absolutely correct. The case was not about whether MPAA could sue Newzbin for damages - it is clear that under English law it can. But to do so, the MPAA would need to show its members suffered loss, and the MPAA could then only recover for their loss. The members' loss has no direct relationship with Newzbin's profits - it could be more than Newzbin's profits; it could be less than Newzbin's profits.

In fact pretty hard to show what the MPAA members' loss is - and this case was about a crafty attempt by the MPAA to avoid that difficulty.

The argument was that Newzbin's profits actually belonged to the MPAA members (in the same way that if you steal my bike, the bike still belongs to me, and if you steal my cash, I can have a proprietary right in your bank account of the same amount). Would be a great result for the MPAA, as they would then simply take the all profit and not need to show any loss. The slight problem was that there was no legal authority for such a claim, and so they lost

Bob

I am a lawyer. The previous post is wrong - the usual rules of copyright apply whether or not you've accepted terms of service.

Piriform's objection is not very clearly stated, but there is a problem if the Bleachbit developer is encouraging people to import winapp.ini - the information in it is copyrighted and this is likely an unlicensed use. It would be prudent for Bleachbit to tell people not to use its import functionality to import Piriform's original winapp.ini, and better still if the software rejects attempts to do this.

Whether importing third party (non-Piriform) rules is acceptable depends upon the terms on which those rules are made available. If they're posted in a forum whose rules provide the files can be used only in Piriform products then Piriform has an arguable case (that Bleachbit is procuring a breach of contract/copyright) but that's a more difficult argument for Piriform to make, as they have to show the terms of the contract/copyright license are effective.

Bob

Your firm needs to tighten up its money laundering procedures - that is an insufficient level of client due diligence. If you are not confident your client is who he says he is then you should not act. If something were to go wrong, your firm would face civil proceedings and it (and potentially you personally) could face an LCS investigation or even prosecution.

This is just protectionism - why shouldn't American companies be able to hire whoever they want?

Good luck persuading a court of that - last I checked those "tax protestor" arguments had a batting average of zero.

I'm aware that post-modernists believe it is a self-evident truth that there is no such thing as a self-evident truth.

Well that's just not true - Wikipedia could accept copyrighted photos subject to an absolute irrevocable non-exclusive licence for their use on wikipedia (with attribution). A simple click-through licence would suffice.

As a matter of UK law, the gallery's position is most likely correct. How it enforces this against Wikipedia and/or the user in question is a different story...

Or they could just be an innocent citizen arrested by the secret police of a totalitarian state that denies freedom to its own people?

Just a thought.

You are confusing the European Court of Human Rights (relevant to this case, irrelevant to the USA) with the International Criminal Court (which the US hasn't signed up to but which is irrelevant to this case)

The problem is that the study was limited to Wikipedia articles covering mainstream science, and the quality of these is generally very good. The quality goes downhill very rapidly the further one gets away from the mainstream, whether in science, history, politics or anything else.

I think you are right. I'm not a German lawyer, but on the basis of European law she has a couple of excellent arguments:

First, under the Distance Selling Directive she has 30 days to return the software and receive a refund (how precisely this applies to downloads is unclear, but it certainly applies).

Second, under Council Directive 93/13/EEC, unfair terms in consumer contracts are unenforceable. A hidden term that the consumer pay a fee for software that is normally free is likely to be regarded as "unfair".

I assume Germany has implemented these Directives into local law - it certainly should have done. So she should refuse to pay under the Distance Selling Directive, and have the Unfair Terms Directive as a fallback.

Amazing so many people are so confident she has to pay.

Plus an injunction to prevent further infringement, which is of some use...

How can that be? The cost of physically producing a copy of OS X is tiny. There may be a huge sunk development cost but - no matter what it is - Apple will make money off each sale. Whether this is increasing Apple's profit from OS X, or reducing its loss doesn't change that.

OK, but bear in mind the electricity may have been generated from fossil fuels at efficiency of 50-60%, and then transmitted across the distribution system at efficiency of 90ish%, and then used to charge the capacitor (which will have an efficiency of less than 100%, but I've no idea what it will be)

All of which will likely end up better than 20% efficiency, but some way short of 90%.