However, powered gliders with scooter motors work--as do human-powered gliders (human own problems in the conducting of its tests: they're not always that scientific or well-thought-out. Should read:
However, powered gliders with scooter motors work--as do human powered gliders (human < 1hp). This exposes MB's own problems in the conducting of its tests: they're not always that scientific or well-thought-out.
Also, it's "right off the bat"--not bad, as I typed.
It's 4 pass, 1 plausible, and 3 busted. Add in the three "MacGuyver mini-myths"--all confirmed--and that's 8 to 3 right off the bad.
One of the busted ones, furthermore, is indeed plausible. A 9hp engine is sufficient for a properly-built ultralight if you know what you're doing. Having not seen MacGuyver in close to 20 years, I have no idea what sort of design it was. However, powered gliders with scooter motors work--as do human-powered gliders (human own problems in the conducting of its tests: they're not always that scientific or well-thought-out.
The other one, building an ultralight out of makeshift materials, really depends on the materials. The true obstacles is fasteners. That one may or may not be plausible (if he was in a junkyard, sure).
The sodium one is just bad. MB got that right.
But that's 9 to 2, maybe even 10 to 1 given a serendipitous setup. That's a pretty good hit rate for a TV show--probably as good as Mythbusters itself.
It's jargon. Some places call it a violation, an infraction, an ordinance offense, or an administrative citation. See e.g. http://www.co.kern.ca.us/code/PDFs/AdministrativeCitationInformation.pdf. They all mean the same thing: a legal penalty that is not a crime. It depends largely on your city which one is used, but because it's a municipal code, the penalties are not criminal. On the state level traffic code for non-criminal breakings of the law, it's often called an infraction. There is no dictionary that stores the particular terminology used locally to refer to the same basic concepts.
Were I in a legally sophisticated forum, I'd have used the term 'violation' instead, but the lay definition of that word lends no clarity. I would have thought that 'citation' would be easy enough to grasp for the lay community here, given that I assumed people would understand that if it ends with a citation, there is no criminal charge. At least three of you have failed at that.
Infraction, from Black's, 8th: "n. A violation, usu. of a rule or local ordinance and usu. not punishable by incarceration. See VIOLATION"
For violation: "1. An infraction or breach of the law; a transgression. See INFRACTION. [...] 4. Under the Model Penal Code, a public-welfare offense. In this sense, a violation is not a crime. See Model Penal Code 1.04(5)."(emphasis added).
Moving violation: "An infraction of a traffic law while the vehicle is in motion."
If you are cited for an administrative citation, a violation, or an infraction where the penalty is a simple fine, there is not a criminal record because there has been no crime. You must specifically be charged with a misdemeanor in order for it to be a crime. There are both misdemeanors and felonies in the traffic codes of every state, but there is no state to my knowledge that has fully criminalized their traffic laws. The costs and burdens on the state would be tremendous.
As to jaywalking, you can check the penal code of your state and see if you can find a code charge for it. California, Hawaii, Washington, Arizona, and New York do not list the offense (including by any other name). I am not willing to invest the time to show the negative existence of such when no one has provided anything resembling evidence that it might.
Check the city codes of America's largest 100 cities. In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about and can't be bothered even to suggest proof of your affirmative case.
You are simply not correct that jaywalking is commonly a criminal offense without recklessness, just as parking tickets and vehicle code infractions are not. If you really believe that to be a common case, you should have no trouble referencing a case in which a person was charged with simple jaywalking (not that they were stopped for jaywalking and were found to have committed a crime, and not reckless endangerment by jaywalking).
Your curiously amusing suggestion for statutory analysis neglects one basic fact: states establish criminal law. Municipal codes do not create additional crimes. Thus, unless you can point to more than one state vehicle code which authorizes criminal charges for simple jaywalking, you a making an untenable and implausible claim. If you had any proof, you'd have provided it.
For someone who has struggling to grasp the terminology and the threshold for criminal offenses (and even who determines them), it's not hard to reject your conclusion.
Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had not used the word citation at all in my reply, but said that in many parts of the United States, Jaywalking is a criminal offense. That might be more clear, but it is not true. Jaywalking is an administrative citation almost everywhere in the United States, and in fact I can't think of any state where it is currently classified as a misdemeanor without being coupled with reckless conduct.
In this usage, calling a traffic ticket a "traffic citation" is correct usage even if there is a criminal charge behind it. Again, you are conflating the two words which have developed in a subtle and complex field, the law. The paper is indeed a traffic citation. However, the paper and the offense are separate things, and there is also a citation (albeit a poorly-chosen homonym) on the offense side. When talking about the offense, a citation is a petty violation producing no criminal record. You are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies, but you aren't convicted of a citation. The citation, a paper notice or summons, is a completely different thing.
At this point, I feel it important to caution against the conflation of two words 'citation'.
A "citation" as in a ticket and court summons can be made for an administrative citation, a misdemeanor, or a felony.
A citation when used by name in practice refers to the administrative citation, not the document itself as it appears you may be using it. In some places administrative citations are also called infractions, ordinance violations, or regulation offenses; in no place is it a crime. One does not generally refer to a misdemeanor or felony ticket as a "citation".
