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Lessig, Zittrain, Barlow To Square Off Against RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's case in Boston against a 24-year-old grad student, SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, in which Prof. Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, along with members of his CyberLaw class, are representing the defendant, may shape up as a showdown between the Electronic Frontier and Big Music. The defendant's witness list includes names such as those of Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Author of 'Free Culture'), John Perry Barlow (former songwriter of The Grateful Dead and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), Prof. Johan Pouwelse (Scientific Director of P2P-Next), Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Author of 'The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It'), Professors Wendy Seltzer, Terry Fisher, and John Palfrey, and others. The RIAA requested, and was granted, an adjournment of the trial, from its previously scheduled December 1st date, to March 30, 2009. (The RIAA lawyers have been asking for adjournments a lot lately, asking for an adjournment in UMG v. Lindor the other day because they were so busy preparing for the Tenenbaum December 1st trial ... I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam)."
I bet he had a fun childhood.
Before those of us here who love to download copyright films and music at no cost start cheering these men on who challenge the RIAA, let's remember that Lessig doesn't want to abolish copyright, but simply restore short terms. He is not our ally in ensuring we can get whatever media we want whenever we want for no cost.
Hit 'em hard for freedom's sake, eh?
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
NEXT WEEK at the MANHATTAN SLAMATARIUM! Aaaaaaaaaaare you reeeeeaaaaadyyy to RRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUMMMMBLE?
Is anyone surprised that the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats is resquesting more time? It takes a LOT of lawyers to succesfully bully and threaten an entire all-star team of intellectuals college professors well-reknowned in their fields as opposed as a single young student. You don't just steamroll a group like that with a single "cease and decist or we'll ruin you" email.
=( looks like i blew it lol
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.
But at any rate, for the corporate media spin on this, here are a few links:
Billion Dollar Charlie vs. the RIAA
Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case
Lawsuits Brought by Music Industry Are Unconstitutional, Lawyer Says
Law professor fires back at song-swapping lawsuits (AP)
Law Professor Takes on RIAA
Prof: Penalty unfair, will help with $1M download lawsuit
RIAA defendant enlists Harvard Law prof, students
Harvard Professor: File-Sharing Lawsuits Unconstitutional
Free Martian Whores!
While this approach may work when suing Gramma, it's a different story when you roll in pro bono representation and evangelical students.
Wonder how long Sony is going to keep writing checks?
Hit 'em hard for freedom's sake, eh?
Well, I'm glad you're so certain that the grad student has not broken any laws. Frankly, I'm not certain anything the RIAA is doing is illegal ... and if that's the case, we need to target a change in the laws.
I might stop being spitting mad.
I hate:
1. DVD's that lock you out of fast forwarding through the crap (long intros, FBI warnings, previews, etc).
2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place).
3. Anti-competitive prices on CD's, and music in general. There have been findings of fact showing anti-competivie behavior, but nothing done to stop it.
4. CD's that try to install crap on my machine (yes, you Sony).
5. DVD's that all prevent me from being able to make fair use of their content (using short clips for example) without becoming a criminal.
6. Retarded EULA's.
I want to own my own shit again!
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights. You just wait.
Since I keep getting modded down, I feel compelled to provide userful information. I apologize for the way I stated my first comment, but the RIAA is the guardian of an industry so antiquated and oppressive that having sympathy for these guys is a little like feeling sorry for a Georgia slaveholder after watching Sherman's troops fire his mansion and scatter his livestock. Here's an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music -- the "talent" -- are getting royally screwed in the royalty department. It's been like that for years. Anyways, harvard has the court documents posted here for all to see.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Are they perhaps trying to postpone the trial long enough so that the class has finished it's term and the 'defense team' has moved on to a new subject?
----- - The beatings will continue until morale improves
the way it's always been meant to be. even though it's minions tend to foist themselves to their appropriate reward, it's still no giveaway.
The RIAA lawyers have been asking for adjournments a lot lately, asking for an adjournment in UMG v. Lindor the other day because they were so busy preparing for the Tenenbaum December 1st trial ... I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam
I'd restate that as, "I guess when congress sells you a few new laws every year, delaying is a pretty smart business tactic."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Yeah, well the manufacturers of that shirt might sue you if your picture is taken wearing 'their' shirt. It happens with cars.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Offtopic? I would say that anyone who tried to make a "first post" blew it. Thus, the above comment is spot on. Apparently BountyX has gained some insight. (But don't anyone dare mod it insightful! We don't want to encourage such things.)
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.
That's absolutely reasonable. When you wear that shirt, you're representing Tommy Hilfiger and are, therefore, impacting the future sales of that brand. By wearing that white shirt after labor day, you're in effect saying that the Hilfiger brand itself is out of style, causing irreparable and immeasurable damage. This theft of future sales is obviously wrong and it needs to be stopped. Since there's no telling how many days you've warn that shirt in a damaging way, and there's no telling how many people were negatively impacted, I think it's entirely fair to set the minimum damages to $15,000 and the maximum at 2% of the brand's gross yearly earnings (even though the damages may be much, much greater).
Also, since clothing brands are named after the person who designed them, and by wearing them incorrectly, we're going to start calling the improper wearing of clothes "Assassination" instead of the more tame "bad style". The Designer Assassination Prevention Act of 2009 will set all of this into the law books. It's only fair, after all.
I hate: 1. DVD's that lock you out of fast forwarding through the crap (long intros, FBI warnings, previews, etc). 2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place). 3. Anti-competitive prices on CD's, and music in general. There have been findings of fact showing anti-competivie behavior, but nothing done to stop it. 4. CD's that try to install crap on my machine (yes, you Sony). 5. DVD's that all prevent me from being able to make fair use of their content (using short clips for example) without becoming a criminal. 6. Retarded EULA's.
