Slashdot Mirror
German Publishers Want Monopoly On Sentences
Glyn Moody writes "You think copyright can't get any more draconian? Think again. In Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for 'a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder. According to the drafts circulating on the Internet, permission shall be obtainable exclusively by closing an agreement with a new collecting society which will be founded after the drafts have matured into law. Depending on the particulars, new levies might come up for each and every user of a PC, at least if the computer is used in a company for commercial purposes.' Think that will never work because someone will always break the news cartel? Don't worry, they've got that covered too. They want to 'amend cartel law in order to enable a global "pooling" of all exclusive rights of all newspaper publishers in Germany in order to block any attempt to defect from the paywall cartel by a single competitor.' And rest assured, if anything like this passes in Germany, publishers everywhere will be using the copyright ratchet to obtain 'parity.'"
Dying creatures thrash about as they go to meet their doom.
News at 11 (please don't sue me gemany)
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
"German Publishers Want Monopoly On Sentences" I'm posting this now before /. can sue me for it.
Raters gon' rate.
It's coming and big corporations are not part of it.
Knowing how German works there is clearly lots of room for creativity in word construction (or is that Wortbildungkreativität?) :D
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
What a bunch of Nazis.
disagree with the proposal. If no one else, the pirate party member in the German parliament will surely be a critical voice...
I don't think Germany had the baby boom, and not many people would consider the Nazis the greatest generation
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I really, really hope they do this.
Of course the consequences will be awful but at least the anti-software patent people will have a perfect analogy for their arguments and one that the public (and politicians) can understand.
No sig today...
I wonder what the definition of "newspaper" will be for the purpose of this law--will it be dead-tree only? Otherwise someone should generate all possible combination of words resulting in (perhaps nonsense) sentences of lets say 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 words, and then of course protect them with this law.
Once the list is generated, the now idle servers can be stuffed up the ass of the greedy bastards who want this law.
Most of Europe, Germany included, did indeed have a baby boom after World War II, much like America did. Baby booms are quite common after devastating conflicts, regardless of who "won". It's society's way of making up for the loss of life, and to handle the grief associated with such losses. We've seen it happen throughout history, not just due to war, but due to significant natural disasters, as well.
And the Nazis weren't the equivalent of America's Greatest Generation. They were from earlier generations. Most of the American leaders at that time weren't part of the Greatest Generation, either, with many of them being born well before 1900.
The Greatest Generation includes people born after World War I, from 1918 to 1945. These were the people who fought in WWII, but many did so against their will, regardless of nation, as conscripts rather than volunteers. Many disagreed with the stances and actions of their political leaders, but would've faced a bullet in the head were they to resist.
The flip side, though, is that pro-patent people could also use this to their advantage. Imagine this exchange:
Anti-patent person: Software patents are ridiculous! It would be like trying to claim ownership over a sentence!
Pro-patent person: Well, copyrights on sentences have been granted, so there!
Palm trees and 8
I don't speak German or read German newspapers, but from my knowledge of english-language newspapers, Headlines are raely sentences, and often don' make sense..
Often they are written to be a clever play on words. I suspect tht there is a headline writting class in journalism schools.
Anyway since headlines are a very short summary of an event, and a lot of events are similar to past events. (eg man drowns in flodded river) I don't think they could be copyrighted.
I'm coming to the conclusion that some people have such a sociopathic sense of entitlement that they are unfit for living among humans. Anyone who takes steps to use force of law (which ultimately comes from the barrel of a gun) to steal from society without regard is a dirty pirate and should be dealt with as such.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This is to inform you that the headline
"German Publishers Want Monopoly On Sentences"
infringes on our trademark, Monopoly. Please refrain from using this word in your headlines, or contact us for licensing arrangements. Further use will result in legal action.
The Germans can have the right to that particular "word order".....
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I suggest a "period."
To whoever modded this post "informative:" it was obviously a joke. Either mod it "funny" or mod it "lame" (yes, I propose that we add "-1 Lame" to the moderation system).
Palm trees and 8
If, however they patented the construction of headlines by employing the same kind of absurd semantic abstractions that allow borderline retards to will software patents into existence... Eye-Pee institutions would be only too eager to accommodate such misguided stupidity.
We have a monopoly on kicking their ass.
These publishers need to learn a little about combinometrics. The Associated Press said they wanted to be able to copyright phrases as short as five words. Consider a 500 words story which would have 495 five word phrases which could then match up to anything that was ever written -- or just try googling for the exact string. I just googled the string containing the 2nd-6th words of this comment, "said they wanted to be", and got 3.2 million hits. If AP had gotten their way with the copyrights bit, AP would have had to have determined who had the rights to this phrase and negotiate use with the owner. Then AP would have to search for the owner of the string containing the 3rd to 7th words, "they wanted to be able" which had 7.8 million hits. And so on. Further this would have to be repeated for six, seven, ... word strings. Someone must have pointed out to AP how they would be not just hoisted, by destroyed by their own petard.
This inane copyright that the German publishers are proposing would end up preventing them from writing headlines.
> On the other hand, it is unusual that the U.S. would agree to agree to
> another country's intellectual property regimen: It doesn't have to.
I guess that must be why the USA never signed the Berne convention, which would have drastically expanded copyright owner's rights.
Oh. Wait...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Guess Il take out a patent on having bright ideas, then. Any bright idea will then belong to me.
Or snide remarks. That's a good one. Oh, there's a world of activity ahead.
