Upon what basis does the Supreme Court get final say in interpreting the US Constitution? The answer to that question is: A Supreme Court ruling from the early 1800's. I am not sure that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not Constitutional, but people need to keep in mind that that is a self designated power, not one given to the Supreme Court by the Constitution.
So to whom would *you* give this authority?
Declaring Congress to be the final arbiter would effectively nullify the Constitution, since it'd be pretty bizarre for Congress to pass a law and then decide it was unconstitutional.
Giving it the the President has it's own problems, as he could then use that authority as a "super-veto".
The only viable solution is to have a group who have no involvement in the law-making process to have this authority. It *might* be better to have an independent panel who do nothing *except* examine laws to determine their constitutionality, but the only way to create such a panel would be a constitutional amendment.
In the USA, life + 70 literally means that, at best, anything created in your lifetime will not become public domain until you are 70. More likely, you'll be dead and your children might see it fall into the public domain.
Er - life + 70 means *exactly* that. You will NOT live to see the copyright expire, no matter how long you live. Assuming that a child of yours is born the day you die, *he* will see the copyright expire when he hits the age of 70.
I saw "might" because if the artist signed away their rights to a corporation, your grand-children will be the first to see it become public.
It makes no difference who buys the rights after creation - the term is set based on the author's life + 70 years. The only exception is a "work for hire", in which case the term is either 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from date of creation, whichever is longer.
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time. For example, there was the Chang Modification back in 1988 (It slowed down the system clock that was used as a timing base for the benchmark, resulting in higher benchmark scores).
Why is it that multibillion dollar companies are constantly researching exciting new tech that makes it more and more impossible for us to remain annonymous? Just once, I want to see IBM or somebody backing Tor or Freenet or something similar.
Please remember that IBM is, like most corporations, a for-profit entity. Which means that the vast majority of their research is going to be aimed at projects that will allow them to make a buck.
In short - Tor and Freenet don't spend gazillions of dollars on technologies, while governments do.
no.... if it costs 10x current solar prices to ramp it up to 99% then it doesn't really help does it. I mean maybe for some weird science use but not for energy production.
TFA is a little light on details, but consider this quote: "Researchers discovered that more light shined on the nanotube created even more electricity, a huge difference from today's silicon solar cells where excess energy is lost in the form of heat rather than used to create more electricity."
So say it's 10x the current price of solar cells, but can utilize cheap mirrors so that you only need 1/10 as many of them as conventional solar cells.
There *is* some potential here (assuming it actually works on a larger scale, of course).
Don't you think cops have more to do than fill out paper work on a kindle you lost? Even if it was Stolen out of your back pack, who has time to have cops filling out paperwork for a 300 dollar device?
You might get away with filing such a report in Pincushion Arizona, but they will laugh you out of the station in Dallas.
First off, let's clarify things. An item that you *lost* is not something you'd ordinarily file a police report on.
Second, the value of the device shouldn't be significant, except for determining whether it's petty or grand larceny. I know, in practice it is, but that's an issue with the police being focused on the wrong things (like harassing prostitutes and low-level drug dealers).
Third, why do the *cops* have to fill out anything? Have standard forms, which the person filing the complaint fills out, and an officer on duty (you know, one of those overage/overweight desk types who wouldn't be doing anything important anyway) reviews, points out any problems, and accepts once properly completed (checking ID and whatever to keep everything kosher).
I wish I had mod points, because this is exactly the issue. Let's say someone puts their Kindle up on eBay, and then after it sells calls Amazon and says that the device got stolen. How is Amazon supposed to know whether the device whether the device was stolen or not? Even worse, what happens if Amazon believes someone claiming to own your device and bricks it, where does that put them? It's entirely reasonable that Amazon won't do anything without a direct request from the cops (or presumably a court order).
That's the role a police report should play. When you file a report with the police, the police report number can be given to Amazon as evidence that an actual theft occurred. Amazon can then query the police to verify the report is genuine (insurance companies do this all the time in the case of auto accidents, theft of insured property, etc, so the mechanisms for this are already in place), and once they've done that can disable the device.
In your Ebay example, what would happen then is that the buyer of the now useless device could contact your police department, with the records of the sale, and you'd potentially be facing criminal charges for filing a false police report (cops *really* don't like people doing this, and they know where you live, so there's a real chance they'd follow up on this).
Mr. Borgese, who lives in Manhattan, questions whether hunting down a $300 e-book reader would rank as a priority for the New York Police Department.
If that's the case, then what does he hope to achieve by finding out the location of the Kindle? Rhetorical question -- we all know what he hopes to achieve, and Amazon wants no part of it.
