Slashdot Mirror
Yoko Ono/EMI Suit Exposes Fair Use Flaw
Ian Lamont writes "Yoko Ono and EMI Records have backed down from their suit against the makers of a documentary film who used a 15-second fragment of a John Lennon song — but only after a Stanford Law School group got involved. Even though the use of the clip was clearly Fair Use, the case exposed a huge problem with the doctrine: It's becoming too expensive for people to actually take advantage of what is supposed to be a guaranteed right. Ironically, the song in question was Imagine."
Can't the film makers just countersue to get the losses incurred by this lawsuit? If not, then there's a serious problem with the judicial system.
Fair use is a legal defense to be used in court, therefor everyone who wants to avoid defending their case in a court avoids including copyrighted stuff in their works even if it's clearly fair use.
Terrible state of affairs.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Money protects money by the overwhelming use of money. If you can't afford the same legal team Yoko has scouring indie film makers for infringement, you whimper and give in right or wrong. Same with the RIAA: bow unless you have a defense team assembled.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Could it be any other song?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
When John Lennon wrote "Imagine no possessions" he was worth $150 million.
why does anyone need the exclusive rights to something for more than 10 years? if you can't make your money on it in 10 years, it's time to stop flogging a dead horse, and if it's still popular it's long since passed into pop culture and should enter the public domain in recognition of all the support it's had...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If you can legally use a piece of a track under 'Fair Use', is it possible to create a legal P2P system where each user hosts (ie. makes available) this amount?
Could I host 30 seconds legally, and you host 30 seconds legally, and Bob hosts 30 sec and Jill hosts 30 sec?
Everyone in the country could host 30 seconds of every track in the world.
Could this work?
CH
Tsk, tsk it's an insectivorous submarine!
Banana Slugs?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
True. But famous kids would stop coming home to the 'rents house for the holidays if they thought they weren't getting royalties down the road when the death rattle sounds.
"Take this job and shove it. I got a famous Dad."
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Personally, I was around in the 60s, and the Beatles were far inferior to Pink Floyd. Mind you, I'm a Southerner, I have to say that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Seriously, you can be sued at anytime, for anything, with any reason. It's a strategy those with more money than you will use to force you to settle. Even if some states have written anti-SLAPP laws, it's written by lawyers to make sure lawyers always come out on top.
I hate to admit it, but she's right. Everybody knows that such types of fair-use are what make record sales plummet. Why buy John Lennon's record when you've got a 15-second fragment of one of his song in a documentary that you can just reply as many times as you like?
That's right, you don't, which is why so many baby seal-killing pirates are now resorting to listening to documentary soundtracks just to avoid buying discs just so they can avoid giving $2 of royalties to starving artists like John Lennon. God I hate these bastards.
You just got troll'd!
Would Yoko Ono have sued about this if Michael Moore borrowed that same 15 second clip?
I think not.
It's only OK to "Imagine" a world that believes exactly as you do.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
If it wern't for Yoko's history, I'd wonder if this was more about stopping that terrible film from being associated with Lennon than any real copyright concern.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I think the following provision should be in the law: if a jury decides a lawsuit is frivolous, then the lawyers that started it should pay everything they got plus punitive damages to the part that got sued, where "punitive" means "enough to hurt". No lawyer should be allowed to get *any* profit from a frivolous lawsuit. And lawyers should know enough about the law to realize that they are embarking on a frivolous lawsuit, whose purpose is just to intimidate or send a political message.
Copyright is enforced by the public. It is entirely up to us how long we choose to enforce copyright terms. I, for one, am all for zero length copyright terms.. but some people think slightly longer terms are acceptable. Only Disney and similar megacorps think the life + 90 year crap is acceptable (until they need another 30 years added on).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Would it really be unfeasible or inadvisable, in cases as clear-cut as this, to turn up to court yourself, sans lawyer, and say "This clearly falls under fair use. Can I go home now?"
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
Way to bury the needle on the irony meter, Yoko.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unlike European copyright law, which is premised on creators' rights, US copyright law is premised on public benefit -- encouraging creation of new works as a first and primary goal, accomplished by means of a temporary, government-provided monopoly by which creators can make a return on their work.
Perpetual copyright leads to economic inefficiencies (in which the cost to the public as a whole vastly outweighs tho benefit to the author and inheritors (if you need me to cite an peer-reviewed analysis to this effect, let me know and I'll dig up a few), to older works being lost because nobody has the rights to reproduce them (or enough economic incentive to do that at the price the present rightholder wishes to charge), and to new works which could leverage the public domain (the "creative commons") not being created.
