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• "[it] does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous 'fair use' provisos of existing copyright law"
• "I could always use excerpts for commercial or noncommercial purposes. It's called fair use. I can still do that, but Creative Commons seems to hint that with its license means that I cannot."

Yet every single CC license clearly states "Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above."

Lessig wrote a very interesting book on the subject. An articulate response to that would be great, but Dvorak is just spreading clueless FUD.

Link - http://www.free-culture.cc/

Creative Commons Licensed: BY-NC-SA

Free Culture is (cc)... don't think any of the others are though.

Is it really like breaking into BEST BUY and stealing CDs' and movies ?

Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/ talks about this issue, and does a pretty good job of arguing that the theft of "tangible property" like a music CD, and the theft of (or violation of) "copyright property" are not exactly the same crime:

When you walk into Camelot Music, and take the latest Snoop Dog CD off the shelf, then Camelot Music has one less CD to sell. Camelot then will have to consider the loss of 15 bucks or whatever it is, because they can't replace that CD for free.

This isn't the case when you download an "unpermissioned" copy of the same work. The way digital technology works, copies are perfect and infinitely low in cost. The value assigned to the copy (of the copyright protected content) is determined by the author, or publishing company - because the physical, or "real" world attributes no value to the copy since it is so easy to reproduce... infinitely.

There is the view that, because you downloaded the content for free illegally, then the money you WOULD have paid is what was lost in profit. Well, that begs the question: Is it absolute that the content you acquired for free would be content that you would have paid for had it not been available for free. RIAA rejects that argument, saying "If you want it at all, then the law says you pay, it doesn't matter if you wouldn't have it if it weren't available for free... that's irrelevant." That's a redirection though - the question wasn't "does it violate copyright law", yes it does. The question was "is it the same as the theft of tangibles".

The paradox of copyrighted content having no actual value and instead only the artificial author-determined law-enforced cost is a recent development. It comes with the digital territory. Thank about it: Books - the original copyrighted material, had to be printed and published (which cost money) and on ACTUAL paper (which kills trees AND costs money) - so this is really the first time in history that copyrights have been so trivial to violate. The trivialness is what makes it's tremendous penalization so absurd. Think about this:

A doctor can cut off your left leg - when you really had a problem with your right leg. Penalty for malpractice? $250,000. max. And that act of butchery requires the negligence of a highly trained professional and (probably) a team of highly qualified peeers. Tons of prep go into a surgery like that, and measures are taken to, in theory, ENSURE that you the patient know WHAT is going to be lopped off.

Compare that to the mere act of a teenager (with probaby little to no knowledge of what a copyright is - thanks public school!) downloading all those PHAT TUNES marketed to them nonstop... and they get it for free, and burn it to CD to listen to with their friends. That teen lands their family smack dab in the middle of a multi million dollar law suit.

Someones earlier post mentioned that law is supposed to promote the general welfare. Is it not blindingly obvious that, in Mr. Lessig's terms, the law has been "queered" to benefit the uber rich?

There ought to be a balance between the flow of content into the public domain (so that culture may be promoted and built upon) and the regulation of content ( rights gauranteed to the author for a sufficient amount of time so as to provide the incentive for innovation ). Currently this balance does not exist. And the powerful RIAA and MPAA lobyists have a very extreme view on what role copyrights ought to play in our culture, and by consequence (this is scary) who is ALLOWED to create and distribute content, and who isn't.

Hint: all your base are belong to them.

Prof. Lessig has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. He is offering his latest book, Free culture, as a free download. You can get it as a 2.4MB PDF, a bittorrent, or a in a bunch of other formats. Enjoy.

To those with existing business models on selling contents, yes. Read the manifesto. There's also a more coherent summary. It's only a problem if you believe the current (or rather recent past) model is the right way to distribute content and sharing is wrong.

There are excellent points in this manifesto. As far as the sharing is concerned, the point is that the days of media companies making money from selling content are just about over. There's a new market in town and if they don't invest in new business models they will die. This doesn't mean content will die, but the monopolies and their business models will die because they thrive only through scarcity, which is gone now. And there are people in line to take their place. Already there are commercial companies jumping into the new markets opened up by P2P.

