I can see reason for people to object despite this.
I can easily envision a photographer being willing to let other people freely use their work in something which is for commercial purposes, but not to let other people sell their work directly. What (CC) license is such a person supposed to have chosen?
"Censorship", in its basic sense, is simply the attempt to prevent some (particular) audience from being exposed to some (particular) information.
If government or other authoritarian involvement were essential to the concept of censorship, "self-censorship" would not be a stock phrase, because the concept would be a contradiction in terms when done by anything but a government entity.
The distinction between censorship and "just being selective" is that someone being selective just chooses what information they themselves will present, whereas someone engaging in censorship attempts to restrict what other people can present.
Sometimes these can overlap; for example, the editors of a newspaper who choose which Letters to the Editor to publish are certainly being selective, but may also be engaging in censorship if they make that choice based on wanting to keep their readers from being exposed to the information in some of the letters. But the distinction is still important.
(None of what happens in Techdirt comments seems to be censorship to my eye, for the record. Unless there are posts actually being deleted, which I'm fairly sure is not the case.)
Unfortunately, there are incentives against that, if the bill to which the provisions are attached contains important/critical/time-sensitive things which are hard - or even impossible - to justify rejecting.
Which is why I would support various measures (too many and too long to list off here) aimed at restricting the breadth of a given bill and at making sure that the legislators have no excuse for not knowing exactly what they're voting on. But getting that implemented would be more of an up-cliff than even an uphill battle.
(The other "solution" to such unrelated-provisions legislation would be the line-item veto, in some form - whether by the executive in signing, or by members of the legislative voting in for or against. But that A: just moves the problem and B: in the executive case is plausibly argued to be unconstitutional.)
Anyone else find it amusing that 0.5 Mbps (512 Kbps, or 64 KB/s) is considered the minimum speed necessary for Web browsing and E-mail, when for so many years the top speed available (without paying ridiculous premiums) was ~53KB/s?
Not that it isn't necessarily a reasonable minimum nowadays - but if it is, that says something unfortunate about the footprint of modern Websites... to say nothing of what people think of as reasonable in E-mail nowadays.
While untrue statements are in fact compatible with (and may even be necessary for) defamation, you left out the critical word: "clearly".
"Clearly untrue" statements cannot be defamatory, because one of the components of defamation is likelihood that someone will think the defamatory statement is the truth. If it is clear that a statement is not true, then by definition, the statement cannot be defamatory.
Actually, as I understand matters, "probable cause" in the original context appears to have referred to "probable cause to believe that the thing being searched for is in the place to be searched" - where "probable" is contrasted with "plausible" or "possible" or even "improbable", any of which would leave much more room for random or punitive searches.
It had nothing to do with "threats to public safety" or "crime in progress" or similar - only with the likelihood, and (by way of determining that) believability, of the idea that the search being carried out would find the thing being searched for. If you can't convince the person whose responsibility it is to make such judgments that it's probable that the thing is where you say it is, you don't get to search for it there.
That gets lost to some degree under the common-parlance jargon use of the phrase, but I believe it's still of critical importance in understanding how the idea of probable cause should be applied.
On the one hand, yes, having the job be done only by people who don't care about the negative aspects of what they're doing would be a bad thing.
On the other hand, it would mean that people could despise, ostracise, and otherwise socially abuse TSA employees with a clear conscience - thereby giving the remaining employees a different type of disincentive to continue working there.
I think there's a case to be made that that could be worth the trade-off. Although there is still the difficulty that there's no way to be certain that the state where only "the bad people" still work there has yet been achieved, so it wouldn't be possible to be entirely certain about that clarity of conscience after all.
These two tests represent, and possibly exemplify, two essential basic questions which should be asked of any patent application, under and below (as contrasted with "over and above") questions like prior art:
* "Could a person skilled in the art reproduce the invention based on the description in the full patent? If no, the patent application must be rejected."
* "Could a person skilled in the art reproduce the invention based on the description in the abstract of the patent? If yes, the patent application should be rejected."
The rest of the details of my proposal are mostly a way to define how to determine whether a person skilled in the art could reproduce the invention with the given information. Even if you don't go as far as finding such people and having them actually do it, however, I think it could still be useful to explicitly codify these questions as rules in the patent-application-handling process.
