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Hollywood's Foundations Rest on Piracy
enrico_suave writes "Wired Magazine had an interesting perspective on how Hollywood has 'pirate' roots in its history, as well as radio, cable TV, and the music industry. Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"
Where do you think the term copy-right came from anyway?
To some extent, piracy helps business. Do you think, for example, that MS would be where it is now was it not for piracy? Piracy is what brought Windows to +90% of all PCs.
Why, the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached.
at the beginning humans would fight for food. anything was game. i guess the same was with the movie industry at that time... ah... what the heck...
I'll need three ships and fifty stout men. We'll sail around the Horn
and return with spices and silks, the likes of which, ye have never seen!
Don't have to pay for the stories if no longer copyrighted.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
From the article:
But because patents granted their holders a truly "limited" monopoly of just 17 years (at that time), the patents had expired by the time enough federal marshals appeared. A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property.
In the words of the article, is there a distinction between Copyright and Patent? I was under the impression patents were for ideas of inventions, and copyrights a wann-be patent for creative works. In any case, it's interesting in a sad way how the movie industry took off initially by infringing on Edison's patent, then grew more when the patent expired after a reasonable period of 17 years. Yet in the past couple of decades, the same people who made their fortune because a patent expired are trying to extend copyrights for generations!
There was a tradition in the radio business of the 1930's of taking shows of other stations far away and broadcasting them as your own.
So, P2P networks, according to this, will cause another round of copyright law to be written and P2P networks will have to pay some set fee as dictated by congress for those "publishing" works. That seems to be the pattern over time for content broadcasting.
No wonder the RIAA wants to prosecute under existing laws, the pattern of new copyright law for disruptive technologies appears to favor the new technologies over the existing system. This would mean the end for the RIAA
So, someone, somewhere (gee, didn't this already occur in Russia) should set up a "for pay" P2P network with some nominal fee, and start paying to the RIAA. Send them checks. Similar to the broadcast license now charged for any restaurant etc to replay music publicly. The RIAA will surely come down on them, but if the population is large enough, new copyright laws will be written, and viola - effectively no more RIAA.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Only one example in the article is truly piracy, and that is the movie industry violating existing patents on recording technology.
The other two involve ambiguities in the law.
Oh but wait, that would require reading the article.
Actually, you took their electrons so.... but yeah, I see the point.
In this case, the most obvious tidbit is the approved use of the term "piracy." An article talking about music piracy over p2p would have any number of posts saying "it's not piracy!"
The problem with the IP debate is that the arguments are always lacking logical consistency.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
as the term for copyright theft was coined a long time ago...
1930s Newspaper advertisement
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I tried that with my lawyer. He only gave me advice. I thought, "I'm not paying him, he didn't give me anything physical." Big mistake.
Here's a pirate Hollywood was founded on.
If i download music, i will ether eventualy buy it within the next few weeks, or i never would have bought it, even if i dident/couldent download it. P2P lets me see what the music is like, and discover new artists. If i download something and never buy it, its because 1) it was crap (and i usualy delete the crap) 2) only liked a couple tracks 3) the album has a RIAA label on it
In many states there is a law concerning Mechanic Leins, which means the mechanic owns the car until you pay the bill. In the example, you did steal the car.
In the case of electricity, energy is not abstract like a thought or idea.
If you are going to pirate something, then at least wear the patch. It is more authentic that way.
No, Vern. They just let him in.
What you steal when you download copyrighted material.
Since people say copyright material is not theft because nothing is stolen here is a short list of what is stolen when the music or movie is not obtained through legal means.
Editing costs.
Advertising costs.
Employee wages.
Script costs.
The list goes on and on.
Many people will say "Well I can just hit record on the radio and get the same thing." True, to an extent. You pay for the quality of the sound when you buy a CD. Radio does not offer the same quality. Also, every time a song is played on the radio the artist is given a set amount and is being paid. The same happens when movies are shown on TV and when you rent a DVD. It is called royalties.
Just because you think the music industry makes too much money does not give you the right to declare that your illegal activities are not theft. I personally pirate almost all my music and have recently downloaded most of the episodes of family guy. Am I a thief, absolutely. I admit it but really don't care. I only have a problem with those people who deny it.
Thank you for your time
"Cable TV, too: When entrepreneurs first started installing cable in 1948, most refused to pay the networks for the content that they hijacked and delivered to their customers - even though they were basically selling access to otherwise free television broadcasts. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters' content, but more egregiously than anything Napster ever did - Napster never charged for the content it enabled others to give away."
I know this a bit offtopic, but does anyone know a good site that could sort of present the whole history of the cable industry. I thought it didn't start up until the 1970's, but maybe I'm wrong. Have been before, will be again.
Thanks In Advance...
Kev
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
Downloading copyrighted material is only theft if the license precludes you from doing so. Copyright establishes ownership. The owner can grant a public license for his work without relinquishing ownership.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
Free association time: my favorite crime movie is The Long Good Friday. Which also employed real gangsters as extras. One of whom saw Bob Hoskins (playing the crime lord) yelling at a subordinate. He took Hoskins aside, and told him, "You don't need to yell. He knows who you are."
Disney is also a major pirate (besides Pirates of the Carribean). It is ironic that Disney lobbied to have the copyright lengths lengthened. Disney themselves made a mint by plundering the public domain (Snow White, Pinnochio, etc).
There is a failure in your analogy.
A closer one would be if I watch the mechanic fix my car, then fix other people's cars with that information, depriving the mechanic of the opportunity to fix their cars for a fee.
This one fails as well, but it illustrates that the problem is in the fact that digital music can be copied without incurring manufacturing costs, which wrecks the music industry's business model.
I don't know what the answer is, but draconian copy controls seem to be failing. (Witness; I watch my DVDs on my GNU/Linux system without a "legal" CSS key.)
-Peter
Disney, the core of "Hollywood", is the greatest IP monopolist running amok in our marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, they have built their empire on appropriating public domain "improperty". Somebody build a better mousetrap!
--
make install -not war
He forgot murder, incest, and total control of water rights.
Dang... wish I'd saved the whole thing though; the original osopinion.com website had long since morphed into something else. Maybe I oughta chuff up a resume' and call Wired? Nah.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
For a while I have been arguing that the debate should not be framed in the "innovator versus freeloader" view but in a "constitutional rights and individual property rights versus expansive intellectual property" view.
Most Americans do not accept the idea that you have a right to give away a copy of a song to anyone who wants it. While we hear constantly about those numbers that "40% of internet users said they saw nothing wrong with pirating music" we cannot go by that. Americans are just like any other people; when we think we can get away with something that doesn't seem to directly hurt someone we do it. Downloading bootlegs doesn't seem to hurt anyone, but it can.
If I had bootlegged the entire new Android Lust album instead of buying it on iTunes I would have not sent the chick behind AL any money. iTunes allowed me to send her maybe $2 for the album which I paid $10, probably a good $5 less than what I would have paid for a CD copy.
We need to stress to the government that iTunes, not more legislation, is the key to getting the system working. We need to show them that bands like Metallica refuse to do their part because they want an all or nothing. Buy 20-30 songs on iTunes and you give Apple more ammo to counter the claims that piracy has no solution. They can just shrug in front of Congress and say "it's not our side, the legal downloading side, that has dropped the ball. They refuse to let people buy their tracks one by one because they want them to buy them all or nothing."
There will always be politicians who will rail against piracy and ignore iTunes and other legal services, but many politicians will just look at these industries and say "the mechanisms are in place, why aren't you being a team player, why are you coming to us for help when there are companies dying to make the market work for you?" Politicans tend to be lazy, just look at how many Senate votes that John Kerry has missed in the past 12 years. Something like 1000 or more a year according to Fox News.
We can appeal to the public by pointing out the supremacy of the 1st amendment over Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. The first amendment was ratified later so it supercedes everything in the original constitution, just as all parts of the constitution must be read in the context of the Bill of Rights.
We should also point out how anti-backup provisions and attitudes like Jack Valenti's "if you want a backup, buy another copy" are against common sense, American tradition and capitalist principles. I have yet to read of a prominent capitalist theorist who would support the DMCA. Rand, Ricardo, Hayek and Smith are probably spinning in their graves over the DMCA and similar "seller protection legislation."
