For an indication about how this might go, there was a previous case between rival chocolatiers Cadbury and Darrell Lea over the colour purple. <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/cadbury-loses-purple-case-20060428-ge27nq.html">Cadbury does not own the colour purple and does not have an exclusive reputation in purple in connection with chocolate.</a>
But, of course, the case is most famous for how it dealt with expert testimony. Cadbury wanted to introduce an expert witness, Brian Gibbs, to testify on consumer behaviour. Justice Heerey ruled that this was inadmissable because Gibbs was not going to say anything that an ordinary person wasn't familiar with. Specifically, and I quote, "Judges buy chocolate too."
Just because someone supports Israel doesn't mean they aren't antisemitic. A lot of neo-nazis very much like the idea of ethnostates in general, and places they can send Jewish people in particular.
See? Two can play at this game.
The way it's phrased, I'm not sure there's a problem on the legal question. The US government can <i>ask</i> any US company for any technical assistance it wants at any time for any reason. The problem is that the government seems to be kidding itself that this constitutes some kind of <i>demand</i> with force behind it.
The US government can also petition a court to compel some kind of activity for any reason it has good reason to believe might be legal. The problem is that FISA works mostly in secret, so the public has no oversight or any chance to intervene.
Now you know, people. If you see your organisation engaging in rampant illegal acts, keep it to yourself unless you're a decent respectable kind of chap who can hold his own at a nice cocktail party.
"You may need to unlearn a bunch of C++ stuff before learning a more high-level language like Python..."
According to my resume, I speak over 60 programming languages to varying levels of fluency. My postgrad work was on compilers, in case you were curious, and I still do the Pragmatic Programmers thing of a new language every year.
No matter what your first programming language is, you need to unlearn stuff to learn your second programming language. There does come a point where you no longer need to unlearn anything, which happens somewhere around the 4th paradigm.
Incidentally, you probably have to unlearn more going from Python to C++ than you would going from C++ to Python. C++ has sane variable scoping rules, for a start.
By the way, the snippet from the SMH story is slightly misleading. NuCoal has not been accused of corruption. They bought a company (Doyles Creek Mining) which had been granted the mining licence, apparently without finding out that a government minister basically handed the licence to a group of his friends.
I know you're kidding, but just to be clear, no, these aren't moral rights. Moral rights cover things like:
- The right to be identified as the creator of the work. - The right to prevent the use of the artist's name on any work which the artist did not create. - The right to preserve the integrity of the work from mutilation or distortion.
So that would cover things like:
- The artist's name should be attached to the metadata associated with any picture of it on Wikipedia. - Nobody may use photographs of the artwork to, say, push a political agenda which the artist does not agree with.
All stuff that Wikipedia could easily abide by, and probably does already, and are not the subject of this case.
Musk knows that the worst possible thing that could happen to Tesla is that its platform becomes one of many incompatible platforms.
What Musk wants is for Telsa's platform to be the world standard. He's betting that opening up the patents means that other people and companies will work towards that goal, and he won't have to pay them a cent.
This is, in a deep sense, very similar to Facebook's business model, or many open source business models: get other people to make your system valuable for you for free.
To borrow a Lessig analogy, consider an alcoholic man who is beating his family. Lessig is talking about the alcohol, and you are talking about the violence.
They are both problems. And it's undeniably true that violence is the proximate problem; it's what is directly hurting people. But the alcohol is the underlying problem, and without fixing that, nothing will really get fixed.
Similarly, term limits are a proximate problem, but money is the underlying problem. Action on term limits won't happen until there is a critical mass of politicians who are not motivated primarily by campaign funding.
One of the thing that strikes me about this is the amount of time that Musk "held" these patents is for exactly the amount of time that they needed to be held to serve their legitimate purpose (so that he could get the product on the market), and no longer. That is patents done right.
If you hold and enforce your patents longer than that, it's a clear sign that your product failed.
People being nice to each other is under-reported.
But, of course, it's hard not to imagine what would have happened to the troubled kid if the FBI got hold of him. It's not unknown for them, if they find a vulnerable young person at risk of entering a life of crime, to invent a criminal gang for them to be a member of, and give them as much encouragement and equipment as needed to commit a staged crime, so they can then arrest said kid and then tell the world how good they are at catching horrible criminals. Well, if the kid is brown, anyway.
I agree broadly with Michael's take on the whole thing, and I am no fan of the Beastie Boys, but I have to disagree with you. If they weren't important, people wouldn't be using their music as cultural references.
Nor do they don't come off as bullies. They come off as honouring the memory of a nice dead guy.
Goldieblox were (IMO) legally in the right, but they lost the PR battle.
For an indication about how this might go, there was a previous case between rival chocolatiers Cadbury and Darrell Lea over the colour purple. <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/cadbury-loses-purple-case-20060428-ge27nq.html">Cadbury does not own the colour purple and does not have an exclusive reputation in purple in connection with chocolate.</a>
But, of course, the case is most famous for how it dealt with expert testimony. Cadbury wanted to introduce an expert witness, Brian Gibbs, to testify on consumer behaviour. Justice Heerey ruled that this was inadmissable because Gibbs was not going to say anything that an ordinary person wasn't familiar with. Specifically, and I quote, "Judges buy chocolate too."
