Slashdot Mirror
Beyond Eldred v. Ashcroft
I thought I'd grab up some of the many commentaries and responses to the Eldred decision. If you read only one of these links, see Lessig's blog. Jack Balkin, another law professor who contributed to the case, is discussing it in his blog. The NYTimes has two distinct news stories on the decision (NYT1, NYT2), plus a biting editorial about the decision. Copyright scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan has a piece in Salon. The LA Times posts one of the very few stories to present the decision in a positive light. Reason is one of several to mock the mouse.
I stand in a sort of perverse awe, trying to grasp the 'reasoning' of Justice Ginsburg's opinion...utterly perplexed as to how six other justices signed their names to it when they had the exact text of how the ruling should have come down by Justice Breyer's hand.
I want there to be some good that comes out of Eldred, but right now I'm very disillusioned. So, I'm following Lessig's advice and turning to blogging. Let your opinions be known.
-R
Is sharing a journal of all your daily thoughts and emotions the best strategy to employ in order to win a court case as a lawyer?
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
What boggles the mind is how little this really benefits the corporations. With rare exceptions (Snow White, Happy Birthday, and Gershwin), what percentage of content revenues come from old material? For record companies, a good year comes from a big hit created that year, not the old stuff.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The LA Times Article was a gag-inducing personal piece. I loved how the law is supposedly for little people and their legacy:
To quote the woman in the article, about her grandfather's films:
"I'm happy that people won't be able to take his art and show it in a way that would diminish or hurt it, or put it in a way that he wouldn't have wanted," she said.
From what I can tell, she's mainly worried about people selling tapes on EBay. How horrible. People VIEWING AN ACTORS FILMS! I'm sure that's the last thing he wanted.
I'm glad this woman cares for his legacy. I commend her work. But in the bigger picture, her win is the loss for many of us. I'm sure in 20 years, when the companies go to congress asking for a longer copyright extention, there will be some other justifications.
But in the end, I'd rather see a legacy for all. No man stands tall except on the shoulders of others.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Except for Justices Breyer and Stevens, the Supreme Court has sold out. They have given their Nihil Obstat to perpetual copyright, and ignored the Constitution, no matter what they say in Justice Ginsburg's majority opinion. We can expect another Copyright Term Extension Act every twenty years. Citing this precedent, the Supreme Court will do nothing about it. I guess I should have expected as much from the Supreme Court that decided to throw out the results of the 2000 election, and coronate Bush.
Soon, no one but historians will know what the public domain even was. We are all the public domain, and have all been robbed. An idea once expressed belongs to us, and is only on loan to copyright holders. Now, the loan can last forever. Copyrights frequently do not even go to the artists, scientists, and inventors who do the actual creating, but to parasites who exploit them. From now on, as the public domain, we should all engage in "piracy" as a form of civil disobedience, and take back what rightfully belongs to us. To hell with unjust laws that the corporations bribed Congress into passing, and bribed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices into upholding. We, the public domain, must declare them null and void, and ignore them.
Imagine that the perpetual copyrights the corporations have created always existed. The King James Version of the Bible would be copyrighted. To print copies of it, you would need permission from the British Crown, or at least the Church of England, and would also have to pay them royalties. The KJV is so widely published because it is in the public domain, and anyone who wishes to may make copies of it. Now, nothing created after 1923 may ever belong to us all in this manner again.
It seems that Government of the people by the people and for the people has perished from the earth. We are left with government of the people by the corporations and for the corporations. I challenge Congress or the Supreme Court to prove me wrong.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
When your really think about it, the fact that they are trying to prevent stories from enterring the public domain is even more hypocritical.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
Suzanne Lloyd has spent the last four years refurbishing her legacy: 26 films made by her grandfather, silent film star Harold Lloyd. She has spent millions on digitally restored prints and full orchestrations.
now i'm sure suzzie has worked hard for her digitally remastered films, but just because they were grandpa's films doesn't mean they're hers. it's been said over and over and over again. usefull art and science... to the creator... for limited times... NOT to the creator's grandchildren for decades to come for century old media.
I snail-mailed and e-mailed my Congresscritters yesterday. The short version of it is:
Something like that...
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Like the one where the shrink finishes examining Minnie, and comes out and tells Mickey that he can't find any evidence that she is mentally ill. Mickey then says, "Aw, shucks, doc, I didn't say she was crazy, I said she was fucking Goofy! ha HA!" (drumroll)
You are not the customer.
