Who cares if both companies have money to burn over a copyright pissing contest. If the befuddling legal language was written by professionals, agreed upon by a professional "arbitrator, the judge", and executed by professionals, the result was absolutely correct. Both laymen and professionals now generally agree the newspaper got exactly what they asked for and the judge agreed to. If that is NOT what they wanted, then bogus clarification requests are only a hindsight demand for a mulligan.
Blind adherence to the law is REQUIRED by law if you want to avoid violating the law. Period. A lawyer I know is fond of saying that the law is a jealous mistress. It wants only what it wants, now what is right. If you are looking for justice, I suggest you look elsewhere.
As for your example. That in itself is disingenuous. A request by my boss, is not the same as a legally binding court order with legal consequences for failure to comply as written. Additionally, the order was drafted by opposing counsel (professionals) enumerating their wishes, and approved by a professional judge. the language was unambiguous and direct. Now they are complaining, "But what we really meant was..."
Google was providing a free service for the newspapers. They decided they did not like the way Google provided that service and asked the court to force Google to exclude them. Now they are complaining that Google will not continue to provide them a DIFFERENT service for free. And you want to defend it????
Is there any wonder why everybody hates lawyers. "Utterly precise, verbose" legal language is incomprehensible to the party subjected to it, such that they can be sanctioned for following it to the letter. This is the ultimate bullshit that leads to disrespect for law. Nobody can live their life without tripping over voluminous shit laws designed to trap an innocent party that happens to piss off the establishment. If the revolution ever does come, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer of a politician
And no. If I have to ask a judge for clarification for such a simple order, the judge is just making it up as he goes, adjusting it to his own wishes. And if it wasn't what he wanted in the first place, he should NOT have signed such a dumb assed order. He is being paid to know what the hell he is doing, not just wing it and see how it goes.
.
I cancelled Netflix ages ago. They have always promised more than they could deliver for the money. I had the 3 out-at-a-time unlimited plan and cycled through the DVDs quickly. We did not have cable and My wife, I, two teenagers, and two young kids watched a lot of movies. When they throttled me and it started taking a two weeks to replace DVDs mailed back to Netflix, I gave them the finger and dropped my service.
We started visiting Family Video. It cost more, but we got 6 DVDs a week instead of 6 DVDs a month.
It's also all about Taylorism taken to it's furthest degree. In the vision of the MBA dudes, everybody within a company is an expendable plug-in component.
As a long time engineer who is currently at the exact halfway point of his MBA, I have a bit of firsthand knowledge. That may have been the method of the old school MBA, but newly minted MBAs are being taught the value of talented employees and the cost of treating labor as a commodity. We are also drilled with the stupidity of short term gains at the expense of long term value. And *SHOCKER*, we are well versed of the hidden costs, drawbacks, and disadvantages of off-shoring. The big push right now is "working with China" and the impending overshadowing of our economy by theirs.
This war on drugs is working out just great for us. Any day now, we'll have it all wrapped up and be done with it.
Seriously? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. My state can't afford to pay its bills and is thinking about privatizing state prisons, and you want to lock up kids being kids and ruin their future. When I was 18, the drinking age was 18 and nobody had a shit fit until MADD convinced Reagan to blackmail the states into raising the age. I'm all for locking up violent criminals, but the sheer number of new "offenses" being dreamed up every year is why we have the largest percentage of incarcerated population in the civilized world. All these paranoid, law-and-order-at-any-cost, types are just plain stupid...
The security theater is all about control. Do you think for one second that the administration could have gotten away clean with wireless wiretapping if not for the security theater drumbeats and foolish sycophants claiming they are doing a great job protecting us? We (the US citizenry) are being slowly inundated into total surveillance, control, and servitude by the minions of the government who just can't get enough of that security theater.
Bullshit. I have been subjected to one of these DUI checkpoints. The police stop every nth car whether or not alcohol is smelled or suspected. I happened to be the lucky number n car. They required me to remove my glasses and submit to a field sobriety test. In Ohio, there is no publication of checkpoints, so in order to get around the 4th amendment, they test "randomly". i.e. every nth car. That is, unless they happen to smell or see alcohol. Then you are busted anyway.
