Draft Jimmy Wales for U.S. Senate underway

[Peter]

Ghs wrote:

Are we supposed to be happy or sad that Wales is not an anarchist? I haven't quite figured that out yet.

end quote

Jimbo alludes to your discussion, George, at the end of one letter.

I will stand by what meager proof I can come up with, which is a faulty memory . . . because I will not publish another personal conversation, even if I did find it, and it does prove my point ) . . . And as proof I offer the fact that anyone can change an article on Wikipedia, unless Jimbo locks it in. It’s success relies on the basic good and rational nature of the writers and contributors.

He has had a few lawsuits but has retained the anarchistic nature of his enterprise. If you look up info on some obscure subject, like New Caledonia, the search engine goes to Wiki, and the articles are quite informative, and I assume, the truth, but I read it with a grain of salt.

JR should not be allowed to commit fraud on OL by writing a letter and then signing someone else’s name to it. Now Jeff is someone who should be banned for life.

Jeff committed fraud with the following:

“Oh yes he is! I have incontrovertible truth in the form of an email from Jimbo that I made up and now can't find!

Sincerely,

Peter Taylor”

I did not write that.

Just imagine a evil, malevolent being, like JR, with his hands on the “write an article with citations button” at Wikipedia. I can’t imagine Jeffrey Daumer doing any worse, and that is the failing of Wikipedia and rational anarchism.

Peter Taylor

[Selene]

Why did Jeffrey Dahmer never eat any clowns?

Ready...

because they taste funny.

[kiaer.ts]

Why did Jeffrey Dahmer never eat any clowns?

Ready...

because they taste funny.

Had he only eaten clowns, and I been a juror, he'd've been acquitted.

[Peter]

From the Draft Jimbo for Senator site:

State Sovereignty

Jimmy calls himself a big supporter of federalism and states’ rights, and believes that major issues unmentioned by the Constitution (such as abortion and gay marriage) should be handled at the state and local levels, not by Washington, D.C. (Source)

National Defense

Jimmy understands the need for a strong national defense, but believes that our foreign policy must exemplify individual liberty and self determination just as our domestic policy should, and not prop up corrupt regimes or dictate to other countries how to run their internal affairs. (Source)

end quotes

Whew! Halleluiah! You can’t get any more anti-anarchist than that. What does disqualify a person from winning a political office? The third rail? Abortion stance? Gay marriage stance? Wikipedia’s open source code?

I think he has as much chance of being Senator from Florida as Donald Trump has of being the next United States’ President. Still, he would be better than the Wahoo they now have, so we wish you well, Jimbo.

Peter Taylor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Can the reproduction of private email correspondence, if done in sufficient quantity, really constitute a violation of copyright law? This is not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know, and I'm curious.

George,

This is a gray area of the law--and there is even the problem of which law to use. It gets worse, too--there's a problem with which country's law to use. Don't forget that the Internet covers the world.

So far, the server has been the main defining factor in determining jurisdiction. If I host a work on servers in the USA, the laws of USA prevail. Ditto for other countries. Thus, if I put a work (say, the latest Hollywood movie) on servers in Panama or an island somewhere, I can host almost anything I want without fear of USA copyright violation. (You gotta be careful with hit-men, though, but that's another issue, )

Think Wikileaks, for instance,. for another good example.

In an ideal world where there is no messiness, posting an email you received would be a flat-out copyright violation. In the real world, the legal literature I have read takes into account a whole lot of context.

Here's just a simple example, although it is not relevant to the issue that prompted your question. I mention it merely to show the complexity. Suppose you receive a sales email from an online store and you used it verbatim in a promotion on your site, but gave credit to where it came from. You didn't ask for permission. Is a product description of, say, an electronic drill (or worse, penis enlargers) and purchasing conditions worthy of claiming copyright infringement? No court or judge I know of would waste much time over this.

Here's another. RSS feeds, which the vast majority of Internet sites now have (look for a small squarish orange button with three curved white lines in it), give tacit permission for folks to use the works on such sites elsewhere.

I once blasted the hell out of the SLOP people (including Hsieh since she was there at the time) for posting portions of Chris Sciabarra's emails without his consent, and I called it "copyright violation" back then. However, strictly speaking, since the excerpts were short, they could have argued fair use if a lawsuit arose. My point with those sanctimonious bullshitters, though, was that they used double standards for this stuff. When folks did it to them, it was copyright violation worthy of the harshest moral condemnation and no exception. When they did it to others, it was "righting a wrong."

Like I said, bullshit.

