IAAL...

Copyrights are not patents, copyrights have independent creation exception, but there's no exclusive use and you can't just point to prior art. So you can't say: look it existed before and walk away if you're sued. All musicians say I didn't steal that melody, I come up with myself! The fight always centers around: Did you actually come up with it yourself or did you hear some other song and copy it. George Harrison vs. The Chiffons being a fine example.

Despite there being an alleged hard drive with every melody possible--that's still the exact same case. Now a defendant could say: I heard it on track 512,010,120 on this copyrighted hard drive that no one has heard of or listened to vs. on that song that there's a record of me listening to on Amazon or that was played on the radio.

I'm against imaginary property as the rest of the pitchfork bearing folk but I'm not sure what the point of this was and they should get off my lawn and news feed. Good publicity for ... something ... I guess. Oh look, there's a TED Talk, that always inspires confidence.

@jamesmartinluther

Oddly enough, I posted an article last night detailing some thoughts that crossed my mind about potential legal issues looming for Ethereum ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse... ) and I'd love to get some feedback from someone connected with Ethereum on how the issues are being address--if at all.

I really don't see how Ethereum gets around their DAO issue when a legal challenge arises seeking a hard fork, it really seems like a sticking point to me.

Best regards,
Tyler

They're also holding a Hack-for-Change hackathon in June ( http://hackforchange.org/hack-change-tampa ) -- Tampa and Hillsborough are definitely working to push growth of the technology center and open data within the tri-county area.

If anyone can pulls an alert from a public domain torrent, please post the link. I'd really like to get my 5 alerts out of the way this weekend so I can speak with the CAS team about how utterly useless they, and their entire scheme, are before my account cancels.

Well, if they overbook the flight too much and no one will take their offers, the airline's involuntarily deny passengers entry and hand them a form detailing 14 USC 250.9 ( link ). The law is a protectionary measure that says, any airline can break our contract with you at any time by handing you a maximum of $200.00 and finding you an alternative flight within 2 hours of your flight, or by handing you $400.00 and telling you to piss off. Though, you can refuse the payment, and opt to sue them in court.

Of course, airlines loathe paying any money back, so they offer you the free flights instead. All-in-all I guess the law works decently well, but I can assure you getting one of those forms and being told your next flight will be available in 8 hours after a red-eye flight from California is not a fun experience. Though, here's a tip, tell them you're refusing the payment and opting to seek compensation in court while booking the first available last-minute ticket on whatever airline is leaving next. In my case, they, amazingly, found me a seat.

The article is wrong, the cape doesn't go on display until the 25th link. So don't pop over and try and see it until next Wednesday.

You mean like this patent on the magsafe power supply connector: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7311526.PN.&OS=PN/7311526&RS=PN/7311526

Don't forget that if they'd simply bothered to show up to the ex-parte hearing, Samsung could have easily informed the court that the camera man had made such a terrible mistake. So, clearly, it's their fault.

Roughly 10 years ago, I was war-driving and one of the hotspots came up: 'CIA SAFE HOUSE'. The sad part was, I wasn't sure if it was a joke or if someone was actually that daft. It was a posh area of town, so I'm still undecided to this day.

Here's a presentation discussing the issue of force password disclosures and laptops I gave at DefCon 17: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibQGWXfWc7c

Check the law and make up your own mind.

I'm sure you were trying to be funny, but I'd hope that both Google and Oracle would have had enough brains to bring in qualified attorneys.

I'm a full-time appellate attorney and co-founder of the Azureus Bit-Torrent client (written in Java, but don't blame me for Vuze -- I left the project long before then). I've taught classes on computer security and advanced programming at 4-year universities. I also speak around the country on both legal and security topics (DefCon, Shmoocon, ToorCamp, and various legal-bar events etc.). I've spoken on anything from constitutional issues, intellectual property, contracts law, reverse engineering, code design, etc. Actually, the latest talks I'm working on are on advanced techniques with Python bytecode. So, yes, while most attorneys would have a hard time explaining these topics to judges, not all of them would and I'm hopeful that the judge was presented with competent people.

And, yes, I've had to explain computer topics to both attorneys and judges -- they understood them. Conversely, I've had to explain legal topics to software engineers -- they also understood them. It's really not that difficult, and you'd be amazed at how similar some of the concepts really are.

Cheers,
    T

And that's why people dislike lawyers -- they think it's about winning not justice. A good lawyer knows it's about justice, not simply winning.

Or maybe they got the idea from Tennessee, who has had this on the books for a number of years? See Tenn. Statutes: 39-14-602(b)(1):

Accesses any computer, computer system, or computer network commits a Class C misdemeanor. Operating a computer network in such a way as to allow anonymous access to that network shall constitute implicit consent to access under this part

[link]

There seems to be a slight conflict of interest here (slight might be the wrong word). Honestly, isn't this encouraging the companies producing these machines to intentionally include bugs in their code? Your code is filled with bugs, we'd like to procure your services:

Casino: Someone won the jackpot!
Game Producer: What machine revision?
Casino: Money Sucker R12
Game Producer: No problem, checkout line 112 -- I think you'll find something you like...

Given that these jackpots only occur once every couple of years, it wouldn't be that big of a problem. Plus, everyone here knows that no code is perfect. The people won, give them their money...

You're dead wrong (see: Transocean's limitation of liability filing). There is a little known clause, outside of admiralty law practitioners, that allows parties to limit their liability to the value of the vessel after the wreck. For reference, that generally isn't a low of money and it appears from their filing that it's roughly $26M. They are correct that it doesn't protect claims from the Oil Pollution Act but I'd wonder how many incidentals that'll apply to.

So, yes, yes, Transocean and BP, as a successor to liability, are actively working to limit to the claims as much as possible. I won't speculate on the outcome but I'll throw in that I'm glad I never did buy property on the Gulf side of Florida.

For reference: Explaination of the law. There are better sources but that one is publicly available.

Cheers,
    T

P.S. Yes, IAAL and Exxon still hasn't paid for the Valdez accident --consider it...
P.S.S. Sorry for the repost --didn't realized I wasn't logged in.