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Message 179000 - Posted: 16 Oct 2005, 19:28:02 UTC

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Message 179048 - Posted: 16 Oct 2005, 20:48:52 UTC
Last modified: 16 Oct 2005, 20:59:47 UTC



FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll 11Oct05 rated Bush approval rating at 40%
Congratulations Mr. President.
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Message 179315 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 17:43:33 UTC - in response to Message 178219.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2005, 17:49:49 UTC

Most expensive, specialized software has intrusive DRM in it to prevent this sort of abuse.

Yep. And regardless, it still gets hacked regularly. Because the DRM really doesn't prevent anything. My wife comes across illegitimate PeopleSoft modules all the time. PS (now Oracle) generally just lets it go because they don't want to sue their customers.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court, which has juristiction over anything that Google does in any juristiction including overseas operations (Foreign Corrupt Services Act and all that).

That's just silly. U.S. Federal Courts do not have jurisdiction in any jurisdiction, and even if they did for some reason, that doesn't mean they have jurisdiction over any company. Google need not be a U.S. company.

If it cannot be accomplished without the intellectual property, then it is using the intellectual property. That is the nature of intellectual property.

Google does it now w/o the "intellectual property," they're just expanding.

See above about taxation. ... This ownership right, while not absolute, is why governments can't just sieze money unless a crime was committed.

Again, I don't know where you are going here. The gov't does as it wishes. In taxation, it seizes your money without a crime being committed.

My point about late fees was to illustrate that a generic user doesn't have an ownership right to permanently keep something from the library.

No, because that would be theft of tangible property from the library. But with mp3's, I'm not arguing a right. I'm saying it simply IS.

Libraries operate under specific conditions to maintain their special status in the copyright universe. Like I said, if Google wants to try to run a digital library, it should say so.

That wouldn't change anything, though it might use that tactic in court.

Do you honestly think that license plates, registration stickers, annual inspections, auto insurance, traffic cops, toll booths, traffic lights, street signs, pavement markings, special traffic courts, radar guns, and red light cameras are all there because cars need them to operate? The infrastructure for controlling cars is so pervassive that you don't even notice it. Just becaise the Internet is relatively unregulated now does not mean it will stay that way. If companies like Google push too hard, hasty and bad laws could result

No, I think most of the above are to promote efficient traffic movement. And the rest are to raise revenue--they raise revenue because enforcement is cheap. The difference being, that most of the "infrastructure for controlling cars" is to keep them moving in an orderly fashion. This is not an issue with digital content, and the point still remains, that while it is cheap to raise revenue with traffic, it is brually and prohibitively expensive to enforce laws against file transfers.

As far as bad laws, whose bad laws? You mean the very laws that are being ignored right now? By millions of people? You'd really need some draconian laws to do as you are suggesting, and then once again, they'd have to enforce THOSE.

Creating indexes is generally considered fair use, but what Google is proposing is not an index but rather a data retrieval system. Data retrieval systems are specifically prohbited without the copyright owner's consent. Most companies of Google's size would prefer to remain in the US because it has relatively low taxation, the environmental regulations don't really hurt it, and it enjoys (up until now, anyway) strong private property protection. Ask the oil companies that invested in Venezuela how important that is.

You must have missed what I said: "You had better hope that every jurisdiction on earth agrees with you. I don't think they will. Many places would have a LOT to gain from hosting Google's (or anyone else's) server farms." There are PLENTY of places where there is low taxation, little environmental regulation, and strong private property protection. This is why off-shore accounts and tax evasion are rampant, and the U.S. has been unable to stop it. If the U.S. can't stop actual money from evading U.S. law, it isn't going to be able to stop digital content from changing hands. In fact, it's unlikely to even try.

You seem to have this idea that U.S. law is effective and enforceable throughout the world. That simply isn't true. And not one company like Google needs anything to do with the U.S. if they don't want to. Ask companies like Tyco...

International sanctions may not work (okay, they won't work), but the FTC could forbid any US firm from advertising on the newly-foreign Google.

