"Nevertheless, you do have that choice. Further, since punitive damages are not allowed for breech, you'll find that they're not typically allowed as terms of the contract"
Funny how the ATT iPhone contract has an Early Termination Fee, even though the iPhone's cost isn't subsidized by ATT, yet inspire of that my "voluntary" breach of contract will cause me to be charged a $175 ETF fee. Supposedly punitive, non-mitigated damages fees are not allowed under California law. Reality however favors the deep pockets of big business.
"These are typically considered valid contracts." (Re: posted signs saying customers give consent to have bags searched."
They may or may not be considered valid contracts. However, even if they are valid they are **civil** law contracts and not a matter of criminal law. Stores do not have police powers to detain you and force you to submit to the terms of a contract!!!!!
"hey don't have to have any sort of cause to search your bag in their store."
No, they don't need a cause to **ask** but they can't physically detain or force you to submit to a search you unless they witnessed a crime and are effecting a citizens arrest. They have no powers of arrest other than citizens arrest and you can only make a citizens arrest if you **witnessed** a crime, not just because they'd like to see in a bag.
As to the police search of the OP's bag, the cop is probably in the clear *for the search* because the store misrepresented the facts to the cop. However, the store is not in the clear. They had no legal right to physically detain the OP for failure to submit to a voluntary bag search. As to the tort, there is much more at stake that indignity of being falsely accused--the OP is **in the system** with an arrest record that will show up anytime a cop calls in a a check--forever. Additionally, the OP will suffer legal costs to defend his false arrest. Further, he has been defamed as exemplified by the many, many posts claiming he should have submitted to the demands of the Circuit City employee. And, there is the emotional distress of his relatives who witnessed the false arrest.
No, there is a case here and Circuit City has some damage control to do, and fast. Already, in a similar case, Tiger Direct corporate apologized. CC would do well to follow suit.
Private institutions are not police and they do not have police powers. Defending the idea that they do does a disservice to those who don't fully understand their rights. Our rights are nebulous enough without misinformation being added to the mix.
"No, you really can. Contracts are not inviolate or holy or anything; if either side wants to breech a contract at any time, then they are always absolutely free to do so. "
Your definition of "free to do so" is not one that is shared by everyday people. I'm free to break my NDA agreement, which will then freely allow me to pay $1,000,000 as a breach of the contract that I'm "free" to break at anytime. I certainly would have a hard time arguing that my compliance with the NDA is "voluntary" now that it is signed.
I wouldn't think that the Costco contract is so onerous, but there are usually consequences for "voluntarily" breaching a contract, even if that just means your membership will be rescinded.
"I must say I have a hard time sympathizing here. This falls under the heading of something my old boss used to refer to as "you'd be right, but you'd be dead"."
Er, except he's right and he isn't dead! If this **isn't** a big deal then it never would have resulted in his unlawful detention and arrest.
Now this clearly does not rise to the importance of fighting for suffrage and civil rights, but your boss would have dismissed those fights as well. He would have told Rosa Parks that she'd be right but she'd be dead! That or you are miss representing your boss's opinion...
"They can call the police, or they can perform a citizen's arrest"
You can only execute a citizens arrest if you actually witnessed a crime. Suspicion is not enough. Failure to submit to a voluntary bag check is not reasonable grounds for suspicion--otherwise the bag check is effectively no longer voluntary since you will be arrested unless you comply.
"I'm curious about one thing here: In many large chain stores in NYC (Best Buy, Home Depot, etc.) - there is a little sign posted at the entrance that says "We reserve the right to search your bags," or something to that effect. Now - by reading that sign, and subsequently entering the store, am I therefore consenting to any subsequent search of my bags while in the store? "
IANAL, however I suspect that such signs do not constitute a binding agreement, otherwise they could post whatever they wanted on those signs, such as, "By entering Bust Buy agree never to sue Best Buy for any reason and you agree to let Bust Buy strip search you for any reason or no reason."
"Can a private institution actually reserve a right that violates my own constitutional right to privacy (without my explicit consent)?'
Unfortunately, civil rights aren't as clear cut as that. What the government is barred from doing is not necessarily barred for prove institutions. However, in this case it is likely not constitutional law that preserves your rights not to be searched but state statute.
