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If you are only using blank media for legitimate purposes, then a)good on you, and b)you are in the minority.

Whilst legitimate use is entirely possible, you cannot tell me that you seriously believe that all the buyers of blank media are only using it for good not evil (feel free to invert the 'good' and 'evil' based on your beliefs).

I personally believe that media cartels are unnecessary, evil organisations that should be wiped out. They give nothing to the artist and the give nothing to the fans. They are parasites. Anything that aids their demise (ie. filesharing, etc.) is alright by me. See here for some good reasons they should go.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

so if it is for profit, does affect if it can be considered permissible or not.

For the average person, it's not currently a big deal, but try talking to some librarians or educators. It's a big deal to them. Read the CETUS Fair Use Pamphlet for the perspective of universities on fair use.

However, in the future, the loss of fair use rights will be a big deal to the average person. The right of first sale is one of such right that people are going to miss when they can no longer sell their old books, music, and movies and when stores that can legally sell used versions exist. It's worth remembering that consumers have already shown their dislike of digital formats that remove some of their fair use rights--remember how consumers rejected of the DivX movie disk format in favor of DVDs.

It makes me wonder if the whole system of copyright is rather broken, to be frank. But I don't know of a better way, so I can't really criticize too much.

Law professor Jessica Litman offers some interesting alternatives to the current economic and legal copyright system in her book Digital Copyright.

Fair use is inherently a grey area, with great leniency for the judge. Normally, four factors are considered: purpose, nature, amount, effect.

Purpose: Nonprofit educational use is valued over commercial use. In your case, this will probably work in your favor.

Nature: Copies of educational texts are more likely to be considered fair use than artistic works (such as music). The way you use the copyrighted work is also important. For instance, giving out copies of a newspaper article for an assignment is likely to be considered fair use. Your use of music to spice up the videos (more entertainment than education) is likely to work against you.

Amount: Although the law doesn't say anything about it, the judge will certainly consider the amount that was used. Copying an entire book will be much less well recieved than just copying a few pages. I certainly wouldn't try to broadcast an entire CD in full, but broadcasting entire songs may also be held against you.

Effect: The more likely it is that your 'fair use' will cost money to the copyright owner, the more likely it is for your actions to be considered infringement. For instance, just broadcasting music might mean that people no longer buy music for their music player or listen to the radio. The fact that such a service is 'competing' with these options would be very much against you. In your case, it probably depends on how you use the music. Creating your own music videos would be bad, but background music to a very school-specific video might be ok.

Anyway, the RIAA could certainly sue your school if they wanted to. They might not win (I'm really not sure how it would pan out), but your school might not have the resources to fight them off. Then you might be looking at a nasty settlement fee. The safest bet might be too try and use freely available music whenever possible and otherwise try to reduce the amount of copyrighted music you use. And I would definately try to keep under the radar, drawing publicity to this in the mainstream media (by having a local station air the best videos made by students, for instance) would be dangerous.

Some more info

"Fair use" is a technical term, and "timeshifting" is not now and never has been "fair use".

The courts did rule in Sony v. Universal City Studios (1984) that use of VCRs is primarily for time-shifting, and that such use does not harm the value of the work to the copyright holder, thus the courts refused to ban VCRs. However, there has never been any ruling, implied or otherwise, that copyright holders are obligated to assist us in our fair use, or prohibited from engaging in other technological measures to prevent us from engaging in activities that might be defended as "fair use".

Slashdot in general has a very, very, very unbelievably wrong idea of what "fair use" is, to the point that it has virtually no connection with what the legal concept actually is. Fair use is a very narrow allowance to use small portions of copyright works subject to severe limitations, no more. There is no such thing as a "fair use" right in law. (Which isn't to say there shouldn't be one; I do in fact argue that something like it should be protected. But that doesn't make it magically appear in the real law we have now.) As a result, the flag can not infringe on our non-existant "fair use right".

