Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff.
Wonder if you could either sue them for delivering an insufficient product (it does not function as a slipper under the definition for longer than a day after walking) or keep returning them under warranty.
Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK.
My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.
The tribunal decided that Jaffa Cakes were cakes because when they go stale they go hard like a cake whereas a biscuit tends to go soft when it goes stale.
I remember hearing about this because the one who wanted it classified as a biscuit proposed the test that determined it was a cake. That is the sole reason I remember this story.
Absolutely- even as a lifelong leftie, I find the rhetoric on CNBC just as sickening as that on Fox.
I've (somewhat sardonically) wondered if they're both false flag operations. Imagine CNBC started with the idea "we'll parody the left to make them seem radical and unreasonable" but accidentally developed a huge following who didn't get the joke.
Thank you for pointing this out. Carlson and Maddow made nearly identical arguments in court and if both are not mentioned in the same breath, the speakers bias is instantly displayed to anyone who is educated on this topic.
> IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.
Agreed but the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News. The problem goes deeper. I despair.
Carlson's texts were wild, they proved that he knew he was spreading lies and did it anyway for views. That's why Fox settled with Dominion for $787 million dollars.
Meanwhile, OAN sued Maddow for calling them Russian propaganda and her lawyers responded by flexing, doubling down with receipts under oath. Signing up for consequences if they were wrong, and receiving none because they were correct.
So no, these are not the same, and anyone who argues that they are immediately reveals themselves to be partisan hacks.
[Judge Smith] found OAN and its parent company were unlikely to prevail on the defamation claim because the challenged speech was not a statement of fact and the context of Maddow’s show made it likely her audience would expect her to make political opinions.
Putting the details of the court case aside, the judge is clearly saying that he does not believe that Maddow's show was "news" and it shouldn't be treated as such. That's what GP was pointing out: the defense of being "not news", which both shows have in common.
> the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News
I think the 'average' person thinks of 'Entertainment News' as celebrity gossip, e.g., E! News[0] etc. Telling them the entertainment news/opinion/commentary they watch is not actually 'News' but is entertainment "news" doesn't compute
What Fox News argued was a bit more nuanced than that all of Fox News isn't news. Rather, "Fox successfully argued that one particular segment on Tucker Carlson’s show could only be reasonably interpreted as making political arguments, not making factual assertions, and therefore couldn’t be defamation."[1]
That feels like a fairly reasonable assertion for anybody watching Tucker Carlson.
Well, context matters in looking at defamation claims.
Let's say you were involved in a freak hunting accident and shot somebody, but you were never charged with any crimes.
If the Fox News "hard news" program (if such a thing exists) said "skrebbel is a murderer" that is more likely to be understood to be a statement of fact, asserting something in a legalistic sense. [IANAL, but I think even this is unlikely to be defamation, although there is a somewhat similar case where ABC settled with Donald Trump over saying he was "liable for rape"]
If somebody on Tucker Carlson Tonight said "You can't trust anything that skrebbel guy says, he's a murderer!" that is more likely to be understood as an opinion based on disclosed facts, not a fact. That person isn't asserting that you committed or were convicted of a specific crime of murder, but rather that you killed somebody and it might be your fault. On a show were people are arguing and exchanging opinionated views, viewers should understand that these things are opinions. And therefore that's not defamation, because it's an opinion.
Isn't it also how, many years ago, Top Gear got away with a hit job on Tesla by claiming they're just an entertainment show, so they're not obligated to do honest or truthful reviews?
Alex Jones argued this, with the obvious implication, that whoever buys Infowars also owns the character of Alex Jones, and Alex Jones cannot play Alex Jones any more without infringing their copyright. (But I suspect this incoming government doesn't care to apply logical consistency to his case)
And then when he tried using the "Steven Colbert" character on a different show,
Comedy Central threatened him because Steven Colbert does not have rights to the "Steven Colbert" character.
Al Shugart started Shugart Associates and pretty much created the 5 1/4" floppy market. He sold to Xerox. He later started Shugart Technology and was promptly threatened with a lawsuit because he literally had sold his rights to his own name (in the particular context). He changed the name to Seagate Technology and the rest is history.
Yes, you can be enjoined from using your own name.
> Yes, you can be enjoined from using your own name.
This is not that case.
In popular media when "The Colbert Report" was broadcast, Steven Colbert was very open about the fact that he was playing a character on TV who happened to have the same name as him.
