(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
This wording is indeed telling. This, AFAICT, precludes a defence that the modification was to enable home-brew software. Home-brew software does not make money, the usual measure for commercial significance, and therefore is not "commercially significant" as another purpose for the modification. Playing an import game is commercially significant to the US rights holder, but only in the negative sense that they consider to be in breach. An import game is one where the takings have gone to a foreign entity. This clause is heavily stacked: if the US rights holder isn't the one making a buck then the modification is in violation of this clause.
"Her syllabus, which is effectively the contract between her and the student"
"Effectively", but not actually. IIRC, a contract without exchange of consideration (usually money) is not a contract. Their is very unlikely to be money changing hands directly between the teacher and the student, who are the alleged contracting parties.
This _might_ permit the teacher to upload the student's work but it absolutely _does not_ permit TurnItIn to further distribute the work, or derivatives of it, without the copyright holder's permission. That, I think, is the point being argued.
Malware asks, "how do you expect that to happen in a saturated market?" You shuffle the available money around between competitors until there are no competitors left then you set your price each year. Eventually you'll fall foul of monopoly laws, thereby ending the endless growth illusion and necessitating deployment of the golden parachute.
In the last large company I worked in this is exactly what they expected from their essentially saturated/monopoly position: each year the percentage by which income should exceed costs had to increase. Given the orders were essentially fixed, the increases came from cutting cost (and by extension quality and timeliness). However, achieving an ever increasing margin in these circumstances is far more likely than convincing a bean counter that you cannot have perpetually increasing profit margins even in an unbounded market. Exponential growth is a bitch with big teeth.
From my reading here it is clear there are two amounts concerned in the judgement: compensatory damages and punitive damages. The former is supposed to compensate the winner for losses, and clearly goes to them. My question is, who gets the punitive damages? The deterrent represented by these punitive damage awards is a parallel to the sentence or fine in a criminal case, both of which are collected by the State on behalf of society. Is that the case in these civil litigations in the US, or does the winner claim that as well?
Films that exceed the R 18+ and X 18+ classification categories will be Refused Classification.
Computer games that exceed the MA 15+ classification category will be Refused Classification.
Films that get refused classification involve bestiality, paedophilia, direct instruction in drug use etc. I expect that most reasonable people have no issue with this. Anything less than this gets an X18+ or R18+ rating and is legally for sale subject to conditions excluding minors. This includes every pointlessly violent slasher flick.
A game that contains graphic violence that is "not justified by context" gets an RC rating and is banned from sale. Why the difference?
It might be a public performance in some sense, but I venture that a lot of the ring tones that people have on their phones are paid for by the subscriber (through their carrier, phone manufacturer, or one of the underhand subscription services) and therefore legally licensed for the purpose for which they are being used. ASCAP is trying to retrospectively change the agreements it knowingly entered into with the ring tone vendors to allow use of the tones as the audible ring of a phone.
If people were deliberately ringing their own phone and charging admission to hear the ring tone then maybe the case would cease to be a horrendous waste of court time.
Perhaps these "poor floor people" should be trained in how to escalate stuff they cannot deal with so that they can suggest it to the customer rather than it having to be demanded by the customer. Less stress all round, and the company does not risk losing a customer.
In many parts of the world voting is not a two horse race or a highest vote wins system (I don't know which applies to Iran). Some of us get to express a series of preferences with lower order preferences being significant if no-one get 50% of the votes on first preferences (often the case here in Australia). Counting a voter's first preference is indeed fairly quick, but tallying a preferential ballot can take quite some time, especially if the result is close or the electoral area is large and contains many polling stations.
A casual glance at the last Federal election results for polling booths in my electorate shows that none handled more than 5000 voters (excluding absent/postal votes) and they are able to return a provisional first preference count for the House of Representatives within hours. Usually the "certain winners" in provisional counts are sufficient to identify the new Government. Senate votes and close races typically took days to be settled fully.
There seemed to be several approaches but everyone was playing their cards close to their (patent) chest. They all seemed to be targeting lower altitudes of about 500-1000 metres.
One is described in some detail here and used cables to provide guidance (just the kite aloft): http://tinyurl.com/m57qtp (no, not a Rickroll).
The voting machine does more than the infallible pencil and paper that you describe, which only covers the marking of a vote. The voting system that you yearn for involves correct marking of the ballot paper, manual transport of vote boxes, manual handling of the paper, manual tallying of the votes, manual reporting of results upstream, manual cross checking of error rates, recounts on-demand etc... Each and every one of those steps in the system in open to human error (losing count, misreading), lack of understanding (failing to mark the ballot correctly, failing to count preferences* properly) or deliberate corruption (losing ballot boxes, etc). Votes have always been subject to these problems. All this does not excuse electronic voting machines from accountability, but please take your rose-coloured glasses off when comparing the alternative.
Am I alone in thinking that: "work with an employee..." != "dupe an employee"?