Heh heh. For someone so fond of quoting the U.S. Constitution, a blanket restriction such as this would never pass. Neither would it shut down Google anyway. Besides, if Ford wanted to advertise through Google, it just places the ad through LandRover, or Lotus, or Mazda, or Aston Martin, which aren't in the U.S.
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Message 179330 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 18:36:03 UTC


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Message 179337 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 19:00:05 UTC - in response to Message 179315.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2005, 19:05:21 UTC

Most expensive, specialized software has intrusive DRM in it to prevent this sort of abuse.

Yep. And regardless, it still gets hacked regularly. Because the DRM really doesn't prevent anything. My wife comes across illegitimate PeopleSoft modules all the time. PS (now Oracle) generally just lets it go because they don't want to sue their customers.

While other companies have turned it into their primary source of revenue. Deciding not to enforce a right is not the same thing as not having the right. I have the right to represent myself at trial... it would be dumb, but it is my right.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court, which has juristiction over anything that Google does in any juristiction including overseas operations (Foreign Corrupt Services Act and all that).

That's just silly. U.S. Federal Courts do not have jurisdiction in any jurisdiction, and even if they did for some reason, that doesn't mean they have jurisdiction over any company. Google need not be a U.S. company.

Ask KPMG about being tried in US federal court concerning activities of subsidiaries that exist completely overseas.
If it cannot be accomplished without the intellectual property, then it is using the intellectual property. That is the nature of intellectual property.

Google does it now w/o the "intellectual property," they're just expanding.

Google is using the intellectual property of website publishers to create its search engine. The copyright notices on websites typically do NOT exclude storage in a data retrieval system. Copyright holders can opt-out of Google's indexes if they really want to, but the presumption is that information published on the Internet was put there to be found and browsed by the public. The presumption of publishing in a physical book is that the copyright owner wants people to purchase said book before enjoying the benefits of that content. Webpages are marketing materials. Books are products. There are web-enabled products, but no search engine really webcrawls these, only the webpages that point to them.
See above about taxation. ... This ownership right, while not absolute, is why governments can't just sieze money unless a crime was committed.

Again, I don't know where you are going here. The gov't does as it wishes. In taxation, it seizes your money without a crime being committed.

If you don't know the difference between a tansfer tax and a siezure, then it is no wonder why you can't seem to grasp basic tenets of private property.
My point about late fees was to illustrate that a generic user doesn't have an ownership right to permanently keep something from the library.

No, because that would be theft of tangible property from the library. But with mp3's, I'm not arguing a right. I'm saying it simply IS.

And I'm not saying that Google can't buy scads of books (or check them out of a library a few at a time) and scan them into a database. It's physically possible. It is also physically possible to pump a dozen bullets into someone in a back alley (and quite difficult for the authorities to prevent, by the way), but that doesn't excuse either behavior. However, if Google is going to blatantly violate the copyright on thousands upon thousands of works, then it should not be surprised by a huge red bull's-eye on its chest.
Libraries operate under specific conditions to maintain their special status in the copyright universe. Like I said, if Google wants to try to run a digital library, it should say so.

That wouldn't change anything, though it might use that tactic in court.

It would change a lot, because then the Google Library would be responsible for reasonable measures to enforce copyright law. Reasonable doesn't mean absolute, and Google could probably do this at low enough cost to still make the sidebar advertising profitable. It would, however, mean that straightforward attempts to search out a whole series of "snippets" in a title (therefore giving a webcrawler the entire text of the work) would need to be blocked.
Do you honestly think that license plates, registration stickers, annual inspections, auto insurance, traffic cops, toll booths, traffic lights, street signs, pavement markings, special traffic courts, radar guns, and red light cameras are all there because cars need them to operate? The infrastructure for controlling cars is so pervassive that you don't even notice it. Just becaise the Internet is relatively unregulated now does not mean it will stay that way. If companies like Google push too hard, hasty and bad laws could result

No, I think most of the above are to promote efficient traffic movement. And the rest are to raise revenue--they raise revenue because enforcement is cheap. The difference being, that most of the "infrastructure for controlling cars" is to keep them moving in an orderly fashion. This is not an issue with digital content, and the point still remains, that while it is cheap to raise revenue with traffic, it is brually and prohibitively expensive to enforce laws against file transfers.