The reason why I continue to post this point, despite continued evidence that Slashdot as a whole refuses to understand this, is that the misunderstanding is dangerous. Thinking you are protected legally means you won't do anything to protect a "right" you think is safe. It's not. Fair use doesn't do shit for you unless you fit into the narrow provisions as described in the link above, and Slashdot as a whole needs to stop thinking otherwise or we will continue to have our "fair use rights" "stripped" from us, with no coherent protest.

What rights are lost should be clarified: Fair Use.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
http://www.cetus.org/fairindex.html

It's not that the industry hasn't tried to do this before (CSS); it's just that this time, they've got a better-than-even chance of succeeding in their efforts.

Before you did that, they should probably take a look at the four factors that cpt kangarooski took me to task for omitting.

Fair Use: Overview and Meaning for Higher Education has an interesting analysis of court cases where fair use was argued, and whether it prevailed or not.

One particular example that might be similar to your case is American Geophysical Union v. Texaco Inc., where a Texeco scientist was photocopying articles from Journals we subscribed to. Since the research was done to to strengthen Texaco's balance sheet, the purpose wasn't absolutely non-profit. Since an entire article was photocopied, it fell against the substantiality factor. The end result is that the court didn't consider it fair use.

That is real fair use...

I do not think that means what you think it means.

No, this is very different from Fair Use.

Your fair use system requires that:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

(more here)

We also have our own version of Fair Use which is similar to yours.

The law that this article is talking about is very different from that. The article explains that so you should know this but just to be clear: Recordable media sold in Canada has a levy placed on it. The money from this levy is distributed to various parts of the music industry to make up for supposed lost profits that arrise from the unpreventable copying of music by consumers. This is a provision that goes well beyond fair use.

Lucky us.

Fair Use: Overview and Meaning for Higher Education

Copyright law begins with the premise that the copyright owner has exclusive rights to many uses of a protected work, notably rights to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works, and publicly display or perform the work. But the Copyright Act also sets forth several important exceptions to those rights. Key statutes make specific allowance for concerns such as distance learning, backup copies of software, and some reproductions made by libraries. The best known and most important exception to owners' rights is fair use.

The Fair-Use Statute

The following is the full text of the fair-use statute from the U.S. Copyright Act.

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. (Emphasis added)

The Meaning of the Four Factors

While fair use is intended to apply to teaching, research, and other such activities, a crucial point is that an educational purpose alone does not make a use fair. The purpose of the use is, in fact, only one of four factors that users must analyze in order to conclude whether or not an activity is lawful.

Moreover, each of the factors is subject to interpretation as courts struggle to make sense of the law. Some interpretations, and their subsequent reconstruction by policy-makers and interest groups, have been especially problematic. For example, some copyright analysts have concluded that if a work being used is a commercial product, the "nature" factor weighs against fair use. By that measure, no clip from a feature film or copy from a trade book could survive that fair-use factor. Similarly, some commentators argue that if a license for the intended use is available from the copyright owner, the action will directly conflict with the market for licensing the original. Thus, the availability of a license will itself tip the "effect" factor against fair use. Neither of these simplistic constructions of fair use is a valid generalization, yet they are rooted in some truths under limited circumstances. Only one conclusion about the four factors is reliable: each situation must be evaluated in light of the specific facts presented.

The following are brief explanations of the four factors from the fair-use statute. All four factors which affect fair use must be taken into account before reaching a conclusion.

Purpose

Congress favored nonprofit educational uses over commercial uses. Copies used in education, but made or sold at monetary profit, may not be favored. Courts also favor uses that are "transformative" or that are not mere reproductions. Fair use is more likely when the copyrighted work is "transformed" into something new or of new utility, such as quotations incorporated into a paper, and perhaps pieces of a work mixed into a multimedia prod

That's the problem -- it IS being done with the consent of the originator.

Trivially false; if the Washington Post consented to the modification, they would not be suing.

The payment is in the form of the services Gator provides (it DOES have some useful functions, by the way).

Also trivially false. The ads Gator are replacing in your webpages are paid for in checks written to Gator. You are not paid at all; the features of Gator such as they are are hooks to get you to use the service, just as you are not a customer of television, except inasmuch as you may pay a cable bill.

