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In the U.S.

In cases of works made for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author

Absolutely right. Still, depending on the terms upon which the OP parted with his client, it might be well to contact them and let them know that their property has been mis-appropriated by the new developer.

In cases of works made for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

The amount of footage isn't really relevant here.

It's completely relevant here. U.S. Copyright Office - Fair Use:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of 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
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

(Emphasis Mine) It doesn't matter that it's video of someone playing instead of someone playing live. "The experience" doesn't matter; copyright is on the contents of the game, not on the enjoyment someone gets from said game.

Sounds like ya'll have a far more sane copyright system than we do here in the States. Down here, the allowed use of copyrighted works without permission is based on "fair use". Here's a quick overview of how the law looks at it, but that's like taking a scoop of water out of an ocean; "fair use" is a very complicated topic, and the variety of factors are often argued and fought tooth and nail, both in and out of courtroom.

Will a company be able to sue successfully because it's product appears in a scene of a movie it dislikes?

As stated by the GP, many companies will pay studios to use their products in movies as a form of advertising, so this would be rare. I did find this article:

Legal experts say fairly recent product placement practices, in which companies pay producers to use their products in TV and movie scenes, have mistakenly given corporations the idea that they can control the use of their products on camera.

Experts say studios are not obligated to get permission before featuring a product in their work. [...] Filmmakers, legal experts say, are protected under federal "fair use" privileges for use of trademark products without getting the OK of the rights holder.

Emphasis mine. Of course, this is different from Let's Plays because the products in movies are usually auxiliary (often being swapped with anything similar, fake or real; though the article doesn't say one way or other, I think Paramount will remove the cans to avoid the potential of a lawsuit, regardless of standing), whereas in Let's Play they are the primary product, front and center. The only thing about the videos is the voice-over added by the video creator and any editing that went into its creation. You can't switch out in this case, because then you wouldn't have a video. Taken in more legal terms:

Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.
[...]
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

IANAL, but since LPs tend to cover the entire game, that means they use a substantial portion of the copyrighted work, and so would not be considered "fair use". (The other factors come into play, but this is the big one IMO.) If someone was doing a review, using footage of the game, then that might be fair use because the review would only use a dozen or so minutes, a very insubstantial portion of the game. (It may, however, break the first factor about commercial uses, where applicable, so overall it may not be fair use.)

I think it's you.

No, it's not.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

They're simply a list of ingredients

So you're free to make a SpicyWith. (Unless they have a trademark on SpicyWith, which is again unlikely as descriptions are not allowed)

It's not even theft, it's a copyright violation, a civil offense.

Uhh, in the U.S. copyright infringement is a criminal offense. Don't you actually read that FBI warning that comes up before EVERY bit of content on DVDs? Also, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Now, there are also civil charges for copyright infringement that can be applied, but it's a crime and there are people that suffer financial loss because of it. Those people usually don't include Hollywood as their profits keep going up despite copyright infringement. But, small production companies and artists trying to get their foot in the door do suffer real consequences of copyright infringement and do suffer real "hurt" because of it. I'm not getting on a high horse here as I have violated a few laws in my time, but I am not ignorant of what I am doing nor the real consequences thereof.

There is no "they." The GP is wrong. The decision is made by the Librarian of Congress, in accordance with Section 1201(a)(1) title 17, United States Code. Any "they" would have to be referring to the Register of Copyrights and the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information of the Department of Commerce, who work in an advisory role.

But, the statement issued by the Library of Congress says about as little as is possible with so many words. I certainly don't get the feeling that the LoC will revisit the decision, and I don't see where the law provides a mechanism for that, even if they wanted to. The statement refers to a benefit to "review and resolution" in the context of telecommunications policy, says the rulemaking "was not intended to be a substitute for deliberations of broader public policy," and ends with a door slam - "The most recent rulemaking has served this purpose."

Even if not explicitly stated, every piece of unique work has a natural copyright anyway.

That may be your religion, but I don't share it.

Copyright isn't natural, it's a legal concept. That aside, it is a fact that any original creative work is copyrighted automatically, that's not religion.

I realize that you're just nitpicking at the original wording by lawyers, but when I was younger, it actually used to be called "natural copyright" more. Now it's known more as a common law copyright or copyright by natural law. In fact, the wiki page says that it stems from the idea as a natural right. Gov site for other readers. I didn't mean to say that it's "natural." Only using the phrasing of my generation.

Eventually, the F/OSS version can't compete and keep up and eventually dies.