I think the manifesto is an excellent companion to Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture and the free culture movement it's inspired. The manifesto probably needs to be edited and updated by someone with more eloquent writing skills, but I think that's the point of article and releasing it under a CC license.

The thing is that due to recent changes to the copyright laws of the US, the ??AA's now OWN our culture for however long they want.

Wether (uncommercial) piracy is ok or not can be discussed, but allowing a few large corporations to control our culture, freedom of speach, kill the public domain etc is NOT OK.

Check out Lawrence Lessigs Free Culture, or look for a presentation he did on the subject...

The following website links to a book by Prof. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford on copyright issues. He actually argued a case in the Supreme Court two or so years ago against the continous extensions of copyright limits by Congress which prevented a lot of material entering the public domain. (He lost and explains why in the book)

http://www.free-culture.cc/

He has good historical examples explaining how big media uses the law and technology to curtail creativity. Discusses everything from the lawsuits on college students by **AA to those of RCA on FM inventions in the 1930s. Definitely a good read by anyone interested in copyright issues.

By the way, Lessig is Chairman of the Creative Commons Foundation.

It sounds like the judge read and took to heart Larry Lessig's book, Free Culture. A free download and a must-read!

Attacking Playfair shows that Apple will not tolerate iTunes users who want to be in control of their own computers. It may allow people to jump through hoops to extract the plaintext - but it will always be on their terms.

Laws in our country make Playfair illegal. They are obligated to fight it. If Playfair had stayed under the radar and wasn't blasted out all over everywhere maybe Apple could have ignored it. Once you are flouting the removal of the DRM that allows them to run a business, you can bet their lawyers will be looking for remedies. But there's already a solution to this problem ... if you want legal DRM free digital content (as you put it "to be in control of their own computers") you must buy CDs. Not to sound like a whiner or anything, but no one is forcing people to use iTMS. It's just simple economics, people (not me, I have yet to buy a tune from iTMS) are saying "I don't mind the restriction, or lack of ownership, or account management that comes with saving five bucks on a record." People are saying "I will accept DRM in order to save a little money and have the music now, rather than waiting for a very flat cylinder to come in the mail."

In defense of iTMS, I do like to shop around, and watch the movie trailers and enjoy the samples, but I've just never been compelled to purchase. I haven't really loved some song so much that I would buy a one off track, I'd rather own the whole record. I know iTMS sells albums, so no need to remind me. I'm saying the economics is what motivates me... I don't mind to pay a little more and get all 44 thousand bits of every second.

Now, regarding p2p etc... I know I've talked about fair use and all. P2p is great... I use it, who doesn't, but the fact is copying (note I didn't say stealing or pirating) something to which you have no right is illegal. I mean, it's the law. Until the law is changed copyright holders pretty much have an obligation to protect their material.

So anyhow - the bad guys see how easy it is for us to get something for nothing, it steams them up and they resort to DRM. You think they could just ask us to stop? "Hey all you teens sharing your Timberlake mp3s, will you please stop? You're forcing us to enact copy control regimes..." As long as it's legal to buy DRM free digital music your argument doesn't hold up. As a thought experiment - maybe we should be talking about movies instead... maybe there's a fair use argument to be made about downloading a movie ... since there is no drm free outlet for digital movies. You'd still have to own a piece of plastic in our current regime.

The problem is behavioral as much as it is legal and technological.

Read Lessig's book if you haven't. It's here if you like.

"The whitepaper goes on to state that the long-term goal of this system is to catalog every human creation in existence that can be expressed by a digital medium."

This is being done to squeeze yet more money out of "consumers" for the copyright creators.

I don't overly fault the creators for doing this. I do fault ourselves for not finding a way to do something similar, although for different ends.

Specifically, referencing page 126 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture ...

"Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution is that for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all books published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an archive of all moving images and sound...

But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of libraries or archives could be. When the commercial life of creative property ends, I don't know. But it does. And whenever it does, Kahle and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand it; some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had become unimaginable for much of our past--a future for our past. The technology of digital arts could make the dream of the Library of Alexandria real again.

Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building such an archive. But lawyers' costs remain. For as much as we might like to call these "archives," as warm as the idea of a "library" might seem, the "content" that is collected in these digital spaces is also someone's "property." And the law of property restricts the freedoms that Kahle and others would exercise."