1st off, the moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that not everybody can use something at the same time, not from monopolies granted by a king in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy
2nd, copyrights are a fraud in that they don't help creators that much. Often you'll hear it cried from the rooftops that the artist is king and that anybody who finds a need to copy is a self centered brat that offers nothing of value to society. Perhaps this is intentional as to distract from the fact that for every artist that makes it big, 10000 are in dirt poverty.
3rd, they are worthless as a free market property right. If I said I had no incentive to grow apples unless I could plant them in your yard, or I said that I had no incentive to grow cotton without owning slaves on the plantation - people would see it as the worthless arguments that they are, but if I say I have no incentive to bring things into the public domain without a copyright monopoly - they just take it on faith, they don't even question it. If the govt gave someone a monopoly on growing peaches and then called it free market because he could buy and sell shares of that monopoly - people would see it for what it is, a fraud. The same is true with copyrights. Since peoples activities have a natural limit in supply and demand, and not information, it is the activities that should be equated to market value and not information.
4th, information is so easy to copy and manipulate that we are quickly reaching a point where either all of it must be controlled or none of it. The copyright industries know that and so should you.
The "other" CTEA challange is Golan v. Ashcroft which has been on hold while Eldred v. Ashcroft was being decided.
The CTEA took some works which were previously in the Public Domain in the US and restored their Copyright. Golan, a conductor, lost the use of some compositions which were formerly in the PD in the US. This case will now procede.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Allow me to summarize this "biting editorial":
1) The Supreme Court's decision that extensions to copyright were constitutional really just favored copyright holders. Holy fuck, no kidding?
2) Even the defense didn't really think that the laws Congress passed would be declared unconstitutional, but they still tried.
3) The public benefits from public domain. Also, an unsupported assertion about how the public domain is a "great democratic seedbed of artistic creation" is put forward. A fine sentiment, whatever, still nothing "biting".
4) The author concludes that this is a setback for the public domain, and adds some doom and gloom nonsense about how it's the beginning of the end for it.
Come on, people. Is this what "biting" has come to mean these days? No fucking way.
"Biting" would have been to call Lawrence Lessig a bumbling idiot for presenting such a ridiculously weak case to the Supreme Court. "Biting" would have been to further berate him for his self-serving commentary that basically boils down to "well, gosh, I knew I wouldn't win but I had to try. Ain't I such a great person for trying? Now, it's your turn. You go fix the problem."
What a chode. Opponents of the DMCA and other copyright extensions had a great chance to make a compelling argument about the benefits of the public domain, and Lessig fucks it up. How many similar cases do you think will make it before the Supremes now? That's right, ZERO. It's called a precedent and it now works against us. Thanks, Lawrence.
Moving on to other potential targets, a "biting" editorial could also have noted that Disney, who has drawn heavily from public domain, is downright reprehensible for refusing to give anything back.
Similarly "biting" remarks could have indicated that the Disney films which drew most heavily from public domain material (Beauty and the Beast, the Little Mermaid) have been enormously successful, while those which come from the febrile, impotent imaginations of the hacks at Disney (Pocahantas, many others ad nauseaum) tend to do quite poorly.
One might also "bitingly" observe that if Disney would just throw these harebrained plots back into the public domain pool and let them profit from others' efforts for a decade or so, by the time Disney ripped them off once more they might be halfway watchable.
Such a "biting" editorial could also have targeted those jackals in Congress who routinely sell out the public's interest in these matters to Disney and other megacorporations. Fuck you, Senator Hollings.
I prefer a little more bite in my "biting" editorials, thanks all the same.
Here's a tip, Michael: if you're going to throw in snide, jackass remarks and unsolicited observations, at least do everyone the courtesy of making them reasonably intelligent.
"Biting editorial" my gangrenous left testicle.
The NYTimes editorial characterizes public domain as an experiment, and criticizes the decision for making it likely to end. The reality is the opposite: property rights to ideas and expressions were an experiment. The natural law is that you can only take property if by "taking" property, you deprive the owner of the use of the property. For example, if I steal your car, or your money, they are not available to you to use. Except in the most colloquial sense, I can't "steal" an idea, or a tune, or a movie plot, because doing so does not remove it from the use of its originator. It is a shame that we Americans on the whole appear to have basically come to believe that our best interest is served by simply giving up any hope of having individual Rights and Liberties in favor of having the government infantilize us - sorry, care for us. Bleah!
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
As a European, can I just say thanks a lot?
This means that we can look forward to corresponding legislation on climate change, the international criminal court, gun control etc. right?
Or is it maybe that big-business sponsored WTO programs are the real driving force here, and not a desire to match European practice at all?