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Fair Use is Not a Constitutional Right
jmichaelg writes: "Ed Stroligo at overclockers.com has written an article on the fair-use provision of the 1976 copyright law. He goes into some depth on the difference between a constitutional right vs. a legal right as well as covers the Betamax, Napster and Rio cases. It's a well thought out article and definitely worth the read."
what kind of right it is. It doesn't matter whether it's a legal right or a constitutional right. I want it, and I will refuse to give it up. I do whatever I please with no thought for the law. I base my actions on my personal values and morals. If I happen to break a law, like the DMCA, tough. The civil rights activists were breaking a law when they sat at the front of the bus and refused to get up. They said the law was unjust, they went to jail for it, and they won. I plan to do the same.
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Reasonable people agree that the creator of a work should compensated for his efforts, hence copyright - but it has no basis in the constitution. The real question deals with practical issues surrounding the rise of the internet. With the possibility of instaneous distribution and infinite, perfect replication, how can creators be compensated for their work? MegaCorp Inc. wants everything regulated, which is never going to happen. Slashdot types want everything free as in beer, which doesn't encourage creation. So until someone finds a decent way of paying artists aside from CDs, books, etc. people are going to keep stealing digital things because it is a better way to distribute.
As usual, the extremes on either side of the argument need to be tempered to find a workable solution. And it isn't going to be found in the Constitution.
I think a *lot* of people have forgotten one very basic principle: the Constitution of the United States (a la Bill of Rights) is not designed to enumerate every single "right" we have as human beings. This is a very common misconception, and an extremely dangerous one at that.
Kids in school these days are being taught that the government "gives" us a set of basic rights. This is an incorrect, but unfortunately somewhat prevalent view. The government does not *give* us rights; we have these rights just as surely as we have a nose. The role of government in this case is to *protect* those rights which we already have.
Here's the problem: if you "educate" an entire generation of Americas to believe that the government gives us rights, you end up with the unfortunate consequence that we must also accept that what is given may be taken away. This tends to work out well for those in positions of power, and poorly for the average citizen.
This is one of my top reasons for wanting to spend at least a few years of my life teaching. Teachers carry a responsibility to accurately convey knowledge, and the ability to use critical thinking skills, to our soon-to-be citizens. No, I'm not saying I'm God's gift to teaching, or even that I'm right all the time (probably wrong more often than I'd like to admit). I *am* saying I'm interested in taking a stab at changing things.
The Constitution doesn't say I have a right to wipe my own @ss, either. Fortunately, the framers of the Constitution weren't that stupid:
Amendment IX
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
What needs to be done is a clarification on just what exactly copyright is. As near as I can tell, this is what it should be: authors and inventors shall be rewarded with a monopoly on the sale and distribution of their respective works. Infringement of copyright then becomes a theft of market. Unfortunately, with Washington so thoroughly bought and paid for, I doublt that we'll see that kind of system any time soon.
BlackGriffen
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
1. part of the purpose of Fair Use is to preserve the public's First Amendment right to discuss copyrighted works. The fact that some of these rights are explicitly recognized in copyright law doesn't mean that Fair Use is inherently limited to what is in the current law.
2. where there is a conflict between the Constitution's provision for copyrights and the First Amendment, the First Amendment should be presumed to override the original language, because the very purpose of an amendment is to modify the Constitution.
none of this means that people can copy whatever they wish and claim Fair Use. on the other hand, laws that impose criminal penalties on reasonable exercises of the First Amendment should be shot down at the earliest opportunity.
The fair use provisions of the 1976 copyright law are based on supreme court rulings made before 1976. Fair use is a constitutional right due to both the first ammendment and the tenth ammendment (when you consider that congress has the power only to pass copyright law in order "To promote the progress of science and useful arts"). An important supreme court case on this issue, Eldred v. Ashcroft, is coming up. This case should directly answer the question of whether or not congress has the power to enact copyright law which does not promote the progress of science as well as whether or not copyright law is "categorically immune from challenge under the First Amendment", but the current precedent is that they do not, and they are not.
I think what he means by "legal" rights versus constitutional rights is really a matter of "statutory" versus constitutional rights. The concept of legal rights encompasses both.
The fundamental concept of the article is correct. It does not, however, go far enough. While copyright is discussed/provided for in the Constitution; the extent of the "right" (i.e., what exactly the right is) is a product solely of statutes (here, the 1976 Copyright Act).
D'oh -- the stuff that buys me beer! Ray -- the guy who sells me beer!
The Copyright of Act of 1976 was intended to preserve the judicially developed doctrine of fair use and "not to change, narrow, or enlarge it in any way." (4 MELVILLE B. NIMMER & DAVID NIMMER, NIMMER ON COPYRIGHT 13.05, at 13-150 & n.7). Fair use is still very much a creature of the courts. Congress identified a list of four factors that the courts must consider, but there are no bright line rules.
The judicial origins of the doctrine lead one to ask the question, if there were no fair use doctrine, would the Constitution obligate courts to come up with one? There is a strong argument that fair use is mandated by the Constitution. It goes as follows:
U.S. CONST. art I, 8, cl. 8 reads: "The Congress shall have Power . . . [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Thus, Congress's power in creating copyright is arguably limited to those actions that promote "the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Fair use doctrine prevents copyright law from serving as a bar to progress. Thus, if courts did not recognize a fair use defense, the Copyright Act, as applied in certain cases, would be unconstitutional because it would effectively prohibit activities which the Congress has no constitutional authority to prohibit.
I like this argument better than those that rely on the First Amendment, because it does not need to reconcile conflicts among different provisions, relying instead on the copyright clause itself.
Since we are talking about legal issues and correct classifications and obviuosly some people will never get it straight:
copyright infringement != theft
Property rights have nothing to do with copyright. The laws governing those two subjects have totally different motivations.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I think people here are missing an important point ... what are the limits of space and time shifting? The courts have agreed that shifting music purchased under the First Sale Doctrine onto a device to be legal. VCR is a precedence for time-shifting (which TiVo mimics digitally).
/dev/null then they gain "value" at the expense of businesses trying to capture the fickle tastes and limited attention of consumers. The sad thing is that companies can't change as they've already got those music backlists on their accounting books as "assets" and consumers are becoming more adventurous in their exposure to internet music.
However, from a media studio point of view, this deprecates their backlist. Basically they build up a catalog of works and hope to extract as much future revenue as possible out of sunk costs (think director's cuts, think remix, think DVD extras). By having an alternative "source" of originals (abeit not as mutable) they lose pricing power over secondary/tertiary markets. Apple's business model doen't rely on them owning content, but on allow consumers to rip and snip, effectively bringing the studio into the house. Time and space shifting, if you extend this beyond the immediate neighbourhood via digital means (think web-radio) hurts the larger companies who rely on regional segmentation to market at different price-points. Any corporation which has a backlist of crap is basically going to be ignored despite how much they intend to push the stuff once they lose control of the distribution system.
The fact that there is civil disobediance in people not obeying the copyright law in music indicates that either the law is flawed or that there's some distortions in the market. My guess is that the advertisement business model is just not sustainable over the internet as ads effectively "dilutes" the signal-to-noise ratio when hunting for decent music. If people time-shift ads to inifinity, or space-shift popups to
Immoveable object vs irresistable force springs to mind.
LL
While the article is informative, the author doesn't speculate on why Fair Use isn't a constitutional right. Without any sarcasm implied, could it be that it's simply too recent a concept/development to be established as an amendment? Is there too much opposition to establishment of Fair Use laws? Is it too murky an issue, or is there no sense of a "need" to draw those lines on Capital Hill?
