They let Merck off from the full punishment when one of its business units was caught systematically defrauding Medicare because the full punishment, complete blacklisting from Medicare, would have risked bankrupting Merck. This is also the same government that prosecutes some Islamic schmuck who thinks he's giving money to aid Palestinians who are going without (but the "charity" is really a Hamas front), but then gives the "Palestinian Authority" hundreds of millions in funds (much of which is to arm itself) despite the fact that most of the PA's factions are regarded as terrorist groups by the federal government.
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
When you acquire software without following the legal route, you're doing so without "right or acknowledgment."
There is no obfuscation here from the BSA on the simple fact that copyright infringement is a class of theft. The real obfuscation comes from the fact that they use faulty data to make a basis for creating unconscionable contracts or the perception that a user is in a contractual relationship with them (which is not true in many areas since EULAs don't care force of law in most jurisdictions).
But the real hurdle is convincing people that a non-lawyer is entitled to call out a federal judge on their logic in the first place.
That's because most Americans don't read the tortured logic they often employ to justify their decisions. Kelo v. New London would give a normal person a brain aneurysm trying to wrap their mind around the thought process used to justify an upward redistribution of real estate wealth to rich land developers on the basis that their ability to generate better public revenues is a "public purpose" under the 5th amendment.
Those of us who have read a few major court rulings are well aware of how fallible they are. In my opinion, this is a typical example of why mass democracy is deadly to a republic. You have an ignorant, teeming mass of voters who are "deferring to their betters" in the judiciary while simultaneously wanting the privileges that are granted to an informed and responsible electorate.
That they'd pay full price for a phone that is about to be upgraded just because it comes in a color they like.
Think about that. The color of the phone is so important that they will pay full retail, plus a two year contract, for a phone that is about to be "obsolete" just because it's white instead of black.
how seriously can you take anyone talking about "cyberspace" in 2011?"
Give them time. At least the term "information superhighway" has largely disappeared from public discourse. That term was one of those few political terms so cheesy and clueless that it gave me a Tourette's-like tic every time I heard it...
The tort of Malicious Prosecution comes in when no reasonable lawyer would believe that the law supports a case they have brought and the case has caused clear damage to the victims. The EFF should consider this route since Righthaven does not have legally valid ownership of any of Stephens Media's works. Therefore I would be surprised if they had a reasonable legal basis on which to bring suit...
That people actually fear that the government is sufficiently flexible to run something this complicated and sophisticated.
Be much more afraid when they start using terms like "deputizing" to describe a public-private partnership with companies that actually can do this for them.
Instead of complaining about the iPad costing a few thousand publishing jobs, why not ask why there are no companies in the US which can do the fabrication (cost-effectively!) on US soil to take over from the Tsunami-damaged areas of Japan...
They cost too much. $35-$40 for a new Disney combopack? Ridiculous. Most of the other studios are about as bad on new releases. For that price, I might as well go to the video game aisle and pay $60 for a new game is going to last 8-10 hours.
I do buy almost exclusively blu-ray, but thanks to their prices, they've made me stick to a policy of waiting at least a year before buying most movies.
It's likely just a way for them to avoid an age-discrimination lawsuit. Law enforcement, like the military, generally doesn't recruit new people past their early to mid 30s. If he's new, by the time he'd hit 20 years on the force, he'd be staring down 70 (he's 48, according to TFA).
Microsoft, Google and Apple should buy them all, share the IP rights and then liquidate the corporations. Can you imagine the "W.... T.... F....." reaction in this country if the tech industry finally said "ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!!!" and brought to bear its ~$1T in net worth to bear on this $50B pest?
Most people are censorious by nature to one extent or another. People tend to group together with like-minded individuals. Those two factors, plus a system that lets them trash those they dislike is an inherent recipe for disaster.
The solution, if there is one, is a simple filter process:
1. One complaint, per item. 2. Individual review of complaint. 3. If your complaint is blatantly unreasonable, you're banned.
Maybe if a member of "Saudi Flag" got permabanned the first time they filed a false report, things would change a little.
Quite a few school districts are actively pushing creationism against evolution, dismissing global climate change, and many "non-essential" curriculum activities.
That's right, blame it on religion instead of harder targets like teacher's unions that have protected terrible and under-performing teachers. I'm a great example of why they should be broken up. My math education was so bad in "good public schools" that I am now staring down the prospects of having to go to a community college to make sure I have all of the foundations plus engineering calculus down pat before I can apply for a M.S. in any respectable subject.
