Saw in the NY Times this morning that California has coming into effect soon a ban on foie gras. For those that don’t remember Chicago for a time passed a similarly dumb law. Why do I say dumb? Well for one foie gras is misunderstood – go watch how it’s made, the animals treated and compare that to your standard poultry operation and you will probably come to the conclusion that it should be chicken that is banned and not foie gras.
see article here
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Interesting post over at TechCrunch discussing a number of legal issues touching on daily deals (and how they may be violating laws, especially consumer protection). Like any area that is new and evolving its unclear what daily deals (Groupon, Living Social, Faveroo here in Columbus among others) are and you might be able to fit them under gift card laws, which the post at TechCrunch points out might put them at some odds with various state laws (Groupon does use some vague term language to hedge these issues, but they are setting up local merchants with some sticky issues).
I’ve been looking into issues like gift cards, bankruptcy, sales tax, and alcohol regulations. These might all sound esoteric and not really worthy of discussion, but the outcomes can significantly affect the value proposition to the consumer, merchant and the deal provider
….
What’s the correct sales tax on a $51 purchase with a $50 Groupon that someone bought for $25 in a state with a 5% tax rate? The possible answers are 5 cents, 68 cents, $1.30 and $2.55. That’s based on a taxable value of $1 (amount paid at point of sale), $13.50 (amount merchant actually gets), $26 (total amount consumer paid) and $51 (total face value of the transaction). I find that most businesses pick either extreme.
See TechCrunch
So while some of these might sound a bit bland to some, they could actually pose a whole host of issues to the rapidly expanding industry. As someone who has missed the expiration on some of the deals I bought here, I wouldn’t mind having the longer date gift card laws often require, but of course these might cause companies to not want to get into the deals to start with.
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Headed out west for a couple days tomorrow and figured I mention a few interesting things I saw recently, so just a hodgepodge post:
Filed under: Books, Columbus, IP, Law, Misc, News, Ohio | Leave a Comment »
Two Ohio college presidents are among dozens nationwide who are asking lawmakers to consider whether the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21.
I have long thought our nations mandated 21 year old drinking age was wrong for a few reasons, one has to do with the method of implementing by withholding highway funds if states didn’t change to a 21 year old drinking age and also for the problems with binge drinking it creates. Lastly the idea of having something illegal for people who are able to vote, serve in the military etc seems crazy to me. Well apparently a push to rethink the 21 year old age is coming front and center as many prominent college presidents, including Gordon Gee here in Columbus have signed onto to the Amethyst Initative, that was just started:
Launched in July 2008, the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.
The Amethyst Initiative supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.
Filed under: Law, Ohio, Politics | 1 Comment »
The free software movement had a tough choice of whether to appeal a lower court decision that held freely distributed software couldn’t be protected through the use of copyright infringement claims (only contract claims). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. overturned the lower decision saying that despite the traditional method for copyright owners selling their copyrighted material the court said. “The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however.”
This is big for a few reasons, one of which it helps keep the cycle of development in free products moving. It requires those who wish to update or use the code to publish their changes or provide attribution (pointing people back to the larger movement). The reason the usage of copyright infringement to protect this is so useful is the strength of copyright infringement claims compared to the breach of contract claims the lower court limited them to.
The “attribution and modification transparency requirements directly serve to drive traffic to the open source incubation page and to inform downstream users of the project, which is a significant economic goal of the copyright holder that the law will enforce,” according to the appeals court.’ See PC World article
Filed under: IP, Law, News, Tech | 1 Comment »
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit just overturned a lower court’s March 2007 ruling, which found Cablevision’s Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder infringed on copyrights. The Second Circuit held that offsite DVRs were not copyright violations (could still head to Supreme Court some think), paving the way (for now) for cable companies to provide subscribers with DVR functionality sans the home unit (users would still need a digital cable box capable of on demand interaction). Still, this can be seen as a big win for those who argue for broader usage rights, then those put forth by Hollywood and other major content owners. Cable companies can provide this type of service much cheaper than the current at home products.
