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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 $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing."
Well, I've always said, as the rapid pace of technological change continues to force a reconsideration of the
vitality of our intellectual property regime, it is tempting indeed to cite the
"communications revolution" of our time -the Internet- as disrupting to the
delicate balance struck by pre-digital copyright laws between the rights of owners
and users of creative works. After all, it was no less than the Supreme Court that
succumbed to this inexorable urge in its first encounter with cyberspace by
famously proclaiming the Internet "a unique and wholly new medium of
worldwide human communication."
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Link in the story is a blog, here is the pdf that the blog links to: http://www.turnergreen.com/publications/Tehranian_Infringement_Nation.pdf
As an earlier poster pointed out I found the caveman tattoo bit about destruction quite funny, was also shocked to hear that "Happy birthday to you" is still under copyright, according to wiki it will expire in 2030 in the United States.
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
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for Bruce Schneier!
Why a link to his blog, when all he says is boilerplate comment about the original article. Yeah, I know it's a PDF, but anyway. I believe does not need techniques like Roland's Piquepaile to get hits.
hmm maybe I should watch my back now, considering I have bad-mouthed Bruce Schneier... brb, unplugging my box from the netwoGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAfldsfjadlkfw35r$@#%$ETW#TE%$T
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.
Thanks,
The MAFIAA
My blog
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.
Copyright is automatic, you do not need to register a piece in order to have copyright on it.
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!
There's these litting things called Footnotes. See the part you didn't include... that little number 31 up in the air actually means something:
17 U.S.C 102(a)(1), 106(1), 501(a). Although one could attempt to distinguish the existing case law on the matter, courts have deemed fair use rights to a previously unpublished work, such as a piece of correspondence, to be exceedingly limited. See, e.g., Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 555 (1985) (noting the strong presumption against fair use of unpublished works); New Era Publ'ns Int'l. v. Henry Holt & Co., 873 F.2d 576, 583-84 (2d Cir. 1989) (noting that "a small, but more than negligible, body of unpublished material cannot pass the fair use test" and that under ordinary circumstances "the copying of 'more than minimal amounts' of unpublished expressive material calls for an injunction barring the unauthorized use" (quoting Salinger v. Random House, Inc., 811 F.2d 90 (2d Cir. 1987))).
Common Law Copyright
No, at least for those countries that have signed the Berne Convention, anything "original" you write has automatic copyrighted status granted. It might be easier to enforce that copyright in the courts, however, if you register your work with the Copyright Office.
The copyright act of 1976 basically dictates that, unlike previous copyright law, all new works are automatically covered by copyright law, and are afforded its protections. This means that all new original and derivative works are protected by copyright whether they are registered or not, and whether the owner chooses to enforce their rights or not.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
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?
Used to work that way - a long time ago. Now original works are protected by copyright as soon as they are committed to a tangible medium (i.e. written down, recorded, etc). Copyrighted works still have to be registered with the LoC before any legal action can start - but that is just a formality that the copyright holder can satisfy at any time prior to taking legal action.
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)
That is correct. Emails, however, often fall into the "conversation" realm and would lack the necessary creativity to gain copyright protection. So you can't just say all emails are copyrightable because some, if not most, will not be.
Theoretically, a copyright exists the moment a document is created, which is to say that if I have a half-written story somehwere which someone takes and finishes, I still have copyright to the original story and they have violated my copyright without including the section I wrote via attribution a.k.a. without my express consent. Now, copyright law was a lovely idea when the world was traversable in months, only a small fraction of the population could read and write, and everything was committed to paper, but the dawn on fast travel, the Internet, and digital media makes it iffy, because it requires much more effort to establish that a work is in fact yours to begin with and then the possibility a work gets onto the Internet will cause so many copies to be created that anything short of a global corporation is going to have the resources to sue everyone for infringement. The gist of the article is simple -- the old way of handling copyright (and by extension, intellectual property) is ineffectual at best.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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
Not at all.
Copyright starts the moment you create something.
Going through any process is just to prove that you created something. But if no one contests, for example, that what you scribbled on the back of an envelope was created by you when you said it was, you have copyright to it.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"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.
Besides, I would imagine that you, the sender, give implicit license to every node between you and the recipient to reproduce the bits for sending to the next node / to the recipient, and give implicit license to the recipient to reproduce the e-mail on-screen (if not in print) so that they can actually read it.
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
:)
when thought is commercialized only commercials will have thoughts ;~)
When thought is commercialized, only commercial entities can be permitted to have thoughts.
There, fixed that for you.
That could also make one wonder about the possibility of a hidden agenda behind the decline of education for common (read: not-rich/powerful people or their families) people.
If one has no words for a concept, it becomes hard to think about or communicate to others.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.}
Correspondence is copyrighted(see TFA) while conversation is not.
If it is not registered, you can not sue for money. Therefore, it shouldn't have been included in his violation/$ total.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Do you have a source for that claim? I have never heard it before.
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.
