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Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

I'd read 26 to mean that the rental doesn't include any storage space; when I've rented in buildings with a storage locker they list it in the lease. (Not a CA lawyer, etc etc etc)

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Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Where?

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Ralphis posted:

I meant as far as production of the tracks (obviously). I guess this leads me to another related question though:

Are sites like OCRemix technically breaking copyrights with practically every post? Are these different than radio music because they are not registered through ASCAP or BMI?

Thanks for the input!

Yes, they are (probably) violating (songwriting/publishing) copyrights with basically every post. No, they are not different than radio music; ASCAP/BMI do a lot more than just the radio (though the radio is historically the majority of their business model, they've done a lot - a lot of it bad - the last few years in other arenas.) A song (technically, a composition) that's registered with ASCAP/BMI is usually easier to clear, since you can just get an ASCAP/BMI/(SESAC) license and be covered for any of their works, while unregistered works must be cleared with their composers.

Music copyright is complex. Every recording of a song not only has the usual rights protected (distribution, public performance, replication, etc.), but there are also two protected elements - first, the music composition is protected, and second, the sound recording. Conceptually, this makes a lot of sense - just because Beethoven died hundreds of years ago and his compositions are out of copyright, that doesn't mean that the incentive story of copyright shouldn't allow for reward for the performers who translate that written work into sound (there's a similar concept for the recorded performance of literary works - even though the underlying work might be out of copyright, the implementation is protected if fixed). Similarly, if we only protected the sound recording, there's no reason to do the hard work of composition - you'd be better off only making covers and reaping the benefits of others' work (this is part of the economic theory of copyright, which has lots of problems, but which tends to be the academic theory most used in defending copyright). So we recognize both elements.

The separation of the two elements is also a historical matter. Composition copyright was protected before there were effective technologies for recording and reproducing performances. Since copyright is statutory, the statute protected the composition but didn't incorporate any protection for the sound recording. Piracy of sound recordings ensued basically as soon as it was technically possible to do so, and courts threw up their hands and said "well, look, there's no right in the statute". So Congress created one. But historically they're recognized as different rights; this makes even more sense if you realize that for most of history, and even now in many genres, composers and performers are entirely different entities with significantly different interests.

Music is also more complex because the two elements don't have the same protections. The major difference is that sound recordings don't receive analog public performance protection, though they do receive a digital public performance right - i.e., streaming. There are historical reasons for this, but they basically amount to "the radio industry in the 50s and 60s had a ton of money and successfully lobbied Congress to keep their exemption from public performance royalties for terrestrial broadcast". It's also given rise to the practice (widespread in country music in particular) of popular performers demanding to be registered as one of the composers when they record/perform a song by an unknown songwriter - that way they get paid for radio play, and because the popular performer can get their song played, songwriters typically acquiesce. But that's a total aside.

(And entirely aside from all that, even if copyright only covered sound recordings, the derivative works right would probably be extended to cover covers.)

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

EvilJay posted:

IANAL but a court won't allow you to anonymously file a motion to quash so you'd have to file it under your real name. Once you file the motion, they GET your name which is what they want anyway.

Read up on this blog, it has most of the information you'll need/want:
http://torrentlawyer.wordpress.com/

Varies by jurisdiction whether they'll allow you to anonymously file your motion to quash. Movement recently has been generally away from allowing it, though.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Diplomaticus posted:

1) Yes. No.

2. You're not. You need a license. Lots of millions - you could potentially be liable for tens of thousands of dollars per each infringing download that you distribute (e.g. each person who downloads each song).

Specifically, you can go through the § 115 compulsory license process (don't do this, HFA is much easier and charges the statutory rate anyway), or you can negotiate a license with the original composer (except odds are you can't if you're asking these questions), or you can get a mechanical license - typically via the Harry Fox Agency (do this - they're actually workable for small artists).

