It's actually impossible for the computer to know whether you're creating an infinite loop.
Its impossible for a computer program to be constructed which can do so for all cases (hence, the halting problem), but that doesn't mean that its impossible to detect some infinite loops, or to detect constructs which are particularly likely to be infinite loops, either of which could, in theory, be useful features in an IDE.
Spelling/grammar checkers for human language aren't flawless, either, but they still have utility. The fact that perfection in a task is impractical or even provably impossible doesn't rule out useful applications.
However, left to his own devices in his native environment, a human embryo will develop into an autonomous human.
A human embryo has no native environment ("native environment" being the environment in which you are born), and left to its own devices, a human embryo will, fairly certainly, die.
Though I completely agree with you that proper copywrite channels should be persued, a dated envelope with a reputable lawyer attesting to its authenticity should be pretty solid.
Yeah, because in the event of a legal dispute, having your lawyer vouch for you is going to carry a lot of weight.
(Not to mention that the lawyer you've retained as a "document validator", as they will be a key witness in the case, probably won't be able to represent you in the event of dispute, requiring you to hire a second lawyer. Being a law student, I'm not exactly opposed to people popularizing schemes which result in hiring more lawyers than necessary or reasonable -- it is future job security, of sorts -- but this probably isn't a good idea. And its a lot more expensive than just registering a copyright, which is a lot better evidence in court.)
First, you are asking for legal advice. Stop now and walk away from the website. Talk to a lawyer. Do not listen to a storm of layman opinions, all of which are almost certainly wrong.
Second, if you're still reading this, there is no such thing as "IP" in the law. There are copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and possibly a few other things.
Was it your intention to underline the truth of your first point with your second? There is, indeed, a thing called "IP" or "Intellectual Property" in the law, a subset of the broader category of "Intangible Personal Property", itself a subset of "Personal Property" itself a subset of "Property". Each of those categories has common legal features, and each of those categories has more specific subsets with their own particular rules.
Mailing to yourself *does* prove you came up with it first. Whether the proof useful in a dispute is another question that depends on the work itself.
The reason it is generally not useful in a dispute is because it doesn't prove anything; it doesn't prove that you came up with it, and it doesn't (because its fairly easy to falsify by a number of means) prove that you had it at a particular time in the past.
However, it's sufficient for "moral rights", i.e. claiming you did/wrote/invented it first.
Morally, you know you created it and when. You don't need any kind of documentation for that. Proving it to an even slightly skeptical third party, OTOH, is probably not going to be helped much by the mail-it-to-yourself method.
But please try to remember that many writers are doing the best that they can. Jerry Pournelle has been complaining to Scribd for some time, but they just ignore his email messages.
So, Jerry Pournelle can't use Google to find out how to file a proper DMCA takedown or, better yet, find a copyright attorney to do it for him and, if the material isn't taken down "expeditiously", proceed to legal action?
And there's a real chance that it will win if the systems like Scripd are able to hide behind the complexity of the DMCA and drive bookstores out of business
There is complexity in the DMCA, but not much in this aspect of it. The requirements for a proper takedown notice are simple. The effect is simple. And the course of action if it is ignored is simple.
Better yet, have the lawyer prepare a formal disclosure document (or do it yourself). A simple thing that says what your IP is, gets signed by two people with some competency in the general area of your IP, and gets notarized. This documents at least three people able to put the information in your possession at a specific time. Courts like dated, physical evidence.
You could just get a registered copyright for significantly less than the combined fees of the attorney and notary here, which would also provide dated, physical evidence.
However you're ignoring the fact that some of the DMCA notices were for content that was ripped off/stolen/whatever.
Its not being ignored, its irrelevant. The fraudulent ones are still a violation of the law, no matter how many non-fraudulent notices were included along with them.
Let's say I have a photograph, or a television script, or have finally perfected the water-to-gasoline conversion process, or some other piece of non-software but copywritable or patentable IP. I know I want it secured in my name, on this date, in a provable and verifiable way. But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I'm willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me. Any attempts at theft could, would, and must be immediately rebuffed by my offer of proof from when I first secured the IP. What, if any, tool or method is available to me in the digital world?
The digital world is the wrong place to search for a solution. The simplest, most effective (though not, particularly in the case of patents, the cheapest) solution is to simply secure the appropriate legal registration of the IP (a registered copyright, a patent, etc.) and then offer the product under a no-cost license that requires credit and whatever other terms you want to impose.
(Since copyright is automatic, you can technically avoid registration and still be protected, but registration serves the documentation role you are looking for without any technical trickery, and copyright registration isn't particularly expensive.)
