Re: Do You Want Inventions To See The Light Of Day?
Dear RJR,
I'm not sure it's sunk in yet but you're a complete moron, know that?
The "invention" that I'm talking about one that deals with a mutation in the human genetic sequence, specifically BRCA1 and BRCA2. When they mutate a certain way they send the chances of breast cancer into orbit.
The patent is held by a company called Myriad. Well, actually, a series of patents over the genes which pretty much gives them control of that sequence.
The fees they charge are such that to get a test for the mutation costs upwards of $4,000 US. At this point we're not even discussing treatment.
Myriad has also blocked research into that problem.
"No one makes you or anyone else license. You do not have to use the invention if you don't like the price."
People who have this mutation don't get that choice, do they? So much for that argument.
Now then, as to patent law, one thing is that natural processes such as mutation aren't supposed to be patentable but still the patents were awarded.
The whole thing is in front of the courts now. With some luck, they'll be overturned.
BTW, do you know that nearly 20% of the human gene sequence as one or another patent claim?
Incidentally, doesn't it come to mind that lowering the price of these tests would mean something simple like selling more of them and actually recouping any costs faster?
Nahh, of course not. One must compensate the "inventor".
Then you fall back on compensation. Well, to some degree true, but in most cases as this thread has repeatedly pointed out to you in most cases an invention is the result of someone scratching an itch to find a better, more effective way of doing something not sitting in their mother's basement, laptop in hand, trying to come up with yet another get-rich-quick scam.
Now, onto a patent fail because the inventor got too greedy.
There's screw head sold in Canada but not the United States known as the Robertson. It's deceptively simple, looks like a square head but it's not quite that simple. The trick isn't in the shape but the slight slight angle towards the bottom of the hole that allows the head to remain on a screwdriver in almost any condition.
Unlike slots, phillips, torx or any number of other screw heads these are almost impossible to strip as the driver and head are designed to let go just as the over torque point is reached.
Might explain why anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge here replaces screws that come in kits with robertsons and pulls out the damnable phillips head and replaces them as quickly as possible on any assembled product.
Mr Robertson, the inventor, licensed it in Canada at a reasonable rate while he wanted a ridiculous amount to do the same in the United States. Guess what? He lost that market and the money that went along with it because he got greedy.
As has been repeated, ad nauseum, to you, isn't only the compensation of a limited monopoly (and I do mean limited) but that it's available for others to study and improve on. Patents aren't trade secrets, you know.
I'm beginning to wonder if you've had an original, to you, thought in decades.
Re: I'm getting woozy as to what the alternative is.
The "star" system existed long before recordings which is one of the e reasons we still remember, hear and, in some cases, worship Litz, Handel, Beethoven, Bach and that set of romantic era composers.
That the fat cats of their era were the Duke of St Martins-in-the-fields-behind-the-hedgerow-and-the-nasty-bull or some record company fat cat makes little difference.
Now in those days the nobility and pretenders in the upper middle class swarmed to concerts that these composers played at or conducted at ridiculous prices shouldn't sound all that unfamiliar.
The records of the day were sales of sheet music and you can bet the composer and sponsor got a cut of that.
And acts have sold extras at concerts for years. I can remember being flogged tshirts and other paraphernalia at Led Zep shows in the early 70s so that's not all that new.
We're at the same place we were, culturally, when Edison recorded Mary Had A Little Lamb on a cylinder. We don't know what's coming next.
And there's always been the Lady Gaga and Madonna characters. We seem to have a fascination for powerful, successful, independent women who do whatever the hell they want to and do it well. The latter is the difference between them and the Lindsay Lohan's of the world. They control their fame and the star maker machinery where the Lohan's let it control them to the point of self destruction.
You underestimate music as an art form and what it does to and with humans. It's the only art form that takes in all parts of the brain including those areas that are part of our deepest emotions.
Rarely does reading a novel bring up an unconscious reaction like the appearance of goosebumps and shivers while a phrasing or tonal quality of a piece of music often does.
In that sense free reduces none of the value as the value of music is intrinsic. If all you look at this the price of exchanging it you're losing a lot of it's real value to humans. So, we'll continue to pay for it. As long as we judge the price to be a reasonable for the enjoyment and emotional qualities it brings us.