What I don't think you're seeing is that Gator is supplying work-for-hire.

Work-for-hire is an irrelevent concept here. Work-for-hire can't appropriate someone else's copyright. In fact, pursuing this angle is a quick loss for you; if Gator is doing work for hire, then QED copyright issues apply. And it turns out Gator has no right to do those modifications. Oops.

See, you aren't even 'hiring' them for content modification; to the extend that you've 'hired' them, it's for convenient storage and selected dissemenation of personal data. To the extend that you are a 'customer' of Gator, it has nothing to do with copyright at all!

You seem to think it's illegal for me to replace ads in something that I download. I seriously doubt that you can make that case.

Actually fairly easy to make. Nobody cares because when you do something, the damages are zero anyhow. Copyright law is heavily based on damages, which is one of the reasons this case is an inevitable win for the Washington Post. When Gator is doing it, that's a different story, then when you're doing it. (If they aren't the ones doing the replacement, they exactly how are they involved anyhow?)

If I want to download your web site and then hire someone to replace all the content with "Jerf beats his wife", that is fine, too.

But if your software caused thousands of viewers to see your modification, I'd sue you for libel. Large scale, systematic on-the-fly modifications are indistinguishable in results from actual modification. Shall we open this loophole to every person who can technically take advantage of it?

Also, you're missing a point; Gator is being sued, not you. What you can do with a page completely fails to defend Gator.

Once it is in my computer, my fair use rights say I can do whatever I want with it for my own personal use.

Again, flatly, totally, utterly, inarguably wrong. What "fair use" is isn't up for debate, it's a matter of law, and you don't understand it. (And the link works for me...)

Look, I hate to be snotty here, but your post is so riddled with errors that it's hard to take it seriously. You don't understand who "the originators" of the copyrighted works are (Washington Post et. al.). You don't seem to understand the economics of advertising. You don't understand "fair use" at all. You don't even know what "work-for-hire" is. Those are facts not open to debate. Your lack of understanding of those basics leads me to not be surprised that you can't seem to follow what I'm saying, let alone address the issues in a refutation, rather then re-iterate your misconceptions of what's going on and what the law says about it. You can't even seem to keep track of who's getting in trouble for what actions.

I think you need to make a distinction between morality and legality.

Pot calling the kettle black, I'd say, for someone who has demonstrated a lack of understanding of legality on this subject from top to bottom. Your belief in what is ethical does not determine the law, the law does.

Once a page leaves a server and enters my computer, my fair-use rights take over and I can do ANYTHING I want to that page, except rebroadcast it.

First, do you choose what ads to add in? No?

You aren't doing a thing to the page. It's being done by a third party, specifically Gator, without consent of the originator. Personally, I call that censorship, though YMMV.

Proof: If it were you doing that to the page, where are your payments for the ad space? What, Gator gets them? Clearly, they are the ones modifying the page, if they are selling this ad space to others.

Second, fair use applies only under very specific and limited circumstances... it's not the carte blanche you seem to think it is. In this case, of the four factors to be considered in whether or not something is fair use, this completely fails three of them; Gator's use is solely commercial (1), they use the entire copyrighted work (3), and the market for the work (as defined in copyright terms which tends to talk about money) is eliminated entirely for that viewing (4). Fair use is not a defense in this case.

It's none of the magazine's business if I do that, and it's none of anyone else's business if I choose to use Gator.

It is the magazine's business. They may not want to be a party to this third-party transaction. (You can make a case for choosing on your own not to view ads, but when you add a third-party in like Gator the situation changes dramatically, especially since Gator is directly profiting.)

Frankly, it doesn't matter if Gator informs them. What they're doing is highly unethical, and almost certainly illegal.

By the way, you need to be exceptionally careful about this. If you let Gator do this, then there's really nothing stopping them from modifying the contents of the page, since from a copyright point of view, that's exactly what they're doing. If they can modify for the purpose of commerical profit, then they can do it for any purpose, since that's the highest purpose in our broken copyright laws. Of course, if Gator can do it, anyone can.

