John Alderete was trying to catch a few hours of sleep while the rains beat down Tuesday morning on his home in Kapa’a, Hawaii, on the island of Kauai. But shortly after a quarter to 6 in the morning, he was abruptly awoken by the shrill blare of his cellphone. A tornado warning had been […]

Over 90 per cent of us read online reviews before purchasing a product these days. And those ratings can make or break a company or product.

A passionate and seductive album which reminds us how distinctive this band can be.

The family of a boy with ADHD that sometimes causes him to "bite, punch" and "kick" is suing Education Queensland for alleged discrimination by teachers who restrained him when he became "disruptive" and "aggressive".

The corporate regulator is taking the Bank of Queensland (BOQ) and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to court for imposing "unfair" contract terms on their small business customers.

Kay Boisen is being sued by Queensland Health because of an administration error over her long-service leave payment. The union says she could be among hundreds of nurses who've been wrongly paid.

Fire authorities prepare for a challenging weekend as scorching temperatures and gusty winds create dangerous fire conditions in the southern half of WA, including Perth where the mercury is expected to get as high as 38 degrees.

An arrest warrant has been issued after a man who served 12 years in prison for bashing and raping two tourists in WA's far north breached his post-sentence supervision order and failed to appear in court.

Residents on the NSW Central Coast say common sense has prevailed after police withdrew hundreds of $263 fines on residents parking outside their own homes.

The lofty lawsuit stems from last November.

For years, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office in Louisiana issued fake subpoenas to witnesses and crime victims. Unlike subpoenas used in ongoing prosecutions, these were used during the investigation process to compel targets to talk to law enforcement. They weren't signed by judges or issued by court clerks but they did state in bold letters across the top that "A FINE AND IMPRISONMENT MAY BE OPPOSED FOR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS NOTICE."

Recipients of these bogus subpoenas sued the DA's office. In early 2019, a federal court refused to grant absolute immunity to the DA's office for its use of fake subpoenas to compel cooperation from witnesses. The court pointed out that issuing its own subpoenas containing threats of imprisonment bypassed an entire branch of the government to give the DA's office power it was never supposed to have.

Allegations that the Individual Defendants purported to subpoena witnesses without court approval, therefore, describe more than a mere procedural error or expansion of authority. Rather, they describe the usurpation of the power of another branch of government.

The court stated that extending immunity would be a judicial blessing of this practice, rather than a deterrent against continued abuse by the DA's office.

The DA's office appealed. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court took the case, but it seemed very unimpressed by the office's assertions. Here's how it responded during oral arguments earlier this year:

“Threat of incarceration with no valid premise?” Judge Jennifer Elrod said at one point during arguments. She later drew laughter from some in the audience when she said, “This argument is fascinating.”

“These are pretty serious assertions of authority they did not have,” said Judge Leslie Southwick, who heard arguments with Elrod and Judge Catharina Haynes.

The Appeals Court has released its ruling [PDF] and it will allow the lawsuit to proceed. The DA's office has now been denied immunity twice. Absolute immunity shields almost every action taken by prosecutors during court proceedings. But these fake subpoenas were sent to witnesses whom prosecutors seemingly had no interest in ever having testify in court. This key difference means prosecutors will have to face the state law claims brought by the plaintiffs.

Based upon the pleadings before us at this time, it could be concluded that Defendants’ creation and use of the fake subpoenas was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” but rather fell into the category of “those investigatory functions that do not relate to an advocate’s preparation for the initiation of a prosecution or for judicial proceedings.” See Hoog-Watson v. Guadalupe Cty., 591 F.3d 431, 438 (5th Cir. 2009)

[...]

Defendants were not attempting to control witness testimony during a break in judicial proceedings. Instead, they allegedly used fake subpoenas in an attempt to pressure crime victims and witnesses to meet with them privately at the Office and share information outside of court. Defendants never used the fake subpoenas to compel victims or witnesses to testify at trial. Such allegations are of investigative behavior that was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.”

Falling further outside the judicial process was the DA's office itself, which apparently felt the judicial system didn't need to be included in its subpoena efforts.

In using the fake subpoenas, Individual Defendants also allegedly intentionally avoided the judicial process that Louisiana law requires for obtaining subpoenas.

The case returns to the lower court where the DA's office will continue to face the state law claims it hoped it would be immune from. The Appeals Court doesn't say the office won't ultimately find some way to re-erect its absolute immunity shield, but at this point, it sees nothing on the record that says prosecutors should be excused from being held responsible for bypassing the judicial system to threaten crime victims and witnesses with jail time.

For well over a decade we've talked about the many problems that arise when copyright is compared to "property" -- and people try to simply move over concepts from physical, tangible property into the world of digital. A key aspect of this: when you "purchase" something digital online, is it really a "purchase" or is it a "license" (especially a license that could be revoked)? If it was a true "purchase" then you should own it and the seller shouldn't be able to take it back. But in practice, over and over and over again, we've seen stories of people having things they supposedly "bought" disappear. The situation is so crazy that we've referred to it as Schrödinger's Download, in that many copyright holders and retailers would like the very same thing to be a "sale" some of the time, and a "license" some of the time (the "times" for each tend to be when it hurts the consumers the most). This has, at times, seeped into physical goods, where they've tried to add "license agreements" to physical products. Or, worse, when some copyright folks claimed that buying a DVD means you don't actually own what you bought, but rather are merely "purchasing access" to the content, and that could be revoked.

