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Copyright Defeats?
Uruk asks: "Over the last few years, we've seen what looks like the victory of copyright and business interest at the expense of the consumer. There's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. Copyright holders can even shut your website down without doing the research about whether or not it was appropriate. Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway. Does anyone know of any copyright or consumer victories on the net in the last few years? Something that limits the abilities of these laws, or otherwise acts in the copyright spirit of free use? My hat is off to GNU and EFF, even Project Gutenberg. What is the status of this ongoing battle? I'm looking for the sunny side to a situation that seems littered with defeat."
Reistance is futile. Hillary Rosen will copyright your children's DNA and patent the cold virus they catch that makes them sick.
Expect to pay licensing fees when you make a baby or catch a cold.
http://www.eldred.cc/eablog/000074.html
e;I know of a copyright winner, it was this company named ____________
Copyrighted name though, can't talk about it.
The sunny side is that with Kazaa, Direct Connect, etc I've managed to fill up several hard drives worth of copyrighted material that keeps me quite happily entertained!
Victory is ours! muhahahaha
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling allowing public domain material to be copied without crediting the source. This is a good, if small, thing.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Other than being offensive, what's the problem with that site? Is that photo copyrighted and being published without permission?
RIAA/MPAA lose suit against Streamcast/Grokster.
Victories by people without millions to lobby congress with? You've got to be joking.
Serious, this could be the ONLY time goatse is relevant!
the sunny side is the money side
.. for you, its sunny
.. welcome to the darkside
.. face the .. the have nots .. thats just the way it is.
you got money?
no money?
whats with all this social debate?
facts people - the haves have
have to circumvent
either that or kowtow.
Maybe the US government should spend more time fixing the high unemployment, school-funding crisis, and widespread drug problem and less time helping rich hollywood hacks line their pockets with more dough.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978176.html
I thought this was pretty big!!
I'd hardly call the UCITA a "defeat". Yeah, it passed in a couple states where it was rushed through, but in all the others it's met stiff resistance and is stalled or dead.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I'm thinking that the MPAA is infringing on my copyrights on their web site. The MPAA itself has gone to considerable expense and trouble to relieve me of any and all responsibility for actually investigating that they have, and their ISP is in deep, deep shit if they don't treat the MPAA just like any other accused war criminal/infringer, if I were to complain. It'd be real interesting to see if their host has honored any takedown orders from the MPAA, before filing such an order against the MPAA itself.
But that'd be fighting abuse with abuse, and I'd never recommend doing that.
Well he didn't produce the picture and somebody else did (google goatse and you'll find the full disgusting picture series) which _would_ make him in violation of the photographer's copyright. Unless of course the photographer has released the goatse man pictures into the public domain.
I am sorry to say that we're fighting a losing battle. No matter what we do, in a couple of years everything will be owned by only a handful of companies and everything you do on your computer must be approved by Microsoft or some other company. It's ashamed... Really.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
The biggest consumer victory over the last years isn't really related to copyright. It's the whole Internet in general.
Cheap, high speed cable access. Almost everyone has an email address these days, even my mum has two.
Even taking into account the enormous amount of crap out there, viruses, script-kiddies, etc, there is still an enormous amount of fantastic and free (as in beer and speech) software for the taking, useful information, online dictionaries - you can find something for almost every subject.
The dot com bubble spoiled (or educated depending on your view) people to expect things for free, but the biggest consumer victory is the wealth of information and content available to all who seek it.
Those who are old enough, try and remember the time before you had regular internet access.
Yes, people may be clamping down on copyrights, yes there are idiotic patents out there, and Microsoft is currently pouring money into nanotechnology in an attempt to turn humanity into a "perfect" society.
On balance the "good internet" outweighs the bad (at least for now). Having that resource available beats the shit out of being able to download the latest Britney Spears mp3. (as in fact would repeatedly punching yourself in the nuts, but you get the idea)
Hey, c'mon, how can CNN be expected to cover a minor story like that when Martha Stewart is about to be indicted?
This post is dedicated to all of those
Consumer successes against overblown claims may easily go unreported.
This may be a legal situation where an imbalance of reportage is regrettably built in.
If a copyright owner takes action and sees it through, there is an actual legal result that can easily get reported. But if a consumer resists an unjustified threat then the case may be dropped before anything appreciable has happened in legal terms and the position can easily go without report.
Maybe if there is some way to collect an informal archive about unjustified attempts to claim enforcement of copyrights, the results could be of use to consumer and public-interest organisations. It might also help when there are attempts to design sensible reform proposals to limit the imbalances in this area of law.
Censorship? Quit trolling. You can find the report on CNN here
she is?! i haven't been following the case. gimme links!!
I think it is high time to realize how naive we were to ever think that the courts would straighten this out for us. The courts are the least democratic, most reactionary, and least progressive element of government - and while they have done good (especially in America due the fantastic foresight of the framers, which has unfortunately reached its tether now) trying to think that we can turn to them for deliverance of the Internet is insanity.
I think, however, that the widespread belief among many of the information freedom activists and supporters that the courts would work things out (in the Eldred case, the DeCSS case, the Napster case, etc) should be noted as very strong evidence to the fundamental honesty of their position. It is so clear and obvious to us that laws forbidding us from manipulating our own computers and lawsuits against networks for not controlling those that use them are an insanity and step all over our fundamental freedoms that the otherwise naive belief that the courts would side with us seemed not only logical but necessary.
So is not the case. The unconnected man, the information horder, and those who view computers with suspicion and fear simply do not see the same thing as we do when they look at these things. Fundamental shifts will occur when one group grows at the expense of the other, not sooner.
While this is not really a copyright issue, now we're allowed to take pictures of Starbucks. Before this, most Starbucks managers used to politely ask you to put your camera away, and it's rumored that at least one stupid manager tried to confiscate the camera of someone who had taken the picture of a friend inside his Starbucks. http://emergentreport.com/dj/archives/000360.html
Oops, my fault, I missed it. CNN's article is even more detailed, BTW. Thanks for the link.
Less is more !
If a student copies Shakespeare, and claims it as their own original work, it is plaigerism, and by tradition, they will get a failure on whatever assignment they plagierized on. Here, the public domain appears at first glance to be open to legal plagiarism.
