A plan like that could backfire, as one of the primary things that the Fed looks at when setting interest rates is inflation. Increasing the costs of imports across the board will likely increase inflation, which would make a rate cut less likely.
But in general, I think this is too complicated. The simpler explanation for all this is the Executive branch is currently held by isolationist.
It could get even more wild. I could imagine batters having custom profiles for different pitchers. E.g. one bat for when hitting against someone who throws 100MPH four seam fastballs, and another when facing someone who throws 90 MPH cutters.
I'm picturing a caddy standing off to the side of the batter with a bag full of bats, sizing up the last pitch and say "May I suggest the pine with the conical twist sir?"
If you find yourself in Louisville, Kentucky, you can see how they make bats at the factory. At least 20 years ago, it was already pretty automated. They put the blanks on a copy lathe and turn out bats from a template.
I mean that's part of baseball as chess (or poker), right? The batter swaps to the fastball bat, communicating that they expect a fastball. The pitcher knows, from the coach's extensive scouting, and swaps to the curve. But actually, the batter knows he struggles with that kind of fastball and was hoping to bait the curveball, which he's more confident swinging against, and is happy to use a slightly suboptimized bat.
Copyright infringement is a strict liability offence, so not having intent isn't a defense.
However, in this scenario you'd very likely have a good "innocent infringement" defense, which would allow the judge to lower the statutory damages to as low as $200. Since the damages available are so low it wouldn't be worth suing over.
The plaintiffs will, eventually, need to prove that their claim is likely true ("preponderance of the evidence" standard.) Right now they're fighting about expanding discovery to try and uncover more evidence.
The US Constitution grants congress the power to give authors and inventors time-limited exclusive rights to their works/discoveries (Art1.S8.C8). This moots the 1st amendment argument.
I don't think that authors having exclusive rights to their works necessarily implies that someone else _receiving_ them is legally culpable though. My admittedly naive thinking is that someone distributing something illegally doesn't necessarily imply that the receiver is also committing crime. If Robin Hood steals a fancy 4K TV from the mansion downtown and gives it to his neighbor as a birthday gift, would the neighbor be guilty of a crime as well? Does the answer change if Robin Hood were instead the owner of the mansion next door (who could plausibly be the owner of the TV) and gives it to his less wealthy childhood friend?
I'm not saying that either of these situations are directly analogous to the distribution of copyrighted works (since among other things, I don't think there's any way to buy a TV without being able to freely give it to someone else), but that it's not immediately obvious to me that the illegality in distribution has to be symmetric, and that there might be a coherent legal argument that people having the right to _receive_ information isn't inconsistent with the only people with the right to transmit it refusing to allow it. The part of the Constitution (edit: Supreme Court opinion; not actually the Constitution itself) quoted above doesn't seem to say anything about the right to share anything, just to receive it.
If Robin Hood sees a nice painting hanging in the castle, then commands a genie to create an exact brush-stroke-by-brush-stroke replica that is identical to the original in every way, then gives the replica to his neighbor as a birthday gift, has any crime even occurred?
In this situation, the noble does not own the painting, so much as they possess it and have only been granted a license to privately view it, not a license to show it to others, and further license only to reproduce it for their own personal archival purposes - Robin Hood did not have license to view the painting, and the genie did not have license to reproduce it
but now that the reproduction exists, does it carry the same license with it, and should the neighbor be held responsible for the original violation of the license, when all they’ve done is receive an illegally produced copy?
Should the owner if the original painting be held responsible for failing to prevent it from being illegally viewed and copied?
>In this situation, the noble does not own the painting, so much as they possess it and have only been granted a license to privately view it, not a license to show it to others, and further license only to reproduce it for their own personal archival purposes
What is the point of making such an "analogy"? Might as well say the noble has a copy of Die Hard in their DVD collection.
> an exact brush-stroke-by-brush-stroke replica that is identical to the original in every way
Yes, forgery is a crime in many jurisdictions, and in some it does not matter whether or not you are transparent about it being such -- specifically for copyright/trademark reasons.
