RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum

selven writes "In a blatant campaign devoid of any subtlety, the RIAA is fighting for the hearts and minds of our children with its Music Rules, a collection of education materials on how to respect copyright. The curriculum includes vocabulary such as 'counterfeit recordings, DMCA notice, "Grokster" ruling, legal downloading, online piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, pirate recordings, songlifting, and US copyright law.' There is no mention whatsoever of fair use. Compounding the bias, it includes insights such as that taking music without paying for it is 'songlifting,' and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal. On the bright side, it includes math showing that the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million."

Comments

Okay, You Have the Floor

[eldavojohn]

There is no mention whatsoever of fair use.

Well, there actually is a mention of fair use in the parent guide but all it does is refer you to a better site. The only other mention is -- hilariously enough -- in their own terms of use about using the materials on the site under fair use.

But that's beside your point, let's play a game. Pretend you have the floor in front of primary school students and you want to explain fair use. What do you say?

I'm not saying they shouldn't mention it. Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway. And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct! So with my masters degree in computer science, I am clearly unable to pin down what precisely constitutes fair use and what does not. I imagine that were I charged with uploading and editing fair use samples of every song off of David Bowie's Hunky Dory album (which I did) that my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer ... not the law. Because "fair use" is ambiguous and the so called "doctrine" is downright laughable. If you don't agree with me, go ahead and post a response arguing for or against my above Wikipedia edits being "fair use." I'll gladly play the devil's advocate if someone doesn't beat me to it.

So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children? Or how you plan to "win their hearts and souls" with the fair use doctrine?

What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents. Something shouldn't be unclear until you've already been sued for doing it. That's how you find yourself in situations like the RIAA suing thousands of people and watching court case after court case resolve to millions in damages awarded from an average citizen to a huge conglomerate of lawyers and labels.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[selven]

"You have the right to use small parts of something covered by copyright (like quoting a book for an essay) to comment on it, write a review about it or parody it and you're allowed to make copies for yourself to use."

That covers most of it.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[dlsmith]

Sounds like there's "mention of fair use" right here in the summary:

making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal

"Personal use" seems like a pretty reasonable approximation to "fair use," as far as school children are concerned. Why would they mention "making copies for personal use" at all if they're presenting all copying as illegal?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Xeth]

You could tell the children that copyright is not absolute, and that its primary purpose is to allow creators to make money off their copyrights. Sometimes, you can use pieces of their material for certain uses. You could follow it up with a few simple examples, like a short piece of a song, a screenshot of a game, etc.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[eldavojohn]

"You have the right to use small parts of something covered by copyright (like quoting a book for an essay) to comment on it, write a review about it or parody it and you're allowed to make copies for yourself to use."

So you're saying that if I take very small samples of The Beatles' White Album (as I consider the album an entire work) and make new songs out of those small samples, it is completely legal and I can distribute or sell said reconstructions because they are small parts or parodies? Do I need to merely include a comment on my "mashup" to make that legal?

Or if I take a single episode of the Family Guy (the whole series is what seven seasons now?) I can distribute that with my website with commentary on how it's great for society?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[selven]

If you're actually doing some commentary on the pieces of the songs that you're using, then yes. And no, an episode of Family Guy is not a small piece - each episode is a standalone work.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[djnforce9]

What I strongly believe is that the RIAA may find the current generation of teens and young adults to be pretty much a lost cause in terms of convincing them that "downloading is wrong/illegal/etc" because they will just end up doing it anyway (apparently making examples of people through massive lawsuits did not have enough influence). This could be for a variety reasons including being against the RIAA's policies, negative PR, how the RIAA have treated people (and even artists) in that past, or because each individual just can't find anything ethically or morally wrong about downloading especially when they later decide to give tribute to the artist directly should they become a close fan.

So knowing that, the RIAA can move towards a younger audience who are still too young to make decisions like the teens and young adults and therefore end up being VERY impressionable. I am assuming the objective is to convince them that "filesharing is wrong and illegal" so that when they DO get older, they will not partake in the same actions as their older brothers/sisters and maybe even parents.

Naturally in order to accomplish this task, the information will likely be biased in favour of the RIAA so any counter-arugments to their policies such as "fair use" will be cleverly omitted from the program. In short, this whole thing is NOT for the benefit and education of children but the private business interests of a third party organization. Educating them that the RIAA's ancient business model is the ONLY way one should go (as opposed to filesharing which has opened up numerous other possible distribution models).

I think the RIAA's actions here border on "sick" and "brainwashing" if you ask me. That's like if Coca Cola ran a program at schools informing children that all other brands are "harmful" and will have severe negative consequences if you drink them.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[RIAAShill]

You could tell the children that copyright is not absolute, and that its primary purpose is to allow creators to make money off their copyrights. Sometimes, you can use pieces of their material for certain uses. You could follow it up with a few simple examples, like a short piece of a song, a screenshot of a game, etc.

Sure you could tell children that. It makes sense to discuss fair use in a context where it is most applicable (e.g., when teaching about music composition or research paper drafting). But it is just a distraction when trying to discourage non-creative, infringing uses of copyrighted works (software piracy, P2P sharing of ripped music tracks, etc.).

Fair use is not as simple as you might think. When a court is faced with a fair use defense, all four factors of fair use have to be considered:
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of 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
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

To make matters worse, fair use is considered a defense to copyright infringement (first developed in the courts and then codified by Congress), not a right. Thus, if you are doing something that might be considered a fair use in court, the copyright holder can sue and you have the burden of proving. The copyright holder doesn't have to first prove that your use was not fair.

Additionally, trying to give "a few simple examples" is not as trivial as you think. A short piece of a song, sampled by a music artist and distributed commercially, might not be a fair use. A screenshot of a game, plastered on the cover of a third-party rip-off game, could be infringement too.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[eldavojohn]

If you're actually doing some commentary on the pieces of the songs that you're using, then yes. And no, an episode of Family Guy is not a small piece - each episode is a standalone work.

Yeah well, I said that to illustrate a point in what is a complete work? Did you know that a single song can be recorded over hundreds of hours spent in a studio? Is each snippet of a track recorded a "complete work"? What about the post recording processing that goes on? You're using that too, you know.

I'm just trying to get you to think about the ways in which this whole fair use thing becomes ambiguous but apparently you can say what you feel like saying without quoting or citing one legal document or precedent ... and there you are at +5 informative. Great, keep teaching kids that.

Go ahead and tell us what fair use is, I'm not pretending to be a lawyer but you're doing a fine job.

As for my above post being moderated troll?! So much for discourse and discussion on nailing down the definition of "fair use." I cite Capitol Records chasing after the Grey Album and I'm the troll.

Why do I even waste my time putting together posts? I am so sick and tired of this site.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Bob9113]

So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children?

Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.

Step 2: There is no step 2.

Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[sbeckstead]

Actually if the commentary covers the entire episode and the entire episode is required to illustrate the commentary then yes it is fair use. Fair use is not a law, it is a positive defense against a charge of copyright violation. Fair use is so nebulous that it cannot be stated more precisely than what was said in the GP.

I took a course in High School where we dissected the film Cool Hand Luke , and we showed the whole thing. Then took pieces of it and commented on each piece one section at a time and in the end we had reproduced the entire script and several images within the commentary. This was ruled fair use because we used the entire thing in the commentary and the commentary would be useless without the amount we used.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[icannotthinkofaname]

Why would they mention "making copies for personal use" at all if they're presenting all copying as illegal?

Exactly. If they were to do that, it would contradict other things that they say, and they'd end up with no credibility.

Obviously, they're going to misrepresent the law if it suits their purposes. How else are you supposed to get anyone to believe you, except by spinning larger and larger webs of lies to make what you say consistent with the lies you have already told?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[commodore64_love]

The UK Government's Health Services called. They have no problem with this curriculum, even if what is being taught by RIAA is contrary to what the parents (us) believe. And no this isn't off-topic.

It all comes back to the same principle - we parents have lost control of what our children are being taught, and other organizations are filling in the gap. Our objections don't matter, because we voluntarily gave-up this control and handed-it over to the UKHS and RIAA.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[commodore64_love]

>>>I think the RIAA's actions here border on "sick" and "brainwashing" if you ask me. That's like if Coca Cola ran a program at schools informing children that all other brands are "harmful" and will have severe negative consequences if you drink them.
>>>

I share the same thoughts about what UK Health Services is doing with telling schoolchildren "masturbation is good", but few seems to agree with me. For some reason if corporations do it, then it's bad, but if governments do it, then everyone thinks it's okay. Odd.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[walshy007]

They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief.

Children are like sponges, it can be hard to do that sometimes

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of "brainwashing" the kids on this issue considering many grow up to "rebel" against various old fuddy-duddy "moral" guidelines (especially if "everyone else is doing it").

Applies to my kids in their 20's now (oldest of 4 is actually 30, and a raving anarcho/libertarian now - so much for parental values ;-) And my wife has seen it year after year with her 1st-grade students as they "grow up".

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. I wonder if that's why they baptize children and start them on Sunday School early, too...

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[chrisbtoo]

Why do I even waste my time putting together posts? I am so sick and tired of this site.

I appreciated them, FWIW.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[orgelspieler]

I'm sorry you got modded down, but you got modded back up quickly. Please stick around; I enjoy reading your posts. They are always well thought out and interesting. Don't let a couple of mods on crack tick you off.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

UK Gov't Health tells kids to masturbate;Parents are angry. But when you have a monopoly, customer opinions don't matter

Your sig and your post both present the same essential argument, and both suffer from the logical fallacy. I seriously doubt that the Uk government is telling kids to masturbate. I full believe and wouldn't even be surprised to hear that the UK government is telling kids something along the lines of "Current psychological research shows that masturbation is natural and/or healthy". The first is giving advice, the second merely stating a fact. Moreover the second is stating a TRUE fact. Whether or not you believe that masturbation is natural and/or healthy, the vast majority of current research shows that it is. Your moral judgment on the act itself cannot stand in the way of a simple statement on the current state of research *about* the act. You are perfectly free, at home, to tell your children that masturbation is a sin, and that they should not do it. The schools can, and should, present data about what the most current science on the matter says. Schools should not be in the business of teaching morals, but they are in the business of presenting scientific data to students.

The same fallacy applies to your post about what RIAA is doing. While what the RIAA curriculum is teaching might be counter to your moral beliefs (i.e. you may believe that all information should be free and copyright laws are an abomination), unless it is factually inaccurate it doesn't matter. Schools are again not in the business of presenting moral arguments, they are in the business of presenting facts. In this case legal facts. If the facts are wrong (and in this case is seem that they are, if not wrong, certainly biased) then we should object. If the facts are right, and the curriculum does not stray into making moral declarations, then the fact that we'd like those facts to be different doesn't change anything. Objecting based on the idea that we'd rather our children didn't hear these facts is silly.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remind yourself that you have a master's degree in computer science, and the average mod has been languishing in junior college for years :)

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway.

It is deliberately left undefined. A fair use is an otherwise infringing use which, under the totality of the circumstances, is fair. There are tests to help determine fairness, and there are trends as to the sorts of things that often are fair or unfair, but ultimately it is meant to be a a way of handling minor, otherwise infringing acts which should be allowed in the spirit of copyright, rather than the letter of the law; and it is a way of handling unusual and unforeseen acts.

If you want specific exceptions for specific things, whether they are narrow or broad, that's fine, but then they should exist in addition to fair use, since they could never suffice to replace it.

Remember, both law and equity are part of our legal traditions; don't be surprised that fair use is rooted in the latter.

And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct!

Fair use has no such things. I'm sorry that you are upset when people point this out to you. The best people can manage with fair use is to look at a number of cases, and try to discern trends. But each fair use case being unique, trends are of limited utility. There have been cases where small amounts of material were quoted from a work, and it was not fair, and there have been cases where entire works have been copied, and it was fair.

If you're really interested in trying to know when a use is fair or not, I'd suggest learning the test and reading a number of the leading cases on fair use, including the recounting of the facts of the case, so you know just what the particular use happened to be. But this will only at best put you at the level of legal scholars, lawyers, judges, etc. who get it wrong fairly often. Courts have a hard time working out fair use, and reversals on appeal are not uncommon. It's just a difficult thing, and it can't be helped without destroying fair use in the process.

Again, I think you'd be much better off leaving fair use (and your criticisms of it) aside, and instead pushing for additional statutory exceptions which would avoid your having to rely on fair use for things you wanted to do, while still leaving it in place for those who did need to rely on it.

For example, I would like to see an exception that made any otherwise infringing act non-infringing (or at least non-actionable) if it was engaged in by a natural person, and was not commercial in nature or for profit, without affecting secondary liability. The idea being that Alice could engage in file sharing, but Bob could not run a torrent tracker that carried advertisements, or required a fee to access, nor could Carol require that people adhere to a particular ratio of uploads to downloads, nor could Dave sell the software used for this. Thus while we might reduce the amount of money that could be exploited from a particular copyright, at least about all the money there was to be had would still be funneled to the copyright holder. It also legitimizes a lot of what people are doing already, kind of like repealing Prohibition.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Killer Orca]

I share the same thoughts about what UK Health Services is doing with telling schoolchildren "masturbation is good", but few seems to agree with me. For some reason if corporations do it, then it's bad, but if governments do it, then everyone thinks it's okay. Odd.

I haven't heard of this, are you sure that they're just not telling children masturbation isn't "evil" for you like some people would have everyone believe?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[chrisbtoo]

I share the same thoughts about what UK Health Services is doing with telling schoolchildren "masturbation is good" [...] -- UK Gov't Health tells kids to masturbate;Parents are angry. But when you have a monopoly, customer opinions don't matter

Where are you getting this info? I assume by "UK Health Services", you're referring to the NHS, but the top 2 google hits on NHS masturbation were one page saying (paraphrased) "social values have changed, it's no longer taboo" and another being a description of study that found masturbation at a young age may be linked to prostate cancer. Neither of those seem to be a call for the youth of Britain to get down with their bad selves.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Late Adopter]

I feel like you are on some level being disingenuous here. Fair Use is intentionally ambiguous, since it is a question of spirit, not just enumerating that which is permitted. Pretending that distributing whole tracks or episodes of a show, even with your own work on top of it, doesn't excessively advantage from the work the original artists put into it, to score pedant points, borders on intentionally naive.

The law is the best reference for this. 17 USC 107 lists the four factors to test, and gives illustrative (and not exclusive) examples to show what the purpose behind the doctrine is. If you are trying to do something that uses the work as a basis, you probably have a problem. If you are trying to merely talk about the work, and use small snippets of it to that end, you are probably ok. And then copying your own copies for your own exclusive purposes is ok.

Parody gets a little tougher to talk about, since the case-law makes the distinction that what is meant is critical parody (which makes sense, given that it fits the pattern of the permitted classes), and not parody as a back-door to making a derivative work (in the Weird-Al sense). Note that Fair Use is not unique here: like any case that wanders too close to the boundaries of the law, you have to take it to a courtroom to know for sure. Wikipedia offers Mattel, Inc. v. Walking Mountain Productions and Art Rogers v. Jeff Koons as cases to reference.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[tuxgeek]

WTF?
Shooting one self in the foot 101

"making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal"

Not everyone listens to the radio
One means of promotion of a great tune is when it's heard at a friend's home on their stereo
If the CD is good, your friends will rush out and buy it.
Sales soar, and the album goes platinum

In order to protect and preserve the newly purchased CD, the wise consumer rips the thing to digital and then listens to music on their digital player of choice. You then store the CD to protect it from damage and loss. This is how it's done in the real world

For the MAFIAA to declare this illegal is retarded.
They are actually criminalizing the act of listening to the music, they (the artists and production companies) want to promote.
These people running the RIAA are stupid! Only from the mind of a fucking lawyer
Like this business model is going to work

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[aesiamun]

Masturbation and corporate interests aren't the same. I would expect, as a parent, that I would get prior notice that my child would be given lessons on how to be a good little consumer that way I can pull them from the class for the session during that time.

What's wrong with masturbation, anyway?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[djnforce9]

>>> I share the same thoughts about what UK Health Services is doing with telling schoolchildren "masturbation is good", but few seems to agree with me. For some reason if corporations do it, then it's bad, but if governments do it, then everyone thinks it's okay. Odd. Probably because governments are supposed to be acting upon the best interests of the people as a whole (assuming they are not corrupted) making them easier to trust. Businesses on the other hand are only interested in achieving maximum profits even at other peoples' downfall/expense unless they are a non-profit organization like charities (which is clearly not the case for the RIAA).

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Coren22]

I share the same thoughts about what UK Health Services is doing with telling schoolchildren "masturbation is good", but few seems to agree with me. For some reason if corporations do it, then it's bad, but if governments do it, then everyone thinks it's okay. Odd.

I noticed this in your sig a few time, care to elaborate on what it is you are speaking of? Not living in the UK, I have heard nothing about this curriculum and am curious as to what exactly they are teaching? Masturbation rather then sex? Masturbation is good for you and will improve the flow of your chi? Just curious what it is exactly they think is good about it.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone came in and told me that when I was in school, I would have dropped trou and started whaling away right then and there.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Coren22]

Is JEW an acronym for something I have not heard of? One place in your post it is not capitalized, so this would lead to the impression it is the shortened name of a specific corporation.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[mcgrew]

The moderation system seems to be working, as your "-1, troll" has become a "+2, interesting" as it should be. It only takes two asshats to take an informative or interesting post and make it invisible.

I'd like to add to the "fair use" thing: if you plagairize, aven a tiny bit, that is NOT fair use. If you don't give credit where creadit is due, you should be bitchslapped. It's usually easy to tell when something is not fair use, but I agree that it is hard to tell when something is.

Perhaps if Comgress wasn't a wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporatti we could get fair use defined in understandable terms. We could also get a reasonable copyright length so it wouldn't be such a problem anyway. Why should Tolkien's, Hendrix's, or Walt Disney's work, or Gene Roddenberry's work be covered by copyright? He's dead, Jim. There's no way in hell you could ever convince any of the listed people to create more art.

Now watch Paramount sue me for typing "he's dead, Jim".

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DarkPixel]

What's wrong with masturbation?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the answer to that, you need sun, vacation, and a girlfriend :)

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Dragonslicer]

I took a course in High School where we dissected the film Cool Hand Luke , and we showed the whole thing. Then took pieces of it and commented on each piece one section at a time and in the end we had reproduced the entire script and several images within the commentary. This was ruled fair use because we used the entire thing in the commentary and the commentary would be useless without the amount we used.

As far as I know, "educational purposes" is itself often a defense against infringement charges. School bands don't have to pay fees for the music performances, only for the sheet music itself. In my college sports bands, we'd even have a few students write their own arrangements of songs.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[stokessd]

What's wrong with masturbation, anyway?

Apparently it disrupts the church service... Who'd have known?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Hatta]

my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer ... not the law.
How is that different from any other law?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jellomizer]

That is much harder then you think... Your biases are often sent to the children even if you are not trying to do so.
Lets use Unions. I don't think teachers can fairly teach children about unions and their effect on the US and the world. As they are directly benefiting from the Unions so even if they try to teach both sides it makes it seem that Unions will benefit the Underclass at a slight expense to the upperclass, Created such advancements such as Minimum Wage, Weekends and Holidays. However there is little teaching about the other side of unions to allow full critical thinking. Such as past (And possibly current) Moffia ties. The fact that they are now separate organizations who are in the lookout for improving the Union vs. The individual worker. The fact that Unions can hinder HR for a company so much that the company cannot be allowed to modernize or improve efficiency, as efficiency improvements either mean less employees or employees doing more or more difficult work. Or the fact the Unions are now more of a political force who pressure (mostly the democrat party) to do things their way).

Now that a teacher is a Union Member they will have a difficult time teaching the negatives especially if they feel these negatives are untrue or just a small side effect. Vs. someone else who sees it as a major side effect.

Is it important when teaching say american history to cover big events say the civil war WWI and WWII (Where the US won and was considered the good guy) vs. Whisky Rebellion, War of 1812 (WHICH WE ACTUALLY LOST!), Vietnam... Where our goals wern't not always noble and our success wasn't so great.

And do you have any idea what backlash you would have from the parents and politicians if you tried to teach children to look at both sides of WWII.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children?

Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.

Step 2: There is no step 2.

Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.

Exactly. I'm seriously disturbed that this political discourse is even taking place in elementary school. It should not be before High School.... after an age most children learned to a) question authority an b) experience music for themselves without all the political sideshow garbage in the way.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Kjella]

And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct!

Because you quote academic guidelines, which have a million other rules not applicable to normal life and examples of takedowns that have absolutely no weight whatsoever? It's been shown many times you can get takedowns on anything, just by sending the letter. Only court cases matters to determine fair use, I'd be tempted to mod some of these troll myself.

Trying to clarify copyright law in the way you want is impossible, it's like trying to name all the ways you can be criminally negligent and not just gullible or sloppy. The exact border will depend on a million cricumstances even though some things are clearly accidents and others very clear disregard of duties.

For example, let's say that you formalized the portion limits, and made it clear that any use under x% is legal. How long do you think it'd last before you have bittorrent clients that'd only share x% of a file? Different people sharing different parts of the file for a complete seed of course. The other way is even more hopeless, you want to define how much you must parody something?

You will not be able to find any sane definition of fair use unless you include intent. There's nothing different about the copy if I am making a backup or making a copy to sell on eBay. Intent is always debatable, so even if they put into law you can do X with intent to do Y, you'd still end up in court to determine your intent.

It is really not that difficult to understand the intent of fair use. It's not meant to be a end run around copyright - if you bave found a "fair use" way to stop buying CDs, DVDs and watching ads it's probably not. It's also against fair use to take away your ability to do something that might be fair use, also known as DRM. We just don't find the balance because noone on either side seems to be looking for it.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[interkin3tic]

And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over ... despite my analysis being correct!

Uh... someone in that thread said that was a guideline, not a law. I have no idea if that's true or not. You weren't ridiculed, people just disagreed with you. One said that bit about guideline vs law, another disagreed with your interpretation of said guideline, and one guy made a joke (the butt of which was Lessig, not you.) Last, is it really "over and over" if it's just multiple people responding to one post? That was one thread you linked to there. It's not like you've become a running joke for it.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[morgauxo]

Correction: it's primary purpose is to encourage creators to create and share what they create

Allowing creators to make money is the means towards that end, not the end itself. Or at least that's my understanding of the original intent. It's lobbyist's self serving abbreviation of the idea being strictly about money and Congress's failure to see the difference that has allowed copyright and patent law to become so perverted over the last 30 or so years.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[amicusNYCL]

making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal

This sounds like FUD to me (courtesy of "selven", apparently). Here's one of the "activities" in one of the PDFs:

Take a look at these scenarios. See if you can spot the songlifters who are breaking the copyright law...

Caitlin wants to listen to music as much as possible. She copies all the music she buys online onto blank CDs so she can listen to her music when her friends come over to play. And she transfers the music she buys on CD onto her MP3 player so she can listen to her music when driving in the car with her family.

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

I'd like to see a reference on where they say that it's illegal to play your music for your friends. That's specifically what I'm trying to find in the PDFs, I think that claim by TFS is false.

Of course, this entire "program" seems like a nightmare to sit through. Look at this stuff, in the teacher's guide:

Write the word songlifting on the chalk-board and ask students what they think it means.

*raise hand* I know! That's a word that was made up by a shady corporate lobby.

Have students conduct the survey [to find out who they know is a "songlifter"] as home- work, emphasizing that they should only collect information, not names. Use the chalkboard to compile their findings and investigate trends. For example: Which is the most common type of songlifting? Which age group has the most songlifters? Have students use the results of their survey to determine whether or not songlifting is a serious problem.

So Billy, do you download songs? Oh yeah, what do you use? I haven't heard of that one, I should check it out. For research, I mean.

Next, draw the copyright symbol on the
chalkboard. Ask if students know what this
symbol means and where they might have seen
it

I weep for our nation's schoolchildren..

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Struct]

Not following how your approach gets us to a place where these kids can grow up happy to pay a whole lot of money for the right to see or hear a copy of something. If anything, your proposal makes this much less likely. Are you sure you're really taking this seriously?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Volntyr]

So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children?

Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.

Step 2: There is no step 2.

Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.

You forgot Step 3. PROFIT!!!!

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[commodore64_love]

>>>While what the RIAA curriculum is teaching might be counter to your moral beliefs (i.e. you may believe that all information should be free and copyright laws are an abomination), unless it is factually inaccurate it doesn't matter.
>>>

So you have no objection to RIAA or Coca-cola or the Communists or any other group coming into a school and brainwashing your children to ignore what daddy/mommy taught them (and maybe even turn them in, if they spot mommy/daddy with illegally-copied CDs or other warez).

Got it.

It's interesting that people are so casual about giving-up freedom and tying chains around their ankles. Maybe people feel more secure living as Serfs than as liberated individuals.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[WWWWolf]

It's already afternoon and I've not had coffee, so apologies for not posting this to my blog. I've got to Ramble.

Someone needs to get rid of the term "fair use". It implies there's a conflict between two content creators, and one of them will be given a begrudging "fair" chance of using the other's content. Here in Finland, we have a more appropriate term for the same legal concept: "the right to quote".

It is, however, a slight problem that even our legislators have been pretty vague in the law itself: "A published work may be quoted according to good manners and up to the extent that is appropriate to the use". (And it's not limited to text; other works can be "quoted" too) What exactly qualifies as "good manners" and "appropriate extent" is up to the courts. Or is it? We have a specific Copyright Council that has issued tons of legally sound (but not legally binding, as they operate on what has been unilaterally told to them and they won't investigate the claims further than that) opinions and recommendations of what, on those specific cases, is appropriate amount of quotation and what is not. For free. Anyone can send them questions, in free-form letter or email, and they give out statements. The statements are all there on the Web for people to browse. A great resource for everyone wondering whether or not something is okay.

I'd fully support setting up bodies like that in other jurisdictions too. The right to quote should be something that should be applicable and understandable without lengthy, costly legal fights. Even before you go and actually create anything at all.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[techwrench]

Honestly, I think you would have a better chance of getting a pony for Christmas...

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Your moral judgment on the act itself cannot stand in the way of a simple statement on the current state of research *about* the act.

Apparently you've missed the last 20 years in the United States - for a sizable chunk of our population, moral judgement DOES override scientific research. FFS, we have people in positions of authority who truly believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old! (see http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/08/az-state-senate-earth-6000/ )

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[gilgongo]

So you're saying that if I take very small samples of The Beatles' White Album (as I consider the album an entire work) and make new songs out of those small samples, it is completely legal

Hello. This is Slashdot. On the Web. You need to make things a bit clearer as to whether you are a) joking b) being sarcastic c) doing something else.

Right now, you are looking like a fair idiot.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

One can write a great book like Free Culture, but you can't make people read it. Obviously, you have read it. My copy is very worn as I have shared it with many people.
 
Most people really couldn't care less.
 
You cite some excellent cases of individuals, and what goes on very regularly. It begs the question of "What is our culture, how do people participate, and why?" With a group of very powerful and rich individuals attempting to define n-subset as criminals.
 
Not saying it is simple, but I empathize with your frustration with all these "common sense" arguments made by people that get all their education on the issue from Slashdot articles.
 
Thanks for trying though, and thanks for thoughtfully caring about the issue.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Donkey_Hotey]

Aaaaaaaand your post was a perfect example of your alleged point.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[WNight]

what fair use is

Anything that isn't unfair.

It really is that simple. The only hitch is that lawyers who are paid to lie will claim that something is unfair simply because they see some money and think they can get it.

Perhaps the lady fined $1.8 million will decide to buy bullets instead of paying anyone, then the definitions (or number of lawyers willing to argue it) will change.

Yes, the law is crap in that it doesn't define anything but even if it did (think of how you clearly and explicitly don't need permission to use software, but the industry says otherwise and supplies EULAs) you'd still have liars and their legal staff trying to twist the truth. Law just *is* shit.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[westlake]

Children should learn to think. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief.

