Why is knowledge inside one&#39;s head considered privileged information but knowledge written on a piece of paper is not? At least in the US, one can refuse to reveal information contained inside one's head by pleading the Fifth Amendment. However, the same protections don't apply to papers (or computer files) with information you might not want to share with the government. But why does this distinction exist at all? Why does the law make a distinction as to the medium in which certain information is contained?
The Fifth Amendment protection relates to a repugnant act, that of forcing a person to testify against themselves, and it is not about ways of looking at &quot;information&quot;. The relevant (legally-ancient) distinction is between a general inquiry and an accusation. The courts have always had the power to make a general inquiry, but there have been limits on the ability of the courts to make accusations. It is a fundamental requirement of law that there must be an accuser, if there is to be a criminal proceeding. But is it also considered to be morally repugnant to force a person to accuse themselves. The difference lies not in the informational content in question, it is in what act – compelled self-accusation – is excluded from the legal system.
If you are worried that some secret will become public, you should find and meet with an attorney, not a financial adviser or other nonlawyer. Your attorney is able to shield your secret information from disclosure in ways other professionals cannot. Raise any credit score issues you're concerned about. In general, the public has a right to access judicial records. See Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc., 435 US 589, 597 (1978) (noting that the right is rarely litigated and not clearly defined). That right is not absolute; some records can be sealed, which means that the public can't read them. Local rules govern when that happens. I don't think the existence of a civil lawsuit could be made secretly except in special circumstances. Likewise, the plaintiff usually must identify herself, except in special circumstances. A plaintiff should assume that everything about the lawsuit--who filed it, against whom, what evidence arises, the trial, and who wins and loses--will be public.
I'm not a lawyer, but under the law as it's written, I see two problems: 17 USC 121 allows "authorized entities" to make and publish accessible copies of works. An "authorized entity" is defined as a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities. So if you, as a private citizen, decide to do this, it could conceivably be copyright infringement. You might have to set up some kind of non-profit organization to make it legal. It's also OK (I think) if you make such copies for your own personal use, so long as you don't redistribute them. So far as I can tell, nothing under 17 USC 121 requires the original publisher to provide an "authorized entity" with a copy in any particular format (PDF, paper, or otherwise) for making accessible copies. Basically, the law seems to have envisioned organizations of sighted people purchasing paper copies, transcribing them, and republishing them; not blind individuals doing electronic transcription for themselves. It might still be worth contacting Hal Leonard and asking what they can do for you, but unfortunately it doesn't look like the law requires them to do anything for you. As Nij points out in the comments, this really seems to be a question about the company's policy, rather than the law.
As for the subject matter (what can be protected), amplitude, frequency, harmonic pattern, duration etc. are all physical facts, and there is no protection for physical facts. The basic requirement is that the thing protected must be "creative". Once you have a creative composition (assuming it is a composition, where infringement is harder to establish), the question arises whether a particular other composition infringes, or is an independent creation deserving its own protection. Again, the law does not deal in technical acoustic properties, and "similarity" is dealt with in an essentially subjective manner. The find of fact, who is an ordinary observer, has to weight all of the evidence and decide whether there is substantial similarity (or striking similarity) which could be evidence of infringement (substantial similarity is not against the law, copyright infringement is). Both parties to the litigation will present testimony supporting their contention and refuting the others' contention. At some point, one side is likely to introduce expert testimony to the effect that there are only so many possible melodies, which if persuasive can overcome a feeling that two compositions are rather similar. The law only addresses the logic of that judgment, and not the scientific facts. For example, in the case of Testa v. Janssen, the legal premise is set doen that "proof of direct access is unnecessary where striking similarities between two works are present". HOw then do you know if there are striking similarities? To prove that similarities are striking, plaintiffs must demonstrate that "such similarities are of a kind that can only be explained by copying, rather than by coincidence, independent creation, or prior common source." Stratchborneo v. Arc Music Corp., 357 F. Supp. 1393, 1403 (S.D.N.Y.1973) citing a previous ruling on that point. Ultimately, the courts cannot not dictate a scientific procedure for making that determination.
The tort for this kind of activity is called public disclosure of private facts, and almost every U.S. state recognizes that this tort is invalid under the First Amendment in the absence of a legal duty not to disclose of the type existing between an attorney and client, or a psychotherapist and a patient, or a contractual non-disclosure agreement, that does not exist between roommates. There is nothing illegal about your roommate's conduct. Your best move at this point is to take responsibility for your own conduct, to repent and to convince the world that you're doing your best to get on the straight and narrow going forward. If your former roommate insisted on payment for not disclosing the information, that would be extortion, but there is nothing wrong with going ahead and disseminating it without trying to obtain something of value from you for not doing so.
