I believe you are thinking of the settlement details, which are usually not part of the court documents. Thus the "out of court" part of the name.
As other posters note, as soon as it is ordered by the court or submitted to the court, unless it is sealed, it's part of the court (and thus public) record - put into the public domain. Witness the SCO vs IBM, SCO vs Novell, etc. documents published on Groklaw. Those cases are still in pre-trial motions (not necessarily still in pre-trial discovery, even if SCO would wish it so).
Regardless, Comes vs Microsoft was actually in the trial phase. There were jurors and everything!
Are they saying that "Hey, we've had to ban 100,000's of accounts because people are using your products and we want you to pay us back for those 100,000 accounts. Lets see, that's 100,000 accounts at $15 / month and the average account is active for 1 year. So, pay us $18,000,000."
Unlikely that a villain would sink a full year's cost into a subscription they're farming (either for gold, or to make an account to sell). Risk management in their business plan.
And those folks who DO subscribe that far in advance are less likely to endanger their accounts.
[i]Sorry but the pharmaceutical companies should be sending them the drugs for free.[/i]
[i]can't we come up with some GPL'ish license to free any product based on this data?[/i]
To misquote Henny Penny...
"who will help me identify this virus?"
Indonesia provides the virus samples, sure.
"who will help do the research on the vaccine?"
Indonesia would if it had the expertise. They'd probably do it "in house" if they could.
"who will help me manufacture and distribute the vaccine?"
Does Indonesia have the facilities? I do not know. But if it costs X per unit, simply giving the vaccine 'recipe' back to Indonesia for free doesn't magically enable them to make it.
The pharmaceutical companies can't (as a general rule) afford to simply give vaccine recipes away completely free, as they'd be out the R&D costs. Same way Sourceforge projects die due to lack of funding - the engineers have to eat and pay rent, same as the rest of us.
However, if Indonesia "outsourced" the research, making the vaccine "work for hire" as it were, it COULD do as it wished with it, including free distribution. Assuming they could afford to make and distribute it.
Or the pharma companies could write it all off as promotional/charitable expense. Or the UN could sponsor it.
I'm just sayin', y'know, that there ARE ways around paying ruinous (profitable) prices, but that there ARE expenses involved that you can't simply wave the "I hate IP laws" stick at and make disappear.
It's real value is to use as an additional charge once a violator has been caught. It keep the real habitual offenders in jail longer
And that, I submit, is a flaw in the legal system. If you want violators to spend more time for a second or Nth offense, craft the punishment for the specific laws they commit in that fashion. Don't invent new excuses to keep them in jail longer. Creating a NEW law solely for the purposes of entrapping people who violate other laws is unjust by nature, even if it generates a socially useful result.
I am against the concept of laws which can only be broken during the act of breaking a different law, or are only enforced after the fact. Charge the violator with aggravating circumstances for the more serious crime.
Isn't that exactly what this is doing?
Nope. As the GP said, they're creating a crime they intend to enforce when they have a bias against the perpetrator. Otherwise, "it's too much trouble to enforce".
And just for drill... how do you prove that you have NOT got a hidden hotmail account somewhere?
Sorry about your luck, Whitney: in the future, don't store your email with Lycos.
Correction: Don't store your email on the web. If you want to keep it, put it in storage you control - a thumb drive, a server run by someone you trust, forwarded to an account whose mail you download locally, take your pick.
For my money, the CSR person would have done well to a) restore the lost email (even if it took flagging the account "premium" for 30 seconds), and b) telling the customer "that was your one mulligan. You should take your email off our servers."
I've found in other venues that "in our discretion", "fees up to", and such like are all "expect the worst" weasel words. It is ALWAYS "what is in the company's favor". And while squealing like a stuck pig sometimes works, it is unreliable, as this case points out..
engages threat ballistic missiles at both endo- and exo-atmospheric altitudes
This is marketing speak for "it's steerable as a rocket, not just with flight surfaces." Note that this would describe most ballistic missiles of all sorts.... and would NOT describe the "Cruise Missile", which depends on lifting surfaces for most of its flight.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe you are thinking of the settlement details, which are usually not part of the court documents. Thus the "out of court" part of the name.
