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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."
are in a boat, Pete jumps out, who's left?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The other one is still on the front page, no less.
Douglas P. Price
Don't be mad. This is just a bootleg of the previous post.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Eh. Saw this in the subscriber's preview and even mailed the editor about it -- but seems like it doesn't matter.
Wonder why they bother saying, "see any problems with this story? mail our on-duty editor.."
Duh.
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?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
In this case, it seems to be an anti-copyright story -- but in this case, we have a store that is making money by selling copies of music, and giving the musicians nothing in return.
The vibe here tends to be anti-copyright, but is it so anti-copyright that we even think it's ok for a store to make a profit off musicians that never get paid?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Maybe I'm too old, but I thought this was going to be an article about alcohol
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A sensible ruling on copyright terms?
Dear Mr. Bainwol,
I apologize for the unpleasant news you are probably reading this morning. We thought we had this one in the bag, but the opposing side actually made better use of solid facts and accurate analysis than we anticipated. I estimate more obfuscation will be needed to win on appeal. We will do our best though.
Sincerely yours,
Your Well Paid Lobbyist
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From the article:
"It stands in marked contrast to existing law and prior decisions that have determined that Congress was well within its constitutional authority to adopt legislation that prevented trafficking in copies of unauthorised performances of live music," spokesman Jonathan Lamy said.
So the performances were illegal?
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Oh, great...a federal judge declaring a 10-year-old anti-bootlegging law unconstitutional
Well, this is certainly great for all those 10-year-old bootleggers out there.
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Note: Upon request, I can also provide highly informative and insightful posts, provided that you have an extrememly short-term memory
Alarm clock goes off.
Babe.
I got you babe.
porp
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).
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.
That's a beautiful concept that I'd love to hear from the Supreme Court of the U.S., but it's actually one that SCotUS has already turned down in Eldred v. Ashcroft, saying that the Sonny Bono Copyright Extention Act was constitutional because 75 years is less than infinity, and you can't prove that they're going to jack it up to higher 20 years from now because that's in the mysterious future.
Damn, you haven't read ANYTHING about this have you.
First off this case is about a totally seperate law than the Elred vs Ashcroft case.
Second, this law says that it is illegal to sell bootleg recordings FOREVER.
That's right, forever.
Not 75 years. Not 750 years. Forever.
That's what the law says. I have a tough time seeing how prohibiting the distribution of a copyrighted work forever does anything but really obviously run counter to the "limited time" provision set out in the constitution.
I'm sure that the RIAA is going to try to get this overturned, but they're going to have a much tougher time of it than you let on. It would probably be much easier for them to get a new law passed that only makes the sale of bootleg recording illegal for 999,999,999 years. At least then they could argue that the new law wasn't technically providing infinate copyright.
And now for the really cool part which no one else has brought up (that I have noticed).
This sets a great precedent for striking down the DMCA:
By prohibing the circumvention of copy-protection devices, even after copyright has expired, the DMCA is effectively establishing an infinate copyright (there is no legal way to distribute works in the public domain).
Life is too short to proofread.
The judge did NOT say "copyright law illegal" he said a law prohibiting the sale of live recorded works - bottlegs - recordings that technically HAVE no "real" copyright because they were not registered by the record companies that may have the artists under contract.
Somehow, in the last three hours, this has turned into "copyright law illegal." Maybe Timothy is taking journalism lessons from Dan "I'd Rather I hadn't done that."
And BTW, copyright law was never intended for that use you so obtusely outlined. If you keep a journal and drop dead, and I find it long after your death and decide to publish it, your estate is still going to have to rely on copyright law to prevent me from doing so... and if it's past the enforcement term, you're SOL. You may never have wanted your diary published, you may have said some incriminating things that would hurt your descendants - tough.
Same goes for live recordings. Until those ridiculous rulings in the paranoid 80s when the press was finding pedophiles in every daycare center, this even applied to stuff like child porn - essentially anything that has been recorded, published or otherwise (thanks to that other ruling that said "it's covered from the second you create it, no registration needed") is protected by copyright law. That means, once copyright has expired, your estate is gonna have to come up with something else to prevent publication of that diary I found.
Post it twice, shame on you. Read it twice, shame on me!