Technically the point of sale is in Russia, not the US.
Has this been tested in court, or is it explicitly clear in law somewhere? This means that there's no import duty or sales tax on software downloads from abroad in the US, right? There is in the UK, because it is deemed to be a commercial import, not a personal one, unlike actually going there. I would have thought that this kind of issue would be covered by international treaty, and therefore standardised.
This is all based on copyright law, which in turn is based on international treaties. You need a licence to import copyright material into the UK, a contract in Russia isn't going to change that. You can bring it in yourself for personal use, but CD-Wow have already been stopped from posting CDs from Hong Kong based on this law. They probably settled out of court, though, so it won't count as a precedent.
Sometimes I think the big interests such as the RIAA or BPA (UK equiv.) don't want the law to be tested, they're happy to sabre-rattle over it.
Supplemental to my previous answer: It's not that their Russian licence forbids it, it's that their Russian licence cannot grant them the right to sell and import into the UK. They need a UK licence to do that, and they would need to charge VAT and pay it to the UK government as well. (The UK government introduced this requirement a couple of years ago, but it is not widely enforced.)
It's not that there is a specific law against downloading, but distribution of copyright works is restricted to those that have a valid licence, and AllofMP3 don't have a licence to import all that music into the UK. I don't think the "But I'm importing it - I could fly to Moscow but this is easier, it's the same thing" arguement holds water, just in case someone was contemplating that one.
And yes, in answer to your other reply, it is illegal for me, in the UK, to copy music from a CD that I purchased onto my Ogg player. I have written to my MP urging him to oppose legislation that makes this even more illegal, and to suport moves to decriminalize a large section of the UK population in this respect with some sane laws. I might have put it a bit more betterer than that.
OK, I don't know German law, but I'm fairly sure that it would be against UK law in my case, and probably US too (which I incorrectly assumed you were, on the basis of Slashdot being US-centric), despite it being mostly unenforced as yet.
I don't like morals, I am more interested in ethics. Ethics is about finding a practical compromise that is acceptable to as many as possible, morality is more about not compromising religious principles.
I don't have a lot of time for Tycho's POV, and I appologise if I incorrectly selected you as an example of this. But hey, this is/.:-)
In addition, they are only investigating allofmp3.com. That does not mean that a judge will actually convict them of a crime.
I will continue to buy from them.
Whether or not they are operating legally in Russia is irrelevant to you, assuming that you are not in Russia. They may or may not have a licence to distribute music in the Russian market, but you are not in the Russian market, so they have no licence to distribute to you, so you were participating in copyright violation. The very fact that you are on Slashdot wipes away any claim of ignorance that you could make, especially with a fairly respectable/.id like that.
The book says "in the midst of the great Kansas prairies", the point I referred to is right on the southern edge of Kansas. Do the Kansas Prairies extend into Oklahome, down towards Owasso?
So, who lives closest to the intersection of 2200 Rd and 4300 Rd, Coffeyville, Kansas? Just keep clicking the "+" button, and that's where the exact centre of Google's map of the US is. Just north of Coffeyville Country Club.
When I hover over a "Cached" link, it says "http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=986368135098 &lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE", but when I click on it, it goes to "http://cc.msnscache.co.uk/cache.aspx?q=9863681350 98&lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE&geovar=207" which gives me a 500 "Unresolved host name".
When a friend of the falmily went over to the US for a three-month working vacation, he had long curly hair and a beard. When he came back he had short hair and was clean-shaven. He got fed up of being stopped and searched by the cops.
F/OSS means Free / Open Source Software. The "Free" means, essentially, GPL and other compatable licences, where the freedom of the software is guaranteed by clauses in the licence that appear to be restrictive, but maintain the freedom over the long term (i.e. that prevent the software from being proprietized).
most people in China don't care if the government controls all the corporations as long as they can make money and buy cell phones, bootleg DVD's, and knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags
That's close. More accurately, they simply don't think about it. My brother's wife, who is from China, found it utterly astonishing that we talk about politics in this country, and discuss whether or not the government is doing the right thing. It simply hadn't occurred to her to even think about whether the government was right or wrong, in the same way that most people don't worry about whether the sky should be blue. (I happen to find that question interesting too, and I wouldn't be surprised if some other slashdotters did too, but that's another matter.)
Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin... believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species
So "animals", as a group, have rights that preclude the existence, in laboratories, of certain experiments. That doesn't make sense. Do they have the right not to be infected by viruses? Do they have the right to prevent humans from selectively breeding other animals? Do they have the right not to evolve?
Is he saying that a non-existent animal hybrid has the right to continue not existing?
I wish DRM technologies had the right not to be invented.
It's not a question of being "anti-BitTorrent", it just isn't the right tool for the job. I like BitTorrent, but it only works for files for which there is a sufficiently high demand that there will be enough users online that have the file. It's perfect for the latest Linux distributions, but rubbish for obscure video files.
In this case, anyone clicking the "Torrent" link is going to have to wait for hours or even days to get their file.
A shop selling pencils is not profiting from the drawings that those pencils were used to create. NCSoft, however, is running a commercial service that includes those characters. I don't know what the CoH revenue model is, but even if it's free like Diablo II, that just means that it's funded through sales, and those sales will benefit if the players know that they can pit their pseudo-spidey versus someone else's pseudo-hulk. That probably counts as vicarious infringement.
I think it's a little sad, but will stand up in law IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
See recent story New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars, from the linked article:
This has got to be the funniest thing I've read all year. Thank you, Lokitorrent guy, if this is true, because it's made my day.
