Wade Cook made money by selling overpriced seminars to people trying to get rich quick.
They also tried to do trading for their own account.
They were not very successful.
Wade Cook Financial,
and its wholly-owned subsidiary the Stock Market Institute of Learning,
are now
bankrupt.
In US civil cases there is a process called discovery, in which each side has to turn over over evidence to the other. Third parties call also be ordered to turn over evidence.
Discovery happens after the case is filed and before the trial. The DMCA added a process whereby an ISP can be ordered by the U.S. District Court clerk's office to turn over names before filing.
Either way, information is turned over before the trial and verdict.
With the new DMCA procedure, the RIAA could file against an unknown "Joe Doe" and then subpoena the Doe's name from the ISP as a regular part of discovery. This would raise costs to both the RIAA and John Doe, who would lose the choice of settling before filing and probably have to hire a lawyer to respond to the court.
This point has already been litigated;
the court ruled that there is no such right.
There used to be a service called
my.mp3.com that used a tool called Beam-It,
to check if a customer had a CD.
If so, they could download an MP3 of it.
MP3.com claimed their service was a form of time-shifting, and therefore legal and fair use under US law.
Universal took MP3.com to court and won.
MP3.com was ordered to pay $250M to Universal.
They could have been ordered to pay much more
($150K per CD, on up to 10K CDs, for a total of $1.5B), but the judge felt that MP3.com had acted more responsibly than other web startups.
An ISP can register under the DMCA
for a Safe Harbor, that would protect them in this case.
Otherwise, if a system under your control makes an unauthorized copy, you are liable for a civil copyright violation. The law explicitly provides a penalty of up to $30K for non-willful copyright violations.
Besides, if the RIAA wants to shut down something like Freenet, they are free to sue just those running Freenet nodes and ignore ISPs, even if the ISPs neglected to register for safe harbor protection.
Civil copyright violation does not require that you be personally aware of the file going across your node. The maximum statutory penalty for non-willful copyright violation is $30K per item. If the violation is found to be willful then the maximum penalty jumps to $150K.
Are copyright violations by a "pass-through" nodes willful? The argument is favor is that by running a Freenet node you have deliberately blinded yourself to predictable violations.
If the the RIAA is looking for "only" $15K from an individual, as seems to be the case in their recent actions, they can ignore this issue.
The DMCA created "Safe Harbor" protection for ISPs. An ISP is not liable for copyright violations by their customers, if the ISP has registered with the government and is unaware of the violations.
Contributions to properly registered charities are tax deductible. For example,
Apache is a 501c3 charity, so it would qualify for a deduction.
Contributions to individuals would be gifts and not qualify. There is no tax deduction for gifts. Large gifts must be reported to the IRS by the giver.
This IPO decision is more in the hands of their venture capital backers
(Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital)
than in the hands of the founders.
A VC wants to cash out at some time, not hold forever.
Once the market for tech IPOs picks up, Google will go public.
The tax on dividends has not been eliminated. It has been reduced to a maximum of 15%. Previously dividends were taxed as ordinary income (max rate 38.6%).
This is exactly wrong. Roughly half of the DMCA is about service providers. It provides them with a Safe Harbor protection for copyright violations committed by their customers. This only applies to ISPs who follow certain rules, starting with paying a (small) fee to register with the government.
Five officers of WorldCom have been indicted and four have pleaded guilty.
The four who pleaded guilty are awaiting sentencing. That will probably not happen until
after the trial of WorldCom's former CFO,
Scott Sullivan. He faces multiple fraud charges that could put him in jail for the rest of his life if convicted.
The DMCA gives the web hosting company (ISP) a limited immunity ("Safe Harbor") from copyright violations committed by its customers. That immunity ends shortly after they get the letter. The DMCA does not add any penalty if an ISP doesn't not take down the site in response to the letter. The ISP just loses its DMCA-provided Safe Harbor.
Without the DMCA Safe Harbor, the ISP could easily lose a civil copyright violation lawsuit for actions committed by its customer.
The DMCA gives ISPs "Safe Harbor" protection from copyright violations by their customers. If an ISP doesn't keep records, then they risk losing their Safe Harbor and could be sued for the copyright violations.
