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Lessig Legal Team Needs Your Copyright Stories
Joe Gratz writes "Lawrence Lessig and his legal team are asking for your help. Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law that have created a large class of 'orphan works' -- creative works which are out of print and no longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright. To win the lawsuit, we need more examples of people being burdened by these copyright-related barriers to the use of orphan works. Visit the Kahle Submission Site and tell us your story."
If they don't have evidence that it's causing a problem, why are they starting a lawsuit?
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Am I misunderstanding this, or are these people just being trolls?
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Your pursuit of happiness is is referred to as an "unalienable right" of the people in the United States' Declaration of Independence.
Has your happiness been alienated? Hell yes.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
While you're at it, write your congressperson and ask them what year you will be able to perform "Happy Birthday" in public without paying royalties or getting sued.
You have the right to pursue happiness. Achieving happiness is not guaranteed.
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
You have the unalienable right to pursue happiness. You do not have the unalienable right to be happy. His right to pursue happiness has not been infringed upon.
>Your pursuit of happiness is is referred to as an "unalienable right" of the people in the United States' Declaration of Independence.
>Has your happiness been alienated? Hell yes.
The right of PERSUIT of happiness is not the same as a "Right To Be Happy", which does not exist.
Don't worry, be happy! - Bobby McFerrin
--
BMO
Well, final fantasy has been re-released on the ps2(and in Japan on the wonderswan color and now IIRC gameboy advance). I really think the companies should embrace roms, ie sell them for a few bucks a pop. Almost no overhead, pure profit, and I would gladly agree to pay $2 a piece or so if it was possible(also makes it a lot more conveint). Just look at iTunes.
Hell, while they are at its, they should release an SDK for some of these older machines that will allow you to use it for free for non-commecial games, and maybe a potion of the proceeds if you want to release a commercial game through their service.
But instead they decide to go after used video game stores because they say selling used games hurts their profits...geez.
SInce it is a legal group, they are motivated by money, so I would want to know more about why they are truly doiong this before I would support this effort.
That's like saying, "Since you're a programmer you're obviously only interested in making money on your programs, just like Microsoft and other companies do." In fact, some programmers like sharing their code for free. (Perhaps you've heard of the GPL?)
Similarly, some lawyers take on cases because it's the right thing to do. They often lose money in the process, or at the very least forgo other money-making opportunities.
The upshot here is that a group of nice, civic minded lawyers think the current Copyright extensions are a crock of shit, and they want to overturn the law. (Not all of copyright--just the mindless extension that Congress gives to THE MOUSE (disney) any time it wants it...)
But I seriously doubt this case has any merit from the POV of a judge (yes, I did RTFA). Free speech simply does not apply to using someone else's copyrighted work, and the U.S. Congress has the Constitutional authority to make copyright laws. The laws may be burdensome and unfair, but that's Congress's responsibilty, not the courts, and if you've studied the recent history of the Supreme Court, you know that they're not going to interfere with something that is indisputably within Congress's authority under the Constitution, regardless of its burden on society, because the court does not make laws, it simply interprets them.
The resources spent on this would be far better spent on other courses of action, like lobbying or a public education campaign. This is just expensive windmill-tilting.
This guy's name just keeps coming up, over and over.
You have to hand it to this guy - he doesn't give up on *anything*.
How much better this world would be if there were more like Lawrence!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I tried to reinstall it, after 12 years. One of the disks was unreadable. I wrote to the manufacturer. They told me they didn't sell it anymore. Got it from a warez site. Fuck the law. As the Romans said, non omne licitum honestum, i.e. "not everything that's legal is honest". Or, as Heilein's professor Bernardo de la Paz said in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress":
"But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do."
Mostly, photographers are so concerned with copyright because they like to eat.
Their work is their sole source of income, and reprints tend to be a significant part of their income. The law has provided them with a mechanism to protect their rights, and they use it so they can provide for themselves and their families.