Easy solution: Don't buy any of that stuff.
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.
Then we'll just get all of our clothing from Sweden like we currently do with all of our media ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"I'll get back to ya on that!"
Didn't someone just recently copyright that phrase?
I hope the RIAA gets sued!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have to agree with you except for #3. An anticompetetive price would be one that was underpriced, when RIAA music is sickeningly overpriced. There is no reason whatever why you should have to pay more than ten bucks for a CD, as you can get professionally duplicated lots as small as 1000 for $1k including covers and printing. I'd guess for RIAA sized lots they could get them for a quarter of that.
Most local bands here in Springfield have their own CDs, and sell them for five or ten bucks each.
Free Martian Whores!
Wierd Al Yankovic, among others, have complained that they make less off digital downloads than regular sales. The problem is that the record companies haven't changed their royalty system to accommodate digital sales and probably won't. For physical media, record companies would deduct from sales for things like manufacturing and distribution out of the artists' royalties. With digital sales, there are not any real manufacturing costs and retailers like iTunes Store absorb the distribution costs. But the record company would still deduct these costs from royalties.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
have three effects:
1. they punish well-behaved customers for what pirates do
2. they have zero effect on the pirates
3. they turn well-behaved customers into pirates
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Obviously they're postponing trials because they are busy drafting a Federal bailout of the music industry.
The Govt. created the Internet, they owe the record companies some love. $30 Billion ought to do it.
No one in their right mind on Slashdot should want to abolish copyright. As authors of free software under licenses like the GPL, we actually depend on copyright law to keep our creations free.
But what we're keeping them free from is mainly compilation copyrights.
The problem is that software couldn't be safely released into the public domain because somebody else could fix a bug or make a useful mod, copyright the fix or upgrade, and everybody else (including the original author) are hosed. They can't fix or upgrade it in the same way themselves without being in trouble. So putting software in the public domain means losing, not just control of its future (which is OK), but possibly the use of future versions (which is not).
GPL and other "free" licenses head this off by keeping the copyright alive, using it as a bludgeon to prevent others from capturing the freed software, while allowing its use by those who agree to leave it free, including its future versions.
But while killing coypyright would kill free licenses, it would also kill the thing they were created to prevent. Yes you wouldn't be able to use the copyright underlying the license to force somebody who didn't distribute the upgrade source to chose between releasing it or stopping distribution of the object (and paying big penalties). But then he couldn't use copyright to keep you from reverse-engineering his object code and distributing equivalent source, either. B-) With the original problem solved we could dispense with open licenses and some of their additional downsides (such as mutual incompatibility).
(Granted GPL has since been upgraded to provide some protection against patents, which WOULD be lost. But that's a kludge providing very limited protection. Meanwhile software patents are being attacked separately.)
= = = =
Having said all that:
My own opinion is that copyright (with reasonable term, without a ban on reverse-engineering, and without junk like "look and feel", "interface operation is a 'performance'", and "similar function is a derived work") is the right protection for software. It bans straight copying, giving adequate time for original developers to get a product established in a market before clones can appear and imposes adequate development costs on cloners, without setting patent-style boobytraps for others who independently develop the same ideas.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would feel sorry for the Georgia slaveholder, he'd already (however rightly so - since it was made illegal) lost property that he'd paid for. But since he was doing something completely legal for years, society had made it illegal, it's okay for government thugs to destroy his home and and food/income as well? In the land of bad analogies that is /., your analogy truly stinks.
When we finally get these production companies out of the picture maybe we can start getting some decent music. These companies have stunted artist evolution since they starting coming up with formulas for shallow success. This is one industry that should go the way of GM out of principle.
The 14'th amendment was was created to be an option.
There's a knee-jerk reaction among many mods to downmod ANY first post, even it it's on-topic, insightful, informative, and/or funny and in no way insiteful or inflammatory. Every time I've made a first post it gets its ass ripped with "offtopic" or "troll" yet somehow winds up at better than 1, often 5.
Think before you mod.
However in this case, I'd have downmodded it too.
Free Martian Whores!
Heh. Described a different copyright problem than I named.
Compilation copyrights are copyrights on collections of otherwise free (i.e. public-domained) works. A bad guy could also get a copyright on a piece of freed software by including it with several other pieces in a distribution and copyrighting that.
Both this and copyrights on derived works based on a public-domain work are copyright recapture. Both are defended against by open licenses built on copyright. And both cease to be a problem if copyright goes away.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would feel sorry for the Georgia slaveholder, he'd already (however rightly so - since it was made illegal) lost property that he'd paid for. But since he was doing something completely legal for years, society had made it illegal, it's okay for government thugs to destroy his home and and food/income as well? In the land of bad analogies that is /., your analogy truly stinks.
Just because something is legal does not make it right. He still deserves what he gets.
I hate:
7. apostrophes
I've seen what you wear after 8PM on weeknights, I wouldn't be caught dead on your ass either.
I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam
=( looks like i blew it lol
I am perturbed at the references to steam engines today.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
I had posted that story to a photography forum I'm a member of and someone took the initiative to contact Toyota's legal department. They're backpedaling now on their original claim:
Translation: We found a couple of legitimately infringing photos on your site but rather than give you specifics we decided to be lazy and just order them all down. We figured you'd just roll over and take it, but then you had to spread the word. Now we're facing a ton of bad PR so we're going to limit our claims to just those originally infringing photos.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
words evolve in meaning and use, and you need to get used to it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights. You just wait.
