"The service actually sells the DVD to the customer for $20. After the customer is done with the DVD, they sell the DVD back to VidAngel for $19. So, in fact, the DVD is the customers at the time that the customer is using VidAngel's service to stream the customer's DVD to the customer's PC."

Arguably, streaming the content of a DVD to a device that you control is a "fair use" copying of that DVD. (I'm too lazy to look up the case law.) You're not impacting the originator's sales/licensing of that content, and that's why the use is "fair". If you "owned" the physical copy of the DVD (for the about two hours it takes to play it through VidAngel), that would have no practical bearing on the question of copyright infringement. The copyright is to the work, not the media on which it resides.

Wrong. The court only ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail, and that the defendant's motion to terminate the preliminary injunction was denied. No precedent here.

I also have to say that I agree. Purchasing a DVD doesn't entitle you to stream the entire video to others, in any form. If you want a "clean" version of a movie, you can (1) sell a player that skips the objectionable parts or (2) make a video yourself. The copyright holder gets to control the distribution and modification of its work.

... turning a generator will power it indefinitely, so long as I keep turning it. No battery required.

The problem here is cell phones transmit back to a tower regularly, which requires more power than can be drawn from the air. For that you need either a really big ultracapacitor, or ... a battery. Either that or you can go about your day turning a crank for the generator on your phone.

"So they routinely ignore their duty under the law and just do whatever isn't too much trouble for them" They do as much examining as the application fee pays for. If you can think up a better system, we're all ears. "It'll cost over a million dollars to get the patent invalidated." Unlikely. It might cost a good patent law firm $20K to respond to an allegation of infringement, which would include arguments of invalidity. That would shut down the suit, because the patent holder wouldn't want to risk their hard-won IP. A company worried about a patent can seek inter-partes examination in the USPTO (which will cost about the same).

Responding to the Slashdot summary:

"non-transitory computer-readable storage medium" is a standard phrase used in patents to avoid a sec. 101 rejection on the basis that a software invention is transitory (thank you very much, Supreme Court".) It's used a lot.

This is more than a reminder message system. It's a system that associates that "article" with a message and delivers it at the same time. It doesn't strike me as much of an improvement over the prior art, but we are talking about something with a priority date of five years ago.

"And just a few minutes of research reveals that QR codes were already used to encode information for reminder messages." Do share with us that research, and perhaps we can agree...

"The Patent Office reviewed HP's application for years without ever considering any real-world products. Indeed, the examiner considered only patents and patent applications." Again, that's standard. They don't have a pile of application software they can run through to identify prior art. They do a search in documentation in databases convenient to the examiner.

If HP ever tries to enforce this thing, the respondent will no doubt find invalidating prior art. HP will probably choose not to enforce it, and merely use it to inflate their reports to stock holders.

Well, then. Post your "whole response" and perhaps I'll have something to respond to other than your sleep-addled insults. You haven't rebutted what I have said.

As anyone can download LinkedIn's data, HiQ is doing nothing special in the market. You're less likely to use LinkedIn because you've discovered that it can be used by anyone in a way you don't like. HiQ hasn't impacted the market by scraping it. Your analysis applies to the entire compilation. HiQ is downloading information for individual postings, which is not protected by copyright. (If HiQ was breaking into LinkedIn's servers and downloading the entire compliation, then your analysis would have some merit.)

If you posted such wisdom elsewhere, why not post it here? Is it so troubling for you, being so eager to make a point? (If you really had such a wise posting, that is.)

I get it. You're a person who thinks he understands copyright law, and wants to prove his expertise. Perhaps you should consult with one of your colleagues specializing in law (of any kind) before replying again.

... and because that's how LinkedIn provides the data, the scraper operates under the doctrine of fair use. (There's no other way for it to collect the data.)

Whether your copying of the data is for personal or business use is not distinguished in the law. Your impact on the market is what counts. This scraper isn't affecting LinkedIn's ability to operate or provide the service that it does. You're free to gather information over the web (or another medium) as much as you like, recompile it, and resell it if you want to. Whether you profit from it doesn't matter. Publishers of directories and phone books have been doing this for many years. Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the search engine providers do it too.

Would you like me to correct you a further time?

A compilation of facts can be copyrighted, but not the underlying data. If this company wants to extract those facts, data or other bits of information and create its own compilation, it violates no one's copyright. It doesn't matter whether those facts came from multiple sources or a single one.

Even if there were to be a copyright here, the doctrine of implied license and the statutory exclusion of fair use upon infringement would probably apply. By making the data available to anyone over the web, LinkedIn arguably granted an implied license to use that data. (They don't publish it to keep it secret.) The courts have ruled it is a fair use to record movies on your DVR for your own personal viewing, and it would arguably be the same for extracting a collection of data from an Internet source, provided that the entity didn't compete with that source.

I missed nothing. I'm an intellectual property lawyer.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is part of the Federal Criminal Code, and no private entity can use it to bring a suit. A prosecuting attorney for the government could make a criminal charge, but LinkedIn would have to persuade him/them to take that act. This is much ado about nothing.

Actually, if the scraper used a valid username and password (or other valid credentials) to gain access, access was authorized. It might have violated a user agreement perhaps, but that's a separate civil matter. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act specifies criminal acts that a private entity (like LinkedIn) can't use as a basis for its suit.

Like it or not, if you (or an employee in your example) choose to publish information about yourself in a publicly-accessible place, then you've voluntarily relinquished whatever privacy rights you had in that information. Whatever you believe about HiQ, they are only organizing and re-releasing public information. LinkedIn has no copyright in it (as they didn't create the data, nor is it a work of authorship), and they were complicit in the act by delivering it up upon request.

Data is not copyrightable, because it isn't a "work of authorship" under the copyright statutes. That's why LinkedIn is using this hacking law in a contorted way to try to stop the use of this content.

No, that's not quite correct. LinkedIn only has a copyright in that which (1) they acquired from their employees or other sellers and (2) constitutes a "work of authorship". They do not have a copyright in the content acquired from other sources, e.g. data, phrases, images that originate from members or other sources. The arrangement of information on a page may be a work of authorship, but only if there is some creative aspect to it. Data on a web page is not a work of authorship, and no one has a copyright in it. Not even by the one who produced or collected it.

A person would have to agree to have that on their phone, and carry it around with them (so they could be charged for humming a tune covered by copyright). No phone maker is going to make that mandatory, because no one would buy the phone. [Well, maybe if it was an iPhone. :-) ] Humming is also arguably a fair use of the music being repeated.

That's like saying that you don't have a right to throw a misbehaving drunk out of your bar until he gets drunk and misbehaves. The right to throw drunks out of bars exists prior to the act, just as the right to enforce copyrights exists before infringement.