So why does F/OSS still exist at all? Reality seems to disagree with you. Because F/OSS doesn't need to compete it doesn't have to die, it just needs people who are interested in it, and we live in a big world. New fancy features may not always be developed as fast as with proprietary software because the motive to score big with a hype isn't so strong, but F/OSS software does tend to gradually improve.

You're right with most F/OSS software, but my sentence applies to the context in which I presented it. For instance, FLAC is on an equal level as other lossless audio compression files. (Apple's ALAC is also under the Apache license, so we're pretty well off as far as free audio compression.) However, imagine FLAC was under a different license. A company uses the code and improves it in house. In fact, the company gets lucky and improves it by 50%. Again, this is just a hypothetical scenario, but that's what these licenses are for anyway -- hypothetical scenarios (in fact, the reason a company makes their code closed source is so that a company with more money can't use it and in effect make the first company go under; for companies, closed source usually makes sense if your primary product is software; all dealing with hypotheticals). Now, a 50% improvement is quite a lot. If the company releases it as free to use but does not release the source code, how many average users would jump on that bandwagon? Probably quite a lot. Eventually, all music is distributed using this closed source compression. F/OSS has battled and continues to battle this, but with near-equal compression it's not too bad. With a margin such as 50% for lossless compression, well, that would be quite detrimental. And in fact, if F/OSS programmers work tirelessly to chop it down another 10%, now the big corporation can chop theirs to 60%. Eventually, I think that FLAC would turn into in inactive project, or be an active project with little-to-no support.

Luckily, this scenario is rare, and I don't have specific examples of free software under a non-copyleft going inactive due to corporations, but I believe that's due to my lack of research and knowledge to find them. They're obviously not kept very public. However, there are tons of inactive/dead free projects.

It's just a question of what you're willing to risk. Once you put it under a non-copyleft license and you quit the project, no one else can take it up and change the license. They would have to continue under the same license. It's completely up to the coder/person of course, and everyone is free to choose what license they want.

Maybe you can't charge people to listen to it, but you can legally charge people to rent the CD from you.

Not in the USA.

See 17 U.S.C. Â109(b)(1)(A)

Also, if I grab random people off the street and ask them if the want to come to my house to listen to the latest insert artist name here CD, it's perfectly legal. Even though once I get enough people, they are a crowd, and they are strangers, it's not a public performance.

The operative term here is "my house." Do it basically anywhere besides that and it is a public performance.

17 U.S.C. 1201. Section 1201

Congress specifically authorized the Librarian of Congress to make these decisions. The Librarian is a presidentially-appointed position.

Shouldn't really be able to copyright the look on guns.

The utilitarian nature of these objects should make them useful articles
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl103.html
which can't be copyrighted (though I'm sure they're trying).

Various parts could be covered by design patent, but quite allot of cool military hardware should have no patent on it anymore (barret's 1982 rifle shouldn't have any live patents anymore given the 14-20 year lifespan).

Side note on creative IP litigation: In the EA vs. Textron lawsuit. Textron alleges EA, in violating their trade dress, is confusing gamers about Textron's involvement(lack thereof) in the game. Hopefully EA will win on free speech grounds; and then games, like other forms of artistic expression, won't be as encumbered by licensing fees.

Not to worry, neither am I, but we're in pretty plain territory here. :)

Copyright Basics, from copyright.gov
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is cre
ated in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship
immediately becomes the property of the author who cre
ated the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights
through the author can rightfully claim copyright.
In the case of works made for hire, the employer and not
the employee is considered to be the author. Section 101 of
the copyright law defines a âoework made for hireâ as [...]

I highly recommend to anyone who takes an interest in this to familiarize themselves with the U.S. government's copyright office's Circular #14 entitled "Copyright Registration for Derivative Works," which states: "A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already existing works. Also known as a “new version,” a derivative work is copyrightable if it includes what copyright law calls an “original work of authorship.” Any work in which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship is a derivative work or a new version. "A typical derivative work registered in the Copyright Office is a primarily new work but incorporates some previously published material. The previously published material makes the work a derivative work under copyright law. To be copyrightable, a derivative work must differ sufficiently from the original to be regarded as a new work or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify a work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and formatting are not copyrightable." http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

That's false. Unless you're in certain states in the USA where slavery has made a comeback.

You mean unless you are in the United States, or any territory that US copyright law is enforced. For your reference:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

Note that most "programmers" fall under works for hire. Also, the Supreme Court has ruled that

Moreover, it held that supervision or control over creation of the work alone is not controlling.

