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Lawrence Lessig On Hollywood's Attack On Fair Use
Richard Koman writes: "Tim O'Reilly and I interviewed cyberspace lawyer Lawrence Lessig about the law and P2P for O'Reilly's OpenP2P site. He makes some great points about the legal and investment climate for P2P (the RIAA's goal is to "guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off") and the full-bore attack on fair use in the DeCSS case (the DMCA says "you cannot crack copyright protection schemes even if your purpose is to allow you to have fair use of the underlying material.")" I disagree a bit with Lessig's statement on the second page about why we don't have book licenses - I think it's because the legal system refused to enforce them, not because the book industry thought it was futile. But overall it's definitely a good read.
I can only pray to god you're joking.
There was originally a balance struck with copyright. People accepted the rights of authors to have control over their work for a period of time (then 14 years). This allowed the author (and publisher) to make money from his work. In return, at the end of that period of time, the work would become part of the public domain, free for all to use.
Note also that the original copyright law in the USA was unusual in giving the original author control over "dervied works". Somthing which dosn't tend to be the case where copyright laws started out being long term. At least this kind of addition was related to copying whereas the more recent attempts to broadern "copyright" have nothing to do with copying.
I think that to be just we should give copyright holders their due, however they in turn must recognize our rights to "fair use". Digital media does allow for abuse of copyrighted material, but this is a teo edged sword. Digital material is ethereal as anyone who has had ahard drive crash or accidentally erased a file will know. I is essential to be permitted to have backup copies. Others have enumerated the needs of students and educators. Users of digital material must have the same right as users of hardcopy material.
Treat it in the same vein as "This book cannot be lent or given to someone else." and "This book cannot be given to someone else." As the file is not all that hard to transfer, and as these notes are on the "permissions" page, I would say that their meaning of "cannot" is "is not allowed to". See You are forbidden to read this.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
If you say so. In the package software industry, when customers stopped buying software with copy protection, in favor of software that didn't have copy protection. Businesses stopped using copy protection, except for those that died.
Businesses that engage in the practice of selling hardware that doesn't work and doesn't accept returns invite big Chicago law firms to do what they have done for years to great effect -- file national class action lawsuits that change the behavior of companies or cripple them.
I remember reading something at least similar to what he says she said. I believe it was in an interview and the question was something along the lines of, "Does the RIAA really believe they can stop all of these new software programs and devices from appearing and allowing people to get music for free?" I'll go dig around in my bookmarks and see if I can find a link when I get home tonight.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Sure, there WAS a middle ground. I'd say it occurred shortly after the VCR was introduced and before Macrovision came around. Movies could be bought and rented, you could tape things from TV and if you really wanted, you could dub a tape. However, at this time, buying a legit new movie cost WAY too much. Around $80-$120 if I recall.
At this time, you could also dub cassettes easily, nobody really complained, artists and the recording studios made lots of money, and everyone was generally happy.
However, they realised that if they could edge out fair-use, they could squeeze just a few extra dollars out of the people. And here we are. Everything is protected from copying now, CD prices are still high, DVD prices are *reasonable* for the most part, but should come down in price within the next few years. Note that I said "should". I think it will be much like the CD however. They will keep the price artificially high, just to line their pockets some more.
Who are the crooks in this situation? Average Joe who buys 20 movies and pirates 1 or 2, or the production companies who make billions of dollars each year for doing very little, while attempting to take away our rights to make even more?
This may be great article that has generated some excellent discussion, It won't put a dent into the RIAA's efforts until the story is picked up by the mainstream media, and put into terms that the average American can understand. /. and the rest of the "geek press"; we now need to get CNN, USAtoday, etc to cover the story.
This has had enough coverage on
Headlines such as
"Publishers to prosecute reading children's stories" and
"Hollywood to ban VCRs"
are the way to get the message across. This will be the only way to get to the politicians who right now are aligned with the media if for lack of a strong (ie, voter affecting) counter-lobby.
That's because companies can see this for the legal time bomb that they are, and want no association with them. That is, until they become successful money makers and they can invest without the chance of legal recourse coming THEIR way. I find it interesting that so much emphasis has been placed by the media on the idea that VC money has to go into any new technology. As just about everyone here knows, that simply isn't so. As has been stated many times before, all it takes is one sharp programmer to write a new application that is good enough and wanted enough that it takes off. As for P2P, some may say that the "geek factor" in programs like Gnutella and Freenet will doom them to failure in the mainstream marketplace. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how usable they are, but the same was said about things like IP telephony, Netcasting, and even the Internet itself, anf they were all adopted by the masses to one extent or another. Usable or not, VC-backed or not, P2P must continue to develop, if for no other reason than to show the media industry that it doesn't have veto power over technology. And FWIW, when the printing press was invented, it scared the hell out of the monarchies and the Church. These entities had a stranglehold over information, and they were going to either harness this new technology for their exclusive use or crush it if they had no other choice. For a long time, they mostly succeeded, but they ultimately failed, although the unlicensed printers of the day probably didn't see many encouraging developments. The thing is, people didn't give up, and freedom ultimately won, even if it took a few hundred years.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
If they then turn around and say 'you can't make a DVD player, it can copy _our_ stuff', you say, well, fine. SONY can't make DVD players either - those players can copy _my_ stuff! (A large reason why DVD player manufacturers aren't guilty of breaking the DMCA is that they are 'commercially viable')
Note well that the new ~$3000 PowerMacs from Apple have a DVD-RW, _and_ firewire ports. The $1600 model has DVD-ROM and firewire. And Darwin has the drivers. (Or should anyway.) There's got to be some sort of interesting & useful hardware hacks in there. [Glares at tangled pile of silly analog cables in his entertainment center]
The free speech argument is all well and good, but this seems like a much faster (and clear cut) way of dismantling this hideous law.
You hit the nail on the head. No copyprotection but really protect copyrights. Besides history has shown that if copy protection gets too tight and starts to affect useability, less people use. Anonymity on the web will go away soon enough (not that I think that is a good thing) and when it does, it will be easy to enforce.
Many used book stores sell second-hand software, such as Half-Price Books here in Austin and it is legal, although they, the book store, do not seem to guarantee that the purchaser can get past the technical restrictions.
The DMCA obviously makes it illegal to circumvent technical restrictions to copying or distributing software, but the physical media (CD-ROM) can still be given away, donated, loaned to a friend, or given away, and the software copyright holder will usually have no legal means under copyright to prevent it (although software companies do of course often attempt technical means to prevent it with serial numbers, verification numbers, online registration, requiring the CD-ROM to be in the drive and such).
Another thing. In UCITA jurisdictions, software copyright owners may be able to get restrictive license terms enforced by a court, at least where the purchaser has access to the license terms before purchase. I do wonder though about whether federal preemption issues aren't raised by state court enforcement of UCITA licensing terms that works to restrict rights consumers have under copyright, such as those of first sale and fair use.
Ed
This same web page has Adobe's reply to complaints about their permissions page.
If that's the case, then the Glassbook license violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. If voice synths can't read the content, that shuts out blind people.
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http://www.msgeek.org/ -- Because you can't keep a geek grrl down!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If it is enforced and all WIDELY distributable methods are under control, ie usenet, napster, servers etc, with no copy protection then we will be where we are now anyway. If you want to make an mp3 and give it to your buddy, technically it's wrong but no one will hassle you. If you and your buddy write a little client/server app so the two of you can share music, no sweat. Put stuff out where thousands can get it and you will get in trouble. That is how it works now with almost any IP or copyrightable works and that is the way it should be.
as I see it is marketing and a form of specialized investment, not distribution per se. Frankly, I suspect they'd love nothing more than enjoy that higher profit margins that would come to digital distribution.
Also, P2P and direct artist to consumer sales are not one in the same. In fact, they're almost mutually exclusive. P2P is probably not going to facilate actual sales, that'd much better suited towards centralization. P2P hasn't brought micropayments and the like any closer. The artist is just as capable of doing that today as they were before P2P emerged. So suing P2P outfits will do little to nothing to stop increased artist independence. Even if the industry wanted to, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on [if they wanted to sue an unsigned artist using a respectable website, something akin to mp3.com, that simply isn't getting near their copyrights] In short, they're quite seperate issues.
Now I know you realize the importance of marketing, but I don't see Napster and the like as being a marketing tool. Personally, I think the "just personal channel" aspects are overhyped these days. We may see increased personal targeting of marketing, but I don't think the majority of consumers will ever be there own DJs--it's just too much work. What we may see is increased specialization, i.e., 50 MTV channels...but even there there would be a lot of homogenization and crossover. Witness the perseverence of the likes of MTV.
Though this isn't my field of expertise by any means, it's pretty clear to me that the real reason is that people like to have things in common with their peers, whether it be music, sports, movies, politics, or whatever. People need to talk to each other and these things provide grounds to talk. In other words, even if they were willing to devote the time and energy, there is a natural force that pushes people back together.
Will someone please explain to me why copyright and patent infringements are called theft? What has been stolen?
This is a serious question. I'm not looking for tired analogies to stealing a car, or borrowing a bike, because those analogies don't apply. Keeping in mind the fact that information can be and is naturally copied at will, what justification is there for calling copyrighted information or patented inventions "intellectual property" and calling infringements of IP law "theft"?
I'm talking to believers in copyrights and patents. I'm really trying to understand your point of view. Please don't brush this question off with overused quotations. Please write about what it means to you, and why you believe the way you do.
The relevant law is available here (in Finnish).
In other words, this article hardly applies to most of Europe - as far as I can tell DeCSS is protected by law here!
