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In what situations is hearsay allowed in a court of law?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3TEQ9A_lm8 I am not sure if I am crazy, but Amber's legal team is using a backdoor to use hearsays as evidence or to tilt the jury in their favour by continually mentioning the hearsay. But the judge keeps allowing them to do it. Is there a rule or law that dictates how a judge can allow a legal team to use hearsays?

This is a quite complicated area of evidence law in the U.S. as there are many statements which are inadmissible under the hearsay rule, but there are also many statements that would otherwise be hearsay that fall within exceptions to the hearsay rule. In U.S. federal court practice, hearsay is governed mostly by Federal Rules of Evidence 103, 104(a), 201, 801-807, and 1101. Most state court rules of evidence in the U.S. with regard to hearsay closely track the Federal Rules of Evidence. Some states do not follow this pattern but are substantively very similar as the Federal Rules of Evidence largely track of the common law rules of evidence before they were codified. Rule 801 provides two exclusions from the definition of hearsay and a foundational definition. Rule 802 prohibits the introduction of hearsay into evidence unless an exception applies. Rule 803 provides 23 exceptions to the rule. Rule 804 provides five more exception to the rule. Rule 807 provides a final residual exception. So, in proceedings where the hearsay rule applies there are 31 main exceptions to the general rule, in addition to the argument that the general rule does not apply, but this still excludes lots of statements. Rule 201 (judicial notice) is another exception. Some of the main reasons to admit hearsay are that: It is not offered for the truth of the matter asserted (e.g. to prove the someone was present and talking at a place not that what they said was true, or to prove that someone said something defamatory or fraudulent, or to prove the someone made a "verbal act" with legal significance like agreeing to a contract or ordering someone to do something). It is a statement of a party opponent or someone affiliated with a party opponent (i.e. someone affiliated with the other side in the lawsuit or criminal case). It is a prior statement of a person made under oath and subject to cross-examination. It is a business record or public record or an "ancient document" (currently ancient means before 1998 in the federal courts, and typically more than twenty-years old in the state courts). It is a market quotation. It is a statement made describing things "in the moment", for medical diagnosis, or when the facts were fresh in the "declarant's" mind. It pertains to rights in real property, or to family relationships. It is a statement contrary to the interests of the person making it. It is a statement made when the declarant's death was believed to be imminent (i.e. a dying declaration). It is a statement made against someone who caused the witness to be unavailable. There are reasons that the statement is reliable and the intent to provide the statement is cleared with the court in advance. The matter upon which a statement is made is of general public knowledge not reasonably subject to dispute, is easily confirmed without doubt by a court, or is from a learned treatise. Hearsay objections are also waived if a timely objection isn't made to them. See Federal Rule of Evidence 103. And, courts have some discretion to allow hearsay testimony on immaterial matters or matters that are not seriously disputed in the case for expediency's sake. Rules 104(a) (excluding preliminary matters) and 1101 set forth when the hearsay rule applies and when it does not. Rule 1101 excludes from the rule a variety of preliminary matters, mostly in criminal cases such as: grand-jury proceedings extradition or rendition; issuing an arrest warrant, criminal summons, or search warrant; a preliminary examination in a criminal case; sentencing; granting or revoking probation or supervised release; and considering whether to release on bail or otherwise. Rule 805 governs the complicated situation of hearsay within hearsay. Rule 806 coordinates the hearsay rule with rules on how it is proper to introduce evidence about the credibility of a witness. There is also a constitutional rule of criminal procedure, called the "confrontation right" that established minimum standards for the exclusion of hearsay evidence in criminal trials even when a court's procedural rules do not exclude it. Most states also have a hearsay rule pertaining to oral promises made by dead people called the dead man's statute, and limitations on introducing oral statements related to written agreements called respectively, the parole evidence rule and the statute of frauds. In contrast, in the U.K. courts, roughly speaking, hearsay is generally admissible when the person making the underlying hearsay statement is available to testify, or is unavailable, which subsumes a large share of the U.S. hearsay rule, and makes much more hearsay admissible. U.K. practice would also allow admission of almost anything without a U.S. hearsay exception since they are derived from British common law evidence rules related to hearsay. The main purpose of the hearsay rule is to prevent a defendant in a criminal case or lawsuit from being denied an ability to cross-examine witnesses in court because they would like to present evidence by affidavit or letter instead, effectively placing that burden on the prosecution in criminal cases, or on a plaintiff in simple civil cases, rather than forcing the defendant to pro-actively subpoena witnesses for the other side in the case. The rule has a broader sweep than that, but that is its core purpose.

Were any crimes committed in The Duck Song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtN1YnoL46Q Let's take the song in a different direction: TL;DR version A duck repeatedly visits a lemonade stand, asking for grapes. Each time the proprietor says he has no grapes. After many repetitions the proprietor says "If you come back, duck, I'll glue you to a tree and leave you all day, stuck!" The duck reports this exchange to the police as an illegal threat. The proprietor claims that the duck harassed him. Is the proprietor guilty of some crime? Is the duck guilty of some crime? Assume that the duck is considered a person. Long version 🎶 A duck walked up to a lemonade stand, and he said to the man running the stand, "Hey, [bum bum bum] got any grapes?" The man said, "no," and the duck did go; he just waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], he waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], till the very next day [bum bum bum bum bum bum babum], When the duck came back to the lemonade stand, and again asked the man running the stand, "Hey, [bum bum bum] got any grapes?" He still heard a "no," and again he did go; he just waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], he waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], till the very next day [bum bum bum bum bum bum babum], He kept coming back to the lemonade stand, kept asking the man running the stand, "Hey, [bum bum bum] got any grapes?" This went on for days, he just wouldn't part ways, though he waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], he waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], till the very next day [bum bum bum bum bum bum babum], The duck came back to the lemonade stand, again asked the man running the stand, "Hey, [bum bum bum] got any grapes?" The man'd had enough, this was getting to tough, and he said to the duck who came to his stand, "If you come back, duck, I'll glue you to a tree and leave you all day, stuck!" After this louder no, the duck decided to go; he just waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], he waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], till the very next day [bum bum bum bum bum bum babum], When the duck walked up to the city police, and he said to the cop at the city PD, "Hey, [bum bum bum], is this an illegal threat?" The man went to court, accused of assault, and he looked at the judge, wanting the trial to halt; he said, "I plead not guilty! This duck harassed me!" The judge asked the duck, "So what did you do? Was the lemonade man harassed by you?" The duck answered back, "Well, in part it is true. I wanted some grapes, but he had not even two. I went back every day, until the threat yesterday. Then I waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], I waddled away [waddle waddle waddle], I waddled away [waddle waddle waddle] and I told the DA." Now I'd like to know what this judge will say. Did the duck harass the man, coming every day? Did the man commit a crime, or is he OK this time? 🎶

Ducks are ducks, not people. It might surprise you, but even a hypothetical duck that could talk is a type of bird and is considered a waterfowl and wild game but not a person or human. As such, you can not commit any crime such as assault against it. In fact, provided that the lemonade stand owner has a hunting license and this is not in a zone where you can not hunt, such as inside a town, he could have shot the bird without repercussions - because a duck can be hunted. Threatening game birds is not covered by any law. Only would the lemonade stand owner have glued the bird to a tree he would have committed a crime, because gluing birds somewhere would be considered animal cruelty in most jurisdictions. As the duck is a bird and not a person, it can not commit any crimes, such as harassment. If a duck is a person... Assuming that there is such a place where duck is a slang term for a person, or where ducks are considered people, then the pattern is different: Such as duck would indeed perform a repeated action that is very much aimed at annoying the lemonade stand owner. But that is not necessarily legally harassment: In Germany, § 238 StGB is aimed at stalking and requires the aim of inciting fear, § 185 StGB is for insulting speech, including harassing speech, § 186 StGB is for defamation, and § 240 StGB for coercion through harassment. A charge under those would be tedious. In the United Kingdom, the English Protection from Harassment Act 1997, does not define harassment as any specific pattern. Scotland's variant reads a little simpler, and makes harassment for harassment's sake illegal. These laws might be applied to the duck. Many of the United States federal laws will simply not apply to the situation. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is about sexual harassment in the workplace, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is for schools, and the Fair Housing Act does deal with home purchases and renting. All seem inapplicable. If the threat of gluing someone to a tree is a real threat under the law depends very much again. In Germany, it might be interpreted as too hilarious to be considered a true threat, but humiliating enough to constitute one of the insult laws, but the lyrics do not offer enough facts to make a proper analysis for this part.

How is it legal to marry and impregnate a female under the age of consent?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB-BNlauWUs How is it legal to marry and impregnate a female under the age of consent? How can the guy not get arrested if he impregnated a female under the age of consent in the United States? Is there some kind of legal loophole that allows something like this to happen? The video shows a short (47 sec) scene in which a young woman, said to be 14, is in apparent pain while being treated by two medical caregivers (whether doctor or nurse or what is not stated nor obvious). She is accompanied by an older man, apparently in his late 40s or 50s. He is refereed to as "Reverend" and says that he must be in another town at some distance to preach at a revival meeting the next day. It is said that the young woman had a "spontaneous miscarriage" the next day. As the caregivers examine her and ask her questions, she seems to look to the older man for permission to answer. At the end the caregivers refer to the woman as "your daughter" and the older man looks surprised and insistent and states that she is his wife, and the clip ends on that statement. It is not clear if this is part of a drama or a dramatized report of real events.

"Age of consent" is a legal meme that refers indirectly to different criminal statutes, for example in Missouri under MO Rev Stat § 566.034 , A person commits the offense of statutory rape in the second degree if being twenty-one years of age or older, he or she has sexual intercourse with another person who is less than seventeen years of age §023 also states that "It shall be an affirmative defense to prosecutions under sections 566.032, 566.034, 566.062, 566.064, and 566.071, that the defendant was married to the victim at the time of the offense". MO Rev Stat §451.090 allows marriage with parental permission to those aged 16 and 17 (by prohibiting licensing of marriage to those younger) No recorder shall issue a license authorizing the marriage of any male or female under sixteen years of age nor shall a license be issued authorizing the marriage of any male or female twenty-one years of age or older to a male or female under eighteen years of age. Combining these legal parts, you get the result that a man may marry and impregnate a woman whom he could not legally have intercourse with (irrespective of pregnancy) were they not married. It just depends on what the specific law says.

Can you get into trouble for not answering questions when talking to the police?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWUx3-b0F_Y Can you get into trouble for not answering questions when talking to the police? Or is this a legit "cheat code" that can get you out of trouble? Which one is it? More specifically, will responding to any and every inquiry from a police office in the US with "I don't answer questions" and nothing more cause legal trouble for the person responding in this way? Will limiting oneself to such response avoid potential legal trouble? What are the legal consequences of acting in this way?

There are certain situations where the law may require you to provide some information -- particularly when you've been pulled over for a traffic violation -- but it is typically limited to basic identifying information. Beyond that, it is legally advantageous to refuse to answer questions. If you are doing so, though, you should explicitly invoke your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and your Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Invoking the Fifth prevents the police from using your refusal to answer as evidence, and invoking the Sixth requires the police to stop asking you questions. It may, however, be practically disadvantageous to refuse to answer questions, as there are cops who are just looking for a reason to act like a psychopath.

Which Canadian laws forbids the construction of a 400-mile pipeline within Wet’suwet’en lands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aljg-k4vLJo The occupation started in September and halted the company’s efforts to build a key portion of the over 400-mile pipeline within Wet’suwet’en lands that violates both Wet’suwet’en and Canadian laws. The video claims it's illegal, but the workers still obtained an injunction from the court to proceed with the project, so I am kinda confused and I would like to have some legal opinions on this.

Which Canadian laws forbids the construction of a 400-mile pipeline within Wet’suwet’en lands? Maybe none. Maybe the Constitution. The gas company asserts there is no such law. The protesters assert that they hold aboriginal title under the Canadian constitution and therefore, without their approval, construction is illegal. At least one, and possibly both, are wrong. Which one we don't know because the matter has not gone to trial. In 2019 B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church granted an injunction to allow construction: As part of her decision, she considered Indigenous legal perspectives, noting disagreement as to "whether hereditary governance is appropriate for decision-making that impacts the entire Wet'suwet'en nation." "All of this evidence suggests that the Indigenous legal perspective in this case is complex and diverse and that the Wet'suwet'en people are deeply divided with respect to either opposition to or support for the pipeline project," Church wrote. She said it was difficult to reach any conclusions — especially ones that would invoke the Constitution: "This is not the venue for that analysis and those are issues that must be determined at trial." But at this point, there's no suggestion that a trial on those issues will take place. If a B.C. Supreme Court judge who has heard arguments on the matter doesn't know the answer, I certainly don't.

When is it ok to use tabloid news as evidence in court?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfLlAVFJZXg When is it ok to use tabloid news as evidence in court? Am I crazy, or this is irrelevant, full of hearsays and speculations therefore these tabloids shouldn't be used as evidence or during questioning? What are the rules on this in the United States? ( The linked video shows part of the cross-examination of Johnny Depp in his defamation case against Amber Heard. The opposing lawyer reads the headlines from several newspaper articles critical of Depp and asks Depp if hje has correctly read the headlines of articles published on specific dates in specific publication. Depp replies that the lawyer has read the headlines correctly in each case, but expresses disagreement with the content in various ways, saying things like "as reported" and "but how did he know". The purpose of the questions is not made clear during the linked video, but the lawyer repeatedly emphasizes that these articles were published well before the allegedly defamatory statement. )

It depends on what is of evidence for. Normally, any newspaper, be it "tabloid" or "respected" or even the jurisdiction's "paper of record" would be considered hearsay; instead the source of the newspaper story should be called to testify instead. However, there are a couple of exceptions to this, beyond normal hearsay exceptions, which basically boil down to when a certain thing being published is, in fact, the information being entered into evidence. For example, in certain circumstances, the courts may accept "service by publication" for certain notices. An instance of this publication would be evidence that service by publication was carried out. Another example, your link is to a lawsuit concerning defamation; defamation requires proving that the damaging falsehood was transmitted to a third party. So entering into evidence a tabloid that publishes such a damaging falsehood is evidence that it was transmitted to a third party (namely, the public).

Is the NYC gender identity law too harsh?

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/legal-guidances-gender-identity-expression.page Examples of Violations Intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun or title. For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman “him” or “Mr.” after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses. Refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun, or title because they do not conform to gender stereotypes. For example, calling a woman “Mr.” because her appearance is aligned with traditional gender-based stereotypes of masculinity. Conditioning an individual’s use of their preferred name on obtaining a court-ordered name change or providing identification in that name. For example, a covered entity may not refuse to call a transgender woman her preferred name, Jane, because her identification says that her first name is John. 11 Requiring an individual to provide information about their medical history or proof of having undergone particular medical procedures in order to use their preferred name, pronoun, or title. To me the issue is being intentional about misnaming right?

"Too harsh" is a value judgement. How harsh is harsh enough? But it seems to me that a challenge to this provision on free speech grounds might in some cases have merit, if it is enforced in such cases. I haven't heard of such a challenge being mounted, however.

criminal v. civil litigation what are the differences

hypothetically speaking Someone is in civil litigation and the defendant says that their actions are justified because the plaintiff committed a crime and the civil judge dismisses the civil litigation in favor of the defendant based on the defendants bare allegation that the plaintiff committed a crime. The question; is civil and criminal litigation different? Is one adversarial (civil) and the other inquisitorial (criminal)? Or, do I have those backwards? If the trial court in the civil litigation has authority to decide criminal allegation(s) in favor of one party over another, does the party accused of committing a crime have the same rights as he would in a criminal case, specifically the right to a verified criminal complaint showing the elements of the alleged crime?

The differences are: In civil litigation, the defendant is sued by the plaintiff (who may be a government, body corporate or natural person) for restitution (damages or a court order) of harm. In a criminal trial the defendant is prosecuted by the government for punishment of an offense. Civil plaintiffs have to prove their case on the balance of probabilities . Prosecutors have to prove the offense was committed beyond reasonable doubt for a crime (e.g. murder) or on the balance of probabilities for a civil offense (e.g. failing to get a dog license). The administrative procedures around them are usually different. The similarities are: In common law jurisdictions a trial is adversarial - the role of the court is to determine the dispute ; not to establish the “truth”. However, inquisitorial things happen before the trial, for example, discovery in a civil trial and a police investigation in a criminal one. The role of the judge and jury (if any) is the same.

