I heard LA doesn't have anything worthwhile for mass transit either.
You heard wrong. Today I bicycled (I could have taken the bus, but I prefer to ride) up to the Red Line station at Hollywood and Vine and took the Red Line to 7th and Metro, where I picked up the Blue Line south; picked up the Green Line where it connects and took it to the Redondo Beach terminus. From there it was an easy (flat) ~7 mile bike ride to my office. Going home was almost the reverse, except I took the Red Line to Vermont and Wilshire and walked a block to my old law school, where I'm auditing a patent law course. After class I walked the block back to the Vermont/Wilshire stop and caught the 720 express bus (one of those big jointed double-bus things), which dropped me off about two blocks from my townhouse (I live just north of LACMA West). All of that public transit use was covered under a $3 Metro "day pass."
When I go down to spend weekends with my girlfriend in Orange County, I take the Red Line to Union Station ($1.25) and spend another $4.75 for an adult one-way ticket down to Laguna Niguel / Mission Viejo station; from there it's a nice hilly workout 5 mile bike ride to her house (and there's racks to store bikes on the MetroLink trains; you have to hold your bike on the Metro (not MetroLink) subway trains, and the buses have folding racks on the front that hold two bikes per bus).
For the record, I have a car (German, sports, likes to overheat in traffic, has to tip-toe through half the intersections around here or it'll bottom out, but great fun out in the twisties or anywhere where it can actually be *driven*), a beater of an old SUV, and a motorcycle. But for 80% of my Los Angeles life, a bike and/or public transportation can get me around. And I can even study or catch up on email (Treo) or etc. on the trains.
+1 here. My last console was an original Nintendo (we started with the Atari 2600, and my younger brother had an NEC TurboGrafx16), and I've basically sat out the last decade+ of console development. And PC development, kinda (Mac user; I have Quake 2 and StarCraft on my PowerBook;). I picked up a second-hand GameCube recently to get (re?)acquainted with (relatively) modern console gaming; you know, more than a four-way directional controller, an A and B button, Select and Start... I think the Revolution buzz was what rekindled it for me. Now, I need old-school SMB and Metroid and Zelda in addition to the new-fangled versions of those... (Metroid Prime still floors me.)
While I could have found a public payphone, all my phone numbers are stored in my mobile & PDA and I actually remember very few of them. I could speak to people, after somehow getting their numbers, but they could not call me back. All the usual channels that are normally avalable to me to get information about a delay were unavailable to me - no web access or even SMS messages to friends with access. You just have to stand in a queue like a sheep.
I've heard the same complaints... From (pro bono) clients who were in prison.
As customers have bought a DVD, part of their fair use rights include space-shifting - moving the film from the DVD to another device.
Cite for that? In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 80 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999), space shifting was held to be permissible because it was within the ambit of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, codified at 17 U.S.C. 1008 &c.
Since there is no such carve-out for motion picture works, the blanket exclusivity of 106(1) applies, and reproduction is infringement.
I may be wrong on this one, but perhaps Circuit City has purchased a license to the CSS keys, that would allow them to decrypt and re-encrypt DVD's without "circumventing" the copy protection
Possibly. I'm not familiar with the terms of the CSS licensing agreement, but I'd expect that this type of activity would be outside of it, however.
Too, there's still 17 USC 106(1) to contend with, which leaves the right of reproduction exclusively in the hands of the copyright owner. The main feature of a movie DVD isn't software, it's a "motion picture work fixed in a copy by a method that permits it to be perceived with the aid of a machine or device" (all copyright terms of art), so the 117 carve-out doesn't apply. You can argue fair use, but since there's a market for iPod-encoded movies, Circuit City is making a commercial use of the work, they're copying the work in its entirety, and we're talking about creative (insofar as copyright is concerned) works with strong copyright protection, I would not expect fair use to be a viable defense.
CSS encryption isn't remotely effective at controlling access to films.
