The key is to have enough Americans in space at the time of the riots that, after everyone down here dies, they can return to Earth and repopulate the planet. Because sex in space is far more interesting than star wars have become.
If the GPL is found unenforceable or anything else bad, it will be rewritten to draft around the court's decision in a way to make it work in the future. Finding out that you have a crappy contract doesn't prevent you from making a better one next time.
In senior English in high school, we could get out of exams by making on-topic videos. I was a part of The Beo Wulf Project, Shakespeare's The Tempest (animated...very badly), and Oliver Wars. Oliver (played by the biggest guy in our group) wanted more food, but the only way to get it was through Jedi training. And then two Jedi knights come to save Oliver from the Siith Lord, with one Jedi dying and the Siith Lord losing his head in the process. Incidentally, cause of death of the Jedi knight was being thrown into a pile of dog poo (entirely unknown until after filming). We did the light-saber battle out of Phantom Menace with both Jedi and Darth Maul going at it at once - but out imitation light sabers really hurt when we screwed up.
Someday we'll rotoscope in some better light saber effects, but it's still hilarious.
How about if you provide a service that is only used for illegal purposes, and you even distribute instructions on how to use it for those illegal purposes? Are you still entirely blameless just because it can be used for a legal purpose, although nobody uses it for that, including the person who provides it?
Aim isn't the point, here. The point is that you have no right to tell me how to pursue my happiness as long as my pursuit doesn't cause you harm, and that my owning a machine gun and committing no crimes with it whatsoever does you no harm (there are virtually no cases of legally-owned machine guns being used in crimes in the US, and yes, you can legally own one but not if it was built after 1986, which is an unconstitutional and pointless law, but I digress...I think the only case of a registered NFA weapon being used in a crime was actually a silencer or short-barrel gun and not a machine gun anyhow).
I don't tell you what you can do for fun in the privacy of your own property. What's wrong with asking for the same respect in return?
Although they are no longer mandatory (which is sad; for a while, they were), sanctions exist to punish attorneys who file truly frivolous or oppressive lawsuits. If such sanctions were still mandatory, the losing plaintiffs in frivolous lawsuits would not only pay the defendants' legal fees, but also would pay the court for wasting everyone's time.
I clicked on your link but nothing happened. But maybe you can help me out - since I clicked on it, every link I click on takes me to a porn site. I had to use a friend's computer to write this. Help!
(Also a joke, in case they add a "own damn fault" mod and someone is tempted to use it on me.;)
How is it not a limited time? If you don't like the specific limits selected by Congress, you have a right "to petition the Government for a redress of [your] grievances," US Const. Amendment I. (If you think that the existing limits violate the "limited times" of the Constitution, you may be able to get the copyright law thrown out as unconstitutional. But it's generally considered better form, particularly on this entire thread of anti-judicial-activism discussion, to go through Congress on this one.)
My world is just fine with that limit, for numerous reasons I won't bother with here, and therefore I will not be exercising my right to petition for a redress of any such grievance. (I have others and bring them up frequently.) The point I was making was actually not about the time limit, but rather with respect to your implication that Congress has no such power in the first place.
same thing with excessively easy conertablenss [sic] to full automatic weapons that serve no purpose besides human hunting
Keep your value judgments to yourself. Ferraris serve no purpose other than reckless driving, syringes serve no purpose other than injecting heroin, and high heel shoes serve no purpose other than spreading STDs. All that may be true, but full automatic weapons still serve purposes other than "human hunting," not the least of which is my right to the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is that, if you run a service that you intend for mostly illegal use, you should not be completely immune from the damages you cause. I sat in on a moot court argument about a pretend case designed to resemble the one argued this morning, and one of the facts in that pretend case was that the file-sharing service provided users with a tutorial on how to download music. The problem was that the song they explicitly used as an example was copyrighted material they had no license to.
I don't know if any similarly damning facts exist in the real case, but if they did it'd almost have to be a slam dunk against them, given that they not only knew about the prevalence of illegal use, but intended it. And that's exactly where the whole business model discussion comes into play.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 8 (the powers of Congress), Clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
I'm an advocate of states' rights, but the Constitution gives this one to the feds. And it does so on purpose - you don't want to deal with 50 different copyright laws everytime you write an essay or record a song.
