That's one theory. The fact is that nobody is really sure, and even the best modern-day research can only come up with steel that is "very similar to" Damascus Steel, because the relevant knowledge has been lost.
Steel is actually one of the best examples of the legitimate need for a patent system. Wootz (aka. Damascus Steel) wasn't the first time it was created. Not even close, in fact; the earliest known steel samples date back to ~1400 BC! But because of smiths keeping it a secret, the technology got lost and independently rediscovered so many times that it's a bit surprising that we have it today at all!
And the reason we have it today--the reason we had an Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the modern age, built on cheap, widely-available steel--is because Henry Bessemer was English and lived in a time when the English patent system existed, and he patented his Bessemer Converter process for industrial steelmaking. And since then, we've never lost the ability to make steel again, because it was published for the general public to get their hands on.
But that only happened after secrecy kept losing the technology, over and over and over again, and set back mankind's progress by literally 3000 years.
Twitter's filing similarly questions the venue choice, making some of the same arguments, but with the added legal heft of Twitter's terms of service requiring any such lawsuit be brought in California.
Without getting into the broader issue of the lawsuit's viability, can we please not legitimize this nonsense? The ability to use leonine contracts to effectively invent unaccountable private law is one of the worst things to ever come out of the Internet Age, and the sooner it's struck down, the better.
Yes, and if you read what I wrote in context, I'm freely granting that part. It's the "to [the USA's] Enemies" part I'm disputing. Unless we're at war with Russia, it's Officially Not Treason to help them out.
For her part, Ms. Pellosi said Facebook acted as “willing enablers of the Russian interference in [the 2016] election.” To be blunt again, she accused Facebook of treason.
Oh?
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
-- Article 3, Section 3, US Constitution
Does a state of war that I was unaware of exist between the US and Russia, such that giving them "Aid and Comfort" would meet this definition?
For example, as the Guardian reported, one CDU supporter tweeted about Rezo: "This young man is spreading an endless stream of fake news and is populist down to the tips of his blue hair"
Definition of populism:
representation or extolling of the common person, the working class, the underdog, etc.:
When exactly did that become an insult or a bad thing?
I could have sworn I wrote about this when the this dispute started in February, but it appears not.
You did, and it was in the Crystal Ball for a while, but somehow it ended up not being published.
All of which is nonsense. The video game and literary markets are not the same and it strains the mind to imagine how the average consumer might somehow confuse an entry in the Elder Scrolls game series with a series of science fiction novels.
In addition to the excellent post above detailing just how interconnected these markets are, there's more than one form of confusion. If Bethesda publishes a game under the same title as an established book series, there are two obvious ways that that could go wrong:
1) They could then want to publish (or license to others to publish) tie-in books in the game's setting, which would then end up stepping on the sci-fi series' toes. Trademark opposition is a very good way of making sure that this doesn't happen, especially in cases where the newcomer (Bethesda, in this case) is not aware of the existence of the other series.
2) They could end up drowning out the sci-fi series. Bethesda is huge, with a massive degree of cultural impact. Everyone has heard of Fallout and Skyrim. If they come out with a game called Redfall, and then people find Redfall books in the bookstore and find out that it's not at all related to this game they like, they might feel cheated or annoyed. They might ask for their money back. They might leave negative reviews calling it deceptive advertising or accusing the books of trying to free-ride on the name of the game, even though the books were around first.
Video games and sci-fi books may not be exactly the same market, but they're close enough that I don't see anything "trollish" or unworthy about the publisher's efforts to avoid getting steamrolled by this trademark registration. There are plenty of bad-faith trademark abuses out there, but this honestly does not look like one of them.
No implicit or other judicially created exceptions to subject matter eligibility, including “abstract ideas,” “laws of nature,” or “natural phenomena,” shall be used to determine patent eligibility under section 101, and all cases establishing or interpreting those exceptions to eligibility are hereby abrogated.