Children are also entitled to accurate legal and medical advice that is within their limits of understanding.

The ability of a child to make critical judgments is limited. That is part of what it means to be a child.

It is within bounds to tell a kid that downloading movies and music from unknown sources can cost his parents a lot of money.

It is within bounds to tell a kid that feeding copies of his favorite videos to the Internet can be prosecuted as a federal crime.

--- and while that simplifies things a bit, it should be enough to keep him - and you - out of trouble.

It is within bounds to tell a kid that resources like Pandora and Netflix play by the rules.

"Don't get into a car with a stranger."

Children can be comfortable living within a rule even when they don't fully understand why it it exists.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

Nicely done you have completely taken what I said out of context, and neatly twisted its meaning. I said in no fewer than two places in the post that schools should not be making moral judgments at all, but should be presenting facts. As accurately as possible. Let's look at both subjects that seem to irritate you and see how schools should handle them...

Masturbation:
1) "Current research shows that masturbation is a normal/healthy activity" - Fine. It accurately states a fact. Current research does in fact show that.

2) "Current research shows that masturbation is a normal/healthy activity, and you shouldn't feel bad about doing it" - Questionable. The first statement is certainly true, the second is getting on to possibly making a moral call. I would generally support it, because the first statement supports it, and frankly I think masturbation is perfectly normal and healthy. I can see where some parents might object.

3) "Masturbation is fine, any family or religious figure that tells you otherwise is wrong." - Bad. The school is usurping parental and/or religious authority. If the schools in the UK are actually saying this or something like it, then I don't support their program, despite agreeing with their aims.

Copyright Infringement:
1) "Copying music and movies and sharing them with your friends is illegal under most circumstances in most of the Western World" - Fine. It's an accurate statement of facts. More details explaining exceptions might be good, but on the face of it this statement is accurate.

2) "Because copying music and movies and sharing them with your friends is illegal under most circumstances in most of the Western World, you should not do it. You could be arrested or fined and your parents could get into trouble." - Questionable. It gives advice, and presents a "scare" scenario. Again though, the second statement follows pretty logically from the first, and you can in fact be arrested or fined. There's nothing really inaccurate here, but I can see where some parents might object.

3) "Copyright infringement is wrong and evil and should be punished where ever it's found out. Always tell on anybody you find doing it." - Bad. Makes a moral judgment call, and gives questionable advice about how to behave.

It's pretty simple. If the school is giving out facts, and the facts are accurate then the school is doing its job. I never defended this as a good program. In fact I say quite clearly that it seems to be giving out biased or incorrect information. My objection is not to the fact that you don't like it (I don't think it's a good idea either), my objection is to the reasons you dislike it. Your essential argument could be used to completely shelter children from any information you, as their parent, don't want them to have. It's the same essential argument used against the teaching of evolution. If school curriculum are based on withholding everything that any individual parent doesn't want their kinds to know, pretty soon there won't be any curriculum. By the time you accommodate the pacifists that don't want their kids to know wars existed, the right wing Christians who don't want their kids to know other religions exist (not to mention half the biology and physics curriculum), the anarchists who don't want their kids to know laws exist, and the prudes who don't want their kids to know sex exists, you might as well cancel education after 6th grade once kids know how to read and add most of the time.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[sbeckstead]

Educational Purposes is not a free pass, it is an adjunct to be used in evaluating fair use.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Fulcrum of Evil]

not parody as a back-door to making a derivative work (in the Weird-Al sense).

As I understand it, Weird Al would be perfectly justified in making parodies without permission. He may have to pay royalties, but asking permission is just him trying to be a stand up guy.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[WNight]

The UK school-system *should* be telling kids to masturbate. Not as in, "drop your drawers and go", but "if you do, you will enjoy it, and you should give it a try." It's true, and it would make the kids lives better. Even if they didn't do it, simply cutting back on all the moralistic drivel out there would remove useless sources of stress.

If the parents don't like it, and try to censor the message, I'd say the kid should be given the choice to be emancipated or placed in foster care.

Now if the RIAA comes in and gives a blatant one-sided talk about copyright, they're in the wrong. Blatant misrepresentation of the law (they're telling children this shit, hoping children don't understand how crazy these views are) doesn't help the children.

We (the net connected) should start a policy of copyright poisoning. Show that while it can help some living authors, etc, that copyrights pay more lawyers than authors, that they sue more innocent users than industrial counterfeiters, etc. Surely the copyright on the LotR has enriched lawyers and parasites far more than the author...

Right now most people somewhat respect (if not follow) copyrights. They feel they're roughly related to rewarding creators. That's mostly incorrect because like patents copyrights are now far more of a business weapon than a leg-up. If they saw how rarely these laws actually benefit society (and the creators) they'd probably flaunt the laws more.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[idontgno]

I'm no copyright expert, but basic googleage tells me that even in an academic environment, public performance (i.e., a concert, marching band on the field, etc.) requires distinct license, above and beyond buying sheet music. But apparently, just performing music within a classroom setting for the purposes of teaching (for instance, in the band room while learning to read sheet music and tootle your tootler) isn't public performance.

As to "educational purposes" as a particular defense against infringement charges, as far as I can tell it isn't. It appears to be one particular species of Fair Use, with varying degrees of success depending on the extent of the "infringement".

IANAL, of course. But google agrees with me.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just trying to get you to think about the ways in which this whole fair use thing becomes ambiguous but apparently you can say what you feel like saying without quoting or citing one legal document or precedent ... and there you are at +5 informative. Great, keep teaching kids that.

Fair Use is supposed to be ambiguous.

If you REALLY want to get technical, selven (1556643) could sue you right now for plagiarism. According to Slashdot's disclaimer, "Comments are owned by the Poster." You didn't list his name, the web address nor did you list the time and date you accessed his words. Congratulations, you quoted someone without giving proper credit.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[elashish14]

So the fact is that many laws are based out of moral beliefs. The US Constitution is purported to promote equality for all (maybe it's not in the exact wording of the document, but we can take ti for granted), yet how do we define equality for all? To what extent can we really say that some policy is equal?

Let's consider sex offenders. Does keeping a centralized directory of people that have committed sex crimes promote equality for offenders? For other civilians? Where do we draw the lines? There is no way we can expect to draw these lines simply through objective factual guidelines - there is always some moral interpretation.

Now apply this to the MAFIA: is it really sensible to say that the 'intellectual rights' to someone's artwork can be bought and sold for, and enforce it through an act like DMCA? There is no factual way to confront this issue and no way that we can have any directive in public schools on this matter. For schools to have open discussion on the matter is probably good and encouraged - but this program is nothing of the sort. It's unidirectional straight-out telling the kids that we should be propping up an industry on an outdated business model backed by a corporate entity that improves the lives of no one but themselves. This does not belong in schools. Discussion, yes. Directive, no.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[idontgno]

Because this is On the Web, as you very sagely put it, you could... you know... click the link. Assess the content of the linked page against eldavojohn's original context, and perhaps decide for yourself whether he means what he says or is being ironic.

To quote one of my older sigs here, "Whether this post is ironic or sincere is left as an exercise for the reader."

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Znork]

Eh, no. The primary purpose of copyright was to reward the friends of the crown in exchange for support in censorship and control. The English people needed protection from cheap and potentially dangerous books printed by the Scots. And paying friends through awarding monopolies confuses people more than outright taxing them and handing to proceeds to your buddies.

The fact that the creators get a miniscule percentage of the revenue is not a mistake; copyright is, and has always been designed that way on purpose. Had anyone of the involved parties actually given a damn about encouraging creators it would have been trivial to formulate a system with levies on sales where the majority of the revenue went directly to the creator.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[31415926535897]

"Current studies show that killing gang members leads to lower gang violence."

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[merreborn]

Schools are again not in the business of presenting moral arguments, they are in the business of presenting facts

That's not entirely true.

Especially with respect to the study of racism, the moral aspect is heavily emphasized, in my experience.

In elementary school, when covering the civil rights movement, several students were moved to the back of the class and ignored for perhaps 5 minutes, as a simple illustration of segregation. Some of those students didn't take well to the lack of attention. It's one of the few moments in elementary school I still remember.

There was a similar exercise in middle school, related to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, in which certain students were marked with blue stickers (analogous to the star of david).

Both exercises were clearly intended to show segregation and racism as morally wrong.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jhp64]

The same fallacy applies to your post about what RIAA is doing. While what the RIAA curriculum is teaching might be counter to your moral beliefs (i.e. you may believe that all information should be free and copyright laws are an abomination), unless it is factually inaccurate it doesn't matter.

Of course it matters. Schools don't have an infinite amount of time: even if they follow your "fact-based" approach (whatever that means when it comes to writing or indeed any sort of art), they still need to make decisions about which facts to include. If the facts are wrong, it's easy to discount them. But if the RIAA (for example) comes up with lesson plans based on (let's assume) an accurate description of copyright law, then I would say that it's still not worth the time. Work on math, science, history, writing, music, any number of things before spending time on this.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Kirijini]

Fair use is a fact-intensive policy consideration. There are no absolute rules. You can point to various set of recommendations ("not more than 10%," etc. etc.), but those are guidelines or recommendations, not the law.

Whether or not the unlicensed use of a copyrighted work is fair use depends in every case on the facts of the case. It also depends on the policy considerations at stake.

There are four main factors (not "rules") that courts are required to consider when they evaluate a fair use defense, as spelled out in Â107 of the Copyright Act. They are (this isn't strictly quoting the act):
- the nature of the use, especially whether it is commercial, nonprofit, or educational
- the nature of the original copyrighted work
- the proportion of original work used
- the effect of use on the market/value for the original work.
BUT, while the courts are required, to consider these factors, they do not have to give them equal weight (and, they can consider other factors as well). It depends on the situation. A critical analysis of a copyrighted Haiku or other short poem could probably reproduce the whole poem. "Probably." That wouldn't be true if the critical analysis was an advertisement. Unless maybe if it was an advertisement for an academic literary journal published by a university.

The virtue of fair use is that it appeals to what is fair, not what is technical. But if you want to get technical, fair use is an equitable defense - in other words, an issue of equity, not of law. Look it up. That's why fair use is ambiguous. It's meant to be adapted to each situation as necessary. As for your point about needing a lawyer - tough shit. That's true of nearly every legal issue outside of small claims court. Your issue isn't with the complexity of fair use, your issue is with the fact that copyright infringement makes you liable for a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one, so you don't get a public defender/free lawyer.

How do you explain fair use to children? "Fair use" means you can use copyrighted works in ways that are "fair," whether or not you have permission. What fair means is up to the courts. You can then cite examples.

That doesn't fully explain the law, but thats not the point when trying to educate children about legal issues. It'd be pretty damn easy for the RIAA to say "you can do what's fair." Or, more accurately, "We'll won't sue you if you're fair with your use of our songs." Or, more accurately still, "We'll probably lose if we sue you for fair uses of our songs in ways we don't give you permission to do."

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[ultranova]

And no this isn't off-topic.

Whenever someone feels the need to say this, the post is off-topic ;).

It all comes back to the same principle - we parents have lost control of what our children are being taught, and other organizations are filling in the gap.

Which is good, since the more conflicting information a child receives, the faster he realizes that people lie to him to manipulate him. Cynicism is the seed of wisdom; lack of cynicism makes you a gullible fool.

Parents having complete control of what their children are being taught would simply make it easy for them to indoctrinate them to whatever religion or ideology they happen to have blind faith in. We already have too many such people pushing ID, communism, libertarianism, homeopathy, and other assorted stupidity; we really can't afford having any more.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jedidiah]

> Yeah well, I said that to illustrate a point in what is a complete work? Did
> you know that a single song can be recorded over hundreds of hours spent in a
> studio? Is each snippet of a track recorded a "complete work"? What about the
> post recording processing that goes on? You're using that too, you know. ...which ultimately doesn't matter because it's never published.

In this regard, proper copyright registrations and declarations would be a good thing.

They would help establish what is and isn't the work. And whether or not something is a cohesive sort of "symphony" or just an "anthology".

You're trying to create a hair to split that doesn't really exists. Sounds like "songlifting" really.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Darkness404]

For some reason if corporations do it, then it's bad, but if governments do it, then everyone thinks it's okay. Odd.

Because the it benefits the government so much if you masturbate or not? Its not people pay the government for that, and neither does the government produce porn or anything like that.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jedidiah]

Yes it is. My University went rather nuts with this exception as a number
of the courses used "textbooks" that were nothing more than photocopies.
This of course was quite a boon for the local copy shops that did all of
the "printing".

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Dragonslicer]

As far as I know, our band director didn't keep a list of exactly which songs we played at every football, hockey, and basketball game. Maybe the university paid a flat fee, or we really were breaking the law.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Dragonslicer]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant, that educational purposes is usually considered fair use. Obviously you can't just say "educational purposes" and get a free pass; you have to actually be involved in educating in some way (the easiest is to be a teacher or professor, but you could try arguing it if you're privately teaching some kids).

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jedidiah]

Yes, you could tell them that but then you would be a BIG FAT LIAR.

          Copyright doesn't exist to enrich artists and authors. Copyright exists to enrich society.

The state sanctioned distribution monopoly is just something that the federal
government is allowed to do in order to further that goal. The enticement of
authors is a means to an end rather than a means unto itself.

Although even the "corporate bootlicker" spun version of copyright
still might leave students wondering why copyrights still exist
long after the death of the relevant author.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

A Weird Al style parody would quite likely be a fair use. It's not that it would be a derivative work -- any kind of otherwise infringing activity is potentially a fair use, including derivatives -- it's that parodies make fun of the works they're based upon, which necessitates taking from the underlying work, parodies don't act as substitutes for the works they're based upon, but parodies usually can't get authorized. Take a look at Campbell v. Acuff-Rose for a good example of this sort of thing.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

(as I consider the album an entire work)

Then you would be wrong and a lawyer from Apple Corps would be knocking on your door.

This is why it is important to actually KNOW things rather than just speak out of your a$$.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

I'd like to add to the "fair use" thing: if you plagairize, aven a tiny bit, that is NOT fair use.

Well, that's not the law. In fact, US copyright law has no right of attribution which would preempt an otherwise fair use. Not that it has much of a right of attribution to begin with.

And not that there should be any such right as a matter of copyright law. The history of US copyright law is pretty clear that authors are pretty strongly incentivized to create and publish without such a right, which suggests that the right is not necessary. Authors might like it, but if they're willing to create without it (as virtually all of them are, since so few are eligible for it even now), why bother giving it to them? It is bad public policy to impose a burden on the public when the public will receive no greater benefit thereby.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

You're both right an wrong. There's certainly a moral message of "Segregation is wrong" / "Racism is wrong" in those type of lessons, but it's more interpretive than it is direct. We did a similar lesson when I was in middle school. 6 Kids were given "privileges" for a lesson. They got to talk and play as much as they wanted, were given soda and sweets, and generally made better than the rest of us. It was only a one hour class, but it still felt miserable. The last ten minutes of class were spent discussing how this related to racism and classism. At no point did the teacher ever out and out say "segregation and separate but equal are bad". She didn't have too. The message was in lesson. For those of us not privileged it was manifestly not fun. For those in the privileged group it was manifestly obvious that the rest of us were not having fun.

The idea wasn't so much to make the moral statement "Racism is bad", it was to personalize the *fact* that being treated badly or differently makes *you* personally or *your friend* personally feel bad. It's left to the student to then make the jump to the moral idea that "treating people badly or differently makes them feel bad and is therefore wrong."

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

I think that's an entirely different question than, "you shouldn't teach this because I disagree with it", which is what the OP was saying. there is an argument fro teaching the basic of copyright law as part of a high school civics class, but I agree that this is probably unnecessary in elementary school. There are much better things to spend time on.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, I'm not quite clear on precisely what you were doing with that movie, but showing a movie in a classroom for educational purposes usually isn't a fair use, because it doesn't need to be; it generally falls under section 110 as a lawful performance. Fair use is a defense of last resort, remember. If something else is applicable, the issue of fair use will not be addressed.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee citing U.S. law and using terms like ambiguous aren't going to win over parents, much less confuse the hell out of children.

Why are children learning about copyright in the first place. They should be learning maths, history, science, and exercising. To inflict the mayhem and calamity that is the present U.S. Copyright on them, is cruel and unusual punishment, possibly bordering on torture.

Once again, this country and the Capitalists that run it, show their ineptitude, greed, and gross misconduct when it comes to a line of ethics.

I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but leave it to the R.I.A.A. to shock me once again. Congratulations, R.I.A.A!!! You crossed a line I never thought you would cross: trying to subvert America's youth to the whim's of your corporate masters. May YOU ALL ROT IN HELL FOR ETERNITY!!!!!!!

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[pwfffff]

"YOU KILLED MY BROTHER, so I think I'll give up on this whole gang thing, really."

Really?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[bzipitidoo]

Could Fair Use be clearer? Maybe. But I'll spell out what I think he is getting at. Fair Use is inherently ambiguous. Saying that's intentional is like saying "I meant to do that" after making a mistake. Laws should not be unnecessarily ambiguous. There ought NOT to be a law where there is no need.

Using one entire episode of a show is obviously not Fair Use, while using only 10% is regarded as fair. But at some point we always reach a gray area, and we always will. As an example, what about double or triple size episodes, in 30 minute installments, complete with "to be continued" announcements at the break points? Which 10% of that is fair? Could the first 6 minutes be used, or would the user have to take no more than 3 minutes from each 30 minute part? Suppose the producer tries to obscure things by purposely leaving out the "to be continued" announcements? To argue one way or another on that and similar questions is to miss the point. We shouldn't have to argue about that at all. We should not have fallen into the trap of wasting huge amounts of time and money trying to decide such things on a case by case basis. No there are not a finite number of circumstances, so we won't be able to eventually have a decision for every possible circumstance. And if we do have a decision, we can reopen and fight again and again. We shouldn't have to split hairs at all. We should avoid the entire issue, and replace copyright law. Find another way to justly compensate artists. Don't feed the confusopoly.

As another example, take traffic lights. If we could afford to replace every intersection with an interchange, we would not need traffic lights, or laws concerning traffic lights. No more running of red lights. No more red light cameras and corruption involving the shortening of yellow lights in order to extort money from "violators". Most of all, no more waiting around at red lights. It's a nice dream, but at this time replacing every intersection is impractical. If we ever get flying cars.... Replacing copyright law on the other hand is not only much more possible, but necessary.

I think technology will force us to scrap copyright. Copying will only become easier and faster and more deeply embedded in all that we do, and it is already impossible to stop the majority of copyright infringement that occurs constantly. Also the law is such a hopeless mess, based on bad foundations and bad ideas, it never will be possible for would-be obedient users to know that something they're doing is infringing or that something they want to do is not infringing. The law is so screwed up that just booting up a computer with Windows is an infringement, as the computer copies the OS from disk to memory, however fixing such specific issues by explicitly allowing them does not really help. The only way to be sure of complying with the law is never do anything at all-- never write any songs, books, never buy anything in case it might be pirated, never use a computer or a network or a phone, never even watch TV or listen to the radio lest you remember a jingle and sing it where someone else can hear. Of course we're not going to shut ourselves into boxes, instead, we're all criminals. Copyright must go.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[xigxag]

Your #2's don't correspond neatly with each other. Masturbation is not illegal. Copyright violation is. It's entirely reasonable and not at all questionable for public schools to advise children not to commit illegal behavior on their computers, particularly in the context of teaching the children how to use and explore the internet. Otherwise, someone who gets sued by the RIAA could turn around and sue their child's school, saying that their child learned how to fileshare on the school's computers and the school was negligent in not informing the child of the risks involved.

That's not to say a good school won't also present the controversy over whether filesharing should be illegal or not.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[mcgrew]

Well, that's not the law

Since you're a lawyer I'll take your word for it, but it should be the law.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Gonarat]

I'm not sure how it works everywhere, when my Daughter went to High School here in Louisville, KY., the band had to pay for the music they used on the field and in competition. The band director went through an organization that supplied the sheet music, made sure that the show purchased was not being used by any other band in any of the shows we were going to compete in, and made sure we had the right music for the instruments we were using. For our size band (50 to 75) students, the cost of the show we used in the 2008-09 school year was somewhere between $2500 and $3500. The cost of the show varies by popularity and band size. Our band organization foots the bill (read band fees and fund raisers) since the schools do not provide any funds to speak of. The cost of the show includes any and all performance fees, so in the end, yes, we are paying performance fees. A High School Band, costs a lot of money, especially if the band is big, and the suppliers of the music make sure that they get their cut.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[imuffin]

Let's not forget, though, that facts can be misleading. By choosing what facts to present and which to leave out, an implicit moral judgment may be presented. Masturbation can cause soreness to the affected areas. Some people become addicted to masturbation and can't think about anything else. Being caught masturbating has lead to embarrassment and social awkwardness. All facts.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

Correction: it's primary purpose is to encourage creators to create and share what they create

A minor correction to that:

Copyright's purpose is to promote the progress of science, by encouraging authors to create and publish works, and by having minimal, if any, restrictions, in both scope and length, as to what the public can do with those works.

The second half -- that copyrights should be as minimal and short-lived as possible while still encouraging authors -- is important, since works are more valuable to the public the less protected they are by copyright. It's why there are limits to copyright, why copyrights expire (or at least are supposed to; the current law is pretty rotten), etc.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

Your point is valid, but since the two situations don't exactly correspond the bullet points couldn't either. 2.2 is probably less questionable than 1.2, I'll agree, but I think I added enough extraneous "phear" to 2.2 to make them reasonable comparable.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

...me too.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

No need to take my word for it. Attribution was not present in US copyright law until 1990. Since then, it is only available for a very small set of works -- check the definition in 17 USC 101 for a work of visual art, to see what is covered -- and even then the attribution right is subject to fair use.

And why should we even have this much?

There hasn't been a big explosion, AFAICT, in the quantity of eligible works since the law was passed in 1990. This suggests that the creators of such works, e.g. fine artists, sculptors, art photographers, etc., are not incentivized to create and publish their works because such a right is available. And there's not really a dearth of such creators now, nor before the law came along, which is attributable to copyright law. There is no attribution right for the vast majority of works, but the US is awash in non-eligible works now, and was before the law was enacted.

Granting copyrights imposes a burden on the public, and has a public cost. This is acceptable if granting the copyright produces a benefit to the public which outweighs that cost. In the case of attribution rights, it seems that they have the inevitable burden, with no commensurate benefit.

So while some creators might want an attribution right, the fact that they are perfectly willing to create and publish works without it leads me to oppose such a right, since it would be a huge waste perpetrated against the people.

It's kind of like how I'd like my clients to pay me a million dollars an hour. Since I'm willing to settle for less, no one is foolish enough to pay me more than they absolutely have to.

And even if I refused to work unless I did get paid a million dollars an hour, my clients would surely, rightly, decide that I'm not worth that much, and simply fire me. This is exactly what we should do with authors who want too much copyright: Refuse to give them any rights that we deem excessive, and if they refuse to create, we happily let them wait tables or deliver pizzas. No creative work is so important that it justifies excessive copyright. We are better off without such works by definition.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[DrgnDancer]

True. I did briefly touch on bias, and said that a biased program, even if it is strictly accurate is bad. As I've said in a couple of other places through this thread, I don't actually think this program is a good idea, nor that it's authors don't have a (not so) hidden agenda. Quite the opposite, I'm sure given the topic and the authors that the whole thing is full of bias and inaccuracy. What I object to is why the OP dislikes the program. "I'm morally opposed to copyright, and therefore don't want my children to learn about it" is essentially the same argument that people use to try to keep evolution out of the classroom. Had he said "I don't trust this organization to present this information fairly and accurately" I'd have jumped right on by. Between the way he phrased his objections, and his signature (which is essentially making the same argument on another topic) I felt the need to say something.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Tteddo]

Actually I kinda look forward to your comments on various subjects. A little reason and thought is a nice change.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[jellomizer]

Yes it is. Even when I tried to be balanced My own views come into the picture. I have had bad experiences with Unions so my bias is passed in my writing about them.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

I've downloaded and read much of the content, but I couldn't find anything that matched up with the summary's statement that the materials state that playing music for your friends in your house can be illegal. It does state this:

"Copying music you've bought to your personal computer or player is a common activity which can generally be done without legal consequences. However, distributing a song to others without the permission of the rights holders is a very different story."

This is more or less correct. You can generally make a backup of your music, and you generally can't redistribute those copies without permission of the rightsholders. They've given an example of the dividing line between fair use and infringement, despite the summary's claim that there's no mention of fair use.

If somebody who's read the PDFs more thoroughly can point out where it states that you're not allowed to play a backup copy of music for your friends in your home can be illegal, I would be much obliged.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

"Exactly. If they were to do that, it would contradict other things that they say, and they'd end up with no credibility."

I don't follow. The parent's guide pretty clearly states that making a personal copy of your music is generally OK. Are you referring to something else? What's the basis of your understanding that they're presenting all copying as illegal? Serious question.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

"For the MAFIAA to declare this illegal is retarded."

Can you point me to somewhere on the site where they actually do this?

If you're not seeing my point, perhaps I read a Slashdot summary that stated that tuxgeek has dyed his hair green. Somebody might state that the decision to dye your hair green is retarded. Perhaps it would be, if we're dealing with abstracts, but the essential point is that you did not dye your hair green.

"WTF?"

Indeed.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

Someone needs to get rid of the term "fair use". It implies there's a conflict between two content creators, and one of them will be given a begrudging "fair" chance of using the other's content. Here in Finland, we have a more appropriate term for the same legal concept: "the right to quote".

It's a perfectly good term.

First, a fair use can be any kind of otherwise infringing use, though not any particular kind of use will necessarily be fair. It need not be limited to quotations, which anyway may or may not be fair depending on the particular case at hand. While fair use is a last resort, it is meant to be a catch all, avoiding situations where the law of copyright conflicts with the spirit of copyright.

Second, fair users can either be authors or can be end users of works; the term doesn't imply what you infer.

We have a specific Copyright Council that has issued tons of legally sound (but not legally binding, as they operate on what has been unilaterally told to them and they won't investigate the claims further than that) opinions and recommendations of what, on those specific cases, is appropriate amount of quotation and what is not. For free. Anyone can send them questions, in free-form letter or email, and they give out statements. The statements are all there on the Web for people to browse. A great resource for everyone wondering whether or not something is okay.

That's great, but US federal courts, which hear the vast majority of copyright suits in the US, are prohibited by our Constitution from doing this.

A separate body could be set up to give opinions that had no legal weight to them, but this seems expensive for something that could not safely be relied upon. Especially if you didn't limit it to just copyright (which is only of interest to a small number of people, assuming sensible copyright laws). Plus, since courts themselves struggle with fair use issues all the time, it seems unlikely that such a body could offer accurate information without being annoyingly conservative about it. I don't need my tax dollars paying for someone to give me advice, who then tells me not to bother, simply because they want to avoid any possible risk of error on their part. Most of the places that try to advise about the limits of fair use engage in this already, so it seems likely to me that we'd see more of it. I'd rather get honest advice, even if that means getting told that I'd have 50:50 odds of the particular behavior being lawful, or whatever.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Jahava]

While what the RIAA curriculum is teaching might be counter to your moral beliefs (i.e. you may believe that all information should be free and copyright laws are an abomination), unless it is factually inaccurate it doesn't matter.

The part that concerns me is that the RIAA's curriculum is not presenting a fair and unbiased outlook on the copyright situation. The summary points out "fair use" as an example of a topic that's relevant but not discussed to any relevant degree. The message is more or less a mindless list of activities that may be illegal stating outright that they are illegal, and that is incorrect.

The RIAA is (ab)using its power (derived from its financial prowess) to gain an influence in schools and using an influence to spread an incomplete message to kids with the intention of modifying their behavior, their opinions, and their perspective on file sharing en masse. In an open forum, the solution is for an alternative party to present their own material, filling in the blanks and correcting errors and biased statements.

