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Can the Secretary of State exempt people over 75 requiring a TV licence under section 363 of the UK's Communications Act 2003? Can the Secretary of State exempt people over 75 requiring a TV licence under section 363 of the UK's Communications Act 2003? I don't have any legal background but below is an extract from Communications Act 2003 at section 363 (the link has more readable formatting). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/363 Communcitaion act 2003 363 Licence required for use of TV receiver (1)A television receiver must not be installed or used unless the installation and use of the receiver is authorised by a licence under this Part. (2)A person who installs or uses a television receiver in contravention of subsection (1) is guilty of an offence. (3)A person with a television receiver in his possession or under his control who— (a)intends to install or use it in contravention of subsection (1), or (b)knows, or has reasonable grounds for believing, that another person intends to install or use it in contravention of that subsection, is guilty of an offence. (4)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale. (5)Subsection (1) is not contravened by anything done in the course of the business of a dealer in television receivers solely for one or more of the following purposes— (a)installing a television receiver on delivery; (b)demonstrating, testing or repairing a television receiver. (6)The Secretary of State may by regulations exempt from the requirement of a licence under subsection (1) the installation or use of television receivers— (a)of such descriptions, (b)by such persons, (c)in such circumstances, and (d)for such purposes, as may be provided for in the regulations. (7)Regulations under subsection (6) may make any exemption for which such regulations provide subject to compliance with such conditions as may be specified in the regulations.	Can the Secretary of State exempt people over 75 requiring a TV licence? Yes. s.363(6) introduces the power to exempt those listed at (a) to (d) by way of Regulations. s.6, paragraph 1 of the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004 states: No fee shall be payable for a TV licence of a type referred to in the first or second entry in column 1 of the table in Schedule 1 where— (a) the licence is issued to a person aged 75 years or more or to a person who will attain that age in the calendar month in which the licence is issued; and (b) the single place, vehicle, vessel or caravan specified in the licence is the sole or main residence of that person. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/692/regulation/6?timeline=false The first and second entries in column 1 at Schedule 1 refer to black and white or colour TVs in a domestic setting or business purposes. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/692/schedule/1?timeline=false	It seems to me that some commentators/articles have inadvertently conflated different legislation and a recent event involving the seizure of equipment from protester Steve Bray in Parliament Square. Some articles about Steve Bray have named or otherwise referred to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 without an explanation of any link between that person and this law - to me there is no link in the context of Bray's equipment seizure (the police may have mentioned other newer powers to Bray). Among other things, section 143 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 (as amended) explicitly prohibits the unauthorised use of "amplified noise equipment" (including but not limited to loudspeakers and loudhailers) within Parliament Square and (the amendment) "the Palace of Westminster controlled area". Westminster Council provides a map in pdf format of the respective areas: Appendix to Protocol for enforcement of provisions in relation to noise nuisance in the vicinity of Parliament. Before the PRSRA 2011, sections 137 and 138 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 gave the Home Secretary the power to prohibit the unauthorised use of "loudspeakers" in "designated areas" no more than one kilometre around Parliament Square. Part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 amends the Public Order Act 1986 in relation to "public processions and public assemblies", including clauses related to "noise". Section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 abolished the common law offence of public nuisance and created the statutory offence of "intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance". This more recent legislation has been criticised in relation to protests generally (not solely those that involve megaphones), e.g. by the Joint Committee on Human Rights its witnesses in their scrutiny of the-then Bill. Quote: The Bill introduces a new statutory offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” which was previously an offence at common law. There is a wide range of non-violent conduct that may be caught by the statutory offence, which potentially criminalises some forms of peaceful protest. The offence carries a maximum sentence of 12 months if tried summarily and 10 years if tried on indictment. A person can also be issued with a fine.77 A number of our witnesses raised concerns about the impact of these changes and its compatibility with Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR. We share some of those concerns. In summary the explicit prohibition of "amplified noise equipment" is limited to Parliament Square and "the Palace of Westminster controlled area" but one can easily imagine the police claiming that a protester's use of a megaphone is a public nuisance.	To me this seems analogous to failing to report a bank error in your favour, which amounts to theft in england-and-wales. I wrote an answer about that here. See that answer for the details but briefly there are five elements to establish under section 1(1) the Theft Act 1968: Dishonesty (section 2) Appropriation (section 3) Property (section 4) Belonging to another (section 5) Intention to permenantly deprive (section 6) As pointed out in the comments, there is a separate offence of abstraction of electricty in section 13 which only has the following elements: dishonesty, use of electricity, and lack of due authority. The courts have also held that electricity cannot be considered "property" for the purposes of the Theft Act (Low v Blease [1975] 1 WLUK 325). Arguably this offence is not commited here as you had due authority (permission from the supplier) to consume the electricity, however I will have a look later to see if I can find some case law on this point and edit it in if I find anything. With that said, "property" includes choses in action (section 4(1)). Choses in action are intangible property which can only be recovered by enforcing a right rather than by taking possession. In the case of a bank error, the resulting bank balance is a chose in action and the crime of theft is committed on that basis. In your scenario, the right to be paid for electricity you consume is a chose in action belonging to the supplier. Although I'm not aware of any case law specifically on this point, it seems to me that depriving the supplier from its right to be paid could satisfy the requirement of appropriation of property. The other elements of theft, as in the case of bank errors, are easily established here. Note that you won't be saved by "if and when the company does discover its error, I have no problem with paying the arrears". This is because of section 6(1) of the Act which states: A person appropriating property belonging to another without meaning the other permanently to lose the thing itself is nevertheless to be regarded as having the intention of permanently depriving the other of it if his intention is to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of the other’s rights; and a borrowing or lending of it may amount to so treating it if, but only if, the borrowing or lending is for a period and in circumstances making it equivalent to an outright taking or disposal. Even if you eventually pay for the electrity, your intention was not to do so if they didn't notice. Note also that it is not necessary that there is a contractual requirement to notify the supplier of their mistake. Such a requirement can arise under common law (e.g. A-G's Reference (No 1 of 1983) [1984] 3 All ER 369, elaborated in my other answer). You didn't specify which part of the UK and this answer may not be applicable in Scotland or Northern Ireland.	Given that this is a UK based company, the most applicable Act would be the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971 A person who, not having reasonable cause to believe there is a right to payment, in the course of any trade or business makes a demand for payment, or asserts a present or prospective right to payment, for what he knows are unsolicited goods sent (after the commencement of this Act) to another person with a view to his acquiring them [for the purposes of his trade or business], shall be guilty of an offence and on summary conviction shall be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. This law specifically refers to [unsolicited] charges for entries in directories. You also mentioned that they're misrepresenting that a company is already a customer and sending out invoices on that basis. That would be a breach of the Fraud Act 2006 A person is in breach of this section if he dishonestly makes a false representation As to their enforceability, that answer is no. If this came before an actual judge, the judge would throw it out in a heartbeat. No agreement was made to provide a service in return for a payment and these companies rely on sending threatening letters via (seeming) third-parties precisely because they wish to avoid that level of scrutiny.	No. See section 20 Equality Act 2010 which imposes the duty to make adjustments only in relation to a person's disability: (1) Where this Act imposes a duty to make reasonable adjustments on a person, this section, sections 21 and 22 and the applicable Schedule apply; and for those purposes, a person on whom the duty is imposed is referred to as A. (2)The duty comprises the following three requirements. (3) The first requirement is a requirement, where a provision, criterion or practice of A's puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter in comparison with persons who are not disabled, to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage. (4) The second requirement is a requirement, where a physical feature puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter in comparison with persons who are not disabled, to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage. (5) The third requirement is a requirement, where a disabled person would, but for the provision of an auxiliary aid, be put at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter in comparison with persons who are not disabled, to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to provide the auxiliary aid. ... For completeness, section 6 defines a disabled person for the purposes of the Act: (1) A person (P) has a disability if— (a) P has a physical or mental impairment, and (b) the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities (2) A reference to a disabled person is a reference to a person who has a disability. ...	I don't know where you looked, but the Housing Act 2004 on legislation.gov.uk is up to date according to its header: [the] Housing Act 2004 is up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 12 January 2023. There are changes that may be brought into force at a future date. Sections 212 to 215 fall within Part 6, Chapter 4 of the Act. With hindsight, you may be looking at an earlier version. So for awareness, if the entry's header is: green, then it is up to date. Any provisional amendments (i.e. yet to be enacted) there might be can be found using the "view outstanding changes" drop down option if there is one. red, then there are changes yet to be made which can be found via the "view outstanding changes" drop down option. blue, it's either the original version that has not had any amendments, or it's an earlier version that can be navigated to/from by selecting the the tick box "show timeline of changes" and the sliding calendar above the header.	The gov.uk website has a page devoted to this specific matter. With reference to the issues mentioned in the question: It seems to imply that form RX3 may not be necessary: "Download and fill in the form to cancel a restriction, if one has been registered." Regarding the cost: "Send the form and documents to HM Land Registry’s Citizen Centre. There’s no fee." As the website makes clear, even without form RX3, there are still a number of other documents that must be submitted. It also states that you can apply yourself, or use the services of a legal professional.	Georgia Code § 40-5-24 says: Any resident of this state who is at least 15 years of age may apply to the department for an instruction permit to operate a noncommercial Class C vehicle. What is “age”? According to § 15-11-6, (a) Except as provided in subsection (b) of this Code section, a child attains a specified age the first second past midnight on the day of the anniversary of such child's birth. (b) A child born on February 29 attains a specified age on March 1 of any year that is not a leap year. So, you still have to wait until the 15th anniversary of your birth to apply for a permit.
Is a cookie notice required for analytics? Note: I've been directed here from Meta.SE I'm using GoSquared for my website analytics. I've visited quite a few sites using Google Analytics but they don't have a cookie policy or a cookie banner/cookie notice, even though Google Analytics uses cookies to provide their services. Do I need to make my own cookie policy or cookie notice if I use GoSquared Analytics (which also uses cookies to function)? Note that these are non-essential cookies provided by a third party. And does the fact that I am in the UK change anything?	Most likely yes if you are subject to UK or EU laws: The EU ePrivacy directive and implementing laws such as PECR in the UK require that you obtain consent before accessing information on a user's device, unless that access is strictly necessary to perform a service requested by the user. Cookies and similar technologies such as LocalStorage are stored on the user's device. Analytics are not strictly necessary to display a website. Thus, you need to obtain valid consent before setting any analytics cookies. GDPR and ePrivacy/PECR have some interactions: Even though the cookies might technically be set by GoSquared, you as the website operator are responsible for compliance. You are the data controller, the third party analytics are usually a data processor who only process data on your behalf. You must ensure that the data processor is compliant. Even if they were a joint controller you'd be responsible for what happens on the website (relevant precedent is the Fashion ID case). While ePrivacy originally had a fairly weak concept of consent (e.g. “by continuing to use this site, you consent …”). However, the GDPR updated the definition of consent, so that valid consent must be freely given, informed, actively given, and specific. If you set cookies for different purposes in addition to analytics, users should be able to give or withhold consent for analytics independently from other purposes. Since consent must be actively given, consent is never the default, e.g. pre-ticked checkboxes are not compliant (relevant precedent is the Planet49 case). Like Google, GoSquared stores data in the US. You are causing personal data to be transferred into the US, which is an international transfer. Before it was invalidated earlier in 2020, such transfers were easy to do under the Privacy Shield adequacy decision. Now, such transfers are only legal if you sign SCCs with your data processor, and your risk assessment indicates that your user's data is sufficiently safe there, despite your processors potentially being legally unable to comply with the SCCs. Fortunately for you the UK's ICO has taken a more industry-friendly stance on this matter than other countrie's data protection agencies. Why do so many websites use Google Analytics (GA) without requesting proper consent? A variety of potential reasons: They are actually non-compliant. After all, GA is not GDPR-compliant in default settings, and Google doesn't do a good job of providing essential information. Many data protection agencies have indicated that cookie consent enforcement is not their focus. GA can be used without using cookies/LocalStorage/…, and thus without requiring consent under ePrivacy or PECR. The websites might not be subject to EU or UK laws such as ePrivacy.	The territorial scope of the GDPR is defined in Article 3. It covers "personal data of data subjects who are in the Union", whether they are EU citizens or not. So to answer your questions: 1) are EU users, but moved to USA a few years ago, and signed-up on my website? They are not in the EU, so are not covered. You don't need to know if someone is an EU citizen, just if they are currently in the EU. 2) went for holidays in USA, signed-up on my website, and then came back to EU? (note - potentially skipped any Consent questions at sign-up, because IP was from USA) If someone moves into the EU while using your service then they fall under the GDPR for the time they are in the EU. If their home address is in the EU then that is covered, and monitoring of their behaviour while in the EU is also covered. Your other two questions are about VPNs. If a VPN is used to evade IP address geolocation and you have no other clue about where someone is then you can't be blamed for not knowing where they are (although I'm not aware of any actual case law on this topic). But if someone with a USA IP address gives a home address in the EU then you should probably treat them as being in the EU to be on the safe side. Basically, if you don’t know if they are in the EU or not, you should treat them as if they were.	Yes, there would still be an obligation to comply with erasure requests – if the data subject can be identified, and if the GDPR applies. This is a case for Art 11 GDPR: processing which does not require identification. The pastebin site is not required to collect identifying info just in order to facilitate later deletion. If the site is unable to identify the data subjects, then the data subject rights (like access, rectification, erasure, restriction, or data portability) do not apply. Other rights like the right to be informed and the right to object do remain, though. But if the data subject provides sufficient additional information that makes it possible to identify their records, then the data subject rights apply again. In practice, this is likely going to mean that anyone with access to a paste will be able to request deletion, since the site would have no ability to verify the identity of the data subject beyond the information in the paste. None of this absolves the site from implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of this data. Even though the pastes might not be directly identifying, they are personal data and are far from anonymous. Common practices like numbering pastes with a sequential ID or showing recent pastes on a homepage have to be viewed critically. My go-to recommendation is to assign a cryptographically random UUIDv4 ID to the post, so that it is practically impossible for anyone to find the paste unless they were given a link by the uploader. Your idea to delete pastes after a fairly short retention period is also good. This helps with security, and it is in line with the GDPR's data minimization and storage limitation principles: data may only be kept as long as necessary for its purpose. On the other hand, quick deletion might not be in line with the purpose of these pastes – it all depends on context. You mention that this is an US-based site. If so, there's a question whether GDPR would even apply. GDPR will apply per Art 3(2) if the data controller is offering its services to people who are in Europe. Here, “offering” does not mean mere availability of the website, but that the data controller intends the service to be used by such people, in particular if the service is somehow targeted or marketed to such people.	For land ownership records and other similar scenarios such as business directors, the requirement for these to be public will be in legislation rather than a contract - this provides the legal basis, see GDPR Article 6(1c). Additionally when government departments are doing it they also have 6(1e) as lawful basis: "1. Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: ... (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; ... (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;" -- GDPR, Article 6(1c,e). I'm not familiar enough with the specific legislation that will apply here but pretty sure this will be the case, and having said this you may well find public registries also become less public going forward. The reason ICANN has come under fire, is partly because under GDPR privacy is a protected fundamental right and therefore to comply personal data should be kept private by default and privacy never something you would be required to pay extra for. Any contract ICANN have in place with their registrars will not override legislation, it is in fact the other way around. "2. The controller shall implement appropriate technical and organisational measures for ensuring that, by default, only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed. That obligation applies to the amount of personal data collected, the extent of their processing, the period of their storage and their accessibility. In particular, such measures shall ensure that by default personal data are not made accessible without the individual's intervention to an indefinite number of natural persons." -- GDPR, Article 25(2). This doesn't stop ICANN from maintaining a register of domain name owners (registrants), but it does mean they can't just publish all records upon request to anyone anymore - whether people will be granted access to personal data will now depend on if they have a lawful basis for this, and in these cases their processing of the personal data will be limited to those purposes. Being nosey doesn't count! "When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of the contract." -- GDPR, Article 7 (4) - Conditions for consent. What this means essentially, is that if the consent is conditional for the contract it will not be treated as freely given, and therefore not valid - it will no longer be acceptable to contractually bind the provision of a product or service with consent to publish personal data or any other form of processing such as marketing mailing lists. Looking now at the specific points you have raised: "GDPR article 6 allows for processing of personal data on a contractual basis (section 1b)" Whilst this is true, this is only part of it - it doesn't allow for unlimited processing for any purpose and sharing it with any people, if you look at Article 5(b) it states that the information is collected for specific explicit legitimate purposes. Each purpose requires its own legal basis and needs to be compatible with the principles of GDPR. Without consent, ICANN currently does not have a legal basis to make the WHOIS records public for EU citizens and should have adopted some technical controls to require them to opt-in if they wish to be included in the public register. They're coming under fire for non-compliance having been given 2 years to prepare and change their systems/processes. "processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;" Again whilst this is true, not all processing is necessary for the performance of a contract. In the same way people must give consent to receive marketing communications, they must freely give consent for their information to be shared/published (separate to the contract for provision of service) in the absence of other lawful basis for this processing. "Also section 1c, processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject;" There is no legislation which requires them to publish the personal data of domain name registrants. In this paragraph 'legal obligations' refers to those required by legislation (i.e. statutory obligations), not contracts (or non-statutory obligations) which are covered under Article 6(1b). "And finally section 1e, processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;" ICANN has no official government-assigned authority, and publishing the personal data globally is not in the interests of the data subject's or others' welfare or well-being - this is what is meant by 'public interest'. As far as I can see what ICANN are actually doing to comply seems to be accepted by the European Data Protection Board, they are only 'under fire' as you say because they are late in doing so. The deadline was 25th May 2018 and they had 2 years to prepare like all other organisations.	You must get opt-in affirmative consent to process personal data, including tracking people's use of your site or providing targeted advertising. The banner on StackExchange is likely in violation of the GDPR. Do not copy it. It does not have an explicit opt-in, only an opt out which is onerous (leave the site, then manually go in and delete any cookies they set, which may be hard to identify if they are from 3rd parties). The sites you mention that have a gateway are a more correct implementation. Consent must be acquired before processing of data begins, and it must be explicit.	It is the data controller's responsibility to respond to data subject requests. If you provide a B2B service, you are most likely a data processor who only acts on the controller's behalf, on the controller's explicit instruction. This will depend on your contract with the controllers, your customers (see Art 28). Typically a processor would merely forward any data subject requests to the controller. Only if you are contractually obligated to serve data subject requests would it be possible for you to respond directly. If a processor were to fulfil a data subject request on their own initiative, that would arguably be a GDPR violation. However, the processor has to assist their controller with compliance per Art 28(3)(e), e.g. by implementing an admin interface through which the controller can service GDPR requests. The core issue here is that controllers and processors have slightly different obligations in order to be GDPR compliant. Controllers owe compliance to the data subjects, but processors only act on the controller's behalf and owe compliance to their controllers – they have no direct relationship with data subjects. Assuming you were a controller, then yes, I would assume you would have to decrypt any data that you are able to decrypt in order to fulfil a data subject request. Access requests can only be denied if: Art 12(5): they are “manifestly unfounded or excessive” (which the controller has to demonstrate), or Art 15(4): the access would “adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others”. Art 11(2): the controller can demonstrate that they are actually unable to identify the data subject so no data subject rights in Art 15–20 apply. A request is not automatically excessive just because it will require substantial CPU time, this exception is more often triggered when data subjects request the same data very frequently (e.g. every week). You are not required to provide or search data that you don't have access to (e.g. E2E encrypted data). Your use of per-field encryption is a very strong security measure (depending on how keys are managed). But GDPR is not about achieving maximum technical data protection, but merely requires appropriate safety measures (see GDPR Chapter 4, especially Art 32). Asymmetric encryption of small fields within a database is unlikely to be appropriate, taking into account the cost of processing and the data subject's ability to exercise their rights. A different security measure to ensure that every business only sees the correct data would be through testing and code review of your SQL queries, and full disk encryption of the server storing the database. In practice, asymmetric encryption is most often just used to encrypt a symmetric key, which is then used for the actual data. But which measures are appropriate also depends on the risk to data subjects – your approach could make sense for very sensitive data. Art 14 does not play a role here. It is about transparency of processing: that you need to (a) notify the data subject that you're processing their data, if feasible, and that you (b) provide information about this processing, usually in form of a privacy policy. Art 14 is the pendant to Art 13, which applies when data is obtained directly from the data subject. The Art 15 right to access and the Art 20 right to data portability are distinct from the right to be informed. In any case, it is the controller's responsibility to fulfil these rights.	Why do you think Oracle have not been protecting their trade mark? Using a trade mark to describe the product (“Written in JavaScript”, “Seeking JavaScript developer”) is not an infringement and the trade mark owner is under no obligation to, indeed, cannot stop this. Where they are required to defend their trade mark is when it is being used in such a way that there is the risk of confusion that the goods or services could be confused with the trade mark owner’s goods or services. Further, they are not required to defend all breaches, only enough to show that they are actively doing so. Also it is not important that the trade mark be associated with the trade mark’s owner. Do you know who owns the trade mark “Ben & Jerry’s”?	There is nothing in the GDPR requiring you to collect individual personally identifiable information. If the website has no need, and the website owner no desire, to collect such information, there is no requirement to do so. The GDPR requires that if such information is collected, that there is a lawful basis, and that it be handled appropriately and stored securely, and deleted when there is no longer a need to retain it, or on a proper request. If no such information is collected in the first place, all the rules about how to handle it do not apply. It is possible that some law of an individual country in the EU might mandate collection of some particular information, but I have not heard of any such requirement.
Does section 230 protect users who distribute pirated content? From my non-lawyer reading, it seems the prime protection in section 230 is clause (c)(1): (1)Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. From section (f)(2) it would seem that youtube and spotify are interactive computer services. If say spotify provides me with a file containing music, and I use youtube or bittorrent to distribute it am I not considered publisher or speaker of the result, therefore am not liable for copyright infringement? It would also seem that I avoid the obligations that are put on the providers of these systems, as the obligations section only specifies provider not user, unlike this section.	No. There are certain provisions of section 230 that carve out what liability these companies have for third party (i.e. User) speech on their web pages in 230(e). 230(e)(2) says that nothing in Section 230 may be construed to limit or expand laws reguarding intellectual property. These services are still on the hook if users post trademark or copyright infringing material to the site. Other such matters similarly not permitted include obscenities laws, exploitation of children laws, state laws, communications privacy laws, and sex trafficing laws. As a special note that section 230 was created to allow for emerging internet technologies and buisness to not have to worry about third party speech on their platform from holding them liable as a publisher. Thus, if I was to sue youtube for defamation of character based on a video you uploaded, calling me a Sith Lord, I could not sue Youtube (who has lots of money) but would rather have to sue you (who I presume does not have lots of money... at least not youtube/Google levels of money). Thus youtube cannot be civilily liable. It can still be criminally liable and liable for copyright infringement.	It is not obvious what the answer is. There are two fundamental questions – what will Youtube do in response to a particular action, and how can you put an end to the infringement? Youtube's response is driven by federal law, 17 USC 512. There is some danger to Youtube that you could sue them for contributory infringement, and this law specifies the conditions under which they can be immunized against such a suit. Referring to the stage of the DMCA take down process that you are at, they will put the material back up unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider’s system or network. As a prelude to filing such an action, the infringer must file a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person Observe that the person has to consent to federal jurisdiction, not state jurisdiction. Small claims court is a state court (copyright small claims court does not yet exist). Under 28 USC 1338, "No State court shall have jurisdiction over any claim for relief arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, or copyrights". For the most part, federal law preempts state law, but that guide might point to something about your case (an added right) that overcomes federal preemption. Supposing that that is the case, you might file a suit in state court over that added right: then, it is literally true that you "filed an action seeking a court order to restrain". You could also just go ahead and file an action in state court, because sometimes the court just does what it thinks is right, even if it doesn't have jurisdiction. Even if the suit is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, you will have "filed an action seeking a court order to restrain". However, Youtube may not be impressed, the way they would be if you picked Federal District Court. At this point, your options (for getting the material taken down) require filing a suit against the infringer. You can file an infringement suit in the UK, but the material will probably be restored on Youtube until they eventually receive a court order demanding that the material be taken down. You can file a suit right now in the relevant federal court in California and notify Youtube, and they should leave the material taken down. Since you are not suing Youtube in small claims court and the infringer is also not in California, you could not sue in small claims court (somebody has to be in California) unless you are suing Youtube (and will lose because they cannot be sued, per safe harbor rules).	Import laws apply to the one who imports. In your scenario that is the person in country A only. The server owner does not cause the digital content to be transmitted to A. The one who downloads does.	Copyright includes authorization of derivative works such as translations, so you must have permission of the copyright holder to create a translation. You could be sued for creating the unauthorized translation for your friend. If you attempt to further distribute the book, the chances of getting sued increase substantially. That path probably includes your legal obligation to foot the bill for the publisher and distributor having to defend themselves in court, since your contract with the publisher or distributor probably includes an indemnification clause saying that you indemnify them (pay their costs) against damages for your infringement. So your are at risk, and it increases if you do anything to distribute the translation.	You have the right to request anything you want, but there is a very limited set of things that you can have a legal expectation of them doing. The service provider has no obligation to block a user. You can likewise request a report, and from a pirate site I would expect no response. There is no legal requirement that a pirate site block an offending user after a certain number of offenses. There is no direct way to compel a pirate site to ban a user. Indirectly you might accomplish that end if you take legal action against the site, which causes them to ban a user in order to protect themselves If a DMCA request was not "proper" (the correct legal form) they will not perform a takedown, and may not inform you that they won't. Make sure your takedown request is legally correct and actually delivered to the correct person. If they still ignore your request, they will have lost the "safe harbor" provisions, and you can theoretically sue them. Since the pirate site presumably only hosts a link to elsewhere, their making public such a link is not itself copyright infringement, so you need to be going after the ISPs who manage the actual host sites. The pirate site might still be a contributor to infringement, along MGM v. Grokster lines. A standard defense against infringement would be "We had no idea", and ignoring DMCA takedown notices is clear proof that they did have an idea. That's basically what DMCA takedown is about: saying what it takes to use the "We had no idea" defense.	In general, using content provided by another who incorrectly posted it under a permissive license, such as a CC license, does not grant a valid license from the real copyright holder. That is, if A writes some code (or a song, or creates an image, or whatever else), it is protected by copyright. If B then posts it to the web, with a statement that it is released under a particular license, without having obtained permission from A, then B's "release" is of no value, because B had no rights to grant. If C downloads and uses this content, relying on B's license, then A could take legal action against C. C would probably be considered (in the US) an "innocent infringer" which reduces the minimum statutory damage amount, but does not otherwise change C's legal position. A could, if it chose, bring suit and possibly obtain a judgement including some damages. But to return to the practical case of code posted on one of the SE sites. Given the comparatively short code sections usually posted, and that they do not usually form a complete working program, and given further the stated educational purpose of SE, it is likely that in US law such a posting would constitute fair use, and in the law of other countries fall under one or another exception to copyright. That is a general conclusion, the details would matter. I have not heard of a case similar to that suggested in the question. I find it unlikely that an SE poster would post copyright-protected code without permission, that is valuable enough to be worth an infringement suit, and substantial enough and having enough effect on th market for the original to be outside the protection of fair use. Such a situatiion is, of course, possible, even if unlikely. Note that a cease-and-desist letter is not a court order, and is really only a threat of court action. its only legal effect is to put the recipient on notice, so that continued infringement is not without awareness of the copyright claim. To have legal effect the claimant must actually bring an infringement suit, which is not without cost.	No. That clause does not give other users a licence to reproduce the work (other than what is necessary to access or use it) or create derivative works. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to do those things. (See 17 USC 106.) The clause you quote only indicates that other users can "access" (download for viewing) your "information" and use it, too. It doesn't give away any of your exclusive copyright in the work. You do grant Facebook a licence to do certain things with your work in section 2.1 of the Terms of Service, though.	united-states In US law this is covered by 17 USC 512 (c) which was added to the US copyright law by the Digital Millineum Copyright Act (DMCA) Under that law, the service provide is not liable if The service provider does not actually know that content posted is infringing; and The provider does not have good reason to belive that content is infringing; and The provider promptly removes or makes inaccessible infringing content once the provider knows or has reason to believe that content is infringing; and The provider complies with the DMCA take down procedure; and The provider has and publishes the contact info of a designated agent to receive complaints and takedown notices. (The above is a paraphrase of the actual text of the law, rewritten for clarity.) The above is all true no matter how short or long the videos or music selections may be. The length is not relevant, except as it may affect a claim fgor fair use, where length is only one of the factors to be considered. The above would also apply if the video, as opposed to the music, was a copyright infringement. Note that the individual poster can still be liable for copyright infringement, and the service provider may be required to respond to a subpoena for information identifying posters. Note also that a service provider must warn posters not to post content protected by copyright to which the poster has no rights, and must have some procedure in place to limit or cancel the access of posters who persistently post infringing content.
What makes someone a "principal officer of an executive department"? §4 of the 25th amendment makes reference to "a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide" – Congress has not provided anything else. 5 USC 101 lists the "executive departments". Art II § 2 of the Constitution says that the president shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for It is reasonable (but not self-evident) that having been nominated to be a principal officer of, e.g., the Dept. of Justice does not thereby make you one. What legal precedent can be called on to decide if an acting department head "counts" as a principal officer for purposes of the 25th Amendment §4, either for determining what number constitutes a "majority", and for determining whose written declarations are to be considered?	The question has no definitive resolution other than the authorities cited and some other related authorities such as the protocol rules of the Secretary of State for diplomatic purposes and the Presidential succession statute. It has never been litigated any reasonable interpretations of the the constitution and relevant law could be argued. There is also some case law under the appointments clause regarding which departments count as principal departments. There is a broad consensus regarding the existence of 15 principal departments of the United States government and which departments those 15 departments are in practice. I would say that the majority view is that the highest ranking person in each department is the principal officer of that department (which is provided for by statute in the event of vacancies) but there is also an argument that only the Congressional ratified and Presidentially nominated Secretary of a department (and the Attorney General in the Justice Department similarly appointed) count. In the event of a dispute, either Congress or a court could resolve the issue depending upon how the issues ended up being presented for a decision. If asked, the White House Counsel would render a formal opinion that would be binding upon all members of the Executive Branch. Triller novel writer Tom Clancy has explored some of the scenarios as have other writers in the same genre, but since the 25th Amendment has never been invoked in this manner, there is no definitive answer or even a non-judicial precedent to provide us with guidance on the question.	Perhaps. The relevant law is assembled into notes on 3 USC 102. The original act of 1963 defines President-elect in this manner: (c) The terms 'President-elect' and 'Vice-President-elect' as used in this Act shall mean such persons as are the apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President, respectively, as ascertained by the Administrator following the general elections held to determine the electors of President and Vice President in accordance with title 3, United States Code, sections 1 and 2. There is no specific statutory provision directing the Administrator of the GSA to ascertain who is that President-Elect. The administration is apparently taking a position similar to that taken by the Clinton administration, that states determine who has been elected, and the states have not officially determined who has been elected: nor has a candidate conceded. If a court orders the Administrator to make the ascertainment, I expect that the administration would appeal the ruling up to the Supreme Court. This letter, addressed to the Administrator, gives the legal rationale.	The comments have already pointed out that the President of the United States is still a citizen, and all of the rights of a citizen are still protected for them. Additionally, the Administration is allowed to take policy positions which are antagonistic to a person or group's cause, even if that group is practicing their rights to express their views legally. To give a different example, the President and his administration may denounce the position of a group of Neo-Nazis marching legally. So, any argument that the President is acting in an official capacity while making antagonistic comments also probably fails, as the Administration is allowed to take a position on any issue they deem worth taking a stand on. As noted in another answer and in comments, the applicable laws appear to be 18 U.S. Code § 227, which provides for punishment of government officials who attempt to influence employment decisions through official acts for political purposes, and 42 U.S. Code § 1983, which provides for civil action when a person deprives, or causes the deprivation of, another person's rights under color of law. 18 U.S. Code § 227 likely does not apply for two reasons The President may show that his conduct was not purely for political purpose The official statements made do not qualify as official acts per McDonnell v. United States, as they are not a decision or action on a "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy"; that question or matter must involve a formal exercise of governmental power, and must also be something specific and focused that is "pending" or "may by law be brought" before a public official 42 U.S. Code § 1983 might apply if the official statements were found to be acting under color of law, but I think the statements made so far will fail to meet the qualifications for this statute. Blair v. Bethel School District gives three qualifications for conduct that would allow recovery under this statute: (1) he engaged in constitutionally protected activity; (2) as a result, he was subjected to adverse action by the defendant that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in the protected activity; and (3) there was a substantial causal relationship between the constitutionally protected activity and the adverse action. The President's and Administration's official speech appears to fail the second criteria. First, it is questionable whether it qualifies as an "Adverse Action" - in Blair, as well as Hartman v. Moore and Gibson v. United States, the adverse action against the Plaintiff caused actual damage or indignity. However, even if we assume the official speech qualifies as an adverse action for the purposes of the statute, it still appears to be permissible for effectively the same reasons as the first and third arguments presented in the decision: First, the adverse action Blair complains of was a rather minor indignity, and de minimis deprivations of benefits and privileges on account of one's speech do not give rise to a First Amendment claim. The actual effect of the Administration's speech has a minimal direct effect on the players it speaks against. The decision further states: The most familiar adverse actions are “exercise[s] of governmental power” that are “regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature” and have the effect of punishing someone for his or her speech Official speech by the Administration is not "regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature." While this is not a complete definition for "adverse action," it gives a sense of severity, which official speech does not appear to meet. Additionally, the President's right to speech, and the Administration's authority and need to make official speech as directed by the President is a competing interest in this case, as was the interest of the Board in Blair: Third, it is significant that Blair isn't the only party in this case whose interests implicate First Amendment concerns. To the contrary, we assume all of the Board members have a protected interest in speaking out and voting their conscience... The decision does note that: The point isn't that the vote against Blair was protected speech simply because it was expressive. Almost all retaliatory actions can be said to be expressive, including those that are manifestly unconstitutional. But, while Blair certainly had a First Amendment right to criticize Seigel and vote against his retention as superintendent, his fellow Board members had the corresponding right to replace Blair with someone who, in their view, represented the majority view of the Board. Similarly, it's probable that a court would find that the President's right to speech and their Administration's corresponding authority to speech against the players' right to protest is equally weighted or even weightier, such that stifling the official speech is as bad or worse than the alleged chilling effect of the speech. Some examples of things that clearly would fall afoul of 42 U.S. Code § 1983 would be the President or the Administration misappropriating funds to use to pay NFL teams not to hire players who kneel during the national anthem, or signing an Executive Order preventing players who kneel during the national anthem from playing - in both cases, they are taking actions which fall outside the powers of their office, which would qualify as acts made under color of law and clearly chill the players' First Amendment rights.	Analysis. This question has never been squarely resolved by case law. An analysis would look to the U.S. Constitution (the pertinent parts of which are restated below) and case law under it, to determine if Congress has the authority to enact such a law or not including whether laws currently on the books affect it. Caucuses and primaries are used by political parties as part of their process for determining their Presidential nominees, and the only constitutional acknowledgement that they exist, or are subject to federal regulation is in the 24th Amendment. Political parties also have a 1st Amendment freedom of association interest in choosing their nominees as they see fit, subject to reasonable regulation in an area of law that is not well spelled out in case law. On the the other hand, caucuses and primaries are government regulated, mostly at the state level, because their results have an officially recognized role in Presidential elections under state laws regulating elections for Presidential electors, and primaries are generally conducted at state expense by state and local government officials, rather than by political parties acting autonomously. And, states have wide expressly granted discretion regarding how they conduct Presidential elector elections subject to the authority of Congress to prohibit various kinds of discrimination in the conduct of elections and to set the date of Presidential elections (a right that Congress has chosen not to strictly enforce allowing early voting, for example). New Hampshire does have the authority to say what a political party must do to have its nominee recognized on its general election Presidential ballot, and when it will conduct its state primaries. But, it does not necessarily have the power to determine whether or to what extent a national political party will consider the results of that primary in the process of selecting its nominee for President. The Democratic party, for example, would probably be within its rights to award no delegates to its national convention based upon New Hampshire's primary election participants based upon the New Hampshire primary election, and to instead award New Hampshire delegates solely as "superdelegates" who serve ex-officio, or based solely upon an entirely privately funded and operated Presidential caucus it held in New Hampshire at a date of its choosing. The flip side is that New Hampshire might be within its rights, probably, to decline to put a Democratic party national convention chosen nominee on its Presidential elector ballots, a retaliation, although arguably that would deny the rights of its citizens to vote in the Presidential election over which the federal government has more regulatory authority. The exact details of any situation leading to litigation would matter a lot, and it isn't possible to predict with any great certainty how a challenge would come out, although it is possible to articulate what provisions of the U.S. Constitution (and with more research, what court cases (maybe a dozen or two are arguably pertinent), federal statutes and state statutes) would be pertinent to the decision. It is possible to advocate for an outcome within the range of legally relevant authority, but, in practice, a negotiated compromise that would not push up against the hard constitutional limits of the constitution, relevant statutes and cases would almost surely be reached before it came to that point. For example, while New Hampshire might arguably have the right to refuse to put the Democratic nominee on the ballot because it didn't consider the results of its first in the nation primary in choosing its nominee, I very much doubt that New Hampshire officials would actually go that far, if push came to shove. On the other hand, if Congress passed a law stating that the District of Columbia shall hold the first in the nation primary, as it is probably expressly authorized to do under the 23rd Amendment, that federal law would probably pre-empt New Hampshire's law on the point. Relevant Provisions Of The U.S. Constitution As Amended Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution might be relevant. It states: The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution might be pertinent, it states in the pertinent part that: The Congress shall have power . . . To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. Even more directly, Article II, Section 1 which states, in part, that: The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows: Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector. . . The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States. Article VI states in the pertinent part that: This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Sections 1, 2, and 5 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. These sections state: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. . . . Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. . . . Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: Section 1. The District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is the only one expressly recognizing the existence of primary elections, might apply. It states: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might apply. It states: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Collectively, these sections of the U.S. Constitution give the federal government considerable legislative authority to regulate state elections for federal offices.	No. They could be, but the "nullification" wouldn't be automatic. That is because, as the Congressional Research Service says in its excellent "Executive Orders: An Introduction": "Once issued, a valid executive order has the force and effect of law. Executive orders do not, by default, expire when the issuing President leaves office. Instead, an issued executive order remains in effect until it is either struck down in court, modified, or revoked." Because executive orders persist but can be easily changed, one of the first orders of business of a new administration is to revoke, modify or re-issue inherited executive orders. As far as your hypothetical, most commenters agree that when the President is expected to return to office quickly, the Acting President's job is simply to "keep shop." However, in extreme cases, such as the one you outline, they also agree the Acting President can exercise the full-range of Presidential powers. Thus, the Acting President could revoke the problematic orders. (This is discussed in Yale Law School's in the Yale Law School's "Reader's Guide" to the 25th Amendment.) If you want to know more, the Wikipedia page on Executive Orders gives a short (and harmless) summary. For more detail, see either the CRS pamphlet cited above, or their earlier pamphlet,"Executive Orders: Issuance, Modification, and Revocation."	Congress can compel any person or company to appear before them for any reason: this article and this more extensive review give overviews of Congressional subpoena power. Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178 affirms the power of Congress to investigate matters that could bear on the actions of Congress, but also draws lines on what kinds of questions can be asked. It is unquestionably the duty of all citizens to cooperate with the Congress in its efforts to obtain the facts needed for intelligent legislative action. It is their unremitting obligation to respond to subpoenas, to respect the dignity of the Congress and its committees, and to testify fully with respect to matters within the province of proper investigation. This, of course, assumes that the constitutional rights of witnesses will be respected by the Congress as they are in a court of justice. The Bill of Rights is applicable to investigations as to all forms of governmental action. Witnesses cannot be compelled to give evidence against themselves. They cannot be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure. Nor can the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, religion, or political belief and association be abridged. Congress has the power to enact laws (and it not charged with the duty to investigate federal crimes, which is in the domain of the executive branch). So if Congress wants to find out whether they should pass a law, they can subpoena people and ask them questions. In the case of Watkins, an individual was interrogated regarding his personal life. He refused to answer, stating that "I do not believe that such questions are relevant to the work of this committee nor do I believe that this committee has the right to undertake the public exposure of persons because of their past activities". The Supreme Court concluded that while it is an offense to refuse to answer questions "pertinent to the question under inquiry", the Court could not figure out with reasonable certainty what the inquiry was about. BTW the holdings section of this opinion (in 1957) ranges a-y, which is a remarkably nuanced and non-committal collection of holdings, which can be summarized by saying that the court found the question to likely be "off-topic". If Congress wants to contemplate passing a law to restrict Twitter, it can subpoena anyone it wants to. There is an unresolved question regarding subpoenaing the executive branch (specifically, the role of executive privilege, where POTUS can shift the burden of proof to Congress to establish their right to interrogate the executive branch).	This is known as the "ministerial exception", which protects the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, which include the right of religious groups to determine who is and is not a member of their clergy, and emerges from the case-law of the US Supreme Court. The most recent leading case on this is Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 565 U.S. 171 (2012); as Chief Justice Roberts put it in that case: the Establishment Clause prevents the Government from appointing ministers, and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own	The 25th amendment §3 says Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Nothing in the Constitution deprives the Vice President of his powers / duties when he is also Acting President. Alternatively, the VP can become acting President under §4, without presidential cooperation, by declaration of the VP and a majority of the cabinet. Then either the President asserts that there is no inability, or Congress decides there is. But: unless the president dies or resigns, or is impeached, the VP is Acting President and actual Vice President, and therefore breaks ties in the Senate. Note that under §4, the VP plus cabinet must declare POTUS unable, and must do it again if POTUS denies the inability. That means that there must still be a VP, who along with the cabinet re-affirms the disability.
Can Law Enforcement in the US use evidence acquired through an illegal act by someone else? There are reports on the internet this morning that a group of people were able to hack Parler and download around 70tb of data from the servers before AWS ceased hosting the platform. There are plenty of accusations being levelled at Parler's users in regards to using it to coordinate activity during the 6th January Capitol Riots. /r/ParlerWatch/ All Parler user data is being downloaded as we speak! Can law enforcement agencies in the USA use this data without violating any laws themselves? Would it be admissible in a court of law should charges be brought? Would this complicate legal proceedings should law enforcement seek a court order to seize the same data from the source (it is presumably still being held by AWS).	Yes: So long as law enforcement did not compel the hackers to hack the data and the data was recovered by Law Enforcement through their investigation of the Hacker's breeching the server's security. Evidence of a crime committed by a third party is admissiable if it came to light during an unrelated investigation. The party that did the hacking could still be liable for any crimes they committed in their retrieval of the data. There are occasions where someone who is committing a crime stumble upon evidence of a more serious crime and informs the police of the problem either because they would never want to be party to a serious crime, but also because it can help them get reduced sentancing to give up the greater evil. As an example, in "Home Alone," when Kevin tricks Harry with the film clip of the gangster murdering Snakes with his Tommy Gun, Harry is freaking out telling this to Marv, but Marv realizes what's going to happen if they get caught: They've been robbing houses in the neighborhood and the police would likely pin the murder on them rather than assume two seperate crimes occured in the same block. Marv suggests they snoop around so they can see who walks out of the house and give the cops a face with a name. This leads them to discovering Kevin's ruses and the film's climax.	I'll preface this by saying I live in Australia where the lowest jurisdiction that can make an act a criminal offence is the state; local governments simply do not have that power here, Question 1: If I understand this right you have a law that you do not enforce that carries moderate sanctions and you are asking that a law that you do not enforce with greater sanctions will be a greater deterrent? Well ... no (see here). If you want to stop the behavior you have to enforce the sanctions that you have in a fair and impartial way. I would suggest that you make it very clear that starting in early September the laws will be enforced - that gives people fair warning. Then, each weekend in September you bring in enough police (State Troopers?) to enforce the law. Its not going to take many $250 fines to make people stop. Question 2: No comment. Question 3: No comment. Question 4: Sounds like a good way of getting the city sued for negligence; just because people are breaking the law does not make it legal to hurt them. If you are serious then fencing the entire area may be worthwhile but the area would still need to be policed.	In the general case, it seems unlikely, based on the wording (which is convoluted). In certain cases, if the president of Russia posts "My name is Vladimir Putin", that post is personal data. On the other hand, you might, based on my writing, conclude that I am from the US, and you might even conclude that I'm in Washington state, but that doesn't distinguish me from 7.5 million others, so on those grounds that is not personal data. Eventually, though, you might identify me specifically from other things that I may have said on SE. The definition depends on two parts. First, personal data is "information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person". Any "information" provided by a natural person is "related to" that person (as is any "information" that is about such a person). The second part defines "identifiable natural person", that is, who is an "identifiable person"? Every person can, in principle, be identified by reference to some label or description of fact about them, so every person is an identifiable person, under this definition. This means that every piece of text that refers to an individual (not even text which can identify the person) is "personal data". Obviously, any individual can be uniquely identified by some collection of identifiers; the problem is that the wording of the law does not explicitly say "using that supposed personal data". If I mention that I have a relative named Knudt, that would technically be personal data: I've given information that relates to a person, though you have no idea (and could not possibly figure out) who that person is. Another term that the regulation defines and uses in a few places is "pseudonymization", which is defined as the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable natural person The point of interest here is that this says that "personal data" which cannot be attributed to an individual is, nevertheless, still personal data. I think the most important part of the regulation is art. 6, which defines lawfulness of processing, especially para 4., which allows consideration to be given to safeguards such as pseudonymization.	I will address only the legal issues. Prosecutors for very good public policy reasons are not required to prosecute every crime they have suspicions about. When exercising this discretion they consider: Is the act, in fact, criminal - many of the things you list, while reprehensible, unethical, and possibly immoral are not actually criminal. Do they have the resources (time, staff, money) to collect the evidence and run this case as opposed to the thousands of other crimes out there. There are always more crimes than can be prosecuted and these have to be prioritised in some way. Do they have enough evidence to gain a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. People can be fired or resign on suspicion, they can't be convicted on it.	Police officers are authorized to use force regardless of what they are wearing, to effect an arrest. One issue will be whether the defendants should know that they were under arrest, but there is no requirement to utter particular phrases when dealing with a combative lawbreaker. There will be an internal investigation at some level to determine whether the officers violated any department policy, and no doubt the video and testimony of those in the are would be relevant. There probably is some policy to the effect that you have to distinguish yourself from a street vigilante (you have to state your authority), though I can't find any specific online publicly-available department rules. There is no law that requires an officer to say that he is one, or to show his badge, before starting an arrest.	It is probably illegal under Indonesian law for you to launch a cyber-attack on a website that you believe violates Indonesian law, just as it is illegal for you to shoot a person for fraud. The Indonesian government reserves the right to judge guilt or innocence, and to mete out punishment, within Indonesia. It is definitely illegal under US law, also UK law and so on, to launch a cyber-attack on a website for some reason, so you can be prosecuted under the laws of that nation. You should then be concerned with the Law on Extradition (1979), noting that there might be a treaty but also Indonesian law allows extradition on the basis of the interest of Indonesia (as judged by government officials). Indonesian nationals do not enjoy immunity from extradition (as is the case in some countries). There is no extradition treaty between Indonesia and the US; there was one between the UK and Indonesia but I cannot determine whether it is still in force.	The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.	Intent would greatly factor into the case. As mentioned, possession of child pornography is illegal. There was a case, where a man had inadvertently downloaded such images. In the case, it was shown that there was sufficient evidence that it was accidental and without his knowledge. Presumably, if you by happenstance created an identical code through encryption/compiling, there would be a lack of evidence of intent or evidence of your intended use. For example, your stored password manager file happens to store data identical to an illegal image. The password manager output is provable and repeatable to show that it was simply circumstantial. If you have hundreds of such outputs that all "just happen to be illicit images" you would probably fall on the wrong side of reasonable doubt. As to whether you can keep the data, the programmers for the password manager would probably update their system to modify the output to avoid bad press. The general idea is that the "illegal number" is so incredibly specific that accidental cases are very unlikely to occur, and if it did, that there would be forensic evidence indicating intent and use.
Why does the U.S. have much higher litigation cost than other countries? According to the institute for legal reform (https://instituteforlegalreform.com/wp-content/uploads/media/ILR_NERA_Study_International_Liability_Costs-update.pdf), liability/GDP ratio is 1.66% which is almost three times that of the Eurozone. This is a complex question, for sure, but what are the key reasons that the U.S. has such high litigation costs?	Litigation Costs v. Liability Insurance Cost It is worth noting that what the Institute for Legal Reform, a tort reform lobbying group, is stating, is not that the U.S. has "higher litigation cost" than other countries. They are financed mostly by businesses that have to pay liability insurance expenses and are motivated in their analysis to come up with any analysis to argue in favor of reducing those expenses for their backers. This Institute is stating that liability insurance costs are greater in the U.S. and that this is a good way to infer that the things that liability insurance costs pay for in the U.S. are more expensive (and both of these narrow propositions are largely true). But, liability insurance costs have two big components: (1) claims paid, and (2) costs paid in the litigation process itself. And the contexts in which these costs are incurred has to be balanced with other parts of the overall systems. As economists like to say, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Higher claims paid may be good or bad. Higher claims paid discourages businesses and individuals from doing things that hurt other people, and compensate people who are hurt by wrongful conduct and to the extent that a claim paid does both of these things an an appropriate amount (or even higher considering that not all wrongful harms are litigated for a variety of reasons). But if they are too high they may discourage business activity by overcompensating injured people in a way that discourages business activity that does more good than harm. Litigation costs are a necessary evil. These cost also discourage tortious conduct, but not so precisely as they can discourage lawful conduct that is improperly the subject of litigation as well (and in many personal injury circumstances it is not obvious in advance to 100% certainty who is at fault) and they don't compensate people who are hurt by wrongful conduct. But litigation costs are necessary to operate the system. To the extent that more litigation costs in the aggregate better distinguishes between rightful and wrongful claims, they have value, to the extent that they do not, they have less value. Alternatives Within The U.S. It is also possible to make different choices on the value of litigation costs and U.S. jurisdictions have done this in some circumstances for particular kinds of litigation. Most U.S. jurisdictions (maybe all of them) impose strict liability on an employer for workplace related injuries greatly reducing the litigation cost share of compensating workers for injuries on the job at the cost of making employers pay for injuries caused by fellow workers or the negligence of the injured employee, rather than the employer or its management. This is called the worker's compensation system. Some U.S. jurisdictions have made a similar risk reward determination in the case of minor automobile accidents, in a system called "no fault insurance" barring lawsuits for small automobile accidents (a key defined term in such systems) and requiring drivers to instead self-insure form injuries and damages in small automobile accidents, to reduce litigation costs, and limiting litigation to automobile accidents with serious injuries or very major property damage where the costs of litigation are justified in light of the magnitude of the harm for which fault needs to be allocated. Short Conclusion In sum, while liability insurance costs are higher in the U.S., that doesn't necessarily mean that the money is not well spent and appropriate. This is a political choice with pros and cons attached to it. Caveats I haven't moved to close this question because a lot of the key factors are matters of comparative law between systems of accident liability. But this is usually considered as a political and policy issue, usually raised in Politics.SE instead, with which there is often overlap with Law.SE Also, I haven't really sourced this answer, because it is long and time consuming just to get the major considerations out. There is an extensive academic literature for essentially all of the points that I discuss. But most of my own sources are hard copy books that I can't link and would be time consuming to locate sources for online that I don't have easily available at this time. One good overview of several of the long standing basic comparative civil procedure points discussed below is this article from 1987 by John Langbein, who historically was one of the leading academic scholars in the area of comparative civil procedure. Drivers Of Claims Paid Costs There are at least eight big factors that impact the substantive amount of liability awards involved, not all of which may apply in any particular two country comparison. One of the big things that liability insurance costs pay for in the U.S. is liability for medical expenses caused by tortious or allegedly tortious personal injuries that are paid for by third parties and not litigated elsewhere. In most countries, some form of universal healthcare system pays for medical costs and those universal healthcare system paid medical costs can't be recovered in litigation. In the U.S., in contrast, medical expenses are always recoverable in personal injury litigation even if those costs were actually paid by health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or worker's compensation insurance (in cases where the lawsuit is alleging personal injury from someone other than the employer), due to something called the collateral source rule, then the person who actually paid for the medical expenses is entitled to some of the amount recovered by the injured person in the personal injury lawsuit as a consequence of what are called "subrogation rights." Basically, the U.S. shifts a lot of what would be paid for a different kind of public or private insurance in other countries onto liability insurance. The relative amount of money spent on one kind of insurance rather than another isn't really a big deal in the larger scheme of things. The virtue of the way that other countries do it, is that there are fewer people who are injured without an ability to pay for medical care without severe economic disruption in those countries than in the U.S. and untreated medical injuries or massive economic disruption to injured people is more problematic than treated medical injuries that don't cause massive economic disruption. The flip side of that however, is that by not clearly allocating the costs of medical care to the people who cause severe injuries as a tort liability based system does, businesses have less of an incentive to be careful and injury rates are reduced more slowly. The U.S. has seen a massive reduction in accidental injury over the time period that tort reformers allege has witnesses a surge in tort liability. An older but heavily cited article on comparative law regarding the collateral source rule and subrogation rights (and other aspects of those topics) is found here. Some countries, like Germany, for example, appear to have the injured party formally assign a right to sue to someone who made payments to the injured party for the injured party's benefit. The U.S. has a high costs of living, in general, and of medical costs in particular. Even in countries where there are awards of medical costs, U.S. awards for this area large because health care costs are much higher in the United States, on average, than in any other country in the world (for reasons beyond the scope of this answer, but as pertinent to this question, including many reasons not related to the malpractice liability associated costs of medical providers). Furthermore, the U.S., while it does not have the highest cost of living in the world (it ranks twenty-one although some key regions of the U.S. with high liability insurance costs have a much higher cost of living), has a high costs of living relative to most countries. So, claims for lost wages and damage to property, and claims for non-economic damages and punitive damages that are indirectly influenced by the high cost of living in the U.S. are influenced by this fact. If you cause a U.S. worker to lose ten years of wages due to their wrongfully incurred injuries, you may have caused $500,000 of damages prior to considering the time value of money. The same injury to a worker in China or Mexico might be $50,000 or less. and 4. The United States personal injury lawsuit system allows for the recovery of non-economic damages for items like pain and suffering, emotional distress, inconvenience, disfigurement, and the like, which is not allowed, or is allowed more sparingly, in most countries other than the United States; but this is offset by the unavailability of attorney fees to the prevailing party. Image from here. In part, the U.S. rule allowing non-economic damages, however, counterbalances the fact that most legal systems allow a prevailing party in a lawsuit seeking damages for personal injury to recover their attorney fees, while U.S. law does not allow a prevailing party in a personal injury lawsuit to recover their attorney fees in most cases. Instead, attorneys for injured parties customarily charge a contingent fee (often 1/3rd of the gross recovery) for their services, and defendants in personal injury cases have their attorney fees paid for by their liability insurer. So, while non-economic damages seem like a much broader recovery in the U.S. system than in non-U.S. systems of personal injury lawsuits, net of attorney fees recoveries that aren't available in the U.S. but are available elsewhere, this difference is not so great. While no rule mandates this and there are types of cases (e.g. civil rights, privacy and defamation cases) where economic damages don't tend to be proportionate to non-economic damages, in the U.S., in a typical personal injury case, non-economic damages tend to be proportionate to and less than the economic damages award in a case. Thus, in a case with $1,000,000 of economic damages awarded, a $500,000 non-economic damages award might be typical. Many people assert that the availability of punitive damages awards is an important factor; it is actually a very minor factor. In the U.S., when someone tortious injures another and that injury is intentional or reckless, a jury may award punitive damages in addition to the economic and non-economic damages intended merely to compensate the victim of the tort. If the economic damages in the case are significant, this can't be more than an amount proportionate to the compensatory (both economic and non-economic damages combined) award, typically not more than 1-3 times the amount of compensatory damages awarded. When the compensatory damages are very small (e.g. $100), the proportionality standard isn't so strict, but the award of punitive damages still can't be unduly large. While, in theory, one could imagine a world where this is a major factor, this is actually mostly hype from tort reform advocacy groups. Punitive damage awards are rare and as a share of aggregate tort liability awards in the U.S. account for a low single digit percentage share of the total. See, e.g. U.S. Justice Department statistics. (punitive damages awarded in 5% of cases that go to trial where Plaintiffs prevail, i.e. 700 out of 25,000 trials, only about 3% of cases filed go to trial, and the median punitive damages award is $64,000). Thus, punitive damages are awarded in about one in 1190 tort cases filed. U.S. tort awards are mostly made by juries, while this is exceedingly uncommon in all but a handful of other countries. In most countries, even those with common law legal systems, all, or very nearly all civil litigation is resolved by judges without juries, and in civil law legal systems not based upon the English legal system, serious tort damage awards are made by a panel of judges and can be reviewed de novo (i.e. redetermined from scratch) by a bigger panel of judges on appeal. In contrast, the lion's share of U.S. personal injury lawsuits that go to trial are resolved in jury trials. Judges are, for a variety of reasons including desensitization from seeing many cases and social class attitudes, stingier in their award of tort damages on average than juries, and this is particularly true in the case of panels of judges that balance out extreme opinions, relative to the extremes possible with a single judge. The causes of this mirror the fact that judges are much less likely to acquit a criminal defendant than a jury, on average. Of course, there are always exceptional cases and a damages award is based upon a human evaluation of the facts. In the U.S. a jury's award of tort damages is also much harder to reverse on appeal than a judge's award of tort damages in any system, since it simply states a dollar award and the appellate court must uphold it if there is any plausible justification for such an award in the evidence presented at trial and not merely because the actual articulated reasons of the jurors (which aren't considered in U.S. civil cases) were actually proper and supported by the evidence in the record. Another related point is the juries are less predictable than judges and single judges are less predictable than panels of judges. Unpredictability causes cases to settle in the U.S. that might have been resolved in favor of one party or the other in another system, and this uncertainty, on average, works against defendants and in favor of people who have been injured. Even in civil law systems with panels of judges, however, there is still a significant amount of uncertainty, because the law of when there is liability in tort for injuries is governed by standards that are fairly vague in almost every country. The U.S. has a thinner social safety net meaning that litigation is often the only way to obtain needed economic resources when someone suffers harm from an injury. In lots of countries there is a robust social safety net of unemployment, disability and welfare payments that can provide income security in the event of lost employment due to an injury. In the U.S. these options are much more meager, so the net benefit that an injured person can receive from suing rather than relying upon the social safety net and not suing even though they could is much greater in the U.S. than in other countries. This is despite the fact that U.S. system of tort liability is more heavily fault based than the system used in civil law countries. In the U.S., while there are situations which are exceptions to the general rule, most tort lawsuits involve proof of negligence by the person that caused the harm, and that the damages suffered were caused by the negligent act. In civil law countries, there is much less of a focus on whether acts of the defendant that caused the person harmed to suffer injuries. It isn't truly a strict liability system but it is closer. The reduced necessity to prove negligence reduces the cost of litigation in civil law countries while increasing the amount of awards. Basically, there are far more cases in the U.S. where the decision is that the defendant injured the plaintiff but that there is no liability because "shit happens" than in civil law countries. Drivers Of Litigation Costs Participating in the process of recovering damages for tort injuries (i.e. true litigation costs) usually involved more aggregate litigation costs for the defendants (and for plaintiffs, defendants and courts combined) in the U.S. than elsewhere. Several factors drive this difference, including factor eight above and five additional factors. Not all of this apply in every particular two country comparison. The U.S. and other common law systems systemically allocate more litigation expenses to the parties than to the courts, than civil law countries. Image from here. From here (although there is considerable variation in the number of lawyers per capita in each U.S. state, the U.S average is 4 per 1000 people, but South Carolina with the fewest lawyers per capita has 2, Massachusetts and Connecticut have 6, New York has 9, and the District of Columbia has 77). Countries with civil law litigation systems (based on the systems of Continental Europe) have vastly more judges (about ten times as many) who are more pro-actively involved in the litigation process per attorney representing a party, than in the U.S. or other common law countries. Because of this, even if the total litigation cost to all parties and the system itself were equal in common law and civil law countries, a greater share of the cost would be paid for by the government through judicial system budgets at public expense, and less would be paid for by the parties. This also has the indirect effect of causing U.S. judges to avoid involvement in the case as much as possible until as late as possible in the case in the hopes that the delay will cause it to settle, even if the delay in resolving an issue causes the parties to incur more litigation costs than would have been necessary if the judge had paid attention sooner. The Extreme Finality of Jury Trials Results In Systemic Over-Expenditure On Litigation Costs. In the U.S. system, you get one shot at trial, and particularly given the issues present in a typical tort lawsuit for personal injury, this is virtually unreviewable on appeal. This means that a competent trial lawyer for a party needs to rule out or prepare for every possible uncertainty in advance, rather than only those possibilities at trial that are likely. In a civil law system, you can prepare for only what is likely and if you are surprised at trial, you can appeal the factual findings made and introduce evidence or arguments to address the surprises you encountered on appeal only if they actually come up. This kind of trial preparation is much less expensive than the extreme no stone left unturned approach that is typical in the U.S. As an answer from @JohnFx to this question notes, a lot of this pretrial preparation manifests itself in the form of "discovery" costs. A related subset of this factor is that the behavior of judges when presented with a tort case is much more predictable than the behavior of a random panel of citizens selected only at the end of a case. Knowing who will decide the case can focus and reduce the kind of preparation of needed and what kind of outcome is likely. For example, you can know from experience that certain kinds of testimony and evidence will be given weight by a particular judge or panel of judges to a greater degree than you can with a jury where evidence that may have lots of impact to one juror may not have as much impact as a different kind of evidence with a different juror. The stakes are higher in U.S. litigation so more litigation expense is justified as proportional to the higher stakes. If you have a serious personal injury case in the U.S. with $2,000,000 of medical costs, $1,000,000 of plausible non-economic damages award, and $500,000 of other economic damages for a total of $3,500,000 at stake, it is rational for both sides to spend money to maximize the quality of their case than they would in a case where only $500,000 plus attorneys fees can be awarded to a winner and a loser pays the other side's attorney fees, in system where medical costs paid by a third party aren't litigated and non-economic damages aren't awarded. Attorney compensation is more heavily regulated in other countries. In the U.S. attorneys are allowed to charge what the market will bear. In many countries there is government regulation of attorney fees that limit hourly rates or per task rates and don't allow for contingent fee awards. This can make U.S. litigation fees higher than in other countries. Earlier resolution of cases on the merits is possible in most other countries because decision making isn't reserved for a jury trial at the end. A logistical reality of a jury trial system in the U.S. is that the jury meets once for a few days and can't be reconvened. This means that pre-trial resolution of issues reserved for the jury is allowed only in the clearest cases where no jury could reach a different result that would be upheld on appeal. In contrast, in almost every other country, where judges resolve all or almost all tort lawsuits, it is much more feasible to arrange decision making in a manner calculated to minimize litigation costs. For example, in a U.S. personal injury lawsuit, the plaintiff must almost always present evidence of both liability (i.e. that they were wrongfully injured by the defendant) and damages (e.g. lots of medical expert and medical expense and cost of care and lost wages testimony) in the same trial that happens over the course of a few days. In many other countries it is common to bifurcate the trial so that liability is tried first and evidence of damages is only presented once the issue of liability is determined. In many other countries it is also common to resolve issues of special preconditions to liability, such as whether the driver of a truck causing injury was acting within the scope of employment, or whether a statute of limitations has run, on the merits based upon both disputed evidence and law, before the liability trial. In cases that don't go the distance to a trial on all issues, this reduces litigation costs. And, even if the resolution of early issues like preliminary issues or liability is favorable to the plaintiff, wins on those issues may cause the later issues in the case to be resolved without a trial and settled. Interest Disclosure Since I questioned the motives of the Institute for Legal Reform based upon an interest biasing it in a particular direction, I will also disclose my own relevant interests and experiences. I litigated many cases on behalf of insured defendant with casualty insurance (or the self-insurance pool equivalent) at a firm where I was employed for three years early in my career. Over the remainder of my career (more than twenty years), I have represented roughly the same number of plaintiffs in litigation where insurance is potentially a source of recovery, and a smaller but not insignificant number of defendants who also have insurance defense counsel. Most of my litigation practice involves commercial and probate cases where there is no insurance coverage for either side. I also represent many clients in transactional and commercial litigation matters who are business owners or businesses that have to pay significant liability insurance premiums in the course of their business or profession and have done considerable asset protection planning work and have taught courses on that subject to other lawyers. I have been self-employed as an attorney for more than fifteen years, and in that time period I have had to maintain both health insurance and liability insurance policies. My practice has also involved a small, but constant and significant, amount of representation of U.S. based clients with legal affairs that involve other countries such as international trade, business investment, tax, probate and child custody matters that require familiarity with the legal systems of other countries. I was an award winning law student in these subject of comparative law in law school where I was also a senior editor in the Michigan Journal of International Law.	It is hard to tell what the statement in the OP that "95% of the contract disputes are won/lost directly by the contract itself" was intended to mean. It isn't literally true. A breach of contract claim requires a showing in every case of (1) the existence of a contract giving rise to a contractual duty, (2) an unjustified breach of one or more of its valid terms, and (3) to recover more than nominal damages, a showing of the amount of damages caused by the breach. In the simplest of breach of contract cases, say, a promissory note default case, proof of the existence of a signed original promissory note, and business records regarding the defendant's payment history establish all of these elements, and establish a prima facie case that the defendant is unable to seriously contest. One possible intended meaning of the statement that you are paraphrasing is that usually the existence or non-existence of acts allegedly giving rise to a breach of the contract are undisputed and that the litigation primarily boils down to what the contract required in the fact of undisputed extrinsic evidence of breach of contract. This is not my experience. The overwhelming majority of contract lawsuits are basically collection actions for non-payment of an invoice, for foreclosure of a lien, or for eviction for non-payment of rent, in very simple transactions, where the party with a payment obligation has undisputedly failed to perform and the performance by the party to whom payment is due is not seriously disputed either. Probably 90%+ of contract cases have this character and are resolved by default judgment. A majority of the remaining < 10% of contract cases settle with the plaintiff getting some payment or acknowledgment of debt from the defendant, usually with payment plans reached primarily based on considerations mostly related to ability to pay (which isn't legally relevant but is as a practical matter critical in the subsequent collection stage), even if there are minor or unlikely to succeed disputes over liability and damages issues on the merits. Somewhere on the order of about 0.4%-4% of contract lawsuits involve cases where there are bona fide dispute regarding whether payment was made, or whether there was a legally recognized justification for non-payment such as the failure of the party to whom payment is owed to fully perform their obligations under the contract. The interesting cases usually involve disputes over whether someone earned the amount that they sought or instead failed to perform as agreed in some manner other than payment. When there is a written contract, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the validity and terms of the written contract are undisputed, and efforts to argue that there were any side agreements or subsequent modifications of the original written contract are very challenging to prevail upon. Disputes over breach and justification for breach are more common than disputes over the terms or meaning of a written contract, even though these are certainly disputed sometimes. And, of course, there are frequently disputes over whether there was a contract, and if so, what its terms were, in the case of express oral contracts, and contracts that are implied-in-fact or inferred from the course of dealings of the parties. Another possible interpretation of the paraphrased sentiment is that usually the language of the contract determines what your rights are in a case. Certainly, the rights of the parties usually do boil down to what the language of the contracts requires. Some Statistics The Colorado state courts publish an annual report with statistical data every year. The annual report for the year 2017 was typical. In District Courts (the courts of general jurisdiction) there were 247 civil bench trials (about a quarter of which are tort cases), and 218 civil jury trials in civil cases (about three-quarters of which are tort cases), which consist mostly of contract cases, but with a minority of tort cases and property rights case and cases involving statutory rights (it excludes evidentiary hearings in domestic relations or mental health or probate cases, or pre-trial evidentiary hearings such as hearings on preliminary injunction requests, eviction hearings, non-judicial foreclosure summary hearings, and criminal or quasi-criminal trials, hearings and cases) out of 89,632 civil cases filed. About 12,000 of these are contract lawsuits (52,000 are pro forma tax lien filings). Thus, there are about 240 contract case trials out of about 12,000 contact lawsuits, with about 2% of contract cases going to trial (about three-quarters of the time before judges instead of juries) (this excludes a very small number of disputed contract claims adjudicated within probate cases each year). In County Courts (the courts of limited jurisdiction for claims under $15,000 in 2017), there were 801 civil bench trials, 14 civil jury trials, out of 140,462 civil cases filed (the vast majority of which are breach of contract cases and 98%+ of which are decided by judges usually in trials of one day or less, instead of juries), with about 0.6% of contract cases going to trial. This counts evictions as well as straight out contractual debt collection lawsuits as contract cases. There were and 1,657 small claims court trials (always before a judge rathe than a jury and limited to disputes of $7,500 or less with limitations on lawyer involvement) out of 7,118 small claims cases filed, but the mix of cases is very diverse so mapping that to resolution method isn't really workable, even though more than half would be contract cases. Essentially all of the small claims cases that don't go to trial are default judgments and day of trial settlements. By comparison, there were about 460 federal court contract cases filed in Colorado in 2016 (about 0.3% of all contract cases filed in Colorado in any given year). These cases go to trial at a rate similar to the 2% rate for state court of general jurisdiction contract cases (perhaps 7 bench trials and 2 jury trials a year) (this figure excludes bankruptcy court cases which each have multiple disputed or undisputed contract claims within them). Certainly, it would be safe to say that less than 1-2% of contract lawsuits filed in Colorado go to trial. In all cases that don't go to trial, there was a default judgment (most common), settlement (next most common), or resolution in pre-trial motion practice (least common but more common than contract cases going to trial, let alone a jury trial).	The law was first promulgated on June 8, 1940 By the 76th Congress. The original text is here. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly important piece of legislation and I can find commentary on it and I’m not going to read the debates - if you do, please get back to us. Two points to note, it was passed at a time when most of the rest of the world was at war and the US was quietly preparing to be at war and it seems to be intended to fill a gap in state law since conviction under state law is a defence under Federal.	A case for negligence or some other tort would likely never reach the stage where we could answer this question, as lawyers are generally immune from suit for their litigation conduct. I don't know of any case with facts likey you've described, but my understanding is that the litigation privilege precludes virtually any tort action based on a lawyer's statements in the course of the proceedings. Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeal, for instance, has specifically acknowledged that claims for defamation, extortion, fraud, perjury, forgery, slander of title, injurious falsehood are unavailable: The policy reasons for the privilege have often been repeated: In fulfilling their obligations to their client[s] and to the court, it is essential that lawyers, subject only to control by the trial court and the bar, should be free to act on their own best judgment in prosecuting or defending a lawsuit without fear of later having to defend a civil action for defamation for something said or written during the litigation. Ponzoli & Wassenberg, P.A. v. Zuckerman, 545 So. 2d 309 (Fla. 3d DCA 1989).	In my experience, varying jurisdictions can and do differ as to the myriad ways these disputes are resolved. Contract law is one area where the judge has a lot of discretion. This is definitely true in state courts, even from judge to judge, and can even be true in the federal level-The 9th Circuit has some wildly different appellate decisions when compared to the 1st Circuit, and so on. I say this not to be argumentative, but to highlight the importance of careful and concise drafting that fully explicates the bargained for exchange, as there can be a vast amount of judicial subjectivity that goes into determining which rules pertain to certain situations. "Conflicting or competing clause" cases are now some of the most commonly litigated contract disputes. This is largely because the last 20 years has seen a huge influx of people "drafting" (more like piecing together) contracts without benefit of qualified counsel. This is particularly true because lay people do not generally create a specific insturment like an attorney would - from scratch, with definitions and terms specific to the transaction. Rather, they go online and find "form" or model contracts that they feel are close enough (which are almost always missing key components), and then they type in their own terms, or even write them in. Because this is so common, most jurisdictions follow the rule that hand written terms supersede pre-printed terms; likewise, type written terms will take precedence over pre-printed terms. Specific terms also carry more weight than general terms. Specific terms will usually be given precedence over general terms, as these are seen as creating a specific exception to the general terms. For example, if Clause A in your scenario said: Written notice must be provided at least five days in advance of (any) change... (leaving out "to price"), then clause B would prevail because it would be more specific than the more general term (A), which in my scene would pertain to any change whatsoever (this is assuming the whole of the agreement did not shed light on the issues more fully). In your hypothetical, these are both specific terms. In that case, the court would first examine the entire contract and all addendum, specs, plans, etc. when interpreting competing or conflicting clauses applying the fundamental principal that a contract should always be interpreted as a whole - not clause-by-clause - and not section-by-section. Contracts will often have numerous parts with portions incorporated specifically by reference, or numerous documents that may be integral to the transaction, If the parties agree to what constitutes the various parts of the contract (even if not incorporated) the entirety of the transactional documents may be considered by the trier of fact (and law). Once examined, if a proposed interpretation makes other portions of the global agreement meaningless, illogical or unenforceable, and another party's interpretation is in keeping with the document as a whole, that is the interpretation that will typically be adopted. Assuming this analysis doesn't work to resolve the issue, then the court would look to see if there is an order-of-precedence clause, which is a clause that lays out what parts of the contract / types of clauses take precedence over others (ex. written requirements take precendee over performance requirements, addendum hold less import than the signed agreement, schematics hold less import than addendum, and so on). Assuming this there is no order of precedence, the court will look first to see if the contract was negotiated back and forth, with terms being modified with each draft. If Yes, then the court will except extrinsic evidence (parole evidence) that goes to the intent of the parties bargained for exchange. If not, the contract term(s) will be construed against the drafter and in favor of the one who signed the others' instrument. So, as you can see, there is no clear answer to what seems to be a simple issue. This just goes to show: Lawyers seem expensive when you decide to hire them - Lawyers are expensive when you have to hire them, because you decided not to in the first place!	The core principle of stare decisis is that the law should not depend on what judge you got; two cases with the same facts should have the same outcome. In the common-law tradition, there weren't really written statutes; there was only "what's been done in the past," and so the only reference you'd have to what the law should be in some situation is past court decisions. If judges didn't have some constraints to rule similarly to before, there really wouldn't be any legal standards (because there was no written law to go back to; in civil-law countries, there always has been a written law, so precedent isn't so important). Stare decisis doesn't actually directly stop a judge from entering a decision that goes against binding precedent. However, judges are expected to obey precedent, and for the most part do what they're supposed to do. If they don't, the case will likely be reversed on appeal. Binding precedent only applies within the area a court serves; a court doesn't have to listen to precedent from a different court that has nothing to do with the case. The rule is that precedent from any court up the appeals chain is binding; federal district courts are bound by their circuit court and SCOTUS, state courts are bound by higher state courts and SCOTUS (but not other federal courts, as the case can't be appealed to them). A court can sometimes overrule its own precedent, but the cases where it can do that are rare (and so applying a higher court's precedent can also be viewed as "if you appeal to them they'll say X, so we're saying X.")	Each side paying for their own litigation costs is called the American Rule. As you noted in your question, it contrasts the English Rule where the losing party pays the winning party's litigation costs. In the United States, there are literally thousands of specific exceptions to the American Rule but they can be divided into these general categories: Contracts that say the losing party pays. This is one you pointed out in your question and is pretty common. Common Fund Doctrine. This is legal principle that courts have applied where it would be unfair for a plaintiff to pay their legal fees because it would be ultimately coming out of their pocket. Some classic examples are: A beneficiary suing a trustee for violating his fiduciary duties; shareholders suing the management of a company; and some types of class-action and antitrust cases where the efforts of the attorneys benefited the "common good". Contempt proceedings. See Toledo Scale Co. v. Computing Scale Co., 261 U.S. 399 (1923). This would only apply where one party is asking the Court to hold an opposing party in contempt, not where a judge initiates a contempt proceeding. Today, most states and the federal system have court rules that would likely apply here as well. Bad Faith litigation. As you noted in your question. This would be bad-faith/frivolous lawsuits and action in litigation that needlessly delay or increase the expenses of the opposing party. Statutes. This is by far the largest category. There are too many statutes to list but here is a sample of some broad categories: Civil Rights Cases (Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, housing discrimination, Americans with Disabilities Act, Etc.) Consumer Protection cases (Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair Debt Collection Act, etc.) Landlord-Tenant cases Environmental Protection Cases Open Records Law cases (Freedom of Information Act and similar state statutes) The statutes that contain fee-shifting provisions are generally ones where litigation is thought to be in the "public interest." The idea is that the legislature wants to encourage the private enforcement of certain laws. Allowing the recovery of attorney's fees provides financial incentives for lawyer to take cases where the ultimate damages award is small and might be less than their legal fees. There is a good law review article in the American University Law Review called The American Rule on Attorney Fee Allocation: The Injured Person's Access to Justice on this topic. While it's 20 years old, the policy considerations and historical perspective remains accurate.	For a contract (including ToS) to be valid, one of the things it must have is "legality of objects". That is, if the contract purports to require anything that is unlawful in the jurisdiction then (barring a severance clause) it is not a contract. In common law countries, the starting point is that people are free to contract for and about anything they like - a contract is simply a mechanism for exchanging value between the parties on whatever terms they wish. However, judges and legislatures have decided that there are some things you cannot trade and some terms that are unconscionable or against the public interest and these vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction*. For example, a contract is not legal in any jurisdiction if its terms seek to exclude the intervention of the courts - this is against public policy. So for example, a binding arbitration clause requiring the parties to accept a private arbitrator's decision as final excludes the courts, yes? Well, in Australia, yes, such clauses if used in a contract between parties with different bargaining power (like a Telco and its customers) are invalid because they prevent the weaker party pursuing a class action. However, they are perfectly legal in the United States because the SCOTUS has determined that the customer can persue litigation after arbitration is finished so this doesn't impede the courts. These are essentially the same laws interpreted by the courts so that they have totally opposite effects. So this might lead you to think that you'll put one in - it'll be OK in the US and Australians will represent such a tiny share of your market that you don't care if I can't enforce my ToS there. Except, if your website is visible by Australians, you have just exposed yourself to a government fine of up to AUD 5,000,000 (say USD 3,000,000) per day for breach of Australian Consumer Law. As a general guide (which is very stereotypical), US jurisdictions are the most permissive in the rights they will allow their citizens to give up: the US attitude is that everyone is free to make the best deal they can. European jurisdictions are the least permissive in this regard: most European countries follow a more social welfare state model and the citizen needs protecting from themselves. Commonwealth countries tend to be more in the middle.
In a non-emergency situation can I refuse to comply with police requests until after they have shown me their ID? Let's say I have an encounter with a police officer. That officer has asked me to do something I would normally be expected to comply with, such as get out of my car during a traffic stop or to give my name. Rather then immediately complying I request to see their id and take a photo of it, as proof of the identity of the officer, first. Could I be guilty of not complying with the officers orders by demanding identity first? Presume this is a non-emergency situation, No one has reason to believe there is a danger of immediate harm if I don't comply with the officers demands. Similarly the police are not currently in pursuit of a criminal, trying to secure evidence that is likely to be destroyed, or any of the other situations that may justify police rushing standard procedures.	First, no, given the wording of the question: "by demanding identity first". US courts have never held that citizens must immediately comply with non-emergency orders free of back-talk. Let's assume that the refusal is conditional: "I won't comply until you show me your ID". In most (?) jurisdictions, there is no obligation imposed on police to show ID, though I am excluding home searches. There is a policy requirement in Seattle (§7) that Employees may use a Department-issued business card that contains their name and serial number to satisfy the request for the information. Employees will also show their department identification card and badge (sworn) when specifically requested to do so. Exception: Employees are not required to immediately identify themselves if: An investigation is jeopardized A police function is hindered There is a safety consideration Massachusetts has a law saying that "Such identification card shall be carried on the officer's person and shall be exhibited upon lawful request for purposes of identification". In the domain of search and seizure law, the court reasoned in Doornbos v. Chicago, regarding a seizure by plainclothes police that Absent reasonable grounds to think that identification would present an unusual danger, it is generally not a reasonable tactic for plainclothes officers to fail to identify themselves when conducting a stop. The tactic provokes panic and hostility from confused civilians who have no way of knowing that the stranger who seeks to detain them is an officer... it is usually unreasonable for a plainclothes officer to fail to identify himself when conducting a stop or frisk As you can see, this identification requirement is tied to constitutional search and seizure limits for which there is voluminous case law regarding what is "reasonable". The scenario that you propose is fairly far from the kind of case identified in Doornbos: is the order from a uniformed officer in a police vehicle? That seems to be what you're describing. Now we must inquire as to the legality of the order. Picking on Washington state law, RCW 46.61.015 requires that No person shall willfully fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of any duly authorized flagger or any police officer or firefighter invested by law with authority to direct, control, or regulate traffic. RCW 46.61.021 requires a person driving to stop for a LEO, and to identify himself: failure to comply is a misdemeanor. There is no statutory provision that a person can refuse to obey these (or similar sections in the motor vehicle title) until the officer provides ID. A police officer (in Washington: and I suspect any other state) does not have unrestricted authority to give people orders, there are specific statutory circumstances giving police the power to order people to do things. Obstructing a police officer is a crime, but obstructing an officer is where one "willfully hinders, delays, or obstructs any law enforcement officer in the discharge of his or her official powers or duties", and not "doesn't cooperate". There is a provision, RCW 9a.76.030 where A person is guilty of refusing to summon aid for a peace officer if, upon request by a person he or she knows to be a peace officer, he or she unreasonably refuses or fails to summon aid for such peace officer and the "knows to be a peace officer" clause implies either that the officer is uniformed, or has provided identification. Finally, we have "failure to disperse" when a person congregates with a group of three or more other persons and there are acts of conduct within that group which create a substantial risk of causing injury to any person, or substantial harm to property; and (b) He or she refuses or fails to disperse when ordered to do so by a peace officer or other public servant engaged in enforcing or executing the law. These laws are attuned to emergency needs, thus outside the penumbra of your scenario. In short, the primary question must be, when can police lawfully give you an order that you must obey, which narrows the matter down to traffic-related matters. The seizure must be reasonable: it is reasonable to require a person to stop for a uniformed officer. Reasonability does not entail that all officers must produce ID when effecting a seizure, but this may be the case with plain-clothes officers. Even when in Seattle with a departmental policy requiring officers to identify themselves, an officer's failure to identify does not render the seizure illegal.	Regarding being pulled over, the guidance at Learn to drive a car: step by step states (emphasis mine): If a police officer asks you to, you must be able to show: your driving licence a valid insurance certificate a valid MOT certificate (if your vehicle needs one) If you don’t have the documents with you at the time, you may be asked to take them to a police station within 7 days.	It depends on the type of warrant. Failure to pay a fine is not necessarily an arrestable offence. The Police Scotland Warrants Standard Operating Procedure (710 kB PDF) states: 5.3 Whilst there is no legislative requirement for Officers to physically possess the warrant to force entry / effect arrest, it would be considered best practice if a forced entry is anticipated. There may be instances where this is not practically possible to obtain the warrant in time or it may be geographically challenging to do so. Possession of a scanned copy of the warrant would be good practice on such occasions, again where the circumstances permit. and 5.5.1 By virtue of Section 135 Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 an apprehension warrant implies authority, where it is necessary for its execution, to break open shut and lock fast places. Entry into any house or building, therefore, may be affected by any constable in order to execute the warrant in accordance with its terms and only as a last resort. and 5.6.1 An Extract Conviction/Means Enquiry Warrant (back fine warrant) is issued by the Clerk of Court when an accused person fails to pay the fine imposed within the period allowed for payment. This extract is a sufficient warrant for the apprehension of the accused, but unlike an ordinary warrant of arrest, it does not authorise a constable to break open doors in order to affect arrest. Sheriff officers are not police - they are closer to what in England and some parts of the USA would be termed bailiffs, used for civil recovery of debts etc.	Obviously the police isn't checking all the time that all the speed limit signs are still where they should be, so in practice you would get a speeding ticket, which the police officer would give you with a good conscience. And you might very well think that you missed the sign, and pay the fine without complaining. If you are sure there was no sign, you could say to that officer "I didn't see any speed limit sign, where was it? " and hopefully he or she would tell you where that sign was supposed to be. Then you might go back, find the sign on the ground, take a photo, take it to the police officer who would then take action to get the sign back up, and would most likely make that speeding ticket invalid. There are exceptions: A speed limit sign can actually allow you to go faster than you would be allowed without the sign. For example in a town the normal speed limit without any signs might be 30mph, and the sign said 40mph. If the police officer stops you going 45, you have no excuse because without the sign the limit would have been 30. Or you have one sign 30, followed by a sign 40. Same situation if the "40" is taken down. Or the police should have put up repeating signs every two miles, but put them every mile. If one sign is down, they could still be within the legal limits. And last, assuming the police didn't put the sign up just for fun, there is probably something making it unsafe to go 60mph if there was a sign 40mph. If that is something you should have seen, and doing 60mph was dangerous for reasons you should have seen, then you might get a ticket for driving at an unreasonable speed. Even if there never was a speed sign. You are never allowed to drive at a dangerous speed.	The legal question here is whether police have an enforceable power to enjoin a person from visiting a particular person or from entering a particular jurisdiction (especially the one where they have police powers). The obligation to obey police orders generally ends at matters regarding arrest, traffic orders, or crowd control. Freedom of travel is a fundamental constitutional right, along with freedom of association. That does not mean that you can go absolutely anywhere you want and do anything you want with whoever you want, but it does mean that any restriction have to be encoded in law, and such laws have to pass strict scrutiny. Any enforceable legal restrictions would have to emanate from the courts.	No For the same reason that requiring a licence to drive might, in some circumstances, result in harm to a person who cannot drive because they don’t have a licence. The city (or any government) has legislative immunity for the laws they put in place even if those laws have negative consequences to some people. All laws have negative consequences to some people, for example, laws against theft are extremely prejudicial to thieves. Similarly, the executive is immune for exercising their discretion in the enforcement of the law. This is the basis of the police not having a general duty to protect. However, police have a specific duty to protect when they have taken an individual into their care and control.	In most US States (probably all of them) failure to follow the Lawful orders of a police officer is itself a crime, and is grounds for the officer to arrest the person, even if the person had not done anything wrong prior to that. This obviously leads to the question: what orders are lawful? The officer has a pretty broad range of discretion. Ordering a person out of a car, or to roll down a car window, is pretty clearly lawful. Ordering a person to commit a crime would not be lawful. Neither would ordering a person to submit while the officer rapes or robs the individual be lawful. In practice, the officer will usually think that all of his or her commands are lawful, and might feel threatened by any failure to comply. In which case, the officer might shoot. This might not be upheld later if the command was not lawful and/or the officer's fear was not reasonable, but that will do the person shot little good. It is usually wise to comply with any commend, unless it puts you very directly at serious risk. Remember you don't know what else has happed to the officer that day. Has the officer had a fight with his/her spouse that morning? Just been denied a promotion? Been turned down for a mortgage? None of that should matter, legally, but it will affect the officer's attitude, and can lead to escalation, even if the person stopped is in no way at fault. An instruction to "shut up" is probably not going to provoke an officer to shoot if it is disobeyed, but it might help to escalate the situation. It is probably lawful, depending non the exact circumstances. As to the first amendment issues, that would probably come under the 'time, place, or manner" regulations that may be applied to speech. And even if it is not held to be lawful, the time to contest it is in court, not during the stop. If the officer feels safer with the window fully rolled down so that the officer could reach in, that is probably a lawful command.	Police make arrests when they (or a judge) decides to Police have the legal power to make an arrest if: they witness a crime being committed. Indeed, anyone can make an arrest in this circumstance. they have reason to believe that a crime has been committed. they have a warrant from a judge. Some reasons why police can, but choose not to make an arrest are: they don’t believe a crime has taken place. Accusations are easy; convictions are hard. they are exercising the discretion they have under the law to not prosecute a crime where it would not be in the public interest. Factors at play include the seriousness of the crime, the availability and strength of the evidence, the police and court resources available, other matters they have before them etc. they do not have sufficient evidence now but will pursue investigations to get more. Arresting someone starts all sorts of legal clocks ticking and if they can’t bring their case in time the defendant will walk.
Are chess games copyrighted? First and foremost, I've already done some research regarding my question - web pages including, but not limited to the following ones, weren't able to answer my question to it's full extent: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/17143/what-are-the-laws-concerning-copyright-of-chess-games https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1wgnc7/chess_and_copyright/ https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/copyright-on-games etc. According to various sources, chess games (the moves themselves) aren't protected by copyright of any kind. The consens in those articles is that the infringement starts with either advertising a blog, book, etc. (doesn't matter whether it's paid/free) with a player, i.e. "100 best games of Magnus Carlsen". Another opinion which has been shared frequently is that chess notations are eligible for copyright. That out of the way, let's dive right into the question itself: Suppose someone wants to share a paid blog post including special games of different kinds of players. For each of those games he lists a snippet of the important moves (which is completely legal) and includes the name of both parties, i.e. the white player is "Magnus Carlsen", black player is "Anish Giri". Moreover, the event has been played in 2015 at the World Championship (details are fictional). Is such a publication copyrighted? The games are taken by any database, e.g. https://www.chess.com/, https://database.chessbase.com/, https://www.chessgames.com/, etc. If it is, why do these sites have millions of games (they surely haven't requested permission by each player)? To be more precise, what parts of the chess game are copyrighted? Am I allowed to share a selection of different games, including details like names, date, place and so forth - all public knowledge?	This answer reflects US law; I don't know German law. To be more precise, what parts of the chess game are copyrighted? The parts which are not copyrighted are the facts of the individual games. These include the moves, the players involved, the venue, the clock times, draw offers, etc. Basically, anything found on the scoresheet. The parts which are copyrighted are the parts the author actually, well, authored. Commentary and analysis, for example. A discussion of the "important" moves of the game would certainly qualify. Am I allowed to share a selection of different games, including details like names, date, place and so forth - all public knowledge? Single games, yes. But you can't take Fischer's "My 60 Memorable Games" and publish a collection of just those 60 games, even if you leave out his commentary - the creativity that went into selecting which games were included qualifies for copyright as well. (Note that a simple collection of all of a player's games in the order in which they were played would not qualify for copyright, as that's not creative enough.)	Do you have an explicit permission by the artist? Does the artist give a blanket permission to anyone which covers this kind of use of their work (a license)? If no, then you commit a copyright violation when you use their work for your blog. This applies to practically any country which signed the Berne convention which is almost everywhere in the world. Having no commercial interest is usually not an excuse to violate copyright. Regarding which jurisdiction applies when you, your website and the copyright holder are in different countries: I opened a new question about this.	Can he use another commercial product that is copyrighted, e.g. a map of a location (the map is a political map and has nothing to do with trees), for his tree research purposes, if such a map won't be part of the book he works on? Yes. Copyright protects particular expressions of ideas and knowledge, not the ideas and knowledge themselves. Using a map for research purposes when the map or a modified version of it does not appear in the final work does not make the final work a "derivative work" covered by copyright.	Generally, no, this will not violate copyright. Your end user might violate copyright, but that is their problem not yours. Your program is a tool, just like a word processor is. If I copy a Harry Potter book into a word processor that does not make the word processor maker liable. There is a concept of "contributory infringement", which I think is what you are concerned about. I don't know about Danish law in particular, but most countries would require evidence that you had reasonable knowledge that actual copyright violation was occuring, rather than just being aware that it might happen in theory. This is normally applied to file sharing services who have to have "notice and takedown" measures, file filters and the like. This isn't your concern as you never have any access to the files created by your users. You can also be found liable if you induce anyone to commit copyright violations. Don't draw your customers attention to the custom monster feature as a workaround for those copyrighted monsters, as that could be considered to be inducement. Also don't provide any "wizards" or similar tools which make it noticeably easier to duplicate the custom monsters (e.g. if you notice that the copyrighted custom dragon stats are all on a linear scale with dragon size, don't create a "dragon creation wizard" embodying that fact.) This assumes that your program runs entirely on the end user computer. Its different if you provide any kind of cloud storage for generated characters.	Assuming Chegg own the copyright, then they can restrict the activities that copyright protects The statement you quote is no more or less than the rights granted to them by copyright law. Basically, it's their stuff, they get to decide how you can use it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the uses that you have nominated are prohibited. For that, we would have to look at the specific fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright protection where you are. It's likely that both of your usage scenarios would meet fair use and probably fair dealing (which is harder to meet). You may also find that, buried somewhere in those massive terms of use, is something that deals with this directly.	Since the person who posted the game component under the CC-BY license has no right to do so, no one who used it in reliance on that license had any rights either, and all such uses were at least technically infringement (unless they came under a copyright exception, which seems unlikely). The holder of the copyright on the component could sue in any country where a game using it was published. The details of the law, including the rules on damages and other remidies, will vary from country to country. In the united-states those rules are contained in Chapter 5 of title 17 USC particularly sections 502-505. Section 504 provides for possible money damages. Section 502 provides for a possible injunction (court order to stop infringing). Section 503 provides for for infringing works to be seized. Section 505 provides for possible awards of costs and legal fees to a successful plaintiff (copyright holder). Section 502 allows injunctions to "prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright" on "reasonable" terms. But when the infringement has already been stopped, no such injunction is needed and a court is not likely to impose one. Section 503 allows the court to order the impoundment of infringing copies and "plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles by means of which such copies or phonorecords may be reproduced". This is largely obsolete for digital content. Section 504 is the key. It offers the plaintiff a choice between actual damages plus profits and statutory damages. The rule for the first is: The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. This means money made by use of the unauthorized content, plus any loss of sales or other losses suffered by the owner. Money mad by the infringing work but not made by use of the infringing content is not included, if this can be proven. Income obtained after the infringing content was removed would probably not be included in the infringer's profits. Statutory damages can be any amount between $750 and $30,000 that the count thinks is just, but id the infringement is proved to be "innocent" the lower limit is $200. The exact provision reads: In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. An award of costs and fees under section 505 is entirely up to the discretion of the court. If the maximum possible award of infringer's profits is $10,000, and a defense of innocent infringement is plausible, a plaintiff might well find such a suit unprofitable, given the legal expenses involved in preparing an carrying through such a suit. But that is entirely up to the copyright owner. An owner may choose to file even an unprofitable suit in an effort to deter others. A person who has discovered that s/he has innocently infringed a copyright and made some money in the process would be wise to document the prompt removal of the infringing content form any publication, and efforts to notify the copyright owner. Ther is no way to be sure what actions the owner will take, if any, within those that the law allows. Often a owner in such a case will not bring suit if the infringement was apparently innocent, resulting profits were small, the infringement has been halted, and future infringement by that infringer seems unlikely. But different owners have different policies on such matters. An owner can delay in deciding whether to file suit or not.	A person who uses a name similar to an existing protected trademark may have committed trademark infringement. The trademark owner can sue, and possibly collect significant damages, and possibly also get an injunction against further infringement. Note that this is not a matter of a crime, but of a lawsuit by one person or business against another. (A point of terminology: A trademark, like a copyright, is said to be "infringed" when someone uses it without permission in ways that the law does not allow. The word "broken" is not used for this.) In many countries, only marks properly registered with the appropriate national registry are protected. In the US simply using the mark can lead to its being protected, although registration can give greater rights to the mark owner. Protection in one country does not give protection in another. In general, protection only applies in the same or a similar market area as that in which the mark is already being used. An electronic game may well be similar enough to a card or board game for protection to apply. A key question is how similar a mark can be and avoid infringement. The basic test is if a reasonable person could be confused into thinking that the products were from the same maker, or were affiliated, or that the maker of the original product or service endorsed the new one. This is always something of a judgement call. If a mark is similar enough that a judge or jury might think that some reasonable consumers would be confused or mislead, then there is risk of an adverse judgement. Note that even an unfounded suit may be costly to defend. If there is any question, consulting an experienced trademark lawyer may well be a good idea. I will not express an opinion of the similarity of "2oobbllee" and "Dobble". That would be legal advice. But if the OP were to change the name of the app, the whole matter would seem to be finished with no risk of court action. Note that the concept of a game, unlike the name, cannot be protected, neither by trademark law nor by copyright law,	AD&D, like all games, is covered under copyright. HOWEVER, games are not treated the same as books and other works. Rules of a game, including "stats" and other information required to play the game, are NOT protected by copyright. This is Copyright Law, and has nothing to do with a license which a work is published under. Artwork is fully protected by copyright, as is any setting descriptions. In the context of the D&D franchise, the actual wording of any rulebooks, monster descriptions, game modules, and such are all protected by copyright, so you can't wholesale cut-and-paste things. But, that does not extend to the various mechanics of the game. Armor Class, Hit Dice, etc. are all mechanics, and CANNOT be protected. That includes values assigned to monsters or characters or such. A company cannot also protect the particular layout of those statistics, if that layout is considered generic in nature. In the case we are talking about, a table listing the statistics is NOT protected, as it does nothing more than list those statistics, and contains no original, protected material of WotC. In addition, uniquely created monsters, characters, etc. all have their name protected, but not their statistics. But generic names thereof cannot be protected. It is perfectly permissible to have a clone copy of a Drow and call them a Dark Elf (a generic name). One could not copy the description of the Drow from a Monster Manual, but the idea of a Dark Elf cannot be protected, nor can the statistics thereof. It is explicitly permissible by Copyright Law to clone the rules to a game, which in the context of D&D includes a generic name for anything trademarked (thus, no Drow, and no Dungeon Master, but Dark Elf and Game Master), the mechanisms used to play the game -- including the terms used to reference them -- and all related numerical statistics associated with those components of the game. All of this is in addition to any rights the OGL gives you. These rights CANNOT be restricted by the OGL, as they are basic Copyright Law rights, not license rights. I've been writing D&D expansions and such for over 4 decades now (since the late 1980s), and this is what I've repeatedly been told by various Copyright lawyers. In short, provided you don't use the text description of a particular monster (and instead write your own one, using the same concept of what the monster is), and you don't use a trademarked name for it, it is possible to "scrape copy" the statistic summary section of any Monster Manual or the like. Here's an explicit parallel: the game of Monopoly. When creating a clone of Monopoly, here's what you CAN do: Copy the basic layout of the board - a square with the properties laid out in a path around the edge. Arrange the properties as they currently are, WITH THE CURRENT NAMES on them. Each property's name is not possible to protect, as they are generic names. Free Parking, Jail, and Go To Jail, and Go can all be labeled and placed accordingly. Chance and Community Chest cards can be named as such, and referred to as such. The text on the cards is also (mostly) usable. The costs and values of all Chance, Community Chest, and properties can be copied. The rules of movement, going to jail, etc. can all be copied. Have pieces that are Hats, Dogs, Cars, etc, and both Hotels and Houses, and explicitly refer to them by those names. Here's what you CANNOT do: Use the particular color scheme of the board Use any artwork, including the drawings on any cards. Use the particular graphic presentation of a card. Copy the design of any piece, except the House/Hotel which, insofar as they are very generic, can be extremely similar. You can only use the word "Monopoly" in the context of referring to the Parker Brothers game, not in any other context, as it is trademarked. The specific wording of the rulebook cannot be duplicated. You have to write the rules in your own words. The wording of certain Community Chest and Chance cards, where they are not just generic game instructions, cannot be duplicated. E.g. "Grand Opera Night—Collect $50 from every player for opening night seats" cannot be duplicated, but you can have any other wording for something that would gain you $50 per player. Now, see how that works in comparison to D&D?
In Europe, can I refuse to use Gsuite / Office365 at work? See above. In a country where GDPR applies (Italy in my case), do I have the right to refuse giving consent to Google and Microsoft to store my personal data, if this account is for work use? Or, in other words, can my employer force me to make a Google account (or provide one for me) and forfeit my personal data, browsing habits, image while videoconferencing etc. to Google?	You probably can't refuse to use such services. The relationship between you and these services is very different when you interact with them as a consumer, versus when these services are provided on behalf of your employer. In the latter case, the service is (or at least should be) bound as a data processor who can only* use your personal data as instructed by the data controller, your employer. Thus, it is your employer who determines for what purposes your data will be used, not the cloud service. Your employer has a legitimate interest in providing a modern and secure productivity suite to its employees, and in requiring you to use such services for efficient communication and collaboration. Of course it would be possible to provide some such services on-premises, but the GDPR doesn't really discriminate between self-hosted and third party services, as long as the third party service is contractually bound as a data processor. To a large degree, this is of course a legal fiction. The cloud services deploy new features all the time, and all that your employer can really do is agree to those changes, including agreeing to new ways for how to process your data. Also, the service provider may act both as a data processor on behalf of your employer for some purposes, but as their own data controller for others. E.g. in Google Workspace (formerly GSuite, formerly Google Apps for Business) Google collects analytics data about how you use their Docs product, and they use it for their own purposes. However, they would only process the document itself as a data processor. This is quite different in the consumer version where Google can use personal data for their own purposes, although within the limits of their privacy policy. Within your work account, you do have some privacy controls, similar to a consumer account. While your employer can set defaults and restrict features, you are not forced to share all data. E.g. in a Google Account, you can “pause” web and app activity (i.e. browsing history) that would otherwise be collected from Chrome browsers while logged in with your work account, or from Android devices that are managed by your employer. This data would potentially be used by Google for Ads, even with a Workspace account (I'm not sure). However, Google Workspace services generally do not feature ads themselves, e.g. the paid Gmail version does not feature ads. The largest real issue with the use of such services by an European employer is the international transfer of data to a non-EU jurisdiction, especially into the U.S. The GDPR offers many alternatives for how such transfers can be protected. In the past, the EU and US had used the Privacy Shield mechanism. However, it was found to be invalid in the 2020 Schrems II ruling, due to concerns about US mass surveillance. Subsequent guidance from supervisory authorities explained that it's not sufficient to use “standard contractual clauses” as an alternative protection, but that additional safeguards have to be implemented, which would effectively deny the personal data to actors in the US. Both Google and Microsoft offer some “data sovereignty” choices that prevent international transfers into the US. However, those have to be configured appropriately by your employer. Thus, instead of asking “can these services be used?” to which the answer is yes, it might be better to ask “is my employer using these services in a compliant manner?”. If you have concerns about such issues, you can contact your employer's data protection officer	No, they can't do that. GDPR Recital 42 states: Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment. Here's some more context on consent requirements.	According to my knowledge I am not allowed to share other people's full name nor phone number nor email address without their permission. That is not correct. According to GDPR Article 2: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data ... ... (c) by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity; GDPR Recital 18 states in relevant part: (2) Personal or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the context of such activities. Personal data that is not processed by "automated means", for example data which is transmitted verbally, by hand writing, or by manually sent email, is not covered by the GDPR. Data which is used by a natural person for "personal activities" is also not covered. Consulting one's personal lawyer might well be a personal activity unless it is a business matter. Even if such a transfer of data were in scope for the GDPR, consent of the data subject (DS) is not the only available lawful basis. GDPR article 6 permits any of several possible lawful bases to be used, particularly paragraph 1 point (f) which reads: (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. Also possibly relevant is point (c) which reads: processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; In short, providing one's personal lawyer with the names and addresses of relevant people in connection with a legal issue is not at all likely to be prohibited by the GDPR, nor to require the consent of the people whose names and contact info are provided. However, a comment by user PMF reads: The Data Protection laws are mostly for companies, not for individuals. This is an overstatement. The laws do apply to natural persons as DCs, although enforcement is largely targeted at businesses, particularly large, for-profit businesses.	I can't find any law that would prevent an employer from requiring this. Under current Florida law, an employer can even demand passwords and access to an employee's social media accounts. A bill was proposed to prohibit this, but it hasn't passed. Generally, an employer can require anything they want as a condition of employment, as long as it is not illegal. Florida has at-will employment so the employer could certainly fire the employee if they don't comply.	The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.	[I'm not so well-versed on US and Russian law, thus I will limit my answer to EU law.] Your specific use of a user identifier, as I understood from your question, can be classified as personal data, so in your case, the GDPR seems to apply. This means that you need to have a) legitimate purposes to process that personal data (e.g. crash reporting) and b) a legal justification for each purpose of processing: it could be based on consent or another legitimate purpose (inc. your own legitimate interests). Consent might not be the best option for you, but it's up to you to decide. In any case, you need to assess the risks to the data subjects (your users) before you decide. How likely is it that you will get breached, and what potential harm will that cause to your users? These are some guidelines; my recommendation is that you read the law and the guidelines by the Article 29 Working Group and European Data Protection Board, or hire some good experts on this. There is no easy answer, or one size fits all solution. The GDPR isn't so hard to understand or implement, but it does require some change in mindset. With the new law, processing personal data carries a higher risk of penalties, so you should do it only when it's absolutely necessary, and with respect to the rights of your users.	The Google TOS says, applicable to creation of accounts: You may create your own Google Account, or your Google Account may be assigned to you by an administrator, such as your employer or educational institution. If you are using a Google Account assigned to you by an administrator, different or additional terms may apply and your administrator may be able to access or disable your account. To protect your Google Account, keep your password confidential. You are responsible for the activity that happens on or through your Google Account. So the account wasn't created for you by an administrator, and it is your own Google account. The terms say that you are responsible for what happens with your account, thus if you were to turn over the password to someone else and they did illegal things, you would be responsible (at least with respect to your legal relationship to Google). Google does have business email, which your employer apparently did not utilize. In order to have actual ownership of the account, the business would need to set up the account for you and claim initial "ownership". If you create an account for the convenience of a business, that convenience – but not the account – is a gift from you to the business.	In answer to your questions, always get potential clients to sign a contract which covers the GDPR personal data processing requirements at a minimum, prior to giving them a copy of a consultant resume to retain. If you were sat in a meeting with them it is much simpler to record in your logs that the client had sight of the resume but was not left a copy of it in any format, than it is to keep track of which clients have a copy of which data and chasing up to ensure it is erased/destroyed when appropriate. To ensure clients treat the resumes as confidential, make sure they are labelled in the header and footer as confidential. They could also be kept in an envelope clearly marked confidential. There could also be a footnote in small print that informs anyone with a copy, who the data controller is, and that processing is strictly subject to the terms of the 'client contract' or whatever you call it, and that it should be returned or shredded within X days of receipt for example. If you have a computer system generate these it could even specify the client's name and the specific date it should be shredded by. Your notice could include a reminder that the personal data is protected under the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016 and that (client name) as a data processor could be held liable in the event of unauthorised disclosure or processing, if they act outside or contrary to lawful instructions of the data controller. Whilst this won't enforce responsible processing at least it will ensure that your business has done its best to ensure any recipients are fully aware of their responsibilities to protect the information and it would be very difficult for a client to claim they weren't aware the information was confidential or that they had legally binding responsibilities to protect it. It's also worth noting that simply sending CV's/resumes (or other personal data) out via email (unless suitably encrypted) would not meet the requirement in GDPR recital 39 for personal data to be "processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security and confidentiality of the personal data, including for preventing unauthorised access to or use of personal data and the equipment used for the processing." Email technology whilst convenient does not offer any guarantees regarding privacy and confidentiality, therefore instead of sending resumes as email attachments it might be better to use a web-based extranet system which authenticates users before granting access to view resumes. Emails could just let clients know there is a new resume or X number of resumes waiting for them to review and give them a link/button to login. The records of processing activities are in GDPR Article 30 on page 50, and it does not specify a retention period nor that we can choose the retention period, but simply states that data controllers make the records available to the supervisory authority when requested to do so - this may imply indefinite retention of processing records even beyond the life of the processing system (e.g. discontinued products/services), however we may need to await further clarification on this issue from supervisory authorities to be sure.
Are there any complications in hosting an Italian website on a server in the USA? I own a webserver that resides in the USA. This server hosts different websites but they all have users mostly from Italy. One of the websites, a blog made with Drupal, has a .it domain registered with a company called aruba https://www.aruba.it/home.aspx Yesterday I had an issue with he domain and i called their technical support. They noticed the domain was attached to an american server and they told me i could get fined for this due to the european GDPR law but they didn't want to tell me any more details despite me insisting. I don't think they read the privacy statement before saying that because the website was not accessible at that moment (even using the server's IP would not send you to the website, you need to go from the domain, which was not working) I tried looking on the internet and i found 2 things: That cloud services hosted in the USA might not be good enough to host european websited (which is not my case because i'm not using a cloud service) If you server is in the USA and you are collecting personal data you must specify that in your privacy statement (still not my cause because I'm not collecting personal data) This is what else i could think of about the website that might be relevant: The privacy statement is a "standard" one i found on the web a few years ago and i've seen it being used on many italian websites The website does not collect any personal data by itself (only aggregate data like how many people visited a certain article) There is a private area but it's for the staff only and it doesn't require email or any data (users are created manually and are for internal use) It only uses technical cookies It has Google Analytics attached to it but but it's specified in the privacy statement and the "cookie banner" is configured in a way that will block it until you opt-in The only issue i could think of is that I have not specified in the privacy statement that the site is hosted on an american server but that can be easily fixed. My questions are: Is what i was told by Aruba's technical support correct? What could be the reason for this risk? What can i do to prevent being fined? Do i have to move my servers to Europe?	When the data controller is from the EU/EEA/UK, the GDPR applies. Any website inherently processes personal data such as IP addresses. Thus, when transferring personal data into the US (e.g. because the website is hosted in the US), it is necessary to comply with the GDPR's Chapter V which covers international transfers. The US hoster would also have to be bound as a data processor per Art 28. There are multiple legal bases for international transfers into the US. There used to be an “adequacy decision” that allowed transfers without further conditions in the form of the EU–US Privacy Shield, but it was found invalid in the 2020 Schrems II ruling due to concerns about US mass surveillance. The next alternative are “appropriate safeguards” to protect the transfer, which generally requires that the data exporter and data importer (here: you and the hoster) sign standard contractual clauses (SCCs). But in the wake of Schrems II, it is clear that SCCs alone are not sufficient, and would generally require supplemental measures to protect the personal data. The concern is that an US company would not be legally able to comply with the SCCs they've signed. Art 49 has fallback legal bases for occasional transfers such as the data subject's explicit consent, which are not useful here. What most people do is pretend like SCCs are sufficient and hope that regulators turn a blind eye, at least until another adequacy decision is negotiated. However, guidance by regulators including EDPB recommendation 01/2020 explains that it's the responsibility of data controllers to analyze their specific transfers, adopt supplemental measures if necessary, or stop transfers if such measures are impossible. To cut the chase short: there are no technical measures that could help in a cloud or SaaS setting, and I would include webhosting in that setting. As a consequence, it's effectively impossible to be GDPR-compliant while relying on services that store or process personal data in the United States. It would therefore be prudent to migrate an US-hosted website to a server located in the EU/EEA or in a country that has an adequacy decision. Your registrar's information seems correct in this regard, though it is admittedly a bit self-serving for a company that offers web hosting itself. On to your specific questions/arguments. Is all of this irrelevant because you are not using an US “cloud” service? No. Don't get distracted by the word “cloud”. The issue is that you are using an US-based service that processes personal data in the clear. Can you avoid disclosing the international transfer because you aren't processing personal data? But you are most likely processing personal data. The GDPR's definition of personal data does not just include identifying information, but any information relating to identifiable persons. Identification includes being able to single out a person. IP addresses are likely (but not necessarily) a kind of personal data. In any case, your use of Google Analytics sets tracking cookies that definitely allow identification of visitors. Since you are performing an international transfer of personal data, you must inform the data subjects. Is copying a standard privacy policy sufficient? While transparency about processing activities is an important part of GDPR, it is only a part. Other parts include: having a clear purpose and legal basis for processing activities binding services who process personal data on your behalf as data processors per Art 28 (here: in particular hosting and analytics) finding and implementing appropriate security measures having a plan for dealing with data subject requests In any case, the privacy policy must fulfil all points mentioned in Art 13 GDPR. Ideally, it should also cover the information obligations from Art 15. There are guidelines on transparency from the EDPB. If your privacy policy was drafted before 25 May 2018, it likely wasn't updated for GDPR. There is a staff-only private area. Whether or not there is any private area is not relevant for GDPR. GDPR is not about protecting private data in contrast to public data, but about processing of personal data, i.e. data that relates to persons. Also note that the staff members are data subjects as well. The only cookies are “technical cookies”. Very good! The ePrivacy directive is closely related to GDPR and addresses what kind of information you may use from user devices, including cookies or similar technologies like LocalStorage. This directive was implemented in the Italian Data Protection Code. You may only use cookies etc if they are strictly necessary for providing the service explicitly requested by the user (such as storing a language preference on your website), or if the user has given their consent. You are using Google Analytics, but only if the user gives consent. Since Google Analytics is an US-based service, some of the above concerns about international transfers apply. Relying on consent is good, though Art 7 GDPR gives some conditions for consent. In particular, the user must have a real choice. While analytics can probably be used without consent, setting cookies for analytics does require consent. As much as I loathe them, consent management tools can be useful here e.g. because they also help with keeping records of consent. In summary: While you have good data minimization practices, your website likely isn't GDPR-compliant in its current form. You can take some first steps toward better compliance, such as by avoiding unnecessary international transfers and updating the privacy policy to better align with Art 13 GDPR. Fines are unpredictable. Most data controllers are non-compliant in some way (probably including myself). But most data controllers don't end up getting fined. While fines should be “effective” and “dissuasive”, they also have to be proportionate to the infringement. Many data controllers have been able to substantially reduce or completely avoid fines by quickly remediating compliance issues when being contacted by their supervisory authority. I have yet to hear about a fine for data transfers into the US, but of course I have no idea what cases the supervisory authorities are currently investigating.	You are responsible for what data is being processed by your website. When you embed third party components on your website (e.g. iframes, scripts), you are at least jointly responsible with the third party providing these components. You are only responsible for what happens on the website (i.e. what processing is under your control), not for what the third party provider does with collected data on their services. However, note that information will be transferred to Google's servers regardless of whether the visitor has a Google account! The Fashion ID case is relevant case law establishing and explaining these points. Since you are (jointly) responsible, you need a legal basis for collecting personal data through the tracking snippet and sharing it with the third party (here Google). For example, the legal basis could be a legitimate interest, or could be consent. A legitimate interest requires that you balance this interests against the interests, rights, and freedoms of the data subject (the site visitor). If the data subject wouldn't reasonably expect this tracking, you cannot rely on a legitimate interest. Consent can always work, except that it is a freely given, informed opt-in – likely unsuitable for conversion tracking. Which legal basis to use is primarily your responsibility. You argue that the tracking snippet does not collect personal data. However, this argument is not well supported. Under the GDPR, personal data does not only include directly identifying information such as an email address, but also any information “relating” to an identifiable person. Identification includes the ability to single out someone, e.g. by a browser fingerprint. For purposes of conversion tracking, Google will clearly try to collect data that allows the visitor to be singled out, thus collecting personal data. Furthermore, specific kinds of information are regulated by the ePrivacy directive. This includes “traffic data” and “information stored on a terminal device”, regardless of whether this information is personal data under the GDPR. Under ePrivacy, such information can only be used as strictly necessary to provide the service requested by the user (and conversion tracking is not strictly necessary), or when the user gives their consent. Depending on what information is collected by the tracking snippet and on whether you are subject to ePrivacy, you would have to collect consent anyway. There is also the issue that Google Ads is an US-based service, and transferring data to the US is largely illegal since the 2020 Schrems II ruling. The US do not provide an adequate level of data protection, so that transfers would require additional safeguards. Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for Controller to Controller transfers are not sufficient by itself. Of course those extra safeguards are effectively impossible to implement and no one is doing this correctly, but it's worth considering that there is additional legal risk. Explicit consent can provide a legal basis for transfers even to a country with inadequate protections, but that mechanism is intended for occasional transfers. In conclusion: you have wrongly concluded that no personal data would be involved you are jointly responsible with Google for whatever data is processed by the conversion tracking snippet you need a legal basis for sharing this data with Google legitimate interest may be sufficient, depending on what data is involved (consider ePrivacy) and depending on the result of your legitimate interest balancing test alternatively, you may require every visitors consent to track their conversions – unlikely to result in good data additionally, such use of Google Ads may run into issues around international transfers due to the Schrems II ruling this kind of stuff is difficult, and no one is really doing this correctly :/	GDPR does not cease to apply because of the location of data storage. It applies based on the location of the data processor, data controller, and data subject. If you are in the EU, you are a data subject covered by GDPR. It does not matter where the data are stored. Note that you are asked to confirm that you're aware that US laws may be less protective, but you're not asked to acknowledge that anything about the arrangement causes the "laws of your country/region" not to apply. The company also does not seem to be claiming that they don't apply, although it seems that they want you to think so, and it's not clear whether they think so. You are correct that GDPR doesn't allow its protections to be waived. A data subject may always consent to certain processing, and some processing may be performed without consent, but it's not possible to waive the right to withhold consent for processing that does require it.	The GDPR only mentions cookies once (Recital 30). (It says that cookies are personal data if they are associated with natural persons.) As far as cookies go, nothing has really changed since 2002, and the exception granted in the EU cookie directive Article 5(3) is still valid: This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service. If your site complies with the 2002 directive today, it will be GDPR compliant. All the "EU Cookie Law Compliance" plugins I've checked out let the admin configure the site to comply with the 2002 directive, and most let you choose between implicit consent (which is, and still will be, OK if you or third party services do not use cookies for profiling or to collect personal data), soft consent, or hard consent. The latter is however mandatory if you or third party services use cookies to for profiling or to collect personal data. However, if at least one of your cookies are used for profiling (and if you use Google analytics, you are), or if they are used to collect personal data, the exception from explicit consent quoted above does not apply and implicit consent (i.e.: "continued use of the site amounts to implicit consent to the use of cookies") has never been legal for the site. So while nothing has changed since 2002, there is a lot of misinformation about cookies floating on the Internet, and a lot of sites have their cookie banners set up wrong. You may want to do a new cookie audit for your site to verify that you comply with existing legislation.	The site would combine the data in novel ways, which is processing the data. Processing personal data which is publicly available is still processing personal data. You would have to take GDPR into account. That does not mean the processing is forbidden, but you need a legal basis for doing it. In many ways, having the informed consent is the easiest legal basis, but there are others. The data subject would have the right to demand information about the data you hold, and to demand the correction of wrong data. There is not necessarily a right to demand deletion, but if consent is withdrawn and you have no other basis for data processing, you have to delete. Note also that the consent basis would mean you have to actively contact the people whose consent you seek before the processing starts, and document how you do it. That makes pay-per-request models difficult. But consider that the news media can process some data about some people without the consent of the subjects of their activities. They just need to balance privacy and other legitimate interests all the time.	Does GDPR prohibit reading unsolicited emails from people who have not explicitly opted in to a mailing list? tl;dr: No. I have never heard of this, and I don't see how this could follow from the GDPR. You should follow up with the Secretary to find out how she came to her conclusion. Detailed reasoning: The GDPR restricts the processing of personal data, so it does in principle cover reading email, since reading counts as "processing", and an email may contain personal data. However, Article 2 (emphasis mine) says that: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system. I would read this to mean that a human reading emails is only covered by GDPR if the emails are part of a "filing system" or intended to be. So reading the emails is ok, it's only problematic if you intend to systematically store them. Even filing them, while covered by GDPR, would presumably be allowed, because to actually act on the email, you would have to keep it, and Article 6 allows processing of personal data to "take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract" and when "processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller". One caveat: If the email contains data that falls under special categories of personal data (Article 9) you may need explicit consent for storage. That covers things like racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs and health information. So if someone discloses a health problem or their religious belief in their mail, you may need to ask them for permission to keep it. In summary: At most, GDPR would require you to promptly delete the email once you no longer need it (which could be immediately if the email is irrelevant to you). If the email contains data you legitimately need (e.g. a complaint you need to follow up on), you are allowed to keep it as required (based on Article 6 (f)). Note that in both cases no explicit consent is required from the email sender, unless the email contains particularly sensitive data, such as political/religious beliefs or health data.	Sure, you can make such a request, but its not likely to help you. Scammers are criminals and don't generally care about GDPR compliance. Scammers are criminals, and won't just publish their real world identity. Serving them with a lawsuit will be difficult, especially if they are from outside the EU. GDPR lets you sue data controllers, but it's not worth it. You can sue for compliance (e.g. to compel fulfillment of your access request), and you can sue for damages stemming from GDPR violations. Compared to the damages you have suffered, a lawsuit is very expensive.	Yes, it triggers the GDPR obligations Considerations: Can you surely identify those residing in Europe? In that case you should ask them to sign up again and confirm the consent. A lot of mailing lists are doing just that. Did they previously give consent and you can document it? If so, then you can argue that you have the required consent. Do you have business in Europe? If not then I don't think they would bother to go after you. You could just walk away from the fine. What other personal informastion are you storing? If you know who reside in Europe then you already have more info than just the email. The email address itself wouldn't be much of a documentation issue, SAR or Portability task.
