Um when every major record label has at least 1 "promoter" charged with fraud & racketeering for "buying" airtime from DJs, it's not about hard work or the expense of producing good product. It's about not being able to flat out buy enough airtime to get into the market. Some of these "promoters" were spending as much bribing DJs to play specific songs as the company was buying actual airtime for advertisements.
Certainly it's legal to form such a company. The issue becomes whether or not you can accomplish that act in a legal manner.
Lahnam Act restrictions are supposed to limit the ability of one company to interfere with another companies profitability, IE using FUD/slander/legal bluffs to scare away customers. However, a non-profit organization would be exempt from many of those rules - so long as they don't cross into actual slander/fraud etc.
Organizing rotating protests outside the offices of the RIAA & it's constituent members is perfectly legal. Talking to the press, writing op-ed pieces, etc are also legal. Even building a Non-Profit around constructing an effective boycott would all be acceptable.
Check your notes on serving a summons etc. In MA it's perfectly valid to simply drop it off at the last known residence (there are some restrictions on how long they stayed there & how long they've been gone) and then sign the service documents as having done so.
Per the Discovery Channel, the price of sexual favors from a hooker hasn't changed relative to the price of bread since Rome was busy invading the British Isles. Interesting people those Romans, the soldiers had coins printed up with sexual positions on one side & amounts on the other, that way they didn't need to speak the local language to get what they wanted.
M$ employees acting with authorization have been and continue to distribute Linux to the tune of ~300 servers from ~50 distros within their "Linux" lab.. They did it for purposes of profit, and improving windows capability and performance.
To nit-pick, they didn't distribute in the sense used by the GPL - any more than the IT staff of any company distributes Linux by putting it on servers in the company's office across town. It's an internal USE, not distribution. They do not appear to be sending these machines to other companies, just using them in-house. From a GPLv2 standpoint it does make a huge difference.
you get charged with the weight of the blotter paper not just the drug.
When the paper weighs in orders of magnitude higher than the dosage, that's a huge difference.
In my mind, that is entrapment. Perhaps not per the wording of the law, but in my mind, this is what happened
Officers trolled a discussion about "I like older men".
This gent was one that responded, and after seeing that he was on the hook, they let out the bait of how old the 'character' was.
They then arrested him for soliciting sex for a minor.
You forgot step 2B:
Suspect proceeded to make a date for sex with assumed 13 yr old
Entrapment boils down to who was leading the incident. If it was the cop, it's entrapment, if she just let him dig his own hole, that's a good sting.
Stings like this are usually supervised/coordinated by a member of the DA's office in order to ensure that legal entrapment doesn't occur.IE did the officer propose he come down to have sex, or did he? Did he initiate the IM, or did she? If she initiated the actual IM was it in response to a request of his in the open chat?
FWIW, I think that stings are a better way of dealing with a lot of types of crimes than just waiting around. The FBI, supposedly, has several people who do nothing but pretend to be hit-men. All they do is wait to be contacted by someone wanting someone else whacked, then they go through all the steps - right up until the money hit's their hands. Just because law enforcement makes themselves available to assist you in hanging yourself, doesn't mean they are entrapping you.
However, from what I read in the judgement, it was not at all clear that the man contacted her after she broadcast her age. My interpretation was that he spoke to her before (they had met in a chatroom called "I like older men" apparently) and then she told him her proported age after some discussion.
Correct from my reading - his problem stems from his making a date for sex after finding out the bait's "age". If he dropped it after finding out she was supposed to be 13, this never would have been prosecuted. Until he was advised of the "age" there was the statutory defense of he "believed her to be of the age of consent." Per the wording of the law, it's the belief that the contact is with a minor that's the trigger. Once he was told of the "age", he lost that defense, and by proceeding with the "seduction" invoked this law.