...and a hundred years ago the automobile put the horse-and-buggy manufacturers in a bad situation. No one suggested they had any rights to continue being profitable.
The attitudes at the time would have ment they would have been greeted with laughter had they attempted to lobby for legislation to protect their interests. However situation now is that governments (especially the US government) tend to view protecting the interests of established industries as important.
We reward artists for being productive and creating great works of art. We do not reward them for not doing anything else; that's just the situation I'd want to avoid.
We also get situations of an artist saying "I wish I'd never written than book, song, etc". With long term copyright they can go a little futher and "unpublish" something.
To get back to the Constitutional clause authorizing copyrights, they are to encourage innovation, not to create future windfall profits for some corporation that happened to buy up the copyright. Many people might decide to write a book or not depending on whether they get paid in the next few years. Some might also hope to later get a fat check from Hollywood. No one is going to base his decision on whether he might be able to collect on re-prints in 30 years
Even where there is some commercial basis for creating the work in the first place then a return is going to be expected in at most a few years. Not decades!
>>The American Library Association should announce soon that they will be striking up a deal with Viacom/Time-Warner/AOL/Virgin/UniCorp to allow library patrons to borrow their copyrighted material. Libraries need to strike a deal to do this? Since when?? My library has lots of CDs, movies, etc, and I'm sure some of them must me Viacom/Time-Warner/etc?? Maybe you're just being sarcastic, I don't know. It's early.
IANAL, too, but in the appeal of the DeCSS case the lawyers of the defendands state that the DMCA says
"you cannot crack copyright protection schemes even if your purpose is to allow you to have fair use of the underlying material" and is therefore unconstitutional.
C - the footgun of programming languages
"Gee, what if he gets sick" or dies leaving dependent children? That's what disability and life insurance is for. The rest of us have to buy that (or get it through employment), why should authors and artists be different?
By the way, writing is one profession that you can practice from a hospital bed. When the late great Robert A Heinlein started writing, he was flat on his back and had just received a medical discharge from the Navy.
Ever heard of cinema?
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
When I bought the CD did I enter a contract that said, "you only own the cd, not the content?" I've payed 15.00 (not 12.99) for the rights to *use* the music and the medium. Now if I damage my cd, by your rules, if I provide X-Distrubtor 2 bucks are they going to replace my scratched cd? Since I payed for the rights to listen to it? I don't think so. I am afraid that's just playing both sides to squeeze that extra consumer buck. I don't buy major label crap anyway, I don't need it or want it. However, for the people who do, the RIAA and EVERY OTHER COMPANY is *only* repeat *only* in the business to make a buck. Now if they can get you to pay for a cd 3 times, hey, that's even BETTER.
Trademarks are things that identify a business, and they are and should be good as long as the business exists and uses them. But trademarks give the holder substantially less rights than copyrights. They don't even have to be exclusive (Sun Oil, Sun Computers, etc.). The only thing a trademark really does is prevent others from using it fraudulently to mis-represent themselves as associated with the trademark holders business. The Mickey Mouse trademark doesn't prevent anyone from making cartoons with a similar, (but not identical) mouse, with a different name. The Mickey Mouse copyright might, depending on how similar the mouse was...
Unfortunately there's this thing called money . . .
There was originally a balance struck with copyright. People accepted the rights of authors to have control over their work for a period of time (then 14 years). This allowed the author (and publisher) to make money from his work. In return, at the end of that period of time, the work would become part of the public domain, free for all to use. That bargain is long dead, broken by publishers. They continually lobbied for more control and longer copyright terms, and they got them. Now copyrighted works don't go into the public domain for at least 70 years, and that's only if the author dies right after creating the work. Is it any wonder that many people have no respect for copyright anymore? We haven't seen anything go into the public domain for decades! We're going back to the times before the Statute of Queen Anne in Britain where publishers had perpetual copyright control over works they published. That was stopped by the Statue of Queen Anne, and US courts acknowledged that copyright is a privilege, not a right, and that there were no perpetual rights granted to authors or publishers for control over the works they create and publish.
Today, publishers are still seeking perpetual control over the works they publish. People should understand that if there is to be a bargain, they must keep their end. Why should we create laws that serve only to enrich a few at the expense of the freedom of the rest of us? We grant copyrights so that authors will continue to create new works for us to enjoy and learn from. They will continue to create these things whether we give them 14 years of copyright protection or 1400 years of copyright protection. It is in the best interest of most of us if we limit the term to something reasonable such as 14 years. As things stand today, anything created in our lifetime will likely not go into the public domain in our lifetime. That's just not right and illustrates how the scales are tipped heavily in the publishers' favor. What we need now is copyright reform. We need to roll back the copyright term to the original 14 years (plenty of time to turn a very nice profit). There will be a fight. Highly profitable corporations do not give up money without a very big fight. But we need to restore a balance between the creators and the public. That alone could go a long way towards restoring respect for the copyright system and ensuring that the creators will profit from their creations. Yes, the publishing industry will have to resign themselves to not being able to milk a creation for all eternity, but there's really no reason they should have ever had such a right to begin with.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yes. Enforce copyright, and get rid of copy protection.
No draconian laws that remove fair use (e.g. DMCA) are needed. Just a few narcs who hang out on IRC, use Napster, etc. When they catch someone breaking the law (e.g. redistributing copyrighted material without permission), get their identity somehow, and throw the book at 'em. Then publicize the hell out of their victories in court, in order to spread fear. When people hear that the college kid who runs an FTP site where you can download entire albums or movies (instead of samples) ended up having to sell his car and computer in order to pay the legal judgement, maybe they'll be less likely to violate.
If the pirates can be made to suffer, then the rest of us won't have to. We'll be able to copy our DVDs to hard disk so that we don't have to deal with removable media, we'll be able to listen to the music that we bought in our cars, etc. And the people who made it will still get paid. And the pirates will be broke, or live in constant fear that the guy they met on IRC might actually be a RIAA rent-a-cop.
In order to make this work, though, there has to be ways to hold people accountable for their actions. It seems to me that the purpose of things like Freenet is to avoid that. Freenet is going to fail, though.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Wow, that's even worse! This sounds like we've got a major potential lawsuit from those who are visually impaired. I would think that the equal access laws such as the ADA would have strong precidence over this.
Come to think of it, perhaps the limit should be something like 7 minutes. If you need to record longer, do the same as above.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The book and software analogies are not quite the same as this case. Sure, you could copy a book or software and give it to someone, but that has it's limits. You can only make so many copies, so going after one person doesn't make much sense. Now if you started copying hundreds of copys and giving them away, chances are you would have at least been taken to court. But no one would do that because of the expense involved in copying so many books. Same thing with copying software on disks. Now however, Napster and ftp lets you give to potentially millions of people. At no cost to you. That is a huge difference. The fact that you are getting a lesser quality copy may have impact now, most people if they like the music will buy the cd, but someday you will be able to upload/download identical copys in seconds. That is why record companies are compelled to act now.
--They simply need to make it easier for consumers to buy music/video than to copy it.
It won't be possible if you can download in seconds and burn just as fast.
I dissagree that it would mean the end of musicians excepts as marketed Ignore the music song trading. The same argument can apply to motion pictures. Music groups/singers can get money from live performances. Motion Pictures don't have an equivanlent to this.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Err, Napster has spread and has shown no sign of slowing down. And, in spite of this, sales of CDs are still rising! The irony of all this is that Napster probably would have remained a small thing if the RIAA hadn't come down on it with its hysterical, overblown overreaction (we gotta protect ourselves--err, the artists rights!), basically giving Napster a huge spotlight and an incredible amount of free advertising.
As I stated my original post, the threat of Napster wasn't to immediate CD sales but the future sales. Eventually when I can download music of the 'Net direct to my Aiwa, Sony, Bose or Kenwood CD player then store that on a personal recorder when I ride the train or in a car stereo, what is the incentive to buy CDs? Believe me, the RIAA is not stupid, they aren't fighting over a few million CDs sales now but over the survival of a multibillion dollar industry.
And to those who consistently point to the French revolution and the lack of copyright at that time leading only to the production of dreck, that hardly an airtight counterexample. What you imply is that the only way high quality creative works get made is when there is a copyright system in place (and, by extension, that an author of such a work gets paid), and I don't believe that's the case at all. You will be hard pressed to prove that the only motivation for creation of high quality works is monetary.
Now you are being illogical. The only known example of abolishing copyright lead to a dearth in the quantity and quality of music and literature being produced yet you brush this off as being inconsequential. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Frankly, it's common sense, if less people can make a living doing something, less people will do it. Secondly most artists cannot maintain the high quality of their work if they have to work day jobs to make ends meet or even worse have to tour just to put food on the table. Of course, when we include books in the equation, you realize you are stating that authors simply do not deserve to eat since they don't tour.
Grabel's Law
The real problem with MP3.com was that they were making money (or attempting to) from someone else's work without permission. While you as a purchaser of a cd IMHO have the right to copy to other mediums of your choice for your own use, MP3.com did not have the right to use copyritten material in a way as to make a profit from it without in some way making some profit available to the artist.
Or maybe some people on slashdot really are hypocrits. Maybe they simply don't have a single, consistent, line of reasoning. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want mass marketed goods, but love to attack it because it's chiq. They want to listen to pop music, but they don't want to pay for it. They want to ban copyright entirely, but ignore that major stipulation in GPL that insists on you open your source. I'm not saying every single one of these applies to everyone, but many points can be applied to the most vocal critics here.
