Mailing stuff doesn't work for patents or for copyrights.
In the case of copyrights it's a foolish thing to do when it's relatively cheap and easy to register your works with the Library of Congress. A court will have absolutely no problem accepting the registration as proof of dates and copyright ownership. The same court will simply laugh at your post marked envelopes. If you are a US citizen who wants to sue in court for infringement, you have to register your work anyways.
In the case of patents, the only conceivable situation in which the mailing trick could work is if there is a dispute between two would be patentees about who conceived the idea first.
But the evidence of a sealed postmarked envelope just isn't going to be considered credible.
A recording company expects to repeat the process dozens of times per year, and they do expect to sell millions and possibly tens of millions of records.
I seem to recall some people floating around the idea that drug dealers were pirating movies/music in order to get money to purchase drugs for sale. I thought drug dealing was already hugely profitable, but apparently if it weren't for the mp3 subsidy, there wouldn't be any drugs in this country.
Do you really think that Verizon et. al. are doing this because it is the right thing to do? No way."
Having the RIAA enforce copyrights their members' copyrights IS the right thing to do. That way if there is any market backlash against abusive extension of copyright law, the correct party gets the brunt of it. Nothing else is has even the slightest potential to make the RIAA back off.
Why should ISPs have to pay the cost of enforcing someone else's copyrights? (Which means that you pay the cost)
I think the best evidence of abuse is the Rambus debacle. There was a slashdot story about the FTC bringing an anti-trust action against them.
Skin Tone independent of race?
on
Robotic Photographer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I thought skin tone was highly correlated with race.
Are they really trying to say that the machine does just as good a job of identifying all skin colors? I'm willing to believe that, but the statement that skin tone is independent of race seems a little goofy.
Thompson is claiming that they still encourage free players. So anyone who wants to write an mp3 player can put it up for download in both source and binary format.
The only real problem is that you can't put an mp3 player on a for pay distribution of GPL'd software, even though the value of the player is a minute fraction of the value of all the other software on the disk.
This is not the ideal situation, but it isn't going to prevent anyone from playing mp3s on any computer they want to.
You're correct that the evidence cannot be admitted to prove negligence, but the rules of evidence do allow evidence of remedial measures to show that 1) The remedial measure was feasible 2) The entity in question had enough control, authority to implement the remedial measure.
I think there's plenty of other evidence that the registrar's actions were not reasonable.
When the government elects to use proprietary software, that sometimes forces all of us to use the same stuff. IMO the government shouldn't be requiring citizens to use MS Word, Internet Explorer etc just to interact with them.
Of course that argument doesn't apply to what servers, databases, etc the government uses, or to what applications the government uses for things other than generating documents.
But when the government uses open source applications to communicate, that still leaves citizens with choices between open and closed source applications. Thus requiring the government to use open source for these tasks means more freedom of choice for everyone not in the government.
But the article also mentioned that a required first year course would be changing from C++ based to C# based.
I think teaching engineering students C# is a goofy idea, but it isn't much worse than teaching them pascal which is what a lot of schools did until fairly recently. Almost certainly those engineering students are going to need to learn yet another language in order to get any meaningful work done. The same was true when pascal was taught.
"Furthermore, licenses CANNOT be transfered to replacement machines if your original windows version was an OEM license. "
And if you buy from Dell, even if you can get them not to force the OEM license on you (which in your situation you can't use or even give away to charity) they are still going to change you for it. That just plain stinks.
That link is for a search session that will expire after a while. It's dead now.
Just to sum up things. Toho owns the Godzilla trademark on movies, and related entertainment services, toys, comic books, t shirts, etc. In short not for anything like web browsers.
But that isn't how the suit will be decided. The court will do weigh a bunch of factors (8 or so) to determine if there is a likelihood of confusion. Usage on disimilar products is only one factor.
Most likely, Toho will suggest that their mark is famous which means they get to argue that Mozilla dilutes the strength of their mark. If they can establish Godzilla as famous, then it doesn't matter much that the products bearing the mark are different as long as the channels used for advertising overlap.