If you want to argue that 10 years is a bad idea, that's an eminently reasonable position to take. Arguing that copyright should be perpetual, on the other hand, goes against everything US copyright law is based on, and favors a position which would be very much to the detriment of the public, including those who create new works.
in 1893 a school teacher made up a ditty (and most likely copied the tune and lyrical idea from other songs from that time period.)
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.
She died in 1916.
twenty years after "Good morning to you" was first sung a song with the same melody became popular.
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday To You
Happy Birthday Dear _____
Happy Birthday To You
The sister of the deceased sued and took the copyright because the songs were obviously so similar.
My parents sang that song at my first birthday party (Illegaly I may add as it was probably in a public place like a resteraunt) and the copyright will not expire until after I am dead.
The "artist" never saw a dime.
The "artist" only created something vaguely similar.
A pack of lazy useless family members and lawyers have been living off the income for the last hundred years contributing nothing to society while doing so and being nothing but a pain.
That is the copyright system as it stands.
Work for an hour and you can gain the right to charge other people for making certain sounds in public or making certain marks on paper for the rest of your life, then your kids inherite that right and then sell it to some random company and the best thing is that it will never expire since the terms keep getting longer and longer and longer.
copyright is broken.
It should last no longer than is needed to get your book published and on the shelves or your song recorded and into peoples ipods.
The irony isn't that the song was imagine, the irony is that the US Constitution grants Congress the power to give copyright "To promote the progress of science and useful arts".
Good luck getting John Lennon to write any more songs. Today's copyright law is clearly unconstitutional and perhaps should not be obeyed.
Free Martian Whores!
You can not be my Yoko Ono.
It's becoming too expensive because the doctrine is being abused to no end for monetary gain rather than the protection of the property.
how is babby formed?
And I quote:
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
QED
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
'Fair Use' is what's left of the right to copy after most of it has been suspended to create a privilege to benefit publishers (in the belief this ultimately benefits the public).
You have a right to copy anything you create, purchase, or discover. The state has suspended this right apart from those few exceptions it terms 'fair use', but those exceptions only come into effect as defences after you have been prosecuted for copyright infringement, not before. There can be no 'fair use' without infringement.
It would be better to demand the complete restoration of the right to copy, and to abolish copyright, than to quibble about whether certain exceptions should be acknowledged prior to the commencement of any litigation.
46 of 50.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
My argument is that it should be up to the creator to decide how long they wish to enforce copyright for. They want to enforce it for 50 years, fine. Refile something every 5-10 years and be done with it. If they can't be bothered to file, copyright expires. It should not be up to a bunch of people who are not involved in the creation of a thing to decide how long the creator should have rights to it.
The reason people attempt to file perpetual copyright is that the things being copyrighted, in most cases, still have value. If others are uncomfortable with that, they are perfectly free to create something different/better. People should stop arguing for the removal of other's rights because it's inconvenient for them.
Imagine? They deserve to be sued just for lack of taste.
That if a copyright holder repeatedly uses legal harassment to prevent obviously legal uses of its copyright, perhaps it should lose that copyright. All you would need is one or two lost copyrights and you would see media company behavior dramatically change.
Sharing all the world
I don't care why you're posting AC
The copyright to Happy Birthday is not owned by the original author ..not by the new words author ..but by Warner Music Group
due to expire in 2030 (US) 2016 (Europe) currently estimated to be worth US$5 million
and is a good example of copyright that is largely ignored by the general public ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
...well, I must admit I only partially saw it. It's such an angry, pointless, biased rant that it's almost impossible to watch the whole way through.
It's 1.5 hours of trashing the theory of evolution with well-thought-out reasons like "it's only a theory" and "certainly evolution, not a mustached psychopath, was responsible for the Holocaust".
I wouldn't want any song I own placed in this movie...
Why would I spend time and effort to develop a computer program if it could be freely copied?
you've got it all ass about face. the creator isn't the one responsible for the concept of "copyright" it's the public and the government which is backed by the people. i pay taxes which funds the government that protects those creators copyrights, so who the hell do they think they are, that they should keep benefiting for 90+ years from the protection i afford them?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There is no such thing as a use which is "clearly fair use."
Fair Use is not a right, it's a guiding principle used in courts (it's what is called an "equitable doctrine" and acts as an "affirmative defense" -- "equity" refers to rules which are not law but are designed to overcome unfairness in some applications of the law, and an "affirmative defense" is where you admit to breaking the law but claim that it shouldn't matter because of some extenuating circumstance). Courts weigh several different highly "fuzzy" factors in determining whether Fair Use should apply.
Some people might think this distinction is pedantic, but it's important for the following reason: people in the open-source/media-rights community need to understand that current law is not as much in their column as they'd like. This means two things:
1) You should not assume, just because some use seems fair, that you would win in a copyright infringement case based on Fair Use.