So works done that they haven't explicitly asked for, are indeed still covered by works for hire.

Additionally,

If a work is made for hire, the employer or other person
for whom the work was prepared is the initial owner of the
copyright unless both parties involved have signed a written
agreement to the contrary.

I can send you links to judgements from other courts that prove you wrong as well if you so like, but talking out of your ass won't help. Please link to either an official document, like from the copyright office as I did, or to Supreme Court rulings on the matter, otherwise, I'll assume this discussion is over.

"Drug paraphernalia" is illegal to sell because it contains traces of illegal drugs, not because of what it is.

Wishful thinking. Let me introduce you to 21 USC 863 specifically where it defines the term drug paraphernalia:

The term “drug paraphernalia” means any equipment, product, or material of any kind which is primarily intended or designed for use in manufacturing, compounding, converting, concealing, producing, processing, preparing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into the human body a controlled substance, possession of which is unlawful under this subchapter. It includes items primarily intended or designed for use in ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing marijuana, [1] cocaine, hashish, hashish oil, PCP, methamphetamine, or amphetamines into the human body, such as—

(1) metal, wooden, acrylic, glass, stone, plastic, or ceramic pipes with or without screens, permanent screens, hashish heads, or punctured metal bowls; (2) water pipes; (3) carburetion tubes and devices; (4) smoking and carburetion masks; (5) roach clips: meaning objects used to hold burning material, such as a marihuana cigarette, that has become too small or too short to be held in the hand; (6) miniature spoons with level capacities of one-tenth cubic centimeter or less; (7) chamber pipes; (8) carburetor pipes; (9) electric pipes; (10) air-driven pipes; (11) chillums; (12) bongs; (13) ice pipes or chillers; (14) wired cigarette papers; or (15) cocaine freebase kits.

Yet I can still walk into any of the dozen or so head shops in town, and walk out with any of those items, legally. All the proprietors have to do is put a little sticker on the object that states, "FOR TOBACCO USE ONLY," and bip-bang-boom, not drug paraphernalia.

This statue was used as the basis for Operation Pipe Dreams where 55 people were indicted and charged for trafficking in illegal drug paraphernalia.

According to the link you provided, the only arrests made were in Pennsylvania and Iowa. not really what I would consider the national dragnet that you're making it out to be.

subsections of the DMCA,

Such as?

17 USC 1201 section (2) states:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that — (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

As I said before, if the sole purpose of the kit was crime, you'd have a point. However, as the kit can also be used to prevent crime, harden networks, discover bugs, et. al., the DMCA clauses cited above would not apply.

well, that and the fact that 17 USC 1201 section (2) specifically encompasses copyright, and nothing else. Context is pretty important, you know.

consumer protection against malware laws in several states like California, Arizona, Indiana and others...

A) Again, such as? If you can't cite specific ordinance, I'm inclined to call bullshit.

"Drug paraphernalia" is illegal to sell because it contains traces of illegal drugs, not because of what it is.

Wishful thinking. Let me introduce you to 21 USC 863 specifically where it defines the term drug paraphernalia:

The term “drug paraphernalia” means any equipment, product, or material of any kind which is primarily intended or designed for use in manufacturing, compounding, converting, concealing, producing, processing, preparing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into the human body a controlled substance, possession of which is unlawful under this subchapter. It includes items primarily intended or designed for use in ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing marijuana, [1] cocaine, hashish, hashish oil, PCP, methamphetamine, or amphetamines into the human body, such as—

(1) metal, wooden, acrylic, glass, stone, plastic, or ceramic pipes with or without screens, permanent screens, hashish heads, or punctured metal bowls; (2) water pipes; (3) carburetion tubes and devices; (4) smoking and carburetion masks; (5) roach clips: meaning objects used to hold burning material, such as a marihuana cigarette, that has become too small or too short to be held in the hand; (6) miniature spoons with level capacities of one-tenth cubic centimeter or less; (7) chamber pipes; (8) carburetor pipes; (9) electric pipes; (10) air-driven pipes; (11) chillums; (12) bongs; (13) ice pipes or chillers; (14) wired cigarette papers; or (15) cocaine freebase kits.

This statue was used as the basis for Operation Pipe Dreams where 55 people were indicted and charged for trafficking in illegal drug paraphernalia.

subsections of the DMCA,

Such as?

17 USC 1201 section (2) states:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

consumer protection against malware laws in several states like California, Arizona, Indiana and others...