"Then that too would be voluntary. If you don't want to show your receipt at such a store, then you'd just breech the contract. There's nothing wrong with that, it'd just tend to preclude you from shopping there again."
Not really. Once you have signed the contract, they are no longer voluntary but mandatory and you cannot voluntarily decline. However, it remains to be seen whether failing to comply with the search clause in your Costco membership is strictly a civil matter which merely allows them to bar you from ever entering again or if it allows them to call the cops on the belief that your refusal to comply with the contract is grounds to believe you are shoplifting. I would tend to assume the former. So, in that sense Costco would merely be able to remedy the defect by barring your future shopping just as Circuit City or Tiger Direct **did** to someone. But, I'm just guessing...
First, he didn't have to show his receipt or open the bag containing **his** property for the Circuit City door monitor. Unless you are shopping in a membership store where you signed a contract allowing such searches they are **voluntary**
Security consultant Chris E. McGoey notes: "A customer can refuse to have their bag checked and simply walk out the door past the bag checker. Hopefully the bag checker has been trained to know that they cannot force anyone to submit to a bag search without cause. This is important because the expectation of the bag checker is that all bag contents have been purchased. The worst thing that could happen is that an aggressive bag checker would forcibly detain or threaten a customer who refused to comply with the voluntary search." http://www.crimedoctor.com/loss_prevention_3.htm
Sure, it would have been easier to submit to a search, but stores use the force of conformity as a method of social engineering to get you to comply. A voluntary search isn't voluntary unless you can say no without negative consequences, otherwise the search is **coerced**. The effectiveness of this social engineering will be seen in the comments of people who will say he should have just shown his receipt. These people show their receipts and, based on innate human behavior, think that everyone should behave as they do and that not to do so is to be unreasonable. But where should it stop? If you think the store had a right to make him show a receipt and have his bags searched--contrary to law--why not make him take his shoes off and let them inspect his wallet? They have **just as much right** do do that as search his bags, which is to say, "none."
Not showing your receipt when you don't have to may seem like a trivial gesture but clearly it is not. The OP was within his legal rights and as a result was arrested. Most of us are unwilling to face those kind of consequences to stand up to our everyday rights. He was not. I hope he brings awareness to the over zealous use of searches by private business acting like they are the government with police powers.
As to the arrest for failing to show his license. The OP was the one who called the cops and they arrested **him**, not the store personnel who were unlawfully detaining him in the parking lot! Idaho state law specifically says he just has to identify himself to the officer not show ID, and he isn't required to have an ID on him! To all of those who say he should have been arrested for not showing ID do you think that would also apply if he hadn't been carrying one? If not, why is it any different to arrest him just because he did?
One of the biggest problem with the Moller sky car is that it has no glide ratio--and no margin of safety during an engine failure. Even helicopters can land without power by going into "auto rotation." The Moller sky rock cannot.
While the sky car could use a rocket launched parachute like those used by some paraglider pilots, those don't help unless you have some altitude for it to deploy and decelerate your fall. Moller has been sucking up venture capitol for decades but he is to flying cars as Lyndon Larouche is to the presidency--it ain't gonna happen.
"This, gentlemen, was a piece of art. Most likely a one of a kind. Can you hear comic store guy and everyone like him cry out in agony and disbelief? How can he? How dares he? How could anyone take a piece like this and mount his own head on top?"
I think Comic Book Guy would be aghast that he took the life-sized Hans Solo in Carbonite(tm) out of the giant life-sized plastic blister pack and played with it! And of course Comic Book Guy would be moaning in pain on the floor if he heard that this "fan' cut off Harison Ford's head...
The guy may be a "fan," but he's no **collector**.
"You're saying that Robert Jordan has less "just pulled this out of my ass"?
Wow."
Well, not if you count by the word...almost nobody can drag out a book more effortlessly than Jordan. Most author's books are done after 300 pages but Jordan is just warming up and getting the exposition out of the way. But you can tell he is setting up long plot arc's 1 or two books in advance base on the slow, drawn out plots. I don't get that same sense of interbook pre-planning from Rowling, with the exception of books 6 and 7.