In the case of "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert," he is not playing the character from the Colbert Report.
The very specific bit was from after the 2017 election when Trump was elected. Steven Colbert did a bit, in character as "Steven Colbert", with props from "The Colbert Report", and a guest appearance from Jon Stewart. (Because the main focus of "The Colbert Report" was to mock conservatives.) Otherwise, everything Steven Colbert (the person) does on "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert" does not involve the "Steven Colbert" character from "The Colbert Report."
And that's when he stopped being funny. As a big fan I was confused by how unfunny his tonight show content was from day one compared to everything we saw upto that point. I can see why legal action when nowhere it's not the same product. Using the same name does cause confusion in the marketplace.
To be fair, in Steven Colbert's case, he definitely was playing a character on The Colbert Report. A ridiculously conservative one that asked guests repeatedly if George W. Bush was a great president, or the greatest president. It was very over the top.
Yep- if Pee-wee Herman’s character were instead named after the actor, Paul Reubens, that character could still be licensed/sold. Paul Ruebens could still do interviews, and take jobs under that name, without permission, but he’d better not show up in the Pee-wee outfit.
If there were any tax implications, they were incidental. The show was parody, so the opinions he espoused in character were necessarily ones he didn't actually hold.
Yes, Jaffa Cakes - minature sponge cakes flavoured with Jaffa oranges. Cakes aren't subject to Value Added Tax in the UK, which allows them to be sold more cheaply to the consumer or have a greater profit margin. A tribunal confirmed that they are true, real and genuine cakes, so you may feel entitled to enjoy your tax-free treat!
In a way it's not completely tax-free; the embodied costs of producing and selling the cake are still taxed with employee income tax, National Insurance, import duties and so on.
The UK's exemption from VAT covers lots of things, but not an entirely logical selection: cakes are considered staples and are exempt, but drinks (including soft drinks, beer and mineral water) are taxed at the full 20% rate.
In general, I would personally prefer that the UK not have VAT, as it's a regressive tax (people with lower incomes pay a greater percentage of their income on it than high earners do).
I think basic and healthy foods should be VAT exempt. Bread, milk, eggs, vegetables, fruit (maybe not fruit that needs to be shipped from South America or Africa), water etc. Also maybe school books and newspapers and of course medicine. Sugary drinks _should_ be taxed.
Sales tax is horrendously regressive and during a war you will find that things like cakes and biscuits are not actually frivolous at all. We drink a lot of tea.
The window tax features prominently in a visual novel video game (The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles), which also contains a bunch of wildly outlandish historical nonsense and characters like mad-scientist inventors, teleportation devices, and Sherlock Holmes types. I was blown away to learn the window tax was actually a real thing, not something silly just made up for the game.
I had a friend that argued that Marshall Mathers (Eminem) could never actually be sued for defamation because most of the defamatory things "he" said wasn't actually him saying it, but Slim Shady.
Sounds insane. But what is more surprising to me - is why dolls were taxed differently than other toys. At first glance, it looks like stupid rules force to play silly games.
In India, the pizza base has a different tax rate than the topping and so some restaurants will have two separate lines on your pizza bill - one for the base at 5% tax and another for the topping at 18% tax.
The tax on popcorn is also totally crazy. "Unpackaged and unlabelled popcorn with salt and spices is categorised as 'namkeen' and taxed at 5%. Pre-packed and labelled ready-to-eat popcorn attracts a 12% GST rate. Caramelized popcorn with added sugar is taxed at a higher rate of 18%."
What I think is happening is that the place is specifically charging different tax rates for each part of the pizza. That does seem odd but the alternative would be to tax the whole of the pizza at a higher tax rate than the one presented. Example, most countries might put a whole pizza at, say, 10% VAT, while here part of it is at, say, 4% and the rest at 10%. Ideally that's cheaper.
The pizza thing seemed incredibly silly to me. Surely the restaurant has already paid the tax when they bought the raw ingredients? Must any product served in a restaurant be taxed according to the rate of the most highly taxed ingredient in it, regardless of proportion?
So I looked it up. And yes, that is exactly the case, and it's an absurd situation that is causing massive headaches.
Or my shirt that has a tiny, useless pocket on the inside of my shirt (down where it might often be tucked inside of your waistband.) It has a tag with a picture of sunglasses on it, and a reasonably sized pair of sunglasses might just tenuously perch inside.
This makes it a jacket, and jackets are taxed at a lower rate than shirts.
