Yes. of course, but the point is that they have to prove that you knew about the default judgement. That's what the institution of "being served" is about... having supposedly independent witness who can testify that the defendant knew about the court and could properly defend himself. Without that any declaratory judgement should be invalid.
Wait a minute... that does not sound right. Being sentenced without being served? In the USA? I don't really know your constitution but I guess the right to defend yourself in court is a constitutional right in every at least somehow democratic country - and being sentenced without proper chance to defend himself would clearly violate this guy's human rights... so this cannot be final sentence, it's still just some kind of declaratory judgment that he can just deny that and after that the proper court will start, right?
The problem with this argument is that in theory this is not unilateral. In theory the contract is between artists on one side and people represented by government on the other side.
The fact that in reality government represents the other side of the contract than it should is another thing. And if this is the reason for opting out of the law... well than I am opting out of half of the whole legal system.
I can imagine that one day (some part of) the Internet declares independence and becomes self-governing entity where US or any other law cannot be effectively enforced.
Actually now that I think about it... we just need some distributed alternative to DNS, transparent end to end encryption and some independent money system and we are all set.
There are many countries with much reasonable patent law - why don't we just get out of US jurisdiction? In EU software is not even patentable and I am not talking about China yet - why don't we set up our patent-free app market there and just make sure that all the money is channeled out of the reach of US jurisdiction?
The Valley has traditionally been the place to go for startups and is still seen as such. But it seems to me that during last 5 yeas Americans managed to create the most innovation-hostile legal environment in the world... which kind of renders all those wonderful things they can offer to creative and productive people moot. Maybe it's time to use their screw ups as an opportunity and take the kingdom out of their hands. The society which managed to monopolize basic ideas and made creating useful things illegal and racketing legal is doomed anyway.
Lets brainstorm a little and try to imagine how global system able to transfer money to those who create things from those who find those things cool and useful without ever going through anything controlled by American law could look like.
Isn't this exactly what terrorists want? So we would change our way of life and give up substantial liberties to achieve security? Dear Americans, it seems to me that TSA is giving up to terrorists on your behalf... and encouraging more terrorist attacks by showing that this strategy just works.
If you did that your patents could not protect you - the protection is based on "if you sue us with your patents we will sue you with ours" strategy and if your patents were public domain you could not sue anyone.
But it could be possible to create some kind of GPL-like patent pool - something like "we put our patents together, you can use all patents in the pool as long as you never sue anyone, but if you sue, any patent from the pool will be used against you" kind of deal.
That thing about Einstein being religious is kind of a myth - "spiritual" would probably be a better word. For example, in his letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind he wrote "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends, which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this".
About that thing with stupidity being "unique to social groups and not inherent to the human race" - AFAIK nobody in this discussion claimed that stupidity is unique to social groups. But the level of stupidity or ability to reason is not the same in every social group, do you agree?
Many social groups are self-assigned, you can decide whether you want to be a part of that group or not, and your ability to reason can certainly influence that decision.
BTW, it never ceases to surprise me how strong emotions can atheism provoke in the U.S. - I live in Europe, I am an atheist, so is most of the people I know and never in my life I encountered any negative reaction from anybody.
Well... we - users - could create that cost. Boycott of Apple products would work... if only enough people cared. But my guess is that most of the people just don't care. Although I would love to be proven wrong.
It seems to me that we are heading towards the end of free market - so many patents are so vague and broad that basically everything is covered by patents - therefore you risk lethal lawsuit no matter what you do to compete on the market... the only secure thing to do is doing nothing. So incentives are really screwed up. And government is not willing to fix it. It's time for creativity.
I grew up in a totalitarian communist regime. It was really bad and it damaged a lot of people. But to this day I am still surprised how creative some people can get under pressure.
The system is killing creativity - therefore we, creative people, need to find the way how to route around the system. Any ideas?
Yes... when they are going to imply, than I am going to disagree with that. But that police guy does not imply anything, directly or indirectly. Mere mention of some facts that can help understand the situation is not blaming... we have right to talk about reality, about changes that technologies bring to society, about tools that people including rioters use, about facts, right?.
There are so many real problems that sometimes we see some wrongdoing everywhere. But we have to be careful about that - there is really thin line between freedom defender and tin-foil-hat freak.
And BTW, please don't call me friend when you don't mean it. It feels like patronizing... and I am sure you would not want that.
Of course that I had red that article before I posted my post... and again, I still don't see any blaming in anything you quoted.
Claims like "BlackBerry Messenger service played a key role..." are just stating the facts similarly like stating "the knife was used as a murder weapon", which does not imply that the knife (or it's producer) is to be blamed.
And the fact that BlackBerry is helping investigation? They are helping because they are some kind of a "witness", someone who can have access to some information about what happened... which again in no way implies that they are held responsible for anything.
"RIM can be legally ordered to hand over details to police of users suspected of unlawful activity." ? The same.
And so on... I don't see how any of your quoutes implies any blame.