There is absolutely no "justifiable" or "probable" cause whatsoever. I was simply collateral damage so they can visually inspect each and every motorist on a specific stretch of highway. Of course, I could have refused to submit to the test and automatically lost my license for 6 months. This is another of Ohio's wonderful laws.
As a non-drinker, this bullshit infuriates me. I have to prove innocence during a non-justified traffic stop.
By your logic, Sony could hire mercenaries to start gunning down everyone who even might be involved
Isn't that pretty much what started this whole debacle? Sony subpoenaed everyone who donated to Geohot and those who dared to look at his research. They drew first blood by siccing their lawyers on the innocent. Now they are reaping the whirlwind.
This isn't a revolution. This is crime.
Only time will decide that. Most failed revolutionaries are declared criminals by the winners.
30 years ago we were much less safe with the constant threat of Soviet nuclear annihilation on 15 minutes notice. Today we welcome gropes and nude photographs in the airport because we fear the Arab boogeyman and we pay for the privilege. You can be charged as a sex offender because you urinate outside and suddenly find yourself unable to find legal housing anywhere within some cities. There has been a sad decline in the public's value of freedom.
Or perhaps the "creeping" is because people tire of the NWS and local new channels crying wolf every time there is a thunderstorm. I for one, never replaced my weather radio because I was tired of being woken at 3AM because NWS heard some rain falling somewhere within 20 miles of me. How many times do they need to broadcast those damn "thunderstorm warnings" at 3AM? Jesus, wake me if there is a tornado, I can deal with a little rain just fine.
Fact is, though, the value of a commodity is how much someone is willing to pay for it, not how much it costs to produce.
This has to be the most insightful comment I have ever read here. Throw in a bit about artificial scarcity, and I will vote for you for Emperor of Slashdot.
Maybe that can put I'd rather be an asshole than a bleeding heart on your tombstone when some starving poor or sick person caps your ass when they rob you looking to feed themselves.
The issue we have now is that the seller is out of state but the point of purchase is in-state
The point of purchase is most definitely out-of-state. Just because you add the Internet to the equation makes it no different than mail order catalogs or ordering by telephone. That is Bezos' point. If the point of purchase was in state, you would have lots more trouble than just sales tax. Every state would require income tax on receipts of those purchases. Why is this so hard to understand?
So if I buy a burger from McDonalds made from a cow killed in Nebraska I don't have to pay sales tax in California? Man, I've got to explain that to the Franchise Tax Board here. They've had it all wrong for decades.
Generally, McDonalds does not sell mail order, so your sales transaction occurs in person. Since your transaction occurred in state, you pay sales tax. McDonalds may not have to pay sales tax on their Nebraska cow if the beef company had no presence in yours/McDonald's state. Do you understand now? Wishing things worked the way you want does not change the actual locality of the transaction or the taxation base.
Maybe in California, but not my state. The GP is correct. Most states require residents to pay USE tax on out-of-state purchases just as GP said. Coincidentally, use tax exactly equals the amount of sales tax which would have been paid had the purchase been made in state. You are required to declare purchase valuations and pay the use tax on my state's income tax form. There is no sales tax levied on out of state purchases. There cannot be because the sales transaction occurred within another state. This is precisely why the tax has a different name. Otherwise it would be struck down in Federal court as an attempt to tax interstate commerce.
You are partially correct though. It is unconstitutional for a state to require an out-of-state party to collect either sales or use tax for an purchase. This is Amazon's assertion and it is legally is sound. The only question is whether or not their associate subsidiaries meet the legal definition of state presence.
Another dishonesty of corporate taxes is that I am legally entitled to approx one millionth the local electric company profits. In other words, I own stock and am paid a dividend. Yet for mysterious reasons, the corporation pays income taxes on my money AND I pay income taxes on my money... Double taxation.
And you receive in return for your "double taxation", an immunity to the debts and miscounduct of "your company." If they drop the ball and go bankrupt, nobody is going to take away your house to pay your portion of the debts of your company.
I for one will be glad to drop double taxation if you will take legal responsibility for your company. Make sure they don't do anything illegal or get into financial trouble though...
