Four of the Bay Area law school IP student groups (USF, Stanford, Boalt, and Hastings) are putting on a Law & Technology Conference. One of the panels is directly on this issue: Who should be responsible for TLD management and should ICANN be internationalized?
The conference is open to the public. Anyone interested in speaking on this conference (who is qualified, of course), please email me at sbtoeniskoetter ((AT)) usfca.edu . Thanks
Poor IBM, Novell, DaimlerChrystler, etc... Looks like there won't be any money left once the initial claims have been settled for counter-claims and any independant claims like libel, etc..
On that note, I can certainly see why SCO took the gamble it did. The company was going to be bankrupt soon and realized that it had just a very small chance of winning any Linux suit. So if they didn't sue, they would be bankrupt for sure in 2-3 years. If they DID file suit, they at least had a chance they would win (albeit small) and save themselves from bankrupcy.... Under this view of things, they actually didn't take ANY risk since it was inevitable they would have gone under if they hadn't filed suit... Just something to think about (though I still think SCO is SCum)
You might want to check your archaelogy books a little better. What the Turkish govt calls "Troy" was found by the illustrious Heinrich Schliemann, a pseudo-archaelogist. He's the same man who likely made the "mask of agamemnon" himself for a publicity stunt to make Mycenae a big hit. There are many articles about the site commonly known as Troy in archaelogical journals but not many believing that this is the actual site of Troy.
This is a short-sighted and a naive opinion. While I believe most of the original article is FUD and mere political banter (especially the part about "Linux Activists" believing all patent/trademark law should be eradicated), your commentis outrageous.
Trademark, patent, and copyright laws exist to protect the "property" of those who create them. Without these laws there is little in the way of incentive for developing new products, since competitors can merely take your program, re-label it, and release it. A good example is Biotech patents: biotech companies spend millions of dollars every day in R&D. This R&D results in many useful and life-saving devices and drugs. If a competitor can easily take this device/drug and reverse-engineer and re-release/re-package, there is no incentive for the Biotech companies to continue making these drugs/devices.
Here's another example: You're a engineering student who works in his freetime trying to design a great new widget. You spend thousands of dollars and put in every moment of free time on this product. Finally you get it to work and release it to the world. The next day every widget producer has your design and begins creating their own. DO you have any incentive to ever work on a widget ever again?
Don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of F/OSS. But your view of IP law is completly wrong. If you're interested in the basis for IP law or just want to learn more about it, Harvard Law School has a great page with primers for copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret law.
I'm a law student studying in IP so the subject is near and dear to me. I believe in the necessity of IP laws but what is really needed is a balance between IP protection laws and consumer rights. Right now the law is being bent heavily towards strong IP protection and against consumer rights. I'd like to make it a little more fair, but arguments like this make myself and others like the EFF look bad and are just provide more ammo for the content and software industry.
If this is true, it will no doubt have a huge affect on the hardware market since consumers will be forced to upgrade to keep up. Businesses as well will have to upgrade. During the dotcom bust, everyone stopped buying hardware and sales have been down ever since. This could be the swift kick in the ass that the hardware market needs to get back on track.
That being said, I don't really see why the system needs so much in the way of specs. If this is supposed to come out in 2 years, there's going to have to be HUGE leaps in technology and huge drops in price for this to be anywhere near affordable for the average consumer.
Actually I would consider paying for it, if there existed a way for me to pay for the content. BBC programming that is fresh and new is NOT available in the U.s. -- hence no way for me to pay for it. Congrats on automatically assuming that it is possible for me to pay for this content and that I wouldn't pay for it even if I could.
Public TV is a great thing and i'm happy to help support it. I'm assuming that if this plan goes through, UK residents will be able to downlaod by verifying (somehow) that they are residents and pay the tax, and that MAYBE the rest of the world can pay-per-download from the same site.
