Slashdot Mirror
False Copyright Claims
FreetoCopy writes "Teenagers downloading music may not be the worst copyright offenders. See this item (available for download in PDF file with free registration) about the growing problem of copyfraud — in which publishers, archives, and distributors make false claims of copyright to shut down free expression. From the paper: 'Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet's Water Lilies, and even the US Constitution. Archives claim blanket copyright in everything in their collections. Vendors of microfilmed versions of historical newspapers assert copyright ownership. These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the owner's permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use...'"
That summary is copyright (c) Me 2007 - take it down now, or I'm sending the lawyers round!
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Sue You
Take it down now
Take it down now
That summary is copright
Take it down now
I'll sue you if you don't
Take it down now
I'm sending the lawyers round!
Your overuse of my IP clearly falls outside the realm of Fair Use, so "take it down now!"
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
As far as I can see, there is apparently no consequence for making a false claim of ownership. Perhaps false claims of ownership should result in the loss of their ability to assert copyright at all. Actually, that probably wouldn't be appropriate but I'm at a loss for what would be appropriate in a case of false assertion especially when it should be obvious that they didn't create the works in question.
However, when you create a "derivative work" based on public domain content, it's probably eligible for copyright protection in and of itself. The problem comes from where you draw the line. Perhaps in the interest of preserving the public domain, there should be law stating that any use of public domain material within derivative works should also fall within the public domain. Imagine how viral that could be...
I paid money to the family of King John of England after they claimed it was work derived from something called the "Magna Carta." I think I may have been rooked.
JibJab was sued by The Richmond Organization, which owns Ludlow Music, and was asserting its copyright claim.
As much as I hate to cite Wikipedia:
Richmond Organization threaten[ed] legal action. At this point, it was noticed that the copyright to the original 1945 publication had expired in 1973 and was not renewed as then required by copyright law. The Richmond Organization settled with Jibjab shortly thereafter. It still, however, claims copyright on other versions of the song, such as those appearing in the 1956 and later publications. Legally, such claims only apply to original elements of the song that were not in the public domain version.
So, no, it wasn't the "Bush Camp" that tried to get the song pulled. And those who can remember the parody without the tinted glasses of partisanship remember that it poked fun at both Republicans and Democrats equally well. But somehow you don't see Republicans claiming the "Kerry Camp" tried to get it silenced. I wonder why that is...
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
The *recording* can be claimed under copyright law. For instance, you can freely record your own version of "The House of the Rising Sun" and distribute it however you care. But you can't do that with the recording of that song made by The Animals. While the song itself is public domain, the recording is not.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'm very pro public domain, cc and copy-left but the FA omits some facts.
Although he's right that merely digitizing or copying a public domain work does not result in a new copyright, creating a collection of public domain works does. The individual works remain in the public domain, but you can't copy the "collection" as a whole (eg. scan and upload the book as a whole to the internet) because the creativity of selecting and assembling the work is a new copyright. This, for example, would apply to Dover books of public domain clip art.
Also, public domain music can be re-copyrighted to an extent--unfortunately--because individual arrangements can be copyrighted. You are free to use the original tune, but you can't copy a new arrangement because that arrangement is a new copyright.
Public domain is not GPL. Just because a work is public domain doesn't mean that derivative works will be public domain.
Now, that being said, the article is, otherwise, a good one. I'm tired of museums and "educational" institutions claiming copyright on the public domain works in their collection and copyright on the reproductions of those works. In those cases, no new creativity has occurred and there is no new copyright.
Remember when the Bush Camp tried to shut down Jib Jab over the copyright of "This land is my land?"
I think you're thinking of the Scientologists.
</sarcasm>
ALL claims of exclusive ownership and control over information are fraudulent. The law itself is a fraud.
What?
Making a false claim under the DMCA is PERJURY. It's a criminal offense.
The DMCA is a good law with poisonous rider provisions (stuff about circumvention devices for example), and of course like any law with good intentions, is being gamed and rigged by those who are less than honorable. The situation under the DMCA is better than the previous regime, where an ISP could find itself liable for someone simply having uploaded something that's a blatant violation. Unfortunately, the "easy out" that it gives ISPs is responsible for the number and scale of the bogus takedowns too.
I want to see, in the words of FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle (great name!), "a few public hangings" for bogus DMCA takedowns. I'm not deluded enough to believe it will happen. Why we don't see any perjury prosecutions is simply representative of endemic corruption that implicitly favors the monied interests (because they're "good for the economy"). But blaming it on the DMCA itself is just naive.
So screw the copyright regimes. I don't do much copying, but I don't shed a single solitary tear for the labels and studios. Cynicism sure does breed contempt for the law.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Don't go into convulsions just yet!
But we need an effective way for marking content with important details such as copyright owner, copyright date, contact details, and perhaps even licensing details in terms of what the licensor explicitly allows to be done with the content, even if there is no artificial technology restriction imposed on what is disallowed.
For example, if I find a piece of music on the Internet and I want to use it in something that I'm creating, how do I know if I can? Who do I contact? What if I don't even know what the song actually is? Sure enough, even knowing that the copyright holder doesn't want me to do such a thing might not stop me from doing it, but at least I know I'm acting against their wishes.
If we could have some form of DRM that was actually more like "digital rights marking", and survived transcoding/editing, that would probably be very interesting. To the extent that it wasn't used to restrict our actions, but merely make us aware of what we were doing (in terms of our actions being acceptable or otherwise), maybe that's something we as a society could agree to adopt.
The new song is a unique work. If I make a new arrangement for an old Beethoven or Mozart piece I own the copyright of that arrangement. So while the original is in the public domain my new arrangement is not.
... Shakespeare is dead?
realkiwi
Broken thinking makes good comedy - but not so good politics.
