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High Court Agrees to Hear File-Sharing Dispute
stkpogo pastes: "The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies. Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., which came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works." Grokster won in the lower courts, but the studios are appealing. This case, when finally decided, will be equivalent to the Betamax case 20 years ago which ensured that VCRs were legal.
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
This case is very different from the Universal v. Sony "Betamax" decision, and we're not doing ourselves a favor by constantly comparing the two.
In the Betamax case, the central issue was over whether using the technology of a VCR to timeshift broadcast programs violated the copyright law, and the court said it wasn't a violation. If it was a violation, using a VCR to record TV would be illegal, and Sony and other VCR makers would be making devices that would have a primarily use that was illegal.
In this case, however, there's no question about whether the use of the technology is legal. Using P2P to upload and download copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission is illegal. The question is over liabilty... is Grokster liable because people are using their software for an illegal use, when the software can both be used for legal and illegal files.
What's at stake here isn't the legality of P2P, but a dangerous question for software writers. Are the makers of software liable for what their users do with the software? So far they're not and hopefully it's going to stay that way.
Can the same be said for file sharing? (Just a question, I'm not making a judgement here.)
but are phone companies responsable if you use a phone line to commit a crime? Are car and gun compagnies responsable if you rob a bank with a gun and use a car to get away? It's hard to prove that filesharing networks are solely there to exchange copyrighted materials and nothing else.
The difference is that, while a court ruling might have been able to prohibit the widespread importation and sale of VCRs, stamping out filesharing is (I'll go out on a limb here) impossible. The record companies are wasting a lot of money suing companies for the benefit of, having won, having to contend with the Freenets of the world.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
I live in the home of the free...
This was decided a long time ago in Canada.
To summarize (and over-simplify) It's no different then a Library having a photocopier in a room full of copyrighted books. What people use it for is up to them.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Whenever I have gtk-gnutella running, you'll find them on the gnutella network. They're mine to share, I'm not violating anyone's copyright.
Sometime soon I'm going to share lossless WAVs over bittorrent. I have to fix a problem with one of the tracks first.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
One thing I almost never hear in conjunction with the controversy on the record labels losing money due to decreased CD sales is the fact that the economy began to go downhill at around the same time that the CD sales began to fall. True, this coincidentally was also the time when file sharing became popular, but I should think that the bursting of the economic bubble would have more to do with the losses. CDs are a luxury item, basically, and when people have fewer discretionary dollars (as what happens when the economy goes sour) they quit buying as many luxury items. When the economy is up, people might just go out and buy that new CD even though there's probably only two or three good songs on it. When the economy is down, it has to be a damn good album or a person's favorite artist to get that CD sold. Upscale stores saw hits in 2001 (blamed on the economy), upscale restaurants saw hits in 2001 (blamed on the economy), and record companies saw hits in 2001 (not blamed on the economy). The logic doesn't follow.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--34
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Copying hurts everyone, only just a little.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution. This is no different today than it was in times past.
There was no way to physically control copying of a book 200 years ago. No one really cared whether their copy of a book was from the rightful publisher, unless the spelling were bad or something.
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument. Copyright is not intended merely to pay people for work they've created. It's intended encourage people to produce works in the hopes that they may profit, and to support them while they are producing more.
In the classic example, Daniel Webster supported his family for 20 years on the proceeds from his speller while he compiled his famous dictionary. In publishing a dictionary, he inspired and aided countless writers and publishers. Probably you and I would not be reading /. were it not for those two works; in fact, they were so important to the early American educational system that without them we might not be reading English.
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
sigs, as if you care.
This is the same type of reasonaing that the Bell System used to claim millions in losses in the 911 hacker case. The company used a complicated formula to compute losses on a document that they sold copies of for $14. The court's didn't buy it in the 80's and should buy it now...
In case someone saw "911" in there and thought this had to do with terrorists, the parent poster is referring to the Craig Neidorf case. It actually happened in the early 90s. At the time, Neidorf published an online magazine called Phrack. In one issue, he published a document which described some really boring aspects of Enhanced 911. The company which produced the document included incredible things to up the price of the document. Salaries of employees, entire computer systems, hospital bills for the birth of employees, etc. The total came to somewhere around $80,000.
Thankfully, Neidorf won. Of course, he had a $100,000 bill for lawyer fees at the end of it. Justice is expensive.
The origin of copyright goes back to at least English common law, if not further.
The problem we have is that we have something that is not a physical object - I know it's an unpopular and purely approximate term, but "intellectual property". My point is that "you can't see it, touch it, feel it, etc...", but it is possible to own it. Something that a brain produces via its intellectual capacities or talents, yet there is no physical object to show for it.
That's the very same problem that the "concept" of copyright has been addressing for hundreds of years. The point is that you CAN argue "Nothing is being taken off the shelf". Everyone agrees on that point - it's obvious nothing is being taken off the shelf. It's obvious no physical object is being taken from one person unjustly and given to another. That's what the concept of intellectual property law has been trying to address for the past few hundred years (or longer).
It all revolves around making the not-real real. Pretending that something that does not exist as a physical object is a physical object. Taking something that is purely an invention of the mind and treating it as if it were the labor of one's hands. That's the whole point - it's not that no one understands this, it's that they understand it very well - miles ahead, actually... this is the very problem that copyright is supposed to address (at least in a common law, common sense sort of way). It's not just about encouraging people to create stuff. It goes deeper than that. It's about making intangible objects into tangible objects for the purpose of legislation and addressing injustices. It's always been that way, long before the U.S.A. even existed.
