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Kahle vs Ashcroft: Copyright Battle Continues
Robotech_Master writes "People may remember librarian Brewster Kahle as the man behind Archive.org's Wayback Machine and the Internet Bookmobile. He was one of the big supporters of Eldred in the Eldred vs Ashcroft case. Well, he's at it again. A new lawsuit, Kahle vs Ashcroft, has been filed as of March 22nd. Lawrence Lessig comments on this case in his blog." Question number 3 of the FAQ explains that while the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this case challenges the breadth.
Not that I agree with the result, but didn't the US Supreme Court rule that effectively "open-ended" copyright terms were OK?
Musicians who are interested in this might also be interested in the creative commons license.
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- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Obligatory IANAL. I think "unconditional copyright" is a good idea. I might write a hundred songs (or poems or whatever) in a year and not make any money off of them. It costs money to register your work as copyrighted.
Not needing to register each work simply puts the burden on the "fair use" user. If they want to use my work, then I can grant them the rights to use it. But that doesn't mean that I give up copyrights.
If I am required to register my copyright, then I lose some of the ability to protect it.
As it stands, I am able to create a work and the copyright exists immediately. I can even register the copyright after an infringement takes place and win in a lawsuit.
Want to prove that you created the work on a certain date? Mail it to yourself and don't open it.
People may remember librarian Brewster Kahle as the man behind Archive.org's Wayback Machine and the Internet Bookmobile.
I remember Brewster from when he developed WAIS ......
After all, licenses like BSD and MIT/X are basically public domain anyway. The only difference is that they explicitly disclaim warranty. This is the only reason why I have released software into MIT/X instead of PD. I don't want to get sued if I release it under PD. This would mean I would have to register everything I do with the copyright office or it's automatically under PD? I would support this if there was a way to release writings into PD without incurring any liability for how they are used. I hope they take that into account.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
In summary, the plaintiff is annoyed that he has to track down authors to get permission to publish their books online. So he wants the law to change back so that authors need to be burdened with paperwork and fees to obtain copyright because he doesn't want to spend the time and money getting permission from the authors. Standard practice of trying to use the govt. to make your life easier at the expense of someone elses constitutional rights.
Vote for Pedro
Since authors are, largely, unlikely to care about the rights of people who want to derive from their works, couldn't a reinstatement of copyright registration for works within the United States theoretically drive authors to nominally publish their works in other nations (in order to get automatic protection as per the current U.S. system), and thus drive creativity out of the U.S.?
I don't know if this would occur in practice, and I'm not saying it's a good reason to maintain a flawed system, but it seems like something to think about if/when we design new copyright policy.
Would this case, if ruled in Kahle's favor, make abandonware legal?
People have been distributing old, abandoned software (mostly from the 1980s) on web sites for years, knowing that it is illegal but under the likely correct assumption that they are doing the publisher no harm whatsoever. I have never heard of any true abandonware resulting in legal action, but currently a company that holds the copyright for a program can go after someone distributing it online for free. It makes no difference if they still sell it, support it or even remember it exists.
Of course, there would have to be some kind of definition for what constitutes abandonware, but that would be the case with all other works as well so I'm confident they'll figure that part out. I hope Kahle wins this one, personally.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I read the article and with every line I got more and more angry. Then I closed the article and I couldn't really recall what they were talking about ....
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
From the FAQ:
> a freedom, it should be noted, that was granted by an author's voluntary decision not to register his work.
One can as easily reason that first of all, in the old situation, many people would not obtain a copyright simply due to lack of knowledge, means for registration etc.
In the new system an author can still take the voluntary decision to keep a work free by explicitly putting it in the public domain.
The FAQ argues that this makes life more difficult for people trying to preserve things in the digital domain, but that is soemthign that I believe can be addressed by fair use. The FAQ also claims that the new system does nothing to protect authors, but that is not true, it makes that authors can do waht they are best at, creating works.
The term of copyright, the unfair limitation of user rights, and fair use are the issues, not automatic copyright.
I may be missing something, but I think the current unconditional system is OK if other considerations are made. Works are copyrighted regardless of the will of the author, which seems OK. The only problem I see is with proof of ownership documents. I imagine someone falsely claiming that "I wrote this and authorized so-and-so to use it in his college thesis."
The only solution I see is that if the author WANTS to grant rights to any or all, he must prove ownership beforehand. Otherwise, it's more of a hinderance than a help.
The upside is that owners of works who have not explicity copyrighted their material still have rights.
Then again, it may just be bunk.