Yes. Operating under those assumptions, this would be a First Amendment violation under controlling law in D.C. The starting point is Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124 (D.C. Cir. 1977), which held that &quot;denial of a pass potentially infringes upon first amendment guarantees.&quot; In that case, the Nixon White House refused to issue a press pass to a reporter for a liberal magazine, but refused to explain why beyond citing &quot;reasons of security.&quot; The D.C. Circuit said that if the White House intended to open itself to the press, it needed to do so in ways that did not offend the First Amendment. White House press facilities having been made publicly available as a source of information for newsmen, the protection afforded newsgathering under the first amendment guarantee of freedom of the press requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. Not only newsmen and the publications for which they write, but also the public at large have an interest protected by the first amendment in assuring that restrictions on newsgathering be no more arduous than necessary, and that individual newsmen not be arbitrarily excluded from sources of information. Given these important first amendment rights implicated by refusal to grant White House press passes to bona fide Washington journalists, such refusal must be based on a compelling governmental interest. Clearly, protection of the President is a compelling, “even an overwhelming,” interest... However, this standard for denial of a press pass has never been formally articulated or published. Merely informing individual rejected applicants that rejection was for “reasons of security” does not inform the public or other potential applicants of the basis for exclusion of journalists from White House press facilities. Moreover, we think that the phrase “reasons of security” is unnecessarily vague and subject to ambiguous interpretation. Therefore, we are of the opinion that appellants must publish or otherwise make publicly known the actual standard employed in determining whether an otherwise eligible journalist will obtain a White House press pass. Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124, 129–30 (D.C. Cir. 1977). In a nutshell, Sherrill is saying that when the government is granting press credentials to some and denying them to others, First Amendment principles require it to meet basic due-process requirements of notice and an opportunity to be heard. Therefore, those denied with an explanation for the denial and an opportunity to contest that denial. In this case, it's not clear whether the White House has provided Acosta with a hearing and notice at all, which would itself be a violation if that situation continues for too long. But even if it does, the White House could not use the procedure to punish Acosta for exercising the First Amendment principles that the procedure is designed to protect. If the opposite were true, i.e., Acosta &quot;laid hands&quot; on the intern, I'd guess that that would be enough to revoke his credentials, assuming the White House went through the appropriate procedure. Sherrill explicitly recognizes protecting the President and his family as a valid basis for denying access, and I assume the courts would extend that protection to White House staff, especially if the White House were to argue that an assault on staff suggests that the person can't be trusted around the president himself.
Does the HOA's lawyer have a duty or is it standard practice to label documents (including) as privileged if it contains privileged information? While it is sometimes labeled, this is done by attorneys when it is done, mostly to prevent stupid clients from sharing the information and waiving the privilege. Usually, however, documents are not marked as privileged in advance and when documents are requested from a third-party this analysis is usually done by junior attorneys and paralegals working as a team for the first time. Formal designation is not required because the definition of what is protected is defined by statute and common law rules on a uniform basis. The duty to share information with HOA members does not generally extend to privileged information. If a document that would otherwise be required to be disclosed (like attorney invoices) contains privileged information, the usual course of action is to redact the invoice so that it contains only non-privileged information (e.g. a bottom line amount owed and the date of the invoice and the matter). In an HOA context, the privilege of the HOA as a client belongs functionally to the board and its officers, not to all of the members of the HOA. Does the Association's contractor who maintains the records have a duty to act as a gatekeeper to said invoices if they are not labeled? This depends upon the contract between the Association and the contractor. A well written contract would include this duty, and spell out the mechanics of how it is implemented, but not all contracts live up to best practices. A related issue is whether a release of privileged information by an independent contractor constitutes a waiver of the privilege by the client if the contractor is not in an agent-principal relationship with the Association, which is often a determination made only after the fact by a court. Some jurisdictions' rules of civil procedure provide a waiting period between the issuance of a third-party subpoena for documents and the earliest time that those documents can be delivered to a third-party, to allow objections on grounds of privilege or another basis to be raised prior to the disclosure of the documents. Colorado Rule of Civil Procedure 45, for example, has such a provision. I don't know what the rule is in Florida on that issue.
Different kinds of court records are subject to different rules, but generally speaking, the public has a right to access the complaint in a civil case, derived from both the First Amendment and common law. Under common law, the Court should only block public access if it determines that some interest in secrecy outweighs the interests promoted by the general policy of openness, which include the promotion of actual fairness and the appearance of fairness, community therapeutic value, and facilitating news coverage of the case. Even if you can get the records sealed under the common law test, you still need to pass the First Amendment test, which asks whether there is a compelling governmental interest in limiting access to the record and whether sealing it is the least restrictive way of achieving that interest. The answer to both questions is usually no. In applying those tests, HIPAA neither requires nor permits courts to make exceptions to the public's right to access court records. Its privacy rules only govern protected health information in the possession of medical providers, insurers, etc. This means that filing a medical malpractice case will almost certainly result in the facts underlying that case becoming part of the public record. One could petition the court to seal portions of the record if they were particularly sensitive, but the court is basically required to do whatever it can to avoid granting that motion.