"Don't forget to keep refreshing their frontpage. You wouldn't want to miss out on the latest news. Something important might get posted any second and you'd never know!"
I know, none of us would want to miss out when the RIAA posts an article about what "fair use" rights that we have to make a backup copy, use it in research, review, or critique, or to resell the original to someone else once we don't want it anymore.
I mean, they MIGHT post something about that, right?
"Current situation may not be as clear cut as slavery. But you can argue that we are protecting our individual freedom of expression and normal methods (i.e. letter writing etc) are not working, so extraordinary measures are needed."
In a way it IS about slavery. The RIAA's monopoly stranglehold on artists, and the inequity in recording contracts, their PERPEUTAL ownership of distrobution rights even AFTER the end of an artist's contract is one of the closest things to slavery that still exists in the USA...
All which is made possible by their continued monopoly control of marketing and distrobution of music. Which MP3, P2P and hobbyist internet broadcasting threaten with obsolescence, much like the first Ford did the horse and buggy...
"The way to make a concinvincing case against legalizing a certain activity is NOT to commit that crime yourself."
No, it's PRECISELY this... This attack on RIAA.ORG proves that such an activity SHOULD NOT be legalized.
It's the RIAA that wants DoS legalized for their own use, it's US who DONT WANT it legalized. Therefore, a public DoS'ing of sites like RIAA.ORG will demonstrate how this is a BAD idea...
And it is a horrid idea. It's obvious that Hillary Rosen is creaming her panties in anticipation of being given vigilante law enforcement powers. But any law that doesn't cut BOTH WAYS, ie, doesn't give said powers to ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER (which can be any and all of us), will be struck down in the courts as violating the "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment.
I don't think the Evil Hillary of the RIAA really understands just what kind of firestorm to be used AGAINST HER that this law would create...
I almost think they are desperate... The Emperor's Clothes are off when it comes to the RIAA, the REAL cost of CD's, and how artists are lucky to get a few pennies out of each CD sale...
"I agree. As a ordinary citizen, one can only vote for one's rep. As a front for a bunch of corporations, with a lot of monetary backing, one buy a heck of a lot of lobbying power and congressional ear."
The best way to reform campaign finance law is to NOT allow a candidate to accept contributions from ANY corp, org, or individual who DOES NOT LIVE/located where said candidate would represent them.
The McCain CFR bill is such a farce. It does NOTHING to reign in corps, or fatcat rich assholes. What it DOES do is make it impossible for people like US to band together and contribute enough collectively to lobby. And even as an individual it makes you a FELON if you were to dare to buy TV or radio time to criticize a candidate 60 days before the election (ie, the time when the sheep masses are MOST likley to be paying attention!).
Individual/. geeks have no power. Collectively we have a LOT if we would just organize. A nonpartisan group to lobby for open source and IP fair use.
Another point I meant to make (hit submit too fast), is that the reason WHY corps and their allies in government favor turning over US sovergnity to such international alphabet soups is this:
To subvert the law (US Constitution).
Their loophole is to claim that obeying WIPO, WTO, ICANN, etc, is required because we are signatory to a TREATY. Which is how they justify overriding the Constitution.
The fact is, the Constitution puts rather severe restrictions on the government, AND corps, and there IS a limit to how far they can subvert it.
Setting up international orgs that operate in shadow (under US law, a director of ANY corp would have full access to records that Arebauch is having to SUE to get from ICANN), they can get greater lattitude that they could not get under US law.
For instance, want to have perpetual copyright? Get WTO to mandate it, and the President and Congress can say "we signed the treaty, we are obligated", thus striking away a DIRECT provision of the Constitution without going through the legal amendment process.
I submit to you all that it's not those who wish to fight back (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26433.html ) against these international corporate cartels who are subverting the law, but the cartels themselves!
"To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes"
Actually it's the equivalent of putting taxes on printing presses to SUBSIDIZE monastic scribes.
Or on establishing a "trade group" made up of representatives from the buggy industry to regulate automobile highways...
The old media companies established ICANN and other horrors strictly for the purposes of making the Internet safe for their profit.
Frankly, I feel it's more than slightly treasonous for ANY American administration/Congress to turn over US sovergnity to any kind of international body, which ICANN is.
Why? Because groups/treaties like ICANN, WIPO, NAFTA, WTO, almost ALWAYS end up being exploited by the powerful corporate intrest, both domestic AND foreign, to subvert the rights and interest of the common American Citizen.