Wait till produce markets start selling oranges that have a note injected under the peel that says, after about 6 pages of legal boilerplate and definitions, "Sunkist Oranges are owned and trademarked by Sunkist. Any reproduction including but not limited to: using seeds to grow more Sunkist Oranges, taking pictures of Sunkist Oranges, or using Sunkist Oranges for any non-personal use is prohibited by law and punishable by a maximum fine of up to $500,000 per offense and 5 years of incarceration. Purchasing this orange licenses you to one user per purchase. If you wish to share this orange, you must contact Sunkist to purchase additional licenses through our hotline below. By tasting, juicing, or breaking this orange into slices, you agree to these terms." and meanwhile, it infects your house with airborn SecureFROOT scurvy.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Brilliant.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Are you working on legislation which would lock up all of those content thieves who get up and go to the bathroom instead of watching the commercials thereby depriving the starving artists of their hard earned income?
These BATHROOM BANDITS must be stopped.
Just because the law permits something, doesn't make it right to take advantage of it, when it's a stupid law. The law allowed slavery and slaveholders got rich off the sweat of other human beings, until time, circumstances, and war finally put a stop to it. All the slaveholders had to do was free his slaves to avoid the consequences of war.
The law currently allows ridiculously long period of copyright protection, while technology allows individuals to undermine the stupidity of current law. All copyright holders have to do is to put their works into the public domain (or a Creative Commons license).
See the analogy?
I've been to the land of bad analogies, they have some extremely nice fjords.
I'll bet if Weird Al were to sell his digital downloads directly on his own webpage without RIAA support he'd have a different opinion on the profitability of digital music sales. Especially if Steve Albini's numbers are correct.
Al is probably earning about 2% of each sale. I'd be pissed too.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I would feel sorry for the Georgia slaveholder, he'd already (however rightly so - since it was made illegal) lost property that he'd paid for. But since he was doing something completely legal for years, society had made it illegal, it's okay for government thugs to destroy his home and and food/income as well? In the land of bad analogies that is /., your analogy truly stinks.
Just because something is legal does not make it right. He still deserves what he gets.
There you go again foisting your morals off on others.
He does not deserve what he gets, and the type of bullying you're suggesting amounts to something quite worse than what the RIAA does to the people on the receiving end of their bullying.
Forcing him to comply with the law is one thing, basically killing him by destroying his ability to eat is as bad as it gets, it's tantamount to murder. In fact, they are basically murdering him and his whole family (children and all), as well as anyone else who depended on him.
When freeing the slaves, the government should have done what they are required by law to do whenever they take property, they can force a sale, but they still have to pay whatever they can convince a judge is the fair market value for it. That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
And just so your high and mighty "morals" don't get too out of control, remember, most of the culture you likely benefit from was built by societies that allowed slavery or other types of indentured service. If you're a religious nut I'll also remind you that Paul, from your New Testament sent the runaway slave back to his owner.
In the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial," the issue before the trial court wasn't evolution, it was the teaching of evolution in the public schools in violation of Tennessee state law.
Which meant that all the intellectual firepower Darrow had assembled to defend evolution had no platform. They had nothing useful to say. Nothing admissible as evidence.
The place to make that argument was before the Tennessee legislature.
Here's a newsflash, those navel oranges that taste so yummy? You can't grow a tree from them as they are sterile (I forget the actual term applied to fruit). So they've already taken that step. Now I don't know how they will do the EULA under the peel, but for now they probably just stick it on the box/bag/outside. :-)
*Seedless watermelon and grapes are the same... can't grow your own either. I am OK with that since I'll never do either.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
He is not our ally in ensuring we can get whatever media we want whenever we want for no cost.
Short terms is what we actually do want. Copyright and patent.
Make your money off of something when it's new. Let a few years pass. Then it goes into the public domain.
How is this a bad scenario? Sounds like a little slice of heaven to me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Entertainment attorney Jay Cooper, who specializes in music and copyright issues at Los Angeles-based Greenberg Traurig, is convinced that Nesson will not persuade the federal court to strike down the copyright law.
He said the statutory damages it awards enable recording companies to get compensation in cases where it is difficult to prove actual damages.
The record companies have echoed that line of defense.
Umm... ok. So, you feel entitled to compensation even though you can't prove anything. I'm sorry, but this calls for a huge:
WTF!!??
The solution to all those problems is....
Pirate your media.
Better 'customer' experience. Lower price.
Heck. You're stupid not to pirate. What with the way the media companys have been treating people lately.
The copyright environment sucks.
I was using a torrent to download a linux distro the other day. I was actually concerned about being "tracked" by my ISP as a file pirate.
This is so wrong. Corporations are using private law backed up by copyright statute to create a Kafka-esque "guilty because we say you are guilty" environment. Oh, sure, they don't have the power to imprison you, but with the courts they do have the power to bankrupt you with lawyers fees with no credible evidence.
I'm serious, people need to start fighting back, and not just in the courts. Who says they get to make the rules? What they are doing is not fair, it is not civilized, and it is not human. The fight, therefor, need not be either.
If every lawyer and executive that works for a RIAA company gets egged every day on the way to work. If every car they own gets its tires slashed. If every time they are in a starbucks, someone pours hot coffee on their suit. If every time someone sees one yells at the top of their lungs "CRIMINAL F(*&CK GET OUT OF HERE." Maybe they'll start to see that the money they are being paid to ruin people's lives will in turn ruin theirs.