Spurious argument, legally. It's already been tried and defeated. See, e.g., Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 346 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
Show me a passage in any lawbook that equates copyright infringement with theft.
Chapter IIIa of Prosecuting Intellectual Property Crimes (my copy is in dead-tree form, but it's also available online: http://www.cybercrime.gov/ipmanual.htm), by David Goldstone: "the criminalization of large-scale copying even in the absence of economic motivation by the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, Pub. L. No. 105-147, 111 Stat. 2678 (1997). . .
Also, in many jurisdictions copyright infringement is a tort, not a crime.
In the U.S., all copyright cases are Federal, and controlled by the United States Code and stare decisis in the Federal District and Circuit courts, and the Supreme Court. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html#301 17 USC 301. Under the United States Code, copyright infringement can be (depending on the factual circumstances present) either civil or http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506 criminal (17 USC 506).
Many extra-territorial jurisdictions treat, or can treat, (c) infringement as criminal.
I saw something in my news clipping service about a recent -- last week -- India conviction and six month jail sentence for (c) infringement, but can't find it on news.google.com.
adding a provision that made web services considered distribution
The GPL depends on copyright to have any teeth whatsoever. It's a document that modifies the statutorily-created exclusive rights (17 USC 106). I've done a fair amount of research and briefing on what constitutes distribution in an online context (most notably, New York Times v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Frena, 839 F.Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fl. 1993), Agee v. Paramount Communications, Inc., 59 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 1995)).
I'm pretty comfortable in saying that making available a web service is not, and cannot be construed as under current copyright law, a distribution. A public performance, perhaps. An implicit invitation to create a derivative work, perhaps. But it is not a distribution.
We use e/pop http://www.wiredred.com/ at the law firm where I work (I'm not in IT, my only exposure is to the client). It's about as basic as you can get, and even senior partners can operate it (we have a few that weren't even on email until 2-3 years ago). No other connection with the software, just use it and know that it's 'good enough' for us.
By comparison, every time I get into an argument with a law-geek and they play the "but that word doesn't mean the same legally as it does in English" card, I just want to serve up some serious hurting.
The 'problem,' as I see it, is that the law demands exactingly precise use of language. (I've personally witnessed multi-million dollar litigation over the position of a comma, because it changed the meaning of a sentence.) The legal use of language tends to be unerringly precise -- as precise as, say, C demands you to be. Most English speakers use English more fluidly; think "Perl," to continue my programming language analogy.
If you can give me a term (or terms) that you've encountered that has a 'different' legal meaning than it does in common conversational English usage, I could speak more intelligently to this point. I suspect, however, that an analysis of the true definition and etymology (check with Black's Law Dictionary -- 6th Edition if you can find it, though even the 8th has merit -- and the Oxford English Dictionary) will reveal that the legal usage is the proper usage, at least historically. (As to why legal terminology doesn't change to reflect common usage -- I'd guess stare decisis; it's not uncommon to cite to legal opinions or treatises that are a hundred years old or more; the words have to have the same (legal, not conversational) meaning today as they did then, or the whole mess gets way, way too confusing.
. . . [T]he simple truth is that I can not get enough people together long enough to play this game. Same holds for D&D and all the others. Hell we have trouble getting three hours together for a poker game . . .
And yet golf is still very popular, which requires (generally) getting you and three of your friends / colleagues / business prospects / etc. out on the fairways for 5-6 hours, plus lunch, plus beer, plus time on the driving range, plus...:)
(Yes, I'm a geek, read/., and play golf. There's actually a lot of us. And we walk, rather than use a cart. The horror!:) )
[I]f they hadn't contracted the shuttle out to the lowest bidder in the first place, we might have better craft.
The Space Shuttle was designed for a lifespan of 5-10 years (one week in orbit, two weeks to prep for the next stint aloft; 100 missions), and started flying in the early 80s. Do the math. True, the shuttle fleet hasn't performed half the missions it was 'supposed' to fly, but any mechanic can tell you, age can take as much of a toll on systems as mileage does. The Space Shuttle should have been phased out in the early 90s, but guess what... Instead, we have 1970s designs crawling out to launch pads on 4 decade old hardware...