Schools, however, are not open forums. Unfortunately, the alternative parties don't really have the resources to compete with the RIAA, and likely won't be heard in a shouting contest. This leaves schools (and through them, kids, and through them, the future political climate) completely vulnerable to this one-sided propaganda.

Material that is presented in schools ought to be factual and unbiased (hah, but seriously). The rationale for this is that the children aren't necessarily mature, smart enough, and/or capable enough to exhibit their due diligence and perform their own research on the subjects that they are exposed to. They may (and most probably will) accept the school's teachings as unquestioned fact for at least the near future (this is marketed towards kids grades 3-8).

Of course, parents can always step in and attempt to un-bias (or re-bias) the curriculum, and that is their prerogative and their duty, but they can only operate on knowledge that they are aware of. Some will likely undo the RIAA's propaganda, but many will not, and those kids will grow up believing that the RIAA's half-truths are the entire picture.

Ultimately, a school should not use the material directly ... they should petition interested parties and collect relevant information, then forge their own aggregate materials to present to children. However, both myself and the RIAA know full well many schools will take the easy path, and who knows ... with good lobbying, maybe they'll be forced to.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[bennomatic]

Teaching critical thinking does not require spelling out all sides to every issue. To take your union example, a child who has learned to think critically might, during a lesson on the virtues of unions, come up with the following thought:

"If unions were established to protect individuals from the corruption and/or inhumanity associated with large and/or profit-making organizations, does it not follow that a union which grows large enough or profitable enough may itself become inhumane or corrupt?"

If the teacher presiding over that conversation rewards that student by encouraging further discourse, who knows? Maybe the problems of greed and corruption will be resolved in a generation.

And with regards to World War II, there were many more than two sides. But I'm curious as to what you are referring to as presenting the other of "both sides"? If you're referring to the Nazi perspective, I think that a lot of that information is clearly made available, at least in reasonably good schools. The only way I as a parent would get in the way would be if a teacher tried to actually justify the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Russians, the elderly and infirm and other "deviants".

If you're referring to imperial Japan's perspective, well, all you have to do is look at the flag from that era to know what they were thinking. If you're thinking about Italy, the red-headed step-child of Axis powers, well, all you have to do is watch any Keystone Capers flick to understand what they were thinking.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Bigjeff5]

Weird Al normally doesn't need permission, but he always tries to get it anyway. Defending lawsuits, even if you win, is expensive.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[bennomatic]

Again, I think you'd be much better off leaving fair use (and your criticisms of it) aside

To be fair--pun intended--I don't think the OP has any great hatred of fair use. My impression is that s/he just doesn't think that it's well-defined enough to depend on, much less teach to children. To his/her point in an above thread, it's true that your ability to make a fair use defense often does depend on the lawyer you can afford.

Of course, this is true for many things. See OJ Simpson for more detail.

But most of all, I agree with the poster who talked about teaching critical thinking to children, so they can't be indoctrinated. Neither by the corporate overlords, nor the "information wants to be free" set. Learn what's going on, make your decisions, and take responsibility for them. It's not that hard.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[bennomatic]

Moreover the second is stating a TRUE fact

I'll bet someone has to wax his palms before going out...

Joking aside, I wish it weren't the case that people accept a difference between "facts" and "true facts". Facts that aren't true aren't facts. They're fallacies.

Sigh. I'm not snarking you; I'm simply bemoaning the fact that your comment reflects a depressing trend.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[icannotthinkofaname]

From the fine summary:

and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal.

Exactly the quote that the parent to my previous post cited.

Basically, parent asked what may have been a rhetorical question, and I decided to answer it. The message that the RIAA is trying to send is that there's no legal way to copy music files once you've gotten your hands on your CD of choice. If they present scenarios of legal copying, then their statement is false.

If copying CDs to my computer for backup (or for main use while having the CDs lying around somewhere) is fine, but letting my friends listen to this, without copying it to their devices, isn't, exactly what is or is not legal to do with my music?

And if letting friends listen is illegal, why should I be allowed to, say, broadcast the song from my computer's speakers? There's a chance that someone who didn't buy the CD could hear the music!

This really raises two questions:
1.) What, exactly, is "fair use"?
2.) Does the RIAA have any authority whatsoever to define what "fair use" means?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Bigjeff5]

Anything that isn't unfair.

Actually the US Copyright code spells out the criteria, very much narrowing what is considered "fair".

You've got to realize that "fair use" is the original right, and copyright is a restriction placed upon it to incentivise the creation of new art. Without copyright, fair use would obviously not be a question, because it would be the purchasers of the creative work who would have complete control over their individual copy (including the ability to make more copies and distribute them). Copyright grants a limited monopoly, restricting the public usage rights. They still exist underneath the copyrights, and frankly large copyright holders hate it.

Fair use is ambiguous and subjective because the ultimate right to use the creative works belongs to the public, not the artist/author/big media corporation, and copyright is simply a restriction on that right to ultimately (hopefully) enhance the benefit to the public. "Clarifying" the law would make it more restrictive, not less restrictive. It is better this way.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Children are naturally born to do that, it isn't something you need to TEACH them. Children will investigate and mimic what they see.
 
Put them into a rich environment for them to explore, and from there the best you can hope to do is not discourage the learning process.
 
And personally, natural problems in a natural environment has more to offer than any fake problems in fake environments (video games).
 
Know what screws kids up? When they ask questions and parents insist on giving smart ass answers. I see many kids ask their parents questions about their environment, and there is almost an immediate reaction of "Why are you bothering me?".

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[chicago_scott]

Why do I even waste my time putting together posts? I am so sick and tired of this site.

Hmm... self-loathing saves a post from the dreaded 'Troll' mod? I'll need to remember that!

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[commodore64_love]

LINK - http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=%22UK+government%22+teen+masturbation - Many cultures consider masturbation to be a mortal sin. The UK Health Services monopoly should not have authority to overrule these beliefs and tell children "masturbation is your right and good" in direct defiance of the parents' wishes. The government is supposed to be the servant of the Parents/the People, not the other way around. WE are the masters, not serfs.

Somebody else wrote:

>>>Probably because governments are supposed to be acting upon the best interests of the people as a whole (assuming they are not corrupted) making them easier to trust. Businesses on the other hand are only interested in achieving maximum profits even at other peoples' downfall/expense
>>>

I don't trust any organization that has direct access to my wallet and sucks dollars out like a vacuum. Neither do I trust any organization that has black-suited men that can bust down my door whenever they feel like it (ref: Professor Gates and about 1 million similar cases every year). At least RIAA or Microsoft can't do either of those things.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[WNight]

"Clarifying" the law would make it more restrictive, not less restrictive.

Agree.

It is better this way.

Disagree.

It is a fact that they would restrict rights and reward cronies if "they" "clarified" the law, but that doesn't mean a broad and poorly-worded law is better simply because they could always make it worse.

Copyright law, patent law, and other monopoly grants are ridiculous, especially when they're given to someone based on being first and applied to everyone without regard for usefulness. The only good solution is no government monopolies.

Really, it's deeper than that though, our legal system is fundamentally flawed. Your chances of success are directly based on your finances. What might be fair and reasonable laws if they applied equally to everyone are nothing but shit when sold to the highest bidder.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Bob9113]

Within the scope of public schools -- the implicit nature of this conversation -- children should not be indoctrinated with beliefs about what is right and wrong.

downloading movies and music from unknown sources can cost his parents a lot of money.

That is a deceptive statement that I would not want my child hear from a source which has the veneer of authority.

feeding copies of his favorite videos to the Internet can be prosecuted as a federal crime.

As is that.

resources like Pandora and Netflix play by the rules.

While they may be within the bounds of the law they most certainly do not play by the rules. My rules. Adam Smith's rules. And I don't want the school telling my children differently.

Children can be comfortable living within a rule even when they don't fully understand why it it exists.

Yes, and that is precisely why schools should not be telling them things that come from biased sources. They might believe it, and live by it. Telling them the unreasoned rules is my job (or my church's job, or whatever moral and ethical authorities I choose).

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[biscon]

doesn't this essentially mean that fair use is in the eye of the beholder? (and thus a game of lawyer vs lawyer). I mean if you brought a fair use case before 10 different courts are you sure that 7-10 of them would come out the same way?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

I know the summary stated that -- but when you read the actual course materials, it states that making a backup copy is generally OK. I'm wondering where you got your info (besides the incorrect summary, of course).

"The message that the RIAA is trying to send is that there's no legal way to copy music files once you've gotten your hands on your CD of choice."

I know that this is Slashdot and we never read the original articles, but this is what the actual parent's guide states:

"Copying music you've bought to your personal computer or player is a common activity which can generally be done without legal consequences. However, distributing a song to others without the permission of the rights holders is a very different story."

This contradicts your statement. There's a wide gulf between distributing tracks via P2P and simply playing music in your home for your friends. I know that it may be blurry for some, but trust me -- one is unauthorized distribution, the other is not.

"If copying CDs to my computer for backup (or for main use while having the CDs lying around somewhere) is fine, but letting my friends listen to this, without copying it to their devices, isn't, exactly what is or is not legal to do with my music?"

Huh? You can let your friends listen to your music in your own home. You might be confusing this with the "unauthorized public performance" clause you see in those scary FBI warnings. The bar is set pretty high here... your home would need to be regularly open to the public. A house party, even if you're charging money for beer cups, doesn't count, since it's not a public venue.

"And if letting friends listen is illegal, why should I be allowed to, say, broadcast the song from my computer's speakers? There's a chance that someone who didn't buy the CD could hear the music!"

Sorry, I just think you're being paranoid. Letting your friends hear your music in your house is not illegal.

"1.) What, exactly, is "fair use"?"

Lots of folks are confused about this one. Fair use isn't a defined set of rules, but rather guidelines (you'll often hear the word "doctrine"). Often, what is or isn't fair use is decided in court based on the facts of the particular case. But in case I haven't been clear, playing music for your friends in your house isn't even near the boundary.

"2.) Does the RIAA have any authority whatsoever to define what "fair use" means?"

Nope. They've taken several file sharing sites and services to court, and many of the defendants (beginning with Napster) have attempted the fair use defense. In each of these cases, it was the court that decided whether fair use applied.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[LionMage]

It doesn't say that. In fact, the teacher's guide says this in the answer section:

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

This is related to the item from the activity guide:

Caitlin wants to listen to music as much as possible. She copies all the music she buys online onto blank CDs so she can listen to her music when her friends come over to play. And she transfers the music she buys on CD onto her MP3 player so she can listen when driving in the car with her family.

This is followed by a multiple choice checklist with possible answers. I suspect the summary was written with the assumption that the "correct" answer is the one most likely to inflame Slashdot passions.

In short, this is (as another commenter pointed out elsewhere) likely FUD. I re-read TFA multiple times and couldn't figure out where the author of the summary got that bit from, and then dug down into the PDFs on the Music Rules site. Turns out I couldn't find anything resembling the claim made in the summary because it wasn't there to be found.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Dan541]

My favourite is this one. Utterly hilarious!

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

"I'd like to see a reference on where they say that it's illegal to play your music for your friends. That's specifically what I'm trying to find in the PDFs, I think that claim by TFS is false."

Agreed. I've read most of the stuff on the site (until the awful colors got to me) and found no such statement. In fact, at several points they gave examples of fair use, so TFS's "at no point is fair use mentioned" statement is also a lie.

The record industry has certainly been known to whitewash, confuse, and outright lie. This apparently gives many file-sharing advocates the impression that it's okay to lie as well when fighting against copyright owners. Pity.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[turbidostato]

"Go ahead and tell us what fair use is"

You are implicitly mixing two *very* different things.

On one hand is the "fair use definition" which basically is what you already got and it's terribly easy to transmit even to children: just two or three not too long phrases on plain English.

On the other hand is the "USA legal system" which is the one that doesn't take the time to translate those easy phrases to legal carved stone, that allows entities that start on "R" to litigate against undefined "John Does", that allows for legal doctrine to be "downright laughable", that allows for something to remain "unclear until you've already been sued for doing it", that makes the average citizen to believe that the one with the more expensive lawyer is the one that winds.

Trying to explain to children "fair use" and "USA legal system" I really don't see any problem with the former, but I won't try with the latter. Not it terms I'd want to use speaking to children at least.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[b4dc0d3r]

Death marking the end of copyright is a dangerous path, lest a person suddenly have a business case for "ending the copyright" prematurely. Public domain is just a click away.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Omestes]

As a person who spent a rather long time slumming around in philosophy classes, most dealing with epistemology and philosophy of science, I learned the necessity of drawing three flavors of "truthiness" into things.

You have lower-case "truth", which is generally any subjective judgment that we individually hold true. This is weak, and generally non-justified. We can call it colloquial truth. Social.

Then you have capital "T" "truth", which is justified, observed, and probably actually True. This is the realm of science and facts, etc... Phenomenal.

Then you have capital "truth" ("TRUTH") which is the actual, objective, and invariant truth. This is unobtainable, and probably has something to do with Kant's "things in themselves". Noumenal

A lot of people use the term "fact" in the first sense of the word. So sometimes it sadly becomes necessary to deliniate yourself from tom-foolery.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[b4dc0d3r]

If you buy sheet music from a reputable publisher (you can identify these easily because they swarm all over music educator conferences) the whole point is to study and then give a concert. Needing a separate license for that would be ridiculous - the school administration office would go crazy when they apparently had to re-buy what they already bought.

Sometimes the license comes with it, sometimes you get a different license.

http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/the-right-to-royalty-free-memories/

I went along with the high school band on their final performance at a band competition in East Los Angeles in November of 2007. I was shocked to see signs posted all over the arena saying âoeNo Videotaping Allowed in Respect for the Copyright Owners of the Musicâ. The reason given for banning all camcorders was that there was no permission for âoemechanical reproductionâ of the songs being played. The music industry feels the need to prevent the parents from recording their own kids, because this might cut into their profits.

In this case the license is for a performance on a football field, but doesn't include recording. MPAA/RIAA are the recording guys, ASCAP/BMI are the performance guys. If you buy out of the "marching band" section, it probably includes the outside performance license.

So it does involve an extra license, but it's usually in the cost of the music. If someone arranges something copyrighted, no one has gotten paid so you're taking a risk of being audited.

It's not a big quibble, just illustrating that academics is nowhere near an automatic exclusion.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[sbeckstead]

Thank you, Wasn't 100% sure of the movie being shown but I was reasonably certain of the usage of the entire script in the commentary we made that went along with the movie. Fair use is tricky even in a school setting and I would hate to have to defend myself against it. I just recently had a movie that I did the music for shown at a film festival and I had to make sure that I had buy out rights so I didn't have to jump through all the performance documentation hoops.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[cpt kangarooski]

To be fair--pun intended--I don't think the OP has any great hatred of fair use. My impression is that s/he just doesn't think that it's well-defined enough to depend on, much less teach to children.

Oh sure. It is certainly not well-defined, and probably very hard to teach to children, but it is important enough that if you were going to teach children about copyright laws for some reason, it should be included. Given that it ultimately comes down to whether or not it seems fair, with some various issues to think about in deciding that (e.g. it's fair to do time shifting because it does no harm to anyone, but file sharing is likely unfair, as it is a substitute for the legitimate market, and doing that substitution does leave the copyright holder somewhat worse off), I think the kids could get a rough handle on it.

My concern is simply that fair use needs to be left alone. If someone finds it too vague for their liking, rather than criticize or try to alter fair use, it's better to make a separate exception for the issues they're concerned about, leaving fair use intact. Trying to make fair use well-defined would kill it dead.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Be that as it may, you're the one that's getting fucked, not them ;)

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[ajlisows]

You are assuming that working at a Union Job where you have no choice but to join the Union automatically makes you Pro-Union. I've known people who worked in Unionized manufacturing plants as well as Public School Teachers who loathed the Unions they were part of and blamed said Unions for a lot of things that were wrong at their shop or with the Public School System. I've also known some people in unions that didn't really care about the issue at all.

In general terms, you are probably correct in that a higher percentage of Union workers are pro-union as compared to non-union workers. However, I don't think you can state for a fact that all teachers will put a positive slant on them. Each individual teacher will have their own personal biases regarding just about everything they teach.

I'm getting way off topic, but this is A little anecdote that I like to tell about indoctorinating of children. This happened back when I was in Grade School, during an election year...I really don't remember if it was Reagan/Mondale or Bush/Dukakis. My teacher asked me who I would vote for if I could. I picked the Democratic candidate and she asked me why. I gave her my reasons (Which were probably very childish and stupid, but that isn't the point). She said..."And what would be the most important reason to vote for him?". I thought about it for awhile and said "Because he is a Democrat?" Said teacher was absolutely beaming with pride and told me that was the right answer. From that moment on until I was old enough to have a remote understanding of politics I actually thought that the Republicans were truly evil people and the Democrats were the good guys simply because a person who I was told to respect and learn from told me so. As a 2nd or 3rd grader, why would I think my teacher was just steering me towards her belief system? Pushing her views on me wrapped up as fact was an absolutely disgusting act, IMO.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Stanislav_J]

My impression is that s/he just doesn't think that it's well-defined enough to depend on, much less teach to children. To his/her point in an above thread...

Given that the percentage of Slashdot users who have a uterus is small enough to be rounded to zero, I think we can drop the contrived sexless pseudo-pronouns.....

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[moortak]

Some sheet music suppliers bundle the fees in with the cost of the music itself. Perhaps the fees were handled in some similar manner that didn't require keeping tabs on it later.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[icannotthinkofaname]

I'm wondering where you got your info (besides the incorrect summary, of course).

You got it. Now, are you quite finished wondering what other site could possibly have such incorrect information, or am I going to be subjected to this same question every time you respond to me?

Slashdot's the only news site I pay attention to. Of course I'm affected by the ridiculous amounts of bias /. has for and against different things and ideas. And, while I used to read the articles, I've gotten progressively lazier with it.

Actually, no, I do generally RTFA. I just happen not to have in this case, because I was lazy today from not having much sleep last night. I plan to sleep quite well tonight, wake up between 10:00-13:00 tomorrow, and maybe read something more interesting than the summary from this article.

tl;dr version - I'm so horribly misinformed because I hang out here with you guys.

Any other questions?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Draek]

You know, I agree with both you and the GP. The problem is, the GP is stating what should happen, while you're stating what would likely happen were his ideals be put into practical use.

The fact that we only get an insanely biased perspective on World War II and are practically forced to go and read Mein Kampf if we want to understand the other side of the conflict is one of my biggest problems with today's education. It shouldn't be so, but I know that if I ever tried to change it I'd be labeled a neo-nazi and lynched to death.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[MacWiz]

Your biases are often sent to the children even if you are not trying to do so.

While this is true, it is not the case here. The RIAA is making every effort to imprint their biases on the uninformed. They're telling kids that letting their friends listen to music is an offense. That's beyond bias; it's a flat-out lie.

Once again, the depth and breadth of the music industry's stupidity is simply astounding.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[bennomatic]

Clearly, you don't know what's going on here. There's loads of hot single chicks posting on the /.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[shark72]

No other questions. To be fair, Reading TFA was particularly tough this time since there were a number of PDF files with garishly bad color schemes. I probably wouldn't have either, but the statements in the summary sounded so blatantly false I had to see for myself if the RIAA really was saying that. I thought for a while that maybe they were in some of the PDFs I hadn't checked, but I finally figured out that the submitter was simply pulling things out of his butt.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[agnosticnixie]

The first links found are from ABC and Stormfront - I guess that fits in well with your view of reliable sources.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Using one entire episode of a show is obviously not Fair Use

The Supreme Court of the United States found otherwise. They ruled that (a) a device need only have one substantial non-infringing use to be legal, and that (b) timeshifting was such a use.

A Federal court likewise ruled that space shifting of entire songs was Fair Use, referring back to the Supreme Court ruling to make part of their argument.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Atario]

Or the fact the Unions are now more of a political force who pressure (mostly the democrat party) to do things their way).

In what way is this an argument against? Unions are supposed to represent the interest of the workers. Exerting political pressure is a perfectly legitimate way of representing.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[rtb61]

Well, if you going to be so picky about fair use, how about we look at for example "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I would have though that would have been far more important than later legislation that covered fair use. So if a creative work or discovery fails "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than legally speaking it should not have the protection of copyright and at the very least prior to obtaining the protection of copyright, that creative work or discovery should have publicly substantiated that it meets those requirements.

So let's seem some conservative politicians get up and defend the copyright protection of porn whether written, sung, photographed or video recorded, not that I am against porn but I would hardly say that under law that it is entitled to copyright protection (governments can't implement legislation that goes their constitution). So fair copy right in creative works should be much like patents, substantiating their value to society prior to their achieving copyright protection for a limited time.

Now consider this, if I could push a button and produce a perfect of copy say a blank rewritable DVD, complete with case, who would complain. So when I copy that DVD have I stolen it, I legally supplied the copying device, I legally supplied the raw components, I legally supplied the energy to power the device and I legally supplied the original to be copied, so I provided a substantial amount of the work in creating a copy and only the civil infringement of a private post purchase (always questionable) contractual agreement comes it to question, no theft is occurring and calling it stealing would be lying.

How about 90 day warranties on media for copyrighted content for which people have paid a licence fee that should last the life of that contents copyright protection 75 years, now isn't that stealing when the media fails (and, yes books will last 75 years with reasonable use).

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Khyber]

Wait until the common population calls for their heads publicly. They'll be fucked and we'll get richer from it as we take their shit for ourselves.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are an idiot, and from your other diatribes and links, I would guess an American idiot. The link quotes "local government" sources - that is *not* the UK government. The "UK Health Service" does not have a monopoly on anything (hint, Bupa and PPP exist and provide private medical cover to a large part of the UK population who want this). Your right-wing idiocy seems to have rendered you incapable of understanding any of the issues you are spouting on.

I suggest you learn to research things properly, and in particular read and understand the points of an argument you disagree with - it'll make you a better person rather than an unthinking, easily-lead, overly-politicised, biased moron.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that listening to music is copying because the memory of the song is copied into your mind. You can recall and sing the lyrics, hum the tune. Are we all committing thoughtcrime?? If you walk down a city block whistling a tune, are you committing an unauthorized performance?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha... cute. You'll be waiting for a loooong time. But, by all means keep posting empty, dickless rants on the internet, if it makes you feel better about your own station in life. Maybe you can kickstart the revolution by passing out fliers at the junior college ^_^

p.s. ewwww, you're a furry :(

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[vuffi_raa]

"Copying music and movies and sharing them with your friends is illegal under most circumstances in most of the Western World"

actually it isn't, you can sue to recover damages and there are standard penalties under these suits based on DMCA, but so far as actually being "illegal", that is a misconception by most people. It is up to states to write their own rules on it and most states don't see this as a wise use of their resources to pursue action or to write specific laws supporting IP.
Tell me how you are supposed to explain that to a bunch of kids when most adults don't even understand the difference between civil and criminal proceedings.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[mcgrew]

No creative work is so important that it justifies excessive copyright.

I agree, and I believe copyright law is already excessive, especially its time "limits". You're not going to get Tolkien to write any more books, after all.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[mcgrew]

Fourteen years with option for a fourteen year renewal (only by the author) seems reasonable to me. I can't think of a business case for "ending the copyright" prematurely, and in any case murder is still illegal.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[chrisbtoo]

You're right on the first 2 counts, but I think my wife might object to the 3rd.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[morgauxo]

I stand corrected. My knowledge only goes to the reasons history books claim it is was written into the US constitution. If true, this older English version is no doubt where they got the idea.

Why would a school include this "material"?

[Hitman_Frost]

It doesn't fit into the approved subject criteria... Mathematics, English, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and so on...

It's not like they could "bribe" the schools either, surely as the government would have something to say about that...

Or am I simply being naive? ;-)

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[omnichad]

Teaching about law in general, while not exactly a classical subject, is good and right. It's a part of history, as well. If we're all expected to be good citizens and obey the law, then we have to learn it somewhere. Corporate sponsorship of teaching materials in this way is outright ridiculous, though.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[CannonballHead]

How does music, art, baseball, football, special ed, sex ed*, etc., fit in?

This coming from a musician, btw...

* not referring to anatomy/biology here.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[Lonewolf666]

Music and art:
I don't know about the US, but in Germany there are separate classes for these. At least in secondary school, can't remember primary ;-)

Baseball and football:
Phys ed. I think the US has that too.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[sbeckstead]

You forget "Civics" which this falls under.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[orgelspieler]

It's called "social studies" where I come from.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phys. ed. has been almost entirely abolished from the US public school system to make more time for test preparation

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[CannonballHead]

I know the classes exist. My question was how it fit into the "core" subjects. IMO, we spend too much money on music, art, sports, etc., in public schools. I was homeschooled and those things were not part of my school curriculum. They were things that I was allowed to do after I finished my school work. Well, I was "made" to practice piano/instruments, as I showed some talent but, as a typical kid, didn't particularly like practicing. Video games, reading for fun, and sports were extracurricular non-school activities. "School" was math, language, and science pretty much. I did have physical education in high school (even homeschooled) for one year.

Seems like in most public schools, math-language-science type courses are not really the priority. "Self expression" has taken precedent over "learning." Which makes sense, I suppose, since the current popular world view appears to be that it doesn't really matter what other people think, it just matters what you like doing... follow your dreams (even if your dreams are stupid) :)

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[jedidiah]

The represent useful aspects of a well rounded individual. They represent
things that are useful for a person to know. They represent things that
enhance the cognitive function of a person.

Education should be more than just assembly lines and skirmishing lines.

Re:Why would a school include this "material"?

[anyGould]

I can think of two different counter-arguments for this:

One: your average kid doesn't really care about the "core subjects". But most of them like one or more of the "options" - you get your kids to like school by giving them *some* part of it they enjoy. (Remember the old saw - "my favorite subject is recess").

Two: I don't know about the rest of you, but my music, video, computers, and business education classes have been more useful to me in my life and career than my physics or calculus. (And I work in a "number crunching" job!). Giving kids a little of everything lets us both find what each student *really* wants to do, plus hedges our collective bets - when I was in school, everyone was pushed into computing classes. Now, office workers are a dime a dozen, but the few classmates who stuck with trades are doing quite nicely for themselves. We don't know what our kids will need five or ten years down the road - better to make them well rounded.

Don't raise their statistics!

[Dalzhim]

Don't provide them with another unique hit!

Don't worry...

[celibate for life]

... the internet will teach them what they really need: how to find warez.

Re:Don't worry...

[troll8901]

It's spelt "gamez".

How about rewards?

[garyisabusyguy]

Surely the riaa can take a lesson from the war on drugs and get the children to turn in their parents and friends for dmca violations!

I mean c'mon wouldn't it be worth it to any kid to receive a free cd (with rootkit) for sending their parents, friends, neighbors and relatives to the slammer?

Re:How about rewards?

[tfmachad]

When I read the article the first thing that came to mind was indeed kids ratting on their parents for their mp3 collection. Very Orwellian of you to mention it.

Re:How about rewards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very Stasi of you to mention it.

There, fixed that for you...

Re:How about rewards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Report your drug using friends and get free drugs!

Re:How about rewards?

[westlake]

Surely the riaa can take a lesson from the war on drugs and get the children to turn in their parents and friends for dmca violations!

When a kid reports a drug violation in his family it is most likely because he sees someone in danger.

Metro kids can be 1st to report threats via text

It is an extension of the national Speak Up campaign begun in other cities in 2002. It will also be initiated in New York City this fall.

Texters and callers will be able to notify trained counselors about guns in school and other threats of violence, "without being tagged as a snitch," said Julie Young-Burns, Safe and Drug-Free Schools coordinator for the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Students also may use the tip line to report threats of suicide, domestic violence and substance abuse.

This is the real world of drug abuse:

Inside the Levi King Courtroom: Day 9, Police make arrest in shooting that narrowly missed two small children.

I don't have sympathy to spare for the geek who expects his kid to be a silent accomplice.

You want your free movie fix?

The warez game that retails for $60?

Fine. But don't put the heat on your kids. Don't expect them to take the fall for you.

If anyone rats you out, it's your tough luck, Charlie.

Re:How about rewards?

