Warner Music Forces Lessig Presentation Offline

An anonymous reader writes "Larry Lessig, known (hopefully) to everyone around here as a defender of all things having to do with consumer rights and fair use rights when it comes to copyright, is now on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown notice from Warner Music, who apparently claimed that one of Lessig's famous presentations violated on their copyright. Lessig has said that he's absolutely planning on fighting this, and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'" Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."

Comments

Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one!

[gilgongo]

Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.

Ooooh they're gonna get creamed. And I will be laughing like a drain!!

Per Mr. Lessig's request, copy and paste:

[UnCivil Liberty]

WMG contact form: http://www.wmg.com/contact
----

Sect. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [17 USCS Sects. 106, 106A], the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[QuantumG]

Yeah, and he's already had his ass handed to him court at least once.

Difference between theory and practice and all.

It's Like Steve Irwin Poking a Stingray!

[eldavojohn]

Too soon?

Re:It's Like Steve Irwin Poking a Stingray!

[NoobixCube]

Oh he poked plenty of stingrays before one got him. Purely coincidental that it was a stingray that got him - I'm sure everyone (even the people that liked him) would have preferred him to have been eaten by a crocodile if they had to choose what animal killed him.

Pick Your Battles Wisely

[eldavojohn]

He uses a 50 second clip of The Muppet Show's "Ma Na Ma Na" which is a very short skit track of about 2:29 minutes. He shows it being set to an Anime Music video mash up of Vampire Hunter D Blood Lust. I can't seem to track down who would be the rights holder of this track but I'm guessing it's Warner. I have only seen 15 minutes of his presentation so it's possible there are other violations.

Larry: Non-free Audio Fair Use for music constitutes 10% or 30 seconds of a song (which ever is shorter) and it must be in a low enough quality (didn't investigate the audio on this video to find out if it satisfied Ogg quality of 0 rule). For the rest of the 15 minutes I saw you looked fine but this stuck out at me. Pick your battles wisely and adhere to this rule next time.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[EvanED]

Larry: Non-free Audio Fair Use for music constitutes 10% or 30 seconds of a song (which ever is shorter) and it must be in a low enough quality (didn't investigate the audio on this video to find out if it satisfied Ogg quality of 0 rule).

[Citation needed].

It's certainly case law if that's even true, and I'm skeptical that it's a universal rule even if true. The statues place no such requirements, and, in fact, there are many times when using an ENTIRE work would be considered fair use.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[flaming error]

"Ma na ma na" is one of those songs that just really stick in your head. It plays and re-plays, over and over again. Probably by the time this Warner stooge finished thinking about Lessig's presentation he had already listened to it in his head for at least 30 minutes. That's an unlicensed full-length (and then some) copy.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick your battles wisely and adhere to this rule next time.

What rule? The Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107 makes no mention of any kind of 30 second rule.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, IANAL.

However,
From my own analsys of the codified fair use doctrine, the proportion of the copyrighted work that is used for a fair use purpose is not explicitly stated excepting that it must not be in it's entierety, and should therefor satisfy as long as the proportion is not "In it's entierety"- Since the copyrighted work is a clip from the original muppet show, and the muppet show episode being longer than 2:29 minutes, I fail to see the reason why this is not fair use.

Additionally,
There is not a qualifier for quality in the codified body concerning fair use, thus the quality argument is insubstantiated as far as I can tell.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Twanfox]

Really, there are set numbers on how much of a work can be used? Because I seem to recall (as noted above) that the law doesn't give specific numbers, but only that whether a use is fair must take into account how much of the work is used. It also includes criteria such as the type of use, how it impacts the market for that work, and whether it is commercial or not. If there is case law that sets precedent for this, you might be well to include those references to back up your numbers.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

What is fair use and what is not fair use is determined based on the facts of each individual case. Something that is fair use in one instanceâ"say a parodyâ"might well not be fair use in another like a movie review.