Architects Registration Board UK - Charging annual fee for use of protected job title Background: The Architects Registration Board (ARB) in the UK has the following on its website The Architects Register is the definitive record of all UK architects. If someone is not on the Register, they are not an architect – it’s as simple as that. The title “architect” is protected by law in the UK. It can only be used by people who have the appropriate education, training and experience needed to join the Architects Register. Anyone with the appropriate education and work experience can apply and join the register and only then can they legally call themselves an architect. If one is not registered but calls oneself an architect e.g. on LinkedIn, the ARB can and does prosecute. It has even gone to absurd levels to enforce this rule e.g. here. I understand the need for protected job titles and the need to have a body that safeguards such protections but now comes the part I find a little absurd: The ARB charges every architect in the UK an annual fee to stay on their register. The fee is £119 this year. Failure to pay this fee results in a fairly swift removal from the register and one also loses the legal right to call themselves an architect. Even if you're unemployed, the fee is mandatory to retain the right to use the word "architect" in one's CV, LinkedIn, etc. Is there any other country/profession where use of the protected job title requires payment of an annual fee? Does the ARB's policy of charging an annual retention fee seem reasonable and if not, is there a UK government agency that one can make a formal complaint to about this? EDIT: Moo's comment made me realize that the same holds for doctors too. As someone who works in neither field, the fact that some people must pay an annual fee to a government body for their entire lifetime just to call themselves a doctor or an architect feels very strange. It surprises me that this money doesn't come out of taxpayer funds. After all, it is for the protection of the general public that some job titles are regulated so it seems unfair that the doctors/architects/etc. are the ones paying for this regulatory service.	This is commonplace in many jurisdictions across many profession, trades and businesses The authorisation of the register and the amount of any fee (which can be zero) is spelled out in the legislation. As is who is authorised to collect it and maintain the register: sometimes it’s a government authority, sometimes it’s a professional association. Sometimes the title is protected and sometimes it isn’t. Off the cuff, the following is an incomplete list for australia. Some of these are Federally regulated and some are State based. Some of the State based ones are nationally recognised, meaning if you register in one state you are registered in all, and some aren’t. Some states require registration that other states don’t. Architect Engineer Doctor Nurse Physiotherapist Nutritionist Veterinarian Solicitor Barrister Anyone working with children Plumber Drainer Gasfitter Roofer Electrician Waterproofer Builder Real Estate Agent Used Car Dealer Bus driver Truck driver Taxi/ride-share driver Train driver Ship’s master Second-hand goods dealer Security guard Bartender Forklift operator Crane operator Builder’s hoist operator	A tenant has a right to "live in a property that’s safe and in a good state of repair". There are additional regulations possibly applicable in your situation if this is a "house in multiple occupation", summarized here. "Hazards" are explained here. However, these rules pertain to the condition of the building, not other tenants (except that "overcrowding" is also a hazard). They also say you should "report anti-social behaviour to your local council". It is legal to rent a room in the UK to a person convicted of a violent crime, so it would also be legal to rent a room to a person who hasn't committed a crime (assuming he is legally in the UK). If the person did not engage in actual anti-social behavior towards you, there is nothing to report to the local council. The landlord has no affirmative duty to disclose such a fact, and it might be illegal to do so under the Data Protection Act, since this is "sensitive personal data".	The assurance benefits both parties. The tenant cannot be evicted before the minimum term expires, if they have adhered to the terms of the agreement (with some rare exceptions). The landlord can gain possession under the terms of the agreement (subject to a minimum term). The Housing Act 1988 ended the "sitting tenant" trap for new lettings, where the landlord could not sell the house at market value. In practice, since 1997 most ATs are Assured Shorthold Tenancies with a 6-month fixed period which the agent renews. Though there are some ruthless agents who like to move tenants on so that they don't get too settled (and they can charge the landlord a re-letting fee). OTOH some landlords will want to keep a trouble-free tenant. Before 1988 tenancy laws were heavily skewed towards the tenant. Practically the only way a lawful tenant could be evicted, was if the owner needed to live in the property, and owned no other property (i.e. an owner of multiple lettings could not just shuffle around between them, to evict tenants). So although the new style tenancies were called "Assured", basically new tenants lost their "security of tenure" and IMO this eventually created a huge inflation in domestic property value between 1995 and 2007, as residential property became a commodity which individuals were encouraged to invest in: the buy-to-let market.	"Mathematician" is not a legally regulated term, so there are no laws that would prohibit me from calling myself a mathematician (I am not one). I do know a tiny bit about number theory, set theory, formal language theory and logic, but mostly I know about African languages. If I have no shame, I can legally call myself a mathematician. My employing institution has no policy that regulates self-appellation. In fact it is very common for people to self-mislabel in the fashion that you describe. Many people claim to be "linguists" when they are actually "English teachers" or are "translators". However, if I were to claim to have a PhD from the Department of Mathematics at Yale University, that would be a false statement of fact, and potentially internally-actionable by the institution. My actual mathematician colleagues cannot sue me for damages (they have not been objectively harmed), but an institution could sack me for material misrepresentation of credentials (for which reason they might actually demand a copy of said credential). It is possible that a materially false statement of credential could be actionable as fraud, though I can't come up with a plausible scenario at the moment.	The Equality Act (2010) lists the following protected classes (emphasis mine): age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation. It is unlawful for businesses to discriminate against anyone, in the goods or services (or physical access) that they offer, based on any of those characteristics. Some disabilities may prevent people from wearing masks, and those people cannot be discriminated against. I couldn't find a source in the law that says this explicitly, but according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission there is no legal requirement for people who have disabilities to be able to prove that they are disabled in order to receive accommodations for their disabilities. While you could, theoretically, ask people to prove that they have a disability if you don't believe them, you'd basically just be setting yourself up to have to pay a bunch of money in compensation when you eventually run in to somebody who actually does have such a disability, and doesn't have proof with them, who then takes you to court for discrimination and wins.	Yes, GDPR applies: you are a data controller established/living in the UK or are offering services to people in the UK you fall under the material scope of the GDPR. The Art 2(2)(c) exemption for “purely personal or household activity” does not apply since you're offering the service to the public. You must consider GDPR compliance here. This is especially important as you are showing personal data to the public. Don't do that unless you have a very good reason, appropriate safeguards, and are clear to users how their information will be shown. On a high level, GDPR compliance involves working on the following questions: For what purpose are you processing personal data? Context: purpose limitation principle per GDPR Art 5(1)(b) What is the legal basis for processing? GDPR Art 6(1) lists the available legal bases. Here, consent, necessity for performance of a contract, or a legitimate interest could be a legal basis. They may have further obligations attached. A legitimate interest requires a balancing test that considers the data subject's rights and freedoms. Consent must fulfil the conditions per Art 7 in order to be valid. What is the minimal data necessary to achieve the purpose? Per the Art 5(1)(c) data minimisation principle, it is illegal to process personal data beyond what is necessary and adequate. You must provide data protection by design and by default per Art 25. Special categories of data per Art 9 such as health data are illegal to process outside of narrow exemptions. You must delete data once it is no longer necessary. What appropriate safeguards and security measures should you apply? Per Art 24 and 25, you are responsible for determining and implementing appropriate measures. This depends a lot on your specific context, so there's no checklist you can apply. Per Art 25(1) you must pseudonymize the processed information if that is compatible with the processing purpose. What further compliance measures do you have to consider? There are additional GDPR and non-GDPR compliance measures. From the GDPR side: Use the answers to these questions to write a privacy policy, including the information that you must provide to data subjects per Art 13. Consider whether you have to maintain a Records of Processing document per Art 30, or if you have to make a Data Protection Impact Assessment per Art 35. If you use third party services, figure out whether they are a joint controller or data processor and apply appropriate safeguards. If you have data processors, ensure that you have a contract in place that covers the items from Art 28(3). If you share data with other controllers (not processors) you need a legal basis for doing so. If you transfer data into a non-EU/EEA country (after 2020: non-UK country) you need a legal basis per Art 44 and have to cover additional items in your privacy policy. Ideally, the target country is covered by an EC adequacy decision per Art 45. For US-based companies, this is the case only when they have self-certified under the Privacy Shield framework. Non-GDPR compliance steps could include cookie consent banners, or showing a VAT ID. How can you prepare for data subject requests? Data subjects have various rights per Arts 15–23, subject to the modalities in Art 12. For example, a data subject could request that their information is erased from your website. The exact rights also depend on the legal basis you selected. You should figure out in advance how to deal with such requests.	The Facebook forum doesn't prevent a contract from being formed. But, for a contract to be formed there must be an affirmative agreement, not silence (at least in cases that aren't between merchants). If they later decide to work together without reaching an agreement on the details, the draft contact could be considered, but the Facebook forum for its delivery and that fact that it wasn't expressly assented to might reduce its weight as part of the evidence in an attempt to determine what the terms of their oral or implied agreement to work together involved. It would be very unusual for a broker not to get a signed agreement in writing to pay his fees, although an oral or unsigned agreement to pay a broker is not necessarily barred by a statute of frauds. A finder of fact would be quite skeptical of a broker's claim to have an agreement in those circumstances and often the professional regulatory provisions related to brokerages would require that fee agreement must be signed and in writing even if contract law does not require that this be done.	It’s their job Or, at least, part of their job. For some, like state-employed medical examiners it’s an explicit part of their job description that they will give expert testimony when required. For others, it can be something they choose to do as part of their business, either as a side-gig to their “day job” (most experts). Or because their primary business is dispute resolution, this includes many professionals who become arbitrators or expert determiners and offer their services as expert witnesses. In both cases, it’s a job for which they get paid, and usually, paid handsomely. For example, all the engineering companies that I have been part of charge 3-4x their normal fee for legal work partly because it’s demanding work that distracts from their core business but mostly because of market economics - people will pay more for an expert witness than they will for a consulting engineer even when they’re the same person. It’s also difficult and nasty work - no one enjoys writing reports that they know are going to be attacked over every inconsistency. As for giving evidence and being cross-examined? Even at $500/h, you’re getting a bargain. Other people may be motivated by the noble ideal of a just cause. Me? Here’s my bank account, make sure the money’s there before I testify. So, how much were you offering?
Are property managers of rented properties obligated to wear face masks when interacting with residents? Asking this for my sibling: "I am currently living in Oakland and am living with a chronic health conditions that puts me at greater risk of complications from COVID. My property manager doesn’t wear a mask around myself and other residents and does not take any COVID precautions. I have said that I want him to wear a mask, but he has ignored that. I'm hesitant to say anything to the management company or the landlord because I am not sure if he is the landlord. I’m worried that if I say anything, nothing will change and he will be less responsive to maintenance needs (the apartment has shoddy electrical wiring and heating and I depend on him being responsive when things go wrong). What are my rights as a tenant when it comes to COVID and how do I get him to wear a mask around me?"	One path would be to get compliance, by demonstrating that it is legally required. The best evidence that he is legally required to wear a mask is this recent mandate from the Department of Public Health. However, I cannot find a corresponding executive order, which may be in a generic form empowering CDPH to issue orders. Any imposition of penalties for violation must be publicly announced and rest on legislative authority. The mandate is not generally enforced, except in a few cases regarding bars and restaurants. There are various persuasive avenues that you could pursue, such as asking CDPH to come talk to him (unlikely, but you could try), complaining to the property owner, appealing to local social media to apply pressure (possibly putting yourself at legal risk for defamation, if you make a false statement). There are two more involved legal actions to contemplate. One is to terminate the lease and move elsewhere. This would likely result in an action to collect the remainder of the rent, but the strategy would be to argue that the manager has interfered with your private enjoyment of the premise. A second, highly improbable, is to sue the manager and get an enforceable court order requiring him to wear a mask. Courts have a prejudice against ordering people to take actions when other options exist (terminating the lease, monetary compensation). It could be an interesting but expensive test case to see if you could get a judge to order the manager to wear a mask. So yes they are obligated to wear masks, but legal enforcement is going to be difficult at best.	You can't give your landlord a "notice to quit" A "notice to quit" is something a landlord gives to the tenant under s8 or s21. Assuming you want to end the tenancy, you would give them whatever notice is required in accordance with the lease. Why the paranoia? Ending a residential tenancy is routine and would not normally land you anywhere near a court. You give your notice, pay your rent, move out and get your deposit back. Is there something going on that you're not telling us? If so, ask about that thing in a different question. The video would be fine as evidence However, it would only be used if there was a dispute over the service of the notice. While this can happen, its pretty rare and your precautions seem ... elaborate. Your landlord's name and address (and yours) will be a public record forever Courts are public, the names and addresses of the parties are a matter of public record (unless you are children, or sex offenders, or have some other reason the court accepts as to why this shouldn't happen). These records are kept indefinitely.	Short Answer Can an incomplete and unsafe building be rented to a tenant on a commercial lease if the building never received a certificate of occupancy? Yes. Unless your lease says otherwise. Your sole source of legal protections is your lease. Without knowing the detailed provisions of your lease, it is impossible to know. Long Answer The General Rule In commercial leases, to a much greater degree than in residential leases, the principle of buyer beware (a.k.a. caveat emptor) applies. Commercial leases are typically negotiated between sophisticated parties, and if the tenant doesn't want to start paying rent until the certificate of occupancy is issued despite a lease that says otherwise, then that is tough luck and the tenant is bound to the terms of the lease. Commercial leases are generally rented in "as is" condition, sometimes with and sometimes without a tenant finish and improvements allowance from the landlord. Unless otherwise agreed, in a commercial lease, the burden is on the tenant to do "due diligence" including a physical inspection of the property by a professional inspector and independent review of the zoning status of the property to confirm that the tenant's business is allowed to operate at that location, much as a buyer of real estate would. If the tenant identifies an objection during the due diligence period set forth in the lease or contract to enter into a lease with the tenant, then the tenant can choose to get out of the lease obligation. But, there is only a due diligence condition if the tenant bargains for it. The lease allocates responsibility to maintain the building in good repair and may allocated this responsibility to the landlord or the the tenant. In one of the most common types of commercial leases, called a triple net lease, virtually all maintenance obligations are the tenant's responsibility: The triple net absolves the landlord of the most risk of any net lease. Even the costs of structural maintenance and repairs must be paid by the tenant in addition to rent, property taxes and insurance premiums. Some firms, such as WeWork build their entire business model around entering into the "as is", triple net commercial leases with landlords that are the norm, and then subletting the properties to smaller businesses on a furnished, all maintenance and building services provided, gross lease basis. Many states have statutory or common law implied warranties of habitability in the case of residential leases that require that a certificate of occupancy be in place and that other conditions be met by the landlord: An implied warranty of habitability is a warranty implied by law in all residential leases [ed. in states that have such a warranty] that the premises are fit and habitable for human habitation and that the premises will remain fit and habitable throughout the duration of the lease. New Mexico, in particular, has many statutory protections for residential tenants (statutes found here). But, almost none of these protections extend to commercial leases in New Mexico, because commercial leases are not leases of dwelling units, as defined in the relevant statutes. Note that not every state even has an implied warranty of habitability for residential tenancies. Colorado did not have one until the early 2000s, and it had only very weak protections for tenants regarding habitability until the current decade. Before then, in Colorado, a defective or unsafe condition of the premises was not a defense to paying rent under either a commercial or a residential lease in the state. In theory, a county or municipal government could impose a habitability requirement on commercial leases. But, this is very uncommon because, as the examples below illustrate, there are circumstances where it is sensible, even in a fair deal, to place the burden of making property subject to a commercial lease habitable. Examples Of Situations Where This Would Not Be Required In A Fair Deal Most commercial tenants insist upon terms that say that the obligation to pay rent starts when a certificate of occupancy is issued and the tenant is allowed to take possession of the premises. But, there would certainly be some times when a commercial tenant would pay rent on property that does not yet have a certificate of occupancy. For example, in what is called a "pad rental", a business rents a basically vacant lot with only a concrete foundation and utility hookups and zoning approvals in place, and then the tenant builds a shop or office building on the pad. See, e.g., this commercial lease offer on Loopnet, a major internet site for listing property available to be leased by businesses: ABOUT 4900-5100 N WICKHAM RD , MELBOURNE, FL 32940 Rental Rate $3.79 /SF/Yr Listing ID: 15146692 Date Created: 2/11/2019 Last Updated: 3/19/2019 1 LOT AVAILABLE - Rental Rate $3.79 /SF/Yr Lease Term 20 Years Service Type To Be Determined Date Available Now Space Type Relet Lot Size 0.69 AC DESCRIPTION Pad ready site with all utilities, parking field, ingress/egress, retention, and site lighting IN. Join Goodwill, Einstein's Bagel, Verizon, Twins Car Wash, Wickham Road Music, and Nail Salon in this 100% leased new retail center. HIGHLIGHTS Pad ready site. In a commercial pad lease, typically, a tenant would start paying rent immediately and the length of time needed to get the tenant's shop built and approved for occupancy by local government officials is their problem. But, even then, the terms would depend on what was negotiated between the landlord and the tenant which would depend to a great extent on how hot the local commercial real estate market was and on the other terms. A landlord will usually offer more favorable terms (such as a provision stating that rent is not owed until a certificate of occupancy is issued) in a weak rental market, but may also decide to have very tough lease terms with a somewhat lower monthly or annual rental rate. Also, as in the example above, conditioning rent payment on occupancy or availability for occupancy, is less common in a very long term lease such as the twenty year lease being offered for the pad rental above. Something very similar is done in an existing building that requires tenant finish. At one extreme, the landlord will do tenant finish to the tenant's specifications at the landlord's expense and the tenant will only start to pay rent when the tenant takes occupancy. At the other extreme, the tenant will start paying rent immediately and do the tenant finish at the tenant's sole expense. In between, the tenant may do the tenant's own tenant finish pursuant to landlord approved plans, with the landlord contributing a tenant finish allowance that will often be less than the full anticipated cost of tenant finish work, and the rent will be reduced or waived for a set period of time which may be less than the actual or anticipated time that it takes to complete the tenant finish. This gives the tenant an incentive to not waste tenant finish dollars and to push the contractors doing the work to finish as soon as possible. In yet another example, it wouldn't be terribly uncommon for a landlord to rent a commercial space that is already occupied by squatters, or holdover tenants, to a new tenant on a triple net basis. In a lease like that, the tenant is responsible for evicting the current occupants, rather than the landlord. The promise that the leased property won't be occupied by someone else when the lease commences is called the "covenant of quiet enjoyment" (which is "a covenant that promises that the grantee or tenant of an estate in real property will be able to possess the premises in peace, without disturbance by hostile claimants."). This provision is often, but not always, included in a commercial lease, although often, courts will imply in law a covenant of quiet enjoyment into even a commercial lease, in the absence of express language in the lease stating that the covenant of quiet enjoyment is not intended to be included in the lease. Conclusion It all boils down to the terms of the lease and a reasonable construction of the relevant lease terms. The fact that there is such a thin amount of legal protection from unfair lease terms is one of the reasons that most commercial tenants hire an attorney to help them negotiate the terms of a commercial lease, in addition to, or instead of, a commercial real estate broker. Footnote: Why Is Commercial Lease Law So Harsh? The duties of a commercial tenant are much closer to, and in some cases, almost identical to, those of an owner of real property and are not infrequently for long terms such as twenty, or even ninety-nine years. Why would a landlord and tenant enter into a commercial lease in these situations, rather than having the prospective tenant simply by the property subject to a mortgage? A lot of this is tax driven. Many businesses would purchase their buildings rather than lease them if taxes were not a consideration and the commercial lease is basically a tax favored alternative to a mortgage payment. When the commercial landlord is a mortgage lender in all but name, and a commercial tenant is a building owner in all but name, it makes sense to place the legal maintenance responsibilities of a building owner on the commercial tenant. A business can deduct every dollar paid in rent from its revenues when determining its taxable income, even the portion economically attributable to land value and depreciation in the structure of the building, as it is paid. But, if the business finances the purchase of the property with a mortgage, the business can deduct the interest paid, but not the principal payments. Depreciation of improvements on real estate (for most of recent U.S. tax history, over a straight line 39.5 year depreciation period) can counterbalance some of the principal payments, although often more slowly than the principal payments are actually made. Also, if depreciation deductions wipe out too much of the business's income, those depreciation deductions are disallowed or deferred. Furthermore, the portion of the purchase price of property attributed to land value can't be depreciated at all. In many cases, this quirk of the tax law is addressed with a business structure in which: (1) a non-profit that doesn't care about the tax treatment of its income leases the land to (2) another business that builds a multi-tenant building on the property which it owns even though it doesn't own the land the building is built upon, subject to a mortgage with a long amortization period similar to the depreciation period for the building, which in turn is (3) leased to businesses that actually used the multi-tenant building by the building owner. Second Footnote On Rent Control and Cooperative Apartments Even further afield, in places like New York City that have rent control, residential tenants become more economically equivalent to apartment owners, and residential landlords become more economically equivalent to a combined mortgage lenders and home owner's association. There was a strong demand for rent control in New York City at the time that rent control was adopted, because economic necessity meant that mostly people needed to live in one unit of a multi-unit apartment building, but the legal concept of ownership of one unit within a larger apartment building that is now commonly called a "condominium" in the United States, did not exist. So, there were a lot of renters in New York City who very much wanted to be de facto apartment owners who didn't have the legal tools available at the time to achieve this goal. The other work around which was used in the Northeast before the condominium was invented was a "cooperative apartment", in which all of the residents of a particular apartment building owned the entire building and were jointly and severally liable on the mortgage on the building, but then were allocated a unit within the building in exchange for economic obligations to the cooperative association that managed the building on a not for profit basis for its owners.	This likely comes down to contract law (note: I'm not a lawyer; this isn't legal advice). If his rental contract is not with you, you'll need to refer this to the property owner's representative. I don't see why just sharing the house would give tenants any eviction rights over other tenants. Even if you are the owner (cf “my house”), it would be unusual for independent tenants to be party to each other’s rental contracts. The other tenants are irrelevant to any eviction attempt, except perhaps as witnesses in court.	As you say, the roommate who was there "did not equate the sound of a running toilet with wasting water". That, I am afraid to say, is negligent: normally, when you hear constantly flowing water, you do something about it. Somebody has to pay for the water, and assuming the water is in your name, that is you. You could yell at the roommate, but legal negligence is irrelevant to the water bill. However, if there were any resulting damage (for example to wiring or walls), that is where the question of negligence would come up: you probably would be found liable for damage to the building that resulting from letting the condition persist. But unless the fill valve broke at the tank and leaked water onto the floor (which would be clearly obvious) there won't be any damage that you are liable for. I assume that the leak developed from an old part giving out. This would be normal wear and tear, for which you would not be responsible (assuming you didn't cause the problem, for example by putting concentrated bleach in the tank). You you are saying that the landlord is trying to charge you for the repairs, and on this point, the landlord is on thin ice. A landlord cannot just make up rules about assigning liability for damage: that is a matter to be determined by the courts. A tenant can do things to a fill valve that can cause a leak; and the seal has to be replaced every few years. The tenant is not liable especially for routine replacement of the fill value seal, and does not become liable because they failed to inform the landlord in a prescribed manner. Not reporting a leak within 24 hours does not contribute to the underlying failed part. You could probably contest the legality of that bit of maintenance clause 24, in that the landlord cannot unilaterally declare who is responsible for damage. At the trial, both sides will present relevant evidence, and the judge / jury will decide whether the tenant's negligence caused the seal to fail.	The ordinance is not very specific about how notice is to be given: therefore, it need not be in writing, and it need not be sent by mail. It would not be surprising if the "notification" came in the form of a city person inspecting the reported obstruction, walking up to the house and knocking and finding nobody home (thus triggering the "In case the owner cannot be found" condition), whereupon the city removes the rocks. That clause does not mean "In case we do not know who the owner is", it almost certainly means "in case the owner cannot be contacted immediately". Article III is in general about obstructions on streets, which are not allowed, except by permit in section 78 under "Permit to Obstruct Traffic Lane". Assuming that no obstruction permit was obtained, what usually happens is that an officer is sent to tell the owner to remove the obstruction (more or less immediately), and if nobody is at the site whom they can tell, they probably won't go any further (e.g. asking neighbors where the owner is). There is no legal definition of "reasonable time", instead the law simply takes that to mean "the amount of time a reasonable person would require". It would thus depend particularly on the size of the obstruction and the volume of traffic. One measure would be how quickly the rocks were moved -- if it was a matter of days and there was no notice, written or otherwise, then there would not be the kind of urgency that might justify the "We knocked and nobody was home" version of notification.	Clauses (a) and (c) are potentially relevant. You have to look in the Rules & Regulations to see what exceptions are permitted. Although firearms and especially shotgun shells are of a "dangerous, flammable or explosive character", it is reasonable to believe that when stored properly, they do not unreasonably increase the danger of fire or explosion, and would not be considered hazardous or extra hazardous by any responsible insurance company. On the latter point, you could ask any responsible insurance company if they would consider such shells to be hazardous. While in ordinary language simple possession of a firearm is not a threat of violence, the wording of clause (c) is open to a wider interpretation, since acts considered to be a threat of violence include displaying or possessing a firearm, knife, or other weapon that may threaten, alarm or intimidate others. The fact is that many people are alarmed by the simple existence of a weapon, so simply possessing a weapon could be interpreted as a "threat" in this special sense. Since you are not in the position of having signed the lease and now need to deal with the consequences of this clause, the simplest solution is to explain your interest, and ask them if having your gear in your apartment would be a violation of the lease. Be really clear about this and get it in writing in some form, if they say "no problem". Then either pick a different place, pick a different hobby, or find a separate storage facility.	She has no legal right to your stuff, and every legal right to the apartment. The only way adjudicate such a conflict of rights is with a restraining order. A temporary order would expire in 3 weeks. Item 14 in the petition requests exclusive use, possession, and control of the property. However, that path of restraints is tailored to domestic violence, so item 27 has you describe the alleged abuse: Abuse means to intentionally or recklessly cause or attempt to cause bodily injury to you; or to place you or another person in reasonable fear of imminent serious bodily injury; or to harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault (sexually or otherwise), hit, follow, stalk, molest, keep you under surveillance, impersonate (on the Internet, electronically or otherwise), batter, telephone, or contact you; or to disturb your peace; or to destroy your personal property. Note that the description refers to destroying your personal property, not pawing through it. It's really impossible to know if the judge will exercise his discretion to include "reasonable fear of destruction (or theft) of personal property", since the ex-roommate has no further interest in the apartment. There is an alternative path of a harassment restraining order, which does not require a defined domestic relationship (such as ex-roommate), where "harassment" is violence or threats of violence against you, or a course of conduct that seriously alarmed, annoyed, or harassed you and caused you substantial emotional distress. A course of conduct is more than one act and that seems even less likely.
Who is liable if somebody takes a check written to them before the funds are in place to cover it? This is hypothetical. Suppose I write out a rent check to my landlord, but I don't give it to him. Instead, I leave it on my desk because I still have to deposit funds to cover the check. Unbeknownst to me, the landlord enters my apartment while I'm away, sees the check, assumes he should take it, attempts to cash it, and it bounces. Am I liable for writing a bad check? Is the landlord liable for theft?	I'll take Washington state law to be typical. RCW 9a.56.060 is the criminal law governing rubber checks. Writing a check which you know at the time of drawing or delivering a check that has insufficient fund with intent to defraud is a crime. That's not the case here. It might appear to be theft on the part of the landlord, except that In any prosecution for theft, it shall be a sufficient defense that: (a) The property or service was appropriated openly and avowedly under a claim of title made in good faith, even though the claim be untenable That is, he quite reasonably believed that it was intended for him (it is made out to him). As for civil liability, your "liability" arises from your contract with your bank, and unless you have a remarkable "not my fault" clause in the checking account agreement, you can't sue the bank to avoid the overdraft fees (except if bank breaches a promise to not cash a postdated check until the date written on the check, and the check is dated for some time after the check was deposited). You might attempt to sue the landlord, since his action caused you harm: if his act was negligent. If the rent was already due and you were in arrears, the landlord's act of taking the check to apply to your rent obligation (thus saving you from rent late fees) is what a reasonable person would do. But if the check was for rent due a month in the future, a reasonable person would know that they are not owed the rent at this time, and it is highly unlikely that you intended to hand over the check right now: taking and depositing the check would be neglectful of the ordinary care that the landlord owes you as a tenant, and he could be found liable for the damage that he did. It is suggested in a comment by Ryan M that violation of the notice requirement under the Residential Landlord-Tenant act negates a good faith defense. State v. Hicks, 102 Wn.2d 182 concludes that "Animus furandi", or the intent to steal, is an essential element of the crime of robbery ... the good faith claim of title defense negates the intent element of robbery Nothing in the statutes or case law exists which demands completely clean hands in invoking a good faith defense. Use of force is illegal; but use of force in self defense is legal. The courts have not ruled that a person is deprived of that defense if they have committed a criminal act (landlord entering a residence is not a crime, it is a civil wrong), or if they have committed a tort act.	Generally speaking, you signature and delivery of the lease to the landlord makes it possible for the landlord to enforce. Particularly when, as in the question, the landlord presented the lease to you as an "offer" which you accepted without modification, it is probably binding upon the landlord even if the landlord does not sign it or return a copy with the landlord's signature. In jurisdictions that have a statute of frauds, your part performance by sending checks in the lease period consistent with the lease, and the landlord's part performance by continuing to allow you to occupy the premises without objection, would probably make the statute of frauds (which generally requires a signed writing by the party against whom a lease is enforced) to be inapplicable. On the other hand, if you materially changed a version provided by the landlord, there is a real question over whether there has been an offer and acceptance, or a meeting of the minds, agreeing to the new lease. Materially here meaning changes that are more than updating your contact details and go to the heart of the lease contract.	By default, the tenant is liable for all rent until the end of the lease. E.g. if neither the tenant nor the landlord can find a suitable and credit-worthy replacement tenant (e.g. if the market has crashed), then the whole lease must still be accounted for by the original tenant, and the lost "rent" becomes "damages". However, there is also a concept of damage mitigation, and California Civil Code 1951.2 explicitly defines that it's the landlord's duty to mitigate damages. This means that the landlord cannot simply sit still and collect the rent on an empty apartment. Because of this, some smaller landlords in California outright have a policy that you can cleanly break the lease by paying for 2 months of rent as a penalty. (It appears that a good summary of various examples about landlord/tenant damage mitigation is available at UniformLaws.org.) However, when it comes down specifically to the SF Bay Area with the ever increasing rents and the lowest residential vacancy rates in the nation, and also especially with the corporate landlords that already have sufficient resources in place to readily advertise and promote an abandoned unit, it can probably be argued that, in practicality, requesting more than one month of rent (in damages) as a penalty for breaking the lease is simply unreasonable.	In any legal dealing, there is always some risk. The signature constitutes definitive proof that you have a contract, but you still have a contract, because you have mutual acceptance. A far-fetched scenario is that the lessor could allege that they did not agree to the terms of he contract with you (perhaps claiming that you obtained a blank contract form from them and filled in details, but they didn't agree to those details). However, if they allow you to move in, that is sufficient constructive evidence of a contract, so they could not argue "We didn't agree to this". The main risk would be your lack of proof that they ever agreed to lease the place to you (no emails, no texts, no witnesses, no legally-recorded conversations). There may be specific state laws about providing a copy of the rental agreement, such as this California law, where they must provide a copy to the tenant within 15 days of execution by the tenant. This provides a collection of relevant state laws, though you may have to dig a bit because this is a hook into all of the laws about leases and not just about providing copies.	Yes, company A is liable for that; ignorance is not a defence. For this reason, a prudent company A would put an indemnification clause in their contract with company B so that if A is sues then company B pays. This is, of course, completely useless if company B is out of business at the time of the suit.	Typically the landlord will have a preexisting clause in the lease that says the landlord may choose to amend the lease at a later date. While that may be in contracts, I don't see that holding up in court. You can't unilaterally amend contracts to add new terms without acceptance on part of the lessee. Any clause in the contract like that will require notification of the lessee of the change and a chance for the lessee to terminate the contract without recourse on part of the lessor. Generally this must be done in the same format as the original lease (written). Most jurisdictions don't allow for a verbal amendment to a written lease. So in a way, yes, it is legal for a landlord to require payment via a certain method (like a direct debit from a bank account). They cannot however change the payment terms unilaterally without notification and acceptance. They can use language such as sending the notification (via registered mail) and then saying that a failure to respond is acceptance (because you are, by actions, accepting the terms by continuing to live there).	Ultimately yes, this can and does happen, but there are a few steps necessary before the bailiffs come to your door. In times gone by, the common law recognized a right to "distrain for rent", meaning that a landlord could come round to the tenant and seize some property as security (up to the value of the rent owed). If the rent is not then paid within a certain time, the goods could be sold. Various additional provisions of law covered the circumstances around forcing entry, breaking open locked cupboards, and searching off the premises for goods which the tenant had concealed. There were also special-case rules about what could be seized, such as a statute of the seventeenth century saying (among other things) that landlords could not harvest growing crops, but could take already-cut sheaves. Subsequent reforms for the protection of tenants have made it so that landlords cannot do this at their whim. They first have to go to the County Court for a judgement that there is an unpaid debt. (In fact, this and subsequent steps can happen with any debt.) On that basis, they can apply for a "warrant of control", under which an "enforcement officer", commonly called a bailiff, will take charge of collecting the money owed. There are quite a few steps and rules here, but the basic position is the same in terms of being able to take your stuff. And it is not the landlord walking around making those decisions, but a court-appointed officer. The previous common-law "distress" process is now totally abolished, for most tenants by the Housing Act 1988, and for everybody in 2014, because of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 section 71, which simply states The common law right to distrain for arrears of rent is abolished. Commercial property has its own legal regime since that Act, but previously functioned in the same way. So landlords can no longer seize your property on their own, but they can go through a few hoops and ask a court to do it. They also do not get to keep the specific property, but just get the money. As mentioned above, this is the general avenue for what happens when a court orders you to pay money, and you don't do it. The High Court has its own enforcement officers who are able to deal with larger amounts of money, as well as enforcing evictions. In Scotland, the same basic pattern applies but different words are used, and some of the detailed rules are different. "Attachment" is when a sheriff officer (= a bailiff) comes round to value your possessions and auction them off if you don't pay. There is also "arrestment" which is taking money out of your bank account.	No employer has ever the right to withhold your pay check for work you have done. It is strictly illegal. Even if they had 100% evidence that you caused damage and were responsible for that damage, they still can't withhold your pay. They have to pay you, and then they can try to take you to court. The reason for this law is exactly cases like yours, where people try to avoid payment. If the "powerful attorney" tells you that you are not getting paid, then that "powerful attorney" is making a big mistake, because any lawyer would love to take your case to court and see the judge cutting the "powerful attorney" down to size. If you don't want a lawyer now, then you can write a letter by registered mail telling them that you worked for them, how much the payment due is, that they are legally required to make that payment, and that you will take them to court if they are not paying. If there is a conflict between law and a "powerful attorney", the law wins, and the law is on your side.
Court transcripts of U.S. trials about claims of voter fraud When you argue with QAnon proponents online, a common claim is that none of the “evidence” for voter fraud has ever been tried in court, and that this is all just “fake news” made up by the “mainstream media”, which is controlled by the “deep state” and whatever. They demand actual court transcripts instead. But court transcripts are rarely being referenced directly by the media, so it takes some digging to find them. For instance, after some work, I managed to find Law v. Whitmer in Nevada. The verdict itself is in document 20-44711. Can someone provide me with more, similar court transcripts from the trials where the “evidence” of voter fraud has been debunked?	You'd have to specify the cases you want. All court transcripts are a matter of public record, though a copy may cost you a fee from the court clerk's office to recieve. It should be pointed out that not all cases got to an evidentiary stage to actually evaluate on the record any evidence. A vast majority were decided on pre-evidentiary rules such as standing or laches (timeliness) and not all cases that were able induced evidence debunked the evidence. Any appellent case would also not induce evidence as all appeals cases are strictly matter of law rather than matter of fact (evidence), so those cases would be asking a higher court to double check non-evidentiary decisions. The fact that the party that brought the suit does not have standing to bring the suit OR that the party that brought the suit brought it too late for the courts to proceed on the matter does not debunk evidence that the fraud happened in the eyes of the law... it simply means the questions of fact were never addressed at all	The question actually asked, "what legal theories would support or harm...", is somewhat unclear. But what the questioner seems to be asking is, basically, what would happen if you tried it? The answer, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward. In the hypothetical case, you have been publishing a notice for years, saying "I have not been served with a subpoena." You then get served with a subpoena that includes a gag order. The gag order, presumably, includes wording prohibiting you from revealing the existence of the subpoena. You then cease publication of the warrant canary. By doing so, you have revealed the existence of the subpoena, and you are in violation of the gag order. You will be subject to whatever penalties you would be subject to if you violated it in some other way; for example, by publishing a notice that said, "Hey! We got a subpoena! It's a secret!" The distinction between revealing the existence of the subpoena by action, rather than by inaction, is a false one. It's exactly the kind of cutesy legal formality that non-lawyers love to rely on, but real judges ignore. If you tell someone: "Hey, you know John Smith's three sons, Joe, Ted, and Bill? Joe and Ted are good people; they have never molested any children. As for Bill--well, I don't have anything to say about Bill." If Bill is not a child molester, you have defamed him, and you are not going to convince a judge otherwise. The EFF link you link to tries to claim it'll "work" because courts are reluctant to enforce speech. Even if that were true, that might mean your canary would be effective in the sense of giving the public notice of the subpoena. That doesn't mean you wouldn't be liable for giving the public notice. For example: I put up a billboard saying "Bill Smith is a pedophile." Even if the court can't force me to add the word "not", that doesn't mean the billboard isn't defamatory. Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering.	I'm no expert, but I had assumed this clause was present in case of the following situation. Joe is arrested for a robbery of a London bank. Joe says nothing under questioning. At trial, Joe's defense is that at the time of the robbery, he was in Sheffield drinking beer with his brother. On the basis of common sense, a jury could think: "Surely if Joe were really innocent, he would have told the police of his alibi at the time he was questioned, and saved himself a lot of trouble. Since he didn't do that, maybe a more likely explanation is that he wasn't actually in Sheffield, but that sometime between arrest and trial, he came up with the idea of faking an alibi in Sheffield, and convinced people to testify falsely to that effect. Yes, that does seem more plausible. So we are not going to give much credence to Joe's supposed alibi." So it really would be the case that not mentioning the alibi during questioning would harm Joe's defense at trial. The warning, then, is intended to keep Joe from doing this inadvertently. If Joe's alibi is genuine, but out of a misguided desire to exercise his right to remain silent, he doesn't mention it during questioning, he may accidentally increase his chances of being wrongly convicted. Everybody has an interest in avoiding this.	I believe in truth, justice and equality for all What I get is something else. Nobody cares what you believe: what can you prove? And what can they prove? They say they posted you this letter. You say you never received it. If it goes to court they will submit evidence about how their internal letter generation and postal system works, this either will or will not convince the court on the balance of probabilities that the letter was posted. If it does convince the court, you will provide evidence of how you deal with incoming mail and that it never arrived, this will either convince the court that the postal service did or did not deliver the letter to you. Then you’ll know who wins. As to your allegations of fraud: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence- theirs, the postal service or yours.	Based on the question, this was not perjury; if the officer did not review the footage, the fact that his testimony was in error indicates a mistake, nothing more. To even consider a perjury charge, the prosecuting authorities would need evidence that the officer knew the testimony was wrong when he gave it. You do not indicate the jurisdiction, so nobody can say whether an appeal would lie (since new evidence has come to light), whether the conviction could be quashed for procedural failure (if multiple requests for evidence were really not received) or whether a complaint could be made against the prosecutor, the defence lawyer, or even the judge. But no case has ever been strengthened by brandishing about words like 'perjury' without being able to substantiate them.	I don't believe your premise is necessarily true. As the Supreme Court has held, a defendant can be prosecuted for perjury after being convicted for another offense at trial: The conviction of Williams, at a former trial, for beating certain victims is not former or double jeopardy. Obviously perjury at a former trial is not the same offense as the substantive offense, under 18 U.S.C. § 242, of depriving a person of constitutional rights under color of law. . . . It would be no service to the administration of justice to enlarge the conception of former jeopardy to afford a defendant immunity from prosecution for perjury while giving testimony in his own defense. United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 62 (1951) (emphasis added). Now as a practical matter, trying a convicted person for perjury is most likely rare, since the prosecutor has already obtained a conviction for the underlying offense. Starting another prosecution for perjury might be excessive or unnecessary. But that doesn't mean it's categorically prohibited. Note also that perjury by the defendant can be considered by the judge to enhance the defendant's sentence. United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87, 96 (1993).	That book provides advice on legal writing; it is not a source of rules for legal writing. Rather than repeatedly identifying themselves using their full name, parties customarily refer to themselves in the third person, e.g., "The defendant refused to waive his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial." In practice, though, pro se litigants regularly refer to themselves in the first person, and there is no formal consequence for this.	Was Alex Jones's attorney handing over phone-record evidence a "mishap" or required by law? The discovery phase, which concluded before the trial began, required Alex Jones to provide texts and emails mentioning Sandy Hook (among other things). He did not provide any and testified in writing and in court he could find none. On August 3rd 2022, day seven of the trial, plaintiffs' attorney Mark Bankston claimed he had obtained from Jones's attorneys a digital copy of Jones's cellphone on which there were texts and emails that mentioned Sandy Hook. He said this copy was mistakenly provided to him. Whether accidental or deliberate, this copy or its texts and emails mentioning Sandy Hook were not provided during discovery. Judge Gamble told the jury about the digital copy, "we don't know whether it was on accident or on purpose... but what we do know is that it wasn't properly turned over when it should have been." https://youtu.be/qhtz_6JKSh8?t=7658 A video clip of the part of the hearing in question, when Bankston begins asking Jones about the texts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpnSCIak5A8. Or this timestamp in a longer clip https://youtu.be/qhtz_6JKSh8?t=6821. Mark Bankston for the plaintiffs, addressing Jones: "Your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of your entire cellphone, with every text message you sent for the past two years. And, when informed, did not take any steps to identify it as privileged or protected in any way, and as of two days ago it fell free and clear into my possession. And that is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn't have text messages about Sandy Hook." The above quote begins 5mins into the first clip or this timestamp in the longer clip https://youtu.be/qhtz_6JKSh8?t=6830). After the texts, Bankston asked questions about emails not being turned over... Jones had sworn he didn't even use email. Bankston showed him emails that appeared to be written by Jones. "I must have dictated them" said Jones. Judge Gamble told the jury about the digital copy, "we don't know it was on accident or on purpose, but what we do know is it wasn't properly turned over when it should have been." https://youtu.be/qhtz_6JKSh8?t=7665 Bankston told journalist Dan Solomon the phone copy was put in a Dropbox the parties were using to exchange materials. Bankston did not believe it was put there deliberately and notified Jones's attorneys. Apparently Jones's attorneys did not respond. Under Texas law they had ten days to assert privilege or say the material was put there by mistake, Rule 193.3(d) - as of August 3rd Bankston was legally free to read and use the material. (There is some gossip online about what was supposedly heard on 'hot mic' between Reynal and Bankston, I haven't heard it myself and have no timestamps or clips. I do think I heard Jones, after leaving the witness box, ask Reynal "they got my text messages?") [edit] Incidentally, this isn't the first time that Jones / his attorneys failed to comply with discovery orders in relation to these Sandy Hook cases - a number of sanctions and default judgements have gone against him for that. Indeed this damages phase is the result of the default judgment against him in September 2021 for failing to comply with discovery: "The Court find that Defendants unreasonably and vexatiously failed to comply with their discovery duties. The Court finds that Defendants' failure to comply with discovery in this case is greatly aggravated by Defendants' consistent pattern of discovery abuse throughout the other similar cases pending before this Court." [edit 2] On August 4th 2022 Jones's attorneys have filed an emergency motion that seems to settle the issue of whether the provision of all the material was a "mishap": they say it was "inadvertently" supplied. text of the motion They claim they promptly informed plaintiffs' attorneys about the mistake but the latter used the material anyway in violation of privilege, procedure and the court's protective order. Now Twitter lawyers are arguing about whether the language used by the defence was adequate to engage the rules mentioned above. But this doesn't seem to resolve the issue of why the material demanded for discovery was not supplied for discovery or why Jones testifed he could not find such material. Judge Gamble denied the request for a blanket protective order to seal the record of the text messages and denied the motion for mistrial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbAmNwbiMk
Should I worry about code plagiarism if it's my code? If I wrote a code by myself, which I know is my code because I myself have thought about the logic and code while developing it. But if the same logic and code was thought by somebody else and is used by somebody else, what am I supposed to do if a plagiarism check happens?	If it's patented then it doesn't matter that you independently came up with it. Most software is not patented, though. Most developers do not even think about patents when writing code. In theory you could spend your time keeping up to date on software patents so that you avoid infringing. But this probably only makes sense for specialists who would want to read the latest patents in their field anyway. All software is protected by literary copyright, though. In this case they will try to prove that you did not independently created it, and did copy it. Whelan v. Jaslow in 1986 ruled that structure, sequence and organization of a computer program were protected by copyright. So you could be liable even if you did not just copy and paste sections of code. But even if you're worried the court would get things wrong and think you copied a program when you never even saw it in the first place, there is really nothing you can do about it.	As @amon stated in a comment, copyright requires creativity. If the author of a tool wants to claim copyright on the output of that tool, then that output must contain something that required the creativity of the tool author. For a tool that just re-indents its input, the output is created from the input with a mechanical, non-creative, transformation and the output does not contain any creative content that wasn't already present in the input. For that reason, authors of such tools can't claim any copyright on the output. For a tool like bison, which was mentioned in the comments, the output contains a measurable amount of creative content that was not present in the input, but which was provided by the authors of bison. For that reason, the authors of 'bison' do have a copyright claim on the output of the tool (for which they give a broad permission to use). So, the basic question becomes, how much of the (creative) content of the output can be traced back to the tool itself and not to the input that the tool processed. For linters/formatters, that is likely to be very little. For code generators, it can be anywhere between very little and all of the output. The license restrictions on the code produced by the tool itself are by default the same as the license restrictions on the source of the tool, but the tool author can choose to apply any other license to the tool code that ends up in the output. If the output of the tool is, at least in part, dependent on an input file, then the authors of the input file also have a copyright claim on the tool output (as their creative work influenced the output), so the tool author can not claim exclusive ownership. The usual situation is that for tools that don't add creative content to the output, the author explicitly states that the don't have any copyright claims on the output. For tools that do add creative content, that content might be released under very permissive conditions (like, "you can use the output as a whole for any purpose, but you can only separate out the code that comes from the tool's codebase if you adhere to the <X> license")	Software qua property is protected by copyright *perhaps patent, in some jurisdiction). The general rule is that whoever creates the thing (book, song, software) has the exclusive right to the thing. If an employee of Company 1 writes software for Company 2, that employee might (rarely) hold the copyright, but typically that scenario would involve a "work for hire", where the employee is hired by Company 1 to do such tasks as part of his duties with Company 1 (which might then be given to Company 2). This would then be a work for hire, and the copyright is held by Company 1. If the actual author was an independent contractor, he would hold the copyright – see Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reed for analysis of the subtle nuances in making that determination. The concept "work for hire" which crucially involves the "employee" relationship would not be applicable to Company 2 paying Company 1 for a product, and as long as the actual author is an employee of C1, C1 has not created a "work for hire" in the legal sense. Without some explicit disposition of copyright, Company 2 is in a sketchy position. Since C1 holds copyright, they must grant a license to C2 so that C2 can legally use it; or, C1 must transfer copyright to C2. This does not happen automatically, and (if C1 does not want to remedy the situation after the fact) C2 would need to take C1 to court to force a resolution to the situation. At that point, the issue would be what C1 implicitly promised, even though they didn't put it in writing. It is likely that the initial exchange was along the lines "Can you make us a program that will do X?", and the answer was "Sure, that will cost Y", and then "Okay, go ahead, looking forward to the product". The courts would not simply say "Well, you didn't explicitly require a license, so you don't get to actually use the software that you paid for". However, it's a somewhat open question whether the court would order a license (of what nature?) or a transfer of copyright. The disposition would depend heavily on the facts of the case (what was said, what C1 actually did, what kind of business they are, what did creating the work involve...).	You can read it, you can examine it to the point where you understand it, and then you can get inspired by the code and write your own code, without copying the code on the website, which does the same thing. If there is no license, then you can do what copyright law allows you to do. You are not allowed to copy the code, or create derived works by taking the code and modifying it.	The words "proprietary format" are important. Are you sure the format is proprietary? If it is, then it's likely protected in which case they might have grounds to sue (but that does not mean they would definetly win). If the format is not proprietary, and so long as you don't share data which is proprietary then I believe you fine. I'm not a lawyer - but I cite GIF files as an example. They were still protected by the US and some other countries until at least the late 90s and there were various threats to open source linux companies who shared code that used the file format. I'm not aware of anything other than threats and never heard of any company being sued, let alone winning or losing. Another example that comes to mind is the RedHat ISO format. My understanding is RedHat could not stop anyone from sharing open source, but they could prevent folks from sharing the format they assembled and shared the open source. Again, I am not sure if it was ever tested in any court of law anywhere.	First of all, "plagiarism" is more of an academic than a legal term. It means using another's work without proper credit, and particularly in a way that falsely makes it appear to be ones own work. This is severely criticized in academic and journalistic circles, and may result i a person losing a job or being expelled from a degree program, but it is not in and of itself a legal issue. What a court is concerned with is copyright infringement. Some things are plagiarism but not copyright infringement. For example, copying without acknowledgement from a work written two hundred years ago might well be plagiarism , but would not be infringement because the soruce is not protected by copyright. i can, for example copy from the music of Bach all that I want, because it is long out of copyright. On the other hand, if I copy a recent work without permission but properly attribute my source, it is not plagiarism, but may well be copyright infringement. When faced with a claim of copyright infringement, a US Federal court will look at several things. First of all, it will check if the copyright has been registered within eh copyright office. Under US law, one must registered before bringing a copyright suit. If there has been no registration, the suit will be dismissed. The court will also consider evidence of similarity, unless the defendant admits copying. Usually if this is disputed there will be expert testimony that the similarity is so great that simple coincidence cannot explain it. Thsi will consider the notes, the duration of each tone, rhythm, chords, keys, and other musical elements. To establish copying there should normally be a significant similarity over an extended passage at least. I have read of cases where similarity of a passage 35 notes long was enough to m establish copying. But there is not clear cut rule on this. A passage just a few notes long could be identical by accidental recreation, and will not generally prove copying. The court will also consider evidence of access. The plaintiff will often introduce evidence showing that the alleged infringer had access to a copy of the source work. This is not absolutely essential, but is very helpful to the plaintiff's case. The court can also consider claims of common source. If the defendant says that the allegedly infringing work was in fact based on an older work now out of copyright, which the plaintiff's work was also based on, that would tend to defeat a claim of infringement. The court might also consider claims that the alleged source work was not in fact original and should not have copyright protection. And if the defendant admits copying, but claims that this was a fair use of the source work, the court will analyze the statutory dour factors, and possibly other relevant factors to determent whether this is valid fair use or not. This is where claims of "influence" tend to be resolved. There is no clear cut set of criteria for how much copying is allowed. I have not followed the links, because I am not a musical expert and my judgement of the degree of similarity would not be meaningful, and even if it were, the degree of similarity alone would not prove whether there has been infringement. Note that it is also possible that one of these composers has actually gotten permission from the other, perhaps in return for a fee, to use part of the other's work. In that case there would be no infringement, as long as there was permission. The book My Life in Court by Louis Nizer has a detailed description of a successful suit for infringement of a copyrighted song, the so-called "rum and coca-cola" case (Baron v. Leo Feist). The book describes in detail the evidence presented by plaintiff and defendant. See also the Music Copyright Infringement Resource provided by The George Washington University Law School & Columbia Law School, which lists many cases of alleged copyright infringement of music, from 1844 to 2021, giving results and excerpts of court opinions as well as other information about each case.	You are in breach of Copyright. Plain and simple. Certain websites allow you to use the website content as long as a link is made, but the website must clearly state that. You may also use a tiny portion of the content if it falls under Fair Use, where "Fair Use" does not mean "I want to". The best thing to do is not to do it. You can't copy anybody's work without consent. If you're thinking about Google specifically then they offer multiple APIs so that you can use their content in a wide variety of ways.	Copyright requires originality Your infinity hard drive appears to be a machine designed to violate copyright by immediately copying anything presented to it. Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin were creating original melodies. These do not have copyright until they are fixed in a tangible medium. That's what the hard drive is for. This is insurance against them being sued if they release a song and someone claims it violates that person's copyright - they can produce in court the melody with a date stamp of 2015 (or whatever). GitHub or similar would be even better evidence. In this context there is a specific allegation that melody X infringes copyright. Riehl & Rubin can then go to their records (including metadata) and say no, here is melody X version 1 through n and they all predate your release so we didn’t violate your copyright.
Is it legal to film in a venue (e.g. bar or nightclub)? Is it legal to film inside of a venue such as a bar or nightclub? The film would be used for marketing material for a business.	'Is it legal?' could mean one of two things. Does it break the criminal law; could I be arrested? There is no law criminalising photography or filming in a private place (assuming you're not doing something amounting to harrassment, or making something inherently illegal like child pornography). The act of filming per se is therefore not illegal in a criminal sense. However, the proprietor of a private place can ask you to stop filming or demand that you leave; if you fail to comply then you will be trespassing. Trespass is not a criminal offence (although the police will undoubtedly remove you if called). However, if your intent was to intimidate, obstruct or disrupt activity within the premises, you could be charged with Aggravated Trespass under s68 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Could the owner, or someone else, have a civil claim against me? This is more difficult to answer. Trespass is a tort, so the owner could in theory have a claim against you if you were filming against his wishes. However, he would have to prove some measurable amount of damage, and this is why few trespass cases come to court. The occupants of the premises may be able to sue if you breach their right to privacy (Article 8 ECHR, incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998); however, a court will balance this against your Article 10 right to freedom of expression. A court will consider all circumstances: for example, if you were filming in the toilets of a nightclub, the occupants' right to privacy may well outweigh your right to freedom of expression. A copyright owner may have a claim against you if you include their work in your film; for example, if you film inside a nightclub and substantial parts of songs are captured on your film, this may give rise to a claim. I am not a lawyer. Don't rely on free advice from strangers on the Internet.	An example of where this is not allowed is Seattle, WA. Municipal code SMC 12A.06.025 states It is unlawful for any person to intentionally fight with another person in a public place and thereby create a substantial risk of: Injury to a person who is not actively participating in the fight; or Damage to the property of a person who is not actively participating in the fight. B. In any prosecution under subsection A of this Section 12A.06.025, it is an affirmative defense that: The fight was duly licensed or authorized by law; or The person was acting in self-defense. You can see from adjacent sections that "mutual combat" is not legal. I recognize that there is this meme about Seattle, but this is a distortion of an incident when the police turned a blind eye to a fight. We have police issues, no doubt: there is nothing legal about such fights. Of course, for a licensed event, you can "fight". Of course the potential legality depends on how mutual combat is defined. Illinois v. Austin 133 Ill.2d 118 and citations therein, subsequently Illinois v. Thompson, 821 NE 2d 664 define it thus: Mutual combat is a fight or struggle which both parties enter willingly or where two persons, upon a sudden quarrel and in hot blood, mutually fight upon equal terms and where death results from the combat. Similar death-definitions are found in Donaldson v. State, 289 SE 2d 242, Iowa v. Spates, 779 NW 2d 770. The law looks askance of such behavior. For the sake of clarity, a term other than "mutual combat" would be preferable.	No. These companies seem to be saying that they are entitled to sell music under some sort of mandatory licensing agreement authorized by the law of the Ukraine, or by a licensing agreement specific to the Ukraine. Even if this were true, it would only give them the right to distribute the files in the Ukraine. If an American, sitting in the U.S., makes a digital copy of a file on a Ukrainian server by copying it to his or her U.S. hard drive, they have to have a license to do so issued either by the U.S. copyright holder or authorized by U.S. law. A license to distribute in the Ukraine doesn't give the U.S. end user that license. A Ukrainian statute doesn't give the U.S. end user that license. If the end user doesn't have that license, he or she is violating the copyright holder's rights and may be civilly or criminally liable. There is no scienter requirement for copyright infringement. In fact, it's not at all clear that any Ukrainian site is operating even under this dubious legal cover. This report on Ukrainian licensing agencies by an industry group claims that many Ukrainian licensing authorities are actually scams that have no rights to distribute music under any license--one of the "rogue licensing agencies" discussed is Avtor, referenced in your first example. There is some legal confusion over what group does have permission to license music and collect royalties in the Ukraine, but it's clear that Avtor doesn't, and it certainly doesn't have permission to distribute them in the U.S. If a guy came up to you on the street and told you he had written permission from Disney to videotape their latest movies with a camcorder and sell them to you for a dollar, are you violating the law if you buy it? The answer is yes, and it's the same for these Ukrainian sites.	As is often the case with the recording statutes, the meaning of the law is refined by case law. Specifically, the consent requirement holds when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The statutory language limits the restriction to "private communication": therefore, a person does not gain veto power over a public recording session simply by walking into the arena. Consent is implied when the fact of recording is self evident (you can see the operating recording device): by continuing to speak knowing that your speech is being recorded is implicit consent. Also, consent is only required for participants in the communication, and a person who happens to wander into the scene is not a participant in that communication. You may not want to test the edges of the law, in case a person wanders into the scene oblivious to their surroundings and talking on their cell phone. There might be a scenario where you're recording yourself but they are unaware of that fact, and they are having another private communication. The law does not prohibit accidentally overhearing someone else's private communication, it prohibits recording it. An unavoidable sign may aid you in your quest to not get sued.	A tenant has a right to "live in a property that’s safe and in a good state of repair". There are additional regulations possibly applicable in your situation if this is a "house in multiple occupation", summarized here. "Hazards" are explained here. However, these rules pertain to the condition of the building, not other tenants (except that "overcrowding" is also a hazard). They also say you should "report anti-social behaviour to your local council". It is legal to rent a room in the UK to a person convicted of a violent crime, so it would also be legal to rent a room to a person who hasn't committed a crime (assuming he is legally in the UK). If the person did not engage in actual anti-social behavior towards you, there is nothing to report to the local council. The landlord has no affirmative duty to disclose such a fact, and it might be illegal to do so under the Data Protection Act, since this is "sensitive personal data".	Not all discrimination is illegal. For instance, landlords discriminate against those who can't afford to pay the rent. They might discriminate against former tenants who destroyed several walls during their lease period. They discriminate against those with bad credit, and often might discriminate against the unemployed. Landlords often do discriminate against frat students/college students in general. In fact, at least in the US, discrimination is generally allowed unless it's discrimination for one of a few specifically prohibited reasons (such as race). A lease is a negotiation on both sides; it requires both the landlord and the tenant to be satisfied with each other. As for why different places have different laws: Toronto is not actually in the United States. That means it has different people, a different culture, different primary values, and a different legal tradition. It's not surprising that laws are different; if laws were the same everywhere, the world would be a boring place indeed.	Can he name a particalur one, like Linkin Park? Or that would be considered non-allowed type of advertising? Generally speaking, that does not constitute unlawful advertising. Public figures are allowed to broadcast their preferences on issues that are more sensitive than topics of music. There might be few, rare exceptions where something like this would be outlawed, but most likely that has to do with a regime's censorship of specific bands or music styles rather than with a general prohibition.	What are our possibilities here? You could be sued for damages in Mexico, the country of origin of the copyright or any of the other signatories of the Berne Convention. You could also be charged with a criminal offence but that is less likely. how much can we get away with? Not a legal question. What you are proposing is illegal - how likely your getaway plan is to work is not for me to say. Is there any advantage on us being on México? No Is there any advantage on picking any either Dragon Ball or League of legends because of the country they are in? No Can they stop us from doing it? Yes
Sue a university for armed robbery My friend was robbed the other day on university campus at night. He lost his laptop and his mobile phone. So, all of his work is now gone. He is having a mental breakdown at the moment. So, I want to know if it's possible to sue the university because it happened on their campus and it is their responsibility to make sure all students are safe on campus.	Probably not. Overview You haven't specified a jurisdiction. I will talk about Australia because that's what I'm familiar with. In Australia the most relevant area of law would be tort, specifically negligence. The university would be liable to pay damages if a court found that it owed a duty of care to your friend, that it breached that duty, and that your friend suffered injury ('injury' including loss of property as well as mental suffering) as a result of that breach. Also potentially relevant would be contract law, if your friend and the university had entered into some kind of agreement relating to his security, or equity, if the university had somehow acted to lead your friend to rely, to his detriment, on the university protecting him (promissory estoppel: Walton Stores v Maher). However, I think this is unlikely unless, for some reason, the university had put up signs saying 'Please come onto our land and we will be responsible for your security'. Negligence You have stated that 'it is their responsibility to make sure all students are safe on campus.' It is not clear whether you mean to state that as a fact or whether you are suggesting it as a possible hypothetical basis of liability. I am not aware of a case that establishes the proposition that universities do have such a duty. The judgments in Modbury Triangle Shopping Centre v Anzil (2000) 205 CLR 254 discuss the liability of the occupier of land (such as the university in your example) for injuries inflicted by criminals upon people present on land (such as your friend in your example). In that case, the defendant ran a shopping centre. The plaintiff worked at a shop in the shopping centre. At the end of the plaintiff's shift at 10.30pm, it was dark outside because the shopping centre switched the lights in the car park off at 10pm. The plaintiff was mugged in the shopping centre car park on his way out to his car. The key question there was whether the defendant shopping centre was under a duty to keep the lights on for workers leaving work (along with the question of how the failure to illuminate the area led to the attack i.e. whether the plaintiff still have been mugged if the lights were on). Therefore the question that we are presently interested in, about an occupier's responsibility to protect visitors, is only dealt with as a side issue in that case. But the principle is pretty well-established that, generally, you are not responsible to protect another person from the criminal acts of a third person. The common law has a strong presumption against imposing liability for 'omissions' as distinct from acts, which is another way of saying that the courts don't want people being liable to run out into the street and help people. See paragraphs 27 and 28 and thereabouts in Modbury Triangle. Particular relationships may exist which create such a duty. One is in relation to school children; the school is responsible for taking such care of the child as a parent would. The relevant features of this the school-child relationship include the child's vulnerability as a child and the way the school controls their movements and enviroment during the school day. I presume that your friend is not a child and the university does not control his or her movements. Therefore a court is likely to be looking at the general principle that the university is not responsible for protecting people from the criminal acts of strangers, and then looking (and probably not finding) any special feature of the relationship between your friend and the university that creates an aspect of vulnerability, reliance or control that makes it reasonable to impose a duty of care. Some people think that there is a general principle that if something bad happens to them, some identifiable person with cash must be responsible for paying compensation, whether that is an insurer, the government or a nearby corporation. The common law has not picked up that principle. The common law would slate the responsibility home primarily to the mugger. Sue them. What does the university have to do with it? Conceivably the university might also be liable along with the mugger, but the fact that an injury occurred and nobody else can in practice be held responsible does not in itself make the university liable. As mentioned by Pat W., there may be some other feature that creates a duty, such as if the university had made some change to the environment that allowed made the attack to occur when it wouldn't otherwise have e.g. moving your friend's dormitory so that the only entrance was through a dark alley, or if the attack occurred inside a university building where the university controlled entry (even then not sure that would get your friend over the line).	The matter is not clear-cut (and the university lawyers are presumably relying on that fact). The bold part and following overstates the situation, especially the unconstrained "publishing anything" edict. You can publish whatever you want that the university doesn't have a legal interest in. The clause that says "If you have co-authors or co-researchers you must ask their permission before publishing, and include their names" is true, and defines a limit on their control. If you don't have co-authors, it's none of their legal business. (There can be issues regarding publishing an affiliation, so let's put that on hold). They can, however, prohibit you from claiming an affiliation with Pod U, unless you submit your works to some internal vetting organization. This requirement should, however, be stated somewhere perhaps in the rules of the graduate school (not just the student handbook); or the other legally-enforceable rules. You should also pay attention to the exact words that they use. You must ask permission to publish work done with a co-author (that's a fact: it's a standard requirement in universities). It is important to be sure that the information you publish is correct (clearly that is not in dispute). They are allowed to ask you to get X's approval. The First Amendment does not prohibit them from urging you to follow a course of action.	No Let's consider a similar scenario. If you made a beverage which poisoned a number of people, would you be absolved of liability because you gave it away for free? Of course not. As there is no contract between you, they would have to bring an action against you in the tort of negligence or negligent misstatement OR under consumer protection law. To succeed at tort they would need to prove that you owed them a duty of care; from Donoghue v Stevenson "You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonable foresee would be likely to injure ... persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably have them in contemplation ...". Most cases will founder on your inability to foresee the use to which your software may be put. Consumer law is jurisdiction specific but they generally contain warranties that what you provide (gratis or otherwise) is fit for purpose, merchantable and that you do not make false and misleading statements. There is a chance that a case brought under this sort of law could succeed as you have not limited the purpose, specifically declared that it is not of merchantable quality and have (presumable) said what it does so that, if it doesn't do what you said, you have been misleading and deceptive.	If the police can get a warrant from a judge confirming that they have probable cause, they could, and that finding would probably be confirmed in a subsequent suppression hearing alleging that the warrant was issued without probable cause. But, it would be unlikely that a judge would issue a warrant that covered multiple apartments if there was not probable cause to indicate that evidence of the crime was in a particular apartment. I could imagine a situation where a judge might do so (e.g. the evidence was strapped onto a rat that had the ability to move from apartment to apartment in a wing of four adjacent apartments in the same wing of the building through the crawl space in the ceiling), but in any reasonably normal fact pattern, a judge would be unlikely to grant a warrant in a situation where probable cause had not narrowed down the particular apartment where the evidence was believed to be located due to insufficient investigation by the police.	Can I sue? (Shall I sue? Is up to you) Yes, anyone can sue anybody but that doesn't mean it will be successful. The likely candidate for making a claim seems to be under the tort of Emotional Distress, however, note that... Since the definition of offensive conduct is subjective by its very nature, the courts have set high standards to make out a claim for intentional infliction of emotional harm. To be successful, the plaintiff must show that the defendant intentionally or recklessly engaged in extreme and outrageous conduct which caused severe emotional distress to another person. Source ...but according to the OP and comments, this criteria does not appear to be have been met.	The state argued, and the jury was convinced, that Mr. Holle turned over his keys specifically intending to facilitate the robbery. They necessarily found that Mr. Holle was not telling the truth when he said he thought it was all a joke. I don't know what evidence they had to demonstrate that, but I could imagine that there was testimony indicating Mr. Holle knew that these people had engaged in similar acts before, that the group spoke of the plan with a level of specificity that made him aware they were not joking, or that he saw them taking other steps to prepare that let him know they were planning a crime. It doesn't matter if he wasn't renting the vehicle or didn't have an agreement to divide the spoils. The question of "why" he facilitated the crime is technically irrelevant to the legal question of whether he facilitated the crime. Nonetheless, I could imagine several reasons why he would have lent his car: he wanted to ingratiate himself with this group, he was bullied into doing it, he believed he would get some of the pot they stole, he didn't like the target, and so on. The fact that he was risking prison time is a uniquely poor argument that he didn't know what he was doing. The risk of punishment is always present for committing a crime, and yet we know that people commit crimes all day, every day. Why do they do it? Probably a good question for psychology.SE.	Assuming that the police have a warrant to seize your cell phone, the scope of what can be seized is specified in the warrant. It is not automatic that seizing a phone entails seizure of some or all online accounts (e.g. automatic backups, collections of passwords in a Google account) and it does not automatically "freeze" or block a person's access to their accounts including phone accounts. It's not that it is impossible to seize an account, it's that it is not automatic: it has to be in the scope of the warrant. Here is a collection of petition templates, asking the court to allow the seizure of various things for various reasons (mostly electronic), including access to bank accounts. If the police suspect that information might be available online after it has been deleted from a phone, they would need to include online accounts in the scope of the petition(s). There is even a template for "give me everything", called "Frankenstein".	Yes, but that doesn't make the theft not theft At the time of the crime, Joe committed theft. The state can prosecute Joe for that theft. Alice's subsequent gift does not change this although it would prevent her from suing for recovery. As a practical matter, if Alice was willing to lie and say that the gift preceded the theft or she had given permission for the item to be taken, this would almost surely create reasonable doubt in any prosecution. However, on a pure "these are the facts" basis, the theft is a theft.
If I accidentally agree for new WhatsApp's terms and conditions, How to revert that? WhatsApp team updates their policy and it will be from Feb 8. I accidentally agreed with the policy. Later I realized the policy is not good. How can I revert my agreement with the WhatsApp team? We have alternatives like Signal and telegram but I like to use WhatsApp. I am thinking if most of us not agree with WhatsApp's policy then they will change their decision.	Don’t use WhatsApp The terms of service are the contract that WhatsApp are willing to make their service available under. You have 2 choices: accept those terms and use the service, reject the terms and don’t use the service. There is a theoretical 3rd choice but it’s not practically feasible: negotiate with WhatsApp for your own custom terms. It’s not feasible because WhatsApp have to be willing to do that, and they aren’t for the very simple reason that they can’t administratively deal with individual contracts with millions of users. More generally You can’t accidentally agree to a contract. Entering a contract requires a deliberate intention by all parties. WhatsApp showed their intention by providing the service and the terms. You showed your intention by clicking “I agree”. The instant you did that the contract became binding on both of you. You can’t go back later and say “Whoops! I didn’t mean it.” You did it, you meant it. If it was a mistake it’s your mistake and you get the consequences of your mistake.	At what point passed the original ETA is the contract still valid? There is no hard limit or deadline other than the one (if any) the contract itself provides. The contract remains valid regardless of a party's breach or non-performance. The remedies that would be available to you are in the form of rescinding the contract --without having to pay the cancellation fee--, or forcing the store to deliver the furniture soon. The longer the delay, the clearer your entitlement to either remedy. The manager's allegation about other customers is unavailing: Your description does not reflect that the contract or estimates are in terms of the delay that non-parties tolerated. Their contracts are totally unrelated to yours. The contracts might not even be comparable. The purpose of estimates is to give the counterparty some rough information that is known to likely influence his decision-making. Accordingly, a huge departure from the estimate supports the finding that the store deprived you of information that was material to your decision. The store's failure to timely inform you strikes the contract law tenet that you entered the contract knowingly. Furthermore, the store's deliberate act of specifying even the day of the month [mis-]led you to rule out that the delivery might actually take years. Typically furniture is purchased with the expectation of being able to start using it relatively soon, not years later. In addition to breach of contract, the store might also be in violation of statutes against unfair and misleading practices.	You can probably refuse A contract cannot be changed unilaterally unless the contract provides for unilateral change - its unlikely your contract does. In any event, the person with such a power of unilateral change has to exercise it reasonably. It is an implied term of employment contracts that the employee must obey the lawful and reasonable directions of the employer. So the question is, is the requirement to use a fingerprint time clock both lawful and reasonable? Well, at first blush, without genuine consent on your part (and "do it or get fired" is not genuine consent) this would appear to breach the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The biometric data of your finger is personal information and, as such, it can only be collected with your consent. A similar factual case was decided in queensland (Note: the Australian law will be different in some ways from the Canadian law but they both require consent for collection) last year in that way.	Can a landlord (UK, English law) make a claim from a potential tenant who wants to back out of signing a Tenancy Agreement? No. Your description reflects that in this particular scenario there is no tenancy contract. The only actual contract relates to the holding deposit, and your description suggests that both parties fully complied with their obligations pursuant to that contract. Accordingly, neither party has a viable claim against the other. Regardless of whether verbal agreements are cognizable under UK tenancy law, the meeting of the minds you portray is that this tenancy ought to be formalized only by signing a contract. That supersedes customer's prior verbal expressions of intent about moving in. The landlord incurred expenses that either were covered by the customer's holding deposit or were unreasonable. An example of the latter is the fees "landlord has paid for the dates on the contract to be changed (repeatedly)", a task that any person can perform with a text editor at a negligible cost. Likewise, "turn[ing] down other potential tenants" is covered by the holding deposit the customer paid. As for taking "a detailed inventory", that is a task the landlord would perform with any potential tenant and which would render the same outcome regardless of who the tenant would be. The holding deposit must be associated to a deadline or holding period. Beyond that deadline, it is up to the landlord to grant customer's requests for postponement. But the landlord is not entitled to compensation for a risk he deliberately took without even requiring a [renewed] holding deposit. what's the situation if the tenant still claims they want to move in, but the landlord wants to withdraw because they no longer trusts the tenant's promises? That depends on the deadline associated to the holding deposit. Once the holding period has elapsed, the landlord is entitled to do with his property whatever he wants. The customer would have a claim only if (1) landlord withdraws prior to the deadline and (2) customer provably intended to move in.	could I claim that my product must be added asap? And is it reasonable to ask for compensation for the missed revenue due to pushing back the launch? Unfortunately, no. Your description reflects that you consciously treated as sufficient the limited knowledge you had at the formation of the contract. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts at §154(b). There is no indication that (1) at the formation of the contract the company committed to a more specific timing, or (2) you would have declined the invitation had you known at the formation of the contract that the company would keep postponing the inclusion of your product in the way you describe. You were given the expected date only after you performed your duties pursuant to the contract, which defeats the notion that the company's timing was any relevant to your decision of entering the contract. The only way you could prevail is by proving that the company breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is implied in all contracts. See Restatement at §205. Other than that, the lack of contract provisions to protect your interests give the company significant discretion.	Variations of contracts must be consented to by all parties. This means that if the company sent your friend varied terms, it would have included means by which she would have consented - this may be by continuing to use a service. You cannot unilaterally change the terms of a contract. You could try to charge the company PoS terminal storage fees, but it's highly unlikely to be enforceable if they don't agree to it. In theory if they are aware of the change and they accept them in some way then they are bound to the terms just as she would be, even if they later claimed that they were not aware of them. There is some precedent - in Russia - for this with a bank and it made the news some time ago. There's plenty of cases in which people who don't read EULAs or loan contracts thoroughly are still forced to honour their obligations to their creditors under them.	There are not enough facts to draw a conclusion First, it’s not clear that the document you signed amounts to a contract. For example, what consideration did the school give you in return for the permission you gave them? Providing you with an education doesn’t count - they were legally obliged to do that already. If it is a contract then whether and how it can be revoked would depend on the terms of that contract witch I’m guessing you don’t have a copy of. Notwithstanding, as a minor, you have the right to void the contract until a reasonable time after you turn 18. Even if it is now many years since that happened, it might be reasonable since you only just discovered the website. If it isn’t a contract, then it would be revocable at any time. Practicalities Make a fuss and they may take the photos down even if they are not obliged to. They presumably have plenty of photos of kids who aren’t you and aren’t complaining and if you make it so it’s easier to change the website than to deal with you, thy’ll change the website. I suspect their inertia is because they once paid a web developer to create the site, it has never since been updated, they don’t know how to do it, and they don’t want to have to pay someone to find out. Otherwise, why would they have photos of ex-students rather than current students? If so, an offer by you to cover the costs, might solve your problem.	Do I have any recourse for invalidating all or part of the contract? No. There is a presumption in contract law that when a contract is reduced to writing then what that writing says is what the parties agreed. Also, if you signed it, then you are legally stating: I read it, I understand it and I agree to it - don't sign things you don't understand. If your lawyer has produced something you don't understand then have them redraft it until you do. Would a successful suit against the lawyer for malpractice or negligence make any difference? No. A suit against you lawyer may get you damages from your lawyer but it will not affect the rights of third-parties. What is best practice for avoiding flawed contracts like this in the first place? Read and understand the contract. Educate yourself enough in the law so that you can do this. Your lawyer is there to give you professional advice; you are there to make your own decisions.
My daughter was born on the Palmyra Atoll. How do I obtain US citizenship for her? Note: the story below is fictional, but the legal question posed is a serious hypothetical. While attempting to sail across the Pacific I discovered I was pregnant. Eventually I ran aground on the Palmyra Atoll and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Obviously I have a lot to worry about, being stranded on a tiny uninhabited island with a newborn and all (yes I have Internet access don't think about it), but what really matters to me right now is that my daughter will be a U.S. citizen. After all, I happen to know that the Atoll is the only incorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, and "incorporated" means that the Constitution applies in its entirety, so by the 14th amendment she should be granted citizenship by birth. I am not a U.S. citizen, so she cannot derive citizenship from me. Now, how should I go about getting her stateside and proving to the U.S. authorities that she is entitled to citizenship? Should I sail to Kiribati and register her birth certificate with the authorities there, or make the longer trip to Hawaii and ruin my chances of ever crossing the Pacific? You may assume that I have all the evidence necessary that she was born on the Palmyra Atoll. Before she was born, I had enough time to set up a camera and film myself measuring my latitude and longitude and then giving birth	Legally your daughter is a US citizen How you go about demonstrating that is not a legal question, it’s a question about bureaucratic processes and off-limits for this site.	Reservations aren't of or for a single tribe (meaning roughly "ethnic group"), they are for a particular Nation (whether or not that term is used in a specific case -- it could be "Confederation" or "Band"). In Washington state, the Yakama Nation is a confederation of people who are Klikitat, Palouse, Walla Walla, Wanapum, Wenatchee, Wishram, and Yakama; the Tulalip Tribes covers the northern Lushootseed tribes made up of the Duwamish, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish. Only 2/3 of the recognized tribes have reservations. The key legal concept is not exactly being "of a certain tribe", it is "being enrolled". Ancestry relates to enrollment (and disenrollment) via individual rules about membership. Federal Indian law is encoded in Title 25. Let's just say that a question about what that title says is way to broad to ever answer. Generally speaking, there are two types of reservation land, trust land and fee land. The US government holds trust land in trust, which has various restrictions on transfer, and is exempt from taxation: transfers require higher approval (tribe, BIA). Fee land is land that the individual(s) own outright. In the case of fee land, anyone can purchase that land. The land that would be of interest for this question is trust land. The Yakama reservation, for instance, has open and closed areas, the latter being mostly trust land with use restricted to enrolled members. On fee land located within a reservation, that does not mean that one is completely free of tribal rules. After all, off the reservation, you are still subject to the local government's land use rules (zoning restrictions, for example). The ruling of Brendale v. Confederated Tribes, 492 U.S. 408 is very complex and says "yes and no". Tribes do not have authority to zone fee land on the reservation owned by non-members, but they do have authority to generally zone fee land on closed areas of the reservation. (Very roughly speaking, fee land is subject to general government-planning type restrictions on land use that we are all subject to; but there are limits on how discriminatory those rules can be. Above all, fee land is in fact owned by the individual, and a tribe cannot claw the land back, though they can buy it back). A Nation can set rules for membership which would be patently illegal in the general context of US law. In Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, the situation was that the rule of the Santa Clara Pueblo nation said that the children of a Pueblo woman who married outside the tribe (e.g. to a Navaho) may be denied tribal membership, but did not exclude children of a Pueblo man who married outside the tribe. The consequence is that the children of a woman lose the right to reside on that land after the mother dies (also can't vote, etc.) The short version is that SCOTUS held that this is legal. Indian nations enjoy sovereign immunity, so you can't sue them.	It depends Law in international airspace over international waters is the law of the country the plane is registered in - just like a ship is considered land of the registered/owner's country while in international waters. This is, according to the Britannica, also called the quasi-territorial Jurisdiction. So if this were a Lufthansa Flight, technically everything there happens in Germany under the Tokyo Convention and German Law (StGB §4) and the case can be held in Germany. For United Airlines it means, that the act happened in the US and if it was an Air Japan flight, it would be Japan, no matter in which airspace it happens. However, other laws might also make the law of other countries apply and put the people into the jurisdiction by virtue of law applying globally: if the perpetrator or victim were US citizens, any felony that happens between the two on that flight can also be prosecuted in the US, as they claim jurisdiction in those cases. Similarly, the UK and Germany have similar laws, in the latter case for only a subset of crimes (StGB §5, 6-11a). This is the principle of personal jurisdiction. But technically, the quasi-territorial jurisdiction can override that. And that again is overridden once the plane lands and enters the territorial jurisdiction of the harboring country. All involved countries can elect to prosecute or not, and there is no double jeopardy problem as we have separate sovereigns. Who is most likely to prosecute? Depends on the case, but in the least, the country of registration has Jurisdiction and will usually get the first crack at the case. However, extradition treaties and other treaties between two countries can give preference to the country of the nationals. BTW: we had pretty much the same question for murder on a plane.	The location of your residence entrance is irrelevant for the law, what matters most is your "street address", i.e. mailing address. That is the address (therefore city) that you use for voter registration, and basically how you identify "where I live". If you lives 5 miles out in the country in an unincorporated area, you'd still use Needles (e.g.) as you mailing address: but you would not be able to vote for a mayor of Needles, just based on your mailing address. Both municipalities might claim jurisdiction based on the physical location of the property, especially for matters of building code. It should not be possible for both municipalities to tax the full value of your property, but they could split the assessment proportionally. The cities themselves are not collecting the tax, the county is (though property straddling a county line raises an interesting question).	First, let's be clear. Under the relevant Australian law, this person is an Australian citizen, This is for two reasons. First, because he or she is descended from someone who was born in Australia in the time period from January 26, 1949 to August 19, 1986 (or who was a British subject born in Australia prior to January 26, 1949), and second, because a child born in Australia after 19 August 1986 (and who is not otherwise an Australian citizen) and who lives in Australia, automatically acquires Australian citizenship on his or her 10th birthday, if the child has not been granted or otherwise acquired Australian citizenship in the meantime. This occurs automatically (by operation of law), and applies irrespective of the immigration status of the child or his/her parents. So, the question is not one of status as an Australian citizen, but of proof of status as an Australian citizen. This individual is not truly stateless. Also, even if the parents (contrafactually) were stateless rather than being Australian citizens, which they were, children born in Australia whose parents are stateless and not entitled to any other country's citizenship may in some circumstances apply for and be granted Australian citizenship. One of the reasons that Australia allows this rule is that in order to deport someone you have to know that the person deported is a citizen of the country to which the person is deported. If you are a stateless person in Australia (as this person is not, but someone might suspect them of being), you can be denied rights the flow from citizenship, rather than merely from being a person or being a resident. But, you can't deport a stateless person because you have no place to deport them to. Related to this fact is that Australia is a party to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961), a multilateral international treaty. In respect of contracting states: "Stateless birth" on their territory attracts the grant of their nationality (article 1). Otherwise stateless persons may take the nationality of the place of their birth or of the place where they were found (in the case of a foundling), otherwise they may take the nationality of one of their parents (in each case possibly subject to a qualifying period of residence in that State) (article 2). A stateless person has some time beyond attaining adulthood to seek to claim the benefit of the Convention. That time is always at least three years from the age of eighteen (article 1(5)). Transfer of territory between states must occur in a manner that avoids the occurrence of statelessness for persons residing in the territory transferred. When a State acquires territory, the inhabitants of that territory presumptively acquire the nationality of that State (article 10). Persons otherwise stateless shall be able to take the nationality of one of their parents (possibly subject to a period of prior residence not more than three years) (article 4). Absent circumstances of fraudulent application or disloyalty toward the contracting state, deprivations and renunciations of citizenship shall only take effect where a person has or subsequently obtains another nationality in replacement (article 8). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will issue travel documents evidencing nationality to persons, otherwise stateless, having a claim of nationality under the convention. Birth on a sea vessel or aircraft may attract the nationality of the flag of that vessel or craft (article 3). Disloyal or certain criminal conduct may limit an individual's ability to avail the benefit of the Convention (article 8). The benefit of the Convention may be claimed by guardians on behalf of children (article 1(1)). States may impose a period of residence qualification for granting nationality to persons who may be otherwise stateless. That period is a maximum five years immediately prior to application and maximum of ten years overall (article 1(2)). There is also the question of proof. What suffices as proof sufficient for an immigration and nationality official varies, and there are probably presumptions that would be relevant. The fact that you are currently resident in Australia, that you have no recollection of living anywhere else or being told that you live anywhere else, your own testimony under oath regarding your place of birth and ancestry, any documentation that exists of you being in Australia in the past, and the fact that you speak English in an Australian accent fluently and speak no other language, would also be evidence of your citizenship or might trigger a presumption in favor of assuming that you are a citizen unless proven otherwise. The government can also change its processes to fit special circumstances. For example, during the Vietnam War in which the United States was involved, a significant number of children were born to U.S. soldier fathers and Vietnamese mothers in Vietnam. Ordinarily, under U.S. law, it is necessary to establish that a particular person who is a U.S. citizen was your father. But, in the aftermaths of these births, there was a period of time at least, when anyone born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother, who was racially part-Vietnamese and part either European or African in ancestry, was presumed based upon appearance alone to be a child of a U.S. citizen present in Vietnam in connection with the war effort and granted citizenship by birth, with their place of birth and mixed race alone sufficing to establish their citizenship. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Australia adopting such a rule in the case that you describe. Also, even if such a per se rule were not adopted, usually the ultimate test in a proceeding to establish citizenship is proof by a preponderance of the evidence that it is more likely than not that this person is an Australian citizen, and that standard could probably be met by any official who was not intentionally inclined to bear ill will to this person or their group. Competent legal representation and expert testimony would likely help the person to establish their citizenship.	Under US law, names do not matter, what matters is the citizenship of the parents. As a US citizen, your children are automatically also US citizens. Whether or not the child also gains citizenship in the father's country depends on the laws of that country. Under Kosovan citizenship law art. 6, if one parent is born outside of R. of Kosova and both parents agree in writing that the child shall acquire Kosovan citizenship (which does not preclude US citizenship). The child does not gain German citizenship (unless the other parent is a German citizen).	You have not committed a crime or a violation of non-criminal law when you swear something under oath believing in good faith that what you are saying is true, and you are mistaken. The law does not expect omniscience. Also, making a false statement under oath is only sanctionable if you make a false statement of a "material fact." Whether or not you have a Social Security number is not a "material fact" in the context of a passport application where the material facts are that you are the same person as the person described in your birth certificate, that the parents there are to the best of your knowledge your parents, that the birth certificate is authentic, and that you have not renounced U.S. citizenship. The question about a Social Security number is there for administrative convenience, not to make any determination about your right to a passport. You should apply for a Social Security number. If you already have one, your actions consistent with not having one will only corroborate the fact that you were ignorant of that fact when you applied for a passport, and you will have your existing Social Security number provided to you. As a practical matter it is unlikely that you have one. There are no forms that your non-U.S. parents would have to be filled out that would have required one, and you know that you haven't applied for one in the past. Before Social Security numbers of dependents were required on U.S. tax forms, most people didn't get Social Security numbers until they got their first job.	You haven't actually asked a question, but I presume that you want to know how the 11-year-old son could accompany his mother to the US if she moves to the US as the fiancée or spouse of a US citizen. The US Department of State has a page about this on their site. It says: Overview: What Is a K-1 Visa? The fiancé(e) K-1 nonimmigrant visa is for the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) of a United States (U.S.) citizen. The K-1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the United States and marry his or her U.S. citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of status to a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Because a fiancé(e) visa permits the holder to immigrate to the U.S. and marry a U.S. citizen shortly after arrival in the United States, the fiancé(e) must meet some of the requirements of an immigrant visa. Eligible children of K-1 visa applicants receive K-2 visas. Later, it says: Does My U.S. Citizen Fiancé(e) Need to File Separate Petitions for My Children? No. Your eligible children may apply for K-2 visas based on the approval of Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé(e), that your U.S. citizen fiancé(e) filed on your behalf, but your U.S. citizen fiancé(e) must list the children on the petition. Separate visa applications must be submitted for each K-2 visa applicant, and each applicant must pay the K visa application fee. After your marriage, your children will need to file separately from you for adjustment of status. They cannot be included on your application for adjustment of status. More information about adjustment of status is available on USCIS’s website under Green Card (Permanent Residence). Important Notice: Under U.S. immigration law, a child must be unmarried. In order to file for adjustment of status for your child following your marriage to your U.S. citizen spouse, the child’s stepchild relationship with your spouse must be created before the child reaches the age of 18. (Emphasis and links in the original have been removed.) If she marries before moving to the US, then the process is somewhat different, but it is still possible for minor children to be included. You can read more about that at Immigrant Visa for a Spouse of a U.S. Citizen (IR1 or CR1).
Is it ever a good idea to volunteer for a "photo line up"? Many years ago I was walking down the street when several patrol cars quickly pulled up, police jumped out and sternly stated, "Stop. Can I see some ID?" (with hands on guns/tasers ready for a chase). Naturally I stopped and showed ID. No problem. Once the officers saw I was cooperative and not trying to be difficult, they lowered their defenses and became much more cordial. I learned that I "matched the description" of someone who apparently had just moments before committed an armed robbery a few blocks away. Okay, so I get why I was stopped. Again, no problem. They took my information and let me go on my way. A few days later, two officers knocked on my door and asked if I would "come down to the station to be part of a photo line-up." Note that I have no criminal record and there is most likely nothing "on file" that would have been sufficient for the police to use. Due to my circumstances - just got off work, had a job that left me smelling of gas, tar, and asphalt and very, very greasy and grimy and I hadn't had a chance to clean up yet - I politely turned down their request. This wasn't a problem. The officers went on their way. Much later I read somewhere that one should never pose for a photo line up because if the "witness" makes a mistake you could be in a whole lot of trouble quickly with little or no cause for it. Is it ever a good idea to pose for a photo line up if you haven't been charged with anything?	In this instance, the police were almost certainly trying to get you to volunteer to be in a line-up with the victim of the crime picking out potential suspects (of which you were absolutely one, and probably remain so). Assuming the chap or chappete who got mugged, who basically only saw the barrel of the gun, picked you out of the lineup at random, you could have expected to be carted off to a holding cell pending an interview, followed by arrest and very likely conviction for armed robbery. You were wise to refuse. You should never cooperate with the police even if you think have an amazing alibi that means that you couldn't have committed the crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE	The only time cops are violating the law for cowardice is when they fail to intervene in misconduct by another cop, see, e.g., here at page 10 (two police carry out a blatantly unlawful arrest, but there is also liability for the two other junior officers watch and do nothing about their superiors' misconduct), or when an arrested or incarcerated person has been placed in peril by the cop, see, e.g., here (police arrest woman and put her in a squad car on train tracks and fail to try to rescue her when a train is about to and then does smash into the squad car where she is helplessly handcuffed and locked in). This said, cops are routinely disciplined or fired for cowardice as an employment matter (see, e.g., here where a policeman who fails to rush in to stop a school shooting in progress was "suspended in the immediate aftermath of the attack and later resigned" and also here in a similar case). But, they are rarely disciplined or fired for being too aggressive even if it crosses the legal line unless the facts are unequivocally clear.	I'm a notary. If someone showed me a marked-up license, I'd refuse to perform the notarization, and make a note of the persons name and phone number, to make sure I would never make another appointment with the person. Is there a law that says I have to refuse? I don't think so. Is there is a law that says I can refuse if I have any doubts about the person's identity? Absolutely.	To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.	It's not an interrogation Nothing makes Mr. Hansen a police investigator. He is a private person talking with another private person. His testimony or the recording of the interview might or might not be admissible in trial, that's for the court to decide. But Miranda warnings are only needed when you are under arrest or when you are in a custodial interrogation. Hansen, agent of the police? There's arguments that Hansen might or might not have acted as an agent of the police, and in one case he was deputized. However, that does not change that for Miranda you need an arrest or custodial interrogation (e.g. where one is not free to leave). As far as I am aware, none of the people interviewed was in such a situation and technically free to go at any time - making Miranda not required.	Basically, it is up to the court. The relevant law is the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE). You don't give much in the way of specifics, but it sounds like you confessed something to the police at the side of the road immediately after the accident, and now wish to dispute that confession. If you are taken to court and the police want to introduce your confession as evidence then you (through your lawyer) can ask the court to rule it out. You may be able to do so on a number of grounds. Was the confession properly recorded at the time? Were you treated in an oppressive manner, such that you felt you had to say what the police wanted to hear. Did you think you might get more favourable treatment if you said what the police wanted? For instance, did you think you might be allowed to go home once they were satisfied? Were you given a proper rest, or were you in a mental state that might cause you to say things without understanding the consequences (it sounds like this would be your main argument, but consider the others too). [Edit] If you needed medical treatment that would also be relevant. Were you properly cautioned (that speech beginning "You do not have to say anything...") before the police asked you questions. If you think you may be facing criminal charges then you should get yourself a lawyer sooner rather than later. A lawyer will know all about this and be able to navigate the relevant legal processes on your behalf. A bit of background: back in the 1970s the police frequently attributed incriminating statements to suspects when arrested, such as "Its a fair cop, guv", or "Who ratted on us?". The rules in PACE were made to stop such "verballing".	It is unlikely that Bob's conduct would constitute disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace in the fact pattern you described and the police and the Mayor who ordered to police to act have probably violated Bob's constitutional rights. While governments may adopt reasonable "time, place and manner" restrictions on free speech, and the inquiry as to whether a time, place and manner restriction is reasonable is a fact specific inquiry, the facts presented in this question are in the heartland of free speech protections and so an arrest is likely to violate a clearly established constitutional right. Bob believes the mayor to be corrupt. The mayor is an ex police officer. So Bob decides to protest in front of city hall at noon with a sign and speaking loudly about his dislike for the mayor while walking back and forth on a public sidewalk. Bob is in a public place that has a long tradition of being a symbolic public forum for expressing grievances. He is articulating statements that he holds in good faith about a matter of public concern relating to a public figure. Noon is not a time at which there is a need to maintain quiet. There is no indication in the question of any special facts that would modify the usual considerations in this fact pattern (i.e. the building is not on fire requiring fire departments to keep people clear, there isn't a Presidential motorcade nearby, there is no indication that there is an ordinance on the books in advance that attempts to reasonably accommodate protesters in the interest of some important interest (e.g. not interfering with security lines)). Realistically, absent negative facts which are not mentioned, this looks like a strong case for a constitutional violation and a weak one for criminal liability.	So first things first, whether or not Stand Your Ground is in play, the burden of proof is always on the State to prove any crime did happen and any defense does not. Another thing that I think you confused in your question is it seems apparent that you think Stand Your Ground is Self Defense. This is not true. In the United States, self-defense is always a legal right for a victim of a potential crime, regardless of if your state has Stand Your Ground or Duty to Flee laws. Self-Defense typically can include justifiable homicide as you are not privy to the intent of the bad actor. Under Duty To Flee laws, you cannot claim self defense if you could reasonably get away from a criminal action safely... if given the choice between fight or flight, you must flee the scene. Stand Your Ground contradicts this and says that if you are in a public place and a criminal is trying to make you a victim, you have every right to defend yourself without any duty to remove yourself from the situation first... basically at this point, you can make either choice and not worry about losing justifiable Homicide. Making a criminal arrest of a Stand Your Ground claimant at the seen is not necessarily required. While the claim may be disputed, in the case of firearms, using an illegally owned weapon is typically ground for arrest regardless... (probably not in cases where the illegal gun was introduced to the scene by the dead criminal... and the victim picked it up in a scuffle... though this requires some measure of sorting out). Legal Fire Arms are very well documented and the fire arm in question will be confiscated as evidence. If it is found that it was not a justifiable homicide, the person in question is probably at the address tied to the gun. Now, again, Stand Your Ground only applies to steps needed for Self-Defense, it is not self-defense itself. Self-Defense authorizes only the amount of force needed to safely resolve the situation, up to and including leathal force, but it does not require you to kill the perpetrator in every instance it is invoked. For example, if merely pointing a gun at a perpetrator is enough to stop the crime, you do not get to pull the trigger. That flips it back into homicide. Similarly, if I pull my gun and the guy advances anyway, I may fire and if the guy is on the ground and out cold (thus, no longer a threat), I don't get to walk up, and put a second bullet between his eyes, execution style. This too is murder. As a bit of anecdotal evidence, when I was living in Florida, I worked for a man who just recently purchased a firearm for self-defense (in the home only) and he said that when he was filling out paperwork with the police, the cop looking over his paperwork said, "Now remember, if you have to use that, shoot to kill. It's less paperwork for us." Now, I wasn't there when to cop said it, I don't know what his tone was. I took it as the cop being a little funny, but maybe a little inappropriate. I cannot speak to how much that is indicitive of FL Police culture. It was hearsay on my part... I just thouht it was funny and... demonstrates the attitude towards self-defense. Essentially, by the time cops arrive at the scene, they HARD PART is over... they merely have to collect evidence and take witness statements. If the shooter is cooperating and his story checks out, it will look very bad if they detain a crime victim who defended himself. It's just bad PR. Ultimately, his job is to collect all evidence, not determine if the case should go to trial. As I mentioned, the gun was legally owned in the specific case, and more than likely the CCTV tape is collected, but not yet viewed. Hindsight may be 20/20 but at the time, I do not think it's fair to say that the cop knew this might not be such a clear cut case. In such cases, the cop may not make an arrest because there is not any crime that he can charge the man with and he is cooperating. And keep in mind that in the heat of the moment for the shooter, he may not even realize he did something that might break his self-defense case. Cops can detain a person claiming Stand Your Ground for just about any legitimate reason, even suspicion of homicide that the detainee will claim is self-defense.
Can an unwritten law be considered a law, with legal effect? A question came up with a friend over dinner. In societies that have no written language, are their laws considered to have legal effect? Does a law have to be written down in order to be considered a law and enforced?	Different socities, including some that are not considered sovereign nations, create laws, that is enforceable rules of conduct, in different ways. Not all write them down. But they are all Law in that they are rulwa that societies can and will enforce mon their members. I recommend reading Legal Systems Very Different from Ours by David D. Friedman (Professor of Law at Santa Clara University). There are free versions available on the web, and the final version is available from Amazon. It includes chapters on several systems where law is not written, including: Pirate Law Prisoners’ Law Romani Law Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne: The Plains Indians Somali Law Other chapters deal with systems where law may have been written, but its method of formation and operation are very different from the models usually discussed on this site. This include Roman law, Imperial Chinese law, Jewish law, Early Irish Law, and the law of saga-period Iceland.	There is no "theft" without a law that defines what "property" is and what "theft" is. Laws derive from the state that has the power to enforce them. A state may issue the laws and decrees and stablish who owns the lands. It can later make changes to that ownership. When the Normans invaded England, Willian I became the legal authority and with that he could award, confiscate and keep lands as he saw fit, without that being considered "theft" in any legal sense of the word. The English government (and all others) still have the authority to take away, redistribute and otherwise change the ownership of lands as they see fit, and nothing of it would be theft. Internally most of them have chosen to stablish some procedures to ensure that this is only done when needed by meeting some tests (eminent domain), but even if they didn't have those (again, self-imposed) restrictions they still would be able to change ownership as they saw fit. That does not mean that a government using that power to punish political opponents or ethnic minorities would not face internal and external protests.	If you copy copyrighted material without permission or another exemption, you are at risk It doesn’t matter if you know the material is subject to copyright, it doesn’t matter if you think you have permission but don’t, it doesn’t even matter if you knowingly make the copy or if it is some background process you don’t know about. Copyright law is really simple: if you make an unlawful copy, you broke it. If this seems unduly harsh, remember you are dealing with a law with its roots in the 18th century that was internationalised at the beginning of the 20th century. Making copies then was a hard, deliberate process - you couldn’t “accidentally” or “inadvertently” make a copy of a literary or artistic work. Now you can - the world has changed, the law hasn’t.	In the United States, individual members (States) of the union are allowed to make their own constitutions and state laws & regulations. This includes laws that may contradict Federal law, although this is a grey area. It usually comes down to enforcement: Federal laws are usually enforced by Federal law enforcement as they can not force states to do so. Further more, State prosecutors will usually not attempt to prosecute you for a Federal law infraction. Only Federal prosecutors OR the department of justice will do this. To see a more detailed explanation on this, look at this "How Stuff Works" article.	I'm a notary. If someone showed me a marked-up license, I'd refuse to perform the notarization, and make a note of the persons name and phone number, to make sure I would never make another appointment with the person. Is there a law that says I have to refuse? I don't think so. Is there is a law that says I can refuse if I have any doubts about the person's identity? Absolutely.	Each case is decided on its own facts I know you want a clear answer to where the bright line between illegality and legality but there simply isn’t one. The reason you feel there is a “legal grey area” is because there’s a legal gray area. The way the common law works is that there are some acts and omissions that are clearly crimes/torts/breach of contract, some that aren’t and some that live in that grey area. When someone brings a case in the grey, the court will make a ruling that will apply to similar facts and we get a little light on the subject. Then the legislature changes the law and it all goes dark again. Each of your bullet points is simply too vague and encompasses so many fact patterns that it’s impossible to say. For example, “Using a fake name/birthday”: do the ToS prohibit this? is there an intent to mislead or deceive? are there laws that prohibit this? is a benefit being received dishonesty? etc. If you come with a specific, detailed fact pattern there might be case law that is specifically relevant that will allow an answer with a high chance of being right. However, nuances matter and no two fact patterns are exactly the same and the difference might be enough to distinguish your case from the precedent. Or there might not be a relevant precedent because no one has sued/prosecuted on this fact pattern before. Then we are in virgin territory and even experts are only making educated guesses until the judge (and the appeals court(s)) hand down their decision. These are the most interesting cases to watch but the most terrifying to be part of. If you need to ask the question”where’s the legal line on this?”, there’s a decent chance you have a foot on each side.	If the Kenya legislature passes such a law, they can impose such a requirement on Kenyans who want to create such social media groups. Note that this is a license from the Kenyan government, not a copyright or trademark license. In effect, it is a tax on running a social media group, along with various regulations. I have no idea if this bill is at all likely to pass. If it does pass, it might be hard to enforce, as it would probably require cooperation from Facebook and other social media platforms, and the companies which run those platforms are not located in Kenya, and might not cooperate.	Legalese The purpose of a legal document is to set out the rights and responsibilities so that: they can understand them, a third party (e.g. a judge) can rule on them in the event of a dispute. These two requirements are often in tension. We have about 1,000 years of legal precedent where certain words and phrases (sometimes in Latin rather than English) have developed very clear and precise meanings. This serves very well for the 2nd point but it can be confusing to lay people especially where: the word as used in everyday speech has a broader meaning than the way it is used in the law (e.g. shall), the word is no longer used in everyday speech (e.g. thou), or the damn thing is in Latin (e.g. certiorari). For example: "Thou shall not kill" is a legal prohibition - killing by you must not happen. However, "Killing is illegal" is merely an observation. TL;DR There is no reason why an agreement cannot be expressed in plain English. However, when put in front of a judge, that plain English must be interpreted; maybe it is better to use words that have clear and unambiguous legal definitions? An anecdote, probably untrue In the spirit of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. The legal fraternity's love of opaque language supposedly dates from the 1600s. In those days a lawyer was paid by the folio - a large piece of paper. As a consequence lawyers used very big handwriting. Parliament, justifiably, thought that this was a rort and legislated that lawyers must be paid by the word. So now we have "in the event that" instead of "if" because 400 years ago it was worth four times as much. Parliaments do this kind of thing a lot.
Can a Pediatric Dentist Require Conscious Sedation or Refuse Treatement? Pediatric Dentists regularly administer oral sedatives ("conscious sedation") to perform dental work on young children or toddlers because it makes them "cooperate" better. If a parent is reluctant for his/her child to undergo conscious sedation due to the inherent risks and side effects associated with this procedure and wants the physician to perform the dental work using nitrous oxide or just a local anesthetic, can a dentist refuse to treat the child? I think it's noteworthy that insurance does not cover the cost of conscious sedation (even in young children or in children who need a lot of dental work done) which suggests that conscious sedation is not actually necessary for the physical and mental well being of the child. It is mostly done for the convenience of the dentist or to accelerate the procedure. Can a dentist withhold treatment in such cases? Or can a parent force the dentist to perform treatment with a lesser invasive approach?	A medical practitioner may use whatever methods s/he thinks proper and appropriate, subject to the limits of malpractice law, and to the right of the patient (or patient's parent or guardian for a child) to give informed consent to any procedure or treatment. A patient can not insist on a treatment or method that the doctor or dentist does not wish to perform, having only the right to seek another practitioner. Nor is a practitioner required to use only procedures covered by insurance, unless bound by contract to do so (as may be the case with some "in-network" or HMO agreements). Again, the patient is free to seek treatment elsewhere. So the parent could insist that the dentist not use "conscious sedation" by withholding consent, the dentist may then refuse to treat at all, unless perhaps this was an emergency situation not allowing the parent to seek another treatment venue.	There is no specific statute in Missouri that prohibits a teacher from saying "ADHD". There is a specific federal statute that obligates the school district to make accommodations if a student is diagnosed with ADHD (also a state law). A teacher is not technically qualified to diagnose ADHD. Finally, the teacher is an employee of the school district and is required to follow the policies of the district. Those are the 4 legal cornerstones on which the teachers response must rest. The unquestionably weakest cornerstone is understanding the realities of district policy. There may be district-policy type reasons that motivate reticence to recommend testing, but such "abundance of caution" is not motivated by a legal mandate imposed on the teacher, it is more likely to be the result of a fear of reprisals (for triggering extra expenditures by the district). Such a fear is not legally warranted, except insofar as if you don't know what the law says (many people don't), fear is a kind of reasonable response. But ignorance of the law is no excuse. It might be useful to know that it is not required to get a doctors diagnosis of ADHD, so the teacher's evaluation might carry more weight that you would expect, were that a requirement.	Most states have a low barring the distribution of counterfeit drugs, which this would appear to violate. For example, the Colorado Imitation and Counterfeit Controlled Substances Act, codified at Sections 18-18-419 to 18-18-424, Colorado Revised Statutes, makes it a minor drug felony (class 4) to distribute an imitation controlled substance which is "a substance that is not the controlled substance that it is purported to be but which, by appearance, including color, shape, size, and markings, by representations made, and by consideration of all relevant factors as set forth in section 18-18-421, would lead a reasonable person to believe that the substance is the controlled substance that it is purported to be." It already contains a placebo exception for medical professionals stating that it "shall not apply to practitioners licensed, registered, or otherwise authorized under the laws of this state to possess, administer, dispense, or distribute a controlled substance, if the distribution, possession, dispensing, or administering of the imitation controlled substance is done in the lawful course of his professional practice." But there is an argument that the intended purposes of the use of the counterfeit rather than the real thing was to prevent a suicide, and that doing so had that effect, which might excuse the crime. The fact that B initiated the conversation by asking A and might have successfully obtained the drug if he asked someone else makes this defense particularly plausible. People who fail to commit suicide do not statistically just try again by another method, suicide is an impulsive action that if prevented is not nearly as likely to recur if someone fails to do so by one particular method. Colorado expressly allows the use of physical force to prevent a suicide. "A person acting under a reasonable belief that another person is about to commit suicide or to inflict serious bodily injury upon himself may use reasonable and appropriate physical force upon that person to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to thwart the result." Section 18-1-703(1)(d), Colorado Revised Statutes. This isn't actually a use for physical force, but it informs the application of the "choice of evils" defense, codified at Section 18-1-702, Colorado Revised Statutes in Colorado, which provides (with nuances not reproduced here) that: conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when it is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury which is about to occur by reason of a situation occasioned or developed through no conduct of the actor, and which is of sufficient gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding the injury clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the offense in issue. It isn't obviously immoral either (for the same reasons), although one could make a case that the "victim" could bring the tort of outrageous conduct a.k.a. intentional infliction of emotional distress, against the person causing it, although again, the question would be what were the damages and was it justified. The tort remedy is a better fit as it is often used in cases of "pranks" calculated to cause extreme emotional distress as this one apparently was. The intent of the "victim" to commit suicide might also constitute "unclean hands" barring a tort recovery in this situation in tort law if asserted by person A.	What real human teeth look like is a fact, and not subject to copyright. But some particular designer's or artist's image of human teeth would be protected by copyright, unless it is too old -- (prior to 1923 under US law), or unless it lost copyright in some other way. To create a derivative work based on such a copyrighted work would require permission from the copyright holder. Otherwise it is copyright infringement, and the holder could sue. As to the car models, the original designs would be protected by copyright, and a maker of a model should have permission in some form, or again the copyright holder could sue. Of course, a copyright holder is not required to sue, and if the value of the work is too small a suit might not pay. But that is not a matter of legal right, but of the holder's choice and business decision. A copyright holder could always change such a decision at a later time, when perhaps the value had increased. The exact laws on how to file copyright suits, and exceptions that might apply, vary by country. The question does not indicate what county it applies to.) But the basic principals are the same in all countries that adhere to the Berne Copyright Convention, which is all but a very few countries in the world. See this Wikipedia article for more details.	In the US, detention does not add anything: we can generalize the principle to any time when a student is in the custody of the teacher (classroom, field-trip, sporting event...). One question, for the scenario that you describe, is whether the injury was foreseeable. Suppose the injury is an abdominal aortic aneurysm – this is not foreseeable. The question that the court would ask is whether a person exhibiting reasonable caution and care would know that there is a possibility that the child has some condition. The details regarding this condition "not being easily noticeable" are essential to the outcome of the case. A child coughing up blood should be immediately treated medically, it is not reasonable to assume that a child who sneezes (once) is in imminent danger. The teacher's response is also important, and again this is a very fact-intensive inquiry. A child who has a heart attack should not be told "go talk to the nurse" (let's assume that the teacher correctly notices that this is a heart attack happening), 911 is the correct (minimal) remedy. Perhaps using the auto-defibrillator also part of the reasonable standard of care for a teacher (assuming there is one, and that the teacher has been trained how to use it). Then finally, the teacher is not liable if their actions / inactions don't cause the injury. In the case where a student suddenly dies, the fact that the teacher didn't somehow prevent the death doesn't make the teacher liable. But if the child is bleeding and the teacher decides "We can deal with this when detention is over" and the child bleeds to death in the interim, we would conclude that the teacher's lack of care caused the child's death. The school might also be liable on various grounds, for example if the school has no nurse and has no practical way for the teacher to contact emergency medical services. Some school policy which unreasonably restricts the teachers exercise of reasonable care could make the school liable. At any rate, "the child died" does not cause absolute liability, what confers liability is the actions and inactions of a party.	In the US, there are no laws against surgical circumcision with informed consent (and I don't know of any such laws in any other country). Parents are generally allowed to grant surrogate informed consent. There is no requirement that circumcision be carried out by a licensed physician or other approved practitioner. A person can be held civilly liable for damage done by the procedure. There are no criminal prohibitions in the cases that you describe, but there could be civil interventions. In particular, the court could override parental consent – for instance, if a parent ordered circumcision of their 17 year old. If some person does the circumcision without parental consent, that could be a crime. The key distinction is parental consent. The law grants parents the power to act on behalf of the child, under the premise that children do not have the capacity to act in their own best interest, and cannot reasonably be forced to bear the full consequences of their actions. These are long-standing pre-common law premises, which even predate the promulgation of English common law. "Best interest" is not a technical term requiring definition, but it is a factual matter that is very difficult to judge. Judges use solomonic wisdom to determine whether a surgery is in the best interest of a child when it is medically advantageous but psychologically detrimental. Just as an adult can consent to a circumcision thereby negating any accusation of assault, so too can a parent consent on behalf of their child.	The law imposes no general duty to “care for” anyone For example, unless you are a lifeguard, there is no duty to render aid to a drowning person. There are a number of specific duties including: the duty of a parent or guardian to provide for and keep safe a child a similar duty for anyone standing in loco parentis - in the place of a parent. This can be a person or an organisation: a babysitter is an example of the former, a school is an example of the latter. a duty under negligence where you have a duty of care a duty to report child abuse (including neglect) that is imposed on some occupations a general duty to report crimes that may be imposed on all members of the public in some jurisdictions a duty to stop and render aid imposed on drivers This list is not exhaustive.	There is a world of legal difference between a doctor or counselor "pressing" you to consider meds and even suggesting several and them actually writing a prescription. The line to cross is a non-doctor writing you a prescription for prescription meds; this has not yet happened. And 99.99% of the time, it won't happen. The counselor is licensed by the state and will clearly know their legal limits, which are an important part of their education and licensing; they are not going to risk their license or a lawsuit by doing something illegal. If the counselor is a doctor and is able to write prescription, then they will ask you about medical history and other meds during a formal clinical visit in order to write the prescription. If you feel the counselor may be pressing you too hard to consider meds, he may be crossing an ethical line, but that's entirely different than breaking the law. Determining if he crossed an ethical line is for his licensing board to consider, not you. You can ask the licensing board how to proceed. Ask the counselor for their license number; they will freely give it and tell you who to contact.
Can you legally move a dead body to preserve it as evidence? A fisherman is heading upstream in his boat, and sees a human corpse float past. Obviously even if it wasn't murder, it still warrants a 911 call because it was a death. The river however, is steadily moving the body away. Can the fisherman move the body and avoid legal jeopardy because the intent was to preserve it as evidence? You can make other scenarios I'm sure, but I chose this one as an example. Basically, the concept here is that doing nothing will possibly result in the total destruction of the body/evidence.	In this specific scenario, not only is it not a crime, failure to do so is a breach of proper maritime protocols and could be illegal. A person manning a boat and sees a human in water in distress should immediately go to the rescue or recovery of the victim. This is commonly started by the crewman of the vessel who spots the body shouting "Man overboard" once... which triggers every crewman on the deck to also shout the same thing exactly once regardless of if they can see the man who is overboard (The idea is that the call is so all crew on the deck are not announcing the sighting but responding that they know there's an emergency situation in progress... and to muster to the appropriate situations). The boat's helmsman or pilot will then proceed to maneuver to recover the body in the water and bring it onboard the boat, (if traveling by sail, to then as soon as possible transfer to a motor powered vessel or to land which ever is quicker). Additionally, should the boat have radio communication, the situation should trigger a mayday communication which will alert other vessels, regardless of purpose and local emergency services to the situation, with GPS tracking aiding all responders. Typically while underway at sea or in large bodies of water, all operators of watercraft are required to respond, regardless of actual purpose on the water (recall the famous "Miracle on the Hudson" incident where New York Ferry Operators were the actual first responders to get ALL passengers and crew off the crashed plane to land, where EMS and police services were waiting to deal with the survivors). Most boating licenses these days require a basic understanding of duties with maritime safety and if you come upon a situation while underway, you are a first responder automatically. Remove the question of water and say that there is person who you are unsure of if they are alive or dead on dry land. Under law, you cannot be held liable for anything you do in the course of saving a life so long as you are acting within your competency to do so, and do not take actions you are not licensed to do as part of training, oversight, and regulations dictate, you cannot be sued for medical injuries inflicted on someone in the course of saving their life (called "Life over Limb"... that if the only way to save an unconscious person from death is to amputate a limb, you're not liable for cutting off the limb in question, so long as you are trained to do this. To a lesser extreme example, if CPR is performed right, you will break the victims ribs... since it's a question of keeping the person alive, the temporary pain and handicap of broken ribs is seen as acceptable). As a lifeguard (for pools, I wasn't certified for "wilderness lifeguarding" but the differences in this respect were minimum) your first thing to do when getting in the water to fish out a swimmer in distress was to get them back to the pool deck before life efforts could occur (there are a few times where you had to start the life saving efforts in water, but I can count them on one hand, and one of those incidents was only after confirming your victim was conscious and even then you still were moving to get them out of the water asap... it's just asap would be a little bit longer. We also weren't trained to pronounce death. If it was so serious that CPR starts, you do not stop unless another guard or EMS relieve you.). In these situations, there is proper evidence gathering procedures that will be used to establish what happened. For example, the first responders will be fingerprinted and prints in the areas touched for life saving efforts will be noted as part of the evidence. Additionally, paramedics, EMS and first responders will often alert police to any items of note they saw around the victim that were disturbed in the process of life saving efforts. The police may collect evidence from you to rule you out as a suspect (by showing the evidence on the body was consistent with applied life saving techniques) and to identify evidence not related to you at all (a pink fiber on the body that doesn't match any of your clothes means the body came into contact with the fibers from another source). This also establishes "Chain of Custody" when you call the body in and stay with it and allow minimum contact with it (many larger ships will store the body in a locked room to keep crew and passenger contact to a minimum). Either way, so long as you tell the police everything you did in rescue and recovery, this isn't tampering with evidence on the face of it. If something that is inconsistent with your story comes up, it's not necessarily incriminating either... in the heat of the moment in a rescue and recovery effort, tunnel vision can form and you aren't expect to recall everything you did. Police should know this and understand that you were cooperating in what for most of the world is an unusual situation.	The citation could be written but it should be easy to beat. In the circumstance that you describe the accused could just say the he was not driving his car at the time. If the prosecution is a sham with all your friends saying you all saw this thing, then the defendant can bring all of his friends to say that he was at some other place. The benefit to having a cop on the scene is that the cop will get ID and positive identification. The other thing the cop has is expert judgment. If a cop sees unsafe lane movement and writes a ticket, his testimony in court carries more weight than the "it was not unsafe!" testimony of the accused. Keep in mind, getting all of your witnesses to court on the same day, after continuances and other delays, and getting them all to tell the same story to overcome the presumption of innocence is no small feat. All that to say, it's easier with police as witness. There are two mechanisms which could get you where you want to go. Private prosecution and citizen's arrest. Private prosecutions are a part of history but not strictly unavailable at the state level. You could write up some charging documents to see if you can get your target indicted. Citizen's arrest is interesting because the rules are fairly unclear unless governed by a specific statute. There are two necessary parts of citizens arrest and the first part gets the attention. The first part is the detention (arrest). The crimes for which a citizen can legally detain a suspect are likely defined by state statute. The second part is giving testimony about the witnessed crime. Let's assume that you see a felony happen and watch the perp walk into a gas station bathroom. You are prepared to arrest, do part number one, and then call the cops, to do part number two. But while you wait for the guy to come out of the bathroom a cop walks up. You explain the felony and the cop goes into the bathroom and arrests the guy. It's purely witness testimony that led to the arrest and the indictment (physical evidence - let's say there is none) and even the trial. You successfully get the guy indicted and when you show up to testify you tell the story as you witnessed it. Now the accused gets to take the stand. When he takes the stand he says, "it was the other guy." When asked, "what other guy?" He says, "I was in the bathroom and a guy ran in and went into the stall. Then a cop came in and arrested me." Reasonable doubt right there. How much more if it's a bunch of friends ratting on some lone driver? Police need evidence. Prosecutors need evidence. Judges need evidence.	Assuming that the above can be established by admissible evidence, that sounds like a case for first degree murder, and probably various other crimes as well. In some jurisdictions there is a specific crime of "Murder for hire" which might also apply if available on the jurisdiction where this occurred. A comment mentions a possible insanity defense. That is going to depend on detailed facts not included in the question, but might be possible.	The standard of proof for a criminal conviction is the same. So they would similarly need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to convict the foreign national of a crime. But deportation is not a criminal proceeding, and has a different standard of proof. (In deportation you also don't have criminal defendant rights like right to an attorney if you can't afford one.) I believe the standard is "clear and convincing evidence".	In all likelihood, the judge's order related to data collection and reselling is not legally enforceable. They weren't parties to the expungement action, so the judge doesn't have jurisdiction over them. And, the First Amendment protects the right to say truthful things pretty absolutely. Arguably, if the sites provided the information without making clear that it might not be current because records were expunged or corrected, there might be a claim for negligent misrepresentation, false light, or even defamation, but I seriously doubt that even those claims would hold up. The language in the order might cause sites to comply out of not legally justified concern, or just a desire to be accurate, even if it is not enforceable. So, it doesn't hurt to bring that information to the attention of such sites and ask them to take down the information. But, when push comes to shove, I very much doubt that you would prevail in court enforcing that order against them. Certainly, if you do nothing, they will do nothing, because they are not psychic and have no idea that the court order related to those records has been entered. Even a valid and enforceable order directed at a party over whom a court has jurisdiction is not effective until the person ordered to comply with it has notice of the order. And, there is no system that gives sites like that notice without you taking action to inform them of an order.	There are some complexities here, and several possibilities. First of all, it seems from the question that: There were not any "exigent circumstances" or any other special situation which would justify making a search without a warrant (there are several circumstances which can justify a warrantless search, but none are mentioned in the question). The police had no probable cause, indeed not even any reasonable suspicion. Thus the police had no valid reason even to request a warrant, and if they had asked for one, they should have been refused. No resident of the house consented to any search at any point. The police had no honest belief that they were acting lawfully. They knew, or any reasonable police officer should have known, that they were acting unlawfully. Now, let us consider some of the possibilities left open by the question. For purposes of discussion, let us assume that the house was owned by Bob and Carol, and no one else lived in it. There are several possibilities. Case One: The evidence appears to implicate Bob. Bob is charged, and Bob's lawyer Joan makes a timely motion to suppress the evidence. The judge should hold a suppression hearing, and under these conditions, should suppress the evidence. The trial will go forward without it, or be dismissed if there is not enough other evidence to proceed. Case Two: Much like Case One, but another group of police officers had good reason to suspect Bob, and was already in the process of preparing a request for a warrant, supported by valid probable cause. Had the first group not searched the house unlawfully, the second group would have obtained a valid warrant and found the evidence under its authority. In this situation, known as inevitable discovery the evidence would be admitted, and the unlawful search will not matter. Case Three: The evidence implicates Fred, not Bob or Carol. Fred did not live in the house, but had asked Carol to store some boxes for him. Carol did not know what was in them. Fred has no privacy rights to the house. Bob or Carol could have lawfully consented to a search, and Fred would have no grounds to object. Fred has no grounds to suppress the evidence, as Fred's rights were not violated, and Fred cannot assert Bob or Carol's rights. A trial of Fred would proceed as if the search had been lawful. Bob and Carol may have grounds for a Section 1983 lawsuit against the police for violation of their rights, but that will not help Fred. Case Four: The evidence appears to implicate Bob. The police arrest Bob, and tell him that they have a case against him, and that if he does not confess, they will also arrest Carol as an accomplice. (They lie, but Bob believes them.) Bob pleads guilty. The unlawful search is never raised, and Bob is sentenced as if it had been lawful. Case Five: The evidence appears to implicate Bob. Bob's lawyer Joan fails to request a suppression hearing, or to object at trial to the evidence from the unlawful search. Or more likely, instead of going to trial, Bob's lawyer arranges a plea bargain without raising the issue of the search. Bob is convicted as if the search had been lawful. Bob may have a valid appeal on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, as Joan should have known better. Case Six: The evidence appears to implicate Bob. But the police have other evidence as well. Bob's lawyer raises the issue of the unlawful search. However, the prosecutor convinces Bob's lawyer Joan that they can probably convict Bob even without the evidence from the search. Joan arranges a plea bargain, and Bob accepts it. Bob will be sentenced under the plea deal, and nothing will be done about the unlawful search, except that Bob may get a somewhat better deal because the authorities do not want it exposed in court. Note that only in cases One and Five will a possibly guilty person possibly go free because of the unlawful search, and it is by no means certain even there. It is also possible that a judge will wrongly admit the evidence in a Case One situation. This is likely to be corrected on appeal, with the unlawfulness as blatant as the question assumes. In a case where the unlawfulness is more marginal, this is less sure.	Murder is definined in Utah as: Murder is causing the death of another person under any of the following circumstances: ... Knowingly engaging in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person and under circumstances which evidence a depraved indifference to human life. It's not unreasonable to consider dropping 3,000,000 bouncy balls over a populated area as "depraved indifference", particularly if someone had asked/read the question and would therefore know the potential consequences. Whether the killer would be charged with murder or manslaughter depends on the exact circumstances.	There are all manner of reasons that evidence can be excluded at a trial, most of which are set forth in rules of evidence. If the evidence was not admitted on the grounds of relevance and the charge was speeding, I presume that the reason that it was found not be to relevant was that it was not possible from a video to determine how fast someone was driving and there was no dispute in the case over who was driving. If the defendant could have articulated some reason that the video was relevant to those points, perhaps it could have been admitted. But, as if often the case, pro se defendants are usually not articulate enough to set forth a legally relevant reason that evidence should be admitted. Unless the defendant could show that the video showed something allowing a jury to determine whether or not the law was violated, it probably wouldn't be relevant and I can't easily imagine how it would be relevant, but perhaps there was some special facts or circumstances that might show, for example, that the speed gun was actually picking up another vehicle.
