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Kahle v Ashcroft Appeal Filed
An anonymous reader writes "Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive has announced that the appeal of Kahle vs. Ashcroft has been filed.
Here is the appeal.
Kahle vs. Ashcroft concerns the constitutionality of changing from an opt-in copyright system (which existed for almost 200 years in the US) to the current opt-out system, where every doodle on a piece of paper is copyrighted for 95 years. Yes, they used the word doodle in their appeal.
Previous stories here, here, and here."
But I thought it was 70 years after the death of the author (as opposed to the cited 95) or is that just for literature?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Not to troll, but I noticed that this link had something to do with http://www.archive.org.. If you haven't been to this page before, you must go! It has been around for several years, and has some pretty kick ass archives of the internet.. yes.. the internet. You can get a look at snapshots of sites differet points in time. A must see.. I like looking at tech sales sites and lookin at the crazy prices :)
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The change brought us in line with copyright laws from Europe. Personally I'd rather have the moral rights clauses instead of an opt-out system.
Yes, the power was granted to Congress by the Constitution, but only "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts", if my memory serves correctly. The argument would be that Congress has gone beyond the scope of the powers granted to it. I won't make an entire defense of their claim -- but you should read the actual filing linked to in the article itself, especially the Introduction section, which is (surprisingly) understandable and in plain English.
It looks to me like this case builds a lot on the Supreme Court's reasonings in Eldred v. Ashcroft, so just because the previous case was lost doesn't mean that this one is automatically doomed.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Your comment was fucking hilarious. Mind if I use it as a springboard to make a point?
Copyright --which, just so we're all on the same page, is the legal recognition of natural property rights --does not prohibit quotation. To the contrary, the law specifically states that quoting a work for the purposes of commenting on it is not a violation of the work's creator's property rights.
That seems to be a point on which ever so many people have been misled. I figure it couldn't hurt to be explicitly clear about it.
Close, but no cigar. Art. 1, section 8: "The Congress shall have 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."
That clause gives Congress the power to legislate patents and copyrights, but it is limited by the phrases "to promote the progess of science and useful arts" and "for limited times." Therefore a copyright act that does more than that is unconstitutional, and congress does not have power to act unconstitutionally.
As I understand it, their argument on appeal are that the continuous extensions of the period of copyright protection violate the limited times clause, and - separately - that the current system impinges on First Amendment free speech.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
No, you're confusing two different terms. Without getting into the specific details, if a work is created by an author normally, it lasts for their life + 70 years. But if it is a work for hire, it lasts for the shorter of 120 years from creation or 95 years from first publication.
This used to be a lot easier: upon first publication of the work, there was no copyright unless one had been specifically registered. Then the term was a flat period of time for everyone, and shorter than the current term lengths too.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You have forgotten about fair use.
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Yes, that's exactly right. For instance, if you were to produce a podcast where you review new music, and as part of that effort you were to include snippets of songs followed by your opinion of the album, that would be totally, 100%, hands-down, no-question legal.
However, if you were to reproduce whole songs, or to do so with not particular intention of commenting or offering criticism, that would probably not be legal.
It was broken in the sense that it was incompatible with the law of pretty much every other country in the world. The change was done to make US law compatible with the Berne Convention, so the US could join.
I think what he means is that copyright is not nessecarily a natural right, and not exactly a property right either. Some fringe legal scholars and armchair theorists say that property rights give owners the right to "exclude people," and that the theft of property denies the owner use of his property while an infringer of copyright need not diminsh the intrinsic value of the work. One such thinker includes Jefferson, while describing the majesty of knowledge, drawing an analogy to fire and candles; that by lighting the candle of anothers with your own flame, your own is not diminished.
Furthermore, one might suppose that copyright isn't a natural right at all! Man lived for several hundred years (likely much more) without a notion of copyright. In fact, in the past people were often given entirely to the profession of copying another's works verbatim. They were not called "pirates" but rather "scribes," who's efforts protected what they saw as valuable knowledge. You could also recall that copyright was originally a device to silence critics of the British throne, now perverted by the bookmakers for their profits and embraced by their contemporaries for the same.
Does an author have exclusive domain over his own works, and the right to make derivative works? If so, this flies in the face of hundreds of years of human endevors building upon one another. Musicians will tell you that it is quite rare to create a truly original piece. We say that it is frequent that we quote one another, without attribution. We steal ideas and concepts and bring in new ones. Certainly, Beowulf was not the work of a single man (in fact it is widely speculated that one of the aforementioned scribes did a quite a number on it), yet there is no wide damnation in any field concerning permission of these people. Furthermore, if copyright is a natural law of property, why do they expire? Certainly you must admit that eventual copyright expiration is in the public's interest!
Copyright isn't a "legal fiction" but it does make a bargin with the creators in the world; give temporary control over your work in exchange for sharing it with the world. When so many (napster-heads, fan fiction authors, warez distributers, cover bands, photoshoppers, etc) refuse implicitly recognize the legal authority of a law, one has to question its status as "natural law."
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Could someone please mod the parent down since it's simply incorrect, uninformed or deliberately wrong propagandistic bullshit.
