I understand the line needs to be defined and corporations will circumvent the issue by paying people to make their speech for them
You seem not to realize that corporations don't actually have concrete existence and that they are merely a legal fiction, and that every action attributed to a "corporation" is actually the action of one or more individual natural persons, right?
Because when you realize this, your whole argument about corporations circumventing the issue by paying people to make speech for them is nonsensical -- all speech attributed to corporations is actually made by natural persons. Because there is no one else to make it.
Unfortunately, "wasting" in this case doesn't refer to security theatre.
Actually, it does. Buying stuff on the premise that buying and using it will create security and not using it is a form of security theater. (Its a form of security theater directed mostly at Congress rather than travelers, but it is theater nonetheless.)
If the TSA actually used what they bought, regardless of whether that actually made anyone any safer or not, that would entirely satisfy the oversight committee.
I don't think the evidence is sufficient to support that. That the oversight committee recognizes that it is impossible for the equipment to be doing any good in storage does not imply that the oversight committee putting it to use with no actual effect would "entirely satisfy" the committee.
These 'photoshop' regulations and proposals generally require some sort of written disclaimer if a model has been photoshopped. However, that seems like a very questionable assumption about how this stuff works...
Does anybody seriously suspect that advertisements prove compelling because we are deceived by them in some trivial 'I believe that this advertisement is a representative depiction of reality." sense that could be refuted simply by a textual disclaimer?
Refuted? No, because that's a rational mechanism. But a disclaimer of misrepresentation on a specific point may create a broader subjective feeling of distrust in the source, in much the same way that the positive image creates a subjective acceptance that goes beyond any rational connection to the image. So I wouldn't dismiss it as something that can work, though rational refutation has little to do with it.
The kneejerk-reflex "good for you" diet which is low in fat and high in carbohydrates is not only not good for you, it will make you accumulate MORE fat and give you less energy.
No, it won't. If you maintain the same exercise level, replacing fat with an equal mass of carbs will make you lose weight -- weight loss is pretty strictly associated with calorie deficit, and carbs have fewer calories per unit mass.
Beyond a certain point, that's not good for reasons besides weight loss, but that's tangential.
What you want is a fatty steak with a tab of butter on it and a green salad with anchovies and a high fat salad dressing without added sugar (Newman's Own Caesar is pretty good).
Not really. You do want protein, and you do want some fat (though, for health, the fat on a fatty steak or in butter isn't what you want -- you want more heart-healthy fats), but a fairly small amount in total, and you want some carbs -- more than you want fat -- and you want as much non-starchy vegetables as you can eat.
So the judge's logic then is yes they are copyrightable.
No, its not.
If the jury instructions indicate anything on this point, they indicate the opposite.
Why else would he say that?
There were two plausible reasons for the jury instructions as written, neither one of which is pre-judgement in favor of Oracle: 1) The judge genuinely has no idea how he will rule on the legal issue, but wanted to get this part of the case to the jury now so that trial presentation could move on to the patent phase without the mass of information in that phase confusing the jury deliberations on the copyright issues. Consequently, he needed the jury to rule on any question of fact that might be relevant to a determination on the copyright issues. 2) The judge knew he was to rule against Oracle on the legal issue, but also knew that it was a relatively untested area of the law where an appellate court might rule differently. Consequently, in the interest of judicial economy, he asked the jury to decide the fact questions that would be relevant were his decision on the law to be overturned by an appeals court, so that such an event would not necessitate a new trial in order to reach a final judgement.
Considering the instructions in context of the request for briefings on the law, the first if these is probably more plausible than the second.
In a murder trial the judge has to decide if the evidence is sufficient enough to proceed with a jury and then a verdict.
This is generally the process, but (1) criminal process is different than civil process, and (2) nonetheless, in a criminal case as well as a civil case the judge can ask the jury to rule on questions of fact where the legal issue still remains to be decided.
The court system works the other way around.
Well, no, you are just wrong. Its true that in the simplest, baseline process determinations of law that frame which fact questions are relevant to the outcome occur before jury instructions, but the simplest, baseline process does not hold in all cases.