A) Again, such as? If you can't cite specific ordinance, I'm inclined to call bullshit.

Here's a page with some links to State ordinances related to malware

I agree with you about the registration requirements being a big problem.

The Berne convention states (Article 5 (2)): "The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality" However, the US requires registration in order to get statutory damages and attorney's fees. ( http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf pg 7) I wonder if registration could be required for things like takedown notices.

I do wonder how far it would be possible to go without needing to modify the Berne convention. For example, it states (Article 9 (2)) that: "It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author." It might be possible to argue that orphan works are a special case in that they are not being normally exploited and the author has abandoned their legitimate interests.

They may have been "new", but they were reprints of things that went out of copyright before the changes started in 1976. (see Effect of 1976 Copyright Law with Amendments of 1992 and 1998 http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.pdf)

There is a separate provision of U.S. copyright law that prohibits the importation into the United States, “without the authority of the owner of copyright,” of copies of a work “acquired outside the United States.” – Slate

The law is unambiguous:

(1) Importation.—Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. – Importation and Exportation, US Copyright Law

The case is still open, but basically one side is arguing that what ever you own, you don't own it once you take it to USA. After that point you are just a licencee. And it the US copyright owner does not approve you buying the stuff from abroad, you are violating the licence. I recommend you read the article linked at the top to get the picture.

Mod parent up, please. There is generally nothing restricting me (as an individual, or as a business) from renting out anything that I own to others, from my DVD collection to my empty beer bottles, to the sad pile of VHS and Laserdisc movies that I still have.

(Except for computer software which, for some reason, has been declared special by an act of Congress. (And yes, I'm old enough to remember renting PC software from the "video store" before this happened.))

Fair use used to be legal. I could share music and videos with you freely -- even copies, even copies of copies, or copies of copies of copies. The operative word is of course 'free'. I can't charge you for it, and you can't make a profit off it. But as long as you stayed within those boundaries, it was all good.

You do NOT get to make shit up. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

Look, I get it... you're pirating material.. and you're telling yourself all day long, it's ok... this *used* to be legal.

But it's NOT true. If you want to have a reasonable discussion about copyright law.. then YOU NEED TO STICK TO THE FACTS.

The first copyright law was the The Statute of Anne in 1709 in Britain. It did not apply to the colonies. The first copyright act in the US was the US Copyright Act of 1790.. it was similar to the Statute of Anne. http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf

That from and after the passing of this act, the author and
authors of any map, chart, book or books already printed ... shall have the sole right and
liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending such map, chart, book or books, for the
term of fourteen years ...

And be it further enacted, That if any other person or persons, from and after the
recording the title of any map, chart, book or books, and publishing the same as aforesaid, and
within the times limited and granted by this act, shall print, reprint, publish, or import, or cause
to be printed, reprinted, published, or imported from any foreign Kingdom or State, any copy or
copies of such map, chart, book or books, without the consent of the author or proprietor thereof,
first had and obtained in writing, signed in the presence of two or more credible witnesses; or
knowing the same to be so printed, reprinted, or imported, shall publish, sell, or expose to sale,
or cause to be published, sold or exposed to sale, any copy of such map, chart, book or books,
without such consent first had and obtained in writing as aforesaid, then such offender or
offenders shall forfeit all and every sheet and sheets, being part of the same, or either of them, to
the author or proprietor of such map, chart, book or books, who shall forthwith destroy the same:
And every such offender and offenders shall also forfeit and pay the sum of fifty cents for every
sheet which shall be found in his or their possession, either printed or printing, published,
imported or exposed to sale,

Go read the very lengthy document stored here: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ and form your own opinions if you wish.

IANAL, my opinion is worthless.

Thank you, that's interesting and, at least in theory potentially useful to me some day.

(Only had one real copyright claim, someone used one of my images on the cover of their death metal CD and was selling it. No returned phone calls for weeks. Good thing it was the cover, Eventually I DMCA'd the album cover from Amazon's web site, got a call back in *minutes*, whole matter was settled an hour or two later. If they'd counterclaimed, or just used m images inside the CD booklet, ... well, anyway. Weird how these things work.

Anyway, thanks again for the data.

One other thing: The copyright office has an RfC or the like on making a copyright small claims court. I think something like that might be sensible, but IANAL. Anyway, FYI, http://www.copyright.gov/docs/smallclaims/

Nothing in the DMCA says the authors must be named. It says the complaint has to include "A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

dom

For someone in such a position, you should know that such a work is covered by "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians"

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf

(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

I think it's criminal infringement when it's done for financial gain, which I'd guess is a context they might aim for here.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

Look-and-feel lawsuits are less than a crapshoot. Apple lost theirs against Microsoft, for example.

