As a former prosecutor in Louisiana, I can explain this one for you. To begin with, understand that the penalty for Murder 2 is life in prison, no parole. And here in Louisiana, that sentence means you will die in prison. For Murder 1, the penalty is either the death penalty or life in prison.
We don't use the concept of "premeditation" in Louisiana, we use "intent." If you kill somebody, and you had an intent to kill them, that's Murder 2, even if that intent was formed the second you pulled the trigger. You don't have to "lie in wait" or anything like that. In a poisoning case, the only defense, beyond just I didn't put the arsenic in his soup" would be "I had no idea that was arsenic, it came out of the jar labelled 'sugar.'" It's also Murder 2 if you kill someone in the course of committing another crime, such as armed robbery. Say you accidentally drop the gun while you're pulling the robbery, and it goes off and kills somebody. You didn't intend to kill the guy, you didn't pull the trigger, but you did kill him in the course of a robbery, so that's Murder 2.
Murder One is a murder where you intended to kill someone AND one of several aggravating circumstances is present. If you shoot a cop and kill him, that's Murder 1. If you're pulling a robbery AND you intentionally shoot the store clerk, that's Murder 1 (if you had only accidentally shot the store clerk, it would be Murder 2).
Note the use of the phrase "intent to kill or cause great bodily harm." That's in there to prevent the murderer from claiming "yeah, I shot him, but I only wanted to wound him in the arm, I didn't mean to shoot him in the heart."
Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:
Note the language "fixed in any tangible medium of expression." Until it is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, it is not subject to copyright. What is protected from copying by the copyright law is the thing which is fixed in the tangible medium of expression.
Stop and think for a moment about things like candid photos of people out in the real world. Not models being paid to pose, just everyday journalism photos, snapshots, etc. The photographers who take those pictures just "recorded and broadcast" what they saw, but they still own the copyright to those photos.
Also, if anybody could simply pick up and rebroadcast the C-Span footage, what incentive would they have to pay the cameramen? Why should they do all that work, if anybody else would be free to pirate the signal and broadcast it themselves, without having to pay for the cameras and the cameramen, the competitor could provide the same product for much less.
C-Span has only ever claimed ownership of the committee footage, which they recorded at their own expense. They have never claimed ownership of of footage of the floor, because that footage was created by the U.S. government and is thus not susceptible of copyright.
It's very simple. The copyright is not in the live speech or debate or whatever, but in the recording of that speech or debate. If I happen to bring a video camera to a public forum and record it, that videotape and the footage on it is mine, because I am the one who "fixed" (i.e. recorded) it onto a medium. Imagine 5 guys with a camera taking pictures in a public place. They may take 5 very similar images, but the copyright for each image belongs to the photographer who took it, not the subject. Or consider the local studio photographer. You pay him to take your picture and sell you prints, but he owns the copyright of the pictures that he took of you (unless he agrees to sell them to you, of course). Even though the picture is of you, the copyright belongs to him.
Similarly, for Congressional committee hearings and the like, C-Span cameras, paid for with private C-Span dollars (they receive no taxpayer subsidies) are responsible for recording the image. Thus, C-Span owns the copyright to that video and audio recording.
Unlike your writings, those recordings are not a "U.S. government work" (the technical term in the copyright law), and so C-Span has the copyright on them.
In contrast, the footage of speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives are recorded by cameras owned and operated by government employees. Thus, like your writings, they are U.S. governmnet works. Anybody who wants to can hook into the feed and broadcast it, copy it into their computer, whatever.
The OP gets it massively wrong when it says that C-Span asserted copyright to what Pelosi republished on her blog. They never did. A GOP guy asked a question of a random C-Span employee; between the two of them, they misunderstood the details (it was floor speeches not committee speeches) and the random C-Span employee told the GOP guy it was copyrighted. That was wrong, and within the day, once it became an issue, C-Span had made sure to get the correct information out.
I discuss in more detail here and here on my blog.
You seem to be overlooking the put back provisions of the DMCA. The guy who posted the video of the penises attacking the wife's avatar could have just certified to YouTube that the material was non-infringing, and then YouTube under the DMCA would have left the video up (barring any TOS violations), leaving the 2 parties to fight it out amongst themselves in court... with the video remaining up until ordered removed by a court.
I am wholeheartedly opposed to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, but the take-down notice system it created seems to me to strike just the right balance.
