What everyone is forgetting is that GoldieBlox didn't create the video as a parody. If they were just doing a parody as a means of just doing it for fun and not to make money from it, then I would be on GB's side. But, the fact of the matter is that GoldieBlox made the decision to take the Beastie Boys song, claim "fair use", and then use it in a commercial to advertise their product.
You can package it all up real pretty and claim "fair use" until you're blue in the face but once GoldieBlox took the Beastie Boys song and created a commercial advertisement for their product, it stopped being fair use.
The concept of Fair Use is very limited to how you can claim that. Fact is, GoldieBlox is trying to make money of a song created by the Beastie Boys and they are trying to get out of having to pay for the rights to use that song.
If I have a car in my driveway and I have not driven it in 10 years, that doesn't mean that you have the right to take my car out of my driveway for your personal use. This is exactly what GoldieBlox has done. They've taken something that belongs to someone else and are claiminig it for their own use without compensating the Beastie Boys for it.
To add insult to injury, they pre-empted The Beastie Boys by filing a lawsuit against The Beastie Boys for using the Beastie Boys own music.
I find it disingenuous that Mike Masnick would defend a company that took music created by someone else, use it in their commercial, and then turned around and sued the very people who created it.
That's like a user on Techdirt suing Mike Masnick for comments that the user posted on Mike's website.
The CPD are claiming that callers are engaging in a campaign to "harass, confront and threaten physical violence" against police officers? WOW! Really?
Isn't that the same thing that police officers do to the general public? So, it's okay when the police "harass, confront and threaten physical violence" but it's not okay when the people do the exact same thing?
The CPD need to realize that if they expect the people to not engage in this sort of activity then the police need to lead by example. If the police engage in activity to "harass, confront and threaten physical violence" against me then you can be damn sure that I'm going to reciprocate in kind.
"Due unto others (aka, the police) as they would do unto you"
I don't agree with Mike Masnick's article. While the entertainment industry has always gone overboard on their copyright lawsuits against whoever, wherever ... in this case, I support the Beastie Boys.
First, GoldieBlox used their music without permission and without licensing their music to be used in an advertisement that was designed to advertise for their company.
Second, GoldieBlox filing for declaratory judgment and suing The Beastie Boys before they could file their lawsuit reeks of so much BS that I can't believe that the courts haven't tossed GoldieBlox's lawsuit out. They have no merit for filing a lawsuit. What I find troubling is that GoldieBlox used copyrighted music without permission and then sued the Beastie Boys on the basis of Fair Use. Sorry, guys, but using someone's copyrighted material in an advertisement for your company is NOT considered fair use.
Finally, The Beastie Boys were willing to set everything aside as long as GoldieBlox pulled the ad and stopped using their song in their ad. Come to find out, GoldieBlox lied and kept pushing forward with their lawsuit.
In the end GoldieBlox is going to lose and I think they're going to lose big because no competent judge will ever find the use of The Beasie Boys' music in GB's ad as fair use. That is a long stretch in itself and GB simply screwed up by not withdrawing their lawsuit in the first place.
Somebody needs to tell AT&T that it's failing to live up to its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders then. At&T answers to its shareholders, NOT the other way around.
I'd love to see every stockholder dumping AT&T stock and then watch its stock price plummet to junk status.
I hate to point out the obvious but that any lawsuit the MPAA wringles out of the Megaupload evidence is surely going to get tossed out of court because any co9mpetent judge will realize that the government, working in collusion with a corrupted judge and the MPAA violated the due process rights of Megaupload and obtained evidence in violation of the "Rules of Evidence".
There's no way that the MPAA gets to use the evidence collected from those servers/hard drives in any type of trial. Getting the government to confiscate those servers/hard drives and then getting the government to hand over that evidence so that it could file lawsuits.
The MPAA may have harmed its position because any competent lawyer would ask the MPAA where the search warrant is for obtaining that information. Also, the same lawyer would be asking the MPAA if they happened to notify the court and what attorney of record represented Megaupload when they asked for said warrant.
When it comes out (in court) that MPAA obtained the data from the Megaupload servers through an ex-parte process with the government and a judge with NO opposing attorney representing the defendants, THEN ALL HELL IS GOING TO BREAK LOOSE.
Oh! The Appeals Courts are going to have fun with this one. Not only has the government violated due process, talked to a judge ex parte (which is a violation of court procedure) but I wouldn't be surprised if the judge who allowed this to happen gets dismissed from the bench for corrupting justice.
I wouldn't be surprised if the government is forced to drop their case against Megaupload as well as criticize the MPAA for their duplicity in this case as well.
