Democrats are all for market solutions for spacelaunch..... because the current system is so screwed up that going with a "market solution" is 100% not the way that George W. Bush did it. Therefore it must be good.
I do like this phrase: "Democrats don't think free markets work in the atmosphere, Republicans don't think it works above."
BTW, the $9 billion being dumped on Constellation is mostly a Republican earmark of monumental proportions. I find it strange that of all of the earmarks that Republicans are willing to keep, this one stands out. I think that figure may even be a bit low, but that is your figure and large enough I can live with it as it gets the point across that it is a colossal waste of money. For myself, I think Constellation is just plain wrong to be happening for many reasons, even if it might be a potential employer for myself and that its cancellation will adversely impact many of my neighbors.
Life itself basically violates the laws of thermodynamics.... if thought of as a closed system. Life is basically the way that the universe fights entropy adding order to chaos, even though ultimately it has to fail. That doesn't mean we can't have local changes to entropy where the universe can be "reset" back to some earlier condition or even improved upon, but none the less when you take into account the universe as a whole, entropy always increases regardless.
I'm not saying anything in support of the educational system, whose purpose is usually to train a generation of kids to become factory workers. That factories no longer exist in many/most 1st world countries for these kids to be employed in is usually missed by educators trying to perpetuate the system. Could education systems be adapted for other aims? Perhaps, but it certainly isn't to teach kids to become the best they can be. Having school kids learn about AI techniques seems like an awful waste of resources too. A shift to make knowledge workers instead of factory workers seems to be too big of a leap for unionized professional educators whose organizational roots are in industrial labor unions.
An argument here is that the officials working with Cisco may have been similarly uninformed or misled by statements from Cisco attorneys. I would hope that is the case.
I was in a slightly similar situation with a small start-up company, where some detective from Los Angeles was trying to act on behalf of one of our "customers" (they turned out to be a competitor) and made some inquiries about our company from the local police department and had even supposedly filed an extradition request (we were in another state) for an arrest of our company president. Unfortunately for this poor detective, our CEO was a former police officer who knew the local police department real well and had lived in the area his whole life, so not only did that extradition request backfire, but it nearly got that detective arrested instead. The local PD asked a quick question as to what was up, and in about 30 seconds they dropped the matter entirely with a question of what to do next against the idiot. The CEO basically said to drop the matter, which is what happened.
Yeah, this is standard par for the course when working with certain people who have no moral compass and will do anything to get a buck or win. As it appears that the prosecutor involved had been working with Cisco on other matters, perhaps he was getting just a little bit too friendly with the Cisco staff and treated what was a questionable request more as a routine incident and something reasonable. He may be "on the take" to Cisco or it could be otherwise innocent on his part. Regardless, the Cisco legal office knew full well what was going on and they bear culpability, at least if what I read in that legal brief is factually correct.
I would agree to an extent with this attitude, so far as corporations get special privileges from society and therefore should be expected to follow a stricter code of behavior. I don't know about a 10x penalty, but it certainly would get the message across that if you are operating under the structure of a corporation with the legal protections it offers, that you also have a duty to the public that you will be obeying the law as it applies to your institution. If you don't want to operate under those kind of guidelines, you can always set up a sole proprietorship. That also gives victims a clear cut person to blame and file a lawsuit against as it is a mere citizen who runs & owns the organization if they aren't using a corporate structure.
Yeah, I could live with that. There is even a moral basis to that principle.
Doing that punishes far more innocent people (the ones that just work there and literally have no idea that anything like that is going on, it's all so far above their heads, and their families) than it does guilty.
I'm curious who the "innocent people" are that you are referring to? Assets could certainly be sold/given to employees, but if a company is guilty of substantial fraud or engaged in unlawful activity which merits a "corporate death penalty", I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing either.
Certainly if I owned shared in such a company and had been earning dividends from unlawful activity, I would expect the value of the shares in that company to drop considerably or be even worthless. Indeed on moral grounds alone I would want at least restitution to the victims, and for that to come from the company's assets, even if it meant corporate bankruptcy.
More to the point, by engaging in criminal activity the officers of the corporation are neglecting their fiduciary responsibility to ensure the aims of the corporate charter, which usually is to "maximize profits and to increase shareholder equity". Those officers failed at that job because not only was shareholder equity not increased, but it took a huge hit even if the exact "death penalty" isn't exacted. For this reason, putting the corporate officers involved and especially the corporate board of directors on the hook for these damages as well is justified because they should know enough about the company to be able to catch this kind of activity or at least be taking active steps to make sure it isn't happening. A corporate board officer who does not know what the company is doing is can not plead ignorance.
Such a corporate death penalty certainly should be a last resort, if there is a clear corporate culture within the company to engage in fraud or engaging in other illegal practices. Bankruptcy is essentially the same thing, and usually the fate which hits companies doing this sort of stuff. It may not be called a "corporate death penalty", but it is essentially the same thing. If the officers of the company didn't want to face that consequence, they should have been more careful and have known the law in the first place and certainly shouldn't have engaged in practices which harmed others.
If Martha Stewart can go to prison for what she did in violation of her fiduciary responsibility, many others can too.
NASA's biggest challenge has always been funding and the year-to-year budget process. There really should be some way to budget more than one year at a time; that just doesn't work very well for long-term projects.
I don't know if this makes much of a difference, but NASA (at least von Braun's group which built the rockets in the 50's and 60's) came from the U.S. Army's artillery ordinance command (and not the Army Air Force which became the USAF). Some of this year-to-year budget approval came from the funding mentality that constitutionally is required for Army projects. Naval contracts, however, typically were expected to span multiple years of development.
For instance, when aircraft carriers are put into the development pipeline, they typically get funded to completion. Yes, occasionally there are even ships where the keel is laid down and construction starts where the plans for the ship are then subsequently scrapped, but it is a comparatively rare thing and the whole contract can be funded for many years in one single appropriation only subject to legislative review in terms of status reports and the ability of the management of that project to continue to completion.
Missiles were treated as essentially overgrown artillery shells that just got better and better range to eventually be able to hit targets further than the circumference of the Earth. The early rockets were usually simple enough and cheap enough that they could be purchased where the development together with the flight missions could be completed within a year. Once the precedent is set, it is incredibly hard to change. I'd agree that this is a problem and should be addressed, but it is also giving up political power on the part of Congress as well. They don't like that.
I would love a restructuring of NASA to be more like the original NACA that it developed from. There was some amazing research that happened there, and I also think many of the exploration missions (like MESSENGER, New Horizon, and Dawn) certainly provide a national benefit.
