It strikes me as odd that a contract made in a fraudulent manner (under the pseudonym "Sam Bacile", which was a violation of his conditions of parole) should be held enforceable by a Federal judge. If a fraudulent contract has no validity then the copyright claim should be upheld.
The judge should have addressed the fraud issue more clearly. There should be no reasonable defense against the copyright claim given the criminal activity surrounding the production of the film. How can ANY of "Bacile's" contracts be held valid?
The lying never stops with you anti-SOPA/PIPA people. Perhaps in your eyes it's okay to distort the facts and hide the truth from your readers but that's not okay with me.
These bills never proposed shutting down Websites that were allowing casual abuse. These bills were clearly directed at foreign Websites that were created for the purpose of violating intellectual property rights.
As matters stand right now, you and your fellow idiots are saying that it's okay for the US government to forbid American Websites to profit from stolen intellectual property rights but that it must not in any way protect American IPR interests against systematic parasitical practices from foreign Websites.
Everything that SOPA and PIPA threatened is already forbidden under U.S. law. These bills make reference to existing laws that are being enforced today (and were being enforced before January 18) to protect intellectual property rights.
No one has lost their freedom of speech under those existing laws.
Everyone is still free to link to whatever they want to link to.
And yet the U.S. Government has very effectively used those "despotical" tactics such as DNS blocking/filtering to take down child pornography Websites, terrorist Websites, and Websites that engage in other activities. None of you anti-SOPA activists have objected to THOSE takedowns with your pseudo-technical babble about how it doesn't work.
It's unfortunate that so many people in the technical industries came out of the woodwork to protest laws they clearly don't understand. To claim that these methods -- which have worked fine for years without harming either the Internet or freedom of speech -- would destroy the online world as we know it is a crock of manure.
The only real new aspect to SOPA was that it was going after the money. Google and other online advertisers make millions of dollars from the advertising that the foreign sites pay for and carry on their Web pages. Cutting off their advertising and their revenue (or at least a big chunk of it) would have choked many of these Websites into virtual death.
And these laws would allow millions of American Webmasters to go after foreign scraper sites that are taking our content and using it to make money through the Google AdSense program.
Sure, Google takes down violators that are brought to their attention, but if they were doing enough to fight these issues then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
SOPA and PIPA are not just about your cheap-assed free music downloads.
Sounds to me like you would not even be able to legally name the Website (the URL, at least) as that would be a reference.
Still, why should you care about linking to Websites that are designed to break the law? The public interest is not being served by promoting criminal activity.
You might as well complain about not being able to link to child pornography, sites that advocate murder, and sites that teach children how to make explosive devices to use in school.
Why do you draw the line at theft of intellectual property rights and say that organized criminal activity that defrauds investors and rights owners of millions or billions of dollars in owed value should be exempted from the law?
Why do you want to see the 1st Amendment used to protect and enable the activities of criminals?
There is nothing in that point of view for the benefit of John Q. Public. What's in it for you? More illegal downloads because you're too cheap to pay for songs and movies?
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Michael Martinez.
Are contracts made as part of fraud enforceable?
It strikes me as odd that a contract made in a fraudulent manner (under the pseudonym "Sam Bacile", which was a violation of his conditions of parole) should be held enforceable by a Federal judge. If a fraudulent contract has no validity then the copyright claim should be upheld.
The judge should have addressed the fraud issue more clearly. There should be no reasonable defense against the copyright claim given the criminal activity surrounding the production of the film. How can ANY of "Bacile's" contracts be held valid?
RIAA Totally Out Of Touch: Lashes Out At Google, Wikipedia And Everyone Who Protested SOPA/PIPA
The lying never stops with you anti-SOPA/PIPA people. Perhaps in your eyes it's okay to distort the facts and hide the truth from your readers but that's not okay with me.
These bills never proposed shutting down Websites that were allowing casual abuse. These bills were clearly directed at foreign Websites that were created for the purpose of violating intellectual property rights.
As matters stand right now, you and your fellow idiots are saying that it's okay for the US government to forbid American Websites to profit from stolen intellectual property rights but that it must not in any way protect American IPR interests against systematic parasitical practices from foreign Websites.
Everything that SOPA and PIPA threatened is already forbidden under U.S. law. These bills make reference to existing laws that are being enforced today (and were being enforced before January 18) to protect intellectual property rights.
No one has lost their freedom of speech under those existing laws.
Everyone is still free to link to whatever they want to link to.
And yet the U.S. Government has very effectively used those "despotical" tactics such as DNS blocking/filtering to take down child pornography Websites, terrorist Websites, and Websites that engage in other activities. None of you anti-SOPA activists have objected to THOSE takedowns with your pseudo-technical babble about how it doesn't work.
It's unfortunate that so many people in the technical industries came out of the woodwork to protest laws they clearly don't understand. To claim that these methods -- which have worked fine for years without harming either the Internet or freedom of speech -- would destroy the online world as we know it is a crock of manure.
The only real new aspect to SOPA was that it was going after the money. Google and other online advertisers make millions of dollars from the advertising that the foreign sites pay for and carry on their Web pages. Cutting off their advertising and their revenue (or at least a big chunk of it) would have choked many of these Websites into virtual death.
And these laws would allow millions of American Webmasters to go after foreign scraper sites that are taking our content and using it to make money through the Google AdSense program.
Sure, Google takes down violators that are brought to their attention, but if they were doing enough to fight these issues then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
SOPA and PIPA are not just about your cheap-assed free music downloads.
Referring to infringing sites
Sounds to me like you would not even be able to legally name the Website (the URL, at least) as that would be a reference.
Still, why should you care about linking to Websites that are designed to break the law? The public interest is not being served by promoting criminal activity.
You might as well complain about not being able to link to child pornography, sites that advocate murder, and sites that teach children how to make explosive devices to use in school.
Why do you draw the line at theft of intellectual property rights and say that organized criminal activity that defrauds investors and rights owners of millions or billions of dollars in owed value should be exempted from the law?
Why do you want to see the 1st Amendment used to protect and enable the activities of criminals?
There is nothing in that point of view for the benefit of John Q. Public. What's in it for you? More illegal downloads because you're too cheap to pay for songs and movies?