Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

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mharr
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby mharr » Sat Jul 04, 2020 11:02 am

A reminder that the EFF have been working for years to secure everyone's rights over the computers we own precisely because we're heading into a future where we ride around inside big computers all day while smaller ones ride around inside us. Copyright was never a productive legal context for any of this. https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Sat Jul 04, 2020 1:10 pm

mharr wrote:A reminder that the EFF have been working for years to secure everyone's rights over the computers we own precisely because we're heading into a future where we ride around inside big computers all day while smaller ones ride around inside us. Copyright was never a productive legal context for any of this. https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

CFAA is relevant but it's not a copyright law (and, fortunately, recent legal precedent suggests a move away from the notion that violating TOS is a CFAA violation); the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the copyright law that makes it illegal to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" -- ie, to crack DRM -- aside from a set of limited exceptions that changes every three years.

Currently, that list of exemptions includes breaking DRM in order to repair "land vehicles" (as well as "smartphones, home appliances, or home systems"), but those exemptions are set to expire next year. The rotating list of exemptions that repeatedly need to be defended and reevaluated is not tenable; we need permanent laws establishing consumers' rights to modify their own property.

To that end, the EFF's been pushing right-to-repair laws for years and that's gained some traction now that farmers are finding themselves unable to repair their own tractors. Mostly what's happened so far is that state legislatures have pushed right-to-repair laws, manufacturers have offered token gestures to make their DRM accessible to third parties, and the legislatures have backed down.

What I'd really like to see is for DMCA 1201 to be repealed entirely. Breaking DRM should not be illegal in and of itself. Copyright violations are already illegal; we don't need a separate law to make it illegal to break copy protection.

Short of that, I'd like to see the law modified so that it's only illegal to break DRM if you go on to violate copyright law afterward. Breaking DRM in order to do something that's legal -- making backups, format-shifting, adding accessibility features like text-to-speech for books or speech-to-text for videos, doing security research, fixing your car, etc. -- should not be illegal. Breaking DRM shouldn't be illegal -- but if we have to accept that it's going to be illegal, it should only be illegal if it's broken for the purpose of doing something illegal.

Short of that, well, that leaves us with the current piecemeal approach of trying to pass laws exempting certain specific types of fair use from the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. Which is bullshit; all fair use should be exempt. But right-to-repair laws are a start, at least, a foot in the door.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jul 04, 2020 1:24 pm

Niku wrote:how much more insufferable classic car enthusiasts are going to be.


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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Wed Jul 15, 2020 12:46 pm

Thad wrote:If you have some free time and want to read some enjoyable excerpts of a judge reading the riot act to a copyright troll: Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Benchslapped And Sanctioned AGAIN In A Massive Filing Detailing Pages Upon Pages Of Him Lying Under Oath

Bad news keeps on coming for Richard Liebowitz; now one of his clients swears Liebowitz never told him that he'd filed suit or received a settlement offer.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Thu Aug 06, 2020 11:09 am

A financial services firm called Moxie Tribes has opposed a trademark application by Southtown Moxie, which is...an intellectual property law firm.

Filing a frivolous trademark opposition to a law practice that specializes in trademark law takes some real, whaddaya call it...chutzpah.

Anyway, Southtown Moxie's response is a delight.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:19 pm

Oracle v Google is in oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

This is the case that will determine whether or not software APIs are copyrightable.

For the nontechnical: an API is like a specification. It doesn't perform any action, it just describes the names of things and what kind of information they accept as input or provide as output.

Google is on the right side of this and Oracle is on the wrong one. Allowing copyright on APIs is a terrible, nonsensical idea. Unfortunately I don't have a hell of a lot of faith in the Supreme Court to understand why.

If the ruling is 4-4, then the lower court's opinion stands; the lower court decided for Oracle.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Upthorn » Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:22 pm

Can you copyright a contract? Because that's all an API is...
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Thu Oct 08, 2020 12:36 pm

Ars says oral arguments didn't go so well, though it bears noting that predicting a ruling based on oral arguments is a mug's game.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Oct 08, 2020 1:49 pm

I can only find two takes on this anywhere:

1. I don't know what any of these words are but I hate Google, am employed by Oracle, and/or Donald Trump said Oracle is good, so Oracle wins.
2. I am a software professional* and you are about to do substantial long-lasting damage to the entire U.S. tech industry, and potentially break a lot of the internet.

