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Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp., circumstances aren't the same, but they do establish that copyright holders must exercise good faith in determining that a copyright infringement has actually occurred before filing a takedown notice. They don't specifically set out what constitutes good faith, but clearly removing items that simply contained the words "The Box" wouldn't qualify given this "fair use" precedent actually included 29 seconds of copyrighted material and was deemed plausible enough fair use for the counterclaim to proceed.
Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. was a 2007 case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet. Stephanie Lenz posted on YouTube a home video of her children dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy."[1] Universal Music Corporation (Universal) sent YouTube a takedown notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claiming that Lenz's video violated their copyright in the "Let's Go Crazy" song. Lenz claimed fair use of the copyrighted material and sued Universal for misrepresentation of a DMCA claim. The court held that, in violation of the DMCA, Universal had not in good faith considered fair use when filing a takedown notice.
The court also explained that liability for misrepresentation is crucial in preventing abuse of the DMCA as a means to stifle controversial speech.

And USC 17 S512 subsection (f) establishes penalties for misrepresentation by either the copyright holder or the alleged infringer

The DMCA's penalty of perjury language only applies to the statement that the author is "authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512).

If I work for Consolidated Pictures, which owns the rights to the movie The Cairo Goose, and I send a DMCA takedown notice on the file MSDN_Preview_WinNT_Cairo-{g00s3}.rar, and state under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights in The Cairo Goose, I'm fine, even though upon closer inspection the RAR file is, on its face, obviously not a copy of my employer's motion picture. (It's someone else's copyright to enforce. ;))

To be clear, I'm not saying (in a DMCA takedown) that I own the rights to that /file/, I'm identifying a work (The Cairo Goose), saying under penalty of perjury that I'm authorized to act on behalf of the rights holder of that work (The Cairo Goose), and, not under penalty of perjury, that I have a good-faith belief that the file in question is a copy of The Cairo Goose.

Note that 512(f) does provide liability "for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer" when a DMCA notification "knowingly materially misrepresent[s]" infringement.

Also, 512(g) provides for reinstatement of content upon counter-notification where there was a "mistake or misidentification of the material..."

United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Now the actual law derived from this allowance can be found here, and it is not so fluffy. That said, nothing short of a constitutional amendment can override the Constitution, meaning that the above sentence is the entire foundation for Title 17.

what a moron. You can't even find the actual laws that assign copyright, dickhead? Only a complete dumbfuck couldn't do the 30 seconds of googling required to find out.

http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

Got it, shit for brains?

If you legitimately own a copy on some medium, medium-shifting to another one is legal, just like you can rip your own music CDs to mp3s.

Incorrect, at least under U.S. copyright law. RIAA v. Diamond, 98-56727 (9th Cir., June 15, 1999) (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1054784.html), the seminal case on the issue, found a fair use in "space shifting" music to MP3 players, but did so under the auspices of the Audio Home Recording Act (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html), which carves out specific exemptions applicable to sound recordings. No such provision(s) exist for video game ROMs, in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.

So... there's an exemption for Music but not for everything else so you read the negative into it? Generally, in case law as I understand it (not a laywer) - the absence of a case proving a poiint can't be inferred to prove a point.

If you legitimately own a copy on some medium, medium-shifting to another one is legal, just like you can rip your own music CDs to mp3s.

Incorrect, at least under U.S. copyright law. RIAA v. Diamond, 98-56727 (9th Cir., June 15, 1999) (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1054784.html), the seminal case on the issue, found a fair use in "space shifting" music to MP3 players, but did so under the auspices of the Audio Home Recording Act (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html), which carves out specific exemptions applicable to sound recordings. No such provision(s) exist for video game ROMs, in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.

