Manditory support of those less fortunate than you.
Reverance & obediance to Allah before self or country - ie. god before greed.
Strict accountablity before both Allah & your fellow man.
Yep, those are definately the hallmarks of a terrorist if I ever saw them.
Now if you want to talk Radical Fundamentalism, well, that's a different story. Of course it's the same difference between Southern Baptists & Fundimentalist Christians who blow up abortion clinics & burn Mosques. One is strict, the other is crazy.
If you want an "open" last mile of fiber, do it as a municipal project and run it like a public utility. Don't stomp your feet and cry because a private business does it first and won't give it away.
Um, FIOS IS being run like a public utility. It's using PU right of way regulations to drop it's big ass boxes in front of peoples houses. It's using PU rulings on 'network improvements' to bypass all local regulations on construction & buildouts. The FIOS project is also part of the $9B+ in tax credits & grants that the telcos have received over the last decade with the garuntee that we would all have 40MB service 5 years ago.
Let's also back up & examine this, 'private business does it first'. In Chicago suburbs, the telco's spend $12M to defeat plans to run Municiple Fiber to EVERY HOME. 2 years later they force fed a 3% coverage to just the wealthiest neighborhoods & quoted their costs as 3X the total coverage plan they had defeated. AT&T & Verizon are actively blocking municipality's attemtps to impliment these types of installs - usually by quoting their PU monopoly status. After that, they are doing less, charging more, and killing all forms of competition in the process.
All while the FCC 'protects our interest' by ruling that 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber from the Telcos isn't subject to the regulations that cover 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber by the cable companies.
Actually, it's not a 'free pass', it's another hoop to be jumped through to get at them. One document shows up in an FBI file with an NSA note and this case is back on. The case was ordered dismissed because they can't 'show cause' to bring the case. Once 'cause' is established this goes live again.
Actually, most of what we know is based on a year long investigation by the NYT who sat on this story for a year prior to breaking it. THe few things the govt has stated have only been confirmations or 'clarifications' to specific statements made in the story.
Also note that a large portion of the technical details have been revieled by the people who installed the equipment in some of these hubs - not by the govt. To say that most of our information is from the administration is a poor representation of the facts at best.
How about if you were a lawyer? Do you think the NSA would be bothered in the least about passing along information to the DOJ reguarding your stratagies in pursuing a $B class action case against the US for unlawful imprisonment?
The problem isn't that the NSA is tapping the phones of US citizens, it's that Nixon did it & the US govt expressly wrote laws forbidding exactly what the NSA is doing - unsupervised wiretaps. They created an entire court & post approval schemes to make sure that the approval process didn't interfier with priority/time sensative investigations. I don't care if you aren't breaking the law & don't care who listens in on your calls. I do care that the Federal Government doesn't give a shit about the very rule of law it's supposed to be upholding!
Bush & the NSA got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Like the average 2 year old, they first denied that the facts were the facts. Once they couldn't get past that point they switched to beligerant teenager & just said 'fuck off the rules don't apply to me'. That's where we stand now. Bush & the NSA acknowledge that they broke the law & then hide behind the 'state secrets' act to shield themselves from any investigation/proscecution relating to it.
Note how they are even stonewalling the security subcommity that's trying to look into exactly how bad of a legal fuckup this is. "This stuff is so super secret that we can't even show 8 members of Congress with top level security clearances what we are doing. The fact that we are legally mandated to advise them & we can only perform these operations under their oversight is irrelevant."
I think this is eventually going to fall apart into a cluster fuck that's going to make Watergate look like a well coreographed ballet. This suit was turned down because the plaintifs couldn't show direct harm with the 'chilling effect' on free speech being completely dismissed by 2 judges as a 'concoction'. Eventually there's going to be an arrest made & it'll get tied to the NSA.
The game is over once that happens, Bush has already lost almost every aspect of the 'state secrets' cover he has. As more & more information is leaked out, he's got less & less coverage. The 'unable to show cause' requirement to continue these cases is one of the last pieces of the puzzle. Once a case is tied to the project, that's gone & he's down to 'fuck off'. There's one case that's already in play because of this very fact. Parts of it were thrown out, but the judge ruled that there is enough public knowledge about the project to continue, and the fact that the party suing was accidentally provided documents showing he was under survailance is sufficient to prove cause.
The Shrub has all the pieces he needs to do the job, he just doesn't like having to play by the rules that accompany those tools. Sorry, if he can't win playing by the rules, he needs to step asside & let someone else have thier chance.
Per the Russian copyright laws, downloads from places like AllofMP3 are treated like public performances (Juke Boxes) not music sales. ROMS is the group that collects these fees. If AllofMP3 is paying ROMS, then whether the RIAA likes it or not, it's acting in a manner consistant with Russian law.