A work has to be registered for you to sue for copyright infringement but it doesn't have to be registered before the infringement takes place before you sue. It does, however, need to be registered before the infringement takes place to be able to get statutory damages. See 17 USC 411 & 412.
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!
"Intellectual property" is a fiction in the US, as the Constitution makes plain. You have a "limited time monopoly", not "ownership".
"Imaginary Property" is a far more useful and honest term.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This probably just depends on how they are written. This is a good point though. I think they might actually fall into correspondence more often. Chats would be more like conversation.
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.
That's true, but TFA's representation is bogus. When you send someone an email, your consent to make copies in order for them to read the damnmed thing are assumed.
Clearly, reading email is NOT violation of copyright. TFA does proponents of copyright reform no favors, as it makes really stupid assertations like this. It only makes us, as a whole, look as stupid as TFA itself.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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
I know I shouldn't feed the anonymous cowards, but this is obviously a vast over-simplification. IP obviously has plenty of drawbacks--you suggest some of them--but nobody has come up with a better way to create incentives to put R&D into ventures which pay only IP rewards. For example, it costs billions of dollars to develop a new drug, but manufacturing drugs is incredibly easy. Everybody complains about the patent system for drugs, but nobody has come up with another system that would give sufficient incentives for a pharmaceutical company to invest billions in lab research and clinical testing of new drugs. A system without IP would not lead to innovation in pharmaceuticals; there's no way to recoup a billion-dollar investment if generic manufacturers could undercut the price of the drug from Day 1. No new drugs means none of the new drugs that have changed the lives of millions, from Lipitor to Prozac to Viagra.
The same goes, to some extent, for movies. It's true that it costs tens of millions of dollars to produce a movie. If there were absolutely no IP laws and commercial copyright infringement were allowed then nothing would stop ABC from showing a movie that was out in theaters and not paying the studio. Or for a theater to show the movie and not pay the studio. Or for cut-rate vendors to sell the movie openly on DVD the day it comes out in theaters. With absolutely NO IP protection then movies just won't get made.
There might be a better balancing point than what we're at now, but it's far from clear that "no IP" is the right solution.
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
No you can sue for monetary damages on any copyright infringement, registered or not. All works are protected under copyrighted laws, and all copyright laws/violations have the same rights/damage assessments in a court of law. (and for those saying 'what about the GPL/BSD/CC/etc or public domain?' those are licenses and copyright rights granted to authors and people under copyright law)
Now in a court case you may have to prove your copyright claim is valid. By registering with the US you have a 'trusted entity' confirm your claim to ownership at a specific time. The registration does not guarantee it is a original work, so the copyright can still be disputed, but a government backed copyright claim is harder to refute.
So basically registered copyrights are a government record saying 'At X time on Y date, Z person has claimed to this to be their original work'. The important word is claimed....all claims can be disproved with the adequate evidence.
He's totally confused. As I understand, you do have to register the copyright before you can bring a lawsuit, but once registered you can sue retroactively.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
This is actually a point with a lot of debate in the world of biographical scholars. A lot of families of artists and historical figures are trying to keep their correspondence private, using copyright as one justification. The logic is that if the family/estate owns the copyright in their letters, then they can prevent scholars from reproducing the letters publicly.
It's an interesting balance. On the one side, you have a family with a significant privacy interest. On the other hand, you have the public's interest in knowledge about the family/history. Copyright law--thanks in part to the old "moral rights" or "author's rights" theory--still includes the ability to prevent others from publishing even if you yourself are not.
Hap-happy birthday! hap-happy birthday!
happy happy happy happy hap
Hap-happy birthday! hap-happy birthday!
happy happy happy happy hap
Sung to the tune of "La Cucaracha" (Spanish for "The Cockroach")
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"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)
If the copyright is not registered you can only claim 'actual damages'. Emails typically have very little commercial value.
If the copyright is registered, you can claim actual damages + statutory damages.
IANAL but I've read the copyright myths page..
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
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."
Clearly, reading email is NOT violation of copyright.
TFA didn't say reading, but quoting the text of the email in the reply and forwarding it to other people.
So it seems "we as a whole" aren't very good at reading comprehension, to boot.
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
With absolutely NO IP protection then movies just won't get made.
Doubtful. Plenty of "IP" was created before copyright even existed. To say that no content, regardless of medium, would be created without copyright is not supported at best, flat-out fraudulent at worst.
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.
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
And they could have just translated "las mañanitas"
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?
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
Sure there is, contract law, especially the subset related to trade secrets. Require anyone buying your drug, or buying a ticket to your movie, sign a contract in which you promise to not reverse engineer or otherwise analyze the drug, or to record the movie. Standard contracts will soon appear, as will more global contracts. You'll sign a stock contract with GlaxoSmithKline and Paramont and be able to buy their drugs and watch their movies simply by presenting your ID. A quick database check and you'll be allowed to buy your drug or tickets.
