And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?
That's why it's better to release your software on BitTorrent. The customer takes care of the distribution themselves.
For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.
Nah, I'm sure it's much more scientific than that. You need to make an advanced formula that takes into account the substitution rate, the market segmentation, and the regression towards the mean, prove it works given some reasonableassumption, and finally apply it to the numbers you pulled out of a hat.
If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.
When you steal, you're depriving someone of the thing you steal.
Copying something doesn't deprive the original owner of it. Unauthorised copying is only illegal because our forefathers believed publishers needed a time-limited monopoly on artistic and literary works in order to publish them (and also because of the political maneuvering of said publishers). If that assumption is mostly wrong, there's no reason to restrict copying.
In my country we have conscription, but the jobs which are tough, hard and require long training are filled with volunteers. People take those jobs for reasons such as the ones you describe: They want adventure, a place to belong, or feel they are the best of the best. And that's also who the military wants; they don't want someone who doesn't care to pilot an airplane or guard a border in Afghanistan.
What propaganda haven't they lived up to that was revealed by Wikileaks? The US military likes to pretend their strikes are very precise and kills few civilians. The Afghan and Iraq war documents show that they fail to disclose many civilian deaths.
The Iraq war documents exposed that the number of civilians killed had been downplayed by the US military. If we are going to safeguard human rights, we first need to know the truth.
The "Cablegate" documents showed that my own country's toughened copyright legislation was due to pressures from the USA.
One of Wikileaks' most recent leaks exposed child slavery and prostitution in Saudi Arabia, which the Saudian government denies exists.
P.P.S. There aren't any "death panels" in our system, because life-saving health care is always prioritised. I read about a case a few years ago, where someone needed an extremely expensive medicine which would cost the equivalent of several million dollars per year, and it was debated whether the public health care should pay for it. I don't know how it ended, but in any case, it's very rare that the issue comes up.
I live in a country with universal health care, and most of the health care specialists are public servants, so they never have to worry about getting paid. Health care is budgeted - the MDs and beaureacrats plan for so and so many treatments every year - and there are few unnecessary treatments.
Instead, the system tends to favour those who have contacts. Patients are prioritised by some MD after supposedly objective rules, but in practice, it depends on how well your own MD makes your case for you. Patients are put on waiting lists with no way of knowing how long they will have to wait - it depends on how many treatments the beaureacrats budget for next year.
You may be right about that part. I just don't think we should excuse the pirates - they're not helping their countrymen and contribute to the corruption and instability themselves..
It's allowed because the newspaper is (normally) not a competing product.
The purpose of trademark law is to make it easier for the consumer to distinguish between brands. The trademark owner doesn't have a right to profits gained from using the trademark. The trademark owner only has the right to stop competitors from confusing the consumers by using their trademark for their own products.
According to TFA, the company tried to stop the activist group by suing for trademark infringement. That failed.
That doesn't mean it's suddenly ok to impersonate a person or company and make defamatory statements in their name. The ruling only concerned trademark infringement. The laws against slander and libel still hold, and anyone who pulls off a prank like this still needs to justify it as a legitimate criticism of the person or company. They just can't be sued for trademark infringement.
If the court had ruled in favour of the trademark infringement claims, it could very easily have been used to stop anyone from using a company's name in legitimate criticism.
There were even more ludicrous claims made by the company, including suing for computer fraud. Basically, the company was trying to claim that if you take information that's freely available on a web site, and use the information in a way the site owner doesn't approve of, you've committed computer fraud. They're saying using information from a web site in a way the site owner doesn't approve of, is equivalent to hacking into the site.
This ruling is not only sane from a free speech perspective, it's sane from a legal perspective. The judge simply applied the laws as they were intended.
The company name is also part of the trademark. Both the name and the logo are protected by trademark law. Both can be used to reference a company, for example, in a newspaper article about the company, but may not be used commercially in a way which causes confusion with a competing product.
The logotype may also be protected by copyright law, but generally it's considered fair use to use a copyrighted logotype in a newspaper article or criticism of the company.
What I cannot do is make a misreference, especially if I am doing so as part of commerce.
Why should it be illegal to use a trademarked name incorrectly in non-commercial use? That'd be like legislating against incorrect grammar.
Slandering an organisation by impersonating it and making ludicrous statements in its name is already covered by slander and libel laws. In this case, there wasn't enough grounds to sue for slander and libel, so the company tried to hit them with trademark infringement. The judge ruled against the trademark infringement claims, but that doesn't mean it's always okay to impersonate an organisation. The laws against slander and libel are still there to protect an organisation in the more severe cases.
The company was trying to sue for trademark violation. If they had won, it could have prevented people from using a company's name in legitimate criticism.
If we want to make it illegal to impersonate an organisation, there are better ways to do it than to base it on trademark law.
For the purposes of trademark law, commercial use of a mark means using it to sell goods or services, period. Advertising is not generally considered a product unless your company is an ad network.
The company funding the shell company would be guilty of infringement, since they used the shell company to advertise their product.
Think about it: corporations use advertising firms to design their advertising campaigns all the time, but if one of their ads break trademark (or any other) law, it's the corporation which gets sued.
Slashdot Mirror
And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?
That's why it's better to release your software on BitTorrent. The customer takes care of the distribution themselves.
For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.
Nah, I'm sure it's much more scientific than that. You need to make an advanced formula that takes into account the substitution rate, the market segmentation, and the regression towards the mean, prove it works given some reasonableassumption, and finally apply it to the numbers you pulled out of a hat.
If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.
When you steal, you're depriving someone of the thing you steal.
