You'd posted something the otherday discussing your headaches with Vx doing somekind of APCO25 waveform work. You'd joked that anyone who understood what a PSK was and how to make your DSP grok it should call you.
I'm not looking for a job but would like to hear more about your experiences with the air interface work.
It's interesting and important to note that RMS naturally had a copyright centric view when he started thinking about how to construct a licensing scheme addressing his concerns about software licenses.
It's not surprising then that there has been less discussion about how continental Author's Rights regimes fit with free software and open source licenses than under the US/British copyright regime.
There's been an interesting discussion on debian-legal over the last few months on "moral rights" issues. I would agree that this paper may demonstrate a bias, but also that we need to continue to think constructively about the issues posed.
Could a German speaker with access to legal dictionaries please translate the paper for review? Thanks.
If you're interested in the recent debian-legal discussions check the archives on the "droit d'auteur" or moral rights discussions.
You may use the title of "senior" may be applied when your GS level or other experience is high enough... their are many creative titles here at the Commission...
Senior Information Obfusticator, Senior Citizen, Senor Attorney... -- James Miller (You can find me in the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology's Spectrum Policy Branch... but my views are my own not those of the Commission..)
Providing information to a company can help them lower their prices. That is incentive enough for many people to authorize use of their information. If I do release my info, I would like to limit the use of the information in some circumstances however.
Consider the same problems surrounding the DMCA. Company X distributes something (information, music, video, etc..) but would like to limit its use in someway. We can observe that once their information enters the public stream, as a matter of technology, policy and law it's difficult to reign back in what has been given away.
How is the privacy advocate's desire to protect their information different from content producers desire to limit use of their information. What can be learned from the latter's efforts.
It's not just a usenet problem. Recently we had a very interesting discussion about non-exclusive licenses in the context of mailing list posts, as well.
Pam Samuelson who heads the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and Peter Jaszi, head of American University's IP Program and Clinic are both well published on this subject.
This article will discuss how traditional copyright jurisprudence is butting heads against new maximalist doctrines. See Peter A. Jaszi, Goodbye to All That--A Reluctant (and Perhaps Premature) Adieu to a Constitutionally-Grounded Discourse of Public Interest in Copyright Law, 29 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 595 (1996).
This article discusses the different positions playing out in the TRIPS and WIPO Copyright treaty negotiations. See Pamela Samuelson, The U.S. Digital Agenda at WIPO, 37 Va. J. Int'l L. 369, 374 & 375 n.39 (1997).
It's more consistent with copyright parlance to speak in terms of minimalist or maximalist positions.
The minimalist camp takes a more restrictive (some would argue traditional) view of scope of rights protected under copyright. The minimalist camp is more sensitive to the public interest in discussions of copyright jurisprudence. You might say they are the "pro-napster" club.
The maximalist camp promotes expansions of scope of rights for copyright holders. The maximalists are who you will identify as the "anti-napster" club.
Some people who have written alot in this area are Pam Samuelson
I am research assistant to Professor Peter Jaszi. He is widely renowned copyright scholar with interests in the U.S. Fair Use doctrine, heavily implicated by Napster and file sharing. He is usually who NPR, and other radio and TV affiliates call.:)
http://www.wcl.american.edu/pub/faculty/jaszi/bi o. html.
Guys, software isn't going away and lawsuits aren't either. If you are being frivilously threatened you may still end up in court but there are people working to protect open source developers. I am one and there are clinics that are popping up all over to address the communities needs. Alot of us also are programmers.
If you've got an issue that relates to your development work one good place to go now is www.opencode.org. It's "cumbersome" for a law student to offer to help because they need an attorney to supervise work. Generally, a student can do work for an attorney but not an individual. That's why the emerging clinics will be important.
Now...
Westlaw listed 107 cases involving copyright and rule 11 motions. I found 4 involving copyright/software and 3 patent/software. Point being cases needs advocates and at the very least people do file these motions with summary judgement requests. I am not familiar with German or EU "civil" civil law..;)
General blackletter law under Rule11(b) reads filings must have been "to the best of hte person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances." 11(b)(1) discusses intent to harass or cause unnecessary delay. My civpro book discusses when a suit is not formed after a reasonable inquiry and discusses some cases. If the extent of your knowledge of Rule 11 is having watched "Civil Action" you might merit some more reading..;)
I'll assume that anyone else following up will have taken a Civil Procedure class and will be competent to discuss the federal rules. Stop the FUD guys. Debacles like DeCSS & OLGA (rest their soul) are going to continue till the word gets out to our parents and other "normal" Americans of what's really going on and we start standing up for ourselves.
