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Copyright and Copy Rights
neocon writes "Today's National Review Online has an interesting
piece from John Bloom of UPI on the origin of Copy Rights (what Copyrights really are) and the
current attacks on them in Congress and elsewhere."
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The article is an excellent summary of the issues, what's happened, and how ridiculous some of this is.
Copyright was a legal system for protecting a creator's opportunities and placing things in the public domain. A win-win situation in the minds of the founders, I'm sure.
It's been turned into a way to hold onto information for a ridiculous (eternal?) amount of time. Something comes up, a few more campaign donations go out, and it gets changed again.
'nuff said.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
is there are two purposes to patents/copyrights. And the government/coporations have expanding the meaning of such things too far.
The first purpose is to prevent people from stealing credit for inventions. So if person A writes a book it is illegal for person B to say that they wrote the book. A scam like this is easy to pull off, and still happens today. So you register your copryight and you become the rightful author/inventor if you indeed did come up with the idea first.
The second purpose is to give authors or inventors a temporary monopoly. If there was no guarantee of profit for inventing things or creating art then few people would do it, none as a career, and the quality and quantity of such things would be far less. Without a temporary monopoly someone who writes a book will have it immediately stolen and published by numerous publishing houses and recieve no money for their hard work. Someone who invents a new device will have it copied in 100 different forms and sold by 100 other firms in different names and varieties resulting in no standard and yet again no money for the inventor.
What we have today is a near-permanent monopoly on works created. This is the direct antithesis to capitalism, the way our economy works. Today someone who makes a new work is granted near-permanent ownership of that work. They profit from it for all-time and nobody is ever allowed to compete with them.
You know there are so many articles on slashdot about copyright this and bad patent that. But every time a new one comes out I see the situation from a new angle. From my head alone I could probably write a whole essay going over every single aspect of copyright and why things aren't right the way they are, and the way they should be.
Just gotta wait on Eldred vs. Ashcroft and see what happens.
http://illegal-art.org/
This was a recent show in NYC which displayed works which have almost been suppressed out of existance by Corporate culture. You can find articles on copyeahright, music, videos and other forms of expression.
Uhhh, Sonny Bono was a Republican. Sorry.
The reason we have a Republican Nation is that Americans "do give a shit" and voted for the Republicans.
Well, let's be fair. Most Americans who could vote, didn't. About a third of the voters in this country cast a ballot in the midterm elections. So I think it's more accurate to say that of the Americans who do give a shit, a slim but notable majority voted for Republicans.
And I think it's fair to say that most Americans don't give a shit whether Disney holds on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie." I know I couldn't care less about that. It makes absolutely no difference to my life one way or another, except in principle.
Can somebody convince me otherwise? I feel kind of bad about being so indifferent about the Bono act. Can somebody give me an example of a situation in which a work's not being copyrighted-- that is, being in the public domain-- led to some kind of wonderful thing happening?
I write in my journal
Of course copyrights are still relevent. If *I* create something it (a copyright) protects *me* and *my* work. I don't work for free and I doubt you do either. Why would anyone bother to create new works if they couldn't have some semblence of a guarantee of being justly compensated for it if that's what they want? Just because you apparently believe that all things should be *free* doesn't mean everyone else does (in fact I would argue that the vast majority of people would disagree with you).
Even Linux has benefitted from copyright. Think about it this way: Those that have contributed code to Linux and other *free* software projects had to earn their money in some way. Odds are likely (almost guaranteed) that most of those methods for earning income were supplied via a patent, a copyright or a trademark. Be it the guy working for a multi-million dollar corporation producing commerical software to the college student who's parents support them by working for an advertising company, to the college student who pays the bills by working at a fast-food restaurant. The point is that the wholesale destruction or disallowance of copyrights and / or patents is ridiculous.
Abusive patents and copyrights however should be fair game.
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
If you're interested in a very good description of where and when the idea of copy( )right went wrong, I highly recommend this book. It was written by a professor at NYU, but he's not a law professor - so the book isn't written in legalese.
National Review is an embarrasment to conservatism and Constitutionally-limited government. It's gone downhill ever since WFB fired Joe Sobran, the best columnist in America, as senior editor.
Now it's just an Israel-First rah-rah rag for GOP hacks with that intellectual paperweight Jonah Goldberg at the helm.
If you want real conservatism (and libertarianism, for that matter) check out
The American Conservative
OR
Chronicles
OR
The New American
For those of you who don't know who John Bloom is, check it out.
You've also seen him in the movies.
No blood, no breasts, one beast (Disney). Copyright-fu, literature-fu, argument-fu. Four stars. Joe-bob sez 'check it out.'
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
That said, what in the hell do you need an assault rifle for?
How do you define 'assualt rifle'? Do you mean something like the AR-15, a single-shot carbine that shoots 5.56mm (.223) ammo and whose outer body is patterned on the M-16? Well, target shooting with them is a lot of fun...