On OL, I have adopted the policy of common sense. I advise people to seek permission. If someone's work is used without permission and that person writes to me complaining that he or she doen't want it posted here, I tend to remove it. But not always. It depends on the reasonableness of the situation.

A recent case with Michael Newberry's tutorials comes to mind, and that wasn't even a copyright thing. We ended up coming to a very good understanding where his values and mine were served. There was no need for moral condemnations, pointing fingers, accusations of this and that, one pushing the other around, and so forth.

Anyway, that doesn't happen much.

The problem with the Objectivist (and even libertarian) world is that it sometimes attracts people who are not reasonable and consider this to be a virtue. I call them control freaks. Depending on what is at stake, I rarely insist with their material, not because I bow to their control, but because pompous pains-in-the-ass are time-suckers with no gain at the end. Their works are rarely objects worth fighting over.

Probably the largest problem we have had (other than the... drum roll... mass plagiarist of the past ) concerns Ayn Rand Answers edited by Robert Mayhew. Robert Campbell did a side-by-side comparison with Rand's spoken worlds to show the changes Mayhew made. Sometimes he quoted extensively from the book to give context. The publisher sent me a standard form DMCA takedown notice, Robert removed the parts of the quotes that did not have changes and all was presumably good. I have heard nothing from the publisher since. If they want more, though, this is a case I believe is worth fighting for.

In my opinion, legally, the Internet is still the Wild Wild Web in terms of Intellectual Property and I predict it will be for a long time to come. Just think of the fundamental issue--protection governing copies. In order for you to read my words right now, which I own the copyright to, they have to be copied onto your browser. How's that for a mess at the premise level? So I believe common sense over listening to this person or that is the best way for me to go.

I don't advise anyone legally, though, since I am not a lawyer. (Gotta say that in this country.)

Michael

EDIT: I also want to make clear that Peter posts excerpts from his archives here on OL with my explicit approval. We discussed this when he showed up.

[Peter]

Thanks for the explanation, Michael.

I once took an excerpt from an article of (edited)'s, changed a bunch of words (usually the same word) by inserting another word and proved, quite believably, Roger Bissell's, theory of no legal abortions after the fetus gains consciousness in the womb around the 26th week of gestation.

I was a big fan of (edited) and extolled her virtues on Atlantis. She was personally for a woman's decision to have an abortion up to the moment the baby is born, and then, (bleep)thinks, a "mother" is entitled to a dead baby. I knew that but my reason for using her argument's form was to show her brilliance. Obviously, if a premise is incorrect, the rest of the logical argument is faulty.

She did not care that I did it for a lark and felt no malice towards her. Quite the contrary. She threatened to sue me, and wrote me several nasty letters. Really nasty. I had the letter deleted from Atlantis, and never spoke or wrote her again. I recently came across an article of hers on the internet, but shuddered, and did not read it.

Peter Taylor

Edited March 24, 2011 by Peter Taylor

[kiaer.ts]

Can the reproduction of private email correspondence, if done in sufficient quantity, really constitute a violation of copyright law? This is not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know, and I'm curious.

George,

This is a gray area of the law--and there is even the problem of which law to use. It gets worse, too--there's a problem with which country's law to use. Don't forget that the Internet covers the world.

So far, the server has been the main defining factor in determining jurisdiction. If I host a work on servers in the USA, the laws of USA prevail. Ditto for other countries. Thus, if I put a work (say, the latest Hollywood movie) on servers in Panama or an island somewhere, I can host almost anything I want without fear of USA copyright violation. (You gotta be careful with hit-men, though, but that's another issue, )

Think Wikileaks, for instance,. for another good example.

In an ideal world where there is no messiness, posting an email you received would be a flat-out copyright violation. In the real world, the legal literature I have read takes into account a whole lot of context.

Here's just a simple example, although it is not relevant to the issue that prompted your question. I mention it merely to show the complexity. Suppose you receive a sales email from an online store and you used it verbatim in a promotion on your site, but gave credit to where it came from. You didn't ask for permission. Is a product description of, say, an electronic drill (or worse, penis enlargers) and purchasing conditions worthy of claiming copyright infringement? No court or judge I know of would waste much time over this.

Here's another. RSS feeds, which the vast majority of Internet sites now have (look for a small squarish orange button with three curved white lines in it), give tacit permission for folks to use the works on such sites elsewhere.