The article was culled from a morass of court decisions, which when strung together form something of a grounding for this issue, but nothing conclusive. I think something like DigitalConsumer.org's Digital Consumer Bill of Rights is in order, at least to draw the lines in the sand. However, this is about as likely to pass as a Patient Bill of Rights. Your response could be that with big money influences the little guy will never win, or maybe just that it's too complex an issue for lawmaker's to tackle right now, and they'd rather leave it up to the courts, case by case. Regardless, even a Supreme Court decision will be too specific to nail down this sector of law, and I don't think a definite answer from our government on what our Digital Rights are is an unreasonable request. I'm willing to bet, however, that "unreasonable" is just what we'll find the answer to be.
...which consists of 10 minutes of reading and another 20 of thinking about what the author said, let me put it down into a single sentence.
"Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user's preferred technique or in the format of the original."
---Universal v. Reimerdes
US Second Circuit Court of Appeals
You have the [legal] right to use it in a specified manner, albeit a limited one.
If you were an artist, well lets assume you are.
You buy comic books, and say you draw wolverine, the Xman character on paper, you are learning to draw and you begin to appreciate art, eventually you grow up to become the best artist the world has ever known.
This is one possibility.
Now, lets take another look at it, from another view point. Imagine buying a comic book with a timer on it. This timer tells you how much time precisely you have to read it after its opened.
You open the comic book, you read it as fast as you can to beat the timer, after the time is up, everything erases, this is so you cannot share the information in this comic book, this prevents you from ever having a refrence point to learn to draw, from ever becoming an artist. To make it even more extreme, imagine this book could only be read when your registered finger prints were on the book, any imagine that when your prints are on any book that you are automatically being charged for the purchase.
Imagine now, someone invents a machine, which allows them to randomly generate comic style artwork from just scanning one image of wolverine into a computer, imagine then people using these machines to not only share comic books, but to create new comic books. Then imagine the original comic book company suing the makers of this machine for giving art back to the people who for a long time had to pay $20-30 a comic book, a book which they were timed for how long they could read.
Now lets bring it to the most extreme, imagine it being illegal for people who read these books and decide to share it online by repeating the story from memory and using the comic art generator software being thrown in jail.
Ah so people should be thrown in jail so a richer group of people who have a monopoly can maintain it? Even if just as much money can be made by advancing the industry via software generated artwork and a new group of artists who create art for fun?
Thats something to think about. Seriously. Because this situation WILL happen in our lifetimes and we will be forced to choose, money, or freedom.
Do you want to control the art? or is art just about money now?
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Except that's not the scenario you should anticipate. If you provoke the ire of the media monopolies, they won't have you arrested. They'll sic their lawyers on you. Which will tie up all your assets in litigation until you relent.
Nor should you expect society to respond to your actions the way it did to the Civil Rights movment. That was about fundamental matters of human dignity, like being able to sit down while riding the bus, or use a public bathroom, or buy a house, or do a thousand other things most of us take for granted.
Many people might think you also have the right to listen to a song without buying the whole album, or watch Sex and the City without subscribing to HBO. But let's get real: these issues will never inspire the same level of outrage and activism.
Could someone explain how this is suppoused to work:
* when the copyright expires it's allowed to copy the work in question
* but assum the work is on a copy protected media like a dvd
* acording to the DMCA it's then still ilegal to use copy protection cracking software
- so how are we legaly sopoused to be able to copy a copy protected work even when the copyright has expired ?
Most people would consider it an individual liberty to be able to use what they paid for in any way the choose, whether it be ripping a CD to mp3, ripping a DVD and encoding to some other format (requiring DeCSS), or just owning a computer that has an unrestricted memcpy() . It's considered a basic right to bear arms, so are you telling me it's not, to own something that can copy bits?
First, who exactly decides what "reasonable people" are? Second, copyright was originally more "reasonable" at a 7 year term, then more "reasonable people" came along and now look where we're at. Finally, "it has no basis in the constitution" is just wrong, because the Constitution is the sole source of authority for the Federal Government to make laws. If copyright didn't come from the Constitution, then it is an illegal law.
Hellooo, DMCA, SSSCA. We said the former was "never going to happen", and it did. The latter... won't pass this year, maybe. The future is not a very bright one, though.
Uh, hello, first off "Slashdot types" (of which I believe I qualify) likely want more: everything free as in liberty; free as in beer is just a nice extra. This "doesn't encourage creation"? What do you call these:
Or maybe that business model just isn't going to work anymore, so they better get a different job or find a different way to make money. There is no guaranteed individual right to make money on a given venture. The reason we originally had the copyright was to further society, not line corporate pockets. Artists can control their work, possibly making money for a short period of time, then work is returned to the public domain. That's not how it works anymore.
No. The end has already been determined. Like a Myrddraal, MegaCorp Inc. has already been killed, but they're too dumb to realize it, and it doesn't mean they're not still dangerous (see DMCA and SSSCA).
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
But how much are they getting paid? Billions?
So you'd rather they rob the musicians instead of us?
Face it, at least if we rob the musicians, musicians have a better chance of getting rich and making money. If their music is really that good, more people will pay for their service to make more. more people will go to their concerts, more people will buy their fancy high quality DVD with their videos on it even though you can record low quality videos on MTV.
You see, when someone makes revolutionary music, people are very willing to pay money. People shouldnt pay money for trash like britney spears, if you want to pay money to some fake musicians with no talent in the current system go ahead.
In the new system at least we will know the musicians who do get paid deserve every penny.
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This article says that DeCSS somehow gets around the copy protection embedded into DVD's. As I'm sure most of you know, this isn't technically true. The purpose of CSS is not copy protection but content control. CSS allows movie studios to decide when, where, and by whom the DVD is viewed. Lets say you're in Europe and you'd like to watch a DVD that has just been released in the states. Under the ordinary laws of commerce if you've got the money to buy that DVD then you get to watch it. Not so with CSS. Now movie studios have the ability to pick and choose which titles get released in which region at which price. Lets say there is a title that the powers that be in your country have banned because they don't like it. CSS gives the MPAA the perfect means by which to implement and support this oppression by foreign governments. None of this is right or just. The idea behind copyright is to give producers of works certain rights and protections to encourage the creation of art and knowledge. Unfortunately with things like the DMCA and CSS, non-producers such as the MPAA are perverting the concept of copyright. Where traditionally copyright has been used to define when, where, and by whom a particular work is COPIED, it is now being used to control where, when and by whom a particular work is viewed, read, seen, or otherwise utilized.
Imagine if there was CSS for books and in order to read a particular book you had to live in the right country, be of the correct race or social group, and pay a surcharge to the book cartel every time you wanted to read it. As it stands now books are independent entities. Once a publisher prints a book and sells it, that publisher has no control over what is done with that book other than a legal right to control whether it or portions of it are copied or used in other works. You can read this book, then give it to your friend to read. The publisher can't come have you and your friend arrested because he hadn't paid for the "right" to read that book. You can smuggle books that are unpopular with an oppressive regime into that country and the words will still be legible.
The problem with CSS is not that it is a copy protection scheme, but that it is a scheme to control who uses the DVD, which has nothing to do with copy protection or copyright.
If I remember right a group of video pirates were busted here not too long ago for copying DVD's. What I heard about that case is that they were copying the entire DVD bit-for-bit whether it employed CSS or not. The copied DVD's were still encoded using CSS. So what possible use is it as a copy control scheme? None of course, but its very useful for controlling which people get to watch the DVD.
Another group that is trying to pervert copyright into content control is the "church" of scientology. They employ copyright and trade secret law in order to try and prevent anyone from knowing the truth about their "religion." The truth is that scientology is nothing more than a highly successful scam that robs people of their money, enslaves many in the "Sea Org," and destroys families by forcing those in the cult to "disconnect" from relatives who are critical. Their abuse of the legal system is legendary. Their policy of filing suits for harassment value alone is such that I'm amazed their lawyers havent' been disbarred by now. The organization's sole purpose is to sucker people out of their money that is then passed "uplines" to the likes of David Miscavige. Their use of front groups and interlocking corporations to facilitate the laundering of this money would make John Gotti weep. If you want to find out more about this kriminal kult take a trip to www.xenu.net Be sure to pass this on to your friends too. The more people know the truth about this criminal organization, the fewer potential victims the cult will have to feed upon.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
If I purchace any item I should be able to do whatever I want to it. Including and not limited to:
modification
destruction
reverse-engineer to make myown.
transferral to another party via resale or gift
However, what I cannot do is make cloned copies and re-distribute them as the original.