And suppose the judges that end up with case decide that "orderly" use of a computer means that it is crippled against copyright infringement. Imagine if the early car drivers made a habit of running off the road and destroying storefronts. The contents of the stores usually survive in sell-able form, but the means to sell them is compromised. The store owners would demand protection... maybe high guardrails on every roadside (even if nothing of value is behind it), or worse yet a mechanism that limits the speed of cars to something safe for a collision with a sturdy storefront.

It would be worse if early car drivers made a point of running into storefronts to publicly exert their right to drive where-ever they wanted. Cars as we know them might have been banned outright, with governments laying tracks where they intended public roads and relegating car-buyers to whatever roads they've decided to prepare. Such cars would be more useful than walking, but not nearly as useful as the cars we know.

Even with the radical car drivers, so long as "major drivers" (trucking companies) did not join the protests, store owners might be persuaded that guardrails are the more reasonable option. Those radical drivers are hard to catch, but if we do catch one we'll lock him up. Had the major trucking companies joined in the protest, then very heavyhanded government action would have been required.

This is roughly like the situation we have now, except that storefronts aren't really being destroyed, but the store owners feel violated because the drivers are tresspassing.
As far as bad laws, whose bad laws? You mean the very laws that are being ignored right now? By millions of people? You'd really need some draconian laws to do as you are suggesting, and then once again, they'd have to enforce THOSE.

If you showed Congress in 1905 what it would have to spend in 2005 to keep car traffic "orderly," it probably would have passed legislation banning private vehicles. By 1905 standards, our traffic laws and infrastructure are draconian and intrusive beyond imagination.
Creating indexes is generally considered fair use, but what Google is proposing is not an index but rather a data retrieval system. Data retrieval systems are specifically prohbited without the copyright owner's consent. Most companies of Google's size would prefer to remain in the US because it has relatively low taxation, the environmental regulations don't really hurt it, and it enjoys (up until now, anyway) strong private property protection. Ask the oil companies that invested in Venezuela how important that is.

You must have missed what I said: "You had better hope that every jurisdiction on earth agrees with you. I don't think they will. Many places would have a LOT to gain from hosting Google's (or anyone else's) server farms." There are PLENTY of places where there is low taxation, little environmental regulation, and strong private property protection. This is why off-shore accounts and tax evasion are rampant, and the U.S. has been unable to stop it. If the U.S. can't stop actual money from evading U.S. law, it isn't going to be able to stop digital content from changing hands. In fact, it's unlikely to even try.

You seem to have this idea that U.S. law is effective and enforceable throughout the world. That simply isn't true. And not one company like Google needs anything to do with the U.S. if they don't want to. Ask companies like Tyco...

The problems with enforcing US tax law are generally not foreign governments, it is the overly complex nature of US tax law. Saddling the Internet backbones with monitoring requirements is not beyond the government's capabilities. The capability limit is doing all that monitoring and maintaining the current speed. If content piracy actually rose to a level that threatened the economy, you would be surprised what the government would be willing to give up for security.

As for ignoring the US market, the US is still the 900 pound gorilla of markets. China has more people, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly eager to let its people access all the information that they want.
International sanctions may not work (okay, they won't work), but the FTC could forbid any US firm from advertising on the newly-foreign Google.

Heh heh. For someone so fond of quoting the U.S. Constitution, a blanket restriction such as this would never pass. Neither would it shut down Google anyway. Besides, if Ford wanted to advertise through Google, it just places the ad through LandRover, or Lotus, or Mazda, or Aston Martin, which aren't in the U.S.

US courts issue injunctions routinely, and the judge usually gives instructions to the effect that "you understand that this is going to limit your rights." An injuction is a lower form of imprisonment.

The problem with stealth advertising is that it is worthless if the customer can't identify what is being advertised! It doesn't matter how many hands the ad goes thru on its way to a channel, if it appears on the other end then it is recognizable.

