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Coding Fair Use
An Anonymous Coward writes: "A report from CFP2002 on the tension between making fair use clear and retaining ambiguity to facilitate the application of fair use to future technologies." Lots of good papers available from the Fair Use By Design workshop and the conference in general.
Everyone likes free code. Much like they like free stuff, as in my tagline.
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retaining ambiguity
write all laws and regulations in verse.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
As the article states, any system to try and restrict access to content will be broken.
You can keep passing laws but you cannot enforce the laws already in place as there are just way too many laws and even more people to break them.
If you can't enforce all the laws for all the people, then of necessity you must choose which laws you will enforce, when you will enforce them and who you will enforce them on.
In the world we live in right now- resources are not going to be primarily aimed at keeping content locked up. There are larger, more pressing issues. (like staying alive)
Content creators need to take some of that creativity and look for new ways to make it self sustaining.
It makes me think of self defense moves where you use the weight and inertia of a large aggressor against them. Content creators need to stop fighting what is an unstoppable force and find a way to ride that force to succes.
Easy to say, hard to do? Sure but what is worthwhile that isn't difficult?
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Posted on Tue, Apr. 16, 2002 Can We Design Fair Use into Content? Posted by Dan Gillmor I'm at the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference in San Francisco, attending a workshop on the topic of "fair use" -- a term that has many descriptions and applications. There's a lot of law on the whiteboard, including a variety of doctrines that show up in black and white in copyright law -- Sections 107, 110, 108 and a host of other elements. The vocabulary often incorporates more than what many copyright lawyers tend to discuss. Ann M. Bartow, assistant law professor at the Unviersity of South Carolina, argues that the law should ultimately incorporate what people do in real life -- and that we have to reduce the complexity inherent in today's statutes. Here's her presentation (PDF; 264 KB). "Don't we deserver a copyright law we can understand and follow?" she asks. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is arguing for ambiguity. He thinks copyright law needs to leave room for innovation as new technologies come along. An audience member asks if this ambiguity is what lets lawyers threaten people with lawsuits for non-infringing uses, intimidating them into taking down Web content that should remain public. We need a floor, von Lohmann says, not a ceiling on permissible activities. The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view -- a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely. Turn that around. Can fair use be turned into code? That is, can we use technology to ensure it, just as we can use technology to take it away? Stefan Bechtold, from Stanford Law School, thinks it can -- at least in some circumstances. But the law is still going to be needed, he says. He thinks digital rights management can be progressive, while law is conservative. The key word is "can" -- and the evidence is not behind him. Both, as currently established, are highly restrictive. What's progressive is technology, which makes hash of attempts to control content. Any digital rights management system is going to be broken.
Video Game cheats, hints a
this quote from the article sums up for me everything wrong with the **IA.
"The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view -- a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely."
This is what is wrong with the US today.
Sent from your iPad.
Looks like we might be on the right track too.
This is only going to become more common. Companies have to realize that people are not "consumers" and that they want to particpate rather than just observe. All of the best things happening in the game industry are happening because of the participation of people in the market. Hopefully this will expand, and be encouraged by more astute businesses.
What is it about the "tan & taupe" colors of YRO that makes me want to put on my tin-foil hat?
Oh yeah, its gustapo michaels paranoia mixed with severe hipocracy!
"Making fair use clear" pretty much amounts to an oxymoron. The impossibility of "defining" fair use just means that IP do not make sense altogether, that's all.
An audience member asks if this ambiguity is what lets lawyers threaten people with lawsuits for non-infringing uses, intimidating them into taking down Web content that should remain public. We need a floor, von Lohmann says, not a ceiling on permissible activities.
The floor for the entertainment and other "content" industries is increasingly clear. They don't fundamentally believe in fair use, and they see technology as a way to turn everything into pay-per-view, a system that would eliminate fair use almost completely.
This impulse has been around for a while under different names.
It used to be known as "Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg"
Fair use need to be somehow writtin into law, but I do not see a quick way around someone who decides to sell something only on a pay perview basis. With a wide enough reach (such as the Internet) you can generally get enough people to support the market, even if they are only the tiniest fraction of the population.
Example: Spam
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It is going to take a long time to work out the struggles of the RIAA and people's need to have fair use of the media they purchase. It seems like it is going to be tough for the big media companies to build a digital format that I can't copy to my friend's computer, but I can put in my computer, mp3 player, or stereo.
The piece makes mention of the entertainment industry trying to move everything to pay-per-view. Clearly, that would be ideal for them. But lost in that worldview is the idea that once I "buy" a bit of content, it's "mine" to do with as I choose, short of republication.