If these guys managed to get in by conning an unknowing employee then they can hardly be claimed to have been working together. They are no more working together than the way a con-man "works with" their victim. It's largely moot anyway, which employee is going to say, "Hey boss, I let them have the information."? Severely career limiting methinks.
In the computing line the oldest working piece I have is a Sinclair ZX80 circa 1981.
Still working, but I have had to replace the Z-80 CPU on one occasion.
I think the far more interesting question is, "Who has the right of redress?" in the case of alleged circumvention.
Is the presence of an actual work subject to both copyright and technical restrictions required for this clause to be active? It would certainly seem so because the measure, "must effectively control access to a work", implying that a work must be present. If so, then Adobe, as the originator of a method for applying "technological measures", but without any protected copyrighted material involved in an actual infringement, is not in a strong position. The BBC (to use your example) would be the organisation that could seek redress if, and when, "technological measures" are actually used to circumvent such a measure.
This all falls apart the moment lawyers get involved to enforce your "rights" (dare I say privileges) against a mid-sized guy.
When each of the original artists comes after you because they think you have skimped on their royalty you can be absolutely certain that the lawyers (who are now involved anyway) will interpret "gross profit" incredibly broadly. They'll want 10% of every sale regardless of whether it actually contains anything of theirs: because the item "can use" their whatever. They will of course mean before tax (a royalty on money that's belongs to the State) and before any expense involved in the business of making the good or service. They will argue that your business only exists because they provide their music/image/data and therefore what is yours is theirs. You have pay your lawyers to argue them back to a reasonable starting point before you can even make headway.
Pour multiple "rights" holders into the mix and you'll quickly be paying 50% of your gross to them, and you still pay the tax (on 100%) and costs, and take all the risks.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me fix that for you:
Need to be careful of all sorts of legislation if you start organising these sorts of shennanighans
I'll second that!
This wording is indeed telling. This, AFAICT, precludes a defence that the modification was to enable home-brew software. Home-brew software does not make money, the usual measure for commercial significance, and therefore is not "commercially significant" as another purpose for the modification. Playing an import game is commercially significant to the US rights holder, but only in the negative sense that they consider to be in breach. An import game is one where the takings have gone to a foreign entity. This clause is heavily stacked: if the US rights holder isn't the one making a buck then the modification is in violation of this clause.
"Her syllabus, which is effectively the contract between her and the student" "Effectively", but not actually. IIRC, a contract without exchange of consideration (usually money) is not a contract. Their is very unlikely to be money changing hands directly between the teacher and the student, who are the alleged contracting parties. This _might_ permit the teacher to upload the student's work but it absolutely _does not_ permit TurnItIn to further distribute the work, or derivatives of it, without the copyright holder's permission. That, I think, is the point being argued.
The Federal act abolishing the death penalty is one of the most accessible pieces of legislation I've had the pleasure to read:
Indeed ROFLMAO :D
Where are the "Funnier than a fart in a space suit" mod points when you need them?
Malware asks, "how do you expect that to happen in a saturated market?" You shuffle the available money around between competitors until there are no competitors left then you set your price each year. Eventually you'll fall foul of monopoly laws, thereby ending the endless growth illusion and necessitating deployment of the golden parachute.
In the last large company I worked in this is exactly what they expected from their essentially saturated/monopoly position: each year the percentage by which income should exceed costs had to increase. Given the orders were essentially fixed, the increases came from cutting cost (and by extension quality and timeliness). However, achieving an ever increasing margin in these circumstances is far more likely than convincing a bean counter that you cannot have perpetually increasing profit margins even in an unbounded market. Exponential growth is a bitch with big teeth.
From my reading here it is clear there are two amounts concerned in the judgement: compensatory damages and punitive damages. The former is supposed to compensate the winner for losses, and clearly goes to them. My question is, who gets the punitive damages? The deterrent represented by these punitive damage awards is a parallel to the sentence or fine in a criminal case, both of which are collected by the State on behalf of society. Is that the case in these civil litigations in the US, or does the winner claim that as well?
For the international audience:this conversation is about paracetamol
From: Guidelines for the Classification of Films and Computer Games http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/LegislativeInstrumentCompilation1.nsf/framelodgmentattachments/6C888688A3BBD40ACA2574120004F72A
Films that get refused classification involve bestiality, paedophilia, direct instruction in drug use etc. I expect that most reasonable people have no issue with this. Anything less than this gets an X18+ or R18+ rating and is legally for sale subject to conditions excluding minors. This includes every pointlessly violent slasher flick. A game that contains graphic violence that is "not justified by context" gets an RC rating and is banned from sale. Why the difference?
It might be a public performance in some sense, but I venture that a lot of the ring tones that people have on their phones are paid for by the subscriber (through their carrier, phone manufacturer, or one of the underhand subscription services) and therefore legally licensed for the purpose for which they are being used. ASCAP is trying to retrospectively change the agreements it knowingly entered into with the ring tone vendors to allow use of the tones as the audible ring of a phone.
