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Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust (Except Where Prohibited by Law)
- Allied Capital
- Barclays
- Bear Stearns
- Citigroup
- Credit Suisse
- David Einhorn
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Fail
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Finance Industry
- Goldman Sachs
- goldman sachs
- headlines
- Henry Blodget
- Lehman
- Lehman Brothers
- Merrill
- Merrill Lynch
- Morgan Stanley
- New York Stock Exchange
- ratings
- Ratings Agencies
- The Economist
In April of 1994, Bill Clinton nominated to the federal bench one Denise Cote, formerly an editor of the Columbia Law Review, and the first woman to serve in the U.S. Attorney's Office as the Chief of the Southern District of New York Criminal Division. Cote pulled the federal securities case against WorldCom's officers and directors. And on March 18th of this year, Cote issued an opinion and order baring Zero Hedge partner TheFlyOnTheWall.com from reporting immediately on equity research reports from the big banks, not to mention awarding damages and attorney's fees in an amount to be determined later. It seems (brace yourself) that TheFlyOnTheWall.com had been something of an authority on equity research recommendations from Wall Street and regularly reported to its active newsfeed the 10,000 foot versions thereof with characteristic Super Fly speed.
We at Zero Hedge are highly suspicious of any effort to reduce the amount of information available to the marketplace. Or the citizenry, for that matter. For example, when someone writes:
...a State that is one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President has declared a major disaster under section 401 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and determined as a result of such disaster that every county or parish in the State warrant individual and public assistance or public assistance from the Federal Government under such Act and for which— "(A) in the case of the first fiscal year (or part of a fiscal year) for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year after the application of only subsection (a) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5 (if applicable to the preceding fiscal year) and without regard to this subsection, subsection (y), and subsections (b) and (c) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5, by at least 3 percentage points; and "(B) in the case of the second or any succeeding fiscal year for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year under this subsection by at least 3 percentage points.
...when they actually mean "Louisiana" or:
(1) a bank, the deposits of which are guaranteed by a State;
(2) owned by the State in which the lender is located;
(3) under the control of a board of directors that includes the Governor of the State....
...when they actually mean "The Bank of North Dakota" we check to make sure our pocket watches are still with us. By the same token, we are fairly certain that Zero Hedge readers are not particularly impressed with the abolition of mark-to-market accounting in favor of deeply opaque mark-to-myth coated balance sheets. While looking the other way when it comes to a technically insolvent institution is bad, coy FDIC lies like "we cannot ever run out of money" are just the next step from concealment to obfuscation. (Does anyone know what is actually in the health care bill, by the way?)
A number of forces now conspire to prevent the free dissemination of information to unapproved parties (read: the little guy) in the United States. Ironically, the more truthful and damaging the data, the more cause seems available to those wishing to oppress it. Truthful data about the insolvency of a financial institution, for instance, has far more power to (correctly) shake the confidence in the stability of the institution than fabrications. Though vindicated by the truth of his conclusions, David Einhorn was mercilessly investigated and scrutinized for having the temerity to suggest that Lehman Brothers and Allied Capital were bits of burnt toast.
In the United States, tools like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (and Julius Genachowski) give third parties the ability to preemptively, and without showing cause, force service providers to remove content they would prefer to see suppressed, even in the absence of any legitimate copyright claim. Long time readers may remember Zero Hedge's experience in such matters.
Libel law in the United States has become an excuse to attack the author who suggests (perhaps with some reason) that you might be a skank. And now, apparently, if you commit the crime of reposting an unclassified and already widely public airport notice sent from the TSA to tens of thousands of recipients including some in Nigeria and Islamabad (not exactly super-secret stuff) you can expect to be visited by TSA agents and threatened with arrest, a HUAC-like blacklist, and foster care for your children- yet somehow the President of the United States can call you an obscene, greedy, fat cat banker to a national television audience of millions without repercussion.
