It's true though, radio stations do have to pay for the music they play. And not just for the recording either. They also have to license the words of the song and the notes of the music...
And they probably pay a lot more than $2000 a year...
Actually, you have it reversed. Peter Veeck did not write the codes. He published the codes that SBCCI wrote.
SBCCI threatened to sue him for publishing the codes. Peter Veeck sued first for a declaratory judgment in a Texas federal court. He probably did this to eliminate the risk that they would drag him to federal court in Alabama (their location).
Here is a summary...
on
Open Source Law
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There is this standards setting organization, probably made up of member companies in an industry.
The standards setting organization is in the business of creating "model" codes. This is common. A better known example would be the Model Penal Code which is a set of proposed criminal laws created by the American Law Institute... in this case, the group was creating model codes for buildings (plumbing, electric, etc.) to be enacted by cities.
So, you have an organization that creates this work with the intention of it being incorporated into the law. However, they get some revenue by selling copies of the code to interested parties (probably people in the building industry, architects, developers, students). So they assert a copyright in the code that they wrote.
Meanwhile, you have this guy in Texas who is giving people access to the municipal laws in his region. The municipal laws do not actually copy the organization's code, but they incorporate it by reference....
IOW, you need access to the organization's work in order to know what the law is! So the guy gives people access to the code free of charge, and the organization threatens to sue him.
The 5th Circuit said that laws are in the public domain. This also applies to rules that are incorporated by reference into a statute even if the text of the rule is not copied into the statute.
Simply put, people have a right to know what the law is.
If the code does come from a common original source (either SCO, Linux or one of the BSDs), then over years of modifying it, only every third line of code (on average) might remain the same. And the comments would be the most likely part to stay unmodified.
What it will do is give them more arguments when lobbying Congress. "See, we have done all we could. Our businesses will die unless you pass more laws for us." If you read the Morpheus dismissal order, that is exactly what the judge argued for. He basically complained that his hands were tied and that Congress should pass some laws so he can do something about it.
Why have they never mentioned usenet? Because they can't stop usenet file sharing unless they are allowed to cancel files and the isps are forced to abide.
Similarly, they cannot stop p2p unless they are somehow allowed to filter an isps traffic and put filesharers offline without wasting time on due process (which applies only to government action, not RIAA action).
Expect more assaults on the free flow of information. The question is not whether they will succeed under the current paradigm. (They can't.)
The question is whether they can get Congress to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Hopefully they can't.)
more regulation of other kinds of direct marketing...
1) Telemarketing, started with states, now it's federal
2) Spam, see California (other states?)... eventually it will be federal
3) Junk mail, currently self-regulated (Direct Marketing Association)... if they stop regulating themselves, we may see the same kind of last-resort gov't regulation here. Except that the USPS relies on revenue from the vultures.
It would be nice to get those bastards completely out of our lives... but I won't hold my breath.
The upshot? One day, most 'new' media will only be playable on windows, and hence MS will control the consumer market.
What's to prevent a developer from supporting that same technology in Linux?
And what makes you think the media companies would use technology that limits their market to Windows users once they find out that their media is still piratable and pirated?
How is this pro-spam? A defense of inadvertence only makes sense when the penalty is $1,000 per unsolicited email. I don't think it's fair to hold it aganst someone who mistypes an email address.
On the other hand, it is not a meaningful impediment to suing real spammers. All it means is that you have to prove "more likely than not" that it wasn't a mistake. This isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt" we're talking about.
So how do I prove that something wasn't inadvertent? Legally, I believe the burden is on the prosecution, and the bill allows for cases to potentially be tossed if the sending was inadvertent, or the penalties at least greatly reduced.
The bill provides for civil remedies, meaning that the victims can sue. It's true that the plaintiff has the burden, but it's not the same burden as in a criminal case.
In a criminal case, it's "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil case it's "more likely than not."
