The Devil Wears "Google" as Blogger Shuts Down FTP Blog Publishing: LawPundit Feed now at http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/kUbm

Due to the chaos caused by Google’s Blogger shutting down FTP publishing to the original Blogger users — who helped build PyraLabs — the company that Google bought and mangled, we can only say that
- the Devil wears “Google” -

Due to the chaos caused by Google’s Blogger shutting down FTP publishing to the original Blogger users

— who helped build PyraLabs — the company that Google bought and mangled, we can only say that

– the Devil wears “Google”.
so please now read LawPundit and its archives at The Life of the Law blog

and use the RSS feed address below for the LawPundit The Life of the Law blog in the future:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/kUbm http://thelifeofthelaw.wordpress.com/feed/

As far as we can tell, no other feed addresses for LawPundit work for postings made after the migration of the site.

We are looking at alternatives for producing LawPundit in the future in a more user-friendly environment.

Law Translators and Professional Language Translation : A Call to Resist Discount Rates

Legal or other language translation is by nature a competitively rough business where competent translators are very poorly paid to begin with, so that the following posting is of value to professional translators in the field:

Are you a professional translator? If so, do NOT lower your translation rates! « Marcela Jenney’s Blog

“Clients are asking for discounts, and translators are honoring their requests more and more every day. When you provide a discount on your services, you are giving permission to others to think your services are not worth much. And, unfortunately, this trend is adversely affecting the entire translation and localization industry.”

Read the full story here.

Rules, rules, rules: Modern Golf is Being Destroyed by USGA and R&A : Now Grooves on Irons Being "Rolled Back" : Absurd!

For someone who yearns to play golf the way the game was played in days of yore, there is the laudable Hickory Tour of the Hickory Golfers, where players play tournaments with hickory-shafted clubs and otherwise bask in golf nostalgia. Nothing wrong with that.

But holding back the development of the game of golf – which has otherwise been keeping pace with technological development – is idiotic, and in recent years, that is precisely what golf’s ruling bodies, the USGA and the R&A have been doing, neither preserving the “original” game of golf nor permitting the modern game to develop naturally. These “brakers” on the game of golf are in our view nothing more than people overimpressed with their own importance.

We love the game of golf – but by no means its ruling bodies – and recently posted our opinion about the new “grooves rules” in golf – which make a laughing-stock of the sport, requiring irons used by the pros to be individually measured to make sure they abide by arbitrary stuffed-shirt specifications effective starting this year 2010, but exempting recreational golfers, who will be bound by the new rules only starting in the year 2024. The whole thing is absurd and is intended by some self-appointed “golf gods” to make it more difficult for pros – and in 14 years also the amateurs – to impart spin on a ball when it is in the rough. Hah! Why not have the pros use a “rake” to strike the ball if it is out of the fairway – that will send the scores up.

We have no idea who these idiotic new equipment rules are intended to serve. Fans want to see birdies and eagles by the pros and not bogeys and double-bogeys – they see enough of that in their own game. If we read the USGA correctly, they are telling us that the pro golfers are getting to be too good and that they are starting to impose artificial impediments to keep those scores higher. How stupid is that!!

We are NOT fans of the current USGA nor of the European R&A. Both of these bodies are outdated, anachronistic throwbacks to an age long gone by and they have outlived their usefulness. Moreover, they have gotten to be far too big for their knickerbockers. Golf does not need them and would get along better without them. I can not think of a single instance in my golf life where they were useful for anything. A simple rule book – the USGA and the R&A now produce the “Rules of Golf” – can be produced by high-school students and calculating golf handicaps is child’s play in the computer age.

The manner in which these bodies are increasingly meddling in golf club construction in recent years is a case in point, now even outlawing both new and 20-year old clubs because of the type of grooves on the clubface. In our view, this is simply insanity personified, as Phil Mickelson is quoted as saying:

Grooves problem resolved after Ping waives legal rights | Reuters

“‘It’s cost manufacturers millions of dollars. It continues to cost them money as we now have to hire people to scan, document and store data of every groove on every single club.’”

One way for Tiger Woods to get back on the positive side of fans like me would be to team up with Phil Mickelson, opt out of the idiotic USGA and R&A and their stuffed-shirt leadership and paternalistic nostalgia, and start up a new MODERN golf association permitting golf club and golf course construction according to the state of the art of current technology.

This leaves everyone at the USGA and the R&A to join the Hickory Golfers, who can straighten them out as to what the game of golf “used to look like”.

