As long as the ACLU refuses to recognize the 2nd Amendment I'll continue to not recognize the ALCU as actually looking out for our civil liberties.
On reflection, it seems like the ACLU is just not recognizing what you think the 2nd Amendment means. Their position seems fairly reasonable to me. I would expect a reasonable person would understand their dithering on the second amendment(do we advocate people can own nukes? do we support some 'weapons of mass destruction' exception? if we support an exception that is not explicit in the amendment, doesn't that mean we're back where we started?) when it's so much different that the black-and-white of, say, civil forfeiture laws.
If you think the ACLU has done nothing for "our civil liberties," I'd suggest you conduct some legal research.
...with economical impacts in the billions might attract enough federal attention to get some standardized laws...
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I'd expect to see a tax cut to benefit the wealthiest spammers instead of anything that would help the common email recipient.
IMO the MLB tv blackout rules are an anachronism of a bygone era.
I completely agree. What fascinates me is that the league will complain about the precarious financial health of the sport, but they can't seem to adjust their broadcast/delivery scheme to actually collect money from those willing to pay. Why on earth would you ever black out an interested/paying customer?
The webcasting blackout thing is yet another example of how mlb can't get it's act together on this. The product should be baseball, and a fan should be able to choose their own convenient medium. Instead, the league sells the media: buy our webcasting so you can get a few games, buy our hollow-sounding audio feeds so you can hear the radio broadcast before the sun goes down, buy our satellite package (but we hope you have local cable for when we black you out), oh, and keep that analogue antenna around.... It's no wonder they're in trouble when a fan like me with ready money can't get the games I want in the format I want when the announcers and cameras are there anyway.
I really like that picture. 'Mom, please give me some ideas of where one might find socks.' 'Dad, please tell me where you find lost socks.' 'Mrs. Crabapple...' Then she ranks locations based on their frequency/importance of citation in the answers she gets, and looks in those locations sequentially until she finds her lost sock.
Not really much like just looking around for a sock.
I know this is way at the end of the discussion, but it doesn't look like anyone's saying it. To my mind, the problem with re-engaging human exploration of the solar system is that it all needs to be done a little bit at a time: we can't just say "build the Mars transit vehicle, here's the money" and expect it to be done directly.
I think a case can be made that the most interesting activities of the current space program are the Hubble space telescope, followed by the Voyager missions. And when I think that they launched the Voyager craft 30 years ago, with only planetary objectives, I just feel lucky that they're out there.
So what I think should be done is to re-fund something along the lines of the Pluto Kuiper Express mission, but equip the craft for some serious extra-solar science. And an energy source and transmission capabilities appropriate for a very long distance/time. Shoot, screw Pluto, maybe just send it out of here as fast and direct as possible.
Honestly, I want to send something up that makes my son say in 2040, gee, dad, I'm so happy your generation decided to launch that, we're getting such cool data and it's so far away...
the lock system was not designed to have a single master key
The system you describe was clearly designed to include a top level master (your key). A "different master key for each building" would simply have been a sub-master: that submaster key shares a certain number of cuts with the top level master, with the remaining cuts on the submaster being identical to cuts in that position on every change key for that building. Now, if you meant that they never intended to produce that single top level master or let anyone carry one, that I wouldn't know...
What kind of rigging is possible when there is only one bid?
From the nctimes article mentioned above, quoting a council member: "He laid traps to run off the only other qualified bidder, Microsoft, and they are telling us in sworn affidavits that that is why they didn't bid."
Obviously it is easy to rig the bidding process even if there is only one bid- the council member refers to changes in the requests for bids that were allegedly tailored to give SimDesk an advantage. Who knows what Microsoft's price would have been without a bid?
The USA Today article really glosses over the political battle on this issue and the good reasons for that battle. Many people in Houston are actually quite angry about the adoption of SimDesk, and it has nothing to do with pro-Microsoft bias or SimDesk's "unproven track record" thing.
This timeline would claim Houston spent $42,000 marketing a possible SimDesk contract before the proposal was even requested. This article suggests the City's CIO "had decided on that vendor before the city's mandatory bidding process had even started." I'll leave it as an excercise to the reader to google for more information, but my point is that this is a much more significant issue than USA Today suggests in the article.
I'm as happy about my city using non-monopoly software as the next guy, but I think in this instance there's a strong likelihood that the SimDesk contract was awarded in a non-competitive environment anyway. Surely this is not the way any of us want alternatives to MSFT to be chosen.
I think claiming Congress will be able to indefinitely extend 20 years at a time is without merit. The Court implicitly assumes in its opinion that this is not the case, which essentially means they would re-hear with any additional extension.
From the majority opinion:
Concerning petitioners assertion that Congress might evade the limitation on its authority by stringing together an unlimited number of "limited Times," the Court of Appeals stated that such legislative misbehavior clearly is not the situation before us...... And as we observe, infra, at 18, there is no cause to suspect that a purpose to evade the "limited Times" prescription prompted Congress to adopt the CTEA.
Besides, you'd be ignoring how in 20 years the dissents' balancing arguments become that much more persuasive, and that we'd get 20 years of empirical evidence on whether extensions foster the recovery of old films, etc.
I worried time marched on and left me uncool, but it seems they've just abandoned the venerable KCMU for the more "edgy" KEXP. I find it hard to believe they're that much more 'freeform' or 'experimental' than they ever were, which is to say in the upper quartile of college radio stations. I just hope state of Washington taxpayers didn't pay for a call-letter change.
