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I doubt its true but someone once told me that VCR's with RCA inputs had [to] include a macrovision chip to scramble the signal.

It's true. Page 4 of this LoC document states that the DMCA requires new VCRs manufactured or sold in the United States to respond to automatic gain control and four-line colorstripe copy protection; both techniques are used in the Macrovision system. The relevant statute is 17 USC 1201(k).

Correct. Copyright does NOT protect titles!

Does anyone have a license agreement from a Sony game that specifically allows the "copy in memory"? I've certainly never seen that on other software license agreements.

I don't know about UK law, but you haven't seen it on American software because US copyright law automatically grants that right to the owner of a legitimate copy. See my earlier comment.

By that argument, proxy servers and browser caches are illegal too.

No, the DMCA made those legal, at least in the USA. Seriously. Look at page 10 of this PDF from the Library of Congress.

IANAlan Cox, but what 99% of the people in this discussion fail to realize is that this probably has nothing to do with the future of Redhat/Linux, but with the principles involved.

Fact: Alan Cox has serious issues with the DMCA, both practical and philosophical.

Fact: AOL/Time-Warner, being an industry leader in the area of movies and such, is a proponent of the DMCA and other similar laws.

Alan, being a man of principle, probably feels that the merger would be a bad thing becuase of this, and his working in the resulting company would comprimise things that he believes in. Unlike many people in this world (and, it seems, on slashdot), he feels the finding a new job is the proper course of action in this case.

As an aside, the non-Alan consequences of this are interesting - AOL/TW owns RH, in order for RH to play DVDs (which is an important feature of a modern desktop OS) it needs to violate the DMCA, AOL/TW supports the DMCA. So with AOL/TW owns a product that endorses breaking the DMCA, or they give RH (and by that, perhaps all of Linux/x86) a "legal" (if not open) method to play DVDs.

Ya gotta love the RIAA going against the DMCA or whatever that anti-reverse-engineering thing is called.

According to this PDF from the US Library of Congress, law enforcement officers operating in the line of duty are exempt from the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. (Read More...)

As the article points out, PVR's do not use removable media (hey, now there is a good idea for me to patent... if only I believed in our patent and copyright system and it was how it should be). Therefor, it makes it nearly impossible for me to distribute/lend my copy to someone else (network TiVos are something else). This was the video industry's major gripe against VCRs when they were introduced. All though I would be quite enraged if they prevented me from recording broadcasts on a removable digital media, I would be far more enraged if I could not make digital recordings on a PVR.

Ultimately, IMHO, something like SCMS will be introduced to prevent multiple perfect digital copies originating from one source. However, SCMS was a joke for MiniDisc/DAT-- many units simply ignored the copybits or gave the option to turn them off. If worse came to worse, you can whip up a bit stripper and copy until your heart is content. Hopefully, if we end up getting a SCMS-like system on digital broadcasts, it will be taken as seriously as it was on MD/DAT and/or be very simple to beat...

...Then, of course, we would violate the DMCA and go to jail for months before our arraignment...

... building a Dolby Pro-Logic encoder for an Edison Cylinder Phonograph

Look, if a law that restrictive was ever passed, Police officers would be breaking it.

According to page 5 of this PDF from the Library of Congress, law enforcement officers acting in official duty are exempt from the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Remember Prohibition?

The current crop of Republicrat legislators don't seem to; otherwise, they would have repealed the anti-recreational-drug laws a long time ago.

Any politician who would vote for such a thing better hope the donation from the media companies can buy him a ticket to Rio and keep him fed for the rest of his life

Find how much your politician got from Di$ney at Open Secrets.

because his public "service" career would end at the next election

Not with our ovine electorate.

AudioGalaxy IMHO is the best free client out there . The others such as MusicCity's Morpheus, Bearshare, Limewire, and KaZaA all have been held accountable for copyright violations. You might remember the slashdot article entitled P2P vs. RIAA: RIAA Wins. Now aren't we glad that our government passed that wonderful law called The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)[pdf]?