To qualify for a Safe Harbor you must be registered with the copyright office. There is a small fee for this (about $20). I would be surprised if he were registered.
Registration is a required, but not sufficient, condition for Safe Harbor status.
Apple's price is flat from 87, after taking splits into account.
According to
YahooFinance, in April 87 AAPL closed at 79.25. Adjusted for splits and dividends this is equivalent to 19.76 today.
On Friday AAPL, closed at 18.17.
If you look at the quote with a bit more context: "...evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...",
I think it is clear that they are referring to states like North Korea becoming more of a threat by increasing their nuclear weapons capability.
One could argue with the use of the term nation-states. Generally, nation refers to an ethnic group and state refers to a goverment. A nation-state is when the two combine: France is both the land of the French and a goverment. It is an open question if there is or was an Iraqi nation as opposed to a Kurdish nation, etc., and an Iraqi state.
Under US copyright law, the registered copyright owner can ask for up to $150K per work for willful
statutory damages. If the infringment is not willful, they can only get up to $30K per work.
Statutory damages do not require that they show any actual loss or that the infringer made any money. They only need to show that they owned the copyright and that infringment occured.
Also, this would be a civil case so the money is for damages, not fines.
Nissan is building a new plant in Mississippi to build big pickup trucks. The plant isn't in China or Bangladesh. Toyota is going to announce a new truck plant in a couple months for Texas, not Romania. Honda and Mercedes are expanding in Alabama, and Hyundai will build a new plant there. BMW is expanding in South Carolina.
The fact that people sign up for a do-not-call list, does not mean they will not buy when called. The point of calling is to talk people into buying stuff that they were not looking to buy.
They already sell placement on
many sites, including Alta Vista, AOL, Excite.com, go.com, iWon, Terra Lycos, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, InfoSpace (including MetaCrawler and Dogpile). Also Internet Explorer and Netscape's browser.
The
Chairman and CEO of SimDesk, Mr. Waters, is "responsible for the strategic direction and management of SimDesk".
Mr Waters
was founding chairman and CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) and served BFI from 1969 until 1997, when BFI was sold to Allied Waste for $9 billion in cash.
During the 1980s,
BFI pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing.
More details:
In 1987, a group of commercial business customers filed a national class action lawsuit against Houston, Texas-based BFI and Oak Brook, Illinois-based WMI, alleging the highest echelons of both companies had orchestrated a nationwide price-fixing conspiracy. In one important document, the business customers detailed a number of antitrust cases across the nation and the involvement of key corporate officers from both firms. In 1990, both firms agreed to settle the case for a total of $50 million plus $13 million in attorneys fees, while denying any wrongdoing. All evidence in the case, including some "4 million pages of documents," was sealed.
They would seem to have the makings of a worthy successor to Microsoft.
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Wade Cook made money by selling overpriced seminars to people trying to get rich quick. They also tried to do trading for their own account. They were not very successful. Wade Cook Financial, and its wholly-owned subsidiary the Stock Market Institute of Learning, are now bankrupt.
Discovery happens after the case is filed and before the trial. The DMCA added a process whereby an ISP can be ordered by the U.S. District Court clerk's office to turn over names before filing.
Either way, information is turned over before the trial and verdict.
With the new DMCA procedure, the RIAA could file against an unknown "Joe Doe" and then subpoena the Doe's name from the ISP as a regular part of discovery. This would raise costs to both the RIAA and John Doe, who would lose the choice of settling before filing and probably have to hire a lawyer to respond to the court.
There used to be a service called my.mp3.com that used a tool called Beam-It, to check if a customer had a CD. If so, they could download an MP3 of it. MP3.com claimed their service was a form of time-shifting, and therefore legal and fair use under US law.
Universal took MP3.com to court and won. MP3.com was ordered to pay $250M to Universal. They could have been ordered to pay much more ($150K per CD, on up to 10K CDs, for a total of $1.5B), but the judge felt that MP3.com had acted more responsibly than other web startups.
