Archive for the ‘News’ Category
An important case in online video sharing was decided last week. In Universal Media Group v. Veoh Networks (PDF) the federal judge dismissed the case on the grounds that he believed Veoh Network Inc, a popular video sharing website, fell under safe harbor clauses within the DMCA. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the act that protects copyrights in the online realm. An Electronica Frontier Foundation spokesperson felt that this case would also apply to YouTube in that their terms of services and procedures are similar.
This case allows video sharing sites to fend off liability for copyright infringement from it’s users given they use a rather low standard of procedures in handling reported infringing use. The case seems to acquiesce that works may be ‘performed’ and the sharing sites don’t need to ‘pre-check’ the videos before it displays them. This burden on video sites to remove infringing works strikes a balance between IP rights and video dissemination. While it’s still a considerable financial burden on sharing sites the costs aren’t as bad as facing copyright litigation.
What discussion of online videos and applicable law would be complete without an embedded High-Def video?
The consensus among them is that the national economic picture is improving; Texas is weathering the recession better than most states; and energy and technology will be the two sectors that lead the state’s recovery. Using current and projected population trends, each offered insight into how that growth will impact Texas by 2050.
Commissioner Staples said the increase in population translates to a net decrease of 1.5 million acres of agricultural land. “This amounts to a per capita loss of 270 acres for each 1,000 new residents. We’ve got to do the math on water needs, infrastructure and figure out what this means in an opportunity for our state. This summit is all about recognizing those challenges and developing a strategy for success.”
Extrapolating from population statistics, Dr. Perryman said that 1,000 new residents move to Texas each day. Just to meet housing needs for this burgeoning population, Texas will need to add 165,000 multi-family and single family homes each year to keep pace.
“What that means on highways, schools, water and sewer is that it will be a challenge to keep that, and everything else, going. But it’s also a huge opportunity that will define our future with new emerging technologies,” said Commissioner Staples.
“In bad times, good is ‘relative,’” Dr. Perryman said. “Regarding housing, our situation is not as bad as it could have been. We overbuilt the market, but not drastically. This is not worse than the 1980s – that was the worst time for Texas since the Great Depression.” He said builders have stopped building in Texas and will likely construct only 86,000 units this year.
He applauded passage of Proposition 4 on the Nov. 11 ballot, which creates a pathway for additional top tier research universities.
“Companies want to congregate around educational institutions. Look at microelectronics in Austin and the University of Texas,” he said. Biotechnology and food represent new frontiers for business development.
“If you bring in research money, you create jobs,” he said. To illustrate the point, he cited the national gross domestic product (GDP) at $14 trillion. The gross domestic product of start-up businesses founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni is $2 trillion. Dr. Perryman said that Massachusetts understands the incubation process between business and education, and so does California.
Texas is starting to “get it.”
“Technology will be something that leads us out of the recession,” he said. “And so will energy.”
Dr. Perryman said that Texas represents eight percent of the national economy; however, the state only lost four percent of what the country lost during the recession.
Lt. Gov. Dewhurst agreed with Dr. Perryman on education as a pathway for creating new jobs. “We must improve public schools and universities so they can prepare workers and leaders to succeed,” he said. “We have tried to create
pro-growth, pro-business environment in Texas, and people all around the country are hearing about this.
“Over the last three years, Texas is #1 in creating jobs; #1 as the place to do business; we have more Fortune 500 companies in Texas than any other state. This is huge – think of the business opportunities.”
The WSJ reported that Homeowners claimed a victory in New Jersey where a nationwide grassroots effort to stop government abuse of eminent domain power since the misguided decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
“Under that standard, as Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her dissent in Kelo v. City of New London, any Motel 6 can be knocked down for a Ritz-Carlton. In the Long Branch case, the contracts even ceded the city’s power of eminent domain to the developers, giving private businesses the ability to tell the city when it should confiscate private property. Such flagrant abuse of public power for private purposes troubles most voters. In the wake of Kelo, some 43 states have reformed eminent domain laws to ensure they couldn’t become a tool used casually against local homeowners on behalf of private interests. New Jersey is one of seven states that did nothing. The Garden State’s courts have been more active, however. In 2007, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that to qualify for blight, an area must be a detriment to the health, safety and welfare of its residents. Subsequent rulings have adopted this more robust protection of private property, including for the homeowners of Long Branch.”