If I go to the store and purchace the latest Stephen King novel and then read it, It is completely within my right to resell that book.
I do not own the copyrighted work, the text of the work. I own the materials that make up this specific copy of the work. This gives me the right to do whatever I want with my copy of the work. I can paint all the pages blue and stick feathers on the covers. I can then sell my Stephen King case-mod.
I can even try to sell it at a price greater than my purchace price. It is my copy. I can redistribute my copy!!!
I can buy 100 copies of the book. Do the same mods as well as number them. I now sell them as a limited set.
This all should be well within my right as I am taking materials that I legally aquired and combining them. I am not, however, making "copies" of the work.
I can even sit down and try to write my own stephen king type story. (I suck. I cannot write anything near SK)
I cannot try to redistribute my cloned King as the real thing (aside from the fact that it would suck and noone would believe it was him anyway)
People are choosing to use Napster and other data sharing software to redistribute their own unmodified "copies" of the original work.
This is where the law is being broken.
I can make as many copies as I want for my own personal use. I can do whatever the heck I want with my copies. I can NOT, however, redistribute those personal copies unless they ALL go with the original.
I can make a photocopy of parts of a StephenKing book to take with me on vacation. I do this for MY PERSONAL USE. Not to redistribute. This should be legal.
I cannot redistribute my own copies without the permission of the copyright holder. Or until the copyright expires.
Lets try another analogy with Beverages.
I purchace a case of Beer(tm).
I can then do whatever I want with the liquid in the can.
I can modify it - make beer batter shrimp.
I can destroy it - pour it over a fire.
I can transfer it to someone else -
sell it at a concert for 10x price.
give it away at a party
I cannot make exact duplicates for redistribution.
(even if we had cheap materials duplication technology)
However --
I can brew my own beverage that is indistinguishable from the original. As long as I do not attempt to pass it off as the original.
It really should be that simple.
If it is not, someone please tell me where I am wrong.
comment directly in my journal
Interesting to note that these laws place a large segment of otherwise lawful citizens in breach of the law to the benefit, generally, of Corporate Citizens
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
A review comment along the lines of "The grass animation in Shrek is inferior to that of Sully's fur in Monsters Inc" can not be backed up with an excerpt from a handheld camera in a cinema; therefore the DMCA is quite capable of preventing normal fair use as laid down in section 107 of Title 17 of US law. This right was not removed by the DMCA although certain judges have choosen to ignore this fact when preciding over cases where their ex-employer and long standing friends from the MPAA were prosecuting.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You often see these is newspapers who are on one side or the other of an issue: when you do, you know the newspaper's biased.
davecb@spamcop.net
when the copyright expires it's allowed to copy the work in question, but assum the work is on a copy protected media like a dvd, acording to the DMCA it's then still ilegal to use copy protection cracking software
Not necessarily unlawful. The DMCA (17 USC 1201) bans only circumvention acts and devices that attack "a work protected under this title" (that is, Title 17), namely a work under either a subsisting copyright or a subsisting mask work monopoly. Works whose copyrights have expired are no longer "work[s] protected under this title." This is why the Big Seven studios haven't released much (if any) public domain content on DVDs, because in that case, somebody would be able to lawfully make or import a circumvention device designed specifically to decrypt public domain works (which also happens to work on copyrighted works, wink wink nudge nudge). And no, encoding celluloid to MPEG-2 doesn't introduce enough originality to pass the 103(b) exclusion.
so how are we legaly sopoused to be able to copy a copy protected work even when the copyright has expired?
Without the Bono Act, the DMCA lacks teeth because the Mickey's Early Years DVD would contain public domain content, making DeCSS, QrPFF, and EfDTT legit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Your choice, let some CEO decide how you can use what you paid for and own. Or you decide how you can use what you paid for and own.
I think of it this way, if I pay money for something, I can do any damn thing i want with it, If I buy a Cd and decide to use it as a frizby then so be it, if I decide to break it into peices and feed it to my dog so be it, ITS MY CD.
They own the right to sell it, but once i buy it its MINE.
I can copy the information off of it, that information is also mine, they own the right to sell it, but i can share it if i want to!
If you were playing a CD on your stereo and invited friends over, and its against the law to let anyone besides you listen to that CD, should speakers by outlawed because they allow you to break the DMCA or whatever stupid law is in place? Should you tell your friends that they cant listen to the music with you? Hell clubs and raves should be outlawed too, after all these people are all stealing sound. hey dont forget the people who share TV sets, all of them are evil paracite pirates who are stealing from tom cruise and keanu reeves.
Oh and dont even think about trying to draw your favorite cartoon character or comic, thats against the law too.
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Another conflict between copyright and technological copy protection measures is that the Constitution defines copyright terms to be limited; the intent was clearly that afterwards, works pass into the public domain. Technological protections undermine this, keeping copyrighted works under technological protection forever locked up.
Copyright is special privilege granted by the government with the policy goal of encouraging people to create and publish works. It is justified only by a clause in the Constitution that balances various interests against one another. If one side doesn't live up to its side of the bargain, the whole deal falls apart.
Overall, I can't figure out whether the author of that article is disingenuous or just stupid. Of course, the Constitution doesn't allow piracy. But it also doesn't allow corporate theft of the commons. The question is where the dividing line is. We can't expect much help from our current "constructionist" supreme court with that, who, by their own admission, will vote for big business in these cases to the point of absurdity. So, in that sense, yes, it is up to the legislature to put a stop to piracy--of the copyright system by big media companies.
The basic principle is that only the enumerated responsibilities listed ( in the Const., State, Municipal, Neighborhood, etc.) are given to the government..ALL other rights belong to the individual......We submit to governance by citizenship and contract.
The Government does not GIVE us rights....We have them and give some up for the good of society! The government does not "start out" with all of the rights (or the right to all money either) and then "Give" them back to us.....
We start out with "All rights except these...." which we temporarily give to government at our pleasure....(at least in the old times)...that's why it's important to vote...always....
Like the presumption of innocence, this needs to be emphasized to kids in their civics classes.......
If you get the basics right, all the other stuff will fall into place.
Don't buy it.
Turn off cable, DirecTV, XFM. Don't rent tapes/DVDs. Don't buy CD's. Trade around amoung your friends if you feel the need.
Remember, Intellectual Property isn't like paying rent, or eating. You can live without if for a while. I flat gar-en-tee that if you and two of your friends were to stop buying IP for even a month, Jack and Hillery would sing a very different tune.
Why don't we have the great Intellectual Property Black out? Why not pick a month, say one where all the new movies come out, and just turn off cable, direcTV and XFM, don't buy CD's, rent any tapes, or buy any kind of IP?
Look, we can do something. Insted of being arrested (like in the 60's) we can protest by keeping our hard earned in our pocket. If you slip, buy an indulgance from EFF with a like donation, or even just 10% of what you gave to Jack and Hillery to rip off your rights. Invest in a little to keep 'em.
No, what'll happen is that the whiners don't want to do anything at all about it but sit in their pitty pot and expect someone else to protect their rights. Grow up. It's time you did something to protect your rights for yourself.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
You know why? Its illegal!
you reviewing a movie is stealing from the actors like tom cruise and dennis hopper. These guys are starving in the streets because you reviewed their movie revealing their plot, causing millions of people not to go to the movies anymore!!! Movie sales are way down due to sites like slashdot.
Yeah its not a law yet, but do you really think this couldnt apply? After all, mp3s arent 100 percent digitally perfect conversations, and neither is turning a movie into a text file, not only that but, is it not your right of free speech and expression to do whatever you want with the information you consume? Even share it?