[mcgrew]

Didn't both the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in the USSR do this, too?

Re:How about rewards?

[ArhcAngel]

*PHEW*

for a minute there I thought we would never get that NAZI reference in there.

Re:How about rewards?

[jedidiah]

Betraying your own family? Does one get any more hostile to "family values" than that?

Re:How about rewards?

[anyGould]

Texters and callers will be able to notify trained counselors about guns in school and other threats of violence, "without being tagged as a snitch," said Julie Young-Burns, Safe and Drug-Free Schools coordinator for the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Hmm.. don't see the "not being tagged as a snitch" part working. Nothing travels faster than gossip.

It should be okay for the kids

[croftj]

As long as the President didn't come up with it!

Re:It should be okay for the kids

[schon]

Exactly - this is just the Invisible Market Fairy at work!

Re:It should be okay for the kids

[coolsnowmen]

Funny + Insightful + Flaimbait-- and more importantly, Exactly what I was thinking.

Why is there a huge ?conservative? reaction to the president trying to motivate kids, but I only hear /. complaining about RIAA poking their biased noses into kids education. I'm probably just young and naive.

Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

What's next:

Kids, turn your parents in for infringement and get this new song!

Really?

[ZekoMal]

So, instead of funding some better early introductions to sex-ed, better science classes, better...everything, we're expecting public schools to waste time telling kids not to burn disks?

I mean, I'll play devil's advocate for a just a second: It didn't stop them from smoking, so why the hell do you think it'll stop them from doing a far easier to do "crime"?!

Re:Really?

[Attack DAWWG]

sex-ed

The Devil's work!

science classes

The Devil's work!

not to burn disks

Patriotic! Don't you understand?

Re:Really?

[Ceseuron]

Exactly. How is this "curriculum" relevant to producing functional citizens in our society in our schools? It doesn't teach them anything they can use in the real world. Is the RIAA expecting employers and higher education institutions to base acceptance on whether or not they received a passing grade in this?

Re:Really?

[sbeckstead]

Because most of the illegal copying happened in the first place because no one was educated to the fact that it could be illegal. Since ignorance of the law is no excuse we should at least give them the tools to know when to hide what they are doing.

Re:Really?

[Jason Levine]

Better science class? I don't think evolution should be associated with school.

Of course, that'd be funnier if a parent (and teacher!) hadn't already said that about a band shirt featuring an "evolution" theme.

http://www.sedaliademocrat.com/news/0px-18740-span-font.html

Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt's decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"I was disappointed with the image on the shirt." Melby said. "I don't think evolution should be associated with our school."

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, I'll play devil's advocate for a just a second: It didn't stop them from smoking, so why the hell do you think it'll stop them from doing a far easier to do "crime"?!

The opposite if anything. When you were playing games as a kid, who would you have chosen to be: a pirate or a sailor fighting against pirates? Watch what terms you use, RIAA. You are encouraging millions of little Jack Sparrows.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll find that 'illegal' copying happened in the first place because it wasn't illegal...yet.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we tell sellers to ask their ID while selling CDR/DVDR ? Or CDR/DVDR drive ?

Re:Really?

[sbeckstead]

No it was illegal; the laws haven't changed but the enforcement level and awareness has changed.

Re:Really?

[Bent Mind]

we're expecting public schools to waste time telling kids not to burn disks?

Well, they will have to find time around telling kids their parents are bad people if their parents ever touch alcohol.

Have you ever seen the load of propaganda sent home with kids? It makes you wonder how they find time to take roll-call.

Re:Really?

[jedidiah]

NO. The LAWS HAVE CHANGED.

The laws have been in a constant state of flux for 30 years. They are continually changed to further bias media moguls.

This is about more than just Napster.

Re:Really?

[sbeckstead]

Um you need to give me citations on that, the laws themselves haven't changed in the last 10 years. At least not since the download era started. Even the modem people were aware that what they were doing was illegal to some extent. So no they haven't really.

Re:REALLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually because you are an American, we charge you a 2-seat license per person. It's the same logic when airplanes charge heavy people for 2 seats.

Love,

The RIAA

Re:Really?

[Atario]

RIAA shill: Kids! Copying music is bad! P2P is bad! File sharing is bad!
Kids: [Keys click as they Google for "copy music", "p2p", and "file sharing"] Hm, I didn't know you could do those things...neat! Thanks, Mr. RIAA man!
RIAA shill; [Large sweat drop appears on head]

How about some Civics?

[lcfactor]

It's sad to me we're seeing this kind of curriculum foisted upon the classroom by dying industry when most public schools are pulling back Civics programs, and overall education about the law and democratic process. It's a sorry state indeed. Here's to the work of Sanda Day O'Connor though - who's at least trying to do something about it. (If you don't know who that is, you might need some remedial schooling yourself)

Re:How about some Civics?

[petrus4]

It's sad to me we're seeing this kind of curriculum foisted upon the classroom by dying industry when most public schools are pulling back Civics programs, and overall education about the law and democratic process.

The kids most likely wouldn't want to learn Civics themselves anywayz.

That is a big part of the problem. We can't simply blame corporations for raising generations of increasingly brainless, servile consumers. There is a fundamental human craving to be as brainless and servile as possible.

The one thing human beings will literally kill to avoid, more than anything else, is having to think.

Re:How about some Civics?

[Tony Hoyle]

I'm not sure that's true. For some segment of society, maybe.. but for others less so.

One of my earliest memories is of when a teacher was trying to tell me the alphabet and me demanding to know *why* B follows A and C follows B. I got 2 weeks of detention for that.. learned early that you don't ask questions in school, you just give them the correct answer and move on (one of my other lessons was - if you discover that the times tables can be done by adding numbers together, on no account let your teacher know. Another two weeks of detention for working something out rather than rote learning it).

I still react when someone states something without backing it up with evidence. I *want* to think for myself.

Re:How about some Civics?

[petrus4]

I'm not sure that's true. For some segment of society, maybe.. but for others less so.

That segment would be the majority.

I applaud your own intellectual proactivity, but realise that in being that way, you are not mainstream normal; and neither am I, for that matter.

Re:How about some Civics?

[DrgnDancer]

one of my other lessons was - if you discover that the times tables can be done by adding numbers together, on no account let your teacher know. Another two weeks of detention for working something out rather than rote learning it

Wow. We were told that multiplication was a function of addition when we learned the tables, I'm fairly shocked not only that you weren't, but that you got in trouble when you figured it out. The correct way, IMO, was the way my elementary school teacher explained it: "Multiplication is simply addition of the same number to itself "multiple" times, and you *can* figure out 3x4 by simply adding three together 4 times. This can be really cumbersome with larger numbers though, so we memorize the multiplication table to make things easier. It may seem hard to memorize all of this, but it's easier than having to add "8" to itself nine times every time you want to know what "8x9" comes out to." Of course that's not a quote, and I'm sure she used simpler words, but that's the gist. Give the theory, then explain the practical way to do it if the practice varies from the theory: Education 101.

Re:How about some Civics?

[anegg]

This doesn't address your primary thesis of learning not to ask questions in school, but you may be surprised to learn that my children are being taught specifically that multiplying numbers can be done by adding.

I am *amazed* that you got detention in 1st grade asking about the alphabet, however... wouldn't your parents have had something to say about that?

Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[haplo21112]

When my kid reaches school age can I make sure she doesn't get exposure to this blatant pack of lies. Will there be a letter sent home so I can OPT her out of gettig this "education".

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you specifically cite which parts of the program are "lies?"

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[CannonballHead]

Of sex ed or copyright ed?

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[Homr Zodyssey]

As a parent of a school-aged kid I can tell you that this is not how it works. They don't send home a letter telling you they're teaching polynomials, evolution or T.S. Elliot.

However, they are VERY sensitive to potential lawsuits. Angry parents standing in the school office tend to get their way, regardless of the logic of their arguments. Stay involved. Ask your kids' teachers about the subjects they will be taught. Go to PTA meetings.

The parents who sit around waiting for letters to be sent home to them are the parents who have no say in how the school is run.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[JohnRoss1968]

When you think about it, isn't it basically the same thing. Copyright Education-- Kids Dont Copy Music Its Bad. Sex Ed--- Kids Dont Copy ...yourselves Its Bad

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[commodore64_love]

>>>When my kid reaches school age can I make sure she doesn't get exposure to this blatant pack of lies.

Well if you elect me as your State Governor, you can "opt out" of the public school and send your kid to a private school instead, which teaches your values. And if you provide a receipt for said school, you'll be exempt from Government School Taxes for that year (since you shouldn't have to pay for something your kid is not using).

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[otterpopjunkie]

Looking at some of the teacher materials they present on the site,
it makes me want to throw up.

What a disgusting waste of resources trying to teach grade school students what a DMCA Notice is. Kids don't need that crap in their head they've got learning to do.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[Dragonslicer]

Of sex ed or copyright ed?

Around here, the biggest lie about sex education is that you might someday have sex.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[DrgnDancer]

Really? Seriously? So everybody who doesn't have kids can opt of school taxes too, right? Since we shouldn't have to pay for what we're not using? Also, can I opt out of police taxes? I don't really like laws, and I don't want to pay for their enforcement. Oh, if I promise not to drive can I opt out of road taxes?

This post is infinitely LOL'able. First you can already "opt out" of public schools. Private schools are a thriving industry in the US, and every state makes at least some provision for home schooling as well (though some are less generous than others). Of course you have to pay for the private schools, but this is always the case when you choose to use something other than what is provided for you.

If you were advocating vouchers to defray the cost of private school, I could at least see where you are coming from, but exemption from certain taxes? How do you know what taxes pay for schools? How do you enforce this? In most districts schools are paid for from a combination of property levees and the general fund (which comes from a combination of things: Sales taxes, fines and fees for minor crimes and government services, other property taxes, state funding, all kinds of things). Many people who send kids to school rent and only pay property taxes indirectly, how do you help them? What about general fund taxes? Can you tell stores to charge 1/2 a point in sales tax less for people who can prove their kids are in private school? Knock $10 off speeding tickets for people who can prove it? What about people without kids at all? Do they get the same treatment? Are you going to raise the taxes on people who choose to use public schools? You'll have to when all this funding dries up. Again how do you handle renters? Keep track of who has kids in Public schools and charge their land lords more property taxes? That'll fly I'm sure.

This is the way public services work. We all pay some money in and everything the government does with it doesn't necessarily benefit everyone. My taxes go to pay for the road improvements in north Huntsville. I don't go to north Huntsville, but I don't get exempt from the taxes. Next year those same monies might be used to improve a road I do use that some other tax payer never does. I pay for a police department I've never had to call... doesn't mean I'd like to get rid of them, just I haven't personally needed them. Education of children is a service that may not benefit everyone directly (I don't have kids), but every time I go to McDonald's and the kid behind the counter knows how to make change for a ten, I can thank a school somewhere.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[mcgrew]

Stay involved. Ask your kids' teachers about the subjects they will be taught. Go to PTA meetings.

I did all that when my kids were in school, and none of it helped the tiniest little bit. The only parental involvent the school system wants is when they're fund raising.

If I had to do it again I'd sell dope so I could afford to send my kids to private school.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[angelbunny]

Using the word 'piracy' when not talking about piracy is beyond misleading...

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[angelbunny]

Personally, I'm more interested in removing propaganda from the school system and not just for my child (if I had one) but for the community as a whole instead.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[CodeBuster]

When my kid reaches school age can I make sure she doesn't get exposure to this blatant pack of lies.

Yes there is. Send them to a private school of your choice or else educate them yourself. He who pays the piper calls the tune after all and if you really want to advance your children with a superior education then you must be willing to spend your own time and money, above and beyond the taxes which pay for the worthless public schools, to make it happen; there really isn't any other way.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[DrgnDancer]

You are essentially completely missing the point of public services. Let's take an example of three couples. Each of these couples has two children. The first couple is rich. They make (for the sake of really easy numbers) $1,000,000 a year. The second couple is well off. They make $100,000 a year. The final couple is poor. They make $10,000 a year (OK, that's unlikely, but I'm trying to keep the numbers easy). They all live in your new Utopia.

The first couple has lots of money, they can afford the best of everything: They have multiple private security officers working for them, send their children to the best schools, and have two licensed vehicles that they've paid for the right to drive on the road. They don't pay police, school, or other service taxes. Other than the roads, they contribute nothing to the public coffer.

The second couple has enough money, but not enough for the good private services. They are protected by the public police and their children are educated by the public schools because they can afford the police and school taxes, and they can manage to keep one car on the road so they carpool everywhere. They have some problems though: by definition, being cheaper and with no one to true "general fund" to absorb the overhead, the public services aren't as good as the private ones. After all it simple math, if the school tax is 10K per student, and the privates schools charge 20K by definition the private schools have twice as much to spend per student. Same with the police. With only one car, they can't always get ends to meet just right, if someone has to go home sick, both of them do. Life is OK, but it isn't great. They pay a flat 10K each for school tax (per kid), police tax, and the car. Other ancillary government service fees add up to another 20 K a year. This leaves them with 40 K of money to actually live on and the government takes 60k from them. 60% taxes wasn't supposed to be a part of the utopia, but since the rich people don't pay ANYTHING into the school fund or police fund or the rest (except the road fund, not even they can afford to put private roads everywhere), it has to come from somewhere. Thankfully they only need to pay for what they use (which is pretty much everything, because the private version cost even more).

The third couple is essentially screwed. Paying the school tax, or the police tax or any thing else would break them. Their kids don't go to school, and the police don't patrol their neighborhood. Their neighborhood of course becomes a breeding ground for crime, because there is no education and no police presence. Illiteracy rates are phenomenal, if you're lucky your parents can teach you to read, but after a few generation the likely hood that your parents even know how is pretty small. No government service paid for means no real health department or trash pickup. In addition to becoming a breeding ground for illiterate criminals, the neighborhood is a health hazard to the rest of the city.

In total, in this scenario the government has collect 80K from our three couples. 60 from the middle class couple (more than half their income) and 20 from the wealthy couple (a negligible amount). If you want to poor couple to get any services at all (and we pretty much have to if we want to avoid total societal collapse), the money is going to have to come from somewhere. Since the rich couple doesn't get charged for services they don't use, it'll have to be a surcharge on the middle class couples taxes. So either no services at all for the poor, or the middle class couple is losing even more of its income. Since there is no way the middle class couple can carry themselves AND the poor couple at the same rate of service as they could carry just themselves, the services suffer even more compared to the private services. Let's say there's a 10% "carry the poor people" fee on any tax you already have to pay. Now the rich couple contributes 22K over all, and the middle class couple contributes 66K. We'll even say that t

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[SilverEyes]

Here is a rant.

Ok, this is society. Welcome, I hope you like it. You see, we have this thing called other people. Other humans. And well, not all the other people are alike. Taken together, because - who wants to be a hermit in the woods? - these other humans make up this society.

So there is society. This society is "we". We've agreed there are some things we should probably not do, like kill each other. We made up a list of things that we've tended to agree are good ideas. So far, it's not the best, but it's pretty good. Some people disagree, and we try to address that. Then there are very few people who think everyone else should die and they should be in charge and they also deserve a new computer.

However, as a group, we've done pretty well by aiding our individual interests, and the interests of group balanced against individuals. So we don't listen to the people who don't want to destroy the group. The group isn't perfect, and it can change, but we have it because we were agreeing on some things and doing better than we were as individuals.

These other people. We treat them with respect because they can have great ideas, everyone does, sometimes. But not all the time. Sometimes other people are right. Sometimes we give in a little bit of our personal gp to buy the cleric a wand of healing, it could help. We're all different, and we all have different ideas. But we need to agree that by having an entirely opt-out group, no one might be part of the band. And that wouldn't be as cool as having a party.

So we'll be a party. In this group some make more, some make less, some are doctors, and some are farmers. Some are fighters, some rogues (not rouges), and the most awesome of all are druids. We decided we want both doctors and farmers, we need healing and dps, we need control, and because there are a lot of us, we can't just exchange services at the tribal council. So we have money. Money and taxes. And lots of other cool things too. Like cookies. Cookies are really good. And also Zoidberg was there.

Anyway, this taxation exists to provide services for all, and to help redistribute wealth. Not everyone agrees all the time, in fact, people generally do not agree. But by agreeing not to be entirely self-serving nihilists, we've seem to have some kind of compromise. And it has worked out pretty well so far. We've defeated some monsters, had some laughs, and gained some levels. Are we realms-shaking gods yet?

No, not yet.

(Tag rant in humour/sarcastic colour, I realize you didn't say that everyone should die).

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[SilverEyes]

Now, reality is a lot more complicated than this, but in general, this is how society works.

You're here too!? Awesome! This society gets better and better.

Welcome, welcome. Perhaps I am being welcomed. Good post with numbers. I am surprised you didn't go into how inpractical and non-causal only funding emergency services "when you need it" is. That's like saying you should be able to have insurance only for when you need it.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[nurb432]

Good luck with that. While its a great idea, you will find that this sort of 'indoctrination' is so pervasive its hard to completely isolate your children, if they associate with the rest of the world at all.

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, you can be reasonably assured SOMEBODY'S gonna get screwed!

Re:Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[agnosticnixie]

I suggest we implement the hardline libertarian program and see how long it takes for them to be lined up on the wall for shit and giggles - oh right, if Somalia's any indication, a couple of years :p

Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

There is no fair use involved in making unauthorized copies of a work. I don't care what you call it. If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

Fair use copies are allowed for parody, artistically arranging, education and research purposes. They should expand the vocabulary to: Paris Convention, Berne Convention, Michael Geist, and, of course, MAFIAA.

I don't think you'll find much agreement on /. People often believe pretty much anything that isn't nailed down should be free because they don't want to pay for them. Copyright is a compromise to allow creative people to be compensated, but not to stifle the production of creativity from leaning too far either way.

Re:Fair use?

[Dalzhim]

Then you sir, aren't allowed to quote me if you reply to me on this thread. Otherwise I'll sue you.

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

Then you sir, aren't allowed to quote me if you reply to me on this thread. Otherwise I'll sue you.

-Dalzhim

Go ahead and try it (just please not in Texas) =P

While you have copyright of your text, I am not causing monetary damages (which are the only damages you can sue for). There is existing precedent where Internet correspondence is not private information (sometimes, even e-mail). I believe this is considered a public forum, and I have attributed your remarks. At worst, you could have my remarks removed from the forum.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no fair use involved in making unauthorized copies of a work. I don't care what you call it. If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.

So are you saying that one copy is ok?
Or are you saying that you shouldn't even be allowed to make a digital copy of your cd to play on your mp3 player?
Fair use does and should exist, the only trouble is that on the internet one copy becomes thousands in hours.

Locking away Intellectual property for 100 years is not fair either though.

Re:Fair use?

[petrus4]

This is the other problem.

Organisations like the RIAA have unfathomably stupid people like yourself to act as their cheerleaders; people who apparently don't understand that, by supporting corporate avarice, tyranny, greed, and amorality, you're actually advocating screwing yourself over just as much as anyone else.

The RIAA and its' ideas do not need to be defended; they need to be unsparingly, uncompromisingly, and completely annihilated. You are on the wrong side of this argument.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

Quoting you would be fair use because of the nature of the use and the nature of the work.

Re:Fair use?

[JohnRoss1968]

Then you sir, aren't allowed to quote me if you reply to me on this thread. Otherwise I'll sue you.

Could you sue me in Paris...I have not been there yet. Oh yeah they'll need to pay to extradite me extradite (sorry i'm broke)

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although technically correct, your post has about as much to do with our complaints as the price of tea in China. Fair use is a necessary part of the copyright system, and if you look in the US Constitution it is considered a compromise between the People and the creative arts producers. After all, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, but copyright was the only abridgment of that right that our founders considered worthy of consideration. When it came time to implement copyright, fair use was required in the eyes of Congress, the Courts, and the People to keep the system equitable.

I am not going to hide behind fair use to excuse piracy; it is an actionable civil offense (NOT criminal in the sense that shoplifting is) and copyright holders have a right to pursue legitimate cases of copyright infringement. I don't comment on whether I have done that in the past because it is immaterial to my point. However, the RIAA claims that format shifting is not fair use. They want you to buy the CD and separate MP3s of the same song for your iPod and computer hard drive; basically paying for the same thing twice or more. In fact, fair use claims that you CAN make an archival copy for your own use (not to copy and give to your friends) and to shift the work to any medium of your choice (from CD to MP3/Ogg/FLAC/whatever). I don't know if the RIAA will express their opinion on archival copies or format shifting in their "curriculum" but the bias is still there.

Just because some copyright infringers hide behind a twisted definition of fair use doesn't mean that the concept doesn't exist. If it didn't exist, then the whole copyright system would be unconstitutional. As an example, it would mean that movie producers could slap Gene Shallit with a copyright infringement suit because he showed a small clip of the movie in a negative review (actually a modern-day equivalent to the scenario that forced fair use into the law). Then it would either have to be nullified or you'd see piracy applauded by the People as a method of civil disobedience.

Re:Fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

There is no fair use involved in making unauthorized copies of a work.

Well, everyone seems to disagree with you. First, fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. Since all copyright infringement is necessarily unauthorized, all fair uses must also be unauthorized uses. If it were authorized, there'd be no infringement and no need for a defense to infringement.

Second, some types of activity which have been known to be fair uses involve making copies of works, such as time shifting and space shifting. Other types of activity which have been known to be fair uses involve copying portions of works, which is the same type of infringement, such as quoting from a work.

You may want to learn more about fair use before making incorrect statements about it in the future.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've just contradicted yourself.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

Cherry picking. Go back and read the whole post and try again.

Re:Fair use?

[RIAAShill]

Organisations like the RIAA have unfathomably stupid people like yourself to act as their cheerleaders . . . The RIAA and its' ideas do not need to be defended; they need to be unsparingly, uncompromisingly, and completely annihilated. You are on the wrong side of this argument.

Why is there such a pervasive belief (or use of rhetoric that claims) that people who hold different positions or have different beliefs are necessarily stupid or inferior? Can't intelligent, reasonable people reach different conclusions of the world, even given the same evidence?

Aristotle had beliefs about the world that we know were flawed. Newton's beliefs were incomplete (and he was a bad investor to boot). Yet, I would not dream of calling either men stupid.

After several hundreds of years have passed, perhaps the level of copyright will have looked like a failed legal experiment (along with The Ordeals). Or, maybe copyright holders will have more control over their works, making their current level of control appear as weak in comparison (like looking back today at how women could not really own property in the past).

Discussion and debate about rights and responsibilities is healthy and an important part of the development of law. But perhaps we should show some civility to each other by recognizing that great minds do not think alike. Intelligent, reasonable people can view the world in different ways.

I do not think it necessary to say preface everything with "someday I may be proven wrong . . . " I just suggest avoiding ad hominem attacks except in the most rare cases where no intelligent, reasonable person can hold certain, highly-harmful beliefs.

Re:Fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

No, no. You made a very sweeping statement. I have pointed out specific examples which contradict you. Therefore, your sweeping statement is wrong. There's nothing bad about cherry picking examples that demonstrate that you were incorrect; frankly it's absurd to imagine otherwise.

I invite you to make a more accurate statement about fair use, though it will likely contain lots of conditional elements, nuance, etc. which might not be up your alley.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

Copyright is in the body of the Constitution in Article 2, section 8. The First Amendment was tacked on to the Constitution later. Copyright was not added to the Constitution as "an abridgment" to the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment and claiming so is disingenuous. At best, copyright could be said to limit the freedom of the press, but at the same time it strengthens the same freedom by allowing the press to make a living as the press.

Fair use existed only as common law in the U.S.until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, which would be about 200 years AFTER "it came time to implement copyright".

I suggest you actually read a history book some time.

However, the RIAA claims that format shifting is not fair use.

And, that is a question for the courts. They claim it isn't, others claim it is. It is up to the courts to interpret the law and decide the matter. The fact that you do not wish to go to court to decide the matter is irrelevant. Your two choices are "prove it in a court of law" and "change the law". If you can't do either, then you are just whining.

Resorting to straw man arguments will get you no where.

Re:Fair use?

[Hatta]

A person cannot educate themselves or do research?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are we talking about fair use or personal use? Don't try to weasel your way through the argument by moving the goalposts.

Re:Fair use?

[Dalzhim]

If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.

In this case, I have posted a comment. You have quoted it, and it resulted in n > 1 copies being made in every browser's cache in the hands of m > 1 people, and all of this without my permission. Either your description of an unauthorized copy is wrong, or your fair use defense is wrong. One has to be.

Re:Fair use?

[Hatta]

To be fair, he did say:

in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1

Which would exclude time shifting, space shifting, backups, etc.

Re:Fair use?

[Hatta]

You are largely correct. Almost every case under these conditions would not be fair use. Here's one I think that qualifies however.

You should be careful about making blanket statements like "There is no fair use involved in making unauthorized copies of a work" and then following with all sorts of conditions. You contradict yourself in your own post that way. It might be more consistent to say "there is no fair use involved in distributing unauthorized copies of a work".

Re:Fair use?

[petrus4]

Your entire post is one fallacy after another. You apparently have no concept of how to argue. And, judging from the style of the post, I bet you are under the age of 23.

As far as calling you stupid is concerned; while I admit that I shouldn't have done that, what I have trouble understanding is how people don't realise that piracy actually benefits everyone (including yourself) a lot more than caring about copyright does.

If you don't believe me, try using an application like eMule sometime. Gather up a few hundred gigabytes of mp3s and text files on various subjects, and then use that material to exchange with other people who have items that you consider to be of interest.

In that scenario, it benefits you, (you get files you consider relevant) and other people on the network. (They get files which they consider relevant, from you)

The only people it concievably doesn't benefit, is either perhaps the artists themselves, or organisations like the RIAA, who only really exist to make money from other people's work anyway.

Nine times out of ten, even with piracy, an even moderately successful musical artist is going to make at least some money from their music. They might not make billions, perhaps, but they don't completely lose, either.

So ultimately, nobody other than perhaps the labels themselves are harmed; and the general public using p2p, benefit in a mutually supporting manner.

The RIAA, I can assure you, don't really give a damn about artist welfare. They claim they do, purely because they know that making such a claim might make the public more sympathetic towards them; but it's pure lip service. They are there purely in order to secure their own profits.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that changing your mind is not going to happen, and judging by the rest of the thread your concept of copyright law is not in tune with mine, or reality's for that matter. So, I'll keep this brief and be on my way.

The First Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights) was ratified simultaneously with the Constitution, including Article 2 Section 8. In fact, many states refused to ratify it without the Bill of Rights. As far as the law is concerned, they are of the same document, not "tacked on later".

Further, when Congress started to put into effect the common law statutes were first introduced, their first test of legitimacy was the example I set forth before: a critic being sued by quoting an excerpt of the subject. Common law or not, fair use is what allowed copyright as we know it to exist.

Although I thank you for the history lesson (most of which I already knew), that is not the point of the argument; it is simply back-story on fair use. And the beauty of that is the burden of proof is not on me. The way it works is that the plaintiff has to have a cause of action against me and prove on the preponderance of evidence that I infringed on their copyright and did not fall under the fair use doctrines. As it happens, some courts have already ruled that format shifting is, in fact, fair use. Proof of fair use in my hypothetical is already done despite it not being the point of my argument. What will you shift the focus to next?

Resorting to pushing back the goalpost will get you nowhere. And attempting to argue with someone who does that will get me nowhere. So I bid you good day.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently you are too stupid to win, so you will not bother with him anymore.

Re:Fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

Which would exclude time shifting, space shifting, backups, etc.

Computer software backups, where you own the copy of the software you're backing up (n.b. owning a copy is different from owning a copyright), is covered elsewhere and thus is not fair use simply because there is no need for it to be. It probably would be if the specific exception were removed, though. But courts are lazy and will always take the easier solution, whereas fair use is a defense of last resort.

The number of people making use of copies made pursuant to fair use may be indirectly relevant. For example in the well-known Texaco case, a private library was copying copying journal articles for multiple patrons to avoid having to buy multiple subscriptions, and that was not a fair use.