Congress says to Supreme Court, "you can't do that." The appropriate response is for the Supreme Court to say to Congress, "oh yes we can" and strike down the law.
Re: Re: ICE in charge of blocking counterfeits coming across the
As a software developer, I can say from personal experience that software is most definitely a "writing."
The point where things get a bit hazy is the compiler. The relationship between written software (aka. "source code," the stuff that the programmer actually writes) and executable software (the part that the computer runs, which is built from the source code by a program called a compiler) is almost perfectly analogous to the relationship between a blueprint and a building built from it. And the law allows for copyrights on blueprints, but not on buildings.
But for whatever reason, that same copyright relation does not hold in the world of software; people have been registering copyrights on compiled software for decades now, and successfully suing people over infringing such copyrights. The legal landscape would be a lot better if that were not the case.
And while there are plenty of people who appear to support a dead Facebook in response to that company's long history of sketchy practices, that's not really the reason Hawley wants them dead.
That may be. But a person who wants the right thing for the wrong reasons... still wants the right thing.
That's cool, but I can't help but wonder how you're going to pay for it, when there's a banner directly under this article all about how the last lawsuit Techdirt was engaged in basically brought you guys to your knees financially...
If you want your claims that you're being wrongfully accused of making strawman arguments to be taken seriously... it might help if you didn't immediately follow it up with a list of ridiculous strawman versions of your opponent's position that consistently completely miss the point of his argument. All that does is further add to the evidence that you're nothing but a troll arguing in bad faith.
At some point, we need to turn the narrative around. We need to acknowledge that we do own what we bought, that property rights still mean something, and that abusing technology to circumvent said rights cannot and will not be tolerated.
A modest proposal for fixing this issue: recognize in law that access to such services, being necessary to the functionality of the property that you bought, is an integral part of what you purchased, and therefore unilaterally terminating service is unjustly and unlawfully depriving you of your property. The key word here being unilateral. Google would be free to shut down a service like this, but only if they release the full source code to the servers, in addition to all technical knowledge and tooling necessary in good faith for others to be able to replicate it and ensure continuity of service.
Belittling people based on strawman versions of their arguments is a very common theme in your posts. I talk about behavior--harassing and stalking tactics that have literally gotten people killed in the past--and you turn it into "people I don't like," as if it were nothing but a personal preference, as valid as any other personal preference, rather than something based on objective behavior.
Such behavior should not be tolerated, and it certainly should not be granted the same legitimacy and legal protections as actual journalists who serve the public interest!
This settlement has the potential to deter journalists from taking pictures of anyone or anything.
But we're not talking about journalists here; we're talking about paparazzi.
People whose tactics, were it not for the entirely incidental fact that they publish the results, would be indistinguishable from criminal stalking and harassment, a seedy industry that literally has blood on its hands. The less people make the mistake of equating them with real journalists, the better, especially for journalists!
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (Euipo) denied a trademark for a ‘Brexit’ energy beverage back in 2016 after ruling the term was too ‘offensive’ to put on a can. An official had felt ‘citizens across the EU would be deeply offended’ and it would ‘undermine the weight of an expression denoting a seminal moment in the history of the European Union.’
For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is:
Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands, and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves Paradise, everyone should want to be in the Federation! Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day, they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways, you're even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious, you assimilate people - and they don't even know it.
On the post: Qualcomm Used Patent Monopolies To Shake Down The Entire Mobile Phone Industry For Decades
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Free Market
That's one theory. The fact is that nobody is really sure, and even the best modern-day research can only come up with steel that is "very similar to" Damascus Steel, because the relevant knowledge has been lost.
Steel is actually one of the best examples of the legitimate need for a patent system. Wootz (aka. Damascus Steel) wasn't the first time it was created. Not even close, in fact; the earliest known steel samples date back to ~1400 BC! But because of smiths keeping it a secret, the technology got lost and independently rediscovered so many times that it's a bit surprising that we have it today at all!
