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john mayer posted:I don't know anything about the legality of the situation, but as a Spanish speaker it's obvious when he wrote a lot of his copy while looking at your site. In of itself, though, that's not illegal. I haven't heard any trademark usage in play here, (not clear that there is any use in commerce here going on), and asking for a $10,000 license fee is absurd. OP: don't use people's prewritten takedown notices, for the above reasons.
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Mar 1, 2011 18:38
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the littlest prince posted:I can't answer the employment question, but regarding your actual debt, you should totally read this thread because it sounds like you might have a scummy collector: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3234974 If they get a judgment again, which is entirely possible if he owes money, they can go after his wages.
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Mar 1, 2011 19:00
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chemosh6969 posted:If they get a judgment again, which is entirely possible if he owes money, they can go after his wages. If they're still trying to get him to pay then chances are they haven't been through the court system yet. If they already had a judgment they would probably just let the wages be garnished and be done with it.
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Mar 1, 2011 19:29
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Posting on behalf of my friend who lives in Rivserside, California (Riverside County). I found out today that my friend's laptop broke, and the cause is apparently "faulty electrical outlets" in her apartment, which she just recently moved into (she is in her second month of living there right now). Normally this would be a rather unremarkable occurrence, but there are two facts that make me wonder if her landlord is legally responsible for the damage. 1) Not knowing what was wrong, she brought her laptop to a computer repair shop and the worker there told her that the computer was fried on the inside and that a faulty outlet was responsible. 2) She has two roommates, both of which have their own laptops which have become similarly fried. So in a three person apartment there are three laptops, all of which are fried, and a computer repair shop identifies a faulty outlet as the cause. My question obviously, is whether or not the landlord is legally obligated to cover the laptops seeing as it was a fault of a recently occupied apartment that caused the damage. Also, even if the landlord is legally responsible, is at all practical to expect him to cover it, or is it more likely that burden of proof and the hassle/expense of going to court means that my friend and her roommates are basically screwed?
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Mar 2, 2011 09:56
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The landlord should absolutely pay for the laptops. Get it in writing from the computer repair shop for each laptop, then take it to small claims court if the landlord won't pay. Small claims is cheap and informal, and if they have proper documentation they'll probably win. Have each roommate sue individually if all of them are on the lease.
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Mar 2, 2011 10:36
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Konstantin posted:The landlord should absolutely pay for the laptops. Get it in writing from the computer repair shop for each laptop, then take it to small claims court if the landlord won't pay. Small claims is cheap and informal, and if they have proper documentation they'll probably win. Have each roommate sue individually if all of them are on the lease. Actually, probably not. The only way the landlord could be responsible is if he had some knowledge about the faulty outlet and didn't fix it. Even if he knew, establishing that he knew about the outlet being faulty (to the extent that it would cause damage to the tenants' property) is probably difficult if not impossible. It's very similar to having a hot water heater fail and flood your apartment. The landlord is responsible for repairs and maintenance. You would have to establish that he was negligent (or worse) in carrying out these obligations, not merely that there was a problem and your stuff got damaged. Outlets go bad. Water heaters fail. These things happen. That's what insurance is for. You should have renter's insurance (and if anyone renting and reading this thread *doesn't* have it, GET IT) to cover these things. It's exactly what it's for. Renter's insurance is usually pretty inexpensive. If you have car insurance with a major carrier, they often can bundle some renter's with it for a pretty low price. It probably doesn't help Roommate's #2 and #3 that they should've known *not* to use the faulty outlet(s), as it had already fried Roomate #1's computer.
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Mar 2, 2011 16:13
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I'm not a lawyer, but I am a computer nerd. The only way I can see for "faulty outlets" (rather than a power surge or whatever) to fry computer power supplies would be if the outlets are miswired, probably with a bad ground. If the landlord has a duty to keep the apartment's electrical system up to code, and it is in fact the outlet's fault, then the landlord hasn't done it. I don't know the legal aspect to say whether it's the responsibility of the landlord or the tenants to monitor that, though. From a technical standpoint, if you do have a bad ground or miswired outlet, get that poo poo fixed now. Miswired electrical outlets can be a serious safety problem. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 2, 2011 |
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Mar 2, 2011 17:06
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Maybe get an electrician to look at it to find out if something's wrong or not?
