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Comment Re:Will this affect overseas profits tax evasion? (Score 1) 749

Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, which is what these companies are practicing, is not.

I've heard this argument from neoliberals on CNBC. It reminds me of a teenager whose parents catch him high as a kite: "You said I shouldn't smoke pot. You didn't say anything about cooking it in brownies and eating it."

It's a reminder about why corporations are regulated. They will do their best to circumvent laws using lawyers, unless they can be sufficiently frightened into behaving. Human beings are capable of discerning right and wrong and society holds them accountable. Corporations' charters specifically require that they not discern between right and wrong and then avoid accountability by saying, "But I didn't pinky swear!".

I would never voluntarily pay more tax than I am legally required. I do not know anyone who would voluntarily pay more tax than is legally required, regardless of their political beliefs. I do not think it is wrong to take advantage of any legal means at my disposal to reduce my tax burden. This problem will continue until the lawmakers start actually doing their job instead of trying to shift the blame for their failure.

Comment Re:Will this affect overseas profits tax evasion? (Score 5, Interesting) 749

Will this influence the tax gimmick where the HQ is overseas so the profits don't have to have taxes paid on them?

Why is it the money can evade the government but the data can't?

Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, which is what these companies are practicing, is not. There's no criminal wrongdoing taking place.

Even though the politicians bluster on and on about the problem, they always forget to mention that they are the ones with the power to fix it, if they chose to.

Comment Re:Maybe, maybe not. (Score 5, Insightful) 749

Microsoft is based in the United States, so there may be some valid argument here that as an American company, Microsoft data regardless of where "in the cloud" it is stored is subject to American legal rulings.

The *real* question is what about companies that do business here but are based in other countries?

There must be precedents or applicable laws for physical analogies. If a company operating in the US happens to store physical records somewhere outside the US, and those records are pertinent to the case, would those not be covered by a US subpoena? If the company has access to them and the ability to procure them, what does the physical location of the records or their headquarters matter?

Comment Re:This now requires (Score 2) 484

The Court seems to think it's likely that the Legislative/Executive branches would have modified the law in a way that clearly included what Aereo doing to circumvent it. They're probably right, but what they should have done is refuse to hear the case and let the correct branches of government do their jobs. Many parts of the government are overreaching their authority in ways that are really troubling.

FCC "rules" that jailbreaking is legal. Yeah FCC!
FCC "rules" that Net Neutrality is dead. Boo FCC!

SCOTUS rules that cops need a warrant to search your mobile. Yeah SCOTUS!
SCOTUS rules that Congress meant to include Aereo in a law made before anyone had any idea that technology would make something like Aereo possible. Boo SCOTUS!

Executive says they won't enforce federal drug laws regarding pot. Yeah POTUS!
Executive says it's kosher to kidnap or even kill citizens without due process, as long as they're pretty sure they're bad guys and are physically in some other country at the time. Boo POTUS!

Where the hell are the lawmakers? Oh, that's right, They're busy dicking around spending all their time trying to make the other team look bad.

Comment Re:Wrong decision (Score 1) 484

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

Public meaning anyone can sign up to and access the service.

Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?

Probably yes, whether it's wifi or two tin cans and a string. But, unlike Aereo, Netflix has purchased licenses to allow them to do so.

Comment Re:Wut? Traffic? (Score 1) 314

Please explain why heavy traffic around LAX is relevant to the discussion, seeing that both established cab companies and ride companies want to brave the heavy traffic to pick up passengers at the airport.

The city in fact is trying to keep ride companies out.

The amount of cabs in the airport at any given moment is strictly regulated. They can't do that with ride-share apps. More cars = more traffic.

Comment Those who don't learn history's lessons... (Score 2) 431

In the 1960's the prevailing opinion about Japanese quality is that it was inferior in every way except cost, and there was ample justification for that opinion. Then the same thing happened again a couple decades later, but this time it was Taiwan. In the early 1900's? Germany was the dog-shit bottom-feeder of manufacturing.

All three of the above are now considered to be among the highest-quality manufacturers in the world.

Things change.

Comment Re:Key Point Missing (Score 2) 34

The summary misses a key point. Yes they scan and store the entire book, but they are _NOT_ making the entire book available to everyone. For the most part they are just making it searchable.

Agreed that it's not in the summary, but as you correctly note, it's just a "summary". Anyone who reads the underlying blog post will read this among the facts on which the court based its opinion: "The public was allowed to search by keyword. The search results showed only the page numbers for the search term and the number of times it appeared; none of the text was visible."

So those readers who RTFA will be in the know.

Submission + - Appeals Court finds scanning to be fair use in Authors Guild v Hathitrust

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In Authors Guild v Hathitrust, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that scanning whole books and making them searchable for research use is a fair use. In reaching its conclusion, the 3-judge panel reasoned, in its 34-page opinion (PDF), that the creation of a searchable, full text database is a "quintessentially transformative use", that it was "reasonably necessary" to make use of the entire works, that maintaining maintain 4 copies of the database was reasonably necessary as well, and that the research library did not impair the market for the originals. Needless to say, this ruling augurs well for Google in Authors Guild v. Google, which likewise involves full text scanning of whole books for research.

Comment Re:Translation : (Score 1) 314

I take it you don't fly in or out of LAX very much? Traffic is a nightmare. It can take 30-45 minutes to simply loop through the terminals a single time when it's busy, which is damn near every night. I'm not saying that these rules don't defend taxi's turf, but there is more reason to it than just that.

Comment Re:Embarrassing info, or are the feds just idiots? (Score 1) 272

There could be a number of reasons why they don't want the info public

1) It doesn't work that well, or there is an obvious defense against it they don't want public.

2) They've been abusing their power some how by collecting info on people not really suspects, and don't want to be hit up by every divorce lawyer in the country. ( not sure if that's really illegal).

3) They're idiotic power tripping jerks that think its an ultra secret thing that will cause all law enforcement to lose its effectiveness if more people know about it.

4) It contains evidence of alien life forms visits to our planet, and their preference for blackberry cell phones.

5) They've been using it to track some for-real bad guys, and the release of the documents would compromise an ongoing investigation or investigations.

I suspect it's a combination of mostly (2), some (5), and a sprinkling of (3).

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