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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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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
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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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