Such a system is obviously not aimed at those for whom price is the main consideration. For those interested in performance, however, an extra $600 may well be worth it. I paid more than that to upgrade my laptop screen to a very high resolution, because it was worth it to me. I could definitely see myself paying an extra $600 for a system with this, though it would also need to have an actual, larger capacity harddrive, too, for my data.
The problem with that argument is simply this: Would either Bell or the alleged other guy have worked so hard to invent the telephone if they didn't have an expectation of being able to patent it and make some money off of it before somebody else made a generic version? Maybe, not everybody is motivated by money. But I doubt it. It cost Bell lots of time and money to invent the first telephone. He needs a way to recoup that.
The concept of patents is very sound and necessary to encourage innovation in areas where replicating the invention is cheap, but thinking it up in the first place is not. The problem today is with the implemenation of patents by the USPTO and the expansion into areas like "business practices" and truly mind-numbingly obvious things like "one-click shopping". Marketing gimmicks should not be patentable.
I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing illegal about a landlord discriminating against a tenant for being a DJ and a rave promoter. Landlords have no obligation to rent to anybody. Generally speaking, the only grounds for which they can't discriminate against you are race, gender, and age, and, in a few states and communities, sexual orientation.
Your AC comment would indeed be "insightful," were it not completely wrong. In the end, at least one company was forced to pay Pamela and Tommy Lee substantial damages for making the video available on the internet. The only battle that the porn people won was its claim that the couple signed away their rights in their initial settlement agreement with the porn people who first aired it. After the trial judge's throwing the case for internet distribution out of court was overturned on appeal, the porn people threw in the towel and judgment was rendered against them for the illegal distribution of the video.
It's not like this happened to Blackberry overnight. The suit and shutdown order have been years in the making. Even the absolute-final-obvious-to-a-blind-man writing on the wall of the coming shutdown has been around for many months. Businesses have had AMPLE time to migrate already.
And they would have the same kind of timeframe with any other litigation which might shut down their use of software they had purchased.
And exactly what new categories have been added in the past 20 years that have resulted in large numbers of people ACTUALLY going to jail? I'm not talking about laws like the gp poster cited about mixed-age heterosexual sex vs. mixed age homosexual sex... those don't result in any real numbers of people in prison. Who shouldn't get jail time? Drug dealers? Burglers? Thieves? Armed robbers?
Do you have a link for one of those? All the products shown on Tivo.com require a subscription service of one sort or another. ReplayTV also requires a subscription and they reserve the right to change your software whenever you connect to their server.
I never gave serious thought to buying a TiVO. I am not going to shell out several hundred bucks on a device that MUST be connected to the manufacturer/service provider in order to work. I'd be more than happy to pay several hundred dollars for a TiVo-like product that was entirely stand-alone. I know how to program a VCR, I don't need idiot-proof scheduling software for that. Once the company started going the route of making money on the service rather than on the hardware, all of the current abuses (their own commercials during the commercial skip, cancellation fees, "broadcast" flags) were inevitable.
Does any company make a stand-alone box that functions like a TiVo, but without any need to connect to their servers?
The difference is that, when the mail is stolen and open, the mail recipient will probably sooner rather than later discover the security breach, because they are expecting its arrival, and until it gets there they can't get money out of the ATM. So when it doesn't come in a few days, they call the bank who says they sent it, whoops, must have been stolen, cancel the card, issue a new one.
If, on the other hand, the criminal scans the unopened mail and puts it back in the mail process, then the recipient gets everything, it looks good, and he goes out and starts using the card. Now the thief can quietly go along, occasinally checking the balance, then draining the account on payday, before anybody knows the card data has been stolen.
Also, the data could be stolen by a post office employee who sneaks in a hand scanner. If that same employee were to physically steal and open mail, they'd be caught pretty quick when two dozen people downstream of that employee all complain that their mail was missing. But if the same employee doesn't steal the mail but just scans it, it will take much longer to discover them.
All those little things you mention (calling to dispute the bill, getting a new number, etc.) are a real hassle and take time and effort which could be devoted either to billable hours or fun instead of dealing with credit card bureaucrats.
And it can be a real problem if your account is hacked/stolen right when you really need to use it. Suppose you're on vacation in Europe, go to pay for your rental car, and find out that your credit limit is maxed out. Do you really want to deal with that on vacation?