In other words, you'd have to prove that the spamming was more likely to have been intentional than inadvertent.
Not that hard to do really, especially if you have no previous business with the spammer. Who is going to believe him when he says that he "inadvertently" sent an email with the subject, "$500,000 in 6 months!!!" to 30,000 email addresses?
You must have missed page two, where they mention the FBI knocking on a "Stanford-educated" Pakistani man's door because of books that he purchased on eBay. It's a good thing he had his ducks in a row immigration-wise, and that he was "Stanford-educated" or you can bet they would have thrown him in detention with the rest of em.
They aren't limiting this to sellers who are accused of not shipping. They are applying this to anyone that the government thinks is suspicious. And that is their own choice of words.
Regardless of whether it were libel, it could be defamation.
Defamation (aka slander) only requires telling a single other person.
Libel is an aggravated type of defamation that requires the defendant have used a medium with potential for publishing to a lot of people, like radio or newspapers.
Harassment means you are being harassed. Intel wasn't being harassed.
If the employees were being harassed (though it says he removed them when they asked), then they should have sued along with the company, but they didn't.
Wrong! You didn't read the whole opinion.
It said that such a claim may not be based on the _content_ of the messages. The court took pains to make it clear that you can still sue for spam that overloads machines.
In other words, you can't sue because of what the sender says, only the amount of what he sends.
SCO knows it has no case against users of ANY Linux distro, much less the one that it is distributing itself. By distributing its version of Linux, SCO bound itself to the GPL, and any code that it released (including what it claims was stolen from UnixWare) is now released under the GPL...
Their case against IBM is a contract case, NOT a copyright case.
They have no case against Linux or any Linux users! It's all a PR game.
"Sue our own customers?!?! Oh wait, no, we would never do that, we love our customers."
SCO obviously knows it can't get anywhere except by using propaganda to curry favor.
Associating Linux with:
Communism
Software Piracy
Napster/Illegal copying of music
Smoking Marijuana
It's not funny. It's dishonest. This is the typical modus operandi of someone who lacks not only a sense of humor, but also a sense of reality and of fairness.
The RIAA (and anyone else) can simply point to the Verizon lawsuit as presidence in any future case where they want the names of "pirates".
We will see how long that precedent lasts.
Verizon is appealing the judge's order, and they have good arguments against the constitutionality of the DMCA-supplied subpoena power.
I think their best argument is that the DMCA violates the "case or controversy" requirement of the Constitution. The DMCA's subpoena power is available without a lawsuit or even a claim that there could ever be a lawsuit, thus it is a power that the judicial branch of the government may not have under Article III of the Constitution.
The "case or controversy" requirement is taken pretty seriously by the Supreme Court. And I would hope by the D.C. Court of Appeals as well (which will be hearing this appeal).
Say you have a consumer site you have created where you review cars. General Motors doesn't like your review of its latest gas-gulper...
Not only can they threaten to bring whatever frivolous lawsuits their lawyers can dream up, thus scaring you into taking down the review because you can't afford legal representation. They can also force you to put up their version that says,
"The latest review of our gas gulper posted here was filled with outright lies and was funded by Honda. And the reviewer is on crack."
Now, how is that not going to chill freedom of speech?
Anything that regulates a small website owner is by definition going to have a chilling effect on free speech, since the strength of the small website owner is low cost. Anytime you add regulations, it adds costs. It adds money for lawyers, and mindspace for the website owner, who should be thinking about making a better website, not complying with EU Code #123123889023.
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The "breaking" in breaking and entering does not refer to breaking an object. It refers to breaking the "protective seal" of the dwelling.
If you open an unlocked door to enter a dwelling that you have no right to be in, you are breaking and entering.
Trespassing just means you are on someone else's property without permission. It has nothing to do with whether you are inside a building or not.
It's true though, radio stations do have to pay for the music they play. And not just for the recording either. They also have to license the words of the song and the notes of the music...