The hollywood position is built on pure, unprincipled greed. Defeating it only means that we need to be consistant and show the public where the law is going to start biting them in the ass if they don't care now.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The wired article is mixing these two cases up. Hollywood may have been founded on piracy of media, which may have been wrong during the patent windows. But it is the piracy of content which is more disturbing in the digital age, i.e. the violation of copyright by copying a particular expression of idea.
One thing that this article doesn't touch on is that early Hollywood (and radio) was filled with people copying each other's works, and in a lot of cases the result of copying and reworking old material resulted in a richer cultural landscape than would have otherwise occurred.
Look at how many classic songs of the 30s, 40s and 50s there are whose canonical popular version wasn't the original, or even created with the approval of the original artist. Similarly, what a loss to cinema it would have been if Stoker's estate had been able to crush Nosferatu with lawsuits... if nothing else, we would never have had Shadow of the Vampire. Most people don't listen to Fred Astaire's old singing, but everyone knows Taco. And the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin" was originally an Elvis track. That's not saying that Taco and the Pet Shop Boys didn't get the rights first (I have no idea), but that it's that kind of thing that has resulted in a richer world.
Aww... I was there with you until Family Guy. They're coming up with a new 3-year contract based on their phenomenal DVD sales.
That'a also part of the equation. If there are no sales, there's no way to tell if a franchise is worth bothering with. Family Guy was cancelled and then proved itself on the shelf, so it's coming back, no thanks to you...
You are most decidely not welcome.
The article is based on redefining what Piracy is. Some of the people on the pro-file sharing side are kinda crazy. Sharing copy-right materials is illegal. So get over it.
Does that mean that file sharing software should be shut down? no... Technology has put conent providers behind the eight ball (in terms of their old buisness model) and they might as well try to stop people from copying.
If you can make it a little harder it means money for you. The industry is just trying to strike an equalibrium (how much do we spend to stop pirates VS how much that increases our profits.
Metallica. Bootlegs. Need I say more?
Got mead?
"A closer one would be if I watch the mechanic fix my car, then fix other people's cars with that information, depriving the mechanic of the opportunity to fix their cars for a fee."
Actually I think an even better example would be if you could magically touch your mechanics head and know everything that your mechanic knows and has spent years learning and paying for (education). Then used that knowledge, fixed other people cars and refused to kick him back a few cents even though he told you that it will cost you to do the magic head touch procedure.
DVD's on linux is a fair use issue, not a theft issue, not even close.
"Don't have to pay for the stories if no longer copyrighted."
They do have to pay someone to write a film script of the story. I don't know how expensive this is, but it's probably still cheaper than making a film of a copyrighted work.
Decode these
OK, P2P is "piracy."
That's the first line. This comming from Wired, who I use to think was some sort of tech magazine who had some knowledge. A technology can not "be" piracy. The technology could have "been" pirated, in the sense that it was secret, someone owned it, and then someone hijacked it. p2p was never someone's dark secret technology.
California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers like Fox and Paramount could move there and, without fear of the law, pirate his inventions
Yes, ok. Who did that with p2p?
A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property
Allright, a new industry may have been founded from the use of p2p network applications to spread copyrighted materials illegally. Was p2p itself founded on illegally distributed copyrighted materials? some technical specification on how to develop p2p apps? did someone patent p2p and now that Intellectual Property is running rampant in the wild causing p2p to "be piracy"?
I must be missing something. "p2p" is not the same thing as "illegally copying copyrighted materials over a p2p network". Wired can suck it. This is written by Lessig? i just don't see the conclusions he's drawing
"Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"
Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean a) that this was the only way something like Hollywood would have started, and b) that because their business began by defrauding Edision, you have the right to infringe on their rights.
Vote for Pedro
Another question for you. Is it theft if I record and pass around episodes of Firefly, if they're not available any other way? Does that same action become or remain theft when the Firefly DVD is released?
How about this: If you make copies and pass around the Firefly DVD, because it was being sold for $1,000,000, and you and your friends had no possiblity of ever buying it, is it still theft?
Joan of Arc or Passion of the Christ has no such costs.
It is true that it is fair use issue.
It is also true that it illustrates that DCMA+CSS utterly fails. Which was, after all, my point.
-Peter
Change with the times! Hollywood must find a way to use technology to make money. Otherwise, they will spend more than ever lost on piracy try to protect their outdated business models. Same for the music industry... Digital formats are here to stay, so find a way to alter the model and keep on making your money!
I guess the problem with the above suggestion is that there are a few people at the top that may lose a fraction of their power... Too bad they are will to risk millions, and piss of the customer base over a pride issue...
--Ryan
Well, I've worked in places where the fax machine did tend to cook everything it touched, one place had a fax machine called "Tyrannosaurus Fax" because it was huge, noisy, old, and its teeth ground up most of the paper fed into it.
Dude, they pay someone to write (and usually rewrite and rewrite) the script several times anyway. You think peter jackson just shot based on the books?
Read jack phelps dot net
You also need to talk like a pirate, lest you be mistaken for a scurvy lubber.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Or in the case of Jurassic Park 3 where about 2 sentences in the book are used in the movie. It's not even the same characters in the movie. You can read the book (one of the best I've read) and seeing the movie will not have ruined anything for you. Trust me.
Oh yeah my point...someone had to write an entire script for this movie. About all that was taken from the book was the fact there are dinosaurs on an island. I really wish they had at least put in the cameleon dinosaurs in the movie.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
First off I am not confusing anything. I think of resources as property and you do not. That is fine, the best thing about the US is you are allowed to be wrong. God bless America.
Second, yes if there is not way to get FireFly episodes and you take it on yourself to copy and distribute them then it is still theft. When the DVD becomes available it is still theft. If you do it naked it is theft. It is theft every time whether you want it to be or not.
If it costs a gizzllion dollars it is still theft. Why would it being financially unattainable by all but a select few make it not theft. Are your really arguing that it is ok to steal things that are too expensive to afford?
You are a thief, so am I but I am not in denial about it.
The whole car-mechanic metaphor is not apt. The whole music industry in so insane,as to have no really good durable product analogies.
The music industry invented the concept of performance rights (that (P) you see on CDs) so that they could control the particular sound recording under copyright rules in much the same way as the artist.
I ask why in the Book publishing world we do not have an equivalent to (p), but instead the author licenses the rights to publish a work to a publisher, while still maintaining copyright. The (p) is a bad thing, especially when you consider that the artist actually paid to record the music company's copyrighed work, i.e., that particular (p) recording. Further consider that the artist pays to market the music industry's work, to manufacture it on CD, and such.
The music industry has far fewer costs associated with what is distributed than does a book publisher, yet charges in the same price, keeping the white meat, and passing the costs on to the artist.
Is this OK?
Developing Retail Point-of-Sale Software
There's definitely a legal distinction between the two. You're not taking property without paying for it, you're duplicating information without paying for it. The latter does not directly result in a loss by the victim.
But now the cat's out of the bag and, well, maybe it is piracy. But piracy is now good! After all, it helped build Hollywood!
It's just amazing the twists and turns of logic that P2P file thieves will use to justify their theft. In truth, they are people who do not respect property ownership at all, yet would probably scream if someone stole some of their own property. These same people want to be paid for their work, but refuse to understand that other people like to be paid also. Just amazing.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Yes this is still stealing! Episodes of firefly belong to it's creators! they can do what ever they want to with it. If they feel that people who can't afford 1 million dollars to watch it are the scum of the earth and don't want them to watch it, the people who can't afford 1 million dollars should not be able to watch it. It's their property and they alone should decide how it is used. Regardless of how you feel about it.
Disney themselves made a mint by plundering the public domain (Snow White, Pinnochio, etc).
What's wrong with that? Nothing. It's public domain, and it is ripe for the plundering. Since these things are public domain, there is nothing to stop anyone from cashing in either (see the knock-off "Pocahontas" videos that others made came out in the wake of that Disney movie). I just see nothing wrong with this.