Fight for sensible copyright laws. Donate to the EFF. Or do both.

But we must stop doing nothing.

- Neil Wehneman

From Lessig's book Free Culture:

"Indeed, the catalog of Disney work drawing upon the work of others is astonishing when set together: Snow White (1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), /Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), /Robin Hood (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Mulan (1998), Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), and The Jungle Book (1967)--not to mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, Treasure Planet (2003). In all of these cases, Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn."

Yeah, and it doesn't keep track of all the crappy albums and movies that people avoided buying because they sampled first.

Anyway, I strongly suggest that people read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture book (available for from online).

This is the kind of gross misuse of copyrights that is appalling. A little digging around on the Google and we can see that author of this song is Woody Gurthrie who lived from 1912-1967. Now assuming Woody Gurthrie wrote this song on the year of his death under the original copyright laws this work would have passed into public domain by 1999. But due to lobbying efforts of the music and movie industry this period has been extended to before the Great Depression! This isn't all that important though because it is still copyrighted regardless of former laws. However, what is important is that this song on JibJab isn't the exact song by Woody Gurthrie that was copyrighted, it is cleary a derivative work that is based on a copyrighted work but which adds a creative element that goes far beyond what Woody Gurthrie ever did. This is an issues talked about extensivly throughout the book Freeculture by Lawrence Lessig which is freely downloadable at his site. One example given in the book is how many great works where based on copyrighted works before them that had not yet entered public domain such as Disney movies or Japanese comics. The general idea is that although new works are based on older copyrighted ones it doesn't hurt the original copyright holder and serves to stimulate the growth of culture. For more information check out FreeCulture.org

www.downhillbattle.org

www.freeculture.org

www.free-culture.cc

I just finished reading Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig's latest book. That was an interesting read, and I found it remarkably similar on some points to thoughts I've had on the subject lately.

The last few chapters discuss ways that individuals and governments can and should act to preserve free culture and prevent the culture cartels from gaining more influence. He gives several examples of proactive efforts to preserve freedoms that were lost as technology developed. The Free Software movement was the first example, and Lessig explained how the GPL proactively protects freedom to derivitize, use, and distribute software. It has taken a couple of decades, but there is now a healthy and vibrant ecology in the copyleft commons of software.

He then listed several examples of using ideas from the FSF copyleft commons to proactively protect freedom of non-software things. The Public Library of Science was discussed, as well as the Creative Commons. I remember reading the philosophy section of the GNU project website a few years ago and thinking, "You know, these guys are really on to something..." The ball is rolling, and with work and time we will have a free culture protected by copyleft, including art, literature, music, software, entertainment, and scientific discovery. This is not about communism. It's about FREEDOM, sweet FREEDOM.

His book can be purchased on paper, or downloaded free (he has literally put his money where his mouth is). I was about halfway through the electronic version when I decided to support it by buying the hardcopy (which is easier to read anyway).

I strongly recommend this to anyone. Buy it. Read it. Tell other people about it. And mention it in the first post on a digital rights story on /.

I have been using PDAs for precisely this function for about 2 years now. I avoid eBooks like the plague because of DRM and other stupid old technology features (like pages). (For a good example of the limitations of eBooks read Chapter 10 of Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig). I also use PDAs to read news I gather from the Net. From my experience:

• Zaurus:

  The webbrowsing and text viewing applications are fairly fast once they have been loaded into memory. NetFront (the webbrowser) supports CSS and properly renders PNGs. Web pages are generally pretty, although getting large fonts to work is a bit of a hassle. Both CF and SD/MMC cards are supported.

  The screen on the Zaurus is unbelieably bright (especially if you have used an iPAQ before). The colors are breathtaking. The screen is really amazing. The resolution is also really 640x480 like on a desktop (for post C700 models).

  The Zaurus battery is rechargable and replaceable like a cellphone battery. It lasts for hours even when playing mp3s.

• iPAQ:

  PocketIE is very slow. It starts up quickly but loads pages slowly. It does not support CSS and renders PNGs improperly. It often crashes or locks. The screen cannot be scrolled while it is loading. For older web pages, it is not bad, though.