How about the fact that we throw kids of wildly different abilities into the same class and teach to the lowest common denominator? This means that most classes are incredibly slow for the students who can perform. Heck, this applied even to the AP classes I took in high school.
But oh yeah, it's teaching creationism that's destroying kids' ability to do Math, Physics, etc. A few minor points of contention between religion and science are to blame for why kids are completely turned off.
Positive rights are "more fun" than negative rights, which is why I think most people gravitate to them. This is how we get arguments about how great Cuban healthcare is, while completely ignoring the fact that if you own an unlicensed cell phone in Cuba you will quite literally be facing "reeducation through hard labor" or worse. The left has almost completely abandoned negative rights except when someone does something to a protected group that is bad enough to make a liberal say "there ought to be a law..." (and by coincidence, there was, in the Constitution).
Instead of focusing on rights to this or that material thing, how about getting hot and bothered about the poor not having these rights in most of the world:
1. The right to freedom of speech. 2. The right to worship freely. 3. The right to protection from abusive searches and seizures. 4. The right to keep and bear arms for personal defense. 5. The right to a public, honest and open trial with legal defense. 6. The right to not be tortured. 7. Habeus corpus as a human right.
800,000 people in the US suddenly not working and not getting paychecks isn't a serious issue to you?
They're on unpaid leave, likely for a few weeks. I know this may come as a shock to a lot of slashdotters, but federal employees and contractors are substantially better paid than the national average. If they can't survive for a few weeks while Congress sorts this mess out, then they deserve it.
The federal shutdown is only affecting 800,000 employees out of a few million uniformed servicemen, civilian employees and contractors. I would be surprised if it's even 25% of the federal workforce.
What this shutdown means is that until the budget goes through, the feds aren't buying any new toys and those considered "non-essential" to the mission of their agency (or department, in some cases) will be treated like dead weight.
Ironically, this would be an excellent time for an audit of the federal labor force and contracts to see who should be permanently let go and/or have their contract torn up.
They're called "scavengers" because the reporter sympathizes with them. Typically because there's a whole liberal narrative about the noble poor who would NEVER, EVER steal anything for pleasure... just for bare minimum subsistence. Much like how we know that when a poor man robs a middle class family of their electronics, it's axiomatic that he's only stealing them so he can pawn them for food and medicine money for his starving children...
They'd rather use a cipher created by ancient pagans than one created by a nominally Christian culture (Christianity being allegedly a protected, semi-respected religion under Sharia).
The music industry's official distribution channels have come down to Target, Walmart, Apple and Amazon for most of their sales. I suppose there's "FYE," but I can't remember the last time I was in one.
Of those four, Amazon is probably the least evil in terms of what it does to suppliers. Walmart in particular is legendary for cackling like the wicked witch as it tightens the vice around its suppliers' nuts just for shits and giggles. Apple is not as bad, but is run by a man who wouldn't hesitate to make an example of a record label that screwed with it in a way that they deemed "unacceptable."
Really, Amazon is a big stick with which they can beat both Apple and Walmart if they play their cards right. Which is about as likely as the RIAA's executive suing Congress over the DMCA calling DRM an unconstitutional and "socialistic" restraint of trade.
If the federal government were this aggressive in pursuing and prosecuting Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen, Manning probably would have been too scared to have pulled this stunt...
because the government claimed it contained classified information
If I were the defense attorney, I'd be drafting a subpoena right now for the federal staffers who wrote up the document(s) to have them answer three questions:
1) Is this the document you wrote: yes or no. 2) Are these the same classification markings you applied to it: yes or no. 3) Has this document been otherwise tampered with since it left a secure federal facility: yes or no.
If the answers are yes, yes and no respectively, all that'd be left to say on that charge is:
The document was marked unclassified. The document was disseminated properly. The document has not been tampered with. The document is unclassified.
I'm cool with that. Let's add a law that says that if your company steals the source code from a partner's product that as punitive restitution they get a perpetual, non-exclusive right to your entire source control for the product which bundled the stolen goods.