What is more worrisome is when Disney plunders other's non-public properties, like when "The Lion King" ripped off the "Kimba the White Lion" show.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The internet is meant to be a vast distributed network of independent nodes, each interacting with each other. It is a bit like how the neurons in your brain are wired. This way, the internet really becomes a tool of the individual as opposed to a tool of an institution.
[
- Read More
]The MPIAA's attempt to end P2P is simply luddite. The Film Industry has greatly benefitted from the digital revolution. I have seen quite a few films where 90% of the scenes use CGI.
[
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]The MPIAA can't stop the internet's true potential from being realised. Internet is the largest juggernaut that exists right now in the world. The MPIAA is but an ant fighting against a glacier. There's no question as to who will win.
[
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]Nothing to see here
This back and forth about piracy and morality and P2P is such bullshit.
Everyone -- yes, every goddamn one -- knows that the Hollywood/MPAA (and the RIAA music fight) boils down to one thing: money in the pockets of executives. That's it. It's only about technology insofar how that technology impacts the bottom-line. It's not about art. It's about making sure a select group of executives make sure they can keep the mortgage payments on their Bel-Air mansions and can keep memberships in their country clubs. That's it. That's where my, yours, and everyone else's dollars are going: to buy some titanium fucking Big Bertha golf club for the peabrained asshole who's been crowned king of the other peabrained assholes working beneath him.
Valenti wants to make sure the cash keeps flowing into his pocket and into the pocket of every other overpaid, dim-bulb, "I can green-light this" executive motherfucker working the valley.
You want goddamn immorality? It's the entertainment industry and the people that run it that are at the very foundations of the "immorality" of piracy. Forget Janet Jackson's nipple. Forget Powell's sudden decision to attempt to regulate *cable* television today (!). Forget the fact (and I'll digress here) that the fundamentalist assholes that have gone to see Mel Gibson's "Passion" claim that it's a fantastic movie yet in the same breath decry Janet Jackson's nipple, the state of marriage, and the violence in contemporary culture -- overlooking perhaps that the Passion is more "violent" than any number of Grand Theft Auto games strung together and more "explicit" than any svelt little nipple hiding behind a sun-shaped nipple medallion.
The hypocrisy of Valenti and his immoral executive motherfuckers is astounding. It boggles the mind.
Are you asking me?
The whole thing seems like a racket to me. I think that Internet-based distribution of digital music will break the record industry's back.
I'm not going to shed any tears for them.
-Peter
"They were not Pirates, they were Privateers!"
I agree. I haven't purchased a cd in about 2 years. I have no source of hearing new material now that the majority of radio stations are owned by conglomerates like Clearwater who pick about 20 songs & tell the dj's to play them til the listeners throw up. I used to purchase about 4-6 cd's per month when I kept finding good stuff on p2p I hadn't heard before.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
The copyright for the Arabian Nights did not "run out", as the stories were written long before copyright existed.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers like Fox and Paramount could move there and, without fear of the law, pirate his inventions. Hollywood grew quickly, and enforcement of federal law eventually spread west. But because patents granted their holders a truly "limited" monopoly of just 17 years (at that time), the patents had expired by the time enough federal marshals appeared. A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property.
Patents expired because Edison was not smart/mean enough to keep releasing frequent "new and improved" versions of his invention. Had he done that, people would probably be stuck with "Edison Camera Millenium Edition (c)1999" to this day.
He could have made the upgrades compulsory, too.
Editing costs.
Nope.
Advertising costs.
Nope.
Employee wages.
Nope.
Script costs.
Nope.
However, can you imagine if this was remotely true? People who downloaded gigs of music would be instant millionaries because of all the editing, advertising, payroll, and script costs that they've stolen right out of the hands of the MPAA. Oh what a fantasy you're entertaining.
Copyright infringment, regardless of how you feel about it, is not theft in any form. Perhaps people wouldn't be so tempted to download a movie off of a P2P network instead of paying $5-$10 a head to see it at a theater if Hollywood would come out with more than 3 decent movies in an entire damn year! It's evident with the iTunes success that many people would rather follow the law and pay money if the demands of the consumer are held above the greed of the companies.
Nothing is stolen. Copying is different from theft, entirely.
"Editing costs. Advertising costs. Employee wages. Script costs."
All of which are spent and received long before any instance of piracy: nothing is stolen.
"you the right to declare that your illegal activities are not theft. "
Knowing the meanings of words gives me this right. Only certains kinds of illegal activities are theft.
i don't recall there being a third jurassic park novel. could be a clue.
seeing the movie will not have ruined anything for you
other than your evening
...arrr. Just proves that Hollywood and the RIAA arent as perfect as they want everyone to think they are. *shrug* Down with the RIAA, then.
-Macs rule. PCs drool.-Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in
Of course they pay screenwriters. But paying screenwriter for derivative script + original work option price IS MORE THAN just paying the screenwriter for a derivative script.
The difference can be millions.
Dumbass.
from dictionary.com:
stealing
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
property
[...]
c. Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks.
Stealing, in short, is depriving someone goods or a service. When someone copies and album it is not stealing (but is copyright infringment) because they may not have purchased it in the first place, you cannot argue absolute property loss directly or indirectly from a situation that may never have occured (the purchase of the copyrighted work).
"You bring your car to the garage. It gets fixed and the bill comes to some amount of money. You are expected to pay the mechanic this amount."
In this case you DID get your car serviced so you DO owe money.
"Did you just steal from the city or not? You didn't take anything "physical" from them."
Again, you are misunderstanding the meaning (or perhaps citing people who have worded the point poorly). You are taking a measurable amount of electricty from the city that will directly effect their pocket book. You owe the money.
No, most of the aruments are pretty consistant. Including yours. You argue for strong IP because YOU benefit from it, not because it's actually good.
What?
The point is Hollywood has based a lot of stories on pre-copyright or copyright-expired works.
Fuck, you nerds have this syntax error brain and an obsession with pointing out error, however trivial. Don't be so picky, you know what the point is here.
And your post is redundant.
It's their property and they alone should decide how it is used. Regardless of how you feel about it.
Fine. I agree. So I will make my own copy of "Firefly" episodes and do with them whatever I want. They'll still have the originals: no one has stolen a thing.
"that P2P file thieves will use to justify their theft"
It is impossible to steal a file using p2p. This has never occured, anytime, anywhere.
With p2p, copies of files are created. No files are taken.
Wiccaweb? Using your logic, you are a thief. Wicca is a fake modern religion made up by some nut who STOLE aspects of existing legitimate ancient faiths.
Basically, its similar to a drug dealer giving free samples. Its a tactic to get you "hooked" to make it easier to come back later and set prices. At that point, the dealer does not want anyone giving freebies, because that eats into his profits, and the amount is all the larger for the perceived loss.
The MPAA and RIAA fit this model as well. The "need" for music and movies drove the technology forward for the VCR and the DVD player, as well as cassette, LP, CD, you name it. Once those became common items in the home, the MPAA/RIAA wanted to stop the record function because they wanted you to rent any content you watched. This is also why the MPAA maintains that content on television is a delivery system for advertisements, and that removing the commercials is tantamount to stealing the content.
The difference (in the MPAA/RIAA's eyes) between earlier piracy and current methods (e.g. p2p networks serving digital copies) is that the copies are digital and do not degrade as much as analog sources. Whereas early analog videos would degrade to the point of unwatchability after about the 3rd generation. Today's digital copies are nearly as good quality as the originals, and therefore people do not need to go out and buy the originals. This is, as the numbers show, not true, of course, but again, the loss of revenue is all the larger in its perception.
--Storm
Or in the case of Jurassic Park 3 where about 2 sentences in the book are used in the movie. It's not even the same characters in the movie. You can read the book (one of the best I've read) and seeing the movie will not have ruined anything for you. Trust me.
You can't read the book, period. There IS no Jurassic Park 3 book! Unlike the first two JP movies, the third is not book related.
You say it is the best you've ever read. Do you keep it on a shelf with "The Bible II", "Lord of the Rings IV", and a collection of post-1880 Shakespeare plays?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
So yes, in your sad attempt to make a point, you *did* steal something.
It also takes resources to push the electrons to you ( the amperage ) , so you not only stole a object, but also the effort to get it to you.