The judge agrees syntax is copyright infringement or he would tell Oracle to shove it and focus just on the patents.
If that were the case, the judge would not have, on Sunday, added a new issue to the list of copyright issues that the parties are required to address in briefs due to tomorrow, specifically: "Assuming that a copyright protection does not extend to names, including fully qualified names, and assuming that copyright protection does not bar others from using identical input-output (argument-return) designations, such that Google was free to use the identical names and identical input-output designations, what more did Google allegedly copy from the 37 packages that is allegedly covered by copyright?"
Common sense. Juries do not deliberate on something if the judge doesn't know if a crime has occurred is ridiculous.
You call it "common sense", and I call it "an assumption born of ignorance".
For instance, in this case, there aren't even allegations that a crime has occurred. Its a civil, not a criminal case.
Yeah an few users by comparison. People don't know what LibreOffice is. Sorry but the Libre folk should merge back with the product which has some market share.
Marketshare (as opposed to usage share or other shares) is usually defined as "$ sales for product/$ sales for all products in the market". As such, both LO and AOO have either 0% marketshare or undefined marketshare, depending on how you draw the boundary of the market.
Usage share, I suspect that LibreOffice has at least as much as AOO (which, after all, just had its first stable release), though they both probably have less than their common ancestor, OOo.
LibreOffice is also more feature rich and under more active development, so from all indications AOO is likely to get further and further behind over time, which is going to make it very hard for it to maintain, much less gain, usage share against LO.
Now, of course, you might think that insurance providers would be happy to fund these drugs even while over-the-counter, since it's far cheaper to subsidize (for example) blood pressure or cholesterol-lowering medication for life than cover one emergency trip to the hospital and bypass surgery, but I really don't think most insurance providers think that way.
OTOH, its even cheaper to not cover the blood pressure medication and have you pay for it OTC and still take it and get the benefits.
Its also cheaper for the insurance company not to cover the blood pressure medication, have you not buy it OTC, and have you die from a heart attack before you are able to get (and rack up a bill for) medical attention that they would have to pay for.
This is a great idea for asthma medication. A lot of poor people don't get decent asthma medication, and end up with ineffective and harmful over-the-counter stuff instead, because they can't go to the doctor. We've had that whole discussion here before.
Since insurance (both private and government programs like Medicaid) tends to cover prescription drugs but not OTC drugs, making existing drugs OTC rather than prescription, while it may drop the retail price, often makes them less accessible to poor people.
OTOH, for the same reason, it reduces costs to public and private insurers, and increases drug company profits.
And depends in various ways on Chrome's internal object representation.
Yes, plugin APIs tend to depend in various ways on the internal object representation of the system that they support plugins for. That's no less true of the now-widely-used Netscape plugin API (NPAPI), which Pepper's PPAPI is intended to replace.
Those would be the obvious cases, but you really missed the point. I'm going to copyright Jon's math API: "public int sqrt(int base, int power);" If Oracle were to win this case, trolls everywhere could start writing function signatures, registering for a copyright, then start suing the crap out of everyone.
That's where the misperception that this is about "API copyright" is misleading. The issue here isn't whether an API standing alone can be copyrighted, and any resolution of this case has, at best, a distant bearing on that issue. Its whether the copyright an on undisputably copyrightable implementation of an API extends to the sequence, structure, and organization of that implementation in such a way that copying just that piece directly from the implementation is a violation of copyright.
Plus, you seem to think that copyright is like patent, and that mere similarity without evidence that the similarity is due to copying proves a violation. "Trolling" of the form you describe would works for patents because patents are a government granted monopoly on use, not on copying. Copyright works differently, so even if it was firmly established to protect APIs in all cases, API-trolling of the form you describe would be fruitless.
What Oracle is trying to claim is that action is ILLEGAL, because the expected API call is 'copyrighted'... So even though the Mono developers created their own implementation and had no access to the CLR code, because it looks the same as the CLR code, it's a copyright violation.