In this context, it is more than ironic that while, on the one hand the judicial, executive and legislative branches of the United States have embarked on a pressing anti-finance campaign, at the same time the infrastructure, both legal and technical, supporting, for example, citizen journalism has been eviscerated with the surgical instruments of libel law, copyright law, and anesthetized with the thick, vein-burning serum of injunctive relief.
This is easier to understand when you realize that a number of players stand to benefit from opacity. Yes, those seeking to create a consensus for favored policy reforms that could never gain favor if their true nature were known, but most particularly those who purport to clear away the fog and cut peepholes in the frosted glass- for a nominal fee, obviously. We refer to equity research teams, as the astute reader has no doubt already guessed.
It takes only a brief skimming to discover that Judge Cote is quite taken with the import and power of the large equity research houses and the potential for their research to move markets. Her assessment of the case, it will be seen, borders on the terminally naive. To wit:
This litigation confronts the phenomenon of the rapid and widespread dissemination of financial services firms’ equity research recommendations through unauthorized channels of electronic distribution. This dissemination frequently occurs before the firms have an opportunity to share these recommendations with their clients -- for whom the research is intended -- and to encourage the clients to trade on those recommendations.
Recommendations may move the market price of a stock significantly, particularly when a well-respected analyst makes a strong Recommendation. Such market movement usually happens quickly, often within hours of the market opening following the Recommendation’s release to clients. Thus, timely access to Recommendations is a valuable benefit to each Firm’s clients, because the Recommendations can provide them an early informational advantage.
[...]
As Lynch explained at trial, a client who learns of a Recommendation from a telephone call from Merrill Lynch often will decide to initiate a trade on the spot.
Oh, well if Merrill Lynch says so....
Quite the contrary, it isn't difficult to find reason to doubt the value of equity research. In fact, it is more difficult to find reason not to doubt it. Consider "Target Price Accuracy in Equity Research," research by Stefano Bonini et al.:
Our analysis shows that forecasting accuracy is very limited: prediction errors are consistent, auto-correlated, non-mean reverting and large (up to 46%). The size of forecasting errors increases with the predicted growth in the stock price, the size of the company and for loss making firms. Additionally, the intensity of research and the market momentum negatively affect accuracy. These results suggest that analysts research is systematically biased which supports theoretical predictions by Ottaviani and Sorensen (2006). Since stock price forecasting is largely an unmonitored activity, market participants may fail in fully understanding this behavior thus not arbitraging away these inefficiencies.
Ottaviani and Sorensen, for their part, opined:
We develop and compare two theories of professional forecasters’ strategic behavior. The ?rst theory, reputational cheap talk, posits that forecasters aim at convincing the market that they are well informed. The market evaluates their forecasting talent on the basis of the forecasts and the realized state. If the market expects the forecasters to report their posterior expectations honestly, then forecasts are shaded toward the prior mean. With correct market expectations, equilibrium forecasts are imprecise but not shaded.
A footnote points out:
Ironically, The Economist (“Dustmen as Economic Gurus,” 3 June 1995) reports the surprisingly good performance of a sample of London garbagemen in forecasting key economic variables.
Cote, however, obviously limited by the evidence the parties presented to the court, considers matters much weightier than all that:
The unauthorized redistribution of research reports and Recommendations has had another impact on the Firms. The Firms have cut their analyst staff and budgets significantly in the last five years because of their perception that equity research is no longer driving commission revenue as forcefully or consistently as it once had. With clients able to review the Firms’ Recommendations and even research reports through other sources, the research departments have been handicapped in their ability to argue for their historical share of the Firms’ overall budgets. Thus, with the decline in exclusivity of their research, the resources that the Firms have devoted to research production have declined. (Emphasis ours).