I would expect the 11th Amendment's sovereign immunity would apply to the state of West Virginia itself. The individual(s) who setup the lab, though, are up a certain creek.
Facts and figures cannot themselves be protected by copyright (though the selection and presentation of them can, in a very limited form). That was established pretty unambiguously in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
There may be some protection under the 'hot news' doctrine (International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=248&invol=215 ), but I'm pretty sure modern courts would follow the reasoning of the 2nd Circuit (though not binding on non-2nd Circuit courts, unlike the Supreme Court opinions cited above, which are binding on all U.S. courts) in National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997) http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/105_F3d _841.htm...
Except there's (a) statutory damages available, which specify minimum damages amounts per infringement (17 USC 504). Also, if the RIAA proves their case (to the applicable civil burden of proof, "preponderance of the evidence" -- e.g., something was 51% more likely to have been A vs. B) and the jury disregards the facts and acts on empathy, the RIAA can always move for a judgment non obstante verdicto.
Well, to be relevant, a piece of evidence has to have (at least) the slighest tendency to make something more or less likely to be true. I'd say the maps pin-pointing the Target stores makes it at least slightly more likely that this guy was pulling off this scam that affected Target stores...
Also, it doesn't show "intend" [sic]. If anything, it would show a "common plan or scheme," but since that's only applicable to character evidence, it's immaterial here.
During the time of Charles Dickens, there were no copyright laws for books in the USA.
An incorrect (or, at best, incomplete) statement. Copyright has always been a part of U.S. law; it's specically provided for in the Constitution (Art. I, Sect. 8, Cl. 8), and one of the first acts of the first Congress was to codify copyright protections. Books were the first things to be granted express copyright protection; indeed, 'writings' of 'authors' is all that's expressly protected under the Constitution's clause; everything else (software, music, movies, etc) has been interpreted in some way to be the 'writing' of an 'author.'
America did not always recognize foreign copyrights, however, hence the treatment given to Dickens' work, etc. That changed with the adoption of the 1909 Act, which did afford foreign copyright holders the same protections U.S. copyright holders benefitted from.
So if a tech-unsavy person is uploading while downloading as part of the protocol, s/he is likely not intending to infringe copyright in the uploading, and therefore likely not guilty of an infringement.
From Playboy Enterprises v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla. 1993):
There is irrefutable evidence of direct copyright infringement in this case. It does not matter that Defendant Frena may have been unaware of the copyright infringement. Intent to infringe is not needed to find copyright infringement. Intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement; rather, innocence is significant to a trial court when it fixes statutory damages, which is a remedy equitable in nature. See D.C. Comics Inc. v. Mini Gift Shop, 912 F.2d 29 (2d Cir. 1990). (Emphasis added.)
I hope they keep up and tell the RIAA where they can shove their lawsuit. All it will take is one judge to rule in favor of any one of these single mothers to set a JUDICIAL PRECEDENCE nullifying every other case the RIAA tries to file.
In a word, no. First of all, these are all district court hearings. A district court's decisions are non-binding, even on itself, precedentially. A circuit court decision (an appeal from a district court's holding) may be precedential, but it would be binding precedent only on the district courts in that district -- though perhaps persuasive elsewhere. On the other hand, perhaps not. Only United States Supreme Court decisions are binding on all lower courts, and they hear almost all of their cases by deciding to grant cert, once it's been sought, as an appeal from a circuit court. They seldom do this, unless there's a split between circuits, or a particularly novel legal question they'd like to chew on.
Finally, you're forgetting the one thing every lawyer picks up on his/her way through law school - the ability to distinguish a case. "Your honor, defense counsel makes a compelling argument based on the persuasive authority found in Assrammer v. Prison Punk, from the 2nd Circuit. However, we'd like to respectfully point out that in Assrammer, the physical nature of the confinement was a two-man cell; here, the cells were built for four men, ergo, Assrammer is inapplicable for the following reasons:...