Will this be availabe to non-UK citizens?
on
BBC to Try TV On Demand
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm a big fan of BBC programming and reguarly download it from the Usenet currently (recent favorites: The Office and The Worst Week of My Life). Because this is based on UK licensing fees, I wonder if it will be available to those of us in the rest of the world? Or perhaps we can pay a small fee to be able to download these episodes as well? This is the way I hope TV is going. My schedule is such that I am in bed before most of the prime time TV is on so the only way to watch it is to download it (or get one of those TiVOs).
Not that i necessarily agree much with the original poster, but you've completly miscast intellectual property law.
Typically (with SOME exceptions turning up now), software is not patentable. It is, however, copyrightable. The reason why those computer people (and the other industries whose products fall under IP) deserve extra special protection is because they produce commercial products. To use standard property theory, they've mixed their labor with something tangible, hence procuring ownership over that thing. We protect their right to do so because if everyone can wantonly copy, then there is no incentive to mix their labor with something and produce it.
All your examples involve someone to whom the thing being patented is only collateral to their job. Their primary purpose is to sort parts, flip burgers, deliver newspapers, or play football. Their company may have the right to patent certain methods or use copyright and trademark to protect their IP, but the individuals do not.
Realistically, too, the methods you've listed above for the individual workers will likely be property of their employer under a standard contract provision....
I love the idea here -- I used to tape concerts on my DAT with stealth mics all the time, but there's nothing like a good soundboard. The problem I see, as many others are sure to comment on, is that the memory stick is only 128 MB which means MP3 quality can't be that great. I think a 256 MB keydrive would be much better.
Also the other problem is that no major record labels are going to allow their artists to do this, so it will remain a niche market. Record labels used to, and still do, believe that "bootleg" live recordings hurt record sales. This is completly erroneous because anyone who goes to the trouble of finding a live show is a big enough fan of a particular band that they already own some or all of their records. Hence, no loss of revenue.
There's also a control factor. Many artists are perfectionists and don't want to release any recordings where they sound less than perfect.
It's possible the newspaper could try to sue for some sort of declaratory judgment. They may not have standing to sue if DieBold doesn't sue them however....
These kinds of busts have been regular occurrances in the scene since at least '92. Everyone remembers the big BBS busts of '92-93, the RaZoR 1911 busts, the DoD and PWA busts... They're just part of life for people who choose to participate in that lifestyle.
But the plain fact is that they have never and probably will never be that effective. Look at warez (of all kinds) distribution now as compared to '92 --> it's exploded in size & scope. So in reality these serve not to actually protect anybody's intellectual property rights, but to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who might be thinking of taking a leadership role in one of these groups. Also they look really good in the media to scare high school and college students from even downloading warez in the first place... But overall, just an ineffective media sideshow.
I agree with the issues you raise but are there any practicable alternatives in an capitalist society? With no economic incentive to pump billions yearly into R&D, no drugs will be developed. What's your solution? Copyright will NOT work here. Reverse engineering a drug is easy so there needs to be protection.
Unless you want to live in a state-controlled truly socialist society, I don't see an alternative.
I know this is merely flamebait, but its so idiotic that i had to respond. As a law student interested in IP, I normally do not have the best impression of patents -- but mainly because of their recent use in software and method patenting. But there ARE good patents. Perhaps the best examples are pharmaceuticals. The drug companies put millions of dollars into R&D EVERY DAY to develop drugs that really help people. Without the protection of a patent system which guarantees they can profit from it either by direct sales or by licensing, NO drug company is going to make these products.
On the other hand many types of patents and individual patent applications are clearly not even worth the paper they are printed on and the USPTO has some major issues. But don't blast the entire system for the faults of only a niche part of the overall system.
If you really want to find the best lawyer, check out Martindale-Hubble and search for an AV-rated lawyer in your area. These are rated as top of their profession.
Of course if you're jsut trying to get out of a DUI, any old lawyer will do. But if you want an attorney for a civil case or a great criminal lawyer, it really is the best place to go.