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Mar 2, 2011 17:40
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Here's something I was wondering about. Stars and Stripes is an official newspaper for the United States military. It is editorially independent, but receives federal funding, and its' reporters are civilian Department of Defense employees. The newspaper claims that it is protected by copyright, but shouldn't it be in the public domain because it is a work of the Federal Government?
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Mar 2, 2011 20:29
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EDIT: nvm
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Mar 2, 2011 20:38
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Konstantin posted:shouldn't it be in the public domain because it is a work of the Federal Government? If the federal government comes up with new bomb technology, do you think that's going to be public domain?
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Mar 2, 2011 21:18
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chemosh6969 posted:If the federal government comes up with new bomb technology, do you think that's going to be public domain? Yes it probably is public domain. I don't think public domain means what you think it does. If you distribute copies of secret government writings about new bomb technologies, the federal government will not sue you for violating their copyright; you will face criminal charges for treason or espionage or terrorism or something.
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Mar 2, 2011 23:35
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chemosh6969 posted:If the federal government comes up with new bomb technology, do you think that's going to be public domain? Bomb technology is not copyrightable subject matter; notwithstanding this, the government does not research bomb technology -- defense contractors do all the patenting and other information.
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Mar 3, 2011 00:07
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I'm taking my former roommate to small claims court in Tucson, AZ over unpaid rent and utilities, etc. She's on the lease. She gave her 30 days notice in February, and we found someone to replace her. We outlined what she needed to do to get off the lease (paint over her room, remove everything, get up to date on bills with us), and now it's March. She hasn't returned her keys, she didn't paint, and she left a bunch of furniture crap on the back porch where it got rained on and is getting gross and moldy. When I sue her, I assume it would be for removing her items and repainting, along with the utilities, as opposed to March rent. Would it be fair to just use the amounts the leasing office would charge as if we had all left and they had to repaint/remove this stuff, even though they're not the ones repainting and removing it?
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Mar 3, 2011 00:48
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nm
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Mar 3, 2011 00:49
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SWATJester posted:Bomb technology is not copyrightable subject matter; notwithstanding this, the government does not research bomb technology -- defense contractors do all the patenting and other information. All patent applications are done in the name of the individual (human) inventor. However, the federal government can and does take an assignment of patent rights as would any corporate entity.
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Mar 3, 2011 02:10
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SWATJester posted:Bomb technology is not copyrightable subject matter; notwithstanding this, the government does not research bomb technology -- defense contractors do all the patenting and other information. Contractors don't do it all. We've come up with stuff, that we submitted through the processes and had it picked up. Speaking from experience as a munitions troop in the Air Force. I'm also not talking about making a new missile but smaller things. Depending on what you come up with, you can get some cash from it.
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Mar 3, 2011 03:23
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Is an FBI agent obliged to arrest someone they witness breaking a federal law? Does it matter if they are on duty or off duty? What about if the agent does not witness it but instead hears a confession, i.e. "I smoked a ton of marijuana last night." or "I pirated the latest Photoshop." I've googled several different combinations of words but can't find anything, it's mostly about job requirements or sites offering to find criminal records.
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Mar 3, 2011 17:28
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USDA Choice posted:Is an FBI agent obliged to arrest someone they witness breaking a federal law? Does it matter if they are on duty or off duty? What about if the agent does not witness it but instead hears a confession, i.e. "I smoked a ton of marijuana last night." or "I pirated the latest Photoshop." No.
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Mar 3, 2011 17:36
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In a situation where someone overdosed and passed out, and the police search the person and find contraband on him or her, can they press charges? This is in a state with a good samaritan law but does that apply to the person?