While you and I might disagree on the viability of a for-profit commercial venture sponsoring an exploratory mission to Mercury, I will agree that public exploration is useful and even needed. I like the example of the Lewis & Clark expedition as a government sponsored scientific endeavor of which produced a huge beneficial payback to the American people for the expenses which happened at the time. The journals of the expedition are even now invaluable in terms of the knowledge of biology, the indigenous tribes of the areas they passed through, and other information they recorded on that journey at the beginning of the 19th century. These modern explorations of the Solar System are clearly being done with the same general pattern and is something I'd love to see continued into the future.
The issue I have is how a technological problem like trying to figure out how to get into low-Earth orbit is still a massive unsolved engineering task requiring a cost-plus procurement contract? On this I think I can agree with you that a big refocusing of NASA is needed to be done, even if it causes several within NASA to lose their jobs. That may even require closing some NASA mission directorates, which is certain to get some congressmen upset. Then again there have been several military base closings even recently, so I know it can be done if there is a will to get it to happen. NASA needs to be in the business of exploring and stretching the limits of technology. It certainly should never have been turned into a military logistical command.
Keep in mind, a high-profile disaster or 3 could easily set back the privatization of space, too.
Perhaps it was because it was in a different era, but the sinking of the Titanic didn't stop steamship travel across the Atlantic. It did introduce new concepts of passenger ship safety that still exist today, and it also introduced the concept of an engineering review committee for engineering disasters of various kinds, but it didn't kill the industry.
I don't think a high-profile disaster for private or even public spaceflight will be all that devastating. What is needed is more variety and more options so if something like the Challenger or Columbia disasters happened that we can continue to send astronauts into space on other spacecraft designs. Spaceflight continued after Columbia, even if the procedures changed a little bit after that. Space exploration, sadly, does include a whole bunch of deaths of various kinds, even if it doesn't happen so often.
The regulations that I am most concerned about right now are the "crewed orbital spaceflight" regulations, as "man-rating" a spacecraft is currently a very arbitrary regulatory regime which pretty much boils down to whomever has paid the most for congressional lobbyists gets to fly and everybody else can go jump in a lake. While NASA may have the most experience in the area, having them write the regulations when they are currently in competition with private industry seems like a huge conflict in interest.
We also need to be a little more tolerant of both failure and deaths. I'm not saying that we should deliberately go out of our way to avoid safety, but no for-profit business is going to be in the market to kill its customers as a business plan. I also think the comparisons to the nuclear power industry are unfair because there are some real concerns with nuclear power, particular in regards to the disposal of the nuclear waste, which simply don't exist with spaceflight. Chernobyl is held up as a poster child of engineering gone wrong, but I don't think it would even remotely be an issue if it had been a time-limited disaster where people would have moved on with their lives in the region of the plant. It is the ongoing health and environmental consequences of that disaster which make people question if we should be doing that elsewhere, and those are very legitimate concerns.
Had the Space Shuttle crashed and burned taking out the Empire State Building with it, there would have been some people justifiably annoyed and a huge number of deaths, but life would have gone on. The potential for disaster isn't nearly as great and the long term consequences are not the same as it is with nuclear power. I also think the long term benefits will be more apparent for spaceflight as well.
Ultimately, the issue is if money can be made. Steamships didn't stop crossing the Atlantic because people and industries could continue to make a profit in spite of having to comply with a few new rules. Ultimately it falls into this philosophy, that new rules are created for the following reasons:
Somebody screwed up and made a big mistake. The rule was created to make sure nobody repeats that same mistake
Somebody wants to exert political control over the lives of somebody else, merely because they can
I don't mind rules created for the first purpose, and there are many such rules/regulations that I can think of. On the other hand, far too much of a regulatory organization is coming up with rules just for the hell of it. It is those kind of rules that I find annoying and feel they should be removed if found. Far too often rules may even be created because mistakes happened, but additional requirements are added as busy work which really aren't needed and are in place to justify the bureaucracy. This isn't confined to just spaceflight, but all endeavors of modern society.
How many manned spaceflight rocket designs have been proposed since the Saturn V was slated for retirement? Starting with the "Big G" Gemini II capsule all of the way to the Orion/Constellation program and nearly 20 vehicles in between, I'd say that is a consistent pattern of failure after failure. It certainly hasn't been a lack of trying, but a consistent lack of follow-through to get something built has been a huge problem. Only the Space Shuttle seemed to be the only program to be spared the wrath of budget cuts, even even the Shuttle program didn't get by unscathed. Many of the reasons why the Shuttle program had to end now is explicitly because of design compromises made in the 1970's when it was first being developed. A little more money then could have saved billions over the past 30 years.
Yes, the unmanned programs launching on stuff like the Delta II, Delta IV, and Atlas V have been going rather well, and the spacecraft themselves seem to work out fairly well. Then again you have stuff like the James Webb Space Telescope that is also spiraling out of control and devouring what is even coming out of the science directorates. This isn't even isolated to just the manned spaceflight efforts, as the bureaucracy is starting to eat away at even the unmanned stuff now. What is worse, the easy low-hanging fruit that could be grabbed by even unmanned missions has already been taken, and now we need to start spending more money for stuff that is more elaborate and thus more expensive.
If you want to make this a fight between manned vs. unmanned missions, both concepts lose. That is the wrong fight to make. For those who currently are real scientists leading real teams studying other planets, they acknowledge that they would love to get a couple of people to help with the follow-up research that comes from their efforts. There is a role to be played for both manned and unmanned missions, and they need each other both from a conceptual viewpoint as well as from a funding viewpoint.
I do agree with the issue that programs which go past the current administration and need to be dealt with by multiple presidencies and sessions of congress are unlikely to be continued without some incredibly strong leadership. The real trick, however, is trying to lower launch costs, and that is something which has not even been a goal at NASA. It certainly wasn't a real goal for the Shuttle program.
I'd like to know what accounts you were reading. Seriously. I've read many of those same "insider accounts" as well as what the staff and policy makers in the Eisenhower administration were saying at the time.
Wernher von Braun had a rocket that had been completely built and ready to do flight testing before Sputnik was launched. Instead, the government essentially cancelled his project in favor of another that was being built by the U.S. Navy (von Braun was working for the army ordinance directorate). Since he had done numerous sub-orbital flights previously, I don't doubt that he could have beaten the Russians to orbit.
Yes, there were problems, but the American leadership wasn't nearly as shocked as you indicate, at least at the top. Members of congress were mostly clueless about the issue, and just like they are shocked that the Shuttle program is over now like they were surprised back in the 1950's over Sputnik.
President Eisenhower certainly didn't show any surprise that the Russians made it into space, but then again he was arguing for an extensive involvement in space well before Sputnik too. What he was most interested in was reconnaissance satellites to replace or substantially supplement the high altitude aerial flights then being done. There were other policy documents to indicate that spaceflight certainly was under active consideration.
This isn't a fantasy. Please read up on this stuff before you start to knock yourself out.
I hope so. I hear very little to nothing about any replacement.