Also a great place for law students to find firms who might need externs or summer associates. We all use this service.
Does this remind anyone of the Seinfield episode where Elaine offends a Doctor, and then every single other Doctor knows so she can't find a doc to treat her anywhere?
Now picture that on a grand scale if you happen to piss off the govt somehow!
What i'm getting tired of is that they're all tiny little slivers of plot, but you have to sit through an intro, review of what the last episode was about and previews of the next episode. This is like HALF the total time of each episode... Someone needs to take all these, remove all the intros, reviews, and previews, and make a single 1 hour episode out of the entire first season... Am I the only one who feels this way? I stopped downloading the episodes after Season 1 Ep 06 because of this.
The Tech-Saavy among us who are avid slashdot readers might still want this. Realistically, 4 gb vs. 15gb is no big deal unless you're using it as an actual Hard Drive and not a music player. I want one because the regular iPod is a bit too big for my tastes -- the small size makes all the difference for me.
Checked the new SF Apple Store on my way home from school yesterday and asked about iPod mini; was told they haven't had one in quite some time and they won't be expecting one for "weeks."
Me: So is there day I should come back? Do you know which day you'll be getting more?
Employee: We have no idea when we'll be getting more. They said "a couple of weeks" and that was a couple of weeks ago. We're still saying "weeks"
I see they're selling for $50-100 above retail on Craigslist. Go capitalism.
Not Lessig's Intent
on
Free Culture
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· Score: 2, Insightful
From what I gather from reading Lessig's previous book, his webpage, EFF webpage, and my personal experience as a law student studying IP and CyberLaw, you are getting two different points mixed up:
(1) EFF & Lessig argue that filesharing and related technology is so prevailing that the old copyright regime no longer works, and it really needs to "get with the times."
(2) They also argue that the copyright laws enacted in the last 20 years (but espceially in the last 8 years) significantly crush creativity.
Your problem is that you mushed these two concepts together. The filesharing people are not the victims the so-called "Lessig crowd" are talking about necessarily, but instead he's talking about artists and authors.
Good luck finding a Laptop with linux. When I started law school 8 months ago, I search EVERYWHERE for a major computer manufacturer which sold laptops pre-loaded with linux, but couldn't find anything. Not even IBM!
Law students, always looking to network, love this social networking. At my school we have network and power hookups for every single seat, so a good 80%+ of students bring laptops to class. Because of the tiered seating and because I sit in back, i can usually see what my fellow students are viewing on their screen. You would be surprised how often I see them on social networking sites!
Our career services office is constantly telling us to network since this is where many of us will ultimately find externships and our post-grad jobs. I'm sure they'd be happy to see their students using these services...
Doesn't surprise me that much. Visited Finland (also from California) in January of this year and, while I think the Finnish people are great, their customer services is horrible and nobody seems to want to take responsability for anything. One thing you really start to take for granted if you've never been out of the U.S. is customer service. Sure is nice not to have to yell to get what you want!
Plug this search into google and you'll see what he's so mad about: "mark maughan brown CPA" .
Basically he was disciplined by the California Board of Accountancy, and that is the first two hits to show up. I don't see anything wrong with this; he did something wrong and now he's complaining because his dirty laundry gets aired before his firm's webpage....
Still waiting for some of the larger electronic music labels to do this. There are a couple right now with limited DRM-less mP3's for sale, but it is still only a small amount of their catalog.
What i'm really looking forward to is some of these labels putting up their ENTIRE backcatalogs, including tracks which have never before seen the light of day.
