Is it legal to use a TV-B-Gone on a TV in a business? Is it legal for a customer to use a TV-B-Gone to turn off TVs in businesses, e.g. the ones playing sports channels in restaurants or the demo models in stores, without permission of the owner?
Trespass to chattel The TV is owned by the store or restaurant. You are not allowed to use it or manipulate it. So you commit Trespass to Chattel, which is &quot;the use of property without permission of the owner&quot; and a common law tort. To prove Trespass the store would need to show: You intended the trespass on the chattel, in this case, by turning off the TV. That can be proven by you owning the TV-B-Gone and using it. You deprived the owner's use of the chattel for a substantial time, which in the case of a sports bar might be any moment of the game, especially if the bar is allowed to run sports bets. in the case of the sports bet bar, you might even have created harm to something that the bar has a legitimate interest in. The Sports Bar might have the much easier case, while the store might not be able to prove the required deprivation of the chattel or damage caused by turning it off. Similarly, if a TV-B-Gone turns off a public CNN monitor at an airport though, you created harm because CNN would need to send a technician to turn it on again - the remote controls are only with the technicians, not in place. Do note that because of TV-B-Gones many such displays are installed in shielded boxes, or have been modified to not register to remote controls at all. Most sports bars don't even have a TV there, it's a computer monitor that is fed from a stream. However, if it's store advertisements... I doubt you turning it off would have caused the substantial deprivation to qualify as trespass to chattel. And while TV-B-Gone is just a tort... Don't you dare to run a cellphone jammer: Well, Cell-Phone-B-Gone could be done, but it’s illegal. One way to do it is to create a very low power fake cell transmitter, and the phone call would be gone. But disrupting a cell phone service is illegal in and of itself. - Mitch Altman, inventor of the TV-B-Gone in a 2006 interview
You give SE 2 licences The CC-BY-SA one and the one that goes “the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content … as reasonably necessary to, for example (without limitation):”. SE can choose which one it uses. Even though the enumerated cases are “without limitation”, they indicate the general area where the 2nd licence would be “reasonably necessary”. If SE used it outside that domain and did not comply with CC-BY-SA they would arguably be in copyright violation.
It depends on the terms of the licence You can do X until I tell you to stop You can do X as long as Y You can do X forever are all valid licences. For the website you name, the licence is “worldwide, non-exclusive, permanently, irrevocable, royalty-free”.
You are not reading a law book here and you should not interpret a driving test so literally. It's quite clear that the question implies you should follow all of their instructions regarding how to proceed through traffic. Sometimes those instructions do involve "breaking laws" such as driving on the wrong side of the road or proceeding through a traffic signal that was not turned off. The B option clearly does not mean they have the power to disobey all laws in existence, only those concerning traffic as evidenced by the examples given. You are not Sheldon Cooper and you should know how to interpret a vague question correctly. You are also not a gopher, and you can correctly deduce that crashing into another car or driving off the cliff into the water is not in your best interests, and that calling the police to report someone abusing their position is probably a good idea. If you're concerned by the wording, try contacting the California DMV to have them clarify the wording.
20th Century Fox have a trademark on "Simpsons." They have trademarks on "Bart Simpson", on "D'oh", on "Duff Beer". I would assume that they take their trademarks seriously. What you can't do is to use someone else's trademark to make people believe your commercial product is related to theirs. It's quite reasonable to assume that someone seeing your book in a store would think it is written by the makers of The Simpsons show and therefore buy it. Even if you say that isn't your intention, it is what would happen. I'd try coming up with some different titles, maybe "How to write animated TV shows" with "Example: The Simpsons" (well, you are the writer so you should come up with something better), and take them to a lawyer. And then contact the makers of the show (again asking the lawyer for advice how to do this) because even if your lawyer says the title is fine, that doesn't mean you can't be sued.
Generally you can only use logos (i.e., symbolic trademarks) if you have the trademark owners' permission. You may certainly use the names Cisco and Microsoft nominatively, although they might ask you to provide a disclaimer of any affiliation including sponsorhip or approval, if it gets to them. "Not making any money" is also not the sole determinative factor in proving your defense of "fair use".
I’m guessing you have seen a sign in a business that read - “Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone”. At least in the US, they do not need a reason as long as the reason isn’t unlawful discrimination. They can decide not to serve you.
No It's your device, you can do what you like with it (subject to the law - you can't hit people with it. Unless they want to be hit: whatever turns you on, turns you on). However, if you do operate it outside their instructions then they would not be legally liable if it failed and injured you or someone else or set fire to the cat or whatever. The "prohibition" would limit their legal liability.