I don't know what you mean by that "Jello floating"... I was just referring to the fact that articles about someone blaming some third party are pretty common here at Techdirt and I guess that phenomenon is pretty common.
I am sorry but I don't see the "blaming" you are talking about. You quote Steve Kavanagh saying that "really inflamatory, inaccurate" messages on Twitter were mainly to blame for the disorder... but he never claims that anyone else than those who posted those messages is to blame.
The fact that the certain individual (ab)use some service does not mean the service is responsible, which of course you know, but... I might have missed something but it seems to me it's you who conflate service with its users, not him. Maybe you have seen so many examples of officials blaming third parties that you see that even where there is none of it and you are putting it into his mouth.
Please see that article you linked: Asked whether those behind the messages could be arrested, Kavanagh said: "Absolutely."
(Not only) this case seems to be sending clear message: businesses all over the world need to be careful and make sure that no strategic part of their operations falls under U.S. control/jurisdiction.
Probably not the message that any nation with huge and rapidly growing debt and competitors getting stronger every day should be sending.
That's a misunderstanding. Those patents in question are not the same patents that Microsoft uses to sue Motorola and HTC so just buying them and "giving" them to Motorola and HTC would not have helped at all. Google wanted to buy them not because they would help Android producers directly but because they could use them in "mutually assured destruction" strategy - if you sue Android producers with your patents we will sue you with our patents.
Therefore buying those patents together with Microsoft would mean that they could not use them against Microsoft that way - Microsoft would eliminate Google's defensive strategy... and let Google pay for it.
So this strategy would work as long as you set up a distribution system that do not depend on any American company, right?
Europe has always been more bureaucratic than US which made us less competitive. Current US software patents system could be finally something that makes US less competitive - EU should leverage that!
Companies like HTC or Samsung... basically all non-US companies should just license all those US patents and add it to prices of their products only for US customers. Having to pay for the same products much more than the rest of the world should create strong motivation to fix the law.
Kissing your asses? Oh no. Now we are kissing China's ass. I am not saying I am happy about it... American ass used to be better one to be kissed by the rest of the world. It's a shame that your country has changed so much since 9/11 2001, it used to be such a great county.
I have two things that I don't understand... any explanations/opinions would be appreciated.
1. I keep reading that Microsoft demands 15 bucks for any Android device that Samsung sells etc. - why is it not only for devices sold in the US? AFAIK Samsung is South Korean company, I for example live in EU and we don't have software patents here... so why should we care about American patents... or even pay for them?
It seems to me that the best strategy to deal with patents would be to let only Americans pay for them (which would maybe make them want to fix their broken patent system) - but nobody seems to be doing that, why?
2. It seems to me that American patent system has deviated into the tool that allows to transfer money from those who do things and are successful to those who have government granted monopolies. This must have terrible impact on American economy - why is it not changed? I know... lobbying, corruption, political pressure... but innovative anti-patent companies like Google are rich too and should have some political impact. Even companies like Microsoft and Oracle have been damaged by patent trolls and should have at least some motivation to change things.
Why is nothing changing? Why are innovative and creative companies not pressuring the government to change patent law... or moving outside of US jurisdiction... which would seem to me to be even smarter thing to do?
On the post: Craigslist Trying To Destroy The Life Of Someone Who Made Posting To Craigslist Easier
Re: Re: Huh?
On the post: Craigslist Trying To Destroy The Life Of Someone Who Made Posting To Craigslist Easier
Huh?
On the post: Shouldn't Unilateral Retroactive Copyright Extension Mean Copyright Is Void?
Unilaterral?
The fact that in reality government represents the other side of the contract than it should is another thing. And if this is the reason for opting out of the law... well than I am opting out of half of the whole legal system.
On the post: Developers Urging Boycott Of Apple & Google Until They 'Deal With' Patent Trolls
Re: Re: Boycotting the wrong party
Actually now that I think about it... we just need some distributed alternative to DNS, transparent end to end encryption and some independent money system and we are all set.
On the post: Developers Urging Boycott Of Apple & Google Until They 'Deal With' Patent Trolls
Just get out of US jurisdiction
The Valley has traditionally been the place to go for startups and is still seen as such. But it seems to me that during last 5 yeas Americans managed to create the most innovation-hostile legal environment in the world... which kind of renders all those wonderful things they can offer to creative and productive people moot. Maybe it's time to use their screw ups as an opportunity and take the kingdom out of their hands. The society which managed to monopolize basic ideas and made creating useful things illegal and racketing legal is doomed anyway.
Lets brainstorm a little and try to imagine how global system able to transfer money to those who create things from those who find those things cool and useful without ever going through anything controlled by American law could look like.
On the post: TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape'
Terrorists must be so proud
On the post: The Patent Pledge: Good Idea... But Wrong Target
Re:
But it could be possible to create some kind of GPL-like patent pool - something like "we put our patents together, you can use all patents in the pool as long as you never sue anyone, but if you sue, any patent from the pool will be used against you" kind of deal.