This is a look-and-feel lawsuit, and when it comes to games, look-and-feel is even harder to enforce than the look-and-feel of a spreadsheet program, for example.

To repeat what Hatta posted up there:

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Just because something is visually similar doesn't mean that it's an infringing copy. SCO tried this "nonliteral copying" argument and failed.

--
BMO

Funny you came up with the same exact figure that most of these shady Russian sites sold music for.... (AllOfMP3.com, and so many more like Nuloop and such)

I'd say that $0.20 per track is a pretty reasonable price for digital goods, problem is you're starting to run into a conflict with the amount of revenue the law allocates to the composition's publishers and the songwriters they represent, which in the US is a statutory mechanical royalty rate of around $0.09 which did not seem outrageous when songs were selling for $1 or more, but at $0.20 for the whole thing, this has the potential to become a huge problem.

Anyway, my main argument is that the Russian sites must have researched the tipping point that would make people 'click and buy', which for music seems to me remarkably accurate at around $0.15 to $0.25 per song. Of course I wouldn't expect any record label to agree to this, this is a fight that will go on until those on the side of copyright owners who must change their expectations are given no other choice but to grudgingly take it.

Speaking of mechanical royalties, the white elephant in the room that almost everyone is continuing to ignore is that US terrestrial radio is -unlike any other radio networks in the entire world- still exempt from paying royalties to copyright owners for the use of the sound recording due to a long-standing exemption granted to them by Congress in 1933 to build out their FM networks. (they're still building them as we speak) Only publishers get paid, but nothing goes to those who funded and own the sound recording. [yes, publishing and ownership of master recordings are two separate, distinct areas that most people who aren't familiar with the setup tend to bundle as one thing]

To add insult to injury, and because of reciprocity agreements with other countries, this means that the owners of US copyright cannot collect income from radio play from stations in other countries since those foreign artists are not getting paid this income by US radio. That money goes to 'black box', famously shared and redistributed among society members in whatever country this happened

This exemption is therefore costing the owners of sound recordings an double whammy in lost income. This obviously made sense when one hand was washing the other, and radio play helped certain acts sell into the millions. So it was overlooked as a mere promotional expense. But now that records are not selling, the fact that radio is using all of this music for free -by only paying the publishers- is sticking out like a sore thumb.

I'd say for anybody who's mad, that'd be a much more logical place to start looking for some easy and very large additional income streams, rather than blabber on uselessly flapping their wings about online piracy. But it means butting heads with the NAB's tough lobbyists and ruffling a lot of feathers in places we usually don't have much access to, starting with addresses on K Street, District of Columbia.

No no no, the FBI did not violate copyright by taking the data.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Prosecution of MU counts as a judicial proceeding which is an exemption.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

The copying was incident to a judicial proceeding.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Copying incident to a judicial proceeding qualifies as fair use, and I'm sure that prosecuting someone for copyright infringement qualifies as a judicial proceeding.

The only way this is going to be overturned is to place a stamp of copyright protection on API interfaces directly and hand this whole case to Oracle, giving them everything they ever wanted and more. I just don't see any higher court will do something like that.

I don't see it happening, either, especially as it runs contrary to the interoperability clauses contained within the DMCA. If we are granted special privileges to reverse engineer copy protected works for the purposes of interoperability, surely it is a difficult sell that using an API could be construed as infringing. There is nothing I saw at a glance that explicitly says so, but it is pretty clear that cross-compatibility of programs is considered important, and any ruling to lock down APIs is a complete 180 from that.

From 17 USC 512(g)(2)(C): A service provider that receives a counter-notification "replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice". How am I misreading this?

The problem with a very long copyright term is that the content doesn't go into the public domain. How old is old?

An example of a very old copyright is the King James Version of the Bible, which is still under copyright in the United Kingdom. Should the works of William Shakespeare still be under copyright by his heirs? What benefit would that provide?

Strong copyright really is a strong restriction on speech, where using the Steamboat Willie example you can't effectively use it in examples of early animation. Just as significant is the issue with copyrighted works of about the same age where the current copyright isn't even known. This is an issue known as "orphaned works", where in some cases the company who "owns" the copyright simply doesn't exist. If you want to re-publish some of these older work where the copyright status is uncertain, you take the risk of massive copyright infringement even if you have performed an extensive survey to see who might own that content. This includes simply trying to archive copyrighted material to simply preserve it for future generations, where strong copyright simply prevents even ordinary archiving of that content. This has resulted in some substantial works being lost.