If people were deliberately ringing their own phone and charging admission to hear the ring tone then maybe the case would cease to be a horrendous waste of court time.
Perhaps these "poor floor people" should be trained in how to escalate stuff they cannot deal with so that they can suggest it to the customer rather than it having to be demanded by the customer. Less stress all round, and the company does not risk losing a customer.
So they have a run-off election in the event that the votes came down: 49%, 49%, 1%, 1% ?
In many parts of the world voting is not a two horse race or a highest vote wins system (I don't know which applies to Iran). Some of us get to express a series of preferences with lower order preferences being significant if no-one get 50% of the votes on first preferences (often the case here in Australia). Counting a voter's first preference is indeed fairly quick, but tallying a preferential ballot can take quite some time, especially if the result is close or the electoral area is large and contains many polling stations.
A casual glance at the last Federal election results for polling booths in my electorate shows that none handled more than 5000 voters (excluding absent/postal votes) and they are able to return a provisional first preference count for the House of Representatives within hours. Usually the "certain winners" in provisional counts are sufficient to identify the new Government. Senate votes and close races typically took days to be settled fully.
There seemed to be several approaches but everyone was playing their cards close to their (patent) chest. They all seemed to be targeting lower altitudes of about 500-1000 metres.
One is described in some detail here and used cables to provide guidance (just the kite aloft): http://tinyurl.com/m57qtp (no, not a Rickroll).
The NS article has a summary image for another approach: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2656/26562001.jpg
The idea uses computer control to fly the kites in a figure-of-eight circuit (or the like). They don't go anywhere substantial. New Scientist covered this last year (subscription required for full article): http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826562.000-to-make-the-most-of-wind-power-go-fly-a-kite.html
If you can see the Milky Way then it's worth pondering how other cultures interpreted the sky: The Emu in the Sky http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/AboriginalAstronomy/Examples/emu.htm
The voting machine does more than the infallible pencil and paper that you describe, which only covers the marking of a vote. The voting system that you yearn for involves correct marking of the ballot paper, manual transport of vote boxes, manual handling of the paper, manual tallying of the votes, manual reporting of results upstream, manual cross checking of error rates, recounts on-demand etc... Each and every one of those steps in the system in open to human error (losing count, misreading), lack of understanding (failing to mark the ballot correctly, failing to count preferences* properly) or deliberate corruption (losing ballot boxes, etc). Votes have always been subject to these problems. All this does not excuse electronic voting machines from accountability, but please take your rose-coloured glasses off when comparing the alternative.
* Not all parts of the world rely solely on first-past-the-post polling.
Finally found a use for Wolfram Alpha:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Zhengzhou+china
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Climate+of+Yancheng+china
...and when it does you had better hope that the security goons don't make your head explode too :)
Am I alone in thinking that: "work with an employee..." != "dupe an employee"?
If these guys managed to get in by conning an unknowing employee then they can hardly be claimed to have been working together. They are no more working together than the way a con-man "works with" their victim. It's largely moot anyway, which employee is going to say, "Hey boss, I let them have the information."? Severely career limiting methinks.
In the computing line the oldest working piece I have is a Sinclair ZX80 circa 1981. Still working, but I have had to replace the Z-80 CPU on one occasion.
I think the far more interesting question is, "Who has the right of redress?" in the case of alleged circumvention.
Is the presence of an actual work subject to both copyright and technical restrictions required for this clause to be active? It would certainly seem so because the measure, "must effectively control access to a work", implying that a work must be present. If so, then Adobe, as the originator of a method for applying "technological measures", but without any protected copyrighted material involved in an actual infringement, is not in a strong position. The BBC (to use your example) would be the organisation that could seek redress if, and when, "technological measures" are actually used to circumvent such a measure.
This all falls apart the moment lawyers get involved to enforce your "rights" (dare I say privileges) against a mid-sized guy.
When each of the original artists comes after you because they think you have skimped on their royalty you can be absolutely certain that the lawyers (who are now involved anyway) will interpret "gross profit" incredibly broadly. They'll want 10% of every sale regardless of whether it actually contains anything of theirs: because the item "can use" their whatever. They will of course mean before tax (a royalty on money that's belongs to the State) and before any expense involved in the business of making the good or service. They will argue that your business only exists because they provide their music/image/data and therefore what is yours is theirs. You have pay your lawyers to argue them back to a reasonable starting point before you can even make headway.
Pour multiple "rights" holders into the mix and you'll quickly be paying 50% of your gross to them, and you still pay the tax (on 100%) and costs, and take all the risks.
The lawyers, on the other hand, can't lose.
Insightful? Are you freakin' kidding me?
60000 miles by 0.85 CENTS per mile is $510 for a set of four tyres. What did your four 60000-mile tyres actually cost?