How similar should a tune be to constitute theft of someone else's tune?

i am a composer of hip hop songs. As opposed to rap songs, hip hop songs are very melodic by nature. now sometimes i get inspired by someone else's tune, or write my own tune and then find out someone wrote a similar tune too. When you look at melody there is: notes key sounds (or instrument) volume length of each note (which can be different between the notes) sequence of the notes (which note comes after which note) My question is across these, how many things have to be different to show it is similar? Also specific question about number of notes- lets say i have same sequence, almost same volume and length. how many notes before it becomes theft? 3? 5? 7? I am choosing US because most of the hip hop songs are in the US. But i am in the UK. But I'm trying to make songs that work for the US too.

There is no real answer to this question. The analysis will always be qualitative, not quantitative. If your work sounds "too similar" to a protected work, it's at risk of being deemed an infringement. There's no way to say exactly where the line will be drawn, as there are so many elements at play, any one of which could put you over the line.

questions about the Rubik's cube trademark/copyright/patent

i checked Rubik's cube image rights and i'm still confused about the legal protection of Rubik's cube. I know the patent expired and their 3d trademark lost a case in EU. Does this imply they don't own the exclusive rights to the concept of 3x3x3 cube with rotating sides? Can I legally manufacture and sell a blank wooden 3x3x3 block that rotates with no pictures/color? (under the assumption that rotating mechanics are different)

This patent was found https://patents.google.com/patent/US6974130B2/en , which expired in 2014 for failure to pay maintenance fees. Looking at the patents which cite it, and also show prior art, may help paint the picture of the developed patent status. There are also numerous blogs and articles on the cube and it's history. https://blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu/2015/10/the-legal-puzzle-of-the-rubiks-cube/ This one covers some initial patent infringement against Ideal. https://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/rubiks-cube-patent-intellectual-property/ The wiki on the toy also has patent history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube When I took a patent course at HLS, one of the final exam questions, which I did not elect to answer was on the Rubik's cube. It is a complex story.

Copyrights of an application with similar name to another application

i has writing a php framework that its features is most important features that are exists in codeigniter and laravel and very very another features that is not exists in another frameworks. it's a full framework with many features and capablities. actually my framework is not complatly global and i wanna create it for my country programmers but non-iranians can use it and it's not dedicated to iran and iranians. becuase in iran we haven't a powerful framework such as CI or Symfony or ... that be iranian and have an iranian community to my compatriots could ask their questions with their own language on it. becuase as i'm a codeigniter developer, i know the problems of all of my compatriots programmers so about 6 month ago started writing my framework and from first i called it LaunchPad and its terminal countdown. actually the LaunchPad terminal (countdown) is similar to CI Spark or Laravel artisan and about my question: i know we have an application with launchpad name, that all of us known what is its activity area. if i call my framework to launchpad, it's incorrect ? i mean this work break the rights of copyright or trademarks rules or not and it's ok ?

Mr. Esteki is correct. Your copyright rights attached upon completion of your program; it’s considered a literary work. No registration is needed for the protection, but it is always helpful to make your rights searchable in case you need to protect your work in the future. If your program is substantially different from the other program and could not be confused with the other LaunchPad then you might be able to get away with using it. You need to contact an intellectual property (IP) attorney who has experience with both Iranian law and international IP issues. With the virus issue now, they should be more inclined to have a video conference with you. So, location issues would be less of a problem. My personal opinion is that you should find a different trademark and save yourself any possible legal headaches since it appears that they are similar and could be confused with each other. Again, an IP attorney can help you with all of that. I hope this helps. Good luck.

Copying Definitions from Wikipedia to a Crossword game

i have a crossword android mobile game that is published on playstore. it's monetized by ads. because this is a crossword game, i need a lot of words and it's definition. Currently it has 300+ level. I took most of the definition (about 95%+) from a dictionary (i have seek permission from them) and some are from Wikipedia. Sometime the word definition from wikipedia is too long so i make it shorter, by cutting some word or replace it. in credits section of the game, i provide the link to wikipedia.org. i cant provide link to each wikipedia page because there would be so many, and i don't remember all of them. Will this be alright ? Is the definition in wikipedia count as fact or not? I mean, i know Wikipedia won't sue me or something like that, and i don't live in US. But my OCD made my question a lot about license.

Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included (a link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement; click the link for more details). Copied Wikipedia content will therefore remain free under an appropriate license and can continue to be used by anyone subject to certain restrictions, most of which aim to ensure that freedom. This principle is known as copyleft in contrast to typical copyright licenses. You can find their copyright terms here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Web icons copyrightable?

i have a question pertaining to the copyrights of web content. I understand that the web design of a website belonging to a business is protected by the copyright law. However can this be said for web icons that exist on the webpage?

If they are original works of authorship, they are copyrightable. 17 USC §102 : Copyright protection subsists [...] in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories: [...] (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works [...]

Existence of a software development contract

i have a question regarding software development contracts. Take for instance two company, A and B whose primary business mainly involves the reconfiguring and resale of microcomputer system. Company A and company B had a signed letter agreement which tasked company B to build a video editing system for company A. After the completion of the system, company B will have the rights to own one half interest in the software. In such a situation, is it a normal contract or is it a software development contract.

Dale M is right. A SW Development Contract is just about the same thing as any other Development Contract - difference is that it's about SW development.So if Development Agreement is a "normal contract" a SW Development Agreement is also. However, a Letter Agreement might not be considered as normal contract (or as binding as a "normal contract")- depends on its terms. It's normally used also as a "pre-agreement" where the Parties define the commonly agreed grounds of the business relationship. In your particular case, the Letter Agreement defines that the Software will be jointly owned by both A an B in equal shares - this is then the common overall understanding of the Parties, but more specific provisions would be in the Parties' benefit, e.g. does B also has licensing rights? will B be entitled to any compensation for each SW license granted by A as a result of its own (A) commercial efforts?

how intellectual property can be protected while it is undisclosed?

i have learned that " Contrary to patents, trade secrets are protected without registration , that is, trade secrets require no procedural formalities for their protection. A trade secret can be protected for an unlimited period of time, unless it is discovered or legally acquired by others and disclosed to the public. For these reasons, the protection of trade secrets may appear to be particularly attractive for certain companies. There are, however, some conditions for the information to be considered a trade secret. source So, if a competitive company stole an idea from another company and says it has discovered such idea, what the original company have with them to demand the Intellectual property, as they haven't registered or disclosed certain idea.

It is, of course, illegal to "steal" trade secrets. It is, of course, difficult to prove they were stolen. This is one of the disadvantages of a trade secret over, say, a patent. Even if the secret entered the public domain illegally (by being stolen, say) anyone who was not a party to the illegal act (e.g. they read it on a web page) can legally use it - the owner only has recourse against the criminal.

Is it illegal to make an account on 'DarkNet' marketplaces (which provide illegal goods for purchase), but not actually make any trades?

i know this might be a goofy question, but i wanted to ask here, i am thinking about making tutorial videos on tor because it fascinates me, and i wanted to find out if it's illegal to create accounts and access websites on tor that provide illegal goods, but however not purchase any of those goods. i have read some articles online about darkweb markets and some of these markets you simply can't see unless you made an account, and so if it's illegal to make an account on these websites on the darkweb then some journalists might have broken the law. but before any of that, i wanted to ask you guys and find out, to make sure i wouldn't be recording myself committing a crime or something, thank you. 1st EDIT: someone has said that my question is a duplicate of this post Why is Silk Road criminal but not LocalBitcoins? my question asks a completely different question then that post, that post asks why the makers and providers of a darknet website are criminal, i am asking if a private 3rd party, who is not the maker of the platform, the pusher of drugs, or the law enforcement hunting these parties, is at fault simply by making an account and passively observing the illegal darkweb market place, am i committing a crime if i do? would i be guilty by association? would i be a accessory to a crime? thanks 2nd EDIT: so this guy named "gorkin" has commented that i need to "reword" my title, but i have no idea what he means and i have no idea how to get in contact with him, or speak to him directly, he said that the "that" in my title can refer to the market places or the accounts themselves, and my question is not about the marketplaces, it's about just passively setting up the accounts on the darkweb marketplaces, i checked the question that someone claims my question is a duplicate of, and it's a completely different question then the question i am trying to ask, so if someone were to just contact me directly and explain to my why they think my question is a duplicate that would be great and i can explain what i mean by my question, thanks.

Under United States law, it is not illegal to simply make an account on a forum where criminal activity takes place. The closest thing I can think of would be misprision of felony (AKA failure to report a crime), which requires active concealment (see United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5th Cir. 1977) ). Simply observing evidence of criminal activity and not reporting it would not qualify. However, if that forum also contains material that is illegal to posses (such as child sexual abuse material), downloading that (even by simply viewing it using your browser) could be a crime. I would note that I am specifically not advising you whether or not doing any of the other things, like making and publishing tutorial videos on how to access such sites, is likely to get you into trouble with the law. If you want that sort of legal advice, you should contact a lawyer, as the advice is going to be very specific to the exact details.

cross border copyright claim

i live in EU. somebody from another EU country is writing me that they intend to take me to court for a very minor possible copyright infringement. my question is - if meanwhile i move to live in a completely different EU country, can he have success in court over there since the actual copyright infringement took place in a different country?

As user Philipp notes in a comment , international lawsuits can succeed. This is surely even easier within the EU than it would be otherwise. I do not precisely know how the proper venue would be chosen in the EU case you describe, but there is a Wikipedia article discussing the relevant regulation, the Brussels I Regulation : The Brussels I Regulation contains a jurisdictional regime: the rules which courts of European Union Member States use to determine if they have jurisdiction in cases with links to more than one country in the European Union. The basic principle is that the court in the member state of the party that gets sued has jurisdiction, ... There are, however, several exceptions to the basic principle. Even if the action is pursued in the original country, any judgment arising from that action would be enforceable in the new country : In 2012, the EU institutions adopted a recast Brussels I Regulation which replaced the 2001 regulation with effect from 10 January 2015.[18] The recast regulation...abolishes formalities for recognition of judgments and simplifies the procedure for a court chosen by the parties to commence proceedings (even if proceedings have started in another member state already). Therefore, the general answer to the implied question, whether one can avoid legal action for copyright infringement by moving to a different country, is no.

can a chinese online store cancel a paid contractual sales agreement if i wont pay additional costs after the agreement is made

i made an online purchase from a chinese website with free delivery/shipping but the next day they refused to honour the agreement as i refused to pay extra charges for shipping that was already stated as "free shipping" on the online add and included in my final paid sales agreement/invoice. they never even offered a counter offer etc and then tried saying that the items were priced wrong also and that they were old prices etc. making every excuse in the book not to honour the agreement. can i get my order honoured or claim compensation for losses and messing me about etc

There are no realistic prospects for suing a company because they give you the runaround. Everything else pretty much depends on the contract. As an example, on a web page, an exhortation "Free Shipping!" is not false advertising when they charge for shipping, because that exhortation doesn't mean "we always ship everything for free", it means that free shipping is a possibility. When you look at the details of the contract, it will specify when there is free shipping. Some state might enact a very strict deceptive practices law that prohibits advertisement that says "Free Shipping" unless there are no conditions attached to getting free shipping, but that isn't the way it is now. Once you actually have an agreement, then the parties can be held to that agreement. Whether you actually have a legal agreement can be a little murky with online sales: you may instead have an invitation to treat. A website is an advertisement, not an offer, so you have to investigate to determine what constitutes an offer and acceptance. Clicking something doesn't necessarily count. Actually paying generally does; entering a credit card does not (was the charge just pending?). An express acceptance counts. This would be the primary legal question – do you have an actual offer and acceptance (and how would you know)? I presume that there was a step where you had to check a box and click "submit", and the check box said that you agree to the terms of sale. There should be something in there that addresses what constitutes an agreement (should be, but might not be). You could try suing the company to get a court order requiring them to send the goods for the agreed on price ("specific performance", but the courts are unlikely to do that, instead they will order "compensation", i.e. a refund. You can read up on Chinese contract law here , to see how your situation is addressed.

Know if my page violates any rule or copyright, without risking suspension or closure

i'm an administrator of an Instagram page in which I make posts about drawings and covers related to comics. Obviously I am not the author of these drawings but I always add in the description the name of the artist if I know him. My community is growing steadily and I am afraid that when I reach a higher number it will be reviewed by Instagram and close my page. How could I do to know if I am violating any law without putting my community at risk?

Obviously I am not the author of these drawings... If you are posting on Instagram creative material by other artists - drawings, photographs, illustrations - that you did not yourself create , then you are 1) violating Instagrams Terms of Service, and 2) infringing on the copyright of the artists of that work. 1) The Instagram Terms of Service says (emphasis mine) : Under Instagram’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, you can only post content to Instagram if it doesn’t violate the intellectual property rights of another party. The best way to help make sure that the content you post to Instagram doesn’t violate copyright law is to only post content that you’ve created yourself. Copyright | Instagram Help Center You are clearly in violation of the Terms of Service. Your "community" is not at risk; they did not post the material. But you are at risk of Instagram closing your page. But, most importantly, 2) you are also at risk of being the subject of a lawsuit by the artists for infringing on their copyright. All the artist (or creative company) needs to do is see their work on your site, and they can send a takedown notice to Instagram claiming copyright infringement, and could serve you papers for a civil court action. Naming the artist makes no difference; you do not have permission or a license to post their work. The number of visitors or members of your community makes no difference; posting one image you don't own and one other person viewing it on Instagram is a copyright violation. Even if you have only used a small part of a whole work by the artist, you may not prevail using a Fair Use ( Fair Use - U.S. Copyright Office ) defense in court.

US Constitutional text question / federalist papers / republic by definition ..opinion

if "treason" against the government was needed to save the country, would "treason" not be a duty? regardless of the current state of the United States(current politics out of discussion) If the country , defined by its creating documents is at its brink.

Legally speaking, there is no such thing as "treason against the government". Any legal charge of treason is treason against the country. Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 of the US constitution reads: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. See also 18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason which reads: 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. It is hard to see how making war on the United States, or helping an open enemy do so, could "save the nation" and in the absence of either of these, there is no treason, although other charges might possibly apply. The interactive Constitution site from the National Constitutions Center says about this provision of the Constitution: Treason is a unique offense in our constitutional order—the only crime expressly defined by the Constitution, and applying only to Americans who have betrayed the allegiance they are presumed to owe the United States. While the Constitution’s Framers shared the centuries-old view that all citizens owed a duty of loyalty to their home nation, they included the Treason Clause not so much to underscore the seriousness of such a betrayal, but to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition. Debate surrounding the Clause at the Constitutional Convention thus focused on ways to narrowly define the offense, and to protect against false or flimsy prosecutions. The Constitution specifically identifies what constitutes treason against the United States and, importantly, limits the offense of treason to only two types of conduct: (1) “levying war” against the United States; or (2) “adhering to [the] enemies [of the United States], giving them aid and comfort.” Although there have not been many treason prosecutions in American history—indeed, only one person has been indicted for treason since 1954—the Supreme Court has had occasion to further define what each type of treason entails. The offense of “levying war” against the United States was interpreted narrowly in Ex parte Bollman & Swarthout (1807), a case stemming from the infamous alleged plot led by former Vice President Aaron Burr to overthrow the American government in New Orleans. The Supreme Court dismissed charges of treason that had been brought against two of Burr’s associates—Bollman and Swarthout—on the grounds that their alleged conduct did not constitute levying war against the United States within the meaning of the Treason Clause. It was not enough, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion emphasized, merely to conspire “to subvert by force the government of our country” by recruiting troops, procuring maps, and drawing up plans. Conspiring to levy war was distinct from actually levying war. Rather, a person could be convicted of treason for levying war only if there was an “actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design.” In so holding, the Court sharply confined the scope of the offense of treason by levying war against the United States. The Court construed the other treason offense authorized by the Constitution similarly narrowly in Cramer v. United States (1945). That case involved another infamous incident in American history: the Nazi Saboteur Affair. Cramer was prosecuted for treason for allegedly helping German soldiers who had surreptitiously infiltrated American soil during World War II. In reviewing Cramer’s treason conviction, the Court explained that a person could be convicted of treason only if he or she adhered to an enemy and gave that enemy “aid and comfort.” As the Court explained: A citizen intellectually or emotionally may favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country’s policy or interest, but, so long as he commits no act of aid and comfort to the enemy, there is no treason. On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy—making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength—but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason. In other words, the Constitution requires both concrete action and an intent to betray the nation before a citizen can be convicted of treason; expressing traitorous thoughts or intentions alone does not suffice.

can you get prosecuted for a crime in country(A) for a crime that took place in country (B)?

if (Bob) who lives in country(A) infringes copyright of citizens of country (B) and hacks into country(B) government servers and continues to do crime against country(B),if country (A) and country(B) have no extradition treaty with eachother: is there any way that country (B) would be able to arrest or stop (Bob) from continuing his attacks? can country(B) prosecute (Bob) in country (A) because black hat hacking is also illegal in country(A)?