2) If you want to make Fair Use into a well-defined right, you'll need to write to your representatives in Congress.
People who submit summaries on Slashdot which mischaracterize Fair Use do injury to the political goals of the readership.
> Pah. The "average citizen" is busy on bittorrent without a worry about "fair use".
Pah. The "average citizen" is busy on bittorrent^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h
YOUTUBE without a worry about "fair use".
There. Fixed it for ya! :)
IMHO, the situation is more like, "An average citizen has no hope of negotiating the legal minefield for any kind of profit, but can use Youtube as an expressive media for personal gratification and let THEIR army of lawyers deal with the licensing arrangements that would otherwise make its creation and distribution impossible."
Aside from the harm created by perpetual copyright, the other big problem with IP law right now is the transaction costs of licensing. Want to make your own Southpark episode starring Beavis & Butthead? Good luck getting the media firms responsible for licensing them to even return your phone call unless Trey Parker, Matt Stone, AND Mike Judge personally intervene on your behalf to cut the red tape. Otherwise, you'll be spending several thousand dollars per hour, plus expenses, on negotiations ultimately leading to boilerplate licensing fees so outrageous, even the lawyers will admit that they're intended more to weed people out than actually open up new business possibilities. To them, you're *so far* below the commercial radar, you're wasting their time. Ergo, Youtube's ultimate business model... leveraging the economies of scale that only a major media conglomerate can afford to hammer out bulk licensing deals for content that's not quite lucrative enough to justify dealing with the parties individually.
This was absolutely positively NOT a fair use issue. There are many legal reasons why they had no right to use that clip in the movie that went beyond the protections allowed by fair use. Yet again slashdot users don't even attempt to understand the issue.
Pretty much every law is 'enforced' by the public, including the laws that say you can leave your car in the public car park and be reasonably sure it will still be there after 8 hours. Copyright is no exception.
The article asks, "Is Fair Use decided by who has the most money?"
The answer, of course, is yes.
Money decides nearly everything.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Obviously I'll defer to the opinion of a Stanford law professor, but it seems on the face of it not to be a clearly frivolous lawsuit.
Ben Stein, Mark Mathis, and the rest of the lying scumbags (see Expelled Exposed for proof) who produced this piece of dreck were using the song for a commercial purpose and were not criticizing, commenting, or reporting on it, and their disingenuous pseudo-documentary certainly doesn't qualify as teaching.
Say what you like about Yoko Ono, but wanting to avoid association with this misfire in the culture war is understandable.
You seem to have missed the point.
the person who got the copyright isn't the person who wrote happy birthday, happy birthday which was performed for years on radio and in public without any copyright notice before then just happened to be similar to a song written by a dead woman who's family then used the courts to make their own.
so even if you write your own song and don't bother to copyright it then some fucker with more money can you can just come along, take the copyright then sue you if you want to use it.
great isn't it.
bah! "make it their own" and "than you" not "can you "
You're looking at this through the European perspective -- as if the creator's monopoly on their work is a natural right.
Look at it again, as if the natural order of things in for information to be usable without restriction, and copyright is an artificial monopoly created for the sole purpose of benefiting the greater good of the public as a whole.
To be sure, things which are copyrighted may have value to the eventual rightsholder 90 years later -- but if you calculate present value at the time of creation (if you've never taken an accounting class, this determines the amount which would need to be invested, at current interest rates, to yield the same eventual income as the extended monopoly period would grant; this sum effectively represents the amount of economic motivation granted to an author to create their work), the amount of value which the creator receives at the time of creation based on this extended grant of exclusive rights is absolutely minimal. On the other hand, the costs levied on the rest of the economy -- even excluding the unknowns of derivative works which aren't created, public-benefit performances which don't occur, and enhanced breadth of society's culture as a whole based on expanded exposure to knowledge -- are considerable indeed.
See this amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenge of the DMCA, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law (Landes and Posner), Forever Minus A Day? Some Theory And Empirics of Optimal Copyright (Rufus Pollock), and (for lighter reading) this analysis in the Financial Times.
I agree that shorter terms with an option to renew are desirable, but also hold that the length of renewal should be limited either explicitly or via economic incentives (ie. attaching significant cost for renewal after a reasonable period).
Shakespeare seems to have produced pleanty of work despite others being free to copy his work at the time.
Pleanty of companies do quite well producing items which are not protected by copyright or patent in any way.
Apparently the copyright was supposed to expire in 1991 but due to all the recent extensions it probably won't expire until at least 2030.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
If the legal system was even trying to pretend it was a justice system then you wouldn't need to pay anyone to get a fair shake.
The fact that successful lawyers make huge money is proof positive that the law like everything else is biased toward the rich. If you would get the same result no matter how expensive a lawyer you got then why would you pay a lot of money?