Thinking of downloading a free share program, ever wonder how RIAA can attack you? The following was taken from their website outlining how the DMCA can be used against you and I.

"The DMCA law also delineates the responsibilities of Internet service providers (ISPs) in cases of infringement online. For example, the law formalizes a notice and takedown procedure between ISPs and copyright owners. It is now clear that when an ISP is aware it is posting or transmitting infringing content, the ISP must act to remove the infringing works or it may be liable for any resulting damages." snip

So what has RIAA been up to? The following is proof that they have been busy using their precious DMCA.

The RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit seized 1,257,796 illegal CD-Rs by midyear 2001, this is up 133% compared to midyear of 2000. Here is a link to a pdf with their mid year statistics for 2001; and then I will end my rant on RIAA because I don't want to get too offtopic :)

On Cnet they keep track of the most popular mp3 search utilities. Morpheus comes in first this week with slightly less than a million and a half downloads; it has an impressive 42 million total downloads. Remember back to the height of Napster's popularity, they had a supposed 200 million users. This number shouldn't be compared to the number of total downloads due to the possibility of users creating multiple accounts.

Also on Cnet, Napster 2.0 beta 10.4 the one that was reviewed in the article has a ghastly approval rating of 0.099. That means that less than one hundredth of the people that downloaded the new pay-for-play Napster actually liked it. Going through the user reviews of the products it appears that they find that Napster falls short of the free clients, it certainly is apparent that it does not yet have the user base that Free Nappyster enjoyed.

For the electronic junkies out there I would recommend a less well known file sharing client known as SoulSeek. You can download it not from Cnet, but from their own website. The latest version is 104 and it includes dedicated techno/electronica service with a great user base; "Private messaging capabilities with both online and off-line users; Folder based file-sharing, which allows for more convenient browsing and downloading; Fine-grained control over file-sharing, with the ability to restrict access to a select list of users, as well as the ability to disallow access to specific users; Fine-grained transfer queue management, with the ability to restrict the number of uploads and downloads per-user and in total; File searching with users in room or in user list; Wishlist that takes search patterns for easy automatic notification when certain files become shared; A generic personalized recommendation system." snip

Now that these Pier to Pier file sharing networks have taken over, they are looking for ways to make money. Maybe to pay their programmers and lawyers. Beware of the adervistements that come bundled along with the install for the more popular sharing clients, such as Audiogalaxy. These bundled programs are known as SpyWare.

-If I metamoderated myself I would care more about karma

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/4409.html

you're trusting everything2 for accurate data [on the Bono Act]?

You mean like this?

Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (idea) by yerricde
Wikipedia article covering the Bono Act to which I contributed heavily

Yes. I'm trusting myself and my sources (which include the Library of Congress web site and Open Secrets) for accurate data.

I have a feeling they will use a combination of video watermarking and steganography to allow copyright holders to mark any video as their own. Of course, like sdmi, it won't last long.

Persuant to the DMCA, we probably won't ever hear about it. Maybe, we need to help these guys.

Finally someone is paying attention to this issue. I've posted this information in a couple of slashdot threads, and here it is again. It's one of the most incredible recording industry lies/ripoffs. Maybe now it will get some attention.

The upshot of it is that every time you purchase a digital audio recorder, or blank digital audio recording media, such as audio CDRs, you pay a small statutory royalty into a fund. This fund is collected by the Federal Government, and turned over directly to the music industry. The name of the fund is the DART fund. DART stands for "Digital Audio Recording Technology". The best source of information on the DART fund is right here

These documents are very interesting. They show how the money was paid out. The law was written to allow all of the major copyright interests to gather together and collect all the money in one lump sum. According to the first report on the page, we find that 99.997% (LITERALLY!) of all of the statutory royalties collected on blank digital audio media (mostly CDRs), and digital audio recording devices went to the following organizations:

Broadcast Music, Inc. (``BMI'');
the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (``ASCAP'');
SESAC, Inc. (``SESAC'');
the Harry Fox Agency (``HFA'');
the Songwriters Guild of America (``SGA'');
and Copyright Management, Inc. (``CMI'')

Copyright Management, Inc. is a blanket organization that represents all of the major record labels.