We don't have the money to fight them in court, but we can ruin their lives just as easy as they can ruin the lives of innocent people. If they don't have a conscience, perhaps we should perform that function for them. I'm not calling for violence, not at all. I am calling for wholesale property damage. Break everything they own when ever they get it. They feel perfectly comfortable wreakig financial havoc on people, we should feel the same until they stop.
I might stop being spitting mad.
I hate:
2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place).
Try Mediamonkey. http://www.mediamonkey.com/
Works as advertised.
Not slashvert, just a happy user, with loads of Macs & PCs, iPods, bluetooth in the cars...and three teenage girls. Junked iTunes early on, never looked back.
Author/editor Eric Flint (of the Baen Free Library fame) wrote a whole series of wonderful essays on copyright as editorials in the "Jim Baen's Universe" magazine. You can read them all for free (and I urge you to go read them.. he make a whole series of great points).
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
The government didn't "take" property. They made kidnapping and forced labor illegal.
Charlie Tuna was new then, he's made a comeback in recent years. He's the "Chicken of the Sea" brand tuna mascot
Last time I checked, Charlie was on StarKist, not COTS.
How is it possible to hold a copyright on Happy Birthday? The lyrics change every time you sing it.
What does their copyright look like?
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear *
Happy birthday to you.
Or have they filed millions of copyrights?
Copyright 2234257612, Happy Birthday to You, Aaby version.
...
Copyright 2234257613, Happy Birthday to You, Aaron version.
Copyright 2234257614, Happy Birthday to You, Abe version.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Your talk about owning excrement is disgusting. You already own your own excrement. Your problem is that you want to own somebody else's. That's yucky.
The solution is obvious: Don't buy excrement. Either pick up your excrement free (it's really easy to do, I'm sure) or make your own (equally easy).
Stop whining about other people's excrement. They get to make it the way THEY want. That's freedom, man.
Is this pro-bono or not?
Prof. Lessig opposed the Sonny Bono Act.
they will see how few consumers (approximately 0%) are willing to purchase music for personal use under that kind of restriction.
Citation needed.
If I may play Devil's Advocate for a second...
Did the liquor salesmen deserve to lose their lively-hood during prohibition? Just because something is illegal does not make it wrong.
(I truly don't have any direction to take this, just seemed like something to bring up)
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
An anticompetetive price would be one that was underpriced, when RIAA music is sickeningly overpriced.
He meant illegal collusion to set prices. That method doesn't use competition to set prices, so it could be seen as non-competitive, anti-competitive, or whatever. They have been convicted of that, and did nothing to change their actions, other than being a little more discrete when illegally price-fixing.
Learn to love Alaska
Their business model collapses, hopefully chapter 11 ensues, new management enters, abolishes overpaid execs.
Not in today's United States. Federal bailout. It's the new model for capitalism these days.
Incompetent execs? Outdated business model? Are you selling something that was great in the 80's but sucks today?
Federal bailout. After all, we can't have these overpriced incompetent execs making the unemployment numbers worse, can we?
I'm only halfway kidding. I would not be surprised if these sleazebags tried to dip into the new broken economy safety net of federal bailouts.
"OMG the pirates have taken our money! Help help help! NONE of this is our fault at all! Just because we've redefined music to be this thumping easily mass produced crap a trained seal and a drum machine could make and force DRM down our consumers throats (that is, when we're not suing them) doesn't mean a thing!"
I give about 60/40 odds that some RIAA goon will try this sometime before the current administration is replaced. You watch.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I hate [DVD DRM]
Easy solution: Don't buy any of that stuff.
To which publisher of DRM-free feature films are you suggesting the grandparent switch?
Admittedly, this is somewhat offtopic, but maybe I can get some helpful responses.
What alternatives are there for people who don't want to pirate bay their music? I'm looking both for a way to pay a reasonable sum for mainstream music, and possibly an outlet for freely distributed 'indy' music. For commercial downloads, the ability the preview songs would be preferable but not necessary. Oh, and I'm not in America, so many of the more popular solutions don't work for me.
As an aside, doesn't it indicate how backwards the music industry is when I have to come to somewhere like slashdot to ask these questions? I'm sure there a millions of other people like me, who have disposable income that they're willing to use to support music, but don't know where to go to do so.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
He does not deserve what he gets, and the type of bullying you're suggesting amounts to something quite worse than what the RIAA does to the people on the receiving end of their bullying.
Bullying? Are you serious? Like hauling people from another continent across the sea in horrible conditions and then forcing them to spend their entire lives serving you in return for the right to continue living to serve you, as well as any children of theirs being born into servitude isn't bullying?
You've got some kind of fucked up morality there. There's also the issue of the fact that there was a war going on. They took sides, took up arms, and took their chances. I can't feel sorry for them. Their children, sure. But not the slave-owners themselves.
Forcing him to comply with the law is one thing, basically killing him by destroying his ability to eat is as bad as it gets, it's tantamount to murder. In fact, they are basically murdering him and his whole family (children and all), as well as anyone else who depended on him.
I got the impression that there were a lot of manual labor jobs opening up in the south. I'm sure the survivors could get on as laborers somewhere else.
That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
Funny how your morality excuses the act of purchasing slaves in the first place, but you feel that releasing them without treating them as property is wrong. They were recognized as human beings rather than property. Buying them is a non-starter.
Since I'm agnostic, that other remark doesn't apply to me.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
When freeing the slaves, the government should have done what they are required by law to do whenever they take property, they can force a sale, but they still have to pay whatever they can convince a judge is the fair market value for it. That's right, you heard me, the US government should have bought them and freed them.
