I'm a big fan of you, NewYorkCountryLawyer, but you really should have disclosed in the summary that you are currently counsel for the defendant, ReDigi, in this court case.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you seem to have found a heavy-weight ally in this case.
It's obvious that this company was originally hired by Steve Jobs to produce contact lenses which change physical reality to match what is displayed on them.
They failed (the original development plan was to bootstrap the initial, barely-working devices to cause later ones to work better), so they're trying to cut their losses by selling this (comparatively oh so boring) tech to the military.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the behavior of consumers. Is there some special reason why consumers would pay for games even if given the opportunity to obtain them for free, which wouldn't be applicable to books also?
Scribd cannot magically know if the uploader is the rightsholder, and authorized agent of the rightsholder, or an infringer. That is, until someone else, claiming to be the rightsholder, asks for a DMCA takedown.
> but in most cases, I don't blink an eye when a criminal is killed by a police officer while resisting arrest
It seems to me that "resisting arrest" is the most common way for police officers to frame/entrap innocent people, so, yes, I think you should be blinking a bit more, perhaps? Or were you thinking about the kind of extravagant resistance sometimes seen in movies and on TV?
Where does this judge live? The MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have been doing this for years, now, no? And as far as I know, no US judge has called them out when they cite their "research" as background information in a court case.
Thus, both the federal government and the state government are able to charge and prosecute one person for the same criminal act, which is often the case for drug related crimes. As well, two or more states can prosecute and try a person for the same criminal act.
One wonders what the Founding Fathers would have thought about this mess.
So what does this mean? One no longer has to worry about being tried twice for the same "crime", rather, one has to worry about it happening to you as many times as there are countries in the world who enforce copyrights?
Never mind that some countries have even more ridiculous laws than the US and Europe --- in CÃte d'Ivoire, for example, the term is 30 years longer than the already ridiculous pma + 70 years, and they don't even follow the rule of the shorter term, so it protects works even after they become public domain in the country of origin.
Never mind that many kind of artistic works, like movies, now include contributions from many different countries, so that even if the law was limited to being extradited to a country which actually contributed to the creative work, I wouldn't be surprised if movie studios would start actively "padding" their creative workforce with people from exotic countries with amenable copyright laws or legal systems --- kind of like what happens even within the US with regards to certain locations like Texas.
> Once I might have liked to think that "don't do evil"
It's "Don't BE evil" not "Don't do evil" (nor "Do no evil").
These phrases have different connotations.
"Don't be evil" is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, more like "don't emulate Hollywood villains". My gut feeling is that this was the original meaning, but Google's marketing department has decided that pushing this as central to Google's image, and I've now learned from the linked Wikipedia article that the sixth point of the 10-point corporate philosophy of Google says "You can make money without doing evil." (So even though I jumped to correct you, it seems that your version is also correct, if not a direct quote --- thanks for helping me learn something new).
("Do no evil", which is often the misquoted version of rabid anti-Google posters, on the other hand, is fire-and-brimstone church preacher telling you you're going to Hell.)
I think you misunderstand "test case", here. I did not mean a legal test case. I meant an economic test case --- for that, it is sufficient to have just this one decision.
Will this cause the total collapse of the Slovakian news business? My suspicion is "no".
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens, so finally there might be some (slightly) more objective evidence for those of us who are interested in how the current copyright laws encourage or discourage various economic endeavors.
Unfortunately, you can't (freely) administer one of the standard medical tests for that (or even the newest competing test) --- all because of the influence of copyright law. Perhaps, yes, this is the age of where the Pirate Parties' platforms progressively produce politically pleasing positions.
Google was also fined money (the linked article didn't specify if the money was paid to the plaintiffs or just to the French courts). I wonder if Google pointed out in their briefs that the French courts taking this action would more or less make it impractical, from a business point of view, for Google (or any other search provider, for that matter) to ever return unflattering results from any search. Why?
The decision means that it is bad business for Google to ignore any explicit request to remove unflattering results.
Once enough different requests are in to remove "MyBusinessName scam" for different values of MyBusinessName, it will eventually become impractical to filter these results except by removing all results containing "scam".
Are Europeans on the eve of a new, wonderfully utopian view of the net? One wonders what a search for "Greece debt" would look like. Probably the first entry would be about ponies.
To begin, we all agree that piracy is a form of stealing? A content creator loses out on a royalty every time someone downloads their material, though by the same token it's not as if by someone downloading this material they're inhibiting other people from accessing that same material.
