Among the stolen items that were recovered, according to the affidavit:
? Nineteen CD-ROM discs containing the entire restricted library of sound effects
created during the past 25 years for use in the "Star Wars" films, with an
estimated "collectible value" of $95,000.
? More than 2,000 high-quality digital images from "Episode II," valued at
$125,000.
? Hundreds of video files of "Episode II," from concept shots to final clips,
valued at $100,000.
? About 113 storyboard images - or sketches outlining scenes from the film - with
handwritten notes by Lucas, valued at more than $100,000.
and
When threatened with dismissal, Foley admitted that he had taken photo images,
storyboards and a script for "Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace," but "nothing
big," according to the court document. He specifically denied having a copy of
"Episode II."
Foley said he was an "avid fan" and had taken the items for his "souvenir
collection" at his Petaluma home, according to the court document.
Foley agreed to allow Webb to look through the items at his home and when they
arrived at his Lakeville Circle townhouse the investigator saw "tons of 'Star
Wars' items," Webb said in the affidavit. Foley turned over numerous items,
including 25 CDs with images of the film, three videotapes of "Episode I"
voice-over tests, 115 storyboard image strips and a hard disk drive with
downloaded photo images.
He (or his mother, who lives in the Irvine residence cited below) also, perhaps, attempted to destroy evidence:
Authorities served a search warrant at the Irvine residence the next day, the
court document said, and found "Star Wars" production photos in a trash can, as
well as shredded documents that appeared to be "Star Wars" sketches.
Waldo, obviously, must be using such Satanic means as witchcraft, mind-control, and either flight or teleportation (no doubt with the assistance of Dark Powers) in order to manipulate crowds into resembling him so closely while he flees into obscure locations. I highly recommend keeping this daemonic tome away from ye spawn.
Well, maybe not. Go ask the American Library Association; according to that List of Lists, for some reason it's 87 on the list of "most challenged" books. One could argue that it's not much of a "book" if the objective is to stare at pictures and find somebody, but *shrug* maybe the daemonologie explanation is more satisfying...
Somebody well-funded like the Walt Disney company can pay those royalties, or, if the royalties demanded are outrageous, spend some time and money looking for alternatives. An upstart on a much lower budget might be hampered far more if the copyrights remain.
Shakespeare's work should be unencumbered, but specific performances and derivative works may not be. I wouldn't recommend trying to videotape, say, The Reduced Shakespeare Company performing one of their altered versions and using the clip in a music video unless you get their permission first. Likewise for classical music; you should be able to get the sheets and perform it yourself, but a specific performance by, say, the Boston Philharmonic may be off-limits.
The Renaissance wasn't rife with people running around duplicating each other's work for zero effort and zero permission, either.
As for motives, well, actors and directors have a habit of being handsomely paid for big movies. Do you think Keanu Reeves works for free? Were the computers they needed for the effects just contributed to the project? Did some property owner, just for the sake of making movies, give free permission to use his land and equipment? The whole process requires money. You can't pay your suppliers with a smile or your own happiness, after all...
Heck yes, they pay. My university ended up doing some router configuration tweaks after the student population consistently used far, far more bandwidth (a few times as much or something like that) than the university's contract with the ISP provided for... with P2P a major culprit.
Cap all outgoing traffic from the dormitory networks, regardless of port or protocol. This would drastically cut down on out-of-campus users downloading from servers in the dorms (the largest part of the problem), while leaving non-dorm machines (cluster workstations, research labs, office computers, et al) untouched.
Considering that for quite some time, you pretty much had to be a white male landowner to vote, and owning people was still permitted, I doubt that the Founders were overly concerned about women's right to be POTUS. You'll have to look at later amendments for that.
A few tens of thousands might make them blink by setting a precedent -- one that might suddenly be raised to hundreds of thousands if a latter Congress decides that it could use the revenue, or that it's time for some 30's-style redistribution of the wealth again. I reckon that they'd fight it tooth and nail for at least that reason.
An patentable drug, system, or mechanism -- or lack of it -- might have a/huge/ impact on society. Not being able, however, to create a derivative work of, oh, "Steamboat Willie" doesn't really hurt anybody unless they're so uncreative and obsessed enough to only be capable of churning out SW-based crap. Ditto for most other creative works.