Today is the Birthday of Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Born on March 8, 1841 in Boston

Via the Britannica Facebook feed for today March, 8, 2010, we are informed that the great judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., also known as “The Great Dissenter” was:

“born March 8, 1841, Boston died March 6, 1935, Washington, D.C.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.] Justice of the United States Supreme Court, U.S. legal historian and philosopher who advocated judicial restraint. He stated the concept of “clear and present danger” as the only basis for limiting free speech.”

Read the rest at the Britannica Online.

__________

The Wikipedia has some paragraphs which contain some of the better known of Holmes’ famous quotes:

“According to Holmes, ‘men make their own laws; that these laws do not flow from some mysterious omnipresence in the sky, and that judges are not independent mouthpieces of the infinite….’

As a justice of US Supreme Court, Holmes introduced a new method of constitutional interpretation. He challenged the traditional concept of constitution. Holmes also protested against the method of abstract logical deduction from general rules in the judicial process.

According to Holmes, lawyers and judges are not logicians and mathematicians. The books of the laws are not books of logic and mathematics.

He writes: “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, and even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics….”

Holmes, also insisted on the separation of ‘ought’ and ‘is’ which are obstacles in understanding the realities of the law. As an ethical sceptic, Holmes tells us that if you want to know the real law, and nothing else, you must consider it from the point of view of ‘bad man’ who cares only from material consequences of the courts’ decisions, and not from the point of view of good man, who find his reasons for conduct “in the vaguer sanctions of his conscience”….

EDGE: "Europe, Where the Idea of Competition in the Internet Space Appears to Focus on Litigation, Legislation, Regulation, and Criminalization"

Does Europe especially need to reconsider their approach to the Internet? EDGE would say yes:

Edge: TIME TO START TAKING THE INTERNET SERIOUSLY By David Gelernter: “Introduction: Our Algorithmic Culture” by John Brockman:

“Edge was in Munich in January for DLD 2010 and an Edge/DLD event entitled ‘Informavore’ — a discussion featuring Frank Schirrmacher, Editor of the Feuilleton and Co-Publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andrian Kreye, Feuilleton Editor of Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich; and Yale computer science visionary David Gelernter, who, in his 1991 book Mirror Worlds presented what’s now called ‘cloud computing.’

The intent of the panel was to discuss — for the benefit of a German audience — the import of the recent Frank Schirrmacher interview on Edge entitled ‘The Age of the Informavore.’ David Gelernter, who predicted the Web, and who first presented the idea of ‘the cloud’, was the scientist on the panel along with Schirrmacher and Kreye, Feuilleton editors of the two leading German national newspapers, both distinguished intellectuals….

Take a look at the photos from the recent Edge annual dinner and you will find the people who are re-writing global culture, and also changing your business, and, your head. What do Evan Williams (Twitter), Larry Page (Google), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web Consortium), Sergey Brin (Google), Bill Joy (Sun), Salar Kamangar (Google), Keith Coleman (Google Gmail), Marissa Mayer (Google), Lori Park (Google), W. Daniel Hillis (Applied Minds), Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures), Dave Morin (formerly Facebook), Michael Tchao (Apple iPad), Tony Fadell (Apple/iPod), Jeff Skoll (formerly eBay), Chad Hurley (YouTube), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) have in common? All are software engineers or scientists.

So what’s the point? It’s a culture. Call it the algorithmic culture. To get it, you need to be part of it, you need to come out of it. Otherwise, you spend the rest of your life dancing to the tune of other people’s code. Just look at Europe where the idea of competition in the Internet space appears to focus on litigation, legislation, regulation, and criminalization. [emphasis added]“

Read the whole thing here.

Hat tip to the Encyclopaedia Britannica at Facebook.

Paranoid on Privacy: Legitimate Law Enforcement Data Retention in the European Union Dealt an Extreme Blow by Germany’s Constitutional Court

EU DATA RETENTION for LAW ENFORCEMENT PURPOSES

The European Union EU Data Retention Directive, Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC requires telecommunications data storage by EU Member States for law enforcement and anti-terrorism purposes. Each EU Member State is required by the Directive to enact legislation in accordance with the Directive. Article 4 on Access to Data provides in addition that privacy safeguards are to be adopted:

“Member States shall adopt measures to ensure that data retained in accordance with this Directive are provided only to the competent national authorities in specific cases and in accordance with national law. The procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access to retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements shall be defined by each Member State in its national law, subject to the relevant provisions of European Union law or public international law, and in particular the ECHR as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights.”