So then, this opens the debate: Is public plagiarism of public domain works a bad thing? If it could lead to new copyrights on old work, then it is definetly a bad thing for the public good... but if no evidence survived to show that the public domain work exists now in the public domain, is it not better that at least someone preserved the work, even if just to own it for life+x years? After all, the ownership of a work in the public domain cannot be defended in court, which makes the copyright directly on the work nearly useless.
There will likely be some interesting cases that come forth from this ruling, and what happens afterward.
Ryan Fenton
Does Kazaa count as a victory for consumer rights?
Gutenberg can burn through near as much time as can Slashdot. Though so many of us are avid readers, probably too few of us take time to read the occasional classic; Gutenberg is well stocked, and with a selection of texts that will have you quoting circles around pretentious arts majors.
/me breaks into song.
Slashdot humor is more often more similar to humor of days past: word play, teasing, rabid character assassinations. Many of these classics are authored with the intent of communicating new found theory and thought- things that we'd like to think are right up our way.
Beyond the intrinsic value of this sizable collection, reading texts that are in the public domain, thereby avoiding those that are not, is a most Excellent ***FINGER*** for the dip-shits who would deny us OUR rights to information that our ancestors would have rather have published for all.
Progress requires that we build on prior works. If reading old literature helps get the message across that we've enough with excessive copyright...
Though the US rejects it here.
I am more concerned the the attitude of the justice department regarding these detainees. Your quote "The Justice Department says its actions were fully within the law, adding that it makes no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from terrorist attacks" mirrors this quote from the WashingtonPost about the Moussaoui trial: "The government's appeal resulted in Tuesday's hearing. Prosecutors argued in written pleadings that national security should trump a defendant's rights in terrorism cases." Though these people are not US citizens, they are still people and hold a right to a fair trial. I applaud the judges decision, but it looks like the outcome of this is that the Moussaoui trial will be moved to a Military Tribunal, where more secrecy is allowed.
I got my stuff for free from Kazaa ;)
It was covered on NPR yesterday and was front page news on most newspapers (Time, NY Times) today. How you missed it, I don't know. I will agree that CNN is pathetic though...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
http://www.eff.org/bernstein/
http://cr.yp.to/export.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-225508.html?legacy=c net
In a 2-to-1 vote, a federal panel affirmed U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel's 1997 landmark ruling in Daniel Bernstein vs. the Justice Department. That decision states that software source code is a language, and therefore the export controls violate the University of Illinois math professor's First Amendment right.------ Michael A. Romig
How come no one has talked about off-shoring "illegal" websites/servers? People who think their websites/servers may be considered "illegal" under the DMCA or UTICA should move their sites to off-shore web hosting companies in copyright-unfriendly countries such as Russia, India, China, etc.
That way, the RIAA/MPAA can't touch you. Why do you think doom9.org hasn't been shut down? AFAIK, the website appears to be based in UK.
Off-shoring seems to be the best solution in bypassing the sticky fingers of the MPAA/RIAA Valenti cabal.
I'm thinking they "were fully within the law" because they were "people who were living in the US illegally". They probably have severely limited rights, just like the rest of our criminals. I'm pretty certain there are more than 84 prisoners in our country that have "suffered a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" in jail. We just don't (as a society) give a shit. I'm also going to bet that nearly every civilized nation in the world has similar problems.
Not strictly copyright, but still IP related, is the patenting of the SARS genome by the BC Cancer Institute to ensure its availability for all. Whether doing this was a victory, or the necessity of having to do it a defeat, I leave up to you....
Maybe if there is some way to collect an informal archive about unjustified attempts to claim enforcement of copyrights
Would that be the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse?
Will I retire or break 10K?
As for how the footage came into the public domain, they never renewed the copyright, and it expired in 1977.
No one has really explained in detail what the case was about. Fox hired Time to produce a TV series based on a book. It was originally broadcast in 1949 and the copyright expired in 1977. Fox never bothered to renew the copyright. Dastar purchased copies of the original, public domain series, edited the footage, and sold it under their own name.
Fox complained, of course. They used the theory that, by selling the tapes and not revealing the original source of the footage, they were "reverse passing off" the footage as their own, a violation of the unfair trade practices act.
The court did not want to use trademark law to interfere with copyright law, and found for Dastar.
I guess "cheap" is relative, but I consider $500+ per year for a cable modem to be just this side of extortion. I'll admit I don't know what their costs are, but every time they jack my cable TV bill, they claim it's to cover the increased cost of programming. Can't use that excuse for internet access. The fact is as long as the cable and phone companies have a near-monopoly on high-speed access, we consumers are screwed.
I do agree with you about the "good internet", and Britney Spears.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Remember, with respect to any specific law, the bad guys only have to win once. Their resources are effectively unlimited and they can try again and again and again until an obscure amendment to a law nobody ever heard of or a "must pass" appropriations bill gets added and suddenly. . . it's a bad law.
The best EFF and the rest of the alphabet soup geektivist civil liberties groups can do is fight a holding action.
The reason is that by definition, a non-profit organization can't contribute a single dollar to a political campaign.
We can't beat the bad guys in the long run, without at minimum, having our own top-bracket lobbyists working congressionsal offices, matching them dollar for dollar, having full-time legislative analysts checking EVERY bill and relevant agency regulation for booby-traps, and full-time staff answering phones and opening mail (like the snailmail with our $5 and $20 and $100 contributions) and e-mail and running mailing lists to let us know when it's time to send a message through Congress via their fax gateway.
In other words, we need our own PAC with enough startup budget to set up the infrastructure and do the election commission filings (e.g. FEC) required to legally collect and spend money in DC and each of the 50 states.
This hasn't happened and won't happen. Nobody with the startup money will put it into any "geektivism" organization that isn't tax-deductible, it isn't enough to feel good, the people who can write $1M checks demand tax-writeoffs as well.
If somebody was willing to do the right thing today, it is probably (perhaps the problem can be fixed by throwing a shitload of money at it) too late for a NRA/AARP style PAC to go into business in time to intervene in the 2003-2004 election cycle.
The other option: our high-tech vendors stop doing the "deer in the headlights" thing, stop being hypnotized with the promise of endless profits out of the catalogues of the major content owner members of *AA (MPAA/RIAA) organizations if they only make unbeatable DRM. The promise is bullshit anyway, it depends on fiber bandwidths to every home anyway.
By the time 10Mbps to every US home happens, the vendors will have had to move their R&D and production operations to free countries anyway.
The war is for all practical purposes over in the USA.
The place to make a stand? Probably the EU.