In the case of pure content, you stole nothing.. you only relocated information when you download it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article talks about the primary difference between P2P and the other technologies as being that in general P2P networks share the content for free, and this is an incredibly important distinction.
After all, if no money is changing hands then there is zero opportunity for artists/content providers to be compensated. You can't reward the creator while protecting the medium (as in the case of the cable industry) because there is nothing to protect it with..
This is a case where free is only good for the end user, not so much for those needing to make a living off the works they produce.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Quoted relevant text:
"Now for the real bemusing part... perhaps the MPAA should look at their own history before they point their finger at the DeCSS "pirates" they seek to subdue: If you look back to the history of filmmaking, back when the motion pictures were first invented, you'll find Thomas Edison's monopoly in New York City. His company held an exclusive and tight stranglehold over all film projectors, film, movie rights, and nearly anything associated with motion pictures. If you wanted to make a movie, you paid an exorbitant number of fees to rent the cameras, rent the scenery provided only by Edison, and even to rent the film (yes, Rent - you never actually owned it, even after it was developed.) Anyone caught trying to make their own movies or to show them without the blessing of Edison and Co. were buried in lawsuits, or worse. A small group of filmmakers decided to revolt, proclaiming that one should be free to create and show films without kow-towing to some huge conglomeration. To escape Edison and Co., they moved everything they had to a far-away place...a small town known as Los Angeles, California. From there, these artistic rebels created films - films that created the largest dominant force of culture on Earth, all because they wanted to make films without a corporate stranglehold. It's an utter pity, and a show of sheer hypocrisy by the MPAA, that the artistic descendants of those early pioneers have decided today to resurrect and bow down before the very thing their forebears hated the most."
Turned out that DiVX eventually made me wrong on some of the article, but otherwise it's cool that the rest of it has held up after all this time :)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It isn't quite cheap yet. You can eBay a reasonably priced RS/6000 (150-300 dollars). But you won't be getting anything more than a RS/6000 43P-140 (1x332mhz PowerPC 603). It'll run AIX, and fairly well (and linux), but you aren't talking horsepower in the RS/6000 game until you throw at least 5000+ dollars at IBM.
How about Edison's out and out theft of "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" (A Trip to the Moon)? http://www.holonet.khm.de/visual_alchemy/voyage.ht ml Edison couldn't resist this when he saw it in Britain, and had the reel lifted and transported back to the US where it was copied and placed into circulation.
You're right. I am legally a criminal because I steal whatever media I want from the Internet.
But I don't consider myself a criminal for this behavior. The laws and morality are diverging here. The Internet has changed what is possible. Laws will change to refelct this. Economies will change to reflect this.
I have power to live in the world as I want. It may be legal for companies to screw me. But now we have a way to fight against a system that while giving us great freedoms has also given huge corporations a way to screw us too.
So basicly I'm saying, I 'steal' bacause I can. I screw those who have screwed me. I screw those who have not screwed me because this is the world we live in now and I'm prepared to accept the new economies advantages and disadvantages.
Also, I think the people getting screwed the biggest are the richest people and companies. Stealing from them doesn't really bother me on a moral level.
"Theft" is a very specifc criminal offense, and it has a legal definition. And the Supreme Court has already ruled on this matter: Copying Is Theft and Other Legal Myths "But technically, file sharing is not theft. A number of years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with a man named Dowling, who sold "pirated" Elvis Presley recordings, and was prosecuted for the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property. The Supremes did not condone his actions, but did make it clear that it was not "theft" -- but technically "infringement" of the copyright of the Presley estate, and therefore copyright law, and not anti-theft statutes, had to be invoked. So "copying" is not "stealing" but can be "infringing." That doesn't have the same sound bite quality as Valente's position. "
But my question is, what if I was never going to buy/rent the work in the 1st place? Really, its a serious question. The things I download are things that I wouldn't spend money on. If I was asked to pay to play I wouldn't. I buy the DVDs I want, I rent at least 3-4 movies a week, and I buy software that I can afford and want. Downloads are just a curiosity, and more often than not end in thinking "man I'm glad I didn't waste money on that". Now if I live in China and are copying/dowloading to sell on the street that's a different story for sure, and its definitely illegal. But will all this legislation/police tactics solve that? The answer is no.
There are sides to this issue that aren't being considered by the MPAA/RIAA/BSA.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
"You're right. I am legally a criminal because I steal whatever media I want from the Internet"
This is not why. You have likely never stolen a thing, since it is very hard to steal using the Internet. However, if you have done anything illegal, it is copyright infringement.
I bought my DVDs, i bought a sony DVD-ROM, but im still breaking the law by watching DVDs on my computer, because im bypassing the digital protections (CSS)
It would be interesting to see the mechanic stick a "Do Not Remove" sticker across your rims, and if you remove it to service the car yourself, you break the law
It seems what he is going on is that morally the theft which occurs is the deprivation of sales (because that is the only thing they have been deprived of, hence theft), so if you can show without a doubt that someone never would/could have bought something, it can't still be classified as theft in that way.
Further, you are confusing something: That is the defintition of theft by law, and your personal belief of what theft is. When speaking about these issues, it is very important to clarify whether we are speaking about what should be occuring or in law, and what the law currently says about it.
What is electricity then?
What is a thought?
You're whole argument is invalid. They are the saem thing.
I live in FL, around Orlando to be exact. Been listening to one drive time radio program for 12 years.
In 2000, I spent 8 weeks or so working for Sprint in KC. Picked up a radio program that had one of the contests that was a direct rip off of the one I listened to for 12 years. How do I know it was a rip off? One morning the DJ in KC area said, "We got the idea for this when we heard it on a radio staion during our trip to Disney World" (i.e. the station I listen to).
It's really starting to bug me how everyone says 'Fine I admit it! I'm stealing from the internet!'
What? How can you steal from the internet? Are you stealing electricity? Are you suggesting that downloading copyprotected information is stealing??
Funny that, the law doesn't consider copyright infringment as stealing.
How about we all stop using the media companies propaganda for a little while. Lets call downloading songs from the internet what it really is (or rather uploading, if downloading is actually legal where you are), copyright violations.
"But piracy is now good! After all, it helped build Hollywood!" This article was never intended to condone the earlier actions of Hollywood (or the other groups it mentions) but was instead meant to illustrate the hypocricy of their current actions against the so called "pirates".
that only applys if you would have bought the cd/dvd/vhs if you couldent download it. The music i download without paying for, is music that i NEVER would have payed for
they are not loosing out on money they otherwize would have receved
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such Hollywood pirate movies as "Valenti's of the Caribbean" and "Avast ye DeCCS-lubber!"
Actually he did: He gave youhis personal time.
If on the other hand he had made a copy of his advice and sold it to you, it would then be a copyright work and fall under completely different laws, and hence not be legally considered stealing.
its stealing of the profit that would have been made from the sale of said work. for the poruse of the law it doesnt matter how much there charging or if its not avalbile anyother way.
I think it's important to note that the article is excerpted from Lawrence Lessig's upcoming book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity . It's not entirely a stand-alone piece, though it was used instead of Lessig's monthly Wired column in the March issue.
The copyright for the Arabian Nights did not "run out", as the stories were written long before copyright existed.
Ok, but how about... The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Too old?
Cinderella? Too old?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Too old?
The Little Mermaid? Too old?
Beauty and the Beast? Too old?
Pocahontas? Too old?
I could go on, but I think you get my point. I just relish the irony that Disney can't fathom the thought of someone else using their IP to possibly make a buck...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Here's a few that I can think of off the top of my head --
- Cinderella
- Sleeping Beauty
- Beauty and the Beast
- Alladin
- Snow White
- Tarzan
- Alice in Wonderland
- 20000 Leagues under the Sea
That doesn't include derivitive works, such as Anastasia, Swiss Family Robinson or The Jungle Book, or 'historical' work, such as Pocahantus or Davy Crockett.However, it's my understand that they're the ones who keep lobbying for the extension of copyright length, and it seems to get extended right when Mickey's almost in the public domain.
That's not to say that there are other companies out there who don't base their movies off of other people's content whom they haven't compensated for doing so, but that Disney in particular seems interested in preserving the status quo, and making sure that other people can't make a profit off of the work they've done, even though that's how they made it in the first place. (Alice came before Mickey)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
But the musicain or programmer did not give you his time when he created the music or program that you stole?