The law, as I skimmed it, specifically indicates that it is required to be targeted. You have to solicit a specific individual, blogging is broadcasting. It also never says e-mail. It's always 'electronic mail messages or files.' If people want to interpret that as email, that's fine, but it's broader than that - the way it's worded SMS, IM, and faxes also are covered.
...and that cop might have enticed me into having sex with this supposed thirteen year old... but it's a crime that wouldn't have happened, most likely, without the cop standing there and pushing it along all the time.
There is a fine line here that cops & DA's do understand. It's the difference between a sting and entrapment. Sometimes the difference is only 1 word in a question, but it's a difference. Generally the difference in a sting is that the cop is passive, only responding to the questions & actions of the target. This allows the target to lead the conversation where they want to go, and protects the operation against allegations of entrapment.
As for
But when the cops start things, then I get itchy.
In the same way, here, I don't see the cops playing at all fair. They were basically trolling, which in my mind is both ethically wrong and legally grey.
From what I read, they hung out in a chatroom & waited to be contacted - they didn't contact this guy, he contacted them. They passed him information regarding a faux-persona which was clearly identified as underage. He made a date - for sex - with a person he believed to be 13. It's no more entrapment than putting a cop out on the streetcorner dressed like a hooker. What you see, isn't what you get - but the solicitation charge is based on what you tried to get.
Hmm...
(7) "Electronic mail message" means an electronic message or computer file that is transmitted between two or more telecommunications devices; computers; computer networks, regardless of whether the network is a local, regional, or global network; or electronic devices capable of receiving electronic messages, regardless of whether the message is converted to hard copy format after receipt, viewed upon transmission, or stored for later retrieval.
That pretty much defines an IM. So as far as the legislatures went, they did a good job. With this definition, SMS, IM, faxes, SKYPE, video-teleconferencing, and E-Mail are all covered, along with pretty much any other form of digital communication. Heck it even covers converting the msg to a JPG & sending it with no ASCII text.
Of course goatse is much to easy to sucker people into if they can't read the site. I would recommend only 1/2 points for people who can't read the site.
How about if someone pulls a blue bunny & blackholes MS at their Peering Point? Everyone's MS goes down when validation comes due - figure 3-4% on any given day? Russia and EU governments have already expressed concerns over these kinds of issues, not to mention that if the capability is in Vista, then MS can be forced to implement it at the whim of the US government - add some geolocation code to the Vista server & everyone in France is a pirate.
I install things in local-user-space all the time. Makes my life a lot easier to test new software when it's sandboxed into my userspace instead of the general system bin directory.
Anything I am demoing goes into my ~/programs directory- that way if there is a conflict, pulling it doesn't yank the standard libraries.
Check your TOS with your ISP again. Many of them have prohibitions against running servers off of your dynamic IP address. Most of that is holdover from having a 'server' defined you as a business user, but it's still there. I know that RCN shut down Port 80 inbound following Code red because there was more virus traffic than actual requests - it's staggering how many people are running IIS without knowing it. At one point they also blocked all port 25 traffic not directed to the official network mail servers [excluding static IP customers].
There were craploads of complaints, but the right to do so was clearly marked in the TOS.
It is the courts job to decide which forms of law take precedent.
No. It's the courts job to pass sentence, and make rulings of guilt or innocence according to the statues.
The people who drafted the statutes know the intent of the statute; the judges don't. When you don't know what your boss wanted, you ask him; you don't invent laws on the fly. Again, the courts are wrong. And again, they get away with it, because only a judge can limit the power of another judge.
Which statues? Local? Federal? Copyright, contract, Criminal? They are often overlapping and frequently conflicting. It is exactly the job of the judge to determine which of these apply to a given situation. Doing so does not "invent new laws on the fly", just because you disagree with a decision doesn't make it wrong. As to only a judge limiting the power of another judge, I simply state that impeachment proceedings are not held by other judges.
Any judge can rule contrary to precedent, at any time, for any reason he or she deems valid. Precedent is no more important than fashion; and typically, just as devoid of common sense.