I didn't realize they took property. I thought they freed people in bondage. Besides, didn't he steal work from the slaves in the first place? They should have sued him for back wages, overtime, dangerous work environment. And then the IRS should have gone after him for not paying payroll taxes for the value of work he had them do for him. And then they should have sent him to Africa in the hold of a ship.
The system works!
...And a lot of cars
Redundancy is good And also good.
My analogy did not make a legal reference. It was an emotional analogy that suggested how an onlooker may feel when an obviously corrupt business practice/owner gets taken down. If a judge smacked the RIAA down and gave it a huge fine for all its actions, how many people would truly feel sorry for the organization? My point was from a strictly emoitonal perspective. Next time, I'll use a car analogy.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
>That's absolutely reasonable. When you wear that shirt, you're representing Tommy Hilfiger and are, therefore, impacting the future sales of that brand. By wearing that white shirt after labor day, you're in effect saying that the Hilfiger brand itself is out of style, causing irreparable and immeasurable damage. This theft of future sales is obviously wrong and it needs to be stopped.
Ok, since you brought it up, I have to wonder if that's the real reason Apple doesn't allow clones. Not because of loss of revenue -- the real thing will still be cooler and in demand -- but because proles will witness OSX running on a VG2230, for instance, instead of the much cooler Apple Cinema Display. Typing on a lumpy Microsoft Natural instead of an Apple Ultrathin. Using an ugly Thermolake Soprano instead of a Mac Pro. And this clearly dilutes the brand, because Apple is about style every bit as much as function.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Wow, that's scary. As in, "I can see that happening in a few years," scary. And for some reason, it makes me want to buy a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, some Calvin Klein jeans, then sit around picking my nose in public.
Redundancy is good And also good.
i bet they have really nice cars too...
do not read this line twice.
2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place).
Ever tried Floola? It works great for me. Never had a need to use itunes since.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
By your logic, the proper response to the illegality of marijuana includes not smoking it? I'm afraid my ethical principles are incompatible with yours then.
when the dominant power defines a word as a pejorative, it also instantly develops a positive cachet amongst those oppressed by that power. consider the use of the N word among black people, or the word "queer" by gay people. the original meaning is coopted as a point of pride by those who are labelled with the pejorative, so that in time, the word loses value as a pejorative, or even becomes positive in connotation
i mean even the word pirate itself, outside of any copyright considerations, is almost positive. it has developed a sort of romantic robinhood like quality. witness the blockbuster pirates of the caribbean movies: the hero is a pirate, when, of course, in reality, these guys were like the pirates trolling off the coast of somalia today: murderous amoral thugs
a word's meaning, and its negative connotation are complicated things. you simplify too much, and miss completely what happens to a word when it is coopted by various groups. do not underestimate the power of the riaa to shoot itself in the foot by brandishing a word that has romantic qualities to it as well as negative
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
blockbuster movie where the pirate is the hero?
words are complicated, their negative connotations dependent on the context. the pirates of centuries ago were of course just like the amoral murderous thugs trolling off the coast of somalia today, but over time, they've developed a romantic, robin hood type quality
words are complicated. they are not like a programming statement. they evolve over time, have different meaning to different groups and in different contexts, etc. language is fluid, not written in stone
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Compilation copyrights are copyrights on collections of otherwise free (i.e. public-domained) works. A bad guy could also get a copyright on a piece of freed software by including it with several other pieces in a distribution and copyrighting that.
That's incorrect. A copyright on a compilation only covers the compilation, not the contents of the compilation. For example, if I created a copyrightable compilation by creatively selecting and arranging public domain fairy tales that I liked, my copyright would only over that particular selection and arrangement; anyone would be free to copy the individual fairy tales (whether from my book, or any other source), republish them individually, or in other compilations, etc. All that's protected is the particular arrangement of the selected things. Not the things, not other arrangements of multiple things. Compilation copyrights are pretty thin, in fact.
Both this and copyrights on derived works based on a public-domain work are copyright recapture.
If I understand your point correctly, you're wrong again. Copyrights on derivative works only cover the original material, not the material derived from the underlying source. For example, if I took the public domain fairy tales, and added illustrations based on the stories, the illustrations would be derivative works. But a copyright on the illustration doesn't cover the underlying story itself, or even the elements of the story as depicted (e.g. if there is a picture of Red Riding Hood, that doesn't prevent other people from drawing her, or copying the public domain elements, such as her having a red hood, directly from my work). Derivatives aren't necessarily thin, but they're weaker than more original works. In fact, if you're concerned about recapture, the real danger is a public domain derivative work which is rendered useless because the underlying original work is still copyrighted.
-- 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.
Respectfully, I have to tell you I found more heat than light in your argument.
I regret not to have any mod point left to mod parent up. What do you want to see on a news clip on this topic, a team of lawyers including Zittrain, Lessig and Nesson defending a student and successfully taking on the RIAA or egg-throwing people? If you are public relation agents for the RIAA, the second or perhaps even preferably, both!
language evolves on its own, outside the realm of anyone's control. you don't unilaterally decide by fiat that you will redefine words according to some sort of agenda, and common culture will just fall into place for you. if you want to fight the riaa, use your energies and fight them, but if you instead use your energies to try to redefine the meaning of words, because the coopting of their usage by certain groups is not to your liking, you're just wasting your time and energy
and yes, that is what the riaa is trying to do by using the word "pirate", and yes, they are wasting their time. so you want to be as hopeless and retarded as the riaa? the game the riaa is playing is stupid. you beat them by not playing their stupid game. stop trying to redefine words. they ebb and flow in meaning on their own, at the behest of popular culture, which no one controls. pure folly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As sad as it is to think of other humans as "property," the slaveholder had a property basis in his slaves since he had most likely bought them from the Northerners who had encouraged their enslavement and brought them here to be sold.