Example: I buy a book. I can read it zero or more times. I can pull pages out and rearrange them or stick them on my wall. I can make a photocopy of portions and keep those pages in my car. I can give the book to a friend, but I'm not allowed to copy the book and give it to a friend.
This right is, of course, what the fair use clauses are meant to protect.
Copyright law is really (or should be!) about publishing--no one but the owner of the "rights" to a piece of work has the legal right to publish it.
Perhaps it's all semantics (but isn't that what the law and politics are about?), but it seems to me we should stop talking about copy rights and start talking about publish rights. Put the battle into the right geography: It's not about making copies but about distributing copies.
If we managed to change the language to a language of publish rights instead of copy rights, then perhaps terms like "piracy" would simply vanish. And, it seems to me, coding protections for publish rights while also coding protections for fair use rights would be less ambiguous and more achievable.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Write 'em in Perl!
Better yet, write every law with *one line* of Perl.
A few of these articles has this heading: "Please do not cite or quote without permission." This says much more than the article itself. Oops, i just quote from the article!
This is what it all comes down to, in my opinion. The rate at which things change in regards to technology, and thus web-related issues, is astronomically fast when compared to the evolution of our current economical system (where copyright laws take hold). Trying to constraint the content of something that changes so quickly isn't feasible. The people who are likely proposing such measures are most likely the people that don't really understand the implications of it (that could be expressed by IT-savvy individuals with a background in law/commerce).
There may be some general statements we can make, and even some extreme cases that we can easily restriction, but creating steadfast regulations that are intended to be applied wholesale ain't gonna cut it.
Companies have to realize that people are not "consumers" and that they want to particpate rather than just observe.
You straight up trippin, man. When Consumers gonna learn that that's all they is, Consumers? The only participation you entitled to is in yo decision on how to spend yo benjamins. We got a term on the streetz that go "Too many chefs spoil the soup."
Na'am sayin?
Aw, c'mon. It's a joke :-(
- 'Thou must comprehend that the "I have a right to do anything I wish with the music in this CD" attitude is harming the industry'
- 'By ripping MP3 Thou art harming the poor artists who render their souls into such sweet tunes'
- 'Think of the starving musician who hath slaved into the dark hours! Think of the powdered cheese food thou art taking out of his mouth when Thou doth copy of his music!'
- 'Don't trouble Thyself sending them money... We can pass the money on to him for Thee!'
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
There are several things I'd like to see additionally. For example;
- The right to sell a used copy of a film, like you can do a book.
- The right to sell a used copy of any software, like you can do a book.
- The banning of software licenses. Software copies should be SOLD, not licensed. If I buy something from you, you should have no right to regulate how I choose to use that item.
- The banning of use-limiting technology that harms the consumers, sorry, citizens (such as DVD regionalization). See above. Or perhaps, rather, the outlawing of enforcing such technology. What I do with my DVD is for me alone to decide.
This is just a start. For example, if you consider the law to be a sum of the generally acceptable morals, then peer-to-peer file sharing should be allowed and legal. Judging by the volume of Napster, Grokster, DirectConnect etc, this is considered acceptable activity by citizens. So fucking what if some corps think it damages their bottom line? Get a new business model. To quote somebody else; the law is not indended to protect obsolete business models. If nobody wants to buy your stuff, you had damn better get into a different business, and that's it.Phew, got into an intense rant there. Anyway, I think you get my idea. I think the law has to shift more than these basic points, but they are a good start of making the public (and lawmakers!) aware that there is another tray on this scale.
Mod parent up, it's funny :-)
Isn't this what Windows DRM (Digital Rights Management) will be for? An unholy alliance between greedy entertainment companies and our favorite software monopolist, designed to assist Joe Customer out of his hard earned dollars in exchange for his rights as a consumer?
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
a nice dialog!
* Insofar as almost all artistic production is built on the foundation of past artistic production, and insofar as quoting, sampling and reframing existing artistic works in order to create new artistic works is a natural form of artistic production and a healthy, creative response to one's cultural millieu, such quoting, sampling and reframing shall not entail a copyright infringement when the result is an identifiably distinct artistic production.
* Likewise, quoting, resampling and reframing as part of critical practice and in research shall not entail enfringment.
From what I understand, the book publishers tried to license all their works around the turn of the century and this resulted in the "First Sale" doctrine we have now when the Courts struck that down.
I'd be in favor of "First Sale" recognition for software, but until we have that Fair Use doesn't have much affect on me. Even if Fair Use would allow me to do something with software that I don't already do, the license would probably forbid it.