The traditional contours of copyright have been warped in a much worse way than the opt-in/opt-out division. Until the 20th century, the only way to infringe copyright was by unauthorized publication of a copyrighted work. Making a private, personal copy of something only became an infringement under the 1909 copyright act revision. If we went back to the traditional contours, all the MPAA bullshit lawsuits would have to go away at once.
However, there is no way that Kahle could seriously litigate the above. He instead goes after opt-in/opt-out, but will get nowhere, because the same media conglomerates who stopped Eldred will stop this. They do not want a public domain to exist. They opposed the Eldred bill which tried to get abandoned works back for the public domain, by requiring a copyright renewal with a fee of one dollar after 56 years! Lessig explains:
The Kahle lawsuit is an interesting intellectual exercise, but we need to treat this as a war, not a parlor game. We need better tactics to raise real political awareness, rather than filing these silly lawsuits without having the awareness wide enough.Bullshit. Copyright law is the legal creation of monopoly rights for ideas. It is entirely an artificial construct. Under copyright law, ideas indeed are property -- but that doesn't make them natural property. And how could they be? With real property, only one person can possess it at any given time. The idea that I can say "this is mine" stems from the fact that if I'm holding it, you physically can't be. Ideas aren't like that -- it's not possible for me to give you an idea without keeping it for myself at the same time, and I don't lose anything by doing so. How can something be called "property" if you can give it away without losing it?! Here's further justification of that, in the form of a quote:
"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." Wow, what a great line! Wanna guess who said that? It was Thomas Jefferson! And who better to define copyright than the guy who wrote the Constitution in the first place?
Speaking of Jefferson, he didn't want legal monopolies (i.e., "intellectual property") in the Constitution at all:
James Madison had to persuade him to put them in:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Trivial examples would include Barrie's "Peter Pan," under perpetual copyright in the UK for the benefit of a children's hospital. Agatha Christie made a gift of the royalties from "The Mousetrap" to her grandson in 1952, the play, still a favorite of amatuer and professional companies worldwide, has been worth millions. It isn't simply a question of what a professional may produce in old age, but what an artist in her prime must do to insure her retirement, plan her estate.
In practice, this is the way it works out. "Fair use" certainly includes artistic, creative works that cite originals. If I did it in a book nobody would question it. If I do it in a song, no record company in their right mind would publish it without permission (and usually big $$ fees). And, given the current state of laws (and more importantly of their interpretation by lawyers, many of them paid by record companies), they would be right to make this decision -- why take the risk? Common practice in the music industry is to clear samples and pay for them, no matter how "derivative" or not the final product is in relation to the sample.
It depends on your reason for quoting. It it's criticism or comment or parody or something along those lines, you're mistaken. But if you're just "sampling" in order to create your own work, no, that's not allowed. That's stealing.
That's crap. I can quote in a book from various sources whether or not I am "criticizing," "commenting" or "parodying" those sources. True, the above mentioned activities are considered important free speech activities (and thus specifically mentioned in copyright cases as fair use), but who is to say that a guitar riff used to make a new song is not in some way a comment on the original? And why should such a riff be treated any differently than a quote from a newspaper, for example, used in a poem or in another article or whatever? My problem is not with the reasons for fair use but with the fact that copyright laws *in practice* treat music (and video) differently than they do text, yet they refuse to acknowledge this double standard. I hate to use this corny phrase but a paradigm shift is necessary in the world of copyright law.
Of course! It impeded corporations' God-given right to squeeze every last dollar out of citizens/customers/consumers!
You forgot "cattle". Anyway, on this I think they're in the wrong. Works being copyrighted by default is better for the little guy (to big companies with a lawyer registering copyright is a no-brainer). The problem with copyright law is the duration, which is far too long.
Copyright was (at least in the US) created to promote the progress of science and art. Back then, it seemed they remembered this even older proverb:
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
(16th Century proverb.)
What necessity is that? The necessity of copyright expiring, the need to create something new in order to profit by it. That promotes the science and arts.
Yes, lengthening copyright promotes business. But there are countless ways the government could make the conditions better for the business, while still forcing them to renew themselves.
Copyright should not extend longer than it is reasonable to expect profit from it at the time of the initial release. When Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, was he expecting profits today? Was Tolkien when he wrote Lord of the Rings? Did Beatles when they released their first hit?
They didn't. They expected profits the next year, maybe the next 20-30 years. But if you're a healthy young man, copyright can easily last (20 now, 100 at death + 70) 150 years. That I can live in retirement and my heirs can profit of it helps business, but not the science and arts.
After say 30 years, I should have to renew myself, or to let others take my work and build upon it. Either way it promotes science and art. Again my motivation will be at most 20-30 years ahead, not 120 (to go). And again 30 years later, when there's 90 to go. And 30 years after that, with 60 go to, I've been dead for 10 years. How does a monopoly to a dead man promote the science and arts?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Quoting" a beat from a song is more complex. There are rights which the songwriter has, and there are rights that the performer of the song has. Generally, record companies own copyright to artist's performances, but songwriters own the right to their songs.
Not to defend media barons from being anal about letting you quote parts of their output or anything.
Sorry for being long winded, but to sum up my argument:
It is the responsibility of the content poster to understand the nature of the medium hesh is posting too. In the case of the internet, it unreasonable to post content and expect exclusive control when even the simplest measures are not taken to protect it.
Internet Archives will continue to thrive.