There is no discussion of whether copyright infringment is a vestige of slavery in the opinion. Rather, the court holds that there is no evidence of a pattern of copyright infringement by the states which would justify abrogation of state sovereign immunity.
I think that you're wrong about the "vestige of slavery" bit. It is true that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to give full civil rights to former slaves, but what amendment actually does is to extend to the states certain restrictions previously imposed only on the federal government. No showing of a relationship to slavery is required. For example, the denial of the vote to women is not a vestige of slavery since at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment free women did not have the vote. However, I am sure that the Supreme Court would overturn a state statute denying the vote to women on the grounds that it violates the Equal Protection clause, which is extended to the states by the 14th amendment.
Er, in reality you have to sign an employment agreement for that to be true, depending on where the agreement is made.
And do you think that either Intel or George Lucas is so ignorant as not to know the law of the jurisdiction in which it operates and arrange the necessary agreements? The fact is that it in many industries designs are routinely set up as work for hire so that they will belong to the employer. We don't know whether Lucas did this, but it is quite possible that he did, in which case he owns the rights and there is nothing screwy going on here.
That's a bit too cynical. We don't have all the information here. If Lucas went hired Ainsworth and told him what he wanted and Ainsworth developed the detailed design and the molds, then the basic idea was Lucas's and the design was a work for hire, the rights to which belong to Lucas. It's just like when an engineer designs a chip for Intel - the design belongs to Intel, not the engineer.
It is possible that the arrangment was different, e.g. that the designer came up with the design and offered it to Lucas, in which case the rights would depend on what sort of contract they entered into (that is, whether Ainsworth merely licensed Lucas to use the design or whether he sold the rights outright), but the fact that a court has already ruled in Lucas' favor suggests a scenario like the one above. If so, it isn't a case of the courts screwing the little guy - it is a standard case of work for hire.
This is great! It means that F/OSS fights terrorism! If you can get software for free, there's no motivation to pay a pirate. Will the Bush administration now be throwing its weight behind F/OSS?
Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. For one thing, it won't be the only ISO standard for documents: we already have ODF. For another, ISO certification still will not make it an open standard. Governments and other organizations that require documents to conform to an open standard will still have to use ODF, not OOXML. We need to continue pressure for the use of open standards and to refuse to use OOXML ourselves.
Your characterization of the Groklaw crowd is quite inaccurate. Plenty of people there are familiar with standards processes. And yes, they know that there has been controversy before, but rarely has there been controversy of this magnitude, to my knowledge, NEVER in the fast-track process. The purpose of the fast-track process is to expedite the formalization of what are already de facto standards, which means standards that are well thought out and carefully written, that exist in multiple implementations, and on which there is substantial consensus. Microsoft's attempt to use the fast-track process for OOXML is outrageous given that OOXML is a bloated mess, has yet to be implemented by anyone, not even Microsoft, and is a single-company effort on which there is no consensus.
Indeed. And the lack of existing implementations makes OOXML all the more inappropriate for the fast track process, which is intended for existing de facto standards, meaning (a) widely implemented and (b) with broad consensus in the relevant field.
Microsoft certainly has been more active in attacking the free software movement and in particular Linux. Sure, other companies want you to buy their software rather than use something else, but most of them haven't generated the amount of FUD that Microsoft has or engaged in the bullying that Microsoft has. Do you see the Opera folks behaving like Microsoft? I don't think so. Do you see Corel trying to lock people into WordPerfect's file format? No, they were one of the original members of the OASIS committee that created ODF.
Actually, that depends on who your opponents are. If they are a large, well-funded corporation, the financial barrier may be great. If it is a matter of getting other developers of software you started to recognize your rights, it may not be.
Unless your contribution consisted only of small, isolated bits, which as I understand it was not the case, even if there is nothing left that is recognizably your original code, BusyBox as a whole is still a derivative work and you therefore retain rights in it, no?
OSI does not have any members, only a board of directors. Microsoft should not be allowed on the board barring a dramatic and clearly sincere shift in its position and actions, because it cannot be relied upon to act to promote open software.
IANAL but I am reasonably confident that Sequoia cannot successfully sue Felten. They may be able to sue New Jersey for breach of contract if in fact they have a contract with New Jersey that forbids such reviews. That may be the case - I believe that the license for MS Windows Server forbids reviews not approved by Microsoft. If there is such a contract, it would be interesting to see if it holds up in court. The "no review" provision is arguably void as being contrary to public policy.
Felten, however, has no contractual relationship with Sequoia and therefore cannot be in breach of contract. Sequoia therefore cannot sue him unless they can come up with another cause of action. Maybe, just maybe, they could sue him for disclosing trade secrets, if New Jersey has really nasty trade secret laws.