Would DC Statehood Require a Constitutional Amendment or State Approval? DC Statehood has been in the news recently, and I'm wondering about the logistics of it. First, take this excerpt from Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution: New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress. Although I would imagine DC is not considered to be under the jurisdiction of Maryland or Virginia, it seems to be at the junction of the two states, right? Also, how would we define "part?" Is DC a "part" of Maryland? So would DC statehood technically require approval from the Maryland and Virginia state legislatures? Now, here's an excerpt from Article I Section 8 The Congress shall have Power To… exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States… Giving Congress the power to "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatshoever, over such District" seems pretty mutually exclusive with statehood. Would the Constitution need to be amended for DC statehood?	Probably not Maryland gave consent by ceding the land that became DC back when DC was first formed. Virginia had originally ceded a matching piece of land, which would have made the district a neat square 10 miles by 10 miles. Decades later, the Virginia General Assembly voted (in February 1846) to request the return of Alexandria in a process known as retrocession. On July 9, 1846, Congress voted to return all the area that had been ceded by Virginia. Since then, the district has consisted only of the land originally ceded by Maryland. When Article IV Section 3 says "by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states" it means by joining two states into one new one, or by cutting off parts of two of more states and making them a state -- doing either of those requires the consent of the states involved, but not an amendment. Article I Section 8 could be satisfied by creating a smaller district, perhaps just the Mall and the public buildings surrounding it, including the White House and the Capitol, but no residential areas. In any case nothing in Article I Section 8 mandates the creation or retention of a Federal district. It could be argued that making DC a state would require the consent of Maryland, which once included that land. Or it could be argued that Maryland's original cession left it with no further authority over that land (I favor the latter view). But no consent of Virginia would be needed, because none of its original land is included in the current district. In any case, Article IV Section 3 seems to give Congress this power, with no need for an amendment, only possibly for Maryland approval. So it appears that the primary body that would have to approve statehood for DC would be Congress. Whether approval from Maryland would also be needed is unclear -- probably not. No other body would need to approve. However, there is no case law on the matter, and such a move might well be challenged by those who would not want DC to elect two senators.	The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.	The District is not a state, and does not function as one. The District does not elect any Senators, nor any Representatives. It does elect one "Delegate" who sits in the House, and may speak in debate, but does not have the right to vote. The Constitution allows congress to exercise "Exclusive legislation 8in all cases whatsoever" over the District. However, since 1973 the Congress has allowed limited "home rule" in the district, although it could cancel this at any time by a new law. The district has a local government, but it more closely resembles the government of a major city than that of a state. It is led by a Mayor and a city council. It is specified in some Federal laws, and one Constutiuonal provision that for certain limited purposes the Districtm should be treated "as if it were", a state. There have been a number of proposals to make the District into a state. The most recent ones have proposed to do this by redefining the "Capital District" into the White House, the Capital building, the Mall between them, buildings adjacent to the mall, and a small adjacent area. The rest of the district would, under such proposals, be admitted as a new state. Congress has the power to admit new states, so this would not require a Constitutional Amendment. But no such proposal has yet passed Congress. There are some special provisions in the way the District is Governed. For one thing, to compensate for the many public building and facilities (which pay no taxes) and the special demands on the District of the Federal Government, Congress provides some of the funds needed to run the district, with the rest coming from local taxes. Congress must approve the District Budget, and can veto local laws. See the Wikipedia article for more detail.	The method of proposing an amendment by way of Convention has never been used. Thus, procedural aspects such as how members of such a convention would be chosen have also not been settled: In the modern era, scholars have debated various issues, including: (1) how delegates to the convention should be chosen; (2) whether Congress, state legislatures, or the delegates should set rules of procedure for the convention; (3) the vote threshold would be required to propose an amendment in convention; and (4) how voting rights on a proposed amendment should be apportioned among the states. (Constitution Annotated, "ArtV.3.3 Proposals of Amendments by Convention")	To pick up on your comment 'Does this mean if I wish to build a chair for personal use, then since trade of chairs exists between states, Congress has the authority to outlaw possession or manufacturing of chairs?': Yes. For example, the US Congress can legislate to prohibit a farmer from growing wheat for use on his own farm, on the basis that there is interstate trade in wheat and therefore the Commerce Clause permits Congress to regulate the growing of wheat: Wickard v Filburn (1942) 317 US 111. If you grow marijuana, or build a chair, or whatever, you conceivably affect the number of marijuanas, chairs, etc that are traded between states. Therefore you affect interstate commerce. Therefore the US Congress can regulate you. The fact that your marijuana or your chair or your what is trivial in the scheme of the national economy is irrelevant if the aggregation of all regulated marijuana, chairs or wheat is significant: 317 US 111, 127-128. If the law didn't prohibit possession of marijuana absolutely but instead prohibited, say, the carrying of marijuana in schools, then the US Congress might have trouble relying on the Commerce Clause: see United States v Lopez (1995) 514 US 549 and replace 'marijuana' with 'handguns' (OK the marijuana/handgun analogy is bad but hopefully this illustrates that there are at least some limits on Congress' power -- it's not just 'any physical object that relates whatsoever to interstate trade therefore unfettered federal legislative power').	Original jurisdiction is not necessarily exclusive jurisdiction. [T]he original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, in cases where a State is a party, refers to those cases in which, according to the grant of power made in the preceding clause, jurisdiction might be exercised in consequence of the character of the party, and an original suit might be instituted in any of the federal Courts, not to those cases in which an original suit might not be instituted in a federal Court. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821) However, "in the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress made the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction exclusive in suits between two or more states [...]. The Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the remainder of suits to which a state was a party was to be concurrent." (Federal Judicial Centre - History of the Federal Judiciary)	Let's look at the Ur-example of a free-speech law, and the most wide-ranging, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It says (my emphasis): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This limitation applies only to the government. Indeed, it has been argued that this limitation only applies to the legislative branch of government and not to the executive (except when exercising legislatively delegated power) or judicial branches. Certainly, the courts have held that it is within their power to issue "gag" restraining orders. Notwithstanding, it imposes no restrictions on how non-government actors can limit your free speech. The owner of a shopping centre can require you not to evangelise, the owner of a stadium can require you not to use offensive language and the owner of a social media platform can restrict your speech in any way they wish. You have a right to talk - they have a right not to give you a platform.	This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)— which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude— and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
Federal Pardon before being charged? Is it possible to receive a presidential pardon before being charged (a "blanket" pardon or "pass")?	Yes, here is an example. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon: Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974. But he was not charged with anything.	No Section 2, Clause 1 says: ... and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. Impeachment is explicitly carved out from the President's power to pardon.	There is no general legal obligations be truthful Such an obligation only arises where specifically called out by law or where there is a relationship of trust between the parties, e.g. they are negotiating a contract, they have a doctor-patient relationship etc. In any event, the President has legal immunity for actions performed as President. Presidents answer for their misdeeds at the ballot box, not the courthouse.	Yes, this is allowed. A famous example was the Rodney King beating, where police officers were acquitted at the state level but convicted federally. US v. Lanza formalized the rule, and it has survived the application of the double jeopardy rule to the states. It's called the separate sovereigns doctrine, and also applies to prosecutions by two states (see Heath v. Alabama) and by an Indian tribe and the feds (see US v. Wheeler). It does not apply between DC and the feds or territories and the feds, because DC and territorial laws are established under the power of the federal government. These prosecutions are uncommon. As far as the feds go, they normally consider a state prosecution to have satisfied the federal interest in the case (win or lose). But prosecution by multiple sovereigns is not barred by the Fifth Amendment.	Yes, they can be sued civilly Or, for that matter, be prosecuted by another jurisdiction- pardons only work within the jurisdiction that issued them. In a common law jurisdiction, the pardon cannot be used as evidence Nor, for that matter, can a criminal conviction. This is partly because the elements that need to be proved for the civil wrong won’t correspond to the elements of the crime. But mostly, because it just isn’t allowed.	Do I correctly understand that Federal employees, notably including the Armed Forces, pledge their duty first to the Constitution of the United States and only secondarily to carry out legal orders? And that they have no legal obligation to execute an illegal order? What process allows a subordinate to defy an illegal order if a superior gives the order? What legal protection does the subordinate have? All officers of the United States government (and for that matter also all officers of state and local governments) including soldiers in the armed forces are sworn to uphold the Constitution. Members of the armed forces are not only allowed to disregard illegal orders, they are obligated to not carry out illegal orders. Operationally, disobeying an order due to the fact that it is unconstitutional is a defense to an effort to fire or discipline a federal government civil service employee who may only be fired for good cause after due process. In the military, the issue would usually present itself in the form of a defense in a court martial for refusing to obey a lawful order of a superior. Of course, it would hardly be unprecedented for someone's firing from a job that was unlawful, or for a wrongful court-martial conviction, to be upheld on appeal. Suppose the Congress holds someone in contempt. The Congress, as I understand it, goes to a court to enforce the contempt charge. The court turns to Federal law enforcement to bring action. What if the President directs Federal law enforcement to ignore the court order? What if law enforcement complies with the President? The U.S. Justice Department is charged with bringing contempt of Congress cases at the request of Congress. But, an attorney retained by Congress could probably bring such an action in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia if the U.S. Justice Department refused to do so. Contempt may be civil or criminal, and unlike ordinary criminal charges (felonies can only be brought based upon grand jury indictments and grand juries are controlled by prosecutors) either civil or criminal contempt charges can be brought by a non-governmental employee attorney. The established practice is to seek contempt sanctions against the lowest level employee who has the authority to take the action requested, or to seek contempt sanctions against everyone from that lowest level employee up through the chain of command to the responsible cabinet officer. The President is generally not named as a party against whom contempt charges are sought. Defiance of the law in the face of a binding and immediately effective court order would be a constitutional crisis and you would need to move to the realm of politics and political realities, and away from the realm of what the law says that people should or should not do, to meaningfully predict how a constitutional crisis turns out. The law assumes that all government officials will obey a lawful court order duly enforced. If government law enforcement officers start defying court orders, then there is a constitutional crisis. On the other hand, the vast majority of law enforcement officers in the United States are civil servants who aren't beholden personally to the President. They were appointed on a merit basis, they are civil servants who can't be fired without good cause and due process, they are in agencies that have an institutional culture of obeying court orders. The civil servants with more seniority (and basically all senior military officers in the U.S. military) have served under multiple Presidents of different political parties. The number of political appointees supervising them is fairly modest. Likewise, most federal judges at any given time were appointed by prior Presidents and even judges appointed by a current President will not infrequently rule against the federal government when the facts and law demand that they do so. There is less politics and there is more unity in interpretation of the law among federal judges and federal law enforcement and legal officials than is generally assumed by more cynical members of the general public. Suppose Congress orders fines. What is to be done if no one will enforce the fines? A court can order that the fines be paid out of the U.S. Treasury. The order itself can have the force of law without the cooperation of any U.S. Treasury official. Sustained defiance of such a court order would lead to a constitutional crisis. Same scenario as 1 but this time it’s impeachment and conviction: the President defies any action to remove him. What if the President simply barricades himself in the White House and orders security and military personnel to protect him? Is there a protocol in the U.S. military hierarchy to deal with this scenario? This has never actually happened, of course, so it is hypothetical. The Treasury Department, General Services Administration and Secretary of State (and all other government officials) should revoke privileges that the President has by virtue of being President and provide them to the new acting President (realistically, in the simple scenario presented, current Vice President Pence). The military should stay out of it, but should immediately start treating acting President Pence, and not the impeached incumbent as the Commander-in-Chief. U.S. military forces are indoctrinated on the Presidential succession and it is unlikely that many military officers would disregard a Presidential impeachment. The Secret Service should stop defending the former President except in an ex-President capacity. In theory, one could imagine acting President Pence bringing an eviction action in the local courts of the District of Columbia just as one would with any holdover tenant. Since the local courts in D.C. are federal, this doesn't present the federalism problems that it would if the same thing were done in a state court with respect to federal real estate, and U.S. marshals would evict him and his family like anyone else. The trickier situation in terms of creating a constitutional crisis, honestly, is really one where the President is clearly and blatantly defying the law and court orders, but the U.S. Senate refuses to convict the President in an impeachment proceeding out of partisan bias. What should common citizens do if any of these scenarios play out? Whatever they want, in a lawful manner. Ultimately, this would be a matter for federal government officials (elected and appointed alike) to figure out.	A state's criminal jurisdiction normally applies to acts committed in that state's territory. So if you consume something in state A, you can't be charged in state B for violating state B's prohibition against consuming that thing. However, if state B has a prohibition against public intoxication, and you enter its territory while intoxicated, you could be charged for violating state B's prohibition on public intoxication. The fact that you're crossing state lines also increases the possibility that the federal government would want to get involved; the location of the federal prosecution could be in either state, although neither state's court system would be involved.	At the federal level, there is no real equivalent to what you're describing. A probable cause hearing evaluates the government's evidence in a similar way, but it doesn't ask whether a reasonable jury would convict. The closest I can think of is a Rule 29 motion, which does ask that question, but not until trial has already begun. You typically make the motion at the close of the government's case, and (if it was not successful) again at the close of your own, though I've heard tales of judges granting the motion at the end of the government's opening statement. The states all have their own rules, but they're generally pretty similar to the federal rules in this respect, as I understand it. I don't know of any state that allows the kind of motion you're talking about, in criminal cases, at least. In civil cases, I think everyone has Rule 12(b)(6) motions, which ask the court for a pretrial determination that there's no set of facts that could establish liability on the plaintiff's theory of the case.
Can I deny people entry to a political rally I co-organise? Can I deny entry or remove unwanted guests from a political rally I co-organise? If we organise an officially authorised political rally in a public place for a particular cause (Palestinian solidarity, covid-19 restrictions, generic anticapitalism) and guests turn up who we don't want to be associated with (known antisemites, known violent extremists, salafists) — can we refuse them to participate in our rally and/or make them leave? Can I make participation conditional upon respecting our code of conduct? I'm interested in answers for Germany and other countries. By guests, I mean anyone who attends the rally, not speakers. I assume that the organisers in any case usually restrict access to the podium to invitees, but would rarely/never restrict attendance to a public rally to invited visitors. I'm interested in answers for the regular situation, not considering current (temporary) restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic (in which getting official authorisation may in many countries not happen anyway). (This question is inspired by media reports of radicalisation within demonstrations against covid-19 restrictions in Germany, with at least some organisers cancelling their announced rallies completely after far-right groups encouraged each other to turn up in support. This was from a period during which such rallies were still being authorised. I have anecdotally heard of incidents before where left-wing groups struggled to keep neo-nazis away from pro-Palestine demonstrations or how to deal with radical nationalists in leftist environmental groups.)	This would seem to fall under "negative" freedom of association; that is, the freedom to not associate with certain other people. This article discusses the matter in the context of individuals who refused to join a trade union: the ECHR decided that the right to not join a union is just as much a part of freedom of association as the right to join one. By extension, if you decide to hold a meeting (which is also part of the freedom of association), then you have the right to exclude people that you don't want to associate with. You might have a problem if you want to demonstrate in a public place: the undesirable people have just as much right to turn up as you do. However if you have had to get police approval for your demonstration (there is a bunch of ECHR law covering that) then you might be able to tell the police that those people are not part of your demonstration, and ask that they be treated as an unauthorised demonstration. It would be up to the police to take appropriate action at that point.	Article 15(2) of the Indian Constitution prohibits restriction to any citizen of India on entry to a public hotel, restaurant or place of entertainment on the grounds "only of religion, race, caste, sex [and/or] place of birth". It is a fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens of India. The Supreme Court of India has held a "public place" to mean any place which is open to the public and to also include private places functioning to serve a non-exclusive group of people. Hence, a club or premise opened only to serve its affiliates or members shall not be considered a public place for the purpose of this provision of law. Hence, if a citizen of India is not denied admission purely on the basis of his/her religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, his admission to a restaurant or a hotel owned and operated by the government or private concerns may be prohibited as the rights of admission may be reserved with the management of the premises. Just to conclude you can sue the hotel for denying entry	Very briefly, holding political views or having political party affiliations simply do not give a person inclusion in a protected group (Wikipedia) when it comes to federal law. Protected classes do include • Race – Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Religion – Civil Rights Act of 1964 • National origin – Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Age (40 and over) – Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 • Sex – Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Civil Rights Act of 1964 • The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission interprets 'sex' to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity • Pregnancy – Pregnancy Discrimination Act • Citizenship – Immigration Reform and Control Act • Familial status – Civil Rights Act of 1968 Title VIII: Housing cannot discriminate for having children, with an exception for senior housing • Disability status – Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 • Veteran status – Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act • Genetic information – Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (Many state laws also give certain protected groups special protection against harassment and discrimination.) In the US, political beliefs are one's own to choose and participate in, mostly due to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (Wikipedia): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...	The relevant conventions tried to discourage the traditional mercenary business model, but they also try to avoid loopholes in their rules. Under command by and authorized by Russia? Yes. Wearing clothing/insignia recognizable at a distance? I don't know, but a big Z would be enough. Carrying arms openly? I presume so. There is no requirement that armed forces use only their own nationals (see the French Foreign Legion). While Russia tries to deny being "at war," under international law it is, and residents of the unoccupied part of Russia may rally around the flag. We don't know what will happen after the war. There is the precedent of the SS, which was declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg (that is, membership was considered evidence of complicity in their crimes).	Is it legal to trespass the fence (with little passage in it) with no signs, if there's no buildings behind it (for example, construction site)? As usual, it depends, but probably not. By entering the property you would probably commit Hausfriedensbruch (trespass). According to German law, Hausfriedensbruch applies not only to a building, but any "enclosed property" ("befriedetes Besitztum"). So in this case the question is whether the site qualifies as a "befriedetes Besitztum" in the legal sense. There is no complete list of criteria for that, but the general rule is that the property is physically protected from access. For example, a fenced-in lawn would count (even if the fence is easy to step over), while a temporary barrier (such as a plastic chain) in an otherwise public passage would not. There is no requirement for there to be a building, thus it does not matter that the construction site is empty. So in your case, you would likely commit Hausfriedensbruch by entering the property, unless the passage is obviously intende to allow access to anyone (and is not just an accidental opening). The penalty for Hausfriedensbruch is up to one year of prison (though in many cases you'll probably get away with a fine).	That depends what is meant by "not allow". Such a blog author could certainly include a statement that the blog was intended only for female readers. That would not be enforceable. She could include a ToS provision requiring a user to agree to such a restriction. That might be enforceable in theory, but it would be a lot of work to try to enforce, as a blog author does not normally know who her readers are. Such an author could have the blog require registration and log-in, and as part of the registration process require registrants to provide evidence that they are females. That might work to keep (at least most) males from directly reading the blog. If we suppose that the author had such a registration process, and someone brought suit under a federal or state anti-discrimination law, what would happen? Such laws usually only apply to "places of public accommodation". Such laws have mostly been employed to address discrimination in hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar places. I am not aware of any case declaring a blog or any similar online service a "public accommodation". Such a finding would be needed for a suit in such a case to be won by the plaintiff. There are also specific laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, and education. But those would not apply to this sort of case. So I am inclined to doubt that any such restriction, if imposed by a blog author, would be found to violate US anti-discrimination law.	This potentially (i.e. almost certainly) runs afoul of laws against religious discrimination. However, you can have such a requirement provided you make an accommodation for those with sincerely held religious beliefs or practices against bacon-eating. You can also have such a requirement (despite the beliefs) if not having the requirement imposes an undue hardship on the business. For example, if the job is "bacon taste-tester", then there's no reasonable accommodation. This applies to religious objections, since religion is protected class, but not "I don't like bacon" as an objection; nor does this apply to people who object to meat-eating on economic grounds.	A witness who disobeys a court order has automatically broken the law. Indeed, this is the most fundamental of laws; you can't decide "If I turn up to the hearing I may be punished for my crime; but not attending isn't against the law, so goodbye." A witness who goes out of the jurisdiction cannot, of course, be punished while there (though when he returns he may have to explain why he chose to leave having been warned that he must attend or face penalties- that is the meaning of sub poena). But your assumption that anybody who fails to attend probably had a good reason betrays a fundamental, though common, misunderstanding. A court has determined that your evidence is necessary for justice to be done. There is therefore no good reason not to attend. It may well be that a doctor would prefer that you did not go to court that day, and if you apply to the court it may be possible to find some arrangement. But you are not allowed to decide 'my convenience is more important than discovering whether the defendant should go to jail or not". Civilised countries have people who are empowered to make that decision; they are called judges, and the decision has been made.
Are publicly available password dumps legal under GDPR When a company gets breached by hackers, often the contents of their databases will make its way onto the internet. Sometimes this will include obviously personal information such as email contents or personal data but it's quite common to see a text file with emails and passwords of the format: [email protected]:abcdef ... [email protected]:password123 [email protected]:hello456 This is useful information for security professionals to test if an account uses a password that's been published in a data leak somewhere. On the other hand, the data is stolen and the individuals have not consented to their data being used for this purpose. There exist services such as Have I been pwned that allow a user to search these databases and find out if their data is included in a public data dump. Troy Hunt (who runs it) is based in Australia but if the site is available to users in Europe, it would still be covered by GDPR legislation. HIBP uses hashed passwords to maintain privacy. Under GDPR, is it legal for me as an individual to hold a copy of a leaked database and is it legal for a security company to hold it (or information derived from it). I'm based in the UK (Scotland specifically) if other laws are relevant.	I think haveibeenpwned would be legal in the EU because it carries out a task in the public interest (Art. 6(1)(e)), and it shares no more data then necessary, for example you can search for a password, but it would not show you the emailaddress which belongs to that password. It would also be legal for you to hold a copy of a leaked database, but only if you have a legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) to have it. Being a security company does not change that, but finding a legitimate interest might be easier. If you have a legitimate interest to hold a copy of a leaked database, it does not mean you can use it in any way you like. For example testing if the password still works, is very likely illegal everywhere in the EU. But I'm not familiar with the UK laws.	In my opinion, this should be enough. The GDPR regulation is general - it does not attempt to address these issues directly, precisely for the reasons we see here: You can never predict how the technology will develop. When interpreting the GDPR, we must keep the intended goal in mind. What is the purpose of the "right to erasure"? To prevent anyone from further processing the personal data. If you "crypto-shred" it, it can't be processed anymore, not even theoretically. The encryptec file cannot be used to identify the subject, therefore it is not even personal data anymore. In case it can be decrypted in the future... Well, that is just a speculation. The courts can go to great lengths in interpreting what personal data is (dynamic IP address is considered personal data, since it can be linked to a person by the police with a court order), but i am pretty sure that "it can be theoretically possible in some distant future" is beyond the limit. As for the second question, I am not aware of any applicable case-law, but I guess that current security and technological standards will be used to assess the delay. You have a right to protect your data, the subject has a right to erase them. Those rights must be balanced, neither fully overrules the other. The delay should be short enough so the right to erasure is effective, and it should not extremely long compared to other (economically viable) backup solutions available, in line with current industrial standards.	Congrats, you've done well to minimize your processing of personal data. But I think you're still processing personal data, and are subject to the GDPR. Serving a website necessarily involves processing an IP address. This IP address will typically be personal data. While you are not storing the IP address, the GDPR's definition of “processing” extends beyond storage and pretty much covers doing anything with that IP address. As far as I know this is not an entirely settled matter, but it's better to err on the side of caution and to assume that you are in fact performing a processing activity. Even a static web page can easily lead to additional relevant processing of personal data, for example if the HTML embeds resources from third party domains. Since your website is clearly targeted at the public, it does not fall under the GDPR's exception for “purely personal or household” purposes. So I think you do need a (minimal) privacy notice that contains at least the items mentioned in Art 13 GDPR. The main reason why some people try to avoid posting a privacy notice is because it must disclose your identity and contact details. But in Germany, that information has to be provided anyway due to the Impressumspflicht. As part of your GDPR compliance obligations, you must protect how data is processed by others on your behalf. A hosting provider will typically act as your data processor. For this to be legal, you need a contract / data processing agreement that fulfills the conditions in Art 28 GDPR. This contract binds the data processor to only use the data as instructed by you, and not for their own purposes. European hosting providers sometimes include the necessary terms in their terms of service / AGB, but you should check to make sure. Netcup expects you to accept their data processing amendment in your account settings. In the hypothetical case that you were not processing any personal data at all, the GDPR would not apply and it wouldn't require you to post a privacy notice. Other laws might still have information obligations, notably the German TMG and TTDSG.	The GDPR gives controllers a lot of latitude. They must decide on the correct course of action taking into account the possible risks to data subjects. Specifically, no notification of the authority is necessary if “the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons.” In your scenario 1, you suggest that there is no breach because there is no evidence that the data was improperly accessed. This analysis is faulty: the controller is aware that the data was not properly secured, and cannot rule out that the data was improperly accessed. I would argue this fits the description of a “breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful … unauthorised disclosure of … personal data” (compare the definition of a data breach in Art 4(12)). Thus, a data breach has happened. The question whether the supervisory authority has to be notified of that breach is more debatable. The controller must assess the likelihood of risks to the data subjects. Here, they can perhaps argue that the risk of disclosure is low. However, the nature of the breached data would also be relevant. If in doubt, the controller should make the notification. The goal of the GDPR is not to punish unlucky companies that suffer a breach, but to protect personal data. Thus, fixing mistakes and cooperating with the supervisory authorities is likely the best approach for most companies. In your second scenario, the data is sensitive – its disclosure has a high risk for data subjects. However, the risk of someone intercepting this data is debatable. Does the risk of interception balance out the sensitivity of the data? That's the data controller's call, but I don't think so. A notification would seem appropriate here. As a technical remark, simply offering HTTPS is not sufficient to prevent MitM attacks – users must be forced to use encrypted connections. If a controller sees MitM as a risk, they are required by Art 24 to take appropriate technical measures. Here HSTS and HSTS preload would prevent the connections from being downgraded to HTTP. Instead of offering insecure connections, the site would become inaccessible. A complementary strategy is to not serve content over HTTP, but have the HTTP server only issue a permanent redirect to the HTTPS URL.	How can I truly say that I 'consent' to data collection and processing when I am coerced, so to speak, by the threat of failing my courses if I do not use this novel software? There is no need for you to "consent". Consent is just one of the reasons that allows a data processor to collect your data. There are other reasons that allows the data processor to capture your data. In this case, it seems of application the "legitimate interest clause", as it is in your university's legitimate interest to capture your activity in order to evaluate you. Of course, that covers only the data collected that is relevant to that interest. They will certainly capture your identity and your answers, they may log your sessions and may try to gather some data to detect if you are somehow cheating, but they would not be allowed to check which are your favorite pornhub videos because that is not relevant for the university's legitimate interest. Art. 6 of the GDPR states: Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes; (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person; (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. This page also provides some in-depth analysis	It's hard to prove a negative, and I'm not sure which specific part of the quoted Terms you object, to, but it specifically states that content access may be done to: Comply with the law Protect its customers; and Protect the security of its business; and Protect its business interests. It's unlikely that access of information to comply with the law is illegal. At least one EU directive, Directive 95/46/EC, sets limits on the collection and use of personal information. We're concerned with the first condition for lawful data processing, and the second principle of data quality. Data processing is only lawful if the data subject has unambiguously given his consent; or processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party; or processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; or processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject; or processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller or in a third party; or processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interest pursued by the controller or by the third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests for fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection. The principles of data quality, which must be implemented for all lawful data processing activities, are the following: personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully, and collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes. They must also be adequate, relevant and not excessive, accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date, must not be stored for longer than necessary and solely for the purposes for which they were collected; special categories of processing: it is forbidden to process personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and the processing of data concerning health or sex life. This provision comes with certain qualifications concerning, for example, cases where processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or for the purposes of preventive medicine and medical diagnosis. So, let's say that someone has given their consent. It'd be at least a little questionable whether the inspection of private information could mean that they access personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and the processing of data concerning health or sex life. I'm a bit less clear on US laws, but you'd probably look for laws around Personal Identifying Information, as that's where a lot of focus has been.	First of all, in a GDPR contest, the process described is not strong anonymization. It may be hard for an outsider to go from the stored record to any PII, it is much easier for an outsider to "single out" an individual. This means that given a known individual, one can determine whether that person is among those listed in the records, or can determine this to a significant degree of probability. For this only the algorithm and the rotating salts are needed, one need not break the hash. Note also that the GDPR specifies that if a person can be singled out with the assistance of the site operator the data is not considered anonymized. Thus this data needs a lawful basis under the GDPR, and the various other GDPR requirement all apply. However, even if the data were totally anonymized, and say just added to a count of users with this or that User Agent, the process of reading local data (including but not limited to cookies) itself requires informed consent, and so a cookie banner or other interaction with similar info under the e-Privacy directive (EPD). The EPD, being a directive and not a regulation, must be implemented by national laws, and the exact provisions in those laws may differ somewhat from country to country. But I believe that all of them require consent before any local data is read.	Earlier this year, the Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet wrote a blog post about exactly this topic. As it is written in Dutch, I will summarize it here: As you also said, deleting posts breaks the flow of the archived conversation and it makes your archive incomplete. This is a problem for the freedom of expression and information. But Art. 17(3) GDPR includes an exception to the right of erasure for this situation. So posts do not need to be deleted. However, profiles are not included in this exception. So they must be removed, but they can be pseudonymized. For example replace the username with user89432, and remove all details from the profile. If other posts contain the nick of the author of an anonymized post, that is considered an journalistic, academic artistic or literary expression, so Art. 85 GDPR would apply, so the right of erasure does not apply to that. Bottom line: you only have to pseudonymize the account, if that person wants to be removed from the forum.
Can I write my signature in my conlang's script? Can I write my signature in my conlang's (constructed language) script, which consists entirely of straight lines? If not, why?	Legally, yes. A legally binding signature doesn't have to be written in cursive, or in English, or even be your name, or any text at all for that matter. The purpose of a signature is to identify the person who is signing the document, and to indicate that they have understood and approved the document. So long as you have a reasonably unique and reproducible mark, your signature can be pretty much anything, from your name, to a pseudonym, to pictograph. A classic trope in media is for pirates or peasants or other illiterate people to simply sign contracts with an "X" or to "make their mark", since they are unable to write their own name. Now, using things other than your name written in cursive might be frowned upon and difficult to implement in practice, since a pictograph can't be as easily linked to an individual as a name can, and signing a contract with something other than a recognizable form of your name is a downright unusual way to conduct business. When signing for a mortgage, for example, a lender might get fears that you're trying to defraud them if you start signing all your documents with a smiley face. But in principle, signing a mortgage with a smiley face or conlang script is exactly as binding as signing your real name in cursive. Local laws may vary in what constitutes a signature, but it seems this is generally the case.	Your understanding of the GPL is a bit off. GPLed code doesn't generally force you to GPL the output of the program, but that's just because the output of the program is normally not a derivative work of the program. For instance, if you write a novel in Emacs, your novel is an entirely original work. The fact that you used Emacs as a tool doesn't mean that your novel is somehow based on Emacs. This generator is different. It generates sprites by putting together art assets made by the program's creator. That means that the output contains a substantial amount of content made by the program creator, which means that it would likely be covered by the program creator's copyright. If the content was licensed to you under the GPL, you normally have to abide by GPL restrictions when you redistribute the content or incorporate it into your own program. Copyright holders can, if they want, grant additional permissions to their content and allow you to incorporate that content into nonfree software. For instance, the GCC compilers have an additional permission for their runtime libraries to let you use them in any GCC-compiled code; without that permission, GCC could only be used to compile GPL-compatible code. But unless the copyright holder has granted those permissions, when program output contains large amounts of their copyrighted content you're bound by the GPL when using it. In this case, the program specifically says that the art is dual-licensed under GPLv3 and CC-BY-SA-3.0. Since the generator's output is a combination of premade art assets (the buttons just let you tell the program which art assets to combine), the output is a derivative work of those assets. You can't use it unless your use is compatible with the GPL v3 or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (either works, since dual licensing lets you pick either license).	To use an API over a network connection (as opposed to, e.g., the Windows API), a user communicates a request to the API host, or server, and awaits a response. The host of the remote API can refuse to serve requests from users for probably any reason. Such services often require users to accept a license as a condition of using the service, and they may charge a fee as a condition of the license. A license to use a service is obviously not necessarily bound to a license for the use of its source code, just as the ability to reach the service is not dependent on the ability to see (let alone use) the code in any format, whether it be the source code or some compiled form of the code. In essence, source licenses and service licenses have different primary goals, at least inasmuch as the source license seeks to restrict someone who has actual physical access to compiled code, and possibly source code. Service licenses do not have that concern, though I have seen service licenses that also prohibit decompiling. This is probably the result of a CYA attitude among lawyers: the language is already in the standard software license text, and it doesn't hurt anything to leave it in, and it could help if a service user somehow managed to download the program code.	I've seen prohibito used in a few places, but never by any source that I'd use as a model for my writing. As I understand it, the Latin names for the other writs were adopted in medieval times, when Latin was much more heavily used in the English courts, while the writ of prohibition developed centuries later. In that case, I think it would have been natural to simply give it a standard English name.	In theory "legalese" is English: you will find every word in the dictionary, and the rules of grammar are exactly the same. However in practice it is true that legal documents are often written in a very specific style. There are a number of possible reasons for this: The document must say what it intends very precisely. Most regular language is quite sloppy and ambiguous, but lawyers share with computer programmers the need to ensure that what is said is precisely what is meant. A legal document exists within a legal system in which certain words or phrases carry very specific meanings. For instance in the UK the words "in trust" when talking about money or property will automatically import a huge body of law (and its also possible to have that law apply even if you don't use the magic words). Lawyers know about these things, and will write a document to either invoke or avoid those bodies of law as they see fit. Related to (2) above, laws and legal precedents give lists of things that must be done or proved. Legal documents will often follow these lists using the same terms in order to avoid future challenges. For instance US patent law specifies what must go into a patent application, so you had better follow the format and use the same subject headings. Within patents in particular, the patent office manual allows a patent to be rejected because of informal language that leaves the patent unclear. Patent lawyers and examiners have evolved an informal set of conventions about how things are said. If you use these conventions the examiner will have a much easier time understanding what you mean. Its not "cargo cult", more a specialised language. (Note: the following is about the US patent system, but similar considerations apply everywhere.) Lets take a look at an example patent picked at random: The abstract lists the key elements of the invention in very abstract terms, such as "vibrating mechanism" and "power source". If you were writing this in "informal" language you might mention a specific power source such as a battery. But doing so limits your invention: what if something other than a battery (such as a super-capacitor or spring-driven generator) is used? That would be a separate invention not covered by your patent. So patent lawyers take time to think and ask about generalisations. The next interesting part is the Claims. These set out precisely what is and is not covered by the invention. If the Claims don't cover it then its not in the patent. The format of each Claim is defined in 35 US 112, so if you don't do it like that it won't count. Finally we get to the Description. This is intended to explain the invention to "any person skilled in the art". It also needs to explain the prior art and show why the invention is new and useful, because those are statutory requirements. Much of this is in fact written in an ELI5 way, if the 5-year-old had swallowed a dictionary. The reason is that any little thing omitted or assumed can be used by a future challenger claiming that the hypothetical "person skilled in the art" would have failed to understand or know it. So lets take a sample paragraph from this patent (numbers refer to diagrams in the patent): The electrical connection 22 may include a circuit device that transforms a DC power provided by the power source 26 to AC power for the vibrating mechanism 28, which circuit devices are known to those having ordinary skill in the art of circuit design. This anticipates a possible variation on the invention and stops it being patented separately. It asserts that the "circuit devices" are known, so it doesn't need to describe them in detail. If that assertion wasn't there then someone might challenge the patent on that point, but since the assertion has been accepted by the patent examiner it is presumed to be correct. Note the "... ordinary skill in the art ..." phrase: this is explicitly calling out to the language in Title 35. You might imagine that such a variation would be obvious, and therefore not patentable. However it is very difficult for a court to decide in hindsight whether something would really be obvious to a person skilled in the art; you wind up with each side hiring expert witnesses who will give competing testimony as to whether it seems obvious to them. As a result the courts have set a very low bar to a claim that something is "non-obvious". The language used throughout a patent is of vital importance: infringement cases can hinge on the most trivial of linguistic issues. This blog post by a patent lawyer has a list of examples, including this one: For example, in Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Weston, Inc., Chef America tried to protect a cooking step for heating a dough at a certain temperature inside an oven. But Chef America drafted the claim to read “heating the . . . dough to a temperature in the range of about 400 degrees F. to 850 degrees F.” The Federal Circuit reasoned that “to” is not “at” and, thus, the claim required the dough (not the oven) to be heated to the specified temperature. The Court then ruled that the claim was not infringed. In fact, under the Court’s claim construction, this claim could not possibly be infringed unless one wanted to make burned dough. See also this case on "partially" not including "totally", and this post on why the word "disclosure" is now used instead of "invention". Patent lawyers call this kind of thing "patent profanity", i.e things you simply do not say. So if you don't use this kind of "legalese" in your patent the following things are much more likely: Your application will be rejected because the examiner cannot understand exactly what your invention consists of. Trivial variations on your invention will turn out not to be covered. Someone will challenge your patent on the grounds that you didn't explain everything that a "person skilled in the art" might need to know.	The CC-ND license seems to be what you are looking for. However, Sec. 2(a) has two conditions, one allowing copying and distribution of the unmodified original (as stated in A), but also allows the user to modify but not distribute a modified version of the work (they may "produce and reproduce, but not Share, Adapted Material"). This would mean that a reader could rewrite your paper, as long as they keep it to themselves. If this bothers you, I think you could not rely on a standard named license, instead you'd have to provide your own – such as CC-ND 4.0 without clause (2)(a)(B). Rewriting a legal document is a risky proposition, even for a legal professional, because you have to carefully think through all of the implications of any new punctuation, adjectives, and deletions. If you contemplate deleting clause (2)(a)(B), you should come up with a line of reasoning that compels you do delete it in order to accomplish your goal, and check that the deletion doesn't thwart that goal. That is why people pay money to lawyers (and also why you need to make your goal clear to that lawyer, lest the agreement be inconsistent with your goal).	This can't be right. If I modify open source code as part of the work done, by nature of the open source license that code can not become intellectual property of the client. Certainly it can. That which is "developed or produced" would be the modifications to the pre-existing code, i.e the copyright on the derivative work so created. If the base code was under a share-alike or copy-left license, then the client can only distribute it under the same license (or a compatible one, perhaps). But nothing compels the client to distribute it, and for the client's use, the client owns the copyright, without fear of any future claims by the contractor. If I have my own code/scripts/settings/templates/etc that I use as a contractor, and I modify those in the interest of coding efficiency in the interest of serving the client, it hardly seems correct that these assets become property of the Client. Those are your work, and you can choose whether to sell the copyrights to the client or not. Again, only the work done for that client would be covered under the wording quoted above, unless there is another provision that grants the client a license to use the pre-existing work which you modified for the job, which there probably ought to be. Or I suppose the agreement could assign copyrights in pre-existing work to the client, but that seems an odd choice, and the language in the question would not do that. You and the client could agree on a different provision such as: The contractor grants to the client a fully-paid, non-exclusive permanent license to use all intellectual property developed under this agreement, and any pre-existing works that may be incorporated therein. The contractor warrants that s/he is entitled to grant such license, without infringing on the intellectual property of any other person or entity. That wording would have the contractor retain all copyrights and other IP, but provide a license to the client to use it without further payment or expiration. Many other ways to structure such a provision are possible, dividing the rights up however the contractor and client can agree. The price for the work might vary depending on what rights the client obtains. Both forms, and many others, are perfectly legal, it is just a question of what the contractor chooses to sell, and what th4e client chooses to buy.	Legalese is not required You can and should write a will in plain English. However, you need to ensure that your simple wishes can: Actually be understood, Actually be implemented, Don't have unintended consequences, Cover all bases. Use a lawyer I suggest that you write your simple wishes out as you have done and take them to a lawyer. A good lawyer will be able to: Draft a will and have it executed so that it complies with the law, Keep a copy of the will so that your executor can find the damn thing without having to tear your house apart, Consider the contingencies that you haven't. My lawyer charged me and my wife $150 each - 20 years latter the estate has twice as many children and would be worth several million dollars; I consider it one of the cheapest pieces of insurance I have ever bought. Contingencies Who is the executor of the will? This is the person who administers the estate until it is finalised. As written, you haven't named one: in most jurisdictions this makes the government's Public Trustee the executor. How and how much will the executor get paid? Executor's are entitled to be paid for their services. What happens if you and your wife are separated or divorced at the time of your death? Wills are not automatically terminated by these events. What if Bob is dead before you die? Or has emigrated? Or is insane? What if Bob dies in the same car crash that kills you and your wife? What if Bob dies after he becomes the trustee of the trust? Who will be your child's guardian? As written, Bob is responsible for the finances but he is not the guardian. The child would be reliant on kinship guardianship or become a ward of the state. For what purposes can Bob use the trust money? Education of the child? Vacations for the child? His own gambling problem? Can the trust borrow money? What types of investments can the trust make? Bolivian palm tree futures anyone? Does Bob need to get professional financial advice about this? Who will audit the trust to ensure Bob is behaving appropriately? Your wife falls pregnant tomorrow. Do you want to write a new will or have one that works no matter how many children you have? What if all 3 of you die in the same car crash? Who gets the estate then? Only people with no assets or dependants have a simple estate
Can an employer claim defamation against an ex-employee who has claimed unfair dismissal? In UK law, in a case where an ex-employee claims unfair dismissal against their previous employer. However both claimant and employer settle before Tribunal Hearings through negotiation of a COT3 agreement. Can the ex-employee later face defamation claims by the employer regarding their dismissal? For example, the ex-employee claims their dismissal is because of reason X while the employer has claimed at the time it is categorically not because of reason X but Y & Z. The ex-employee mounts their tribunal claim on the fact that Y & Z have not resulted in dismissal for other staff so X must be the reason. If the claimant shares their believe that X is the reason for dismissal, with friends or colleagues, can they later face defamation charges? I understand Defamation in the terms of this HSE page.	Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.	The fact that the employer has vicarious liability for acts of its employees "within the scope of employment" does not mean the employees are not also liable for their own acts. In reality, however, the employer is more likely to have insurance for such "acts or omissions" of employees. The plaintiffs can "sue everyone in sight" and let them figure out who actually pays when they are found liable. That way, when the employee's actions are (for instance) ruled a "personal frolic" or otherwise outside the scope of the employer's liability (in tort or contract), the case doesn't get dismissed for failure to name all the proper parties. One policy goal is to place financial liability as close as possible to the person most likely to have been able to avoid the harm, thus discouraging such risks, without placing the entire burden on individuals employed in hazardous occupations and without artificially limiting potential sources of compensation.	Is there any legal doctrine whereby E's agreement with A continued to apply to E in his work for company N? No, because the parties to the non-compete agreement were Employee E and company A, not the human who owned and sold A. What about B? Do they have any standing to block E's going to work for a B's customer? No. My rationale is that the decisions you describe result in a waiver of the non-compete clause. An employment relation between B and E never existed. Thus, the only vestige of B's non-compete rights binding E that could have been preserved stem from E's former employment at A. However, that vestige disappeared at the instant B --apropos of the hospital project-- waived its non-compete clause with N. Given B's waiver with regard to N, N's failure to establish a non-compete clause with E enables the latter to conduct business with (or accept employment at) the hospital. If anything, B would have standing to sue N for negligence or related torts. But neither B nor N has any viable non-compete claims against E.	Yes, there is legal precedent against this that would only apply to a government employee. First, let's discuss the private sector. In this case, you are a private employee that comes to your place of work and accuses you of "stealing the cookies from the cookie jar" which is a serious criminal offense. They wish to talk and your boss is in the room. You plead the 5th, but your boss says you're fired if you don't talk to the cops. This is legal because you still have the right to refuse to talk, you just lose your job. A private employer has the right to free association, and wants nothing to do with cookie thieves, alleged or actual. However, in the government employ, your boss is an agent of the government. This same situation is different because the government pays the boss and the agent... so in essence the government is saying talk or be fired. This is unconstitutional as the government cannot retalitate against you for your refusal to talk. Generally, in order to talk to you, the investigator would need either a signed Garrity Statement or a Signed Kalkines Statement. The former is a statement saying that they are investigating a wrong doing but you cannot lose your job if you refuse to speak to the investigators, where as Kalkines says you must talk but you are granted immunity for your part in the wrong doing, so long as you make truthful statements. For more on this, check this legal blog. There is also the matter that a false accusation (and let me be clear... this is academic, I'm not saying the accusation in the real life topic is false, nor am I saying that the defense is false... we're merely discussing a possibility) is made to your employer and they do not offer the job on the basis of the accusation alone, this is grounds for defamation actions... and in certain jurisdictions, it's criminal defamation, so there could be jail time. It's interesting you mentioned teachers, because this happens alot. Kids do know that there are certain things that get a teacher fired quickly, so teachers do get the occasional false accusation of sexual assault (I know one teacher who has had multiple accusations over the course of her career). One of the few good things I can say about the Teachers Union is they cover the legal defense of accused teachers. The accusations do get the teacher removed from the class for sometime, but they don't lose their jobs over this matter. It's followed up but the accusation doesn't immediately lead to the teacher getting fired..	what is it called when you are forced to breach a contract? You might be referring to constructive termination or constructive discharge. Held v. Gulf Oil Co., 684 F.2d 427, 432 (1982) explains that a claim of constructive termination arises where "working conditions would have been so difficult or unpleasant that a reasonable person in the employee's shows would have compelled to resign" (citations omitted). Whether a reasonable person in your shoes would feel compelled to resign depends on what your "personal, and possibly medical reasons" are/were at the time of the events and whether the employer sought to take advantage of that.	If the employment was at will, the most the company could have done was fire her. If the employment has already been ended on good terms, the most the company can do is refuse to rehire her and/or give bad references. As you point out, no contract existed and they'd have a devil of a time proving damages anyway.	The relevant legislation is the Employment Act 1996, but in plainer language ACAS describe that they can make deductions for the following reasons: the employee's contract specifically allows the deduction it was agreed in writing beforehand they overpaid the employee by mistake it’s required by law, for example Income Tax or a court order the employee missed work because you were on strike or taking industrial action The first two provide pretty wide latitude into what they can make deductions for so long as it's in the contract/a written agreement The employer can't make deductions that would result in your wage dropping below minimum wage except in the following circumstances: tax or National Insurance something the employee has done which their contract says they’re liable for, such as damage to a vehicle through reckless driving repayment of a loan or advance wages an overpayment made to the employee made by mistake buying shares, other securities or share options in the business accommodation provided to the employee – find out more about accommodation deductions on GOV.UK something the employee uses – for example union subscriptions or pension contributions I'm not sure if it matters whether the employer is a private individual or a company Nope - for these purposes an employer is an employer To look at your specific examples: but assume that the employee is not doing a very good job No.. incompetence can get you sacked or fired - but it can't get your wages docked. At least not unless there was some performance-related-pay element to your wages already in the contract. But that would be difficult, it would have to be quantifiable. There's a reason why such structures typically have a base salary with performance-related elements paid as bonuses, because it's easier to simply not pay extra if thresholds aren't met than it is to deduct from a base wage. snoozing on the job Again not unless that was specified in advance - and that would be an oddly specific thing to include. Most likely they'd just get fired, in the majority of employment scenarios taking unauthorized sleeps on the job is going into Gross Negligence territory if there's a pattern. taking personal phone calls Taking personal calls is something that's more likely to be covered by a contract or company policy - but again it's more likely to lead to disciplinary action or sacking than wages being docked. You'd have to get into measuring how much time was lost in order to dock the appropriate amount etc. late into work You'd think this would be a slam dunk - you're late and therefore not meeting your contractual obligations. But in reality the same requirements as above apply - there needs to be explicit agreement in advance of the deduction in either your contract or other written consent for an employer to dock wages. It's probably more common than the other examples for such a provision to exist, but it still needs to be there.	Unless your contract, whether individual or collective, has a clause requiring this compensation you are out of luck. Sometimes one of the “benefits” for a company’s move is to leave behind workers who are not 100% committed to the company in that they would not move or commute a long way to keep their job. 30 miles isn’t very unusual where I live. In the U.S. most employment is on an "at will" basis. That means you can quit anytime you like without notice and you can be fired at any time for almost any reason or no reason, as long as the reason is not one of the protected reasons.
Adapting the US FLAG for subversive activities I have noticed more and more black and white American flags with blue lines in a black and white field using OUR copyrighted AMERICAN FLAG? Some have hideous comic skulls included. Plus some now being used by racial and civil war extremists incorporate Confederate Flag images and vile images of snakes and guns while they readily use our AMERICAN FLAG as a background. This has to be illegal. Is it illegal to take the American Flag and adapt it to your own racist or sexist messages?	The US flag is not protected by copyright. Nothing as old as the flag is protected by copyright under US law. Indeed no work published in the US prior to 1925 is now protected, except for works of non-US origin protected under the Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) 4 USC sec 8 purports to PRESCRIBE the treatment of the flag, and paragraph (g) says: (g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature. However, as this Wikipedia article points out, 4 USC 8 and related sections are advisory, not binding, and no penalty is provided for violating them. 4 USC 3 provides a $100 fine: or 30 days jail time for: Any person who, within the District of Columbia, in any manner, for exhibition or display, shall place or cause to be placed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, drawing, or any advertisement of any nature upon any flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America; or shall expose or cause to be exposed to public view any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign upon which shall have been printed, painted, or otherwise placed, or to which shall be attached, appended, affixed, or annexed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, or drawing, or any advertisement of any nature; or who, within the District of Columbia, shall manufacture, sell, expose for sale, or to public view, or give away or have in possession for sale, or to be given away or for use for any purpose, any article or substance being an article of merchandise, or a receptacle for merchandise or article or thing for carrying or transporting merchandise, upon which shall have been printed, painted, attached, or otherwise placed a representation of any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign, to advertise, call attention to, decorate, mark, or distinguish the article or substance on which so placed shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $100 or by imprisonment for not more than thirty days, or both, in the discretion of the court. The words “flag, standard, colors, or ensign”, as used herein, shall include any flag, standard, colors, ensign, or any picture or representation of either, or of any part or parts of either, made of any substance or represented on any substance, of any size evidently purporting to be either of said flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America or a picture or a representation of either, upon which shall be shown the colors, the stars and the stripes, in any number of either thereof, or of any part or parts of either, by which the average person seeing the same without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag, colors, standard, or ensign of the United States of America. 18 USC 700 was a criminal statute punishing anyone who: mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States But 18 USC 700 was struck down by the US Supreme Court as a violation of the First Amendment in United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990) Se also the full text of the decision. The decision said, in relevant part: The Government concedes in these cases, as it must, that appellees' flag burning constituted expressive conduct, Brief for United States 28; see Johnson, 491 U.S., at 405-406, 109 S.Ct., at 2540, but invites us to reconsider our rejection in Johnson of the claim that flag burning as a mode of expression, like obscenity or "fighting words," does not enjoy the full protection of the First Amendment. Cf. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 769, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). This we decline to do.4 ... Although the Flag Protection Act contains no explicit content-based limitation on the scope of prohibited conduct, it is nevertheless clear that the Government's asserted interest is "related 'to the suppression of free expression,' " 491 U.S., at 410, 109 S.Ct., at 2543, and concerned with the content of such expression. The Government's interest in protecting the "physical integ rity" of a privately owned flag5 rests upon a perceived need to preserve the flag's status as a symbol of our Nation and certain national ideals. But the mere destruction or disfigurement of a particular physical manifestation of the symbol, without more, does not diminish or otherwise affect the symbol itself in any way. ... As we explained in Johnson, supra, at 416-417, 109 S.Ct., at 2546: "[I]f we were to hold that a State may forbid flag burning wherever it is likely to endanger the flag's symbolic role, but allow it wherever burning a flag promotes that role—as where, for example, a person ceremoniously burns a dirty flag—we would be . . . permitting a State to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox' by saying that one may burn the flag to convey one's attitude toward it and its referents only if one does not endanger the flag's representation of nationhood and national unity." Although Congress cast the Flag Protection Act of 1989 in somewhat broader terms than the Texas statute at issue in Johnson, the Act still suffers from the same fundamental flaw: It suppresses expression out of concern for its likely communicative impact. The above quotes without acknowledgement West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) where the majority opinion includes the often-quoted passage: If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. Any legal device to prohibit modified versions of US flags, particularly when these are in fact being used to make or symbolize political arguments or positions, would fall under the same rule, and would be equally unconstitutional.	No, they cannot confiscate anything. They say they can just to minimise the percentage of people who will disobey the filming prohibition. A sensible percentage of those who would otherwise ignore the prohibition will not question the legality of possible confiscation and will just obey the rules.	It's questionable, because if you design your own visual interpretation of the T-Shirt then it isn't necessarily the one from the book and thus your art has it's own copyright. However, if the current Copyright Holder and Possible Trademark owner is selling the shirt it could be an issue because yours is not official but being sold as one. If you're making it for non-sale and just cosplay, than you have a better arguement.	You can’t use pictures You can’t use any of these, nor can you make your own art that is derived from these. That’s copyright infringement and there is no fair use defence because you are specifically trying to do something Nintendo already does. You can reproduce that stats of the Pokémon because stats are facts (even if they are facts about fictional things) and facts are not protected by copyright.	School districts / states do generally have the power to set the curriculum including the viewpoint that will be officially conveyed. One well-known major restriction on such viewpoint restrictions is that the schools cannot restrict the free exercise of a religion, and cannot take a position on a religion. Apart from the religion third-rail, schools have pretty free reign in setting the curriculum, see Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City for one instantiation. In this case, the teacher assigned various books, including Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the books that prompted an outcry. The upshot of that case is that a teacher cannot invoke the First Amendment to override policy. This article (draft version, easier to handle) (published version, annoying footnote structure) reviews the topic, and section III covers prior cases. It notes that the cases of Lawrence, Windsor, Obergefell do not address the constitutionality of these education laws, though the reasoning in the prior cases might be applicable if there were a suit over curriculum. There is an implication that some of these rules have been enforced in the past, but most of the evidence is in the form of news stories (Beall v. London City School BOE is not available in the open). The article does engage in a somewhat deeper study of enforcement in Utah, where it was enforced (until it was repealed). Enforcement is necessarily indirect. The law require school districts to have a particular curriculum; violation would come when an individual teacher taught contrary to the prescribed curriculum. Those laws do not contain any provision like "a teacher who violates these rules gets fired", instead, punishment is via the general rule that you have to teach what is in the state-mandated curriculum. Rather than officially terminating a teacher for violating this curricular guideline, districts use vague reasons for non-renewal such as "due to problems with communication and teamwork" (from Evans-Marshall).	What is allowed and what happens are different things; this is why we have police, courts and prisons. If everyone followed all of the laws all of the time we would need none of these. The videos are copyright and without the permission of the copyright holder (the NFL) you cannot reproduce or distribute them. A defense to copyright violation is if the usage is fair use or fair dealing. What you see on line is: Done with permission of the NFL Fair use as it is being used to comment on or analyze the performance; like a critic's book review. Unlawful and not pursued (yet) because the NFL considers it not worthwhile.	Not in US law, at least. Under the 1999 decision Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp (36 F. Supp. 2d 191) such images are not protected by copyright. As the Wikipedia article says, the court here ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality. This decision has been generally followed in US copyright law thereafter. At the time it was claimed that UK law took a different view, but I understand that more recently the UK also follows the Bridgeman rule, although I cannot confirm that at the moment. See also this article about the Bridgeman case and its effects. The service probably puts that notice onto all its newspaper reproductions, not checking which ones are from originals still under copyright. EDIT: As some comments point out, the formatting used to present the digital version, if not a slavish copy of the original newspaper, might be original enough for copyright protection. Therefore one should copy only the digitized text, or elements obviously a direct copy of the original newspaper which is in the public domain. The digitizing service will not get any copyright on the original text or images, even if the formatting has enough originality for protection.	Publishing government records is pretty classic First Amendment-protected activity. Keeping in mind that one can find a lawyer to sue for anything, I think that person would likely be operating well within the law. One thing in particular that I'd recommend staying aware of is how one might attempt to monetize this endeavor. There have been a lot of sites publishing arrest records, court records, and mugshots, and then charging people to have them removed to keep them from popping up in a Google search for those people's names. That is -- rightly -- regarded as sketchy behavior; while several states have passed laws prohibiting that business model, I don't believe any such law exists in Washington State at this point.
Can a person be vaccinated against their will in Austria or Germany? Is it legal for someone to be vaccinated against their will in Germany and Austria? Are there reasonable circumstances, under which this would be legal (e. g. if the government declares martial law and civil law is suspended)? My question is different from these 2 (1, 2) because it is about Germany and Austria (not US).	Yes and no In Germany, the first case where vaccination was mandatory was Smallpox. The Bundesverwaltungsgericht had adjudicated back in Juli 1959 – I C 170.56 - that mandatory Vaccination (Impfpflicht) against Smallpox follows the Impfgesetz of 1874 (RGBl. S. 31) which was declared a) still good law and b) in line with the Grundgesetz and so enforced vaccination of everybody who had no counterindication was inside the law. Currently, the measles are under mandatory vaccination with the MasernschutzgesetzInformation, german aka IFSG § 20law, german (Measles are listed in Abs 8). The same rationale and legal basis from those two can be applied to theoretically any other vaccination - if it is comparably terrible. The Masernschutzgesetz declares that without MMR vaccination you can't work in some jobs, like as a medical care worker, teacher or in a Kindergarten, and you can't be enrolled in a school or Kindergarten, unless you have a counterindication. Note that you do need to visit a public school, so the Masernschutzgesetz is total mandatory vaccination against measles for kids. The 2020 update on the law of infectious diseases (Gesetz zur Verhütung und Bekämpfung von Infektionskrankheiten beim Menschen. short: Infektionsschutzgesetz/IFSG, see above) still (and actually did since the measles change in 2019) open the door to make some vaccination mandatory exceeding the measles in IFSG §20 Abs 6 - for especially vulnerable parts of the population: Das Bundesministerium für Gesundheit wird ermächtigt, durch Rechtsverordnung mit Zustimmung des Bundesrates anzuordnen, dass bedrohte Teile der Bevölkerung an Schutzimpfungen oder anderen Maßnahmen der spezifischen Prophylaxe teilzunehmen haben, wenn eine übertragbare Krankheit mit klinisch schweren Verlaufsformen auftritt und mit ihrer epidemischen Verbreitung zu rechnen ist. Personen, die auf Grund einer medizinischen Kontraindikation nicht an Schutzimpfungen oder an anderen Maßnahmen der spezifischen Prophylaxe teilnehmen können, können durch Rechtsverordnung nach Satz 1 nicht zu einer Teilnahme an Schutzimpfungen oder an anderen Maßnahmen der spezifischen Prophylaxe verpflichtet werden. § 15 Abs. 2 gilt entsprechend. The general gist of that paragraph is: Following a regulated process, people that are vulnerable and under a present and current risk of an epidemic and that do not have counterindication can be mandated to undergo prophylactic treatment, which can include or be a specific vaccination. TL:DR So yes, there is mandatory vaccination in germany, but currently not for everyone but based on certain criteria.	German perspective: In German law, there is the concept of Schöpfungshöhe (threshold of originality), which is required for authorship rights (Urheberrecht) to apply to a work. Basically, the idea is that a minimum of creativity is required for something to be protected. However, that bar is rather low. Thus, for example: Literary works are protected practically always. Maps are generally protected, even though you might argue they "slavishly copy nature", because the act of choosing what to show and what not is already creative. However, a faithful photographic reproduction of a painting is not eligible for Urheberrecht to apply (LG Berlin, AZ 15 O 428/15) So yes, a "slavish copy" of a work would not qualify for protection if there is no creativity involved. Note, however, that other types of protection apart from Urheberrecht might apply, such as Sui generis database right.	First of all, although the GDPR is stated to apply to any site which processes the data of any person who is in the EU, it is not clear how a site not located in the EU, does not business in the EU, and does not primarily target EU residents as its audience can be required to comply with the GDPR. To the best of my knowledge, no such case has yet been brought, much less decided. There has also been some debate on whether an IP address constitutes Personal Data under the GDPR, and if it always does so, or only under particular conditions. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that (under the predecessor Directive 95/46/EC) that a dynamic IP address was personal data. But in that case the web site was run by the German Federal Government, which surely has wider scope for getting info from a German ISP than a small private US web activist does. There is not yet any case law that I know of on the applicability of the GDPR to IP addresses in any case at all similar to the one in the question. Joe would in my view be wise to at least learn that logs are being kept, and post a disclosure of this on the site. Whether Joe needs to do more than that is less than clear at this time.	"Medical lawyer" is really the wrong focus, this is an issue of civil rights. The question would be, is it a violation of your civil rights to prevent you from taking your baby home; is it legal for the federal government to investigate people who refuse to take a covid test? You can take the question along with pertinent evidence to a civil rights attorney. To pick a non-random hospital's web page, they note that "Any person having surgery or a procedure, including birth, at a Texas Health hospital will be tested for COVID-19 to provide appropriate care for the patient, and for the protection of visitors and the care team", and "you will need to be tested at admission to help safeguard you and the care team". In answer to the question whether you can decline testing, they say "Testing is recommended to promote the health of you and your baby. Patients who have COVID-19 can have a weakened immune system and may have inflammatory symptoms that can compromise healing. We encourage you to speak with your provider about the best decision for you", which doesn't explicitly say "No you may not", nor "Yes, you may". However, they cannot literally force you to take the test: at most, they can refuse to treat you. In answer to the question "Will I be separated from my baby if I test positive for COVID-19?", they say "Texas Health will follow guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of OB/GYN and the Centers for Disease Control for how to keep you and your baby safe during your hospital stay. Ultimately, any decisions about care for you and your baby will be between you and your provider, based on what is best for you both". This is also not crystal clear. There are three primary legal issues, putting a worst spin on their policy. They say up front that you will be tested prior to admission: the question is whether you can decline to take the test but force them to admit you. Now we are closer to the realm of a medical negligence attorney – they can refuse to treat you, but that might leave them liable. The second question is whether they can temporarily take the infant away, against the mother's wishes (for example, hold the infant in a separate facility while the mother is in the hospital). The third question is whether they have direct authority to take the infant away when you leave the hospital. The third question gets a plain and simple no. The Texas Dept. of Family and Protective Services has some authority in such a matter, but taking a child requires an investigation and a court order.	If the Attorney General has officially determined that you renounced US citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxation, you have a lifetime ban under INA 212(a)(10)(E), and there is no immigrant waiver for this ban. See 9 FAM 302.12-6. I am not sure if the Attorney General has ever made such a determination about anyone. Otherwise, I don't see anything that would prevent you from immigrating to the US like any other foreigner.	Typically in extraditions, the treaties will only allow for extraditions if both nations have a similar crime and similar punishment for that crime. In this case, there maybe some pause for Australia to grant an extradition as Australia no longer has the death penalty for any crime, so it could be that while the new crime the defendant is being sought for is Escape from Incarceration related (that's a yes in both countries), technically the punishment for an escaped Death Row Inmate is the Death Penalty. Australia can't extradite for any crime where death penalty is on the line, but the requesting nation can say they will give a more lighter sentance that is more compliant with the requested nation's own laws. However, since it is Death for another crime that Austrilia never had jurisdiction over, it complicates matters. There is precidence for procedural reasons for refusing to extradite. For example, while the U.S. and Italy have an extradition treaty and both view murder in the same light, the U.S. refused the extradition of a citizen who was wanted for a murder in Italy that she was previously aquitted of, but new evidnce was uncovered. Because it is illegal for the state to try a person twice for the same crime in the U.S., the U.S. declined the extradition treaty. Some additional notes, extradited persons can only be tried for crimes that they were extradited for, so there is an argument that Australia would refuse unless Indonesia promises to commute the Drug Trafficking sentence to Life Imprisonment	One thing that may prevent this is contract law: the employer may not have the power to impose new requirements on employees during the period of the current contract. For prisons that are run by government agencies, there may also be statutory restrictions on what the warden or Bureau of Prisons can compel employees to do without legislative approval (this is a general feature of government employment). There are additional disability and religion-based protections for employees. Apart from such legal considerations, the vaccine is not universally available, which explains why not all employers mandate that employees get vaccinated. It's not clear how prisons, specifically, are relevant: there's no general rule that "because it's a prison, normal law is suspended".	The UN has a copy of the extradition treaty between the US and Brazil, the short version of it is that the treaty lays out in Article II an exhaustive list of crimes that are extraditable, skimming the list I don't see defamation (since of course in real life it's not a federal crime). As a general principle, Country A won't extradite someone to Country B if the conduct they are accused of in Country B is not a crime in Country A, if Country A does not think Country B would provide a fair trial, or if the person is convicted if the punishment likely to be imposed by Country B would be illegal under the laws of Country A (this comes up a lot with extradition from Europe to the US if a possible punishment for the crime is death). So in your hypothetical Brazil would probably be unwilling to extradite its own citizen for the crime the US accuses them of. I think another part of your question is whether the US or Brazil would have jurisdiction over this defamation. In theory, both could claim jurisdiction over it. In practice most criminal conduct is criminal relatively universally, especially among similarly geolocated countries, so the rest of this paragraph is assuming both countries did consider the defamation criminal and extraditable. As a matter of judicial effectiveness an Internet crime would probably be prosecuted in the country where the person resides. There would likely be a language barrier too, if the US court would have to employ a Portuguese translator. However, this is all largely a political question more than a legal one, if the US really wanted to make an example of this person in their own country the US could try to use political leverage to get Brazil to extradite them. The US could also wait until the person travelled abroad and petition the third country to imprison and extradite them. That's something that happens more commonly for citizens of a country that the US does not have an extradition treaty with.
Bright-line or Litmus Test for Sedition? The media is crediting Donald Trump, Giuliani and Trump's son with inciting the protesters to march from the Ellipse to and breach the Capitol building on 6 January 2021, interrupting the electoral college finalization. Is there a bright line or litmus test that can be applied to determine if sedition has been committed?	There are several treason and sedition crimes in federal law all of which are defined by statute. Treason Offenses Treason offenses pertain to acts in furtherance of a foreign country or sometimes more specifically a foreign country with which the United States is at war (which is the legal definition of an "enemy"). These include Sections 2381, 2382, some of the subsections of 2386, 2388, 2389 and 2390. They are: 18 USC § 2381. Treason ("Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.") 18 USC § 2382. Misprision of treason (i.e. failure to report knowledge of someone else's treason to an appropriate government official). 18 USC § 2386. Registration of certain organizations (the guts of this offense's treason component are found in part B(1) which provides that: "The following organizations shall be required to register with the Attorney General: Every organization subject to foreign control which engages in political activity; . . . [and] Every organization subject to foreign control which engages in civilian military activity") 18 USC § 2388. Activities affecting armed forces during war 18 USC § 2389. Recruiting for service against United States 18 USC § 2390. Enlistment to serve against United States None of these are implicated by the question. Sedition Offenses Sedition offenses pertain to acts to overthrow or interfere with the government that do not have a clear nexus with a foreign country.These include Sections 2383, 2384, 2385, some of the subsections of 2386, and 2387. They are: 18 USC § 2383. Rebellion or insurrection (see below) 18 USC § 2384. Seditious conspiracy (see below) 18 USC § 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof-- Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons. 18 USC § 2386. Registration of certain organizations (the guts of this offense are found in part B(1) which provides that: "The following organizations shall be required to register with the Attorney General: . . . . Every organization which engages both in civilian military activity and in political activity; . . . and Every organization, the purpose or aim of which, or one of the purposes or aims of which, is the establishment, control, conduct, seizure, or overthrow of a government or subdivision thereof by the use of force, violence, military measures, or threats of any one or more of the foregoing.") 18 USC § 2387. Activities affecting armed forces generally (in the pertinent part: "Whoever, with intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States: (1) advises, counsels, urges, or in any manner causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States; or (2) distributes or attempts to distribute any written or printed matter which advises, counsels, or urges insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States-- Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.") But the sedition offenses potentially pertinent to the question are Sections 2383 and 2384. They are as follows (emphasis added) 18 USC § 2383. Rebellion or insurrection Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. And also (line breaks and line numbers inserted editorially for ease of reading and discussion purposes): 18 USC §2384—Seditious Conspiracy (1) If two or more persons (2) in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, (3) conspire (4) to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, (5) or to oppose by force the authority thereof, (6) or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, (7) or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, (8) they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. Lines (1), (2) and (3) are elements of the offense which must be established beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution in a criminal trial. In addition one of the four elements (4), (5), (6) or (7) must be established beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution in a criminal trial. Elements (6) and (7) are particularly relevant to the question here. The meaning of the words used in those elements is further defined in case law interpreting the statute in connection with the preparation of a jury instruction applying this statute to the facts presented at trial in a case (as well as lots of more general instructions on how a jury makes factual determinations). Only elements of the offense upon which some evidence has been presented by the prosecution are included in jury instructions. But the definitions in a jury instruction which is operationally the law in any particular case doesn't get a whole lot more specific than the statutory language quoted above. Ultimately, any vagueness in that language has to be resolved unanimously by the jury (or by a judge in a trial to the court). If these elements are established, the maximum punishment of (8) is authorized. Caveat The discretion of the sentencing judge to impose a sentence is not nearly as unfettered as it appears due to general provisions of Title 18 of the United States Code related to the exercise of sentencing discretion by a judge which incorporate by reference the federal sentencing guidelines adopted by an appointed federal government commission. These guidelines are advisory, rather than mandatory, but still have real effect. A judge has to calculated the guideline sentence, then articulate based upon judicial findings of fact any reason for deviating from the guideline sentencing range, and if this process is not followed, or if the findings of fact made aren't supported by the trial court record or don't support the conclusion reached, the sentence can be reversed for an abuse of discretion when the guideline sentence isn't followed, even if the maximum sentence authorized by this statute is not exceeded.	Section 11302 of the California Elections Code makes it crystal clear - as soon as an office becomes vacant, the recall election proceeds anyway, unless as of that moment there are not enough signatures to proceed to the vote. So the resignation tactic can only be used to stop a recall election while they are still in the signature-gathering phase - it will not work if they have already gotten enough signatures. California's recall law as it applies to statewide elected officials is, frankly, idiotic (it should be like an impeachment, next officer in line gets the post), but it is designed specifically to stop a shenanigan like you describe. The Lieutenant Governor would become Governor if Newsom resigned, but only subject to the results of the Recall - if Newsom is recalled (despite already having resigned), the person with the plurality on part two of the ballot would become the next Governor.	We can only guess at what argument he has in mind, but one possible argument is that the standard is unconstitutionally vague, similar to the argument by McDonnell in the recent McDonnell v US (admittedly about a different statute). The vagueness argument was developed in several of the briefs: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mcdonnell-v-united-states/ The unconstitutional vagueness argument has also been made specifically about 18 USC 793 (e). US v Hitselberger 1:12-cr-00231-RC D.D.C. (2014). The defendant made a motion to dismiss based on constitutional vagueness, but this motion was denied. Private Manning raised the same defence, also unsuccessfully: http://fas.org/sgp/jud/manning/051012-vague.pdf	It is difficult to keep track of the rapidly changing legal variables, but it would be illegal and unconstitutional for state police to set up an unauthorized stop-and-search checkpoint on the road ("due process" means "following the law"). As a prelude, there would have to be some higher authority that empowers them to do this. You would have to scrutinize the emergency powers legislation of every state to be certain, but no governor has the power to mandate blanket body searches in case of a medical emergency. (Martial law shifts enforcement of the law to the military, but doesn't generally create arbitrary decree-writing powers). The legal foundation of such searching would have to be a new law: then the question is what the law requires that could make on-the-road body searches constitutional. Since the right to be free of unreasonable searches is a fundamental constitutional right, this law would be reviewed under strict scrutiny. Searches "just for fun" will not pass such scrutiny, nor will "because it's an emergency" or "keep the public safe". Having the disease is not and cannot be a crime, so this law would have to be founded on a strict no-travel requirement. That brings the matter within the sphere of the "officer safety" exception in the case of an arrest. I'm not suggesting that an absolute travel ban would be upheld as constitutional in the US, but that is the kind of legal foundation that would be required for state police to force people to be Covid-searched.	Although the constitution doesn't explicitly require your vote to be equal in strength, surely the founders intended with the word 'vote' that you at least get to choose who you vote for. Quite the contrary. The founders specifically intended that smaller states should have disproportionate strength - they knew exactly what they were doing. This was one of the major design goals of the Constitution and is reflected in several other areas (e.g. the structure of the Senate); the smaller states wouldn't have agreed to join the Union if such concessions hadn't been made. There's a general principle in law that "the specific overrides the general". You're not going to get anywhere by trying to read into the word "vote" when there is explicit text saying something different. If the founders intended the word "vote" to imply "equal power for everyone", then why would they have specified, in great detail, a system which does exactly the opposite? For that matter, the founders didn't particularly intend that the people be able to vote for president at all! Article II, Section 1 says only that "each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..." There is no requirement that the state should hold an election to determine the appointment of the electors. According to Wikipedia, five states initially had the electors chosen by the state legislature, without having the people vote at all, and South Carolina continued to use this system until 1860. The 14th Amendment, section 2, appears to require that all eligible voters (male and 21 at the time, since modified by the 19th and 26th Amendments) be allowed to vote for their electors, but even there the wording is "any election" which appears to leave open the possibility of having no election at all. (It hasn't been tested as far as I know.) I think that your proposed lawsuit would be quickly dismissed, possibly as "frivolous".	No. The law would be void for vagueness. Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926): [T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. The example of the "well known but hidden stop sign" appears to allow for arbitrary prosecution and should also be void.	See Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571, para. 272 OPCA litigants who advance these schemes will often focus on certain aspects of court formalities. Like Mr. Meads, they may scrutinize the court for some hidden indication of its true nature. A strange but common belief is that a flag with yellow or gold thread ‘fringes’ “denotes a military jurisdiction, not common law”. In R. v. J.B.C. Securities Ltd., 2003 NBCA 53 at para. 2, 261 N.B.R. (2d) 199, Chief Justice Drapeau of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal rejected a motion by Lindsay “... removing the gold‑fringed Canadian flag that has adorned the Court of Appeal’s hearing room for years ...”. This motion, and the argument that “[t]here is no lawful reason for a Canadian flag to be present other than the regular statutory authorized flag” was frivolous and vexatious: para. 9.	If President Trump refuses to execute the war, does that become an act of treason on his part? Probably not, but it depends on the definition of treason. Congress could decide that it is, impeach him, and remove him from office. They could also remove him from office without using the term treason. Is he required to act on such a resolution? Not really. As chief executive, he has discretion to prioritize the tasks assigned to him by congress. Furthermore, there is plenty of precedent in international affairs for countries being legally in a state of war without any actual combat or other hostilities. If he doesn't, is there any recourse other than impeachment to force US armed forces to attack RF interests at home and abroad? There's always political pressure. But there's no way to relieve the president of his command of the armed forces without relieving him of his office. Aside from impeachment by the congress, this can be temporarily achieved by the cabinet, as specified in the 25th amendment. POTUS is the commander-in-chief, but, at the same time, he is not allowed to unilaterally decide who may or may not cross the border into the United States. The president's ability to make immigration policy and the fact that such policy is subject to judicial review are unrelated to his powers as commander in chief. Immigration is a civil and criminal matter, not a military one. The president's powers in this regard are delegated to him by congress, not specified in the constitution. On the other hand, the president's role as commander in chief of the military is explicit in the constitution. Do the judges also have a power to compel armed forces to take actions which a sitting President is refusing to take? The judiciary does not have the power to order military operations.
What's the point of those "spousal privileges" if, as I understand it, no-one can be forced to give a meaningful testimony anyway? I don't understand this concept called "spousal privilege". Regardless of whether a defendant is a wife or husband in relation to a potential witness, the latter can always refuse to say jack or just go with the "I can't recall" thing. What, will they torture them? What's the point of these "privileges" then?	Regardless of whether a defendant is a wife or husband in relation to a potential witness, the latter can always refuse to say jack or just go with the "I can't recall" thing. What, will they torture them? What's the point of these "privileges" then? There are actually two separate spousal privileges, the confidential communications privilege and the testimonial privilege. Confidential communications with a spouse are not admissible in evidence, even if the spouse wants to testify. This privilege is like an attorney-client privilege, or a psychologist-patient privilege, or the privilege that attaches to confessions made to a priest, reflects the long standing assumption that communications made in reliance on a confidential relationship should not be betrayed in court. There are often exceptions to the spousal privilege for domestic violence and child abuse. It applies even if the couple that was married at the time that the communication was made is no longer married. Part of the theory of the confidential communications privilege with a spouse is that these communications wouldn't have happened in the first place but for the privilege, and that communications between spouses serve a socially desirable end overall that should be encouraged, by strengthening marriages. The testimonial privilege is the privilege against testifying against a current spouse. In some jurisdictions this belongs to the testifying spouse, and in some jurisdictions it belongs to the spouse testified against. In Florida, it belongs to the testifying spouse in federal court and is not available in state court at all. This applies only to a current spouse and is designed to avoid forcing someone to have to choose between obeying the law and loyalty to their spouse. This usually has more exceptions than the confidential communications privilege and some jurisdictions don't have it at all. The law presumes that people who testify under oath will tell the truth and retains the right to punish them for contempt of court or perjury if they do not. The fact that someone can lie on the stand in ways that sometimes can't be caught is besides the point of whether it is fair to force a spouse to do that. Historically one goal has been to prevent domestic violence against a testifying spouse that might occur if the testifying spouse testifies truthfully but negatively against their non-testifying spouse. Also, there is a sense that the testimony offered may have more to do with the health of the marriage (being more or less favorable based upon that without regard to whether the testimony is truthful) and hence isn't reliable. It also prevent discovery in the course of a lawsuit from one's spouse, which could otherwise be used as a dirty litigation tactic to impact a litigant's family in a civil case primarily for purposes of harassment. Contempt of court sanctions against non-cooperative witnesses are not uncommon. Lots of witnesses aren't very sophisticated and aren't good at paying attention. When you start answering "I don't know" regarding your address, when the last time you saw your spouse in person, what kind of car you have, and whether you know what a copying machine is, it is often pretty easy to spot an intentionally uncooperative witness. Often there are prior unsworn statements or the witness is crystal clear on some points and yet claims no recollection on others. Procedurally, if the judge is convinced that someone is trying to obstruct the court a judge makes a finding of fact to that effect based upon observations that could support that conclusion in the testimony and evidence, higher courts on appeal have to defer to those findings. Appellate courts can't second guess trial court credibility determinations. So, it is a lot easier to establish grounds for contempt of court than one might theoretically expect. Perjury prosecutions are exceedingly rare (on the order of 1 per 200,000 people per year), and a majority of those prosecutions do not involve court testimony. But the legal prospect of being convicted of a felony for lying under oath in nonetheless a powerful one because a lot of tactical and practical decisions in court are based upon worst case scenarios, and it does happen now and then, a few times a year at least, in most states.	Nothing in the description strikes me as illegal or unlawful, so I am unsure of the grounds your friend would have for legal action. The questions a lawyer would ask (in addition to that) would be likely to include : How does your friend quantify the damage? The law is great for pursuing financial compensation, but does not handle abstract concepts. Has your friend used psychological counselling services, and what was the cost? What additional financial costs has your friend borne? If your friend has written to the University and has expected a response, what is the evidence of diminished trust? (The letter suggests otherwise.) Would a reasonable person (the proverbial "man in the street") be psychologically damaged by the events experienced by your friend? Is there evidence of a pre-existing condition? You've also mentioned yourself as a witness. Did you witness the eviction, or would you be attesting to your friend's state of mind? If the latter, what are your psychological qualifications? In the main Western jurisdictions, the answer to the question "can my friend sue?" is usually "yes", but whether they stood a chance of winning the suit would probably be a better question to ask. Your friend would only be likely to win a case against the University or the Security company if they could demonstrate unlawful or counter-contractual activity by staff, and were able to demonstrate financial damages that had been caused by that activity.	Sometimes rights conflict with each other, and the courts decide which right takes priority. The Sixth Amendment provides that a defendant is entitled to "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor". The Fifth Amendment says "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". And the First Amendment gives the right to free speech, which includes the right to not be compelled to speak. If you're on trial and try to get someone else to confess on the stand, his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination trumps your Sixth Amendment right to have him testify. But if he couldn't take the fifth (for example, if he had already been acquitted), your Sixth Amendment right would override his First Amendment right to free speech.	The California jury instructions for the crime of perjury give more detail on what it means to commit perjury: it's not just that you make a statement that is false, you have to willfully state that the information is true even though you know it is false. If you have a belief that you will be convicted for perjury (or any crime) by testifying, you may invoke your 5th Amendment right (I assume you are not testifying as the defendant in a criminal matter). You might (theoretically: see below on immunity and perjury) be granted immunity from prosecution, in which case there is no 5th Amendment right to refuse to testify (you are not putting yourself in criminal jeopardy), and the court can order you to testify. Or, you might not be granted immunity and still be ordered to testify. The federal immunity statute, 18 USC 6002, also needs to be scrutinized. When ordered to testify, "the witness may not refuse to comply with the order on the basis of his privilege against self-incrimination", but it generally cannot be used against him: no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case However, there is an exception: except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order. In other words, you cannot be immunized against a perjury charge. In Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 defendant refused an order to testify, on the grounds that they (allegedly) believed that the government's grant of immunity was not broad enough, i.e. that there were areas where they might be questions and forced to criminally implicate themselves. They refused, and were held in contempt. The opinion recognized that the 5th Amendment "protects against any disclosures that the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used" (emphasis added). In Mason v. United States, 244 U.S. 362, the court held that The Fifth Amendment does not relieve a witness from answering merely on his own declaration or judgment that an answer might incriminate him; whether he must answer is determinable by the trial court in the exercise of its sound discretion, and unless there is reasonable ground, as distinct from a remote or speculative possibility, to apprehend that a direct answer may prove dangerous to the witness, his answer should be compelled. Heike v. United States, 227 U.S. 131 asserts that "the constitutional protection is confined to real danger, and does not extend to remote possibilities out of the ordinary course of law, citing Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (itself quoting Lord Chief Justice Cockburn): "the danger to be apprehended must be real and appreciable, with reference to the ordinary operation of law in the ordinary course of things; not a danger of an imaginary and unsubstantial character, having reference to some extraordinary and barely possible contingency, so improbable that no reasonable man would suffer it to influence his conduct" Although the wording of the immunity statute does not allow immunity from prosecution for perjury, the 5th Amendment right can only be invoked against a real legal jeopardy. They can be compelled to testify, they probably cannot be immunized against a perjury conviction (certainly not at the federal level). We would need to know the entire circumstances of the case to be able to assess whether the "knowing to be false" part could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.	Every state requires at least two witnesses to a will unless it is entirely written in your own handwriting. A lawyer as a witness is fine. A spouse as a witness is not ideal as she would be an interested party if there was a dispute over whether it was executed. It may not be prohibited, but I would never do that in my practice ever. I discontinued a will signing just last week because we only had a lawyer and a spouse and not other witnesses. I would be somewhat concerned.	Assuming that privilege applies, no Not all communications with your lawyer trigger privilege and if it doesn’t then the lawyer is not your lawyer and is under the same obligation to report as any other member of the public. If privilege does apply then they must keep your secrets. If they are defending you and you confess to the crime then they can: represent you if you plead guilty withdraw unless that would prejudice your defence continue to act providing that they do not: suggest someone else committed the offence set up a defence inconsistent with the confession they can: argue the prosecution has not made their case, that you are not guilty of the offence charged by reason of law, or argue for any other (non prohibited) reason that you should not be convicted.	It is not as simple as the witness just making the assertion that they are the killer. They will be subject to grueling cross examination to break their story. If the victim was killed at a specific time, perhaps the prosecution can prove the witness was somewhere else at that time, and therefore lying. (No Opportunity) If the victim was killed with a specific weapon, perhaps the prosecution can prove that only the accused had the weapon, and the witness had no access to it, and therefore lying. (No Means) If the victim was killed in a specific way, perhaps the witness doesn't know any of the details of how the crime happened, and therefore is not credible. (No Knowledge) If the accused's DNA is found at the scene, and their shirt is covered in blood, and the witness has no corroborating evidence against them, then the witness is likely lying. (No Evidence) If the witness claims he is the murderer, the prosecution can inquire as to why he killed the victim. The real murderer had a reason: Perhaps money, power, hatred, passion, etc, that the witness may not be able to provide. (No Motive) Planting doubt in the mind of a jury is an effective defense. But lying about who did what, when, how, and why it is not as easy as you suggest.	The short answer is that yes, a couple can marry for the purpose of gaining access to the marital privilege in court actions, even if they are pending when the marriage occurs. There is basically no such thing as a sham marriage in this context. (There may be a handful of outlier cases as is the case in any legal rule, but this is the overwhelmingly uniform rule of law today.) In practice, outside the context of an annulment proceeding in the civil courts where one of the parties to the marriage or fiduciaries such as legal guardians for one of the parties to the marriage seek to have it invalidated, a legally entered into marriage is valid for all purposes without question. Even many marriages that can be annulled for religious purposes are not eligible to be annulled under non-religious civil law. Third-parties generally do not have standing to declare that a marriage be annulled. Usually marriage is conclusively established by the existence of a marriage license and the absence of a death or divorce by either party. Even the existence of a common law marriage, or the existence of some factor that prevents a marriage from being recognized as valid (e.g. one of the parties is already married or is underage) is often fairly easily proved (and is usually completely unrelated to the case in which a martial privilege is to be asserted and undisputed). Immigration law is the only context is which the status of a marriage as a sham is actively policed. Also, keep in mind that the marital privilege for evidentiary purposes is actually two separate privileges. One is the privilege not to testify against a current spouse in a legal proceeding. The other is the privilege not to testify as to confidential communications made to a spouse while the couple was married. Both have exceptions (e.g. for crimes in which one of the spouses is the victim). A confidential communication to a boyfriend/girlfriend prior to marriage is not protected by the confidential communications marital privilege even after the couple married. Only the testimonial privilege would be available with regard to those communications, and the testimonial privilege often has more exceptions than the confidential communications privilege (usually the exceptions are enumerated by statute that varies from state to state). A previous answer related to spousal privilege with quotations from a state statute to provide an example can be found here. In Colorado, which is fairly typical, the confidential communications privilege applies to all crimes (except those which are ongoing or are between the spouses), while the testimonial privilege does not apply to serious felonies.
If the US federal government is sued for not abiding by it own laws, can it then be sued for the legal expenses due to the lawsuit? In US citizenship applications it's common for an application to be processed beyond the time frame set by the federal law. In such cases, the applicant may file a lawsuit with a federal court, requesting the court to issue and enforce a writ of mandamus in order to compel the federal government to process the application within the time frame set by the federal law. Does the applicant have the right then to sue the federal government for his legal expenses? After all, it's the government's dereliction that caused him to sue the government. Otherwise, what would prevent the government from always abusing its power? It may decide to process applications as slow as possible, and only process an application in a timely manner if a lawsuit is filed against the government (at the expense of the applicant); but without any further financial consequences to the government.	Short Answer No. The immigration applicant is generally not entitled to his or her attorney fees in this situation, even though the government is violating one of its own laws. Long Answer The Black Letter Law Question The Right To Fees Depends On The Legal Theory Advanced A consistent answer doesn't exist at the level of generality of the title question. Some of the statutes that relate to a violation of the law by a government official include an attorney fees remedy to a prevailing plaintiff, while others do not. Violations of constitutional rights enforced under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 entitle a prevailing plaintiff to an attorney fees award. But the immigration law is a statutory requirement not a constitutional one and there is no generalized constitutional right to have the U.S. government comply with every provision of every enacted statute. Indeed, the general rule is that enforcement of statutory rights against private individuals is discretionary and non-justiciable. A writ of mandamus filed to compel the federal government to take action as it is required to do under the immigration laws would usually arise under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, which does not generally entitle the prevailing plaintiff to attorneys' fees, and that would probably be the case in an All Writs Act petition for a writ of mandamus filed in relation to the timely processing of an immigration application. But the All Writs Act is basically a statutory touchstone through which the door is opened to the entire pre-Revolutionary War English common law of writ practice as modified in a common law manner through case law by the American federal courts, and there are probably some exceptions in fact patterns beyond the scope of the question. This said, I am not an expert in immigration law and it is possible that there are administrative law remedies under either the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) or the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) which might provide a different solution to the same problem. Article III Court Litigation Is The Rare Exception In Immigration Cases Keep in mind that most immigration law matters are in the exclusive original jurisdiction of the immigration courts, which are not Article III courts, and are instead staffed by administrative law judges operating according to immigration court procedures, which must then be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and only after those remedies are exhausted may most immigration cases be brought before an Article III court which in that case is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the circuit in which the case arose within the immigration court system. And, appellate review of BIA decisions is quite limited. Perhaps someone more familiar with the federal APA and INA would know if there is any right to attorneys' fees under those acts, although I suspect that the answer is that there is not. Indeed, the fact that Article III litigation is such a rare exception to the general rule is one of the reasons that this problem has not been viewed as a crisis that is critical to fix. It is easier to find alternative funding to litigate cases that come up only dozens of times a year than it is to do so for issues in cases that are routine and pervasive. Exceptions Apply Where There Is Wrongful Government Litigation Conduct Also, while attorney fees are not recoverable as a matter of course in actions arising under the All Writs Act where there is not a common law right to attorney fees in a particular fact pattern, attorney fee awards may still be entered in an action under the All Writs Act, or under any other cause of action in federal court, as a sanction for wrongful litigation conduct. There are three kinds of sanctions for wrongful litigation conduct that commonly arise: Rule 11 If a party files a legal document in a federal court case which is frivolous (i.e. lacks any colorable legal basis), groundless (i.e. lacks any factual basis), or vexatious (i.e. is made for the purposes of harassing a party or delaying the case for no legitimate purpose even if it is not otherwise frivolous or groundless), then an attorney fees award may be made as a sanction proportionate to the fees incurred as a result of the wrongful litigation conduct under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. Discovery Sanctions If a party fails to obey the rules governing pre-trial disclosure of information in "discovery" forcing the other party to enforce those obligations in motion practice prior to trial, one of the remedies that the court may (and often does) provide for this wrongful conduct is to award attorney fees to the party that requested the information and did not receive the response that party was entitled to under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37. Contempt of Court If a party or someone else with knowledge of the court order and some relationship to a party fails to obey a court order, or if someone who is present in the courtroom engages in conduct disrespectful to the court in the court's actual presence, party who engaged in this misconduct may be held in contempt of court. Contempt of court may be criminal, simply punishing the wrongdoer for misconduct in the same way that one might for a misdemeanor violation, or civil, imposing incarceration or fines or other remedies until the wrongdoer complies with a court order. When someone is held in contempt of court, the sanction for doing so frequently involves an award of attorneys fees incurred as a result of the wrongful action by a party to the case against the wrongdoer. Of these three options, the third, contempt of court, has the most bite as a practical matter. If a judge orders the immigration agency to meet a deadline by a certain time and it fails to do so, which isn't an uncommon result when it has already failed to do so despite receiving formal complaints about the delays, it is very likely that the sanction for failing to meet the court ordered deadline to comply will result in an attorney fees sanction against the government. Does This Rule Encourage Misbehavior? what would prevent the government from always abusing its power? It may decide to process applications as slow as possible, and only process an application in a timely manner if a lawsuit is filed against the government (at the expense of the applicant); but without any further financial consequences to the government. Sometimes Government Officials Do The Right Thing Because It's Their Job In any political and legal system, we have to count on some of the key actors to follow the law not because there are consequences for not following the law, but because their job is to uphold the law. For example, we trust judges and juries to try and rule in accordance with the facts presented to them and the relevant law in the cases they decide in court, even though both judges and juries have absolute immunity from liability for their official judicial acts. The President, and every single other federal government official, federal judge and federal administrative law judge, is likewise sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States, and the President and everyone else in the executive branch acting with authority delegated to them from the President's Executive Branch power has a duty to "faithfully execute the laws" of the United States. Presidential elections represent (theoretically anyway) the judgment of the American people concerning who is most able to do that job properly and to make good choices about how to exercise discretion in doing so. Also, as a practical matter, many snarls in the immigration process are handled by members of Congress in their constituent service role or through the passage of private laws, rather than by attorneys for the applicants in the Article III court, in part precisely because individual litigants can rarely afford to pay lawyers to do that. Almost every Senator and members of the House of Representatives (539 in all including non-voting delegates who still get staff), where I worked as an intern for a while, has a staff member who devotes perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 FTE to resolving cases like this one. Sometimes Delays Are Unavoidable And Not Due To Official Misconduct The wrongfulness of the delay is also mitigated by the fact that often delays are not due to any bad faith conduct on behalf of the federal government officials involved. It is not infrequently the case that it is impossible for federal government officials to do the job that Congress have given them a mandate to carry out, by the deadlines that Congress has set forth, with the funds that Congress has appropriated to them to get the job done. This is true not just in the immigration law context, but in all sorts of circumstances. The Political System's Design Naturally Disfavors Immigrants Of course, politicians and government officials often don't do everything that they are supposed to do for reasons that aren't noble or blameless. The administration in place for the last four years as of the time that this answer is written specifically campaigned on a platform of radically reducing legal immigration and largely succeeded in doing so, even though it lost many particular legal battles on that front. This wouldn't be the first time that this has happened. Immigrants, by definition, are made up of a class of people who can't vote in Presidential or Congressional elections and, as the median voter theorem would predict, their interests as non-voters fall to the bottom of the political priorities. The U.S. Legal System Is Applying Rules Designed For Different Contexts The other reason that this happens is that it evolved that way. There are a lot of good policy reasons (beyond the scope of this answer) for the American Rule that each side bears their own attorney fees in lawsuits between private parties. In a nutshell, it encourages people not to litigate minor disputes and encourages settlements that reduce the deadweight loss of transaction costs associated with litigation in lawsuits where there are substantial amounts in controversy. There are good arguments for the opposite rule as well, which is why there are many exceptions to it and why the English legal system, post-1789, ultimately ended up changing its default fee shifting rule. But when that rule was put in place, "public law" (i.e. lawsuits between the government and private individuals and between governments) was largely outside the jurisdiction of the common law courts that are the ancestors of the modern U.S. court system. The general rule was that you couldn't sue the government or government officials at all, and there were few exceptions and the scope of government regulation in people's lives was much smaller, although that was starting to change. Other Countries Adopt The Rule You Propose In contrast, in French law, under the First Republic, sovereign immunity from its citizens (that survived in England) was abolished, and the Republic established a separate legal system for handling public law disputes, under the supervision of the French Council of State, that has endured through the present. In the French system, copied in principle (although not every administrative detail) by essentially all other countries with a civil law legal system, once you file a public law complaint (on a form you can purchase at your neighborhood convenience store), the Council of State assigns one public law lawyer (basically a senior civil servant and not a member of the same legal professions as private law lawyers and notaries and prosecutors and judges) to represent the government in your case, and assigns another one from the same pool of government lawyers to represent its citizens in the case, in a manner similar to how barristers are assigned to serious criminal cases on a case by case basis in the British criminal justice system. There is a lot to be said for the civil law approach. Historically, it has led to government bureaucracies that are better run and treat citizens more fairly and with less corruption, relative to U.S. style systems, which is an important reason why state owned enterprises are much more popular in countries with civil law systems than in countries without them. But that simply isn't the path that U.S. law has taken, even though there are good arguments that the U.S. system is more vulnerable to being unfair. Various Workarounds And Limitations Prevent Worst Case Scenarios Still, because government officials do try to follow the law as best they can most of the time (especially career civil servants who implement the political appointee's policies), and because really outrageous litigation conduct by government lawyers who take unreasonable positions in public law litigation can result in judicial sanctions, the system still does provide some means for relief when the government violates the law. Finally, the fact that attorney fees aren't shifted in these cases doesn't mean that these cases aren't litigated. In some cases, the individual or their sponsor can afford to litigate the issue. In some cases, immigration attorneys litigate the issue pro bono (i.e. without charge to the client) because the issue has importance to their ability to deliver results to all their other clients or as a form of charitable giving and, in some cases, local governments fund this litigation on behalf of their non-citizen residents or non-profit advocacy groups fund this kind of litigation from private donations. For example, the City of Denver is among those local governments that has established a fund to help pay lawyers to litigate immigration issues on behalf of its residents to address the financial barriers those residents face to enforcing their legal rights under federal immigration laws. So, in an example of the Coase Theorem of economics, even when the formal legal arrangements and rules of a system are non-optimal, a free market economy tends to find workarounds that reallocate unfair burdens in a way that is sufficient to make the system as a whole function better.	State governments (and state courts, employees, etc., as part of that government) are generally immune from lawsuits for all liability. See Governmental Tort Liability : 2017 Tennessee Code : Justia. You're really not going to be able to sue the state, the court, the prosecutor or parole officer over what you see as a negligent decision, considering the individuals' previous record or freedom while on parole, and/or whether they are charged as an adult or a minor. Most any lawyer will advise you of this. You could contact a local legal aid clinic Legal Aid/Legal Services \| Tennessee Bar Association for more of an explanation and explore the possibilities.	I am wondering if the government can still implement it and force people to pay even if the decision is challenged in court. Laws are not automatically put on hold because they are challenged. For an action or a law to be halted by the Court before a decision is made, the applicant would have to seek an interlocutory injunction, which are granted only if, as established in RJR-MacDonald Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1994] 1 SCR 311, (i) is there a serious issue to be tried, (ii) will the party seeking the injunction suffer irreparable harm if it is not granted, and (iii) does the balance of convenience favour the party seeking the injunction. The first issue is rarely a problem, especially for a controversial issue like this. I am thinking the government might be able to tax people and then refund people if the court doesn't uphold the decision instead of a court challenge being able to postpone the tax indefinitely. A quantifiable financial harm is rarely irreparable (in private law cases). However there is an important exception for Charter cases where a financial harm is assumed to be irreparable because damages are often not awarded in constitutional cases. Though in this case it might be considered reparable because the quantification of damage and the method of redress are straightforward. For the third question, the Court needs to weigh both sides' interests in the case where the injunction is granted. Even if the damage is deemed irreparable, the Court may (or may not) still find the public interest in health outweighs the financial interests of the unvaccinated.	Typically an Answer would have two parts. The first part presents the Defendant's side of the story raised in the Petition in an effort to assert that the Petition when viewed in light of the actual facts hasn't demonstrated a right to relief. The second part sets forth "affirmative defenses", most of which are procedural in nature. An affirmative defense raises some set of circumstances not discussed in the Petition that make it appropriate to deny relief even when, but for the defense, if everything in the Petition was true, this would suffice to establish grounds for relief. For example, procedural defenses might include: failure to meet a deadline, failure to give notice to the proper persons, failure to pay a filing fee, failure to include required information (such as a case number or a statement of facts or a signature) in the Petition, or lack of standing to file the Petition on behalf of the child because parental rights or legal guardianship are absent or because the person filing the Petition isn't an adult. The notion is that the Reply, in theory, should limit itself to responding to the newly raised procedural defenses stated in the Answer, or to new documents provided with the Answer, instead of trying to argue and resolve every dispute of fact or credibility issues between the Petition's version of the facts and the Answer's version of the facts. When in doubt, talk about it in the Reply. At worst, it is beyond the scope of what should be included in a Reply and can be ignored by the hearing officer as harmless. And, sometimes the hearing officer will decide that they want to know what is said even if it isn't strictly within the proper scope of a Reply. Certainly provide any documents that weren't previously provided that rebut the claims in the Answer.	No. The Fourteenth Amendment says: nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; The Supreme Court has determined that this clause incorporates much of the Bill of Rights. The logic is mildly tortured, but it's basically that "due process of law" means "due process of a law that is compatible with the fundamental rights of a free society." This logic is known as "substantive due process," because it reads in to "due process of law" requirements about what those laws can do (as opposed to procedural due process, which is about the actual procedures being used). It's pretty settled that the Bill of Rights, after the 14th Amendment, should apply to the states. There's another possible way to get there: the 14th Amendment says "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which Justice Thomas recently thought meant that the Second Amendment applies to the states in a concurring opinion. But as of now, substantive due process is the standard logic for it. Virtually all of the Bill of Rights is incorporated against the states. There are a couple things which aren't (like juries in lawsuits, and grand juries), but the Establisment Clause is incorporated (see Everson v. Board of Education, 330 US 1).	To the extent Constitutionally permitted or as further limited by the state’s own law Constitutionality, a suit may be brought (or a prosecution launched) when the state has personal jurisdiction over the defendant. … a state court may only exert personal jurisdiction over an individual or entity with "sufficient minimal contacts" with the forum state such that the particular suit "does not offend 'traditional notions of fair play and justice.'" What constitutes sufficient "minimum contacts" has been delineated in numerous cases which followed the International Shoe decision. For example, in Hanson v. Denckla, the Court proclaimed the "unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with a nonresident cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum State. The application of that rule will vary with the nature and quality of the defendant's activity, but it is essential in each case that there be some act by which the defendant purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State, thus invoking the benefits and protection of its laws." For the abortion bill, an organisation that provides funding to Texas residents probably has “minimum contacts”, an out-of-state doctor who treats all-comers probably doesn’t. For employment laws: if the employee is based and work takes place in the state, yes. There is a separate question of which state's law applies which is independent of which state's courts can hear the case. A California court can decide that it can hear a case according to Texas law for example although, in practice, if the California court felt that all of the issues were Texan, they would probably decide they lacked jurisdiction.	There are two kinds of competent authorities: courts, and government enforcement agencies (tax offices, building inspectors, etc.). A court might order X to do something if Y petitions, but X is notified of the proceeding to which they are a party, and X will (should) object to the petition on the grounds that the petitioned relief is impossible or imposes an extreme burden on them. If, having objected that it is impossible to comply the court still orders you to do the impossible, you have to appeal the ruling. Ultimately the Supreme Court may order you to squeeze blood from a stone, and there is nothing practical that you can do – you must do the impossible, or suffer the consequences. However, courts do not order people to squeeze blood from a stone. A government agency may make such a demand, with minimal opportunity for you to object. Your recourse is very similar to the case where a party petitions the court to order you to do something. A law may exist whereby an agency is authorized to "order" a person to act in a certain way: there may be a requirement for a hearing, or you may have to sue the agency to overrule their demand. It is possible that you can appeal agency-internally that it is impossible, or too burdensome, to comply, or you may have to make that argument in court. It is usually best to persuade the agency that they are asking the impossible, since the courts tend to defer to government agencies that issue orders, unless your case is particularly egregious. "It would be inconvenient for us" is generally not a viable defense. The general rule is, you must follow the law, period.	Under U.S. law, a U.S. court can assert jurisdiction sufficient to enter a binding judgment (called "long arm personal jurisdiction") if the events giving rise to the lawsuit took place in the state where the state or federal court in which the suit is brought is located. Generally speaking, modern U.S. law allows the service of the summons and complaint that gives the court jurisdiction over the defendant if the events giving rise to the suit took place in the state, to be served anywhere in the world (or even in outer space, for that matter). But, the practical reality is that serving someone with process from a U.S. court in another country would be difficult and expensive, and enforcing the judgment if you win could likewise be difficult. There are also a couple of other problems specific to small claims court: Many small claims courts do not have the full jurisdiction that the U.S. Constitution allows them to have by virtue of the statutes that authorize them and their contemplation that proceedings take place predominantly or entirely in person. It isn't uncommon for the statute authorizing a small claims court to limit its jurisdiction to defendants that live in the same county. Most small claims courts are only allowed to enter money judgments subject to some very narrow and idiosyncratic exceptions. Most small claims courts do not have jurisdiction to order specific performance of a contract to sell a car, even though they could award money damages for breaching the contract to sell the car if those money damage could be demonstrated convincingly. These barriers particular to small claims court could be solved by filing suit in another state court that has broader jurisdiction. (The federal courts would probably not have jurisdiction over this case even if there was "diversity of citizenship" between the parties because the amount in controversy would probably be less than $75,000 unless it was a very fancy car indeed to be worth that much used.) Different consideration would apply if these facts and circumstances arose outside the United States, depending upon the jurisdiction in question.
Publishing research obtained by violating Google's TC I believe Google's Terms and Conditions prohibit bot scraping: that is, submitting lots of (automated) search queries in a short time. This is enforced by mechanisms such as CAPTCHAs and IP blacklisting. But suppose a researcher, say based in UK, managed to work around them, get a big amount of data from Google searches and use it to publish some research. Could they get, theoretically, into trouble? Would they, practically? Would the above depend on how they circumvented Google's checks (i.e., by using lots of proxies)?	First of all, Google's TOS says we reasonably believe that your conduct causes harm or liability to a user, third party, or Google — for example, by hacking, phishing, harassing, spamming, misleading others, or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you And you ask: But suppose a researcher, say based in UK, managed to work around them, get a big amount of data from Google searches and use it to publish some research. You're confusing methods with results. Someone uses methods to get a result, but if the results are not legal, the methods are usually illegal, too. Would the above depend on how they circumvented Google's checks (i.e., by using lots of proxies)? The words "or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you" means just that; it does not give any wiggle room for the actual method used to scrape. Could they get, theoretically, into trouble? Very much so. The researcher would have at least civil liability, and possibly criminal exposure. Would they, practically? Google can be very not kind to people who break their TOS. And Google has lots of money to spend on lawyers and court fees to enforce their TOS. Google would probably be able to easily prove the data came from their servers, and would probably have server logs to help prove it. And see user6726's answer for specific legal citations in the US and UK.	If the operators of a site post them in such a way that anyone with a browser can access them, with no login or other security precaution required, and not even any notice that the files are confidential, they are implicitly inviting anyone to view them, and thus it is legal to do so. There was a case where a site owner gave specific notice to a user not to access the site, and blocked the user's IP. When the user hired a proxy service to get around the blockage, this was held to be unauthorized access, a crime under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse act). But in that case the individual notice was considered essential to the applicability of the act. That case was Craigslist, Inc v. 3Taps, Inc et al, 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2015). See also This Wikipedia article and thisJaxEnter article. As the Wikipedia article put it: Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Note that in this case web scraping was apparently impacting the craigslist site.	This is relatively uncharted legal territory, so until multiple cases establish some sort of precedent, we can only guess. I know of no legal requirement that a Browser or User has to submit cookies or referrer data or other meta-information accurately. In that regard, a user is unlikely to be prosecuted just for submitting HTTP headers. It is likely closely related to Free Speech issues. The DMCA spells out that it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection measures. While this law is typically used to make it illegal to copy DVDs, video-games or streaming movies, it is possible that the "3-free articles" policy could be interpreted as a copyright protection mechanism, and defeating it by changing HTTP headers is a circumvention. A good summary is here. A specific site's TOS (Terms of Service) probably contains language that spells out it is a violation to use the site in a manner other than as it is intended. This is a typical anti-hacking, anti-screen-scraping provision. Altering a browser session to circumvent their services is probably a violation of the license to access the site, and may open a user to a civil lawsuit for damages or even criminal hacking charges (the details of which are different state-to-state)	A web site that is serious on protecting some content behind a paywall will put the protected content, or a version of the page with both protected and unprotected content, on separate page or pages, so arranged that a user will not be able to follow the link until that user has signed in and been accepted as an authorized user. A site that merely uses CSS to hide "protected" content is not really protecting it. CSS is designed to be modified by the ultimate user -- that is part of its function. If the site chooses to send you content, you are entitled to read it. Even if some of the content has a CSS tag attached which suppresses or obscures the display of that content, they know perfectly well that any user can supersede this with local CSS, and so I don't see how they have any legal claim, nor any way of knowing if you have accessed the "hidden" content or not. If you attempt to bypass or hack a login screen, that might be circumvention under the US DMCA, or "Unauthorized computer access" under any of several laws.	First I should point out that the Google question is about a different situation, the "snippet" issue where a tiny part of a web page is redistributed, where the issue of resolved in the US by appeal to the "fair use" defense. The proposed scenario as written here is broader since it would go beyond a couple of lines, and goes up to the limit of copy an entire web page. That is copyright infringement, with or without an associated link. Copyright protection is not just about attribution, it is about control. If you can limit your copying appropriately, you may survive under a fair use analysis; but you need to hire a lawyer with experience in copyright litigation to vet your notions of what is "a small amount" etc.	You are clearly seeking legal advice. Answers on this site come from anonymous people on the internet and are not legal advice. You should not act based on information from this site. I am unaware of any lawsuit where one would be sued for merely storing and reading HTML for personal use. Downloading a webpage is probably not a copyright violation. Most things you create, including HTML source code, are protected by copyright and copyright includes the exclusive right to choose who can read what you created. I couldn't find any actual reference to this but I would hazard a guess that displaying an HTML webpage online is implicitly allowing others to read that code. I believe this guess is correct because all modern web browsers have the capability to view source that nobody considers illegal and browsers also include the capability to save webpages to disk. These browsers are made by companies with large legal departments, I doubt Internet Explorer would include this function if using it was a copyright violation. Here begins speculation: However, your expanded question says that not only you wish to read the HTML code but you also wish to process it, extract information from it and use what you learn this way. This could, I think, be prevented by the copyright holder. Still, what you are describing is commonly done in the world. Services such as Google, Bing or the Wayback Machine go far beyond what you are doing. In theory, I can see this as being a copyright violation but again, the fact that these big companies - without any kind of contract with the website owners - keep doing it is big evidence in favor of legality of storing webpages. You should be careful about how you use the stored data, though. For example, computer programs often have a stipulation in EULA that prevents you from reverse engineering the code. I could see that the use of some websites could be protected in such manner. Further (not authoritative) internet pages on this topic: https://stackoverflow.com/q/22819287/1580088 https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120621055815AAvJPvN	Is that extortion? false advertising? or in any way illegal? Not at all. The owner of the site is simply exercising his right as outlined in the terms and conditions from when the user signed up. And giving users an option for continued use of the site (that is, for him not to exercise a right of which they were always aware) does not constitute extortion.	Providing they meet the basic requirements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) then they are binding contracts. Consideration is not an issue: the site provides the content, the user provides eyeballs on it. Consent is the major stumbling block. Online Terms of Service are either presented as browsewrap or clickwrap or sign-up wrap. A browsewrap provides notice of the terms of service but there is no specific user assent to them. A clickwrap requires the user to check a box specifically about agreeing to the terms (with or without user registration). A sign-up wrap presents user registration with a "Sign up" and provides notice to the terms at the point of service but doesn't have a check button specifically for the terms. As an example, Stack Exchange provides two types of wrap. For the casual user, there is a Legal link at the bottom of the page - a browsewrap. If you sign-up, you go to a page that says "By clicking "Sign up", you agree to our terms of service, ..." - a sign-up wrap. Whether a Terms of Service is an enforcable contract depends on whether the user provided notice, whether the user gave consent and whether enforcing the agreement is conscionable. Clickwraps and sign-up wraps have the advantage over browsewraps in the first two of these. Assuming that the contract terms are unremarkable (i.e. they are within the range of "normal" for that type of contract) a clickwrap will normally create an enforcable contract - Forrest v Verizon and Motise v America Online being the relevant case law. Browsewraps are more problematic: Specht v Netscape said no contract but where the browsewrap is shown prominently and repeatedly they can form an enforceable contract - Hubbert v Dell and Cairo v CrossMedia Services. Zaltz v Jdate was a sign-up wrap and did create an enforceable contract. All of these turn on the facts of how the information was was presented to the user. For example, in Meyer v Kalanick the Second Circuit said: Where there is no evidence that the offeree had actual notice of the terms of the agreement, the offeree will still be bound by the agreement if a reasonably prudent user would be on inquiry notice of the terms.[sic] So, in general, Terms of Service are enforcable as a contract if a reasonably prudent user could, on inquiry (e.g. by clicking a link), make themselves aware of the terms. This also explains why skrinkwraps (when software came on actual physical media in a shrink-wrapped box with the terms inside) were not enforcable - a reasonably prudent user could not inform themselves of the terms without unwrapping a product they didn't yet own.
If I don’t profit in any way and have disclaimers, can I use Pokémon names in my app? Suppose a developer creates a simplistic web-based educational game that uses Pokémon names, but not images. It has a similar battle style to the old Gameboy games, but all the images are original. If the dev were to publish it as a 100% free and open source educational application on web, android, and iOS, is it possible for the dev to run into copyright/trademark issues of any kind? Would it fall under fair use, and if not why? If the developer will not profit off of the application in any way, does that help avoid legal problems? Similarly, if the developer includes disclaimers about the Pokémon names would that help? Are there other steps could such a developer take to avoid a lawsuit? Suppose the developer simply posts the game to GitHub for potential employers to see. Could the developer get in trouble if someone pulls the code and publishes it elsewhere? If the developer is asked to take the game down, and does so, could the developer still face charges?	Making the game free makes very little if any difference to the position here. There are two kinds of IP issues that could possibly be involved: copyright and trademark. Note: both copyright and trademark are civil, not criminal issues (except in very limited circumstances which do not apply to the situation described in the question). You will not "face charges" but might possibly be sued. If you are asked to take down such a game and comply, this might end the matter, but if an IP holder claimed that damages had occurred before the game was taken down a suite might possibly still be brought against the developer. Copyright Names, like titles and other short phrases, cannot be protected by copyright. As long as no other text from anyone else, and no images are copied or imitated, copyright is not infringed. This means that there are no copyright issues. Game mechanics and rules cannot be copyrighted, although the words of game rules can be. Therefore, fair use which is a strictly US copyright legal concept, is not involved here. Neither is fair dealing, a somewhat similar legal concept from the UK and some commonwealth and European countries. Trademark Here is the main issue for this situation. The names of individual Pokémon characters are probably (almost surely) protected as trademarks. That means you cannot use them to identify your game, or any other product or service, and you cannot use them to advertise or market your game. This is true even if the "selling price" is $0. The use here does not seem to be nominative use, as you are not intending to refer to Pokémon or any of its variants. You are just reusing the names. As long as you make it very clear that your game is not made by, nor in any way authorized or endorsed by the makers of Pokémon, this is probably not trademark infringement. But if the makers of Pokémon become aware of your game, they might well send you a cease and desist letter, and they might file a trademark infringement suit. Even if you were to win such a suit, as I think you might well do, it might be costly to defend. Could you alter the names to ones you invent form yourself? That might save a lot of trouble and hassle. What is the value to you in reusing the well-known Pokémon names?	It depends on the game and what you copy. Games are an utter nightmare when it comes to IP law as so many parts of them cannot be copyrighted. Game rules for example cannot be copyrighted, nor can the concept itself. Some things can be copyrighted or trademarked. You cannot use the following: Names Written elements- while the rules themselves can't be copyrighted, rulebooks can Artwork and other visual elements Miniatures designed for the game Original characters Try to avoid these and the Hasbro lawyers should leave you alone.	Using it without permission is copyright infringement and illegal. Legally, you can try offering money to the company for the copyright or for a suitable license. For example offer them $1000 for a copy of the code licensed under the GPL license. If they accept, you are fine.	The fact that a developer is showing off work that he/she has done for other another company doesn't imply that that developer owns any copyright to the work. In Canada, see the Copyright Act, § 13 (3): Where the author of a work was in the employment of some other person under a contract of service or apprenticeship and the work was made in the course of his employment by that person, the person by whom the author was employed shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright and § 13 (4): The owner of the copyright in any work may assign the right... In the US, see 17 U.S.C. § 201 (b): In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright. and § 201 (d): The ownership of a copyright may be transferred... "What rights should and should not be attributed to the developer?" That is a business decision to be made on a case-by-case basis. Advice about the prudent balance of copyright between an employer/client and employee/contractor is legal advice. "Is it okay to use this projects as part of the developer's portfolio?" If the developer can link to public use of a product that he/she developed for a company, then the developer is not violating copyright by simply advertising that they worked on the product and linking to, without reproducing, the work. If the developer for whatever reason maintained copyright ownership in the code and other assets, it would not be copyright infringement to reproduce those as part of the portfolio. If the developer did not maintain copyright ownership in the code or assets, reproducing those may be copyright infringement, dependent on whether the copyright owner allowed the developer to reproduce those elements, or if the reproduction is fair use. There may be other laws or contracts implicated, though: non-disclosure agreements, trademark law, among others.	The store is, as far as i can see, not using the trademarked image to sell their cake. Your family does not intend to sell anything at all. This photo, from the description, could not reasonably be confused with an official image from the trademark holder. (all of this is based on your description, of course). Therefore, the trademark holder probably won't sue for trademark infringement, even if they somehow heard of this event, and if they did sue, they would quite likely lose. You would be making a copy of a presumably copyrighted image. You might have an active defense, but that is very hard to be sure of in advance. (Note that "fair use" is a very specifically US legal concept, and would not apply in the UK. The roughly comparable concept is "fair dealing" but that is more restrictive, and follows somewhat different rules.) In any case, it is possible that the rights holder would sue, and if the situation were a bit different (the was only one person pictured, making the shirt with the protected image very prominent, for example) there might be a larger chance of such a suit being successful. No business is going to want a bakery department manager deciding whether a particular use of a particular image does or does not infringe IP rights, and whether it does or does not expose the business to significant risk. Just to get an opinion from their lawyer on whether this image infringes would probably cost them several times the price of the cake with image printing. The store has no doubt written its guidelines to err well on the side of caution, because one suit, even if they won, would cost far more than the profits of many cakes, and if they lost, could have a very negative effect on their bottom line indeed. The store is entitled to restrict what business it does to keep itself safe from lawsuits. It is going to keep well on the cautious side, in all likelihood, and so it should. I fear you will have to find a store with a different policy, or use a different picture.	In my opinion, you are totally free to publish the information. There are two areas of law that can be cosidered - private and public law. In the private law area, you can be liable for revealing trade secrets, but only if you agreed to keep them by a contract. Trade secrets do not exist by themselves (there are minor exceptions, eg. in competition law, but those do not concern us), they must be protected by contracts. Another private limitations, like libel laws, won't apply here. This is not uncommon, but not in cars - you can find clauses like these in software license agreements. Then there is the public area. Is there any regulation, any policy of the state, that prevents you from publishing it? I am not aware you whole legal code of your state, but I doubt there is. It would be a harsh limitation of freedom of speech. Even if the modification could lead to illegal effect (like, modifying toy weapon to kill by rising its power...) it would be only illegal under very rare circumstances. To conclude it - freedom of speech can be limited only if there is sufficient public interest to do so, and I don't see any.	This kind of quotation, for commentary, criticism, or reference, is generally allowed without obtaining permission. In the US, this falls under fair use (see 17 USC 107. In the UK and most commonwealth countries, it falls under fair dealing. In other countries there are various exceptions to copyright that will probably cover this. Even answers that do not directly quote the rule books often use information from those rulebooks to write an answer. Facts and ideas are never protected by copyright, so this is not going to be an issue. See 17 USC 102(b), which provides: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. As a comment by user Trish reminds, game rules are facts and are not protected, although their exact wording may be.	Yes and no. [note, the following is all written about US law. In other jurisdictions laws are, of course, different (though usually not drastically so.)] In the US there are (at least) three different bodies of law that might apply to code: copyright, patents, trade secrets. Copyright covers original expression. Anything you write is automatically, immediately protected under copyright. The copyright applies to the code itself, and anything "derived" from that code. It's up to the courts to decide exactly what "derived" means. One case that's long been viewed as a landmark in this area is Gates Rubber v. Bando Chemicals. The Court of Appeals for the tenth Circuit decision includes a section titled: "The Test for Determining Whether the Copyright of a Computer Program Has Been Infringed." Note that you can register a copyright, and that can be worthwhile, such as helping recover some damages you can't otherwise. Patents are quite different from copyrights. Where a copyright covers expression of an idea, a patent covers a specific invention. Rather than being awarded automatically, a patent has to be applied for, and awarded only after the patent office has determined that there's no relevant prior art to prevent it from being awarded. A patent, however, covers things like somebody else independently discovering/inventing what's covered by the patent. A trade secret could (at least theoretically) apply to some process or procedure embodied in the code. A trade secret mostly applies to a situation where (for example) you're trying to form an alliance with some other company, and in the process tell them things you don't tell the general public. If you've identified the fact that what you're telling them is a trade secret, and they then tell a competitor (or the general public, etc.) or more generally use that information in any way other than the originally intended purpose, it could constitute a trade secret violation. As a side-note: patents and copyright fall under federal law, so they're basically uniform nation-wide. Trade secrets mostly fall under state law, so the exact details vary by state. Absent a reason to believe otherwise, I'd guess your interest here is primarily in copyright infringement. The key here would be showing that one piece of code was derived from the other. That is, it specifically would not apply in a case where there were only a limited number of ways of doing something, so anybody who wanted to do that had to use one of those ways. Since this would not indicate actual derivation, it would not indicate copyright violation.