In other words, all of the people who are raising hell that they aren't being paid when people burn music onto CDRs are being ...

you got it ...

paid every time a blank CDR is purchased!

However, nowhere in any of these web pages will you find the actual dollar figures. The reports go to laughable extremes to avoid disclosing exactly how much money we are talking about. For instance, according to the report, for the 1995 funds collected, 99.998034% was paid to the music industry, 0.001966% was paid to one individual claimant, and 0.000614% was paid to Ms. Alicia Evelyn.

I obtained the actual royalty yearly figures by contacting Ms. Evelyn, one of the individual claimants. Ms. Evelyn is a songwriter who, unable to obtain any royalty payments from ASCAP for her work, petitioned the copyright office directly for payment. She read me these numbers over the phone which she received in the course of her research. If you do the math, you'll find that she received a few pennies for her efforts. Literally.

Here are the total amounts collected year by year since 1992. These statutory royalties were all paid out to the recording industry:

1992 $118,227.42
1993 $520,162.84
1994 $521,999.64
1995 $473,592.20
1996 $397,152.52
1997 $969,178.06
1998 $1,978,457.93
1999 $3,551,030.86
2000 $5,285,246.32

So, while on the one hand, the music industry is claiming that they are not being paid when individuals make audio CDRs of their music, yet on the other hand, they are quietly collecting millions of dollars in statutory royalties from consumers when they purchase blank digital audio media.

The key here is that these are statutory royalties. They are NOT a tax. They are described as royalties in the law, and they function exactly as royalties.

A royalty is what you pay in exchange for the right to make a copy. This is the ordinary meaning of the term "royalty", as it is used throughout copyright law, and there is absolutely no evidence that it means anything else in the context of the AHRA.

I submit that by accepting these statutory royalty payments from the general public, the recording industry, and every major record label claimed this money, has incurred an obligation to permit the public to exercise the rights that they have paid for, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.

This is NOT an issue of fair use. This is an issue of consumers receiving the rights that they have paid for.

Kudos for Rep. Boucher. We need more representatives of his caliber with his level of committment to the rights of the people.

More relevant to personal copies are the sections on libraries and archives from US Copyright Office Circular 92:

(c) The right of reproduction under this section applies to three copies or phonorecords of a published work duplicated solely for the purpose of replacement of a copy or phonorecord that is damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen, or if the existing format in which the work is stored has become obsolete, if-

(1) the library or archives has, after a reasonable effort, determined that an unused replacement cannot be obtained at a fair price; and

(2) any such copy or phonorecord that is reproduced in digital format is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives in lawful possession of such copy.

In other words, converting from an older format (CD) to a newer one (MP3) for your own personal use is legal, provided that the copies are not distributed.

No where in the documents on fair use could I find any reference to an individual's "right" to distribute copies, particularly to the general public (e.g. Napster.) Even public libraries are under significant restrictions for copying, and are not allowed to have more than 3 archive copies in circulation at a time.

If interpreted loosely, you might read those restrictions as meaning that you can "lend" two copies of an MP3 to personal friends while keeping one for your own use, provided that you own the (overpriced) CD the MP3s were ripped from.

Of course the PTO doesn't mention anything about copy protection, but as a "copy protected" CD isn't readable by my MP3 player, I believe it is legal for me to transform media to a format that is usable with my equipment. (i.e. Ripping a "copy protected" CD for use in an MP3 player.)

As per usual, IANAL.

Ok, so this might just be a start, but I think we all can agree that coca cola ads are some of the most memorable over the years. Believe it or not, the Library of Congress has archives of information important to America's cultural history, and at

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/

you can find 50 years of coca cola ads. I especially like the ones with the polar bears.

