'Imagine a car that accelerates from zero to sixty in 250 feet, and then rockets to 120 miles per hour in just one more inch.
First of all at non relativisitc speeds, doubling the speed results in a four fold increase in kinetic energy and not a doubling. Why give a bad classical mechanics analogy and then tell us that the speed didn't actually double because of relativistic effects.
"You could argue that the reason the PC gained such a market share over Apple is because IBM didn't engage in litigation as much and allowed the third party market to flourish."
True, but on the other hand, the result seems to be that IBM isn't able to make any money selling PCs.
Whatever the merits of this case are, Microsoft's motives are extremely suspect. They recently lost a half billion dollar patent case, and just this past week they lost a 50 million dollar case in which the judge awarded extra damages because of evidence that Microsoft deliberately infringed assuming that the small company holding the patent was undeserving of respect. Microsoft hates the idea that other company's hold patent and consistently advocates for weakening of patent laws at every opportunity.
They don't do so because they hate software patents. Microsoft holds plenty of their own software patents. But MS believes the proper purpose for a patent is in a portfolio to be used to force others to cross license so you can ignore patents others may hold while selectively denying licensing to whoever they chose. They hate the idea of patents in the hands of people who might actually sue.
"In a criminal case there is no such equivalent to a default judgement, becuase of the 5th, 6th and 14th amendment for due process. Unlike other countries, a court cannot try you for a crime if you are not there for the trial. If you fail to show up to court, you get a bench warrent issued for your arrest and you will wait for you day in court in a jail cell. If this was a criminal case (although if it was, then the computer would have been siezed), then it would have been obstruction of justice and maybe destroying evidence."
Actually there has been at least one criminal case where defendants skipped town at some point early after the start of trial proceedings and ended up being convict in absentia.
Look up the story of Ira Einhorn who killed his girl friend and then bolted to France before his trial began. Einhorn was convicted in absentia. He eventually got a new trial, but only because France would not extradite him without a promise for a new trial.
If they get authorization from the copyright holders then the circumvention stops being illegal.
Also not all violations of federal laws are felonies. Felonies generally speaking are violations punishable by more than 1 year in jail or fines of >= $1000. I suspect circumvention actually is a felony.
You're correct. Only oral communications are targetted by the New Hampshire statutes. Also there is a provision stating that the captured oral communications cannot be used as evidence in any court proceeding. I wonder if the video alone would have been enough to show what needed to be shown here?
The court could assess a royalty or a one time payment for future usage. If the injunction does not issue, that's almost certainly what will happen instead.
Probable cause is the basis for getting a warrant and not a substitute for a warrant.
Unless the police thought that either the perps, a bomb or a bomb trigger were in the computer, there were no hot pursuit/exigent circumstances to justify not getting a warrant. The computers were not going anywhere.
What would have been accomplished by having the FBI grab up all of the libraries computers and dragging them off to the lab? Was that somehow going to save lives?
This is exactly why we want judicial oversight over the executive branch. We want a zealous executive branch trying to keep people safe, but with oversight so to rein them in as necessary.
For selling 77 games, the sellers could already be charged with a felony offense under the No Electronic Theft Act. Sometimes people forget that copyright law does have some criminal provisions.
I don't know how much the games cost, but if the retail price were at least 33 bucks apiece (or on average), then the perps would run into the following provision:
"shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500"
At the 1000 dollar level, the sentence can be 1 year
You may look at it as long as your method for doing so does not make a copy. But downloading the code will make a copy, and so will viewing at on a browser.
Such a move wouldn't be very smart, even if it was technically possible. SCO could easily argue that "those evil linux people removed it because they knew it was infringing code."
Actually, SCO should not be allowed to argue that. The rules of evidence prevent using the defendant's corrective action to prove liability. The idea is that you don't want to force the defendant to leave in a dangerous or infringing situation in just so his legal position is better.
If you look at it as a percentage of the cases they handle, the Ninth is roughly the same as the rest of the US Circuit Courts.
Good point. When the Supreme Court feels like the appellate court has gotten the right answer, then they simply don't take the case. You would that the cases the Court takes would be overturned a high percentage of the time.
This case is being compared to Lotus v. Borland.
In that US case the trial court initially got found infringement. An appellate court overturned the decision, and the Supreme Court was split 4-4 with one judge not taking part.
That means that the Lotus v. Borland case is the law in only one circuit in the US. I would expect the courts in other circuits might very well reach a different decision.
It's not enought to simply claim there was copyright protection. You should actually have such protection. It isn't really that hard to add some kind of weak encryption if you aren't trying to be compatible with something else, but from the description on the web page, the reverse engineers did not encounter anything that looks remotely like a protection measure.
Of course it's always possible that there is a patent or two involved.
"Part of a DMCA letter is the avowing, under penalty of perjury, that you have good-faith reason to believe the infaction occured, and that you have legal authority to act on behalf of whoever holds the copyright on whatever you're complaning about."
Unfortunately, that isn't quite right. Only the part indicating that the sender is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder is under penalty of perjury.
"not true, however having it registered usually makes it much more easier to protect yourself."
US citizens and US based companies cannot sue in a US court without registering their copyrights first. Because of the Berne Convention, US courts cannot make foreigners jump through the same silly hoop.
There are additional rights (statutory damages) that you cannot get if you don't register your copyrights either before the infringement or within 3 months of publication.
This is still non news. The Copyright office generally does not scrutinize what gets submitted to it. They make sure all of the boxes on the forms are filled in and then grant the registration. It's not anything like a patent examination.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot rely on State Street friendly arguments anymore. This patent application is DOA.