Does Trump's pardon of the Blackwater mercenaries violate international law? President Trump recently pardoned Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, four Blackwater mercenaries convicted in 2014 of killing civilians in Iraq back in 2007. The United States is a party to some of the Geneva Conventions. A UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries spokeswoman said that "these pardons violate US obligations under international law". Is that correct? Did Trump violate binding obligations of the U.S. government under the Geneva Conventions (the part the U.S. is a party of) to prosecute war crimes with that pardon? This question has two parts: Do the Geneva Conventions the U.S. is party to establish an obligation? Does the pardon legally violate these obligations?	There are a number of complexities that come together that make the claim that President Trump violated obligations under the Geneva Convention difficult to justify. By definition, the Blackwater employees were not mercenaries according to the Geneva Convention (United Nations Mercenary Convention). Among other things, the Geneva Convention requires that a mercenary is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict The Blackwater employees would have been considered civilians according to the Geneva Convention. Although civilians can be considered combatants according to the Geneva Convention in International Armed Conflict, by the time of this incident in 2007 the situation in Iraq was no longer considered International Armed Conflict and it's questionable if the Geneva Convention applied. (The status of the conflict changed with the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004.) The incident that occurred, often called the Nisour Square massacre, was related to Blackwater employees who were guarding a convoy of U.S. State Department employees. In essence, the Blackwater employees were acting as private security guards, not as active participants in armed conflict. As civilians, the employees could have been charged under Iraqi law or U.S. law for the actions they took that day. However, under the Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. contractors were not subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction without the permission of the U.S. From a CRS Report for Congress titled Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues: Under CPA Order Number 17, as revised June 27, 2004, contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts... This left U.S. law, specifically the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA), as a means to prosecute the Blackwater employees for any potential criminal acts and it is under this law the Blackwater employees were ultimately charged and convicted. MEJA allowed persons who are "employed by or accompanying the armed forces" overseas may be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 for any offense that would be punishable by imprisonment for more than one year if committed within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. The Blackwater employees were not charged for "war crimes" under the Geneva Convention but for manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation. Now to the question of President Trump's pardon legally violating the obligations of the Geneva Convention. Assuming that the Geneva Convention applied to the Blackwater employees and their actions at Nisour Square, from a U.S. perspective a treaty cannot alter the President's constitutional powers. The second article of the Constitution of the United States, in Section 2, states: ...he shall have the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. The law upon which the Blackwater employees were convicted was U.S. law; an offense against the United States and, therefore, a pardon for a conviction under this law is within the President's constitutionally granted powers. In Reid v. Covert, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that treaties cannot alter constitutional powers: It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights -- let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition -- to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government, and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined. There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. The pardon issued by President Trump was legal from a U.S. law perspective. As such, it represents an official action of the United States. This would leave it to the United Nations to determine if the U.S. was in violation of any treaty. Given the difficulty in establishing that the Geneva Convention even applied to the actions of the Blackwater employees it seems a stretch to think that the U.S. would be found in violation.	This issue was addressed in United States v. Meng, 2020 BCSC 785. The authority to extradite is via the extraditing state's treaty with the U.S. and its domestic implementing legislation. In Canada, this is the Extradition Act. Extradition requires consent of the extraditing state and for the requesting state to follow the extraditing state's domestic procedure. The question you raise is how sanctions of requesting state affect the interpretation of the domestic offence for the purpose of establishing the double criminality requirement. Critical in this case was that the charged offence was fraud against HSBC (albeit based on alleged concealment of sanctions violations). See para. 23: The double criminality question in the committal hearing is therefore whether Ms. Meng’s alleged conduct, had it occurred in Canada, would have amounted to fraud contrary to s. 380(1)(a) of the Criminal Code. Ms. Meng argued: that the conduct cannot amount to fraud because in essence the proposed prosecution is to enforce US sanctions laws against Iran, measures that are not part of Canadian law and which, indeed, Canada has expressly rejected. The Attorney General argued: that the double criminality analysis may properly take the US sanctions into account as part of the foreign legal backdrop against which the essential conduct is to be understood. The court agreed with the Attorney General: The effects of the US sanctions may properly play a role in the double criminality analysis as part of the background or context against which the alleged conduct is examined.	The law does not say. It is up to the judgment of the judge to determine what constitutes "Le fait de provoquer directement à des actes de terrorisme ou de faire publiquement l'apologie de ces actes". I would not have predicted that the act constituted "faire publiquement l'apologie", but if that expression can reasonably construed as meaning "indicating approval of", then I understand the conclusion. The law does not mention SSIDs, that simply falls under the penumbra of "publicly approving of terrorism", and there isn't a specific list of forbidden acts. Analogously, Holocaust denial is against the law in France, and there is not a specific list of things that you can't say, there is a general rule from which specifics can be inferred. Publicly saying "Free Kurdistan!" could be construed as supporting PKK and thus approving of terrorism, but that would be quite a stretch. Using the SSID Pkk21, on the other hand, could be a problem.	International law is always subordinate to domestic law. In the Westphalian world we live in, all power rests with each and every Sovereign nation. International law is a creation of those nations and only has force where the affected nation acquiesces to it. For example, the US and Russia have refused to sign up to the International Criminal Court so that court has no jurisdiction in their territory or over their citizens. North Korea has refused to sign the Berne convention so there is no protection of foreign copyright there. Similarly, a nation, having entered a treaty, can revoke that treaty. There would be consequences but these would be geo-political, not legal. Of course nations can and do behave hypocritically - insisting that others follow the law they ignore.	Yes. The President can pardon everyone (with the possible exception of himself) of crimes, and can pardon people by category rather than by name. But, the President can only pardon federal crimes that have been committed and are mentioned in the pardon. However, the federal crimes do not have to have resulted in convictions or even charges to be pardonable. Many mass pardons of this type were made after the U.S. Civil War. Another notable mass pardon was of draft dodgers after the Vietnam War was over by President Carter. The President cannot (in the opinion of many, it hasn't been authoritatively resolved) pardon himself. The President cannot pardon a state or local crime or a crime against the law of another country. The President cannot use the pardon power to eliminate the right of one person to sue another person. The President cannot pardon a crime that was not committed at the time that the pardon was issued.	International Humanitarian Law applies to all armed conflicts The Geneva Conventions are a part of the overarching body of this law. It applies to all armed conflicts, not just declared wars. An armed invasion by R of U is a conflict to which IHL applies irrespective of if it is a declared war or not. BTW, declared wars outside Africa and South America are virtually unknown since WWII	Desuetude is the wrong concept. Desuetude relates to laws as a whole falling out of use; it doesn’t relate to individual cases. There is no question that the UK actively enforces their bail laws so they are not falling out of use. There is a statute of limitations that applies to non-major crimes within which the state must initiate prosecution. However, in this case the prosecution for bail violation has been initiated and Mr Assange is “on the run” so this is not relevant. Neither is the fact that the original charges that led to his arrest has been dropped- he is wanted for escaping lawful custody under English law for which the penalty is pretty stiff. I will also venture an opinion that the case against him is as open and shut as it comes. TL;DR When he dies.	I can't comment on what the legal situation would be in your home country, but as a matter of U.S. law, the hypothetical scenario you've described is not illegal. First, because you aren't a U.S. citizen and because you aren't operating in the United States, the U.S. government probably has no jurisdiction over you, your website, or your conduct. Even if it did, the most relevant statute, 18 U.S. Code § 1017, would not apply. The statute prohibits the "fraudulent or wrongful" use of the FBI's seal. But "fraudulent" and "wrongful" generally refer only to conduct where one uses deception or other means to obtain money, property, etc. to which they have no lawful entitlement. United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 399 (1973). Because you aren't using the seal to obtain anyone's property through deception, this use would not fall within the statute's proscriptions. Even if the government sought to prosecute you, you would have a valid First Amendment defense. The First Amendment protects the right to free speech, and it does not allow statements to be criminalized merely because they are false. United States v. Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. 2537 (2012). This outcome should be unsurprising to most U.S. observers. I think most people would agree that the U.S. obviously cannot prosecute a Hollywood producer for making a movie dramatizing the FBI's efforts to shut down the Pirate Bay, even if it displayed the FBI's seizure message on a monitor in the course of the movie, and even if it showed the seal being used on a completely fictional website. The hypothetical you're describing is not materially different. In both cases, the seal is being used to falsely create the impression -- for entertainment purposes -- that the FBI has shut down a website. Saying false things for entertainment purposes is not a crime in the United States.
Can I use a Public Domain work commercially, if I extracted data from a Non-Commercial use digital copy There is a number of digital libraries such as Europeana, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Kramerius, Polona and so forth. Each offers a large colletion of digitized books. Many of these books are available in Public Domain, meaning I can do almost anything with them. But while some libraries allow unrestricted use of their Public Domain content, others do not and limit the use of their copies to Non-Commercial use. It is my understanding that NC only applies to the digital copy, not the work itself. Now, the copy o a book is a collection of images. Let's say I want to use these publicly available NC images to restore the original value of the PD work (i.e. use OCR to obtain text of a book), and then use that extracted data (i.e. PD text) commercially, for instance I want to sell my clean text copies as ebooks. What I would end up in the end is my textual reproduction of a Public Domain work, which I can use. But it would be derived from a Non-Commercial copy. Is that breach of NC licence, if I am profiting from a reproduction of PD text I extracted myself, but using NC digital copy (scanned images) of that book to retrieve it? I personally considered the following line of reasoning in favor of an individual being able to use the end result commercially, i.e. for selling ebooks of Public Domain works: The photographer has copyright in the photograph itself, not in the items photographed. A “slavish copy” of a work would not qualify for protection if there is no creativity involved. Copyright protects literary and artistic expression, not facts. I am interested in how this works globally, but mostly within the EU.	But while some libraries allow unrestricted use of their Public Domain content, others do not and limit the use of their copies to Non-Commercial use. It is my understanding that NC only applies to the digital copy, not the work itself. Your understanding is correct. An ancient text, or one long out of copyright, does not get new protection by creating an image of the text. At most the image itself is protected, not the underlying text. In the US, and other jurisdictiosn that follow the rule of the 1999 Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp case there is no copyright protection on the image because it has no original content. Some EU courts have indicated that they will be following the logic of bridgeman. To the best of my knowledge no EU decision grants copyright protection to an otherwise out-of-copyright work because of its presence in a digital library or collection. However, if a person gained access to a digital library or collection subject to a TOS agreement which includes "no commercial use" terms and then published a text from it commercially, that person might be subject to a breech of contract or similar suit by the library. Such a suit would need to include proof of damages.	Prompted by this recent similar question, I've revisited this question and deleted my original answer as it was completely off the mark. This is its replacement. It is illegal, and it turns out to be an international standard in the Berne Convention. Article 16 in full: (1) Infringing copies of a work shall be liable to seizure in any country of the Union where the work enjoys legal protection. (2) The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall also apply to reproductions coming from a country where the work is not protected, or has ceased to be protected. (3) The seizure shall take place in accordance with the legislation of each country. Your scenario falls squarely within point (2) and the imported George Orwell book is to be treated as an infringing copy within the UK. The implementing UK legislation for (2) can be found in Section 27(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.	You don't say where you are located. Copyright laws are different in different countries, am going to assume US laws. Under US law, a faithful digitization of a book does not get a new copyeight, see Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 25 F. Supp. 2d 421 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) and thw Wikipedia article about that case (On the issue of mrequired originality, see also FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE COMPANY, INC. (No. 89-1909.) (1991) which dealt with copying a telephone directory.) The court in Bridgeman held that: It is uncontested that Bridgeman's images are substantially exact reproductions of public domain works, albeit in a different medium. The images were copied from the underlying works without any avoidable addition, alteration or transformation. Indeed, Bridgeman strives to reproduce precisely those works of art. ... The mere reproduction of a work of art in a different medium should not constitute the required originality for the reason that no one can claim to have independently evolved any particular medium.'" As discussed above, the law requires "some element of material alteration or embellishment" to the totality of the work. At bottom, the totality of the work is the image itself, and Bridgeman admittedly seeks to duplicate exactly the images of the underlying works. ... [O]ne need not deny the creativity inherent in the art of photography to recognize that a photograph which is no more than a copy of the work of another as exact as science and technology permit lacks originality. That is not to say such a feat is trivial, simply not original. The more persuasive analogy is that of a photocopier. Surely designing the technology to produce exact reproductions of documents required much engineering talent, but that does not make the reproductions copyrightable. The Bridgeman court was actually construing UK law, but the earthlier phase of Bridgeman i and the SCOTUS case of Feist show the same result under UIS law. Note that books and other works published before 1925 are now out of copyright in the US. Copyright can also be lost ion other ways, such as publishing without a copyright notice before the effective date of the 1976 act, and failure to properly renew a work published in the US before 1964. Assuming that the book is not under copyright, neither the library nor anyone else has a US copyright in the PFD. Unless the library imposes some additional restriction by contract, any such PDF may be copied or shared freely. It may even be sold or rented. And the validity of such an additional agreement would be questionable, but since the question does not mention such an agreement, I will not go into that further.	Wikipedia, at least the English-language edition of Wikipedia, takes the position that what applies to it is US copyright law. Under that law, anything published in 1924 is now in the public domain, and anything published first in the US, or simultaneously in the US and another country with no copyright notice prior to 1978 (the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act) was never protected by copyright, but was in the public domain from the date of publication. See "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States". Beyond that, the statement quotes would seem to be, in effect, a license permitting free but non-commercial use. That alone would not normally permit Wikipedia use, except under a claim of fair use. So Wikipedia use would be based on the date of publication, or the absence of a copyright notice, or both. As a long-term Wikipedia editor, I am confident that the images described would be usable in Wikipedia articles. They might or might not be up-loadable to Wikimedia commons, but I think they would be. The question of US Federal Government authorship is a distraction, this work would be in the public domain if the US Govt had no role in creating it.	Unfortunately the answer is a vague "it depends." Commercial versus non-commercial is not clearly defined in actual law, and is usually up to the specific license to define what it considers to be commercial use. If you were putting them on your business cards, then it's just being used for advertising and whether it's commercial use is a bit controversial. If the license explicitly prohibits the use of the work in advertising, then the license should explicitly mention that and should not rely on the term "commercial use" to cover or protect it. Creative Commons ran an excellent study on commercial versus noncommercial use back in 2009: Defining “Noncommercial” - A Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” In the United States, for example, the Copyright Act does not define a copyright owner’s rights in terms of commercial or noncommercial use. Instead, copyright law sometimes attaches legal significance to whether a use is “commercial” or “noncommercial” or whether a user is deemed to be a commercial or noncommercial entity, However, rarely are the terms defined, and the law offers no specific guidance on how to differentiate between commercial and noncommercial uses or users of copyrighted works. If you were putting them on a business card you were making for the client, then that would be more clearly identified as commercial use because you're using it in something you are selling for a profit. What your client will be using them for is not relevant, because you're the one selling them to the client and you need to have the right to be able to do that.	"public performance" is a term used in copyright law mostly for music, dance, drama, and audio-visual works, where it means to actually perform the work in front of an audience. For a book it could mean to read the book aloud in front of an audience. It is not largely used for software. I suppose that demonstrating or running the software in front of an audience would be a public performance. Running the software and using its output in a publication would not be a "public performance" as I understand it. As long as the user has the right to access the software, which normally includes the right to run it, the output may be used with no further or special permission.	Yes, you can grant any license you want to your larger work. With respect to Creative Commons, they provide guidance: May I apply a CC license to my work if it incorporates material used under fair use or another exception or limitation to copyright? Yes, but it is important to prominently mark any third party material you incorporate into your work so reusers do not think the CC license applies to that material. The CC license only applies to the rights you have in the work. For example, if your CC-licensed slide deck includes a Flickr image you are using pursuant to fair use, make sure to identify that image as not being subject to the CC license. For more information about incorporating work owned by others, see our page about marking third party content. Read more considerations for licensors here. With respect to MIT License for software, I don't think that many of the reasons for fair use apply to using someone else's source code in your project. If you're creating criticism, commentary, news, or educational material, you probably have more than just code. You should choose a more appropriate license for the complete work (like a Creative Commons License). Taking someone's software source code and trying to use it under fair use may also lead to issues when you consider other factors, such as the purpose of the use, the amount included in the larger work, and the effect of value on the copyrighted work. I'm not finding a lot of cases regarding fair use in software. Galoob v. Nintendo found that you can modify copyrighted software for personal use (not relevant to this discussion). Sega v. Accolade found that copying software for reverse engineering was fair use under certain conditions (again, not relevant here). If you are attempting to use anything under fair use, regardless of the license that you apply to your larger work, you do need to ensure that you do not give the impression that each individual piece of that work is also under that licence once extracted. That's why you need to clearly mark which portions are used pursuant to fair use. If those portions are extracted from the larger work, then the original restrictions to use apply. However, someone can use the larger work under the license you grant. I just wanted to add this brief section to be extremely clear. When you are producing a work, you can choose a license for that work. If you are incorporating someone else's work into your own work, there are two possibilities: You obtain the other person's work under a license. You must abide by this license and all of its requirements. Some licenses are viral in nature, which restrict the licenses that you can apply to the larger work. You use the other person's work under fair use. In this case, you need to properly attribute the work and identify that it is not available under the same license as the larger work. Someone that extracts that smaller portion must abide by the copyright of that work. If it's available under a particular license, they can choose to use that license or under fair use if they are able to. Someone using your complete combined work uses your license.	No. The images are copyrighted, and you are using them in a way that would leave you with virtually no argument for fair use. The factors for fair use are set out in 17 USC 107, and they indicate that the courts would reject your use: The purpose and character of the use, including whether it is of a commercial nature or for nonprofit educational purposes: There's no indication that your use would be for nonprofit or educational purposes. The nature of the copyrighted work: Works of fiction and art are highly creative works at the heart of the policy for copyright protection. The amount of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole: You are apparently copying entire images, though I suppose you could argue that each image is just one small portion of a larger book or website. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: You are trying to create a board game, putting yourselves basically in direct competition with the makers of D&D. I generally prefer a pretty liberal interpretation of what constitutes fair use, but this just has virtually nothing that would make me comfortable arguing in your favor.
"Trump privately admitting it's over" -- can he be therefore be prosecuted for Raffensperger call? Not a lawyer, but if this reporting is correct, wouldn't it greatly increase Trump's legal exposure for the call with Brad Raffensperger about "finding 11,780 votes" this past Saturday, January 2? The hard part about proving mens rea for Georgia §21-2-604 and 52 U.S. Code §20511 is demonstrating that Trump knew that he actually lost, rather than operating under the sincere delusion that he won big, and this article would seem to blow that defense to smithereens. But I get that his MO is to say a bunch of contradictory BS at once, so he can't be pinned down to any specific POV that might prove inconvenient from the legal standpoint. Perhaps he could leverage his frequent (not to say incessant) public statements on how he only lost because of election fraud to establish a plausible deniability that might hold up in court.	There's also the matter of admitting its over is not admitting he lost. Trump could be saying privately that he thinks all possible attempts to contest were blocked, but that since almost all were blocked for non-evidentiary reasons, he can still hold that had the cases progressed to the evidentiary portion the outcomes would have been different. From an apolitical example, just because someone cannot be tried because of statute of limitations, doesn't mean they didn't do the crime... just that the prosecution didn't charge them in a timely manner. The prosecutor, upon getting the decision from the judge that the trial won't even happen, could say to himself or a client "It's all over" while still believing they had the guy they accused dead to rights for the crime. There is further issues with the Politico report that could negate this as evidence of Mens Rea (the first matter is for some reason the link to the report is not working for me, so pardon my ignorance of the details in the article). I'm supposing that Donald Trump did not tell the reporter this story himself, but rather a likely unnamed source that is close to Trump. Here the problem in court would be a matter of evidence (Trump would say he never said this... Politico can't refute that claim by saying we know a guy who says you did... the guy who said Trump said it could testify, but as of yet, we don't have any identity at this stage in the game... the burden of proof is on those who say Donald Trump said something that He himself says he never said or doesn't recall saying. The net result is that the statement attributed to Donald Trump would not be evidence to Mens Rea in any prosectuion right now because there is no specific person attributing the hearsay statement to Trump when Trump denies saying it (it is not hearsay to introduce statements agains opposition's intrest at trial, but the testimony to such evidence needs to be made by a person who was privy to the statement when it happened (they don't need to be the party that the comment was made to... just had to have a valid way of hearing it first hand). With all verbal statements, the larger context also applies, so access to the larger conversation as well as Trump's state of mind in the moment he said it to help infer ultimate meaning. Did Trump think he actually lost because he accepted the results OR did he think lost because he was cheated and denied a chance to be heard in court or have his evidence considered beyond pretrial determinations? The quote could be said in either context and mean totally different things as evidence to the two specific crimes you accuse him of. It's not something to dismiss off hand, but at this stage it is also not a smoking gun. Remember the classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" and that a single lone statement can have multiple meanings... assuming the most appealing meaning can have disasterous results when the statement is put into a broader context.	The 1975 ban by the attorney general prohibited prosecutors from offering to reduce charges, dismiss counts, or request a particular sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. (Ad hoc exceptions were allowed, initially only by the AG, later by the head of each local office. For a while, there was also judicial bargaining). The AG's ban was on quid pro quo arrangements by his office, and the AG has absolutely no power over the plea by an accused, so that is how an accused could still plead guilty. The following quote is from the first page of Rubenstein & White: On July 3, 1975, the Attorney General of Alaska, Avrum Gross, issued written instructions forbidding all district attorneys and their assistants from engaging in plea bargaining. This prohibition extended to all felony and all misdemeanor prosecutions filed as of August 15. They could not offer to reduce charges or dismiss counts in multiple-count complaints, informations, or indictments as a quid pro quo for guilty pleas. Nor could they request the court to impose any stated sentence; they could only recite the facts. I can't locate a copy of the actual memo, but also see this quote, esp. "...negotiations with defendants designed to arrive at an agreement for entry of a plea of guilty in return for a particular sentence...". A guilty plea is much cheaper for a defendant than paying an attorney and getting convicted, so if you're actually guilty and the evidence is good, it could be a wiser move to plead guilty. There is little reason to engage in a futile act. It apparently also caused a change in the prosecutorial standard for charging, from probable cause to beyond a reasonable doubt – consequently, the chances that the accused is actually guilty goes up. The re-evaluation study also found evidence some evidence that sentencing was lighter in the case of a guilty plea, and it would be sufficient for the accused to believe that he could get a lighter sentence as a reward for a guilty plea to nudge a person in the direction of a guilty plea.	The law is really bad at protecting whistleblowers From my understanding of US law, this is not unauthorised access to a computer: the reporter made a legitimate request to a remote computer, that computer provided data,the reporter accessed the supplied data on their own computer. However, pointing out the failures of people in power is fraught even if it is not illegal. It is certainly within the Governor’s power to authorise an investigation of the reporter. On the face of the law, it seems reasonable to suspect that what was done might be a violation so there is nothing legally wrong with initiating an investigation. I suspect that such a broad interpretation of the law would fall foul of the First Amendment which may partly explain why it wasn’t prosecuted: the government doesn’t want to find out. Similarly they can issue press releases, which, due to the First Amendment, don’t have to be true, just not defamatory. Saying it’s a possible violation is true and not defamatory. Saying the reporter was an evil person who is only doing this for political purposes is a statement of opinion and not defamatory. It’s a fact of the world that people with power can use that power in ways that are malicious, unethical, and unfair but not necessarily illegal.	This is wire fraud and punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. It is not relevant that the victims of this fraud are people who support a cause that the US government opposes. Nor is it relevant what your friend chooses to do with the ill-gotten money. It is still just as illegal. Whether your friend would be prosecuted would be at the discretion of federal prosecutors, and political motivations could come into play. That is beyond the scope of Law.SE to address. What is certain is that he could be prosecuted. Giving information to the FBI probably won't help, as from your description, the victims of this fraud aren't doing anything illegal. "Donating money to support Russia", while vague, does not sound like it violates any of the current sanctions.	In the case you link, this was given as an opening statement by the defense. Opening statements do not contain evidence. The defendant may or may not testify on their own behalf during the trial - this testimony, if given, counts as evidence, even if it is somewhat self-serving. And anything which tends to casts doubt as to the defendant's guilt is evidence that they didn't do it, even if it isn't proof. If there is reasonable doubt, then "he didn't do it" is not illogical. And it would seem unfair to allow the prosecution to say "he did it" but not allow the defense to say "no he didn't".	We don't have enough facts to know. What Bob said about having violated the injunction, which could expose him to criminal contempt of court liability, was not true. But, the precise details of what he said, to whom he said it, and his relationship to the case, are not clear. Saying something that isn't true isn't always against the law, and even when it is against the law, the consequences depend upon the context. An intentionally false statement of fact to a police officer or to the court under oath would probably be a crime (but, unlike U.S. practice, criminal defendants who testify are not generally required to testify under oath). An unintentionally false statement of fact to the same persons (e.g. because Bob misheard the question or was drunk at the time and assumed that the statement of fact he was making was true or had dementia) would probably not have legal consequences for him. A mere confession - I am guilty of violating the civil injunction - would probably not be perjury or fraud because guilt of a civil injunction includes opinions and legal conclusions which are not actionable, as well as implied statements of fact, which might be actionable. But, if he confessed in the form of a plea, there probably wouldn't have been a trial at all. Once he made his plea, his factual guilty or innocence might be irrelevant in the face of a judicial admission. Courts can sometimes sanction parties to lawsuits for wasting everyone's time under quite specific circumstances, but we don't know precisely what relationship Bob has to the case in which the injunction was entered.	"Fraud" is a broad term. In the first 9 months of Fiscal Year 2015, the US Government prosecuted 5173 white collar crimes, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. This includes mail fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the US, identity theft, health care fraud, wire fraud, and others (listed in the link). Federal prosecutors have a large amount of discretion in when to bring charges. See The Department of Justice Policy on Charging and Sentencing and Title 9 of US Attorney's Manual, Section 27 (Principles of Federal Prosecution). These are not laws, but internal department guidance to prosecutors that outline the factors they should consider when making charging decisions. There is quite a lot of detail in these guidelines, but at the highest level, they are summed up by this paragraph from the Attorney General's memo: Accordingly, decisions regarding charging, plea agreements, and advocacy at sentencing must be made on the merits of each case, taking into account an individualized assessment of the defendant's conduct and criminal history and the circumstances relating to commission of the offense (including the impact of the crime on victims), the needs of the communities we serve, and federal resources and priorities. The US Attorney's Manual gives very specific guidance regarding the prosecution of various forms of fraud. For example, Title 9, Section 43 covers mail and wire fraud. Here is an excerpt: Prosecutions of fraud ordinarily should not be undertaken if the scheme employed consists of some isolated transactions between individuals, involving minor loss to the victims, in which case the parties should be left to settle their differences by civil or criminal litigation in the state courts.	The witness can go outside and ask questions of the witness’ lawyers So if, for example, Mr Trump chooses to testify to the grand jury he goes in alone - no lawyers. If he wants to consult his lawyers he needs to ask to do, leave the room and consult them. If I were Mr Trump’s lawyer I would be worried that he wouldn’t know when he should do that.
Is a voicemail proof of intent to leave an estate to somebody? Say that person A (who owns an apartment in Miami) left a voicemail message to person B (to whom they are not related—person B would not otherwise inherit anything) saying they want to leave B everything and that he doesn't have long left to live. Suppose that there is a logical reason for A to do so—that B had helped them when they needed help. If person A does pass away, would a voicemail hold up in any kind of probate court?	If this is Florida, then a will has to be written. If there is no written will, the estate falls under the law of intestate succession, part 1. Per § 732.502, every will must be in writing, signed, and witnessed (therefore a voice mail is not a will). If there are any relatives, they may be entitled to a share; otherwise, the estate goes to the state, where it is sold and the funds go into the state school fund (§732.107).	Consider that stuff "court costs" or "court fees." They are actually often things not related to the court, like environmental fee, or emergency medical something or other, or park poop bag fee. Pretty much whatever either the legislature or administrative decision makers what to put on there. And FWIW, if you were not texting get your phone records and bring them to court to prove that you did not send any texts in or around that time.	FIRST: A last will and testament does not have to be disclosed to anyone [1] prior to death. But at death, notice of the commencement of a probate proceeding which is necessary for the will to be given effect must generally be given to: (1) everyone who takes under the will, and (2) everyone who would take if either that particular version of the will were invalid and a prior will that it revokes is valid, and (3) everyone who would take if there were no valid will, and (4) creditors whose claims are accepted as valid, but are not paid due to the insolvency of the probate estate. Everyone entitled to notice of the probate of a will is entitled to see the last will and testament submitted to the court in its entirety. The case could be placed under seal to prevent people other than interested parties and their lawyers from seeing the will, but not sons of a decedent who are interested parties by definition even if they get nothing under the will, because they would take if there was no will. SECOND: This said, it is easy to make a secret transfer effective upon death via a variety of non-probate transfers such as a beneficiary designation on an account, or the provisions of a trust, that don't require a court proceedings to take effect the way that a will does (people who think that they can avoid probate by having a will are fundamentally mistaken, probate is a court proceeding necessary to give a will legal effect). Only some of these methods of making a secret gift work if the estate is subject to estate taxes which requires disclosures to be made on gift and estate tax returns of all transfers taking effect at death (something that can be circumvented by making a transfer during life that is not reportable during life because it is within some exception to gift taxation). NOTES: [1] Usually a will has to be shown to the two witnesses to a will, unless it is executed under the recently repealed Louisiana law allowing for a "mystic will" which has seven people witness the envelope but no one witness the will itself prior to death. Of course, holographic wills, substantially in the handwriting of the person writing them, don't have to be witnessed at all.	Normally, a recorded deed is taken at face value. If Bob acquires a house and conveys the house to Bob and Clark, his cousin, a joint tenants with right of survivorship, or pays for 99% of the price of a house and directs that it will be deeded to Bob and Clark as joint tenants with right of survivorship, the normal interpretation of that transaction is that Bob made a gift of an undivided one half interest in the property with right of survivorship to Clark. It sounds like the fact pattern is that Bob dies before Clark, giving Clark 100% title of record to the house subject to the mortgage, and Bob's heirs are not cool about that fact and would like to escape that consequence. This is a tall order for Bob's heirs. Normally, at least two important rules of evidence will preclude admission of testimony to the contrary. One is the parole evidence rule. This excludes as a matter of law evidence of discussions entered into prior to execution of an unambiguous written instrument that is not on its face incomplete, even if other evidence, called "extrinsic evidence" is available. The other is the dead man's statute, which is quite tricky in its technical application, but is basically designed to prevent an interested party from offering self-serving testimony that economically benefits them about what a deceased person said. The classic examples would be "I'll sell you these gold bars for $10", or "I'm giving you this painting", or "I agree to let you live in my house after I die rent free for 11 months." A statement regarding an intended ownership interest in joint tenancy with right of survivorship real estate asserting that it is not 50-50 when nothing on the face of the deed suggests that this is case might be barred by the dead man's statute since these are statements of a dead man that favor the person offering the evidence. But, as I say, the application of the rule is quite technical. Also, to the extent that any third-party like a lender or a judgment creditor of the surviving joint tenant gets a lien or other property right in the property that is recorded, and that person had no knowledge of the claims of ownership outside real property records of the relative rights of the joint tenants, that evidence couldn't be used to impair or reduce the third-party's rights in the property by virtue of the recording statutes. If a dispute arose while the co-owners were alive at a time when there were no disputed claims of third-parties to the property, the joint tenancy would be easy to severed into a tenancy-in-common, and the actual relative contributions and right of the parties could be litigated in court with the testimony of those parties. But, usually, the four unities are in practice, a consequence of a joint tenancy with right of survivorship deed being prepared and recorded, rather than primarily being a condition precedent to it. If a single deed is executed that says that grantee are two or more people who are described as joint tenants with right of survivorship, then the legal consequence of that deed is that the co-owners become equal owners with a right of survivorship and unlimited right to possession of the whole. Also, even though it isn't standard, it isn't impossible for property to be in a tenancy-in-common which a side agreement to make a transfer upon death to the remaining tenant-in-common, even if it isn't a true joint tenancy with right of survivorship. So, if one proved by some competent and admissible evidence that a 50-50 ownership was not intended and that it wasn't a true canonical joint tenancy, this wouldn't necessarily invalidate the survivorship provisions on the face of the deed. A judge would be more likely to treat the deed as a non-standard non-probate transfer at death than to treat it as a tenancy-in-common without a right of survivorship, despite language of survivorship on the face of the recorded deed. Now, something other than equal co-ownership might be admissible for some purposes, like tax consequences, but that wouldn't go to who gets the property when a co-owner of the property dies. From an evidentiary standpoint, the case would [be based upon] . . . non-will ledgers, third party banking transactions, and letters of evidence that show the decedent undertook full responsibility for expenses related to the acquisition and maintenance of the property. The joint tenant was involved in the deed and mortgage issuance by the decedent for the sole purpose of mortgage qualification (i.e. credit requirements) This doesn't sound very convincing. First, there is nothing inconsistent with a joint tenancy with right of survivorship with one co-owner being the person who provides the funds for purchasing the home and handling all of the maintenance and expenses. This is more common than not in the case of a married couple or pair of unmarried domestic partners that own the real property as joint tenants with right of survivorship and it used to be even more common. Second, a lender would almost always require that all people obligated on the mortgage be owners of the property, and that all owners of the property be obligated on the mortgage. (Strictly speaking, in California, it would probably be a deed of trust rather than a mortgage, but that is functionally equivalent.) But, it wouldn't be very common as a commercial requirement to insist on joint tenancy with right of survivorship as opposed to tenancy-in-common ownership. Also since providing credit to a transaction is something of value, getting an ownership interest in the property in exchange isn't beyond the realm on possibility and plausibility in a deal that isn't entirely arms length but isn't entire a gift either. Providing credit is probably sufficient consideration to support the deal as a binding contractual agreement. Now, the best strategy might be a letter or exchange of letters that amount to an agreement. This wouldn't bind the mortgage company, but might have some relevant. Still, if the letters predate the execution of the joint tenancy deed, the parole evidence rule might keep the letters out of evidence. Some sort of express trust theory, treating the letters as a trust agreement, might if the language was right, be a stronger legal argument. I'm trying to wrap my head around how a court would interpret documentation vs. intent with regard to the joint tenancy ownership of real property. The key point being that the decedent didn't 'generally' pay for the property, but always paid for it. This is almost completely irrelevant. It is consistent with the alternative characterization of the transaction, but it is also consistent with the deed terms. In particular, if the decedent described the remaining joint tenant as a 'renter' during an interval of co-habitation, and no financial transactions between the two took place subsequent to that. I could imagine bringing a legal action to reform the deed, but the threshold of proof to win that action is pretty high. Absent some sort on undue influence or abuse of a confidential relationship, I have a hard time seeing a deed like this being reformed by a court to reflect a different kind of transaction, even if that was the original intent of the parties, but it isn't impossible if the right facts and evidence were available (which the dead man's statute, again, heavily constrains). If Bob was defrauded by Clark, I could also imagine some sort of legal remedy being available. But it is hard to think that Bob who was the primary mover in the deal would have been defrauded by Clark in this fact pattern. In California, the relevant case law seems to be Kershman v Kershman, Milian v DeLeon, and Cosler v Norwood Kershman v. Kershman is not on point. It is a divorce case dealing with the issues of marital v. separate property under California's community property regime which is an entirely different body of law that doesn't apply to unmarried co-owners of property. Milian v. De Leon is more on point, involving unmarried people with unequal contributions to the property who take title by a deed that says joint tenancy. it found that, “once the court in a partition action has determined that a true joint tenancy exists, it may not order reimbursement or contribution on account of differences in the amounts the parties have paid toward the initial acquisition of the property.” Milian v. De Leon (1986) 181 Cal.App.3d 1185, 1195. (Source) This holding is the standard common law rule. It isn't isn't really relevant here, however, because that case applies in the context of a partition action while the co-owners are alive, and not after death when the survivorship feature causes the surviving co-owner to be sole owner by operation of law. Cosler v. Norwood is a much older case, from 1950, and seems to stand for the proposition that the language of the deed regarding equal ownership that flows from calling the co-owners joint tenants can be overcome by extrinsic evidence in the context of a partition action, although it is arguably implicitly repealed by Milian v. De Leon. But it isn't on point for the same reason that Milian v. DeLeon in not on point - it considers the rights of two living parties in a partition action dispute (i.e. a lawsuit to untangle co-ownership of property), not concerning the validity of a survivorship provision in the deed in the presence of unequal contributions to the acquisition price. Changes to the survivorship rights do not obviously at all flow from the existence of unequal contributions.	In principle, a verbal contract is just as binding as a written contract. The catch is that it can be difficult to prove what was said. Unless you have witnesses, it would just be your word against his. As DStanley says in the comments, if you have proof that you paid half -- canceled checks or receipts or whatever -- that would be evidence that there was some sort of agreement. Whether your daughter is allowed to drive the car on a specific day depends not just on who owns the car but who has legal custody of your daughter. If a friend of hers said that it is okay with him for her to drive his car to a wild party where there will be drugs and an orgy, the fact that he has full title to the car does not mean that her parents have no right to tell her she can't go! You didn't say what the custody arrangements are, but if you have full custody or shared custody, this would give you certain rights to tell her what she is and is not allowed to do.	There are several questions in the OP. The answers to all of them depend on the lease terms. If Person A wants out of the lease, is the only option to just try to negotiate a way out of their portion of the lease with the landlord, presumably by payment or other means? Yes, usually. Regardless of who is on the lease, Person A is on the lease. In order to terminate or break the lease, Person A will have to negotiate termination. Most residential leases provide for joint and several liability for lease obligations. That means the co-signed lease is like three non-exclusive leases, one each between landlord and Persons A, B, and C. So Person A has to find a way to break the Person A lease. Other than a breach by either party, that likely can only be done by negotiation with landlord. What rights do Person B and C have if Person A does stop paying? Absent some other relationship or understanding between them (that is, other than the lease,) likely none. Persons B and C are each fully responsible to pay all of the rent. In other words, as far as the landlord is concerned it does not matter who pays the rent as long as it gets paid. If it doesn't get paid, the landlord can evict and sue all 3 for non-payment of rent. But the lease likely does not discuss the relationships between A, B, and C - whether they pay pro rata by time in the unit, by space used, per capita, or whatever. Landlord doesn't care, and is not the counterparty to those decisions. That said, if there is a relationship between A, B, & C (for instance, if A & B had a contract describing who would pay what, and B entered into another contract with C,) that will determine their relative obligations. The landlord agrees to allow the lease to be amended for another person, person C to be on the lease. Person B negotiated this with the landlord without consent of person A. This may create liability between B to A, C to A, or B & C to A. It is even conceivable that it creates a liability from landlord to A, if A had a reasonable expectation that the lease would not be amended absent A's consent. And the amendment may not be enforceable against A. So, for instance, A may be able to kick C out of the unit and bar C from reentry. It will not effect A's liability to pay rent.	A text message is just as legally binding as a letter, and the lion's share of the cases have held that a text message from a known sending phone number is equivalent to a signed letter. One would have to carefully parse the exchange of communications to see if they amounted to a binding offer and acceptance, but the fact that it was in a text message, rather than on a piece of paper is irrelevant. Indeed, generally speaking, such an offer and acceptance, if the words exchange show that, could be binding even if made orally, if it could be proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Procedurally, however, once a judgment has been entered, as is the case here, the process of proving that you have complied with a stipulation regarding what is to constitute payment in full may be challenging. I'll leave the question of civil procedure in Connecticut small claims court to someone more knowledgable about it than I am as that could vary a lot from state to state, or even from court to court based upon local practice within the state.	Of course The prosecution just needs to prove that the crime happened (or the defendant believed it to have happened) and you helped (in brief, there will be specific elements of the crime that each need to be proved). This would be easier if the primary crime had a convicted perpetrator but it’s not impossible without. Allow me to illustrate with an example. I will set out facts which are somewhat contrived and would not be so clear cut in a real case but for the purposes of the example please take them as undisputed and fully supported by evidence. John and Jill are in a relationship. This relationship is well known to be argumentative with frequent shouting matches and one or the other storming out. This does not amount to domestic violence by either party. John's friend Alan believes (wrongly) that there is domestic violence. During an argument Jill drops dead of a heart attack. John rings Alan distraught and says "I've killed her." Alan assumes (wrongly) that John has murdered Jill. Alan says "i'll take care of it. You go to your dad's". Alan (alone) disposes of the body. John is not guilty of murder (or indeed, anything). Alan is guilty of accessory to murder even though the actual crime never happened. The fact that Alan believed it happened is enough.
Does the Fourteenth Amendment give community college students the right to distribute election materials at any time? I am a student at a local community college that is, to my knowledge, owned and operated by the county's department of education. One day, the student organization was hosting a barbecue. Student elections were coming up, and a friend of mine was running. I saw him at the barbecue distributing his "vote for me" cards. A barbecue worker reminded him "this is an (college initials withheld) event". Suppose I were to volunteer to distribute these cards in exchange for nothing. Could the college go after me for distributing these fliers during the barbecue? Also, can the college actually do anything to my friend for distributing, or causing to be distributed, such cards during the event?	Almost no constitutional right, for the most part, applies or gives rise to an all-encompassing right at all times. Schools can determine that certain times are off limits as activity during those times may interrupt the environment most conducive to learning, or for other articulable reasons; this is fine so long as it is applied evenly. Schools may say you may not hand out literature at certain times, only before or after classes, weekends, or put limits on the place or manner of distribution. There are examples of this premise that exist, pertaining to nearly every right, otherwise considered absolute. This is no different than the principle that while Americans enjoy the right to free speech, not all speech is protected at all times, or that the right to bear arms does not apply to all people, places, or environs.	States have a general police power, meaning that they can pass laws about whatever they want unless there's a specific reason they can't. A state does not have to give special justification for why something is in the realm of stuff they can regulate; someone challenging it has to say what specific section of the Constitution it violates. For a time, the Due Process clause of the US Constitution was considered to imply freedom of contract. This time ended in the 1930s. The doctrine of a constitutionally protected freedom of contract is pretty much completely dead. A state can't abridge the freedom of contract for no reason, but that's because just about any law needs some reason to be allowed. The level of review is that the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest; this is not a very demanding level of review. Source State bar associations are given power by laws making it illegal to practice law without being a member of the bar and requiring licensed lawyers to comply with bar rules. State bars that control admission to practice are generally government agencies (specifically, agencies of the court system). When the state bar is not a government agency, attorney discipline and licensing is handled by a government agency (lawyers might have to join the bar, but the bar has to accept licensed lawyers as members; the bar's power in these cases is limited to recommendations to the courts).	I see lots of possible issues here, including: Will the Apprendi decision be given retroactive effect? Were the constitutional issues raised at the time of trial, and if not will a court permit them to be raised later? Will a court agree with the law review publication? Will the facts in your case be sufficiently similar to the cited case? Beyond those, in a section 1983 suit many public employees have qualified immunity unless the legal point was already "well established" when the violation occurred. To pursue this you will need to work with a lawyer skilled in this area. No one on this forum can possibly given you a reliable answer as to whether you have a reasonable case.	The main relevant bit of constitutional law is Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, where it was held that a general law against use of peyote does not violate the Free Exercise clause, though in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 a law specifically designed to restrict Santeria animal sacrifices is an undue burden on religion. The Employment Division court cites Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 as the only cases where the First Amendment prevents a generally applicable law from applying in a religious context, which the court notes "are distinguished on the ground that they involved not the Free Exercise Clause alone, but that Clause in conjunction with other constitutional protections". The TRO doesn't go into detail about the reasoning: Based on the materials presented and the arguments of counsel, the court finds: (1) Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim alleging a violation of their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion So it is hard to say on what grounds the plaintiffs are likely to succeed. The governor's order is a bit peculiar, because it initially looks like a neutral 10-person limit on gatherings, but on the one hand makes an exception for religious events by allowing any number of people "officiating" so sets the limit on participants (advantage to religion, not constitutional), but then also includes numerous exceptions to the order, including schools, day-care, food pantries, detox centers, shopping malls, restaurants and so on. The set of exceptions is large enough that one might conclude that this is an undue burden on the exercise of religion. The breadth of the number of exceptions undermines claims of "necessity" which are crucial to any order that closes churches.	First, there are many versions of Robert's Rules of Order: here is an early free version. §26(c) suggests a procedure for creation of a committee to draft resolutions, and §53 contemplates other (standing) committees. Nothing therein suggests that there are restrictions on the right of a member to vote, in terms of a mandatory adjournment. However, RRO is not a Universal Organizational Bylaws, so in order to have any force, it must be adopted as part of the bylaws (in whole or part). It especially cannot dictate who is eligible to vote – that is a detail that has to be in the organization's bylaws.	It is the job of the judge to instruct the jury about the law. If Texas had pattern instructions I'd look up what the instruction is for this matter, but you don't, so I don't know what the judge would say. But it is the judge's sole prerogative to instruct the jury in the law. If the question is a "commitment question", then it is an improper question and should be disallowed, see Stendefer v. State. The question "Would you presume someone guilty if he or she refused a breath test on their refusal alone?" is such a commitment question, and is disallowed. Similarly, "If the evidence, in a hypothetical case, showed that a person was arrested and they had a crack pipe in their pocket, and they had a residue amount in it, and it could be measured, and it could be seen, is there anyone who could not convict a person, based on that" (Atkins v. State, 951 S.W.2d 787). An improper commitment question could be of the type "could you refrain...": Let us assume that you are considering in the penalty phase of any capital murder case, okay? And some of the evidence that has come in shows that the victim's family was greatly impacted and terribly grieved and greatly harmed by the facts․Can you assure us that the knowledge of those facts would not prevent you or substantially impair you in considering a life sentence in such a case (Penry v. State, 903 S.W.2d 715). One way in which a commitment question can be legal is if it asks basically "can you uphold the law?", for example "can you consider probation in a murder case?", or "are you willing to consider mitigating circumstances". The wrong answer to those questions will lead to a for-cause dismissal. The third question is flagrantly improper, the first is rather improper, and the second probably is. If the question can be framed in terms of a candidate's willingness to follow the law, then it should be legal.	most likely The government can't compel people to some sort of speech under the 1st amendment. Forcing a company to host people is compelled speech by the company. It is well established that the government can't compel a newspaper to host its messages as it wants. The key case might be Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo 418 US 241 (1974). In this case, it was deemed unconstitutional that a newspaper would need to host speech of a political candidate the newspaper didn't like in the same amount it had used to disparage that candidate. While the Miami Herald brought the newspaper into the line by the action of the newspaper, Wooley v. Maynard 430 U.S. 705 (1977) held that the state could not force any citizen to host its motto. Or for the matter, any message. The State may not constitutionally require an individual to participate in the dissemination of an ideological message by displaying it on his private property in a manner and for the express purpose that it be observed and read by the public. Pp. 71717. Forcing a public web page to host advertisement or speech from any government - or under the threat of the government action - is compelled speech and violates the rulings of Miami Herald, Wooley and other cases. However, there is a little light for the government under PruneYard, Turner Broadcasting and Rumsfeld. However, all of them don't cut here: Turner Broadcasting was about a service provider for radio that did not host its own speech. PruneYard is a shopping center that doesn't host its own speech and is only useful in California as there is a California constitution issue. And Rumsfeld dealt with military recruitment, which always is special. A similar Florida law was deemed to be very likely unconstitutional by the (federal) Northern District of Florida (Injunction Text) Addendum A joint lawsuit by NetChoice & CCIA was filed against Texas on 22nd September 2021 (Complaint), asking for a preliminary injunction. NetChoice puts its filings on their website. Further reading: Ken White - Make No Law podcast #11: Deplatformed Ken White - Section 230 Is The Subject of The Most Effective Legal Propaganda I've Ever Seen 01st December 2021 Update Indeed, the relevant parts of HB20 were put out of enforcement via injunction on December 1st, 2021, reasoning that: Social media platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms. See Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1932 (2019) (recognizing that “certain private entities[] have rights to exercise editorial control over speech and speakers on their properties or platforms”). Three Supreme Court cases provide guidance. First in Tornillo, the Court struck down a Florida statute that required newspapers to print a candidate’s reply if a 13 newspaper assailed her character or official record, a “right of reply” statute. 418 U.S. at 243. [...] In Hurley v. Irish-Am. Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Grp. of Bos., the Supreme Court held that a private parade association had the right to exclude a gay rights group from having their own float in their planned parade without being compelled by a state statute to do otherwise. 515 U.S. 557, 572– 73 (1995). [...] Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that California could not require a private utility company to include a third party’s newsletters when it sent bills to customers in Pac. Gas & Elec. Co. v. Pub. Utilities Comm’n of California, 475 U.S. 1, 20–21 (1986). HB 20 compels social media platforms to significantly alter and distort their products. Moreover, “the targets of the statutes at issue are the editorial judgments themselves” and the “announced purpose of balancing the discussion—reining in the ideology of the large social-media providers—is precisely the kind of state action held unconstitutional in Tornillo, Hurley, and PG&E.” Id. HB 20 also impermissibly burdens social media platforms’ own speech. Id. at *9 (“[T]he statutes compel the platforms to change their own speech in other respects, including, for example, by dictating how the platforms may arrange speech on their sites.”). For example, if a platform appends its own speech to label a post as misinformation, the platform may be discriminating against that user’s viewpoint by adding its own disclaimer. HB 20 restricts social media platforms’ First Amendment right to engage in expression when they disagree with or object to content. For these reasons, IT IS ORDERED that the State’ s motion to dismiss, (Dkt. 23), is DENIED. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, (Dkt. 12), is GRANTED. Until the Court enters judgment in this case, the Texas Attorney General is ENJOINED from enforcing Section 2 and Section 7 of HB 20 against Plaintiffs and their members. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), Plaintiffs are required to post a $1,000.00 bond. IT IS FINALLY ORDERED that Plaintiffs’ motion to strike, (Dkt. 43), is DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE AS MOOT.	It appears that the "leading" source of Freedom of Movement is the Privileges and Immunities Clause (Art. IV, S.2 , Cl. 1) of the US Constitution, that "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States". See Crandall v. State of Nevada, 73 US 35: "We are all citizens of the United States, and as members of the same community must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own states" (quoted from an earlier case); US v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 In all the states, from the beginning down to the establishment of the Articles of Confederation, the citizens possessed the right, inherent in citizens of all free governments, peacefully to dwell within the limits of their respective states, to move at will from place to place therein, and to have free ingress thereto and egress therefrom citing the Privileges & Immunities clause as the constitutional foundation. However, this article, sect. IB notes a number of additional constiutional sources: Various Justices at various times have suggested no fewer than seven different sources: the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and [sic] Immunities Clause, a conception of national citizenship said to be implicit in the structural logic of the Constitution itself, the Commerce Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and each of the Due Process Clauses. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 relates freedom of movement to the Commerce Clause, Aptheker v. Sec’y of State, 378 U.S. 500 points us to the Due Process clause. The argument hasn't apparently been made based on the First Amendment, since there are better arguments.
Can I use my Stack Overflow profile to release the contents of my questions and answers under a secondary license? As I understand, when I post something on Stack Overflow (or other Stack Exchange sites), I have copyright on the contents of the post and I've licensed significant redistribution and re-licensing rights to Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow then releases that content to other netizens under an open license, but requires attribution in the form of a link to the original answer. I have occasionally seen users on Stack Overflow who update the 'bio' section of their profile page to say something like 'I hereby release all of my contributions to Stack Overflow, past, present, and future, into the public domain.'. Since those users do hold copyright, it seems to me this is valid. I.e., anyone using the content can choose to use it under the license offered by Stack Overflow (with attribution required) or as public domain content as offered by the user themself (without attribution required). Is it valid to use the 'bio' section of your Stack Overflow profile to release your Stack Overflow contributions under a secondary license? Does the answer differ if releasing to the public domain rather than under a secondary license?	You can licence your copyright under as many licences as you like to as many people as you like It's your copyright - you can do what you want with it. What you can't do is give someone an exclusive licence and then give licences to others - that would be a breach of contract with the exclusive licensee. How you let people know about the available licences is also up to you - your bio on Stack Exchange is fine.	It seems that you don’t understand what parody is. If you do understand, please explain how it’s even possible to parody computer code. What you can do with “open source” code depends on the licence the copyright holder(s) release it under. For some very permissive licences you can do what you suggest, for most, you can’t.	You can put anything you like in a ToS document, but not everything you might put there will be enforceable. By posting something on the web, you are inviting anyone to read it. In some jurisdictions that may include the right to make and store a personal copy, although not multiple copies or a copy for commercial use. You can taker technical measures to prevent automated access and automated downloads (scraping). There was a case (hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp, 938 F.3d 985 (9th Cir. 2019)) in which access restrictions were held binding in a US court, but in that case the site owner had notified the would-be reuser (a competitor) directly. The laws on this sort of thing may differ from country to country, and are not as well-settled as older parts of the law tend to be. The question asks: can I list in my terms of service that all users acknowledge I own their posts ... The only way in which the host could "own" the posts would be if the users transferred copyright to the host, or granted the host an exclusive license. Under US law this would take a written and signed document. Clicking an "I agree" box or button might constitute a valid signature. A statement that "by using this site you agree ..." would pretty clearly not. You might prohibit bots copying from your site and posting duplicates, but to prohibit users re-posting their own messages elsewhere is harder, legally, and leas reasonable in my view. Under US law you could not actually file suit for copyright infringement until you had registered the copyright, but that is not true in many other countries.	Probably not. There are potential problems on the levels of copyright, data protection, and the Youtube terms of service. You should assume that comments are typically covered by copyright. You do not have a license to these comments, only YouTube does. Therefore, YouTube can show the comments but you can't copy them – just like YouTube can stream your videos but others can't download them and host them on their own websites. To cover the copyright angle, you'd either need to obtain a license from the commenters, or get a sub-license from YouTube, or identify a suitable copyright exception. The comments are personal data within the meaning of the GDPR, so that your processing of these comments (including mere storage) would be subject to GDPR as well. You need a legal basis for processing personal data. Which legal basis is suitable would depend on the purpose of processing, and on your relationship with the commenters. Potentially applicable legal bases in this context: you have a contract with the commenters that requires you to show the comments on your website. For example, I could see such a contract if there were a “featured comment” perk for a Patreon subscription. But this is not going to fly with random commenters. you have a legitimate interest (LI) that allows the processing. A LI requires that you conduct a balancing test where you weigh this interest against the commenter's rights. This is very specific to the purposes for which you want to show the comments. However, a LI will generally only apply if you have an existing relationship with the commenters, making it possible for them to expect that this processing will occur – unlikely if you'll be scraping comments from YouTube. you have obtained consent from the data subject. Consent must be specific, informed, freely given, and unambiguous – you can't obtain consent by writing “by commenting under this video you consent to XXX” in the video description. Regardless of legal basis, you would have to inform the commenters under Art 14 GDPR when you scrape their comments from the platform. Finally, consider the platform terms of service. I have not read the YouTube ToS recently, so I don't know what their specific conditions are. But in general, such ToS will not allow you to scrape content from their platform in order to host it somewhere else. The ToS might allow certain actions like embedding a link/iframe to such videos on other sites, without allowing other actions such as copying other user's content to your site.	According to the current version of the TOS: You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. This explicitly says you own your content, although Medium has some rights to do some things. And they won't sell it without permission, so unless Medium itself is publishing this book, it would seem to be copyright infringement. (Of course, I don't know what the TOS said when you originally wrote the article.) If what was copied was not copyrightable (like a quote from the Constitution, or a simple uncreative graph of something obvious) then it wouldn't be infringement. But your article was probably more than that.	are there any safeguards you could take to preemptively block such behavior, such as a disclaimer inside the book cover that reads something like The safeguard you outline would be overridden as soon as the author enters any contract that requires assignment of copyright. (I would not delve in the differences between licensing and copyright assignment because that hypothetical author is dealing with a contract of adhesion which readily requires assignment; the author has no option to change the ToS to allow for licensing only) Under contract law, one of the essential prerequisites is that the conditions of a contract be entered knowingly and willfully. By deliberately clicking on a ToS page to move forward with the uploading a copyrighted work, the author is signaling his awareness and acceptance of the ToS. The fact that the author chose not to read the ToS is irrelevant and very unlikely to strike whatever entitlements the website owner formulated in the accepted ToS. For the same reason, the author's safeguard disclaimer does not bind the website owner: It cannot be said that the website owner was aware of that disclaimer at the time of the formation of contract between the author and the website owner. That is, the website owner did not knowingly and willfully accepted the author's safeguard. The website owner is not even expected to know about any safeguards which one of its potential user intends to establish. The length of a ToS document is also irrelevant because the website owner has the valid argument that "the user-author could have skimmed through the ToS or do a search (via Control-Find) of keywords such as 'copyright' or 'property', whence any allegation of 'inadvertent' assignment of copyright is untenable". Is there a way to protect your IP from inadvertently being licensed/stolen/assigned via TOS "agreements", without having to waste your life reading huge one-sided online "contracts" that are "subject to change without notice" anyway? Yes. That consists of not uploading one's works in such platforms. In contract law that would be expressed as "declining an exchange of considerations". There are many other alternatives for an author to promote his work without being required to assign copyright.	As long as you own the copyright to the works, you can even publish the source code itself under two different licenses, which can be radically different. For example, MySQL is licensed under both a commercial and an open-source license. Given that you can publish a single piece of work as multiple licenses, it is your choice which one you wish to grant to the book or the code, as long as you own the copyright.	It's not illegal to say things in your profile. SE requires you to license your content to them on a non-exclusive basis pursuant to CC BY-SA 4.0. "Non-exclusive" means that you can also license the material to others on some other basis, e.g. CC0. In that case, a person who uses your material can rely on the other license that you granted. If SE wanted to, it could prohibit putting licenses in a user profile, in which case you would have to promulgate your more generous license elsewhere.
May an employer legally terminate a contract, should the planned funding supporting that contract cease to exist? A Canadian university issues job offers for its post-doctoral fellows according to a template in which one reads: This appointment is a term appointment from [date] to [date], and is funded, at least in part, from funds external to the University’s general purpose operating budget. In the event that these funds cease to be available, your appointment will be terminated. What is the rationale behind the legality of this clause? (Assuming that the employee's performance is satisfactory) shouldn't the employer be fully responsible for the salary coverage of his employee in the course of his contract?	Provincial jurisdiction may need to be specified. But in general, assuming you are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, you can be terminated for any reason or even no reason, as long as the contract is followed, the actual or apparent reason is not discriminatory or otherwise illegal and the termination procedure meets the provincial employment standards. The labour law usually provide requirements for notice periods or severance pay (or both), unless there exists a just cause (e.g. extreme disregard of duty, theft, repeated insubordination, etc.; lack of funds on the part of the employer is not a just cause). shouldn't the employer be fully responsible for the salary coverage of his employee in the course of his contract? Yes, but the contract is saying it can be terminated under certain conditions, after which time you are no longer "in the course" of your contract. Termination due to lack of funds is usually not considered discriminatory or otherwise illegal. You remain entitled to wages for any period you have worked. Additionally, the employer needs to respect the required notice period or severance pay under the provincial employment standards related to termination with or without cause, regardless of the funding situation.	Termination. The binding provisions may be terminated by mutual written consent of the parties; Provided, however, that the termination of the Binding Provisions shall not affect the liability of a party for breach of any of the Binding Provisions prior to termination. It basically says that you and the company can free each other from the contract or any part of it — by signing another agreement. This is limited though: if either of you have breached the original contract and become liable (e.g. one of you owes the other heaps of money for damages), then those liabilities will remain. ... which is nonsense of course — because you always can free each other from any liabilities to each other if you both want it.	The parties to the contract have not changed; they are still the purchaser company and the scrap vendor. The obligations have not changed; they are presumably based on amounts of stock and monetary value. The only changes are in the name of one party and its ownership, so unless the contract permits termination for those reasons (not unheard of, if a contract has been intended to provide/avert support from/by a particular party or symbolism) the contract still stands with all its terms. A novation is not needed.	What stops a university form doing anything it wants is the contract you entered with the university when you enrolled. (I'm writing from the perspective of a student, not faculty). You and they are bound by the contract, and part of that contract will be a clear outline of academic processes such as ethics, grading, class requirements and test taking, as well as penalties for cheating and plagiarism. That contract will be outlined in your student handbook. That handbook and contract will also clearly outline (or should) the grievance process and remediation for both students and faculty. Since you feel that the university is not being fair, you need to start with investigating that formal grievance process and look into gathering your materials and filing a complaint. The college will have an office that handles such grievances; you need to find it and talk to them. If they are a private college, yes, they do have their "own rules," but some aspects of federal, provincial and local civil and criminal law will still apply. Be aware that the school contract may bind you to arbitration - which means you have to deal with the college on all matters - and you may not be able to go to a public court on a civil matter. A lawyer will be able to tell if you are bound by arbitration and if so, that's the end of the road. If not, a lawyer will tell you if you have a criminal or civil case. In any event, the grievance process at the U will more than likely be your first step. If by chance criminal misconduct is found during the grievance process, then a federal, provincial or local prosecutor would be involved; we would assume the university would be forthcoming if that need appeared.	Can a district rescind an offer of employment? Yes. Any contractural offer can be withdrawn so long as it has not been accepted. You did not accept it, so the withdrawal is legal. Can they hire someone who is not qualified ... That depends on the particular law that mandates the qualification. As a general principle, anyone is allowed to work at anything unless there is a law that says “you cant do job X unless you have qualification/licence/accreditation/whatever Y.” So you need to actually read that law. Some allow a grace period for a person to do X while they get Y and some are outright prohibitions. And there are some things that people think require a specific qualification because everybody has one but there is actually no legal requirement. For example, I’m a qualified arbitrator, adjudicator and mediator. I need the qualification to work as the first one in australia and I it to work as the second in queensland but not new-south-wales but I don’t need it anywhere to work as the last one - most mediators have qualifications but they are not legally required. I am not a qualified lawyer because I don’t need to be to work as any of the above and, indeed, merely being a lawyer does not allow you to work as an arbitrator. … and rescind my offer of employment? The eligibility of the person they chose to hire has no bearing on their decision not to hire you. If they have hired an unqualified person then that is for the relevant regulator to deal with and has nothing to do with you. Are they not obligated to hire the most qualified applicant? No they are not. Employers have the discretion to choose the applicant they consider the “best”. And they can assess how your better qualifications weigh up against someone else’s past history with the organisation. Provided they do not consider things that they are not permitted to consider under discrimination law and that the process is not corrupt, they can weight the various factors how they wish. However, if an employer has stated that they will weight various applications is a specific way, then they have to do that.	You cannot contract outside the law Any "contract" that purports to break the law isn't a contract - it's an unenforceable agreement. For example, across all jurisdictions, a contract that is unconscionable is void. So is a contract that requires one of the parties to break the law - a "contract" for murder for example. In addition, you cannot call an employment relationship a "business" relationship - if the relationship meets the requirements of an employer-employee relationship then that's what it is and woe betide you if you haven't complied with all relevant entitlement, tax, insurance and safety laws. In addition, all of the relationships you listed are contracts.	This is largely a contract law issue, with little to do with intellectual property. Let's take a closer look at Offer and Acceptance of a Contract. An Offer or Acceptance can be made: Orally In writing By conduct First, you offer your client a written contract, with terms and conditions. Your client refused to accept. There is no contract. Then, your client offers you another contract, orally: We still want you to move forward with the project. We will give you $X as deposit, and then you will begin work. After the project is completed, we will deposit another $Y to you. It is irrelevant whether $X and $Y are the same as in the written contract or not. This is a separate contract, and the original terms you proposed does not apply. Did you accept this contract? From Felhouse v. Bindley (1862): Acceptance must be communicated clearly and cannot be imposed due to silence of one of the parties. Since you accepted the deposit and began work, you have accepted the contract by conduct. This is a contract where there is no terms and conditions besides that one sentence mentioned by your client. Furthermore, you intent to carry on this contract (you wish to complete the project and get the money). This contract has benefits to you for Consideration. Would it have made a difference? Suppose that your client's response is: We are sorry, our company has a weird policy about accepting contracts in writing, 30 people have to approve it and it takes 3 months. Would you take a verbal acceptance? We will give you $X as deposit and you will begin work, after work is finished we will give you $Y, as stated in the contract. Then this would be an oral acceptance of the original (written) contract with terms and conditions. But that cannot happen, since the client explicitly refused your offer. An acceptance must be unconditional. Qualification of terms of offer means to destroy the original offer. Counter-offer means to reject the original offer. Can the client use the deposit as evidence that there is a verbal contract? Yes, certainly. But this contract is not the un-signed contract. Read this conversation, again, carefully: We still want you to move forward with the project. We will give you $X as deposit, and then you will begin work. After the project is completed, we will deposit another $Y to you. There is no mention that your proposed terms and conditions apply, is there? Even if the client, after 2 weeks, come back to you and says: Sorry for refusing your offer earlier. After due consideration, we think your company's proposal is best. We would like to move forward with you. It will be $X for the deposit, and $Y after completion. All your proposed terms and conditions apply. Deal? This time your client is making an Offer. If you accept, it will be a new contract, not the same one you offered to the client earlier. About the money. This is really a case by case situation. Depending on how much the entire project is completed and the nature of the project, results can be different. A deposit is necessary to begin work. The deposit secures the client's intention to carry on the project. The final payment is make after work is finished satisfactorily. Isn't the current situation exactly what a deposit is for?	Can non-competes be enforced after expiration? Strictly speaking, it can no longer be enforced. Instead, company X may still obtain remedies for your breach of contract (I am definitely not "condemning" you, as I totally understand your position; I'm just explaining the vulnerability to which you are exposed). What you call expiration is more of a "freezing period" during which you were prohibited to work for company Y. But what matters is the concept of statute of limitations, which is the period during which company X may sue you for breach of the non-compete clause (and hence, breach of contract). The statute of limitations for breach of contract varies by jurisdiction. In jurisdictions of the U.S., typically it is three or six years. It was risky for you to rely on company Z's "assurance", especially if Z did not memorialize --in writing-- that it would defend you in the event that company X sues you for breach of contract (after all, Z alleged being "confident they could defeat the non-compete if necessary"). Furthermore, company Z's allegation that your promotion nullifies or supersedes the "old" non-compete seems devoid of merit, at least at first glance. One would need to know the terms of your contract with company X to ascertain whether company Z's assessment is accurate.
Is there defense against public officials providing incorrect information? On several occasions I've needed clarification on tax rules and have asked at the public tax office, and officials have provided guidance that another official has contradicted and/or denied at a later occasion. This has lead to tax adjustments in both directions, but so far when I've informed them they haven't enforced overdue penalties in the times when I needed to make additional payments. What worries me is that I feel they could demand I pay a penalty at any time and all I have is my word to back me. Public officials are human and make mistakes, and my tax situation seems to be rather rare so I believe they are interpreting the regulations as they go sometimes. Is there any way I can defend myself against penalties when mistakes are made in my favor? Some options I've considered: Asking via email: this doesn't seem to be an option in this case though or they ask me to visit the tax office to discuss sensitive specifics Recording the conversation: I don't believe they'd allow audio recording due to the presence of other consultations in the room/building, not sure about recording laws over the phone (may be the same as 1) Asking for a signed statement with the advice they provided, but I imagine that they would just say something to the effect of "this isn't a service we provide" Asking for legal citations when they provide the advice. I'm not sure they know though or if they've gotten their information indirectly through training, if they'd be willing to look it up, and if there's a reasonable number of citations (it could be quite a lot, and there may be other background knowledge in their decisions). My examples above are mostly about tax but I'd like a general answer if possible, for example for other fields or something I could further google if traveling abroad, etc.	Is there any way I can defend myself against penalties when mistakes are made in my favor? Another option, in a similar vein to your suggestions, is to make a contemporaneous record of the conversations. Then send an email* to the public official detailing what was said and agreed, along with a request that they reply with any observations or amendments within a certain time frame. That way you have a date-stamped document properly addressed to the other party to use as evidence or leverage. *or a recorded delivery letter etc	The legal requirement to hand over the returns is found in 26 U.S. Code § 6103: (f) Disclosure to Committees of Congress (1) Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on Taxation Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure. Enforcement is found in 26 U.S. Code § 7214 (a) Unlawful acts of revenue officers or agents Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States— ... (3) who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment; or ... shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. The court may in its discretion award out of the fine so imposed an amount, not in excess of one-half thereof, for the use of the informer, if any, who shall be ascertained by the judgment of the court. The court also shall render judgment against the said officer or employee for the amount of damages sustained in favor of the party injured, to be collected by execution. These punishments are essentially identical to those in Section 7213, which describe the punishments for those who unlawfully release returns. I've seen that section quoted in some articles as the basis for punishing failure to provide requested returns to the Chair of the House Ways and Means committee, but I'm not really seeing how that section covers non-compliance. Non-compliance seems only covered by Section 7214, which requires the "intent to defeat" (or various other issues, such as not disclosing known violations to the Secretary, etc.). That may be hard to prove in this scenario, and part of the stalling by Mnuchin may in part because they are exploring if they can build a strong case that it wasn't his intent to defeat the title. The quote of his you note is particularly on point on this, as he explicitly says he intends to obey the law; he's just questioning the constitutional issues involved.	In general you can dispute and negotiate any bill from a professional. The stronger your arguments for disputing it, and the more coherent your demands for adjustment, the more successful you will tend to be. This is like any business negotiation. One partner at a very large U.S. law firm once admitted to me that their corporate clients almost always ask for – and receive – billing adjustments. Of course, when push comes to shove, unless you're accusing the lawyer of fraudulent billing, then typically by contract you are liable for the bills. However, non-lawyers often assume that they will lose any dispute with their lawyers because it seems like lawyers have free access to the legal system. The reality is that there is a significant threshold that must be met before a law firm will sue a client for payment. That threshold will depend on the firm's opportunity costs, the costs of litigation, their assessment of reputational risks, how much they expect to actually collect, and sometimes just how ticked off they are.	This depends entirely on STATE law, and you need to list the state(s) you are interested in in the question. Thus, the usual legal statement "it depends." POLICE ARE NOT ATTORNEYS Don't accept legal advice from the police at face value. Police frequently don't actually know the minutiae of the law, and/or often misunderstand it. Their job is not to provide legal advice nor legal judgement, their job is to enforce the law based on certain priorities. Thus the area of enforcement is usually narrowed to specific categories so they can be experts in that area. (I.e vice cops, bunko squad, homicide division, etc.) But police are not lawyers, so don't expect them to understand the law. They did not attend 3 years of law school after attaining a college degree, which lawyers DO. Police get as little as 3 months training (in some states like Arkansas they can be put on duty without ANY training for up to a year (!) before attending the academy). THAT SAID, REGARDING CALL RECORDINGS: There are single and two party states. In single party states, any single person who is part of a call or communication can record it. In "two party" states, everyone that is part of the call must be informed. There are numerous exceptions and stipulations however. GREAT EXPECTATIONS First off, is there an "expectation of privacy." Again this varies by state and case law. Generally, if there is no expectation of privacy, then there is a clear exception to record. For instance, if you are in a busy restaurant, and people around you can hear or eavesdrop, you have no expectation of privacy. Courts have also ruled that if you are in the presence of a police officer performing official duties, there is also no expectation of privacy (not for either of you). IS IT LIVE OR IS IT MEMOREX Are you being recorded? If you are in a two/all party state, and you have an expectation of privacy (a phone call made in your home) then one of the following must occur: If the police are recording you without your knowledge, they must have a court order permitting them to do so as part of an investigation. Otherwise you must be notified with a statement at the beginning of the call that the call is being recorded. (Typically your option is to hang up or continue. Continuing the call implies your consent.) In some states the notification can be in the form of a "duck" or a beep every 15 seconds (time period varies, this is also different per state). OPINION NOT ADVICE BELOW I would think that being notified that a call is being recorded ends any expectation of privacy for any involved party. Assuming the state law and related case law supports recording when there is no expectation of privacy, this circumstance would seem to permit recording legally. Doubly so if your were talking to police in official capacity (did you notice a beep every xx seconds?) CAUTION: Because this varies so much by state, and because even the various Federal District Courts are not in unanimous agreement on the minutiae, there may be other factors to consider.	Counter notices are described in 17 USC 512(g)(3). It starts with the requirement for "A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber" (and a statement under penalty of perjury...). Supposing that you can't get anywhere with finding the contributor even via a subpoena, then you're stopped there: you can't swear on behalf of someone else. Paragraph (f) also says that if a person files a false infringement claim, they become liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it but it's not immediately obvious that you would suffer damage by taking the material down (not immediately obvious doesn't mean obviously not true). A case could be made, but it's risky. In Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Diebold was hit with substantial damages basically for having made up a theory that certain email discussion was infringing when it was clearly fair use. If a person actually lies about being the copyright owner, that would probably be viewed even more dimly by the courts. Your 4th argument gives you no traction: if an infringer posts infringing material and transfers copyright on the web page, but they don't hold copyright, then that transfer mean nothing. As for the other arguments, your attorney will have to suggest an advisable course of action. S/he might advise that your evidence is so strong that you should just ignore the takedown; or that you should take the content down and then sue for damages; or take the content down and lobby your congressman for a change in the law. [Addendum] I will reiterate my recommendation to get a lawyer. I believe that under the law, the risk to you would be the situation where the person prevails in an infringement suit against you. Outside of the "mere conduit" safe harbor, you have to participate in the notice and takedown scheme in order to "stay safe" (also you have to do so quickly). You have identified a potentially huge flaw in the system. Theoretically, criminal charges of perjury and paragraph (f) damages would be enough to deter ordinary wrong-doers, provided that you can really prove that someone else is the copyright holder. But the cost of litigation is not zero and the chances of winning are not 100%. The law does assume that all parties tell the truth, indeed the law requires a "penalty of perjury" statement. Since counter-notice is also part of the legal dance, I would conclude that you do have to write yourself a counter-notice. Then if there is a suit, you have satisfied the requirements of the law.	So these are the basic rules of the tax game: The taxpayer (employee, in this case) is liable for tax on income earned by him. On occasion, the payor of the income to be received by the taxpayer is required to withhold tax on the payment, remit the withheld tax to the IRS/state/local tax authority and pay the balance over to the taxpayer. If that happens, the taxpayer is entitled to a credit against his taxes for the amount withheld by the payor. Failure by the payor to withhold the required amount of tax does NOT excuse the taxpayer from paying tax on the income he earned. So company B is right.	...the public is susceptible to misinformation by bad actors in the financial system and therefore are protected by the SEC... The SEC governs fixed laws about financial transfers, disclosures, etc., and investigates illegal acts regarding those laws where there are quantitative facts, i.e. who moved how much money to where, who engaged in information for insider trading, and other situations based on hard evidence. Bad actors are deterred by the fact that can be prosecuted for their crimes by the SEC and other authorities. Shouldn't... political campaigns be audited for truthfulness? There is no government authority that audits or regulates political ads and/or claims; such authority or laws would clearly violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia as to the government regulating or attempting to control or manipulate free speech. In a non-partisan fashion, government authorities can and do routinely supply publicly available documents that can be used by the public, fact checkers and the press. False political claims are investigated by the press and various non-profits, also under the same 1st Amendment protections so that the press can operate free of government intrusion. See https://www.google.com/search?q=political+fact+checking for different political NGOs and media outlets which do fact checking. Such resources themselves can be fact challenged and partisan themselves, of course; news outlets can be under the editorial control of a political agenda, and a "fact checking" website or NGO can be funded by partisans. ...why shouldn't the same be done in the political system? Within a political system such as the US, people are responsible for their own thoughts and actions; and they are responsible for assessments of what may or may not be factual, and for what they believe (which, of course, can be removed from a factual basis). The idea that a government should be involved in auditing or otherwise having control over political speech is a political question, not a legal question.	If the data controller has “reasonable doubts concerning the identity of the natural person making the request”, then “the controller may request the provision of additional information necessary to confirm the identity of the data subject” (Art 12(6) GDPR). Until the data subject provides this information, the request is paused. But what are reasonable doubts, and what additional information can the controller request? The GDPR itself provides no clear guidelines, though general principles apply – the additional information must be necessary, adequate, and proportionate for the identity conformation purpose. The controller's obligation to comply with access requests must be balanced with the controller's obligation to ensure the security of data by rejecting invalid requests. Just accepting any request without any verification would also be a breach of the GDPR. For example: If the company identifies data subjects by email address, then demonstrating control over the email address would be an appropriate verification step. But just mentioning the email address would not be enough since it could be someone else's email address. If the company provides a website where data subjects have created user accounts, then being able to log in to the account would be an appropriate verification step. In these examples, asking e.g. for government photo ID would not be appropriate because that doesn't help strengthen the link between the person making the request and the personal data being processed. Such data collection would be disproportionate and unnecessary. In contrast, if you walk into a bank and ask for a copy of your data, it would be entirely appropriate for them to ask for government ID because (a) the higher general risks warrant stronger checks, and (b) such ID will help confirm that the person making the request is indeed the proper account holder. The bank will also have been legally required to request ID when the account was originally opened, so that asking for ID as an identity verification measure during this later request won't involve collection of more data than they already have. (These examples were made up by me and are not official, but read on.) The EDPB has issued draft guidelines on the right of access 01/2022, which also discuss the issue of additional information for identity verification in sections 3.2 and 3.3. In particular, paragraphs 73-78 talk about IDs: 73. It should be emphasised that using a copy of an identity document as a part of the authentication process creates a risk for the security of personal data and may lead to unauthorised or unlawful processing, and as such it should be considered inappropriate, unless it is strictly necessary, suitable, and in line with national law. […] it is also important to note that identification by means of an identity card does not necessarily help in the online context (e.g. with the use of pseudonyms) […]. 75. In any case, information on the ID that is not necessary for confirming the identity of the data subject, […] may be blackened or hidden by the data subject before submitting it to the controller, except where national legislation requires a full unredacted copy of the identity card (see para. 77 below). […] 76. […] Example: The user Ms. Y has created an account in the online store, providing her e-mail and username. Subsequently, the account owner asks the controller for information whether it processes their personal data, and if so, asks for access to them within the scope indicated in Art. 15. The controller requests the ID of the person making request to confirm her identity. The controller's action in this case is disproportionate and leads to unnecessary data collection. […] Example: A bank customer, Mr. Y,, plans to get a consumer credit. For this purpose, Mr. Y goes to a bank branch to obtain information, including his personal data, necessary for the assessment of his creditworthiness. To verify the data subject’s identity, the consultant asks for notarised certification of his identity to be able to provide him with the required information. The controller should not require notarised confirmation of identity, unless it is strictly necessary, suitable and in line with the national law […]. Such practice exposes the requesting persons to additional costs and imposes an excessive burden on the data subjects, hampering the exercise of their right of access. 77. Without prejudice to the above general principles, under certain circumstances, verification on the basis of an ID may be a justified and proportionate measure, for example for entities processing special categories of personal data or undertaking data processing which may pose a risk for data subject (e.g. medical or health information). However, at the same time, it should be borne in mind that certain national provisions provide for restrictions on the processing of data contained in public documents, including documents confirming the identity of a person (also on the basis of Art. 87 GDPR). Restrictions on the processing of data from these documents may relate in particular to the scanning or photocopying of ID cards or processing of official personal identification numbers. To summarize: controllers can request IDs only in comparatively niche scenarios, and must then take additional safeguards to protect the sensitive document (e.g. instructing the data subject to redact parts of the ID, not making copies, and immediately deleting the ID after successful verification). A lot here comes down to national laws, which may explicitly require or forbid use of the ID in this context. The EDPB guidelines are not binding or normative, especially since this guidance is still in the public consultation phase. However, the guidelines present an overall consensus of the national data protection authorities in the EU, and the guidelines are regularly cited by courts. In practice, many controllers do ask for disproportionate amounts of data. Sometimes this seems to be an attempt to discourage data subject requests, which would clearly be non-compliant. In some cases, this is due to a narrow interpretation of “reasonable doubts” in which they try to eliminate any doubt about the identity. If the data subject and data controller cannot agree on a suitable identity verification process, then the data subject can: Art 77: lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, and/or Art 79: sue the data controller in court, both for compliance (fulfilling the request) and for compensation (if damages were suffered). It is worth noting that the data controller is responsible for being able to demonstrate compliance (Art 5(2) accountability principle), such as demonstrating the apparent reasonable doubts to a supervisory authority or to a court. When the controller requests ID, the controller has the burden of proof to show that this is compliant.
Can children be placed, and required to testify, under oath in American courts? In one scene of the film i am sam the character Lucy, seven years old, is questioned in some kind of court under oath. When her story is "shaky", she is reminded that she is under oath and not allowed to lie. Is this authentic? Could it actually happen in American courts?	The Testimony Of Children Under Oath Do Children As Young As Seven Years Old Testify In U.S. Courts? Could it actually happen in American courts? Yes. It can and does happen on a regular basis, although a seven year old is at the very lower end of the range at which children are called to testify as witnesses with any regularity. Any witness which a court determines is competent to testify, which includes many, but not all, minors, testifies under oath. Some jurisdictions have a hard and fast minimum age at which someone can be competent to testify (often age seven is the minimum), while other states make it a rule of reason for the court to evaluate on a case by case basis. Child testimony can be used in any kind of case, not just sex offenses against children or child abuse and neglect cases, although those cases are the kind of cases where child testimony is most common. Special Arrangements Sometimes Made For Child Testimony While special arrangements for the form and circumstances of that testimony can sometimes be ordered by a court (sometimes raising constitutional issues regarding whether the "confrontation clause" right of a criminal defendant is violated in a criminal case under U.S. Constitutional law), the default rule is that a minor testifies in the same manner as anyone else. Often the exact wording of the oath is changed when a child can't reasonable be expected to understand the normal wording. Perjury In Cases Of Child Testimony Under Oath If the person testifying under oath is a minor, a perjury offense would be presumptively tried in juvenile court rather than an adult criminal court. Also, it is possible that even if a child is sworn and testifying under oath, that a child will not be old enough to prosecute for the crime of perjury, even in juvenile court, if the child intentionally commits perjury. An oath has symbolic value and is believed by many people to have an effect, even when there is no credible threat of a perjury prosecution for lying under oath. In practice, perjury prosecutions, even for adults, for court testimony, are vanishingly rare even in pretty clear cases, even though the crime is committed basically every day that courts are open for business. For example, there are dozens of such prosecutions a year in Colorado including both in court and out of court sworn statements, and there are tens of thousands of evidentiary hearings and evidentiary trials each year in Colorado, or which perjury is actually committed in perhaps 5%-10% of such hearings and trials. Alternatives To Child Testimony Under Oath Evidence Of Unsworn Out Of Court Statements Made By Children It is also possible for things that a minor says to be recounted by someone who heard them said or a transcript of a conversation with someone that was not under oath (in which case it is hearsay, but may come within an exception to the hearsay rule), or via a videotape of a child saying something (which is a record to be authenticated prior to its admission). But, in both of those cases, what the child says that the court considers as evidence is not testimony. Interviews In Chambers Of Children Another process by which courts obtain information from children, often in child custody cases, is for the judge to personally interview the children, not under oath and not with testimony taken down by a court reporter, either in or outside the presence of counsel for the parties (and almost always not in the presence of parents or any audience present at a hearing) in the judges chambers. This is primarily done not to elicit evidence of facts, per se, so much as to discern the preferences, desires and concerns of the children themselves as expressed directly. Statements of preferences, desires and opinions of children, because they are not statements of fact and are instead statements of opinion, are by definition not capable of being prosecuted for perjury, since their truth or falsity is not objectively determinable. These interviews are given more weight in the case of older children than in the case of younger children and this process would not be used at all for infants or pre-schoolers.	Insofar as those treaties don't bind the US, the notion of "violating" such laws is moot. Hoda Muthana is, under Yemeni law, a Yemeni citizen (it is immaterial whether she has ever "accepted" or exploited it), and as such stripping her of US citizenship would not leave her stateless. In the case of Hoda Muthana, the action is based on the legal argument that she was not ever a citizen, based on the premise that her father was a foreign diplomat. Under US law, children born to foreign diplomats in the US are not birthright citizens, following US v. Wong Kim Ark. Birthright citizenship cannot be revoked. However, a person can renounce their citizenship, via certain acts, including taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;or (3) entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if (A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or (B) such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer The defense argument would presumably be that ISIS is not a foreign state (despite their own claims to the contrary) so her affiliation with ISIS does not qualify. There are grounds for denaturalization, including falsifying or concealing relevant facts pertaining to naturalization, refusing to testify before Congress, or joining a subversive organization including Al Qaeda within 5 years of naturalization.	No. Indonesia Law uses Civil Law structures which use an Inquisitorial Trial. The chief difference is that in the United States (which has a Common Law Structure) the judge usually does not decide the case, but interprets the law (Trier of Law) and with a few exceptions, will determine the sentence once guilt is found. The Jury decides the case (Trier of Fact) and pronounces guilt (It is the right of the defense to request a Bench Trial, which gives the Judge both roles. The prosecution cannot object to this request). In a Civil Court, the big difference is that their is no Jury and the Judge has both roles (Trier of Law, and Trier of Fact). As the name suggests, rather than two sides fighting each other (adversarial), the two sides are answering questions posed to them by the Judge or usually a panel of Judges are used and the Judge may initiate further investigation in the evidence. The United States does use Inquisitional Trials from time to time, but they are often seen in misdemeanors, traffic courts, and small claims courts. The latter is a popular daytime TV genre (think Judge Judy) while misdemeanors and traffic court decisions are often time funny and make great Youtube videos. There are not many great Adversarial media as many throw out rules for time sake (real U.S. trials have many long boring periods during testimony) and story/drama sake. I would recommend "My Cousin Vinny" which was written by two lawyers who were fed up with Hollywood messing up how court room drama works and is hilarious to boot. When viewing either, take them with a grain of salt.	First off: if someone in DHS is telling you this, your first, best, and really only option is to get advice from an attorney specializing in family law. Regardless of what we tell you here, without representation you will have a hard time with officials who believe otherwise. That said: I don't find anything exactly matching what you describe. The Uniform Adoption Code (AR Code § 9-9-200 (2014)) does not specifically address sibling groups at all. Adoptive parents do have rights to streamlined adoption of a sibling of a child they already adopted, under the Streamlined Adoption act (AR Code § 9-9-701 (2014)). In the section related to Placement of Minors (AR Code § 9-28-108 (2014)), however, is likely what the case worker was describing. Subsection (b) (2) reads, in part: (2) When it is in the best interest of each of the juveniles, the department shall attempt to place: (A) A sibling group together while they are in foster care and adoptive placement This is discussing foster care and adoptive placement, of course. I think the key wording is When it is in the best interest of each of the juveniles; that would be your argument (that it is not in their best interest). I see a 2011 case, for example, discussing a sibling group of four children not entirely different from yours; while there are not children with special needs, there is a child with major behavioral issues, and one of the (three) foster parents is considering adopting one of the children and "would be open" to considering others, but clearly isn't expecting to be required to do so. Note: I am not a lawyer, and particularly not one specialized in family law This is based on my reading of the 2014 Arkansas code. That is almost 2 years old. That said, I don't see any news articles or similar discussing limitations in sibling group placement in Arkansas recently, which is the sort of thing that usually would get attention. That said, this has also been something that HHS has been trying to encourage states to push for – more sibling group placement and awareness of sibling group issues – so it's entirely possible something could have changed.	In 2017 Illinois changed its law so that criminal charges for child abuse have no statute of limitations, and can be prosecuted as long as the accused is alive. This applies to all such crimes that occur after the new law was passed, and to all prior crimes on which the previous statute of limitations had not yet expired. See this news story on the change Previously, Illinois law allowed for prosecution for up to 20 years after the victim turned 18. Since the women Kelly is accused of having abused were 16 or younger in 1998 or later, the older statute of limitations would not have expired until at least 2020. More than 35 states now have no statute of limitations for child abuse. By the way, for civil actions, as opposed to criminal charges, the Illinois law now says: an action for damages for personal injury based on childhood sexual abuse must be commenced within 10 years of the date [a person turns 18] or within 5 years of the date the person abused discovers or through the use of reasonable diligence should discover both (i) that the act of childhood sexual abuse occurred and (ii) that the injury was caused by the childhood sexual abuse. The fact that the person abused discovers or through the use of reasonable diligence should discover that the act of childhood sexual abuse occurred is not, by itself, sufficient to start the discovery period under this subsection (b). Knowledge of the abuse does not constitute discovery of the injury or the causal relationship between any later-discovered injury and the abuse." (ILCS § 5/13-202.2(b)) Thus, a civil suit by one of the alleged victims might or might not be barred by time, depending on details of the date of the abuse and the victim's age. In short, do not take a drama as a source of legal advice. Look it up or ask a reliable source.	The California jury instructions for the crime of perjury give more detail on what it means to commit perjury: it's not just that you make a statement that is false, you have to willfully state that the information is true even though you know it is false. If you have a belief that you will be convicted for perjury (or any crime) by testifying, you may invoke your 5th Amendment right (I assume you are not testifying as the defendant in a criminal matter). You might (theoretically: see below on immunity and perjury) be granted immunity from prosecution, in which case there is no 5th Amendment right to refuse to testify (you are not putting yourself in criminal jeopardy), and the court can order you to testify. Or, you might not be granted immunity and still be ordered to testify. The federal immunity statute, 18 USC 6002, also needs to be scrutinized. When ordered to testify, "the witness may not refuse to comply with the order on the basis of his privilege against self-incrimination", but it generally cannot be used against him: no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case However, there is an exception: except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order. In other words, you cannot be immunized against a perjury charge. In Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 defendant refused an order to testify, on the grounds that they (allegedly) believed that the government's grant of immunity was not broad enough, i.e. that there were areas where they might be questions and forced to criminally implicate themselves. They refused, and were held in contempt. The opinion recognized that the 5th Amendment "protects against any disclosures that the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used" (emphasis added). In Mason v. United States, 244 U.S. 362, the court held that The Fifth Amendment does not relieve a witness from answering merely on his own declaration or judgment that an answer might incriminate him; whether he must answer is determinable by the trial court in the exercise of its sound discretion, and unless there is reasonable ground, as distinct from a remote or speculative possibility, to apprehend that a direct answer may prove dangerous to the witness, his answer should be compelled. Heike v. United States, 227 U.S. 131 asserts that "the constitutional protection is confined to real danger, and does not extend to remote possibilities out of the ordinary course of law, citing Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (itself quoting Lord Chief Justice Cockburn): "the danger to be apprehended must be real and appreciable, with reference to the ordinary operation of law in the ordinary course of things; not a danger of an imaginary and unsubstantial character, having reference to some extraordinary and barely possible contingency, so improbable that no reasonable man would suffer it to influence his conduct" Although the wording of the immunity statute does not allow immunity from prosecution for perjury, the 5th Amendment right can only be invoked against a real legal jeopardy. They can be compelled to testify, they probably cannot be immunized against a perjury conviction (certainly not at the federal level). We would need to know the entire circumstances of the case to be able to assess whether the "knowing to be false" part could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.	It depends. If the tip is that there are pictures proving that a minor consumed alcohol 10 years ago, probably not. If the tip is that there's a kidnapped child being tortured inside, more likely. In either event, they would probably seek to build up some independently obtained evidence to enable them to obtain a warrant based on probable cause. An anonymous tip might be enough, depending on how detailed it was and whether there were any objective indicators of reliability, but it's not a sure thing.	Assuming that the age of criminal responsibility in your jurisdiction is more than five (I don't know any jurisdictions where it isn't), then you can't be arrested for this. It is possible that the therapist will have to report the information, and it will appear on your record if you apply to work with vulnerable people. On the other hand, if your parents put you up for adoption aged five (but kept a sister), they will have had to explain why - and that is likely to have been recorded (unless this is so long ago that record keeping was much more lax in those days). I would recommend finding a different therapist that is more comfortable being told about these things. You might also need to consult a lawyer for a short while (they will often offer a 30 minute free consultation).
Can the "Pandemic" be considered "not occasioned by the conduct of the (business)" and considered not reasonably remedied? In my contract it reads "In the event that (business name) is unable to perform any of it's obligations under this Agreement due to any occurrence whether or not occasioned by the conduct of (business name), which would prevent (business name) from hosting said event, then, (business name) shall be released from any further performance under this Agreement for whatever period of time until after the occurrence is reasonably remedied. Should your event be cancelled for any of the above reasons, (business name) shall only be held responsible to refund the total amount paid by you to (business name) as of the date of cancellation or delay."	This is just saying that if they can’t host your event then the only remedy you get is your money back that your paid them (your deposit, advance payments, and of course your don’t owe final payments). It is there to make it clear that they are not responsible of any other money. What else might the client want them to refund? Other lost expenses. Non refundable deposits to the band, the florist, the caterer if this is just for the space. The non refundable airline tickets your relatives bought. Prepaid hotel rooms. They will not pay for any of that. The pandemic is a bit of a red herring because although that is of course the big thing now, it says any occurance whether or not the business caused it. The answers to your specific questions though are pretty trivial. -The business did not cause the pandemic or control the state health office (Irrelevant as noted) -There is nothing they can do about it. The state or county will allow the events when the situation improves. But even if say there was no state order but the venue for their own reasons or because they could not get enough staff cancelled, the answer would be the same.	This depends on your employment agreement, if any, with the organization, and on the company's contract with the organization. You can quit your job with the organization, giving whatever notice your contract provides. The company can end its contract on whatever terms that contract permits. Most service contracts specify a fixed term, with renewal possible or in some cases automatic if notice to end the contract is not given by some specified date before the renewal date. But many other arrangements are possible. If no term is specified in the contract, and there is no provision for how much notice is required, then the company should give "reasonable" notice, which will probably be in line with the norms and customs of the industry involved in the relevant country. The specific law of that country may or may not provide a required minimum notice period. The contract between the company and the organization might provide that they would not hire any employees or recent ex-employees of the organization without consent for some period, perhaps a year. If there is such a provision it must be complied with unless it is not enforceable under the law of the jurisdiction. Different jurisdictions have very different attitudes toward such contract provisions. If such a provision were violated, and it was enforceable in the jurisdiction, the company would be liable for damages if the organization choose to enforce its contract. The contract between you and the organization might include a provision that you not leave to become employed (within some time limit) by one of the organization's customers, or perhaps by one you had worked with. If there is such a provision, it might or might not be enforceable in your jurisdiction. If it is enforceable, you must comply or be liable for damages. Even if there are no contract provisions preventing such employment of you by the company, you must not without permission take with you and use for the company's benefit any confidential information that is the property of the organization and is not already known to the company through legitimate means. If you do, both you and the company might be liable for damages under trade secret law. In the absence of any enforceable contractual provisions, and if no confidential information is taken by you, there should be no legal problems. The moral issues I am in no position to offer an opinion on, and are off-topic here anyway. If you were to quit, and the company were to then seek to break its contract because, in your absence the organization could not provide proper service, and you were then to accept employment with they company, and if further the company had known of your plans, both you and the company might be liable for damages to the organization, depending non the details of the law in your jurisdiction. This could be a tort of "interference with a contractual relation" or something of the sort. You should be very careful in agreeing to any such procedure. If there is a question as to whether a provision of a contract between the organization and either you or the company in enforceable, or whether a provision prohibits you leaving the organization to be employed by the company, that would need to be addressed by a lawyer who knows this area of the law in your jurisdiction, and the specifics of the contract, or eventually by a court. It is out of scope for this forum. Nothing in this situation will be a problem if the organization agrees to whatever is done. All possible problems occur only if it does not agree, and claims to have a legal right to prevent it or seek damages.	It's not an offer. An offer must be sufficiently complete that it is able to be accepted and thereby form a contract. If the wholesalers were to write back "I accept" - what, precisely are the terms of the contract? It is an invitation to treat in that is is "...an expression of willingness to negotiate."	Termination is a matter of fact That is, it has either happened, or it hasn’t. Whether it has or hasn’t depends on a multitude of factors including the terms of the contract, the actions of the parties, and communication between them. These factors are so case specific that it is impossible to generalise. Further, within a given case, reasonable parties may differ on if a contract has been terminated, which party initiated the termination, and if that termination was lawful. Usually, these cases involve mutual allegations of repudiation by the other party and rightful termination in response by our side. These issues are likely to be the major ones that the court or tribunal will have to determine. A claim for damages would need to be pursued as part of the overall case but the deadline for raising them is a procedural matter for the court or tribunal. Failing to raise them as an issue in pre-litigation correspondence would not be a bar to raising them in a claim or counter-claim. However, failing to raise them at the earliest opportunity denies the offending party the opportunity to mitigate the damage and, if they can show that there were actions they could have reasonably taken to mitigate but couldn’t because they weren’t informed, then that may reduce or eliminate the damages payable.	In general, "making a reservation" does not create a contract, except when it is obvious that you have a contractual agreement. That would be the case with an airline reservation, and one clear sign is that you have to pay for the ticket when you make the reservation; or, it you don't, then there is no contract, and they can cancel or change the price. You would look for clear signs of an agreement, such as a "agree to terms" button that you have to click. Paying a deposit is another clear sign. Then you would simply look at the terms of the contract to see what their obligation is, and what yours is. They may have strongly committed to providing service in which case you might have a cause for legal action if they break that commitment, or they might have made no specific promises about service in case of intervening events (such as if the chef has a heart attack, or the power goes out). If we do think of this as a contractual matter, you breached your duty as a customer, to be there by 7:30, so even if there is a contract, they didn't break it. The note that you added renegotiating the arrival time was insufficient – it is outside of the contract, and possibly something that they didn't see (they only look at the names and official time blocks reported by the web page). In lieu of a contract, there could be some statutory obligation, i.e. a specific regulation in Sweden saying "if a restaurant accepts a reservation, they absolutely must hold the space available for the entire reserved time", which is an unreasonably onerous business practice that no nation requires.	canada Not merely because of the length or legalese, and not the entire contract. But there is a line of authority in Canadian law that can lead to exclusion-of-liability clauses being unenforceable, and length is a factor. When there are unusual exclusion clauses, inconsistent with the main purpose of the contract, executed in hasty circumstances, where the contract is long and/or small and the signer's attention is not drawn to the exclusion clauses, courts have been wary to enforce them. Karroll v. Silver Star Mountain Resorts Ltd., 1988 CanLII 3294 (BC SC): [18] ... to allow someone to sign a document where one has reason to believe he is mistaken as to its contents, is not far distant from active misrepresentation. [19] In the usual commercial situation, there is no need for the party presenting the document to bring exclusions of liability or onerous terms to the attention of the signing party, nor need he advise him to read the document. In such situations, it is safe to assume that the party signing the contract intends to be bound by its terms. [20] But situations may arise which suggest that the party does not intend to be bound by a term. In Tilden the hasty, informal way in which the contract was signed, the fact that the clause excluding liability was inconsistent with the overall purpose of the contract, and the absence of any real opportunity to read and understand the document given its length and the amount of small print on its reverse side, led the Court to conclude that the defendant should have known that the plaintiff had no intention of consenting to the onerous exclusion in question. In these special circumstances, there was a duty on Tilden to take reasonable measures to bring the exclusion clause to the attention of Mr. Clendenning. Tilden Rent-A-Car Co. v. Clendenning, 1978 CanLII 1446 (Ont. C.A.) said: In modern commercial practice, many standard form printed documents are signed without being read or understood. In many cases the parties seeking to rely on the terms of the contract know or ought to know that the signature of a party to the contract does not represent the true intention of the signer, and that the party signing is unaware of the stringent and onerous provisions which the standard form contains. Under such circumstances, I am of the opinion that the party seeking to rely on such terms should not be able to do so in the absence of first having taken reasonable measures to draw such terms to the attention of the other party, and, in the absence of such reasonable measures, it is not necessary for the party denying knowledge of such terms to prove either fraud, misrepresentation or non est factum. In the case at bar, Tilden Rent-A-Car took no steps to alert Mr. Clendenning to the onerous provisions in the standard form of contract presented by it. The clerk could not help but have known that Mr. Clendenning had not in fact read the contract before signing it. Indeed the form of the contract itself with the important provisions on the reverse side and in very small type would discourage even the most cautious customer from endeavouring to read and understand it. Mr. Clendenning was in fact unaware of the exempting provisions. Under such circumstances, it was not open to Tilden Rent-A-Car to rely on those clauses, and it was not incumbent on Mr. Clendenning to establish fraud, misrepresentation or non est factum. Having paid the premium, he was not liable for any damage to the vehicle while being driven by him. As Lord Denning stated in Neuchatel Asphalte Co. Ltd. v. Barnett, [1957] 1 W.L.R. 356 at p. 360: "We do not allow printed forms to be made a trap for the unwary."	If you had an agreement that amounts to a contract, it is binding even if it was informal. However, if your agreement was not in writing, it might be hard to prove. You can easily prove that you transferred money to the other party. But can you prove that it was a loan an not a gift? And even if it is agreed to be a loan, if no repayment time was specified, what says that the debt is due now? Was the agreement really for a loan repayable on demand? The court would have to determine what your real contract was, or what contract can be implied from the actions of the parties. Also, if you are in a common-law jurisdiction, there could be a question of what consideration there was for the loan. Without consideration, there is no valid contract in such a jurisdiction. Perhaps a promise to repay could be treated as sufficient consideration. Small-claims courts do deal with unclear verbal contracts on a regular basis, but the outcome will depend on the facts of the case, and on the details of local law. It might be wise to consult a local lawyer with small-claims experience. A single consultation should not be too expensive. In response to comment If the "written binding agreements" include a statement from the other person that this is a loan, and a promise to repay it, you are in a stronger position than I had thought from the original question. The question for the court would be, since there was no due date agreed, what is a reasonable date to impose. The court might treat it as a loan repayable on demand, or specify some particular date for repayment.	The contract was made the moment Mr. E asked for the cake, the baker agreed to make it, and (while or shortly before) the baker created a receipt ("ticket") at around 1 PM. The receipt is the evidence of what was agreed upon and likely contained the descriptor and the estimated finish time of the cake as well as the price1. This means that the contract is not just oral, it is evidenced in writing, though not a written contract. The contract stipulated: Mr. E will, at 3:30 PM, pay £50 to the baker as specified on the receipt. The Baker will, at 3:30 PM, give a custom cake to Mr. E as described on the receipt. The contract is enforceable, so even if Mr. E does no longer want the cake, it is his (to dispose of in any way he wants) and he owes the baker £50. So if Mr. E does not pay, he is in breach of contract. 1 - The contract was formed by the meeting of the minds the moment both agreed on the price and service. This can be during or while putting it in writing on the ticket, which merely is the evidence of it, or shortly after said formation as JBentley does note. It is not material that neither party did sign: Mr. E got a copy of the ticket and the baker got a copy (so they know what to make)
Is a pardon ("Begnadigung") under German law possible before a final court sentence? I just read that under US law, the US president may pardon a person even before they have been sentenced, and even before they have been accused (see e.g. Ex Parte Garland, 1866). . I was curious about the legal situation in Germany. The German Basic Law (Grundgesetz), Article 60 says: (2) He (the Federal President) shall exercise the power to pardon offenders on behalf of the Federation in individual cases. However, I could not find any law that specifies what exactly is covered by the "power to pardon". So my question: Can a pardon under Article 60 be issued before the offender has been sentenced? I did find an article by the Legal Service of the Bundestag, which says: Unter„Begnadigung“ wird eine Maßnahme verstanden, mit der eine rechtskräftige Entschei-dung beseitigt oder gemildert wird. My translation: "Pardon" refers to a measure which removes or mitigates a legally binding decision. Das Begnadigungsrecht des Bundespräsidenten, Anja Eiardt/Sarab Borhanian, 2007 So it seems to be accepted that a pardon is only possible after sentencing - but what is this based on? Is there some special law?	tl;dr: Yes, a pardon under German law is only possible for a final court sentence (or other similar sanctions, such as expulsion of a public servant). This is not written down explicitly anywhere. Rather, this rule, like most other rules around pardons, is a matter of historical convention. This is probably because the power to pardon itself is a historical convention (and considered by some to be a violation of modern legal principles), so it kind of stands "outside of the law". Apparently the Begnadigungsrecht (power to pardon) mentioned in Article 60 of the Basic Law is not formally defined anywhere, rather the details are a matter of convention. However, there is a judgement by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), "Zur Frage der Justitiabilität von Gnadenentscheidungen", 2 BvR 552/63. The judgement gives some historical background for the power of pardon, and confirms that there is no formal definition. Additionally, the judgement says: Das Begnadigungsrecht, wie es das Grundgesetz in Art. 60 Abs. 2 kennt, besteht in der Befugnis, im Einzelfall eine rechtskräftig erkannte Strafe ganz oder teilweise zu erlassen, sie umzuwandeln oder ihre Vollstreckung auszusetzen. Es eröffnet die Möglichkeit, eine im Rechtsweg zustande gekommene und im Rechtsweg nicht mehr zu ändernde Entscheidung auf einem "anderen", "besonderen" Weg zu korrigieren. The judgement explicitly mentions "rechtskräftig erkannte Strafe" (final legal decision or judgement) - so this explicitly confirms that the power of pardon is only for changing a (final) judgement. Similarly, the Bayerische Gnadenordnung, §5 says: (1) Der Gnadenweg darf nicht dazu dienen, die nach gesetzlichen Bestimmungen mögliche Anrufung des Gerichts zu ersetzen. Hierüber ist der Gesuchsteller gegebenenfalls zu belehren. My translation: The process of pardon shall not be used to replace court proceedings as given by applicable laws. An applicant for a pardon is to be informed about this when applicable. This, again, confirms that a pardon must not replace or inhibit a court judgement.	There is one context where this does happen. Common law judges have direct contempt power. This means that while a judge is in the courtroom presiding over a case, the judge can summarily punish someone with incarceration and/or a fine without a trial for "contempt of court" because the judge has personally observed what has happened. Contempt of court encompasses types of disorderly conduct that wouldn't otherwise be criminal conduct. In other contexts, the judge is just one more witness and would not be assigned to handle the case. so you can only get "non-witness judges" from out-of-state or another region. The lawsuit hasn't begun yet, and all of the possible, local judges saw it happen. As a practical matter, this is basically impossible. But there are procedures in cases where large numbers of judges a conflicted out of a case, for example, to get a judge from the next county over or another part of the same state.	As an example, POTUS does not undertake the entire pardon process on his own, instead they are preliminarily processed by the Department of Justice, which makes a recommendation. Only POTUS can "grant" the pardon, and we lack substantive information on how deeply he gets involved (does he just sign documents based on staff recommendations? does he do his own research?). I don't know what physical form Clinton's 450 pardons on January 20, 2001 took, but a president might use an autopen (Obama did use such a device). Questions have been raised and definitive answers from SCOTUS are lacking as to whether hand-to-paper signatures are demanded by the Constitution. DoJ at one point thought it was okay. This article lists the Constitutional functions which cannot be delegated: reporting to the Congress on the state of the Union; convening either or both Houses of Congress and adjourning Congress; signing and vetoing bills; receiving ambassadors and public ministers (recognition); appointing and removing ambassadors, ministers, and certain other public officers; nominating federal judges; and making recess appointments However, the Constitutional function of negotiating treaties or numerous functions as commander in chief of the armed forces is generally delegated, within the executive branch. Numerous statutory functions can be delegated (and Congress may say explicitly that some function can be delegated, in passing the law). The matter of implied power to delegate statutory function is the topic of a couple of centuries of litigation, but as an example in Williams v. United States, 42 U.S. 290 SCOTUS held that a law prohibiting the advance of public money in any case whatsoever to the disbursing officers of government except under the special direction of the President does not require the personal and ministerial performance of this duty, to be exercised in every instance by the President under his own hand. SCOTUS has not established bright lines regarding the extent of permissible delegation.	The short answer is "yes". There is U.S. Supreme Court authority that supports this position, In particular, United States v. Laub, 385 U.S. 475 (1967), Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 599 (1965), and Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423 (1959), stand for the proposition that a defendant may not be punished for actions taken in good faith reliance upon authoritative assurances that he will not be punished for those actions. If the U.S. Department of Justice (or a U.S. Attorney with jurisdiction over the place the offense was committed) (hereinafter DOJ) says this, people who reasonably rely on that pronouncement can't be prosecuted until a different policy is announced and people who acted in reliance on the previous DOJ position are given a reasonable opportunity to change their conduct in response to the newly announced policy. The statement does have to be a publicly announced policy (or a policy personally communicated to the defendant or his counsel), and not just a de facto reality in terms of prosecutions not being brought in the past, or a secret, unannounced policy (or, for example, an unofficial and offhand statement of the U.S. Attorney General at a party that does not amount to a policy statement). Of course, the defense doesn't protect you if the DOJ says it won't prosecute if you do X, but you do X times Y which goes beyond the safe harbor created by the DOJ pronouncement. For example, the DOJ might say that they will not prosecute conduct involving marijuana offenses that is legal under state law, if it does not violate any other laws, and also meets certain conditions found in federal law (e.g. no offenses within 1000 feet of a school) that the DOJ chooses not to refrain from enforcing. But, if the DOJ then publicly says that it will start enforcing federal law without exceptions on July 1, 2021 and has rescinded its prior policy, a reasonable time in advance, then this defense ceases for conduct after that date. What constitutes reasonable notice would depend upon the facts and circumstances. The DOJ can also reach a binding agreement not to prosecute a particular instance of conduct by a particular person irrevocably in connection with plea bargaining type agreements, with respect to offenses of which the DOJ has jurisdiction (but not necessarily prosecutions by a different government such as a state government or the government of another country, for which the DOJ is not an authorized representative). For example, suppose that a mail carrier is killed by a resident of a home claiming to have acted in self-defense in Denver, Colorado. The DOJ could reach an irrevocable agreement with the resident to accept a plea bargain to a misdemeanor charge of not paying the tax due on the sale of the firearm from a non-compliant gun shop, dismissing forever the charge of murder of a federal post office employee. But that agreement would not bar the District Attorney in Denver from bringing murder charges twenty years later under state law prohibiting murder of human beings in the State of Colorado. For the defendant resident to prevent that from happening definitively, an agreement from the State of Colorado's District Attorney in Denver, or the Colorado Attorney General, would also be required.	How many indictments does it take for Donald Trump to be imprisoned? An unlimited amount. Imprisonment is usually authorized as a result of a conviction rather than from an indictment. Pretrial detention following an indictment but prior to a conviction is permitted, but discretionary in the judgment of the judge. Also, there is a right to post a judicially determined reasonable bond to obtain release from pretrial detention after one is indicted and before one is convicted in the vast majority of cases (including the ones that President Trump is facing). Can a person who is indicted, before running for president, become president? Yes. Indeed, the majority view of legal scholars (it is has never been tested in a real case) is that someone who is convicted and serving prison sentence can still become President if that is who the voters choose. What's the purpose of indicting Mr. Trump if indictments are only an accusation? An indictment is a pre-requisite to trying someone for a felony in federal court. To convict someone of a crime one needs to first indict them, then have a jury trial, and then have a jury unanimously vote to convict a person, before they can be convicted of a crime and sentenced for it. Even after conviction, there is a statutory (but not a constitutional) right to a direct appeal of that conviction to an appellate court. Also, an indictment is more than a mere accusation. An indictment in a determination of a grand jury that probable cause exists to believe that the person indicted committed the crime charged. In the federal court system grand juries are composed of 16 to 23 members and 12 members of the grand jury must concur in a decision to indict a defendant on a charge for there to be an indictment on that charge. This prevents people from enduring criminal prosecutions on charges that a majority of a grand jury finds are so baseless that there is not sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that the defendant committed that crime. The grand jury must base its decision to indict or not on actual evidence in support of the charges in the form of sworn witness testimony and exhibits, not just the allegations of the prosecutor. As a practical matter, the standards of professionalism in federal criminal prosecutions is so high that almost all charges sought by federal prosecutors from grand juries result in indictments on those charges (federal grand juries refuse to indict approximately one in 16,000 times). But, in state courts that use grand juries, which can't pick and choose only the best cases to prosecute, grand juries routinely refuse to indict defendants on a substantial share of charges brought to them by prosecutors (on the order of one in 20). One source notes: Statistical figures showing a higher prevalence of grand jury reluctance to follow the government in ages past are almost nonexistent. However, a table of felony arrests in New York County between 1900 and 1907 found on page 111 of the 1926 book The Prisoner at the Bar by Arthur Train provides some rare illumination. In those seven years, some 5,214 out of 57,241 people were arrested by the police on felony charges whom New York state grand jurors decided not to indict. Grand juries are especially likely to decline to indict defendants in cases involving celebrities, politicians, law enforcement officers, and other high profile cases with political implications. See also Kaeleigh Wiliams, "Grand Juries Should Not Hear Police Misconduct Cases: Grand Juries will Indict Anything, but a Police Officer" SLU Law Journal Online 79 (2021).	This is the cited article. Thankfully, the interviewee provided a scan of the police letter he received, so the rest of this question is relatively easy to answer. He was specifically charged with Störung der öffentlichen Ordnung (lit. Disturbance of the public order) persuant to § 81(1) of the Sicherheitspolizeigesetz, which reads (after putting it through Google Translate): Who by a behavior that is likely to arouse legitimate annoyance, disturbs public order, commits an administrative offense and is punishable by a fine of up to 500 euros, unless the behavior is justified, in particular by the use of a constitutionally guaranteed right , In the event of aggravating circumstances, instead of a fine, imprisonment can be imprisoned for up to one week, or up to two weeks for repeated offenses. This law is almost certainly constitutional as it specifically allows exercise of constitutional rights. Note this also includes human rights, as Austria has included the European Convention on Human Rights as part of its constitution. Given that, I'm guessing if the interviewee had wanted to, he would have had a decent shot at having this charge dismissed.	It is my understanding that he was charged under 18 USC § 1001 which gives a maximum sentence of 5 years under most circumstances. This is the absolute maximum; the judge is not allowed to give more than the law allows. Here are the federal sentencing guidelines. If you look in the guidelines, you'll see that the base offense level for this crime is 14. If there was a "substantial" interference with justice, the offense is increased by 3 levels. My guess is that they won't find this to be the case. There are several other adjustments that likely don't apply. Under the "Adjustments" section of the guidelines, it says: (a) If the defendant clearly demonstrates acceptance of responsibility for his offense, decrease the offense level by 2 levels. (b) If the defendant qualifies for a decrease under subsection (a), the offense level determined prior to the operation of subsection (a) is level 16 or greater, and upon motion of the government stating that the defendant has assisted authorities in the investigation or prosecution of his own misconduct by timely notifying authorities of his intention to enter a plea of guilty, thereby permitting the government to avoid preparing for trial and permitting the government and the court to allocate their resources efficiently, decrease the offense level by 1 additional level. It seems that the first one applies. The second one cannot apply in this particular case since the offense level was not 16 or greater. So the offense level would be reduced from 14 to 12. If you look at the Sentencing Table, you can see that an offense level of 12 has a recommended sentence of 10-16 months for someone with no prior criminal history. Also, this is in Zone C, meaning: the minimum term may be satisfied by... a sentence of imprisonment that includes a term of supervised release with a condition that substitutes community confinement or home detention according to the schedule in subsection (e), provided that at least one-half of the minimum term is satisfied by imprisonment. so it seems he would go to prison for at least half of that. But if the offense level was dropped just one more level, he would be in zone B, where probation with home confinement would be an acceptable sentence. But there's one more thing to consider: He's cooperating with investigations into other people. This allows a departure from the ordinary guidelines. Upon motion of the government stating that the defendant has provided substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense, the court may depart from the guidelines. (a) The appropriate reduction shall be determined by the court for reasons stated that may include, but are not limited to, consideration of the following: (1) the court’s evaluation of the significance and usefulness of the defendant’s assistance, taking into consideration the government’s evaluation of the assistance rendered; (2) the truthfulness, completeness, and reliability of any information or testimony provided by the defendant; (3) the nature and extent of the defendant’s assistance; (4) any injury suffered, or any danger or risk of injury to the defendant or his family resulting from his assistance; (5) the timeliness of the defendant’s assistance. I have no idea where the Guardian got 6 months from. It's certainly possible that's part of the plea deal (although nothing says the judge has to impose the sentence that the prosecutor recommends as part of the deal), and maybe there are adjustments I'm not taking into account that would reduce the offense level further. I just now found a copy of the plea agreement. It specifies that the parties agree he will be sentenced under guideline §2B1.1(a)(2). This ordinarily is for offenses such as theft, property damage, forgery, or fraud. As far as I can tell, the government is just using this to get the sentence down, because there's no real relation to the crime he's accused of. Under that guideline, the base offense level is 6. The two level decrease for accepting responsibility puts it at an offense level of 4, with a possibility of a downward departure for cooperation. Regardless of whether or not there's a downward departure, this would have a 0-6 month sentence recommendation, which is the lowest available in the guidelines. This is also in Zone A of the sentencing table, meaning a sentence of just probation with no imprisonment or home confinement is possible.	It is reported that this is the result of new legal reasoning in German law. In the cases of Demjanjuk in 2011 and 2015 it was found that being a camp guard is enough to be found guilty of accessory to murder, even without specific evidence of a crime. In a more recent trial (Rehbogen) the prosecution used the same reasoning to charge and try a concentration camp guard.