Diplomaticus isn't quite right here, though: the current interpretation in most circuits (at least 1/2/9/11) is that the award is between 200 and 150,000 per work infringed, depending on a few factors, no matter how many times it's been infringed (the RIAA screwed this up in the Limewire suit). That said, you'd still be looking at up to 150k in damages per song you distribute, plus the potential of attorney's fees. (I don't know if it's settled what happens when you infringe on one original work in multiple different infringing works - i.e. you cover Paparazzi as both chiptune and salsa track without obtaining permission).

tldr: License yourself properly. In this particular case, it should be fairly easy to do, not incredibly expensive (9c per song under 5 minutes, slightly more if it goes over the 5 minute mark, and yes that's a solid chunk of what you'd get from iTunes for selling the track but then again, you didn't write the song).

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Diplomaticus posted:

Yeah I'm in 4th circuit.

I didn't think there were any circuits that actually went against the statutory text on this one, so I went and checked. In the 4th Circuit, the per work infringed rule applies (check Bouchat v. Champion Prods., or read the Arista v. Limewire opinion on damages calculation - 06-CV-5936 docket item 622 in SDNY). The 9th had a brief interval of per-infringement, but it was in a very different context and the 9th has subsequently rejected that position anyway. 2 and 9, which tend to be the most influential in the copyright context, are both pretty well settled on per work infringed now, so it's safe to assume that's your exposure.

That said, it's still up to 150k per track plus attorney's fees, so, you know, not exactly a cheap award. The recent Constitutional reduction in damages trend isn't going to apply to someone selling songs, either, so you're likely to see the full hit.

edit: goddamnit way to edit while I'm researching/typing.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Dexter Stratton posted:

My question has to do with copyright law (I think). If someone has asked the same question, I apologize.

My brother is a terrific musician who arranges a lot of pieces for marching bands or pep bands. He typically gets a call from a band director who asks for a particular pop song in 15 parts or whatever so he can play it at the basketball game. My brother arranges the parts and sends it off. I've told him he could get into some kind of trouble with recording companies if he doesn't get permission to make arrangements. He's not sure where to start with that process.

Can he license his arrangements with a mechanical license? He'd like to start making money this way, but it seems to me that if he's reproducing someone else's work, he owes someone something.

He cannot use a mechanical license for what he's doing. Mechanicals include the privilege of making arrangements (to a limited extent), but only for purposes of generating a recording of that arrangement (which is what the mechanical actually pays for). If you want to create and exploit a particular composition, then you need to obtain permission directly from the composer/publisher.

Getting that permission is why you need a specialist - it has to be negotiated, individually, per composition you wish to make arrangements of.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

CaptainFuzychin posted:

So I got the following email today:


After way too much googling, I figured out that Dance All Day is a German digital music distribution company, and that from the sound of various people's complaints about having similar issues, it seems that my video has been mistaken for one that contains their content. Upon further investigation I found that not one but TWO of my videos have been flagged by youtube for infringement on the same company, and are blocked from being viewed in Germany. So I did the logical thing and filed a dispute claim via Youtube's handy and little form that doesn't give me any option to state my case.

This is my case: the videos in question are entirely original content that I made in film school years ago, one of which doesn't even have music and the other has completely original music created specifically for the movie by a guitarist I know. Aside from that, both videos actually predate the existence of Dance All Day by a couple years. So obviously enough, they can't possibly contain anyone else's intellectual property.

My questions:
1: Is my ability to copyright these videos in any way impeded by this? I am in the process of copyrighting everything I've done and I don't want this bullshit getting in the way.

2: If I can't solve the problem through Youtube's fairly inept dispute system, how would I go about addressing this legally?

3: The videos are part of a web show that I still make: what's the best way for me to copyright a whole season of a web show? There's several episodes, do I copyright them each individually or send a DVD of them all to the Library of Congress? Are there any resources online with tutorials for how to go about this and what methods to use?

1: No. You had a copyright the second you fixed them in a tangible medium. Now, you may still want to register them, as it provides some advantages, but you have a copyright. I have a copyright in (my portion of) this post, for that matter. Getting a copyright is easy and very hard to interfere with. Enforcing it is hard, which is why people register them (it makes enforcement easier/more profitable).

2: Hire a lawyer. Mention the words Universal and Lenz.