I am not aware any state that fails to separate violations, misdemeanors, and felonies into three categories. All moving violations may be classified as misdemeanors in a few states, but that has absolutely nothing to do with anything discussed thus far.
but how would they go about suing/charging people even if they were inclined to do so? Well, let's see...maybe blogs with instructions, photos, and videos of proof coupled with those logs to cross-check equipment. Hell, even just knowing the MAC address might well narrow it down, coupled with security footage if they really needed to nail someone.
It's unfathomable that they'd go through the effort and expense to do so, and it's highly unlikely that they even care that much. Someone will get fired for pushing out a ridiculous access control methodology, they'll put something more sophisticated in, and move on with it.
None of that really has any bearing on the fact that it's just plain wrong. There are plenty of legitimate ways to get onto AT&T wifi networks for free (being a Uverse customer for one; using a Starbucks card to purchase your drink for another) that there's no possible justification.
is it really 'stealing' if you actually have an iPhone and are presumably paying for the service through that? If it's free access for iPhones and you're not using an iPhone, then yes. To use a car analogy for Slashdot comprehension, if the valet is offering free parking for Audis, and you own an Audi and are driving a Subaru that day, well, then you've got to pay. Even if you think it's a pointless and arbitrary restriction (it is)--because it's their pointless and arbitrary decision.
People of the gimme gimme generation seem to have forgotten that freedom isn't just about them. If someone wants to charge for wifi, they can, even if a third person offers it for free--make a choice between free wifi and whatever reason it is that is driving you to Starbucks. You can't always get what you want (not you, specifically, but one mustn't foul lyrics).
No, we were speaking about the existence and application of theft of service as a cause of action. Your bizarre and pointless narrowing of the criteria to force a rarity gets you nowhere.
If you want someone to put together a list of theft of service prosecutions for Internet service, you'll have to pay an attorney to do it (no, I'm not asking). They're out there, and moreover you know they are.
Your query is malformed, to boot. You're hoping to disprove the existence of the cause of action by suggesting that people are not often charged for using wireless access points without permission, but the fatal flaw is that most incidences of access are by way of unsecured APs or private devices. The ball game is quite different with a national service on commercial equipment. People have been sued for fraudulently accessing ISPs. It's not newsworthy, surprising, or remarkable in any way.
It's also a needless distraction from the original comment.
If you get a speeding ticket and plead guilty, you have a criminal record in those states. If you have a criminal record as a result, it's not a citation (irrespective of what the paper says at the top). It's a misdemeanor. It is true that in some places, jaywalking is a misdemeanor and not a simple citation.
This is why some job applications say "please list all felonies, and all misdemeanors committed in the last 10 years except minor traffic violations." If it weren't for the "except" you would have to list all your recent traffic tickets. Not quite. The "except" part does not apply to e.g. $12 expired meter tickets, infractions of the vehicle code, or jaywalking in most states, because they are neither felonies nor misdemeanors. The "except" part carves out traffic violations that are misdemeanors which you would otherwise have to report but can skip. It is not the case that without that clause, you would have to report citations, i.e. administrative infractions.
You already received examples. What good are citations going to do you for petty cases? You want citations for everyone who's ever skipped out on a bill at a restaurant and got sued for it? For people who got free cable and got busted? Messing with the PG&E meter?
Still, here's a couple to whet your indignant curiosity:
People v. Harden (2007), Case no. C050231 People v. Bowles (2004), Case no. B171234 People v. Crossdale (2002), Case no. S097222
There, some random selections from the first 10 results, all California.
I seriously doubt that Starbucks or AT&T would risk the negative publicity going after "criminals" like this. So do I, as previously stated. Why 'criminals' is in quotes escapes me, though. No matter how easy to pick the lock is or if you can just go in through the window, it's theft of service.
the point the OP was making is that it is a rarely prosecuted crime No, it's not.
It happens all the time. We're not talking about wardriving or hopping on unsecured wifi. This is bypassing (however easily) access restrictions on a paid service. Also, skipping on restaurant bills, gaming the phone system, and splicing into cable systems are all also theft of service.
Jaywalking, further, in most places is not a crime. It's a citation.
It's a violation of the law in all jurisdictions, and finding a jury is a cakewalk. The only person that needs luck is a defendant in finding an attorney who can get him out of it.
"Theft of service" is its own special category. Chances are that AT&T will just fix it to something a little more robust than a user agent string and won't bother to sue anyone about it, unless they just feel like being dicks this month.
This case is a civil matter, yes. Distribution absolutely can be a crime, though. Atlantic had very little hope of proving their civil case here, so obviously they weren't even going to try for even harder-to-prove criminal charges.
Just like there's civil fraud and criminal fraud, there is both civil and criminal copyright infringement.
The first ammendment makes no statements on how original that expression must be. No, for two very good reasons: first, there's no such thing as an "ammendment" and second, because that's what the Supreme Court is for.
Your right to free expression covers your original expressions. It does not cover, and never has, the simple duplication of someone else's. The First Amendment is not unlimited, nor is it absolute.