Just how we'll do that isn't known, at the moment. What we do seem to be discovering is the old mega label model, which isn't that old really, isn't working and won't work.
Thing is if you can't put the knife back and tighten the tourniquet too much you lose the limb if you can't get the needed attention to it.
Either way you die. From blood loss or from gangrene.
Of course, you'd bleed less if you left the damned knife where it was till you figured something better out because the skin and the knife hilt itself will slow the bleeding.
The major labels have done none of the above except to make the fatal mistake of giving that knife a great big twist.
By way of an example of this is that the copyright license we have applied to our church publications and web site are -NC for what some would call "ideological" reasons. It's not that we're against making money from the content it's that we don't want the content used hither and yon by commercial entities who, in the past, have done so without attribution and by applying their own copyright to their very slightly remixed write up. In school this was called plagiarism.
Newspapers are very, very good at this. Particularly the small town variety who are often desperate for content of any kind.
So yes, it's about control.
If I was to release music using a CC license I'd think long and hard about the -NC restriction as it stands. I'd think long and hard about it again of, say, our church choir were to release music using -NC because it could be interpreted, quite reasonably, that passing the collection plate during a service means it's being used in a commercial setting.
This is the perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. At it's extreme it's also know as cutting off you nose to spite your face! ;-)
There's a false dichotomy making the rounds here that splits inventors and innovators into two separate groups when, in fact, they complement each other.
Imitation may be sincerest form of flattery but that only works when done well and by extending on what came before, Ronald J. Riley not withstanding.
There are such moments, as the invention of the transistor, that literally change everything. They are, in my mind, rare, though as what happens next is that innovation takes over where innovators see uses for the invention that the inventor never saw.
Inventors themselves can, quite often, be poor innovators. A classic example is that Thomas Edison stuck with tube style recordings long after the platter style had proven more popular because it was cheaper as well as more resilient in terms of storage. Remember that Edison was one hell of a marketer so that's a notable failure.
We all copy from the day we're born till the day we die. Wal-Mart stays successful by copying and tweaking itself though it will start to die the moment it stops doing that.
An invention is not an end in itself. If it's truly a game changer such as the steam engine, the telegraph, telephone, radio and the semi-conductor it gives birth to strange and unexpected children such as the internal combustion engine, television, desktop computers and the Internet.
Invention is copied,combined, morphed and reborn in ways the inventor who was, after all, scratching an itch over a problem or challenge they had. That it's taken by someone else and applied to a situation the inventor had no idea it could be applied to is the genius of our species.
I tend to agree with Mike in that patents tend to slow down or stop such tinkering. Or even things like research into diseases and conditions liked with DNA. Humans eventually find ways to work around these situations but we'd work around them faster if it were not for "inventors" who block access by charging ridiculously high licensing fees or insisting that a company they set up is the only solution as long as they have the patent monopoly to keep others out.
It was forseen in many ways with NAFTA but not in this one.
As for your incredible knowledge of the Canadian legal system could you please tell me what you base that on? It's certainly not first, second or third hand knowledge of how we do things up here. Rumours, maybe, but not much if any facts.
As for our court system, it's not perfect any more than the US court system is.
As a Canadian I haven't the slightest interest in "inflicting" our legal system on you or any other American unless you happen to do something stupid, illegal or both in Canada and are subject to our laws. Same as I'd expect if I did either or both in the United States.
As for police state laws, or potential ones, I really want to point you at the Patriot Act. At least we still operate with the doctrine of habeas corpus in full effect which the Patriot Act knackered.
I don't think it's likely that Supreme Court would uphold this if it gets that far, as I said, it violates precedent in that damage enforcement requests by American courts to Canadian courts have be "reasonable" as the Supreme Court has defined them and this certainly isn't.
The guy that posted after this last outbreak of paranoia of yours is right. We (and Mexico) are far more concerned with having some of your more idiotic laws imposed on us. So far, outside of softwood lumber, that hasn't happened.
And, for your information, enforcement orders are routinely granted on both sides of the Canada-US border AFTER they've been heard in open court in the proper jurisdiction in either Canada or the USA.
You sound like a One World Government nutter, you know.
The order is against Guerbuez not the people and government of Canada (or Quebec) so we aren't on the hook for a damned thing.