Is there any chance that the Courts will just strike down the licenses for software? Are we to act like these software are only protected by copyright, including Fair Use provisions, to get this brought before a court?
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If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
My first karma point! 8'DDDDD
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
"I would have argued poverty, crime, the technology gap, drugs..."
Hmmm... That's not really scoped very well:
Poverty: Been around since day one - Unfortunately the HAVES don't really consider it a problem.
Crime: Been around since the beginning of civilization. Part of human nature, it's never going away as long as we're still human. Not just something "wrong with the US today"
Drugs: Been around since before civilization (Opium, pot, etc.) - Part of human nature, it's never going away as long as we're still human. Not just something "wrong with the US today" - Many, possibly a majority, would disagree that it's even a problem. Best way to get rid of that is to just open the floodgates, evolution in action, those that can't handle it are removed from the gene pool.
Technology Gap: Hmmm... For 99 out of 100 cases, it's a laziness gap. If you are too poor, and you really want one, then use two of the above to obtain a computer - steal a computer, or sell drugs until you have enough money to buy one. Your choice.
Decline, right on time. What happened to the dream sublime? They're building empires... (Queensryche, Empire)
We are in the days of transition between an economy of scarcity and an economy of plenty. In years past the technology to create has been relegated to a select few. Now, it is open to all.
This is the time when all of those entities and industries which are dependent on the economy of scarcity are going to try to enforce a *false* scarcity on the people. They will resist changing their business models to fit the economy of plenty as they will see it as de-valuation of their assets.
The rule is plain and simple: When a paradigm shift occurs you either change with it or you get left behind.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
It's more of an Exorcist pea-soup green... Each post is the vomitous bile of satan :)
The US looks at objects and knowledge as things to be bought and sold. We jealously guard our secrets and our possessions. After all, what's mine is mine right?
Until this attitude changes, I can only see that we will covet our ideas and pass whatever laws we can to insure we keep what's ours.
The truth of the matter is people want to participate in creation and collaboration.
And that is certainly evident in every M$ vs open source argument you see at /.
This is what is wrong with the US today.
What, that people like to make as much money as possible? That they want to reinterpret or alter the laws to do it? Or that consumers are so hung up on mass-market entertainment that this is even an issue?
That this conference will have any effect? All the decisions are going to be made in court, and it will be a political fight. As with any political fight, the people who control public opinion will win.
In this particular case, public opinion is way out of control. This is not meant to imply that there is a problem, just that nobody can convince 100+ million internet users that they should give up their right to fair use.
I thought of this: if I don't sign a non-disclosure agreement with someone then anything I see and anything I hear I can rightfully tell anyone I choose about it.
If a person creates an AI with sufficient apparant intelligence to be simi-autonomous, and then that AI absorbs content information, then would it not be free to disiminate that information, from memory, as it saw fit? If I had a photographic memory and could reproduce another person's origional work of art from memeory with no flaws then wouldn't my work be considered my own, to do with as I please?
An artist who copies a Rembrandt ows no royalties to the current owner of the painting. Let's take someone more recently famous: Tomas Kinkade. If I paint a copy of one of his works from memory, then that work is my own to sell, or give away, as I see fit.
Would an AI that I owned, having a perfect memory and perfect ability to replicate a work, also have that right?
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
The real long term fact of life is that there is no longer a need for publishers when the cost of replication is zero. Why do band need labels if there is nothing to label? If an album is $1.00 how many more folks are going to be willing to pay for it on line? I'll bet the bands are going to see a lot more return when the labels go away. You are going to see the same thing in ASCII publishing. You will also see the Amazones go away too. Who need an intermediary when an author can pop up a web site for next to nothing and pay a financial intermediary (visa, paypal, etc) 1% to help with the cash transfer.
The DOT.COMs had it all backwards. The net is a great way to make money when it is used to eliminate intermediaries not to build new middlemen.
Makes more sense than calling suicide bombers homicide bombers, and in fact, put's publishing rights terminology along the same lines as why suicide bombers were called suicide bombers in the first place- Practically all suicide bombers are homicide bombers, but not all homicide bomers are suicide bombers, distinguishing suicide bombers from Timothy McVeigh for example.
In the same sense, copying rights are more extensive than publishing rights.
Laws that restrict the people from doing something that they want to do and that they perceive as being "victimless" can never hold. Prohibition was one such law. Alcohol was illegal, so only criminals had it. Today's drug laws are similar. Those that want it can get it and a law will never have an impact on that as long as the demand is present.