The works described as "orphan works" in the linked FAQ show a need for some sort of copyright reform. Clearly, there are works out there which hold a good deal of intellectual value, but hold no commercial value for their owner.
Perhaps what we need is some sort of system that if a work has not been used commercially for x period of time, it should be deemed to have no commercial viability and be released to the public domain.
"But many books fall into a nether region. These are works that are not commercially viable and therefore not widely available to the public, but are nevertheless subject to continuing copyright protection."
In the event that they cannot convince Ashcroft, they could also start another project which would automate and simplify the process of obtaining this permission.
If anything, making it easier to access this type of information would be beneficial for both the authors and those in search of using their work.
This suit seeks to have the laws that implement the Berne Convention struck down as unconstitutional. However, my highly inexpert reading of the Constitution reveals that the Constitution and all treaties entered into by the US are the supreme law of the land. The Berne Convention is just such an international treaty. Thus, it would seem that the supremacy clause trumps any argument Lessig et al may bring before the court, since the terms of the Berne Convention enjoy equal footing with the Constitution.
Now, if the US enters into a treaty that is in direct opposition to the Constitution, which document wins? I have no idea if this issue in Constitutional law has ever been addressed.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Notice how no execeptions are made for abandonware, shareware, vaporware, freeware or any other type. So now the question to ask seems to be what constitutes limited? My limited copyright time doesnt seem to equal Mickey Mouse's.
Jason
Argue About Stuff
Not to mention, the Berne Convention is a world-wide treaty (and well-liked by megacorps) that may as well be carved in an adamantium tablet. No way they'd be willing to disadvantage US content owners while foreign copyrights are being extended just as freely.
The issue they are questioning is whether the work should be protected if the author doesn't care. The suit is stating that for a work to be protected, the author ought to be required to express a desire for it to be protected. Also, the author could then provide some means for contact so that permission can be requested.
I agree that difficulty of access does not make it permissible to use without authorization, but see little value in restricting access to works where the author doesn't care. Requiring the author to request and renew copyright merely ensures that they are still interested in maintaining the rights to their work.
Atanamis
"Perhaps what we need is some sort of system that if a work has not been used commercially for x period of time, it should be deemed to have no commercial viability and be released to the public domain."
What if someone is intentionally holding on to something (which currently has no commercial appeal any more) in order to use it later for some sort of retro throwback appeal, which would make it commercially viable again? Would they be able to prevent this slip into the public domain somehow?
The history of the Supreme Court shows very little traction for the reframing of constitutional questions and going back up. Even though they make a big deal about how this isn't Eldred vs. Ashcroft, it really is a distinction the court will find tenuous. They got shot down on the copyright extensions, they will get shot down on the inclusionary aspects of this.
I believe they are right and the court is wrong on Eldred, but until a Democratic president can get in for another 8 years and Kennedy and Scalia get the boot, they won't win.
The abandonware issue is more substantial. A requirement that copyright be renewed for $1, or that it be deemed abandoned if nobody is available to offer the rights after a reasonable period of time, is more rational. Perhaps one of those evil "activist judges" will so find.
sulli
RTFJ.
I agree with most of your points. I'm not trying to support a perpetual copyright; quite the opposite. I would argue is that copyright is too long - not that it should be removed from people who want it kept.
If an author wants to protect his work, he should. But only in the interest of him protecting his work and ability to profit from it reasonably. He should be able to extend it to a period if he chooses. But that would require registration. If an author wishes to protect it for a period (say, 20 years) then he shouldn't need that registration requirement. After that point, failure to extend would result in the work being released to the public domain.
If a vintage TV show is released on DVD, you might buy it. So they keep the copyright.
It sucks, but if I release a book and then decide that I don't want to sell it anymore, I should be able to stop the distribution. Within reason. Not forever.
If an author doesn't care (abandonware) then it should lapse and go public domain. If they don't care, then contacting them should result in a "sure, I'll release it to public domain and you can give it away."
This case is summed up: I want to give stuff away for free, but tracking down authors and getting that release is a lot of work so I'll try to do it in one fell swoop.
According to the constution. The reason why we have copyright is Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 8 of the constution. It says that congress shall have the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". To that end we got copyrights and patents.
Notice, however, that it is quite clear about the reasoning. It is to promote progress, in other words, to make sure the work is distributed. Also notice it is clear about the limited times, in that the author can only have control for a while, then it belogns to everyone.
So it's clear that it is unconstutional to use copright to try and maintain control forever and not share with anyone.
think about it.