If you had bothered to read the entire quote, he did *not* ask for Amazon's help in finding the Kindle - what he asked them to do was *disable* it. Which has some merit - if Amazon did disable those devices when stolen, it would kill the black market for stolen Kindles. But as noted in TFA, this poses a problem, as it's too easy for someone to contact them, pretending to be you, and reporting *your* Kindle as stolen...
What *should* happen is that Mr. Borgese files a police report on the stolen Kindle, and can then contact Amazon, with the police report number as evidence that he's not some practical joker. Amazon then disables that device, so that whoever stole it (or whoever bought it from the thief) can no longer gain the benefit of having it. This reduces the potential for mischief (and, in the case that the person simply misplaced the device, puts the onus on *him* to reverse the process), while still destroying the resale value of the stolen item.
This is more or less what Mr. Borgese attempted to do. But Amazon has no mechanism for this - they want to be contacted by a law enforcement officer with a supoena. Which the police probably won't bother doing, unless the theft is tied to drug dealing, terrorism, pedophilia, or whatever BS is high on their public relations agenda this week.
You're right, but I'm not convinced that's such a bad thing. The lone inventor producing a better mousetrap in his basement is something of a myth don't you think? Outside of web companies how often do you hear about a company becoming huge on the back of a single guys cheap invention? Google is perhaps the main example of this in recent years, but even so, developing the PageRank technology took years of research at a university followed by significant hardware investment to build a working implementation.
It *is* far less common than it used to be. The days when a pair of college kids working in their garage could start up what would become a major player in the computer industry seem to be gone (in case you don't recognize the reference, I'm talking about how Apple started). But I dislike the creation of a patent system that is inherently biased in favor of established players - if someone *does* come up with something significant in his garage, I'd like to have the system built to where he could gain financially for his work.
I don't believe that the inventor should get all possible profits from an idea, but if a corporation is making large piles of money off of an inventor's idea, then I believe that then inventor is entitled to at least a medium size pile for himself:)
Throttling the entrancy rate would be similar to what you suggest. I think this would be equivalent to setting a very high incentive rate.
If by "throttling" you mean limiting the number of organizations that can buy into the pool, then I would be worried about "squatters" - Imagine that the patent for a big drug is only allowed one entrant this year, and by various methods SquatterCorp manages to buy into the pool. They could then resell their share in the pool for substantially more than they paid for it.
You could try to add a restriction that the organization buying into the pool must agree to bring the drug to market, but there are easy ways around that restriction ("oh - we're contracting to RealDrugCorp to do the actual manufacturing/marketing/distribution").
Multiply the cost of development by I to arrive at $1.2 million. ACME Inc applies for a patent on their wonder drug, and it is deemed novel thus granted. A new pool is created with a value of $1.2 million.
I question whether using the actual cost of development is viable. In the case of drugs, a company may have to pay to develop 20 drugs before they get one that actually works and is profitable - that area research has a very high failure rate (drugs that don't work, have too many undesirable side effects, etc). Using actual cost of development could kill areas of research where it's expected that a small number of successes will offset the expenses of the large number of failures.
Pro - the size of the pool is determined by the audited cost of development. Thus you cannot make millions off something trivial or obvious.
I would consider this on a Con, rather than a Pro. You're basically setting up a system which will only benefit "big" inventions (meaning those funded by wealthy individuals or corporations). Consider the following scenario - working in my garage, I come up with some invention for a trivial amount, but which has massive utility (let's use the "better mousetrap" as an example). I only spend a few hundred dollars working on it, so the pool would be very small. MegaSuperEverything Corporation then jumps in, and for a trivial amount of money obtains the rights, and proceeds to sell many millions of them thanks to their existing marketing/distribution channels, while I can only sell a handful because of the competition. Knowing that this is likely to happen, what incentive do I have to patent the invention?
Con - The second entrant to the pool has the advantage of not needing to do the R&D yet can immediately benefit from the invention. First mover advantage might not be enough to offset this. Perhaps could be solved by throttling the entry rate to the pool.
Just have a decaying rate. For instance, in year one, the pool would be cost of development times 100 (or higher). In year 2, it drops to 75x. Year three down to 50x. Have a floor, so that after 10 years, it's at 1.5x, and remains there until the patent expires. This would tend to preserve the first mover advantage, without compromising the concept (provided the decay rate is reasonable).
Ok folks, don't get yourselves in a tizzy over this.
If you read the article (yeah, I know, it's against Slashdot rules, but give a try anyway) you'll see that all this hype originates from a company that has a product to detect faked DNA evidence, that they hope to sell to forensics labs.