Plus, of course, if a lot of people used one-time numbers, there would be a lot less credit card fraud, which in the end would mean lower rates for all credit card users.
So I hardly consider this a "marketing tool" only. If my card company offered it, I assure you I would use it regularly.
In addition to the technical risky-port blocking solutions that others have suggested, I have 2 non-technical solutions.
1. As another poster suggested, have a sliding scale for how many days you are kicked off the network after bringing it down. First offense, 1 day and the standard lecture. Second offense, 1 week and a heavier lecture. 3rd offense, 1 month with no internet.
2. SHAME. Every time a user brings down the network, post his or her name on the bulletin board explaining who was responsible for everybody else's internet going down. Or maybe a big sign (a scarlet "V" maybe) next to the door of the offending user.
That was more or less my point, but obviously today's moderators didn't think it very funny...
And of course Microsoft has given similar names to 2 different pieces of technology, Windows Messenger and MS Messenger. I assume the article is right that Reuters was using the MS (Instant) Messenger software.
That's just not true. Do you have a source to back up your outrageous claims? In fact, the U. S. Supreme Court recently threw out the sentencing guidelines which limited the discretion of judges in imposing sentences, returning full authority over sentencing to the discretion of individual judges. A judge can suspend the sentence entirely, impose the maximum, or anythin in between at this point.
In fairness to the story submitter, CNN got it wrong in its headline. The body of the story, however, correctly describes the court's ruling as based on trademark law, not copyright law. (You can't copyright titles.)
If it's not that big a deal, and everybody knows what's going on anyway, why is the Gomery commission getting so upset about it?
And trying to punish Canadian news outlets who merely publish a link to the American website? I'm sorry, but that's wrong, and should be wrong by anybody's definition. Do you support China's filtering of internet access for all its citizens?
There's a difference between keeping things secret and censorship. If a journalist were to get hold of the Warren Commission files and publish them, he would have an absolute right to do so under our First Amendment. The Pentagon Files were highly classified documents, and taking them was theft, and the person who leaked them to the newspaper broke the law. But that didn't make it illegal for the newspaper to publish them.
"If you speak these words, you will go to jail." That's a terrible concept. If you tell people what you observed in a public hearing with your own eyes and ears, it sounds like you can be fined and imprisoned by the Canadian government. In my opinion, that's just wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
As a former prosecutor in Louisiana, I can explain this one for you. To begin with, understand that the penalty for Murder 2 is life in prison, no parole. And here in Louisiana, that sentence means you will die in prison. For Murder 1, the penalty is either the death penalty or life in prison.
We don't use the concept of "premeditation" in Louisiana, we use "intent." If you kill somebody, and you had an intent to kill them, that's Murder 2, even if that intent was formed the second you pulled the trigger. You don't have to "lie in wait" or anything like that. In a poisoning case, the only defense, beyond just I didn't put the arsenic in his soup" would be "I had no idea that was arsenic, it came out of the jar labelled 'sugar.'" It's also Murder 2 if you kill someone in the course of committing another crime, such as armed robbery. Say you accidentally drop the gun while you're pulling the robbery, and it goes off and kills somebody. You didn't intend to kill the guy, you didn't pull the trigger, but you did kill him in the course of a robbery, so that's Murder 2.
Murder One is a murder where you intended to kill someone AND one of several aggravating circumstances is present. If you shoot a cop and kill him, that's Murder 1. If you're pulling a robbery AND you intentionally shoot the store clerk, that's Murder 1 (if you had only accidentally shot the store clerk, it would be Murder 2).
You can read the law for yourself:
- First Degree Murder
- Second Degree Murder
Note the use of the phrase "intent to kill or cause great bodily harm." That's in there to prevent the murderer from claiming "yeah, I shot him, but I only wanted to wound him in the arm, I didn't mean to shoot him in the heart."C-Span has only ever claimed ownership of the committee footage, which they recorded at their own expense. They have never claimed ownership of of footage of the floor, because that footage was created by the U.S. government and is thus not susceptible of copyright.