I'm shocked that evidence that was being considered to be used in a criminal case was even allowed to be divulged to the MPAA lawyers. I suspect that the MPAA attorneys are going to be called in front of the ethics review board for that one.
If a 200 pound cop cannot restrain a 95-150 pound high school student, then that cop needs to find another job because he sure as hell has the wrong job.
If a police officer cannot subdue a suspect without a weapon (something that they should be trained to do anyways), then there is no reason in hell why they should be employed as a law enforcement officer.
Their sworn duty is to "protect and serve" not to beat someone to death, shoot them in the head or taser someone until they are in a coma.
Anybody who claims that a weapon is not lethal, no matter the intent of the weapon made, is either an idiot or a fool. It doesn't matter if it's a gun, knife, taser or baton. Law enforcement doesn't consider a baton to be a lethal weapon nor a taser a lethal weapon but yet they are banned for the public to own.
There is a reason why these are considered weapons, whether it's for defense or offense. Any weapon in the hands of a police officer is a lethal weapon and I find it disingenuous for law enforcement to say that this isn't so.
Gwiz, I'm in my late 40's and I've been through the public educational system, back when we had a liason officer with the police department. He was always respectful to the students but then again, we didn't have students bringing guns to school.
Guns, Knifes, Tasers, anything that could be used as a known weapon, should be banned, from both the students, facility staff, teachers AND anyone who is on the premises of any public educational facility.
When you throw police officers into the mix, it's not "if" something will happen between a cop and a student but "when" it will happen.
You have police officers armed with tasers or personnel who are employed by police departments who are already NOT properly trained in the use of tasers but you throw those officers into an environment with high school students and eventually you're going to have police officers tasering high school students.
Police officers should be placed in a high school environment because they lack the necessary training and they lack the university or college classes that prepare you for a public educational environment.
Whoever idea it was to put police officers in high schools, and forgive me for saying this as it's meant as a figure of speech, should either be shot or they should be hung from the nearest tree until the end of time.
It's the same reason why we do not allow our military to be deployed into the borders of our country, with the sole exception of a national crisis and even that requires the suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Really stupid idea. If police officers need to stationed at schools, then their authority as police officers need to end at the door and they need to be required to be on the property WITHOUT a gun, baton or taser.
High school students are NOT criminals, whether these cops think they are or not.
What do they mean by non lethal weapons? Police officers ARE the problem. There is no way that anyone actively employed in law enforcement should be on school property, employed or otherwise.
Introducing a police presence on school property? If the parents of every child in these schools were smart, they would refuse to send their children to school until these police officers are removed.
Introducing law enforcement in the middle of public education facilities is just asking for a recipe for disaster because police officers are not properly trained to deal with children.
No judge in any court should be hearing cases regarding computers, programming and copyright if they have no knowledge or experience in programming or code.
I just realized. The U.S. Government is putting everybody on the No Fly List because they don't want Americans leaving the United States, giving up their citizenship, and revolting to another country, a more friendlier country.
When a website owner is not doing anything to curb the behavior of inappropriate content, then the owner of the site SHOULD be held liable. After all, website owners all around the world are being held liable for the content posted by their members.
This all started with bit torrent and filesharing sites. Did anyone honestly believe that courts would keep that contained to just filesharing sites?
What you guys are forgetting is that Europe is not in the United States. Since Wikipedia has created a German portal, they are responsible for the content posted on their site.
Wikipedia has a responsibility to follow the laws of other countries and if a court finds that a website can be held liable then the owner of that website either needs to block Germany from accessing Wikipedia or start monitoring what its users are posted.
For those who say that Wikipedia doesn't do this, your argument is non-existent. Because Wikipedia already logs every change made to its website and they have thousands of assigned moderators and editors who actively monitor their website.
I happen to agree with the German courts on this one. What nobody realizes is that if a member on a website posts something inflammatory or they post something libel, and the owner of that website does not take adequate measures to remove that content, then the website administrator/owner SHOULD be held libel for that content.
At the same time, I think that website owners should have a certain limited period of time to identify the libel content and to remove it within an appropriate period of time.
Website owners should be held libel if they don't take appropriate steps to ensure that its users aren't posting such content. After all, website owners cannot immediately remove some content while denying the ability to remove other similar libel content.
Feinstein keeps saying "bombs, bombs, bombs and more bombs". Does she own that word where she gets $5 everytime she says it? And Rogers talking about Al Qaeda and their splinter groups.
Well, who's fault is that? The White House and Congress deciding that they had a right to invade any country in the Middle East because every country nin the Middle East who doesn't do what the White House tells them to do is labeled a terrorist.