When you purchase a CD, you are not purchasing the right to listen to the music. You are purchasing a piece of plastic. You have the right to listen to your CDs because there is no law that prohibits it. Even if your CD is stolen, you still have the right to listen to it, or to any other CD. If you borrow a CD from a friend or a library, you have all the rights in the world to play that CD to your hearts content. You don't become "licensed" to listen to a CD when you buy it any more then you become "licensed" to look at a painting when you buy it. When you buy a CD you acquire the ability to listen to the music on it at will. Not the right. You always have the right to listen to any CD you want to.
Here, if you could track down the guy who swiped your CD's, you would regain both the plastic *and* the right / ability to listen to the music thereon.
Actually, you would only regain the ability. You never lost the right to listen to the CD when it was stolen. Only the ability.
Important difference, because that's exactly what copyright holders are trying to eliminate with "digital rights management" technologies. They want to sell the "rights" to perceive works, instead of selling physical copies of works. These are the battlelines.
Actually, I interpreted it as meaning that blind people are allowed to use text to speech, it's just that the software is going to be extremely uncooperative. Much like (prior to DMCA), you can record a Macrovision-protected signal, but the equipment will try to stop you.
It's not a legal restriction. It's not part of a license that the user agrees to. It's just an artificial crippling of the content by using a closed format. As such, it is subject to market forces, and therefore not a legal problem.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
10 years is too short sometimes (as with movie rights to books), and rather long for other things (software which is obsolete in 2 years). The present law, life of the author + 75 years is utterly too long (and probably unconstitutional, besides).
I would suggest that copyright per se expire in 25 years, or 2 years after the item is removed from the market. The items can be freely copied after that. However, the author should keep some rights to control derivative works for life -- so turning a book into a movie, for example, requires the permission of the author.
But the meaning of "permissions" is. It's not a restriction agreed to between the copyright holder and the end user. It's a restriction agreed to between the document and the software.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"You own the CDs. You don't own the right to do what the hell you like with them."
If i can't do what the hell I want with them, then apparently "owning" needs a new definition.
More times than not no one has a Owners License - they have a User Lease Agreement.
As for the money taken away from artists, well, you're right to an extent.
If I were to burn a CD and sell that CD to people I am definitely taking money away. But, (this is a wire I'm walking on here) if i were to grab an Mp3 burn it to a disk and give it to someone, chances are that person is going to a) listen not like it and burn something else over it, or, b) love it, want a better quality copy plus the artwork that goes with the original and head out and buy it.
Grabbing Mp3s for the sole intention of listening to music that you may not otherwise pay attention to does only good for the artists trying to get noticed. The irony is that as long as the Record Cos dont see it that way the artists will get screwed. Mp3s are going to be as much of a destructive force in the recording industry as blank tapes were.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
Because movies are entertaining, and people like watching them. No more, no less. Love the DMCA (?) or hate it, going to the movies is still a kick-ass fun time (usually) so why should we have to suffer because of this? That's the last thing I want.
do any inventions come from an isolated inventor anymore, or are new inventions only building on what came before?
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During the last few months in France, a debate has been inflamed by some authors and certain groups representing authors which feel that libraries are giving their work away for free, and that libraries should instate fee-based book-loaning. That would be, I think, a quick shut-down of one of the simplest sources of free information.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
Yes, I do. I do because that is fair use - to do anything I want with the cd and the music on it, short of distributing it to other people. That's protected by copyright law. Anything else is free game."
So let me get this straight, you can do "anything" you want with a CD except distribute it to others.
So basically what you're saying is that you don't own the right to do what the hell you like with them.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
So you're saying that be actively skirting copyright law, they are in some way voiding their copyrights? I like it, but I can't see you winning a court case with that.
ok, i'll bite.
SlashDot is not an activist group, it is a news site. for nerds. not all nerds are into the same things; some of them even have tastes and opinions which conflict with those of other nerds. some nerds want to watch movies. some nerds want to boycott the MPAA. supporting all these diverse interests doesn't make SlashDot hypocritical, any more than your local newspaper is being hypocritical for publishing editorials of differring opinion.
so enhance your calm. Slashdot is a rich tapestry!
/bluesninja
That's incorrect. The DMCA bans devices and services which are designed to circumvent access controls, e.g. DeCSS. It also separately bans devices which have only limited commercially significant use apart from circumvention. Twice. From the DMCA Section 1201 (a)(2)(B) and again in (b)(2)(B):
Presumably the drafters intended to specify either devices which can be used for circumvention and have no other commercially significant use, or devices that have a commercially significant circumvention use and no other commercially significant use. However, they settled for banning all devices whose commercial significance is finite (sounds reasonable...).Note that 'commercially significant' is not the same as 'commercially viable'. The former means that it affects commerce, regardless of whether it can profitably be sold, hired, etc.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
...i.e., They know who butters their bread.
n tendo/Sacco/Vanzetti's of the world will have to evolve or face the consequences. Whether they can do this entirely on their own terms remains to be seen. I don't think so and certainly hope not.
The situation is not exactly analogous because there are not (yet) companies putting them out of business by exploiting the new technology. Customers themselves are going to put them out of business by exploiting the information infrastructure that is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. I don't think most people want to deliberately rip off the people who create the media, but on the other hand, they have no compunctions against ripping off people. What goes around comes around.
Furthermore, people like Napster, MP3, and who knows who else are trying to find a chink in the corporate-driven intellectual property armor to provide the services that the media companies refuse to provide and eventually they will succeed. The AOL/Time-Warner/Netscape/Yahoo!/Microsoft/Sony/Ni
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
...that the purpose of COPYright was to prevent illegal COPYing of a work. If I want to buy a Britney Spears CD and use it to make lightning in my microwave, or shine a light on it to make colourful reflections on my walls, or slice pizza with it, or use the data bits on it to seed a random # generator, that's my own damned business. When the RIAA/MPAA's profit-hungry 'updates' to our copyright laws are finalized, do we have to start calling them 'userights'?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I think anyone arguing this really understands that this is NOT a problem to record companies and musicians today. It will be a problem 10 years from now when iso copies are considered small and download in seconds and cd burners burn at 100x. Then it will be a problem. Record companies cannot set a precedent now of allowing people to share music because it will then not be enforcable 10 years from now.
I'm not saying the ONLY use for P2P is piracy, what I am saying is that:
A) Most people associate P2P with piracy, hence the word synonymous.
B) The industry has sued P2P piracy agents, not just P2P concepts.
C) The industry is NOT just suing any new distribution model; they're suing agents that have a direct affect on their own copyright. If there is some overlap (assuming you could really call napster a new distribution model with a straight face), it's coincidental.
No, I don't think we "need" that bit of information, because it is largely immaterial. We know that mass storage and bandwidth (i.e., centralized file distribution) is plenty affordable now because of the presence of so many of entities of that type online that have much as much or less revenue opportunity. We can also do reasonable approximations to prove the point. The point being that if an mp3.com type model costs mere pennies, the most napster could save is those pennies. If there is a choice between mass appropriation of copyright or saving a few pennies for the rare small artist, the choice should be pretty clear. If the situation is different than this, then it should be up to Napster to prove otherwise.
The only one I can think of is that it allows them to distribute the server and bandwidth costs. If you have a sample of your work that you want to spread far and wide (so that people who like the free sample will get hooked and want to buy your non-free products), it costs you money (server and bandwidth) to make the sample available. P2P lets you move that expense to your fans.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Correct, which is one of the reasons for the shorter term, the reason for the required archival (of a high quality copy that can be used to create a very very large quantity of copies) at the LoC, and the continued persistance of no authorial rights other than copyright and the right of first sale.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Fascinating argument. There's one thing that I might question, though. "...authors who, given some choice... "
Speaking from the sidelines of the musician community, I don't see a lot of choice either there or in the publishing industry. If you want to make a good living and reach a wide audience, you deal with the publishers and accept their lobotomy licenses. If you want to retain reasonable control over your material and distribute it how YOU want it done, then you self-publish and maybe sell enough to cover your costs.
I'd be very interested to hear how your book is doing in a year. I suspect that if it's good, you might have covered costs by then. No more. I'd love to be wrong about this, mind you. I think that the world is just now starting to develop cheap and efficient self-distribution channels for independents like yourself which will create the choices we want to see. Really, that's what scares the Big Media Companies(tm) the most. The spectre of most musicians and writers being able to live comfortably off of self-published material, that doesn't involve them!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
There were MORE forms of music and more people making it before Gilbert and Sullivan's copyright BS attack, phonographs, radio and all that mass produced garbage culture.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The other option is to keep your new invention a "trade secret." The stereotypical example of this is the machines that print the M's on M&Ms - they never patented it so that their competitors never got to see how they did it (and thus were unable to copy it). But M&M Mars has to take extreme efforts to protect this themselves - employees must sign non-disclosures and other legal documents to insure that they don't leak the "trade secret". Since you haven't offered any benefit to society (your blueprints are behind locked doors), then society doesn't offer any protection back to you.
Perhaps there could be a choice (1) copyright a book the usual way and allow fair use to licensees but also gain some simple protections from the government, or (2) protect your own book using your own methods including any access controls you like but have no DMCA to protect you.
Actually, most of us here would want only two stipulations, and that's not really copyright as we know it. the two stipulations are:
1. Proper and full credit where it is due.
2. Whatever price I charge for it, you should charge no more unless you add something of value.
granted some folks on here would want more, but those of us who believe copyright is wrong, as far as I have seen, would be happy with those two, very very mild stipulations.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
You don't remember this article? On the premise of preventing priracy, MS went after eBay auctions even of legit software.