DMCA. Repeat after me, DMCA. The fact arcade games are in proprietary ROMs or even soldered to the mobo, you removing them to "archive" or medium shift, it illegal in the US

Except that an Exception to the DMCA was made:

37 CFR 201.40 Exemption to prohibition against circumvention

1. Compilations consisting of lists of Internet locations blocked by commercially marketed filtering software [...]
2. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. [...]
3. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling of the ebook's read-aloud function and that prevent the enabling of screen readers to render the text into a specialized format.

"Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed." straight from http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

Now I'm not a lawyer, but it was always my understanding that copyright doesn't protect APIs for that reason. An API is really a statement of facts. Now a specific header -might- be covered by copyright and a specific source file (implementation) can definitely be covered by copyright. The API itself though is really a statement of fact to the compiler (And the human). Like a phone book, you can copyright layout and the specifics of a phone book, but you can't actually copyright that "xxx-xxx-xxxx" calls "john doe". Because that is a simply a statement of fact. This is why WINE can even exist. As their implementation of the Win32 APIs is -not- a implementation copy of the Win32 source, it is a implementation that follows the same "truth".

So:
extern double sqrt( double );

Can't really be copyrighted, because it is a literal statement of facts. The implementation may be copyrighted. (in this case the math is ancient, but say a hand tuned assembler might be copyrighted, though a clean room implementation of the api obviously doesn't intrude upon that copyright)

And the java api:

static double sqrt(double a)

isn't violating anyone's copyright by declaring the identical facts for the appropriate language.

Anyway, obviously the courts will have to sort that out. And what the fuck do I know. But if APIs suddenly become copyrightable, then welcome to a world of hurt for everyone who writes software, including Oracle themselves.

The court didn't say "APIs are protected by copyright".

This I am well aware of, but it seems that there is a chance to decide that APIs are copyrightable. Regardless of how 'creative' APIs are, I believe that as the point of inter-operability, they need to be non-copyrightable in order to allow people to reverse engineer. I can see how the courts cannot offer a summary judgement, but at the same time I don't have much faith in the U.S. court system to always come up with the right decision...

By the way. and this is just a side point, but there are 'creative' works out there that are non-copyrightable, such as culinary recipes.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html

We may need a lawyer to speak up on this, but it seems that the creative work would be the food itself, and the mere listing of its ingredients aren't copyrightable. Maybe the API definition will fall under this, being merely a list of functions and not the actual code itself.

What's different now?

A decade ago, ISP-provided web hosting and banner-supported web hosting came with 0.005 GB of space. A decade ago, we were in the dot-com crash. A decade ago, broadband was an experimental, expensive technology, and there weren't enough viewers of bootleg online videos to have a noticeable effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The entertainment industry was still fighting things like Napster and WinMX, which were used more often for single songs rather than albums or movies.

Joe User sees no benefit from the business implementation side of things

Joe User sees that videos are available on the Internet as opposed to not available on the Internet.

you are wrong.

You are thinking that the license applies to a particular instance of the software as if it were a physical thing. That is nonsense, and your theory would get laughed out of court.

The license applies to the work, in the abstract, not to any one particular copy of it. This is a principle of copyright law, but it is also made explicit in the GPL. Read section 0 a few times until that sinks in.

Try reading section 6 a few times until THAT sinks in. It supercedes section 0. Each copy grants the recipient a license.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor.

So, each copy comes with its' own license grant. And no, copyright law doesn't just apply to works in the abstract. It applies to the physical manifestation as well, whether it be a book, a photo, a television broadcast, a live performance, or bits on a disk. You don't receive copyright registrations for a "work in the abstract". For code, you supply a physical copy of the first 25 and last 25 pages of source code (or all if it's 50 pages or less). See also the note that if the program is on a CD-ROM, you must ordinarily send them the CD as well as the source.

Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.

My point if it wasn't clear is if you want to sell digital downloadable music is that you have to get permission of the copyright holders. See In this case, the music companies would not allow Apple nor anyone to do so without DRM. Copyright Law says the copyright holder controls the distribution of their works and DRM was their stipulation. It was the same requirement for MS in their PlaysForSure, Apple in FairPlay, etc. Now if Apple wanted to sell physical CDs online then they didn't need to any DRM but that's not what they wanted to do.