Criminal? Vehicle stolen by family member If a policeman refuses to record or investigate a crime, such as a vehicle theft by a family member where the case could be borderline criminal or civil. What can one do to give the police department the confidence that this is a criminal case and not a civil case? Another aspect to the theft is property within the vehicle. In fact, what if property in the vehicle does not belong to any relation of the family member who took the vehicle. Can the other owners of the property file a criminal theft complaint? Can the owner of the vehicle file a complaint about property that was in it?	Apart from hiring an attorney (who will, based on the specifics that you tell him, have a better recommendation), you can appeal to the district attorney, the mayor, a higher officer in the chain of command with the local police, and whatever TV-on-your-side news-guys there are. The decision to prosecute rests with the DA: the police make recommendations. The DA probably has investigators, and all of the above can persuade the police to take a closer look at the case. Ultimately, you cannot force the police to investigate, only the local government that the police are a part of can order the police. An attempt to sue the police for not doing what you think they should do will fail, because the courts have repeated held that barring an illegal basis for non-investigation, investigating purported crimes is discretionary.	I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer. Victoria The Road Safety Act 1986 (Vic) s 73A makes the obstruction of the operation of a safety camera or speed detector an offence. It is likely that the obstruction of a mobile speed camera would fall within this offence. The law does not restrict the operation of the device to police, and so it may not be relevant whether the car was marked or not. New South Wales Certainly, the obstruction of an authorised officer is an offense as per the Roads Act 1993 (NSW) s 240 and the Road Transport Act 2013 (NSW) s 173 Obviously these apply to NSW and Victoria only; I haven't researched the other states yet. It's possible, though not definite, that other states will have similar laws. It is also likely, though not definite, that people who attempt to obstruct it may be charged with obstruction of traffic in some way, as most states require you to not obstruct the normal passage of traffic unreasonably. (eg Road Obstruction (Special Provisions) Act 1979 (NSW) s 4)	Although I don't think there's a general principle that stealing a key is equivalent to stealing what it unlocks, some jurisdictions may certainly have laws that punish the theft of a key more severely. For instance, see the North Dakota Criminal Code, section 12.1-23-05, which grades theft offenses. Paragraph 3i provides that: Theft under this chapter is a class C felony if: [...] The property stolen consists of a key or other implement uniquely suited to provide access to property the theft of which would be a felony and it was stolen to gain such access. So if you steal $50,001 in cash, you are guilty of a class A felony, punishable by 20 years imprisonment and/or a fine of $20,000 (see Chapter 12.1-32). If you steal a key that unlocks a safe containing $50,001 in cash, and it can be shown that you stole the key in order to gain access to the cash, you are guilty of a class C felony, punishable by 5 years imprisonment and/or a fine of $10,000. If you steal a key blank that doesn't unlock anything, but has similar intrinsic value to a key (say, a couple of dollars), then you are guilty only of a class B misdemeanor, punishable by 30 days imprisonment and/or a fine of $1,500.	While it is from a different jurisdiction, the following goes to the heart of the matter: Arrest, when used in its ordinary and natural sense, means the apprehension of a person or the deprivation of a person's liberty. The question whether the person is under arrest or not depends not on the legality of the arrest, but on whether the person has been deprived of personal liberty of movement. Directorate of Enforcement v Deepak Mahajan, (1994) 3 SCC 440 at ¶46 (SC of India) In your example, the police officer has been deprived of "personal liberty of movement"; if they can still speak there would be no legal impediment to them placing the person who arrested them also under arrest. It would then be incumbent on both parties to deliver each other into lawful custody. The citizen would need to seek out a law enforcement officer to do this; the police officer has already done so, being their own law enforcement officer. After this, comes the paperwork.	As far as I can tell, that would be a criminal act. Georgia law § 16-8-2 - Theft by taking says: A person commits the offense of theft by taking when he unlawfully takes or, being in lawful possession thereof, unlawfully appropriates any property of another with the intention of depriving him of the property, regardless of the manner in which the property is taken or appropriated. Georgia law § 16-7-21. Criminal trespass says: A person commits the offense of criminal trespass when he or she intentionally damages any property of another without consent of that other person and the damage thereto is $500.00 or less or knowingly and maliciously interferes with the possession or use of the property of another person without consent of that person. If you know the store is refusing to sell you a product, and you eat that product anyway, that is theft. If you don't eat the food but just open it, that's still criminal trespass. Even if you're leaving them money, you're still taking and/or damaging their property without their consent. Additionally, if they told you to leave, and you refused and instead started opening food items, you might be guilty of trespassing in the more traditional sense: A person commits the offense of criminal trespass when he or she knowingly and without authority... Remains upon the land or premises of another person... after receiving notice from the owner, rightful occupant, or, upon proper identification, an authorized representative of the owner or rightful occupant to depart. As to whether it was legal to give the candy to your daughter before the disagreement and refusal of service, that may depend on what the standard practice is. It seems to me that in most clothing stores you're supposed to pay before consuming the product - this isn't a sit-down restaurant. But if there's nothing else going on, I think the average store would refrain from calling the police if the person did not try to hide the evidence (for example, by stuffing the empty box on a shelf) and if the merchandise was paid for before the person attempted to leave the store, regardless of whether it's technically illegal.	My recollection is there's a big difference between money and property. I found a 1929 law journal article that supports my recollection. The owner of stolen property is entitled to have it returned. If the person who obtained it from the thief didn't know it was stolen, the person didn't commit a crime, but must give up the property and is not entitled to any compensation (unless the person can get compensation from the thief). A person who innocently receives money is the holder in due course, and gets to keep it. The victim's only recourse is to get compensation from the thief.	To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.	Theft is universally a crime in virtually every jurisdiction. Insofar as a state has a criminal code and a functioning judiciary, theft will always be a crime. It is also a basic legal principle that theft is a tort as well (in other words, a civil wrong incurring damages to an individual that can be remedied in a court of law). A key part of the problem in failing to make theft a crime, is that in the absence of a substantive penalty in terms of a fine or imprisonment, theft becomes a low-risk, high-reward activity where the maximum penalty is simply the repayment of stolen goods (with relatively minimal loss). This fails to provide an effective deterrent to this socially frowned-upon activity, and rates of crime would skyrocket. It is appropriate, therefore, to make theft a crime (and all jurisdictions do so), as all pillars of criminal justice immediately apply. Edit: As @/JBentley correctly points out, penalties do in fact exist in civil law. That said, the power of incarceration, perhaps in this case the ultimate deterrent, is largely unavailable in civil cases. The ultimate point - that theft is rendered a more sound and legitimate enterprise based largely on gambling - remains the same. Additionally, not all individuals have the time or effort to file small claims and follow cases to the end. Making theft a tort-only offense would cause extraordinary difficulties in enforcement as many would consider the loss of perhaps a small article relatively insignificant compared to filing in small claims court.
Is it criminal for POTUS to engage GA Secretary State over Election results? Given recent headlines regarding the Trump-Raffensperger phone call regarding GA election results, experts like Preet Bharara indicate criminal conduct. If this is true, What exactly would a prosecutor charge? State? Federal? Would Trump be vulnerable to Federal prosecution of the phone call after he leaves office? I would think that the proper venue for POTUS to stake any claim would be in the judiciary system (courts)? I am not a lawyer, however, I do enjoy learning the lingo. Thank you for the thoughtful response.	What exactly would a prosecutor charge? State? Federal? It depends on whether it is a state or federal prosecutor. It appears that the president has at least flirted with violating both federal and state law, in which case he may be charged by both the federal and state prosecutors, each one laying charges under the relevant body of law. Would Trump be vulnerable to Federal prosecution of the phone call after he leaves office? Yes, if the facts support such a prosecution. It's not clear to me that the conversation constituted an unambiguous violation of the federal statute, but I have no knowledge of any precedent that might inform such a determination.	I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.	It's happened before in real life. Here is a 1994 article describing an Illinois criminal trial where defense counsel pulled the old switcheroo and sat a different person with him at the defense table instead of the defendant. The defendant, instead, sat somewhere else in the courtroom. After a witness misidentified the perp as the person at the defense table (not the defendant), the judge directed a not-guilty verdict to settle the case but sanctioned the defense attorney instead. The appellate and state supreme courts upheld the sanction (by a one-vote margin in both cases) but dissenting opinions noted counsel and defendant technically broke no rules. From the article: The dissent said Mr. Sotomayor's intent was only to show the unreliability of the prosecution's witness. Moreover, seating a client at counsel's table is customary but not required. Nor is a lawyer obliged [...] to help a witness make an identification. Also, here is a similar but not duplicate question.	We may soon have a more definitive answer. A Grand Junction, Colorado newspaper is suing a politician for calling it "fake news", and the resolution of that case and the hypothetical that you propose would turn on the same legal principle. It is highly unlikely that such a lawsuit would prevail, because "fake news" probably doesn't constitute libel per se, because the comment could be construed as hyperbole or as a statement of opinion (neither of which are actionable), and even potentially, because a "speech and debate clause" defense under the state constitution might apply (depending upon the context in which the statement was made by the politician). The context of the particular tweet cited generally defines specified organizations as "the FAKE NEWS media" rather than accusing them of any particular instance of making a false statement, so it is probably an opinion or hyperbole. But, if the statement were made knowing it was false or with reckless disregard as to truth or falsity, and if the term "fake news" in the context in which it was used could be legitimately construed the imply a statement of fact which is not true, it wouldn't be impossible for the lawsuit to succeed, and depending upon the context of the statement, it could have such an implication. A suit against Trump could also implicate Presidential immunity doctrines which are more robust than immunity doctrines for other public officials, particularly if the "fake news" comment could be construed as part of the official duties of the President (for which there is absolute immunity) as opposed to his unofficial duties. The immunity question is a closer one than the question on the merits of defamation law about which there is much more case law to flesh out what is and isn't covered.	Anyone can meet with anyone to discuss impeaching POTUS – it happens all the time. Senators are not under any special First Amendment disability that prohibits them from talking on that topic. "Meeting to discuss" sometimes "convening a session to officially debate an action". The House impeaches, the Senate convicts, so Senators do not debate or "discuss" a motion to impeach. There are (were) private discussions regarding procedure, and it is reasonable to assume, regarding the substance of the charges. The Senate is allowed to set its own rules, so if the Senate wants to conduct an impeachment behind closed doors, it can. Treason is if one, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason What you describe is politics, which is legal.	Sometimes In general, intentionally false speech gets less protection than other speech, and in some cases it is unprotected. The classic example of speech that is unprotected is "Falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater". Note that this is both intentionally false and highly likely to be seriously harmful to multiple uninvolved people. On the other hand, the classic case of New York Times vs Sullivan said that, at least when the subjects were public officials (later broadened to public figures) it was not enough to prove simple falsehood in a defamation case, one must prove "actual malice" (an unfortunate term) which in this context means statements that are either knowingly false or are made with reckless disregard for the truth. The court in that case said, in effect, that if a newspaper had to be sure that its every statement could be proved true in every detail, it would be unwilling to vigorously report on matters of significant public concern (this is a paraphrase, I'll add a quote later). Opinions are considered legally not to be either false or true. "President Jone is the worst leader the US has ever had" Is a statement of opinion, and so is not defamation. Moreover, in political contexts, attempts to punish false statements of fact that are not defamatory have been held unconstitutional. One example was the "Stolen Valor" act, which punished falsely claiming to have been awarded a medal by the US armed forces. This was held to be against the First Amendment. In general, regulation of speech (which here includes writing and other forms of communication) must be fairly narrowly drawn and must have good reasons behind them to survive a court challenge. How much so depends on the nature of the law, and particularly whether it is "content-neutral" or not. Details and cites to come when i have a little more time.	The president alone has power, under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, to grant pardons for federal offenses. Many states have an analogous power for governors, to pardon state offenses. In some states, though (for example Minnesota), there is a board in charge of the process (made up, in Minnesota, of the Governor, Chief Justice and Attorney General). Likewise, in Canada, pardons are granted by a board. Although POTUS has the power, in terms of implementation it is a bit more complicated, since he doesn't sit around wondering "Who should I pardon": he has an Office of the Pardon Attorney who makes recommendations. However, there are other ways to get out of jail (besides doing the time), namely having the conviction overturned, being paroled, and credit for good behavior. Federal parole is no longer an option, but the other avenues are open, at least in principle.	You would think so, but no While at first glance, President Trump sending a staff member to testify under oath in his place (to nullify any personal risk of perjury?) appears to epitomize the concept of "hearsay"-- a statement that: (1) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and (2) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement --there are some subtle but important distinctions and exceptions in play. I'm going to list them off in increasing order of relevance. FOIA penalties are civil, not criminal The official DOJ website lists off the penalties for Freedom of Information Act violations: The court may award reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs against the government when the complainant substantially prevails. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(4)(E). Action Against Individual Employees: Sanctions may be taken against individual agency employees who are found to have acted arbitrarily or capriciously in improperly withholding records. Additionally, the court must award attorney fees and other litigation costs against the government. When the statutory requirements are found by the Court to have been met, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) must promptly initiate a proceeding to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted against the office or employee who is primarily responsible for the withholding. The MSPB, after investigating and considering the evidence, submits its findings and recommendations to the agency concerned which then is required to take the corrective action recommended by the Board. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(4)(F). Additionally, there now exists independent jurisdiction for such MSPB investigations under 5 U.S.C. Sec. 1206(e)(1) (1982). Failure to comply with a court order to produce the records in question may also result in punishment for contempt for the responsible employee. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(4)(G). So the strongest penalty against any individual government official who violated FOIA would be losing their job, or civil contempt of court. In principle the prohibition against hearsay applies equally to civil cases as criminal ones; in practice, because the stakes are lower, courts may take a somewhat looser attitude towards hearsay in civil cases than they would in a similar criminal case. Rule 807(a), "Residual Exceptions" Rule 807(a) gives courts large latitude to determine whether or not to admit hearsay evidence: (a) In General. Under the following conditions, a hearsay statement is not excluded by the rule against hearsay even if the statement is not admissible under a hearsay exception in Rule 803 or 804: (1) the statement is supported by sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness–after considering the totality of circumstances under which it was made and evidence, if any, corroborating the statement; and (2) it is more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence that the proponent can obtain through reasonable efforts. In this situation, the presiding judge, Reggie Walton of the D.C. District Court, clarified what he would consider "sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness": U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued the rare order to the White House last week after expressing dissatisfaction with a previous explanation submitted by the Justice Department’s top career official, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer. Weinsheimer said he had checked with an unidentified official in the White House counsel’s office and determined that no new declassification was triggered by Trump’s latest tweets. However, Walton said given Trump’s suggestions of a rogue element undercutting his orders, some assurance directly from the president or someone who had spoken to the president was necessary. As Meadows had, one presumes, literally spoken to the president, this satisfied the presiding judge's own explicit standard of "sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness" for when hearsay may be admitted into evidence. Rule 807(a)(2) is also relevant here, in its caveat that hearsay may be accepted into evidence when it is "more probative...than any other evidence that the proponent can obtain through reasonable efforts". Arguably, forcing the POTUS to neglect his duties running the country and "ending the pandemic" long enough to testify in what is, in many ways, a run-of-the-mill FOIA case, would take too much effort to be "reasonable". Which brings me to the next point: Rule 804(a)(1) and Rule 804(b)(5), "Unavailability of the Declarant" Rule 804(a)(1) discusses a specific exception to the hearsay rule when the declarant can't or won't personally testify: (a) Criteria for Being Unavailable. A declarant is considered to be unavailable as a witness if the declarant: (1) is exempted from testifying about the subject matter of the declarant’s statement because the court rules that a privilege applies As POTUS, it makes sense that Trump would have some degree of privilege or immunity from being deposed. If a sitting President could be dragged into court at will over any government litigation, no matter how mundane, to personally testify, it would be impossible to perform the functions of their office. Think about all of the live issues winding their way through the courts right now that Trump has tweeted about. Now, imagine the demands on his time if he was dragged into court to testify regarding every single one: "Sorry Angela Merkel, I have to cancel our international summit this year, I'm giving a live deposition in 50 different court cases in the next three weeks and I don't have time to do 'foreign policy' right now. Hope no new World Wars break out! Good luck!" Of necessity, a POTUS has to be permitted to delegate 99.9% of legal representation on matters of public policy to other Executive Branch officials, when it comes to who actually needs to be physically present in court. And since he is privileged from personally testifying, that means exception 804(b)(5) applies: (b) The Exceptions. The following are not excluded by the rule against hearsay if the declarant is unavailable as a witness: .... (5) [Other Exceptions .] [Transferred to Rule 807.] We discussed how Rule 807 applies in this circumstance up above. But I want to circle back to the idea that the President has to be able to delegate statements of official policy to other authorized government representatives, such as Meadows, because of the clinching exception: Rule 803(8)(A)(i): Public records of governmental policy aren't excluded by the hearsay rule Rule 803(8)(A)(i) tells us that: statements of public policy (such as, whether the government is going to declassify, or has already declassified, every document relating to the Russia investigation, specifically including Mueller report and FBI interview redactions) made by public offices or their official representatives (such as the POTUS's chief of staff, authorized to speak on behalf of the POTUS, clarifying the Executive Branch's stance on declassification) are not excluded by the hearsay rule: The following are not excluded by the rule against hearsay, regardless of whether the declarant is available as a witness: .... (8) Public Records. A record or statement of a public office if: (A) it sets out: (i) the office’s activities This makes sense given the purpose of the rule against hearsay. It's supposed to prevent innuendo and rumor from sneaking into the factual record when the facts are in dispute: "I heard the defendant's mom say the defendant said he did it," related by the defendant's mom's bingo buddy, would deservedly raise some eyebrows around the bingo table, but isn't the kind of solid evidence an impartial trial requires. Statements of public policy and government action by public officials, on the other hand, have a lot more authority and credibility than what a friend of a friend of the defendant heard the friend say the defendant said. Meadows isn't (just) some random golf buddy of the President who overheard what the President was thinking when he made these tweets; he's the President's official delegate to the court, conveying the Executive Branch's official position on declassification. Such official statements are ordinarily presumed maximally trustworthy and reliable, at least partly for logistical reasons. Similar to how we can't ask Trump to cancel all the COVID task force meetings to clear his schedule and testify about some tweets, we can't drag every government officer who makes an out-of-court official public statement or record into court to certify it--at least, not every single time. The judicial branch of the government takes the word of other branches of the government mostly at face value†, and does not consider public records or statements in an official capacity as "hearsay" to be excluded from evidence. So the TL;DR version is: No, Meadows coming into court to convey this statement on behalf of his boss would not be excluded by the hearsay rule. †Significantly, statements or records regarding policy might be excluded as hearsay, per 803(8)(B), if the opposition demonstrates that the statement or record is somehow fishy or unreliable: "(B) the opponent does not show that the source of information or other circumstances indicate a lack of trustworthiness." But in this instance, in order to demonstrate a "lack of trustworthiness", the plaintiffs in the case--BuzzFeed, CNN, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center--would have to show that the government was actually declassifying and unredacting all material related to the Russia investigation, contrary to what Meadows claimed in court. Since the government is not actually doing this, the President's social media rants notwithstanding, the plaintiffs would be unlikely to prevail if they tried to use 803(8)(B) to get Meadows' testimony excluded as hearsay.
I want to translate the Bible to a yet untranslated language. What legal aspects should I look for? Yes, there exists a language in which the Bible has not yet been translated to. I wish to do that translation. Which version of the Bible can I use, and am I liable for lawsuits? Thanks	Translating any text produces a derivative work. If the original text is protected by copyright, this requites the permission of the copyright holder. Any ancient text or translation of the Bible is totally free of copyright protection. Any version published in the US before 1926 is now out of copyright in the US. The rule3s for copyright of a Bible version are not usually different from those form any other text in a given country. There are a few special exceptions. For example, as described on this site the King James Version (KJV) is under Crown Copyright in the UK. There could be similar special copyright rules in other countries for particular versions. Note that the KJV is listed as PD on the list linked in the answer by user6726. But this would not be correct in the UK, although it would be in the US.	I would argue that no, there is no copyright for the restored work. Independent copyright is only possible for any original material added, as previously discussed on this site. In this case, the added work was a technical process rather than a creative process, and technical processes cannot be protected by copyright. Copyright licenses would therefore be ineffective. However, I believe one could still impose a license based on owning the copy as opposed to the copyright (contract might be a better term in this case). However, if a third party managed to obtain a copy through some other avenue, any such contract would not be binding on them and nothing could be enforced against them unlike with copyright laws. Another way a license might be imposed is through patent protections, as technical processes can be protected via patents. However, I'm not as familiar with patent law, and this doesn't appear to be the claim being made.	If someone gave a gift than requested it back is it legal? The request itself is legal, but that does not mean that you have to comply with it. I never promised anything that tied to the tablet. So I'm not sure if it counts as a conditional gift. It does not. An unconditional gift (which initially you did not even want) fails to meet the elements of a cognizable doctrine such as contract, promissory estoppel, fraud, or unjust enrichment. he says he will report the tablet as stolen if I don't return it He might get in trouble if he does that, since he knows or should know that the tablet was never stolen. He gave it away despite your initial refusal(s). As such, he might incur false reporting of a crime.	They have copyright in their additional text, and possibly in things like their visual design choices (fonts, layout etc). They may also have introduced a few deliberate typos to detect any literal copies from their version (rather as mapmakers add a few imaginary features to their maps). None of this creates any rights to the original text. You are still free to produce your own copies of the original text. Just get it from some other source so you can be sure not to include anything of theirs.	Yes So far so good. This is a copyright violation but it is probably fair use - certainly there is case law permitting a copy of a backup digital asset to be made so I don’t see why a similar argument wouldn’t work with backing up a physical book. Clear copyright violation. Alice can rent out the original under the first sale doctrine but the ‘backup’ is not so protected. It’s not fair use because it’s use is commercial, the work is a type of work the author expects to profit from, the entire work has been copied and the use is deleterious to the market i.e. the renters are less likely to buy an original - it falls foul of all four factors of the fair use test.	First, if by "they say" you literally mean they use spoken words, and not a printed advertisement, or an advertisement on the internet that you can print out, then you may have a hard time proving what they said. If you can prove what they said that would be very helpful, a seller may be in trouble if their contract is not the same as what they promised. If things go to court, then a judge will first figure out what the contract is (let's say both sides have a copy of the contract - but the words are different, then a jury decides). That's not what we have here. Then the judge decides what the words in the contract mean. If the words are ambiguous, then the judge interprets the words in favour of the person who didn't write the contract.	Usually not, usually Translating literary works is generally regarded as an adaptation, but I don't think translation programs—and HTML and Markdown, two markup languages with similar principles—are adaptations. According to the description on Creative Commons, Merely changing the format never creates a derivative. So changing WAV to MP3 is not considered an adaptation, nor is changing DOC to PDF. As for HTML and Markdown, it seems a bit vague, but it can be said that although their encoding methods are different, the results presented are very similar. According to https://creativecommons.org/faq/#when-is-my-use-considered-an-adaptation, a modification rises to the level of an adaptation under copyright law when the modified work is based on the prior work but manifests sufficient new creativity to be copyrightable Adaptation produces a derivative. A derivative contains both the will of the original author and the adapter. Creation involves choice, the painter chooses the colors to use, and the translator chooses the words to translate. There are inherently fewer options to create a program. Rendering markdown to html can be done directly through other programs, and it is difficult to see the shadow of the adapter. Editorial originality is very import. Yet one more thing is important: legal definitions. This is what it says in the https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-an-adaptation FQA page What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law So, the laws of where you live still matter. We all know that there is a large gray area in copyright law, which often makes everything depend on the actual situation. This is just a little bit of my personal thoughts for your reference :)	Currently there is nowhere in the USA where polygamy is legal. So regardless of their sexual or gender expression or orientation, being married to MORE THAN ONE person at the same time is illegal. If, however, it turned out that someone had more than one spouse at their death, I'm sure that property distribution would be a matter for the probate court to sort out. As far as legally-married "trans spouses", for lack of a better term, I don't see why that would that impact inheritance in any way?
Are peer-reviewed scientific journals subject to FOIA? Are peer-reviewed scientific journals subject to the Freedom of Information Act? I found this somewhat helpful page: Open Meeting Laws and Non-Profit Organizations (Digital Media Law Project).	No. Freedom of information laws are about government information. Peer reviewed journals are not government institutions.	In the U.S. the text and drawings of a patent application/patent may be copyrighted by the author. If such protections are being claimed, the patent application must contain this authorization from 37 CFR 1.71 (d) and (e)- e) The authorization shall read as follows: A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to (copyright or mask work) protection. The (copyright or mask work) owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all (copyright or mask work) rights whatsoever.	Yes. There is both a duty to disclose and permit inspection of certain records (e.g. those that adversely affect either party's case or support another party's case) and a right for the court to demand access to other specific records. In england-and-wales the applicable rules are found in Part 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules. For example: Standard disclosure 31.6 Standard disclosure requires a party to disclose only– (a) the documents on which he relies; and (b) the documents which – (i) adversely affect his own case; (ii) adversely affect another party’s case; or (iii) support another party’s case; and (c) the documents which he is required to disclose by a relevant practice direction. Specific disclosure (1) The court may make an order for specific disclosure or specific inspection. (2) An order for specific disclosure is an order that a party must do one or more of the following things – (a) disclose documents or classes of documents specified in the order; (b) carry out a search to the extent stated in the order; (c) disclose any documents located as a result of that search. Party's control 31.8 (1) A party’s duty to disclose documents is limited to documents which are or have been in his control. (2) For this purpose a party has or has had a document in his control if – (a) it is or was in his physical possession; (b) he has or has had a right to possession of it; or (c) he has or has had a right to inspect or take copies of it. Right of inspection 31.3 (1) A party to whom a document has been disclosed has a right to inspect that document except where – (a) the document is no longer in the control of the party who disclosed it; (b) the party disclosing the document has a right or a duty to withhold inspection of it, or (c) paragraph (2) applies. (2) Where a party considers that it would be disproportionate to the issues in the case to permit inspection of documents within a category or class of document disclosed under rule 31.6(b) – (a) he is not required to permit inspection of documents within that category or class; but (b) he must state in his disclosure statement that inspection of those documents will not be permitted on the grounds that to do so would be disproportionate. Inspection and copying 31.15 Where a party has a right to inspect a document– (a) that party must give the party who disclosed the document written notice of his wish to inspect it; (b) the party who disclosed the document must permit inspection not more than 7 days after the date on which he received the notice; and (c) that party may request a copy of the document and, if he also undertakes to pay reasonable copying costs, the party who disclosed the document must supply him with a copy not more than 7 days after the date on which he received the request. And, in case there's any doubt that this applies to electronic records: Meaning of document 31.4 In this Part – ‘document’ means anything in which information of any description is recorded;	That is a very broad clause, broader than the default US rule for copyright, for example. (I know the question asked about the UK, I just happen to know the US copyright rule.) It would seem on the face of it to include independent research on a subject totally unrelated to the person's employment, done off the company's premises and not during normal work hours, but while the person was an employee.. Indeed it would arguably include the copyright to a novel written off premises and during off hours. Use of "course of employment" (instead of "term") would improve the provision. so would "as a part of his or her employment" or "closely related to the subject of his or her employment". Another possible restriction would be "Using the Company's facilities and/or equipment, or during normal working hours". However, my experience is that an employer will have drafted whatever language it uses through its company lawyer, and will be quite unwilling to alter it in any way. A prospective employee will probably be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it choice unless that person is a nearly indispensable figure to the company. One could send the company a certified letter saying, "When i signed the contract agreeing to {company language} I did not intend to include any developments made off company premises, not using company equipment, and unrelated to the subject or scope of my employment. I retain full rights to any such developments." Such a letter would help establish that there was no meeting of the minds to assign such non-employment-related developments or IP to the Company. How much weight it would have if the rights to such developments were the subject of a court case I am not sure.	Issues considered Based on the papers you cite, it seems like its not even straightforward in U.S. law. They discuss three main legal questions that are obstacles to implementing an open-access policy: Is there a "teacher exception" to work for hire, giving researchers initial copyright over their papers? Does a non-exclusive partial rights transfer survive a subsequent exclusive copyright transfer? Is a university policy a sufficient legal instrument to achieve the non-exclusive rights transfer in question (2)? Turns out, this scenario is specific enough that it really matters which jurisdiction is being considered. I took this question as an opportunity to research the copyright regimes of France, Germany and Japan (translations of their respective copyright acts linked). Japanese copyright law is fairly similar to U.S. copyright law in terms of rights transfer, so I will mainly be analyzing the first two (that and I have no competence in Japanese). I am not in any position to be writing papers over this subject, but in considering questions (2) and (3) with a civil law context, I'll cover some laws on governing rights transfers. I'm not considering question (1) because if the university holds original copyright, then it is trivial for them to implement an open-access policy. I thus assume the faculty members hold original copyright for this answer (which is generally the case in France and Germany anyways). Author's rights basics Author's rights are separated into two branches: moral rights and economic rights. Moral rights are generally non-transferable. Often they cannot be waived and last for eternity. Economic rights are those which can be transferred and exploited, but as you note these may also be subject to restrictions. For the rest of this answer, I will be avoiding the term "copyright" as it is ambiguous: It can mean just the economic rights (like in the translated Japanese), or author's right as a whole (like in the translated German and French). Note: Links from this point on are in French (English resources weren't sufficient). Survival of non-exclusive rights transfers In Germany, this is a straightforward affirmative: Section 33 states: Exclusive and non-exclusive rights of use shall remain effective with respect to rights of use granted later. [...] In France, an answer to this question is elusive. This isn't too surprising as French statute hardly references non-exclusive licences. As an example, it took until 2007 for the GPL to be recognized in court. Given that the courts have been leaning towards giving weight to open licenses, my assumption is that they would follow the common-sense approach taken by German law though I've not found any direct statement to that effect. Implementing an open-access university policy From an author's right perspective, the biggest issue I see in drafting such a policy is that by default the authors give the university a non-exclusive right of distribution for future articles. France has particularly strong protections for future works. L131-1 states: Total transfer of future works shall be null and void. Though it may look as if this can be easily avoided by adding a few simple small clauses, jurisprudence has been to interpret this in favour of the author when possible. For further information, see here. While I'm of the opinion the scope of the policy would be narrow enough to avoid the reach of L131-1, there are additional restrictions on publication contracts. Noting that giving the university non-exclusive distribution rights will likely make the university a "publisher" in the eyes of the law, L132-4 states that: A clause by which the author undertakes to afford a right of preference to a publisher for the publication of his future works of clearly specified kinds shall be lawful. Such right shall be limited, for each kind of work, to five new works as from the day of signature of the publishing contract concluded for the first work or to works produced by the author within a period of five years from that same date. This makes it difficult to have a blanket open-access policy. I'm not certain whether an opt-out clause would be enough to avoid the above restriction. Additionally, France has the moral right of retraction allowing the author to withdraw granted rights of use under strict conditions (L121-4). French moral rights can't be waived so it's futile to account for it in a policy, but it's something to be aware of when implementing an open-access system. In Germany, while there are some protections for future unknown types of use, the scope is fairly well defined here. This puts the situation squarely under Section 40: (1) A contract in which the author undertakes to grant rights of use in future works which are not specified in any way or are only referred to by type shall be made in writing. The contract may be terminated by either party after a period of five years following its conclusion. The term of notice shall be six months, unless a shorter term is agreed. I therefore don't see an issue with this in Germany provided that the policy is specifically agreed to and is renewed with faculty at least every 5 years. Legislated open-access Whether or not the university implements a lawful open-access policy (which is challenging in France...), the author has another available option. Both Germany (Section 38(4)) and France (L533-4 I. of the Research Code) have legislated a limited form of open-access that the author has a right to. While the laws are slightly different, they boil down to the following: After publication in a journal, the author may publish the article in an open-access manner after an embargo period of at most 12 months notwithstanding any exclusive rights transfer to a publisher, provided that the research was at least half funded by public funds.	united-states Yes and no, that is, the courts have extensive powers to compel testimony, but there are rules about doing so. This article addresses the question of expert testimony. Suppose you want an expert to testify, then Rule 26(a)(2)(B) applies, requiring disclosure of the information to be disclosed, along with a written report. It could be nearly impossible to provide the required information without the cooperation of the expert. Furthermore, under Rule 45(d)(3)(B)(ii), a subpoena can be quashed, which the article summarizes in terms of the objections that Testimony about an expert’s findings may impact or limit an expert’s ability to conduct research Testimony about an expert’s work may be unethical, if the work is not completed, peer reviewed, or otherwise in a “publishable” format The subpoena and resultant testimony could put the expert at a competitive disadvantage Work required to adequately prepare for such testimony is overly burdensome The subpoena and subsequent testimony may put the unwilling expert in a controversial or otherwise uncomfortable position In a specific instance of subpoenaing an involuntary witness, the court in In Re: World Trade Center Lower Manhattan Disaster Site Litigation addressed a motion to compel expert testimony. The opinion lays out various powers of the court to compel a "non-retained" expert witness, including the "substantial need for the testimony or material that cannot be otherwise met without undue hardship". There is a complex weighing of factors here, which is resolved at the finding that "Plaintiffs have failed to show that the Non-Retained Experts' testimony is unique" so the petition to compel testimony was denied, but the affiliated research center was compelled to disclose the underlying data. So it depends on the circumstances, see Kaufman v. Edelstein, 539 F.2d 811.	No. The general policy of the University of California is that students and faculty retain the copyright of scholarly works they create. So the thesis is copyrighted by its author (unless the author has since transferred copyright for some reason). However, if you contact the author and ask politely, there is a good chance that they will give you permission to share it.	You can always be sued, but truth is an absolute defense to libel. Your actions could be perceived in any way imaginable. What usually matters for legal purposes is how a "reasonable person" would perceive them. As an example, Pennsylvania's Megan's Law Website warns: Any person who uses the information contained herein to threaten, intimidate, or harass the registrant or their family, or who otherwise misuses this information, may be subject to criminal prosecution or civil liability. It further clarifies: Public access to information about registered sexual offenders is intended solely as a means of public protection, any other use prohibited.
What is it called when you get a ticket for driving an automobile which is in sore need of repair? I live in the United States Specifically, the state of Colorado. I am required to tell my new employer what crimes I have pled guilty to, or been convicted of in a court of law. In Colorado, you can get a ticket for driving a badly damaged car. If you drive a rust-bucket - a shit-box - then you can get a ticket for having a poorly maintained vehicle. I have done exactly that. The punishment for this crime crime is a monetary fee + 2 points removed from the guilty party's driver's license. What is the official name of this traffic offense in the veritable state of Colorado?	You (probably) did not commit a crime in Colorado. The answer to your question though is probably Driving an unsafe vehicle Colorado Revised Statutes Title 42. Vehicles and Traffic § 42-4-202 (1) It is unlawful for any person to drive...on any highway any vehicle...which is in such unsafe condition as to endanger any person, or which does not contain those parts or is not at all times equipped with such lamps and other equipment in proper condition and adjustment as required in this section and sections... The above is not a crime , it is (5) Any person who violates any provision of this section commits a class A traffic infraction. A class A traffic infraction is a civil violation. Note that some driving offenses are crimes: In Colorado, driving more than 25 mph over the posted limit is a class 2 misdemeanor, and doing so in a constriction zone is a class 1 misdemeanor. Also note that I say probably because it is possible that they charged you with something more extreme- reckless driving? violation of noise or pollution ordinances?- but for a fine small enough that you don't say, 2 points, and you did not have to go to court (you could have if you wanted for the ticket, but not required) it is very unlikely.	Because that's the law since 1935! StGG§ 265a (eng) declares, that it is a criminal offense to take transportation without a ticket and not wanting to pay. (1) Wer die [...] die Beförderung durch ein Verkehrsmittel [...] in der Absicht erschleicht, das Entgelt nicht zu entrichten, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu einem Jahr oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft, wenn die Tat nicht in anderen Vorschriften mit schwererer Strafe bedroht ist. (1) Whoever [...] uses a means of transportation [...] with the intention of not paying the fee therefor incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine, unless the offence is subject to a more severe penalty under other provisions. But how come transportation fares are in the same paragraph as tricking a vending machine into selling you an item or phones to call without paying the full or any fee? In this case, it's history: §265a was first enacted in 1935, targeting mainly public telephones and vending machines, because those could be tricked by modifying 2 pfennig coins to have the diameter of 10 pfennig coins. The wording was quickly broadened to encompass any machinery controlling entry, but not all sorts of transportation (e.g. a taxi). But where did this come from? Well, the need for the law came from a problem the lawmakers and justice system faced: Because no human was tricked into letting people use the machine for less than the price or nothing at all, it wasn't fraud, because fraud was defined to interacting with a human in such a way. So there had to be a separate offence that targeted tricking machinery. When enacted, Tickets and ticket vending machines were in the scope of the paragraph from day one, as ticket sales or access to the train in many places was handled by automatic machines already or you could buy pre-paid ticket booklets/strips which would then be stamped and devalued in the transportation or at the station. In 1953, the scope was broadened to any use of the telecommunication infrastructure without pay, as the upcoming lack of telephone company employees creating a physical connection would mean it wouldn't be fraud anymore, so they used the same reasoning. Finally, in 1997 the telephone network was renamed communication network, also encompassing the internet and cellphones. One year or fines The punishment is one year or fine. In Germany, that is a fine of up to 365 day-values, which then are determined by the wealth and income of the convicted person. If you can't pay or want to pay, you can instead go to prison, each day serving also reducing your fine. That is called Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe. Only in exceptional cases like a massive repeat offender, the sentence would be only jailtime and no fine instead. Also note that all transport is companies and not conducted by the state (even if the DB is state-owned), and as such it is an Antragsdelikt - the damaged private party has to convince the state attorney that going to court is worth their time. However, it is much better for the transportation company to instead leverage the Terms of Transportation and gain the increased fare - usually at minimum 60 € or multiple transport price, whichever is higher.	In Washington, there is no criminal sanction for installing an "aftermarket" product on your vehicle. If we are speaking of non-commercial vehicles, the penalties for violating the various safety regulations is a ticket. The federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards can be consulted here. The criminal penalty provisions are here, as authorized by 49 USC 30170 – basically, lying in a report to the government will get you in trouble. You would have to track down all of the provisions in the regulations, but here is the bumper prohibition. The rule prohibits manufacture or importation of a car or a part that doesn't meet the standard. Subsection (b) addresses the "then added later" question, generally saying that there is little prohibition against you tweaking your car. First, if you "had no reason to know, by exercising reasonable care, that the vehicle or equipment does not comply with the standard", you are not subject to penalty. Usually, people have absolutely no reason to know that some part is unsafe, which is not the same as non-compliant, but you might pick up a really cheap bumper having been told that it is cheap because it totally ignores the applicable standards: then you would have reason to know. Used cars and parts are not subject to any federal scrutiny. The concept of a "vehicle in violation" is a legal misconception. Certain acts violate, objects do not violate. The chokepoint that controls car parts is the "manufacture or sell" part of the law, which prevents Auto Zone from selling you a bumper made of clay (it does not prevent you from installing such a bumper – unless your state has a specific law to that effect). The shop is in violation, not the customer.	Here is a link to the relevant Texas Statute: Title 7, Subtitle C, Chapter 545, Subchapter A: Sec. 545.351. MAXIMUM SPEED REQUIREMENT. (a) An operator may not drive at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances then existing. Combine that with: Sec. 545.352. PRIMA FACIE SPEED LIMITS. (a) A speed in excess of the limits established by Subsection (b) or under another provision of this subchapter is prima facie evidence that the speed is not reasonable and prudent and that the speed is unlawful. This section mentions, as an example, among other points: (2) except as provided by Subdivision (4), 70 miles per hour on a highway numbered by this state or the United States outside an urban district, including a farm-to-market or ranch-to-market road; What this means is that if you are driving over 70 miles per hour on a type of highway mentioned in (2) above then you are, by legal definition, driving at a speed that is greater than is reasonable and prudent. When you are cited for speeding you are not charged for driving at a specific speed in an area posted at another speed. You are cited for violating a broader law, such as in Texas, driving in an unreasonable or imprudent manner. The mention of the speed is merely a recordation of the facts that support the state's case against you. Let's take the proposal to demonstrate the speed is too low to its logical conclusion. You plead not guilty and it comes out during testimony that you weren't driving 80 but really 85. The judge will still find you guilty of the underlying charge as the facts in the case still support that finding. I have personally witnessed mistakes in tickets result in dismissal. Those mistakes have, however, been related to other facts about the case though: time of day, date of offense, etc. I've also witnessed people attempt to claim a lower but still illegal speed. For example, "I wasn't going 85 I was only going 80." These resulted in findings of guilt.	I assume you're talking about this case: Bus lane camera mistakes woman's sweater for number plate. No he couldn't just ignore it - because that doesn't actually result in it getting put in front of a human (judge or otherwise). Instead the fine would escalate and ultimately be passed to a collections agency. Only challenging the Penalty Charge Notice (as this person did) would get a human involved. As a bonus, if the automated fine happens to come with a S172 notice to identify the driver ignoring that is an offence in of itself (irrespective of the original alleged offence), and in many cases carries a worse penalty (£1000 and 6 points IIRC). what if this item of clothing became fashionable and was therefore causing this person to receive hundreds of these fines every week? While it's unlikely to get to that stage - the item of clothing on its own wouldn't do it, there needed to be a specific partial-obscurement of the garment as well, it's not impossible, after all perhaps it's their favorite sweater, they always carry their bag like that and cut across the bus lane on their way to work etc. In those circumstances there's nothing legally that changes, I'd expect the poor vehicle owner to be on first name terms with the people at the council enforcement call centre in question sooner rather than later. Re edit: Suppose I want to annoy somebody as much as possible, what's to stop me from printing a t-shirt with their actual number plate on it, then walking around past all sorts of cameras, knowing that they will receive multiple fines every day and have no choice but to keep calling and explaining. After all, the council has no duty to make it easy for someone to get through on the phone, so, potentially, I could walk around bus lanes and car parks all day. I could get some friends to do this all over the country in different local authority areas and the victim could - literally - have not enough hours in the day to have to keep fighting false fines. Would they not have some recourse to sue for harassment or "vexatious litigation"? In all honesty I don't know for sure what would happen in this scenario - I can't think of a similar enough case. But I would expect targeting an individual in this manner would qualify as harassment pretty easily and for which there are both criminal and civil actions that can be taken. I suppose hypothetically you could argue that the "number plate shirt" is effectively being used to make false allegations that the car's registered keeper had committed crimes, which opens up avenues to prosecution for Perverting the Course of Justice or wasting police time. But I have no idea how likely that would be to be pursued.	As far as I understand, no one can jail anyone as a result of a civil matter. I can't just say, hey! You did this! I'm taking you to jail. You simply don't have the reason and authority to do so - and I doubt the jails would want random people coming in for random reasons. Courts also don't send people to jail for this. As far as I understand, you can only be jailed by a judge for a criminal matter. However, you can go to jail as a result of a civil matter. When this happens, you need to found guilty of a criminal offence, most notably Contempt of Court. You can be found guilty of that offence if you don't respond/comply to the court's instructions - such as failing to repay debts. In order to be found in contempt, the court needs to find that you also intended to refuse the court's instruction (this is known as mens rea). If you were found liable, the court would not send you to jail. They would instead tell you to repay the damages that you owed the creditor (the person who filed suit). Inability to do this does not result in contempt of court, however, you should generally let the court know of this. In terms of this, the court can allow the creditor to garnish wages, have scheduled payments... etc of the debtor. To answer the main question, the only time that the court will jail a person will be upon conviction of a criminal offence (such as contempt of court), and not a civil matter (such as liability).	The Straßenverkehrsordnung(Translation) in Germany says this: § 34 Accidents (1) Any person involved in a traffic accident must: stop immediately; take the necessary steps to ensure traffic safety and, if there is only minor damage, move their vehicle to the edge of the carriageway; ascertain the consequences of the accident; assist injured persons (section 323c of the Penal Code); to other persons present at the scene of the accident who were involved and have suffered damage: a) state that they (i.e. the person referred to in the first clause) were involved in the accident; and b) if requested to do so, provide their own name and address, present their own driving licence and vehicle registration document and, to the best of their knowledge, provide details of their third-party insurance; a) remain at the scene of the accident until, by virtue of their own presence, it has been possible to identify their personal details, their vehicle and the nature of their involvement to the benefit of the other persons who were involved in and have suffered damage in the accident; or b) wait for a reasonable length of time and leave their own name and address at the scene of the accident if nobody was prepared to perform the identification; immediately facilitate subsequent identification if they have left the scene of the accident legitimately, after giving a plausible excuse or upon expiration of the waiting time (paragraph 6(b)). For this purpose, they must inform at least the persons referred to above (paragraph 6(a)) or a nearby police station that they were involved in the accident and must provide their own address, their present whereabouts as well as the registration number and location of the vehicle that was involved in the accident, which must be kept available for immediate investigation for a reasonable length of time. For minor accidents (no injuries, no suspected criminal offence, no major disagreements between involved parties, ...) you do not have to call and wait for police (you have a right to call them but they might try to discourage you from requesting that they come to the scene). For normal traffic accidents insurance doesn't come and collect evidence at the scene, instead an appraiser will document damage to your car and look at statements and witness reports and other documentation. You can just exchange all necessary information with the other party/ies and then leave with your car (possibly using a towing service). However, OP might refer to the specific case of an accident with a rented car. In that case, the contract with the rental service often mandates that you call police and request an official police documentation and report in case of an accident.	Rule 286 states: If you are involved in a collision which causes damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property, you MUST stop. If possible, stop in a place of relative safety (see Rule 275) give your own and the vehicle owner’s name and address, and the registration number of the vehicle, to anyone having reasonable grounds for requiring them if you do not give your name and address at the time of the collision, report it to the police as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case within 24 hours. This mirrors the underlying legislation at section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988: (2) The driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle must stop and, if required to do so by any person having reasonable grounds for so requiring, give his name and address and also the name and address of the owner and the identification marks of the vehicle. (3) If for any reason the driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle does not give his name and address under subsection (2) above, he must report the accident. (4) A person who fails to comply with subsection (2) or (3) above is guilty of an offence. The penalty for this offence depends on the particular circumstances, and, as per the Sentencing Council' guidelines, it is: Triable only summarily: Maximum: Unlimited fine and/or 6 months Offence range: Band A fine – 26 weeks’ custody A Band A fine is: 25 – 75% of relevant weekly income The Offence Range has three Categories to determine the appropriate sentence depending on the: Level of seriousness
Insurance - Forced to call for cancellation I purchased the insurance cover online, without having to use any phone/landline. It's now close to expiration, and there's auto-renewal which I have no option to disable. In order to cancel the renewal, I'm forced to call the call center. One would ask, so what's the problem with this approach? What if I do not own any mobile/landline device/number? What if I do not have enough time to wait 30 minutes in the phone queue? I am forced to effectively "work" for the insurance company by wasting my own time & money. Is there any consumer protection law stating that if I purchase a service by means A, i should be able to cancel by using at least the same methods (eg: online)? Update 1: Jurisdiction: England, United Kingdom.	Such a right would only exist if the legislature has created it by some act. Insurance is excluded under the class of covered contracts under The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 (see schedule 2), and The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. The only restriction on automatical renewal clauses under Consumer Rights Act 2015 is that the deadline for objecting to renewal cannot be unreasonably early (schedule 2, unfair terms); and in general, the terms may not be vague. Since there is no law restricting a contract from requiring written notice, or telephone notice, or whatever they demand, then it comes down to what the contract says. If it says "you must call", then you must call.	This is possibly but not necessarily fine. The data controller (the garage) is responsible for safeguarding your personal data. They must take appropriate safety measures, but this depends a lot on their own risk assessment. For example, to protect the data from being used by employees for their personal purposes, the controller might use organizational measures like a policy “you're not allowed to do that.” Many companies allow employees to use their personal devices for work purposes (BYOD). When the data controller allows this and takes appropriate safety measures, everything is perfectly fine. The company still has to make sure that the data is only processed for legal purses and deleted afterwards. Implementing a BYOD policy in a GDPR compliant manner is difficult but not impossible. A data breach has occurred when the security measures were insufficient and your data was deleted or disclosed without authorization. Your scenario would only be a breach if the company did not have a BYOD policy and the salesman used their personal phone, and arguably then only if that device is also breached. However, do not discount the alternatives: they do have a BYOD policy and the salesman is acting within their instructions the salesman was using a company-controlled device, not their personal phone If you have good reason to believe that your data was mishandled (and these alternatives do not apply), then the GDPR offers you the following remedies: You can of course complain to the data controller, especially if they have a dedicated data protection officer. You can lodge a complaint with a supervision authority, which is the ICO in the UK. They expect you to attempt to resolve your issue with the controller first. The ICO can then decide if they want to investigate the issue. You can sue them for compliance and for actual damages suffered (you have none, though). Note that all of these alternatives are more effort than they are likely worth. In particular, the garage can always correct the problem, e.g. by getting your contact info deleted from the personal device or by creating a retroactive BYOD policy.	Since you asked two questions: No and No Does a company’s T&C or their house rules supersede law No and is asking private health status (including the request to wear a mask) an offence? No A company cannot require you to do things that are against the law but they can require you to do things that go further than the legal minimum. The UK and Spanish governments do not require you to wear a mask but they do not prohibit private organisations (like airlines) for making it a requirement to access their facilities. The law requires that they make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. But you don’t have a disability, you just can’t sleep with a mask on. If you had a disability you would have no trouble in getting a letter from your doctor to that effect. The contract requires them to take you from the UK to Spain: they don’t have to enable you to sleep. If you read the T&C, you will find that they can refuse to carry you if, in their reasonable opinion, you pose a hazard to the aircraft or the people aboard it.	It is legal and quite common. Your choice as consumer is at the point of selecting insurance company. If you dislike ES enough, that would be a reason to select a different insurance company. It would be surprising if your ES contract disallows pharmacy pick-up, but even if it did, that would also be legal. This does not mean that the government doesn't have the power to break up Express Scripts, under anti-trust laws. There is no clear rule regarding how successful a company can be in attracting customers.	It is the use of a "menace" which creates the crime, not the nature or validity of the demand. That's not correct. You've inadvertently missed the other element of the offence: that it's an "unwarranted demand". A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21 For example, I may have reasonable grounds under the Consumer Rights Act to demand a refund for a faulty good. It might be sensible to moderate one's language, e.g. "If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 30 days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs." vs. "If I do not receive the money from you within 30 days of the date of this letter I'll take you to the f***ing cleaners, sunshine." But the language doesn't make the demand unwarranted.	Each of the 50 states plus non-states has their own laws, but there is nothing general about contract or other law in the US that forces a rental facility to accept customers who don't have / won't get the insurance that they require. It is a reasonable requirement, because it protects their interest insofar as angry customers might sue the facility because their car was broken into, and many of them would mistakenly believe that their car insurance covers theft or destruction of contents (thus leading to a desire to sue, to cover the property loss). It may be just too much hassle and too risky for them to assume the correctness of a customer's claim that they already have adequate coverage and will maintain said coverage, with no practical means to verify the claim.	A text message is just as legally binding as a letter, and the lion's share of the cases have held that a text message from a known sending phone number is equivalent to a signed letter. One would have to carefully parse the exchange of communications to see if they amounted to a binding offer and acceptance, but the fact that it was in a text message, rather than on a piece of paper is irrelevant. Indeed, generally speaking, such an offer and acceptance, if the words exchange show that, could be binding even if made orally, if it could be proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Procedurally, however, once a judgment has been entered, as is the case here, the process of proving that you have complied with a stipulation regarding what is to constitute payment in full may be challenging. I'll leave the question of civil procedure in Connecticut small claims court to someone more knowledgable about it than I am as that could vary a lot from state to state, or even from court to court based upon local practice within the state.	No The contract is created at the moment that an offer was accepted. In normal circumstances: You accepted an offer that they made to the general public by sending a purchase order for specific items at specific prices, or They accepted your offer by communicating their acceptance to you (being advised that the goods have been dispatched counts). However, in this circumstance, the company has been explicit that the contract is only created when either: You checkout and pay, or They “supply an invoice to you.” It appears that neither event happened so there is no contract. Their specific terms have overridden the common law rules on offer and acceptance (as they are allowed to do) and the offer has not been accepted until you receive their invoice. Specifically, it cannot be accepted by performance (dispatching the goods) and the requirement for the invoice to be supplied overrides the postal rule. Note that, in this case, you got lucky. 99 times out of 100 there would have been a valid contract and you would have breached it. In future, cancel orders specifically, don’t make assumptions.
Can a work based on a public domain work be released somewhere the original work is not public domain yet? So, in Europe, works written by authors who died in 1950 will enter the public domain, including things like 1984 and Animal Farm, whose author, George Orwell, died in 1950. However, since they were released after 1926, they will not be entering the US public domain until 95 years after publication. If someone in Europe made a film based on Animal Farm or 1984, what would happen if they tried to release it in America? I can see in this question that copies of a work that is public domain are to be seized upon entering a country where they aren't in public domain, but what about derivative works based upon works that are public domain in one country but not another?	Such works may be considered as copyright infringements under US law. The US does not apply the "rule of the shorter term", and so the PD status of the parent work in some other country,. including the source country, is not relevant. There are, however, other ways for a work to have lost copyright protection under US law, and one of them might apply in a particular case. Also, whether a work is legally a derivative work of another is a fact-based legal question, and the answer is not always as obvious as one might think. The copyright holder of the parent work could file a copyright infringement suit, seeking damages and other relief in a US Federal court. Note that one of the rights that make up copyright is the right to make or authorize the making of derivative works. This ism spelled out in 17 USC 106 item (2) "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;" I am not sure of the rules for customs seizure of allegedly infringing works. I thin k that only works already adjudged to be infringing are seized, pursuant to a court order, but I am not sure of that. II do not see how the customs service would determine the disputable issues mentioned above. For the matter of that, any such work could be authorized by permission from the copyright holder, and I don't see how customs would know if there had been such permission granted. Added citations: 17 USC 503 says: (a)(1) At any time while an action under this title is pending, the court may order the impounding, on such terms as it may deem reasonable (A) of all copies or phonorecords claimed to have been made or used in violation of the exclusive right of the copyright owner; ... (b) As part of a final judgment or decree, the court may order the destruction or other reasonable disposition of all copies or phonorecords found to have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, ... 17 USC 602 provides that: (a) (2) Importation or exportation of infringing items.—Importation into the United States or exportation from the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords, the making of which either constituted an infringement of copyright, or which would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sections 501 and 506. ... (b) Import Prohibition.—In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs and Border Protection Service has no authority to prevent their importation. In either case, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by the United States Customs and Border Protection Service of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work. It appears that copies of an infringing work may be seized. but only by court order. It appears that import of an allegedly infringing work may be prohibited, but not when copies were lawfully made. But such imports may be reported to the claimant, who can then take appropriate legal action.	No It says right on the page you linked: These downloads are not public domain, as they are parts of content that has already been licensed and distributed. Although using these downloads may be permissible as long as the project itself falls under the rule of "Fair Use," it is ill-advised to use these downloads for any project intended for profitable gain or commercial advertisement, unless otherwise stated by Kyutwo.com.	Not in US law, at least. Under the 1999 decision Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp (36 F. Supp. 2d 191) such images are not protected by copyright. As the Wikipedia article says, the court here ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality. This decision has been generally followed in US copyright law thereafter. At the time it was claimed that UK law took a different view, but I understand that more recently the UK also follows the Bridgeman rule, although I cannot confirm that at the moment. See also this article about the Bridgeman case and its effects. The service probably puts that notice onto all its newspaper reproductions, not checking which ones are from originals still under copyright. EDIT: As some comments point out, the formatting used to present the digital version, if not a slavish copy of the original newspaper, might be original enough for copyright protection. Therefore one should copy only the digitized text, or elements obviously a direct copy of the original newspaper which is in the public domain. The digitizing service will not get any copyright on the original text or images, even if the formatting has enough originality for protection.	"The Holy See owns all copyrights in the works published under its name or created on its commission (art. 5)." Since this painting was commissioned by the Vatican for the Sistine Chapel, they own the copyright to it. The first sentence just says the Vatican owns all copyrights that exist, it doesn't speak to whether any copyrights exist in the first place. Earlier in that article, it says "The law provides for copyright 70 years after the death of the author, or 70 years after publication for works with no named author." I don't know off-hand when Michelangelo died, but I'm pretty sure that it was more than 70 years ago. So if there is a copyright, it has long since expired, and who owns it is a moot point. The painting is well in the public domain. If there were a valid copyright, a sculpture would be a derivative work and would require a license.	Let me give some nuance, if not a definitive answer, since I'm not a lawyer. First, ArXiv holds only a license, not the underlying copyright. You need to contact the copyright holder to get permission (and a license). That may be the authors themselves, or a journal if they have assigned the copyright to it. However, it might be more complicated, especially for commercial use. Since the authors of papers frequently use images created by others, sometimes correctly and sometimes not, you should explore a bit more. Perhaps the paper itself will have a citation of the figure and an indication of its source, and hence of its copyright holder. In that case, the authors may not be able to help you, since, at best, they probably also hold just a license. However, for some academic purposes and in some jurisdictions an academic work can be permitted to use a figure (or other things) without regard to copyright. This is called fair use and it varies around the world. But a commercial work won't be able (probably) to depend on the same exception to copyright law and you still have to find the copyright holder. Moreover, even if the authors have a proper license (explicitly), that license (a) may not be transferrable and (b) might be for non-commercial use only. Academic copyright holders often (not universally) issue their work under a fairly permissive license but that is restricted to non-commercial use. Since they hold the copyright they can also issue additional licenses against it if they like, but need to do so explicitly. Ultimately, to use the work of others you have to deal with the copyright question. It is further complicated by the fact that a figure may be considered under the law as a "complete work" even if it appears within another work. So, replicating it is less likely to fall under fair use rules - though they vary. And, there is one other question you should ask yourself. Is your talk really a commercial use? If you are an academic, it may be a subtle question, or not.	It depends on the nature of the quote. Quotes from Buddha, Aristotle and Lincoln are out of copyright. Otherwise, the two basic questions are: who put that quote in fixed form, and is copying it "fair use"? If for example you happen to be at a political rally where a politician makes a noteworthy extemporaneous quote, you could be the copyright holder, because copyright law protects the person who first puts the work into fixed form. (If he's reading from prepared text, the speech writer or his employer would hold copyright). You can also quote small bits from any source, such as "Don't think about your errors or failures; otherwise, you'll never do a thing". It would not be "fair use" to chop up a novel into a sequence of 2-3 sentence quotes. This assumes that you manually assemble the quotes from legal sources, such as a print copy of "The Martian". Whether or not you can legally pull the data from an online source depends on the terms of service for that site. That lets out brainyquote as a source, so check the TOS for whatever source you get the material from.	In the US, the original author still owns the copyright, unless the original work was out of copyright (in which case no one owns the copyright): copyright is not granted for just pressing a "scan" button, and mechanical reproductions are not eligible for copyright (copyright protects creativity, and a scan involves zero creativity). To quote 313.4(A) ("Mere Copies") of the Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition: A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional authorship. [...] Examples: [...] Photocopying, scanning, or digitizing a literary work. That doesn't necessarily mean the repository can't put any restriction on your use of the copy; the repository may have a terms of service. Terms of service are rooted in contract law, not copyright; just because the work is in the public domain, doesn't force the repository to show it to anyone who asks, and they can force you to agree to a contract first. The enforceability of that contract is fact-dependent.	At least in the United States (and I'm pretty sure this is true around the world), facts and information cannot be copyrighted. Just because a work is copyrighted, doesn't mean every part of that work is copyrighted, and factual information conveyed by the work is a part which is not subject to copyright. Copyright on a collection of facts is limited to the selection and arrangement of those facts, and only if that selection and arrangement has some bare minimum amount of originality. See Feist v. Rural, 499 U.S. 340. In this case, it looks at first glance like the person who made that site made their own selection of which materials and which sources would be included; the one place where they really seem to have copied their selection is from glass catalogs with datasheets from specific manufacturers, who would have a hard time arguing that "everything we manufacture in this widely-recognized class of substances" is an original selection. What the author of the website has done is relinquish his rights in his selection and arrangement of the data. In some places, there are other rights besides copyright that do apply to databases; for instance, the EU recognizes database rights to protect significant investment in compiling a database of stuff. But the US does not have that concept. For citing stuff, that's not really a legal question, and has more to do with academic standards. Ask your adviser or teacher if you have one.
Can I legally use (read/encode to/decode from) the MP3 format without paying a license fee? I noticed a lot of different questions about the subject MP3 in the legal website (https://law.stackexchange.com/search?q=mp3). But none of them answer my question really. First of all, I'm thinking about including features in a technical service that should be compatible with MP3 files. This means I would like to know if it is legal for me decode and use a user-uploaded MP3 file. For example; converting it into another audio format. Or make an image of the frequency waves within that MP3 file. Is it I allowed to work with the MP3 format without paying a license fees? Secondly, is it also allowed to encode an audio file into the MP3 format. For example a text-to-speech tool that outputs the audio in an MP3 encoded file. So shortly; Can I legally use (read/encode to/decode from) the MP3 format without paying a license fee?	Some MP3 technologies are still under patent in the US: you can read the wiki page on that matter to see if it is applicable to what you intend to do. This assumes you write your own code – if you use someone else's conversion software, that would depend on the licensing terms for the software.	On the face of it, transcripts are derivative work covered by copyright (even if automagically generated). You are allowed to use them if the use is fair use or if you comply with YouTube's terms of service.	The question that you need to answer is whether, when you embed, you "copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content". It seems that you have done that, i.e. you didn't just "watch". The next question is whether you have "prior written consent of YouTube". Youtube requires a license from contributors granting users the right to "access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service". To fill the gap, you have to determine whether your act of embedding is permitted by the Youtube TOS. Their TOS states §2A that "The Service" includes the YouTube "Embeddable Player". It also says §4 YouTube hereby grants you permission to access and use the Service as set forth in these Terms of Service, provided that: (A) You agree not to distribute in any medium any part of the Service or the Content without YouTube's prior written authorization, unless YouTube makes available the means for such distribution through functionality offered by the Service (such as the Embeddable Player). On the face of it and as long as you do the stuff that follows in B-I, you have complied with that requirement and therefore you have written permission from Youtube.	Sure, you can. But if you, from the US, contract with and pay someone outside the US and then use the results of that effort - the reverse-engineered code, either directly in violation of copyright or to find workarounds - within the US, you may not be culpable in a criminal sense (depending on different jurisdictions and trade/IP agreements), but you certainly would be liable in a civil sense. If the US based software developer (I assume a US-based software company, as you said "outside the US") tracks you down, they can open a civil action against you for any damages they want to claim, including theft of IP, loss of profits, EULA violations, and on and on, because you posses and are using reverse engineered code. How much money do you have to lose?	Hypothetically speaking, if a program doesn't come with a EULA, does that mean someone in possession of it (who isn't the owner) would be breaking the law if they used it? If the copy on the stick was lawfully made with permission of the copyright holder, then you can lawfully use the software. Someone who lawfully comes into possession of a lawfully made copy of the software (that was not a backup) has the right to use that software in the ordinary way. For example if someone found a USB stick lying on the ground and it had software on it but no EULA, could they use the software? Maybe, but it would be hard for them to know whether they could or not. It might be a backup. It might be an unlawful copy. There was a case where a person found a CD in the trash that was clearly an original. The package had a shrink wrap agreement, but he found the CD without the package. The court held that he had every right to use the software on the CD (since it was a lawfully-made copy and not a backup) and was not bound by the EULA (since he hadn't opened the package). But he was very fortunate in being able to demonstrate these facts.	Usually not, usually Translating literary works is generally regarded as an adaptation, but I don't think translation programs—and HTML and Markdown, two markup languages with similar principles—are adaptations. According to the description on Creative Commons, Merely changing the format never creates a derivative. So changing WAV to MP3 is not considered an adaptation, nor is changing DOC to PDF. As for HTML and Markdown, it seems a bit vague, but it can be said that although their encoding methods are different, the results presented are very similar. According to https://creativecommons.org/faq/#when-is-my-use-considered-an-adaptation, a modification rises to the level of an adaptation under copyright law when the modified work is based on the prior work but manifests sufficient new creativity to be copyrightable Adaptation produces a derivative. A derivative contains both the will of the original author and the adapter. Creation involves choice, the painter chooses the colors to use, and the translator chooses the words to translate. There are inherently fewer options to create a program. Rendering markdown to html can be done directly through other programs, and it is difficult to see the shadow of the adapter. Editorial originality is very import. Yet one more thing is important: legal definitions. This is what it says in the https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-an-adaptation FQA page What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law So, the laws of where you live still matter. We all know that there is a large gray area in copyright law, which often makes everything depend on the actual situation. This is just a little bit of my personal thoughts for your reference :)	The first question is whose law you are concerned with, since in principle you might have violated copyright law in any country, and might be sued under the laws of multiple countries. The US has a concept of "fair use" which is notoriously difficult to apply. When you are sued in the US, you can defend against the allegation by arguing certain things: telegraphically, this includes purpose and character of use, nature of the work, substantiality in relation to the whole, and effect on market. Plus there is a 5th factor to be considered, transformativeness. The court then weighs these factors to decide if the use is "fair". By reading existing case law on the topic (conveniently available from the US Copyright office) you might develop a fact-based opinion of the risk: you would be vastly better off hiring an attorney who specializes in US copyright law to do an analysis for you. Do not hire a programmer to give you legal advice (do not hire an attorney to debug code). You would "fail" on the test of substantiality in that you are copying a highly substantial portion of the original work(s). You would "win" on nature of use (research especially non-profit and commentary are the underlying purposes that drive fair use law). It's not clear how you would fare w.r.t. nature of the work, which is intended to distinguish the extremes "news report" and "literature and artistic work" where copying news is at the fair use end of the spectrum. It is not clear how you would fare on "effect on market", but probably not so badly: are you avoiding some licensing fee? Coupled with the tranformativeness consideration, you are most likely having no effect on the market, since the product that you will distribute is not the original work, but a scientific conclusion about the work. Germany has different laws, and this article would be relevant if you cared about Germany. There was a change in the law that expanded the analog of fair use pertaining to research use. That law allows 15 percent of a work to be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research. That, b.t.w., does not refer to what you are planning to do (unless you also publish quotes); for personal scientific research you may reproduce up to 75 percent. Since this is a new law only a year old, you could become part of the cutting edge in testing the limits of the law. So the standard disclaimer applies: ask your attorney. But note section 60d of the law which legalized data mining, and is squarely on point: (1) In order to enable the automatic analysis of large numbers of works (source material) for scientific research, it shall be permissible to reproduce the source material, including automatically and systematically, in order to create, particularly by means of normalisation, structuring and categorisation, a corpus which can be analysed and to make the corpus available to the public for a specifically limited circle of persons for their joint scientific research, as well as to individual third persons for the purpose of monitoring the quality of scientific research. In such cases, the user may only pursue non-commercial purposes. (2) If database works are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall constitute customary use in accordance with section 55a, first sentence. If insubstantial parts of databases are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall be deemed consistent with the normal utilisation of the database and with the legitimate interests of the producer of the database within the meaning of section 87b (1), second sentence, and section 87e. (3) Once the research work has been completed, the corpus and the reproductions of the source material shall be deleted; they may no longer be made available to the public. It shall, however, be permissible to transmit the corpus and the reproductions of the source material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for the purpose of long-term storage.	Here's where you went wrong legally: Suppose I legally obtain some digital image created by somebody else (e.g., by downloading from a public website). That, right there, is copyright infringement- unless the copyright owner has granted permission or the image is public domain you cannot copy it - this breaches "the right to make reproductions". By posting it on the web (assuming that it isn't itself an infringing copy) they have given implied permission for you to look at it in a web browser but not to copy it into a presentation even if that presentation is never presented. If it is presented then that makes the infringement worse - it adds breaches of "the right to communicate to the public" and "the right to use the work as a basis for an audiovisual work". How is this different from the computer wallpaper? It isn't. If you are using the one of the defaults that shipped with the OS then the license gives you permission. If you are using someone else's copyright without permission then it's a breach. There are defenses to copyright infringement but these are quite nationally variable - search this or other sites for "fair dealing" and "fair use".
License incompatibility between PHP and MariaDB? I plan to make a simple website with HTML, CSS, PHP and MarìaDB; however, when I read the MariaDB license (GPL V2) I noticed that it is incompatible with the PHP license (this can be seen in the GNU FAQ section). I have some questions: If the existence of such license incompatibility means that, for example, when using PHP code to make queries and insertions in MarìaDB, would you be incurring the license incompatibility? If I were incurring license incompatibility, is there any way I can use PHP and MariaDB without incurring such incompatibility?	You are concerned that your application is somehow a derivative work of MariaDB and therefore subject to the GPL. It's not totally clear to me whether that is the case or not. But it doesn't matter, because you are not distributing MariaDB itself (or any other part of your application). You're running it on a server which users are connecting to remotely. From MariaDB's licensing FAQ: Internal usage is free The GPL license only affects code that you distribute to other parties. Internal usage within an organization is totally free and not subject to any conditions. There is no such thing as 'internal distribution' that would restrict the usage of your code by requiring it to be GPLed. Connecting to a remote service that runs MariaDB (or any other GPL software) in the background is also free. For internal programs for which you own all the copyright(s), there is essentially no risk in using GPL software. The argument you can use in your defense is that if the software became GPL as part of the distribution, you as the copyright holder could immediately revert your part back to its original copyright. No one has the right to require you to reveal or redistribute your code to the outside of your organization even if you would have distributed it internally linked with GPL software! If your lawyers are concerned about distributions of software linked with GPL libraries between different legal entities within your organization, you can solve this by distributing your components and the GPL software separately, and have your other entity combining them. You can also switch to use the new LGPL client libraries. The use you have described in your question clearly falls into this case, and the presence of this FAQ item clearly demonstrates that the MariaDB developers intended to allow you to do this. The Free Software Foundation (the people who wrote the GPL) agree with this position for both unmodified copies and derivative works. Technically, you don't need a license to "use" a piece of software at all, assuming you have lawfully obtained it. But you're concerned about the possibility of creating a derivative work, for which a license is required. Fortunately, the GPL doesn't care about derivative works so long as they are not distributed.	Congrats, you've done well to minimize your processing of personal data. But I think you're still processing personal data, and are subject to the GDPR. Serving a website necessarily involves processing an IP address. This IP address will typically be personal data. While you are not storing the IP address, the GDPR's definition of “processing” extends beyond storage and pretty much covers doing anything with that IP address. As far as I know this is not an entirely settled matter, but it's better to err on the side of caution and to assume that you are in fact performing a processing activity. Even a static web page can easily lead to additional relevant processing of personal data, for example if the HTML embeds resources from third party domains. Since your website is clearly targeted at the public, it does not fall under the GDPR's exception for “purely personal or household” purposes. So I think you do need a (minimal) privacy notice that contains at least the items mentioned in Art 13 GDPR. The main reason why some people try to avoid posting a privacy notice is because it must disclose your identity and contact details. But in Germany, that information has to be provided anyway due to the Impressumspflicht. As part of your GDPR compliance obligations, you must protect how data is processed by others on your behalf. A hosting provider will typically act as your data processor. For this to be legal, you need a contract / data processing agreement that fulfills the conditions in Art 28 GDPR. This contract binds the data processor to only use the data as instructed by you, and not for their own purposes. European hosting providers sometimes include the necessary terms in their terms of service / AGB, but you should check to make sure. Netcup expects you to accept their data processing amendment in your account settings. In the hypothetical case that you were not processing any personal data at all, the GDPR would not apply and it wouldn't require you to post a privacy notice. Other laws might still have information obligations, notably the German TMG and TTDSG.	To answer the question in your title: Yes, software licenses are copyrighted. They are written works that involve (significant, expert) creative effort to create. The best solution would be for Grammarly to hire a lawyer and say "we want a new EULA. We think this one covers a number of points our current one doesn't". Most legal documents will be copyright for the same reason (there may be a few that are so stereotypical that there is essentially no creative effort in putting them together).	The trivial answer is yes, at least under certain circumstances, as the example you give shows. First, the concept of substrings is not particularly useful in trademark law. IF that were the case, then we wouldn't be able to have a company called "Gaudiest Clothing Brand" because it contains the substring audi. But, you might say, what about looking at words instead of characters, as with the example of "Linux" and "The Linux Foundation." In that case, I offer the example of "Target," which is a word found in literally thousands of US trademarks. You'll notice that the first item on this list where word mark is simply target, rather than a phrase containing that word, doesn't even belong to the well known chain of stores. This brings us to another important aspect of trademark protection, which is that the mark's purpose is to identify a producer of goods, a provider of services, or particular goods or services themselves. You could probably start a bookstore called McDonald's, unless you're near Redmond, Washington, but you certainly would not be able to use that name for a chain of hamburger-based fast food restaurants. Back to the subject of Linux, one possible explanation here is therefore that Linux is a trademark for an operating system, while The Linux Foundation is a trademark for a non-profit foundation that is concerned with the operating system. The trademarks don't represent competing entities. Consider, for example, the disclaimer on volkswagenownersclub.com: VolkswagenOwnersClub.com is an independent media publication. VolkswagenOwnersClub.com and its owners are not affiliated with or endorsed by Volkswagen AG or Volkswagen of America, Inc. Volkswagen is a registered trademark of Volkswagen AG. All rights reserved. All information Copyright 2006-2010 (Also consider, for example, the case of Apple Corps, Ltd. and Apple Computer, Inc..) As far as I can tell, however, "Volkswagen Owners' Club" is not directly relevant to this question, because it is not a registered trademark, and the question concerns two registered trademarks. I am not sure whether two such trademarks could coexist if there were an adversarial relationship between their owners. In this case, hwoever, the trademarks are used together because the owners have a collegial relationship. They work for a common goal, the promotion of the product identified by one of the trademarks. The foundation's use of the trademark is therefore undoubtedly with permission. In fact, the Linux foundation is Linus Torvalds' employer, and one of the foundation's purposes is to manage the Linux trademark that Torvalds owns. Now the question of derivative trademarks, such as My Linux is clouded by the fact that Linux is an open source operating system. In principle, you can't modify a product and then sell it using its original trademark unless you have permission. For example, I don't suppose I could rebottle Coca-Cola with some added salt and pepper and sell it as *Phoog's Coca-Cola" unless I had permission from the owner of the trademark. With Linux being an open-source project, however, the terms of the open source license probably explicitly permit people to use the trademark under certain restrictions if they offer, for example, a customized distribution of Linux	In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 includes provisions which are thought to apply to websites, although as far as I know there is no case law on the matter. If a website's use of JavaScript makes it inaccessible to users with some disability, it may fall foul of the DDA. However, there is no law specifically requiring JavaScript-free versions of web pages.	The only real recourse you have is to contact the webhost and try to convince them your content is really yours and file a DMCA Takedown request. How you convince them might be an issue; do you have any old screenshots? Original photos? Any proof that the content and photos are yours? The webhost appears to be https://datacamp.co.uk/ , unless the DNS is being proxied, since DNS points to CloudDNS https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dns:marksmayo.com NZ and UK are members of the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, so there don't appear to be any arguments about not applying copyright law. You willingly gave up the domain, so you have no recourse or valid reason to try and regain ownership of the domain. You could try and contact the new owner of the domain by filing a complaint via the abuse email listed by the domain registar at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?&domain=marksmayo.com But they may not do anything, even if you can prove a copyright violation, since they only handle the domain registration and not the webhosting. How they got the content is another question: who was your webhost when you owned the site? Datacamp? Did they not delete it when you closed your account? How did the new owner come to get it?	That “shall be used for Good, not Evil” clause is a moral category, not a legal category. From a legal perspective, it is likely meaningless and/or unenforceable. Neither Debian nor users of that software should expect any legal risk for using or distributing the software. However, software under that license will never make it into Debian because it violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The DFSG is not a contract in the legal sense, but it forms part of the Debian social contract with its users. It is not in the interest of the Debian project to include software unless the software is free to use for any purpose. While the JSON license's usage restriction is likely meaningless in practice, it clearly tries do do exactly what the DFSG wants to prevent. In the Open Source community, there is a broad consensus against the JSON license. The DFSG, slightly edited, was adopted as the Open Source Definition. Consequently, the JSON license also fails to be an Open Source license. The Free Software Foundation also looked at the license, and concluded: “This is a restriction on usage and thus conflicts with freedom 0. The restriction might be unenforcible, but we cannot presume that. Thus, the license is nonfree.”	"Doing the same thing" is very common. We even have names for certain categories of websites, such as "web shop" and "blog". Such concepts are not protected in general. Obviously, you can't copy the name of existing webshop, or their logo, but things like a "rectangular layout of products for sale" aren't original. There is of course a grey area here, because there's a continuum of similarity. In general, similarities that follow from technical justifications are acceptable (having an upload button is sort of the point for your website), similarities that are cosmetic only (same color choice) might be interpreted as intentional attempts to cause confusion.
Executive order by Trump on 2020-11-12 barring investment in publicly traded companies that the US says are owned/controlled by the Chinese military I read on finance.yahoo.com (mirror): The move stems from an executive order President Donald Trump issued on Nov. 12 barring investment in publicly traded companies that the U.S. government says are owned or controlled by the Chinese military. I'm confused by the executive order: Does this only concern US citizens, or also US legal permanent residents? I understand that such Chinese companies will be delisted from NYSE. Does it allow such Chinese companies to be still traded via OTC Bulletin Board? Does it allow US citizens/residence to own shares in such Chinese companies via non-US brokerage account?	The order itself is here. It applies to "any United States person", which includes citizens, LPRs, entities with a US basis, and any other person in the US including tourists. It applies to transactions, and not static possession. There is no exception to the effect that "you can trade as long as it's not on the NYSE", and it says Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited The order is not just directed at brokers, or the NYSE, it applies to everybody / everything everywhere, if you are a US person. Apparently there was some unclarity on the OTC question, which was clarified by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, to the effect that it includes OTC trading.	Overview An executive order cannot make new law. However, most executive orders are based on powers granted by law to the President, or to some executive agency or department. Others are based on laws that come under the general power and duty of the President to "take care that the laws are executed" and announce some policy for how laws will be interpreted and enforced. Announced mandates In the case of the mask and vaccine mandates announced but not yet issued by the Biden administration, they apparently claim to exercise powers granted under various laws, particularly the Occupational Health and Safety Act. It is likely that once such regulations are formally issued they will be challenged by those opposed to such mandates. If they are upheld, (or are somehow not challenged and thus assumed to be valid) they will carry the force of the laws under which they are issued, and thus the Supremacy Clause will apply to those laws, and to the orders as ways to enforce those laws. Other Precedents The question says: Currently, the only precedent to enforce fines and vaccine mandates (at a state level) that I am aware of is a 1905 decision by the Supreme Court, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (197 US 11 (1905)), where it allowed Massachusetts to fine an individual for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates set by the state. This is not quite correct. Jacobson is the leading case on this issue, but there have been some others. In Zucht v. King, 260 U.S. 174 (1922) the US Supreme Court held that a local ordinance mandating vaccinations for school attendance did not violate federal constitutional rights, citing Jacobson and calling the matter settled law. Note that the ordinance in Zucht applied to both public and private schools without exception. In Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944) the Supreme Court opinion included (at 166) the statement that: Acting to guard the general interest in youth's well being, the state, as parens patriae, may restrict the parent's control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child's labor and in many other ways. Its authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child's course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death. People v. Pierson, 176 N.Y. 201, 68 N.E. 243. The catalogue need not be lengthened. It is sufficient to show what indeed appellant hardly disputes, that the state has a wide range of power for limiting parental freedom and authority in things affecting the child's welfare, and that this includes, to some extent, matters of conscience and religious conviction. (Emphasis added, footnotes omitted) Prince v. Massachusetts was a child labor case, not a vaccination case, and the above comment was technically obiter dictum (not binding precedent). But because of it Prince has several times been cited in later vaccination cases alongside Jacobson and to show that Jacobson is still good law. Note that Prince, like Jacobson and Zucht, was a case supporting state law against a 14th amendment challenge. Supremacy Clause An Executive Order that is not backed by any valid law would not be the "Supreme law of the land" under the supremacy clause, and might well be simply held invalid for lack of Presidential authority to issue it, depending on the subject of the order. But orders claiming to make law on the President's own authority are quite rare. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (the steel seizure case) invalidated such an order. In that case the President not only did not have the backing of a specific law, but failed to follow the procedures set out in a relevant law. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer the concurring opinion by Justice Jackson has proved influential in later cases and in later congressional drafting of laws. The key passage of that opinion starting at 343 U. S. 635 reads: Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress. We may well begin by a somewhat over-simplified grouping of practical situations in which a President may doubt, or others may challenge, his powers, and by distinguishing roughly the legal consequences of this factor of relativity. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government, as an undivided whole, lacks power. A seizure executed by the President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of persuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least, as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables, rather than on abstract theories of law. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system. Into which of these classifications does this executive seizure of the steel industry fit? It is eliminated from the first by admission, for it is conceded that no congressional authorization exists for this seizure. That takes away also the support of the many precedents and declarations which were made in relation, and must be confined, to this category. Can it then be defended under flexible tests available to the second category? It seems clearly eliminated from that class, because Congress has not left seizure of private property an open field, but has covered it by three statutory policies inconsistent with this seizure ... Would a vaccine mandate or mask mandate that goes beyond any law passed by Congress fall into Jackson's "zone of twilight"? In the absence of a court ruling, no one can say.	Yes, You May According to this page from Invest-faq It is perfectly legal for non-resident aliens to trade equities on exchanges in the United States using US brokerage houses directly. (A “non-resident alien” (NRA) is the US government’s name for a citizen of a country other than the US who also lives outside the US.) ... Of course there are certain formalities concerning tax treatment of such accounts, and these formalities must be clarified with the brokerage house when the account is opened. Individuals who are not US citizens must complete a W-8 form, which is a certificate of foreign status, and return it to the brokerage house. The specific rules of how these accounts are taxed are described in IRS Publication 515 (Withholding of tax on non-resident aliens) and IRS Publication 901 (Tax treaties). The tax treaty is especially important. If the individual’s country of residence has an agreement (tax treaty) with the US government, those rules apply. The relevant Investopedia page says: There is no citizenship requirement for owning stocks of American companies. While U.S. investment securities are regulated by U.S. law, there are no specific provisions that forbid individuals who are not citizens of the U.S. from participating in the U.S. stock market. However, even if a non-U.S. citizen can legally trade U.S. stocks and bonds, it may still be required (in addition to being advisable) for them to consult with an investment firm and use the services of a professional. ... One of the goals of the Patriot Act of 2001, passed following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was to prevent individuals with any links to terrorist activities from funding their illegal activities through the American capital markets. The act led to brokerage firms implementing more stringent requirements for verifying customer identities, particularly for non-U.S. citizens. Part of this legislation also requires stockbrokers to report any suspicious account activity to the U.S. government. However, these regulations obviously do not impact the majority of international investors because the vast majority of investors do not have any criminal associations. Some brokerage firms may require non-U.S. citizens to produce additional types of identification documents in order to comply with their individual policies. This can include visa information, a valid Social Security number, or a Certificate of Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting form (also called a W-8BEN). Some brokerages may also require non-U.S. citizens to submit paper applications versus submitting online applications to open accounts. The Forbes article: "If You Trade Around The World, You Need To Know IRS Rules" says: Non-resident aliens are subject to tax withholding on dividends, certain interest income and sales of master limited partnerships like energy companies. They have U.S. source income — effectively connected income (ECI) — on real property and regular business operations located in the U.S. A non-resident alien living abroad can open a U.S.-based forex or futures trading account and not owe any capital gains taxes in the U.S. U.S. tax law has long encouraged foreign taxpayers to invest and trade in U.S. financial markets ... A non-resident alien living abroad can also open a U.S.-based securities account, but there could be some dividend tax withholding. If the non-resident spends more than 183 days in the U.S., he owes taxes on net U.S. source capital gains, even though he may not trigger U.S. residency under the substantial presence test. Thus having a visa of any kind is not required. Anyone anywhere in the world who is not associated with terrorism may trade on US exchanges provided they comply with the appropriate tax, identification, and other laws of the US in doing so.	Yes. The Russian owned party to the contract can be sued. The remedies would be those available under the contract, which may or may not be futile to pursue, which almost certainly specify the court to which disputes should be brought. I have no access to the contracts and can't read the relevant languages anyway, however, so I can't tell you what they say about this point. In all likelihood, a Russian court would not rule in favor of Poland or Bulgaria on this score, and would not order Russia to restart supplying natural gas to them (perhaps on the theory that national security and foreign affairs decisions are involved), and no other court would have the practicable ability to cause Russia to reopen its natural gas pipelines. So, if they prevailed, the Court would have to fashion some other remedy (e.g. seizing Russian assets sufficiently associated with the contractually bound party over which they can acquire jurisdiction). If there is a third-party guarantor of the contract, collection could be feasible. If not, it would be much more challenging.	Title 52, section 30121 of the US Code is the section regulating election spending by foreign nationals. Specifically, it forbids both making and accepting said contributions, as well as banning independent expenditures: (a) Prohibition It shall be unlawful for- (1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make- (A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election; (B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or (C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or (2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national. (1) would get you. (2) would get Trump. Extradition may be difficult, but you have committed a US crime if Trump takes that contribution, and if you do turn up in the US then the US might prosecute you for it (they almost certainly won't, but they could).	Many laws control the conduct of the executive branch "Attempting to control the conduct of the executive branch" doesn't imply a violation of the constitutional separation of powers. Congress has many laws that control the executive. 35 USC 101 tells the Patent and Trademark Office what subject matter is patentable. 15 USC 1052 tells the Patent and Trademark Office that it must provide registration unless a trademark falls into one of several categories. There are many many more. This power comes from Article 1, Section 8 The power to enact laws that tell the executive branch what to do stems from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives congress the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." Example of intrusion on Executive authority But, when a statute intrudes on the authority conferred on the Executive by the Constitution, it is not constitutional. An example where Congress intruded on Executive authority is Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 576 U.S. ___ (2015). The court held that "the power to recognize foreign states resides in the President alone", and that "if Congress could alter the President’s statements on matters of recognition or force him to contradict them, Congress in effect would exercise the recognition power. An exclusive Presidential power disables the Congress from acting upon the subject." (Citing Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), an important separation of powers case that went the other way: the Executive issued an order that infringed on the law-making powers vested in Congress.) Executive acknowledges that Congress can control how vacancies are filled There is a case before the Supreme Court in October term 2016, where the Executive is defending its interpretation of a statute that concerns how particular executive employees are hired, fired, or directed: National Labor Relations Board v. SW General, Inc.. The Executive is not challenging the constitutionality of the statute, though. The Executive even argues, basically, "If Congress wanted to control us, it has the ability to and knows how to control us.. it just didn't in this case." No bills of attainder United States v. Lovett 328 U.S. 303 (1946) is another case where Congress went too far. The background here was that Congress passed a law that said "no salary or other compensation shall be paid to certain employees of the Government (specified by name)". The court held that: "Legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial, are bills of attainder prohibited by the Constitution." This principle was refined in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977). The court upheld an act that directed "the Administrator of GSA to take custody of appellant's Presidential materials". Even given this specific direction to take a particular action, the court found that "the Act does not, on its face, violate the principle of separation of powers."	Although it doesn’t seem to be on the Federal Register (yet), the Presidential Proclamation on Adjusting Imports of Steel into the United States issued on March 8, 2018 has been published on whitehouse.gov. The relevant law cited in the proclamation is section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which is codified at 19 U.S.C. § 1862 and provides: [A]fter receiving a report ... in which the Secretary finds that an article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security, the President shall ... if the President concurs, determine the nature and duration of the action that, in the judgment of the President, must be taken to adjust the imports of the article and its derivatives so that such imports will not threaten to impair the national security. The Department of Commerce published its 262-page report, ‘The Effects of Imports of Steel on the National Security,’ on January 11, 2018.	The FDA approved the device as requiring a prescription (not OTC). FDA regulations govern the manufacture or distribution of devices and drugs, not the consumption. An overview of FDA regulation is here. They say they they are "responsible for regulating firms who manufacture, repackage, relabel, and/or import medical devices sold in the United States". The entire pile of regulations (21 CFR) is here. There has to be an underlying statute that authorizes the FDA to impose restrictions: that would be in Title 21 of the US Code. The specific law regulating medical devices is 21 USC 360. Congress can easily pass laws that restrict what businesses do (a consequence of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution), but they (theoretically) have a more limited ability to restrict what an individual does. Since there is no federal law prohibiting the use of a prescription device, it is not a crime to possess or use such a device.
Is it possible for a publicly accessible, personal blog to make use of the personal use exception of the GDPR? The GDPR Article 2 defines the material scope the regulation. Article 2 (2)c states that this regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity; This sentence is known as the personal use exemption. When this was included in the GDPR, the drafters decided to keep the personal use exemption unchanged from the article 3(2) of Directive 95/46. (There as a lot of lobbying for removing "purely" from the sentence – but drafters wanted to keep it.) There also an unofficial description in Recital 18, that say: (1) This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity. (2) Personal or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the context of such activities. (3) However, this Regulation applies to controllers or processors which provide the means for processing personal data for such personal or household activities. This says that you're not exempt for processing that has connection to a professional or commercial activity. But it is very ague on what makes you exempt. Does "social networking" include maintaining your own blog, or are they only referring to your activities on Facebook and similar "social" media where you obviously are not the controller (the controller is who owns and runs the platform)? A key question, partly arising from a lengthy discussion thread under the answer by @Greendrake in this related question, is whether this means that a publicly accessible, personal blog is excluded from the scope of the GDPR? To answer this question, one need to consider that the GDPR Article 4 definition 1 says that: ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; We know from EU case law that this also includes IP-addresses, since such online identifiers indirectly makes people who is visiting such a publicly available personal blog identifiable. Also, note that the scope of the GDPR is processing of personal data. This is defined in GDPR Article 4 defintion 2: ‘processing’ means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction; Some critics of the GDPR have objected that such a definition of ‘processing’ is over-reaching. However, it being over-reaching does not mean that we should ignore it. In conclusion, I would like to link to two seminal cases heard by the ECJ: C-101/01 C-212/13 Central to both cases was the question of whether the processing activities of an individual was covered by personal use exemption under article 3(2) of Directive 95/46. In both these cases, the ECJ took an extremely restrictive view, and concluded that the personal use exemption did not apply to the processing done by these individuals. The questions is: Is it possible for a publicly accessible, personal blog to make use of the personal use exception of the GDPR to avoid having to comply with the regulation? If "yes": What need to be considered by its owner?	I think that one cannot answer a question such as "Will the personal use exception in the GDPR apply to personal blogs?", because it is unclear if you refer to: personal information published on the blog pages personal information collected from the Website, by way of forms, cookies, server logs, strictly collected and processed for the purpose of operating the Website for your own personal purposes as a blogger (by yourself of through a subcontractor in the sense of GDPR) and not personal information collected from the Website's operation, transferred or provided to third parties for their own purposes (this would include cookies used to identify and track users across multiple domains) Regarding 1., a personal blog wanting to benefit from the exemption should not publish third party's personal information without their consent or another legal basis, and C-101/01 certainly applies here. About 2., if the information is strictly collected and used for the own personal purpose of the operation of the blog, I would tend to agree that it should benefit from the exemption. I feel that C-212/13 would not necessarily be an indication that because the blog is publicly accessible it is then "directed outwards from the private setting" in the sense of this ruling, and should not be considered as "purely ‘personal or household’ activity". C-212/13 case was relating to a camera installed by an individual on his family home for its own security purposes which was also monitoring a public space. The persons filmed on this public space had absolutely no direct connexion with the person collecting their images. In case of a blog, the visitors of the blog interact with the blog for fulfilling the own personal purpose of the operation of the blog of the publisher of the blog. Another argument is given by the Recital 18 which you quote: a personal blog can be viewed as a type of social networking or related online activity. Finally, about 3., there is no doubt for me that, in this case, the publisher of the blog is engaged in an activity which is not personal, since it willingly provides personal information to third parties which they use for their own purposes (and not as subcontractors in the sense of GDPR). There may be other approaches apart from these 3, but that's a start for your considerations.	Yes When personal data is processed in the context of an EU/EEA/UK establishment (for example, by a company with offices in the UK), then all these processing activities must fully comply with the GDPR, regardless of where the data subjects are located. For the UK GDPR: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the United Kingdom, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the United Kingdom or not. For the EU GDPR: The GDPR applies to: a company or entity which processes personal data as part of the activities of one of its branches established in the EU, regardless of where the data is processed; or …	I don't think you would be responsible for whether your software is used in a GDPR-compliant manner. For GDPR compliance, it is important who the data controller is. The data controller is whoever determines the purposes and means of a personal data processing activity, i.e. the why and how. The data controller alone is responsible for their GDPR compliance. When a data controller wants to run some software, it's the data controller's responsibility to ensure that this software is used in a GDPR-compliant manner (or possibly not at all). Determining purposes and means of processing When someone other than the developer runs a software, the question is who might be a controller: you as the developer, they as the operator, or neither, or both? The operator is clearly a controller: they determine a purpose for data processing (e.g. to manage staff) and have determined means to perform that processing (e.g. to use the software). The developer may or may not be a controller. Clearly, the developer has made choices about how the processing of personal data will be performed, i.e. has determined some means of processing. E.g. the developer has developed a particular architecture, chosen a way to store personal data, and has implemented some security measures. But determining some means is not sufficient to be a data controller, see discussion below. Has the developer participated in determining the purposes of processing? I think this will depend on the specific functionality provided by the software in question. If the software just does what it says and processes the data for the operator's purposes, everything should be fine. If the software also processes data for the developer's purposes, that developer might be a controller. For example, if analytics or crash reports are collected by the developer, that would be a clear indication that the developer would be a (joint) controller. So depending on specific factors, the operator might be the sole controller, or the operator and developer might be joint controllers. Essential vs non-essential means What about the developer determining some means? When does this make the developer a joint controller? The EDPB has created a theory of essential vs non-essential means: 40. As regards the determination of means, a distinction can be made between essential and non-essential means. “Essential means” are traditionally and inherently reserved to the controller. While non-essential means can also be determined by the processor, essential means are to be determined by the controller. “Essential means” are means that are closely linked to the purpose and the scope of the processing, such as the type of personal data which are processed (“which data shall be processed?”), the duration of the processing (“for how long shall they be processed?”), the categories of recipients (“who shall have access to them?”) and the categories of data subjects (“whose personal data are being processed?”). Together with the purpose of processing, the essential means are also closely linked to the question of whether the processing is lawful, necessary and proportionate. “Non-essential means” concern more practical aspects of implementation, such as the choice for a particular type of hard- or software or the detailed security measures which may be left to the processor to decide on. – EDPB guidelines 07/2020 on the concepts of controller and processor in the GDPR, added formatting for legibility Looking through that list of essential means, some might be determined by a software's developer, but I wouldn't expect this to be the case for this kind of open source software. types of personal data: the software certainly sets a framework for processing specific kinds of personal data, e.g. by providing database fields for names, contact details, and schedules. But ultimately, the developer does not control which data is actually collected and filled into those fields – the developer does not cause specific kinds of personal data to be processed with the system. duration of processing: unless the software is programmed with a fixed retention schedule, it should be impossible to argue that the developer has determined the duration of processing. Even then, it would also be the operator who has determined this duration to be appropriate, rather than editing the open-source software to change the duration. But typically, no such retention schedule is enforced, and retention would depend solely on the operator (who can use an admin interface or a database console to erase old records). categories of recipients: typically, the developer does not determine to whom the data in the system will be given. But if the system sends data to third parties by itself, this might change. For example, if the system is pre-configured to store data in an existing cloud database instance, or to a specific analytics server, the developer might be acting as a controller. Here, good software engineering and legal risk minimization coincide. Best practices for web apps state that account credentials and connection strings shouldn't be hardcoded or committed to a repository, and should instead be provided externally (e.g. via environment variables). categories of data subjects: this depends solely on how the software is used. The developer has no way to determine whose data the operator will enter into the system. If the developer isn't a controller, might they be a data processor instead? In a GDPR context, a data processor is whoever processes personal data on behalf of a controller. The developer is clearly not a processor in this scenario because both the “processing” and “on behalf” criteria fail. The developer has no access to the data in the operator's instance, so cannot process the personal data. There is no direct relationship between the developer and the operator. The operator has not delegated authority to the developer so that the developer would be acting “on behalf” of the operator. There is a legal relationship between the two roles (the developer has licensed the software to the operator) but that is entirely irrelevant in a data protection context. The GDPR isn't directly about cookies While the GDPR does cover how personal data can be processed with cookies, the famous “cookie law” is actually separate: those cookie consent requirements stem from EU member state's implementations of the ePrivacy directive. Instead of talking about “controllers”, ePrivacy has concepts such as the “provider of an information society service”. While this role fits perfectly to an operator/provider who runs a web app in a publicly accessible manner, it does not fit a developer who merely makes some source code available. Is the developer even subject to the GDPR? The GDPR can only apply to data controllers and processor who process personal data. As discussed above, the developer is probably not processing personal data at all. Even if the developer were processing personal data, it is questionable if GDPR would apply assuming the developer has no “establishment” in the EU (e.g. an office). Then, the question would be whether those processing activities are either related to offering goods or services to data subjects in Europe, or whether the processing activities involve monitoring the behavior of people who are physically in Europe. Unless the developer is actively targeting European businesses with marketing for this software, the answer is very likely “no”. Could the operator sue the developer for providing software that isn't GDPR-compliant? The operator can sue anyone for any reason, but is probably not going to win. As discussed, the operator is a data controller. They are responsible for ensuring that their purposes and means are GDPR-compliant. That involves selecting suitable software. The data controller would be neglecting their own responsibilities if they just download some random software and start feeding personal data into it. Things might be different if the operator specifically advertises GDPR compliance features but you're not going to do that. It's also worth noting that common open source licenses like the Apache License 2.0 include a warranty and liability disclaimer. To which degree they protect the developer ultimately depends on national laws, but they make it difficult for the operator to make a legal argument that they're entitled to a GDPR-compliant product. See also the related question: Do warranty disclaimers in software licenses carry any legal weight? What can you do? First, don't worry too much. Given how much bad software there is on the internet, surprisingly few developer get into legal trouble for writing source code that's buggy or missing some features. Second, consider choosing a license for your project that includes a reasonable warranty/liability disclaimer. Third, make the state of your project clear in your README file. If someone knows that this is alpha-quality software and that no compliance features were implemented, it's their own fault if they actually use that software.	The examples you cite are all based on national law in Sweden and other Nordic countries. If you check GDPR Article 7(1)(e), you will see that processing is lawful if: processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; Further down in the same article, you'll see that not only Union law, but also: Member State law to which the controller is subject apply. GDPR Article 7(1)(e) is controversial and there is also a note that The Union or the Member State law shall meet an objective of public interest and be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. There has been attempts by privacy advocates to stop some of these transparency practices (in particular public tax report disclosure) by arguing that they do not meet this criterion, but so far these challenges have been unsuccessful.	This issue touches upon two distinct GDPR rights: Art 15 right to access: you have a right to receive a copy of all personal data concerning you that are undergoing processing (including storage). Access may only be denied where this would “adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.” Art 20 right to data portability: if processing is being carried out by automated means, and processing is based on certain legal bases (consent or contract, but not legitimate interest), then you have a right to receive a copy of your personal data in a machine-readable format, for personal data that you have provided to the data controller. Whereas the right to access is fairly straightforward, the right to data portability applies under much more narrow conditions. Basically, it's a right that you can download any data that you've uploaded so that you can move to a different service. Google Takeout is primarily concerned with your right to data portability, and provides your data in a machine-readable format. Any photos that you've uploaded to Google Photos, you'll be able to download. Thus, it could be technically compliant to exclude information that they've inferred about your personal data, such as image-recognition results. Such results would still be personal data under the GDPR definition of the consent, and would be covered by your right to access. Google might argue that you already have access to this data through the web interface. In my opinion the GDPR clearly requires the data controller to provide a “copy”, i.e. the data in some durable form – not merely access through a web interface. Whereas your question is specifically about Google, the same issue applies to other services as well. E.g. Ruben Verborgh has an interesting blog series on trying to get access to all their data from Facebook, though unsuccessful so far. Similar to your scenario, Facebook offers a download for personal data but does not include all personal data in this download. In one of the documents provided by Facebook in the course of the exchange, they note that they allow access to photo tags through the web interface, but do not include this in downloaded data – without providing further justification.	Yes, phone numbers would generally qualify as Personal Data under GDPR. It would be so irrespective of whether you have also stored other information along with the phone numbers or not, since also information that indirectly could identify a natural person is Personal Data (provided that there are, somewhere else, public or not public, a register of who holds the specific phone number). See Article 4(1) GDPR. (One could possibly argue that the phone numbers would not be considered personal data if there is no actual register of who owns a specific phone number with any other party. Or if such register is in practice not available for anyone. It might be so in some cases, although I would not rely on it.) Whether you have the right to process the phone numbers must be assessed based on its lawfulness (see Article 6 GDPR). It could be based on consent, performance of contract, legitimate interest or any other ground set out therein.	What many people miss in relation to GDPR is the other five lawful bases for processing - there's a lot of discussion about consent, but this is only one lawful basis of six. The full list from Article 6 : Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes; (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person; (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. Arguable bases would include performance of a contract or public interest, though there's also room to argue whether legitimate interests of the controller are, or are not, overriden by the subject's fundamental rights and freedoms. The short answer is it's not just about consent, and press and social media sites are likely to have covered themselves with their contract or with a public interest argument.	Great question - I work for a London based company who use a large amount of location data. The process for deletion of data is not as simple as it first sounds. We recently had a deep dive with our legal team and as a result actually created a product to process deletions. Personal data from users/customer is carried for lots of reasons, not just marketing. What if you're asked to delete data that is needed to bill customers, information that may be relevant to a legal case or information that needs by law to be retained for the purposes of audit? GDPR does not make it illegal to carry personal information, it simply needs you to justify why you are keeping the information - inform the named person about this and provide them with a timescale for deletion. For example if you are required by law to store a record of emails to document the work done, but the user asks you to delete that information. You would be entitled to keep that information but only for the purposes of maintaining that audit trail. You would delete all associated customer data that was unnecessary such as CRM info, payment details etc.. but could keep the audit trail. The proper way to respond to the user's deletion request would be "your data will be kept in a secure server for the purposes of maintaining an audit trail for x amount of time. Once this time has elapsed it will be deleted. If you are unhappy with our use of this data please contact our data officer". GDPR isn't designed to catch you out - if you have a legitimate reason to keep that information then you are entitled to. The law was designed to stop marketers and advertisers hoarding huge amounts of information, as well as undermine Google/Facebook's duopoly on our personal information.
Do default Apache logs violate the GDPR? Joe is a completely novice Web developer who sets up an Apache server on its defaults, which include collection of log files which basically say "this specific file was requested by this specific IP address using this specific client string at this specific time, and the request succeeded/failed." Joe might not even be aware of this logging and might not ever use it. Joe's Web site is Web 1.0: information published in a form others can read. It has no capabilities for typical users to create an account, log in, or enter data beyond the HTTP GET requests their browser automatically sends when the user navigates to/from/on the site. It doesn't even need cookies. Joe's server and operations are outside the EU and his primary target audience may be too (e.g. Joe is a local activist in a non-EU country, and the Web site is that of the activist group, or a small nonprofit, or even a local restaurant which might serve ethnic food from a specific European tradition). However, it may be that some people in the EU are interested in what Joe is saying/doing, and visit Joe's web site to read what's posted there. This page and others I've seen indicates that IP addresses are considered personal information under GDPR. It seems that Joe's server is collecting that data without notice and consent from each user. It doesn't seem that this site would qualify as "purely personal" in the same way as a personal blog might. Is Joe in violation of GDPR, just for having posted a simple Web site with an Apache server on defaults?	First of all, although the GDPR is stated to apply to any site which processes the data of any person who is in the EU, it is not clear how a site not located in the EU, does not business in the EU, and does not primarily target EU residents as its audience can be required to comply with the GDPR. To the best of my knowledge, no such case has yet been brought, much less decided. There has also been some debate on whether an IP address constitutes Personal Data under the GDPR, and if it always does so, or only under particular conditions. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that (under the predecessor Directive 95/46/EC) that a dynamic IP address was personal data. But in that case the web site was run by the German Federal Government, which surely has wider scope for getting info from a German ISP than a small private US web activist does. There is not yet any case law that I know of on the applicability of the GDPR to IP addresses in any case at all similar to the one in the question. Joe would in my view be wise to at least learn that logs are being kept, and post a disclosure of this on the site. Whether Joe needs to do more than that is less than clear at this time.	If the website's processing of your personal data is within the scope of the GDPR, then you have a qualified right to request the erasure of your personal data. It is relevant whether: the website operates within the EU; the website is operated by a company established in an EU country; the website aims to sell goods or services to people in the EU; or the website is routinely processing the personal data of people in the EU (including non-citizens). Furthermore, it is relevant whether your posts: contain one or more identifiers from which you could be personally identified, directly or indirectly, including by only the administrators or owners of the website; and by their content, directly reveal information relating to you. For example, let's say you posted on a forum saying that "I am a keen supporter of socialism", and your personal email address was used to sign up to the website, then you would have revealed information about your political beliefs, which by reference to a username, the website owners could use to uniquely identify you by your email address. You would not necessarily have to have used your name. If, for example, you posted something factual, like, "The Porsche 911 GT2 RS MR recorded the fastest lap time for a road-legal sports car on the Nürburgring," then it is only personal as long as it is associated with an identifier through which you could be identified. As such, the removal of the relationship could easily anonymise the post. A data controller has an obligation to provide means by which the data subject can exercise the rights guaranteed under Chapter 3 of the GDPR. Article 17 grants the right to "erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay" where the grounds under Art. 17 lit. 1 (a) to (f) are met. It may be relevant what the lawful basis of processing personal data was in the first place, such as in determining whether you can withdraw consent (i.e. you cannot withdraw consent if consent was not given), or in determining whether there is a right to object under Article 21 lit. 1. Derogations permissible under local implementing laws may provide for other exemptions or requirements to the right to erasure, so it is also important to determine the country of jurisdiction.	Your confusion might be caused by the fact that even with a contract, only the data necessary for that contract is covered under the GDPR. So yes, while there might be an "execution of contract" under the T&C, this would only cover necessary data. That means you can't ask arbitrary signup data under the guise of a contract. If you need to deliver a physical product, you can store a physical address. If it's an online service, you can store an email address or similar handle. But you can't mix the two. A physical address is unnecessary for the execution of a contract that's not physical in nature. Now, you mention "consent". Under GDPR, this is a distinct justification besides "execution of contract". You might have consent to store a physical address in addition to an online address, e.g. if you offer a customer to physically mail a password request form. This consent is additional to the contract. Also note that the bit above only covers the lawful reasons for the processing of personal data (article 6). You also have to obey the other GDPR rules, e.g. fully inform the user, make sure that consent is freely given, etc.	It's probably due to GDPR. You will see that around 2018-05-25 when GDPR came into force, many US-based websites changed their terms of service to increase the age requirement from 13 (age below which the U.S. COPPA law applies) to 16 for European users. For example, here are Stack Exchange's terms of service from 2018-05-02, mentioning 13 years, and here is the version one day later mentioning 16 years. The GPDR allows companies to process personal data under a variety of legal bases, such as “legitimate interest”, “necessary for performing a contract”, or “consent”. But children are not able to give consent in this context. If a website wants consent from a child for some data processing, Art 8 GDPR requires the service to make “reasonable efforts” to check with the parents first. This reasonable effort is more effort than just banning children from using the services. The GDPR itself does not define exactly when someone is a child for these purposes – it lets individual EU member states define the exact age limit, which may be anything between 13 and 16 years. Thus, websites that definitely do not want to have to comply with Art 8 GDPR take the upper bound of that limit and mention in their terms of service that the service is only intended for persons aged 16 or older. The text of Art 8 GDPR is: (1) Where point (a) of Article 6(1) applies, in relation to the offer of information society services directly to a child, the processing of the personal data of a child shall be lawful where the child is at least 16 years old. Where the child is below the age of 16 years, such processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child. Member States may provide by law for a lower age for those purposes provided that such lower age is not below 13 years. (2) The controller shall make reasonable efforts to verify in such cases that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child, taking into consideration available technology. (3) Paragraph 1 shall not affect the general contract law of Member States such as the rules on the validity, formation or effect of a contract in relation to a child.	european-union (germany, spain, uk) The cookie consent law is the ePrivacy directive, which was implemented as national laws by all EU member states (including, at the time, the UK). Later, GDPR changed the applicable definition of consent so that implicit consent is no longer allowed. A notice in fine print as in the given example is not sufficient to meet this definition of consent, so any non-necessary cookies set in that context would be a violation. But it would be the national ePrivacy implementation that would be violated, not the GDPR. Thus, the GDPR's famous 4%/EUR 20M fines are not relevant here. Instead, each country can set its own fines. In Germany, this would probably be up to EUR 50k (§16 TMG) though German law doesn't implement this aspect of ePrivacy correctly. In the UK, PECR penalties are determined by more general data protection penalty legislation. Notable instances of cookie consent enforcement include the Planet 49 (ECJ judgement, German BGH verdict) case which basically affirmed that yes, the GDPR's definition of consent applies. Thus, any case law regarding GDPR consent is also applicable to the issue of cookies. Furthermore, the Spanish AEPD has issued an interesting fine due to insufficient cookie consent, but due to much more subtle violations than the outright disregard in the given example. E.g. in the Vueling action (decision (Spanish, PDF), summary, listing on enforcementtracker), the Vueling airline's website had a consent banner but ultimately told the user to reject cookies via their browser settings. This violates the requirement that consent must be specific/granular, since the browser settings are all-or-nothing if they're available at all. The airline was fined EUR 30k, the maximum possible under applicable Spanish data protection law. But what kind of risks would some blog run into that just sets cookies without appropriate consent? If the service is outside of the EU, enforcement is difficult. I am not aware of cookie consent enforcement against non-EU services. National data protection authorities can investigate the violation and issue fines, subject to their respective national data protection laws. They generally only do this when there are lots of complaints. Some authorities like the UK ICO have indicated that cookie consent enforcement isn't a priority for them. Independently, individuals can generally sue the service for damages. Some lawyers might send out cease and desist letters to non-compliant websites in the hopes of collecting fees. So aside from the last point, the risk is likely somewhat low, especially for a smaller site. At this point, it is worth reminding that ePrivacy/GDPR doesn't require consent for all cookies, and is not just limited to cookies. It is more generally about access to and storage of information on a user's device, unless that access is strictly necessary to provide the service explicitly requested by the user. Thus, functional cookies can be set without consent. However, consent does become necessary when cookies or similar mechanisms are used for analytics, tracking, or ads. Even though GDPR is involved, the cookie consent requirements apply regardless of whether the cookies involve any personal data.	If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen The thrust of this question, as well as many others you have posted, seems to be looking for a way of avoiding your obligations under the GDPR because they are difficult, onerous and/or expensive. Too bad! You don’t have the option of which laws you comply with and which ones you don’t. If I had my choice, I’d comply with the GDPR and not with tax law, but I don’t so I can’t. You have 3 simple choices: Do your best and insure the rest. This means learning what’s required and implementing it to the best of your ability and taking out appropriate insurance cover to deal with any mistakes you make. Ignore the law and hope you don’t get caught. Don’t release apps.	Nicknames, usernames, or gamer tags are definitely personal data under the GDPR. You are operating under a very narrow definition of “identifying”, which is understandable since the definition of personal data in the GDPR isn't overly enlightening at first glance: […] an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; — GDPR Art 4(1) However, this definition does show that “identifiable” should be interpreted rather broadly. For example, indirectly identifying data is still identifying data – there doesn't even have to be a strong identifier like a name, passport number, or street address. It is also not necessary that identification enables you to determine the real world identity – identification is anything that allows you to single out a person, or to combine data into a profile of that person (compare Recitals 26 and 30). In any case, an online username or user ID is clearly an identifier and will fall under one of “a name, an identification number, […] an online identifier”. If in doubt, ask your data protection authority for guidance. You've correctly understood that you will need a legal basis to process this data, and that legitimate interest could be that legal basis. This doesn't have to be your own interest, so a community interest would be OK. You need to balance the user's rights against this interest. You have performed this balancing and have found that the interest outweighs these rights. You've noted that such leaderboards are a cultural norm and are generally expected, which strongly weighs in your favour. However, legitimate interest is not a free pass but just means an opt-out solution (right to object per Art 21). You should also inform users that the leaderboard is accessible publicly when they join your server (transparency principle per Art 5(1)(a) as detailed by the information obligations in Art 13). In particular, you should use a “message of the day” or welcome message functionality to link to your privacy policy. You should also be aware that other rights such as the right to access, erasure, and data portability apply. As an alternative to legitimate interest (opt-out) you could also consider consent (opt-in), though this results in slightly different data subject rights and is more difficult to do correctly. But I'd agree that legitimate interest is more appropriate here.	IANAL, and as @GeorgeBailey suggests, you should ask one. That said, some aspects of your question are directly addressable with what we know. Does US law states anything about this? Yes. Federally this falls under the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. §2511. Workplace monitoring generally falls under either the "System Administrator Exception" or under Consent. In general, continuing past a banner constitutes consent. Does company policy enforcement with such a warning over ride the right to not be subject to surveillance? In general, yes. You don't need to use the companies network if you don't want to consent - and they don't need to hire you if you don't want to use their network. But it's their network, and their rules apply. There are some nuances, and courts have found that the wording of the notice has made a difference in some cases, but overall, if the systems are properly posted with banners, then the employer may capture communications. See the "Bannering and Consent" section of this article from cybertelecom.org, e.g.: Even if no clicking is required, a user who sees the banner before logging on to the network has received notice of the monitoring. By using the network in light of the notice, the user impliedly consents to monitoring pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c)-(d). Note that stored data is covered by different laws than communications. It's a nuance. Is it ethical to sniff all the data without giving any other warning than the logon banner? "Ethical" is a very different question than "Legal", and largely more subjective. Most employers require signed consent for monitoring as a condition of employment, and use banners thereafter. That is ethical by my definition, in that it meets or exceeds the requirements of the law, and does not mislead or use subterfuge. The tone of your question suggests you find it distasteful, and therefore probably it violates your personal code of ethics.
Speeding unawares after turning from the terminating road of a T-junction This is a follow-up question for "Ambiguous speed limit after passing a T-junction" (59728). The original question asks what the speed limit is, in the 20 metres after the intersection and before the 60-sign. This question asks whether ignorance of this speed limit is a valid defence. We again consider the intersection between Fitzgerald St and Angove St in North Perth, Western Australia (left-hand traffic). This is a T-junction, with Fitzgerald St being the continuing road and Angove St being the terminating road. Dale M's answer to the original question establishes that: The speed limit along Fitzgerald St northbound is 40 km/h (pink), beginning at the 40-sign before the intersection, all the way up to the 60-sign erected 20 metres after the intersection. Only after this 60-sign does the speed limit become 60 km/h (green). The existence of a side road with a 50 km/h limit (blue) is irrelevant. Now suppose that Bob approaches on Angove St and turns left into Fitzgerald St northbound. Bob knows nothing about the earlier 40-sign, but sees only the 60-sign, and concludes either: The speed limit on Fitzgerald St is immediately 60 km/h, since the 60-sign is consistent with all of Fitzgerald St being a 60-zone (which was indeed the case before 2016); or The speed limit on Fitzgerald St is immediately 50 km/h, since the 20 metres up to the 60-sign is an unsigned portion of a built-up area. Therefore, after completing the left turn, Bob drives through the final 20 metres of the 40-zone believing that it is either a 60-zone or a 50-zone. (Yes this is difficult, but I think just doable with a powerful car by starting with a wide left turn into right lane at 35 km/h.) Does Bob have a valid defence if issued with a speeding infringement? If yes, suppose that Alice drives along Fitzgerald St northbound, straight through the intersection, clocking a speed of 60 km/h within the final 20 metres of the 40-zone. Would infringing Alice require proving that she did not turn left from Angove St like Bob did?	Bob has no defense Speeding in western-australia, as it is throughout australia, is a strict liability offense. That means that intention to or knowledge that you are breaking the law is not required. Don’t know the limit? Doesn’t matter, you are still legally obliged to comply. However, all the way up the chain, from the police officer, through the administrative arm to the judge, each person has discretion to waive the infringement notice. Basically, they can do that if they don’t think it’s “fair” on Bob in the circumstances. Given that Bob managed to reach 40+km/h within 20m of a more than 90 degree corner I think the infringement notice is very fair. Negligent Driving is possibly the more appropriate offense. However, it’s possible to imagine circumstances where waiving the infringement notice is fair. For example, if a speed limit sign has been removed or completely obscured by foliage or a parked vehicle and Bob could show he was not familiar with the area. The question on Alice is, from above, moot.	The only really authoritative source of answers is a court interpreting the laws on an as applied basis (and there are many U.S. traffic laws, one in every state and sometimes additional local ones, not a single U.S. traffic law). An answer from a government official or police department is not authoritative, although it may be informative of how the official in question would enforce the law.	Washington state dedicated a section of their code to explicitly make this illegal (to install it, not just use it). RCW 46.37.685(1)(b) says It is unlawful for a person to have an installed license plate flipping device on a vehicle, use technology to flip a license plate on a vehicle, or use technology to change the appearance of a license plate on a vehicle. and it is illegal to sell them. Georgia does not seem to have a specific law on the topic, but the same effect holds under GA Code §40-2-41, which says: Unless otherwise permitted under this chapter, every vehicle required to be registered under this chapter, which is in use upon the highways, shall at all times display the license plate issued to the owner for such vehicle, and the plate shall be fastened to the rear of the vehicle in a position so as not to swing and shall be at all times plainly visible... It shall be the duty of the operator of any vehicle to keep the license plate legible at all times. No license plate shall be covered with any material unless the material is colorless and transparent. No apparatus that obstructs or hinders the clear display and legibility of a license plate shall be attached to the rear of any motor vehicle required to be registered in the state. We can start with the question of whether the vehicle must be registered: yes, it does. Then we can ask if "which is in use upon the highways" is true. This is not obvious, because that clause could be interpreted as meaning "which is at some time or other in use upon the highway", or else as "at those times when it is in use upon the highway". I strongly suspect that the courts would find in favor of the first interpretation, not the second, especially since the law also says that you must "keep the license plate legible at all times" (not "at all times when you are on the highway"). Finally, a plate flipper clearly "hinders the clear display and legibility of a license plate", and the law prohibits the attachment of such device, not just its use. So obscuring your license plate is just not legal.	This varies from state to state. Here's a representative statute: Any driver or operator of a motor vehicle who, having been given a visual or audible signal by a peace officer directing such driver or operator to bring his vehicle to a stop, willfully fails or refuses to obey such direction, increases his speed, extinguishes his lights, or otherwise flees or attempts to elude the officer. See 625 ILCS 5/11-204. For a first offense, IL calls it a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year and $2.5K. but on the third offense it becomes a felony punishable by up to 3 years and a $25K fine. If the signal was meant for you, then the divided highway is a moot point so long as you realize it was for you (which might be established by you turning off the road into some neighborhood where you have no business). united-statesillinois	This simply indicates that the lane the arrow is pointing to is reserved for the use of bicycles. Typically such a sign would be mounted on a pole near the curb, so that the arrow would point to the rightmost lane of the road. Another version of the sign exists with an arrow pointing straight down. This one is designed to be mounted on a cantilevered pole, so that it is directly above the bike lane in question. Where the bicycle lane is immediately adjacent to the curb, the ground-mounted version of the Reserved Bicycle Lane sign (Rb-84A OTM) should be installed. In cases where the bicycle lane is not adjacent to the curb, such as when a parking lane is present, the overhead mounted version of the Reserved Bicycle Lane sign (Rb-84 OTM) may be considered. If used, the overhead sign should be installed on a cantilever and centred above the designated lane, every 200 m or where visibility obstructions warrant. The cantilevered signs are not required after every intersection. (All images and quotes taken from the Ontario Traffic Manual.)	I should have done my research properly, hopefully this will be indexed and be helpful to someone else in the future. The specific legislation is The Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 regulation 98: Stopping of engine when stationary 98.—(1) Save as provided in paragraph (2), the driver of a vehicle shall, when the vehicle is stationary, stop the action of any machinery attached to or forming part of the vehicle so far as may be necessary for the prevention of noise. (2) The provisions of paragraph (1) do not apply— (a) when the vehicle is stationary owing to the necessities of traffic; (b) so as to prevent the examination or working of the machinery where the examination is necessitated by any failure or derangement of the machinery or where the machinery is required to be worked for a purpose other than driving the vehicle; or (c) in respect of a vehicle propelled by gas produced in plant carried on the vehicle, to such plant.	I believe the answer you seek can be found by searching for the terms "(desired state name) statutes pedestrian crossing." In the case of the state of Florida, there are references to the situation you describe. Some of it appears slightly contradictory, but the ones that apply are not ambiguous: (10) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway. (12) No pedestrian shall, except in a marked crosswalk, cross a roadway at any other place than by a route at right angles to the curb or by the shortest route to the opposite curb. The contradictory portion appears thus: (11) Between adjacent intersections at which traffic control signals are in operation, pedestrians shall not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk. There appears to be no reference regarding distances between adjacent intersections. It's unreasonable for one to be expected to walk a half mile (0.8 km) if there's a mile between intersections. There's an area nearby in which the traffic control signals are spaced about that distance apart. Cities may have specific regulations regarding such activities.	Despite the lengthy background, the only question seems to be: Can a police officer lie about a consequence of a traffic violation they charge you with? As a matter of constitutional law in the United States, that answer is generally "yes." States can impose more limitations if they like. Only a small minority of states actually do so. Incidentally, an attorney, such as a deputy district attorney, is not allowed to lie about the consequences of a traffic violation, or anything else (even in extreme circumstances like a hostage situation). This violates the rules of professional conduct applicable to all attorneys. This sounds like a classic "driving while black" situation and is probably involves unconstitutional discrimination by a government official, although proving that in an individual case is virtually impossible.