-sk
The readers don't pay to borrow the books, but the library pays the author a small sum (around 1 cent, I think) each time it's lent out.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
But the only "problem" is the "problem" of "I don't wanna pay for it and don't wanna have to wait 75 years for it."
I don't see that as a problem.
Disney wants to keep it's rights to early Mickey Mouse because they KNOW it's sill a valuable property. This hasn't stopped them from continuing to spit out new movies every other year.
Let's be honest, too. The problem isn't that "artists" aren't producing enough (prompting the bizarre, i.e. government, solution of greatly limited copyright times.) Rather it is the stealing of NEW materials. A 10 year copyright (very short) would not affect the huge losses occuring today by people downloading Britney.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
A 10 year copyright (very short) would not affect the huge losses occuring today by people downloading Britney.
What huge losses? The music industry just had a record year for profits. Even when asked, they haven't been able to show any real losses. The losses are just as imaginary as copyright itself.
But the only "problem" is the "problem" of "I don't wanna pay for it and don't wanna have to wait 75 years for it."
No, the problem is that there's no reason for us to grant a copyright to artists and other creators or publishers if we aren't going to get something out of it as well. The original "bargain" was for 14 years. We wouldn't publish something that was copyrighted without paying the artist for it, and at the end of the term the work went into the public domain and was free to all. That bargain is long broken and there is no longer anything in it for the public. The US courts said long ago that copyright is a privilege, not a right. If that privilege isn't benefitting the public as a whole by making more works part of the public domain, then what reason do we have to maintain our end of the bargain long after the publishers broke their end?
Disney wants to keep it's rights to early Mickey Mouse because they KNOW it's sill a valuable property. This hasn't stopped them from continuing to spit out new movies every other year.
Aside from the distinction between a trademark and a copyright, I don't think that it matters that the mouse is still profitable. The term should have expired long ago. Trademark law might still apply to it in some cases, but other than that, the mouse should be fair game.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I agree with that, when you bought a physical object and you lose it, you don't have the right to a free replacement. But the software industry (and now the MPAA) are claiming that you didn't actually buy that disk, you just bought a license to play it. So losing the disk doesn't mean anything -- you've still got that license. Microsoft better mail out a replacement right now, or they are interfering in your enjoyment of your own property. Right?
Yep, that's ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as the corpo-rats wanting to switch freely between the "license" model and the "physical property" model depending on which way will extort more money from their customers.
Yeah, right. Check out 17 USC 1201 (k)(1)
It's illegal to make, sell or modify VCRs that aren't susceptable to the automatic gain control hack (which is what Macrovision is) unless IIRC it's grandfathered in.
Do you really think that there's any incentive for VCR manufacturers who don't also own movie studios (thus not Sony) to have Macrovision? Hell no. In an unrestricted market that stuff sells like hotcakes. Check out the relative popularity of standard non-region 1 DVD players vs. modded players in foreign countries.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sure there is some middle ground, but the RIAA and MPAA go *way* too far. They want not only to "protect" their copyright, but also to dictate to you in which way you may use a product you own yourself under fair use, whether it is *legally* time-space shifting it, or viewing a movie wherever you want without being forced to see ads. These are not copyright "rights". These are not intellectual property "rights". Profit is not a "right". These companies have no "right" to arbitrarily control your usage of a product you buy and own. This is a simple matter of greed, where the content industry sees that a consumer's rights, coupled with the internet/ may deprive them of profits that they think they have a right to. So they spend megabucks lobbying the government to pass ridiculout and arguably unconstitutional laws, under a very thin veil of "protecting copyright", when they are really all about "controlling usage".
;)
(p.s. if you don't like my overuse of quotes - you know where you can stick it
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
> P2P (the RIAA's goal is to "guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off")
Sounds like an attempt to exercise an existing monopoly to control another industry, IMO.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I just got my Feb. pay-per-view magazine. It has the dates/descriptions of all the ppv's for feb. I noticed something interesting on page 4. Under the paragraph header "How To Record a Pay-Per-View", it says, and I almost quote(I dont have it in front of me)"It is legal to record a pay-per-view", then it gives detailed instructions as to how to do this.
How different would recording a ppv be from recording a dvd (rented or bought), a vhs (rented or bought), etc? Especially since I am subscribed to "digital cable"?
1) Yeah, that's fine. If a work has been registered a proper and correct copyright notice would be required. This could come into play in that lawsuits are only possible if the copyright had been indicated - otherwise they're rather baiting people into respecting works that may not deserve it.
Up until '76 or so IIRC that was required, so I can see it coming back.
2 and 3) I disagree. Something like Mickey Mouse has netted Disney *BILLIONS* of dollars over the years. They would, I am quite certain pony up for everything to be registered as long as possible. The prices are absolute which lets the rich copyright holders keep them for as long as possible, and the poor ones lose them right away.
This is why I had a percentage of the gross. If it's worth it to Disney, they'll figure out how much Mickey made them, and cough up a hefty amount.
While Joe Blow, author of "Meet Joe Blow: An Autobiography" only has to put in a few bucks... if he even cares.
Possibly a minimum could be put in - no less than $1000 to renew....
But I strongly feel that copyrighted works should enter the public domain no matter what during the lifetime of the author and the audience. First because there is no amount of money that can encourage an author to write more works (the actual purpose of copyrights) after he's dead. And if he has a bestseller, which implies that he could make a significant contribution to the arts, he shouldn't be able to retire on it. Let him be prolific!
And as for the audience, they too can make contributions to society. Derivative works are close to my heart, and I don't see a problem with some of them (e.g. fan fiction - often better than the original)
4) I agree. Additionally, since ALL copyrighted works would have to be preserved in the best possible form in the LoC (none of this situation where a large number of famed silent films have been permanently lost) and made publicly available there's still a hope left even if the work is more or less abandoned.
5) Agreed - see my note on point 1. Also make it an abuse of copyright (resulting in the loss of the copyright of the offending work) if the date is changed without getting a legal extension. On a composite or extended work there could simply be multiple dates, eg. Copyright 1995, 2005
6) Quite so.
Note also that some trademarks must also necessarily expire when the earliest work incorporating it does.
It is not enough that Mickey Mouse films be available to everyone as they expire. New, independent films also have to be produced, and unless the trademark on the character runs out at the same time as the first work he's in enters the public domain there's no real gain.
Anyone can write a story about Odysseus, or King Arthur, or Paul Bunyan. Imagine the blow to the arts if they were trademarked. Characters like Superman or Bugs Bunny aren't special, and should also be able to be used by anyone when the time comes.
IIRC this is already a principle of copyright and trademark law, and is the reason Disney's so frickin' evil in that regard.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
>> A 10 year copyright (very short) would not affect
>> the huge losses occuring today by people
>> downloading Britney.
>
> What huge losses? The music industry just had a
> record year for profits.
I was, of course, referring to the losses of still further profits, which is their right as producers of said music.
>> But the only "problem" is the "problem" of "I
>> don't wanna pay for it and don't wanna have to
>> wait 75 years for it."
>
> No, the problem is that there's no reason for us
> to grant a copyright to artists and other
> creators or publishers if we aren't going to get
> something out of it as well. The original
> "bargain" was for 14 years.
Ummm, I was unaware a free society was built around you "granting" someone a reprieve from intellectual theft. That you are only going to grant this reprieve from you thefting in so long as you "get something out of it". The purpose of this "bargain" was to ensure the people who worked long and hard on something get an exclusive, coercive monopoly on that thing for a period of time. This has absolutely nothing to do with you, the wannabe leach, "getting something" from it in exchange. What you "get" is the same protection for your stuff as they do for theirs.
> The [Disney Mickey Mouse] term should have
> expired long ago. Trademark law might still
> apply to it in some cases, but other than that,
> the mouse should be fair game.
Why should it have expired? Why should anyone but Disney be able to use it? They built it. They've been cultivating it for decades. Yes, indeed, it is still highly profitable, and that is EXACTLY why it should still be protected. If it were lying in a garbage heap, no one would care to do derivations from it. It's precisely because they've kept it valuable that they should have the law continue to secure them their exclusive rights.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
...thus almost completely stagnating further development. Good job and well done.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Your ethical stance fails if you claimed insurance on your stolen CDs. And if you weren't insured, then you failed to cover a risk, and so it's your loss that you no longer have the CDs, and it is unfair of you to expect the music producers to cover that loss. About the only way you are ethically in the clear is if you were insured, but chose not to claim on the insurance - but even then, you're only in the clear if you allow the artists to claim from your insurance policy.
Of course, the ideal solution would be to find the thieves and give them a good kicking.
~Cederic
If P2P is synonymous with piracy, why do I keep getting glossy brouchures for expensive conferences for the "P2P Revolution" that are sponsored by companies such as Intel, Microsoft and ActiveState? I guess those companies are now pirates as well.
----- The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them.
Excellent post!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I had been thinking something like this:
1) Terms of 10 years, retroactively applied
2) In order to gain the ability to levy civil or criminal charges against an infringer, works must be registered with the USCO.
3) Registration requires:
a) Archiving a useful copy of a work (high quality masters of video, source code to software, ordinary copies of books) in the Library of Congress
b) A fee to handle processing by the USCO and storage fees at the LoC.
4) One extension may be granted for a maximum 20 year term. If this is done, a significant amount of money (1/100th of the gross of the work over the previous ten years?) is charged for this. The money goes towards the creation of public domain works: software, art, literature, etc. which are also archived in the LoC.
