There are a number of studies that suggest the rates of serious traffic accidents significantly increase after installing traffic cameras.

So the only possible incentive for traffic cameras is revenue. I imagine if all traffic camera revenues were required by law to be sent to non-profit charities (as an Arizona state senator is attempting to do, just in case his outright ban fails) that you wouldn't see a single camera installed.

People would abuse that like crazy.

Many states and counties have laws requiring drivers keep up with the flow of traffic. This isn't something pulled out of thin air, and it's definitely not a fallacy. Some governments articulate this with minimum as well as maximum speed limits (which creates a whole new set of issues - what if your safe speed for conditions is below the minimum?), while others leave what constitutes an unsafe driving speed to the officer.

I think the reason most people don't do that is because they don't know they can, or because they actually can't (don't have the hardware in their phone).

I can think of a number of occasions where I wanted to share a photo with a friend or grab a photo from a friend's phone or something similar, but didn't because it would be a huge hassle going through online or direct phone to phone means. Hell of a lot easier than it was 10 years ago, but still too much hassle to bother with. If all we had to do was select the photo and bump phones, there's not much reason not to share the photo. It's one of the things I'm looking forward

Lower the barrier far enough and it will become common place, and bumping is about as low as that barrier goes. You may not use it every day, but if everybody were using it you'd probably use it too.

A previous poster noted that Chirp for Android and Iphone does exactly that - passes a link via little audio chirps. Anybody running Chirp can pickup the link and follow it, like an audio QR code.

Bezos's idea sounds like sort of a combination of Bump and Chirp - using audio chirps to set up an internet connection (via the cloud) between the phones instead of using sensor data from the bumps to set up that same connection.

Neat, but pretty damn obvious (you've already got two companies doing almost the same thing) so I don't see how it's patent worthy.

10 seconds on the Bump website told me how - Bump sends the phone's sensor data to Bump's servers the cloud in order to be processed to determine who the bump was from and what the bump was for, before making a connection between the two.

Chirp just sends a link via audio that the other user(s) can follow. No cloud necessary, and any device close enough to pick up the chirp can follow the link.

Chirp has to be an order of magnitude more efficient in terms of getting its information from one device to another. However, the two apps obviously do very different things. Chirp is only sending links to content - it's like an audio QR code. Bump is using the bump information to identify the two devices and make a secure connection between them over the internet in order to transfer data from one device to the other. It's kinda like bluetooth except that it leverages the cloud instead of transmitting directly and you don't have to pair the devices - or rather pairing the devices is as easy as bumping them.

Maybe you should send that link to the USPTO, it might help.

Uh...

That's a totally different kind of "restricted".

Access to the internet was restricted because of who owned it. Commercial use was restricted because it was all owned by the government. Access is still restricted, though much less so since the early 90's, in that you must pay for some kind of connection to the internet.

Content, however, has always been completely unrestricted, even in the fledgling days in the 80's. Granted, in the early early days it was all just experimental stuff, followed by mostly University research and whatnot, but porn has been a part of the internet in the form of usenet and other BBS's almost since the very beginning (early 80's, at the very least).

Incidentally, this wasn't in the US, but the EU's version is based on the US version, so it is effectively the same thing. Some technicalities might be different, but by and large it appears to work the same way as the US version.

And it's still the fault of the US Congress, more than anybody.

Because such a registrar does not exist. All registrars, ISP's, search engines, and anybody who could possibly be remotely considered a distribution channel for potentially copyrighted material, must abide by the DMCA or risk losing their "safe harbor" status. If they lose safe harbor, they are legally responsible for any and all copyrighted material that is distributed using their services. In other words, if they don't comply with the DMCA, they're fucked.

