Its amazing how many people don't understand how this works. There is a treaty, of which the United States, GB, and Australia are all signatories, that creates certain baselines for cybercrime. Since the treaty process was started by the Council of Europe, its rather disingenious to blame all of the resulting statutory implementations on the US. Yes, we did have a large part in the writing, but we were not the only ones who did, and the statutes that each country wrote as a result were their own doing. Yes, the US doesn't always play well with others (WTO, anyone), but the cybercrime treaty is good law, and in accordance with traditional common law principles. If you stand in Canada, and shoot a man in Michigan, you can be extradited to Michigan, if Canada decides that's the most effective method. Same thing here. If you hack a US server, even if you are in the UK, the UK can send you to the US for trial. Jurisdiction is commonly based on the effect of the crime, not just the origin. In this case, I doubt there is an applicable treaty, as the US Supreme Court would frown on restrictions of parody, and likely strike down Congressional implementation of any statute. Likewise, the Thai government could attempt a civil suit in US court, but I doubt that is going to carry much weight. Its also perfectly acceptable for Thailand to ban YouTube from doing business in Thailand absent a representative in Thailand for just this purpose, but if YouTube merely posts the videos, and Thais come to the videos, it will be difficult for Thailand to respond.
Actually, the crime committed was under the Council of Europe Cybercrime treaty, and one of the provisions is extradition. It merely makes sense in our networked world to have treaties that allow for extrajudicial criminal invesitgations. Otherwise, criminals would sit in a country with the most lax laws, and conduct obviously criminal activities against other nations, whose hands would be tied. With regard to hate speech, that was placed in a seperate treaty so that the US would not have to sign it, or more accurately, so the US could sign the other provisions of the treaty. As hate crime legislation is against the 1st Amendment in the US, even if the Senate ratified the treaty, the Supreme Court would hold it invalid. So, that is why there is a difference.
I'm not 100% sure what you are asking. It seems to be more a question of how do we prevent people from revoking the GPL, instead of how do we revoke the GPL. Let me lay out some points, although I am not an expert on the GPL, and take this at your own risk, and I'm not a lawyer. First, you can contract for a license. You can enforce that contract. However, a license is not a contract. I can give it away. Most people believe that any contract enforcement for a license would result in damages, not specific performance of the license, although case law is sparse on that specific point. That difference may seem subtle, but it is really important, especially in the realm of open source software, where proving consideration is dicey. You can make an estoppel claim. Say I license something to you, such as a piece of land. I promise not to revoke that lease and you rely on that promise, for instance, by improving the land. Assuming the court doesn't determine that we've moved into a lease and merely called it a license (which is possible. You can call something a license all you want, but if it doesn't meet the legal definition, a court will call it what it really is), the court will make the license irrevocable. If I do revoke it, it will either order specific performance in that I continue to license that land, or force me to pay you damages. So, any license, that on its face says can't be revoked, might fall under estoppel, although, again, the case law is sparse and this is a best guess as to how courts will interpret it. Its also possible that they will say the license in question isn't really a license, they may say that you can't give up the ability to revoke in such a general manner, or they may apply estoppel. Its hard to tell. Does that in any way address your question?
Actually, by definition, a license is revokable at any time, regardless of the terms of the contract. There can be some estoppel issues over time, but that's an exception, not a rule.
Because it did come out. How can she ask that kids applying not lie on their resumes if she did? It creates a standard that would make admissions to MIT almost impossible to administer. If it hadn't become public, maybe MIT could have dealt with the issue, although I'm not sure I would be comfortable as her supervisor continuing to supervise someone who lied on such a fundamental thing. You'd never know what else she lied about, and trust is important in all working relationships. Yeah, her 28 years of service and award show that a degree isn't that important for that kind of job, but honesty and credibility with the high schoolers are, and she's lost both of those.
I agree with you; I wasn't making a normative claim, just explaining why the push originally happened. If copyright provided adequate protection, we would not have seen a push for software patents. Why try and pass new laws if existing ones provide the protection you need? Again, though, I am fully against patenting software, or any other mathematical equation. To me, they boil down to something found in nature.
Copyright law only covers a verbatim copy of software. As long as your re-write it, you can keep the same logic, and not pay anything to the company. That's why there was originally a push for software patents; so people couldn't copy the logic. Trade secret laws were designed for exactly this type of thing.
True, but your jury is not skilled in the art, and the question is whether they will give credence to that claim from a potentially self serving Apple witness. Regardless of how obvious something is on/., it may not be obvious to twelve ranchers in that district in Texas.