Germany implemented that Directive in the “Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG“, effective January 1, 2008.

On March 2, 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that German law unconstitutional, essentially on the grounds of “vagueness” and ordered the destruction of all data thus far retained – an extreme decision without seeming practical necessity.

A nice summary of the court decision is found at the Privacy and Information Security Law Blog by Hunton and Williams LLP.

The Spiegel Online International in Defending Privacy: German High Court Limits Phone and E-Mail Data Storage writes (March 3, 2010):

Germany’s highest court has rejected a controversial law requiring data on telephone calls and e-mail traffic to be stored for six months for possible use by law enforcement. Data stored so far must be deleted immediately, and strict controls must be put in place before the law can come into force again.”

Lance Whitney at CNET’s Politics and Law in German court rules against data retention policy writes:

“The German court found that the law, as implemented, went beyond the intent of the original directive and has ordered all customer data to be removed immediately. The new ruling suspends the directive but doesn’t knock it down permanently. The German court indicated that tighter controls would be needed to ensure the security of the data as well as a clear intention and control over what the data would be used for.”

The German Federal Constitutional Court decision follows a similar line of provincial thinking found in the article German Minister Warns Against the Power of Internet Giants, as written by Spiegel Online International:

“German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has launched an attack on the Internet economy, warning that the likes of Google, Microsoft and Apple store vast amounts of personal information on Web users that can be used for financial gain, and can hurt people’s chances of getting jobs or bank loans.”

In a comparably paranoid vein, there is also pressure in Germany and in the EU on Google’s Street View. As reported in CNET’s Does Google Street View see a future in Europe:

“Faced with European Union demands that Google reduce the time it stores its Street View images from 12 months to 6 months, Google Chief Technology Advocate Michael Jones said this week that the company may choose not to map any new photos in Europe unless an agreement on data retention can be reached. Jones, who is also Google’s former chief technologist of Google Maps, Google Earth, and Local Search, made his comments in an interview with Bloomberg News at the Cebit Technology Fair in Germany.”

People’s aversion to Google’s Street View must be one of the most puzzling developments ever, as we find Street View to be one of the greatest features in geographic mapping ever devised, adding a new cartographic dimension to our planet of incalculable value.

The conception that data storage of valid cartographic material GENERALLY violates rights of privacy is simply absurd in all but the most exceptional cases (we leave room open for such a possibility since exceptions always – validly – surface.)

Someone will ALWAYS have this data stored somewhere, but if the data controllers limit it, YOU and I won’t have it, be sure of that, and only someone ELSE will have it. I am not sure how putting cartographic data into the power of unknown data controllers increases my privacy, whereas I do know for sure that limits on Street View greatly limit my world.

Maybe I want to be able to see and show to others – online – the street where I grew up without having to fly there half-way around the world. Or maybe I want to be able to examine thoroughly a future vacation locale or a possible real estate purchase, like a home, without finding that a hotel is next to an oil refinery, or that the home is directly on a highway. Or maybe I want to check out local amenities and circumstances, like schools, shopping, dining, sports, recreation, etc., for a future change of residence or for a visit. There are many, many legitimate uses to Google Street View. I am at a loss to understand how the privacy of anyone is wrongfully infringed by showing the world as that world actually is – in its entirety – presuming of course that what is shown can be seen from public property and shows nothing that a normal passer-by could not see. That is why people who want greater privacy than is normal build hedges around their houses. Well, let them. But do not deny Street View to those of us who want to have it and who find it a welcome addition to the “real world”.

Are you a Connector? Patenting Influence at the USPTO

1201tuesday.com has a posting at Claiming Under the Influence (of Bilski) referring to a “System and method of identifying individuals of influence” which was issued as U.S. Patent No. 7653568 and which is abstracted as follows:

“This invention relates to a system and method for identifying target individuals who possess certain characteristics statistically indicative of their ability to influence others in their decision making regarding consumer goods, consumer products, political issues or candidates, financial matters, investments, real estate, insurance, travel and leisure, by non-limiting example. The subject invention encompasses not only the identification of a key group of individuals in a population more likely to affect the decision making of others in the population (“Influentials” as discussed below), but also includes the identification of additional (“non-Influential”) informational data common to Influential individuals, as well as the application of this additional informational data to other populations. The advantage of employing this additional informational data to ascertain Influentials is that this data can be publicly available data (such as, for example, from the U.S. Census Bureau), thus facilitating the identification of Influentials without the necessity of undertaking any surveys to identify Influentials per se instead relying on pre-existing public demographic information.”

