The Penny Arcade guys ran into this when they ran a parody of American McGee's Alice which used Strawberry Shortcake.
No, they got sued by an overly litigious greeting card maker (American Greetings) and backed down because they knew it wasn't worth going to court over something they made no money off of.
When you play a song off a CD, you are implicating two sets of rights: those of the sound recording and those of the underlying musical composition.
If you were to play a sound effect off a CD, you would only be doing something related to sound recordings and nothing to do with any musical composition.
In the first instance, you'd be doing things related to both (1) artists and (2) composers. In the second instance, you'd be doing things related to only (1) artists.
Case 1 implicates ASCAP. Case 2 does not.
Until very recently, there was no public performance right in audio recordings, and so making your own version of the audio recording would only implicate rights of the underlying musical composition. Thus, if I covered some Coldplay song, Coldplay would have no standing to sue unless they also were the composer of the underlying musical work.
However, within the past decade or so, a new law came into force that creates an exclusive public performance right for sound recordings. However, this only applies when dealing with digital audio transmissions, not with analog/playing-over-your-boombox-speakers performances.
Now that I've written this, I'm not sure where I was going with it. I'll just post it for those interested in the history and development of copyright law.
ASCAP is a society for composers, authors, and publishers. It has nothing to do with audio recordins and everything to do with the underlying musical composition.
For example, say I write a song for Coldplay and they record it. ASCAP represents me, not Coldplay.
As a general matter, every (professional) songwriter in the US is covered by ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. These societies basically exist only to collect copyright royalties as statutorily created and defined by US copyright law. These are known as "performing rights societies." See 17 USC 101.
Actually, I believe what you're saying is, "God, I hope some CS student doesn't try this, because he'll succeed and I'll be unemployed. I'd better discourage them as much as I can!";)
I will not pay that price as long as books are cheap
I think you don't understand the benefit this will have on many people. But here I just wanted to point out how cheap books are compared to Kindle stuff:
which Comrade Obama promised to do something about... where is he on that anyways?
Goddamn, chill the fuck out. He's not Superman. He's got a shitty economy, two wars, a human rights debacle, and an impending pandemic to deal with. Jeez. You expect him to reform a major part of North America's trade infrastructure while dealing with all this in one hundred days?
Now I'm under the impression he told people in TX that NAFTA is good and people in IL/OH that NAFTA is bad. Well, really, I believe it was a more nuanced "we need to make it not hurt IL/OH but help TX" and not the way I said it.
But dude. Smoke some grass and chill the fuck out.
Regardless of what is a crime and what is legal, evading/avoiding taxes is tax evasion/avoision. It doesn't matter how you do it or whether or not it's legal.
Actually, it does. Tax avoidance is legal. Tax evasion is the crime of using illegal means to decrease your tax burden. To quote Wikipedia,
Tax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, in order to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. By contrast tax evasion is the general term for efforts to not pay taxes by illegal means.
But corporations are people; hence the "corpor" in "corporation."
Think of it this way: corporations experience double taxation: once when the corporation gets money, and once when the shareholders get dividends.
But if a corporation is a person (which it is), then how is this double taxation any different than you paying taxes on the money you make from the sole proprietorship you own and then your employee paying income tax on the money you pay him? That is effectively double taxation, too, if you frame it differently.
while the rest of us donate a third or more to uncle sam
I agree with your basic premise, but I wanted to point out this statement as incorrect. I ran a calculation to see how much you need to earn to pay 1/3 of your salary in federal taxes, and my result was that, effectively, you have to make a million dollars a year to pay 1/3.
Of course, I'm sure you were using it as a ballpark figure for style, but I get tired of people misunderstanding marginal tax rates. If you make 400K/yr, you don't pay 35% in taxes. Your marginal tax rate is 35%. Your average tax rate (what you're actually paying) is less than 33%. Hell, the average graduate with a 4-year degree will pay, in my simplified model, only ~16% in taxes. So the average person pays less than 1/5 of his income.
Now, I couldn't be arsed to look up the tax rates for the rest of the payroll taxes, but the calculation obviously won't shift much lower if we incorporate those: the federal income tax is the big one.
Feel free to point out my math errors and check me with this tool, but I feel confident I'm at least on the right track.
Note that I may have excluded some federal taxes in my haste, but I also ignored all deductions, etc., that the person could take for children, education, home, health, etc. I also pretended the person was single (your tax burden is lower if you're married and file jointless, less some unusual circumstances).