Maybe a right to justice would have been a nice addition to a constitution.
Not that the rights you do have really exist. If you read a bit you'll find out that the only thing you have a right to do is complain to the government which doesn't really work if the government has been purchased by large corporations.
I have no problem paying to see performances and sponsoring artists is an old tradition which worked quite well during the renaissance with no copyright around.
What is a problem is a claim that you own something in my head.
That you can charge me for making certain sounds in public for no other reason than you made those sounds first.
While I'm on the same side of the argument I feel I must poke a hole in this.
"i pay taxes which funds the government that protects your property rights, so who the hell do you think you are, that you should keep benefiting for 10+ years from the protection i afford them? Your car should be free for anyone to take from your driveway 10 years after it's been bought!"
So write a better song, and don't sing Happy Birthday.
Doing what you're suggesting may end up having disastrous unintended consequences.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
*ludicrous attempt to portray evolution and atheism as causing eugenics and Nazism*
Margaret Sanger founder the Population Council, which formulated modern eugenics. She thought Hitler circa 1930 to 1940 was wonderful. She wanted to stop births of "Catholics, blacks, Jews, and other mental defectives" (her words).
Only after the evils of the Holocaust were publicized in photographs did she tone down and change the name to Planned Parenthood. You will notice most of her clinics are in black dominated neighborhoods, and blacks have abortions out of all proportion to their numbers in society.
Nothing ridiculous about the movie, bunkie.
How does this tie atheism and evolution to eugenics and Nazis?
The ideas behind eugenics, terrible as they are, came from animal husbandry, not evolution: You improve your herd by allowing the best animals to breed.
Furthermore, in the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, eugenics was a popular idea among much more people than just Margaret Sanger. Both government and Christian church leaders supported it for a while. Ellen White, a leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Christian denomination and formulator of the modern Biblical interpretation of young-Earth creationism, advocated eugenics. (For more information, read Ronald Numbers' book "The Creationists" and Christine Rosen's book "Preaching Eugenics.")
Finally, Nazism drew upon historic Christian anti-Semitism. For example, towards the end of his life Martin Luther wrote a horrible -- although popular -- book called "On the Jews and Their Lies," which heavily influenced Hitler.
I suggest, bunkie, you learn more about history and science so that next time you won't be so easily swayed by blatant propaganda pieces like "Expelled" that profess to be unbiased documentaries.
due to expire in 2030 (US) 2016 (Europe) currently estimated to be worth US$5 million
This assumes it doesn't get extended again before 2030.
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My argument is that it should be up to the creator to decide how long they wish to enforce copyright for. They want to enforce it for 50 years, fine. Refile something every 5-10 years and be done with it. If they can't be bothered to file, copyright expires. It should not be up to a bunch of people who are not involved in the creation of a thing to decide how long the creator should have rights to it.
they be able to sell the rights? yes? since they're "property"
You know what would happen then- companies would spring up which just buy up all the cheap copyrights they can and set up an automatic system for refreshing them. (unless you think there should be a significant fee to get time added) it's a winning investment since it pays off forever and you can make sure it never expires. These companies would add no value. zero ziltch nada and people would be forever walking on egshells for fear of violating some ten thousand year old copyright and getting sued into oblivion.
Simply a set of sounds. Yes. exactly. 100%. Utterly utterly correct.
You might have put effort into making that patern but then I put effort into drawing a giant picture in the sand. it's still just paterns in little bits of broken rock and that doesn't mean I own your sand if you make the same patern.
You're free to spend a year making your collection of bits on your hard disk which you own but you don't own my hard disk and I can arrange them however I like.
And who said anything about taking anything from you? You're perfectly free to keep it where I cannot see, I have no right to break into your house and take your information but if you choose to give it to me, sell it to me or show it to me then I can do whatever the hell I like with the knowledge.
I totally agree - the only CD I've bought in the last few months was Angela Brown's 'In a Dangerous Mood'
She's awesome live, and I got the CD at a gig in the West End Centre.
Check her out at her myspace page - she's one hell of a blues singer.
Go out and see music live, and buy the CDs directly from the artist - it's their living, not some shyster RIAA bastards.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
yes, yes you should work for a living just like I and most of the human race already do.
It should last no longer than is needed to get your book published and on the shelves or your song recorded and into peoples ipods.
So you'd be happy for Dreamworks to rake it in with a multi-million dollar multimedia franchise based on Megatokyo, starring Rob Schneider and Paris Hilton? I mean, it's hit the bookstore, it's fair game right? I'm all for stamping out ridiculous copyright protections, but that goes way in the opposite direction. Creators need some sort of protection.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If I wrote a book "harry potter and the toaster" following on from the popular series and published it how many sales would I get assuming I didn't try to pretend it was written by JK which would be covered under trade mark as far as I know.