Ok, so this might just be a start, but I think we all can agree that coca cola ads are some of the most memorable over the years. Believe it or not, the Library of Congress has archives of information important to America's cultural history, and at

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/

you can find 50 years of coca cola ads. I especially like the ones with the polar bears.

Ok, so this might just be a start, but I think we all can agree that coca cola ads are some of the most memorable over the years. Believe it or not, the Library of Congress has archives of information important to America's cultural history, and at

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/

you can find 50 years of coca cola ads. I especially like the ones with the polar bears.

However, isn't the DVD region coding an "access control" mechanism, which is what the DMCA prohibits circumventing? The text of the law doesn't refer to encyrption, only "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work..."

USC Title 17, Section 106 says what exclusinve rights a copyright holder has. One of them is the right "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords."

The definition of "copies" is given in and very clearly includes making a copy of a file on a hard drive. Basically, anything that you can listen to again later is a copy. An mp3 qualifies.

Penalties are given in USC Title 17, Chapter 5

USC Title 17, Section 106 says what exclusinve rights a copyright holder has. One of them is the right "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords."

The definition of "copies" is given in and very clearly includes making a copy of a file on a hard drive. Basically, anything that you can listen to again later is a copy. An mp3 qualifies.

Penalties are given in USC Title 17, Chapter 5

USC Title 17, Section 106 says what exclusinve rights a copyright holder has. One of them is the right "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords."

The definition of "copies" is given in and very clearly includes making a copy of a file on a hard drive. Basically, anything that you can listen to again later is a copy. An mp3 qualifies.

Penalties are given in USC Title 17, Chapter 5

Go to the main legislative search page and put "HR2724" in the search box.

The link provided by the esteemed Slashdot authors gave me the following:

Please resubmit your search

Search results are only retained for a limited amount of time.Your search results have either been deleted, or the file has been updated with new information.

try this

Got a reference on this? It sounds urbanlegendish. -- Chris Johnson

It's not a legend; it's a well-known problem. It generally is only a problem for jazz musicians, because quoting melodies and playing standards are such important parts of the idiom. (There were a lot of famous related issues related to sampling of copyrighted works in rap music, of course, which is one factor that helped make things nasty.) And of course this issue doesn't practically kick in when you're playing at Bob's Tavern; but it gets heavy when you're in a recording studio. It's a key reason that contempo recordings usually have very few standards -- artists are encouraged to use all original material. Also, the problem is most pronounced with standards that have been around long enough that the performance and other rights are in the hands of stodgy publishing companies, estates, or family trusts. In other words, once lawyers get involved the thing gets ugly.

I personally know many people who have been caught in exactly the situation I described, though I can't think of any published accounts. But any working jazz studio guy will be quite familiar with the issue and the problem.

A good friend, for example, was recording a double-CD with the music of Livingston and Evans, a tremendously prolific and successful songwriting team who wrote such tunes as Buttons and Bows, Que Sera Sera, Mona Lisa, and also lots of TV themes such as Bonanza and Mr. Ed :). The date was being supervised by a relative of one of the writers, who represented the production company. He was playing his ass off, as usual. She kept interrupting and saying "You need to stop playing these medleys of other peoples' tunes." The recording engineer was ready to walk off the job in disgust; he explained "These aren't medleys; they're quotes. That's how jazz is played." But my friend was able to limit his quotes to music that was either written by Livingston and Evans, or in the public domain. (He is such an awesome player that he could do this. That's why he gets concert gigs in Australia, South America, and Europe, I guess, and isn't stuck playing at a cheesy gin mill.)

I'll poke around to see if I can find any published descriptions of this problem, but again it's really well-known in the business.

Obviously, the extent of the problem and the enforcement varies. Plenty of recordings are made that are full of lengthy quotes. Generally, the deal is then worked out afterward: the estate or BMI or ASCAP contacts the publishers, and some licensing deal is arranged, depending on how much material was quoted, how famous the performer was, etc.