Selling music dates back to Edison's recorded cylinders in the late 1800s and there was certainly no digital rights management embedded in the wax cylinders. Selling non-DRMed music is not a new thing.

I never said DRM was always in music since the time of Edison so your point is rather irrelevant.

In addition, your assertion that copyright law gives copyright holders the ability to add DRM is ridiculous and completely wrong (in addition to being completely irrelevant to the discussion).

Copyright law doesn't give the ability to add DRM. No law ever prevented adding DRM to music, so copyright owners have had the ability to do so since DRM was invented. No law had to be added to 'give' them that ability.

See US copyright law Title 17, Chapter 10 and Chapter 12. Yes it is up to the copyright owners to choose to add DRM and trust me, they wanted to add it.

tl;dr: You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. Please stop making a fool of yourself in public.

I suggest you do some basic research before calling other people names.

Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.

My point if it wasn't clear is if you want to sell digital downloadable music is that you have to get permission of the copyright holders. See In this case, the music companies would not allow Apple nor anyone to do so without DRM. Copyright Law says the copyright holder controls the distribution of their works and DRM was their stipulation. It was the same requirement for MS in their PlaysForSure, Apple in FairPlay, etc. Now if Apple wanted to sell physical CDs online then they didn't need to any DRM but that's not what they wanted to do.

Selling music dates back to Edison's recorded cylinders in the late 1800s and there was certainly no digital rights management embedded in the wax cylinders. Selling non-DRMed music is not a new thing.

I never said DRM was always in music since the time of Edison so your point is rather irrelevant.

In addition, your assertion that copyright law gives copyright holders the ability to add DRM is ridiculous and completely wrong (in addition to being completely irrelevant to the discussion).

Copyright law doesn't give the ability to add DRM. No law ever prevented adding DRM to music, so copyright owners have had the ability to do so since DRM was invented. No law had to be added to 'give' them that ability.

See US copyright law Title 17, Chapter 10 and Chapter 12. Yes it is up to the copyright owners to choose to add DRM and trust me, they wanted to add it.

tl;dr: You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. Please stop making a fool of yourself in public.

I suggest you do some basic research before calling other people names.

You have still been in violation of copyright law and could face $750-150.000 statutory damages for that,

Only if the copyright was previously registered with the US Copyright Office. Otherwise, you are only entitled to provable economic damages, and even that only starts the meter ticking after you notify the entity involved.

Proving actual economic damages on software you've licensed to others "for free" is a tough row to hoe ... the real value of the GPL is its' moral aspect - that it is a "share-and-share-alike" license, and that people who violate it should be ashamed of themselves (and that a court might order infringing products to stop being sold, such as with busybox in big-screen TVs). But how much money did the authors of busybox actually lose because the TV manufacturers were in violation of the GPL? Nothing.

The GPL is a carrot-and-stick, with emphasis on the carrot.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html

I am not a lawyer, but here's how I understand the definitions: If it's transmitted over an electronic network and not fixed on the other end, it's a performance. If a physical copy is delivered, it's a distribution.

Given the comment "It was done on my own time with the companyâ(TM)s full support.

Depends if he can prove that. "On company time" is not something that has held in court from what I remember. And to show they supported him owning the copyright, he would need a signed legal document (I think). I do agree he should consult a lawyer though if he really thinks he has a shot at this.

However from: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf (Emphasis mine)

These factors are not exhaustive. The court left unclear
which of these factors must be present to establish the
employment relationship under the work for hire definition,
but held that supervision or control over creation of the
work alone is not controlling.
All or most of these factors characterize a regular, salaried
employment relationship, and it is clear that a work created
within the scope of such employment is a work made for
hire (unless the parties involved agree otherwise).
Examples of works for hire created in an employment
relationship include the following:

  A software program created within the scope of his or her
duties by a staff programmer for Creative Computer Corporation

Copyright infringement is not a criminal offense.