The lawyers for the RIAA and their members probably took one look at the all-star defense witness list and immediately filed delaying motion(s) to reduce the chance that all of them, who are college professors and industry experts with busy schedules after all, would be able to reappear again on the delayed date. Or in other words, they (the RIAA) are simply trying to throw a wrench into scheduling machinery in the hopes that one or more of the all-star expert witnesses for the defense will have a scheduling conflict on the new date and be unable to appear. A cheap shot from the masters of the cheap shot...the RIAA. At what point does an annoying and vexatious accuser simply go away? There was a time, not so long ago after all, when being a persistent and annoying busybody got one into more trouble than it was worth.
In the hold of a ship.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
and you defeat terrorists with suicide bombs
and you defeat rapists with sexual assault
and you defeat bank robbrs by mugging them
etc., etc...
small hint: you don't defeat the riaa by playing their game, understand?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I like the bit at the top.
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How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
If I may play Devil's Advocate for a second... Did the liquor salesmen deserve to lose their lively-hood during prohibition? Just because something is illegal does not make it wrong.
I would say they did not deserve it. Prohibition was unwarranted government interference in people's lives.
Of course it is possible for a liquor salesman to be evil in how they conduct their business, but it is not necessarily or fundamentally evil in the way slavery is.
Guys,
This is *the* case. The big guns are being brought out. I really hope Tenenbaum wins.
But has anyone thought of the consequences of a loss? What will happen then?
I can see dark days ahead if he loses ...
I agree with you on what these copyrights cover.
But if one copyrights the fixes or upgrades to a software work, it gives them standing to claim that an equivalent fix or upgrade infringes their copyright.
Similarly, copyrighting a "compilation" of a set of otherwise free works - for instance, a Linux distribution - would give the holder of that copyright standing to claim that another, later, linux distribution was an infringing work derived from theirs.
Even if the claim is provably bogus the ability to assert it in court, especially in combination with the draconian penalties for infringement in current copyright law, is a major burden on the targets of such claims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
..of a few, large, hairy baboons entering the kennel and sniffing at the chimpanzees.
Yes and no. One of the things that people have done over the years is attempt to "retake" words used against them as pejoratives. The best example that comes to mind is "Queer".
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
Finally someone is going to take the RIAA's lawyers to trial. Maybe its happened before but all i hear about are cases where the defendant bows down before the RIAA and agrees to pay an ungodly sum of money for a few hundred/thousand songs. My self, I feel quite secure, because I only download tv shows, and there isn't really a huge coalition of huge companies going after people that Torrent a tv show, watch it, share it to a 1-1 ratio, and then delete it. Speaking of downloading torrents, does anyone know how to get passed a total block on torrent downloading? My school recently uped its torrent blocking, to where you can't download a .torrent file (but Demonoid.com allows one to download them as .txt files), but now when I start uTorrent my internet gets shut off for a few minutes. Anyone got any ideas how to get around this? I'm just a college student that wants to be able to watch tv, most of the shows I watch are network tv as well, and can't afford a TV. Also the school internet is so slow during the day that I can't stream even the low quallity shit they have out there, which is why I preferred torrents.
Any help is welcome.
"Most local bands here in Springfield have their own CDs, and sell them for five or ten bucks each."
That's exactly what the big media companies sell them for _to dealers_, who then add their own mark-up to cover their operating costs and make a profit. In another piece of news that that will doubtless come as a shock to many Slashdotters, my own undercover investigations have revealed that Colgate and Nabisco don't get all the money that people pay to stores when they buy toothpaste or crunchy things in packets.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
that's wierd i was listening to closer to the heart as i read your sig.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
But Charlie the Tuna is StarKist. Chicken of the Sea has a mermaid on it.
I can never decide if Charlie and the Mermaid would fight it out to the death like most ocean creatures, or if they would begin a forbidden embrace between two species of the sea that would otherwise be mortal enemies?
Do merfolk eat tuna, just like dolphins, or are they peaceful people who eat kelp and plankton? Why do mermen carry a trident if they are peaceful, aren't weapons usually the development of hunter cultures. Perhaps it is equivalent to a pitch fork for farming great kelp fields?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
But if one copyrights the fixes or upgrades to a software work, it gives them standing to claim that an equivalent fix or upgrade infringes their copyright.
So?
First, copyrights are not patents. If Alice rewrites an algorithm, and Bob also rewrites the same algorithm, Alice can't use copyrights to sue Bob, because copyrights apply to expressions, but not to actual methods or processes. And where there is only one, or are only a few ways to reasonably express a particular method, there cannot be a copyright, lest it effectively be a copyright on the method. Likewise, copyright only protects creative expression, which requires freedom of choice. This means that the copyright only applies to the literal expression of the software, as opposed to what it does, and only where there are quite a number of ways of doing it, which are genuine creative choices, and not dictated by external factors such as efficiency. Thus, a software work generally has a stronger copyright overall (there's lots of creative choices in writing a big, modern OS) than it does in any specific part (there's not so many creative choices when implementing an efficient sorting algorithm). Further, unlike with patents, copyright requires copying, i.e. the infringer being aware of the supposedly infringed-upon work and copying from it to create his own work. Independent creation of the same work does not give rise to copyright infringement. See e.g. the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS to create IBM compatible computers, which are what most people use to this day. (Technically, clones were the computers that did use infringing copies of the original BIOS; they were more common before the RE had been done) It helps to use 'clean room' methods to ensure that no one can argue that you copied, but it's not strictly necessary.