So why when its digital information, the rights of the offline world dont apply anymore? I say fuck that, we deserve the right of free speech and expression in the digital world, because eventually the digital world will be the offline world, and we dont want our children to grow up in a nazi facist RIAA ruled information economy where all the information is controlled by corperations and people all have to fight for information.
It makes sense to fight for physical objects, but to fight, compete for and attempt to own information in an information based society? Thats just fucking silly.
Humans produces information at unlimited amounts, the population keeps growing, you have the third world who needs this information and who could contribute so much to the world, yet we want to hold this information back and keep it to ourselves, or not us, but the top 1% so they can continue to rule the world through censorship.
This is as bad as China, Nazi Germany, Russia, etc.
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As several other people mentioned, the often forgotten 9th Amendment states that the Bill of Rights is not a complete list of the People's or States' rights.
There is also what the Constitution does not say. It says Congress can grant authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and inventions for a limited time. It doesn't say Congress can grant authors and inventors absolute control over their writings and inventions forever.
In case someone missed it, the MPAA now has control over on what player you can watch that DVD you purchased for all eternity. It'll be illegal to rip and encode your DVD collection to MPEG-46 two hundred years from now under the DMCA because DVD is poorly encrypted with CSS.
Is that absurd to anyone else?
One important test for this Right: The People consider that they have it. Criticism, parody and other fair uses has been viewed as a right of those derivitive creators.
Thats right, because giving uneducated peoplee access to information without them paying for it, is robbing the matheticians, musicians, artists, and information producers of the last 500-1000 years of their right to control our access to it.
Libaries need to be outlawed too, i mean if we allow access to free books, it robs the makers of these books of money they deserve.
Oh and lets not forget, the scientists like einstien, his theory or relativity should be SOLD, not given away for free!! Scientists shouldnt release the super string theory, or the big bang theory, it should be sold in stores so only people who are rich enough to afford it can become smart scientists.
You know what? Sure you guys think I am joking, and maybe I am, but if information is controlled, Education is impossible.
How can someone learn to program without a book to teach them C?
Should the creators of C sue all of the free C tutorials all over the net?
How about open source be outlawed next?
You see how it all sounds? Thats where control of information leads to, absolutely no freedom.
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No, it's not. You are free to sing any song yourself, or recite from any book. In those cases, it is YOU that is doing the speaking, and your right to speak is protected. Making copies of someone else's recorded speech is a different matter altogether, and is not covered by the first amendment at all.
Most people would consider it an individual liberty to be able to use what they paid for in any way the choose
Excuse me, but exactly what do you pay for when you buy a book, a CD or other copyrighted material?
The whole point of the copyright law is to determine what you paid for. To clarify what you are purchasing, the courts have separated the rights into two categories: There is the right to use something and the right to distribute it.
When you purchase a CD, you are purchasing the right to use that CD. You are not purchasing the right to distribute the music.
Your claim that people aren't getting what they paid for is totally bogus because you are getting exactly what they paid for. You purchased the rights to use the music. The courts have even extended that right, and consider your copying the music from your CD into your RIO player as simply transporting the music through space and time.
Tell me how its any diffrent than using your computer to do the same thing? Oh i get it, so if you manually copy something, its alright and legal, but if you used an automated process or machine to do it, its illegal?
Copying is copying. Speaking of an idea which is owned by someone else or reciting someone elses song "Karoke" is no diffrent than turning a song into an mp3.
Neither are 100 percent perfect quality, both are copies of the information however.
Is Karoke free speech?
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This would all be a moot point if
.
.)
A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES HADN'T GONE AND STARTED STEALING EVERY DAMN LAST FILE IN EXISTENCE OFF OF NAPSTER
Yes napster had fair use potential, but the MAJORITY OF TRAFFIC OVER IT was ILLEGAL. School childern sold f*cking pirated CDRs for crying out loud! Of COURSE there was/is a problem, and the ONLY way to get around it is to MAKE PEACE with the RIAA.
Suggestion #1;
stop f*cking stealing files! Do NOT brag about your MP3 collection, do NOT say that you just download files to test out a CD (uh people, helllooo, various online sites, hell, TONS of online sites allow for you to sample entire tracks from CDs, LEGALY. The RIAA and members tried to do its best to accomidate people in that area, what response did they get? NOTHING) and STOP downloading every damn file in existence just because you want to have the largest MP3 collection/penis size!
(apologies to those few who actualy DO use P2P file sharing programs for SOLELY legal purposes. All, uh, 3 or 4 of you.)
Next, if you REALLY want to shove it to the RIAA, then for crying out loud do not listen to their music AT ALL
When artists can start getting MORE money and MORE listeners from signing up with alternative lables then they can from signing up with one of the 'big boys' THEN and ONLY THEN will we have 'won' this 'war' against the RIAA.
Yes the DMCA sucks, horribly. Some type of law needed to exist to address that illegal sector, and we all KNEW that some type of law was going to be passed sooner or later.
Now what did you HONESTLY expect to happen? The big companies to draft a WELL REASONED and LIGHT handed law that allowed for maximum consumer protection?
HEheheheheheehohohohohLOL!! Seriously now.
THINK your actions through before you take them. THINK of the long term CONSEQUENCES of your actions before you take them.
(of course getting napster featured on the f*cking 6'oclock news didn't help much either. . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Technically, yes. Your right to speak is protected by the first amendment. Your computer has no such rights under the first amendment.
Yet the founders of this country, you are telling me, did NOT intend for us to steal music?
Yeah ok, the founders of this country left europe because of stupid laws like the DMCA, they set up this country to make sure we as people always have freedom. Not freedom for the big companies.
If big companies are losing money due to "stealing" of information they own, perhaps they need to figure out a new way to make money, or go out of business,
they arent needed anymore, distribution is free now, the consumer can distribute better than they can, musicians wont make any more or less money either way, consumers will save a fortune
Look, its as simple as this, controlling information and restricting it from the mass, is censorship, its no diffrent than china controlling the internet.
If you think the USA was built on this concept, perhaps you should think about moving to china, where censorship is more common.
Censorship sucks, the USA is a hypocrite nation telling other countries to not censor anything, yet they censor information more than any other country.
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The computer should be given all of our rights because its a technology which EXTENDS our speech. Its a damn communications device not a toy.
A computer allows us to speak to more people, faster, As computers become more and more important, someday computers will be used for 99 percent of all our speech, if our speech isnt protected on computers, then if not us, our children have lost the right to free speech.
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However all of them have about as much relation to real societies with real people in them as Freud's theories of the mind: ie, bugger-all.
People just aren't like that and no large (300+) society based on such ideals has ever lasted more than a decade. There are (lots of) examples of societies where some people's work is treated thus, but there's always someone (Stalin, the Pharaoh or whoever) who quite clearly does own their own work and probably everybody else's to boot and has an army to engage nay-sayers in "Poli Sci debates".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Discussing math and algorithms is just as illegal as copying a song to mp3 and sharing it.
You see, unless you discuss it with your lips, its illegal, discussing it with text using a computer is not manually discussing it with your lips thus not protected by free speech.
You see how twisted the law is?
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With regard to the DMCA and DeCSS, I must say I disagree with your analysis. The DeCSS source code which has been prohibited from being distributed doesn't do anything. It is a few text files named '.cpp' and '.h'. It describes a process in a language appreciable to computer scientists how CSS is decrypted. A computer scientist learning about encryption would derive infinitely more value from DeCSS than a garage DVD counterfeiter.
DeCSS isn't useful in pirating DVD movies. To copy a DVD movie, if the first encrypted byte is 11001010 then, a pirated copy needs to contain exactly 11001010, not whatever that might be decrypted as.
DeCSS should in fact be legal under the DMCA. (As mentioned above, it isn't useful in pirating movies; there is no reason to decrypt them: just copy bit-for-bit.)