And your judgment that copyright law is "just plain wrong" is your own; obviously, enough others have thought differently for long enough to make it law. If you don't agree with the law, then get it changed through the political legislative process.
Fair enough, and I disagree with the jury on this; but there is at least a rational basis for their finding, which is that the gun maker negligently allowed their guns to fall into criminal hands. I don't think that they owed such a duty, but evidently in New York they did. (There are many reasons I will never live in New York, and this kind of thinking is but one of them.)
I do wonder if the gun makers found liable in that case appealed the matter. News stories about lawsuits always piss me off because they only announce two things: filed lawsuits and dollars given. If a case is dismissed as frivolous by a judge, that never gets reported; and if a case is appealed, that never gets reported. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was ill-reported as it was, but the media didn't tell you that the woman's award was significantly reduced after the jury verdict was announced. Simply put, the vast majority of what happens in court isn't news-worthy. (Although if it happens in criminal court and there is a celebrity defendant, somehow everything that happens becomes monumental and deserving of widespread media coverage. What color underwear was Jacko wearing in court today, anyhow?)
You don't have to be in business to have a business model. For instance, in the early days, Linux did not have any business prospects whatsoever, but that did not preclude Linus from adopting a particular business model with the goal of widespread use and development of his kernel. The same applies here.
Also, the big concern here is that people can and will build business models around what the law allows and what it proscribes. If you know that you can get away with it because there is exactly one legal use for your service, but that you will make millions on the illegal use, you will build a business around that. (Consider a package carrier that carries one box of doughnuts and 99 boxes of cocaine from New Mexico to Wyoming every day.) This is bad.
The competing concern is, of course, that you don't want to destroy services that are used mostly for legal but occasionally for illegal purposes. (Reconsider the package carrier, which has carried a billion boxes of doughnuts this year but someone snuck a pound of cocaine into one box of doughnuts.) This is also bad.
There's a difference between getting sued and losing a lawsuit. Can you demonstrate one news article of a court deciding that a gun manufacturer was liable for injuries or deaths intentionally caused by use of their products? (Settlements with no admission of responsibility and legitimate products liability lawsuits, such as "I shot your gun at a target and the gun blew up in my hand," do not count.)
Yes, the fact that Supreme Court justices asked hard questions of attorneys at oral argument, as has been the standard procedure in all oral argument since the dawn of the court system, is proof that those justices "work for Business." </sarcasm>
This is what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to get at every aspect of the controversy at hand. The controversy here is that the music industry thinks that anything that can be used to infringe a copyright is inherently bad, while the other side thinks to the contrary. Howeer, when a technology is predonominantly used for infringing purposes, maybe it is inherently bad.
The reason that the justices were so hard on the respondents' counsel is that they do not want to set a precedent that will allow companies to build a business upon infringing uses just because they have the potential for non-infringing use, but they also don't want to set a precedent that will kill businesses whose services are inadvertently used for infringing uses but are primarily used in a lawful manner.
If the makers insist on Windows-only releases, why would you want to deal with them in the first place? It means they're in bed with MS.
Although this inference isn't entirely reasonable, I think it'd be better to prove my point by analogy: "If a programmar insists on Linux-only releases, it means he's in bed with Linus."
Here's a counter-argument: There are no major software companies in Europe because you dumbasses* think that "Windows XP Home Edition N" is a good marketing decision.
* - No offense to present company if unrelated to the decision-making process, but you always come and blast Americans for every decision of Congress that you don't understand, so it's fair game.
So, if I want to talk about two dogs, one of which you know about and the other of which you do not, I can say with perfect grammar "My dogs is better than yours." Just brilliant.
Slashdot Mirror
The key is to have enough Americans in space at the time of the riots that, after everyone down here dies, they can return to Earth and repopulate the planet. Because sex in space is far more interesting than star wars have become.
If the GPL is found unenforceable or anything else bad, it will be rewritten to draft around the court's decision in a way to make it work in the future. Finding out that you have a crappy contract doesn't prevent you from making a better one next time.