How simplistic. The money lost by that particular content creator is more likely equal to something like:
R*N*(P - Q)
where R = the size of the royalty per download, N = the number of illegal downloads, P = the probability that the illegal downloader would have legally downloaded the work if there were no possibility to download it illegally, and Q = the probability that the illegal download will cause a future legal download from the same artist. No, that's not really a good model, it would probably be better to model the illegal downloader to have an internal probability for pay for the downloaded material, and exposure to the material, even illegally, will (with some other probability) affect that internal probability for future downloads.
Whatever. No matter that I suck at modelling it (need... more... coffee!). The fact is, it's a lot more complicated than your simplistic "one download, one lost royalty".
"News for Nerds"... hmm, last time I checked, the vast majority of nerds knew how to use dictionaries. Or dictionary-browser-extensions. Or whatever is the current-day equivalent.
I bashed SharkLaser, who wrote the summary, for the reason stated: he tried to subtly inject his own ideological position by being judgmental. He comes off as "preaching to the sinners", which totally turned me off.
I actually greatly admire RMS, even if I don't totally agree with his ideological position. Calling SharkLaser's position the "Church of RMS" was meant to reflect on how I thought SharkLaser related to his own beliefs, not as a statement for or against the ideological position itself.
> perhaps you don't know how much time & effort (and money) it takes to create an effective "Look and Feel" for complex software
That doesn't make copying it illegal. If you wanted to say copying Look and Feel is unethical, then you should state that explicitly.
> Rulings like this, where such activity isn't given sufficient penalty, will result in MORE SOFTWARE PATENTS
How did you expect the court to punish violating a (design) patent which wasn't filed? Anyway, in the current IP status quo, patents at least expire after 20 years --- copyright is practically eternal. Patents may suck, but they suck less than copyright:
They require significant effort and money to attain.
As far as I understand the court decision, it would have been legal.
I'm not sure I would have gone as far as the judge did, since by downloading the software illegally, Real View not only deprived 20-20 of the cost of a license, it also prevented 20-20 from trying to use its copyright to impede the development process of Real View (by arbitrarily refusing to grant them a legal license). Personally I don't think that that is an ethical use of copyright, but as far as I know it is still legal (as opposed to trying to publicly sell software but refuse to license it on the basis of race, religion, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a big fan of you, NewYorkCountryLawyer, but you really should have disclosed in the summary that you are currently counsel for the defendant, ReDigi, in this court case.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you seem to have found a heavy-weight ally in this case.
It's obvious that this company was originally hired by Steve Jobs to produce contact lenses which change physical reality to match what is displayed on them.
They failed (the original development plan was to bootstrap the initial, barely-working devices to cause later ones to work better), so they're trying to cut their losses by selling this (comparatively oh so boring) tech to the military.
> We're talking about books, aren't we?
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the behavior of consumers. Is there some special reason why consumers would pay for games even if given the opportunity to obtain them for free, which wouldn't be applicable to books also?
Humble Bundle, et al., deigns to disagree.
Scribd cannot magically know if the uploader is the rightsholder, and authorized agent of the rightsholder, or an infringer. That is, until someone else, claiming to be the rightsholder, asks for a DMCA takedown.
Ever heard of dajaz1 ?
> Is this an example of our 3-part government actually working as intended?
No, not really. "As intended" would mean that:
Instead we have:
> but in most cases, I don't blink an eye when a criminal is killed by a police officer while resisting arrest
It seems to me that "resisting arrest" is the most common way for police officers to frame/entrap innocent people, so, yes, I think you should be blinking a bit more, perhaps? Or were you thinking about the kind of extravagant resistance sometimes seen in movies and on TV?
> Oracle has no one to blame but itself
Where does this judge live? The MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have been doing this for years, now, no? And as far as I know, no US judge has called them out when they cite their "research" as background information in a court case.
Current protection against double jeopardy, even in the US, is fairly limited:
One wonders what the Founding Fathers would have thought about this mess.
So what does this mean? One no longer has to worry about being tried twice for the same "crime", rather, one has to worry about it happening to you as many times as there are countries in the world who enforce copyrights?
Never mind that some countries have even more ridiculous laws than the US and Europe --- in CÃte d'Ivoire, for example, the term is 30 years longer than the already ridiculous pma + 70 years, and they don't even follow the rule of the shorter term, so it protects works even after they become public domain in the country of origin.
Never mind that many kind of artistic works, like movies, now include contributions from many different countries, so that even if the law was limited to being extradited to a country which actually contributed to the creative work, I wouldn't be surprised if movie studios would start actively "padding" their creative workforce with people from exotic countries with amenable copyright laws or legal systems --- kind of like what happens even within the US with regards to certain locations like Texas.
> Once I might have liked to think that "don't do evil"
It's "Don't BE evil" not "Don't do evil" (nor "Do no evil").