As I said this thing is on it's way to the Supreme Court of Canada because we do have little rules in Canada about excessive civil awards which the lower court judge appears to have ignored.
Re: It's play money, but the principle will be turned to general use.
One minor little detail here.
Cross jurisdictional enforcement orders in civil cases started to become common in the 1980s as divorced women with children sought to enforce separation agreements or divorce settlements when, say, the dead beat dad ran away from Vancouver and landed in Edmonton in Alberta.
Sometime in the 90s it became cross border with the United States where US courts would enforce such settlements rendered in Canada where the dead beat dad ran off from Vancouver to, say, Seattle. And Canadian courts would grant enforcement orders in the same circumstances in Canada rendered in the United States. In both cases the order requires a judicial review in open court before it's granted.
Something to do with NAFTA, if my memory is working.
The fly in the otherwise good ointment is that no one foresaw this sort of situation as Canadian courts rarely, if ever, enforce some of the more extreme rulings that come from some US courts. Until now.
Of course, no one foresaw there would be such an idiot as Guerbuez who would continue to pull the lion's tail after the first mauling. Streisand effect, remember?
If he'd have shut is yap we probably wouldn't be here.
Remember that this isn't an enforcement of US law in Canada it's the enforcement of a legitimate court order from an American court.
And I'll bet dollars to donuts that this thing will be appealed.
BTW, in Quebec French common law holds sway from the time that France lost their North American colonies to Britain rather than the English common law base which the rest of Canada and the United States base their civil law on.
You forgot the neighborhood kid who cuts the grass, the meter reader, the guy that drops the spam, I mean flyers, on the doorstep, the cable and telephone guys and on and on and on,.
Don't you understand that they're all entitled? Each and every blessed one of them back to the guy that built the first mud hut somewhere in Africa?
Now that's how it's supposed to work. None of this freehold crud that's mucking up the system and makes companies lay awake at night dreaming up new ways to separate you from your money.
Would you please try to understand what a constitutional monarchy is? And how Parliament is structured and why?
As for asking to form a government the reality is that those wishing to form the government must demonstrate they have the support of the majority in the House of Commons or can get it. The monarch doesn't enter into that one little bit.
You do, I take it, understand that that the monarch can't have so much as a dime if the Commons says it can't. As in, it's the Commons that controls the purse strings.
And yes, the monarch can dissolve Parliament but only to follow that with an election.
As for a Bill of Rights in England that's taken care of by a body of law going back to Runnymede and beyond which as removed most direct powers of the monarch.
It's far more likely that a republic will fall into actual tyranny, if history is guide at all, than the English constitutional monarchy will.
Let's not even mention that the site is crammed full of ads and that people put up with the things because they love the content.
Cats have a curious relationship to humans. We find them beautiful, graceful, the source of the best relaxation medication around (purrs), powerful, dangerous, funny, silly and somewhat idiotic. And for those sentenced to live in huge cities something of a link the the wild as it's clear that they're don't fully domestic or wild. They're a bridge.
Might be why we lavish so much care and affection on an animal that is more than happy to take both while it uses our bodies as bedwarmers at night!
(FYI, I'm the proud, happy custodian of a pair of these little beasts.)
If you follow the links you'll see the core of the suit is that Mr Royall's lawyer claims that he is a private citizen and, as such, is something of an innocent bystander in the use of eminent domain by the town where this occurred.
Read a bit deeper, not much deeper as it doesn't seem the facts are in dispute you find he and the municipality worked together to have the previous owner's title removed so that Mr Royall could build his project and profit from it.
Given this Mr Royall took a active part in a public process with the town that resulted in what the book writer sees as an injustice. The moment he did that he surrendered any pretense of being a private citizen and moved himself into the public realm much the same as any politician or activist would do.
It's a SLAPP suit pure and simple.
No one put him there. He did it himself so that he could build a project that he hoped would make money. All very well but the moment he took part in the exercise of eminent domain and encouraged it he ceased to be a private person and became a public one.
He can certainly sue for defamation but there's no doubt the speech in the book is political speech as it's analyzing a public incident where the author concludes that eminent domain was, at best, abused. Mr Royall is hardly an innocent bystander regardless of what his lawyer says based on the agreed facts.