Second, even if there was no evidence whatsoever of infringement, and the whole thing was transparently bogus, there would still be standing. Bob could sue Alice with no evidence whatsoever, without an iota of truth in his accusation, and while the case would quickly be dismissed once Alice motions for it, she would have to make an appearance and actually do so. The requirements for standing are far below the requirements to win, because standing just means that you can start the judicial process in motion. I really don't see a problem, or a good solution if it is a problem, especially if you want to protect defendants against possibly dishonest plaintiffs, which doesn't harm honest defendants who actually have a case, but need to use the system to prove it. It's a side effect of an adversarial system, with discovery generally handled by the litigants.
-- 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.
Nesson argues that the [act] is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group . . . carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. Source.
So why is it a criminal law rather than a civil law if it provides for 3rd party, rather than government enforcement?
So he's arguing that steep penalties convert civil law into criminal law based on the 5th and 8th Amendments. The 8th amendment argument will be based around excessive fines. Maybe a judge will look at the piracy "loss" figures, and realize they're garbage and buy the argument.
Converting the statute into a criminal one will trigger the 5th amendment to ensure due process - meaning substantive rights for accused infringers. That'd be things like public defenders, a heavier burden of proof on the prosecution, and some other goodies. All of which are good.
Perhaps it'll work. He is a brilliant law professor. Maybe he'll get an appellate court, or maybe even SCOTUS to go along with it. So lets say he wins and SCOTUS overturns the statutory damage statute. What will be the remedy congress comes up with?
If Congress wants to do anything (and the lobbyists will make sure they do), Congress has two choices. Either reduce the fines to return to civil law OR put in place federal enforcement of copyright infringement. Any guesses which way congress will go? I've got one. Free federal enforcement for the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and others - this time with all the power of the federal government.
Yuck. Lets just hope federal prosecutors don't think charging a pimply faced youth with copying Star Wars is worth their time.
I had Wendy Seltzer for two classes (and an independent study I never really got around to finishing) in law school. Smart woman. Her blog is here, if anyone is interested. http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/
-Daniel
I was looking for The Station just to test Yahoo's music search when it was new. I was disappointed that it returned only the tracks and CDs for sale, and didn't mention the stuff they've uploaded to archive.org.
The CD cost just as much retail as they sell it for on stage. Dave told me they get 1000 CDs for $1000.00; that's the minimum number the factory will duplicate. The dollar includes the case, insert, and printing on the CD itself.
If they can get CDs for a buck, BMI with its economy of scale should be able to get them for a quarter. And even if BMI is paying the same buck, that's nine bucks worth of profits to share with the retailer. A 900% markup ain't bad.
Free Martian Whores!
I was actually trying to be a little humorous. You or I know before we do it that to scream "first post" is stupid. This person, on the other hand, didn't figure that out until he was down-modded. However, he did figure that out. In other words, he gained some insight. My response was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, which is the reason for my parenthetical comment, in case someone thought I was totally serious.
It's a tough room!
Free Martian Whores!
It's a tough room!
Tell me about it.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"even if BMI is paying the same buck, that's nine bucks worth of profits to share with the retailer. A 900% markup ain't bad."
This is once again typical Slashdot economics which equates the difference in production cost and retail price with with pure profit. Here are some factors you didn't take into account:
1) The cost of producing the recordings that are on the disk, which involve rather more than just the studio time. These are paid from artist advances which are recouped from the artist's royalties, but those advances still have to be made.
2) Cover designs, which aren't free.
3) Promotion such as advertising, costs incurred by artists travelling to promotional interviews, getting stuff on radio and video playlists, posters and other display items for use in stores, etc.
4) Bulk warehousing costs.
5) Transport, packaging, etc.
All of the above and various other sundry costs must be amortised from sales, hence the fact that the actual profit margin the "big four" make from each CD sale for a new release from a current popular artist is around 10% (there are various sources on the Internet which publish their figures because they're publicly traded companies). The profit margin goes up for back-catalogue and compilation sales where the production and promotional costs have already been recouped, but this sort of CD usually sells for a much lower price than new releases, and its rare for annual sales to be particularly high even with the small number of artists whose back catalogues can command the same sorts of prices as current stuff.
Retailers also have a number of overheads which have to be deducted from their profit margins, hence the fact that the small outfits whose costs / unit sale are the highest tend to be the ones who've suffered most from the long-term sales downturn, with specialist chain stores being next on the list, and department stores / superstores coming last because CD / DVD sales are only a small part of their overall operation.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
All of these costs are there regardles sif it's BMI or a smal local band. The local small band also has to pay for studio time, cover design, etc. There is no reason that an EMI CD should cost more than a lacal band's CD. RIAA CDs are very, very overpriced.
You do understand why WalMart is driving small locals out of buiness? Economy of scale. The record companies are like if Wal Mart charged three times what the mom and pop stores did, then sued people for not shopping at WalMart. "But we have all these costs because we're so big".
Free Martian Whores!
"All of these costs are there regardles sif it's BMI or a smal local band."
Balderdash. Small bands don't have anything approaching the promotional costs of a major release (if they did, they wouldn't be a small band); they have no warehousing costs because they keep their small number of CDs in their own homes; and they have no transport costs because they take their CDs with them to gigs.
"The local small band also has to pay for studio time, cover design, etc."
They pay small sums to a small local studio for small local results, and usually either design their own covers, or get a friend to do it for a pittance, which is why so many of their CDs look and sound poor, especially the drums, because small studios seldom have drum booths or "engineers" who know how to mic. drums properly. Another notably absent element is the session musicians and singers that not only solo artists, but also bands use on professional recordings.
