't protect anyone other than authors for a long time).
Furthermore, copyright terms were flat terms of years, basically unrelated to whether the author lived or not, which is sensible since it's far more predictable and easy to keep track of.
Plus, copyright law traditionally has not allowed for quotations; that was imposed by courts to remedy the failure of lawmakers to make copyright less than fairly absolute.
The sorts of myths and misinformation you're spreading about copyright's purpose and origins doesn't help.
Are you kidding? International copyright laws would be the worst thing ever. We need to abandon all of them, and leave only two principles in place: unilateral national treatment, and to not act in a way that authors could not, if they chose, obtain a copyright in multiple countries.
Substantive copyright law, however, should be completely left to each nation. Some will want a lot, others less, or very little, or none at all. These are all perfectly valid options.
Nothing good has ever come of copyright law that was not wholly inwardly focused.
No, the ranges I provided are pretty accurate.
And I assure you, there's a lot of good IP lawyers out there, from lots of good schools. But it's hardly as sexy a field as you think it is.
I say this as an IP lawyer, who knows a ton of IP lawyers, and even more lawyers generally.
First off, I'm not a lawyer. No one on slashdot is :)
I am.
For a minimally qualified lawyer that works in the appropriate field, rates are probably in the neighborhood of $100 - 200 hour.
I'd love to know who it is that you've seen charge five grand an hour. He must have the best clients ever.
We also need a generally accepted registry for public domain works so that it is provable who the first creator of a work is (that's also necessary as a defense to make sure other people don't claim copyright and sue people for using a work that's in the public domain).
Copyright does not require novelty, so I'm not sure what you'd gain by this. Of course, meaningful deposit is an important thing, and ought to be manditory for copyrighted works and optional for public domain works.
I think that what he means is not so much that it is impossible, but that where there is BSD software, no one is going to bother getting a different arrangement from the developer. The GPL forces them to either accept it under the GPL or negotiate or go without.
I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.
Because it's not. It's illegal, it's just not stealing. Arson isn't stealing. Trespassing isn't stealing. Murder isn't stealing. If they're wrong, they need to be wrong for reasons that stand on their own, rather than by trying to stuff them into a category in which they don't belong.
Generally, I find that there are good reasons for copyright infringement to be illegal, but that most people who throw around loaded terms like 'stealing' don't know what they are, and can't actually make a good argument for their position. They're just appealing to emotion. Don't do that. Appeal to reason.
Simply make the people that are caught pay double the full retail price for each piece of stolen software.
Heh. You should take a look at 17 USC 504. The level of damages you suggest are tremendously low (and kind of vague) in comparison.
Is it actually legal to download a copy of something you taped or not? In Australia it could be an issue, but what about in the States?
In the US it is illegal to violate the exclusivity of any of the rights of copyright holders enumerated, among other places, in 17 USC 106. One of these is reproduction, which is what occurs when you tape something off of TV, and also when you download.
However, it is possible that this conduct may, in some or all cases, fall under an exception in the law. One such exception is fair use (section 107), which may apply in some cases. However, it's also possible that in some situations, fair use won't apply. It's impossible to say that, e.g. all home taping is fair use. It depends on the specifics, so one instance of home taping, by one person, might be treated differently than another instance, perhaps by another person.
It's difficult to say that courts would allow downloading as a fair use, since it has little in its favor. That home taping has been known to be a fair use is in fact pretty surprising.
Of course, one good thing to note is that distribution, which is what you do when you upload, is a separate right, and thus a separate infringement, and likely much harder to defend.
It's a good thing that right now we can daisy chain devices for hot peripheral on peripheral action!
OS XX is okay, but I'm really waiting for OS XXX. It will have much better plug and play support than we have today.
No it absolutely did not.
The Lisa mouse is easily recognized by having a beige color scheme similar to the original Macintosh mouse, but with a different connector, a wider, shorter button, and somewhat different case styling.
This is a Lisa mouse.
The second mouse seen here is the original Macintosh mouse, IIRC.
Fucking locust Wednesdays, always have to vaccum.