I seem to be making an amazing amount of enemies from doing this. Sadly, they don't realize that their real enemy is probably the community board that is cracking down on underage drinking in the East Village, and the Liquor Board that would revoke our license to serve beer legally if we too didn't do everything in our power to stop underage drinkers from obtaining beer at our bars.

Congress and MADD are the real enemy. Local busybodies and bureaucrat-police are merely agents and opportunists.

A fake ID, besides being illegal to create in the United States, is a derivative work of the United States Government, and is not an original creative work of authorship.

Why can't it be both? I just checked the copyright page of a translated book and found one copyright for the original and one for the English translation.

I don't know if government ID cards carry copyright protection in the first place. Federal documents generally don't unless they were producted under contract. There's a doctrine in copyright law saying that certain official work product of local governments is presumed to be in the public domain as far as copyright law is concerned, in addition to the explicit disclaimer for federal government works.

Also helps if you don't look 12 on your fake ID.

I find it funny this budding young political star wasn't smart enough to use a fake name on a fake ID.

I had a friend who was a bouncer and did astrology as a hobby. He would ask people what their sign was.

This is an interesting tactic, but failed.

Forgeries, unless created specifically as a work of art--and not confiscated in the attempt to commit a crime--can't be copyrighted.

Even if she could, by some circumvented logic, she would have a hard time proving her copyright without registering it--costs about $45 per document and takes about 3-6 months to get notification. Most copyright infringement cases fall apart right there--as well as trademark cases. Without registration you're screwed in a legal sense, because you admit that you didn't think it was important enough to protect, and then want to claim protection after the event. In part, it's timing.

You also have to prove that the folks who are infringing are making profit or damaging your intellectual property in some way, and your ability to distribute it.

In short: not only is the application for DMCA bogus from the get go, it is boned without her registering her intellectual property.

I had a fake id when I was younger.

Yeah that's right Ms. Brownshogger, when we were porking in the broom closet in second grade? I was only PRETENDING to be driven by instinctual desires.

IANAL, but to sue under any law, wouldn't the person who presented the fake ID have to state that it was indeed him that presented it for the case to go forward at all? If he did, then the DA has a nice simple case about attempted utilization of a false ID.

Yeah, his lawyer would probably tell him to avoid the self-incrimination, but that sort of stops any action against the bartender/bar/bar owner. Right?

Forgive me but WTF is the DMCA?

Don't try to put your bartender in a corner, if she's a scorpio like me, she's probably got a ridiculously large social network with which she can fight back.

Very true, never piss off the bartender and always give them a tip.

Stormneedle-

That's the due-process destroying aspect of the DMCA at work. Basically the law says that if someone signs a statement saying they own the copyright on a work, the provider can take it down to avoid liability. If they do not take it down, then can then be sued or whatever.

So most providers just take down everything they get a complaint about, even to the detriment of their paying (or not, it is a blog) customers.

ok seriously I'm not trying go after every headline today but isn't there a period missing somewhere?

Stormneedle
IANAL

I love this acronym.

/giggle

Tell the underage drinker to kiss off.

"Sue me"

actually two periods?

I had a friend who was a bouncer and did astrology as a hobby. He would ask people what their sign was.

Were people simply too drunk to say "I don't know, I forgot all that hippie crap once it became 1980"?

DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It sucks donkey balls.

Personally, I was able to grow a Grizzly Adams beard at 18, so I was rarely asked for my ID.

dc-kid

Don't worry. You're missing a few commas, yourself.

anyone can fill out a DCMA takedown request, legitimate or not. webhosts, scared shiatless, comply without bothering to see if the DCMA takedown request is legit. this happened before when the NFL sent a DCMA takedown to youtube when some lady had their "this broadcast, blah blah blah, express written persmission etc..." screen, only to find out that the lady was a lawyer for the EFF.

the bartender should repost the ID, post the associated legal jargon referencing DCMA takedown requests, and publicly shame the girl in question.

Petulant Dwarf: Forgive me but WTF is the DMCA?

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. (Google is your friend.)

So this bartender is benefiting from holding US Government property and is foolish enough to say so.

Petulant Dwarf: DMCA is an update to US intellectual property laws, particularly copyrights for digital media. Many provisions in it have been lambasted due to Congress kowtowing to Hollywood corporate interests. Some have also tried to categorize DMCA as an anti-terrorism act, either to lampoon it or to try to shelter it from criticism.

EvilEgg: I had a friend who was a bouncer and did astrology as a hobby. He would ask people what their sign was.

Ya, I got busted on that one when I was 16. I had a friends ID. He asked me what my sigh was. I was a little tipsy at the time, and responded with "How should I know? I don't even know what my own sign is." Ya, he took the ID, and I spent the rest of the night at Denny's thinking about how I should have responded while my friends got wasted.

I was a bouncer for several years in a college town in Pennsylvania. I've confiscated my fair share of fakes. By PA law, we are not allowed to take IDs if we think/know they are fakes, but we are allowed to retain the card for the police. By PA law, the license is property of the state and not the individual, so we cannot take them. Only representatives of the state can. I'd just tell the person, "I don't believe this is you. I've called the police. They will verify your ID. If it is you, then your first round is on me for your troubles. If it's not you, then they will arrest you on the spot and I'll get paid $50 for catching a fake."