You're correct that you cannot prove a negative, but in copyright litigation, copying is not usually proven by direct evidence that someone saw you copying because generally the plaintiff can't get that kind of evidence. The plaintiff instead shows similarity between your stuff and his and then offers proof that you had access to his stuff. Unexplained similarity plus access equals copying.
If the plaintiff can't establish that you had access to his stuff, then the court can reasonably infer that similar features in the code are either required to implement the functionality or were independently created. Either possibility is a win for the defendant.
If the source code was locked up in a vault at MS with only trusted people having access, then MS won't be able to prove access. You can then use clean room reverse engineering methods to prevent contaminating the programmers.
But if the code is available by having someone fill out an NDA in favor of a bogus company, you'll never be able to establish (by a preponderance of the evidence) that your programmers were not contaminated by seeing MS code.
"I have such difficulty imagining what the high-ups at RIAA are thinking. Crushing diversity and turning broadcasters against them isn't going to help even them one single bit."
If you're interested in what the RIAA is thinking, read their web page at www.riaa.org. The RIAA is very up front about why they do and what they want.
Diversity means loss of control and a thinner spread of profits and lower prices because of increased competition. Does that sound like something a cartel would want?
"I suppose that he thinks that all sorts of software companies will relocate to Virginia to take advantage of our coddling them."
That's absolutetly the reason why Virginia and Maryland jumped on UCITA so quickly. Your legislators think that their states will be more attractive to software companies. Somethings going to have to replace all that tobacco money right?
The provision allowing reverse engineering mirrors the European approach by making legitimate reverse engineering only for the purposes of making an interoperating program. The European Union copyright directive specifically disallows using reverse engineering for making competing programs.
But in the US, court decisions have allowed reverse engineering for the purpose of creating competing programs. UCITA probably can't remove this possibility, but it can force unnecessary litigation just to vindicate the right to reverse engineer.
I think you miss the point. Were those cases not allowed copying other than computer software? If so then those examples pretty much trash the post that said that only computer software could be legally backed up.
The DMCA isn't strictly about digital anything. The words digital and millenium are in there to make the act seem more hip and modern. Macrovision is specifically mentioned in the act, and is protected to a greater degree than any other technological measure.
As long as the plaintiff is only seeking injunctive relief rather than money you are not guaranteed to get a jury trial. Sorry, but that's the way the seventh amendment works.
Plus in these IP trials, a lot of the issues are matters of law to be decided by a judge even when you do get a jury trial. Typically the judge will decide on whether your fair use defense works.
You've cited the statutory provision for backups of computer programs, but there are other allowed copies that are applicable to non computer material. For example in the suit against Diamond Rio, the court indicated that ripping music from a CD to play in a Rio was a non infringing use.
The AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act) allows you to make non commercial use analog copies using any system and also to make non commercially used digital copies as long as you use those royalty paid recorders and disks.
Apparently from even the RIAA has no problem with you making copies of cds to play on your computer or on a portable music player:
http://www.riaa.org/Ask_the_RIAA_QA.cfm#6
So there's no need to refer to your personal use copies of music as "backups". You're mistake was to assume that the only allowed copies are those specifically called out by statute. If that were true, the MPAA would have won their suit to outlaw VCRs.
Most (probably all) of the recently released APEX DVD players, and certainly all of the cheap ones are advertised to play VCDs (on both cdr and cdrw) right out of the box.
Now some of them do need to be 'upgraded' to defeat macrovision and region coding, but those things are associated with playing DVDs and not VCDs.
US courts are going to give a lot of deference to an arbitrators decision as long as the parties agreed to arbitration, the process is fair, and the decision is not completely wrong. So if the decision is based on deciding which sides facts are correct, a court probably won't reverse an arbitrator's decision.
But if the arbitrator makes a bad decision because he can't properly apply the rule of law to the facts, I would hope a court would take the case and reverse the decision.
In other words, the arbitrator's decision shouldn't be given any more deference than would any trial court decision.
Slashdot Mirror
Mailing stuff doesn't work for patents or for copyrights.