But here's a parallel situation. Suppose you wrote a mystery novel about a singer, and you wanted to quote a few bars, lines, or stanzas from various songs in each chapter. To do this, you'd need to arrange licenses with whoever holds the rights to each of those songs. You can use the title for free, because that is not protected by the copyright; but even a short phrase is often viewed as an infringement. Very short excerpts have been judged as infringements. I'll bet you couldn't get away with "that voodoo that you do so well" or "that old black magic called love."

See this, this, this, and especially this (which includes this useful statement: "The distinction between "fair use" and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission. The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported"; you'll note that this list does NOT include the type of reverential quoting that is done in jazz improvisation).

I have seen some better documented discussions and examples of this issue from time to time, but can't remember where I found 'em. I did a bunch of research about this issue not only because of the recording studio pain in the butt (I was trying to provide my Livingston & Evans friend with some legal ammunition to use, but found he was screwed), but also because I was investigating the use of quoted song phrases in a novel (I found I was screwed). The whole thing is a mess. HTH

The DMCA section 512 guarantees protection if you do NOT alter the contents of the users posts. See
The DMCA section 512

For starters, this would mean U.S. commercial radio stations would have to pay double royalties to broadcast the same music they do now. (Check out the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995.)

Also, I think any switch that eliminates the current spectrum model would be disastrous for other reasons, too. (Fragmenting the current unified, ubiquitous radio audience into groups with and without digital receivers, for one thing.)

I'm not a lawyer or a (legal) broadcaster. Just so you know. But I think digital radio is a Bad Idea(tm).

Section 109 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 109, permits the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under title 17 to sell or otherwise dispose of possession of that copy or phonorecord without the authority of the copyright owner, notwithstanding the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution under 17 U.S.C. 106(3). Commonly referred to as the ``first sale doctrine,'' this provision permits such activities as the sale of used books. The first sale doctrine is subject to limitations that permit a copyright owner to prevent the unauthorized commercial rental of computer programs and sound recordings.

But of course that's not a judicial opinion, which you seem to cite, but which I can't find.

I mean if everybody gets the rights of the Constitution afforded to them why then do we have citizenship?

To vote. To pay taxes. To sit on juries. To hold political office. The Rights granted by the Constitution are granted to Persons, not 'Citizens.' I'll head off any complaints about semantics by making reference to the provisions for eligibility to be a Congressman:

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen. [Emphasis mine]

If personhood = citizenship, then why did the framers make the distinction between the two when determining eligibility? For further edification on your rights, and mine, and those of visitors from distant lands, I suggest the ACLU (Join Today!).

Curiously, the web page for civilian users of GPS is under uscg.gov, but the references to it in the GPS book by Hofmann-Wellenhof (Fifth Edition, 2001) give the address as uscg.mil. Did the Coast Guard get changed from a military agency to a civilian one?

[Disclaimer, I haven't read Tim O'Reilly's web log, it is slashdotted]

Michael writes:

...all licensing, including the GPL, is an expression of power over what other people can do with the software.

I disagree. Copyright Law is an expression of power of the copyright holder over the users of the media. Many licenses (eg, the typical Microsoft EULA) make use of the power of Copyright and Contract Law to claim even more power over the users. It makes sense to say that these licenses are an expression of power.

The GPL, and other Free Software licenses take no additional power over users beyond those already exerted by copyright laws. In fact, they give users additional freedoms that they would not otherwise have. I would call these licenses expressions of freedom, not power.

I take issue with O'Reilly's description of copyright law as a compromise between creators and users. There's absolutely no evidence that the rights of users are considered when copyright laws are made.

Historically, yes, copyright law has had much more to do with balancing the rights of creators with the rights of publishers. In the US, the rights of users are brought into the equation by the doctorine of Fair Use, which is a matter of legal precident in the court system, not by creation of laws.

