US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2267

After spending the night in jail, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis tells her lawyers, "All is well," adding that she slept well. She also says she is prepared to stay in jail. And her legal team says the marriage licenses that were issued by the clerk's office today are invalid.

"She has a clean conscience, even though she's incarcerated behind these bars," attorney Mat Staver said Friday afternoon.

Davis was found in contempt of court and jailed Thursday; since then, several same-sex couples have received marriage licenses from her office. As Eyder reported Friday morning, those who can now marry include James Yates and William Smith, who had sought a license five times.

As for Davis' future, Staver said, "she will remain the clerk of Rowan County as long as the people" want her to.

The attorney also reiterated that Davis "cannot affix her name or her title, under her authority, to a marriage license. ... That is for Kim Davis a heaven or hell decision."

In her absence, deputy clerks in the Rowan County clerk's office have been issuing marriage licenses in a businesslike manner, Eyder says, a marked contrast to the celebrations, rallies and protests that have been going on outside this week.

On September 05 2015 09:05 Belisarius wrote:
I have absolutely no idea what your point is.

She thought one thing, and acted accordingly. Then she changed her mind and began to act, to her, accordingly.

Her current position isn't very smart, but it's not contradictory.

On September 05 2015 10:32 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


It's all pretty much within the margin of error though, not to mention the fact that there's still a lot of time before the elections.

And do you actually want Trump to win the presidency?

On September 05 2015 10:32 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


It's all pretty much within the margin of error though, not to mention the fact that there's still a lot of time before the elections.

And do you actually want Trump to win the presidency?

On September 05 2015 10:41 Plansix wrote:
Yeah, the candidate endorsed by several U.S. White supremacist has supporters everywhere.

On September 05 2015 10:50 Slaughter wrote:
Trumps "support" is more a symptom of people telling the establishment to fuck off. Its very low stakes when its so far away from the actual elections. Very few would actually vote for him lol. The potential reality of President Trump would terrify too many people.

The extent to which our international obligations interact with — and may sometimes override — domestic law is a pretty fascinating one, and is, for any number of pretty obvious reasons, increasingly in the news. Here’s a rather small footnote to the very large controversy over the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, involving a narrow (but actually quite important) bit of U.S. copyright law, that nicely illustrates how complicated these questions can be — a synecdoche, as it were.

The copyright issue relates to so-called “orphan works.” As a consequence of many factors — the absurdly long term of copyright protection [life of the author plus 70 years — see my comments here on the liberation of Sherlock Holmes, after a lo-o-ong time, from his copyright shackles], along with the elimination of copyright notice, or copyright registration, requirements as preconditions for copyright protection — there are literally millions upon millions of works — books, letters, songs, articles, poems . . . — created in the ’30s, ’40s, or ’50s that are (a) still protected by copyright, and for which (b) it is virtually impossible to ascertain who owns the copyright, or even whether the copyright is still in force. Consider this scenario:

Alice Johnson publishes a book of poems in 1930. It languishes, unsold, and largely vanishes from sight. You would like to reprint it. To know whether you need permission to do that, you have to locate the author. If she has died, you have to find out when — if it was 1933, you’re in the clear; if it was 1993, not so much. If she has died, you have to find her heirs, because copyright passes as personal property at death. Possibly all of her heirs, because they may well have taken title to the copyright, upon Alice’s death, as joint owners. And if any of them has died, you’ll need to round up their heirs. And so on.

How do you do it? The answer is: You don’t, because you can’t. It is, by any reasonable definition of the term, impossible.

That’s an orphan work.

Who cares, you ask? It’s a fair question. After all, you could (and probably would) just go ahead and reprint the book — what are the odds that someone will come out of the woodwork and accuse you of copyright infringement?! You’re more likely to be struck by lightning. Twice.

And even if someone does sue you — what are his or her damages?! For an out-of-print book that nobody has bought for 70 years or so?

It looks like you have something like a 0.0004 percent chance of being sued, and, even if you are, a damage award likely to equal about $0.03 — even your lawyer will let you take that risk, no?

Well, actually — no. Big problem #1 is that copyright law doesn’t require the plaintiff to show any damage whatsoever. And it authorizes awards of up to $150,000 in “statutory damages” for each work that is infringed — independent of any damage assessment. [And it authorizes the prevailing party in an infringement suit to recover his/her attorney’s fees.] Substituting $150,000+ for $0.03 changes the risk equation quite a bit.

And big problem #2 is that nothing is more likely to guarantee that Alice’s heirs will emerge from the woodwork, brandishing their copyright registrations, than the scent of money. So if by some chance you are actually successful with your reprint, you materially raise the odds of getting sued. 0.25 times $150,000 looks a lot different than 0.00004 times $0.03.

And if you’re still wondering “Is this really such a big deal?,” multiply it all by 10 million (or more). Remember Google Books? I don’t know about you, but I was pretty excited by the thought that every book ever published was going to be available to me over the Net — with all the lousy news out there, that sure sounded like a good thing for the human race, no? Well, the Google Books project foundered largely because of the orphan works problem. Even Google is not willing to take on $100 billion or so of potential exposure to infringement claims, and its attempts to reach a settlement that would have waived the rights of “orphan works” copyright holders to get statutory damages was unavailing — on the grounds that no court can approve a settlement waiving the statutory rights of persons who are not only not present in the courtroom to weigh in on the settlement, but who haven’t even been notified — because, of course, nobody knows who they are — that there is a settlement.

On September 05 2015 10:53 Eskendereya wrote:


Typical leftist using "race" to try and win arguments they can't win with logic or facts.

I could play your little twisted racist game too. The Black Panther Party was pro Obama and they even tried to use intimidation at the polls to get their way. In fact, %90 of Blacks voted for Obama and I'm sure every racist Black voted for Obama as well. All the pro-Black groups voted for Obama.

On September 05 2015 02:34 Toadesstern wrote:

...

Her rights aren't infringed upon at all, thus her "civil disobedience" isn't okay. She has the right to believe whatever she wants to and to practice most of that as long as it's not infringing on other peoples rights.
If you believe her rights to religious freedom are infringed upon you'd also agree that a religious Hindu who refuses to eat meat from a cow, who made it into some city council is allowed to ban all restaurants/supermarkets who sell beef, just because he happens to think that's a sin. And surely you can't expect him to sign something that's part of that.
You'd also agree that a muslim who happens to think sharia law is the way to go should be allowed to enforce that in his city if he makes it far enough to the top because otherwise would infringe on his religious beliefs.

I doubt you'd agree with any of that?

...

On September 05 2015 11:56 TheTenthDoc wrote:
The fact that polls don't even ask about head to heads for non-Trump candidates is probably way more important for Trump than any actual head to head numbers at this point. Pretty terrifying that pollsters want hits that much, honestly.