In the case of copyrights it's a foolish thing to do when it's relatively cheap and easy to register your works with the Library of Congress. A court will have absolutely no problem accepting the registration as proof of dates and copyright ownership. The same court will simply laugh at your post marked envelopes. If you are a US citizen who wants to sue in court for infringement, you have to register your work anyways.
In the case of patents, the only conceivable situation in which the mailing trick could work is if there is a dispute between two would be patentees about who conceived the idea first.
But the evidence of a sealed postmarked envelope just isn't going to be considered credible.
But you forgot something
A recording company expects to repeat the process dozens of times per year, and they do expect to sell millions and possibly tens of millions of records.
I seem to recall some people floating around the idea that drug dealers were pirating movies/music in order to get money to purchase drugs for sale. I thought drug dealing was already hugely profitable, but apparently if it weren't for the mp3 subsidy, there wouldn't be any drugs in this country.
Do you really think that Verizon et. al. are doing this because it is the right thing to do? No way."
Having the RIAA enforce copyrights their members' copyrights IS the right thing to do. That way if there is any market backlash against abusive extension of copyright law, the correct party gets the brunt of it. Nothing else is has even the slightest potential to make the RIAA back off.
Why should ISPs have to pay the cost of enforcing someone else's copyrights? (Which means that you pay the cost)
I think the best evidence of abuse is the Rambus debacle. There was a slashdot story about the FTC bringing an anti-trust action against them.
I thought skin tone was highly correlated with race.
Are they really trying to say that the machine does just as good a job of identifying all skin colors? I'm willing to believe that, but the statement that skin tone is independent of race seems a little goofy.
Thompson is claiming that they still encourage free players. So anyone who wants to write an mp3 player can put it up for download in both source and binary format.
The only real problem is that you can't put an mp3 player on a for pay distribution of GPL'd software, even though the value of the player is a minute fraction of the value of all the other software on the disk.
This is not the ideal situation, but it isn't going to prevent anyone from playing mp3s on any computer they want to.
The argument is that your domain name is like your phone number rather than like a trademark.
You're correct that the evidence cannot be admitted to prove negligence, but the rules of evidence do allow evidence of remedial measures to show that
1) The remedial measure was feasible
2) The entity in question had enough control, authority to implement the remedial measure.
I think there's plenty of other evidence that the registrar's actions were not reasonable.
When the government elects to use proprietary software, that sometimes forces all of us to use the same stuff. IMO the government shouldn't be requiring citizens to use MS Word, Internet Explorer etc just to interact with them.
Of course that argument doesn't apply to what servers, databases, etc the government uses, or to what applications the government uses for things other than generating documents.
But when the government uses open source applications to communicate, that still leaves citizens with choices between open and closed source applications. Thus requiring the government to use open source for these tasks means more freedom of choice for everyone not in the government.
But the article also mentioned that a required first year course would be changing from C++ based to C# based.
I think teaching engineering students C# is a goofy idea, but it isn't much worse than teaching them pascal which is what a lot of schools did until fairly recently. Almost certainly those engineering students are going to need to learn yet another language in order to get any meaningful work done. The same was true when pascal was taught.
"Furthermore, licenses CANNOT be transfered to replacement machines if your original windows version was an OEM license. "
And if you buy from Dell, even if you can get them not to force the OEM license on you (which in your situation you can't use or even give away to charity) they are still going to change you for it. That just plain stinks.
That link is for a search session that will expire after a while. It's dead now.
Just to sum up things. Toho owns the Godzilla trademark on movies, and related entertainment services, toys, comic books, t shirts, etc. In short not for anything like web browsers.
But that isn't how the suit will be decided. The court will do weigh a bunch of factors (8 or so) to determine if there is a likelihood of confusion. Usage on disimilar products is only one factor.
Most likely, Toho will suggest that their mark is famous which means they get to argue that Mozilla dilutes the strength of their mark. If they can establish Godzilla as famous, then it doesn't matter much that the products bearing the mark are different as long as the channels used for advertising overlap.
You have that exactly backwards. ProCD is one of the court cases supporting EULAs hidden away in the box.