But on the other hand, when you quote from a work, this is copying and is prima facie infringing (since there's no requirement that you copy an entire work for it to infringe). Usually quotations are fair uses (though not always) and they often appear in multiple copies that are not just passed out to multiple people, but are sold to them.

And of course, I think there's an easy hypothetical for time shifting. My mother is very disinterested in gadgets; rather than learn to use the remote control for her TV, she just tells someone else to turn it on or change the channel for her. Suppose that there was a TV show that she wanted to watch, but the only way that she could watch it would be if it were recorded from the broadcast. Suppose further that I too wanted to watch it, and also would have to record it in order to do so. If I were to use a VCR to make a new copy of the show, and I took that copy to my parents' house so that my mother and I could watch it together*, then this would seem to satisfy the earlier poster's broad requirements (an additional copy has been made, it is 'in the hands of' multiple people) but would pretty likely be a fair use. Or if you prefer, assume that I watched the tape, then sent it to my mother for her to watch, or that I made two copies, one for each of us to watch; I don't think it changes anything.

*I am aware that while making a new copy of the show by recording it to tape is prima facie infringement, a private performance of that copy is not infringing at all. But the earlier poster didn't seem to care how the additional copies were used, just that they were widespread.

Re:Fair use?

[angelbunny]

rofl! Someone needs to comment this guy up.

And don't forget that unless everyone pays for a copy reading out loud or playing music out loud is sue worthy as well.

Re:Fair use?

[Donkey_Hotey]

If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.

In this case, I have posted a comment. You have quoted it, and it resulted in n > 1 copies being made in every browser's cache in the hands of m > 1 people, and all of this without my permission. Either your description of an unauthorized copy is wrong, or your fair use defense is wrong. One has to be.

Therefore, according to previous RIAA arguments, the courts' decisions and the Justice Department's tacit approval, the "potential" number of copies made via browser caches could number in the millions. The plaintiff should receive 63 Eleventy-Milloin dollars, not for any "actual" damages, but for the deterrent factor,

Re:Fair use?

[Ant P.]

And if you rape, pillage or murder (or all three), you're subject to less punishment than if the m in your example was 20. In america, that is. There is no fair use defense because there is nothing there worth defending.

Re:Fair use?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The only people it concievably doesn't benefit, is either perhaps the artists themselves, or organisations like the RIAA, who only really exist to make money from other people's work anyway.

Well, since the artists are getting screwed anyway, I don't see a problem here. Like the artist? go to a show.

Nine times out of ten, even with piracy, an even moderately successful musical artist is going to make at least some money from their music. They might not make billions, perhaps, but they don't completely lose, either.

That's not the way to think about it - you don't get a say in what's a fair amount of money. The artist gets to figure out how to monetize their skill, and for most, it's usually live shows - Jimmy Hendrix was pulling in $30k/show in 1969. Larry the f'ing cable guy gets something like $300k/show. A lot better than album sales and easier to audit too.

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.

In this case, I have posted a comment. You have quoted it, and it resulted in n > 1 copies being made in every browser's cache in the hands of m > 1 people, and all of this without my permission. Either your description of an unauthorized copy is wrong, or your fair use defense is wrong. One has to be.

No. His description of fair use defense is correct. Given the purpose of quoting you, and the nature of the copyrighted work, there really can't be any damages. There is precedent for this which I have stated, I don't really want to go find it, but I will if you insist. There is no effect on the market for your work. Further, we have also not infringed on the moral right you have over the work, and this right is not always protected in some countries.

Brad Templeton has an excellent simple explanation of copyright.

Copyright Myths

Re:Fair use?

[Dalzhim]

Read again. His first post says that once there are n > 1 copies in the hands of m > 1 people, all of this without permission, then there is no fair use defense. So once again, either that statement was wrong, or the fair use defense he has claimed is wrong.

Re:Fair use?

[WNight]

Oh yeah, because you certainly gave a thoughtful discourse on why n>1 copies are bad... You just stated your own opinion as if it were fact, when in fact it's not only just opinion, but just the opinion the RIAA pays to shove down kids throats. Are you especially gullible, or a product of these first training classes?

As if the law usually, let alone always, was right.

Such a simplistic argument is guaranteed to be wrong, and by making it, you're wrong.

The rest of us can look at copyright, etc, as a treaty for the benefit of some and detriment of others.

It's pretty easy to say that copyright today is unhelpful in many ways. It's obviously the one-sided result of intense lobbying, and now moralistic propaganda. The pro-copyright side (ie, you) never gives reasons why copying is bad other than that it's against the law.

Certainly copying of LotR doesn't hurt the creator in any way and "helps" many people by giving them something to read.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

Oh yeah, because you certainly gave a thoughtful discourse on why n>1 copies are bad

If you start with 1 copy of a copyrighted work and you don't own the copyright or have permission to make copies and you end with more than one copy, you have made copies that are unauthorized. By law, you do not have that right.

That simple fact makes the rest of your post irrelevant.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

Wrong again. Quoting your "work" to criticize it is a legitimate fair use. Your "work" is so small that the only way to quote it effectively is to quote it in toto. To do otherwise would be to misrepresent your "work" and miss-characterize both the criticism and your "work". Because you have already given away for free your "work", there is no effect on the possible market for it.

You lose all around.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

That may very well be an unfounded claim of copyright. The proceedings were the result of the government and public money. The question is "Can a work created by the government with the fund of the people, by the people, for the people fall under copyright law or is it in fact in the public domain?" Once again, this is something that either needs to be spelled out in the law, or decided by the courts.

Re:Fair use?

[DaveV1.0]

That entire post of yours is nothing but an appeal to popularity and ridicule.

Violating other people's copy rights does not benefit the people who legally hold those rights.

The RIAA is made up of the record labels and other copyright holders. The labels buy the copyrights from the artists. They don't have to care about the artist's welfare. It is not their job. Caring about the artist's welfare is the job of the artist, the artist's agent, and the artist's lawyer.

Your argument boils down to "I want it and don't want to pay for it so it is OK for me to take it."

You need to grow up, child, and realize that the world does not revolve around you and your wants. You do not have the right to violate other peoples rights, be they copy rights or any other rights simply because you want something and can not afford to pay the asking price.

Re:Fair use?

[jedidiah]

> I don't think you'll find much agreement on /. People often believe pretty much anything that
> isn't nailed down should be free because they don't want to pay for them.

Total slander.

The simple fact is: technology is difficult to use if copying is not easy. Computers are ALL ABOUT copying. If I can't copy something, I can't use it. If I can use it, then I can pirate it. There just isn't any getting around this really. Media moguls and artist wannabes simply don't get this.

Overblown hysterics about the damages of rampant copyright infringement eventually interferes with my ability to use the stuff that I bought and paid for.

Re:Fair use?

[jedidiah]

> Violating other people's copy rights does not benefit the people who legally hold those rights.

That is not a claim that you are in any position to prove.

You're the real infant here.

Piracy can and does quite often benefit the original author. Obscurity is far worse than piracy. This is why enlightened authors have given up on the artistic megalomania.

Although you frame the argument as a logical fallacy. It is not up to the pirate to demonstrate benefit has occured or that harm has not occured. It is up to those seeking to subject individuals to massive fines to demonstrate those damages.

Don't try to conflate the letter of the law with justice.

Re:Fair use?

[jedidiah]

You are a lying sack of shit that will say anything it takes to support your agenda.

There is no advantage to you for any of us to "go read history" because we will find out for ourselves how full of shit you are.

Your remark about the Bill of Rights is beneath contempt. It should get you tarred and feathered in any town square in the nation.

Re:Fair use?

[Dalzhim]

Okay so your first post is wrong by not allowing a fair use defense to anything that has been copied without authorization. Thank you for clearing things up!

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

Ah, ok. I see now. n > 1 rather than n >= 1. Ok, that is a better description. Simply put, my argument is that suing for copyright infringment over someone quoting your comments on the Internet is not going to get you anywhere. At most, you'll be able to get it removed.

Further, it is a valid fair use defense. Critical commentary. You seem to be confusing fair use. As others have put here, it is case for legitamately infringing copyright. For example, in school you can distribute sections of a book to the classes. There are now n > 1 photo copies in the hands of m > 1 students. There is a fair use defense for educational purposes. An analogous situation applies to the browser cache and quotation we've been discussing for quoting him.

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

I'm confused. Yes, computers copy data, we need common formats and interfaces to make them work, etc. etc.

The next sentence after the one you quoted stated that copyright is a compromise. Which it is, allow creative people some method of gaining compensation, but not stifle it so that it continues to enrich society.

So, given that, what am I getting into hysterics about? I certainly exaggerated. My statement that everything not nailed down should be free is an exaggeration, for sure, but I find a strong bias towards an abolishment of property rights, especially for digital property. (Which people affectionately call "information" and claim that creative digital works are just numbers - which is overly pedantic).

Re:Fair use?

[SilverEyes]

So many of your other posts are really good (except the one where you just call the guy a lying sack of shit, come on), and here you fall victim to what you claim the GP is doing.

To paraphrase from here rather than rationalize about the costs/benefits of copyright infringement, maybe you should ask the artist yourself?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, judging from the style of the post, I bet you are under the age of 23.

And, judging from that sentence, I know you to be ageist, arrogant and, considering the remainder of your post, hypocritical.

Re:Fair use?

[WNight]

As if the law usually, let alone always, was right.

By law, you do not have that right.

You are SO stupid.

The law was bought by special interests, it doesn't serve the people at all. That's the simplest indicator of a bad law.

That simple fact makes the rest of your post irrelevant.

As a defense in court, yes.

But in the real world, as people who are talking about the effects of a law because it needs changing, then no. A law does not make right.

Your inability to try to understand what people are saying makes you irrelevant. For all your troll-like insistence that the law is absolute you merely show yourself to be equivalent to a Nazi sympathizer, etc. Someone willing, or eager, to use any excuse to force their beliefs on others. You're not capable of understanding this, nor willing to try. Thankfully, your role in life is to be a warning to others - "this is an authoritarian asshole, don't be like him."

Re:Fair use?

[Estragib]

for i in {1..10}; do cp song_i_ripped_from_my_cd.flac song_i_ripped_from_my_cd_$i.flac; done

This simple script shows that your fact (n > 1) isn't simple.

Moreover, when I don't use FLAC but MP3, i.e. introduce lossiness, I can even give those copies to my friends, who are m > 1 people, and it's still legal, as long as I don't publish, or "make them available to the public". This is true at least in countries that handle this the same sane way audio tapes were handled; which, by the way, include your own country a few years ago.

Copying audio for select friends in a lossy format was, and will always be, moral. That it was, and isn't any longer, legal is of negligible import for everybody who didn't watch too many "public service announcements".

Re:Fair use?

[petrus4]

You need to grow up, child,

I seem to recall you mentioning something about ad hominem attacks.

Perhaps now, having made one yourself, you can understand how, when a sufficient degree of passion arises in an individual, such mistakes can be difficult to avoid making.

Understand; there is no judgement in this statement. Only an attempt to enable you to empathise with my own earlier position.

There is another point here as well. You have stated to me, the case of the record companies, using their own, very set, prescribed logic.

I, on the other hand, attempted to present to you, a scenario where mutual benefit can occur between individuals, which rather than using the same style of rote logic, developed in an emergent sense over time.

I made no appeal to ridicule in my second post, either; although I acknowledge that I did in the first.

Re:Fair use?

[Dalzhim]

You still don't understand.
My first post is sarcasm to put the ridiculously oversimplified statement of DaveV1.0 under the spotlight.
Of course in the real world quoting someone is fair use. But according to his original definition it wouldn't be.

Re:Fair use?

[anyGould]

To be fair, he did say:

in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1

Which would exclude time shifting, space shifting, backups, etc.

.. but would include multiple people being in the room when it's heard, or it being stored on multiple devices.

Easy example: My wife and I each have a "portable music device". If we each put a copy of Song X on our machines, should we expect jackboots at the door?

It's the same problem with "public performance" being prohibited. If I watch a movie, that's OK. If I put it on the local movie screen for a hundred people, that's not. But where's the dividing line? Can my wife watch with me? How about my kid? If I invite my siblings and parents over, that's 7 people now watching. Can the seven of us watch it in a theatre? Can a hundred of us watch it in my living room?

When I was in elementary school

[johnny cashed]

We were taught to share. Guess those chickens came home to roost eh?

Re:When I was in elementary school

[Anonymous Coward]

Share all you want. Bought a CD? Give it to a friend.

But copying isn't "sharing". It's stealing.

Re:When I was in elementary school

[Anonymous Coward]

It surprises me that of all the arguments back and forth about copyright, this one has survived so long.

Call copyright infringement "stealing" and the anti-copyright crowd suddenly love splitting semantic hairs: "It's not stealing, because the original is still in its owner's possession!" But nobody seems to realize that for the same reason, it's equally misleading to compare it to "sharing" as we were taught to do as kids.

Re:When I was in elementary school

[Just Some Guy]

But nobody seems to realize that for the same reason, it's equally misleading to compare it to "sharing" as we were taught to do as kids.

For most of us "sharing" means "here, take part of mine and we'll both have some". By contrast, you seem to have grown up "sharing" your lunch money with the school bully. You're looking for "giving".

Re:When I was in elementary school

[mcgrew]

I'm not so sure about that. Just last week I had a discussion here with a fellow who was adamantly opposed to anyone getting a copy of his work, under any circumstances, without his being paid for it. It didn't matter that it cost him nothing for the person to get a copy, if the person would otherwise not pay for it or if the person COULDN'T pay for it but needed it badly.

So the lesson didn't take for everybody. Selfish, greedy assholes still exist.

Re:When I was in elementary school

[coolsnowmen]

Share all you want. Bought a CD? Give it to a friend.

But copying isn't "sharing". It's stealing.

Obviously an AC, because copying isn't stealing/theft. It is breaking copyright law and licensing agreements.

Re:When I was in elementary school

[Anonymous Coward]

We were taught to share what was ours. If it's not yours to share, then it's something other than sharing.

Fine!

[crhylove]

Let's have that curriculum, and then a much more in depth look at Benjamin Franklin, arguably the smartest and most important of the founding fathers.

"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."

That's a quote I like in particular, RIAA, you rat bastards contrary to all human achievement and creativity. I hope you die a horrible, horrible, slow and agonising death, every last member.

Re:Fine!

[coolsnowmen]

Not trying to be an RIAA lover but:
    Times have changed since then. It wasn't possible to copy someones invention so perfectly without a lot of work. Now, I can download someones whole discography if I know the right website without so much as leaving my combination toilet+fridge+chain.

Re:Fine!

[crhylove]

I would agree with this. However, since we are able to get files like this directly on an internet somebody else invented, via a computer somebody else invented, I think the spirit would remain the same. I doubt very much old Ben would have ANY truck with the RIAA and MPAA and their sequestering of modern culture in favour of the cookie cutter rehash sequel bands and movies that they put out instead.

I think he would think Britney Spears sucks too.

Re:Fine!

[coolsnowmen]

I paid for someone to build my compute and ship it to me. I pay my ISP to be connected to this internet.

Your evaluation of movies or music being bad/'cook'e cutter rehash sequels'/ doesn't give you the right to have a copy of their music. In fact, if you truly stood behind that, you wouldn't watch modern movies, or listen to modern music, and there for wouldn't give a damn about what the RIAA/MPAA are doing.

Re:Fine!

[agnosticnixie]

It's also possible to do that whole discography without a lot of effort though - if you only have the discography, that's more shows the performer doesn't need to do.

Re:Fine!

[crhylove]

Well, for the most part you summed it up exactly. I don't in fact listen to modern music. Or watch modern movies. I mean, occasionally I will try one of either out, but I usually lose interest quickly and move on.

I do however pirate plenty of documentaries, as I feel everyone should.

Re:Fine!

[coolsnowmen]

In someway, I see the source of that angst then. A revealing documentary simply tells the truth, and the truth should be free. But the reality is that a reporter of some sort needed money to make that movie. [s]he needed it to provide for his or her responsibilities and to cover the expenses of such an endeavor.

Re:Fine!

[crhylove]

Oh I agree. It's not an ethical choice to pirate the documentaries, but it is an ethical choice to stay informed. Would you steal to feed your family? I would steal to educate myself and others. Particularly if I feel that the BBC is not going out of business any time soon.

Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[neonprimetime]

... This is why I am hating public schooling more and more these days. They are not teaching your kids math and reading anymore ... they are teaching whatever the lobbyist want them to learn.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[sbeckstead]

You obviously have not had kids in school lately.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[commodore64_love]

"Propaganda institutions" is the phrase you're looking for. Many libertarians claim that's why public schools were created - to fill incoming immigrants with pro-american propaganda, but I think those people are nutters. I think public schools started with good intentions (like most government programs), but evolved into nothing more than soapboxes for lobbyists & others with agendas.

See my sig for an example.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[jmerlin]

Quite "obvious." I mean aside from the continual push of "standardized" tests which amount to trying to set a standard on how intelligent a child SHOULD be, making no means to mention that oh my FUCKING god we're not all the EXACT SAME -- because that would be politically incorrect?

Oh and the fact that every subject is being dumbed down more and more with ADHD friendly books that contain 50% of each page with lots of pictures, unnecessary commentary, web references, song references, etc etc with the content becoming less and less important.

And nay, I should not even need to mention the constant never-ending drive of large corporations trying to indoctrinate children into thinking THEIR way or being hooked on their products with the assistance of local and state govt.!!!!

No, obviously this person has no kids in school. I was in "school" (I'm assuming you don't mean college because heaven forbid it's not really a school, right!?) 4 years ago. It was that way then. My brother was in "school" 7 years ago.. it was that way then. My youngest sister is STILL in "school" and it is STILL THAT WAY NOW, only becoming increasingly worse and worse.

What is clear here, however, is that you lack any insight whatsoever into the public education system. It's full of corruption and ridiculous horrible "standardized" curriculum to the brim along with lobbied indoctrination. In short, I will not be totally shocked if within the next few decades the walls in every public school in the USA are covered with corporate advertisements nor if big brother, obama's huge government machine, doesn't eventually, hand-in-hand with his corporate bedbuddies have every say about what is taught, down to the very specifics, in such public schools -- even though the parents themselves pay for their children's education. It's already clear that these schools only buy state mandated, big name publisher books that come in edition X (where X >= 7) which costs $200/ea while a book from 30 years ago, with MORE content, and a better presentation (with real insight!) may cost $20/ea. Why do you think this is fact? Because these books teach things like what students *NEED* to "pass" "standardized tests" -- because a math book, for instance, with only figures where figures make sense and with small borders and lots of words and symbols and numbers.. oh no.. that CANNOT POSSIBLY prepare our students for anything. That's just WRONG! They must be taught to take a word problem, convert it to an english problem, find the nouns and verbs, write them down, draw a picture, then apply 10 formulas they've been forced to memorize rather than conclude via some basic common sense a single linear equation and solve using elementary algebra!

You, my friend, are one hell of an ignorant person. Wake up and smell the bullshit.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been called on this one already. Citations for your sig or shut up.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[betterunixthanunix]

Why focus on Obama? I was in New York's public school system a long time before Obama was president, and I can tell you that what you are describing is almost an improvement. Back then, the subjects had been dumbed down to their lowest possible point (yes, we are seeing an improvement now), and high school graduates were having trouble with basic arithmetic. When we were not "learning" how to read and add, we were being taught about how crack dealers would try to sell drugs to us (even though we were 4th graders), how strangers with vans were plotting to abduct us, and were then shown world maps that still had the USSR on them (as late as 1999). And yes, we still had the publisher sweetheart deals that we have today -- but the editions were >= 4, rather than 7.

Before you whine about the current state of affairs, just consider how much of an improvement we have today.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[sbeckstead]

Actually as a parent I took an active role in my son's education and despite the mandated standardized tests my wife and I did manage to educate our son to think for himself and not automatically accept everything the schools presented as gospel. We helped him cope with his ADD and he removed himself from the drugs his doctor prescribed entirely on his own.

You obviously think that school is supposed to be a fire and forget education machine and you are therefore a facilitator of what you believe is happening. Don't scream about this crap if you won't take an active role in educating your offspring. School is not a complete education by any means and I set the values that my son learned.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[jmerlin]

Why is it the professors I've asked teaching in universities say students coming fresh from HS are getting worse and worse (on average). If it were getting better -- would this not be the case?

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[WNight]

And it isn't harmful anyways, so just shutting up would be best.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[betterunixthanunix]

Perhaps because the number of students admitted to various colleges has increased over the past decade? My alma mater is currently expanding its dorm capacity yet again, the third time in just 10 years. It is not that the quality of students graduating high school has decreased; it is that the number of students accepted to college has increased, which necessarily means the standards are lower (at least at moderately to highly competitive schools).

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[jedidiah]

Except a proper school is a "fire and forget" mechanism if it's operating properly.

The whole point of public education is to grant access to those of humbler beginnings. If everyone has to act in a manner that effectively makes the entire government apparatus redundant, then there really isn't any point to it. If children need to be "home schooled" in addition to attending public school then the public schools are a complete failure. They aren't serving their original purpose.

This kind of nonsense is what prevents public education from achieving it's own stated objectives.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell a fundie.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[sbeckstead]

What planet do you spend most of your time on? School has never been fire and forget, not even in the time of Charlemagne. You always pay attention to what your young ones are being taught and supplement and correct as necessary. If you don't don't be surprised when your son/daughter turns you in for something and has you marched right off to a re-education camp. the statement "It takes a village to raise a child" is not hyperbola it has meaning. Raising kids is hard work and not for the meek or lazy.

Re:Public Schools Taking a dump ...

[agnosticnixie]

Does Stormfront count as a source, because it's apparently one of them.

The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

Schools should focus on "The three Rs", Reading, wRiting, a aRithmetic, and secondarily on physical and sex education so people know how to be healthy.

After they have been taught these things and have mastered English and communication skills enough to differentiate propaganda from civics and distinguish logical fallacies from legal dogma, then they can be taught about the RIAA and copyright in a Political Science class, and not as part of a religion.

Re:The three Rs

[Dragonslicer]

Schools should focus on "The three Rs", Reading, wRiting, a aRithmetic

So what should schools do with kids after they're done with 2nd grade?

Re:The three Rs

[Just Some Guy]

Schools should focus on "The three Rs"

"Ritalin, Restraints, and Repetition"?

Re:The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

So what should schools do with kids after they're done with 2nd grade?

If they've mastered English, Mathematics, and the physical and social science subjects after the second grade they should go to college or university and get a token degree/diploma or try to get an apprenticeship in a field that interests them.

Re:The three Rs

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I like our modern education system better than the feudal BS you're advocating. I also like having free and public education for all, as it helps to get people out of poverty: your system would condemn a million talented people to crap jobs based on their parents' circumstances. Not the country I want to live in.

Re:The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

I like our modern education system better than the feudal BS you're advocating. I also like having free and public education for all, as it helps to get people out of poverty: your system would condemn a million talented people to crap jobs based on their parents' circumstances. Not the country I want to live in.

Your reply doesn't make sense. You are completely incoherent.

Re:The three Rs

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I disagreed with you, then pointed out a very good reason why it's a positive thing. Sorry if you can't follow that.

Re:The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

You said,

I disagreed with you, then pointed out a very good reason why it's a positive thing. Sorry if you can't follow that.

I cannot "follow" that. You said;

I like our modern education system better than the feudal BS you're advocating. I also like having free and public education for all, as it helps to get people out of poverty: your system would condemn a million talented people to crap jobs based on their parents' circumstances. Not the country I want to live in.

What you said does not relate to anything I said. In fact I thought that you may have accidentally replied to the wrong person. You may want to double-check the thread.

To emphasize, I originally said;

Schools should focus on "The three Rs", Reading, wRiting, a aRithmetic, and secondarily on physical and sex education so people know how to be healthy.

After they have been taught these things and have mastered English and communication skills enough to differentiate propaganda from civics and distinguish logical fallacies from legal dogma, then they can be taught about the RIAA and copyright in a Political Science class, and not as part of a religion.

And then my next reply was;

So what should schools do with kids after they're done with 2nd grade?

If they've mastered English, Mathematics, and the physical and social science subjects after the second grade they should go to college or university and get a token degree/diploma or try to get an apprenticeship in a field that interests them.

There is obviously no coherent relationship between the ideas that I expressed and your replies. Are you trying to be ironic about the fact that I think school children should have English language skills?

Re:The three Rs

[SilverEyes]

What?

If. He said if. As in, IF these prodigal genius children have managed to MASTER English, Math, science, social science by second grade they should probably continue on to uni or college, rather than waste their time with the rest of K-12.

Re:The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

Schools should focus on "The three Rs"

"Ritalin, Restraints, and Repetition"?

Yes, for college kids I have found these things, along with corporal punishment, to be a catalyst to the learning experience.

seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

they're kidding, right? please, someone tell me they're just kidding??

Re:seriously?

[SilverEyes]

They're kidding*. Feel better?

*Of course, they are actually not kidding.

Had to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't copy that floppy fool!

video

Re:Had to be said

[MChisholm]

Have you seen the recent sequel to that video? Ugh.

Re:Had to be said

[techwrench]

No, this did:

Video

The Rules

[CopaceticOpus]

Their site says "True music fans play by the rules." That's so fucking metal.

I prefer the site http://musicrules.com/ (without the dash.)

Can parents take their children out of class?

[Lord_Dweomer]

So what rights will parents have to prevent their children from being taught these falsehoods? I can imagine quite a can of worms if schools don't want to let parents remove their children from instances where this is being taught.

Better yet, can parents sit in on these teachings to make sure their kids aren't being blatantly lied to?

Re:Can parents take their children out of class?

[SteinzoTheGreat]

Sure, you can tell the school that you don't want your child/children present when this is taught -- and they will most likely comply . . . they also may forward your name and address to the RIAA (and to the House & Senate Committees on Un-American Activites, and whatever other institutions "subversives" get reported to . . . ).

Re:Can parents take their children out of class?

[The Archon V2.0]

So what rights will parents have to prevent their children from being taught these falsehoods?

Same as they have now for abstinence-only sex education and evolution-hostile science. None.

But the parents aren't powerless. My mom, when I was young, made sure I knew a few things before going to school. One thing was that teachers are humans. Humans make mistakes. Humans do things that they think is the right thing but isn't. And some humans are just genuinely bad.

It served me well in school, through my mandatory religion (Catholicism) classes*, my broken science classes**, and my incredibly incompetent sex ed classes***. Still serves me well.

( * In a public school, no less.)

( ** Several memorable stories about that. One teacher didn't like the science book so never used it, just went off what she thought she remembered, because obviously her brain was perfect. Guess what? She didn't remember Newton's Laws of Motion correctly. Another prefixed the chapter on empirical knowledge and scientific method with a speech that could be summed up as "The scientific method is good, unless it finds something against God. Then God wins." The test for the chapter had a high-value question about the speech, of course.)

( *** The teacher had three kids, I was a teenage virgin. I was convinced I knew more about sex than she did. In fact, a decade or so along, I still think I knew more about sex than she did.)

The emperor is naked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Children are best at spotting when the emperor is naked.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[sbeckstead]

But somebody has to tell them that when the Emperor is naked he should be embarrassed no?

Re:The emperor is naked!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Children are best at spotting when the emperor is naked.

I see what you're saying, but you're wrong. Children are horrible at spotting that.

Look at drug education, which is taught in a similarly shrill tone. Almost all children come out of that with an absolute hatred of any drugs. It's not until later, when exposed to the actual effects that some of them will realize that most of what was taught was bunk. Many will have the extremely negative reaction that they were taught for the rest of their lives, regardless of any evidence they receive to the contrary. And even those that do figure out that it was mostly hysteria that they were taught generally fling in the other direction, rebelling against any authority and expecting everything they say to be a lie.