Fundamentally, however, any law is an agreement between "The People" (being those who permit the government to exist by following the rules and refraining from revolting), and those particular people governed by the law. Copyright law is no exception.

The basis of Copyright Law in the US is in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have the power ... 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;" Congress is supposed to legislate according to the will of the people, or at least the people who voted for them.

So basically, Copyright Law as it now stands in the US is a compromise between the users (via their representatives in Congress), and the creators (via their lobbyists in Washington). Yes, it is a one-sided compromse (observe that the lengths of copyright have always been set so that Mickey Mouse stays out of the public domain).

If you want a different balance, make sure your will is known to your representatives. If your representatives ignore your will, vote for someone else. If enough people get involved, our government still won't be perfect, but at least it will better represent the will of people, and look less like the will of lobbyists.

For those of you in other nations, the basic theory is the same, the mechanisms are different.

I'm AC for a reason. I am glad they decided to do this at this time. I am in the process of renewing my corporate software contracts, and having a company that I am paying to *protect* my corporation condone clandestine acts, even by law enforcement, is unacceptable. Installing something like this seems to be in opposition to certain HIPPA privacy requirements, which we're required to adhere to. How can we comply with these new and existing privacy laws if the government keeps dropping these surprises?

But then again, it will result in some interesting technological develpments, so I can think of things that could be worse wastes of taxes.

Yeah. Too bad that any interesting technology would probably not be released to the public domain in the name (rather, under the guise) of national security. We can wave the FIA (Freedom of Information Act) in their face, but "our" government seems to have no problem overturning other legislation under the guise of national security; I doubt this will be any different.

• The House of Representatives
  
• Thomas at the Library of Congress
  
• The US Postal Service
  
• The Securities and Exchange Commission
  
• The Federal Trade Commission
  
• (FWIW: i.e. not much) The Internal Revenue Service This is one of the poorer examples, but at least you can download forms in PDF.
  
• The White House
  
• The US Dept of Justice Not as useful as the others...
  

I suppose many /. readers already know this, but thomas has the details on bills. In this case it is the "Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act", HR 1552. If you follow that link and click on "bill status" you will see that the Senate passed the House version without amendments, so it doesn't need to go to conference committee. Looking at the Congressional Record for 15 Nov 2001 shows you what the Senators had to say on the bill. (linking to Thomas is a bit tricky, so in case I got it wrong, just start at the thomas home page and use the bill number or the date for the congressional record text).

I suppose many /. readers already know this, but thomas has the details on bills. In this case it is the "Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act", HR 1552. If you follow that link and click on "bill status" you will see that the Senate passed the House version without amendments, so it doesn't need to go to conference committee. Looking at the Congressional Record for 15 Nov 2001 shows you what the Senators had to say on the bill. (linking to Thomas is a bit tricky, so in case I got it wrong, just start at the thomas home page and use the bill number or the date for the congressional record text).

I suppose many /. readers already know this, but thomas has the details on bills. In this case it is the "Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act", HR 1552. If you follow that link and click on "bill status" you will see that the Senate passed the House version without amendments, so it doesn't need to go to conference committee. Looking at the Congressional Record for 15 Nov 2001 shows you what the Senators had to say on the bill. (linking to Thomas is a bit tricky, so in case I got it wrong, just start at the thomas home page and use the bill number or the date for the congressional record text).

It's rough. The US Code is online, but it's a miserable read. Find it here: www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong013.html.

Laws in progress (and insane shit that thankfully never makes it into law) can be found at thomas.loc.gov.

Too many hours browsing this shit will drive you crazy, make you want to move to Belgium. :-)

Interesting how only the powers that be should now be allowed to eavesdrop and crack into computer systems, even though they're so intent on making it illegal for everyone else.