There is also the general issue of content being made available for people to make derivative works. You mention why somebody should profit off of Star Wars? My counter argument to that is what stories have been lost because people can't enter the Star Wars universe and tell stories from that setting, do a "what if" speculation about what might have been if Luke Skywalker failed to destroy the Death Star, and other numerous stories. This isn't just speculation here either, as such stories have been squelched through copyright claims. Yes, fan fiction exists in various forms, but the original copyright holder heavily regulates these kind of stories.

Giving a good example of how stories entering the public domain can benefit from a retelling, "West Side Story" is essentially a retelling of "Romeo and Juliet" but in a much more contemporary setting. If William Shakespeare's copyright was still being honored, that story simply wouldn't have been told. I could say the same thing about "The Lion King" as a retelling of Hamlet. Both of these derivative stories are recycling the work of the past in a new way that really has added value to our culture and serves to encourage retelling these stories in very new ways.

Also, this debate about copyright term length goes back to the debate over the issue with the original constitution convention of 1787, where the issue of copyright terms was raised in that convention. Abuses of copyright at the time were rampant and the copyright clause was explicitly entered into the U.S. Constitution as a protest against the British copyright laws of the era. It should be telling that the first edition of the Bible printed in America was in Cherokee, as publication of the Bible in the English language was prohibited under the copyright laws of the time. It wasn't until after the American Revolution that a copy of the Bible in English was published... after which there were literally hundreds of presses making copies of that particular book. Other writings of the American Revolution as set up by the "Committee of Correspondence" were also critical to spreading knowledge about key issues of the day, where they used something akin to and open source license for spreading that information.

In short, the U.S. Constitution was written with a very limited term explicitly because the founding fathers knew the value of content in the public domain and expected that we should have access to our own cultural heritage. Long copyright terms prevent that. While it was a dissenting opinion (therefore not really law), I did appreciate Justice Breyer's opinion that he wrote for Eldred v. Ashcroft covering this specific topic and why lengthy copyright terms is a bad thing, going into very speci

It's an authorized copy. You're allowed to make it as per the license. Once it's in ram, it can be modified as per copyright law, which makes it clear that the copy in ram is not protected from modification since it is not "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", and in fact almost every program WILL be modified by running it - you have variables that have to be modified to do anything, such as set up a system call, write a value, do a loop.

The confusion arises because there are two separate issues - the license to the original, and the use of the in-memory copy. Where the license to the original allows a single copy of it to be loaded into memory, so as long as the original is validly licensed, you can load ONE copy into ram. Licenses that don't place restrictions on the number of copies that can be loaded into ram, such as the gpl, don't even face this restriction.

So, now that you have a legit image in ram, can you modify it? Of course - just running the program w/o any patches will modify the in-memory image of it if it does anything, such as input or output, or a loop, or pretty much anything else but a bunch of NOPs.

So the question is, can you patch the in-memory image with additional functionality, or remove or alter existing functionality - and Goolab v Nintendo says yes, you can.

"But isn't the in-memory image protected from modification by copyright?"

The Constitution says no

What is copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship <b>fixed in a tangible medium of expression.</b>

As long as you don't create a new copy of the code "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", you have not violated copyright law. So, as long as you don't save that in-memory image to disk or any other method that results in a copy "fixed in tangible medium of expression", you have not violated the authors' rights under copyright law.

It's really not all that complicated.

In fact, when it comes to programs that do something but don't have any runtime-modified variables, I've only written one program that didn't actually have any local variables that were modified at run-time - and it was just to patch a bios at runtime for one program - 12 bytes of assembler.

You still don't get it - copyright law says you do NOT create a derivative work until the "work" is fixed in some permanent media, such as saved to hard disk or DVD or other permanent storage. Neither the GPL nor any other license can get around what copyright law allows.

What is copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.

The key word is FIXED. Saving to ram is not FIXED - it's transient. Patching in ram is not a violation of the copyright act, never was, and since it's part of the original Constitution, unless and until you can amend the Constitution, never will be.

So bring it on - the only "half-assed" here is you refusing to read up even a teeny tiny bit on copyright law and court decisions, and "talking out of your nether regions", to put it politely.