I just wrapped up my late night at KTRU which is certainly the peer of many of the stations mentioned here. I believe we generally sound better than most college stations, since the 50K watts tend to keep us from doing anything too dumb.
I'm in the same boat as the parent poster, mostly because I can't imagine paying per-month play charges. Can anyone fill me in on why EQ would be better or worse than a detailed, well-populated traditional mud? It seems like many of the complaints about EQ would fit into any laundry list of complaints about even the best ol' text based games, which have exactly the same 'addictive' draw but generally don't require you to shell out to Sony.
Honestly, I've been trying to give up Arctic for like 8 years now... would EQ be a decent crutch to wean myself with?
What I can see happening is state legislatures ousting democratically elected Senators because they don't like their ideology
There's no mechanism for removal of a senator by the state legislature. From Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution: "Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.... Each House may... expel a member." There's no mention of any other body besides the Senate itself being able to remove a member.
State legislatures tend to be far more conservative than their respective populations
This might be a horse-before-the-cart kind of thing: perhaps the state legislatures are more conservative because the electorate thinks they wield little power and thus turns out disporportionally conservative for state legislature elections when compared to much more prominent federal senator elections.
It appears that you work for, quote "one of the largest law firms in the Southwest." (US)
Nope, I'm a French tennis player.
You did not disclose this. I now understand your deliberately spin on these arguments - and see straight through you.
Several problems: 1. Assumes my interests are somehow connected with my employer's. 2. Implies that non-disclosure renders my reasoning invalid. 3....oh, whatever. I could claim you didn't disclose that you're an anarchist nutcase, but I'm not sure that's really true or relevant. All it really means is I'm well-educated on some of the underlying issues.
I could not understand why you would want consumer confusion for ownership of domain names.
Actually, what I've been saying is your.reg plan would not reduce confusion and that many of the procedings you object to wholesale do indeed reduce confusion.
Why do you wish to abridge the publics choice of words?
That's like asking me why I want to abridge my neighbor's right to address his house using a non-arabic house number, made-up street name... making the guy adhere to what the rest of us are doing in no way diminishes his right to ownership. Similarly, I can't imagine how a particular domain name is critical to free expression, when there is obviously no lack of an alternate forum.
A trademark is NOT a word that prevents all other businesses from using dictionary words (providing not passing off) - is it?
Passing off is a deliberate, bad faith intent to deceive. Breaching my rights as a consumer requires no such intent- if you confuse me, that's enough. Moreover, we're not talking about 'using a dictionary word', we're talking about using a mark as a domain name. I've got no problem with you saying the phrase "2900 Crystal Drive, Arlington, Virginia" but if you somehow feel entitled to receive mail addressed that way, it's an entirely different thing.
Is it not a true fact, that Corporations have no desire at all to prevent confusion on the Internet - they just wish illegal dominance of it?
No. That's just your opinion.
tell me why simple need to balance competing interests has not been solved?
Well, some might say it has been. What I think you're saying is you disagree with specific UDRP decisions, but I don't see any comments which are more applicable to the process as a whole.
Very different from the example of cocacola that corrupt lawyers use - are they not?
I dunno, it really isn't very hard to lose an argument despite being right if you don't argue it well. Since I doubt arbitrators are per se unreasonable, I can rather safely assume that the losers deserved to lose. Not to mention, the body of decisions is increasing and is therefore less likely to encounter any particularly poorly-reasoned decision again.
Also - why cannot apple.computer.us.reg, apple.computer.uk.reg, apple.record.uk.reg etc. etc. ALL use their trademark?
They can, but unless and until user behavior changes, it'll do no good as far as confusion, etc.
We are talking about a word on its own, say for example 'domino' - how can you avoid confusion in cyberspace?
You can clear a reasonable swath out of the forest of domain names around a mark. I fail to see any harm in such a practice, you simply allege that it's somehow illegal or hurts my rights to free speech.
The odds are that most people typing domino.com get the wrong business - true or false?
Specious, again. Even your proposal wouldn't fix this: ooops, says user, I typed domino.nonintuitivethirdlevel.reg.us but that's not DOMINO'S pizza.
So again (longer version) - The only way to avoid confusion, on the Internet, is to supply more information - yes or no?
Nope, again, you can clear a reasonable swath out of the forest of domain names around a mark. Not to mention, likelihood of confusion is never zero, so the question should really be does your method of 'supplying more information' significantly reduce it? As far as I can tell, all it does is fiat no confusion, as in "oh, there's no way anyone could be confused about affiliation, sponsorship, etc. with nissan.com, after all, it's not nissan..reg.us."
Why should one trademark be allowed to prevent everybody else from using the word - when it is unlawful for them to do so?
Again, it's not use of the word, it's use of the mark or something confusingly similar domain name. If you're so pro-trademark as you've claimed, surely you can understand how dilution and disparagement aren't concepts that sit out to the side of the pro-consumer basis of trademark law, but rather they go hand in hand. On this level, it is more than appropriate to grant some kind of exclusive rights to Coke for cocacola.newtld- after all, why would I need a domain name including their mark to make my 'legitimate complaint' if not to drive traffic to my site through confusion? Besides, you're ignoring the fact that myopinionisthatcokesucks.com would never be transferred by the UDRP process. Your quote of the Trademark Act is not germane- the UDRP applies to cases where one party has "no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name." Clearly, two competing trademark registration holders (as contemplated by the Trademark Act) would not be able to avail themselves of UDRP provisions since holding a trademark registration is prima facie evidence of a right.