There are guidelines, much like the one quoted. However they are only guidelines and are in no way binding on courts unless they have been cited in a superior court case.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[eldavojohn]

Ugh, very well. They're referred to as "portion limits" and the safe range has always been 10%-ish. Check out what Stanford advises it's students (and this is in academia, mind you):

up to 10% or 1,000 words, whichever is less, of a copyrighted text work. For example, an entire poem of less than 250 words may be used, but no more than three poems by one poet, or five poems by different poets from any anthology.

up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work.

up to 10% or three minutes, whichever is less, of a copyrighted motion media work (for example, an animation, video or film image).

a photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety but no more than five images by an artist or photographer may be reproduced. When using photographs and illustrations from a published collective work, no more than 10% or 15 images, whichever is less. Or,

up to 10% or 2,500 fields or cell entries, whichever is less, from a copyrighted database or data table may be reproduced. A field entry is defined as a specific item of information, such as a name or Social Security number in a record of a database file. A cell entry is defined as the intersection where a row and a column meet on a spreadsheet.

I'm sorry but what Mr. Lessig did from 11:00-11:49 was in my mind a ballsy use of a song ... about 35% of that song was used. That's a big warning bell to me.

Good luck to him, I hope there aren't other infractions later on. Wikipedia uses the 10% rule, that's how I know about it. I'm not a lawyer and I'll punch you if you call me one but I fear he's going to run into trouble on this one.

Best of luck to you Larry.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[random coward]

In this section we discuss academic use guidelines that have been discussed and proposed, but have never been formally approved.

PROPOSED Academic guidelines from Stanford University are not the Law of this land. Good thing you're not a lawyer. If you were your clients would be suing you for malpractice.

I still have my soul, IANAL, etc...

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[sqlrob]

Very good catch. Maybe Lessig should Talk with this Stanford law professor about the rules and get some clarification.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[DragonWriter]

From my own analsys of the codified fair use doctrine, the proportion of the copyrighted work that is used for a fair use purpose is not explicitly stated excepting that it must not be in it's entierety

It doesn't say that either. It says that the portion used is a factor to be considered in determining fair use, it doesn't say, in the statute, which way that factor weighs. Which makes sense; there are circumstances where using the whole work would probably weigh in favor of fair use, where using selected portions might not (e.g., format- or time-shifting of a work which includes advertising, where removing--or, a fortiori, replacing--the advertising content might, all other things being equal, make the use less likely to be considered fair use.)

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing more than a safe harbor. To really find out whether something is fair use, you have to evaluate all four factors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Only one of the elements is how much was taken.

I'm not going to do a full analysis. Indeed, even if I did, a court's analysis would probably look much different.

The truth is that most people cannot afford to pay the lawyers to go to court and make the fair use argument to find out whether something is fair use or not.

So most people stick with the safe harbors.

In this case, Warner Brothers picked on the wrong guy. Lessig has both the resources and the inclination to go into court and make a fair use argument.

I would love to see that case. Unfortunately Warner Brothers is going to cave very quickly and there will never be a court case.

The RIAA / MPAA will make sure that when they go to court, they have a defendant who will not garner public sympathy.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[cdrudge]

Thanks for linking to the original video. I hadn't seen or heard that in a while. Kind of ironic how you lecture Larry about what fair use guidelines are (notwithstanding whether you are or are not correct), but you have directly referenced the work in it's entirety that would have even less going towards it regarding fair use. While I understand that you probably didn't post the video, don't you find what you did a little bit hypocritical at some level?

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point they did.
The Muppet Show: Music, Mayhem, and More! - The 25th Anniversary Collection
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006IZP8

Track Listings
1. The Muppet Show Theme - featuring The Muppets
2. Mahna Mahna/Lullaby Of Birdland - featuring Mahna Mahna & The Two Snowths
3. There's A New Sound - featuring Scooter ...