The first church I went to was a Presbyterian church. A very conservative, Calvinist one. Their position was very similar, but they added that all sex outside of God's plan is an abomination to Him. The practical difference is that it's natural, but sinful, to have sex with your girlfriend. If you turn to your own gender, children, animals, etc. that is "more of an abomination" in a practical sense. What it means is that you are truly starting to stray into the darkness; the orientation itself is a symptom of one turning toward Satan in a meaningful way.
Liberals respond to this typically with the assertion that for some people it's inborn and "why would God knowingly create a defective person." To that we conservative Protestants respond that God didn't make them be born a homosexual, but rather the sin nature they inherited afflicted them at birth. In others, it gives them a wicked temper or other burdens with which they must contend.
What liberals haven't faced up to is that homosexuality exists in at least three different forms: congenital predisposition (the theoretical biologically-based minority), childhood trauma (homosexual pedophilia, primarily) and freely chosen deviancy. When you see two otherwise straight women have sex at a college party, that is a perfect example of the third category. It is also the sort of behavior which is unequivocally condemned by Christian churches because it has no mitigating circumstances that warrant a merciful, light-handed approach to correcting.
Let's see. You have four healthy players in a huge market. One buys out another to become the biggest. Now we have only three choices. Less choice leads to less competition. Less competition means they don't have to work as hard for our filthy lucre.
Thanks, captain obvious, for this insight. Stuff like this should be so obvious it could be used on a "voting permit application test" if we ever wanted to truly root out the potential voters so brain dead that they can't be trusted with the franchise...
In only two states in the Union are you legally secure in pointing a loaded weapon at someone you catch in the act of robbing you. In most parts of the country, if a group of guys are loading the entire contents of your home into a moving truck, you become a felon if you even "shoot to wound" one of them. You can't even knee-cap them with a.22, but copyright owners can get $150k statutory damages on the spot for copying a single throwaway picture from a local rag.
I'm a conservative and most of the conservatives who know me used to think I was nuts on copyright law until I began to show them how utterly insane our system is. The closest parallel for the common man is a military legal code that won't allow a soldier to rough up a prisoner who he knows has useful intelligence, but that lets field commanders deploy low-yield tactical nukes on villages that remain neutral.
It's such an inversion of the natural order and justice that it's sickening. We don't allow a man being subjected to an armed robbery to confidently use lethal force on his assailant (note: I am advocating that victims of armed robbery should always be legally authorized to use lethal force to resolve an armed robbery situation), but we let big copyright utterly destroy families over sharing a dozen songs.
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They let Merck off from the full punishment when one of its business units was caught systematically defrauding Medicare because the full punishment, complete blacklisting from Medicare, would have risked bankrupting Merck. This is also the same government that prosecutes some Islamic schmuck who thinks he's giving money to aid Palestinians who are going without (but the "charity" is really a Hamas front), but then gives the "Palestinian Authority" hundreds of millions in funds (much of which is to arm itself) despite the fact that most of the PA's factions are regarded as terrorist groups by the federal government.
One of the definitions of stealing is:
When you acquire software without following the legal route, you're doing so without "right or acknowledgment."
There is no obfuscation here from the BSA on the simple fact that copyright infringement is a class of theft. The real obfuscation comes from the fact that they use faulty data to make a basis for creating unconscionable contracts or the perception that a user is in a contractual relationship with them (which is not true in many areas since EULAs don't care force of law in most jurisdictions).
That's because most Americans don't read the tortured logic they often employ to justify their decisions. Kelo v. New London would give a normal person a brain aneurysm trying to wrap their mind around the thought process used to justify an upward redistribution of real estate wealth to rich land developers on the basis that their ability to generate better public revenues is a "public purpose" under the 5th amendment.
Those of us who have read a few major court rulings are well aware of how fallible they are. In my opinion, this is a typical example of why mass democracy is deadly to a republic. You have an ignorant, teeming mass of voters who are "deferring to their betters" in the judiciary while simultaneously wanting the privileges that are granted to an informed and responsible electorate.
That they'd pay full price for a phone that is about to be upgraded just because it comes in a color they like.
Think about that. The color of the phone is so important that they will pay full retail, plus a two year contract, for a phone that is about to be "obsolete" just because it's white instead of black.
Give them time. At least the term "information superhighway" has largely disappeared from public discourse. That term was one of those few political terms so cheesy and clueless that it gave me a Tourette's-like tic every time I heard it...
