You can Cheat on your Spouse but NOT on your Taxes

Rephrase: you can probably get away with cheating on your spouse, but the IRS will always catch you.

Case in point, Mr. Walter Halby who attempted to reduce his tax liability by claiming medical expense deductions for his patronage of prostitutes. Mr. Halby claimed $100,000 in deductions for payments to prostitutes as necessary treatments for medical conditions (sexual addiction and erectile dysfunction). I’m not a doctor so I won’t comment on whether feeding an addiction is a proper course of treatment for any type of addiction, but Mr. Halby failed to take the “treatment” part of the allowable tax deduction for medical expenses into account. Mr. Halby was never diagnosed with a medical condition that needed treatment, nor did a doctor prescribe a specific course of treatment for Mr. Halby. Even more unfortunate for Mr. Halby, he failed to keep adequate records of his payments for his “treatments”, didn’t show that repeated sexual gratification was necessary to cure his “illnesses,” and he lived in the wrong state. Prostitutes normally don’t give receipts or invoices, so Mr. Halby couldn’t substantiate his payments or reasons therefore. Most unfortunately for Mr. Halby, paying for sex is illegal in the state of New York. You can’t deduct a payment for medical treatment if that treatment is illegal. If Mr. Halby lived in Nevada he may have had a better case.

The Longest Journey Starts With a Single Step

I must admit I lost a little faith in our political system after the 2000 election and all that transpired under the Bush administration. For nearly ten years, I did everything in my power to avoid political discussions of any kind. Naturally, then-candidate now-President Obama, with his focus on integrity, hope, and restoring American ideals, completely sucked me in. Now I, along with countless others, anxiously await confirmation of my belief that President Obama can bring about change – at least in the sense that he can encourage a level of transparency in government that will restore my faith in the people supposedly leading our country. When I learned that our new Secretary of Treasury (the man in charge of ensuring proper administration and collection of tax) had failed to properly pay his own taxes for a time, I began to have some misgivings. Those misgivings intensified slightly upon reading that another nominee, Tom Daschle, had likewise originally failed to report income in his tax returns for several years resulting in a substantial underpayment of taxes on his part. (Source.)

Upon reflection, however, I think we’re noticing a positive trend for the Obama administration. Once nominated, both Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner and Health Department nominee Tom Daschle corrected their respective errors and reported them to the Senate during the confirmation process. Requiring top officials to re-examine their prior conduct and rectify potential errors on their own initiative before acquiring top level-posts seems to indicate that the Obama administration will be held to a higher standard of internal and external accountability. (By “higher standard” I mean they will be held accountable at the very least some of the time as opposed to never.) I personally feel that President Obama will have satisfied my expectations by simply instituting internal procedures that comply with the overriding spirit of the Constitution: checks and balances.

(I can offer no justification or alternative explanation for the unfortunate choice of Eric Holder as Attorney General, though. See prior commentary here, here, and here.)

Flori-duh: We vote for change but fail to do so

On behalf of myself and my fellow Satyriconistas: congratulations to PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obama’s capacity to unite and inspire was proven today when millions of Americans chose hope and idealism over fear and negativism. May he lead our nation with the same intelligence, charisma, fortitude, and integrity he has shown during his campaign.

As my best friend – a minority in this country for far too long – texted to me: “Its a new day.”

Unfortunately, Flori-duh did not get the message. Yes, my state voted for Obama. But, we also voted to retain a bigoted, useless constitutional provision authorizing institutional racism. Amendment 1, which would have deleted a superfluous constitutional provision allowing the legislature to prohibit “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning real property, was defeated 52% to 48%. We also approved - by a greater than 60% margin, mind you – a constitutional provision designating an entire class of persons as second class citizens. The Florida “Marriage” Amendment, defining marriage as between a man and a woman and disregarding any other type of committed relationship, has passed.

Copyright duration primer from a bloodsucking lawyer

By Tara “Bloodsucker” Warrington

I am fucking terrified of vampires. Even as a grown woman, I still sleep with the covers drawn up around my neck. Of course, I have always been a bit of a masochist so I consumed all things vampire-related growing up: The Lost Boys, Anne Rice, Salem’s Lot, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. (Please refrain from mentioning Nosferatu: just the thought of that particular incarnation of vampire is enough to give me nightmares.) Nothing compares to the original, however: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Originally published May 1897 in the United Kingdom, Bram Stoker’s Dracula spawned an entire industry of literary bloodsuckers. The novel was subsequently published in the United States in 1899. The copyright laws in existence at that time required authors to register and deposit their published works in order to receive copyright protection. Stoker failed to do so. Lugosi v. Universal Pictures, 139 Cal. Rptr. 35, 37 n.4 (1977). Dracula, therefore, has been in the public domain in the United States ever since its publication. The novel retained copyright protection elsewhere until 1962 (50 years after Bram Stoker’s death) when it passed into the public domain. Id.