It is where I live. Where do you live, and what's the best way for an American to legally immigrate?

The government says as much: 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.

Material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container may be registrable.

If your game includes any written element, such as instructions or directions, the Copyright Office recommends that you apply to register it as a literary work. Doing so will allow you to register all copyrightable parts of the game, including any pictorial elements. When the copyrightable elements of the game consist predominantly of pictorial matter, you should apply to register it as a work of the visual arts.

The deposit requirements will vary, depending on whether the work has been published at the time of registration. If the game is published, the proper deposit is one complete copy of the work. If, however, the game is published in a box larger than 12" x 24" x 6" (or a total of 1,728 cubic inches) then identifying material must be submitted in lieu of the entire game. (See âoeidentifying materialâ below.) If the game is published and contains fewer than three threedimensional elements, then identifying material for those parts must be submitted in lieu of those parts. If the game is unpublished, either one copy of the game or identifying material should be deposited.

Identifying material deposited to represent the game or its three-dimensional parts usually consists of photographs, photostats, slides, drawings, or other two-dimensional representations of the work. The identifying material should include as many pieces as necessary to show the entire copyrightable content of the work, including the copyright notice if it appears on the work. All pieces of identifying material other than transparencies must be no less than 3" x 3" in size, and not more than 9" x 12", but preferably 8" x 10". At least one piece of identifying material must, on its front, back, or mount, indicate the title of the work and an exact measurement of one or more dimensions of the work.

FL-108, Reviewed November 2010

U.S. Copyright Office
101 Independence Ave. S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000
(202) 707-3000

Revised: 22-Dec-2010

Most people don't know the law, so they fold when they get the C&D.

So you're free to make your own version of Risk or Tetris - but when you write up the rules, you have to use your own words to describe them - you can't just cut-n-pasta the original rules. The rules aren't protected - only their physical expression is (font, layout, artwork).

People are surprised that there's no copyright to a game name or movie title - but that's why you can see 3-4 movies with the same name and different decades at IMDB, and there's no copyright infringement.

Copyrights are from the moment something is created, it doesn't have to be published. "Publication is not necessary for copyright protection." [Bam, citation: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html%5D. If you wrote a diary and never showed it to anyone, it would still be copyrighted.

And you do need to have seen the original to be in violation of a copyright. If we wrote the same diary, word for word, without having seen each other's, we theoretically would both have rights. [I don't have a public citation for this one.] This is unlike patents, which you can violate without ever knowing the patent existed.

Last I checked, in the US at least, one could have a copyright in ones pen name, so I'm not really sure why there would be something special about using a CC license.

For reference:

"An author of a copyrighted work can use a pseudonym or pen name. A work is pseudonymous if the author is identified on copies or phonorecords of the work by a fictitious name. Nicknames and other diminutive forms of legal names are not considered fictitious. Copyright does not protect pseudonyms or other names. ... But be aware that if a copyright is held under a fictitious name, business dealings involving the copyrighted property may raise questions about its ownership. Consult an attorney for legal advice on this matter."
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl101.html

And only small portions, btw, not the whole thing, which was my claim in the first place, see:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

"reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson;"

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

Enjoy the part that says:
"reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson."

Not the whole of a work. A small part.

For all those claiming I'm wrong, please read this first:

"reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson;"

Not a whole work. A small part. Who says this?
The copyright office.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Title 17 USC Section 107, described here.

The title of a bill has no legal force. The statute covering such attribution is Title 17, United States Code, section 1202, which does not require that "copyright management information" be in digital form as a condition of protection.

3-5 years, depending on whether you're talking about civil or criminal copyright infringement. At least, that's what I got from reading about it a day or two ago.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#507

I just don't see how any finite number of years would count as unlimited under any reasonable definition of the word "unlimited".