This would be so much more fun if anyone else were reading.
Professor Milton Mueller is recognized expert in this field... DNS creator Paul Mockapetris would be the best person to ask about the project - would he not?
No, he wouldn't. If either of these guys is contending what you represent they are, they are simply wrong. Let me start here: A trademark is any word, phrase, slogan, symbol, design, device, or combination thereof which identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes these goods or services from those of another. Now, does EBAY serve as a source of services and does it distinguish those services from, say, the auctions at xuppa.com? Clearly it does.
The analysis is accurate (demonstrably so) and takes into account all aspects of the problem.
I disagree. This problem presents nothing more than a simple need to balance competing interests: on one side you've got concepts of trademark, on the other you've got third party desire to occupy and use any domain name. Again, what I assert is that your 'ivory-tower' analysis ignores how people use the internet as well as any factual considerations relating to particular domains or marks. Honestly, do you believe I should have the right to register and use cocacola.com? If so, we're going nowhere. I find it impossible to suggest that my personal interest in registering and using a particular domain name is more compelling than the other billion internet users finding what they think they're going to find when they type 1) arguably the strongest and most well-known mark in the world and 2) the most well-known TLD into their browsers. Frankly, unless a person has some sort of anti-corporate chip on their shoulder, I'm not sure how you'd convince them that some unknown bunch of people out there that feel entitled to the freedom to use some unknown domain names is more important than that person's need to get what they think they're getting.
You miss the point - why should Nissan Motors prevent Mr Nissan using his own name?
Because nobody's looking for Mr. Nissan, we're all trying to buy a car. We might as well ask why shouldn't Mr Nissan use davidnissan.notreg.us.
But you do not find it at domino.com
Silly European, all Americans know its DOMINO'S and not DOMINO, and sure enough, I typed dominos.com in my browser and got the pizza chain. If you're alleging they're wrongly going after the registrant of domino.com, well, all I can tell you is I haven't the faintest guess who the hell that might be. I'll grant that it's possible, but it seems highly unlikely there is some UK (or whereever) DOMINO mark that remotely approches the strength and fame of DOMINO'S. How else would they occur to you as an example?
This does not interfere - it helps avoid confussion. You did not answer my questions inc. The only way to avoid confusion is to supply more information - yes or no?
This sentence really helped me crystalize my thoughts, thanks. There are numerous ways to avoid confusion in the brick and mortar world beyond mere information, but let's generally set that aside. You can supply more information along the lines of a giant banner above your store reading "MARK is a trademark of PROPRIETOR and this store in no way affiliated with MARK or PROPRIETOR." Or you can educate your employees to always explain the same at any mention of the mark. But it doesn't prevent confusion if the banner is in Chinese or the employees only speak Klingon. Thus blah.blah.reg.us can't be reliably said to reduce any confusion- day 1 after rollout, 998 million internet users are still trying nissan.com for the auto maker.
You do an excellent job of quoting completely specious authorities. Referring me to your own website, for one, doesn't exactly get the ball rolling.
The part about your analysis that fails to persuade is that it tries to discuss this in a vacuum. ('Prof. Somedude said these weren't trademarks' despite the fact that the public treats them that way. 'Domain name creator Otherdude said these weren't trademarks' despite the fact that they clearly function as an indicator of source in the vast majority of instances.) Likelihood of confusion is appropriately determined on a factual basis, so there's no way you can tell me in advance what is confusing and what isn't. Without wasting words trying to influence someone with an apparent big grudge, I'll be brief: you miss the point that.reg would only help if consumers tried nissan.geeletmelookupclassnumberswhileitype.us.reg or whatever you're proposing before they tried nissan.com, which they totally won't. Artificially moving trademark issues to a separate TLD might placate you (what lost domain name ticked you off this much?) but it won't do the average guy any good. The rhetorical question in answer to yours is:
Given people conduct business on the internet - most lots of business - why should some small random guy the average consumer has never heard of be able to interfere with business between a consumer and the proprietor of a famous brand?
Besides, you're also ignoring how UDRP bails out seriously screwed up 'landrush' systems.
My problem with this sort of analysis is it assumes that trademarks are some evil pro-corporation conspiracy. The basis for trademark law is, however, consumer protection. Were this a world where trademark rights were weaker, many more people would understand that: their "Intell Pentiups" would fail right and left and they'd wonder why.
Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar.
I think a little more review of "confusingly similar" and the apple analogy would help UDRP decisions seem much more reasonable. Co-existence of similar marks in the real world is dependent on a low likelihood of confusion of source, origin, affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship, meaning that the whole reason you have a million uses of the word "apple" is that no consumer confuses a grimy independent auto repair shop with a record label. In effect, it is in wide legal use not because they are confusingly similar but instead because confusion is unlikely. Enter the internet, and suddenly you lose many of the formerly distinguishing factors like geographic location (.com's are everywhere and anyone can get to you), channels of trade (on the internet, you don't walk down to the docks to by APPLE boats and head to the stadium to watch the APPLES play- you sit at your desk and click), and appearance or pronunciation (no graphics in a domain name, no sighs-co vs. sis-co).