What exactly is it that a license is required to do? That is, is it conducting investigations on the behalf of others for money that requires a license, or is it certain investigative activities that require a license, even if done on one's own behalf?
Since you agree with me that these are all examples of government information that should not be made public, why do you think that they are "weak examples"? The post to which I was responding proposed allowing all citizens access to "all governmental information". My point was precisely that we need to distinguish between information such as this that is legitimately secret and information that should be public.
While I agree that there is way too much secrecy and that it is used far too often to protect wrongdoing by government officials, eliminating secret government information would be a disaster. Do you really want every hostile government and terrorist to know the locations, travel schedules, and arming codes for all US nuclear weapons? What do you think will happen if the names of undercover agents in foreign countries are publicized? How about the impact on fighting organized crime and terrorism of eliminating the Witness Protection program? If you make use of government health care, do you really want everyone to be able to read your medical records?
If your company is publicly held, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 imposes strict requires on document retention, including email. You can't just adopt a policy and stick to it. If your policy is not in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, you will be in big trouble should anyone sue you and ask for email or other documents that should have been retained.
What makes you think SCO can sell stock? Nobody will buy it other than kooks or anti-Linux folks willing to pay to harass Linux. SCO has already been delisted!
And what assets do you think they have? Nothing much. I don't think there's anything worth stripping.
Even a large infusion of cash is unlikely to do SCO any good. They have no income to speak of and no product likely to generate any. Their lawsuits have no chance of succeeding given the ruling that they never acquired the Unix copyrights from Novell. Even in the extremely unlikely event that this is overturned on appeal, they still have to prove infringement of their copyrights, which, with discovery complete, they have still been unable to do, and they have to overcome the problem that they themselves distributed Linux under the GPL, which is a huge problem for them. Finally, no matter what happens, they are going to have to pay millions to Novell since they failed to pass on to Novell the income from their franchise to sell Novell's Unix property, for which they (SCO) were merely to receive a 5% fee. Money will pay the lawyers a little bit longer, but it isn't likely the lawyers can postpone the end very much.
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There is no discussion of whether copyright infringment is a vestige of slavery in the opinion. Rather, the court holds that there is no evidence of a pattern of copyright infringement by the states which would justify abrogation of state sovereign immunity.
I think that you're wrong about the "vestige of slavery" bit. It is true that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to give full civil rights to former slaves, but what amendment actually does is to extend to the states certain restrictions previously imposed only on the federal government. No showing of a relationship to slavery is required. For example, the denial of the vote to women is not a vestige of slavery since at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment free women did not have the vote. However, I am sure that the Supreme Court would overturn a state statute denying the vote to women on the grounds that it violates the Equal Protection clause, which is extended to the states by the 14th amendment.
And do you think that either Intel or George Lucas is so ignorant as not to know the law of the jurisdiction in which it operates and arrange the necessary agreements? The fact is that it in many industries designs are routinely set up as work for hire so that they will belong to the employer. We don't know whether Lucas did this, but it is quite possible that he did, in which case he owns the rights and there is nothing screwy going on here.
That's a bit too cynical. We don't have all the information here. If Lucas went hired Ainsworth and told him what he wanted and Ainsworth developed the detailed design and the molds, then the basic idea was Lucas's and the design was a work for hire, the rights to which belong to Lucas. It's just like when an engineer designs a chip for Intel - the design belongs to Intel, not the engineer.
It is possible that the arrangment was different, e.g. that the designer came up with the design and offered it to Lucas, in which case the rights would depend on what sort of contract they entered into (that is, whether Ainsworth merely licensed Lucas to use the design or whether he sold the rights outright), but the fact that a court has already ruled in Lucas' favor suggests a scenario like the one above. If so, it isn't a case of the courts screwing the little guy - it is a standard case of work for hire.
This is great! It means that F/OSS fights terrorism! If you can get software for free, there's no motivation to pay a pirate. Will the Bush administration now be throwing its weight behind F/OSS?
Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. For one thing, it won't be the only ISO standard for documents: we already have ODF. For another, ISO certification still will not make it an open standard. Governments and other organizations that require documents to conform to an open standard will still have to use ODF, not OOXML. We need to continue pressure for the use of open standards and to refuse to use OOXML ourselves.
Your characterization of the Groklaw crowd is quite inaccurate. Plenty of people there are familiar with standards processes. And yes, they know that there has been controversy before, but rarely has there been controversy of this magnitude, to my knowledge, NEVER in the fast-track process. The purpose of the fast-track process is to expedite the formalization of what are already de facto standards, which means standards that are well thought out and carefully written, that exist in multiple implementations, and on which there is substantial consensus. Microsoft's attempt to use the fast-track process for OOXML is outrageous given that OOXML is a bloated mess, has yet to be implemented by anyone, not even Microsoft, and is a single-company effort on which there is no consensus.