5) Fair use rights are protected, as are any necessary steps needed to exercise these rights (law doesn't matter here - this derives from the Constitution)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Interesting suggestions. You guys have done some thinking. For all the difference in details, we do agree that getting and keeping copyrights should be more difficult than at present, and that life + 75 years is too long for a copyright to run.
Filing with the Library of Congress required for copyright: That seems like a good suggestion to me. As I understand it, in present law it's copyrighted from the minute you write it until you do something to put it in the public domain. (Does this web site have a policy such that posting here makes it public domain?) This leads to difficulties in determining if something is copyrighted, who owns it, and possibly if it does wind up in court it might be questionable even what the original work was. I think that automatic copyright should run only 6 months from first publication; after that, if you haven't filed for copyright, it's public domain. And filing must include giving a copy to the Library of Congress. WITH NO COPY PROTECTION! This ensures the original is preserved in case of a question, and it ensures that after the copyright has run out the work will be available to the public.
Initial fees: should be as low as possible and still pay the expenses of processing the registration.
Terms and renewals: I like the idea of making renewals costly. I don't like making the terms as long as 25 years, or allowing a 75 year total. To get back to the Constitutional clause authorizing copyrights, they are to encourage innovation, not to create future windfall profits for some corporation that happened to buy up the copyright. Many people might decide to write a book or not depending on whether they get paid in the next few years. Some might also hope to later get a fat check from Hollywood. No one is going to base his decision on whether he might be able to collect on re-prints in 30 years. (I use books as the example because the best ones do remain marketable forever, unlike all software and most movies.)
So I would suggest a maximum of three terms and steeply rising costs, 5 years for $10, 20 years for $1,000, 15 years for $100,000. After 40 years, even The Wizard of Oz should be public domain.
And finally, I do think that if it's off the market for more than two years, it should be public domain. No allowing corporations to just sit on something for decades, neither using it or allowing others to use it. (Maybe running The Wizard of Oz on network TV annually should count as keeping it in publication?)
If a book isn't selling well enough to stay in the bookstores but you are worried about movie rights later, you can keep it in "publication" by posting it on a web site with a notice like, "This is a copyrighted work owned by (name) at (address). You may download it for your own use, print a single copy, and distribute electronic copies as long as this notice is preserved. All rights for commercial publication and derivative works are reserved."
This may well cost more than just providing the mp3s themselves, especially when you stop and consider that 99% of their searches and database are for pirated material.
You keep saying this, but you aren't really giving us any evidence either. How much does it cost MP3.com to create and maintain their databases? How much does it cost Napster? That's the information we need, and apparently don't have. So this is all just idle speculation with nothing to back it up on either side.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The digital rights management type systems will have to be beaten in court in a manner that refers to the original Beta case - giving the rights back to the end user, not the deadbeat middlemen.
To answer what is middle ground: High quality product distributed at a resonable price that can be manipulated by the end user (backed up, mixed, etc. If the price is resonable and the product usable, sales should increase. The more muddied the waters get with all this copy protection bs, more consumers will get confused and abandon the technology - see DIVX and DAT. Give me a cd or dvd at a fair price and I will buy it. Make it overpriced or unusable and I won't. Most people are inherently honest. There will always be some who aren't.
A minor nit-pick:
There is a flaw in the Metallica logic - they became huge, with NO radio or video support. Until "One", there was no airplay, not even on rock stations (there were a few, but very few). One of lifes greatest ironies was hearing "One" on a top 40 station because album sales were so high. Until "And Justice..." there was no support from a marketing standpoint. It would be interesting to see what effect a P2P distribution system would have had if it existed during the first two albums - would they have become huge faster, or bombed?
(I worked for a rock radio station during this timeframe, so I have some idea of what was going on behind the scenes at that time)
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Except that the technology and experienced personel required to properly produce a professional quality product are getting cheaper every day.
It was very hard for anyone to afford getting custom tapes made professionally. In the era of tapes the recording and editing equipment wasn't as common as it is now, and was thus much more expensive. Tapes also cost a ton to duplicate because the only method available was to actually run all the tape through the spool while recording. Unlike CDs which are mastered in a second.
The labels are getting obsolete, except as marketing. And PR companies exist on all scales, from someone to promote you locally to a world-wide campaign. These companies also contract for a specific job for a specific fee, not the complete rights to everything you produce for a number of years.
Whether that's true or not, the other restrictions listed for it is still restrictions far beyond what is normally given with copyright, so Lessigs point still stands.
You don't own the right to do what the hell you like with them. "
Yes, I do. I do because that is fair use
No, that's first sale. The doctrine of first sale says that you can do what you like with the physical object you purchased, aside from making copies of it.
Fair use allows you to make copies of a work or portions thereof without the copyright holder's permission, depending on what you're going to use it for.
Two different legal principles.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Unlike most people on Slashdot, I am neither pro-Napster nor anti-copyright. IMHO, it would have been disastrous in the long term if Napster had been allowed to spread unchecked because once technology to transfer music easily from PCs to Home Audio Systems to Cars to Personal Devices was perfected [5 to 10 years], no one would ever buy music again and it would kill music as a profession except for a few heavily marketed superstars (Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc) and truly talented groups (Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica, etc) in certain genres who could still make money touring. Similarly with eBooks, a serious disincentive for books being published has been the copyright issues and the creation of a growing underground of book pirates who trade eBooks similar to how MP3s were traded until Napster, Gnutella and Scour.net opened it up for the masses. Few authors are comfortable with spending months or years writing a book just for others to distribute it for free and prevent them from putting food on the table.
On the one hand the "Digital Rights Management" technologies being created to combat these threats to copyright are ominous. Microsoft plans to support digital rights management at the OS level very soon and has started making moves in that direction while hard drive manufacturers have considering adding hard drive copy protection to all systems built in future and Intel has flirted with copy protection for monitors and other display devices. All of the aforementioned technologies are invasive, distasteful and prevent users from exercising their rights to fair use of copyrighted or non-copyrighted works.
Also recent legal wranglings aimed at protecting copyright have robbed consumers of rights that they have had or should have such as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In the same vein certain rulings against opponents of the RIAA and MPAA such as the $118 million dollar ruling against MP3.com or the ruling against 2600.com are ridiculous.
So my question is this: Is there a middle ground?. On the one hand I am opposed to piracy and "Information Wants to Be Free" has always been a poor justification for piracy in my opinion (whether software or music) but on the other hand it is clear that something has to be done soon about the way in which consumer rights are constantly being eroded. Basically I believe that until advocacy against the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright cartels begins to counter their arguments with reasonable points that can benefit both sides, we are doomed to continue in this downward spiral. As long as our arguments boil down to "I want free shit" or "No encryption can't be hacked", we will constantly be at war with the RIAA & MPAA and since they have more money (and thus better lawyers) than us, they will win.
Grabel's Law
Well you got to admit it's a good defence when the RIAA's lawyers are saying that open source people are obviously Communist Wierdoes.
you could just say look at all of these films we've reviewed How could we have watched these and be UnAmerican?
Personally, I believe that the user should be legally entitled to take 720x480 screenshots and extract 22kHz 8-bit stereo sound (if not 48kHz 16-bit stereo). The program would restrict the NUMBER of the screenshots (so as to prevent frame-by-frame piracy, as if DeCSS and DivX haven't already made this obsolete), and one minute of audio per session. The current content-control system (and that's exactly what CSS boils down to: content control) is truly Orwellian (if not also Draconian). Those who control the present control the future, those who control the future control the past, and those who control the movie industry indirectly control the sanity and demeanor of the people.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
About thirty years ago it became possible and easily accessible for anyone to copy an entire book on a copier. They could then bind it and voila, a "free" book. This did not herald the end of the publishing industry. My opinion is that, although easy to do, it's not worth the time/cost of doing. It may be that this ability reduced the cost of books to consumers; if a book cost $34,000 one might consider copying and binding it.
Twenty years ago it became fairly simple for someone to copy software using cracking utilities or just a disk copy. Did this begin the downfall of the software industry? At that time, the software industry believed it would but ultimately people continue to buy software. Most readers of Slashdot can find a crack for a demo program and use it. But your cracked demo usually is somehow not quite as good as the purchased version -- there might be stray lines in some graphics or some driver is not supported. It's usually easier and cheaper in terms of time to buy the CD, stick it in and hit install than modify some DLL with a hex editor. Again it is likely that the ability to copy puts downward pressure on software prices which is good for consumers.
The most recent developments make it possible, for example, to obtain almost any song and play it at near-CD quality. Woe to the music industry! Of course using Napster you have to find the song, wait in a queue for your download to begin, then hope that your song wasn't encoded by some ninny at 20kbps or stops before the last 20 seconds. If, on the other hand, you could say "Stairway to Heaven" into your remote control and 5 seconds later it downloads (and can be replayed ad infinitum) to your Sony MP3 Jukebox thanks to your gigabit connection to Columbia House wouldn't it just be easier to pay $.003?
My point is that the result of these new technologies has not and will not result in ruination of an industry. Instead it will result in lower consumer prices and _possibly_ lowered profits for some copyright-based industries. The RIAA and Hollywood have no right to force profit-protection legislation on consumers. They simply need to make it easier for consumers to buy music/video than to copy it.
The difference is between "This (electronic) book cannot be read aloud" and "You may not read this book aloud".
The former indicates the capabilities of the software, the latter indicates your rights.
Of course, he presents no evidence that she actually said that. In the interview he links to she doesn't anything like that.
Best Slashdot Co
kudos. nice reply.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
no company can take 3-7 young ISO industrial standard humans, teaching them some steps and let them annoy any sane person for years, just because they have the money and the influence to do so?