First, it depends on whether trial in absentia is legal in the prosecuting jurisdiction. In the US, trial in complete absentia is prohibited by the due process clauses of the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments. Italy on the other hand does allow such trials. Second, even if a person is convicted in absentia, that does not mean that the perpetrator is stopped in any sense. This being about law, I will not discuss the option of illegal enforcement (even when legal under the laws of the prosecuting country), however this is an obvious way to overcome the lack of an extradition treaty. In general, if a nation will not extradite a person to another for prosecution, they also will not enforce a foreign judgment against the person. An extradition treaty may not be necessary: if it is legal for country B to expel undesirable aliens (or citizens), that could open an avenue for legal arrest (in country C).

Law on selling self-made electronic devices

if I make a microcontroller or any electronic device and it has LEDs, it is not me who created these LEDs, I bought them, even chosen for the pack of transistors that I bought on Amazon, so if I want to market a device that uses these LEDs and transistors, do I pay copyright to the author / brand of these LEDs too? And what if I buy a ready-made Wi-Fi card or SIM card reader that I buy and integrate into my device, must I pay copyright also?

Under the First Sale doctrine , when intellectual property is imparted to an actual physical thing, the first commercial buyer of that actual physical thing (that is made with proper intellectual property licensing or permission) is entitled to use it without further intellectual property limitations. As Wikipedia explains at the link: The first-sale doctrine (also sometimes referred to as the "right of first sale" or the "first sale rule") is an American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works (for example, enabling individuals to sell their legally purchased books or CDs to others). In trademark law, this same doctrine enables reselling of trademarked products after the trademark holder puts the products on the market. In the case of patented products, the doctrine allows resale of patented products without any control from the patent holder. A different analysis applies if the goods when first made were already infringing. But, in practice, the aggrieved IP owner usually sues the primary infringer or an importer of the infringing goods, rather than a retail purchaser, in those case.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

if I used United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) for my game name and publish google play store then in this world no one can use my name to publish both App Store and google play or amazon store? I found this one recently Lion Studios has acquired in the Love Balls trademark through its continuous use in commerce, Lion Studios is also the owner of the following federal trademark application currently pending in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) Lion Studios (Serial No. xxxxxxxx) for “game software” Filed October 9, 2017 above mean no one can used this name in the world to publish game to App Store.

No Registering a trademark in the USA prevents anyone using it in the USA . To achieve worldwide protection it would need to be registered in every country. However, trademark protection can also arise through usage without registration so Love Balls is already a trademark wherever it has been used. This doesn’t mean other people cant use it. A trademark is limited by industry and is protected only to the extent that the other person’s use could cause confusion that that person’s goods and services are associated with the trademark owner. If you want to make a line of, say, adult toys called Love Balls this trademark for computer games wont stop you. Notwithstanding, independent of any trademark, the logo has copyright protection in all of the countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention, that is, almost all countries.

Can a foreigner be charged for solicitation in another state?

if a foreigner who doesn’t live in the states, paid for prostitute services in new york 1 year ago and wasn’t caught or anything like that but if for some reason, the police found out about it somehow.. The statute of limitations is 2 years in New York. And if the foreginer were to visit Hawaii in half a year from now or 1.5 years from the date of solicitation, can he be charged in Hawaii? It is a different state from New York but it is still within NY’s 2 years statute of limitation.. what do u think are the chances?

You can be charged for a crime until the statute of limitations has expired. If it was not a federal crime then your concern would be interstate extradition (a.k.a. rendition ). If the crime was committed in another state then if you are charged and a warrant is issued for your arrest it depends on how serious the crime was. Even if local police find that you are a fugitive, it is up to the state in which you were charged to decide whether they will pay the costs to retrieve you. If they won't, then the state in which you are found will not detain you further on that warrant.

GDPR: if a user doesn't agree cookies on my banner, what must I do?

if a guest of my site click on "Not agree" on cookie banner, what must I do? Have I to disable all the cookies? Have I to disable all the cookies except technical cookies (eg. login session cookies)? (I hope the second one) And if I use anonymous google analytics, have I to disable also it or not? Another question: for registered users is it correct to not present the cookie banner? Thanks, bye

Technical cookies are always fine at any time, the user does not have to agree for these cookies. You cannot use any other cookie until the user agreed. So if the user clicks on "Not agree", nothing changes, as you still cannot set those cookies. Also see Working Document 02/2013 providing guidance on obtaining consent for cookies for further guidance. The same applies to google analytics, you cannot use it until the user agrees, but you can configure Google Analytics in a way you don't need consent . You can use a cookie to store whether the user agreed or not to the cookie banner. That way you don't have to ask it again. And yes, you can store that cookie without consent. So it might happen if a registered user did not answer the cookie banner, so you still display it.

is it possible to override a provision regarding whether state or national law applies to a crime?

if a law has the following provisions Where an act or omission constitutes an offence punishable under this Act and also under any other Central or State Act, then, notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, the offender found guilty of such offence shall be liable to punishment only under such Act as provides for punishment which is greater in degree. Is there any legal principles or laws that could allow for the defendant/accused to be charged and punished under those laws that provide for a lesser punishment ? so far the most relevant law I've found is the general clauses act 1897 section which states that Where an act or omission constitutes an offence under two or more enactments, then the offender shall be liable to be prosecuted and punished under either or any of those enactments, but shall not be liable to be punished twice for the same offence. but it doesn't stand up to the non obstante clause I'm referring to anyway

No. The general clauses act of 1897 allowes to charge with either but not both laws that are possible, depending on the choice of the prosecutor. The law you quoted without source is not circumventing that, it just alters the punishment tables for all involved laws to be the biggest of all involved laws. Let's take a fictional set of laws: the state says that jaywalking is punished by 1 day in jail. the central law says that jaywalking is punished by 1 week in jail. the free streets act (FSA) says that jaywalking is punished by 1 month in jail and it has that provision. the jaywalking prevention act (JPA) says that jaywalking is punished by 1 year in jail. As a result, under any of the four laws, the punishment is always 1 year, never the lesser ones, because the FSA overrides the state and central law and even its own punishment by that of the JPA.

validity of passports after stamped deported

if a person is deported from a country where he used to work to the country of his origin and his passport has been stamped DEPORTED IS the passport still valid for visit to other countries

A foreign government has no authority to revoke a a passport, so the passport is certainly valid. The bearer of the passport will however find it more difficult to gain entry to other countries because the prior deportation will subject the bearer to greater scrutiny from visa officers and border guards.

SEC Act 1933 or 1934 Reporting Requirements triggered for sale over 10M?

if a privately held DE corporation operating & owned exclusively in & by Californians is sold for over Ten Million U.S. dollars, with some of that price millions to be exact, being paid a few months later, ie. millions "financed" up front at the point of sale by way of a contract, do any SEC Act 1933 or 1934 Reporting Requirements get triggered?i.e. the fact it was over ten million purchase price? What if a Hedge fund is purchasing the company and pays the "financed" portion down the line also--does that, ie. hedge fund involvement, trigger reporting requirements? Thanks!

It depends. Most transactions of that scale would be structured to avoid the requirement of making a '33 Act or '34 Act filing although some exemptions do require a bare bones minimal notice of the claim of exemption to be filed with the SEC and state officials. In General Generally speaking, the '33 Act applies to all "public offerings" of stock that are not exempt from registration (a tricky topic discussed below). The '34 Act requires public disclosures to be made by: (1) all banks with 1,200 or more shareholders, (2) all other kinds of companies with 500 or more shareholders, and (3) all other kinds of companies with 300-499 shareholders which have $10 million or more in total assets in any of its last three fiscal years. Disclosure starts automatically following a '33 Act offering until the '34 Act threshold is no longer met, and also applies in cases where the '34 Act filing requirement arises in the absence of a public offering subject to registration under the '33 Act. But, a great many offerings of stock are exempt from disclosure and constitute "private offerings". The safe harbors to qualify as a private offering are mostly set forth in SEC Regulation D , 17 C.F.R. §230.501-508. Various combinations of other exemptions exist involving some mix of a limited number of investors who are not "accredited investors" and a limited dollar amount. Essentially all offerings of less than $1 million are exempt from federal registration although they may be subject to state "blue sky laws" under Rule 504 of Regulation D. As Applied The transaction you describe, in which all sales of stock that are limited to accredited investors (of which Hedge Funds would be an example), regardless of the dollar amount of the transaction, are exempt from '33 Act regulation under Rule 506 of Regulation D. Some of the California specific details are described here , but basically, state regulations is coordinated with federal regulation in this area. There is also an "intrastate offering" exemption from the '33 Act, but it is generally very narrowly defined in light of the expansive reading that has been given to the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. If there are sufficiently few total shareholders in the venture (i.e. fewer than 300), it is also exempt from '34 Act filings as well.

Can a Union CBA circumvent Right to Work?

if an employer is in a Right to Work state, Can a union create a contract with an employer that requires the employer only keep union employees on payroll?

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 banned "closed shop" union agreements in the USA, which is where an employer agrees to only hire union members and only keep union members on the payroll. So, no . (though there are examples of unions that are effectively closed shop, and the Wikipedia article gives a few examples)

intellectual property rights infringement

if i download a picture of product from merchant website, who owns the IPR of the picture? manufacturer or merchant. The product picture can be anything like mobile phone, a picture of a house or even of a Donald Trump.

Initially, the creator of the image, or in some cases the creator's employer, owns the image, or more exactly its copyright. But that copyright can be sold or otherwise transferred. If the creator was a contractor, it is likely that the copyright was transferred to the client. If a business owns the copyright, and it is bought by another business, that copyright will most likely be transferred along with the rest of the business. The copyright owner may also chose to grant permission to others to use the image in various ways. This is known as a license . The terms of the license can be pretty much anything that the copyright owner chooses to make them. When an image appears on a merchant website, it may be that the merchant owns the copyright, or that the manufacturer of the item pictured owns the copyright, and has licensed the image to the merchant for use in the catalog. It may even be that a third party owns the copyright, and has licensed the image to the merchant, directly or via the manufacturer. In any case, by displaying the image on the catalog site, the merchant has given visitors permission to view the image, and probably to download copies for personal use. But unless there is an explicit grant of additional permissions, a user may not re-use the image in any other way. This would include distributing it to others, creating modified versions of the image, or combining it with other images. In addition to being protected by copyright, the image may possibly be a trademark, used to identify the product it represents. This is more likely for product or business logos, and less likely for simple pictures of a product, but it is possible in either case. If an image is also a trademark, it may not be used to advertise or indicate the source of goods or services without permission from the trademark holder, and it may not be used to indicate or imply any endorsement or association between the trademark holder or the maker of the product and the person using the image, without permission. There are limited exceptions to copyright. In the US Fair use applies. This is for comment on or reference to the copyrighted work, or for limited use of it, particularly for "transformative use" this is different from the original use. It is more likely to apply for non-commercial use, but can apply to some commercial uses. A somewhat similar, but narrower, exception known as Fair dealing applies in the UK and some other countries. This law.se Q&A describes fair use in more detail. There are limited exceptions to trademark protection. In general, use of a trademark to identify or comment on a trademarked item is nominative use and is permitted. Nominative use is more likely to apply to a word than to an image or logo.

medical software: liability vs indemnity in UK?

if one is doing a medical software for other company then one needs indemnity (client may have to pay to fix errors) or liability insurance (patient may be badly diagnosed)? or both?

Ideally, both. Indemnity means security against or exemption from legal responsibility for one's actions. An insurance contract is a classic example of an indemnity: in return for your premium they agree to indemnify you against whatever legal liability they are insuring. In a client/contractor relationship there may be things the client will indemnify the contractor for, however, most clients would be unwilling to extend this to indemnifying the contractor from the quality of the work. For example, if the correct input to your software gives incorrect output and the client suffers damage as a result then they would quite rightly want the option of suing you. Liability insurance is a type of insurance (either public, product or professional) where your insurance company will indemnify you against negligence providing that you have complied with the policy terms. Basically, when you get sued, they will defend the case and pay out the settlement and costs. Note that this type of insurance does not cover fines or criminal charges levied by governments; there are policies that do subject to public policy constraints (e.g. if a person is penalised by the state then public policy dictates that they cant just offload the penalty to the insurer). Nor does it cover the cost of rework if required.

Why don't YouTube take legal actions on YouTube downloader sites/applications?

if they don't/won't do,then why does some youtube downloader apps thrown out of the PlayStore (Tubemate, Vidmate etc ..)? if they do, why there are plethora of web sites/apps doing still doing it?

It's all about the ratio of impact level / easiness to take them down. In other words, worthiness of bothering. A mobile app will have a bigger impact and is much easier to throw out of the Playstore compared to websites which will have smaller audiences and are more difficult to take off the web. If Youtube learns that any particular website offering downloads is causing enough revenue loss, surely they will care of it.

in Germany, who appoints Prosecutor

in Germany who and how appoints Prosecutors? ps. I am looking at http://iate.europa.eu/ 's translations, with entry 'EN Prosecutor': EN public prosecutor DE Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt FR procureur de la République IT procuratore della Repubblica EN public prosecutor's office DE Staatsanwaltschaft FR parquet / ministère public IT procura / pubblico ministero Comments on translations are welcome too.

A quick Google search shows a quote from Public Prosecutors in the United States and Europe: A Comparative Analysis , by G. Gilliéron: In Germany, the federal prosecutor general and federal prosecutors are appointed by the President of Germany upon proposal of the Minister of Justice and with the consent of the legislative chamber ( Bundesrat ). State prosecutors are appointed by the State Minister of Justice. As an aside, I don't agree with the Italian translation of the term "public prosecutor's office". "Procura" is correct, but "Pubblico Ministero" is not. In fact, even if the Italian word "ministero" usually refers to an office (as opposite to "Ministro" i.e. Minister), "Pubblico Ministero" is not the name of the office, which is actually "ufficio del Pubblico Ministero".

are all ex post facto laws or retroactive laws unconstitutional?

in India and America the respective constitutions have a prohibition against (in India its article 20). would all kinds of retroactive laws be unconstitutional ? for example amnesty laws that provide for early release and removal of mandatory minimum nature of sentance or laws making people serving a minimum sentance eligible for early release. would those laws be against the constitution of India and America ? or would thoe be against the maximim of "the state shall not deny to citizens equality before law" Edit;; would paying an organization to lobby to get someone pardoned or to get the parliament to have amnesty laws count as corruption within the scope of this law ? https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/1558?sam_handle=123456789/1362

All ex post facto laws are unconstitutional in the United States. But, not all retroactive laws are unconstitutional in the United States. An ex post facto law is basically a law that retroactively makes conduct illegal or punishes it more severely than it was punished at the time if it was already illegal. By way of example, tax legislation is often constitutionally retroactive, and laws that retroactively make the punishments for acts that are crimes at the time more lenient (or retroactively grant amnesty for previously illegal conduct) are legal. I strongly suspect, but do not know for certain, that India's constitutional law makes the same distinction that U.S. constitutional law does in this regard.

shareholders agreement with impossible to meet obligation

in shareholders agreement it says person X would do something by Jan 1. the contract wasnt signed and ascended until feb 1 at which time the person still hadnt done the thing. is person X in breach or can they argue that it was impossible to comply when everyone signed and it was common knowledge that they hadnt done the thing...so it cant count as a material breach

Assuming the "shareholder's agreement" is intended to be a contract ... Not all agreements between shareholders are intended to be legally binding contracts. For example, an agreement to meet for drinks after work on Fridays. However, it sounds like this isn't one of those. Do you have a contract? It's possible that the doing of the "something" by person X was a condition precedent , if so, the fact that it wasn't done means the shareholder's agreement is void - doesn't exist, never existed. Alternatively, if person X misrepresented the status of the "something" (which could include remaining silent about it) then other parties to the contract who were materially induced to enter the contract by that misrepresentation could disclaim the contract - that is, it would be void for that reason. There are different consequences if the misrepresentation was innocent, negligent or fraudulent but that's not germane. Can you be in breach from the beginning of a contract? Absolutely. As described, it was a term of the contract that person X was to have done "something" by 1 January and they hadn't. As such, the instant they signed the contract they were in breach of it and the other parties to the contract would have cause to take action against them. However, if, as stated, they knew that person X had not done what they were required to do (which may need to be proved if they deny it) the court would need to determine the parties' intentions regarding the breach. In an ideal world, the parties would have detailed what they wanted to do about the breach but it doesn't seem like they did this. There might be differing views on what the parties intended and that evidence will ultimately decide the matter. If there is absolutely nothing to go on, a likely outcome is that the court might decide that the intention was for the breach to be remedied in a reasonable time and, if it wasn't, the other parties could then take action. Is it a material breach? A material breach is one that allows the aggrieved party to terminate the contract as well as sue for damages. What they choose to do is up to them: they can terminate and end the contract or they can affirm and keep the contract going. In either case, they can seek damages. If they affirm they can ask the court for an order of specific performance on person X to do "something" by a specific time: if X doesn't she is then in contempt of court. However, if damages are an adequate remedy (they usually are) the court will not grant such an order. A minor breach just entitles them to damages but the contract remains on foot. Since we don't know what "something" is, it's impossible to say if this is a material or a minor breach. Can you contract to do the impossible? Yes - although knowingly doing so would be extremely unwise. A contract that is legally or physically impossible is void, however, a contract that is impossible due to inability or circumstances is not. Plenty of people who have been impacted by the pandemic or government responses to it are finding this out. See What effect does an event like the current Covid-19 pandemic have on contractural obligations?

on what matters does the ICJ have compulsory jurisdiction?

in the ICJ statute it is stated The jurisdiction of the Court comprises all cases which the parties refer to it and all matters specially provided for in the Charter of the United Nations or in treaties and conventions in force. does this mean ICJ have compulsory jurisdiction on matters related to UN charter ?