As for how much you owe the band, you owe what the compulsory licensing scheme of the country says you owe. If Russia says the per public performance rate is $.02/play, then you owe your band $.02/play not the $.20 provided for by the US compulsory license. So you're entire argument of 'oh I can't collect royalties because I'll owe the band more than I collect' is bogus.
As for ASCAP & BMI, my understanding is that they're not all that friendly if you're not in NA or represented by one of the big international groups. I also find it interesting that they're 'looking out for the artists interests' by insisting on collecting for CC licensed works.
When I opted out of my contract, they billed me the cancellation fee - once for each phone, on each account, that turned into just under $1800 for cancelling 3 phones. In 3 months all I ever heard was "yes it looks like something is wrong, but if you'll just pay your bill we'll refund you when we figure it out."
I still get the occasional call from them & I still tell them I'll pay after they figure it out.
From what I have learned from PJ @ Groklaw, lamlaw.com, & law.com, it's actually fairly common practice to open the fight with cluster bombs & see who flinches at what. Once you have that, you start applying the shotgun to the sticking points until you see an opening. That's when you pull out the rifle & start taking ranging shots.
The reasoning for this is that the judge will limit what & how many times you can bring new things into the case. By filing for the civil proceedings under the RICO & CF&A acts along with malicious proscecution and the other assorted goodies, she can use them all. If however, her lawyer waited until discovery to file the RICO & CF&A complaints, it's quite likely that the judge would not permit them under the grounds that the information required to file for them was available prior to launching the case & they failed to do so in a timely manner. Thus the cluster bomb approach - cover everything at one go & see where it seems to have left a mark.
Once you've posted all of your initial claims, you'll see that some don't survive the initial discovery & review period - that's good because now you have fewer more focused claims & you can start really doing the work. "Oh look, the Atlantic CEO flinched in his deposition when we asked about claim 5, let's bury them in discovery work on 5 & see why." This is the shotgun period.
Once discovery is winding down, you pull out the rifle & start taking ranging shots at the expert opinions. If you're lucky, you can take one out. If not, you've still put a few holes in them & you know where the weak spots are.
Trial is where the actual snipers duel it out. They both know roughly where the other one is & they both know the terrain, it's just a test to see who can do the most damage before the the other one gets enough advantage to take them out.
So the consumer could transform large content to fit their phone's screen with software they control, but their ISP cannot, because their ISP is their agent, without the right to copy, regardless of any contract between them.
This is definately the fuzzy area of copyright law. AIUI, the phone companies proxie is supposed to be able to run a transform & alter the page as needed to fit onto the cell phone screen. However, as pointed out previously, the existance of the 'no-transform' header in the specs implies that this is a publisher granted ability not a fair use one.
If there is one thing that is clear, it is that tacking headers or footers onto a page - without advising the end viewer - isn't part of fair use under any circumstances. At least when GoogleNews was serving up cached articles, it was clear that the content was being provided from googlecache and not the original site. If adding the notice that a site is being served from cache is a copyright violation, I can't possibly see how tacking adds onto one wouldn't be.
You as the consumer have no rights in this manner. You do not own the copyright on the material being presented. If however you advise content owners, say the MPAA, that stupid.movie.of.the.month.com is being altered by dumb.isp.net and is presenting adds related to competing movies, I'm sure you'll be wanting some popcorn for the ensuing court battles.
What you want in a case like this is for someone with the wallet to do the heavy lifting & get precident set. Once precident is set, it's hell of a lot easier to win than when you try to actually set precident.
Copyright is fairly simple when you remember that it's merely whether a given person has the right to make a copy of something.
It also controls 'derivative works'. That's what's at issue here. If your mobile proxy squeazes my 1280X1024 page down to 640X480 for mobile viewing, it is making a derivative work. However, that type of transformation can be construed as fair use under the copyright law - it transforms the product from one format to another without altering the content beyond what is required for the transformation. Both the MPAA & RIAA have stood in front of congress & proclaimed format shifting is 'fair use'. Of course they proceeded to make the tools to do that illegal but hey, the act is legal
Deliberately altering the original content by adding or removing content is not format shifting, it is creating a derivative work, the original and the altered work do not contain the same content. No contract between the ISP & the end user can permit them to do this, because the ISP doesn't own the copyright to the works in question. If this is done at the hosting end, then it can be legally included in the hosting contract, but not in the provider contract.
How is that different to a TV channel inserting advertisement into a TV show?
Because there are sections of the TV show specifically marked as 'insert commercial here' --- haven't you ever seen someone miss the cue & see the B&W spot marker show up? They are allowed to insert local spots into designated places, but they aren't allowed to insert the local spots over the network spots. It's part of the broadcast license they receive with the program.
Or a radio station that fades in a commercial while a song is still playing?
There is a specific term for this, which I'm too lazy to look up, but it's done to prevent pristine recordings from being made over the radio. It's been a part of radio broadcast since the cassette recorder became available - and it's a compromise between the RIAA & the radio stations. Technically it is creating unauthorized dirivatives of the music - but big music feels they are better served by ruining any recordings.