On the other hand, there are other significant problems - you could say, in a way, that the type of music that our society had become filled with prior to the advent of the internet lended itself to what happened to it. The structure of the entertainment conglomerates, the concept of fame and fortune, the drugs, the sex, and the rock and roll... you can't go around pretending that stuff doesn't affect you in some way (just like your parents told you).
The music changed, and evolved into something different, something that can't stand on its own merits and virtues, but needs sex and drugs and fame and fortune to prop it up, like a crutch. If you want people to not file-share, then the music itself should embody that point of view on a deeper, spiritual level. Rock bands don't accept donations from endowments. It's not "about" that. Rather than embrace society, popular music needs to rebel against it, using the fame and the fortune as a vehicle to tell anyone who might disagree to get lost. If popular music teaches you anything, it teaches you that file sharing is good, and that you should do as much of it as possible. It's the best way to empower yourself. It also happens to be the best way to expand your artistic horizons and stop listening to the crap that "they" want to feed you.
It's two things, really. One is that the selection of "legitimate" multimedia is still somewhat limited for lots of people, and it makes it difficult for people to get together in real life and discuss interesting artists, bands, and movies. Electronic "discussions" make this much easier, and trading of files kind of needs to take place for those "discussions" to mean anything. Maybe "forums" is a better word. Any P2P application is really just a way for human beings to get together and share what they think is cool. Sounds like the entertainment conglomerates want this to happen in real life, not electronically - (i.e. have a get together and listen to music and watch DVDs). But this can't happen until the selection gets diverse enough that it makes it interesting enough and worthwhile for everyone involved. And that can't happen because there's no money to be made in such endeavors. The way to make money is to have less choices, more quantity. Everyone watching the same lacking selection of canned, pre-digested bland crap.
It looks like BitTorrent may be next on the list. MPAA spokesman declines to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen. They'd have a harder time proving that BitTorrent is primarily used for copyright infringement though, due to the many legitimate uses.
If I have to pay for my stuff, why should you get it for free?
0 2dltr0023.html. As you can see, everyone who buys blank media pays for piracy in one way or another, regardless of whether they actually do infringe on anyone's copyrights.
You may or may not know this, but there is a "piracy tax" on blank media that you buy which could be used to make copies of copyrighted material. Check out the section labeled "Audio Home Recording Act" near the bottom of this page: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
On another note, you don't have to pay for your stuff. That is simply a choice you make.
Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?
Your assumption is that the "public domain" will be better stewards than the original artists.
Speaking as an artist, I can say that this is very often the case. For example, I write plays. For a while I tried hiring actors and directing them myself, but it was just too damn much for me. I would rather be writing something else than trying to make the play into a physical rendition which is so important to the play's success. Now I give my plays over to a dedicated volunteer group who hire the actors, teach their lines, get a venue, etc. My work is not copyright-managed in any way. I don't ask for royalties, and I get paid scratch - usually a donation from the volunteers - but the plays are a big success.
Strangers walk up to me on opening night and pretend to know me. I now have clout that I didn't have when I was directing plays on my own. I have a reputation, all because my plays are run by people who are really invested in performing them. My plays are, in essence, community-supported works of art.
So why have I given my work away for next to nothing, you may ask? Because in a marketplace for talent, having had successful runs of your show is more important than having made money from them personally. Would I want a bigger cut of the profits if my play were being performed on Broadway? Hell yes I would, although I might not get it. I would worry about it more if I wasn't sure that I can continue to make products of that calibur and better for years to come. I already sold the work once for what I thought it was worth - professional credibility.
And even if no big theater puts on my play, there is still the chance that someday, those same volunteers who did it the first time will find my script (they're already keeping an archive) and remember how great they thought it was, and decide to pass it on to others or even perform it again. That's how literature becomes immortal, if not commercially successful.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
... a little at a time.
The monopoly granted by copyright has its benefits as you so eloquently note. It also has its costs. In particular, because it is a legal monopoly, it encourages 'rent seeking behavior', as existing holders will attempt to extend the range and depth of their monopoly and attempt to exploit it to obtain regular income with no work. A classic example of this is Disney or the Milne family.
Copyright must remain a balance between these two evils.
Personally, I think the current situation with both hugely inflated copyrights and peer-to-peer may be the worst of both worlds. Copyright terms are long and restrictive so that old works cannot be reused, built upon, and reinterpreted in new ways and at the same time P2P filesharing may eventually put a huge dent into copyright revenue. People don't think, socially, p2p is that wrong because they see the insane extent of copyright law.
How about this alternative?
Let the term be, say, 30 years, but with strong enforcement. That means that people who want cheap stuff have a legitimate public domain source. Infringing copyright would become less socially acceptable. Old works that have procurred virtually all of their value (at 30 years) are available to be reinterpreted and built upon.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Clearly The Constitution is at fault. Didn't those people know how to say what they really meant? And I'd always been told they were the smartest people of their time. Now I'm just sooo disappointed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I've actually been writing a law review article on this very topic, so in a way, I'm disappointed, because the court will make anything I say fairly irrelevant. Anyways, my hunch is that the court will most likely side with the software creator on this. As always, Posner wrote a masterful opinion in the Aimster case, deciding against Aimster. What sunk them is the fact that Aimster was way too involved in helping people download copyrighted music, regardless of any legitimate uses. The nail in the coffin was the fact that their website actually posted links to download the most popular songs. It's kind of hard to argue you aren't responsible for your users actions when you're actually helping them do it. Grokster can be distinguished from both Napster and Aimster for this reason. The connection isn't there. The others could say in good faith that they were just providing the software and could stop people from using it illegally. Grokster can. Unless the court decides to make up a new test for looking at this, I don't see how Grokster loses.