(With apologies to Office Space and the Federal Pound me in the Ass Prison concept, which I shamelessly borrowed in my sleep-deprived stupor.)
We have restrictions on cruel and unusual punishment. Windows isn't unusual, but it certainly is cruel.
Ah, someone doesn't remember their Logic 101. The prohibition is on punishments both cruel and unusual. To be cruel and unusual, Windows would have to be both. Since it's one and not the other, it does not satisfy the logical AND construct, and it's thus a valid punishment.
The Exchange Replacement How-To. LDAP, IMAP, POP3 (if you must), etc., etc. Open tech that works together and scales as high as you can add servers for it to...
Lesson learned, people put a huge premium on the size/shape/appearance of the thing. The Shuffle underscores this.
Or there may be very real, practical considerations that upset the 'bang for the buck' equation. For instance, when I bought an iPod, I wanted something I could wear exercising. The mini fit the bill, as the smallest and lightest then-available iPod. Sure, other iPods had a lot more capacity for not much more money, but they were also a lot bigger and heavier; the mini fit my intended use.
Of course, there was still room for improvement, and when the shuffle came out, I snapped one up. For a 1 hour workout, capacity isn't that big a deal; I Auto Fill it every morning and I'm good to go. The shuffle is also delightfully low maintenance, owing at least partially to the flash storage and the lack of a backlit (or any) screen; I can toss it in a corner and pick it up a week later and it still plays. My mini's battery needs to be recharged if it sits more than a day or two. So for a grab-it-and-go solution the shuffle wins hands-down; what it lacks in capacity and interface it more than gains in transparency (you forget you're wearing it, it's that light and small), lack of worry (at $79, if it gets destroyed it's not that big a deal), etc.
My mom and I both have shuffles and minis and they fit our comparable lifestyles. My brother, who doesn't exercise and wants only to be able to carry a little device for car listening, instead of the huge binders of CDs he used to truck around (especially now that he lives in the city and parks on the curb and had to carry all that weight/bulk in every night or risk losing a window -- though probably not the CD collection, unless the thieve(s) were into obscure, bad death rock and bootleg CD-Rs) has a single high-capacity iPod 4G and is exceedingly happy with it. For him, the capacity/cost ratio is the controlling factor.
Not for me. I'll be getting a nano immediately; I've been bicycle-commuting and wearing my mini on an armband; this will be a nice replacement for that, with all that I love about the shuffle and all I occasionally miss about the mini (the capacity; the shuffle's great at the gym, the mini's better trekking to/from work and on errands).
If you make something truly obscene (either minimum wage or seven figures)
Seven figures is obscene?! How do you figure? At my firm (which is identical to hundreds of firms), if you perform for 8 years and make partner, seven figures is guaranteed your first or second year as a partner. We have several guys in their mid-30s doing just that.
Maybe within the context of programming seven figures is obscene, but not in all professions. (And honestly, if you're good enough to command 7 figures as a programmer, you're probably helming the company or in some capacity setting salaries...)
No court in the world recognizes "copyright infingement" as theft.
Really? You might want to tell that to the L.A. Superior Court; just got this off the wire:
Los Angeles - - Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley announced today that the state has charged Jed Frederick Kolbes, who operated a major Internet hub that facilitated copyright theft online, under California conspiracy and conspiracy to commit grand theft laws. Kolbes today pled guilty to the charges.
Seems they recognize even vicarious copyright infringement as 'theft' in at least one court.