The whole problem is that they cannot locate authors in order to get permission. The only way they could solve this is by.... having everyone register their work with Kahle & Co. But wait! thats exactly what the government used to do!! You see the conundrum?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
My best example:
I have all of the back issues of PCVR magazine (a magazine put out from 1992-1994 relating to homebrew VR using the PC). I would like to republish and give away CDs or downloads of the articles, but to do so I either need to get each author's permission (then likely reset/retype/reformat the article), or contact the publisher. Both of these options have turned out to be dead ends:
First off, getting permission from each of the authors is nearly impossible: most authors didn't list contact information, the few that did either list compuserve or old AOL addresses, neither of which work anymore. The few that do list real email addresses, those addresses likely don't work either (its been 10+ years after all). To make matters worse, some of the articles were written by the publisher/editor himself!
To understand, the publisher/editor of the magazine started it literally in his home (likely in the kitchen or garage!) - the first few issues are photocopied and stapled. It was a real shoestring publication - more of a 'zine for VR than anything else. A great lot of the information presented in its pages has been lost to the community at large, which is a shame because it seems like every article about 3D this or that here on Slashdot, there are posts asking about how to buy or build an HMD for this FPS or whatnot, or other esoteric 3D hardware - and I would love to be able to point these people to the methods and devices already utilised, so that people don't need to reinvent the wheel (and hitting the same stumbling blocks that were already overcome). This is the information that I want to save.
However, I have been unable to contact the publisher: Joseph D. Gradecki. I won't go into any detail as to what I have done to try to locate him in the past (I have already posted that kind of information in long past articles). Let it suffice to say that he seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, or at least the internet. None of his last know address or phone number information checks out. His last publishers (he wrote a couple of more recent books in the late 90's) have no idea where he is (or if they do, they are not giving me any help, which is possible or likely). I don't have the money to hire a PI or anything.
This is one case where having up-to-date information about where the publisher or author was would help. Furthermore, if there was a small burden to keep the copyright up (like a small fee to be paid, as suggested), I have no doubt that most or all of the authors of these articles would have let them lapse into public-domain long ago...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I had this discussion with a friend once, and I think it's a valid point, even if I personally hate the idea of owners hoarding their works away.
There is a viable solution for both sides, though-- escrow for copyrighted works. Set a minimum copyright period (10-20 years) during which works are copyrighted just by creating them, as they are now. To keep your copyright beyond that, you must give the Library of Congress an unencrypted digital, or highest-resolution-possible analog copy of your work, to be held in escrow until the end of your full copyright term. At that point, even if you HAVE hoarded your work away for the entire 150 years or so of your copyright, the work still exists for posterity.
Everybody wins. Cranky or embarassed authors can hide their works away until some time after their death, and normal folks don't lose things to obscurity.
Of course, I still think copyright is waaaaay to long, but this is one of those issues where there is a solution we could implement now, without getting into the deeper issues.
I can just see the legal tangle such a change would cause for Linux, et al. I also question how well such a change would work with the Berne Convention, since we're not talking about a novel here, written in one country, but a product written by hundreds of contributors from around the planet, both US and elsewhere. IANAL, but this looks like it would be a real mess, with no one winning but the lawyers.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
So this indefinite copyright law wasn't to protect
Mickey Mouse from Taiwan ?????
I'm wondering about something:
Can anyone but the owner of a copyright sue you for copyright infringement? The reason I ask is because I'm thinking about this concept of saving abandoned art. If no one is left alive who provably owns a work, then who is going to sue you if you copy it? If nobody can be found who has legal standing, even if copying would be illegal, wouldn't it be not much of a legal risk to go ahead and copy the work?
The COA declared that you can't copyright the law and that it does diserve the public to have copyrights attached.
" Third, to enhance the market value of its model codes, SBCCI could easily publish them as do the compilers of statutes and judicial opinions, with "value-added" in the form of commentary, questions and answers, lists of adopting jurisdictions and other information valuable to a reader. The organization could also charge fees for the massive amount of interpretive information about the codes that it doles out. In short, we are unpersuaded that the removal of copyright protection from model codes only when and to the extent they are enacted into law disserves "the Progress of Science and useful Arts." U.S. Const. art. I. 8, cl. 8.
Conclusion
For the reasons discussed above, we REVERSE the district court's judgment against Peter Veeck, and REMAND with instructions to dismiss SBCCI's claims."
Veeck vs SBCCI was ruled opsite of what you claim. Laws can not be copyright. What the Supreme Court did was agree with the COA and not here SBCCI on apeal.