I don't think this "unlicensed derivative work" is going to get much traction.
I certainly hope you're wrong, because this is exactly the kind of crap that copyright is supposed to prevent.
Chances are the advertising inserted would be random/varying every page load, so the only "copy" of said "derivative work" made in a fixed form is the one in an end user's browser window and possibly a file cached by the web browser. And effectively, end user is the party that has created the work by choosing the environment in which to browse to that web site. Since the only "copy" of the web site is of a temporary nature and is for personal use, it is not likely that infringement has occured.
From the 3 writeups on this blackbox I've read, it actively inserts code into the HTML stream. By actively rewriting the code it passes on, it's creating a derivative work. If it built a frame & inserted the original page into the frame, you might get away with your argument, but it doesn't seem to be working that way. I would definately say that any page owner would have a good shot at nailing the ISP for 'derivative work' infringement. It's going to be very hard to argue that sticking adds on someone's page by rewriting the code doesn't alter the page.
After that they should be able to go after the box mfg for that wonderful new catagory of 'contributory infringement' that they seem to be keen on using against p2p sites.
If I understand this correctly, it means that, for example, a magazine publisher can put out an electronic archive of past issues without having to negotiate the rights with everyone who contributed material to the relevant issues. I've had a couple of magazine articles published, so this could impact me, but I still think it's a reasonable ruling.
From the article on law.com, it does appear that the right to publish archives of complete collections - IE, with all advertising & context intact - is being upheld as falling under the rights granted when the article was first published. I think that that's valid - if they can reprint it on paper, microfiche, and microfilm, then excluding digital media makes no sense. Nor does claiming that the software used for presentation creates a derivative work. That particular argument could be interpreted as meaning that a work could only be reprinted if it used the same page-layout software to set up both print runs.
I think however, that the inclusion of his photo's in the montage would be considered a 'repurposed' use of his photos & he should still be able to claim infringement reguarding them, unless he has an advertising clause in his contract which would void even this.
Similarly, they shouldn't have to renegotiate rights to music and such when putting out old TV shows on DVD. This is especially true with the new media didn't exist when the original work was produced (so they didn't think to include it in the contract to begin with).
There is a vast difference between broadcast TV & DVD collections. Broadcast TV was not designed for home ownership - the shows were owned by a single entity & meant for broadcast under highly restricted licensing agreements. The people made these with the understanding that that's how it is and how it would be. Why would you include a clause in a contract to cover a situation that's 20 years away from being invented? Perhaps moreso, How would you include a clause like that?
Your argument holds in DVD v VHS distribution, but not broadcast v (DVD/VHS).
Is the l7-filter's approach something that p2p software's next generation can get around? Maybe, but it won't be as simple as port hopping. There will always be ways to get a few files though, but the question is whether large-scale p2p operations will remain viable in a context of widespread packet filtering.
Given that P2P is the prefered method of file distribution for large legal files - Blizzard's updates, Bittorrent's deal for movie distribution, Linux Distro's, etc- I doubt that they'll be able to kill it entirely. Unless they can figure out how to set the evil bit, this isn't going to work the moment this drops onto an ssl link because there is no way to differentiate an encrypted dvd stream from a linux distro.
Not true. The application just reads and writes from a socket, not caring what the endpoint of that socket is.
I refered to software - as the collection of kernel, network stack, and web server - not just the web server. More importantly, while the web server could be written in a way that it never even knows what the IP address is, the http protocols are supposed to be providing that information in the headers.
And as far as the operating system is concerned, it is simply pushing random bits through an interface. To create a link between the two might fall under the "extra creation". Even though all the information is technically in the RAM, it is more like a jigsaw puzzle than a real document.
There is definatly a requirement that the data be extracted & presented in a human readable format. That is the issue at hand, is it originally a 'document' or isn't it? If the contents of RAM are a document, then this is transcription which is permissable. If the contents of RAM are not a document, then this is being required to create documents for discovery, which isn't permissable.
From other places, it appears that torrentspy is running diskless servers with everything in memory. The arguments that the information is held on the servers for up to 6 hours seems insane to me, unless they are already capturing these logs in a ramdrive. If these logs have been captured & are stored on a ramdrive, then they loose a lot of ground on the argument that they are not documents - they have a degree of permanence & can be manipulated exactly like a document. In this case, we are discussing transcription from a ram drive to a more permanent media - there is no creation of a document.
If on the other hand we are discussing a system with no access logging at all, then the requisite contents of RAM will be shifting blocks of RAM with little to no permanence which can NOT be manipulated like a document without damaging the system. I can delete an entry to a log file with no harm to the system, try zeroing the data block holding the IP address & request. In this case, there is a requirement that actual data be collected & a new document created.