The simple fact is that if someone wants to plant your DNA at a crime scene, there are many possible ways for them to obtain *real* DNA to use for that purpose. They aren't going to go through the hassle of creating fake DNA...
Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
Unless of course you also read this on snopes and decided it was a good time to perpetrate an urban legend. *shrugs*
What's truly silly about this urban legend is that there are plenty of *real* examples of excessively long government documents. Google for "military brownie specification" for an example ("wc" tells me it's only 9660 words, but I'm sure there are some others that can equal or exceed the 26,911 number).
Explain to me why the revenue generated by a copyrighted work has any relevance to the question of "fair use."
One of the factors used in determining whether something was fair use or not is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work".
I suspect that the defense is trying to show that the songs in question made tons of money, despite the actions of the defendant, and as such this test might favor the defendant.
I don't know whether or not this will actually *work*, mind you, but it seems to provide a handle to request such information.
This case seems like a prime candidate for "criminal negligence causing death". The defendant, from what I've heard, did wilfully cause distress to a child whose depressive condition was known to her (seriously? a 13-year-old girl who is NOT emotionally volatile is the exception, not the rule!) that the defendant should have known faced a reasonable likelihood (which is not the same as "better than 50-50 odds") of causing the death of said child. That's pretty much criminal negligence right there.
First off, "criminal negligence" means "failing to take action when it is obvious that such action is necessary to prevent harm". What you're looking for is called "depraved indifference", which means "taking an action knowing that harm is likely, but not caring".
And I'm not sure that *either* applies to his case. You state the defendant "should have known faced a reasonable likelihood of causing the death of said child", but there's no evidence that the defendant had the psychological training needed to recognize the difference between an ordinary teen's mood swings and a teen headed for suicidal depression. Without such expertise, you can't really assert that she knew that there was a serious probability of suicide resulting from her actions.
What this case calls for is the classic "wrongful death" civil suit. There simply isn't an existing criminal statute that covers this case (and it would be extremely hard to craft one, without many unintended consequences), so let the girl's parents sue the crap out of Lori Drew, and let that be the end of it.
IANAL as well, but I think you're misinterpreting copyright law. Copyright law these days deals with distribution. Ever since the establishment of fair use, the mere act of copying is no longer considered infringement.
I disagree. Here's a section from Wiki's reference on US copyright law for what it's worth:
There are five basic rights protected by copyright, sometimes called the five "pillars" of copyright. The owner of copyright has the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:
* To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
* To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
* To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
* To publicly perform the work, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, and sound recordings by means of digital audio transmission;
* To publicly display the work, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work.
A violation of any of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder is said to be a copyright infringement.
Please note the first one.
While the RIAA isn't actually chasing the *downloaders*, if they accuse you of uploading, and their case turns out to be garbage, if they've gotten a look at your hard drive and they've found files they can reasonably assert are illicit copies, then they can potentially sue you for those. It appears to this non-lawyer that the defense attorney is attempting to preclude them from doing so...
I'm just going by what the law books say. Sorry you disagree with them. The law books say that for a distribution to be "to the public" it can't be to a limited network.
But is Gnutella a "limited network"? Any person who has 1) A computer 2) Access to the Internet 3) A Gnutella "servent" (Limewire, Bearshare, etc., which can be downloaded for free from the net.) has access to Gnet. Since pretty much anybody can obtain all of the three, I would consider that public. (Whether the law does or not is, of course, another matter entirely)
By the way, the "to the public" element is just one of the many missing elements. The RIAA has also failed to prove (a) dissemination of copies to the public, and (b) a sale, other transfer of ownership, rental, lease, or lending.
That was my main point. There are many different angle of attack on this problem: 1. No proof that anything was ever distributed to anyone other than MediaSentry 2. The fact that MediaSentry's methods are secret, and cannot be established as being reliable. 3. The fact that MediaSentry has extremely lax evidence handling procedures. 4. The fact that MediaSentry isn't licensed to perform investigations, though many states require this for collection of evidence to be used in a court of law. 5. The fact that their so called expert does little but regurgitate what MediaSentry tells him. 6. The fact that their expert has a vested financial interest in the success of the terror campaign.
Maybe "the public" has some special meaning in Lawyer Town
I would say it has the same meaning it has everywhere else, which is that it is available to all -- as, e.g., this comment can be viewed by "the public" -- rather than to a limited network.
Sorry Ray, but I have to call you on this one. Saying that the files are only "available to people on a particular network" *is* making them available to the public, since potentially anyone can connect to that network. If I were handing out CD's to people here in Tucson, would you say that they weren't available to the public since you'd have to fly down here to get one?
