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New IP Treaty Looming?
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article by James Boyle in the Financial Times, the United States is helping push a Treaty that would create an entirely new type of intellectual property right in the US, in addition to copyright, covering anything that is broadcast or webcast. (Regardless of whether the work was in the public domain, Creative Commons Licensed etc, the broadcaster would control any copies made from the broadcast for 50 years.) Boyle argues that this is dumb, unconstitutional, and anyway should be debated domestically first."
Touche.
Boyle argues that this is dumb, unconstitutional, and anyway should be debated domestically first."
Having debates on U.S. Policy is sooo pre-2001. Try again in January 2009...
Our country is run by lawyers. No where is this more obvious than when seeing the lawmaking process. Greased palms, closed door deals.
I have a solution, however. The problem is there are too many lawyers. They have no natural predator, as it were. I propose,then, a lawyer hunting season. Say, from Sept to March. Trophies are based on bank account size.
Of course, mounting your kill is perfectly acceptable.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Copyleft content can only be distributed under it's copyleft license. If someone wants to change the license terms then the redistribution license is void and the copyright owner can seek civil remedies for infringement. With regard to copyleft content, these bills are stillborn!
The guy who owns the server, the guy who paid for an account on the server, or the ISP the server colos at or is connected to?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
What if only Fox or CBS has the footage of a particular public event? Do we let the broadcaster eviscerate the ideas of fair use, prohibiting other networks from showing fragments so as to comment on the events, or criticise the original coverage? The proposed treaty text allows for fair use-like exceptions but does not require them. Once again, we harmonise upward property rights for powerful commercial entities, but leave to individual states the discretion whether and how to frame of the equally crucial public interest exceptions to those rights. Increased property rights for broadcasters are required. The public interest in education, access, and free speech is optional. (Among other things, most of the recent drafts would outlaw home recording of TV and radio unless a special exception was put into the law, state by state.)
... that will more than likely pass simply because of the big company backing ... of course it would be almost impossible to enforce at the individual level ... nobody has the resources to check such things as recording tv or radio programs on your home pc, tape deck, etc.
Well written article. This sounds like a poor idea
the United States is helping push a Treaty that would create an entirely new type of intellectual property right in the US
The summary is a bit misleading. Yes, the US is pushing for this new IP concept, but it's through WIPO, so it's not intended solely for the US.
It is our policy to push our ideas on as many nations as possible.
It helps distract from the fact that the people of our country have no say of their own...
(end of post)
You see, the US and Micrisofts and Hollywoods "vision" of the future is that instead of providing goods and services to pay off the huge US debts, they provide IP. While it's an interesting trade off: phoney property for printed up paper money, the problem is that for people to live day to day they need real goods and services. The problem is also that the information age implies just the opposite, information is becomming commoditized which means that it's service value is becoming worth more than it's IP value. Not to mention, that the information age is also making it impossible for the Fed to lie to people about the value of their money. Mees thinks all hell is about to break loose when the real world kicks in and ripps these people a new one.
I'm always skeptical about anything that puts webcasting and broadcasting in the same boat.
Yes, superficially they appear very similar. A single originating source distributing to the masses. But there the similarities stop.
With broadcasting there are certain physical limitations to take into account - for instance, if I want 100 people to hear/see my broadcast I need a signal of a certain power and frequency. If I want 1000 people to be able to hear it I must increase the broadcast power and I may need to change frequencies (depending upon what certain areas of the spectrum are defined for). Now, if I pay for 1000 people to listen to me, but only 1 actually tunes in the radio - it doesn't matter: I'm still paying the same amount for if 10,000 or 1 person hears me. I need to keep pumping the signal strength.
With webcasting I only pay bandwidth based upon how many users are actively connected to me. Furthermore - by using p2p technologies I can emmensely leverage the bandwith problem. Suddenly the differential between reaching one listener and reaching 10,000 is greatly altered in webcasting from that of broadcasting.