See Title 17 Section 1201 (f)(3):
It should be legal to play DVDs on a GPL operating system like Linux. Using the DeCSS source code, it is possible to do so. Of course, the movie studios would be pissed off if they didn't get to sell a $100K license. Perhaps that is what this is really about, money and control not copyright violations.
The DMCA effectively kills Fair Use. The DMCA says that copy protections can't be circumvented regardless of why. That effectively makes circumventing a copy protection with no intention of infringing on copyright illegal. If you read the Encryption Research exemption, it says that researchers must get permission to see if encryption protecting copyrighted materials is secure. Have independent researchers ever been required to get permission from patent holders to conduct a study on whether or not a drug is safe?
The SSSCA/CBDTPA goes even further in this deranged direction, making it illegal to be capable of committing copyright infringement. Certainly, copyright infringement isn't good, but most people in prison are there for more dangerous crimes that threaten a much larger portion of society. Like murder or rape for instance. If Congress has been empowered by the Constitution to make it illegal to be capable of committing a crime, why haven't they? Probably, because there is nothing criminal in capacity. Intent and actions can be criminal, capacity can't.
Just my two cents.
Sincerely,
Paul
There's nothing in our constitution that says your intellectual work must be kept from being freely used by the public at large. If tomorrow, congress decided to overthrow all "intellectual property" law, there would be no constitutional argument against it, though certainly many people would complain. The constitution gives congress the power to set up a system of copyright and patents. It doesn't make it a requirement. That power is intended for the benefit of the public by creating economic incentives to produce works which will eventually (and within a reasonably short time) enlarge the public domain. That power has been massively abused such that it is now a way for a handful of people to get super-rich on works that will only enter public domain many generations after they were originally produced. On the other hand, freedom of speech is a constitutional right--and a moral right as well. If the government errs in the process, it ought to err on the side of freedom of speech.
"Fair Use" is what allows both copyright and the first amendment to coexist.
For example, 60 Minutes broadcast excerpts of the "I have a dream" speech by Martin Luther King, and didn't have to pay the King foundation (or whatever legal entity who owns the copyright) anything.
Government doesn't have a "Censored" stamp, but it does have "Top Secret" which is often abused. (I think Senator Moynahan wrote a book on this). If they could just stamp "Copyright" and then sue the New York Times, CNN, or whoever for broadcasting something embarrassing like the pentagon papers, the first amendment would cease to have any force or effect.
As far as "copying" entire works between media or formats - downloading to an MP3 player or making a backup of your hard drive, that might not come under "fair use", but that is a different thing - that "fair use" doesn't cover the acts, as opposed to it being rooted in the constitution (in this case fair use follows from the freedom of speech and of the press - such speech and/or publication - of otherwise copyrighted material - is protected by the first amendment).
Disclaimer: IANAL, but this is my understanding.
OTOH, many of the uses claimed as fair use do not meet the SC's Freedom of Speech and Press constraint on copyright law.
fwiw.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
After reading the article, two themes emerge: copyright of intellectual property and free use thereof. These two concepts can be interpreted as follows (my interpretation, based on limited understanding): Copyright is a law created with the intention of protecting creators control distribution of their creations for a limited duration -- after which they have the opportunity to renew their control or allow it to pass into the public domain. Free use is a concept by which those who purchase intellectual propery are allowed to use it in any way they wish as long as they do not re-distribute it.
So, theoretically, those that hold copyright on music/movies/etc. should have the final say on how to distribute it. The problem is that it isn't just the artists that hold the copyright -- it's also the publisher of the creation -- i.e., the movie distributor, the recording label, etc. What they want is for somebody to buy the music/movies/books they distribute. In most cases, they could probably care less what we do with them once we purchase them.
However, a large number of people have made it very public that consumers don't simply purchase them and keep them in their own house -- they copy them and give them to friends, or, in the case of the internet, complete strangers. And they do it for free.
What's interesting is that it's not typically the artist who will suffer from this -- especially in the case of music or books, where the artist literally gets pennies to the dollar in royalties -- it's the distribution/publishing companies. And since they own copyright on the materials, they have a legal case.
The problem is then this: what if I, who own XXX cd and YYY DVD, want to make one or two archival copies so that I don't ruin my original by playing it too much? What if I want a copy of XXX cd to play in the car, an mp3 copy of it to play on my computer at work, and my cd to keep at home in my CD player? Well, because the recording industry feels that we as consumers only want to copy materials in order to re-distribute them, they want to curtail our ability to do these things -- especially since digital media is so portable and easily distributed.
Who's right? The recording industry has legal precedence (copyright laws) -- but so do consumers (audio and VHS recording technologies exist, after all, under the umbrella of "fair use"). Who will win? The people who scream loudest in the ears of the lawmakers.
No ones being harmed or threatened here. This is one group of people, who are restricting the speech and expression of the masses, in this case, its restricting the masses from using the technology to express themselves freely.
Technology which harms no one and helps everyone EXCEPT the exclusive group who are trying to stop it.
This country was not built to protect big companies, it was built to give freedom to the people. Right now big companies are trying to take freedom from the people in the name of profit. That is not what this country was based on at all, if it were, we'd still be buying tea from the british because it helps them profit.
Think about it, these idiotic statements are some of the same statements made by people in the past.
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No, I'm doing it because (a) it's more convenient for me to download songs than it is to physically pick them up and (b) there is no method available for me to purchase the song I want without also purchasing 10-15 other songs that I do not want, do not like, and will never listen to.
Your claim that once you copy it to your computer "these 1s and 0s are MINE, I own it now" is quite incorrect. You do NOT own it. You own the rights to listen to it yourself for your own private entertainment. You cannot legally give a copy to a friend, whether for free or for profit.
Why am I stating that I have illegal MP3's? Partially to dispell the inevitable hypocrisy that's out there concerning the illicit trade of MP3's. The vast majority of this topic is being fillibustered by those who claim either (a) music should be free (which I disagree with), or (b) after purchasing a CD you own the music (something I also disagree with), or (c) all these MP3's are really just bootlegs and independent artists which is completely legal (which is nonsense -- everyone knows that the vast majority of MP3's being traded are copyrighted). I wish to separate myself from the above camps. I don't think I own the music, nor do I think it should be free. And I don't think you're stupid enough to buy the line that most MP3's are acquired legally. I'm a bizarre minority, someone who wants to pay for my music, but not under the current terms and restrictions. You can demonize me all you want, but it's the truth. When I feel that the deal is equitable to both sides, I will gladly pony up. In the meantime, I will buy only the CD's I can't do without, I will buy singles where I can, but the remainder will be found online via Gnutella. The recording industry has a golden opportunity here to get customers like myself into their pocket. I'm making an offer, but they are not listening. I, however, am listening, and not to their silence.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
but I think it merits noting that the people you speak of live in societies which forcibly deny them such rights. Yes, the waters become murky at this point, but I choose to maintain the position that they still have the potential to express those rights. This can be viewed somewhat like the potential energy in a boulder perched at the top of a cliff. It's not "really there", but in a very true sense it could be expressed should conditions prove favorable.
A number of posters have put forth the opinion that a society retains/has the rights it vigorously defends against those who would deny them. I wholeheartedly agree with this concept. Unfortunately, a number of societies on this planet exist in such a state that it becomes all too easy for a select few individuals to maintain control over the masses. *Why* this occurs will always be the subject of great debate; various factors, such as lack of education, fear, apathy, etc will probably always be part of the "reason why."
I think the important thing to note in all this is the simple fact that once a society has made significant progress down the hill of allowing its government to deny rights, it can be very difficult (short of all-out revolution, which is both difficult and frequently bloody) to reverse the trend. This is why I tend to take issue with people who say things like "no, I don't agree with the government on issue X, but it's no big deal after all..." How many "small deals" will people tolerate before they realize how much ground they've given up?
