Slashdot Mirror
Everyday Copyright Violations
Schneier has pointed out a great law review article about the problems with copyright. The author takes a look at normal daily practices and how many commonplace actions actually result in what can be considered copyright violations. "By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John's activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing."
Well, I've always said, as the rapid pace of technological change continues to force a reconsideration of the
vitality of our intellectual property regime, it is tempting indeed to cite the
"communications revolution" of our time -the Internet- as disrupting to the
delicate balance struck by pre-digital copyright laws between the rights of owners
and users of creative works. After all, it was no less than the Supreme Court that
succumbed to this inexorable urge in its first encounter with cyberspace by
famously proclaiming the Internet "a unique and wholly new medium of
worldwide human communication."
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Link in the story is a blog, here is the pdf that the blog links to: http://www.turnergreen.com/publications/Tehranian_Infringement_Nation.pdf
As an earlier poster pointed out I found the caveman tattoo bit about destruction quite funny, was also shocked to hear that "Happy birthday to you" is still under copyright, according to wiki it will expire in 2030 in the United States.
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
Team Slashdot - Members:#1 Run Time:#1 Points:#1 Results:#1
for Bruce Schneier!
Why a link to his blog, when all he says is boilerplate comment about the original article. Yeah, I know it's a PDF, but anyway. I believe does not need techniques like Roland's Piquepaile to get hits.
hmm maybe I should watch my back now, considering I have bad-mouthed Bruce Schneier... brb, unplugging my box from the netwoGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAfldsfjadlkfw35r$@#%$ETW#TE%$T
That's nothing! I upload 90 gigabytes of copyrighted material every day! This 'John' ain't got shit on me. Whodaman?!
Any good /.er can see that copyright is reaches way too far, but now what good is that doing us. The only way this can change is to break through the lobbying stranglehold that the content-producing cartels have on our legislatures. Short of that there isn't much that can be done other than just hope you aren't one caught by someone trolling for a lawsuit.
I got a catholic block.
Isn't this concept applicable to laws in general? How many of you think that you could drive to work without making a single violation? Hell, when was the last time you got on the highway and the majority of the traffic wasn't going at least 5 mph over the speed limit? And depending on what state you live in, you have varying laws that you most likely break every day. The law is getting so intricate that few people understand exactly what it entails anymore. Ideally, the law should be easily understood; written in the vernacular. We shouldn't need lawyers to translate it for us.
Does anyone even understand copyright on fonts?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
He has no time to survive! Make his time! (Move Zune! For great injustice!)
Sorry. I had to.
Since we've all seen and we all know Cardinal Richelieu's "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him." quote, and Rand's "There's no way to rule innocent man..." quote, let's go for something a little closer to home in US jurisprudence.
Unfortunately, it wasn't an April Fool's joke.
current "Intellectual Property" laws are simply trying to commercialize the fruits of mind, but since we depend on the free exchange of ideas, such laws hinder society and must be resisted
;~)
when thought is commercialized only commercials will have thoughts
O.K. if I encode the opening chords of Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" into a barcode and have it tatooed on my schlong, then sleep around, and then the RIAA comes after me, do I have a leg to stand on? Do I have a shot? Will they cut me off? Am I in violation? Can I be infected by a rootkit? Does taking viagra count as intent to mass distribute?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
That's a very good article. The example surprised me. I thought that one would need to be much more far-fetched than he was to get the total that he gets.
It even failed to mention some potential liabilities. When he "emails his family five photographs of the Utes football game he attended the previous Saturday," the point is the infringement of the copyright of his friend who took the pictures. He doesn't pile on the possibility that the images themselves contain copyrighted team logos, or that... this is so weird that I'm not sure I'm remembering it correctly, but I believe the owners of some buildings are now claiming that the appearance of the building itself is copyrighted and that photographing the buildings infringes... so the photographs might be infringing by showing the stadium itself.
What he does not mention is the spectre of selective enforcement. It is very convenient for authorities if everyone is a law-breaker, because then you always have a valid pretext for prosecuting/persecuting them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Anyone who's worked in the entertainment industry knows that the industry themselves violate the copyright laws more than anyone else. But if you think about it, anything and everything we do on the internet, email, heck, anything digital is a "reproduction". After all, when we view a html or a gif or hear a midi, it's a reproduced on our local computers. If these companies had their way, every word we speak would be copyrighted. But yeah, apparentally, even repeating what someone else said is copyright infringement. Or viewing a webpage or even you posting an e-mail sent to you can be considered copyright infringement.