And the final absent element is of course the radio play, TV interviews, gigs in sold-out football stadiums, and the ability for the artists to live well off the proceeds of making music instead of having to finance everything themselves from a minimum-wage job. That's why the members of just about any of those local bands you cite would undergo major surgery without anaesthetic for a recording deal with one of the companies you claim are ripping us all off.
"You do understand why WalMart is driving small locals out of buiness? Economy of scale."
I suggest you check up on some facts before making simplistic statements like this, because there's _a lot_ more involved in the way Walmart achieve their low prices than economies of scale.
"The record companies are like if Wal Mart charged three times what the mom and pop stores did, then sued people for not shopping at WalMart."
More exaggerated hyperbolae:
1) You've already said the majors charge $10 for a CD _including the dealer mark-up_, which is also what you also said at least some local bands charge for a direct sale _without a dealer mark-up_. $10 isn't three times as much as $10.
2) None of the majors or their representative bodies has ever sued anyone for not buying their products, or attempted to coerce people into buying them in any way other than advertising or bribing radio stations to get their products on playlists.
""But we have all these costs because we're so big""
Which is again something you've invented because it's easier to make stuff up than go to all the effort of looking up some facts.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Small bands don't have anything approaching the promotional costs of a major release
One word: Radiohead.
they have no warehousing costs because they keep their small number of CDs in their own homes
They pay rent or mortgage; that's warehousing costs.
have no transport costs because they take their CDs with them to gigs
That IS transport costs.
They pay small sums to a small local studio for small local results, and usually either design their own covers, or get a friend to do it for a pittance, which is why so many of their CDs look and sound poor, especially the drums, because small studios seldom have drum booths or "engineers" who know how to mic. drums properly
The locals here produce CDs that sound as good as, or in most cases better than, RIAA fare.
Another notably absent element is the session musicians and singers that not only solo artists, but also bands use on professional recordings.
Black Magic Johnson (a blues guy) sings, plays trumpet, and drums. the live shows have two white guys playing bass and guitar. Their CD Food For Thought is excellent. The Station has seven members, including Dave Littrell, who plays guitar, sax, clarinet, and several other instruments. Both their CDs are excellent, their first "All That Lies Between" is especially good. It surpasses ANYTHING I've seen the majors produce this century.
None of the majors or their representative bodies has ever sued anyone for not buying their products
You know that's bullshit. The RIAA lables have fired off hundreds of lawsuits against "pirates", who spend more money on music than anyone.
The mammals (indies) are feasting on dinasaur eggs and the dinasaurs are making excuses. Transportation, studio, warehousing costs aren't their problem. It's the executives and lawyers and middlemen and the cocaine they snort and mansions they and their top tier of singers and rappers live in.
The major labels are dying, and I for one will be glad to see them gone. They are leeches on the creative community, and more and more artists are starting to realize it.
Free Martian Whores!
"One word: Radiohead."
You're going to have to do better than this, because Radiohead signed a six album deal with EMI in 1992, and were heavily promoted by that label. They'd be complete unknowns without that promotion, as would Nine Inch Nails, who have followed Radiohead's lead in selling music from their own web site.
A person who actually knew a bit about the industry (which isn't you) would of course have no trouble coming up with artists who actually achieved fame without having it bought for them by a major label. A well-known example is the Arctic Monkeys, whose fans used the likes of FaceBook and various file sharing networks to generate a significant amount of buzz about them. I won't bother going into any more detail here because feeding their name into Google will lead you to lots of info about them.
"They pay rent or mortgage; that's warehousing costs."
They'd pay that rent or mortgage irrespective of whether they store CDs in their homes or not, so it isn't anything remotely like industrial warehousing costs. I'm really finding it hard to see why you continue to write things that make you look like a total idiot.
"The locals here produce CDs that sound as good as, or in most cases better than, RIAA fare."
You must live in an utterly unique part of the world if your local studios can afford facilities and engineers to rival those of the ones used by major artists.
"Black Magic Johnson (a blues guy)"
Black Magic Johnson is a blues group, not a blues guy.
"the live shows have two white guys playing bass and guitar."
Who are both members of the group, not session musicians. I also fail to see how anything else you mention has any relevance whatsoever to my point about session musicians and singers on professional recordings, because entire orchestras and "big bands" use session people both in the studio and when playing live, and they have a lot more than seven members.
"It surpasses ANYTHING I've seen the majors produce this century."
I suggest you back up this claim by producing some evidence to prove that your opinions about music are objectively more correct than somebody randomly pulled off the street in any part of the world.
"You know that's bullshit. The RIAA lables have fired off hundreds of lawsuits against "pirates", who spend more money on music than anyone."
1) None of those lawsuits was brought for not buying products.
2) Please provide some evidence for your assertion that non-commercial pirates _as a group_ spend more money on music than non-pirates _as a group_.
"The mammals (indies) are feasting on dinasaur eggs and the dinasaurs are making excuses."
Independent labels are being hit just as hard by the downturn in recorded music sales as anyone else, so this is more rubbish from a practised purveyor of rubbish.
"It's the executives and lawyers and middlemen and the cocaine they snort and mansions they and their top tier of singers and rappers live in."
Which you resent because you're doomed to be an eternal nobody who will never earn as much in a year as they spend in a day.
"The major labels are dying, and I for one will be glad to see them gone."
This is obvious, although your rhetoric reveals that your main reason for this boils down to seething envy.
"They are leeches on the creative community, and more and more artists are starting to realize it."
If this is the case, then how are "their top tier of singers and rappers" able to live in mansions?
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.