I'd argue that, in this case, where Mr Royall inserted himself into a very public and controversial use of the doctrine of eminent domain he made himself a public figure which results in him also being subject to a conclusion based on normal analysis of such things. As in "Mr Royall was enriched by this while it was unfair to the other party who was made poorer as a result. And as Mr Royall appears to have actively encouraged the municipality to exercise these rights he is part of if not the major reason for this injustice occurring."
In short he's subject to normal political speech and criticism. And he's finding he doesn't like it so he wants to silence it.
Too bad, so sad.
Of course just letting it go means it would be forgotten by all but a few but now it's becoming part of a cause celebre around misuse of the eminent domain doctrine.
You're correct in your cyclical assumptions about human governmental experiments.
If you look at it you'll see relative periods of stability which are shattered by sudden changes in how governance takes place. They also happen to be periods of relatively sudden technological change.
The introduction of what we know as democracy occurred in Athens during such a period, largely driven by the Greeks themselves, borrowed by the Romans who picked up on what the Greeks did and improved the living daylights out of it.
Rome itself changed to a tyranny under the successors to Augustus, no democrat himself, as the Empire expanded and stabalized.
It all fell apart when Rome did, in the west, and the period we call the "Dark Ages" when tyranny returned with a vengeance.
Fast forward to the Renaissance and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in England. Another period of rapid technological change came about along with the pressure from the House of Commons to take power from the monarchy and the Lords. Along came a nutbar King named George III and the American Revolution which the Commons, by and large was sympathetic to but couldn't overturn the Lords or the nutbar King, who ignored it and financed German mercenaries to fight in America when the Commons turned off the financial tap.
The US Congress and the British Parliamentary system which reformed itself into it's current form by the the 1860s or so, have served as the model of democracy in action ever since.
Now we're in a period of rapid tech change again and, guess what?, the forces of what historians call reaction are screaming and yelling that the sky is about to fall. These forces, being the creatures of the previous stable period and getting filthy rich from it, grab control of government and create things like ACTA which serve no purpose but to ensure the reactionaries continue to reap the largest part of the economic pie.
Eventually the attempts to freeze or control tech change fail, as they did first in England and America fail during industrialization then in Europe and eventually globally.
Not without, I ought to point out, a lot of bloodshed along the way. (See Franco-Prussian War, the U.S. Civil War).
The other thing is that these periods of stability/revolution are becoming shorter and shorter though out history and I rather suspect it will be much shorter this time out.
What's the change now? The ability of the "masses", "commoners" or "mob" to communicate freely.
What made the American Revolution successful was the ability of the colonists of the time to print pamphlets, for example, that set our their grievances and solutions. Americans knew this and ensured that it could continue by making a (very healthy) fetish of a free press and free speech.
It's against this background where there are pockets of freedom which aren't going to go away easily that the forces of reaction (in the historical rather than political sense) will find impossible to control.
This time around, I suspect, it's going to be the ability of the "masses" to get around reactionary forces like those behind ACTA by communicating using the Internet as the tool. For example the ability to penetrate the great firewall of China or the more moronic notions going on in that "democracy" we call Australia.
This time, I pray, without the ocean of bloodshed required to unseat the reactionaries (in the historical sense again) the printing press and the industrial revolution needed to get them unseated.
It's about power, folks. Real, imagined or desired by the sponsors of ACTA. And don't look to current political parties to resolve that without revolution within their structures or their near complete collapse. They sold their souls long ago.
This woman and any other Indy filmmaker or studio films will make the money that the audience thinks it's worth.
That the movie industry invests up front on it's product that's not the slightest reason that they should make a profit at all.
Nor does it entitle them to somehow avoid losing their shirt if the product is crap.
From a valid argument that this filmmaker deserves a return on product sold you somehow move to the fantasy that the public at large ought to subsidize her so that she has $0 cost. That's plain nuts and you know it.
If major releases can come close to taking a major studio down why should she be different if their consumers judge the film to be useless or worse?
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Re: Do You Want Inventions To See The Light Of Day?
I'm not sure it's sunk in yet but you're a complete moron, know that?
The "invention" that I'm talking about one that deals with a mutation in the human genetic sequence, specifically BRCA1 and BRCA2. When they mutate a certain way they send the chances of breast cancer into orbit.