Anyway, I'm amazed that we don't see more lawsuits about this kind of thing -- but one was recently filed in California. Someone named Amanda Caudel is suing Amazon for saying that you've "purchased" a video download, which Amazon might disappear from your library whenever it wants. As the lawsuit makes clear, Amazon directly says that you are buying the movie (as opposed to renting it). From the lawsuit filing itself:

And, they point out, in your account there's a listing of "Your Video Purchases & Rentals." But, the lawsuit claims, what you purchase doesn't seem to behave like a real purchase:

Reasonable consumers will expect that the use of a “Buy” button and the representation that their Video Content is a “Purchase” means that the consumer has paid for full access to the Video Content and, like any bought product, that access cannot be revoked.

Unfortunately for consumers who chose the “Buy” option, this is deceptive and untrue. Rather, the ugly truth is that Defendant secretly reserves the right to terminate the consumers’ access and use of the Video Content at any time, and has done so on numerous occasions, leaving the consumer without the ability to enjoy their already-bought Video Content.

Defendant’s representations are misleading because they give the impression that the Video Content is purchased – i.e. the person owns it - when in fact that is not true because Defendant or others may revoke access to the Video Content at any time and for any reason.

In so representing the “Purchase” of Video Content as true ownership of the content, Defendant took advantage of the (1) cognitive shortcuts made at the point-of-sale, e.g. Rent v. Buy and (2) price of the Video Content, which is akin to an outright purchase versus a rental.

Though some consumers may get lucky and never lose access to any of their paid-for media, others may one day find that their Video Content is now completely inaccessible. Regardless, all consumers have overpaid for the Video Content because they are not in fact owners of the Video Content, despite have paid extra money to “Buy” the product.

The plaintiff (or rather, her lawyers) are trying to make this a class action lawsuit, and are arguing that (among other things) this is false advertising. I am, not surprisingly, sympathetic to the plaintiff -- and remain disappointed at how copyright and similar restrictions are being used to chip away at ownership and actual property rights. That said... I'm not that optimistic the case will get very far. In the past, companies have been able to wiggle out of similar claims, and I'm pretty sure that Amazon tries to push disputes like this to binding arbitration, meaning that the lawsuit may be dead on arrival.

Still, it's yet another reminder of how copyright is chipping away at real property.

Jimmy Dore: The intelligence agencies have been releasing the reports to convince us that we should be upset at Russia because they hacked our election. First of all, who gives a shit if they did? The United States tapped Angela Merkel’s … Continue reading →

A call for papers has been issued for AUBE ‘20/SUPDET 2020, a joint conference of the 17th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection (AUBE ’20) and the Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Symposium

Indonesian's family claim cruise line failed to adequately protect workers

Gustavo Oliveira was last seen near Tallow Wood Drive in Clifton Park around 1 a.m. with his father, 41-year-old Nivaldo Oliveira, police said.

Gustavo Oliveira was last seen near Tallow Wood Drive in Clifton Park around 1 a.m. with his father, 41-year-old Nivaldo Oliveira, police said.

Gustavo Oliveira was last seen near Tallow Wood Drive in Clifton Park around 1 a.m. with his father, 41-year-old Nivaldo Oliveira, police said.

Weak encryption technology has given rise to the phenomenon of “Zoombombing”, where uninvited trolls gain access to a video conference.

Looks like mass lawsuits aren't just for Germans anymore: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is estimating that some 75,000 people have been sued for allegedly sharing pornographic movies in the US. This revelation comes as part of a new amicus brief (PDF) the civil liberties group just filed on behalf of 500 file sharers, asking an Illinois judge to squash a lawsuit against people accues of sharing videos from First Time Videos LLC, better known under the porn brand FTVGirls. A footnote of the amicus brief states:

"As of January 14, 2011, by an informal count, well (over) 75,000 people have been sued in similar (in some cases nearly identical) complaints arising from the alleged infringement of pornographic movies. This includes 4507 individuals sued in the Northern District of Illinois alone, in nine separate lawsuits. In addition, mass copyright complaints based on non-pornographic movies have also been brought against over 13,500 people in the District of Columbia."

I just wrote a story about lawsuits like these on NewTeeVee, explaining how German rights holders have filed more than half a million of such lawsuits in 2010. It looks like U.S. rights holders are well on their way to repeat these numbers, unless courts step in - which is of course exactly what the EFF wants. The group blogged on Monday:

"Friday's brief is the latest of EFF's efforts to stop copyright trolls -- content owners and lawyers who team up to extract settlements from thousands of defendants at a time. Tactics include improperly lumping defendants together in one case and filing it in a court far away from most of the accused people's homes and Internet connections. When adult film companies file these predatory lawsuits, there is the added pressure of embarrassment associated with pornography. All of these factors can convince those ensnared in the suits to quickly pay what's demanded of them instead of arguing the merits of their case in court."