The scope of compulsory jurisdiction at the ICJ is by unilateral declaration of each nation. You can see the declarations of states that have assented to compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ here: https://www.icj-cij.org/en/declarations Each declaration specifies the scope of compulsory jurisdiction that the state is assenting to. For example, Romania has said it does not accept compulsory jurisdiction for "any dispute regarding to the protection of the environment." I believe all the states that have conditioned their acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction on the opposing state having accepted the same obligation. E.g. Sweden accepts as compulsory ipso facto and without special agreement, in relation to any other State accepting the same obligation , the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, ...

illegal activity on web

is having a website for the sell of prescription and illegal drugs illegal? If so how can they be caught if they are changing IP addresses every transaction? The only other thing I know is it is out of Texas and the drugs are coming from Mexico.

Selling illegal drugs is illegal - how you do it is irrelevant. Law enforcement has various means for dealing with cybercrime and I do not know the technicalities of how they do it but the can if they devote enough resources to it. The major difficulty is that identifying the perpetrator is only half the problem if they are in a different jurisdiction: catching perpetrators is hard enough without trans-national police and judicial cooperation.

Is it illegal if i convert a film to a VideoGame?

is it illegal if i convert a film to a game ? im a Game Developer i got some idea to convert Film Story to Video Game so i worried about is it allowed by owner of film or not at that situation if film not allowed Change Anime to Vedio Game not allowed too ? Thanks

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.

GDPR for dummies: can I track anonymous data? can I track how many people accept / refuse my new cookie policy?

is it legal following the GDPR law, to track anonymous data without consent? I was reading many articles, but GDPR is so broad, there is so much information that receiving a simple answer as that, seems impossible. The question is this: Can I track anonymously, how many people refuse / accept the new cookie consent policy on my website? or do the ones who refuse fall into a black hole?

Yes. Article 4 GDPR Definitions (1) ‘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; Recital 26 Not applicable to anonymous data The principles of data protection should apply to any information concerning an identified or identifiable natural person. Personal data which have undergone pseudonymisation, which could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information should be considered to be information on an identifiable natural person. 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. To ascertain whether means are reasonably likely to be used to identify the natural person, account should be taken of all objective factors, such as the costs of and the amount of time required for identification, taking into consideration the available technology at the time of the processing and technological developments. The principles of data protection should therefore not apply to anonymous information, namely information which does not relate to an identified or identifiable natural person or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a manner that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable. This Regulation does not therefore concern the processing of such anonymous information, including for statistical or research purposes.

Is it legal for employers to ask for social media handles?

is it legal for employers to ask for social media handles in job application or pre-employment forms? If it is unrelated to the job? I understand for jobs like marketing, modeling etc. where a large social media following increases the cash flow, in that case it makes sense to ask for the handles as the person will be a face of the company. Hence the request and assessment could be written under job requirement. But for a position completely unrelated to one's social media presence, is it legal? Looking at North America and Europe ; Canada, USA, Germany

An example of a near-restriction is Washington's RCW 49.44.200 , which prohibits an employer from "Request[ing], requir[ing], or otherwise coerc[ing]" an employee or applicant to disclose "login information" for a social media account, or require the person to access the account in a way that the employer can see the content of that account. "Login information" is defined as "a user name and password, a password, or other means of authentication that protects access to a personal social networking account" – so "user6726" is not login information. It would be legal to require me to reveal my SE username, in Washington. The same kind of law exists in Arkansas . California law is different – an employee may not require or request an employee to "Disclose a username or password". Colorado law is similar. I have no idea if the various state legislatures intended this difference, or if they simply are unaware that "and" and "or" mean different things.

Is it legal to electronically sign a rental lease in South Australia?

is it legal to 'electronically sign' a lease / bond arrangement? https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/legality/global/australia states that it's not legal for "some property transactions in South Australia (Law of Property Act 1936 (SA) s26)" http://www7.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/sa/consol_act/lopa1936198/s26.html disposition: http://www7.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/sa/consol_act/lopa1936198/s7.html#disposition conveyance: http://www7.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/sa/consol_act/lopa1936198/s7.html#conveyance which says lease?

No A lease is an "interest in land" and falls under s26 of the Law of Property Act which Docusign states is not "typically appropriate". I'm not sure why they say that because on the face of it there seems to be nothing in s26 that conflicts with the Electronic Communications Act 2000 – maybe they know of some case law they are not telling us.

Downloading free software directly from my website

is it legal to have free softwares like VLC and Chrome to be download directly from my website? where the user would click o the icon for VLC for example and get the installer download without having to go the website for it.

Just because software is free doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with conditions All software is copyright and virtually none of it has entered the public domain. Therefore, the copyright owner can decide, usually through a licence, who can copy it and under what circumstances. You need to read the licence applying to each piece of software to see if you can do this.

My software outputs to another company's proprietary file format; legal?

is there a general answer to whether it contravenes DMCA or copyright protection to have a piece of my software output to another company's proprietary file format?

I can't see why it would be illegal. For example, Microsoft was even forced to publish file formats, which would be rather pointless if you couldn't output to that file format. There was the situation where compressing images to the .gif format had legal problems because the compression algorithm was patented, but someone found a way to output images to the .gif file format without doing any compression, which turned out to be absolutely legal and not covered by that patent. When you output to a file format, you are not copying any information of the company. In the extreme case that the file format requires you to copy such information (for example if the file format requires that the first line of the file is "This file format may only be used by ABC company. Any use by any other company is copyright infringement. ", and software refuses to read files without that line of text, then this line is required to be there and therefore doesn't fall under copyright. (In the early years of PCs, IBM computers had the letters "IBM" somewhere in the BIOS, and some software checked for these letters and refused to run if they were not there. Result: Copying these three letters into your own BIOS was legal. ) The DMCA is about circumventing copy protection to copy someone else's copyrighted works. (There is another part having to do with protecting ISPs and websites from getting sued; has nothing to do with this at all). You are not circumventing copy protection, and you are not copying someone else's copyrighted works, so the DMCA doesn't come into this.

legal defense on laws applied differently to different persons

is there any way to defend yourself against a law that's being applied in certain way to a person by previous trials by other judges, and then when you are being judged for the same action and you are found guilty? Can the previous trials be used as example to defend yourself to appeal the judgment in higher instances of court?

This article summarizes the status of precedent in Argentine law, which appears to be "special". As he says, there is a system of (very) "soft precedent", and the Argentine Supreme Court has repeatedly said that lower courts are not obliged to follow their rulings, but if you don't you run the risk of your decisions being struck down. Which seems to mean that lower courts should check what the Supreme Court has said, but you can diverge from those findings if you have a new argument, or other good reason. In the US and other common law jurisdictions, courts will also follow decisions by other courts at the same level of the hierarchy (not just superior courts), but in Argentina, there is no horizontal stare decisis . Under the inquisitorial system, the court is part of the investigation, so you can discuss with them analogous facts. Apparently, however, that is the old system, since 3 years ago Argentina switched to an adversarial system , and I think this is the new Code of Criminal Procedure . My impression is that adversarial systems have stricter procedures. So it is possible that you would be blocked by rule from introducing any such argument.

is an 11 year order for protection legal

it appears as if an order for protection has been altered but I need to be educated on whether or not it is possible for an Order for Protection to be effective for 11 years when the defendant has a squeaky clean background, even if the defendant didn't show up for the hearing. Wouldn't there be some sort of follow up on the case at some time during the 11 year period? The order was placed ultimately as a way for the petitioner to work the system to gain custody of the minor child involved in the case. We believe the petitioner simply added a 1 to the 1 year originally ordered, made copies of the already signed paperwork and hand delivered copies to required authorized personnel and to the defendant. Apparently the petitioner of the order was working for the local legal aid voluntarily and may have used this place of employment to act as an attorney for certain clients and used her knowledge of the law to trick certain clients into believing her to be some sort of paralegal or lawyer. The 11 year order for protection may have been faked. Right?? This is in the State of Washington in the US.

RCW 26.50.060 governs the duration of protective orders. It depends on the reason for the order (and also note that there has been a change in the law, taking effect July 25 this year or next, depending on which section). The key provision is "(6) The court order shall specify the date the order expires if any ", which means that a perpetual order is possible. An order cannot be faked or altered, but a piece of paper purporting to be an order can be. You can obtain a copy of the actual order from the county courthouse. If you read para (2) in the statute, you will note that is says If a protection order restrains the respondent from contacting the respondent's minor children the restraint shall be for a fixed period not to exceed one year . This limitation is not applicable to orders for protection issued under chapter 26.09, *26.10, 26.26A, or 26.26B RCW. 26.09 is about dissolution and separation, suggesting that it is not necessarily faked. But yes, it is possible that the "11" was faked, and you can test that theory.

Examples for songs copyright violation

it looks like you have to learn from examples of what constitutes copyright violation when sampling someone else's tune for example in a hip hop song (or even in a rap song). I used search engine duckduckgogo to find "song copyright trial" in video section but found no examples of actual trials discussing this matter. I remember not too long ago Led Zeppelin got away with one, maybe it wasn't too similar. But cannot find the trial on the internet- maybe it was livestreamed and no one recorded. Is there anyone that can share examples of how they decide if a song is similar enough to another song? maybe you are solicitor or they copy from you? or even the one copied (if you are not in jail!)?

Rolling Stone has a short non-technical article on a dozen famous cases. This page is a massive database on music copyright infringement cases going back to 1844, along with analysis of the cases. That analysis may well suffice for your interests: here is an except from a recent case: In fact, there is no melodic material in the section in question in the plaintiff’s work. The harmonic progression of the arpeggiated chords of both songs is utterly commonplace and not copyrightable expression. Neither are “structure, tempo, instrumentation” when, as here, these elements in both works contain no protectable authorship individually or combined. The plaintiff’s references to “iconic notes” and “feel” are meaningless. What excited the plaintiff was merely the fact that a portion of the defendant’s song sounds like his. This similarity, however, doesn’t support a claim of infringement of a musical work when, as here, the musical elements of the portions of the songs in issue underlying the recorded sounds of both works contain little or no protectable original expression Apart from providing the appellate court rulings, this also includes original complaints and petitions, certain trial court rulings, and amicus briefs which are the "technical" core of the court's finding of fact. However, you will need to read a varied sample of these cases and not just pick one at random. This will at least provide the raw material basis for discovering how these decisions are made.

are there any legal systems in the world where the judiciary and the legislature are the same?

it's well known that the limited lawmaking power that a judiciary has comes from interpretation of statutes but are there any systems where the judiciary and the legislature are one and the same and have broad lawmaking powers ?

Historically, this was true in the Icelandic Commonwealth in the Middle Ages, and in some democratic Greek city-states in the classical era. Similarly, in non-democratic feudal regimes, the lord or monarch was both the law giver and sitting in court was also the arbiter of all disputes arising under the lord's own laws. In places like Saudi Arabia where the monarchy's power is more than symbolic, the system still works this way to a significant extent. The practical reality in most one party Communist states is similar. In the United Kingdom, historically, the Appellate committee of the House of Lords (staffed by a subset of aristocrats usually appointed for life by the Prime Minister to the post) was the highest court of appeal of other courts in the British Commonwealth (with the Judicial committee of the Privy Council handling final appeals from outside Britain), and it was also a court of original jurisdiction for certain criminal cases against other aristocrats to satisfy the Magna Carta's notion that one is entitled to a jury of one's peers. Top level general purpose legislatures rarely serve as courts at the highest level, except in very isolated political matters. A good example of narrow quasi-judicial legislative power is the power of the Congress in the U.S., to be the ultimate judge for Congressional election disputes and of some Presidential election disputes. Congress also has quasi-judicial jurisdiction over impeachments of government employees whether or not they are elected, and over expulsions for cause of its own members and over other ethical sanctions of its own members. Many other legislatures have some sort of quansi-judicial impeachment and/or explusion power exercised as a whole by by some committee within it. It is common in the United States for administrative agencies, within their narrow area of competence to exercise both quasi-legislative power to enact regulations with a broad mandate in a subject area, and also to have quasi-judicial power in that same subject area. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Merit System Protection Board, for example, all operate in this fashion to some extent. Likewise, it is very common at the local government level for a city council and its planning board to carry out both legislative roles and quasi-judicial role when disputes come up regarding its land use regulations. Similarly, school boards routinely both establish employment regulations and other school rules, and serve in a quasi-judicial role with respect employee discipline or termination, and with respect to student discipline. This dual role is also common for the boards of other public institutions like hospitals and state colleges, and for private non-profit organizations. A recent example in that kind of situation is Colorado's State School Board which both exercises legislative power over when charter schools (i.e. public schools not under the direct supervision of any elected local school board) may be formed, and has the ultimate and final judicial review role over decisions by local school boards to grant or deny school charters.

Am i responsible for fees from FedEx i was not made aware of and did not agree to pay?

last month I ordered a computer from an American company that shipped it through FedEx. I paid for shipping when I purchased the computer and if I remember right I also paid a small import tax when the package was in customs. Today I received a bill from FedEx with a massive charge on it that included the following charges Advancement Fee $10.53 HST on ADV/Ancillary Services Fees $10.25 Clearance Entry Fee $75.03 Canada HST $41.30 The Canada HST I found out I do have to pay but the rest of the charges don't look like any kind of legitimate government charges and I was completely unaware of them. Am I legally obligated to pay these random fees when I in no way agreed to pay them? I didn't even know there was anything owing on the package, I was told everything was paid for and I just had to wait. They were also supposed to get my signature at the door for proof of delivery but they failed to do that as well, they just left it at the door and left without even knocking. from what I know of Canadian law since I was not made aware of these fees I am not responsible for any of them besides the government tax, but I am concerned i may be wrong and I'm unsure of what to do.

Online stores shipping stuff internationally usually include a clause in their Terms along the lines "buyer is responsible for all clearance/import fees and taxes". What those fees and taxes are depends on: destination country (the actual tax) carrier (e.g. FedEx) (clearance charges as the carrier also acts as your customs broker) value and, sometimes, what the item is. The onus is on the buyer to check all those charges in advance before deciding to buy. It would have been naive to assume that, when you buy internationally, all that you pay is what the store gets plus import tax (unless you're ready to be present at the customs when the item arrives, fill forms and liaise with them yourself).

Taking "wild animals" on a plane

last week I was in London for some sightseeing. In a park, I saw a lot of squirrels, and most of them were quite tame, came to other people, climbing on their trousers and ate out of their hands. I think we all can agree that squirrels are awesome and with animals so tame, the thought of taking one away with you comes to mind. Apart from the question of whether you should do that (which I would answer with a definite no, the flight in the plane alone would propably be too much for the little guy), I would be interested if there would be a legal way to do that. I come from Germany and traveled by plane. Would it be legal to do that? I think you would at least have to take the animal to a vet and get some sort of certificate that the animal is healthy and don't has any diseases. Are there specific laws that prohibit taking a wild animal from a different country and make it your pet? I know, it may be a funny question, and I wouldn't want that anyone would do something like this, but I'm really interested in the answer to that question.