The patent is held by a company called Myriad. Well, actually, a series of patents over the genes which pretty much gives them control of that sequence.
The fees they charge are such that to get a test for the mutation costs upwards of $4,000 US. At this point we're not even discussing treatment.
Myriad has also blocked research into that problem.
"No one makes you or anyone else license. You do not have to use the invention if you don't like the price."
People who have this mutation don't get that choice, do they? So much for that argument.
Now then, as to patent law, one thing is that natural processes such as mutation aren't supposed to be patentable but still the patents were awarded.
The whole thing is in front of the courts now. With some luck, they'll be overturned.
BTW, do you know that nearly 20% of the human gene sequence as one or another patent claim?
Incidentally, doesn't it come to mind that lowering the price of these tests would mean something simple like selling more of them and actually recouping any costs faster?
Nahh, of course not. One must compensate the "inventor".
Then you fall back on compensation. Well, to some degree true, but in most cases as this thread has repeatedly pointed out to you in most cases an invention is the result of someone scratching an itch to find a better, more effective way of doing something not sitting in their mother's basement, laptop in hand, trying to come up with yet another get-rich-quick scam.
Now, onto a patent fail because the inventor got too greedy.
There's screw head sold in Canada but not the United States known as the Robertson. It's deceptively simple, looks like a square head but it's not quite that simple. The trick isn't in the shape but the slight slight angle towards the bottom of the hole that allows the head to remain on a screwdriver in almost any condition.
Unlike slots, phillips, torx or any number of other screw heads these are almost impossible to strip as the driver and head are designed to let go just as the over torque point is reached.
Might explain why anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge here replaces screws that come in kits with robertsons and pulls out the damnable phillips head and replaces them as quickly as possible on any assembled product.
Mr Robertson, the inventor, licensed it in Canada at a reasonable rate while he wanted a ridiculous amount to do the same in the United States. Guess what? He lost that market and the money that went along with it because he got greedy.
As has been repeated, ad nauseum, to you, isn't only the compensation of a limited monopoly (and I do mean limited) but that it's available for others to study and improve on. Patents aren't trade secrets, you know.
I'm beginning to wonder if you've had an original, to you, thought in decades.
On the post: Why The Major Labels Continually Fail To Adapt: They Can't Take The Risk
Re: I'm getting woozy as to what the alternative is.
That the fat cats of their era were the Duke of St Martins-in-the-fields-behind-the-hedgerow-and-the-nasty-bull or some record company fat cat makes little difference.
Now in those days the nobility and pretenders in the upper middle class swarmed to concerts that these composers played at or conducted at ridiculous prices shouldn't sound all that unfamiliar.
The records of the day were sales of sheet music and you can bet the composer and sponsor got a cut of that.
And acts have sold extras at concerts for years. I can remember being flogged tshirts and other paraphernalia at Led Zep shows in the early 70s so that's not all that new.
We're at the same place we were, culturally, when Edison recorded Mary Had A Little Lamb on a cylinder. We don't know what's coming next.
And there's always been the Lady Gaga and Madonna characters. We seem to have a fascination for powerful, successful, independent women who do whatever the hell they want to and do it well. The latter is the difference between them and the Lindsay Lohan's of the world. They control their fame and the star maker machinery where the Lohan's let it control them to the point of self destruction.
You underestimate music as an art form and what it does to and with humans. It's the only art form that takes in all parts of the brain including those areas that are part of our deepest emotions.
Rarely does reading a novel bring up an unconscious reaction like the appearance of goosebumps and shivers while a phrasing or tonal quality of a piece of music often does.
In that sense free reduces none of the value as the value of music is intrinsic. If all you look at this the price of exchanging it you're losing a lot of it's real value to humans. So, we'll continue to pay for it. As long as we judge the price to be a reasonable for the enjoyment and emotional qualities it brings us.
Just how we'll do that isn't known, at the moment. What we do seem to be discovering is the old mega label model, which isn't that old really, isn't working and won't work.
On the post: Why The Major Labels Continually Fail To Adapt: They Can't Take The Risk
Re: Re: Permanent risk
Either way you die. From blood loss or from gangrene.