The "exclusivity of their research," you see, is so critical and so fragile that the likes of Fly is prone to cause massive research layoffs daily with the publication of each new morning recommendation summary update. How glorious must it be to walk along the sweet gumdrop shores under the big, purple skies of planet Cote, where the savaging of the finance industry in general in recent years and the 2003 global analyst research settlements (forbidding compensation to research linked to trading or investment banking volumes) specifically have no impact whatsoever on the staffing levels of research groups much less the growing insignificance of sell-side research on every level.1
Barclays Capital Inc, et al. v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com might be a straightforward case if the only issue were limited to copyright. Fly fielded cease and desist letters on a number of occasions and apparently modified its behavior with respect to the collection of recommendations data to avoid outright copyright violations. The case notes that:
When it comes to the plaintiff Firms, however, [Fly President and majority shareholder Ron] Etergino professes that he no longer feels free to look at the research reports, even if someone should send them to him. Instead, Etergino asserted at trial that he is usually the only employee who posts the Firms’ Recommendations, and by 2009, he was engaging in a ritualistic and labor-intensive process of “confirming” each Firm’s Recommendations from at least two and sometimes three independent sources before publishing them, still typically before the market opening.
On reading this account we could imagine virtually no circumstance in which a citizen reporter, a blogger, or any other author could reasonably be restricted from publishing information gleaned, via the methods described above. Clearly, the ability to confirm the information from multiple sources would at least suggest that the material had seen wide distribution. This brings up a particular point.
Much is made in the present case of the allegation that Fly routinely published recommendations before the client of the bank received them. To our way of thinking this is primarily the result of sloppy thinking on the part of the court, not least by equating access with actual consumption. No serious institutional client would make substantive trades based solely on Fly's reporting as a substitute for the full text of an actual research report.
To draw the conclusion that the sorts of clients that would drive material fractions of trading revenue for the bank developing equity research would use recommendations in such a fashion and without the support of detailed financial models and internal research would not only require a vanishingly small estimate of the client's intelligence, but would mandate a highly permissive, or perhaps non-existent investment committee process at the client as well.
It is extremely difficult to see how timeliness of access to these reports relative to the market's opening bell is some kind of critical, world-shaking concern in this context. This is, however, a key component of the court's rationale. This, in turn, leads to another question:
If snap-trading on recommendations is a trading tactic inconsistent with the sorts of clients that might throw around enough trading commissions to make a bank grovel, how does one argue that the value of such reports to a bank's clients just after release is so high as to warrant notice (much less special judicial protection under "hot-news misappropriation" theory)?2
We actually think it much more likely that, to the extent they have any value at all, and we do not consider this even remotely self-evident, recommendations have become a recursive end unto themselves, with short term investors chasing the crowd, which is itself chasing the crowd and trying to jump the recommendation bump before the rest of the country gets in on the action.
Of course, this sort of self-referential paradox of recursive hype makes it somewhat difficult to call recommendations "hot news" with a straight face. Unfortunately, as Fly did not seek to present any of these facts to the court as evidence and, in fact, Judge Cote does not seem to have taken much of a shine to Fly, the court is quite deaf to them. For example:
Ultimately, as the facts are in dispute. It should be observed, however, that Etergino was not a reliable reporter of facts. He frequently contradicted himself. His unreliability appeared attributable to both his lack of attention and care in making statements, which tended to be rushed, and his motive to escape liability.
Then there is this:
Fly’s complaint in its suit against TTN also heavily borrowed language, structure, and argument from the complaint in this action.
Ouch.
But on a moment's reflection, this is a bizarre complaint. Given the amount of boilerplate and reuse of material in complaints and motion filings throughout the practice of law in the United States it seems almost petty and trite for an individual sitting on the federal bench to sink to this level. To our way of thinking, no argument has endured such a severe mismatch of station since Milburn Drysdale sucked up to Jedediah Clampett once weekly on CBS.
On the face of it, most of the case would seem to be wrapped up in copyright issues, which should be easily disposed of by resort to the Fair Use Doctrine, provided Fly had taken even the most casual editorial liberties by injecting sufficient commentary and original content into quoted material. Oddly, Fly abandoned that defense quickly and apparently on its own initiative:
In its defense, Fly asserted that its copying was a fair use of the Copyright Plaintiffs’ reports under 17 U.S.C. § 107, and Fly maintained this defense through summary judgment. Fly no longer disputes, however, that it infringed the copyrights in these seventeen reports. As such, judgment shall be entered for the Copyright Plaintiffs on their claims of copyright infringement.