TaxProf Blog and the Wall Street Journal recently highlighted a new edition of Dracula being released this year: “The New Annotated Dracula,” edited by Leslie S. Klinger (a tax lawyer by day, insert clever bloodsucker joke here by night), which apparently features several innovative plot interpretations and historical exposes. The annotation culminates with the first ever publication of an alternate ending originally drafted by Stoker.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the alternate ending is a separate and distinct work of authorship (the chapter clearly was not intended to be incorporated into the whole) and assuming the alternate ending consists of original copyrightable material, this new publication underscores an interesting durational issue arising under current copyright law. The United State’s Copyright Act of 1909 required publication and notice of ownership for federal copyright protection to subsist in a work of authorship. Unregister, unpublished works retained a perpetual common law copyright under state law. The Copyright Act of 1976 amended the statutory framework by abolishing common law copyright and providing that federal copyright subsists from the moment an original work of authorship is created. Registration and publication were no longer requirements for obtaining copyright protections on works of authorship. Previously unregistered and unpublished works were now brought into the rubric of federal Copyright Law. However, the authors of the vast majority of unregistered and unpublished works had long since passed away, as had their survivors. (Unregistered, unpublished works included a vast array of items, including personal correspondence, diaries, sketches, etc.)

In order to curb massive application and operational hurdles, the Copyright Act of 1976 provided a specific durational term for previously unregistered, unpublished works. Each previously unregistered, unpublished work was deemed to be created as of January 1, 1978 – the enactment date for the Copyright Act of 1976. If the work remained unpublished, the copyright terminated as of December 31, 2002 and the work passed into the public domain. If the work was published prior to December 31, 2002, the copyright term extends until December 31, 2047. Had the alternate ending for Dracula been published prior to the end of the year in 2002, the ending would have been entitled to copyright protection until December 31, 2047. Since it was not published prior to that time, the ending is now completely in the public domain. With the publication of the alternate ending in the “New Annotated” version of Dracula, genre authors should feel free to suck literary elements straight out of heart of the alternate ending in creating new works

One final note, I personally think Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, is an ass for keeping this early draft of Dracula hidden for as long as he has.

What do you mean I have to pay taxes?

By Tara Warrington,
Legal Satyricon Correspondent

Every once in a while, you hear some yahoo claiming that the Federal Government doesn’t actually have the power to tax you. This post is designed to put that particular urban myth to rest.

Copyright Applies to Free Software Too

by Tara Warrington
Legal Satyricon Correspondent

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in Jacobsen v. Katzer that the terms of a license – even one granting free and nonexclusive use – control when determining if the scope of the use is limited by the license itself or more broadly by copyright law. The decision itself is not earth shattering when viewed in light of the specific terms of this particular open source license. Nevertheless, it shows a promising tolerance for moral rights principles.

Supreme Court: Solicitation of Child Porn Categorically Unprotected by First Amendment

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court held today in United States v. Williams, (Source), that “offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment.”

I’ll leave most of the analysis of this case to the professionals, but I’d have to agree with Eugene Volokh that the decision is not so much about child pornography as it is about the government’s ability to restrict speech that solicits illegal activity. (Source.) That said, it appears the Court went out of its way to construe the statute so as not to implicate its earlier decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), (Source) which invalidated the Child Pornography Protection Act based on the Act’s prohibition of the selling and possession of materials that appeared to portray children (real or virtual) engaged in sexual conduct (actually or virtually).

MJR Note: Lets not divert our attention from Scalia’s attempt to re-define “obscenity”.

“We have long held that obscene speech — sexually explicit material that violates fundamental notions of decency — is not protected by the First Amendment. See Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484-485″

A House Divided?

Some genius in south Flori-duh thinks the best way to solve the State’s fiscal callousness is to pass a idiotic nonbinding, ineffective resolution declaring it “in the best interests of the citizens and residents [of North Lauderdale]” to divide Florida into two separate states – North Florida and South Florida. (Source).

I don’t know, maybe this isn’t such a bad idea. Divide the State in two -or better yet three (North, South, and Central)- with all the crazies, asshats, and arsonists  concentrated in the Northern and Southern portion of the State, while the remainder of us in the Central reap the benefits of continued exploitation of the tourism industry. It’s not bad fiscal policy (for Central Florida) and would certainly improve the quality of life for those of us who love living here but are constantly embarrassed because all the crazy shit seems to happen in Flori-duh.