Further, duplication is not even expression. You have an Amend. I right to sing a song or paint a painting modeled on one you've seen, but a simple, mechanical act utterly devoid of creativity or critical thought like copying isn't expressive.
Are you insane? At present, nothing prevents me from giving someone a copy of something except the copyright restrictions that are forced on the populace at the threat of violence. No, it's the fact that it's not your work to copy. The fact that it has to be backed by law simply reflects the basic greed and misplaced entitlement of, among others, the Slashdot audience. At some point, you will simply have to grow up and accept that paying $10 for a CD does not give you ownership of the work itself any more than buying one movie ticket gives you ownership of the theater building or buying a single soda makes you an owner of Coca-Cola.
Copyright itself is a view forced on everyone else! Copyright isn't forced on you. You're free to release your work under whatever terms you wish. Other people can enforce or not enforce whatever they choose as allowed by law. If someone creates something, then that person gets to set the terms of how many rights and to how many people he sells it off. You, the customer, don't have any rights until you buy them.
If you don't like copyrights, support artists who use alternative terms. Too bad if that means you can't get DVDs of your favorite TV show. It's their show, they financed it and produced it, and they get to decide how they want to make it available. You don't get to set aside those terms and decisions and steal it because you don't approve of their business model. Sometimes, believing in something means sacrifice. If you don't have the fortitude to give up some ultimately pointless entertainment, the strength of your convictions is sorely lacking.
Imagine you're a bricklayer building houses and the concept of credit doesn't exist, and everybody simply has to pay up front in cash for the whole price of the house. Suddenly you go from working on 100 buildings a year to one because 99% of people can't afford to buy a whole house with cash.
Or imagine you've got a $100 million building full of historical artifacts. Now, you could sell it to a private owner for a rich guy's playground. You could sell it to a rich, old philanthropist who would open it to the public for free, if you're lucky enough to find one. You could also set it up like a gallery and charge admission, since each person would be willing to pay a token amount to enjoy the experience without having to buy the whole building that they have no hope of ever affording.
In other words, artists only get paid for art they've "already finished" because it hasn't been paid for yet. Some is more profitable than others. Why do you want to restrict artists to recouping costs, but let businesses turn unlimited profits? How does that even begin to make sense?
This is a stupid argument and you are a stupid person for making it, primarily because it costs nothing to make a digital copy of an album. It's also stupid because people who can't afford things often buy cheaper versions of the same thing. It doesn't matter what it costs, or even what it's worth. Just because you're a whiny, self-important brat with entitlement issues doesn't change the fact that it's not yours, it's theirs, and if you don't want to pay for it, you can live without it. Period.
And copyright infringement is not theft. Stealing != theft.
I'm talking more about the morality of the situation. No, you're not. You're talking about what you wish the morality of the situation were. The unfortunate (for you) reality outside of your basement cave is that society has deemed it wrong to take what isn't yours to take. Further, "morality" also must be viewed in the light of the first-person actor. An act that is wrong remains wrong even if no one is hurt by it.
I am not depriving you of anything if I make a copy of an album I wouldn't have paid for anyway. Yes you are. You are depriving "me" (by which I assume you mean the rightsholder) of my exclusive right to control distribution. Whether or not you approve of that system, you have no right to interfere. Buy your art and CDs from someone with terms you're willing to accept.
Or do you believe that it's okay to trespass, and that's a silly law, too? Maybe you're opposed to laws about peeping toms and voyeurs, too? The perpetrator isn't depriving you of anything there. OH, wait, there's those pesky things about dominion over your property and the right to quiet enjoyment.
t is illegal, but I do not believe it to be immoral and in a world not ruled by corporate interests, it would be legal No, it wouldn't. It was illegal long before the "world" began being ruled by "corporate interests".
The OP's right, you're wrong. In the case you specify you're paying the bank for 30 years for giving you a loan. You're paying back that loan + interest.
Yes, you are. But you're paying after the transaction is completed, which is the point you're missing. The bank earns more in the transaction than their lost opportunity cost in advancing the money and letting it sit and collect interest in the account, because the rate they charge is higher, and on top of that, they can use your house for 30 years as an asset to extend more loans to other borrowers, and then collect from them.
The loan industry is a massive money-shuffling scheme, with profits that far exceed costs. The fundamental argument against copyright holders is that they "make more than their work is worth" according to people like you and the OP--yet the reality is that they make exactly as much as consumers are willing to part with.
Actually your insurance company is providing you that service every month -- if you have an accident/etc. that qualifies as a claim on the policy
That's not a service. They don't do anything other than cash your check every month. It's a risk spreading pool. Your money is used to pay off other claims, and if you die without every having made a single claim on your policy, you don't get that money back. They did absolutely zero work, but collected money based on the piece of paper they provided you with peace of mind.
Copyrighted works are exactly the same. They provide you with entertainment, a similarly intangible quality to peace of mind. You're okay with insurance companies taking your money for doing nothing, but don't approve for someone else adopting another cost-spreading system.
You get to enjoy a film for $15. Without the copies to spread the cost, you wouldn't be able to have a home library of major motion pictures unless you had a $50 million pile to commission one for your own private enjoyment.