A Thirst for God : When Former Skinheads Convert to Judaism, You Know Something Big is Under Way for Religion in Europe

Dan Bilefsky at the New York Times reports on the
Changing Face in Poland [where] Skinhead Puts on Skullcap

“Hundreds of Poles, a majority of them raised as Catholics, are either converting to Judaism or discovering Jewish roots submerged for decades in the aftermath of World War II.”

As written at PowerLine:

“”There is something afoot in matters of faith — in Germany as in France and other parts of the allegedly de-Christianized continent of Europe, according to Catholic and Protestant clergymen interviewed on a recent fact-finding tour. They spoke of an ever-growing ‘thirst for God.’”

We think that this is a great thing as long as it means that men and women are taking their “spiritual” life more seriously.

This development should not be confused with many of the fundamentalist adherents of the world’s organized religions, however, whose connection to true spirituality has often been subverted by political agendas and is no longer connected to any kind of a true God at all.

“True spirituality” is the genuine search for God.

The world’s established organized or disorganized religious doctrines too often breed no more than secularized brainwashed sects totally removed from any real spiritual life – often acting directly contrary to the interests of humanity.

LawPundit Migration to a Google Blogger Custom Domain to be Attempted Today : If it Fails You Will Have to Shift Your Reading to LawPundit at Blogspot

We are now starting our migration of the LawPundit blog to status as a Custom Domain at Google’s Blogger. We do this unwillingly, however, for as we wrote previously at LawPundit, Google and Blogger will no longer support FTP publishing of blogs – they have now set a deadline of May 1, 2010, even though the original PyraLabs Blogger, before its purchase by Google, in fact started out with FTP blogging ONLY. Time marches on, I guess.

If the migration works, you should notice no change in anything.

If anything should go wrong in this migration process, however, LawPundit at this address will become unreachable through no fault of ours and you should then shift your links and subscriptions to the LawPundit mirror at Blogger’s blogspot.com which we have thankfully maintained over the years at LawPundit (Blog II).

We will try to do the Google Blogger “automated migration” today.

The Antithesis of Justice : Criminal Convictions in Italy of Google Execs Point to Flaws in European Union (EU) Law

We posted about this absurd case previously at LawPundit.

Struan Robertson, editor of out-law.com, writes on March 3, 2010 in Google convictions reveal two flaws in EU law, not just Italian law inter alia as follows regarding the inexcusable criminal convictions of Google execs – made in absentia in Italy – for alleged untimely takedown of criminally offending video material posted online by youthful criminals in Italy and totally unknown to Google execs at the time for which their criminal conviction for non-action applies:

“Web hosts are unfairly exposed all across the EU and two legal changes are needed….

Problem 1: An unreasonable caveat to safe harbour….

Problem 2: We don’t know enough about notice and takedown….”

Read the whole posting here.

Robertson in our opinion in focusing on the ill-drafted EU laws and on the shambles of law in Italy is much too lax with the misguided officials in Italy and with the responsible lawmakers in the European Union, all of whom are much more directly at fault than Google for the appearance of the offending video.

Why have government officials in Italy and the EU not instituted effective procedures in their own law enforcement systems to timely catch criminal postings in their areas of jurisdiction – AS IS THEIR JOB, rather than putting the entire onus of “policing” on Google or other online providers. Why should Google be more effective in catching criminals than THE government institutions are – it is not Google’s line of business at all.

Everyone always wants to put the blame on the other guy, rather than honestly shouldering their true part of the blame themselves. Policing is a responsibility of government institutions and not of Google. Maybe nations and communities should not have 90% of their officers playing cops and robbers with normal citizens for minor things like traffic violations etc. – and should direct more of the attention of their own State employees to combatting real crime. Now – THAT would be a major change.

If the purpose of Italy’s convictions is to seek scapegoats, which the guilty often do to ward culpability away from themselves, it would be equally logical to issue criminal convictions for all those in Italy and the EU responsible for what happened in the instant video case, and we would not stop at judges, legislators and officials, but would also include the teachers and parents of the criminals, who were unable to keep the offenders from doing their offensive acts. Google is at the end of a very long chain of societal and legal blunders and errors which create criminal offenders to begin with.