So while I don't like this ruling, and I certainly don't like the implications of the ruling, I can certainly see a situation where the argument does work. Variable data stored in ram certainly isn't a 'document' in the traditional sense, however a logfile stored on a ram-drive meets all of the criteria.
Note again that I do not know if torrentspy is logging to a ram-drive or not, if anyone actually knows their architecture and setup, then we could resolve the issue.
That by providing data on where to obtain movies, torrentspy is engaging in 'contributory infringement'. It's the same thing they have been saying since day 1, and it generally seems that the US courts are willing to buy it.
And why would the **AA spend all this money, when they can (as I believe they have) just have the court order TorrentSpy to log the relevant info to disk? The government digs deep into a hard drive when it has to, e.g. they reasonably expect to find useful info re a planned terrorist attack
Because the court cannot compel anyone to create a new document in order to produce it in discovery. They can however compel you to transcribe it to another format. If I only keep my data in a propietary binary format that is only readable on my home system, I can be required to reformat the document to a pdf/txt/office/printout/whatever and present the transcribed document.
This judges ruling is definately crafted to work around this fact. By defining RAM as a document, the court can require that it be transcribed & turned over. The issue hinges on if RAM is in fact a document* or not. I checked about 6 law dictionaries, and only 2 of them had any definition for 'document'. The first definition precludes this interpretation as it requires permanence. The 2nd definition might be able to be stretched to fit, but it's a rough go without starting to require conversations to be recorded & prevent people from recording & using anything that happens to touch their computer.
*This legal dictionary defines a document as: n. a popular generic word among lawyers for any paper with writing on it. Technically it could include a piece of wood with a will or message scratched on it.
This one defines it about the same: DOCUMENTS - The deeds, agreements, title papers, letters, receipts, and other written instruments used to prove a fact. Documents is also understood evidence delivered in the forms established by law, of whatever nature such evidence may be, but applied principally to the testimony of witnesses.
The judges decision appears to be based on the fact that you can simply enable logging in the server software. If this stands up, which I'm optimistic that it won't, there's still another loophole you can use: Create a webserver software which has no option to log ip addresses. Then in order to create IP logs you would have to actually install another program to do so, and that *does* constitute creation of documents.
It doesn't work that way. The judge order is a step back 1 level from the implimentation & relies on the architecture & protocol. The IP addresses & requests are nessesary for the protocols to funtion properly. The software - and consequently RAM - must have those pieces of information in order to process the requests. The ruling states that the document in question is the IP/Request information stored in RAM. How you choose to transcribe it is up too you, but the court order is for the data stored in RAM.
As an order, it is technically sound and prevents the kind of jimmying most people are talking about. The problem is it's built on the wrong premis. For this ruling, the judge appears to be examining ram as analogous to a paper document. The problem is it's more closely related to speech. A document by it's nature has permanence with a requirement that it be avtively destroyed. Speech & ram are both ephemeral & have a requirement that they be actively recorded in order to achieve permanence.
As pointed out by someone else, if this stands, we don't have to worry about whether AT&T giving the NSA copies of data from their switches is illegal, because this ruling makes the copies in ram a 'document' belonging to AT&T with which they can do as they please. Since almost all of the phone traffic in the US now routes through packet switching systems, AT&T can now tape your calls as they run through the switch & post them to Utube, give them to the NSA, or sell them back to you - all under the grace of 'RAM is a document'.
If this does go to trial, my defense strategy would be this: Bring one expert witness after another to the stand to testify that this could happen on a poorly patched and insecure system regardless of what this woman may have done.
That would be great - unless the judge bars your experts from testifying, like this judge did with this case. She had an expert, who was much better qualified than the prosecutors 'witness' to provide testimony, who was prohibited from testifying. Essentially the judge & prosecutor railroaded her on this one.
having an onLoad='someFunction();' element in the body tag however does make this all rather obvious from what I can understand. Given that that feature predates either patent, I think prior art is supposed to cover this whole mess.
Please provide some links for this; it sounds deeply wrong to me. How would re-encrypting the already encrypted plaintext allow you to observe data shifting, when the point of encryption is to obscure the relationship between the plaintext and the ciphertext?
Here is the wiki for Fourier Transformations. The rough gist for our purpose is that when you composit elements (multiple encryption schema) you get a new schema with identifiable characteristics that can be reversed back to the original elements. IE FTIR works by using a FT to de-convolute a broad spectrum scan into individual frequency components. The math was ugly when I took it 15 years ago & entirely beyond me now.
The same principles should apply to double encrypted systems - artifacts (elements introduced by the encryption algorythm itself & not part of the original file) from the first encryption should be identifyable by re-encrypting with a known encryption algorythm & masking against the known artifacts of double encrypting with differing base algorythms in combination with the known 2nd encryption schema.