I only ever got one wrong. He had broke his nose and cheek since getting his license photo and changed his signature. Sorry Rick!

This article is useless without a pic of the perp.

/YAWN.

Just use the same month and date, change the year. Duh.

I see where the writers for Boston Legal get their story ideas. WTF.

A minor is under 18, an underage drinker is under 21. The advantage of being a minor is that you can have all records sealed at 18 of any mis-doings in your youth. The disadvantage of being 18 -21 is that you are an adult, and while that does not include being able to purchase alcohol until you are 21, you are considered responsible for your actions.


That's the whole problem right there.

"You're a 25-year-old Canadian named McLovin?"

/not obscure as of August 17th or if you've been to a movie in the last month.

If US drinking laws weren't so asinine and backwards you wouldn't have to worry about quite so many college kids drinking illegally. Kind of sad when someone can drive, vote, sign up for the military and die overseas, get married, have kids, etc... can't legally buy a beer.

I'm not a lawyer or anything but isn't forging a government document a felony? I bet if I forged an automatic weapons license I would be in pretty deep trouble.

The best part is that the story made Slashdot. (For those of you don't know it, imagine Fark if everybody was a software engineer.) The power of the /. effect now means that every Google search for her name now brings up about nine references to her fake ID instead of her budding political career. For further reading...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/08/1922210

I wonder what will happen once the power of the Fark side gets added to this?

http://www.google.com/search?q=ashley+heyer

/no clicky, no poppy. I can't find a guide to FARKtml

Since she's not the author of her State issued ID she has absolutely no grounds to make a DMCA demand, a fact which should have been obvious to anyone who thought about it for ten seconds. Unfortunately, as we all feared and warned, all ISPs take a "ban first, ask questions later" approach, and the DCMA has become an all-purpose Internet censorship tool.


There ARE provisions in the DCMA to recover damages for abuses of the act, but sadly they are not nearly as well known as the "take-down" rules, and very few website owners have the financial resources to hire a lawyer to vindicate those rights.

carmody: Personally, I was able to grow a Grizzly Adams beard at 18, so I was rarely asked for my ID.

I really, really hope you're not a girl :p

Bartender is a complete prat.

lol, rachel hyman.

Also, she comes off as a rather self righteous condescending biatch about underage drinkers for someone with the lofty position of (apparently) bartender.

What do you expect from Massholes.

The Dread Pirate Robertson: /no clicky, no poppy. I can't find a guide to FARKtml

This is why there are great Fark-related plugins for Firefox.

Get them all (FF 2.0 needed for latest versions of the plugins, though).

Thanks for the link, Dread Pirate. Btw, FarkTML = HTML.

I remember as a college freshman I had a very elaborate plan to make fake ID's. well actually real ID's printed with the same equipment as the state with a different photo. The same hardware was for sale to the private businesses. The holograms I could get printed in asia cheep. All the licence info from public databases or off the scanner. Then I realized it was silly and not worth jail time. I drank like a fish anyway without the need for a fake ID and so did everyone else. Coulda made a $100+ a pop though.

I rememeber back in the day a Korean liquor store owner confiscating my GF's fake ID. It even had her photo on it - it was a perfect ID, not sure how he knew. He refused to give it back and threatened to call the police. I was about a buck-twenty at the time and still managed to throw his candy display rack halfway accross the store in anger. We didn't get the booze, but we got the ID back real fast.

/got some punanny that night for sure!

Isn't it illegal to post a minor's picture and name without their permission? I'd think that would have been a better way to get back at them.

owtytrof
dc-kid
Don't worry. You're missing a few commas, yourself.

Really?

Anyone else notice the headline has been fixed?

/so not a grammer nazi
//matter of fact, I'm VERY bad at grammer

Stavr0:

But since it was a FAKE ID, it doesnt have real info now does it.

I have rarely seen a fake ID which uses any real info of the person. it is almost always made up completely. If I confiscated an ID as a bouncer i would simply assume it was fake and therefore i wasnt publishing anyones details besides a photo which may or may not actually be that person.

yeah what the hell guys?
Get some pics of the license and of the bartender in here, you're all slacking.

Can the state that her fake ID came from hit her up with somekind of infringement?

\Kinda dumb, but kinda serious.

heheh, hyman

If the "castle" the blogger mentions is the same bar I'm thinking of, I'm surprised underage kids go there anyway, as the beer is expensive, and the atmosphere is fairly laid back and reserved. No TVs either.

Just great discussion and a damn fine beer selection.

tweekster: I have rarely seen a fake ID which uses any real info of the person. it is almost always made up completely. If I confiscated an ID as a bouncer i would simply assume it was fake and therefore i wasnt publishing anyones details besides a photo which may or may not actually be that person.

Back in the day, Wisconsin IDs could be altered with some skill, acetone (I think), a laminator (or iron), and an exacto knife.

Then you just go back to the DMV and tell them you lost your ID, and get a 'real' one again.

I think they're clamped down though.

see, i AM a fake id so i'm getting a kick out of these replies..