And the reason we have it today--the reason we had an Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the modern age, built on cheap, widely-available steel--is because Henry Bessemer was English and lived in a time when the English patent system existed, and he patented his Bessemer Converter process for industrial steelmaking. And since then, we've never lost the ability to make steel again, because it was published for the general public to get their hands on.
But that only happened after secrecy kept losing the technology, over and over and over again, and set back mankind's progress by literally 3000 years.
On the post: Twitter And Liz Mair Explain Why Devin Nunes' Lawsuit Doesn't Belong In Virginia
Without getting into the broader issue of the lawsuit's viability, can we please not legitimize this nonsense? The ability to use leonine contracts to effectively invent unaccountable private law is one of the worst things to ever come out of the Internet Age, and the sooner it's struck down, the better.
On the post: Shallow Fakes: Why Facebook Was Right Not To Delete The Doctored Video Of Nancy Pelosi
Re: Re:
Yes, and if you read what I wrote in context, I'm freely granting that part. It's the "to [the USA's] Enemies" part I'm disputing. Unless we're at war with Russia, it's Officially Not Treason to help them out.
On the post: Twitter And Liz Mair Explain Why Devin Nunes' Lawsuit Doesn't Belong In Virginia
This article needs a bit of proofreading...
On the post: Shallow Fakes: Why Facebook Was Right Not To Delete The Doctored Video Of Nancy Pelosi
Oh?
Does a state of war that I was unaware of exist between the US and Russia, such that giving them "Aid and Comfort" would meet this definition?
On the post: German Political Leader Questions YouTubers' Right To Tell Fans Not To Vote For Her Party, Urgently Summons Her Advisers In Response -- By Fax
Definition of populism:
When exactly did that become an insult or a bad thing?
On the post: Bethesda And Zenimax Settle 'Redfall' Trademark Dispute With Trollish Book Publisher
You did, and it was in the Crystal Ball for a while, but somehow it ended up not being published.
In addition to the excellent post above detailing just how interconnected these markets are, there's more than one form of confusion. If Bethesda publishes a game under the same title as an established book series, there are two obvious ways that that could go wrong:
1) They could then want to publish (or license to others to publish) tie-in books in the game's setting, which would then end up stepping on the sci-fi series' toes. Trademark opposition is a very good way of making sure that this doesn't happen, especially in cases where the newcomer (Bethesda, in this case) is not aware of the existence of the other series.
2) They could end up drowning out the sci-fi series. Bethesda is huge, with a massive degree of cultural impact. Everyone has heard of Fallout and Skyrim. If they come out with a game called Redfall, and then people find Redfall books in the bookstore and find out that it's not at all related to this game they like, they might feel cheated or annoyed. They might ask for their money back. They might leave negative reviews calling it deceptive advertising or accusing the books of trying to free-ride on the name of the game, even though the books were around first.
Video games and sci-fi books may not be exactly the same market, but they're close enough that I don't see anything "trollish" or unworthy about the publisher's efforts to avoid getting steamrolled by this trademark registration. There are plenty of bad-faith trademark abuses out there, but this honestly does not look like one of them.
On the post: Congress Now Pushing 'Bring Back The Patent Trolls' Bill
Re: Re: Jurisdiction fight!
Sure, why couldn't it be? We've had bad laws struck down quickly before.
On the post: Congress Now Pushing 'Bring Back The Patent Trolls' Bill
Jurisdiction fight!
Congress says to Supreme Court, "you can't do that." The appropriate response is for the Supreme Court to say to Congress, "oh yes we can" and strike down the law.
On the post: Techdirt Sues ICE After It Insists It Has No Records Of The 1 Million Domains It Claims To Have Seized
Re: Re: ICE in charge of blocking counterfeits coming across the
As a software developer, I can say from personal experience that software is most definitely a "writing."
