Slashback: Disney Copyright, Alaa Freed, Kelo Repealed 260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."
If it's a hit in Sweden, US will hopefully follow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:3, Interesting)
What an opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
It is clear here that the Democrats are on the side of the average person on a straightforward issue which is easy to explain and easy to get people excited about-- and the issue is framed in a way which makes it clear that a slight change in the partisan balance of power would have a direct effect on how Congress treats the issue.
With the upcoming Congressional elections, this represents a wonderful opportunity for the Democrats to completely fail at either communicating a message to the American people or presenting a credible alternative to the Republicans. I am sure that Democratic strategists are as we speak working around the clock trying to find some way to fumble this opportunity which has been dropped into their laps.
Re:If it's a hit in Sweden, US will hopefully foll (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why sites like The Pirate Bay [thepiratebay.org] are able to stay alive; they aren't actually infringing copyright, they're simply indexing user-uploaded torrents.
In the US, this would count as contributory infringement I believe, and would be shut down.
Disney story unrelated to copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Well it would be, but the Disney case is all about Milne selling the merchandising rights back in the 30's and the daughter basically wanting to back out of that contract. What does that have to do with copyright again?
I don't think it's right of Milne (or Disney) to try and break this contract either but you have to feel a little sorry for Milne who had her grandfather basically give away a vast fortune in return for some smaller sum. Still, I think she's doing well just with her contract to Disney...
Sun doesn't understand open source... (Score:1, Interesting)
Unless Sun really steps up or releases Java under a real open source license, without ridiculous restrictions (so other people can pick up Suns slack), I believe Java is in for a really tough time trying to survive the next 5-10 years. Look at how long its taken Swing to become reasonably decent, and yet even in Java 6 it still has serious problems. Look at the mess that is the Date API, NIO, JMF, Netbeans etc. Examples of terrible design decisions exist all throughout the standard API and additional Sun packages. Even a lot of people at Sun admit this, however these issues don't get fixed because Sun refuses to lose backwards compatibility (even though they've failed at that several times already). The API has so many depreciated methods that it's practically disgusting to look at.
The JCP process is not transparent, is way to slow and is a serious pain in the ass to get involved with. You want to get involved and fix bugs/write code, not gonna happen unless you sign a myriad of forms and sign lots of your rights over to Sun. Just being involved also means that you can't work on other JVM implementations. Furthermore, with the JCP you get the privilege of writing extensive JSRs and then waiting for them to take years to start seriously looking at them. You want to fix a bug or add an additional feature to Java, write a JSR and maybe it will be included in Java 10 in 10 years! Look at the bug list for Java, some of the bugs have been around for years.
For an example of the JCP not being a transparent community process, we only have to look back a few weeks when Sun out of the blue decided to include Apache Derby in the Java 6 JDK (which they've renamed JavaDB for inclusion with the JDK...). No JSR and no warning given to the JCP, just Sun unilaterally making the decision on what's best for Java. What a stupid decision that was... Who the hell, besides total beginners, wants a database included in the JDK? Are Java programmers really so inept that they can't go to the Derby website and download a jar file? What happens when a serious bug is found in Derby? Are they going to release an update to the JDK? How long will it take before the version included in the JDK is outdated? A few weeks, a few months tops... What are they going to bundle next with the JDK? That POS Netbeans? Glassfish? JOGL? Suns control over Java is running it into the ground.
Oh by the way, when Sun says "a couple months" they really mean 10 or more months [sun.com].
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kelo as viewed from the perspective of a local (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets take a look at the text at hand.
"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
There is no doubt that increase tax revenue is good for a budget but the problem with me is two fold. First, Private property taken for private use is not public use. Or at least wasn't until recently. Obviously all taxed properties in a cities tax base are for city the to use because they collect taxes, and of course taxes are for public use. Bamm dangerous prescient (Which I'm certain you agree with)
The other issue I have is with just compensation. If the land, which is taxed, is being taken then given to someone else so it can be taxed more, then what compensation should that person receive? I don't think just compensation means the cost of the property. It means the loss of liberty, the cost of moving, all expenses associated with being force out of your property, cost of employment, sentimental value, the cost of a new property (Which now wouldn't be yours anyway because it would be taxed and all things taxed in the city is now for public use.) It is very dangerous and I don't think the City of New London will be justly compensating any of the people/land owners force for forfit.
On a side note, if they would just plant some Chaffseed, Gerardia, or Pogonia which are considered endangered, it might make the property even more of a hard pill to swallow, since it would require yet another expensive law suit, since the property is already planned to be mowed over with new development.
Re:If true, NASA is terminally ill (Score:1, Interesting)
Engineers, of all people, know that nothing is ever perfectly safe. They also know - the decent ones know, anyway - that at a certain point you have to accept that there will be some risk and move forward anyway. It may be that this engineer was unable to do that. Which we can all understand, I think, since it's quite clear the shuttle is fundamentally unsafe in several serious ways; but that said, we do have a need for a space program in some form. We're working on getting a safer replacement done, but for now we have to get by with stopgaps and flawed technology. Which is, of course, another problem: if you've spent decades working on the shuttle, it becomes your baby and you want to fix it instead of throwing it out with the bath water.
I'm not saying that's what happened here. I'm just saying that at a certain point, fighting for a feature - even a really important one like safety - ceases to be advocacy and turns into whining and getting in the way of actual work. In which case it'd be good that he was let go.
Something to consider, anyway.