The DMCA procedure is simple and clear: If you receive a DMCA take-down notice, you immediately cease distribution. In the case of a registrar, that means suspending the DNS hosting for that address. If they don't comply immediately, they're fucked. If they contact the infringing website first, they're fucked. The only option they have is to remove the service as soon as they receive the notice, then contact the website owners and notify them that the service has been suspended due to DMCA infringement. If the website owner replies that their use of the material is legal and they contest the claim, then the registrar (or anybody else) is free to resume the service as usual. At that point it is up to the copyright holder to sue the website owner, and the registrar (or anybody else) is in the clear until a judge tells them to stop service again.

That's how the law is written, and there is nothing GoDaddy, an ISP, Google, or anybody can do about it. It is disgusting, but you have your representatives in Congress to thank for the nasty piece of work that is the DMCA, not GoDaddy.

Point the blame where it belongs and quit letting Congress off the hook for this shit.

No registrar that wishes to remain legal will refuse a DMCA takedown notice. Ever.

They don't get that right under the law.

This is a problem with the DMCA, not GoDaddy (or any other registrar).

They can go after anyone in the chain, it doesn't have to be the content host.

For example, Google has to abide by DMCA notices regarding their searches.

Anybody in the communications pipeline that is capable of denying access to the material is a potential target for a DMCA notice. It's usually smarter to go after either the website itself, or the ISP of the website, but search engines and registrars are certainly not off limits.

And the DMCA leaves no option for a recipient of the DMCA notice. They must remove the material immediately or risk infringement themselves. It's only when the alleged infringing party contests the claim that the hosting service (or search engine or registrar or whoever) can put the content back up.

That's exactly what happened here - dumbass company sends a DMCA notice to GoDaddy, GoDaddy shuts down IMSLP, IMSLP contests the claim, GoDaddy is now in the clear to re-enable IMSLP's domain name, and they do so.

This is just how it works. It is an incredibly one-sided law, as the original poster has no right to contest before the content is removed, and there are zero ramifications for issuing a fraudulent DMCA notice. It's an obvious tool for shutting down stuff you don't like, even if you have no copyright to it.

That's how the DMCA works. Any entity that wishes to claim safe harbor must immediately remove the material in question. The DMCA notice goes to the party that is directly distributing the content, not the original infringing party, so there is no option to allow the infringing party to contest it before take-down.

It is only after the infringing party notifies the distributing party that they have a right to distribute the material that the distributor can once again put the material back up for distribution.

That is the procedure that was laid down by law, and yes it is disgusting.

I have no idea whether or not GoDaddy is ethical, but in this case it is not their fault at all. It is the DMCA that is unethical, and numerous court cases have established that in order for someone like GoDaddy to maintain a Safe Harbor status under the law, they must remove the alleged infringing content immediately, with no consideration as to weather or not the party issuing the takedown notice has a legal right to issue such a notice.

Personally, I would be fine with this part of the DMCA if it contained ramifications for filing fraudulent or frivolous DMCA take-down notices. As it is though, it is horribly one-sided.

P.S. Would it kill you to capitalize? Not doing so makes you look twelve, despite the fact that you otherwise write reasonably coherently and punctuate reasonably well.

I think it can be argued that way, and the DMCA doesn't leave any choice in the matter.

If it can be successfully argued that they should have complied and did not, then they will be held legally liable for breaking the DMCA. The absolute only way you get safe harbor in a DMCA dispute is if you comply immediately and blindly. Only when the infringing party denies the claim (either by claim of ownership or fair use, doesn't matter) can you put it back up.

Mod parent up.

Germany is a member of the Berne Convention (a founding member, even - the US came very late to that party), which is the basis for our current copyright laws.

While there might be slight differences, they are extremely similar, by necessity of complying with the treaty.

The InfoSec Directive of the EU (to which Germany complies) is very similar to the DMCA, but I'm not entirely sure about whether or not US DMCA take-down tactics are possible under the EU directive or Germany's version of the law.

As langelgjm said, German copyright is completely non-transferable (which is really, really nice, IMO), but there do exist exclusive licenses which are nearly as good as transferring copyright. It gives the licensee full control over the work. Since corporate ownership of copyright is not possible in this instance, they generally have agreements with their employees to grant exclusive licenses to the company. It works out about the same.