Forgery would require trying to pass off the copy as an original. As long as it is not pretending to be something it isn't, it is just a replica, not a forgery.
Without taking a stand on whether this _should_ be illegal or not, but whether it _is_, I could imagine that a legal system might want to give the painter a way to get income for a limited time by distributing copies of the painting, and that copying it in this way would infringe upon those rights. In this case though, I'd argue that the modern analogue of this would be Robin Hood getting invited over to watch a movie with the noble (which would be allowed!) and then secretly burning a copy of the DVD when the noble went to the bathroom. Our current legal system doesn't consider "I didn't know what I was doing was illegal" to be a valid defense, so Robin Hood would still be committing a crime by sharing the DVD further after he's copied it. (Since we don't have genies in real life, I don't know how the law would consider them culpable, but based on my very limited knowledge of genie lore, my guess is that the amount of free will they have in this situation is about the same as the DVD burner, so they probably would be okay from the perspective of the law?)
Interestingly, I think that the more direct analog to what we have today would be if the noble themself had the genie copy the painting and gift it to their friend Robin Hood. I do think the same logic I gave above ultimately applies to whether our current legal system would allow the artist to enforce exclusivity, but I find it a lot more compelling as an argument about whether it _should_ be allowed or not compared to the hypothetical you gave. In your version of it, it doesn't feel like allowing what Robin Hood did is particularly beneficial to society, but in the version where the noble is an enthusiastic participant in the copying, it seems a lot more like outlawing it would lead to some harmful dynamics (like you mention about whether the noble bears responsibility for protecting access to the painting based on obtaining it). In other words, having a system where the artist is allowed to enforce his exclusive distribution rights universally actually seems _less_ problematic to me at first glance than one that only applies to those who sign an agreement when purchasing the paintings.
To put this in terms of torrenting, my naive understanding is that right now, it's definitively considered illegal to seed protected content, and the question is whether it's legal to download it without seeding or not. I actually think that it would be worse to allowing downloading without allowing seeding as well, so the system that Meta is arguing for would be worse than if what they did is also illegal. However, I'm honestly not sure if they're actually right or not about what the law says, and that's why I brought up the hypotheticals I did. I also honestly don't feel confident in my feelings on whether I'd prefer to ban both seeding and downloading protected content or to eliminate the legal protections entirely and allow both, but it doesn't seem like that's actually the legal question at the heart of the current matter.
your TV example is a bad example for discussions around copyright — how does one copy a TV?
a more pertinent example to the main topic at hand
i download a file onto my PC. in doing so i have made a copy of that file onto my PC.
if that file is a copyrighted work, e.g. a musical work, i have reproduced the work by downloading it. i have copied it. streaming music is covered by copyright for the same reason - a copy is transferred onto your device because you clicked on a button. the act of copying, or reproducing, the work is the bit that matters.
the distributor (spotify/apple) just gave me access to their original copy to make my own, new, copy. distribution is covered, but slightly different as it is facilitating others to infringe copyright (if i’m pirating music).
in your TV example, a closer idea would be if i 3D printed a new TV based on a patented design. probably not allowed to do it (i don’t know patent law) but who’s gonna enforce it? no one knows about it.
if i start selling my 3D printed TVs, well, i should probably get a lawyer sharpish.
—
also, isn’t knowingly receiving stolen goods a crime? so receiver of the TV in your example could be charged with a crime if it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt that they knew it was stolen?
> If Robin Hood steals a fancy 4K TV from the mansion downtown and gives it to his neighbor as a birthday gift, would the neighbor be guilty of a crime as well?
In this specific example, probably yes.
> Does the answer change if Robin Hood were instead the owner of the mansion next door
Yes, it does. The main problem here is that Robin Hood is well known to obtain everything he has in the world by stealing it.