All men are NOT created equal. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, or has an agenda.
There are as many people with an IQ below 100 as above it. Don't believe me? Take a road trip to your local Wal*Mart or DMV. There will always be people who cannot earn a living wage, yet work up to their potential. "Getting off their ass" is easy for somebody with an education who has a bit of grey matter, but not everybody does. Globalism has shipped out most of the higher paying low skill jobs and they aren't coming back. And what about disabled people? Do you propose we throw them away? Maybe we should reintroduce some sort of Dickensian workhouse plan to keep them.
Pray that you never become disabled or have a retarded child under your "fair to successful people" plan. After all, we don't want governmental insurance supporting your lazy ass or your kid. And if you starve... Well tough shit.
And no, I am not disabled and do not have any disabled kids.
You must have clicked submit too soon because you were about to explain how you have no publicly funded roads, bridges, air traffic control, police, army / navy / airforce, prisons, firefighters, justice system, schools, health care, welfare, parks & recreation facilities, sanitation or water supply where you live.
He said your taxes, not Chinese treasury bill money. 42% of Federal expenditures are currently through borrowing. Now we can't raise taxes, and we have to fight two wars (maybe threee. Look out Pakistan). We absolutely have to continue giving tax breaks to oil companies (who incidentally are enjoying record profits) and we can't default on interest. We need to keep funding those prisons so we can keep those terrorists and drug dealers off the streets. Who does that leave to screw? Hmmmm.... I believe they're mentioning Medicare and Medicaid.
Interesting. I saw an article in a newspaper last week claiming that 45% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes, mostly those with lower incomes. I'm not sure how that reconciles with the claim that the poor "pay a substantial percentage of their incomes in taxes."
Don't forget payroll taxes. Up to 15.x% if you are self employed. Of course there are sales taxes, and the poor spend larger proportions of their total income, subjecting it to more sales tax. Then there are the gasoline taxes. Don't forget all the annual state fees, such as drivers license, vehicle inspection, and car registration renewals. There are excise taxes on everything from tires and telephone service, to booze and cigarettes. And if they are lucky enough to own property, there's property taxes. And we can't forget about state, city, and school district income taxes. Of course the rich can cover their living expenses with a smaller proportion of their income. The rest go to investments and savings, which they do not pay taxes on, until the investment earns income.
In my state, income taxes are a larger bite for even middle income levels than Federal Income Taxes when you have exemptions and children.
Slashdot Mirror
My post is no more off topic than yours.
Who cares if both companies have money to burn over a copyright pissing contest. If the befuddling legal language was written by professionals, agreed upon by a professional "arbitrator, the judge", and executed by professionals, the result was absolutely correct. Both laymen and professionals now generally agree the newspaper got exactly what they asked for and the judge agreed to. If that is NOT what they wanted, then bogus clarification requests are only a hindsight demand for a mulligan.
Blind adherence to the law is REQUIRED by law if you want to avoid violating the law. Period. A lawyer I know is fond of saying that the law is a jealous mistress. It wants only what it wants, now what is right. If you are looking for justice, I suggest you look elsewhere.
As for your example. That in itself is disingenuous. A request by my boss, is not the same as a legally binding court order with legal consequences for failure to comply as written. Additionally, the order was drafted by opposing counsel (professionals) enumerating their wishes, and approved by a professional judge. the language was unambiguous and direct. Now they are complaining, "But what we really meant was..."
Google was providing a free service for the newspapers. They decided they did not like the way Google provided that service and asked the court to force Google to exclude them. Now they are complaining that Google will not continue to provide them a DIFFERENT service for free. And you want to defend it????
Is there any wonder why everybody hates lawyers. "Utterly precise, verbose" legal language is incomprehensible to the party subjected to it, such that they can be sanctioned for following it to the letter. This is the ultimate bullshit that leads to disrespect for law. Nobody can live their life without tripping over voluminous shit laws designed to trap an innocent party that happens to piss off the establishment. If the revolution ever does come, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer of a politician
And no. If I have to ask a judge for clarification for such a simple order, the judge is just making it up as he goes, adjusting it to his own wishes. And if it wasn't what he wanted in the first place, he should NOT have signed such a dumb assed order. He is being paid to know what the hell he is doing, not just wing it and see how it goes. .