They all appreciate that their work can mean a great deal to their customers, but in the end they have to look out for themselves - if they were too nice with their copyrights, they'd end up giving away their livelihood.
One effect of this idiotic law is the wholesale destruction of nearly all of the popular books from the first half of the 20th century. The very best stuff and well-known titles are still being published and read (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Raymond Chandler) but past a hundred or so titles, the books are just disappearing.
When the paper wears out or the book stops being checked out, libraries take the title off the shelf. Large cites will sometimes save a copy in the stacks, but usually the books get pulped or burned. In a technologically advanced civilized society, each title that is worth being published in the first place would be scanned and OCR'ed before being completely wiped out. But this is illegal under the Mickey-Mouse-protection-to-infinity US copyright law. So they just get pulped and burned.
I read a book by Florence King about how white people got to be so weird (a sort of laid-back but sharp quasi-anthropological study of Caucasians in North America) "WASP, where is thy sting?". In this book, she cites many of the books that were influencial on her and her parents thoughts and attitudes when she was growing up in the 1940's. It is impossible to find any of them now even though they were read and enjoyed by tens of millions of people and had a great deal of influence on how the depression generation came to view the world.
Now the rock'n'roll generation (the baby boomers) and the MTV generation and Kazaa generations would just say 'Fuck this stupid law' and then OCR and circulate their favorite books and videos anyway. But the WWII generation won't, they'll trust that the proper authorities are taking care of the preservation of their culture. But that is not happening and their entire culture except for about 100 titles is just evaporating.
Hundreds of years from now, people will marvel at the American empire and technological accomplishments from the end of World War II. They will wonder at what these people were like; what they believed; how they interacted with each other; what drove them. But they will never know because all the popular literature from this period is being destroyed and not copied as its media wears out.
It's all happening because of this insane US copyright law. And nobody seems to be aware that it's happening.
Sure, there's a copy of every book published in the US in the Library of Congress. Maybe. One copy. Somewhere in the vast warehouse stacks. But with the current ability to fit tens of thousands of titles on a single 89 cent DVD-R there's no excuse for allowing all of the popular books from the early and mid-20th century to disappear. Future generations will not think well of us for allowing this to just happen. Just because nitwit assholes like Michael Eisner have hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't give them the right to destroy the entire culture of generations.
Wow! A sensible comment! I've recently run into several photographers while doing on-site PC service and support, and got into debates with 2 of them about this sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned, no matter which photography company claims exclusive "rights" to a photo of a person, that person or their immediate family and relatives should have rights that superceed all others.
This seems to become a sticky issue with most commercial photographers, especially when it comes to wedding photos. But as far as I'm concerned, they need to change their whole business model. Instead of the structure they claim to use (where the money isn't made off taking the initial photos, but only on the prints and reprints ordered later) - I say, just charge up front for your time to take the photos! Quit trying to use copyright law as leverage to collect money later on the reprints.
Surely, copyright law was never envisioned to be used in such a manner, preventing people from reproducing images of their OWN FACES (or their loved one's faces), just because those images were originally captured using someone else's camera and film.
I've always viewed photography as a service one performs. Anyone can buy a camera and take pictures. It's not rocket science. But photographers get hired mainly for the convenience, plus the understanding that they happen to be "better than the average person" at getting good photos. It seems most commercial photographers, however, are more caught up in the idea of reproducing and reselling prints from their stash of archived images. That's not what the whole profession should really be about!
If your book went out of print fifty years ago, and you've done absolutely nothing since to make your continued interest in the work known, hell yes.
Lessig generally comes up with good plans for this sort of thing. He's not going to demand that every work not currently being printed be released into the public domain. That's just crazy. Instead, he's probably proposing some sort of notification system where, every other decade or so, an author has to fill out some short form to notify the Copyright Office that she doesn't want her work to be considered abandoned. Ideally, it would also provide another avenue for interested parties to hunt down the owners to get their permission.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Ignoring the law is not acceptable - you can still be fucked over by some over-zealous photographer, abandoned game/software publisher, author, or anyone else with a point to make or a bone to pick.
