I tried the add-on out on atdhe net, that site you mentioned was taken down for the Superbowl. It works. The ICE page shows up, then it redirects you. Now I'm watching things that ICE doesn't want me to watch.
Since the script is an adaptation of a book, it appears Lions Gate owns the book rights. They are listed as a production company for this movie, which is in pre-production, according to the imdb. That doesn't make their legal claim any more sensible, since that would mean they just own the rights to make it into a movie. I think the NFL has a disclaimer that you can't even describe their games, for commercial purposes, without their written consent (to prevent unauthorized people from reporting on their games), which seems like a dubious extension of the term "copying." This is even more dubious because even if they own the book rights, they don't own a copyright on the book and thus can't enforce copyrights on a derivative work or a review of a derivative work. If they produce a script, they'd own copyrights on that, meaning they could prevent distribution of the script, but the lawyer, "Liat Cohen, Esquire," claims it's a fake, so they can't own copyrights on a fake script (though producing a fake script might violate the original author's copyright). Additionally, the blogger's not distributing the script, just giving a review, which falls squarely into fair use.
Then again, there's no reason to think it actually is a fake. How does the lawyer, Liat Cohen, know that it's a fake script? The review simply doesn't give enough information, and it's doubtful this lawyer really has any special knowledge about what's going on in pre-production of the movie. In fact, there's a long discussion thread at the imdb discussing the script, which was started after the blog post was removed. This would mean, they could enforce copyright and prevent the script from being distributed, but again this is a case of a review of a script, which falls into fair use.
Most likely, the lawyer has been hired to protect Lions Gate's IP, stumbled upon this blog post, thought it sounded like the type of thing she's supposed to prevent and then posted a comment in the comment section (why didn't she send an email?) that was scary and threatening and filled with legalistic mumbo-jumbo to try and stop this perceived threat. And she's just claiming it's a fake to stopper the leak of the script, which wasn't supposed to have been leaked.
This highlights another big problem in IP, which is when these companies outsource their IP protection to these lawyers who have no business sense. The lawyers threaten and intimidate people, who are usually potential customers, into submission and completely tarnish the company's reputation.
It makes sense, if the script in question is actually a real script that's in development and Lionsgate is just lying in order to prevent word from getting out. In other words, all that's going on is that they're trying to stop a leak and aren't embarrassed about using a little bit of Kettle Logic to do it ("Not only have you violated our right to that script we wrote, but we never even wrote that script").
Why, oh why don't we have the loser pays rule for lawsuits in the United States? That way, Tasini could compensate Huffington for all of the time and money he's forcing her to spend having to deal with all of this.
It's almost annoying to hear such good suggestions on how to reform the voting system, like the system in South Dakota with the paper backup that the voter can review themselves and which is machine-counted, giving you two different machine-counted votes to compare; and same with the online audit with anonymized numbers. They're good ideas. I could see some risk of abuse with the anonymized numbers, since people might be able to hack databases that store the info associate with the number and thus de-anonymize them, but that's about it. It's annoying because they're not being used widely. Every election should be done in a way similar to South Dakota, with a machine-countable, elector-reviewed, paper backup. This isn't rocket science here. They aren't curing cancer. They just came up with a smart way to utilize available technology to come up with a system that's more efficient and reduces the risk of fraud and mistakes. Why are so many places so inept at running elections?
My attitude on ideas like this is always the try and see approach. I can think of a lot of reasons why it wouldn't work, but the real test is if it does work Trial and error is so much more illuminating than any sort of speculation. Of course, asking lawmakers to have the presence of mind to promptly eliminate laws that don't work would be more than a little naive.
Nonetheless, I like the idea of trying this on other vice crimes, like prostitution as another commenter mentioned. Or also on drug sales. Though I don't approve making any drug sale or use illegal, at least only making the sale of drugs illegal would be an improvement.
To clarify for those who've been talking back and forth. Yes the album is available on the file hosting website megashares, and, so far as I can tell, no others. There were some uploads to filesonic and hotfile but these have been taken down. And the file is a real rar file with the whole album in mp3. Like everyone else, I can't find a single torrent of the album. You can listen to their music if you go to their myspace page. With all of the attention they're getting, if someone were to upload a torrent, it'll probably help them. I'm not going to do it, since I don't like their music, but maybe there's a kind soul out there.