The US Attorneys have also had luck putting executives in jail for signing off on plans that they knew (or should have known) were illegal. This seems excessive for advertising in the wrong place, but if Google really takes the fight that far, the US government is likely to strike back.

----

It is not likely to go to these lengths. For a company whose motto is "don't be evil," it should recognize that its current image problems are symptoms of perceived "evildoing." Whether Google can or cannot prevail in court is irrelevant because such issues rarely get to a courtroom. Google voluntarily halted its scanning program before the injuction was official. When all sides have had a reasonable conversation, Google should see that-- legal technicalities aside-- it is misappropriating content in the worst traditions of big companies bullying individuals.

Printed material isn't controlled by a small number of distributors like music is, therefore getting permission from each and every single copyright holder may not be practical. Some copyright holders will resist for stupid reasons. Some might want a tiny cut of the ad revenue. Others will be glad for the exposure. Some might even pay for prominent positions in search results (much like current Web search).

If Google goes the "library" route, then it will need to operate under a number of restrictions, but as I said above it can probably turn a profit that way and still get most if not all of the goodwill it was trying to get with this project in the first place.

(edit for grammar)
No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.
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Message 179356 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 20:13:55 UTC - in response to Message 179337.  
Last modified: 17 Oct 2005, 20:25:01 UTC

While other companies have turned it into their primary source of revenue. Deciding not to enforce a right is not the same thing as not having the right. I have the right to represent myself at trial... it would be dumb, but it is my right.

Not with copyright law. You have no right not to enforce the copyright, your work will end up in the public domain. Which Disney knows.

Ask KPMG about being tried in US federal court concerning activities of subsidiaries that exist completely overseas.

I didn't say the gov't doesn't try BS from time to time. However, that doesn't really invalidate the point. I said that U.S. Federal Courts do not have jurisdiction in any jurisdiction, and even if they did for some reason, that doesn't mean they have jurisdiction over any company. Google need not be a U.S. company. Unless your point is that you think U.S. courts DO have worldwide jurisdiction...

Just think of all the companies that routinely ignore U.S. law now. Because they aren't here.

The presumption of publishing in a physical book is that the copyright owner wants people to purchase said book before enjoying the benefits of that content. Webpages are marketing materials. Books are products. There are web-enabled products, but no search engine really webcrawls these, only the webpages that point to them.

Except that those same copyright owners wouldn't have any problem if every single person went into a library?

If you don't know the difference between a tansfer tax and a siezure, then it is no wonder why you can't seem to grasp basic tenets of private property.

Ohferchrissakes. There is no difference between a transfer tax and a seizure, the gov't sticks a gun into your face and takes what it wishes according to whatever rationale it has at the time. There is no difference. That's like saying a tariff isn't a tax. It's ALL a tax, or it's ALL a seizure. It doesn't matter what you name you put on it.

Maybe this discussion would be better served without such comments. I am well aware of the definition of private property. I am simply making the point that when it comes to digital content, the world has changed.

And I'm not saying that Google can't buy scads of books (or check them out of a library a few at a time) and scan them into a database. It's physically possible. It is also physically possible to pump a dozen bullets into someone in a back alley (and quite difficult for the authorities to prevent, by the way), but that doesn't excuse either behavior. However, if Google is going to blatantly violate the copyright on thousands upon thousands of works, then it should not be surprised by a huge red bull's-eye on its chest.

Yes, but it is WORTH the costs to try to prevent murder. It isn't worth the costs to prevent digital transfers. Which is why it isn't done now.

It would change a lot, because then the Google Library would be responsible for reasonable measures to enforce copyright law. Reasonable doesn't mean absolute, and Google could probably do this at low enough cost to still make the sidebar advertising profitable. It would, however, mean that straightforward attempts to search out a whole series of "snippets" in a title (therefore giving a webcrawler the entire text of the work) would need to be blocked.

What if the court just decides that "reasonable" means a warning on the site? A checkbox before you can search? Children can now drink all the bleach they want and no bleach company is liable. Why? Because the warning on the bottle is reasonable. Children still drink bleach though.