3: http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formpa.pdf. http://www.copyright.gov/eco/. You can also call up the Copyright Office and ask them questions. Did I mention you should talk to a lawyer? If you're unsure of who might be able to help you, look into a local Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts chapter - a number of large cities have them.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Cookie Kwan posted:

Then, this morning when I woke up this morning he told me he was going to go to the police and turn himself in for war crimes in the US (What. the. gently caress. As far as I'm aware, he hasn't even been to the US).

Given that it sounds like you're not in the US, you might want to explain where you're located. It's likely to matter significantly in this kind of thing.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

ChiTownEddie posted:

I tried searching for this because it seems like it should be a common issue...but I guess I just don't quite understand all the caveats of law.

My friends and I are running a sports editorial blog, pretty standard stuff with approximately 10 readers haha. Anyway we've kind of been avoiding the whole 'sports images' thing since everything is copyrighted and AP/Getty images are hilariously expensive.

My question is do we have absolutely no legal ability to use, say an NFL image, that we find on the net in one of our articles? Assuming we claim no ownership, don't want to edit, but we do have ad's on the site (if that even matters).

I am not your lawyer, consult someone who is for actual legal advice, etc.

The use you're proposing infringes on copyright. The question is whether it's a fair use (I subscribe to the "fair use is an affirmative defense to infringement" school of thought, because it makes more sense in my head, even though policy-wise as a matter of burdens of proof it really ought to be a barrier plaintiff has to overcome to show infringement, not a burden shifted to the defendant after the plaintiff shows prima facie infringement and blah blah blah anyway) and, and the answer is... well, it depends. Fair use being notoriously fact-specific and all that, I'm not going to discuss your case, because doing so would probably constitute giving you legal advice.

Instead, I'll note that news reporting is one of the prototypical fair uses, that one of the fair use factors is the market for sale/licensing of the work, and the fact that AP/Getty sports images have a tremendous licensing market.

I'd also add as a practical matter that most of the time the blogs that use sports images get away with it, and that when they do get yelled at, they just get asked to take down the images and stop doing it, they don't get sued.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Austinboi posted:

Curious if any of the lawyers can explain the actual law behind dumpster-diving or rummaging through someone's garbage. For the sake of argument, I'm in Williamson county in Texas (just north of Austin).
No offense has been broken, no crime committed, just curious what the actual laws are on private property vs public.

Thanks!

Generally (at least in common law, states may have different regimes codified in statute) property put into the garbage is considered to have been abandoned and thus free to the first taker.

That said, you may be trespassing in the process of getting to abandoned property, so it still might not be legal.

wellwhoopdedoo: The answer to your copyright question is "It depends on a lot of fact specific considerations". It doesn't sound like you're looking for any kind of compensation for it - have you considered just offering to assign the copyright to the company in exchange for them agreeing to distribute it to lawful owners?

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

ibntumart posted:

I second Ashcans's advice: see if your Representative can help cut through this red tape.

Here's a list of all the US Representatives for (the city of) Los Angeles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_officials_in_Los_Angeles#U.S._House_of_Representatives

Thirding this advice. Your Senator is also an option - most of them (probably all, but at least all the ones I've worked for) have casework services where they will help you deal with federal agencies. Typically they do this for immigration issues, but SSA would completely qualify.

Make sure to contact the *local*/state office. I'd recommend calling them on the phone - if you just contact via webform, you'll probably get routed to the right person eventually, but it may take some time and occasionally stuff gets lost. (I don't do casework but I have done some constituent mail work and look, you get a lot of mail, okay?)

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Alchenar posted:

Your brother in law doesn't get to benefit from the hard work that his co-inventor put into turning the patent into a buisness.

However, said co-inventor can't prevent your brother from going to anyone who's licensed the patent from his co-inventer and offering to license his part-interest for a lower price.

Effectively, the two of them both own a patent and either one can use it - they don't owe each other anything. Potential buyers only need a patent license from one of them.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Chae posted:

I just got a message from a gentleman called Bart Palo Sr. He has recently acquired the trademark to the phrase "Hit Somebody" and has contacted me to inform me of this fact as I own and have owned since 2005, the domain name Hitsomebody.com (a personal blog/place to host my files - currently being renovated, so it's a bit of a mess if you do visit).