San Francisco, CA — Delving into privacy concerns in the age of the smart phone, the California Supreme Court determined today that after police take a cell phone from a suspect during an arrest, they can search the phone’s text messages without a warrant.
The majority in the 5-2 decision reasoned that U.S. Supreme Court precedents call for cell phones to be treated as personal property “immediately associated” with the suspect’s person.
But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote that information stored on cell phones shouldn’t be examined without a warrant and warned that the majority sanctioned searches that violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
In 2007, a Ventura County deputy sheriff arrested Gregory Diaz after watching an Ecstasy deal go down in the backseat of Diaz’s car. About an hour and a half later, after Diaz denied knowing anything about the transaction, the deputy looked at Diaz’s cell phone text message folder and found a text that seemed to set a price for six Ecstasy pills. When confronted with the message, Diaz admitted to participating in the drug sale.
Diaz tried to suppress the evidence from the cell phone search, but both the trial court and the Second District Court of Appeal held that the search was proper.
In weighing whether perusing the text messages constituted an illegal search, the Supreme Court relied largely on United States v. Robinson , 414 U.S. 218, 224 (1973) — which held it was legal for an officer to search a cigarette pack found in an arrestee’s coat pocket — and United States v. Chadwick 433 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1977), which invalidated federal narcotics agents’ warrantless search of a 200-pound foot locker after they arrested the men loading it into a car.
Diaz’s lawyer, Lyn Woodward of Pacific Grove, had argued that the quantities of personal data cell phones contain are “unrivaled” by items traditionally considered “immediately associated with the person of the arrestee,” such as clothing or a cigarette pack. She also argued that cell phones should be treated like the foot locker in Chadwick because they’re not necessarily worn on the person.
But in an opinion written by Justice Ming Chin, the majority said the high court has held that it doesn’t matter what the item is — it can be searched without a warrant if it’s been properly seized.
“Nothing in these decisions even hints that whether a warrant is necessary for a search of an item properly seized from an arrestee’s person incident to a lawful custodial arrest depends in any way on the character of the seized item,” Chin wrote in People v. Diaz , S166600.
Werdegar, joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in the dissent, argued there’s no need to search a cell phone immediately if it’s in police control, and that instead a warrant can be obtained to conduct the search properly. She wrote that the majority gave “police carte blanche, with no showing of exigency, to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person.”
And, in a footnote, Werdegar reasoned that the facts of the case — because of increasingly ubiquitous cell phones and handheld computers — differ enough that the precedents the majority cites “provide no basis for evading this court’s independent responsibility to determine the constitutionality of the search at issue.”
But if the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions should be revisited “in light of modern technology,” Chin wrote, “then that reevaluation must be undertaken by the high court itself.”
The following provisions have recently taken effect.
Card issuers will be prohibited from raising rates on new accounts for 12 months.
Issuers can’t impose retroactive rate increases, meaning that rate hikes on outstanding balances generally will be prohibited. The exception to this is consumers who are 60 days or more late with their payments.
However, card issuers can still raise your rate on new purchases at any time, as long as they provide 45 days’ written notice.
People under age 21 will have to get an adult co-signer to get a credit card if they can’t show they have the means to pay off the debt on their own.
Card issuers also will be barred from offering freebies to college students on campus to get them to apply for a card.
Any amount you pay above the minimum payment will be applied to the balance with the highest interest rate.
Issuers must show you how long it would take you to pay off your card and the total cost if you just made minimum payments. (That’s assuming you don’t charge more on the card.)
“If you had no idea of how damaging minimum-payment syndrome is, you get it now,” said Todd Mark, vice president of education at Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Dallas.
One rotten thing some card issuers have done in response to the law is double the minimum payment for some cardholders from 2.5 percent of the total balance to 5 percent.
“It may be more difficult for these consumers to realize the benefit from this provision,” said Bill Hardekopf, chief executive of LowCards.com.
Card issuers won’t be able to charge interest on balances from a prior billing cycle that have been paid, a practice known as “double-cycle billing.”
Due dates for card payments must be the same each month.
Credit card issuers will be prohibited from opening an account or increasing the credit limit on an existing account unless the issuer has considered whether the borrower has the ability to repay the debt.