Lawsuits are lawsuits and rich plaintiffs are always going to be scary; doesn't mean you have to run away without a fight if there are people willing to fight with you.
--
The above is general black letter law and is not a substitute for legal advice from an attorney. The above is not legal advice; does not constitute the formation of an attorney client relationship; and is not a solicitation.
There is something to the "it's GPL so beware" argument.
It might be shown that they were just fishing and intending to scare off and harass xiph coding.
Assuming they would file a suit without having read the source and with no other basis they may be liable for a Rule 11 violation which prohibits filling such frivilous suits.
See Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11 (it's not blue booked, so sue me...).
Actually the FBI has jurisdiciton over a variety of international issues.
Also what they are doing need not be described as "worldwide snooping." They might argue they are executing their duty to protect against foreign "agents" attempting to operate terrorist activities in the US.
People interested in the more hairy FBI issues should look around for discussions of the "secret" courts that hear evidence and try defendants often with no right for the defendant to confront the evidence or his accusers.
Also it may be of interest to readers, generally, that the FCC is becoming increasingly deferrant to the "requests" by other executive law enforcement agences and the DOJ/FBI regarding international telecommunciation/Satellite/submarine cable licensing.
The policy issues are not simple though unless you assume that either likelyhood of terrorist activity is unlikely in the US or no compromise of privacy should be permitted.
We held an event last year here in D.C. discussing these issues and I know other law schools do too. If you're local to the Washington, D.C. area I'd be glad to forward people some panel discussions that would be interesting.
I think it's a good idea. I hope people will talk to their legislators and have them support the National Science Foundation and other groups designed to do this kind of thing two. Certainly solves alot of problems with intellectual property to give smart people a stipend to produce work for the public domain.
It is ironic however that the model of selecting a few stellar performers for patronage is in tension with the notion that "open source" often purports to rely on, a community of contributors. Do we need people selected and paid to be source maintainers and build engineers as well?
Slashdot Mirror
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/ DA-04-1844A1.pdf
Rather than settling for a press article, enjoy reading the real thing. It's a short, three pages.
You'd posted something the otherday discussing your headaches with Vx doing somekind of APCO25 waveform work. You'd joked that anyone who understood what a PSK was and how to make your DSP grok it should call you.
I'm not looking for a job but would like to hear more about your experiences with the air interface work.
ciao
It's interesting and important to note that RMS naturally had a copyright centric view when he started thinking about how to construct a licensing scheme addressing his concerns about software licenses.
n -l egal-200305/
It's not surprising then that there has been less discussion about how continental Author's Rights regimes fit with free software and open source licenses than under the US/British copyright regime.
There's been an interesting discussion on debian-legal over the last few months on "moral rights" issues. I would agree that this paper may demonstrate a bias, but also that we need to continue to think constructively about the issues posed.
Could a German speaker with access to legal dictionaries please translate the paper for review? Thanks.
If you're interested in the recent debian-legal discussions check the archives on the "droit d'auteur" or moral rights discussions.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debia
If you're doing serious review please feel free to contact me there. I'd be glad to provide some general summaries and some pointers to literature.
You may use the title of "senior" may be applied when your GS level or other experience is high enough... their are many creative titles here at the Commission...
Senior Information Obfusticator, Senior Citizen, Senor Attorney...
--
James Miller
(You can find me in the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology's Spectrum Policy Branch... but my views are my own not those of the Commission..)
Providing information to a company can help them lower their prices. That is incentive enough for many people to authorize use of their information. If I do release my info, I would like to limit the use of the information in some circumstances however.
Consider the same problems surrounding the DMCA. Company X distributes something (information, music, video, etc..) but would like to limit its use in someway. We can observe that once their information enters the public stream, as a matter of technology, policy and law it's difficult to reign back in what has been given away.
How is the privacy advocate's desire to protect their information different from content producers desire to limit use of their information. What can be learned from the latter's efforts.
It's not just a usenet problem. Recently we had a very interesting discussion about non-exclusive licenses in the context of mailing list posts, as well.
That's odd half the post disappeared... anyway...
Pam Samuelson who heads the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and Peter Jaszi, head of American University's IP Program and Clinic are both well published on this subject.
This article will discuss how traditional copyright jurisprudence is butting heads against new maximalist doctrines. See Peter A. Jaszi, Goodbye to All That--A Reluctant (and Perhaps Premature) Adieu to a Constitutionally-Grounded Discourse of Public Interest in Copyright Law, 29 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 595 (1996).