No, they don't say the same thing. The second one adds relevant information.
Indeed. And the lack of existing implementations makes OOXML all the more inappropriate for the fast track process, which is intended for existing de facto standards, meaning (a) widely implemented and (b) with broad consensus in the relevant field.
Microsoft certainly has been more active in attacking the free software movement and in particular Linux. Sure, other companies want you to buy their software rather than use something else, but most of them haven't generated the amount of FUD that Microsoft has or engaged in the bullying that Microsoft has. Do you see the Opera folks behaving like Microsoft? I don't think so. Do you see Corel trying to lock people into WordPerfect's file format? No, they were one of the original members of the OASIS committee that created ODF.
Actually, that depends on who your opponents are. If they are a large, well-funded corporation, the financial barrier may be great. If it is a matter of getting other developers of software you started to recognize your rights, it may not be.
Unless your contribution consisted only of small, isolated bits, which as I understand it was not the case, even if there is nothing left that is recognizably your original code, BusyBox as a whole is still a derivative work and you therefore retain rights in it, no?
OSI does not have any members, only a board of directors. Microsoft should not be allowed on the board barring a dramatic and clearly sincere shift in its position and actions, because it cannot be relied upon to act to promote open software.
IANAL but I am reasonably confident that Sequoia cannot successfully sue Felten. They may be able to sue New Jersey for breach of contract if in fact they have a contract with New Jersey that forbids such reviews. That may be the case - I believe that the license for MS Windows Server forbids reviews not approved by Microsoft. If there is such a contract, it would be interesting to see if it holds up in court. The "no review" provision is arguably void as being contrary to public policy.
Felten, however, has no contractual relationship with Sequoia and therefore cannot be in breach of contract. Sequoia therefore cannot sue him unless they can come up with another cause of action. Maybe, just maybe, they could sue him for disclosing trade secrets, if New Jersey has really nasty trade secret laws.
Only in certain Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mauritania.
The astronauts' mothers have an in with NASA. It's a conspiracy.
What exactly is it that a license is required to do? That is, is it conducting investigations on the behalf of others for money that requires a license, or is it certain investigative activities that require a license, even if done on one's own behalf?
Since you agree with me that these are all examples of government information that should not be made public, why do you think that they are "weak examples"? The post to which I was responding proposed allowing all citizens access to "all governmental information". My point was precisely that we need to distinguish between information such as this that is legitimately secret and information that should be public.
While I agree that there is way too much secrecy and that it is used far too often to protect wrongdoing by government officials, eliminating secret government information would be a disaster. Do you really want every hostile government and terrorist to know the locations, travel schedules, and arming codes for all US nuclear weapons? What do you think will happen if the names of undercover agents in foreign countries are publicized? How about the impact on fighting organized crime and terrorism of eliminating the Witness Protection program? If you make use of government health care, do you really want everyone to be able to read your medical records?
Yeah, but surgical skill is in a lot of ways more like athletics than intellectual. They're not typical physicians.
I'm surprised that such a discriminatory policy has survived the various free trade and IP harmonization agreements. Has it been an issue?
If your company is publicly held, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 imposes strict requires on document retention, including email. You can't just adopt a policy and stick to it. If your policy is not in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, you will be in big trouble should anyone sue you and ask for email or other documents that should have been retained.
True, but in this case the discovery has already revealed evidence that is quite damning, namely that Microsoft knew about Vista's many problems.
What makes you think SCO can sell stock? Nobody will buy it other than kooks or anti-Linux folks willing to pay to harass Linux. SCO has already been delisted! And what assets do you think they have? Nothing much. I don't think there's anything worth stripping.
Even a large infusion of cash is unlikely to do SCO any good. They have no income to speak of and no product likely to generate any. Their lawsuits have no chance of succeeding given the ruling that they never acquired the Unix copyrights from Novell. Even in the extremely unlikely event that this is overturned on appeal, they still have to prove infringement of their copyrights, which, with discovery complete, they have still been unable to do, and they have to overcome the problem that they themselves distributed Linux under the GPL, which is a huge problem for them. Finally, no matter what happens, they are going to have to pay millions to Novell since they failed to pass on to Novell the income from their franchise to sell Novell's Unix property, for which they (SCO) were merely to receive a 5% fee. Money will pay the lawyers a little bit longer, but it isn't likely the lawyers can postpone the end very much.