Squirrels do not make good pets. If it is gray squirrel, you technically need a license to keep one, however, the airline might not check this. Therefore, you MIGHT be able to get it on the plane in a carrier. It is technically against a UK regulation (not a law) to even possess a gray squirrel. There is no telling how this might or might not be enforced. In general, if the cops in the UK somehow found out you had a gray squirrel, they would probably seize it and kill it because it is considered an invasive species. It is a crime to possess a gray squirrel in the EU. If you land a gray squirrel in an EU airport, they will confiscate the squirrel, arrest you, then fine you and kill the squirrel. It is illegal to capture a red squirrel in the UK. You can possess one as a pet, but you must have a certificate showing that it was legally obtainined, otherwise you will be arrested and prosecuted under the Wildlife & Countryside Act. I don't know the law on red squirrels in the EU, however, my guess is you probably need a license to have one as a pet.

Could you explain the concept of money laundering in simple terms?

launder 2 informal Conceal the origins of (money obtained illegally), typically by transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses. (from here ) Suppose, I have illegally obtained money (I don't). So, basically, everything I can do with it, other than spending, would be laundering, is that correct (putting them into a bank account, investing in a business, etc.)?

Laundering physical money Let's say a career criminal committed a couple crimes and is now in possession of a large heap of money in form of coins and paper currency. They want to use that money to buy themselves a nice house. But showing up with a huge bag of money at a bank or real estate agency would look very suspicious. It is very likely that they will get reported and then investigated by law enforcement. What do they do? They need some explanation where that money comes from. A good way to turn that dirty money into apparently clean money is by running a legitimate cash-based business. The criminal then goes to the bank each week and deposits a chunk of their ill-gotten cash claiming it's income from their business. Common choices are restaurants, casinos or the name-giver laundromats which were famously used by crime boss Al Capone to launder his illegal income. But they can use any business for this purpose which takes payment in cash and doesn't leave easy to analyze evidence how much business they really performed. Now the criminal has all that ill-gotten money on a regular bank account and can use it to buy what they want without raising any further suspicion. Laundering electronic money Another category of money laundering which got very relevant in the age of online banking is to launder illegally obtained money which can be found on bank accounts. For example by hacking online banking accounts or running scams. If the criminal would just send that money to their personal account, then the investigators would just need to subpoena their bank and their real identity would be revealed. So they need some way to move that money which is hard to trace. Common methods are: Transfering money to accounts in foreign countries in order to tie up investigators with the bureaucracy of international investigations. Transferring money in ways which are hard to trace, like cryptocurrency, gift cards, private money transfer services or private people they recruited to forward money through their personal accounts . Buying, transfering and selling virtual assets in online games. Buying physical items from online stores using false identities and selling them again under their real identity. Fortunately none of these methods of money laundering are completely untraceable. They make the work of law enforcement more difficult, but not completely impossible. The criminals usually hope to frustrate law enforcement to the point that they give up and prioritize "larger fish".

Are there any countries where ex post facto amnesty laws are a thing?

laws that decriminalise acts and sentences that also retroactively free or reduce the sentances of convicts who commited various offences prior to the decriminalisation / sentance reduction

Article 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights : prohibits the retroactive application of criminal law, both in relation to criminal conviction (Article 15(1), first sentence) and greater severity of any sentence (second sentence). It also requires a more lenient penalty to be applied if one is introduced after the offence was committed (third sentence). Article 15(2) preserves the legitimacy of the trial and punishment of crimes ‘according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations’, prompted by concerns that the post-Second World War prosecution of war crimes may otherwise be called into question. But, as Wikipedia in the link above explains, this only "requires the imposition of the lesser penalty where criminal sentences have changed between the offence and conviction." Many countries have adopted it, but some have adopted it only with reservations. The United States, for example, has specifically reserved and not assented to those provisions of Article 15: The United States has made reservations that none of the articles should restrict the right of free speech and association; that the US government may impose capital punishment on any person other than a pregnant woman, including persons below the age of 18; that "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment" refers to those treatments or punishments prohibited by one or more of the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution; that the third clause of Paragraph 1, Article 15 will not apply ; and that, notwithstanding paragraphs 2(b) and 3 of Article 10 and paragraph 4 of Article 14, the US government may treat juveniles as adults, and accept volunteers to the military prior to the age of 18. The United States also submitted five "understandings", and four "declarations".

Assisted by friendship, on friendship, or ...?

let us say an attorney who is also a close friend of mine assist me just thanks to our friendship, without charging any fee . Question is, is there a way to refer to such kind of situation? Would you use something like assisted on a friendly basis , or in friendship ?

I've heard the Latin expression pro bono being used when a lawyer agrees to work at a reduced fee, or even without charging any fee. As far as I know, it is used both when the client is a friend or relative and when the client cannot afford to pay the fee.

How to manage intellectual property right for different clients from a consultancy

let's say company A is a consultancy in field XX and develops software solutions for client B. Client B clearly retains the IP of the work done. Then company A will have 2 more clients C and D. Now, company A has clearly the expertise to do a similar work for company C and D (without copying or reusing the same software of course). Is there any infringement of IPR of company A just has other clients and do similar jobs? Especially in software clearly there are pieces that can be repeated in different project but they are not representative of the IP. How the company A can handle the legal situation: it has to give the IP to client B , C and D without infringing all of them. Otherwise company A will get out of business because they cannot have multiple clients.

Is there any infringement of IPR of company A just has other clients and do similar jobs? Typically no, especially if that knowledge is gained independently. For example if Client A provided the company with a specific algorithm and asked for that algorithm to be implemented, the company could not use that algorithm (even if the code is different) for Client B. However if Client A came to the company and said "we want software that does X, Y, Z" and the company developed the algorithm to do that, it would be free to use that with Client B. How the company A can handle the legal situation [...] Technically speaking this is done in a number of ways depending on how the company wants to implement it. It may have a well-documented development process which documents where these methods come from and a source control system that can show that the code is independently written. Separation of data (for example, completely unrelated source repositories) and even having different individuals working on the projects. Usually though there is some kind of documentation exchanged between the contractor and the client at the beginning of the project that outlines very carefully where the intellectual property belongs (and clearly defining the scope of work and any intellectual property output). This may include such provisions as: Assignment of any patents Documentation and assignment of algorithms Non-disclosure agreements Release and removal of all documentation/source/notes/etc from the contractors system related to the developed system via signed affidavit Documentation of trade secrets Marking sensitive documents as such (Confidential/Internal use only, etc) Another important step from the client side is an indemnification agreement, which basically would say that if Client A were to sue Client B for an IP violation arising from work produced by the contractor, that the contractor would be the one to pay for that particular violation (and court costs/lawyer fees, etc). This is a huge incentive for the contractor to clearly demonstrate that while the output is similar, it was developed independently. The important thing here is to remember that Intellectual Property and Expertise are two different legal concepts. Intellectual Property is something that can be legally protected, while expertise is general knowledge that cannot.

can small loans be considered gifts for tax purposes?

let's say someone wishes to loan money to his brother, but has little expectation of repayment and no intention of pursuing the matter if his brother defaults. would the irs consider this a gift, a loan, or a gift loan? details: 14k$ at 12% interest for a fixed term of 3 years as a strictly oral agreement without any signed document. let's assume there are some emails or text messages discussing the issue, but nothing documenting a final agreement.

this article seems to imply it would be considered a gift since the lender does not intend to enforce the debt. The IRS starts with the presumption that a transfer between family members is a gift. You can get around that presumption by showing that you really expected repayment and intended to enforce the debt.

Is everything in an animated TV show copyrighted?

let's use Futurama as the example. I understand all the characters are copyrighted. What about certain objects like slurm? or the holophonor? Are all objects in the whole duration in the episode copyrighted?

Each episode of the show as a whole, and all the individual images in it, are protected by copyright, but the idea of a holophonor, or indeed any idea, is not. The more closely anyone else's drawing of a gadget resembles one from the show, the more likely it would be to be found to infringe copyright. The same is true of a character image. The more distinctive and original the image, and the more closely someone copies it, the more likely a finding of infringement would be.

Does a university have rights to an invention of product which was created during one's active enrollment?

lets say I have a product which I am the sole creator, and I intend to make a business out of this product. The idea / creation of this product came to fruition during undergraduate enrollment at X university. I used my lab access from a course I was enrolled in, to do verification tests on this product. They can confirm when and how long I've accessed the lab's as it is key card access which logs traffic data. Will the university have partial rights or ownership to the product/ business related to the product under this circumstances ? Given I used the facilities provided by the university ?

Generally, research and invention done by a student independently while enrolled as a student at a university or college would be the intellectual property of the student. This seems to cover the situation that you describe. Merely using university facilities and equipment does not make the university an owner of the intellectual property created using them absent an express agreement to the contrary which would be very unusual and might even be void as a violation of public policy considerations. Conceivably, if your use of university equipment and facilities was beyond the scope of the allowed rules for using it incident to being a student, free of charge, the university might charge you a fair rental value of the equipment and facilities used in violation of university policies on the use of those things if it was really excessive (e.g. you accounted for 95% of the machine shop use at the university and wore out the machine much more than it would typically be worn out), but that would not give it an ownership interest in the intellectual property created with the equipment and facilities. If the student is doing the work as an employee of the university under the supervision of a professor, the analysis regarding whether it was work done for hire that belongs to the university or work for which the student-employee was a partial author (along with everyone else who participated in coming up with it personally) would be subject to the same analysis as in the case where someone is an employee of any other firm. In practice, there would frequently be a written employment agreement spelling out intellectual property ownership if the work was done in a part of the university that usually engages in inventing patentable ideas.

violation of the terms of service

literally i have an app(to earn money) that parses google.translate results. Changes it(info from google) and puts it in. And it seem I am violating terms of service because i am scraping google.translate site and getting information from it, but then i somehow changing it. But still i am a bad person. And google detected and proved that it was me and my app doing such unscrupulous action. What kind of punishment/penalty etc will apply to me?

At very least, Google can deny your App access to their translation service and API, so your App won't work anymore. At most, they could - depending on jurisdiction, i.e. where you are located - take you to civil court in California for damages. It's unlikely, but they could; but they could easily send you a threat letter which may require you to hire a lawyer to answer. From Google Terms of Service All claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the Services will be litigated exclusively in the federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA, and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

I need to know if I need a privacy policy for a computer app

make computer apps using Winforms and such the apps that i make are computer side only nothing gets stored off the computer nothing gets moved anywhere else lets say i have an app that needs your email and it just saves it inside the app itself after the user enters it without ever leaving or sending that information anywhere but in the computer itself would this require a privacy policy

So your privacy rules are "nothing ever leaves the computer, and the only private information stored is the user's email address which is stored inside the application". So that's what goes into your privacy policy. Normally a privacy policy would be viewable on your website, but you can also just add a menu item "View Privacy Policy" into your application, where you display the privacy policy. As others mentioned in comments, what exactly is going on with that email address? If it isn't used, why is it stored? So I suppose you use it somehow. Put that into your privacy policy. "Your email address is recorded so you can receive an email when a new version of the application becomes available", just as an example what could go into your privacy policy. If that's your only use obviously.

What are the penalties of making false police report in Germany?

my GF & I have discovered recently that our flatmate had made a false police report in Germany while she visited her partner there. In her report she told the police that her bag was stolen while in actual fact she sent it back to us in Italy by DHL (Received yesterday), so that she could lie to her partner to stay with her longer. We received the package today and since we do not want to be involved in any police related matter, can anyone advice the consequences and if it is serious, we would prefer to call the police and explain. We have all the proof that showed the sender was our flatmate herself.

Making a false police report could fall under Sec. 145d of the German Criminal Law Code (§ 145d StGB, Vortäuschen einer Straftat , "Misleading authorities about commission of offence" ). As such, they could face a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine, the latter being much more likely for such a small offence, especially if they have not been in legal trouble before. I doubt any court would sentence them to more than 90 Tagessätze (day fines).

Medical right to privacy- HIPAA

my Roomate has been calling my physician and disclosing my health information including when my appointments are and what medications I am taking. I have not signed or told anyone working there that this was okay. Do I have legal rights as I am now finding out they have contacted more people than my Roomate.

There is a problem in the question, that it does not clearly identify the relevant facts. Most of the information given ("my Roomate has been calling my physician and disclosing my health information ") says that the roommate sua sponte contacted the physician, and others, but the end which says "they have contacted more people than my Roomate" suggests that the physician contacted the roommate and others. So there are two radically different issues here. There is no statute specifically prohibiting your roommate from calling random people to tell people facts about you, up to the point that it becomes some kind of stalking / harassing behavior. More likely, this would constitute the tort of invasion of privacy, and the specific cause of action in the US would likely be public disclosure of private facts. The exact details would depend on what state you are in, but I will assume Washington law where there is such a privacy right. Half of the four elements of that wrong seem obvious: it concerns your private life, and it is not a legitimate public concern. The other two are that it was publicly disclosed, and the disclosure would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. It is unknown whether it was publicly disclosed; it is highly likely but not self-evident that a jury would find the specific disclosure highly offensive. If there is some evidence that the roommate contacted multiple people and you wish to discover the full extent of the disclosure, a lawsuit could be filed and email could be subpoenaed, assuming that the disclosure was by email (or some similar trackable means of communication). If the disclosure was purely oral, it would be very difficult to obtain evidence of disclosure, but it could come from testimony (e.g. if Sally informs you that Ray revealed the information to her). On the other hand, HIPAA (via the Privacy Rule ) clearly prohibits revealing personal medical information to others (apart from communication to medically-relevant individuals). This is so clearly established that it is hard to imagine a physician disseminating private medical information to unauthorized people. It is, in fact, extremely likely that you did sign something, although it seems to be rare that patients know what they are signing (that is, you e-sign something with minimal visible content, perhaps just the word "privacy", and you have not actually read the document supposedly associated with the signature). Still, it is imaginable that some physician might have (wrongly) dispensed with the signing ritual. The fact that you probably "signed something" does not mean that you specifically approved the general release of such information to the public. Non-medical individuals have to be specifically identified, which could have come about by them asking you if you wanted someone to be a "contact", and you were misled as to what they were asking for (thus unknowingly "approved" i.e. robo-signed them telling your roommate protected information). This could be actionable, though you'd have to show that you had not permitted such a disclosure. If the "others" are within the penumbra of the medical profession, though, your physician can disclose private information to relevant people: for instance, he can (and will) inform the nurse that you need an appointment, need a prescription, and so on. Whether or not the disclosure oversteps the allowed boundaries would depend on who and why the information was disclosed, but the general limit is that the disclosure has to be specifically allowed by the regulation, where section 160.103 of the rule starts to lay out who is allowed vs. not allowed to be disclosed to.

Adult son moved out but left belongings behind

my adult son 28 has moved in with his girlfriend and her parents and has left the majority of his belongings in my house, How long do I have to give him to remove them and what can I do if he doesn't remove them ( can i dispose of them ) ?

It is likely you are a bailee A bailee is a person who is entrusted with the property of another without transfer of ownership. A bailee is responsible for the care and protection of that property and its return when requested. You must act reasonably with respect to the property and take reasonable precautions to protect it. If you store it in a damp cellar and it gets dated, you are liable for that damage. It is not reasonable for you to keep it indefinitely. If you wrote to your son giving him a reasonable time for its removal (say 6 weeks) after which you tell him you will dispose of it, that’s probably fine. Even better, pay a lawyer to write the letter if, as you say, the relationship has broken down irreparably. Of course, letters from lawyers can cause irreparable breakdowns.

is requiring "auto pay" for a better car insurence payment plan considered discrimination

my car insurance company doubles up my first monthly payment if i dont use auto pay. is this considered discrimination. Why should I be penalized for not giving access to my bank account.....

It may be discrimination, but it is not discrimination based upon any reason that the company is prohibited from engaging in. This conduct is legal in pretty much all U.S. jurisdictions.

Should I pay rent, post-lease period, when I didn't live there anymore?

my friend and I moved out of our apartment a week before our lease was up, but we just simply didn't return the keys or let the apartment complex know, thinking they'd just charge us for it if needed. Now, we are being charged 250 dollars as a prorated amount for the days after the lease was up that we didn't let the management know that we had left. The rent charge was the pro-rated rent for every day after 2/27 that the apartment remained in y’alls possession. Unless the keys are turned in or the resident confirms in writing that they have vacated the unit we cannot legally take possession of the apartment. For that reason you were being charged rent until I received the email confirmation from you that y’all have in fact vacated the unit. Even though it is not a high amount, I am not fully willing to pay it because we weren't there. I would appreciate any advice.

When you take possession of someone else's apartment and live there, that means you have an exclusive and protected right to be there and even exclude the owner from entering as he normally could in his own property. You prevent the owner from renting it to someone else. The rent that you pay under the rental contract is what it costs you to gain these privileges. If you leave early, your obligation to pay the amount of the lease still exists, even if you're not there. If you had told the landlord that you were leaving, returned the key, and he had managed to re-rent the unit before the end of your lease by a couple of days, then he might have be obligated (depending on local law) to take those days into account.