The EU has already pushed too far. I personally refuse to use MS products, so I'm not a MS fan, but the EU has gone too far in interfering with the market. Yes, the US has gone too far in "promoting" innovation through patents, but the EU has swung too far the other way. Besides, if you won't allow software patents (which I am against), then you should allow software to be a trade secret. If you are concerned about the monopoly, how about all governments use an open standard for all government business? Then, companies that want to do business with the government will switch, and things will cascade down. Governments have enough power as market actors, as opposed to market regulators, to affect things without being so heavy handed.
IANAPL, but after reading this patent, it seems to apply more to a system of desktops, such as KDE uses, as opposed to a tabbed environment. Of course, it is rather broad, and you could squeeze tabbed browsing into it I suppose. By the same token, you could squeeze most windowed systems that allow the windows to overlap and not lose their state.
There are far worse threats to privacy than Google. Watch out for continued government laws that require ISPs of all flavors to maintain data for long periods of time, and to turn it over to law enforcement for less and less stringent requirements. If you are worried about your privacy, don't sign up for the stupid service. Rotate your search engines. Use random Wi-Fi hotspots. If people want their privacy protected, they need to take responsibility for it. You reduce your privacy, and you get free services and make some services easier to use. Most people are ok with that. Whether its because they don't care about their privacy or they are stupid doesn't really matter. They made a choice, they don't need advocates fighting to put the cat back in the bag. They most certainly don't need corporations looking out for their privacy interests, unless its a selling point. Businesses provide services and make money. They don't take care of you. Take responsibility for yourself.
I was just reading a law review article on using threats to internet intermediateries to censor speech when the 1st Amendment would prevent direct censorship. Evidently, the Supreme Court ruled on this practice back when McCarthy was trying to use private entities to censor supposed communists. Hopefully, the case law will catch up to the technology, and we can ignore these idiots. See:155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 11 for complete article.
State judges are elected. Trapping them would be very interesting to their future opponents, I am sure. No one should be afraid of angering judges with legitimate means and for legitimate ends. That is why most federal judges tend to look down on state judges, for better or for worse. I would like to see a PAC present some of your evidence to voters during the next election period. That would hit the judges were it hurts, and send a signal to others.
This assumes a level of optical recognition that is missing in current robots. Also, once you let these things go, there is a ton of reliance on the programming and the technology. In my opinion, there should be no autonomous robots on the battlefield. Drones are one thing, with the pilot safe elsewhere, but completely automated robots are another.
I will assume that VIOP will indemnify Vonage when they lose a patent case in court, but what about the third patent Vonage "infringed" upon? What services will they have to restrict in order to avoid violating that patent?
True, but some previous releases of Windows did drive computer sales and had large numbers after such a short time. Windows 95, for instance. I don't think any reasonable predictions about Vista expected the same thing, but some unreasonable ones did.
If you disable explorer.exe, do you still have access to all of the WIN32 API? Is there a one to one correspondance to KDE's windowing environment, or will Windows apps call on the wrong library when trying to initiate?
Actually, as an infantry officer, I prefer the monocular. If you get whited-out, you still have one good eye. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you are used to it, the monocular is an excellent system.
Actually, almost all criminal prosecution has been limited to uploaders, and civil litigation has been used against downloaders. There is certainly no legal restriction for this, just the way the government and RIAA have decided to address the issue. And since you are not a criminal until you have been convicted in court, and the government has declined to prosecute downloaders, downloading music isn't really criminal even if the statute makes it so. Besides, the RIAA couldn't settle a criminal prosecution; once it got to a prosecutor, the prosecutor is the one with that right.
By having a rich variety to consume from. If this case goes forward and Viacom wins, then sites with similar business models will either become much more restrictive or disappear entirely, and that is bad for consumers.
They know Grokster doesn't really apply. They are pushing the envelope, and hoping to widen the precedent. If they can, it makes future legal battles much easier. Of course, it also eliminates DMCA protection for anyone who makes a profit, thus eliminating the only thing about the DMCA that was good for consumers.