And they probably pay a lot more than $2000 a year...
This sucks for commercial-free internet radio.
Actually, you have it reversed. Peter Veeck did not write the codes. He published the codes that SBCCI wrote.
SBCCI threatened to sue him for publishing the codes. Peter Veeck sued first for a declaratory judgment in a Texas federal court. He probably did this to eliminate the risk that they would drag him to federal court in Alabama (their location).
There is this standards setting organization, probably made up of member companies in an industry.
The standards setting organization is in the business of creating "model" codes. This is common. A better known example would be the Model Penal Code which is a set of proposed criminal laws created by the American Law Institute... in this case, the group was creating model codes for buildings (plumbing, electric, etc.) to be enacted by cities.
So, you have an organization that creates this work with the intention of it being incorporated into the law. However, they get some revenue by selling copies of the code to interested parties (probably people in the building industry, architects, developers, students). So they assert a copyright in the code that they wrote.
Meanwhile, you have this guy in Texas who is giving people access to the municipal laws in his region. The municipal laws do not actually copy the organization's code, but they incorporate it by reference....
IOW, you need access to the organization's work in order to know what the law is! So the guy gives people access to the code free of charge, and the organization threatens to sue him.
The 5th Circuit said that laws are in the public domain. This also applies to rules that are incorporated by reference into a statute even if the text of the rule is not copied into the statute.
Simply put, people have a right to know what the law is.
If the code does come from a common original source (either SCO, Linux or one of the BSDs), then over years of modifying it, only every third line of code (on average) might remain the same. And the comments would be the most likely part to stay unmodified.
A few more downloads will not hurt them.
What it will do is give them more arguments when lobbying Congress. "See, we have done all we could. Our businesses will die unless you pass more laws for us." If you read the Morpheus dismissal order, that is exactly what the judge argued for. He basically complained that his hands were tied and that Congress should pass some laws so he can do something about it.
Why have they never mentioned usenet? Because they can't stop usenet file sharing unless they are allowed to cancel files and the isps are forced to abide.
Similarly, they cannot stop p2p unless they are somehow allowed to filter an isps traffic and put filesharers offline without wasting time on due process (which applies only to government action, not RIAA action).
Expect more assaults on the free flow of information. The question is not whether they will succeed under the current paradigm. (They can't.)
The question is whether they can get Congress to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Hopefully they can't.)
more regulation of other kinds of direct marketing...
1) Telemarketing, started with states, now it's federal
2) Spam, see California (other states?)... eventually it will be federal
3) Junk mail, currently self-regulated (Direct Marketing Association)... if they stop regulating themselves, we may see the same kind of last-resort gov't regulation here. Except that the USPS relies on revenue from the vultures.
It would be nice to get those bastards completely out of our lives... but I won't hold my breath.
The upshot? One day, most 'new' media will only be playable on windows, and hence MS will control the consumer market.
What's to prevent a developer from supporting that same technology in Linux?
And what makes you think the media companies would use technology that limits their market to Windows users once they find out that their media is still piratable and pirated?
On the other hand, it is not a meaningful impediment to suing real spammers. All it means is that you have to prove "more likely than not" that it wasn't a mistake. This isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt" we're talking about.
Who do you think the jury will believe?
The bill provides for civil remedies, meaning that the victims can sue. It's true that the plaintiff has the burden, but it's not the same burden as in a criminal case.
In a criminal case, it's "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil case it's "more likely than not."
In other words, you'd have to prove that the spamming was more likely to have been intentional than inadvertent.
Not that hard to do really, especially if you have no previous business with the spammer. Who is going to believe him when he says that he "inadvertently" sent an email with the subject, "$500,000 in 6 months!!!" to 30,000 email addresses?
How long till SCO sues the author for leaking trade secrets?
They aren't limiting this to sellers who are accused of not shipping. They are applying this to anyone that the government thinks is suspicious. And that is their own choice of words.