Doing a quick search, he is leaving comments all over the place on things like movie sites (supposedly to inform Kevin Smith that his upcoming movie of the same name would break said trademark) and lyrics sites so that the late (great) Warren Zevon can suitably adjust his song of the same name.

Here is the chap's facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000441137992&sk=wall

A record of the trademark I found: http://trademarks.justia.com/851/12/hit-somebody-85112764.html

I'm in a very different field to him, mine dealing with stupid personal blogging crap and his dealing with ugly clothes that will never sell.

Basically, should I be paying this guy any attention, asking him to leave me alone, ignoring him altogether, or what?

Some good advice from someone who knows what they are talking about would be good.

This is the single most important line from his registration documents:

"FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 2011-07-01"

You'll want to read this, as well: http://www.fr.com/Prior-User-vs-Federal-Registrant--Whose-Mark-Is-It-Anyway1/

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Bioshuffle posted:

Actually, I take back what I said. As I was going through the rest of the pictures (It's not every day you come across one of these so I took tons of them), look what I found. Look towards the left part of the image.

Looks like he would have gotten a ticket after all!

He's fine. Code requires a sign for EACH space, not just one sign somewhere in the vicinity. Looks like they restriped the parking lot and moved the handicapped space (probably because the old space didn't comply with the shortest-possible-distance part of code, which they probably tried to get away with because I bet it netted them an extra space in the lot) and didn't fully remove the old marker.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Schitzo posted:

Re: hosting the clips - I'd be a little surprised if the station's agreement with ASCAP (or whoever) permits rebroadcast of the music by a third party. Maybe there's an exception for promotional use, which that might be.

The station should have someone (maybe a lawyer, maybe not) who deals with licensing. She should have a sit-down with that person.

ASCAP actually doesn't deal with digital rights. It's SoundExchange for digital public performance (streaming/webcasting) and the rightsholder directly for digital download (podcasts/downloads), plus Harry Fox for the composition reproduction rights for download situations. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide would be worth taking a look at to get an idea of exactly what she would need to do - it won't be simple to do it legally.

Because this is California, there's also the potential issue of rights of publicity for recordings of a voice - I think California retains those in the person, but who knows if there's some weird contract clause that means the station has ROP to her voice in connection with the shows she does.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

BirdOfPlay posted:

I'm not a lawyer, but that is a VERY BAD assumption, Wikipedia even has an article titled "American Rule", but this is about attorney fees and not the costs of filling. But still, if the courts, normally, don't require repayment for attorney fees, why would they force KitchenAid to pay for your filling fee?

It's far more common for the prevailing party to be awarded court costs than it is for them to be awarded attorney's fees.

As an example: http://www.sdcourt.ca.gov/portal/page_pageid=55,1424410&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

"At Trial - If you file a Small Claims lawsuit and win the case, the court will generally award you the following costs and fees:
Filing fees
Reasonable costs to serve the other party
Reasonable costs for an investigator to locate the other party for purposes of service of process"

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

woozle wuzzle posted:

If you're in the US, it's just tough. That event counts as school grounds when you're on it, just like a football game. Outside of something like a bathroom stall, there's no expectation of privacy in terms of school discipline. Schools have a lot more latitude with that than the police.

That said...

Realize that even if legally you can't do anything, it's not that hard to get bad publicity for this kind of thing and school districts don't really like showing up in newspapers.
Talk to your local ACLU, they might make some noise on your behalf.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

woozle wuzzle posted:

Uhhh... The ACLU wouldn't care at all. There's no civil liberty involved here. And what bad publicity? I can see the headlines now:


"Local school closely monitors its event!"
"Kids flip the bird with no expectation of privacy, get caught, must apologize!"
"Parents: did you know your school checks behind the photobooth curtain at prom!
"ACLU reports uprise in prank calls from teens that want constitutional protection from legitimate school discipline!"


Sorry Winszton, it might seem lame, but there's nothing wrong with the school monitoring the pictures taken in those booths at prom. In fact, they'd probably have liability if they didn't.