As I understand it, the anti-trust settlement doesn't address MS market position directly; it address the usage by MS of its position in order to hinder competition.
The past antitrust settlement is not the issue, the issue is liability (in a separate action) for the vote-buying under antitrust law.
I don't think anybody would mind if MS made a great product that dominated the competition because it was a superior product.
Well, lots of people (including the competition) would mind, but it wouldn't be illegal. Leveraging an existing monopoly in another market to monopolize a market is one illegal way of monopolizing trade, another way (demonstrated by Allied Tube, cited in TFA & TFS) is to corruptly influence a private standard-setting body. The previous MS antitrust case resulting in the settlement centered around a particular case of the former, the issue here is the latter.
Although I consider OOXML to be an abomination, at this point Microsoft could be seen as trying to introduce competition.
Right. Microsoft is just a little-guy competitor trying to break into the office suite market dominated by OpenOffice.org which is virtually without serious competition, not a dominant player desperately trying to fend off a challenge to its dominance.
Use your MS email address to offer bribes to public officials without management knowledge
Actually, if they were public officials rather than a private standard-setting body, Allied Tube wouldn't apply.
For anything to stick, they would have to show that there was some management involvement. A corporation is not one single mind.
A corporation is, however, a single legal person, and to escape liability for the actions of its employees often (especially in a civil rather than criminal case) must demonstrate that those actions were outside the scope of employment, since the carrying out of actions which advance an overt corporate interest by an employee can itself be evidence from which a jury can conclude, barring any contrary evidence, that the action was within the scope of employment notwithstanding the illegality.
Where the action occurred is probably of little consequence to US antitrust law; what will matter is the intended and actual effect on US market position. I think its pretty hard to argue that Microsoft isn't pushing for ISO standardization as a way to reinforce (among other things) the US market position of Office, and Allied Tube suggests that the particular means being used may be antitrust violations in that context.
The process to remove a work is lengthy and emails were apparently not returned.
The process to remove a work is to provide a notice conforming to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), which should take about half an hour if you've actually located infringing content, and by sending that to the registered agent identified on the publicly accessible portion of the website (as required by 17 USC 512(c)(2)), and then check to see if the infringing work is expeditiously removed as required by 17 USC 512(c)(1)(C). If not, file a lawsuit, because the service provider is outside of the DMCA liability shield, and is subject to suit for damages and injunctive relief for the infringment.
If the service provider tries to put you through additional hoops and draw the process out, well, as long as you do what is required and document it, they're the one's left holding the bag.
Anyhow, no amount of actual infringement justifies the illegal (under 17 USC 512(f)) misrepresentation involved in the false claims of copyright ownership and infringement at issue here.
Reading the emails, there is no way that they consitute a valid DMCA takedown notice. Thus, Scribd had no obligation to take anything down. Scribd should have demanded a proper notice or ignored the emails.
Ignoring a takedown notice that falls short of the technical requirements but that identifies the work infringed, the infringing content, and provides contact information has the legal result that the flawed takedown notice may be used to prove the service provider's knowledge of infringement, and thus have the same effect on liability, as if it were a flawless takedown notice (see 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(B)(ii)). Scribd, therefore, was quite likely required, at a minimum, to contact the complaining party for a proper takedown notice, but just taking the material down avoids the mess of paying a lawyer to find out whether or not they actually have to comply and, if not, what they can get away with, contacting the complaining party, etc.
I don't think its fair to act as if Scribd's is morally obligated to know the precise legal boundaries of what they can get away with and push them (unless they have an explicit contractual obligation to their users to do so).
"many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way."
So what you're saying is that yes the site does contain copyrighted materials for which no permission been obtained, and hence it does infringe on the works of some authors?
No, saying that many of the subjects of the supposed DMCA takedown notice were not infringing does not say that the others were infringing; its perfectly consistent with the infringing/non-infringing status of the rest not being readily determinable.
Sorry chief, but ya do the crime, ya do the time.
Whether or not any of the alleged incidents of infringement was accurate, all of the false accusations were material misrepresentations that are actionable under 17 U.S.C. 512(f). So, clearly, your statement here must be an endorsement of, rather than a challenge to, the criticism leveled by GP.
You can't simply make someone disappear when he's in the center of attention.
You can make them really and verifiably dead, however; perhaps under suspicious circumstances, but you can make it difficult to prove anything and discover or invent material to discredit anyone peddling "conspiracy theories" connecting you to it. Which, ultimately, acheives the same result as the whole disappearing thing.
Completely different business model, so the attempted comparison is worthless.
