Live forever or die trying
“Everybody on TV and in movies reads the same newspaper, it seems. And they’ve been reading that standard newspaper prop for decades.”
Posted via web from crasch’s posterous
The sheer volume suggests that these cases aren’t designed for prosecution—and they don’t need to be. As the RIAA lawsuits showed us, most people will settle. Data from the recording industry lawsuits, revealed in a court case, showed that 11,000 of the 18,000 Does settled immediately or had their cases dropped by the labels. Seven thousand either refused to settle or never responded to the settlement letter, but after the RIAA subpoenaed their identities and filed “named” lawsuits against them, nearly every one settled.
After years of litigation, the number of people who have pursued a trial all the way to a verdict can be counted on one hand.
The legal campaign has the potential to earn real money. Copies of the settlement letters and settlement contracts seen by Ars Technica show that Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver generally asks for $1,500 to $2,500, threatening to sue for $150,000 if no settlement payment is forthcoming. Assuming that 90 percent of the current targets settle for $1,500, this means that the lawyers, studios, and P2P detection company would split $19.7 million.
Once the infrastructure has been set up, this sort of system is simple to replicate, since it’s built largely on sending out letters and collecting cash. If the lawyers can continue signing up indie film clients at the current rate, they could be on their way to filing nearly 30,000 lawsuits by year’s end, which would double the potential cash on the table.
Time to repeal copyright law.
Posted via web from crasch’s posterous
Posted via web from crasch’s posterous
Defensive publishing service offered by ip.com:
Patenting is extremely expensive and most companies have more innovative ideas than budgeted patent resources. Who can afford to patent everything? On the other hand, who can afford to let competitors patent technology used in your products and services? Worse yet, how do you know, years in advance, which patentable ideas you will need for your products and services? Defensive publishing is a low cost way to prevent competitors from obtaining patents and protect your freedom to practice.
Although nothing compared to getting a patent, it’s still kinda pricey — $200.00.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/eonline/20080819/en_movies_eo/24472
Who will watch Watchmen? Nobody, if 20th Century Fox gets its way.
After a major court victory, the studio has announced a bid to block the release of Warner Bros.’ anticipated adaptation of the seminal graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Fox originally tried to develop the project more than a decade ago, but didn’t manage to get the film off the drawing board. The studio claims Warners never properly acquired the rights to Watchmen, and, in a major twist, instead of seeking a share of the would-be blockbuster’s box-office gross, Fox is seeking to kill the flick entirely before it unspools in theaters March 6.
Good thing we have copyright to encourage encourage artists:
Making Your Case for a Permit
If you do decide that a permit is the way to go (in other words, you’re going to use a tripod), one thing they will want to know is, “What will the photos be used for?” They may ask if they’re going to be used for commercial purposes, educational purposes, to be sold as postcards, etc.For example, on my recent trip to New York, we contacted the observatory at the top of 30 Rockefeller Center to request a permit to shoot the New York Skyline at dusk from their observatory (which would require me setting up a tripod). They had a page on their site for photo permits, and who to contact, etc. and so we followed their instructions. Unfortunately, we were turned down because we were going to use the photos in one of my books, which they felt was a “Commercial Purpose” so our request was denied.
We also contacted the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and they had a request for photography permit section as well, and they were pretty clear and adamant about the fact that both the exterior and interior of the Guggenheim were copyrighted, and tightly controlled. Despite several calls to the department that handles photo requests, we were never able to reach anyone, and they never called us back, so we were out of luck.
Timothy Sandefur has an excellent analysis of IP law from a Randian perspective.
Rand’s argument is that intellectual property rights are natural rights, and that “[t]he government does not ‘grant’ a patent or a copyright in the sense of a gift, privilege, or favor.” Id. at 131. As a descriptive matter, of course, this is plainly false. Intellectual property was not a right at common law, and has always been regarded by the law as a mere privilege. Donaldson v. Becket, 98 Eng. Rep. 257 (H.L. 1774), accord, Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591, 663 (1834). But if Rand is saying that patents and copyrights ought to be regarded as natural rights, she has to make a case for it, and that case must profoundly address the most significant characteristic of intellectual property: its non-exclusivity. That is, intellectual property can be used simultaneously by more than one person at a time, and once obtained, it can never be taken away from a person. In Jefferson’s phrase, a person who lights his candle from mine illuminates himself without darkening me.