And suppose the judges that end up with case decide that "orderly" use of a computer means that it is crippled against copyright infringement...

Who cares? Because they don't manufacture every computer on earth, nor do they have jurisdiction everywhere on earth.

...Imagine if the early car drivers made a habit of running off the road and destroying storefronts. The contents of the stores usually survive in sell-able form, but the means to sell them is compromised. The store owners would demand protection... maybe high guardrails on every roadside (even if nothing of value is behind it), or worse yet a mechanism that limits the speed of cars to something safe for a collision with a sturdy storefront.

Again, the car analogy fails. It's pretty easy to figure out who ran their car into the store front. It is prohibitively expensive to figure out who sent "Help me, Rhonda" across the world on foreign servers. Especially if you won't have legal jurisdiction anyway.

If you showed Congress in 1905 what it would have to spend in 2005 to keep car traffic "orderly," it probably would have passed legislation banning private vehicles. By 1905 standards, our traffic laws and infrastructure are draconian and intrusive beyond imagination.

Pfffft. In 1905 there were what, 7 cars on the road? Making them move efficiently was easy. Now there are likely 225 million or so and it is significantly harder. Though it is still easy to see who speeds, who rams their car into a store front, etc.

The problems with enforcing US tax law are generally not foreign governments, it is the overly complex nature of US tax law. Saddling the Internet backbones with monitoring requirements is not beyond the government's capabilities. The capability limit is doing all that monitoring and maintaining the current speed. If content piracy actually rose to a level that threatened the economy, you would be surprised what the government would be willing to give up for security.

I said "You seem to have this idea that U.S. law is effective and enforceable throughout the world. That simply isn't true. And not one company like Google needs anything to do with the U.S. if they don't want to. Ask companies like Tyco..." With your comment above, are you of the mind that internet backbones in every jurisdiction on earth are going to comply? What if, like now, China just goes along it's merry way? What if, like now, Lichtenstein thinks it likes the idea of enhanced revenue hosting backbones? You know, they don't care about U.S. law now, what makes you think they will care then?

As for ignoring the US market, the US is still the 900 pound gorilla of markets. China has more people, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly eager to let its people access all the information that they want.

A) They get it anyway. B) They ignore U.S. copyright law now. And they STILL generally end up with MFN status.

US courts issue injunctions routinely, and the judge usually gives instructions to the effect that "you understand that this is going to limit your rights." An injuction is a lower form of imprisonment.

Again this only matters in U.S. jurisdictions. It doesn't matter in the overwhelming majority where they aren't concerned with enforcing U.S. law.

The problem with stealth advertising is that it is worthless if the customer can't identify what is being advertised! It doesn't matter how many hands the ad goes thru on its way to a channel, if it appears on the other end then it is recognizable.

U.S. law doesn't apply to Mazda in Taiwan placing a Ford ad in a Google page that is located in the Bahamas.

The US Attorneys have also had luck putting executives in jail for signing off on plans that they knew (or should have known) were illegal. This seems excessive for advertising in the wrong place, but if Google really takes the fight that far, the US government is likely to strike back.

Again, non of this matters if Google (or the next one) isn't a U.S. company. I simply don't see how you can make the case that the U.S. will try to stop copyright infringment when doing so would take many times the resources that they use to stop money laundering and tax evasion and they can't even stop those. I mean they don't put monitoring devices on now and they are losing BILLIONS (if not more) of dollars every year. They have everything to gain from doing this, and still the costs are prohibitively expensive. And you think they are going to spend much much more to try and save Jessica Simpson's income?

It is not likely to go to these lengths. For a company whose motto is "don't be evil," it should recognize that its current image problems are symptoms of perceived "evildoing." Whether Google can or cannot prevail in court is irrelevant because such issues rarely get to a courtroom. Google voluntarily halted its scanning program before the injuction was official. When all sides have had a reasonable conversation, Google should see that-- legal technicalities aside-- it is misappropriating content in the worst traditions of big companies bullying individuals.

You had really better pray that the next big company that decides to do this thinks just like you and U.S. law. Or, that p2p doesn't make the whole think obsolete anyway.
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Message 179361 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 20:22:54 UTC - in response to Message 179330.  