To look at it another way, you're not looking for the data, you're looking for the artifacts of the first encryption method. By applying a new function to the result of the first function, you're hoping to improve the signal/noise ratio & show those artifacts. At the proper scale, sin(x),cos(x),x=0.5 all appear to be a flat lines, however the tan(sin(x)) clearly shows the variance at any scale. The same process applies to the encryption process - you should be able to identify the pseudo part of the random appearance of the encrypted data by reprocessing it in a given method. Note that it may take a specific algorythm for each encryption method to make the signal/noise ratio high enough to identify it as a match without actually decrypting the contents.
Note that this still leaves you without a key, but at least you would know which decryption algorythm to be trying to match keys against.
Statistically speaking, the encrypted data isn't random it's pseudo random. By re-encrypting it with a known schema, you may be able to identify the original schema by observing the patterns of data shifting between the old & new files.
Not that that is usually a problem, even if the key has to be supplied, most of the disk encryption schemes I've seen require that the OS know in advance which crypto method is being used.
Linux offers a few encrypted file systems - Here's one - that can include the swap file/partition.
If you're using a swap file instead of a swap partition, it's even easier to use - just put the swap file on an encrypted filesystem & it will autmatically be encrypted right along with the other data.
As a side note - standard username/password encryption is pointless for this anyway - unless you plan on typing in a 1024 bit password anyway. You would need a key on a USB stick that they would just confiscate anyway. Biometrics are iffy - Jello has an 80% success rate at getting past fingerprint recognition.
Alternately you can go with those spiffy cards that provide a 4 - 8 digit number based on the time, but again they would confiscate the card.
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-5 stupid bigot.
Strict Islam contains such terrorist mandates as:
Yep, those are definately the hallmarks of a terrorist if I ever saw them.
Now if you want to talk Radical Fundamentalism, well, that's a different story. Of course it's the same difference between Southern Baptists & Fundimentalist Christians who blow up abortion clinics & burn Mosques. One is strict, the other is crazy.
Um, FIOS IS being run like a public utility. It's using PU right of way regulations to drop it's big ass boxes in front of peoples houses. It's using PU rulings on 'network improvements' to bypass all local regulations on construction & buildouts. The FIOS project is also part of the $9B+ in tax credits & grants that the telcos have received over the last decade with the garuntee that we would all have 40MB service 5 years ago.
Let's also back up & examine this, 'private business does it first'. In Chicago suburbs, the telco's spend $12M to defeat plans to run Municiple Fiber to EVERY HOME. 2 years later they force fed a 3% coverage to just the wealthiest neighborhoods & quoted their costs as 3X the total coverage plan they had defeated. AT&T & Verizon are actively blocking municipality's attemtps to impliment these types of installs - usually by quoting their PU monopoly status. After that, they are doing less, charging more, and killing all forms of competition in the process.
All while the FCC 'protects our interest' by ruling that 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber from the Telcos isn't subject to the regulations that cover 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber by the cable companies.
Actually, it's not a 'free pass', it's another hoop to be jumped through to get at them. One document shows up in an FBI file with an NSA note and this case is back on. The case was ordered dismissed because they can't 'show cause' to bring the case. Once 'cause' is established this goes live again.
Actually, most of what we know is based on a year long investigation by the NYT who sat on this story for a year prior to breaking it. THe few things the govt has stated have only been confirmations or 'clarifications' to specific statements made in the story.
Also note that a large portion of the technical details have been revieled by the people who installed the equipment in some of these hubs - not by the govt. To say that most of our information is from the administration is a poor representation of the facts at best.
How about if you were a lawyer? Do you think the NSA would be bothered in the least about passing along information to the DOJ reguarding your stratagies in pursuing a $B class action case against the US for unlawful imprisonment?
The problem isn't that the NSA is tapping the phones of US citizens, it's that Nixon did it & the US govt expressly wrote laws forbidding exactly what the NSA is doing - unsupervised wiretaps. They created an entire court & post approval schemes to make sure that the approval process didn't interfier with priority/time sensative investigations. I don't care if you aren't breaking the law & don't care who listens in on your calls. I do care that the Federal Government doesn't give a shit about the very rule of law it's supposed to be upholding!
Bush & the NSA got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Like the average 2 year old, they first denied that the facts were the facts. Once they couldn't get past that point they switched to beligerant teenager & just said 'fuck off the rules don't apply to me'. That's where we stand now. Bush & the NSA acknowledge that they broke the law & then hide behind the 'state secrets' act to shield themselves from any investigation/proscecution relating to it.
Note how they are even stonewalling the security subcommity that's trying to look into exactly how bad of a legal fuckup this is. "This stuff is so super secret that we can't even show 8 members of Congress with top level security clearances what we are doing. The fact that we are legally mandated to advise them & we can only perform these operations under their oversight is irrelevant."