Webcasting and broadcasting are essentially two different entities.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
...Piratbyrån's opinion will be taken into account.
Its all for greed.... If the they make money off of it they want it... They don't care about our rights... They only care whats going into their pockets.... If they could they would charge you for how many times you go to the bathroom.....
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
The theory is that both copyright and treaty-making are in the constitution. The RIAA and the MPAA are whispering in the ears of congress, "If you pass a law giving us new rights, it can be constitutionally challenged and we lose, but if you make it part of a treaty, then we can contend that overturning the new treaty is just as unconstitutional as granting us a new right. We can contend that the Supreme Court does not have the power to overturn a treaty."
Ka-ching!
I don't want to be too off-topic or political here, so if I am, I apologize, but I have a few honest & serious questions.
Most people I know agree that copyright is messed up, and this proposal just makes the situation even more complicated.
From TFA: "rights have to be of limited duration". So, why is it that as a nation, we have not had any noticeable impact on the situation in our country? Do we really want to have copyright limited to a fixed duration again? Do we really want to have more freedom in obtaining, sharing, distributing content and ideas? Then why isn't that happening on a larger scale?
Things such as the GPL, Creative Commons type of licensing, etc. seem like a step in the right direction, but clearly even they have limitations. Why can't the public seem to get amendments that seem to work more in its favor (instead of in the favor of organizations, companies, etc.) on the table and then signed into law? Reasons other than capitalism, I mean...
SixD
Since Boyle first wrote about this last September, I was wondering what others had to say about it. Here's a blog entry from Lawrence Lessig. Not too much written there, but it led me to an EFF page and CPTech action page.
every one of them. content CREATORS own the content. content LESSORS HAVE RIGHTS.
unless you're out to outlaw rights, and this is the start of it.....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
anything that is broadcast or webcast
:o)
Er... What if I speak about it ? Will I be covered. ? I mean could I sue anyone repeating what I said ?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Firstly: I am not a constitutional scholar. In fact, although I have read parts, I have not attempted any in-depth study of the US constitution.
I have wondered about treates such as the one discussed in the article. The President and Senate can make treaties. According to the constitution, such treaties "become the law", which implies that the President and Senate, acting together can override the consitution without the normal approval process required for changes to the constitution?
Did I miss something? What if the US signed a treaty with China that each government agreed that criticising the actions of either of the 2 governments would be banned? Goodbye first amendment. Where in the constitution is such a treaty not allowed or limited?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The U.S. Constitution explicitly grants copyright power to Congress, but it doesn't deny further IP legislation, and in fact says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. That is, unless something in the treaty is explicitly banned by the Constitution, any powers any treaties give to Congress are valid. See STATE OF MISSOURI v. HOLLAND, 252 U.S. 416 (1920).
The government is just getting stupid now. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL THE INTERNET!
I misread your comment (i skim) to something liek the following
what we need is a system for evaluating lawyers similar to myspace. the lawyers take scene photos in their bathrrom mirror, hiding behind their fringes, making cpu-intensive profiles. you stalk the hottest ones (you secretly think emos are *cute*) and leave them creepy messages. you join groups toa lign yourself with specific policies. the lawyers with the most friends win.
The guy who owns the server, the guy who paid for an account on the server, or the ISP the server colos at or is connected to?
The one with the most money to spend on lawyers.
In related news, FedEx & UPS join forces to get the FedUPS Act of 2006 passed that would give transportation companies intellectual claim to every copyrighted material they transport.
Seriously, why should FedEx or UPS lay claim on a book they transport? Why is a (TV) broadcaster any more special because they transmit a signal? Cuz they put there little logo in the bottom right? Or because they do all kinds of fancy pop-outs that advertise other shows?
Neither FedEx nor a broadcaster do anything original, why do they get protection from Big Brother?
:wq
Are you kidding me?! Take some free content and repackage it and suddenly it gets a copyright? There's GOT to be a way I can use this... I've got it!
I'm going to repackage "The King James Version" and other versions of "The Bible" and then sue every church that attempts to teach from it.