Actually, no. See, the "competitor" to which people turn may well be mail/online ordering from the manufacturer. So the preference that the person go "somewhere else" so that your "competitor" can "go broke" selling computers at a loss may just mean that a competitor who has a business model that allows them to make a profit on selling computers indeed makes a profit, while you eat the cost of a computer sitting on your shelf (and, as a bonus, lost the repeat business of a customer who, while they might only have bought a computer that day, would have returned to buy accessories, software, or non-computer products from you if they had a good experience shopping at your store.)
Driving off customers because they aren't going to buy the ideal set of products at one time may be a good way of making your numbers look good to higher management that analyzes them in a limited manner ("hey, look, I've got a high margin on each transaction!") but its not a particularly smart long-term business strategy.
Insurance is meant to protect you against losses that will overwhelm you.
"Overwhelm" is stated too strongly. Insurance is simply buying predictability.
Like $200k medical bills, your house burning down, or your (income producing) spouse dying. "Extended warranties" on products like iPods or even laptops are an abuse of the customer because it's not going to break anybody if they have to buy a new iPod in 3 years.
On iPods I might agree, as a general rule. Laptops are often fairly critical, and people often don't keep the cash reserves to pay for them, so if they are forced to repair or replace them unexpectedly, the actual cost is likely to be more than the sticker price (due to the cost of credit), or there will be the cost of foregoing them for a time. Insuring a laptop for a cost greater than the cost of replacement times the probability you'll need replacement therefore can be perfectly rational, though the particular cost of any particular extended warranty may or may not be, depending on the circumstances.
If you have the money, why not just bank some $2000 towards replacing the computer?
Arguably, you should, which is why I said: "It doesn't make a lot of sense to insure a computer if you are fairly certain (1) you are going to replace it eventually, and (2) you will always have the reserves to replace it at need in an emergency."
I vaguely remember reading about the human genome being found to contain the genome of viruses that we our bodies had defeated aeons ago, but which had been incorporated into our own genetic code as a result.
That's fairly expected for viruses: virus entire mode of operation is injecting their DNA into cells which then reproduce them (sometimes this destroys the cell, sometimes not). Viral DNA in the genome of a host species isn't, therefore, very surprising (it does require the virus to have at some point infected, non-fatally, a germ cell rather than a somatic cell, but given enough time and population, that's bound to happen a number of times.)
Finding a large segment of the genome of another organism (a virus isn't an organism), though, is more surprising, since that's usually not how we understand organisms to work.
However, just because in this particular case you came out on top (replacement costs were higher than insurance costs) doesn't change the fact that, on average, you lose money when you buy small-scale insurance.
On average, you lose money when you buy insurance regardless of scale. That's, in fact, the whole point of insurance: you pay slightly more than your expected costs up front to negate the risk of unexpected costs greatly in excess of either your expected costs or the insurance cost.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to insure a computer if you are fairly certain (1) you are going to replace it eventually, and (2) you will always have the reserves to replace it at need in an emergency.
OTOH, if may be essential to replace it, and you may not be able to do so out of cash, it may be worth insuring.
So, unless you know ahead of time that the thing you are buying is in some way defective, it's best not to get the insurance. This will lead, on average, to more money in your pocket at the end of the year.
on average, that's true of every kind of insurance, regardless of scale. Insurance is worth it (if it is at all) based on the consequences of the potential unexpected downside it protects you against and the degree to which it mitigates that risk, not because you will on average save money with it. Risk is a real cost, even though its monetary value may be highly subjective.
Most of these places don't do commissions, so it doesn't really effect them one way or another.
Whether or not they do commissions, you can rest assured that corporate is tracking their stores sales numbers, that the stores are tracking internal departments sales numbers, and that the managers are tracking whose doing a good job selling, and that jobs are riding on each of those (and, at the management level at least, even short of jobs riding on it, bonuses are at stake, too.)
Of course, OTOH, in many cases the reason for the pressure is that bonuses, etc., are riding on getting a certain number or proportion of extended warranty or other add-on sales, so the salespeople may feel that its worth it to take a chance of losing a sale to try to push the add-on.
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Its impossible for a computer program to be constructed which can do so for all cases (hence, the halting problem), but that doesn't mean that its impossible to detect some infinite loops, or to detect constructs which are particularly likely to be infinite loops, either of which could, in theory, be useful features in an IDE.
Spelling/grammar checkers for human language aren't flawless, either, but they still have utility. The fact that perfection in a task is impractical or even provably impossible doesn't rule out useful applications.
A human embryo has no native environment ("native environment" being the environment in which you are born), and left to its own devices, a human embryo will, fairly certainly, die.