The thing that really bothers me about this case is that there's such a disconnect between the rationale behind this publicity rights thing and the real reasons. They're claiming the rationale is to protect the reputation of these dead people, but really it's just about making money. I have no problem with people doing things to make money, but to create a law that allows you to reach out and tamper with the free expression of other people needs really good justification, and reputation just doesn't cut it.
I think a lot of the commenters here are sort of missing the point by talking about principles like "the jury should weigh the facts presented" or "impartiality" or whatnot. This is a practical question. It's a question of is the jury more likely to get the verdict right or not.
I can see no reason why a better informed jury would make poorer decisions. There are certainly cases where the jury would tend to find distorted information from independent research, but there are other cases where the jury gets distorted information in the courtroom, like say in the Mike Tyson rape case. But only balance, it would seem to favor better decisions by juries.
The only objection I can see is that people tend not to be very good at handling lots of information, and that their ability to decide increases the more information presented. Thus, perhaps, more information would tend to lead juries to acquit more often.
I'm just wanted to point out that if you want to hear the song, it's been uploaded elsewhere. I just did a search of "What Pi Sounds Like" on google video and came up with a bunch of hits. Several people have even uploaded it onto youtube. There must be an instructive lesson in there somewhere.
It's seems pretty clear to me, that the only feasible solution to this situation is to improve competition among internet providers. But to do that, we need to know why there is so little competition. Personally, I'm not really clear on what the reason is. Is it a an infrastructure problem (too expensive to build new infrastructure for new competitors)? Is it a regulation problem (regulations creating high hurdles for new competitors)? Is it a demand problem (people simply aren't demanding alternatives because one ISP is as good as another)? Either which way, such caps, if they become more widespread, could encourage competition.
You say they don't learn, but perhaps these politicians recognize the problems and just consider it a matter of priority: namely, copyrights are more important than free speech. Copyright protection is an issue supported by well supported special interests. Russian freedom of speech, not so much. One can only hope that the Russian people realize what's going on and start pushing back.
It's a good article, but I think he really fails to see how the major studios have grown more cautious because they face a lot more very real competition than they did in the past: tv, video games, independent films. Video games particularly eat into that key young male demographic, and independent films really eat into those older demographics, and tv just hurts them all around. The problem is that instead of trying to compete by really innovating and taking risks, they've gone the other direction and become excessively cautious.
Does it seem ironic that a communist country has a really hard time doing genuinely communal projects, like wikipedia, or other crowd-sourcing efforts? There's probably a lesson somewhere in here about what is purported to promote cooperation and what actually promotes cooperation.
Someone commenting on this article noted that Sherman Frederick, columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and defender of the Righthaven suits (http://tinyurl.com/245fves), is more than willing to post copyrighted material on his blog without permission: http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm/SNL_on_TSA.html
Unfortunately, it's long been the case that libel has long been considered an exception to first amendment free speech protection. I think this is a bad idea because in virtually all (if not completely all) cases libel suits are used to squash legitimate though unwanted critique rather than actually address false accusations. In this case, it would come down to whether the criticisms of the doctor are legit. Nonetheless, even if there's a legal basis, it's still incredibly stupid. The doctor takes a big risk of alienating potential customers as well as exposing his shoddy work in a public lawsuit.
Why don't litigants who bring forth stupid lawsuits have to pay? This should be the norm in all lawsuits. It's pretty much the norm in all other countries with well run judicial systems. This is why no other country besides the US has overall problems with excessive litigation, because if you file a legal action, you risk paying a substantial penalty if a judge rules against you.
I used to work in a theater for a market research company, getting people to watch movie trailers and give their opinions. One of the questions offered was: "Would you pay more money for a better movie going experience" or something to that effect. I didn't think too much of it at first since most people said No. But at one point I thought, "There really are movies that are worth the $10-$14 dollars you pay for a movie ticket in New York City, and there are movies that aren't. Why not use variable pricing." I had a lot of idle time on this job, so I thought about such things. Big budget movies could be sold for higher prices and cheaper romance/comedy/drama type movies could go for cheaper. Even better, theaters could add responsive pricing. If a movie is selling particularly well jack up the price, like airlines do. Every time a movie sells out you could've made more money by selling tickets at higher prices, and every time it doesn't sell out, you could've made more money by filling more seats. Enhancing the experience would help a lot too, but strategic pricing is a good idea.