Basically you're paying them to "insure" you can recover
Well, it's ensure, and no, you're just paying into a large money pool in exchange for a check under certain circumstances. Likewise, when you buy a DVD, you're paying into a large pool to finance the cost of the production, plus a handsome profit--a profit you don't deny the insurance companies.
That others are paying into the pool as well is irrelevant, each of them is paying for the same service, they're not throwing money at nothing.
Same with copyrighted works. The fact that it's a lower cost because it relies on smaller contributions from a larger pool is exactly the strategy used for selling copies.
The interest charged beyond the actual purchase price is their fee for letting you spread that big-ticket item's purchase out over time. Again, no one is getting paid more than once here.
No one gets paid "more than once" for CDs or DVDs, then, if that's the logic you want to apply. The fact that they can continue selling you copies is compensation for the fact that they let you spread that big-ticket item's purchase out over a large number of people.
I love how you start off here saying you're buying stock in the work then turn around and change it to talking about owning the company. That's a bit of a difference there.
Nothing's changed around, and there's no difference. Stock in a company works like copyrighted works as "shares" of the "work". You're awfully confused here. It's a simple metaphor.
And I've got news for you, you DO own the CD/DVD/VHS/whatever you bought because the doctrine of first sale most definitely applies
Whoa there, sparky! What does this have to do with anything?
The market hasn't placed the value of a typical album or movie at any price. What the market has done is determine what those making the albums or movies pay for the various things they nee
This is an obviously specious metric. Everyone has downloaded music for perusal, found out that it sucked ass, and deleted it. And pretty much everyone with bandwidth and friends without it has downloaded music for someone else and either deleted it or has it lying around, never listened to once. These are of course not necessarily lost sales, because these days you can go to a record store and listen before you buy. It's not. If you are the only legal producer of widget X, and you've sold 10,000 of them, but you've got evidence that there are 13,000 out there and can prove it, then you have lost 3000 times the price of widget X because they were acquired without payment. It doesn't matter if they got it underhanded and then decided it sucked and threw it away, or if the only reason they have it is because there was a pile of free ones in an alley someplace, and if they couldn't have gotten it for free, they wouldn't have it.
It's a thuggish argument. When most people get things unlawfully "for free", it's because they wouldn't have paid for them anyway. We're not talking about a starving man stealing a loaf of bread here. We're talking about an affluent group of gimme-gimme whiners with a mistaken sense of entitlement.
"I stole it to try it out, but then I destroyed it at no cost to you" isn't a defense. It's not even a justification. After all, these days you can go to a record store and listen before you buy. You can go to a second-hand shop and get a copy at a low enough price that it doesn't matter, and if you hate it, you can usually exchange it for something else. Why didn't you take advantage of legal methods to do so? The online stores even have previews. Some of them stream full-length music for that purpose.
The problem with the RIAA is that they don't really have evidence in most cases, but they snarl and bark anyway. It's their own fault for not embracing a digital sales model that made sense early on. But to say that it's a specious claim that each download is a lost sale is plainly false.
It's unlawful acquisition without payment. You took something without paying. You are in possession of a good, for which legal possession is based on payment, and you did not. The focus of the analysis is on what you did, not what its consequences were to the victimized party. You cannot slice that in a way that does not create legal liability for you. The only place the "but no one was hurt" game comes into play is in determining the amount of liability, and that is offset against your affirmative justification for taking it. Since legal options readily exist, that justification fails, and the out-of-pocket loss, or lack thereof, loses relevance. If you take my TV, I don't really lose any money, because my home is insured. I've paid out more in insurance premiums than the claim to replace it, so I lose nothing and the insurance company still makes its massive profits. That doesn't mean you can take my TV.
You already do, or at least your bank did. You pay your mortgage every month, do you not?
The OP is wrong. We pay for lots of things long after they're created, based on a theory of credit or cost spreading. For example, a bank pays the people who built your house up front, because most people don't have that kind of cash sitting around to do it themselves. You pay the bank for 30 years. The job is done.
You pay insurance premiums every month even though the agreement was created years ago. The insurance company isn't actually providing you with hundreds or thousands of dollars in service every month. You can only afford to have insurance because millions of other people are sharing the cost with you. You pay that bill, even if your lifetime payments actually add up to more than the policy limit, and even if you never actually make a claim. If you buy a big-ticket item on credit and pay it down over time, your credit card company is profiting from a purchase you made months ago (profit far exceeding their opportunity costs for advancing you the money in the first place). When you buy into a co-op or timeshare, you're paying for something that was probably paid off years ago and is now just profit.
Buying a copy of a copyrighted work for $10 or $15 is like buying stock in the work. You never own the "company" with your single share, but you do own a tiny piece of it. If you buy enough shares, you can take over the company and do what you want with its work, including blowing your money by giving it away. The market has placed the value of a typical album at several million dollars, and a typical film at dozens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. If you actually took out a loan and bought the whole thing, then yes, OP would be correct to complain about being asked to pay continuously. But since one person doesn't continually pay, and since the work is worth more than the $15 for the first DVD, the rant is, well, misguided and wrong. You wouldn't be able to afford CDs and DVDs if millions of other people didn't pay small amounts for it over the years as well.