Where are the terrorist attacks?
ON September 11th, Osama bin Laden only got lucky. Since then? We had a guy who tried to light his underwear on fire; another guy who tried to catch his shoes on fire and the New York attack where a guy used fertilizer that did not explode and he locked the keys to the car bomb inside the car.
It's like Al Qaeda is outsourcing to Ringling Brothers. This was discovered to be the plot for a new Jim Carey movie.
On the post: Beastie Boys Not Letting Goldieblox Off; Launch Massive Countersuit
You can package it all up real pretty and claim "fair use" until you're blue in the face but once GoldieBlox took the Beastie Boys song and created a commercial advertisement for their product, it stopped being fair use.
The concept of Fair Use is very limited to how you can claim that. Fact is, GoldieBlox is trying to make money of a song created by the Beastie Boys and they are trying to get out of having to pay for the rights to use that song.
If I have a car in my driveway and I have not driven it in 10 years, that doesn't mean that you have the right to take my car out of my driveway for your personal use. This is exactly what GoldieBlox has done. They've taken something that belongs to someone else and are claiminig it for their own use without compensating the Beastie Boys for it.
To add insult to injury, they pre-empted The Beastie Boys by filing a lawsuit against The Beastie Boys for using the Beastie Boys own music.
I find it disingenuous that Mike Masnick would defend a company that took music created by someone else, use it in their commercial, and then turned around and sued the very people who created it.
That's like a user on Techdirt suing Mike Masnick for comments that the user posted on Mike's website.
Excuse me for saying this, but that's screwed up.
On the post: Police Who Seized Woman's Phone As 'Evidence' Of Bogus Crime Now Complaining About Criticism
Isn't that the same thing that police officers do to the general public? So, it's okay when the police "harass, confront and threaten physical violence" but it's not okay when the people do the exact same thing?
The CPD need to realize that if they expect the people to not engage in this sort of activity then the police need to lead by example. If the police engage in activity to "harass, confront and threaten physical violence" against me then you can be damn sure that I'm going to reciprocate in kind.
"Due unto others (aka, the police) as they would do unto you"
On the post: Beastie Boys Not Letting Goldieblox Off; Launch Massive Countersuit
First, GoldieBlox used their music without permission and without licensing their music to be used in an advertisement that was designed to advertise for their company.
Second, GoldieBlox filing for declaratory judgment and suing The Beastie Boys before they could file their lawsuit reeks of so much BS that I can't believe that the courts haven't tossed GoldieBlox's lawsuit out. They have no merit for filing a lawsuit. What I find troubling is that GoldieBlox used copyrighted music without permission and then sued the Beastie Boys on the basis of Fair Use. Sorry, guys, but using someone's copyrighted material in an advertisement for your company is NOT considered fair use.
Finally, The Beastie Boys were willing to set everything aside as long as GoldieBlox pulled the ad and stopped using their song in their ad. Come to find out, GoldieBlox lied and kept pushing forward with their lawsuit.
In the end GoldieBlox is going to lose and I think they're going to lose big because no competent judge will ever find the use of The Beasie Boys' music in GB's ad as fair use. That is a long stretch in itself and GB simply screwed up by not withdrawing their lawsuit in the first place.
On the post: AT&T Tells Shareholders To Mind Their Own Business Concerning Its Relationship With The NSA
LOLS. I can't believe you didn't know that. LMAO
So, technically, you never left AT&T and you still have the same crappy service.
On the post: AT&T Tells Shareholders To Mind Their Own Business Concerning Its Relationship With The NSA
I'd love to see every stockholder dumping AT&T stock and then watch its stock price plummet to junk status.
On the post: US Court Secretly Lets Government Share Megaupload Evidence With Copyright Industry
There's no way that the MPAA gets to use the evidence collected from those servers/hard drives in any type of trial. Getting the government to confiscate those servers/hard drives and then getting the government to hand over that evidence so that it could file lawsuits.
The MPAA may have harmed its position because any competent lawyer would ask the MPAA where the search warrant is for obtaining that information. Also, the same lawyer would be asking the MPAA if they happened to notify the court and what attorney of record represented Megaupload when they asked for said warrant.
When it comes out (in court) that MPAA obtained the data from the Megaupload servers through an ex-parte process with the government and a judge with NO opposing attorney representing the defendants, THEN ALL HELL IS GOING TO BREAK LOOSE.
On the post: US Court Secretly Lets Government Share Megaupload Evidence With Copyright Industry
I wouldn't be surprised if the government is forced to drop their case against Megaupload as well as criticize the MPAA for their duplicity in this case as well.