That's why overturning our current copyright length is important! I just looked through an old copy of the 'Golden Book Encyclopedia' (illustrated, for kids) from 1959 and happened to look up copyright. It says, "To get a copyright in the United States the writer or publisher must send two copies of the work to the Copyright Office in Washington DC. He must also pay a small fee. The copyright he gets is good for 28 years. At the end of theat time it may be renewed for another 28 years. (that's 56 years) That means that the encyclopedia would have gone to public domain in another 14 years. 2018.
In 1976 congress extended copyright retroactivley to 75 years. The Sonny Bono Act in 98 extended it another 20. Now this same encyclopedia won't be put into Public Domain until 2054. After you are dead. And other people are wondering how in a DRM-filled world they are going to 'preserve' your memories.
IOW, go after those who are effectively making copyright last forever - your congresswhores. They are the ones who are 'ignoring' your feelings. Photographers, authors, coders, musicians etc. are only going to utilize what they have; if © lasts forever - they'll take advantage of it.
Congress needs to be reminded of the original intention of copyright - to give the author of a work LIMITED time to use it.
That would be your job.
Rubbish. Photographers already have the "I must eat" angle well and truly covered. They do quite well from charging for their time at studio sittings, "glamour" shoots, weddings, etc.
The amount of money that they make from these is far more than they could ever collect in royalties on family portraits and wedding photos exchanged via e-mail.
Only a very small number of photos ever reach iconic status within a culture. The rest should fall into the public domain almost immediately. Which is Lessig's point: too much protection is being given to things that don't need any.
Well said.
I would like to add that this also does a disservice to the memory of the creators of the works. Copyright seems to be working to insure the anihilation of their memory.
An extreme comparison, but imagine taking the graveyards of your ancestors, destroying the headstones, and putting up some parking lots. I don't particularly care about gravestones and ancestors, but that seems somehow very wrong.
I've seen other companies buy a competing product just so they can kill it.
Should copyright law be used as a tool to suppress information? What if I am a rich, but terrible, writer of fantasy epics. Should I be able to buy the copyrights to the Lord of the Rings, and then prohibit anyone from printing the books?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
She says that specifically in regard to downloading, but the same applies to out-of-print tracks.
Happiness is a state of mind - not a particular activity. Try finding happiness in the everyday joys of life such as getting up each morning, eating, sleeping.
Video Game cheats, hints a
For large works like a FAQ it may be reasonable to perform registration, but do you really want to have to go to the trouble to make sure that every Usenet and Slashdot post you make won't be reprinted for profit by someone else?
This post is Copyright (c) 2004 Anonymous Coward.
Any reuse of this post, accounts or descriptions of this post, or use of any of the word or letter combinations that this post contains contains without the express written permission of Anonymous Coward is likely to get you laughed at.
If it's my property, don't I have the right to lock it away?
Well, you have the right to suppress your work for the copyright term, after which it enters the public domain. But when the copyright term is longer than both your life and the life of most of the people who remember your work and want it redistributed, you are obviously inhibiting fair use.
A good example from my life is that of my favourite Roger Moore movie 'Wild Geese.' An errant VHS player chewed up my copy a while ago and to get a new VHS (used) is costing me $50. Thank God for the internet, or I would probably not have been able to even find a copy. The only reason I even have a VHS player anymore is so that I can watch this movie. And finally, given that it is used, who knows what the quality will be like?
It's eminently possible that when the copyright reaches the public domain in ~50 years, there actually won't be any copies left anywhere, and the studio copy, if stored badly, will be destroyed. Ridiculous IMHO.
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Isn't the whole problem here that because we don't have access to works that should be in the public domain, that we don't even know what we're missing?