If you'd like to round up $50 million to buy and truly own a motion picture and never have to worry about copyrights again, knock yourself out. Otherwise, deal with they profit from sales above and beyond what they need, just like every other profitable business.
When I produce a copy of WinXP Cognitive dissonance. Duplication is not production. It's reproduction, which is legally distinct.
When Real Property is abandoned it can be taken by anyone. When copyrights are abandoned, the work can be used by anyone, too. The difference is that "abandonware" is not usually legally abandoned. Similarly, just not occupying property does not mean it is abandoned.
Furthermore, it's not as simple as you describe. You can possess property that is "abandoned", but it doesn't become yours for quite some time, and the legal owner can kick you out whenever they want until those many years have passed. True abandonment (unlike the "abandonment" you describe) is rare.
It seems that he is confusing Trademark law with Copyright law. It is my understanding that if a company does not use a trademark, they can lose the rights to it. Abandonment of a copyright is not simply "not using it to sell copies" or "not making commercial use of their copyrighted work". Today, parties all but have to declare that they abandon their copyright in order for it to be so.
Trademarks are slightly different, but you have not framed the issue in the correct manner. It's not the non-use of a trademark that itself causes problems, but rather the failure to defend against others making use of it. You can sit on an unused trademark (say, the "Fairlane" name for Ford) if you might have use for it in the future or if it's a temporary gap in use (like when they retired the "Taurus" name for several years). As long as you prevent someone else from using it, it's not considered abandoned. Like copyright, abandonment is more than not using it. But abandonment and losing rights for failure to prosecute ("dilution") are distinct.
"Abandonware" still protected by copyright remains so. If you own a license already, the law allows you to take some otherwise unlawful means to continue using it once it has been abandoned by the manufacturer, but it does not allow you to sell or distribute it simply because the original company no longer chooses to.
The only place the law is really grey is if the company no longer exists AND no one purchased or was assigned the rights. There hasn't been an affirmative ruling on that to my knowledge, but there's a strong case that the copyright has lapsed if the holder and their estate/successor no longer exist.
Nobody has a right to be forced to surrender anything they produce. If they decline to sell or otherwise license you a copy, too bad. You don't have a right to it. To say otherwise wouldn't "protect commerce" as he claimed--it would violate one of the most basic components of a market economy: the right to contract freely. Of course, I don't accept the premise, either, since copyright exists to create and protect exclusive (i.e. property) rights in the creator in exchange for sharing the information contained in the work and the ultimate (though by no means immediate or even timely) seeding of the public domain for future generations.
Put another way, if innocent intent is not a defense, how could deliberate infringement be? If you want something that is not for sale, you do not get to just take it. It's amazing anyone could possibly think otherwise, regardless of their personal stance on IP.
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However, powered gliders with scooter motors work--as do human powered gliders (human < 1hp). This exposes MB's own problems in the conducting of its tests: they're not always that scientific or well-thought-out.
Also, it's "right off the bat"--not bad, as I typed.
It's 4 pass, 1 plausible, and 3 busted. Add in the three "MacGuyver mini-myths"--all confirmed--and that's 8 to 3 right off the bad.
One of the busted ones, furthermore, is indeed plausible. A 9hp engine is sufficient for a properly-built ultralight if you know what you're doing. Having not seen MacGuyver in close to 20 years, I have no idea what sort of design it was. However, powered gliders with scooter motors work--as do human-powered gliders (human own problems in the conducting of its tests: they're not always that scientific or well-thought-out.
The other one, building an ultralight out of makeshift materials, really depends on the materials. The true obstacles is fasteners. That one may or may not be plausible (if he was in a junkyard, sure).
The sodium one is just bad. MB got that right.
But that's 9 to 2, maybe even 10 to 1 given a serendipitous setup. That's a pretty good hit rate for a TV show--probably as good as Mythbusters itself.
It's jargon. Some places call it a violation, an infraction, an ordinance offense, or an administrative citation. See e.g. http://www.co.kern.ca.us/code/PDFs/AdministrativeCitationInformation.pdf. They all mean the same thing: a legal penalty that is not a crime. It depends largely on your city which one is used, but because it's a municipal code, the penalties are not criminal. On the state level traffic code for non-criminal breakings of the law, it's often called an infraction. There is no dictionary that stores the particular terminology used locally to refer to the same basic concepts.
Were I in a legally sophisticated forum, I'd have used the term 'violation' instead, but the lay definition of that word lends no clarity. I would have thought that 'citation' would be easy enough to grasp for the lay community here, given that I assumed people would understand that if it ends with a citation, there is no criminal charge. At least three of you have failed at that.
Infraction, from Black's, 8th: "n. A violation, usu. of a rule or local ordinance and usu. not punishable by incarceration. See VIOLATION"
For violation:
"1. An infraction or breach of the law; a transgression. See INFRACTION. [...] 4. Under the Model Penal Code, a public-welfare offense. In this sense, a violation is not a crime. See Model Penal Code 1.04(5)."(emphasis added).
Moving violation: "An infraction of a traffic law while the vehicle is in motion."