A similar to example could be said of the official Ruby VM and JRuby.
Considering that JRuby uses actual code from the main Ruby project under the license under which it is offered, it really couldn't. The issue of use of APIs being violation of the copyright on the original implementation of the API wouldn't really come up much when the original implementation is under permissive open source license.
Another words, this is bad news for EVERYONE
Well, if the judge had ruled in favor of SSO copyright applying to the APIs here, it would be potentially bad news for language/API reimplementors where the first description of the language/API isn't usable under a permissive license.
But, in any case, that hasn't happened. This (as in what as actually happened) is pretty much nothing, as neither the copyright protection of the SSO of the APIs nor the availability of "fair use" as a defense to the use of the SSO in a reimplementation of the API even if it is within the scope of the copyright of the API implementation have been determined one way or the other.
So why the hell do we allow Google to release non-working beta software on the internet?
Because: (1) Google's "non-working Beta software" often works better than software from other companies that purports to be ready for general release, (2) For most software purposes on the internet, there isn't the kind of immediate public safety concern that justifies regulation of what vehicles are allowed on public roadways.
Why do we allow them to blatantly violate our privacy and sell our information to advertisers? It's time for the government(s) to step in and do something about them.
Insofar as thee have been actual credible accusations of privacy violations at Google, governments -- both in the EU and the US -- have stepped in.
If you have information on cases where that has not occurred, you should provide specifics, rather than vague handwringing.
Though, preferably, in an appropriate place -- even if you had a point, without some nexus beyond a connection to the same company, it would still be off-topic in a thread on Google's driverless car technology.
Google needs to be shutdown, or at least they need to be made to change their blatantly obvious and abusive business. And if they refuse, the CEO's and higher level people need to be put for jail for their violations.
As a pretty firm believer in the principal of legality as opposed to the rule of lynch mobs, I'd like to see some credible evidence that the "CEO's and higher level people" actually committed offenses for which jailing is the punishment prescribed by law before accepting that they ought to be put in jail.
With Google's insistence to label pretty much all of their projects as "beta" to avoid liability
"Beta" has no direct effect on legal liability. It mainly exists to manage customer expectations about feature stability and functionality.
And, anyway, its not something they do that much anymore.
Plus, posting a $1 million bond liability bond is a strange thing to do to "avoid liability".
On top of this we can think about Google's history of privacy violations. It's obvious they are trying to gain something from this
I think there are lots of really obvious ways you could "gain something" from driverless vehicle technology that don't involve privacy violations.
Starting with licensing driverless vehicle technology to vehicle manufacturers.
I was already shocked when I read about Google Goggles and the way the device works.
Google Goggles isn't a device at all, its software that's available for various devices.
It doesn't process the image on the device itself but instead sends it to Google's servers.
Uh, yeah, it advertises itself as an image-based version of search. Next thing you are going to be surprised that the Google Search app doesn't do the search locally on your device, but sends the search terms to Google's servers.
Combined with Google's facial recognition technology and patent, Google Goggles will give the company outstanding amount of living world and meatspace data.
"living world" and "meatspace" are the same thing.
And it would give them the same amount of information as with the facial recognition technology without the patent, which is a red herring.
Now I can only guess that Google is trying to expand their privacy violations to roads, driving habits and your everyday life.
So? Aside from revealing your personal biases, what value do you think your unsubstantiated guess in this area provides?
That implies there's a bubble. Direct financing of projects is the future, not a fad.
Future vs. fad is irrelevant. You can't have a bubble burst because Kickstarter sponsorships aren't a tradeable commodity, so people turning off of the Kickstarter model won't burst anything. There's no market for there to be a bubble in.
If people stop sponsoring through Kickstarter, you'll just have a reversion to people actually having to take a business plan to people who will most likely demand debt or equity stakes in the business to raise capital to launch a new consumer product business (or to expand an existing business to a new consumer product using funds other than the profit of the existing business.)
Seems Kickstarter is more like business used to be... create an idea, shop it around to get capitol to market said idea.