You can also use something like the street performer protocol. "We'll put a team of 10 scientists on AIDS treatment research for a year if someone or group coughs up 10 million dollars. Everyone who contributes will get a copy of all the resulting research." Or "I've got a great idea for a movie. Here's my previous movies to show that I have the skills. Here's the general premise. If I'm given 50 million dollars, I'll make it. Everyone who contributes will get a copy for the cost of production and shipping."
Have a bit a of faith in the free market. I want medicine that will extend my life, and I want to watch entertaining movies. I have money I can spend on those things. Producers can make drugs and movies and want my money. We'll work something out!
I find your lack of faith in the free market disturbing. But even if you're right and we can't find some way to connect people with money who want movies to people who want money and can make movies, it's silly to suggest that movies won't get made. It will just change the cost of movies that get made. Blogs have made anyone who wants a journalist. (Not necessarily a good journalist, but a journalist none-the-less.) Bandwidth, audio compression, computerize mixing, and cheap recording equipment mean that people who never expect to make money are recording talk shows as podcasts. We've got very free music under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. As costs keep dropping, it's just a matter of time before free movies become common. Short form films are already common (you may have heard of a little site called YouTube). They may not be Hollywood blockbusters, but movies will be made. It turns out that people like creating content, but the barrier was the cost of entry. That cost continues to drop. Sure, most of the resulting content will suck, but some of it will be really good.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Looking at the current crop of rich kids, I'd be willing to submit that the rich are suffering more from an educational lack than the rest of us...
I swear, when I heard "What's a well for?" I almost sprayed Dr. Pepper all over the TV.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
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
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
You're missing the point of drug R&D. 99% of phramaceuticals are very easy to manufacture. And the FDA requires that the final ingredients be publicly-disclosed. A skilled chemist could learn how to reproduce GSK's drugs by reading the FDA disclosures and analyzing the pills.
Once Joe's Discount Drugs has learned how to reproduce GSK's drugs, you would never sign a deal with GSK (at, say, $100 / month) if you can buy it from Joe's Discount Drugs for $20 / month. Contract alone CAN'T solve IP unless the underlying IP is protected.
The "street performer protocol" doesn't work as well since we want public distribution of the results; the whole point of the venture is to spread the information beyond your 10 select researchers.
And if you think Youtube replaces studio movies then it's a sad future we have. I enjoy watching Youtube at work as much as anybody, but there's no substitute.
We COULD have simple laws
Well, you can basically have just laws, simple laws, and laws with generally predictable and consistent effects. But experience shows that you can only really get two of those three. Of them, I'd say that simplicity is probably the least important.
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.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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.
For example, it costs billions of dollars to develop a new drug,
Yes, why is drug development so horrendously inefficient?
Yes, I know the hand waving answers but the real underlying reason is the drug companies don't have any strong free market incentives to become more efficient.
It's time they felt the chill winds of the free market.
That means a much less privileged legal position leading to much less concentration of financial power (which in turn leads to political distortion/power), to the extent that maybe even no "IP" protection privilege is the best balance.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
...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.
You apparently have never worked in the pharma industry.
Let's ignore what it takes to get from a molecule-of-interest to human trials. A lot of people estimate that it takes up to 6-8 years just to get from lab to human testing in a cancer drug because of the slow reaction between the drug and the animal or tissue sample; it's simply not possible to work faster than the drug acts (and to make sure that the condition doesn't re-surface). Similarly, of 1000 interesting compounds in the lab, only 1 might end up making it to human testing, just because of the incredible complexity of the human body.
Just looking at the FDA's mandatory requirements for human testing before a drug can be released:
First, the company has to conduct Phase I trials on 20-80 healthy volunteers. These patients are paid, usually pretty well, for the risk of taking an untested drug. Then, the FDA requires Phase II trials on a larger group, usually up to 300 volunteers, again all paid. All the while one must pay for doctors, insurance, support staff, record-keeping, etc. Then, the FDA requires yet another round of testing with Phase III multi-center trials. One must support up to 3,000 patients, again with all the associated doctors, nurses, support staff, record-keeping, insurance, etc. Depending on the drug, Phase III trials can last from several months to several years. These tests must be distributed across several testing centers.
At any point it could turn out that there is some safety or efficacy problem that renders the drug worthless. Then all the investment has gone down the drain.
Sure, we could make drug testing more "efficient" by cutting down this three-stage safety and efficacy testing procedure, but I for one am glad that the FDA requires drugs be tested before being released. It's no guarantee of safety, but it sure as heck cuts down on the number of dangerous drugs sold.
I don't know why you think drug companies aren't competing in the free market with each other to come up with new drugs; it's just a long, difficult, and expensive process.
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?
Please go tell all the people who used to not even be considered people that the standards of education for them are declining.