The ACLU is pretty solidly on the "privacy is a civil liberty" side of things, even if you aren't. I've worked with some of their lawyers on privacy issues, this is very much the sort of thing a local chapter would at least talk with him about. It's not as bad as the Middleton case, but it's still not good.

And I think the fact that the school kept copies of the students' photos from the photobooth at prom is kind of an obvious problem, privacy-wise. They weren't checking them at the printer - they got called into the principal's office the next week and sat down with a copy of the photo. Then they're told "get your parents to sign this photo" with an implied or else. Exactly what is the student supposed to be apologizing for, flipping the bird at a camera when they expected (reasonably) to be the only ones to see it? Or would you think it's fine if your neighborhood CVS took a quick look through copies of everyone's photos after they print them at the minilab?

edit: Let me give you some alternate headlines that any halfway decent ACLU lawyer would come up with in 5 seconds.

"School principal peeps behind photobooth curtain at innocent teens having fun."
"School principal caught printing out copies of photos of students."
"School principal trying to shame students out of expressing themselves at prom."
"Student photographs used for blackmail by principal."
etc.

Kalman fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Mar 29, 2012

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

TheBigBad posted:

Did the school collect a standard photo release? Could this be even a consideration?

They're not exploiting it commercially, so, probably not.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Cowslips Warren posted:

I'm pretty sure CVS does check photos as they are being printed. Or they check a roll here or there. Otherwise it'd be easy as pie to print child porn or something. Can some CVS goons back me on this? I remember posts about this in the retail thread.

If the students had had their photos taken while they were touching each other sexually, or, gently caress it, flashing the camera, would the invasion of privacy still apply, because this is a school-sponsored function, right? I mean, gently caress, teachers in public schools can't even post pictures of themselves on Facebook with a glass of wine or in a bar. As much as I disagree with that, in this case I assume the prom was a school-held event and the photographer was being paid by the school?

I'm talking their minilabs, not roll development - the things you stick a USB stick into and get some photos printed out of. If those saved copies and later CVS went through those copies, I'm pretty sure most people are going to consider that a privacy problem.

There was no photographer, in this case. It's a small booth with a camera and a photo printer attached to it. You go in, sit down, the screen flashes, four photos get taken, and a minute later you get a strip of photos handed to you. No humans in the loop. Events rent them for a couple grand for the night - the student's prom money probably went at least partially to paying for the photobooth.

And yes, if they were flashing the camera, I'm pretty sure that the principal printing off copies the next day is still a problem - probably even worse than in this case. Imagine if your principal called you into the office and said "I have a picture of your genitals - if your parents don't sign it, you're in trouble." I mean. Seriously, think through the implications of school officials having access to those photos.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

For housing ads, it's a little more complicated than just whether it's a protected class - it also depends on who's posting the ad, and in certain circumstances sex preferences are treated differently from other preferences. However, while it may not be legal to advertise a preference, it is legal to have a preference, at least in some circumstances (except when it comes to race, under HUD's interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866).

All that said: it probably isn't going to be enforced against a random person renting out a room.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

NancyPants posted:

What happens when your rental lease expires but you continue to rent month to month without a current lease? As a renter are you obligated to follow terms in an expired lease? I'd expect to have to abide by basic common sense and local laws, of course, like continuing to pay the rent and not destroying the premises. I live in Nebraska.

The rental company managing my apartment requires some ridiculous 60 day notice if I want to move out at the end of my lease. That makes no sense to me, since I've never encountered anywhere in this area that will hold any home for more than 30 days. I'm convinced it's a tactic to make people continue to renew their leases rather than deal with the hassle of trying to leave without having to pay an extra month's rent as a fee. There are month-to-month leases available, but my lease is a fixed term.

It's occurred to me that if my lease is expired and there's no current agreement on file, I should be able to leave with 30 days notice just as they could tell me to leave with 30 days notice (provided the reason isn't for non-payment or filth). Am I wrong? Is there a better way?