Of course, you'd bleed less if you left the damned knife where it was till you figured something better out because the skin and the knife hilt itself will slow the bleeding.
The major labels have done none of the above except to make the fatal mistake of giving that knife a great big twist.
Whoops!
On the post: CBC Stops Using Creative Commons Music Over Concerns About Commercial vs. Non-Commercial Use
Re: Re: Our classic human failures, on display
Newspapers are very, very good at this. Particularly the small town variety who are often desperate for content of any kind.
So yes, it's about control.
If I was to release music using a CC license I'd think long and hard about the -NC restriction as it stands. I'd think long and hard about it again of, say, our church choir were to release music using -NC because it could be interpreted, quite reasonably, that passing the collection plate during a service means it's being used in a commercial setting.
This is the perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. At it's extreme it's also know as cutting off you nose to spite your face! ;-)
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Imitation may be sincerest form of flattery but that only works when done well and by extending on what came before, Ronald J. Riley not withstanding.
There are such moments, as the invention of the transistor, that literally change everything. They are, in my mind, rare, though as what happens next is that innovation takes over where innovators see uses for the invention that the inventor never saw.
Inventors themselves can, quite often, be poor innovators. A classic example is that Thomas Edison stuck with tube style recordings long after the platter style had proven more popular because it was cheaper as well as more resilient in terms of storage. Remember that Edison was one hell of a marketer so that's a notable failure.
We all copy from the day we're born till the day we die. Wal-Mart stays successful by copying and tweaking itself though it will start to die the moment it stops doing that.
An invention is not an end in itself. If it's truly a game changer such as the steam engine, the telegraph, telephone, radio and the semi-conductor it gives birth to strange and unexpected children such as the internal combustion engine, television, desktop computers and the Internet.
Invention is copied,combined, morphed and reborn in ways the inventor who was, after all, scratching an itch over a problem or challenge they had. That it's taken by someone else and applied to a situation the inventor had no idea it could be applied to is the genius of our species.
I tend to agree with Mike in that patents tend to slow down or stop such tinkering. Or even things like research into diseases and conditions liked with DNA. Humans eventually find ways to work around these situations but we'd work around them faster if it were not for "inventors" who block access by charging ridiculously high licensing fees or insisting that a company they set up is the only solution as long as they have the patent monopoly to keep others out.
On the post: Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings
Re: @ "no one foresaw"...[this with NAFTA].
As for your incredible knowledge of the Canadian legal system could you please tell me what you base that on? It's certainly not first, second or third hand knowledge of how we do things up here. Rumours, maybe, but not much if any facts.
As for our court system, it's not perfect any more than the US court system is.
As a Canadian I haven't the slightest interest in "inflicting" our legal system on you or any other American unless you happen to do something stupid, illegal or both in Canada and are subject to our laws. Same as I'd expect if I did either or both in the United States.
As for police state laws, or potential ones, I really want to point you at the Patriot Act. At least we still operate with the doctrine of habeas corpus in full effect which the Patriot Act knackered.
I don't think it's likely that Supreme Court would uphold this if it gets that far, as I said, it violates precedent in that damage enforcement requests by American courts to Canadian courts have be "reasonable" as the Supreme Court has defined them and this certainly isn't.
The guy that posted after this last outbreak of paranoia of yours is right. We (and Mexico) are far more concerned with having some of your more idiotic laws imposed on us. So far, outside of softwood lumber, that hasn't happened.
And, for your information, enforcement orders are routinely granted on both sides of the Canada-US border AFTER they've been heard in open court in the proper jurisdiction in either Canada or the USA.
You sound like a One World Government nutter, you know.
On the post: Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings
Re: Canadian Tax Payer
The order is against Guerbuez not the people and government of Canada (or Quebec) so we aren't on the hook for a damned thing.
As I said this thing is on it's way to the Supreme Court of Canada because we do have little rules in Canada about excessive civil awards which the lower court judge appears to have ignored.
On the post: Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings
Re: Re: Re: One Bihllyun Dohllars...
On the post: Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings
Re: It's play money, but the principle will be turned to general use.
Cross jurisdictional enforcement orders in civil cases started to become common in the 1980s as divorced women with children sought to enforce separation agreements or divorce settlements when, say, the dead beat dad ran away from Vancouver and landed in Edmonton in Alberta.
