How can you tell? It seemed like he was running for president even before being elected Senator.

That would mean the school would have to notify EVERY attendee with a camera that they are not allowed to sell photos due to an exclusivity contract.

Mere notification does not suffice. Each one attending would have to agree to a contract restricting the usage of photos they take as a condition required to enter the property.

If the event is being held on school grounds, which is public property, then the administrators might not have the right to even condition entry to surrendering such publication rights.

I wouldn't be surprised if a local professional photographer was already given an exclusive contract to sell photos.

An agreement with a photographer does not bind third parties. Unless you required third parties entering the property to assent to an explicit agreement not to photograph, or an agreement restricting the usage of photographs taken, then they can use the photos they took and own rights to in any lawful manner once they leave.

I doubt that vendors can just attend an event and sell something like hot dogs for instance without some kind of agreement.

In most places, it is probably not lawful as a business/food vendor to go onto someone else's property without permission and conduct sales on-site; you can lose your license that way, also.

On the other hand, there is no restriction on taking pictures anywhere you are lawfully present. Although, in some municipalities, taking pictures of certain public objects (Such as the Hollywood sign in California) for a commercial purpose requires a permit issued by the local authority, but that is a matter of special local law used to help fund the maintenance of those public works.

Clearly, the principal is an absolute goof. It's high school sports, for chrissake. I mean, I know it's Texas and all, and in Texas, high school football is sacramental, but geez. It's bad enough that public universities have become big-money football programs with a little school on the side, but can you at least pretend that high school sports is about the students and not about revenue or aggrandizing adults?

Let it go, or maybe next time the kid will post the pictures he has of the football coach snapping towels and playing grabass in the showers with the defensive secondary.

The real story is that this guy was selling the photos. And he was using school provided equipment. And he wasn't paying taxes.

Selling the photos online isn't a crime. The conditions he was allowed to use the school equipment under allowed him to retain his copyrights, and he didn't sign an agreement promising not to sell photos for money.

Most likely, no taxes are due; he obviously hasn't been running this for years, probably less than 6 months. In order for taxes to be due and unpaid, he would have to be successful in his sales and profit from them, AND have sufficient profit to require filing a return, AND fail to file the required returns for state and federal.

The school owned the camera he used. Therefore all work from that camera belongs to the school.

Wrong. The law does not say that, and the conditions the student was allowed to use the camera under did not include an assignment of copyright ownership.

Most professional sports teams copyright their games. Even tweeting the score can get you in trouble.

Only if you're a player or party to an agreement that prohibits tweeting the score.

They only own copyright to the media they produce.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Being able to do something is good.
2) Being able to teach someone else how to do something is better.
3) Being able to convince someone to do something is best of all.

In other words, think about whether maybe you should move to management. Do you still really want to write code? I'll bet you've developed some skills over the years that would serve you well in management. And the most important thing to remember is, don't be the manager that you always hated.

Think about your future. Not just what you want to do today, but how you see yourself in a few years. I know it's a cliche that everybody gets asked at interviews, but you've got to be willing to give yourself an honest answer.

If you drop the (US), then quite often. In Canada the maximum punishment for a provincial crime is two years less a day. Anything more serious than that is federal.

It's true in that those universal statements aren't universally true. Grass isn't green in the winter here, it's brown. The sky is blue outside my window currently, but yesterday it was gray. There's an awful lot of water around here that isn't wet during the winter.

Though there was a good reason for the original compact Macs to discourage users from opening them up -- there were exposed high voltage monitor electronics in there which could give you a hell of a zap of not properly discharged.

The later all in one Macs of the 90s were better in that regard. Their user suitable parts (motherboard, drives) all were easy to get at, but the monitors and power supplies were fully enclosed.