Generally (and this is not for Nebraska in particular, consult a Nebraska LLT lawyer), when a lease's term ends it converts to a month-to-month tenancy with all the same terms. However, the notice term may be converted with the tenancy, since the general rule for monthly periodic tenancies is that you have to give notice of *at least* one full period in order to terminate the lease. Ask a Nebraska lawyer for the state-specific law, but I would guess you're obligated to follow the terms of your lease with the possible exception of the notice provision.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

glompix posted:

I'm not in possession of the house, so it doesn't sound like I'm totally bound to the lease yet. I may just be getting my hopes up, but I'm kind of looking for options. Anyone know anything about lease termination before the lease begins? Is it possible for me to just not pick up the keys and mark my deposit as a loss?

You're getting your hopes up. You were bound once you signed the lease; the passage you quote is about giving a tenant options if their landlord is loving them over, not giving the tenants ways to get out of a lease.

If you really want the house, you need to talk to the duplex leasing company and figure out what they'll ask you to pay to get out of your lease, and figure out if it's worth it to pay to have the house over the duplex.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Alchenar posted:

Because Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments, so having to give up financial independence for the rest of your life would mean that nobody in their right mind would ever agree to the job.

You could always step down from the Court.

And it's not like blind-trusting your assets is the only method of insulation available - a lot of firms require (because of insider trading concerns) that their lawyers clear many financial instrument trades through the firm's conflicts committee prior to executing the trade. If the Court actually acknowledged the authority of any other body to regulate it (see: Judicial Conference rules of judicial ethics not applying to SCOTUS) it would be easy enough to do something similar, allowing justices to manage their finances within constraints designed to minimize the potential for conflict.

That said, Ginny Thomas's political activities wouldn't actually be affected by a blind trust type situation, so you're fixing a different problem than the one you set out to fix.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Arcturas posted:

If you're in the US, most states have an Electronic Signature Act of some variety, which says that e-signatures are just as valid as pen & paper signatures. In Utah, for instance, it's Utah Code 46-4-201 and the associated act. 46-4-201(1) says "A record or signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form."

There's also the national E-SIGN act, which basically says the same thing, with some procedural caveats for certain types of transactions (banking, probably property, maybe some others).

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Depending on how that statute has been interpreted, the 100 bucks may not be considered part of your rent, as it could also be considered a convenience fee, not rent.

It also might not. States vary on how they treat things like that, find a local LLT lawyer.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Dogen posted:

Oh what's this


You might want to quote that in your letter thingy

As others have said, with that kind of language there is not sense in quibbling with them over what's reasonable because it sounds like they hosed up and agreed you owe nothing by being lazy

edit: did you give them a forwarding address within 4 days of the termination of your tenancy?

Query: is termination on the 30th of June or the 1st of July? Presumably the lease ran through midnight. You may still be safe (IANAMichiganL) but might be worth seeing if you can find out if this has been dealt with before.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Dogen posted:

In general you do weaken your ownership interest in IP by not defending it, but I'm honestly not sure how that would apply in this case since it is kind of weird.

You only weaken trademarks by a failure to defend (and it's more complicated than that anyway, you don't have to go after absolutely everything) - copyrights and patents aren't weakened by a failure to defend, though it may open up the potential for some types of reliance/implicit license arguments if you're on actual notice of another's infringement and choose to allow it.

Your best bet is to find your local chapter of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and give them a call - they should be able to refer you to someone local, if you want to pursue this. Registration is going to be pretty much essential if you want to recoup anything from the case (which you will, because this kind of thing gets expensive).

edit: Registration opens access to statutory damages instead of lost profits, and also provides for constructive notice from date of registration (which isn't actually a benefit here, since you have actual notice provided by the takedown if nothing else) and give you the ability to request an injunction. Also, it's mandatory if you want to file a suit.

Kalman fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 30, 2012

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Generally, the jury says "What a piece of poo poo" and convicts you.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Not to mention the potential for a dram shop act defense for the bartender.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

euphronius posted:

We should really have a list of goon lawyers per jurisdiction who will do goon lawyering for reduced fee or something. Or like a $50 for 30 min session. That way goon lawyers can give good advice in a proper A/C relationship.