Yeah, because in the event of a legal dispute, having your lawyer vouch for you is going to carry a lot of weight.
(Not to mention that the lawyer you've retained as a "document validator", as they will be a key witness in the case, probably won't be able to represent you in the event of dispute, requiring you to hire a second lawyer. Being a law student, I'm not exactly opposed to people popularizing schemes which result in hiring more lawyers than necessary or reasonable -- it is future job security, of sorts -- but this probably isn't a good idea. And its a lot more expensive than just registering a copyright, which is a lot better evidence in court.)
Was it your intention to underline the truth of your first point with your second? There is, indeed, a thing called "IP" or "Intellectual Property" in the law, a subset of the broader category of "Intangible Personal Property", itself a subset of "Personal Property" itself a subset of "Property". Each of those categories has common legal features, and each of those categories has more specific subsets with their own particular rules.
The reason it is generally not useful in a dispute is because it doesn't prove anything; it doesn't prove that you came up with it, and it doesn't (because its fairly easy to falsify by a number of means) prove that you had it at a particular time in the past.
Morally, you know you created it and when. You don't need any kind of documentation for that. Proving it to an even slightly skeptical third party, OTOH, is probably not going to be helped much by the mail-it-to-yourself method.
So, Jerry Pournelle can't use Google to find out how to file a proper DMCA takedown or, better yet, find a copyright attorney to do it for him and, if the material isn't taken down "expeditiously", proceed to legal action?
There is complexity in the DMCA, but not much in this aspect of it. The requirements for a proper takedown notice are simple. The effect is simple. And the course of action if it is ignored is simple.
No, because with or without the penalty of perjury, a material misrepresentation is independently actionable under 17 USC 512(f).
You could just get a registered copyright for significantly less than the combined fees of the attorney and notary here, which would also provide dated, physical evidence.
Its not being ignored, its irrelevant. The fraudulent ones are still a violation of the law, no matter how many non-fraudulent notices were included along with them.
Foolish, sure, but also illegal.
The digital world is the wrong place to search for a solution. The simplest, most effective (though not, particularly in the case of patents, the cheapest) solution is to simply secure the appropriate legal registration of the IP (a registered copyright, a patent, etc.) and then offer the product under a no-cost license that requires credit and whatever other terms you want to impose.
(Since copyright is automatic, you can technically avoid registration and still be protected, but registration serves the documentation role you are looking for without any technical trickery, and copyright registration isn't particularly expensive.)
The past antitrust settlement is not the issue, the issue is liability (in a separate action) for the vote-buying under antitrust law.
Well, lots of people (including the competition) would mind, but it wouldn't be illegal. Leveraging an existing monopoly in another market to monopolize a market is one illegal way of monopolizing trade, another way (demonstrated by Allied Tube, cited in TFA & TFS) is to corruptly influence a private standard-setting body. The previous MS antitrust case resulting in the settlement centered around a particular case of the former, the issue here is the latter.
Right. Microsoft is just a little-guy competitor trying to break into the office suite market dominated by OpenOffice.org which is virtually without serious competition, not a dominant player desperately trying to fend off a challenge to its dominance.
Actually, if they were public officials rather than a private standard-setting body, Allied Tube wouldn't apply.
A corporation is, however, a single legal person, and to escape liability for the actions of its employees often (especially in a civil rather than criminal case) must demonstrate that those actions were outside the scope of employment, since the carrying out of actions which advance an overt corporate interest by an employee can itself be evidence from which a jury can conclude, barring any contrary evidence, that the action was within the scope of employment notwithstanding the illegality.
Where the action occurred is probably of little consequence to US antitrust law; what will matter is the intended and actual effect on US market position. I think its pretty hard to argue that Microsoft isn't pushing for ISO standardization as a way to reinforce (among other things) the US market position of Office, and Allied Tube suggests that the particular means being used may be antitrust violations in that context.
The process to remove a work is to provide a notice conforming to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), which should take about half an hour if you've actually located infringing content, and by sending that to the registered agent identified on the publicly accessible portion of the website (as required by 17 USC 512(c)(2)), and then check to see if the infringing work is expeditiously removed as required by 17 USC 512(c)(1)(C). If not, file a lawsuit, because the service provider is outside of the DMCA liability shield, and is subject to suit for damages and injunctive relief for the infringment.
If the service provider tries to put you through additional hoops and draw the process out, well, as long as you do what is required and document it, they're the one's left holding the bag.
Anyhow, no amount of actual infringement justifies the illegal (under 17 USC 512(f)) misrepresentation involved in the false claims of copyright ownership and infringement at issue here.