I'm going to go ahead and hit submit here because I don't want to reread anything to see if I made typos or, hell, was even coherent at 2am.
Since when is an LLC a Corporation? I took business associations, and I'm pretty damn sure an LLC is not a corporation.
For one thing, the "C" in LLC stands for "Company," not "Corporation." Secondly, LLCs are taxed as partnerships (or sole proprietorship) with pass-through taxation, not double taxation like corporations. It's possible for an LLC to elect to be taxed as a corporation, but under 99% of all situations, an LLC that elects to be taxed as a corporation is run by a bunch of numbskulls.
Finally, since you said that you are the business, I'm going to assume that you literally meant that. If you're an LLC, you're an LLC. However, if you're a corporation, then you're an S corporation (unless your company structure was set up by a stupid lawyer and he chartered you as a C corporation, more burdensome taxes and all), not an LLC. Here, an LLC provides massive benefits as well. You'll be taxed pass-through rather than doubly whether you're an S corp. or an LLC. However, the S corp. has other restrictions placed upon it that an LLC does not. These may not apply to you, but an S corp. cannot have more than 100 shareholders, none of them may be non-citizens of the US (for federal tax purposes), etc.
However, it is possible for an LLC to have a corporate structure. But it's definitely not a corporation. It's a limited liability company.
Keep your terms of art correct, please.
tl;dr You are making assertions about Delaware corporate law based on your experience as a corporation, but you're not a corporation. This makes your claim to authority suspect, especially when you erroneously conflate corporations and LLCs.
Please correct any assumptions I've made or correct things that I got wrong.
Just out of curiosity, suppose I live in country X where murder is legal. If I stand on the border and shoot someone in neighboring country Y, what are the consequences for me?
Generic was probably a poor choice of words. What I meant by generic is it is a not a name that they made up, it is part of the English language and in the dictionary.
Well in that case, it was a pretty damn careless use of the word. I mean, since you took a trademark course, you should've been aware that "generic" is a term of art within trademark law. The classifications of trademark distinctiveness are fanciful, arbitrary, descriptive, suggestive, and generic. Worst case scenario for the small guy in this case? "Android" is found to be suggestive. And I think the courts would find it "descriptive," personally.
Now, I wouldn't be bitching so much at your mistake if you hadn't prefaced your entire argument with "I recently took a tradmark class [so I know what I'm talking about]."
Would make it a bit hard to talk to each other huh?
Trademarks govern how entities can advertise and use marks in trade. It has 100% nothing to do with how you talk to people in regular conversation.
Isn't this similar to why microsoft decided to settle out of court with Lindows. IIRC the judge said with a degree of incredulity "You are trying to claim ownership of the word windows - and anything that sounds similar?"
No. Microsoft likely settled because the word "window(s)" was already used before trademarking it to describe the entities in a GUI. Thus, had it gone to court, it's possible "Windows" would have been found to be a generic mark and thus the trademark protection would have been wiped out.
Any judge's incredulity would have sprung forth from that, not from some Microsoft attempt to "own" the word. For one thing, I'm fairly confident the trademark "Windows" is limited in scope to software. I can call my window company "Windows" all I want. Hell, I could call my shoe company "Windows" and not infringe upon Microsoft's trademark.
And as for your implied assertion that trademarking a single word is "silly," apple, apples, appleseed, bar, bear, etc. Need I go on?
Granted, those specific ones I've linked to tend to also require some sort of stylized text or logo requirement to find infringement, but my point still stands. One-word marks are given trademark exclusivity all the time.
android "automaton resembling a human being," 1727, from Mod.L. androides, from Gk. andro- "human" + eides "form, shape." Listed as "rare" in OED (1879), popularized from c.1951 by science fiction writers.
The word "apple" has been in the English language since time immemorial, but that didn't stop both Apple Corp. and Apple Computer.
The reason "bovine" might be more difficult to use as an exclusive trademark is because it pretty much literally describes the thing it's protecting. This is an example of a descriptive mark being denied trademark exclusivity.
On the other hand, "android" here would be classified as either an arbitrary or suggestive mark, both of which can receive trademark exclusivity through the USPTO.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they got sued by an overly litigious greeting card maker (American Greetings) and backed down because they knew it wasn't worth going to court over something they made no money off of.
Of course by "artist," I don't mean to imply that composers are not artists. I've just chosen "artist" as a shorthand for "performing artist."