Teaching unbalanced and hysterical lessons to young children, who do not have BS filters in place, is as far as I've seen, universally harmful. I can think of no situation where a reasoned explanation of the facts, and clearly marked explanation of theories, would not be better than the above.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[mcgrew]

And even those that do figure out that it was mostly hysteria that they were taught generally fling in the other direction, rebelling against any authority and expecting everything they say to be a lie.

That's one reason that "marijuana leads to harder drugs". You teach the kids that all drugs are evil and they find that pot is relatively harmless (for adults, anyway; kids shouldn't be getting intoxicated on ANYTHING), they're not going to believe the mostly true propaganda about cocaine.

This RIAA "awareness" thing will backfire.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you know some pretty gullible children. For me, it was the DARE program in elementary school that first got me interested in drugs. I figured, "Huh, if they're going to these lengths to lie to me, this stuff must be pretty interesting".

Re:The emperor is naked!

[Trillian_1138]

Teaching unbalanced and hysterical lessons to young children, who do not have BS filters in place, is as far as I've seen, universally harmful.

I 100% agree with that statement, and it's possible some kids were exposed to drug education (to use your example) earlier than I was. But, having gone through DARE in 4th grade (so, about 9 or 10) I came out with an absolute hatred of drug education. And - although the plural of anecdote is not data - I have yet to meet someone who went through DARE and feels differently. And everyone seems to agree DARE doesn't do much[1]. Now, this isn't to counter your main point, that children are impressionable and what they're taught should be carefully constructed - but drug education doesn't seem like a good specific example.

-Trillian

[1] - Source

Re:The emperor is naked!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

That's one reason that "marijuana leads to harder drugs".

Nah, it's mostly that making it illegal drives you to a dealer, who often stocks the other stuff. Make it something you can buy at Safeway and that will stop.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[ClosedSource]

David Hanson is a pro-alcohol guy so I'd take anything he says about drug abuse with a grain of salt.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[DrGamez]

Maybe if you go to Drugmart or something, as far as I know I've never been offered anything other than my usual plants!

Re:The emperor is naked!

[mcgrew]

Like I said, one reason out of many, none of which have anything to do with pot's pharmachology and everything to do with its illegality.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[CubeRootOf]

I think this, and most of the drug related comments on slashdot are funny.

Any kid that grew up with this stuff has a natural hatred of drugs, with good reason.

but I somewhat agree, they could do drug education much better: They could have these school children take a tour of the lives of drug users, and then ask them the simple question: Is this how you want to live your life? I knew what my answer was at 3, and it hasn't changed since.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[Culture20]

That's one reason that "marijuana leads to harder drugs".

Nah, it's mostly that making it illegal drives you to a dealer, who often stocks the other stuff. Make it something you can buy at Safeway and that will stop.

Alcohol is perfectly legal, and yet people go to a dealer who stocks illegal marijuana anyway. Seems like the pattern wouldn't be any different, just the pieces in the pattern.

Re:The emperor is naked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, pretty much everybody I went to school with thought the drug education stuff was absolute b.s. and didn't buy it for a second.

It didn't stop them from smoking

[wiredog]

You checked out smoking rates in the US lately? Way down from it's peak.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[neonprimetime]

You checked out smoking rates in the US lately? Way down from it's peak.

... because of schooling? or because of price?

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[ZekoMal]

I checked the schools. The groups of kids smoking. The larger groups of kids smoking on college campus. Way down, yes, but with adult smokers. "The results come from a survey of 54,301 regular smokers, part of the 2004 and 2006 National Youth Tobacco Survey of nearly 5 million 12- to 17-year-olds." (emphasis mine). Pulled from http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2009-02-12-marlboro-kids-smokers_N.htm. I'll see if I can find some evidence of kid smokers also decreasing, but...I don't think kid smokers have decreased.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[ZekoMal]

And as an addendum: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/150010/teen_smoking_in_america.html 23% of high schoolers smoke. That's uh, that's not good. That's 1/4 of high schoolers smoking...even if it's decreased, I'm not impressed.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[PitaBred]

Peer pressure. It's just not cool to smoke any more.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[plague3106]

Well the effects of schooling are likely overshadowed by the effects of "oh we're bad for doing something illegal!" See also under-age drinking in college.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

There are probably other reasons for the decrease in smoking (while I won't pretend that "education" isn't a part of it, I doubt it's all of it). Banning smoking in bars and at some workplaces, for example, has certainly contributed to a lot of people either quitting smoking or not starting in the first place.

Re:It didn't stop them from smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

You checked out smoking rates in the US lately? Way down from it's peak. ... because of schooling? or because of price?

... or statewide bans of smoking indoors?

the scary part is

[Anonymous Coward]

where they say that if you make a copy and play it for friends (with you there), that is a copywrite violation. So if you keep the original as a master and use the back up you are violating the law? If that is the case, soon you won't even be able to play the original without violating the law.

Re:the scary part is

[sbeckstead]

Technically even playing the original with friends present is illegal. Practically as long as it is in your home you are safe. But if you do it while an MPAA official or RIAA in the case of a music CD then he could (be an asshole and) turn you in.

Re:the scary part is

[AndrewNeo]

Sshh, don't give them any ideas! We know they'd love to charge every time you listened to it, and for everyone within hearing range.

Re:the scary part is

[anyGould]

Heck, you might not be able to listen to it at all - isn't changing it from MP3 to audio waves "format shifting"?

Passion?

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to making music for passion? Now it's all about money. Sad.

Re:Passion?

[SteveFoerster]

I gather that most of the musicians who actually make music still do it because they have a passion for it. It's the corporate distributors who want to use government to club everyone over the head to eke out every last possible cent.

Re:Passion?

[anyGould]

What ever happened to making music for passion? Now it's all about money. Sad.

From the artists I know (and read), they don't make their money from albums anyway - they make their living playing live events, mostly. One version of a story I've heard around is some places don't even sell their CDs at the event, because they'd rather sell you the T-shirt - they make more money that way.

Only the *labels* (including artists who are big enough to have their own labels) are honked off about stealing, because they're the ones who lose out.

Remember kids, if you copy that CD, you're stealing from a large multinational corporation. If you want to support artists, buy their T-shirt.

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million."

So, going by the 80,000 per song that Jammie Thomas had to shell out divided by the $7.8 million worth of damages stated here, this is saying that children in the US have downloaded a combined 97.5 songs!

Re:Awesome!

[amicusNYCL]

That's sort of different then what they claim in the teacher's guide PDF:

Total number of songs lifted = 7,800,000;
Total cost of songs lifted = $7,722,000

So which is it RIAA, is a song worth $80,000 or is a song worth $.99? In order for a court to award damages of $80,000 for distribution of one song that costs $.99 to purchase, that makes the assumption that a single person distributing a song equates to a loss of 80,808 sales. That's a bit of a stretch.

Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until Coca-Cola publishes educational materials targeted towards children that shows them why Coca-Cola products are superior, and why you should never drink off-brand cola!

President Obama

[ehaggis]

And people were up in arms about President Obama speaking in the schools? I'd much rather have an inspirational speech by our president than propaganda by a private organization.

Re:President Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

And people were up in arms about President Obama speaking in the schools? I'd much rather have an inspirational speech by our president than propaganda by a private organization.

so, would you rather hear propaganda by your president, or inspirational speech by a private corporation?

same difference...

Re:President Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I get some inspirational propaganda with a side of jingoism?

Re:President Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'd rather have propaganda by a private organization than subject the helpless young to platitudes from our orator in chief, what's your point? At least they'll take lessons from private groups with a grain of salt. At this point, students still respect and venerate our elected officials and the damage from Obama (or Bush) can be far worse.

Re:President Obama

[mldi]

And people were up in arms about President Obama speaking in the schools? I'd much rather have an inspirational speech by our president than propaganda by a private organization.

"Inspirational speech" by Obama these days is propaganda.

Re:President Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

And people were up in arms about President Obama speaking in the schools? I'd much rather have an inspirational speech by our president than propaganda by a private organization.

The Supreme Court is about to decide a case regarding political advertising as free speech. If they (likely) decide that political advertising by corporations cannot be restricted by the government, then they will be saying that a corporation's speech is as better than yours or mine (since our campaign contributions, er, free speech is limited to $2500).

Using this as precedent, what private organizations have to say will likely be more valuable than what the teacher has to say. Good luck fighting City Corp.

"Little Brother" Doctorow, DCMA, then DHS?

[Globally Mobile]

Reminds me of a section in Chapter 13 of Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother. In chapter thirteen, or if you grep/search/seek out the phrase "Under what circumstances should the federal government be prepared to suspend the Bill of Rights?" Then you will see a classroom discussion about a little text that is released by the DHS, after things go ary, which eerily reminds me of this DCMA edu-mercial. The title of the educational material is called WHAT EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY. During the scene the boy & the teacher go back and forth about rights, and the constitution, etc.

Eeery. Orwell, Dick, & Brunner were all right on point. *shivers*

DVD sniffing dogs?

[snspdaarf]

The dogs can sniff out a DVD? Do they work on DVD only, or can they do BluRay as well?

Re:DVD sniffing dogs?

[SilverEyes]

They can sniff BluRay, but you'll only really notice a difference with a High Definition owner. Plus you need to connect the owner to the dog with a special HDMI leash.

Re:DVD sniffing dogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

They smell the plastics used to make the discs, so I imagine it would work for BluRay as well. It only works for large quantities, so unless you have a whole warehouse stuffed with pirated discs, I wouldn't worry.

Re:DVD sniffing dogs?

[Donkey_Hotey]

... Plus you need to connect the owner to the dog with a special HDMI leash.

Conveniently, Monster Cables sells them. A good deal at $379.99 apiece.

Re:DVD sniffing dogs?

[SilverEyes]

That is a good deal. Usually they are so outrageously expensive no rich, sane person could buy them.

Now if we could only convince sane people to buy them...

Re:DVD sniffing dogs?

[anyGould]

Oh, where are my Funny mod points when I really need them?

Erm... EPIC FAIL

[M-RES]

Compounding the bias, it includes insights such as that taking music without paying for it is 'songlifting,' and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal.

Erm, no it isn't illegal. What if the music you're 'taking without paying for it' has been released as CC or Public Domain? Personally, since all the crap first started kicking off back in the Napster days I've released all of my own music as CC and sold some for commercial use, but my small fanbase always appreciated that I'd give them tracks for free and sell them CDs for the cost of the materials and they were free to share them around with friends (I encouraged it), because it was free publicity that got me bigger attendances at gigs and thus better gigs with better pay. Filesharing is a great thing for artists. Major labels are bad bad bad things for artists and will only screw them over to exploit their talent without fair compensation. I bet the RIAA don't talk about THAT fact do they?

Re:Erm... EPIC FAIL

[VeNoM0619]

Erm, no it isn't illegal. What if the music you're 'taking without paying for it' has been released as CC or Public Domain?

Exactly this will have fail written all over it. The kid will go to these classes and come home to newgrounds.com, then question it.

That's how I learned (for better or worse), if I could question one thing and prove it's wrong, then the entire lesson could be corrupt and I took it as a "everything taught in this lesson could be true" for later research/discussion outside of the teachers view. Kind of like how they said sex was bad.

Re:Erm... EPIC FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids don't care about CC or public domain works. It's the over-hyped & over-marketed tripe that they're mostly interested in - precisely because it is over-marketed & over-hyped. In a way I think it's great they scare the crap out of kids - hopefully they won't download & listen to any of that garbage anyway.

Re:Erm... EPIC FAIL

[Jason Levine]

And, just to muddy the waters more, I've "bought" many songs from Amie Street or Amazon MP3 at a price point of $0. In the former case, they were songs with low sales (songs start out free and rise in price as people buy them). In the latter case, they were one day promotions where select songs were given away for free (to tempt you into buying non-free songs, obviously). I guess I'm a "songlifter."

Re:Erm... EPIC FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

How many kids do YOU know play music that was created in the 19th century? Probably not to often, so the odds of you finding a large pile of public domain music for them to play is fairly slim. (This is the first big problem with Eternal-But-We're-Not-Admitting-It-Because-The-Law-Says-There-Must-Be-A-Deadline Copyright.)

Finding Creative Commons stuff is actually quite possible, as well as the idea that BANDS MAKE MP3S FREELY AVAILABLE FROM THEIR OWN WEBSITES all the time. By what the RIAA is trying to teach your young, this would still be "songlifting" (Which sounds an awful lot like "shoplifting" and I'm quite sure this is intentional even if the actions are completely unrelated.)

But hey, brainwashing doesn't work nearly as well if they expose the target to ALL the facts and proper definitions and intentions behind laws like Copyright right?

Re:Erm... EPIC FAIL

[mcgrew]

One of the punk bands my daughter turned me on to (I can't remember the band's nae) had printed on the CD itself "Please be kind, burn a copy for a friend".

Without fail, whenever I buy or am given a CD from a band playing in a bar I'll ask if they mindeme putting it on the internet. Without fail the answer is aleays "HELL NO I DON'T MIND!!!"

What's wrong with teaching?

[photomonkey]

I bet I'll lose a ton of karma here, but...

What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright? I agree completely that the US system is far from perfect, but we do have copyright laws on the books, and they're there for a good reason.

Most artists are not rich. The ability to control their music, pictures, paintings, designs, etc. allows them to pay bills very much in line with the ordinary Joe. It's a job. They should get paid for their job, if their work is in demand.

The Internet generation seems to think that if you can touch something, you can have it. I've started to see that 'entitlement' thing that the older folks keep talking about. Stuff on the Internet is not necessarily free. Sure, there are plenty of people who do make their songs, pictures etc. available for free legitimately. Why not download that? I'm betting it's because much of the time, it's not nearly as good as the paid-for stuff.

More people should be taught to respect copyright; even if it only leads to a change in the laws on the books (specifically, I hate the lifetime+70. Far too long.). But illegal downloading really IS stealing. I know that's an unpopular view, and the cartels have done nefarious things trying to enforce the laws, but it remains a fact.

And as to the fair use argument:

1) Fair Use is an admissive defense for copyright infringement. Meaning, you don't get to do something because it's fair use, you do it and if you get sued, you make a case for fair use.

2) Fair Use generally does not encompass making copies of something to give to someone else. It also does not encompass putting complete or majority portions of a work, say, online for review or critique purposes.

3) People should be able to make backups of CDs and movies (except for the lousy 'decryption' provision), and even shift between media.

But let's not pretend that downloading something you don't own or have license to use is somehow OK; much less Fair Use.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to control their music, pictures, paintings, designs, etc. allows them to pay bills very much in line with the ordinary Joe. It's a job. They should get paid for their job, if their work is in demand.
Let's say I invent the cure for cancer. How long do I get to control this? Why should someone who wrote a song have more control over their work?

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Maximum Prophet]

What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright?

Nothing, as long as you are teaching them actual law.

Back in the day, when plain paper copy machine began to pop up in places like public libraries, people had an understanding of copyright that was simple and wrong. Most people thought that you could copy anything you wanted in any amount if it was for personal use. No-one was prosecuted for copying too many pages out of a book. Now, with the Internet, things are more complicated, but people haven't kept up.

A good teacher would make a passing reference to the RIAA's literature, then ask the class, "What do you think copyright *should* be?", and then go into a discussion about the history of copyright, how laws are created, and how to get them changed.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[canajin56]

Did you read the summary? They are telling kids it is illegal to put a CD and play it when friends are over, because your friends don't have a license, so that is stealing.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[photomonkey]

I read the article itself, and fail to see where that was mentioned. I think that the submitter "remixed" some of what was said in the Ars article with what was on the MusicRules site.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Zordak]

I agree with you to a point (hey, I'm an IP attorney---IP is my bread and butter). But I can also see the outrage. I don't want lobbyists spoon-feeding my children propaganda. If they have a class that informs them about copyright, wonderful. But I don't think it's a topic for elementary school (middle school/junior high, maybe), and I want the curriculum designed by somebody other than a lobby group that's heavily invested in a particular business model (I know Jack Valenti was MPAA, not RIAA, but "If you want a backup, buy a second copy" is not good law). I have PowerPoints about IP basics that I'd be happy to take to local schools if they're interested in a legitimate primer on the topic.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[photomonkey]

And until schools step up and start doing that, outsiders will come in to do it in their version.

We've seen it already with drugs and sex-ex. It's true, not fucking is the only way to not get pregnant. But that doesn't mean it's abstinence-only that should be taught. Yet, in many schools teachers would rather let someone else come in to talk about an uncomfortable subject; even if it's a little spun.

Same deal with digital downloads. The article mentions a few artists who do make their stuff freely available. But that's the exception, not the rule. A safe rule is, if you're not absolutely sure, don't do it.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[itsdapead]

But illegal downloading really IS stealing.

No it isn't: Illegal downloading is copyright infringement - it may be against the law, but it has nothing to do with theft. In other news, dropping litter is not assault with a deadly weapon, and shoplifting is not murder.

Dropping gum on the sidewalk is reprehensible behaviour, but we don't call it "attempted shoe homicide" and send people to the Big Chair for it.

Last time I looked, the only religion which included "Thou shalt not infringe copyright" in its commandments was Scientology.

That's the problem: there's nothing wrong with teaching kids the facts about copyright. The problem is with teaching kids industry propaganda about copyright which exagerates its seriousness, and is really about vested interests trying to maintain control of the industry in an age when most musicians would do better by givimng away music and making their money from gigs and t-shirts.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet generation seems to think that if you can touch something, you can have it.

and you seem to think that you can "touch" music. music is not a thing. music is information. music is art. music is sound.

the absolute worst thing in the world is the idea that you should try to keep someone else from having information or art or sound.

this isn't "oh, i have a sandwich and you don't, so i should give you my sandwich, oh but then i won't have a sandwich anymore :("

this is "i have thoughts and ideas and information and i express them, oh - but not to you. you can't hear this. you can't know this. you can't unless you pay me."

you think that's "right"? then what the hell is wrong with you?

the only argument for copyright, in the end, is "if i can't get paid for this, i won't do it". "not doing it" is portrayed as a bad thing for all of society. BAH, i dispute that. don't do it then. see if anyone cares. NO ONE WILL. the world will still go on, people will still make music, people will still express their thoughts, people will still share information. the world loses nothing when people stop doing these things because they can't make money off of it, because these are things the world never really had anyway.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Idiomatick]

It isn't artists that rich from copyrights btw. They make money from concerts.

And the harm? That it is presented in such a biased way by such a biased group. We wouldn't let the Cincinatti bible seminary write our science courses for the same reasons.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[DarkPixel]

What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright?

Because schools are not there to teach our kids about respecting the law, they are there to teach them critical thinking and problem solving skills, and to expose them to knowledge... not force them to agree with it. Copyright has nothing to do with critical thinking or problem solving, and it is not the kind of knowledge that k-12 kids should be worried about in the context of schools. Don't forget, schools are not parents... no matter what the 'gumment says yo! Of course, this is just my opinion and not reality, which makes me sad. How about you?

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Requiem18th]

Do they teach kids too about the reasoning behind copyright limits? That corporations that depended on lifted works from their culture now are strangling the new generations for profit? That they have extorted and lobbied the copyright limits to over ten times its original term?

Seriously why do you let these corporations run your government?

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Dotren]

I'm actually very curious.. as an IP lawyer, how do you view the current state of copyright law?

I've begun to read up on copyright, in general, in the last few years and it amazes me at how much we, as a civilization, stand to lose and what we've already lost. The more I read about it, the more I realize that the original idea of copyright was an amazing thing... provide protection for a work so that the creator can profit from it for a reasonable amount of time and then release the work into public domain so that the work is never lost and everyone can freely be enriched by it. Since the work moves into public domain, the creator is encouraged to create another work if he/she wishes to continue making money in this way.

Now, instead, we seem to have a system where the creator can create a single work and then he/she and their children can profit off of that work for several human lifespans. Or, potentially worse, the creator creates a work which is then immediately owned by a corporation that then profits and locks the work for several human lifespans, assuming they don't find more ways to extend it even past that time-frame. When does the work pass into public domain in this model?

I would love to find a way to get students (and I don't mean just k-12 students... college and university students as well) as interested and involved in this as many of them even were during this last presidential election. Ultimately, if we don't find a way to get things under control, it will be they who will have to do it or suffer even worse consequences than we are now (imagine having to pay for a song every time you listen to it or, indeed, think about the lyrics in your head... we hope such a thing is a long way off but, when it's possible, we all know they won't hesitate to do it).

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[BitZtream]

What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright?

Nothing is wrong with it. We should indeed teach our children to respect the law, and change what they don't agree with in a legal manner

Most artists are not rich. The ability to control their music, pictures, paintings, designs, etc. allows them to pay bills very much in line with the ordinary Joe. It's a job. They should get paid for their job, if their work is in demand.

Most artist aren't any good, thats most of why they aren't rich. The should get paid for their work. Where I disagree is that they should get paid some ridiculous amount of money for 0 cost copies of their work, which is what this is actually about

The Internet generation seems to think that if you can touch something, you can have it. I've started to see that 'entitlement' thing that the older folks keep talking about. Stuff on the Internet is not necessarily free. Sure, there are plenty of people who do make their songs, pictures etc. available for free legitimately. Why not download that? I'm betting it's because much of the time, it's not nearly as good as the paid-for stuff.

People realize that there is a fundemental flaw with someone charging for something they had no involvement in. People realize that when I give my brother a copy of some MP3s that the only actual cost is the power used. The people you speak of seem to be a little more aware of the entitlement situation than you. They realize that 'the artist'/record label/whatever aren't ENTITLED to money for things the have no involvement in. People don't generally feel entitled if someone else puts something in to it. A digitial copy has 0 cost to make, regardless of the imaginary costs the labels create.

My giving someone a copy of a song DOES NOT TRANSLATE TO A LOST SALE automatically. It is NOT lost revenue. It is not THEFT. Using these retarded arguments is why no one gives a fuck about the labels, RIAA, or MPAA any more.

More people should be taught to respect copyright; even if it only leads to a change in the laws on the books (specifically, I hate the lifetime+70. Far too long.). But illegal downloading really IS stealing. I know that's an unpopular view, and the cartels have done nefarious things trying to enforce the laws, but it remains a fact.

I really don't know anyone that doesn't respect reasonable copyrights and enforcement. Even software pirates support it in a limited form

I think downloading something that is meant for public consumption for free is perfectly acceptable. You want to make money, make money from what requires work. Don't expect me to just give you money for something that it takes out nothing to reproduce.

I'll be happy to pay to come to your show if you're good.

Go fuck yourself if you think a my replication of an electron pattern which I produced without changing entitles you to get money from me.

People deal fine with 'reasonable' and will as a general rule, follow the law. When the law becomes unreasonable, people largely ignore it, I certainly will.

The laws regarding copyright are unreasonable, and better yet, openly purchased from the politicians by media companies. No balanced sane person will ever respect those laws.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

This arguement is getting really old...It's not stealing it's copyright infringement. Yes it is copyright infringement, but why...What is it that you did? You took something without permission...uh...um....that's STEALING. Now you'll probably say that it's not stealing because you have nothing physical, and the other person still has the song/movie/whatever. Yeah, so. Go look up the definition of stealing. I checked multiple sources, and not one said or implied that you had to actual lose something physical. I think back to childhood, and remember when you have some assignment in class to draw something, and your talking to your pal...when it comes time to show your drawing, your pal proudly holds up his picture of a dinosaur eating spaghetti, as you yell, "Ms. Whoever, Billy STOLE my idea." Maybe these kids do need and education, so they can learn to shout "Ms. Whoever, Billy copyright infringed my idea" I also think of all the plot lines that have people breaking in to a place to 'steal' the plans for for something, perhaps a DeathStar. They don't even always take a hardcopy, but sometimes memorize it, or take a picture. I guess they are mistaken, as that is not stealing, because the company still has their plans, or a backup copy of their plans elsewhere That ill make for some interesting dialog. Instead of something like "Let's see those stolen DeathStar plans", it should be "Lets see those copyright infringed DeathStar plans". Stop this nitpicking crap.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back in the early days of photo-copying. My sister needed something copied for a school report. The copy machine place wouldn't do it. totally refused.

Even though that'd be fair use.

At least today one can get a AIO from wal-mart to do the job.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[mcgrew]

What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright?

Nothing, provided they were honest about it, but they're lying thieves. They're not going to do it honestly; back in the 70s when copyright law explicitly stated that noncommercial copying was legal, the labels still put warnings on albums that copying was a Federal offense.

Most artists are not rich.

I don't see where that has anything to do with anything.

The ability to control their music, pictures, paintings, designs, etc. allows them to pay bills very much in line with the ordinary Joe.

No, the ability to be paid for their music, pictures, paintings, designs, etc. allows them to pay bills, not control over their art. And it's nothing like the ordinary Joe; Joe gets one paycheck for one week's work. He doesn't get paid for the next hundred years for the siding he installs today.

They should get paid for their job, if their work is in demand.

They do. You assume that every download is a lost sale, and that's a fallacy. If there were no public libraries, I would likely never have bought an Asimov book, and I bought (probably literally) tons of them. If Cory Doctorow didn't post the full text of his books on the internet I'd likely never have read them. As it is, I bought a copy of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom after reading Little Brother online at his web site. Ironically, my copy of that novel was stolen from my bookshelf, it's probably in a second hand bookstore now.

The Internet generation seems to think that if you can touch something, you can have it.

Another fallacy. You can't touch bits, you can't touch information. You seem to think that the internet generation is all for burglary and shoplifting, and they're not. You are insulting my grown children with your balderdash.

I've started to see that 'entitlement' thing that the older folks keep talking about.

I'm 57 and I haven't heard anybody my age talking about it. The only ones I hear complaining about "entitlement" is neocons, and there are as many young ones as old ones.

Sure, there are plenty of people who do make their songs, pictures etc. available for free legitimately.

That's because those people aren't stupid. Only an idiot would withhold the art he poured his heart and soul into. If there was a law passed tomorrow that only RIAA signed artists could legally make a CD, the RIAA would welcome P2P. They're at war with their competetion, the indies, few of whom object to noncommercial copying.

Why not download that? I'm betting it's because much of the time, it's not nearly as good as the paid-for stuff.

I do, as do many others. And usually it's BETTER than most of the "only for pay" stuff. Witness Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, not to mention Linux (a far superior OS to the paid for stuff in many ways).

But illegal downloading really IS stealing

No, it isn't. It's copying. If I steal your car, you have no car. If I make a copy of your car you still have a car. Just because someone downloads your stuff doesn't mean that they would or even could pay for it. It's a fact that music pirates (note that I'm not one) spend more money on music than non-pirates. It's a win-win for everyone. Only the RIAA has a legitimate reason to be against P2P, and that reason is to keep indie music out of your ears.

Now tell me, if I want to download a song simply titled "scatterbrain", how can I tell if what I'm downloading is public domain, CC, copyright with permission to share, or copyright without permission to share? Do you have any idea how many hundreds of different songs there are with that name?

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[SilverEyes]

Last time I looked, the only religion which included "Thou shalt not infringe copyright" in its commandments was Scientology.

Seriously? That's hilarious!

Some musicians may do better. But it's not really fair to say that musicians should just give their work away and make money through another (although related) avenue. That's like saying all programmers should just program in their spare time and become IP lawyers because they'll make way more money.

Perhaps I'm being pedantic with what you said as you seem to have the same feeling towards copyright I do. I feel that musicians should be able to profit from their work (and I agree, copyright should be around 20 years).

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

But illegal downloading really IS stealing.

No it isn't: Illegal downloading is copyright infringement - it may be against the law, but it has nothing to do with theft.

At this point in the argument, I would point out that possessing an illegal copy of something does not deprive any legal owner (licensee, really) of the use of the work, whereas in theft, the owner can no longer use the stolen item.

It's not stealing, it's cheating: similar to copying someone else's homework.

Now if the new IEEE Digital Personal Property were implemented, and it worked as specified, then you could steal it. Though I suspect that IEEE DPP is there more to show the world, in writing, that the concept is simply not viable.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Thagg]

You'd get to control it, if you want, with a patent, for 20 years -- less the time it takes to get the cure approved by the FDA. You'd be rich as you want to be by the end of that time.