These phrases have different connotations.
"Don't be evil" is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, more like "don't emulate Hollywood villains". My gut feeling is that this was the original meaning, but Google's marketing department has decided that pushing this as central to Google's image, and I've now learned from the linked Wikipedia article that the sixth point of the 10-point corporate philosophy of Google says "You can make money without doing evil." (So even though I jumped to correct you, it seems that your version is also correct, if not a direct quote --- thanks for helping me learn something new).
("Do no evil", which is often the misquoted version of rabid anti-Google posters, on the other hand, is fire-and-brimstone church preacher telling you you're going to Hell.)
I think you misunderstand "test case", here. I did not mean a legal test case. I meant an economic test case --- for that, it is sufficient to have just this one decision.
Will this cause the total collapse of the Slovakian news business? My suspicion is "no".
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens, so finally there might be some (slightly) more objective evidence for those of us who are interested in how the current copyright laws encourage or discourage various economic endeavors.
Oh shut up already --- if you want to express yourself freely go stand on a box on the street corner. This is the Internet.
My impression from perusing Wikipedia is that this Shafer-Maksutov telescope is the second largest mainly because it's just not that good a design for professional work. I'm not an astronomer, though, by any means.
Any astronomers out there who could chime in on this?
> FWIW, I'd say yes, you appear to be confused.
Unfortunately, you can't (freely) administer one of the standard medical tests for that (or even the newest competing test) --- all because of the influence of copyright law. Perhaps, yes, this is the age of where the Pirate Parties' platforms progressively produce politically pleasing positions.
Google was also fined money (the linked article didn't specify if the money was paid to the plaintiffs or just to the French courts). I wonder if Google pointed out in their briefs that the French courts taking this action would more or less make it impractical, from a business point of view, for Google (or any other search provider, for that matter) to ever return unflattering results from any search. Why?
Are Europeans on the eve of a new, wonderfully utopian view of the net? One wonders what a search for "Greece debt" would look like. Probably the first entry would be about ponies.
How simplistic. The money lost by that particular content creator is more likely equal to something like:
where R = the size of the royalty per download, N = the number of illegal downloads, P = the probability that the illegal downloader would have legally downloaded the work if there were no possibility to download it illegally, and Q = the probability that the illegal download will cause a future legal download from the same artist. No, that's not really a good model, it would probably be better to model the illegal downloader to have an internal probability for pay for the downloaded material, and exposure to the material, even illegally, will (with some other probability) affect that internal probability for future downloads.
Whatever. No matter that I suck at modelling it (need... more... coffee!). The fact is, it's a lot more complicated than your simplistic "one download, one lost royalty".
"News for Nerds"... hmm, last time I checked, the vast majority of nerds knew how to use dictionaries. Or dictionary-browser-extensions. Or whatever is the current-day equivalent.
Begone from my sward!
> possession of child pornography
Can't fault him there: for example, see my recent post which includes some reasons why making possession of child pornography a crime is downright frightening.
I bashed SharkLaser, who wrote the summary, for the reason stated: he tried to subtly inject his own ideological position by being judgmental. He comes off as "preaching to the sinners", which totally turned me off.
I actually greatly admire RMS, even if I don't totally agree with his ideological position. Calling SharkLaser's position the "Church of RMS" was meant to reflect on how I thought SharkLaser related to his own beliefs, not as a statement for or against the ideological position itself.
> It's a bit silly to answer the above to an article
It wasn't an answer to the article, it was a comment on the poster's summary (which I tried to make clear, by quoting the point I wanted to address).
> who approved the illegal download and reverse engineering
Studying the UI of software isn't reverse engineering.
> perhaps you don't know how much time & effort (and money) it takes to create an effective "Look and Feel" for complex software
That doesn't make copying it illegal. If you wanted to say copying Look and Feel is unethical, then you should state that explicitly.
> Rulings like this, where such activity isn't given sufficient penalty, will result in MORE SOFTWARE PATENTS
How did you expect the court to punish violating a (design) patent which wasn't filed? Anyway, in the current IP status quo, patents at least expire after 20 years --- copyright is practically eternal. Patents may suck, but they suck less than copyright:
As far as I understand the court decision, it would have been legal.
I'm not sure I would have gone as far as the judge did, since by downloading the software illegally, Real View not only deprived 20-20 of the cost of a license, it also prevented 20-20 from trying to use its copyright to impede the development process of Real View (by arbitrarily refusing to grant them a legal license). Personally I don't think that that is an ethical use of copyright, but as far as I know it is still legal (as opposed to trying to publicly sell software but refuse to license it on the basis of race, religion, etc.).