To point out why this is so confusing for people:
When you play a song off a CD, you are implicating two sets of rights: those of the sound recording and those of the underlying musical composition.
If you were to play a sound effect off a CD, you would only be doing something related to sound recordings and nothing to do with any musical composition.
In the first instance, you'd be doing things related to both (1) artists and (2) composers. In the second instance, you'd be doing things related to only (1) artists.
Case 1 implicates ASCAP. Case 2 does not.
Until very recently, there was no public performance right in audio recordings, and so making your own version of the audio recording would only implicate rights of the underlying musical composition. Thus, if I covered some Coldplay song, Coldplay would have no standing to sue unless they also were the composer of the underlying musical work.
However, within the past decade or so, a new law came into force that creates an exclusive public performance right for sound recordings. However, this only applies when dealing with digital audio transmissions, not with analog/playing-over-your-boombox-speakers performances.
Now that I've written this, I'm not sure where I was going with it. I'll just post it for those interested in the history and development of copyright law.
ASCAP is a society for composers, authors, and publishers. It has nothing to do with audio recordins and everything to do with the underlying musical composition.
For example, say I write a song for Coldplay and they record it. ASCAP represents me, not Coldplay.
As a general matter, every (professional) songwriter in the US is covered by ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. These societies basically exist only to collect copyright royalties as statutorily created and defined by US copyright law. These are known as "performing rights societies." See 17 USC 101.
Beatbox?
What, am I supposed to join them???
Were Ensigns Booger and Takashi aboard as well? I'll bet Ogre did a number of the tiles.
I wouldn't say Brown conned religious nuts. I'd say he trolled them. "Con" implies that he persuaded them to his side. I do not think this occurred.
World renowned multispectral imagist Jacques Renaud heard an arm hit the ground, and he knew it was his.
1. Read the first sentence of any of Dan Brown's books.
2. Then reread my comment.
3. Then mod me +10 insightful AND funny.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Actually, I believe what you're saying is, "God, I hope some CS student doesn't try this, because he'll succeed and I'll be unemployed. I'd better discourage them as much as I can!" ;)
I don't even download anime, and I could name three that still remain, and they're all big. I won't, though.
Biking is lovely and all, but there's no way I could bike in a suit to work in Austin between, say, March and mid-September.
I think you don't understand the benefit this will have on many people. But here I just wanted to point out how cheap books are compared to Kindle stuff:
What the crap? A 375% markup on the Kindle version!
The Kindle version isn't cheaper. It's more expensive!
YouTube is a long call. Google is playing a half decade in advance on this one.
Unfortunately for Google, Hulu is competing rather well in this arena.
Goddamn, chill the fuck out. He's not Superman. He's got a shitty economy, two wars, a human rights debacle, and an impending pandemic to deal with. Jeez. You expect him to reform a major part of North America's trade infrastructure while dealing with all this in one hundred days?
Now I'm under the impression he told people in TX that NAFTA is good and people in IL/OH that NAFTA is bad. Well, really, I believe it was a more nuanced "we need to make it not hurt IL/OH but help TX" and not the way I said it.
But dude. Smoke some grass and chill the fuck out.
Actually, it does. Tax avoidance is legal. Tax evasion is the crime of using illegal means to decrease your tax burden. To quote Wikipedia,
But corporations are people; hence the "corpor" in "corporation."
Think of it this way: corporations experience double taxation: once when the corporation gets money, and once when the shareholders get dividends.
But if a corporation is a person (which it is), then how is this double taxation any different than you paying taxes on the money you make from the sole proprietorship you own and then your employee paying income tax on the money you pay him? That is effectively double taxation, too, if you frame it differently.
I agree with your basic premise, but I wanted to point out this statement as incorrect. I ran a calculation to see how much you need to earn to pay 1/3 of your salary in federal taxes, and my result was that, effectively, you have to make a million dollars a year to pay 1/3.
Let x be your salary.
x/3 = .35(x-372951) + .33(372951-171550) + .28(171550-82250) + .25(82250-33950) + .15(33950-8350) + .1*8350 + .062*102000, x>=372951
Of course, I'm sure you were using it as a ballpark figure for style, but I get tired of people misunderstanding marginal tax rates. If you make 400K/yr, you don't pay 35% in taxes. Your marginal tax rate is 35%. Your average tax rate (what you're actually paying) is less than 33%. Hell, the average graduate with a 4-year degree will pay, in my simplified model, only ~16% in taxes. So the average person pays less than 1/5 of his income.