It's very simple. The copyright is not in the live speech or debate or whatever, but in the recording of that speech or debate. If I happen to bring a video camera to a public forum and record it, that videotape and the footage on it is mine, because I am the one who "fixed" (i.e. recorded) it onto a medium. Imagine 5 guys with a camera taking pictures in a public place. They may take 5 very similar images, but the copyright for each image belongs to the photographer who took it, not the subject. Or consider the local studio photographer. You pay him to take your picture and sell you prints, but he owns the copyright of the pictures that he took of you (unless he agrees to sell them to you, of course). Even though the picture is of you, the copyright belongs to him.
Similarly, for Congressional committee hearings and the like, C-Span cameras, paid for with private C-Span dollars (they receive no taxpayer subsidies) are responsible for recording the image. Thus, C-Span owns the copyright to that video and audio recording.
Unlike your writings, those recordings are not a "U.S. government work" (the technical term in the copyright law), and so C-Span has the copyright on them.
In contrast, the footage of speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives are recorded by cameras owned and operated by government employees. Thus, like your writings, they are U.S. governmnet works. Anybody who wants to can hook into the feed and broadcast it, copy it into their computer, whatever.
The OP gets it massively wrong when it says that C-Span asserted copyright to what Pelosi republished on her blog. They never did. A GOP guy asked a question of a random C-Span employee; between the two of them, they misunderstood the details (it was floor speeches not committee speeches) and the random C-Span employee told the GOP guy it was copyrighted. That was wrong, and within the day, once it became an issue, C-Span had made sure to get the correct information out.
I discuss in more detail here and here on my blog.
You seem to be overlooking the put back provisions of the DMCA. The guy who posted the video of the penises attacking the wife's avatar could have just certified to YouTube that the material was non-infringing, and then YouTube under the DMCA would have left the video up (barring any TOS violations), leaving the 2 parties to fight it out amongst themselves in court... with the video remaining up until ordered removed by a court. I am wholeheartedly opposed to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, but the take-down notice system it created seems to me to strike just the right balance.
Such a system is obviously not aimed at those for whom price is the main consideration. For those interested in performance, however, an extra $600 may well be worth it. I paid more than that to upgrade my laptop screen to a very high resolution, because it was worth it to me. I could definitely see myself paying an extra $600 for a system with this, though it would also need to have an actual, larger capacity harddrive, too, for my data.
The problem with that argument is simply this: Would either Bell or the alleged other guy have worked so hard to invent the telephone if they didn't have an expectation of being able to patent it and make some money off of it before somebody else made a generic version? Maybe, not everybody is motivated by money. But I doubt it. It cost Bell lots of time and money to invent the first telephone. He needs a way to recoup that. The concept of patents is very sound and necessary to encourage innovation in areas where replicating the invention is cheap, but thinking it up in the first place is not. The problem today is with the implemenation of patents by the USPTO and the expansion into areas like "business practices" and truly mind-numbingly obvious things like "one-click shopping". Marketing gimmicks should not be patentable.
I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing illegal about a landlord discriminating against a tenant for being a DJ and a rave promoter. Landlords have no obligation to rent to anybody. Generally speaking, the only grounds for which they can't discriminate against you are race, gender, and age, and, in a few states and communities, sexual orientation.
Your AC comment would indeed be "insightful," were it not completely wrong. In the end, at least one company was forced to pay Pamela and Tommy Lee substantial damages for making the video available on the internet. The only battle that the porn people won was its claim that the couple signed away their rights in their initial settlement agreement with the porn people who first aired it. After the trial judge's throwing the case for internet distribution out of court was overturned on appeal, the porn people threw in the towel and judgment was rendered against them for the illegal distribution of the video.
It's not like this happened to Blackberry overnight. The suit and shutdown order have been years in the making. Even the absolute-final-obvious-to-a-blind-man writing on the wall of the coming shutdown has been around for many months. Businesses have had AMPLE time to migrate already. And they would have the same kind of timeframe with any other litigation which might shut down their use of software they had purchased.
But fair use is not grounds for circumventing DRM under the DMCA.
Gattaca
And exactly what new categories have been added in the past 20 years that have resulted in large numbers of people ACTUALLY going to jail? I'm not talking about laws like the gp poster cited about mixed-age heterosexual sex vs. mixed age homosexual sex... those don't result in any real numbers of people in prison. Who shouldn't get jail time? Drug dealers? Burglers? Thieves? Armed robbers?
Do you have a link for one of those? All the products shown on Tivo.com require a subscription service of one sort or another. ReplayTV also requires a subscription and they reserve the right to change your software whenever you connect to their server.