A trillion year copyright would reasonably be called "unlimited". Do you disagree? I think this would be pretty obvious to the average person.

My apologies if I'm unfairly stereotyping you, but I think the confusion is just because Slashdot is filled with math-professor and computer programmer types. If you are writing a computer program, you have to assume the computer will take you literally, even if the results are ridiculous. But this isn't true for most communication (including laws)—a person is the intended recipient, not a computer. And the constitution is not a computer program. It's true that in math class, a trillion is a finite number. But to a person, a trillion years is the same as forever.

I've probably wasted too much time already writing a post that no one will read, but it may be appropriate here to quote Supreme Court Justice Breyer in his dissent in the Eldred vs Ashcroft case:

The lack of a practically meaningful distinction from an author's ex ante perspective between (a) the statute's extended terms and (b) an infinite term makes this latest extension difficult to square with the Constitution's insistence on "limited Times."

Yet another games rental service that completely ignores PC gamers.

PC game rental services in the United States would need the copyright owner's permission. Console game rental services do not. See Title 17, United States Code, section 109(b)(1)(B)(ii).

Take down notices only apply to hosts. This man wasn't hosting anything, just providing links to files

That's not how I understand 17 USC 512. Subsection (c) applies to hosts, and (d) applies the same way to "information location tools". But being far less familiar with the (UK) Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 as amended, I was unable to find the corresponding British statute if any.

It's also a crime in some countries to put a fraudulent notice of authorship on a work. For example, in the United States, see 17 USC 1202-1205.

I wrote this above but I'll copy it for you.

I assume you are trying to say they are hypocritical because they Copyrighted a book against IP. Just because you argue for a different set of laws doesn't mean you can ignore the ones that exist. Copyright exists the moment you create it. See http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html [copyright.gov]

If you go to mises.org all of their books are free to download. They registered the copyright for the sole purpose of preventing someone else from copyrighting the works and trying to prevent the free dissemination. This is similar to the creative commons license. It sounds crazy but if you want to make something freely available so people can copy it you have to do this with a copyright. They are just working within the system.

I assume you are trying to say they are hypocritical because they Copyrighted a book against IP. Just because you argue for a different set of laws doesn't mean you can ignore the ones that exist. Copyright exists the moment you create it. See http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

If you go to mises.org all of their books are free to download. They registered the copyright for the sole purpose of preventing someone else from copyrighting the works and trying to prevent the free dissemination. This is similar to the creative commons license. It sounds crazy but if you want to make something freely available so people can copy it you have to do this with a copyright. They are just working within the system.

In this notice, the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, announces that during the period from the time of this notice through October 27, 2009....

[Federal Register: November 27, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 227)][Rules and Regulations][Page 68472-68480]

Expired?

How did the LOC define a library or an archive?

The general impression I have is that this was an academic/istitutional excemption.

The LOC on this same ruling rejected circumvention of CSS to allow DVD play under Linux. Rejected circumvention to play region-encoded DVDs.

There were licensed DVD players for the Linux OS. There were many inexpensive ways to play DVDs from other regions and many still legitimate reasons for region encoding.

The burden is always on the one demanding an excemption.

There is no hard and fast rule about what is and is not fair use. Multiple copies for classroom use in the context of teaching are explicitly mentioned in the statue. As other posters have noted, this is more of an issue for small graduate courses - undergraduates typically use a textbook. In some cases works are out of print. Finally, in academic publishing, this is hardly about authors making money - academics don't write academic books to make money, they do it to advance their fields and their own careers.

Fair use explicitly includes the possibility of multiple copies for classroom use in the context of teaching.

The point of copyright is not making people pay for things, it is public benefit. We tend to forget that, but in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, SCOTUS put it well: "The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.”