I once blasted the hell out of the SLOP people (including Hsieh since she was there at the time) for posting portions of Chris Sciabarra's emails without his consent, and I called it "copyright violation" back then. However, strictly speaking, since the excerpts were short, they could have argued fair use if a lawsuit arose. My point with those sanctimonious bullshitters, though, was that they used double standards for this stuff. When folks did it to them, it was copyright violation worthy of the harshest moral condemnation and no exception. When they did it to others, it was "righting a wrong."

Like I said, bullshit.

On OL, I have adopted the policy of common sense. I advise people to seek permission. If someone's work is used without permission and that person writes to me complaining that he or she doen't want it posted here, I tend to remove it. But not always. It depends on the reasonableness of the situation.

A recent case with Michael Newberry's tutorials comes to mind, and that wasn't even a copyright thing. We ended up coming to a very good understanding where his values and mine were served. There was no need for moral condemnations, pointing fingers, accusations of this and that, one pushing the other around, and so forth.

Anyway, that doesn't happen much.

The problem with the Objectivist (and even libertarian) world is that it sometimes attracts people who are not reasonable and consider this to be a virtue. I call them control freaks. Depending on what is at stake, I rarely insist with their material, not because I bow to their control, but because pompous pains-in-the-ass are time-suckers with no gain at the end. Their works are rarely objects worth fighting over.

Probably the largest problem we have had (other than the... drum roll... mass plagiarist of the past ) concerns Ayn Rand Answers edited by Robert Mayhew. Robert Campbell did a side-by-side comparison with Rand's spoken worlds to show the changes Mayhew made. Sometimes he quoted extensively from the book to give context. The publisher sent me a standard form DMCA takedown notice, Robert removed the parts of the quotes that did not have changes and all was presumably good. I have heard nothing from the publisher since. If they want more, though, this is a case I believe is worth fighting for.

In my opinion, legally, the Internet is still the Wild Wild Web in terms of Intellectual Property and I predict it will be for a long time to come. Just think of the fundamental issue--protection governing copies. In order for you to read my words right now, which I own the copyright to, they have to be copied onto your browser. How's that for a mess at the premise level? So I believe common sense over listening to this person or that is the best way for me to go.

I don't advise anyone legally, though, since I am not a lawyer. (Gotta say that in this country.)

Three points. First, according to federal law, there is no copyright in federal documents or works created by government agents in the pursuit of their duties. Copyright is a civil matter - there may be criminal laws relevant in the theft, possession, and distribution of government documents. Second, the fact that a court may not find damages in a specific case at law in no way impairs or makes ambiguous one's copyright in one's work. And as for Campbell's work, it falls well within fair use, being the non-commercial use of mere portions of works for scholarly ends which could not possibly be achieved without recourse to the text, which itself was openly published for its intellectual import.

I too will make the necessary disclaimer that Michael is not a lawyer.

Edited March 24, 2011 by Ted Keer

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ted,

I don't recall ever saying that copyright infringement should fall under criminal law instead of civil law, nor do I remember discussing awarding damages or not in this discussion, so I presume your remarks are in addition to mine, not as commentary on them? Am I correct?

When you use words like "federal," "civil" and "criminal," you are presuming USA law, correct?

Here's a question. How about New Zealand where Crhis Sciabarra's emails were posted, being that two of the persons doing so were Americans living here in the USA, and ditto for Chris? I don't remember SLOP's server (I think is was Dreamhost at the time), but I presume it was in NZ. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

I agree with you that Robert Campbell's work falls under fair use. That's what I would argue in a lawsuit. But the judge would decide, not me.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I once took an excerpt from an article of (edited)'s...

Peter,

Ah, man.

That's dirty pool.

Now you got me all curious and stuff.

I ain't proud so I'll go ahead and ask.

Who is she?

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Ted,

I don't recall ever saying that copyright infringement should fall under criminal law instead of civil law, nor do I remember discussing awarding damages or not in this discussion, so I presume your remarks are in addition to mine, not as commentary on them? Am I correct?

When you use words like "federal," "civil" and "criminal," you are presuming USA law, correct?

Here's a question. How about New Zealand where Crhis Sciabarra's emails were posted, being that two of the persons doing so were Americans living here in the USA, and ditto for Chris? I don't remember SLOP's server (I think is was Dreamhost at the time), but I presume it was in NZ. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

I agree with you that Robert Campbell's work falls under fair use. That's what I would argue in a lawsuit. But the judge would decide, not me.