This leaves only the misappropriation of "hot news" to deal with, surely a trivial matter once the "hot news" (an analyst recommendation in this case) is widely disseminated. Truly, what value can information have as "hot news" if you can confirm it independently from two, three or more different sources? What legal theory could be offered to warrant granting a property right in such information? Cote jumps right into misappropriation:
Similarly, even if true, it is not a defense to misappropriation that a Recommendation is already in the public domain by the time Fly reports it.
[...]
Since it does not matter whether Fly has taken its headlines directly from the Firms’ research reports or elsewhere, it is not necessary to decide the credibility of Fly’s description of its current methodology for researching the Firms’ Recommendations, nor to decide which of the putative sources for its headlines could properly be considered “public” in nature. (Emphasis ours).
For those of us not on planet Cote: "'Hot news' is neither hot, nor news. Discuss." Or, perhaps, just try to follow this reasoning:
The value of "Hot News" is its exclusivity to the possessor, and;
Its timely distribution, and;
The unique and costly research and analysis that goes into its production, yet;
For the purposes of enforcing misappropriation it need not be:
Valuable (see Stefano Bonini et al.), or;
Exclusive, or;
Accurate, and;
It can be saturating the public domain in four different mediums, and;
You're still fucked if you distribute summaries of it.
But really what sends us screaming off into the darkness in the end can be found towards the end of the opinion:
This final element also helps to align the tort with the overriding public interest, so that it serves to protect socially valuable products or services in danger of being under-produced.
[...]
It was undisputed at this trial, and explicitly conceded by Fly, that the production of equity research in general, and its production by the plaintiff Firms specifically, is a valuable social good.
Read: We're doomed, at least while defendants concede this kind of fact without dispute.
In essence, one need only know that a number of forces align themselves against the free dissemination of information in the name (whether they realize it or not) of protecting old business models that depend for their existence on slow, antiquated distribution channels or the fact that all financial data is molding away in a file cabinet somewhere in Fresno, CA. Moreover, a sort of "new dark ages" movement, closely tied to the hard swing towards state owned and command and control economies that now dominates the political landscape, increasingly makes a mockery of "free speech" ideals in the United States. Don't worry though, the Dustman Forecasters, Pipefitter Fortunetellers, and Iron Workers Clairvoyants Union Local #255 is accepting new members. With a little palm greasing Local #255 is certain to be gifted a majority stake in one of the soon-to-be-bankrupt ratings agencies via a little bankruptcy priority modification by their executive branch patron. I hear salaries are on a 14 monthly payment cycle and their pension pays 135% of salary after 12 years of loyal service. Yeah, it is hard to get in past the waiting list but I hear cheap scotch gets the taste right out of your mouth.
- 1. The settlement, which also smacked Henry Blodget with $4 million in fines and "disgorgements," was between the SEC, NASD Inc., the New York Stock Exchange, Inc., the New York Attorney General, and other state regulators and Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. (Bear Stearns), Credit Suisse First Boston LLC (CSFB), Goldman, Sachs & Co. (Goldman), Lehman Brothers Inc. (Lehman), J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. (J.P. Morgan), Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Incorporated (Merrill Lynch), Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated (Morgan Stanley), Citigroup Global Markets Inc., f/k/a Salomon Smith Barney Inc. (SSB), UBS Warburg LLC (UBS Warburg), and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Inc. (Piper Jaffray).
- 2. See e.g., International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) (Ruling that "hot-news" is a form of “quasi-property.”)
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First the TheFlyOnTheWall.com and then talk radio ... buy SIRI
+10000
i should sue you for taking the 'hot-words' right out of my mouth. ("quasi-property" and all)
that's exactly what occurred to me about half-way down the article.
at this rate, SIRI may not be such a good call - i can only assume the SIRI satellites will be shot down as terrorist armaments.
it is *so* time for bed. what a day.
we're friggin doomed...