Sometime in the 90s it became cross border with the United States where US courts would enforce such settlements rendered in Canada where the dead beat dad ran off from Vancouver to, say, Seattle. And Canadian courts would grant enforcement orders in the same circumstances in Canada rendered in the United States. In both cases the order requires a judicial review in open court before it's granted.
Something to do with NAFTA, if my memory is working.
The fly in the otherwise good ointment is that no one foresaw this sort of situation as Canadian courts rarely, if ever, enforce some of the more extreme rulings that come from some US courts. Until now.
Of course, no one foresaw there would be such an idiot as Guerbuez who would continue to pull the lion's tail after the first mauling. Streisand effect, remember?
If he'd have shut is yap we probably wouldn't be here.
Remember that this isn't an enforcement of US law in Canada it's the enforcement of a legitimate court order from an American court.
And I'll bet dollars to donuts that this thing will be appealed.
BTW, in Quebec French common law holds sway from the time that France lost their North American colonies to Britain rather than the English common law base which the rest of Canada and the United States base their civil law on.
On the post: Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings
Re: Odd punitive damages.
The ruling Facebook asked the Quebec court to enforce the penalty for came from a US court based on US Laws.
For all that, though, these kinds of cross jurisdictional enforcement orders are usually aimed at dead beat dads not this kind of idiot.
On the post: Surprise, Surprise: MPAA In Favor Of Current ACTA Text Before Anyone's Supposed To Have Seen It
Of course the MPAA has seen it, they paid for it.
Now, where's my anti-cynicism pill?
On the post: Surprise, Surprise: MPAA In Favor Of Current ACTA Text Before Anyone's Supposed To Have Seen It
Re: Quick Question
Voted down now would be better. Much better.
On the post: Bill Introduced To Ban Home Resale Fees
Re:
Don't you understand that they're all entitled? Each and every blessed one of them back to the guy that built the first mud hut somewhere in Africa?
Now that's how it's supposed to work. None of this freehold crud that's mucking up the system and makes companies lay awake at night dreaming up new ways to separate you from your money.
On the post: UK Gov't Frees Up Gov't Works Under 'Open' License
Re: "for re-use under simple licensing terms"
As for asking to form a government the reality is that those wishing to form the government must demonstrate they have the support of the majority in the House of Commons or can get it. The monarch doesn't enter into that one little bit.
You do, I take it, understand that that the monarch can't have so much as a dime if the Commons says it can't. As in, it's the Commons that controls the purse strings.
And yes, the monarch can dissolve Parliament but only to follow that with an election.
As for a Bill of Rights in England that's taken care of by a body of law going back to Runnymede and beyond which as removed most direct powers of the monarch.
It's far more likely that a republic will fall into actual tyranny, if history is guide at all, than the English constitutional monarchy will.
Idiot.
On the post: UK Gov't Frees Up Gov't Works Under 'Open' License
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On the post: How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Make In A Single Column Defending A Paywall?
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Cats have a curious relationship to humans. We find them beautiful, graceful, the source of the best relaxation medication around (purrs), powerful, dangerous, funny, silly and somewhat idiotic. And for those sentenced to live in huge cities something of a link the the wild as it's clear that they're don't fully domestic or wild. They're a bridge.
Might be why we lavish so much care and affection on an animal that is more than happy to take both while it uses our bodies as bedwarmers at night!
(FYI, I'm the proud, happy custodian of a pair of these little beasts.)
On the post: Can The 'Gist' Of A Book Be Defamatory, Even If Nothing Is Proven False?
Re: Devils Advocate
If you follow the links you'll see the core of the suit is that Mr Royall's lawyer claims that he is a private citizen and, as such, is something of an innocent bystander in the use of eminent domain by the town where this occurred.
Read a bit deeper, not much deeper as it doesn't seem the facts are in dispute you find he and the municipality worked together to have the previous owner's title removed so that Mr Royall could build his project and profit from it.
Given this Mr Royall took a active part in a public process with the town that resulted in what the book writer sees as an injustice. The moment he did that he surrendered any pretense of being a private citizen and moved himself into the public realm much the same as any politician or activist would do.
It's a SLAPP suit pure and simple.