You could, actually, kill all the art and artistry in history, and society would still function -- albeit probably less happily. If you crippled medicine, engineering, and industry with 95-year limits and no compulsory licensing in the case of independent rediscovery, however, you'd still be living in -- at best, probably -- a wooden shack with no sanitation, and a dozen nasty strains of pathogens just waiting to infect you. That's a pretty big difference.
It is, however, extremely ideological and replete with litmus tests, most obviously on Roe v. Wade, and has been the subject of rather mean-spirited conflict ever since, oh, the Bork episode. Hell, leftists even procured and published the man's video rental records (an act which is now illegal due to this very incident), and involving some $20M spent by both sides on advertising.
Partly it's politics. Well, it's probably/mostly/ politics -- letting American citizens die overseas doing 1st-Amendment-covered activities, especially religious ones, wouldn't be too popular with the voters.
There's also a little bit about how the Taliban wasn't a recognized government, so probably the US official position would be that, as illegitimate, the Taliban had no legitimate authority over American missionaries there. *shrug*
If an American got busted overseas for, say, theft or homicide, I doubt there'd be an extraction mission, because those are illegal o'er here, too. Getting sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, hm, that might result in an uproar, but still, probably less so than death-for-religious-speech.
It's not an issue of sovereignty, because individual people aren't nations -- _Snow Crash_ excluded. It's not a sovereignty issue if a private citizen chooses to flout the law of his own country. Contracts, obligations, and responsibilities do not magically vaporize should one make it to foreign soil, any more than one can protect one's own salary from the IRS by accepting it in cash in the lobby of the French embassy.
A citizen retains the obligations of his citizenship, and -- depending on the country he's physically in -- possibly some of the rights and privileges, at least should he make it to the consulate... In addition, being in a country in which you are not a citizen may cause you to have second-class status; for instance, you can much more easily be ejected from the country.
If a US citizen travels to, say, Moscow, and offers to spy for the FSB, and it's noticed -- you can sure as hell bet that he's risking arrest when he comes back. Somehow, that doesn't seem wrong to me.
Because you're more likely to be watching US media rather than Russian media, and the US media would rather cover the Emmys, how much the stars of _Friends_ make, or whether any of the new crop of shows this season is any good?
Russia/does/ matter wrt Iraq, because it's unlikely that anybody's going to strip away their permanent seat and veto power on the Security Council. Ditto for France and China. All three have connections to Iraq, with Iraq owing oil and money to the former, and China somehow tied in with the Iraqi air defense system (having helped rebuild it... perhaps in exchange for information on the capabilities and tactics of US aircraft?)
I would feel that Larry Flint would be a dumbass for visiting Saudi Arabia, given that he's probably aware of the efficiency of their legal system and it basis in Sharia.
Similar opinions apply to missionaries who are so naive as to try to convert Muslim fanatics, like the members of the Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban. If you're going into a region that considers you a criminal (or will, if you're about to piss them off), you shouldn't be surprised when they enforce their beliefes on you.
I could be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that some cameras are capable of outputting 10 or 12 bits per color per pixel, if you use RAW format.
If you need more range, you might be able to use what another poster suggested -- take one that's underexposed, take one that's overexposed, and blend them. You'll likely want a tripod for that, 'tho, and a camera giving you full manual control so you can lock it to identical settings (aside from exposure compensation, or time) for both shots.
If you're using film, you can't tell whether or not the shot you just took, and may never be able to get again once you leave, until it's too late.
A large part of the benefit of digital is the ability to know, right then and there, whether or not you screwed up. That way, you can change settings or your position or what-not and make sure that you/do/ get the shot -- which, unless you're either a photographic deity, or shooting set-pieces, or extremely relaxed about quality, won't be 100% of the time.
I'd be more worried about the prices of the lenses, anyway, and those (for the Nikon and Canon systems, at least, since digital and film share the same basic mounts) are the same regardless of film or digital. Quite a few L-series Canon lenses far exceed the prices of the camera bodies they'd be used on...