This article discusses the different positions playing out in the TRIPS and WIPO Copyright treaty negotiations. See Pamela Samuelson, The U.S. Digital Agenda at WIPO, 37 Va. J. Int'l L. 369, 374 & 375 n.39 (1997).
It's more consistent with copyright parlance to speak in terms of minimalist or maximalist positions.
The minimalist camp takes a more restrictive (some would argue traditional) view of scope of rights protected under copyright. The minimalist camp is more sensitive to the public interest in discussions of copyright jurisprudence. You might say they are the "pro-napster" club.
The maximalist camp promotes expansions of scope of rights for copyright holders. The maximalists are who you will identify as the "anti-napster" club.
Some people who have written alot in this area are Pam Samuelson
I am research assistant to Professor Peter Jaszi. He is widely renowned copyright scholar with interests in the U.S. Fair Use doctrine, heavily implicated by Napster and file sharing. He is usually who NPR, and other radio and TV affiliates call. :)
i o. html.
http://www.wcl.american.edu/pub/faculty/jaszi/b
If not anyone from the digital freedom coalition.
Guys, software isn't going away and lawsuits aren't either. If you are being frivilously threatened you may still end up in court but there are people working to protect open source developers. I am one and there are clinics that are popping up all over to address the communities needs. Alot of us also are programmers.
;)
;)
If you've got an issue that relates to your development work one good place to go now is www.opencode.org. It's "cumbersome" for a law student to offer to help because they need an attorney to supervise work. Generally, a student can do work for an attorney but not an individual. That's why the emerging clinics will be important.
Now... Westlaw listed 107 cases involving copyright and rule 11 motions. I found 4 involving copyright/software and 3 patent/software. Point being cases needs advocates and at the very least people do file these motions with summary judgement requests. I am not familiar with German or EU "civil" civil law..
General blackletter law under Rule11(b) reads filings must have been "to the best of hte person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances." 11(b)(1) discusses intent to harass or cause unnecessary delay. My civpro book discusses when a suit is not formed after a reasonable inquiry and discusses some cases. If the extent of your knowledge of Rule 11 is having watched "Civil Action" you might merit some more reading..
I'll assume that anyone else following up will have taken a Civil Procedure class and will be competent to discuss the federal rules. Stop the FUD guys. Debacles like DeCSS & OLGA (rest their soul) are going to continue till the word gets out to our parents and other "normal" Americans of what's really going on and we start standing up for ourselves.
Lawsuits are lawsuits and rich plaintiffs are always going to be scary; doesn't mean you have to run away without a fight if there are people willing to fight with you.
--
The above is general black letter law and is not a substitute for legal advice from an attorney. The above is not legal advice; does not constitute the formation of an attorney client relationship; and is not a solicitation.
There is something to the "it's GPL so beware" argument.
It might be shown that they were just fishing and intending to scare off and harass xiph coding.
Assuming they would file a suit without having read the source and with no other basis they may be liable for a Rule 11 violation which prohibits filling such frivilous suits. See Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11 (it's not blue booked, so sue me...).
Actually the FBI has jurisdiciton over a variety of international issues. Also what they are doing need not be described as "worldwide snooping." They might argue they are executing their duty to protect against foreign "agents" attempting to operate terrorist activities in the US. People interested in the more hairy FBI issues should look around for discussions of the "secret" courts that hear evidence and try defendants often with no right for the defendant to confront the evidence or his accusers. Also it may be of interest to readers, generally, that the FCC is becoming increasingly deferrant to the "requests" by other executive law enforcement agences and the DOJ/FBI regarding international telecommunciation/Satellite/submarine cable licensing. The policy issues are not simple though unless you assume that either likelyhood of terrorist activity is unlikely in the US or no compromise of privacy should be permitted. We held an event last year here in D.C. discussing these issues and I know other law schools do too. If you're local to the Washington, D.C. area I'd be glad to forward people some panel discussions that would be interesting.
I think it's a good idea. I hope people will talk to their legislators and have them support the National Science Foundation and other groups designed to do this kind of thing two. Certainly solves alot of problems with intellectual property to give smart people a stipend to produce work for the public domain. It is ironic however that the model of selecting a few stellar performers for patronage is in tension with the notion that "open source" often purports to rely on, a community of contributors. Do we need people selected and paid to be source maintainers and build engineers as well?
To actually pursue a claim against CC, there actually have to be people who suffered injury.
Did anyone actually post their real info off and could substantiate that they were possible harmed?
I'd be interested in looking into what possible claims might flow from CC's "negligent" posting publishing of personal info on the web site.
Perhaps we can pull this dicussion over to opencode or elsewhere... drop me some email..
IANAL, but I hope to be in two more years...