If every studio can make a film about it freely which one do you think the fans will get excited about? Joe blogs version or the one which the author has agreed to help produce of course.
There wouldn't be a franchise and the authors participation in other projects ends up being worth more.
It moves the focus from trying to leech more and more out of old work and towards creating new things which people like. Authors who can consistantly produce good work would be fine.
How many millions do book companies make by printing and selling shakspeare? I'm fairly sure I saw a big section dedicated to books and plays written in that era in my local bookstore....
Does David Archuleta know that Yoko Ono took his song?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I have no problem paying to see performances and sponsoring artists is an old tradition which worked quite well during the renaissance with no copyright around
Will you pay to hear me read my novel? The next show is tomorrow at 4:30am Eastern in my basement. Bring your own coffee.
Well, no, of course you won't. You'll expect me to publish it online and make it available for free. Or you will wait until someone else buys it, rips it, and publishes it online for free.
Message: Artists whose work translates digitally are screwed. Best, really, to become a sculptor. True, few enough people will actually pay to see a gallery showing, but if they want to "own" the art they will have to pay the artist for the privilege.
You're looking at this through the European perspective -- as if the creator's monopoly on their work is a natural right.
Yeah, of course. That's because it is.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'm not talking about what happens after a book has taken off, though. In that case the book's popularity is obviously sufficient protection from infringement. I'm talking about the 99.99% of cases where somebody creates something which isn't a hugely successful cash-engine, or which has yet to become one.
Imagine if Jon Stevens got his hands on Watchmen back in the 1980s, in the copyright climate you propose. No legal power on Earth could've stopped him from producing a movie in which a flamboyantly camp Rosarch battled giant spiders. He could've turned it into a kids' TV show, and a cereal, and become de facto creator of Watchmen, because nobody would know about Alan Moore apart from his terrible, violet, twisted parody of Stevens' incredibly popular childrens' series.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
That is the law of the united states. It is the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure #11. A lawyer must sign every paper he files, certifying that the information based in it is based upon evidence and is not meant to delay, harass or increase the cost of litigation. http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule11.htm
IIRC, torrents use SHA-1 hashes, not CRC, and AFAIK, there are no known collisions for that yet, which makes #4 infeasible at present.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
But why?
Economic analysis demonstrates provably that the "natural right" view leads to suboptimal results for the public good. What evidence can you offer in opposition?
If the meme you hold is demonstrably harmful to society as a whole, including creators, why would you continue to assist in its propagation?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There was copyright in Shakespeare's day.
Frack the public good, and economic analysis thereof. This is how it breaks down:
Any man has a natural right to attempt to sell his goods/services, without the interference of others.
Since art is so easily copied, the right of an artist to attempt to sell copies of his work, free from interference, must be protected by law.
Since it directly follows from a basic natural right, copyright is a natural right, or at the least, necessary to implement a natural right.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
You mean just like with disney and Grimm's Fairy Tales? Those unpleasant parodies of our beloved disney stories?
Or how they themselves stole Sleeping Beauty from Charles Perrault or how he himself took the story from Giambattista Basile?... and on and on.... tell the same story better and people will choose your version. Simple as that.
Odly enough I've never downloaded a book, for some reason I like to own a paper book as do most people and as I said, it should last long enough to get your books on the shelf or songs into ipods.
No, you didn't have enough money off the book. You didn't make any. Unlike the movie, nobody noticed it. It languished on the shelves for ten years until some random screenwriter decided that it was great. And everyone lapped it up, and that jerk's published your own book as "the novelisation of the movie", because it's out of copyright, and he's making thousands of dollars off it, and you're a joke because you're pretending to have written the movie. And legally there's nothing you can do about it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
[citation needed]
From what I've read I was under the impression that there were no copyright laws protecting Shakespeare and his works during the Elizabethan era.
I am by no means whatsoever a copyright abolitionist -- but with regard to this line of argument, it bears mention that artists made a living long before copyright existed. The argument that copyright is necessary for a natural right to be implemented is thus bogus. Indeed, the additional faults of this argument are many:
Please read the second line in my previous reply to contain the line "the idea that eternal copyright is necessary", rather than "the idea that copyright is necessary".
The submitter and the so called legal expert claims this was a clear case of fair use.
Considering the clip makes up part of a commercial DVD and really has no relevance to the subject matter of that DVD, I don't see any fair use claim.
I don't support the current copyright laws, but whatever the lifespan of a copyright, the regulations should be obeyed. This case did not meet fair use guidelines, in fact it was an example of the rules acting as they should.