Maybe this is the **AA solution to the massive failure of the current stategy?
With regard to FOSS/GPL/CC offerings, will this make the proprietors of the infrastructure (telcos) owners of the information being transmitted, trumping the rights of the original copyright holders?
# ~: no sigs today
"dumb, unconstitutional, and anyway should be debated domestically first"
AND WE'RE DOING IT ANYWAY. That's the New American Way, in the New American Century. Four more years!
--
make install -not war
Gah you can't make something that is public domain and make it not public domain in terms of distribution.
My head asploded.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Pirate steals stream, hosts it over P2P (and if it's on there, he doesn't care about intellectual property), millions of other people host it and suddenly everyone's an Intellectual Property holder! How can this be a bad thing? (Yeah, sort of naïve to beleive that, but it's worth a shot . . .)
There are plenty of captains of industry that have no more respect for rule of law and a properly functioning competitive capitalist economy than the bandana-wearing anarchist at your local Move-On rally. The key, since we the people ultimately make the hiring and firing decisions in the legislature, is for us to work to keep some people's grubby hands off of the controls of the "do it or I'll shoot you" machinery. The problem we encounter is that we can hardly agree whose hands are grubby and whose are pure.
I propose we limit the powers of the national government to a very limited list of roles we can all agree on, and leave all other powers to the states or the people themselves. (We used to call this "The Constitution") This includes limiting the power of the judiciary to invent new, controversial federal powers by "interpreting" the "living Constitution", and chucking those earmarking career politicians out of office. And yes, that means voting out the likes of Robert Byrd if you're a West Virginian even though he does "so much good" for your particular state. (Read: "he takes everyone elses money and funnels it to us"). Ask yourself: Why do politicians start their careers rich and end them spectacularly, obscenely wealthy? Politicians should not be allowed to make *any* income other than their salary. And that salary should be equal to the national average. Eliminate the lucrative career path.
So how long before I can license my work CC-BY-YOU-CAN'T-BROADCAST-THIS-IN-THE-US-3.0?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
If there's anything I've learned is to not trust a one-sided argument. I'd like to see a link to the proposed treaty before I believe the author of the article. Nowhere in his article does he post a link to the actual treaty, so I can consult the language for myself and see if they're indeed saying that. Remember, everyone has an agenda, news is subjective.
ComeAcross -- You never know what you'll find.
It seems that whoever is first to broadcast a copyrighted work is granted a right, independently of the copyright holder, to enjoin redistribution of that work. In other words, the broadcaster gets right of first refusal for any material they were ever first to broadcast.
It's not at all clear why they got this right in the first place (incentive to broadcast material they didn't produce themselves?), but today it's largely seen as highly anachronistic, and often described in derisive terms.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Dear US Government,
Get stuffed.
Yours sincerely,
The Rest of the World.
I have no problem with the US introducing stupid laws in their own country. But why on earth does this need to be pushed into the WIPO? Surely there are more important things to be worrying about than yet more rules to line the pockets of big business?
I download all that stuff for free. And If that is wrong I'll move to Sweden.
Everything I like to do has been continuously threatened by assholes so that moving and paying taxes somewhere else has really become a good idea.
I don't think staying in a country that sucks and demonstrate against it's goverment makes sence anymore since demonstrations are not soo TV anymore.
When you see a video crew doing vox-pops in the street, that young thing with the clipboard is obtaining permissions to use the interviews.
Is this just broadcasters trying to save on paper work?
U.S. people have been passive in the wake of corporate attack against their freedom for over a long time now. And the attack progresses day by day. Now what is it gonna be next ?
Read radical news here
Quit spoiling the rantings of the slashbots with facts and reasoned discussion.
Protecting the rights to the broadcast as a whole I like.
Believe it or not, there can be a great deal of creativity in how you present a broadcast of material copyrighted by others. This should be protected as a performance.
