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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.

Submission + - Councilman/Open Source Developer submits Open Source bill (gothamgazette.com)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: New York City Council Member Ben Kallos (KallosEsq), who also happens to be a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developer, just introduced legislation to mandate a government preference for FOSS and creating a Civic Commons website to facilitate collaborative purchasing of software. He argues that NYC could save millions of dollars with the Free and Open Source Software Preferences Act 2014, pointing out that the city currently has a $67 million Microsoft ELA. Kallos said: "It is time for government to modernize and start appreciating the same cost savings as everyone else."

Comment A little late, but welcome (Score 1) 136

A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

A malcontent like myself might be a little unhappy that it took the courts ten (10) years to finally come to grips with the personal jurisdiction issue, which would have been obvious to 9 out of 10 second year law students from the get go, and I personally have been pointing it out and writing about it since 2005; but at least they finally did get there.

And a philosopher might wonder how much suffering might have been spared had the courts followed the law back in 2004 when the John Doe madness started; but of course I'm a lawyer, not a philosopher. :)

Bottom line, though: this is a good thing, a very good thing. Ten (10) years late in coming, but good nonetheless. - R.B. )

Comment Re:Clear as mud (Score 1) 8

Each year the competition is different but, this year the primary goal is to move two foot diameter balls into either a low goal for one point or a seven foot high goal for 10 points. All with a robot that isn't allowed to be more than five feet tall. There are ways to work with the teams on your alliance to score more points per ball as well as a 62 inch tall truss at mid field to shoot over for an additional 10 points. Even though I work with a high school team every year (FIRE Team #0322), some years the scoring is...interesting to try to explain. Here is an animation created by FIRST to explain this years game. It'll probably do a better job than I can.

Comment Re:How long before the FAA stops this? (Score 2) 49

A federal judge recently ruled that the FAA has no authority over "small unmanned aircraft." Which effectively kills the FAA's regulations that said commercial drone use in the US was illegal. As far as liability in case of death is concerned, it'll probably be handled similarly to any other accident. If it is determined that malice, negligence, or recklessness is involved then there will probably be jail time. If it's just an unfortunate and/or unavoidable accident then probably not.

Comment Re:Quick change needed [Re:Stop] (Score 3, Interesting) 349

There is one potential issue. I only found it when I was using a smaller regional ISP while I dealt with a billing dispute with Charter. If your ISP uses extreme levels of NAT and is used primarily by tech-savvy people (those who would be likely to use Google DNS in the first place). It may look to Google like a single IP address is hammering their DNS servers with queries and they may block that particular public IP address. I got that one explained to me by the president of that small ISP about a year ago when I asked why my DNS queries weren't going through and ended up being escalated to the top.

Comment Preliminary injunction (Score 1) 211

I guess it would take a litigator to notice this, but it's quite unusual that a preliminary injunction denial would be getting this kind of appellate attention.

In the first place, it was unusual for an interlocutory appeal to be granted from the denial of the preliminary injunction motion. In federal court usually you can only appeal from a final judgment.

Similarly, apart from the fact that it's always rare for a certiorari petition to be granted, it's especially tough where the appeal is not from a final judgment, but just from a preliminary injunction denial which does not dispose of the whole case.

Comment Re:Rule #1 (Score 4, Informative) 894

Legally speaking, every male American citizen between the ages of 17-45 who is not an active duty member of the armed forces and every female member of the National Guard is a member of the 'militia of the United States' by federal law (10 USC 311). That militia is formed for the purpose of draft selection but, it's still a militia set up by federal law and if that doesn't meet the requirements for "A well regulated Militia" then I don't know what does. I, being a 28 year old male citizen of the United States, therefore consider myself to be a member of the well regulated militia of the United States and therefore have the right to bear arms. Even if I have not to this point chosen to exercise that particular right.

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