The excuse for passing the DMCA, BTW, was that it was REQUIRED by WIPO...
After all, the BSA is just Microsoft's "Brownshirts", little more than their own private little extortion and stormtrooper division.
MS does not acknowledge competition that is not like them (closed). Therefore, neither will the BSA.
In the wake of the current corporate accounting scams, why aren't the RIAA/MPAA/BSA members being called to task for the $BILLIONS they claim in public FUD in "losses" to "piracy", yet they NEVER EVER put these in their financial statements...
Methinks the IP lobby needs to either PROVE these losses or be sued for fraud.
Remember, Stalin said that voters decide nothing, that those who COUNT the votes, everything. Trusting some closed source software, given Microsoft's stellar record of producing bug and exploit free code, is INSANE!!!
The only difference is, a candidate can get screwed and never know how. Why am I not surprised? These machines were put in by the same biased, corrupt elections people who carried out the recount scams...
Democrats almost all of them, BTW. The "butterfly" ballot was designed and approved by a DEMOCRAT controlled board. The recounts ALL run by Democrats.
Not that I have much use for republicans anymore, because I don't see them as being significantly different or "better" than the Dems. Nor any more honest. Dems use government largesse to buy votes, and will comit mass vote fraud when they have to. Republicans run vast corporations that use largesse to buy GOVERNMENT actions, and use mass fraud to fool investors into buying their stock.
The end result is always the same. The individual, who is supposed to be SOVERIGN in this country, gets trampled...
"That all being said, I doubt these reporting requirements will do much to stop terrorism. The evidence is mounting that our failure to stop past terrorism was not due to a lack of power or resources, but due to ineffective leadership and incompetence. All the information in the world won't help our government agencies who in the past have shown a frightening lack of intelligence."
What is happening is that the government types are pushing intrusive, inconvienent, ineffective (but psychologically reassuring) security at airports to LOOK like they are doing something...
This instead of examining the background of the thousands of middle eastern Muslim male immigrants, or "students" in this country. 95% of terrorist attacks against Americans have been carried out by these people.
Yes, the Arab groups squeal. But, I have a message for the world:
IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES IS A PRIVILEDGE, NOT A RIGHT!
I don't have a "right" to emigrate to Saudi Arabia and start setting up Christian Churches, do I?
So, in the name of PC, we strip search 80 year old grandmothers in airports, and let 18-45 year old Muslim male non citizens breeze through, ignoring that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers were of that demographic.
On the other end, the "big brother" and "law enforcement establishment" types are using this crisis, this TRAGEDY, the deaths of thousands of innocents, as a way to gain more power to intrude than the "Drug War" ever could have justified...
The lessons we need to learn from this is:
1. Take foreign countries and groups making threats against the USA SERIOUSLY (China is next). 9/11 happened because we have been FAR too complacent about Islamic terrorism for too long.
2. The "1984" crowd will exploit ANY crisis to make bad laws that will haunt us far longer than the name Osama Bin Laden.
"You know that in Europe banks have to report cash transactions over a certain size, and other "suspicous activities" to law enforcement? Europe already has that sort of "monitoring" in place to stop money laundering."
This has been done in the USA for years. IIRC, any cash withdrawal of $10K requires you to fill out a form that goes to the Feds... And I think the Patriot act LOWERS this limit...
It seems to me what civil liberty the so-called "Drug War" hasn't destroyed this open-ended, never to be resolved "War on Terrorism" will finish off for good...
"Assuming this case isn't dismissed, my bet is the court says you have the right to domestic travel anywhere you like - by car or on foot."
Which is just like the court's asinine support of the FCC's censorship of broadcasting... It's only "free speech" if it's on 18th Century technology.
Expect that they wouldn't even hold up your right to not show your "papers" to drive a car, you do, you know...
Yep, we aren't far away from barbed wire and machine gun toting goosesteppers demanding to see our "papers" at every state border...
If we have to become what the Mohammedian fundamentalist states are (in terms of lack of personal sovergnity) to defeat them, WHAT IS THE POINT?
Unlike World War II and other times where we have temporarily suspended civil liberties, this "war" does not have a definable enemy, nor a definable "condition of victory".
Nope, we've just set the police/big brother complex loose in an infinate, open ended, perpetual "drug war" that will defeat nothing except the Constitution.
The most amazing thing isn't the fact that our Foudners created a system over 200 years ago that is still funtional today. No, it's the fact that the biggest PROBLEM with our government today is that it won't ABIDE BY IT...