Obviously, I shouldn't expect this opinion to be very popular here, but I'd rather get Microsoft on my first try at microsoft.com,.biz,.whatever than preserve some random small-time third party's right to the name. And in the end, it you take it from the perspective of the average guy (that is, the person trademark law is most trying to protect) doesn't it make sense that Nissan.com would be the car maker's site? After all, that's what they'll type into their browser when looking for it.
Moreover, that's another reason.reg would be foolish: with the sophistication of the average user, it'd be about as worthwhile, popular, and well-known as.aero.
I wonder though- the fatwallet letters claim "copyright protection can only extend to expressions of ideas, where that expression has some creative spark and can be separated by the idea itself."
Seems to me that the idea - 'hey, we're the best retailer anywhere on Nov. 29' - could be expressed by particular prices, and that it might take a creative spark to determine which items should be discounted and by how much to get the idea across. Point being, if controlling case law is the phone book example, it may not be so clear cut here- after all, 'people have phone numbers' is itself not an idea but a fact. A retailer using a price to show they're unique and good would clearly not be able to do so if everyone else had their price, too, whereas my phone number is mine regardless of who publishes it.
So I think the linked article is completely misreading FCC documents (while mixing in some good ol' USC) to the point that the article has next to no basis in reality. I kept thinking "how do these people know that it only lets you opt for premium channels, etc., that doesn't sound like the FCC." Anyhoo, after dillegent searching of the federal register for final rules, the only thing I can find even remotely related to the subject of the linked article is this rule notice which essentially says that big media companies are prohibited from requiring cable operators from having to buy multiple channels. Has nothing to do with a cable operator making a bunch of viewers pay for stuff they don't want
So we've also had some people discussing 47 C.F.R. 76.921 (which I believe is a mis-citation of 47 U.S.C. 543(b)(8)(a) but that's just the perfectionist in me) regarding "Buy through of other tiers prohibited," but that too has nothing to do with the gist of the Business Week article. What that part of the code says is that if I as a cable operator offer anyone a pay-per-view or single premium channel, I must offer it to everyone on the same terms. Meaning if I don't like people getting just HBO, I can make it unavailable without the purchase of the other million HBO's. Or I can offer the pay-per-view channels in bulk without programming as a paid-for feature of digital cable- that way pay-per-view is its own tier. And if I have actual competition, that provision doesn't apply to me anyway.
So, I'm tempted to say the linked article is total bullshit given that we've all been trying to find out just what the hell it's talking about, and the only close things we've found certainly don't support the BusinessWeek article. Certainly nothing in any of this suggests that an individual consumer has the ability to opt out of anything a cable company requires.
First sale would apply to whatever format they received the original software in- meaning, say, they could sell the discs they used to set up network-install software, but it's the license that allows them to copy that stuff from computer to computer, and thus they have no right of first sale to the copies.
Can anyone put forward a well-reasoned argument why the Internet should be exempt to sales tax?
How about that Internet sales harness an efficiency that outweighs the tax-collection benefit? I'm imagining, say, comparing my online purchases delivered in FedEx low emission vehicles from a single dimly-lit warehouse in a temperate climate to hopping in my 10 mpg SUV, driving to the well-lit and air-conditioned store, and making a purchase that is taxed to pay for, among other things, a clean air regulatory system and environmental remediation. You could come up with a ton of possibilities: putting keyboard repetitive stress injuries on purchasers instead of retail employees that collect from state workers comp funds, shifting income growth from lower-tax-bracket retail employees to higher-bracket shipping employees, lower retail construction demand leading to cheaper road construction contracts, whatever else.
Just because it 'makes sense' to apply sales tax to internet purchases doesn't mean it'd be good for everyone or even the government.
Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!
on
Saddam's Inbox Hacked
·
· Score: 3, Informative
on his best, most charitable, not-killing-people day
If you set parameters like that, I have to disagree. Rumsfeld says he's letting people go from Guantanamo, meaning that all those people who said wait, you can't just imprison people who may be innocent were almost on the money. They only missed the part where they used may be instead of are. If you pick a day where Saddam isn't actually killing people, he's obviously doing no worse than this.
I wouldn't have taken the poster literally- and with stuff like the above going on, his figurative point is easy to make.
Along the lines of "exactly where do you think 20K people will affect anything?" I've got to point out that 20K falls short even in Wyoming. A quick look at 2000 election results in Wyoming suggests you'd need on the order of 45K votes to get half of the state senate. And that's assuming you don't piss off all the other otherwise-divided voters with your 'we newcomers are taking over your state" rhetoric. I mean, if you were going to move there and become the Jehova's Witnesses of voter motivation, you'd still need to more than double your original group, and that with your original group spread all the hell over the state to ensure that you can get the right number of residents in any given district to win the maximum number of seats.
I prefer to use my pie-in-the-sky pointless idealism on votes for the Green Party. Moving to Alaska or Wyoming seems a little extreme.
Okay, and not so appropriate, but from the FAQ: Why don't we start shooting government agents?
I mean, why not, surely armed rebellion stands as much of a chance as this stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as the ACLU refuses to recognize the 2nd Amendment I'll continue to not recognize the ALCU as actually looking out for our civil liberties.