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Message 179372 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 21:18:16 UTC - in response to Message 179361.  

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Message 179377 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 21:37:31 UTC - in response to Message 179356.  

Not with copyright law. You have no right not to enforce the copyright, your work will end up in the public domain. Which Disney knows.

Filing a lawsuit is called "enforcing a copyright" in lay language. You don't have the right to privately enforce anti-theft laws for tangible property, either. One is considered civil and the other criminal, but there is nothing to prevent that from changing.[/quote]
I didn't say the gov't doesn't try BS from time to time. However, that doesn't really invalidate the point. I said that U.S. Federal Courts do not have jurisdiction in any jurisdiction, and even if they did for some reason, that doesn't mean they have jurisdiction over any company. Google need not be a U.S. company. Unless your point is that you think U.S. courts DO have worldwide jurisdiction...

Just think of all the companies that routinely ignore U.S. law now. Because they aren't here.

US courts have juristiction over all .com domains. The infringing behavior started while Google is a US company, meaning that the people involved, should any judge decide to pierce the corporate veil, would be committing a continuing criminal enterprise under US law. The US indicts druglords who've never set foot on US soil; they are not going to be detered by someone filing some incorporation paperwork with Madagascar.

US copyright applies to the US. It doesn't apply to foreign countries except to the extent that specific treaties apply. If some company wants to do something in South Korea that is illegal in the US, that really isn't the US's business except as a matter of diplomacy.

Once such a company starts marketing within the US, it becomes a US matter. It is pretty much accepted that all of the software in China is bootlegged, but no one gets really hot and bothered about it until conterfeit goods are exported to the US.
The presumption of publishing in a physical book is that the copyright owner wants people to purchase said book before enjoying the benefits of that content. Webpages are marketing materials. Books are products. There are web-enabled products, but no search engine really webcrawls these, only the webpages that point to them.

Except that those same copyright owners wouldn't have any problem if every single person went into a library?

A library increases sales for the copyright holders. If 100 people want a given book, but not very badly, it is unlikely that any one of them will buy it. When the library buys one or two copies, any of those 100 people can borrow them. Public libraries tend not to have the latest bestsellers on their shelves.

Remember that Google is not making the contents of all of these books available for online reading. The plan is not, as many seem to think, to make the content freely available to everyone. It is to allow public queries of the content so that Google can sell advertising for those who would sell a copy of the content. It is technically possible for a webcrawler to pull all of the scanned content, but that is not Google's intent.

Despite its rhetoric, Google is not making all of the great works of literature freely available to the masses. It is entering a vast collection of copyrighted content into a data retrieval system so that Google can get paid for serving up relevant ads. If someone is using my property to acquire some benefit, I have the right to grant or not grant permission to do that for whatever illogical reasons I care to invent. You can't put a charity carwash on my front lawn without my permission, you can't borrow my car to deliver free meals to the infirmed without my permission, so why should Google be able to illegally use intellectual property regardless of how noble their goals seem to be?

congoo.com is making copyrighted content available for "free" on the Internet. I put "free" in quotes because there are strings attached. The difference is that congoo.com is signing contracts with the content providers on an opt-in basis, fully compliant with existing law.
Ohferchrissakes. There is no difference between a transfer tax and a seizure, the gov't sticks a gun into your face and takes what it wishes according to whatever rationale it has at the time. There is no difference. That's like saying a tariff isn't a tax. It's ALL a tax, or it's ALL a seizure. It doesn't matter what you name you put on it.

Maybe this discussion would be better served without such comments. I am well aware of the definition of private property. I am simply making the point that when it comes to digital content, the world has changed.

I never said that a tariff isn't a tax. Tolls and registration fees are taxes, too. The US government sets up rules for what is to be taxed and then applies them. The rules are too complex, the revenue targers are WAY too high, and the IRS does a poor job of enforcing them evenly. This doesn't change the fact that it is distinct from siezing existing property.