The difference is that the people providing the capital aren't doing it in exchange for either equity or debt stakes, they are doing it exchange for something else, usually some form of the regular product that is being funded.
This is a really good deal for the businesses using Kickstarter, but only a good deal for funders if they have a strong emotional investment in the potential product itself and the products actually get made as expected. It wouldn't take a lot of products that fail to deliver after being funded to substantially weaken the funder-side perception of it being a good deal in general.
Now here's some REAL math based upon real world experience (almost 20 years of CFL usage).
CFLs and LEDs don't live any longer than incandescents because of many factors.
If we're talking about experience, then, IME, CFLs -- haven't used LEDs -- last many times longer than halogens, which last considerably longer than regular incandescents.
But personal experience is often uncontrolled and unreliable as a basis for generalization, which is why the whole controlled study idea was created -- and the data surely supports the ideas that CFLs last far longer the incandescents.
If Google admitted that the APIs were substantially similar, then the instruction was perfectly correct.
The point wasn't that the instructions were incorrect, merely that on their face they essentially directed the jury to a finding on the question of infringement with regard to the APIs (before considering the "fair use" defense, which was a separate question of fact.)
The grandparent wrongly attributed the request for a mistrial to the content of the jury instructions.
IIRC, Google objected to the use of the substantial similarity test rather than a stricted test in the jury instructions, so -- without the text of the motion in front of me -- I wouldn't be surprised if the jury instructions was the main reason for the motion. (If it did make the admission and agreed that the standard was appropriate, there would be no reason to prefer a mistrial over a partial verdict.)
They're not moving for a complete mistrial, from what I understand. The jury couldn't reach a unanimous decision on whether or not Google's use of Oracle code constituted fair use or not (and they were told to assume it was copyrightable, which is also a decision that the judge still needs to rule on), so the judge postponed the fair use decision. Google is moving for a mistrial with regards to the question of fair use in particular
This is misstated. They are moving for a mistrial on Q1, which is the "API copyright issue" which includes both the infringement issue (Q1A) where the jury found that Google had infringed (before considering the fair use defense) and the fair use issue (Q1B) on which the jury hung. I'd have to see the text of the motion, but it might also affect the Q4 interrogatories on whether or not Google reasonably relied on a Sun/Oracle conduct which implied that it did not need a license to implement the APIs (on which the jury found that Sun/Oracle conduct which reasonably suggested that did exist, but that Google failed to prove that they reasonably relied on it), which relates back to Q1.
Copying the "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs is the definition of implementing an object-oriented interface, regardless of the specifics of the implementation.
That might be true, but its somewhat irrelevant as they were found to have copied "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs, they were accused of copying the "structure, sequence, and organization" of Oracle's copyright-protected implementation of the Java APIs.
Had the direct source of their information on the APIs been something other than the actual Oracle copyright-protected source of Oracle's implementation, this would have been a different issue.
The essence of this ruling is that publishing something under open source means nothing if the copyright holder later changes their mind.
Well, no its not, for two reasons: First, the jury deadlocked on the "fair use" question. Without a ruling on that, the decision doesn't even mean Google is liable for anything, much less that anyone else copying the SSO of someone else's code to reimplement APIs would be.
Second, and most importantly, this was a jury finding on a fact question, where the judge has not ruled on the fundamental question of law, to wit, whether the copyright on the source files in question extends to the structure, sequence, and organization. Until that decision is made, the jury finding of fact is not merely incomplete, but legally irrelevant.
Because while a partial verdict on this point isn't particularly good for Oracle (since they can't win without both a full verdict that reaches the fair use defense and a ruling on the law), and the finding the jury made on this point is the best Google could have expected given the jury instructions, it still benefits Google for Oracle to have to start over on this point with a new jury, rather than having this finding be final.