Brewster is not a librarian!!!!!!
He will even talk shit about librarians, with librarians in the room!
This problem really arises because of the inherent differences between software and other works, like books for example.
When an author writes a book, it probably takes a significant amount of time, goes through an editorial process, and in the end is copyrighted as a completed work. There might be minor corrections later on, but the work is basically finished.
Software, on the other hand, evolves over time. The first version of something probably doesn't take that long to make, depending on the project. A single contribution to an open source project could be quite small. And it's likely to change sometime down the road.
The two things are just so different that having them governed by the same system is just silly, IMHO.
Copyright has never been a constitutional right. Copyright is not a constitutional right. Hopefully, copyright will never be a constitutional right.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
I spent HOURS googling about Veeck a couple weeks ago, and somehow picked bad keywords every time. All of the search results referred to the original case, the three-judge appeal, and/or the certiorari, but never the full court ruling. Damn page rot.
Thank you for the correction. It's a fucking wonderful ray of sunshine.It won't affect any laws. If you want the federal government to change a law, you sue the United States. It's always been that way. This ashcroft crap is just stupid media propoganda. Why don't they say "Dickless vs. Christianity" unless they have another reason to hate Ashcroft than his religious beliefs.
We've got length, breadth...
Inquiring minds want to know...what's the girth?
What if there was a compromise between the two systems? For example, as an author, I automatically got 5 or 10 years of automatic copyright protection of a work upon creation. This gives me time to create something and then decide if it is going to be profitable enough to continue copyrighting. At the end of the grace period, if I want to keep the item copyrighted, I have to register it for a fee with the government. This copyright then lasts for whatever the government says (currently set at 50+ life of the author).
Hell, though this system you could even set different fees for different lengths of copyright (up to a max # of years). You have a piece of software? Set it's copyright for 25 years and save yourself 1/2 the fee. If it is still profitable at the end of the term, you can extend the copyright to the remainder of the term for the remainder of the fee. Granted, the fee may have gone up by then. You have a comicbook character that might be profitable the whole time? Copyright the whole time and pay the full fee.
But if the author does not think the work is worth taking the time to do a few hours of research over a period of 5 or 10 years, the work becomes public domain. And don't tell me that 10 hours of research, plus 1 hour to fill out forms for each piece of work is excessive. This is spread over a few years after all. How many people are going to create nothing but profitable works?
Just my 2 cents.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
And next week I'm filing a suit to challenge the height of copyright expansion!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
You seem to have a few misconceptions.
"If they want to use my work, then I can grant them the rights to use it."
Only if they can find out that you are the copyright holder and if they can also find out how to contact you.
The problem that this is trying to address is the thousands of works that currently cannot legally be archived or utilized due to the near-prohibitive cost of trying to research who (if anyone) is the proper person to contact.
"If I am required to register my copyright, then I lose some of the ability to protect it."
I don't see how this sentence makes any sense at all. If you are required to register your copyright, or to include some useful copyright notice with the original, it merely gives would be (re)users a standard way to determine that you are the copyright holder they need to talk to. You don't lose anything...
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Hmm - looked up "gradecki.com" on google, led me here:
Cummings and Associates
They look like a used parts/computer ebay seller. The site haad an ebay comment from Mr. Gradecki - apparently his ebay ID is cscientist (email of "joe@gradecki.com") - here's hoping my email to him gets answered.
His site, BTW, holds links to PDFs of the magazine - but the links go nowhere. I am hoping to find out more about this from him.
Looks like today I may have gotten closer...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Going back to the old "no copyright until you register" system is something else, and pretty radical.
With copyright, you get a government-guaranteed monopoly, backed and enforced by police and courts, paid for by tax payers, lasting decades. It seems entirely reasonable to ask you to at least affirmatively assert your copyright.
(Note that GPL stuff very definitely uses copyright as its base. Do you want to have to register every little release to have a valid GPL on it?)
Yes, of course--why wouldn't I? This could be handled completely automatically, with a nominal, tiny fee. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be every tiny release; even with registration requirements, you get a significant period of time to register. So, GPL'ed software could be registered once per year.
Joe replied to me after I emailed him at the above address. He told me that he is wanting to republish PCVR, which is why he has the links up, but that he hasn't had time to convert them over to PDF. I sent an email with my interest, and I am hoping he will respond in kind, maybe I can help him get the project rolling, or something. I will post back here on what happens in the next few days...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Ok, so you're saying law implementing a treaty can't be declared unconstitutional, because a treaty is on equal footing with the constitution? So if, say, the Republicans wanted to get around Roe v. Wade, Bush could sign a treaty with John Paul II jointly agreeing not to allow abortions in their respective countries?