Copying something doesn't deprive the original owner of it. Unauthorised copying is only illegal because our forefathers believed publishers needed a time-limited monopoly on artistic and literary works in order to publish them (and also because of the political maneuvering of said publishers). If that assumption is mostly wrong, there's no reason to restrict copying.
If everyone starts downloading ten times as much software as they can use, we'll have bankrupted the entire industry in a year!
My bad.
In my country we have conscription, but the jobs which are tough, hard and require long training are filled with volunteers. People take those jobs for reasons such as the ones you describe: They want adventure, a place to belong, or feel they are the best of the best. And that's also who the military wants; they don't want someone who doesn't care to pilot an airplane or guard a border in Afghanistan.
Well, it remains to be seen if Wikileaks will use the contract to cover up things they shouldn't.
Have they actually sold anything to news broadcasters and publisher?
The paragraph may be there to legally justify the damages when someone breaks confidentiality.
Yes, the video was called "Collateral Damage" by Wikileaks.
Israel is a democracy and doesn't oppress its own citizens, but it behaves like a dick towards other peoples.
What propaganda haven't they lived up to that was revealed by Wikileaks?
The US military likes to pretend their strikes are very precise and kills few civilians. The Afghan and Iraq war documents show that they fail to disclose many civilian deaths.
The Iraq war documents exposed that the number of civilians killed had been downplayed by the US military. If we are going to safeguard human rights, we first need to know the truth.
The "Cablegate" documents showed that my own country's toughened copyright legislation was due to pressures from the USA.
One of Wikileaks' most recent leaks exposed child slavery and prostitution in Saudi Arabia, which the Saudian government denies exists.
P.P.S. There aren't any "death panels" in our system, because life-saving health care is always prioritised. I read about a case a few years ago, where someone needed an extremely expensive medicine which would cost the equivalent of several million dollars per year, and it was debated whether the public health care should pay for it. I don't know how it ended, but in any case, it's very rare that the issue comes up.
P.S. I think the issues with billing sound serious - it's not strange at all that you bring it up.
I live in a country with universal health care, and most of the health care specialists are public servants, so they never have to worry about getting paid. Health care is budgeted - the MDs and beaureacrats plan for so and so many treatments every year - and there are few unnecessary treatments.
Instead, the system tends to favour those who have contacts. Patients are prioritised by some MD after supposedly objective rules, but in practice, it depends on how well your own MD makes your case for you. Patients are put on waiting lists with no way of knowing how long they will have to wait - it depends on how many treatments the beaureacrats budget for next year.
You may be right about that part. I just don't think we should excuse the pirates - they're not helping their countrymen and contribute to the corruption and instability themselves..
Of course the Americans are ultimately hunting the pirates because they think it benefits their trade. That doesn't make it less beneficial.
Um, do you mean the pirates are ordinary people like you and me?
Or did you confuse "Somalian pirates" with "Afghans"?
It's allowed because the newspaper is (normally) not a competing product.
The purpose of trademark law is to make it easier for the consumer to distinguish between brands. The trademark owner doesn't have a right to profits gained from using the trademark. The trademark owner only has the right to stop competitors from confusing the consumers by using their trademark for their own products.
According to TFA, the company tried to stop the activist group by suing for trademark infringement. That failed.
That doesn't mean it's suddenly ok to impersonate a person or company and make defamatory statements in their name. The ruling only concerned trademark infringement. The laws against slander and libel still hold, and anyone who pulls off a prank like this still needs to justify it as a legitimate criticism of the person or company. They just can't be sued for trademark infringement.
If the court had ruled in favour of the trademark infringement claims, it could very easily have been used to stop anyone from using a company's name in legitimate criticism.
There were even more ludicrous claims made by the company, including suing for computer fraud. Basically, the company was trying to claim that if you take information that's freely available on a web site, and use the information in a way the site owner doesn't approve of, you've committed computer fraud. They're saying using information from a web site in a way the site owner doesn't approve of, is equivalent to hacking into the site.
This ruling is not only sane from a free speech perspective, it's sane from a legal perspective. The judge simply applied the laws as they were intended.
The company name is also part of the trademark. Both the name and the logo are protected by trademark law. Both can be used to reference a company, for example, in a newspaper article about the company, but may not be used commercially in a way which causes confusion with a competing product.
The logotype may also be protected by copyright law, but generally it's considered fair use to use a copyrighted logotype in a newspaper article or criticism of the company.
What I cannot do is make a misreference, especially if I am doing so as part of commerce.
Why should it be illegal to use a trademarked name incorrectly in non-commercial use? That'd be like legislating against incorrect grammar.
Slandering an organisation by impersonating it and making ludicrous statements in its name is already covered by slander and libel laws. In this case, there wasn't enough grounds to sue for slander and libel, so the company tried to hit them with trademark infringement. The judge ruled against the trademark infringement claims, but that doesn't mean it's always okay to impersonate an organisation. The laws against slander and libel are still there to protect an organisation in the more severe cases.
The company was trying to sue for trademark violation. If they had won, it could have prevented people from using a company's name in legitimate criticism.
If we want to make it illegal to impersonate an organisation, there are better ways to do it than to base it on trademark law.
For the purposes of trademark law, commercial use of a mark means using it to sell goods or services, period. Advertising is not generally considered a product unless your company is an ad network.
The company funding the shell company would be guilty of infringement, since they used the shell company to advertise their product.
Think about it: corporations use advertising firms to design their advertising campaigns all the time, but if one of their ads break trademark (or any other) law, it's the corporation which gets sued.