As it now stands, the people FURTHEST REMOVED from the actual criminal video activity have been held criminally responsible rather than those CLOSEST to it. How convenient for all of the institutions involved, whose members via overinflated salaries are all stuffing their pockets with taxpayer monies but of course disclaiming any responsibility themselves for the state of affairs in their own jurisdiction. Some distant executive from a far-away jurisdiction will be picked to shoulder the blame – a blame which ITALY and the EU rightly should share among themselves.

That is not a miscarriage of justice. It is the ANTITHESIS of justice.

Mobile Patent Lawsuits Increasing Dramatically

Nick Bilton at the New York Times Bits Blog discusses the Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits in the last year, writing inter alia:

“On Tuesday when I spoke with Eric Von Hippel, a professor of technological innovation at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He pointed out that patent lawsuits had turned particularly unpleasant lately as a result of companies that only buy and sell patents.”

Read the whole thing here.

Hat tip to TechDirt.

This was all foreseeable years ago and we wrote about it. Now, you have a gigantic – then avoidable – problem at your doorstep which is no longer avoidable.

New’s New News! Intellectual Property Watch reports Release of New Senate Patent Reform Bill Details

Intellectual Property Watch reports that New Senate Patent Reform Bill Details Released

William New writes (“New’s new news”):

“United States Senate Judiciary Committee bipartisan leaders today released details of much-anticipated compromise legislation aimed at reform of US patent laws. The new bill ostensibly makes significant steps toward resolving longstanding differences in legislative efforts to modernise US law for patent quality and efficiency, and make it more compatible with international laws.

The new bill, referred to as the managers’ amendment, is being touted as providing a critical boost to innovation. The bill must go to the full Senate for a vote, and must be passed in the House of Representatives as well.

The senators’ press release is available here.

The proposed amendment, over 100 pages, is available here [pdf].”

Read “New’s New News” here in entirety.

German Nationals Forming a UK Company

German Nationals Forming a UK Company

Forming a private limited company in the UK is a simple process and has a low set up cost. If you are intending to trade in the UK, it appears to your customers and suppliers as though they are dealing with a UK based entity.

As the shareholder and/or director of the company you can remain ordinarily resident in Germany. There are no residency requirements for the first subscribers, subsequent shareholders or directors of an English private limited company and directors and secretaries of private limited companies are not required to have any particular qualifications.

A private limited company can be formed with one director (who must be at least 16 years old) and one shareholder and there is no minimum or maximum share capital requirement (public companies do have capital requirements).

UK companies are required to have a registered office in the UK to act as a contact point for the people that the company deals with and to which official notifications can be sent. However, it is relatively cheap and painless to engage a registered office service provider to give you a UK address and to forward post to you. You can even use this address as the service address for directors and the residential address of the directors can remain private.

There are certain minimum maintenance requirements for a UK private company. It must file an annual return to Companies House setting out the current directors, secretary (if it has one) and its current capital and shareholder position, although this is a fairly simple task. The company will have to keep accounts based on requirements prescribed by UK legislation and to file these with Companies House (although the extent of the filing is relaxed for small companies). The company has to keep certain registers such as directors, secretary, shareholders and charges. These registers must be available for inspection at its registered office.

Finally it is possible for the company to be incorporated and registered in the UK but to be resident for tax purposes in Germany under the relevant double tax treaty. You should seek specific advice on this from a tax adviser if this is your aim.

You may need an apostille certificate if you need to present the company’s UK documents in Germany or other country that recognises the Hague Convention. This will usually avoid a German authority questioning the authenticity of the UK documents. Again this can be arranged at fairly minimal cost if you find it necessary.

In summary, forming a company in the UK is a painless, low cost process. There are also no residence requirements for the officers or shareholders of the company, and there is no minimum share capital requirement.

Jamie Hunt, Legal Clarity Ltd

The information provided in this article is intended as a general guide only. It is not exhaustive or tailored to your individual circumstances.

So Where’s Your Originalism Now, Justice Scalia? – Law Blog – WSJ

So Where’s Your Originalism Now, Justice Scalia? – Law Blog – WSJ

Car and Driver and Professor Bainbridge write that The Problem is the Driver, not the Pedal

Professor Bainbridge writes that The Problem is the Driver, not the Pedal and quotes Car and Driver:

“Every man, woman, and child in the U.S. has approximately a one-in-8000 chance of perishing in a car accident every year. Over a decade, that’s about one in 800. “

If the driver is the problem and that will mostly be the case, perhaps it is time that everyone, including car manufacturers pay increasing attention to safety rather than to speed and acceleration in their design of the world’s motor vehicles.