Any creation done without some management background, that is peeping on custumers.
This reminds me of something.
Once people were sacrifying anything to and blaming anything on god(s). Today the market takes more and more this place. (Unemployment? That's the Market! Free use of code? Thats destroying the market!)
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
If that is the case, what will people do for blind people ? They can't use text to speech software on it ?
I thought that it was illegal to restrict the use of any tool that could reduce a disability (at least in Cananda). That's why seeing eye dogs are permitted into Mc'Donalds.
What happens when a CD is scratched or stolen? I should be able to replace it (for cost of the CD itself, not the music) so long as I have proof of purchase, right?
The fact that I can't do this is quite irritating, as I had a few hundred dollars worth of CD's stolen a year ago. I refuse to buy the songs again, so have been rebuilding the collection through online sources. Definitely a pain, but paying twice for the same thing is ridiculous, especially when said price is hyperinflated to begin with.
The argument has always been that I don't purchase the rights to a copyrighted song, movie, etc., but the right for personal enjoyment of that work. (licensing). Great, I agree. Two problems. 1) If I'm not paying for the media, but the license, what does it matter what media I play it on? It doesn't- that's why "fair use" allows for personal copies. 2) If my VHS copy of Star Wars bites the dust, why must I pay to license the movie again? I should be able to replace the media (tape) at cost without re-licensing the work. Copyright protects the creator, as it should, but I see a dangerous trend towards neglecting to protect the consumer as well. When I buy a copyrighted work I agree to the terms, but by the same token when a content provider applies for a copyright they also agree to the copyright terms. If I don't like the terms I don't have to buy, and if they don't like the terms they never have to release their work. Either way, neither one of us has the right to break the terms of copyright. It's like me deciding I want to keep my car but don't want to be held to those pesky payments I agreed to. You can't have it both ways.
Sounds like the makings of a class action lawsuit.
Seriously, if I have >$1000 worth of DVDs and my player breaks and I buy a new one that my old DVDs don't work with then that would be enough incentive for me to find as many people as I can who have the same problem and start suing the manufacturer.
That sounds nice and all, but what does it mean? Let me try an awful analogy:
The irony of the Anit Piracy case is that the ships that were labelled contraband were not built or planned by shippers, but by the Pirates! It was pirate built ships that were restrained. That is why all ship builders must worry about this.
No, I don't morraly equate the copying of software or girl scouts singing "America the Beautitul" with murder and pillage. I simply want to know what goes on inside the head of a "strong-IP" guy.
It looks like you mean something like the DCMA goes above and beyond the power and intent of both copyright and patent laws. Copyright laws are intended to foster publishing and the expansion of the public domain by granting copy protection limited by the life of the contents creator. Patents are designed to encourage research and invention by granting a time limited protection on the invention's use. The DCMA combines the much stricter implementation rules of patents with the much longer, even infinite, time rules of copyright. This much too powerful device is now being used to prevent others from publishing original and useful material. In the end it may serve to reduce and eliminate the public domain which both patent and copyright laws seek to expand.
Ah, what do I know? I think that copyright protections are obsolete as the costs of publishing has been reduced to next to nothing, that Gilbert and Sullivan were Satan's minions, and that IP is BS. People will always publish, for the reasons they did before they were "protected", pride, philanthopy, and propaganda. Money is a byproduct.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That was a mis-interpretation. The e-book said "cannot read aloud". As some Brit pointed out the first time this was posted on Slashdot (weeks ago), this is not the same as "may not read aloud." (You'd think those Brits invented English or something. ;) What was really meant was that the e-book would not work with the speech synthesis program included in the reader, not that using speech synthesis or reading it to your kid was a copyright violation. I don't know if this was a deliberately locked out feature or if the book simply lacked the underlying data required by the speech synthesis. In the first case, I certainly hope that they would make it easy for the visually impaired to get the key to unlock it -- otherwise I would support a lawsuit. But the second case is pretty likely, too; if the book was scanned in, it's probably images rather than text, so the data to run the synthesizer simply isn't there, and doing an accurate image to text conversion currently requires a lot of proof reading.
Law (at least in the US) doesn't work that way, as entertaining as it would be in some cases (imagine if Bill Clinton sued you and you were allowed to take the stand and lie as much as you wanted because Clinton has signaled that he does not want perjury law to apply to him....).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Can you supply me a reasonable cost-benefit analysis for the preservation of copyright in the internet age?
This whole issue is coming up BECAUSE the cost-benefit analysis of preserving copyright protection has changed.
There's a new cost, the DMCA, the restrainment of the first amendment, that wasn't there before.
There is an implicit assumption in what you say that the cost-benefit analysis for copyright has remained unchanged. It has.
If you were to have the misfortune of living in the 1800's, you would realize something: almost no one got rich off of media enterprises. And this was not for a lack of distribution of works, either. A select few artists, such as Charles Dickens, became wealthy in their own time. Many other artists such as Poe, Dickenson, Melville, and others, either died in poverty or were not recognized for the value of their art.
In the grand scheme of things, the filter of time and perspective tends to add value to the works of past artist. Moby Dick and The Raven are examples of 19th centry works that are popular today but were not well recognized or even accepted by the critics of the time as being good examples of art.
Today, however, book companies can make a living off of reprinting these copyright expired works.
Musicians, as well, rarely ever acheived great fame or wealth in their time. Many works for the orchestra familiar today are from artists who did not make much money in their time. People such as Gustov Holst, or Richard Strauss whose works are well known today had little recognition in their own time.
How does this apply to Britney Spears and N' Sync? They are more of a social phenomanon than musical or visual artists. Granted, their works are visually fast and full, and musically upbeat, but little of either philosophical or literary value is contained within. Is this bad? No, not in a artistic sense, thier art stands in its context. What does this mean for the economic value of their works? A 14 year old girl might have biological reasons for wanting to see N' Sync, and a social need as well, because all of her friends are "in to them". Does this mean the work they are producing is valuable? Well, in monotary terms, yes, it is. But will the music of N' Sync stand against Beethoven's 7th? No. Because Beethoven crafted the music as an art form. N' Sync crafts their music as a vehicle to collect teenage dollars.
When all of this is put in a context where people can download any arbitrary work of music without paying money then things become interesting. The concept of economic value is thrown out the window. It has been my experience that people will indeed download Britney Spears over Beethoven, and this is reasonable given other pressures associated with it, not to mention peer approval. Perhaps people enjoy the thrill of 'stealing', or think they are getting the most economicly for free.
But which work is more valuble? My humble opinion is that I would rather familiarize myself with the timeless quality of Beethoven's works rather than the fleeting emotion that Britney would give me. Although other people most likely will reach a different conclusion, I think the crux of the matter is that the value of music is embedded in its quality to the beholder, and that no one monatary value can be attached. Personally, I think that there is little of value in most recent music, and it does not deserve a copyright. If no works had copyrights, then we would go back to the old days were there were only a few rare superstar artists and most others quietly labored away from the spotlight. Others would be subsidized by organizations who have an interest in such things. Bach, for example, was paid by the church to write music and direct choirs. Many orchestras today have composers-in-residence, who produce works that may or may not have great artistic value, but who know in advance that they most likely will not profit greatly from them.
In the end, people will surround themselves with the art they enjoy, so the whole conversation is moot other than to see which big record company and/or profit making artist gets your money.
I do agree there. We do have too many "made for mass market" people out there. It's not my thing, but it is for alot of young girls and horny old men, so what the heck. They still produce music that I like too, so all is well. I still think that what the artist makes is theirs and they should be able to choose how to distribute it. If they want to give everyone mp3's for free and make money on the road, more power to them. If they can make it work, more bands will do it and the record companies will crumble anyway. That is what the free market is all about. However, I don't think we should say that work musicians do should be put into public domain simply because it is easily copied. If a new distribution method is going to take over and musicians can find other ways to make money that is good. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with people saying that since they THE CONSUMER don't like the system then they should be allowed to circumvent it. It really is the artists call. I hope that this kind of distribution would really work, but I want the creator to be able to control how their work is produced, and as of now, work is produced under the assumption that profits will come from cd and tape sales.
Obviously, one is capable of reading the text aloud. In this case, you can interpret may and can in a straightforward manner.
However, with the arrival of DMCA protected systems, your rights and the technical capabilities of the software become as one.
Take the case of the electronic book. Let us say, say, for instance, that a user is blind, and wants to use a braile out put device. The user has software that allows them, to 'cat' the contents of any text file to 'dev/braile', which will allow them to read the text file in braile.
Now, suppose this user buys an electronic book. The book is not a mere collection of text files-- instead it is supplied in an encrypted format-- and is thus only readable by an approved "client." (Let us imagine that the encyryption is strong enough to resist the efforts of cryptoanalysts).
It does not matter that the publishers did not exclude braile readers by design. It does not matter that reading a text file in braile constitutes "fair use."
It only matters that the designers of the client software did not contemplate that a blind user might read their book, and therefore did not design their client software so that it would be compatible with a braile reader. Their design flaws are now protected by law.
The DMCA protects "technological measure[s] that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title". There is a clear distinction in copyright law between access and use. Access is defined as acquiring a copy of the copyrighted work, whereas use is, well, obvious. In purchasing a DVD, I have accessed the copyrighted work. I own the copy of it. CSS is a use control measure, not an access control> measure, and therefore the DMCA doesn't apply to it. The reality of what transpires in a courtroom is, of course, obvious to anybody that has been following the story thus far.