So, to summarize:

1. Ship unmodified binary;
2. Load binary image into ram;
3. Patch binary image in ram with proprietary code - no "derived work" under copyright law since copyright only covers the actual image on disk - "fixed in a permanent medium" - not a transient copy loaded into ram.
4. When someone wrongfully complains "you're violating the license", point out that you do not ship modified binaries, nor is the ram image "fixed in a tangible meadium of expression" such as print, hd, or other non-transient storage, as required within the meaning of the copyright act;
5. If they sue, counter-sue and demand demand their copyrights be assigned as part of any settlement;
6. PROFIT!

Now note that since there is no "derivative work" within the meaning of the copyright act, there is no requirement to ship the source for any in-memory patches. Any attempt to impose such a requrement through some modification of the license is outside the scope of the law, the same as you can't make a license to own a slave.

The GPL won't be around by the end of the decade, because it really is "holed below the waterline" and even version 3 fails to address this gaping hole. And with the availability of hypervisors and gobs of cheap ram, it's no big deal to patch binaries on the fly and cache them in memory.

So anyone can take the kernel, or an open-source database, or even closed-source code (as per Goolab v Nintendo, where Nintendo had to pony up $15 million), and patch it in ram. As long as you hold a valid license to the original, the in-ram copy is perfectly legit, and you can patch it as mutch as you want gratis of any requirement to ship the code for the patches.

No, we won't. It's already well-establshed that you can copyright pantomine acts. You don't even have to take my word for it. Care to just admit you were wrong now?

Unfortunately for your argument, languages are far from information alone with a minimum of original creativity. They take a lot of thinking, planning, and creative thought in order to come up with a structure for others to work in. I completely disagree with Oracle's position here, but you can't claim that creating a programming language is like listing facts in a telephone directory, it takes a lot more work and creativity than that and it is not created based on merely observing the world but on copying the good bits of other languages (so Oracle is crazy to even go down this path). It's more like creating a font, a dictionary, or recipes, all of which have *elements* which are copyrightable, but are in this same murky grey area, precisely because they are used by so many other people to create other stuff, which makes it of questionable value to society to lock them up with copyright.

The amount of effort requires to come up with a language has nothing to do with what is copyrightable. As a direct analogue, here's the US Copyright Office's page on games. Notice:

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

I bring up games because the principles are exactly the same. The rulebook which comes with the game, is a written description of the rules. It is *not* the rules, it is a particular expression in literary form, and is therefore subject to copyright. But the actual rules, the principles, mechanics, algorithms and procedures of the game, are mathematical abstractions. They are ideas, not subject to copyright.

A dictionary is not a language. It describes the language. It is an expression which is copyrightable. A grammar book is not language. It is another description, another literary expression, also copyrightable. Language is abstract. It is a set of rules, and rules are not copyrightable. The _description_ of the rules is copyrightable. In the same vein, the API specification document is copyrightable. The API itself is not. This is an important distinction that most people fail to make.

If Google, for example, were to reproduce Java's API documentation verbatim and distribute it with the Android SDK, they would be in violation of copyright. But if anyone merely read the API and re-implemented the language based on the described rules, they wouldn't be violating any copyright. They may have copied the ideas, but ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Well, it absolutely does not beg the question, but I'll answer it for you anyway. Many many people have been jailed for copyright infringement, it actually happens all the time. The guys selling bootleg DVDs on the street would be the most obvious example. Anyway, for your reference:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

Nothing in there says "you may use small clips, stills, and other unique characteristics from privately owned works to advertise your pub"

From the US Copyright Office:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of 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
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

I'd say it would be fair use in the US, and IINM it's a US company that's suing. Especially considering "The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work." The effect of the Hobbit pub's "infringemet" is selling more copies of the movie.

I'd point you to the statute, but you couldn't afford it.

The statute for statutory damages.

The timing on this is WAAAY too coincidental...that's because the studios rolled this out now so that they could tell the Librarian of Congress that there exists a commercial ability to rip DVDs to digital files for use in the iOS infrastructure and therefore Exemption Class 10 and the position of Public Knowledge is unnecessary. Read the comments and replies, you'll see.

Which makes this all the more insidious. They could have rolled this AGES ago, but they're doing it now to stop American consumers from exercising their Free Use rights for another 3 years...during which, I'm sure, there will be another shift in their business strategy that they will take advantage of to bilk consumers. Ironically, the reason they gave during the arguing of the DMCA for this provision was NOT anti-consumer; instead it was compliance with licensing of hardware manufacturers. How thin that veil was! Because now they're back transparently arguing against the consumer. This needs to stop NOW! The studios stood by and watched the revolution; their loss. Consumers have hundreds/thousands of dollars of DVDs and Blu-rays and capable hardware to do the conversions at their fingertips, just as with CDs and iTunes. Exempt the DMCA and give us the ability to exercise our rights without being labeled "pirates".

