Judge: Live Performance Copyright Unconstitutional

swiftstream writes "CNN reports that a federal judge has ruled in favor of the owner of a record store in NYC in a copyright case brought against him for selling recordings of live performances. The judge said the current copyright code on live performances is unconstitutional, because copyrights last forever, in conflict with the 'limited time' requirement of copyright law."

Comments

can you please just TRY?

[Speare]

Can you frickin' editors please just TRY not to post duplicates of stories that are still on your frickin' FRONT PAGE?

Re:can you please just TRY?

[badasscat]

Are you mad because you feel taking the 10 seconds to read an article headline is too much of your precious time?

I'm sure he's "mad" because having nothing but a bunch of duplicate stories right on the front page of a site makes the site a lot less useful. And every story that's a dupe is another story that didn't get posted.

There are a lot of tech news sites and blogs out there - news.com, engadget.com, theregister.com, etc. Some of them overlap the content posted here, but there's generally a lot of info that only gets posted in one place, which makes each of those sites worth visiting on their own. But if one of those sites simply repeats the same story over and over, then it's not really providing you with news at all, which is the main purpose of their existence. I would think this would be of interest to the editors here; posting dupes very simply makes the site less useful and makes visitors less likely to keep visiting.

If you like visiting a site, and you suddenly see it become less useful than it used to be, then the natural human reaction would probably be disappointment and/or irritation. I don't think there's any reason for you to try to belittle those feelings among people who are just trying to get the editors to do a little better job for the good of the site as a whole.

Without belaboring the obvious...

[rco3]

Timothy, you might think about giving up now. That's got to be one of the most pitiful dupes I've ever seen - even on Slashdot.

Tell me again what those subscriptions are supposed to get me?

Re:Without belaboring the obvious...

[Fnkmaster]

Tell me again what those subscriptions are supposed to get me?

The right to see stories before everyone else so you can email the editors and tell them that it's a dupe - only to have your email ignored and see the story posted anyway?

Advice

[Sanity]

Even the most lax sources of information that purport to call themselves "news" exercise sufficient respect for their readers not to report the same thing twice within as many hours.

Slashdot must be making a reasonable amount of money out of its subscribers and advertising, perhaps a small fraction of that could be spent on vetting what is posted on the front page?

(And before I am dismissed as someone who should be dismissed, take a look at my /. id - which is lower than most, not to mention the fact that I have been interviewed on this site. /. is a great site, and so its popular, but it won't stay popular if the editors don't demonstrate more respect for their readership).

Re:Advice

[quantaman]

Slashdot must be making a reasonable amount of money out of its subscribers and advertising, perhaps a small fraction of that could be spent on vetting what is posted on the front page?

I have to say I considered subscribing a couple times but then just took a look not just at the rampants dupes but even worse the massive factual errors that show up so often in the summary that even a cursory glance through the article would reveal. How many times I've read about a company doing some great evil in the summary only to find they've done nothing of the sort in the article, or about some event described as something completely different. Almost all of these errors could be caught with 3 min of research, it's gotten to the point where I don't even pay attention to the summary or even the title other then to see if it's something that might be interesting, it's the article and comments that I use for info.

Re:re-posted article

[Fnkmaster]

Has anybody ever actually had the supposed editor-on-duty respond when they pointed out it was a dupe? Not saying it never happens, but the couple of times I tried to let them know (before I let my subscription lapse), it didn't do anything, and I always hear other people complaining about having the same experience.

Re:It's interesting to note what gets duplicated

[sv0f]

Yet if I want to do the same thing with marijuana I'm the criminal?
Yes, you are. That's the law. You can't sell marijuana. [...]

For the record, selling bootlegs is wrong
And so is everything the RIAA does.
No, thats provably false. The RIAA is validated by the massess. The music industry sells millions of records and is rather profitable. Logically that means something they are doing is filling a marketable demand.

Drug Dealer: I am validated by the masses. I sell lots of drugs and am rather profitable. Logically that means that something I am doing is filling a marketable demand.

(I think you should forget about "marketable demand" and simply say the RIAA's practices are allowed by the law.)

Re:It's interesting to note what gets duplicated

[mabhatter654]

but this guy has a "copyright" on that particular performance...

That's the real trouble with where the copyright laws have gone. Each "performance" is technically a different performance so his "copy" is unique from any others...should even have it's own protections!!!

More than that it's a perfect case to show the hillarity of the system... The idea of letting ANYTHING out of your mouth or pen be copyrighted is perposterous...especially for 150+ years!! The original intent was to have the works submitted to the Library of Congress for posterity... not to have every private letter supressed. If you look at the largest corperate push for protections, it's now "live" events, databases, and "pre recorded" software... these people don't ever plan on releasing the actual scripts, information, or source code to the "library" for posterity to enjoy ...it's just a form of corperate welfare.

on the flip side, we can't just eliminate the 1976 changes becase GNU DEPENDS on them. Otherwise getting offical copyrights for OSS would be prohibitvily time-consuming and expensive.