(Note also the difference in the use of "must" vs. "should" in the two tests. I included that difference intentionally, because there are some corner cases where it could potentially make sense to grant a patent application even when the second test might fail, and I wanted to leave room for that in the details.)
That's part of why I said it's logistically impractical and would be prohibitively expensive in practice.
I still think it's a useful line to start on, though - almost a thought experiment; it serves to help frame the problem in the right way, and point out what things actually need to be addressed, even if it isn't practical as a way of addressing those things by itself.
There are a number of other corner cases and loopholes and so forth as well, which would have to be addressed by any fully-detailed proposal in this direction, but I figured the version I gave is legalistic enough that I'm risking people not bothering to read it even as is. A more detailed legalese version is percolating in the back of my head; I've gone over three or four main variants on it so far already.
That would only address a small part of the problem.
What about patent applications which do provide implementation details, but not enough of them, so that you can't actually implement the patented thing just based on the information in the patent? It's not always going to be obvious what is and is not "enough", unless you are in fact "a person skilled in the art" - which, for any given field, most patent examiners are not.
What about patent applications which are for something which would be obvious to anyone in the field who bothered to work on the problem?
There are many categories of possible reasons why a patent application can be bad. My proposed pair of tests wouldn't address all of them, but I think it would address most of them, including particularly the ones which are not being properly addressed under the current approach. Your proposed test (in addition to lacking detail by which to judge what is and is not "only an idea") seems to me as if it would only address one or two of them, at most.
I realize it's logistically impractical, would be prohibitively expensive in practice, and would just lead to massive delays in the processing of patent applications, but I've been contemplating two basic tests which I might want to argue should be applied to any patent application.
There are longer and more legalistic ways to describe them - to fill in details, eliminate loopholes, address corner cases, and avoid unintended consequences - but the basic outline is:
One:
* Find a "person skilled in the art".
* Give that person access to the entire patent application.
* Ask that person to reproduce the invention, based on the description in the patent application.
If they do not succeed, then the patent application does not adequately describe the invention in question, and must be rejected - because it does not fulfill the purpose for which patents exist in the first place: enabling other people to reproduce the invention.
Two:
* Find another "person skilled in the art".
* Give that person access to only the summary / abstract of the patent application - the part which describes what the thing to be patented does, but not any of the details of how it does it.
* Ask that person to create something which does what is described in that summary text.
If they succeed, and what they create is close enough to the claims of the full patent application that it would be likely to be considered infringing, then the patent application covers something which is "obvious" to a person skilled in the art - and so should be rejected.
There are still other reasons why a patent application should potentially be rejected - prior art, for example, though the second test covers that to some degree if we assume that a "person skilled in the art" would probably be familiar with most such - but it seems to me that that would address the vast majority of bad patent applications.
Actually, people have agreed that "clear parody" is not a sufficient argument - not that it's not a valid one. It's not enough by itself, but it can be an important component of a larger, multi-part argument.
Of course it had a fair-use status; either it was fair use, or it wasn't. Therefore, it had either the status of being fair use, or the status of not being fair use - either of which qualifies as a "fair-use status".
Applause and kudos to Chief Lanier, Captain Harris, and the "other officer" involved. This is exactly the way police officers (especially high-ranking ones) should react when learning of violation committed by other officers, especially when there's strong evidence that they have been - and it's also just about the only example I can think of having seen of a case where they actually have reacted that way.
Let's hope that they keep this up, both in this case (so that it doesn't end up getting swept under the rug or disappearing into the cracks of Internal Affairs after all) and in any future cases that may, and likely will, arise. Let's also hope that any necessary changes to training, monitoring, and discipline procedures to prevent future violations will be made with appropriate determination and alacrity.
My understanding from the summary is that the patent is not on the form of carbon itself, but on a particular process for making it. The former would be unreasonable, but if sufficiently narrow and non-obvious, the latter can be entirely fine.
On the post: Flickr Plans To Sell Creative Commons Photos And That's Okay...
I can easily envision a photographer being willing to let other people freely use their work in something which is for commercial purposes, but not to let other people sell their work directly. What (CC) license is such a person supposed to have chosen?
On the post: Thailand Coup Leaders Insist Their Orders To Censor The Internet Are Not Actually Censorship
Re: Re: Re:
"Censorship", in its basic sense, is simply the attempt to prevent some (particular) audience from being exposed to some (particular) information.