Rep. Lofgren does have an varied list of top contributors -- perhaps most relevant would be the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
If you check the list of Top Industries that support Zoe Lofgren with money, the #1 item is... "Computer Equipment & Services", followed by "Lawyers/Law Firms". "TV/Movies/Music" pays her some (not much for the 2002 cycle, only $7.7K), but quite a bit less (about 10:1 for combined computer/law vs TV/movies/music).
That ratio would be rather consistent with this stance, although it's not indicative of a quid-pro-quo as people are going to give money mostly to reps who vote favorably if there's a danger of getting somebody who would vote the other way.
...because of the words "cruel and unusual punishment" as explicitly specified in the Constitution. Unusual isn't defined in a vacuum, and therefore they were obliged to take into account outside opinions.
Copyright law is phrased differently; "limited", for instance, doesn't imply "limited according to the attention span of modern bandwidth-crazed channel-switching humanity".
Win2K includes a link to "Windows Update" in the Start Menu, and they've (probably) got the bandwidth to download it... 10BT NICs are cheap these days. MSFT will cheerfully tell them about SP3 or other updates through that service (and if they leave "Critical Update Notification" or whatever it's called on, it probably periodically polls MSFT to check.)
As for McAfee and similar, they'll learn once their friends start mailing them attachments...
It's not totally out of the question. Didn't ABC's Ms. Sawyer once "interview" a _sock puppet_ whose sole claim to fame was being an advertising mascot? Granted, ISTR that it may have been on one of the ultrafluffy morning shows, but still...
Phase 1 -- Deny everything until hard evidence shows up.
Phase 2 -- Admit it, but then insist that the hurt to your reputation is enough punishment already; that it's not worth dwelling on; and can't we all just move on please.
What, their right to block traffic, set a ROTC building on fire, sabotage firefighting equipment, vandalize buildings, hold a prohibited demonstration during a state of emergency, and throw rocks at the National Guard?
Yup. All legitimate forms of "protest", nothing violent there...
Slashdot Mirror
From an article with actual substance rather than a big graphic of the reporter:
Among the stolen items that were recovered, according to the affidavit:
? Nineteen CD-ROM discs containing the entire restricted library of sound effects
created during the past 25 years for use in the "Star Wars" films, with an
estimated "collectible value" of $95,000.
? More than 2,000 high-quality digital images from "Episode II," valued at
$125,000.
? Hundreds of video files of "Episode II," from concept shots to final clips,
valued at $100,000.
? About 113 storyboard images - or sketches outlining scenes from the film - with
handwritten notes by Lucas, valued at more than $100,000.
and
When threatened with dismissal, Foley admitted that he had taken photo images,
storyboards and a script for "Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace," but "nothing
big," according to the court document. He specifically denied having a copy of
"Episode II."
Foley said he was an "avid fan" and had taken the items for his "souvenir
collection" at his Petaluma home, according to the court document.
Foley agreed to allow Webb to look through the items at his home and when they
arrived at his Lakeville Circle townhouse the investigator saw "tons of 'Star
Wars' items," Webb said in the affidavit. Foley turned over numerous items,
including 25 CDs with images of the film, three videotapes of "Episode I"
voice-over tests, 115 storyboard image strips and a hard disk drive with
downloaded photo images.
He (or his mother, who lives in the Irvine residence cited below) also, perhaps, attempted to destroy evidence:
Authorities served a search warrant at the Irvine residence the next day, the
court document said, and found "Star Wars" production photos in a trash can, as
well as shredded documents that appeared to be "Star Wars" sketches.
Waldo, obviously, must be using such Satanic means as witchcraft, mind-control, and either flight or teleportation (no doubt with the assistance of Dark Powers) in order to manipulate crowds into resembling him so closely while he flees into obscure locations. I highly recommend keeping this daemonic tome away from ye spawn.
Well, maybe not. Go ask the American Library Association; according to that List of Lists, for some reason it's 87 on the list of "most challenged" books. One could argue that it's not much of a "book" if the objective is to stare at pictures and find somebody, but *shrug* maybe the daemonologie explanation is more satisfying...
Maybe it's a tactical decision.