Requesting to see holiday rota and GDPR

my partner has asked if she can see the holiday rota and was told she couldn't because of GDPR. Is that correct? I know anything that identifies you needs to be secure but the rota of when people are working is clearly visible on their noticeboard so doesn't the same apply to that? thanks

There is no clear answer to this question. The GDPR doesn't not apply, but it delegates rules for processing in the context of employment to member states. That means, the laws in your country might override the GDPR here. As the data controller in this situation, the company must protect the personal data it processes, including the personal data of employees. Protection doesn't have to be absolute, just proportional to the risks. It may be fine to treat data in one context more carefully than another. This is always a judgement call of the data controller. There is nothing about holiday rotas where the GDPR would require them to be kept under lock. The company could very well decide that this data isn't very sensitive and that everyone can look at it themselves. For example, the company might argue they have a legitimate interest for this so that employees can see whether their colleagues are unavailable. But until the controller makes such a decision, the rota contains other person's personal data and cannot be disclosed without a legal basis. Here, I see three reasons why the company might be acting that way: They are overly careful with GDPR compliance and are cargo-culting restrictions that are not actually necessary. They have made a conscious decision to restrict access to this data to protect the private life of employees. They want to make it more difficult for employees to take time off.

Does collaboration with branded products need permission?

my question is simple. If I were to sell a food product at my takeaway shop for example our own chicken wings with Frank's redhot sauce which is a branded sauce, would we be able to advertise as Frank's red hot chicken wings or chicken wings with franks red hot sauce? And if that is not an issue is it possible to advertise their logo next to the picture of our chicken wings on the menu/flyer? I feel it would only benefit the brand in use as a means of advertising and collaboration with no harm to their brand since they are still separate products. Thank you for reading.

You're talking about using someone else's trademark in marketing your product. In that context you likely need permission from the licensor. The licensor is the entity in the territory with exclusive legal rights over a thing that gives, sells or otherwise surrenders to another entity a limited right to use that thing in the territory. The licensor might be nice and easy going, they might have a restrictive and onerous approvals process or they might completely refuse you. I feel it would only benefit the brand in use as a means of advertising and collaboration with no harm to their brand since they are still separate products. But the licensor may not hold the same belief and let's be forthright about it: you want to use their trademark or material to benefit your product or service. If the usage were solely informational or descriptive (e.g. "Ingredients: ... Frank's Redhot Sauce ... ") or "collateral" (the trademarked item is part of a larger product) that might be OK. But even if it were legally OK you might nevertheless be tied up in a legal argument to establish that it's OK. However, my inference from what you wrote is that the trademarked name would be given prominence in your marketing material that they could argue implies some kind of relationship or affiliation or could lead to customers being confused that the licensor was involved in producing or selling the product.

Roommate accusing me of theft in Germany

my stuff kept going missing and when I asked my roommate they denied but later I looked through their bags and found out it that they were stealing my stuff and hiding it in their bag. I took a picture of my stuff that I found in the bags. then I packed my things and left cause I was scared from them. when they called me I confronted them and they denied and accused me of putting my stuff in their bag to falsely accuse them of stealing from me, but now I am suspecting that they are gonna call the police accusing me of stealing their stuff can they do that? and what will the police do? how does the police system in Germany works in such situations?

germany Anybody can call the police and file charges. The police will probably ask both sides to make statements for the record. If you are potentially accused of a crime, they will inform you of your right not to testify, which can be scary if you are not familiar with the legal language. You can file charges against the other side at this point, too. Police are familiar with situations where two sides accuse each other. Having collected evidence and statements, the police decide if there is enough of a case to present it to the prosecutor's office. That's not yet a determination of guilt, it merely means that they will look into it further. The prosecutor decides if there is enough of a case to bring it to court. (The prosecutor must see a likelihood of success.) If the case goes to trial, there will probably be a single judge, no jury. You are not required to have a defense attorney, but you might want to if there are language problems. However, in the German system, the judge is not merely the 'referee' between the prosecution and defense. The judge is supposed to question witnesses to understand what happened, and in many cases the judge will ask the same questions a defender would have asked. For minor crimes, there is a procedure called Strafbefehl , which is important to understand. It is a letter with the offer of a sort of 'plea bargain,' which goes into effect unless you refuse it quickly and demand a trial. Doing nothing means you accept.

Write song to the tune of a copyrighted song

my wife is considering writing (and selling) some childrens' books which will contain songs which are to the tune of various copyrighted songs (like the "Let It Go!" song from Disney's Frozen). She wouldn't have the musical notes in the books. My question is, would it be legally kosher to say that a song is "to the tune of Disney's 'Let It Go!' from Frozen"?

Such a song would probably be a derivative work, and thus permission would be required. If the rhyme scheme of the original was imitated, or other distinctive elements were used, the case for this being a derivative work would be even stronger. Of course, the copyright owner might not sue, but with Disney ... It might be that permission could be obtained. There is no knowing until she asks. She should probably consult a lawyer with knowledge in this area with the specific song(s) she plans to use. Parody and Fair Use Strictly speaking, this would not be a parody, because it is neither mocking nor commenting on the original. Rather it is using the form of the original to say something quite unrelated to the original. Many people mistakenly use "parody" for this situation. However, whether or not this is a "parody" it might be fair use if this is under US law. A finding of fiar use is not automatic for any parody under US law. Note that in Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co 268 F.3d 1257 (The case of The Wind Done Gone (TWDG)) the 11th Circuit Appeals Court did not simply dismiss the infringement claim on the ground that this was a parody. Rather it undertook a detailed study of the factors governing fair use. The court wrote: There is no bright line that separates the protectable expression from the nonprotectable idea in a work of fiction. ... While we agree with Houghton Mifflin that the characters, settings, and plot taken from GWTW are vested with a new significance when viewed through the character of Cynara in TWDG, it does not change the fact that they are the very same copyrighted characters, settings, and plot. Houghton Mifflin argues that TWDG is entitled to fair-use protection as a parody of GWTW. In Campbell , the Supreme Court held that parody, although not specifically listed in [17 USC] § 107, is a form of comment and criticism that may constitute a fair use of the copyrighted work being parodied. Parody, which is directed toward a particular literary or artistic work, is distinguishable from satire, which more broadly addresses the institutions and mores of a slice of society. Thus, " [p]arody needs to mimic an original to make its point, and so has some claim to use the creation of its victim's . . . imagination, whereas satire can stand on its own two feet and so requires justification for the very act of borrowing." (citations, mostly to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. omitted) ... The fact that parody by definition must borrow elements from an existing work, however, does not mean that every parody is shielded from a claim of copyright infringement as a fair use. "The [Copyright] Act has no hint of an evidentiary preference for parodists over their victims, and no workable presumption for parody could take account of the fact that parody often shades into satire when society is lampooned through its creative artifacts, or that a work may contain both parodic and nonparodic elements." (quoting Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. ) ... ... we will treat a work as a parody if its aim is to comment upon or criticize a prior work by appropriating elements of the original in creating a new artistic, as opposed to scholarly or journalistic, work. The court found that TWDG was a parody under this definition, and then proceeded with a detailed analysis of the fair use factors in this specific case. After a long analysis of each of the four fair-use factors, soem of them divided into multiple facets, the court concludes: We reject the district court's conclusion that SunTrust has established its likelihood of success on the merits. To the contrary, based upon our analysis of the fair use factors we find, at this juncture, TWDG is entitled to a fair-use defense. It should also be noted that this was a preliminary finding on the status of an injunction, and the actual infringement case was settled, rather than tried. The case of Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co establishes that for US copyright purposes, a parody is a work that is intended "to comment upon or criticize a prior work by appropriating elements of the original in creating a new artistic, as opposed to scholarly or journalistic, work." A work imitating but neither commenting on nor critizing a prior work is not a parody of it. Such would be the case of the songs described in the question. The Suntrust case also establishes that while a parody will often be a fair use of the original, this is not always nor automatically the3 case. The full four-factor fair-use evaluation must still be made, and not all parodies will pass. Still less will all works that imitate but do not parody the original. Parody in non-US law The Suntrust case is all about fair use, a very specifically US legal concept. It does not exist in the law of any other country that I know of. The UK and several Commonwealth countries have "fair dealing" a somewhat similar but more restrictive concept, which moreover is not exactly the same in the various countries that use it. Some of these specifically mention "parody" as a permitted purpose of fair dealing. Others do not, but mention "criticism" of the original work. A parody may be a form of criticism. None of them grant an automatic and all-embracing exception for parodies. Other countries have neither fair use nor fair dealing. Some have limited exceptions for criticism. In some cases parodies might fit these, but it is surely not valid to say that parody is always an assured defense to a claim of copyright infringement.

Wife involved in car accident, minor injuries, not her fault, driver failed to yield

my wife was in a car accident back in March of this year. She was in a 2001 Toyota Sequoia when a car failed to yield and turned left in front of her causing the accident. The air bags did deploy and the car was totaled. She went to emergency room because here neck, shoulder and back were sore just to make sure she was ok. We contacted an attorney and they had her go to several chiropractor sessions. The car was in decent condition before the accident, priced at around $7,000 Their insurance company gave us around $6000. They gave us $500 for car rental in the interim. The attorney got back to us last week and said we were awarded $4500 in medical compensation. What do I need to do at this point? How do verify amount is correct? We had to purchase a car lower than what we had, although newer and more expensive, so now we have a car payment that we didn't have before.

We can't, in general, answer questions that ask "what should I do?" The insurane company is (almost surely) offering a settlement . This will be less than you might possibly get after a trial, but you don't have the uncertainty of a verdict that might be smaller, nor the delay, stress, and costs of a legal case. You could attempt to negotiate for a higher payment, probably through your attorney. Or you could take the matter to court. Your attorney could advise you on the costs, risks and possible benefits of either course. We cannot. One option would have been to buy an older used car, of similar value to your previous var.

Reasking in Law forum from academia- Can i defend myself?

original: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78853/is-it-unethical-of-me-and-can-i-get-in-trouble-if-a-professor-passes-me-based-on?noredirect=1#comment194231_78853 I originally asked this question in academia, and although I received a lot of comments I'm looking more fore a legal viewpoint. so I thought I would post one here. Edit: There is some information I originally left out but I want to include here. **1) the only thing I have documented from me and the professors exchanges is my email mid semester asking her for office hours, conversations were made on phone. 2) The university did not restrict native speakers to take this course. 3) The reason I was comfortable with originally not showing up to class was because 2 native speakers did the exact same thing before me, and when I asked about the legality of it they told me the professor said it was okay we speak it, and that the prof wants to enroll more students in order to "open" the section. this went over my head, and at the time I thought it was normal as many colleges give credit for competence. 4) Public institution**

There are two senses in which this action might be "against the law". One is that it violates some specific (statutory) law, the other is that it violates some common-law principle especially pertaining to contracts. We can quickly dispose of the possibility that you have violated a statutory law: there is nowhere in the US where you are compelled by law to do anything about foreign language classes (take, avoid, pass, whatever). Your university has the right to establish and enforce whatever requirements it deems proper for awarding degrees and credits, and has the legal power to act broadly in providing an education. Let's say that they have stated a requirement that everybody must take 2 quarters of some foreign language, then if you don't do that, they are entitled to withhold the degree from you. Whereas, if you had satisfied all of the requirements for the degree, then they could not arbitrarily withhold the degree -- it is now a thing that you have a property right to. Just as the university has the right to impose requirements (with appropriate advance notice), they also have the right to suspend requirements, generally or according to circumstances (as long as it is not arbitrary). A typical actual example is "that class hasn't been taught for 3 years". In this case, the requirement was not suspended, but an agent of the university acting within the scope of their appointment judged that the requirement had already been satisfied in your case. The university administration might not actually approve of the professor's choice and might change their rules or sanction the professor (at my university this was common practice, albeit never officially sanctioned), but it is the sort of thing that is within the scope of the professor's job (to judge that you have satisfied the "bottom-line" requirements of the course). Since there was no wrong-doing on your part and you acted in a good faith belief that the professor's actions were "allowed", then the university would be buying itself a pile of legal trouble if it were to rescind your degree.

How to identify whether our organization is subjected to the juridication of federal trade commission (FTC)

our organization is registered in the United States. By registering the company in the US means, are we under the jurisdiction of the FTC? or is it something else? because we are planning to get the privacy shield certification. For that, it is mandatory to be subjected to the jurisdiction of FTC, but I don't know how to find our company's status. I am not familiar with US laws and regulations since I am new to this area.

The US Federal Trade Commission is responsible for the enforcement of certain US laws, particularly in the areas of anti-trust (monopolistic practices) and consumer protection. The FTC itself, on its page "What the FTC Does" says: The Federal Trade Commission enforces a variety of antitrust and consumer protection laws affecting virtually every area of commerce, with some exceptions concerning banks, insurance companies, non-profits, transportation and communications common carriers, air carriers, and some other entities. The agency leverages its resources and targets its enforcement efforts at practices that cause the greatest harm to consumers. The basic statute enforced by the FTC, Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, empowers the agency to investigate and prevent unfair methods of competition, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce. This creates the Agency’s two primary missions: protecting competition and protecting consumers. The statute gives the FTC authority to seek relief for consumers, including injunctions and restitution, and in some instances to seek civil penalties from wrongdoers. The FTC has the ability to implement trade regulation rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive and the Commission can publish reports and make legislative recommendations to Congress about issues affecting the economy. The Commission enforces various antitrust laws under Section 5(a) of the FTC Act as well as the Clayton Act. The FTC monitors all its orders to ensure compliance. Any organization or business that operates within the United States in fields covered by any FTC order is subject to its jurisdiction, whether it is "registered" or not. Businesses that deal with consumers will find a number of FTC regulations applying to their operations. Businesses that operate on a business-to-business basis, but do not have anything close to monopoly control of any industry will be less impacted. The FTC does oversee some Federal privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In short, it is what an organization does that makes it subject to various FTC regulations. Without knowing what an organization does, there is no way to know to what extent it will come under FTC regulations. The EU-US Privacy Shield was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on 16 July 2020 "on the grounds it did not provide adequate protections to EU citizens on government snooping". There will be no future certifications under it.

Could a person be the Dean of a University and the head of a company?

per Andrew W. Moore's self introduction , he is the "Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University" and the "head of Google Cloud AI" at the same time. Is this legal?

It depends on what you mean by "legal", and the specifics of that relationship. Usually, there is a university policy prohibiting full-time faculty from holding other jobs (setting aside the summer-job exception for 9-month employees, which administrators are not). This would violate such a policy and possibly be grounds for termination – as violation of the terms of the contract. In the typical broad sense of "legal" used here, an act that violates a contract is not "legal". In the case of state universities, it might be a violation of a statute, which is even more clearly "illegal". However, faculty members are generally not prohibited from taking largely symbolic or minimum-work type jobs: the relevant consideration is whether the outside job interferes with their faculty position. There's no reasonable way to determine the legal status of this particular appointment and side job.

Is the following considered ethical or acceptable behavior for a law firm?

plaintiff commences litigation. This could require up to three proceedings, call them A, B, and C, that are customarily run in sequence, that is, one after another. That is, if plaintiff wins A, there is no need to pursue B, and if the plaintiff loses both A and B, there is no point in pursuing C. A judge in jurisdiction Y disclaims jurisdiction, citing jurisdiction X's priority. So the law firm appeals in jurisdiction Y. Meanwhile a judge in jurisdiction X advises plaintiff not to proceed with the underlying case, until he decides whether or not the defendant has the "standing" to be sued in its jurisdiction. The law firm runs all three proceedings simultaneously (the appeal in jurisdiction Y, the standing case in jurisdiction X, and the underlying case in jurisdiction X). The effect is that it is collecting all three sets of fees, when the judges have advised the plaintiff to proceed with one proceeding at a time. Is this considered ethical or acceptable behavior? Is there anything the client can do to discourage this?