:p
Any quoting of this post without the owner's consent is copyright infringement and will be pursued to the full extent of the law... just kidding
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
I'm guessing someone will raise the point of Fair Use, so I'll repost the comment I posted on Schneier's blog as to why that doesn't really help you any. Oh, and a bonus link to USC 17 (copyright law) so you can see that I'm not making this crap up. Mind you, IANAL, but you need one to make sense of that. Any layman can figure out where and how it does NOT make sense, though, which is why I encourage you all to read it.
-----
You guys realize that Fair Use is something you have to *prove in court* right? By the time you're proving that your use was fair, you're already on the hook for big money in legal fees.
And how many of the copyright rules do you know? Did you know that having a TV that's too large can be copyright infringement in some cases? You can rent console games that meet very specific requirements, but you can't rent PC software (I really have to wonder where the X-Box games fall, legally speaking, given that the X-Box is just a PC, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft cares to test it and they may still meet the statutory requirements).
Honestly, read USC 17 sometime. It's positively mind-boggling. We've got everything from international treaty created super-trademarks (the Olympics & Red Cross spring to mind), loads of crap meant to serve various lobbies, and so many screwball statutes that I don't understand at all.
Granted, IANAL, but I think that the average person would be surprised by just how many rules there are. And those are just the statutes!
God help you when you find out that, while "facts" aren't copyrighted, facts about a fictional work aren't really "facts" according to at least one court! That's right, the fact that Harry Potter attends Hogwarts may not be a "fact" per the law. So I might just have infringed upon Rowling's copyrights right there.
She won't sue, you say? Actually, she IS suing someone right now over that very issue because they want to publish an unauthorized encyclopedia...
Is it really Fair Use when there are so very many confusing rules you have to follow to maybe, hopefully be protected (with that assuming the courts decline to make a new precedent or extend existing law)?
Or to sum up this entire post, isn't it bad if we each need our own personal lawyer just to be able to *OBEY* the law?
Of course the same applies to copyright. The copyright laws have become so over reaching that everything we do on a daily basis could be construed as breaking a law, so if we displease the wrong person then they already have something to pin on us.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Watching as US Copyright goes south is particularly painful for someone who grew in a communist country. I was old enough before '89 to take part in political discourse, which often took form of political jokes. It was a kind of very bitter humor, uninteligible for someone who didn't breathe this air of suspicion and fear. So this is a kind of nasty flashback for me, as it reminds me the joke/saying from those times: there is a law on everybody*. As soon as you stick your head too high, to far, put your nose where it doesn't belong, someone will find a law that will punish you severly. It's kind of bitter irony, that it is US, the mythical Land of the Free of my youth.
/. comments?
Robert
* pl. na kazdego jest paragraf
PS The nineties called and they want their "iso-8859-1 hardcoded webpages" back. Need I wait for "Web 5.0" to be able to use non-latin1 characters in
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Google News was considered to have broken copyright merely by aggregating news. They were REQUIRED by the belgian company to request for each and every infringementto enter into a contract rather than the belgian company put a meta tag or userobots.txt (because that isn't a contract).
So, yes, according to the (so far successful) attempt by Copiepresse you DO have to ask for permission for each and every copyrighted work (and copyright law doesn't say "but not emails").
Yes, it makes no sense, but the law hasn't made sense for centuries.
"COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS"
"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."
Where has this gone wrong? Happy Birthday is under copyright?? This is blatant abuse, for financial gain of course, of what is legitimate protection for innovation.
It is weird that Happy Birthday is still under copyright. This is why large chain restaurants don't sing it to you on your birthday. Instead they sing some crappy restaurant-theme specific version of a birthday song. Texas Roadhouse has some crappy cowboy birthday song and the former Chi-Chi's has a silly Mexican birthday song.
I respect Schneider, I am for copyright reform (but never expect to see it un the US so long as we remain a plutocracy with a more or less meaningless vote), yet I was disappointed. I should not have RTFA; I only did so because it was Schneider's blog, yet the entire post was in the slashdot summary.
I clicked on his link to the paper, and was disappionted to find a PDF. Google failed me when I made a cursory effort to find an HTML version.
The paper he links is itself incorrect in its very first page when it speaks of "the rights of owners and users of creative works." The US Constitution makes it quite clear that the "owners" of creative works are we, the people. The copyright holder is NOT the "owner". He has a "limited time" monopoly on publication, NOT "ownership".
When I've paid off my house, I will own it. I can pass it down to my decendants who can hand it down to theirs. My two registered copyrighted works, however, pass into the public domain after a rediculously long time.