The whole aurgument is im not stealing it becouse they still have the song well what you are stealing is the profit from the sale of that song. atleast in the legal sense. Personly I dont care you want to download go ahead just admit dont try to justify it with baseless aurguments
"its stealing of the profit that would have been made from the sale of said work"
So, when I listen to that song, I am stealing a profit? What, do I get 3 cents in my bank account each time?
Of course not. Nothing happens to the profit, let alone it being stolen.
Had the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act been in effect in 1940 when Disney was producing Pinocchio, Disney would have needed a license from the Collodi estate.
Do you approve of copyrights that last through well over the average human being's life expectancy? If so, why?
Lessig makes some valid points about how the early days of various content industries were based on patent piracy, but he keeps using his new definition of "piracy" to refer to things that were not illegal:
What they're doing is perfectly legal. Maybe it should be, maybe it shouldn't, but it's not piracy! What is Lessig trying to do here? Then there's this: Isn't it more reasonable to avoid using the word "piracy" for things that aren't "plainly wrong"? Should we really be using the word "piracy" to refer to things that are "useful and productive"? I think I understand the point Lessig was trying to get across, except it's not a point that anyone would really argue: "Certain actions that do not constitute copyright or patent infringement are productive!" No shit?"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
You listed Tarzan. Tarzan is not public domain. The Edgar Rice Burroughs estate has kept pretty tight control on him, and it appears that everyone who does anything with Tarzan, even Disney with their recent film, gets permission.
Please see this site
I don't know about Pinnochio because I never read the book.
Is it because Google had trouble finding it because you misspelled it? I forgive you. You can read an English translation of The Adventures of Pinocchio starting here.
No, not me. I agree with all 6+ of my respondents to my parent item.
My defense of Disney's free speech rights to produce these works is not a defence of their denying free speech to others. I do oppose that, and agree with all the points including yours.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you didn't have some form of contract with him before he gave you that advice, then you owe him nothing. I personally have never gotten advice from a lawyer without being forced to sign a contract first. So, if you signed up for the RIAA's amnesty program and promised not to download any more songs, then you are clearly in violation of the contract if you download -- and the contract violation is much easier to prove in court.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"My goodness, that makes him perfect for president. Bush Jr. beat out "
We'd all be better off if President Kerry ends up spending all his time on vacation and none in the White House. Anything is better than having him act on his ill intentions and mean-spirited promises.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yeah, but if you distinguish copyright infringement from patent infringement, you lose the conflatability of the term "intellectual property". The entertainment industry wants to conflate copyrights with trademarks in order to suppress fan fiction. The proprietary software industry wants to conflate copyrights with patents and trade secrets in order to suppress interoperability among products. So if we want to fight on the terms of the copyright industries who claim that "piracy is piracy," then patent infringement is just as much "piracy" as copyright infringement.
... we're innovators, using new technology to break up the old "closed" system of information control. If people can get religious degrees on scholarships then surely there must be some philanthropy available for the Fellinies and the Woody Allens of this world. Our current profit motives for funding the arts cause an unnecessary waste of society's resources.
You've thrown your television out the window, now throw Hollywood out with it.
Senator Fritz Hollins told me about this, but told me to keep it secret. Clients for the Gnutella P2P network
He also said Linux users can go straight to Gnutella
must be some philanthropy available for the Fellinies and the Woody Allens
What, so he has more money to pay out in alimony once he divorces his daughter?
Oh, what I'd give to see this as an episode of "The Connection Series".
Editing costs.
Advertising costs.
Employee wages.
Script costs.
Has anyone given these a dollar value? Ditto royalties. Presumably they are very low if iTunes is any yardstick.
>> California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers like Fox and Paramount could move there and, without fear of the law, pirate his inventions
>Yes, ok. Who did that with p2p?
Vanuatu was remote enough from Eisner's reach that software makers like Sharman could incorporate there and, without fear of the law, pirate his works.
Was p2p itself founded on illegally distributed copyrighted materials?
Yes. It would not have attained a critical mass without infringing copyright in the works that were crossing the network. Look at how many users Napster (pre-Roxio) lost when it switched in to an opt-in system for songwriters and recording artists (around beta 10 IIRC).
"p2p" is not the same thing as "illegally copying copyrighted materials over a p2p network".
When expanded "Pirate to Pirate", where "pirate" in turn expands to "an infringer of a copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret", P2P does indeed stand for unlawful file-sharing.
That's actually not ironic.. it's just hypocritical, or a double-standard.
Irony is when the effect is counter to the intention. In other words, a backfire.
Like, if Disney got such strict copyright laws passed that they could no longer "pirate" old works (or somehow made their existing works illegal, or liable for royalties to the original author's estate).. THAT would be ironic.
It would also be ironic if new creative works became non-existant because of rampant IP hoarding. (Which is *supposed* to stimulate creativity, not strangle it)
Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean ... that because their business began by defrauding Edison, you have the right to infringe on their rights.
There does exist the unclean hands doctrine. I acknowledge that it probably does not apply to the legal technicalities of infringing copyrights of an industry built on infringing patents, but it likely applies to their moral aspects. Likewise, the fact that the major corporate sponsor of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act could not have published Pinocchio in the early 1940s or The Jungle Book in the 1960s if the Bono Act were in effect at those times argues against the moral legitimacy of the Bono Act.
Civil disobedience - eat that Mr. Eisner.
There's a reason the world's largest pharmaceuticals companies -- and some of the largest companies of any kind -- are based in Switzerland. They were founded there at a time when the Swiss had no patent protections, and the new companies made their fortunes by freely violating the patents of pharma companies in England. These are the same companies that today argue for greatly increasing patent protection. In my family we have a term for this, which is "I-got-mine Syndrome." It's an antisocial feature of the corporation.
You use the words "property ownership" and "stole" with respect to copyright. Let me gauge where you stand on government-granted monopolies related to works of authorship and inventions. First of all, would you want to have to pay royalties for every kilometer that you drive to the estate of the caveman who invented the wheel?
These same people want to be paid for their work, but refuse to understand that other people like to be paid also.
At some time, one has to determine from first principles who deserves to be paid and, worse yet, who deserves to ban any use of a given work.
"piracy" really is too strong a term for copyright infringement.
--Brian
But did a much better job. Next time I'll take more time and do more research before posting. - Parent author.
The owner can grant a public license for his work without relinquishing ownership.
And the owner can also refuse to republish an already published work at any cost. Do you approve of that? Let's all go to the Disney Store and ask for Song of the South on DVD.
this is an important lesson similar to the one learned from Gangs of New York. Not-so recent immigrants to New York would use the politics of protectionism to gain a competitive advantage over more recent imigrants. Similar to the RIAA and MPAA fight against "the new kid on the block", file swapping, when they were in the same shoes not so long ago.
--Brian
Remember those ads they used to air, with Britney Spears comparing P2P filesharing to stealing CDs from a music store? Those were complete bullshit, because in the latter case, nothing is being copied, you are just walking out with physical property owned by the store. That is theft. P2P is not. In fact, if we were to take the US legal code from the early 1800s, when American copyright law was practically nonexistent, and use it today, filesharing would be completely legal, but stealing CDs would remain illegal.
The fundamental problem is that filesharers are violating the RIAA's exclusive right to make and/or sell copies of a given work. That's what all the debate and lawsuits are really about. Although there may be various editing, production, advertising, etc. costs involved in producing the __original__ work, those are not being "stolen" by anyone. Indeed, these costs are typically remunerated by exercise of the exclusive rights to copying and distribution of the work (ie selling CDs).
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
PG-13 you unfunny fag
That's actually not ironic.. it's just hypocritical, or a double-standard.
Damn that Alanis Morrisette! I knew I should have never believed a word she sang!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
The Anastasia cartoon by Fox was also a remake of a much earlier live-action Anastasia film, also by Fox.
"la la la la la la".
You said:
"If I had bootlegged the entire new Android Lust album instead of buying it on iTunes I would have not sent the chick behind AL any money."
Sonny boy, by buying through iTunes, you gave this young lady a grand total of 30 cents for her efforts.
