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Comment Re:If you own a bar and you own a CD... (Score 1) 156

If you own a bar and you own a CD, you are allowed to play your CD in your bar. The article is pure idiocy. Bars don't need to pay licensing fees.

17USC106:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following

[...]

(4) in the case of [...] musical [...] works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(emphasis mine).

17USC101 defines public performance:

To perform or display a work “publicly” means— (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered

it also defines perform as:

To “perform” a work means to [...] play, [...] it, either directly or by means of any device

So, playing your CD in a place that is "open to the public" is performing it publicly, and the copyright owner has the exclusive right to do that. This means that if you want to do it you need a license from the copyright owner.

Note also that a recording of music typically has three distinct copyrights on it. (1) The songwriter's copyright on the tune, arrangement, etc., basically everything you'd find in the sheet music other than the lyrics, (2) the songwriter's copyright on the lyrics and (3) the recording artist's copyright on the recorded performance. It's not uncommon for there to be a lot more than two songwriter copyrights, and in the case of recordings that contain significant sampling, there can be more copyrights in the recording, too.

To play the CD in your bar, you need licenses from all of the copyright holders. As others have mentioned, the record labels take this seriously and there's a high probability that infringing their copyrights this way will result in your being sued for millions of dollars, because the law authorizes statutory damages of up to $150,000 per offense.

Comment Waiting for the next two months (Score 2) 43

I didn't have much trouble with this month but then I live in a cooler part of The Netherlands. I care more about night time temperatures though. As long as they are low I can open up all windows and use a couple of fans to force hotter air out or cooler in.
We'll have to see how the next two months will turn out.

Luckily I have seen less mosquitos at night as well (thanks for degrading the bio diversity) to bother me. Speaking of which, I also noticed a significant drop in the presence of spiders this year. I guess they don't do well on a reduced food intake diet.

Comment Re:Perspective (Score 1) 111

a.) It's a billion dollar company. They can hire and pay the needed workforce. I'm not doing it!

They can hire and pay the temp workforce, of course, but the cost of hiring a bunch of people for a few days is a lot higher than the hourly wage you pay them. Best case you can go through some temp agencies, and I'll be surprised if they haven't already done that, but once you've exhausted that resource you're going to be getting bottom-of-the-barrel personnel, if you can even find them.

It makes sense that Amazon finds it more cost-effective to retask office workers for a few days. And if you're going to do that, and you don't want to interfere with those office workers' normal work too much, it makes sense to pitch it as optional so the office workers can determine how much time they can spare without interfering with anything essential. Likewise, it makes sense to give them access to conference rooms with VC equipment in the warehouses, so if they can take any urgent meetings during their warehouse shift.

Comment Give me a real filter (Score 1) 29

I don't want to unsubscribe to this or that.

I want to give natural language filters like "I never want to see a political email again, from anyone"

Or maybe "If they make it sound urgent but it's not urgent at all, don't show it to me and remind me a week before the actual deadline if it's at all important".

As others have said, unsubscribe links often do not work and it's probably all the Gmail feature will use.

Comment Re:Priorities (Score 2) 111

It is important that money is saved in order to pay for Jeff's wedding cake.

They're not saving money. They're retasking office workers who make $100+ per hour to do work they usually pay a lot less for.

OTOH, if it keeps customers from having bad experiences because the system is overwhelmed, it may be a good use of those expensive workers.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 111

Nobody is being asked to work for free. They are being asked to help out in the warehouse instead of their normal job duties.

That is definitely not what the word 'volunteer' means and it is used many times.

That is absolutely what the word 'volunteer' means in this context. "a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task." ("freely" in this instance is intended to mean "without coercion", not "without compensation". Think "free speech" not "free beer".)

Nah. These are salaried workers being asked to do something during their normal work hours. It's basically not possible to avoid paying them.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 111

I would not put it past Amazon to levy the expectation that they should do an additional number of warehouse hours in addition to their normal salaried office hours. Thus, "volunteering."

Weekdays 10 am to 6 pm. That's normal work hours. Unless they're being forced to use vacation time, they're being paid.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 111

So they are getting 30-50/hour to work in the warehouse? Id be pissed if I was there doing the same job as them for $14.

More likely 100-200/hour, more if they're software engineers or similar highly-paid office workers. $30/hour is only $60k/year. There's no way Amazon white-collar workers in NYC are making that little.

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