When I see an inaccuracy in the very first page of a paper, especially a whopper like this, hat's as far as I read. Sorry.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Should I get a license to sing "Happy Birthday to You" from Warner Chappell? I guess I will, just to be safe...
Name of the Client: me
Description of the Presentation: birthday party
Who will view the presentation? friends and family
How many people will be attending the presentation? 20
What is the number of locations where the presentation will take place? 1
How many copies will be made? 25
Will any copies be sold? No
Please give a detailed description, including timing(s), of how the song will be used in the presentation: The song will be sung once before I blow out the candles on my birthday cake. There will be a camcorder set up and the recording will be sent to everybody at the party and some people who could not attend.
Are you going to license an original master recording or are you going to re-record the song? Rerecording
Will you be altering the Song's lyrics in any way: Yes
If yes, please type new lyrics.
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday Dear RockMFR
Happy Birthday To You
And Many More
On Channel 4
And Scooby Doo
On Channel 2
And Frankenstein
On Channel 9
General Comments: no gifts, please
*submits*
Fee: $0.00
:)
Talk about copyrights when your copyrights are violated and copyright law is the only protection that your work has.
The example has a number of things which either (1) are fair uses, (2) aren't infringements at all or (3) aren't subject to copyright at all.
For example, the cell phone snapshot that happened to capture a copyright picture in the background -- that's clearly fair use. Displaying your tattoo in public doesn't make it a "public display." The forwarded emails are probably subject to an implied license and, even if they weren't, they may not contain sufficient creative expression to be copyrightable. The rough drawing of an architectural building is not an infringement (see 17 U.S.C. 120(a)). Reading the e.e. cummings poem is probably also fair use, especially if each student has a textbook containing the poem.
Copyright law is generally *civil*, not criminal. In general, this means that a lot of wrongs are ignored by potential plaintiffs, just as a matter of tradition, convenience and politeness, just as they are with a lot of other civil wrongs -- nuisance, trespass, assault** (especially among children), etc..... Nobody goes around saying "Look at how many acts of trespass you committed today. We need to fix trespass law."
[Note: I agree that copyright law needs some reforms; the repeal of Sonny Bono would be a great start. I just don't find this example to be very persuasive.}
all that stuff is irrelevent.
all you need is some good tunes, not this bothering about nazis and light bulbs and things.
relax, get with the music and forget about the distractions.
Ok, you know what, this is ridiculous. /. keeps doing this. The article is not by Schneieieieieir or however you spel his name. The article is by John Tehranian. And, yes, that is just about the jist of the problems with copyright. You know what? Welcome to the Law. As a certain author (I think it was Dickens) wrote in a book called Bleak House, "The Law is concerned with nothing but the Law," IIRC. And that's how the Law works. Government makes up zillions of laws that make no sense and don't serve to accomplish anything. Half the time, the laws contradict each other. Imagine how crazy life would be if the law said that you MUST drive on a red light, and another law said you MUST NOT drive on a red light. Then all you have to do is park a police officer next to a red light. No matter what people do, they get a ticket. The situation isn't quite that bad when it comes to traffic laws, luckily, but it IS that bad when it comes to other things. What it all boils down to is SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT. They make up contradicting laws so that if you piss off the wrong person and they want to get you, all they have to do is match up perfectly legitimate activities with whatever law says they're illegal and they got you. Same goes for civil laws. If you think about it, it's in the best interest of corporations with barges full of money to have lots of contradictory laws so that they can create lawsuits and then file motion after motion until the competitor's resources run out and they are put out of business. There's another thing, too, that makes these big corporations immune. If YOU want to go after them because you have a legitimate claim, they'll dig up lots of places where you're infringing on THEIR copyrights just by existing and breathing, and so you'd better drop your claims or they'll hunt you down and cut your head off and stick it on a pig pole. Then some bumbling idiot like Darl comes along thinking he can play the legal lottery, but he didn't realize that Linus has more resources at his disposal than the Borg up in Regmond.
http://www.thespeciousreport.com/2005/05050217paris_hilton.html
Isn't it amazing? Oh crap -- here comes my boss --- no, you can't say that -- Donald Trump owns that phrase!
Here's George's take on the Ten Commandments
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is why I do not read blogs... because they are rife with poorly researched theses such as this.
The entire argument made in the excerpt is predicated upon completely ignoring 17 USC 1, Section 107, "Fair Use". Period.
TFA is not newsworthy material.
