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Cyber Sleuths vs. Secret Networks
amnfinch writes "I saw this article on BBC news and frankly, I was blown away. Just another example of the relentless campaign to treat file swappers as criminals when their 'crime' is murky at best." Sir Haxalot provides an article on the flip-side: "CNN has a story on 'exclusive' Peer to Peer networks, that require 'knowing the right people and having a wealth of content on your hard disk to get into the clique.'"
Please have your wife post about such matters in the future. It is not considered "fair use" to distribute entire songs, albums, movies, and other forms of copyrighted material publicly and in their entirety without the copyright holder's consent.
It is against the law to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
For more information, click here.
uhhh... Bzzzzztt!! WRONG!
You didn't listen carefully to your wife, because there's no way a cyber-law class in ANY school would define fair use in the terms you just described.
By your definition of fair use, all those CD bootleggers on the streets in New York City are legitimate, since they are copies of a purchased album. And that is obviously not the case.
The law governing fair use is actually fairly easy to understand: (link)
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
It doesn't take an economist or a lawyer to understand point 4 - sharing copyrighted content that you do not have rights to millions of people would have DEFINITELY have a substantial impact upon the value of the copyrighted work.
Just helping you out in case you spout off that "big media companies" argument in front of a judge.
Pinkerton was also famous for being called in to stop labor strikes at Carnegie Steel and then shooting the workers that were on strike...
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Crudely Drawn Games
The "there'll be no music" arguement is complete BS. Before modern copyright law, people made music. Creative people will draw, sculpt, and make music independent of copyright law. Creating art is something people do. The only thing that copyright law produced was 1)RIAA/MPAA, and 2) pop stars. Maybe you think that there are not enough N'syncs, but I for one think one is too many.
If you look at the contracts that most musicians sign, you will see that they are exceptionally one-sided. So, while the musicians ARE getting screwed by p2p, the real losers from p2p are the record labels. And frankly, I don't have much compassion for record labels.
I also want to mention the Lifetime + 70 years copyright length. I think that the RIAA/MPAA are trying to keep the public domain as empty as possible, in the hopes that the public domain withers away. Yet the corporations will take as much from the public domain as possible (e.g. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.