Busy Bee fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Mar 3, 2011 |
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Mar 3, 2011 18:45
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RE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_%28BDSM%29 STATE: AL I am currently dating someone who is into bondage/sadomasochism and has requested that I incorporate certain things, i.e. slapping, spanking, restraints, etc. into our time together. I mentioned some sort of consent form being signed/put into place so that there is not some sort of fallout in terms of being termed as abuse/assault/whatever. Is consent a valid defense provided that it is informed consent and signed by both parties? Not looking to inflict any actual bodily harm or anything, but she expressed an interest in being "used." Any advice on how to handle?
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Mar 3, 2011 19:07
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Busy Bee posted:In a situation where someone overdosed and passed out, and the police search the person and find contraband on him or her, can they press charges? Yes. Busy Bee posted:This is in a state with a good samaritan law but does that apply to the person? "Good Samaritan law" can describe a number of things (duty to assist, immunity for those who assist), but I don't see how any Good Samaritan law would act to prevent a cop from charging the drug user, just because s/he passed out.
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Mar 3, 2011 19:44
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eviljelly posted:"Good Samaritan law" can describe a number of things (duty to assist, immunity for those who assist), but I don't see how any Good Samaritan law would act to prevent a cop from charging the drug user, just because s/he passed out. http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100607/NEWS01/706079913&news01ad=1 "Under the new law, people will not be charged with drug possession if police obtained evidence for the charge only because the person called 911. The victim also won’t be charged with drug possession."
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Mar 3, 2011 19:50
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Busy Bee posted:In a situation where someone overdosed and passed out, and the police search the person and find contraband on him or her, can they press charges? Busy Bee posted:This is in a state with a good samaritan law but does that apply to the person? "a responder [that is, not the person in need] is presumed to be immune from civil [that is, not criminal] liability for actions taken in good faith [for example, not illegal acts] to render aid to a person unable to request or to consent to such aid. edit: Busy Bee posted:http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100607/NEWS01/706079913&news01ad=1 LLJKSiLk posted:RE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_%28BDSM%29 If you are not in a position of trust with your partner such that you are trying to get legally enforceable protection for yourself, you probably should not be engaging in play that is grounded in, flows from, and explores said trust. Any (theoretically) binding consent procedures that would protect you in court would wreck whatever scene you two were trying to begin. Any other consent form, even a super vanilla slave (or whatever less inflammatory name you want to give it) contract would be Exhibit 'A' against you in a case against you. The problem with any kind of consent to power 'exchange' is that by definition, the contract is an adhesion contract and would not be enforceable. It's all well and good as part of a scene, but it's not going to hold up in court. I think there's a BDSM thread around here somewhere. Go there and look around, get some safewords and start small. joat mon fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 3, 2011 |
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Mar 3, 2011 20:21
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Having talked to some people I know who are into BDSM the answer is pretty much 'don't rape people'.
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Mar 3, 2011 20:54
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joat mon posted:This is a good law. Unfortunately, the traditional 'good samaritan' law won't cover your fact pattern. If you are in WA, good for you. If not, what state? Fortunately, this did not happen to me but rather my friend. And yes, he is in WA state.
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Mar 3, 2011 21:16
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Hypothetical question. As I understand some states require permission to record conversations and some states do not. What if a person in a state that requires permission called a person in a state that did not require permission. Does one take precedence over the other? Is there a federal law that will come into effect?
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Mar 3, 2011 21:40
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Busy Bee posted:http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100607/NEWS01/706079913&news01ad=1 That's a pretty unique "Good Samaritan" law. Good for them. By the way: "The law doesn’t offer protection from any other criminal charges." - I would imagine this includes charges for dealing. So there's still a lot of caveats. Plus, I imagine nothing stops cops from keeping an eye on the OD victim afterwrds.
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Mar 3, 2011 23:50
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I have a question about renters rights in MA. Perhaps one of you folks can help me? Basically, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Boston. My girlfriend stops by 3, sometimes 4 times a week to sleep here. I got confronted by my landlord today, saying that 'she lives here, we have records of her being here, that needs to stop or I will evict you'. She doesn't live here, has no stuff here, has an apartment elsewhere that she has a signed lease for- do I have any basis here to tell him to stuff it or am I going to have to look for a new place?