On reflection, it seems like the ACLU is just not recognizing what you think the 2nd Amendment means. Their position seems fairly reasonable to me. I would expect a reasonable person would understand their dithering on the second amendment(do we advocate people can own nukes? do we support some 'weapons of mass destruction' exception? if we support an exception that is not explicit in the amendment, doesn't that mean we're back where we started?) when it's so much different that the black-and-white of, say, civil forfeiture laws.
If you think the ACLU has done nothing for "our civil liberties," I'd suggest you conduct some legal research.
...with economical impacts in the billions might attract enough federal attention to get some standardized laws...
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I'd expect to see a tax cut to benefit the wealthiest spammers instead of anything that would help the common email recipient.
IMO the MLB tv blackout rules are an anachronism of a bygone era.
I completely agree. What fascinates me is that the league will complain about the precarious financial health of the sport, but they can't seem to adjust their broadcast/delivery scheme to actually collect money from those willing to pay. Why on earth would you ever black out an interested/paying customer?
The webcasting blackout thing is yet another example of how mlb can't get it's act together on this. The product should be baseball, and a fan should be able to choose their own convenient medium. Instead, the league sells the media: buy our webcasting so you can get a few games, buy our hollow-sounding audio feeds so you can hear the radio broadcast before the sun goes down, buy our satellite package (but we hope you have local cable for when we black you out), oh, and keep that analogue antenna around.... It's no wonder they're in trouble when a fan like me with ready money can't get the games I want in the format I want when the announcers and cameras are there anyway.
I really like that picture. 'Mom, please give me some ideas of where one might find socks.' 'Dad, please tell me where you find lost socks.' 'Mrs. Crabapple...' Then she ranks locations based on their frequency/importance of citation in the answers she gets, and looks in those locations sequentially until she finds her lost sock.
Not really much like just looking around for a sock.
I know this is way at the end of the discussion, but it doesn't look like anyone's saying it. To my mind, the problem with re-engaging human exploration of the solar system is that it all needs to be done a little bit at a time: we can't just say "build the Mars transit vehicle, here's the money" and expect it to be done directly.
I think a case can be made that the most interesting activities of the current space program are the Hubble space telescope, followed by the Voyager missions. And when I think that they launched the Voyager craft 30 years ago, with only planetary objectives, I just feel lucky that they're out there.
So what I think should be done is to re-fund something along the lines of the Pluto Kuiper Express mission, but equip the craft for some serious extra-solar science. And an energy source and transmission capabilities appropriate for a very long distance/time. Shoot, screw Pluto, maybe just send it out of here as fast and direct as possible.
Honestly, I want to send something up that makes my son say in 2040, gee, dad, I'm so happy your generation decided to launch that, we're getting such cool data and it's so far away...
the lock system was not designed to have a single master key
The system you describe was clearly designed to include a top level master (your key). A "different master key for each building" would simply have been a sub-master: that submaster key shares a certain number of cuts with the top level master, with the remaining cuts on the submaster being identical to cuts in that position on every change key for that building. Now, if you meant that they never intended to produce that single top level master or let anyone carry one, that I wouldn't know...
What kind of rigging is possible when there is only one bid?
From the nctimes article mentioned above, quoting a council member:
"He laid traps to run off the only other qualified bidder, Microsoft, and they are telling us in sworn affidavits that that is why they didn't bid."
Obviously it is easy to rig the bidding process even if there is only one bid- the council member refers to changes in the requests for bids that were allegedly tailored to give SimDesk an advantage. Who knows what Microsoft's price would have been without a bid?
The USA Today article really glosses over the political battle on this issue and the good reasons for that battle. Many people in Houston are actually quite angry about the adoption of SimDesk, and it has nothing to do with pro-Microsoft bias or SimDesk's "unproven track record" thing.
This timeline would claim Houston spent $42,000 marketing a possible SimDesk contract before the proposal was even requested. This article suggests the City's CIO "had decided on that vendor before the city's mandatory bidding process had even started." I'll leave it as an excercise to the reader to google for more information, but my point is that this is a much more significant issue than USA Today suggests in the article.
I'm as happy about my city using non-monopoly software as the next guy, but I think in this instance there's a strong likelihood that the SimDesk contract was awarded in a non-competitive environment anyway. Surely this is not the way any of us want alternatives to MSFT to be chosen.
I think claiming Congress will be able to indefinitely extend 20 years at a time is without merit. The Court implicitly assumes in its opinion that this is not the case, which essentially means they would re-hear with any additional extension.
..... And as we observe, infra, at 18, there is no cause to suspect that a purpose to evade the "limited Times" prescription prompted Congress to adopt the CTEA.
From the majority opinion:
Concerning petitioners assertion that Congress might evade the limitation on its authority by stringing together an unlimited number of "limited Times," the Court of Appeals stated that such legislative misbehavior clearly is not the situation before us.
Besides, you'd be ignoring how in 20 years the dissents' balancing arguments become that much more persuasive, and that we'd get 20 years of empirical evidence on whether extensions foster the recovery of old films, etc.
I worried time marched on and left me uncool, but it seems they've just abandoned the venerable KCMU for the more "edgy" KEXP. I find it hard to believe they're that much more 'freeform' or 'experimental' than they ever were, which is to say in the upper quartile of college radio stations. I just hope state of Washington taxpayers didn't pay for a call-letter change.