Once you tell someone a secret, you need to be prepared to beat them up if they share it. — dad, 1996
This gives you the right “to beat them up” but not the right to learn a secret. You can take a patent and build that thing in your house. The government can’t stop you, neither the inventor. It’s when you try to sell it that they can come after you.
>...You can take a patent and build that thing in your house. The government can’t stop you, neither the inventor. It’s when you try to sell it that they can come after you.
I don't think that is correct. The patent act states:
>...Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Note where it says "makes, uses". In practice, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.
As a general defense, the research exemption is only applicable where you can reasonably claim you are using a patented invention for research purposes. But if it looks like the reason you are infringing on the patent is that you want to use the patent, but don't want to pay for the rights, that is not going to work. Even if your intentions are not commercial, making or using a patented invention is still infringement. Like I said before, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.
I don't think it'd hold up, but one could argue that the first amendment was an amendment, and thus changed the constitution, and therefore removed that ability of congress.
The amendments protect the rights as they existed at the time the amendment was passed. I.e. how would the plain text of the text be interpreted by a reasonable person in 1791. E.g., re 2nd, what did militia mean?
Thus, the 1A locks in speech rights as they existed in 1791. Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate.
>Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process.
Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights - the right to X when X means government NOT doing something. Right to freedom of movement, right to freedom of religion, right to freedom of speech, right to privacy - these are restrictions on government to protect the liberties of the people. And then you come to the tenth amendment -
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history.
Congress has zero power whatsoever whenever they lack the consent of the goverened. The functional legitimacy of the entire federal government is near zero - we're living in the orwellian nightmare where the military industrial complex more or less runs the entire show from behind the scenes - something Eisenhower tried to warn us about over half a century ago.
> Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process.
The legislative process can't make exceptions to constitutional provisions. These were recognized as not covered by first amendment protections by jurisprudence, not legislation.
>It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history.
Which is why we immediately replaced a loose federation of Strong States with a new government built around an explicitly empowered and strengthened federal government?
The idea that the constitution was built around a very weak federal government is wrong. The founders built a weak federal government, immediately ran into problems with it, and immediately those same founders built a new government with a strong federal government with EXPLICIT and CLEAR authority and supremacy over the states on certain things.
For example, modern conservatives often decry how the federal supremacy on interstate commerce is used to regulate interstate commerce, but the commerce clause was built to tear down all possible protectionism and trade barriers states had erected amount themselves. The strong federal government was also built explicitly to be a single strong bloc for trade negotiations.
There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken. The founders literally tore up the government to make a new one without the authorization to do so because there was no stability, no long term hope for the existing one.
>...There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken.
Nobody listened to them? I think most historians would agree that they were instrumental in getting the bill of rights added to the constitution. For example:
>...Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, three crucial states, made ratification of the Constitution contingent on a Bill of Rights. In Massachusetts, arguments between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists erupted in a physical brawl between Elbridge Gerry and Francis Dana. Sensing that Anti-Federalist sentiment would sink ratification efforts, James Madison reluctantly agreed to draft a list of rights that the new federal government could not encroach.
"In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931) ; see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824). Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation." District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).
Interpreted as an ordinary voter would have interpreted it.
It doesn't moot the argument just makes it slightly more complicated. Not only is current copryight very far from what a normal human would understand as a limited time but that is not the only restriction there - this power is also given with a specific purpose that current copyright does not effectively serve.
1997 would be JDK 1.1, which introduced the java.util.Calendar/GregorianCalendar classes. The Calendar API was an improvement in some use cases over Date, but it's biggest flaw was mutability. The current API is based on JodaTime and is very similar to Temporal.
Assuming the works have registered with the copyright office they're eligible for statutory damages.
The range for that is huge though, it can be in the hundreds of dollars per work, or if the infringement is shown to be wilful then a judge can award up to $150,000 per work.
I've always preferred it to low-quality trackpads that a lot of laptops tend to have. Typically I would use my thumb and wouldn't have to move my hand very much at all.
But in general, I think this is too complicated. The simpler explanation for all this is the Executive branch is currently held by isolationist.