Letting Gator doing this, and defending them is handing everybody in the world free reign to modify anything they can technically get access to, just because they can. ("Might makes right?") There's just no difference. I for one do not want to hand this power to anybody. That it will be abused pretty much goes without saying. We must defend the right to integrity.

It should be obvious that on this point, the right to integrity is more importent to us little guys then the Washington Post, which has the resources to defend itself.

I've been around this debate more then a few times; please, before replying (not Reality Master 101 personally, everybody), at least read the fair use link and educate yourself about the current state of the law. You're free to think it's not perfect, and should be some other way (as I do), but please, for the love of Gnu, no lengthy, fact-bereft lectures on personal misconceptions of copyright law...

Once a page leaves a server and enters my computer, my fair-use rights take over and I can do ANYTHING I want to that page, except rebroadcast it.

First, do you choose what ads to add in? No?

You aren't doing a thing to the page. It's being done by a third party, specifically Gator, without consent of the originator. Personally, I call that censorship, though YMMV.

Proof: If it were you doing that to the page, where are your payments for the ad space? What, Gator gets them? Clearly, they are the ones modifying the page, if they are selling this ad space to others.

Second, fair use applies only under very specific and limited circumstances... it's not the carte blanche you seem to think it is. In this case, of the four factors to be considered in whether or not something is fair use, this completely fails three of them; Gator's use is solely commercial (1), they use the entire copyrighted work (3), and the market for the work (as defined in copyright terms which tends to talk about money) is eliminated entirely for that viewing (4). Fair use is not a defense in this case.

It's none of the magazine's business if I do that, and it's none of anyone else's business if I choose to use Gator.

It is the magazine's business. They may not want to be a party to this third-party transaction. (You can make a case for choosing on your own not to view ads, but when you add a third-party in like Gator the situation changes dramatically, especially since Gator is directly profiting.)

Frankly, it doesn't matter if Gator informs them. What they're doing is highly unethical, and almost certainly illegal.

By the way, you need to be exceptionally careful about this. If you let Gator do this, then there's really nothing stopping them from modifying the contents of the page, since from a copyright point of view, that's exactly what they're doing. If they can modify for the purpose of commerical profit, then they can do it for any purpose, since that's the highest purpose in our broken copyright laws. Of course, if Gator can do it, anyone can.

Letting Gator doing this, and defending them is handing everybody in the world free reign to modify anything they can technically get access to, just because they can. ("Might makes right?") There's just no difference. I for one do not want to hand this power to anybody. That it will be abused pretty much goes without saying. We must defend the right to integrity.

It should be obvious that on this point, the right to integrity is more importent to us little guys then the Washington Post, which has the resources to defend itself.

I've been around this debate more then a few times; please, before replying (not Reality Master 101 personally, everybody), at least read the fair use link and educate yourself about the current state of the law. You're free to think it's not perfect, and should be some other way (as I do), but please, for the love of Gnu, no lengthy, fact-bereft lectures on personal misconceptions of copyright law...

Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.

Ignoring the semantic right/privilege issue, it seems to me that a case could be made for the schools having a "right" to make copies in the manner they did.

IANAL and all, but it seems to me that one of the primary reasons for the fair use provisions of copyright law was to allow schools to make multiple copies of items they could not afford as long as it was for educational purposes and it did not strongly impact the potential sales of the items.

Unlike most people on Slashdot, I am neither pro-Napster nor anti-copyright. IMHO, it would have been disastrous in the long term if Napster had been allowed to spread unchecked because once technology to transfer music easily from PCs to Home Audio Systems to Cars to Personal Devices was perfected [5 to 10 years], no one would ever buy music again and it would kill music as a profession except for a few heavily marketed superstars (Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc) and truly talented groups (Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica, etc) in certain genres who could still make money touring. Similarly with eBooks, a serious disincentive for books being published has been the copyright issues and the creation of a growing underground of book pirates who trade eBooks similar to how MP3s were traded until Napster, Gnutella and Scour.net opened it up for the masses. Few authors are comfortable with spending months or years writing a book just for others to distribute it for free and prevent them from putting food on the table.

