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MP3Tunes 'Safe Harbor' Court Challenge Approaching
markjhood2003 sends along an update on a story we first discussed two years back: EMI's lawsuit against MP3Tunes on the claim that cloud storage of music is illegal. The case has gathered importance as cloud computing has grown in capability and acceptance. Opposition briefs in the case are due on Wednesday and oral arguments will start in January. EMI is making the unusual move (the opposition calls it "desperate") of insisting that the EFF's friend-of-the-court brief not be accepted. "EMI says the brief filed last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups supporting MP3tunes’s argument that it’s not responsible for what music its users store on its servers should be barred because it is 'a pure advocacy piece, not a "friend of the court."' Amicus curiae briefs are often filed by interest groups and the government in cases that could set major precedents, in order to illustrate the broader ramifications of the case. ... After three years of litigation, EMI argues that EFF’s brief is too long, thereby 'circumventing' the court’s 'page restrictions' causing 'additional burden' to the court and “prejudice” to the EMI. ... In addition, EMI says, EFF’s brief 'contains unsupported speculation that is not helpful to the Court.' Anyone can submit such a brief as long as they’re not a party to the case, and judges have full discretion whether to accept them. They almost always do."
Sigh.
Physical location of information storage is irrelevant.
What matters (and what should matter legally) is who has control of
and access rights to the information. That is the person who is
in possession of the information and determining its disposition.
Whether a person chooses to manage their personal or personally owned
information on a local hard drive, a usb stick, or a rented chunk of the
cloud ought to be completely irrelevant.
If law is going to rule on uses of internet architecture, law had
better understand fundamental concepts of internet architecture,
such as virtual private networks and idependent security realms.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
32 whole pages including cover page, table of contents and submission credits at 1.5 line spacing? And people accuse Gen Y of having a short attention span... I'd have to agree that EMI are scraping the bottom of the barrel for reasons.
Even worse, I rip all CDs I buy to flac. Then if I want to use them on my phone I convert that to a smaller format. I truly am a horrible person.
80, the optimum length is 80.
It should be green text on a black background.
Attaching data to a medium which cannot be duplicated and degrades over time is the cornerstone of the entertainment industry's business model. Cloud computing, networks, and any other form of data duplication and replication is therefore its natural enemy.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The concept of "stealing ideas" is flawed. Ideas occur independently and simultaneously to many people when the conditions for that idea are right. And virtually every copyrighted work is derivative... can anybody cite a single movie Disney ever published that was based entirely on original characters and story line? Copyright monopolists have argued that libraries should be illegal, audio tape should be illegal, and videotape should be illegal. Now they are arguing that cloud storage of data should be illegal. I expect this argument to have much the same result as the previous ones.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So why does it matter where it is stored, who stores it, blah blah blah.
If all I have purchased from the record companies is a license to the music, then isn't all that matters is that the person accessing the cloud has a license? Doesn't that license entitle me to certain listening rights.
Or to put it another way, isn't MP3Tunes.com responsible for doing nothing else beyond ensuring I have a license for the music they are serving me? Isn't a reasonable method for discerning that fact my ability to upload a copy of that music?
There are two scenarios: either I uploaded a licensed version so now STFU. Or it is an unlicensed version and as such MP3Tunes still isn't facilitating since they aren't the ones that gave me the unlicensed version in the first place and oh yeah BTW I already have an unlicensed copy so the battle is lost. No one else is "getting" that unlicensed version since the only reason they even have access via the cloud is because they already uploaded a licensed version or [drum roll please] they already are in possession of, and uploaded, an unlicensed version.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
> They keep people from stealing ideas.
How do you "steal" an intangible??
To quote a famous insight...
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
The concept of Imaginary Property is absurd to begin with ... I have a sequence of numbers, yet somehow magically it is "owned" by someone else because it just so happens these numbers represent the frequencies of Happy Birthday. EMI can go fuck themselves.
Copyright is eventually going away in a few hundred years, whether they like it or not, and maybe we can get onto more important things instead of arguing over who "owns" what particular sequence of numbers.
The Fashion Industry has no copyright at all yet it still "magically" makes money ...
http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/25/lessons_from_fa/
--
"Resistance of the Future is Childish"
Actually, the whole of human understanding is inter-related ideas. No idea can stand in isolation from any other. However, reality has little bearing on how the judiciary process works. In fact, an argument could be made that it can function in the absence of any grounding in reality. For that matter, the same can be said of society in general. One of the cornerstones of our society is the idea we can own land. We have entirely artificial barriers that we've interposed between ourselves and our physical environment. I cannot walk outside, point to a random spot on the ground, and prove a relationship between it and anyone else based on what my senses tell me. Nonetheless, this artificial social construct of land ownership is an intrinsic part of our daily lives. Society would not function without it. I couldn't force you to leave "my" home if you were not welcome, businesses could not develop the land because the next day somebody else might come and knock down their building, etc. Land ownership, however artificial, does serve a purpose.
Intellectual property too has become an intrinsic part of our daily lives -- and it is also as artificial of a social construct as land ownership. And the courts' job is to uphold social constructs and maintain the status quo... not debate the merits of said constructs.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I agree that copyright law needs revising, but I have yet to see someone suggest a decent alternative that benefits both the consumer AND the producer of the consumed good.
A strong case can be made that copyright is just not working for its intended purpose.
Consider that the US Government alone spends 20+ billion dollars a year on pure science and scholarly research. And that copyright actually stifles the movement of the ideas these dollars are supposed to promote.
20+ billion dollars is worth 2000+ 100 million dollar movies. Hollywood doesn't make that many. If we're being generous, they spend about 3 billion on 300 "blockbusters".
17+ billion dollars is worth 17000 1M dollar (to produce!) albums. I only know of one "one million dollar album" (I'm sure there are a few out there...). But realistically, call it 170000 "100 thousand dollar albums". The music labels do not make 170000 albums in a year. Let's call it... 3000 albums a year. That's another billion dollars.
We have 14+ billion left. Television costs about 1000$ a minute to produce. That means that the remaining science budget is worth about 14000000 minutes of television. That's worth about 26.61 years of television, produced every year. How much of what is on cable is a re-run? How much is pretty much worthless after it first airs -- (Like the news)? The figures I've seen suggest that about 1.3 billion dollars were spent on producing new television in 2006. Lets call it 2 billion today.
We still have 12+ billion left. How many books is that worth? Writers are notoriously poorly paid, at about 5c a word. Lets triple that, to pay editors and publishers' administrative staff. That comes to 80 BILLION words a year. An average book is about 120,000 words, which means that the remaining science budget comes to 2 million books a year. Publishers don't put out anywhere near that many books, and a large number of the books they do put out is paid for out of the science budget anyway. Let's call it 100,000 books a year. That's 1.8 billion dollars a year.
We still have 10+ billion dollars left in the science budget. Of course, there are many other kinds of productions. And yet, these largest four or five dwarf them.
Clearly, science costs DWARF the entertainment industry's production costs. And yet we are tying the hands of the people we have chosen to promote for the sake of the minority, few of which have anything to do with "useful arts and sciences" anyway.
Copyright is rent seeking, and should be abolished (or at least curtailed) as such.
After all, I am strangely colored.