The same shenanigans more or less work for most types of taxation. There’s always an angle to reduce or even eliminate taxes, unless you work on salary or for wages. It’s clear who the system is built for lol.
It’s a silly world where people who never worked send people who only worked as mobsters to take money from people who work for a living. Then the first two groups share that money in 999999:1 proportion. They call it “taxation”.
It has upsides like having an army for defense, roads and other common things. But don’t forget the primary nature and motivation behind it. They just want your money, and your offspring to please them in various ways.
This reminds me of maybe the worst tax in human history which is also unconstitutional. The Pauschalabgabe[0] in Germany, which also got adopted in other countries, implements a freely decidable flatrate tax on all mediums which can be used to create a pirated copy.
How much tax for a laser printer? Well it depends how fast it prints:
Up to 14 pages/Minute: 25,00 €
Up to 39 pages/Minute: 50,00 €
From 40 pages/Minute: 87,50 €
For every storage medium this tax has been paid, because of the possibility of making a pirated copy. Technically we all paid already to make pirates copies.
Isn't this also what allows people to create copies for personal use, and what makes downloading pirated media legally clear, and only producing/distributing illegal? Sounds like a fine tradeoff, as fixing IP laws (and international treaties) is way too hard of a problem.
It’s the other way around the law got created because of the possibility of private copies and their fear of profit loss. A private copy is only legal if the source is legal. Circumventing copy protection makes it illegal.
Pirated copies and temporary copies like streaming are afaik grey areas because the difficulty to prove and not a trade off.
I believe it was sold into the US market originally. I bought it second hand in a secondary market that sources its used articles primarily from the USA and Canada.
It would actually be way to miss. If it hadn’t been marked with a sunglasses emblem, I would have easily thought it was just a gusset. It’s just one of the bottom front corners of the left side of the shirt, with a triangular gusset that is big enough to just hold 2/3 of a pair of glasses, mesh, in this particular case.
This sort of thing happens relatively often; Sony also tried (unsuccessfully) to have the PS2 deemed a personal computer (which would have lead to 0 tariffs in the EU): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabasic#PlayStation_2
I often wonder what the ROI is on this. How much did Sony have to pay engineers to implement this interesting but seemingly pretty useless functionality vs. what it actually saved them in the aforementioned tariffs? I know the knee jerk reaction is to say it obviously saved them some money or they wouldn't have done it, but I've seen far too much corporate stupidity in my life to take that as a given. I'd love to see the data.
Well, in the end it didn't save them anything, because the EC didn't accept that having a toy basic interpreter made what was obviously a games console a PC. I can't imagine it was terribly expensive in the scheme of things, though.
If it can run a desktop linux environment it's a PC. That said it probably should only count if the preinstalled software is Linux and not some games OS.
When you ship millions of units of the kit, you only need a small savings per unit for the sum total to become a big enough saving to be noticeable to the financial dept. bean counters.
Maybe it was just a passion project for the engineers or even Ken Kutaragi ? See also Net Yarose, Linux For Playstation 2, Other OS & Yellow Dog Linux for Playstation 3.
Or when the makers of Jaffa Cakes baked a giant 12 inch version[1] and brought it to the court to argue they were cakes and not biscuits to get lower VAT.
Most UK bikkies are meh, though. I have to import ones from NZ here to survive.
Mallowpuffs are so much better than tea cakes. Squiggles, Tim tams, chit chats, sultana pasties, griffins macaroons, toffee pops, hundreds and thousands, mint slice.
Whereas here it's mostly shortbread or bourbons/custard creams.
Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! I can't have POLITICS in my comics, my comics are apolitical, there's good guys and bad guys, and it's always clear who the bad guys are - those that are not [like] me! /s
Sounds like Ford putting seats in the back of their vans so they could pay less tax when importing them from Mexico, then removing them before they're sold. Looks like they've now been fined, but they got away with it for a while.
I wonder if there is any place where one can look up all these sort of creative legal-tax shenanigan stories. They are so fun and such an interesting lens to see what _is_ via this interlinked, case-specific web of events.
When Trump set a tariff on German optics because he was mad at Germany, Leica had a workaround as well.
Most of their equipment is made in Portugal and finished in Germany, with whatever WTO agreed % of value added that allows them to stamp "Made In Germany" on the goods.
So for US markets they issues a series of lenses that were more fully finished in the Portuguese factory such that they could be stamped "Made In Portugal".
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-c...