Michael

US law was assumed. The point in bringing up civil versus criminal and the lack of copyright on federal documents was to point out that wikileaks was a poor comparison. Of course you are correct that the reach of the law is limited, that was assumed also. But you said "I can host almost anything I want without fear of USA copyright violation. ...Think Wikileaks, for instance,. for another good example." I don't know what sort of extradition treaties exist between the US and the countries Asshenge frequents. But I have no doubt that felony US criminal statutes apply. (I also have a feeling that the Administration and magistrates in the UK and Sweden are sympathetic to Asshenge.)

As for Sciabarra, I don't know the law in NZ, so I couldn't venture even an amateur opinion, but there would presumably be jurisdiction to bring a suit if, say, they have stronger privacy or defamation laws. For example, Roman Polanski, living in Paris, sued Vanity Fair, published in the US, for defamation in a London court, and won.

As for the Judge deciding, well, you can indict a ham sandwich too.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ted,

Wikileaks is still online.

I doubt it will ever be taken down, that is unless the Wikileaks people don't want it anymore. Even should that happen, there are so many mirrors out there that, like I said, I doubt it will ever be taken down completely.

Sure, the head dude (Assange) was the poster boy for a frontal assault on the USA government and will suffer the consequences of a pissed off humongous spy and military infrasturcture, but I wager the USA copyright law will not be his major headache.

In other words, copyright-wise, I doubt he will suffer punishment. I might be wrong, but for now, I doubt it. So Wikileaks is a very good example of what I was talking about.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Ted,

Wikileaks is still online.

I doubt it will ever be taken down, that is unless the Wikileaks people don't want it anymore. Even should that happen, there are so many mirrors out there that, like I said, I doubt it will ever be taken down completely.

Sure, the head dude (Assange) was the poster boy for a frontal assault on the USA government and will suffer the consequences of a pissed off humongous spy and military infrasturcture, but I wager the USA copyright law will not be his major headache.

In other words, copyright-wise, I doubt he will suffer punishment. I might be wrong, but for now, I doubt it. So Wikileaks is a very good example of what I was talking about.

Michael

Let me repeat, Michael, copyright has nothing to do with any trouble Asshenge might face. There is no copyright in federal government documents or works produced by government agents in the pursuit of their duties.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ted,

There is copyright ownership of private emails. Even when made at work.

You need to brush up on your copyright understanding of government documents being in the public domain if you want to make blanket statements like you just did.

Not all are.

Look it up.

Michael

EDIT: I just looked around and my suspicions were confirmed. Specifically, if private emails are found within the the cables of government officials and war logs, or if those cables.logs contain copyrighted materials of third parties, Wikileaks could be nailed for copyright infringement even on the first dump to the public. The fact that it approached the Pentagon and asked the military to review the documents before releasing them does not legally exempt it from following USA law (when on USA turf).

I have read comments in a few places that Wikileaks has published copyrighted works. For example, in one case I read it had published the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions, which is under copyright protection, but I have not checked this.

I could invest more time and energy, but I just don't have it to prove a hairsplit.

[Reidy]

At least some government assets count as intellectual property. When I worked at a NASA installation years ago, they kept a legal staff that pursued unauthorized use (by t-shirt makers among others) of the agency's photos and designs.

[kiaer.ts]

Ted,

There is copyright ownership of private emails. Even when made at work.

You need to brush up on your copyright understanding of government documents being in the public domain if you want to make blanket statements like you just did.

Not all are.

Look it up.

Michael

EDIT: I just looked around and my suspicions were confirmed. Specifically, if private emails are found within the the cables of government officials and war logs, or if those cables.logs contain copyrighted materials of third parties, Wikileaks could be nailed for copyright infringement even on the first dump to the public. The fact that it approached the Pentagon and asked the military to review the documents before releasing them does not legally exempt it from following USA law (when on USA turf).

I have read comments in a few places that Wikileaks has published copyrighted works. For example, in one case I read it had published the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions, which is under copyright protection, but I have not checked this.

I could invest more time and energy, but I just don't have it to prove a hairsplit.

I said government documents and works created by government agents in the pursuit of their duties are not protected by copyright. How that extends to private emails, or applies to Asshenge, I will leave up to you.

[kiaer.ts]

At least some government assets count as intellectual property. When I worked at a NASA installation years ago, they kept a legal staff that pursued unauthorized use (by t-shirt makers among others) of the agency's photos and designs.

That's trademark, not copyright. I assume government also has a stronger and criminal protection for the unauthorized use of official logos. You can dowhatever you like with images such as Hubble Telescope photos.

[Peter]

I sent a reply as to her identity to your yahoo account, Michael.

Peter