Summary: RIAA gets a domain seized (it was during that big counterfeit bust a year back). Holder says "okay, I'm calling your bluff, I responded to DMCA requests, I'm safe and you have no case. Give it back, or formally request I forfeit it." Gov't requests for an extension on having to do this, which the holder is not allowed to see. This continues for the better part of a year. The reasoning for the extensions? "We're waiting on some stuff we probably should've had before we seized his domain."
better than that - earlier this week a judge in ny ruled that if you're gonna try to nail a bunch of people for using torrent, you gotta make the case for EACH one, not some vague sense of what a conspiracy is because that sure as hell isn't what people are doing.
so yeah, the courts are right now the main branch saving us.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
Wanglicious posted... better than that - earlier this week a judge in ny ruled that if you're gonna try to nail a bunch of people for using torrent, you gotta make the case for EACH one, not some vague sense of what a conspiracy is because that sure as hell isn't what people are doing.
so yeah, the courts are right now the main branch saving us.
Actually, that IS conspiracy as far as I understand. You are making available resources to someone else (your bandwidth and copy of the file) to use to commit a crime (copyright infringement). The problem is not the conspiracy part. The problem was enjoining them all as a class action assumes they would all have the same defence, which is not the case, many have the reasonable defence that they were not the ones doing the infringing. (hence their being severed)
go check out oracle/google. you won't be disappointed, that judge is flat out amazing.
Google/Oracle is actually a prime example of big content having bought out the courts <_<. The fact that it has even GOTTEN to this point just shows how absurdly broken patent law is.
Wait, what? Google/Oracle is before a JURY right now. (okay, the judge gets to call whether or not an API can be copyrighted, but he hasn't done that yet)
*goes on 10 minute search* Okay, I'm tired of dredging through Groklaw.
The only thing I found the judge did was nail down a technicality saying Oracle couldn't add any more patents after the fact. And that's more of a procedural blunder on Oracle's part. What part are you referring to?
nah, it isn't a conspiracy because torrent does this automatically, leaving the person without any knowledge of WHO he's sharing with and cases are often brought up with just a group of people, not even suggesting they shared it with each other. just that it was shared, automatically.
ars tech has been really nice with the google/oracle coverage. also, it wasn't a procedural blunder as much as they were trying to add stuff. rundown went: - oracle makes the claim, department of patents says okay we'll look into it to see if it's doable. - oracle moves forward with case despite full knowing and being told that it's in the wings. - case starts - ruling of okay you can make your claim work out - oracle tries to bring it in now but judge says no, you already knew the answer was no when you started so stop that.
and the judge specifically went down after the EU Supreme Court ruling to this case just yesterday. which is good for the judge because he's not BS'ing either one.
Wanglicious posted... nah, it isn't a conspiracy because torrent does this automatically, leaving the person without any knowledge of WHO he's sharing with and cases are often brought up with just a group of people, not even suggesting they shared it with each other. just that it was shared, automatically.
I personally do not agree with his line of reasoning there. Though it does it so automatically, by its very design bittorrent cooperates with others to accomplish the goal of getting your file. Nominally speaking, yes, you are able to theoretically limit yourself to only legal distribution of the file. But the probability is so low that you can't reasonably expect that to be the case. So by running it you're clearly aware you're enabling others to infringe as well.
Conspiracy to my understand only requires some sort of agreement that a crime be committed. Basically once your client acks someone, you're conspiring in my opinion.
ars tech has been really nice with the google/oracle coverage. also, it wasn't a procedural blunder as much as they were trying to add stuff. rundown went: - oracle makes the claim, department of patents says okay we'll look into it to see if it's doable. - oracle moves forward with case despite full knowing and being told that it's in the wings. - case starts - ruling of okay you can make your claim work out - oracle tries to bring it in now but judge says no, you already knew the answer was no when you started so stop that.
And I'm fairly sure there's a million and one things you can do as Oracle to say "we've got stuff pending that we might want to add and at the very least it shouldn't be dismissed with prejudice". They just dun ****ed up.
and the judge specifically went down after the EU Supreme Court ruling to this case just yesterday. which is good for the judge because he's not BS'ing either one.
seriously, this judge is awesome.
You see, to me, a programmer, it is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS you cannot copyright an API. It shouldn't need any deliberation whatsoever. Like, once you gut the API, you have almost nothing left in the language. More problematically, the API is a concept. It's not something technical. It's the idea if you make a certain statement, there is a certain effect on the state of the program, typically described at a fairly high level. Like... ugh. It's REALLY obvious.
Okay. It took me a while to get an elegant non-technical explanation, but I have one. An API is a description of what a programmer doesn't have to do, because it is already done for him. Whether or not that's copyrightable or even debatable, I leave to the reader to decide.
Once again, the fact that we are even here discussing this at all shows how broken patent and IPs are for software in my eyes.
oh i definitely agree with the idea that APIs shouldn't be copyright and that it's obvious as **** that you can't. and the judge does try to get into it a bit. however that's not just an issue within our court system, but was, for the longest time as well, in Europe's.
thing is they resolved it in the highest court to say APIs aren't. and that paints a real nasty picture for oracle here because google can literally shift business over there if they felt like it and be okay.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.