It's unfortunate, but this is how things typically go. Instead of making a huge commotion with sweeping actions, those who would seek to forcibly deny rights tend to take numerous small steps toward that goal. Or, to put it in crude terms, it's easier to pass a fifty raisins than a single watermelon.
You see and thats where I disagree.
If i translate something into computer language, I now own it, because its NOT the original work.
Not only that, but if I buy something, I OWN what i buy, not the rights to use what I buy.
Third, If I buy something, I have the right to do anything i want with it no matter what it is.
Sure this isnt the law, but its morally right. The people deserve to OWN what they but, and do whatever they want with what they own, businesses who steal money from consumers by tricking them into thinking they own something they dont, should cease to exsist and be replaced with more honest businesses.
Shit like that reminds me of microsoft saying windows comes free with your computer, and millions of people believing it.
Or AOLs 10,000 free hours in 30 days, I bet there isnt even 10,000 hours in 30 days.
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And to extend what I just said.
If you take a pencil and you draw a picture of wolverine from a comic book, you are doing the same thing as you are doing when you rip a song from an CD and onto mp3.
The only diffrence is, instead of the computer and burner, you are using the pencil.
Should the pencil have copy right protections built into it? or how about the paper? is it not yourr freedom of expression to draw what you want on the paper?
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Someone had to buy the music for you to get a copy of it, or copy it in the first place. So all of these people who claim music can never make money unless its sold as a product, are silly as hell.
Someone always has to buy it no matter how its distributed it.
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Information on your computer, are 1s and 0s.
You own the hardware correct? What gives the RIAA, DMCA, or anyone the right to tell you, what information you can and cannot put into your computer, how you can and cannot use your computer, what patterns of 1s and 0s you can and cannot run, what source code you can and cannot write.
Its fucking censorship, theres no way around this.
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If the government and record companies are allowed to tell us, what we can and cannot do with our hardware, what we can and cannot write, what we can and cannot run,
They are taking away our ability to express ourselves via computer.
If it were a pen and paper, and someone said you cant draw this because this drawing is under copyright,they'd be removing your freedom as an artist.
If someone said you cant write this code because of a law, they are taking your freedom as a programmer.
If you write a program, which allows people to copy information from a physical source and digitalize it, when in digital form, its 1s and 0s, its no longer the original.
Why the hell should we treat it as if its the original work? Its now OURS. We made it, sure we made this new digital work from someone elses work but everyone makes everything from someone elses idea.
Fact is, no group of people, no person, no one should be able to control how the masses uses their computer
If we use it to generate information and that information happens to benifit the world, so be it.
Second, alot of people here must like governments ruling over you, while i'm not a republican or anarchist, in some situations, I understand why we dont need government to control us.
Government should enforce laws, not control us. not control information. As long as we dont use our computers to harm anyone, then its free expression in my mind.Record companies need to join the digital age, and learn how to start a real business instead of fighting to protect an obsolete business and obsolete technology
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Before someone does something like copies a book, or a picture, or draws the notes to a famous song on the paper, hell infinite possibilities, even writes down the source code.
Better outlaw paper!
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The author does not seem to understand the scope of fair use.
Fair use includes more than just 'time shifting'. It includes such uses as parody and commentary.
Though Congress codified fair use into the Copyright Act, it did not create fair use. Rather, the addtion of fair use provisions to the lawy merely recognized the fair use exceptions that had been developed by courts over nearly two centuries of copyright law.
The truth is that some of those fair use rights -- specifically parody and commentary do, in fact, have their roots in Constitutional guarantees and cannot easily be nullified by Congress.
The reductio ad absurdum I usually make is the other way around - if I have a dream in which Wolverine is a character, do I not have the copyright to my own dream? Has copyright trumped our own subconscious?
The only thing about copyright, and hence fair use indirectly, is in section eight which reads: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
This article in the constitution does not grant people any "natural right ownership" of their inventions and writings... in fact, it it only grants "exclusive right" for a limited time in such a manner as to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. If time limits and fair use doctrine wasn't there in the law, then copyright would fail to pass constitutional muster.
If you want to learn more about copyright, visit the Copyright's Commons.
An artist puts out a CD with one song that you like and 15 that you don't? Of course it's not fair to buy such a CD. You don't really like enough of it, do you?
:) I've really only been listening to independant music for a few years; it was all my local "modern alternative rock" station before then. But I've discovered that, to me, the overall quality of the songs is better. The CDs are also less expensive. Sure, there are plenty of indie bands that suck, too, but the good ones are really good, and there's a lot of original sounds that don't ever make it to commercial radio.
:) There are many like it; some are freeform, and some adhere more strictly to a specific genre. But try it out; you just might like it. I did.
Maybe you should like bands that suck a little less. Really. I mean, shouldn't someone have at least 5 good songs before putting out their own album? If you only have 3 good songs, you can put out a split CD with a similar band or something, but...
Admittedly, working as a music director at at a (largely) independant radio station, I have a bit of an axe to grind. But it's a really good axe
A large benefit of this is that most of those stations are not RIAA members. Yes, kids! You can buy CDs, good ones, for less money, and not support the RIAA!
Of course, they don't have the marketing machine that you pay for when you buy the overpriced CDs, so how can you find out about them? College radio station people read the College Music Journal . There are also many good review sites; do a Google search and find a site where people have reviewed Quasi, Built to Spill, Autechre, The Czars, etc.
You could also listen to my station online
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It seems clear to me that with the DMCA Congress attempts to execute copyright law via a protected technology.
If Congress gets away with usurping the president's power to execute laws, what chance that the rest of the US Constitution will be enforced?
Two questions:
How exactly is Congress executing the DMCA?
How does a technology execute a law?
IT IS A RIGHT! It's in the constitution!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
all we need is one single DVD which should be public domain on which DeCSS can be used for the whole thing to be made legal.
Mickey Mouse may already have entered the public domain due to lack of proper copyright notice. Your single DVD may be "Mickey's Early Years."
Will I retire or break 10K?
The problem is that as long as our community pretends to want fair use protected for principled reasons but really just wants to go on pirating forever, we're not fooling anyone, and the lawmakers are going to push all the harder for controls. This makes legitimate fair use an innocent victim of the campaign against piracy.
I suggest that we drop the pretense and help to get the legislators focused in the right area. It is one thing to enforce laws against piracy, and entirely another to order that all computer equipment be rendered unable to make unauthorized copies. This is like outlawing machine tools because they could be used to produce Ford automobiles without the permission of Ford. Legislators the world over need to be shown how absurd this is, but we can't show them if we can't be trusted. If we're going to convince the world that the digital revolution means an end to high-valued content, we are going to have to clean up our act and become credible.
Does anybody what "going digital" is doing to our culture? Well, for starters, it's devaluing many items we have in media and software.
The problem lies therin:
Medias for the longest time has distributed analog songs and movies. They were fairly hard to copy, as you usually had to spend the same amount of time to listen to them to copy them. Still, for quite the time, records were just records. No copying them at all, but they were affordable and 'refreshing' (music-wise). If it broke, it wasn't too much to replace.
The Main Cost Is The Media AND the Contents.
Now, the media wishes to distribute everything digitally. The problem for them is that digital data can be copied exactly. Not true with analog (well, most part). CD's cost 15-20 $ a piece and dvd's are equally overpriced. The biggest change this has made is a normal audio cd has about 500 MB raw tracks. This compresses (in 320 kbps) still is about 120 MB. Since the cost here is just space to hold data and the 'creativeness', people see less value.
My point is that cheap media is making people wonder why we are paying SOO much for what seems to be easily stored FOR PENNIES. These days, CD storage is cheap. SO why are we STILL PAYING 15-20 $ dollars for a cd?
Believe who you will, but if Paula Samuelson says the point is controversial, I'm inclined to believe her. Perhaps the point isn't as obvious as the article makes it out to be.