It's worth noting that not everyone in the porn biz ready to sue the file sharing masses. Pink Visual's Allison Vivas told me recently that she has no intention to sue individuals, and Private CEO Berth Milton even said that piracy is promotion. Watch the entire interview with him embedded below:

The Immigration Department today reminded the public to stay vigilant against phone scammers claiming to be from the department.

The department said victims in recent cases received pre-recorded voice calls from scammers posing as immigration officers informing them that they would have immigration restrictions imposed on them.

Such calls were then transferred to another scammer posing as a non-local law enforcement officer who asked the call recipient to provide sensitive information such as personal particulars, bank account numbers and passwords.

The department stressed that it does not make any pre-recorded voice calls to the public, nor will it transfer calls to other non-local authorities or ask the call recipient to provide information such as bank account numbers and passwords.

It reminded people to verify the identity of a caller and not to disclose their personal information.

If people have any doubts about a call, they should immediately report it to Police.

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) — A Pennsylvania inmate whose dreadlocks violated a jail’s haircut policy has been released from solitary confinement after more than a year, although his federal lawsuit is still pending. A federal...

A class action lawsuit alleging that a Florida dental practice sent unsolicited text messages in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Jan. 6.

London (24, Cornhill) : Published by F.G. Harding ; [London] (147, Strand) : & J. McCormick, October 1831 ([London] : Printed by Lahee)

In the 1920s, the U.S. was in full thrill-seeking mode. From horse-diving (you have to see it to believe it) to barnstorming. And at the center of many of these activities were a group of daring young women.

An evacuation order and alert have been issued for eight properties near Quesnel, British Columbia, due to risk of a landslide from flooding.

Apple has been hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company concealed the so-called "stage lighting" issue experienced by some 2016 MacBook Pro owners.

Source: www.cnn.com - Saturday, May 09, 2020
In SF's Tenderloin district, after the number of tents jumped nearly 300%, residents, businesses and a nearby law school are suing to force the city to clean it up.

Welfare measures issued during COVID -19 Pandemic: A Great Government Initiative or an Unnecessary Burden on Employers in India?

Relaxation in adherence to prescribed timelines issued by SEBI due to COVID 19

The number of prescriptions for opioid medications in Delaware, as well as the total quantity of opioids dispensed, have dropped significantly in the 12 months since the Department of State enacted stricter prescribing regulations to help combat the opioid crisis statewide.

The Division of Public Health (DPH) is announcing that the Lewes Board of Public Works (BPW) has issued a drinking water notice to customers after tests showed elevated levels of lead in the water. DPH received notification late last week from BPW that drinking water samples collected in August showed an exceedance of the EPA Action Level for lead. Lab analysis found that the 90th percentile result of 26.5 ug/L exceeded the EPA Action Level of 15 ug/L. Sampling consisted of 10 samples collected in different parts of the BPW service area with results ranging from non-detect to 38.4 ug/L.

There has been a 63 percent rise in the number of student visas allotted to Indians to study in the UK in the past one year, data published by UK's Office for National Statistics (O.N.S) reveals. Report Says Tremendous Growth in Student Visas from…

In 2019, Ontario has issued 7,391 nominations in its Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program as per an announcement. OINP had an initial allocation target standing 6,650, and in December 700 places were offered to it by IRCC. It included 41 nominations in…

Tesla Inc. was sued by the family of a man who died as the result of a crash allegedly caused when the Autopilot navigation system of his 2017 Model X malfunctioned.

The Reserve Bank of India on Sept. 28, 2011, issued a statement recognizing a letter issued by Unique Identification Authority of India containing details of name, address and Aadhaar number, as an officially valid document as contained in Rule 2[1][d] of the PML Rules, 2005.

The Reserve Bank of India on Sept. 28, 2011, issued a statement recognizing a letter issued by Unique Identification Authority of India containing details of name, address and Aadhaar number, as an officially valid document as contained in Rule 2[1][d] of the PML Rules, 2005.

The Reserve Bank of India on Sept. 28, 2011, issued a statement recognizing a letter issued by Unique Identification Authority of India containing details of name, address and Aadhaar number, as an officially valid document as contained in Rule 2[1][d] of the PML Rules, 2005.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has issued an announcement regarding two updated statements by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering.

The Reserve Bank of India on Sept. 28, 2011, issued a statement recognizing a letter issued by Unique Identification Authority of India containing details of name, address and Aadhaar number, as an officially valid document as contained in Rule 2[1][d] of the PML Rules, 2005.

BACKGROUND New Regulations were issued in terms of the Disaster Management Act, No. 57 of 2002 (Disaster Management Act) on 29 April 2020 (New DMA Regulations). Regulation 2(3) of the New DMA Regulations provides that any Directions issued by a resp...

The Investment Association (IA) has issued guidance to UK listed companies on how to approach executive pay issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. The IA published a Full Article