There are plenty of "replacement" vehicles to the Shuttle. Nearly a dozen have been designed by NASA, some very similar to the Shuttle and some more like the Apollo capsule. There are also more than a dozen American spacecraft designs currently under development in various stages, including a capsule called the "Dragon" which has just been announced that it will travel to the ISS in November of this year. There are even some European spacecraft designs that I'm particularly impressed with, some which are "sub-orbital", but there are some orbital spacecraft too.
I'm especially interested in the European (non-Russian) designs because they seem to be showing a whole lot more imagination in terms of completely rethinking just how a spacecraft even should work in the first place. I'm sure the ideas will make it "across the pond" if they prove successful.
If you haven't heard about these vehicles, I'd suggest using a search engine to search for them. I'll admit that it would be nice if there was a Shuttle v 2.0 that would do most of the same things that the Shuttle does, but that is admittedly not being done right now. I am at a loss as to why that isn't happening either, but the engineers involved with this stuff certainly aren't sitting on their hands.
While I'm not much of a fan for seeing the Shuttle continue, it is a magnificent spacecraft and I do look forward to seeing Altantis and her sisters in museums in the near future. They did a whole bunch of amazing things, and prove some spaceflight ideas that will be invaluable for future spacecraft design.
I just hope that the record of achievement will be matched in the future and surpassed in terms of tonnage delivered to orbit, items brought back to the Earth, and satellites repaired while in orbit. At the moment, I don't know of any spacecraft which can do much of that, but I hope that eventually something does get built to fill some of the niches that the Shuttle program did provide. As much as I like the Dragon, CST-100, and other capsules, they really don't do what the Shuttle did.
Only because the American government didn't want to set the precedence. The first satellites, the first people in space, and other "firsts" could all have been American, but the Eisenhower administration deliberately killed American efforts at going into space before Russia/the Soviet Union because doing so would have potentially changed the recognition of various international law philosophies of flying over the territory of another country.
By having the Soviet spacecraft fly first over America in space, it was easy for Americans to justify doing the same thing over the Soviet Union. In the end it likely helped out America better by being 2nd in all of those areas. For stuff that really counts, America was first. It was American astronauts who performed the first EVA (aka "spacewalk"), performed the first in-orbit rendezvous (something the Chinese have yet to do), and the first in-space repair of a spacecraft.
BTW, while NASA "can't" go into space with their own astronauts on their own vehicles right now, it isn't correct to say "America can't go into space". SpaceX just announced that they are going to dock to the ISS with a Dragon capsule in November of this year. This same vehicle will soon be carrying astronauts and already has completed a flight to and from space even if it was unmanned for that flight. The "gap" is going to be rather small. SpaceX is just one of many companies going into space, so even if they fail there will be others.
Sadly, Congress wants to cut funding for commercial efforts like the Dragon and other similar spacecraft in favor of a big rocket that won't even be able to fly astronauts until 2020. Yeah, that is real progress there and a concern about keeping Americans in space. Still, these private companies will be going into space in spite of congressional efforts to kill funding for activities in space.
Lots of people here spent the last 5 years bitching about how the shuttle was old and needed to be retired, now it's happened and everybody's making gloomy predictions about how we'll never leave the atmosphere again.
Those weren't the same groups of people. The Shuttle did need to be retired, and thank goodness it was. Constellation needed to be killed too, and it was. Having manned spaceflight being built by a central design bureau that doesn't care about costs is where the problem is right now.
The really sad thing is that the people who wanted to see the Shuttle program continue should have fought for that a couple of years ago, at least spoken up when the Michoud facility which built the booster tanks was being shut down, together with many other facilities that provided logistical support for the Shuttle program. With those facilities now in mothballs (IMHO they should simply be retooled for other purposes or demolished) and the labor force which built those parts now dispersed to the unemployed, other jobs, and retired, the ability to get all of that going again is nearly impossible and certainly wouldn't be supported by a Congress hell bent on cutting budget items. The Shuttle program likely could have gone on for another 5-10 years, but the decision to stop flying Shuttles was made quite some time ago.
This assumes nothing. All of the vehicles mentioned are being built with private funds, not government appropriations. The only assumption here is that somehow congress isn't going to pass a law taxing these companies and otherwise making it illegal to actually get these private vehicles sent into space. Almost as bad as making it illegal would be to put up so much red tape and regulatory bureaucracy for private efforts that they can't afford to get anything up simply because of government compliance costs.
While I think they could calm down on the regulations a little bit, the FAA-AST certainly is at least trying to encourage private efforts. It would be nice if NASA, the Air Force, and other government agencies which purchase spacecraft and launches could buy from these private efforts rather than try to build their own vehicles (like the [*cough*] SLS program), but "the windbags in congress" don't have to waste their time in trying to help pay for this stuff.
That $14B might be better spent on air conditioning for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
While there are a couple of factual errors with this interview (I'll forgive somebody in their 70's who otherwise was actively involved in the development efforts of a great many spacecraft programs) this interview by Jerry Pournelle covers many of the problems that happened with the Shuttle development:
It could have worked, but too many compromises were made on the Shuttle where those compromises compounded on each other to create many of the problems involved, including what ended up killing 14 astronauts.
I personally think there should have been a Shuttle II program that would have taken the lessons learned and built a new version of the basic design. Sadly, that never happened. What I hope does not get learned from the Shuttle is that reusable lifting bodies should never be used for spaceflight. The real problem with the Shuttle was trading development costs for operational costs, and expecting a government bureaucracy devoted to keeping jobs is going to help lower costs.
While NASA might not be able to launch a shuttle, there certainly are several people who can, and are American as well. Just because NASA development efforts are falling apart and it seems like the bureaucracy at NASA is too big for its own good, that doesn't mean the knowledge is being lost either.
Instead, the real development efforts are now happening with private efforts. Anybody with half a brain and wants to design rockets that really fly, which will carry real cargo and real passengers into orbit are now no longer working for NASA or even many of the major contractors for NASA. Instead, they are working at places like SpaceX, Orbital, Blue Origin, Xcor, or Bigelow Aerospace. They are making things that either have or will shortly go into space.
The real proof that something has changed is how Boeing is treating spacecraft development. They have essentially ignored any direction from NASA in terms of designs and even they went and built their own spacecraft (the CST-100) that will fit on top of one of their own launchers (Delta IV). The technology to go into space is alive and well, with a whole group of people who know how to do it and are doing it routinely. It just isn't going through NASA centers for direction, planning, or funding any more.
I think that is a good thing, although the question begs to be asked, why keep NASA around anymore? If the vehicles being designed by NASA engineers or through NASA directorates keep getting canceled and there is no clear focus in terms of what to do next, I certainly wouldn't want to stick around if I was an employee there. The exciting stuff isn't happening at NASA any more, and they aren't even getting into space and doing stuff. Even the science directorates are being cut back.... for what? A big rocket that will never be used for a mission that is irrelevant because the destination that is its only purpose will no longer exist by the time it is built? Yeah, that is real inspiration to me.