Slashdot Mirror
Details on the conference are available at:
http://slata.stanford.edu/Conference05/
The conference is open to the public. Anyone interested in speaking on this conference (who is qualified, of course), please email me at sbtoeniskoetter ((AT)) usfca.edu . Thanks
On that note, I can certainly see why SCO took the gamble it did. The company was going to be bankrupt soon and realized that it had just a very small chance of winning any Linux suit. So if they didn't sue, they would be bankrupt for sure in 2-3 years. If they DID file suit, they at least had a chance they would win (albeit small) and save themselves from bankrupcy.... Under this view of things, they actually didn't take ANY risk since it was inevitable they would have gone under if they hadn't filed suit... Just something to think about (though I still think SCO is SCum)
You might want to check your archaelogy books a little better. What the Turkish govt calls "Troy" was found by the illustrious Heinrich Schliemann, a pseudo-archaelogist. He's the same man who likely made the "mask of agamemnon" himself for a publicity stunt to make Mycenae a big hit. There are many articles about the site commonly known as Troy in archaelogical journals but not many believing that this is the actual site of Troy.
Trademark, patent, and copyright laws exist to protect the "property" of those who create them. Without these laws there is little in the way of incentive for developing new products, since competitors can merely take your program, re-label it, and release it. A good example is Biotech patents: biotech companies spend millions of dollars every day in R&D. This R&D results in many useful and life-saving devices and drugs. If a competitor can easily take this device/drug and reverse-engineer and re-release/re-package, there is no incentive for the Biotech companies to continue making these drugs/devices.
Here's another example: You're a engineering student who works in his freetime trying to design a great new widget. You spend thousands of dollars and put in every moment of free time on this product. Finally you get it to work and release it to the world. The next day every widget producer has your design and begins creating their own. DO you have any incentive to ever work on a widget ever again?
Don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of F/OSS. But your view of IP law is completly wrong. If you're interested in the basis for IP law or just want to learn more about it, Harvard Law School has a great page with primers for copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret law.
I'm a law student studying in IP so the subject is near and dear to me. I believe in the necessity of IP laws but what is really needed is a balance between IP protection laws and consumer rights. Right now the law is being bent heavily towards strong IP protection and against consumer rights. I'd like to make it a little more fair, but arguments like this make myself and others like the EFF look bad and are just provide more ammo for the content and software industry.
That being said, I don't really see why the system needs so much in the way of specs. If this is supposed to come out in 2 years, there's going to have to be HUGE leaps in technology and huge drops in price for this to be anywhere near affordable for the average consumer.
Public TV is a great thing and i'm happy to help support it. I'm assuming that if this plan goes through, UK residents will be able to downlaod by verifying (somehow) that they are residents and pay the tax, and that MAYBE the rest of the world can pay-per-download from the same site.
I'm a big fan of BBC programming and reguarly download it from the Usenet currently (recent favorites: The Office and The Worst Week of My Life). Because this is based on UK licensing fees, I wonder if it will be available to those of us in the rest of the world? Or perhaps we can pay a small fee to be able to download these episodes as well? This is the way I hope TV is going. My schedule is such that I am in bed before most of the prime time TV is on so the only way to watch it is to download it (or get one of those TiVOs).
Typically (with SOME exceptions turning up now), software is not patentable. It is, however, copyrightable. The reason why those computer people (and the other industries whose products fall under IP) deserve extra special protection is because they produce commercial products. To use standard property theory, they've mixed their labor with something tangible, hence procuring ownership over that thing. We protect their right to do so because if everyone can wantonly copy, then there is no incentive to mix their labor with something and produce it.
All your examples involve someone to whom the thing being patented is only collateral to their job. Their primary purpose is to sort parts, flip burgers, deliver newspapers, or play football. Their company may have the right to patent certain methods or use copyright and trademark to protect their IP, but the individuals do not.
Realistically, too, the methods you've listed above for the individual workers will likely be property of their employer under a standard contract provision....
Also the other problem is that no major record labels are going to allow their artists to do this, so it will remain a niche market. Record labels used to, and still do, believe that "bootleg" live recordings hurt record sales. This is completly erroneous because anyone who goes to the trouble of finding a live show is a big enough fan of a particular band that they already own some or all of their records. Hence, no loss of revenue.