The tort of Malicious Prosecution comes in when no reasonable lawyer would believe that the law supports a case they have brought and the case has caused clear damage to the victims. The EFF should consider this route since Righthaven does not have legally valid ownership of any of Stephens Media's works. Therefore I would be surprised if they had a reasonable legal basis on which to bring suit...
That people actually fear that the government is sufficiently flexible to run something this complicated and sophisticated.
Be much more afraid when they start using terms like "deputizing" to describe a public-private partnership with companies that actually can do this for them.
Instead of complaining about the iPad costing a few thousand publishing jobs, why not ask why there are no companies in the US which can do the fabrication (cost-effectively!) on US soil to take over from the Tsunami-damaged areas of Japan...
They cost too much. $35-$40 for a new Disney combopack? Ridiculous. Most of the other studios are about as bad on new releases. For that price, I might as well go to the video game aisle and pay $60 for a new game is going to last 8-10 hours.
I do buy almost exclusively blu-ray, but thanks to their prices, they've made me stick to a policy of waiting at least a year before buying most movies.
It's likely just a way for them to avoid an age-discrimination lawsuit. Law enforcement, like the military, generally doesn't recruit new people past their early to mid 30s. If he's new, by the time he'd hit 20 years on the force, he'd be staring down 70 (he's 48, according to TFA).
Microsoft, Google and Apple should buy them all, share the IP rights and then liquidate the corporations. Can you imagine the "W.... T.... F....." reaction in this country if the tech industry finally said "ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!!!" and brought to bear its ~$1T in net worth to bear on this $50B pest?
Most people are censorious by nature to one extent or another. People tend to group together with like-minded individuals. Those two factors, plus a system that lets them trash those they dislike is an inherent recipe for disaster.
The solution, if there is one, is a simple filter process:
1. One complaint, per item.
2. Individual review of complaint.
3. If your complaint is blatantly unreasonable, you're banned.
Maybe if a member of "Saudi Flag" got permabanned the first time they filed a false report, things would change a little.
That's right, blame it on religion instead of harder targets like teacher's unions that have protected terrible and under-performing teachers. I'm a great example of why they should be broken up. My math education was so bad in "good public schools" that I am now staring down the prospects of having to go to a community college to make sure I have all of the foundations plus engineering calculus down pat before I can apply for a M.S. in any respectable subject.
How about the fact that we throw kids of wildly different abilities into the same class and teach to the lowest common denominator? This means that most classes are incredibly slow for the students who can perform. Heck, this applied even to the AP classes I took in high school.
But oh yeah, it's teaching creationism that's destroying kids' ability to do Math, Physics, etc. A few minor points of contention between religion and science are to blame for why kids are completely turned off.
Positive rights are "more fun" than negative rights, which is why I think most people gravitate to them. This is how we get arguments about how great Cuban healthcare is, while completely ignoring the fact that if you own an unlicensed cell phone in Cuba you will quite literally be facing "reeducation through hard labor" or worse. The left has almost completely abandoned negative rights except when someone does something to a protected group that is bad enough to make a liberal say "there ought to be a law..." (and by coincidence, there was, in the Constitution).
Instead of focusing on rights to this or that material thing, how about getting hot and bothered about the poor not having these rights in most of the world:
1. The right to freedom of speech.
2. The right to worship freely.
3. The right to protection from abusive searches and seizures.
4. The right to keep and bear arms for personal defense.
5. The right to a public, honest and open trial with legal defense.
6. The right to not be tortured.
7. Habeus corpus as a human right.
They're on unpaid leave, likely for a few weeks. I know this may come as a shock to a lot of slashdotters, but federal employees and contractors are substantially better paid than the national average. If they can't survive for a few weeks while Congress sorts this mess out, then they deserve it.
The federal shutdown is only affecting 800,000 employees out of a few million uniformed servicemen, civilian employees and contractors. I would be surprised if it's even 25% of the federal workforce.
What this shutdown means is that until the budget goes through, the feds aren't buying any new toys and those considered "non-essential" to the mission of their agency (or department, in some cases) will be treated like dead weight.
Ironically, this would be an excellent time for an audit of the federal labor force and contracts to see who should be permanently let go and/or have their contract torn up.
They're called "scavengers" because the reporter sympathizes with them. Typically because there's a whole liberal narrative about the noble poor who would NEVER, EVER steal anything for pleasure... just for bare minimum subsistence. Much like how we know that when a poor man robs a middle class family of their electronics, it's axiomatic that he's only stealing them so he can pawn them for food and medicine money for his starving children...