What's the point of linking a blog that links the actual article? Editors, please start rejecting submissions that do not contain a direct link that requires no registration.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
"However, scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office, computer programs, and as such are copyrightable: ``... the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts using already-digitized typeface represents a significant change in the industry since our previous [September 29, 1988] Policy Decision. We are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices may involve original computer instructions entitled protection under the Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotectable shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registerable as a computer program.'' 57 FR 6202.''
http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm
Probably facial expression are/get copyrighted soon enough too, given that programs (and lots of code) are involved as well.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
booting linux is common? i'm sure booting windows is much more common, given how often it needs to be restarted.
*hat, coat, taxi*
Ultimately, if a large enough organization wants to sue you for something, and they can build a big enough pile of garbage that makes it look plausible, it's going to cost you a boatload of money to prove otherwise, and you're going to be vulnerable to the vagaries of the legal system. At least in the US. The point of the article wasn't that you're actually liable to be sued for millions of dollars for forwarding email or reading poetry in class. It was more that the law, taken literally, is ridiculous (and the article made this point by actually ridiculing it). But I think there is still a valid point to be made about fair use. Although the article cited some scary case law, the truth is that most of these apparent copyright violations are at least meant to be covered under fair use. So I think your response is fairly incisive, but I would still argue that the article is misleading. The problem isn't copyright law so much as the fact that you can get seriously screwed obeying the law.
Am I a lawyer? I can't remember, why do you ask?
The blog entry's reference, an article by Professor of Law Dr. Tehranian in Utah, makes another interesting error... aside from the corruption of "Fair Use".
He states that RIAA lobbied successfully to have sound recordings considered "works for hire" since the 1999 amendment to Title 17. But the contracts themselves have been pretty unambiguous since at least the 2nd Edition of Shemel and Krasilovsky's <i>This Business of Music</i>. Most recording contracts expressly stipulate in writing that the works made are considered works for hire, and that is supported by fixing the lyrics and music in tangible form through a publisher, and that the phonorecord rights tend to be works made for hire, the consideration for which is the recording advance (read: LOAN) paid to the artist to cover recording costs.
The last known example I can think of in which a band assumed the rights of its recordings made for a recording company was in the case of Led Zeppelin whose publisher reverted the copyrights to Led Zeppelin after 26 years. These were not only works before the Copyright Act of 1976, but also the provisions with their publisher were inked in contract. Otherwwise, generally, all works recorded for a recording company are stipulated in contract as works for hire.
I think the best way of dealing with this is to return to requiring copyright registration for some tiny, nominal amount, like $1/registration. That way, we can tell what is copyrighted and what is not.
If people are really attached to automatic copyright, one could say that the first three years are automatic, but then you really have to register explicitly or your work falls in the public domain.
Tell that to Prince, who has issued a takedown for a photo of a fan's Prince tattoo.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I used to know a kid named "Ducky" that grew up to do a lot of porn shoots. He had a Donald Duck tattoo on his arm back then. Unless he had it removed it has to be in a bunch of '80s porn. Of course, nobody looks at the guy and he was particularly ugly too.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
TFA is complete and total crap.
It's long been established that digital "copies" in memory are legal, due to both necessity and transience.
For the rest, fair use exceptions will clearly cover most of the examples they mention, such as making copies of a writing for educational purposes.
There are very, very few of their examples are even somewhat questionable, but even there, responsibility probably falls on someone else (eg. the tattoo artist/shop).
The truth of the matter is, it isn't difficult to avoid copyright infringement. It takes just the slightest bit of effort to send out e-mails with eg. a link to a page instead of a copy of it. Those who are actually guilty of copyright infringement are either ignorant of the laws, or not trying to stay legal. I make no judgment about either, but the fact is, TFA's assertion that it's impossible to avoid running afoul of copyright law is unmitigated nonsense.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I also doubt wether it will stand up in court.
Someone stop me!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Prometheus has been made at mankind for five thousand years for copying his alphabet over and over quadrillions of times.
In Catholic religion, every child is born with The Original Sin.
Now, thanks to our ever expanding Intelligence and Whisdom, every child is now born with the Original Infraction.
With all the Laws, Rules, Copyrights, Patents, etc... Every citizen in the US can be LEGALLY emprisonned at birth (Isn't that Mickey Mouse blanket an illegal copy?).
Aint that convenient for ANY government..?
I predict a lot countries will adopt US style Democracy...
After all, with a Democracy like that, who needs a Police State?
But ignore this comment, I'm just one of those paranoïd watchamacallits.
Gosh, what a great way to treat your fans.
Whodaman?