"- Harry talking to the snake in the zoo in the beginning of book 1, before we learned about parseltongues in book 2"
That is a good example, but it is still quite possible that Rowling really hadn't thought about how or why the snake talked to Harry but just thought it was a fun image and took advantage of the vagueness later on. I think you can argue the same way about every example you bring up. Robert Jordan, for example, is a master epic plotter, sometimes setting up plot-lines several books ahead but you can also see that he leaves his options very, very open so as not to constrict his future options. I don't think Rowling does the kind of advance story arc planning as Jordan does based on the "I just pulled this out of my ass" feeling that some of the plot points in the books have. Anyways, this kind of discussion based on speculation is unlikely to be very conclusive either way.
"Or, applying Occam's Razor, maybe she had the theories running all along?"
Occam's Razor suggests that the theory with the fewest assumptions is the correct one. (It is a simplification to say that Occam's Razor favors the "simplest" argument.)
In this case, which is the theory with the fewest assumptions? I really couldn't say for certain, so I don't think that Occam's Razor applies cleanly in this instance.
However, I think that it is highly unlikely that she wrote the first book with the entire plot-line for the series written out. The series is very inconsistent. For instance, the Patronus Charm was originally depicted as nearly impossible for a student to perform, being very advanced magic--albeit stupefyingly simplistic ("Think happy thoughts..."). Later, in Order of the Phoenix, all the students in "Dumbledore's Army" learn the patronus. The books generally do no show a great deal of forethought from book to book with he exception of book 6 which was written to setup book 7. So, if I had to choose, I'd say that assuming that Rowling plotted all the books in advance is the greater assumption.
...and Hermione manages to push Voldemort out of the Hogwarts airlock and blast him with the main engines...oops, I'm mixing my non sequiturs...
All in all, the Deathly Hallows was a satisfying read. Rowling did a good job of creating the illusion of a Grand Unifying Theory of the previous books and make it seem like there was a clever thread running through them that sustained until the end. She is very good at writing herself out of the corners she paints herself into.
And who is to say that it wasn't the **customer's** dollar that one--as opposed to the 9 allegedly faulty credits issued by the machine due to no fault of the customer?
Customers don't get "do overs" when they lose, neither should the casino...
The argument that slot machine players should have known better is silly. Gambling is a veritable tax on the innumerate. Although some gamblers are very knowledgeable about odds, most play because they either don't care about the math as a whole or don't understand that they will always loose in the long run to the house.
If it wasn't designed for US currency, it should have rejected the US currency, coins or cards inserted as being improper. The casino was negligent.
Whatever the case it is a **gambling** machine so I have a hard time sympathizing with the gambling machine's owner for loosing money. They gambled on a defective machine and lost.
As per the FA, I bet that if they ever found a machine that had only been giving 10 cents credit for every dollar that they would have tracked down the players and given them full refunds...
He does cite example's where the editor has a copyright claim to the collection as a whole even though the individual works remain in the public domain.
"For example, Richard D. Heffner's A
Documentary History of the United States has a copyright symbol even
though the book consists entirely of reproductions of historical documents."
But he fails to make clear that the choice of works for the collection and the order they are put in can by copyrighted. People can still copy the text of individual works from the book, but they can't reproduce the full collection and order of the collection without infringing on the author's copyright. This is an important distinction that is vital to the understanding of public domain and copyright. To give short shrift to this aspect of copyright is a major omission.
I don't think the author of the FA is ignorant of the distinction but I do think he glosses over it to try and make his case stand out more. I think he does a disservice to his point and to his readers by doing so.
What I do think is especially difficult for people who wish to use public domain works contained in collections is that the publishers deliberately try and obfuscate which parts of the book are public domain and which parts are new additions that are copyright. They do this by the "blanket copyright notice" the author of the FA rails so much against rather than saying "Introduction and commentary copyright" or "foot notes and cover art copyright, balance public domain" or some such notice so that people have a reasonable notice of what is actually copyright and what is not. On that point I think the FA is very good.
"Also, as it turns out, the virtual world's regular visitors -- at most 40,000 of them online at any time -- are not only disinterested in in-world marketing, but actively hostile to it, "
You mean **uninterested**.