"A related difficulty arises from the fact that fundamental legal concepts can be interpreted differently. For example, significantly different (and emphatic) views exist on whether the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law is merely a defense against a charge of infringement or an affirmative right that allows copying in specific circumstances. The difference matters, for both theoretical and pragmatic reasons. If fair use is an affirmative right, for instance, then it ought to be acceptable to take positive actions, such as circumventing technical protection mechanisms (e.g., decoding an encrypted file), in order to exercise fair use. However, if fair use is merely a defense against infringement, the same action may be unjustifiable. The basic point is very controversial. While one legal scholar has labeled as "absurd" the notion that fair use could be an affirmative right, other scholars suggest a constitutional basis for affirmative fair use rights."
THE DIGITAL DILEMMA:
A Perspective on Intellectual Property in the Information Age by
Pamela Samuelson, University of California, Berkeley, and Randall Davis, MIT. (page 13)
Until i purchase XP - and the government can go to a centralized source to determine what is on my hard drive and what i've watched - thanks to Microsoft - there is piss-little the government can or will do to the millions of individuals who simply practice their intperpretation of Fair Use.
So - as long as the majority of people use DRM-free software and hardware (read: not Microsoft) (read: such as Apple's and other's software) the vast majority of people will figure out that - for now - there is no possiblity to prevent people from shifting audio and video and text - because at some point, in every case, its free. With audio - its free when it vibrates a speaker coil.. with video, its photons going from a screen to my eyes.
And as long as that is the case - then there is no hope that every single person who is doing something "illegal" is going to be prosecuted.
There were "no ass-ramming" laws on the books for years in just about every state in the union - and eventually, it was figured out that its simply impossible to prevent people from engaging in anal sex - no matter your or the government's feelings on the subject.
So too, the government will be logically forced to reckon with the fact that with the coming age of $.05 DVD's, 100Mb to the home, and 2 terebyte hard drives for $50, its got a long row to hoe in order to prevent me from having a friend come over with his Rush Hour 6 DVD and me snarf a copy in 5 minutes onto my hard drive.
i know this because when it was tried with DiVX, it failed so badly that the attempt was hardly a blip on the radar screen.
When they try it with HDTV, people will simply put up with the plain old NTSC quality that they've had for years - after all, they own hundreds of NTCS DVDs and $50 DVD players are here today and now.
People are already starting to flock away from Windows XP because of its stupidity - many people are settling for 2000 or 98 - and being content with it. Until they make it impossible to run 98 on new Pentium 5's (isn't that a redundant name?) then people will take their old 98 CD's and install it on those new machines when they can't stomach the problems they are having with XP 2.
They - the government and Microsoft, which are becoming practially the same thing (read last month's Wired article on how the govt. and MS are coming together to make "better and more secure" versions of XP in the future" - can only push us so far before we revolt. It happened with VHS, with DiVX, and with shitty cable - and it will happen in the future.
They can try to lock up the world - but it can't be done.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I don't think there is much that we, the little people, can do to stop new legislation. Those bastards think that to stop what is percieved as piracy is to physically prevent us from doing it. Screw our rights. They're pre-punishing us by trying to take our rights away.
That's what the DMCA and the SSSCA is about. Total control. Unfortunately, the people backing this up have enough money to leverage their way, but we the consumers don't have a focused way of using our money back at them. All we can do is not buy their products down the road. By then, the damage is done.
So what can we do? Well, I had an idea about that. Imagine if independent people started making movies and putting them on the net. Imagine if they didn't encrypt the movies so that people could re-edit them. Imagine if they gave us allllll the fair use rights we used to have, yet they charged a price lower than that of what the MPAA provides to us with DVD's.
Think about the ramifications of this for a sec. If people start buying content form the indie guys and they can do more with it for cheaper than with the big meanie corporate guys, then the laws the MPAA would try to pass would be void. Imagine somebody taking a DVD back to a store: "I don't get this, I bought this one movie and I can take screengrabs of it, but I bought this DVD for more and I can't do that!".
I say we get the people of slashdot to scour the web for independent content and let the authors of that content know how we feel. IF we can get them to cooperate, then the next generation of movie makers may very well realize that movies are about fun, not about screwing customers out of every last penny.
If the SSSCA is eventually passed in some form, only the content that is specifically watermarked should be affected. If the new up and coming moviemakers decide not to encode it that way, then we, the consumers, are safe. Our fair use comes back to us, and we don't have to buy our own legal peeps to do it.
Whatcha say?
"Derp de derp."
I know what you mean, but I think that anyone that believes that an economy which can be based on such ideas is not being reasonable, they're being idealistic which is not the same thing at all! At least Thomas Moore had the insight to call his book "nowhere".
I however believe strongly in a free market economy.
Ah, now we're into debating space. A market economy is certainly a good way to motivate people but a (totally) free market goes too far; a free market tends to a mono-culture or at least one where each production niche is dominated by one monopoly or at best a small cartel. This is fine so long as you believe that the purpose of the market is to be a market. If you want the market to be useful adjunct to society, giving each person an outlet for their skills and ideas as well as possibly providing society as a whole with some things which are too big for individuals to do themselves then you need regulation of some sort.
A classic example in the UK at the moment is the Post Office. The government is lining it up for privatisation but is currently unable to say why a private company would provide a postal service to remote islands or villages at a price people on pensions can afford. They are finding that, as a society, people are not keen on letting market forces decide who gets post and who doesn't.
If you're in the US it might be worth knowing that the UK Post Office is regarded as quite good but badly organised; I'm under the impression that the USPO is not so highly though of.
The American example has to be Microsoft. I remember Gates saying that he could see no reason why any other software company would be needed in his vision of the future. This is the same as saying that he wants every programmer in the world (such was the scale of this vision) to either work for him or not work at all. Regardless of free market ideals, this is not a situation I would be happy with and it's not because of who it is, the same situation would be intolerable if it was Ford or Sony.
Sometimes society has to flex its muscles and say "we don't care if it makes money; it has to be done".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
1. Implied contract that you are talking about, does not exist -- when you buy a book, there is absolutely nothing that gives you certain rights and doesn't give you other ones, except the copyright law itself.
2. Contract must be legal to be valid. You can't write any kind of stuff on paper, sign it with someone else and call it a contract. Ex: "Person A sells his daughter into slavery for a person B, in exchange to a certain amount of crack" is a contract that has absolutely nothing valid in it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, CSS is patented
What documentation can you find for that? When I searched for css patent, Google only gave me information on Microsoft's patent on cascading stylesheets. Searching for css scrambling patent, on the other hand, revealed mostly pages about Digimarc's patents on watermarks along with a few pages denying existence of any patent on the Content Scrambling System here. However, this page lists a couple patents; which one are you talking about?
Will I retire or break 10K?
1. Laws passed by Congress are in no way "limited amendments" to the Constitituion. Laws are laws, amendments are amendments. In fact, according to the Constitution, laws passed by the Congress are *third* in the heirarchy of statutes that govern this land (the Constituion is first, foriegn treaties are second.) To call every law passed by Congress a "constitutional right" is absurd, because you could easily pass a law completely counter that would still be Constitutionally valid... it's vague enough that way.
2. This is indeed a difficult one. Some could (rightfully) argue that the federal government has way too much power. Most of this comes from either limited or wide-range interpretation of the rights of Congress. The responsibilites of Congress are spelled out explicitely... but their is one little line about extending their powers to "necessary and proper" things outside of this core that are required to properly conduct their core responsibilities. What this means is that Congress has a Constitutional directive to pass laws that "promote the progress of Science and useful Arts", and that they have the power to pass ancillary laws to protect that Copyright (which is why I think the DMCA could be able to stand up as Constitutionally valid.)
3. I answered this one in 2.
4. Fair use is indeed something the Congress can extend to the people in regards to Copyright and the Consitution. It does not necessarily follow that they *must* extend that right. Indeed, the founders would have been better off specifying the time allotted rather than saying "limited," which leaves the issue far too vague. Indeed, I think "limited" should define a scope of years, or the author's lifetime, whichever is longer.