+10000
We are truly friggin doomed!
The fourth estate is herewith banned.Only approved propaganda may be distributed.
Welcome to Mordor.
Is there some way that you could reproduce the reports 2nd hand, just publish a summary and 'speculation'? Setup a system so that one group of people reads the info and takes notes and the other creates a summary based on the notes? If necessary you could have a partner pubish the full articles on a website in China or something? There has to be a way to blur the lines.
But changes in research ratings *are* news. We see CNBC report on these changes in ratings all the time.
Te issue here doesn't seem to be about copyright infringement, it seems to be about timeliness. What the banks are upset about is the speed at which the information contained within these reports is being reported. Why? Because research institutions have for years played this game: First, report to clients. Then, leak to the press. There's nothing wrong with that, but nor is there anything protectable there. Any reporter (or blog) who gets the information early is 100% free to report it.
This seems like a non-case. Why is Fly being such a pussy?
Fly is a target because it threatened their monopolistic money making machinery, in effect, which to the oligarchs is "stealing." Funny how upset they get when they think someone is stealing from them, even the crumbs, but when they are stealing, it's understandable and attributable to systemic risk.
After reading this, I am at a loss as to the meaning of "insider trading". Is there some threshold level of customers which a bank must have so that distribution of proprietary material is not considered inside information? Or must information be particular to a company's financials to be considered inside? If an IB analyst has obtained material on sales levels and the expected impact on a company's bottom line, is this not "inside" data, and subsequently limiting distribution to a select group of clients would allow them to trade off inside information? Raj Rajaratnam should hope he ends up with Cote during his inevitable appeals process; she seems awfully predisposed to rich insiders.
aren't they all?
-If the news in question weren't at least potentially "hot" Fly wouldn't be interested in it.
-This is the Napster ruling all over again save that the product (or information if you prefer) in dispute is a wasting (or faster wasting) asset. But the Napster ruling didn't stop unauthorized music sharing/downloading, it just made it legally risky to set up a high volume, online hub for it. But the old distribution model for the product never recovered.
-If research houses still feel that they've permanently lost control of pre-existing news dissemination models (and they have) they will just focus more effort into the already rapidly growing field of machine-readable news, currently the new sliced bread in the HFT space. The stated intention here is getting smart-scanners to instantly glean, organize and measure from research reports the market-moving buzz words within them... but how hard would it be really to embed the code of a complex algo within the plain english text of a ho-hum research report - decipherable only by the subscription HFT widget on the client's in-house computer? Too much of that is collusion obviously but there's a lot of money to be (being) made perhaps before thin lines are made more distinct in the first big algo-collusion court case.
-Bonus question: What happens if/when algos begin to collude on their own without the knowledge or intention of their evil-genius masters?
very astute to bring in napster...the similarities are striking agreed.
answer to bonus question: blade runner?
"Bishop to King 7. Checkmate, I think"
Fly could be seen as an independent news gatherer, which does come up with value on occasion. That value is not controlled and in the realm of the seen and unseen agenda that can not be tolerated.
The reason recipes for offal exist (tripe, etc) is because the owners determined that it was beneath them to consume it. So a steady stream of offal was the prized protein of the serfs.
Similarly Fly is a prized source of information and the owners have determined that we should not received even its content level.
I guess I am confused, a fancy sales brochure based on production research of public information is now considered news. You gather information and then publish it with a conclusion or more questions.
So...Any news is now the exclusive ownership of the organization who first breaks the news? Apparently you also may not republish any of said information with a different conclusion.
I am guessing a government news channel is in the early stages of formation. One of the rules will be that you may not publish news before the government and that it must be the official government version. I wonder if they are going to charge royalties...
We are entering an era where the truth itself is intellectual property and lies are given freely to the public domain.
I think it would be a shame if someone were to take the flyonthewall model on to a proxy network. If they did I think it would be in the public's interest for certain news outlets to link to it so the people could be apprised of its ongoing criminal activities until such time as they are brought to justice.
+1 -- Scary. Disturbing.