  Text is loaded in PocketWord. This is, for lack of a better word, a beast. It is extremely slow, and you would not want to read with it. If you have a CF card expansion pack, forget reading text files. It cannot handle large text files (read: Gutenberg etext files) well or at all (I have not tried in a long time). If you have a CF card expansion pack, forget PocketWord: It will not work.

  The screen is bright enough and the resolution is good enough for reading. The colors are nice enough. In addition, the iPAQ comes with a sort of sunscreen case, which makes it readable in extremely bright sunlight (that is a difficult feat even for paper books).

  My iPAQ does not have a replacable battery, but most of the new models I have seen do. The battery life is very good. It should last many hours even when playing mp3s. There are expansion packs with extra batteries.

• PalmOS:

  From what I have been told (by vendors), the Palm does not have a webbrowser. I know there are specialty programs, like Plucker, for converting web pages to PalmOS compatible formats, but I think this is terribly old fashioned of the Palm people to leave this feature out.

  The displays on Palms I have looked at in stores have not impressed me. There could be a model with an unbelievable display, but I have not seen it.

  I cannot comment on anything related to batteries because I have not used a Palm.

  For the first two reasons, I never waisted my money on a Palm. It seems they are trapped in a time warp of what "PDA owners" of 1996 wanted or something. They do not seem to be concerned with putting a computer in your pocket. For people who use PDAs for their PDA functions, however, I have heard that Palm is the best.

Finally, I have not used actual eBook or PDF software on any of the three. I think HTML is the way to go anyway. I just want some pretty text. I do not want pages or DRM or other restrictions. I also like to be able to scroll text. I also want images, but I do not want them locked into the document where I cannot view them separately (many webbrowsers, PocketIE in particular, shrink images to an unreadable size, but image display programs will still display them properly).

1) regarding greed, etc.
Yes, all of these things are money in the pockets of the studios. But they're also money in the pockets of others - and this is where the greed comes in. Quoth the karma whore: "it's not about the money, it's about ALL the money". Copyright says that the content owner has the exclusive right to profit from his property, except under some cases - of which one is fair use. The content industry throws huge amounts of money into fighting fair use or any other limitation of copyrights because it is to their economic benefit to do so. This is an industry that sued to keep the recording button off your video recorder. This is an industry that puts copy protection on CDs, and then lobbied for the DMCA which makes it a crime to circumvent this copy protection, even if you are making a backup copy of your own CD. This is an industry that sued the Girl Scouts for failing to pay for the songs they sing around camp fires. I could go on for pages and pages and pages.

2) regarding the original intent of copyright
In the US, copyright originally granted the authors of "maps, charts and books" the exclusive right to publish their work. That's it. You could put on a play based on a book: didn't involve copyright - the notion of "derivative work" didn't even exist. You could even translate a book and publish the translation. And you got these exclusive rights for 14 years, renewable once - if you registered for them. After that, the property entered the public domain. The original intent of copyright was basically to protect authors - people - against publishers - companies - that would try to unfairly profit by the most vile of acts: straightforward copying with no added value whatsoever.

The content industry always cries "copyright" because no other branch of legislation has been so friendly to them, and no other branch of legislation has ever been so slanted to favor the big against the small. Everything that you write here is copyright to you - for your life plus an additional 70 years. You don't have to register or renew anything, it's automatic. If, tomorrow, some big company decides to take one of your comments and publish it in a book (or make a movie or play out of it, or set it to music and release it) then you can sue them for copyright infringement. And you will never - hear this: NEVER - win (unless of course you are fabulousely rich) because you cannot stand the financial strain of a protracted legal dispute with a big company. You can't go the the police or the FBI and denounce these people: you have to file a suit to protect your copyright. They might offer to settle out of court: figure it will cost them 100KUSD at least to wake up the lawyers and so just offer you that to buy the rights, but you will never win a case and stop them publishing it.

I *strongly* suggest that you read "Free Culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity" if you haven't yet done so. It's available online for free here. Despite the title, it is not a crackpot work. Pretty much all the examples I have used here are from that book and "The Future of Ideas" by the same author. Read them - it will not be a waste of your time.

If I was an aspiring legal type, I'd probably clerk for just about any appellate level judge that would take me. The experience would be too good to pass up.