The overall state of education in the US is kind of frustrating(because so much time is wasted doing nothing at all and such), but the average education level is quite a lot higher than most or all of history.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
It's true that the current business model for researching, manufacturing, and selling drugs wouldn't work without patents, just like it's true that the current business model for recording, marketing, and selling copies of music wouldn't work without copyright. But the whole point of eliminating restrictive patent or copyright laws is to promote a better business model, one that involves less speculation on the part of producers and less restriction on the freedoms of everyone else.
If manufacturing drugs is "incredibly easy", then the pills should be cheaply manufactured by whoever can do it most efficiently, driving the cost of each pill down to little more than the cost of synthesizing and packaging the drug. There's no need for the company that manufactures it to be the same as the company that researched it in the first place, and there's no need for that research to be paid for by increasing the cost of each pill. The research is valuable on its own, no matter how many pills are made, and making more pills doesn't reach back into the past and increase the cost of the research.
What we should be doing is paying directly for the research (or, in the case of music, the writing and recording). That's the hard part. Once it's done, and the researchers (or artists) have been paid, then the information they produced should be freely available to everyone else, so that it can be used and distributed as efficiently as possible.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. 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 overall state of education in the US is kind of frustrating(because so much time is wasted doing nothing at all and such), but the average education level is quite a lot higher than most or all of history.
If you're counting how many learn to read and have graduated H.S./college, then yes. If you're counting the amount of substantive education that would allow one to think critically about governments and societies, like histories of the United States, military history, histories of various successful and not-so-successful countries/societies/religions and the reasons why they were successful or not, then no.
The rich and powerful have the option to pay to be taught these things *if they choose*, but nobody is obligated to learn anything. Likewise, someone from a poorer background might be able to learn about these subjects, but usually would need to have the determination, interest, intelligence, and talent to teach themselves. These are not common traits, and even when present, are many times unrealized because of more immediate life-demands that face those of lesser means.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A life estate (or an estate for a term of years) is both a "limited time monopoly" and "ownership". Likewise, a many kinds of stock options have a limited lifespan but are owned. A copyright is no different, and no less owned.
The thing "owned" is not the work, but specific rights relating to the work. But that's all ownership ever relates to; a specific set of rights relating to something. Ownership is a social convention, not a natural relationship between a person and a physical object.
Intellectual property is no more -- and no less -- a fiction than every other kind of real, tangible personal, and intangible personal property.
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?
Sure, but who is "we"? The government? Sure -- I'd love a Department of Music (or, if you will, a Ministry of Sound) that decides how much to pay budding artists for their works. I'm sure we'd still have the amazing diversity of music that we see today. Of course, it's not a problem that the government would impose standards of taste--no no, the NEA has never denied funding for an artist because it offended religion (NSFW). And I'm sure politics and pork would play no role in it.
Yes, in an ideal world there would be a prize for developing a cool new drug or writing a cool new song. Then the results should be shared freely. But modern technology has yet to invent a way to figure out how big that "prize" should be for each drug and song. The market seems to be a far better predictor.
So, yeah, in theory you are 100% right, but in practice you need to explain "we" a lot better.
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!
Just how many of the several million colonists living in what is now the US do you think were educated in a way that would allow them to think critically about governments and societies?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The neutrality of the above post is disputed.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Just how many of the several million colonists living in what is now the US do you think were educated in a way that would allow them to think critically about governments and societies?
They weren't, as a rule, no different than today. But there was barely an education system in towns and villages, and none very far afield. If one were wealthy, one could have a tutor for ones' children sent to the colonies to teach them those subjects, and whatever else, like latin, in which many tomes of higher-learning were written. One *could* have bills posted around the towns and villages, and even back in England, for a tutor in swordsmanship, musketry, calvary training, and general military education/training. Try the modern equivalent and see how fast you get a visit (or several) from various authorities, including ones who would want the child or children taken away from you.
But this is before the 'modern era' of education, which is the context I was speaking in. My point was that in the last 100 years of educational history for mandated/compulsory education in America (K-12) history education of the type I referred to has been watered down, re-written, made politically correct, and diminished...and military history (outside of the mention of a few wars and notable battles) nearly eliminated.
"History" classes in US schools have become watered-down, politically-correct, evil-european-descended-caucasians-raping-the-continent diatribes that don't even bother attempting to appear balanced anymore. I looked over one of my grand-nephews' history schoolbooks, and going by what I read in there if I were to believe everything in it, *I'd* hate caucasians, the US, and consider even mentioning war as something that in some cases *might* have any valid reasons and/or higher moral and ethical motives as nearly criminal.
Heck, these days, even in colleges, getting an education in military history is getting to be hard to do, what with many colleges being increasingly anti-military. Yes, there are military colleges, but they are diminishing in number, and basic military history education shouldn't require attending such.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A few things in response...
Firstly, I believe I had already thoroughly established my understanding of the domain of intellectual property since my paper titled "Technology and the Music Industry: Music Distribution via the Internet" was written in 1996 at the University of Minnesota. Secondly, contrary to your opinion, I can read. In fact, much of my research in that paper was based on a 600-page dissection of intellectual property practices of RIAA and the music industry, including the entire text of Title 17, Chapter 1, of US code, which I've read backwards and forwards. This book, titled "This Business of Music" was published by two experienced IP attorneys, Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovksy... one of whom served as General Counsel for intellectual property at Warner Bros. Records.