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[KeithIrwin]

1) The Muppet Show is owned by Disney at this point, not Warner Music (see note later)

2) As other commenters have pointed out, there is no bright line test for what constitutes fair use (like 10% or 30 seconds)

3) You're an idiot to lecture Larry Lessig on the boundaries of fair use. He helped write the copyright law and knows as much about it as pretty well anyone in the country.

Beyond that, I'm still trying to figure out what Warner Music objected to. I've gotten through the portion of the video with all the remix examples, and I haven't seen anything which Warner has its hands in. Here's content I've seen:

Danger Mouse - The Grey Album (Jay-Z's The Black Album (Universal) + The Beatles' The White Album (EMI))
DJ Mystik - Inspector Gadget Techno remix (no idea what record label. Maybe it was one of Warner's imprints, but I can't find any information about the release at all)
The Muppets - Mah Na Mah Na (Disney)
Endless Love (Universal)
DJ Unk - 2 Step (Universal)
Soldja Boy (Universal)
Girl Talk (IllegalArt)
will.i.am's Yes We Can (not released by a label)

And that's all I have heard. So, the DJ Mystik one is the one which is even possible, and frankly that seems a little unlikely. Especially since of the listed songs, it was one of the shorter clips.

Now, if it was Time Warner in general, they own CNN and could be laying claim to some of the video clips which are used in the mash-ups. But for Warner records in particular (which is what Lessig says), then unless they released that Inspector Gadget remix (which I doubt), then I don't see how they have a dog in the fight.

All that said, my going theory is that the song they are laying claim to is Mah Na Mah Na. This song has been released by Warner at least once: specifically by Rhino on "The Muppet Show: Music, Mayhem and More (2002)". I am certain that Disney only licensed that release and didn't sell Warner the copyright. I suspect that they stuck that song into their database because they have released it on CD without checking whether or not they actually own the rights to the original audio recording.

Being that they aren't even the actual holder of the copyright and they have claimed to be under penalty of perjury, they're going to lose this one really badly.

That's my best guess, anyway.

Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely

[Toonol]

None of these limits are part of the law. A university standard is just a policy. There is not percentage or amount of a copyrighted work that automatically qualifies it or bars it as a fair use. Our legislators were, in this case, smart enough to realize that such a limit would be arbitrary and quite unhelpful. There are cases where the entire song would be fair use, and cases where 5% would be violating copyright. If you can find a law (not an organization's policy) that says otherwise, please cite it.

Lessig

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Lessig, also known as the guy who defended Obama's vote on the FISA bill, saying, among other things:

He voted to strip immunity from the FISA compromise. He has promised to repeal the immunity as president. His vote for the FISA compromise is thus not a vote for immunity. It is a vote that reflects the judgment that securing the amendments to FISA was more important than denying immunity to telcos. Whether you agree with that judgment or not, we should at least recognize (hysteria notwithstanding) what kind of judgment it was. The amendments to FISA were good. Getting a regime that requires the executive to obey the law is important. Whether it is more important than telco immunity is a question upon which sensible people might well differ.

(emphasis mine)

I'm afraid I lost a lot of the (considerable) respect I had for the guy up until that point.

Lessig is a moderate

[QuantumG]

Lessig is not against copyright. He's a fundamental advocate of copyright, "especially in the digital era", he just thinks it is "out of sync" and "needs an update".

Whereas people like me are advocates of just scrapping the whole damn thing because the potential benefits of doing so are way more interesting than the deprecated business models that it will finally put to bed.. and because I believe it is fundamentally the right thing to do, from a "you don't tell me what I can and can't do and I'll do the same" sense of what right means.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[oGMo]

Whereas people like me are advocates of just scrapping the whole damn thing because the potential benefits of doing so are way more interesting than the deprecated business models that it will finally put to bed.. and because I believe it is fundamentally the right thing to do, from a "you don't tell me what I can and can't do and I'll do the same" sense of what right means.