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Mar 4, 2011 00:49
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StarcraftM posted:I have a question about renters rights in MA. Perhaps one of you folks can help me? Tell him you're entitled to have overnight guests and she resides somewhere else.
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Mar 4, 2011 05:32
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Quick question. I live in Ontario, and have a 25k loan taken out in my name with my parents co-signing it. I have no intentions of paying it back due to the circumstances, which I'm not really going to go into (that's a whole lot of e/n crap). Under the way co-signing works in Ontario, if I refused to take responsibility for the loan, would they go after my parents instead? I know your credit rating would take a hit, but I don't have any finances, and have no need for large loans. Another complication is that if I get married, would my husband be on the hook for it as well since he would be with me?
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Mar 4, 2011 08:14
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Aculard posted:I live in Ontario, and have a 25k loan taken out in my name with my parents co-signing it. They will go after your parents for it. They can also garnish your wages/your parents' wages, or possibly get a lien on property belonging to either of you. Trillian fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Mar 4, 2011 |
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Mar 4, 2011 09:41
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Incredulous Red posted:Tell him you're entitled to have overnight guests and she resides somewhere else. The lease might say you can't have the same person staying over for so many days out of a month/week before they're allowed to increase rent/utilities/etc. Someone staying half a month would probably fall into that. That's pretty standard where I am.
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Mar 4, 2011 19:09
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Jurisdiction: Alberta, Canada We sold a house and bought a new one last fall. The lawyer that we picked for the transactions seriously seemed drunk most of the time, but we had used him years ago for our wills, and I stupidly trusted him to handle the sale & new purchase. He dropped the ball on a number of occasions, and he delayed possession on both houses by being completely unavailable on the day of possession. Since no one could get a hold of him, the transfer of properties was completed a day late. Both the purchasers of our old house and seller of the new house were not happy with the delay. My real estate agent and the seller’s lawyer both put in complaints to the law society about my lawyer. I was waiting until we got the leftover proceeds from the sale to put in my own complaint. A couple of weeks after the closing, I contacted my lawyer’s office to get a record of payouts that he had completed, and to see when we could pick up the leftover proceeds of the sale. My lawyer had died the day before, and no one could help me. I was told to fax over a request for information that would be passed on to the custodian of his files. When I didn’t hear anything back after a month, I contacted the law society to find out who the custodian was, and got his contact information. Initially, the only file the custodian could find was our wills from ten years back, but eventually he found a ledger account of the sales transactions, but no actual files. He told me he would investigate, but it would take time. We are now six months from the date we purchased our house, and I got an email from the custodian last night. He still can’t find our file, and it appears the title was never transferred to us. He also sent me a copy of the ledger from our account, which is completely wrong. We were billed three times the quoted amount for services rendered, and there is a substantial chunk of money missing – never recorded in the ledger. He was also quite specific in the fact that he is not my lawyer; he can’t help me finalize the sale or give me any advice. He also told me there was no more money in the trust account, so I’m out of luck for the rest of the sales proceeds. I will need to pay another lawyer to fix this situation for me. I’ve called the county property tax department; the account is still in old owners’ name. Land Titles Registry tells me that the old owner is still the legal registered owner of our property. Is there any recourse I can take against the lawyer’s estate to recoup the costs I’m going to have to get the property into my name, and how the hell do I get the rest of the sales proceeds if the trust account is empty?