Secondly, I am a registered copyright owner. I have published a screenplay that was registered both with the Writers Guild of America (west) and the Library of Congress, US Copyright Office, under Registration Number PAu002532809 on October 25, 2000. In fact, I filed a cease & desist notification against a company that was erroneously reproducing portions of my work on an adult oriented search engine. It took less than thirty minutes for the website administrator to comply with my request for removal of the material.
Thirdly, I worked with Qwest Communications Internet Security Enforcement Group for three years and processed hundreds of DMCA investigations per week submitted by RIAA, MPAA, BSA, IDSA, and other criminal investigations involving local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. I have, in the course of that work, been closely involved with our own attorneys and General Counsel.
That being said, upon another examination of Mr. Tehranian's paper I count only two instances of egregious claims of copyright infringement that do not pass the litmus test for Section 107 applicability. These are:
1. The violation of Hanna Barbera's copyright in the likeness of Captain Caveman.
2. The public performance of Mildred S. and Patty Hill's "Happy Birthday", Copyright Warner-Chappell Publishing.
Neither of these examples are likely to be pursued with civil or criminal action as the expenditure to do so far exceeds the potential reward... but I find it interesting that you didn't point out these two and only examples of infringement or the fact that Hanna Barbera is no longer the copyright owner of record since its dissolution and reformation as Cartoon Network.
The rest of the examples given, notably extrapolated in the footnotes (pp. 543-547) are in fact erroneously cited as copyright violations. Footnote 33 is a great example. Works published by the United States government are de facto public domain. The reasoning given in footnote 33 is erroneous because even a cursory examination will show that the litigation was not against individuals for having infringed the copyright. This is not a defensible position. If I were to make photocopies by myself for nonprofit, informational purposes, and then share them with colleagues in a meeting or via the internet, this would constitute fair use. What was of issue in these examples of case law was the fact that Kinkos and other companies were attempting to make a margin of profit on the reproduction of these works for individuals who had requested copies. I was at University of Minnesota at the time. The University Bookstores were affected by these cases. The result was that they could not charge a service fee over and above the basic per page copy fee, as had previously been the practice. Thus, their remedy was simply to avoid making copies on behalf of individuals... but individuals could still go to self-service copiers and use them, and this still constitutes fair use.
The fact of the matter is that both the blog article AND the research paper a
My k-12 history education wasn't much, ~10 years ago. My every impression is that it was better than my mothers, ~50 years ago(she really was nearly 40 when I was born).
How much of what you are noticing is simply your own knowledge of the history you are talking about growing? How do you address the fact that there isn't anywhere near 100 years of compulsory 7-12 education? Columbus day the Fourth of July still seem to be pretty big deal, which one wouldn't expect given what you are saying.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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]
My k-12 history education wasn't much, ~10 years ago. My every impression is that it was better than my mothers, ~50 years ago(she really was nearly 40 when I was born).
How much of what you are noticing is simply your own knowledge of the history you are talking about growing? How do you address the fact that there isn't anywhere near 100 years of compulsory 7-12 education? Columbus day the Fourth of July still seem to be pretty big deal, which one wouldn't expect given what you are saying.
My K-12 education occurred 30 years ago. I remember that quizzes were held on sections excerpted and translated from Sun Tzus' "The Art Of War", and that the translated work was available in the school library. I wonder if it's even allowed to be brought on a H.S. campus these days. I remember studying about Hitlers' and Mussolinis' rise to power and how they managed it, and the repercussions including the Holocaust. I remember being taught about Lord Chamberlain, and how his appeasement strategy backfired and nearly caused Hitler to attain world rule.
I remember being taught about Christianity and how the Catholic Church rose to dominance, and where and how that both helped civilization and hurt it. Also about how the Catholic Church suffered the eastern and western schisms and their effects. We also learned about Calvinism and the Reformations. We spent nearly an entire semester on the Crusades, the causes and effects, the battles and tactics used by both sides, and the effects on civilization.
The history books that I was taught from had entire sections with multiple chapters devoted to most of the above topics. The history books I've seen of late, if they even mention some of those topics at all, devote a chapter or less, sometimes as little as a paragraph or two.
I know I'm old, but I don't think that so much history has passed in my lifetime to this point that those events have that much less significance to the world we find ourselves in as the make-up of modern H.S. history textbooks would seem to indicate. The ones I've seen have more on the U.N. and Islam than on WW2 or the Crusades or the American Revolution. I was surprised to learn from my grand-nephews' history book that the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was perfectly justified and all Americas' fault for not allowing Japan to control all the oil-producing territories and sea routes it wanted so it could expand its' empire. I also learned that if only Lord Chamberlain or someone with his views had acted earlier and with more concessions, the Third Reich might have been "contained" and WW2 avoided. I didn't even see any mention of the Holocaust at all. Just....wow.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If you, the artist, feel that the time and talent you'd invest in writing a song are worth $10,000, then you can ask for $10,000, and refuse to work until your audience has put up that much money. If they feel your price is too high, then they won't pay, and you can either lower your price or go into another line of work, just like a barber or interior decorator or anyone else who provides a service.