Most countries have publically funded election campaigns, meaning Hollywood can't legally buy politicians and anti-American sentiment is growing. So if you're in the EU and you aren't part of a high-tech political activist group, join one. If you can't find one in your nation, start one. Find people who already know the political game and learn how to play to win.
If the EU doesn't get it, the center of technology development not only moves out of the USA, but out of the Western world to places Hollywood can't buy off. India and China, for instance.
The Chinese are already planning for a future in which the rest of the world buys its tech from them. They are already working on plans for a permanent manned moon base. They are already designing and fabricating their own CPUs.
Tech Public Policy stuff
For as much as I use it, its worth it to me.
The victories are everywhere, but no matter how good it gets most folks seem to be focused on what they want. Well, if you know how to get everything you want, right now in real life then do clue us in so we can get on with the rest of it. In the meantime we've got to look at what we got and where we got it.
Example: my father is in his 80's; my 20+ aunts and uncles are nearly all dead. And all through those Nixon years and the Carter years and even the Reagan years I remember many an afternoon having to listen to them sit around and bitch about corrupt politicians and (get ready) an out of control press that had way too much freedom and power. Two decades later and this nation of sheeple elects a candidate who told us during his campaign he thought "maybe we have too much freedom."
This is the generation that forged the corporate nonsense we are living with now; this is the generation that put most of these corrupt fuckers in office, that passed most of these corrupt laws. And yet, in spite of their best efforts we now have a nearly unlimited, worldwide press, the ability to exchange copyrighted media and culture in the blink of an eye, and (believe it or not) more voice than ever - but we need to learn to use it on real shit instead of squandering it on essentially meaningless yellow press nonsense like "who gave the president a blowjob." Trent Lott was a good example of a move in the right direction - and I don't know how many of you noticed, but even CBS (er, viacom) and ABC (I mean Disney) were, in the end, forced to give some face time to chairman Mike's idiocy.
Most of these laws you all wring your hands over have become essentially meaningless for private individuals (and especially for indivduals who have an iota of technical knowledge). The victories are all around us, every day.
And speaking of which: I gotta run now; Dog Eat Dog is on...
Creators deserve to be compensated.
I just dug a very deep hole, and filled it in again, neatly. I worked very hard. I deserve to be compensated.
As an absolute principle, ``Creators deserve to be compensated.'' is flawed. The rule is ``Arbeit macht mudes'', not ``Abeit macht Geld''.
See what I've been reading.
I'd take the gold only because you can buy the naked chicks later with it.
It's called class warfare.
Welcome to capitalism.
Similar mirrored attempts are being practiced at UDN.com, one of the largest media conglomerate in Greater China region. The group recently issues a controversial licensing policy which explicitly states that any websites involved in news reproduction, abstraction, or even "copying" an exact quote of it's headline titles from UDN would have to obtain it's "u2u approval" first. The fees for "rights-managed" news are based on a specific criteria: total print run, distribution, intended use, etc. This policy applies not only to public website owners but also newsletter publishers. Another big brother at the parody play is Chinatimes.com, where I find it's user agreement is obviously an attempt to adopting identical business model. Shame that issues like these in Asia hardly ever get enough public attentiopn.
and any other such things, however complicated they might be...
Can't offer any good news for the people, but I was thinking about the recent court ruling in the states which held that computer code is not "speech", and thus not protected by free speech legislation. /.land who could create a meaningful short story/sequence using a programming language? Just to have something to show the doubters..
Having read many posts where pieces of code are used to convey humour, is there anyone out there in
The people involved were not all "people who were living in the US illegally". It included native born as well as legal aliens and naturalized citizens. Since the agency involved was the FBI, and not the INS, the rules that govorn the judicial process should be treating all that the FBI imprisioned with the same responsiveness.
The one thing that I think is being missed here is that these people were held without charges and until the FBI was satisfied that they were inocent, rather than being presumed inocent and only held with sufficent evidence to have a judge delcare either no option of bail, or bail too high for them to pay.
Something tells me that if there were a large population of friends or family of congressmen and congresswomen that were held in this way, there would be new management at the FBI, and the people who made the decisions putting these people in custody would be looking at that side of the cell door themselves.
-Rusty
You never know...
The goods news is that most people do not agree with copywrong and the nonsensical notion of``intellectual property''.
You just can't enforce a law that honest people reject (not without a oppresive regime), and indeed it's very dangerous for governments to even try, because if you have to break the law to do what you think is right, then the Law as a whole is debased.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Church of Scientology recently threatened Google in court and got a judge to issue temporary cease-and-desist order to make Google to eliminate the objectionable (=critical) sites from its search engine, because displaying materials to which COS owns copyright. Google was scared and took the links down temporarily, then restored most of them (which did not display the copyrighted secrets - just provided links to them) and as a bonus Google published a court document containing a complete list of COS-objectionable sites with their explanation.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Also check out Lawrence Lessig's weblog for up-to-the-minute happenings in the good fight. (and for the extremely lazy, here's his RDF feed.
And ( if that weren't links enough) you should go and sign the petition to Reclaim the Public Domain.
yrs trly, linky karma whore
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
You may recall that /. covered the ruling in favour of an Australian who was selling PS2 modchips. He still got caught on trademark infringement, but nevertheless modchipping a PS2 is now legal in this country.
Some quick googling turned up this link which pretty much explains the situation.
The DMCA can't touch us if we all live Down Under.
For a little while. Until we join the Coalition of the Willing-To-Suppress-Basic-Freedoms.
... that I read not along ago and it went something like this:
"The children of today are lazy, without respect and lacking god."
Sounds pretty common right? This was a rough translation of a tablet from Mesopotamia dated to around 2200 BC. Over 4000 years and ain't a damn thing changed.
--- I do not moderate.