This is fundamental misthinking about copyright. Copyright doesn't exist to protect corporate interests. It exists to protect authors... it's the same thing that keeps you from writing a book (or whatever), changing a few things, and publishing it under their name. Of course, as soon as you want to publish it, even if you self-publish, it becomes a "business model" which you seem to find deprecated. Any open source license out there---GPL, BSD, Apache, MPL, CC, etc---are built on copyright.

If you want everything you do to be in an unrestricted public domain, well: you can have that. Do so. But, if you want to tell me that my works must also be unrestricted public domain works: well, you're doing exactly what you claim to be against.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[DragonWriter]

This is fundamental misthinking about copyright. Copyright doesn't exist to protect corporate interests. It exists to protect authors...

This is fundamental misthinking about copyright. Copyright (in the United States) doesn't exist to protect authors, it exists to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." (U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 8) To the extent it fails to do that -- or, a fortiori, impedes such progress -- it is because the rules of copyright are poorly crafted from the perspective of the Constitutional basis of Congress's power to grant copyrights in the first place, and need to be reformed to serve that purpose.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[VGPowerlord]

Copyright might work if the section after the part you quoted was applied ("by securing for limited times").

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[Svartalf]

Indeed. We ought to go back to the timeframes set back in the beginning or to two times that time and leave it alone. 14-28 years should be more than enough for most situations- but we have monied interests such as Disney doing everything they can to protect things like Mickey Mouse and making a mockery of the law as it was intended to be.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[swillden]

"by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

Read the writings of the authors of that text, and you'll understand that they didn't consider authors to have any sort of inherent rights. The difference is actually visible right in that line, in the choice of the word "securing", rather than "guaranteeing". That word implies that the government is granting or providing the rights in question, whereas the other things we think of as rights were thought by the framers to be God-given, or natural, and which government should preserve or guarantee, never, ever, grant.

The grant of temporary exclusivity exists only to serve the interests of the public, not the authors. Its purpose is to ensure that works are created and published to enrich the public domain. If it enriches the creators, that's fine, and good, but it's a side effect.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[Bigjeff5]

An alternative to copyright would be some sort of exclusive right to sell.

The work could be put in the public domain, but only the author would have the right to package and sell that work.

That would give incentive, as the only persons permitted to profit off the work would be the original author, but I don't know that the incentive would be as high as the original copyright term of 14 years exclusive right to copy.

Beyond that, I don't see how you could encourage the production of creative works.

Re:Lessig is a moderate

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would an amount of time that was deemed sufficient protection over 200 years ago when the printing press was a novel creation be ANYWHERE CLOSE to what protection is needed today?

Two or three times what it was then? Try 1/3 to 1/10 of the original time. We now have bestsellers that, in their first week, sell into the seven digit numbers - not of profit - but of units. Five years of protection would arguably be too much with modern technology and distribution methods.

Anything more - ANYTHING - and you're caving into the mindset that the xxAA wants you to be in. Our goal should not be parity with the original length of protection, but significant shortening thereof.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[rackserverdeals]

Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.

But apparently not good at communication?

and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'

Did they take down his email, fax line and ban him from the post office too?

How Lessig Lost the Big One

[Bruce Perens]

See his Legal Affairs Article: How I Lost the Big One.

Re:How Lessig Lost the Big One

[Locke2005]

Isn't most of this article obsolete, since Gonzales v. Raich in 2005 pretty much overturned the 1995 United States v. Lopez ruling anyway?

Re:How Lessig Lost the Big One

[Bruce Perens]

Isn't most of this article obsolete, since Gonzales v. Raich in 2005 pretty much overturned the 1995 United States v. Lopez ruling anyway?

The commerce clause and the copyright clause are two of the enumerated powers. The cases you cite deal with the commerce clause. So, I don't see how.

Re:How Lessig Lost the Big One

[Brian Gordon]

This is off the top of my head but I think QuantumG was probably talking about Eldred v Ashcroft which he totally blew..

