Slashback: Disney Copyright, Alaa Freed, Kelo Repealed 260
Egyptian blogger Alaa freed from jail. FleaPlus writes "Egyptian blogger, open source advocate, and Slashdot interviewee Alaa Abd El-Fatah has been released from jail. He had been imprisoned for 45 days after being arrested (along with several others) for taking part in a pro-democracy election reform rally, on charges which included "insulting the Egyptian president." In a blog post Alaa describes the conditions he was subjected to in the jail, as well as his worry about the hundreds of other activists who are still in prison."
Executive order defuses Kelo decision. physicsphairy writes "President Bush has issued an executive order whose effect is to undo the previous Kelo decision of the Supreme Court. From the article: 'It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.' The downside is that what was once affirmed consitutionally is now affirmed only in federal law."
Disney's trouble with Pooh bear. bbernard writes "It seems that the same laws that allow the Mouse to continue generating money for Disney have prevented Disney from taking control of Winny the Pooh. The Supreme Court has denied Clare Milne's bid to get the rights back for Pooh and his buddies. Clare is A.A. Milne's granddaughter, and her court battle was funded by Disney, as she was going to reassign the rights to them. Interesting to see a company foiled by the laws they insisted on in the first place, isn't it?"
NASA engineer fired for opposing shuttle launch. quad4b writes to tell us The New York Daily News reports that Charlie Camarda was has been removed from his post at NASA for questioning the safety of this Saturday's launch. From the article: "Camarda's removal heightened the turmoil over NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's decision to take the 'acceptable risk' of launching the Discovery orbiter despite warnings of potentially fatal blastoff debris. Camarda, who flew aboard the troubled flight of Discovery last July, told colleagues in an e-mail that he was fired from his post as chief engineer at Houston's Johnson Space Center and given another NASA engineering job."
Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance. An anonymous reader writes "A new insurance company in Sweden is offering a new policy to protect you from the RIAA [Swedish]. For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing. Interesting development in Sweden indeed."
Open source Java months away? bl8n8r writes "A Sun Microsystems Inc. executive said Tuesday said the company is "months" away from releasing its trademark Java programming language under an open-source license. Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer for Sun, said the company is ruminating over two major issues: how to keep Java compatible and ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's "write once, run anywhere" mantra."
Net neutrality amendment defeated in committee. DeathPooky writes "While not the end of the road for net neutrality, the latest vote isn't a good sign. From the article: 'The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday rejected a network neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users. The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.' All 10 Democrats on the committee, as well as Republican co-sponsor Sen. Snowe, voted for the amendment. The other 11 Republicans voted against."
Kelo Untouched (Score:5, Informative)
Try "double-digit" months away (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More Disney details please (Score:4, Informative)
By the way - to the editors.... It's Winnie not Winny.
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:4, Informative)
Presidents of the United States have issued executive orders since 1789. There is no United States Constitution provision or statute that explicitly permits this, aside from the vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and the statement "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" in Article II, Section 3.
Most executive orders are orders issued by the President to United States executive officers to help direct their operation, the result of failing to comply being removal from office. Some orders do have the force of law when made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress due to those acts giving the President discretionary powers.
If wikipedia is accurate, then an executive order only has force of law if made with the backing of a congressional act. Also sounds like you couldn't be jailed or fined for ignoring it.
Re:What a hypocrite (Score:3, Informative)
Issuing an executive order is not the same as legislating. As the head of the executive branch, the President can authorise or limit the actions of any agency under the executive branch as long as doing so would not contradict any legislation.
Re:STFU already (Score:2, Informative)
And not only that but you won't STFU about it and keep posting the same "I don't care--I'm going to do it and I need to tell Slashdot so they can see how stupid I am" posts.
Not "months" away.. (Score:1, Informative)
Basically he said it would be ASAP, but seemed to imply that (lengthy) legal issues were pretty much the cause of delays.
Re:More Disney details please (Score:5, Informative)
Not only net neutrality (Score:4, Informative)
My submission got rejected, but net neutrality is not the only bad thing on the way via bill S.2686. This is the same bill that grants the FCC the power to require audio and video broadcast flag recognition on every device made or sold. This is one of the last opportunities you have to contact your Senators to let them know you are opposed to this bill before it gets voted through in the middle of the night.
Kelo as viewed from the perspective of a local (Score:4, Informative)
See, the thing is, New London is dirt poor. It's been in decline since it's peak in the 1800s, ever since whaling and fishing stopped being a reasonable basis for a small New England city's economy. For a long time now New London has been the poorest town in the area, with the most densely packed suburban sprawl, and a small downtown area which is mostly boarded up. Over the past twenty or thirty years, New London has been slowly building itself back up. They've cleaned up a lot of the bad crime that was going on, and businesses have been moving back in to areas that had lain dormant. They're developing themselves as a cultural center for the area, and doing a good job of it.
Now, with the whole eminent domain issue, here's the thing: It didn't particularly benefit the company much at all. Pfizer was going to build in the area, at comparable price, regardless, just not in New London. The government of New London saw the opportunity to bring that economic boon into their own town, and jumped on it. Now, there was no readily available area to give to Pfizer. New London is very small, with a high population for it's size. They had to move some people in order to make this go through, or they'd lose the tax base of having that industry to a neighboring, richer town.
The money generated for the town by having Pfizer there is going to allow them to increase the quality of their public services greatly. The school system is going to improve, the police effectiveness is going to improve, the quality of life for the entire town going up as a result of this. It's unfortunate that some people had to be removed for this to happen, and even more unfortunate is the level of malcontent some have felt over this act, but the town and it's inhabitants are going to benefit tangibly. The business received some benefit in order to entice them to the town, but that's a marginal amount. Big Business didn't trump the people here. The town made a heavily debated and difficult decision, and made it for the benefit of it's residents as a group.