Can you please return your geek credentials? The judge didn't tell the jury Google was guilty,
True. But on the point that the jury did find (that, before considering the fair use defense and assuming that APIs are copyrightable), the judge essentially directed the jury that Google had infringed. The jury instructions included both: 1. An instruction that, on the issue of the "API copyright" point, infringement should be found if the defendant had access to the copyright-protected work and the alleged-infringing work was substantially similar, and 2. A note that Google had admitted that the APIs at issue were substantially similar to those that the jury was instructed to assume were protected.
Details are thin, but the long-covered Oracle v. Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle. The jury says Google violated copyrights with Android when it used Java APIs to design the system.
Yeah, that's not really all that much in Oracle's favor. The jury instructions all-but dictated that result (the instructions instructed the jury that the relevant legal test was "substantial similarity" and that Google had admitted substantial similarity), the key question in dispute for the jury was Google's fair use defense which had to be evaluated once the jury found that there was infringement before considering the defense. And that's the point that the jury hung on.
Without a verdict on that point, there are two plausible outcomes for the copyright claims:
1) As Google has already requested based on the jury impasse, a mistrial is declared and Oracle has to start the copyright case over at square one (with or without the judge reaching the legal issue on the "API copyright" issue), or 2) The judge moves on to deciding the legal issue of copyright in favor of Google, so that the API copyright issue is dead (pending appeal--and if Oracle wins on appeal, they still go back to square one and a new trial on the facts since the jury hung.)
So its hard to see this as any kind of a win for Oracle.
Does the judge now have to rule on whether API's can be copyrighted?
It certainly seems like the judge has to rule on whether the copyright on the Java source files extends to protect the "structure, sequence, and organization" in the way being referred to as "API's being copyrighted". But its also win-win for Google.
If they can be copyrighted, the jury is hung on an issue critical to the resolution of Google's liability, which is grounds for a mistrial, and Oracle has to start all over on the copyright claims if it wants to do anything with them.
If they can't be copyrighted, the Google's in the clear.
What is the matter with these people? Anybody can load Libre Office, for free and legally, then use the thing for the rest of their lives without paying a cent. It is good old traditional office software, easily used by anybody familiar with any other office suite. No internet connection is necessary for normal use. There are no glaring security holes. How can these dopey bureaucrats pass up a deal like that?
Well, its not a cloud solution, which is expressly what was called for. There are reasons to prefer managed cloud solutions (staff time devoted to installs and maintenance, for one.)
Yes, if all you wanted was some kind of office suite (which isn't what is wanted here, they want cloud-hosted email services and office suite), and the only cost they cared about was license fees, LO/OOo would be sensible things to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem not to realize that corporations don't actually have concrete existence and that they are merely a legal fiction, and that every action attributed to a "corporation" is actually the action of one or more individual natural persons, right?
Because when you realize this, your whole argument about corporations circumventing the issue by paying people to make speech for them is nonsensical -- all speech attributed to corporations is actually made by natural persons. Because there is no one else to make it.
You would have thought wrong, since the 4th Amendment imposes no restrictions on private conduct.
Actually, it does. Buying stuff on the premise that buying and using it will create security and not using it is a form of security theater. (Its a form of security theater directed mostly at Congress rather than travelers, but it is theater nonetheless.)
I don't think the evidence is sufficient to support that. That the oversight committee recognizes that it is impossible for the equipment to be doing any good in storage does not imply that the oversight committee putting it to use with no actual effect would "entirely satisfy" the committee.
Refuted? No, because that's a rational mechanism. But a disclaimer of misrepresentation on a specific point may create a broader subjective feeling of distrust in the source, in much the same way that the positive image creates a subjective acceptance that goes beyond any rational connection to the image. So I wouldn't dismiss it as something that can work, though rational refutation has little to do with it.
No, it won't. If you maintain the same exercise level, replacing fat with an equal mass of carbs will make you lose weight -- weight loss is pretty strictly associated with calorie deficit, and carbs have fewer calories per unit mass.
Beyond a certain point, that's not good for reasons besides weight loss, but that's tangential.
Not really. You do want protein, and you do want some fat (though, for health, the fat on a fatty steak or in butter isn't what you want -- you want more heart-healthy fats), but a fairly small amount in total, and you want some carbs -- more than you want fat -- and you want as much non-starchy vegetables as you can eat.