If this goes on, then, will everyone be forced to develop their own language, eventually ? What about translators between individuals ? Will they be possible or viable without large contracts and at least two different patents ? Will there be "club" OR "group" translators? Imagine the legal complexity! Or a "lengua general". Or inter-group translator translators ? Get real !
Solves the problem of humanity actually evolving, though. Nature, of course, might just cut through the bostercaria and make people telepathic. Until someone patents the genes on that, of course. Artificial interpersonal electronic "telepathy", though, might be a bit easier. But the open source version could have an operational issue, or two.
Is someone trying to get German press blacklisted in the world ?
This view seems at least as old as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriété?, 1840 (quite a different school of thought than Objectivism for sure).
With respect to Ayn Rand's contributions to be revisited for the present debate, one might rather point at the bureaucrats' stance in Atlas Shrugged:
Not wanting their laws observed but broken to cash in on guilt as it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
One thing's for sure if you could get the followers of both authors to agree:
The proposed bill would be, to rehash Lawrence Lessig's take on the dreaded DMCA, "bad law and bad policy."
(c) 2010, Anonymous Coward.
Fools` Day was two months ago!
I thought the judicial system has the monopoly on that!
a sentence in German has roughly the length of a book in English, so they're just bringing things up to parity with the US.
>In Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for 'a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder
This is not quite true. The auxiliary copyright ("Leistungsschutzrecht", draft leaked: http://www.irights.info/index.php?q=node/880) is mostly aimed against big players such as Google (News) who systematically and continuously reuse headlines, snippets and images from publishers for their own profit (selling ads) without paying (in the publisher's mind: adequate) royalties. The average blogger commenting (and quoting) a certain news story is not meant to be affected... but, of course we know, laws like these tend to get out of hand.
Members of the North American music cabal claim that simple chord changes are copyrightable and so exclusively theirs. They have been ordering take down notices for showing such things as the chord changes to Knocking on Heavens Door for example, which has the same chord changes as a million other songs going back thousands of years.
Wow, it completely turns the concept of public domain on its head. Watch the mad rush as people snatch up exclusive rights to publish old works like the bible.... Complete insanity.
Every German who didn't vote for the Piratenpartei is personally responsible for this law.
When did the fourth estate become the fourth reich?
All our sentences are yours. We will descend into the preliterate morass (oops, that is one of your sentences isn't it).
Bye now.
T-mobile = Deutsche Telecom already claimed magenta as their brand color at the EU trade mark certificate bureau. The next step is a patent on water.
It violates my patent on stupid ideas.
I want monopoly on "First post!"
Scientific publishers want to be able to license works at the paragraph level - ostensibly to allow them to create mashups from current works. But once they can do this how small a chunk will become fair use?
What? Control of information from the same people that gave us the National Socialist Party? Never!!!
And how many fail on Orwell's precedent? He got there first with 1984. It was all about making laws that could be enforced on a whim.
I think that predated Atlas. But people forget so easy.
Shrug.
Issmawasanres...
> sigh, sorry my stupid little brother saw i was still logged in and decided to insult people using my account
I wonder why he didn't type, "HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS"?
quick someone patent "publish this story" they will be screwed
This kind of nonsense is par for the course for Germany. People can sue you if they feel insulted, offended, or blasphemed. In fact, in many cases, they can simply send you a letter asking you for money without so much as a court case. Publishers already extract huge amounts of money from electronic equipment, copiers, and blank media. I think it's part of Germany's fascist heritage.
No matter how greedy publishers in other nations may be, they are not going to be able to get these kinds of laws, copyright ratchet or not; Germany's laws in this area mare in fundamental conflict with principles of free speech and they wouldn't stand a constitutional test in the US or elsewhere.
And there, in a nutshell, do you have the reason why German politicians and media are grilling Google alive over Streetview and WiFi packet data: they want to demolish Google's reputation in order to make it easy for them to push their own money-making anti-Google agenda.
Just remember that last time dying German industries took over the government with right-wing populist ideologies, millions of people died.
The German public won't care or understand; as long as the masses still get their boulevard press with big breasted women on the cover, they're happy. Many of them pay for it with government-provided benefits anyway.
This inane copyright that the German publishers are proposing would end up preventing them from writing headlines.
The problem goes away as soon as you either have only a single publisher or a small cartel of publishers. That way, the members of the cartel can publish freely and nobody else can ever compete with them. "Combinometrics" works in their favor, since they already have vast archives with all these phrases.
So if people break this law, will they be given sentences for using sentences?
No left turn unstoned.
Well it seems like you got a +3 "Funny" and a +5 "Informative". Do *you* need the Karma? Maybe you'd like to lend your account to your little brother more often :P.
I'm all for copyrights on sentences. Because after that will come copyrights on individual words and then copyrights on individual letters. I've already got copyright applications pending for A, E, I, O, and U. (I'm considering a copyright on Y as well.) Soon I'll be very rich. Well, either that or everyone will switch to a language with completely different letters like Russian or Chinese.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This Headline Now Copyright.
Erich Tyler John
Also, "Suck it."
1. Generate millions of random sentences. Put them up on a webpage.
2. Sue anyone else who uses any of those sentences.
3. ???
4. Profit!!
AccountKiller
When it becomes impossible or cost prohibitive to track down and pay the holder of specific headlines, or when the amount of headlines patented makes it near impossible to create a current one... why bother? It will eventually become easier for german magazines to simply NOT put a title to their articles and just stick them under the correct category. Politics, national, regional, sports and so on. When everyone realizes just how crazy the whole deal was and this silly idea gets dropped, headlines will return.