An excellent question. We would very much like to know whodaman. Or at least whodaipaddress in a pinch. Also, if you can tell us who John is we'd appreciate that too. Or his Grandma - that'd be good enough. His neighbor would ok also.
Seriously, someday I would just love to see this article put before a judge in some case, as reductio ad absurdum.
I'm losing a mod to say this, but thought this article was a good one, and the site isn't half bad for something thinking about the photography business:
http://www.danheller.com/biz-trademarks.html
This just seems to prove two things about copyright that I've been saying for awhile:
1 - Copyright terms need to be cut back. I think they should return to the original 14 year span plus a one time 14 year extension, but I'd be willing to settle for 20 years plus a one time 20 year extension. (I'd also be willing to grant the concession of a phase in period to keep 40+ years of copyrighted material from hitting the Public Domain all at once.)
2 - Penalties for copyright violation need to be brought back to reality. In the article's hypothetical example, Professor John could be sued for $750 - $150,000 for each (copyrighted) e-mail that he forwarded. This is despite the fact that the actual damages from forwarding an e-mail are practically zero. (Or at least should be. If you have information in an e-mail that could be that devastating were it forwarded, perhaps you should look into another delivery system.)
I would make non-commercial copyright infringement (infringement without attempt to profit) liable for the cost of the infringing material times 10. (Somewhat random number chosen to give the fine a deterrent value. Otherwise people will just infringe, figuring they can pay up if caught.) Using this system, the RIAA could sue a P2P downloader, but would only be able to get about $10 per song. (Price on iTunes - $0.99 - times 10.) Commercial infringers (e.g. CD press operations) would still be on the hook for the full $750 - $150,000 fine.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They're probably not renting it, they're loaning it, which is different. Renting only applies if you charge a fee every time you check something out.
Archives and libraries also have various exemptions in there that I don't pretend to understand.
That said, it's certainly NOT impossible that they're breaking copyright laws somewhere. I'd be more surprised if they weren't. Then again, judges probably have more sympathy for libraries, so they just might get off the hook in various ways that Joe Sixpack wouldn't. Like I said, they have lots of confusing exemptions that apply only to things like libraries. If you or I did those things, we'd be liable for huge statutory damages.
But that's why I told you to ask a lawyer if you want to make sense of this. I can only describe the nonsense in the system.
Take a look at those super trademarks, for example. I may be wrong and they might not be in USC 17 itself, but they're in the USC somewhere. There's a whole section telling you how the trademark on the Olympics works, various exceptions for non-national businesses in Washington state, etc.
There's a reason that the laws are so long. We COULD have simple laws, but we have a full time Congress that has to justify their existence by continually making new rules and adding on to old ones. I really wish we could get back to having a few simple rules you could print on a postcard, but that's probably just a pipe dream at this point.
Is email no longer P2P?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What do you expect really.
The entire idea that "I got here first, so I own it" is antiquated in the digital age. If someone can reproduce the steps you took to get there, someone will. The whole idea that the creator should continue to control their creation after it is released is just plain counter-productive. The separate issue of whether they should be compensated for their work is another matter entirely.
Then there's the fact that companies spend billions on marketing then try to sue if someone uses the image they intentionally made popular. How asinine is that!
What we need is a change to the law such that anyone may produce their own copies or derivatives once a work is made public BUT if they profit from a copy of someone else's creation, they must pay part (or all) of their revenue back to the copyright holder.
As it stands copyright law is based on an 18th Century world (or rather part of the world) and the unique conditions of that time and place. They don't belong here and now.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I want one ....
a -
c -
e -
l -
n -
o - ó
s -
z -
z -
All those characters have been given as html entity of the form � Of them only the counterpart of "o" apears in Latin1 table, and consequently is the only one displayed. The rest of the characters disapears from the HTML source.
So, once again: no matter what your input method, if the character is latin1 plus arbitrary set of other characters, it is displayed by slashcode, otherwise, it gets filtered out from the source. Particularly, Latin2 cannot be displayed, and I suppose the same goes for Cyryllic.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Other people have called you on the fact that you give us no reason to believe this, but I think I ought to call you on one more thing.
If Joe Tattoo Artist gives me, for appropriate compensation, a tattoo of Mickey Mouse, there are three parties involved here:
You fail to distinguish which of the parties Disney has or fails to have valid claims against. It is quite possible that Disney has no valid claim against me, but has a claim against Joe Tattoo Artist. If Joe offers tattoos of Mickey Mouse customarily as part of the services he gets paid for, and the popularity of Mickey Mouse makes his business that more profitable, I betcha Disney can go after Joe.