I think this is eventually going to fall apart into a cluster fuck that's going to make Watergate look like a well coreographed ballet. This suit was turned down because the plaintifs couldn't show direct harm with the 'chilling effect' on free speech being completely dismissed by 2 judges as a 'concoction'. Eventually there's going to be an arrest made & it'll get tied to the NSA.
The game is over once that happens, Bush has already lost almost every aspect of the 'state secrets' cover he has. As more & more information is leaked out, he's got less & less coverage. The 'unable to show cause' requirement to continue these cases is one of the last pieces of the puzzle. Once a case is tied to the project, that's gone & he's down to 'fuck off'. There's one case that's already in play because of this very fact. Parts of it were thrown out, but the judge ruled that there is enough public knowledge about the project to continue, and the fact that the party suing was accidentally provided documents showing he was under survailance is sufficient to prove cause.
The Shrub has all the pieces he needs to do the job, he just doesn't like having to play by the rules that accompany those tools. Sorry, if he can't win playing by the rules, he needs to step asside & let someone else have thier chance.
Per the Russian copyright laws, downloads from places like AllofMP3 are treated like public performances (Juke Boxes) not music sales. ROMS is the group that collects these fees. If AllofMP3 is paying ROMS, then whether the RIAA likes it or not, it's acting in a manner consistant with Russian law.
As for how much you owe the band, you owe what the compulsory licensing scheme of the country says you owe. If Russia says the per public performance rate is $.02/play, then you owe your band $.02/play not the $.20 provided for by the US compulsory license. So you're entire argument of 'oh I can't collect royalties because I'll owe the band more than I collect' is bogus.
As for ASCAP & BMI, my understanding is that they're not all that friendly if you're not in NA or represented by one of the big international groups. I also find it interesting that they're 'looking out for the artists interests' by insisting on collecting for CC licensed works.
When I opted out of my contract, they billed me the cancellation fee - once for each phone, on each account, that turned into just under $1800 for cancelling 3 phones. In 3 months all I ever heard was "yes it looks like something is wrong, but if you'll just pay your bill we'll refund you when we figure it out."
I still get the occasional call from them & I still tell them I'll pay after they figure it out.
Damnit Jolly, stop giving him the Staples 'Easy' button, you know he thinks it's the 'Big Red Nuke' button.
From what I have learned from PJ @ Groklaw, lamlaw.com, & law.com, it's actually fairly common practice to open the fight with cluster bombs & see who flinches at what. Once you have that, you start applying the shotgun to the sticking points until you see an opening. That's when you pull out the rifle & start taking ranging shots.
The reasoning for this is that the judge will limit what & how many times you can bring new things into the case. By filing for the civil proceedings under the RICO & CF&A acts along with malicious proscecution and the other assorted goodies, she can use them all. If however, her lawyer waited until discovery to file the RICO & CF&A complaints, it's quite likely that the judge would not permit them under the grounds that the information required to file for them was available prior to launching the case & they failed to do so in a timely manner. Thus the cluster bomb approach - cover everything at one go & see where it seems to have left a mark.
Once you've posted all of your initial claims, you'll see that some don't survive the initial discovery & review period - that's good because now you have fewer more focused claims & you can start really doing the work. "Oh look, the Atlantic CEO flinched in his deposition when we asked about claim 5, let's bury them in discovery work on 5 & see why." This is the shotgun period.
Once discovery is winding down, you pull out the rifle & start taking ranging shots at the expert opinions. If you're lucky, you can take one out. If not, you've still put a few holes in them & you know where the weak spots are.
Trial is where the actual snipers duel it out. They both know roughly where the other one is & they both know the terrain, it's just a test to see who can do the most damage before the the other one gets enough advantage to take them out.
This is definately the fuzzy area of copyright law. AIUI, the phone companies proxie is supposed to be able to run a transform & alter the page as needed to fit onto the cell phone screen. However, as pointed out previously, the existance of the 'no-transform' header in the specs implies that this is a publisher granted ability not a fair use one.
If there is one thing that is clear, it is that tacking headers or footers onto a page - without advising the end viewer - isn't part of fair use under any circumstances. At least when GoogleNews was serving up cached articles, it was clear that the content was being provided from googlecache and not the original site. If adding the notice that a site is being served from cache is a copyright violation, I can't possibly see how tacking adds onto one wouldn't be.
You as the consumer have no rights in this manner. You do not own the copyright on the material being presented. If however you advise content owners, say the MPAA, that stupid.movie.of.the.month.com is being altered by dumb.isp.net and is presenting adds related to competing movies, I'm sure you'll be wanting some popcorn for the ensuing court battles.
What you want in a case like this is for someone with the wallet to do the heavy lifting & get precident set. Once precident is set, it's hell of a lot easier to win than when you try to actually set precident.