Considering both sides dropped their respective claims anyway, and the clip was removed from the dvd, I don't see what the fuss is about. If I want to make a dvd of video I've shot, and add a published artists music as a soundtrack, then I should be able to. The moment I attempt to profit financially from that DVD I should get permission from the rights holder and pay a fee if required.
I'm wondering what orifice this "natural right" was pulled from.
"Since art is so easily copied, the right of an artist to attempt to sell copies of his work, free from interference, must be protected by law. "
Or just as validly you could say
Since art is so easily copied, either artists who's works can be easily copied should work out a better revenue model, say a performance based one or get a real job.
A food dish can be copied fairly closely yet I see no special law protecting chefs from having their works copied by each other or by the evil ready meal companies.
Imagine this: I come up with a new dish which is very popular and people flock to my restraunt as long as I can forbid anyone else from making something similar. Otherwise other chefs will copy me right away and evil companies will mass produce ready meals which copy my dish then I'll go out of buisness and the children they will spit on me as I lie dying in the gutter!
Copyright is enforced by the public. It is entirely up to us how long we choose to enforce copyright terms.
No, it is up to them, the other members of the World Trade Organization. They have set the minimum copyright term for works first published outside of our country at the life of the author plus 50 years.
it bears mention that artists made a living long before copyright existed. The argument that copyright is necessary for a natural right to be implemented is thus bogus.
Making a living is not what I speak of. The artist has the right to attempt his business model free of interference. Many artists choose to attempt to sell copies of their work, and they must be protected from any interference.
it does not follow that this exclusivity period must be eternal.
I never said it must be eternal, merely that it must exist. Where to fix the length is another matter altogether.
the straw-man argument that the public-good view of copyright leads to artists being unable to sell their goods and services (and thus unable to live off of their work) is simply a bogeyman, and false on its face.
Your rebuttal is, itself, a bogeyman. I made no such argument. I merely said that artists must be able to attempt to sell their work in a manner of their choosing, no more. I don't care if artists are able to make a living under all systems equally well, as my views on copyright stem not from the financial motivation, but the right of the artist to pursue business as he sees fit.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Since art is so easily copied, either artists who's works can be easily copied should work out a better revenue model, say a performance based one or get a real job.
Utterly irrelevant. A common argument by those who wish to abolish copyright, but completely irrelevant. The artist has the right to pursue whatever revenue model he sees fit, free from the interference of others. If his revenue model is poor, then he'll starve, or change it: no one guarantees the right to have a successful business model. We do guarantee the right to pursue a business model unfettered, though.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
You post this question on slashdot? Just lob a great big fat one right across the plate...
I'm going to assume you knew what you were doing...
You cannot copyright food. (currently)
Is this right?
why?/why not?
To most people even the idea of copyrighting food is silly as it should be with most things so it makes for a good example.
Imainge you come up with a new dish say.... deep fried banana and shrimp served in an orange skin or some other weird crap.
Nobody likes your restraunt because it's dark and dingy and almost nobody likes your dish because you're a crap cook.
but some big name cheff comes in one day, sits down and orders it.
2 weeks later you see him on his cooking show preparing "your" dish with a few minor changes and serving it in his well run popular resteraunt and people love it.
He's removed the black hairy bits which put everyone off your version and he's marketing it better.
You would be very very pissed but just because your pissed doesn't mean you get to have the courts shut him down.
The public benefit because they get the well prepared and marketed version rather than your poorly prepared shite.
Now replace "dish" with "story", "resteraunt" with "publishing house" or "shop" and "black hairy bits" with "plot holes and poor writing style and spelling"
somehow I see more resteraunts as I walk down the street than book publishers despite such an "unfair" system.
Fair enough. Perpetual copyright is not the answer, and I didn't really see that part. I just figured you were arguing for the abolition of copyright, which is a safe assumption for the vast majority of posts here.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Life is feeling pretty easy when you are rich. You can afford to have crazy theories about a utopian society.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Those works were largely public domain to begin with (the Grimms were collectors of local fables, and you can't copyright a version of your nation's Johnny Appleseed) and even if they weren't, the authors have been dead for quite some time. I'm sure we can both agree that copyright protection should've lapsed in those cases.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
We're not talking about some product where the skill in creation is vital to the end result, though. If someone takes your un-noticed novel, copies it word for word, and puts it back out to great acclaim, popularity, and gigantic sacks of cash, you would feel rightly aggrieved, no?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So should I make my software bug ridden so I can sell support?
(I should say, the manual skill in creation and reproduction. Dune is Dune is Dune, on pulp or magazine stock, as the same words are there, but a Rodin is not a Rodin when it's been carved from meat by a blind robot.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why would I want to develop software for internal business use which may be used by less than 10 people for free?