The law firm starts all three proceedings simultaneously in order to collect all three sets of fees. Is this considered ethical or acceptable behavior? No. The client would have to knowingly and willfully consent to that. No procedural or substantive law requires a party to retain the same attorney(s) in related or unrelated proceedings. In fact, a party is entitled to switch lawyers or dismiss his attorney(s) even in the course of any one set of proceedings. Thus, besides arrogant, the attorney's assumption that the party will retain him for all proceedings is unfounded and therefore unreasonable . Rule 1.5 of professional conduct discourages the act of collecting unreasonable fees. More specifically, item (a)(5) of rule 1.5 refers to " time limitations imposed [...] by the circumstances ". Here, the contingency upon which proceedings B and C are premised is clearly a circumstance that affects the timing --and even the pertinence or pointlessness-- for starting proceedings B and C. Therefore, an act which (1) the attorney knows --or should know-- is unreasonable, and (2) yet he simultaneously knows with all certainty that it will increase attorney fees is unethical and unacceptable. Is there anything the client can do to discourage this? The client might want to remind the attorney or law firm of the aforementioned rule 1.5, and/or that the client has not decided who he would retain for subsequent proceedings B and C. Regardless, if the attorney needs a reminder to that effect, that would be a red flag.

LSAT question HELP NEEDED

please explain the answer. i chose option c but the answer is option e

please explain the answer. i chose option c but the answer is option e Option C is wrong because it excludes the possibility that most students might have received exactly a B minus. The question permits dividing the group in two subsets. One is {students | grade < B_minus} and the other is its complement {students | grade >= B_minus}. Option C is in terms of the set {students | grade > B_minus} whereas option E is in terms of the set {students | grade >= B_minus}. Only the latter matches the description.

How and when did trespass become a crime, or not a crime?

principally interested in the us and in England, but what are the origins of trespass being treated as not a crime in England, and conversely as a crime in the U.S.? As with terminology for civil burdens of truth? How did they diverge or who diverged from whom?

There hasn't really been any such divergence. The elements may vary, but trespass can be prosecuted both civilly and criminally in both jurisdictions.

Can I sell an Android app by taking someone&#39;s written work that is in a public domain, and then adding some of my work to it?

publishers are selling their books by taking someone’s written work which is in public domain by adding some commentary, picture and translating it, so can I do the same by taking that work, adding a picture, some my own thoughts on it (commentary), making an android app and selling it

If you take a public domain work (or a copyrighted work with permission) and repackage it (with or without extra material) you can sell it. Shakespeare's plays and Bach's sheet music have been reckoned and replaced thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times.

how are companies like metasploit and trustedsec and rapid7 legally protected?

rapid7 and trustedsec develop professional penetration testing software rapid7 also sells a pro version of metasploit...my question is that if someone uses their software illegally how are those companies and developers not held responsible since they developed the hacking software(s)? thanks!

Most products can be used for illegal purposes, so just selling something that is used for illegal activities can't incur such liability in general. There are exceptions, of course. If a product is clearly made for illegal activities and has little or no legal use, the supplier is likely to be liable. If a supplier produces something and markets it for illegal purposes, that's likely illegal. In this case, penetration testing software has a clear legal use: security professionals using the software to test computer system security with permission from the system owner. Computer systems are complicated, and difficult to secure, so in many cases it's necessary to test to see if they're immune to normal hacking tools. Therefore, writing these tools and selling them to computer security people serves an important legal purpose.

Call from detective

say hypothetically someone committed a the crime of stealing a public sign and being publicly intoxicated under the age of 21.. The next day a detective calls asking to talk in person and says they "are not going to get arrested" What should the person do? Show up alone? Show up with a lawyer? Show up but don't say anything and then ask to speak with a lawyer? Don't show up at all? This is all hypothetically in the united states in Pennsylvania

You don't have to talk to the police. All taking a lawyer with you will do is have someone to remind you not to talk to the police, and short your bank account a couple hundred dollars. Tell the detective you're busy. The detective saying you "are not going to be arrested" means absolutely nothing. When they show up to talk to you, don't go to the door unless they have a warrant.

Who is responsible for the actions of an AI (artificial intelligence) agent?

say i have a software that has AI(artificial intelligence) incorporated into it locally, and the user gives the software some permissions. if the software has caused some problems (developed a hack to another person device, deleted data, accessed private information...) all by random algorithmically generated code from the client itself locally. at that scenario, who is responsible?. we can treat this scenario as if a "product" of the software distributor caused damage. or we can treat the AI software as a "worker" for software distributor. the law changes on each of the different perspective of AI like it changes between human workers and products. this is a kind of hypothetical question now, but i believe that in the emerging future this will become a serious question.

There are some cases in Hong Kong regarding these cases. In Dr Yeung Sau Shing Albert v Google Inc (No. 2) [2015] 1 HKLRD 26, the judge granted application for leave to appeal that: On Ground 2, while the algorithmic processes were automated, D deployed artificial intelligence to amass information from previous search queries and web content and then generated predictive keywords for the Autocomplete and Related Searches features. Thus, it was arguable that Google Search did deal with content and, unlike mere conduits or passive facilitators, D might be considered as a publisher of injurious content of the predictive suggestions. So, Artificial Intelligence’s criminal or tort act may turn out to be liable for the Operator. Hope it helps you.

Is it legal to create a paid App that lists commercial businesses without their permission?

similar to this question - Listing clubs and businesses If i say created an android app that listed the names and locations of golf clubs and shops selling golf related things (without permission) that would obliviously be okay because there "facts", but what if I where to charge say $2 to download the app ? Would that not be considered as making money from there name/company, especially if it where trademarked. What would the legal repercussions be of designing such an app and charging $2 for people to download it ? I'm not actually considering doing this, Just interested in what the law is concerning things like this.

I don't think there is a difference as to whether you are charging for the service or not. You are charging for providing a service (your app and the technology and marketing behind it), and not making monies of the trademarks. Looking at your competition such a Yelp, nobody is objecting to be included, rather the opposite, and often companies are paying to get preferential placement within the app. Companies have the right to control the use of their trademarks, so make sure that you are not using them in a way that where they are looking as they are endorsing your app, and make sure that you make it clear how they can be removed or included in your app.

How can sites like https://www.brandwatch.com/ crawl instagram legally?

sites like brandwatch.com and various other analytic sites crawl Instagram? Instagram says in their terms and conditions: We prohibit crawling, scraping, caching or otherwise accessing any content on the Service via automated means, including but not limited to, user profiles and photos (except as may be the result of standard search engine protocols or technologies used by a search engine with Instagram's express consent).

Instagram's API has a developer program . This program has certain policies that developers need to abide by. Platform Policy Before you start using the API Platform, we have a few guidelines that we'd like to tell you about. Please make sure to read the full Platform Policy. Here's what you'll read about: Instagram users own their media. It's your responsibility to make sure that you respect that right. You cannot use "insta", "gram" or "Instagram" in your company or product name. You cannot replicate the core user experience of the Instagram apps or web site. For example, do not build a media viewer. You cannot use the API Platform to crawl or store users' media without their express consent. Do not abuse the API Platform, automate requests, or encourage unauthentic behavior. This will get your access turned off. Some of the metrics from user's Instagram accounts don't count against #4 of their platform policy. For example, If you goto https://www.instagram.com/developer/endpoints/users/ in the documentation. You will see certain endpoints have scopes. These scopes are the permissions apps would need to request from users in order to access that endpoint. Some are public, and some are not. Likely, the metrics which brandwatch gather are either outside the scope of the permissions required from other users, OR they've been grandfathered in before changes to certain policies which restrict crawling user pages freely.

If I have backed out of moving into my apartment, is my lease still binding/ am I entitled to a refund if my guarantor never signed the lease?

so I am 22 years old and from the state of New Hampshire. So I'm a recent college graduate and during the last 2 years, I have rented through the same leasing company with no problems. Fast forward to this past May I graduated and was planning on renting through the same company again and had signed the lease over the summer for a different apartment with the hopes of everything running smoothly. Keep in mind its a college leasing company so they do require a guarantor. I was planning on using the same guarantor as the previous years, but they did not support my move so they decided not to sign the lease this time around. Before I had known they weren't going to approve, I had paid this fall's semester in full ($4,000),on-time and before my move-in day. Due to a lack of job-security/COVID, I had to keep pushing forward my move-in date to the point that I decided to back out of my lease and not move as a whole. Also, I did not pay my security deposit and I did not pay for any renters insurance for the apartment yet/at all because of the uncertainty of when or if I was going to be able to move in. As well, in my lease, it says I am not allowed to move in without renters insurance. Therefore, I was wondering if I was entitled to any money that I had put forth because I did not have a guarantor sign my lease?

Yes, the lease is binding You were required to get a guarantor and you didn't - that might allow the landlord to terminate the lease but it certainly doesn't allow you to.

Why was the &#39;hiccup girl&#39; on trial for murder and not accessory

so I was watching the new Piers Morgan documentary about a young girl, who helped set up a robbery for her boyfriend. She was not directly involved in the robbery, wasn't there and didn't know the participants had a gun, yet she was charged with first degree murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole in a Florida court. My question is why wasn't she charged with accessory to robbery or something like that.

Because Florida has felony murder laws. If you participate (including being an accessory) in the specified list of felonies (including armed robbery) and a murder is committed in the course of that felony, you are guilt of first degree murder. It is a prerequisite that she would also have been convicted for the robbery.

Working on code with uncertain licensing at another company&#39;s behest

so the situation I want to ask you about is as follows: The Client Company has a project that is made of three parts: A front-end web app A back-office An API (back-end) The front/back parts were developed by a contracted company, we can call them Bad Contractor, and the API was developed by a few contracted IT students. The result for the Client is a late, non-functional, mess of spaghetti code with severe security problems. This is where we come in: Client wants us to quickly hack a few fixes/functionalities on the existing codebase, the bare minimum that they could continue working with, after which we will redo their project cleanly from scratch. The front/back parts have NO license mentions, the API part has a license mention that specifies that the code belongs to the authors until Client has paid the authors in full - which has been done, so there shouldn't be an issue with that part of the codebase. All the fees for Bad Contractor were paid in full as well - however their relationship ended on bad terms because of the quality of their work (they wanted to keep 'maintaining' their mess), and to our knowledge, the source code probably still belongs to them (in France, AFAIK, if there is no explicit mention of giving away source code, a license is only for use). So my questions are: who is liable if Bad Contractor learns of this reuse of their code? Is our Client liable for giving us the code and telling us to work on it? Are we liable for accepting to work on code the client gave us? Or both? Heck, can I be made personally liable if it can be proven that I worked on it with this knowledge, even just as an employee?

If Client was foolish enough to pay Bad Contractor (BC) without obtaining a proper assignment of copyright in the source, or at least a sufficient license to allow Client to use the code and create modified versions, then BC owns the copyright to the source, and anyone who creates a modified version without permission from BC is a copyright infringer. The contract under which BC was hired should spell out what rights Client is to acquire, and when they will pass to client's ownership, but it might be that Client didn't get such terms into the contract. Or perhaps BC disputes that Client has fulfilled all its obligations. Yes, an infringement claim could be brought against an individual employee, although it is more likely that it would be brought against the employer, or against Client. It could be brought jointly against all three: programmer, new contractor (NC), and Client. Of course, BC's IP rights only matter if BC files an infringement suit. And it might be that a court would find an implied contract, in line with industry practice and the fees that BC was paid, and toss out such a suit. But courts are often reluctant to create contracts that the parties never agreed to. It would be risky for NC to depend on such an outcome of a possible suit. If you or NC are to work on this, you might want to have a contract in which Client explicitly indemnifies you for any copyright claims by BC, saying that they will take on and pay for the defense of any copyright suit BC may bring, and pay any damages that may be awarded to BC. That would largely remove the risk for NC and for NC's employees.

My hashed IPV4 was published by an administrator on an anonymous imageboard (EU country)

some days ago it on an anonymous imageboard it was opened by an administrator a thread with a .png showing all my posts on that website, and each posts had my hashed ipv4 attached to it. Since i discovered that decrypting hash ipv4 is a walk in the park (less than 30 seconds on a normal consumer computer according to this research: https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/16294 ) i'm here to ask you if i can start a legal cause against the admin of the website. I live in an European Union state so i should follow GDPR laws right? The thread of which i speak it was also filled with threats and similar things, over 400 replies in total. Thank you.

Generally, if you have a GDPR issue, it should be reported to your local Data Protection authority. However, an attacker would have to: transcribe the hash from the image; attempt to reverse the hash (unless you have actually done that yourself, you are only guessing that the hash might be easily reversible). Having done that they have an IP address, which although PII, won't be readily traceable to an individual. Then when they have done all that, they know the name of someone who posted something on a bulletin board. So, although there maybe a GDPR issue there, it's probably too trivial for anyone to worry about.

Are raffle tickets sold by charitable organizations in Virginia required to have date, time of drawing printed on them

some raffle tickets have "drawing when all tickets are sold" printed on them. No time, date or place of drawing.

Virginia code section § 18.2-340.19. authorizes the the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to adopt regulations covering "charitable gambling" which includes raffles. Those regulations may be found at https://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pdf/Charitable%20Gaming%20Regulations.pdf Regulation 11VAC15‐40‐80. (Recordkeeping) Section C provides that: C. All raffle tickets shall have a detachable section; be consecutively numbered with the detachable section having the same number; provide space for the purchaser's name, complete address, and telephone number; and state (i) the name and address of the organization; (ii) the prize or prizes to be awarded; (iii) the date, time and location of the prize drawing; (iv) the selling price of the ticket; and (v) the charitable gaming permit number. Winning tickets and unsold tickets shall be maintained for a minimum of three years from the close of the fiscal year. So it would seem that raffle tickets are supposed to include "the date, time and location of the prize drawing".

legality behind the copyright of adagio in g minor

sources claim it is still under copyright yet Artists continue to simply borrow from it or copy the piece. Does this mean that the fragment stolen by giazotto is copyright free? is it safe to cover giazotto's work without getting sued for it? I am composing a piece that uses this but I refuse to continue because that last thing I want is some guy in India try to sue me because they managed to buy the rights to adagio in g minor

Does this mean that the fragment stolen by giazotto is copyright free? No. If people are using the work, they may be paying a license fee for the privilege, or they may be violating the copyright. The behavior of others is not a good way of judging how you should behave. For example, in many cities in Europe you can see people boarding trams or buses without buying tickets, but that doesn't mean that public transportation is free of charge. Some of those people are breaking the law, but most of them bought a ticket on the previous tram or hold a monthly pass. If there was in fact a fragment, it wasn't "stolen," and even if the piece was based on a fragment, whether that fragment was in the public domain or not, and whether Giazotto used it legally or not, that would not allow others to use the work without permission. The parts that he composed are protected by his copyright even if the fragment is in the public domain. But if the fragment were more recent and therefore also under copyright, well then you would risk infringing two copyrights instead of just one. is it safe to cover Giazotto's work without getting sued for it? Assuming you mean "without obtaining a license," it depends on what you do with the cover. If you only play it for your closest friends without giving them a copy, it's probably safe. I am composing a piece that uses this but I refuse to continue because that last thing I want is some guy in India try to sue me because they managed to buy the rights to adagio in g minor You have a couple of other options. You can find out who actually owns the rights and ask them for permission, or you can hire a lawyer in the hope of determining that your proposed composition does not actually require a license.

Does nulidad de pleno derecho cause effects ex tunc?

spain Does nulidad de pleno derecho 1, 2 cause effects ex tunc ? 1: I don’t know the translation. 2: See also art. 6 of Real Decreto de 24 de julio de 1889 por el que se publica el Código Civil and art. 47 of Ley 39/2015 de 1 de octubre del Procedimiento Administrativo Común de las Administraciones Públicas .