I just wrapped up my late night at KTRU which is certainly the peer of many of the stations mentioned here. I believe we generally sound better than most college stations, since the 50K watts tend to keep us from doing anything too dumb.
I'm in the same boat as the parent poster, mostly because I can't imagine paying per-month play charges. Can anyone fill me in on why EQ would be better or worse than a detailed, well-populated traditional mud? It seems like many of the complaints about EQ would fit into any laundry list of complaints about even the best ol' text based games, which have exactly the same 'addictive' draw but generally don't require you to shell out to Sony.
Honestly, I've been trying to give up Arctic for like 8 years now... would EQ be a decent crutch to wean myself with?
What I can see happening is state legislatures ousting democratically elected Senators because they don't like their ideology
There's no mechanism for removal of a senator by the state legislature. From Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution: "Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.... Each House may... expel a member." There's no mention of any other body besides the Senate itself being able to remove a member.
State legislatures tend to be far more conservative than their respective populations
This might be a horse-before-the-cart kind of thing: perhaps the state legislatures are more conservative because the electorate thinks they wield little power and thus turns out disporportionally conservative for state legislature elections when compared to much more prominent federal senator elections.
It appears that you work for, quote "one of the largest law firms in the Southwest." (US)
...oh, whatever. I could claim you didn't disclose that you're an anarchist nutcase, but I'm not sure that's really true or relevant.
.reg plan would not reduce confusion and that many of the procedings you object to wholesale do indeed reduce confusion.
Nope, I'm a French tennis player.
You did not disclose this. I now understand your deliberately spin on these arguments - and see straight through you.
Several problems:
1. Assumes my interests are somehow connected with my employer's.
2. Implies that non-disclosure renders my reasoning invalid.
3.
All it really means is I'm well-educated on some of the underlying issues.
I could not understand why you would want consumer confusion for ownership of domain names.
Actually, what I've been saying is your
Why do you wish to abridge the publics choice of words?
That's like asking me why I want to abridge my neighbor's right to address his house using a non-arabic house number, made-up street name... making the guy adhere to what the rest of us are doing in no way diminishes his right to ownership. Similarly, I can't imagine how a particular domain name is critical to free expression, when there is obviously no lack of an alternate forum.
A trademark is NOT a word that prevents all other businesses from using dictionary words (providing not passing off) - is it?
Passing off is a deliberate, bad faith intent to deceive. Breaching my rights as a consumer requires no such intent- if you confuse me, that's enough. Moreover, we're not talking about 'using a dictionary word', we're talking about using a mark as a domain name. I've got no problem with you saying the phrase "2900 Crystal Drive, Arlington, Virginia" but if you somehow feel entitled to receive mail addressed that way, it's an entirely different thing.
Is it not a true fact, that Corporations have no desire at all to prevent confusion on the Internet - they just wish illegal dominance of it?
No. That's just your opinion.
tell me why simple need to balance competing interests has not been solved?
Well, some might say it has been. What I think you're saying is you disagree with specific UDRP decisions, but I don't see any comments which are more applicable to the process as a whole.
Very different from the example of cocacola that corrupt lawyers use - are they not?
I dunno, it really isn't very hard to lose an argument despite being right if you don't argue it well. Since I doubt arbitrators are per se unreasonable, I can rather safely assume that the losers deserved to lose. Not to mention, the body of decisions is increasing and is therefore less likely to encounter any particularly poorly-reasoned decision again.
Also - why cannot apple.computer.us.reg, apple.computer.uk.reg, apple.record.uk.reg etc. etc. ALL use their trademark?
They can, but unless and until user behavior changes, it'll do no good as far as confusion, etc.
We are talking about a word on its own, say for example 'domino' - how can you avoid confusion in cyberspace?
You can clear a reasonable swath out of the forest of domain names around a mark. I fail to see any harm in such a practice, you simply allege that it's somehow illegal or hurts my rights to free speech.
The odds are that most people typing domino.com get the wrong business - true or false?
Specious, again. Even your proposal wouldn't fix this: ooops, says user, I typed domino.nonintuitivethirdlevel.reg.us but that's not DOMINO'S pizza.
So again (longer version) - The only way to avoid confusion, on the Internet, is to supply more information - yes or no?
Nope, again, you can clear a reasonable swath out of the forest of domain names around a mark. Not to mention, likelihood of confusion is never zero, so the question should really be does your method of 'supplying more information' significantly reduce it? As far as I can tell, all it does is fiat no confusion, as in "oh, there's no way anyone could be confused about affiliation, sponsorship, etc. with nissan.com, after all, it's not nissan..reg.us."
Why should one trademark be allowed to prevent everybody else from using the word - when it is unlawful for them to do so?
Again, it's not use of the word, it's use of the mark or something confusingly similar domain name. If you're so pro-trademark as you've claimed, surely you can understand how dilution and disparagement aren't concepts that sit out to the side of the pro-consumer basis of trademark law, but rather they go hand in hand. On this level, it is more than appropriate to grant some kind of exclusive rights to Coke for cocacola.newtld- after all, why would I need a domain name including their mark to make my 'legitimate complaint' if not to drive traffic to my site through confusion? Besides, you're ignoring the fact that myopinionisthatcokesucks.com would never be transferred by the UDRP process. Your quote of the Trademark Act is not germane- the UDRP applies to cases where one party has "no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name." Clearly, two competing trademark registration holders (as contemplated by the Trademark Act) would not be able to avail themselves of UDRP provisions since holding a trademark registration is prima facie evidence of a right.