With the legitimacy of the Supreme Court already in contention, it might be worth listening to literally every expert on the subject. Double especially if it looks at all like the the Court actually knew what it was doing and simply decided to fuck a major industry (in a way that long-term plays right into Google/Big Tech's hands) on the basis of general animosity toward Big Tech and/or the West Coast.

And that's not even a patch on the shitshow that would happen with Barrett on the bench, who historically has thrown out suits like this that lack convincing expert testimony, but is also very obviously an owned judge and would probably prove it to the world with her ruling.

Fucksakes.

* Including with honors one Judge William Haskell Alsup.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Oct 08, 2020 2:09 pm

I don't believe for a second that Google's representation just "had a bad day", either. They know what the fuck is going on. Whatever they lose to Oracle is going to be a penny compared to what this would give them precedence to go and do to... hell, any app developer. Real good shit. Nokia phones starting to look pretty excellent right now.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Caithness » Thu Oct 08, 2020 2:58 pm

Does Nokia still make phones? I thought Microsoft shut down their phone business after buying Nokia.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:00 pm

Brentai wrote:I can only find two takes on this anywhere:

1. I don't know what any of these words are but I hate Google, am employed by Oracle, and/or Donald Trump said Oracle is good, so Oracle wins.
2. I am a software professional* and you are about to do substantial long-lasting damage to the entire U.S. tech industry, and potentially break a lot of the internet.


Yes, it hasn't escaped my notice that of the various amicus briefs filed in the case, nearly all of the ones that are by actual software companies are on the Google side. The amicus briefs on Oracle's side are by groups like the RIAA.

I'm holding out some measure of hope that the overwhelming majority of expert opinions in the briefs will be more important to the final decision than oral arguments are.

And that's not even a patch on the shitshow that would happen with Barrett on the bench, who historically has thrown out suits like this that lack convincing expert testimony, but is also very obviously an owned judge and would probably prove it to the world with her ruling.


I'm completely distraught at the prospect of Barrett replacing RBG; there will be dozens of suits where she sides with a horrible opinion where RBG would not have.

This is not one of them.

There are many, many issues RBG was on the right side of. Copyright is categorically not on that list. Based on her record, I'm confident she would have been on Oracle's side in this.

A 4-4 split decision is not a good result, but if that's what happens it means it would have been 5-4 in Oracle's favor if Ginsburg were still on the court. A 4-4 ruling lets the lower court's opinion stand, which is bad, but at least means it's likelier that a future court will revisit the issue the next time one of these suits comes up. (Possibly, in the deepest of ironies, in Amazon v Oracle, where Oracle is taking pretty much the opposite stance on copying APIs that it is in this one.)

Another possibility, this being the Roberts Court, is that they punt on the question of whether APIs are copyrightable and decide the case based on some other criteria a majority of them can agree on.

Caithness wrote:Does Nokia still make phones? I thought Microsoft shut down their phone business after buying Nokia.

They did, but then they sold the Nokia brand to a Finnish company called HMD Global. You can get Nokia-branded Android phones now (as well as Nokia-branded feature phones, via FoxConn).

As for Nokia's pre-Android OS, it eventually became Jolla. It appears to have something of a niche in Europe, but you can't get it in the US.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Oct 08, 2020 5:12 pm

Thad wrote:I'm holding out some measure of hope that the overwhelming majority of expert opinions in the briefs will be more important to the final decision than oral arguments are.


I've yet to see Literally Everybody Else win against a dedicated lobbying firm, but until today I'd never heard a world leader say his DNA isn't DNA, so sure, anything's possible.

And that's not even a patch on the shitshow that would happen with Barrett on the bench, who historically has thrown out suits like this that lack convincing expert testimony, but is also very obviously an owned judge and would probably prove it to the world with her ruling.


I'm completely distraught at the prospect of Barrett replacing RBG; there will be dozens of suits where she sides with a horrible opinion where RBG would not have.