Check again, ruling against precedent is a very good way to get your ruling overturned. One of the reasons judges are appointed not elected is that they can avoid playing games with their rulings to get re-elected. Yes, precedent can be overturned, but doing so normally requires several small cases which each nibble a bit of the foundation for the precedent followed by a final case to create new precedent.
When you start with the statement that MS simply purchased a decision, there's not a lot of room for rational discussion, unless you would like to show proof of questionable financial transactions....
Is there really any question that they did exactly that in the anti-trust settlement? Or do you think the DoJ and the courts did an about turn for no reason? Or do you think judges have magically grown more honest since then? I don't.
The judiciary didn't drop the issue, the Attorney Generals office caved, not the Judiciary. The difference is that Bush's administration said back off & agreed to pathetic reperations instead of following the course suggested by the judge in the case. The Judge doesn't get to have much say when the prosecution caves.
Given that distribution accounts for up to 80% of the production cost, a free distribution network can be of substantial value.
I can host a domain for $200/year. I get paid $200/day. A free distribution network has little, if any, value to me. If I want a free, worldwide distribution network, I can post to Usenet for pennies a day.
and
In this case, free distribution with no financial renumeration is completely in line with the goals of the copyright holder, and therefor does provide a benefit, and thus a compensation as required by Justice Holmes.
The person who infringes copyright is not required to distribute the work. The "distribution network" you like to pretend will benefit me may not even exist.
What you can do, is really irrelevant. As a consideration, that it exists is enough to satisfy a contract.
In the case of the Artistic license involved in this case, the goal is a widespread presence of the copyrighted work and crediting of the author.
Who are you to say what the goals of the author were? Maybe they don't care how widely distributed the work is, so long as their work is credited. And again, retaining credit for authorship is part of the rights they already have under copyright.
The goals of the author can be inferred from the license they choose. The Artistic License is a fairly open license. It has multiple options with regard to compliance with distribution, the constant is retention of the original copyright notices. Retaining credit
When Sun sued under copyright violations, the court determined that MS did in fact have a license, the open license Sun provided, and that the proper venue was contract law, not copyright law.
In other words, the Microsoft guys tendered the best offer.
When you start with the statement that MS simply purchased a decision, there's not a lot of room for rational discussion, unless you would like to show proof of questionable financial transactions.....
It might not be what you expect, but it is a valid position from the courts point of view.
The courts are wrong.
Why, thats great, we can just come to you to get our decisions in the future - no need for this whole court thinga-ma-bobbie. It is the courts job to decide which forms of law take precedent. There are frequently statutory civil laws regarding issues which can be overruled by specific grants of authority or contracts specifically detailing deviations from the statutory baseline. One example, which is becoming more common is pre-nuptial agreements. Statutory code indicates - in most US states - that the assets of a married couple are split 50/50. A prenuptial agreement can alter that in any way. When prenups are voided by a court, they are usually done so on the grounds that the contract itself is void do to inherant imbalances or technicalities in the contract itself - not because statutory law rules.
Contracts overwrite copyright law. If there is a contract in place, then the contract's terms govern the transactions not the copyright law. Care to cite a statute that proves this? Or are you just going by the current whims of the judiciary?
Hmm, lets start with the fact that the ruling was issued in January of 2001. It's not a current whim of the judiciary, it's a 5.5 yr old case.
A statute that specifically indicates that contract law takes precedent over copyright law, not likely - if there were, then it wouldn't have needed a ruling.
However, if contract law does not take precedent over Copyright law, then there is no means to create a distribution channel. If a copyright holder can go to court and say I'm violating his copyright, and contract law doesn't trump copyright law, then that license I contracted for at $50M for is worthless.
Now, if instead of statutes you would like precedent, then we can go for:
This [pdf warning] has some discussion of how contracts and licenses can overrule Copyright grants of fair use etc, and is linked to a case study of iTunes with some more details.