I never gave serious thought to buying a TiVO. I am not going to shell out several hundred bucks on a device that MUST be connected to the manufacturer/service provider in order to work. I'd be more than happy to pay several hundred dollars for a TiVo-like product that was entirely stand-alone. I know how to program a VCR, I don't need idiot-proof scheduling software for that. Once the company started going the route of making money on the service rather than on the hardware, all of the current abuses (their own commercials during the commercial skip, cancellation fees, "broadcast" flags) were inevitable.
Does any company make a stand-alone box that functions like a TiVo, but without any need to connect to their servers?
The difference is that, when the mail is stolen and open, the mail recipient will probably sooner rather than later discover the security breach, because they are expecting its arrival, and until it gets there they can't get money out of the ATM. So when it doesn't come in a few days, they call the bank who says they sent it, whoops, must have been stolen, cancel the card, issue a new one. If, on the other hand, the criminal scans the unopened mail and puts it back in the mail process, then the recipient gets everything, it looks good, and he goes out and starts using the card. Now the thief can quietly go along, occasinally checking the balance, then draining the account on payday, before anybody knows the card data has been stolen. Also, the data could be stolen by a post office employee who sneaks in a hand scanner. If that same employee were to physically steal and open mail, they'd be caught pretty quick when two dozen people downstream of that employee all complain that their mail was missing. But if the same employee doesn't steal the mail but just scans it, it will take much longer to discover them.
All those little things you mention (calling to dispute the bill, getting a new number, etc.) are a real hassle and take time and effort which could be devoted either to billable hours or fun instead of dealing with credit card bureaucrats. And it can be a real problem if your account is hacked/stolen right when you really need to use it. Suppose you're on vacation in Europe, go to pay for your rental car, and find out that your credit limit is maxed out. Do you really want to deal with that on vacation? Plus, of course, if a lot of people used one-time numbers, there would be a lot less credit card fraud, which in the end would mean lower rates for all credit card users. So I hardly consider this a "marketing tool" only. If my card company offered it, I assure you I would use it regularly.
In addition to the technical risky-port blocking solutions that others have suggested, I have 2 non-technical solutions. 1. As another poster suggested, have a sliding scale for how many days you are kicked off the network after bringing it down. First offense, 1 day and the standard lecture. Second offense, 1 week and a heavier lecture. 3rd offense, 1 month with no internet. 2. SHAME. Every time a user brings down the network, post his or her name on the bulletin board explaining who was responsible for everybody else's internet going down. Or maybe a big sign (a scarlet "V" maybe) next to the door of the offending user.
That was more or less my point, but obviously today's moderators didn't think it very funny... And of course Microsoft has given similar names to 2 different pieces of technology, Windows Messenger and MS Messenger. I assume the article is right that Reuters was using the MS (Instant) Messenger software.
Somebody actually CHOOSES to use Microsoft Messenger technology?
That's just not true. Do you have a source to back up your outrageous claims? In fact, the U. S. Supreme Court recently threw out the sentencing guidelines which limited the discretion of judges in imposing sentences, returning full authority over sentencing to the discretion of individual judges. A judge can suspend the sentence entirely, impose the maximum, or anythin in between at this point.
In fairness to the story submitter, CNN got it wrong in its headline. The body of the story, however, correctly describes the court's ruling as based on trademark law, not copyright law. (You can't copyright titles.)
If it's not that big a deal, and everybody knows what's going on anyway, why is the Gomery commission getting so upset about it?
And trying to punish Canadian news outlets who merely publish a link to the American website? I'm sorry, but that's wrong, and should be wrong by anybody's definition. Do you support China's filtering of internet access for all its citizens?
There's a difference between keeping things secret and censorship. If a journalist were to get hold of the Warren Commission files and publish them, he would have an absolute right to do so under our First Amendment. The Pentagon Files were highly classified documents, and taking them was theft, and the person who leaked them to the newspaper broke the law. But that didn't make it illegal for the newspaper to publish them.
"If you speak these words, you will go to jail." That's a terrible concept. If you tell people what you observed in a public hearing with your own eyes and ears, it sounds like you can be fined and imprisoned by the Canadian government. In my opinion, that's just wrong.
So you're saying that censorship ("publication bans") is common in Canada? And you guys look down your nose at US?