21–30 of 70 posts
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse". "Oh, you want to see the law? That'll cost you."
Very troubling indeed are the regulatory bodies that create new felony-level violations of regulations without any sort of legislative action.
The lowest level of the US court system tries hard to stick to what law and precedent say, and to avoid engaging with constitutional issues. If you want to drive change you have to appeal it up a level or two, where the senior judges consider it to be within their pay scale. That is what is going to happen here.
Either side can appeal a case, and judges should be ruling based on all laws, including the state and federal constitutions. Anything less should be grounds for impeachment (as should consistently having your rulings overturned by higher courts).
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
That means that law makers would have to create their own work (perhaps based on the concepts in the trade group's documents).
If the trade groups wanted regulations to reflect their work exactly, they would have to freely license, at which point they could be referenced.
I don't get the criticism against the judge or the ruling. Frankly, the arguments presented by Resource.org seem to be unpersuasive (the claim that these standards are "discovered facts" is just insulting to the engineers that worked on them) and completely unsupported by the law. It's not the judge's fault that your Congress and other governments have sold you out. Go sue them for enforcing laws you can't read.
Standards shouldn't be copyrightable. Or they're not standards, they're just secret handshakes (or whatevers, after all you can't really talk about parts of it, because all of it is just dry quantitative stuff - yet not simple facts to share) that allegedly work. Also, does ISO pay the C++ standards developers? And how much is the market for C++ standards? (Yes, compiler vendors are usually big firms/organizations, b…
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
The only reason why copyright exists is for the benefit of society. If copyright is ever used to the detriment of society, an adjustment is in order.
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
Indeed. I think the pragmatic reponse is to say that from now on laws shouldn't be able to incorporate by reference works that aren't freely licensed. That means that law makers would have to create their own work (perhaps based on the concepts in the trade group's documents). If the trade groups wanted regulations to reflect their work exactly, they would have to freely license, at which point they could be referenc…
Or you can buy the code for the low price of $4999 . Printing fees, and all that."
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse". "Oh, you want to see the law? That'll cost you."
Welfare for the rich, and capitalism for the poor.
Companies get numerous socialist programs to help fund their bottom line, yet average and poor receive little and are berated for it.
Drug test welfare recipients? Can't do that to the CEO, can we?
You're more "equal" rich again, and good luck with that public defender if you're poor.
Kill someone? Poor = eChair. Rich = affluenza, "treatment program".
Just accept the idea that this country now espouses that "More Money = More access to being a citizen". We are not equal. The past had that mythic "equal" part; but that time is done and gone.
In the end, the following is now what this country stands for:
1$ = 1 Vote
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
How about:
a) voluntarily giving up copyright if you want your text to become law.
or
b) not making law out of propriety, private, copyrighted works.
The reality is that secret laws are bad. We've known this as a society for millenia:
http://www.crystalinks.com/romelaw.html
Those laws were published publicly where anyone could read them.
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
No great loss if it does. I don't imagine car manufacturers regard manuals as a profit center.
> what if a private company tried to impose absurd restrictions on accessing copyrighted material that has been incorporated by reference, such that even the governmental agencies charged with enforcing the law were unable to access it? Could that be a way of subverting the law?
The courts tends to be pretty good at dealing with people who try to mess with them through this kind of technicality.
> Or what if a lawmaker has it out for a particular publisher or writer, and purposefully quotes their copyrighted texts (beyond what would typically be considered fair use) in legislation as a way of damaging their copyright? > And if it is the case that nonprofit groups that devise standards for public safety and device interoperability are deprived of their copyrights because those standards are incorporated into legislation, I would imagine it would disincentivize the work they do, perhaps leading to less well thought out public safety and device interoperability standards.
Hmm. Perhaps lawmakers should have to license materials they want to incorporate, or seize them with compensation via an eminent domain-like process.
I can see troubling consequences that arise from both sides' arguments. If private companies can hold copyrights on portions of the law, that inhibits access to those laws, and I think any reasonable person would agree that citizens have a basic right to access the text of laws and legally binding regulations, and paywalls or other restrictions conflict with that right. But if the government can essentially revoke a…
It is because its legal arguments. In reality, laws should not be written as copies of material where the IP is not owned by the government.
Anyone who does not comply with that should have their law removed from the books.