Ask Your Legal Questions Here!

[Psychobabble]

Hey, I thought I'd start a thread where people can ask legal questions and I can try and answer them. For background, I'm a final year Australian law student and I have an interest in, and thus am reasonably widely read, in legal issues. I'm not offering legal advice here, just if you've got very general questions like is X copyright infringement, or can Y be a contract or why did Z high profile case get decided in that way. Also, if you'd like to know why we have a particular legal rule (eg the right to silence) or type of law (eg trade marks) then feel free to ask. I can't promise an answer but I'll try to point you in the right direction at least .

Here's a first one:

are ROMS for emulators treated with the same laws??

I believe that most ROMS (the copied programs) will be illegal but the emulator (software which runs the program) will not be.

This is a slightly murky area of law, though. You might be familiar with the betamax case which held that the manufacturers of the cassete player there weren't liable for the illegal copyright infringement of their users. However that principle isn't absolute and if essentially the only use a particular technology can be put to is illegal then the software (or hardware) will probably also be illegal (see P2P, I did a quick analysis of the fairly recent US Grokster decision here).

Finally, the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (and similar acts in other countries) might apply if the emulator is circumventing an effective copy protection measure. I don't know enough about the details, though.

[DaemianLucifer]

So,with the same principal,CD emulators(virtual cd,daemon tools,etc),and emulating a protected CD is not legal,unless you do it just for yourself,and in order to backup.Correct?

[Kalah]

I'd just like a clarification, if I may: Are you a lawyer, PB? What is your background/specialty with regards to this?

Ehric is a law student, btw - I'm sure he'll pop by.

[Psychobabble]

So,with the same principal,CD emulators(virtual cd,daemon tools,etc),and emulating a protected CD is not legal,unless you do it just for yourself,and in order to backup.Correct?

Like I said, it's a murky area. At the one extreme is the DVD codex crack that that Norweigan (think he was Norweigan) which was a specific hack/crack/whatever designed to get around the standard DVD copy protection system. No non illegal uses thus illegal under normal copyright principles. Also, got around an effective proteciton measure so illegal under DMCA and equivalents. At the other extreme is a video recorder, which can be used for both legal and illegal purposes, but is on balance legal.

Now, a virtual CD emulator itself probably isn't going to be illegal. legal uses like sharing information CDs easily and making some legal backups make it probably OK.

As for whether or not it is legal to make personal backups, this is something which does depend on countries. In the US and Germany it is legal. In other countries like Australia it is illegal. I don't have the research tools to look that up for every country, I'm afraid .

Also, to answer your other question:

Btw,on the site it says that copyright laws last for 95 years?Is that true?

THis is the one thing which still differs from country to country. Like I said in my first post, 50 years from publishing is the minimum I can think of (EU last time I checked). But in the US to the best of my knowledge 70 years. I don't know where the 95 came from, he might have more information available to him than me. Either way, it's longer than computers have been around .

The general length of copyright depends from product to product, too, and for some things like artistic work the clock starts from the death of the author not publishing.

[Psychobabble]

I'd just like a clarification, if I may: Are you a lawyer, PB? What is your background/specialty with regards to this?

Ehric is a law student, btw - I'm sure he'll pop by.

Oops, yeah, final year law student in Australia. Can I repeat, though, I'm not offering legal advice here, just general explantions of legal topics. I've updated the first post with a better explanation of who I and what this post is for .

[DaemianLucifer]

Oh,and an interesting one popped into my mind:Are copyright laws against owning an illegal product or acquiring it?Because if first is the case,someone that got hold of a pirated software before the law was passed can still be punished(which is wrong,imo,because I dont know of any law that punishes crimes done before its passing).

Can I repeat, though, I'm not offering legal advice here, just general explantions of legal topics.

Because if you were,you would have to charge us

[Psychobabble]

Oh,and an interesting one popped into my mind:Are copyright laws against owning an illegal product or acquiring it?Because if first is the case,someone that got hold of a pirated software before the law was passed can still be punished

Good question . But there's two seperate issues there. Reterospective laws and possessing illegal copies. Most copyright laws, I believe, allow authorities to sieze illegal copies so in that way they are 'against owning an illegal product' as you put it. Think raids on market stalls.

But few laws will have reterospective application (even if this is constitutionally permitted). In a country like Australia it is theoretically possible for the government to make possessing something which was once legal a criminal offence, but they never do it. It's bad public policy. When a new law, like copyright laws come in, the laws almost invariably say owning any copies made after X date are illegal, not possessing the product is illegal.

Because if you were,you would have to charge us

No, because if I were I would be acting unethically and you would be able to sue me .

[Kalah]

Think raids on market stalls.

But isn't that (as the DEA calls it) "possession with intent to sell"? I think that goes under breach of copyright by the point of distribution: "All re-distribution of this product is illegal without the permission etc."