"OR, don't have an affair! be honest! if you are so conserned about being caught doing something wrong... either don't do it... or take extra good care and not getting caught. Don't ask the govm't to cover your tracks for you."
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE wants to live in a society with perfect law enforcement.
It's not the government in this case COVERING your tracks for you, it's the government allowing corporations rights that IT DOES NOT HAVE TO GRANT under the Constitution...
The FCC is a GOVERNMENT body. It has no right to "make law" to do this.
But this is what you get when you have a government used to living outside the law (Constitution). The 10th Amendment would seemingly preclude the EXISTANCE of the FCC...
"The next great world power is going to be China."
Through brute force only. China ignores IP laws for it's own convienence, not to foster innovation and opportunity.
China lacks political freedom that is necessary to foster invention. There is a reason why communist countries have to put up walls to keep their people in, after all...
Ultimately, though, the Chinese system will fail just like the soviet one did, once the people become advanced enough to crave freedom. It's just taking longer because China has MILLENIA of cultural acceptance of autocracy to overcome.
"I wonder how the system will have to change to be effective again? Or perhaps some patents will just have to be not granted because they are obvious, or just plain stupid."
THAT would solve a lot of the problem. Indeed, if it became harder to get a patent (because they would require mandatory review, and maybe even require a public comment period for prior art), 90% of this abuse would cease.
The other major reform needed to copyright and patent is to require mandatory, nondiscriminatory licensing. Meaning, that if it's licensed to SOMEONE, it has to be available to be licenced to anyone, under similar terms.
What roils my stomach is how the RIAA got CARP approved, while running right out and signing deals with Yahoo! and others that is discrimanatory against small webcasters. IE, CARP's high rates only apply to those too small to have the weight to negotiate better.
That is not free enterprise or capitalism. That is monopolistic command and control economy, don't let the corporatist "Capitalist" rhetoric fool you.
"The only winners in these spurious suits are the lawyers. Note similar detrimental effects on healthcare. So we need reform. The real question: what political candidates have the required fortitude? Daresay the political landscape of the US is not promising..."
With one of the two major parties (Democrats) in league with the trial lawyers (who LOVE things like this), and the other (Republicans) in bed with the corporations (who also LOVE this), there is not much chance of reform.
Such abuse of the US patent system is going to continue until tough civil and criminal penalties (how bout fraud and raceteering?) are enacted to discourage this.
Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.
Left as it is, the US patent system is going to hurt innovation, DISCOURAGE invention, and make our economy fall behind.
The next great world power is going to be a country that has less stringent IP laws, and a reasonable patent system, one that encourages invention and improvement of invention. Not one like ours that has basically become a corporate blackmail and extortion tool.
Do this shit to the audience, and I think even Joe Sheepizen will turn it off.
This crosses the line. I'm pissed enough at seeing WNBA scores take up 1/4th the screen during the ALL STAR GAME... AS if anyone not a lesbian cares about the WNBA...
Mod me down for extreme non PC-ness (which I wear as a badge of honor), but isn't the point of such obnoxious marketing to FORCE expose us to that WHICH WE DON'T WANT?!
Thank God I don't watch much TV. Enterprise ans sports programing is it.
CRIMINAL penalties for submitting stupid, overbroad patents? And what the hell drugs are the on at the USPTO? Do these guys get paid only on the basis of how many of these thigs they accept?
The US patent system has gone far beyond what was put in the Constitution. It was meant to protect INVENTORS from unethical corporations, not corporations against inventions...
"If the cute doesn't open, the crater he makes will be the same size if jumps from 25 miles or 10,000 feet. That's how terminal velocity works. Sure he'll break Mach 1 in the thin air aloft, but as he gets to into progressivly thicker air he'll be slowed to the same 55 m/s as any other skydiver. As long as he doesn't tuck into a ball or go head first, that is."
Or he will accelerate 32'/second/second until he reaches 160'/second for us non metric Americans;)
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't forget to keep refreshing their frontpage. You wouldn't want to miss out on the latest news. Something important might get posted any second and you'd never know!"
I know, none of us would want to miss out when the RIAA posts an article about what "fair use" rights that we have to make a backup copy, use it in research, review, or critique, or to resell the original to someone else once we don't want it anymore.
I mean, they MIGHT post something about that, right?
"Current situation may not be as clear cut as slavery. But you can argue that we are protecting our individual freedom of expression and normal methods (i.e. letter writing etc) are not working, so extraordinary measures are needed."