"disinterested |dis?int??restid; -tristid| adjective 1 not influenced by considerations of personal advantage : a banker is under an obligation to give disinterested advice. 2 having or feeling no interest in something : her father was so disinterested in her progress that he only visited the school once."
"USAGE A common source of confusion is the difference between disinterested and uninterested. Disinterested means 'not having a personal interest, impartial':: a juror must be disinterested in the case being tried. Uninterested means 'not interested, indifferent': | on the other hand, a juror must not be uninterested."
The judge's ruling seemed to suggest that the RIAA's blatantly misleading filing borders on perpetrating a fraud on the court. It almost seems lucky the weren't cited for contempt.
Public Domain Can Be Re- Copyrighted
on
False Copyright Claims
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm very pro public domain, cc and copy-left but the FA omits some facts.
Although he's right that merely digitizing or copying a public domain work does not result in a new copyright, creating a collection of public domain works does. The individual works remain in the public domain, but you can't copy the "collection" as a whole (eg. scan and upload the book as a whole to the internet) because the creativity of selecting and assembling the work is a new copyright. This, for example, would apply to Dover books of public domain clip art.
Also, public domain music can be re-copyrighted to an extent--unfortunately--because individual arrangements can be copyrighted. You are free to use the original tune, but you can't copy a new arrangement because that arrangement is a new copyright.
Public domain is not GPL. Just because a work is public domain doesn't mean that derivative works will be public domain.
Now, that being said, the article is, otherwise, a good one. I'm tired of museums and "educational" institutions claiming copyright on the public domain works in their collection and copyright on the reproductions of those works. In those cases, no new creativity has occurred and there is no new copyright.
This "reprieve" is just an attempt by the RIAA controlled Sound Exchange to stave off legislation that would return the royalty rates to a sane number. Once the momentum for the legislation wanes, Sound Exchange can crank the fees back up without worrying that Congress will have the fortitude to try legislation again.
Sorry, the parent is not a valid, Bush Administration Surgeon General position. You only mentioned Bush only once and you full well know the standard for any proper scientific position is that President Bush must be mentioned in glowing terms 3 times per page. Please edit and resubmit your paper accordingly.
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"Nevertheless, you do have that choice. Further, since punitive damages are not allowed for breech, you'll find that they're not typically allowed as terms of the contract"
Funny how the ATT iPhone contract has an Early Termination Fee, even though the iPhone's cost isn't subsidized by ATT, yet inspire of that my "voluntary" breach of contract will cause me to be charged a $175 ETF fee. Supposedly punitive, non-mitigated damages fees are not allowed under California law. Reality however favors the deep pockets of big business.
"These are typically considered valid contracts." (Re: posted signs saying customers give consent to have bags searched."
They may or may not be considered valid contracts. However, even if they are valid they are **civil** law contracts and not a matter of criminal law. Stores do not have police powers to detain you and force you to submit to the terms of a contract!!!!!
"hey don't have to have any sort of cause to search your bag in their store."
No, they don't need a cause to **ask** but they can't physically detain or force you to submit to a search you unless they witnessed a crime and are effecting a citizens arrest. They have no powers of arrest other than citizens arrest and you can only make a citizens arrest if you **witnessed** a crime, not just because they'd like to see in a bag.
As to the police search of the OP's bag, the cop is probably in the clear *for the search* because the store misrepresented the facts to the cop. However, the store is not in the clear. They had no legal right to physically detain the OP for failure to submit to a voluntary bag search. As to the tort, there is much more at stake that indignity of being falsely accused--the OP is **in the system** with an arrest record that will show up anytime a cop calls in a a check--forever. Additionally, the OP will suffer legal costs to defend his false arrest. Further, he has been defamed as exemplified by the many, many posts claiming he should have submitted to the demands of the Circuit City employee. And, there is the emotional distress of his relatives who witnessed the false arrest.
No, there is a case here and Circuit City has some damage control to do, and fast. Already, in a similar case, Tiger Direct corporate apologized. CC would do well to follow suit.
Private institutions are not police and they do not have police powers. Defending the idea that they do does a disservice to those who don't fully understand their rights. Our rights are nebulous enough without misinformation being added to the mix.