The timing on this is WAAAY too coincidental...that's because the studios rolled this out now so that they could tell the Librarian of Congress that there exists a commercial ability to rip DVDs to digital files for use in the iOS infrastructure and therefore Exemption Class 10 and the position of Public Knowledge is unnecessary. Read the comments and replies, you'll see.

Which makes this all the more insidious. They could have rolled this AGES ago, but they're doing it now to stop American consumers from exercising their Free Use rights for another 3 years...during which, I'm sure, there will be another shift in their business strategy that they will take advantage of to bilk consumers. Ironically, the reason they gave during the arguing of the DMCA for this provision was NOT anti-consumer; instead it was compliance with licensing of hardware manufacturers. How thin that veil was! Because now they're back transparently arguing against the consumer. This needs to stop NOW! The studios stood by and watched the revolution; their loss. Consumers have hundreds/thousands of dollars of DVDs and Blu-rays and capable hardware to do the conversions at their fingertips, just as with CDs and iTunes. Exempt the DMCA and give us the ability to exercise our rights without being labeled "pirates".

The timing on this is WAAAY too coincidental...that's because the studios rolled this out now so that they could tell the Librarian of Congress that there exists a commercial ability to rip DVDs to digital files for use in the iOS infrastructure and therefore Exemption Class 10 and the position of Public Knowledge is unnecessary. Read the comments and replies, you'll see.

Which makes this all the more insidious. They could have rolled this AGES ago, but they're doing it now to stop American consumers from exercising their Free Use rights for another 3 years...during which, I'm sure, there will be another shift in their business strategy that they will take advantage of to bilk consumers. Ironically, the reason they gave during the arguing of the DMCA for this provision was NOT anti-consumer; instead it was compliance with licensing of hardware manufacturers. How thin that veil was! Because now they're back transparently arguing against the consumer. This needs to stop NOW! The studios stood by and watched the revolution; their loss. Consumers have hundreds/thousands of dollars of DVDs and Blu-rays and capable hardware to do the conversions at their fingertips, just as with CDs and iTunes. Exempt the DMCA and give us the ability to exercise our rights without being labeled "pirates".

The timing on this is WAAAY too coincidental...that's because the studios rolled this out now so that they could tell the Librarian of Congress that there exists a commercial ability to rip DVDs to digital files for use in the iOS infrastructure and therefore Exemption Class 10 and the position of Public Knowledge is unnecessary. Read the comments and replies, you'll see.

Which makes this all the more insidious. They could have rolled this AGES ago, but they're doing it now to stop American consumers from exercising their Free Use rights for another 3 years...during which, I'm sure, there will be another shift in their business strategy that they will take advantage of to bilk consumers. Ironically, the reason they gave during the arguing of the DMCA for this provision was NOT anti-consumer; instead it was compliance with licensing of hardware manufacturers. How thin that veil was! Because now they're back transparently arguing against the consumer. This needs to stop NOW! The studios stood by and watched the revolution; their loss. Consumers have hundreds/thousands of dollars of DVDs and Blu-rays and capable hardware to do the conversions at their fingertips, just as with CDs and iTunes. Exempt the DMCA and give us the ability to exercise our rights without being labeled "pirates".

The timing on this is WAAAY too coincidental...that's because the studios rolled this out now so that they could tell the Librarian of Congress that there exists a commercial ability to rip DVDs to digital files for use in the iOS infrastructure and therefore Exemption Class 10 and the position of Public Knowledge is unnecessary. Read the comments and replies, you'll see.

Which makes this all the more insidious. They could have rolled this AGES ago, but they're doing it now to stop American consumers from exercising their Free Use rights for another 3 years...during which, I'm sure, there will be another shift in their business strategy that they will take advantage of to bilk consumers. Ironically, the reason they gave during the arguing of the DMCA for this provision was NOT anti-consumer; instead it was compliance with licensing of hardware manufacturers. How thin that veil was! Because now they're back transparently arguing against the consumer. This needs to stop NOW! The studios stood by and watched the revolution; their loss. Consumers have hundreds/thousands of dollars of DVDs and Blu-rays and capable hardware to do the conversions at their fingertips, just as with CDs and iTunes. Exempt the DMCA and give us the ability to exercise our rights without being labeled "pirates".