That said, if you copy a DJ set for instance, and cut it up into individual tracks, those individual tracks should not be covered by this "broadcast copyright", as they are divorced from the context that the broadcaster put them in, and copyright should go to the recorders/performers of the individual tracks.
With the DMCA and the broadcast flag it will be illegal to save a copy. So even after the broadcast rights expires in 50 years, copies will still be unavailable thus making copyrights perpetual constitutional or not. Just broadcast again in 49 years to get another renewal. If someone proves it's identical they must have violated the DMCA.
1) I refuse to RTFA
2) What if I don't WANT to be part of this?
3) Do they realise that porn thumbnail images and MySpace profile entries will become intellectual property?
4) Please join me in welcoming our new [un]Intellectual Property Pimpin Overlords.
Telecommunications and digital electronics have demonstrated that bits of information do not behave like physical object, which are subject to property laws because they are naturally scarce. Why, then, are we trying to make information even more into property?
This is the dialog which the powers-that-be do not wish to enter into. There was no opposition to the original Berne Convention (can I hear a "Fuck you, Victor Hugo"?), nor could there have been. But some of us believe that we now know better. They will fail to acknowledge any discussion, because businesses built on idea-as-property, having grown very large and influential with nearly all politicians, have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Of course, this is all talk right now, because there is no opportunity for demonstration, thanks to these treaties.
...over my dead body!
If I wrote, performed and recorded the material, then *I alone* (or in partnership with other musicians who contributed to these works) get to decide how the material is to be licensed. If I release something under a creative commons license (as I have), then it is free (as in "speech") for others to use, *PERIOD*.
While I might be willing to sign over rights to my creative works to a publisher so that my works can be distributed, there's no way I would be willing to sign a contract that assigns the rights to my creative works to the broadcaster.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
...insofar as broadcasts deserve protection -- that is, to the extent that they include original creative work, even if they are derivative works -- they creator of the broadcast already is protected by copyright; as is the original underlying work. There is no use for "broadcast property" except to protect broadcasts that are of material that is not subject to copyright in the first place -- which is very little (since just putting together a broadcast usually creates an original work of authorship), except material already in the public domain.
So what is the "Authority of the United States" that the Constitution's linchpin clause refers to? I'd argue that the "Authority of the United States" refers to Title I, section 8, as amended. Treaties would largely fall under the regulation of foreign Commerce.
This new monopoly on certain uses of intellectual works would benefit the public domain how? Oh sorry companies, didn't you know that the point of copyright was to enrich the intellectual works we, the public, could use however we damn well please?
Companies: Didn't you get the memo? There was a change a while back where the point of the US changed to benefiting us in any way possible.
I welcome the day these fuckers get canned.
we need to buy a tv station together, then we show the complete earth... then earth belongs to us!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I have no idea how you could have a genuinely open, fair, multi-party system. It would presumably need to borrow some ideas from proportional representation, as that seems to be the only method of reliably getting multiple parties into politics. Italy, however, shows the risks of the opposite extreme - having too many parties. There, the former Prime Minister is actively working to bring down the current Government in an effort to pull off a coup and seize power. There very nearly wasn't a current Government, as he'd refused to step down even after losing the election.
My best guess at this time would be for the top two or three candidates to represent the constituancy in direct proportion to the percent of vote they received. So, a person getting 50% of the vote would have 50% of the voting block. This avoids the whole problem of what to do in a tie, as you'd simply have more than one person with the same voting strength.
I also think that the system needs a third, unelected house, where members are selected from the jury pool and who can place bills on trial, as per any other trial. The idea would be to have a group of anonymous people that lobbyists could not identify to corrupt, and who would retain any influence for such a short time that power itself could not corrupt them.
What I do not know is how you could implement either of these ideas within the framework of the US Constitution, or how they could be adapted to fit within the expectations of having a clear line of responsibility, or how they could be debugged on the basis of how political systems actually work in practice.