If government or other authoritarian involvement were essential to the concept of censorship, "self-censorship" would not be a stock phrase, because the concept would be a contradiction in terms when done by anything but a government entity.
The distinction between censorship and "just being selective" is that someone being selective just chooses what information they themselves will present, whereas someone engaging in censorship attempts to restrict what other people can present.
Sometimes these can overlap; for example, the editors of a newspaper who choose which Letters to the Editor to publish are certainly being selective, but may also be engaging in censorship if they make that choice based on wanting to keep their readers from being exposed to the information in some of the letters. But the distinction is still important.
(None of what happens in Techdirt comments seems to be censorship to my eye, for the record. Unless there are posts actually being deleted, which I'm fairly sure is not the case.)
On the post: Harry Reid Wants To Attach Part Of SOPA To Surveillance Reform Bill
Re: Re: coat-tailing
Which is why I would support various measures (too many and too long to list off here) aimed at restricting the breadth of a given bill and at making sure that the legislators have no excuse for not knowing exactly what they're voting on. But getting that implemented would be more of an up-cliff than even an uphill battle.
(The other "solution" to such unrelated-provisions legislation would be the line-item veto, in some form - whether by the executive in signing, or by members of the legislative voting in for or against. But that A: just moves the problem and B: in the executive case is plausibly argued to be unconstitutional.)
On the post: Detailed Report Shows How ISPs Are Making 'Business Choice' To Make Your Internet Connection Terrible
Not that it isn't necessarily a reasonable minimum nowadays - but if it is, that says something unfortunate about the footprint of modern Websites... to say nothing of what people think of as reasonable in E-mail nowadays.
On the post: Health And Human Services Apparently Unable To Recognize Satire; Sends Bogus Legal Threat
Re: Great article, but ...
"Clearly untrue" statements cannot be defamatory, because one of the components of defamation is likelihood that someone will think the defamatory statement is the truth. If it is clear that a statement is not true, then by definition, the statement cannot be defamatory.
On the post: TSA Kangaroo Court Rubber Stamps TSA Fining Guy Who Stripped Naked, Completely Dismissing Court Ruling Finding It Legal
Re: Re: Re: TSA
It had nothing to do with "threats to public safety" or "crime in progress" or similar - only with the likelihood, and (by way of determining that) believability, of the idea that the search being carried out would find the thing being searched for. If you can't convince the person whose responsibility it is to make such judgments that it's probable that the thing is where you say it is, you don't get to search for it there.
That gets lost to some degree under the common-parlance jargon use of the phrase, but I believe it's still of critical importance in understanding how the idea of probable cause should be applied.
On the post: TSA Kangaroo Court Rubber Stamps TSA Fining Guy Who Stripped Naked, Completely Dismissing Court Ruling Finding It Legal
Re:
On the post: TSA Kangaroo Court Rubber Stamps TSA Fining Guy Who Stripped Naked, Completely Dismissing Court Ruling Finding It Legal
Re: Re: TSA
On the other hand, it would mean that people could despise, ostracise, and otherwise socially abuse TSA employees with a clear conscience - thereby giving the remaining employees a different type of disincentive to continue working there.
I think there's a case to be made that that could be worth the trade-off. Although there is still the difficulty that there's no way to be certain that the state where only "the bad people" still work there has yet been achieved, so it wouldn't be possible to be entirely certain about that clarity of conscience after all.
On the post: Serial Litigant Blue Spike Wins EFF's Stupid Patent Of The Month For September
Re: Re: Re: Re: Patent-validation tests
These two tests represent, and possibly exemplify, two essential basic questions which should be asked of any patent application, under and below (as contrasted with "over and above") questions like prior art:
* "Could a person skilled in the art reproduce the invention based on the description in the full patent? If no, the patent application must be rejected."
* "Could a person skilled in the art reproduce the invention based on the description in the abstract of the patent? If yes, the patent application should be rejected."
The rest of the details of my proposal are mostly a way to define how to determine whether a person skilled in the art could reproduce the invention with the given information. Even if you don't go as far as finding such people and having them actually do it, however, I think it could still be useful to explicitly codify these questions as rules in the patent-application-handling process.