As far as the retroactive laws are concerned, there was some legislation put through in Norway at the beginning of this year, but they decided following up on old cases would produce too much of a workload, so they said "let's not" and made the law active from the point of introduction only.

[DaemianLucifer]

Funny,but constitution here prevents the laws from working retroactively(if I remember my classes correctly )

[Caradoc]

OK. I know someone who was arrested for growing a little pot in her backyard. She was charged with a federal crime for 'manufacturing' drugs. As far as I know, she did not intend to sell it and was just growing for herself.

My question is how the US government gets jurisdiction over her case. I'm under the impression that federal legal authority over drugs stems from the Interstate Commerce clause in the Constitution. But there was no interstate commerce involved here. How can they do this?

[Psychobabble]

My question is how the US government gets jurisdiction over her case. I'm under the impression that federal legal authority over drugs stems from the Interstate Commerce clause in the Constitution. But there was no interstate commerce involved here. How can they do this?

Are you familiar with the Raich case? this is a very recent supreme case which looked at that exact issue. In essence, from what I understand, US SC doctrine says 2 things on this issue. First, "commerce" isn't what you think it is, it's better translated as "intercourse" in 18th century (ie constitutional) usage. 2nd, purely local acitivites can impact on interstate intercourse, although the feds do have some onus of proving that it does. Note that they don't have to prove it for any particular person, just that, say, allowing individual pot growing in aggregate could affect the interstate trade in drugs.

And Kalah, thanks for your perspective.

[Panda Tar]

Hello, PB.

I was just wondering (for a long time, that is), if mods were or not, er, how could I say? Illegal? Are they classified by anything out-of-law or not? Since I think it's pretty weird modifying programs like that without a license or whatever. Just a simple question, a wondering.

[pepak]

Funny,but constitution here prevents the laws from working retroactively(if I remember my classes correctly :D )

So does our constitution, but that doesn't seem to have much adverse effect on our retroactive laws...

[ThunderTitan]

I was just wondering (for a long time, that is), if mods were or not, er, how could I say? Illegal? Are they classified by anything out-of-law or not? Since I think it's pretty weird modifying programs like that without a license or whatever. Just a simple question, a wondering.

And how illegal is it to use a cracked exe for a game you legaly own?

[pepak]

And how illegal is it to use a cracked exe for a game you legaly own?

It is, unfortunately and against all logic, illegal.

[Omega_Destroyer]

You're a law student too Psychobabble? I think you are the third one I know of on this message board. Crazy. I'm studying in the states. Actually, I'm in Federal Adminstrative Law as I type this. And yes, it is as exciting as it sounds.

[Corribus]

*Bump*

I was reading C&EN this morning and came across an interesting news brief. Here are two links to related stories on the net:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4007458a10.html
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Ribena_fine ... dvertising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena

Here's a very brief summary of the case:

In 2004, two high school students in New Zealand were doing a science fair project. Specifically they wanted to test the advertising statements of several products over their vitamin C content. One product, a black-currant soft drink Rivena, they found to have almost no vitamin C, despite an advertising claim that "the black currants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges." In NZ, the product label claimed to have 7 mg of vitamin C per serving, and the students repeatedly found no vitamin C at all. They tried to contact the company and were ignored, so they brought their information to the NZ Commerce Commission, which promptly sued GlaxoSmithKline, and won $217,000 in damages plus corrective advertising. (Well, that's certainly something the two kids can put on their college apps.)

Now, my legal question. If the drink label was erroneous, then I can see that is grounds for a lawsuit. But my question is, that the original claim was that "the black currents in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges". This is actually true. Certainly, it's misleading because one could easily (and erroneously) draw the conclusion that the drink therefore also contains more vitamin C than, say, orange juice. But the advertising claim did not refer to the beverages at all. Only to the fruits, so technically, nothing incorrect was claimed. Thus, my question is - is it illegal to use intentionally misleading statements to sell a product, even though the statement itself may be true? The lawsuit seems to have been more complicated than I'm making it out to be, as there seems to have been some poor labeling of nutrition information on the product itself. But I'm just curious about the "misleading claim" bit. Is it illegal to be misleading in advertising, as long as you are not outright lying?

[ThunderTitan]

Wait, oranges don't have vitamin C, or what?

Edit: And they do... alot even! Search for Oranges here: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

1 fruit (131g) = Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid - mg - 69.7

[Corribus]

Edit: And they do... alot even! Search for Oranges here: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

1 fruit (131g) = Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid - mg - 69.7

Right, but it's true that, per unit mass, currants have about four times that amount. So what they said was not technically incorrect. They want the buyer to infer that, because of that fact, a beverage made with currants must have more vitamin C than orange juice, which is a poor deduction to make.

[ThunderTitan]

claim that "the black currants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges."

Well that implies that the currants in the drink have 4 times more Vitamin C, so that's a lie... i'm guessing that's how the judge saw it, even if their defense was based on your interpretation. If they just said Currants have 4 times etc then it would be questionable.