Nobody does. But if the laws of a country generally allow these kinds of shenanigans, I'd boycott them.
At least with laws against it, you know the company can not compelled by the government to participate. It may well be some secret agency pulls an NSA and intercepts it for planting bugs, but at least you know it's not (forced) malfeasance on the part of the supplier.
"And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the words of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841
"Comprehensive patents are taken out by some parties, for the purpose of stopping inventions, or appropriating the fruits of the inventions of others, &c. Such Consequences, more resembling the smuggling and fraud caused by an ill-advised tax than anything else, cause a strong suspicion. that the principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just."
Simple. If you want to sell me something, don't do DRM, or I'll vote with my boots.
And I might even vote with my boots against other of your products. Like not going to the cinema if you morons push DRM. Or not buying your book on paper because the ebook has DRM.
No, I'm not going to use that EME for anything. And unless I can redirect streams in cleartext to my harddisk, I won't subscribe to any service that requires it.
As long as a state has no contract with a corporation I don't see anything that would (or should) make it liable to damages.
We ditched some monopolies? Tough luck that your patents are worth zilch. We increased environmental protection? Tough luck your fracking is now illegal. It wasn't a contract, it was you who decided you could make a business out of it, and now the people decided the law supporting it wasn't a good idea (perhaps even exactly because of your actions) and changed it.
Copyright covers implementations ("works") and not ideas.
You can rewrite Shakespeare, in you own words, and it's NOT Shakespeare any more, indeed, it has legally nothing to do with it, and you get a copyright on it.
Or you can copy Shakespeare, word-for-word, and it remains Shakespeare (and as it happens, public domain), and you get no copyright on it. Even if you did retype everything by hand, and even if it was a tremendous amount of work.
Like in when K&R or AT&T assert that the API of Java is infringing on the API of C?
Because essentially, C is the historic predecessor of Java, and there are tons of functions in Java which have the same names as the ones in C and behave exactly the same way.
Well, then, I'd say we want the US to immediately ditch their system of awarding monopolies on technical inventions, since these obviously constitute a trade barrier.
Either they do that, or the only thing we're left to conclude is that this is not about free trade, but about the opposite: Mercantilism.
Well, you could make it into law, that FOIA requests must be granted unconditionally, and if you want to withhold anything, you need a judge to sign it off; with a penalty if the judge decides otherwise (or sends your document back because of too much blacked out parts).
The trouble is, the DOJ is actually a very bad offender itself. So I'm not sure what really would happen.
What "could" perhaps be done does not at all mean that it actually is being done
Doesn't matter. What IS being done is a massive violation of privacy. And with that, a massive violation of the constitution of the USA.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Guess what, in contrast to other parts of the constitution, it does not even say citizen, but people. The fourth amendment applies to everyone on the planet.
Actually, without diplomatic immunity, it would be possible to arrest US president Obama, and deliver him to the Hague International Criminal Court, for war crimes. Namely for authorizing drone strikes against civilians.
I don't think the USA would want that.
On the other hand, lawyers can speculate what they want, or rather, what their client wants them to speculate...
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Lawyers are not scientists
They don't learn how to make laws that work best.
On the post: Germany Plans To Ban Computer Companies That Work With NSA From Sensitive Public Contracts
Re:
At least with laws against it, you know the company can not compelled by the government to participate. It may well be some secret agency pulls an NSA and intercepts it for planting bugs, but at least you know it's not (forced) malfeasance on the part of the supplier.
On the post: Germany Plans To Ban Computer Companies That Work With NSA From Sensitive Public Contracts
Re: Am I crazy, or...?
I tell you to hand over all data on all your customers, and you can't tell anyone? This is obviously something out of a fascist regimes repertoire.
On the post: Feinstein (Again) Says Metadata Program 'Is Not Surveillance'
I know they will come after us if they can
And yes, this includes even people in the House Intelligence Committee, like Diane S. Roark.
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2011/01/drama_oversight/
On the post: The End Of Maximalist Copyright?
Re: Re:
"And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the words of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrightextension/commentary/MacaulaySpeeches.ht ml
On the post: Patent Reform Is Dead; Patent Trolls Win
Patents inflame cupidity
We already knew in 1851.