"We do guarantee the right to pursue a business model unfettered, though."
So if I want to sell the fruit of my labour. Say shoes.
I and others in the business find that I'm having a problem with low sales because people are re-selling the shoes second hand after using them for some time or getting them repaired.
By your logic - to preserve my "right" to pursue any business model I wish and have that model protected and helped along by law I should be able to demand that it be illegal to pass ownership of my product to another person or artificially prolong the life of the product beyond it's designed limit and so deprive me of future income.(imagine Nike suing shoe repair shops)Of course this model would violate your property rights since they're your shoes once you've bought them.
If you're trying to make money in an area which is doomed to failure because of new technology then you either find a new way to make money or get a different job. Twisting property rights to say "well even though you bought that it still doesn't really belong to you" is just a corrupt solution.
is freezing in the dark...
This is being extensively litigated in the RIAA cases and has gone both ways, but in the few instances where an appellate circuit has made a clear statement on the matter, it's been that there ought to be a presumption in favor of awarding attorneys' fees to prevailing defendants in copyright cases. The presumption is strengthened if the plaintiff brought a case that they ought to have known was frivolous, or if the plaintiff has much greater resources available than the defendant. To my knowledge, the first, sixth, and seventh circuits have all explicitly ruled to that effect.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
b4 socialized medicine is socialized law;-)
Because your boss has paid you to. Same reason you scrub the floor if he tells you to.
if a company needs custom software they'll have someone make it. if they don't want their competitors to get it they'll keep it confidential.
pretty simple.
Or lock it to the first machine it's installed on.
The principles of competition still apply.
2 companies offering open source and selling support, do you buy the contract from the ones with a reputation for setting up buggy systems or the ones who make their money from providing occasional good service to 1000 companies rather than awful constant service to 10 companies.
In other words. your argument is a joke.
Just FYI - most of the people in the US dislike the small (but often vocal) population of the "Creationist assholes" over here too. We are not all wankers across the pond.
"But this one goes to 11!"
easier to ask forgiveness than get permission...
"Affirmative defense" and "right" aren't wholly distinct things. For example, raising First Amendment rights in litigation is generally done as an affirmative defense, and there too, "courts weigh several different highly 'fuzzy' factors" in their determinations.
The EFF has a small bit about this in q5 of their FAQ.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
yet you haven't dealt with the problem or copies which are not exact.
Say some other author picks up some unpopular novel, goes through it with a fine tooth comb and fixes all the problems with the plot, characters, etc and republished it. What makes this different from the cheff taking the crap dish and improving it?
as would the cheff, this validates copyright as it stands how? feeling bad is not a basis for law.
My mistake. He didn't actually know what he was doing.
Then you're arguing with the wrong person. I provided links to extensive economic analysis earlier in this thread, as well as an in-depth discussion of my position; even a cursory review of that discussion, or the references given, would have made it crystal clear that I argue for shorter copyright terms calculated to maximize public welfare, rather than the eternal copyright favored by many of those who see the first and foremost goal being innate rights purportedly owed to those who create.
Copyright is interference! If I publish books or sing songs written by others, how does the author's or artist's right to "attempt his business model free of interference" outweigh by own? A monopoly of any sort (and copyright and patents undeniably establish monopolies) is by its very nature a restriction on the actions that others can take, and thus impingement on their own rights (of freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom of contract, and the like).
The correct argument here is to calculate that interference in such a way as to maximize the public good (by increasing the amount of material created to be published or performed), rather than to argue that it is an innate right, and thus deserving of maximal protection in all cases -- as the "innate right" argument both fails to benefit the public and fails to take into account the other innate rights with which such a monopoly interferes.
Taking a position that an individual has an exclusive right to sell copies of works they created as necessary to exercise an inherent right to earn income from the sweat of one's brow (which I believe to be an accurate restatement of your explanation of why copyright is an innate right) implies that if one did not have the exclusive right to sell copies of works they created, one could not earn income from one's work; otherwise, the "necessary" clause given above would not apply.
I'm in complete agreement. Did Yoko Ono write Imagine? No. She gets rich because she married John Lennon. Let me correct that slightly by saying that she got rich marrying John Lennon because he was quite rich at the time anyway, but is there any sense in the copyright for Imagine ending up in her hands? Here's an idea, let's bring an end to the idea of corporate ownership of copyright. The guy who creates something gets the copyright, and he may assign it to anyone he chooses at that time. On the death of that person, be it old age or tragic accident that claims them ten minutes after the copyright is assigned, it falls to the public domain. The creator (or their proxy) derives benefit for their entire lifetime, and then the public gets it.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
The "artist" never saw a dime.
The "artist" only created something vaguely similar.