Can you be held accountable for rent after you're off the lease? In California, there's a lease with three people on it (call them X, Y, and Z) and the landlord (L), with six months remaining on the lease. Y, Z, and L agree to release X from the lease. Y and Z do this by signing a form that says the following: Unless otherwise stated, all terms and conditions of the prior lease... shall remain true and in effect. By signing this Extension, effective of [insert date] X relinquishes all claim of possession on the Premises and of any held security deposit. The landlord, Y, and Z agree to relinquish X from any obligation regarding the lease as mentioned above. Y, Z, and the landlord remain otherwise bound by all provisions as embodied in the lease as mentioned above. Now, suppose there were prior electronic conversations in which X unequivocally agreed to pay for the next six months of "X's part of rent" (even when he's not on the lease) in exchange for Y and Z (landlord is not part of the conversation) agreeing to remove X from the lease. And then X reneged on that offer by refusing to pay once the modification document (the last two paragraphs) was signed. Can Y and Z sue X in small claims for the "unpaid X's part of rent" after the [insert date]? And can Y and Z sue X in small claims before the [insert date] for what's effectively a reneged future rent?	You can be held liable for rent after you are off a lease. Rewriting a lease only affects future obligations, and doesn't extinguish past obligations. However, you appear to have released X from all obligations via paragraph 2. If you plan to sue for past rent, the court will have to interpret the statement that "The landlord, Y, and Z agree to relinquish X from any obligation regarding the lease as mentioned above", which is non-standard English. It is extremely likely that the court will interpret this to mean "release". You might argue, using earlier emails, that all parties had a clear understanding that this means "from all future obligations, but not past obligations", but that is not what the written agreement says, and the parol evidence rule, which is codified as explicit law in California, says execution of a contract in writing... supersedes all the negotiations or stipulations concerning its matter which preceded or accompanied the execution of the instrument That clause lets X off the hook, in exchange for his claim on the security deposit and for relinquishing his tenant rights to the unit. You cannot sue X for any rent.	am I obligated to pay this fee? Yes. You entered the lease despite been aware of the existence of that fee. That meets the contract law tenet that an agreement be entered knowingly and willfully. Does it not invoke an issue where they can arbitrarily set the price? If the landlord requires a fee that is unreasonably high, that would violate the contract law covenant of good faith and fair dealing. As such, that part would be unenforceable, meaning that the landlord may only charge a reasonable fee. Likewise, unless the lease clearly entitles the landlord to decide the telecom fee arbitrarily, the lease would fail to meet that extent of the aforementioned tenet of a contract being entered knowingly. Does this fall under the category of lease addendum? The form (or format) in which the requirement of telecom fee was mentioned --and agreed upon-- does not matter. The landlord only would need to prove that the tenant was --or should have been-- aware of that fee. Usually the landlord can prove that by showing/producing in court the lease with tenant's signature.	Assuming it's an assured shorthold tenancy (which it will be unless the tenancy agreement says otherwise), the tenancy continues until the tenants give notice, or the landlord gives notice and the tenants leave voluntarily (and failing that, when a court forces them to leave). If no-one gives notice, and the tenants are still present once any fixed term ends, the tenancy continues as a "rolling" tenancy until it's ended as described above. A tenancy agreement stays in force even if the owner of a property changes (whether by purchase or inheritance). So to summarise: by default, nothing changes, and the tenants have the same right to stay that they had before. See, for example, this article, or this one.	Is there any way I can persuade the new landlord to start renting apartment as close as possible to the end of 30-day period? If you already signed a contract with the "immediate move-in" clause, it is going to be difficult to persuade the new landlord. That is because the landlord would have no incentive to postpone his source of income and there is no statute or legal provision available to you on that. If you have not signed the contract, then you two can still negotiate until either party leaves or you reach an agreement. Under contract law, the latter is referred to as knowingly and willfully entering a contract.	You can't give your landlord a "notice to quit" A "notice to quit" is something a landlord gives to the tenant under s8 or s21. Assuming you want to end the tenancy, you would give them whatever notice is required in accordance with the lease. Why the paranoia? Ending a residential tenancy is routine and would not normally land you anywhere near a court. You give your notice, pay your rent, move out and get your deposit back. Is there something going on that you're not telling us? If so, ask about that thing in a different question. The video would be fine as evidence However, it would only be used if there was a dispute over the service of the notice. While this can happen, its pretty rare and your precautions seem ... elaborate. Your landlord's name and address (and yours) will be a public record forever Courts are public, the names and addresses of the parties are a matter of public record (unless you are children, or sex offenders, or have some other reason the court accepts as to why this shouldn't happen). These records are kept indefinitely.	Your question seems to be about abandoned property and whether Missouri’s statute on disposing of property after a tenant abandons his/her property applies. See Mo. Rev. State. Ann. § 441.065 (“Abandonment of premises, disposition of remaining property.”) Assuming there was no agreement (in writing or orally) for the 19 year-old to pay rent, he was most likely a guest and not a tenant. As a guest, landlord-tenant laws, would not apply to the property that that was left at the nice family’s house. The definitions section of Missouri’s landlord-tenant statutes (and common sense) support this analysis. See Mo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 441.005. Therefore, the issue them becomes did the 19 year abandon his property? To that question, I think the answer is yes. Missouri Courts have defined the test for “abandoned property” in Herron v. Whiteside, 782 S.W.2d 414, 416 (Mo. App. W. Dist. 1989), stating: Abandonment is the voluntary relinquishment of ownership so that the property ceases to be the property of any person and becomes the subject of appropriation by the first taker. Wirth v. Heavey, 508 S.W.2d 263, 267 (Mo.App.1974). Abandonment of property requires intent plus an act. Id. A sufficient act is one that manifests a conscious purpose and intention of the owner of personal property neither to use nor to retake the property into his possession. Id. Intention to abandon may be inferred from strong and convincing evidence and may be shown by conduct clearly inconsistent with any intention to retain and continue the use or ownership of the property. Herron, 782 S.W.2d at 416. So to synthesize that passage from Herron, the court is saying that there is a 2 part test for determining if property is abandoned. Did the person intend to abandon the property? Did they commit some act to show this intention? If the answer is yes, to both, they the “first taker” or person that gets possession after the property is abandoned is the new owner. Here, it seems that the 19 year-old intended to abandon the property. He left without explaining why and stated that he would not unload the property if the nice family tried to return it (implying he would not accept the property back). Looking at the second part, him moving without giving notice, and telling the nice family that he won’t accept delivery of the property are both acts showing his intent to abandon the property.	You agreed to pay these fees when you applied for the apartment, so unless they explicitly say that one or both of these fees is waived in case you don't take the apartment (virtually no chance that they said such a thing), you owe that money. Your obligation is not contingent on them convincing you that the fee is just, so it doesn't matter that they won't explain the difference. However, if they said you can pay electronically, then you can pay electronically, since that too is part of the agreement.	Your contract is between you and your landlord. Separately, the landlord has a contract between himself and the agency. Your obligation to pay rent is owed to your landlord, not to his agent. Ask your landlord to send you an email (if you don't already have one) which requests you to pay rent from X date onwards to him directly. Then pay him the rent in the way he has requested. Barring some unusual terms of the contract (which you haven't provided a copy of), the agent will not have any grounds to sue you.
Are there legal consequences of being banned by a web service? If you get IP banned from a website (like reddit), while youre on your phone, do you face any legal repercussions? Does it show up on your record? Do you get banned from other websites? Do the police find out? Does your ISP provider find out? Sorry this is a silly question but I’m curious	An IP ban prevents a user from accessing a website if they are using a certain IP address. This is done by the website- your IP is needed to connect. There is no need to inform your ISP, law enforcement, or your parents. Even if there was a chance of you being IP banned from Reddit, which there isn't, this would affect nothing besides making you unable to access Reddit.	You tag the question with "criminal law", suggesting that by "illegal" you mean "is it a crime" -- that would depend on jurisdiction, but in the US or my state, it is not a crime. There are crimes that you could commit with such an account, but violating the TOS is not itself a crime. However, it is illegal, a breach of contract, as you can see from the TOS "You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission".	Whatever crime or infraction you are charged with, it applies to you personally however they spell your name and however you spell your name. Whether or not you should go depends on the alternative that you face (large fine or jail time for failure to appear?). An argument that you didn't commit the offence because they misspelled your name would hold zero water.	There does seem to be a meme in the UAE of people threatening legal action for negative reviews, as a form of defamation. The police will simply tell them that this is not a crime, go hire a lawyer if you want to sue them. If you block them, perhaps they don't have any other way to contact you (seems that was the point of blocking them), which means that you cannot receive their offer "If you pay us AED 1,000 we will not sue you", which could be a problem if they win their court case. Still, it is perfectly legal to ignore or block them, up to the point that you are actually served with legal papers. When they actually sue you, "blocking" is irrelevant, they will hire a process server to hand you the legal papers that command you to appear in court.	Is this interpretation correct? YES Encounters such as this should normally fall within the non-statutory stop & account which covers police-initiated conversations with members of the public to ask general questions about their activities when there are no reasonable grounds to suspect an offence. The terminology varies from Force to Force, but can be summarised as: What are you doing? Why are you in the area? Where are you going? What are you carrying? There is no legal requirement or obligation to answer any of these questions, and the police cannot lawfully detain anyone to ask them - unlike the statutory powers under Stop & Search and Arrest covered by the OP.	To do so I used some images and Gifs which may be under copyright but since I don't earn money for myself and there is no company backing me I was hoping that there is some protection for private persons like me who just want to showcase the project. Sorry. If your website is public facing (i.e. not password protected and available only to family and close friends), you need to follow copyright law. There is no exception to copyright just because a project is run by an individual for non-commercial purposes. I am also insecure about the GDPR regulations since I give users the ability to create an account and try it out. Your profile says you're in the EU. Then you need to comply with the GDPR. Is there any way to protect me against greedy lawyers and companies? Could I write something like: "This website is a peace of art" and save myself with arguments like "artistic freedom" or "free speech"? Nope. A controversial website run by Peter Sunde had at one point a "free speech" disclaimer (similar to the one you propose) posted. However, Sunde did never use this defense in court: Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine. If he had shown up in court, I am pretty sure the court would have told him that such a disclaimer has no legal merit. The only protection that will make you completely safe is to adhere to the law.	Here's where you went wrong legally: Suppose I legally obtain some digital image created by somebody else (e.g., by downloading from a public website). That, right there, is copyright infringement- unless the copyright owner has granted permission or the image is public domain you cannot copy it - this breaches "the right to make reproductions". By posting it on the web (assuming that it isn't itself an infringing copy) they have given implied permission for you to look at it in a web browser but not to copy it into a presentation even if that presentation is never presented. If it is presented then that makes the infringement worse - it adds breaches of "the right to communicate to the public" and "the right to use the work as a basis for an audiovisual work". How is this different from the computer wallpaper? It isn't. If you are using the one of the defaults that shipped with the OS then the license gives you permission. If you are using someone else's copyright without permission then it's a breach. There are defenses to copyright infringement but these are quite nationally variable - search this or other sites for "fair dealing" and "fair use".	You have a contract - they have fulfilled their obligation (they paid you), if you do not fulfil their obligation (not to post it online) then you are in breach of the contract. Your obligation continues even if you gift the money back to them. If you breach the contract then they can sue you for the damage that they suffer. Presumably this would be damage to their reputation and for a public figure this could run into millions of dollars. In demanding additional money from them beyond what you are legally entitled to you are, at least, flirting with the crime of extortion/blackmail. This would not be a matter for them to sue you for, it would be a matter for the DA to prosecute if they chose to make a complaint. There doesn't seem to be a defamation issue here because you are not stating anything that isn't true. Now, the extent of the agreement appears to prohibit you posting it on the internet, however, the spirit of the agreement is that you will keep the information secret in all respects - that is likely how a court would look at it. Of course, if someone does steal the information from you then you haven't broken the agreement but you would probably have to prove that it was stolen when they sue you.
Is online lottery legal in India? Is a person from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India allowed to play an online lottery? I know playing the lottery is banned in Uttar Pradesh, India, but what about playing the online lottery of other states or playing the international lottery. For example Powerball, Mega million from lotto247.com I have read many answers online but none of them had a source. Some say no and some say yes it is allowed. Please help me read trustworthy, legitimate material that can certify whether it is really allowed or not.	Section 3(a) of the Uttar Pradesh Unauthorised Lottery (Prevention) Act of 1995 states that.. No personal shall promote or conduct any lottery... No distinction is made in the Act between physical and on-line lotteries, but whether this law is actually enforceable for using non-jurisdictional websites will depend on the circumstances and available evidence - which is another (and potentially off topic) question. https://www.latestlaws.com/bare-acts/state-acts-rules/state-laws/uttar-pradesh-unauthorised-lottery-prevention-act-1995/	I am not a lawyer; I am not your lawyer. You do not cite a jurisdiction so this makes it very difficult to get a definitive answer. What follows is for Australia but the general principles are common law and would be applicable to other common law jurisdictions except where statues apply or case law has diverged. In the first instance, it seems that you were not party to any arrangement to pay for the electricity. So on the face of it you are not party to any contract requiring you to pay. Even if there was such an agreement: family, domestic, social and voluntary agreements (which this would be) are presumed not to be intended to legally bind the participants. Whether this presumption would be overturned would depend on the specific facts. On the face of it, there is no legal obligation to pay. Your options are: Do nothing; this puts the ball in their court, they can: Forget about it (it would then be over) Attempt to sue you with little prospect of success (which would cost them and you a lot more than $50 irrespective of who won) Do something illegal like beating you up (you really need to assess this risk) Tell everyone they know (in person and on social media) what a skiving prick you are (you could probably sue them for damages but that's not really going to happen, is it?) Pay them what they are asking Offer to pay them something less. Option 1 is likely to break any relationship you have with the person, Option 2 is likely to preserve it and Option 3 could go either way. Ultimately, like most legal questions, this is not about the law; it's about relationships ... broken ones mostly.	There are certain requirements of Statehood according to the Montevideo Convention on Statehood of 1933, which is just a codification of international customary law: a permanent population; a defined territory; government; and capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Is it "legal" to buy a piece of land and claim it to be another country than before(either inventing a new one or migrating it to an already existing one)? According to international law, it is. Sure. But just because you say something is the case, doesn't mean it is. Always. Sometimes it is. But for present purposes, let's say that if you found an uninhabited island and said that you were a country, that wouldn't be the case - nor if you bought it from a man living on it. If you found some land that belonged to another country and decided to claim it as that of an existing country, then it would depend on the specific circumstances. That's exactly what happened to the Krim island in the Ukraine(now Russia maybe?), right? I don't think so. As far as I know, the annexation of territory isn't considered sale. In any case, the ownership of this land is still under dispute. So, if it's possible without the influence of these international institutions, trying this in an area with their influence would be easier, right? If trying this means declaring some land you have purchased to be a new sovereign state Nope. You probably still don't meet the requirements for statehood. If trying this means the acquisition of some land by an existing sovereign state Maybe. Probably not. The Montevideo Convention requires that statehood not be gained through force; while member states' interests may be greater where they are more invested, the requirements for acquisition of territory are the same no matter where you are. What would prevent me from creating my own nation? Money, defensibility, recognition, the fact that you probably don't own any land that you "buy" (depending on the jurisdiction and real estate system), the fact that you generally can't unilaterally declare yourself a sovereign state.	Usually this answer would be provided by a local government land use ordinance, and not by the constitution, national law, state law or common law caselaw rules. It would vary considerably from place to place within India. You would need to review your local land use ordinances to find the answer.	"Any perceived compliance or non-compliance of other developers’ apps does not have any bearing on the compliance of your own apps." Could this mean that Google Play's policies are applied differently for different developers or apps? No, it means that you can't break the rules even if others are breaking the rules or you think they are breaking the rules. I think it is worth noting that those apps are for the Indian market. I don't know which one you are in, but google will have different rules for different countries to comply with various regulatory requirements.	If the ability to get a Pannini is conditioned on buying paper towels for money, then he isn't really selling paper towels for $2 and the Pannini for free, he is really selling a package consisting of paper towels and a Pannini for $2, so it would probably still be illegal. The phrase lawyers and judges use to talk about attempts to create loopholes like this one is "too clever by half", which means: "Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful."	It may very well be illegal, depending on the laws of the country. Most people have the right to enter their own country (except for practical problems, like not being able to prove you have the right) because you list your passport and/or other ID). But it may be illegal to enter outside official border crossings, for example. Or illegal to enter without having the entry registered. Or soon, it might be illegal to enter the U.K. while avoiding quarantine, whether you are British or not. But it wouldn’t be the fact that you entering that’s illegal, it would be how you did it. If you are the Dutch owner of a Ferrari then entering the Netherlands on the A40 from Germany at 170mph is very, very illegal :-)	I believe the author has published it online. I agree. It is posted at his publisher's website. However, I am unsure if I'm allowed to read it. This answer assumes you are in jurisdiction whose copyright laws is based upon the Berne convention (i.e. the civilized world + USA). Assuming it was the author published it online, it is perfectly legal to read it. Technically, the author is performing his work by putting it online, and by reading it, you are just enjoying his performance. Also, if you are in a jurisdiction with an explicit exception from copyright for personal use, or where fair use allows making copies for personal use, it would also be legal to download it, or to print it on paper (but for personal use only). As for downloading and printing for non-personal use - that is not legal in Berne jurisdictions.
When the VP is Acting President When the Vice-President is serving as Acting President on account of a temporary disability of the President, do they retain their Vice-Presidential powers, including the power to preside over the Senate and cast a tie-breaking vote?	The 25th amendment §3 says Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Nothing in the Constitution deprives the Vice President of his powers / duties when he is also Acting President. Alternatively, the VP can become acting President under §4, without presidential cooperation, by declaration of the VP and a majority of the cabinet. Then either the President asserts that there is no inability, or Congress decides there is. But: unless the president dies or resigns, or is impeached, the VP is Acting President and actual Vice President, and therefore breaks ties in the Senate. Note that under §4, the VP plus cabinet must declare POTUS unable, and must do it again if POTUS denies the inability. That means that there must still be a VP, who along with the cabinet re-affirms the disability.	The Twelfth Amendment states that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States." Thus, to serve as vice president, an individual must: Be a natural-born U.S. citizen; Be at least 35 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution Because the age requirement for President is 35 years old, the Vice President must also meet that requirement.	Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 says The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present. Therefore, the House cannot try an impeachment. The wording of the Constitution does not say "The Senate must try any impeachment delivered by the House". The option to reject an impeachment by simple majority runs completely counter to Senate tradition. But analogous to deployment of the "nuclear option" to change Senate rules, it is a conceivable outcome. The first impeachment presented to the Senate was against a Senator, William Blount in 1797, and in that instance the Senate appears to have voted that Blount was not an impeachable officer (so they did not vote on impeachment, but they did vote to expel him). In Nixon v. US, SCOTUS ruled that Senate impeachment actions are not justiciable. While current Senate rules require a trial, the rules can be changed by the Senate by a majority vote, and SCOTUS will not review such actions. The Senate can also adjourn and not take up one or more articles, as happened in Andrew Johnson's case.	There is no such restriction. At the time the Constitution was written it was the common practice to use "he" for a person of unknown or unspecified sex. The use of that word cannot be taken to imply a restriction to males. If it were not settled before, the 19th Amendment granting voting rights to all adult women would have settled the matter. While it is true that no woman has yet been elected to, or held, the office of President, women have been elected to Congress. But the 2nd paragraph of Article I section II provides that: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. If the use of "he" were a restriction to male office holders, no woman could be elected to the House. And in fact the Hon Nancy Pelosi, a woman, is currently Speaker of the House, and would become President in accordance with law should both the current President and Vice-President die, resign, or become ineligible without a new VP being appointed and confirmed as provided for in the 25th Amendment. The argument made in the question is without merit.	The US President is indeed bound by the Constitution, and indeed by the ordinary laws. Current Justice Department policy is that a sitting president may not be indicted. No court has ever held this, the US Constitution does not give explicit presidential immunity the way it gives limited immunity to members of congress (in the "speech and debate" clause). No sitting US President has ever been charged with a crime, much less indicted, so the matter has never come before a court. An old news story indicated that President Grant was stopped for a traffic offense (speeding, in a horse-drawn carriage), accompanied the officer to a police station, paid an appearance bond for the traffic court, and then failed to appear, forfeiting the bond. Even if this is accurate, no claim of presidential immunity was made, and no court decision was rendered. So no precedent was established by that event, one way or the other. Any President may be impeached and convicted, if Congress sees fit to do so. There is no enforceable standard on just what is and is not an impeachable offense. That is left to the sound judgement of Congress. Nor is Congress required to act if it chooses not to, no matter how strong the evidence may be. Nixon's Vice President , Spiro Agnew, was investigated for alleged corrupt practices. It appeared that Maryland (where he had been Governor) was ready to indict him on several charges. He was persuaded to plead "no contest" in a plea bargain to a single count, and was sentenced to probation with no jail time. At the same time, he resigned as VP. No one knows what would have happened had he continued to insist on his innocence, and claimed before the court that a sitting VP could not lawfully be indicted (a claim he had made earlier in the process). Even assuming that a sitting President cannot be indicted or tried, nothing prevents such a person from being charged and perhaps convicted after his or her term has ended. The constitution explicitly says that if an official is impeached and removed from office, there may be a subsequent trial on any relevant charges. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. (Art I; section 3; clauses 6&7) Whether any statute of limitations would be tolled (paused) while the president was in office cannot be determined until and unless the matters comes before a court for a decision. Note that the US Constitution imposes few duties or obligations on individuals. it is mostly concerned with specifying he structure of the federal government, and the powers of and limitations on its various parts. It also specifies the relations between the Federal and State Governments. It also declares a number of rights held by individuals, most of which can be regarded as limitations on the power of the government. If the President were to be accused of a crime, it would almost surely be one established by statute, not by the constitution directly, because treason is the only crime defined directly by the constitution. However, the official acts of the president are clearly limited by the Constitution, and in a number of cases have been held void as being unconstitutional. One of the more famous cases is Youngstown Sheet and Tube vs Sawyer 343 U.S. 579 (1952), also known and the "steel mills seizure case". During the Korean War, President Truman attempted to take control of a number of steel mills to stop a labor dispute, on the ground that this was hindering the national defense. The US Supreme Court ruled that he lacked the power to do this, and that his action was void.	There are two kinds of immunity: absolute and qualified. Absolute immunity is limited to the official discretionary acts of judges, prosecutors in the litigation process (but not in the investigatory process) and the President. And, in the cases of judges and prosecutors this is only immunity from civil liability and not criminal liability. Thus, for judges the scope of absolute immunity extends to legal rulings and conduct related to being a judge in a courtroom. In the case of a prosecutor, it pertains to litigation conduct (but not conduct physically dealing with a defendant or investigating a crime). This is usually an open and shut question which can be determined on the face of the legal complaint against the official. Only the President has relatively broad kinds of activities covered and his saying he is immune doesn't mean that a judge trying a case will agree with him. If he's murdering his wife, no judge will believe that he's acting in his official capacity to do so. Other government officials generally have only "qualified immunity" which means that they have liability if they intentionally violate clearly established law, which basically means that there is a binding judicial precedent governing the facts and circumstances at issue.	Art II, Sec 2, Cl 1 of The Constitution says of the president "and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment". The Constitution does not state any further restrictions on the presidential power, and there are no statutory limits, because, as observed in Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control. Accordingly, presidents have written pardons on and with numerous different writing instruments. Insofar as there are no constitutional restrictions beyond the aforementioned, it is not required that a pardon be signed, or that it be on a tangible semi-permanent medium. It is impossible to know what such a pardon tweet would look like, beyond the limit on length. The one place where a presidential signature is required is under the Presentment Clause, that when presented with a bill that passed the two houses of Congress, "If he approve he shall sign it". Such a signature need not be actually written by the president, it may and often is written by an autopen. The question of the legality of autopen signatures for bills has not been presented to SCOTUS, but the Department of Justice has issued an opinion (July 7, 2005) that it is legal. I have failed to locate a repository of presidential pardons (the actual documents), so I do not know if, so far, all presidential pardons were written down and signed, though I would expect it to be so. The Arpaio pardon was signed (or auto-signed), likewise Obama's final mass-pardon on Jan 17, and previous Obama pardons were, but pre-Obama, DOJ does not provide any document.	If the spouse of the US president filed for divorce, would a) the President have any claim of immunity from any litigation that followed (e.g. the division of assets in the matrimonial pot, child custody etc.), The President could claim it, but the President wouldn't win. Notably, a number of state governors and mayors have divorced while in office, and other foreign heads of state have been divorced while in office. For example, a U.K. court recently handled the divorce of a UAE monarch (over his objections to jurisdiction on sovereign immunity grounds), applying the same common law principles of head of state and sovereign immunities that exist in U.S. law and concluded that it had the authority to move forward with the case. Also, any Presidential divorce would take place in state court, not in federal court. Federal courts do not have subject-matter jurisdiction over divorce and custody cases (under the "domestic relations exception" to federal jurisdiction), so the civil action could not be removed to federal court, unlike federal criminal cases involving the official duties of the President and unlike civil cases over which the federal courts have jurisdiction. b) would all the proceedings be fully held in private, This would be in the reasonable discretion of the judge. It would not be a matter of right, but it is quite plausible that a judge might close the proceedings, especially if minor children were involved. c) could the President themselves be compelled to take the stand and Yes. A party to a lawsuit may always be compelled to take the stand, at least if no other person can provide a full substitute for the party's testimony. In ordinary civil lawsuits against the President, a President is usually compelled to testify only if an underling involved in the same matter cannot provide equivalent testimony. In many civil cases naming the President in his official capacity, the President has no personal knowledge of the facts and so can't be compelled to testify. But that would rarely be true in a divorce case, and would never be true in a divorce case where custody was an issue. This said, a state divorce court judge would almost certainly be very deferential to the scheduling concerns of the President for that testimony, and might allow that testimony to be provided remotely via videoconference so as to minimize the interruption this would pose to affairs of state and to address the security concerns of the Secret Service (i.e. the President's official bodyguards). d) what would happen if the President refused to do so? The judge could hold the President in contempt of court, which is punishable by fines and/or incarceration. But a more likely outcome, tailored to minimize interference with government business, is that the Court would sanction a President who defied an order to testify by assuming as a matter of law that any testimony from the President would have been unfavorable to the President and make a conclusive adverse inference on the evidentiary issues about which the President was asked to testify against the President.
Can a confidentiality obligation in an agreement have an indefinite period I've found that some companies are very much against the individual and want indefinite confidentiality clauses. I'm happy to sign a 2 year clause but an indefinite one is sickening to me. I'm working in medical devices not the CIA and ideas could be used elsewhere to save patient lives. I have pushed back on the duration but the company is sticking with FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Surely the law should be there to prevent morally bankrupt practices and intellectual enslavement? Is an indefinite duration of confidentiality actually legal in the civilian sector? Is there anything I can do to push back on an indefinite duration of confidentiality? FYI; I'm in the EU but the company is a US multinational.	Yes Of course, the period is not actually "indefinite" - it has a definite end: the date of your death. It also has another (unstated) endpoint: the point at which the information ceases to be confidential other than through your breach: for example if published in a patent application. The correct legal term here is not "indefinite"; its "forever" or "perpetually". I prefer forever because perpetually technically means "all the time" rather than "neverending". However, documents commonly use “indefinite” when they mean “forever” so there is unlikely to be grounds to dispute the interpretation. Under US law there is no prohibition on perpetuities as there is in most common law jurisdictions (80 years is typical) so this contract is totally legit. As for the law preventing "morally bankrupt practices and intellectual enslavement"; it does: you don't have to enter this contract if you don't want to.	Late to the party, but I'll answer anyways. In general, providers have a lot of wiggle room when sharing information with parents, on condition that the patient hasn't explicitly objected despite having opportunity to do so. HIPAA allows the provider to make a judgment call on whether such information can be shared without explicit consent: Quoting Title 45 § 164.510 : (i) Obtains the individual's agreement; (ii) Provides the individual with the opportunity to object to the disclosure, and the individual does not express an objection; or (iii) Reasonably infers from the circumstances, based the exercise of professional judgment, that the individual does not object to the disclosure. HHS does discuss disclosure to family members in their FAQ : A covered entity is permitted to share information with a family member or other person involved in an individual’s care or payment for care as long as the individual does not object. A parent of a child who has just turned 18 is likely still somewhat involved in the child's care, so, absent either an objection or a reason to believe the child would object if asked, sharing is probably not a violation.	If a contract sometimes uses the wrong name, is it still valid? Yes. It is valid as long as the contract as a whole permits identifying the parties (unequivocally) and ascertaining their role with respect to the contract. Using "Contractor" and "Consultant" interchangeably despite only the former being explicitly defined seems a bit sloppy, but it does not by itself alter or invalidate the meaning of the contract. The excerpt you reproduce is self-explanatory. Its first sentence identifies the parties, and there are only two. Thus, there is no reasonable way to dispute that the second sentence means "Contractor shall indemnify Company", since a clause of the sort "he will indemnify himself" makes no sense. Moreover, the legal definitions of Indemnitor and Indemnitee (Black's Law Dictionary) clearly make reference to "the person" (who protects or is protected, accordingly) and "the other" (that is, not to self).	There is a potentially infinite regress of questions regarding the constitutionality of restrictions imposed under these "emergency" circumstances. The basic legal principle is clearly established: laws restricting fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny. The specific details of a particular law and surrounding circumstances have yet to be discovered by the courts. If it is necessary to the purpose of saving lives that meetings of more than 10 people be prohibited, then the "compelling interest" test probably has been satisfied. That is basically a medical question, and the courts have a limited interest in scientific controversies, instead they are interested in whether people who make legal decisions do so rationally (is it reasonable to think that such limits would accomplish that compelling government end). Is it reasonable to think that restrictions lasting two months are necessary? The Black Death lasted at least 4 years. In the current circumstances (very limited hard knowledge this disease), it's hard to say what government actions could not be excused based on necessity. Summary execution is, at least in the current knowledge context, probably not going to pass strict scrutiny. As already explained in other thread on the topic, there is no "churches are above the law" constitutional provision. The appropriate question in the Florida case is not about the First Amendment, it is about the Due Process clauses – is the arrest lawful? We will, no doubt, see. On the face of it, he violated the law, so he can be arrested. I understand that there is a team poking holes in the order.	There may be jurisdictional differences, but this link gives a thorough summary based on US interpretations. In short, privacy is an expectation based on common law while confidentiality is an ethical duty - usually (but not exclusively) part of a professional interaction. For correspondence where the sender wishes to show that they are aware of their ethical responsibility and that they also recognise that the addressee would have an expectation of privacy, both are often written.	Yes, this is a valid concern As written, every piece of IP you produce while employed belongs to the employer. This includes your hypothetical game. It also includes your weekly shopping lists, your Christmas card to your Great-Aunt Nellie, the … a-hm … private video you make of you and your significant other. As written this is overly broad and probably unenforceable. However, it’s always better to have clear and legally enforceable clauses in your agreements because unclear, arguably unenforceable ones lead to disputes. To be fair, the employer has probably lifted some (bad) boilerplate and hasn’t actually thought through what it means. Get it redrafted.	Yes, your clause specifically limits you to only working for COMPANY, even in your off time. Canada does not have a law protecting your right to work secondary jobs (moonlighting) in your off-duty hours. This means that any contract clause specifically limiting you to work with the employer only is valid, and breaking it is cause for justified dismissal. Based on this, do I need to ask for explicit permission to work on such projects? Yes, you will need to disclose any potential "business or occupation whatsoever". You could play contract games by saying "it's only a hobby" or "it doesn't make any money", but you will be opening yourself up to issues. The best thing to do is to disclose your project to your employer and get in writing their permission to work on it with specific terms that you will not be using company time or resources in any way. See: Patterson V. Bank of Nova Scotia	The health insurance contract should set forth what is and is not covered in detail (in addition, there would be a short summary version). They probably don't have to provide procedure codes that are covered or not covered because no such one to one correspondence exists because the language of the insurance contract is controlling and does not exactly correspond to procedure codes. For example, one of the basic eligibility questions is whether a procedure is medically necessary. A procedure may be medically necessary for one person, but not for another, and usually a denial based upon medical necessity is subject to appeal to other medical professionals engaged by the insurance company. Unless the insurance contract provides that an EOB must contain procedure codes, it probably doesn't have an affirmative obligation to do so, because there is no general principle of law that would require them to disclose their internal classification of services provided outside of a litigation context. And, in a litigation context, you probably could obtain procedure codes in discovery from the insurance company, as the code assigned to a procedure on an EOB would almost surely not be privileged or a legally protected secret. It may very well be that the company has an in house set of procedures for certain common diagnosis codes that are routinely allowed or are flagged for review by an insurance company bureaucrat. But, that would ordinarily be considered something of a trade secret of the company and is not a statement of what is or is not allowed under the actual health insurance contract. However, the privilege against disclosing the information in that context would flow from trade secret law and not from the fact that they are PHI. I don't agree that PHI is the correct reason for failing to disclose that information (unless some case law of which I am not aware has interpreted it differently). The federal law definition of PHI is at 45 CFR 160.103: Protected health information means individually identifiable health information: (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this definition, that is: (i) Transmitted by electronic media; (ii) Maintained in electronic media; or (iii) Transmitted or maintained in any other form or medium. (2) Protected health information excludes individually identifiable health information: (i) In education records covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as amended, 20 U.S.C. 1232g; (ii) In records described at 20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(4)(B)(iv); (iii) In employment records held by a covered entity in its role as employer; and (iv) Regarding a person who has been deceased for more than 50 years. The cross reference to 20 U.S.c. 1232g(a)(4)(B)(iv) reads as follows: (iv) records on a student who is eighteen years of age or older, or is attending an institution of postsecondary education, which are made or maintained by a physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, or other recognized professional or paraprofessional acting in his professional or paraprofessional capacity, or assisting in that capacity, and which are made, maintained, or used only in connection with the provision of treatment to the student, and are not available to anyone other than persons providing such treatment, except that such records can be personally reviewed by a physician or other appropriate professional of the student’s choice. In short, it is B.S. that you are being given an illegitimate reason for not complying with your request, but it is probably still within the company's rights for other legitimate reasons to deny your request.
Legality of reverse engineering when licensing code stops working and the author is deceased? There is a piece of software floating around there called ASIO Link Pro, but apparently (and sadly) the author of that software has passed away. (Alternative to ODeus AsioLink for Audio Routing?, Reddit, November 2017.) Evidently the software needs to communicate with a license server which is no longer being maintained (or something like this) which has effectively rendered the software useless. In Reddit link above, you can see that people have come up with a patch from reverse engineering the product. I've included the EULA here for reference, but want to highlight this section specifically for this question. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble ASIO LINK PRO, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. So my question is: To what extent is such activity (reverse engineering, decompiling, disassembling) expressly permitted by applicable law? I get that it's complicated with multiple countries and everything, but let's just say US, UK, and AU as some examples... Full End User License Agreement IMPORTANT PLEASE READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY BEFORE CONTINUING WITH THIS PROGRAM INSTALL: O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) for AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) ASIO LINK PRO(s) identified above which may include associated software components, media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic documentation ("ASIO LINK PRO"). By installing, copying, or otherwise using ASIO LINK PRO, you agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA. This license agreement represents the entire agreement concerning the program between you and O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543), (referred to as "licenser"), and it supersedes any prior proposal, representation, or understanding between the parties. If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, do not install or use ASIO LINK PRO. ASIO LINK PRO is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. ASIO LINK PRO is licensed, not sold. 1. GRANT OF LICENSE. ASIO LINK PRO is licensed as follows: (a) Installation and Use. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) grants you the right to install and use copies of ASIO LINK PRO on the number of computers for which a license has been purchased [e.g. A 2 machine license allows install on 2 computers] and each computer must be running a validly licensed copy of the operating system for which ASIO LINK PRO was designed [e.g., Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows Vista]. 2. DESCRIPTION OF OTHER RIGHTS AND LIMITATIONS. (a) Maintenance of Copyright Notices. You must not remove or alter any copyright notices on any and all copies of ASIO LINK PRO. (b) Distribution. You may not distribute registered copies of ASIO LINK PRO to third parties. Evaluation versions available for download from AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) website may be freely distributed. (c) Prohibition on Reverse Engineering, De-compilation, and Disassembly. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble ASIO LINK PRO, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. (d) Rental. You may not rent, lease, or lend ASIO LINK PRO. (e) Support Services. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) may provide you with support services related to ASIO LINK PRO ("Support Services"). Any supplemental software code provided to you as part of the Support Services shall be considered part of ASIO LINK PRO and subject to the terms and conditions of this EULA. (f) Compliance with Applicable Laws. You must comply with all applicable laws regarding use of ASIO LINK PRO. 3. TERMINATION Without prejudice to any other rights, O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) may terminate this EULA if you fail to comply with the terms and conditions of this EULA. In such event, you must destroy all copies of ASIO LINK PRO in your possession. 4. COPYRIGHT All title, including but not limited to copyrights, in and to ASIO LINK PRO and any copies thereof are owned by O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) or its suppliers. All title and intellectual property rights in and to the content which may be accessed through use of ASIO LINK PRO is the property of the respective content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other intellectual property laws and treaties. This EULA grants you no rights to use such content. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543). 5. NO WARRANTIES O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) expressly disclaims any warranty for ASIO LINK PRO. ASIO LINK PRO is provided 'As Is' without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including but not limited to any warranties of merchantability, non-infringement, or fitness of a particular purpose. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) does not warrant or assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within ASIO LINK PRO. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) makes no warranties respecting any harm that may be caused by the transmission of a computer virus, worm, time bomb, logic bomb, or other such computer program. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) further expressly disclaims any warranty or representation to Authorized Users or to any third party. 6. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY In no event shall O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, or lost information) rising out of 'Authorized Users' use of or inability to use ASIO LINK PRO, even if O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event will O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) be liable for loss of data or for indirect, special, incidental, consequential (including lost profit), or other damages based in contract, tort or otherwise. O DEUS AUDIO (ABN 53456965543) shall have no liability with respect to the content of ASIO LINK PRO or any part thereof, including but not limited to errors or omissions contained therein, libel, infringements of rights of publicity, privacy, trademark rights, business interruption, personal injury, and loss of privacy, moral rights or the disclosure of confidential information.```	I'm not sure this would be a copyright violation. 17 USC 117 says: (a)Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner... Due to the shutdown of the license server, it is impossible to use the program without an adaptation. It is therefore an "essential step in the utilization of the computer program", and not infringing, in my opinion.	Pseudo-code written down somewhere is protected by copyright, even if the article containing it doesn't say anything about the pseudo-code contained in it (i.e. doesn't mention "this too is copyrighted"). For example, let us assume that the following isn't actual compileable / executable code in some extant programming language: procedure bubbleSort( A : list of sortable items ) n = length(A) repeat swapped = false for i = 1 to n-1 inclusive do /* if this pair is out of order / if A[i-1] > A[i] then / swap them and remember something changed */ swap( A[i-1], A[i] ) swapped = true end if end for until not swapped end procedure It does nevertheless constitute an expression of an abstract algorithm. If it can be copied and pasted, it is an expression. If you run this through a filter to create executable code in some language, you will have created a derivative work (and possibly one with no copyright protection, if the conversion is totally automatic). If you read the lines and say "Ah, I know what that would be in Pascal", that has the modicum of creativity required to make your conversion protected, but you've still infringed the underlying work. On the other hand, a logical flow chart, which is a picture of the abstract idea of what to do, is copyright-protected only as a graphic object. If you look at it and it inspires you to write pseudo-code or actual code, you are not copying the flow chart.	How close is such a statement corresponding with the reality? Legally, such language is a meaningless statement of future intent that at best makes clear that the person making the statement isn't waiving any of their legal rights. Certainly, no infringer would have standing to sue if they failed to do so. Whether a joint venture member or foreign reseller could sue the company for failing to enforce its IP rights is another question that presents itself very differently and depends upon much more than what the warning labels state, such as the language in the joint partnership or reseller's agreement with the copyright owner. Also, in criminal copyright violation cases, even if the copyright owner asks for the maximum possible consequences, the U.S. Justice Department is under no obligation whatsoever to go along with that request. Likewise, a judge has no obligation to impose the maximum penalty allowed by law following a criminal conviction, even if the copyright owner and the U.S. Justice Department both request a maximum sentence for someone who pleas guilty or is convicted of the offense following a trial. In practice, something like 98% of federal criminal cases, and a similar percentage of federal civil cases, result in agreed resolutions which result in less severe penalties than the maximum penalties allowed by law. This happens as a result of a mutual agreement to resolve the case with a guilty plea, or a settlement agreement in a civil case, or both. Also, in practice, none of these companies, nor the federal government's prosecutors, have the resources to press anything but the most clear and serious copyright violation cases, and cases that are valuable for P.R. purposes. Anything else is essentially a random lottery from myriad cases that could have been brought in order to counteract the argument (both political and legal) that their copyright protections are empty and completely unenforced is a large part of the cases to which the statutes would make it seem that they apply. Also, in a case brought by a joint venture owner or reseller for failure to enforce a copyright which causes the partner damages, presumably in some sort of breach of contract or breach of fiduciary duty action, there would be no way to prove damages from all of the non-enforcement, since enforcing every known infringement would not be cost effective and would reduce the net profits of everyone involved.	This kind of piracy is unfortunately common. When your copyright has been violated, your available response is to sue the infringer. Yes, this costs money, and yes, many infringers get away with it. In the Free Software/Open Source community, a couple of actors including the FSF, gpl-violations.org/Harald Welte, and the Software Freedom Conservancy have sued GPL infringers. But they can only do that for copyrights that they hold themselves. For example, the FSF holds copyright for the GNU userland, whereas Welte and Conservancy hold copyright for parts of the Linux kernel. They do not hold copyright for your software so they cannot enforce the AGPL license on your behalf. What can be done fairly easily is to file a takedown request with platforms that host the infringing content. Under various safe harbor laws including the US DMCA, a platform is not responsible if they accidentally host infringing content uploaded by users. However, the platform has to take the content down if they're notified that the content is infringing. For example, you could file a DMCA takedown request with GitHub to take down their repository, in case they are using GitHub. The drawback is that a takedown notice can be contested by the alleged infringer, in which case the content is reinstated and you would have to sue. The platform is not allowed to make its own determination about whether you or the infringer is right.	Apparently Such Files May be Distributes or Sold Section 5.e of the Google APIs Terms of Service reads: e. Prohibitions on Content Unless expressly permitted by the content owner or by applicable law, you will not, and will not permit your end users or others acting on your behalf to, do the following with content returned from the APIs: Scrape, build databases, or otherwise create permanent copies of such content, or keep cached copies longer than permitted by the cache header; Copy, translate, modify, create a derivative work of, sell, lease, lend, convey, distribute, publicly display, or sublicense to any third party; Misrepresent the source or ownership; or Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices; or falsify or delete any author attributions, legal notices, or other labels of the origin or source of material It might seem that 5.e.2 prohibits the suggested use. But if the text is in fact in the public domain,"applicable law" (that is, copyright law) permits you, or anyone, to "Copy, translate, modify, create a derivative work of" or otherwise use the content. Thus 5.e.2 does not apply. Points 3 and 4 would seem to indicate that the source, including title and author information, must be included or preserved in the output files, but seems to be the only relevant restriction that applies. Response to Comment A comment by user Brian Drake questions the theory of this answer, stating: The most you can say is that copyright law does not prohibit certain conduct (and even that is not clear: just because the text is in the public domain does not necessarily mean that the audio is in the public domain); this does not mean that copyright law expressly permits that conduct. US Copyright law does not define what constitutes the public domain. Rather it defines what is protected by copyright, and specifies some cases in whch a work is not protected. (For nexample, 17 USC 105 provides tht works of the US Federal Government are not protected.) Anything not included in the protection of copyright is in the public domain. This has been confirmed by many cour cases and legal writings. Law generally follows the rule "Anything not forbidden is allowed." Audio as Derivitive Work An audio recording of a person reading a text aloud would be a derivative work of that text, and would normally have its own copyright, if created lawfully. (If the recording was of a text protected by copyright, made without permission and outside of fair use, it was not made lawfully and the infringer has no copyright in the recording at all.) But US courts have held that a work created by a mechanical or automatic process, including many computer programs, is not an "original work of authorship" and thus is not protected by copyright at all, and is thus in the Public Domain. The case of the "Monkey Selfie" is on point. ("Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, § 313.2" (PDF). United States Copyright Office. 22 December 2014. p. 22. "To qualify as a work of 'authorship' a work must be created by a human being.... Works that do not satisfy this requirement are not copyrightable. The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants." Moreover, if the audio were protected by copyright, it would presumably be owned by the person who ran the program, and 17 USC 106 specifically grants the copyright owner permission to distribute copies. Sources The Wikipedia article "Public Domain" reads in relevant part (citations omitted): The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired,[1] been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. ... As rights vary by country and jurisdiction, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a country-by-country basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required, gives rise to public-domain status for a work in that country. ... Definitions of the boundaries of the public domain in relation to copyright, or intellectual property more generally, regard the public domain as a negative space; that is, it consists of works that are no longer in copyright term or were never protected by copyright law. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the term public domain and equates the public domain to public property and works in copyright to private property. However, the usage of the term public domain can be more granular, including for example uses of works in copyright permitted by copyright exceptions. Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair-use rights and limitation on ownership "How Can I Use Copyright-Free Works (in the Public Domain)?" by Nolo Press reads: Copyright law gives creators certain exclusive rights. These rights include the exclusive ability to copy, distribute, and perform the copyrighted work. But copyright is not infinite. Rather, it provides copyright holders with protections for a limited duration. When a work becomes available for use without permission from a copyright owner, it is said to be "in the public domain." Most works enter the public domain because their copyrights have expired. The Legal Information Institute (LII) article "public domain" reads: The public domain includes every creative work that is no longer protected by a copyright, trademark, or patent. Creative works that are no longer protected are owned by the general public rather than the original creator. As such, the work is free to be copied, performed, or otherwise used by anyone. "Copyright and Scholarship: Public Domain" from Boston College Libraries reads in relevant part: "Public domain" works are not protected by copyright. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. An important caveat regarding public domain material is that collections, new editions, and derivative works of public domain material may all be protected by copyright. With collections, an author could collect public domain works in a book or display them on a website, and the collection as a whole could be protected by copyright, even though individual works within it are not. "Welcome to the Public Domain" (Stanford libraries) reads in relevant part: The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. Wikipedia article "Monkey selfie copyright dispute" "A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos" (AP) reads in relevant part: A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos, a federal judge said Wednesday. U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in federal court in San Francisco that "while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act." NARUTO, a Crested Macaque, by and through his Next Friends, People forthe Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., v. DAVID JOHN SLATER; BLURB, INC., ; WILDLIFE PERSONALITIES, LTD." (Ninth Circuit full opinion April 23, 2018 No. 16-15469, D.C. No. 3:15-cv-04324-WHO) reads in part: We must determine whether a monkey may sue humans, corporations, and companies for damages and injunctive relief arising from claims of copyright infringement. Our court’s precedent requires us to conclude that the monkey’s claim has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution. Nonetheless, we conclude that this monkey—and all animals, since they are not human—lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court	A simple EULA does not absolve you from legal responsibility. The law that you need to be acquainted with, if you are dealing with the US (i.e. might be sued in the US), is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in particular Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act which states the "safe harbor" provisions. Aspects of DMCA safe harbor are covered in many Law SE questions. In essence, you have to provide a way for rights holders to complain that someone has infringed their copyright on there site, and you have to take down allegedly infringing material: and there are a number of legal formalities to attend to in doing this. The main point is that you can't just ignore the problem and hope it goes away, and you can't just say it is not your responsibility, which is what a simple EULA does. To be protected, you need a "designated agent" where complainers can contact you. You provide the information online (as well as stating the DMCA policy, which can be in the EULA), and also register that information with the Copyright office (online). The complaint has to be in writing, and most of the burden is on the author of the complaint, but you still have to be sure that the complaint is legally conforming. The complaint has to say what was infringed (e.g. the URL), the identity of the protected content (title of the book, for instance), and provide the complainer's signature and contact information. It also requires the complainer to say that they have a good faith belief that the material is illegally copied (no permission, and not otherwise allowed by law), and a perjury statement that the foregoing is accurate and authorized by the copyright holder. When you have a conforming notice, you must "expeditiously" remove / disable the infringing material (there is no definition of "expeditious"), notify the user, then wait for a proper counter-claim (same general form as the take-down claim but where the user denies the posting the material was illegal. If you get a counter-claim, you notify the alleged copyright owner and wait for them to file suit in 10 days. If they don't do that, you restore the material. Here is a sample complaint, and a sample counter notice. Also, this document (look for the download tab) reorganizes the legal language so that requirements are put in logical order and not randomly scattered throughout the US Code.	I realize it has been eight months, but I believe I can offer an opinion. Given the nature of the question, please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and my opinion is no substitute for professional legal counsel. [Preparing this post has been an educational experience and my opinion should in no way be interpreted as expert opinion] Assuming you have not infringed on any patents, the relevant legal challenges Valve could try include breach of contract, copyright infringement, and trade dress infringement. Breach of Contract The potential breach of contract occurs because the Steam client setup application requires you to accept a contract of adhesion (The License) before the software can be installed. I could not find a copy of The License online in plain text (this is separate from the Steam Subscriber Agreement, which you also agree to by accepting The License), but you can read it any time by running the Steam client setup application which is available at [redacted due to low rep - the Steam website]. These so-called "shrink wrap licenses" are of questionable legal value, depending on how the licensee assents to the contract. People often bring up Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp. In that case, the only reference to a license was on the download webpage, and it was only visible if the user scrolled down past the download button - Netscape argued unsuccessfully that clicking the download button indicated assent to the terms of the license. The Steam client setup application has a prominent dialogue box showing the terms of The License and requiring your explicit assent before installation can continue. A more relevant case may be ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, where the Seventh Circuit ruled that a license agreement was valid where the licensee had to click on a dialogue box assenting acceptance to the agreement. In short, you may be required to defend yourself under the terms of The License. If the licenses are thrown out as unenforceable, the prosecution would probably move towards copyright infringement. Section 1 Paragraph C of The License states (emphasis added): Except as expressly set forth elsewhere in this License Agreement, you may not, in whole or in part: copy, photocopy, reproduce, translate, reverse engineer (with the exception of specific circumstances where such act is permitted by law), derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, or create derivative works based on the Program. Now you assert that there has been no reverse engineering, that you made yours "completely from scratch using completely different styling and images (even different website inside the client that is mine)". You may be challenged on these claims in court, for example comparison of source codes could rule out reverse engineering. I will touch on derivative work status later. Note that under Section 5, the provisions of Section 1 Paragraph C do not apply after you have uninstalled the Steam client software. This means in the case that you [can prove you had] uninstalled the Steam client software before making your own client, you would have a defense to breach of contract under Section 1 Paragraph C. However... The License also includes the terms of the "Steam Agreement", viewable online at http://www.steampowered.com/agreement. The Steam Agreement takes effect when you register for your Steam account. Section 2 Paragraph G of the Steam Agreement echoes the above referenced Section 1 Paragraph C of The License, and even survives termination of the Steam Agreement (your steam account being cancelled). Now assuming you can provide defense against reverse engineering, you may need a defense against the charge that your work is a derivative work. Your case may be pretty strong if you can show that your client was indeed written from the ground up - which rules out the possibility of deriving your program code from Steam's code as literary copyrights go. The prosecution could try saying you have copied the audiovisuals of their program, but your program was written "from scratch using completely different styling and images". Eventually prosecution may have to move into trade dress infringement. Copyright Infringement In a case of alleged copyright infringement, the first order of business is to prove there is a copyrighted work to begin with. The work in question is the Steam client by Valve Corporation. Again, I am not an expert but I could not find any copyright registration for the Steam client (http://www.copyright.gov/records/ -> Post-1978 Records -> Search by Name "Valve Corporation"). Copyright registration is required before infringement suits can be filed. Valve can register after infringement occurs but they will be limited to actual damages and profits. Nevertheless Valve does claim copyright over its product. A notice is posted on The License and Steam Agreement, and from the client itself the Help menu contains a command "Legal Info" which opens a webpage containing a copyright notice. Since 1979 it has not been necessary to post a copyright notice, but a notice helps break a defense of innocent infringement. You imply that you copied elements of the Steam client "to give customers a similar feel to what they are used to [the Steam client]". In your specific case innocent infringement may not be a valid defense. It seems you are most concerned about copyright infringement over the menus. An extremely relevant case is Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland International, Inc. In that case the First Circuit held that the menu heirarchy for Lotus 1-2-3 (the progenitor of virtually all menu heirarchies today) was uncopyrightable as a "method of operation" under U.S.C. 17 Section 102(b). We think that "method of operation," as that term is used in [U.S.C. 17 Section] 102(b), refers to the means by which a person operates something, whether it be a car, a food processor, or a computer. Thus a text describing how to operate something would not extend copyright protection to the method of operation itself; other people would be free to employ that method and to describe it in their own words. Similarly, if a new method of operation is used rather than described, other people would still be free to employ or describe that method. We hold that the Lotus menu command hierarchy is an uncopyrightable "method of operation." The Lotus menu command hierarchy provides the means by which users control and operate Lotus 1-2-3. If users wish to copy material, for example, they use the "Copy" command. If users wish to print material, they use the "Print" command. Users must use the command terms to tell the computer what to do. Without the menu command hierarchy, users would not be able to access and control, or indeed make use of, Lotus 1-2-3's functional capabilities. If specific words are essential to operating something, then they are part of a "method of operation" and, as such, are unprotectable. This is so whether they must be highlighted, typed in, or even spoken, as computer programs no doubt will soon be controlled by spoken words. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision with an even court (Judge Stevens recusing), so no national precedent was set. Nevertheless the ruling has not been overturned - the First Circuit goes into great detail explaining their decision, and I do recommend reading the ruling. We have already discussed derivative works and reverse engineering with contracts, and the same defense would apply under copyright law: source code comparison. Trade Dress Normally things like design and layout are left to patent law. A desperate prosecution, however, may claim that by copying their "look and feel" you infringe on their trade dress. The relevant text is part of U.S.C. 15 Section 1125(a) (emphasis added): (1) Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services, or any container for goods, uses in commerce any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which- (A) is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with another person, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of his or her goods, services, or commercial activities by another person, or (B) in commercial advertising or promotion, misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of his or her or another person's goods, services, or commercial activities, shall be liable in a civil action by any person who believes that he or she is or is likely to be damaged by such act. (2) As used in this subsection, the term "any person" includes any State, instrumentality of a State or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this chapter in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity. (3) In a civil action for trade dress infringement under this chapter for trade dress not registered on the principal register, the person who asserts trade dress protection has the burden of proving that the matter sought to be protected is not functional. Defense against such a claim would be showing that the elements of Steam's "look and feel" were adapted because of functional reasons - see example rationale in the previously mentioned Lotus v. Borland. Overall, so long as you did write the program from scratch and there are no patent violations, you have in my opinion a strong case. There may be moral questions about unfair competition (why should you be allowed to capitalize off Valve's work put into the Steam client?), to which I would point out that your product does not appear to be in direct competition with the Steam client. Without direct competition or confidence in evidence of IP infringement it is quite unlikely Valve will file suit against you. If you would rather avoid even the possibility of legal action, you could always contact Valve directly and ask for a license.	Primary Theory I suspect there might not be a legal answer to this question. I have always suspected a sort of pseudo-intellectual elitism (or simple preference or carelessness) with passive voice sentence construction in general. I sense license writers have not (yet) escaped this general trend. I would love someone to prove this theory incorrect. But, alas, I doubt it will happen. Alternative Theory But because this is a Law Q&A site, I will advance the following alternative theory. I don't believe it's correct. But I will advance it because it's the only possible explanation I can think of that might be even remotely based on legal reasoning... Maybe they are just basing their construction on the way the law itself is written? For example, if the law says, "Permission must be granted..." Then it would follow that a writer who wants to comply with the law might choose, "Permission is hereby granted..." instead of something like "The authors hereby grant permission..." or, as the OP suggested, "You may..."
Will a court order be taken out for this? Could the FBI get involved in something like this? I had 3 gmail accounts (where I had the same generic random first name and other words and random letters that I was made to put in to get them). None of them contained no personal information of mine. I was logging onto one of them 2 weeks ago when I accidentally made a typo and a message came up that said “there’s something unusual about the way your signing in..... we’re going to disable prompts” I then realised this was someone else’s account and pressed back without entering a password. (By this time I had realised I couldn’t remember the username of my account so I had lost access to it) Then I created the second account to email the stranger whose email I typed in to apologise for the mistake of accidentally logging on and tell them there was no malicious intent behind it but I simply done it because we had a similar email address. I also offered to email google if it caused them any problems. I then created a 3rd email address to replace the one I had lost access to using the same generic name as the first however on second glance I also realised this was quite similar to the strangers email (it was one letter away). I received no response from the first email I sent so a few stressful hours later I wrote another email this time I went on an apology rampage reiterating that it was simply a mistake and even told them I would delete both accounts (the 2nd and 3rd as I lost access to the first) because I didn’t realise how similar they were to theirs. I received no response again so I decided to go on the gmail support forum and give a proper explanation of what happened, that support forum reassured me by telling me it was a non issue and then I deleted my account. Then I reactivated when I realised that I didn’t give a proper explanation to the stranger and instead went on a stressed out, apology filled rant so I emailed the link of the support forum question to them and apologised for overreacting and worrying the both of us. I then deleted my account permanently. Then I started scrolling through the support forum and saw the person whose email I accidentally typed in ask a question about how to identify the person whose been sending them emails (although the date of the question indicated that they asked that days before this whole fiasco took place) the response said the only way to do that would be to get a court order. The worst thing is the person whose email I accidentally typed in was using a personal name which was 1 letter apart from the generic random name I had as my email address. What’s going to happen to me? Can that person take a court order out to compel google to reveal my identity over something like this? Someone on a different forum told me that I will end up sounding like a scammer because I sent those emails apologising, Despite me stating over and over again that there was no malicious intent and that it was a simple mistake. The FBI have a tip line dedicated to online scams. Will I get in trouble with the FBI for something like this?	It is not a crime or a tort to accidentally sign in to an email provider with an incorrect email address, even if that address is actually held by some other person. Not attempting to enter a password or repeat the attempt makes it clear there was no intent to obtain unauthorized access, and the emails make that even more clear.	Assuming that the police have a warrant to seize your cell phone, the scope of what can be seized is specified in the warrant. It is not automatic that seizing a phone entails seizure of some or all online accounts (e.g. automatic backups, collections of passwords in a Google account) and it does not automatically "freeze" or block a person's access to their accounts including phone accounts. It's not that it is impossible to seize an account, it's that it is not automatic: it has to be in the scope of the warrant. Here is a collection of petition templates, asking the court to allow the seizure of various things for various reasons (mostly electronic), including access to bank accounts. If the police suspect that information might be available online after it has been deleted from a phone, they would need to include online accounts in the scope of the petition(s). There is even a template for "give me everything", called "Frankenstein".	In most jurisdictions a message sent by email is now legally the same as one sent on paper by, say, postal mail, and a name typed at the end, or other indication of source is the legal equivalent of a physical signature. You are probably in the same legal position yu would have been in if you had written, signed, and sent by post a letter of acceptance.	Disclaimer: Not a lawyer or even living in US. I try to write the answer under US law. Other countries law may differ. Make sure you consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction. Here is my understanding of the individual examples: You don't need permission legally, because you are only accessing your own account and your own information. You are the only one damaged by the intrusion and therefore, nobody can really file a lawsuit against you. This is often used by security researchers when the subjects are uncooperative. That being said, if it is an actual pentesting client, you may want to refrain from it regardless. You don't need a permission to modify hardware you own. This is completely legal and not considered an attack. It would qualify as an upgrade, such as replacing a component in your laptop. You are allowed to do that. You should have a permission here. This is an intentional penetration test and you should have permission to do this. The same as 3. This is an intentional penetration test and you should get a permission. Though if you logout immediately and don't mess with the interface, it may not be illegal on the basis that you did not cause any damage or steal any information, or it may be illegal under some circumstances. It may also be impossible to prove that you did not do anything while there.	Online conversations are generally allowed evidence. However, EVERYTHING in the chat should be considered, as well as any later actions. Were there later conversations that said something different? Did the lease you signed have different terms? One line in a WhatsApp does not make your case a "slam dunk". It may only be one piece of evidence in a much larger context.	Residents agree that the receipt of mail by any individual not listed as a Resident or Occupant in this Agreement at the Leased Premises shall be proof of occupancy of that individual and a violation of this Agreement. I assume that the lease states that only the listed individuals can reside in the unit. Maybe they think that this says that receipt of mail by an unlisted person is a further violation of the lease, I don't think that is clearly enough stated that the courts would agree that receiving mail is itself a violation of the lease. Instead, it seems to be intended to say something about an existing clause – you can't have other people living there. The courts would look at the requirements of the lease, and ask "did you comply"? The question of whether you did a certain thing is a question of fact that has to be resolved in court. However, the revised lease language does not state that all mail must be addressed to Johnny Johnson – it only addresses receipt by a person not on the lease. You are (apparently) on the lease, so you may receive mail there. Nothing in the lease controls how such mail can be addressed. If you receive mail addressed to Tommy Thompson, your defense is that you received the mail, and you are on the lease, so you will not have violated the new clause.	Generally they don't. If the conversation was made while there was a third person present, the person can be a witness at trial. Unless the witness is impeached, the witness's statement may be sufficient for you to meet your burden of proof to show the statement was made, because the burden is just a preponderance of evidence in most civil cases. Note that, the existence of a statement is not sufficient to prove breach of privacy. The context surrounding the statement is important. If you intend to record communications from the landlord in the future, please check with your jurisdiction's laws regarding recording of communications. Many jurisdictions (such as California) only permit a private communication to be recorded when all parties give consent. Not only an illegally recorded conversation is inadmissible as evidence (with the exception to rebut a witness), it is also a crime to do so. Some other jurisdictions in USA allows one party to record the conversation without obtaining consent from the other party.	No, they did not. Yes, you can sue them but you won’t win You agreed that they could do this in clause 8.3 of your contract: If Google becomes aware and determines in its sole discretion that a Product or any portion thereof (a) violates any applicable law; (b) violates this Agreement, applicable policies, or other terms of service, as may be updated by Google from time to time; (c) violates terms of distribution agreements with device manufacturers and Authorized Providers; or (d) creates potential liability for, or may have an adverse impact on, Google or Authorized Providers (for example, if a Product has an adverse economic, reputational or security-related impact); then Google may reject, remove, suspend, limit the visibility of a Product on Google Play, or reclassify the Product from Google Play or from Devices. The power to determine if your app does this lies solely with Google. "Sole discretion" is a term of art which is no obligation on Google to act reasonably. Indeed, they may act arbitrarily - that is, they do not have to treat you the same as anyone else nor do they have to offer you procedural fairness/natural justice/due process. It also removes any obligation on Google to act in good faith. However, they may not act in bad faith - that is, they cannot act maliciously. So, unless they are deliberately persecuting you, then if they decide you broke the rules then you broke the rules.
Ambiguous speed limit after passing a T-junction Consider the intersection between Fitzgerald St and Angove St in North Perth, Western Australia (left-hand traffic). This is a T-junction, with Fitzgerald St being the continuing road and Angove St being the terminating road. The speed limit along Fitzgerald St northbound approaching the intersection is 40 km/h (pink), due to an earlier sign. The speed limit along Fitzgerald St northbound 20 metres after the intersection is 60 km/h (green), as signed explicitly. The speed limit along the Angove St approach is 50 km/h (blue), the default speed limit in a built-up area. What is the speed limit along the "ambiguous portion" (yellow) of Fitzgerald St northbound, that is, the 30-metre portion of Fitzgerald St from the left-turning lane of Angove St up to the 60-sign? Suppose Alice travels on Fitzgerald St northbound, and drives straight through the intersection. Alice would conclude that the speed limit along the ambiguous portion (yellow) is 40 km/h, since the earlier 40-sign on Fitzgerald St applies all the way up to the 60-sign. Suppose Bob approaches on Angove St and turns left into Fitzgerald St northbound. Bob knows nothing about the earlier 40-sign, and only ever sees the 60-sign on Fitzgerald St after the intersection, and could conclude either: The speed limit along the ambiguous portion (yellow) is 60 km/h, since the 60-sign is consistent with all of Fitzgerald St being a 60-zone (which was indeed the case before 2016); or The speed limit along the ambiguous portion (yellow) is 50 km/h, since it is an unsigned portion of a built-up area. Either way, Bob concludes that the speed limit along the ambiguous portion is greater than 40 km/h. In practice it is unlikely that Bob, after completing the left turn, could actually manage to accelerate to a speed greater than 40 km/h within the 20-metre ambiguous portion up to the 60-sign. But it seems that the speed limit in the ambiguous portion is ill-defined, meaning that Alice (going straight ahead) might be able to get away with doing 50 km/h or 60 km/h. Relevant parts of Road Traffic Code 2000: Part 1 — Preliminary 3. Terms and abbreviations used (1) speed zone means a length of carriageway defined at its beginning by means of a speed limit sign, and at its end by means of — (a) a de‑restriction sign or an “end speed limit” sign; or (b) another speed limit sign; or (c) an “area speed limit” sign, a “school zone” sign or a “heavy vehicle speed zone” sign; or (d) a T‑intersection where that carriageway ends; Part 3 — Speed restrictions 11. Speed limits generally (2) A person must not drive a vehicle in a built‑up area, at a speed exceeding 50 km/h, except within a speed zone in which a higher speed is permitted. Points and modified penalty: see regulation 17.	40km/h There is no ambiguity. The speed limit on the through road is clear and the speed limit on the side road is irrelevant. The fact that Bob may be legitimately unaware that this is the speed limit doesn’t matter either. If you want to ask if Bob has a defence if issued with an infringement notice, please feel free to post a new question.	In all honesty, this completely depends on the judge you happen to get that will hear your case. There's no straight-forward "yes this will work" or "no this won't work" answer in a case like this. But a couple things to keep in mind: The fact that he was from out of town doesn't matter. If signs were displayed, then he has to obey the signs. Your argument about the placement of the signs may or may not work, again depending on the judge. But make sure you take more evidence than just some numbers derived from guess work (you'll need pictures of where the car was parked, where the signs are at, and exact measurement between the two signs and the vehicle, pictures of obstructions, etc). It's up to you to decide whether collecting all of that is worth the $45. Someone has to pay the ticket. You cannot just go to court and get it dismissed because you weren't driving. By default, the parking ticket obligation falls onto the owner of the vehicle. If you know you weren't driving, you can then request the person who was to reimburse you, or even sue them for reimbursement if they refuse. Continuing from #2, in some jurisdictions and especially if the parking ticket was issued by a private company (like at a strip mall) that doesn't use police enforcement for parking, you can provide them with the name and address of the person who was driving and have them re-send the ticket to the correct person, but not always. However, relying on this is a bad idea. The ticket, while issued to another person, is still attached to your vehicle and if the other person refuses to pay, it's your vehicle that will be impounded, booted, etc if the ticket is left delinquent. Then you just have even more hassles to deal with. Having outstanding tickets for your vehicle could also affect your insurance premiums. Don't let this linger for too long. Get on top of it and decide what the two of you are going to do as soon as possible.	My own answer to the question is yes, but not directly. As with many other laws it would take a court ruling to definitively spell out how international agreements are applicable to a given situation. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that such a court ruling was ever produced so far: Google Scholar fails to list any US court cases relevant to the Convention on Road Traffic. The only somewhat relevant case is Busby v. State in which the court rules that one cannot drive in Alaska with an IDP after having been previously restricted from driving in Alaska. The court does stress out that: The Convention does forbid a signatory country (or subsidiary state) from imposing or enforcing license revocations in a manner that discriminates against residents of other signatory countries. But Busby does not claim that he was the victim of such discrimination. Busby's license was revoked for conduct that would have led to license revocation if committed by an Alaska resident. (Indeed, Busby's license was revoked while he was an Alaska resident.) And Busby does not claim that he was singled out for prosecution because he was a resident of a foreign country—i.e., that the State would not have charged him with the offense of driving with a revoked license if he had still been an Alaska resident. This could possibly mean that the court believes that the Convention only applies to foreign residents, but its not spelled out specifically. Searching for Canadian court cases likewise doesn't turn up anything useful. The only relevant case is R. v. Lawend where the person in question was trying to drive in Ontario on a foreign license after previously having had their Ontario license suspended. Here the court rules similar to the decision in Alaska in that having a foreign license does not allow one to circumvent locally imposed license restrictions. Searching for UK case law doesn't turn up any relevant court cases. Australian case law is likewise mute on the subject. There is also a relevant legal opinion by the Department of State quoted in the Digest of United States practice in International Law, 2002: Reading these provisions as a whole, we believe that the State of Georgia, consistent with the CRT, (1) must permit an alien to drive in Georgia using a foreign driver’s license issued by a country party to the CRT only if the alien has been lawfully admitted to the United States; (2) must permit a lawfully admitted alien to drive in Georgia using a foreign driver’s license of a CRT party only during the first year after the alien’s admission; and (3) may, in accordance with Georgia’s residency laws, require an alien resident in Georgia to obtain a Georgia driver’s license as a condition for continued authorization to drive. By the same token, nothing in the CRT would prevent the State of Georgia from applying more liberal rules with respect to the driving privileges of aliens. In Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States, 2014 the author further analyses how the 1949 Geneva Convention is applicable within the United States. First, to settle the definition of "international traffic": Nonetheless, the United States ultimately accepted that “the purpose of chapter II was to establish, in effect, an international code of minimum safety requirements. By indirection, the rules of the road set forth in the convention would apply to the pattern of domestic as well as to international traffic. The author the meaning behind Article I of the Convention: Article 1 states in part that no party “shall be required to extend the benefit of the provisions of this Convention to any motor vehicle or trailer, or to any driver having remained within its territory for a continuous period exceeding one year.” This provision, on its face, indicates that the parties recognized that the treaty would benefit individuals. In no way does this recognition compel a conclusion that the Convention is self-executing, but it does suggest that the treaty is of a type that the Senate might have understood to be directly enforceable. And finally on the issue of whether or not the treaty is "self-executing": For these reasons, it is likely that courts will continue to treat the Geneva Convention as self-executing. Nonetheless, a court might conclude that, with respect to section II’s rules of the road, the governmental obligation is merely to “take appropriate measures” and that such an obligation is too vague to be enforced judicially. So it seems absolutely clear that the Convention intended for participating countries to allow foreign drivers to drive abroad for up to one year. However international treaties are not self-executing by default in Canada, unlike the US: Canada is bound by the terms of treaties that it enters into and breach thereof may give rise to international claims. However, in Canada treaties are not self-executing; they do not constitute part of the law of the land merely by virtue of their conclusion. So even though British Columbia is violating the 1949 Geneva Convention one cannot directly rely on said international agreement to enforce their rights. But another state party could theorethically sue Canada on behalf of its citizen to request that Canada rectifies its laws with accordance to the agreement.	The Highway Code said: Vehicles. Any vehicle driven by a learner MUST display red L plates. In Wales, either red D plates, red L plates, or both, can be used. Plates MUST conform to legal specifications and MUST be clearly visible to others from in front of the vehicle and from behind. Plates should be removed or covered when not being driven by a learner (except on driving school vehicles). [Law MV(DL)R reg 16 & sched 4] The good old Highway Code "Must" vs "Should". "Must" means that it is a legal issue, anything that is "Should" is only advisory	As a linguist who reads laws for a hobby, I would say that "and" legally means what it was intended to mean. There are often interpretive statutes which say that "and" can be read as "or" or vice versa, when necessary (as in ORC 1.02 "And" may be read "or," and "or" may be read "and" if the sense requires it. Delaware doesn't have that as a rule, but it is a rule employed by courts "as required". One approach to interpretation is to discern intent from surrounding text, so we would look at the whole code. The general context is the rule that "A building or land shall be used only for the following purposes". Following Article XXVII of the code, other uses could be permitted because "§115-32. Special use exceptions may be permitted by the Board of Adjustment and in accordance with the provisions of Article XXVII of this chapter and may include...". That section ends with "C:Other special use exceptions as follows", and includes "Private garages for more than four automobiles and with floor area of more than 900 square feet in a residential district". From the list of things enumerated in §115-32, there is no coherent pattern – some things are in the list of special exceptions, some things are in this list, some not. So the "surrounding text" approach doesn't help in this case. Scrutiny of legislative debate is sometimes invoked, especially at the federal level, but there is negligible chance that there is any such evidence here. The almost-final approach is to spell out the competing interpretations, and see if anything jumps out as ridiculous (because it is assumed that lawmakers do not pass ridiculous laws). The two interpretations are "both must be true", versus "one must be true". Since the general rule is that you can go ahead unless it is restricted, then with the "both" interpretation, you need a special exception permit if you simultaneously plan to have more than 4 automobiles (which means, 5+, so 4 is allowed) and floor area greater than 900 sf. Thus if you plan for only 4 cars, or can fit the 5 cars into 900 sf, then you would not require a permit (on the "both" interpretation). Which btw is the literal interpretation of "and". This is not an absurd scenario (using a generous 10'x18' space, which I derived from parking slot regulations in Danbury CT). So it is reasonable to think they meant "both". The "either of these" interpretation says that they are being even more restrictive – you need permission to have a 5+ car garage (regardless of size), and you need permission to have a garage larger than 800 sf (even if there were only 1 car in it). This seems a bit specific since there isn't generally a size restriction on structures in the code – except that playhouses are limited to 150 sf. and can't be tall enough for an adult to stand up. Since the literal meaning of "and" is "both at once", and since no facts about the code say otherwise (i.e. that interpretation does not result in an absurd nullification of some other provision), an objective court should interpret this rule to mean "both at once", thus the government imposes the fewest restrictions on your property. No way to know what they will do.	It could be the passenger's problem or the taxi's problem When these sorts of breakdowns in communications happen in specifying contract terms then either or both parties can be at fault. If the passenger specified the wrong address then it is clearly the passenger at fault. Similarly, if the driver drove to a different address from what the passenger said, it would clearly be the driver at fault. However, if the passenger was imprecise and the driver made an assumption then who bears responsibility depends on whether that assumption is reasonable or not. For example, the main street in the Sydney, Australia CBD is George Street. Even though George Street is an extremely common name with literally dozens in the Greater Sydney area, a taxi driver would reasonably assume that a passenger at the airport asking for "George Street" means the one in the city, not any of the others. In such a circumstance, the onus is on the passenger to specify exactly where they want to go. Whether the driver is an employee or a contractor is irrelevant - they are the representative of the organisation with whom the passenger has a contract.	No. Such a marking is equivalent to a solid double yellow line, and passing is not permitted. These raised pavement markers are known as Botts' dots and are commonly used in California together with, or instead of, painted lines. A line of evenly spaced dots is meant to signify a solid line. Since here there is a double line of dots, it is a solid double yellow line. If passing were allowed, you would see a single yellow dashed line, which would be indicated with dots by a group of 3-4 evenly spaced dots, then a longer gap, and repeating. California Vehicle Code section 21460 provides as follows: (a) If double parallel solid yellow lines are in place, a person driving a vehicle shall not drive to the left of the lines, except as permitted in this section. [...] (e) Raised pavement markers may be used to simulate painted lines described in this section if the markers are placed in accordance with standards established by the Department of Transportation. The relevant standards are found in the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). On page 655, Detail 23, you can see a diagram showing exactly this configuration of dots and stating that it is an alternative to a solid double yellow line. It appears that current policy is to phase out the use of Botts' dots, so this question may become moot in the future.	California Vehicle Code chapter 11, division 7, article 1, section 22350: No person shall drive a vehicle upon a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable or prudent having due regard for weather, visibility, the traffic on, and the surface and width of, the highway, and in no event at a speed which endangers the safety of persons or property. Section 22358.5: It is the intent of the Legislature that physical conditions such as width, curvature, grade and surface conditions, or any other condition readily apparent to a driver, in the absence of other factors, would not require special downward speed zoning, as the basic rule of section 22350 is sufficient regulation as to such conditions. Without knowing exactly what questions the officer was asked, it's impossible to know why you were ticketed and why you were found guilty, but "reasonable or prudent" and "endangers the safety of [others]" covers a great deal of ground.
Too old to be a lawyer? I’m nearing 40 years old, based in Australia and I would like to steer my career towards cyber crime and litigation involving technology. To practice law, obviously I need to do an LLB/Juris Doctor followed by PLT. Is 40 a little late for any of this?	Too old to be a lawyer? Legally: No. See Part 4 of the Age Discrimination Act 2004 which... ...makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the ground of age in respect of the following: (a) employment and related matters; (b) education; https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2020C00283	Yes, in general US prosecutors are licensed attorneys if they're practicing law. You don't necessarily technically need a license if your job is purely administrative, but to appear in court you do. They are subject to professional ethics requirements, and can be disbarred for violating them. There may be a state or two where they aren't licensed, but the common rule is that they are.	In a Bar exam hypothetical you are expected to discuss the merits of each party's cases. There are potentially many breaches here, you need to discuss them all.	Not in jurisdictions I am familiar with. A "Power of attorney" is a power to act as an attorney-in-fact, not to act as an attorney-at-law. A layperson practicing law for someone other than herself is usually the unauthorized practice of law and is illegal in most jurisdictions. It would be permissible if a jurisdiction carved out an exception for a particular kind of case, but they generally don't and are very unlikely to do so in a criminal case. For example, in Washington State "Limited Practice Officers" can assist people with one of a very limited set of civil legal forms that do not need modification. There may be some exceptions, but they would be more likely to occur before a matter becomes criminal. For example, the accountant who represents a taxpayer before the IRS, or the agent who files a form containing perjury to a federal agency like the post office or homeland security on your behalf. So it is very unlikely, but if it is important to you you can ask someone familiar with your kind of case in your jurisdiction.	Why is everyone afraid to give “legal advice”? It may be illegal to give legal advice if you are not authorised to do so by the regulator. In New Zealand, providing legal advice without being a lawyer may result in a fine up to NZ$50,000. The person who received the advice could later claim damages for wrong/bad advice. They may not necessarily succeed in this claim but headache is guaranteed. What is the difference between legal advice and personal opinion? Largely depends on the jurisdiction, wording of the corresponding laws and circumstances of the advice/opinion. why isn't the same logic applied to every other aspect of life like cooking, how to fix the foundation of your house.. etc? Putting wrong ingredients in your recipe can poison you. A weak foundation may cause your house to collapse and kill you. The question "why" is not really supposed to be answered on this site. But because I am giving answers to the two questions above, I will comment on this one too: Laws are written by lawyers. They are often lobbied by lawyers too, especially laws about lawyers and who can give legal advice. Lawyers are directly interested in limiting general public access to the market of legal advice: it simply makes their job more comfortable and highly paid.	In Texas, as in most of the US, the law is "Employment at Will". This means that an employer is free to fire people at any time, for any reason, or none, as long as it is not for one of the few reason forbidden by law, such as racial or age discrimination. Hourly employees are entitled to overtime pay in such cases, but "exempt" employees are not. Nor are they entitled to comp-time as a matter of law, that is at the option of the employer. (The question seems to imply that the employee in question was "exempt" but does not actually say so.) The only really effective recourse against that sort of "death march" is to quit and find a better job, or to threaten to do so while they still need you, unless the conditions return to acceptable ones. I have heard of people in such a situation who "get sick" every day at 5:30pm, because local law forbid requiring ill employees to work. But that is pretty much inviting an arduous and possibly expensive administrative and/or legal battle, and will depend on the specifics of the state/local law. In any case, it is too late for the person in question to try that. On the facts as stated, there might be a valid claim of age discrimination. But additional facts would be needed to establish this, and it would be in my view unwise to try it without consulting a good employment lawyer. Such a lawyer could advise exactly what must be proved and how, and what the probable chances of any recovery would be.	Let me turn this around, how would you find a doctor, plumber or hairdresser? There is nothing special about lawyers! Things you should consider when hiring a lawyer are the same as for any other profession or trade: The service you need them to perform Location Value Ability/Expertise References/Referrals As a simple procedure: Define your search. You don't need a big city lawyer for a traffic offence and you probably need a specialist if you are going to lodge a patent. Consider how far you want to travel for face-to-face meetings. Again, a traffic offence will have you looking in your local area; a patent may involve travel to a major city. As a general guide a bigger firm will have more expertise available but charge higher fees. Search Internet, telephone books, court records, radio ads, word of mouth etc. etc. Build a shortlist based on your criteria. Contact your prospectives and ask them: Can they do the work you need? What will it cost? Who are their references? Check the references! Really! Check the references! Decide.	Since Mr X has a lawyer, the lawyer should advise what form this letter should take to be most helpful to Mr X's interests. In the absence of such advice, I would suggest soemthing like My lawyer, Y, now represents me in connection with {matter} and has done so since {date}. Plus any additional content that the company wants to see.
How is the "Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017" constitutional? H.R.1865, known as the "Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017", recently passed both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by president trump. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I have much experience with the law, but the fact that this bill passed, almost unanimously, really concerns me. I want to clarify that I'm not advocating for prostitution or sex trafficking. I'm simply interested in the constitutional legality of the bill and the precedent that it sets. A summary of the bill and its actual contents can be found on Congress.gov: H.R.1865 - Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. I have several questions about the legality of this bill. After reading through it, it seems to violate the constitution in a couple ways: Section 4, Subsection (b) "Effective Date - The amendments made by this section shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and the amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply regardless of whether the conduct alleged occurred, or is alleged to have occurred, before, on, or after such date of enactment." This seems like a violation of Clause 3 of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution which clearly states that Congress shall not pass any Ex Post Facto law. Meaning, a law that can be applied retroactively. Am I missing something? Section 2 and Section 3 The purpose of these sections, and the bill in general, is to add an exemption to section 230 of the "Communications Decency Act of 1996" for websites that promote or facilitate prostitution or sex trafficking. The purpose of section 230 was to limit liability for the owners of a website in regards to content generated by the website's users. This new law essentially strips away that limitation. So, states can now prosecute an individual who owns or operates a website for content produced by the users of the site, if those users advertise prostitution or sex trafficking. This seems like a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. How can an individual be held legally liable for content, free speech, created by other individuals? Consider the amount of content produced, even within a short period of time, by websites such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. How is it that they should be obligated to regulate the free speech of others? What makes prostitution and sex trafficking the only crimes exempt? Essentially, why not make all crimes exempt? That one simply defies logic, in my opinion. Other Concerns Section 4, Subsection (a) states: "Whoever, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (as such term is defined in defined in section 230(f) the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230(f))), or conspires or attempts to do so, with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both." How is this a federal crime when the legality of prostitution is regulated by the states and is not among the enumerated powers of the federal government? I'm guessing that because it stipulates that it must be a "means of interstate or foreign commerce", that it falls within federal jurisdiction? Lastly, if indeed this law is unconstitutional, how does the public go about challenging it's legality? Thanks.	As for the ex post facto question, an ex post facto law is one that makes an act illegal when it was legal at the time of the commission. Let's now look at the clause: (b) Effective date.—The amendments made by this section shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and the amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply regardless of whether the conduct alleged occurred, or is alleged to have occurred, before, on, or after such date of enactment. What amendment is made in section subsection a? Section 230(e) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230(e)) is amended by adding at the end the following: “(5) NO EFFECT ON SEX TRAFFICKING LAW.—Nothing in this section (other than subsection (c)(2)(A)) shall be construed to impair or limit— “(A) any claim in a civil action brought under section 1595 of title 18, United States Code, if the conduct underlying the claim constitutes a violation of section 1591 of that title; “(B) any charge in a criminal prosecution brought under State law if the conduct underlying the charge would constitute a violation of section 1591 of title 18, United States Code; or “(C) any charge in a criminal prosecution brought under State law if the conduct underlying the charge would constitute a violation of section 2421A of title 18, United States Code, and promotion or facilitation of prostitution is illegal in the jurisdiction where the defendant’s promotion or facilitation of prostitution was targeted.”. This does not make any act illegal. It say "we don't mean by this that...", and does not make any act illegal. The basic definition of the crime is here: §2421A(a) Whoever, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (as such term is defined in defined in section 230(f) the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230(f))), or conspires or attempts to do so, with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both likewise §2421A(a). The bold part is standard language invoking the Commerce Clause, which is the source of federal authority in what would otherwise be a state matter. The italicized part, referring to intent, indicates that the website owner/operator has to have a wrongful intent, so it's not just a penalty against those who own or operate a website for content produced by the users of the site, if those users advertise prostitution or sex trafficking. The First Amendment has a number of limits, for example you are not free to threaten or defraud, or advertise murder for hire, of advertise employment, housing or lodging (etc) discriminatorily (e.g. "Women need not apply" is illegal). The question would be whether the government has a compelling interest in limiting free speech (I think the court would say yes), and is this the narrowest restriction possible that accomplishes that interest (again, yes). So it would probably pass strict scrutiny. The purpose of the act is both to tune up the Communications Decency Act and to extend the Mann Act, which makes certain forms of interstate sex a crime. So, 18 USC 2422 (a)Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, to engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both"; (b) Whoever, using the mail or any facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 10 years or for life. This expands the federal limits on prostitution in a standard way.	Content posted to the web is usually openly accessible to all (unless protected by a password, paywall, or similar restriction). But that does not mean it is freely copyable by all. Such content is protected by copyright in just the same way as if it had been published in a book of essays by various contributors. Unless the copyright holders (who are likely to be the original authors, but might not be) give permission, or an exception to copyright applies, copying such content would be clear and obvious copyright infringement, and any copyright holder could sue for damages. Permission could be given by publishing the content under a permissive license, such as a CC-BY-SA license, or any of many other available permissive licenses. Or a would-be reuser could find the copyright holders and ask for permission. If the holder cannot be found or identified, or does not respond, then no permission has been granted. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See this answer and other threads with the fair-use tag here for more on fair use. Since the question seems to contemplate using the whole of the posted content, since it might well damage any potential market for that content, and since the use does not seem to be "transformative", nor used for criticism or comment, a finding of fair use for this situation seems unlikely. But Fair use findings are very much fact-driven, and the exact facts do matter. Thus I cannot be at all sure whether a court would find this toi be fair use or not. In other countries there are a variety of exceptions to copyright, and I have not come close to reviewing them all. But none of the ones I know of seem to apply to the situation described in the question. Many are narrower than the US concept of fair use. I fear that without permission, copying this content would be infringement. However, it would not be infringement to create a site that includes a link to the existing content, and a summary or description of that content, along with new content, including comments on the old, with brief quotes to indicate what is being commented on.	There are three main aspects to this: Its their website, and their terms of service. They can enforce those terms, or change them (in some appropriate manner). You have no recourse if they remove you, block you, or delete your account, for example. That's the measure that you would probably have, virtually every time. To claim damages, or litigate beyond just website access control, requires a legal claim. But there's a catch there. To claim damages, they need to show actual damage, which they wish to be compensated for. If you misused their website but no actual harm can be shown, the total damage claimable is zero, whether or not you followed their rules. Merely entering dishonest information isn't by itself harm. So they would have to show they suffered damage/harm because of that, which is directly attributable to your behaviour, was foreseeably harmful etc, or similar. They also need to consider legal costs, and ability to enforce, especially if you are in a different country. If for some reason the computer use was also illegal, then a criminal act could be committed and they could notify law enforcement. For example suppose you did this in the little known country of Honestania, where the law says that to prevent trolling and online abuse, anything posted on social media under any but your own legal name is a crime. Or suppose you'd been banned from the system and ignoring/evading such a ban was criminal computer use or criminal trespass due to the forbidden/unauthorised access (which can happen in several places). But this is purely for completeness; I guess you'd know if you were taking it further, into criminal computer use.	The protection lies in the fact that these sorts of restrictions are expressed in state laws, and states are Constitutionally forbidden from denying to any citizen the equal protection of the law, or from interfering with religion. The First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids states from making any law impeding free exercise of religion, or having the effect of establishing a state religion. This means that any law that forbids people of any religious denomination (including atheists) from holding any office (elected or not) under any level of government is unconstitutional. See Torcaso v. Watkins. Moreover, Title VII's protected classes are also (with the exception of sex) suspect classes under the Equal Protection Clause. A state or local government may not pass a law discriminating against a suspect class unless it is a narrowly tailored law which is the least intrusive way to achieve a compelling state interest. In practice, that means a state can't pass a law discriminating on the grounds of national origin, race, or religion. Sex is a quasi-suspect class; government discrimination on the grounds of sex must further an important state interest in a way reasonably related to that interest; again, in practice this will tend to rule out laws saying "no women can be elected to this post." The Americans with Disabilities Act actually does not exclude elected officials. It defines "employee" as "an individual employed by an employer." The Equal Pay Act doesn't apply to elected officials, but again, sex is a quasi-suspect class. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act also excludes elected officials, and this is the one case where a state really could discriminate -- the applicable test is whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest, which is not an especially high bar.	There is no current authorization to bar any member of the house from the floor, so the answer depends heavily on what actually happens. Since remote voting was approved, no constituency would be disenfranchised. But we could imagine the house adopting a rule barring remote participation, and also barring entry to the House floor for any person not wearing a mask. The House is constitutionally allowed to set its own rules. The House did bar Adam Clayton Powell from being seated, and he did indeed sue. SCOTUS, most importantly, asserted that this is a justiciable question, and most importantly "In judging the qualifications of its members under Art. I, § 5, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications expressly prescribed by the Constitution". This could be overcome by expelling the member who refuses to wear a mask (Congress has the power to expel, but not exclude). There would be a significant conflict of rights in this case. Residents of the district has a right to representation (equal protection clause), but Congress has the right to expel members. But Congress has expelled 5 members, and most recently, Ohio's 17th district was without representation in the US House for a half a year after Traficant was expelled. That did not prevent the House from exercising its right to expel a member.	It is well established that the federal government has complete control over immigration. See especially Arizona v. US which holds that States are precluded from regulating conduct in a field that Congress has determined must be regulated by its exclusive governance. De Canas v. Bica (1976), 424 U.S. 351 is also relevant to the application of field preemption to INA. In this case, the courts found that Congress had not (at that point) entered the field of employment of unauthorized workers, so state laws were not preempted by federal law. Laws can change, and with them, potential state powers. In Arizona the court held that Intent can be inferred from a framework of regulation “so pervasive . . . that Congress left no room for the States to supplement it” or where a “federal interest is so dominant that the federal system will be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject” and with respect to issues of immigration, Because Congress has occupied the field, even complementary state regulation is impermissible. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 adds provisions to the Immigration and Nationality Act, including employment-related law, thus Congress has entered the field of regulating immigration with respect to employment. Current 8 USC §1324b arises from various amendments to the INA, where the present expression "protected individual" was inserted, by Public Law 101-649, to replace earlier "citizen or intended citizen". Congress also introduced Temporary Protected Status in §302 of the law, which has specific (more restricted) provisions regarding employment. The evidence clearly indicates that Congress intended to include employment issues w.r.t. their supreme power regarding immigration. These discrimination provisions are in the field of immigration, and not discrimination legislation (where Congress has not preempted the field). Congressional silence must, in the light of what Congress did say, be interpreted to mean that the US immigration policy only offers certain specific protections, and states cannot add to or subtract from those protections.	Is there something in the language of the act that makes sexual harassment a civil rather than a criminal offence? Yes. Laws that create criminal offenses have to have language to the effect of "violation of this law is punishable by up to X years of imprisonment or a fine of up to $Y", or "violation of this law is a Class Z felony." Sometimes it is not entirely clear if violation of a law can form a basis of a private civil lawsuit, or if it can only be enforced by government officials, from the language of the statute alone. When it is unclear the courts have to resolve that ambiguity. In rare instances, it may be clear that some parts of a statute have criminal penalties, but due to unclear wording and punctuation in the statute, it is hard to tell precisely which parts of the statute these criminal penalties apply to, and in those cases, courts also have to resolve that ambiguity. There is also some conduct that it is constitutional to punish with a civil penalty, but not as a crime that can result in incarceration. For example, it is unconstitutional in most states to incarcerate someone for failing to pay a debt, but there can be a civil penalty for failing to pay a debt. Courts decide if these constitutional limitations are violated. Similarly, while Congress can enact both crimes and civil penalties, there are some governmental bodies, like school districts or water boards, that have the power to enact certain civil penalties, but do not have the authority to create new crimes. Was that up to the lawmakers to decide, or is that just something that evolved out of the ways the courts and prosecutors responded to sexual harassment claims? And who decides such things in general? Generally, this is decided by lawmakers. Obviously, however, anyone can lobby legislators to take one position or another. Also, the fact that something has a civil penalty does not necessarily mean that prosecutors aren't the people who enforce the law. Sometimes violations of the law prosecuted by prosecutors have civil rather than criminal penalties. For example, many tax law violations are prosecuted by government lawyers with civil penalties, but only a small minority of tax law violations are prosecuted criminally. Further, it isn't uncommon for a type of offense, like securities fraud, to have both civil penalties and criminal charges available as remedies that can be enforced by prosecutors. And, when that happens, prosecutors get to decide which tool to use. For example, even if exactly the same conduct could be prosecuted with either a civil penalty or a criminal charge, prosecutors might prefer a civil penalty because the burden of proof is much lower, the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not apply (you can refuse to testify but that fact can be used against you in a civil penalty case), and a defendant in a civil penalty case doesn't have a right to a lawyer at government expense. Also, enforcing a civil penalty generates net revenue for the government most of the time, while criminal punishments normally cost the government more money to carry out than any revenue the government may receive from the person found guilty for fines and court costs. On the other hand, trying to enforce a significant enough civil penalty to discourage misconduct against someone who has no money or property may be a futile effort, while criminal sanctions could discourage misconduct from other similarly situated people in the future.	The provisions of the credit card account agreement will be governed by Delaware law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The provisions of the online services agreement will be governed by New York law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The electronic communications agreement will be governed by the law of the place with the most significant connection to any disputed issues arising under it. It could also be considered to be an extension of the online services agreement rather than a separate agreement. UDAP is an acronym referring the state deceptive trade practices acts. The unfair act involves non-receipt of paperless billing statements. Even with this level of detail, I don't believe it is possible to know in advance which of the agreements is implicated and which state's laws will be held to apply (or if the differences between the laws of the candidate states is even material on the issue in question). These issues are decided on a case by case basis when there is a mishmash of facts and the outcomes are not terribly predictable. It also isn't obvious that there is a provision covering the conduct in question in any of the three potentially relevant states. The Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act doesn't appear to clearly apply to financial services at all. New York's application to financial services is quite narrow and subject to an exception for conduct in conformity with federal law. A failure to provide an invoice, without more, isn't necessarily a deceptive trade practice at all. All in all, there isn't a straightforward or easy answer to this question that can be reached from the information provided.
Can a company bind an "affiliated" company in a contract if the term is used 1) improperly and 2) properly? Normally, an affiliate is a company in which another company or entity has a minority interest. (This is different from a subsidiary, in which a company has more than 50% control.) Under those circumstances, I don't see how the company can bind its affiliate in a contract. But Company B signed a contract with Company C, binding itself to sell all of its widget production, and that of its "affiliate" A, at a fixed price to C. In the relevant contract, Company B defined "affiliate" (perhaps improperly) as a company it controls. In point of fact, the "control" percentage was 80%. Can Company B so bind A with 80% control? How about 40% ownership?	It sounds like you may be conflating ownership and control. It's very common for an affiliate to have a contract with the parent company. These terms can be very detailed - it may give the parent company the right to sell the affiliates widgets, but not sprockets (as those are sold by another parent company). As such, you can't really measure "control" as a simple percentage. So, when the parent is selling widgets, it can reasonably claim control over its affiliate. The buyer does not need to know the exact terms governing the relation between parent and affiliate.	Adults are bound to contracts with minors The technical term is that a contract with a minor is that it is voidable by the minor unless it is subject to the exemptions - a contract for necessities or a contract of benefit to the minor (e.g. a reasonable mobile phone contract). Until the minor chooses to void it, it is binding on everyone involved. They can do this anytime before they reach majority or within a reasonable time after that providing the contract is not complete. That means, for one and done transactions, the contract cannot effectively be voided because the contract is complete - think of a child buying an ice cream, riding a bus or going to the movies. If it is voided, the minor is obliged to return whatever consideration they received and that is still in their possession. So, for the mobile phone contract, if it included a handset, they must return that providing they still have it.	This is neither unusual nor illegal, assuming that the buyback price is specified in the agreement. If your friend does not wish to take advantage of the "nice discount" he can decline the deal, and decide for himself whether he wishes to buy shares without restriction, at the market rate. (It would be interesting to know what happens if he sells his shares and then leaves the company. I am fairly sure the agreement will cover this, but requiring an ex-employee to buy shares and then give them to the company could be considered unconscionable. That might be worth asking a lawyer about).	That would likely be treated as a preamble. These have been held in some jurisdictions to not have any weight. For example, see Sherbrooke Community Centre v. Service Employees International Union, 2002 SKQB 101: The preamble to a contract is nothing more than an introduction to that about which the parties have actually agreed. It puts the agreement into context. It describes the goals of the agreement. It speaks to what went before and the spirit in which agreement was achieved. On the other hand, it does not contain any promises. It does not contain any restrictions or commitments. It could be removed entirely without in any way altering that which was agreed to and set out in specific terms. [...] this clause in the preamble does not create or eliminate rights or obligations Granted, the introductory phrase in your hypothetical clause is not literally a preamble, but it has the same characteristics cited in the above decision: "it describes the goals", "it does not contain any promises", "it could be removed entirely without in any way altering that which was agreed to". If you wanted the clause to only take effect if toilets overflowed, use an alternative wording, like: Company B may not resell any products purchased from Company A at a discounted price in a manner that causes toilets to overflow.	Terms in a contract that are not legal or not enforcable are quite capable of causing you trouble and costing you time or money, most likely a generous amount of both. Your friend shouldn't care one bit about whether these terms would be legal and/or enforcable. If he doesn't like them, then he MUST NOT accept the changed contract. Not if these terms are illegal and unenforceable and of course even less if they are legal and enforceable. I would write back "I believe that the suggested change in terms is illegal and would be unenforceable. I also believe that the change is deeply unfair towards me and creates a considerable legal risk that I am not willing to accept under any circumstances. I therefore strongly reject your suggested change. "	Attribution is not a legal requirement If company A owns IP (copyright and trademarks in this case), they can licence it to company N on whatever terms are mutually acceptable. They may require company N to attribute their IP or they may not.	No They will list the price they are charging you. This will normally be greater than what they paid because that’s how business works. The amount they are allowed to charge is what you agreed in your contract with them (which may incorporate a price list) or, if the contract is silent, a reasonable amount. What is reasonable will be related to what the market in your geographical area charges. While this is indirectly related to the input cost of a given item, business can and do charge what the market allows.	The internal organizational documents and practices of the company would determine this in terms of actual authority and would vary from company to company even within the same jurisdiction of organization and entity type. For example, one company might give that authority to the general counsel, another to the corporate secretary, a third to the Vice President for Information Technology, and a fourth to their Chief Innovation Officer, yet another might allow any officer of the company to do so, or might allow any employee of the company to do so. Usually, the more often a company does something and the more routine it is to do that, the lower down in the organization the authority is allocated. Anyone who appeared to have the authority to do so to a reasonably third-party, however, could bind the company even if they didn't actually have the authority to do so.
Can a tenant break a lease if a Landlord disobeys city ordinances in MO? I am a tenant that rents from a landlord who owns a multi-family rental housing complex. Recently, I was notified via email that they would be renovating a unit in my particular building as early as 6AM. According to my local city ordinance, construction or repairs to any structure must be made after 7AM on weekdays. In the leasing agreement addendum that includes this information regarding this specific renovation, it does not state a specific time that the renovation work should be done. I'm wondering what my options are as a tenant going forward. Is it possible to break my lease without a penalty due to this?	Is it possible to break my lease without a penalty due to this? No. A reminder to the landlord or reporting with the authorities the violation is most likely to dissuade the landlord from incurring nuisances earlier than 7AM. The landlord might be mindful enough to ensure that work done between 6AM to 7AM does not disturb tenants. Even if the landlord insisted on causing disturbances earlier than 7AM, the situation is very unlikely to justify tenants' breach of the lease. That is because the annoyance from 6AM to 7AM does not render (or is not what renders) a unit unlivable. The landlord's violation could be actionable if it causes to the tenant(s) an provable loss.	Has this contract been translated (badly) from another language because the construction of the clause is cumbersome and confusing? Does the contract say that I can have guests over 1 night without charge? Without charge, yes. However "Without Landlord's prior written consent, Tenant has no excuse to accommodate ..." so you need the landlord's permission for overnight guests. If so does it only start charging on nights after the first? No, if a person stays more than 1 night (with the landlords permission) then this triggers the landlord's right to charge. See below for how much they can charge. Is it supposed to be 10% of monthly rent $137 per guest per night? "With temporary commendation, day-based, and additional 10% of rent each person is applied." The term is ambiguous, I can see three ways that this would be interpreted: If you have a guest who stays more than 1 night in a month they can charge 10% for that guest for that month (i.e. 2 to 31 days all for the same price). For 2 people for 2 days this would be $1,400 x 10% x 2 = $280. They can charge 10% of the monthly rent per night that the guest stays. $1,400 x 10% x 2 x 2 = $560 As, 1 except the rent would be pro-rata. $1,400 x 10% x 2 x 2/31 = $18.06 Assuming that the landlord put forward this contract the interpretation adopted in the absence of other evidence would be the one least advantageous to the landlord i.e. 3. However, there is other evidence - the landlord accepts that the rate is pro-rata - he has just failed to account for the 10%, so 3. again. How is overnight defined? Well, is it defined in the contract or by the law where you are? If not, it would take its normal English usage - "for the duration of the night". If they arrive before sunset and leave after sunrise the next day then they have stayed overnight. What if they came over at 9am and slept in the day? It says nothing about requiring your guests to sleep. If they party overnight then they are overnight guests. If they sleep all day but don't stay overnight they are not overnight guests. What about 2 am? If sunrise is after 2am then this is not overnight.	Your contract is the only relevant one in your relationship with your landlord If they have broken it you can sue for damages. However, you have to actually read the lease to see if they have broken it - if they are doing something the lease permits, they haven’t broken it.	It depends on where you are. Typically, rodents inside a rental must be removed by the landlord. In Tukwila, ch. 6.16.030 under health and sanitation says It is unlawful for the owner or occupant to fail to reconstruct or repair [buildings of various types, controlling in various ways] for the purpose of preventing rats, mice, or other rodents from gaining entrance thereto; and it is also unlawful for the owner of [things rats eat] to fail to adequately protect the same to prevent such rodents from gaining access to or coming in contact therewith. This does not govern rodent "outside" (either on private property or on public lands): the city has absolutely no responsibility for rat control. A similar ordinance exists in Kirkland, except that 21.41.302(e) says "The owner or occupant of real property shall keep buildings and premises free from rats, mice and other rodents", where "premises" includes the land (thus, it is the land-owner's responsibility). The "owner" is defined as any person, agent, operator, firm or corporation having a legal or equitable interest in the property; or recorded in the official records of the state, county or municipality as holding title to the property; or otherwise having control of the property, including the guardian of the estate of any such person, and the executor or administrator of the estate of such person if ordered to take possession of real property by a court so Kirkland must eliminate rats in its parks. But there is an exception that The provisions of this section shall not apply to wetlands, unimproved parks, greenbelts or other unimproved property if the property owner or occupant has not committed any acts or omissions that increase the likelihood of rat, mice or other rodent infestation and it's not clear whether there are any improved property owned by the city that has rats. King County (which contains Tukwila and Kirkland) does not appear to have any rodent control ordinances apart from one pertaining to kennels, not surprisingly since most of the county is out in the woods. There are often municipal agencies that provide "assistance" in rodent control (not that they do it, but they may tell you what to do), but generally the responsibility is on the property owner.	There are two separate issues here. Firstly, the deposit. Any deposit is required by law to either be placed in an approved deposit scheme provider at the start of any tenancy, or be insured with a provider. Either way, the landlord (or their letting agent) is required to issue the tenant with certain prescribed information within a certain period, as well as meet a few other requirements. Failing to do this can result in the landlord having to return the deposit and pay a fine to the tenant - if the tenant is willing to take him to court. If the landlord has done everything by the book, they don't owe you anything. (If they've paid the deposit into a scheme, then they will not receive any interest, as it's kept by the scheme provider to pay for their services.) Secondly, the renewal fee. These are legal and commonplace. However, you're never obliged to renew your tenancy, as if the fixed term expires and you don't leave, then it automatically becomes a statutory periodic tenancy (often called a "rolling tenancy"). With a periodic tenancy, you can leave by giving one month's notice in writing; or your landlord can request that you leave by issuing a section 21 notice, which gives you two months to depart or face legal action. If you tell the landlord that you would like to change to a periodic tenancy when the current fixed term ends, then no-one has to do anything (though the letting agency may charge you an admin fee). The landlord cannot impose a new tenancy agreement, but they can issue a section 21 notice. Or, as you suggest, you can request a longer fixed term. This provides more security for you and the landlord - though it makes it harder to leave early, as you're potentially liable for the rent for the whole term.	You say that you have a joint lease. This means that you and your roommate are jointly (together) and severally (individually) responsible for fulfilling the terms of the lease. From the landlord's position there is only one tenant - both of you together constitute the tenant. If you want to change this so that the tenant from date X is your roommate and someone else you have 2 options: Jointly give notice, ending the current lease and triggering the return of the deposit. Your roommate and your replacement are then free to negotiate a new lease with its own deposit. The landlord would conduct a final inspection on your lease and an initial inspection on the new lease. With the landlord's permission, substitute the new person for you on the existing lease. This does not end the lease and does not trigger the return of the deposit. The landlord is not obliged to do anything. You can negotiate whatever deal you like about the security deposit with whoever you like.	Yes. An HOA covenant binds successors to the owners who make the HOA declarations and establish the relevant covenants. Generally, there is a process in the HOA rules by which a supermajority of owners can disband the HOA, but otherwise HOA rules automatically bind successor owners, whether they agree or not. Fines imposed by an HOA member by an HOA normally only bind a successor owner if the fines have been recorded as HOA liens against the property.	Is this even legal? Yes, it is lawful. The Ontario Tenancy Act does not seem to outlaw that type of clauses. But the clause (or lease) will be binding only if you agree to it. Also note that the clause refers to reasonable costs, which implies that those costs must be for a reasonable cause. In other words, the landlord would be barred from recovery of legal expenses if you persuade the Board that the landlord's complaint is frivolous or vexatious. Notwithstanding that the clause is lawful, I would personally discourage you from agreeing to pay the adversary's attorney fees. Note that the clause may apply in the event that neither party fully prevails, whence it is in your best interest to preclude the risk of having to reimburse the landlord in that scenario.
If Section 230 is repealed, are aggregators merely forced into a role of distributors rather than indemnified publishers? According to the article by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) "Section 230 is Good, Actually" Section 230 says that any site that hosts the content of other “speakers”—from writing, to videos, to pictures, to code that others write or upload—is not liable for that content, except for some important exceptions for violations of federal criminal law and intellectual property claims. They go on to say, Basically, Section 230 means that if you break the law online, you should be the only one held responsible, not the website, app, or forum where you said the unlawful thing. Just to be clear, that isn't strictly correct, right? A quick wikipedia search shows that in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content. In one source online, I even saw Section 230 described as Congress enacted § 230 to remove the disincentives to self-regulation So which is it? Does the removal Section 230 mean a site will be held liable for the content created by others? Or, does it mean that a site will only be held liable if they engage in optional moderation or acts of "publishing" (such as filtering and removal of offensive material). It seems like it's still the creator that is liable. And you can still have a free and open moderation-free internet in a post-Sec 230 world? Handling spam Update: On spam, the same case above Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., 776 F. Supp. 135 (S.D.N.Y. 1991) states that, CompuServe's ultimate right under the contract to remove text from its system for noncompliance with its standards merely constitutes control over the result of CCI's independent work. This level of control over the Journalism Forum is insufficient to rise to the level of an agency relationship. With this text, I don't think it's sufficient to say that in a post-Section 230 world removal of content would be defamation per se, it seems it has satisfy some standard.	you can still have a free and open moderation-free internet in a post-Sec 230 world Sure, but remember what moderation-free means: no moderation whatsoever. That means no removal of offensive content like trolling, profanity-laden or racist rants, or even outright spam. Stack Exchange, for example, gets thousands of attempted spam posts a day, despite the fact that very few of them actually get through, and the ones that do are usually quickly removed. Section 230 protects Stack Exchange's ability to do this without incurring liability for what users post. Imagine a Stack Exchange in which spamming was allowed. So I would say that the EFF's statement is substantially accurate, in that the ability of sites to perform such moderation is fairly essential to their ability to function as communities. The fact that they could avoid liability by not moderating is not relevant if it would make the site unable to function properly.	The essence of the order's argument is that in editing user generated content outside of the provisions in one section of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), the platform necessarily excludes itself from the protections afforded by another section of the CDA. The EFF says: ... Even though neither the statute nor court opinions that interpret it mush these two Section 230 provisions together, the order asks the Federal Communications Commission to start a rulemaking and consider linking the two provision's liability shields. The order asks the FCC to consider whether a finding that a platform failed to act in "good faith" under subsection (c)(2) also disqualifies the platform from claiming immunity under section (c)(1). In short, the order tasks government agencies with defining “good faith” and eventually deciding whether any platform’s decision to edit, remove, or otherwise moderate user-generated content meets it, upon pain of losing access to all of Section 230's protections. ... The order also argues that the very popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are the functional equivalent of the public square, not merely private providers protected by the First Amendment, and therefore should not be able to edit user generated content. The EFF article quotes from a Supreme Court judgment that says "merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints." Recommend the full article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/trump-executive-order-misreads-key-law-promoting-free-expression-online-and See also Techdirt's article, The Two Things To Understand About Trump's Executive Order On Social Media: (1) It's A Distraction (2) It's Legally Meaningless. [edit] Eugene Volokh wrote a good explainer with background. Regarding the social-media-platforms-become-state-actors argument, see this recent D.C. Circuit judgment on appeal (Freedom Watch v Google etc): Freedom Watch's First Amendment claim fails because it does not adequately allege that the Platforms can violate the First Amendment. In general, the First Amendment 'prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech.' Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1928 (2019). Freedom Watch contends that, because the Platforms provide an important forum for speech, they are engaged in state action. But, under Halleck, 'a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.' ... This was a group that alleged Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple "conspired to suppress conservative political views ... its audience and revenues and succeeded in reducing each". Very similar to Trump's complaints. And "this idea that Section 230 requires sites to moderate in a neutral fashion has become very popular even though it has no basis in reality or law" - Ken White (aka Popehat) in another good explainer and podcast about this.	Stack Exchange has given moderators certain authorizations or powers, but that does not automatically make them agents. The specific provision in the agreement that they are not agents would make it harder to argue that they are in fact agents in a particular case, but if they are in fact acting as agents they might be held to be agents in some situations. In order to hold SE liable, a plaintiff would need to shoe actual harm by a person acting as a moderator. Such a plaintiff would need to show further that the mod was acting in accord with the delegated authority given to mods, or in ways approved or encouraged by SE. If the action was a breach of the moderator agreement, and in no way approved or encouraged by SE, it might be hard to show that the mod was acting as an agent of SE in that instance. Without specific context, such as how the mod is alleged to have harmed the plaintiff, and how SE encouraged or permitted this, or failed to take reasonable steps to prevent such harm it is hard to give a specific answer, or an assured one. CDA Sec 230 says, among other things, that the operator of a service, such as SE, will not be treated as the speaker or publisher of statements posted by users, and in general will not be liable for such statements. (That is particularly section 230 (c) (1).) But there are many details and without specifics again there is little one can say. CDA section 230 (c) (2) (A) provides that a service provider (such as SE) or a service user shall not be liable for: any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; and CDA section 230 (c) (2) (B) provides that a service provider (such as SE) or a service user shall not be liable for: any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1). Given all this, it is hard to see how a post or an edit of a post made in good faith could be a cause of action against anyone, or how a post made in bad-faith could be a cause of action against the service provider unless they knowingly supported or encouraged it. The added hypothetical says: Let's assume a moderator, in good faith, edits the contents of a question, and changes its meaning in a way that reflects badly on the original poster's intent and reputation. Even if well-intentioned, might that action of the moderator, while still associating with new text with the OP author's name, become a defamatory act? Since the complete editing history is always available, one click away from any post, and the user name of the most recent editor is always displayed right under the post, adjacent to the link to the history, it is hard to see how a reasonable person could believe that an edited post was the work of the original poster. Beyond that, to constitute defamation there must be a purported statement of fact that is false, and harm to the reputation of the would-be plaintiff. Normally such a false statement must be "of and concerning" the plaintiff. It is hard to see how A making a statement, and B editing it, could create defamation of A. B could add defamation of some other party C, but then it could be easy to show that this was B's writing, not A's, so A would have no liability, and SE would have no liability for B's actions, as posting defamation is certainly not an approved activity. Moreover, it does not require moderator status to edit someone else's answer. Any user with a certain reputation level (1,000 on Law.SE, the level varies by site) my edit any post. Currently about 160 users have this privilege on law.se, while there are only 2 moderators. On other sites the numbers will often be larger. Since editing another's post is not a moderator privilege, it is hard to see how being a moderator is relevant to doing so improperly. And since CDA sec 230 (c) (2) (A) protects posters for liability for edits or deletions made in good faith, it is even harder to see any liability here.	Makerbot's explanation of the Terms is accurate This is comparable with most other services that host and display User-created content - even with SaaS providers, as per Interpretation of content ownership/usage in service provider agreement. They are correct that they are asking for the lots of broad rights, but it's all qualified with (my emphasis): 3.2 License. You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company and its affiliates and partners, an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use your User Content, and to grant sublicenses of the foregoing, solely for the purposes of including your User Content in the Site and Services. That is, if they use your User Content for a purpose other than including it in the Site and Services (and you have not agreed to this use), you may be entitled to relief in the form of an injunction or damages.	Short Answer Based on the facts you supplied, it seems the author's request for removal might be unenforceable. Explanation Section 2.a.1. of the license declares the license is irrevocable. [Emphasis added]: Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to: A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and B. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material. Irrevocable means: "Unable to cancel or recall; that which is unalterable or irreversible." Disclaimer: I am not an attorney. I am not your attorney. So don't rely on my answer for anything. Hire a real attorney if you need help with a legal matter. Never take legal advice from strangers on the internet. Treat all answers on this site the same way you would as if they came from a bunch of strangers at a party who got all their legal information by watching episodes of Boston Legal, The Practice and Ally McBeal. But have lots of opinions they are willing to share on legal questions nevertheless.	You give SE 2 licences The CC-BY-SA one and the one that goes “the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content … as reasonably necessary to, for example (without limitation):”. SE can choose which one it uses. Even though the enumerated cases are “without limitation”, they indicate the general area where the 2nd licence would be “reasonably necessary”. If SE used it outside that domain and did not comply with CC-BY-SA they would arguably be in copyright violation.	How close is such a statement corresponding with the reality? Legally, such language is a meaningless statement of future intent that at best makes clear that the person making the statement isn't waiving any of their legal rights. Certainly, no infringer would have standing to sue if they failed to do so. Whether a joint venture member or foreign reseller could sue the company for failing to enforce its IP rights is another question that presents itself very differently and depends upon much more than what the warning labels state, such as the language in the joint partnership or reseller's agreement with the copyright owner. Also, in criminal copyright violation cases, even if the copyright owner asks for the maximum possible consequences, the U.S. Justice Department is under no obligation whatsoever to go along with that request. Likewise, a judge has no obligation to impose the maximum penalty allowed by law following a criminal conviction, even if the copyright owner and the U.S. Justice Department both request a maximum sentence for someone who pleas guilty or is convicted of the offense following a trial. In practice, something like 98% of federal criminal cases, and a similar percentage of federal civil cases, result in agreed resolutions which result in less severe penalties than the maximum penalties allowed by law. This happens as a result of a mutual agreement to resolve the case with a guilty plea, or a settlement agreement in a civil case, or both. Also, in practice, none of these companies, nor the federal government's prosecutors, have the resources to press anything but the most clear and serious copyright violation cases, and cases that are valuable for P.R. purposes. Anything else is essentially a random lottery from myriad cases that could have been brought in order to counteract the argument (both political and legal) that their copyright protections are empty and completely unenforced is a large part of the cases to which the statutes would make it seem that they apply. Also, in a case brought by a joint venture owner or reseller for failure to enforce a copyright which causes the partner damages, presumably in some sort of breach of contract or breach of fiduciary duty action, there would be no way to prove damages from all of the non-enforcement, since enforcing every known infringement would not be cost effective and would reduce the net profits of everyone involved.	I only address the core legal question. The first question regards where the review appeared: on the facility's own web page, or on some third party web page? In the latter case, there is the possibility that soliciting a modified review in exchange for something of value violates the terms of usage for that web site. There are also US federal regulations pertaining to advertising, as well as state regulations. The federal regulations are here. The main question is whether what you say constitutes an endorsement, as specified here. They define an endorsement as: any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The regulation in fact gives some helpful examples (reading them helps to clarify what an "endorsement" is), the last of which involves a dog: Example 8: A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog's fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides. Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides. The distinction at issue is whether the suggestion of receiving something of value might influence a person's statements. You can pay for a positive review, as a reward for saying nice things, as long as the reviewer had no reason to think that they would get get something in return for a review. Taking your review to be an endorsement, as required here, Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. The regulation does not require you to reveal every thing that came into your mind in writing the review, but it is pretty clear that suppressing the concern about vaccination paperwork and the star count constitutes a dishonest statement of opinion of the endorser. Material connections must also be revealed: When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed. For example, when an endorser who appears in a television commercial is neither represented in the advertisement as an expert nor is known to a significant portion of the viewing public, then the advertiser should clearly and conspicuously disclose either the payment or promise of compensation prior to and in exchange for the endorsement or the fact that the endorser knew or had reason to know or to believe that if the endorsement favored the advertised product some benefit, such as an appearance on television, would be extended to the endorser In the 7th example under material disclosure, they describe a blogger who received something of value in connection with a review: the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge I should point out that these regulations are written by the FTC, and the implied interpretation (such as that the blogger should disclose... with no clearly stated penalty for failure to disclose) is an FTC interpretation. 15 USC 52 prohibits false advertisements for services affecting commerce. This is the jurisdictional aspect of their complaint against Cure Encapsulations, where defendants paid for reviews on a third-party website (this case involves a relationship between defendant and a fourth-party company that apparently hunts for and pays reviewers). This is apparently the first instance in which the FTC has gone against a business for paying for reviews on a third party web site, so it's not a foregone conclusion that they will prevail in court. Still, Chevron deference means that they will probably win at least on the jurisdictional question. The main difference is that in the Cure Encapsulation case, the violation was even more egregious in that the individuals were not even customers, and in this instance the would-(not)-be review was not the honest opinion of the endorser.