Please stick to arguments that will actually hold water, such as that the law be requires the RIAA to show that there was actual distribution to the public (rather than just to their agents). That one would put an end to the whole RIAA campaign, if you can ever get the judiciary clued in...
The way I interpret this (although IANAL) is that if you're sharing a folder online, and they don't sue you within 3 years, you're pretty much home free? This could be really good news for people who share files. Especially since you could copy them to a computer not connected to the internet, wait 3 years, then release it to the wild.
IANAL either, but I believe you're confusing two points. There are two different rights given to copyright holders - the exclusive right to create copies, and the exclusive right to distribute them to others.
The section you're reading only applies to the former. So imagine the following: You download a bunch of songs from the 'net, and have them on your hard drive for more than 3 years. Then they discover that you have those infringing copies. The statute of limitation prevents them from suing you for having copied those songs without the rights holder's permission.
But, if you then distribute them to the public, a new infringement occurs (a violation of the exclusive right to distribute). The statute of limitations on *that* runs from the date of distribution, not the date of copying.
To expand on this, recoiless weapons like the jeep mounted ones scale down even further. A gyrojet round would work very well on a lightweight stealthbot and give it the lethal force of an infantryman with a rifle.
But after it fires a round, it wouldn't be a "stealth" bot anymore - IIRC, Gyrojet rounds are even louder than conventional firearms.
Am I the only one who find the whole issue about illegally obtained evidence not being admissible in court preposterous?
Let's say I go out and kill somebody, but the only evidence against me it is an illegally obtained wire-tapping. It doesn't make me any less guilty. And the people who obtained it illegally obviously need to be prosecuted but it still shouldn't change anything in terms of me. Obviously in this case most people would argue that making me walk on a technicality is not in everybody's best interest. Without going into special cases, can anybody tell me why illegally obtained evidence should not be accepted? Evidence is evidence and it carries its weight irrespectively of how it came about.
For the record, I like the RIAA's actions as little as the next guy, but that's not what we're discussing here.
The suppression of the illegally obtained evidence is a deterrent. If you know that illegally obtained evidence isn't admissible, then you won't go out and commit a crime in order to obtain such evidence. Without such a restriction, the use of illegally obtained evidence would become commonplace (especially in cases such as your murder scenario, where the tapper would be considered a hero by the community, and probably never punished or given a token punishment for the criminal act).
Also note that illegally obtained evidence is not *always* inadmissible. If I tap into your phone line for the purpose of using it for free phone service, and I overhear you talking about the killing, I may be able allowed to testify against you. The ban is primarily on those committing illegal acts for the express purpose of gathering evidence. Which is exactly what MediaSentry was doing for the RIAA.
MediaSentry is an unlicensed investigator. As such, any evidence they gained is inadmissable.
Tell it to da judge. The case against Jammie Thomas is based *solely* upon the "evidence" provided by MediaSentry. Yeah, they have a hard drive, with songs on it, but there's no proof that these were offered for upload except for MediaSentry's word.
I'm not sure if this was even argued by her attorney...
Ray, I'm curious why you haven't said much at all as to why her lawyer might be withdrawing from the case. Aside from your customary, thinly-veiled swipes at the plaintiffs, I don't see anything addressing this. If her case is as strong as you have been implying consistently in your comments over the past months (and I think I've read every single one of them), it certainly seems odd that an attorney would bail on a slam-dunk case like this one. Surely there has to be another (more objective) explanation or two?
Not NYCL (and IANAL to boot), but I don't think this case is a "slam-dunk". Yes, the judge messed up big time with that jury instruction, and with a binding precedent that the plaintiff must show actual distribution (as opposed to "making available"), the RIAA's case doesn't look all the rosy. But there's still one issue that I don't believe has been resolved - do the downloads made by MediaSentry (under whatever name they're using this week) constitute unlawful distribution? Because that is the *only* distribution that the RIAA's goon squad can actually prove, and there's some case law that seems to say that the distribution has to be to the public, and distribution to agents of the copyright holder don't count.
He's such a nice guy that he doesn't want to see her put herself into terrible debt, BUT he's not such a nice guy as to give her his services at an affordable rate?
Who said anything about him being a nice guy? He doesn't want her to go deeper in debt to him, because he's not sure that he'll ever get paid...
Slashdot Mirror
Upon what basis does the Supreme Court get final say in interpreting the US Constitution?
The answer to that question is: A Supreme Court ruling from the early 1800's. I am not sure that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not Constitutional, but people need to keep in mind that that is a self designated power, not one given to the Supreme Court by the Constitution.