I'm shocked that evidence that was being considered to be used in a criminal case was even allowed to be divulged to the MPAA lawyers. I suspect that the MPAA attorneys are going to be called in front of the ethics review board for that one.
On the post: ACLU Calls For Ban On Nonlethal Weapons In Schools After Tased Student Ends Up In Coma
If a police officer cannot subdue a suspect without a weapon (something that they should be trained to do anyways), then there is no reason in hell why they should be employed as a law enforcement officer.
Their sworn duty is to "protect and serve" not to beat someone to death, shoot them in the head or taser someone until they are in a coma.
On the post: ACLU Calls For Ban On Nonlethal Weapons In Schools After Tased Student Ends Up In Coma
There is a reason why these are considered weapons, whether it's for defense or offense. Any weapon in the hands of a police officer is a lethal weapon and I find it disingenuous for law enforcement to say that this isn't so.
On the post: ACLU Calls For Ban On Nonlethal Weapons In Schools After Tased Student Ends Up In Coma
Guns, Knifes, Tasers, anything that could be used as a known weapon, should be banned, from both the students, facility staff, teachers AND anyone who is on the premises of any public educational facility.
When you throw police officers into the mix, it's not "if" something will happen between a cop and a student but "when" it will happen.
You have police officers armed with tasers or personnel who are employed by police departments who are already NOT properly trained in the use of tasers but you throw those officers into an environment with high school students and eventually you're going to have police officers tasering high school students.
Police officers should be placed in a high school environment because they lack the necessary training and they lack the university or college classes that prepare you for a public educational environment.
Whoever idea it was to put police officers in high schools, and forgive me for saying this as it's meant as a figure of speech, should either be shot or they should be hung from the nearest tree until the end of time.
It's the same reason why we do not allow our military to be deployed into the borders of our country, with the sole exception of a national crisis and even that requires the suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Really stupid idea. If police officers need to stationed at schools, then their authority as police officers need to end at the door and they need to be required to be on the property WITHOUT a gun, baton or taser.
High school students are NOT criminals, whether these cops think they are or not.
On the post: ACLU Calls For Ban On Nonlethal Weapons In Schools After Tased Student Ends Up In Coma
Introducing a police presence on school property? If the parents of every child in these schools were smart, they would refuse to send their children to school until these police officers are removed.
Introducing law enforcement in the middle of public education facilities is just asking for a recipe for disaster because police officers are not properly trained to deal with children.
On the post: Judge In No Fly Case Explains To DOJ That It Can't Claim Publicly Released Info Is Secret
On the post: Appeals Court Considers Overturning Ruling That APIs Can't Be Covered By Copyright
On the post: Case Over No-Fly List Takes Bizarre Turn As Gov't Puts Witness On List, Then Denies Having Done So
On the post: UK Parliament Makes A Mockery Of Itself Interrogating Guardian Editor
On the post: German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It's Liable For Things Users Write
This all started with bit torrent and filesharing sites. Did anyone honestly believe that courts would keep that contained to just filesharing sites?
On the post: German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It's Liable For Things Users Write
Wikipedia has a responsibility to follow the laws of other countries and if a court finds that a website can be held liable then the owner of that website either needs to block Germany from accessing Wikipedia or start monitoring what its users are posted.
For those who say that Wikipedia doesn't do this, your argument is non-existent. Because Wikipedia already logs every change made to its website and they have thousands of assigned moderators and editors who actively monitor their website.
On the post: German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It's Liable For Things Users Write
At the same time, I think that website owners should have a certain limited period of time to identify the libel content and to remove it within an appropriate period of time.
Website owners should be held libel if they don't take appropriate steps to ensure that its users aren't posting such content. After all, website owners cannot immediately remove some content while denying the ability to remove other similar libel content.
On the post: Feinstein And Rogers Try To Scare Americans With Ooga Booga Terrorism Threats
Well, who's fault is that? The White House and Congress deciding that they had a right to invade any country in the Middle East because every country nin the Middle East who doesn't do what the White House tells them to do is labeled a terrorist.
Where are the terrorist attacks?
ON September 11th, Osama bin Laden only got lucky. Since then? We had a guy who tried to light his underwear on fire; another guy who tried to catch his shoes on fire and the New York attack where a guy used fertilizer that did not explode and he locked the keys to the car bomb inside the car.
It's like Al Qaeda is outsourcing to Ringling Brothers. This was discovered to be the plot for a new Jim Carey movie.
On the post: Surprise: MPAA Told It Can't Use Terms 'Piracy,' 'Theft' Or 'Stealing' During Hotfile Trial
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