Can they go after me? Well, not in general, but I bet you there are circumstances where they can. If leverage the fact that I have a Mickey Mouse tattoo, e.g., by working as a model in a way that displays my Mickey Mouse tattoo too prominently, I bet you I can get in trouble too.
The law is subtle, and how it applies to any given case is a complicated matter. (And no, IANAL, but the fact that I understand this makes me better understand the value of the service that lawyers provide.)
Are you adequate?
> Talk about copyrights when your copyrights are violated and copyright law is the only protection that your work has.
That's why I give my work away for free. Hell, I don't even like getting credit for my ideas. I feel that the true test of how good they are is how people respond to the ideas themselves, when they have no idea who is offering them. The good ideas get adopted by others and I often see something that might be a case where I influenced someone, or a turn of a phrase that looks like it was originally one of mine. Unless someone rediscovered it; I'm obviously not the world's only source of ideas. Having your bad ideas die in obscurity is another blessing. Take a look at Dvorak's predictions if you don't know why this is a good thing.
Then again, there are a few drawbacks, because you clearly don't know who I am or what I've done, even though I'm reasonably sure you've read some of my work without knowing it.
But I like it that way.
The quoted bits of the article leave out all the footnotes, and the footnotes are crucial. Each claim in the quote is backed up by references to relevant statutes or court decisions. And before laying out the scenario, TFA makes clear what exactly it's doing: trying to concoct the absolute worst case scenario possible based on existing law. The point is that all the law needed for this case to happen exists; a judge could decide in the way the article describes, and find plenty of support in statutes and precedents. The fact that the scenario given doesn't actually happen, and in fact would be catastrophic if it happened regularly, is an argument against existing law.
Are you adequate?
Now this is the sort of article (the original, not the blog entry) that is needed in the copyright debate. It is intelligent, and it raises some interesting questions about how the law works, and how it should work. However, Tehranian does have some issues as far as missing things:
1. He talks about the 1976 Copyright Act, which is a pivotal point for American copyright law, but it would have been nice if he had made reference to the fact that the rest of the Western world, as per the Berne Convention, had those copyright limits already for decades, as well as the fact that the 1976 act only extended works already in copyright by 19 years, and only applied in full to those works created after the law went into effect.
2. He talks about the Copyright Term Extension Act (AKA the Sonny Bono Act) as though it was just snuck through congress without debate, which is not surprising considering his source, which was the other side of the United States vs. Eldred. The thing is, it simply isn't true. Congressional hearings were held on September 20, 1995, with numerous testimonies in regards to the act - three years before the act was enacted. Among the testimonies were librarians concerned with the ability to archive in the face of a copyright extension, with the result that the final act had provisions for archival work 50 years after the death of the author. Tehranian also fails to note that the CTEA was put into place to harmonize with Europe, which was already at lifetime plus seventy years, and had been for some time - the conspiracy theory that it was to save Mickey Mouse holds absolutely no water, as Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark law, not copyright.
As a counterpoint to this article, I would offer "The Mythology of the Public Domain," by Scott M. Martin, which discusses the other side of these issues and was published in a peer-reviewed journal: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
For those of you who won't follow the link, but want to gauge the legitimacy of this post's summary, here's the scoop. Schneier's article links to a PDF of a 13 page paper written by John Tehranian, Professor of Law, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law. It's titled "Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap."
So this isn't Schneier and it isn't some wingnut who knows nothing about the law.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Sheesh. Sorry for being a cynic. I'm sure there's gobs of first-world customers that have benefitted from these meds (like Lipitor, isn't that like the number one drug 'evar!'?) but these are still pretty bad examples (or again chosen for comedic effect). Or are you saying that these are the most profitable drugs and they wouldn't have been made (to sell to rich people) without the current patent system? Pharma companies aren't worried about patent infringement in the first-world, they know they can make their money here with marketing alone. Where they are worried about patent infringement is in the third-world were (poor) governments and (poor) people are not licensing their drugs to make an actual life or death difference in people's lives. For example, AIDS-combatting cocktails being produced out of generics in Africa and India probably does prevent Pfizer from making even more money (does Pfizer make AIDS drugs? I don't know), but the money it's not making is money it wouldn't have had any way -- as the people dying of AIDS in Africa can't afford their drugs!
It's really the same sort of argument that the RIAA makes against piracy with their specious math indicating that every infringement is a lost sale. It's obviously not. There's no way it can be. If some pre-teen downloads 1,000 songs from P2P du jour there is just no possible way they could have legitimately purchased those songs (maybe some tiny fraction, right, with their chore-money).
