So, what is the issue, then? This is it: whether embryos are or aren't persons. If they are, then the full set of rights and obligations pertaining to persons also apply to them. If they aren't, then these rights and obligations don't apply.
I suspect that most people would say you can't do these experiments if embryos are "persons." I don't think the converse is so simple - I think we have some obligations to the embroy even if we don't grant them the full set of "person" rights. As a rough analogy, I can't abuse my dog even though it's not a "person." Its status as "pet" limits my ability to do anything I want to it. Pushing a little farther, I think most people would say minor children also do not have the full compliment of "person" rights or "person" obligations, either. Minor children do not the right to vote or drive; are not capable of committing many crimes because they can't form the requisite mental state; and have more limited Constitutional rights.
So the question then becomes: what rights does an embryo have by virute of its potential to become a full "person." Are these more or less then "pet" rights?
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
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· Score: 1
Fair enough point (though the needless cussing distracts from it, imo). The problem is that there is a certain free-rider issue with these devices. Commerical skipping is only useful if there is quality advertising supported content. Getting quality content, in turn, requires that most people watch the ads.
Yea, their business model is in trouble. Personally, I enjoy an occasional tv show and summer-blockbuster movie. It will be a sad day for me if these things go away.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
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· Score: 1
I hear you can still get it, but it's $15/month/channel, not $0.50/month/channel.
Copyright infringement is theft. Possession has nothing to do with ownership - we all own lots of things we don't physically possess (e.g., my car parked on the street) and physically possess lots of things that we don't own (e.g., employeer's computer). Instead, ownership is all about the right to control what happens to something. Copyright infringement destroys that your right to control just as much as a physical dispossession does.
I routinely give out my passport/visa numbers to the airline before I travel, to the host country's custom officials when I arrive, to hotel clerks when I check in . . . I doubt its possible to travel internationally unless one gives out their 'information.'
I'm not so sure. . . the natural response to this ruling will be to perform the checks when the EU-citizen goes through customs. The net result will be that the US will still get/store the same information, but the EU-citizens will have to wait in even longer lines.
Well, someone's "moral rights" are subjective, so I can't argue with you on this. Your sense of morality is offended by this. All I can say is that mine is not.
I suspect the gp was refering to "moral rights" as a legal term of art. It has a precise definition in those countries where it's relevant.
The claim of any "moral" rights is so assinine I almost don't know what to say about it. The law does not recognize "moral" rights. It grants a monopoly on copying and may impose monetary recompense against losses incured by such copying. Without the law the artist has absolutely no rights whatsoever, except maybe to be a dickhead.
Only partially true. Many civil law countries (e.g., France, Germany) have long recognized moral rights. The Internet makes these issues far more interesting.
This is not about economic-rights. It's about so-called moral-rights. Many civil law countries (e.g., France, Germany) give artists a separate right to control attribution and right to the integrity of their work. For good or bad, U.S. law generally doesn't recognize moral rights.
Another difference is that these devices apparently stored your debit card card + pin. The statutory protections for unauthorized credit card transactions are much stronger than for debit cards (though most debit card issuers voluntarily extend those protections to debit cards).
I'd actually read it as limited to interoperability with other software.
1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs , and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
Doesn't really sound like they qualify for this exception, though.
(Assuming the grandparent post linked the correct patent) I've never walked into a retail outlet that:
1) "receiv[es] dynamic pricing information representing items available on the computer network, the items having a predetermined taxonomy classification encoded in a header for each item;" 2) "concentrat[es] said encoded dynamic pricing information onto a concentration layer, said concentration layer having more than one output, at least one output having a selection based on the predetermined taxonomy classification for selecting dynamic pricing information from a category in the predetermined taxonomy, the category having at least one sub-category in the taxonomy classification schema" or 3) organiz[es] links to the received dynamic pricing information into a predetermined taxonomy; and providing to the search engine a mapping between search requests and the predetermined taxonomy, the mapping comprising reference pointers to dynamic pricing content that can be returned in response to search requests at the search engine."
When reading patents, please remember that claims are the only part that matters. Very, very few articles accurately reflect this fact.
In USPTO-ese, the term "final rejection" means 'you need to pay more money if you want us to keep looking at your application,' not 'your application is invalid.'
My guess is that normally, the patent clercs simply shake their heads, say "don't understand it, but since they wanna patent it, it's prolly working" and pass it.
I'd guess their theory is that if it doesn't work, nobody will care if it's patented.
It's bit of a stretch to suggest that online casinos are simply attempting to express themselves. Regulating gambling-as-conduct is not a free speech issue.
There is a certain technical / economic efficiency in tiered pricing. . . I think we can all agree that some uses require a higher service level than do others (e.g., video traffic vs. email traffic). Any system that does not recognize this fact will not use the available resources optimally. So who gets the bandwidth? I see three basic plans: 1) overbuild the system so that all services receive the highest service level; 2) have someone try to determine which traffic deserves higher service and then enforce these rules; or 3) let market forces decide who gets what level of service. Option 1 is impossible; scarcity is a fact of life. Option 2 might be cool if you can find a unbiased, unimpeachable decision maker with perfect knowledge. Also impossible, imho (just look at current US telecommunication law to see the natural results of this option). That leaves option 3.