If you are cited for an administrative citation, a violation, or an infraction where the penalty is a simple fine, there is not a criminal record because there has been no crime. You must specifically be charged with a misdemeanor in order for it to be a crime. There are both misdemeanors and felonies in the traffic codes of every state, but there is no state to my knowledge that has fully criminalized their traffic laws. The costs and burdens on the state would be tremendous.
As to jaywalking, you can check the penal code of your state and see if you can find a code charge for it. California, Hawaii, Washington, Arizona, and New York do not list the offense (including by any other name). I am not willing to invest the time to show the negative existence of such when no one has provided anything resembling evidence that it might.
You are simply not correct that jaywalking is commonly a criminal offense without recklessness, just as parking tickets and vehicle code infractions are not. If you really believe that to be a common case, you should have no trouble referencing a case in which a person was charged with simple jaywalking (not that they were stopped for jaywalking and were found to have committed a crime, and not reckless endangerment by jaywalking).
Your curiously amusing suggestion for statutory analysis neglects one basic fact: states establish criminal law. Municipal codes do not create additional crimes. Thus, unless you can point to more than one state vehicle code which authorizes criminal charges for simple jaywalking, you a making an untenable and implausible claim. If you had any proof, you'd have provided it.
For someone who has struggling to grasp the terminology and the threshold for criminal offenses (and even who determines them), it's not hard to reject your conclusion.
A mistype to further confuse!
At this point, I feel it important to caution against the conflation of two words 'citation'.
A "citation" as in a ticket and court summons can be made for an administrative citation, a misdemeanor, or a felony.
A citation when used by name in practice refers to the administrative citation, not the document itself as it appears you may be using it. In some places administrative citations are also called infractions, ordinance violations, or regulation offenses; in no place is it a crime. One does not generally refer to a misdemeanor or felony ticket as a "citation".
I am not aware any state that fails to separate violations, misdemeanors, and felonies into three categories. All moving violations may be classified as misdemeanors in a few states, but that has absolutely nothing to do with anything discussed thus far.
It's unfathomable that they'd go through the effort and expense to do so, and it's highly unlikely that they even care that much. Someone will get fired for pushing out a ridiculous access control methodology, they'll put something more sophisticated in, and move on with it.
None of that really has any bearing on the fact that it's just plain wrong. There are plenty of legitimate ways to get onto AT&T wifi networks for free (being a Uverse customer for one; using a Starbucks card to purchase your drink for another) that there's no possible justification. is it really 'stealing' if you actually have an iPhone and are presumably paying for the service through that? If it's free access for iPhones and you're not using an iPhone, then yes. To use a car analogy for Slashdot comprehension, if the valet is offering free parking for Audis, and you own an Audi and are driving a Subaru that day, well, then you've got to pay. Even if you think it's a pointless and arbitrary restriction (it is)--because it's their pointless and arbitrary decision.
People of the gimme gimme generation seem to have forgotten that freedom isn't just about them. If someone wants to charge for wifi, they can, even if a third person offers it for free--make a choice between free wifi and whatever reason it is that is driving you to Starbucks. You can't always get what you want (not you, specifically, but one mustn't foul lyrics).
No, we were speaking about the existence and application of theft of service as a cause of action. Your bizarre and pointless narrowing of the criteria to force a rarity gets you nowhere.
If you want someone to put together a list of theft of service prosecutions for Internet service, you'll have to pay an attorney to do it (no, I'm not asking). They're out there, and moreover you know they are.
Your query is malformed, to boot. You're hoping to disprove the existence of the cause of action by suggesting that people are not often charged for using wireless access points without permission, but the fatal flaw is that most incidences of access are by way of unsecured APs or private devices. The ball game is quite different with a national service on commercial equipment. People have been sued for fraudulently accessing ISPs. It's not newsworthy, surprising, or remarkable in any way.
It's also a needless distraction from the original comment.
Still, here's a couple to whet your indignant curiosity:
People v. Harden (2007), Case no. C050231
People v. Bowles (2004), Case no. B171234
People v. Crossdale (2002), Case no. S097222
There, some random selections from the first 10 results, all California. I seriously doubt that Starbucks or AT&T would risk the negative publicity going after "criminals" like this. So do I, as previously stated. Why 'criminals' is in quotes escapes me, though. No matter how easy to pick the lock is or if you can just go in through the window, it's theft of service.
It happens all the time. We're not talking about wardriving or hopping on unsecured wifi. This is bypassing (however easily) access restrictions on a paid service. Also, skipping on restaurant bills, gaming the phone system, and splicing into cable systems are all also theft of service.
Jaywalking, further, in most places is not a crime. It's a citation.
It's a violation of the law in all jurisdictions, and finding a jury is a cakewalk. The only person that needs luck is a defendant in finding an attorney who can get him out of it.
"Theft of service" is its own special category. Chances are that AT&T will just fix it to something a little more robust than a user agent string and won't bother to sue anyone about it, unless they just feel like being dicks this month.
This case is a civil matter, yes. Distribution absolutely can be a crime, though. Atlantic had very little hope of proving their civil case here, so obviously they weren't even going to try for even harder-to-prove criminal charges.