Copyrights are an artificial construct. From day one. Yes, the creator made them, he owns them, directly on the media he created the idea on. Yes also, anything copied-outside the original, on some sort of physical media, is a copy of an *idea*. Ideas by their very nature are just that, ideas, what came out of humans brains. Ideas get used, and other humans see them, then use them, modify them, combine them with other ideas. This is HOW humans got to be advanced. Joe caveman builds a knapped flint knife. Joe caveman #2 sees this. If #2 steals #1s knife, that is stealing. If #2 sees the design and the technique, then he can build his own knife, then two humans have a knife, two families now have a means to cut food more effectively, to work skins, carve wood into other useful articles, defend the family cave. This is a *good* idea. Joe#2 has used sticks to poke hole in the ground to drop seeds, but the sticks always splinter and break. he tries just the knife, but his arm is too short to get a good enough swing. he gets another idea, ties the knife on the end of the stick, now he has a hoe, perhaps he grows so much that one first year famine for his family and tribe are averted. The ideas have expanded, everyone benefits. Joe #1 played a tune on an old falling down log, sang a little around the fire, and all was well. Joe #2 copied that idea when he went over to the next valley, perhaps it was an icebreaker for him, to show his worth to strangers perhaps, they liked it. Maybe he was a bachelor, and enchanted a new mate, widening the gene pool. His ideas spread, his DNA got more variables. It worked, the concept of idea sharing caught on.
And so forth, to where we are now
Putting restrictions on the sharing of ideas slows down human progress. It is an artificiality that was introduced in the feudal period of human development and society, it was designed to seperate the "classes" to restrict knowledge and enjoyment and ideas in general from "the royals" and "the commoners". Among all things, the "royals" were known for greed and exploitation. That "owning" the ideas let them enjoy that power, to maintain it, but it stagnated our humaness, and created more problems than it solved. It was...wrong. it was an extension of gluttony and greed. It was abnormal before that time. It's a relatively short time period in our human history that "owning" an idea has been considered normal. We have a term for that part of our history, it was the "dark ages", aptly named.
That concept and society, that aspect of feudalism, was and is a flawed civilization. We can recognize that that fork of humaness had serious flaws by merely looking at the historical record. We should strive to get beyond that, we should go back to our roots as humans who cooperated, voluntarily, for everyones mutual benefit, by sharing ideas, and not by force, but just because it's right, and it works better, the idea of sharing ideas IS the better idea, because it has empirical proof that it worked when we did it.. who really wants a return to feudalism? then why should we strive to one of the more heinous aspects of the feudal gestalt? It is illogical.
Our technology is such now, in extremely recent times, that copies of ideas are practically free,effortless, and the sharing far and wide just as easy. It is THE closest thing to a "replicator" we have. This is an amazing time. Would anyone really complain about a material object replicator? I doubt it, if everyone got to use one. It would be so fantastic the inventor would be feted across the planet. So, this complaining by the royal feudal idea owners about our only true replicator is a demand to stay stuck in that sort of archaic feudalism, the dark ages, the age of incredible greed, and incredible want.. That's all it is once you strip away the rhetoric.
Yes, it will cause some adjustment in our world, so have all other advances with technology. This time you would think we might be smart enough to not look this incredible gift horse in the mouth, to take this "idea replicator" and run with it, see where this renaissance of sharing of ideas can take us. Hopefully we can, if we are as smart and as advanced and as civilised as we insist we are.
The petition against software patents... URL below...
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
And, to beat the reply posts:
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Petitions work! Especially anonymous petitions from the Internet!
Try google news.h a+Stewart+indicted&btnG=Search+News
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=&q=Mart
I didn't actually look at any of the articles, but a bunch did come up.
Some people do not care to share their works with you for no compensation. Some people want the fullest possible protection applied to their creations. Why do you want everyone to play nice for you? Get over it. They created it, they can do with it what they will. Stop being a baby.
It's about time an organization focused on the importance of global intellectual property rights. The biggest & baddest bastards may be in the US, but they're trying to screw the entire globe by getting copywrong laws passed everywhere.
I found a reference to this petition on lwn.net http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi? eldred
or see: http://www.eldred.cc/eablog/EldredActOnePage5.htm
for the text of the Eldred Act for public domain enhancement
Isn't it ironic that the last screen of the new Metallica film clip holds the words:
;-)
"For all the people impacted by San Quentin your spirit will forever be a part of Metalllica.
-James, Lars, Kirk and Robert"
I wonder if any of the San Quentin inmates are in there for pirating Metallica off Napster?
Copyright violators are, after all, "Dangerous Criminals".
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I've heard ( but i can't find a confirmation... ) that a group used to defend consumers rights in Belgium ( Test Achats ) is about to sue some companies because they are selling copy protected CDs. It seems it will use the fair use right and the fact that the CDs can't be played with old equipment.
Sorry for the blur but i'm not sure about these informations ( and sorry for my english too )
The EU commission (lobbied by patent lawyers and big corps) are trying to expand patentability dramatically. Public protest has delayed the process, which is now entering the final phase, where amendments will be voted upon. Next election is june 2004
You still have time to write your MEP!
More information
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
...copyrights hold YOU!
page 10
supporting Fox's argument,
Hopefully we can use this to overturn the DMCA. Publishers are using the DMCA to keep people from copying public domain material off of DVDs.
page 12
Fox's audacity is amazing. They claim to deserve credit for material which they copied right out of the public domain.
Politicians generally vote in accordance to what the public supports.
THE VOTES ARE COUNTED IN DOLLARS.
From Open Secrets
2 TV/Movies/Music $330,317
That gives Hollings 330,317 reasons to introduce and work for any bills the record / movie industries want.
Here are the number of reasons the EFF, VTW, CDT, Public Knowledge have given Hollings to be on our side, to the nearest dollar. $0
This is what Howard Berman got from the *AA organizations:
TV/Movies/Music $40,500
This gives him 40,500 reasons to work for the movie/music industries.
Here are the number of reasons the EFF, VTW, CDT, Public Knowledge have given Berman to be on our side, to the nearest dollar. $0
These organizations can NOT give money to politicians.
The contributions I mentioned don't count the larger contributions made through law firms and lawyers on behalf of various industries including movie and record companies, I don't know all the players.
The bad guys are spreading money around by the barrel. There aren't any good guy organizations worth mentioning doing this. So who are the politicians going to listen to day in and day out:?
Believe what you want to believe, but your beliefs are completely rooted in total, blissful ignorance.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Sure people are going to be pissed off and eventually, they might even get around to writing their Congresscritters about it. By the time this can be translated into any kind of action, what do you think is going to be left of high-tech in the USA?
High-tech vendors? They'll simply move whatever R&D that's left in the USA to India and figure on selling dumbed-down versions of the stuff they ship to free countries into the US market. Perhaps they even figure that this will be helpful in wiping out small competitors.
It's invididual developers and small companies that have to worry.
Once these bills are passed, we will simply no longer be able to do business as usual. You haven't read things like CBDTPA and the Broadcast Working Group recommendations, have you?