And you want to get off your butt and exercise.
No, its not.
If the jury instructions indicate anything on this point, they indicate the opposite.
There were two plausible reasons for the jury instructions as written, neither one of which is pre-judgement in favor of Oracle:
1) The judge genuinely has no idea how he will rule on the legal issue, but wanted to get this part of the case to the jury now so that trial presentation could move on to the patent phase without the mass of information in that phase confusing the jury deliberations on the copyright issues. Consequently, he needed the jury to rule on any question of fact that might be relevant to a determination on the copyright issues.
2) The judge knew he was to rule against Oracle on the legal issue, but also knew that it was a relatively untested area of the law where an appellate court might rule differently. Consequently, in the interest of judicial economy, he asked the jury to decide the fact questions that would be relevant were his decision on the law to be overturned by an appeals court, so that such an event would not necessitate a new trial in order to reach a final judgement.
Considering the instructions in context of the request for briefings on the law, the first if these is probably more plausible than the second.
This is generally the process, but (1) criminal process is different than civil process, and (2) nonetheless, in a criminal case as well as a civil case the judge can ask the jury to rule on questions of fact where the legal issue still remains to be decided.
Well, no, you are just wrong. Its true that in the simplest, baseline process determinations of law that frame which fact questions are relevant to the outcome occur before jury instructions, but the simplest, baseline process does not hold in all cases.
If that were the case, the judge would not have, on Sunday, added a new issue to the list of copyright issues that the parties are required to address in briefs due to tomorrow, specifically:
"Assuming that a copyright protection does not extend to names, including fully qualified names, and assuming that copyright protection does not bar others from using identical input-output (argument-return) designations, such that Google was free to use the identical names and identical input-output designations, what more did Google allegedly copy from the 37 packages that is allegedly covered by copyright?"
You call it "common sense", and I call it "an assumption born of ignorance".
For instance, in this case, there aren't even allegations that a crime has occurred. Its a civil, not a criminal case.
Marketshare (as opposed to usage share or other shares) is usually defined as "$ sales for product/$ sales for all products in the market". As such, both LO and AOO have either 0% marketshare or undefined marketshare, depending on how you draw the boundary of the market.
Usage share, I suspect that LibreOffice has at least as much as AOO (which, after all, just had its first stable release), though they both probably have less than their common ancestor, OOo.
LibreOffice is also more feature rich and under more active development, so from all indications AOO is likely to get further and further behind over time, which is going to make it very hard for it to maintain, much less gain, usage share against LO.
OTOH, its even cheaper to not cover the blood pressure medication and have you pay for it OTC and still take it and get the benefits.
Its also cheaper for the insurance company not to cover the blood pressure medication, have you not buy it OTC, and have you die from a heart attack before you are able to get (and rack up a bill for) medical attention that they would have to pay for.
Since insurance (both private and government programs like Medicaid) tends to cover prescription drugs but not OTC drugs, making existing drugs OTC rather than prescription, while it may drop the retail price, often makes them less accessible to poor people.
OTOH, for the same reason, it reduces costs to public and private insurers, and increases drug company profits.
Yes, plugin APIs tend to depend in various ways on the internal object representation of the system that they support plugins for. That's no less true of the now-widely-used Netscape plugin API (NPAPI), which Pepper's PPAPI is intended to replace.
That's where the misperception that this is about "API copyright" is misleading. The issue here isn't whether an API standing alone can be copyrighted, and any resolution of this case has, at best, a distant bearing on that issue. Its whether the copyright an on undisputably copyrightable implementation of an API extends to the sequence, structure, and organization of that implementation in such a way that copying just that piece directly from the implementation is a violation of copyright.
Plus, you seem to think that copyright is like patent, and that mere similarity without evidence that the similarity is due to copying proves a violation. "Trolling" of the form you describe would works for patents because patents are a government granted monopoly on use, not on copying. Copyright works differently, so even if it was firmly established to protect APIs in all cases, API-trolling of the form you describe would be fruitless.