As other posters note, as soon as it is ordered by the court or submitted to the court, unless it is sealed, it's part of the court (and thus public) record - put into the public domain. Witness the SCO vs IBM, SCO vs Novell, etc. documents published on Groklaw. Those cases are still in pre-trial motions (not necessarily still in pre-trial discovery, even if SCO would wish it so).
Regardless, Comes vs Microsoft was actually in the trial phase. There were jurors and everything!
IANAL as well.
Groklaw.com and its viewers have archived the documents and the host is preparing a permanent page for the Comes vs Microsoft trial documents.
... noise might be an issue, though.
agreed. Data in one place is vulnerable to deletion. Data in many places is less so.
Unlikely that a villain would sink a full year's cost into a subscription they're farming (either for gold, or to make an account to sell). Risk management in their business plan.
And those folks who DO subscribe that far in advance are less likely to endanger their accounts.
[i]Sorry but the pharmaceutical companies should be sending them the drugs for free.[/i]
[i]can't we come up with some GPL'ish license to free any product based on this data?[/i]
To misquote Henny Penny...
"who will help me identify this virus?"
Indonesia provides the virus samples, sure.
"who will help do the research on the vaccine?"
Indonesia would if it had the expertise. They'd probably do it "in house" if they could.
"who will help me manufacture and distribute the vaccine?"
Does Indonesia have the facilities? I do not know. But if it costs X per unit, simply giving the vaccine 'recipe' back to Indonesia for free doesn't magically enable them to make it.
The pharmaceutical companies can't (as a general rule) afford to simply give vaccine recipes away completely free, as they'd be out the R&D costs. Same way Sourceforge projects die due to lack of funding - the engineers have to eat and pay rent, same as the rest of us.
However, if Indonesia "outsourced" the research, making the vaccine "work for hire" as it were, it COULD do as it wished with it, including free distribution. Assuming they could afford to make and distribute it.
Or the pharma companies could write it all off as promotional/charitable expense. Or the UN could sponsor it.
I'm just sayin', y'know, that there ARE ways around paying ruinous (profitable) prices, but that there ARE expenses involved that you can't simply wave the "I hate IP laws" stick at and make disappear.
It's real value is to use as an additional charge once a violator has been caught. It keep the real habitual offenders in jail longer
And that, I submit, is a flaw in the legal system. If you want violators to spend more time for a second or Nth offense, craft the punishment for the specific laws they commit in that fashion. Don't invent new excuses to keep them in jail longer. Creating a NEW law solely for the purposes of entrapping people who violate other laws is unjust by nature, even if it generates a socially useful result.
I am against the concept of laws which can only be broken during the act of breaking a different law, or are only enforced after the fact. Charge the violator with aggravating circumstances for the more serious crime.
Isn't that exactly what this is doing?
Nope. As the GP said, they're creating a crime they intend to enforce when they have a bias against the perpetrator. Otherwise, "it's too much trouble to enforce".
And just for drill... how do you prove that you have NOT got a hidden hotmail account somewhere?
Sorry about your luck, Whitney: in the future, don't store your email with Lycos.
Correction: Don't store your email on the web. If you want to keep it, put it in storage you control - a thumb drive, a server run by someone you trust, forwarded to an account whose mail you download locally, take your pick.
For my money, the CSR person would have done well to a) restore the lost email (even if it took flagging the account "premium" for 30 seconds), and b) telling the customer "that was your one mulligan. You should take your email off our servers."
I've found in other venues that "in our discretion", "fees up to", and such like are all "expect the worst" weasel words. It is ALWAYS "what is in the company's favor". And while squealing like a stuck pig sometimes works, it is unreliable, as this case points out..
engages threat ballistic missiles at both endo- and exo-atmospheric altitudes
... and would NOT describe the "Cruise Missile", which depends on lifting surfaces for most of its flight.
N EWS.php
This is marketing speak for "it's steerable as a rocket, not just with flight surfaces." Note that this would describe most ballistic missiles of all sorts.
Link about the Dec 11 test...
http://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/index/THAAD
And you can look up THAAD on wikipedia yourself...