Tech Public Policy stuff
People held without being charged? We hear about this all the time. I'm not saying that any of this is right... I'm saying that it happens regularly. Where's everyones bleeding heart for them?
I'm curious (if only a little). Do you know what the reasons were for their detainment?
is about a bunch of kids who made a shot for shot reproduction of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe the fact that they haven't gotten sued yet qualifies as a small victory for the supports of the intellectual commons? (THey even got nice letters from Spielberg.)
This post is dedicated to all of those
Speaking of Steamboat Willy, I found an amusing parody of it someplace on the internet. The video has an authentic look about it. It's in black and white with low-quality sound.
In the video, Mickey Mouse runs around acting like a villain. He dumps a bucket on a bird's head (just because the bird was laughing at him). He steals some hay. He steals a cow. Halfway through the video, Mickey lifts up a girl's dress and pulls on her panties.
If Disney found the author, they would probably sue for libel and defamation of character.
The court held that photographing a 2D public domain image does not create a new copyright. It lacks sufficient originality. This follows the well-known Feist vs. Rural Telephone, which established that mere lists, like phone directories, are not original works. (As the Supreme Court wrote, "The threshold for originality in copyright law is low, but it exists.")
As a result, you can now put clip art of out-of-copyright material on your web site.
Corbis is trying to get around this. They add watermarking data to an image and then copyright the watermarking data. They then claim that the DMCA prohibits the removal of the watermarking data, even though the underlying image is not copyrighted. This needs to be litigated.
here's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. (...) Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway.
Just so that is clear, the DeCSS case is not over, the next round of trial starts in December last I read, and I'd be surprised if it doesn't get appealed to the Supreme court (unless you know, both sides may appeal in Norway).
Personally, I think it's pathetic, both the duration of the investigation as well as the ridiculous statements made by the prosecution. Judging from the first court ruling, I'd call it being shot down in flames and die. Then again, never underestimate a Phoenix, so time will tell...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...but you probably wouldn't acknowledge it.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was they that scorched the sky. At the time we were dependent on companies playing nice with copyright and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an IP source as abundant as freeware, shareware, the public domain, GPL, and expiring copyrights and patents. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on goodwill to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. A PC's harddrive attached to the internet consumes more electricity than a 120-volt battery and serves more than 25,000 Kazaa files per day. Combined with a form of CD burner, we have found all the free content and software the world could ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where PC are no longer being used to word process company reports. They trade files. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them rip the contents of CDs so they could be turned into MP3s for portable players. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Pirated. The Matrix is a computer generated dream which has probably been videotaped through the analogue hole so many times that 9 out of 10 people watching it will be seeing the backs of heads moving along the bottom edge of the screen, and the words "Distributor Sample Only! Not For Public Exhibition!" scrolling across the top.
OPERATION DARK STORM IS GO!
And the just stopped up the largest malaria magnet in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I'll say Chinese are planning for a future where they buy a lot of quinine.
How about some of the links from 2 articles up which show some copyright defeats.
So what's your interest in copyright protection?
Tech Public Policy stuff
This limits the interest your politicians can have in what the Hollywood lobbyists have to say to them.
Any EU country that refuses to accept the EU Copyright Directive and related regulation / legislation has an automatic competitive advantage in the area of technology over one whose laws are paid for by movie/music industry lobbyists. The really cool new consumer products, both hardware and software will be made in places Hollywood doesn't control.
High tech user community activism with the right kind of education has a very good chance of winning if you people get your acts together RIGHT NOW.
So go for it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Are you agreeing with perpetual copyrights and patents? What if, every time you drove or rode the bus to work, you had to pay royalties to the descendants of the caveman who invented the wheel?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Copyrighted name though, can't talk about it.
I recognize an attempt at a joke, but...
Names cannot be copyrighted, but they can be trademarked. Use of a trademark to identify a company or a product is considered fair as long as the use cannot cause confusion between one company's products and another company's products.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Off-shoring seems to be the best solution in bypassing the sticky fingers of the MPAA/RIAA Valenti cabal.
So, high unemployment = more jobs?
HUH?
I clicked through your signature link to the 'Losing Nemo' website, and there's something in there that I think I should comment on.
While I'm with you on the 'Disney-are-bad-for-stifling-the-public-domain' front, I don't think you're going to win many supporters with the anti-gay angle:
Disney has openly promoted the gay lifestyle, which contradicts the traditional concept of a Christian nuclear family.
It all sounds a bit hysterical and trollish, and doesn't really add to your argument.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Perhaps more to the point, it's futile to try to eliminate capitalism entirely. Every society will have some aspect that are capitalist in some form (with the possible exception of some with communal ownership that actually works, probably limited to <100 people). All you need are possession, voluntary exchange and negotiable terms -- and rules banning those are unlikely to be enforced.
As a description of what goes on in the world, then, capitalism makes useful predictions. As a model for how we should act -- well, any model that doesn't have capitalism embedded in it probably won't work as described.
I don't always like it, but I've concluded it's true: capitalism happens.
I suggest moving your business elsewhere. There's nothing that will get dumb draconian laws repealed faster than all websites operations moving overseas, where (hopefully) the grubby hands of the DMCA et al can't reach them. The American govt care about the economy more than anything else, and if they see an e-commerce drain to other countries, they might be prepared to change the situation. But whilst all you entrepreneurs are still starting up in the good old U S of A, why would they bother to change anything?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The above proposition would only feel fair to me if a potentially IP-consuming citizen had the right to never see advertisements or enticements for IP that the citizen has indicated they do not want to behold. For instance, billboards (which should IMO be thought of as owned by the public, like the airwaves) are typically used to hammer messages into people until they get bored into going along for the ride. Likewise for network television ads, radio, magazines, etc. If the creators of IP want us to respect a model where that IP commands a price, then the minimum I would require is that I am empowered to choose to live in a world that is not littered and strewn at every turn with intellectual garbage related to the hawking of said IP. For this reason I cannot go along with the proposition above. If someone litters my lawn with coconuts, I am going to feel the right to pick one up and own it.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I agree with your basic point, but I'm afraid your history got a little tangled.
The idea of owning an idea (there's meta for you) comes from after feudalism; in fact it's almost directly opposed to the mindset of feudal society where ideas were just about the only thing you could take without fearing severe physical punishment.
The renaissance (which originated through the financial support of feudal lords) drove out the so-called "dark ages", but renaissance thinking first introduced the idea of individual ownership of ideas, art and concepts to us!