So to whom would *you* give this authority?
Declaring Congress to be the final arbiter would effectively nullify the Constitution, since it'd be pretty bizarre for Congress to pass a law and then decide it was unconstitutional.
Giving it the the President has it's own problems, as he could then use that authority as a "super-veto".
The only viable solution is to have a group who have no involvement in the law-making process to have this authority. It *might* be better to have an independent panel who do nothing *except* examine laws to determine their constitutionality, but the only way to create such a panel would be a constitutional amendment.
In the USA, life + 70 literally means that, at best, anything created in your lifetime will not become public domain until you are 70.
More likely, you'll be dead and your children might see it fall into the public domain.
Er - life + 70 means *exactly* that. You will NOT live to see the copyright expire, no matter how long you live. Assuming that a child of yours is born the day you die, *he* will see the copyright expire when he hits the age of 70.
I saw "might" because if the artist signed away their rights to a corporation, your grand-children will be the first to see it become public.
It makes no difference who buys the rights after creation - the term is set based on the author's life + 70 years. The only exception is a "work for hire", in which case the term is either 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from date of creation, whichever is longer.
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time. For example, there was the Chang Modification back in 1988 (It slowed down the system clock that was used as a timing base for the benchmark, resulting in higher benchmark scores).
Why is it that multibillion dollar companies are constantly researching exciting new tech that makes it more and more impossible for us to remain annonymous? Just once, I want to see IBM or somebody backing Tor or Freenet or something similar.
Please remember that IBM is, like most corporations, a for-profit entity. Which means that the vast majority of their research is going to be aimed at projects that will allow them to make a buck.
In short - Tor and Freenet don't spend gazillions of dollars on technologies, while governments do.
no.... if it costs 10x current solar prices to ramp it up to 99% then it doesn't really help does it. I mean maybe for some weird science use but not for energy production.
TFA is a little light on details, but consider this quote: "Researchers discovered that more light shined on the nanotube created even more electricity, a huge difference from today's silicon solar cells where excess energy is lost in the form of heat rather than used to create more electricity."
So say it's 10x the current price of solar cells, but can utilize cheap mirrors so that you only need 1/10 as many of them as conventional solar cells.
There *is* some potential here (assuming it actually works on a larger scale, of course).
Don't you think cops have more to do than fill out paper work on a kindle you lost? Even if it was Stolen out of your back pack, who has time to have cops filling out paperwork for a 300 dollar device?
You might get away with filing such a report in Pincushion Arizona, but they will laugh you out of the station in Dallas.
First off, let's clarify things. An item that you *lost* is not something you'd ordinarily file a police report on.
Second, the value of the device shouldn't be significant, except for determining whether it's petty or grand larceny. I know, in practice it is, but that's an issue with the police being focused on the wrong things (like harassing prostitutes and low-level drug dealers).
Third, why do the *cops* have to fill out anything? Have standard forms, which the person filing the complaint fills out, and an officer on duty (you know, one of those overage/overweight desk types who wouldn't be doing anything important anyway) reviews, points out any problems, and accepts once properly completed (checking ID and whatever to keep everything kosher).
I wish I had mod points, because this is exactly the issue. Let's say someone puts their Kindle up on eBay, and then after it sells calls Amazon and says that the device got stolen. How is Amazon supposed to know whether the device whether the device was stolen or not? Even worse, what happens if Amazon believes someone claiming to own your device and bricks it, where does that put them? It's entirely reasonable that Amazon won't do anything without a direct request from the cops (or presumably a court order).
That's the role a police report should play. When you file a report with the police, the police report number can be given to Amazon as evidence that an actual theft occurred. Amazon can then query the police to verify the report is genuine (insurance companies do this all the time in the case of auto accidents, theft of insured property, etc, so the mechanisms for this are already in place), and once they've done that can disable the device.
In your Ebay example, what would happen then is that the buyer of the now useless device could contact your police department, with the records of the sale, and you'd potentially be facing criminal charges for filing a false police report (cops *really* don't like people doing this, and they know where you live, so there's a real chance they'd follow up on this).
Mr. Borgese, who lives in Manhattan, questions whether hunting down a $300 e-book reader would rank as a priority for the New York Police Department.
If that's the case, then what does he hope to achieve by finding out the location of the Kindle? Rhetorical question -- we all know what he hopes to achieve, and Amazon wants no part of it.
If you had bothered to read the entire quote, he did *not* ask for Amazon's help in finding the Kindle - what he asked them to do was *disable* it. Which has some merit - if Amazon did disable those devices when stolen, it would kill the black market for stolen Kindles. But as noted in TFA, this poses a problem, as it's too easy for someone to contact them, pretending to be you, and reporting *your* Kindle as stolen...