It's too bad that we have to trust a bunch of mostly technologically uninformed politicians to draft law these days. I'm sure their intentions are all good in trying to prevent terrorism, but sadly they've been duped, like much of American society, into believing that government can provide us with safety and security in all aspects of life. Unfortunately, in this effort to provide a safe and secure country, our liberties are getting trampled on in the process.

Here's how the process works. I plan to try it myself in Photoshop.

Many planetary probes don't carry color cameras but instead use high-resolution black and white cameras to shoot three images of the same scene, which are combined to produce those stunning photos that we see on sites like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory site.

Here's how the process works. I plan to try it myself in Photoshop.

Many planetary probes don't carry color cameras but instead use high-resolution black and white cameras to shoot three images of the same scene, which are combined to produce those stunning photos that we see on sites like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory site.

Prior art? That would be the works of Sergei Produkin-Gorskii, who used filters to create colour images from B&W slides almost 100 years ago. As pointed out in the article, Slashdot has already covered this impressive merit.

The situation isn't the same -- we were talking about you producing and distributing the derivative work. You are Warner Brothers.

Maybe that's what you were talking about, but I have said over and over that I am not talking about the creator of the derivitive work, as that could fall under breach of contract (but not copyright), assuming the creator accepts the GPL (would fall under copyright if s/he doesn't).

"unless I see a case where a person who only distributed a derivitive work was successfully sued under copyright law by the maker of the original work (when that derivitive contained none of the original), I'm not going to buy that interpretation."

OK, here's Stewart v. Abend

Wow, that's a very good reference. Of course, I agree with it completely. In its essence it is saying "Therefore, if the author dies before the renewal period, then the assignee may continue to use the original work only if the author's successor transfers the renewal rights to the assignee. [...] Application of this rule to this case should end the inquiry" [emphasis mine]. It also states that "The aspects of a derivative work added by the derivative author are that author's property, but the element drawn from the pre-existing work remains on grant from the owner of the pre-existing work." But I think in this case we're both actually right...

Finally, in the GPL software universe, the case of a derivative work that doesn't include any of the original is *very* rare.

In fact, it seems that the court rules here that it is impossible to create a derivitive work which is independent of the original.

Section 6 of the 1909 Act, 17 U.S.C. 7 (1976 ed.) - which provides that derivative works when produced with the consent of the copyright proprietor of the pre-existing work "shall be regarded as new works subject to copyright . . .; but the publication of any such new works shall not affect the force or validity of any subsisting copyright upon the matter employed . . .," or be construed to affect the copyright status of the original work - does not, as the dissent contends, give the original author the power to sell the rights to make a derivative work that upon creation and copyright would be completely independent of the original work

So maybe in fact we're both right.

And if the creator accepted and followed the GPL, she has only distributed copies licensed under the GPL, so the third party who has recieved copies from her has also gotten them under the terms of the GPL.

That is the part where I disagree, because as I say, there is no restriction in the GPL from distributing copies which are licensed under the GPL and another license. The other license would only apply to the new parts of the work, but in this hypothetical we were asserting that all of the derivitive work was new. Perhaps that hypothetical is impossible, but I hope you at least can agree that the creator of a derivitive work has the right to license the new parts of that derivitive work under any license s/he sees fit (barring any contractual agreement not to do so).

Also, I would like to see this specific case that you mention, because I have never heard of it, and would be surprised if it were true -- there is no way the courts will respect "first sale" if the alternative is the end of digital copyright, which is more-or-less the case here. Basically, if you tried to tell a judge this, they would laugh you out of court.

As it turns out, I was misinformed that it was a court case, but it was in the U.S. Copyright office's report on the DMCA, page 78 (pdf page 120).

This is definately a different case, because it doesn't involve modification. Also, it applies to any content that is sold electronically, not just GPL software. Yes, it even applies to your license.

Well, it applies to my license, but my license already permits distribution without restriction, so it's a moot point.

This scenario still doesn't allow relicensing , *modifying*, or renting.