Skip a few decades, even centuries and all of a sudden you get the so called "enlightenment" following the industrial revilution and only after the advances of this period in time were the post-"dark ages" concepts of owning ideas strong enough to be turned into laws -- leaving us where we are today.
To sum it up: sharing intelectual property was typical in feudal society; the new ideas of the renaissance introduced "individual ownership" of ideas; and only with the industrial revolution and the enlightenment did ideas become "protected" by law.
Ironically, while I agree the greatest advances in both technology, art and mindset can only be made through sharing ideas freely, advances that have been made in the past went hand-in-hand with increasingly stronger "protection" of "ownership" of ideas, rather than v.v.
This is a paradox worth pondering.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
High unemployment = more people out of work = more available jobs :P
Doesn't she make cake-mix or something?
It's amazing the type of logic they use. For example, they cite the rampant piracy in the Asian market for the reason Phantom Menace performed lower than expected there. Didn't anyone stop to think that, perhaps, maybe they just figured out it wasn't a very good movie? ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Well, this was probably a small-scale victory but it was significant to me. ;)
Almost a year ago lawyers from Agfa Monotype threatened me with the DMCA about a program I wrote that changes the embedding permissions on fonts. (slashdot article) I presented my defense via e-mail, they got a lot of bad press, and eventually they gave up (?). The program is still up today. Hopefully other developers who receive cease-and-desist letters will recognize that it is not always costly to fight them...
TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CITIZEN AND MUSIC LISTENER
ABOUT ISSUES CONCERNING MUSIC DISTRIBUTION IN THE MODERN MEDIA MARKET
FROM ALL SIDES WHO RESPOND
(TO BE AND ADMITEDLY BUT FAIRLY EDITED FOR PERTINENCE AND BREVITY!)
After some consideration I have decided to take time off from my day job, and even more painfully, from my independent music career to work on a project that hopefully will highlight some very important issues that I feel strongly about. You may feel strongly about them as well. You may agree with me, or you might feel differently. I am trying in my own way to give the average American music listener/fan/consumer an educational and informative way to decide for themselves about these views.
Even thought I am biased (and admit it up front!) I am going to rely on the views of the responders to make up the project I propose.
You are all hereby invited and challenged to a debate. You are hereby invited to participate in a national discourse.
I am going to keep it simple too.
Almost everyone has access to a camcorder in America. Get in front of one and spout/shout/opine/sublime/ your views about music and the distribution as it pertains to the modern culture and media. All who respond please understand and know that this is an intentional "shot to the arm" of the general public about these issues.
NOBODY, will make money off of this. YOU might even have to pay for your own time/comments and the VHS tape used to make your views known. And if you truly care about discourse in America, YOU may end up having to take the final product to your own local public access station to get it aired.
BUT in response, you WILL receive MY edited tit for tat of YOUR views as compared with those of the others. This is NOT a corporate project. ABSOLUTELY NOBODY will make any money from this. (And yes, even corporate music industry lawyers and spokespersons are invited to respond and provide their own comments!)
I may be one of the least qualified people to do this, but it needs to be done. I can only promise my best to get it aired on my own local access channel, and hope that all who participate do the same in their own local community.
The point is that we need to make the people educated on these issues.
No one else has stepped up to the plate in the TV world and this needs to be done! We (the public) NEED your comments!
(Duh?)
(For, or against, WHAT?)
1. Conglomerated corporation domination of the media.
2. P2P down-loader rights.
3. Independent musicians who are the majority of the copyright owners in America.
4. Copyright necessity.
5. Who should own the airwaves and other channels.
6. Mp3 technology and other digital compression formats.
7. Fair use.
8. Napster, then and now.
9. KaZaa, Grokster, etc.
10. SR/PA performance royalties.
11. Music/media distribution history in general.
12. Yes, HISTORY of media.
13. The internet and/or technology advances that make new music distribution possible... at least for now!
14. Downloading music a crime?
15. Do you buy the CD anyway?
16. Tell me the name of the sites you use for news about all this!
17. Tell me the name of YOUR band/group that is caught up in this transition from the old to the new way (yet to be decided) of music distribution and YOUR VIEW!
18. YES, all legitimate artists who have at least 1 comment WILL be if at least one comment is submitted and they want that view shown on the tape.
19. ALL respondents WILL be identified by NAME, STATE, and OCCUPATION (unless they indicate that they wish not to be!)
20. ONLY coherent opinions will be included. I will ONLY include the BEST STATED and UNDERSTANDABLE of what you say... PLEASE speak your mind and only edit out what you DON'T WANT SHOWN!
21. ANYTHING YOU THINK IS ON TOPIC!
I reserve the right to show or NOT show anything and everything you send me. ONCE AGAIN, there is NO MONEY INV
Why doesn't some hacker pose as a RIAA agent and use the "pre-emptive shut down" against the site of various media companies or the RIAA itself?
I mean, what checks are there to show that the party requesting and ISP shutdown is in fact an aggrieved copyright holder?
For instance pirates wanted cheap music to purchase by the track and not by the CD. Apple has a elequent solution: grab a song, pay 99%per track.
...are largely going down to defeat now that the public has caught on to what's been going on. See Ed Felton's S-DMCA Topic page
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
And if the people "represented" by Hollings would turn out at the goddamn polls and elect someone else who better represented their interests, Hollings would be taking that $330K in pension and trying to figure out how he's gonna live out the rest of his days on such a "fixed income."
Piss and moan all you like about a lack of representation, but in the end it's your own damn fault. If you don't vote and don't take an active role in encouraging others, you deserve whatever "representation" the corporations purchase for you.
I don't think you're going to win many supporters with the anti-gay angle:
I guess I agree. Anything else you think the Losing Nemo page could do without?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why should the people of South Carolina care what you think?
You're part of the problem. You will never be anything else.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Maybe this post is a little late, and maybe the case cited is more of an avoidance-of-major-loss rather than an actual victory, but small non-commercial internet broadcasters appear to have managed a compromise on the royalty issue.
See this article from the Houston Chronicle.
I'm sure many a Slashdot reader's favorite stream is not necessarily rejoicing, but at least this looks workable.