In a way it IS about slavery. The RIAA's monopoly stranglehold on artists, and the inequity in recording contracts, their PERPEUTAL ownership of distrobution rights even AFTER the end of an artist's contract is one of the closest things to slavery that still exists in the USA...
All which is made possible by their continued monopoly control of marketing and distrobution of music. Which MP3, P2P and hobbyist internet broadcasting threaten with obsolescence, much like the first Ford did the horse and buggy...
"The way to make a concinvincing case against legalizing a certain activity is NOT to commit that crime yourself."
No, it's PRECISELY this... This attack on RIAA.ORG proves that such an activity SHOULD NOT be legalized.
It's the RIAA that wants DoS legalized for their own use, it's US who DONT WANT it legalized. Therefore, a public DoS'ing of sites like RIAA.ORG will demonstrate how this is a BAD idea...
And it is a horrid idea. It's obvious that Hillary Rosen is creaming her panties in anticipation of being given vigilante law enforcement powers. But any law that doesn't cut BOTH WAYS, ie, doesn't give said powers to ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER (which can be any and all of us), will be struck down in the courts as violating the "equal protection" clause in the 14th Amendment.
I don't think the Evil Hillary of the RIAA really understands just what kind of firestorm to be used AGAINST HER that this law would create...
I almost think they are desperate... The Emperor's Clothes are off when it comes to the RIAA, the REAL cost of CD's, and how artists are lucky to get a few pennies out of each CD sale...
"I agree. As a ordinary citizen, one can only vote for one's rep. As a front for a bunch of corporations, with a lot of monetary backing, one buy a heck of a lot of lobbying power and congressional ear."
/. geeks have no power. Collectively we have a LOT if we would just organize. A nonpartisan group to lobby for open source and IP fair use.
The best way to reform campaign finance law is to NOT allow a candidate to accept contributions from ANY corp, org, or individual who DOES NOT LIVE/located where said candidate would represent them.
The McCain CFR bill is such a farce. It does NOTHING to reign in corps, or fatcat rich assholes. What it DOES do is make it impossible for people like US to band together and contribute enough collectively to lobby. And even as an individual it makes you a FELON if you were to dare to buy TV or radio time to criticize a candidate 60 days before the election (ie, the time when the sheep masses are MOST likley to be paying attention!).
Individual
Another point I meant to make (hit submit too fast), is that the reason WHY corps and their allies in government favor turning over US sovergnity to such international alphabet soups is this:
l ) against these international corporate cartels who are subverting the law, but the cartels themselves!
To subvert the law (US Constitution).
Their loophole is to claim that obeying WIPO, WTO, ICANN, etc, is required because we are signatory to a TREATY. Which is how they justify overriding the Constitution.
The fact is, the Constitution puts rather severe restrictions on the government, AND corps, and there IS a limit to how far they can subvert it.
Setting up international orgs that operate in shadow (under US law, a director of ANY corp would have full access to records that Arebauch is having to SUE to get from ICANN), they can get greater lattitude that they could not get under US law.
For instance, want to have perpetual copyright? Get WTO to mandate it, and the President and Congress can say "we signed the treaty, we are obligated", thus striking away a DIRECT provision of the Constitution without going through the legal amendment process.
I submit to you all that it's not those who wish to fight back (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26433.htm
"To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes"
Actually it's the equivalent of putting taxes on printing presses to SUBSIDIZE monastic scribes.
Or on establishing a "trade group" made up of representatives from the buggy industry to regulate automobile highways...
The old media companies established ICANN and other horrors strictly for the purposes of making the Internet safe for their profit.
Frankly, I feel it's more than slightly treasonous for ANY American administration/Congress to turn over US sovergnity to any kind of international body, which ICANN is.
Why? Because groups/treaties like ICANN, WIPO, NAFTA, WTO, almost ALWAYS end up being exploited by the powerful corporate intrest, both domestic AND foreign, to subvert the rights and interest of the common American Citizen.
The excuse for passing the DMCA, BTW, was that it was REQUIRED by WIPO...
It's coming to the point where civil disobedience, AIMED at corporations and their paid for public officials is needed...
After all, the BSA is just Microsoft's "Brownshirts", little more than their own private little extortion and stormtrooper division.
MS does not acknowledge competition that is not like them (closed). Therefore, neither will the BSA.
In the wake of the current corporate accounting scams, why aren't the RIAA/MPAA/BSA members being called to task for the $BILLIONS they claim in public FUD in "losses" to "piracy", yet they NEVER EVER put these in their financial statements...