And gee, it will only take 100,000 people downloading to make it equal to the salary of a grocery store checker for a year.
Cripes. You should have downloaded it from Kazaa and sent the chick $3. It would have been cheaper for you and more lucrative for her.
Do you realize what a rip off all that stuff is for the artist?
Put it this way. One can be quantified, the other cannot. Unless you can quantify your comodity, how can anyone STEAL it?
btw: Electricity can be quantified.
"Sharing copy-right materials is illegal. So get over it."
But its not. Its perfectly legal to do it in most instances. I can loan copyrighted material to my wife.
The library has no problems sharing copyrighted material, either. Although I'll bet you think its a communist plot.
Just because you're ill-informed about the world around you doesn't mean you have the right to inflict the rest of the world with your "wisdom". Stop it. I just got a call from Common Sense and she said she was going to hang herself if you ever posted publically again. You're making her barf.
Blah blah blah blah blah. You linux guys are a bunch of thieves. Microsoft stuff works fine for me.
Oh, the ironing is delicious
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
I said all you linux hippies were thieves and communists and worse, probably muslim terrorists.
Microsoft is good! Why do you trash people who try to make money. Theives! I like microsoft. Its way better than Linux hippy thief stuff.
I can see why SCO is sueing you guys!
I agree with your rant 100%.
That's why I say "copy without regret". If you feel real bad, send $5 in an envelope to your favorite artists; that's probably worth 10 album sales to those guys anyway.
I said when P2P first appeared "these guys have been fucking us in the ass for years, well now the table is turned, and we're going to fuck their ass raw until they stop bleeding."
Welcome to that time.
"he didn't give me anything physical."
He gave you his time, something which everybody will agree is in short supply.
The difference is not trivial; the man only has 24 hours in the day he can give. That's it. 24.
I can make 24,000,000 copies of a song, and I still have an infinite number to give.
So maybe you want to try to be funny again, but this time, try to be funny.
The article pointed out that many of Edison's patents were illegally used to develop technology used by film companies. What is the parallel between that and p2p?
First off, the motion picture industry likes to conflate copyrights and trademarks into "intellectual property" in order to suppress (for example) fan fiction, and the proprietary software industry likes to conflate copyrights and patents into "intellectual property" in order to suppress competing interoperable implementations. In my mind, this tendency on the part of the copyright industries to conflate vastly different kinds of monopolies into "intellectual property" justifies using this same conflation against the industries.
The whole article talks about pirating technology, not pirating works of art.
Inventions are under a monopoly. Works of authorship are under a different monopoly. But to the industry, a monopoly is a monopoly, and infringement is infringement.
"which means the mechanic owns the car until you pay the bill."
No it does not. I suggest you contact a lawyer, and not rely on the word of a buddy at the local watering hole.
A mechanics lien is very limited and does not confer ownership.
Yeah it's pretty hard to find anything in that song that actually qualifies as "ironic". Most of it is just bad luck. (It's like raaa-ee-ain.. on your wedding day..) The song should really be called "Typical" or something.
:)
BTW nice name. Bloom County rocks.
A mechanics lien is like any other lien, be it a construction lien or credit lien.
A lien is a legal right or interest that a creditor has in another property that last until the obligation is paid or satisfied.
It isn't 100% ownership, but it isn't 0% either.
From the article: But when the station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy of the composer's work. The station is also performing a copy of the recording artist's work. It's one thing to air a recording of "Happy Birthday" by the local children's choir; it's quite another to air a recording of it by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett.
This paragraph doesn't make sense. The local children's choir, the Rolling Stones and Lyle Lovett would all qualify as recording artists, in this case. How are the latter "quite another" thing?
The implication seems to be that the children's choir is expected to be stepped on. That's depressing.
This is not my sig.
The video, however, was ironic. It opened with her getting Coffee at a gas station and running out of gas at the end of the video.
...and because I have an eye for small details.
And I know that ONLY because my girlfriend at the time loved that damn singer.
But this is all offtopic.
fs
It looks like the copyright is still active, but it will ultimately expire. It's the trademark that can go on forever (can be renewed every 7 years). This happened with Disney and the Mouse. Some of the Mouse films are no longer copyrighted, but the trademark lives on...
"He gave you his time, something which everybody will agree is in short supply."
My lawyer tends to bill on average of 27 hours a day.
I think it's important to note that the article is excerpted from Lawrence Lessig's upcoming book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity .
Sweet, has it hit p2p yet? I want to contribute my part to helping a new technology.
This article is just Slashdot trying to justify movie piracy. B-b-but Hollywood's foundations rest on piracy!
There is no legal or moral justification for piracy of movies and music. I have yet to hear a valid reason.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Prior to the wide spread deployment of the printing press, there was quite a bit of value in hardcopy itself (hard to make), so there wasn't much business in pirate copying (although, there was some form of copyright registration in early chinese history after the development of paper, it wasn't widely used).
;^)
The widespread availiablity of the printing press in 15th century europe essentially made hardcopy "cheap" and widely available. It also threatened the government's earlier ability to censor and control information. At the same time, the printers started to form local guilds to protect themselves from competition (basically they would agree distribute the titles among the member printers so they wouldn't be in direct competition with other guild members).
This turned out to be a fortuitious situation for the both parties. The government decided to take advantage of this situation to grant exclusive rights to print a title to a specific printing guild (so they didn't have to compete with other guilds) and if they didn't give a right to print, you couldn't print it (hence copy-right). This basically allowed the royalty to censor titles by giving the rights to a guild that agreed not to print it in exchange for the "juicy" exclusive rights to print another hot title (increasing the printer's profits since they didn't have to compete with other printers). It also gave the government a good single point to collect taxes. Sort of a quid-pro-quo arangement.
Notice that the original author had no say in the original "copy-right" scheme. It was basically the government desire for censorship leading the government to grant specific businesses monopoly powers to achieve their goals. The authors were basically at the whim of the printing guilds and government for payment (usually a statutory fixed fee per book). Because of the copyright monopoly, the customers ended up paying a higher price, none of which went to the author.
It was only later (around the time of the American Revolution), that this system really started to crumble. With increasing trade, the printing monopolies found that they couldn't keep out the "pirate" copies of books from other countries (sometimes copies even authorized by other governments as favors to local printing monopolies) and with increasing communication, governments realized censorship by copyright was a losing cause. About this time the idea that the author was the natural owner of the copyright (instead of the government) started to take hold and the modern form of copyright came about...
One wonders what system would have evolved had governments not used the then fledgling printing guilds to try to enforce monopolies. Printing monopolies may never have evolved. Authors may have even gotten less than their statutory "fees" or even work for free. Who knows it might have evolved to be like the opensource stuff?
Before there were enough law enforcement officers in hollywood to 'enforce' the film camera patents, Edison's company did so on their own.
It was not unusual for them to hire sharp-shooters to shoot the cameras while people were filming using them. not exactly a legal practice (or safe, some people got shot when the shooters 'missed'), but nobody could really complain. Edison's company also would hire thugs to beat up camera men and seize their equipment.
thank god we're more evolved now... we just take away people's homes via the courts for patent infringement.
-ben
the irony of course is that when Hollywood's copyright expires, they just get it extended... no public domain steamboat willy (first mickey mouse cartoon/likeness)for us!