I appreciate that option 3 requires a working, competitive market. The key is to identify what needs to be a monopoly and what doesn't. "Last mile" of wired-service probably does (for now, anyway). ISP service doesn't. Wireless service probably doesn't. My solution would be to allow as much access as possible to last-mile wired service and let the ISP's do what they want.
I'd like to add that anyone can order a file history for any reason (in fact, the file histories for most new patents are available for free download). You can bet that whoever is being asked to license the patent will download the file and that the information will affect their decision making process.
For what it's worth, if the film had been encrypted using CSS (like a normal CD), then the DMCA applies. If the DMCA applies, the act was criminal (copyright infringement is a tort, while a DMCA violation is a crime).
Not only that, the DMCA doesn't actually make it a crime to circumvent a copy control mechanism. It only makes it a crime to *sell* a device that circumvents a copy control mechanism. If you are smart enough to do it yourself, its OK from a DMCA perspective.
As I understand it, there is no copyright protection in a database as-such in the US. However, there may be copyright protection in the underlying documents and in any notes/comments/edits added to those documents. There usually are also contractual restrictions that limit what you can do if granted access. It's possible that you could have an unfair competition claim as well.
In fact, I think there is a bill that gets introduced every year to protect the 'sweat of the brow' necessary to create databases.
Good point (I'd mod it up), but there is still no way to determine whether that change occured due to a random event or whether some ID decided to help the bugs survive in their new environment. Come up with an experiment to choose between those two hypothesis and you'll win multiple Nobel Prizes.
Conversely, even if ID advocates could find some structure that required a 1 in 10^9999999999999999999999999999 event to occur, the existance of that structure would still not prove there is an ID. Evolutionists could still argue that if that event hadn't occured, we wouldn't be here pondering it's unlikelyness.
In the end, there are limits of what "Science" can do and what it can't.
It's not deregulation per se that helps the little guy, it's competition. My ability to go to company X if company Y charges too much, has lousy service, etc. Deregulation is usually pro-little-guy because it ususally enhances competition.
That said, I don't disagree with you with respect to corporations. It's their job to get as much money from you as possible. The difference to me is that there is no reason to think government will be any better - even if you could somehow free it of 'big money interests' (which I think is impossible anyway). No matter what you do, they are still just a large organization of ordinary people. They are not capable of knowing what is best for me, and even if they did, they are going to do what is in their own interests. Basically, government is just another 'evil corporation' with power of law.
Is there a role for government regulation. Sure . . . to protect against monopolies, to reduce transaction costs, to internalize the externalities. Anything more is will hurt the little guy, not help them, imho.
What's significant about the application submitted by Felten and Halderman is that they knew about the dangers posed by Sony's XCP DRM software a month before the news became public. But they delayed publication for fear of prosecution. During that time, many more consumers fell victim to the spyware propagated by Sony.
Even after reading the article (most of it is a compilation of old complaints about the DMCA), this sounds like good, old-fashion FUD. Nothing in the DMCA says Felton et al. couldn't say "don't install Sony's DRM software because it's a rootkit" or that they needed to worry about circumventing Sony's copy-protection measure (access protection measures are different, obviously, but this did not control access).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's very little money with lots of conditons, but there was a real ban before GWB.
Fair enough point (though the needless cussing distracts from it, imo). The problem is that there is a certain free-rider issue with these devices. Commerical skipping is only useful if there is quality advertising supported content. Getting quality content, in turn, requires that most people watch the ads.
Yea, their business model is in trouble. Personally, I enjoy an occasional tv show and summer-blockbuster movie. It will be a sad day for me if these things go away.
I hear you can still get it, but it's $15/month/channel, not $0.50/month/channel.
Copyright infringement is theft. Possession has nothing to do with ownership - we all own lots of things we don't physically possess (e.g., my car parked on the street) and physically possess lots of things that we don't own (e.g., employeer's computer). Instead, ownership is all about the right to control what happens to something. Copyright infringement destroys that your right to control just as much as a physical dispossession does.
I routinely give out my passport/visa numbers to the airline before I travel, to the host country's custom officials when I arrive, to hotel clerks when I check in . . . I doubt its possible to travel internationally unless one gives out their 'information.'
I'm not so sure. . . the natural response to this ruling will be to perform the checks when the EU-citizen goes through customs. The net result will be that the US will still get/store the same information, but the EU-citizens will have to wait in even longer lines.
My copy of the Constitution has a commerce clause in it ;-)
Only partially true. Many civil law countries (e.g., France, Germany) have long recognized moral rights. The Internet makes these issues far more interesting.
This is not about economic-rights. It's about so-called moral-rights. Many civil law countries (e.g., France, Germany) give artists a separate right to control attribution and right to the integrity of their work. For good or bad, U.S. law generally doesn't recognize moral rights.