Somebody well-funded like the Walt Disney company can pay those royalties, or, if the royalties demanded are outrageous, spend some time and money looking for alternatives. An upstart on a much lower budget might be hampered far more if the copyrights remain.
Shakespeare's work should be unencumbered, but specific performances and derivative works may not be. I wouldn't recommend trying to videotape, say, The Reduced Shakespeare Company performing one of their altered versions and using the clip in a music video unless you get their permission first. Likewise for classical music; you should be able to get the sheets and perform it yourself, but a specific performance by, say, the Boston Philharmonic may be off-limits.
The Renaissance wasn't rife with people running around duplicating each other's work for zero effort and zero permission, either.
As for motives, well, actors and directors have a habit of being handsomely paid for big movies. Do you think Keanu Reeves works for free? Were the computers they needed for the effects just contributed to the project? Did some property owner, just for the sake of making movies, give free permission to use his land and equipment? The whole process requires money. You can't pay your suppliers with a smile or your own happiness, after all...
Heck yes, they pay. My university ended up doing some router configuration tweaks after the student population consistently used far, far more bandwidth (a few times as much or something like that) than the university's contract with the ISP provided for... with P2P a major culprit.
Simple solution:
Cap all outgoing traffic from the dormitory networks, regardless of port or protocol. This would drastically cut down on out-of-campus users downloading from servers in the dorms (the largest part of the problem), while leaving non-dorm machines (cluster workstations, research labs, office computers, et al) untouched.
Considering that for quite some time, you pretty much had to be a white male landowner to vote, and owning people was still permitted, I doubt that the Founders were overly concerned about women's right to be POTUS. You'll have to look at later amendments for that.
A few tens of thousands might make them blink by setting a precedent -- one that might suddenly be raised to hundreds of thousands if a latter Congress decides that it could use the revenue, or that it's time for some 30's-style redistribution of the wealth again. I reckon that they'd fight it tooth and nail for at least that reason.
Nope.
/huge/ impact on society. Not being able, however, to create a derivative work of, oh, "Steamboat Willie" doesn't really hurt anybody unless they're so uncreative and obsessed enough to only be capable of churning out SW-based crap. Ditto for most other creative works.
An patentable drug, system, or mechanism -- or lack of it -- might have a
You could, actually, kill all the art and artistry in history, and society would still function -- albeit probably less happily. If you crippled medicine, engineering, and industry with 95-year limits and no compulsory licensing in the case of independent rediscovery, however, you'd still be living in -- at best, probably -- a wooden shack with no sanitation, and a dozen nasty strains of pathogens just waiting to infect you. That's a pretty big difference.
It is, however, extremely ideological and replete with litmus tests, most obviously on Roe v. Wade, and has been the subject of rather mean-spirited conflict ever since, oh, the Bork episode. Hell, leftists even procured and published the man's video rental records (an act which is now illegal due to this very incident), and involving some $20M spent by both sides on advertising.
Partly it's politics. Well, it's probably /mostly/ politics -- letting American citizens die overseas doing 1st-Amendment-covered activities, especially religious ones, wouldn't be too popular with the voters.
There's also a little bit about how the Taliban wasn't a recognized government, so probably the US official position would be that, as illegitimate, the Taliban had no legitimate authority over American missionaries there. *shrug*
If an American got busted overseas for, say, theft or homicide, I doubt there'd be an extraction mission, because those are illegal o'er here, too. Getting sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, hm, that might result in an uproar, but still, probably less so than death-for-religious-speech.
It's not an issue of sovereignty, because individual people aren't nations -- _Snow Crash_ excluded. It's not a sovereignty issue if a private citizen chooses to flout the law of his own country. Contracts, obligations, and responsibilities do not magically vaporize should one make it to foreign soil, any more than one can protect one's own salary from the IRS by accepting it in cash in the lobby of the French embassy.
A citizen retains the obligations of his citizenship, and -- depending on the country he's physically in -- possibly some of the rights and privileges, at least should he make it to the consulate... In addition, being in a country in which you are not a citizen may cause you to have second-class status; for instance, you can much more easily be ejected from the country.