"No, you really can. Contracts are not inviolate or holy or anything; if either side wants to breech a contract at any time, then they are always absolutely free to do so. "
Your definition of "free to do so" is not one that is shared by everyday people. I'm free to break my NDA agreement, which will then freely allow me to pay $1,000,000 as a breach of the contract that I'm "free" to break at anytime. I certainly would have a hard time arguing that my compliance with the NDA is "voluntary" now that it is signed.
I wouldn't think that the Costco contract is so onerous, but there are usually consequences for "voluntarily" breaching a contract, even if that just means your membership will be rescinded.
"I must say I have a hard time sympathizing here. This falls under the heading of something my old boss used to refer to as "you'd be right, but you'd be dead"."
Er, except he's right and he isn't dead! If this **isn't** a big deal then it never would have resulted in his unlawful detention and arrest.
Now this clearly does not rise to the importance of fighting for suffrage and civil rights, but your boss would have dismissed those fights as well. He would have told Rosa Parks that she'd be right but she'd be dead! That or you are miss representing your boss's opinion...
"They can call the police, or they can perform a citizen's arrest"
You can only execute a citizens arrest if you actually witnessed a crime. Suspicion is not enough. Failure to submit to a voluntary bag check is not reasonable grounds for suspicion--otherwise the bag check is effectively no longer voluntary since you will be arrested unless you comply.
"I'm curious about one thing here: In many large chain stores in NYC (Best Buy, Home Depot, etc.) - there is a little sign posted at the entrance that says "We reserve the right to search your bags," or something to that effect. Now - by reading that sign, and subsequently entering the store, am I therefore consenting to any subsequent search of my bags while in the store? "
IANAL, however I suspect that such signs do not constitute a binding agreement, otherwise they could post whatever they wanted on those signs, such as, "By entering Bust Buy agree never to sue Best Buy for any reason and you agree to let Bust Buy strip search you for any reason or no reason."
"Can a private institution actually reserve a right that violates my own constitutional right to privacy (without my explicit consent)?'
Unfortunately, civil rights aren't as clear cut as that. What the government is barred from doing is not necessarily barred for prove institutions. However, in this case it is likely not constitutional law that preserves your rights not to be searched but state statute.
"Then that too would be voluntary. If you don't want to show your receipt at such a store, then you'd just breech the contract. There's nothing wrong with that, it'd just tend to preclude you from shopping there again."
Not really. Once you have signed the contract, they are no longer voluntary but mandatory and you cannot voluntarily decline. However, it remains to be seen whether failing to comply with the search clause in your Costco membership is strictly a civil matter which merely allows them to bar you from ever entering again or if it allows them to call the cops on the belief that your refusal to comply with the contract is grounds to believe you are shoplifting. I would tend to assume the former. So, in that sense Costco would merely be able to remedy the defect by barring your future shopping just as Circuit City or Tiger Direct **did** to someone. But, I'm just guessing...
First, he didn't have to show his receipt or open the bag containing **his** property for the Circuit City door monitor. Unless you are shopping in a membership store where you signed a contract allowing such searches they are **voluntary**
Security consultant Chris E. McGoey notes:
"A customer can refuse to have their bag checked and simply walk out the door past the bag checker. Hopefully the bag checker has been trained to know that they cannot force anyone to submit to a bag search without cause. This is important because the expectation of the bag checker is that all bag contents have been purchased. The worst thing that could happen is that an aggressive bag checker would forcibly detain or threaten a customer who refused to comply with the voluntary search."
http://www.crimedoctor.com/loss_prevention_3.htm
Sure, it would have been easier to submit to a search, but stores use the force of conformity as a method of social engineering to get you to comply. A voluntary search isn't voluntary unless you can say no without negative consequences, otherwise the search is **coerced**. The effectiveness of this social engineering will be seen in the comments of people who will say he should have just shown his receipt. These people show their receipts and, based on innate human behavior, think that everyone should behave as they do and that not to do so is to be unreasonable. But where should it stop? If you think the store had a right to make him show a receipt and have his bags searched--contrary to law--why not make him take his shoes off and let them inspect his wallet? They have **just as much right** do do that as search his bags, which is to say, "none."
Not showing your receipt when you don't have to may seem like a trivial gesture but clearly it is not. The OP was within his legal rights and as a result was arrested. Most of us are unwilling to face those kind of consequences to stand up to our everyday rights. He was not. I hope he brings awareness to the over zealous use of searches by private business acting like they are the government with police powers.