This is not one of them.

There are many, many issues RBG was on the right side of. Copyright is categorically not on that list. Based on her record, I'm confident she would have been on Oracle's side in this.


No argument there except to mention that I didn't bring up or consider RBG. She'll still be dead whether Barrett becomes a democratic crisis or not.

This sort of predictability is what makes Barrett especially dangerous to my mind. We know RBG's thoughts on the matter. We also know Barrett's - her set precedent actually puts her exactly in line with my thinking. If she were to flip on that - and I have perfect faith that she would - it entirely undermines the Court's status as the final word on interpretation and finalizes its status as just another game mechanic in the outdated ruleset of the Constitution. I mean, if trying to fast track one of Bush's lawyers from 2000 before a contested election hasn't done that already.

Another possibility, this being the Roberts Court, is that they punt on the question of whether APIs are copyrightable and decide the case based on some other criteria a majority of them can agree on.


Oh yeah. The question here goes well beyond "can you copyright an API"; it's "can you buy out a company, take control over a platform you never had any previous input on, boot the guy who actually wrote the thing, and sue another company for redesigning it two years prior without a finalized contract but with the previous owner's explicit consent?"

To which the legal answer is "probably not" and the just answer is "you should be in prison for trying this."

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:23 am

Brentai wrote:
Thad wrote:I'm holding out some measure of hope that the overwhelming majority of expert opinions in the briefs will be more important to the final decision than oral arguments are.


I've yet to see Literally Everybody Else win against a dedicated lobbying firm,


Does Alice count?

No argument there except to mention that I didn't bring up or consider RBG.


You brought up the impact Barrett would have if she'd been seated by the time this case came before the court. I don't think it's reasonable to assess Barrett's impact without asking the very direct question of whether her vote would be any different from her predecessor's.

This sort of predictability is what makes Barrett especially dangerous to my mind. We know RBG's thoughts on the matter. We also know Barrett's - her set precedent actually puts her exactly in line with my thinking. If she were to flip on that - and I have perfect faith that she would - it entirely undermines the Court's status as the final word on interpretation and finalizes its status as just another game mechanic in the outdated ruleset of the Constitution. I mean, if trying to fast track one of Bush's lawyers from 2000 before a contested election hasn't done that already.


I think you get it exactly right in that last sentence -- insofar as Barrett is going to undermine the American people's confidence in the independence of the judiciary, it's not going to have much to do with the consistency of her copyright opinions, it's going to be the circumstances of her appointment.

Another possibility, this being the Roberts Court, is that they punt on the question of whether APIs are copyrightable and decide the case based on some other criteria a majority of them can agree on.


Oh yeah. The question here goes well beyond "can you copyright an API"; it's "can you buy out a company, take control over a platform you never had any previous input on, boot the guy who actually wrote the thing, and sue another company for redesigning it two years prior without a finalized contract but with the previous owner's explicit consent?"

To which the legal answer is "probably not" and the just answer is "you should be in prison for trying this."


Google's handshake agreement with pre-Oracle Sun may end up being important to the final ruling. I don't think any of the rest of that stuff is. In the eyes of the law, the creator of Java is Sun, not any of those pesky humans who worked there. That's how work-for-hire works, and the odds of the Roberts Court throwing out that entire body of law are far south of the odds it'll declare APIs can't be copyrighted.

I'm a little less confident in how mergers and acquisitions work in this context, and whether the court is likely to view "Sun never gave Google any guff for this until Oracle bought it" as a relevant detail or not. I'm inclined to think that's probably not going to matter in itself; a rightsholder can choose not to enforce a copyright for years and then change its mind. A change in management doesn't make that any less true, and I don't think a corporate merger does either.

Though again, Google having handshake approval from Sun at the time may well be a pertinent detail. The court could well rule that they had a verbal contract, and if that's the case then Oracle's still bound by it.

That's one way the court could rule on the case without addressing the question of API copyrightability. There are others.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Fri Oct 09, 2020 2:50 am

Thad wrote:
Oh yeah. The question here goes well beyond "can you copyright an API"; it's "can you buy out a company, take control over a platform you never had any previous input on, boot the guy who actually wrote the thing, and sue another company for redesigning it two years prior without a finalized contract but with the previous owner's explicit consent?"