Anyhow, sorry for rambling. I think it's pretty likely that the pharmaceutical industry will still exist even after some patent reform. I know that's not your argument, but there's a pretty good chance that someone somewhere would still be doing disease research even in the scary 'no IP' world. It would just be a lot less friendly. Most research would be charitably or government funded (so arguably slower or less efficient), actual cures would produced as work-in-hostage with investment and pre-order recouping the majority of production up front, etc. Drug trials for many would be scary, last-ditch lotteries. That would be an unpleasant job to be in while people are dying. It's a tough business, profiting on who lives and who dies. (Good thing our government mediates some of that with its limited-time, state-granted monopolies!)
Cheers.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I think I may have made a mistake there - the 1976 act, as far as I know, extended the work of dead authors only by 19 years - I don't know how it applied to live authors.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
The blog isn't the real news, rather it links to a law professor's law review article. If you're going to call THAT "poorly researched" I'm going to have to say that you did not read TFA and dismissed it out of habit when you hear the word "blog" without applying any actual thought to the matter. Yes, surprise surprise, lawyers know what fair use is and why it won't help you much. It's also beside the point, but you'd have realized that if you'd have read it more carefully (assuming you read it to begin with...). You could say that someone should've posted a link to the PDF in the summary. But guess what? I submitted this as a story last week. It wasn't accepted.
As for "fair use" that's something you can only prove in court. By the time you're in court, you're paying a lawyer thousands of dollars. Yes, you can represent yourself if you have a lot of free time, but read USC 17 sometime and just try and tell me you understand all of the rules, because I really doubt that you do. If you do, please tell me how big a TV I'm allowed to have at work, how big my workplace can be, and what kinds of businesses get exceptions. Yes, we do have TVs at work. No, they're smaller than that (but not by much). Can't hook a TV card up to our projector, though. Our business doesn't get any exemptions. Yes, people have been sued for this. The NFL sued a church for having a Super Bowl party last year.
If you wanted to make a more insightful point, you'd have said that even the RIAA must believe the statutory damages are insane, because they go for a few thousand dollars per song in their settlements instead of the six-figure dollar amount per song the statute allows. Even the minimum is $750 per act of infringement.
When even the RIAA member companies think a part of copyright law is unreasonable, aren't things slightly amiss? These are people who sue children and dead people, for crying out loud!
Prince can tell someone to take something down. Likewise, they can tell Prince to sod off. It has nothing to do with copyright (aside from abuse-as-usual of the DMCA).
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I for one welcome our new patent overlords. So how many copyright billions am I liable for?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Sir,
We regret to inform you that your birthday may not occur due to various violations of intellectual property.
Please contact us should you decide to license this event. In so doing, you will also enable us to investigate your family members for violations of intellectual property.
Wishing you many happy, licensed returns,
The Music Cartel
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
...and thus why I say that lawyers and attorneys are the scribes of our modern day world. We all have to follow the law of the land. But only those with "the knowledge" can read, write, or understand the laws. Funny how that works, huh?
Their power and wealth, as an aggregate, also support this view. They have created a system that needs THEM in order to use it. After all, without translation, it's just a bunch of nonsense that you can't understand.
And by "you", I mean everyone who isn't an attorney.
Really, it's a brilliant plan, whether intended or not.
Remember the old days when you buy a piece of land, you theoretically owns anything above your land space upto the sky. Now, if that still holds, will we charge royalties everytime an airplane, or a kite flies over our 'airspace'. This sounds ridiculous, but in my opinion, that is the same analogy that is being implied here for copyright.....
Wilson Ng What matters is what you can, and cannot do.... Captain Jack Sparrow
If people are really attached to automatic copyright, one could say that the first three years are automatic, but then you really have to register explicitly or your work falls in the public domain. That would require withdrawing from the Berne Convention, and in turn the TRIPS agreements, and in turn the World Trade Organization. Given the recent decline in the value of the United States dollar, would withdrawing from the WTO be a wise move for even those parts of the United States economy unconnected to copyright?
We all know these articles get posted with an attempt to impress upon people that it's ok to copy music, movies and software illegally online. It's not ok, and real people lose real money as a result of your actions. Don't tell me you wouldn't have bought it anyway, because realistically, without the option, you would have paid for some movies, music, and software. Otherwise you wouldn't be downloading anything. Every time you download a movie, you are ripping off those writers who are on strike now, if they get their way.
If you want an analogy, it's techically stealing to eat a grape in a supermarket, but no one will arrest you for it.