How about, "Remember, abolishment of slavery doesn't sound like a bad idea on paper, either." Oops, that worked.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
couple of topics. One, you have no exact endpoint as to how minute and fine tuned and obscure patents and copyrights may be enforced. In addition, you keep calling an idea a product, that's your choice of words, I still call it an idea. I know our society calls it a product, that's what I think is severely broken. Second and most important, your assertion, or to be more fair, it appears a fear, you gain nothing by sharing. That is an ingrained belief system, that's the part I think that needs to be changed very broadly speaking and very generally speaking by current idea comer uppers with. I've done it, invented a tool that was patentable, I just had some made, sold them immediately,recouped my expenses, made a couple hundred bucks, that's it, a pittance as those sorts of things go,then it was wild, and I know several other people and companies then took the idea and ran with it. And it's because I have received good ideas from people, for gratis, they were shared with me. As far as I know, there's no patent on that tool, but it's been some years now so I can't say that for sure, but I know I just dumped it out there, because I wanted my fellow tool users to HAVE the dang thing to make their jobs easier and better. I've walked my talk before.
Third, and to address it specifically with your example, that I didn't pick but was presented to me,, I think the stock market as it stands now is heinous, it's a congame and more lie than truth and more harm than good. Originally, it was a lot different, I understand how it came about, but now, it's an abortion of a concept. It's the casino.. yes, you would be better off and society would be better off without it, in my opinion. I'd say your theoretical two years would have been wasted to make a system to rip people off better and more efficiently. Doubt me? How dare I? Contemplate a simple change in the laws, to reflect INVESTING over shilling and gambling, here it is. New law passed, the "investor honesty and protection act" of 2003. Stocks may be sold only after being held for a minimum of one year from date of purchase, a time limit that allows a company to actually build a widget, for that "investment" action. Scared?
Why, it's an "investment" for the masses of stock purchasers, isn't it? The way it is now, programmed trading and large moves can shill it up in the morning and dump it in the afternoon. Tell me, in exact detail, how acme widgets is supposed to research, develop and market a product between morning and afternoon? You know it's impossible, hence, it's just high brow gambling, snakeoil, scams passing itself as a business. the IPO is one percent of the market, the market most people think of is this daily bushwah of casino shilling ands gambling and technical blinkenlights and everyone using their pet "wave" at each other. It's unneeded in well over 90% of it's incarnation now. All it does is *rearrange wealth*,after first promising the magic beans to people for their cows, it produces nothing with that sort of market and how it's run now, and is the main reason we had the bubble, it was pushed via *greed* and *lies*, telling people that everyone could get something for nothing. I think people and corporations and shillers who are responsible for siphoning off TRILLIONS of dollars from other people are *not very nice* people. Maybe very smart, maybe smooth, maybe powerful, maybe very technically skilled-but not very nice.
Sorry,I respectfully have to disagree, I stand firmly by my original statement, owning ideas is a bad idea,but IMPLEMENTING the ideas to *produce* wealth is totally legitimate. Not rearrange someone elses produced wealth, but to use an idea to create wealth is legit. That is the exact dividing line. I know most people don't agree, so be it, I don't agree with theft by deception and organized extreme buncoism either. Nor usury for that matter, but now I have drifted.
Society benefits by sharing ideas-note, I didn't say transfer wealth around, by seizing someones wealth and giving it to someone else by force of law,we
This is as unlikely as some geek who made his money in the dot-com glory days and managed to keep it suddenly deciding that we need a high-tech user PAC NOW and underwriting his determination with a $2-3M check to get things rolling.
At this point, there are NO credible good answers for the US. Those of us who want to keep making technology need to start shopping foriegn countries and figure out how to pay for getting over there and making new lives for ourselves in foriegn lands.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Hey everybody!
The RIAA is fighting Morpheus!
(Everyone shrugs and goes back to eating goo.)
Obviously you haven't been much of anywhere.
And if you don't learn to play well with others you never will get that parole.
Very nice reply, thanks! I like the idea of "choice" ware, anything really, as long as it's simple and doesn't get restrictive to the point of incomprehensibility. Pay ware donate ware, or shareware or free ware. I would hope that voluntarily that more and more people would stick to share, donate or free, as the benfits are obvious. It seems to allow both the creator and the ultimate end user some sort of decent way to interact with each other on an adult level independent of laws and regulations. I understand the reasons for making money obviously, so I appreciate the work that people have done, and I have both purchased shareware after a trial, as well as tried it, didn't like it or use it much, so I deleted it. I use open source now, I pay for either cloned copies or full price for the distro official releases, as I like getting the physical media,and the dead trees manuals, which obviously have costs associated with it. the concept of try before you buy or donate is a good one. I'd also like to see a micropayment system for the distro makers,, that they in turn donate some of the proceeds directly to the popular app makers, based on... I don't know, a ratings system perhaps, with what gets included in their releases. As it is now, I'd have to cut a thousand little bitty checks all over heck to donate to all these people, seems sort of weird, and I couldn't afford even one dollar apiece to them,but some cents here and there, magnified by thousands or millions of people using the stuff, that would work, the "distributed patron system".
Mostly, despite my non elite spelling skills, I have been a writer, going back to the 60's, when I would cheaply reproduce what I wrote, mimeograph mostly, and give it away, or give it free to what was called back then the "underground" press. Mostly I write on news and politics, but I have also written extensively on survival and preparedness topics, and mostly put on various forums. It's just such a cheap and easy way to be creative and publish and to just give it away. My donation is my time, glad to do it, and I receive just as much back from other peoples inputs along those lines. I have done a small amount of private consulting on these topics, were my work was customised and detailed for the individual, and used an honor system sliding scale fee schedule, that mostly worked out good too, and I always offered a *free* price for those who were in rough financial shape, because to me, the info is better out there than not.
The main problems I see are just way overly complex laws and regulations, that's the part I think humans will get themselves in trouble with, as there is NO incentive for the law writing and administrating "community" to make things easier/simpler/fairer, but all the profit incentive in the world to make them more complex, obscured and expensive to administer. That trend is really the biggest problem, I doubt there's a day goes by here where you can't see or find an example of some blatant absurdity that has now turned into an expensive law mess. I really don't think it can be fixed the way it's setup now, I would prefer scrapping the entire business and starting over, exactly the same way I feel about the US tax "code", which is as cryptographic as beady eyed people can make it now, and shows no sign of improving. It's just too far gone into nutso land. Forget 128 bit file encryption,that's for beginners, just try deciphering the tax code base using alleged english words.... then they try to enforce it, it's a complete disaster. I think that's why the government is harassing the heck out of the guy (Larken Rose, IIRC) who wrote a book on the tax laws called "cracking the code", it was allowing people to figure out exactly how to "do" their taxes in the most efficient manner, they were getting rather *too good* of results.
nice group of thoughts! I think I can describe it simply. We don't have a legitimate government, we have rule by international corporate edict that is filtered by the illusion of an elected representative government. that's what's wrong and it's so extensive now as to be virtually unfixable.