Slashdot Mirror
You heard wrong. Today I bicycled (I could have taken the bus, but I prefer to ride) up to the Red Line station at Hollywood and Vine and took the Red Line to 7th and Metro, where I picked up the Blue Line south; picked up the Green Line where it connects and took it to the Redondo Beach terminus. From there it was an easy (flat) ~7 mile bike ride to my office. Going home was almost the reverse, except I took the Red Line to Vermont and Wilshire and walked a block to my old law school, where I'm auditing a patent law course. After class I walked the block back to the Vermont/Wilshire stop and caught the 720 express bus (one of those big jointed double-bus things), which dropped me off about two blocks from my townhouse (I live just north of LACMA West). All of that public transit use was covered under a $3 Metro "day pass."
When I go down to spend weekends with my girlfriend in Orange County, I take the Red Line to Union Station ($1.25) and spend another $4.75 for an adult one-way ticket down to Laguna Niguel / Mission Viejo station; from there it's a nice hilly workout 5 mile bike ride to her house (and there's racks to store bikes on the MetroLink trains; you have to hold your bike on the Metro (not MetroLink) subway trains, and the buses have folding racks on the front that hold two bikes per bus).
For the record, I have a car (German, sports, likes to overheat in traffic, has to tip-toe through half the intersections around here or it'll bottom out, but great fun out in the twisties or anywhere where it can actually be *driven*), a beater of an old SUV, and a motorcycle. But for 80% of my Los Angeles life, a bike and/or public transportation can get me around. And I can even study or catch up on email (Treo) or etc. on the trains.
+1 here. My last console was an original Nintendo (we started with the Atari 2600, and my younger brother had an NEC TurboGrafx16), and I've basically sat out the last decade+ of console development. And PC development, kinda (Mac user; I have Quake 2 and StarCraft on my PowerBook ;). I picked up a second-hand GameCube recently to get (re?)acquainted with (relatively) modern console gaming; you know, more than a four-way directional controller, an A and B button, Select and Start... I think the Revolution buzz was what rekindled it for me. Now, I need old-school SMB and Metroid and Zelda in addition to the new-fangled versions of those... (Metroid Prime still floors me.)
While I could have found a public payphone, all my phone numbers are stored in my mobile & PDA and I actually remember very few of them. I could speak to people, after somehow getting their numbers, but they could not call me back. All the usual channels that are normally avalable to me to get information about a delay were unavailable to me - no web access or even SMS messages to friends with access. You just have to stand in a queue like a sheep.
I've heard the same complaints... From (pro bono) clients who were in prison.
As customers have bought a DVD, part of their fair use rights include space-shifting - moving the film from the DVD to another device.
Cite for that? In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 80 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999), space shifting was held to be permissible because it was within the ambit of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, codified at 17 U.S.C. 1008 &c.
Since there is no such carve-out for motion picture works, the blanket exclusivity of 106(1) applies, and reproduction is infringement.
I may be wrong on this one, but perhaps Circuit City has purchased a license to the CSS keys, that would allow them to decrypt and re-encrypt DVD's without "circumventing" the copy protection
Possibly. I'm not familiar with the terms of the CSS licensing agreement, but I'd expect that this type of activity would be outside of it, however.
Too, there's still 17 USC 106(1) to contend with, which leaves the right of reproduction exclusively in the hands of the copyright owner. The main feature of a movie DVD isn't software, it's a "motion picture work fixed in a copy by a method that permits it to be perceived with the aid of a machine or device" (all copyright terms of art), so the 117 carve-out doesn't apply. You can argue fair use, but since there's a market for iPod-encoded movies, Circuit City is making a commercial use of the work, they're copying the work in its entirety, and we're talking about creative (insofar as copyright is concerned) works with strong copyright protection, I would not expect fair use to be a viable defense.
I would not want to be Circuit City.
CSS encryption isn't remotely effective at controlling access to films.
Spurious argument, legally. It's already been tried and defeated. See, e.g., Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 346 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
In what way would this violate the DMCA?
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A).
Legally, a corporation is a 'person,' and movies on DVD are almost all protected by copyright.
Show me a passage in any lawbook that equates copyright infringement with theft.