So Michael, your correct, the Supreme Court refused to uphold book licenses. In fairness though, the publishing industry could have continued to fight the decision by revamping the licenses or by pushing Congress for a legislative change to the doctrine of first sale.
The big question I have, however, is if anyone has tried to apply the right of first sale to software? Anyone know?
-sk
DMCA comes quite close to saying that. The anti-circumvention provisions are not subject to a traditional fair use defense, although there are some defenses for some conduct which would be characterized as fair use. Other fair use, however, does not provide a defense to a cause for unlawful circumvention.
That, of course, is the problem with DMCA -- it makes unlawful conduct that used to be officially sanctioned to support IP policy.
Lessig quoted Rosen as saying her goalis to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off. But I can't find that in the interview that was linked.
Best Slashdot Co
Actually, the third Reich is the one that collapsed. The third rich is what some people might call "new money"...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
As Lessig points out near the end of the interview, although the RIAA wants to protect the properties they already own, the big issue for them is protecting their control over what gets published in the future and how it gets published. Their real fear of the uncontrolled nature of the Internet is that it threatens their position as a funnel between the artists and the public.
As Lessig also stresses, the potential of P2P extends far beyond music exchange and the interests of the RIAA. The greatest damage to innovation will occur if the courts, lawmakers and the public continue to look at P2P as a single-use technology.
The only feature of "P2P" that most every person give a damn about is that it facilitates piracy. This is a common feature of all the (psuedo) P2P methods that the music and recording industry has litigated against. Lessigs statement clouds the matter, the industry couldn't give a rat's ass about "new models of distribution", they care about piracy of their own materials. If these "new models of distribution" didn't, as a matter of fact, focus around piracy then the industry would have a much harder time in court. The innovators of these "models" put more effort into facilitating piracy than they do into stopping it.
I'll grant you that the fundamental idea behind P2P is cool in and of itself. However, realistically, what additional advantage does Napster (et al.) offer to the consumer or the artist over and above the traditional centralized client server architecture (which has the added, and well established, benefit of preventing piracy)? It's actually worse for the artist. Ok, so they can stick their song on their own computer and serve it. Maybe if they get really lucky someone will randomly stumble across and download it. Of course, in the mean time, the song may be renamed, damaged, replaced, etc. A central server can do all of this and more. Storage is cheap, certainly cheaper than the expensive database systems that napster employs. You can still get the "random search"--if you believe that important. What's more, you can insure consistent quality, information on the artist, etc. You can also create indexing systems, web pages, common tastes/suggestions (similar to what Amazon does), etc.
In my opinion, until the proponents of P2P can offer a convincing cost versus benefit argument for society that doesn't thumb its nose at copyright, it won't stand a chance. Like it or not, copyright is an integral and important feature of our society. Limiting or regulating P2P to preserve the intent of copyright may well make more sense than just allowing P2P to ride roughshod over copyright. Sometimes inaction can do far more violence than action. It is ridiculous to assume that inaction of the law is necessarily the safer course just because there are some legal complexities.
The Glassbook bit which has been talked about here in the past, and clairified. Read Aloud is to tell the software not to allow voice synths to read the content aloud.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
So in that case they are saying that blind persons are not allowed to use text to speech software to enjoy said book. Still sounds like an overreaching restriction to me.
Come on people, would you like it if took the comments you make here, claimed they were my own and published them as a book? Or what if I went to your website, copied your pages and sold them off to some company? Now, that would be fair, because information is free and copyright is bad. Or would it?
True, MP3.com was not making it easier for users to copy music illegally -- users had to either buy the music from an affiliate of mp3.com or insert a copy of the cd to prove they owned it before they could listen to the mp3 version stored on mp3.com's servers. The court found that mp3.com had willfully violated copyrights because the company did not have permission to make copies of the music (in mp3-compressed format), so that it's copying of the music onto its server was an infringement. The concept of a user being able to access music on a server after proving ownership of the original cd can still fly - - but the company with the server first has to get permission to put copies of the music on the server.... Companies may come up with new methods of distribution, but can't simply use content from others which they have no right to distribute. I don't see what's unreasonable about that.
The author of a document has certain rights that are described in copyright law. For example, the right to produce derivative works or the right to distribute copies. As Lessig notes in the interview, consumers can also enter into agreements with copyright holders via things like shrink-wrap licenses. Entering into a restrictive agreement with someone is not tantamount to surrendering the rights an author has as copyright holder. Although it might strike some chord of fairness, copyright holders don't lose these rights just because you agreed not to read their books out loud (or whatever), any more than they lose their rights when they agree to let a publisher produce and sell copies of their work.
I quite frankly believe that if I buy something, I should be able to do whatever I wish with it, aside from distributing it to others whom have not purchased it. If I want to take my brand new copy of the latest, greatest bubblegum pop Britney Spears crap and stick it in the microwave, that should be my right. If I want to create wallpaper for my house with a fractal imager using the music as an input source, I should be able to. The RIAA (MPAA) should not have any more control over a physical entity that is no longer in their possesion than I should be able to tell you what to do with a computer once I sell it to you.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
Has anybody else been reading User Friendly's recent satire of Hollywood thought suppression? Good stuff, and I'm glad to see the Lessig interview for a serious look at the same subject.
--
This is not my sandwich.
Uh oh...Lessig fell for the "Read Aloud" "right" in the eBook. I think we covered that a while ago and concluded that it was actually phrased ambiguously and should have been more like: "This book is not able to be read aloud by a text-to-speech program".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well, considering that the vast majority of the money that bands make is from touring and not from CD sales, I'd say yeah a lot of bands would still be making a lot of money and still be making music. The only people who lose from the new setup is the saps who work for the recording industry.
Well, what's the point of that when you could just DeCSS the whole thing? That's why I'm not as worried about the limit; because committing piracy is so much easier through DeCSS and DivX than it is through the player program.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Won't work. Too many jurisdictional problems. Too expensive (would you rather see cops scour the net for child porn rather than bootleg Briney Spears recordings?). And the true pirates will, as always, stay well beyond the reach of any law.
--
"these trusted systems were not just efforts at making sure that the copyright interests would have the same rights that they had under copyright law, but in fact could be developed to give copyright holders more rights than they had under traditional law." - exactly... Are politicians really that dumb? I think they know what's going on, but have no clue how to even use a computer. Just like that new E-Privacy Bill... it's the biggest wad of bull I've seen yet. BTW, the DMCA can kiss my arse.
- Never Undrestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Groups... -
Most musicians get the vast majority of thier money for live performance, not for records sold. Selling CDs or singles is a way to get people to want to see them live.
Your argument seems to discriminate against artists in genres that don't have a concept of live performance. For instance, do electronic artists perform live? Most of their music is generated by a computer program (e.g. Modplug Tracker or some other sequencer); what is there to watch?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In the wake of the DeCSS trial something has been running through my mind (catch'im! catch'im!). The outcome of the trial wasn't my main concern when compared to why the judgement came. I truly believe that in this "New Age" there is a place not just for more "tech savvy" lawyers, but judges as well.
:o)
What happened at the DeCSS trial was more of a mockery than anything. If someone is able to pull the covers over the eyes of the law then anything will remain possible. I'm not arguing the point for or against DeCSS, I'm not really even caring (I'd rather watch DVD on Hellevision).
When a lawyer can totally mangle the information of a case to suit his clients purposes I really think that an obstruction of justice has occured. Granted, I didn't hear the entire trial (I only got the two days that Emmanuel Goldstien was on the stand) but, it was apparent to me that the prosecuting attorney was using the judges lack of knowledge to his cases interest.
While its nice to know that there are well studied lawyers out there that are willing to learn what they need to better their understanding of technology, I think that judges that could/will be presiding over the cases should at the very least take it upon themselves to RTFM so they can better serve the people that they are paid to.
Wait, maybe that already happened
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
I agree with your thought process, but not the legality. Copyrights are in place for a reason. Do you think we would have as much diverse and great music that we have today if everything were given away? I really don't think that many musicians would spend the years developing their skill if there was no "making it". Legally they have to and should protect their property. It is their livelyhood. You probably would not do what you do for 8 or more hours a day if you were expected by society to give away your work would you? That is the Legality. Now for your thought process. I really do think that mp3's have increased sales. As long as it is an mp3 and the quality is not as good as the original, people are motivated to go buy original cd's that they like. I think this is a good thing and if I were an artist I would release my own mp3's of good quality. However, I also think that the record companies are looking 5 or 10 years down the road when looking at what they are doing now. Yes, you hear an mp3, like the song and want a real copy of it because the mp3 is not of the same quality. (No arguments about how "most" people can't tell the difference, fact is it is there and perceptions are everything) 5 years from now whose to say there is not gigabit internet connections to everyone's house and downloading an iso image of a cd and burning it on your new 100x burner will only take 3 minutes. Would you then go buy an original? Not likely. I am not here to discuss the technological possibility of the above, just that someday the above will be possible. Record companies have to protect themselves by what they do now. If they say it is ok to distribute for free copies of their music, they can't backpeddle in the future and say "well it was ok yesterday, but today I changed my mind". The courts would eat that up.
. . . the fundamental problem of what is wrong with DMCA, and why strong-IP guys like myself are opposed to it, is that it doesn't protect the plaintiff's intellectual property. In fact, the upshot is that it provides patent-like protection for anti-circumvention "technologies" (an overly generous term in many cases) with unlimited term and virtually unlimited scope.
The irony of the DeCSS case is that the subject matter that was labelled contraband was not written or conceived by the plaintiffs, but rather by the defendants! It was the original intellectual property of the defendants that was restrained. This is why the First Amendment is so clearly implicated in this case.