I'm all for a secession from this corporate bastardized version of "USA Inc" as it stands now. I'm not against business, I'm not against making a buck, I AM against powerful international pirates masquerading as "patriotic americans" and ruling us by stealth fiat from secret star chambers. I could care less what language they speak as a first language, it's easy to spot some international screw everyone else I'm a citizen of the world, as opposed to a joe normal USian. I'm against them other gents, they have no use sitting in power, because first and foremost they aren't real patriots,or even honest, they are just power-mad and money=-centered nutcases, megalomaniacs.
We have the full complete *illusion* of constitutional law,wheras real law, designed to be simple and easily understood by anyone who had an average IQ and could understand the common language has evaporated, it's poofed. It also appears to have a direct relation to number of flags waved and "nuke the ay-rabs" statements and accumulated uses of the word "terrorist" or "terrorism" near as I can see.
"We are the government. Because we say (with our secret evidence) that bad guy person A wants to steal your freedoms, reluctantly we must steal your freedoms so badguy A won't get them". "We are the government. Because you might actually use technology, we now must take away your technology, it is all ours, and we will sell you permission slips and slap huge amounts of thooroughly incomprehesible regulations on that permission, and BTW, you don't own any real property, we own it all,including your very person, and lease it back to you at our leisure and we say what it will cost, and we have THE monopoly on that, and if you don't like it, tell it to the nice man with the tank and jail cell"
This is a government and economic society designed by yossarian. Catch 22 sources compiled with the "gotcha" compiler.
IP abominations are tip of the iceberg, on every front,we face assaults. I like writing on the IP issues, but really, I see that as just a percent or two of the entire problem. These... predatory creatures... posing as men, do it relentlessly, I cringe every day any "legislature" is in session, I am scared every time a "governor" or the so called "president" picks up an inkpen.
Although I don't 100% agree with the capital L Libertarian official version, I would say I am a small l type of person/independent constitutionalist, and as things stand now I fully support and admire the Freestate concept and plan,as it's the ONLY workable plan or idea I have seen anyone propose that has a whisker of a chance of stopping the big brother & global money pirates axis of command and control juggernaut and getting some sort of common sense and accountable government back in place. And the reason why that might be possible is it will take an entire state and all it's official authority and apparatus and support of it's citizens to be strong enough and steeled enough in their resove to say "NO! NO FURTHER, BACK THE HELL OFF, WAY, WAY BACK, OR ELSE!" to big brother.
The "or else" part is critical. There , I said it out loud.
It is going to get down to that, inevitable now, OR we will be total droned out shuffling with eyes averted down slaves of some international monster soon, you can see it, hear it and smell it coming.
It REALLY is going to get down to that,a full secession or a counter-coup to get the nation back from the bribers and strong armed conmen who seized it a long time ago. We are living under a military/bureaucratic dictatorship junta, lead by traitorus internationalists who could care less about anything except their "bottom line" and their hideous fetish of accumulation of raw power over ot
Have you read this one by Emmanuel Kant? You might be interested.
- ueberlamer
...but I have now. Interesting read, albeit a hard text to follow for me older eyes.
I am most wondering now, with no possible way to find out, how he would differentiate todays "copying" with his ages copying. Notice he makes a distinction between derivative works, even exact renderings, because they take labor and media, as opposed to recited works,vocal speech. He classes them different, and I am guessing because there was no true way to actually store them then, or to reproduce them on any media, they needed human effort for each use of a work, they had to be recited. Now this is quite possible, so I imagine he would alter his analysis. Also, he seems fixated on potential damages, ie, it's all based (more or less) on the assumption that the transference of legal power to the editor would be based on remuneration. that seems over emphasized to me, but it's understandable from most peoples point of view.
The point I most agreed with,if I may make an attemtp at paraphrasing here, was the moral and legal imperative for the editor to actually carry out the creators wishes, to get the works out to the public, in such a manner as to be *efficient*, and to fail in that duty is to abbrogate the trust and contract. this is an extreme key point and part of the counter argument that the file copiers of today site, ie, "the means to publish/deliver product exist to make it extremely cheap and still profitable,merely by allowing more precise product isolation and choice, and by the means of delivery,and the editors and publishers ignored that for years and years, they violated their contract of a sorts both to the artist creator and to the eventual consumer public". This is just true facts. That point seems to apply to today, where the big publishers seek to actually hinder dissemination, and seek indemnity against the now legitimate "counterfeiters", who claim from their side that the structure of the published copies being offered by todays editors and publishers violates the efficiency of what is available, in effect, the publishers have failed in their contract with the artist/creator, so in that sense they may not be considered counterfeiters.
In essence,and I hope I got this and am clear on it, the originator owns the work. He may choose what to do with it. He may assign legal rights to make copies. It is the new copiers duty to follow the contract and edit and publish if this is the contract. A non legitimate copy from another is an illegal counterfeit, but not against the artist, only against the publisher. An *apparent* non legitimate copy may be re classified as legitimate IF the assigned publishers have failed to do an adequate job of publishing and dissemination based on their ability to do so, if they fail to use due vigilance, which we can assume is to use the best available technology of mass production.
I don't have any major problems with those concepts. It is after all about choice. I would also like to say I would hope that all creators would seek to work towards maximum exposure with the least cost, and to obtain their "profits" from that, or to take profits by THEIR aquisition of others creations, an advanced distributed quid pro quo barter like system, in short, pure swapping or sharing.
I would rather skip the intermediary third party publisher/editor, I think that is the main difference now with our technology, that middle man step is no longer needed all that much. the creators have all the source tools they need to also publish all the copies they want and to distrivute. this is actually a much better deal for the creators. it's fat city really, well, it would be if everyone else did it, the way it is now half and half with a conglomeration of almost this or that is sort of unwiedly. I would put that to the rapid advances of technology more than anything else. That makes the distribution much cheaper, down to free in theoretical cost, or so close as to be neglible.
There's two basic choices for the creators now, with the caveat of the publisher/editor bec