But in 1917, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that all uses of copyrighted work, even those for which a specific fee was not charged, required compensation. This ruling is also cited in the Sun v MS ruling, again showing that the ruling was not based on a whim, but 80+ yr old precedent.
Also don't forget, when you accept my terms for the OSS license, I get a distribution channel as a consideration. How does a "distribution channel" count as a *benefit* to the author? Distribution channels without financial compensation to the author is precisely what copyright law was designed to prevent.
Given that distribution accounts for up to 80% of the production cost, a free distribution network can be of substantial value. In FOSS, the goal is not specifically financial compensation, if it were, free distribution with no financial renumeration would be counter productive. In the case of the Artistic license involved in this case, the goal is a widespread presence of the copyrighted work and crediting of the author. In this cas
Copyright law is a default statute. It only applies if there is no agreement. The presence of an agreement - abided by or not, invokes contract law - per the spin on the Sun V MS case.
Also, the GPL's explicit statement is a breach of contract clause - essentially revoking all rights of distribution if the terms are not satisfied. Without a specific clause, penalties are determined under contract law. Material breaches of a contract do not automatically void the contract. That type of fallback must be explicitly stated.
If you redistribute without permission, you're breaking copyright-law.
The issue is I do have permission, just not under the terms I'm doing it. That's the very fine edge of the case. Which side the judge will come down on is up in the air, and I suspect it will have a lot to do with the exact wording of the license involved.
The whole issue is that when Sun released Java and allowed implementation, they used essentially an open license without the free to modify clause - companies were free to implement and distribute Java so long as the behavior didn't change. MS modified the code - the whole E^3 issue. When Sun sued under copyright violations, the court determined that MS did in fact have a license, the open license Sun provided, and that the proper venue was contract law, not copyright law.
It might not be what you expect, but it is a valid position from the courts point of view. Contracts overwrite copyright law. If there is a contract in place, then the contract's terms govern the transactions not the copyright law. GPL specifically has a breach clause - it says breach this & the penalty is voiding of your license, and copyright law governs the transaction. Most of the other OSS licenses do not have a breach of contract clause in them. Including the one in question.
Also don't forget, when you accept my terms for the OSS license, I get a distribution channel as a consideration.
Slashdot Mirror
Um when every major record label has at least 1 "promoter" charged with fraud & racketeering for "buying" airtime from DJs, it's not about hard work or the expense of producing good product. It's about not being able to flat out buy enough airtime to get into the market. Some of these "promoters" were spending as much bribing DJs to play specific songs as the company was buying actual airtime for advertisements.
Certainly it's legal to form such a company. The issue becomes whether or not you can accomplish that act in a legal manner. Lahnam Act restrictions are supposed to limit the ability of one company to interfere with another companies profitability, IE using FUD/slander/legal bluffs to scare away customers. However, a non-profit organization would be exempt from many of those rules - so long as they don't cross into actual slander/fraud etc. Organizing rotating protests outside the offices of the RIAA & it's constituent members is perfectly legal. Talking to the press, writing op-ed pieces, etc are also legal. Even building a Non-Profit around constructing an effective boycott would all be acceptable.
Check the entimology of the word, piracy has been associated with printing since the 1700s.
Check your notes on serving a summons etc. In MA it's perfectly valid to simply drop it off at the last known residence (there are some restrictions on how long they stayed there & how long they've been gone) and then sign the service documents as having done so.
Per the Discovery Channel, the price of sexual favors from a hooker hasn't changed relative to the price of bread since Rome was busy invading the British Isles. Interesting people those Romans, the soldiers had coins printed up with sexual positions on one side & amounts on the other, that way they didn't need to speak the local language to get what they wanted.
you get charged with the weight of the blotter paper not just the drug.
When the paper weighs in orders of magnitude higher than the dosage, that's a huge difference.