Ignoring a takedown notice that falls short of the technical requirements but that identifies the work infringed, the infringing content, and provides contact information has the legal result that the flawed takedown notice may be used to prove the service provider's knowledge of infringement, and thus have the same effect on liability, as if it were a flawless takedown notice (see 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(B)(ii)). Scribd, therefore, was quite likely required, at a minimum, to contact the complaining party for a proper takedown notice, but just taking the material down avoids the mess of paying a lawyer to find out whether or not they actually have to comply and, if not, what they can get away with, contacting the complaining party, etc.
I don't think its fair to act as if Scribd's is morally obligated to know the precise legal boundaries of what they can get away with and push them (unless they have an explicit contractual obligation to their users to do so).
No, saying that many of the subjects of the supposed DMCA takedown notice were not infringing does not say that the others were infringing; its perfectly consistent with the infringing/non-infringing status of the rest not being readily determinable.
Whether or not any of the alleged incidents of infringement was accurate, all of the false accusations were material misrepresentations that are actionable under 17 U.S.C. 512(f). So, clearly, your statement here must be an endorsement of, rather than a challenge to, the criticism leveled by GP.
You can make them really and verifiably dead, however; perhaps under suspicious circumstances, but you can make it difficult to prove anything and discover or invent material to discredit anyone peddling "conspiracy theories" connecting you to it. Which, ultimately, acheives the same result as the whole disappearing thing.
Actually, no. See, the "competitor" to which people turn may well be mail/online ordering from the manufacturer. So the preference that the person go "somewhere else" so that your "competitor" can "go broke" selling computers at a loss may just mean that a competitor who has a business model that allows them to make a profit on selling computers indeed makes a profit, while you eat the cost of a computer sitting on your shelf (and, as a bonus, lost the repeat business of a customer who, while they might only have bought a computer that day, would have returned to buy accessories, software, or non-computer products from you if they had a good experience shopping at your store.)
Driving off customers because they aren't going to buy the ideal set of products at one time may be a good way of making your numbers look good to higher management that analyzes them in a limited manner ("hey, look, I've got a high margin on each transaction!") but its not a particularly smart long-term business strategy.
"Overwhelm" is stated too strongly. Insurance is simply buying predictability.
On iPods I might agree, as a general rule. Laptops are often fairly critical, and people often don't keep the cash reserves to pay for them, so if they are forced to repair or replace them unexpectedly, the actual cost is likely to be more than the sticker price (due to the cost of credit), or there will be the cost of foregoing them for a time. Insuring a laptop for a cost greater than the cost of replacement times the probability you'll need replacement therefore can be perfectly rational, though the particular cost of any particular extended warranty may or may not be, depending on the circumstances.
Arguably, you should, which is why I said: "It doesn't make a lot of sense to insure a computer if you are fairly certain (1) you are going to replace it eventually, and (2) you will always have the reserves to replace it at need in an emergency."
That's fairly expected for viruses: virus entire mode of operation is injecting their DNA into cells which then reproduce them (sometimes this destroys the cell, sometimes not). Viral DNA in the genome of a host species isn't, therefore, very surprising (it does require the virus to have at some point infected, non-fatally, a germ cell rather than a somatic cell, but given enough time and population, that's bound to happen a number of times.)
Finding a large segment of the genome of another organism (a virus isn't an organism), though, is more surprising, since that's usually not how we understand organisms to work.
On average, you lose money when you buy insurance regardless of scale. That's, in fact, the whole point of insurance: you pay slightly more than your expected costs up front to negate the risk of unexpected costs greatly in excess of either your expected costs or the insurance cost.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to insure a computer if you are fairly certain (1) you are going to replace it eventually, and (2) you will always have the reserves to replace it at need in an emergency.
OTOH, if may be essential to replace it, and you may not be able to do so out of cash, it may be worth insuring.
on average, that's true of every kind of insurance, regardless of scale. Insurance is worth it (if it is at all) based on the consequences of the potential unexpected downside it protects you against and the degree to which it mitigates that risk, not because you will on average save money with it. Risk is a real cost, even though its monetary value may be highly subjective.
Whether or not they do commissions, you can rest assured that corporate is tracking their stores sales numbers, that the stores are tracking internal departments sales numbers, and that the managers are tracking whose doing a good job selling, and that jobs are riding on each of those (and, at the management level at least, even short of jobs riding on it, bonuses are at stake, too.)
Of course, OTOH, in many cases the reason for the pressure is that bonuses, etc., are riding on getting a certain number or proportion of extended warranty or other add-on sales, so the salespeople may feel that its worth it to take a chance of losing a sale to try to push the add-on.