I guess that information, if anyone did have it, would be covered by this new IP treaty and could not, therefore, be divulged except at a great price.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Does anyone know of an idiot lawmaker blacklist? If none exists, I propose starting one.
It should have convenient features like queries by bill, by category (IP issues, Privacy issues), by supported judges and judgements, etc.
Most importantly, it should be able to narrow down the canidates on your electoral balot to only those whom have not signed on with idiotic bills and then email your phone or make a nice printable page that you can bring with you to the polling place.
Accountability is nothing if the average voter can't remember which way his/her representatives actually voted in the past. Making an easy accesspoint for the average voter to filter through canidates by actual vote history (not proposed platform) would be an incredible asset to the republic.
In the words of Lewis Black, "The Republicans are a party of bad ideas and the Democrats are a party of no ideas". We need a way to get past the party affiliations and get pick canidates as individuals. If nothing more, this would make sure elected officials don't pull the high incumbent retainment rates they are are used to.
I would rather my elected officials vote "no" for every bad bill than to vote "yes" for any bill he/she did not whole-heartedly support. Then again, I am still an idealist.
"If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates." - Jay Leno
I actually am a constitutional scholar. I won't comment on whether the treaty is necessary or a good idea (actually I will: leges sine moribus vanae), but the "Supremacy Clause" of Article VI, Section 1, Clause 2 included treaties as part of the "supreme law of the land," with the understanding that they just can't conflict with the Constitution. And this propspective treaty wouldn't- Congress has authority to create copyright and patent legislation under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.
Now granted, the Article I power belongs to Congress, and treaties are made by the President and only one house of the Congress, but the President's ability to make treaties (and thus the federal government's ability to make treaties, because only the executive branch has the power to make the agreement in the first place) would be meaningless if there wasn't some overlap with the broader legislative domain of the Congress. Think about it- the US is already a party to scads of treaties in the commerce and economic areas (which are traditionally in Congress' domain). Including treaties governing copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc.
I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
"Among other things, most of the recent drafts would outlaw home recording of TV and radio unless a special exception was put into the law, state by state."
That would seem to put most TiVos out of business, unless they partner with a broadcaster.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
However, the prohibition against abridgment of free speech is a negative provision of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has ruled in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003) that fair use and the uncopyrightability of ideas are sufficient and likely necessary to ensure that copyright does not abridge free speech. Any treaty that creates copyright-like rights over speech will be subject to the same scrutiny.
I think I've managed to find a draft copy of the treaty proposal (the article was rather light on information in that regard):
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/
I decided to quickly grep through the document for copyright, and I came cross this:
Article 1
Relation to Other Conventions and Treaties
(1) Nothing in this Treaty shall derogate from existing obligations that Contracting Parties
have to each other under any international, regional or bilateral treaties addressing copyright
or related rights.
(2) Protection granted under this Treaty shall leave intact and shall in no way affect the
protection of copyright or related rights in program material incorporated in broadcasts.
Consequently, no provision of this Treaty may be interpreted as prejudicing such protection.
(3) This Treaty shall not have any connection with, nor shall it prejudice any rights and
obligations under, any other treaties.
Taking a leap of faith here, isn't Copyright embodied within the WCT and Berne Convention (I've only done a few moments' research on this, so I may have that wrong)?
Therefore, this new "Broadcast Orgnisation Protection Treaty" might not actually cause the creative-commons-but-wait-oh-shit nightmare scenario in TFA.
IANAL, of course, so perhaps the interaction between this and the Copyright treaty is more sinister than it seems above.
Thoughts?
You want to mount him, huh?
American elected officials take an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution which virtually none of them do and for which they pay no penalty. American citizens who value the Constitution can and should practice civil disobedience as concerns this law should it go into effect. Gotta start somewhere.
this is just an attempt to overturn fair use of broadcast data. Satelite and cable providers need to get their feet on edge, and fight this law tooth and nail, because in the end they're the ones who are going to be stuck paying the bill, while everyone else looses some fair use rights.