Buy something else instead?
Businesses that rip off their customers by delivering broken product and not accepting returns quickly go out of business.
Businesses that rip off their customers by delivering broken product and not accepting returns quickly go out of business.
You mean like how microsoft is going out of business?
Bullshit. Businesses that don't make money go out of business. Businesses that rip off their customers can make a fortune if they are the only supplier for that product.
0 1 - just my two bits
> because building a duplicate of Susie's bike
> doesn't hurt Susie in any way.
Susie Bike Corp. is hurt tremendously. They went through all the trouble to design and build the bike, spending tens of millions of dollars. Now you just go down to the store and slap a BikeDuplicator into your drive bay and steal a copy, then start spreading the design all over the place, hand out further copies from your drive bay, and so on.
Yes, it does hurt them. The design is not yours. It is wrong to steal that which is not yours. That you may even feel your actions benefit Susie Bike Corp. (or even if your actions DO benefit them more than Susie Bike Corp.'s own actions would) is irrelevant. It is not yours and you do not steal.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Nobody ever has any problems when it comes to copying books. Why do they suddenly see it as OK to copy CD's?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Everybody knows most people in the public at large are just plain too lazy to borrow and copy (or download) copyrighted ANYTHING. It's just easier to buy it at the mall next time they're there. so the bitching of the RIAA and MPAA is just them trying to plier the fillings out of our teeth. And CDs are especially onerous, since there's SO MUCH MARKUP on them. Profit-protection legislation indeed! Remember when records (new) were $7 or so, and these new-fangled CDs were supposed to eventually be much cheaper?
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
IP is meant to protect the invention or writing of the inventor or author, respectively. This is done for the supposed benefits derived from giving this incentive, ultimately to promote the Sciences and the Useful Arts. [Sciences mean writings -- Useful Arts means inventions -- go figure!]
But great care must be taken to balance the grant of rights solely to serve those purposes. To this end, the Courts have assiduously avoided broadening the scope of remedies beyond the typical: measurable or statutory damages, and narrowly tailored injunctions to prevent infringement of the work (and nothing else).
My problem with DMCA is that it does not provide remedies focused on protecting the work itself, but rather on protecting something other than the work. In the DeCSS case, the defendant wasn't enjoined from copying or distributing the plaintiff's work -- he was enjoined from distributing his own original work.
That's where the first amendment is so deeply implicated -- this is original expression that is being stifled, allegedly in a good cause, but it is original expression that is being stifled. It is not derivative of the plaintiff's expression -- indeed, it is entirely unrelated.
Thanks for just sending us to the main page of User Friendly. Im not about to go searching around a site I do not know when its not obvious where the content is.
Link the specific page, or dont link at all.
But now the real danger is that the recording industry has succeeded in its objective, which as Hillary Rosen (president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America) said, is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off.
This is the guts of it. Media companies don't like the potential that new technologies have for distributing content (and excluding them from the supply chain). So what's their strategy been? Armies of lawsuits to make sure that a) anyone with a good idea has to waste their time defending a legal case and b) anyone who wants to fund a good idea won't - because they don't want to get involved in a legal case.
Ironically, the most dangerous and subversive tools are the ones written by individuals or small teams with zero funding - Gnutella, OpenNAP and Freenet.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I didn't word that well did I? Thanks :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It is worth checking out Peertal.com, a news site for the P2P sector.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Not that it matters. We know what the intentions are. The intentions are that those "permissions" apply to the human reader. Otherwise, why would they exist as restrictive options in the first place?
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
"You own the CDs.
You don't own the right to do what the hell you like with them. "
Yes, I do. I do because that is fair use - to do anything I want with the cd and the music on it, short of distributing it to other people. That's protected by copyright law. Anything else is free game.
The bike analogy is misapplied. When I listen to a cd, I'm not borrowing anything from anybody. I'm using a copy. It would be like if Johnny asked Susie if he could take pictures of her bike and make a duplicate. Arguably, he wouldn't even have to ask, because building a duplicate of Susie's bike doesn't hurt Susie in any way.
Content distributors have too many laws tha favor them at the moment. Fair use is needed. Here's my middle ground of what I think Fair Use should include:
1. the user can reformat the purchased material for personal use provided other rights are not broken. For example, I should be able to rip out the audio track of a DVD to CD. I think copies should be allowed, but the copies should be sterile (no copies of a copy). However, I couldn't reformat material in order to make a profit from it.
2. the user should be able to extract portions of purchased material for what has been traditional examples of "Fair Use".
To supplement this reexamine the length of copyright. No copyrights should extend after the death of the author. Also limit the length of time patents are exclusive monopolies. Patents are used to restrict access.
Also note that th ebiggest issue will become access, not rights. If you have the right to record a timeshifted "Friends" HDTV episode, but cannot buy a set top box that allows that, the end result is the same - no recording.
In a large, free market, with all kinds of roughly interesting movies to choose from, this is no big deal. You don't do business with the movie studios that require lobotomies.
But what if 90% of the sheeple[?] do? The 10% of knowledgeable geeks (I'm overestimating) who boycott "lobo studios" won't be enough to put them out of business. The only way to win is to educate the sheeple. Join EFF and help fight the good fight.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
The root of the problem is that many of us really really want to deal with particular publishers, record producers, movie studios, or whatever. If you absolutely can't live without the next Tom Cruise movie, then you are over a barrel with respect to whatever the producer decides to demand. Today they don't demand much -- a few dollars, and they do not cede their control of distribution, so you can't sell second generation copies of your DVD of Cocktail. In the future they may decide that newly released movies can only be viewed in approved screening rooms, and that they will have the right to scan you and remove devices from your person on the way in. They may demand the right to lobotomize you on your way out. If you're so desperate to see that movie, then there's not much you can do. If they wanted, they could produce the movies and not let anyone see them at all.
In a large, free market, with all kinds of roughly interesting movies to choose from, this is no big deal. You don't do business with the movie studios that require lobotomies. They may or may not go out of business, who cares. If you're insanely lucky, you can do business with publishers, bands, and studios that explicitly give you the right to redistribute their music as needed.
We don't live in that world now. The only solution is not to want stuff that comes from organizations that demand more than you're willing to pay. It's hard to arrange. On the other hand, authors and musicians, who traditionally get screwed anyway, should bear some of the blame if things get out of hand. I don't begrudge anyone the rights that copyright grants. But authors who, given some choice, allow their books to be published with (and let me coin a phrase here) lobotomy licenses attached are not helping things. (I say this having self-published my own book -- ask me in a year how it's doing.)
OK, you convinced me. I won't buy any more CD's.
Exactly.. the physical object is mine, and in the 80ies people would consider a CD their personal property and they would make as many taperecordings of them as they liked. The only thing that was illegal was the sale of these copies, because the content was copyrighted and therefor can't be pirated.
But now were past the nineties and cd's still read "reproduction prohibited". The fact of the matter is that the law and it's customs have not evolved. Every time I play a cd, or I read a book, or I tape something with my videocam, I'm reproducing something. Companies apprently strike deals with lawyers to buy up rights on something they don't own, namely: configurations of letters, notes, soundwaves, radiofrequencies.. Once they have bought these rights, they are supposedly allowed to claim every right on everything that resembles what was copyrighted, binary or not. That claim is based upon constitutions and law principles that can date back over 100 years. However, today, content and channels are starting to become less proprietry and more common property.
Obviously, the internet and new technologies and applications, which are entirely free, have played a big part in rendering this model obsolete. Distribution is being taken out of companies hands. Even expensive content generation, like software or websites, is being paralleled by anonymous groups of people doing it for nothing at all. Self-regulative systems are emerging everywhere and on every level (distribution/generation/..), with things like p2p and streaming as fine examples. Instead of trying to protect the old market, the music industry had better found ways to benefit from p2p-like models. And law-makers better start being creative and look at society and it's customs again, because what people are supposed to do, and what people are really considering as ok
People need to start thinking differently, but then again, I believe that slogan is allready copyrighted as well.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Going to the library and going to Blockbuster may soon become a similar experience- as patrons use a smart card to track their borrowing purchases which are instantly charged to their credit card.
Checking out that Kafka's gonna kost ya
There was something in there about libraries leveling access to people of all economic strata- but no one can remember now.
An RIAA spokesman said that the main issue was memory. Memory itself is a kind of copying, so it is in a sense a violation of "fair use" standards.
www.ridiculopathy.com
Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Moderators: This is not a troll. If you disagree with me, why not just post an intelligent reply? That way we could have an actual discussion....
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
With all the disclaimers and prohibition on reverse engineering what choice remains? You buy a DVD player and a DVD, but it won't work. You can't play the DVD, but you can't return it because it's opened -- and opening it signifies that you agree to the terms of the license. The DVD player (not computer based) can't play it because of a change in the encryption standard. No upgrade available for the player -- it's the DVD maker's fault. Any new DVDs won't play on it, no upgrades available, what's left to do?
Fight Spammers!
Lessig mentions the Alice in Wonderland license which states that "This book cannot be read aloud." I believe that this has already been the subject of a slashdot article. But what does that restriction really mean-- does the ebook have the technical ability to read certain "enhanced" texts aloud, or is it an obnoxious loicensing restriction. Lessig is right about one thing. It is unfair and unethical to impose restrictions on the use of a non-copyrighted book-- especially since the text was entered in by Project Gutenberg.
But, for them to take action against you for doing that would violate the anti-retaliation provision of the ADA.
What a tangled web we lawyers weave when we practice to greed.
Fight Spammers!