A latent ambiguity [in a contract] will be construed against the drafter if the nondrafter's interpretation is reasonable. (A contract is latently ambiguous if it is reasonably, but not obviously, susceptible of more than one interpretation.)
Since the FSF is the author of the license, an ambiguity would be interpreted against the interests of the FSF and in favor of the alleged violator.
Besides, if the RIAA wants to shut down something like Freenet, they are free to sue just those running Freenet nodes and ignore ISPs, even if the ISPs neglected to register for safe harbor protection.
Are copyright violations by a "pass-through" nodes willful? The argument is favor is that by running a Freenet node you have deliberately blinded yourself to predictable violations. If the the RIAA is looking for "only" $15K from an individual, as seems to be the case in their recent actions, they can ignore this issue.
The DMCA created "Safe Harbor" protection for ISPs. An ISP is not liable for copyright violations by their customers, if the ISP has registered with the government and is unaware of the violations.
Contributions to properly registered charities are tax deductible. For example, Apache is a 501c3 charity, so it would qualify for a deduction. Contributions to individuals would be gifts and not qualify. There is no tax deduction for gifts. Large gifts must be reported to the IRS by the giver.
This IPO decision is more in the hands of their venture capital backers (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital) than in the hands of the founders. A VC wants to cash out at some time, not hold forever. Once the market for tech IPOs picks up, Google will go public.
This is not unique to the bible belt. New York City has required expensive cabaret licenses for dancing. This has been the law for many years.
The tax on dividends has not been eliminated. It has been reduced to a maximum of 15%. Previously dividends were taxed as ordinary income (max rate 38.6%).
This is exactly wrong. Roughly half of the DMCA is about service providers. It provides them with a Safe Harbor protection for copyright violations committed by their customers. This only applies to ISPs who follow certain rules, starting with paying a (small) fee to register with the government.
See here for details.
Without the DMCA Safe Harbor, the ISP could easily lose a civil copyright violation lawsuit for actions committed by its customer.
This scam made the NY Times today: E-Mail Swindle Uses False Report About a Swindle
The DMCA gives ISPs "Safe Harbor" protection from copyright violations by their customers. If an ISP doesn't keep records, then they risk losing their Safe Harbor and could be sued for the copyright violations.
Registration is a required, but not sufficient, condition for Safe Harbor status.
According to YahooFinance, in April 87 AAPL closed at 79.25. Adjusted for splits and dividends this is equivalent to 19.76 today. On Friday AAPL, closed at 18.17.
The WiFi pilot at the Gare du Nord uses prepaid cards. The cheapest card costs 5 euros and provides 20 minutes of access (about US$5.65).
If you look at the quote with a bit more context: "...evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...", I think it is clear that they are referring to states like North Korea becoming more of a threat by increasing their nuclear weapons capability.
One could argue with the use of the term nation-states. Generally, nation refers to an ethnic group and state refers to a goverment. A nation-state is when the two combine: France is both the land of the French and a goverment. It is an open question if there is or was an Iraqi nation as opposed to a Kurdish nation, etc., and an Iraqi state.
Statutory damages do not require that they show any actual loss or that the infringer made any money. They only need to show that they owned the copyright and that infringment occured.
Also, this would be a civil case so the money is for damages, not fines.
Most likely, these sites are not in Pennsylvania or even in the US. How would Pennsylvania shut down a site outside of the US?
While some auto industry jobs are leaving the US, others are moving into the US.
From Forbes:
The fact that people sign up for a do-not-call list, does not mean they will not buy when called. The point of calling is to talk people into buying stuff that they were not looking to buy.
They already sell placement on many sites, including Alta Vista, AOL, Excite.com, go.com, iWon, Terra Lycos, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, InfoSpace (including MetaCrawler and Dogpile). Also Internet Explorer and Netscape's browser.
The Chairman and CEO of SimDesk, Mr. Waters, is "responsible for the strategic direction and management of SimDesk".
Mr Waters was founding chairman and CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) and served BFI from 1969 until 1997, when BFI was sold to Allied Waste for $9 billion in cash. During the 1980s, BFI pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing. More details:
They would seem to have the makings of a worthy successor to Microsoft.