People also need to understand that judges are *political appointees*, appointed by the executive branch. Their rulings and decisions are quite often (quite typically) politically motivated.
It's cute that some people think the court system is about "justice", but no, it never is: It's about the law, and enforcement of political will. That's all it ever can be, for "justice" is an elusory thing that merely implies one party will be punished at the behest of the other. We pick the winner and loser based on the law (sometimes), and political repercussion (more often than we would like to believe), and not based on any undefined childhood fantasy of "justice".
I agree with Crummy that it would be interesting to see how society would evolve if the Fly model were taken to a proxy network.
Crummy, we have been in that era for a long time. As the MSM, text, and "scientific" thought is fictional. This latest exercise is to begin to censor the Internet as it is now somewhat of an uncontrolled conduit.
censoring the internet is coming under the guise of "cyber security". it is coming. it will be in your face. you will think you need it. people WAKE UP!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY
Marla: so good to see you. Shall I put a kettle on, or are you just dropping by to say hello?
This is America? And people are going to take this? From a distance it looks like the oligarchs truly do run the USA on every level that matters. Very scary stuff and a worrying path to be going down.
Gangster nation 2.0
From a distance?!? From up close it looks like the same thing to this guy! The people will take it until they have nothing left. As long as they have cable TV and can self medicate they will take it. The destination is 3rd world America, and it will be one hell of a journey.
I was listening to some cat on public radio today commenting on NAFTA and how it was intended to lower illegal immigration by creating an environment in which Mexicans can become wealthier and effectively "stay home". Asking why he was so interested in Ciudad Juarez (for years now) he replied, "Because it's the future." That'll be fun.
I'll just leave this right here...
judgepedia.org - Denise Cote
therobingroom.com - Rate your federal judge
Welcome back Marla!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that
was the original French name for Louisiana.
No, but the above will bear a very close resemblance to the future Obamacare-English term for "no" in response to the question: "Am I eligible for this procedure."
That the patient in line ahead of you was just granted a "si" to the same query is of course completely unrelated.
Certainly, this would violate the reasonableness of opinion standard for any CFAs in the organization, and I would think basic fiduciary standards.
On another point (and perhaps I am ignorant here), but wouldn't this ruling violate the spirit of Reg FD? I thought all research was supposed to be disseminated to everyone simultaneously. If they are reserving the opinion for their favored clients, wouldn't this be illegal. I could be wrong here, maybe it is ok so long as research goes to all clients (as opposed to non-clients) simultaneously.
Reg FD is more concerned with a public company disseminating information about itself without preference. So, the CFO can't dial up Fidelity anymore the day before earnings come out and give them the good/bad news ahead of everyone else.
Since then however I've been in the room with such CFOs and money managers and seen them give benign, non-specific answers to queries about upcoming margin numbers or whatever while simultaneously flashing the exact numerical answer by holding up the appropriate number of fingers.
Socialism is not economically viable with an elite ruling masses. Consequently, it inevitably leads to a totalitarian regime.
The US Constitution is becoming more and more a useless piece of paper with its written context being open to government interpretations.
Do not expect that the next elections will do anything to promote democracy since they will be more and more rigged.
welcome back marla, hope you are well...
excellent post and "fly" now faces a serious challenge; by extension we all do.
Personal liberties are taking some serious blows maybe some Republicans will figure this out and run on a platform of re-structuring how we live our lives in a complex world WITHOUT reliance on a federal pay-out, but I guess I missed something last night.
ok...republishing copyrighted materials IS against the law.
However, reporting on their contents is protected by the First Amendment.
Excellent post.. in the post 1984 world we are in. While I don't understand all the legalese, it is the brick after brick that raised the Berlin Wall. IT took a year of over flights by this great country to keep them free from the ruskies. It wiil take three years to de throne Dearest Leader, Madame Comrade Pelponzi, her gnome, Igoreid. This is the end of the beginning. Chicago welcome to the octogone!
Post all research reports to Scribd.com
Done.
What am I missing?