The Fifth Amemdment lays out the groundwork for how something can be seized and why (until the Supreme Court muddied it). The government is obligated to pay for anything that it takes, although it is explicitly permitted to tax transfers elsewhere in the Constitution.

These provisions could be ignored. In fact, they have been in the past. But once you start getting into the government ignoring laws then the whole debate about lawfulness is moot. Taken to its extreme: you won't be able to swap mp3 files if the government seizes all the computers.
Yes, but it is WORTH the costs to try to prevent murder. It isn't worth the costs to prevent digital transfers. Which is why it isn't done now.

Infringing on another's rights is called an "injury" because you are limiting the right-holders ability to enjoy the full benefits of his or her property. In a natural law sense, putting a locked fence around your land so that you can't use it is just as wrong as breaking your hand so that you can't use it.

For people whose entire profession revolves around copyrighted material, it is "worth it" to prevent wholesale devaluation of intellectual property. Intellectual property is protected in the Constitution precisely because first-mover advantage is not enough to ensure progress.

There is a reason that most innovation is concentrated into a handful of countries, and it is not because the people are smarter.
What if the court just decides that "reasonable" means a warning on the site? A checkbox before you can search? Children can now drink all the bleach they want and no bleach company is liable. Why? Because the warning on the bottle is reasonable. Children still drink bleach though.

Like I said, the US economy is robust. As long as everyone agrees to the same rules, the market will adjust. What you are suggesting would be a fairly radical shift in current law, but the market would figure out new (lower) values for intellectual property in the wreckage that follows and emerge operable once again. With less profit motive, there would be fewer (or less skilled) participants in the market on the supply side of intellectual property.
Who cares? Because they don't manufacture every computer on earth, nor do they have jurisdiction everywhere on earth.

Now, just every computer that is sold or used in the US. See the above discussion on applicability of US law. A mandated DRM technology (which is a very real possibility) would obsolete almost every home computer and force a migration onto the "this is good for you" platform.

The Open Source movement is religiously opposed to this idea, but if they are perceived by Congress as a front group for a bunch of content thieves, they may not overcome the well-financed lobbies of the music companies, proprietary software companies, movie studios, etc.
Again, the car analogy fails. It's pretty easy to figure out who ran their car into the store front. It is prohibitively expensive to figure out who sent "Help me, Rhonda" across the world on foreign servers. Especially if you won't have legal jurisdiction anyway.

Don't stretch the analogy further than what it's intended to illustrate. Modern cars are capable of many things that were not forseen at the turn of the twentieth century. Laws and infrastructure have grown to channel these cars in what are generally regarded as useful ways. It would help me if I could cut across the median when I wanted, but letting everyone do it would cause chaos on the roads. Car control laws were based on horse control laws extrapolated to unimaged lengths. The copyright control laws are having a difficult time coping with modern copying technology, and how those laws are stretched out will depend on how visible players behave. Disruptive behavior will likely lead to restrictive measures.
Pfffft. In 1905 there were what, 7 cars on the road? Making them move efficiently was easy. Now there are likely 225 million or so and it is significantly harder. Though it is still easy to see who speeds, who rams their car into a store front, etc.

And there are now technologies for monitoring every step that a computer makes, but they are not practical for large scale use. If current use gets disruptive enough, Internet traffic (within the US) might get choked down to where it fits within draconian security measures. The mere threat of this would spur untold innovation in DRM management by proprietary software companies, none of which would be written with Open Source authors' interests in mind.
I said "You seem to have this idea that U.S. law is effective and enforceable throughout the world. That simply isn't true. And not one company like Google needs anything to do with the U.S. if they don't want to. Ask companies like Tyco..." With your comment above, are you of the mind that internet backbones in every jurisdiction on earth are going to comply? What if, like now, China just goes along it's merry way? What if, like now, Lichtenstein thinks it likes the idea of enhanced revenue hosting backbones? You know, they don't care about U.S. law now, what makes you think they will care then?

China could be scanning every American book into a huge database and using it right now. It doesn't directly affect the US. When it affects the US (such as US web browsers having access to it) is when the US's ability to control starts.