Methinks the IP lobby needs to either PROVE these losses or be sued for fraud.
"I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ"
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"
Remember, Stalin said that voters decide nothing, that those who COUNT the votes, everything. Trusting some closed source software, given Microsoft's stellar record of producing bug and exploit free code, is INSANE!!!
The only difference is, a candidate can get screwed and never know how. Why am I not surprised? These machines were put in by the same biased, corrupt elections people who carried out the recount scams...
Democrats almost all of them, BTW. The "butterfly" ballot was designed and approved by a DEMOCRAT controlled board. The recounts ALL run by Democrats.
Not that I have much use for republicans anymore, because I don't see them as being significantly different or "better" than the Dems. Nor any more honest. Dems use government largesse to buy votes, and will comit mass vote fraud when they have to. Republicans run vast corporations that use largesse to buy GOVERNMENT actions, and use mass fraud to fool investors into buying their stock.
The end result is always the same. The individual, who is supposed to be SOVERIGN in this country, gets trampled...
"That all being said, I doubt these reporting requirements will do much to stop terrorism. The evidence is mounting that our failure to stop past terrorism was not due to a lack of power or resources, but due to ineffective leadership and incompetence. All the information in the world won't help our government agencies who in the past have shown a frightening lack of intelligence."
What is happening is that the government types are pushing intrusive, inconvienent, ineffective (but psychologically reassuring) security at airports to LOOK like they are doing something...
This instead of examining the background of the thousands of middle eastern Muslim male immigrants, or "students" in this country. 95% of terrorist attacks against Americans have been carried out by these people.
Yes, the Arab groups squeal. But, I have a message for the world:
IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES IS A PRIVILEDGE, NOT A RIGHT!
I don't have a "right" to emigrate to Saudi Arabia and start setting up Christian Churches, do I?
So, in the name of PC, we strip search 80 year old grandmothers in airports, and let 18-45 year old Muslim male non citizens breeze through, ignoring that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers were of that demographic.
On the other end, the "big brother" and "law enforcement establishment" types are using this crisis, this TRAGEDY, the deaths of thousands of innocents, as a way to gain more power to intrude than the "Drug War" ever could have justified...
The lessons we need to learn from this is:
1. Take foreign countries and groups making threats against the USA SERIOUSLY (China is next). 9/11 happened because we have been FAR too complacent about Islamic terrorism for too long.
2. The "1984" crowd will exploit ANY crisis to make bad laws that will haunt us far longer than the name Osama Bin Laden.
"You know that in Europe banks have to report cash transactions over a certain size, and other "suspicous activities" to law enforcement? Europe already has that sort of "monitoring" in place to stop money laundering."
This has been done in the USA for years. IIRC, any cash withdrawal of $10K requires you to fill out a form that goes to the Feds... And I think the Patriot act LOWERS this limit...
It seems to me what civil liberty the so-called "Drug War" hasn't destroyed this open-ended, never to be resolved "War on Terrorism" will finish off for good...
The government is good, it is god
Report your family's crimes.
The State is all powerful
Report your friend's crimes.
Resistance is Futile
Report your neighbor's crimes.
Privacy is UNAMERICAN
Pay no attention to the face scanning spy cameras in your neighborhood.
Open source is TERRORISM
Your crimes won't need to be reported. The SWAT team is already on the way.
"Assuming this case isn't dismissed, my bet is the court says you have the right to domestic travel anywhere you like - by car or on foot."
Which is just like the court's asinine support of the FCC's censorship of broadcasting... It's only "free speech" if it's on 18th Century technology.
Expect that they wouldn't even hold up your right to not show your "papers" to drive a car, you do, you know...
Yep, we aren't far away from barbed wire and machine gun toting goosesteppers demanding to see our "papers" at every state border...
If we have to become what the Mohammedian fundamentalist states are (in terms of lack of personal sovergnity) to defeat them, WHAT IS THE POINT?
Unlike World War II and other times where we have temporarily suspended civil liberties, this "war" does not have a definable enemy, nor a definable "condition of victory".
Nope, we've just set the police/big brother complex loose in an infinate, open ended, perpetual "drug war" that will defeat nothing except the Constitution.
The most amazing thing isn't the fact that our Foudners created a system over 200 years ago that is still funtional today. No, it's the fact that the biggest PROBLEM with our government today is that it won't ABIDE BY IT...
Of AOLTW to "allow" their customers to do what the Supreme Court (Betamax case) has ruled they have every RIGHT to do...