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
In my version of morality, two wrongs don't make a right. Aside from that, none of the evidence shown in the article gives me any compelling justification for the outright theft of creative works going on with p2p or any other application. I have never seen a patent convey a stake in ownership of goods produced from it, so I cannot see how Edison ever had a stake in film produced by a motion picture camera illegal or not. The article goes on to discuss current and former problems in copyright laws without drawing any tangible correlation to the development of today's movie or music industries which supposedly is what this article is about. Lastly when discussing cable TV, it fails to mention the fact that cable companies were required to carry local broadcasters signals prior to the same act which allowed local broadcasters to begin charging for their service. The collective arguments of this article are nearly as tepid as the expedient reasoning that IP theft is just reward for perceived corporate transgressions against artists and consumers alike. If a CD/DVD/Ticket or whatever is to expensive, don't buy it. If enough people do, the content producers will lower the price. I have yet to hear an artist request the public steal their work because of all the bad things a producer has done to them. What gets me most about people decrying the RIAA or the MPAA for trying to put a stop to Internet based theft is that no one can suggest a logical alternative way for artists to make a fair amount of money, something required if consumers expect to continue receiving the wide array of choices and possibilities available today. Considering a Hollywood blockbuster can easily cost $100 million or more, can we really expect studios to sell enough T-shirts and toys to cover it ? Perhaps I am the only one to think about it like this but I see a twisted parallel between free-trade economists espousing the benefits the U.S's rapidly outsourcing IT and service industries and the p2p barkers shouting the creative benefits of stealing artist's work. Being in IT and due to be "freed up to pursue other interests" soon, like artists I am wondering just what that will be. Lastly, there is another part. Outside the U.S. government or the U.S. military, no other U.S. industry has had near the influence on the outside world as that of the movie and music industries. For years, they have helped spread the American way of life in a form not even the government or military could convey. Both industries are still major exporters for the U.S., in dollars, influence and good will. I realize not every one who reads Slashdot is a U.S. Citizen but as an American (as we U.S. citizens like to call ourselves) , I find IMHO that helping to eviscerate these industries is un-American. BTW, I am a UNIX administrator and C/C++ programmer, not a Windoze admin. I do not hate Microsoft because they are big but rather because they steal other people's ideas and call them their own, kind of like some people using p2p networks to download stolen music and movies.
Download copyrighted material is never theft. Copyright infringement and property theft are covered by two wholly unrelated parts of the law. A copyright itself can be considered property, but the work covered by the copyright cannot. Copyright law exists to provide a mechanism to treat intangible creative works as if they were property. It does not mean they are property. The distinction is subtle, but very important. One cannot own a song, but one can possess the exclusive government-enforced right to authorize copies of a song.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Its like claiming the "bank" owns your car when you take out a car loan. That's just talk, not reality.
The lien holder has an interest in the car, but they don't own it. If you own a thing, you may dispose of it as you wish (unless its protected by the DMCA, but that's another rant).
Having a lien is simply a claim that you can explore with the count to satisfy a(n alleged) debt. The lien holder, to exercise their rights, must use the court, which may decide to sell the property to satisfy the lien, but that is an option of the court, not simply the person who alleges a lien.
Remember that a lien doesn't derive from common law but instead comes from specific statues, so the courts view liens very narrowly.
What I mean is, if you have 30 days to file the lien, and you miss by 1 second, you missed. There is no "good intent". You just missed. Typically if it was a common law derived law, the courts have wider latitude and treat it much differently.
Not a lawyer, just been involved quite a bit with mechanics liens.
> what a loss to cinema it would have been if Stoker's estate had been able to crush Nosferatu with lawsuits...
;-).
"what a loss to cinema it would have been if Stoker's estate had been able to suck all blood out of Nosferatu with lawsuits... "
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Why do people infringe copyrights, particularly on music?
/. do is that the music industry has spent fifty years screwing its customers in a variety of ways, while most other business have not. Most businesses actually try to benefit their customers and employees, not hurt them - thus most people want not to screw them. Those businesses have spent their time trying to find something that other people need and trying to do it well. Most businesses haven't spent years tailoring copyright to their benefit and their customers' detriment as the music industry (and the movie industry as well) has.
One, they can't use their product in the ways that they would like (and in most cases are legally entitled to). Copy protection and "trusted computing" are designed to protect content by controlling the ways in which people can use it, even though that control is explicitly given to their customers. These "protections" don't stop major copiers (they are copying and selling bootlegs by the carton in Georgia, China, etc.) or people on Kazaa - they do, however, restrict those who buy CDs. Copy protection doesn't hurt copiers, only customers - that isn't a targeting consistent with protecting their rights. It is consistent, however, with taking customers' fair-use rights and selling them back. I guess theft only works one way though.
Two, the music industry has attempted to monopolize access to radio and marketing, and to use that muscle to charge consumers for the privilege of listening to music. Radio is a medium bought and paid for by music companies - thus to get publicity you will likely end up making the music that music companies think sells, or you will end up on college radio somewhere. If that's what you want, fine, but in most things people are expected to strive for the best - the marketing put in place only selects for artists willing to perform sexual acts on music executives. Meanwhile, the leverage of radio allows music companies to drive their market - to create, rather than respond to, demand. You hear what we tell you, and you buy from us, or nowhere. The music industry wants to tell its customers what they will listen to, rather than responding to their customers' desires.
The difference between copying music and copying the output of others on
The music industry's collusion and attempts to monopolize market hurt their customers and their own employees, and depend implicitly on their ability to change copyright law at their will and on the inability of their customers to get their product any other way. Napster and bandwidth killed that, and gave their begrudged customers the ability to get what they wanted on their terms (and without payment). This means exists for other goods as well, but in most cases it is not used - some because bandwidth isn't big enough, and in other because people are willing to pay for what they get and unwilling to disobey conscience. When the copyrights of most businesses are infringed, people find them deserving of protection and undeserving of having their product copied without permission because the people who copied the output could have gotten it justly and legally by other means (like paying for it), and that the terms of the exchange they could have made were fair, and so the copier is being unfair by exacting his own. The music industry has imposed (by its manipulation of copyrights and its collusion in pricing) terms its customers don't want - they want the music, just not at the terms given. Most businesses respond to the market, because they must compete with others - because of collusion the music industry has been able to ignore its customers. Copyright infringement on the scale the music industry has instigated is a response to the lack of market accountability of the industry. It's a bad response, but a response that cannot be ignored.
Nobody is refusing the knowledge that others deserve to be paid for their work - it's the idea that others deserve to be paid for my rights and while colluding on the terms and
I don't much care for this new trend of taking your new issue of Wired magazine and picking an article and posting it to /. it's lazy and redundant. News needs to be *new* not rehashed from your mail.
you can go fuck yourself.
there's not a race or nation on this planet that does not have dirty hands.
the only scum on this earth are the ones loudly proclaiming how white their robes are
and how dirty everyone elses are.
foad
in hell
Judging by the comment about the cameleon dinosaurs in the gp, it is the second novel, "the lost world" that they have confused as being the third nonexistant novel. It did seem like they took a bunch of leftover content from the second novel that wasn't in the second movie, and used it as a base for the third movie.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The resolution is now better with digital but resolution isn't everything.
Film still captures color much better and can deal with much higher contrast ratios. Look at the explosions in "Once upon a time in Mexico". They wash out in the bright spots. There is no definition in the shadows. Digital is great in that it allows people to make films that would not otherwise get made but film is still better.
perhaps this:
http://www.weblockpro.com
might help?
I'm going to reply to this instead of modding it down. Let's see how this works.
A heartfelt rant, I'm sure. The problem is that you ignore some very important facts.
First, while it is fair to say that companies look to profit from their copyrights, not every business interested in protecting their copyrights is some big business looking to pay those that already make a lot of money. I'm a small game developer that doesn't live in Bel-Air, that doesn't have any aspirations to buy golf clubs, and that considers it a financial treat to just eat out. Yet, I own copyright on Meridian 59 and would very much like to keep people from copying the work I've put my time, money, and effort into. People can create or buy their own work if they want it. The truly ironic thing is that the same copyright laws that make it illegal for you to download music also make it download for a large publisher to take music from an independent artist and sell it without compensation. Copyrights benefit the small businesses, too, and taking away copyrights will ensure that the large companies maintain their stranglehold on entertainment.
The second fact is that there are alternatives. There are a LOT of indie artists, developers, etc. out there that would love your support. For every overhyped Ms. Spears there's a handfull of hard-working bands that you'd probably enjoy. The problem is, of course, that looking for the independent is much harder than listening to the advertising singing the praises of the latest media darling. It's easy to listen to the ads that hype up some artist that sold his or her soul to the RIAA for superstar coverage. It's harder to go around town and find the small venues where the good local bands play.
The real solution to this problem is obvious once you consider these two bits: Go support the independent artists. The reasons for doing this are so numerous it boggles the mind. First you get originality, you provide a way for an artist to make money without having to sell out to a large marketing company like the RIAA, you don't pay more money so that the fatcat entertianment executives can buy more golf clubs, you don't have to break the law to enjoy entertainment, etc. The list just goes on and on.