Actually, the Supreme Court addressed it in Missouri v. Holland, 252 US 416 (1920). Its pretty clear law that Congress can ratify a treaty, and it has the rule of law as long as it does not explicitly violate the Constitution, for instance by infringing on free speech. Infringing on States' rights are perfectly acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
Its amazing how many people don't understand how this works. There is a treaty, of which the United States, GB, and Australia are all signatories, that creates certain baselines for cybercrime. Since the treaty process was started by the Council of Europe, its rather disingenious to blame all of the resulting statutory implementations on the US. Yes, we did have a large part in the writing, but we were not the only ones who did, and the statutes that each country wrote as a result were their own doing. Yes, the US doesn't always play well with others (WTO, anyone), but the cybercrime treaty is good law, and in accordance with traditional common law principles. If you stand in Canada, and shoot a man in Michigan, you can be extradited to Michigan, if Canada decides that's the most effective method. Same thing here. If you hack a US server, even if you are in the UK, the UK can send you to the US for trial. Jurisdiction is commonly based on the effect of the crime, not just the origin. In this case, I doubt there is an applicable treaty, as the US Supreme Court would frown on restrictions of parody, and likely strike down Congressional implementation of any statute. Likewise, the Thai government could attempt a civil suit in US court, but I doubt that is going to carry much weight. Its also perfectly acceptable for Thailand to ban YouTube from doing business in Thailand absent a representative in Thailand for just this purpose, but if YouTube merely posts the videos, and Thais come to the videos, it will be difficult for Thailand to respond.
Actually, the crime committed was under the Council of Europe Cybercrime treaty, and one of the provisions is extradition. It merely makes sense in our networked world to have treaties that allow for extrajudicial criminal invesitgations. Otherwise, criminals would sit in a country with the most lax laws, and conduct obviously criminal activities against other nations, whose hands would be tied. With regard to hate speech, that was placed in a seperate treaty so that the US would not have to sign it, or more accurately, so the US could sign the other provisions of the treaty. As hate crime legislation is against the 1st Amendment in the US, even if the Senate ratified the treaty, the Supreme Court would hold it invalid. So, that is why there is a difference.
I'm not 100% sure what you are asking. It seems to be more a question of how do we prevent people from revoking the GPL, instead of how do we revoke the GPL. Let me lay out some points, although I am not an expert on the GPL, and take this at your own risk, and I'm not a lawyer. First, you can contract for a license. You can enforce that contract. However, a license is not a contract. I can give it away. Most people believe that any contract enforcement for a license would result in damages, not specific performance of the license, although case law is sparse on that specific point. That difference may seem subtle, but it is really important, especially in the realm of open source software, where proving consideration is dicey. You can make an estoppel claim. Say I license something to you, such as a piece of land. I promise not to revoke that lease and you rely on that promise, for instance, by improving the land. Assuming the court doesn't determine that we've moved into a lease and merely called it a license (which is possible. You can call something a license all you want, but if it doesn't meet the legal definition, a court will call it what it really is), the court will make the license irrevocable. If I do revoke it, it will either order specific performance in that I continue to license that land, or force me to pay you damages. So, any license, that on its face says can't be revoked, might fall under estoppel, although, again, the case law is sparse and this is a best guess as to how courts will interpret it. Its also possible that they will say the license in question isn't really a license, they may say that you can't give up the ability to revoke in such a general manner, or they may apply estoppel. Its hard to tell. Does that in any way address your question?
Actually, by definition, a license is revokable at any time, regardless of the terms of the contract. There can be some estoppel issues over time, but that's an exception, not a rule.
Because it did come out. How can she ask that kids applying not lie on their resumes if she did? It creates a standard that would make admissions to MIT almost impossible to administer. If it hadn't become public, maybe MIT could have dealt with the issue, although I'm not sure I would be comfortable as her supervisor continuing to supervise someone who lied on such a fundamental thing. You'd never know what else she lied about, and trust is important in all working relationships. Yeah, her 28 years of service and award show that a degree isn't that important for that kind of job, but honesty and credibility with the high schoolers are, and she's lost both of those.
I agree with you; I wasn't making a normative claim, just explaining why the push originally happened. If copyright provided adequate protection, we would not have seen a push for software patents. Why try and pass new laws if existing ones provide the protection you need? Again, though, I am fully against patenting software, or any other mathematical equation. To me, they boil down to something found in nature.
Copyright law only covers a verbatim copy of software. As long as your re-write it, you can keep the same logic, and not pay anything to the company. That's why there was originally a push for software patents; so people couldn't copy the logic. Trade secret laws were designed for exactly this type of thing.
True, but your jury is not skilled in the art, and the question is whether they will give credence to that claim from a potentially self serving Apple witness. Regardless of how obvious something is on /., it may not be obvious to twelve ranchers in that district in Texas.