That probably runs afoul of SA rules though.

Potentially runs afoul of your state bar advertising rules as well (depending on if your state bar has advertising rules).

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

nm posted:

westlaw (shockingly expensive)

Fun story for those who don't know what nm means by this.

I'm doing some research into a patent that was asserted in some random tiny litigations for a client. Maybe 5, 6 hours total, between the patent, some court docs, docket pulls, etc.

A couple weeks later, the billing partner emails me and says "why is there a $4000 westlaw bill?" Westlaw can get very expensive, very quickly.

(Best we can tell, a couple of the court documents were outside our subscription and we got charged full rate instead of negotiated rate. That said, even normal rates can easily hit 50-80 bucks an hour, or 15/search and another dollar or two per result you actually read. Depending on how much case research was done - probably not a ton in this case, but hard to say - a good chunk of that 10k could have been research costs.)

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

woozle wuzzle posted:

None of that matters. You're not going to get paid. That's the bottom line.

At which point I fully expect a "hey can you guys explain UT garnishment and lien law to me?" series of (extremely defensive) posts.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

d0grent posted:

Alright so I just got an EP signed to a label. The label in question is digital only, meaning there will be no physical release of this EP.

Now we wanted the "cover art" for the EP to be this picture:



The legal problem is, we kinda just painted over this picture:



It's supposed to be an homage to the British TV series "Sherlock".

Since there's no physical copies of the CD being made, we technically aren't "selling" the image. Is there any way we can get away with this?

The law doesnt care about if youre selling the image. You're selling a digital EP, which presumably contains a copy of this image. Therefore you are reproducing a derivative work of the original, which is a copyright violation. (If you were giving the EP away, the analysis doesn't change - it's still reproduction in violation.)

So, short answer: no, you can't get away with it if the copyright holder wants to call you on it.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

BigHead posted:

Could he use a photo of Ronald Reagan (who I thought that was at first)?

Does he have:

a) Permission from the photographer (who holds the copyright by default, absent some kind of assignment or other transfer)?
b) (in any locality where personality rights survive death) Permission from the estate or other holder of the right of publicity?

If so, yes. Otherwise, no.

You could argue it's a fair use. Four factor test, you're going to lose: commercial use, essentially non-transformative. You lose on that, the others are irrelevant.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Venetir posted:

Couldn't I just do this in small claims court? It's a $1300 laptop, would it cost more either way, and couldn't I sue him for legal fees as well?

Possibly, probably not but small claims may have a lower limit where you are, and almost certainly you can sue him for legal fees - but you even more certainly aren't going to get them awarded.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

ulmont posted:

An MDL isn't a consolidation, though. You transfer all the cases to a single court, do all the pre-trial stuff there, and then transfer back to the original courts for trial to avoid venue and personal jurisdiction issues.

...if you just wanted to consolidate, you could almost always guarantee venue in Delaware.

Of course, since its patent law and Markman is pre-trial, MDL is effectively consolidation of the important phase of the trial.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Check with your local tenant's association. In a lot of places, this kind of behavior isn't actually legal (for example, Montgomery County in Maryland requires a refund of anything in excess of the actual cost of a credit check if the application fee exceeds 25 dollars and no rental occurs). They'll probably be able to tell you what recourse you might have under your local laws and suggest something/someone to talk to further.

Also, if there's any kind of rental licensing office in your jurisdiction (e.g., in DC you'd go to DCRA), you can probably talk to them and see if you can't get the rental company on their shitlist. Might or might not get you your money back, but can't hurt.

If you tell us where it is, someone will probably at least point you towards your local tenant's association and you might even luck out and get someone to look through local code.

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Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

BelgianSandwich posted:

Harris County Texas (Houston). This is a very pro-business part of the country so I doubt a cap would be in place.

Texas has a state-wide property code, and Houston might have its own. If you're in Houston proper, check out http://www.houstontenants.org/ - they may also be able to point you towards whatever the appropriate local entity is.

Houston, at least, seems to allow recovery of attorneys fees on cases where landlords fail to refund when they should.

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