This is all based on copyright law, which in turn is based on international treaties. You need a licence to import copyright material into the UK, a contract in Russia isn't going to change that. You can bring it in yourself for personal use, but CD-Wow have already been stopped from posting CDs from Hong Kong based on this law. They probably settled out of court, though, so it won't count as a precedent.
Sometimes I think the big interests such as the RIAA or BPA (UK equiv.) don't want the law to be tested, they're happy to sabre-rattle over it.
Supplemental to my previous answer: It's not that their Russian licence forbids it, it's that their Russian licence cannot grant them the right to sell and import into the UK. They need a UK licence to do that, and they would need to charge VAT and pay it to the UK government as well. (The UK government introduced this requirement a couple of years ago, but it is not widely enforced.)
Yes, you've got it! Glad that's cleared up.
CDPA88. I haven't read it for a few years, so my memory may be a little rusty.
It's not that there is a specific law against downloading, but distribution of copyright works is restricted to those that have a valid licence, and AllofMP3 don't have a licence to import all that music into the UK. I don't think the "But I'm importing it - I could fly to Moscow but this is easier, it's the same thing" arguement holds water, just in case someone was contemplating that one.
And yes, in answer to your other reply, it is illegal for me, in the UK, to copy music from a CD that I purchased onto my Ogg player. I have written to my MP urging him to oppose legislation that makes this even more illegal, and to suport moves to decriminalize a large section of the UK population in this respect with some sane laws. I might have put it a bit more betterer than that.
OK, I don't know German law, but I'm fairly sure that it would be against UK law in my case, and probably US too (which I incorrectly assumed you were, on the basis of Slashdot being US-centric), despite it being mostly unenforced as yet.
/. :-)
I don't like morals, I am more interested in ethics. Ethics is about finding a practical compromise that is acceptable to as many as possible, morality is more about not compromising religious principles.
I don't have a lot of time for Tycho's POV, and I appologise if I incorrectly selected you as an example of this. But hey, this is
Whether or not they are operating legally in Russia is irrelevant to you, assuming that you are not in Russia. They may or may not have a licence to distribute music in the Russian market, but you are not in the Russian market, so they have no licence to distribute to you, so you were participating in copyright violation. The very fact that you are on Slashdot wipes away any claim of ignorance that you could make, especially with a fairly respectable
B5 was mostly fantastic, Jeremiah was cool from what I saw of it, but Crusade was awful, so I have mixed feelings about this.
That's their current terms, so the March 12th terms will in fact be more lenient. This story should be "Orbitz relaxes linking restrictions".
From their terms page:
"You agree not to create a link from any Web site, including any site controlled by you, to our site."
I have not agreed to their terms, so I think I can post this link legally:
Orbitz
Ha ha, screw you you fascists!
The old English tonne was 2160lb, though.
The book says "in the midst of the great Kansas prairies", the point I referred to is right on the southern edge of Kansas. Do the Kansas Prairies extend into Oklahome, down towards Owasso?
BTW, there are some impressive reservoirs in that geographic area.
The rest of the planet's governments doesn't produce detailed mapping information and release it into the public domain.
So, who lives closest to the intersection of 2200 Rd and 4300 Rd, Coffeyville, Kansas? Just keep clicking the "+" button, and that's where the exact centre of Google's map of the US is. Just north of Coffeyville Country Club.
When I hover over a "Cached" link, it says "http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=986368135098 &lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE", but when I click on it, it goes to "http://cc.msnscache.co.uk/cache.aspx?q=9863681350 98&lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE&geovar=207" which gives me a 500 "Unresolved host name".
When a friend of the falmily went over to the US for a three-month working vacation, he had long curly hair and a beard. When he came back he had short hair and was clean-shaven. He got fed up of being stopped and searched by the cops.
F/OSS means Free / Open Source Software. The "Free" means, essentially, GPL and other compatable licences, where the freedom of the software is guaranteed by clauses in the licence that appear to be restrictive, but maintain the freedom over the long term (i.e. that prevent the software from being proprietized).
That's close. More accurately, they simply don't think about it. My brother's wife, who is from China, found it utterly astonishing that we talk about politics in this country, and discuss whether or not the government is doing the right thing. It simply hadn't occurred to her to even think about whether the government was right or wrong, in the same way that most people don't worry about whether the sky should be blue. (I happen to find that question interesting too, and I wouldn't be surprised if some other slashdotters did too, but that's another matter.)
So "animals", as a group, have rights that preclude the existence, in laboratories, of certain experiments. That doesn't make sense. Do they have the right not to be infected by viruses? Do they have the right to prevent humans from selectively breeding other animals? Do they have the right not to evolve?
Is he saying that a non-existent animal hybrid has the right to continue not existing?
I wish DRM technologies had the right not to be invented.
It's not a question of being "anti-BitTorrent", it just isn't the right tool for the job. I like BitTorrent, but it only works for files for which there is a sufficiently high demand that there will be enough users online that have the file. It's perfect for the latest Linux distributions, but rubbish for obscure video files.
In this case, anyone clicking the "Torrent" link is going to have to wait for hours or even days to get their file.
A shop selling pencils is not profiting from the drawings that those pencils were used to create. NCSoft, however, is running a commercial service that includes those characters. I don't know what the CoH revenue model is, but even if it's free like Diablo II, that just means that it's funded through sales, and those sales will benefit if the players know that they can pit their pseudo-spidey versus someone else's pseudo-hulk. That probably counts as vicarious infringement.
I think it's a little sad, but will stand up in law IMO.