Digital anti-piracy laws are not much different except that they are designed to protect the monied businesses (artists themselves rarely) rather than protect people from themselves. (arguably) Todays computers are like having a wisky still in every house. The government makes corn illegal, people will use potatoes. The government makes the sale of stills illegal, people will make their own or convert bathtubs. Eventually things will hit some kind of balance. One additional wrinkle is money. (isn't it always?) Will the gov't break peoples doors in and smash their computer equiptment for ripping CD's? Let's hope we never get to that.
RM
}#q NO CARRIER
I get so tired of seeing Slashdot users all wound up about the same thing over and over again and attempting to come up with a solution that relates to only the consumer and the corporation that sold the goods.
This in itself will not solve the problem nor will anything be accomplished in this manner. Corporations have legal rights and have to enforce those rights. And that's fine, they should. What people don't seem to realize for some bizarre reason is that the content PRODUCERS are the ones that give these rights to the corporations. When they transfer rights over to the corporations - its over, stop complaining... nothing will change. What needs to happen is that the ARTISTS need to establish a relationship with the CONSUMERS such that the artist retains the rights and has the ability to implement fair-use. If an artist wants to grant you specific rights to copy stuff for free and such - you must get that from the ARTIST.
Too many times we have heard tales of starving artist through corporation and such to sway legislation to stop people from making copies. If the corporations never have the rights transferred to them, this becomes unnecessary as the artist can make money themselves OR through a corporation that could be given LIMITED publishing rights. This is when the tide will turn, and not before - because corporations do and should have rights to protect anything they own and right now they own the rights to the content we want to copy. Until that changes, we the people are screwed and can't do much about it.... legally anyways.
I have an original thought but my lawyer says I can't share it without a licensing fee
i can quite neatly escape fact of life #2 by lowering the local temperature to a sufficiently low level that all local water becomes solid
of course, given that in order for this to be syntactically valid it would have to include the rather large amount of water in my human body, meaning i cannot escape fact of life #2 without triggering fact of life #1, but this does not make it any less *possible*
Outlawing cars that go over the speed limit is not enough. You would have to outlaw cars that have the ability to go over the speed limit
I said that what you thought was a restriction on the corporations would actually be a restriction on the artist. I make no assumptions about the goals of the corporations.
If you did see some law with a title like "Creative Rights And Protection Act of 2002", you would find upon reading it that while the Congresscritter who sponsrs it will claim to be doing it for the artist, the actual details will show that the CRAP Act of 2002 will wind up leaving the artists worse off than they are now.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
For instance, read the following snippets of copyright law and case law used to justify the decision:
And from Apple Computer, Inc. v. Formula Int'l, Inc., 594 F. Supp. 617, 621 (C.D.Cal. 1984), which held that copying programs to ROM was not necessary for their use because the programs could have been copied to RAM: On first reading of those snippets, it would almost seem as though the justices were arguing that RAM copies should not be protected by copyright law. Somehow they come to the exact opposite conclusion.The court first argues that the act of logging into a computer or looking at the operator logs can be termed "perceiving" the RAM copy of the software. This may be so, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around this conclusion because of its implications. If it's the RAM copy that you perceive when you run a piece of software-- rather than the copy on the disk-- then is free distribution of software on magnetic disks not prohibited by copyright law, because the information on the disk can't be perceived without being loaded into RAM? If loading a disk into RAM creates a separate copy, then it would seem that the original disk copy can never be "perceived", and is therefore not eligible for copyright protection. My head spins.
The upshot of this opinion almost seems to be that you're not in the wrong if you redistribute unlicensed software on disk without ever loading it, or if you're caught with unlicensed software on an unplugged computer. In other words, you can stash all the Warez you like as long as nobody ever catches me with any "perceivable" copies (ie, turn your computer off before the FBI busts in).
They then argue that the Apple Computer case provides precedent for their argument, as it uses the term "fixation" to refer to a copy in RAM-- even though the spirit of that opinion was to differentiate between "permanent" copies like those on burned onto ROM chips which can be protected by copyright law, and "temporary" copies like the one in RAM. Though on first read this decision might seem to be a perfect piece of case law supporting the legality of temporary RAM copies, the 9th circuit instead focuses on the term "temporary fixation" (declining to interpret this as equivalent to "transitory"), though this in fact seems to be the exact use the law itself was designed to protect! If by "transitory copies", the legislators were not referring to RAM copies, then what were they referring to?
All in all, I begin to understand why people have such little confidence in the viability of any decision coming out of the 9th circuit.