Your limited monopoly on the work, which allowed you to publish it without competition, should compel you to keep the work available.
Why should we give you exclusive rights to the work , unless you garantee you will keep it available?
You can keep it secret, and never publish it. Or, you can publish it in the knowledge that someone else may copy it, or, finally, you can publish it knowing you will have a monopoly on the work, provided you live up to your end of the bargain and allow it to pass into the public domain. Preferably within our lifetimes.
As it stands right now, there are works out there that I can NEVER benifit from. I am giving some author a monopoly, under the assumption it will allow me to create works based on it, yet his work was created before I was born, and I will be long dead before his copyright expires. For all intents and purposes, we may as well make it permanant in that case.
That's not how copyright works. The point is not to give an author control of his work as some sort of entitlement, it's solely to encourage him to create. The creater does not and should not have the right to "lock away" their IP. If he didn't want people to read it, he shouldn't have written it in the first place!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As a painter it would really make my life impossible if I had to register every painting I do. Some months I can do 2-3 paintings, some months I do hundreds; it depends if I'm doing sketches, the size of the pieces, if I have commissions, etc.
I also could _not_ afford to register all these paintings; even at $1-$5 per registration.
But if I didn't register them I wouldn't be afforded any protections for my work, so they could be used anywhere, by anyone. Imagine seeing one of your paintings or sketches on the menu of a café that you've never heard of.
I'm all for copyrights being made only 50 years or even less (that gives me enough time to sell the painting), but they should be copyrighted the instant they are created.
BobRoss
There are some sites which show schematics for consoles, computers etc. However, the problem is that these have custom chipsets, yes even the lowly Atari2600 has the Stella chip.
So if you wanted to do a project with these it's nigh impossible, yes some guys have made handheld 2600's, snes etc, but by gutting an old one.
Saving these chips may be equally or more important than saving than software, rom cart dies burn a new one, video chip dies YOU ARE FKED.
Really need a datasheets on their operation etc. so we can FPGA them for propserity, or properly emulate them without failable guesswork.
Remember Atari don't make 2600's anymore! Nor Commodore makes Amigas and C64's, Not forgetting Sega and Nintendo.
My wild guess is that it's not that they don't know it happens. We all do. Copyright law may have been penned as a means to encourage distribution, but we all run 10 times more often into situations where it's effectively used to destroy a work of art, book recording or photo.
The problem is that too convince the Congress, they probably need some damn good examples. With a government that bends over to corporations and invades a country or two to please the oil tycoons, you need to make a _very_ convincing case if you want any hope of them actually taking some corporation's lollypop.
You can't just tell them "Uh, but I can't download Daggerfall, even though Bethesda no longer sells it, nor any of Microprose's games, although Microprose doesn't even exist any more." 90% of them would probably not even consider that to be art or culture. (Even though a movie or printed story with the exact same plot, would get considered as such.)
So you need to give them some really outrageous examples. Not just any obscure book or song, but fundamental pieces of the nation's very culture which are being effectively destroyed by copyright. _That_ might just get the point across.
And for that, well, they need all the help they can get.
[RANT]
The funny thing is to think how wrong communist censorship was in those parts of the world. Instead of trying to outright ban or burn the work of dissidents, they could have just bought the distribution rights and used it to make sure noone is allowed to print or quote that book in the next 95 years. Works like a charm for US corporations, and noone throws a fit about human rights.
It's a funny world where banning a book to protect the ego of a dictator is rightfully reprehensible, but banning it to protect the greed of a corporation is perfectly acceptable and normal. Isnt't it just banning a book in both cases?
[/RANT]
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
his is one reasonwhy Iget 10X the business than other videographers in my area.
Iprint boldly on my quotation... "You own the contents of this DVD 100%. it is your responsibility and your liability... ask everyone else that quoted you if they also release all rights to you."
even when I am 10-20% over the price of the other guys... I get the job because I choose to not be an asshole and steal these people's property by asserting copyright.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.