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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?
Well, it would have been nice had you mentioned all that in your original reply. You know, a better rebuttal than "it's a blog! it's bad!" Wouldn't think THAT would hold up anywhere, even in the court of public opinion. But it's a blog, so it's not like anyone has to use facts to rebut it. At least, not until they're called on it and have to rebut the law review article as well as the short blog post about it.
Ah see now you're changing gears (presumably to escape the humiliation of having jumped to the wrong conclusion about me, but that's ok... it happens)... while that's fine I'd first like you to at least concede that I do, in fact, know and understand copyright law very well.
That said, I guess the problem is that we disagree about appropriate limits of copyright. I, for one, don't have a problem with watching a football game (or whatever) at the office, even if our screen is bigger than that allowed by 17 USC 1, 110, (5)(B).
I don't particularly care for appeals to emotion. They aren't the way to win me over. What I think you're trying to do here even if you don't realize it is this: You're trying to establish how moral you are by taking the side of the "little guy" who just wants to watch his football game in peace (albeit on his employer's time and expense)...
There's no issue of morality at stake here though. This is a simple matter... like a contractual agreement. The football game is a work of copyright. The broadcast stations pay for the rights to broadcast it. The employer that exceeds Section 110's limits in fact is rebroadcasting the program beyond the scope of Fair Use. Simple as that. I am not convinced that you have an argument simply because you're trying, mistakenly, to justify your own sense of convenience by appealing to my vanity in the hopes that I might see this as an opportunity to show how magnanimous I am by taking the side of the "common man"... a sense of vanity I don't possess. Believe me, I possess other kinds of vanity... just not that one.
Also, I don't like that the law allows people to go after such trivialities. You say that they won't because there's no financial incentive, but are you really going to tell me that the RIAA litigation is anything but a money sink? How can you be so sure that people won't abuse these laws? Now, you can tell me that many of these things are legally frivolous, but have you actually SEEN the lawsuits actually going on today?
I'm not averse to this line of discussion but let it be noted that my detailed response was only attempting to clarify my position against the application/interpretation of copyright law in Tehranian's "John" allegory. I would be perfectly comfortable taking on Tehranian in a courtroom on those indefensible claims of his, and I believe that anyone who has a computer allowing them to violate copyright law is perfectly capable of reading and understanding what they can and cannot do. Note that I do not use P2P networks and then later feign ignorance about copyright law. The Cornell Law database is freely accessible to anyone who wants to know the contents of 17 USC or any other Title of the entire US Code.
Anyway, back to your questions...
Can you tell me with a straight face that people aren't pushing the bounds just a little?
After three years of 150-300 DMCA notices per week, I can tell you that the bounds are being pushed more than you know. Fortunately, most of these requests never turn into real litigation because when it comes down to it their positions are utterly indefensible. It just takes a little while and some case law for that to come to light... and now it is beginning to. Recent decisions have underscored the failure of RIAA/MPAA to meet the essential burden of proof in a court of law to demonstrate infringement of 17 USC 12 and/or 17 USC 5, 512.
But it helps to have a better understanding of what's actually going on...
In my 1996 paper I pointed out a couple of k
No need to completely flip out or resort to ad hominem attacks...
I'm not sure you understood the gist of my argument. "Piracy" or whatever you want to call it is, as I stated, not nearly the problem the record companies want us all to believe it is. The real problem is obsolescence of their internet distro model. You can waste time playing semantic origami with the definition of "distribution" too if you like but I don't think it'll get you any closer to winning an argument.
The problem with your argument about copying increasing overall wealth is twofold:
"Copying is legitimate natural economic behavior which reduces scarcity and creates wealth in absolutely every single instance."
Decreasing scarcity never increases wealth. It instead dilutes value. Stock splits are an excellent example. If supply increases and demand remains constant, the equilibrium price decreases. For all your posturing about Economics, this is the most fundamental principle of basic introductory economics and it should be understood backward and forward by someone who inferred that he is an Economics graduate.
But in order for the equilibrium price (the price the market is willing to PAY) to go up, both supply AND demand have to increase. The problem with the "copyright infringement increases demand" argument is this... It simply doesn't. Show me one set of figures and the source that demonstrate that this actually happens consistently.
The other problem with your argument is that concepts such as transportation, shelter, food, music in and of itself, etc. are so generic that they are outside the scope of copyright. That is, these concepts themselves cannot be copyrighted. This entirely undermines your argument. What also undermines your argument is that copyright exists not just in the sound recording (a phonorecord) but in the lyrics and music itself which are extremely unique.