Now, here's what he's saying:
"WTF! Linux? OMG, Linux is so owned... noone ever got fired for buying MSFT. Oh yeah, and we're innovators too."
Regardless of whether it were libel, it could be defamation.
Defamation (aka slander) only requires telling a single other person.
Libel is an aggravated type of defamation that requires the defendant have used a medium with potential for publishing to a lot of people, like radio or newspapers.
Harassment means you are being harassed. Intel wasn't being harassed.
If the employees were being harassed (though it says he removed them when they asked), then they should have sued along with the company, but they didn't.
Wrong! You didn't read the whole opinion. It said that such a claim may not be based on the _content_ of the messages. The court took pains to make it clear that you can still sue for spam that overloads machines. In other words, you can't sue because of what the sender says, only the amount of what he sends.
hell was Intel thinking?
Trespass to chattels?
They basically argued that if I fire someone and that person emails his friend/coworker, it is as if that person had keyed my car on the way out.
No Intel, you may not use the courts to silence dissent... do not pass go, do not collect $200.
...or were they just too stupid to do this earlier?
Basically they are letting independent developers come up with new ways to sell their stuff, without Amazon having to pay those developers.
Why weren't they doing this already?
All of their commercials tout "nationwide coverage", yet they have a reputation for bad coverage in Atlanta too.
Market share, popularity and rate of growth may be relevant if you are a developer thinking about your career...
but for people like me, who merely use the software, Linux is NOT essential to the community.
As RMS points out, it is just one of many potential means to an end (a free operating system).
SCO knows it has no case against users of ANY Linux distro, much less the one that it is distributing itself. By distributing its version of Linux, SCO bound itself to the GPL, and any code that it released (including what it claims was stolen from UnixWare) is now released under the GPL...
Their case against IBM is a contract case, NOT a copyright case.
They have no case against Linux or any Linux users! It's all a PR game.
"Sue our own customers?!?! Oh wait, no, we would never do that, we love our customers."
SCO obviously knows it can't get anywhere except by using propaganda to curry favor. Associating Linux with: Communism Software Piracy Napster/Illegal copying of music Smoking Marijuana It's not funny. It's dishonest. This is the typical modus operandi of someone who lacks not only a sense of humor, but also a sense of reality and of fairness.
The RIAA (and anyone else) can simply point to the Verizon lawsuit as presidence in any future case where they want the names of "pirates".
We will see how long that precedent lasts.
Verizon is appealing the judge's order, and they have good arguments against the constitutionality of the DMCA-supplied subpoena power.
I think their best argument is that the DMCA violates the "case or controversy" requirement of the Constitution. The DMCA's subpoena power is available without a lawsuit or even a claim that there could ever be a lawsuit, thus it is a power that the judicial branch of the government may not have under Article III of the Constitution.
The "case or controversy" requirement is taken pretty seriously by the Supreme Court. And I would hope by the D.C. Court of Appeals as well (which will be hearing this appeal).
The United States was founded on the principle that there should be NO governmentally enforced consequences to speaking the truth.
That is not just today's American society. It has been the state of American society since 1791, when the First Amendment was ratified.
This will definitely have a chilling effect.
Say you have a consumer site you have created where you review cars. General Motors doesn't like your review of its latest gas-gulper...
Not only can they threaten to bring whatever frivolous lawsuits their lawyers can dream up, thus scaring you into taking down the review because you can't afford legal representation. They can also force you to put up their version that says,
"The latest review of our gas gulper posted here was filled with outright lies and was funded by Honda. And the reviewer is on crack."
Now, how is that not going to chill freedom of speech?
Anything that regulates a small website owner is by definition going to have a chilling effect on free speech, since the strength of the small website owner is low cost. Anytime you add regulations, it adds costs. It adds money for lawyers, and mindspace for the website owner, who should be thinking about making a better website, not complying with EU Code #123123889023.