Chapter IIIa of Prosecuting Intellectual Property Crimes (my copy is in dead-tree form, but it's also available online: http://www.cybercrime.gov/ipmanual.htm), by David Goldstone: "the criminalization of large-scale copying even in the absence of economic motivation by the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, Pub. L. No. 105-147, 111 Stat. 2678 (1997). . .
Also, in many jurisdictions copyright infringement is a tort, not a crime.
In the U.S., all copyright cases are Federal, and controlled by the United States Code and stare decisis in the Federal District and Circuit courts, and the Supreme Court. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html#301 17 USC 301. Under the United States Code, copyright infringement can be (depending on the factual circumstances present) either civil or http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506 criminal (17 USC 506).
Many extra-territorial jurisdictions treat, or can treat, (c) infringement as criminal.
U.S.: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/06/28/1699696.h tm
Viet Nam: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php ?num=06SOC080706
New Zealand:http://www.times.co.nz/cms/news/2006/07/ar t100012268.php
China:http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-07/1 6/content_641731.htm
Special Chinese District of Hong Kong:http://www.thestandard.com.hk/weekend_news_de tail.asp?pp_cat=30&art_id=22887&sid=8816949&con_ty pe=3&d_str=20060715
I saw something in my news clipping service about a recent -- last week -- India conviction and six month jail sentence for (c) infringement, but can't find it on news.google.com.
adding a provision that made web services considered distribution
The GPL depends on copyright to have any teeth whatsoever. It's a document that modifies the statutorily-created exclusive rights (17 USC 106). I've done a fair amount of research and briefing on what constitutes distribution in an online context (most notably, New York Times v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001), Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Frena, 839 F.Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fl. 1993), Agee v. Paramount Communications, Inc., 59 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 1995)).
I'm pretty comfortable in saying that making available a web service is not, and cannot be construed as under current copyright law, a distribution. A public performance, perhaps. An implicit invitation to create a derivative work, perhaps. But it is not a distribution.
We use e/pop http://www.wiredred.com/ at the law firm where I work (I'm not in IT, my only exposure is to the client). It's about as basic as you can get, and even senior partners can operate it (we have a few that weren't even on email until 2-3 years ago). No other connection with the software, just use it and know that it's 'good enough' for us.
By comparison, every time I get into an argument with a law-geek and they play the "but that word doesn't mean the same legally as it does in English" card, I just want to serve up some serious hurting.
The 'problem,' as I see it, is that the law demands exactingly precise use of language. (I've personally witnessed multi-million dollar litigation over the position of a comma, because it changed the meaning of a sentence.) The legal use of language tends to be unerringly precise -- as precise as, say, C demands you to be. Most English speakers use English more fluidly; think "Perl," to continue my programming language analogy.
If you can give me a term (or terms) that you've encountered that has a 'different' legal meaning than it does in common conversational English usage, I could speak more intelligently to this point. I suspect, however, that an analysis of the true definition and etymology (check with Black's Law Dictionary -- 6th Edition if you can find it, though even the 8th has merit -- and the Oxford English Dictionary) will reveal that the legal usage is the proper usage, at least historically. (As to why legal terminology doesn't change to reflect common usage -- I'd guess stare decisis; it's not uncommon to cite to legal opinions or treatises that are a hundred years old or more; the words have to have the same (legal, not conversational) meaning today as they did then, or the whole mess gets way, way too confusing.
. . . [T]he simple truth is that I can not get enough people together long enough to play this game. Same holds for D&D and all the others. Hell we have trouble getting three hours together for a poker game . . .
And yet golf is still very popular, which requires (generally) getting you and three of your friends / colleagues / business prospects / etc. out on the fairways for 5-6 hours, plus lunch, plus beer, plus time on the driving range, plus... :)
(Yes, I'm a geek, read /., and play golf. There's actually a lot of us. And we walk, rather than use a cart. The horror! :) )
[I]f they hadn't contracted the shuttle out to the lowest bidder in the first place, we might have better craft.
