It depends on if the billboard is classified as a building or an artistic work. Photographs of buildings taken from a public place (e.g. the sidewalk in front of the building) do not infringe the copyright of the architecture, but photographs of works of art would infringe the copyright of the work.
My guess is that either 1) nobody has filed a complaint, or 2) the FTC doesn't believe that Android is a monopoly. Another point to consider is whether Google requires Chrome to be the only or default web browser or if manufacturers can remove Chrome and install Firefox instead (I don't know the answer).
Android holds a monopoly position in the mobile OS market.
I can see how Android could become a monopoly, and I wouldn't be very surprised if it does in the future, but my personal opinion is that it isn't there now. Of course, since neither of us are judges, our personal opinions don't count for much.
If aliens exist in the galaxy, it would probably be smart as a species NOT to let your presence be known. If as a species you're still using radio waves- it is perhaps best to disguise those waves from being broadcast into space (if that's possible).
Not too long ago, the U.S. government's official position was that if we receive any kind of message from an extraterrestrial species, we would pretend not to have gotten it and not respond. I don't know if that's still the official position.
everyone who payed for it is free to use it as he sees fit (because of interoperability exceptions)
If you paid for it, using it according to the agreement that you made when you purchased it isn't infringement. That's true of all protected works.
And everyone who invents by accident the exact same schema ist free to to use it as well. Because in the end the "copyright" does not prevent him in this special case to do so.
That isn't copying, so of course it isn't infringement. Copyright and patents do not work the same way.
... but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
Many of the employees, especially younger people, want to live in or near a large city that has an active social life. Some engineers are perfectly happy to go straight home from work and sit in front of their computer for most of the other 100+ hours in the week. Other people, including many engineers, want to be able to go see an evening show on occasion.
Not to any significant extent. Otherwise I would just kill you and take all your stuff.
It's a positive feedback loop. A small amount of civilization comes together, and it starts to grow. At a certain size, a small amount of government is needed to organize the civilization. The small government allows the civilization to grow a bit more, which requires a bit more organization and thus a slightly larger government. The feedback loop continues for as long as the value of being organized is greater than the cost of the government.
The legal issue with Internet Explorer was that Windows was a monopoly, and Microsoft was using the Windows monopoly in the operating system market to stifle competition in the web browser market. In order for Android/Chrome to be an issue, it would have to be Android that becomes a monopoly, unless somehow Chrome's monopoly position can be used to force users into buying Android phones, which I highly doubt could happen.
A more accurate comparison would be Chrome/Google Ads, where there would be the potential for monopoly abuse, as many others have pointed out.
A friend of mine is a journalist who makes his living off the website he writes for now that the newspaper it sprung out of has died. That means he's 100% dependent on ads to pay the rent (The sites fairly opposed to paywalls). So understandably he's got a bee in his bonnet about ad blockers.
As far as I know, ad blockers aren't doing any kind of advanced image analysis, they're just going by the domain the ad comes from. So if he wants to sell ads on his site, he can host the ads himself and they won't be blocked.
You've provided no evidence that I'm wrong, and I'm speaking from direct personal experience of working on a lawsuit in which the copyright of a database schema was at issue. So if I'm wrong, then so were the lawyers and judge in that case. I think they are far more credible than you are.
If you choose not believe me, fine, that's your problem. I'm done trying to convince someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I went to a mid-tier state university 20 years ago, and we had a required course about computers and ethics. Then again, the primary reason for having it was to fulfill the university's ethics requirement without needing to take a pointless intro class from the Philosophy department.
The agreement is bound to copyright laws. Any agreement restricting me from what is allowed by the law is void: in sane countries.
That's only true for certain laws/rights. For an obvious example, a confidentiality agreement restricts you from speaking about certain things, even in countries with free speech rights. Anyway, that doesn't apply to this situation, because, as I've said multiple times, the current law in the United States does not allow you to copy database schemas.
Anyway. The directive is not about database schemas. It is about "databases", but unfortunately it is not clear from the text you linked, what actually a data base is.