A pack of lazy useless family members and lawyers have been living off the income for the last hundred years contributing nothing to society while doing so and being nothing but a pain.>
So what's the problem? Just sing this instead, and rest easy knowing that the performance fees will support the widow of the original artist.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
That is where moral rights legislation such as exists in the UK would be helpful. This basically makes it possible to sue if someone plagiarises your work, and in some other related situations. This protection lasts forever
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."- Winston Churchill
Why's everything insightful today?
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
There was copyright in Shakespeare's day.
Yes, but it was not what we think of as being copyright now.
Copyright in the modern sense first appeared in Britain in 1710, well after Shakespeare. Prior to that, there was a thing called the Stationers' Copyright. Basically it was a form of official censorship (nothing could be legally printed without being approved by the government) and a collusive monopoly amongst the printers to keep prices high and competition low. Each printer would choose a book and register it, and thus have a monopoly on printing it. But the authors didn't have any rights to their own works. Printers could get copyrights on authors' books without permission and without payment. All they needed was a copy of the manuscript or some such.
In fact, in Shakespeare's day, there were plenty of unauthorized editions of his plays (generally acquired by paying actors who had learned the play to dictate it to a scribe, sometimes with hilarious results) but no authorized editions. It wasn't until the First Folio, after Shakespeare died, that a good edition came along.
And it's a fairly good thing, too, that there wasn't meaningful copyright at the time, since all but one of Shakespeare's plays was based on previous works, some historical, some fictional, some quite recent. He wasn't the only person writing about Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, you know.
Since the Stationers' Copyright died a long time ago, and has no relationship to copyright since then, most people ignore it, and can justifiably say that copyright didn't really come along until 1710.
-- 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.
I am by no means whatsoever a copyright abolitionist ...
the public-good view of copyright requires that the artist be incentivized to the extent necessary for them to create
Well, I think you've got a little bit of a conflict there.
First, remember that there are two public goods: the public benefit of having more works created, and the public benefit of being unrestricted as to those works. Encouraging more creation by granting copyrights reduces the second benefit at the same time as it increases the first. The trick is that they don't scale linearly; even a very short copyright term, with a very small scope of protection can yield a much larger incentivizing benefit than its inherent detriment. But a very long, broad, term could wind up having little additional incentivizing benefit, making it a net detriment, and thus a bad idea.
Second, this being the case, it is possible in some circumstances that granting any copyright would have no incentivizing benefit outweighing the inescapable detriment. Architectural works strike me as being of this type. We didn't grant copyrights for buildings until 1990. Prior to that, we had plenty of buildings being designed and built. Afterwards, nothing changed. Construction is really governed by how much money people have for buildings, how much demand there is, what's tasteful, etc. Copyright does not play a role. Thus, there's no more works being created as a result of the copyright incentive to the point where it outweighs the public detriment that is automatic from granting copyrights. This sort of copyright, then, should be abolished.
Likewise, it is possible, if much less likely, that changing circumstances in the future could result in copyright not being enough of an incentive to ever justify itself. So we ought not to forever forswear abolition. Rather, we ought to leave it on the table as one possible option, should circumstances ever change to make it the best policy. I don't think we're there yet, and we may never be, but let's not arbitrarily get rid of the idea.
-- 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.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post in its entirety; the "by no means whatsoever a copyright abolitionist" statement was intended to communicate only that I do not seek the elimination of copyright as an end in and of itself.
I asked my boss - he says we need to sell the software to make money. He is on slashdot if you wish to talk to him. His UID is DAldredge (2353)
So because one (rightly) sees the natural order of things, as far as copyright goes, as being total freedom of information - they are automatically anarchists? Nice straw man.
It's worth saying that copyright is a very recent idea. If you need to know what the actual default position on copyright is, just go back and look at how media was handled before the printing press. There was pretty much no concept of anyone having rights to profit or control their works; it was invented only after the creation of media was made an industry.
Great Intellect...
The artist has the right to pursue any model he sees fit, but that does not imply that some models should therefore receive government protection.
In other words, if the model works, great. But you are in fact advocating that the government support and encourage what would otherwise be an unsuccessful business model (mostly due to the fact that it's a poor business model nowadays).
And just to clarify, that's just the argument that copyright is not a "natural right" in the way that freedoms of speech, association, etc. are.
It might still be a useful tool, of course. My personal view is that it is, in a more limited form than what we have now.
Would Yoko Ono have sued about this if Michael Moore borrowed that same 15 second clip?
I think not.
It's only OK to "Imagine" a world that believes exactly as you do.
If someone was trying to say that you were part of some insanely elaborate and genocidal conspiracy (as Stein did by claiming that Darwin, Science and Atheism caused the holocaust), would you be helping that person?