In some places (though perhaps not in all situations, sorry, I dunno the scope of this), "loser pays" is the rule -- but not in the U.S. Many people think that "loser pays" would be a good way to cut down on frivolous lawsuits of the SLAPP variety.
I think that in some cases (I'm thinking of a suit against Ollie North a few years back, and am procrastinating too many other things to look for a link right now), the judge may as part of his ruling make the instigating party responsible for the costs of the nominally innocent defendant.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Eliminate Copyright. Then there will be no more copyright violations ever again. INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!
Checkout www.CopyrightReform.US . You're not alone but we all need to make a centralized effort and direct this anger to the right people.
The right to have a tattoo of a copyrighted work (if such a right exists) and the right to use that work in a photo are two different rights, and the first would not automatically entail the latter.
Are you adequate?
>> I really wish we could get back to having a few simple rules you could print on a postcard, but that's probably just a pipe dream at this point.
> So you're an 'eye for an eye' sort of person? I don't know about other people here, but I'm glad to have progressed beyond that.
Not at all. I just think that we don't need new laws for every single offense. For example, old fashioned fraud covers new online scams. We don't need a new law with all sorts of new requirements just because fraud can now happen online, just sensible elements. Shoplifting, for example, with the two elements of concealment and removal always stood out to me as a well-written law. I like to think that an average juror could render a just verdict just by considering those two points without anyone having to worry about whether City v. Punk's standard that more than 50% of the wine bottle had to be tucked down one's pants was controlling in this jurisdiction. And God help you if you start citing things like The United States v. $12,583.78 and a Half-Eaten Ham Sandwich (those property cases have the WEIRDEST names...).
That aside, courtroom rules and such (e.g. standards which answer questions like "what constitutes reliable evidence?") are things were I don't mind more complexity. You're already screwed at that point in that you're in court and defending yourself.
So my point would be that the laws should be easy to determine if you're going to end up in court or in jail and when I say "easy to determine" I mean that from a layman's perspective.
Once you're in court, it's too late. You need a lawyer. I just hope you can afford one...
I dunno, Lady Justice may be blind, but she is pretty hot!
Is this distinction about to fall?
I would call the "old" definition of correspondence "conversation recorded and transmitted". Since everyone now has video cell phones, and people make blogs, convresations are being captured more now.
Borrowing from Heinlein & several USA Network shows, someone with a trained eidetic memory is undetectible, and society may need to begin exploring scope.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
what we need is a porn star with a Mickey Mouse tattoo clearly visible in a video.
can I volunteer to do some research!
The neutrality of the above post is disputed.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Does anyone know of any Chinese fonts that:
- look nice
- include both Simplified and Traditional, and
- have English letters that also look nice?
Okay, I already know that the answer is "no". How about two out of three?I'm trying to find a font that works well for reading either Chinese or English, so that I don't have to mess with font settings in Firefox and other software, but for some reason the above features seem to be mutually exclusive. I'm trying to mix my own fonts with FontForge, but this is proving to be more complex than I expected.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
> Intellectual property is no more -- and no less -- a fiction than every other kind of real, tangible personal, and intangible personal property.
The ownership may be real, in some sense, but the real problem is with it being seen as "property."
Ideas are non-rivalrous. Copying does not destroy the original, it creates copies. Everyone can't live on an ordinary piece of land, but everyone can have a copy of an idea without taking it away from anyone else.
Yes, you'll try to tell me that it's rivalrous because it stops people from making money. But that's an artifact of law and the reason for calling it imaginary property. It's only "property" because we imagine it to be such and imbue it with such qualities by law. Without law, it is NOT rivalrous at all, and even the law is not truly able to restrain the flow of ideas.
Yep, and entertainment wants to be paid and you want to be a fucktarded cheepskate like the rest of the fucktarded shitdot sheeple. So why don't you along with the other fucktarded shitdot sheeple go run a hot bath, find a fucking razor, and slit your fucking wrists fucktards.
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY OR WASTE YOUR GODDAMNED MODPOINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE!!!!
I've wondered if there are generally accepted violations of copyright that are ignored simply because a large industry has never grown to prevent it.
Recipe's come to mind. My grandmother freely distributes recipes she's found from all sorts of sources through out the years. Her church printed a recipe book for fundraising purposes that is rife with recipes that have been lifted from other sources. I'm pretty sure the RIAA could branch out and pursue these violators.
Is there really a difference between the copies I've made of songs onto CD's, and the recipes that have started in a cookbook but have circulated via index cards?