Yes, it is clear, because it's explicitly defined: "For the purposes of this Directive, ‘database’ shall mean a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means." (Article 1, Section 2)
Traditionally database schemas (and that was the discussion) are not copyright able. Otherwise it would be impossible to write your own software that accesses that data base via e.g. SQL.
That doesn't logically follow. Querying a database does not involve copying and reusing the schema. And even if you make the twisted argument that writing a query that selects all of the fields from one or more tables is copying the schema, fair use exemptions (such as interoperability) would come into play.
So: we can not copyright schemas
The United States courts disagree with you. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this before you believe me. I'm speaking from direct personal experience, so unless you can point to specific case law that says otherwise, I have no idea why you keep arguing about this.
Another thing I've found annoying about Linux is that the software in the repositories is often extremely old and there's no way to upgrade to the latests version. It sounds like Snapcraft will solve this problem as well with auto-updates.
Snaps will have the opposite problem instead - if the software publisher doesn't update the package, you'll be stuck with out-of-date versions of every library that the application uses. This could be a major issue if there's a serious security vulnerability found in a commonly-used library. Instead of getting a single patched version of the library from the package repository, which will probably only take a day or two, you have to hope that every one of the applications that use that library are updated quickly.
The original "Fake News" story was used as an example, back when this phrase really took of in 2016, was the story that the Pope had endorsed Trump for President.
The Pope is a real person.
Trump is a real person.
Trump was running for President.
The Pope was being interviewed.
The Pope was asked a question about Trump.
The only made up part was that the Pope endorsed Trump. The entire story wasn't "completely invented" like you claim. The article was almost completely true!
If the news that is being conveyed to the reader is "The Pope Endorses Trump for President", and that is not something that happened in reality, then yes, that would be classified as "fake news", regardless of the Pope and Trump being real people.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
No, plenty of statements are misleading. It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true, but leaves out other facts that are also important to understanding the situation. "Person X was killed in a car accident" is a true statement, but it can be misleading if you don't also state that Person X was drunk or that an overpass collapsed in the middle of heavy traffic.
The expression 'fake news' is actually quite wonderful as a mis-director of attention. Saying a news story is fake news is not actually a claim that the news story is false, just that it shouldn't be a news story. The implication that is universally taken when the target of a story saying 'fake news' is that the target is denying the events.
That's what it's been turned into by certain politicians and pundits, but that isn't the original definition. The term "fake news" was originally applied to stories that were completely invented and not based on something that occurred in reality. Typically, there's also the assumption that the publisher of the story is trying to convince readers that the story is about a real occurrence; without that assumption, The Onion would be classified as "fake news", and you can debate whether or not that's a fair classification.
Finding clear information about it on the Internet is surprisingly difficult, so I'm mostly speaking from personal experience of working on cases that involved copyright infringement of the structure of a database. So if I'm wrong, the lawyers whom I worked for, and the judges who didn't immediately dismiss the cases, are also wrong. It's possible that some ruling has changed things in the past couple years, but I haven't heard anything.
EU Directive 96/9/EC says that database structure can be protected by copyright (clauses 15, 35, 58). The US Copyright Office's report refers to the EU directive, but doesn't explicitly say anything about adopting the same policy.
But think about it, how an I buy your database (schema) and drop all data, put in my own data, without infringing copyright, if the schema would be copyrighted?
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If you purchase a database from someone, how you can legally use that database depends entirely on the agreement you made to purchase it. If you copy and reuse the schema in some way that is not allowed by the agreement, then yes, you can be liable for copyright infringement. If you only do things that are explicitly allowed by the agreement, then of course you aren't liable for infringement, since you were given permission to do those things. This situation isn't specific to databases, though; it would apply to any protected work that you purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just illegal for news agencies to report that you posted it.
It isn't illegal for a news agency to report that you posted protected material, but it is illegal for them to post additional copies themselves.
It depends on if the billboard is classified as a building or an artistic work. Photographs of buildings taken from a public place (e.g. the sidewalk in front of the building) do not infringe the copyright of the architecture, but photographs of works of art would infringe the copyright of the work.