This applies to most entertainment. Don't want to pay $18 for a CD? Hit an independent musician's site. Many times you can get free MP3's of their songs right off their websites. Check out some local bands at live shows in small clubs. Don't want to pay $50 for a game? Check out some quality independent games. The Independent Games Festival shows off some of the better games that were made without relying on publisher funding.
Don't want to pay for a box if you're going to pay for a monthly fee for an MMORPG? Check out one of the independent games that allow you to download the client instead of paying $50 in the stores. My own game, Meridian 59, only charges a $10.95 per month subscription fee with no startup fees. We intentionally kept the price low so that people would get a great deal from our game. Sure, it's not the most prettiest game out there, but it's fun like a good game should be. (If you just want to look at cool pictures, I might recommend a museum instead.)
In the end, there's alternatives to just taking what you want and applying flimsy justifications for it. There's alternatives out there, and lots of us independents that don't want to contribute directly to the large companies that harm entertainment would be more than happy to have your support. Consider checking us out instead of breaking the law next time you want something fun.
Really, it's up to the market to start supporting the alternatives. That's the only way that the executives will be unable to cover their Bel-Air mortgages and will have to re-evaluate their business model. Giving the independents the ability to compete with the lar
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
So, by limiting musicians' rights - by partially pirating their creative work - record producers and the public benefit.
Piracy? Setting a standard fee by law isn't "partially pirating," it's just regulating. Why is it now piracy to reuse any idea without paying somebody? Building on the earlier work of others is basic human behavior, without which civilization could never have happened. The modern artificial concept of copyright as property has been thrown at us so much that it's getting to be impossible to discuss the subject rationally. It's like talking about religion.
The normal human tendency to imitate and copy has been transformed into an act of evil, almost the way the normal human sex drive was turned into sin by various bead-rattling religious cults. Are we building a religion around the ownership of ideas, with a patch-eyed pirate replacing the horned devil as bogeyman du jour?
Sure. If the copyright owner wants to hold back something for political reasons, it's their material that they're holding back. They can do what they want with it.
Personally, though, I'd like to get some old Dukes of Hazard reruns.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
Fair Use means that they cannot restrict your use of content in certain ways - those rights aren't given to them to restrict. Unless they change copyright law (altogether possible), those restrictions are not theirs to impose. They can tell me not to play the music publicly, or to copy it to give to others (P2P, illegal copy sales, etc.), or to use it in other music I make, and they can hold me responsible if I do. (I believe the penalties for P2P are unjust, but the copyright holders do have a right to seek redress). I'm not certain whether EULA's hold up (I don't think shrinkwrap licences are legal, but I don't really know) but they require at least a positive affirmation of an agreement. The music does not have a similar statement of rights - even if you were choosing to give fair use rights in exchange for music use, the lack of an explicit agreement means you don't know what rights you are acceeding. I'm not even sure that's legal (but IANAL).
Bottom line - if you make digital products, they will be copied. Angering your customers means they will do it more and more often, and people will make it easier for them. The methods to prevent copying of music also take fair use rights that belong rightfully to the users of the product. The best way to prevent this is to avoid taking your customers for granted and to the cleaners - which would seem like good sense in the first place.
P.S. (slightly OT) do you think digital music sales (or per song sales other than singles) would have come about without music copying (and, in particular, without P2P)?
"what if I was never going to buy/rent the work in the 1st place?"
2 29&mode=thread). Same principle.
Intent to purchase is not in question (how you would prove you never intended to purchase it later would be another thing. Courts don't take people's word on these things). The question asked by a prosecutor would be "Did you intentionally cause an unlawful copy of this work to be made (downloaded)", to which the answer would be "Yes". Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
"The things I download are things that I wouldn't spend money on."
Irrelevant, because you have downloaded an unlawful copy. The act of downloading is the illegal part. The fact that you took the time and trouble to download it shows that it has some value to you, otherwise you wouldn't have downloaded it, regardless of what you may say after the fact (I'm thinking like a lawer here, forgive me), so a court would probably ignore such a statement.
"Downloads are just a curiosity, and more often than not end in thinking "man I'm glad I didn't waste money on that"."
Commendable attitude, and understandable considering the complexity of modern software. However, this behaviour, too, is illegal. Again, intent doesn't enter into the question; if you have an unauthorized copy of software in a functional installation you are infringing copyright. No ifs, no buts. Remember the example of Ernie Ball, the guitar string company that switched to Linux after being fined for having unauthorized copies of Windows on four computers that weren't even plugged in (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/21/0515
"Now if I live in China and are copying/dowloading to sell on the street that's a different story for sure, and its definitely illegal"
No, its immoral, but usually legal, since China has very weak copyright laws (and even weaker enforcement), which is rarely invoked for non-Chinese IP. But people selling SVCDs on the streets of Beijing are not worrying the **AAs, because almost none of those "pirate" disks make it to the West, and most western media outlets are prevented from selling inside China anyway. So legislation in the US will do nothing to stop Chinese piracy (well, duh!), but it may do something to stop it in the US.
In fact, you are the kind of person the **AAs are targetting with the current campaign. The large scale pirates will always be there (and always have been), and there are already laws to deal with them. The **AAs want to stop the casual downloaders, the people teetering on the decision of buying then swayed away by the offer of getting the product for free. Your contribution to this may seem small, but remember, there are 60 million P2P users in the US alone. If one third of those users decide a movie is good enough to download, but not good enough to buy, that's 20 million copies providing entertainment (which is what movies are for, so the product can not be said to be deficient, technically), which, at say $5 per copy, is $100 million lost sales (thinking like a lawer again...). If I was in a business that was looking at those kind of figures, I'd be as mad as hell (actually, I'm a musician, so I see good and bad in P2P: its good that anyone can now reach a global audience without the record industry, yet P2P offers no method of rewarding artists, or even reimbursing production costs. If P2P is about free (as in speech) exchange of ideas, surely there should be some mechanism to support the creation of those ideas).
To summarize, the law (and, for that matter, the **AAs) doesn't take into account WHY you downloaded something illegally, just that you DID (it may have some bearing on sentencing, however).
"There are sides to this issue that aren't being considered by the MPAA/RIAA/BSA."
And you didn't raise a single one of them.
The problem here is the euphamism "sharing". P2P isn't sharing, it's copying, plain and simple. If I share your copy, I haven't deprived you of it's use, I have simply copied it. Thats why "P2P isn't theft", remember.
"But its not. Its perfectly legal to do it in most instances."
No, it isn't. Read the copyright notice inside the front cover of a book, someday. Better yet, just read a book. Preferably one about copyright law. The situations where it is permissible to make a wholesale copy of a work are in fact very limited. Most fair use provisions deal with partial reproductions, or academic use. Again, P2P makes copies, it doesn't "share" a single file.
"I can loan copyrighted material to my wife."
Yes, you can. You can loan a PHYSICAL copy you paid for to her. You are not allowed, even under fair use limitations, to make a wholesale copy of a work and give her that copy, which is precisely what P2P does. That is infringement of copyright, and there is ample case history to support this. Fair use would not apply in this situation, since the original is for your personal use, therefore the copy is for your personal use.
"The library has no problems sharing copyrighted material, either."
Wrong. The library cannot lend a book unless it is in original condition, AS PAID FOR. A library may not legally lend a book without the original cover (bet you didn't know that). Libraries are not permitted to give away photocopies of their collection, either, which is a better analogy to P2P.
Your post shows a staggering lack of understanding of the concepts of "file sharing" , the distiction between copying and lending, and the general concepts and foundation of copyright law. How this ever got modded "insightful" is beyond me.
I don't know much about Snow White, but I will assure you that some scholars such as Dr. Willard Gaylin find Disney's first attempt at Pinocchio (1940) to resemble Pygmalion or Frankenstein more than it resembles Collodi's novel. See Adam and Eve and Pinocchio: On Being and Becoming Human (1990) for the details. Disney's second attempt starring Roberto Benigni as the puppet (2002) followed the book to the letter, but the casting was crap. Benigni should have backed off his ego and played Geppetto and let the boy from Life Is Beautiful play Pinocchio.