The point where things get a bit hazy is the compiler. The relationship between written software (aka. "source code," the stuff that the programmer actually writes) and executable software (the part that the computer runs, which is built from the source code by a program called a compiler) is almost perfectly analogous to the relationship between a blueprint and a building built from it. And the law allows for copyrights on blueprints, but not on buildings.
But for whatever reason, that same copyright relation does not hold in the world of software; people have been registering copyrights on compiled software for decades now, and successfully suing people over infringing such copyrights. The legal landscape would be a lot better if that were not the case.
On the post: Techdirt Sues ICE After It Insists It Has No Records Of The 1 Million Domains It Claims To Have Seized
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Exactly. No mention of the fact that the nature of the help provided by Cause of Action includes taking on the case pro bono.
On the post: Techdirt Sues ICE After It Insists It Has No Records Of The 1 Million Domains It Claims To Have Seized
Re: Re:
Yep.
Yeah, that's the part that wasn't stated in the post. Good to hear that, though. :)
On the post: Forget 'Breaking Up' Internet Companies, Senator Josh Hawley Says They Should All Die Because They're Too Popular
That may be. But a person who wants the right thing for the wrong reasons... still wants the right thing.
On the post: Techdirt Sues ICE After It Insists It Has No Records Of The 1 Million Domains It Claims To Have Seized
That's cool, but I can't help but wonder how you're going to pay for it, when there's a banner directly under this article all about how the last lawsuit Techdirt was engaged in basically brought you guys to your knees financially...
On the post: Prince Harry Uses GDPR To Obtain Payout From Photographer Who Shot Photos Of His Rental Home
Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you want your claims that you're being wrongfully accused of making strawman arguments to be taken seriously... it might help if you didn't immediately follow it up with a list of ridiculous strawman versions of your opponent's position that consistently completely miss the point of his argument. All that does is further add to the evidence that you're nothing but a troll arguing in bad faith.
On the post: You Don't Own What You've Bought: Google Nest Edition
At some point, we need to turn the narrative around. We need to acknowledge that we do own what we bought, that property rights still mean something, and that abusing technology to circumvent said rights cannot and will not be tolerated.
A modest proposal for fixing this issue: recognize in law that access to such services, being necessary to the functionality of the property that you bought, is an integral part of what you purchased, and therefore unilaterally terminating service is unjustly and unlawfully depriving you of your property. The key word here being unilateral. Google would be free to shut down a service like this, but only if they release the full source code to the servers, in addition to all technical knowledge and tooling necessary in good faith for others to be able to replicate it and ensure continuity of service.
On the post: Prince Harry Uses GDPR To Obtain Payout From Photographer Who Shot Photos Of His Rental Home
Re: Re:
Belittling people based on strawman versions of their arguments is a very common theme in your posts. I talk about behavior--harassing and stalking tactics that have literally gotten people killed in the past--and you turn it into "people I don't like," as if it were nothing but a personal preference, as valid as any other personal preference, rather than something based on objective behavior.
Such behavior should not be tolerated, and it certainly should not be granted the same legitimacy and legal protections as actual journalists who serve the public interest!
On the post: Prince Harry Uses GDPR To Obtain Payout From Photographer Who Shot Photos Of His Rental Home
But we're not talking about journalists here; we're talking about paparazzi.
People whose tactics, were it not for the entirely incidental fact that they publish the results, would be indistinguishable from criminal stalking and harassment, a seedy industry that literally has blood on its hands. The less people make the mistake of equating them with real journalists, the better, especially for journalists!
On the post: EU Blocks 'Brexit Beer' Trademark, First As 'Offensive', Then As Non-Distinctive
For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is:
On the post: Big Pharma Companies Accused Of Conspiring To Inflate Prices Of Over 100 Generic Drugs By Up To 1000%
When your business model can literally be stated as "your money or your life," it's time to begin locking people up and filing criminal charges.
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