- Suspect proceeded to make a date for sex with assumed 13 yr old
Entrapment boils down to who was leading the incident. If it was the cop, it's entrapment, if she just let him dig his own hole, that's a good sting.Stings like this are usually supervised/coordinated by a member of the DA's office in order to ensure that legal entrapment doesn't occur.IE did the officer propose he come down to have sex, or did he? Did he initiate the IM, or did she? If she initiated the actual IM was it in response to a request of his in the open chat?
FWIW, I think that stings are a better way of dealing with a lot of types of crimes than just waiting around. The FBI, supposedly, has several people who do nothing but pretend to be hit-men. All they do is wait to be contacted by someone wanting someone else whacked, then they go through all the steps - right up until the money hit's their hands. Just because law enforcement makes themselves available to assist you in hanging yourself, doesn't mean they are entrapping you.
What you don't think that Paris has script writers? Lisa's are just better at it.
The law, as I skimmed it, specifically indicates that it is required to be targeted. You have to solicit a specific individual, blogging is broadcasting. It also never says e-mail. It's always 'electronic mail messages or files.' If people want to interpret that as email, that's fine, but it's broader than that - the way it's worded SMS, IM, and faxes also are covered.
There is a fine line here that cops & DA's do understand. It's the difference between a sting and entrapment. Sometimes the difference is only 1 word in a question, but it's a difference. Generally the difference in a sting is that the cop is passive, only responding to the questions & actions of the target. This allows the target to lead the conversation where they want to go, and protects the operation against allegations of entrapment.
As for
From what I read, they hung out in a chatroom & waited to be contacted - they didn't contact this guy, he contacted them. They passed him information regarding a faux-persona which was clearly identified as underage. He made a date - for sex - with a person he believed to be 13. It's no more entrapment than putting a cop out on the streetcorner dressed like a hooker. What you see, isn't what you get - but the solicitation charge is based on what you tried to get.(7) "Electronic mail message" means an electronic message or computer file that is transmitted between two or more telecommunications devices; computers; computer networks, regardless of whether the network is a local, regional, or global network; or electronic devices capable of receiving electronic messages, regardless of whether the message is converted to hard copy format after receipt, viewed upon transmission, or stored for later retrieval.
That pretty much defines an IM. So as far as the legislatures went, they did a good job. With this definition, SMS, IM, faxes, SKYPE, video-teleconferencing, and E-Mail are all covered, along with pretty much any other form of digital communication. Heck it even covers converting the msg to a JPG & sending it with no ASCII text.
Of course goatse is much to easy to sucker people into if they can't read the site. I would recommend only 1/2 points for people who can't read the site.
How about if someone pulls a blue bunny & blackholes MS at their Peering Point?
Everyone's MS goes down when validation comes due - figure 3-4% on any given day?
Russia and EU governments have already expressed concerns over these kinds of issues, not to mention that if the capability is in Vista, then MS can be forced to implement it at the whim of the US government - add some geolocation code to the Vista server & everyone in France is a pirate.
I said no text
I install things in local-user-space all the time. Makes my life a lot easier to test new software when it's sandboxed into my userspace instead of the general system bin directory. Anything I am demoing goes into my ~/programs directory- that way if there is a conflict, pulling it doesn't yank the standard libraries.
Check your TOS with your ISP again. Many of them have prohibitions against running servers off of your dynamic IP address. Most of that is holdover from having a 'server' defined you as a business user, but it's still there. I know that RCN shut down Port 80 inbound following Code red because there was more virus traffic than actual requests - it's staggering how many people are running IIS without knowing it. At one point they also blocked all port 25 traffic not directed to the official network mail servers [excluding static IP customers]. There were craploads of complaints, but the right to do so was clearly marked in the TOS.
FWIU, Linux would not be able to be distributed in the US, or other country that the patent is considered valid in.
Which statues? Local? Federal? Copyright, contract, Criminal? They are often overlapping and frequently conflicting. It is exactly the job of the judge to determine which of these apply to a given situation. Doing so does not "invent new laws on the fly", just because you disagree with a decision doesn't make it wrong. As to only a judge limiting the power of another judge, I simply state that impeachment proceedings are not held by other judges.