On the one hand the "Digital Rights Management" technologies being created to combat these threats to copyright are ominous. Microsoft plans to support digital rights management at the OS level very soon and has started making moves in that direction while hard drive manufacturers have considering adding hard drive copy protection to all systems built in future and Intel has flirted with copy protection for monitors and other display devices. All of the aforementioned technologies are invasive, distasteful and prevent users from exercising their rights to fair use of copyrighted or non-copyrighted works.

Also recent legal wranglings aimed at protecting copyright have robbed consumers of rights that they have had or should have such as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In the same vein certain rulings against opponents of the RIAA and MPAA such as the $118 million dollar ruling against MP3.com or the ruling against 2600.com are ridiculous.

So my question is this: Is there a middle ground?. On the one hand I am opposed to piracy and "Information Wants to Be Free" has always been a poor justification for piracy in my opinion (whether software or music) but on the other hand it is clear that something has to be done soon about the way in which consumer rights are constantly being eroded. Basically I believe that until advocacy against the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright cartels begins to counter their arguments with reasonable points that can benefit both sides, we are doomed to continue in this downward spiral. As long as our arguments boil down to "I want free shit" or "No encryption can't be hacked", we will constantly be at war with the RIAA & MPAA and since they have more money (and thus better lawyers) than us, they will win.

Grabel's Law

So, it's not a problem if I can't incorporate a video clip into my schoolwork or teaching

Why don't you go take another look at what 'fair use' means? Then consider what SMDI is going to do to it. Then you can come back and rejoin the conversation.


...phil

Analysis
The Internet provides access to a wealth of original material and, although it is freely and easily accessible, we must assume that original materials on the Internet are protected by copyright until we learn explicitly that the copyright owner has dedicated the materials to the public domain, or the copyrights have expired. Therefore, the fair-use limits for materials found on the Internet are essentially the same as the fair use of materials disseminated by any other means.

Single copies of short items for a person's own study may fall within fair use. If a work is freely available on the Internet, making a copy will have little or no effect on its market simply because no commercial market for the work has been established or claimed. Nevertheless, some publishers have argued that the potential market for charging Internet users for each copy means that any copying hinders the market. In the meantime, copying of works that are freely accessible to the public for personal uses only will likely satisfy the "purpose" and the "effect" factors of fair use.

As with photocopying, one might reasonably conclude that the "nature" factor would favor uses of non-fiction rather than fiction, and that the "amount" factor might reasonably favor copying excerpts of longer works or copying short essays or articles rather than copying an entire book or other longer piece.

/. posters were discussing the specs and posted them as a means to aid the discussion. Links to the specs were also provided as illustrative examples. Information on extracting the specs was also used as part of the discussion.

Here is the Fair Use Law:
Fair Use Law 17 U.S.C. 107 (1988 & Supp. IV 1993).
Section 107 provides in part: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

It seems clear to me that in this case /. posters were using Microsoft's specs information for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and research which are all protected by the Fair Use Law.

Therefore, /. posters have done nothing illegal and their comments should under no circumstances be removed.

---diva

Apparantly, you don't understand fair use at all if you really think it applies here.

The fair use statute:

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

And from the RIAA website:

Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright infringement, and a violation of federal law. This is true whether the source being copied is analog or digital; whether you are copying an entire album or just one song or even part of a song; or whether you are making a compilation of songs from albums you already own.

Here's the thing. Anyone who is trading (or according to the RIAA anyone making) mp3's without the permision of the copyright holder is commiting copyright infrigement. Napster has maintained since the beginning (and in their own TOS) that they will not permit copyright infrigement "if they know about it". Now that they legally know about it they have no excuse. They will have to remove those users and those files.

Additionally Napster should put in place filters that block files based on artist/title strings at the request of the copyright holders. Others have pointed out that you could simply rename thefile, but this has limited usefulness since it would make them much more difficult to find.

Napster has claimed all along that they are unwitting participants in this "piracy" and many here have defended them. There is no defence if they continue to knowing allow anyine to engage in illegal activity.