If a US citizen travels to, say, Moscow, and offers to spy for the FSB, and it's noticed -- you can sure as hell bet that he's risking arrest when he comes back. Somehow, that doesn't seem wrong to me.
Because you're more likely to be watching US media rather than Russian media, and the US media would rather cover the Emmys, how much the stars of _Friends_ make, or whether any of the new crop of shows this season is any good?
/does/ matter wrt Iraq, because it's unlikely that anybody's going to strip away their permanent seat and veto power on the Security Council. Ditto for France and China. All three have connections to Iraq, with Iraq owing oil and money to the former, and China somehow tied in with the Iraqi air defense system (having helped rebuild it... perhaps in exchange for information on the capabilities and tactics of US aircraft?)
Russia
I would feel that Larry Flint would be a dumbass for visiting Saudi Arabia, given that he's probably aware of the efficiency of their legal system and it basis in Sharia.
Similar opinions apply to missionaries who are so naive as to try to convert Muslim fanatics, like the members of the Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban. If you're going into a region that considers you a criminal (or will, if you're about to piss them off), you shouldn't be surprised when they enforce their beliefes on you.
I could be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that some cameras are capable of outputting 10 or 12 bits per color per pixel, if you use RAW format.
If you need more range, you might be able to use what another poster suggested -- take one that's underexposed, take one that's overexposed, and blend them. You'll likely want a tripod for that, 'tho, and a camera giving you full manual control so you can lock it to identical settings (aside from exposure compensation, or time) for both shots.
If you're using film, you can't tell whether or not the shot you just took, and may never be able to get again once you leave, until it's too late.
/do/ get the shot -- which, unless you're either a photographic deity, or shooting set-pieces, or extremely relaxed about quality, won't be 100% of the time.
A large part of the benefit of digital is the ability to know, right then and there, whether or not you screwed up. That way, you can change settings or your position or what-not and make sure that you
I'd be more worried about the prices of the lenses, anyway, and those (for the Nikon and Canon systems, at least, since digital and film share the same basic mounts) are the same regardless of film or digital. Quite a few L-series Canon lenses far exceed the prices of the camera bodies they'd be used on...
Rep. Lofgren does have an varied list of top contributors -- perhaps most relevant would be the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
If you check the list of Top Industries that support Zoe Lofgren with money, the #1 item is... "Computer Equipment & Services", followed by "Lawyers/Law Firms". "TV/Movies/Music" pays her some (not much for the 2002 cycle, only $7.7K), but quite a bit less (about 10:1 for combined computer/law vs TV/movies/music).
That ratio would be rather consistent with this stance, although it's not indicative of a quid-pro-quo as people are going to give money mostly to reps who vote favorably if there's a danger of getting somebody who would vote the other way.
...because of the words "cruel and unusual punishment" as explicitly specified in the Constitution. Unusual isn't defined in a vacuum, and therefore they were obliged to take into account outside opinions.
Copyright law is phrased differently; "limited", for instance, doesn't imply "limited according to the attention span of modern bandwidth-crazed channel-switching humanity".
Win2K includes a link to "Windows Update" in the Start Menu, and they've (probably) got the bandwidth to download it... 10BT NICs are cheap these days. MSFT will cheerfully tell them about SP3 or other updates through that service (and if they leave "Critical Update Notification" or whatever it's called on, it probably periodically polls MSFT to check.)
As for McAfee and similar, they'll learn once their friends start mailing them attachments...
It's not totally out of the question. Didn't ABC's Ms. Sawyer once "interview" a _sock puppet_ whose sole claim to fame was being an advertising mascot? Granted, ISTR that it may have been on one of the ultrafluffy morning shows, but still...
Pretty much.
Phase 1 -- Deny everything until hard evidence shows up.
Phase 2 -- Admit it, but then insist that the hurt to your reputation is enough punishment already; that it's not worth dwelling on; and can't we all just move on please.
What, their right to block traffic, set a ROTC building on fire, sabotage firefighting equipment, vandalize buildings, hold a prohibited demonstration during a state of emergency, and throw rocks at the National Guard?
Yup. All legitimate forms of "protest", nothing violent there...