Check again, ruling against precedent is a very good way to get your ruling overturned. One of the reasons judges are appointed not elected is that they can avoid playing games with their rulings to get re-elected. Yes, precedent can be overturned, but doing so normally requires several small cases which each nibble a bit of the foundation for the precedent followed by a final case to create new precedent.
The judiciary didn't drop the issue, the Attorney Generals office caved, not the Judiciary. The difference is that Bush's administration said back off & agreed to pathetic reperations instead of following the course suggested by the judge in the case. The Judge doesn't get to have much say when the prosecution caves.
and
What you can do, is really irrelevant. As a consideration, that it exists is enough to satisfy a contract.
The goals of the author can be inferred from the license they choose. The Artistic License is a fairly open license. It has multiple options with regard to compliance with distribution, the constant is retention of the original copyright notices. Retaining credit
When you start with the statement that MS simply purchased a decision, there's not a lot of room for rational discussion, unless you would like to show proof of questionable financial transactions.....
Why, thats great, we can just come to you to get our decisions in the future - no need for this whole court thinga-ma-bobbie.
It is the courts job to decide which forms of law take precedent. There are frequently statutory civil laws regarding issues which can be overruled by specific grants of authority or contracts specifically detailing deviations from the statutory baseline. One example, which is becoming more common is pre-nuptial agreements. Statutory code indicates - in most US states - that the assets of a married couple are split 50/50. A prenuptial agreement can alter that in any way. When prenups are voided by a court, they are usually done so on the grounds that the contract itself is void do to inherant imbalances or technicalities in the contract itself - not because statutory law rules.
Hmm, lets start with the fact that the ruling was issued in January of 2001. It's not a current whim of the judiciary, it's a 5.5 yr old case.
A statute that specifically indicates that contract law takes precedent over copyright law, not likely - if there were, then it wouldn't have needed a ruling.
However, if contract law does not take precedent over Copyright law, then there is no means to create a distribution channel. If a copyright holder can go to court and say I'm violating his copyright, and contract law doesn't trump copyright law, then that license I contracted for at $50M for is worthless.
Now, if instead of statutes you would like precedent, then we can go for:
Given that distribution accounts for up to 80% of the production cost, a free distribution network can be of substantial value. In FOSS, the goal is not specifically financial compensation, if it were, free distribution with no financial renumeration would be counter productive. In the case of the Artistic license involved in this case, the goal is a widespread presence of the copyrighted work and crediting of the author. In this cas
Also, the GPL's explicit statement is a breach of contract clause - essentially revoking all rights of distribution if the terms are not satisfied. Without a specific clause, penalties are determined under contract law. Material breaches of a contract do not automatically void the contract. That type of fallback must be explicitly stated.
The issue is I do have permission, just not under the terms I'm doing it. That's the very fine edge of the case. Which side the judge will come down on is up in the air, and I suspect it will have a lot to do with the exact wording of the license involved.
Depends on how the license is written. GPL says that failure to follow revokes the license, not all of them do.
terminating a license doesn't retroactively initiate copyright violations.
The whole issue is that when Sun released Java and allowed implementation, they used essentially an open license without the free to modify clause - companies were free to implement and distribute Java so long as the behavior didn't change. MS modified the code - the whole E^3 issue. When Sun sued under copyright violations, the court determined that MS did in fact have a license, the open license Sun provided, and that the proper venue was contract law, not copyright law.
It might not be what you expect, but it is a valid position from the courts point of view. Contracts overwrite copyright law. If there is a contract in place, then the contract's terms govern the transactions not the copyright law. GPL specifically has a breach clause - it says breach this & the penalty is voiding of your license, and copyright law governs the transaction. Most of the other OSS licenses do not have a breach of contract clause in them. Including the one in question.
Also don't forget, when you accept my terms for the OSS license, I get a distribution channel as a consideration.