If i translate something into computer language, I now own it, because its NOT the original work.
Except that what you've created is known as a "derivative work", and under modern (even pre-DMCA) copyright law, it is illegal to do that without the permission of the original copyright holder. (IANAL, etc.)
I think when i pay for something, I should be able to use it any way i want, if i change it into a diffrent form of information like 1s and 0s, its not longer the original product and therefore i can distribute it.
If you have a program, and you have a compiled binary and its source code. But people say "Look but dont touch" and its that shared source bullshit, "Touch but dont share"
Well then, wheres your freedom?
That's fine, that's covered by regular "home use", and it's something you've paid for. What you can't do is charge for admission. That's "commercial use". You also can't redistribute the music for other people to make their own copies of it - that's redistribution.
I'm not talking about the law here, I'm talking about right and wrong. Its right for us the consumer to completely control distribution.
Its also fair for the artist to get 100 percent all the profits. Meaning i dont think its right for a consumer to sell something created by artist X. I do think its right for a consumer to share, copy, or do whatever they want, because no money is changing hands here, the people you are sharing it with obviously wouldnt buy it in the first place, anyone who is going to buy it are the ones sharing it usually, those are the fans.
Believe it or not, clubs and raves have to pay pretty hefty prices to do what they do. They do not just go to Rhino Records and pick out some tunes. They pay thousands of dollars per year to ASCAP and BMI, organisations who (purportedly) then compensate the copyright holders. So your analogy doesn't hold up. Its morally right to share. Greed is morally wrong, But this fucking country's system be it law, or the capitalist system, rewards GREED!
I'm sorry, but I can not support a law which I do not agree with morally, its like supporting capital punishment.
Copyright is like Capital Punishment because alot of people are dying over medical patents, cant afford medicines which could be given to them for free over some patent bullshit.
Patents only help the rich CEOs at these big music companies. Musicians arent all rich, most are poor as hell, Musicians make pennies per CD, this just isnt working, Musicians and Consumers arent satisfied, People are dying in other countries, and the only ones who like patents and copyright are the people who own them and are making a fortune from them.
Programmers hate copyright and patents thus we have open source movement.
Consumers hate copyright and patents thus we have napster, gnutella, etc.
Radio broadcasters on the net hate copyright and patents, thats why they protest the laws wit it.
So I'm going to assume, about 80 percent of the population is against copyright and patents, for some reason or another, but they are too confused to do anything about it, or they cant do anything about it.
IN a democracy, you do what the people want, not what the corperations want, not what the politicians want. IF we were a democracy, people would vote, and the patent system would be gone. Because theres more of us who dont have patents and copyrights, or who dont benifit from them, than the few guys in suits who do. Who do you think would win in a vote? And if you make it a world vote, it would be silly to see 6 billion people all vote against copyright and maybe a million people support it, not even 1% of the world population.
This is about whats right and whats wrong, its about what the people want, the consumers, the programmers, the artists and musicians want, not about how to give corperations and rich guys what they want.
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The existence of rights, constitutional or otherwise is very different than the ability to excercise those rights.
The fact remains that our whole society is set up without any pretense of making life better for people -- rather, its set up to make life better for companies.
This message is very unpopular. People don't like to learn than the way the Western world works is stacked against them having a good life; they fight that truth at every turn.
Don't be so cynical. Fortunately or otherwise, (a great deal of us here) live in the best and biggest (economically) country in the world -- the U.S. The "problem," as you would state it, with any advanced culture is the neccessity of laws. You seem to confuse a competetive society with having everything "stacked up against you." Nobody "fights that truth" that I know. Capitalism means competition. It means not everyone is at the top. But you know what? No other country has a better system. I would rather have the chance to be hugely successful than a guarantee to never move through society despite being "equal[ly poor]" (communism). If you think different, move somewhere.
I understand how neat it would be to just have music flying around for anyone to hear, free of charge, and on every device. And if I had the power - I *wouldn't* do it.
Let's face it: it's illegal. Really great and worth fighting to maintain -- but illegal. You can say "Well I hate Microsoft Office cause it's so great but MS charges $500 for it, so I should be able to just steal it." Go ahead -- but if you actually believe that a product's price determines its elligibility for copyright protection, then you're thinking like a young and immature teenager (and I'm 18!).
I'm not saying I don't *like* having Gnutella networks or Hotline. I'm not going to take some moral high ground. But when it comes to issues of the LAW -- of COURSE it's illegal.
As that article noted -- conveinence is not protected by the Constitution.
Copyright protection is a great thing. Patent protection, too. The system is not set up to supress the creative spirits of our country. Could it be done better? Maybe -- i haven't thought much about that. Instead of bitching, maybe you could come up with something better. Who knows.
Just remember to patent your idea.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Umm... No. Read my post closely. I cannot increase the number of copies of a work in circulation by selling copies. However, since I own my copy of the work (both the pages and the "words"), I'm perfectly free to sell that copy to someone else. As the transferal of ownership does not increase the number of copies in circulation. (In case you missed that concept.)
yeah imagine if some wise ass musician copyrighted all the music notes, there could be no derivative work. All innovation is derivative work.
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You need to to do better research. Fair Use and copyright law was brought over from England/Western Europe and was practiced in the United States before it existed and before the Constition. Copyright HAS NEVER existed with the purpose of protecting someones economic rights. The purpose, as reiterated by Supreme Court Justice Sandra D. O'Connor, is to protect and encourage the free flow and exchange of ideas. The only people to say otherwise, in an attempt to divorce the public from their history through ignorance, are RIAA, the MPAA, and their respective lawyers. Anyone doing any research at all can find the history of copyright on the web or in their local library. The idea that a publication which supposedly 'checks' or verifies their stories could print such boldface lies indicates that they need to hire new checkers or that they are owned by the corporate moguls perpetrating this attrocity in America. Perhaps the time is not far off when the Jeffersonian renewal of government by the people and for the people will be required.
Avrice
The courts have already handled this issue. There's a minimum length to a piece of music before it's eligble for copyright protection (I don't know what it is off-hand). There's also a minimum amount of similarity required before one song is considered a derivative of another (e.g., five out of every six notes the same; again, I don't know the correct legal amount).
I'm not really disagreeing with your statement that "All innovation is derivative work." I'm just pointing out how the law currently stands (as I understand it).
My problem with the current slew of proposed intellectual property law is that it is nothing less than prior restraint. You cannot imprision a person in the united states because they may commit a crime.
Owning a photocopier is not against the law. Copying a copyrighted text without the permission of the copyright holder is. I think it is patently obvious that stealing copyrighted material is illegal and wrong. But it is the act that is illegal, not the device that enables the crime. By this logic, anything that could conceivably be used to facilitate a crime should itself be illegal. We have to make pencils illegal because they might be used to copy a copyrighted text.
The cartels that have built the systems that centralize ownership of itellectual property are alaramed by the ease which new technology brings to the copying game, and the quality that digital processes offer in those copies. They didn't go the mat on cassettes and VCRs because of the time copying requires and the loss of quality that came with each generation of copy.
Now digital technology makes copying fast and quality perfect. This really scares the owners/publishers. They can see their monopoly slipping away. I'm not sure how to address this. These proposed laws are grotesque violations of our rights. They are unreasonable intrusions into our private lives. They amount to prior restraint. Still, we have no right to steal, and I agree with the monopolists on that.
Why cant we share that information?
Fighting for ownership is what causes wars
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Laws are neither computer programs nor mathematical theorems.
HaHa. I don't think the founding fathers would find it funny, and I use the word "execute" because they did.
Whoops. Forgot I still had that sig, as I read with sigs turned off for that very purpose (I always thought that they were part of the message body).
Because of the distinction between the paper and the words. I own the copy of the work. There is no legal distinction - I own both the paper and the words. However, because of copyright, I do not have the right to reproduce these words as is. An exclusive monopoly on that right (called copy right) is granted to the author.