"Comprehensive patents are taken out by some parties, for the purpose of stopping inventions, or appropriating the fruits of the inventions of others, &c. Such Consequences, more resembling the smuggling and fraud caused by an ill-advised tax than anything else, cause a strong suspicion. that the principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just."
I OCRd/transcribed the whole article:
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/voices-against-the-patent-system-the-economist-1851/
On the post: And Here We Go: Mozilla Felt Pressured Into Adopting DRM In HTML5
Re:
I bet there's gigawatts wasted each year just for DRM.
On the post: And Here We Go: Mozilla Felt Pressured Into Adopting DRM In HTML5
Re: Re: Re:
And I might even vote with my boots against other of your products. Like not going to the cinema if you morons push DRM. Or not buying your book on paper because the ebook has DRM.
No, I'm not going to use that EME for anything. And unless I can redirect streams in cleartext to my harddisk, I won't subscribe to any service that requires it.
On the post: Top Arbitration Lawyer Says Corporate Sovereignty System Needs 'Complete Overhaul'
We ditched some monopolies? Tough luck that your patents are worth zilch. We increased environmental protection? Tough luck your fracking is now illegal. It wasn't a contract, it was you who decided you could make a business out of it, and now the people decided the law supporting it wasn't a good idea (perhaps even exactly because of your actions) and changed it.
On the post: Why Making APIs Copyrightable Is Bad News For Innovation
Re: No copyright doesn't help Open Source
You can rewrite Shakespeare, in you own words, and it's NOT Shakespeare any more, indeed, it has legally nothing to do with it, and you get a copyright on it.
Or you can copy Shakespeare, word-for-word, and it remains Shakespeare (and as it happens, public domain), and you get no copyright on it. Even if you did retype everything by hand, and even if it was a tremendous amount of work.
On the post: Why Making APIs Copyrightable Is Bad News For Innovation
Re:
Because essentially, C is the historic predecessor of Java, and there are tons of functions in Java which have the same names as the ones in C and behave exactly the same way.
On the post: Latest Trade Agreements Are Re-defining Cultural Choices As 'Non-Tariff Barriers' That Need To Be Eliminated
Monopolies
Either they do that, or the only thing we're left to conclude is that this is not about free trade, but about the opposite: Mercantilism.
On the post: Congress Continues To Pretend That SOPA Actually Is The Law
Re: Problem solved
On the post: You Can Thank The CIA For The Return Of Polio, Even Though The Media Conveniently Ignores This
Re: Re:
So yes, the CIA has part of the blame to carry. They didn't do it on purpose, but out of incompetence.
On the post: Police Ask Blogger To Take Down Tweets Critical Of UK Political Party
Re: Re: Re:
The very same Tea Party who:
- oppose right to abortion
- tighter border controls
- oppose gay marriage or civil unions
Actually, all this is called authoritarianism, and is the opposite of libertarianism. Same with the UKIP.
On the post: Lancaster, California Rolls Out Law Enforcement Surveillance Tech The Right Way -- By Involving The Public
criminal police
What I do not understand is that they're not already under criminal investigation.
On the post: The Government's Antipathy Towards Transparency Has Made FOIA Lawsuits The Default Process
Re: Is there no penalty?
The trouble is, the DOJ is actually a very bad offender itself. So I'm not sure what really would happen.
On the post: Michael Hayden Gleefully Admits: We Kill People Based On Metadata
Re:
Doesn't matter. What IS being done is a massive violation of privacy. And with that, a massive violation of the constitution of the USA.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Guess what, in contrast to other parts of the constitution, it does not even say citizen, but people. The fourth amendment applies to everyone on the planet.
On the post: German Government Hires DC Law Firm To Threaten Its Own Parliament With Criminal Prosecution For Talking To Snowden
Re:
I don't think the USA would want that.
On the other hand, lawyers can speculate what they want, or rather, what their client wants them to speculate...
On the post: Yes, President Obama's Patent Office Started Approving Basically All Patent Applications Again
Of course. Milton Friedman says so. Thomas Jefferson too.
no one has ever been incentivized by patents
Of course not. There are plenty attorneys and trolls incentivized by patents.
and patents are never final rejected
Apparently, you can still challenge this. Unless you refrain to, in which case they are final rejected.
Would you be interested in a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge
Like a monopoly on it? Something like Roeblings US pat. 4'710 "Anchoring suspension chains for bridges" ?
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