They'd rather use a cipher created by ancient pagans than one created by a nominally Christian culture (Christianity being allegedly a protected, semi-respected religion under Sharia).
The music industry's official distribution channels have come down to Target, Walmart, Apple and Amazon for most of their sales. I suppose there's "FYE," but I can't remember the last time I was in one.
Of those four, Amazon is probably the least evil in terms of what it does to suppliers. Walmart in particular is legendary for cackling like the wicked witch as it tightens the vice around its suppliers' nuts just for shits and giggles. Apple is not as bad, but is run by a man who wouldn't hesitate to make an example of a record label that screwed with it in a way that they deemed "unacceptable."
Really, Amazon is a big stick with which they can beat both Apple and Walmart if they play their cards right. Which is about as likely as the RIAA's executive suing Congress over the DMCA calling DRM an unconstitutional and "socialistic" restraint of trade.
If the federal government were this aggressive in pursuing and prosecuting Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen, Manning probably would have been too scared to have pulled this stunt...
If I were the defense attorney, I'd be drafting a subpoena right now for the federal staffers who wrote up the document(s) to have them answer three questions:
1) Is this the document you wrote: yes or no.
2) Are these the same classification markings you applied to it: yes or no.
3) Has this document been otherwise tampered with since it left a secure federal facility: yes or no.
If the answers are yes, yes and no respectively, all that'd be left to say on that charge is:
The document was marked unclassified.
The document was disseminated properly.
The document has not been tampered with.
The document is unclassified.
QED, mofo.
I'm cool with that. Let's add a law that says that if your company steals the source code from a partner's product that as punitive restitution they get a perpetual, non-exclusive right to your entire source control for the product which bundled the stolen goods.
Fair is fair, Microsoft.
The first church I went to was a Presbyterian church. A very conservative, Calvinist one. Their position was very similar, but they added that all sex outside of God's plan is an abomination to Him. The practical difference is that it's natural, but sinful, to have sex with your girlfriend. If you turn to your own gender, children, animals, etc. that is "more of an abomination" in a practical sense. What it means is that you are truly starting to stray into the darkness; the orientation itself is a symptom of one turning toward Satan in a meaningful way.
Liberals respond to this typically with the assertion that for some people it's inborn and "why would God knowingly create a defective person." To that we conservative Protestants respond that God didn't make them be born a homosexual, but rather the sin nature they inherited afflicted them at birth. In others, it gives them a wicked temper or other burdens with which they must contend.
What liberals haven't faced up to is that homosexuality exists in at least three different forms: congenital predisposition (the theoretical biologically-based minority), childhood trauma (homosexual pedophilia, primarily) and freely chosen deviancy. When you see two otherwise straight women have sex at a college party, that is a perfect example of the third category. It is also the sort of behavior which is unequivocally condemned by Christian churches because it has no mitigating circumstances that warrant a merciful, light-handed approach to correcting.
Let's see. You have four healthy players in a huge market. One buys out another to become the biggest. Now we have only three choices. Less choice leads to less competition. Less competition means they don't have to work as hard for our filthy lucre.
Thanks, captain obvious, for this insight. Stuff like this should be so obvious it could be used on a "voting permit application test" if we ever wanted to truly root out the potential voters so brain dead that they can't be trusted with the franchise...
In only two states in the Union are you legally secure in pointing a loaded weapon at someone you catch in the act of robbing you. In most parts of the country, if a group of guys are loading the entire contents of your home into a moving truck, you become a felon if you even "shoot to wound" one of them. You can't even knee-cap them with a .22, but copyright owners can get $150k statutory damages on the spot for copying a single throwaway picture from a local rag.
I'm a conservative and most of the conservatives who know me used to think I was nuts on copyright law until I began to show them how utterly insane our system is. The closest parallel for the common man is a military legal code that won't allow a soldier to rough up a prisoner who he knows has useful intelligence, but that lets field commanders deploy low-yield tactical nukes on villages that remain neutral.
It's such an inversion of the natural order and justice that it's sickening. We don't allow a man being subjected to an armed robbery to confidently use lethal force on his assailant (note: I am advocating that victims of armed robbery should always be legally authorized to use lethal force to resolve an armed robbery situation), but we let big copyright utterly destroy families over sharing a dozen songs.