In senior English in high school, we could get out of exams by making on-topic videos. I was a part of The Beo Wulf Project, Shakespeare's The Tempest (animated...very badly), and Oliver Wars. Oliver (played by the biggest guy in our group) wanted more food, but the only way to get it was through Jedi training. And then two Jedi knights come to save Oliver from the Siith Lord, with one Jedi dying and the Siith Lord losing his head in the process. Incidentally, cause of death of the Jedi knight was being thrown into a pile of dog poo (entirely unknown until after filming). We did the light-saber battle out of Phantom Menace with both Jedi and Darth Maul going at it at once - but out imitation light sabers really hurt when we screwed up.
Someday we'll rotoscope in some better light saber effects, but it's still hilarious.
You are getting hung up in my reasoning. See this comment for a better-written version of it.
How about if you provide a service that is only used for illegal purposes, and you even distribute instructions on how to use it for those illegal purposes? Are you still entirely blameless just because it can be used for a legal purpose, although nobody uses it for that, including the person who provides it?
And when I was in high school we learned about what a lazy bunch of bastards everyone was in the 80s. ;)
Maine and Alaska don't have any Blockbuster locations, maybe. ;)
Whatever you do, don't predict an outcome based on Scalia's questions. He'll play devil's advocate with himself just to stay awake sometimes. ;)
Aim isn't the point, here. The point is that you have no right to tell me how to pursue my happiness as long as my pursuit doesn't cause you harm, and that my owning a machine gun and committing no crimes with it whatsoever does you no harm (there are virtually no cases of legally-owned machine guns being used in crimes in the US, and yes, you can legally own one but not if it was built after 1986, which is an unconstitutional and pointless law, but I digress...I think the only case of a registered NFA weapon being used in a crime was actually a silencer or short-barrel gun and not a machine gun anyhow).
I don't tell you what you can do for fun in the privacy of your own property. What's wrong with asking for the same respect in return?
Gotta love how MS fixes all the useful or cute features, but never the deal-breakers.
"Will some companies get sued and lose?"
:)
That's exactly the issue of this case, as I understand it. Let's hope that the answer is "Yes, but only sometimes."
Although they are no longer mandatory (which is sad; for a while, they were), sanctions exist to punish attorneys who file truly frivolous or oppressive lawsuits. If such sanctions were still mandatory, the losing plaintiffs in frivolous lawsuits would not only pay the defendants' legal fees, but also would pay the court for wasting everyone's time.
I clicked on your link but nothing happened. But maybe you can help me out - since I clicked on it, every link I click on takes me to a porn site. I had to use a friend's computer to write this. Help!
;)
(Also a joke, in case they add a "own damn fault" mod and someone is tempted to use it on me.
How is it not a limited time? If you don't like the specific limits selected by Congress, you have a right "to petition the Government for a redress of [your] grievances," US Const. Amendment I. (If you think that the existing limits violate the "limited times" of the Constitution, you may be able to get the copyright law thrown out as unconstitutional. But it's generally considered better form, particularly on this entire thread of anti-judicial-activism discussion, to go through Congress on this one.)
My world is just fine with that limit, for numerous reasons I won't bother with here, and therefore I will not be exercising my right to petition for a redress of any such grievance. (I have others and bring them up frequently.) The point I was making was actually not about the time limit, but rather with respect to your implication that Congress has no such power in the first place.
same thing with excessively easy conertablenss [sic] to full automatic weapons that serve no purpose besides human hunting
Keep your value judgments to yourself. Ferraris serve no purpose other than reckless driving, syringes serve no purpose other than injecting heroin, and high heel shoes serve no purpose other than spreading STDs. All that may be true, but full automatic weapons still serve purposes other than "human hunting," not the least of which is my right to the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is that, if you run a service that you intend for mostly illegal use, you should not be completely immune from the damages you cause. I sat in on a moot court argument about a pretend case designed to resemble the one argued this morning, and one of the facts in that pretend case was that the file-sharing service provided users with a tutorial on how to download music. The problem was that the song they explicitly used as an example was copyrighted material they had no license to.