Jumbo jets also have engines with enough thrust that they can push more than several locomotives and can usually carry enough fuel that if there were enough oxygen they could make it to orbit. The analogy to your little mini isn't going to cut it unless you have somehow turbo-charged the engine in that vehicle and added wings the size of a soccer field.
Even then, those "jumbo jets" are incredibly light compared to the engine thrust and size. Just because they are big doesn't mean that each pound of weight in their design isn't considered. I completely agree with the GP post as airplanes need to be very much concerned about weight issues. This isn't something you can ignore and is a fundamental issue with flight in general.
Most automobile engines are too heavy to be used for flight... and yes I've seen the airplanes made from used trucks or cars. They are also relying heavily upon the "ground effect" for lift as well and can't get more than a hundred feet or so off the ground. That isn't real flight.
Obviously the grandparent poster doesn't have a clue who Burt Rutan is, but do you have to rub it in?
Then again, I think in this case probably you do. Not much more needs to be said about Rutan, other than simply Google his name and find out what the heck he has done if you are clueless about the guy. Be prepared to drop your jaw.
Unless you can cite a particular court case, I'm calling bullshit on this one. There is no possible way that you can know what a judge would rule when there is a strong argument in favor of one possible decision and a contrary opinion at the same time.
Here you are interpreting the law, but failing to understand what I'm saying. If you don't enforce copyright, you don't get to claim damages. It is that simple. As a result, copyright becomes meaningless since there isn't any sort of enforcement mechanism, even if you may still technically "own" the copyright.
And BTW, you are also twisting my words here, as I did say I was a little mistaken in my notion here, as it only applies to a single person/website/bookstore/music archive. I don't deny that subsequent re-use and re-publication of the content may still be in violation of copyright, but you might not be able to go after a website if the content has been on the server for a long time. I'm also trying to say that there is a huge gray area here where copyright gets real murky if you take your sweet time in trying to enforce copyright. It is you that is asserting you can take as long as you want as long as the copyright hasn't expired. I'm also pointing out there are other provisions in copyright law where the copyright holder is required to take active steps in enforcing copyright even beyond this statute of limitations.
If you want to secure something like a bank account, you don't use a security measure like a password in the first place. Passwords are strictly for low security applications where you openly know that others are going to be getting into the data that you have stored behind that password.
For something that you really want to protect from prying eyes, you use something like an SHA-512 encryption hash with a public/private pair or something else along that line. I declare it is the whole notion that a password actually does more than provides a simple roadblock for pure idiots and to "keep the honest people honest" is a mistaken notion.
I should also note that the number of possible physical keys to most locks is shockingly low. I had a locksmith point out that for most cash registers in grocery stores (at least for a great many years) used only one of five basic keys. I even had all five of them in my possession at one time. Yes, they worked too! Again, it is to keep people from pushing the buttons when they really shouldn't be there. Even now, most cash registers are "protected" with nothing more than a 4-digit key that can be hacked through social engineering alone... if they use something other than the register keys. Some stores are getting fancy with barcodes that need to be scanned indicating some supervisor ID, but even that is not a complicated string of numbers.
Then again, most bank data is "protected" by such amazing "identity" information like a social security number and your mother's maiden name. It doesn't matter how complicated you make your passwords or encryption key, the information can be "hacked" with other very simple social engineering if you really want to get into somebody else's information. Of course, I find the whole notion of "identity theft" to usually be something absurd like this as those confirming identity are using information that really can't establish identity in the first place. Biometrics really are the only true way to establish identity, ranging from a handwritten signature to a finger print, a blood test, a DNA sample, and perhaps something like a retinal scan (something even twins have different). Identity establishment is intimately tied to passwords, as the point of a password is to prove that you are authorized to use a particular resource of some kind.
That is arguable, as web pages are dated. BTW, I generally agree with your interpretation of the law here, but on this particular issue the courts are surprisingly silent, as I doubt anybody has really tried to challenge copyright on this ground.
For myself, I wouldn't want to risk this as I generally respect copyright anyway, but if you have a web page that you've had up for say 5-6 years continuously without any sort of copyright challenge, I think it would be hard to assert that you weren't aware of the copyright violation. You could go after the copyright violator for misrepresenting themselves if they assert they own the copyright or if they claim authorship, but that is a much narrower case.
I don't know what a court would say on this issue for "old" web pages. Generally that isn't an issue as web pages have fairly fresh content by their nature and old stuff gets pushed so deep into archives that I find it doubtful this issue would be brought up in regards to web-based content. Would you know any case law to support your viewpoint that web distribution is "new" under this section of the statute?
I think at best a judge might just simply issue an injunction ordering the content removed and otherwise dismiss the case. It certainly throws a monkey wrench into anybody who thinks they can sue a web site owner for an image that has been on their website for many years. If I remember correctly, there was an image of an eye from a Playboy centerfold model that was commonly used as a "test image" for many years by early graphic imaging tools, and more than five years had passed since the image was created or even first distributed by many of these image manipulation programs. This section was one of the defenses used for why Playboy wasn't entitled to damages after fair-use claims were dismissed as invalid.
I was somewhat mistaken on my previous interpretation, but the net effect is pretty much what I described. Here is the exact wording, essentially a statute of limitation on copyright infringement:
(a) Criminal Proceedings. - Except as expressly provided otherwise in this title, no criminal proceeding shall be maintained under the provisions of this title unless it is commenced within 5 years after the cause of action arose.
(b) Civil Actions. - No civil action shall be maintained under the provisions of this title unless it is commenced within three years after the claim accrued.
(17 USC Sec. 507)
More to the point, you have between 3-5 years to enforce copyright infringement. There are other provisions in copyright law, but if you are not actively trying to enforce copyright, you are not entitled to any "relief" from the copyright infringement. It doesn't really go into "public domain", but the net effect is pretty much the same in terms of somebody who publishes an item, copies something, or violates copyright. It is up to the person who has the copyright to enforce that right.
I know it stinks as you can't possibly know what 300 million people are doing with your stuff, but you do need to step up to the plate to defend your content if your stuff has been copied illegally. There are other provisions that have a similar limit in scope in U.S. law.
Keep in mind what she did here wasn't to "clog the courts with a stupid case like this", she went to the public utility commission and filed a formal complaint. What happened was that after the complaint was filed, Verizon dismissed the complaint and moved the issue up the food chain, which was an administrative law judge who hears complaints being made through the utility commission.
She did exactly as you claimed that somebody ought to do here, and since Verizon objected to the complaint, it went to court. What else was supposed to happen? I suppose it could be like the FTC which receives a complaint that is filed away in "/dev/null" for all of the good it does. Ditto for the FCC, at least from my personal experience.