"Multiple copies for classroom use" is not license for copy shops to duplicate textbooks next to campus, or even course packets. But if as a professor or teaching assistant, I want to photocopy a chapter from a seminal text for my class of 20 students, I am well within my rights.

Hell, there are some books that aren't even in print anymore... used copies are not only outrageously expensive, there simple aren't enough to go around. Sure, I can place it on two hour reserve at the library... or, I can use the Xerox machine in the manner in which it was intended.

Take it one step further. With Bittorrent you're rarely in a position to transfer the entire file to one person, especially on popular torrents like newly released movies. What you're really doing is uploading small chunks of the film to different people, something that everyone here has no trouble understanding but seems to be a hopelessly complicated concept for much of the older generation.

Now the question is, what does copyright apply to? The entire film or all the little bits that make up the film? I don't think any sane person could claim it's the latter, because practically that would make every sequence of bits someone's intellectual property. Even if we couple that idea with a context how do we legally define the context? The name of the file those bits are a part of? And what happens if I encrypt or compress those bits? What if I mix them with bits from other sources? There's just no way to make this definition work. So if I'm not distributing the film in its entirety, if I'm not even distributing large parts of it to the same people, then I think you could argue that distributing it over Bittorrent doesn't violate any IP laws.

Lets say I have a counterfeit bag, some expensive designer one. If I sell that bag to someone, or even give it to someone, I've distributed counterfeit goods. But if I cut that bag up into hundreds of little pieces of fabric, then distribute those pieces to hundreds of different people, have I broken a law? What if I do this 10 times with 10 bags, over thousands of people, have I distributed 10 bags to people? I don't think so. Even if you could reassemble those pieces into an original bag I still haven't given a bag to any one person.

Even the law itself defines infringement to be "any secondary transmission by a cable system that embodies a performance or a display of a work which is actionable as an act of infringement". How can anyone claim a small segment of the billions of bits that make up a movie embodies it? Without the rest of it, they're nothing. Even if you argue that a person could extract a single frame from them, then a simple encryption pass would turn them into truly random noise. At least, until you have the whole file to decrypt.

Sure it's all technicalities, but isn't that what law is?

I recommend everyone leech their torrents to remain legal.

I recommend everyone leech their torrents to remain legal.

It sounds like there were many people recording this particular appearance. Surely the Republican party would not have a legal leg to stand on with regards to pulling clips made by multiple people. I could understand if the Polk Cnty. Republicans wanted to pull their particular recording, but what if somebody else were to release the clip that they made into the public domain? IANAL, so if somebody could explain that to me, I'd really appreciate it.

If it were a private event, then yes one has the right under copyright law to restrict clips made by people attending. This is how the NFL and music bands restrict people from publishing their own videos and pictures of games and concerts.

However, if something happens which makes the clip newsworthy, then it qualifies under the fair use section of copyright law and people are allowed to disseminate the clip for news reporting purposes. If a player or guitarist got killed at a game or event, then you could publish your video of it as a news report and there's nothing the NFL or the band could do to stop you. The Congressman's comments about "struggling" to get by on $174k have become newsworthy, so the clip is free to reproduce for news reporting purposes. He still retains copyright to it - you can't include it in DVDs you sell of "Dumbest Things Politicians Have Said" without getting his permission first. But if you're reporting news (or spreading the word, such as news reporting has become in today's world of Youtube videos, blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates), you're free to duplicate it.

I say this as a conservative: The Congressman hasn't got a leg to stand on. The news reporting fair use exception to copyright law was put there to prevent exactly what he's trying to do.

There is a statutory exception for circumventions performed in the course of an investigation by a bona fide law enforcement agency. See 17 USC 1201(e). I imagine that anyone participating in this competition would be deemed "a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States", though I'd check with the FBI first to make sure such a contract is in place.

Google basically gambled that they could violate copyright on all books and get away with it.