Hmm. Article III, section 2, clause 1 seems to suggest that SCOTUS can declare a treaty unconstitutional. But IANAL.
They upheld the Campaign Finance Reform Act, even as it muzzles the First Amendment for (30|60) days before a (primary|general) election.
(Note that GPL stuff very definitely uses copyright as its base. Do you want to have to register every little release to have a valid GPL on it?)
YES! And SCO too!
One of the problems with GPL - and most of the other open licenses: The new law makes works "born copyrighted", even absent any labeling of WHO owns the copyright. This often makes it impossible to determine what person, or set of people collectively, have the authority to grant a license under any other terms.
It also makes it impossible to determine when the author dies, and thus when the copyright expires and the work passes into the public domain. (Given life-extension technology improvements, some of us might actually still be around then. But even if not, our great**n grandchildren shouldn't be penalized.)
Registration would require declaration of who is claiming the copyright, and what previous copyrights he's acknowledging. That gives you a starting point on figuring out who to ask (or offer some bux to).
And having a record in the Library of Congress on who the actual authors are would also make things like the SCO suit a tad easier to settle. B-)
As for registration of every release, what's the big deal? Burn a CD of the CVS repository, another of the distribution files, maybe another of a mirror of the project website, generate a hardcopy cover letter, and drop 'em in the mail, return-reciept requested. (Should be an open-source tool to generate the cover letter and filled-out versions of any forms within a month after they're defined, eh? Assuming the LoC doesn't just provide an inbound FTP site).
Absent a prohibitive fee, what's so hard about it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You do not get protection for the ideas in the work, which can be freely used by anyone in their own programs, so long as they don't copy your code verbatim.
That's the basic idea. There are slight exceptions in two directions:
1) Fair use includes using VERY SMALL amounts verbatim. If you've got a three-line hack that's really cute buried in there, it might be fair use to clone it - especially if it's being cloned into something other than a program to do the same job. (How much is fair use depends mainly on how much the cloning impacts the value of your work. Thus much more could be used in an article about it than in an unrelated computer program, and still less in a competing product.)
2) "Derived works" don't have to be exact copies. If somebody changes all the variable names, or translated it from C++ to Java (or English to German), it's still an infringement.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If I author something, it is immediatly my copyright. As such, I can let people use my works at no charge, just recognition.
Also, who determines what a 'small' fee is to copyright something?
What about that person who barly knows where there next meal is coming from, but happens to be a great writer?
If you had to pay to have works copyrighted(as opposed to registered) would there be any Harry Potter books?(the author has no money and was on a subsitance program of some sort.)
Now, I am a big believer that Author should retain all rights for a reasonable period of years, say 14, but I don't think they should have to pay for it.
Plus this lets in a lot of abuse.
If I have someone proof read my works, but haen't paid the fee to be copyright, can the proof reader pay and then retain rights to the book?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It hardly seems right that heirs should be required to find, evaluate, and quickly pay to extend the copyright.
How? If heirs want to exploit an estate for financial gain, I would place the responsibility on the heirs to take care of the costs of exploiting the estate. I do not see whence your position comes; would you please explain it further?
When the government taxes copyright, what service is it providing? Writing a law into a book?
The point is that society would benefit from a side effect of a a tax on copyrights: Tax collection leaves a paper trail, and this paper trail would make it easier for potential users of rights in copyrighted works to contact the author in order to begin negotiation. The author benefits as well by having a government-sponsored means of advertising what she may be willing to license.
What does John Ashcroft have to do with Copyright? Or is this a totally different person?
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
Let's not forget that the last "Democratic" president sold us down the river by signing the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act) into law. His name is Bill Clinton.
Even if former Sen. Bob Dole had been in office and had rejected the Bono Act and the DMCA, it wouldn't have helped one bit. Both bills were passed by voice vote in both houses. It takes 80 percent assent to get a voice vote through (20 percent dissent forces a roll call). It takes only 67 percent assent to override a presidential veto.
Appointments to the court are for life.
Supreme Court justices "hold their offices during good behavior." I can imagine all sorts of ways to try to bag justices on that. Would a felony conviction constitute no longer "during good behavior"?
Rather they will get shot down because most judge's eyes "glass over" when you mention copyright to them
Prof. Lessig learned from his mistakes and seems to have begun work on a plan to prevent justices' eyes from glazing over as they did in Eldred.