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Democrats are all for market solutions for spacelaunch..... because the current system is so screwed up that going with a "market solution" is 100% not the way that George W. Bush did it. Therefore it must be good.
I do like this phrase: "Democrats don't think free markets work in the atmosphere, Republicans don't think it works above."
BTW, the $9 billion being dumped on Constellation is mostly a Republican earmark of monumental proportions. I find it strange that of all of the earmarks that Republicans are willing to keep, this one stands out. I think that figure may even be a bit low, but that is your figure and large enough I can live with it as it gets the point across that it is a colossal waste of money. For myself, I think Constellation is just plain wrong to be happening for many reasons, even if it might be a potential employer for myself and that its cancellation will adversely impact many of my neighbors.
Life itself basically violates the laws of thermodynamics.... if thought of as a closed system. Life is basically the way that the universe fights entropy adding order to chaos, even though ultimately it has to fail. That doesn't mean we can't have local changes to entropy where the universe can be "reset" back to some earlier condition or even improved upon, but none the less when you take into account the universe as a whole, entropy always increases regardless.
I'm not saying anything in support of the educational system, whose purpose is usually to train a generation of kids to become factory workers. That factories no longer exist in many/most 1st world countries for these kids to be employed in is usually missed by educators trying to perpetuate the system. Could education systems be adapted for other aims? Perhaps, but it certainly isn't to teach kids to become the best they can be. Having school kids learn about AI techniques seems like an awful waste of resources too. A shift to make knowledge workers instead of factory workers seems to be too big of a leap for unionized professional educators whose organizational roots are in industrial labor unions.
An argument here is that the officials working with Cisco may have been similarly uninformed or misled by statements from Cisco attorneys. I would hope that is the case.
I was in a slightly similar situation with a small start-up company, where some detective from Los Angeles was trying to act on behalf of one of our "customers" (they turned out to be a competitor) and made some inquiries about our company from the local police department and had even supposedly filed an extradition request (we were in another state) for an arrest of our company president. Unfortunately for this poor detective, our CEO was a former police officer who knew the local police department real well and had lived in the area his whole life, so not only did that extradition request backfire, but it nearly got that detective arrested instead. The local PD asked a quick question as to what was up, and in about 30 seconds they dropped the matter entirely with a question of what to do next against the idiot. The CEO basically said to drop the matter, which is what happened.
Yeah, this is standard par for the course when working with certain people who have no moral compass and will do anything to get a buck or win. As it appears that the prosecutor involved had been working with Cisco on other matters, perhaps he was getting just a little bit too friendly with the Cisco staff and treated what was a questionable request more as a routine incident and something reasonable. He may be "on the take" to Cisco or it could be otherwise innocent on his part. Regardless, the Cisco legal office knew full well what was going on and they bear culpability, at least if what I read in that legal brief is factually correct.
I would agree to an extent with this attitude, so far as corporations get special privileges from society and therefore should be expected to follow a stricter code of behavior. I don't know about a 10x penalty, but it certainly would get the message across that if you are operating under the structure of a corporation with the legal protections it offers, that you also have a duty to the public that you will be obeying the law as it applies to your institution. If you don't want to operate under those kind of guidelines, you can always set up a sole proprietorship. That also gives victims a clear cut person to blame and file a lawsuit against as it is a mere citizen who runs & owns the organization if they aren't using a corporate structure.
Yeah, I could live with that. There is even a moral basis to that principle.
Doing that punishes far more innocent people (the ones that just work there and literally have no idea that anything like that is going on, it's all so far above their heads, and their families) than it does guilty.
I'm curious who the "innocent people" are that you are referring to? Assets could certainly be sold/given to employees, but if a company is guilty of substantial fraud or engaged in unlawful activity which merits a "corporate death penalty", I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing either.
Certainly if I owned shared in such a company and had been earning dividends from unlawful activity, I would expect the value of the shares in that company to drop considerably or be even worthless. Indeed on moral grounds alone I would want at least restitution to the victims, and for that to come from the company's assets, even if it meant corporate bankruptcy.
More to the point, by engaging in criminal activity the officers of the corporation are neglecting their fiduciary responsibility to ensure the aims of the corporate charter, which usually is to "maximize profits and to increase shareholder equity". Those officers failed at that job because not only was shareholder equity not increased, but it took a huge hit even if the exact "death penalty" isn't exacted. For this reason, putting the corporate officers involved and especially the corporate board of directors on the hook for these damages as well is justified because they should know enough about the company to be able to catch this kind of activity or at least be taking active steps to make sure it isn't happening. A corporate board officer who does not know what the company is doing is can not plead ignorance.
Such a corporate death penalty certainly should be a last resort, if there is a clear corporate culture within the company to engage in fraud or engaging in other illegal practices. Bankruptcy is essentially the same thing, and usually the fate which hits companies doing this sort of stuff. It may not be called a "corporate death penalty", but it is essentially the same thing. If the officers of the company didn't want to face that consequence, they should have been more careful and have known the law in the first place and certainly shouldn't have engaged in practices which harmed others.
If Martha Stewart can go to prison for what she did in violation of her fiduciary responsibility, many others can too.
NASA's biggest challenge has always been funding and the year-to-year budget process. There really should be some way to budget more than one year at a time; that just doesn't work very well for long-term projects.
I don't know if this makes much of a difference, but NASA (at least von Braun's group which built the rockets in the 50's and 60's) came from the U.S. Army's artillery ordinance command (and not the Army Air Force which became the USAF). Some of this year-to-year budget approval came from the funding mentality that constitutionally is required for Army projects. Naval contracts, however, typically were expected to span multiple years of development.
For instance, when aircraft carriers are put into the development pipeline, they typically get funded to completion. Yes, occasionally there are even ships where the keel is laid down and construction starts where the plans for the ship are then subsequently scrapped, but it is a comparatively rare thing and the whole contract can be funded for many years in one single appropriation only subject to legislative review in terms of status reports and the ability of the management of that project to continue to completion.
Missiles were treated as essentially overgrown artillery shells that just got better and better range to eventually be able to hit targets further than the circumference of the Earth. The early rockets were usually simple enough and cheap enough that they could be purchased where the development together with the flight missions could be completed within a year. Once the precedent is set, it is incredibly hard to change. I'd agree that this is a problem and should be addressed, but it is also giving up political power on the part of Congress as well. They don't like that.
I would love a restructuring of NASA to be more like the original NACA that it developed from. There was some amazing research that happened there, and I also think many of the exploration missions (like MESSENGER, New Horizon, and Dawn) certainly provide a national benefit.