:)
Copyright laws are already insane, like we need any more? and what's with the 50 years, the returns on older programming is quite limited, as the price has to be set low to attract interest in the product. TV Studios could find a lot of better ways to make money
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Can someone tell me what powers this is intended to give that arent already present in copyright law as it stands?
I imagine there will be a new Creative Commons clause, stating that a work may only be broadcast if the broadcaster relinquishes these new broadcasting "rights" to the material, and similar clauses may start finding their way into traditional broadcast contracts as well; why should some broadcast company have any rights to my creation? Remember, if the material is under copyright, the broadcaster cannot claim these rights unless I allow them to broadcast in the first place.
As for public domain matter, the law as described here only applies to the particular broadcast, so it could be countered by an effort to create a large public domain broadcast library of public domain works, so that people can bypass these new protected broadcasts.
Problematic would be if web hosting outfits (or ISP providers) could twist this law somehow to give THEM rights to any material you put on the web; that's probably highly doubtful but I can't rule anything out anymore.
This should hold true for all copyleft content, including CC "share and share alike" (or whatever the
This reminds me of when I directed a college madrigal group. Most of the music we performed was from the Renaissance (and so very public domain), and yet the publishers of said music claimed copyright on the printings of it, maybe because of a few editorial choices here or there. It seemed at the time that there was no way to get a legally copyable version of the music without going to the original source itself, which was probably in a museum in Great Britain or Italy somewhere. (There may have been caches of public-domain versions of these works, but I certainly didn't know about them at the time; and there are now web caches of those works too, but again, were these versions copied from some "copyrighted" printing of the music, and so illegal?)
Seems to me that this is similar: Steamboat Willie (e.g.) might eventually run out of copyright, but good luck getting an original copy of it that wasn't broadcast within the past 50 years. It seems like yet a new way companies can extend their copyrights indefinitely; although, it would only take one person getting a hold of the original material and releasing it into the public domain for it to be legally available.
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&p age=UserAction&id=163
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
this would be a huge huge huge boost to DRM because it's not just that the broadcast companies would control the copies... They would want to control the copies. They would demand that TiVo open their clients systems to snooping and inspection. Then, if they wanted to be able to delete, remove a section of the show (that, say, some politician would want removed from history), or even replace portions of the broadcast then they could do this. They only license the content (subject to change). They would want some kind of access to your machine though i find that a little less likely. But it does open the door to laws that would require content to be "registered" with the broadcast company. Say hello 1984 When you consider how in bed the corporations and the government are together, the government would see such access as their own. Seriously, the NSA would be all over that kind of access to build a further picture of your profile. Because, you know, we are all terrorists until proven innocent.
wait a minute, by the way that reads, if I was to upload something (anything) to say, Youtube then it would legally become youtubes property.
Let's say I upload an NFL game there, would the NFL be able to do anything since it is now the legal property of Youtube?
and system backups....
so we all get to be terrorist and the government gets to be the warden...
To be clear. I write something and post it to usenet and all of the sudden every server that pass it has 50 year rights on it.
and in 50 years another broadcaster will join in and extend it another 50 years
.
And where are my rights to what I wrote?
"I actually am a constitutional scholar."....."I must've been a horrible person in my last life, 'cause I came back as a guy on the help desk."
I think it's tremendous your country is willing to fund a help desk to resolve Constitutional dilemmas. That degree of faith in civic duty is becoming increasingly rare. =D
No, because the intent of copyright was for the advancement of arts and sciences and for some unfathomable reason we've been convinced to accept cooking shows, sporting events and sitcoms as 'art'. What are in fact really entertainment industries are leveraging copyright to turn us into a leasee society, where no little person owns anything at the threat of federal judicial repercussion and pay-per-use is the law of the land. Wait for it, makers of physical product will want a slice of the pie and why not? The populace will be trained to think that way and their creations are infinitely more real than 'loving Raymond'. That the least important, most frivolous and arguably damaging social force is leading the charge is beyond irony and lunacy. In better, older times society would have rid itself of these parasites long ago.