If you really had the tools necessary to achieve world domination, you certainly wouldn't need to be in the business of selling the tools for world domination now, would you?
paintball
I'm not sure about American stations, but the BBC had a policy of throwing away "old" film to free up space, before Star Trek taught TV companies about the wonder of merchandising. So many episodes for Doctor Who, the longest running sci-fi television series, are permenently lost.
Copyright is now automatic and mandatory. You, as the creator of a work, cannot voluntarily put it into the public domain. All that you can do is to license it with the most open and explicit license that you can think of. See Slashdot's Terms and Conditions for an example of a licensing scheme that you've agreed to, whether you know it or not. Saying "this work is in the public domain" is not sufficient, as "public domain" has no meaning in law except for works for which copyright has expired.
If you think this isn't an issue, consider what happens if you unrestrictively license a body of work, and then step in front of a bus. The copyrights pass to your estate, and for the sake of argument, we'll say that's an Evil Nephew. Now, how sure are you that your license is "irrevocable and in perpetuity"? Are you absolutely sure that it's water-tight? Can the Evil Nephew revoke the license? Can he prevent people who currently have copies from making futher copies and passing them on?
It gets even worse where the intent and licensing is unclear. If a work doesn't bear a copyright claim, a clear license, or other identifying information, how do you even know whether you're allowed to copy it? The creator, or his Evil Nephew, could turn up any day and sue you for reproducing their work. It's safer not to duplicate and distribute at all, and that is very much not what copyright law was intended to do. It was intended to encourage dissemination of work. Implicit mandatory copyrights creates a culture that strangles the public domain.
The core of Kahle vs Ashcroft is that copyrights should be something that you actively choose to claim. If you don't, for example, care what happens to your Slashdot postings, just don't put "(C) 2003 $YOUR_NAME" on them. It's pretty much as simple as that.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
between actual damages + profits & statuatory damages + attorney's fees. The reason is that statuatory damages (when infringement is willfull) can be kicked up to $150,000. Which also happens to be the magic RIAA figure that they're seeking for every traded song. And again, registering your copyright doesn't 'protect' actual damages and profits. Those are your already if you can show that the work belongs to you.
Wouldn't you rather have $150,000 + attorney's fees instead of damages and profits on something that may not have been worth much in the first place?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So, the plaintiffs are asking for:
1. U.S. authors to be under a harsher method of obtaining real copyright than foreigners (who would see copyright in the U.S. automatically via the Berne convention.)
2. Most currently-protected works to fall into the public domain.
Whoah. Good luck with that one, guys.
If an author is interested in being contacted to allow negotiation for limited-use rights to his work, he will find some way to make it happen.
The problem here is that a copyright exists but no member of the general public knows who owns it.
In the worst case, if an author cannot be found (or does not want to be found), one can simply wait until the work enters the public domain.
The problem is that in Soviet America, copyright outlives YOU! This is a compromise. If the entertainment industry objects to short copyright terms for works whose author's identity is well-known, why not reduce copyright terms for works whose author's identity is not well-known?
Forced registration simply allows an author to be harassed even when he does not wish to be found.
If an author doesn't want to be harassed, why did the author even publish the work in the first place? If an author has published a work and no longer wants to be harassed, why not transfer the copyright to somebody else? If an author doesn't want to derive income from licensing a work, why doesn't the author release the work into the public domain, under a permissive license, or even just under a Creative Commons *-nc license?
I agree that there should be provisions for an author to release his work with the restrictions that it may be reused, but not for the purposes of profit.
That's called "donating the copyright to a charity." Then the charity could take care of maintaining the copyright under something analogous to a Creative Commons *-nc license.
OUR DEAD IN PARADISE THERE DEAD IN THE HELL
,Ahmed yassin, it is shameful . , .Sharon is a terrorist and an assassin of 1st order.
with this barbarous attitude on the part of a group of terrorist, expressed the animal
savage that you are . Yes you have killed the leader of Hamas
But what you has escaped , it's all the people Palestine is Ahmed yassin , and this act despised you are going to pay it Mr of terrorist , and days that comes, go you it confirms.
The countdown has begun for the end of is telling a " state of grand Israel"
but it is scandalous killed an old man and paraplegic , and with what !!!! MISSILES
this man so much make you fear !!! on its moving chair, and then what to tell for these
that are on their two legs
It has to be beheaded with these general terrorists and their head have to be posed
on the returned principal of Jerusalem.
*********ALKASSAM********