The EU has already pushed too far. I personally refuse to use MS products, so I'm not a MS fan, but the EU has gone too far in interfering with the market. Yes, the US has gone too far in "promoting" innovation through patents, but the EU has swung too far the other way. Besides, if you won't allow software patents (which I am against), then you should allow software to be a trade secret. If you are concerned about the monopoly, how about all governments use an open standard for all government business? Then, companies that want to do business with the government will switch, and things will cascade down. Governments have enough power as market actors, as opposed to market regulators, to affect things without being so heavy handed.
IANAPL, but after reading this patent, it seems to apply more to a system of desktops, such as KDE uses, as opposed to a tabbed environment. Of course, it is rather broad, and you could squeeze tabbed browsing into it I suppose. By the same token, you could squeeze most windowed systems that allow the windows to overlap and not lose their state.
There are far worse threats to privacy than Google. Watch out for continued government laws that require ISPs of all flavors to maintain data for long periods of time, and to turn it over to law enforcement for less and less stringent requirements. If you are worried about your privacy, don't sign up for the stupid service. Rotate your search engines. Use random Wi-Fi hotspots. If people want their privacy protected, they need to take responsibility for it. You reduce your privacy, and you get free services and make some services easier to use. Most people are ok with that. Whether its because they don't care about their privacy or they are stupid doesn't really matter. They made a choice, they don't need advocates fighting to put the cat back in the bag. They most certainly don't need corporations looking out for their privacy interests, unless its a selling point. Businesses provide services and make money. They don't take care of you. Take responsibility for yourself.
I was just reading a law review article on using threats to internet intermediateries to censor speech when the 1st Amendment would prevent direct censorship. Evidently, the Supreme Court ruled on this practice back when McCarthy was trying to use private entities to censor supposed communists. Hopefully, the case law will catch up to the technology, and we can ignore these idiots. See:155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 11 for complete article.
State judges are elected. Trapping them would be very interesting to their future opponents, I am sure. No one should be afraid of angering judges with legitimate means and for legitimate ends. That is why most federal judges tend to look down on state judges, for better or for worse. I would like to see a PAC present some of your evidence to voters during the next election period. That would hit the judges were it hurts, and send a signal to others.
The political process working for the people?
This assumes a level of optical recognition that is missing in current robots. Also, once you let these things go, there is a ton of reliance on the programming and the technology. In my opinion, there should be no autonomous robots on the battlefield. Drones are one thing, with the pilot safe elsewhere, but completely automated robots are another.
I will assume that VIOP will indemnify Vonage when they lose a patent case in court, but what about the third patent Vonage "infringed" upon? What services will they have to restrict in order to avoid violating that patent?
True, but some previous releases of Windows did drive computer sales and had large numbers after such a short time. Windows 95, for instance. I don't think any reasonable predictions about Vista expected the same thing, but some unreasonable ones did.
If you disable explorer.exe, do you still have access to all of the WIN32 API? Is there a one to one correspondance to KDE's windowing environment, or will Windows apps call on the wrong library when trying to initiate?
Why would you run another desktop on top of Windows? Wouldn't you take a performance hit for running two desktops, in essence?
No, the PVS-14 only covers one eye.
Actually, as an infantry officer, I prefer the monocular. If you get whited-out, you still have one good eye. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you are used to it, the monocular is an excellent system.
Actually, almost all criminal prosecution has been limited to uploaders, and civil litigation has been used against downloaders. There is certainly no legal restriction for this, just the way the government and RIAA have decided to address the issue. And since you are not a criminal until you have been convicted in court, and the government has declined to prosecute downloaders, downloading music isn't really criminal even if the statute makes it so. Besides, the RIAA couldn't settle a criminal prosecution; once it got to a prosecutor, the prosecutor is the one with that right.
By having a rich variety to consume from. If this case goes forward and Viacom wins, then sites with similar business models will either become much more restrictive or disappear entirely, and that is bad for consumers.
They know Grokster doesn't really apply. They are pushing the envelope, and hoping to widen the precedent. If they can, it makes future legal battles much easier. Of course, it also eliminates DMCA protection for anyone who makes a profit, thus eliminating the only thing about the DMCA that was good for consumers.
Actually, the Supreme Court addressed it in Missouri v. Holland, 252 US 416 (1920). Its pretty clear law that Congress can ratify a treaty, and it has the rule of law as long as it does not explicitly violate the Constitution, for instance by infringing on free speech. Infringing on States' rights are perfectly acceptable.