It gets a little tricky with the question, "Can a photo be considered a quote?"
It isn't tricky at all. It's been settled for a long time that a photograph is protected by copyright.
My guess is that either 1) nobody has filed a complaint, or 2) the FTC doesn't believe that Android is a monopoly. Another point to consider is whether Google requires Chrome to be the only or default web browser or if manufacturers can remove Chrome and install Firefox instead (I don't know the answer).
Gonorrhea and chlamydia?
...but you do you.
I'm pretty sure those problems come from doing someone else.
Android holds a monopoly position in the mobile OS market.
I can see how Android could become a monopoly, and I wouldn't be very surprised if it does in the future, but my personal opinion is that it isn't there now. Of course, since neither of us are judges, our personal opinions don't count for much.
Searching for "alien life" is probably one of the most useless human activities ever invented.
It's only useless if we never find any, and never is a long time.
Crab people?
If aliens exist in the galaxy, it would probably be smart as a species NOT to let your presence be known. If as a species you're still using radio waves- it is perhaps best to disguise those waves from being broadcast into space (if that's possible).
Not too long ago, the U.S. government's official position was that if we receive any kind of message from an extraterrestrial species, we would pretend not to have gotten it and not respond. I don't know if that's still the official position.
For instance, you could do fetuchini noodles, they take 10 minutes to boil...
Total time 12 minutes.
I don't think many typical apartments have a stove that gets water up to boiling instantaneously.
Then give some evidence.
I already cited the EU directive.
everyone who payed for it is free to use it as he sees fit (because of interoperability exceptions)
If you paid for it, using it according to the agreement that you made when you purchased it isn't infringement. That's true of all protected works.
And everyone who invents by accident the exact same schema ist free to to use it as well. Because in the end the "copyright" does not prevent him in this special case to do so.
That isn't copying, so of course it isn't infringement. Copyright and patents do not work the same way.
... but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
Many of the employees, especially younger people, want to live in or near a large city that has an active social life. Some engineers are perfectly happy to go straight home from work and sit in front of their computer for most of the other 100+ hours in the week. Other people, including many engineers, want to be able to go see an evening show on occasion.
Higher local property taxes means the state doesn't have to fund as many local projects, so state taxes are lower than they would be otherwise.
Civilization happens in spite of government
Not to any significant extent. Otherwise I would just kill you and take all your stuff.
It's a positive feedback loop. A small amount of civilization comes together, and it starts to grow. At a certain size, a small amount of government is needed to organize the civilization. The small government allows the civilization to grow a bit more, which requires a bit more organization and thus a slightly larger government. The feedback loop continues for as long as the value of being organized is greater than the cost of the government.
The legal issue with Internet Explorer was that Windows was a monopoly, and Microsoft was using the Windows monopoly in the operating system market to stifle competition in the web browser market. In order for Android/Chrome to be an issue, it would have to be Android that becomes a monopoly, unless somehow Chrome's monopoly position can be used to force users into buying Android phones, which I highly doubt could happen.
A more accurate comparison would be Chrome/Google Ads, where there would be the potential for monopoly abuse, as many others have pointed out.
A friend of mine is a journalist who makes his living off the website he writes for now that the newspaper it sprung out of has died. That means he's 100% dependent on ads to pay the rent (The sites fairly opposed to paywalls). So understandably he's got a bee in his bonnet about ad blockers.
As far as I know, ad blockers aren't doing any kind of advanced image analysis, they're just going by the domain the ad comes from. So if he wants to sell ads on his site, he can host the ads himself and they won't be blocked.
You've provided no evidence that I'm wrong, and I'm speaking from direct personal experience of working on a lawsuit in which the copyright of a database schema was at issue. So if I'm wrong, then so were the lawyers and judge in that case. I think they are far more credible than you are.
If you choose not believe me, fine, that's your problem. I'm done trying to convince someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I went to a mid-tier state university 20 years ago, and we had a required course about computers and ethics. Then again, the primary reason for having it was to fulfill the university's ethics requirement without needing to take a pointless intro class from the Philosophy department.