It also controls 'derivative works'. That's what's at issue here. If your mobile proxy squeazes my 1280X1024 page down to 640X480 for mobile viewing, it is making a derivative work. However, that type of transformation can be construed as fair use under the copyright law - it transforms the product from one format to another without altering the content beyond what is required for the transformation. Both the MPAA & RIAA have stood in front of congress & proclaimed format shifting is 'fair use'. Of course they proceeded to make the tools to do that illegal but hey, the act is legal
Deliberately altering the original content by adding or removing content is not format shifting, it is creating a derivative work, the original and the altered work do not contain the same content. No contract between the ISP & the end user can permit them to do this, because the ISP doesn't own the copyright to the works in question. If this is done at the hosting end, then it can be legally included in the hosting contract, but not in the provider contract.
Because there are sections of the TV show specifically marked as 'insert commercial here' --- haven't you ever seen someone miss the cue & see the B&W spot marker show up? They are allowed to insert local spots into designated places, but they aren't allowed to insert the local spots over the network spots. It's part of the broadcast license they receive with the program.
There is a specific term for this, which I'm too lazy to look up, but it's done to prevent pristine recordings from being made over the radio. It's been a part of radio broadcast since the cassette recorder became available - and it's a compromise between the RIAA & the radio stations. Technically it is creating unauthorized dirivatives of the music - but big music feels they are better served by ruining any recordings.
I certainly hope you're wrong, because this is exactly the kind of crap that copyright is supposed to prevent.
From the 3 writeups on this blackbox I've read, it actively inserts code into the HTML stream. By actively rewriting the code it passes on, it's creating a derivative work. If it built a frame & inserted the original page into the frame, you might get away with your argument, but it doesn't seem to be working that way. I would definately say that any page owner would have a good shot at nailing the ISP for 'derivative work' infringement. It's going to be very hard to argue that sticking adds on someone's page by rewriting the code doesn't alter the page.
After that they should be able to go after the box mfg for that wonderful new catagory of 'contributory infringement' that they seem to be keen on using against p2p sites.
From the article on law.com, it does appear that the right to publish archives of complete collections - IE, with all advertising & context intact - is being upheld as falling under the rights granted when the article was first published. I think that that's valid - if they can reprint it on paper, microfiche, and microfilm, then excluding digital media makes no sense. Nor does claiming that the software used for presentation creates a derivative work. That particular argument could be interpreted as meaning that a work could only be reprinted if it used the same page-layout software to set up both print runs.
I think however, that the inclusion of his photo's in the montage would be considered a 'repurposed' use of his photos & he should still be able to claim infringement reguarding them, unless he has an advertising clause in his contract which would void even this.
There is a vast difference between broadcast TV & DVD collections. Broadcast TV was not designed for home ownership - the shows were owned by a single entity & meant for broadcast under highly restricted licensing agreements. The people made these with the understanding that that's how it is and how it would be. Why would you include a clause in a contract to cover a situation that's 20 years away from being invented? Perhaps moreso, How would you include a clause like that?
Your argument holds in DVD v VHS distribution, but not broadcast v (DVD/VHS).
Given that P2P is the prefered method of file distribution for large legal files - Blizzard's updates, Bittorrent's deal for movie distribution, Linux Distro's, etc- I doubt that they'll be able to kill it entirely. Unless they can figure out how to set the evil bit, this isn't going to work the moment this drops onto an ssl link because there is no way to differentiate an encrypted dvd stream from a linux distro.
I refered to software - as the collection of kernel, network stack, and web server - not just the web server. More importantly, while the web server could be written in a way that it never even knows what the IP address is, the http protocols are supposed to be providing that information in the headers.
There is definatly a requirement that the data be extracted & presented in a human readable format. That is the issue at hand, is it originally a 'document' or isn't it? If the contents of RAM are a document, then this is transcription which is permissable. If the contents of RAM are not a document, then this is being required to create documents for discovery, which isn't permissable.
From other places, it appears that torrentspy is running diskless servers with everything in memory. The arguments that the information is held on the servers for up to 6 hours seems insane to me, unless they are already capturing these logs in a ramdrive. If these logs have been captured & are stored on a ramdrive, then they loose a lot of ground on the argument that they are not documents - they have a degree of permanence & can be manipulated exactly like a document. In this case, we are discussing transcription from a ram drive to a more permanent media - there is no creation of a document.
If on the other hand we are discussing a system with no access logging at all, then the requisite contents of RAM will be shifting blocks of RAM with little to no permanence which can NOT be manipulated like a document without damaging the system. I can delete an entry to a log file with no harm to the system, try zeroing the data block holding the IP address & request. In this case, there is a requirement that actual data be collected & a new document created.
So while I don't like this ruling, and I certainly don't like the implications of the ruling, I can certainly see a situation where the argument does work. Variable data stored in ram certainly isn't a 'document' in the traditional sense, however a logfile stored on a ram-drive meets all of the criteria.
Note again that I do not know if torrentspy is logging to a ram-drive or not, if anyone actually knows their architecture and setup, then we could resolve the issue.