Actually, Google was sued for digitally copying library books, making them searchable, and allowing users to see a few "snippets" in the search results. The copying is exactly analogous to the copy of every webpage that exists inside any search engine. A lot of people get confused because the Google Books project also encompasses an opt-in publisher program that allows people to read several pages of books. But for books from libraries that are still under copyright, all Google has done is make a digital index and show snippets, and Google's defense is that its actions are legal under fair use.

Rather than lobbying to make some sane changes to copyright law, they want copyright to remain overly strict, but to just apply to everyone except them. One law for Google, one law for everyone else. Of course, it's okay because Google isn't evil...

In fact, Google has lobbied in favor of orphan works legislation. Just do a search for [orphan works google] before 2008. For example, here's Google's position in 2005. Google has been pretty consistent here.

When Google was sued, it had two choices: 1) defend its fair use to the end, or 2) find common ground with the plaintiffs and push the boundaries of class action lawsuits. They didn't have the option of passing orphan works legislation for everybody (although they have supported it), but they thought they could get it for themselves in a mutual agreement with the class.

Facts arent subject to copyright
"Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."

Ref - http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html#what_protect

Function call expressions probably arent copyrightable as they cant be expressed uniquely and still work.

But if there is leeway to expressed them, or groups of them unique then they might b subject to copyright.

example
int foo(int bar);
int foo(int a_rigid_piece_of_metal_or_wood);

Both are compatible (c just needs the type not the name) but maybe they are considered differently expressed, and therefore each is separately copyright-able.

What if there are 1000 functions, both ordered randomly, are the files different unique expressions.

Of course its easy to get around such problems by reducing them to facts, e.g. int foo(int);

* as defined in sections 2,3 of http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of-Congress-1201-Statement.html

The human understandable portion of your post - that part beginning ... ending: "Every application ... the number:" - is the result of a human creating it (creative expression). It enjoys protection under US copyright law.

That string of hex digits is the result of a mechanical process that is a translation - a derivative work. It differs in form, but not - if a reverse translation mechanism is available (and such is) - content. That, by US Law renders the hex string not protected by US copyright (see: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf).

This is the problem. That bit vector ensconced in a device's firmware, even though it is the result of a mechanical process, that mechanical process is but the end point of a creative process and can enjoy copyright protection (US). A hexadecimal representation cannot.

George Hotz (GeoHot), famous for his iPhone hacking achievements, is planning on fighting Sony over their violating his rights to use--however he sees fit--hardware he's paid for. Ever since sharing his iPhone hacks, Hotz has always claimed being against piracy and says he's never pirated any game, or even signed any PlayStation Network agreements. He's asking for donations to fight Sony and try to achieve something similar to what was previously accomplished by the EFF in regard to cellphones.

And I threw in the most relevant link of them all, viz., the link to fucking donate.

I suggest you read the other posts in this thread which point out that I am absolutely correct.

I will post the links they use to refer to the applicable government agencies position on the matter:

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

betamax cassettes don't have the capability to see exactly what you are copying and determine if it should be allowed or not.

Nor does a file sharing service. Without a database of every non-free copyrighted work ever published, it can't determine whether the VP8 frames and Vorbis MDCTs of the .webm video that you uploaded represent a non-free copyrighted work. Relying on title matching leads to the Usher debacle. An automated process currently can't detect nonliteral copying either, such as adaptation of a non-free copyrighted book into a film. And even if an automated process could reliably identify all non-free copyrighted works used in a given work, no automated process can make judgments about the purpose and character of a particular use. That's why the law relies largely on takedown notices.

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

That should cover it for you.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

These are the basic exclusive rights of the owner of the work. It says nothing about performing (i.e. Playing a record, dvd, whatever) in private. You have all the right to reproduce privately a legally owned copy of a copyrighted work, regardless of what any piece of paper attached to it might say. It's reproduction (copying), (re)distribution, PUBLIC performance, etc that are exclusive to the owner of the original work.