Re:Returning to a Constitutionally Limited Governm (Score:4, Interesting)
There's plenty said about them. The CIA has been in the news an awful lot recently, as I recall. Even the dingy old U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is getting a suprising amount of ink these days.
The reason they're not discussed more is because their functions are pretty mundane. The public doesn't care how the NIH decides to award federal grants, or how the SEC polices the stock market. Just printing the letters "IRS" in an article headline will guarantee that the public ignores it.
This is an extremely deleterious consequence of America's love of drama - the undramatic goes unmonitored. Meanwhile, our politicians keep us amused (and distracted from their actions) by waving flags and conjuring images of terr'ists.
What are the alphabet agencies -- FDA, EPA, OSHA, and so on -- doing when they pass laws? And, while these laws are called regulations, so as not to upset anyone who might actually read the Constitution, the Webster's dictionary defines regulation as a rule, ordinance or law.
Agency regulations are not laws. Laws are rules that apply to your actions: things that you may do, or must do, or must not do. Agency regulations are rules that apply to the actions of an agency: how it can utilize a power (that has already been given to it by the Executive or Legislative), how it cannot utilize a power, etc.
It's true that an agency sometimes relies on its own regulations to determine how to treat you. But the agency's power to deal with you in such a way was given to it by a law. And if the agency oversteps its legal authority, then a regulation won't save it.
Example: The IRS has many regulations that dictate how you must pay your federal taxes. Yet, these regulations aren't laws - the law passed by Congress is that:
- You must submit an annual federal income tax payment; and
- The IRS is responsible for creating a tax formula that adheres to the dictates of the legislature; and
- You must use the IRS formula, and follow the IRS submission procedures, to prove that you're paying the correct amount.
Now, what happens if the IRS believes that you've failed your legal duties under #1 or #3? It can't do anything to you! It has no such power. It merely tells the executive branch that you've violated the tax laws, and the executive prosecutes you for evasion - under the general tax laws passed by Congress.- David Stein
Re:If it's a hit in Sweden, US will hopefully foll (Score:3, Interesting)
Two flaws in this argument:
As for their perception of your likelihood to settle:
- David Stein
Re:Disney story unrelated to copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing as how Clare Milne has cerebral palsy, that was a crummy thing to write.
In actuality, IIRC, Christopher Robin (Milne) refused any 'Pooh' money until his daughter was born with that medical condition. He realized she would need money so as to be looked after, when he was gone.
Re:Sun doesn't understand open source... (Score:1, Interesting)
The CDDL causes problems in a variety of situations, especially in one of the areas where Solaris is weakest; hardware support. Linux has vastly superior hardware support and most Linux drivers cannot be ported to Solaris since they're licensed under the GPL or licenses that are not compatible with the CDDL. I've seen several cases where a company was seriously considering using OpenSolaris/Solaris, but since they would've had to program certain drivers from scratch they decided to go with a Linux or BSD derivative instead.
Last time I checked, if you wanted to contribute to the project you also had to sign up on the website and sign several waivers that hand over some of your rights to Sun. The Sun Contributor Agreement also included several clauses which seemed especially unusual for an open source project. Admittedly, the policies on this issue may have changed as I haven't looked at it in a while.
Just like Richard said in the post you linked to, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux (IIRC even Darwin) and the repositories of the FSF have complete cross pollination and this is something OpenSolaris doesn't have. Even with the BSDs people are very wary of using anything licensed under the CDDL. Several lawyers have also come out and advised open source programmers not to even look at the OpenSolaris source code in fear that you may become tainted and unable to continue committing code to GPL'd projects.
Lastly, I don't see this as a fault of the GPL. Most of the other open source licenses seem to handle this scenario fine, the CDDL being the exception. Furthermore, most projects with a licensing problem like this offer dual licensing and, as far as I'm aware, OpenSolaris does not. It also seems odd that Sun purposely created a license where the code cannot be used in anything licensed under the GPL or several other open source licenses...
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why the executive parliamentary model is so much superior to the executive presidential model. In a parliamentary model, power rests with the prime minister, and he can only pass legislation my a majority vote in the parliament. What's more, if he does something outrageous like spy on the states own citizens, he has to go into parilment the next day and be bawled at by the opposition, something executive presidents never have to do. They live in their own, insulated and detached little world, running the country with hardly any oversight for the length of their term. At least prime ministers have their oppositions, and sometimes their backbenchers, watching their backs all the time, often for a place to stick a knife.
The executive president is simply a holdover from the days of monarchy. Some people simply think that "strong government" needs an eleceted dictator or else it won't be powerful enough to get the job done. Whatever. Time and again the parilimentary model has proved superior, with nearly every jumped up dictator now holding the position of a supreme executive presidency. In some parilentary democracies, that position doesn't even exist.
So the next time the president is revealed to have been breaking the law and violating your rights, remember that this isn't a bug in the system. It's a feature.
Re:Kelo Untouched (Score:3, Interesting)
In theory, possibly. In practice, the UK at least doesn't work that way anymore [independent.co.uk], no thanks to Tony Blair. Besides, with a suitably well-whipped majority, it has to be something truly outrageous (or just really, really unpopular with the party's MPs - which shouldn't happen too often, if they're chosen correctly) for any law not to go through. To be honest, sometimes I'm not sure even a law declaring him dictator would be blocked, if it was well-worded and sweetened suitably... the newspapers would kick up hell, and the opposition wouldn't be happy, but that doesn't matter.