11–19 of 19 posts
In my career as a wage slave, I learned to never ask a lawyer for permission, as the answer was invariably "No" (unless one of the C-suiters asked, then the lawyer would bend over backwards to say "yes."). But if my risk manifested, I was on the gibbet. Ask forgiveness, but don't expect mercy, if you really screw the pooch.
In my career as a wage slave, I learned to never ask a lawyer for permission, as the answer was invariably "No" (unless one of the C-suiters asked, then the lawyer would bend over backwards to say "yes."). But if my risk manifested, I was on the gibbet. Ask forgiveness, but don't expect mercy, if you really screw the pooch.
"Can I do X" - yeah that's likely gonna get a no if there's any ambiguity or question about it.
"The VP wants me to do X, what do I need to know" - probably a much more nuanced response. "Someone could make an argument that xyz violates abc, but there's also a counterargument that in this case..." (And put this question writing since it should (a) be privileged anyway - though you should check with legal first re: how they want you to indicate that, if at all and (b) it adds some paper trail if you need to escalate or if the decision is made to do something that later blows up.)
An aside: The phrase "paper over" is used several times, in a way that seems to mean review/look over. My understanding of that term is that it means to cover up or to hide. The earlier ones felt like perhaps condescending on the legalism (attorneys finding a way to make something work), but I couldn't shoehorn one of the later usages. Is this a different usage I am not familiar with? (As for the post itself I strong…
Huh, you're right. That's not at all a correct use of the phrase "paper over." There are three more uses, too, vaguer and thus less obviously wrong. I wonder what the deal is.
In this particular sentence, "going over" would fit.
However, in general I think Cory is (mis)using the phrase as if it means "legitimize" or "associate a paper trail with": not just to review the wording but to come up with the wording in the first place. (Not just "going over" but "working up.") I could just barely believe this is the jargon of some lawyerly (sub)culture.
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> Fair use is important, but there's also "first sale," the doctrine that says that after you buy something, you own it, and copyright can't be used to interfere with your traditional property rights. That's why you can buy and sell used books, paintings, records, and other copyrighted work, even if they are sold with fine print that says you're not allowed to: Hopefully we can use this same logic to reform (destroy)…
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Who did Doctorow run out of business?
An aside: The phrase "paper over" is used several times, in a way that seems to mean review/look over. My understanding of that term is that it means to cover up or to hide. The earlier ones felt like perhaps condescending on the legalism (attorneys finding a way to make something work), but I couldn't shoehorn one of the later usages. Is this a different usage I am not familiar with? (As for the post itself I strong…
> it doesn't make sense to spend hours papering over a legal agreement with someone who wants to sell seven copies of a book at an anarchist book-fair Huh, you're right. That's not at all a correct use of the phrase "paper over." There are three more uses, too, vaguer and thus less obviously wrong. I wonder what the deal is. In this particular sentence, "going over" would fit. However, in general I think Cory is (mis…
It's perversely horrible if you think about the original meaning of paper in paper over (wallpaper), and imagine legal contracts covering the walls of a room - unfortunately quite close to the "reality" that we find ourselves increasingly operating in.
> Fair use is important, but there's also "first sale," the doctrine that says that after you buy something, you own it, and copyright can't be used to interfere with your traditional property rights. That's why you can buy and sell used books, paintings, records, and other copyrighted work, even if they are sold with fine print that says you're not allowed to: Hopefully we can use this same logic to reform (destroy)…
The "You don't own it if you can't destroy it" discussion goes all the way back to people like Cicero and limitations on what you can and can not do with your slaves. What you desire is sensible and can only be achieved by political means; yet it is undermined already. Licenses are granted, not given. They remain the property of whoever issued it. Here fore, among other things, a discussion about property rights reta…
What exactly do you mean by this?
Licenses like the CC suite, and the GNU GPL or MIT software licenses, cannot be revoked after the fact, nor changed. The licensor can choose to stop publishing a work under, for example, CC, but all those who still have a CC licensed copy of the work may continue to use it according to that license. And in fact, I believe they can even continue distributing it themselves, making a license change mostly useless (unless the work is updated I guess).