Do not underestimate the US's ability to apply trade pressure when it feels threatened. The Soviet Union was defeated without a shot being fired because the US manipulated the world oil and gold markets (the Soviet Union's two major exports) and then started an extremely expensive arms race that bankrupted the country. (By the way, W., Star Wars was never really intended to work, it was intended to cost lots of money)
A) They get it anyway. B) They ignore U.S. copyright law now. And they STILL generally end up with MFN status.

Google's very lifeblood (searching the world-wide Internet) is illegal in China. That nation isn't likely to be high on any Google relocation list.
Again this only matters in U.S. jurisdictions. It doesn't matter in the overwhelming majority where they aren't concerned with enforcing U.S. law.

It only becomes an issue if it affects the US. If Google were to irrationally pull up stakes and relocate to another country and offered Google Print as proposed now, it would probably only result in a WTO complaint and a ban on US advertisers doing business with the company. If Google decided to place all printed matter online for free, more direct intervention would be warranted.
U.S. law doesn't apply to Mazda in Taiwan placing a Ford ad in a Google page that is located in the Bahamas.

No one is trying to police the whole world. Ford ads appearing in violation of US trade sanctions are still illegal in the US, and Ford is culpable. Unless, of course, every major corporation in the US is going to follow Google to some foreign paradise where intellectual property has little or no protection... oh wait, Ford's business depends on a portfolio of patents and trademarks...
Again, non of this matters if Google (or the next one) isn't a U.S. company. I simply don't see how you can make the case that the U.S. will try to stop copyright infringment when doing so would take many times the resources that they use to stop money laundering and tax evasion and they can't even stop those.

It depends upon the infringer's behavior. If they pose a direct challenge to the US economy, suddenly the effort is worth a lot of resources.

When VeriSign decided that they were going to unilaterally change how mis-typed DNS entries are resolved, enough pressure was brought to bear to reverse their decision without a single court appearance. What VeriSign did was perfectly legal... and profitable for them. And yet they decided to stop.
You had really better pray that the next big company that decides to do this thinks just like you and U.S. law. Or, that p2p doesn't make the whole think obsolete anyway.

Remember what Google Print is doing. It is not the same thing as rampant copying between private parties. It is using the intellectual property of others for financial gain (ad sales) by a major corporation. Napster and Grokster were killed off because they presented a target. Google can do a lot of things. Being anonymous is not among them.
No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.
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Message 179414 - Posted: 17 Oct 2005, 23:31:45 UTC




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Message 179431 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 0:33:46 UTC - in response to Message 179414.  
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It's not even a very good example of photoshop. Take a close look at the picture. Does brawl-hall.com vouch for the veracity of their pictures?
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Message 179433 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 0:41:32 UTC


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Message 179435 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 0:47:04 UTC - in response to Message 179433.  



I never saw a video clip of that now-famous yelp, but I know it happened. The purplish face may be in keeping with the moment, but I wonder if he really looked that close to a heart attack.
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Message 179439 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 0:53:19 UTC


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Message 179481 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:10:01 UTC
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George II of Texas, Rex
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Message 179482 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:12:25 UTC - in response to Message 179431.  
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It's not even a very good example of photoshop. Take a close look at the picture. Does brawl-hall.com vouch for the veracity of their pictures?

Can the White House vouch for the veracity of anything that has come out of the president's mouth?
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Message 179485 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:21:08 UTC - in response to Message 179482.  
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Can the White House vouch for the veracity of anything that has come out of the president's mouth?


Sure. But can anyone else do better? Dean? Kerry? Teddy K? Where are the Democratic American heros? I would vote for one if one existed. Hillary? Hah!
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Message 179487 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:22:32 UTC - in response to Message 179482.  



Maybe if Clinton had done his job instead of getting them
We would not be in the mess we are in....
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Message 179492 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:31:03 UTC


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Message 179499 - Posted: 18 Oct 2005, 3:45:50 UTC - in response to Message 179487.  
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Maybe if Clinton had done his job instead of getting them
We would not be in the mess we are in....


You should ask, why didn't Bush's daddy do his job...?
We had Saddam by the balls with the world cheering us on...
and now?


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