On the post: Technology Trumps ICE Domain Seizures: Browser Plugin Fix Created In Just Days
Tried it out
On the post: Lionsgate Claims That Reviewing A Fake Script Is Copyright Infringement
The Book Rights?
Then again, there's no reason to think it actually is a fake. How does the lawyer, Liat Cohen, know that it's a fake script? The review simply doesn't give enough information, and it's doubtful this lawyer really has any special knowledge about what's going on in pre-production of the movie. In fact, there's a long discussion thread at the imdb discussing the script, which was started after the blog post was removed. This would mean, they could enforce copyright and prevent the script from being distributed, but again this is a case of a review of a script, which falls into fair use.
Most likely, the lawyer has been hired to protect Lions Gate's IP, stumbled upon this blog post, thought it sounded like the type of thing she's supposed to prevent and then posted a comment in the comment section (why didn't she send an email?) that was scary and threatening and filled with legalistic mumbo-jumbo to try and stop this perceived threat. And she's just claiming it's a fake to stopper the leak of the script, which wasn't supposed to have been leaked.
This highlights another big problem in IP, which is when these companies outsource their IP protection to these lawyers who have no business sense. The lawyers threaten and intimidate people, who are usually potential customers, into submission and completely tarnish the company's reputation.
On the post: Lionsgate Claims That Reviewing A Fake Script Is Copyright Infringement
Are they lying about it being fake?
On the post: Dumbest Lawsuit Ever? HuffPo Sued By Bloggers Who Agreed To Work For Free... But Now Claim They Were Slaves
Loser Pays
On the post: 14,000 'Unsaved' Votes Suddenly 'Found' In Wisconsin?
Voting Reform
On the post: Economist Explains Why Paying Certain Bribes Should Be Legal
Try and See
Nonetheless, I like the idea of trying this on other vice crimes, like prostitution as another commenter mentioned. Or also on drug sales. Though I don't approve making any drug sale or use illegal, at least only making the sale of drugs illegal would be an improvement.
On the post: Band Complains About Massive Downloads Destroying Sales; Researchers Can't Find Any Downloads
Yes it is available
On the post: Publicity Rights After Death Are Severely Limiting Culture
The rationale vs the real reason
On the post: Russia Won't Recognize The Pirate Party Because It Doesn't Like The Name
Suggestions
The Remix Party
The Fair Use Party
The Torrent Party
The Intellectual Commons Party
Any of these any good?
And I like The eejit's Anonymous Party
On the post: Does An Impartial Jury Mean An Ignorant Jury? Can Barry Bonds Get An 'Impartial' Jury?
A practical question
I can see no reason why a better informed jury would make poorer decisions. There are certainly cases where the jury would tend to find distorted information from independent research, but there are other cases where the jury gets distorted information in the courtroom, like say in the Mike Tyson rape case. But only balance, it would seem to favor better decisions by juries.
The only objection I can see is that people tend not to be very good at handling lots of information, and that their ability to decide increases the more information presented. Thus, perhaps, more information would tend to lead juries to acquit more often.
On the post: Copyrighting Pi: Composer Pretends Only He Can Write A Song Based On Pi
Find the video elsewhere
On the post: AT&T Jumps Into The Metered Broadband Pool; 150 Gig Limit For DSL
Why no competition
On the post: Our Elected Officials Never Learn: Ask Biden To Get Russia To Increase Censorship Via Copyright
Perhaps they know what they're doing
On the post: Amazing: A Long, Detailed Article On Hollywood's Struggles... That Never Mentions File Sharing
Competition
On the post: Cuba Tries To Create Its Own Wikipedia, But Might Have Difficulty Seeing It As It Blocks Internet Access
Irony?
On the post: Righthaven Takes On Drudge Report
The irony
On the post: Doctor Sues Patients Over Bad Yelp Reviews
Libel & free speech
On the post: Righthaven Desperately Wants Out Of Lawsuit It Filed, As It Fears Having To Pay EFF's Legal Fees
Why not loser pays
On the post: Blaming Popcorn For Hollywood's Troubles
Variable Pricing
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