*slap* I misread your comment; I read it as saying that renting a movie was an exception to the first sale doctrine. Mea culpa!

Er, no. The First Sale Doctrine is a limitation on the rights of the content producer. The idea is that the content producer loses control over how and to whom a particular (legal/licensed) copy of its work is sold after the first sale. In other words, you have the right to sell or give your own copy of a copyrighted work to anyone you please so long as what you're selling or giving is a legitimate, non-infringing copy. Unfortunately for us in the digital age, this is based upon a scarce resource economy, where the work is transferred as a physical object that is (by natural law) no longer in the possession of the seller once it's been given to the recipient. Since online distribution involves multiple "copies" (if it can be called that) as the network stream flows from device to device across the web, it's much more difficult to wrestle.

No, Zediva's business model was that they would only stream on a 1:1 basis. According to their claims, every stream to every customer was directly from a DVD player reading its own disc. The differentiating issue is that Red Box's strategy involves a physical limitation, whereas there's too much "trust" in Zediva's approach. Not that this makes it right, but that's my understanding.

For which, I assume, they pay money to access just like you do.

No, Amazon uses a carrier (as you state in your next phrase). This carrier uses public roads, I would assume. This carrier also, I assume, pays for the fuel used to power its fleet of vehicles, as well as any tolls that might be encountered. These pay for the roads.

And? I would assume that they pay for postage, just like anyone else who wants to ship a package.

Some (probably most) were, certainly; but what does this have to do with anything? This is true of every business. Should a company in Montana pay taxes to California because one of its employees was educated at UCLA?

I'm not going to address the rest of the points directly, simply because I don't want to repeat myself. Local businesses collect sales taxes because the state, county, city, or other regional authority imposes them for services provided by that authority. The things you mention like firefighting would be carried out by the authority in whatever location that Amazon has a physical presence, where they already collect sales taxes. The rest of the services are federal, for which Amazon pays corporate income taxes, as do the customers who purchase items from Amazon. Amazon does not make use of any local services in areas where it does not have a physical presence, so there's no justification for making them collect the taxes.

Note that sales tax is a tax on the consumer, not on the business. The only distinction here is that businesses with a physical presence are required to collect and pay the sales tax on behalf of the customer, whereas other businesses are not; in these cases, the customer is legally required to report and pay this sales tax as part of their ordinary taxes. No, nobody does that, but that's the way it works.

HTTPS is vulnerable to MITM when using a self-signed certificate, but not eavesdropping. The encryption used for the key exchange (RSA) is not made any more or less secure by the CA that issued the certificate; CA's are there to prevent MITM by establishing trust.

What about lifting 100g of paper? How high would it go?

This would be a major shift in NFL policy if this is allowed. Speaking as a former software developer for an NFL team, the NFL is very *very* strict about what coaches can use on the sideline. While coaches and coordinators in the booths are allowed significantly more freedom, the coaches on the field have thus far been limited to paper printouts. There was some effort a few years ago for the NFL to move to a custom device for viewing sideline photos of the game (developed in coordination with Motorola to go along with the phone carts that they developed for the NFL a couple of years ago), but I'm not certain if that device took off. However, if they were to open the coaches to using an iPad, that would be a HUGE change in policy. The sideline viewer mentioned above was a custom device that could, by design, only view the still photos received from the sideline cameras. No video or game analysis applications. However, with an iPad, the technical options are limitless. The NFL already has individuals that sit in the press box of every game and enter play information into laptops that are connected via VPN back to the NFL offices in New York, and this play data is sent down with the video to the teams the following week. However, there would be no technical reason that this play information couldn't be captured live and entered into one of the game analysis packages out there (a couple of teams develop their own in-house packages--we were one of those teams--both all of the others use one of two packages: XOS or DVSport), and, assuming that that package has an iPad-compatible version, allowing the coaches to view play breakdown and video live on the field. I'm not sure that such information would be helpful, but the very fact that the technical limitations against it might be removed is a very, very big deal.

While my original comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I wouldn't suppose to know *what* mechanism might be employed.

Unless, of course, the point of the launch was to test some kind of covert launching mechanism that simply didn't work.

The issue with Firesheep is session hijacking, not theft of login and password information.

While this is certainly true, it's only meaningful for a single generation of people after its widespread acceptance. Once the procedure becomes commonplace, there would be no reason (barring either financial or barriers or the occasional oddball religious objection to medical care) to wait until someone is an adult to perform this.

You're really advocating handwriting recognition (or, God forbid, Graffiti) as a suitable replacement to the keyboard for input? Yeah, that's definitely the way to go.

Who gives one?

You aren't the only one that saw that. Took me three times to see "Unions"

And your alternative is...what, again? Life is risky. This is *exactly* the sort of strategy that should be adopted. Current texting laws are essentially slaps on the wrist, and there's too much leeway to get around them (for good reason, as I should not have to disclose the contents of my cell phone when I've done nothing wrong that you can prove). If, however, the individual DOES do something wrong (hitting a pedestrian, if found to be at fault in an accident, runs off the road, etc.), then I have no problem with allowing evidence to be introduced as to their behavior. The law already makes a distinction about your thoughts and motives when committing a crime, even when the actions themselves are not crimes. Acting in a thoroughly reckless manner that results in someone's death (driving down the interstate at 150mph and hitting another vehicle, for example) can up the charge from manslaugter to murder simply because you were acting with such a willful disregard for the safety of others (in fact, in most states it's referred to as something along the lines of "depraved indifference murder"). While I don't know that I feel that texting while driving should (or shouldn't) rise to that level, I don't take issue with adjusting the charge or punishment based upon the fact that you were engaging in an activity that is known to raise the danger level substantially.