Re:How Lessig Lost the Big One

[Brian Gordon]

When the decision is 7-2 against you on an obvious violation of constitutional law, you blew it.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[QuantumG]

http://news.cnet.com/Supreme-Court-nixes-copyright-challenge/2100-1023_3-980792.html

Lessig argued that repeated extensions were unconstitutional because they ran afoul of the Constitution's "limited times" requirement and also conflicted with the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech.

But just moments into Lessig's opening remarks, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor interrupted and noted Congress had repeatedly extended the duration on copyrights, with no intervention before by the Supreme Court. What, O'Connor asked, is different about this case?

Lessig then continued to ramble on and the supremes continued to roll their eyes and wonder what the hell he was on about. He later said that, in retrospect, he should have shut up at that point and addressed the point made.

Copyright Warzone

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we're officially at war -- Copyright vs. Fair Use vs. Piracy or Lobbies vs. People vs. Pirates. Oh boy, this is going to be good. I wish I had popcorn. Free popcorn.

Automatic claiming?

[no_opinion]

There's a really good chance this resulted from automatic claiming tools that make use of things like acoustic fingerprints. YouTube or a filtering partner will have a catalog of Warner tracks that new uploads are checked against. Warner may not even have known about this until it blew up. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Re:Automatic claiming?

[boyko.at.netqos]

I got hit with that once, doing a documentary on Austin's air-guitar competitions. I thought that 10-15 second clips, recorded through an analog hole - a microphone placed not near the speakers, but near the air guitar stage (I was more interested in capturing the grunting and movement of the performers than a picture-perfect rendition of old 80s tunes) ... point is, I thought that'd be fine.

Time Warner, as a whole, just doesn't get technology. CNN thinks "holograms" are a great way to tell the news, they want to put caps on broadband, and they are so worried about protecting "their copyrights" that they don't understand how or why people buy music, and what they use it for.

Every business that they run that has any technological background at all is running itself into the ground because they want to sell you something first, then TELL you how THEY want you to use it, and are willing to go to absurd lengths to make sure that you only use it in the manner that they wanted you to - not the reason you bought it in the first place.

This is why they'll sue auto repair companies playing CDs for employees to listen to at work, why they'll knock on people doing anime fun conversions, why they'll knock on air guitar guys.

It's also why they'll offer broadband but put in caps so people can't use it, why they'll offer news programs but only present one or two sides of a multifaceted issue...

What can I say? They're crappy.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't blame Lessig for ignoring her though, when reading the minutes of the case, I think its pretty cleat Sandra was attempting to derail his argument with a tangent.

Further more, if what you said was true, this just shows that judges had already made up their mind on the case and never cared about Lessig's argument to begin with.

look harder...dig deeper...find FACTS...

[Archfeld]

FYI... The 'ma na ma na' song IS NOT MUPPETS, or JIM HENSON, but was written in 1968 for an Italian Porn movie and has been in several movies since then. The muppets used it LOOOOONG after its creation, while that does not ensure that Warner doesn't own it now.

http://www.geocities.com/pieroumiliani/

Re:look harder...dig deeper...find FACTS...

[drinkypoo]

written in 1968 for an Italian Porn movie and has been in several movies since then.

My lady and I recently started renting the occasional muppet show DVD from netfux and occasionally there are some real gems. From memory, Rolf: Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. There's something kind of irresistablish about 'em. We grin and bear it 'cause the nights are long... let's hope that something better comes along! And of course, the classic Muppet rendition of Lydia the Tattooed Lady was mostly lost on me as a child...

that does not ensure that Warner doesn't own it now.

The idea that they can own something that has become an indelible part of my childhood memories disgusts me.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[layer3switch]

Lessig then continued to ramble on and the supremes continued to roll their eyes and wonder what the hell he was on about.

then the supremes said; "Stop! In the name of love, before you break my heart. Think it over."

I believe that part was removed from the official dialogue on the record.

Thanks for the law text

[Lonewolf666]

According to TFA, the presentation has been reposted here: http://blip.tv/file/1937322

After watching the first three minutes, my impression is that

(1) Should be clearly in favor of Mr. Lessig. Nonprofit, political speech, should have pretty strong First Amendment protection. One can argue if he really needs the photos (see point 2), but the character of the use doesn't get much more fair.