(Note also the difference in the use of "must" vs. "should" in the two tests. I included that difference intentionally, because there are some corner cases where it could potentially make sense to grant a patent application even when the second test might fail, and I wanted to leave room for that in the details.)
On the post: Serial Litigant Blue Spike Wins EFF's Stupid Patent Of The Month For September
Re: Re: Re: Re: Patent-validation tests
I still think it's a useful line to start on, though - almost a thought experiment; it serves to help frame the problem in the right way, and point out what things actually need to be addressed, even if it isn't practical as a way of addressing those things by itself.
There are a number of other corner cases and loopholes and so forth as well, which would have to be addressed by any fully-detailed proposal in this direction, but I figured the version I gave is legalistic enough that I'm risking people not bothering to read it even as is. A more detailed legalese version is percolating in the back of my head; I've gone over three or four main variants on it so far already.
On the post: Serial Litigant Blue Spike Wins EFF's Stupid Patent Of The Month For September
Re: Re: Patent-validation tests
What about patent applications which do provide implementation details, but not enough of them, so that you can't actually implement the patented thing just based on the information in the patent? It's not always going to be obvious what is and is not "enough", unless you are in fact "a person skilled in the art" - which, for any given field, most patent examiners are not.
What about patent applications which are for something which would be obvious to anyone in the field who bothered to work on the problem?
There are many categories of possible reasons why a patent application can be bad. My proposed pair of tests wouldn't address all of them, but I think it would address most of them, including particularly the ones which are not being properly addressed under the current approach. Your proposed test (in addition to lacking detail by which to judge what is and is not "only an idea") seems to me as if it would only address one or two of them, at most.
On the post: Serial Litigant Blue Spike Wins EFF's Stupid Patent Of The Month For September
Patent-validation tests
There are longer and more legalistic ways to describe them - to fill in details, eliminate loopholes, address corner cases, and avoid unintended consequences - but the basic outline is:
One:
* Find a "person skilled in the art".
* Give that person access to the entire patent application.
* Ask that person to reproduce the invention, based on the description in the patent application.
If they do not succeed, then the patent application does not adequately describe the invention in question, and must be rejected - because it does not fulfill the purpose for which patents exist in the first place: enabling other people to reproduce the invention.
Two:
* Find another "person skilled in the art".
* Give that person access to only the summary / abstract of the patent application - the part which describes what the thing to be patented does, but not any of the details of how it does it.
* Ask that person to create something which does what is described in that summary text.
If they succeed, and what they create is close enough to the claims of the full patent application that it would be likely to be considered infringing, then the patent application covers something which is "obvious" to a person skilled in the art - and so should be rejected.
There are still other reasons why a patent application should potentially be rejected - prior art, for example, though the second test covers that to some degree if we assume that a "person skilled in the art" would probably be familiar with most such - but it seems to me that that would address the vast majority of bad patent applications.
On the post: The Government's Antipathy Towards Transparency Has Made FOIA Lawsuits The Default Process
Re: Penalty for non-complliance
On the post: Goldieblox Agreed To Pay Charity $1 Million For Using Beastie Boys' Girls
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Goldieblox Agreed To Pay Charity $1 Million For Using Beastie Boys' Girls
Re:
On the post: Goldieblox Agreed To Pay Charity $1 Million For Using Beastie Boys' Girls
Re: Re: Re: Re: Fair Use Consideration
On the post: DC Police Chief Publicly Criticizes Officer's Actions After He Attempts To Shut Down A Citizen Recording An Arrest
Let's hope that they keep this up, both in this case (so that it doesn't end up getting swept under the rug or disappearing into the cracks of Internal Affairs after all) and in any future cases that may, and likely will, arise. Let's also hope that any necessary changes to training, monitoring, and discipline procedures to prevent future violations will be made with appropriate determination and alacrity.
On the post: DailyDirt: Allotropes Of Carbon
Re:
On the post: Brazil Passed On Boeing For $4.5 Billion Fighter Jet Deal Because Of Concerns Over NSA Surveillance
Re:
On the post: Feinstein And Chambliss Let James Clapper Talk Them Out Of Requiring Transparency On The Administration's Drone Strikes
Why pull the bill?
The Senate was working on a bill to require disclosure of drone-strike numbers.
James Clapper assures them that the administration is already working on such disclosure.
So why should the response not be "Great! Then you'll already be well on the way to compliance with the new requirement!"?
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