If that's what's keeping you from curing cancer, you needn't let that stop you.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[itsdapead]

This arguement is getting really old...

No. The concept of "theft" is really old, and regarded as Wrong in most civilized societies (and probably quite a few uncivilized ones, too). The concept of "copyright infringement" is relatively modern, and has nothing to do with theft.

What is it that you did? You took something without permission...

If I take something of yours, you don't have it any more.

If I copy something of yours, you still have it.

I would suggest that its the "not having it any more" bit that makes most people upset when they have something stolen.

"Ms. Whoever, Billy STOLE my idea."

Well, yes, if Billy copied your idea and took credit for it in your place then maybe you could call that "stealing" (but only if you couldn't spell "plagiarism") - but that's not what most copyright infringement is about. People who download music don't normally claim that they wrote it.

I have no time for people who copy something and then sell it or people who knowingly pay money for ripped-off stuff: that money belongs to the author. Maybe you could call that theft. But casual file sharing is not theft, and may even help the industry (look at your legit music collections: how many of those bands did you first hear of when someone gave you a tape or MP3? Would you ever have bought their music otherwise?)

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[itsdapead]

Seriously? That's hilarious!

No, not seriously.

But it's not really fair to say that musicians should just give their work away and make money through another (although related) avenue.

IANAM, but I suspect that apart from the big artists who can swing nice deals with the record companies, that's pretty much what a lot of musicians do anyway...

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Zordak]

My personal opinion (which of course, does not reflect the views of my firm, my clients, or anybody else, and of course, is not legal advice) is that good, solid copyright is critical. That said, the DMCA is ridiculous, and the life +70 copyright terms is absurd. In fact, I think it's possibly unconstitutional, not just because it's too long, but because it's indeterminate. I think it made sense when you got an automatic 26-year term, which you could renew for an additional 26 years. So at most, you got 52 years, and you only get the second half if you didn't abandon it. And you couldn't sell the renewal. So corporate sponsors could only get the first 26 years. If it turned out to be a mega hit, they'd have to buy the second half at market price.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[SilverEyes]

I'd be pretty pissed if I had to study and work hard, and Billy just copied my idea and we both get the same grade. In general, people don't like freeloaders.

I agree though, I view this as different from (CASUAL) file sharing for the reasons you mention.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Uberbah]

But it's not really fair to say that musicians should just give their work away and make money through another (although related) avenue

Straw man.

That's like saying all programmers should just program in their spare time and become IP lawyers because they'll make way more money.

That's like saying that Bernie Madoff's embezzlement of billions from investors is okay because you aren't calling it baby-raping-cannibalism.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[SilverEyes]

Straw man? Care to explain? How did I set up his argument differently? He literally said "most musicians would do better by givimng away music and making their money from gigs and t-shirts". I interpreted this as saying that musicians should give away their work and make money through another avenue (like merchandising).

My argument was that just because the opportunity exist for them to make money in another way, this doesn't mean they should have to do that and devalue their other work (Music in this case) to nothing and give it away.

How is this different from saying programmers should only produce FOSS code, and then do something else as their job? They enjoy being creative while programming, most people agree code has monetary worth, so they could make money. But to pay the bills, they should just do something else. It is the same argument.

That's like saying that Bernie Madoff's embezzlement of billions from investors is okay because you aren't calling it baby-raping-cannibalism.

No, it isn't. The two things I was comparing are actually comparable. I have no idea what you mean by this.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[itsdapead]

Straw man? Care to explain? How did I set up his argument differently?

Well, I did say gigs and t-shirts - the former still counts as being a musician, in a way that being an IP lawyer doesn't count as being a programmer. For one thing, there'd be the small matter of having to go to law school for a few years.

(...thinks...)

...but then I suppose some bands would have to go to music school before they could play live :-)

The problem is the industry conceit that every illegal download is a "lost sale" and every downloader has "stolen" something from them. Money from software sales paid for my house - and I'm perfectly aware that if I'd been paid for every illegal copy, I could have had a much bigger house: but that is a fantasy. Back in reality, the "intangible" nature of software that makes it so easy to copy also means that the marginal cost of production is negligible so you get to keep nearly all of the money from people who choose to pay. If I'd built a better mousetrap, my house would have been mortgaged to pay for the huge loan I needed to set up production to make them in commercial quantities.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Anonymous Coward]

But illegal downloading really IS stealing.

No, it is NOT stealing.

I know that's an unpopular view, and the cartels have done nefarious things trying to enforce the laws, but it remains a fact.

Go fuck yourself. Don't even try the "unpopular view" trick, it's not working, and "remains a fact" is a plain lie. Seriously, do you think everyone is stupid enough to believe you, in this day and age? I repeat, go fuck yourself.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[Uberbah]

Straw man? Care to explain?

You were complaining about arguments he wasn't making - the very definition of a straw man.

He literally said "most musicians would do better by givimng away music and making their money from gigs and t-shirts".

Because the music industry is literally one of the worst for ripping people off, that's why. Royalties are tiny, costs are pushed onto bands as loans, and the money from lawsuits (Napster, mp3.com) has gone entirely to the labels. Toni Braxton and TLC famously made their labels $150 million apiece, and both ended up declaring bankruptcy.

Is anyone listening?

[Maximum Prophet]

So the RIAA has created this literature, is there any evidence that a significant number of schools are taking time away from the SOL test preparation in order to teach this stuff. (School payola, perhaps the RIAA will be caught bribing teachers to present this stuff, wouldn't that be a hoot?)

Re:Is anyone listening?

[anyGould]

(School payola, perhaps the RIAA will be caught bribing teachers to present this stuff, wouldn't that be a hoot?)

Sadly, it already exists - the music companies are just behind the curve. Soft drink companies have been "sponsoring" their way into schools of all stripes for decades. My favorite was the university scholarships in exchange for exclusivity on campus (meaning stores were flat out *told* they weren't allowed to serve The Other Brand). Of course, not only was the value of the scholarships a tiny fraction of the sales gained by forcing the competitor out, most student groups made a killing in black market soda.

Make the check payable to...

[scanrate]

Send me that "measly" $7.8 million would ya? Since it's just a drop in the bucket...

The D.A.R.E. effect...

[lucky130]

Don't they remember the effect D.A.R.E. had? It actually increased drug use...

Basically, they'll be telling kids how to get all the stuff they want for free.

Re:The D.A.R.E. effect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Student t-shirt contest winner...

The front has "I learned my lessons from D.A.R.E."

The back has "I'm sticking to sex and rock and roll!"

Followed closely by calls for Mr. and Mrs. Smith to come have a chat with the principal at their earliest convenience.

Re:The D.A.R.E. effect...

[Maximum Prophet]

RIAA: Don't download music
Elementary School Kid: You mean I can get free music over the internet? Cool!
RIAA: Don't copy your friend's music
E.S. Kid: Friend! Can I copy your music?

Rock and Roll is all about rebellion and thumbing your nose at the establishment. This will go over like a Lead Zeppelin.

Quite Honestly

[Greyfox]

We need some copyright and IP law education in our schools. Your average citizen wouldn't realize that it's a copyright violation to scan that wedding picture that a professional photographer took (99 times out of 100 unless you negotiated that in the contract.) The average citizen thinks you can just grab stuff off the web and use it. The average citizen thinks that if it's there it must be legal. And I'm willing to bet that your average congressman knows not much more than your average citizen.

We're in this mess now because we ignored these issues and didn't complain when Congress kept tipping the scales in favor of the large corporations who own most of the copyrights. Copyright law offers us very little protection now, and it offers the artists who actually create the work very little protection either. And nothing will change it until more people know what's going on with it and are angry enough to make some changes.

I'm not saying that the very parasites who have effected this situation in the first place should be the ones in charge of that education, but I think a well balanced program is required.

Re:Quite Honestly

[photomonkey]

As a professional photographer (albeit not weddings), thank you very much for having a brain. Here's a virtual Friday afternoon beer for you. Salud!

Re:Quite Honestly

[MadCow42]

>> Your average citizen wouldn't realize that it's a copyright violation to scan that wedding picture that a professional photographer took (99 times out of 100 unless you negotiated that in the contract.)

Unfortunately I'll slightly disagree... In highschool I made some side money photographing all the sports teams in our school (action shots) and selling them to the kids/parents (I went on to become a professional photographer). All pictures were stamped on the back with a blatant copyright and do not copy notice. Despite the VERY reasonable prices I charged for reprints, I had parents bring the prints into the camera shop I also worked in on weekends to get them copied.

I'd usually play it cool and simply show them the stamp on the back (they didn't know who I was at the time) and they'd always say "yeah, I know, but can you do it for me anyways?". I loved the sheepish look they got when I explained that no, I couldn't, even if I wasn't the photographer. ("tee hee... oops...")

So, ignorance isn't as prevalent as their desire to avoid cost, even when that cost is minimal. (about $2 surcharge at the time)

Re:Quite Honestly

[DarkPixel]

Really, do we really need it? I think when the majority of a population blatantly disregards a law, something about it is fundamentally flawed and needs to be reevaluated and possibly fixed... before we even talk about [t/pr]eaching it to schoolkids.

Re:Quite Honestly

[CodeBuster]

And nothing will change it until more people know what's going on with it and are angry enough to make some changes.

Life in the real world is difficult, complex, and exhausting. We have enough to worry about without giving two shits about your copyrights. If I choose scan my wedding picutres that is between myself and my wife and nobody else and certainly not the F***ING photographer. There are far too many bullshit laws in this country and we cannot afford to waste our time worrying about it when the dinner needs to be cooked, bills paid, and homework finished.

- The People

Re:Quite Honestly

[Quantumstate]

I agree that a balanced program is needed but I would argue that scanning a photograph would come under fair use. The violation would be distributing the scanned image to someone else. To be honest though I would probably look for a photographer who would give me the copyright to the images taken to use as I like. I would be paying them to take photographs for me. I have never looked at this so I have no idea whether I could find a reasonably priced photographer who would do this.

Re:Quite Honestly

[Korbeau]

Sounds to me that the real problem in this case is that copy shops can be led liable in case of copyright violation.

That's something that Google/Youtube/etc. battled long ago to remove. They want the users to be led liable, not the messenger.

Because yes, you can totally copy pictures all you want, even if they are made by a professional photographer, as long as it's under private / fair use.

(source http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html)

Re:Quite Honestly

[FuzzMaster]

scan that wedding picture that a professional photographer took
This is a perfect example of fair use. The photo is protected under copyright, but that does not disallow such copying for personal use.

Re:Quite Honestly

[FrankieBaby1986]

The average citizen thinks you can just grab stuff off the web and use it. The average citizen thinks that if it's there it must be legal. And I'm willing to bet that your average congressman knows not much more than your average citizen.

If this is the case, and has been going on for a long time, but Photogs, Musicians, Movie Producers, Actors, Newspapers, etc all make money despite it, then perhaps it isn't such a big deal?

Besides, what makes copyright infringement so damn important, that it, and not a million other laws, needs to be taught in schools? More people die from accidents caused by assholes not using their turn signals or tailgating than from copyright infringement.

Re:Quite Honestly

[MadCow42]

>>Because yes, you can totally copy pictures all you want, even if they are made by a professional photographer, as long as it's under private / fair use.

Sorry for the late post here, but "Private" does not equate to "Fair Use". Fair use has nothing to do with commercial application / profit... even copying your own family portrait for your own use is not "fair use".

Reproducing a thumbnail of it to publish alongside a critique of a photographer's work... probably fair use. Cropping to a small section to show the grain structure of the film used... probably fair use. Reproducing the whole work for other uses? Probably not.

Re:Quite Honestly

[Korbeau]

Thanks for answering - yes I see your point and agree in part, in fact I knew I was getting in a slippery slope by using the word "private" here, but in this situation I think it kinda makes sense.

The scenarios you mention are blatant exemples of fair use that I don't think would get debated very much, but at its core fair use is a much more ideal, vaguely defined concept, even the law itself asserts so. And about the "has nothing to do with commercial application / profit" part of the argument I'd like to point out that 2 of the 4 fair-use factors mentioned in Copyright Law (section 107) point to commercial value so I would tend to think it is a big part of the equation:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of 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
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

I'd also like to point to (2) which considers the nature of the work. I would tend to think that in a trial, a wedding photography would be considered different than a commercial photo shoot of Birney Spears (or a Paparazzi shot for the matter).

Considering this, I think that in a trial, fair use reproduction of a wedding photograph would include:
  - reframing
  - copy for personal backup
  - electronic copy
  - use on a greeting card
  - copy to put on display in the house
  - copy to send to close family
  - copy to put on a web page, on a Facebook profile etc.

And so on. I would really like to see literature suggesting otherwise.

Thus my main point is that copy-shops should not be held accountable for fair use violation (there could be some rule here, for instance as long as the number of copy asked remains small and is performed for an individual on a non-recurrent basis ...)

Re:Quite Honestly

[MadCow42]

>> Considering this, I think that in a trial, fair use reproduction of a wedding photograph would include:
    - reframing
    - copy for personal backup
    - electronic copy
    - use on a greeting card
    - copy to put on display in the house
    - copy to send to close family
    - copy to put on a web page, on a Facebook profile etc.

And so on. I would really like to see literature suggesting otherwise

Yes, but all your examples above are creating a new product from the original, each with the value of the original, which could have been purchased from the copyright holder. "Fair Use" is not about creating a duplicate or getting around paying for another copy of something... it's not an excuse to not pay.

"Backup" of a physical item is a strange concept, but I guess I might be persueded to listen if you made a digital scan of a photo and archived it in a valut. However, if you start displaying that digital copy on your web page or greeting cards, you've infringed my copyright. I don't see that as a grey area... it's clear infringement.

As an analogy to music (sorry!) - making backup MP3 copies is fine... but posting them on your web page is not. Giving them with friends is not (and yes, I realize that one is debated, but I don't believe successfully).

MadCow.

Re:Quite Honestly

[Korbeau]

This is a very nice subject, I'd like to see jurisprudence on this. I've been interested for a while on the rights you can retain from your public picture taken (usually none), but not about those on the other side of the camera. Is there a case where a family got sued by a wedding photographer and the photographer won in the US or Canada?

For me a photograph at a wedding is nothing more than a band hired to perform a gig at this same wedding where they don't hold musical score rights. They are both hired because they are technically competent, have some artistic insight and can provide a good service.

The photograph or band use their craftsmanship here, as a good auto-repairman or a good jeweller would do. Their intend is not of authorship, unless stated otherwise in their contract. If there is a matter of debate I think it is a matter of consumer right / false advertisment since of course, most photographs or artists in this situation will either be compliant or make a contract making all these things clear beforehand.

(of course, for a non-technical/non-for-hire artist - photograph or painter - I 100% agree with you)

Re:Quite Honestly

[MadCow42]

It certainly is an interesting area - unfortunately I can't quote a case that shows it decided one way or the other though (IANAL, etc).

>>For me a photograph at a wedding is nothing more than a band hired to perform a gig at this same wedding where they don't hold musical score rights

Well... I'd counter that with: does hiring the band give the bride the right to videotape their performance and sell copies of that video online? Probably not.

Photography for hire is a strange one for sure. I guess you need to be explicit in the contract up front on who owns the copyright, otherwise it defaults to the photographer. I know photographers that will sell the copyright to the bride/groom, but for a significant sum (i.e. about the same as their expected profit from the job total). Usually that means they get the negatives / original files too.

By now, it's probably just us debating this, I'm sure. :)

Corporate propaganda

[macdaddy357]

Corporate propaganda passed off as school curriculum? Only in the United States of Avarice.

Re:Corporate propaganda

[PPH]

Yeah. But let the POTUS try and talk to them about staying in school and watch the right wing-nuts throw a fit.

Re:Corporate propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the Movie or Music industry preach to our kids?
That sounds a-okay with me!

Let the president give a motivational speech on the first day of class?
My kid will be staying home! I don't need your liberal propaganda!

*sigh* wish I didn't live here

Re:Corporate propaganda

[Dragonslicer]

Only in the United States of Avarice.

Give it another year or two and it'll be coming to your country, too. We aren't the only country doing stupid stuff, we're just the ones doing it first. In fact, call us "world leaders" so that we'll feel better about it.

Raising good Corperate Consumer citizens....

[Lumpy]

Sharing? that's bad, Stop sharing with billy.

and children, you do know that you kill kittens when you share? Also you are being very bad if you sing a song you heard on the radio without paying for the right to do so?

yes billy, your mother is a criminal for singing "happy birthday" to you yesterday. She is evil and should be put away.

you know kids, it's up to you to watch your parents and report any suspicious or bad behavior.

Re:Raising good Corperate Consumer citizens....

[CodeBuster]

Raising good corporate consumer citizens is what our public education system is designed to do. It was originally based upon the Prussian education system which was crafted to mold loyal citizens and soldiers who followed orders, didn't ask questions, and accepted the information selected and filtered for them by the elites (who themselves received an altogether different education; one designed to groom them for power over their future subjects). Intelligence and independent thought is dangerous for peasants and slaves, or so the thinking went, so it must be discouraged and beaten out of all but the elites at an early age lest we raise a generation who refuses to accept the system and the powers that be.

Re:Raising good Corperate Consumer citizens....

[rwv]

you know kids, it's up to you to watch your parents and report any suspicious or bad behavior.

doubleplusunfunny

Re:Raising good Corperate Consumer citizens....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Your mother sang "Happy Birthday" and did not pay the $5,000 royalty fee?

Let's sue her for $80,000 and make an example out of her!

Capitalism as a Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the summary reminded me for some reason of the discussion when the Discovery Institute came out with textbooks for teaching Intelligent Design in school. Much like everything about religion, this sounds like an attempt at indoctrinating children so they feel guilty for breaking rules they've been taught to believe from a young age. This has absolutely nothing to do with education and everything to do with corporate interest. If this is legitimately put into any schools I would be amazed and disgusted. There are better things for children to be spending their school time on than how to make sure the RIAA is still profitable.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm a musician

[log0n]

Sooner or later they're going to come after me because the A440 I play sounds a bit too similar to Green Day's A440.

God help the drummers with their 40 essential rudiments.

May I be the first to say....

[billius]

don't copy that floppy!

Because we saw how well that campaign worked...

Re:May I be the first to say....

[dexmachina]

When I watched that, its mention of, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" reminded me of when I used to play that as a kid. So I downloaded it.

Re:May I be the first to say....

[hovercycle]

Where have you been? This campaign worked so well that they made a sequel: Don't copy that floppy 2. Don't copy that floppy 2 BTW that guy at the end was selling copies of shit on ebay and stuff! Now he's getting ass raped...

Classrooms as a political playground...

[ivogan]

My daughter is in 3rd grade this year and after reviewing the material I can say that if I hear of this happening in our school, I will be making a b-line to the superintendent's office. We don't need any more politically biased material perverting the minds of our children. If all aspects of the issue were discussed, my stance might be slightly different.

Re:Classrooms as a political playground...

[__aapbzv4610]

I will be making a b-line to the superintendent's office.

I hope you'll be going in a straight line there, as it will be quicker. 'B-line' is actually 'bee-line', meaning the way a bee meanders all over the place on its way from one point to another.

Re:Classrooms as a political playground...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "bee-line", presumably because, "as the crow flies", bees fly in a straight line.

Re:Classrooms as a political playground...

[david_thornley]

I think the GP meant "B-spline", but, frankly, there's much simpler mathematical ways to describe a straight line. It's just a linear function of t for each coordinate in the system.

Re:Classrooms as a political playground...

[value_added]

'B-line' is actually 'bee-line', meaning the way a bee meanders all over the place on its way from one point to another.

Actually "bee line" (or "bee-line", "beeline") means the exact opposite, namely that after collecting nectar, bees don't meander, but return directly to their hive using the most direct route possible (i.e. in a straight line).

You could say the idiom is synonymous with "as the crow flies", but that would invite confusion on the part of some Slashdot users as soon as a budding ornithologist offers the comment that that crows prefer shiny objects over sweet and sticky ones, and the discussion devolves into a series of unrelated comments on the relative airspeeds of African, European and American bees, laden or otherwise.

Now as to whether our anthophilous overlords do actually fly in straight lines when returning to the hive, I don't know.

You're far more generous than I

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents.

I want all the MP/RIAA lawyers and officers die of very painful diseases. Unfortunately we don't always get what we want...

The bonus consequence is...

[Anonymous Coward]

people on the train can't blast their headphones next to me. I'll turn them in for copyright infringement, since they force me to hear music I didn't buy!

REALLY?

[Logical Zebra]

...playing them while your friends come over is illegal

So if my wife and I listen to a CD in the car, I'm violating the law? Should I have purchased two copies of the CD?

That is, perhaps, the absolute stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.

The RIAA really needs to get a better PR wing.

This will work great!

[mucsdnop]

Because after all.. Look how well the abstinence programs work on children!

Goofus and Gallant

[sizzzzlerz]

Goofus copies his CDs for selling or giving away on the street.

Gallant listens to his CDs with headphones so no one else can hear it, thus violating the RIAA's copyright.

Goofus takes the food from record company executive's mouths by downloading his music off of Pirate's Bay.

Gallant tells the RIAA about Goofus so the RIAA cops can break down his door and haul his sorry ass off to jail.

this is a prime example of how the

[nimbius]

RIAA is flagrantly dated in its message and mission. the site features clipart kids from the 90's, one with a device that looks more like a minidisc or walkman player than any IPod or Zune ive ever seen, and both sporting headphones that look nothing like those that might be worn by the average school kid (buds, or clips usually.)

I feel whiney for mentioning it, maybe im wrong...am i the only one rather concerned both kids are black?

RIAA-people don't get laid...

[ZarathustraDK]

...because if they did and begot children they'd know that children always does the opposite of what they're taught if it doesn't seem immediately dangerous. Children will download stuff, generally not get caught and figure out it's not so bad as it's pumped up to be.

Ppersuasive Writing

[pizzach]

Our society has too much of it. When handled inappropriately, it also teaches children to write like raving lunatics for a cause instead of thoughtfully thinking about the entire situation. I think there is far far too much of this kind of writing in our world.

I still remember the DARE program forcing me to write an essay about how drugs are bad for you. I would just like to say, screw you DARE, the drugs from chemotherapy saved my life from cancer, as did steroids when my immune system fell apart and I couldn't eat anymore. Thank you for forcing blanket statements on us.

When you preach things that one-sidedly, you ended up with children knowing you are full of shit and ignore you.

Damages figure, anyone?

[TX297]

With a teacher's help, students then calculate how "big a problem" songlifting isâ"by multiplying the total number of songs by $0.99.

So they're basically admitting that the actual damages are just $0.99 a song? Seems like a way to take the RIAA on under the 8th amendment using their own propaganda against them.

7.8 million

[funkify]

7.8 million by their estimates, eh? That would be what, like 100 songs?

Glad we home-school

[Basildane]

Every time I read something like this, I am glad we home-school our kids.

Re:Glad we home-school

[UBfusion]

I'm afraid home-schooling has more disadvantages than advantages. Most important of all is that your kids will not learn to defend himself in the society jungle.

Make sure they learn a variety of self-defence techniques and first-aid principles to treat their future knife or shotgun wounds.

To the principal

[JustNiz]

Dear Principal,

I will not allow my son to attend school today due to your policy of allowing profit-based "special interest groups" such as the RIAA to use your classroom as a forum to brainwash kids so they get richer.

RIAA Math

[Jason Levine]

Ok, kids. Settle down. Today in RIAA Math, we're going to learn how to calculate damages from online piracy. Let's say Billy here has shared a song online. Now, we don't know exactly how many people downloaded it so we'll just take a random guess: Fifty million. Now the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so...

Yes, Susie? No, just because the song sells on iTunes for $0.99 doesn't mean it's "intellectual property value" is $0.99. Remember, we're talking about "intellectual property value", not "commercial market value."

Anyway, the intellectual property value of that song is $100,000 so Billy now owes the RIAA Fifty million times $100,000, or... Anyone? Right, Thomas. $5 trillion.

Now, best estimates by the RIAA Association of Piracy Estimations are that there are twenty million people like Billy. Since each Billy damages the RIAA by $5 trillion, how much does all online piracy damage the RIAA? Very good, Melissa. $100 quintillion.

Everyone get's an A.... What, Susie? No, those figures aren't worthless. No, I didn't just pluck numbers from out of thin air. World GDP is $60 trillion? Susie, you've obviously been reading some non-RIAA approved materials. See me after class. Everyone else is dismissed.

Re:RIAA Math

[BooRolla]

If what I've seen on the internet is true, things are about to get how with susie and teacher.

$1.98 per month royalty for Sirius?

[bachnit37]

My Sirius subscription expires on the 22nd and I called to renew. After reviewing their packages I selected one and as we got around to taking my card number they said... "Ok, we have you set up for the monthly plan at $12.95 plus the $1.98 artist royalty fee so you will be charged 14.93 a month."

I said not a chance am I paying a royalty fee on top of my subscription fee. You just lost a subscriber.

Re:$1.98 per month royalty for Sirius?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part is the royalty fee IS only $1.98. Makes you wonder what the first $12.95 are going towards/

*lifting

[Dalzhim]

Shoplifting = stealing from a shop Songlifting = copying a song without paying for that copy Weightlifting = stealing weights from a gym Facelifting = stealing someone's look/style Lambdalifting = stealing variables from a function etc.

Re:*lifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Lambdalifting IS dangerous:

int *fn(void) {
    int a = 1;
    return &a;
}

Re:*lifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, I work on the 28th floor! Am I stealing altitude when I go up in the lift?

Re:*lifting

[Dalzhim]

By the way, sorry for the disgusting layout of my post... Here's more readable...

Shoplifting = stealing from a shop
Songlifting = copying a song without paying for that copy
Weightlifting = stealing weights from a gym
Facelifting = stealing someone's look/style
Lambdalifting = stealing variables from a function
etc.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Topping the news for January 15th, 2012: The RIAA through their wholly owned subsidiary, the supreme court, has passed a landmark ruling today banning the use of speakers to play sounds. "These devices have the exclusive function of illegally distributing stolen property. This ruling has been a victory for all law abiding Americans." said deputy director Kenneth Rivera. Days before the gavel fell, the RIAA's enforcement arm conducted raids, confiscating speaker systems. Fines are levied as a function of power output and length of ownership, though the precise formula is kept under wraps. Monday's raids have yielded an average fine of 14 million dollars per home raided in these sting operations.

According to our sources, the next target will be music played in headphones loud enough to hear. When asked, Mr Riviera said "Clearly, if you can make out a beat, some lyrics, or a couple of notes, you can identify the song. If you can do that, the song will be stuck in your head playing over and over. Someone's got to pay for that."

It doesn't actually say that

[ZJ AJ]

...and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal.

Actually, it doesn't say this at all. I'm guessing the summary is referring to this PDF (page 3) where this scenario is presented as one of four where students have to "spot the songlifters." While there's no answer key provided (as these scenarios are meant as jumping-off points for discussion), I believe it's safe to say that the intent is to show that 1 and 3 are songlifters, while 2 (the one referenced in the summary) and 4 are not.

Don't copy that floppy.....2

[Anonymous Coward]

Two game loving kids get a lesson from DP....nuff said!! LOL DP...

I think that would be impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.

Step 2: There is no step 2.

Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.

I know that exaggerating is generally a bad form of argumentation but you did use the phrases 'never, under any circumstances' and 'any belief' and I would just like to point out how absurd that is. For the definition of indoctrination I'll choose Wiktionary's "to teach with a biased or one-sided ideology".

The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children? The belief that other ethnicities and people who disagree with your view should still be considered human? Hell, the trust in critical thinking, belief that scientific method (not referring to any specific theories or their validity) should be preferred over blind trust is a belief in itself.