Maybe or maybe not. Perhaps a desire for a public image would keep them from a broad harrassment campaign, although the penalties for copyright violation are so stiff that the cost of doing this would be paid by the penalties:
That is a truckload of power to offer a copyright owner, but I've always said it makes sense in the existing cases of things like authoring stories, books, etc. because you need strong protection to keep Big Business from taking control of the works of the Little Guy. What I don't understand is why we need to empower Big Business further. They already seem to be making a healthy business even in the presence of piracy. If they lose money, they seem to just jack their rates to compensate and there's little any of us can do because there's so little competition. So why do they need more protection? Rights should be offered in order to create an incentive for action that might be threatened absent the action; having strong copyright to protect our individual blogs, etc. makes sense. Strong copyright to protect the people already making a healthy living serving those blogs seems worse than stupid--outright dangerous.
As to precedents, the case of WestLaw and its control of the court transcripts for a large part of the nation through the use of copyright (not asserted on the original work, but rather, if I understand correctly, asserted on the page and line breaking algorithms--because some courts have required citations to page and line numbers generated by those algorithms!) is probably worthy of study for anyone who thinks extreme cases don't happen because no one would ever be so bold.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Let's say I release a PD or CC work. Then some webcaster picks it up and claims copyright on that broadcast. Can I sue them for violating the copyright under which I release it? It IS my work, right, and I do have control over MY work, right?
qz
The 1961 Rome Convention was never ratified by the Senate. It would have created broadcast rights and bound signatories to uphold them 30 years ago.
You sound like a libertarian to me!
If only more people would take an attitude and understanding as you have.
Libertas in infinitum
I may be wrong, but from what i have gathered from the article i have come to this conclusion:
:P) Movie City, Cinemax, just to name a few, unless musicians and actors are willing to resign to their IP.
If this new law get passed on to the congress, you can say bye bye to the following industries:
Movie Studios: If they play a movie at a theater, the theater becomes the owner of the intellectual property that THEY are broadcasting. So..no more movies AT ALL.
Movie and Music Channels: Say goodbye to HBO, MTV (Well, i would'nt mind about that one
Music Radios: As musicians would be the ones willing to keep THEIR IP, radios would not be able to play ANY music at all.
TiVo: Obvious reasons.
Multimedia Internet Websites: YouTube, Google Video, iTunes, the upcoming URGE...even MySpace...and i could go on all day long naming websites that use copyrighted multimedia content.
Even News channels/radios/newspapers/websites like CNN or the NYT would be limited to broadcast THEIR news only. And say goodbye to Google News too...
I can't believe that your goverment is so fucking paranoid to even THINK in something like this. This is definitelly NOT the way to go.
Wake up America, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You have to find some sort of limitation for this thing, even a two year old can tell you how wrong this is in so many levels.
What happened to "the land of the free"? Or is it "the land where big companies have free will"? (I know it doesn't rhyme but i'm no rapper either)
Just my two cents.
Andrew.
Does anyone remember any candidate for any office from any party discussing this issue during elections? I think not. So then, what are we to make of the farce that we call representative democracy? Our representatives can't possibly represent the will of the people if they don't inform the electorate of their intentions prior to being elected.
... is to have a 50 year copyright on any bullshit.
Thomas
It's only in their interests not to dump the US currency if it isn't already free falling. If China stops buying the debt who else is left to buy US paper?
The Soviet Union under Brezhnev kept the economy floating with printed money and forced loans from eastern block European banks. When it hit the wall you couldn't buy bread with Rubles it was worthless.
We've been conditioned to accept political parties for so long that we think the problem is how they're arranged instead of the fact that they exist at all.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This could help with that multi-party system you're afraid of.
+++ATH0
D'oh! Forgot about the sig.
To explain: I work the help desk during the daytime to fund my education- just finished my degree.
And come to think of it, a help desk for Constitutional issues would come in handy, especially if the media used it...
I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.