You're correct that you cannot prove a negative, but in copyright litigation, copying is not usually proven by direct evidence that someone saw you copying because generally the plaintiff can't get that kind of evidence. The plaintiff instead shows similarity between your stuff and his and then offers proof that you had access to his stuff. Unexplained similarity plus access equals copying.
If the plaintiff can't establish that you had access to his stuff, then the court can reasonably infer that similar features in the code are either required to implement the functionality or were independently created. Either possibility is a win for the defendant.
If the source code was locked up in a vault at MS with only trusted people having access, then MS won't be able to prove access. You can then use clean room reverse engineering methods to prevent contaminating the programmers.
But if the code is available by having someone fill out an NDA in favor of a bogus company, you'll never be able to establish (by a preponderance of the evidence) that your programmers were not contaminated by seeing MS code.
"I have such difficulty imagining what the high-ups at RIAA are thinking. Crushing diversity and turning broadcasters against them isn't going to help even them one single bit."
If you're interested in what the RIAA is thinking, read their web page at www.riaa.org. The RIAA is very up front about why they do and what they want.
Diversity means loss of control and a thinner spread of profits and lower prices because of increased competition. Does that sound like something a cartel would want?
"I suppose that he thinks that all sorts of software companies will relocate to Virginia to take advantage of our coddling them."
That's absolutetly the reason why Virginia and Maryland jumped on UCITA so quickly. Your legislators think that their states will be more attractive to software companies. Somethings going to have to replace all that tobacco money right?
The provision allowing reverse engineering mirrors the European approach by making legitimate reverse engineering only for the purposes of making an interoperating program. The European Union copyright directive specifically disallows using reverse engineering for making competing programs.
But in the US, court decisions have allowed reverse engineering for the purpose of creating competing programs. UCITA probably can't remove this possibility, but it can force unnecessary litigation just to vindicate the right to reverse engineer.
I think you miss the point. Were those cases not allowed copying other than computer software? If so then those examples pretty much trash the post that said that only computer software could be legally backed up.
Install in this case means copy a file to some place where it can be executed. This would include on removable media like floppies or cdroms.
Can you really prevent people from running any executable other than the ones you intall? I suspect that you cannot.
The DMCA isn't strictly about digital anything. The words digital and millenium are in there to make the act seem more hip and modern. Macrovision is specifically mentioned in the act, and is protected to a greater degree than any other technological measure.
As long as the plaintiff is only seeking injunctive relief rather than money you are not guaranteed to get a jury trial. Sorry, but that's the way the seventh amendment works.
Plus in these IP trials, a lot of the issues are matters of law to be decided by a judge even when you do get a jury trial. Typically the judge will decide on whether your fair use defense works.
You've cited the statutory provision for backups of computer programs, but there are other allowed copies that are applicable to non computer material. For example in the suit against Diamond Rio, the court indicated that ripping music from a CD to play in a Rio was a non infringing use.
The AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act) allows you to make non commercial use analog copies using any system and also to make non commercially used digital copies as long as you use those royalty paid recorders and disks.
Apparently from even the RIAA has no problem with you making copies of cds to play on your computer or on a portable music player:
http://www.riaa.org/Ask_the_RIAA_QA.cfm#6
So there's no need to refer to your personal use copies of music as "backups". You're mistake was to assume that the only allowed copies are those specifically called out by statute. If that were true, the MPAA would have won their suit to outlaw VCRs.
Most (probably all) of the recently released APEX DVD players, and certainly all of the cheap ones are advertised to play VCDs (on both cdr and cdrw) right out of the box.
Now some of them do need to be 'upgraded' to defeat macrovision and region coding, but those things are associated with playing DVDs and not VCDs.
US courts are going to give a lot of deference to an arbitrators decision as long as the parties agreed to arbitration, the process is fair, and the decision is not completely wrong. So if the decision is based on deciding which sides facts are correct, a court probably won't reverse an arbitrator's decision.
But if the arbitrator makes a bad decision because he can't properly apply the rule of law to the facts, I would hope a court would take the case and reverse the decision.
In other words, the arbitrator's decision shouldn't be given any more deference than would any trial court decision.