The Space Shuttle was designed for a lifespan of 5-10 years (one week in orbit, two weeks to prep for the next stint aloft; 100 missions), and started flying in the early 80s. Do the math. True, the shuttle fleet hasn't performed half the missions it was 'supposed' to fly, but any mechanic can tell you, age can take as much of a toll on systems as mileage does. The Space Shuttle should have been phased out in the early 90s, but guess what... Instead, we have 1970s designs crawling out to launch pads on 4 decade old hardware...
I would expect the 11th Amendment's sovereign immunity would apply to the state of West Virginia itself. The individual(s) who setup the lab, though, are up a certain creek.
Facts and figures cannot themselves be protected by copyright (though the selection and presentation of them can, in a very limited form). That was established pretty unambiguously in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?There may be some protection under the 'hot news' doctrine (International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=248&invol=215 ), but I'm pretty sure modern courts would follow the reasoning of the 2nd Circuit (though not binding on non-2nd Circuit courts, unlike the Supreme Court opinions cited above, which are binding on all U.S. courts) in National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997) http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/105_F3d _841.htm ...
In summary, MLB can shove it, IM(ns)HO.
Except there's (a) statutory damages available, which specify minimum damages amounts per infringement (17 USC 504). Also, if the RIAA proves their case (to the applicable civil burden of proof, "preponderance of the evidence" -- e.g., something was 51% more likely to have been A vs. B) and the jury disregards the facts and acts on empathy, the RIAA can always move for a judgment non obstante verdicto.
Well, to be relevant, a piece of evidence has to have (at least) the slighest tendency to make something more or less likely to be true. I'd say the maps pin-pointing the Target stores makes it at least slightly more likely that this guy was pulling off this scam that affected Target stores...
Also, it doesn't show "intend" [sic]. If anything, it would show a "common plan or scheme," but since that's only applicable to character evidence, it's immaterial here.
During the time of Charles Dickens, there were no copyright laws for books in the USA.
An incorrect (or, at best, incomplete) statement. Copyright has always been a part of U.S. law; it's specically provided for in the Constitution (Art. I, Sect. 8, Cl. 8), and one of the first acts of the first Congress was to codify copyright protections. Books were the first things to be granted express copyright protection; indeed, 'writings' of 'authors' is all that's expressly protected under the Constitution's clause; everything else (software, music, movies, etc) has been interpreted in some way to be the 'writing' of an 'author.'
America did not always recognize foreign copyrights, however, hence the treatment given to Dickens' work, etc. That changed with the adoption of the 1909 Act, which did afford foreign copyright holders the same protections U.S. copyright holders benefitted from.
So if a tech-unsavy person is uploading while downloading as part of the protocol, s/he is likely not intending to infringe copyright in the uploading, and therefore likely not guilty of an infringement.
From Playboy Enterprises v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla. 1993):
There is irrefutable evidence of direct copyright infringement in this case. It does not matter that Defendant Frena may have been unaware of the copyright infringement. Intent to infringe is not needed to find copyright infringement. Intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement; rather, innocence is significant to a trial court when it fixes statutory damages, which is a remedy equitable in nature. See D.C. Comics Inc. v. Mini Gift Shop, 912 F.2d 29 (2d Cir. 1990). (Emphasis added.)
I hope they keep up and tell the RIAA where they can shove their lawsuit. All it will take is one judge to rule in favor of any one of these single mothers to set a JUDICIAL PRECEDENCE nullifying every other case the RIAA tries to file.
In a word, no. First of all, these are all district court hearings. A district court's decisions are non-binding, even on itself, precedentially. A circuit court decision (an appeal from a district court's holding) may be precedential, but it would be binding precedent only on the district courts in that district -- though perhaps persuasive elsewhere. On the other hand, perhaps not. Only United States Supreme Court decisions are binding on all lower courts, and they hear almost all of their cases by deciding to grant cert, once it's been sought, as an appeal from a circuit court. They seldom do this, unless there's a split between circuits, or a particularly novel legal question they'd like to chew on. Finally, you're forgetting the one thing every lawyer picks up on his/her way through law school - the ability to distinguish a case. "Your honor, defense counsel makes a compelling argument based on the persuasive authority found in Assrammer v. Prison Punk, from the 2nd Circuit. However, we'd like to respectfully point out that in Assrammer, the physical nature of the confinement was a two-man cell; here, the cells were built for four men, ergo, Assrammer is inapplicable for the following reasons:...