No one put him there. He did it himself so that he could build a project that he hoped would make money. All very well but the moment he took part in the exercise of eminent domain and encouraged it he ceased to be a private person and became a public one.
He can certainly sue for defamation but there's no doubt the speech in the book is political speech as it's analyzing a public incident where the author concludes that eminent domain was, at best, abused. Mr Royall is hardly an innocent bystander regardless of what his lawyer says based on the agreed facts.
Is that really so hard to understand?
On the post: Can The 'Gist' Of A Book Be Defamatory, Even If Nothing Is Proven False?
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In short he's subject to normal political speech and criticism. And he's finding he doesn't like it so he wants to silence it.
Too bad, so sad.
Of course just letting it go means it would be forgotten by all but a few but now it's becoming part of a cause celebre around misuse of the eminent domain doctrine.
Mr Royall meet Ms Streisand.
On the post: Negotiators Get Close On ACTA, And Continue To Mislead About It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Rebelion?
If you look at it you'll see relative periods of stability which are shattered by sudden changes in how governance takes place. They also happen to be periods of relatively sudden technological change.
The introduction of what we know as democracy occurred in Athens during such a period, largely driven by the Greeks themselves, borrowed by the Romans who picked up on what the Greeks did and improved the living daylights out of it.
Rome itself changed to a tyranny under the successors to Augustus, no democrat himself, as the Empire expanded and stabalized.
It all fell apart when Rome did, in the west, and the period we call the "Dark Ages" when tyranny returned with a vengeance.
Fast forward to the Renaissance and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in England. Another period of rapid technological change came about along with the pressure from the House of Commons to take power from the monarchy and the Lords. Along came a nutbar King named George III and the American Revolution which the Commons, by and large was sympathetic to but couldn't overturn the Lords or the nutbar King, who ignored it and financed German mercenaries to fight in America when the Commons turned off the financial tap.
The US Congress and the British Parliamentary system which reformed itself into it's current form by the the 1860s or so, have served as the model of democracy in action ever since.
Now we're in a period of rapid tech change again and, guess what?, the forces of what historians call reaction are screaming and yelling that the sky is about to fall. These forces, being the creatures of the previous stable period and getting filthy rich from it, grab control of government and create things like ACTA which serve no purpose but to ensure the reactionaries continue to reap the largest part of the economic pie.
Eventually the attempts to freeze or control tech change fail, as they did first in England and America fail during industrialization then in Europe and eventually globally.
Not without, I ought to point out, a lot of bloodshed along the way. (See Franco-Prussian War, the U.S. Civil War).
The other thing is that these periods of stability/revolution are becoming shorter and shorter though out history and I rather suspect it will be much shorter this time out.
What's the change now? The ability of the "masses", "commoners" or "mob" to communicate freely.
What made the American Revolution successful was the ability of the colonists of the time to print pamphlets, for example, that set our their grievances and solutions. Americans knew this and ensured that it could continue by making a (very healthy) fetish of a free press and free speech.
It's against this background where there are pockets of freedom which aren't going to go away easily that the forces of reaction (in the historical rather than political sense) will find impossible to control.
This time around, I suspect, it's going to be the ability of the "masses" to get around reactionary forces like those behind ACTA by communicating using the Internet as the tool. For example the ability to penetrate the great firewall of China or the more moronic notions going on in that "democracy" we call Australia.
This time, I pray, without the ocean of bloodshed required to unseat the reactionaries (in the historical sense again) the printing press and the industrial revolution needed to get them unseated.
It's about power, folks. Real, imagined or desired by the sponsors of ACTA. And don't look to current political parties to resolve that without revolution within their structures or their near complete collapse. They sold their souls long ago.
On the post: LA Times' Propaganda Piece Claims Piracy Hurts Filmmakers Without Any Actual Evidence
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fuck You
That the movie industry invests up front on it's product that's not the slightest reason that they should make a profit at all.
Nor does it entitle them to somehow avoid losing their shirt if the product is crap.
From a valid argument that this filmmaker deserves a return on product sold you somehow move to the fantasy that the public at large ought to subsidize her so that she has $0 cost. That's plain nuts and you know it.
If major releases can come close to taking a major studio down why should she be different if their consumers judge the film to be useless or worse?
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