Considering that JRuby uses actual code from the main Ruby project under the license under which it is offered, it really couldn't. The issue of use of APIs being violation of the copyright on the original implementation of the API wouldn't really come up much when the original implementation is under permissive open source license.
Well, if the judge had ruled in favor of SSO copyright applying to the APIs here, it would be potentially bad news for language/API reimplementors where the first description of the language/API isn't usable under a permissive license.
But, in any case, that hasn't happened. This (as in what as actually happened) is pretty much nothing, as neither the copyright protection of the SSO of the APIs nor the availability of "fair use" as a defense to the use of the SSO in a reimplementation of the API even if it is within the scope of the copyright of the API implementation have been determined one way or the other.
Because:
(1) Google's "non-working Beta software" often works better than software from other companies that purports to be ready for general release,
(2) For most software purposes on the internet, there isn't the kind of immediate public safety concern that justifies regulation of what vehicles are allowed on public roadways.
Insofar as thee have been actual credible accusations of privacy violations at Google, governments -- both in the EU and the US -- have stepped in.
If you have information on cases where that has not occurred, you should provide specifics, rather than vague handwringing.
Though, preferably, in an appropriate place -- even if you had a point, without some nexus beyond a connection to the same company, it would still be off-topic in a thread on Google's driverless car technology.
As a pretty firm believer in the principal of legality as opposed to the rule of lynch mobs, I'd like to see some credible evidence that the "CEO's and higher level people" actually committed offenses for which jailing is the punishment prescribed by law before accepting that they ought to be put in jail.
"Beta" has no direct effect on legal liability. It mainly exists to manage customer expectations about feature stability and functionality.
And, anyway, its not something they do that much anymore.
Plus, posting a $1 million bond liability bond is a strange thing to do to "avoid liability".
I think there are lots of really obvious ways you could "gain something" from driverless vehicle technology that don't involve privacy violations.
Starting with licensing driverless vehicle technology to vehicle manufacturers.
Google Goggles isn't a device at all, its software that's available for various devices.
Uh, yeah, it advertises itself as an image-based version of search. Next thing you are going to be surprised that the Google Search app doesn't do the search locally on your device, but sends the search terms to Google's servers.
"living world" and "meatspace" are the same thing.
And it would give them the same amount of information as with the facial recognition technology without the patent, which is a red herring.
So? Aside from revealing your personal biases, what value do you think your unsubstantiated guess in this area provides?
Future vs. fad is irrelevant. You can't have a bubble burst because Kickstarter sponsorships aren't a tradeable commodity, so people turning off of the Kickstarter model won't burst anything. There's no market for there to be a bubble in.
If people stop sponsoring through Kickstarter, you'll just have a reversion to people actually having to take a business plan to people who will most likely demand debt or equity stakes in the business to raise capital to launch a new consumer product business (or to expand an existing business to a new consumer product using funds other than the profit of the existing business.)
The difference is that the people providing the capital aren't doing it in exchange for either equity or debt stakes, they are doing it exchange for something else, usually some form of the regular product that is being funded.
This is a really good deal for the businesses using Kickstarter, but only a good deal for funders if they have a strong emotional investment in the potential product itself and the products actually get made as expected. It wouldn't take a lot of products that fail to deliver after being funded to substantially weaken the funder-side perception of it being a good deal in general.
If we're talking about experience, then, IME, CFLs -- haven't used LEDs -- last many times longer than halogens, which last considerably longer than regular incandescents.
But personal experience is often uncontrolled and unreliable as a basis for generalization, which is why the whole controlled study idea was created -- and the data surely supports the ideas that CFLs last far longer the incandescents.
The point wasn't that the instructions were incorrect, merely that on their face they essentially directed the jury to a finding on the question of infringement with regard to the APIs (before considering the "fair use" defense, which was a separate question of fact.)