Google's handshake agreement with pre-Oracle Sun may end up being important to the final ruling. I don't think any of the rest of that stuff is. In the eyes of the law, the creator of Java is Sun, not any of those pesky humans who worked there. That's how work-for-hire works, and the odds of the Roberts Court throwing out that entire body of law are far south of the odds it'll declare APIs can't be copyrighted.


See, I knew better than to say anything about Gosling because that'd just get pulled out of the context of the rant and wrapped over the entirety of it, but I did it anyway because kinda mad.

But ignore the human in the room. Sun isn't a person and neither is Oracle. What we're talking about here is more along the lines of "can Disney, theoretically, sue people for copyright infringements against Lucasfilm that occurred in 2010, that Lucasfilm publicly and explicitly declined to enforce," which now that I'm putting it that way I'm sure the Court's opinion is "absolutely and how can we help."

Though again, Google having handshake approval from Sun at the time may well be a pertinent detail. The court could well rule that they had a verbal contract, and if that's the case then Oracle's still bound by it.


Well, let's not really call it a "handshake" or an "agreement" here. By all accounts any effusiveness about the situation was for the papers; Sun only didn't attempt to enforce their rights against Google because, you know, they weren't big enough. Oracle is big enough but was never involved in the original infraction; they bought the potential suit like a debt collector buys debts.

Does any of this have a legal consequence? Fucked if I know. But it only exacerbates the chilling effect of copyrighting something as intrinsic to, you know, getting things to work right as an API. Make a wrong move and it might be the the rightsholder that comes after you, or it might be some kind of massive patent troll that smells blood. The safest and surest path is to just not have anything to do with American software developers.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:17 pm

Brentai wrote:But ignore the human in the room. Sun isn't a person and neither is Oracle. What we're talking about here is more along the lines of "can Disney, theoretically, sue people for copyright infringements against Lucasfilm that occurred in 2010, that Lucasfilm publicly and explicitly declined to enforce," which now that I'm putting it that way I'm sure the Court's opinion is "absolutely and how can we help."

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying. I'm sure as hell not saying it's morally right, but I'm saying I find it very, very easy to believe that's the way this court will rule.

You and I can say "Sun isn't a person and neither is Oracle," but these are the guys who decided that Hobby Lobby has freedom of religion.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:15 pm

In lighter news, a wolf-kink author named Addison Cain has been sending frivolous DMCA takedown notices against YouTube videos that document her history of frivolous lawsuits. Her lawyer, Tynia Watson, is very bad.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 30, 2020 1:21 pm

Oculus Quest 2 jailbroken.

I feel like this is going to be an instructive case for the next round of DMCA exemption hearings. People bought a piece of hardware; an increasingly-disliked tech company changed the terms of use after purchase.

Course, it would be nice if we had people willing to actually address copyright reform legislatively, but for now the DMCA exemption process is the best tool we have.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Thu Nov 05, 2020 6:06 pm

Massachusetts Voters Overwhelmingly Support Expanded 'Right To Repair' Law

The movement scored another big win this week on the news that 74.8% of Massachusetts voters (so far) just approved an expansion to an existing Massachusetts law, resulting in one of the most comprehensive right to repair laws in the nation. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improves the law, requiring that as of 2022, all new telematics-equipped vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device.

More simply, that means users can take their vehicle to any repair shop and have easy, transparent access to vehicle data, without running into obnoxious restrictions or having to visit a more expensive dealership mechanic using proprietary tools. The auto industry, as you might expect, tried really hard to scuttle the law, at one point falsely arguing it would "aid sexual predators" (seriously). Apple, Microsoft and others eager to boost revenues via repair monopolies have also, routinely, tried to falsely portray basic repair rights as somehow nefarious and dangerous.

(links omitted)

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Nov 05, 2020 6:54 pm

I would very much like to explore the claim that seeing vehicle data would aid sexual predators. Seriously. Expand on that, because the implications there sure are interesting.

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