While you and I might disagree on the viability of a for-profit commercial venture sponsoring an exploratory mission to Mercury, I will agree that public exploration is useful and even needed. I like the example of the Lewis & Clark expedition as a government sponsored scientific endeavor of which produced a huge beneficial payback to the American people for the expenses which happened at the time. The journals of the expedition are even now invaluable in terms of the knowledge of biology, the indigenous tribes of the areas they passed through, and other information they recorded on that journey at the beginning of the 19th century. These modern explorations of the Solar System are clearly being done with the same general pattern and is something I'd love to see continued into the future.
The issue I have is how a technological problem like trying to figure out how to get into low-Earth orbit is still a massive unsolved engineering task requiring a cost-plus procurement contract? On this I think I can agree with you that a big refocusing of NASA is needed to be done, even if it causes several within NASA to lose their jobs. That may even require closing some NASA mission directorates, which is certain to get some congressmen upset. Then again there have been several military base closings even recently, so I know it can be done if there is a will to get it to happen. NASA needs to be in the business of exploring and stretching the limits of technology. It certainly should never have been turned into a military logistical command.
Keep in mind, a high-profile disaster or 3 could easily set back the privatization of space, too.
Perhaps it was because it was in a different era, but the sinking of the Titanic didn't stop steamship travel across the Atlantic. It did introduce new concepts of passenger ship safety that still exist today, and it also introduced the concept of an engineering review committee for engineering disasters of various kinds, but it didn't kill the industry.
I don't think a high-profile disaster for private or even public spaceflight will be all that devastating. What is needed is more variety and more options so if something like the Challenger or Columbia disasters happened that we can continue to send astronauts into space on other spacecraft designs. Spaceflight continued after Columbia, even if the procedures changed a little bit after that. Space exploration, sadly, does include a whole bunch of deaths of various kinds, even if it doesn't happen so often.
The regulations that I am most concerned about right now are the "crewed orbital spaceflight" regulations, as "man-rating" a spacecraft is currently a very arbitrary regulatory regime which pretty much boils down to whomever has paid the most for congressional lobbyists gets to fly and everybody else can go jump in a lake. While NASA may have the most experience in the area, having them write the regulations when they are currently in competition with private industry seems like a huge conflict in interest.
We also need to be a little more tolerant of both failure and deaths. I'm not saying that we should deliberately go out of our way to avoid safety, but no for-profit business is going to be in the market to kill its customers as a business plan. I also think the comparisons to the nuclear power industry are unfair because there are some real concerns with nuclear power, particular in regards to the disposal of the nuclear waste, which simply don't exist with spaceflight. Chernobyl is held up as a poster child of engineering gone wrong, but I don't think it would even remotely be an issue if it had been a time-limited disaster where people would have moved on with their lives in the region of the plant. It is the ongoing health and environmental consequences of that disaster which make people question if we should be doing that elsewhere, and those are very legitimate concerns.
Had the Space Shuttle crashed and burned taking out the Empire State Building with it, there would have been some people justifiably annoyed and a huge number of deaths, but life would have gone on. The potential for disaster isn't nearly as great and the long term consequences are not the same as it is with nuclear power. I also think the long term benefits will be more apparent for spaceflight as well.
Ultimately, the issue is if money can be made. Steamships didn't stop crossing the Atlantic because people and industries could continue to make a profit in spite of having to comply with a few new rules. Ultimately it falls into this philosophy, that new rules are created for the following reasons:
I don't mind rules created for the first purpose, and there are many such rules/regulations that I can think of. On the other hand, far too much of a regulatory organization is coming up with rules just for the hell of it. It is those kind of rules that I find annoying and feel they should be removed if found. Far too often rules may even be created because mistakes happened, but additional requirements are added as busy work which really aren't needed and are in place to justify the bureaucracy. This isn't confined to just spaceflight, but all endeavors of modern society.
How many manned spaceflight rocket designs have been proposed since the Saturn V was slated for retirement? Starting with the "Big G" Gemini II capsule all of the way to the Orion/Constellation program and nearly 20 vehicles in between, I'd say that is a consistent pattern of failure after failure. It certainly hasn't been a lack of trying, but a consistent lack of follow-through to get something built has been a huge problem. Only the Space Shuttle seemed to be the only program to be spared the wrath of budget cuts, even even the Shuttle program didn't get by unscathed. Many of the reasons why the Shuttle program had to end now is explicitly because of design compromises made in the 1970's when it was first being developed. A little more money then could have saved billions over the past 30 years.
Yes, the unmanned programs launching on stuff like the Delta II, Delta IV, and Atlas V have been going rather well, and the spacecraft themselves seem to work out fairly well. Then again you have stuff like the James Webb Space Telescope that is also spiraling out of control and devouring what is even coming out of the science directorates. This isn't even isolated to just the manned spaceflight efforts, as the bureaucracy is starting to eat away at even the unmanned stuff now. What is worse, the easy low-hanging fruit that could be grabbed by even unmanned missions has already been taken, and now we need to start spending more money for stuff that is more elaborate and thus more expensive.
If you want to make this a fight between manned vs. unmanned missions, both concepts lose. That is the wrong fight to make. For those who currently are real scientists leading real teams studying other planets, they acknowledge that they would love to get a couple of people to help with the follow-up research that comes from their efforts. There is a role to be played for both manned and unmanned missions, and they need each other both from a conceptual viewpoint as well as from a funding viewpoint.
I do agree with the issue that programs which go past the current administration and need to be dealt with by multiple presidencies and sessions of congress are unlikely to be continued without some incredibly strong leadership. The real trick, however, is trying to lower launch costs, and that is something which has not even been a goal at NASA. It certainly wasn't a real goal for the Shuttle program.
I'd like to know what accounts you were reading. Seriously. I've read many of those same "insider accounts" as well as what the staff and policy makers in the Eisenhower administration were saying at the time.
Wernher von Braun had a rocket that had been completely built and ready to do flight testing before Sputnik was launched. Instead, the government essentially cancelled his project in favor of another that was being built by the U.S. Navy (von Braun was working for the army ordinance directorate). Since he had done numerous sub-orbital flights previously, I don't doubt that he could have beaten the Russians to orbit.
Yes, there were problems, but the American leadership wasn't nearly as shocked as you indicate, at least at the top. Members of congress were mostly clueless about the issue, and just like they are shocked that the Shuttle program is over now like they were surprised back in the 1950's over Sputnik.
President Eisenhower certainly didn't show any surprise that the Russians made it into space, but then again he was arguing for an extensive involvement in space well before Sputnik too. What he was most interested in was reconnaissance satellites to replace or substantially supplement the high altitude aerial flights then being done. There were other policy documents to indicate that spaceflight certainly was under active consideration.
This isn't a fantasy. Please read up on this stuff before you start to knock yourself out.
I hope so. I hear very little to nothing about any replacement.