(2) He uses photographs that are probably copyrighted as backdrops for his lecture

(3) Depends on the source(s) - many small samples or all from one source?

(4) I don't see how the use of some photos in this lecture can substantially hurt the sale of the original collections. Especially since the "subtitles" get in the way of reusing the photos from the lecture elsewhere.

Life Lessig err Lessons

[kenp2002]

I learned a long time ago there are two types of people at a bar:

Those you can fuck with.
Those you don't fuck with.

Now I am no genius, I admit that, but I have gotten pretty good at sizing up people. There are just some people you don't fuck with. For instance fat guys with tattoos of cartoon characters. THERE IS A REASON THEY HAVEN'T HAD THEIR ASS BEAT AT THE BAR AND YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT WHY!

They just fucked with the wrong guy. So I am going to discretely walk out of the bar and go to my car because when the fight starts, its never the two guy that are fighting that concerns me, its the stupid shit their friends do.

And I can clearly say, I am a hell of a lot more afraid of Lessig supports then I am of the Media Mafia. Lessig has waaaay more supporters and waaay more "digital firepower." This calls for a "Don't you know who I am" moment?

Needless to say, they went after the wrong guy on this. It's like going up and punching baby Jesus in the face... you're just gonna piss everyone off doing that no matter who they are. You just don't punch baby Jesusessss...

Re:Life Lessig err Lessons

[nomadic]

Needless to say, they went after the wrong guy on this.

If I was a lawyer for Warner, and my boss said I should try to legally stop Lessig from talking, my reaction would be "COOL! I get to go up against Lessig." It is entirely possible they knew exactly who they were going against, and wanted to make a public example. Do you know how cutthroat the music industry is? Do you think these guys are easily intimidated?

You don't need copyright to fight plagiarism

[Mr2001]

Copyright doesn't exist to protect corporate interests. It exists to protect authors... it's the same thing that keeps you from writing a book (or whatever), changing a few things, and publishing it under their name.

No, you don't need copyright for that. All you need is anti-fraud laws, because plagiarism is a form of fraud. Abolishing copyright wouldn't suddenly make it legal to lie to your customers.

Any open source license out there---GPL, BSD, Apache, MPL, CC, etc---are built on copyright.

Many of us believe that the most useful part of those licenses is the way they use copyright against itself, giving users (and other developers) back the rights that copyright law took away in the first place. Without copyright, there wouldn't be much need for those licenses; if someone didn't give you source code, you could freely reverse engineer it and distribute it yourself.

But, if you want to tell me that my works must also be unrestricted public domain works: well, you're doing exactly what you claim to be against.

Not really. If I tell you your works must be public domain, that doesn't actually force you to do anything, or restrict your freedom in any way. Copyright, on the other hand, does restrict the speech of everyone who doesn't have permission from the author to make copies.

copyright intended to grow the public domain?

[bukuman]

Can one read the constitution as saying:

1. copyright is designed to grow the public domain ('...promote the progress of science and useful arts...')
2. by providing incentives for the creation of new works ('...by securing the creators monopoly on copying...')
3. that will then pass to the public domain ('...for a limited time...').

i.e. it's purpose is to grow the public domain, the rest is just mechanism and a choice about how to trade off public good against private good.

The copyrighteous act like a kid who is happy to take the pocket money but not happy to do the chores. They employ Orwellian newspeak by referring to the whole balanced copyright trade-off as 'their property'. They focus only on the protected monopoly and do everything in their power to extend their monopoly duration (even for already created works, no incentive is big enough to change the past) and stop works falling into the public domain.

.

-1 Redundant

[Bob9113]

Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."

What I'm about to say is, I'm sure, redundant. I'm saying it anyway:

Warner,

I am pulling a copy right now. It's going in my mystical hidden repository of stuff fools think they can stop me from seeing.