I don't know if any similarly damning facts exist in the real case, but if they did it'd almost have to be a slam dunk against them, given that they not only knew about the prevalence of illegal use, but intended it. And that's exactly where the whole business model discussion comes into play.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 8 (the powers of Congress), Clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
I'm an advocate of states' rights, but the Constitution gives this one to the feds. And it does so on purpose - you don't want to deal with 50 different copyright laws everytime you write an essay or record a song.
And your judgment that copyright law is "just plain wrong" is your own; obviously, enough others have thought differently for long enough to make it law. If you don't agree with the law, then get it changed through the political legislative process.
Fair enough, and I disagree with the jury on this; but there is at least a rational basis for their finding, which is that the gun maker negligently allowed their guns to fall into criminal hands. I don't think that they owed such a duty, but evidently in New York they did. (There are many reasons I will never live in New York, and this kind of thinking is but one of them.)
I do wonder if the gun makers found liable in that case appealed the matter. News stories about lawsuits always piss me off because they only announce two things: filed lawsuits and dollars given. If a case is dismissed as frivolous by a judge, that never gets reported; and if a case is appealed, that never gets reported. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was ill-reported as it was, but the media didn't tell you that the woman's award was significantly reduced after the jury verdict was announced. Simply put, the vast majority of what happens in court isn't news-worthy. (Although if it happens in criminal court and there is a celebrity defendant, somehow everything that happens becomes monumental and deserving of widespread media coverage. What color underwear was Jacko wearing in court today, anyhow?)
You don't have to be in business to have a business model. For instance, in the early days, Linux did not have any business prospects whatsoever, but that did not preclude Linus from adopting a particular business model with the goal of widespread use and development of his kernel. The same applies here.
Also, the big concern here is that people can and will build business models around what the law allows and what it proscribes. If you know that you can get away with it because there is exactly one legal use for your service, but that you will make millions on the illegal use, you will build a business around that. (Consider a package carrier that carries one box of doughnuts and 99 boxes of cocaine from New Mexico to Wyoming every day.) This is bad.
The competing concern is, of course, that you don't want to destroy services that are used mostly for legal but occasionally for illegal purposes. (Reconsider the package carrier, which has carried a billion boxes of doughnuts this year but someone snuck a pound of cocaine into one box of doughnuts.) This is also bad.
Business models have a lot to do with everything.
There's a difference between getting sued and losing a lawsuit. Can you demonstrate one news article of a court deciding that a gun manufacturer was liable for injuries or deaths intentionally caused by use of their products? (Settlements with no admission of responsibility and legitimate products liability lawsuits, such as "I shot your gun at a target and the gun blew up in my hand," do not count.)
Yes, the fact that Supreme Court justices asked hard questions of attorneys at oral argument, as has been the standard procedure in all oral argument since the dawn of the court system, is proof that those justices "work for Business." </sarcasm>
This is what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to get at every aspect of the controversy at hand. The controversy here is that the music industry thinks that anything that can be used to infringe a copyright is inherently bad, while the other side thinks to the contrary. Howeer, when a technology is predonominantly used for infringing purposes, maybe it is inherently bad.
The reason that the justices were so hard on the respondents' counsel is that they do not want to set a precedent that will allow companies to build a business upon infringing uses just because they have the potential for non-infringing use, but they also don't want to set a precedent that will kill businesses whose services are inadvertently used for infringing uses but are primarily used in a lawful manner.
If the makers insist on Windows-only releases, why would you want to deal with them in the first place? It means they're in bed with MS.
Although this inference isn't entirely reasonable, I think it'd be better to prove my point by analogy: "If a programmar insists on Linux-only releases, it means he's in bed with Linus."
Hell, yeah! I wanna get on AC's friends list. That's powerful shit! ;-D
Here's a counter-argument: There are no major software companies in Europe because you dumbasses* think that "Windows XP Home Edition N" is a good marketing decision.
* - No offense to present company if unrelated to the decision-making process, but you always come and blast Americans for every decision of Congress that you don't understand, so it's fair game.
P.S.: You should have called it Windows RG.
So, if I want to talk about two dogs, one of which you know about and the other of which you do not, I can say with perfect grammar "My dogs is better than yours." Just brilliant.