I agree on relicensing and renting, which are pretty much unnecessary for something which is GPLed anyway. By modifying I assume you mean preparation of derivitive works, which is a much different thing. I only asserted that it allowed distribution of GPLed binaries without distribution of source code, which, hell, is what my license allows too.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking about adding another sentence to my license. "Circumvention of any technological measure or measures which effectively control access to this work is permitted without restriction." At least that would stop someone who added access control (maybe a serial number check) from suing someone who bypasses that serial number check. It would still allow the serial number check to be added, but that's intentional (the purpose of my license is to get the government out of copyright infringement, not to stop companies from adding copyright controls to their software). Actually, one of the main purposes is to ensure that I can never be sued for infringing on a derivitive of my own software.

Sorry, I didn't write it, but you can find it at: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf.
truly a frightening tale of paranormal ignorance and oppression, the likes of which we would never see in this sane, wonderful country, right?

But what if your data representation is already an XML schema? And a pretty complicated one at that? For example, look at METS : The METS schema is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium. The standard is maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, and is being developed as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation.

Have a look at that schema and tell me how you'd store that in a traditional RDBMS (I'd be interested if you could, because I know SQL, I don't know OODMBS or XML repositories - this is painful for me). Databases have been for storing data, but when your data is already a complex XML representation of an object, there's little use in saying don't use OODBMS.

But what if your data representation is already an XML schema? And a pretty complicated one at that? For example, look at METS : The METS schema is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium. The standard is maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, and is being developed as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation.

Have a look at that schema and tell me how you'd store that in a traditional RDBMS (I'd be interested if you could, because I know SQL, I don't know OODMBS or XML repositories - this is painful for me). Databases have been for storing data, but when your data is already a complex XML representation of an object, there's little use in saying don't use OODBMS.

No, the DMCA only concerns devices that "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a protected work".

Technology has advanced faster and further than law enforcement agencies have been able to keep up. And as a consequence, the Fourth Amendment that was written over two hundred years ago without a whiff of the differences between open societies and the terrorist cells that exploit them in the twenty-first century has to be challenged. The Constitution is a wonderful, principled set of guidelines for running a republic, but I postulate that the founding fathers by no means intended for it to become our ten commandments. We have to evolve folks. Evolution requires action.

I welcome your scrutiny of our legislative body, because it is well founded. But somebody has to do something to empower our law enforcement agencies to act. After reading the text of the Patriot Act of 2001 [thomas.house.gov], I feel the Senate and related law enforcement agencies are moving in the right direction. Here's the gist for those that won't read the text: we're stepping up surveillance. We're doing this by hiring translators, improving the sharing of information among agencies, and empowering the executive branch (i.e. President) to freeze assets suspected to support terrorists.

Will terrorists stop trying because of this law? No. Will we be better prepared to intercept and respond to such threats? Yes. Hopefully those of you who spend most of your time in the Slashdot vacuum will understand this.

I don't know if you are serious are not, but I am going to assume you are.. I don't think I would have ever thought of that lol.. Do they really have that much of a voice?

I am serious, indeed.

And, yes, the librarians have that much voice. In fact, SunSite/Metalab/iBiblio (is the same thing; they change anmes every other year or so, because they change sponsors) is actually an on-line library. They host, for example the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) . and many more goodies.

And of course they have a big voice over the Congress. Where do you think the Congressman get their p0rn? At the Library of Congress, off course!

Well, maybe not. But it is a funny thought.

I don't know if you are serious are not, but I am going to assume you are.. I don't think I would have ever thought of that lol.. Do they really have that much of a voice?

I am serious, indeed.

And, yes, the librarians have that much voice. In fact, SunSite/Metalab/iBiblio (is the same thing; they change anmes every other year or so, because they change sponsors) is actually an on-line library. They host, for example the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) . and many more goodies.

And of course they have a big voice over the Congress. Where do you think the Congressman get their p0rn? At the Library of Congress, off course!

Well, maybe not. But it is a funny thought.