As to the arrest for failing to show his license. The OP was the one who called the cops and they arrested **him**, not the store personnel who were unlawfully detaining him in the parking lot! Idaho state law specifically says he just has to identify himself to the officer not show ID, and he isn't required to have an ID on him! To all of those who say he should have been arrested for not showing ID do you think that would also apply if he hadn't been carrying one? If not, why is it any different to arrest him just because he did?
One of the biggest problem with the Moller sky car is that it has no glide ratio--and no margin of safety during an engine failure. Even helicopters can land without power by going into "auto rotation." The Moller sky rock cannot.
While the sky car could use a rocket launched parachute like those used by some paraglider pilots, those don't help unless you have some altitude for it to deploy and decelerate your fall. Moller has been sucking up venture capitol for decades but he is to flying cars as Lyndon Larouche is to the presidency--it ain't gonna happen.
"This, gentlemen, was a piece of art. Most likely a one of a kind. Can you hear comic store guy and everyone like him cry out in agony and disbelief? How can he? How dares he? How could anyone take a piece like this and mount his own head on top?"
I think Comic Book Guy would be aghast that he took the life-sized Hans Solo in Carbonite(tm) out of the giant life-sized plastic blister pack and played with it! And of course Comic Book Guy would be moaning in pain on the floor if he heard that this "fan' cut off Harison Ford's head...
The guy may be a "fan," but he's no **collector**.
"You're saying that Robert Jordan has less "just pulled this out of my ass"?
Wow."
Well, not if you count by the word...almost nobody can drag out a book more effortlessly than Jordan. Most author's books are done after 300 pages but Jordan is just warming up and getting the exposition out of the way. But you can tell he is setting up long plot arc's 1 or two books in advance base on the slow, drawn out plots. I don't get that same sense of interbook pre-planning from Rowling, with the exception of books 6 and 7.
"- Harry talking to the snake in the zoo in the beginning of book 1, before we learned about parseltongues in book 2"
That is a good example, but it is still quite possible that Rowling really hadn't thought about how or why the snake talked to Harry but just thought it was a fun image and took advantage of the vagueness later on. I think you can argue the same way about every example you bring up. Robert Jordan, for example, is a master epic plotter, sometimes setting up plot-lines several books ahead but you can also see that he leaves his options very, very open so as not to constrict his future options. I don't think Rowling does the kind of advance story arc planning as Jordan does based on the "I just pulled this out of my ass" feeling that some of the plot points in the books have. Anyways, this kind of discussion based on speculation is unlikely to be very conclusive either way.
"Or, applying Occam's Razor, maybe she had the theories running all along?"
Occam's Razor suggests that the theory with the fewest assumptions is the correct one. (It is a simplification to say that Occam's Razor favors the "simplest" argument.)
In this case, which is the theory with the fewest assumptions? I really couldn't say for certain, so I don't think that Occam's Razor applies cleanly in this instance.
However, I think that it is highly unlikely that she wrote the first book with the entire plot-line for the series written out. The series is very inconsistent. For instance, the Patronus Charm was originally depicted as nearly impossible for a student to perform, being very advanced magic--albeit stupefyingly simplistic ("Think happy thoughts..."). Later, in Order of the Phoenix, all the students in "Dumbledore's Army" learn the patronus. The books generally do no show a great deal of forethought from book to book with he exception of book 6 which was written to setup book 7. So, if I had to choose, I'd say that assuming that Rowling plotted all the books in advance is the greater assumption.
...and Hermione manages to push Voldemort out of the Hogwarts airlock and blast him with the main engines...oops, I'm mixing my non sequiturs...
All in all, the Deathly Hallows was a satisfying read. Rowling did a good job of creating the illusion of a Grand Unifying Theory of the previous books and make it seem like there was a clever thread running through them that sustained until the end. She is very good at writing herself out of the corners she paints herself into.
And who is to say that it wasn't the **customer's** dollar that one--as opposed to the 9 allegedly faulty credits issued by the machine due to no fault of the customer?
Customers don't get "do overs" when they lose, neither should the casino...