(With apologies to Office Space and the Federal Pound me in the Ass Prison concept, which I shamelessly borrowed in my sleep-deprived stupor.)We have restrictions on cruel and unusual punishment. Windows isn't unusual, but it certainly is cruel.
Ah, someone doesn't remember their Logic 101. The prohibition is on punishments both cruel and unusual. To be cruel and unusual, Windows would have to be both. Since it's one and not the other, it does not satisfy the logical AND construct, and it's thus a valid punishment.
The Exchange Replacement How-To. LDAP, IMAP, POP3 (if you must), etc., etc. Open tech that works together and scales as high as you can add servers for it to...
Lesson learned, people put a huge premium on the size/shape/appearance of the thing. The Shuffle underscores this.
Or there may be very real, practical considerations that upset the 'bang for the buck' equation. For instance, when I bought an iPod, I wanted something I could wear exercising. The mini fit the bill, as the smallest and lightest then-available iPod. Sure, other iPods had a lot more capacity for not much more money, but they were also a lot bigger and heavier; the mini fit my intended use.
Of course, there was still room for improvement, and when the shuffle came out, I snapped one up. For a 1 hour workout, capacity isn't that big a deal; I Auto Fill it every morning and I'm good to go. The shuffle is also delightfully low maintenance, owing at least partially to the flash storage and the lack of a backlit (or any) screen; I can toss it in a corner and pick it up a week later and it still plays. My mini's battery needs to be recharged if it sits more than a day or two. So for a grab-it-and-go solution the shuffle wins hands-down; what it lacks in capacity and interface it more than gains in transparency (you forget you're wearing it, it's that light and small), lack of worry (at $79, if it gets destroyed it's not that big a deal), etc.
My mom and I both have shuffles and minis and they fit our comparable lifestyles. My brother, who doesn't exercise and wants only to be able to carry a little device for car listening, instead of the huge binders of CDs he used to truck around (especially now that he lives in the city and parks on the curb and had to carry all that weight/bulk in every night or risk losing a window -- though probably not the CD collection, unless the thieve(s) were into obscure, bad death rock and bootleg CD-Rs) has a single high-capacity iPod 4G and is exceedingly happy with it. For him, the capacity/cost ratio is the controlling factor.
Not for me. I'll be getting a nano immediately; I've been bicycle-commuting and wearing my mini on an armband; this will be a nice replacement for that, with all that I love about the shuffle and all I occasionally miss about the mini (the capacity; the shuffle's great at the gym, the mini's better trekking to/from work and on errands).
If you make something truly obscene (either minimum wage or seven figures)
Seven figures is obscene?! How do you figure? At my firm (which is identical to hundreds of firms), if you perform for 8 years and make partner, seven figures is guaranteed your first or second year as a partner. We have several guys in their mid-30s doing just that.
Maybe within the context of programming seven figures is obscene, but not in all professions. (And honestly, if you're good enough to command 7 figures as a programmer, you're probably helming the company or in some capacity setting salaries...)
No court in the world recognizes "copyright infingement" as theft.
Really? You might want to tell that to the L.A. Superior Court; just got this off the wire:
Los Angeles - - Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley announced today that the state has charged Jed Frederick Kolbes, who operated a major Internet hub that facilitated copyright theft online, under California conspiracy and conspiracy to commit grand theft laws. Kolbes today pled guilty to the charges.
Seems they recognize even vicarious copyright infringement as 'theft' in at least one court.
Where'd you get your J.D.?