The agreement is bound to copyright laws. Any agreement restricting me from what is allowed by the law is void: in sane countries.
That's only true for certain laws/rights. For an obvious example, a confidentiality agreement restricts you from speaking about certain things, even in countries with free speech rights. Anyway, that doesn't apply to this situation, because, as I've said multiple times, the current law in the United States does not allow you to copy database schemas.
Anyway. The directive is not about database schemas. It is about "databases", but unfortunately it is not clear from the text you linked, what actually a data base is.
Yes, it is clear, because it's explicitly defined: "For the purposes of this Directive, ‘database’ shall mean a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means." (Article 1, Section 2)
Traditionally database schemas (and that was the discussion) are not copyright able. Otherwise it would be impossible to write your own software that accesses that data base via e.g. SQL.
That doesn't logically follow. Querying a database does not involve copying and reusing the schema. And even if you make the twisted argument that writing a query that selects all of the fields from one or more tables is copying the schema, fair use exemptions (such as interoperability) would come into play.
So: we can not copyright schemas
The United States courts disagree with you. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this before you believe me. I'm speaking from direct personal experience, so unless you can point to specific case law that says otherwise, I have no idea why you keep arguing about this.
Another thing I've found annoying about Linux is that the software in the repositories is often extremely old and there's no way to upgrade to the latests version. It sounds like Snapcraft will solve this problem as well with auto-updates.
Snaps will have the opposite problem instead - if the software publisher doesn't update the package, you'll be stuck with out-of-date versions of every library that the application uses. This could be a major issue if there's a serious security vulnerability found in a commonly-used library. Instead of getting a single patched version of the library from the package repository, which will probably only take a day or two, you have to hope that every one of the applications that use that library are updated quickly.
The original "Fake News" story was used as an example, back when this phrase really took of in 2016, was the story that the Pope had endorsed Trump for President.
The Pope is a real person. Trump is a real person. Trump was running for President. The Pope was being interviewed. The Pope was asked a question about Trump.
The only made up part was that the Pope endorsed Trump. The entire story wasn't "completely invented" like you claim. The article was almost completely true!
If the news that is being conveyed to the reader is "The Pope Endorses Trump for President", and that is not something that happened in reality, then yes, that would be classified as "fake news", regardless of the Pope and Trump being real people.
Most things are simply True or False.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
No, plenty of statements are misleading. It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true, but leaves out other facts that are also important to understanding the situation. "Person X was killed in a car accident" is a true statement, but it can be misleading if you don't also state that Person X was drunk or that an overpass collapsed in the middle of heavy traffic.
The expression 'fake news' is actually quite wonderful as a mis-director of attention. Saying a news story is fake news is not actually a claim that the news story is false, just that it shouldn't be a news story. The implication that is universally taken when the target of a story saying 'fake news' is that the target is denying the events.
That's what it's been turned into by certain politicians and pundits, but that isn't the original definition. The term "fake news" was originally applied to stories that were completely invented and not based on something that occurred in reality. Typically, there's also the assumption that the publisher of the story is trying to convince readers that the story is about a real occurrence; without that assumption, The Onion would be classified as "fake news", and you can debate whether or not that's a fair classification.
EU Directive 96/9/EC says that database structure can be protected by copyright (clauses 15, 35, 58). The US Copyright Office's report refers to the EU directive, but doesn't explicitly say anything about adopting the same policy.
But think about it, how an I buy your database (schema) and drop all data, put in my own data, without infringing copyright, if the schema would be copyrighted?
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If you purchase a database from someone, how you can legally use that database depends entirely on the agreement you made to purchase it. If you copy and reuse the schema in some way that is not allowed by the agreement, then yes, you can be liable for copyright infringement. If you only do things that are explicitly allowed by the agreement, then of course you aren't liable for infringement, since you were given permission to do those things. This situation isn't specific to databases, though; it would apply to any protected work that you purchase.
It's called truthiness, and it isn't really all that new anymore.