What *should* happen is that Mr. Borgese files a police report on the stolen Kindle, and can then contact Amazon, with the police report number as evidence that he's not some practical joker. Amazon then disables that device, so that whoever stole it (or whoever bought it from the thief) can no longer gain the benefit of having it. This reduces the potential for mischief (and, in the case that the person simply misplaced the device, puts the onus on *him* to reverse the process), while still destroying the resale value of the stolen item.
This is more or less what Mr. Borgese attempted to do. But Amazon has no mechanism for this - they want to be contacted by a law enforcement officer with a supoena. Which the police probably won't bother doing, unless the theft is tied to drug dealing, terrorism, pedophilia, or whatever BS is high on their public relations agenda this week.
Lloyd B.
You're right, but I'm not convinced that's such a bad thing. The lone inventor producing a better mousetrap in his basement is something of a myth don't you think? Outside of web companies how often do you hear about a company becoming huge on the back of a single guys cheap invention? Google is perhaps the main example of this in recent years, but even so, developing the PageRank technology took years of research at a university followed by significant hardware investment to build a working implementation.
It *is* far less common than it used to be. The days when a pair of college kids working in their garage could start up what would become a major player in the computer industry seem to be gone (in case you don't recognize the reference, I'm talking about how Apple started). But I dislike the creation of a patent system that is inherently biased in favor of established players - if someone *does* come up with something significant in his garage, I'd like to have the system built to where he could gain financially for his work.
I don't believe that the inventor should get all possible profits from an idea, but if a corporation is making large piles of money off of an inventor's idea, then I believe that then inventor is entitled to at least a medium size pile for himself :)
Throttling the entrancy rate would be similar to what you suggest. I think this would be equivalent to setting a very high incentive rate.
If by "throttling" you mean limiting the number of organizations that can buy into the pool, then I would be worried about "squatters" - Imagine that the patent for a big drug is only allowed one entrant this year, and by various methods SquatterCorp manages to buy into the pool. They could then resell their share in the pool for substantially more than they paid for it.
You could try to add a restriction that the organization buying into the pool must agree to bring the drug to market, but there are easy ways around that restriction ("oh - we're contracting to RealDrugCorp to do the actual manufacturing/marketing/distribution").
Multiply the cost of development by I to arrive at $1.2 million. ACME Inc applies for a patent on their wonder drug, and it is deemed novel thus granted. A new pool is created with a value of $1.2 million.
I question whether using the actual cost of development is viable. In the case of drugs, a company may have to pay to develop 20 drugs before they get one that actually works and is profitable - that area research has a very high failure rate (drugs that don't work, have too many undesirable side effects, etc). Using actual cost of development could kill areas of research where it's expected that a small number of successes will offset the expenses of the large number of failures.
Pro - the size of the pool is determined by the audited cost of development. Thus you cannot make millions off something trivial or obvious.
I would consider this on a Con, rather than a Pro. You're basically setting up a system which will only benefit "big" inventions (meaning those funded by wealthy individuals or corporations). Consider the following scenario - working in my garage, I come up with some invention for a trivial amount, but which has massive utility (let's use the "better mousetrap" as an example). I only spend a few hundred dollars working on it, so the pool would be very small. MegaSuperEverything Corporation then jumps in, and for a trivial amount of money obtains the rights, and proceeds to sell many millions of them thanks to their existing marketing/distribution channels, while I can only sell a handful because of the competition. Knowing that this is likely to happen, what incentive do I have to patent the invention?
Con - The second entrant to the pool has the advantage of not needing to do the R&D yet can immediately benefit from the invention. First mover advantage might not be enough to offset this. Perhaps could be solved by throttling the entry rate to the pool.
Just have a decaying rate. For instance, in year one, the pool would be cost of development times 100 (or higher). In year 2, it drops to 75x. Year three down to 50x. Have a floor, so that after 10 years, it's at 1.5x, and remains there until the patent expires. This would tend to preserve the first mover advantage, without compromising the concept (provided the decay rate is reasonable).
Ok folks, don't get yourselves in a tizzy over this.
If you read the article (yeah, I know, it's against Slashdot rules, but give a try anyway) you'll see that all this hype originates from a company that has a product to detect faked DNA evidence, that they hope to sell to forensics labs.
The simple fact is that if someone wants to plant your DNA at a crime scene, there are many possible ways for them to obtain *real* DNA to use for that purpose. They aren't going to go through the hassle of creating fake DNA...
Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
I'm shocked nobody has called bullshit on this one yet. Damn, dude. Check snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp
Unless of course you also read this on snopes and decided it was a good time to perpetrate an urban legend. *shrugs*
What's truly silly about this urban legend is that there are plenty of *real* examples of excessively long government documents. Google for "military brownie specification" for an example ("wc" tells me it's only 9660 words, but I'm sure there are some others that can equal or exceed the 26,911 number).
Explain to me why the revenue generated by a copyrighted work has any relevance to the question of "fair use."
One of the factors used in determining whether something was fair use or not is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work".
I suspect that the defense is trying to show that the songs in question made tons of money, despite the actions of the defendant, and as such this test might favor the defendant.
I don't know whether or not this will actually *work*, mind you, but it seems to provide a handle to request such information.
This case seems like a prime candidate for "criminal negligence causing death". The defendant, from what I've heard, did wilfully cause distress to a child whose depressive condition was known to her (seriously? a 13-year-old girl who is NOT emotionally volatile is the exception, not the rule!) that the defendant should have known faced a reasonable likelihood (which is not the same as "better than 50-50 odds") of causing the death of said child. That's pretty much criminal negligence right there.
First off, "criminal negligence" means "failing to take action when it is obvious that such action is necessary to prevent harm". What you're looking for is called "depraved indifference", which means "taking an action knowing that harm is likely, but not caring".
And I'm not sure that *either* applies to his case. You state the defendant "should have known faced a reasonable likelihood of causing the death of said child", but there's no evidence that the defendant had the psychological training needed to recognize the difference between an ordinary teen's mood swings and a teen headed for suicidal depression. Without such expertise, you can't really assert that she knew that there was a serious probability of suicide resulting from her actions.
What this case calls for is the classic "wrongful death" civil suit. There simply isn't an existing criminal statute that covers this case (and it would be extremely hard to craft one, without many unintended consequences), so let the girl's parents sue the crap out of Lori Drew, and let that be the end of it.
IANAL as well, but I think you're misinterpreting copyright law. Copyright law these days deals with distribution. Ever since the establishment of fair use, the mere act of copying is no longer considered infringement.
I disagree. Here's a section from Wiki's reference on US copyright law for what it's worth:
There are five basic rights protected by copyright, sometimes called the five "pillars" of copyright. The owner of copyright has the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:
* To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
* To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
* To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
* To publicly perform the work, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, and sound recordings by means of digital audio transmission;
* To publicly display the work, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work.
A violation of any of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder is said to be a copyright infringement.
Please note the first one.
While the RIAA isn't actually chasing the *downloaders*, if they accuse you of uploading, and their case turns out to be garbage, if they've gotten a look at your hard drive and they've found files they can reasonably assert are illicit copies, then they can potentially sue you for those. It appears to this non-lawyer that the defense attorney is attempting to preclude them from doing so...
I'm just going by what the law books say. Sorry you disagree with them. The law books say that for a distribution to be "to the public" it can't be to a limited network.
But is Gnutella a "limited network"? Any person who has
1) A computer
2) Access to the Internet
3) A Gnutella "servent" (Limewire, Bearshare, etc., which can be downloaded for free from the net.)
has access to Gnet. Since pretty much anybody can obtain all of the three, I would consider that public.
(Whether the law does or not is, of course, another matter entirely)
By the way, the "to the public" element is just one of the many missing elements. The RIAA has also failed to prove (a) dissemination of copies to the public, and (b) a sale, other transfer of ownership, rental, lease, or lending.
That was my main point. There are many different angle of attack on this problem:
1. No proof that anything was ever distributed to anyone other than MediaSentry
2. The fact that MediaSentry's methods are secret, and cannot be established as being reliable.
3. The fact that MediaSentry has extremely lax evidence handling procedures.
4. The fact that MediaSentry isn't licensed to perform investigations, though many states require this for collection of evidence to be used in a court of law.
5. The fact that their so called expert does little but regurgitate what MediaSentry tells him.
6. The fact that their expert has a vested financial interest in the success of the terror campaign.
Maybe "the public" has some special meaning in Lawyer Town
I would say it has the same meaning it has everywhere else, which is that it is available to all -- as, e.g., this comment can be viewed by "the public" -- rather than to a limited network.
Sorry Ray, but I have to call you on this one. Saying that the files are only "available to people on a particular network" *is* making them available to the public, since potentially anyone can connect to that network. If I were handing out CD's to people here in Tucson, would you say that they weren't available to the public since you'd have to fly down here to get one?
Please stick to arguments that will actually hold water, such as that the law be requires the RIAA to show that there was actual distribution to the public (rather than just to their agents). That one would put an end to the whole RIAA campaign, if you can ever get the judiciary clued in...