How does Google and other websites avoid infringing on 3rd party copyrights for displaying images for 'commercial' purposes? I really hope someone would be able to clear things up, because this question has been bugging me for a long time now. Google Images (and frequently Google Search as well) shows images associated with your search (kinda the point of an image search engine). Yet, the Google platform is a commercial product and is there to make money by displaying ads. Even non-profit websites like Wikipedia or CC search which ask for donations (i.e. money making albeit not for profit), thereby using images in a 'commercial' (money making) context. In the UK, commercial use of images may require a licence (a written permission). The licence must be obtained from the author (the photographer) and sometimes the landowner (I believe this is a branch of what is collectively known as 'third-party' rights, property rights in this instance, assuming the author didn't obtain such permissions). One example could be the UK's famous Durdle Door which requires a licence, if photographs are to be used for commercial purposes. It appears to be a very similar story for sites belonging to National Trust and English Heritage. Yet, there is no shortage of images used in a commercial context without obtaining such licences (apparently) e.g. CC Search, Pixabay, Trip Advisor, Google and many others. I appreciate this is a branch of the civil law and requires a 3rd party to actually raise it as an issue. I highly doubt any of the websites showing images in a commercial context request a permission from landowners around the UK - an unmanageable task. Yet, it feels like Google (or other websites) would not risk a lawsuit to show images unless they had solid basis they are allowed to do so. Question: given that photos of many landmarks in the UK require a written permission (i.e. a licence) to be used for a commercial use, how exactly do websites (e.g. Google, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia and others) operate without infringing on 3rd party copyrights? Clarification: I am less concerned with the author's copyright claims (like those in Perfect 10, Inc. vs Amazon.com, Inc) and more with the 3rd party claims. The UK's government website is pretty clear on that (emphasis mine): What people cannot do on your land The CROW Act has a list of general restrictions that limit what people using their open access rights may do, unless you give them permission to do something on the list, or the right to do something already exists. They cannot: [..] run commercial activities on the land such as: trade or sell charge other visitors for things they do on your land film, photograph or make maps [..]	It depends. Wikipedia is quite strict on its policies, and it only allows uploading images (and other media) that either are in the public domain or with a licence that allows to be reproduced (often, Creative Commons, CC). If you go to the details of the image it claims that the picture is licenced under CC, with attribution to Saffron Blaze. So most probably Saffron Blaze got permision to take the picture, and he distributed it with the CC-Attribution licence. When scrapping a web site for data, Google and other engines usually search for metadata (the robots.txt file) that tells them what to index and what to not. If a user gives them permission to index a picture by not stating restrictions in the robots.txt, they can do index it. Of course, in both cases it might be that someone uploads a picture that he does not have permission to share. In this case the situation will, of course, depend on jurisdiction, but many laws have provisions that ensure that, if the content provider is dilligent in addressing copyright issues caused by the users, they are protected. For example in the USA the Digital Millenium Copyright Act establishes "safe harbor" provisions that protects content providers if they give a way to denounce copyright infringiments and address those in a given timeframe.	Let me give some nuance, if not a definitive answer, since I'm not a lawyer. First, ArXiv holds only a license, not the underlying copyright. You need to contact the copyright holder to get permission (and a license). That may be the authors themselves, or a journal if they have assigned the copyright to it. However, it might be more complicated, especially for commercial use. Since the authors of papers frequently use images created by others, sometimes correctly and sometimes not, you should explore a bit more. Perhaps the paper itself will have a citation of the figure and an indication of its source, and hence of its copyright holder. In that case, the authors may not be able to help you, since, at best, they probably also hold just a license. However, for some academic purposes and in some jurisdictions an academic work can be permitted to use a figure (or other things) without regard to copyright. This is called fair use and it varies around the world. But a commercial work won't be able (probably) to depend on the same exception to copyright law and you still have to find the copyright holder. Moreover, even if the authors have a proper license (explicitly), that license (a) may not be transferrable and (b) might be for non-commercial use only. Academic copyright holders often (not universally) issue their work under a fairly permissive license but that is restricted to non-commercial use. Since they hold the copyright they can also issue additional licenses against it if they like, but need to do so explicitly. Ultimately, to use the work of others you have to deal with the copyright question. It is further complicated by the fact that a figure may be considered under the law as a "complete work" even if it appears within another work. So, replicating it is less likely to fall under fair use rules - though they vary. And, there is one other question you should ask yourself. Is your talk really a commercial use? If you are an academic, it may be a subtle question, or not.	Generally speaking, it is illegal for you to do this. Copyright gives the creator of the image the exclusive right to copy it, and just making copies to send to other people is probably not going to be fair use. Making copies without a license from the copyright holder would therefore be copyright infringement. Are there likely to be any consequences for doing this? Probably not.	Pretty much everything you need to know about the ownership and licensing of your material on Medium is in the Medium TOS you contractually agreed to when you signed up with the service. Basically, you granted Medium a license to use the work, but you did not agree to an exclusive license nor turn over copyright to them. Part of that Terms of Service – Medium Policy reads: Content rights & responsibilities You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). 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For example, you are posting a work that’s in the public domain, used under license (including a free license, such as Creative Commons), or a fair use. We can remove any content you post for any reason. You can delete any of your posts, or your account, anytime. Processing the deletion may take a little time, but we’ll do it as quickly as possible. We may keep backup copies of your deleted post or account on our servers for up to 14 days after you delete it. Pertaining to presenting Medium content in an iFrame on another site, this is reasonably close to not allowing that: You may not do, or try to do, the following: ... (2) access or search the Services by any means other than the currently available, published interfaces (e.g., APIs) that we provide;... You can use Embed Code Generator \| Embedly to embed an iFrame of a Medium page on another site. But contacting Medium via the email at the bottom of the TOS would tell you for sure if it is OK. Comments on your pieces on Medium do belong to the owner. And You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. appears to cover the idea of copying your material from Medium to your own site. If in doubt, ask them.	Quoting content may or may not constitute copyright infringement, depending on the various factors that go into the fair use defense. Short quotes which are made for the purpose of discussion, research and commentary and not for copy would be squarely in the domain of "fair use" under US law. That means that the copyright owner would not succeed in suing you for quoting them: under the statutory mechanism for recognizing his right to his intellectual product, there is a limit on how much control he can exert over your behavior (since the two of you have not worked out some kind of agreement -- copyright law creates rights even when there is no contract). As for Facebook, you have a contract with them, embodied in the terms of service. You have been given permission to access material that they host (permission is required, under copyright law), and their permission is conditional. It says "you may access stuff on our platform only as long as you do X": if that includes a clause "don't be nasty", then that limits your right to speak freely and be as nasty as you'd like. If it says "don't quote even a little", that means you cannot quote even a little, even when you would have the statutory right to quote a little (or, to be nasty). Fair use would mean that you can't be sued for copyright infringement of the stuff that you quoted a little of. You can, however, be expelled from Facebook. You probably cannot be sued for "accessing Facebook without permission". There is a federal law against unauthorized access of computer networks, and there was a failed attempt to construe violation of a TOS as "unauthorized access" – it isn't. But accessing Facebook necessarily involves copying (that's how computers work), and there is no "fair use" defense whereby everybody has a fair use right to access Facebook. Theoretically you could be sued for copyright infringement, for accessing Facebook's intellectual property without permission. Also, Facebook can rescind your permission to access their content (see this case), and once you have been banned, it is a crime to further access their network. This assumes that there is no overriding limit on contracts that would nullify a no-quoting condition. There is no such limit on contracts in the US, so such a contract would be enforceable. There is also nothing illegal (unenforceable) about a TOS which prohibits automated methods of access.	Not only can’t you trademark it, you can’t use it The original logo is covered by copyright which belongs, prima facie, to the original artist. It doesn’t matter that they are based in Russia; Russia and the US are both signatories to the Berne Convention which means they protect each other’s copyright. That means you can only use it if it is fair use (it isn’t) or if you have the copyright owner’s permission (you don’t). Could I still use the logo I bought and trademark it in the US granted that the seller had made some revisions to the stock photo he found? Not if the seller didn’t have permission to make those changes. Creation of a derivative work is one of the exclusive rights copyright gives. The seller had changed up some parts of the stock image, this includes color scheme, orientation, and made the picture look a little low poly. See above. The original artist of the stock photo is based in Russia and as far as I can see there is no registered copyright on it and don't think they could apply for US copyright anyway. They already have copyright. They would need to register it in the US before they could sue but there is no impediment to them doing so. While I'm not sure where the seller (located in Pakistan) officially downloaded the logo, I had nothing to do with the final design of it or downloaded anything from a stock photo website myself, so I'm not sure if I'd be bounded by any terms of the stock photo website Makes no difference. Just because you didn’t steal the car, that doesn’t make it ok for you to drive it. The stock image is very niche and a bit random. Across all the websites the artist has published it on, it has about 5 or 6 downloads altogether. Not relevant at all. As far the copyright of the seller's work goes, the Fiverr terms state that buyers have all the copyright, though I don't know if this is nullified by the use of the stock image. You can’t sell something you don’t own. If the seller had no right to upload the photo (as it seems they didn’t), the terms of the website don’t matter. The true owner never agreed to those terms and isn’t bound by them.	I agree that you have a very strong copyright fair use case. Although the logo is creative and you're using the entire thing, your use is for a nonprofit educational purpose and does not affect the value of the work. The logo is also probably trademarked. But you aren't using the mark in commerce, so I don't think that will be a problem for you.	They are claiming copyright protection so you cannot copy it unless fair dealing exemptions apply. However, there is no copyright in facts - only in they way facts are presented. If you present them in a different way ...
Alternate recourse to assault https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/surveillance-video-released-hotel-incident-jazz-musicians-son/story?id=74985452&cid=clicksource_4380645_7_heads_posts_card_hed Given the assault shown on the video (female suspect tackles minor): if NYC (city) does not prosecute, what recourse does the minor's parents to obtain justice? State / Federal?	There's always civil action possible; "assault and battery" has a civil variant as an "intentional tort" Civil assault and battery are torts. A tort is a wrong committed by one person against another, causing damage. Specifically, civil assault and battery are intentional torts. [...] Intentional torts are torts that are committed on purpose. In addition to assault and battery, causes of action such as false imprisonment, slander, and fraud typically fall under this category. While the requirements of duty, breach, causation and damages are the same, the added element of the tortfeasor’s intent is taken into consideration as well. If a plaintiff cannot prove that the tort was committed intentionally, it may be a case of negligence as opposed to an intentional tort.	Utah has a lot of public parks, so to point in the right direction, I will assume that this is a public park in Salt Lake City, it's just a plain old grassy field, and it's not during a special event. A person is suspected of some crime like selling drugs, not arrested, but told by a police officer to go away and never come back. This is way beyond the power of the police. After due legal process, a proven (not just suspected) public menace could be ordered by the court to stay away from the park. A police officer can, of course, order a person to leave a park when they violate a park rule, in fact rule number 1 is "It is unlawful for any person to do or to allow or permit any of the acts prohibited by this chapter in any park in Salt Lake City", so the police cannot legally turn a blind eye to rule violations. Violation of park rules is an infraction which can earn you a ticket of up to $299. However, the officer can tell you to go away, rather than giving you a ticket or arresting you. But an police order cannot issue a unilateral restraining order. Apart from city laws, there are general state laws regarding trespass and destruction of property. The state criminal trespass law says that A person is guilty of criminal trespass if...knowing the person's... entry or presence is unlawful, the person enters or remains on to which notice against entering is given by...personal communication to the person by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner In this case, the owner is the city, and the officer has apparent authority to act for that owner. In the case of private property, the owner or his agent has very broad authority to give notice requiring you to leave (e.g. if you don't like their politics or their shirt); but in the case of public property, the government has more narrowly circumscribed authority to kick you out.	The police only get involved with criminal matters. So when your question assumes police involvement, the logical conclusion is the host parents allegedly committed some crime. If that were the case, let's say the crime were something like child abuse, criminal negligence or abandonment of a minor. Then the prosecutor's office and/or CPS (Child Protective Services) would do an investigation and, if warranted, refer the matter to the jurisdictional prosecuting attorney's office who could file criminal charges and pursue a prosecution.	This is a good question, which I am going to answer from a practical perspective, rather than a theoretical one, which would probably justify a law review article (applications of the takings clause to criminal justice fact patterns is actually one of my pet areas of legal scholarship, but a lot of it calls for dramatic changes in established practice and precedents reached from other perspectives, making it impractical to pursue in real life). I recently had a case along these lines in my office where my client's property was seized as evidence in a criminal case against a third-party. The crime involved a gun shop where all of the guns that were in the possession of the shop owner for repairs at the time of the bust (i.e. as bailments), including ours worth several thousand dollars in addition to having some sentimental value, were seized as evidence of charges against a shop owner who was fencing stolen goods, making sales to felons off the books, falsifying excise tax returns, etc. He seemed legitimate and had been in business for many years in what was not a fly by night operation. He had all of the proper licenses. Who knew we were dealing with a crook? In that case, we intervened on behalf of our client in the primary case to seek the physical return of the property (basically a replevin claim), as have others affected by the bust. It took a few months and some legal fees, but we prevailed without too much effort, as have the other intervenors. Generally speaking, to make a 5th Amendment claim, you would have to show a total taking and move into some legal gray areas in this context, while it is usually hard for authorities to show a continuing need for possession of third-party property in the face of a demand for its return, especially when photography and other scientific tools can document the evidence in great detail these days. In that case, showing that our client's particular gun was not involved in any illegitimate transaction also simultaneously made it less important as evidence, although that would not necessarily be true in general in these kinds of situations. There is a pending case in Colorado posing similar issues, where a suburban police department essentially destroyed a guy's home in order to catch a felon with no relation to the homeowner whatsoever, who had fled into it and taken refuge there. But, that case, as far as I know, has not yet been resolved on the merits.	To start off, you appear to be confusing assault and battery. Assault does not require physical contact in order for it to occur. Verbal assault is still a crime, but in your situation it doesn't appear that any verbal assault has occurred - he is not actively threatening you with harm, and you are not in fear of being harmed. Yelling can sometimes qualify as verbal assault, but any form of verbal assault is very hard to prove because it leaves no evidence. Unless someone other than the two parties involved comes forward, it likely won't go anywhere. Assuming this has been going on for some time, what you appear to be experiencing is harassment which usually qualifies as a civil matter, and police will not take any action other than asking one of you to leave in order to resolve the issue. Most often, they will ask you (as the person being harassed) to leave, but that can also be in your benefit. If you can prove the other person's harassment caused you to have to leave in order to be comfortable again, then you can claim damages and can sue that other person for the harassment - basically suing for damages of not being able to live in and enjoy your residence which you pay for, as well as any additional costs you encountered by having to find an alternate place to live because of their actions. Again, this is difficult to prove without someone else who has witnessed the continued harassment stepping forward (e.g. your guest who might have only witnessed it once is probably not an incredibly strong witness, because harassment is often defined as having persisted over time, and they cannot testify to more than what they saw in one night). The case would likely just devolve to a matter of "he-said" between the two of you - he will likely claim you just didn't like him and are making things up to get money out of him. You'd need to make sure you have other evidence that supports your side of the story. As far as claiming self-defense, my completely non-legal and mostly combination of "I wish this were common sense" and "I hate when people try to justify unneeded violence" advice is never rely on the self-defense plea. Unless you are in fear of your life, your best course of action if he threatens violence or actually hits you is to leave and let the police handle it. If you have physical marks on you and he has none on him, the case becomes much more clear-cut. If you fight back, and you both have marks, then it again becomes a case of "he-said" and it's hard to prove who initiated the confrontation without cooperating witnesses, and you'd likely both end up being arrested when the police showed up if they can't determine who the instigator was. Just because you know something was in self-defense doesn't necessarily mean the police, a judge, or a jury will believe you. Ultimately, if you're uncomfortable with the place you're living, you should start planning to move elsewhere immediately (which you appear to be doing). If you can both a) avoid financial damages to yourself by preventing yourself being put into a situation that requires you to move quickly without much planning and b) prevent the continued harassment - then you should. Don't let the pot just keep boiling over until it explodes all over the kitchen. You have the power to make this stop too, and you shouldn't rely on other people making the situation go away for you (e.g. your landlord is bound by a contract, and evicting a tenant based on your word can open them to a lot of legal troubles - they have to be very careful with how they handle such a situation). Yes, it sucks that it's not your fault you have to go through the extra effort or move away to resolve the situation, but getting yourself out of the situation should be your number one priority, and doing it yourself is often the easiest solution.	The question actually asked, "what legal theories would support or harm...", is somewhat unclear. But what the questioner seems to be asking is, basically, what would happen if you tried it? The answer, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward. In the hypothetical case, you have been publishing a notice for years, saying "I have not been served with a subpoena." You then get served with a subpoena that includes a gag order. The gag order, presumably, includes wording prohibiting you from revealing the existence of the subpoena. You then cease publication of the warrant canary. By doing so, you have revealed the existence of the subpoena, and you are in violation of the gag order. You will be subject to whatever penalties you would be subject to if you violated it in some other way; for example, by publishing a notice that said, "Hey! We got a subpoena! It's a secret!" The distinction between revealing the existence of the subpoena by action, rather than by inaction, is a false one. It's exactly the kind of cutesy legal formality that non-lawyers love to rely on, but real judges ignore. If you tell someone: "Hey, you know John Smith's three sons, Joe, Ted, and Bill? Joe and Ted are good people; they have never molested any children. As for Bill--well, I don't have anything to say about Bill." If Bill is not a child molester, you have defamed him, and you are not going to convince a judge otherwise. The EFF link you link to tries to claim it'll "work" because courts are reluctant to enforce speech. Even if that were true, that might mean your canary would be effective in the sense of giving the public notice of the subpoena. That doesn't mean you wouldn't be liable for giving the public notice. For example: I put up a billboard saying "Bill Smith is a pedophile." Even if the court can't force me to add the word "not", that doesn't mean the billboard isn't defamatory. Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering.	It seems like callous behavior which leads to a foreseeable death deserves a bigger punishment than just firing of the administrator. The starting point of the analysis is that no one is legally responsible, civilly or criminally, for a suicide unless that person intended that the person who committed suicide do so, which is almost certainly not true in this case. As a matter of law, a suicide caused by merely callous behavior not intended to cause someone to commit suicide is not foreseeable. And if the only actions brought are civil, then the University would be the defendant and the actual individuals who were involved would not themselves even face any trial. This is not accurate. It would be routine to bring suit against anyone personal involved (probably both the administrator and the gay student who allegedly colluded), as well as the University, and indeed, the likelihood of a recovery against one or both of the individuals would be greater than the chance of recovery against the University. To recover against the University it would be necessary to show that the Title IX violation occurred pursuant to an officially approved policy or practice of the University, but this case seems to have at its heart, a failure to an administrator to follow a policy of the University. It might be possible to sue the University or someone involved in the process for a violation of his civil rights, but generally speaking, his death would not constitute recoverable damages in a such a suit. Also, generally speaking, a Title IX claim requires that any party held liable to have had an intent to violate someone's civil rights, rather than that the person was merely mere inept or negligent in implementation or non-implementation of a bureaucratic policy or dispute resolution procedure. This is alleged by the Plaintiff, probably in part because it has to be to prevent the case from being dismissed on the pleadings, but is quite implausible that this really happened that way, and this is difficult to prove unless there is some really hard evidence backing up the alleged collusion. Generally speaking, the fact that a hearing board comes up with a wrong conclusion after allegedly not following proper procedure, is not actionable for damages and certainly wouldn't constitute fraud. UPDATED RESPONSE TO EDIT 2: there maybe other victims, in similar situations, who are not protected by the criminal justice system if nothing of what is alleged to have transpired is deemed illegal It is a common fallacy that if something is not a crime, that it is not illegal or that there are no remedies. A civil lawsuit is a common and often appropriate remedy for all manner of wrongs, and the compensatory and injunctive remedies for civil wrongs such as a breach of contract and torts such as the intentional infliction of emotional distress are often significant. This said, as a government entity, the University of Texas and its employees are probably immune to many tort causes of action that would be available against a private party engaged in the same conduct. In this case, probably the only viable causes of action against the University of Texas itself, as opposed to the responsible individuals in a particular case, would be for breach of contract for not actually carrying out its policies as impliedly promised, and for injunctive relief under Title IX insisting on new policies that would prevent misconduct in disciplinary proceedings. Generally speaking, a criminal law remedy is less victim oriented than a civil remedy and is outside the control of the victim, which can be traumatic for a victim who would prefer not to be involuntarily dragged into the criminal justice process. The notion that settlement is not possible in the criminal justice system is likewise mostly incorrect. There is a reason why we don't handle rapes (for example) in civil courts. Criminal justice system exists to make sure that, at least in theory, those who commit heinous acts cannot buy their way out of consequences of those actions. In fact, one can bring a cause of action for a rape in a civil court. I've done it. And, the lower threshold of proof, the lack of a right to remain silent without legal consequences under the 5th Amendment, the greater focus on compensation for the victim, and the greater level of control of the victim are all good reasons to pursue this route. Many cases of rape by people able to afford to pay compensation are also cases of actionable sexual harassment. In general, criminal law is the solution that is usually resorted to not so much because the acts committed are heinous, but because the typical person who violates a law that is criminally prosecuted is judgment proof and unable to pay compensation that is even remotely proportionate to the harm done, so a civil remedy does not discourage that behavior. Your typical rapist who is prosecuted in the criminal justice system isn't capable of paying meaningful compensation to a victim, although there are always exceptions. Preventing people from buying their way out of their wrongdoing is almost never advanced by criminal justice scholars as a reason for a criminal justice remedy. And, when I have clients who have been harmed, for example, by fraud, most would far prefer to receive compensation from the wrongdoer, than to see the perpetrator punished without receiving any meaningful compensation for their own injuries, which is the usual result in the criminal justice process. Most people think of the criminal justice system as more of a last resort when all other options fail than as a good first choice which it rarely is even when it is the least bad option. So back to the main question, what, if any, criminal charges can be leveled against the administrator and the false accuser if the alleged facts of the case can be confirmed to be true? In the fact pattern presented, where a public official at the University of Texas conspires with a student with whom the official has a pre-existing personal relationship to produce an intentionally inaccurate result in a University disciplinary hearing harming a defendant in that process, there are several university statutes that might form a basis for criminal action against either the public administrator or the conspiring student on the offense identified or conspiracy to commit the offense identified. In no case are any criminal charges against the University of Texas a plausible option in this fact pattern. Each of the offenses is a misdemeanor under Texas law. The best fit is "improper influence". Texas Penal Code § 36.04. This involves reaching an outcome in an adjudication for a reason other than one legally allowed due to someone's application of influence other than a bribe or kickback. The section states: (a) A person commits an offense if he privately addresses a representation, entreaty, argument, or other communication to any public servant who exercises or will exercise official discretion in an adjudicatory proceeding with an intent to influence the outcome of the proceeding on the basis of considerations other than those authorized by law. (b) For purposes of this section, “adjudicatory proceeding” means any proceeding before a court or any other agency of government in which the legal rights, powers, duties, or privileges of specified parties are determined. (c) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor. Two other possibilities are "abuse of official capacity", Texas Penal Code §39.02, or "official oppression" Texas Penal Code § 39.03. These sections and a related one, read as follows in the pertinent or potentially pertinent parts: Sec. 39.01. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: (1) "Law relating to a public servant's office or employment" means a law that specifically applies to a person acting in the capacity of a public servant and that directly or indirectly: (A) imposes a duty on the public servant; or (B) governs the conduct of the public servant. . . . Sec. 39.02. ABUSE OF OFFICIAL CAPACITY. (a) A public servant commits an offense if, with intent to obtain a benefit or with intent to harm or defraud another, he intentionally or knowingly: (1) violates a law relating to the public servant's office or employment . . . (b) An offense under Subsection (a)(1) is a Class A misdemeanor. . . . 39.03. OFFICIAL OPPRESSION. (a) A public servant acting under color of his office or employment commits an offense if he: . . . (2) intentionally denies or impedes another in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing his conduct is unlawful; or (3) intentionally subjects another to sexual harassment. (b) For purposes of this section, a public servant acts under color of his office or employment if he acts or purports to act in an official capacity or takes advantage of such actual or purported capacity. (c) In this section, "sexual harassment" means unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, submission to which is made a term or condition of a person's exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, either explicitly or implicitly. (d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor . . . Also, in all three of these cases, the fact that someone committed suicide afterwards is basically irrelevant legally.	Are there actual laws written, or de facto situations (e.g. let's say another law specifies that a child can't be physically forced to go anywhere without causing abuse) where the child can refuse to attend? Are there "tiers" to the age; Is it true that a temper tantrum of a 5 year old would be seen as such, but the refusal of a 17 year would be legally accepted? This is a hard question to answer that doesn't have a neat resolution. Very little pertaining to the authority of a parent over a child is codified in statutory law and there is not a clear cut age at which a child has "freedom of conscience" vis-a-vis a parent. Most of the law related to children concerns allocation of parenting time and parental decision making between divorced, separated or unmarried parents; abuse and neglect; and juvenile delinquency. There is also usually a snippet of criminal law stating that certain kinds of uses of force to discipline children do not constitute crimes. But, part of why it doesn't come up very much is that older children are usually socialized in a manner that causes them to show a certain amount of respect for the wishes of their parents. It also doesn't come up much for children who aren't in their late teens, because the complete economic dependence of children on their parents or guardians gives the parents considerable power of their children that doesn't require the exercise of physical force. Also, it is quite dependent upon how the issue presents itself. No law enforcement agency is going to aid a parent in forcibly dragging a kid to church against their will. But, no social services agency is going to remove a kid from a home because his birthday party will be cancelled if he doesn't go to the church of his parents' choice the Sunday before his birthday. There are also some subtle but important distinctions between states on the issue of emancipation. In Colorado, emancipation is a statement about the empirical reality. If a child is self-supporting and lives apart from parents or guardians then the child is an emancipated minor. It is not a status granted by a court, it is a status acknowledged by courts when evaluating other issues. In California, a child is not emancipated unless a court grants a child that status and a child who is de facto emancipated without the leave of a court is guilty of a "status offense" (the New York State term for someone in this state is PINS for "person in need of supervision"). Basically, if a parent can force a child to go to church by means that don't constitute abuse or neglect and don't exceed the level of force authorize for child discipline in the criminal code, then they can do it, and if they can't manage that, then they can't do it. Many states have a "status offense" that allows government intervention with the cooperation of a parent or guardian in cases where an "uncontrollable" child is defiant and simply will not give any heed to the parent or guardian's instructions. In practice, the older a child is, the less likely someone viewing a parent's conduct forcing a child to do something is to be viewed as acceptable or legally justified. The legal rights of children in a school setting are also age dependent under the case law, although not always in a really well defined way. Controls on student expression that would be uncontroversial for elementary school students may be looked upon by the law with disfavor for high school students and clearly prohibited for adults. Perhaps one useful way to conceptualize it is that trying to make a child attend a particular kind of religious service is not considered an improper purposes for a parent of any minor to utilize the resources available to the parent to do so, but the range of resources available to a parent with regard to an adult child is much narrower.
POTUS term limit (hypothetical) It is frequently said that the current term limit for a US President is 10 years, consisting of inheriting the presidency for a 2 year caretaker term, then elected twice for 8 years, not necessarily consecutive. Here's a hypothetical question. I do not expect it to happen ever, but would it be legal under current US laws? The President dies, and the VP takes over for slightly less than 2 years. In the next election, he does not want to run again for President, but stands again for VP. He and his partner are elected. Then two years later the President resigns, and the VP is again elevated to nearly 2 years as caretaker President. Repeat for a third term, nearly 2 years as caretaker President. Then he decides to run for President himself, and gets elected twice. Thus he gets 14 years as President, total. This is extremely unlikely to happen, but is it possible?	The relevant part of the 22nd amendment to the US constitution says: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. The question is dues "more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President" mean "more than two years of any single term ..." or "more than two years of any and all such terms taken together". The former is closer to the plain meaning of the text, but the latter is almost surely what Congress intended, given the history of the 22nd. There is no case law, because there is no case in which a person has been elected VP and become president in two or more different terms. Indeed there is no case of a person who, having become president on the death or resignation of a president, then ran again as VP. There is no telling how a court would rule in such a situation, but I rather suspect that the 10-year limit interpretation would be upheld.	No. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution states The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them. Congress could include an increase to presidential compensation in the bill but it couldn't take effect until the next election.	No In accordance with Article II Clause 3, once the votes are counted (and any deadlock resolved) the President has been chosen. At that point, the election is final.	Mr. Comey answered this in his testimony. LANKFORD: Okay. Fair enough. If the president wanted to stop an investigation, how would he do that? Knowing it is an ongoing criminal investigation or counterintelligence investigation, would that be a matter of going to you, you perceive, and say, you make it stop because he doesn't have the authority to stop it? How would the president make an ongoing investigation stop? COMEY: I'm not a legal scholar, but as a legal matter, the president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but could anyone be investigative or not. I think he has the legal authority. All of us ultimately report in the executive branch to the president. LANKFORD: Would that be to you, or the attorney general or who? COMEY: I suppose he could if he wanted to issue a direct order could do it anyway. Through the attorney general or issue it directly to me. This issue also came up in United States v Texas. The obligation to refrain from interference with the FBI is a norm, not a legal requirement. And, like many executive powers, an act that is sometimes legally permitted can become illegal given an improper motive. It is also possible for Congress to find legal acts to be untenably corrupt.	Yes The rule against prosecuting a sitting President is not a law, it is a Justice Department opinion and policy. The justification for it is that dealing with a criminal case would be severely distracting to the President, and thus harmful to the nation. Besides, the opinion goes on, any serious issue can be dealt with by impeachment. That reasoning obviously does not apply to a former President. Article I, section 3, paragraph 7 of the US constitution says: Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. (emphasis added) This clearly contemplates the criminal prosecution of a former office holder, after such a person was removed by an impeachment. There is no exception for a President. Therefor a President can be criminally charged and prosecuted for actions during the presidency, provided that the evidence to establish probable cause is there, and that a Grand Jury indicts said former President. So far as I know there has never been a case where such a thing was done. President Ford's pardon of President Nixon stopped any Federal prosecution of him. I think there have been cases were former US Judges, after impeachment, were criminally prosecuted. But that is not quite the same thing -- no one claims that sitting judges are immune to criminal charges. To be clear this would not apply just to issues that a President had been impeached for. A former President is no different from anyone else in this respect. Any such person can be prosecuted if there is probable cause, and convicted if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal violation of some law, even if the violation occurred while the president was in office.	25th Amendment: Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office. The President can't be removed from office for this by a Congress complying with the Constitution. However, the VP and the majority of the Cabinet can say "he's crazy," at which point the VP takes over the duties as Acting President. Congress then decides whether or not he's crazy. If Congress agrees, the VP continues to act as President.	The 25th amendment §3 says Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Nothing in the Constitution deprives the Vice President of his powers / duties when he is also Acting President. Alternatively, the VP can become acting President under §4, without presidential cooperation, by declaration of the VP and a majority of the cabinet. Then either the President asserts that there is no inability, or Congress decides there is. But: unless the president dies or resigns, or is impeached, the VP is Acting President and actual Vice President, and therefore breaks ties in the Senate. Note that under §4, the VP plus cabinet must declare POTUS unable, and must do it again if POTUS denies the inability. That means that there must still be a VP, who along with the cabinet re-affirms the disability.	Different people have suggested different things as to what constitutes, "the unitary executive theory". The US Supreme Court is not likely to simply adopt such a theory in general terms. It will, instead, rule on a specific case that comes before it, and state the principles behind that ruling. There are a number of Supreme Court rulings saying that a President must abide by laws limiting presidential authority, perhaps the most famous is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) in which the Court rules that the President did not have authority to seize steel mills to put a stop to a labor dispute that was allegedly endangering national security during the Korean War. Congress had passed a law providing a different method of dealing with such situations, and President Truman did not follow the method established by that law. The President has broad power over the operations of executive branch agencies, possibly including the right to order an investigation halted for whatever reasons seem good to the president. If such a case came before the courts and they supported the President, presumably they would hold that the President's actions did not constitute obstruction of justice or any other crime. I find it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would rule that the President may "act against the rule of law", but they might rule that in particular cases the law implicitly grants the President power to take certain actions that others may not take.
If the US federal government has sovereign immunity, why can it be sued in federal courts? Specifically, in US citizenship cases it's common for applicants to request a federal court to issue and enforce a writ of mandamus in order to compel the federal government to process an application within the time frame set by the federal law. However, some federal judges "feel" that it's not within their authority to force the federal immigration system to abide by its laws. Is the federal government immunity in such cases a matter of the judge's personal interpretation? Or is this immunity waived by the federal law?	Yes and No. The Federal U.S. Government as well as each individual state and territory claim Soverign Immunity to a limited degree. In the case of Federal Government, they claim Soverign Immunity to a near limitless degree (more on this in a moment), while States and Territories claim "State Soverign Immunity" which grants them immunity with respect to all soverign powers granted under the U.S. Constitution. To clarify, each U.S. State is seperately soverign in all matters not explicitly allocated to the Federal Government by the U.S. Constitution and all constitutionally written laws. Where the Constitution does not in writing claim a power for the federal government nor reserver a power for the state government, the power is assumed to be state government. So a State can claim immunity for a police situation but not a law it makes regarding immigration or foriegn policy, since that is the exclusive wheelhouse of the Feds. Per the 11th amendment, states can only be sued in state court by citizens of the state, while non-state citizens wishing to sue a state must sue in the Federal Court (Which for the purposes of the trial may adopt the defendant State's laws and regulations for the purposes of questions of fact and law brought up in the suit). All U.S. States and the Federal Goverment additionally wave Soverign Immunity under specific conditions outlined in laws. In the case of the Federal Government, the laws governing when this immunity is waived are governed by the Federal Torts Claims Act (1946) and the Tucker Act (1887). The FTCA covers intentional torts by the Federal Government, while the Tucker Act typically covers matters related to contractual obligations or monitary interactions with the federal government. Things that may be sued for include but are not limited too: Intentional Torts committed by Government Agents in their Official Capacity (i.e. When the FBI violates your rights or maliciously investigates you). Contractual disputes where the Government is a party to the Contract, either in written or implied terms. Constitutional Claims (i.e. The Government may have violated the Constitution. These tend to be for non-monitary relief such as mandemuses, though the 5th Amendment's Taking Clause can be invoked of the government took property and does not justly compensate.). Individual Agencies of the Government when the monitary claim is not drawn from the U.S. Treasury (the agencies own allocated budget is used to pay). Refund for taxes paid In all cases, a Judge will determin if the Government, under the laws, can be sued. If in the example of a government employee being sued, the Justice Department will first make a determination if the employee was acting as an agent of the government when they committed the tortious act, and then will declare themselves Respondent Superior through the agency of employement. From there, the case becomes a suit against the Federal Government and FTCA immunity waiver is determined by a Judge. For example, lets say you (Mr. Rapt) sue Special Agent Jimmy Jones of an intentional tort that he committed in the course of his duty as an FBI agent. The DOJ will first declare that they are Respondent Superior in the case of Rapt v. Jones, thus turning the case to Rapt v. United States Government, Department of Justice, Federal Beura of Investigations, and Jones (Rapt v. United States, et. al.). From here, the Judge who gets the case then determins if the U.S. Government under FTCA can be sued by Rapt, based on Rapt's citizenship status (usually permanent legal residents are covered as citizens for this point, but I can say for certain in this particular law), ripeness (the suit must be filed within 2 years of the incident or first knowledge), and immunity waiver under FTCA. In the case of the State Government, they should have similar laws, but I'm not going to identify all 50 individual laws here. Additionally, the 11th Amendment permits U.S. Congress to waive a State's immunity to suit in certain cases (mostly comes up with the Due Process Clause in the 14th Amendment.). As a fun point, in all cases where a government appears as a defendant in a suit, it is automatically a Bench Trial, as the government usually include a waiver of their right as defendant to a jury trial. The thinking here is that, as a country that was founded by rebelling against the government, a jury of 12 of the government's citizens aren't going to give them any slack at trial, where as a judge (who they pay) is much more likely. TL;DR: Both questions are yes. The immunity is waived under federal law for certain cases, but it is a judge who will make the ruling if the specific case meets the aformentioned waived immunity.	Does this theory have any basis in current or historical fact? Not really. The sovereign citizen movement uses legal terms, but not correctly, and often confounded with Biblical doctrine, and hones in on stylistic matters that are not legally material now and weren't legally material at any time historically, like capitalization rules (which, actually, were historically wildly inconsistent, see, e.g., an image of the original U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence). There was an era from roughly the mid-1800s to the early 1900s when the law was very hung up on the precise wording of deeds (e.g., a deed to "John" rather than to "John and his heirs, successors and assigns" created a life estate rather than transferring full ownership of land), or stating precisely the right things in a legal complaint to have a right to legal relief (when what was required to be stated was discernible only from legal authorities like decades of case law reports or legal treatises). But, while that was an era when technicalities and legal fictions that would seem to a layman to be similar to those of the sovereign citizen movement were important legally, none of the actual technicalities and legal fictions that were historically important in the law are actually utilized by the sovereign citizen movement. Instead, it makes up technicalities and legal fictions that never existed historically, in the service of a defiant, anti-government agenda in which it is easy to impose liability on others but hard to impose liability on adherents of the movement, while the historical technicalities and legal fictions served the opposite role - with a pro-government agenda in which it was hard for non-professionals utilizing red tape filled bureaucracies to impose liability on others but was easiest to do with regard to people who defied authority, like sovereign citizens. Likewise, there has never been any means by which individuals can evade liability for taxes, for criminal conduct, or for civil liability committed by them personally, then or now. The question restates the common misconception that: For example, a plumber may operate in the capacity of an LLC to avoid personal civil (though probably not criminal) liability for any mishaps that may happen while on the job. But, in fact, even with all of the modern limited liability entity formalities complied with, this isn't actually true. One can never have limited liability for work that one personally carries out. Limited liability only protects you from contractual liabilities and from vicarious liability for the acts of your agents and employees. And, doing so still does not insulate you from criminal liability for acts of your agents and employees for the most part due to RICO and solicitation and conspiracy offenses. One can never evade liability in the manner that the sovereign citizen movement suggests, even if one complies with actual legally recognized formalities.	First, mandamus is always a form of writ whereas injunctions are typically a part of the proceedings in a lawsuit. Writs and lawsuits are each distinct, individual legal actions whereas multiple motions for various remedies like injunctive relief can occur within one continuous lawsuit. The lawsuit and the various motions within it including injunctions have largely replaced the common law writ (including writs of mandamus except those from a higher court to a lower) as legislated in rules of civil procedure federally and in most states	Background I will note that the case you cite was decided in 1972 and has been cited by other cases that relied on its precedents in all appellate decisions in Michigan, and one federal trial court decision in Michigan over the last 44 years. The losing party tried to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal later in 1972 because there was no issue of federal law involved. Ultimate Conclusion There is pretty much no way to change the holding of that decision other than to amend the provisions of the Michigan Constitution in question by the procedures set forth in the Michigan State Constitution. Indeed, the basic premise of your question, "a long-standing Michigan Supreme Court ruling might possibly be incorrect" is basically definitionally wrong. When the Michigan Supreme Court interprets a provision of the Michigan State Constitution, its decision is, by definition, the correct interpretation of that language. It isn't terribly uncommon for authoritative court decisions to conclude for a variety of reasons that the literal plain reading of constitutional text actually means something quite different than what the words actually say. For example, the judicially interpeted meaning of the 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution (which is that states are entitled to sovereign immunity unless it is waived by the state or authorized by the United States or another state) is quite different from what the wording of the amendment says ("The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."), which on its face simply slightly narrows federal court jurisdiction and says nothing on its face about sovereign immunity. What you think those words should mean based upon a plain reading of the constitutional text is completely irrelevant. Amending Michigan's State Constitution Amending the state constitution is not easy in Michigan. It has been done only eight times since the current state constitution was adopted in 1963 - seven times pursuant to proposals made by the state legislature and ratified by the voters, and once in 1972 as a result of a citizens petition. It has been amended only twice since 1972. Several methods can be employed to propose and ratify amendments. Section 1 of Article XII states that: Amendments to this constitution may be proposed in the senate or house of representatives. Proposed amendments agreed to by two-thirds of the members elected to and serving in each house on a vote with the names and vote of those voting entered in the respective journals shall be submitted, not less than 60 days thereafter, to the electors at the next general election or special election as the legislature shall direct. If a majority of electors voting on a proposed amendment approve the same, it shall become part of the constitution and shall abrogate or amend existing provisions of the constitution at the end of 45 days after the date of the election at which it was approved. This is the easiest way to amend the state constitution if there is a bipartisan consensus to amend it. Section 2 of Article XII says: Amendments may be proposed to this constitution by petition of the registered electors of this state. Every petition shall include the full text of the proposed amendment, and be signed by registered electors of the state equal in number to at least 10 percent of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding general election at which a governor was elected. Such petitions shall be filed with the person authorized by law to receive the same at least 120 days before the election at which the proposed amendment is to be voted upon. Any such petition shall be in the form, and shall be signed and circulated in such manner, as prescribed by law. The person authorized by law to receive such petition shall upon its receipt determine, as provided by law, the validity and sufficiency of the signatures on the petition, and make an official announcement thereof at least 60 days prior to the election at which the proposed amendment is to be voted upon. Any amendment proposed by such petition shall be submitted, not less than 120 days after it was filed, to the electors at the next general election. Such proposed amendment, existing provisions of the constitution which would be altered or abrogated thereby, and the question as it shall appear on the ballot shall be published in full as provided by law. Copies of such publication shall be posted in each polling place and furnished to news media as provided by law. The ballot to be used in such election shall contain a statement of the purpose of the proposed amendment, expressed in not more than 100 words, exclusive of caption. Such statement of purpose and caption shall be prepared by the person authorized by law, and shall consist of a true and impartial statement of the purpose of the amendment in such language as shall create no prejudice for or against the proposed amendment. If the proposed amendment is approved by a majority of the electors voting on the question, it shall become part of the constitution, and shall abrogate or amend existing provisions of the constitution at the end of 45 days after the date of the election at which it was approved. If two or more amendments approved by the electors at the same election conflict, that amendment receiving the highest affirmative vote shall prevail. There were 3,156,531 votes cast for all candidates in the most recent election for Governor in Michigan in 2014. This means that 315,653 valid signatures would have to be on a petition requesting a constitutional amendment and experience in states where initiatives are common suggest that significantly more signatures than that would have to be collected in order to get that many valid signatures. Section 3 of Article XII says: At the general election to be held in the year 1978, and in each 16th year thereafter and at such times as may be provided by law, the question of a general revision of the constitution shall be submitted to the electors of the state. If a majority of the electors voting on the question decide in favor of a convention for such purpose, at an election to be held not later than six months after the proposal was certified as approved, the electors of each representative district as then organized shall elect one delegate and the electors of each senatorial district as then organized shall elect one delegate at a partisan election. The delegates so elected shall convene at the seat of government on the first Tuesday in October next succeeding such election or at an earlier date if provided by law. The convention shall choose its own officers, determine the rules of its proceedings and judge the qualifications, elections and returns of its members. To fill a vacancy in the office of any delegate, the governor shall appoint a qualified resident of the same district who shall be a member of the same party as the delegate vacating the office. The convention shall have power to appoint such officers, employees and assistants as it deems necessary and to fix their compensation; to provide for the printing and distribution of its documents, journals and proceedings; to explain and disseminate information about the proposed constitution and to complete the business of the convention in an orderly manner. Each delegate shall receive for his services compensation provided by law. No proposed constitution or amendment adopted by such convention shall be submitted to the electors for approval as hereinafter provided unless by the assent of a majority of all the delegates elected to and serving in the convention, with the names and vote of those voting entered in the journal. Any proposed constitution or amendments adopted by such convention shall be submitted to the qualified electors in the manner and at the time provided by such convention not less than 90 days after final adjournment of the convention. Upon the approval of such constitution or amendments by a majority of the qualified electors voting thereon the constitution or amendments shall take effect as provided by the convention The next referendum pursuant to Section 3, Article XII is in the year 2026, and any proposed amendments from a constitutional convention called under that provision would not take effect until approved by voters which could happen no sooner than the year 2028. Voters declined to call for a constitutional convention in the years 1978, 1994 and 2010. No Law Pased Only By The Legislature Can Overrule This Decision The state legislature can't pass an ordinary law that overrules a Michigan Supreme Court interpretation of the state constitution either. And, even Congress can't pass a law that reinterprets language in a particular state's constitution that has been determined to be the correct one by the state supreme court. No Other Court Can Overrule This Michigan Supreme Court Decision The federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court cannot overrule the Michigan Supreme Court on a question of Michigan state law. The lower courts of Michigan cannot overrule the Michigan Supreme Court on any question. The Michigan Supreme Court Is Extremely Unlikely To Modify This Decision The Michigan Supreme Court is extremely unlikely to overrule itself regarding a decision that has stood and been relied upon for 44 years since questions of statutory interpretation are usually given unusually strong respect as precedents to promote certainty, although it could change its mind if it wanted to. Usually, though, a state supreme court only overrules one of its own past precedents if it becomes inconsistent with another line of cases and it eventually becomes clear that there are two or more inconsistent lines of precedents can't be reconciled with each other in some fact pattern that pits one line of cases squarely against another. For example, in Colorado, earlier this year a older case holding that a defense called "laches" could not be used in child support cases collided directly with a newer Colorado Supreme Court case involving promissory notes that held that the defense called "laches" is available in every type of case in Colorado. When confronted with the conflicting precedents in a new case this year the Colorado Supreme Court resolved the conflict in favor of the newer holding, overruling the older one which states that "laches" did not apply to child support cases. But, this is extremely unlikely to happen when the question involves the meaning of the precise wording of a highly technical property tax provision of the state constitution.	The case is Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). Liability under Bivens applies to federal agents who violate a direct constitutional right in a similar way that state officials, or others acting "under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory" may be sued under 42 USC § 1983 for any action that causes "the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws". Section 1983 does not apply to persons acting under federal laws, and thus Bivens becomes a counterpart. It is true that Bivens applies directly to the Fourth Amendment. But it quotes favorably Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678 (1946), specifically the passages: where federally protected rights have been invaded, it has been the rule from the beginning that courts will be alert to adjust their remedies so as to grant the necessary relief [at page 684] and it is . . . well settled that, where legal rights have been invaded, and a federal statute provides for a general right to sue for such invasion, federal courts may use any available remedy to make good the wrong done. [also at page 684] Neither of these passages singles out the fourth amendment. Nor does the logic of Bivens depend on anything specific to the Fourth amendment, as opposed to the Fifth, the Sixth, or the First. I don't know if a case has been brought under Bivens alleging violation of these or other federal constitutional provisions granting specific rights to individuals. The logic of Bivens would require a firm and clear grant of rights, but, for example the Due Process Clause of the fifth is such a grant. If the courts were to hold that a particular claim could not be brought under Bivens because the Supreme Court has not authorized such an extension of Bivens, then Bivens itself describes an alternate procedure. The opinion points out that: [at Pages 390-391] petitioner may obtain money damages to redress invasion of these rights only by an action in tort, under state law, in the state courts. In this scheme, the Fourth Amendment would serve merely to limit the extent to which the agents could defend the state law tort suit by asserting that their actions were a valid exercise of federal power: if the agents were shown to have violated the Fourth Amendment, such a defense would be lost to them, and they would stand before the state law merely as private individuals. Candidly admitting that it is the policy of the Department of Justice to remove all such suits from the state to the federal courts for decision, respondents nevertheless urge that we uphold dismissal of petitioner's complaint in federal court and remit him to filing an action in the state courts in order that the case may properly be removed to the federal court for decision on the basis of state law. This procedure the Court rejected in Bivens as unneeded, but it did not say that such a procedure could not be followed. I would think that the logic of Bivensshould extend to the invasion, by federal officials (other than judicial officers), of any right explicitly and specifically granted to individuals under the constitution. But one can never tell how the courts will react when asked to extend a previous decision. The Bivens did not createa cause of action, or at least it did not purport to do so. It simply held that the longstanding rights grantef under the Fourth Amendment could result in money damages even n the absence of a specific statute providing for such damages. The Bivens Court wrote: [at Page 403 U. S. 402] The contention that the federal courts are powerless to accord a litigant damage for a claimed invasion of his federal constitutional rights until Congress explicitly authorizes the remedy cannot rest on the notion that the decision to grant compensatory relief involves a resolution of policy considerations not susceptible of judicial discernment. Thus, in suits for damages based on violations of federal statutes lacking any express authorization of a damage remedy, this Court has authorized such relief where, in its view, damages are necessary to effectuate the congressional policy underpinning the substantive provisions of the statute. J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426 (1964); Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 323 U. S. 210, 323 U. S. 213 (1944). Cf. Wyandotte Transportation Co. v. United States, 389 U. S. 191, 389 U. S. 201-204 (1967) The OP wrote in a comment: What's the point of Bivens if causes of action still exist for amendments like the 1st Amendment, that are not part of Bivens? What's the difference between suing somebody under the 4th amendment through Bivens, and suing somebody under the 1st amendment? This is merely a matter of terminology. If the US Supreme Court now recognizes a right to sue for money damages directly under the First Amendment, that will be called "an extension of Bivens". If it rules that such a suit would need a new law from Congress to authorize it (as Sec 1983 authorizes suits against state officials), that would be cal;led "refusing to extend Bivens. All suits for damages directly under a constitutional provision where there is no specific federal law authorizing money damages are now called Bivens suits, because that is the case that specifically held that such damages were permitted without such a law.	The DoJ is the USA Or, more precisely, the attorney general (the head of the DoJ) is the member of the cabinet that represents the United States Government in legal matters. The US government is a legal person and can sue and be sued (subject to sovereign immunity), just like any other person. When they do, the attorney general through the department of justice is the natural person who does it. Now, if you are asking what the particular merits of this particular case are: that’s a different question.	When you say "blanket immunity," I assume you're talking about transactional immunity -- the witness cannot ever be prosecuted for any crimes they testified about. This immunity is actually broader than that required by the US Constitution (although some states do require it). However, if it's provided, it absolutely covers crimes connected to what John is accused of. One very common use of immunity is to give a co-conspirator immunity to testify against another co-conspirator being charged with conspiracy. If transactional immunity wouldn't cover that conspiracy charge, it would pretty much defeat the purpose.	tl;dr My assumption: the U.S. government is considering whether to accept refugees and immigrants (given your Syria comment). The background section talks about State attempts to restrict entry. The answer is nuanced since there are different standards for an entrance decision than there are for someone who is already in the U.S. This is because foreign nationals in their home nations aren't "persons within the jurisdiction of the United States," and so laws like the Civil Rights Act only apply in spirit. What does that mean? We wouldn't expect to see the federal government discriminate based on religion, but we might expect to see decisions made about groups that incidentally share an common religion. This is because the federal government has wide latitude when it comes to alienage---which is just a formal name for policies related to non-citizens. While religion is afforded a high degree of protection, the federal government's alienage policies are governed by the lowest level of judicial scrutiny. This implies a practical challenge: things like religion and national origin can be very difficult to disentangle from questions that pertain to the alienage category. For example, a policy might restrict some group's entry "because of" a particular alienage reason and "in spite of" the fact that most of the affected people happen to share a common religion. Background The Equal Protection Clause U.S. Const. Am. XIV § 1 prohibits States from denying any person within its jurisdiction "equal protection of the laws." The Clause is often applied to the federal government as well, via the Due Process Clause U.S. Const. Am. V. See, e.g. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954). In relation to the clause, laws are reviewed for their constitutionality using either strict, intermediate, or rational basis scrutiny. Strict scrutiny would mean that in order to distinguish based on a particular trait, the government has to have a compelling, narrowly tailored interest, and no less restrictive alternative available. Rational basis just means the government's interest is subject to a lower level of scrutiny (e.g. benefits exceed costs, or don't let in felons). Things like, race, religion, national origin, and some forms of alienage are suspect classes that merit strict scrutiny. This bit about alienage is important. As we'd expect from the above, when States enact alienage statutes, they're subject to strict scrutiny, and when those statues cross the line, the courts have found that State attempts to restrict resident or non-resident aliens encroach upon the federal government's exclusive control over entrance of aliens. Graham v. Department of Pub. Welfare, 403 U.S. 365 (1971). In other words, the federal government, not the States, decides whether various "aliens" are admitted. Note: State scrutiny levels when dealing with undocumented immigrants may be context specific. See, e.g. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982) (children and education). The federal government's authority over immigration is further solidified by the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Const. Article VI. See Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67 (1967). As such, the courts have applied rational basis scrutiny to the federal government's immigration policy. One reason alienage is interesting is that it tends to encompass things like national origin and religion. This doesn't imply the federal government makes its decisions on the basis of religion. In fact, it'd be hard to make an argument that they do. However, since the categories can be so closely entwined, many scholars have argued for a change in standard. Edit In hindsight, this topic seems quite forward looking. A couple weeks after the OP's question a U.S. presidential candidate (Donald Trump) came out in favor of a ban on entry into the U.S. by Muslims. That led to a flurry of activity, and to this insightful blog post by Professor E. Posner.
The case of the vanishing ™ I moved from the United States a few years back. Recently, someone visited the U.S. and brought back some "junk food" that my family missed, including Milk Duds and Oreos. I was shocked to see that the stylized words "Milk Duds", "Oreo", and "Nabisco", forming logos, did not have trademark symbols next to them, nor was there any notice on the packaging that those things were trademarks. I'm pretty sure that, just a few years ago when I lived there, all such packaging had indication of trademark status. Did the law change since then? Can someone provide details, please? (Or maybe those three marks happened to lose their trademark status and are up for grabs?)	Trademark symbols Such symbols and notices were never required. Many company lawyers thought that they helped make a stronger case for infringement actions if someone did infringe. And perhaps also that they would deter people from using the trademarks without approval, perhaps even in ways that were legal but that the company did not like. (Companies routinely claim more trademark protection than the law allows.) Added, legal and source citations [15 U.S. Code § 1111] provides](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1111): Notwithstanding the provisions of section 1072 of this title, a registrant of a mark registered in the Patent and Trademark Office, may give notice that his mark is registered by displaying with the mark the words “Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office” or “Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.” or the letter R enclosed within a circle, thus ®; and in any suit for infringement under this chapter by such a registrant failing to give such notice of registration, no profits and no damages shall be recovered under the provisions of this chapter unless the defendant had actual notice of the registration. emphasis added This section was last revised in 1988, and dates originally from 1946 The US patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) publication Basic Facts About Trademarks (PDF) says (on page 9): Each time you use your mark, it is best to use a designation with it. If registered, use an ® after the mark. If not yet registered, use TM for goods or SM for services, to indicate that you have adopted this as a trademark or service mark, respectively, regardless of whether you have filed an application with the USPTO. You may only use the registration symbol with the mark on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the federal trademark registration. However, no specific requirements exist as to the precise use of the “®” symbol as to placement, e.g., whether used in a subscript or superscript manner. emphasis added Added Analysis I cannot find any provision of US law requiring use of the ® symbol or any of its equivalents. However failure to use it may reduce the damages available in the case of infringement. I cannot find any provision of US law authorizing or requiring the use of the tm symbol. It appears to be a matter of common law, that is judge-made law, and a reference to court cases would be needed. There have been significant developments in US trademark law in recent years, but mostly in the degree to which First Amendment concerns are being held to limit tr4ademark protections. I found no change in regard to the symbols, their use, meaning or effect. Many countries, unlike the US, do not grant protection to trademarks unless they are registered, so the tm symbol is largely a US usage. What Changed? To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in US law on this issue in recent years. I see lots of tm and ® symbols on everyday products. I just looked at the power supply for my laptop and it has a tm after the maker's name. I just looked at a candy bar wrapper and it carries an ®. If there WAS a recent court case that changed the practice or influenced a change I haven't heard of it, and I've done some reading in recent major trademark cases. But I am not a lawyer, much less an IP lawyer, so I can't be sure. Another possibility is that the comparatively large symbol adjacent to the large logo on the front of the package was removed, and a smaller logo, with symbol, was placed on the back of the package. That would probably give legal notice to any would-be infringer.	Intellectual property law varies considerably by jurisdiction, and doesn't just involve copyright, but also trademarks, and patents. The first problem you are going to run into is that "Risko!" is probably protected as a commercial trademark rather than copyright. In the US at least, making minor changes to a trademark generally doesn't get you off the hook for unlicensed use. The owner of the "Risko!" trademark could bring suit against you for trademark infringement and it would be up to a judge or possibly a jury to decide whether "Risko" is different enough from "Risko!" that confusion would be unlikely. If they won the suit they could collect damages and their legal costs. There was a protracted and important trademark lawsuit in the US over the names "Monopoly" and "Anti-Monopoly" for board games. An economist, Ralph Anspach, had introduced a game he called "Anti-monopoly". He was sued by the Parker Brothers company for infringing on their trademark for "Monopoly". After 10 years the US Supreme Court ruled in Anspach's favor, finding that "Monopoly" had become a generic term for a type of board game and was no longer a valid trademark. You can't necessarily count on being "small potatoes" so that they'll simply ignore your possible infringement. In US law, failure to enforce their trademark rights can lead to the loss of trademark rights and remedies, so companies are less likely to let minor infringements slide. The situation in Italy may be different. Your artwork and graphical components are another potential problem. Those probably are covered by copyright. Again, the holder of the copyright for the "Risko!" artwork could sue you for violating their copyright on the artwork. A judge or jury would then evaluate whether your artwork was "derivative" of the "Risko!" artwork. If the court finds that your artwork is derivative, you might have to pay damages and legal costs. There are actually a ton of Risk inspired games already available online, but they seem to stay away from names that sounds anything like "Risk" and anything that looks like the Risk artwork.	Good question. A trade mark simply protects the company's exclusive right to use it to identify their goods and services. (R) means that the trade mark has been registered, TM means that, while not registered, the company is claiming a trade mark. Trade marks do not have to be registered to be enforceable. You are certainly not infringing their trade mark by what you are doing and you are not laying claim to the trade mark, so there is no requirement to use the symbols. Best practice is to use the symbols and identify who they belong to: "Intel and Core are trade marks of xyz".	We can't tell you if you can do that or not, because that would be specific legal advise. You should consult an attorney who specializes in trademark law to get an estimation of how risky it would be to use that name. So I am just giving you a couple general pointers. Names are not protected by copyright, but by trademarks. The purpose of trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion. They are supposed to prevent someone from selling a product under a name which consumers might mistake for official merchandise of someone else. Media companies in particular tend to be very protective of their trademarks, because merchandising is often one of their main sources of revenue. And they don't want to share that revenue with people creating knockoff products. Also, they must fight for their trademark in court, because when they only enforce it selectively, then they risk that a court will consider the mark so widely used already that it is no longer worth protecting. But the show is from the 1950s. Is the trademark still protected after all that time? Maybe. There are registered trademarks and unregistered trademarks. Registered trademarks, which usually but not always are followed by an "®" symbol, need to be renewed in regular intervals. So if someone still pays for the renewal, it might still be a protected trademark. Unregistered trademarks, which usually but not always are followed by a "™" symbol, are protected as long as they are "used in commerce". Which means that if the IP owner of that show still sells products branded as "Winky Dink and you", they can probably still claim unregistered trademark protection. In order to find out, you would need to do your own research or pay your attorney to do a trademark research for you. Are your proposed names even a trademark violation? Perhaps, perhaps not. That's for a court to decide. Personally I think that "Winky Dink and Me" is more infringing than "My Winky Dink Syndrome", because the first is a lot closer to the original name and brand image, giving it a higher likeliness of causing consumers to mistake it for an official "Winky Dink and You" product. But that's an argument you got to make in court. Estimating the chance that the judge will side with you and how much in legal costs it will take you to get to the point where you are even going to have the opportunity to make that argument is a job for your attorney.	When you put a logo that is a legally recognized trademark or servicemark in an acknowledgements section of a document, you are not infringing on the mark. A mark if infringed by someone using it when it is used in a manner that falsely communicates an affiliation with, or an endorsement of, the mark owner of the type of good or service that is protected by the mark. Using a mark in an acknowledgment section doesn't communicate this message (unless, of course, the acknowledgement section falsely says otherwise, which it wouldn't in the case posed by the question). Instead, this use is what is called "nominative use", and this use also expressly acknowledges and reaffirms that someone else owns the mark and has not licensed it to the author of the work containing the acknowledgement. So, this use of these logos does not infringe on the trademarks or servicemarks that protect these logos.	Given that obscurity is not security, the company potentially exposes itself to claims of: Misrepresentation under consumer protection laws, or even fraud (things that you sell are not quite what you claim they are, and you know it) Negligence (people rely on your goods/services to be secure as per your claim but you take this very lightly and they get burnt).	One can certainly remove a trademark from an item that one owns, whether it be a car, cell phone, blender, or computer. Using some other firm's mark would not be trademark infringement if one did not try to sell the item. If the logo was complex enough to be protectable by copyright, copying it might be copyright infringement, but for such personal use it might fall under an exception to copyright, depending on the country. In any case a copyright infringement suit in such a case seems unlikely. For a car, registration is generally required, and must accurately specify the make and model. The same is true for insurance coverage, a falsely stated make or model would be fraud. If one were to sell the "rebranded" item, one would have to make the situation clear to any potential buyer, otherwise this might be some form of fraud.	This overstates the case. A company must pursue infringements, arguably even when it isn't economically sensible in isolation to do so, to prevent its trademark from being diluted. But, that isn't the case "when it's blatantly obvious that there is no infringement." There is no benefit from pursuing cases that aren't even colorable infringements. The notion is similar to adverse possession. If you let someone openly use your real property without your permission, eventually, the squatter becomes its legal owner. Also, as in the case of adverse possession, an alternative to suing someone for infringing is to make their permission non-infringing by writing them a letter expressly authorizing them to use your mark. Permissive, licensed use does not dilute a trademark.
Are there laws disallowing discriminatory pricing based on the customer's employment? Are there any jurisdictions in the US which make it illegal (against the law rather than against some contract or custom) to charge higher prices for categories of customers based on their employment. And I mean overtly. For example, can a restaurant post a sign which demands a $100 entry fee for anyone employed by any city or state government or for anyone who is a doctor or a lawyer? Clearly, customers can lie about their employer, but that's not the point. The point is that if anyone enters and then claims to be in a certain employment situation, then they would create a liability by making that claim.	Washington D.C.'s anti-discrimination laws currently include political affiliation and source of income. Given that the city is home to a wide arrange of political actors from Congressmen/women to lobbyists for various causes, these laws were enacted so various industries may not refuse service to someone based on political affiliation or making money as a lobbyist for a cause they disagree with. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing this elsewhere in the nation, but I'm not sure if there are any other jurisdiction that does this in the U.S. There is talk about enacting protections against discriminatory protections against service for Uniformed First Responders (typically police) though most incidents I'm aware of this kind of discrimination are employees of fast food restaurants that will receive some public backlash that forces company higher ups to discipline the employee. Certain chains of restaurants do offer discounts to members of a certain profession. Mission BBQ is very military and first responder friendly and will offer anyone who can show ID backing up their claims discounts on certain days (Military Service "Birthdays" and September 11. On Memorial Day, they set a table aside (complete with table cloth, candle, dishes, and a single red rose) for those lost in service to the country. Most famously, because their primary food product became so associated, Dunkin' Donuts initially offered free coffee and donuts to cops, giving police their trademark favorite food. This wasn't so much of a promotion as a mutual exchange of services: Cops (especially those working the Graveyard shift) typically enjoy their caffinated and sugary foods for keeping alert, as well as an occasion parking spot to write up reports... Dunkin' Donuts, one of the first chains to run 24/7 service in the U.S. needed some security (especially during the Graveyard shift, when robbers were more likely to cause trouble because of very few witnesses) and found that for the price of a donut and some coffee, they could have the city's finest sitting in their parking lot, sipping coffee and writing reports, for way cheaper than hiring a security service. (This practice was discontinued eventually as police forces saw these gifts as a possible corrupting influence and told officers to pay for their coffee. It wasn't that Dunkin' was bribing cops, so much as it was creating a bad image to the public.)	I want them to give me the promised price ... You can’t make them do this. A business that has posted an incorrect price is not obliged to sell for that price. See https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4466/344 ... and I want them to stop the Misleading advertising You can’t stop them yourself but you can report them to the relevant authorities. These are the ones you linked to: NSW Fair Trading for state law breach and the ACCC for Commonwealth breaches. Misleading pricing is a breach of both state and Federal law. Can you please give a practical advice? No. If you want legal advice, hire a lawyer. What can I do? Where should I complain? See above.	Under the assumption stated, the lecherous millionaire is soliciting an act of prostitution, albeit with an unusually high price. His proposal would be just as illegal (or legal) as an offer of $100 for a sexual encounter. In most jurisdictions it would be a crime. George Bernard Shaw famously asked a woman if she would have sex with him (sleep with him, I think was the wording) for a million pounds, and she hesitated and eventually said "well yes, in that case". He then asked if she would for five pounds. Her reported answer was "Mr Shaw! What do you think I am?!" to which he rejoined "We have settled that, Madam. Now we are haggling about the price." This is much the same case -- legally the amount or nature of the price does not matter. Whether this would also constitute sexual harassment would depend on the specific laws of the local jurisdiction.	In fact, the immigration quotas do not discriminate. The described limit is that "No more than 7 percent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year; no more than 2 percent may issued to any one dependency of any independent country". All countries get the same upper limit. Additionally, anti-discrimination laws are subject matter specific: they exist because Congress passed a law that prohibits using race as a basis for employing a person (which Congress can do because of the Commerce Clause). Congress has not passed any such law pertaining to granting of visas. There is a path of reasoning that could lead to concluding that national quotas violate anti-discrimination laws, based on an "effects test" (disparate impact). It appears to be a fact that an applicant for a visa has a much higher probability of being denied a visa is their country of origin is China or India, as opposed to Sweden, which one could spin into a disparate impact argument. In order for this argument to become the law, there would have to be a case brought to the federal courts to the effect that national quotas are illegal, and as far as I know there has never been such a case. There are no provisions in anti-discrimination legislation that support a disparate impact doctrine in immigration, and pretty clear evidence that it was not congressionally intended since Title 8 Ch. 12 clearly calls for nation-based quotas. A final point: "national origin discrimination" is based on "an individual's, or his or her ancestor's, place of origin; or because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group". A Swedish citizen of "Chinese national origin" is subject to the Swedish quota, not the Chinese quota, thus the discrimination is based on country of citizenship, not national origin.	You're thinking of "unconscionability." In the United States, the general rule is that a contract provision will not be deemed unenforceable for unconscionability unless it is both procedurally and substantively unfair. A provision is considered procedurally unfair if it results from some sort of unfair asymmetry in bargaining positions. This could include situations where a party was acting under duress, had a diminished mental capacity, or unequal experience in the . A provision may be considered substantively unfair if it imposes disproportinately unfavorable terms on one party, perhaps by imposing costs far out of line with market prices, or by allocating all risk to that party. If the agreement is not both procedurally and substantively unconscionable, it won't be voided. So the Google TOS may be procedurally unfair because Google's market position gives it disproportionate bargaining power, but because they don't really impose any serious costs on you, they aren't unconscionable. Similarly, a contract provision requiring you to give me your house if you ever forget to turn off the porch lights at night wouldn't be unconscionable if it was agreed to after lengthy negotiations between our lawyers.	If you are given a paid job, and you do the work, then "consideration has been provided", and 1682 will not apply. As to "referral fees" those sound more like kickbacks, but it depends on what, if anything, the person gets for the fee.	They're not actually billing people different amounts because they have insurance or not. Doctors can pretty much bill a patient whatever they want for their service, similar to how a grocery store can charge whatever they want for their fresh deli cheese. Generally, they charge every single person the same amount. It just gets discounted depending on the insurance you have and how much they're willing to pay. One of the huge benefits of having medical insurance (outside of them paying for your medical expenses) is that they build contracts with service providers, known as their network. Those contracts specify prices (both preset and algorithmic) for certain services that you receive through those providers - the insurance provider will only pay that much and the doctor cannot charge the patient more than what is paid. If a claim was processed through a different insurance provider, the price will likely be different since each provider will have a separately negotiated contract with different price points for different services. It's not a system of "this is the insured price and this is the uninsured price" but rather a system of "this is the contract you established saying you'd accept this much from us for this service." For an uninsured person, though, you have no insurance provider and more importantly no provider contract backing you up. So you'd have to face the full force of the non-discounted price of those services. You'll face the same problem even with insurance if you go out-of-network, where the provider does not have contracts and therefore will only cover up to a certain amount that they would normally pay out for a similar service, requiring you to cover the rest of the amount of whatever the doctor decided to bill for that particular service. Without that insurance contract preventing the doctor from billing you the remainder of what they'd normally charge, you'll likely be slapped with a bill for that remainder. Directing back at your original question: there is no reason that a medical provider would ever legitimately bill someone a different amount because they are insured or not, thus there are no laws preventing it. It's that they already agreed to accept this certain amount from patients covered under this specific insurance. Again, they bill every patient the same amount - the insurance company is just saying "we're giving you this much and the rest of this, yeah that needs to go away." If you've ever looked at an EOB (Explanation of Benefits) from your insurance company, you'll see that the actual billed amount from the doctor is almost always much, much higher than what is actually paid out by you or the insurance, often known as the insurance discount. Maybe you'd rather think of it as a coupon?	Yes, barring any statutory prohibitions against such a rule. I would be very surprised if any existed. They don't exist in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with. Look up the local by-laws to be sure.
It's a federal crime to pay someone to do your kid's homework? I read a news article today that announced that a mother who paid a third party to take classes in lieu of her son got sentenced to prison. I assume this is a federal case because in previous news reports about the same investigation, it was described as an FBI project. The story, however, does not say what the mother was charged with. What exactly was the crime for which she is going to prison? The ubiquitous "wire fraud"?	The article actually does say what she was charged with: The Newport Beach, California, woman pleaded guilty in January to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Searching for "US v Littlefair" quickly turned up a DoJ site with a link to the relevant plea agreement and charging document. This confirms that the charge was that Littlefair conspired [...] to commit wire fraud [...] in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343. All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1349. 18 USC 1343 is the general wire fraud statute, and 18 USC 1349 covers conspiracies.	It isn't necessarily "illegal" (in the sense you are committing a crime) but you may be in violation of a verbal contract (which would fall under tort law). Let's take this a bit further. Perhaps Joe Schmoe gave you his debit card information so that you could make deposits for him and he said you could take $5 out for yourself for the trouble. This is a contract between you and Joe for a service. You can't extend Joe's offer to Jane Doe by saying "here is some debit card information, take $2.50 out for yourself". You have no right to extend your contract with Joe to somebody else. Now specifically for passwords it basically boils down to the same thing. Unless Joe gives you explicit permission to give that to somebody else, you can't just decide to unilaterally give what Joe gave you to somebody else. This may be different if Joe said "here, I'm buying you a subscription to service XYZ because you are a nice guy", this may be construed as a gift which transfers ownership. At that point you have control over what is or isn't done with the account. As another example let's say Joe let you borrow his car. You can't turn around and say to Jane, "here's a car you can use", Joe did not extend the offer to Jane, nor did Joe give you the right to extend the offer to another person. It's a moot point though, in the original context of this question, Netflix does restrict you from sharing your passwords "outside your household". Almost every paid service has some restriction against sharing with others. In the end Netflix may shut off Joe's account and Joe may sue you for damages, but you aren't going to be thrown in jail for this. This would be a civil case (tort) which you may be liable for monetary damages.	It is the use of a "menace" which creates the crime, not the nature or validity of the demand. That's not correct. You've inadvertently missed the other element of the offence: that it's an "unwarranted demand". A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21 For example, I may have reasonable grounds under the Consumer Rights Act to demand a refund for a faulty good. It might be sensible to moderate one's language, e.g. "If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 30 days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs." vs. "If I do not receive the money from you within 30 days of the date of this letter I'll take you to the f***ing cleaners, sunshine." But the language doesn't make the demand unwarranted.	Ark. Code 5-60-120 is very clear that the act of intercepting is a crime. Not just "recording and using", not just "recording", but intercepting in any way. Specifically: It is unlawful for a person to intercept a wire, landline, oral, telephonic communication, or wireless communication, and to record or possess a recording of the communication unless the person is a party to the communication or one (1) of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception and recording. Intercepting is illegal, therefore it is not "okay". Perhaps the "sort of a lawyer" was speaking of the probability of getting caught doing it.	This is going to vary based on jurisdiction. In Wisconsin, the attempt statute covers all felonies, but it doesn't cover all misdemeanors. The statute says: Whoever attempts to commit a felony or a crime specified in s. 940.19, 940.195, 943.20, or 943.74 may be fined or imprisoned or both as provided under sub. (1g), 943.20 is in that list, and it just so happens to be the theft statute, which includes theft via fraud. So Eve is out of luck - her attempted theft is a crime, even if she doesn't try to steal the $2500.01 needed to trigger a felony. The penalty listed for attempts is half the sentence you'd get for the completed crime. But even if this wasn't covered by the attempt statute, once the police start investigating Eve, they'll likely find a victim, or some other crime to charge her with. People who do this sort of thing tend to have a pattern of doing this sort of thing. And I notice she's using the Internet to commit the crime; that means she's involved in systems affecting interstate commerce, and she may be breaking all manner of federal laws in addition to state laws.	Yes, but that doesn't make the theft not theft At the time of the crime, Joe committed theft. The state can prosecute Joe for that theft. Alice's subsequent gift does not change this although it would prevent her from suing for recovery. As a practical matter, if Alice was willing to lie and say that the gift preceded the theft or she had given permission for the item to be taken, this would almost surely create reasonable doubt in any prosecution. However, on a pure "these are the facts" basis, the theft is a theft.	I don't think that's an accurate interpretation of the statement. The key difference between the two scenarios is the defendant's legal assessment of who owns the necklace. In the first he thinks he is the owner and can claim mistake of law; in the second, he he thinks someone else is the owner, so he cannot. To say he believes "the law allows for someone to do whatever they want with lost property even if they know who the rightful owner is" is very different from saying he thinks he's the owner. He doesn't think he's the legal owner, he just thinks he has legal rights that include some rights associated with ownership. So if the defendant's statement had actually been, "I thought I was the owner," that would have been a successful defense when the crime requires depriving the owner of the property. The defense was actually, "I thought I was allowed to deprive the owner of the property," which is an admission of guilt when the crime requires depriving the owner of the property. There are a couple questions here: a. A different crime that did not require intent -- or even required a different kind of intent -- could still lead to a conviction. A legislature is free to define larceny differently, so it could say that anyone who recklessly or negligently deprives another of property is guilty. Or it could say that your state of mind doesn't matter and that depriving another of property is larceny regardless of intent. b. In most cases, the mistake of law defense requires that the defendant honestly believe in the mistake; unlike mistake of fact, it does not require that his belief also be reasonable. Either way, the question of reasonableness would probably be a question for a jury, so a judge wouldn't be able to reject it (except in a bench trial). c. Mistake of law is a potential defense to any crime that requires an intent to do something that requires an assessment of what the law is. So if it's illegal to intentionally have sex with a woman who is not your wife, and you mistakenly believed you were in a legal marriage, sex with your non-wife would not be a crime. It has potentially very broad implications, but keep in mind that in many cases, the mistake a defendant would have to claim would be pretty far out there. If it were illegal to intentionally let anyone under 21 years old into your bar, I guess you could argue that you only let a 20-year-old in because you thought the law started calculating at conception, but I doubt you'll convince a jury. Mistake of law defenses still pop up pretty regularly. Here's one just yesterday from the Tenth Circuit. And this one is a Kansas case where a conviction for carrying a weapon while a felon was overturned because the court wouldn't allow a mistake-of-law defense. The Kansas case, though, uses the more modern definition of mistake of law, which also includes reasonable reliance on official statements from the government. In that case, the felon's parole officer had told him that it was OK to carry a pocketknife, but in reality, the law titled "Criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon" prohibited carrying knives, as well.	"Civic obligations" are based on one's personal moral philosophy, best discussed on Philosophy SE. On the legal front, in the US, there is no (existing) legal basis for simply declaring some random thing to be "top secret", even if it has great potential to be used for evil purposes. If this is research conducted under the umbrella of the Dept. of Defense, it might be classified, but a garage inventor is not subject to the laws regarding classified documents. Congress could pass a law prohibiting promulgating research on time travel, but even if such a law were found to be constitutional (unlikely, on First Amendment grounds, see this), one cannot be penalized for breaking the law before it becomes a law.
Do newer contracts supersede prior ones? If a second contract is signed after a prior one and they fully conflict going against fully being each other and there is no mention done of which contract mainly overrides being the other then in the given being situation which given prevails actually? Content before last given editm : Let us say A and Z sign two contracts. The first contract says that A will pay Z $0.5 to $1 a month. There is no mention of what happens if another contract is signed opposing its terms. Later A and Z sign a contract stating $0.2 will be paid to Z per month and nothing more. There is no mention of the first contract in this one. Which of the two contracts will prevail over the other?	Do newer contracts superceed prior ones? It depends on whether the contracts conflict with each other. That is why many contracts contain language akin to "This contract supersedes and replaces any previous or contemporaneous agreements between the parties". The parties would need to adapt such clause if the contracts are compatible and they intend to maintain them. I have seen many contracts saying tgis "this will happens unless agreed in writing to do something else".However many contracts do not have this in written. The main purpose of that language is to specify that any amendments to the contract shall be in writing. That precaution makes it easier to ascertain whose version of the contract is binding, such as where party A alleges an oral amendment and party B denies that such amendment was agreed upon. Your outline of the agreements between A and Z is incomplete. At the outset, the contracts are not necessarily incompatible: The first contract does not provide a deadline for payment; it is unclear when the 2nd contract will be in force; there is not enough information to discern whether the 2nd contract is an amendment of the 1st one, or an independent agreement involving unrelated considerations; there is no indication that the 2nd contract replaces and supersedes the 1st one; and if Z is the draftsman in both contracts, the doctrine of contra proferentem could favor A's legal position. Therefore, the matter of superseding contracts depends on various factors.	TOS are a contract. If you have a contract through the App, you have incorporated the TOS as a term of your contract. Contracts mean what they say they do, what you are thinking of as "basic contract law" is actual just an ordinary and customary term that people in your industry usually make a part of the contract, not contract law itself.	The old terms apply ... ... until the landlord gives notice and ends the lease - then the tenant has to get out. This is not inconsistent with the requirement to “execute all revised rental agreements upon request” - unless and until new terms have been agreed, there are no “revised rental agreements”, once there are, the tenant can be requested to (and must) execute them. There seems to be a misapprehension that this term gives the landlord a unilateral right to change the terms - it doesn’t. However, if the landlord wanted to formalize the month-to-month arrangement that is created under the old lease with new documents (or any other mutually agreed arrangement), then the tenant is obliged to sign it.	No Such a contract would be an attempt to evade the court order mandating a given level of support, and would not be enforceable. However it is not the case that no contract can deal with Child Custody or Child Support. A couple could surely make a contract to pay more than a court had ordered, that in no way violates the order. A contract could specify a default or initial amount of support, to be paid until and unless a court orders a different amount. Similarly a contract could specify initial custody, pending any court decision to the contrary, but it cannot preclude the court from making an order in accordance with the best interests of the child.	The fact that you're not a native speaker of English doesn't alter the legal situation. If you literally had no understanding of English but for some reason you signed a piece of paper, then you might argue that there was no agreement in the first place, but obviously you do speak some English. Most people don't actually understand what contracts mean (on both sides). Contracts are still enforced, based on what the contract says. The move-in data is proposed, not firm, and it even indicates what the charges are if your circumstances change and the dates have to change (whereas is their circumstances change, they wouldn't have a basis for charging extra). It also does say that there will be no refund if you change your mind. So the piece of paper says "No refund". The problem seems to be that there's an "agent" whose statements you relied on, who is ultimately responsible for this problem, and s/he implied that you could get a refund. It's not clear what kind of "agent" this is (is he working for you, or for the owners?). You'd have a somewhat different legal basis depending on which it is, but you could sue someone in either event, assuming that you could actually persuade the court that you were given false information which you relied on. The statement "they will refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is false; the statement "they may refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is true. If the latter was the statement that you relied on, then you knew (or should have known) that that isn't a promise, it's just a guess, and if you read the piece of paper you know that it's a promise with no basis. So I would say it comes down to establishing what promise was made to you. Arguing that the agent "made" you sign isn't going to get you anywhere (unless you can prove actual coersion).	Fun one! First on the question of whether it matters if the agreement is written, I don't imagine it would make a difference in most of the US. We only require written contracts for agreements that meet certain requirements, those include contracts over a certain dollar amount, contracts involving the sale of land and contracts that cannot be completed within the year. Depending on the facts of your hypo, the writing requirement may be in play, but either way, it doesn't really make the situation more or less interesting; it's not a unique issue to this sort of contract. Second, the baseline assumption is that people can form legally binding contracts. The question is, whether something forbids the sort of contract you have in mind. I can think of a few things: It would be reasonably challenging to define what conduct is forbidden by the agreement. But that is merely a challenge not a road block. You could easily come up with a laundry list of forbidden acts to accomplish your result. Two people cannot contract to force the behavior of a third person, barring special circumstance. But again this isn't important since it's just a matter of drafting. In other words the contract probably would not say Juliet cannot go to the movies with Romeo, rather it would say Romeo cannot go the movies with Juliet. Even drafted in the less ideal way, he operative concept is whether the father could enforce a breach. So, the contract COULD be worded to say "If Juliet attends a movie while Romeo is present, Romeo must pay the father $xx dollars." Most importantly a party cannot form a contract that violates public policy. This is sometimes referred to "legality of objects", as in the object/goal of the contract must be legal. Contracts for prostitution, or the sale of a child (i.e. certain adoption contracts), or illegal products, would likely trip over this category. Here however, I can't readily think of a public policy basis to challenge the contract. Surely (some) states have stated a public policy favoring marriage, but it would likely be a challenge to contend the contract to not date (or not marry) was void because of such a policy. I can't think of any reason that the father couldn't enforce this sort of agreement. Finally, even if the contract was not enforceable, it's highly likely that Romeo could not simply take the money and breach. There are basis to demand return of the money even if no enforceable agreement exists. I am not your lawyer. Seek counsel from a lawyer in your area before taking any action. This answer is provided without research and for purely academic reasons. I have no special knowledge of this area of law.	There are two cases to distinguish: information that the other party does not want to give without court order, and information that the other party may not give without court order. Only the former case matters, of course, since the latter by definition requires a court order. So, if the other party is legally capable of giving the information, but it's commercially not sensible for them, then you'll need to sweeten the deal. And that's business, not a legal question anymore. In other words: there's no legal instrument that's at the same time equal to a court order but also different from one. When you need a court order, there's no alternative to a court order.	Yes, that would, or at least could, be a legal contract. The key thing that makes a contract between two parties is the agreement, the intention to enter into a binding contract. The written words are only evidence of their agreement, and the specifics of what is agreed to. An oral (spoken) contract can be valid and binding (although in some cases the law requires a written contract). Electronic contracts do not need to be done through a site such as docusign, although there are advantages to using such a process. A typed signature will be legally binding if it is intended to represent agreement to the contract. The US federal e-sign law says that no specific technology is required to make a valid electronic signature. See What gives e-signatures legal standing/force in the United States? and https://law.stackexchange.com/a/79670/17500 for more details. That the contract words are copied will also not impair the validity of a contract. Many bushiness use form contracts. Many lawyers create new contracts by putting together parts of old contracts that served their purpose. The person sending the offer and proposed contract must make sure that the other party understands that this is to be a binding contract, and agrees to the use of an electronic signature, and agrees to the contract as a whole. It would be a good idea if a bit more detail were included than in your example. Must the agency find people acceptable to the client? Haw soon must it find them? How much must the client pay? How soon must it pay? A good contract will specify such details.
Copyright in video games I noticed in Assassin's Creed : Odyssey that they implemented a feature very similar to Shadow of Mordor's nemesis with mercenaries . By that I mean automatically and randomly generated ennemies with weakness and complex features. This IGN article seems to confirm this hypothesis : Game Director at Ubisoft Quebec, Scott Phillips, says the team “Wanted to have a system where the world was constantly living and constantly challenging” players, so they created a dynamic system of mercenaries within the world of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, somewhat similar to that of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system.Each mercenary has strengths and weaknesses and unique attributes ranging from animal companions and gear to high skill with a specific weapon, and while there are many hand-crafted mercenaries that can be found around Greece,they’re also randomly generated from a pool of modular fight moves and stories as a way to offer a more elite enemy for players to fight. I was surprised to hear someone from Ubisoft admitting that the feature was similar to what someone else did in a previous game. I found this American Bar Association article which explains that game rules are not copyrightable : Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act states: “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”1 In using the word “or,” the statute lists these exclusions—ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries—disjunctively. Thus, each has independent force and effect. This means that neither ideas nor functional elements—such as procedures, processes, systems, or methods of operation—are copyrightable. I won't lie, it is not clear to me even after reading the whole article what is copyrightable and what is not. I decided to look up one of the very best rip-off in history with Instagram's story system and I learnt that since IG's and Snapchat's story system were visually different, it was legally OK for IG to use it. Could someone shed some light on the differences between software and video game copyrights, or globally anything that could help me understand how copyright works in the video game industry? Specifically whether it is "features" or "code" or something else that is usually copyrighted?	Video game copyrights are really not significantly different from book or movie copyrights. One of the most basic principles of copyright is that one cannot copyright an idea only the words and images used to express an idea. The question quotes 17 USC 102(b) which is the US law establishing this distinction. A Similar plot point or device is not a copyright infringement. Such common tropes as "budding romance obstructed by differing values" is not protected by copyright. Neither, I would think is this device of auto-generated characters in a video game. One cannot lawfully copy or closely imitate the actual words or images or sounds in someone else's protected work (without permission). That is the essence of copyright. (There are limited exceptions such as fair use / fair dealing.) What complicates this and confuses many is the concept of a derivative work. When a character or setting is described in significant detail, a detailed, point-by-point imitation of that setting may be enough to make the newer work "based on" the older work, and thus a derivative work. Unauthorized sequels are often held to be derivative works, for example, or unauthorized "guest appearances" in which a well-know or clearly established character from one work is used in another. If a modern detective goes into partnership with Sam Spade, say, or if Spiderman should be an important supporting character in a newly written novel. Similarly a new fantasy set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth or a new comic in Gotham City would probably be derivative. One of the things protected by copyright is the right to create or authorize derivative works, and courts have held that use of a distinctive character an make a work derivative. But for this to apply the character must be distinctive and recognizable. A general type, such as a detective or superhero (or a large city) is not enough; there must be sufficient imitation to make it clearly the use of a character or setting from a copyrighted work, with a detailed, point-by-point similarity would be needed. A game feature such as this "mercenaries" concept would not make another work using it a derivative work, or at least I don't think it would. But ultimately such decisions are made by a court when and if a copyright holder sues an alleged infringer. Whether a work is derivative or not is a very fact-based decision, and so the exact specifics of the case may well matter. If one is considering imitating some general feature of a previous work, it may be wise to consult a lawyer with IP expertise. I am confident that a major game developer or book publisher would have a staff lawyer to review such questions.	Expression is tied up with fixation. Copyright subsists in a work that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression from which they can be reproduced, perceived, or communicated. 17 USC 102 This expression is protected, not the idea. However, copyright infringement can occur even when there is not an exact copy. First, courts use a substantial similarity standard to determine if infringement has occurred. Second, when a character or plot is sufficiently developed, taking that character or that plot can be infringement, even if not expressed in the exact same manner. "We do not doubt that two plays may correspond in plot closely enough for infringement [...] the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly." Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930) Some characters or plot elements are so common to a genre that they are either not considered "original" enough to get copyright protection, or can be taken by others without being considered infringement. This is the scènes à faire doctrine. "Stock scenes and hackneyed character types that "naturally flow from a common theme"—are considered "ideas," and therefore are not copyrightable. But as plots become more intricately detailed and characters become more idiosyncratic, they at some point cross the line into "expression" and are protected by copyright." Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F. 3d 1257 - Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit 2001 See Amanda Schreyer's An Overview of Legal Protection for Fictional Characters: Balancing Public and Private Interests for many more cases and examples of the idea-expression dichotomy in action with respect to fictional characters.	Yes That is very simple - copyright is an exclusive right that starts automatically with the creation of a copyrightable work. The default situation is that the author has an exclusive rights to make copies of the work and derivative works. If the code is published somewhere by the author but the author has not said anything about its licence or copyrights, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. They have the right to just publish it somewhere, others don't. If you try to contact the author and they don't say anything and ignore you, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. If it's impossible to find the author (e.g. I have certain cases with literary works where it's not clear who inherited the rights after the author died), then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. That being said, certain forms of reuse (recreating ideas, learning from them, etc) would not be a copyright violation. But in general the situation with the author not saying anything is almost the same as the author explicitly stating "all rights reserved, you're not allowed to do anything, violators will be shot" - some specific uses are allowed even against author's wishes (e.g. 'fair use' clauses) but everything that needs their permission really does need their explicit permission.	What you are missing is that the original copyright holder can give permission to make derivative works with strings attached. There is no automatic right to derive something from a copyrighted work. Those strings could include constraints on what you create in the process of making the derivative work. Yes it is a string limiting what you can do with something you own, but you would have been warned in the license and had the choice to start from scratch. People do create work-alike software with no copyright strings using two teams and a "clean room" design process. It is a lot harder than modifying something another person has developed. Also, law and someone's understanding of morals need not be aligned at all. And, in patent law, just creating something all by yourself from scratch does not give you ownership. If someone else did it first and got a patent you can't make the item you might think you own. IP law is complex and looking for "fundamentals" may not get you anywhere.	IF part of your code and data is non-open-source, you can't release this software under the MIT license. However, from what I know, CS:GO uses real-life weapons, and their names aren't protected by copyright. Weapon stats aren't copyrightable either. With skin names, you should be safe as well, since there isn't enough (or any) lore around them to establish them as literary works. However, if you are using any in-game descriptions or images, they are copyrighted content and can't be legally copied without permission from Valve. Which might be easy to obtain by writing them.	That is going to depend on the details of exactly who does what, and how much is written down. It will also depend on the agreements between the people involved, which may well be verbal or implied. I don't know of any actual cases where such a dispute came to a copyright lawsuit. As copyright suits largely deal with financial harms and damages, and in most individual game there is little or no financial impact, a suit might be unlikely in most cases. But lets look at some possibilities. In the typical case, the game organizer or DM creates a setting and outline for a series of sessions. This is likely to include maps, descriptions of rooms or locations, descriptions of artifacts, descriptions of non-player characters, locations and types of monsters and other hazards, and other such background. This is probably mostly or fully written down (which includes being recorded on some sort of computer file.) It is therefore protected by copyright, and the initial owner of that copyright is its creator, probably the DM. (In some cases the DM uses a published "module" and makes only limited changes, in which case the DM would only hold copyright on those changes, if anything.) Then the players create characters, in a process that may be supervised by the DM, and possibly participated in by other players. Each player would probably hold copyright to the description of his or her own character, but the DM or other players might be considered to be co-authors of that, depending on their degree of participation. Then the players start having playing sessions, each player controlling the actions of a character (or perhaps more than one), and the DM more-or-less controlling the rest of the world, guided by the pre-created maps and descriptions. Some of those will be shared with the players, or modified (partial) versions of them will be. Events of the sessions may or may not be written down (or otherwise preserved in a tangible form). If they are not, there is no copyright on them. If they are, there is a copyright, and all the players and the DM are probably co-authors. Now lets look and agreements and ownership. The DM probably owns his or her notes, S/he has at least permitted players to use any that have been revealed to the players. The group has probably agreed (implicitly) to co-create the adventure as it happens. There probably are no written agreements about any of this. If a dispute arises, the DM is legally free to withhold the campaign notes, maps, etc that have not been shared with the players. Whether s/he can legally demand that the players not further use the parts of the setting that had been previously revealed is not so clear. It would depend on what the agreement between the DM and the players said; on, in effect, what license the DM had granted to the players. And since there was probably no written agreement, and quite likely not even an explicit verbal agreement, it would depend on what a court found they had agreed on by implication, based on their actions, and the usual customs of such groups. Sorting that out would be loads of fun. It might involve significant legal fees. The DM is unlikely to hold any exclusive copyright on the previous events of the campaign. Most likely everyone who participates would be a co-author of those. Unless there is a specific agreement to the contrary, any co-author of any shared work has the right to use, and license the use of, the shared work, although s/he must account to the others for any profits. The DM certainly has no legal right to forbid the same group from playing together with a different DM (absent a very improbable contract giving such a right). The DM can only control the maps and notes s/he created independently. If a professional DM is involved, as a comment mentions is possible, it might be more likely that an explicit wri9tten contract between the players and the DM will have been agreed to, If so, its terms will control, whatever they are, unless they are somehow contrary to law. Such a pro DM might be more defensive of copyrights, but would not have any more rights than any DM, except as a specific contract might have provided them. I doubt that the courts will see many actual lawsuits over such issues.	The details of this specific matter are not clear because it appears that Mane6 relented in response to a cease and desist letter, rather than be dragged through court. Since we are not privy to the letter from Hasbro, the best we can do is guess based on the degrees of freedom that exist under the law. The claim that this game was a "parody" is an affirmative defense that Mane6 would have to raise in response to a copyright infringement claim (we don't know if there were also trademark infringement claims in the letter). Then the jury would look at the arguments of the two sides to determine whether this was really "fair use", performing the "balancing act" to see how much of the original work was copied, how transformative the derived work is, what the effect on market would be. The lines drawn for making these judgments are not bright. A quick scan of a successor product Them's Fightin' Herds suggest that someone thought the artwork was too substantially similar to the Hasbro product, that is, the fighting pony version was judged to not be transformative enough. Since it didn't go to court, we'll never know.	What SE can do is controlled primarily by the Terms of Service. What most matters is the section on Subscriber Content, which says: You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC-BY-SA), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you... This means that you cannot revoke permission for Stack Overflow to publish, distribute, store and use such content and to allow others to have derivative rights to publish, distribute, store and use such content. The CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license terms are explained in further detail by Creative Commons, but you should be aware that all Public Content you contribute is available for public copy and redistribution, and all such Public Content must have appropriate attribution. This part has not changed: the purported license is still "CC-BY-SA", and the TOS does not explicitly specify a version. What apparently has changed in the relevant section is one "helpful information" link, which now points to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. So the interesting question arises whether that would constitute an unpermitted post-hoc change in the terms by which SE has license to my older stuff. This matter came up in a reviled Meta question; as I pointed out, the TOS also included a merger clause that This Agreement (including the Privacy Policy), as modified from time to time, constitutes the entire agreement between You, the Network and Stack Exchange with respect to the subject matter hereof. This Agreement replaces all prior or contemporaneous understandings or agreements, written or oral, regarding the subject matter hereof. Because of that, the TOS is self-contained and stuff found on other web pages are not part of the agreement. This in itself is a bit of a problem because you can't both say "we're not bound by stuff outside of this page" and say "the specific terms of the license are outside this page". That particular clause is gone, but there is an analog in the current TOS: These Public Network Terms represent the entire agreement between you and Stack Overflow and supersede all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals, and representations with respect to the public Network or Services or Products contemplated hereunder. Furthermore, the TOS contains the following "we can change it" clause: Stack Overflow reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to modify or replace these Public Network Terms, as our business evolves over time and to better provide Services and Products to the Stack Overflow community, or to change, suspend, or discontinue the public Network and/or any Services or Products at any time by posting a notice on the public Network or by sending you notice via e-mail or by another appropriate means of electronic communication. I assume but do not know for a fact that a similar clause existed in prior versions of the TOS. So I conclude that the change is legal.
When did U.S. tax code limit the personal Capital Loss Deduction to $3000? Beginning in the late 1970s, after capital losses offset capital gains dollar for dollar, the allowable deduction on the IRS 1040 form for capital losses coming from Schedule D was $3000. The same is still true today. When did the limit on capital losses become $3000? The second part of the originally posed question has been re-posted on the Politics SE where some had iterated it is better suited: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/61274/more-than-40-years-later-1040-capital-losses-are-still-capped-at-3000-politi	The Internal Revenue Code of 1954, all 1024 pages of it, was enacted in the course of a year, basically rebooting and rewriting the tax code, contains §1211 in in 68A Stat. 321: (b) OTHER TAXPAYERS.—In the case of a taxpayer other than a corporation, losses from sales or exchanges of capital assets shall be allowed only to the extent of the gains from such sales or ex-changes, plus the taxable income of the taxpayer or $1,000, whichever is smaller. For purposes of this subsection, taxable income shall be computed without regard to gains or losses from sales or exchanges of capital assets and without regard to the deductions provided in section 151 (relating to personal exemptions) or any deduction in lieu thereof. If the taxpayer elects to pay the optional tax imposed by section 3, "taxable income" as used in this subsection shall be read as "adjusted gross income". This was rewritten in 1969, 83 Stat. 642, only 256 pages, to say (1) IN GENERAL.—In the case of a taxpayer other than a corporation, losses from sales or exchanges of capital assets shall be allowed only to the extent of the gains from such sales or exchanges, plus (if such losses exceed such gains) whichever of the following is smallest: " (A) the taxable income for the taxable year, "(B) $1,000, or "(C) the sum of— "(i) the excess of the net short-term capital loss over the net long-term capital gain, and " (ii) one-half of the excess of the net long-term capital loss over the net short-term capital gain. "(2) MARRIED INDIVIDUALS.—In the case of a husband or wife who files a separate return, the amount specified in paragraph (1) (B) shall be $500 in lieu of $1,000. In 1976, Pub. L. 94-455, 1401(a,b) makes a further amendment, by replacing "$1,000" with "the applicable amount" and then defining the applicable amount for 1977 and for years thereafter: (2) APPLICABLE AMOUNT.—For purposes of paragraph (1) (B), the term 'applicable amount' means— "(A) $2,000 in the case of any taxable year beginning in 1977; a n d " (]3) $3,000 in the case of any taxable year beginning after 1977. So it has been that way since 1978.	The law you cite says that the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request That includes specific individual returns. That it was intended to include such returns is made clear by the provisions restricting identifiable individual data to executive session. Whether this ought to be the law might well be debated. Whether the House ought to use this law as a way to get at Trump's returns could also be debated. Those are matters of politics, or perhaps ethics, not law. Whether some other provision of law overrides this provision in this case is pretty clearly going to be argued in court, and we will see what the decision is. I won't try to predict it here.	Contributing cash to a company is not tax deductible It’s either a capital contribution or a loan; either way it’s not an expense deductible to the individual (nor income to the company).	The company pays you a salary A. They need to withhold some amount B of that to give to the IRS. Now, if they pay you only C and withhold amount D that is based on that amount, and then make a separate tax-deductible donation E, that means the IRS does get not only an amount D that is smaller than B, but also the company can deduct E (in part) from their own taxes. As a result, that sounds like tax evasion on the face. However, if they still pay you A, withhold B (the tax on the whole amount), and payout C to you as well as the donation as part of your salary, that could possibly be a legal way - though you might want to consult your tax consultant.	Shouldn't the village compensate me or him for allowing the sale with wrong measurement or for changing the rule? No. It is very common for local governments to make changes to zoning ordinances, building codes, etc, that have the effect of restricting the way that property can be used. In most cases this is not considered to be a "taking" for the purposes of the Fifth Amendment, even if it reduces the value of the property, and the government does not have to compensate the property owner. See for instance Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255 (1980). Roughly speaking, the Takings Clause only applies if the regulations are so restrictive that the land cannot really be used at all. Here you are still perfectly able to use the existing house, and it sounds like you can even build an addition - you just can't build in the exact way that you want. You'll either need to design your addition to comply with the current setback rules, or see if you can get the village to approve a variance.	I think you vastly exaggerate the difficulty. Basically: when a user registers, ask for their address, including country, as well as a phone number (including country code, which you may validate via SMS for instance). This should give you the 2 pieces of information that help you determine the country In the case of the UK, HMRC says: Support for MOSS registered micro-businesses UK micro-businesses, that are below the current UK VAT registration threshold and are registered for the VAT Mini One Stop Shop (VAT MOSS), may use best judgment and base their ‘customer location’ VAT taxation and accounting decisions on a single piece of information, such as the billing address provided by the customer or information provided to them by their payment service provider. based on the country, use the standard VAT rate for that country. The difficulty here is to track when those rates change, but your accountant should be able to keep up with that. There is very little chance any special reduced rate would apply to such services, and in any case, no tax authority will complain if you apply the standard rate instead of the reduced one! then declare everything online to your local MOSS (you don't need to register with each tax authority! You can, but you don't need to). In the case of a micro-business, this should be more than enough to comply with the rules.	The Limitations Act of 1980 and its predecessors apply to civil actions brought by private individuals. It is not a criminal statute of limitations. I will answer with regard to civil cases, rather than criminal ones. Section 40 of the Limitations Act of 1980 incorporates by reference a schedule of transition provisions that govern this question, and when a cause of action is not governed by the 1980 Act it usually defaults to the predecessor 1939 Act. The problem is both bigger than just the fraudulent breach of trust unlimited statute of limitations under Section 21 of the Act, since the deadline only runs from when an action accrues that can be long after the act giving rise to the claim actually happened, and smaller, because the act (and also its predecessor 1939 act) allow statutes of limitations to be extended for equitable reasons under certain circumstances. The 1881 Limitations Act, Section 27 had an exception to the general rule for concealed fraud tolling the statute so long as it was concealed, which probably carried over into the 1939 Act. Section 9 of the transition provisions states in the relevant part that: (1)Nothing in any provision of this Act shall— (a)enable any action to be brought which was barred by this Act or (as the case may be) by the Limitation Act 1939 before the relevant date; The 1939 Act limitations ran from when the act was committed, not when it was discovered, until the 1963 Act changes that. A full analysis of the breach of trust issue is found in this law review article.	You are mistaken: The U.S. governments (both federal, and states that impose income tax) assert a right to tax both: Income earned within their jurisdiction (e.g., "on their soil"), and Income earned by citizens (or residents, in the case of states). So it is perfectly legal for a resident U.S. citizen to operate a foreign business entity, earn profit, pay himself, and even bank the money overseas. However, a resident in such a situation would be in violation of tax law if he failed to report his interest in the foreign entity and his earnings, as prescribed by the IRS, on his tax filings.
Patents in video game Following my previous post about copyrights, I now seek information about patents in video game. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization : A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application. As stated by the same source, several condition must be met to obtain one, including : The invention must show an element of novelty; The invention must involve an “inventive step” or “non-obvious”, which means that it could not be obviously deduced by a person having ordinary skill in the relevant technical field; The invention must be capable of industrial application, meaning that it must be capable of being used for an industrial or business purpose beyond a mere theoretical phenomenon, or be useful. Its subject matter must be accepted as “patentable” under law. In many countries, scientific theories, aesthetic creations, mathematical methods, plant or animal varieties, discoveries of natural substances, commercial methods, methods for medical treatment (as opposed to medical products) or computer programs are generally not patentable. I believe the three first conditions are rather obvious, while the last seems to be much more complicated. What is the difference between something patentable and something that is not ? How difficult would it be then for a video game corporation to patent an idea, as suggested in my previous post ? I would be very interested in any information regarding this subject, as I don't really understand how this has not already became a war in the video game industry.	Yes you can patent video games in the U.S. The quote from international law is not fully applicable to the U.S. In the U.S. there is no requirement for industrial applicability or being a technical solution to a technical problem The USPTO has several classes aspects of video games might fall into one is CLASS 463, AMUSEMENT DEVICES: GAMES 1 INCLUDING MEANS FOR PROCESSING ELECTRONIC DATA (e.g., computer/video game, etc.): 2 . In a game including a simulated projectile (e.g., bullet, missile, ball, puck, etc.): 5 .. Simulated projector with diverse interactive target: The patentablity of games in the US has become more difficult after the SCOTUS Alice decision. There is a very detailed answer on Ask Patents. This is a good article on the patenting board games. However it was before Alice.	Copyright is the reason Microsoft owns the copyright to the Minecraft code. That gives them exclusive rights to make copies and derivative works. A mod is a derivative work. Further, copyright is near universal because of the Berne Convention, the countries in blue all respect each other’s copyright: So, you can only make a derivative work if you are Microsoft, have Microsoft’s permission, or fall into one of the copyright exemptions which aren't relevant here. The EULA is the permission Microsoft gives and they set the terms on what you can and can’t do. If you make a mod without following the terms of the EULA then that is a copyright violation and gives Microsoft the ability to sue you and prevent you from distributions the mod. Copyright in an infringing derivative varies by jurisdiction but in the USA, there is no copyright in the work - so, yes, Microsoft do not own it (but they can prevent its distribution) but neither do you. Copyright laws allow Microsoft to not only prevent you from distributing the infringing mod, they can prevent anyone from distributing it - that’s how the get people like Patreon to shut down accounts.	Trade secrets must be kept secret. There are plenty of intellectual properties that can't be kept secret. The most obvious ones would be a writer, musician or composer - the whole reason for their work is to publish it and make it available to as many people as possible. How could that possibly be a trade secret? Similar with trademarks. The whole point of a trademark is to be widely visible. And there are patents. Here the situation is different. Before patent law, inventors kept their inventions indeed secret. Then people realised that this secrecy is in the way of progress. So patent law was created, which gives an inventor rights beyond those of a trade secret, at the cost of having to publish their invention. Even if you invent today, you have the choice of keeping your invention secret and relying on trade secret law, or patenting it and relying on patent law. Again, some inventions are clearly visible. When the bycicle was invented, it was clearly visible to everyone and couldn't be kept secret.	At least in theory an end user could be sued for infringing on a patent, especially a method claim. Given the cost of a patent lawsuit, this strikes me as extremely unlikely to happen though, unless the user in question were an extremely large company, or something on that order. Theoretically, the only difference between open-source software and proprietary software would be that availability of the source code makes it easier to prove use of a patent in open-source software. Releasing the software as open-source doesn't confer any immunity from patent law or anything like that though. Realistically, however, the chances of being sued for infringement if you're basically giving away the software in question are fairly remote. It rarely makes sense for a patent holder to spend millions of dollars on a lawsuit where they stand no chance of even recovering their cost (but no, that certainly should not be taken as legal advice that you're free to infringe on patents, or anything similar--in fact, none of this should be taken as legal advice at all). If you can actually prove that a technique was published or publicly known and used (e.g., in a product that was offered for sale) well before the patent was applied for, the patent is probably invalid (and if proven so in court, the case would normally be dismissed with prejudice, which basically means the patent holder wouldn't be able to sue anybody else for infringement of that patent). I'd note, however, that in my experience this is much less common than most people imagine--many look at (for example) the title of a patent, and assume it lacks originality because it refers to some well-known technique, and ignore the claims where it details the precise differences between the previously known technique and what the patent really covers. Just for example, the EFF used to have a web page talking about a (now long-since expired) patent on how to draw a cursor on screen. In an apparent attempt at scaring the unwary, they showed code they claimed infringed in the patent--despite the fact that the patent's "background of the invention" specifically cited the technique they showed as being previously known, and not covered by the patent.	The film you want to base your game on is probably covered by copyright and likely trademarks. For purposes of the question I'll assume it's not in the public domain (if the film was made before 1926 for example). If you used the film to create your game, it would be a derivative work. Derivative works require the consent of the copyright owner. Distributing it without their permission would leave you open to lawsuits for copyright infringement, unjust enrichment, and possibly others. Fair use/fair dealing likely doesn't apply here. This isn't criticism, parody, or a transformative use. You may be able to get away with this by flying under the radar if you don't distribute it for profit or on any large scale. Some studios are more litigious than others and some accept that leaving fan works alone is better than the bad publicity that comes with shutting them down. However, this is entirely reliant on the goodwill of the studio. The legal way to do this is to get in touch with the copyright holder and ask permission. This may be in return for something else- usually money, royalties, and/or some creative control over your work. This may not be feasible though as a large company may simply ignore such requests from random people. Note that a lack of a response in this case is not permission.	Does a situation like this constitute breach of contract and/or a violation of advertising laws? No. There is not enough information that would lead to a finding of either. It is unclear how customers would be allegedly affected (if at all) by the release of a product at a different store, let alone where the goods or services at issue are digital and require no physical presence at a venue or premise. Except for very specific factual circumstances, a change of sales venue would hardly be cognizable as deceptive or unfair practice. Also, prior to purchasing or reserving a game, there is no contract between the public and the developer/supplier. Potential customers typically are not entitled to a specific performance by the developer. Even if [Phoenix Point] supporters' decision were provably based on the prospect of release at Steam, your description nowhere reflects that there was a mutually conscious exchange (or promise of an exchange) of considerations involving the parties' support of a game and the counterparty's release of the game at a specific venue. Absent that meeting of the minds, either party's reliance or expectation on the other is irrelevant. Generally speaking, the sole cruciality of either party's motives does not create legal obligations.	I've answered this in the context of US patent law, but similar principles apply elsewhere in the world. As stated in 35 USC 271, "whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent". Thus, a patent provides the patent owner with the right to exclude others from performing these actions, and the right to sue anyone who does perform these actions (both to stop them from infringing the patent, and to collect monetary damages for their infringement). Creating an infringing product and then licensing it under the GPL (or any other scheme) does not change the fact that it infringes a patent. 35 USC 271 also states that "Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer". This means that, even if the creator of the infringing product does not perform any infringing acts in the US, the act of offering it for free use could be construed as induced infringement of the patent, and they could still be sued for that infringement.	You can't patent an algorithm, but I'll assume you are talking about the case where you have patented a machine or process that uses an algorithm, but that adds significantly more, and that the software being distributed implements much of this process. Courts might find an implied licence or promissory estoppel when distributing software under an open source licence that doesn't explicitly exclude patent licencing as part of its terms. It would be prudent to state your patent rights and explicitly exclude a patent licence if you intend to enforce your patent rights. As an example, this software implicates a patent , so they allow "permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for educational, research, and non-commercial" purposes. Users that want to use the software commercially need to contact the authors who also happen to be the patent owners, and I assume would negotiate a patent licence at that point.
If someone commits a crime in one state and then flees to another state, will he become safe? If one person commits a crime in one american state and then goes fleeing to another state does that mean he is safe?Can one state refuse extradiction to another or must all states help enforce the laws of another state?Will there be any involvement of federal government?What the tthing is that to what extent will things become changed if the crime is not encoded or is exempt in federal law mainly ? Content before last edit: Let us say there is an offence Z that is punishable with a fine of upto $500000 in state 1 of the United States of America and the accused(who is accused with the crime Z) flees to stateb 2where the act Z is perfectly legal can State 1 successfuly punish the person who does crime Z meaning is intrastate extradiction possible?What if federal laws says nothing about it (Z) is it still punishable? Let's say there is an offence Z. A person commits that offence in state 1, which gives a $500000 fine for it, and then flees to state 2 which explicitly says Z is not a crime. Federal law does not a speak on it. Will the criminal still be fined?	At half a million I would expect it is qualifies as "felony or other crime" - the U.S. Constitution (Article IV Section 2) requires that: A person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.	Yes, a crime is committed as is a tort. The exact crime would vary from state to state. The most common description of this crime and tort would be "fraud" but the way that criminal conduct is allocated between particular offenses in states varies considerable. Theft (in jurisdictions where it is broadly defined) and shoplifting (in jurisdictions where it is a distinct offense) would be two other plausible offenses.	Yes. This is legal, even though it is highly unlikely. There were very few, if any, instances of the federal pardon power being used this way historically, but it could happen, and President Trump, while he was in office, intimated that he might use the pardon power in this fashion. Realistically, it would be easier for the President to prevent someone from being prosecuted in the first place if the crime took place during his term, but he might pardon someone who committed the crime under a previous administration. The fact pattern in the question: “don’t be surprised if I pardon anyone that puts to death repeat heroin and fentanyl dealers dealing in amounts larger than 50 pounds” doesn't sound very morally palatable. But consider a slight variant of it which is much more plausible. Suppose that while running for office a Presidential candidate says: don't be surprised if I pardon someone who was convicted of homicide in a previous administration for killing someone who had been using them as a sex slave in a human trafficking network, or killing someone who was in the process of raping them shortly before their divorce became final but was not allowed to assert a self-defense argument at trial because marital rape was legal at the time. Now arguably that's different, because it doesn't induce someone to commit a future crime. But the President has broad discretion to make policy to de-emphasize certain kinds of criminal prosecutions in any case while in office even without the pardon power, and generally, this is not a basis for having a special prosecutor appointed at the federal level since there is no individualized conflict of interest. Of course, the U.S. President can only pardon someone from a federal crime and can't pardon state crimes or criminal convictions from other countries. So, even if the President pardoned someone of a federal crime in this situation, the state in which the murders took place could prosecute the individual for murder unimpeded (constitutional double jeopardy considerations would also not bar a state prosecution following the federal prosecution). Indeed, the vast majority of murder prosecutions are made under state law, and there are very few murders that take place which are beyond the jurisdiction of any U.S. state and any foreign country, that are in the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and covered by a federal homicide statute, in any year. As noted by @hszmv in a comment to another answer: Federal Murder charges are a thing and can be prosecuted, but are normally reserved for murders that either involve federal government employees (especially if they are murdered because of the duties the performed in the course of their duty or the status as a federal employee) OR murders that occur on Federally Owned Property OR the Murder involved crossing state lines OR is in U.S. Jurisdiction but not in a territory or state jurisdiction (usually applies to some uninhabited territorial islands or U.S./International Waters). Further, a pardon would not prohibit the victim's family for suing the murderer for wrongful death, and indeed, probably wouldn't prohibit them from using the murder conviction that was pardoned to conclusively establish liability in a civil case under the doctrine of collateral estoppel (I haven't researched that highly specific and technical civil procedure issue, however, but even if that wasn't possible, the murder trial transcript would be admissible in the civil case). A civil judgement for wrongful death was famously obtained against O.J. Simpson by the victim's family after O.J. Simpson was acquitted in a criminal murder trial. This tactic would really only be helpful to a prospective defendant with respect to cases where there is not a parallel criminal offense under state law.	Federal crimes and State crimes are different crimes - double jeopardy doesn’t apply, you can be charged with both. Prosecutors have wide discretion on who they charge and who they don’t. If it is demonstrated that a prosecutor has acted corruptly then that case will be referred to a different prosecutor - who has wide discretion etc.	also, what is "cannot be punished on account thereof because they lacked criminal responsibility due to the intoxication or if this cannot be ruled out"? I can not understand This means that if a person, while drunk, does soemthign that would otherwise be a crime, but the person cannot be charged because s/he was too drunk to know that s/he was committing a crime, such a person can insted be charged with having become intoxicated, and given up to the same punishment that would have been given for conviction for doign the unlawful act. For example, if a person damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (drunk), it might be impossible under German law to prosecute for the crime of intentionally damaging property, because one could not prove that the person knew what s/he was doing, and knew that it was criminal. In such a case the person could be charged with having intentionally or carelessly become drunk, but the penalty can't be more than the penalty for having damaged property would have been, nor can it be more than five years. As a practical matter, I think it very unlikely that the police would seek to impose a fine if they didn't issue any ticket or other paperwork at the scene, nor mention any such intention. However, they might be legally able to do so.	The consequences for the US are perhaps better addressed at Politics; if you're really interested in those consequences, you can re-post this question there. For the police officer shooting a diplomat, the officer may be charged under state law, whatever is normal for an incident of this type; it doesn't matter whether the person is a US citizen or a diplomat or any other kind of alien, regardless of immigration status or lack thereof. If the person is a diplomat, however, the officer is also liable to be prosecuted under federal law, namely 18 USC 1116, which makes it a crime to kill, among others, a "foreign official"; the definition of that term includes any person of a foreign nationality who is duly notified to the United States as an officer or employee of a foreign government or international organization, and who is in the United States on official business, and any member of his family whose presence in the United States is in connection with the presence of such officer or employee. The characterization of the response "just been revoked" as "clearly legal" is inaccurate; a police officer has no power to revoke diplomatic immunity. In fact, only the diplomat's own country can waive this immunity. The United States cannot do so; it can only expel the diplomat.	This is an example of the so-called felony murder rule, in which the crime of murder is defined to include deaths related to a felony committed by the defendant. You'll note that the article actually uses the phrase "felony murder". See the Alamaba Criminal Code at 13A-6-2: (a) A person commits the crime of murder if he or she does any of the following: [...] (3) He or she commits or attempts to commit arson in the first degree, burglary in the first or second degree, escape in the first degree, kidnapping in the first degree, rape in the first degree, robbery in any degree, sodomy in the first degree, aggravated child abuse under Section 26-15-3.1, or any other felony clearly dangerous to human life and, in the course of and in furtherance of the crime that he or she is committing or attempting to commit, or in immediate flight therefrom, he or she, or another participant if there be any, causes the death of any person. It's interesting that "another participant" was apparently held to include the police officer.	In general, yes. 1 USC 109 states that: The repeal of any statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute, unless the repealing Act shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability. Translated into plain English, this means that if you were to smoke marijuana in a Yellowstone National Park campground today, and Congress were to pass an act saying "28 USC 841 is repealed" tomorrow, you could still be arrested and convicted for possession of a controlled substance next week. However, if the act instead stated "28 USC 841 is repealed and no retroactive prosecutions shall take place", then you can't be convicted. (The other half of 1 USC 109 is basically the same thing, applied to temporary laws: if a temporary law expires, you can still be prosecuted for actions taken while the law was in effect, unless the law states otherwise.)