Most the anti-gun people are after the insane automatic high-power weapons.
Unless you happen to live in Washington, DC, New York, California, Australia, England, and most of the rest of Europe...
No one is saying you can't have a hunting rifle
Except for wackos like the one in California
Nor do I see a problem with having to register if you own a rifle or handgun.
"This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future."
--Adolph Hitler, 1935
Never in the history of the world, has gun registration NOT led to confiscation and democide.
I have never seen a valid argument for this gun nut crap.
Here's one for you:
"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
I'm going to reply to myself with a link or two.
m mo .htm
f ir e/223rembal.htm
.223 - about the same as 5.56 NATO - the round that the Bushmaster the DC "Sniper" used.
f ir e/308wibal.htm
http://www.remington.com/ammo/ammofr.htm
http://www.remington.com/ammo/centerfire/remcfa
http://www.remington.com/ammo/ballistics/center
That's
3300 FPS at the Muzzle from a 24 inch barrel.
1200 Foot/pounds of energy at the muzzle
http://www.remington.com/ammo/ballistics/center
That's a 7.62 - about the same as 7.62 NATO - the round that snipers and deer hunters use alot.
Slower off the start - 2800 FPS
More than twice the muzzle energy - 2600 ft/lbs
And even more telling are the numbers at 300 yards
1640 in the 308 vs 522 in the 223.
So, what you going to ban?
Sports rifles that help making hunting a 29 billion dollar a year business?
Or lighter rounds that have much lower power?
Owning a gun is in the Constitution and it's been protected by US Code for a while now.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Ah ha, but that is the Army and the National Guard, We the People don't have squat for rights!!!
"The Militia Act of 1792, adopted the year after the Second Amendment was ratified, declared that the Militia of the United States (members of the militia obligated to serve if called upon by the government) included all able-bodied males of age. As the U.S. Supreme Court observed in U.S. v. Miller (1939), "The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the [Constitutional] Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense . . . bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."
So there it establishes that I, a male physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense has a right to own and use firearms.
"The National Guard was not established until 1903. In 1920 it was designated one part of the "Militia of the United States," the other part remaining all other able-bodied males of age, plus some other males and females."
http://www.nraila.org/
I was under the impression that NR and NRO were conservative publications, as opposed to being Republican publications. Not exactly the same thing.
If you look at the political definition(s) of the word conservative, instead of how conservatives are often portrayed, it makes more sense
2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change
3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation as opposed to change
--something witty
I normally avoid the National Review out of distaste for overly-conservative ranting, but on a chance I went to their front page after reading this article, and found:
Keeping Libertarians Inside the Tent
It's an article about how Republicans could keep the Libertarian vote if they'd actually stay consistent in their messages about small government, personal liberty, and strict constructionism. He makes the good point that Republicans only seem to support these issues when it suits them - for example, states rights when it comes to rolling back environmental laws or abortion protections, but not when it comes to euthanasia or drug laws. This is exactly what I've been thinking for a while.
Of course, I was quickly re-disgusted by reading the praise for Reagan's War on the same site, with glowing quotes from Caspar Weinberger among others. And it turned out that the Libertarian article came from the Cato Institute rather than the National Review. But for a minute they had me :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It happens to also be an affirmative defense codified in statute. The statute actually says that Fair Use is not infringement. If you make Fair Uses, you are not infringing the exclusive rights of the author. It follows that you can quote this as a defense if you are accused of infringement, but it is more than just an affirmative defense.
It is more than a statutory right because Fair Use was originally a judicial ruling that the balancing of the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment required that people be allowed to make uses of Copyrighted materials in their speech otherwise the purpose of promoting progress in the Copyright CLause would not be met. We have Fair Use, not because Congress wrote it into statute but becuase the Constitution requires it.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The Declaration of Independance speaks of "inalienable rights" -- rights which you can not surrender. The Constitution codifies some of these Rights in the Bill of Rights -- the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. Amendment 10 specifies that the previous nine are not an exclusive list of rights -- there exist rights retained by the people which are not enumerated there. The Supreme Court relied on the 10th Amendment in Griswold which ruled that there existed a right to privacy as it struck down laws outlawing contraception.
In addition there are Statutory Rights -- rights which you get by virtue of statute. You can go to court to have these rights enforced, though Congress is free to amend the terms of the rights. The right to receive a Social Security pension if you meet the qualifications is a statutory right. If an official tries to deny you your benefits, you can go to court to force them to be paid, though Congress can and does set the amounts payable. Copyright is another statutory right -- it exists by virtue of a statute.
Property rights are rights which behave like tangible property. You can sell, lease, transfer and assign these rights. You can leave them to your heirs. They are alienable (in contrast to the inalienable rights in the beginning of this reply) becuase you can transfer them to another.
Copyright is property-like in this sense -- you can sell your copyright for cash, use it as collateral for a loan and leave it to your heirs (if it hasn't expired). As such, it's appropriate to describe Copyright as a property right.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i