Rand fails to address this matter at all, except in one interesting passage. In that passage, she argues that intellectual property rights must be limited in time, lest they clog the flow of progress: “it would become a cumulative lien on the productivity of unborn generations, which would ultimately paralyze them,” she says, for intellectual property rights to extend to perpetuity. Rand at 131. Yet this argument counts against her proposition that intellectual property is a natural right. For one thing, I know of no other natural property right which becomes unjust merely by the passage of time, and with no intervening unjust act occurring. And if intellectual property is a natural right, then it would seem that a time limit would be an injustice, just as it would be unjust for the government to simply declare that all land titles shall expire in exactly 50 years.
Also be sure to check out Tom G. Palmer’s Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified?: The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects, 13 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 817 (1990).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/business/worldbusiness/23gamble.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ei=5087%0A&em&en=45639b242bae8fd2&ex=1188014400&oref=login
“…The dispute stretches back to 2003, when Mr. Mendel first persuaded officials in Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny nation in the Caribbean with a population of around 70,000, to instigate a trade complaint against the United States, claiming its ban against Americans gambling over the Internet violated Antigua and Barbuda’s rights as a member of the W.T.O.
Antigua is best known to Americans for its pristine beaches and tourist attractions like historic English Harbor. But the dozens of online casinos based there are vital to the island’s economy, serving as its second-largest employer.
More than a few people in Washington initially dismissed as absurd the idea that the trade organization could claim jurisdiction over something as basic as a country’s own policies toward gambling. Various states and the federal government, after all, have been deeply engaged for decades in where and when to allow the operation of casinos, Indian gambling halls, racetracks, lotteries and the like.
But a W.T.O. panel ruled against the United States in 2004, and its appellate body upheld that decision one year later. In March, the organization upheld that ruling for a second time and declared Washington out of compliance with its rules.
That has placed the United States in a quandary, said John H. Jackson, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in international trade law.
Complying with the W.T.O. ruling, Professor Jackson said, would require Congress and the Bush administration either to reverse course and permit Americans to place bets online legally with offshore casinos or, equally unlikely, impose an across-the-board ban on all forms of Internet gambling — including the online purchase of lottery tickets, participation in Web-based pro sports fantasy leagues and off-track wagering on horse racing.
But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That’s because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others.
For the W.T.O. itself, the decision is equally fraught with peril. It cannot back down because that would undermine its credibility with the rest of the world. But if it actually carries out the penalties, it risks a political backlash in the United States, the most powerful force for free-flowing global trade and the W.T.O.’s biggest backer….”
I like Macs. The OS allows me to switch seamlessly between open source and proprietary software, both Windows and Mac. Since it’s based on FreeBSD Unix, it’s both more stable and secure than Windows. Apple puts a lot of QA time and money into making sure everything works consistently. And I like Apple’s design aesthetics.
Unfortunately, however, Apple often still behaves in ways just as evil as Microsoft:
Parallels and VMWare, the respective makers of Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion virtualisation solutions for the Mac have both admitted that they will not support Mac OS X virtualisation in their software.
The reason isn’t technical though, as the two companies probably know how to make this work without the need of Apple.
The problem is that neither Parallels or VMWare want to strain their relationship with Apple by adding this feature without the Mac-maker’s consent and, by the way, violating or encouraging to violate its current user license agreement as well as Apple’s copyright regarding the protection system the company has developed so as to prevent Mac OS X from booting on anything that is not a Mac.
Virtualizing Mac OS X would allow PC users to run this system in a window or on full screen mode, which is probably one thing Apple doesn’t like.
However, it would also be an interesting feature for the enterprise and professionals markets, as virtualisation is used as a flexibility enhancer for easily creating or simulating secure system environments. This technology has been clearly embraced by the Enterprise market during the past two years and is now widely used for production purposes.
http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/hollywood_heat/articles/060525fakes1_feat.html
In California, the statute has been expanded to also protect the use of one’s likeness or persona, which means that even if there is no picture of the person, it is still forbidden to use anything recognizable or a signature of that person without consent. In 1993, Vanna White won a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics over their use of a robot turning letters on a game show in a futuristic ad. White claimed that the ad evoked her image, even though Samsung did not use her name or picture.