Do you automatically own half the IP created by your spouse? https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/1334061416433807360 This Twitter thread raised an idea I'd never heard before: that in a marriage intellectual property is jointly owned by the spouses, which could prove complicated in divorce, and make an open source license invalid if it wasn't made with the consent of the spouse. Is there any legal merit to this idea, that without any explicit agreement (or a prenup) your spouse will own half the IP that you create? Do any countries' copyright laws explicitly discuss this situation, or is there any relevant case law?	That is the case in the state of Washington, for example. All property acquired during a marriage is considered community property. This can make things complicated since there are state-specific rules that can arise in case of a divorce (Enovsys LLC v. Nextel Communications, Inc: the couple declared no community property at the time of the divorce, meaning the wife who was not a party in in infringement case, had no standing – and therefore the infringement suit could procede). This page goes into details. There are 9 US states with community property regimes: it is also the law for Sweden, Germany, France and Italy. In the US, permission from one author is sufficient to constitute "having permission" w.r.t. copyright: an owner of the copyright can license the work, and you do not have to get permission from all owners. This does not invalidate an open source license: spouse 1 can grant such a license even if spouse 2 refuses to grant such a license. Rodrigue v. Rodrigue, 218 F.3d 432 partially answers the question in Louisiana specifically w.r.t. copyright. A lower court held that the state-specific quirk of giving a non-author an equal interest in copyrighted IP must be swept away in the interest of uniformity of federal law. The lower court indeed rejected an argument based on 17 USC 301 which declares federal law to be superior to legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to that set out in Title 17: but community property law is not equivalent to Title 17, it's much broader. The higher courts reasoning is a tall wall of words which boils down the their conclusion that "we disagree with the district court only to the extent that it held the conflict between Louisiana community property law and federal copyright law irreconcilable absent congressional intercession", and having found a way that didn't involve Congress, they declared the work-creator to be the sole owner of the IP created during the marriage. See also the myriad citations contained therein. What this case in particular shows is that the specifics of the states community property laws will have an effect on how a courts would rule on such an IP question.	The only issue relevant to your age is the (ir)revocability of the license. GPLv3 purports to be an irrevocable license. To be really irrevocable, the license would need to grant certain rights in exchange for something of value, that is, you need a license that passes muster as a contract. Copyright licenses are typically treated as contracts, but it is not clearly established in law that licenses are contracts or are not contracts. Out of the goodness of your heart, you can grant permission to use your property, but you can also withdraw that permission. If you have a contract granting perpetual permission to use your property in exchange for something of value, then you can't later withdraw that permission. In the case of Jacobsen v. Kratzer, the sides advances opposing theories that the license was a "bare license" vs. was a contract. (The matter was ultimately settled out of court). This article puts together the legal factors surrounding the notion of license as contract, see p. 21 ff, and esp. §IV for arguments that licenses should be contracts, to be fully enforceable. A contract for non-essentials formed with a minor is not enforceable, until you are 18. You could therefore revoke the license, until you are 18. Anyone who uses the software does so at their peril. However, if the license is not a contract, no existing legal doctrine (in the US) whereby the permission is irrevocable. In other words, yes you can, at their peril. The whole license-as-contract issue is very complicated, and I'm only focusing on the revocability issue. There is a separate question whether one can sue a user for both copyright infringement and breach of contract. The case of Artifex v. Hancom, see also this analysis, found that (in the particular case), plaintiff can pursue the matter as both infringement and contract breach.	"Backlogged" has no legal status. Under usual contract terms, all intellectual property you generate as part of your employment belongs to your employer. But "intellectual property" is a category of rights, such as patents, trademarks and copyrights. An idea by itself is not intellectual property. "Wouldn't it be great if ..." cannot be owned by a company. However, specific ideas can be trade secrets, and trade secrets are protected. It's likely that your idea is a trade secret, if the idea applies to the sort of business that your ex-employer is involved in. The fact that it's called promising by the company reiterates that.	IANAL, just a programmer with an interest in legal rules. Due to the very permissive nature of the MIT license, no, it does not appear that anything illegal has been done. Specifically, the section to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software (emphasis mine) grants everyone the right to modify your code and share those modifications, provided one includes the license. Since this person has included your license (including your copyright notice), they have followed the conditions of the license and are able to share your stuff. Legally. Ethically, I still think its ****. This might be a good starting point in selecting a license (note the Modification column). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses The CC-BY-SA license family, as mentioned by Ron Beyer in comments is on this list, for example. TL;DR: You unfortunately granted a more permissive license than what you wanted/needed to. This was a BadThing(TM), analogous to giving too broad of access rights to a method or class. Determine your desired permissions, then select a license that matches what you'd like to grant.	Generally, no, this will not violate copyright. Your end user might violate copyright, but that is their problem not yours. Your program is a tool, just like a word processor is. If I copy a Harry Potter book into a word processor that does not make the word processor maker liable. There is a concept of "contributory infringement", which I think is what you are concerned about. I don't know about Danish law in particular, but most countries would require evidence that you had reasonable knowledge that actual copyright violation was occuring, rather than just being aware that it might happen in theory. This is normally applied to file sharing services who have to have "notice and takedown" measures, file filters and the like. This isn't your concern as you never have any access to the files created by your users. You can also be found liable if you induce anyone to commit copyright violations. Don't draw your customers attention to the custom monster feature as a workaround for those copyrighted monsters, as that could be considered to be inducement. Also don't provide any "wizards" or similar tools which make it noticeably easier to duplicate the custom monsters (e.g. if you notice that the copyrighted custom dragon stats are all on a linear scale with dragon size, don't create a "dragon creation wizard" embodying that fact.) This assumes that your program runs entirely on the end user computer. Its different if you provide any kind of cloud storage for generated characters.	All your work is yours. They've made it very clear it wasn't a work for hire, so it's yours. They can't copyright any of their ideas. You can't copyright an idea. Only specific creative elements authored by them and present in your work could be covered by copyright. You didn't use their block diagrams. I don't see how references to other sites to look at would constitute a creative element they authored. That said, you probably want to talk to a lawyer and get a written legal opinion that you can rely on.	Intellectual property is property and the owner can do all the things that can be done with property including selling it, gifting it and bequeathing it. It can also be licensed; the closest analogue to normal property being renting or lending it except you can license to more than one person at a time. The current owner can do anything the original owner could do with it. Transfer of ownership does not affect the duration or status of the rights at all.	The MIT License (as distributed by OSI) does not include an attribution requirement beyond the requirement to include the copyright notice in any re-distributed copy including derivative works. The same is true of the description of the license as described in the Wikipedia article. If you sent back to the maintainer a modified version including your own contributions with an MIT license notice and your name in the copyright statement, that is a new work released under that license. The maintainer (or anyone else) may not lawfully use your work or incorporate it into a new derived work without complying with the license terms, which require retaining the copyright notice. By distributing the combined work using a copyright notice not including your name, it would seem that your license is being violated. You could contact the maintainer with a request that your name be included in the notice or your contributions be removed. If that is not accepted, you could use a take-down notice, or file suit. That last would involve significant costs, of course.
If there is more than 1 person harassing you online, are separate court orders required to identify each one? If there is more than 1 email account harassing you online, do you need to obtain separate court orders to identify each one, or is one order sufficient? What if one of the accounts you’re naming is determined to not be harassing?	united-states If there is more than 1 email account annoying you online, do you need to obtain separate court orders to identify each one, or is one order sufficient? A judge could order an email provider to unmask multiple accounts with one court order. Judges are not really restricted in the number of things they can do per order, as long as it's within their jurisdiction. What if one of the accounts you’re naming is determined to not be harassing? Then the judge would be unlikely to order that one unmasked. It wouldn't prevent the others from being unmasked, if the requirements for such an order to be issued were otherwise met.	canada You have tagged this 'criminal law', so I will stick to that, and avoid non-criminal anti-discrimination regimes. Criminal Code, s. 319 makes it an offence to wilfully incite or promote hatred against an identifiable group. It does not matter whether the person that is being communicated to is a member of the identifiable group (meaning "any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion or ethnic origin"). What matters is a strict mens rea requirement that the communication was done with the intent of promoting or inciting hatred against such a group. If the accused holds such intent, it is no defence that they mistook the person they were communicating with as not being a member of such a group. See generally, R. v. Keegstra, [1990] 3 SCR 697. Hypothetical laws If instead you are asking about what a hypothetical law could require (since you ask, "If a law for example criminalises intimidating or assaulting someone who suffers from dwarfism..."), then as a matter of statutory interpretation, the law could be written in a way that makes the mistake you describe a defence or it could be written in a way that does not allow that defence. E.g. "Any person who assaults another, knowing that the other person is X, commits an offence..." This phrasing of the law clearly would require the accused to know that the person they have assaulted is in the category X in order for the assault to fall within this specific variant of assault. E.g. "Any person who assaults a person that is X, regardless of whether they know the other person to be X, commits an offence..." Under this phrasing of the law, knowledge of the status of the target of the assault clearly does not matter. However, Canadian law has constitutional minimum mens rea requirements for elements of crimes that bring risk of imprisonment. If the offence is punishable by imprisonment, then the variant that essentially removes the mens rea from the element relating to the target's status would be unconstitutional.	No. You need to actively be given permission for you to have permission. If they don't reply you don't have permission and are violating their ToS.	Does Amazon prohibit a family of adults from sharing a single Amazon account? No, or at least it seems unlikely. As outlined in my answer & comments on Law Meta, a domestic or family-oriented character is palpable in the clause. That weakens the notion that Amazon's intent is to preclude scenarios which are of a personal-domestic nature and short of commercial/sublicensed use. The language "You are responsible for [...] restricting access to your account" seems more permissive than something akin to "only you are allowed to access your account". The former language is consistent with the term "non-exclusive", which otherwise seems to have no relevance or purpose in the clause. Users' ability (if any) to enter multiple payment methods with different names (i.e., card holder name) could be an additional indication that the scenario you have in mind is acceptable to Amazon. It is easy for a company to implement a validation for the purpose of identifying significant discrepancies of holder names and/or to have the user confirm that all payment methods refer to one same owner. The latter approach is more conclusive for scenarios where a woman has changed names as a result of getting married or divorced. The fact (?) that Amazon declined to include that simple validation weakens the notion that the company is genuinely interested in sticking to a rule of one-person per account.	If there is no reasonable suspicion of a crime having been committed or about to be committed, then there is no reason to seize you, and the Fourth Amendment "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated". Even if a state has a "stop and identify" statute, reasonable suspicion is a minimum requirement for seizing your person, even temporarily. Texas is not a state with an obligation to identify statute. I would not expect the state to be very helpful, given the facts as you report them. There might be others, such as the ACLU, who may be happy to discuss the particulars of your case. The police need to justify a stop in court, and not to the person being seized. I don't know if there is any case law saying that a false police statement to a detainee ("No, I don't have a reasonable suspicion") precludes claiming in court that there was reasonable suspicion, but it should at least make the claim of reasonable suspicion less credible. They do have to have reasonable suspicion, and they do not have to tell you what that suspicion is. OTOH if they are just harassing bicyclists, that would be illegal.	While @jqning is absolutely correct in stating that truth is always an "absolute defense" to a claim of defamation, keep in mind that truth can be a subjective thing. What is one person's version of the truth, may not be another's, even with regard to the same exact experience. Also, while "statements of opinion are not defamation" is typically regarded as true, it has very broad exceptions and is not something that can be relied on in isolation. Defamation is generally defined as a false, published statement that is injurious to the plaintiff's reputation. An online posting, even on an obscure website, will likely be seen by a few people, thus satisfying the publication requirement. A plaintiff cannot succeed in his or her online defamation claim if the defendant's defamatory statement is true. So, for example, if a customer posts a review of your restaurant on Trip Advisor claiming that there were roaches crawling around, you may sue them for defamation. You would then have to prove that there was no roach infestation, and thus, the defendant's statement was false. However, what if there was only one? What if he has a witness who saw it? His truth may be different from yours, and it is up to the trier of fact to decide. Also, getting sued, whether or not you prevail, is at minimum a pain and can be a very expensive ordeal. Opinions are exempt? OK: Following that line of reasoning, restaurant owner shows he's had monthly inspections and prophylactic measures to ensure against pests and the exterminator testifies. The defendant, fearing he's in trouble now, claims that his assertion of roach infestation was just his opinion based on his experience. Opinions are privileged under the law of defamation, right? Not always! Importantly, an opinion may be viewed, generally, as a statement of fact (employing the "reasonable person" standard) if it is something that is either provable or disprovable. What this means is that if the reasonable person would construe your statement to be factual, and not mere opinion, it will be deemed as such and if untrue then you're liable for defamation. The courts may interpret, "I think that [restaurant] has a roach infestation problem," as a statement of fact. This has occurred in numerous cases where people think they can say what they want as long as they couch it as an opinion, with words like "I think..." or "In my opinion...". But when someone says something that factual in opinion form, that is not protected. So, if Jane says, "In my opinion Joe Schmoe is a pedophile..." without absolute proof that Joe is, in fact, a pedophile, then this is libelous (defamation if published or spoken to another). This is because the statement in and of itself is one of "verifiable fact couched in opinion" and it is so damaging to Joe's reputation that if it's not true it is libel per se (defamatory if published – meaning shared). A statement of verifiable fact is a statement that conveys a provably false factual assertion, such as someone has committed murder or has cheated on his spouse. While the law varies some, and sometimes substantially, from state to state, here are some often used examples arising from California courts. Libelous (when false): Charging someone with being a communist (in 1959) Calling an attorney a "crook" Describing a woman as a call girl Accusing a minister of unethical conduct Accusing a father of violating the confidence of son Not-libelous: Calling a political foe a "thief" and "liar" in chance encounter (because hyperbole in context) Calling a TV show participant a "local loser," "chicken butt" and "big skank" Calling someone a "bitch" or a "son of a bitch" Changing product code name from "Carl Sagan" to "Butt Head Astronomer" Since libel is considered in context, do not take these examples to be a hard and fast rule about particular phrases. Generally, the non-libelous examples are hyperbole or opinion, while the libelous statements are stating a defamatory fact. Modified photos that can be shown to scandalize persons or businesses are clearly defamation, and are quite popular on social media. So, for example, if you threw the flyers (I assume you didn't but as an example) all over, and then photographed and published your opinion about the business littering neighborhoods, this would be libelous. The less obvious and absurd the modification, the more likely it is that a court will find it defamatory. So, a picture of a woman with a man's naked torso photoshopped on will not be defamatory, a version photoshopped showing what is to be purported to be her naked body, is. In your case, you face two issues that you should ask yourself: Is your opinion really verifiable (or non-verifiable) facts couched in words that try to make it opinion, or is it truly just your opinion. If fact, is it absolutely true? If the answer is yes, it's fact and yes, it's absolutely true, you're OK. Keep in mind though what I mentioned about truths differing: What if the business didn't know they were put there, or, what if they were placed on cars in a public place and blew in the wind? That could be a problem. While you are most likely fine, you may want to just say, X business's fliers are all over the place, littering the neighborhood and (assuming you called and asked them to pick them up, or wrote them) they refuse to pick up the litter. It sounds like the statements you made are fine, because you don't say that the business littered, or that they put them there; you say they are "plastered" all over, but you don't accuse them openly. That isn't to say it wouldn't be found to suggest fact that they would have to show isn't true (or that they didn't get permission from the property owner). My point is only that, in general, be careful. If he felt that you misrepresented what he did by way of distributing fliers, or if he thought you doctored the photo or set it up, he could sue you if he felt it damaged his business's reputation.	No. A plaintiff may travel to the defendant's jurisdiction to file suit if desired. Nobody usually does this, though, due to travel and logistical considerations. The defendant is the one who decides whether to challenge jurisdiction. Good contacts will include a forum selection clause which would lay out what happens where in the event of a dispute. And this can be anywhere, it is not limited to the locations of the plaintiff and the defendant. N/A.	If your statement is true, it is not libel. But if it is false, it is libel. It does not matter if you directly name him, what matters is if he can be specifically identified by others. Not all others, but at least some others.
Can a Civil Court in England and Wales force a university to award a diploma to a student? I attend one of the world's best universities, where I recently completed a master's degree (MSc). I did very well in the modules, scoring mostly distinction grades. However, despite resitting an examination I sadly failed a core module overall by just 0.75 which is under a mark. The exam was mathematical in nature, and wrote by a new professor who did not write the first exam I sat. The first question on the exam used an initialism I was unfamiliar with, for example using NSC (Nice Sizzled Chicken) instead of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) leaving me unable to answer the question. The next problem was he used a mathematical symbol in an incorrect and different way to which I had been taught by the original professor, and the core reading book. I do understand that in Computer Science people are allowed to change the definition of mathematical symbols, provided they explain what they want them to mean, however I had no way of knowing this professor's definition because I was told to study the course material from when I took the class. I am under the impression that their appeals process will simply reject my complaint about the exam for nonsense reasons, forcing me to take legal action in London. I will get their response within a few months. I am open minded about other routes of action too. Is it possible for a Civil Court to force the university to award me the full MSc, as opposed to a less impressive PGDip which is what they are currently offering me? I have no interest in a financial settlement.	Theoretically, a court could order the awarding of a degree. However, the probability that this will actually happen is extremely low: in general, courts only order specific performance when money awards are no substitute. To get anything, you would have to prove that the university was in some way negligent, that they had some duty of care to you which they breached. You could read the judgment in Siddiqui v. Oxford, where plaintiff lost and was only asking for money, to get a grasp of how courts deal with the question of educational negligence and failed exams / bad grades. It is possible that there is a cause of action based on breach of contract, given the seeming unilateral change in scope of examination. But you would need your attorney to study whether there was any contractual "promise" as to the scope of the exam.	The legal system advances practitioners on a number of criteria, not all of which relate to their legal education. It's essentially the same for all professions - your schooling/education may or may not determine your success in the field. Also relevant would be the social circles you navigate, your achievements post-education, and so on.	A proof can be protected by copyright. The underlying facts of math cannot. But if one has copied details of the order of the proof, or of the selection of theorems to use, and if several other choices would have been possible, then the new proof may constitute a trivially modified copy, or a derivative work, and in either case making of it might be copyright infringement. However, making and distributing a copy, even with no changes at all, for purposes of comment and criticism, might be fair use in the US, fair dealing in the UK or some other parts of the Commonwealth, or fall under an exception to copyright in other countries (these generally vary significantly by country). This is usually a very fact-driven question.	I don't believe it is contradictory. Some kinds of injury are inherently difficult to calculate (e.g. damage to reputation caused by slander) but the judge or jury, as the case may be, will review the evidence and do the best they can. Lord Reed says as much in paragraph 38 of his judgment. ... and as a practical matter, it appears the damages, in this case, were both calculable and supported by evidence. The Court's primary focus was not whether damages could be calculated but rather the measure of damages (i.e. the method of calculation).	There isn't to the best of my knowledge, any single document that tells courts to follow precedant or when and how to do so. Each State, and the Federal government, has a set of court rules of procedure. These will indicate, among many other things, the form that should be used in citing previous cases, but that is about form, not content -- about how to cite a case, not about when a court should or should not cite one. Some precedents are what are called persuasive. These are from other court systems: say a different state, or even another country. These also include rulings from other courts at the same level, say from a different district, or even from lower courts. Other precedents are binding. These are from a superior court to the one where the case is cited. In a state's lower court, rulings of that state's supream court are binding. In Federal district courts, rulings of the Court of Appeals for the same Circuit, and of the US Supreme Court are binding. In Federal appeals courts, rulings of the US Supreme Court are binding. They are also binding in state courts on matters where the US constitution is involved, or where Federal law supersedes state law. Prior rulings of the same court are strongly persuasive, but not strictly binding -- a court can overrule its own precedents when it thinks the law or justice requires this, although most courts are reluctant to do so. Or more often it can distinguish a previous ruling, saying, in effect: "that previous ruling is still valid, but this is a different case in such and such a specific way, so the result is different". Students in law school spend a good deal of time learning how precedents are cited, and how they should be used, learning what sorts of things are controlled by precedents, and how to find the precedents that apply to a particular case. When they become lawyers and then judges, they taken this body of learning with them, and use it in writing decisions, and opinions that explain those decisions. New law from the legislature can reverse previous court decisions, except in the case of decisions interpreting the constitution (federal or state). Amendments can change the constitution. Judges must adapt to such changes in the law. To a significant extent our system of precedent is a matter of tradition, going back largely to the common-law courts of England, although it has been modified by specific legislation in many ways, as well as by more recent court decision and practice. It is passed on in law schools, in legal apprenticeships of various kinds, and in individual court decisions.	Yes. It is legal. Curriculum requirements are policy decisions of an institution, not binding contracts with students. It might be ill advised policy, but it is not prohibited.	There have been cases in the UK where paying someone's legal bills was interpreted as joining their case. So when A with no money libels someone, and B with deep pockets pays A's lawyer, then B risks being held liable for damages if A gets convicted. So B should be very careful. Just giving you money is probably the safest. But attorney-client privilege is between attorney and client. I have been laid off twice with my company asking me to take an employment lawyer and paying for it. (Interestingly each time the bill was exactly the maximum amount the company was willing to pay :-) It would have been absurd if my company could demand information that is under attorney-client privilege just because they paid the bill. Why did two companies pay the lawyers bill? Because that way they ensure that the separation is without problems. The lawyer explained the settlement contract and what it meant exactly. They also checked that the contract didn’t contain anything unacceptable which the company would have fixed. So if I had tried to sue them later I would have no chance to win (but there was no reason to sue). Another reason not to sue was that the company offered I settlement that was very significantly more than was legally required, but if you sued them you would only get what you got in court - most likely less than you would get without suing. So basically they paid to make sure I would have no reason to sue them later.	It is the use of a "menace" which creates the crime, not the nature or validity of the demand. That's not correct. You've inadvertently missed the other element of the offence: that it's an "unwarranted demand". A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21 For example, I may have reasonable grounds under the Consumer Rights Act to demand a refund for a faulty good. It might be sensible to moderate one's language, e.g. "If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 30 days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs." vs. "If I do not receive the money from you within 30 days of the date of this letter I'll take you to the f***ing cleaners, sunshine." But the language doesn't make the demand unwarranted.
Can a judge legally forbid a jury from Nullifying a verdict if they ask him about it before rendering a verdict Let's say I'm part of a jury in a case where I believe jury nullification may be warranted, and that my other jurors may agree with me, and so I suggest it to my fellow jurors. My jurors ask me what would happen if they voted to nullify the verdict and I tell them I can't say for sure, because the legal status of jury nullification is complicated even for the best lawyer, because I'm not a lawyer, and because frankly my knowledge of legal matters is quite haphazard and it's scary to think that the results of a trial and a person's life would depend on my half-remembered understanding of jury nullification. Unfortunately I can't go online to research jury nullification now that I'm a juror so the jury is stuck with my incomplete knowledge as the best information they have to make a decision with. The other jurors, correctly not trusting me to know what I'm talking about, go to the judge to ask about jury nullification and whether it's an option in this trial. The judge is one who is not a fan of jury nullification and does not want to see it happen. Can the judge flat out tell the jury that they cannot vote to nullify the verdict? If the judge did so and the jury chooses to nullify the verdict anyways would the fact that the judge forbade them to do so have any impact on what happens from that point forward? Would the jury risk repercussions for nullifying a verdict against the judge's orders? Finally is there any situation where a jury trying to nullify a verdict could phrase their objection incorrectly such that the judge could take it as a guilty verdict? E.g., if they say "we think you proved the plaintiff did this thing, but we don't believe he should be punished" can the judge rule that they said he was guilty and just ignore the second half?	Can the judge flat out tell the jury that they cannot vote to nullify the verdict? He can but this kind of "jury nullification" makes little sense and is obvious that is not possible. A verdict is rendered by the jury. Once the verdict is rendered, there is no further vote. It would also make little sense for a jury to render a guilty verdict and later have another vote to nullify the previous verdict. From now one I will refer to jury nullification as we usually refer to it: the jury returns a not guilty verdict, although the jury believes the accused is guilty of the crime (rather than returning a guilty verdict and later nullify it, which is what you are implying here) A different question would be "can the judge ask the jury to not engage in jury nullification"? Yes he/she can. A judge can respond that jury nullification is not possible. If the jury convicts, this false information by the judge is generally deemed a harmless error on appeal, and the conviction is upheld If the judge did so and the jury chooses to nullify the verdict anyways would the fact that the judge forbade them to do so have any impact on what happens from that point forward? No. Jury nullification is part and parcel of common law, and it could well be part of the "jury trial" granted by the Constitution. Would the jury risk repercussions for nullifying a verdict against the judges orders? Only for jury nullification no. They can face repercussions if they lie in voir dire and say that they will follow the law as given to them no matter what, for example. Finally is there any situation where jury trying to nullify a verdict could phrase their objection incorrectly such that the judge could rule it as a guilty verdict (ie if they say "we think you proved the plaintiff did this thing, but we don't believe he should be punished" can the judge rule that they said he was guilty and just ignore the second half?) Juries return a guilty/not guilty verdict. They don't return their thoughts to the court ("we think that...."). They simply say "guilty" or "not guilty". If for some unknown reason they should choose to tell the judge more than what is required from them, jury nullification is still an option of the jury and something that the jury can do, have the right to do, so the judge will not be able to override the jury. But this is something that should not happen. If the jury wants to engage in jury nullification, they have to tell the judge "not guilty" and nothing more. The jury doesn't have to explain its decision to acquit.	This wouldn't be customary and is probably improper, but the judge may have been trying to do you a favor. In the absence of being under oath, the judge could not consider anything said in your closing statement as evidence. If you are under oath, the judge can weigh something you say in your closing statement against the other evidence when making a ruling.	When a judge decides a case there will be An order - e.g. "Smith shall pay Jones £100,000" Reasons for the decision - i.e. a description of the evidence, and the judge's findings of fact and legal reasoning. Sometimes a party, even though they have completely won, is nevertheless aggrieved by some things the judge has said in the Reasons (or in the way the judge has handled the trial - e.g. the judge's interventions). For example the judge may have said that the winning party was not a credible witness but they nevertheless won because of the evidence of other witnesses who were found to be credible. The rule in England and Wales is that you can only appeal orders. So if the order is completely in your favour you cannot appeal just because you don't like the reasons.	An appeal to ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. That is not in any way the situation here. The defendant knows if he/she has or has not so the only available answers under oath are "yes" or "no" - the jury knows this too so any other answer will be seen as disingenuous. However, this information (affirmative or negative) is off limits to the jury as it could prejudice their decision, hence the mistrial. A quick judge could instruct the defendant not to answer and instruct the jury to disregard the question but if a conviction results the defence team could use the fact that it was asked as grounds for appeal. A judge must decide if the interests of justice are better served by a retrial or a tainted conviction.	Why does someone need to know? Supreme Court decisions are effective to all cases at trial or on direct appeal when decided, so long as the issue it resolves are raised in the trial court. Judges generally don't suspend cases because a case that could change the law is pending. If the decision comes out shortly after the trial, the judge can overturn the result in a post-trial motion. If the decision comes out later, the issue can be raised on appeal. A smart plaintiff raises favorable issues that could be decided in his or her favor in pending appellate cases to leave the door open for that possibility. If the law is unsettled, the judge makes a best guess about how the higher courts will resolve it and is effectively free to choose either outcome knowing that the result is uncertain. If there is binding precedent on an issue at the time, the judge must follow it, even if there is a likelihood that it could be reversed on appeal. People are presumed to know the law, but it's not possible to know what future decisions the Supreme Court of the USA will make. Therefore, the existing written precedents should be relied upon in their present form, and the case at trial should continue without delay. This kind of consideration is mostly relevant only in cases of "qualified immunity" and in certain kinds of federal habeas corpus petitions (which collaterally attack criminal convictions affirmed on direct appeal). In those cases, law enforcement conduct is not punished, and judicial decisions are not overturned, unless there was clearly established law at the time the decision was made that made the law enforcement conduct unconstitutional, or make the judicial decision a wrongly decided one. In all other contexts, what was believed to be the law at the time an action was taken, or a judicial decision was made, doesn't matter.	Affirmative defenses generally have a subjective or objective factual test for the jury to consider. In this case, the test may be something along the lines of "Given the totality of the circumstances, did the defendant take objectively reasonable precautions to make sure the victim was not underage, or would the defendant in particular have any additional reason to believe the victim was underage despite their precautions." So to answer the original question more specifically, a person could still be guilty of the rape even if the victim took steps to try to trick them if the jury is unconvinced that the defendant acted objectively or subjectively reasonably (depending on the local statutes). A prosecutor could show the jury the fake ID card, for example, and argue that it is obviously fake, or argue that there are other factors that should have led to the defendant knowing that the person was underage - for example, because the defendant has met the victim before and would have known their approximate age.	No. There is a clear distinction between: evidence (or testimony), which consists of statements of fact given by witnesses on oath (subject to prosecution for perjury), governed by the rules of evidence, and which the jury is required to consider but not accept (in the sense that a verdict which is not supported by the evidence can be set aside on appeal), submissions, which consist of argument by the lawyers for the parties, which the jury is not required to consider or accept, and directions, which consist of statements of law given by the judge, which the jury is required to accept. The jury is required by its oath to follow the law as stated by the judge, even if it is wrong. The remedy for erroneous trial directions (an appeal) is different to the remedy for erroneous evidence (a perjury prosecution in the case of deliberate lies; nothing in the case of innocent errors). Because the jury has the power, but not the right, to nullify a charge by disobeying the judge’s directions, there is a sense in which the jury is free to reject the judge’s directions just as it is free to reject evidence. However, this is completely inconsistent with the theory that defines the roles of judge and jury. There is no legal basis for viewing judicial directions as a kind of expert testimony. ‘The power, but not the right’ Obie 2.0 asked about this phrase. It coems from the Case of the Dean of St Asaph, which is reported at R v Shipley (1784) 4 Doug 73. The relevant passage is summarised in Lord Devlin's Trial by Jury (1956), at p 87: Jury’s Power of Acquittal There may well be cases in which the killing is not in doubt and the formal direction not to return a verdict of manslaughter is therefore tantamount to a direction to return a verdict of Guilty. Still, if the direction is ignored, the court must, I think, accept the verdict. There is no way in which a verdict of acquittal can be nullified. As Lord Chief Justice Mansfield put it in 1784: “It is the duty of the judge, in all cases of general justice, to tell the jury how to do right, though they have it in their power to do wrong, which is a matter entirely between God and their own consciences.” Mr. Justice Willes said: “I admit the jury have the power of finding a verdict against the law and so they have of finding a verdict against evidence, but I deny they have the right to do so.” The Chief Justice of Australia held to similar effect in Gammage v The Queen (1969) 122 CLR 444, writing: [The jury] have no right, in my opinion, to return a verdict of manslaughter where they are satisfied of murder. But, as I have said, persistence by them in returning another verdict must ultimately result in the acceptance of that verdict. In that sense, but in no other sense, it is both within their power and, if you will, their privilege to return a wrong verdict. To answer Obie 2.0's question, the jury has the power to ignore the judge's directions, because – at least at the time Lord Devlin was writing in 1956 – a verdict of acquittal could not be nullified. However, the jury does not have the right to do so because the law requires it to follow the directions. As Ed999 observes, the law governing jury trials does vary between jurisdictions. In particular, some jurisdictions (which lack the United States' constitutional double jeopardy clause) now allow for a jury acquittal to be set aside on appeal. However, the fundamental distinction between a witness’s evidence and a judge’s directions was established in England centuries ago, and remains applicable throughout the common law world. It is worth specifically mentioning the United States because jury nullification remains a controversial topic in that jurisdiction. However, the basic principle that the jury is legally required to follow the judge’s directions was established in Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895), and described by Ginsburg J (albeit in a dissenting judgment) as ‘conclusive’ in Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, 512 U.S. 415, 447 (1994). In Sparf, the opinion of the court was: We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence.	The details depend on jurisdiction, but all jurisdictions I know of will excuse jurors if they are medically unfit for jury duty. So the best option would be to try and obtain a medical/psychological certification that you are not fit for jury duty. Of course this assumes you have someone (such as your psychologist, your psychiatrist or your general practitioner) who is willing to write such a certification. Also, find out what it takes for this to be accepted by the court; for example, must it be from a physician, can it be from a psychologist? Finally, if you are honest with the authorities, you will hopefully be excluded. Keep in mind that the court system needs reliable jurors; if you have a nervous breakdown in court, that could cause a mistrial with significant cost, it's in the court's best interest to avoid that.
Can I host copyrighted content until I get a DMCA notice? The content is subtitles in my case. Can I host it until I get a DMCA notice? Or can I not even host it? Can copyright holders cause trouble without first filing a DMCA notice? Most creators wouldn't care about subtitles, this is to handle odd cases where they do. Edit: The subtitles are generated using AI/ML for movies that do not have any. This seems to be relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub#Legal_and_ethical_issues	You may at your peril. The safe harbor provision in 17 USC 512 does not provide absolute immunity to service providers, that immunity is only available (c)(1) if the service provider—(A)...(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent Given your question, which reasonably assumes that the material is infringing, infringement is apparent. The DMCA provisions were written not to protect service providers, but to protect innocent service providers who are not aware of the infringing activities of their users. So it depends on what you know.	You can report it to the publisher(s) Protection of copyright is a matter for the individual rights holder: some (I’m looking at you Disney) are vigilant, thorough and draconian in protecting their rights, others don’t care at all. Unless you are the rights holder it’s none of your business. In much the same way that the guy charging your neighbour for 4 hours gardening but being long gone in 2 isn’t. If you like your neighbour or feel duty bound to do something, you tell them and then leave it to them what they do with it. This is not a matter for the authorities as it doesn’t rise to the level of criminal copyright infringement. Just like the gardener above, this isn’t a crime.	Makerbot's explanation of the Terms is accurate This is comparable with most other services that host and display User-created content - even with SaaS providers, as per Interpretation of content ownership/usage in service provider agreement. They are correct that they are asking for the lots of broad rights, but it's all qualified with (my emphasis): 3.2 License. You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company and its affiliates and partners, an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use your User Content, and to grant sublicenses of the foregoing, solely for the purposes of including your User Content in the Site and Services. That is, if they use your User Content for a purpose other than including it in the Site and Services (and you have not agreed to this use), you may be entitled to relief in the form of an injunction or damages.	The video in some ways belongs to YouTube. Although it's a royalty free one, they have rights to the video, and you ARE using THEIR service, this means that you have to follow their terms of use. It's best to get an offline copy from the content creator. Source: YouTube Terms of use section 6C For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable.	If a website takes down something that infringes on your copyright because of a DMCA request, the legal effect is that you can’t sue the website, only the person who put the content on the website. If a website doesn’t respond to a DMCA request, then you can sue the person responsible AND the website. And that’s what you would have to do: Sue them. And in extreme cases copyright infringement can be criminal; in that case the police might go after the website.	The Apache 2.0 license purports to be irrevocable, but it also presupposes that the supposed licensor has the right to grant permission to copy. In this case, that is untrue, so there never was a proper license and nothing to revoke (the copyright owner grants permission in the form of "a license" which is a legal abstraction, that normally is specified in the license document). An end-user snared by this illegal license might attempt to sue the author because of the legal screw-up but paragraph 9 says that the supposed licensor cannot be held liable. In this case, though, "licensor" is defined not as the person who hands you the license document, but as the copyright owner. So it's the employer who would be not liable under the terms of the document (but since the employer had nothing to do with the license, it's as though the license never existed). The end-user is a secondary infringer (the employee is the primary infringer, in illegally distributing the material). Under US law, that doesn't matter, the user is still liable. Under UK law, secondary infringement includes the element that you have to have reason to know that the copy is infringing, which in the scenario that you describe is not the case.	Titles can't be copyrighted. Meta-data like #2 aren't copyrighted. Not sure if the MPAA could protect its ratings, but I can't find anywhere that it has asserted restrictions on the use of those. If the list of "Similar works" is not somebody else's intellectual property then there's no problem. (If it is I'm not certain what protection it could be eligible for.)	Copyright exists whether they make that statement or not. Giving such notice informs the public that the work is copyrighted, who owns it, and when it was published. If the work is infringed, the defendant will not be able to use an innocent infringement defense. There's nothing special about using the domain name, as it's probably the name or DBA of the business that owns the domain.
Does the receiver need to report invalid customs declaration on international shipment Lets assume the following very likely scenario that definitely happens more than often: I have ordered a product from outside the country that - including shipping - exceeds the amount where you dont have to pay VAT. I was aware of that and prepared to pay the VAT and processing fee. To my surprise it got here without a bill through the regular Swiss Post customs processing facility. Checking the label on the packet it was obvious how, it was declared at only a fraction of the value I had paid. Do I have any legal obligation to report this to customs or is this entirely on the sender? It is already in the tags, but to be sure: This is Switzerland.	Swiss customs has a form to submit questions like this and they gave me a very informative answer. As it turns out the receiver is also part of the customs process. If for some reason customs decides to open an investigation assuming that something regarding declaration/import was wrong the receiver will also be part of the investigation and it is possible that they determine that the receiver is at fault as well. In this case in addition to the import fee additional fines or fees might be imposed on the receiver. I do not know how they determine this, but from a law perspective it is clear. There is always the option to just report a wrong declaration upon receiving the package which means you have to pay the import fee, but no other fines, fees or investigations will include the receiver (assuming the goods involved can be imported legally). The legal part points towards (this part sadly does not exist in English): Zollschuldner Art. 70 Zollgesetz (specifically section 70 (2) c.). For the unlikely reason that the swiss administrative legal code becomes unavailable this is said article translated by me: Customs debtors have to pay customs fee, or if they become unavailable make guarantee for it (materially). Customs debors include: a) The person sending goods across the border (sender) b) The person responsible declaring the goods c) The person on whos behalf goods are ordered <-- Some interesting tidbits: Transport compaines are not liable for anything Your heirs inherit your customs penalties (i.e. you order something from another country, then your heirs have to pay customs fees if you happen to die) Buying a company also means buying their customs obligations.	The contract between you and the company is for the supply of the goods. How they get them to you is irrelevant; they may have them in stock, or they may order them and ship them on, or they may send an order to the factory to ship them directly to you. There is nothing saying that they have to be in stock anywhere. The law you refer to says that they must ship within 30 days unless they provide a specific date. In effect "shipped within 30 days" is an implicit term in the contract. If after 30 days they have not shipped the goods then you are entitled to rescind the contract (i.e. get your money back). Where things get interesting is if they took your money knowing that they would not be able to ship within 30 days, or at least being reckless (i.e. not caring) about it. It does rather sound like this may be the case. If so then it may rise to the level of fraud, and the FTC or state authorities may take action. Try writing to the FTC. A single event won't get any action, but if they get lots of complaints then they might.	No The contract is created at the moment that an offer was accepted. In normal circumstances: You accepted an offer that they made to the general public by sending a purchase order for specific items at specific prices, or They accepted your offer by communicating their acceptance to you (being advised that the goods have been dispatched counts). However, in this circumstance, the company has been explicit that the contract is only created when either: You checkout and pay, or They “supply an invoice to you.” It appears that neither event happened so there is no contract. Their specific terms have overridden the common law rules on offer and acceptance (as they are allowed to do) and the offer has not been accepted until you receive their invoice. Specifically, it cannot be accepted by performance (dispatching the goods) and the requirement for the invoice to be supplied overrides the postal rule. Note that, in this case, you got lucky. 99 times out of 100 there would have been a valid contract and you would have breached it. In future, cancel orders specifically, don’t make assumptions.	An incomplete list: Getting the money. How did you plan to get paid? Credit card? Paypal? Integrating those into a website in compliance with their terms of service is not easy. (I wouldn't touch credit card numbers, in particular, even with a ten-foot pole. Too much liability risk for weak implementations. Too many highly skilled attackers to pounce on any mistake.) Distributing the App. Places like the Apple App Store have their own terms of service, especially regarding payment and in-app purchases. At a guess, Apple would reject your app, but if they allowed it, how does your withdrawal policy fit with the 30% cut they want from the initial transaction? Holding the money. So there are user accounts with a credit balance that can be withdrawn again. Would you be able to repay them if all users withdraw at the same time? Where do you keep the money? Currency risks. Say international customers pay in currency A, which the payment provider transforms into currency B. Then they want their money back, but exchange rates have changed. What do they get? Knowing your customer. There would be money laundering concerns. Do you have the infrastructure to identify your customers? Can customers change the (re)payment method from one account to another? Can you handle withdrawals if a user no longer has the same credit card, for instance? Scammers leaving you to hold the bag. Say a scammer tricks a victim into making a deposit, and then finds a way to redirect the withdrawal (see above). Would you be able to deal with the legal and administrative fallout?	Does posting a letter create any 'legal' agreement between myself and the postal service? Is there any obligation to deliver a letter? Assuming that an agreement is formed, at what point in the process? When the letter entered a post-box, when it was picked up from the postbox, or later - perhaps when a post-mark is added by the postal service? Posting a letter in Germany does not create a contractual agreement between you and the postal service (and so your follow up question above does not apply). Instead, German postal service activities are governed by the Postal Act and regulations adopted by the postal service. The Postal Act creates a system in which independent contractors licensed by the government carry out parts of the process of delivering the mail and are given quasi-governmental status in connection with these activities. Since it is quasi-governmental it has immunity from legal liability, except as set forth expressly by statute. The postal service and its contractors and employees are required to follow the Postal Act and related regulations, and the people and entities involved in doing so may have legal liability for compensatory damages caused to someone as a result of their intentional or negligent violation of the regulations. In contrast, contactual liability is generally imposed without regard to fault and any failure to perform as expected by the parties is actionable. So, in Germany, you can't prevail in suing the postal service or a contractor or postal employee simply by showing that a letter wasn't delivered in a timely fashion, or wasn't forwarded appropriately. You also have to show a court why this happened and demonstrate that the conduct that caused this to happen was intentional or negligent compared to the standard of care for postal workers in the situation in which the alleged misconduct occurred. German law, generally speaking, interprets compensatory damages rather narrowly compared to U.S. courts, for example, generally excluding damages for inconvenience and emotional distress, and favors orders compelling someone to carry out a duty in lieu of a damages award for failure to perform a duty, when possible. Some of the obligations of contractors and employees, such as delivery deadlines, are overall performance standards which are not enforceable in individual cases because not every letter must meet those standards, only a certain percentage of a letters in the system. What commitments beyond the happy-path described above exist? Is there any commitment to attempt to deliver a letter with a less than perfect address (e.g. missing out the postal-code)? Or to offer the recipient the chance to pay the additional postage owed on a letter without enough postage? The highlighted language in subparagraph 4 of the portion of the Postal Universal Service Ordinance quoted at length below governs what should be done in this situation. (There may be additional requirements set forth in other regulations or in individual subcontractor license agreements; this answer is not comprehensive.) The pertinent provisions of the Postal Act provide that: Chapter VII Service of Documents under Public Law Regulations §33 Service of Documents Requirement (1) Any licensee providing letter post delivery services shall undertake to serve documents, irrespective of their weight, in accordance with the provisions of the relevant rules of procedure and legislation on the rules of service in administrative procedure. Sovereign powers commensurate with this obligation shall be vested in the licensee (entrepreneur charged with specific functions in the public interest). (2) The Regulatory Authority shall exempt from the obligation according to (1) above a licensee thus obliged, upon its request, provided the licensee does not have a dominant position in the market. Exemption is ruled out if there is reason to believe that service of documents according to (1) above would no longer be ensured across the Federal Republic of Germany as a result. Exemption may be revoked if the licensee becomes dominant in the market or if the condition set forth in sentence 2 above becomes applicable. A request for exemption may be linked to an application for licence grant. §35 Liability in the Performance of Service of Documents Liable for any damage caused by neglect of duty in the performance of service of documents shall be the licensee obliged, in accordance with the regulations governing a civil service employer’s liability for damages in the territorial area. . . . §38 Liability for Damages Whosoever intentionally or negligently violates this Act, an ordinance having the force of law issued by virtue of this Act, any obligation arising from a licence or any other Regulatory Authority order shall, to the extent that the legal provision, obligation or order aims to protect another party, be obliged to compensate that party for any damage arising from such violation. So, the postal service's obligations with regard to delivering mail are a matter of postal service regulations rather than being in the nature of contracts. And, if an employee or contractor of the postal service causes harm by intentionally or negligently disregarding the regulations, that employee or contractor is obligated to pay compensatory damages to someone harmed by that violation. The primary postal service regulation in Germany, is called the Postal Universal Service Ordinance. Some pertinent provisions of this regulation state: There shall be sufficient letter boxes that customers in urban areas will not need, as a rule, to travel more than 1,000 metres to reach one. Letter boxes shall be emptied every working day and, depending on requirements, on Sundays and bank holidays, as frequently as is needed to comply with the quality standards cited in subpara 3. Letter box clearances shall be based on the dictates of business life; clearance times are to be indicated on the letter boxes. Letter boxes within the meaning of sentences 1 and 2 above may also be other receptacles that are suitable for posting letters. Of the inland letter items mailed on a working day, at least 80 per cent on average, over the year, must be delivered on the working day following the day of mailing and 95 per cent by the second working day following mailing – with the exception of items subject to the requirement of a minimum 50 items per mailing. In respect of intra-Community cross-border mail the quality standards laid down in the Annex to Directive 97/67/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 1997 on common rules for the development of the internal market of Community postal services and the improvement of quality of service (OJ 1998 No. L 15/14) shall apply. If the Annex to the Directive is amended the quality standards in the amended version shall apply as from the first day of the third month following publication of the amendment. Letter items shall be delivered, unless the addressee – by establishing a PO box or in any other way – has declared that he intends to collect the items. Delivery shall be made to the residence or business premises stated in the address, by placing the items in a receptacle specifically for the addressee and large enough to be provided with the items, or by handing the items over in person. Any items that cannot be delivered in accordance with sentence 2 shall be handed over to an alternative recipient, where possible, unless there are instructions to the contrary from the sender or addressee. Where the addressee’s residential or business address can only be reached with undue difficulty or in the absence of a suitable or accessible receptacle for the letter items, the addressee may be excluded from delivery. The person so affected shall be informed of this intended exclusion. There shall be a minimum of one delivery per working day. The structure of postal service law in Germany, as a question of administrative law regarding the functioning of a government agency, rather than as a contract between the person sending a letter than the postal service, would be typical of most countries (although in many countries there would not be the added complication of providing postal services through independent contractors).	Invoices often provide more information than a receipt about the product or service purchased, including the amount of tax paid. The information on a receipt may not be enough to substantiate a deduction or tax credit claimed by the business. This is particularly important in countries like the United Kingdom with a value-added tax. Suppliers who are registered for VAT must issue VAT invoices which describe the goods or services, and specify the applicable rate and total amount of VAT charged. Purchasers who are registered for VAT are entitled to claim back the VAT charged by the supplier as input tax, but must retain a VAT invoice as evidence that the expense included VAT.	There is no clear legal answer, and in case the matter goes to court, the jury would compare actions of the parties. For example, shipper could say "mail it back to us" and recipient could refuse, saying "come pick it up in the next 10 minutes". Both parties are being unreasonable, imposing significant obligations on the other party (time and money, in the case of the shipper's demands). In the case where a shipper is responsible for the error, most of the burden is on the shipper, thus the shipper should arrange for someone to recover the package. The question is, what limitations can the recipient insist on – what is a reasonable level of inconvenience that the recipient should bear? For instance, it is not generally an unreasonable inconvenience to ask a person to leave the package in a corner on the porch, but it could be too much of an inconvenience to ask a person to interrupt their dinner in order to hand over the package, and it would clearly be an unreasonable inconvenience to require the recipient to wake up at 3am to hand it over. When jurors have to decide such matters, they think "what would I do in this situation, and people have different views of what constitutes a reasonable inconvenience.	There is no contract Specifically, an agreement to agree is void for uncertainty. If the total cost of shipping was an insignificant fraction of the value of the contract then there might be sufficient certainty - that is, it could be argued that the buyer (or seller) has agreed to pay a reasonable rate for shipping. However, in the context of most items on the site this is unlikely to be the case. As an aside, your use of the term "rescind" is incorrect. Rescission occurs when one party breaches a term of the contract and the other party elects to terminate (and optionally seek damages) in response. The correct term for both parties agreeing to release the other is "termination by agreement".
Protecting intellectual property I have a startup and I just sent via E-Mail some sample images to a family member who owns a small marketing and design company in the US. My parents had suggested it since we are on good terms with the person and we trust him. The images I sent are close to what the final product is intended to look like. The first e-mail I received back, within a couple of minutes after I sent mine, asked something to the likes of "Do you have copyright on any of the images or the concept?" Obviously, I do not. It's the last piece missing in the startup. This got me thinking, however. Can he, in theory, copyright what I've sent him? Even though I created it, and he indirectly implied in the e-mail that he's not the content owner, can he attribute my own intellectual property to himself? Can he replicate what my startup does, copyright it, and make it impossible for me to build my own product? I am a Canadian citizen (residing in Canada), so I'm not sure if that makes a difference.	You automatically have a copyright in any copyritable things you create. So you own copyright over the pictures you sent him (as long as you created them)	The DMCA prohibits circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to a copyrighted work. So you can't legally "crack" the software, period -- even if you own a disc containing the software and have a valid license to use it, a license to use the work is not authorization to circumvent access controls. So if the disc is copy-protected, by my understanding of the DMCA, you're kinda screwed. (The company might be willing to provide you a replacement copy, even if only to maintain the illusion that the software is "licensed, not sold". But you can't make one yourself.) Likewise, if you have a copy of the disc but have lost the license key, you're screwed. Even if you could prove beyond any doubt that you are the licensee, there's not any law i'm aware of that would compel the copyright owner to provide you another license key. And courts have held that distribution of license keys without authorization is a violation of the DMCA. So whoever might provide you another key, if they're not the copyright holder, has broken the law. If you managed to copy the disc from a friend (without circumventing any kind of copy protection), and had your own license key, you might be in a better position. Many EULAs allow you to make a backup copy. Even if they didn't, copyright law does, so there's a possible case for fair use.	The designer/company owns the copyright to the original work, you own the copyright in the derivative work (the screenshot). However, your work is subject to whatever rights your license to use the game gives you and fair use/fair dealing. An example of a company attempting to enforce copyright from screenshots/screen recordings can be seen by the Nintendo Creators Program.	You would want to establish trademark protection on the phrase "Ball Cube": copyright is not generally a good way to protect names or other short phrases. See, for example, Can I copyright the name of my band? from the U. S. Copyright Office, which notes that "names are not protected by copyright law." Furthermore, you're interested in preventing others from selling a similar object using a similar name, and that's precisely what trademark protection is for. The ball cube design would potentially be eligible for copyright protection, but you should be aware that this protection would not extend to elements of its design that originated in Rubik's Cube, because your design would be a derivative work.	The standard for fair use of trademarks is as follows: (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner. I think you might run into a problem with (1). In other words the trademark owner would argue that you could have used fake trademarks to satisfy your product description needs, so you are using their trademark unnecessarily.	If any elements of the game are protected by copyright, then you cannot reproduce those elements (17 U.S.C. §106) unless your reproduction falls under a fair use exception (17 U.S.C. §107). Elements that may be protected by copyright include: artwork specific language on each card the aggregate effects of the cards (i.e. copying a single card's effects might not infringe copyright, but if you copy the effect of a bunch of the cards, such that you are taking expression of the original author's creativity, that might infringe, even if you change the words used) Whether an element of the game is protected by copyright is a fact-intensive question that would depend on the specifics of the game. Whether your copy infringes is likewise a fact-intensive question that would depend on what you copy. Fair use is also a fact-intensive, case-by-case analysis, but in my opinion, it is likely that creating a computer program derivative work (17 U.S.C. §101) of the game for your own personal education would be considered fair use. From a practical standpoint, even if it were not fair use, it would be near impossible for the copyright owner to discover. Posting the code on GitHub tips the scales away from fair use because of (17 U.S.C. §107(4)): "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." But, none of the factors are determinative on their own. You ask: I likely cannot simply change all the names of the various cards to something else, right? I agree. In my opinion, the selection and arrangement of the effects attributed to each card is an expression of the author's creativity, and no matter what you call the cards, copyright in the game would be implicated if you retained the effects associated with each card. If I start changing the rules of the game, does that make it legal for me to share my source code, for instance? At some point, it will be an entirely different game, so certainly, in the limit, your work would not be infringing. We can't answer where that line is, but in general, the less of the original author's creativity that you re-use, the less likely a ruling of infringement. Also, in general, the more transformative your work is, the more likely a fair use exception would apply.	Bringing fair use into this sounds iffy if you are partnering -- that is a commercial relationship which should be defined. If they did send you a file with their logo for a specific purpose, you can assume that you are allowed to use it for that specific purpose. If they did not send you the file, you can assume that they did not give you permission, or they would have included the file ...	I assume these are digital photos that were electronically transferred (not prints physically delivered). If they were prints physically delivered, he owns those prints, since you used to own them but you unconditionally transferred ownership to him by giving them. No backsies under the law. The photos are protected by copyright law, which means that the person who took the pictures has the exclusive right to make copies, disseminate them, and authorize making copies. In order for anyone to make a copy, they need permission – a license – from you. In the world of pre-planned business deals, the copyright holder writes up a document granting B some right to use the protected material, which typically means "you can install it on your various devices but may not give copies to others". In this case, however, you didn't create an explicit written license. So if this ends up in court, the question is what implicit license you granted. The courts will not decide that you granted him the license to unrestrictedly sell or give away copies of the protected material. The most likely outcome would be that he can only keep his copy, i.e. he will not be forced to erase the copy that you sent him. What the courts would do is try to discern what license you most likely intended to grant to him. There is a provision in copyright law that allows a licensee to make backup copies of a computer program (17 USC 117), but a digital photo is not a computer program. So the lifespan of the copy that you sent would be the lifespan of the phone (I assume) that you sent it to. Since actually using a digital photo technically requires making a copy (from disk storage to computational memory), there is a legal direction (dead-end) that you could go where the photo could exist on the phone, but never be opened again. Again, the courts would have to discern what license you probably intended w.r.t. ever opening the photo – obviously you intended that the file could be opened / viewed any number of times. You could argue that the license which you granted was conditional, i.e. "you can have and use these pictures as long as we are a thing", but establishing that this was part of the license would be tricky. Free digital content often has some "as long as" condition attached to it, i.e. "you can use this program as long as you are affiliated with University of Whatever". I don't consider a conditional license to be a ridiculous interpretation, on the other hand the particular court (judge) might decide that people who sext should be forced to live with the unpleasant consequences of their decisions. If we exclude such a line of thinking, I don't see a compelling counter-argument that your ex-partner inequitably loses a right by construing the license as conditional. I don't know if there is any case law that addresses this: at any rate, copyright law would severely limit what he could do with the pictures (the tort "invasion of privacy" also limits dissemination).
The GDPR loop of physical mail requests ( Is there a way to stop it ? ) It is confusing how this kind of a malacious person an be stopped: A person does this: A GDPR request is sent asking for right to access . The request itself bundles some personal information with it. Under accountability clause the given recipt of previous request must be kept . Second request sent because the recipt will contain personal information which is to be accessed by mail physical mail.Basically he wants to access recipt of previous one. Step 2 is revisited. A bussinesses wealth will be drained like this as they cannot claim request is manifestly unfound or excessive as new records are kept after every request. HOW TO STOP IT !	Artice §12(5) GDPR limits the right to access: Information provided under Articles 13 and 14 and any communication and any actions taken under Articles 15 to 22 and 34 shall be provided free of charge. Where requests from a data subject are manifestly unfounded or excessive, in particular because of their repetitive character, the controller may either: (a) charge a reasonable fee taking into account the administrative costs of providing the information or communication or taking the action requested; or (b) refuse to act on the request. The controller shall bear the burden of demonstrating the manifestly unfounded or excessive character of the request. A request to request the filing that you acted on their request is already excessive, repeated and frequent requests could be acted upon by taking the not-acting steps or sending an invoice before any action is taken. Also, very frequent requests with overlapping times might be answered jointly. It would be good to inform the customer in the last answer granted for free, how often they requested information and that any further answer might incur such and such fees for compiling the information.	Yes, there would still be an obligation to comply with erasure requests – if the data subject can be identified, and if the GDPR applies. This is a case for Art 11 GDPR: processing which does not require identification. The pastebin site is not required to collect identifying info just in order to facilitate later deletion. If the site is unable to identify the data subjects, then the data subject rights (like access, rectification, erasure, restriction, or data portability) do not apply. Other rights like the right to be informed and the right to object do remain, though. But if the data subject provides sufficient additional information that makes it possible to identify their records, then the data subject rights apply again. In practice, this is likely going to mean that anyone with access to a paste will be able to request deletion, since the site would have no ability to verify the identity of the data subject beyond the information in the paste. None of this absolves the site from implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of this data. Even though the pastes might not be directly identifying, they are personal data and are far from anonymous. Common practices like numbering pastes with a sequential ID or showing recent pastes on a homepage have to be viewed critically. My go-to recommendation is to assign a cryptographically random UUIDv4 ID to the post, so that it is practically impossible for anyone to find the paste unless they were given a link by the uploader. Your idea to delete pastes after a fairly short retention period is also good. This helps with security, and it is in line with the GDPR's data minimization and storage limitation principles: data may only be kept as long as necessary for its purpose. On the other hand, quick deletion might not be in line with the purpose of these pastes – it all depends on context. You mention that this is an US-based site. If so, there's a question whether GDPR would even apply. GDPR will apply per Art 3(2) if the data controller is offering its services to people who are in Europe. Here, “offering” does not mean mere availability of the website, but that the data controller intends the service to be used by such people, in particular if the service is somehow targeted or marketed to such people.	This is a good question, as it raises an issue which places the controller's interest in providing a smoothly functioning customer sign up process against customers' right not to have their data leaked. Note that it is not necessary to consider "enumeration" here. Even just being able to check whether one person has a registered account raises the issue. The relevant provisions of the EU GDPR (or in the UK, the UK GDPR as defined in sections 3(1) and 205(4) of the Data Protection Act 2018) are (emphasis added): Article 4(2): 'processing’ means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction So, disclosure of the fact that a user has a registered account amounts to "processing". Article 6(1): Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes; (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person; (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. Of these, only (a) and (f) are likely to be of any relevance: (a) is not too useful since it isn't feasible to design a sign-up system that depends on the user's consent (which they may not give). That leaves us with (f). As noted by the Information Commissioner's Office, "Legitimate interests is the most flexible lawful basis for processing, but you cannot assume it will always be the most appropriate. It is likely to be most appropriate where you use people’s data in ways they would reasonably expect and which have a minimal privacy impact, or where there is a compelling justification for the processing.". The legitimate interest here would be that you need a sign up system which prevents duplicate registrations. Remember though that the processing has to be "necessary" for the purposes of the legitimate interest. One might argue that it is not since you could design the system to give the appearance of accepting the duplicate registration followed by sending an email to the account holder to inform them. On the other hand this will result in a less user friendly experience which could itself be a legitimate interest. Ultimately this is a balancing exercise and it is hard to say whether you have struck the right balance until someone complains to the ICO or the court and a decision is issued. The fact that the practice is widespread among well-resourced and large companies would tend to indicate that it is lawful albeit this is not conclusive in the absence of a court decision. I'm not aware of any cases involving this particular issue but would be interested to hear from others on this point. If the processing is unlawful then Article 18 is applicable: The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller restriction of processing where one of the following applies: [...] (b) the processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes the erasure of the personal data and requests the restriction of their use instead Where processing has been restricted under paragraph 1, such personal data shall, with the exception of storage, only be processed with the data subject’s consent or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or for the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person or for reasons of important public interest of the Union or of a Member State. In other words, the data subject could ask you not to disclose their registration status via the sign up page, and you would be obliged to comply with the request. Separately from the above points, in order to be lawful you must provide the data subject with certain prescribed information at the time when the data is collected. Of particular relevance here are the following items: Article 13(1): Where personal data relating to a data subject are collected from the data subject, the controller shall, at the time when personal data are obtained, provide the data subject with all of the following information: [...] (c) the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended as well as the legal basis for the processing; (d) where the processing is based on point (f) of Article 6(1), the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party; So even if you conclude that the processing will be lawful you will have to give some consideration to the basis so that you can comply with the above provision.	These are only tangentially related to the GDPR A government entity processing data in accordance with a member state law is ipso facto in compliance with the GDPR. That’s because lawful government data processing is a legitimate reason for processing data under the GDPR. If Germany, for example, passes a law saying German police can record every phone call in Germany, then that would be a lawful basis for processing under the GDPR. There may be constitutional or other legal limitations on such a law but as far as the GDPR is concerned, they’re fine.	There are no specific criteria for deciding whether a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, because this depends very much on context. The ICO has given some clarifications, but they still won't tell you an allowed frequency of requests. We (as data subjects) should not invent particular criteria because they would be only our opinion. In any case, the data controller would have burden of proof to show that a request was indeed manifestly unfounded or excessive. That means that a data controller will generally err on the side of caution and allow repeated requests. But that doesn't mean you won't get pushback on your proposed frequency. I think your proposed approach is likely to be both unfounded and excessive. A controller has one month to respond to your request. Sending off a request while a previous request is still pending would likely demonstrate an excessive frequency of requests. Even if the data controller responds more quickly, it is doubtful whether that would entitle you to more frequent updates. Since the data controller will inform you about important events with a letter, this weakens your need to make frequent requests. Your “Bayesian model” is also flawed, both in content and application. As your prior, you expect a very high rate of events. However, a normal citizen would expect to receive a parking fine approximately never. Your model should more correctly be based around the probability of missing an event, while also accounting for letters (which generally do arrive in time). It might also be incorrect to use your circumstances as the basis for determining a reasonable frequency. The ICO suggests multiple factors (nature of the data, purposes of processing, how often the data is altered, relationship with other GDPR rights). These factor's generally relate to the controller's processing, but not to your individual circumstances. Next, your requests seem unfounded: the purpose of your requests is not aligned with the GDPR, and automated requests raise doubt about whether the request is valid. Your motivation to make the requests is “to know about claims such as parking fines […] when something goes wrong with the letters sent”. This is a fairly speculative reason since letters generally do arrive well. In contrast, the GDPR provides for the right to access “in order to be aware of, and verify, the lawfulness of the processing” (Recital 63). You are not claiming the right to access for the purpose of verification and to obtain information about the processing, instead you're abusing the GDPR rights to create a kind of API that auto-updates. So, is three months a hard and fast rule? Definitely not, but it seems like an unobjectionable, reasonable frequency. If a data controller thinks a request every three months is excessive, you'll likely be able to push back successfully. But with more frequent requests, you're entering a grey area. Here, it becomes increasingly likely that the controller is able to demonstrate that your requests are invalid.	The obligation to notify the supervisory authority (CNIL in your case) no longer exists. It was part of the previous regulatory framework, but it is not part of GDPR (which takes affect tomorrow). If you use CCTV that may monitor employees (i.e. they sometimes enter the HQ to consult with the owner), your obligations under the GDPR is basically to inform the employees that the CCTV cameras are there. I.e. Data subjects are entitled to understand when their personal data is being processed, covering the transparency aspect of processing. The use of CCTV must be communicated via signage which indicates the areas covered and instructions for further information.	It is not possible for someone to forfeit their rights because the GDPR is compulsory law. In the EU, laws can be regulatory or compulsory. In case of an agreement, regulatory laws can be set aside, if both parties agree on that. But compulsory laws cannot be set aside. Of course laws can also be partly compulsory. For example provisions which cannot be changed in disadvantage of a consumer. So there is freedom of contract, but it's freedom is reduced by law for the common good or for example to avoid misuse of bargaining power. In particular consumer related laws are often compulsory because it has little power against the other parties. Companies can have their negotiations done by lawyers, so they can make a well informed an well negotiated decision. As an extreme example, you cannot kill someone, even if that person has given you written permission. See also "Peremptory norm" on wikipedia for international law examples.	You're misreading the law. You need to keep reading the section you referenced (emphasis added): The disclosure...shall be made in writing and delivered through the consumer’s account with the business, if the consumer maintains an account with the business, or by mail or electronically at the consumer’s option if the consumer does not maintain an account with the business Thus, the option to have the disclosure sent by mail only applies to consumers who do not have an account with the business. Since presumably a large number of sites only maintain personal information for users with accounts, such sites need not provide a mail option. Further, it doesn't say there needs to be a button: you just need the ability to say you'd like it mailed to you in the request somehow, and then they need to comply when you do.
FICO score calculation exact breakdown Do I have any legal ground to demand an exact breakdown of my FICO score? The precise formula and data points that were used for my report, not some generic explanation.	No It's a trade secret owned by FICO, formerly Fair, Isaac and Company (1956-2003) and Fair Isaac Corporation (2003-2009). As a trade secret, it is protected and breaches of the secrecy carry criminal and civil punishments. Btw: Releasing the formula would invalidate all scores based on it, as it would open doors to manipulate the own score.	Law enforcement sometimes use "pacing" as a speed enforcement tool. The basic idea is that they consistently drive a certain speed - which is at or above the speed limit and notice that the "alleged speeder" is either keeping pace or exceeding the pace. The details are complicated and a police officer would know them much better than me. But basically They have to calibrate their speedometer - because if their speedometer is broken pacing is obviously worthless. They need to bring the calibration results to court. Not having those calibration records for your speedometer means that many police departments will be reluctant to issue a speeding ticket to the other motorists. They rely on the fact that most state laws allow law enforcement leeway to exceed the posted limit. Not being a lawyer or a police officer, I do not know the exact circumstances, but if they were not allowed to slightly exceed the limit for pacing then logically every pacing enforcement should result in 2 tickets - one being for the officer. If you can swear that your speedometer is good then they can use that evidence to write you a speeding ticket, because whatever allowances the law allows law enforcement for pacing are not granted to you. I am sure they can overcome the calibration issue with regard to a ticket issued to you by your certification that the speedometer is correct. If they issued a ticket to me based on your certification that your speedometer was correct, I would call bullshit. Talking to the police can only hurt you.	It may be illegal under product labelling regulations that apply to that kind of product (or under a general deceptive trade practices act), but even then, only if you are interpreting the numbers, whose meaning is not clearly spelled out, correctly. But, to be actionable as fraud it must, among other things, be a misrepresentation as to a material fact (which if the goods, such as cordless drills, are not perishable it probably isn't) and the recipient of the misrepresentation must have justifiably relied upon the misrepresentation (which is necessary not true in the case of a representation that it was made in December 2018 on a product sold no later than July of 2018). It is also not entirely clear that this is a "made on" date. It could refer, for example, to the the twelfth batch or lot or shipment of products made in 2018, and not to the month of December, or it could refer to a product made in 2018 at factory number 12. @NateEldredge in the comments also makes the plausible observation that it could be a week number which is a common system in manufacturing which would put it in a more reasonable March 2018 time frame. You probably shouldn't do anything, because you haven't been harmed by this cryptic string of numbers embossed on the product, and even if you were, your damages would not be worth the time or money involved to pursue it as anything other than part of a class action lawsuit.	You mean like this? Of course, a website can charge you to access its pages; many do. And yes, clicking on an "I agree" button can form a valid contract (just visiting the website can't). Historically, the law has adopted the position that if you sign it (including by clicking "I agree") you read it, you understood it and you agreed to it. It's hard to imaging how it could be otherwise because allowing people to get out of contracts by saying "I never read it" is problematical as well. However, there are two things that mitigate against the type of term you suggest; one practical and one legal. Practical: How do they get your money? They can ask for your credits card details and, if they do and you give them a court will probably come to the conclusion that you knowingly and willingly agreed to pay for the service. However, if they don't have any method of getting money from you, they would have to take you to court to do so. There are a number of practical problems with this like: who are you? where are you? Which court can they sue you in etc. Legal: At common law, there exists the doctrine of unconscionability that describes terms that are so extremely unjust, or overwhelmingly one-sided in favour of the party who has the superior bargaining power, that they are contrary to good conscience. Such terms are legally unenforcable. Further, in many jurisdictions, consumer protection law often give additional protections up to and including not enforcing terms that are merely unfair not just unconscionable.	A clause states "If the contract is breached you accept that you must pay for damages. We shall determine the amount." Will this hold up in court? A court is going to want to look for context and an interpretation that would make this provision make sense before invalidating it (which it might). For example, if there was a schedule of the amount of damages for various violations attached to the contract, a court might interpret this language to mean that the drafting, non-breaching party will invoice you for damages in amount that it determines in good faith to be the correct amount with reference to the schedule or some formula set forth in the contract (e.g. an interest rate on an open account loan), in much the same way that a landlord might dock your security deposit and send you a letter telling you what was deducted in what amounts and why, or that a credit card company might charge you interest and late fees on a monthly basis. A court would, of course, be unlikely to interpret the clause as affording final and binding legal authority to decide what is owed. In the face of a clause like this one, the other party could bring a lawsuit to dispute the amount determined to be owed by the drafting, non-breaching party (unless the contract is a third-party arbitration clause and simply doesn't read like one because it is out of context).	That is private. Who you work for is not information that is disclosed publicly by any state actor in Germany, just like your taxes. In fact, that or who you are employed at is often regarded as personal and private information. Nigh impossible through agencies Public agencies like the Fiskus (tax), Agentur für Arbeit, and immigration are not allowed to give any information about a person to anyone but that person or another agency that has the right to that information. Yes, (generally speaking) the tax office may not even say that a person exists (or doesn't) and what their tax number is to anyone but the person in question.	I'm sorry to deflate what is clearly a very philosophically interesting question, but the law is straightforward here. The truth, essentially, is the set of facts that you believe to be true. Yes. It means that you will not lie by omission, and that you will provide the relevant facts. No, you don't need to recount history since the first instant of the big bang. Only expert witnesses may answer by giving their opinion or evaluation. This is presumed accurate by their experience and where it is not accurate, the other side may present opposing expert witnesses to contest their conclusion or evaluation. Laypeople are permitted to answer only with their recollection of facts. Lawyers may not ask them what their opinion is, although by your definition every question is about opinion, since perception and memory is limited. But the question "What colour was Mr Smith's house?" and "What architectural style informed the facade of Mr Smith's house?" require different amounts of expertise and opinion. "Truth" isn't jargon, or even technical language here. I generally aim to be truthful, and so when someone asks me what time it is, I don't feel compelled to answer to the nano/picosecond. Would you call me a liar? Am I lying by omission? Similarly, if someone asks me what colour a car is, I don't feel compelled to say "I can't possibly know, because my perception may differ from yours. If you honestly feel that when someone asks you to be truthful about something, then you must either be lying, or lying by omission if you don't start your answer with the first instant of the big bang, your problem is not one of law.	There are vendors providing software to facilitate this sort of task. Avalara is perhaps the best known, but I don't have any experience with it and couldn't say whether it's actually any good or not. But the bottom line is that in a destination-based sourcing regime, sales taxes must be computed based on the address of the destination, not city or ZIP code associated with that address. As Avalara has noted, this is a giant hassle, but it's nonetheless the current state of the law. Of course, this assumes the seller has sufficient nexus with Louisiana to trigger a duty to collect sales taxes in the first place. From the question, it is not clear whether this is true.
How can you block GDPR users from US based sites? (I originally asked this question on Server Fault with GDPR tag, but due to minimal response was advised to try asking here) As I understand it, GDPR is European legislation promoted as protecting EU citizen's privacy and granting EU citizens rights to control how websites use data/whether the websites can store said data. My initial impression of GDPR is that if an EU citizen wants GDPR rights, they should only use servers residing in the EU which would be subject to GDPR legislation. However, there apparently is some notion that EU legislation can somehow affect servers outside of the EU? I'm not a lawyer, but I would expect that each nation defines and enforces their own laws -- which may or may not be in alignment with another nation's legislation. How is GDPR even applicable to servers residing in the US (or any other non-EU nation)? Based on several articles I've read online, it seems somehow the US allows EU's GDPR legislation to be enforced on US soil. Since I don't want to deal with GDPR headaches, I seemingly have no choice but to block ALL EU citizens (and anyone else accessing my sites/services from within the EU) from using my websites and services. I can firewall the entire EU IP address space to catch the bulk of EU users, but there are EU citizens who could use VPN or otherwise access my site from an non-EU ISP. Is there a legal approach that can be used to block EU citizens? E.g. "Accessing this site or service as an EU resident is illegal" such that if one violated the legal directive, GDPR expectation would be void? I don't care if they use my websites and services as long as they understand I'm not playing the GDPR game and anything they submit to my servers won't be subject to it.	This might be based on a misunderstanding of the GDPR. The GDPR applies under three circumstances: Art 3(1): you (the data controller) are established/live in the EU. Art 3(2)(a): you offer goods or services to people in the EU. Art 3(2)(b): you monitor behaviour of people who are physically in the EU. What is not a factor: what citizenship your site visitors have (see Recital 14). whether your site can be accessed from the EU (see Recital 23). The crucial part is what “offering of goods or services” means. The EDPB has issued official guidelines on the interpretation of this targeting criterion (guidelines 03/2018 on the territorial scope of the GDPR). Some important notes: The offer of goods or services does not have to involve any compensation. Gratis access to a website can also be a service. GDPR applies when targeting people currently in the EU. US tourists in the EU are protected, EU tourists in the US are not. The moment of offering the service matters. E.g. a US person using an US service cannot claim GDPR protection against the US service while travelling to the EU. Instead of looking at the users of the service, we should look at the target market of the service: if the service doesn't cater to people in the EU, GDPR doesn't apply. The essential question is whether the provider of the service “envisages” offering services to people in the EU. Does the service provider intend for EU data subjects to use the service? The guidelines assemble a non-exhaustive list of indications from case law, in particular the Pammer and Alpenhof case. An excerpt of indications that GDPR might apply: the EU or member states are mentioned in the offer of services the website has marketing targetted at an EU audience the activity at issue is of international nature, e.g. tourism mentioning special contact details for the EU market using a top-level domain name associated with the EU or member states travel instructions when visiting from the EU mentions of an international clientele including people/companies from the EU use of a language or currency other than yours offering delivery of goods to the EU So whether GDPR applies would depend on the subject matter of your website, and on whether you intend to participate in the EU market (even if only online, even if your service is gratis). If GDPR were to apply, then blocking people from the EU would be questionable. It might also be illegal, but not on GDPR grounds. If GDPR does not apply, then blocking people from the EU is already unnecessary. However, geoblocking would be a very strong indication that you don't intend to offer your services to people in the EU. There is no good case law on whether geoblocking is necessary or sufficient. I assume that geoblocking is sufficient (even if it can be easily circumvented e.g. with a VPN), but that it's not necessary in the first place. You could also re-emphasize that you're not targeting the EU market when considering the above indications. E.g. a web shop might clarify that they only ship to North America, but not internationally. Again: your targeting of your website is the crucial factor, not the origin of your visitors. So even if there is an occasional EU visitor, that doesn't mean you have to comply with GDPR.	EU Member State Data Protection Authorities ("DPAs") have fined foreign legal entities (pursuant to Articles 58(2)(i) and 83 GDPR and further national provisions), however it is not publicly documented whether the specific situation you described has occured. Even if such situation would arise, I would think that it is unlikely that DPAs imposing administrative fines could enforce their (fine imposing) decisions outside the EU, even if the decision in question was confirmed by a court. For instance, in the Netherlands there is not a strong legal basis for the (mutual) recognition and enforcement of foreign administrative decisions. I could imagine that the same applies to other EU Member States. However, please note (possible) civil liability Your question seems to refer to enforcement of the GDPR under instruments of administrative / public law. Please note however that the GDPR can also be enforced by private individuals and organizations, e.g. through tortious liability claims. See for example Amsterdam District Court 2 september 2019, ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2019:6490 for a situation (albeit purely national), in which the Court awarded damages for a GDPR breach to a data subject. Possibly, a similar case could be brought against an entity outside the EU that processes data of EU data subjects, contingent upon the outcome of certain questions of International Private Law. With regard to civil damages, there is an extensive international legal framework that covers the cross-border enforcement of rewards for civil damages. Likely, such rewards for damages could more easily be enforced outside the EU. However, I must note that such (private) cross-border enforcement of the GDPR has not happened in practice (yet) either (as far as I know). (Please note that this answer assumes (per the question) that the GDPR is applicable and only deals with the question of the territorial aspects of subsequent enforcement. See about the territorial scope of the GDPR: What is the legal mechanism by which the GDPR might apply to a business with no presence in the EU?).	No, GDPR does not apply here — but other laws might . The General Data Protection Regulation only concerns itself with the following: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system. per Article 2. Furthermore, there is a specific exemption (Art. 2 (2)(c)) which would seem to apply to you (emphasis mine): This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: (a) in the course of an activity which falls outside the scope of Union law; (b) by the Member States when carrying out activities which fall within the scope of Chapter 2 of Title V of the TEU; (c) by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity; (d) by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security. You are sharing the conversation in a purely personal capacity and are not processing it wholly or partly through automated means nor are you intending it to form part of a filing system. Additionally, depending on the contents of the conversation and what you share, there may not be any personal data involved at all. For example, if you only share the messages themselves (and they don't contain any personal data that could identify someone) and censor/black out any names or photographs/avatars from the senders. Either way, GDPR does not appear to apply to you in this context. However, it appears that Article 18.1 of the Spanish Constitution grants the right to "personal and family privacy", as does the Organic Act 1/982 on Civil Protection of the Right to Honour, Personal and Family Privacy, and Self-Image. It's possible that, depending on the contents of the conversation, the other party involved in the conversation may have a case for action against you in the civil or criminal courts (for example, if the information invades their privacy or is defamatory in some way) if you share the contents of the conversation with someone else. I am not familiar with Spanish law so cannot comment further on this matter.	You wrote: As far as I believe, it is permitted under GDPR to record and store non-anonymized web server access logs, as these can be useful for security reasons. True, Recital 49 GDPR: The processing of personal data to the extent strictly necessary and proportionate for the purposes of ensuring network and information security, i.e. the ability of a network or an information system to resist, at a given level of confidence, accidental events or unlawful or malicious actions that compromise the availability, authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of stored or transmitted personal data, and the security of the related services offered by, or accessible via, those networks and systems, by public authorities, by computer emergency response teams (CERTs), computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), by providers of electronic communications networks and services and by providers of security technologies and services, constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned. This could, for example, include preventing unauthorised access to electronic communications networks and malicious code distribution and stopping ‘denial of service’ attacks and damage to computer and electronic communication systems. You asked: My question is whether this anonymization process counts as processing personally identifiable data under GDPR? IP addresses are personal data in some cases, so yes, you're processing personal data. Then, these anonymized logs will be fed into an analytics tool to provide stats on unique visitors, page hits, etc. These are purposes considered compatible with initial purposes according to Article 5.1.(b): Personal data shall be (...) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for (...) statistical purposes shall, in accordance with Article 89(1), not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes (‘purpose limitation’); As a matter of fact, you might be required to anonymize the data for those purposes, see Article 89.1: Processing for (...) statistical purposes, shall be subject to appropriate safeguards, in accordance with this Regulation, for the rights and freedoms of the data subject. Those safeguards shall ensure that technical and organisational measures are in place in particular in order to ensure respect for the principle of data minimisation. Those measures may include pseudonymisation provided that those purposes can be fulfilled in that manner. Where those purposes can be fulfilled by further processing which does not permit or no longer permits the identification of data subjects, those purposes shall be fulfilled in that manner. If I were to anonymize the logs and continue to use them exclusively for security reasons, would that change anything? No, you would be processing data in a manner compatible with initial purposes (ensuring network and information security). Or does it not matter what I do with them once they are anonymized? Yes, it does. If you're not using them for "archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes" then you're using them for purposes incompatible with initial purposes. You would need to find new legal basis for processing. does this extra anonymization process on top then take it over the line meaning that consent and a privacy notice would be required? It depends on what you want to do with anonymized data. In your case, for security purposes or security and statistical purposes, you don't need the consent and there is no requirement for the privacy notice (but sure, it would be nice to publish one). For other purposes it might be different.	GDPR rights and obligations cover different things: A duty of the data processor towards the government of the country where they operate to present certain documentation, and to implement technical and organizational measures to protect data. These would be audited by government agencies, not the individual customer. A single data subject cannot waive them. A duty of the data processor to process and store personal data only with a legal justification. User consent is one possible justification, if it is informed, revokable, etc. So a single data subject can waive a "ban" on storing his or her data in a database along with all the other users who waived that "ban," but the duties towards the government regarding that data would still apply. A duty of the data processor to respond to an Article 15 request by the data subject in a certain way and timeframe. If a data subject writes a letter to the data processor and explicitly states that the letter is not an Article 15 request, then Article 15 does not apply. The data subject would of course have the right to make an Article 15 request at a later time.	The material scope of the GDPR (Article 2) is limited to the processing of personal data (including mere storage) by automated means or as part of a filing system. The question of whether your activity falls within this scope hinges on what you actually do with the data once you take possession of it. You have mentioned saving the contact information of people you have met at conferences, which could refer to simply retaining it for later use, or to the technological process of storing data in a computer. The former, if not done in any structured way (a filing system) would not fall within the scope of the GDPR. The latter, even if poorly executed, such as a photo stored on a business smartphone or a text document thrown onto your workstation's desktop, would always fall within scope as computerised data is processed "by automated means". When the contact information you receive identifies a specific person, as distinct from just a corporate switchboard number and company name for example, it is personal data. When you get that personal data from the person it identifies (data subject), and you're otherwise in scope, Article 13 is invoked, requiring you to provide a list of information, "at the time when personal data are obtained", unless "the data subject already has the information." This is known as the right to be informed. The requirements differ when personal data are not obtained directly from the data subject. I would argue it is unreasonable to be expected to provide the information to the data subject over a cup of coffee or in a quick business card exchange, but if you start entering it into a spreadsheet or your CRM, you need to provide the required information, which may be as simple as a follow-up email thanking them for their time and letting them know you'll keep their contact details on file, along with a link to your organisation's privacy policy, assuming it covers this use, or if not, a specific privacy notice. You will of course be required to comply with other requirements such as the principles of data minimisation and identify a lawful basis, maintain adequate security by implementing technical and organisational measures, hold contracts with any third parties who process personal data on your behalf, and have a process for upholding data subject rights and responding to requests to exercise them - among others - but you should already be doing that for your other processing activities unless exempt. Additional information Edits have been made as clarifications and questions were forthcoming. Email marketing You need to consider the applicable country's implementation of Directive 2002/58/EC as amended ("ePrivacy Directive"). For example, in the UK you could send such messages without consent to contacts at incorporated companies or public sector bodies, but would have required consent for sole traders, private individuals, or partners in an unincorporated partnership. In Ireland, you have an exemption to consent for existing customers who were offered the opportunity to opt out when their email address was collected, but must use the email address for marketing within 12 months. Each EU country will have a different implementation of the Directive. In the Netherlands, Article 17 of the Telecommunications Act implements Directive 2003/58/EC and thus provisions for direct marketing by email. Processing by automated means Processing by automated means refers to processing of personal data in electronic, rather than manual form. All electronic processing is within the material scope of the GDPR, while only manual processing that forms or is intended to form part of a filing system is. Recital 15: The protection of natural persons should apply to the processing of personal data by automated means, as well as to manual processing, if the personal data are contained or are intended to be contained in a filing system. Art. 4(2): ‘processing’ means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means ICO guidance What is personal data?: The GDPR covers the processing of personal data in two ways: personal data processed wholly or partly by automated means (that is, information in electronic form); and personal data processed in a non-automated manner which forms part of, or is intended to form part of, a ‘filing system’ (that is, manual information in a filing system).	Yes, you could do this be means of the EULA, provided you are not in the EU yourself. You only have to comply with the GDPR if you are offering a product or service to people that are in the EU. If you are making it clear that whatever you offer is not available to Europeans, you make your site exempt from the GDPR.	[I'm not so well-versed on US and Russian law, thus I will limit my answer to EU law.] Your specific use of a user identifier, as I understood from your question, can be classified as personal data, so in your case, the GDPR seems to apply. This means that you need to have a) legitimate purposes to process that personal data (e.g. crash reporting) and b) a legal justification for each purpose of processing: it could be based on consent or another legitimate purpose (inc. your own legitimate interests). Consent might not be the best option for you, but it's up to you to decide. In any case, you need to assess the risks to the data subjects (your users) before you decide. How likely is it that you will get breached, and what potential harm will that cause to your users? These are some guidelines; my recommendation is that you read the law and the guidelines by the Article 29 Working Group and European Data Protection Board, or hire some good experts on this. There is no easy answer, or one size fits all solution. The GDPR isn't so hard to understand or implement, but it does require some change in mindset. With the new law, processing personal data carries a higher risk of penalties, so you should do it only when it's absolutely necessary, and with respect to the rights of your users.
Mathematical models for money lending and antidiscrimination laws in the US Are there any federal or state laws in the US regulating which models can banks and money lenders use to decide for/against lending money to an individual? I am interested on this topic in the context of mechanisms to avoid discrimination (for example, how do you ensure that your AI model doesn't have a variable that indirectly or directly takes into account ethnicity when making a decision).	Are there any federal or state laws in the US regulating which models can banks and money lenders use to decide for/against lending money to an individual? There aren't really safe harbors regarding what lenders can use. There are only laws that prohibit certain practices like discrimination in lending. Everything else is permitted. ow do you ensure that your AI model doesn't have a variable that indirectly or directly takes into account ethnicity when making a decision). Using a "black box" machine learning or AI model is inherently risky legally because it isn't transparent and there is no good way to demonstrate that discriminatory effects aren't due to to discriminatory factors as opposed to neutral factors. AI models tend to pick up on impermissible factors by attaching weight to factors that aren't substantively important, but are correlated strongly with impermissible factors, for example, assigning different weights to different surnames. On the other hand, if you can spell out the precise formula by which your model is constructed (in a closed court proceeding if necessary to preserve trade secrets) and can demonstrate that no impermissible factors are considered, directly or indirectly, then your mathematical model is very likely to be upheld as legal and permissible.	There might be some relevant state law. Michigan has a Social Security Number Privacy Act, which limits use of SS numbers, such as publically displaying an amount of a number, use it as an account number, require it to be transmitted insecurely over the internet, mail it etc. However, it is allowed under 3(a) to mail a number in a document if the purpose is to identify an individual, especially 3(a)(iv), to Lawfully pursue or enforce a person's legal rights, including, but not limited to, an audit, collection, investigation, or transfer of a tax, employee benefit, debt, claim, receivable, or account or an interest in a receivable or account. It would depends on your state, but it is highly likely that debt collection is an allowed purpose (even if it not a real debt, just a good-faith mistake). This gives a brief overview of state laws.	Let’s say I go to a cash machine, ask for £100, and the machine gives me £10,000. I use my banking app and see that £100 left my account, not £10,000. At this point I haven’t done anything illegal. If I asked for another £100 and got £10,000 again, that might be illegal. But the extra £9,900 are not mine. They are the bank’s money. If I try to keep it, that is simply theft.	Are all interview questions that don't apply to essential functions illegal? No. Not all such questions are illegal, but see one exception from California legislation as pointed out by @GeorgeWhite and others in section 432.7 of the state Labor Code. Other jurisdictions very likely have equivalent prohibitions, but questions like the one you envisioned ("What music do you like") would not infringe statutory provisions. Generally speaking, it is lawful for an employer to assess candidates' personality & non-essential skills under casual and not-so-casual scenarios through the use of questions with no relevance to the job at issue. Only in very specific circumstances certain pattern(s) of questions may lead to a finding of harassment or discrimination. Questions related to categories which the Civil Rights Act protects are risky because a rejected candidate would have at least some grounds for a claim of discrimination. Those categories are [candidate's] race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Questions on those protected categories are not illegal, but the employer will have the burden of proving that its challenged practice (i.e., making seemingly discriminatory questions) "is job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity" (see 42 USC § 2000e-2(k)(1)(A)(ii)) rather than for purposes of unlawful discrimination.	This may be allowed, or prohibited, it all depends. At the federal level, there is no specific prohibition against asking this question, however it may be found to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if the result discriminates in employment based on race. At the state level (in Washington), WAC 162-12-140 gives examples of fair and unfair pre-employment inquiries. W.r.t. arrests, it deems such questions as fair under limited circumstances: Because statistical studies regarding arrests have shown a disparate impact on some racial and ethnic minorities, and an arrest by itself is not a reliable indication of criminal behavior, inquiries concerning arrests must include whether charges are still pending, have been dismissed, or led to conviction of a crime involving behavior that would adversely affect job performance, and the arrest occurred within the last ten years. Exempt from this rule are law enforcement agencies and state agencies, school districts, businesses and other organizations that have a direct responsibility for the supervision, care, or treatment of children, mentally ill persons, developmentally disabled persons, or other vulnerable adults. See RCW 43.20A.710; 43.43.830 through 43.43.842; and RCW 72.23.035. In other words, asking just about arrests is unfair and illegal. You can look up the law of other states here. In California, you can't ask about an arrest until late in the process as part of an individualized investigation, and can't be an automatic "arrest? No job!" rule. In contrast, Arkansas has no prohibition against arrest as job disqualifier.	"Mathematician" is not a legally regulated term, so there are no laws that would prohibit me from calling myself a mathematician (I am not one). I do know a tiny bit about number theory, set theory, formal language theory and logic, but mostly I know about African languages. If I have no shame, I can legally call myself a mathematician. My employing institution has no policy that regulates self-appellation. In fact it is very common for people to self-mislabel in the fashion that you describe. Many people claim to be "linguists" when they are actually "English teachers" or are "translators". However, if I were to claim to have a PhD from the Department of Mathematics at Yale University, that would be a false statement of fact, and potentially internally-actionable by the institution. My actual mathematician colleagues cannot sue me for damages (they have not been objectively harmed), but an institution could sack me for material misrepresentation of credentials (for which reason they might actually demand a copy of said credential). It is possible that a materially false statement of credential could be actionable as fraud, though I can't come up with a plausible scenario at the moment.	Discrimination is legal except on the basis of a protected class U.S. federal law protects individuals from discrimination or harassment based on the following nine protected classes: sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information Absent from that list is “occupation”. State law may add additional classes including sexual orientation and marital status. Private organisations are also free to add additional classes for their operations.	The Constitution only regulates the powers of the government; it doesn't directly say what the people can and can't do. In particular, it doesn't say directly that nobody except Congress can coin money. However, it does give the government the power to make laws, which are binding on the population. So Congress possibly could make a law forbidding cryptocurrencies, or at least regulating them, under the "regulating the value thereof" clause. However, they haven't done so. In the case of the Liberty Dollar, there are some specific laws that apply. They were convicted of violating 18 USC 485, which forbids the making of physical gold or silver coins that resemble US or foreign money, and 18 USC 486, which forbids creating or passing any physical metal coins as money (as well as other conspiracy charges, aiding and abetting, etc). None of these laws apply to cryptocurrency because they are not physical metal coins. Given that Congress has been explicitly given the power to coin and regulate the value of money in the United States, how are cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Basis created, distributed, and redeemed such that they have not been found unconstitutional? The power to regulate includes the power to not regulate. As a slight tangent, what laws allow for the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies? In a free society, "everything is permitted that is not forbidden". We don't need a law specifically allowing the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies; it's sufficient that there is no law that forbids it.
Can A Person Be Convicted For Impersonating A Medical Professional Through Text Messaging? Given that there's Person A and Person B: Let's say that Person B decides to play two pranks - maybe with the intent to cause emotional distress to Person A - both instances by pretending to be in a medical crisis and impersonating a medical professional. Let's say the first prank involved Person B claiming that he/she was being taken away by an ambulance. Person B texts Person A the following: 1.) "Person A, this is Sean. I’m a paramedic with Person B right now. We put him/her on the gurney and he/she handed me his/her phone and told me to tell you he/she would be fine and he/she asked me to keep you updated if you wanted. He/she fainted and his/her BP is high but his/her vitals aside from that are strong and we are on the way to the hospital" 2.) “I am just a paramedic, I will hand his/her phone off to an ER doctor when we get there to update you periodically” Let's say the second prank involved Person B claiming that he/she is admitting himself/herself to a psychiatric facility and needs to give his/her phone to one of the therapists there. Person B texts Person A the following: 1.) “Hello Person A, the is Allie. I am one of the therapists that will be working with Person B. We will update when he/she requests that we do so, and we will tell you only what he/she tells us to tell you." 2.) “Person B asked me to give you a generic update. We have done a thorough psych evaluation and he/she is currently marked as mentally unstable and at a high risk of self harm. He/she stoped talking about anything and hasn’t really said a word for the past few hours, did he/she ever tell you of any mental illnesses running in his/her family?” Let's say - a month later - Person A is persistent with questions of whether this really happened and Person B eventually admits that it was all a joke. Does Person B have legal grounds to press charges for any of this? Did any crime take place? Is Person B able to be convicted for impersonating through text messaging?	Keep in mind that there are two kinds of legal consequences. One is criminal liability for violating a criminal statute, in a prosecution that must usually be brought by a government official. Merely causing emotional distress, in and of itself, is not generally a crime. For that matter, inducing someone to have sex with you through lies about anything other than the identity of the person having sex is usually not a crime. But inducing someone to disclose secrets or take actions that they otherwise would not have taken based upon a statement like this could be wire fraud, theft, extortion, or a variety of other crimes, depending upon what the person A was induced to do by the messages. Knowing what was sent, in isolation, doesn't tell you everything you need to know. While practicing medicine or other healing arts without a license is a crime or at least a civil offense, this wouldn't necessarily qualify, because person B is pretending to create someone treating person B, not pretending to practice medicine on person A. No one who wasn't in on the prank had medicine purportedly practiced upon them. But if the text were use to cause someone to act in reliance on a medical opinion (e.g., to get an employer to grant family leave to person A) then it might be illegal practice of medicine. The second is civil liability, in the form of a lawsuit for committing a civil wrong, called a "tort" or breaching a contract, or for other private individual initiated requests for remedies. The conduct in the question, conceivably gives rise to civil liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress, or civil fraud. But to know that it isn't enough to know what was said. One also has to know what happened on the other end of the communication. Did person A believe the text? Did person A suffer extreme emotional distress? Did person A part with money or information that couldn't have been obtained without a false statement of fact? Was person A's reputation harmed somehow?	The tort for this kind of activity is called public disclosure of private facts, and almost every U.S. state recognizes that this tort is invalid under the First Amendment in the absence of a legal duty not to disclose of the type existing between an attorney and client, or a psychotherapist and a patient, or a contractual non-disclosure agreement, that does not exist between roommates. There is nothing illegal about your roommate's conduct. Your best move at this point is to take responsibility for your own conduct, to repent and to convince the world that you're doing your best to get on the straight and narrow going forward. If your former roommate insisted on payment for not disclosing the information, that would be extortion, but there is nothing wrong with going ahead and disseminating it without trying to obtain something of value from you for not doing so.	It would depend on your intent, among other things If the prosecution stand a reasonable chance of proving you intended to kill that person by infecting them with coronavirus, they may choose to charge you with attempted murder. Obviously, it would be highly fact-specific. In the alternative (and the far more likely prospect) they could charge you with assault occasioning actual bodily harm contrary to s47 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861 (OAPA) or inflicting grievous bodily harm contrary to s20 OAPA. The exact alternative charge would depend on the effects suffered by the victim and whether it could be proven that you were responsible. If so, and the infection was particularly severe, it could be an s20 offence (GBH). If not, it would probably be an s47 offence (ABH). Of course, if the person caught it and died, and the causation test was passed, etc. then you'd be looking at a murder charge. The same with attempted murder if they didn't die but the causation test was proven and your intent was also proven. However, realistically the most likely charge is ABH or GBH.	Bob appears to have committed "attempted larceny" by extortion, contrary to § 155.05(2)(e)(v): (e) By extortion. A person obtains property by extortion when he compels or induces another person to deliver such property to himself or to a third person by means of instilling in him a fear that, if the property is not so delivered, the actor or another will: ... (v) Expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject some person to hatred, contempt or ridicule; See § 110.00: Attempt to commit a crime. A person is guilty of an attempt to commit a crime when, with intent to commit a crime, he engages in conduct which tends to effect the commission of such crime. And see § 110.10 which covers the "impossibility" that Bob actually had compromising images from Alice's non-existent webcam: Attempt to commit a crime; no defense. If the conduct in which a person engages otherwise constitutes an attempt to commit a crime pursuant to section 110.00, it is no defense to a prosecution for such attempt that the crime charged to have been attempted was, under the attendant circumstances, factually or legally impossible of commission, if such crime could have been committed had the attendant circumstances been as such person believed them to be. (NB Bob's sentence, if found guilty, would depend the value of his attempted extortion)	This is going to vary based on jurisdiction. In Wisconsin, the attempt statute covers all felonies, but it doesn't cover all misdemeanors. The statute says: Whoever attempts to commit a felony or a crime specified in s. 940.19, 940.195, 943.20, or 943.74 may be fined or imprisoned or both as provided under sub. (1g), 943.20 is in that list, and it just so happens to be the theft statute, which includes theft via fraud. So Eve is out of luck - her attempted theft is a crime, even if she doesn't try to steal the $2500.01 needed to trigger a felony. The penalty listed for attempts is half the sentence you'd get for the completed crime. But even if this wasn't covered by the attempt statute, once the police start investigating Eve, they'll likely find a victim, or some other crime to charge her with. People who do this sort of thing tend to have a pattern of doing this sort of thing. And I notice she's using the Internet to commit the crime; that means she's involved in systems affecting interstate commerce, and she may be breaking all manner of federal laws in addition to state laws.	Health care providers in the US may send protected patient records to other health care providers for the purposes of treatment, either of the patient whose information it was or of a different patient (for instance, a doctor could send a chart of a different patient with a similar issue). This can be done without patient authorization, except for two cases: if the patient has requested more restrictions on use of their information and the provider agreed to those restrictions, and with psychotherapy notes. Source: HHS. WhatsApp specifically does not appear to be compliant with HIPAA, which is the US medical privacy law. However, there are many similar systems that are compliant. The body of your question asks about taking a smartphone screenshot; with many secure messaging systems, this is perfectly acceptable, and the principle of a doctor consulting with another doctor about a patient is actually encouraged. HIPAA violations do not by themselves result in any action against a medical license, nor can anyone besides the US government file suit based on a violation (everyone else is limited to complaining to the US government). Private lawsuits and (especially) license consequences are determined by state law, and are state- and situation-dependent. A doctor who calls a press conference to announce that this patient of his has HIV is more likely to face sanctions than a doctor whose violation was just not using a secure enough messaging client. HIPAA violations like this are not that uncommon, and generally result in at most a fine against the practice.	In the US, it depends on why you are doing this, and how you go about performing the operation. There are approved devices and procedures, and there is the other stuff. In an emergency that is life-threatening or threatens severe debilitation, it is permitted for a physician to try an extreme measure – if the state has a "Right to Try" law. Otherwise, a review and official approval by the relevant IRB is required. The devices are regulated by the FDA, but the FDA does not regulate the practice of medicine, so the feds don't have a say in whether a procedure is allowed. Nevertheless, use of unapproved devices can be taken to be evidence of failing to meet the required standard of care, in the case of a malpractice suit or punitive action by the state regulatory board. There is no specific law prohibiting removing lots of organs and replacing them with prostheses, though arguable what happened was that the brain was removed (it's not that a replacement shell was built around the person). Ordinarily, intentionally "killing" a person is illegal (except in case of sanctioned execution or self-defense). There is zero case law that would tell us whether removing a brain from a body "kills" the person. Most likely, there would be a prosecution for unlawfully causing a death, and either the legislature would tune up the law w.r.t. the definition of "causing death", or the courts would do so.	In the UK this is just called "an appeal for the suspect to come forward." The UK police are not allowed to lie or mislead as suggested in the OP, and any reduction in punishment is in the hands of the courts when passing sentence (unlike some other jurisdictions, I believe).
Can the GDPR be used to obtain US voting information This grows out of a comment in the question Who Has the Right to Access State Voter Records and How May That Right be Expediently Exercised? If a US citizen is currently resident in the EU, can that person use a GDPR request to the proper government agency (state board or elections or a similar agency) to obtain that person's own voter record and whatever other information about that person the agency may have in its files?	I suspect that US voting records would fall under Article 2(2)(a): Article 2 Material Scope ... This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: (a) in the course of an activity which falls outside the scope of Union law; I doubt it would be possible to argue successfully that a foreign election is anything other than "an activity which falls outside the scope of Union law." Even the territorial scope could be questioned. This is set forth in the next article, on "territorial scope," the second item of which says: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union. It is probably arguable whether processing absentee ballots from EU residents constitutes "offering services to data subjects in the Union," but in this case it's likely to be more difficult to resolve that question than to determine whether the activity falls outside the scope of Union law.	The GDPR has a fairly broad concept of personal data: any information that relates to an identifiable person. This is far more than directly identifiable information! The concept of identifiability is further explained in Recital 26: To determine whether a natural person is identifiable, account should be taken of all the means reasonably likely to be used, such as singling out, either by the controller or by another person to identify the natural person directly or indirectly. So indirectly linkable information can still be personal data. In your example, that ID can be easily re-identified with a particular person if you know who the secretary was between 2012 and 2014. It is quite likely that there are members in the club with this knowledge, or that this information can be gained from public sources like newspaper reports. Thus, you should assume that your member IDs are at most pseudonyms, but not anonymous. They are likely still personal data. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that you would have to erase everything. Art 17 comes with lots of caveats and exceptions. For example, if you are processing this personal data under a legitimate interest, and someone requests erasure, you might have overriding grounds to continue processing anyway. E.g. such a legitimate interest could involve security or auditability purposes. There might also be such a legitimate interest for keeping some history for the club, but there would have to be a decision based on the individual circumstances. Furthermore, you can of course retain data e.g. due to a legal obligation, or when this information is necessary for the establishment of or defence against legal claims. I understand your desire to keep some data around. Instead of asking “do I have to delete this?” it might be more productive to consider “under which legal basis can I keep this?”. I think you might have a legitimate interest, but you'd have to carry out a balancing test between the various interests and rights. A really problematic approach would be to hold on to de-identified data in the belief that it no longer were personal data. Such a belief is usually mistaken. True anonymization that meets the GDPR's definition is really hard, in particular because you would also have to prevent indirect identification, also by other actors than yourself. There are theoretical models that can help with anonymization, e.g. with k-anonymization methods you'd ensure that there are no unique records in the DB. But this can be tricky to apply correctly, so I'd recommend to only treat aggregate statistics as truly anonymous. In 2012, the ICO has published an anonymization code of practice (PDF). It is no longer up to date with the current legal environment (in particular since the GDPR has expanded the concept of identifiability), but it provides a good overview of both the difficulties of preventing re-identification and an overview of potential solutions.	a few quick notes that come to mind. As the commenters point out: DSGVO is indeed the German equivalent name to the GDPR (English term) "Imprint" isn't a privacy related topic that much, as such it's not really changed by the upcoming GDPR The GDPR changes many things, but the requirement for up front information isn't one of them - so it would've already been a rule to follow Sometimes the question who is responsible for privacy information might not be that easy to decide when you're on platforms. I take this situation as being pretty clear though. You are basically given a blank slate, you can do with that page whatever you want, and the visitor has no clue whatsoever that it might be hosted by Github. In addition to this, Github would be classified as a data processor (providing the tool) and you as the data controller who is in charge of practically everything except for the provision of the page. I hope this helps. Btw. it's not that hard anymore to write a privacy policy these days.	No, it is not legal. Regardless of their location, the only legal options for companies serving to EU residents are to either deny access altogether or to make consent truly optional1 Recital 42 states (emphasis mine): Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s agreement[...] Recital 43 states: Consent is presumed not to be freely given [...] or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. 1 Of course, remember that consent is only one of several means that allow them to process data. For example, if you were getting a trial account for a limited time, it would be considered a legitimate business need to ensure that you are not just opening new trial accounts when the old ones expire. So, if they wanted some data from you to ensure that you are not a previous user and you refused to provide it, then they could deny giving you that trial account without breaking the GDPR.	Yes, so long as you are still a US citizen, it does not matter if you no longer maintain residence in the United States. If you no longer have any sort of residence that can be claimed as a current residence, you simply register at whatever the last residence you used was when you lived in the United States (even if someone else lives there now). You would then have an absentee ballot mailed to you overseas. However, if you don't maintain any sort of residence in the United States, you will only be eligible to vote for federal offices (president, senate, house). You won't be allowed to vote in state or local elections. The keywords you'll need for voting are: UOCAVA, which is a program that allows for easier voting overseas (in some cases the ballot can actually be emailed to you and you are only responsible for printing it out, filling it out, and mailing it back). FPCA, which is the form you fill out. It actually doubles as a registration and an absentee ballot request, so you only have to fill out one form. The absentee request is good for all elections in the calendar year it is submitted, so you only have to fill it out once for both the primary and the general.	This is a good question, as it raises an issue which places the controller's interest in providing a smoothly functioning customer sign up process against customers' right not to have their data leaked. Note that it is not necessary to consider "enumeration" here. Even just being able to check whether one person has a registered account raises the issue. The relevant provisions of the EU GDPR (or in the UK, the UK GDPR as defined in sections 3(1) and 205(4) of the Data Protection Act 2018) are (emphasis added): Article 4(2): 'processing’ means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction So, disclosure of the fact that a user has a registered account amounts to "processing". Article 6(1): Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes; (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person; (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. Of these, only (a) and (f) are likely to be of any relevance: (a) is not too useful since it isn't feasible to design a sign-up system that depends on the user's consent (which they may not give). That leaves us with (f). As noted by the Information Commissioner's Office, "Legitimate interests is the most flexible lawful basis for processing, but you cannot assume it will always be the most appropriate. It is likely to be most appropriate where you use people’s data in ways they would reasonably expect and which have a minimal privacy impact, or where there is a compelling justification for the processing.". The legitimate interest here would be that you need a sign up system which prevents duplicate registrations. Remember though that the processing has to be "necessary" for the purposes of the legitimate interest. One might argue that it is not since you could design the system to give the appearance of accepting the duplicate registration followed by sending an email to the account holder to inform them. On the other hand this will result in a less user friendly experience which could itself be a legitimate interest. Ultimately this is a balancing exercise and it is hard to say whether you have struck the right balance until someone complains to the ICO or the court and a decision is issued. The fact that the practice is widespread among well-resourced and large companies would tend to indicate that it is lawful albeit this is not conclusive in the absence of a court decision. I'm not aware of any cases involving this particular issue but would be interested to hear from others on this point. If the processing is unlawful then Article 18 is applicable: The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller restriction of processing where one of the following applies: [...] (b) the processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes the erasure of the personal data and requests the restriction of their use instead Where processing has been restricted under paragraph 1, such personal data shall, with the exception of storage, only be processed with the data subject’s consent or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or for the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person or for reasons of important public interest of the Union or of a Member State. In other words, the data subject could ask you not to disclose their registration status via the sign up page, and you would be obliged to comply with the request. Separately from the above points, in order to be lawful you must provide the data subject with certain prescribed information at the time when the data is collected. Of particular relevance here are the following items: Article 13(1): Where personal data relating to a data subject are collected from the data subject, the controller shall, at the time when personal data are obtained, provide the data subject with all of the following information: [...] (c) the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended as well as the legal basis for the processing; (d) where the processing is based on point (f) of Article 6(1), the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party; So even if you conclude that the processing will be lawful you will have to give some consideration to the basis so that you can comply with the above provision.	You are processing the users IP address in order to carry out the translation to a physical location (see my comment for the technical issues with that) and an IP address is most certainly considered personal information, so yes under the GDPR you are going to need a published policy because you are both data controller and data processor. You need to inform the user of what you are doing, and you need to tell them of the legal basis for the processing (there are several under the GDPR, of which consent is only one - but in your case its going to be the easiest to justify). If you use a third party service for the location translation, you also need to inform the user of that and make available the third party services data processing policy.	Please note that Google Analytics do not anonymize the data you collect on its behalf unless you configure it to do IP-anonymization. If you use Google Analytics and do not use this feature, you need to have a DPA (Data Processing Addendum) in place with Google in order to comply with the GDPR. This is a real hassle, so unless you absolutely need fine-grained demographic data, it is strongly recommended that you use IP-anonymization. According to our data protection supervisory authority, this is sufficient to comply with the GDPR vis-a-vis Google Analytics. Does data that is anonymized need to be collect in the event of a GDPR Subject Access Request? No. But as the controller, you need to make sure that is is anonymized.
How close can names in the same classification not be in trademark law Say you have 'Bag Watcher' that sells business management software, and another company, with the same class, is called 'Bag Overwatch' that is a computer security company. Is it legal and enforceable to register 'Bag Watcher'? This is in the U.S.	The question is always, would a reasonable customer be confused into thinking that the two are the same, or that there is some relation or sponsorship or attribute to one product or firm the rightful reputation of another. That is always dependent on the specific facts and the specific market involved. So-called "famous" marks get extra protection. The exact markets involved will matter. Any stylizations such as colors and typefaces may matter. Logos may matter. I can't say if one of those specific names would be found to infringe on the other.	Even though student status is not on the list of protected classes, this still might be discrimination. By proxy. Status as student can be a proxy for age, race, and/or color. Maybe even religion if there is a religious school nearby! In fairness to the store manager, when a pack of ten kids comes rolling in on the way home from school things can get pretty hectic. Rather than try to kick out the problem kids many managers will attempt to avoid the problem in the first place. Also, a sign like this might help the manager be less discriminatory. For example, let's say he lets all kids in and only kicks out the ones who are causing problems. If those problem kids are all in one protected class and it's different from the kids who don't get kicked out, the manager looks like he's discriminating based on that protected class. Discrimination by proxy can be hard to prove and I am not sure of the burden of proof in Canada. I have read that "Canadian experience" is used as a proxy in employment discrimination and has been getting some attention lately. That might be a good issue to keep an eye on as it may define proxy discrimination jurisprudence.	First, copyright does not apply to "brands". Copyright exists in literary works which includes art - a picture (any picture) usually has a copyright belonging to the creator of the picture. Brands are protected by Trade Marks. To be clear: A picture of you is protected by copyright belonging to the creator The phrase "Mickey Mouse" is protected by trade mark belonging to the Disney corporation A picture of Micky Mouse is protected by copyright and trade mark. (when) would it be legally OK for me to do so without the copyright owner's permission? You can use copyright material without permission if you meet the fair use criteria in your jurisdiction. You can use trade marks if there is no risk of people confusing your goods and services with the trade mark holder's and you do not cause damage (including loss of potential income) to the trade mark holder or it is fair use (e.g. you are writing a review of a Micky Mouse cartoon). Is it legal if I do not distribute them to others at all? No, this would be OK as copyright fair use, but not as trade mark fair use. Is it legal if I give them to my family/relatives for free, e.g. as a gift? No, not fair use for either copyright or trade mark. Is it legal if I give them away to others for free (meaning I'm losing my own money on them)? No, see above. Is it legal if I sell them to others at-cost (i.e. for the same price I obtained them, meaning I'm not making any money from them)? No, see above. If the answer is "yes" to any of the above, can the copyright holder explicitly prohibit me from doing so, or would such a prohibition be unenforceable (e.g. if this would be fair use)? It isn't allowed. Yes they can stop you. No, it isn't fair use; there is no "fair use" defence for trade mark infringement here - you are depriving them of income because you are not buying their T-shirt! Any other factors that are relevant but which I'm forgetting? Will they sue you for doing these things? Probably not.	Yes. You can build your business with that. Yes. Also, a trademark is not a trade name and vice versa. This is a common mistake. A trademark is a brand affixed to some kind of product. A trade name is the name of a business. They are not the same things. The fact that you have a business with a particular trade name does not mean that you necessarily have a trademark in that name. You do not necessarily need to have a trademark in your trade name and often you can't because it is not a branding of your product. Probably not. Certainly, you cannot get a principle register trademark for this. You could file a state trademark registration if you sell it in a U.S. second or perhaps a supplemental trademark registration, which don't necessarily give you legal rights, but do conclusively establish that you were using the mark in a particular place from a particular time which would discourage anyone else from trying to get a trademark of their own and oust you from using yours. Sometimes trademark examiners are lazy and let generic marks get registered even though they shouldn't. Hard to say. They shouldn't be able to get a trademark in the U.S. on that basis, but the quality of trademark examination varies from country to country, and from examiner to examiner. Every once in a while I see an approved registration for a mark that should totally be disqualified and I shrug my shoulders and ask myself why I always clear a clear "no" from the PTO when I try to submit a mark like that and somehow the bozo who submitted that mark got it approved when it should be clearly ineligible for registration - for example, "Palisade Red" for red wine made in Palisade, Colorado. A lesser level of trademark registration such as a state trademark or a supplemental register mark discourages an otherwise lenient examiner from approving an already dubious mark and strengthen your case if you ever need to seek to have their mark cancelled.	I think you will find that "sign" here means "mark" and includes a word, a phrase, or a logo, or a combination of any of these. Indeed section 6 of the act defines this: "sign" includes the following or any combination of the following, namely, any letter, word, name, signature, numeral, device, brand, heading, label, ticket, aspect of packaging, shape, colour, sound or scent. The main test is whether the two marks are "confusingly similar" or whether prospective customers are likely to be confused into thinking that one seller is actually the other, or into attributing to one the goodwill or reputation of the other. (This standard is much the same under US law or the laws of a good many other countries.) This is a very fact-intensive determination, and is to some extent a judgement call. But a difference in one letter only, with little or no difference in sound, might well be sufficiently similar to cause confusion. Note that section 10 of the law defines this: For the purposes of this Act, a trade mark is taken to be deceptively similar to another trade mark if it so nearly resembles that other trade mark that it is likely to deceive or cause confusion, and thus this might well be a case of infringement. Note that for infringement to be found, in addition to the marks being "deceptively similar", the goods or services must also be similar or in the same category, (or goods "closely related" to protected services or vice versa) unless the mark being infringed on is "well known".	Given the following: We know the name of the plaintiff, The name is likely to be unique so that there won't be too many cases involving a different party with the same name, and The plaintiff is a company so it is not likely to have been involved in an overwhelming number of cases (as opposed to e.g. the IRS); The approach I would use would be to search a legal case database such as Westlaw for all cases where Hamilton Watch Company is a party, and review the abstract for each case that I find. In this case we also have a relatively rare keyword, "pulsar" so we can narrow down the results by putting that in the search as well. However there are several caveats: You will only find cases which went far enough that the court made a decision. Your quote says "I'm told that in the United States the watch company tried suing the radio astronomers for use of the name". That sounds like pretty unreliable third hand information. It's quite possible that they merely sent a cease and desist letter and that got reinterpreted as "tried suing" by the time it was said by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Even if they did sue, the majority of cases are settled out of court without ever seeing trial, which means you are unlikely to find any formal record of it and your best hope may be media articles if it was high profile enough. Large companies often have complex corporate structures involving parents and subsidiaries so the suing party's name may not actually be what you think it is. That certainly seems to be the case here, so you may have to start searching for other company names within the group. Not all cases are reported in which case you are less likely to find them. My jurisdiction is england-and-wales but I surprised myself by discovering that my Westlaw access allows me to login to the US version as well. I found no relevant cases for any of the following searches (based on various companies that have been part of the same group as Hamilton Watch Co over the years): "hamilton" in the party name and "pulsar" in the text. "buren" in the party name and "pulsar" in the text. "swatch" in the party name and "pulsar" in the text. "SSIH" in the party name and "pulsar" in the text. "HMW" in the party name and "pulsar" in the text. The only vaguely related thing I found was when I searched for "watch" as the party name and found this case involving a "pulsar" trademark for watches owned by Seiko Kabushiki Kaisha. It has nothing to do with the purported facts in your question though.	In the Netherlands, this qualifies as a deceptive trade practice (misleidende handelspraktijk) and is therefore directly illegal. It's likely also an unfair trade practice, (oneerlijke handelspraktijk) as the claim appears intended for end consumers. This means that the seller cannot count on the consumer knowing anythong about stuffase. It is a dutch implementation of EU directive 2005/29/EG, so similar laws apply in other EU countries. But the illegal per se part might vary.	How close is such a statement corresponding with the reality? Legally, such language is a meaningless statement of future intent that at best makes clear that the person making the statement isn't waiving any of their legal rights. Certainly, no infringer would have standing to sue if they failed to do so. Whether a joint venture member or foreign reseller could sue the company for failing to enforce its IP rights is another question that presents itself very differently and depends upon much more than what the warning labels state, such as the language in the joint partnership or reseller's agreement with the copyright owner. Also, in criminal copyright violation cases, even if the copyright owner asks for the maximum possible consequences, the U.S. Justice Department is under no obligation whatsoever to go along with that request. Likewise, a judge has no obligation to impose the maximum penalty allowed by law following a criminal conviction, even if the copyright owner and the U.S. Justice Department both request a maximum sentence for someone who pleas guilty or is convicted of the offense following a trial. In practice, something like 98% of federal criminal cases, and a similar percentage of federal civil cases, result in agreed resolutions which result in less severe penalties than the maximum penalties allowed by law. This happens as a result of a mutual agreement to resolve the case with a guilty plea, or a settlement agreement in a civil case, or both. Also, in practice, none of these companies, nor the federal government's prosecutors, have the resources to press anything but the most clear and serious copyright violation cases, and cases that are valuable for P.R. purposes. Anything else is essentially a random lottery from myriad cases that could have been brought in order to counteract the argument (both political and legal) that their copyright protections are empty and completely unenforced is a large part of the cases to which the statutes would make it seem that they apply. Also, in a case brought by a joint venture owner or reseller for failure to enforce a copyright which causes the partner damages, presumably in some sort of breach of contract or breach of fiduciary duty action, there would be no way to prove damages from all of the non-enforcement, since enforcing every known infringement would not be cost effective and would reduce the net profits of everyone involved.
Are there any licensing rules regarding code samples that I could include in my book? I'm thinking to write a book where I could need to use some code samples regarding a proprietary software (SAS in particular). So my question is, should I pay something to the software owner just for using some code rows? Or just because I mention the proprietary software name in my book? I stress that these code samples would be written by me, but usable in a software (as SAS is), that is not open source but is covered by copyright.	That a computer language is proprietary does not mean that all code written in that language is copyrighted by the holder of copyright on the language. Anyone may write, and publish, code in a particular language without permission from the language designers, or anyone else, provided that the code is original and is not a close paraphrase of code written by someone else. If the code to be published was created by someone else, permission would be needed unless the code falls under fair use or some other exception to copyright. Permission might or might not have to be paid for.	There is no loophole because a work released in object code form only — without the Corresponding Source — is not released under GPLv3, even if you say it is. GPLv3 only requires them to also provide whatever source came with it False. Providing the Corresponding Source is compulsory (§6 as pointed by @cHao). If they do not have access to it, it means the work has not been released under GPLv3.	There are two common approaches. The first approach is simply to let copyright law apply. Under the default terms, the IT provider has no rights to copy your software. Running software is allowed, of course, and not a problem that you need to deal with vis-a-vis the IT provider. You still can sue them if they copy your software, even in the absence of a contract. That is the chief function of copyright, after all! The second approach is to allow the customer to subcontract third parties to act on behalf of them, while acknowledging that such subcontracting does not dissolve them from any responsibilities towards you. In other words, if the 3rd party would do something unauthorized, you have a claim towards the customer and they have a distinct but related claim towards their IT supplier.	You can license the use of your IP only for certain uses, for example (most commonly) "non-commercial". The general template of permission is "You have permission to ___ as long as you ___". What the user is permitted to do, in your scheme, is something along the lines of "only distribute the output in this manner", or "not distribute code developed with this tool anywhere else". It's up to you to prove that someone violated that condition, if they did.	If the code is unrelated to your employment you own the copyright no matter if it is written in Visual Studio, on a piece of paper or tattooed on your butt. In the same way a sculptor owns the copyright in their sculpture even if they use someone else's chisel. Using Visual Studio in this way may, however, violated your contract with your employer and/or their contract with Microsoft. Why go there? Visual Studio Community is free.	Assumptions Let us assume that the code involved was created during the period of employment, was within the scope of that employment, and was validly work-made-for-hire (WFH). In that case, the code copyright is owned by the former employer.dn the person who wrote it has no more rights than a random stranger would. I am also going to assume US law. Ownership of Ideas Who owns the ideas, the knowledge of how these libraries work? No one does. In the absence of a patent, no one ever "owns" an idea. ]17 USC 102(b)](https://copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102) provides: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Derivative Works Copyright law does prohibit anyone making a derivative work from a work protected by copyright without the permission of the owner. A derivative work is one "based on" the source work. The classic case is a translation. Exactly when a piece of software is a derivative work of another is fact-dependent. Bu several things are clear. If the source work is trivial and obvious, ther may not be sufficient "originality" for the source work to be protected by copyright at all. If the source work is not protected by a valid copyright, nothing is a derivative work of it. A "hello world" program, for example, is probably not original enough for any copyright. A straight-forward implementation of a basic algorithm like quicksort is probably not original enough, either. If there is only one way, or only a small number of ways, to express the ideas of the source work, the merger doctrine applies. This means that the expression of the work is merged into the idea, leaving the expression unprotected. When the merger doctrine applies, there is, in effect, no copyright. If a work copies ideas from a source, but none of its particular expression of those ideas, the result is not a derivative work, and is not an infringement of copyright. If a work is definitive, but is also a fair use of the source work, it is not an infringement. The usual four-factor fir use analysis must be made to determine this. In particular, if a work is highly transformative, it is likey to be found to be a fair use. Issues from the Question What if the new code (presumably, in the case of something simple) comes out exactly the same (even if I rewrite it without looking)? That Rather suggests that the work was too trivial to be original enough to have copyright protection at all, or else that there are only a few ways to express the idea, and the merger doctrine applies. But if neither o those were true, this might be an infringement. [* To be coninued*]	Your question mixes up two different aspects of intellectual property. From a copyright point of view, it is perfectly legal to reproduce the features of a one piece of software in another. The functionlity of the software is not copyright (although the detailed look and feel of the user interface might be). However you ask if you, as an employee, can do this by "looking into the code of software X". Presumably by doing this learn something of the organisation and algorithms used. Even if you avoid direct copying, you are likely to have learned trade secrets of your employer, and publishing these is at least a civil tort in the US, and in some states a crime.	My question is, because I am not making any income from the distribution of the game, would the use of the copyrighted music fall under Personal Use? There are some "private use" exemptions in Australian copyright law but they have some fairly narrow conditions. These exemptions are fairly narrow because the point of copyright law is not to prevent you from making money with someone else's intellectual property but to protect the other person's ability to make money with it. If Alice writes a song and Bob distributes it free of charge, Alice loses revenue. Similarly, it is Alice's right to decide whether that song should be included in a freely available open-source software product, and her right to decide whether to allow that use without charge or in exchange for a license fee.

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