And even if we do have the complete, original, score, it may have been for old instruments. A lute is not the same as a guitar, for example, and when Vivaldi wrote for lute, he knew how it would be tuned, and what fingerings were possible. To make it work on a guitar can be quite a creative challenge.
Even if we still use the same instruments as the composer wrote the piece for, we might want a score for different instruments. You can't just sit down at your piano, or guitar, or with your full orchestra, with the score to, say, Bach's cantata #147 ("Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring") as originally written as a choral work, and start playing. It just won't work. You basically have to rewrite the music for those different settings.
Some of the examples given could have valid claims for copyright. Layouts are protected under the Berne Convention. Sure the words of a Shakespeare play are free from copyright but the way they're laid out on a page is classed as a new work. You cannot scan in every page, then print the book as your own. In terms of art pieces on birthday cards, who is to say they haven't done extensive alterations to the original painting? Also, as petty as it may seem, putting "happy birthday" on the front is an original work and although "obvious" design choices could be reproduced in other works, straight out scanning and copying is a no no.
The works of the public domain are under my copyright. Please fax me a dollar for each use.s -selling-solar.html
--
Mass production solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
ResidntGeek
Making a false claim under the DMCA is PERJURY. It's a criminal offense.
Wake me up the first time someone is convicted of perjury for making a false DMCA claim. Its not real until the prosecutors, well, prosecute it.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I must say that I'm not totally sure I agree with this (and I usually am pretty much right on with Slashdot group think on copyright laws).
For instance, I have made a little pocket change reprinting a rare 1863 cookbook. By no means am I getting rich off of it, but I do put a copyright on the ebooks I sell just to have some legal options. I don't care if someone prints it out and OCRs it, there isn't a thing in the world I could do about that. But I had to spend a couple of days OCRing the material, cleaning it up, and formatting it. Anyone else wanting to sell it, or give it away, should have to do the same, not swipe my work.
How exactly should someone be able to just start reselling my ebook and why is that wrong of me to put a copyright notice on it?
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I frequently use the ProQuest databases of newspaper story images, available courtesy of my public library. These are digitized page images. Those for The New York Times go cover 1851 to 2003; those for the Boston Globe, 1872 - 1923.
All of these, without exception, bear the notice "Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission."
In the case of articles published before 1923 (and don't you think it's interesting that the Globe cuts off at exactly 1923?) I completely fail to see how these can be anything other than a faithful reproduction of a work published in the United States before 1923.
Darn it, at the very least, if someone is going to claim copyright in something, they should be required to give an explicit statement of the legal basis for their claim. Maybe there's some way this material is copyrighted, but in the case of material that every university library guideline says is in the public domain, the burden of proof... or at least, the burden of saying why this is an exception to the general rule... should fall on the person making the assertion.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I want to see, in the words of FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle (great name!), "a few public hangings" for bogus DMCA takedowns.
I think part of the problem is that the organization issuing the takedowns might actually think they own them, because they own things that use them. Thus a "public hanging" would be out of place.
If I scan and post a picture of the Mona Lisa out of an art history book, am I making an illegal reproduction of part of that book? The IP rights get cloudy when you consider: If I download an unliscensed/illegal MP3 of a song, but I own a CD with that same song on it, the downloaded copy is still illegal. If the source is considered for MP3s why wouldn't it be considered for the Mona Lisa?
We are all just people.
Corbis has tons of pre 1923 images, images from US Govt photographers (WWII, etc) that are all labeled (c) copyright.
The best way to fight back is to turn your back. Don't download their stuff, and most importantly, don't buy it. Of course all the numbers indicate that just the opposite is happening and business is better than ever. Eh...whatever.
What?
You might want to review Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled that copyright protects creative expression, not 'sweat of the brow'.
. _Rural_Telephone_Service.
So while there may be something about your e-book that is protectable, the OCR of the original text almost certainly does not qualify.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v
Try selling your own prints of images copied from the Getty digital archives
- Ok in the interest of following the call for "public hangings" in the GGP: If I make prints from my own source, but Getty Digital Archives believes that it is theirs and they make eBay close my online vending page: Does Getty deserve a "public hanging"? I believe you called for the full weight of Purjury charges to be applied in the case of false DMCA takedowns.
It's a twisty, ambiguous, and nuanced area of law,
-In general I think any laws that can't be clearly understood by an average highschool gradute need to be scrapped and rewritten. If for no other reason but that they can be clearly understood by a jury expected to rule on them.
We are all just people.
I sell out of print books on eBay. There is a certain historic African-American sorority that published a quite hard to find history of the organization -- tends to bring triple-digit prices when you can find a copy. I've been fortunate enough to twice have found a copy (once at an estate sale, once in a Goodwill), and both times when it was listed on eBay, I was INUNDATED with hostile messages from members of that sorority. Apparently, they believe that the fact that the book is copyrighted means that only THEY can sell copies, and only to fellow members -- as far as they are concerned, I don't have the right to read it or even posess it, let alone sell it! Both times, they lodged complaints with eBay who politely explained to them the right of resale and the fact that pretty much every used book sold, whether on eBay or in your local book nook, is copyrighted. But that didn't stop them from continuing to harass me and threaten me with legal action (take yer best shot, I told 'em). Really makes one wonder what sort of deep, dark secrets are in that book that they don't want any "outsiders" to get their hands on a copy!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Let's see the pendants call me on this one
I hate myself for doing this, but it's spelled "pedant".
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Speaking of 'ignorance is no excuse':
s/sediment/sentiment/
s/surounding/surrounding/
s/chalenged/challenged/
s/coledge/college/
s/clrear/clear/
s/willig/willing/
And those are just the spelling errors...
According to Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation, scanning a public domain image isn't sufficient to establish copyright on the result, even if considerable skill and expertise is required.