I cancelled Netflix ages ago. They have always promised more than they could deliver for the money. I had the 3 out-at-a-time unlimited plan and cycled through the DVDs quickly. We did not have cable and My wife, I, two teenagers, and two young kids watched a lot of movies. When they throttled me and it started taking a two weeks to replace DVDs mailed back to Netflix, I gave them the finger and dropped my service.
We started visiting Family Video. It cost more, but we got 6 DVDs a week instead of 6 DVDs a month.
As a long time engineer who is currently at the exact halfway point of his MBA, I have a bit of firsthand knowledge. That may have been the method of the old school MBA, but newly minted MBAs are being taught the value of talented employees and the cost of treating labor as a commodity. We are also drilled with the stupidity of short term gains at the expense of long term value. And *SHOCKER*, we are well versed of the hidden costs, drawbacks, and disadvantages of off-shoring. The big push right now is "working with China" and the impending overshadowing of our economy by theirs.
Golly. I didn't realize that all of our rights had to be enshrined in the Constitution in order to be valid.
Dumbass
Is it the People's Front of Judea, or the Judean People's Front?
SPLITTER!!!!
This war on drugs is working out just great for us. Any day now, we'll have it all wrapped up and be done with it.
Seriously? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. My state can't afford to pay its bills and is thinking about privatizing state prisons, and you want to lock up kids being kids and ruin their future. When I was 18, the drinking age was 18 and nobody had a shit fit until MADD convinced Reagan to blackmail the states into raising the age. I'm all for locking up violent criminals, but the sheer number of new "offenses" being dreamed up every year is why we have the largest percentage of incarcerated population in the civilized world. All these paranoid, law-and-order-at-any-cost, types are just plain stupid...
Dude, you have my highest respect, bar none.
Sorry
s/wireless/warrantless/
I'm not sure if I would mod you funny or troll..
The security theater is all about control. Do you think for one second that the administration could have gotten away clean with wireless wiretapping if not for the security theater drumbeats and foolish sycophants claiming they are doing a great job protecting us? We (the US citizenry) are being slowly inundated into total surveillance, control, and servitude by the minions of the government who just can't get enough of that security theater.
Beware. Kids imitate what they see and Karma is a bitch.
Bullshit. I have been subjected to one of these DUI checkpoints. The police stop every nth car whether or not alcohol is smelled or suspected. I happened to be the lucky number n car. They required me to remove my glasses and submit to a field sobriety test. In Ohio, there is no publication of checkpoints, so in order to get around the 4th amendment, they test "randomly". i.e. every nth car. That is, unless they happen to smell or see alcohol. Then you are busted anyway.
There is absolutely no "justifiable" or "probable" cause whatsoever. I was simply collateral damage so they can visually inspect each and every motorist on a specific stretch of highway. Of course, I could have refused to submit to the test and automatically lost my license for 6 months. This is another of Ohio's wonderful laws.
As a non-drinker, this bullshit infuriates me. I have to prove innocence during a non-justified traffic stop.
Isn't that pretty much what started this whole debacle? Sony subpoenaed everyone who donated to Geohot and those who dared to look at his research. They drew first blood by siccing their lawyers on the innocent. Now they are reaping the whirlwind.
Only time will decide that. Most failed revolutionaries are declared criminals by the winners.
AMEN Brother!
30 years ago we were much less safe with the constant threat of Soviet nuclear annihilation on 15 minutes notice. Today we welcome gropes and nude photographs in the airport because we fear the Arab boogeyman and we pay for the privilege. You can be charged as a sex offender because you urinate outside and suddenly find yourself unable to find legal housing anywhere within some cities. There has been a sad decline in the public's value of freedom.
Or perhaps the "creeping" is because people tire of the NWS and local new channels crying wolf every time there is a thunderstorm. I for one, never replaced my weather radio because I was tired of being woken at 3AM because NWS heard some rain falling somewhere within 20 miles of me. How many times do they need to broadcast those damn "thunderstorm warnings" at 3AM? Jesus, wake me if there is a tornado, I can deal with a little rain just fine.