On the post: 'Real Names' Doesn't Exactly Guarantee A High Level Of Conversation Either
Re: Re: Re: Typical
About that thing with stupidity being "unique to social groups and not inherent to the human race" - AFAIK nobody in this discussion claimed that stupidity is unique to social groups. But the level of stupidity or ability to reason is not the same in every social group, do you agree?
Many social groups are self-assigned, you can decide whether you want to be a part of that group or not, and your ability to reason can certainly influence that decision.
BTW, it never ceases to surprise me how strong emotions can atheism provoke in the U.S. - I live in Europe, I am an atheist, so is most of the people I know and never in my life I encountered any negative reaction from anybody.
On the post: Apple Wins Europe-Wide Blockade Of Samsung Tablets; Guess Which Tablet Apple Is Scared Of Most?
there's no cost to Apple for this?
On the post: Company Claims Patents On Generating A Map From A Database; Getting Real Estate Industry To Pay Up
The end of capitalism?
I grew up in a totalitarian communist regime. It was really bad and it damaged a lot of people. But to this day I am still surprised how creative some people can get under pressure.
The system is killing creativity - therefore we, creative people, need to find the way how to route around the system. Any ideas?
On the post: London Riots? Blame The Blackberry!
Re: Re: Re: Re: didn't you jum the gun a little?
There are so many real problems that sometimes we see some wrongdoing everywhere. But we have to be careful about that - there is really thin line between freedom defender and tin-foil-hat freak.
And BTW, please don't call me friend when you don't mean it. It feels like patronizing... and I am sure you would not want that.
On the post: London Riots? Blame The Blackberry!
Re: Re: didn't you jum the gun a little?
Claims like "BlackBerry Messenger service played a key role..." are just stating the facts similarly like stating "the knife was used as a murder weapon", which does not imply that the knife (or it's producer) is to be blamed.
And the fact that BlackBerry is helping investigation? They are helping because they are some kind of a "witness", someone who can have access to some information about what happened... which again in no way implies that they are held responsible for anything.
"RIM can be legally ordered to hand over details to police of users suspected of unlawful activity." ? The same.
And so on... I don't see how any of your quoutes implies any blame.
I don't know what you mean by that "Jello floating"... I was just referring to the fact that articles about someone blaming some third party are pretty common here at Techdirt and I guess that phenomenon is pretty common.
On the post: London Riots? Blame The Blackberry!
didn't you jum the gun a little?
The fact that the certain individual (ab)use some service does not mean the service is responsible, which of course you know, but... I might have missed something but it seems to me it's you who conflate service with its users, not him. Maybe you have seen so many examples of officials blaming third parties that you see that even where there is none of it and you are putting it into his mouth.
Please see that article you linked: Asked whether those behind the messages could be arrested, Kavanagh said: "Absolutely."
I don't see anything about blaming BlackBerry.
On the post: Rojadirecta Argues That The Justice Department Is Making Up Laws; Has No Legal Basis To Forfeit Its Domain
software patents and now this
Probably not the message that any nation with huge and rapidly growing debt and competitors getting stronger every day should be sending.
On the post: Google, Microsoft, Patents... And How To Dupe The Press With Out Of Context Statements
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Now wait a minute...
Therefore buying those patents together with Microsoft would mean that they could not use them against Microsoft that way - Microsoft would eliminate Google's defensive strategy... and let Google pay for it.
On the post: Lodsys Strikes Again: Sues Rovio For Patent Infringement Over Angry Birds
Re: Re: Rovio? In a court in Texas?
Europe has always been more bureaucratic than US which made us less competitive. Current US software patents system could be finally something that makes US less competitive - EU should leverage that!
On the post: App Developers Dropping Out Of US Out Of Fears Over Patent Lawsuits
manipulate with incentives
On the post: Patents As Theft: How Oracle & Microsoft Seek To Profit From Android Despite Having Nothing To Do With It
Re: Re: Two questions
On the post: Congress Condemns Belarus For Doing A Bunch Of Things It Wants To Do
Re: Re: U.S. - Lords of Creation
On the post: Patents As Theft: How Oracle & Microsoft Seek To Profit From Android Despite Having Nothing To Do With It
Two questions
1. I keep reading that Microsoft demands 15 bucks for any Android device that Samsung sells etc. - why is it not only for devices sold in the US? AFAIK Samsung is South Korean company, I for example live in EU and we don't have software patents here... so why should we care about American patents... or even pay for them?
It seems to me that the best strategy to deal with patents would be to let only Americans pay for them (which would maybe make them want to fix their broken patent system) - but nobody seems to be doing that, why?
2. It seems to me that American patent system has deviated into the tool that allows to transfer money from those who do things and are successful to those who have government granted monopolies. This must have terrible impact on American economy - why is it not changed? I know... lobbying, corruption, political pressure... but innovative anti-patent companies like Google are rich too and should have some political impact. Even companies like Microsoft and Oracle have been damaged by patent trolls and should have at least some motivation to change things.
Why is nothing changing? Why are innovative and creative companies not pressuring the government to change patent law... or moving outside of US jurisdiction... which would seem to me to be even smarter thing to do?
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