My thoughts also, but not so eloquent. I was trying to reinvent the wheel.
But don't you understand how well other government run efforts have fared? Just consider the following successes:
- Copyright law has prevented the illegal sharing of music. So much so that RIAA members cannot keep CDs on the shelves of stores.
- The CAN SPAM Act has stopped filling my inbox with "enhancement" offers. Personally, I don't think I need enhancement...
- Child pornography has been successfully eliminated. Throwing people in prison when their computers become virus-infected KP harvesters did the trick.
- The "war on drugs" is a complete success. Drug use by Americans is down, and there are stable, peaceful, friendly governments in Latin America.
- Banking reforms have eliminated all (known) banking problems. We're just waiting for the trash that's in the pipeline to work out. It's all good.
- Healthcare reform: Because the federal government needs to know the intimate medical details it's non-military citizens. Plus, it's affordable with no waiting and fewer errors, just like the UK.
So what's one more feather in the cap of government interference of information?
[/sarcasm]
Meet the new Police State.
Same as the old Police State.
Just sent money, let me know where to address the Molotov cocktails.
And if ZH initiates litigation against the fed, consider more money on the way.
Here's a new ZH swag logo, gratis:
"When efficiency is outlawed, only outlaws will be efficient."
Brilliant!
And Marla, this could be a perfect time to (ssshhhh!) capitalize on the new disgust/outrage high water mark around here and issue a secondary of ZH T-shirts.
genius
this is the kind of thing that really scares me, and it should others, as we enter the new era of the comrade here in the USSA.
ashes to ashes funk to funky
we know Denise Cote's a junky
strung out on heaven's high
hitting an all time low
ha!
ground control to major tim
commencing QE, algos in
check with blankfein and may God's work be with you
We enjoy front row seats on the destruction of society by the Power Elite.
But on a moment's reflection, this is a bizarre complaint. Given the amount of boilerplate and reuse of material in complaints and motion filings throughout the practice of law in the United States it seems almost petty and trite for an individual sitting on the federal bench to sink to this level.
Wow. Great analysis, all the way around, Marla!
Too bad it wasn't ZH they decided to go after. They pick their precedent-setting scapegoats well, it seems.
We should all be concerned with this precedent. Next up: Government control of the Internet.
"Yeah, it is hard to get in past the waiting list but I hear cheap scotch gets the taste right out of your mouth."
You're my kind of girl Marla. Seriously, I've missed that unique viciousness in your prose. Something about sharks and attorneys comes to mind...
Damn, the coffee hasn't tasted this good for the past couple of weeks. Plunder and false philanthropy governed through ignorance and deceit are the realities of the American system of justice. The simple fact is that as long as there are players there will be those who crave the taste and will do anything for just one more.... Where I came form these folks are commonly referred to as a strawberry, hobit or both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irn9FYJP2fY
I will never forget the first week of securities law and reading the Texas Gulf Sulfur case. A mining engineer employed by a conglomerate with mining interests scattered over the World happened to drill some test holes in one of the firm's mines in Canada and had obtained surprisingly promising results, so he bought - if I remember correctly - $25000 worth of shares. He was convicted of insider trading.
The decision struck me as profoundly unjust. The Texas Gulf Sulphur case meant that speculators and brokerage houses in New York always must have "first call" on all information.
Why shouldn't the guy who actually identifies the geology be able to have first call on the information?? In justice, is he any less deserving than the rent seekers and speculators in New York? Further, the engineer on a single mining project is going to have far less sense of the stock price potential of his find than is the CEO or CFO, who is aware of all projects.
Judge Cote is merely interpreting copyright law in such a way as to protect the the same interest of the financial industry in having and controling "first call" on all material trading information - and this without so much as a nod toward the question of whether dissemination to its customers (without any seperate charge or fee) places the broker's research in the public domain.
So much for all the high minded talk in the securities laws about making all information "public."