The argument that slot machine players should have known better is silly. Gambling is a veritable tax on the innumerate. Although some gamblers are very knowledgeable about odds, most play because they either don't care about the math as a whole or don't understand that they will always loose in the long run to the house.
If it wasn't designed for US currency, it should have rejected the US currency, coins or cards inserted as being improper. The casino was negligent.
Whatever the case it is a **gambling** machine so I have a hard time sympathizing with the gambling machine's owner for loosing money. They gambled on a defective machine and lost.
As per the FA, I bet that if they ever found a machine that had only been giving 10 cents credit for every dollar that they would have tracked down the players and given them full refunds...
...is cut off. How does it end?
Anyways, I didn't mean to imply that a collection of "everything" was a creative and copyrightable act. Thanks for the citations.
He does cite example's where the editor has a copyright claim to the collection as a whole even though the individual works remain in the public domain. "For example, Richard D. Heffner's A Documentary History of the United States has a copyright symbol even though the book consists entirely of reproductions of historical documents." But he fails to make clear that the choice of works for the collection and the order they are put in can by copyrighted. People can still copy the text of individual works from the book, but they can't reproduce the full collection and order of the collection without infringing on the author's copyright. This is an important distinction that is vital to the understanding of public domain and copyright. To give short shrift to this aspect of copyright is a major omission. I don't think the author of the FA is ignorant of the distinction but I do think he glosses over it to try and make his case stand out more. I think he does a disservice to his point and to his readers by doing so. What I do think is especially difficult for people who wish to use public domain works contained in collections is that the publishers deliberately try and obfuscate which parts of the book are public domain and which parts are new additions that are copyright. They do this by the "blanket copyright notice" the author of the FA rails so much against rather than saying "Introduction and commentary copyright" or "foot notes and cover art copyright, balance public domain" or some such notice so that people have a reasonable notice of what is actually copyright and what is not. On that point I think the FA is very good.
"Also, as it turns out, the virtual world's regular visitors -- at most 40,000 of them online at any time -- are not only disinterested in in-world marketing, but actively hostile to it, "
You mean **uninterested**.
"disinterested |dis?int??restid; -tristid| adjective 1 not influenced by considerations of personal advantage : a banker is under an obligation to give disinterested advice. 2 having or feeling no interest in something : her father was so disinterested in her progress that he only visited the school once."
"USAGE A common source of confusion is the difference between disinterested and uninterested. Disinterested means 'not having a personal interest, impartial':: a juror must be disinterested in the case being tried. Uninterested means 'not interested, indifferent': | on the other hand, a juror must not be uninterested."
The judge's ruling seemed to suggest that the RIAA's blatantly misleading filing borders on perpetrating a fraud on the court. It almost seems lucky the weren't cited for contempt.
I'm very pro public domain, cc and copy-left but the FA omits some facts.
Although he's right that merely digitizing or copying a public domain work does not result in a new copyright, creating a collection of public domain works does. The individual works remain in the public domain, but you can't copy the "collection" as a whole (eg. scan and upload the book as a whole to the internet) because the creativity of selecting and assembling the work is a new copyright. This, for example, would apply to Dover books of public domain clip art.
Also, public domain music can be re-copyrighted to an extent--unfortunately--because individual arrangements can be copyrighted. You are free to use the original tune, but you can't copy a new arrangement because that arrangement is a new copyright.
Public domain is not GPL. Just because a work is public domain doesn't mean that derivative works will be public domain.
Now, that being said, the article is, otherwise, a good one. I'm tired of museums and "educational" institutions claiming copyright on the public domain works in their collection and copyright on the reproductions of those works. In those cases, no new creativity has occurred and there is no new copyright.
This "reprieve" is just an attempt by the RIAA controlled Sound Exchange to stave off legislation that would return the royalty rates to a sane number. Once the momentum for the legislation wanes, Sound Exchange can crank the fees back up without worrying that Congress will have the fortitude to try legislation again.
Sorry, the parent is not a valid, Bush Administration Surgeon General position. You only mentioned Bush only once and you full well know the standard for any proper scientific position is that President Bush must be mentioned in glowing terms 3 times per page. Please edit and resubmit your paper accordingly.
(If only that wasn't **actually true**!!!)