Did I answer all your questions?
This would be so much more fun if anyone else were reading.
Professor Milton Mueller is recognized expert in this field... DNS creator Paul Mockapetris would be the best person to ask about the project - would he not?
No, he wouldn't. If either of these guys is contending what you represent they are, they are simply wrong. Let me start here: A trademark is any word, phrase, slogan, symbol, design, device, or combination thereof which identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes these goods or services from those of another. Now, does EBAY serve as a source of services and does it distinguish those services from, say, the auctions at xuppa.com? Clearly it does.
The analysis is accurate (demonstrably so) and takes into account all aspects of the problem.
I disagree. This problem presents nothing more than a simple need to balance competing interests: on one side you've got concepts of trademark, on the other you've got third party desire to occupy and use any domain name. Again, what I assert is that your 'ivory-tower' analysis ignores how people use the internet as well as any factual considerations relating to particular domains or marks. Honestly, do you believe I should have the right to register and use cocacola.com? If so, we're going nowhere. I find it impossible to suggest that my personal interest in registering and using a particular domain name is more compelling than the other billion internet users finding what they think they're going to find when they type 1) arguably the strongest and most well-known mark in the world and 2) the most well-known TLD into their browsers. Frankly, unless a person has some sort of anti-corporate chip on their shoulder, I'm not sure how you'd convince them that some unknown bunch of people out there that feel entitled to the freedom to use some unknown domain names is more important than that person's need to get what they think they're getting.
You miss the point - why should Nissan Motors prevent Mr Nissan using his own name?
Because nobody's looking for Mr. Nissan, we're all trying to buy a car. We might as well ask why shouldn't Mr Nissan use davidnissan.notreg.us.
But you do not find it at domino.com
Silly European, all Americans know its DOMINO'S and not DOMINO, and sure enough, I typed dominos.com in my browser and got the pizza chain. If you're alleging they're wrongly going after the registrant of domino.com, well, all I can tell you is I haven't the faintest guess who the hell that might be. I'll grant that it's possible, but it seems highly unlikely there is some UK (or whereever) DOMINO mark that remotely approches the strength and fame of DOMINO'S. How else would they occur to you as an example?
This does not interfere - it helps avoid confussion. You did not answer my questions inc. The only way to avoid confusion is to supply more information - yes or no?
This sentence really helped me crystalize my thoughts, thanks. There are numerous ways to avoid confusion in the brick and mortar world beyond mere information, but let's generally set that aside. You can supply more information along the lines of a giant banner above your store reading "MARK is a trademark of PROPRIETOR and this store in no way affiliated with MARK or PROPRIETOR." Or you can educate your employees to always explain the same at any mention of the mark. But it doesn't prevent confusion if the banner is in Chinese or the employees only speak Klingon. Thus blah.blah.reg.us can't be reliably said to reduce any confusion- day 1 after rollout, 998 million internet users are still trying nissan.com for the auto maker.
Okay, stale discussion, but here goes...
.reg would only help if consumers tried nissan.geeletmelookupclassnumberswhileitype.us.reg or whatever you're proposing before they tried nissan.com, which they totally won't. Artificially moving trademark issues to a separate TLD might placate you (what lost domain name ticked you off this much?) but it won't do the average guy any good. The rhetorical question in answer to yours is:
You do an excellent job of quoting completely specious authorities. Referring me to your own website, for one, doesn't exactly get the ball rolling.
The part about your analysis that fails to persuade is that it tries to discuss this in a vacuum. ('Prof. Somedude said these weren't trademarks' despite the fact that the public treats them that way. 'Domain name creator Otherdude said these weren't trademarks' despite the fact that they clearly function as an indicator of source in the vast majority of instances.) Likelihood of confusion is appropriately determined on a factual basis, so there's no way you can tell me in advance what is confusing and what isn't. Without wasting words trying to influence someone with an apparent big grudge, I'll be brief: you miss the point that
Given people conduct business on the internet - most lots of business - why should some small random guy the average consumer has never heard of be able to interfere with business between a consumer and the proprietor of a famous brand?
Besides, you're also ignoring how UDRP bails out seriously screwed up 'landrush' systems.
My problem with this sort of analysis is it assumes that trademarks are some evil pro-corporation conspiracy. The basis for trademark law is, however, consumer protection. Were this a world where trademark rights were weaker, many more people would understand that: their "Intell Pentiups" would fail right and left and they'd wonder why.
.biz, .whatever than preserve some random small-time third party's right to the name. And in the end, it you take it from the perspective of the average guy (that is, the person trademark law is most trying to protect) doesn't it make sense that Nissan.com would be the car maker's site? After all, that's what they'll type into their browser when looking for it.
.reg would be foolish: with the sophistication of the average user, it'd be about as worthwhile, popular, and well-known as .aero.
Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar.
I think a little more review of "confusingly similar" and the apple analogy would help UDRP decisions seem much more reasonable. Co-existence of similar marks in the real world is dependent on a low likelihood of confusion of source, origin, affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship, meaning that the whole reason you have a million uses of the word "apple" is that no consumer confuses a grimy independent auto repair shop with a record label. In effect, it is in wide legal use not because they are confusingly similar but instead because confusion is unlikely. Enter the internet, and suddenly you lose many of the formerly distinguishing factors like geographic location (.com's are everywhere and anyone can get to you), channels of trade (on the internet, you don't walk down to the docks to by APPLE boats and head to the stadium to watch the APPLES play- you sit at your desk and click), and appearance or pronunciation (no graphics in a domain name, no sighs-co vs. sis-co).