The literal translation of nulidad de pleno derecho is "null act of full right" or more ideomatically "fully null" but the phrase of equivalent meaning in English language legal terminology is void ab initio , literally "invalid from the beginning". This is an act that, because it was particularly seriously defective, should not produce any effect and, if it does, can be annulled at any time without the correction of the defect or the passage of time being opposed. ex tunc means in a legal context, "from the beginning, from the outset. Used to describe certain legal effects that can affect situations prior to this point in time and therefore can affect past actions." It is more commonly used in canon law, Italian law and the law of other countries that speak Romance languages, than in the English speaking world. You are correct that something that is nulidad de pleno derecho does cause effects ex tunc . The phase ex tunc is rarely used in English terminology although the related term, nunc pro tunc which means having retroactive effect to some relevant date (often the date of the filing of a motion) is commonly used in cases where something is given effect retroactively, but not where something is invalidated retroactively, in which case the term void ab initio is used in English jurisprudence instead. If an action is nulidad de pleno derecho then any legal effect it was given is treated as though it never happened and the remedy of restitution is often available to undo changes in position that occurred as a result of a void act. Some of the common situations where this might come up are (1) an annulment of a marriage of someone who was not eligible to marry (for example, due to an existing marriage or lack of age to marry or mental incapacity) as opposed to a divorce, (2) a determination that a court order or actions are void because the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider the matters before it, or (3) a determination that a deed to property and subsequent deeds in the chain of title derived from it are void because there was some serious defect in the original deed (e.g. it was a "wild deed" purporting to transfer say, the Brooklyn Bridge from someone who never owned it in the first place).

what if two words in a law or act are being used but are contradictory?

specifically within the adam walsh act, in florida, it allows the ICAC to enact "proactive investigations" and this is how they avoid being pursued for entrapment. Blacks law definitions What is PROACTIVE? A behaviour that focuses on results and actions rather than acting when something happens. What is INVESTIGATION? A term that means to examine and to look at carefully, discover the factor make a legal inquiry. What is OPERATION? In general, the exertion of power; the process of operating or mode of action; an effect brought about in accordance with a definite plan. See Little Rock v. Parish, 3G Ark. 100; Fleming Oil Co. v. South Peun Oil Co., 37 W. Va. 053, 17 S. E. 203. so an investigation, would be to observe only, and an operation is when you do something. The actions of ICAC overreach the definition of the term investigation, are not an investigation and cannot be defined as such when interacting in the manner they do to do what they do. The creation of a profile, fraudulent portrayal of ones self, and coordination of multiple parties and agencies to guarantee a 100% conviction rate to get as much funding and convictions as possible, amounts to racketeering, continuing criminal enterprise, fraud and entrapment under current law and legal definition as laid forth in blacks law dictionary, and state statute. please support all responses with case law, either federal or state of florida, or one of 17 states laws this act effects.

what if two words in a law or act are being used but are contradictory? Your post is unclear in that you did not link or cite any specific language of the section(s) or statute(s) that make you concerned, nor did you elaborate on " the manner they do to do what they do ". Absent that context & detail, it is impossible to come up with statutory or case law that addresses a concern so broad. The excerpts of definitions included in your post do not lead to inconsistencies. For instance, the definition of investigation does not exclude the notion of conducting operations. Nor should the definition exclude that notion. In fact, certain operations are so intertwined with --and are so indispensable in-- the investigative process that it would be absurd to try separating them. At the very minimum, an investigator ought to conduct operations to the effect of securing or preserving evidence, lest its loss or deterioration render both process and conclusion unreliable. The investigators' creation of a fake profiles is most likely intended to evidence a defendant's pattern of conduct. This is relevant in the prosecution of wrongs and crimes for which legislation requires proof of defendant's mental state. That type of operations would be illegal if, for instance, the investigators impersonated the defendant (such as in fabricating "evidence" that would seem self-incriminatory) or by procuring testimony from third parties with the investigator knowing or reasonably judging that such testimony would be false.

discovery objections

suppose a party is seeking discovery on an opponent. The opponent refuses to answer discovery because they say "irrelevant, not related to the claims". If the opponent does that on interrogatories the correct course is to motion the court to compel answers by telling the court how those interrogatories are specifically relevant. So, if the issue is over request for admissions and the opponent claims "irrelevant, not related to the claims" what is the proper course here? A party could do a motion to deem matters admitted. But how much of, if any, detail about relevance should the party put in their motion to deem matters admitted? Some people claim that all request for admissions are relevant if they concern any aspect of the case. So, how much of if any detail concering relevance should go into a motion to deem matters admitted? I am adding the following. The problem seems to be the statement "a party can not object as irrelevant without more". Well, is there more if the objection contains; "not related to the claim". So, is this the statement that puts the shoe on the other foot? Does this statement put the burden of proof of relevance on the requester and require excruciating detail to prove relevance? The consensus seems to be, any request is relevant if it will lead to discoverable evidence or facts. And these cases are not going into the DETAILS of why the RFA's are relevant in their particular case. So, the question is if a person were to do a motion to determine sufficiency of responses without stating EXACTLY why the responses are relevant and merely stating that all RFA's are relevant, would they be wasting their time or would they be preserving their legal strategy? In regards to RFA's, is the responding party drawing a legal conclusion by responding with, "objection, not related to the claim"?

You could bring a motion to compel for failing to respond substantively to a motion to admit which is objected to, just as you could for an interrogatory. The process is the same. Normally, a request to admit would not be deemed admitted if a substantive objection was filed by the deadline, even if there was no express admission or denial. Only if the objection were completely and utterly meritless would a judge be likely to order that the request to admit would be deemed admitted in that case since the response was a de facto non-answer and the objection was a mere sham. @Iñaki Viggers states in his answer: the purpose of a request for admissions is [to attempt] to stipulate --rather than to discover-- the facts on which plaintiff and defendant agree. This is not really true. A request to admit is a discovery tool to prevent you from having to prove up what should be non-controversial facts that might nonetheless take time or documentation to prove at trial and to gather evidence for in advance of trial. The questions in a request to admit are typically ones that the other side would not willingly stipulate to (for example, because they'd like to be able to offer testimony to explain a seemingly unfavorable fact) but may not be able to deny. If a party denies a request to admit and then offers nothing to support the denial in discovery practice or at trial, that party risks court sanctions for the groundless denial. Good litigation practice is also always to include some requests to admit that are effectively outcome determinative to give the opposing party a chance to screw up and essentially default the case by not responding on time.

question regarding contractual liability

suppose company A gets raw material from company B to produce final product which is to be delivered to the company C by company A. if company B fails to provide material because of which company A cannot fulfill the order of company C, will company B be liable for loss incurred by company A because of the repudiation of contract between company A and C? and what the bare essentials used?

I would say that company B is liable to company A due to not fulfilling its obligations to company A, whatever they may be and whatever contractual remedies there may be. I do not see that company C's problems with company A are any of company B's responsibilities. As an example, company A does not deliver a life-saving product to company C, resulting in huge, expensive tragedy, due to company B not delivering a common boring commodity to company A.

Would &quot;Puff Daddy&quot; sue if I call my social media thing &quot;Puff&quot;?

thank you for reading! I want to name something after part of a rapper name. So that I don't give away the name, I will use "Puff Daddy" as an example and I want my product to be "Puff" as an example which actually stands for something meaningful and the acronym is respected in the digital field. "Puff Daddy" the example rapper. "Puff" as my example digital social media software and social media site. Puff Daddy is relatively unknown by me (chicagoland) but has 100s of thousands facebook followers. He has a mobile app so you know when his concerts are named "Puff Mobile". And he has a small TV series which might be discontinued but I'm not sure. He is still active and will be for about another 10 years I suspect. I am making a digital presence software which will also have a social media site created as a result. I will name it "Puff". No one else is taking this name space, except for "Puff Daddy". "Puff Daddy" also happens to have a trademark on the name "Puff Daddy", but not "Puff". His trademark has mentions of music as well as "multimedia", this is the only debacle I have. Importantly... His followers call him "Puff" even though he is constantly marketed as "Puff Daddy". My question, will he have good legal ground to sue my company social media site and social media software (does automation stuff)? Let's assume my business will do very well. Second, could I get a trademark on Puff having it state "automation, software, social media, etc." with no mention of music, but I would likely have to mention multimedia (I would change it to this in the future once it gets bigger). Second, if the name was 9-10/10, would you go with it in this scenario from what it stated? Or try to come up with a new name? Thank you! I really appreciate it! The Names are as Examples, but extremely relevant

The most important fact to bear in mind is that there's no way to predict whether a given individual will decide to file a suit against you, though we might say on what basis he might, if he so chooses. There are two basic grounds for a suit, one pertaining to trademarks and the other pertaining to use of names – misappropriation and violating the right of publicity. A word can be a trademark, but the scope of protection is somewhat narrow because the protection is in terms of use within a given business. So calling your computer company "Apple" is out, but calling you roofing service the same is okay (assuming that somebody didn't previously register "Apple Roofing"). The main consideration is the likelihood of confusion. Supposing your business were selling landline telephones and I don't think Apple computer company sells such phones, you might still be in trouble if you called your company "Apple Phone", since they certainly do sell phones. There are thousands of trademarks that include "Puff", including Cocopuffs and various pizza and cheese puffs. Since "Puff" is such a generic word, there is a higher bar to proving infringement (there are thousands of trademarks including "Puff"). "Puff Daddy" is, however, a registered trademark covering perfume, jewelry, clothing and certain online services, so there is a non-negligible chance of confusion. In the case of names (or apparent names), an additional concern is whether this is commercial exploitation without consent of a person's name (which causes harm to the subject). The underpinning of this tort is that such a use falsely implies an endorsement of the product. Again, with a fairly generic word like Puff, there isn't a clear implication that Sean Combs has endorsed a product that is called "Puff Communications", but "Puff Daddy Communications" would almost certainly cross that line. The main issues, then, are the extent to which the name is generic vs. unique, and whether it is likely that a person would interpret the product or service as being the same as another, or would constitute an endorsement.

employer lying about not selling the company

the employer i work for has stated they are not selling the dealership but there are very strong rumors and someone that works for another dealer that stated they are buying our dealership. the regional manager came in and had a meeting stating that they are not selling, our manager just quit out of the blue, and there have been corporate contractors on the property marking areas for what looks like financing. also the office clerks came through marking and taking inventory of all company owned tools and equipment. just curious if they do end up selling and have lied to us this whole time if there is a case or not.

It depends where you are located. If in the U.S., this is likely completely legal. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... Yes, they are probably selling the business. They're lying so they will still have employees during this transition. If they told everyone that in a couple of weeks a new owner will be overseeing things at that they cannot guarantee any of you will be kept on, then everyone would quit and go find new employment. Your manager caught wind of what was happening and did exactly that, maybe you should too.

When was the freedom of speech part of the 1st Amendment first applied to the executive and judiciary?

the first Amendment 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. This only mentions congress explicitly. According to https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. I would like to find the first court case where the first amendment was applied like this to the entire federal government(judiciary or executive). Can you help?

At least in terms of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the earliest I know of was New York Times Co. v. United States , 403 U.S. 713 (1971) , which applied the standard First Amendment test for prior restraints to the judicial imposition of injunctions.

&quot;Procurement&quot; in The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 and its relation to extortion

the immoral traffic prevention act which deals with prostitution laws has some provisons specifically Section 5 of the above Act states: Procuring, inducing or taking person for the sake of prostitution.-- (1) any person who-- (a) procures or attempts to procure a person, whether with or without his consent, for the purpose of prostitution; or (b) induces a person to go from any place, with the intent that he may for the purpose of prostitution become the inmate of, or frequent, a brothel; or (c) takes or attempts to take a person, or causes a person to be taken, from one place to another with a view to his carrying on, or being brought up to carry on prostitution; or (d) causes or induces a person to carry on prostitution; By this definition if someone compels another into extortion and the person who is being extorted doesn't have money so they resort to prostitutuon. would the extorter be held liable under this act as well especially when they are negligent to this or find it amusing intending it and still continue harassing a woman into doing it or know it to be likely that they are doing prostitution but don't care and still put more pressure on the victim while openly joking about it ? what if the victim is underprivileged and means like threat or act of eviction from their home(if the extorter is a landlord) and the means used are things like threat of eviction and would this fall under rape as well ? case going something like this X uses extortion on Y by threatening to evict Y , Y becomes a prostitute , X either doesn't care or finds it amusing and continues doing it for entertainment would they be guilty of this ? what charges could such person face ?

Traditionally "procure" in this sense means to compel another to act as a prostitute, to induce another to act as a prostitute by whatever means, or to provide to a person who wants to patronize a prostitute an opportunity to do so, whether the prostitute is willing or not. Whether a procurer uses extortion or some other means to compel or induce someone to act as a prostitute, whether the procurer is amused or spiteful or has some other attitude, none of those would be relevant to the above-quotes law. The essential thing is that the procurer has in fact caused another to enter into prostitution, or has caused or induced such a person to go from one place to another for the purpose of prostitution. That is enough that the procurer can be found guilty of this crime. However, if A simply puts financial pressure on B (whether lawful or unlawful) and B responds by taking up prostitution, when A had no such intent, this law would, I think, not apply, although other laws might.

did the International Criminal Tribunal for Rawanada have the power to grant pardons and remissions?

the information on it that I've found so far doesn't have any information on this aspect. it appears they had desvretion to decide which setances to pass up to life imprisonment but did it have broad powers of pardon ?

Yes. Article 27 of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, made under UN Security Council Resolution 955 (1994) states the following: Article 27 Pardon or commutation of sentences If, pursuant to the applicable law of the State in which the convicted person is imprisoned, he or she is eligible for pardon or commutation of sentence, the State concerned shall notify the International Tribunal for Rwanda accordingly. There shall only be pardon or commutation of sentence if the President of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, in consultation with the judges, so decides on the basis of the interests of justice and the general principles of law.

Document stating a person&#39;s ability to be an adoptive parent in Ireland

the opinion of a competent authority of the State of nationality of your husband, on his living conditions and his ability to be an adoptive parent; the permission of a competent authority of the State concerned to allow the adopted child to enter and permanently reside in the territory of that State The above is a translated requirement placed upon a citizen of the Republic of Ireland trying to adopt a child from a country outside the EU. Which authority in Ireland could possibly provide such a document? The source of the requirement is the State Department for the Protection of the Rights of Children in Russia.

They would first need to get a Declaration of Eligibility and Suitability which can be obtained from the Adoption Authority of Ireland .

does a purposive approach of statuary construction neccesarily always favour a state in a trial?

the purposive approach choses the interpretation that furthers the purpose of a legislature. but does it take into account things like if a broadly worded law was intended to he applicable to particular cases or not (example if such a case was taken into account, would the drafters want the case to fall within th scope of the law or not)

It does not, as prosecutors often use statutes for purposes other than the purposes for which they were intended. See , e.g. , Yates v. United States , 135 S. Ct. 1074 (2014) . For a very straightforward example, take the classic law school hypothetical: A law that says "No cars in the park." If you drive your truck into the park, a purposivist approach would permit your conviction for violating the statute. In that case, purposivism favors the state. But if you bring a Matchbox car into the park, a purposivist approach would not permit your conviction for violating the staute. In that case, purposivism favors the defendant. And of course, prosecutors are a creative bunch, so they're forever coming up with new ways to existing statutes to prosecute people using statutes that aren't a natural fit for their misconduct.

how does the court define being &quot;in the presence of...&quot;? ie if my girlfriend sleeps over and never sees the kids

there is a rider in my divorce agreement that says my current girlfriend is not allowed "in the presence of" my kids. There are no legitimate safety concerns, my ex-wife is just upset due to the affair. it got into the agreement because I agreed to it in the temporary agreement in order to smooth the transition. it was then automatically carried over. Burlington VT

In the presence of means what it says: your girlfriend and your kids can't be at the same place at the same time.

Is it illegal to use an unsupported version of software, without a license key?

there is this particular computer program, that I [possibly, for legal purposes can't say for sure] may have downloaded, well, "illegally", a.k.a., they require a license key to get the full version, but I (may have) found a hack online that allows me to get a license for the full version for free. So, this was back in 2014, and I haven't used it in a while. However, now I (may) have felt bad about it, and want to whats legal (if I may have not already), so I looked on their website , and tried to contact them, but it appears the version I had [possibly] illegally, version 8.2, is no longer supported at all, so am I allowed to keep the program on my computer, and continue using it, if there's no possibe way to get the legal version (of that particular version, 8.2, which is the only one I;m interested in) now? Their terms of service , as far as I could find on their website, doesn't mention a case like this. Any ideas? Can one continue using a software that was originally downloaded illegally, if at this point in time it is impossible to download the legal version, even if one were to pay? Do software licenses become obsolete when the software is officially unsupported?

Yes, it’s illegal The copyright you are breaching is still valid. It is up to the copyright owner if they want to allow you or anyone else to use their software.

Happy Birthday song lawsuit: grounds for retroactive class action lawsuit?

there. you may know about the lawsuit by a documentary filmmaker against Warner-Chappell for controlling the right to the Happy Birthday song. http://boingboing.net/2015/08/07/the-twisted-history-of-the-hap.html I don't know how this will turn out (and by the way IANAL). If the Court rules against Warner--Chappell (let's say they find that copyright control ended in 1998), would there be grounds for everybody who paid licensing fees during the intervening time to recover those amounts? (I'm assuming there's no deception or fraud on the part of Warner-Chappell). Would there be grounds to recover damages retroactively? Is a class action suit a viable mechanism to recover these amounts? I know this is all wild speculation, but I have always wondered whether there is legal risk in wrongfully keeping something under copyright. Thanks.

As Dale M. Suggests, the article did allude to refunding money retroactively. So somebody clearly is thinking about it. QUOTE: This would seem to be the end of the line for "Happy Birthday." The filmmaker should prevail; fees collected starting in 2009, within the statute of limitations at the time the suit was filed, should be refunded; and a clear future would be established for public-domain use.