Now, I couldn't be arsed to look up the tax rates for the rest of the payroll taxes, but the calculation obviously won't shift much lower if we incorporate those: the federal income tax is the big one.
Feel free to point out my math errors and check me with this tool, but I feel confident I'm at least on the right track.
Note that I may have excluded some federal taxes in my haste, but I also ignored all deductions, etc., that the person could take for children, education, home, health, etc. I also pretended the person was single (your tax burden is lower if you're married and file jointless, less some unusual circumstances).
I'm going to go ahead and hit submit here because I don't want to reread anything to see if I made typos or, hell, was even coherent at 2am.
Since when is an LLC a Corporation? I took business associations, and I'm pretty damn sure an LLC is not a corporation.
For one thing, the "C" in LLC stands for "Company," not "Corporation." Secondly, LLCs are taxed as partnerships (or sole proprietorship) with pass-through taxation, not double taxation like corporations. It's possible for an LLC to elect to be taxed as a corporation, but under 99% of all situations, an LLC that elects to be taxed as a corporation is run by a bunch of numbskulls.
Finally, since you said that you are the business, I'm going to assume that you literally meant that. If you're an LLC, you're an LLC. However, if you're a corporation, then you're an S corporation (unless your company structure was set up by a stupid lawyer and he chartered you as a C corporation, more burdensome taxes and all), not an LLC. Here, an LLC provides massive benefits as well. You'll be taxed pass-through rather than doubly whether you're an S corp. or an LLC. However, the S corp. has other restrictions placed upon it that an LLC does not. These may not apply to you, but an S corp. cannot have more than 100 shareholders, none of them may be non-citizens of the US (for federal tax purposes), etc.
However, it is possible for an LLC to have a corporate structure. But it's definitely not a corporation. It's a limited liability company.
Keep your terms of art correct, please.
tl;dr You are making assertions about Delaware corporate law based on your experience as a corporation, but you're not a corporation. This makes your claim to authority suspect, especially when you erroneously conflate corporations and LLCs.
Please correct any assumptions I've made or correct things that I got wrong.
Brief description of LLC v. Corp.
The only entity who can "bring criminal charges" is the state.
Just out of curiosity, suppose I live in country X where murder is legal. If I stand on the border and shoot someone in neighboring country Y, what are the consequences for me?
Switch my use of arbitrary and suggestive everywhere in that post.
Well in that case, it was a pretty damn careless use of the word. I mean, since you took a trademark course, you should've been aware that "generic" is a term of art within trademark law. The classifications of trademark distinctiveness are fanciful, arbitrary, descriptive, suggestive, and generic. Worst case scenario for the small guy in this case? "Android" is found to be suggestive. And I think the courts would find it "descriptive," personally.
Now, I wouldn't be bitching so much at your mistake if you hadn't prefaced your entire argument with "I recently took a tradmark class [so I know what I'm talking about]."
Trademarks govern how entities can advertise and use marks in trade. It has 100% nothing to do with how you talk to people in regular conversation.
No. Microsoft likely settled because the word "window(s)" was already used before trademarking it to describe the entities in a GUI. Thus, had it gone to court, it's possible "Windows" would have been found to be a generic mark and thus the trademark protection would have been wiped out.
Any judge's incredulity would have sprung forth from that, not from some Microsoft attempt to "own" the word. For one thing, I'm fairly confident the trademark "Windows" is limited in scope to software. I can call my window company "Windows" all I want. Hell, I could call my shoe company "Windows" and not infringe upon Microsoft's trademark.
And as for your implied assertion that trademarking a single word is "silly," apple, apples, appleseed, bar, bear, etc. Need I go on?
Granted, those specific ones I've linked to tend to also require some sort of stylized text or logo requirement to find infringement, but my point still stands. One-word marks are given trademark exclusivity all the time.
That is not true.
The word "apple" has been in the English language since time immemorial, but that didn't stop both Apple Corp. and Apple Computer.
The reason "bovine" might be more difficult to use as an exclusive trademark is because it pretty much literally describes the thing it's protecting. This is an example of a descriptive mark being denied trademark exclusivity.
On the other hand, "android" here would be classified as either an arbitrary or suggestive mark, both of which can receive trademark exclusivity through the USPTO.