Children can not just be taught to critical thinking. Even ignoring all the problems with the ways with which their brain is still undeveloped, they need axioms to base their critical thinking on. Those axioms, or values, don't define how they'll end up thinking but they certainly define the limits of possible results and the problems tackled first. A person might think women are inferior and can be held as property even if he thinks critically. His axioms just might be different than ours or his priorities might differ. Perhaps he has a good theory about how the society as a whole would benefit from men being able to exchange and trade in women though individual women would lose their human rights. Or perhaps he simply doesn't consider right to freedom as important... Or perhaps he would end up thinking about women the way we do but his priorities are different and he considers that very unimportant detail.

All the children have to get their axioms from somewhere. They don't live in a vacuum and they don't come up with those all by themselves. We can argue about who should teach them those values (School, society, parents, 4chan, the church...) but I don't think that we should strive to avoid teaching them those things. In fact, I think it is our responsibility to teach our moral values (all the way from appreciating human life to fair use) to our children by the best of our abilities. Choosing to not raise your child to your religion is not choosing to not teach him your values. It is about choosing which ones of your values to teach him.

Re:I think that would be impossible

[Bob9113]

The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children?

Definitely not. They should be taught to consider the costs and benefits of things like war, social support systems to keep poor people alive and healthy, prohibition of dangerous products versus informed consent, and other trade-offs of human life versus other opportunity costs. And if they reach a different conclusion than we elders have come to accept, than it should be us who question our assumptions.

The belief that other ethnicities and people who disagree with your view should still be considered human?

No. We should teach them about how making slaves free men ultimately lead to increased GDP. About how women entering the labor force after World War II was a major boost to productivity. About all the rational reasons that prejudice is inefficient. Rational comprehension of why prejudice is bad is a much more powerful weapon than some dogmatic statement that it is "bad".

I know this is idealized, and that there will always be bias that leaks in -- but it should always be the priority to base all education on rational constructs and the leaks of dogma should be stemmed whenever discovered. Reading is important not because I like to read, but because it enables children to communicate. Math is important not because I'm a math geek, but because it enables children to solve problems.

If you believe in something, and it has a rational foundation, teach the rational foundation. If you believe something but cannot come up with a rational foundation, challenge your belief until you can find a rational basis, or until you set it aside.

Teaching beliefs instead of rational foundations is to teach children to accept ideology. Down that path lies our current political system of entrenched party-line marchers, shouting each other down at every opportunity. Closed ears, closed minds, and vitriol-spewing mouths. Ignorance and anger. It is hurting our society.

Re:I think that would be impossible

[WNight]

The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children?

Nope, because it's ridiculous.

Not only is it untrue, but you and everyone else who purport to believe it are lying through your teeth.

There are BILLIONS of potentially dying people on this planet. People who really only need food and shelter for a while to drag themselves out of their mess. But nobody gives it to them because they're foreigners, and foreign countries need to self-govern (ie, hold their own people slaves), etc. If you really thought life was even the slightest bit sacred you'd be helping Cuban refugees get to the USA, doing something yourself (rather than protesting, yawn) about Iran's elections, the slaughter of the Tamil, etc.

But, that statement is provably wrong. The only value the leaders of North Korea have, for instance, is very negative. If they were brutally murdered today the lives of their people would improve greatly, even if chaos broke out, simply because their slavers would be dead.

Ditto a long line of people, including RIAA execs, the organizers of the Rwandan genocide, those who arranged earlier pro-Tutsi slaughters, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, etc.

A well-spent bullet, applied by a non-indoctrinated child, could have ended WW2 before it started. Pity the Iraqis that nobody shot GW before he organized the war that has killed over a million of them. Pity the modern North Koreans - if they'd killed Kim Il-Sung a long time ago they wouldn't be plagued by his defective offspring now, millions more of them would be alive and South Kora wouldn't be literally, under the gun.

Universal value of human life, my ass.

Re:I think that would be impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

> We should teach them about how making slaves free men ultimately lead to increased GDP.

If you could live a life of luxury with dozens of (very poor) slaves serving you, why give a crap about GDP? Perhaps a system could be invented that allows for slavery and a GDP comparable to that of a 'free' nation to coexist. What then?

Re:I think that would be impossible

[jedidiah]

Nonsense. Plenty of people throw money at the poor and downtrodden of the world.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always get where it really needs to go. In many cases, the only way you would ever ensure that it did would be to nominate some country as "GloboCop" and have them ensure there isn't any "local interference".

Re:I think that would be impossible

[WNight]

Or get off your ass and give the downtrodden the things they need so desperately. If someone gets in your way, go through them. Hire mercenaries with money, and give the poor food.

That, and nothing less, is what people need.

By participating in the fund-a-dictator program you're only making things worse. By pretending this is help you're ensuring it'll never get better.

By calling, at least, for the death of the dictators you'd be starting social change that while not feeding the current victims would at least remove the problem so that there were less future victims.

Why can't we ALL be global protectors?

Re:I think that would be impossible

[Bob9113]

If you could live a life of luxury with dozens of (very poor) slaves serving you, why give a crap about GDP?

Because the very notion of society is inherently coupled to maximizing the total ability to satisfy wants. The ability of slaves to satisfy their wants is extremely low. So in your example, assuming two dozens of slaves: 1/25th of society would be satisfying more of his or her wants, but the total satisfaction of wants across all 25 people would be lower than if all 25 were free and receiving an equal share of compensation/productivity.

As an aside, we are not there in the United States -- over the past 40 years we have massively skewed the comp/prod ratio curve upward, which has the same systemic inefficiency problems, though to a lesser degree, as if we had slavery.

Re:I think that would be impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

'the very notion of society is inherently coupled to maximizing the total ability to satisfy wants'

Then why not claim the slaves are not part of society (like cattle)? Accepting the slaves as members of society would obviously reduce quality of living for the slave owners, and while doing so would increase the absolute amount of happiness in the society, average happiness would go down.

The optimal solution for a selfish person would be to shape society in such a way that it maximizes THEIR happiness, not that of the rest of society (you might argue that does not fit your definition of society and therefor this would not be a society, which leads to the question 'why be part of a society when better alternatives (for me as an individual) exist?'). If you think you can manage to become a dictator/cult leader/whatever who can get whatever he wants, by all means try. You wouldn't be the first, and some actually manage to pull it off and are 'living the good life' this very moment.

I for one hold no such illusions. I don't have the charisma to do the 'leader' thing :). Well, that and the fact that I was indoctrinated that human life should be valued and my conscience only lets me get away with minor acts of 'evil'. With that in mind I try to aim for a society that treats people fairly, although it's hard to define what that should be like.

Comming back to the part of your post I quoted, which of the following societies would you define as being 'optimal':
1 (absolute or average happiness):
A. A society of 100 very happy people
B. A society of 100 million people who are merely content

2 (current happiness or total happiness over time):
A. A society where everybody is very happy but has unsustainable lifestyles that will come back to haunt later generations
B. A society where everybody is merely content and has sustainable lifestyles

3 (other societies)
A. A society where everybody is very happy that exploits those who are not part of that society
B. A society where everybody is merely content that does not exploit anyone

I think 'maximizing total ability to satisfy wants' is way too vague and allows for complete crap to happen.

Re:I think that would be impossible

[Bob9113]

Then why not claim the slaves are not part of society (like cattle)?

Hunh. I must reconsider my position. You raise a very strong point. Thank you!

Morality VS Public Education

[Anonymous Coward]

It would seem to me, that until people realize stealing is wrong, it isn't going to matter how much 'education' there is. People just don't understand that there are things that are not ok to 'share' because they don't have the right to pass it along. My teenage nieces don't think a thing about it. Don't know how they're going to teach morality in schools... My wife was a public school teacher for several years and that was a problem.

And kid's respond

[Anonymous Coward]

"You mean I can get music for free?!"

D.A.R.E. makes kids more likely to use drugs, so I don't see why this wouldn't make them more likely to pirate music.

Playing music for friends, illegal?

[Jason Levine]

Ok, I'm not a fan of this RIAA "Music Rules" program, but where did the article say that making a personal use copy and then playing it when a friend came over was illegal? I looked at the article and the teacher's PDF but didn't see anything about that case. There was the case where someone burned a CD copy and gave it to a friend, but that would be copyright infringement.

only 7.8 million dollars then???

[advocate_one]

right, memorise that number and throw it back in their faces every time they start pulling ridiculous billion dollar figures for damages out of the air again...

desperate?

[fireball84513]

i doubt this will have any impact at all, just look at how lousy D.A.R.E. did in pubic schools. in the end, they're probably not even going to remember what some teacher said on the subject when they're out with their friends listening to the music they love

RIAA are crooks

[xxuserxx]

The media industry only needs to do one thing to stop a big percentage of piracy. Stop ripping people off! CDs and games are way overpriced and out of reach of what people can actually afford. Just because you can pay for it does not mean your affording it. If CD's were 6 dollars I would start buying them immediately. Games should be no more than 20 dollars. Media production is dirt cheap with the exception of blue ray. The Media industry has a right to make money but wake up people they are trying to squeeze every penny they can out of us and that is not ok. I have not bought a game or CD in years and I will not until they start respecting me. If they choose not to then I have no moral issues with my current options.

Re:"Little Brother" Doctorow, DCMA, then DHS?

[mcgrew]

That book is an excellent read, and I would recommend it to all of you. The forward (or is it the afterward? Been a while since I've read it) has an excellent argument against RIAA tactics. In a nutshell, nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many artists have starved in obscurity.

That link in the parent comment isn't to a place to buy the book, the book itself is freely downloadable in many e-reader formats, as well as PDF and HTML from there. Clearly, Doctorow wants you to read his book! If you want the dead tree version you can buy it, or check it out of your public library for free.

Notice that although some would say "Despite" but I would say "partly because" he gives it away for free, he's a best seller on the NYT list.

What are the chances it backfires?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this will have an outcome similar to the (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) D.A.R.E program. Independent studies reported that the program did nothing to reduce drug usage and some even suggested that the program helped increase drug usage by inadvertently glamorizing drugs and drug usage.

It's the bad boy effect. Kids will look at this and think: "squares buy their music but a real badass steals it". Imagine your children watching a cheesy video where some goody two shoes says no to friends pressuring her to share her mp3s. You know every kid in that classroom is thinking that the person not sharing their music is "totally not cool".

This is why kids start smoking at a young age. They do it exactly because they're not supposed to do it. At least with smoking there may be a disapproving parent behind the scenes that might influence them not to pick up the habit through sincerity. However, with sharing music there is a good chance that these kids go home to parents who feel that the RIAA is an organization of greedy bastards and the only reason not to share music is not to get caught. In other words they don't respect the law they just fear the consequences and, in my experience, kids rarely fear the consequences as much as adults.

Just look at the "success" of the various abstinence programs that some educators would rather impose on our children instead of some honest sex education and a box of condoms. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls and if you try to push abstinence on them all you do is encourage them to have more anal sex. Way to go. Way to think that one ahead. Are people really that naive about human nature? Do they really think they can convince horny teenagers not to have sex? That's how successful convincing kids to pay money they don't have for something they can download from their friend in half a second for free is going to be. Especially when the alternative is not having the latest Beyonce hit. What kid wants to suffer that "humiliation"?

Arrow

[b4upoo]

Maybe the Charley Manson family should have a well defined policy regarding the RIAA. Perhaps the SLA folks should help the RIAA obtain justice right in their own homes. Maybe the KKK could shut the RIAA up. The point being it's time not to be nice!

I sent an email...

[samcan]

I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...

Dear Sir or Madam,

It was with great interest that I perused the materials on the Music Rules website. (On a side note, it doesn't work properly with Firefox 3.0.) I agree that piracy of music is a problem, and some reform of copyright law is needed. However, I believe that your educational materials are misleading and sometimes directly contradict actions of the RIAA in the past.

In the teacher's guide, on page 4, the answer to question #2 (left column) is given:

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

This however contradicts earlier cases where the RIAA has pursued music pirates for doing this exact same thing. A Washington Post article from 2007:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The teacher's guide also ignores the term, "fair use." While fair use is quite limited in U.S. law, generally being restricted to purposes of research and parody, if the RIAA wants to teach third-graders the term, "DMCA notice," why not "fair use?"

Coverage of alternative forms of copyright appears to be non-existent as well, such as the Creative Commons licenses, which allow the creator to turn over specific rights to others, such as the right to modify, or distribute. Public domain coverage is missing as well. Old recordings from before 1923 (such as Edison's early record player) on the Library of Congress site thus would be public domain, and free to download. The materials would scare kids into thinking that everything is copyrighted, and thus illegal.

The materials also should recommend sites where music can be legally downloaded for free. One example is Musopen.com, which contains recordings of public domain works, but also contemporary works where the composer has expressed willingness for his music to be shared. . Warnings should be balanced with alternatives. Also, you could recommend the students to whenever possible purchase music directly from the artist, so that the artist is paid a fair amount.

U.S. federal government training materials ignore this distinction, preferring the "all downloaded music is illegal" mantra. For example, see this training website (it's screen 27 of 48). I can disprove this by visiting this Wikipedia link, where I can download a copy of the W.W.S.S. Wind Ensemble with Dennis Smith playing Arthur Pryor's arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland," released under the EFF's Open Audio License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Pryor_-_Blue_Bells_of_Scotland,_for_Trombone_and_Band.ogg). Similarly, recordings by U.S. military bands, being created by the U.S. government, are generally also public domain.

Copyright reform does need to be effected in the United States. The clause in the Constitution governing copy

how do you teach respect for IP

[billmil]

The poster seems hostile to everything the RIAA says. I too distrust them. That said, I think "teaching children to respect intellectual property" deserves some attention --more so now because the technology changes make copying easier than ever.

I personally think it's flat-out wrong to download/watch a pirated movie while it's still in the theaters. Is it as wrong to download an out-of-print video on Bit Torrent?

If it's wrong to copy music from a struggling artist, why is it less wrong to copy The Blueprint #3?

Fwiw, Johannes Brahms made his money by selling rights to music publishers : he would transcribe his string works (e.g. string quartets) for piano ..people bought the sheet music to play in their own home for their own entertainment. To clarify: most homes people had musical skill to read and play Brahms on the piano. And that's how Austrian folks entertained themselves.

Times have changed indeed.

It's not all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

After all the poster for kids does warn them to "Beware...of programs that might infect your computer with viruses or spyware."

Turning them off Windows at that age can't be bad...:-)

Question for the local folks

[swordgeek]

Can someone from the US explain to me how this material gets into the schools and (as it appears) the curriculum?

My recollection is that the materials teachers present is board-reviewed and carefully developed. This seems to be an injection without any review.

Re:Question for the local folks

[PenguinGuy]

Money and lots of it. If you are a school district and short on cash, RIAA showing up with bags full of money and asking you to brainwash^H ^H ^H educate the kids in exchange for the bags is a very good offer. So you do it and hope you can sleep at night.

But then they have drugs that help you sleep real good.

Attacking sharing will lead to the end of humanism

[UBfusion]

I'm not sure a kid has the mental capability of discriminating between sharing candy and sharing music.

I'm afraid that the lesson the kids would perceive is "don't ever share anything, you never know whether it's OK or not and from what I heard today most probably it'll get me in serious trouble".

There is no research indicating that elevating the status of sharing music to a 'crime' will not negatively affect the kids' willingness to share with their brothers, help people in need or have empathy for the suffering.

Such indoctrination will certainly help destroy what's left from our humanism: In the future, when you get hit by a car, expect no one to help you. When in need, expect nobody to lend you ten bucks. And when you get ill, prepare to die alone. Because all sharing is bad.

The reality of the situation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps this is naivety, but what are the chances that any teacher is going to bother with this drivel?

The righteous-indignation level is definitively high here at Slashdot, but does it serve any purpose? To me, this seems like the most laughable tactic the RIAA has put forward yet. Teachers have real tasks and curriculum to work through, and I find it highly absurd to think that any schools or teachers across the country would even bother.

Reader's Digest version

[iperkins]

Consuming music in such a way that the RIAA does not get all of the money is illegal, immoral and fattening

Re:"In a blatant campaign devoid of any subtlety"

[jedidiah]

Nope. There's still the professional bootlegger.

Although you don't hear much about that sort of pirate anymore.

This is what you could call a "pirate's pirate" in that they manage to inspire contempt from other (non-commercial) pirates.

If money changes hand for the pirated work then the "losses" are no longer just wishful thinking.

"Songlifting" - coining new words is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that any school curriculum should stick to using existing English language words, not absorb new "marketingese" terms like "Songlifting" which has obviously been coined to make it sound like it implies a crime has occurred, as with Shoplifting. Any school lessons to be created should stick to terms with agreed upon definitions, rather than accept meaning laden propaganda terms developed by an organization with a sizable stake in the situation.

Allowing the RIAA to insert its propagandistic definitions of what is or is not a crime into the curriculum of the school system, ought to be a crime :P

Sure, its probably relevant that school kids be taught something about copyright - say a few hours out of a year could be devoted to a discussion of the nature of copyright and intellectual property as concepts - by sometime in High School when the kids might be developed enough to absorb highly abstract and conflicting concepts. HOWEVER, the curriculum for such a discourse should be defined by someone who is neutral to the arguments and capable of coming up with lessons that explore all sides of the issue, not by some private organization with major stakes in shaping public opinion and which has a penchance for suing the living shit out of people to gain a portion of its livelihood. This is like getting the Mafia to provide lessons on organized crime in the US (actually its fairly closely the same).

RIAA recuirts elementary kids as spies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone catch the RIAA asking students to be detectives and gather data on "songlifting"

Part 2
Now find out if songlifting is a real problem in your community. Use this char
interview family members and friends about where they get their music. Bring
findings back to class and combine them with those of your classmates. Use y
data to figure out how much songlifting occurs among the people you know.

The children

[nurb432]

Are the future.. Train 2 generations of children and you have effectively changed the future to your bidding.

Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite the contrary. Do raise their statistics. Their transfer volume statistics, more precisely. Reload, Shift-Reload, take all you can. Make your visit count.

ultimate lulzoriffica

[executivechaos]

hahahahaha this is going to backfire something fierce.

RIAAIdiots.

Can I use file-sharing software...?

[Jahava]

Taken (without permission) from here, commentary mine:

Can I use file-sharing software to exchange music with other computers?

Although file-sharing software can be legal, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that file-sharing companies can be held responsible for encouraging people to illegally exchange copyrighted material over the Internet in this way.

So it can be legal, but file sharing sites are run by guilty bad guys.

Individuals who use file-sharing sites to upload and download copyrighted music without permission can also be sued or prosecuted.

That's about as straightforward as you can get...

In addition to these risks, file-sharing software gives others direct access to your computer hard drive and any private information, such as medical and financial records, that may be stored there.

Wait ... what? Here they drop their PC "may" and "can", and straight-up say that file sharing software lets others access your important private data. This is a complete lie. It's not even partially true.

File-sharing software also makes computers more vulnerable to viruses, and may contain spyware, which is designed to feed information about your online activities to a third party, impeding your computerâ(TM)s performance in the process.

Also stating absolutely that file sharing software makes your computer slow and puts viruses on it. Also complete bullshit.

If the RIAA were presenting a reasonable view of copyright, I'd applaud them. This is pure FUD bullshit filled with not only bias, but flat-out lies. Any teacher that presents this curriculum should be fired immediately.

Re:Can I use file-sharing software...?

[SilverEyes]

Partially true that file-sharing may allow clueless users to unwittingly share their data by accidentally sharing it. (Like say, everything in My Documents, because that's where the root of their music is). Also, as "trusted" networked software with lots of open network connections, it increases the attack surface of the computer (and users are more likely to disable firewalls, forward ports, run it as admin, etc).

That said, yes, it is FUD.

Where's the license?

[Jahava]

I don't know if they can. I don't see anything explicitly granting permission for this material to be used or distributed publicly. If I were a school, I'd be wary of getting sued for reproducing and distributing materials clearly copyrighted by the RIAA (see the bottom of each PDF).

Educating the children

[Anonymous Coward]

Little Johnny raises his hand
"So your saying that we can get songs without paying for them? AWESOME!"

Re:"Little Brother" Doctorow, DCMA, then DHS?

[Globally Mobile]

There is also a really great afterword part focused from a kids point of view complete with experiments, such as building a wifi antennae booster, and other such. Been a while sense I read through it. Another author that throws some of their stuff out there for free for people to read and or buy etc (CC license) is Charlie Stross. He has a bit of fun with the RIAA in Accelerando. He likens them to the oldschool mafioso. Literal leg-breakers.

You forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Singing "Happy Birthday" is also copyright infringement.

the 3 r's

[Anonymous Coward]

And we wonder why kids today cant read or add. Schools seriously need to stop teaching this type of bull**** and start teaching what they are supposed to teach.

We have highschool students graduating at 3rd world level academic performance partialy because of s*** like this.

ob ratm

[10am-bedtime]

Nothin' proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya

To quote a music artist in his impassioned speech

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote a music artist in his impassioned speech to Congress:

"My songs are like my children. Please don't let them take my kids away from me..."

Downloading MP3s and STEALING from music artists is just plain THEFT! Not only that, it's also KIDNAPPING. And because you're taking food out of Madonna & Metallica's mouth, it's also ATTEMPTED HOMICIDE.

You are found guilty on all 4 counts. Sentencing is 400 years with no chance of parole and $4 million. Please proceed to the drive-thru window and a clerk will process your case number...

didn't they?

[biscon]

As they are directly benefiting from the Unions so even if they try to teach both sides it makes it seem that Unions will benefit the Underclass at a slight expense to the upperclass, Created such advancements such as Minimum Wage, Weekends and Holidays.

uhm didn't they?. I acknowledge that unions come with their own set of problems regarding corruption etc but here in the EU at least we have the unions to thank for minimum wage and weekends (back in the day people only got sunday off because they had to go to church). Why are americans so afraid of unions? I mean big business have their own organisations looking out for their interests, why not the workers? Do you really think you would be better off, if workers never organized and made demands of their employer?

RIAA Appeal to Hormones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how their poster has 11 girls but only two boys... Also interesting how several of the girls are much more developed that the age group they're targeting...

Well, you won't have to.

[Anonymous Coward]

As an elementary teacher, I can tell you with 100% certainty that no elementary teacher will ever bother to teach this stuff. We have too much mandated state curriculum to teach as it is, and the crap that the RIAA offers up (it really is crap) is really too lame to teach. Working with younger kids, you develop a "lameness" filter, and subconsciously use it in selecting optional teaching materials, as you want what you teach to appeal to your learners somewhat. Teaching really lame stuff is a waste of time as it loses kid's interest, and the truth is you cease to be relevant when you have lost their interest.

No teacher would ever navigate to the RIAA website, download their materials, then teach it to their class.

DMCA and fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't Bulllleeeve no one has mentioned that the *iaa's have effectively made fair use illegal, via the DMCA, best law their money could buy.

Sure, I can make a copy of a DVD, but oops, no I can't, and certainly not in "plain text" as that would mean I'd broken a copy prevention effort. And, the **AA's have made sure that this is illegal, even if done for "fair use".

Why can't I rip my aging VCR tapes and put them on DVD? You can't get a license to make a DVD burner unless you sign off on the idea that it cannot make DVD's of things that were protected by macrovision or any other abortion that involves not getting what the customer paid for.

We've lost, we should just give up -- and catch a cluebat for taste anyway, all they make is junk.

I am a musician, like one of the above posters, and we turned down a contract with one of the majors because we were already doing better than what was offered by them.

Yup, gigging, selling CD's both at the gig and at record stores we put them into ourselves (we used DiscMaster to get upc's and make that possible) and of course, the T shirts -- all a better deal with our own little bit of added initiative than what Warner offered, by far. Our guitarist (really good) paid off his mortgage with the money we made. We promoted via internet and gave away low quality mp3s (low bitrate) and said you can have this free, no problem, but if you want the high quality, you gotta send in the dough, and we charged $8 per CD, and sold quite a few (many thousands).

Being engineers, we didn't fall for the "you have to have a major producer and of course must record in an RIAA slaved studio, and BTW, we're not telling you but the clock starts before you get there, and yes, the complementary pot in the lobby is $400 a hit, and yes, the clock is running all the time. That's the "risk" they claim to take -- they don't even consider signing you until after you've at least done the B circuit and have a big following. People like Brittny aside -- that's how hard they "take a risk on developing talent". Eg none at all. What a load of dingoes kidneys.

We did it all on our own (being engineers, we went on to much higher paying work when heavy metal got to be a little on the aerobic side -- and people could start to tell shaved head from simply bald) and did fine without those turkeys.

Support your local guys! Go see them, buy their stuff, and some of them will get to be at least as good as any of the fakers the RIAA promotes anyway. You'll be helping music get better, rather than forced into the lowest common denominator so the RIAA can make more (they think). After all, look what that's done for quality on TV. Nuff said?

Don't Copy That Floppy: Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

That's basically what it sounds like. (Except it's for music this time around.) And how well did that work the first time around. No, seriously? (lol)

Anyone remember watching this B.S. back in the day, and then the next week after seeing it going back to business as usual?

And even after that, just how well did the "Napster BaaaaaaaaaD!" type campaign that was on TV work out?

So how is it going to convince kids and adolescents this time around? The kids that will do whatever, will do whatever despite what they're told.

in all these scenarios

[rhendershot]

Stop picking on Billy!

I thought I just read something about this

[aynoknman]

Didn't I just read a slashdot story on the death stench of insects?

Say don't, they do.

[Helldesk Hound]

> On the bright side, it includes math showing that the total damages from
> copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million.

How does the RIAA know that "children" have made $7.8 million American dollars worth of illegal copies of music?

Heh heh. Why doesn't the RIAA sue all those children for those known copyright infringements?

I mean, Its already tried to sue people with no Internet connections.

Surely if anything, this would make children more aware than before that they are able to make copies of CDs.

Disadvantaged Children (Free Music)

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

There is a lot of poverty on the Planet which you cannot ignore. I can tell you that I came from a very poor family indeed, I wore second hand clothes and shoes as a child and life was very tough and learned respect for other people's property, however Music was the only thing that kept me alive and inspired me to work hard and be successful. The notion of the RIAA trying to teach kids that getting some music over p2p is a crime is "lower than a snakes belly". When people some children and families are living in dire conditions and music is the only thing they have. Music does wonderful things to people, it breaks down barriers of communication regardless of race, religion or any other circumstance including war! The RIAA could do something very positive and have their own p2p credit system for disadvantaged families/children so they do not have to pay for music. I do not know of any Artist/Musician who would deny disadvantaged children access to music. Tune of the day is by Al Jarreau "Boogie Down" also a family friend, I cannot link the ch00n without his permission but what I can do is link Hugh Masekela "don't go lose it baby" here who I met in New York http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tih7wwc31lo Be inspirational!

American companies brainwashing american kids

[unity100]

enjoy. i bet they will even attempt to do this with your OWN money through public funds in near future.

noone give me shit about 'american dream' and 'big brother' anymore. this happens when you dont have the 'big brother' -> your OWN government controlled by YOU, cracking down 'private interests' attempting to rip your freedoms and brainwash YOUR kids for their OWN interests.

Unfortunate mistake, you make...

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing, Arithmetic, and Reading are not three "R"s, and this repeated stupidity, obvious to even 6 year olds, generates distrust and a lack of credibility in the education process. What they do spell, is WAR, against common sense, against logic, and against reality. We all need to learn, most of all, Self Control, Respect for self and others, and Positive Attitude. Which all seem to be left by the wayside in favor of glorious WAR.
Yes, I'm a "failed hippy", but I learned to read and write and ennumerate just fine, despite "schooling" destroying most of my natural interest in all 3 of these topics, amongst several other topics rendered stale enough to become ugly parodies of their true natures: music, art, history, sports, nature, architecture, philosophy...
This dogmatism (3 Rs) always hurts my brain when I hear it - why do otherwise apparently intelligent people so eagerly display their willing ignorance, conformity, and lack of imagination.
I now know of university graduates who can barely spell, add or use a pen - the computer revolution has largely obviated the need for these "basics" - who actually make a shit load of money, and they seemed to have learned that your rigidity is something to be exploited for their own empowerment.
Rock on, Mr 3R. I hope you're not one of my children's teachers.