There are plenty of "replacement" vehicles to the Shuttle. Nearly a dozen have been designed by NASA, some very similar to the Shuttle and some more like the Apollo capsule. There are also more than a dozen American spacecraft designs currently under development in various stages, including a capsule called the "Dragon" which has just been announced that it will travel to the ISS in November of this year. There are even some European spacecraft designs that I'm particularly impressed with, some which are "sub-orbital", but there are some orbital spacecraft too.
I'm especially interested in the European (non-Russian) designs because they seem to be showing a whole lot more imagination in terms of completely rethinking just how a spacecraft even should work in the first place. I'm sure the ideas will make it "across the pond" if they prove successful.
If you haven't heard about these vehicles, I'd suggest using a search engine to search for them. I'll admit that it would be nice if there was a Shuttle v 2.0 that would do most of the same things that the Shuttle does, but that is admittedly not being done right now. I am at a loss as to why that isn't happening either, but the engineers involved with this stuff certainly aren't sitting on their hands.
While I'm not much of a fan for seeing the Shuttle continue, it is a magnificent spacecraft and I do look forward to seeing Altantis and her sisters in museums in the near future. They did a whole bunch of amazing things, and prove some spaceflight ideas that will be invaluable for future spacecraft design.
I just hope that the record of achievement will be matched in the future and surpassed in terms of tonnage delivered to orbit, items brought back to the Earth, and satellites repaired while in orbit. At the moment, I don't know of any spacecraft which can do much of that, but I hope that eventually something does get built to fill some of the niches that the Shuttle program did provide. As much as I like the Dragon, CST-100, and other capsules, they really don't do what the Shuttle did.
Only because the American government didn't want to set the precedence. The first satellites, the first people in space, and other "firsts" could all have been American, but the Eisenhower administration deliberately killed American efforts at going into space before Russia/the Soviet Union because doing so would have potentially changed the recognition of various international law philosophies of flying over the territory of another country.
By having the Soviet spacecraft fly first over America in space, it was easy for Americans to justify doing the same thing over the Soviet Union. In the end it likely helped out America better by being 2nd in all of those areas. For stuff that really counts, America was first. It was American astronauts who performed the first EVA (aka "spacewalk"), performed the first in-orbit rendezvous (something the Chinese have yet to do), and the first in-space repair of a spacecraft.
BTW, while NASA "can't" go into space with their own astronauts on their own vehicles right now, it isn't correct to say "America can't go into space". SpaceX just announced that they are going to dock to the ISS with a Dragon capsule in November of this year. This same vehicle will soon be carrying astronauts and already has completed a flight to and from space even if it was unmanned for that flight. The "gap" is going to be rather small. SpaceX is just one of many companies going into space, so even if they fail there will be others.
Sadly, Congress wants to cut funding for commercial efforts like the Dragon and other similar spacecraft in favor of a big rocket that won't even be able to fly astronauts until 2020. Yeah, that is real progress there and a concern about keeping Americans in space. Still, these private companies will be going into space in spite of congressional efforts to kill funding for activities in space.
Lots of people here spent the last 5 years bitching about how the shuttle was old and needed to be retired, now it's happened and everybody's making gloomy predictions about how we'll never leave the atmosphere again.
Those weren't the same groups of people. The Shuttle did need to be retired, and thank goodness it was. Constellation needed to be killed too, and it was. Having manned spaceflight being built by a central design bureau that doesn't care about costs is where the problem is right now.
The really sad thing is that the people who wanted to see the Shuttle program continue should have fought for that a couple of years ago, at least spoken up when the Michoud facility which built the booster tanks was being shut down, together with many other facilities that provided logistical support for the Shuttle program. With those facilities now in mothballs (IMHO they should simply be retooled for other purposes or demolished) and the labor force which built those parts now dispersed to the unemployed, other jobs, and retired, the ability to get all of that going again is nearly impossible and certainly wouldn't be supported by a Congress hell bent on cutting budget items. The Shuttle program likely could have gone on for another 5-10 years, but the decision to stop flying Shuttles was made quite some time ago.
This assumes nothing. All of the vehicles mentioned are being built with private funds, not government appropriations. The only assumption here is that somehow congress isn't going to pass a law taxing these companies and otherwise making it illegal to actually get these private vehicles sent into space. Almost as bad as making it illegal would be to put up so much red tape and regulatory bureaucracy for private efforts that they can't afford to get anything up simply because of government compliance costs.
While I think they could calm down on the regulations a little bit, the FAA-AST certainly is at least trying to encourage private efforts. It would be nice if NASA, the Air Force, and other government agencies which purchase spacecraft and launches could buy from these private efforts rather than try to build their own vehicles (like the [*cough*] SLS program), but "the windbags in congress" don't have to waste their time in trying to help pay for this stuff.
That $14B might be better spent on air conditioning for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
While there are a couple of factual errors with this interview (I'll forgive somebody in their 70's who otherwise was actively involved in the development efforts of a great many spacecraft programs) this interview by Jerry Pournelle covers many of the problems that happened with the Shuttle development:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5745
It could have worked, but too many compromises were made on the Shuttle where those compromises compounded on each other to create many of the problems involved, including what ended up killing 14 astronauts.
I personally think there should have been a Shuttle II program that would have taken the lessons learned and built a new version of the basic design. Sadly, that never happened. What I hope does not get learned from the Shuttle is that reusable lifting bodies should never be used for spaceflight. The real problem with the Shuttle was trading development costs for operational costs, and expecting a government bureaucracy devoted to keeping jobs is going to help lower costs.
While NASA might not be able to launch a shuttle, there certainly are several people who can, and are American as well. Just because NASA development efforts are falling apart and it seems like the bureaucracy at NASA is too big for its own good, that doesn't mean the knowledge is being lost either.
Instead, the real development efforts are now happening with private efforts. Anybody with half a brain and wants to design rockets that really fly, which will carry real cargo and real passengers into orbit are now no longer working for NASA or even many of the major contractors for NASA. Instead, they are working at places like SpaceX, Orbital, Blue Origin, Xcor, or Bigelow Aerospace. They are making things that either have or will shortly go into space.
The real proof that something has changed is how Boeing is treating spacecraft development. They have essentially ignored any direction from NASA in terms of designs and even they went and built their own spacecraft (the CST-100) that will fit on top of one of their own launchers (Delta IV). The technology to go into space is alive and well, with a whole group of people who know how to do it and are doing it routinely. It just isn't going through NASA centers for direction, planning, or funding any more.
I think that is a good thing, although the question begs to be asked, why keep NASA around anymore? If the vehicles being designed by NASA engineers or through NASA directorates keep getting canceled and there is no clear focus in terms of what to do next, I certainly wouldn't want to stick around if I was an employee there. The exciting stuff isn't happening at NASA any more, and they aren't even getting into space and doing stuff. Even the science directorates are being cut back.... for what? A big rocket that will never be used for a mission that is irrelevant because the destination that is its only purpose will no longer exist by the time it is built? Yeah, that is real inspiration to me.