Obviously, I shouldn't expect this opinion to be very popular here, but I'd rather get Microsoft on my first try at microsoft.com,
Moreover, that's another reason
Ah, but the pinnacle of this joke was reached with recursive backwardness- turning the joke backward to make everything backwards in the US:
(Imagine photo of Yakov Smirnoff holding a hot dog.) Smirnoff: "In Soviet Russia, we don't eat this part of the dog."
I wonder though- the fatwallet letters claim "copyright protection can only extend to expressions of ideas, where that expression has some creative spark and can be separated by the idea itself."
Seems to me that the idea - 'hey, we're the best retailer anywhere on Nov. 29' - could be expressed by particular prices, and that it might take a creative spark to determine which items should be discounted and by how much to get the idea across. Point being, if controlling case law is the phone book example, it may not be so clear cut here- after all, 'people have phone numbers' is itself not an idea but a fact. A retailer using a price to show they're unique and good would clearly not be able to do so if everyone else had their price, too, whereas my phone number is mine regardless of who publishes it.
If he's driving his SUV while he drives, he's doing much better than most SUV operators on the roads around here.
So I think the linked article is completely misreading FCC documents (while mixing in some good ol' USC) to the point that the article has next to no basis in reality. I kept thinking "how do these people know that it only lets you opt for premium channels, etc., that doesn't sound like the FCC." Anyhoo, after dillegent searching of the federal register for final rules, the only thing I can find even remotely related to the subject of the linked article is this rule notice which essentially says that big media companies are prohibited from requiring cable operators from having to buy multiple channels. Has nothing to do with a cable operator making a bunch of viewers pay for stuff they don't want
So we've also had some people discussing 47 C.F.R. 76.921 (which I believe is a mis-citation of 47 U.S.C. 543(b)(8)(a) but that's just the perfectionist in me) regarding "Buy through of other tiers prohibited," but that too has nothing to do with the gist of the Business Week article. What that part of the code says is that if I as a cable operator offer anyone a pay-per-view or single premium channel, I must offer it to everyone on the same terms. Meaning if I don't like people getting just HBO, I can make it unavailable without the purchase of the other million HBO's. Or I can offer the pay-per-view channels in bulk without programming as a paid-for feature of digital cable- that way pay-per-view is its own tier. And if I have actual competition, that provision doesn't apply to me anyway.
So, I'm tempted to say the linked article is total bullshit given that we've all been trying to find out just what the hell it's talking about, and the only close things we've found certainly don't support the BusinessWeek article. Certainly nothing in any of this suggests that an individual consumer has the ability to opt out of anything a cable company requires.
First sale would apply to whatever format they received the original software in- meaning, say, they could sell the discs they used to set up network-install software, but it's the license that allows them to copy that stuff from computer to computer, and thus they have no right of first sale to the copies.
Can anyone put forward a well-reasoned argument why the Internet should be exempt to sales tax? How about that Internet sales harness an efficiency that outweighs the tax-collection benefit? I'm imagining, say, comparing my online purchases delivered in FedEx low emission vehicles from a single dimly-lit warehouse in a temperate climate to hopping in my 10 mpg SUV, driving to the well-lit and air-conditioned store, and making a purchase that is taxed to pay for, among other things, a clean air regulatory system and environmental remediation. You could come up with a ton of possibilities: putting keyboard repetitive stress injuries on purchasers instead of retail employees that collect from state workers comp funds, shifting income growth from lower-tax-bracket retail employees to higher-bracket shipping employees, lower retail construction demand leading to cheaper road construction contracts, whatever else. Just because it 'makes sense' to apply sales tax to internet purchases doesn't mean it'd be good for everyone or even the government.
on his best, most charitable, not-killing-people day
If you set parameters like that, I have to disagree. Rumsfeld says he's letting people go from Guantanamo, meaning that all those people who said wait, you can't just imprison people who may be innocent were almost on the money. They only missed the part where they used may be instead of are. If you pick a day where Saddam isn't actually killing people, he's obviously doing no worse than this.
I wouldn't have taken the poster literally- and with stuff like the above going on, his figurative point is easy to make.
Along the lines of "exactly where do you think 20K people will affect anything?" I've got to point out that 20K falls short even in Wyoming. A quick look at 2000 election results in Wyoming suggests you'd need on the order of 45K votes to get half of the state senate. And that's assuming you don't piss off all the other otherwise-divided voters with your 'we newcomers are taking over your state" rhetoric. I mean, if you were going to move there and become the Jehova's Witnesses of voter motivation, you'd still need to more than double your original group, and that with your original group spread all the hell over the state to ensure that you can get the right number of residents in any given district to win the maximum number of seats.
I prefer to use my pie-in-the-sky pointless idealism on votes for the Green Party. Moving to Alaska or Wyoming seems a little extreme.
Okay, and not so appropriate, but from the FAQ:
Why don't we start shooting government agents?
I mean, why not, surely armed rebellion stands as much of a chance as this stuff.