Do we now have to go BEG megacorps for our Constitutional rights?
"OR, don't have an affair! be honest! if you are so conserned about being caught doing something wrong... either don't do it... or take extra good care and not getting caught. Don't ask the govm't to cover your tracks for you."
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE wants to live in a society with perfect law enforcement.
It's not the government in this case COVERING your tracks for you, it's the government allowing corporations rights that IT DOES NOT HAVE TO GRANT under the Constitution...
The FCC is a GOVERNMENT body. It has no right to "make law" to do this.
But this is what you get when you have a government used to living outside the law (Constitution). The 10th Amendment would seemingly preclude the EXISTANCE of the FCC...
Here's how I opt out... I don't HAVE a landline. I have a cell phone, and a broadband connections (cable). That's it.
Until cell phones become 24/7 unlimited flat rate, I don't see the FCC being able to get away with allowing this there.
"Russian spacecraft run linux on easy bake ovens.
Ok, I made that up."
That must mean the Mir ran a pirated copy of Windows `95... Or maybe 3.1 (yecch!!!).
Those were the two most unstable OS's ever...
And don't forget, if you want to carry passengers in your car, you have to buy more licenses ;)
"The next great world power is going to be China."
Through brute force only. China ignores IP laws for it's own convienence, not to foster innovation and opportunity.
China lacks political freedom that is necessary to foster invention. There is a reason why communist countries have to put up walls to keep their people in, after all...
Ultimately, though, the Chinese system will fail just like the soviet one did, once the people become advanced enough to crave freedom. It's just taking longer because China has MILLENIA of cultural acceptance of autocracy to overcome.
"I wonder how the system will have to change to be effective again? Or perhaps some patents will just have to be not granted because they are obvious, or just plain stupid."
THAT would solve a lot of the problem. Indeed, if it became harder to get a patent (because they would require mandatory review, and maybe even require a public comment period for prior art), 90% of this abuse would cease.
The other major reform needed to copyright and patent is to require mandatory, nondiscriminatory licensing. Meaning, that if it's licensed to SOMEONE, it has to be available to be licenced to anyone, under similar terms.
What roils my stomach is how the RIAA got CARP approved, while running right out and signing deals with Yahoo! and others that is discrimanatory against small webcasters. IE, CARP's high rates only apply to those too small to have the weight to negotiate better.
That is not free enterprise or capitalism. That is monopolistic command and control economy, don't let the corporatist "Capitalist" rhetoric fool you.
"The only winners in these spurious suits are the lawyers.
Note similar detrimental effects on healthcare.
So we need reform. The real question: what political candidates have the required fortitude?
Daresay the political landscape of the US is not promising..."
With one of the two major parties (Democrats) in league with the trial lawyers (who LOVE things like this), and the other (Republicans) in bed with the corporations (who also LOVE this), there is not much chance of reform.
Such abuse of the US patent system is going to continue until tough civil and criminal penalties (how bout fraud and raceteering?) are enacted to discourage this.
Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.
Left as it is, the US patent system is going to hurt innovation, DISCOURAGE invention, and make our economy fall behind.
The next great world power is going to be a country that has less stringent IP laws, and a reasonable patent system, one that encourages invention and improvement of invention. Not one like ours that has basically become a corporate blackmail and extortion tool.
Do this shit to the audience, and I think even Joe Sheepizen will turn it off.
This crosses the line. I'm pissed enough at seeing WNBA scores take up 1/4th the screen during the ALL STAR GAME... AS if anyone not a lesbian cares about the WNBA...
Mod me down for extreme non PC-ness (which I wear as a badge of honor), but isn't the point of such obnoxious marketing to FORCE expose us to that WHICH WE DON'T WANT?!
Thank God I don't watch much TV. Enterprise ans sports programing is it.
CRIMINAL penalties for submitting stupid, overbroad patents? And what the hell drugs are the on at the USPTO? Do these guys get paid only on the basis of how many of these thigs they accept?
The US patent system has gone far beyond what was put in the Constitution. It was meant to protect INVENTORS from unethical corporations, not corporations against inventions...
"If the cute doesn't open, the crater he makes will be the same size if jumps from 25 miles or 10,000 feet. That's how terminal velocity works. Sure he'll break Mach 1 in the thin air aloft, but as he gets to into progressivly thicker air he'll be slowed to the same 55 m/s as any other skydiver. As long as he doesn't tuck into a ball or go head first, that is."
;)
Or he will accelerate 32'/second/second until he reaches 160'/second for us non metric Americans