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Mar 4, 2011 22:09
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Today, a friend of mine (call him Bob) got a call from my number asking for sensitive information. My phone has been in my apartment all day, clearly not my phone that made the call. Another friend of mine (Bill) had the same problem, where his number was used to call a third friend (Carlos) and asking for different info but still something that isn't supposed to get out there. After he hung up, Bob texted me asking what exactly I wanted again. I was confused and asked what he was talking about. After all 4 of us exchanged information, Bill and I called our service providers (I have an iphone using AT&T, Bill has a Droid using Verizon) and asked what the deal is and if someone actually used our number to call them. We both received answers saying someone was probably using a service like calleridfaker. This makes sense because Bob and Carlos both said the voices were pretty distorted and hard to hear. We're looking into getting the number from the service providers, but should I involve the police here? What law or laws are they breaking by doing this? I work in an industry where your word is typically a lot and large sums of money are exchanged on a daily basis. While I trust my friends to be careful, if someone were to lose a few thousand dollars due to this I would feel pretty awful if I didn't do everything I could. Asking for confidential phone numbers or getting ahold of an online password is potentially worth a lot of money. I use the term "friend" to describe all the people involved when there is an incredibly large circle of people who I refer to as friends, associates, etc. Someone just having these 4 phone numbers is pretty significant since no one here really gives out our numbers easily and we live nowhere near each other and see each other sparingly. Jurisdiction is primarily Nevada, but numbers are registered in many different states and Carlos lives on the other side of the country. gobboboy fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 5, 2011 |
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Mar 5, 2011 04:32
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gobboboy posted:Today, a friend of mine (call him Bob) got a call from my number asking for sensitive information. My phone has been in my apartment all day, clearly not my phone that made the call. Another friend of mine (Bill) had the same problem, where his number was used to call a third friend (Carlos) and asking for different info but still something that isn't supposed to get out there. The full description makes it sound like something law enforcement would be very interested in, but catching their eye might be tough since "someone faked a caller id" isn't something the guy at the desk taking reports is going to give a poo poo about. See if you can find a fraud/cyber-crime division of some kind and start calling.
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Mar 5, 2011 06:13
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If it's civil legal advice you really want, you need legal advice beyond what this thread can offer because putting the effort into identifying the caller is way beyond what any normal attorney would do without extraordinary fees. As for practical advice, remind your bone-head 20 year old poker ka-billionaire friends not to transfer a red loving cent to any account ever unless the recipient is a) well known and b) at least on the phone if not in the physical vicinity of the giver. I assume, of course, that this "sensitive information" relates to your poker adventures. If some dude from Nigeria (or wherever) jacks your phone number then convinces your friend to give up a few grand (via "garbled voices" or however you described it), then you just deal with it and move on. As to how you would deal with it, I leave that up to those more technologically savvy than myself. If my random guess at your problem is inaccurate, then my mistake. Still, in terms of criminal advice, go to the Las Vegas police because this is some variation of simple criminal theft/fraud and they can at least point you in the right direction. BigHead fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Mar 5, 2011 |
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Mar 5, 2011 10:03
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Trillian posted:They will go after your parents for it. They can also garnish your wages/your parents' wages, or possibly get a lien on property belonging to either of you. Would they even bother going after me? I make 8k a year if that, and have no property (car, house, stamp collection, nada). My parents make 150k+ a year together though, and just put in a 29k kitchen within their house in the last 5 years. I'm not married, so if it came to something like, declaring bankruptcy, I would be off the hook?
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Mar 5, 2011 13:07
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Aculard posted:Would they even bother going after me? I make 8k a year if that, and have no property (car, house, stamp collection, nada). My parents make 150k+ a year together though, and just put in a 29k kitchen within their house in the last 5 years. I'm not married, so if it came to something like, declaring bankruptcy, I would be off the hook? Ha, they'd take one look at the circumstances and go straight for your parents. I hope you weren't planning on talking to them for the next ever.
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Mar 5, 2011 13:15
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Alchenar posted:Ha, they'd take one look at the circumstances and go straight for your parents. I hope you weren't planning on talking to them for the next ever. Oh, I've already stopped talking to them forever. The situation with the loan can be summed up with the fact that I have never had control or direct access to it. my parents locked the card away in their safe and refused to tell me about the balances, or emancipate me so I could get federal loans under my own name with lower interest (because I wasn't "good with money") That's a weight off my shoulders then. They've been paying the minimum for 2+ years now so I guess I'll just keep on my way without em.
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Mar 5, 2011 15:18
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