Re: Re: Morons
Just because someone supports Israel doesn't mean they aren't antisemitic. A lot of neo-nazis very much like the idea of ethnostates in general, and places they can send Jewish people in particular. See? Two can play at this game.
Actually...
"It is more akin to providing a key to a lockbox."
I can't see anything to disagree with in that analysis. This is a fourth amendment issue, not a fifth amendment issue.
Well...
The way it's phrased, I'm not sure there's a problem on the legal question. The US government can <i>ask</i> any US company for any technical assistance it wants at any time for any reason. The problem is that the government seems to be kidding itself that this constitutes some kind of <i>demand</i> with force behind it.
The US government can also petition a court to compel some kind of activity for any reason it has good reason to believe might be legal. The problem is that FISA works mostly in secret, so the public has no oversight or any chance to intervene.
Now you know
Now you know, people. If you see your organisation engaging in rampant illegal acts, keep it to yourself unless you're a decent respectable kind of chap who can hold his own at a nice cocktail party.
(Yes, using the word "his" deliberately.)
Re: What Version Of C++?
"You may need to unlearn a bunch of C++ stuff before learning a more high-level language like Python..."
According to my resume, I speak over 60 programming languages to varying levels of fluency. My postgrad work was on compilers, in case you were curious, and I still do the Pragmatic Programmers thing of a new language every year.
No matter what your first programming language is, you need to unlearn stuff to learn your second programming language. There does come a point where you no longer need to unlearn anything, which happens somewhere around the 4th paradigm.
Incidentally, you probably have to unlearn more going from Python to C++ than you would going from C++ to Python. C++ has sane variable scoping rules, for a start.
Misleading story
By the way, the snippet from the SMH story is slightly misleading. NuCoal has not been accused of corruption. They bought a company (Doyles Creek Mining) which had been granted the mining licence, apparently without finding out that a government minister basically handed the licence to a group of his friends.
I know this song...
Repeat after me: The TPP is not a trade agreement. The TPP is an investment agreement.
Do this daily, and before long you'll never make the mistake again.
Re: But Artists Need To Get Paid !
I know you're kidding, but just to be clear, no, these aren't moral rights. Moral rights cover things like:
- The right to be identified as the creator of the work.
- The right to prevent the use of the artist's name on any work which the artist did not create.
- The right to preserve the integrity of the work from mutilation or distortion.
So that would cover things like:
- The artist's name should be attached to the metadata associated with any picture of it on Wikipedia.
- Nobody may use photographs of the artwork to, say, push a political agenda which the artist does not agree with.
All stuff that Wikipedia could easily abide by, and probably does already, and are not the subject of this case.
Told you...
I told you that the public sector could be more efficient at some things than private industry.
Re: Re:
Precisely.
Musk knows that the worst possible thing that could happen to Tesla is that its platform becomes one of many incompatible platforms.
What Musk wants is for Telsa's platform to be the world standard. He's betting that opening up the patents means that other people and companies will work towards that goal, and he won't have to pay them a cent.
This is, in a deep sense, very similar to Facebook's business model, or many open source business models: get other people to make your system valuable for you for free.
Re: Term limits!
To borrow a Lessig analogy, consider an alcoholic man who is beating his family. Lessig is talking about the alcohol, and you are talking about the violence.
They are both problems. And it's undeniably true that violence is the proximate problem; it's what is directly hurting people. But the alcohol is the underlying problem, and without fixing that, nothing will really get fixed.
Similarly, term limits are a proximate problem, but money is the underlying problem. Action on term limits won't happen until there is a critical mass of politicians who are not motivated primarily by campaign funding.
Re: Visionary
One of the thing that strikes me about this is the amount of time that Musk "held" these patents is for exactly the amount of time that they needed to be held to serve their legitimate purpose (so that he could get the product on the market), and no longer. That is patents done right.
If you hold and enforce your patents longer than that, it's a clear sign that your product failed.
Re: Re:
People being nice to each other is under-reported.
But, of course, it's hard not to imagine what would have happened to the troubled kid if the FBI got hold of him. It's not unknown for them, if they find a vulnerable young person at risk of entering a life of crime, to invent a criminal gang for them to be a member of, and give them as much encouragement and equipment as needed to commit a staged crime, so they can then arrest said kid and then tell the world how good they are at catching horrible criminals. Well, if the kid is brown, anyway.
Re: and we all thought
To be clear, Orwell was a satirist. He was not trying to predict the future. He was trying to comment on developments of the day.
Re: Re:
Yes, but they'll all be brown people.
Re:
I agree broadly with Michael's take on the whole thing, and I am no fan of the Beastie Boys, but I have to disagree with you. If they weren't important, people wouldn't be using their music as cultural references.
Nor do they don't come off as bullies. They come off as honouring the memory of a nice dead guy.
Goldieblox were (IMO) legally in the right, but they lost the PR battle.
For all the good it will do...
...would someone please start a petition on whitehouse.gov? It won't get a response from the White House, but it might remind the media.
(No, I can't. I'm not a US citizen.)
Re: Re:
To be fair, we're all better off having both Ed Snowden and Ron Wyden. Wyden would be no use to us on the run in Russia.
Re: CIA & Domestic Activities
As has been pointed out many times, Guantanamo Bay is not "domestic". It is a legal grey area, and the government wants to keep it that way.