'Imagine a car that accelerates from zero to sixty in 250 feet, and then rockets to 120 miles per hour in just one more inch. First of all at non relativisitc speeds, doubling the speed results in a four fold increase in kinetic energy and not a doubling. Why give a bad classical mechanics analogy and then tell us that the speed didn't actually double because of relativistic effects.
"You could argue that the reason the PC gained such a market share over Apple is because IBM didn't engage in litigation as much and allowed the third party market to flourish." True, but on the other hand, the result seems to be that IBM isn't able to make any money selling PCs.
Whatever the merits of this case are, Microsoft's motives are extremely suspect. They recently lost a half billion dollar patent case, and just this past week they lost a 50 million dollar case in which the judge awarded extra damages because of evidence that Microsoft deliberately infringed assuming that the small company holding the patent was undeserving of respect. Microsoft hates the idea that other company's hold patent and consistently advocates for weakening of patent laws at every opportunity.
They don't do so because they hate software patents. Microsoft holds plenty of their own software patents. But MS believes the proper purpose for a patent is in a portfolio to be used to force others to cross license so you can ignore patents others may hold while selectively denying licensing to whoever they chose. They hate the idea of patents in the hands of people who might actually sue.
"In a criminal case there is no such equivalent to a default judgement, becuase of the 5th, 6th and 14th amendment for due process. Unlike other countries, a court cannot try you for a crime if you are not there for the trial. If you fail to show up to court, you get a bench warrent issued for your arrest and you will wait for you day in court in a jail cell. If this was a criminal case (although if it was, then the computer would have been siezed), then it would have been obstruction of justice and maybe destroying evidence." Actually there has been at least one criminal case where defendants skipped town at some point early after the start of trial proceedings and ended up being convict in absentia. Look up the story of Ira Einhorn who killed his girl friend and then bolted to France before his trial began. Einhorn was convicted in absentia. He eventually got a new trial, but only because France would not extradite him without a promise for a new trial.
If they get authorization from the copyright holders then the circumvention stops being illegal. Also not all violations of federal laws are felonies. Felonies generally speaking are violations punishable by more than 1 year in jail or fines of >= $1000. I suspect circumvention actually is a felony.
There are plenty of legal sources for music and video. Maybe the ISPs are talking about downloading stuff from iTunes.
You're correct. Only oral communications are targetted by the New Hampshire statutes. Also there is a provision stating that the captured oral communications cannot be used as evidence in any court proceeding. I wonder if the video alone would have been enough to show what needed to be shown here?
Burglary is breaking and enterring into a dwelling with the intent to commit a felony. Trespassing is not burglary.
The court could assess a royalty or a one time payment for future usage. If the injunction does not issue, that's almost certainly what will happen instead.
Probable cause is the basis for getting a warrant and not a substitute for a warrant. Unless the police thought that either the perps, a bomb or a bomb trigger were in the computer, there were no hot pursuit/exigent circumstances to justify not getting a warrant. The computers were not going anywhere. What would have been accomplished by having the FBI grab up all of the libraries computers and dragging them off to the lab? Was that somehow going to save lives? This is exactly why we want judicial oversight over the executive branch. We want a zealous executive branch trying to keep people safe, but with oversight so to rein them in as necessary.
For selling 77 games, the sellers could already be charged with a felony offense under the No Electronic Theft Act. Sometimes people forget that copyright law does have some criminal provisions. I don't know how much the games cost, but if the retail price were at least 33 bucks apiece (or on average), then the perps would run into the following provision: "shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500" At the 1000 dollar level, the sentence can be 1 year
You may look at it as long as your method for doing so does not make a copy. But downloading the code will make a copy, and so will viewing at on a browser.
Such a move wouldn't be very smart, even if it was technically possible. SCO could easily argue that "those evil linux people removed it because they knew it was infringing code." Actually, SCO should not be allowed to argue that. The rules of evidence prevent using the defendant's corrective action to prove liability. The idea is that you don't want to force the defendant to leave in a dangerous or infringing situation in just so his legal position is better.
If you look at it as a percentage of the cases they handle, the Ninth is roughly the same as the rest of the US Circuit Courts. Good point. When the Supreme Court feels like the appellate court has gotten the right answer, then they simply don't take the case. You would that the cases the Court takes would be overturned a high percentage of the time.
This case is being compared to Lotus v. Borland. In that US case the trial court initially got found infringement. An appellate court overturned the decision, and the Supreme Court was split 4-4 with one judge not taking part. That means that the Lotus v. Borland case is the law in only one circuit in the US. I would expect the courts in other circuits might very well reach a different decision.
It's not enought to simply claim there was copyright protection. You should actually have such protection. It isn't really that hard to add some kind of weak encryption if you aren't trying to be compatible with something else, but from the description on the web page, the reverse engineers did not encounter anything that looks remotely like a protection measure. Of course it's always possible that there is a patent or two involved.
"Part of a DMCA letter is the avowing, under penalty of perjury, that you have good-faith reason to believe the infaction occured, and that you have legal authority to act on behalf of whoever holds the copyright on whatever you're complaning about."
Unfortunately, that isn't quite right. Only the part indicating that the sender is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder is under penalty of perjury.
"not true, however having it registered usually makes it much more easier to protect yourself." US citizens and US based companies cannot sue in a US court without registering their copyrights first. Because of the Berne Convention, US courts cannot make foreigners jump through the same silly hoop. There are additional rights (statutory damages) that you cannot get if you don't register your copyrights either before the infringement or within 3 months of publication. This is still non news. The Copyright office generally does not scrutinize what gets submitted to it. They make sure all of the boxes on the forms are filled in and then grant the registration. It's not anything like a patent examination.