Now, as a precedent, Kelo is undeniably dangerous. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that in the particular case of New London, it was the right choice to make.
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:4, Informative)
In this case, since the federal government, per executive order, is not to take property via eminent domain when the property won't be used specifically for the public good, the federal government simply won't do it. No other part of the federal government has the capability to exercise such power, so the order is as good as law until a subsequent president revokes the policy, even though it's not statute.
It's essentially the same thing as a federal regulation [wikipedia.org] - these are things defined not in statute, but rather by the Executive Branch of the government. Some things in the CFR are there because the legislature specifically requires them, while others are regulations crafted under the broad discretion that Congress sometimes gives. In the case of the anti-Kelo executive order, (fairly) broad discretion is granted by the Constitution, and the executive order sets a specific procedure under which that power is exercised. The entirety of the federal Executive Branch must abide by that order (under penalty of at least getting fired, and possibly incurring substantial civil damages against oneself if one attempts to bypass the order), and so it's as good as law as long as it's not revoked.
Re:More Disney details please (Score:1, Informative)
This was a licensing dispute which hinged on whether or not an agreement could be voided. It had nothing to do with "laws Disney wanted passed". The writeup is inaccurate.
Protecting the Java trademark:No Problem (Score:3, Informative)
If Sun wants to protect the use of the Java trademark so that others implementing Java runtime systems remain compatible with the standard, there already is a method available. It's called a "certification mark" or "membership mark" class of trademark or servicemark. If you live in the United States, you're almost certainly aware of one very famous certification mark, the "UL" label on electrical appliances. Companies supply samples of their equipment to Underwriters Laboratories, which basically tests the device to destruction, then if the fail point is higher than the minimum standard, UL grants them permission to affix the UL certification mark to their equipment.
A "membership mark" would be used where some organization is allowed to use a mark to show it's a member of a group or has qualified to show the particular mark. I think the "Energy Star" label from the Department of Energy would fit here.
The only requirement to do this is that someone else — that does not distribute the software — has to be the certification authority (you can't be both owner of a certification mark and a user of it, that would be a conflict of interest.) But they'd probably want to do that anyway, the way IBM turned over the Eclipse IDE to a separate foundation after they decided to release it open source.
So, there's already plenty of existing systems available for Sun to use a system to "protect" the Java trademark and the "write once, run anywhere" concept. And a small license fee for those who want to use the mark to cover testing costs for verifying compliance could make the whole thing self-funding.
Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us [mailto]
Totally Wrong About Kelo (Score:1, Informative)
The only way to counter a Supreme Court decision, which interprets actions in the context of American laws, is to make new laws. That power is reserved to the Congress, not the president, as anyone who ever saw Schoolhouse Rock [youtube.com] knows.
Despite the neocon "unitary executive" ("king") philosophy, the president is optional (when Congress overrides a presidential veto), but Congress never is, when making laws.
Of course, with Republicans controlling all three branches of our government, it's hard to tell how the powers are separated. Of course, that's why Republicans are doing all these antiamerican actions, while they have the chance.
And when Bush can sign such a BS order, and have naive people post, publish and read on Slashdot that it somehow "repeals" a Court decision (the correct term is "rescind", even when that is actually the effect), we can tell why they do it. Because when people believe it, it has effect. Even when it's the kind of destruction of America that our enemies have always dreamed of.
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:3, Informative)
As well it shouldn't - such an order would be an unjustified intrusion into the powers reserved to the states, and hence unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment.
Furthermore, it's probably really only good as "advice" to the Attorney General.
Not just the AG, but the entire executive branch - which is almost always the branch that invokes eminent domain on behalf of the federal government. From TFA: "The Attorney General shall: (i) issue instructions to the heads of departments and agencies to implement the policy..., (ii) monitor takings by departments and agencies for compliance...," etc.
But you're correct that this is pretty limited, since virtually all eminent domain cases involve a state or local government. Nor could it (unless it were done in another manner, e.g., tied to state funding via the commerce clause.) And it's further weakened by the host of exceptions - see Sec. 3.
Generally I agree with you, but in this case, your vitriol is unsupported. Also, the headline here ("Kelo repealed"... the decision "undo[es] the previous Kelo decision") is completely wrong and misleading and stupid. The poster, physicsphairy, should stick with physics.
(For once,) Bush isn't trumping the statement of the judiciary - he's not even addressing it, since his order doesn't use the word "constitutionality" at all.
Read as: "Whether or not the Supreme Court correctly granted us this power, we're ordering ourselves not to use it."
- David Stein
Re:Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance. (Score:1, Informative)
Best regards,
Mikael
Re:Swedish pirates provide RIAA insurance. (Score:1, Informative)
It's not really an insurance, more of a solidarity fund...
Re:Returning to a Constitutionally Limited Governm (Score:3, Informative)
The FCC, for example, was created as part of the Federal Communications Act of 1934. Their powers are relegated to them by Congressional Acts, and they have been slapped by SCOTUS before for overstepping the bounds laid before them in the law and for acting without Congressional approval. The USPTO, as another example, is given some support by the original Constitution, but all the laws for it were written through acts of Congress. The laws were merely "clarified" in some instances by the CAFC and SCOTUS. They also have a set of regulations, but in their case, the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) which are applied to patents do not hold the weight of law.
While the EPA was created by a President, Nixon to be exact, many of its "regulations" actually come from Acts of Congress [wikipedia.org]. OSHA was also created by an act of Congress, conveniently having the same acronym [wikipedia.org].
Really, please read up a little bit before accusing these groups of blatantly creating and enforcing laws. These groups did not just magically appear and are hardly some sort of rogue 4th branch of US Government.