The idea is that the distribution and profitability of a work as unique as a specific kind of song or arrangement of notes should be the author's prerogative to license as THEY see fit. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in your counterargument that doesn't reek of arguing from personal incredulity or self-serving convenience.
Your copyright infringement does not profit me, as a consumer, at all. If you believe otherwise, please show mathematically how it does.
That being said, you seem to think that I'm defending the music industry when in fact I'm doing exactly the opposite. I'm suggesting ways they can be beaten at their own game... because frankly, they lack the vision to create truly scarce, truly valuable, truly creative catalogs of music. It's not in their nature to understand how to do so... and that isn't profitable or enjoyable for the artist or the consumer as much as the increase in diversity of the artist pool would be if we stopped pissing and moaning about why you can't download the latest Blink 182 album off a BitTorrent legally and instead paid any sum of money to support an independently recorded artist who adds to the diversity of the music "gene pool".
I am not taking RIAA's side in this... but I'm not buying your unfounded line of reasoning either.
Wait, so if I want to hear a new record from Fall Out Boy, I have to find other fans, gather together with them, and pay money in advance? How in the world am I supposed to know if the new song is any good or not? Yes, there are some areas where we can estimate the value of future personal services -- for example, we are able to evaluate how to pay IT consultants and wedding photographers -- but that's because the employer spends a lot of time interviewing and evaluating. Even then I challenge you to find somebody over 30 who doesn't know of a wedding photographer horror story (usually the photographer who has been paid in advance for creative work will shirk his duty and produce crap).
That's too much effort to invest in new music; I like being able to hear the song on the radio, and THEN evaluate it. The best way to evaluate the quality of music is to listen to it. But in your world we can't listen to the song until we've already paid for it. The whole point of IP is to allow people to conduct these voluntary exchanges -- you let me listen to the song so that I can decide how much I want to pay you for it. In the IP world, I listen to the song on the radio, or listen to a 30-second sample on iTunes, then I decide if I want to pay $0.99 for the song or not. That's the REAL free market there; I listen to the song, then I decide if I want buy it or not. That's the beauty of IP: I get to show you the thing that you're bidding on before you have to commit to buying it. (Imagine instead this was some new invention; if I couldn't show anybody what it was, how could they decide if it was worth investing in a manufacturing facility? In your world once I described the invention to them they could just go off and make it on their own.)
Lastly, why would I bother doing all that if I could just let somebody pay for the music up-front and enjoy the proceeds later? It's the classic free-rider problem. Once the song is out there, in your world there's nothing stopping free distribution. If a song has been produced then I can always get it free. That's great, but why would I ever pay money to get a song produced? If it costs $50,000 (in just fixed costs by the time you count studio time, a producer, re-recording, etc--all before the band's cut) to produce a new track, it'd never be worth my time to invest money if I knew that other people were going to do it anyway. Yes, a little progress bar is neat, but most people would much rather just keep their money and spend it on other things. Politics is a weird exception because of the emotional involvement.
Finally, imagine the contracting costs. I like listening to a bunch of music in the morning. Even if I felt the moral obligation to pay each musician for their work, I really don't want to be bothered trying to decide which new songs from 50+ artists I should invest in. I simply have better things to do with my time than to evaluate songs that haven't even been written yet.
If you, the artist, feel that the time and talent you'd invest in writing a song are worth $10,000, then you can ask for $10,000, and refuse to work until your audience has put up that much money.
Wait, so if I want to hear a new record from Fall Out Boy, I have to find other fans, gather together with them, and pay money in advance? How in the world am I supposed to know if the new song is any good or not?
Do you realize how ridiculous this complaint sounds?
;) If it's an artist you're unfamiliar with, then you can rely on word of mouth, or look at the stuff that artist has previously released, and if the artist is trying to build a name for himself, he can release a portfolio for free to show what he's capable of.
"Wait, so if I want to get a haircut, I have to find a barber and agree in advance to pay him? How in the world am I supposed to know if the haircut is any good or not?"
You're not paying to hear a song that already exists, you're paying the artist to write a new song. Just like you're not paying for some haircut that already exists on a shelf somewhere, you're paying the barber to cut your hair.
How are you supposed to know if it'll be any good? Well, presumably you know who Fall Out Boy is, so you already know it's going to suck.
Point is, this is a solved problem - people deal with it just fine in every other industry.
Lastly, why would I bother doing all that if I could just let somebody pay for the music up-front and enjoy the proceeds later? It's the classic free-rider problem.
The choice is yours. You have to ask yourself, how much do you care about having this new song written?
If you care so little about it that you're willing to take the chance that it might not get written at all, then you can feel free to hang on to your money. Maybe enough other people will contribute that it gets written, and you can enjoy it for free. Or maybe they won't, and it'll never get made.
There's nothing wrong with that outcome - it just means the artist's time isn't worth as much as he's asking, because people don't feel strongly enough about his music to open their wallets. He can lower his price, or convince people that he's better than they think he is (i.e. that they'll be missing out on something big if his new song never gets made), or go into another line of work.