There's also a control factor. Many artists are perfectionists and don't want to release any recordings where they sound less than perfect.
It's possible the newspaper could try to sue for some sort of declaratory judgment. They may not have standing to sue if DieBold doesn't sue them however....
IP also refers to Antitrust but that tends to go along with patents, copyrights, and trademarks.
But the plain fact is that they have never and probably will never be that effective. Look at warez (of all kinds) distribution now as compared to '92 --> it's exploded in size & scope. So in reality these serve not to actually protect anybody's intellectual property rights, but to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who might be thinking of taking a leadership role in one of these groups. Also they look really good in the media to scare high school and college students from even downloading warez in the first place... But overall, just an ineffective media sideshow.
Unless you want to live in a state-controlled truly socialist society, I don't see an alternative.
On the other hand many types of patents and individual patent applications are clearly not even worth the paper they are printed on and the USPTO has some major issues. But don't blast the entire system for the faults of only a niche part of the overall system.
Of course if you're jsut trying to get out of a DUI, any old lawyer will do. But if you want an attorney for a civil case or a great criminal lawyer, it really is the best place to go.
Also a great place for law students to find firms who might need externs or summer associates. We all use this service.
Now picture that on a grand scale if you happen to piss off the govt somehow!
What i'm getting tired of is that they're all tiny little slivers of plot, but you have to sit through an intro, review of what the last episode was about and previews of the next episode. This is like HALF the total time of each episode... Someone needs to take all these, remove all the intros, reviews, and previews, and make a single 1 hour episode out of the entire first season... Am I the only one who feels this way? I stopped downloading the episodes after Season 1 Ep 06 because of this.
The Tech-Saavy among us who are avid slashdot readers might still want this. Realistically, 4 gb vs. 15gb is no big deal unless you're using it as an actual Hard Drive and not a music player. I want one because the regular iPod is a bit too big for my tastes -- the small size makes all the difference for me.
Me: So is there day I should come back? Do you know which day you'll be getting more?
Employee: We have no idea when we'll be getting more. They said "a couple of weeks" and that was a couple of weeks ago. We're still saying "weeks"
I see they're selling for $50-100 above retail on Craigslist. Go capitalism.
(1) EFF & Lessig argue that filesharing and related technology is so prevailing that the old copyright regime no longer works, and it really needs to "get with the times."
(2) They also argue that the copyright laws enacted in the last 20 years (but espceially in the last 8 years) significantly crush creativity.
Your problem is that you mushed these two concepts together. The filesharing people are not the victims the so-called "Lessig crowd" are talking about necessarily, but instead he's talking about artists and authors.
Good luck finding a Laptop with linux. When I started law school 8 months ago, I search EVERYWHERE for a major computer manufacturer which sold laptops pre-loaded with linux, but couldn't find anything. Not even IBM!
Law students, always looking to network, love this social networking. At my school we have network and power hookups for every single seat, so a good 80%+ of students bring laptops to class. Because of the tiered seating and because I sit in back, i can usually see what my fellow students are viewing on their screen. You would be surprised how often I see them on social networking sites!
Our career services office is constantly telling us to network since this is where many of us will ultimately find externships and our post-grad jobs. I'm sure they'd be happy to see their students using these services...
Doesn't surprise me that much. Visited Finland (also from California) in January of this year and, while I think the Finnish people are great, their customer services is horrible and nobody seems to want to take responsability for anything. One thing you really start to take for granted if you've never been out of the U.S. is customer service. Sure is nice not to have to yell to get what you want!
Plug this search into google and you'll see what he's so mad about: "mark maughan brown CPA" .
Basically he was disciplined by the California Board of Accountancy, and that is the first two hits to show up. I don't see anything wrong with this; he did something wrong and now he's complaining because his dirty laundry gets aired before his firm's webpage....
What i'm really looking forward to is some of these labels putting up their ENTIRE backcatalogs, including tracks which have never before seen the light of day.