And why is it, exactly, that small investors are stuck with meaningless lawyerly gobbledy gook in SEC filings while the big funds get to hear the CEO's forward looking statements face to face in "road shows"? And why is it, exactly, that the big funds can call the CEO or CFO on the phone at any time without any requirement that the conversation be recorded and streamed live over the internet.
In weak and impoverished regimes, the corruption is limited to petty bribes of underpaid police and judges. In powerful and rich regimes, such as ours, truly massive corruption is written directly into the statutes and judicial decisions.
And the hypocrisy of our laws is truly staggering.
I wanted to be sympathetic to theflyonthewall.com 's owners and legal counsel, but they put on a very very poor showing in court.
They now have to appeal and use a case from the 9th circuit regarding a similar case albeit FreeRepublic LLC is a non-profit,
LOS ANGELES TIMES v. FREE REPUBLIC
United States District Court
for the Central District of California
2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5669
March 31, 2000
http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/release10/losangt.html
PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Defendant electronic bulletin board moved for summary judgment in plantiff newpapers' suit alleging defendant's unauthorized copying and posting of plaintiffs' news articles on defendant's site constituted copyright infringement. Plaintiffs filed a cross-motion for partial summary judgment, arguing defendant could not invoke fair use as a defense.
OVERVIEW: Entire text of articles published on plaintiff newspapers' websites were posted on defendants' website so members could add commentary. Plaintiffs sued, alleging unauthorized article copying and posting on defendants' website constituted copyright infringement. Defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting the fair use doctrine. After balancing the fair use factors, plaintiffs' cross-motion for summary judgment was granted. Plaintiffs demonstrated their attempts to exploit the market for viewing their articles online, for selling copies of archived articles, and for licensing others to display or sell the articles; the availability of verbatim copies on defendants' website potentially interfered with these markets. Because the copying was verbatim, encompassed large numbers of articles, and occurred on an almost daily basis, evidence supported finding that defendants engaged in extensive, systematic copying of plaintiffs' works. Although the character of defendants' website was non-commercial, they did not demonstrate that verbatim copying of plaintiffs' articles was necessary to achieve their critical purpose.
OUTCOME: Defendants failed to demonstrate that it was necessary to copy, verbatim, plaintiffs' articles to enable website users to criticize the manner in which the media covered current events. Verbatim posting of plaintiffs' articles was more than was necessary to further defendants' critical purpose.
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IF they made an argument that the digital transmission of financial analysis is no different than the digital transmission of financial analysis sold on retail CDs (audiobooks etc) ... and theflyonthewall.com was/is a customer of these financial analysts companies... they could have used the case that broke the Big four record labels monopoly on resale of used CDs.
Article: Stores Sue Over Used CDs- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- August 4, 1993
Related articlesCopyrightCopyright (c) 2009 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to customer service. (Hide copyright information)
WASHINGTON An alliance of record stores has sued four major music distributors, accusing them of intefering in the development of a market for used compact discs.
The Independent Music Retailers Association, claiming to represent several hundred music stores nationwide selling used CDs, filed a class action suit Monday in U.S. District Court in California against Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Distribution, Thorn EMI Plc's CEMA Distribution, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.'s UNI Distribution, and Time Warner's Warner/Elektra/Atlantic.
The association accuses the four companies of "interfering with the development of a used CD market in this country in …
www.freerepublic.com
Great website. I used to hang out there in the late 90s. Comments range from brilliant to GOP apologist to tin-foil hat. Conservatives and Libertarians work together and sometimes duke it out.
They've done a lot of good and really are a fore-runner of the tea party movement. Lots of investigative work that pushed some items to the forefront despite TPTB.
Since the case, they show brief abstracts of articles with links. Still works ok, but sometimes articles behind the links are changed or deleted, so a good bit was lost as a result of the court.
Better yet... this ruling is in violation of the The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936.
Antitrust legislation that amends Section 2 of the Clayton Act of 1914, which was designed to prevent monopolies by catching early-stage practices leading to corporate mergers. Another provision of the Clayton Act prohibits price discrimination by a seller where the effect is to injure the competition.
There is an appeal route along this line too.
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