Here's how this rule works: You try to suppress it, I will get it, and I will keep it forever. That is possible because we are better at this than you are. We will always be better at this than you are. The best among us will never work for you, so you will always epic fail. You cannot stop us. Every time you try to kick us, you are going to get a couple broken toes, and we will just get more ornery.

You know, I don't violate copyright because I haven't made up my mind about it yet. I gotta tell you though, it gets more tempting every time you pull some shit like this.

And if you think you can stop me (let alone the next generation of tech naturals) from watching whatever we want, whenever we want, on whatever platform we want, well, you are really stupid. The more you fight, the more practice we get, and the harder we laugh when we pee on your leg.

Try being nice to your customers some time. It might not do you much good, but it won't do you as much harm as what you're doing now.

Re:-1 Redundant

[cjfs]

Try being nice to your customers some time. It might not do you much good, but it won't do you as much harm as what you're doing now.

Makes sense, unless you view every illegal download as a lost sale. Once you have an entrenched view that says more downloads equals more lost profit, it's hard to break free. Which VP is going to stick his neck out for this issue? If sales go up by 20% but copyright-infringing downloads go up by 40% guess how they'll view it?

Don't support corporations that use these type of tactics, but don't expect them to change either. Raising awareness and ensuring your government doesn't continue to erode your rights will be far more effective.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[Martin Blank]

Justices have for decades attempted to derail arguments with tangents, and they do it to both sides. Liberal justices will demand justification from attorneys representing a liberal side just as conservative justices will do with those representing a conservative point, and all question^W grill the representatives on the points while bringing up seemingly unrelated points, interrupting them at their pleasure. It takes nerves of steel to stand up in front of the Supreme Court, because they do know what they're talking about and they absolutely will cut off the unprepared at the knees, and continue moving up until there's nothing left, and woe unto the attorney who gets combative with the justices.

Remember that the justices have already read a great deal of case information by the time that oral debates have started, so they are often already leaning in one direction or another. However, there's also a great deal of work that goes on afterward as the justices debate the case internally, one of the reasons that the opinions take so long to come out in most cases. This is mostly a secret process, but there have been indications from some justices that a few debates have escalated to serious arguments with logic sometimes being tossed out the window. Traditions have developed over time to deal with those circumstances and allow the justices to at least end each term with civility, if not going home each night or weekend with some friendliness.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[bersl2]

That case was not about the fair use provisions already on the books; it was about the limits of the enumerated power of Congress to establish copyright, which is not a question here. In all probability, he will hand Warner's ass back to them, as this sort of matter is probably well-explored, whereas the scope of Congress' power was not.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[KevinKnSC]

I believe that part was removed from the official dialogue on the record.

After a DMCA takedown request, no doubt.

What if Lessig did want the notice

[Vapula]

His presentation may be willingfully at the fringe between Fair Use and Copyright violation.
He may want to have this case brought to court and use the opportunity to show his whole presentation to the court in order to educate the judges.

Parent gave prove of interesting geocities pages!

[freaker_TuC]

Geocities is dying, such valuable information would be lost forever if not archived at all...

This site is the example of what the Internet really is... or was?

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[Rogerborg]

Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.

In theory, perhaps - although I doubt it. In practice, he has the savant tendency to disregard that the law is implemented by humans, and the one thing that humans can't stand is a wise ass.

The idea that the Supreme Court decides cases based upon justices' political preferences struck me as extraordinarily boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if these nine justices were going to be petty politicians. [Lawrence Lessig]

Is about as close as he's come. And yet even after saying that... somehow he didn't change careers.

As a law professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that [the Supreme Court] does the right thing, not because of politics but because it is right. [Lawrence Lessig]

Well, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for tenure, eh?

Tweaking aside, Lessig's experience is like that of a virgin with a giant porn collection. So I can see why he gets a lot of sympathy around here. Tweaking aside.

Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one

[smoker2]

It's guttural, now shut yer grid !