The way I interpret this (although IANAL) is that if you're sharing a folder online, and they don't sue you within 3 years, you're pretty much home free? This could be really good news for people who share files. Especially since you could copy them to a computer not connected to the internet, wait 3 years, then release it to the wild.
IANAL either, but I believe you're confusing two points. There are two different rights given to copyright holders - the exclusive right to create copies, and the exclusive right to distribute them to others.
The section you're reading only applies to the former. So imagine the following: You download a bunch of songs from the 'net, and have them on your hard drive for more than 3 years. Then they discover that you have those infringing copies. The statute of limitation prevents them from suing you for having copied those songs without the rights holder's permission.
But, if you then distribute them to the public, a new infringement occurs (a violation of the exclusive right to distribute). The statute of limitations on *that* runs from the date of distribution, not the date of copying.
To pull that off, they'd have to build their island 200 miles offshore. That'd have to be some ferry to make commuting possible.
To expand on this, recoiless weapons like the jeep mounted ones scale down even further. A gyrojet round would work very well on a lightweight stealthbot and give it the lethal force of an infantryman with a rifle.
But after it fires a round, it wouldn't be a "stealth" bot anymore - IIRC, Gyrojet rounds are even louder than conventional firearms.
Am I the only one who find the whole issue about illegally obtained evidence not being admissible in court preposterous?
Let's say I go out and kill somebody, but the only evidence against me it is an illegally obtained wire-tapping. It doesn't make me any less guilty. And the people who obtained it illegally obviously need to be prosecuted but it still shouldn't change anything in terms of me. Obviously in this case most people would argue that making me walk on a technicality is not in everybody's best interest. Without going into special cases, can anybody tell me why illegally obtained evidence should not be accepted? Evidence is evidence and it carries its weight irrespectively of how it came about.
For the record, I like the RIAA's actions as little as the next guy, but that's not what we're discussing here.
The suppression of the illegally obtained evidence is a deterrent. If you know that illegally obtained evidence isn't admissible, then you won't go out and commit a crime in order to obtain such evidence. Without such a restriction, the use of illegally obtained evidence would become commonplace (especially in cases such as your murder scenario, where the tapper would be considered a hero by the community, and probably never punished or given a token punishment for the criminal act).
Also note that illegally obtained evidence is not *always* inadmissible. If I tap into your phone line for the purpose of using it for free phone service, and I overhear you talking about the killing, I may be able allowed to testify against you. The ban is primarily on those committing illegal acts for the express purpose of gathering evidence. Which is exactly what MediaSentry was doing for the RIAA.
you get some idiot playing with his FoF (Friend or Foe) tag while in a active combat zone
Soldier 1 "Hai look at me, now Im a good guy [takes FOF tag off], now Im a"
BANG!!.......Thump
Soldier 2 "Ah crap - Hey! Sarge! Need to fill out another Form 7095/36b. You want to to fill out the Darwin Award entry while I'm at it?"
MediaSentry is an unlicensed investigator. As such, any evidence they gained is inadmissable.
Tell it to da judge. The case against Jammie Thomas is based *solely* upon the "evidence" provided by MediaSentry. Yeah, they have a hard drive, with songs on it, but there's no proof that these were offered for upload except for MediaSentry's word.
I'm not sure if this was even argued by her attorney...
Ray, I'm curious why you haven't said much at all as to why her lawyer might be withdrawing from the case. Aside from your customary, thinly-veiled swipes at the plaintiffs, I don't see anything addressing this. If her case is as strong as you have been implying consistently in your comments over the past months (and I think I've read every single one of them), it certainly seems odd that an attorney would bail on a slam-dunk case like this one. Surely there has to be another (more objective) explanation or two?
Not NYCL (and IANAL to boot), but I don't think this case is a "slam-dunk". Yes, the judge messed up big time with that jury instruction, and with a binding precedent that the plaintiff must show actual distribution (as opposed to "making available"), the RIAA's case doesn't look all the rosy. But there's still one issue that I don't believe has been resolved - do the downloads made by MediaSentry (under whatever name they're using this week) constitute unlawful distribution? Because that is the *only* distribution that the RIAA's goon squad can actually prove, and there's some case law that seems to say that the distribution has to be to the public, and distribution to agents of the copyright holder don't count.
He's such a nice guy that he doesn't want to see her put herself into terrible debt, BUT he's not such a nice guy as to give her his services at an affordable rate?
Who said anything about him being a nice guy? He doesn't want her to go deeper in debt to him, because he's not sure that he'll ever get paid...