Another difference is that these devices apparently stored your debit card card + pin. The statutory protections for unauthorized credit card transactions are much stronger than for debit cards (though most debit card issuers voluntarily extend those protections to debit cards).
(Assuming the grandparent post linked the correct patent) I've never walked into a retail outlet that:
1) "receiv[es] dynamic pricing information representing items available on the computer network, the items having a predetermined taxonomy classification encoded in a header for each item;"
2) "concentrat[es] said encoded dynamic pricing information onto a concentration layer, said concentration layer having more than one output, at least one output having a selection based on the predetermined taxonomy classification for selecting dynamic pricing information from a category in the predetermined taxonomy, the category having at least one sub-category in the taxonomy classification schema" or
3) organiz[es] links to the received dynamic pricing information into a predetermined taxonomy; and
providing to the search engine a mapping between search requests and the predetermined taxonomy, the mapping comprising reference pointers to dynamic pricing content that can be returned in response to search requests at the search engine."
When reading patents, please remember that claims are the only part that matters. Very, very few articles accurately reflect this fact.
In USPTO-ese, the term "final rejection" means 'you need to pay more money if you want us to keep looking at your application,' not 'your application is invalid.'
My guess is that normally, the patent clercs simply shake their heads, say "don't understand it, but since they wanna patent it, it's prolly working" and pass it.
I'd guess their theory is that if it doesn't work, nobody will care if it's patented.
It's bit of a stretch to suggest that online casinos are simply attempting to express themselves. Regulating gambling-as-conduct is not a free speech issue.
There is a certain technical / economic efficiency in tiered pricing. . . I think we can all agree that some uses require a higher service level than do others (e.g., video traffic vs. email traffic). Any system that does not recognize this fact will not use the available resources optimally. So who gets the bandwidth? I see three basic plans:
1) overbuild the system so that all services receive the highest service level;
2) have someone try to determine which traffic deserves higher service and then enforce these rules; or
3) let market forces decide who gets what level of service.
Option 1 is impossible; scarcity is a fact of life. Option 2 might be cool if you can find a unbiased, unimpeachable decision maker with perfect knowledge. Also impossible, imho (just look at current US telecommunication law to see the natural results of this option). That leaves option 3.
I appreciate that option 3 requires a working, competitive market. The key is to identify what needs to be a monopoly and what doesn't. "Last mile" of wired-service probably does (for now, anyway). ISP service doesn't. Wireless service probably doesn't. My solution would be to allow as much access as possible to last-mile wired service and let the ISP's do what they want.
I'd like to add that anyone can order a file history for any reason (in fact, the file histories for most new patents are available for free download). You can bet that whoever is being asked to license the patent will download the file and that the information will affect their decision making process.
For what it's worth, if the film had been encrypted using CSS (like a normal CD), then the DMCA applies. If the DMCA applies, the act was criminal (copyright infringement is a tort, while a DMCA violation is a crime).
Not only that, the DMCA doesn't actually make it a crime to circumvent a copy control mechanism. It only makes it a crime to *sell* a device that circumvents a copy control mechanism. If you are smart enough to do it yourself, its OK from a DMCA perspective.
As I understand it, there is no copyright protection in a database as-such in the US. However, there may be copyright protection in the underlying documents and in any notes/comments/edits added to those documents. There usually are also contractual restrictions that limit what you can do if granted access. It's possible that you could have an unfair competition claim as well.
In fact, I think there is a bill that gets introduced every year to protect the 'sweat of the brow' necessary to create databases.
Exactly. Science has its balliwack, religion and philosophy have theirs. Both sides have a tendency to overstep their bounds in this subject area.
Good point (I'd mod it up), but there is still no way to determine whether that change occured due to a random event or whether some ID decided to help the bugs survive in their new environment. Come up with an experiment to choose between those two hypothesis and you'll win multiple Nobel Prizes.
Conversely, even if ID advocates could find some structure that required a 1 in 10^9999999999999999999999999999 event to occur, the existance of that structure would still not prove there is an ID. Evolutionists could still argue that if that event hadn't occured, we wouldn't be here pondering it's unlikelyness.
In the end, there are limits of what "Science" can do and what it can't.
It's not deregulation per se that helps the little guy, it's competition. My ability to go to company X if company Y charges too much, has lousy service, etc. Deregulation is usually pro-little-guy because it ususally enhances competition.
That said, I don't disagree with you with respect to corporations. It's their job to get as much money from you as possible. The difference to me is that there is no reason to think government will be any better - even if you could somehow free it of 'big money interests' (which I think is impossible anyway). No matter what you do, they are still just a large organization of ordinary people. They are not capable of knowing what is best for me, and even if they did, they are going to do what is in their own interests. Basically, government is just another 'evil corporation' with power of law.
Is there a role for government regulation. Sure . . . to protect against monopolies, to reduce transaction costs, to internalize the externalities. Anything more is will hurt the little guy, not help them, imho.