Jumbo jets also have engines with enough thrust that they can push more than several locomotives and can usually carry enough fuel that if there were enough oxygen they could make it to orbit. The analogy to your little mini isn't going to cut it unless you have somehow turbo-charged the engine in that vehicle and added wings the size of a soccer field.
Even then, those "jumbo jets" are incredibly light compared to the engine thrust and size. Just because they are big doesn't mean that each pound of weight in their design isn't considered. I completely agree with the GP post as airplanes need to be very much concerned about weight issues. This isn't something you can ignore and is a fundamental issue with flight in general.
Most automobile engines are too heavy to be used for flight... and yes I've seen the airplanes made from used trucks or cars. They are also relying heavily upon the "ground effect" for lift as well and can't get more than a hundred feet or so off the ground. That isn't real flight.
Obviously the grandparent poster doesn't have a clue who Burt Rutan is, but do you have to rub it in?
Then again, I think in this case probably you do. Not much more needs to be said about Rutan, other than simply Google his name and find out what the heck he has done if you are clueless about the guy. Be prepared to drop your jaw.
Unless you can cite a particular court case, I'm calling bullshit on this one. There is no possible way that you can know what a judge would rule when there is a strong argument in favor of one possible decision and a contrary opinion at the same time.
Here you are interpreting the law, but failing to understand what I'm saying. If you don't enforce copyright, you don't get to claim damages. It is that simple. As a result, copyright becomes meaningless since there isn't any sort of enforcement mechanism, even if you may still technically "own" the copyright.
And BTW, you are also twisting my words here, as I did say I was a little mistaken in my notion here, as it only applies to a single person/website/bookstore/music archive. I don't deny that subsequent re-use and re-publication of the content may still be in violation of copyright, but you might not be able to go after a website if the content has been on the server for a long time. I'm also trying to say that there is a huge gray area here where copyright gets real murky if you take your sweet time in trying to enforce copyright. It is you that is asserting you can take as long as you want as long as the copyright hasn't expired. I'm also pointing out there are other provisions in copyright law where the copyright holder is required to take active steps in enforcing copyright even beyond this statute of limitations.
If you want to secure something like a bank account, you don't use a security measure like a password in the first place. Passwords are strictly for low security applications where you openly know that others are going to be getting into the data that you have stored behind that password.
For something that you really want to protect from prying eyes, you use something like an SHA-512 encryption hash with a public/private pair or something else along that line. I declare it is the whole notion that a password actually does more than provides a simple roadblock for pure idiots and to "keep the honest people honest" is a mistaken notion.
I should also note that the number of possible physical keys to most locks is shockingly low. I had a locksmith point out that for most cash registers in grocery stores (at least for a great many years) used only one of five basic keys. I even had all five of them in my possession at one time. Yes, they worked too! Again, it is to keep people from pushing the buttons when they really shouldn't be there. Even now, most cash registers are "protected" with nothing more than a 4-digit key that can be hacked through social engineering alone... if they use something other than the register keys. Some stores are getting fancy with barcodes that need to be scanned indicating some supervisor ID, but even that is not a complicated string of numbers.
Then again, most bank data is "protected" by such amazing "identity" information like a social security number and your mother's maiden name. It doesn't matter how complicated you make your passwords or encryption key, the information can be "hacked" with other very simple social engineering if you really want to get into somebody else's information. Of course, I find the whole notion of "identity theft" to usually be something absurd like this as those confirming identity are using information that really can't establish identity in the first place. Biometrics really are the only true way to establish identity, ranging from a handwritten signature to a finger print, a blood test, a DNA sample, and perhaps something like a retinal scan (something even twins have different). Identity establishment is intimately tied to passwords, as the point of a password is to prove that you are authorized to use a particular resource of some kind.
That is arguable, as web pages are dated. BTW, I generally agree with your interpretation of the law here, but on this particular issue the courts are surprisingly silent, as I doubt anybody has really tried to challenge copyright on this ground.
For myself, I wouldn't want to risk this as I generally respect copyright anyway, but if you have a web page that you've had up for say 5-6 years continuously without any sort of copyright challenge, I think it would be hard to assert that you weren't aware of the copyright violation. You could go after the copyright violator for misrepresenting themselves if they assert they own the copyright or if they claim authorship, but that is a much narrower case.
I don't know what a court would say on this issue for "old" web pages. Generally that isn't an issue as web pages have fairly fresh content by their nature and old stuff gets pushed so deep into archives that I find it doubtful this issue would be brought up in regards to web-based content. Would you know any case law to support your viewpoint that web distribution is "new" under this section of the statute?
I think at best a judge might just simply issue an injunction ordering the content removed and otherwise dismiss the case. It certainly throws a monkey wrench into anybody who thinks they can sue a web site owner for an image that has been on their website for many years. If I remember correctly, there was an image of an eye from a Playboy centerfold model that was commonly used as a "test image" for many years by early graphic imaging tools, and more than five years had passed since the image was created or even first distributed by many of these image manipulation programs. This section was one of the defenses used for why Playboy wasn't entitled to damages after fair-use claims were dismissed as invalid.
I was somewhat mistaken on my previous interpretation, but the net effect is pretty much what I described. Here is the exact wording, essentially a statute of limitation on copyright infringement:
(a) Criminal Proceedings. - Except as expressly provided
otherwise in this title, no criminal proceeding shall be maintained
under the provisions of this title unless it is commenced within 5
years after the cause of action arose.
(b) Civil Actions. - No civil action shall be maintained under
the provisions of this title unless it is commenced within three
years after the claim accrued.
(17 USC Sec. 507)
More to the point, you have between 3-5 years to enforce copyright infringement. There are other provisions in copyright law, but if you are not actively trying to enforce copyright, you are not entitled to any "relief" from the copyright infringement. It doesn't really go into "public domain", but the net effect is pretty much the same in terms of somebody who publishes an item, copies something, or violates copyright. It is up to the person who has the copyright to enforce that right.
I know it stinks as you can't possibly know what 300 million people are doing with your stuff, but you do need to step up to the plate to defend your content if your stuff has been copied illegally. There are other provisions that have a similar limit in scope in U.S. law.
Keep in mind what she did here wasn't to "clog the courts with a stupid case like this", she went to the public utility commission and filed a formal complaint. What happened was that after the complaint was filed, Verizon dismissed the complaint and moved the issue up the food chain, which was an administrative law judge who hears complaints being made through the utility commission.
She did exactly as you claimed that somebody ought to do here, and since Verizon objected to the complaint, it went to court. What else was supposed to happen? I suppose it could be like the FTC which receives a complaint that is filed away in "/dev/null" for all of the good it does. Ditto for the FCC, at least from my personal experience.
They did, and it was. Read the ruling for the details.