Just like there's civil fraud and criminal fraud, there is both civil and criminal copyright infringement.
Your right to free expression covers your original expressions. It does not cover, and never has, the simple duplication of someone else's. The First Amendment is not unlimited, nor is it absolute.
Further, duplication is not even expression. You have an Amend. I right to sing a song or paint a painting modeled on one you've seen, but a simple, mechanical act utterly devoid of creativity or critical thought like copying isn't expressive.
If you don't like copyrights, support artists who use alternative terms. Too bad if that means you can't get DVDs of your favorite TV show. It's their show, they financed it and produced it, and they get to decide how they want to make it available. You don't get to set aside those terms and decisions and steal it because you don't approve of their business model. Sometimes, believing in something means sacrifice. If you don't have the fortitude to give up some ultimately pointless entertainment, the strength of your convictions is sorely lacking.
Let's try something that's actually parallel.
Imagine you're a bricklayer building houses and the concept of credit doesn't exist, and everybody simply has to pay up front in cash for the whole price of the house. Suddenly you go from working on 100 buildings a year to one because 99% of people can't afford to buy a whole house with cash.
Or imagine you've got a $100 million building full of historical artifacts. Now, you could sell it to a private owner for a rich guy's playground. You could sell it to a rich, old philanthropist who would open it to the public for free, if you're lucky enough to find one. You could also set it up like a gallery and charge admission, since each person would be willing to pay a token amount to enjoy the experience without having to buy the whole building that they have no hope of ever affording.
In other words, artists only get paid for art they've "already finished" because it hasn't been paid for yet. Some is more profitable than others. Why do you want to restrict artists to recouping costs, but let businesses turn unlimited profits? How does that even begin to make sense?
Or do you believe that it's okay to trespass, and that's a silly law, too? Maybe you're opposed to laws about peeping toms and voyeurs, too? The perpetrator isn't depriving you of anything there. OH, wait, there's those pesky things about dominion over your property and the right to quiet enjoyment. t is illegal, but I do not believe it to be immoral and in a world not ruled by corporate interests, it would be legal No, it wouldn't. It was illegal long before the "world" began being ruled by "corporate interests".
The OP's right, you're wrong. In the case you specify you're paying the bank for 30 years for giving you a loan. You're paying back that loan + interest.
Yes, you are. But you're paying after the transaction is completed, which is the point you're missing. The bank earns more in the transaction than their lost opportunity cost in advancing the money and letting it sit and collect interest in the account, because the rate they charge is higher, and on top of that, they can use your house for 30 years as an asset to extend more loans to other borrowers, and then collect from them.
The loan industry is a massive money-shuffling scheme, with profits that far exceed costs. The fundamental argument against copyright holders is that they "make more than their work is worth" according to people like you and the OP--yet the reality is that they make exactly as much as consumers are willing to part with.
Actually your insurance company is providing you that service every month -- if you have an accident/etc. that qualifies as a claim on the policy
That's not a service. They don't do anything other than cash your check every month. It's a risk spreading pool. Your money is used to pay off other claims, and if you die without every having made a single claim on your policy, you don't get that money back. They did absolutely zero work, but collected money based on the piece of paper they provided you with peace of mind.
Copyrighted works are exactly the same. They provide you with entertainment, a similarly intangible quality to peace of mind. You're okay with insurance companies taking your money for doing nothing, but don't approve for someone else adopting another cost-spreading system.
You get to enjoy a film for $15. Without the copies to spread the cost, you wouldn't be able to have a home library of major motion pictures unless you had a $50 million pile to commission one for your own private enjoyment.
Basically you're paying them to "insure" you can recover
Well, it's ensure, and no, you're just paying into a large money pool in exchange for a check under certain circumstances. Likewise, when you buy a DVD, you're paying into a large pool to finance the cost of the production, plus a handsome profit--a profit you don't deny the insurance companies.
That others are paying into the pool as well is irrelevant, each of them is paying for the same service, they're not throwing money at nothing.
Same with copyrighted works. The fact that it's a lower cost because it relies on smaller contributions from a larger pool is exactly the strategy used for selling copies.
The interest charged beyond the actual purchase price is their fee for letting you spread that big-ticket item's purchase out over time. Again, no one is getting paid more than once here.
No one gets paid "more than once" for CDs or DVDs, then, if that's the logic you want to apply. The fact that they can continue selling you copies is compensation for the fact that they let you spread that big-ticket item's purchase out over a large number of people.
I love how you start off here saying you're buying stock in the work then turn around and change it to talking about owning the company. That's a bit of a difference there.
Nothing's changed around, and there's no difference. Stock in a company works like copyrighted works as "shares" of the "work". You're awfully confused here. It's a simple metaphor.
And I've got news for you, you DO own the CD/DVD/VHS/whatever you bought because the doctrine of first sale most definitely applies
Whoa there, sparky! What does this have to do with anything?
The market hasn't placed the value of a typical album or movie at any price. What the market has done is determine what those making the albums or movies pay for the various things they nee
It's a thuggish argument. When most people get things unlawfully "for free", it's because they wouldn't have paid for them anyway. We're not talking about a starving man stealing a loaf of bread here. We're talking about an affluent group of gimme-gimme whiners with a mistaken sense of entitlement.