This has to be the most insightful comment I have ever read here. Throw in a bit about artificial scarcity, and I will vote for you for Emperor of Slashdot.
Maybe that can put I'd rather be an asshole than a bleeding heart on your tombstone when some starving poor or sick person caps your ass when they rob you looking to feed themselves.
The point of purchase is most definitely out-of-state. Just because you add the Internet to the equation makes it no different than mail order catalogs or ordering by telephone. That is Bezos' point. If the point of purchase was in state, you would have lots more trouble than just sales tax. Every state would require income tax on receipts of those purchases. Why is this so hard to understand?
Generally, McDonalds does not sell mail order, so your sales transaction occurs in person. Since your transaction occurred in state, you pay sales tax. McDonalds may not have to pay sales tax on their Nebraska cow if the beef company had no presence in yours/McDonald's state. Do you understand now? Wishing things worked the way you want does not change the actual locality of the transaction or the taxation base.
Maybe in California, but not my state. The GP is correct. Most states require residents to pay USE tax on out-of-state purchases just as GP said. Coincidentally, use tax exactly equals the amount of sales tax which would have been paid had the purchase been made in state. You are required to declare purchase valuations and pay the use tax on my state's income tax form. There is no sales tax levied on out of state purchases. There cannot be because the sales transaction occurred within another state. This is precisely why the tax has a different name. Otherwise it would be struck down in Federal court as an attempt to tax interstate commerce.
You are partially correct though. It is unconstitutional for a state to require an out-of-state party to collect either sales or use tax for an purchase. This is Amazon's assertion and it is legally is sound. The only question is whether or not their associate subsidiaries meet the legal definition of state presence.
And you receive in return for your "double taxation", an immunity to the debts and miscounduct of "your company." If they drop the ball and go bankrupt, nobody is going to take away your house to pay your portion of the debts of your company.
I for one will be glad to drop double taxation if you will take legal responsibility for your company. Make sure they don't do anything illegal or get into financial trouble though...
All men are NOT created equal. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, or has an agenda.
There are as many people with an IQ below 100 as above it. Don't believe me? Take a road trip to your local Wal*Mart or DMV. There will always be people who cannot earn a living wage, yet work up to their potential. "Getting off their ass" is easy for somebody with an education who has a bit of grey matter, but not everybody does. Globalism has shipped out most of the higher paying low skill jobs and they aren't coming back. And what about disabled people? Do you propose we throw them away? Maybe we should reintroduce some sort of Dickensian workhouse plan to keep them.
Pray that you never become disabled or have a retarded child under your "fair to successful people" plan. After all, we don't want governmental insurance supporting your lazy ass or your kid. And if you starve... Well tough shit.
And no, I am not disabled and do not have any disabled kids.
He said your taxes, not Chinese treasury bill money. 42% of Federal expenditures are currently through borrowing. Now we can't raise taxes, and we have to fight two wars (maybe threee. Look out Pakistan). We absolutely have to continue giving tax breaks to oil companies (who incidentally are enjoying record profits) and we can't default on interest. We need to keep funding those prisons so we can keep those terrorists and drug dealers off the streets. Who does that leave to screw? Hmmmm.... I believe they're mentioning Medicare and Medicaid.
Never give up! Never Surrender!
Don't forget payroll taxes. Up to 15.x% if you are self employed. Of course there are sales taxes, and the poor spend larger proportions of their total income, subjecting it to more sales tax. Then there are the gasoline taxes. Don't forget all the annual state fees, such as drivers license, vehicle inspection, and car registration renewals. There are excise taxes on everything from tires and telephone service, to booze and cigarettes. And if they are lucky enough to own property, there's property taxes. And we can't forget about state, city, and school district income taxes. Of course the rich can cover their living expenses with a smaller proportion of their income. The rest go to investments and savings, which they do not pay taxes on, until the investment earns income.
In my state, income taxes are a larger bite for even middle income levels than Federal Income Taxes when you have exemptions and children.