IIRC, Google objected to the use of the substantial similarity test rather than a stricted test in the jury instructions, so -- without the text of the motion in front of me -- I wouldn't be surprised if the jury instructions was the main reason for the motion. (If it did make the admission and agreed that the standard was appropriate, there would be no reason to prefer a mistrial over a partial verdict.)
This is misstated. They are moving for a mistrial on Q1, which is the "API copyright issue" which includes both the infringement issue (Q1A) where the jury found that Google had infringed (before considering the fair use defense) and the fair use issue (Q1B) on which the jury hung. I'd have to see the text of the motion, but it might also affect the Q4 interrogatories on whether or not Google reasonably relied on a Sun/Oracle conduct which implied that it did not need a license to implement the APIs (on which the jury found that Sun/Oracle conduct which reasonably suggested that did exist, but that Google failed to prove that they reasonably relied on it), which relates back to Q1.
That might be true, but its somewhat irrelevant as they were found to have copied "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs, they were accused of copying the "structure, sequence, and organization" of Oracle's copyright-protected implementation of the Java APIs.
Had the direct source of their information on the APIs been something other than the actual Oracle copyright-protected source of Oracle's implementation, this would have been a different issue.
Well, no its not, for two reasons:
First, the jury deadlocked on the "fair use" question. Without a ruling on that, the decision doesn't even mean Google is liable for anything, much less that anyone else copying the SSO of someone else's code to reimplement APIs would be.
Second, and most importantly, this was a jury finding on a fact question, where the judge has not ruled on the fundamental question of law, to wit, whether the copyright on the source files in question extends to the structure, sequence, and organization. Until that decision is made, the jury finding of fact is not merely incomplete, but legally irrelevant.
Because while a partial verdict on this point isn't particularly good for Oracle (since they can't win without both a full verdict that reaches the fair use defense and a ruling on the law), and the finding the jury made on this point is the best Google could have expected given the jury instructions, it still benefits Google for Oracle to have to start over on this point with a new jury, rather than having this finding be final.
True. But on the point that the jury did find (that, before considering the fair use defense and assuming that APIs are copyrightable), the judge essentially directed the jury that Google had infringed. The jury instructions included both:
1. An instruction that, on the issue of the "API copyright" point, infringement should be found if the defendant had access to the copyright-protected work and the alleged-infringing work was substantially similar, and
2. A note that Google had admitted that the APIs at issue were substantially similar to those that the jury was instructed to assume were protected.
Yeah, that's not really all that much in Oracle's favor. The jury instructions all-but dictated that result (the instructions instructed the jury that the relevant legal test was "substantial similarity" and that Google had admitted substantial similarity), the key question in dispute for the jury was Google's fair use defense which had to be evaluated once the jury found that there was infringement before considering the defense. And that's the point that the jury hung on.
Without a verdict on that point, there are two plausible outcomes for the copyright claims:
1) As Google has already requested based on the jury impasse, a mistrial is declared and Oracle has to start the copyright case over at square one (with or without the judge reaching the legal issue on the "API copyright" issue), or
2) The judge moves on to deciding the legal issue of copyright in favor of Google, so that the API copyright issue is dead (pending appeal--and if Oracle wins on appeal, they still go back to square one and a new trial on the facts since the jury hung.)
So its hard to see this as any kind of a win for Oracle.
It certainly seems like the judge has to rule on whether the copyright on the Java source files extends to protect the "structure, sequence, and organization" in the way being referred to as "API's being copyrighted". But its also win-win for Google.
If they can be copyrighted, the jury is hung on an issue critical to the resolution of Google's liability, which is grounds for a mistrial, and Oracle has to start all over on the copyright claims if it wants to do anything with them.
If they can't be copyrighted, the Google's in the clear.
Well, its not a cloud solution, which is expressly what was called for. There are reasons to prefer managed cloud solutions (staff time devoted to installs and maintenance, for one.)
Yes, if all you wanted was some kind of office suite (which isn't what is wanted here, they want cloud-hosted email services and office suite), and the only cost they cared about was license fees, LO/OOo would be sensible things to consider.