"I stole it to try it out, but then I destroyed it at no cost to you" isn't a defense. It's not even a justification. After all, these days you can go to a record store and listen before you buy. You can go to a second-hand shop and get a copy at a low enough price that it doesn't matter, and if you hate it, you can usually exchange it for something else. Why didn't you take advantage of legal methods to do so? The online stores even have previews. Some of them stream full-length music for that purpose.
The problem with the RIAA is that they don't really have evidence in most cases, but they snarl and bark anyway. It's their own fault for not embracing a digital sales model that made sense early on. But to say that it's a specious claim that each download is a lost sale is plainly false.
It's unlawful acquisition without payment. You took something without paying. You are in possession of a good, for which legal possession is based on payment, and you did not. The focus of the analysis is on what you did, not what its consequences were to the victimized party. You cannot slice that in a way that does not create legal liability for you. The only place the "but no one was hurt" game comes into play is in determining the amount of liability, and that is offset against your affirmative justification for taking it. Since legal options readily exist, that justification fails, and the out-of-pocket loss, or lack thereof, loses relevance. If you take my TV, I don't really lose any money, because my home is insured. I've paid out more in insurance premiums than the claim to replace it, so I lose nothing and the insurance company still makes its massive profits. That doesn't mean you can take my TV.
You already do, or at least your bank did. You pay your mortgage every month, do you not?
The OP is wrong. We pay for lots of things long after they're created, based on a theory of credit or cost spreading. For example, a bank pays the people who built your house up front, because most people don't have that kind of cash sitting around to do it themselves. You pay the bank for 30 years. The job is done.
You pay insurance premiums every month even though the agreement was created years ago. The insurance company isn't actually providing you with hundreds or thousands of dollars in service every month. You can only afford to have insurance because millions of other people are sharing the cost with you. You pay that bill, even if your lifetime payments actually add up to more than the policy limit, and even if you never actually make a claim. If you buy a big-ticket item on credit and pay it down over time, your credit card company is profiting from a purchase you made months ago (profit far exceeding their opportunity costs for advancing you the money in the first place). When you buy into a co-op or timeshare, you're paying for something that was probably paid off years ago and is now just profit.
Buying a copy of a copyrighted work for $10 or $15 is like buying stock in the work. You never own the "company" with your single share, but you do own a tiny piece of it. If you buy enough shares, you can take over the company and do what you want with its work, including blowing your money by giving it away. The market has placed the value of a typical album at several million dollars, and a typical film at dozens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. If you actually took out a loan and bought the whole thing, then yes, OP would be correct to complain about being asked to pay continuously. But since one person doesn't continually pay, and since the work is worth more than the $15 for the first DVD, the rant is, well, misguided and wrong. You wouldn't be able to afford CDs and DVDs if millions of other people didn't pay small amounts for it over the years as well.
If you'd like to round up $50 million to buy and truly own a motion picture and never have to worry about copyrights again, knock yourself out. Otherwise, deal with they profit from sales above and beyond what they need, just like every other profitable business.
Furthermore, it's not as simple as you describe. You can possess property that is "abandoned", but it doesn't become yours for quite some time, and the legal owner can kick you out whenever they want until those many years have passed. True abandonment (unlike the "abandonment" you describe) is rare.
Unsurprisingly, the AC is as wrong as the OP.
Trademarks are slightly different, but you have not framed the issue in the correct manner. It's not the non-use of a trademark that itself causes problems, but rather the failure to defend against others making use of it. You can sit on an unused trademark (say, the "Fairlane" name for Ford) if you might have use for it in the future or if it's a temporary gap in use (like when they retired the "Taurus" name for several years). As long as you prevent someone else from using it, it's not considered abandoned. Like copyright, abandonment is more than not using it. But abandonment and losing rights for failure to prosecute ("dilution") are distinct.
"Abandonware" still protected by copyright remains so. If you own a license already, the law allows you to take some otherwise unlawful means to continue using it once it has been abandoned by the manufacturer, but it does not allow you to sell or distribute it simply because the original company no longer chooses to.
The only place the law is really grey is if the company no longer exists AND no one purchased or was assigned the rights. There hasn't been an affirmative ruling on that to my knowledge, but there's a strong case that the copyright has lapsed if the holder and their estate/successor no longer exist.
No, he can't, because he just made it up.
Nobody has a right to be forced to surrender anything they produce. If they decline to sell or otherwise license you a copy, too bad. You don't have a right to it. To say otherwise wouldn't "protect commerce" as he claimed--it would violate one of the most basic components of a market economy: the right to contract freely. Of course, I don't accept the premise, either, since copyright exists to create and protect exclusive (i.e. property) rights in the creator in exchange for sharing the information contained in the work and the ultimate (though by no means immediate or even timely) seeding of the public domain for future generations.
Put another way, if innocent intent is not a defense, how could deliberate infringement be? If you want something that is not for sale, you do not get to just take it. It's amazing anyone could possibly think otherwise, regardless of their personal stance on IP.