On the other hand, if you do care enough about this potential new song that you'd be upset if it were never made, that gives you an incentive to pay. If your favorite band sent you a letter saying "We need some money or else we'll never be able to record another album", wouldn't you respond? I know I would.
If it costs $50,000 (in just fixed costs by the time you count studio time, a producer, re-recording, etc--all before the band's cut) to produce a new track, it'd never be worth my time to invest money if I knew that other people were going to do it anyway.
If you know that other people are going to do it anyway, then you're right, there's no reason for you to pay. And why should there be? The artist gets paid the same either way. He doesn't care who the money comes from.
Finally, imagine the contracting costs. I like listening to a bunch of music in the morning. Even if I felt the moral obligation to pay each musician for their work, I really don't want to be bothered trying to decide which new songs from 50+ artists I should invest in. I simply have better things to do with my time than to evaluate songs that haven't even been written yet.
Well, I'm sure there's plenty of music out there that you've never heard. If paying for new music is too much hassle for you, then stick to the old stuff.
But it wouldn't have to require so much individual involvement. For example, I pay $12.95 a month for satellite radio, and some fraction of that goes to paying royalties for the songs they play. I pay that money because I don't want to deal with finding new music on my own - they hire people with good taste to find new music for me.
Now imagine if instead of paying royalties for songs that have already been made, they spent my mone
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You have got to be kidding.
Option 1 - Listen to song, decide if song is any good, buy song.
Option 2 - Buy song without ever hearing it.
Do you buy a new car without looking at a model on the lot? I don't think so.
By your logic, people are so generous that we shouldn't bother enforcing tickets on planes and trains, right? If I don't pay my fare, there's a chance that the plane won't fly. You forget that I feel the cost of every dollar I spend in fares, but I only feel a small increase in the likelihood of the plane flying that day. It costs me $300 to change the likelihood of the flight leaving by 1%; why would I not just show up and board without paying and hope for the best? It costs me nothing to try.
Heck, why don't we do away with taxes entirely? If I don't pay my share, there's a chance that the government will collapse. Then again, it hurts me for every dollar of tax that I have to pay, but I feel only a 0.00000001% change in the liklihood of government collapsing. Faced with that option, I'll keep my 30%, thank you very much.
People are greedy. It's an unfortunate reality at times, but it's reality plain and simple. People will not pay for what they can get for free. It is the classic economics problem with non-rivalrous public goods: how to avoid the free-rider problem.
In fact, any entity that pays for any kind of research is doing essentially the same thing. They don't know exactly what they're going to get, but the work is worth paying for because it's likely to produce results. By your logic, people are so generous that we shouldn't bother enforcing tickets on planes and trains, right? If I don't pay my fare, there's a chance that the plane won't fly. Sure. That's basically the idea behind flying standby. You save money but assume the risk that you won't get to travel on your preferred schedule. It's natural enough to extend that to paying nothing but assuming the risk that you won't get to travel at all.
Of course, people like to know that they'll definitely get to travel, which explains why that option hasn't, er, taken off for air travel. People are greedy. It's an unfortunate reality at times, but it's reality plain and simple. People will not pay for what they can get for free. It is the classic economics problem with non-rivalrous public goods: how to avoid the free-rider problem. The theoretical free-rider problem's impact on real life may be overstated. Economic experiments have shown that people will contribute more than the bare minimum. For a real life example, see Radiohead's name-your-own-price album release, which brought in millions of dollars total despite the fact that each participant had the option to pay nothing at all.
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Flying standby doesn't work as an analogy because there's no chance that the airline would ever say "oh, okay, you didn't pay but enough other people did so come onboard free!" If that ever happened then you might have an analogy.
And the Radiohead example is a weird one -- they benefited from the massive wave of publicity from being the first major band to use that model. And even despite that, the majority of fans chose not to pay a cent. Magnatune is the real "name your own price" label and they've had middling success. Certainly their artists are getting paid, but not nearly as much as artists signed with "traditional" labels.
To continue from above -- in fact, flying on standby is the exact opposite of the free-rider problem. You pay for a standby ticket, you don't get it free. And you get to utilize a standby ticket when NOT ENOUGH paying customers were willing to pay full-fare. That's the exact opposite of a model where some total number of fans have to pay into a pool, and then everybody benefits when enough do. Standby relies on there being TOO FEW customers paying full price.
If 95% of the fans paid nothing, and the other 5% paid a total of $5 million, that's still five million bucks. Either that amount is enough compensation for the time they put into making the album, or it isn't; the number of people who hear it once it's been released is irrelevant to that question. Certainly their artists are getting paid, but not nearly as much as artists signed with "traditional" labels. Many artists signed with traditional labels make nothing at all. I don't see how the current setup is any better than one where artists are guaranteed to either make an acceptable income or know in advance that they won't (as opposed to only finding out once they've already invested their time into recording an album).
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