That by providing data on where to obtain movies, torrentspy is engaging in 'contributory infringement'. It's the same thing they have been saying since day 1, and it generally seems that the US courts are willing to buy it.
Because the court cannot compel anyone to create a new document in order to produce it in discovery. They can however compel you to transcribe it to another format. If I only keep my data in a propietary binary format that is only readable on my home system, I can be required to reformat the document to a pdf/txt/office/printout/whatever and present the transcribed document.
This judges ruling is definately crafted to work around this fact. By defining RAM as a document, the court can require that it be transcribed & turned over. The issue hinges on if RAM is in fact a document* or not. I checked about 6 law dictionaries, and only 2 of them had any definition for 'document'. The first definition precludes this interpretation as it requires permanence. The 2nd definition might be able to be stretched to fit, but it's a rough go without starting to require conversations to be recorded & prevent people from recording & using anything that happens to touch their computer.
*This legal dictionary defines a document as: n. a popular generic word among lawyers for any paper with writing on it. Technically it could include a piece of wood with a will or message scratched on it.
This one defines it about the same: DOCUMENTS - The deeds, agreements, title papers, letters, receipts, and other written instruments used to prove a fact. Documents is also understood evidence delivered in the forms established by law, of whatever nature such evidence may be, but applied principally to the testimony of witnesses.
It doesn't work that way. The judge order is a step back 1 level from the implimentation & relies on the architecture & protocol. The IP addresses & requests are nessesary for the protocols to funtion properly. The software - and consequently RAM - must have those pieces of information in order to process the requests. The ruling states that the document in question is the IP/Request information stored in RAM. How you choose to transcribe it is up too you, but the court order is for the data stored in RAM.
As an order, it is technically sound and prevents the kind of jimmying most people are talking about. The problem is it's built on the wrong premis. For this ruling, the judge appears to be examining ram as analogous to a paper document. The problem is it's more closely related to speech. A document by it's nature has permanence with a requirement that it be avtively destroyed. Speech & ram are both ephemeral & have a requirement that they be actively recorded in order to achieve permanence.
As pointed out by someone else, if this stands, we don't have to worry about whether AT&T giving the NSA copies of data from their switches is illegal, because this ruling makes the copies in ram a 'document' belonging to AT&T with which they can do as they please. Since almost all of the phone traffic in the US now routes through packet switching systems, AT&T can now tape your calls as they run through the switch & post them to Utube, give them to the NSA, or sell them back to you - all under the grace of 'RAM is a document'.
having an onLoad='someFunction();' element in the body tag however does make this all rather obvious from what I can understand. Given that that feature predates either patent, I think prior art is supposed to cover this whole mess.
Here is the wiki for Fourier Transformations. The rough gist for our purpose is that when you composit elements (multiple encryption schema) you get a new schema with identifiable characteristics that can be reversed back to the original elements. IE FTIR works by using a FT to de-convolute a broad spectrum scan into individual frequency components. The math was ugly when I took it 15 years ago & entirely beyond me now.
The same principles should apply to double encrypted systems - artifacts (elements introduced by the encryption algorythm itself & not part of the original file) from the first encryption should be identifyable by re-encrypting with a known encryption algorythm & masking against the known artifacts of double encrypting with differing base algorythms in combination with the known 2nd encryption schema.
To look at it another way, you're not looking for the data, you're looking for the artifacts of the first encryption method. By applying a new function to the result of the first function, you're hoping to improve the signal/noise ratio & show those artifacts. At the proper scale, sin(x),cos(x),x=0.5 all appear to be a flat lines, however the tan(sin(x)) clearly shows the variance at any scale. The same process applies to the encryption process - you should be able to identify the pseudo part of the random appearance of the encrypted data by reprocessing it in a given method. Note that it may take a specific algorythm for each encryption method to make the signal/noise ratio high enough to identify it as a match without actually decrypting the contents.
Note that this still leaves you without a key, but at least you would know which decryption algorythm to be trying to match keys against.
Statistically speaking, the encrypted data isn't random it's pseudo random. By re-encrypting it with a known schema, you may be able to identify the original schema by observing the patterns of data shifting between the old & new files.
Not that that is usually a problem, even if the key has to be supplied, most of the disk encryption schemes I've seen require that the OS know in advance which crypto method is being used.
Linux offers a few encrypted file systems - Here's one - that can include the swap file/partition.
If you're using a swap file instead of a swap partition, it's even easier to use - just put the swap file on an encrypted filesystem & it will autmatically be encrypted right along with the other data.
As a side note - standard username/password encryption is pointless for this anyway - unless you plan on typing in a 1024 bit password anyway. You would need a key on a USB stick that they would just confiscate anyway. Biometrics are iffy - Jello has an 80% success rate at getting past fingerprint recognition.
Alternately you can go with those spiffy cards that provide a 4 - 8 digit number based on the time, but again they would confiscate the card.