Yeah, it is a problem for switchers, and those who communicate with them, and probably should be addressed in a better way. However, it isn't really a "lock-in" type of situation, in that I doubt that enough people know about it before thinking about switching to have any impact on the number of switchers. If anything, it makes it more likely that a switcher will not come back since it creates a bad "last impression".

It is challenging to figure out a way to design the system to allow for good inter-operation between iMessage (which is nicely encrypted) and the standard SMS. I think that one does want to preferentially use the more secure system when available, and it is certainly a bad idea to fall-back to a non-secure SMS without transparently. Maybe iMessage needs to always check if the phone number is associated with iMessage each time a message is sent and put up a warning "1234567890 is no longer associated with iMessage account fred@icloud.com - should I send an SMS to 1234567890 or an iMessage to fred@icloud.com ?" or something like that. Of course then we would get complaints from people who don't understand the choice.

That's an interesting difference.

The USA manages to stick its tax fingers into a whole lot more than just USA citizens. I suspect that if you use any USA based service (such as Kickstarter or any number of payment systems) you may run afoul of USA tax requirements. Hopefully you won't get hit with a net bill (as there are tax agreements between the USA and a lot of other countries that mostly prevent double taxation), but you can still be hit with non-reporting penalties and the like.

It is not pretty, and it is not limited to USA citizens.

This is a good "science fair" level of experiment with a few controls. Not "Big Mac"s but "regular" hamburgers and quarter bounders.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/arc...

Good point. I wonder how expensive it is to register photos with the correct bodies. Would one large image composed of a thousand small images give sufficient protection to those thousand images?

Of course CR probably is not happy to have their unethical business practices in terms of copyright infringement widely reported. Would cases like this also include court costs for the plaintiff if successful? Even if court costs were not included, it is probably still cheaper to settle at a price higher than what the expected damage award might be to save on CR court costs. Maybe not at hundreds of thousands, but it seems likely it would be in the tens of thousands.

It is not clear that the photographer ever intended for the work to be published - all the publishing was done by CR, so they would be most liable from any claim made by the subjects of the images.

In any case, you do not need to prove the value of the "art" of your photos to claim copyright protection for them. If CR did not get permission to use them in their advertising, they they are liable for copyright infringement - which can carry some pretty significant statuory damages, as much as $150k per work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You could be correct that the runners too might be owed some compensation if they have not already signed away some rights when they registered for the run, but the photographer in this case is not the publisher, so the subjects of the photo would not have any reasonable grounds to take action against the photographer, but they might against the people using their images in the advertising campaign.

The photos maybe were only worth a few dollars before they were misappropriated, but the point of statutory damages in this type of copyright infringement is to act as a deterrent against this type of misappropriation. Statutory damages for copyright infringement can be as much as $150k per work, so the photographer's requested price could be the cheaper route for CR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In this case, he has the strong negotiating position that statutory damages for copyright infringement can be as much as $150k per work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It is not extortion when you offer to not sue someone who has clearly broken the law. Unless the CR people have a contract that gives them some rights to the images (which they do not claim to have) then the CR people are clearly on the wrong side of the current copyright legislation. Sucks to be them - I guess they shouldn't have misappropriated someone else's work for their advertising campaign.

Exactly. In this case, he has the strong negotiating position that statutory damages for copyright infringement can be as much as $150k per work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, he can collect $150k per work in statutory damages after a court case, or CR can cut a cheque for a bunch less and correct their lack of license. That seems like a pretty reasonable beginning of negotiations. Now if this was negotiations before they had used the images improperly, asking for $100k + other stuff would probably be over the top and unlikely to be very effective.

If you are using someone's "something" worth $2-3k without permission, then you're in a pretty piss-poor bargaining position and $100k night actually be not such a bad price to pay. The statutory damages for copyright infringement can be pretty steep:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Plaintiffs who can show willful infringement may be entitled to damages up to $150,000 per work."

We hope.

Two times out of three...

Does your sister encourage the males in attendance at her daughter's birthday party to share a changing room with her (the daughter)? And you are only concerned about potential video recording?

Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
from The IT Crowd - a "don't steal movies" public service announcement.

I seem to recall that in the former Soviet Union, the pay of medical doctors was relatively low, and relatively low status. It was dominated by women.

Women tend to dominate professions that have historically had low pay and low social status, largely because high paying and high status jobs have been denied to them. Society tends to undervalue professions requiring high empathy and social skills.