flydog

texfla said:

They also left several-hundred-year-old rules against murder and theft intact...as well as the constitution. The article appears to imply that the age of the rules is an inherent negative. There are lots of old laws that are good and new laws that are crummy that have been put in place by both parties.

Licensing rules and laws shouldn't be judged as good or bad based on their age or by which party is in power when they're implemented.

They're good or bad based on their effectiveness in creating a fair balance between the rights of content creators and the interests of the consumers that they're willing to sell to. The middle men are unimportant except in the context how the rules impact their ability to add value to creators and consumers.

So...ignoring the age of the laws and the particular administration making the decision...what are the actual merits of keeping the existing rules vs scrapping them?

Talk about reading way too much into something. Geez. 

rob53 said:

Sounds like judge is prejudiced against Apple. It’s like using witnesses in a murder trial who end up being caught telling lies about the murder and not telling the jury they did. 

How many of VirnetX’s patents in question are currently valid? One, two, none?

Based on what?  Do you have access to all the trial evidence, and you personally reviewed all of it?  Did you read the judge's opinion and the parties' motions?   Do you know anything at all about patent law or civil procedure?  The answer to all of these quesitons is, of course, no.

The fact that the USPTO deemed the subject of the patents "unpatentable" is irrelevant because the US Court of Appeals reversed the USPTO's decision.  The patents were valid, enforceable, and Apple infringed on them.  This case has been around for 10 years, and every single court and jury has ruled againt Apple.  
 
End of story.

glennh said:

lightvox88 said:

There should be a law preventing giant behemoth monopolies from combining resources and working together against antitrust lawsuits. Just seems like logic and common sense considering that some of these companies and bigger and more powerful than many entire countries.

There is a law on the books! It’s call the Sherman Act and was signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt aka “Teddy Bear”. If what this article says is true and there are actual written documents communication between the companies  to use in a court of law as evidence, both Facebook and Google can kiss their duopoly online ads days goodbye! Hell with the above stated evidence even a first day law student could use this evidence to prove a violation of Sherman’s Anti-Trust Prohibitions!

The Sherman Act does not prohibit companies from working to defend lawsuits or criminal constitution. Such a law would be plainly unconstitutional (at least it was when I was a first year law student).  Moreover, it's not as uncommon as the article implies. 

If the Sherman Act did prohibit such an arrangement (it doesn't) the government would have alleged so in the complaint (it didn't).

The likely reason the arrangement was mentioned in the complaint was to establish that FaceBook was aware that the conduct constituted an illegal use of monopoly power, and to rebut the argument that the government can't go back on its approval of the merger with Instagram and WhatsApp.

This article is misleading.  Developers are not required to disclose this information until the next time they submit a new app or app update after December 14.  Therefore, there is nothing to "comply with" until the developer submits a new app or app update. Gmail has not been updated in 2 weeks, and therefore Google cannot be categorized as "ignoring" or having to "comply with" the requirement.  

Also, the article makes is sound like WhatsApp is hiding something by stating only that it collects "Other Data Types," however, the labels and descriptions are not chosen by the developer.  There is no option to enter custom information.

jcc said:

I don’t understand why Apple is pushing wireless charging? Wireless charging is one of the worst charging methods as a lot of energy is wasted. They shouldn’t allow the capability until that improves.

The amount of excess electricity used by wirelessly charging your phone for a year wouldn’t be enough to power your refrigerator for 5 minutes.