Filed under: IP, Law, Tech | 1 Comment »
Speeding tickets are one of the more annoying things to deal with, there is a certain helplessness that most people feel in terms of the ability to fight a supposed radar gun reading. An interesting case is taking place out west on the subject where a teen was nabbed for speeding, the only difference between this and every other case is that the kid and his family are trying to fight the ticket w/ the GPS data they have (his car was equipped with a GPS unit that reported back to a central service with his speed so that his parents would know if he was speeding). Of course GPS in every car is something that reeks of big brother to many folks, but here we got a case where it might be able to poke a hole in the normally open and shut case of speeding.
See article Nabbed for speeding? GPS data could get you off the hook – from Ars Technica
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Chicago has by the same large margin that they instituted a foie gras ban, repealed their ban on the sale of fois gras, something that many, including myself thought was pretty ludicrous. Why ban foie gras? well some would argue (and do) that its inhumane, but if Chicago really cares about animals they’d probably be having a much bigger effect banning factory farmed animals (watch how chickens are raised sometime) or to ban Rbgh laced dairy products.
see the story on the “Ban Lifted, Foie Gras is Back on the Menu in Chicago”
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An interesting case from the other side of the pond (fictional mind you) from column of the late Miles Kingston, humor columnist for the Independent (via Volkoh conspiracy blog) :
“A most extraordinary trial is going on in the High Court at the moment in which a man named Chrysler is accused of stealing more than 40,000 coat hangers from hotels round the world. He admits his guilt, but in his defence he claims that – well, perhaps it would be simpler just to bring you a brief extract from the trial. We join the case at the point where Chrysler has just taken the stand…” read the rest at the independent.co.uk
Filed under: Diversion, Humor, Law, Misc | Leave a Comment »
Been very slow on the posts recently, not really for a lack of subject matter, but rather time as work has been busy combined with a lot of travel over the last few weeks, including San Francisco and San Antonio, both places I’ve never been before and an unintended night in Memphis where Northwest Airlines graciously stuck me the other night enroute back from Texas.
On my trip to San Francisco I somehow found myself reading cover-to-cover the ABA Journal, the Ohio Bar Journal and some other random magazines I stuffed in my bag, but usually leave out of my queue (first item of each week is the Economist followed by some others if I get through that one). There was a very interesting article “A Shot at the Second Amendment” (actually the mags were much better than I expected and will put them higher on my list) in the ABA Magazine on the potential for a 2nd amendment showdown, after a circuit court held the District of Columbia’s handgun ban unconstitutional. [The article is interesting partly for the breakdown of the manner in which the NRA has worked over the years to control gun litgation and prevent others from treading on their territory.]
The case is huge for a number of reasons (see Reuters announcement), partly the fact the court has rarely held on 2nd amendment (70 years or so since) and this case is much more clear cut then countless other gun cases that had muddy facts. For more on it see the Scotus blog post on it here.
My personal view on the subject has long been along the lines of the view that the 2nd amendment did not confer a personal right (granted the right to a state militia) and further I like to update the constitution through common-sense and the fact that guns at the time of the drafters did not give one person such a gross amount of power (they could not have envisioned Columbine or Virgina Tech massacres). For that reason I feel that states should be allowed to craft bans on personal firearms and in fact I support handgun bans in general as I do not think anyone needs one to protect their home (buy a shotgun) and that the only reason someone needs a handgun is to kill people and to be more discrete about it. Of course over the years holding this opinion has gotten me into countless arguments with gun fanatics and more centered individuals, but I’ve stuck to it. If you look at countries that don’t have handguns their murder rates are lower by incredible amounts (plenty of arguments against this, but look at it sometime).
Should be interesting, I think the oral argument is set for February. While not a Supreme Court freak I will keep my ears up for info on this one.
Filed under: Law, News | 2 Comments »
