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Uncle Sam Finally Wants To Hear From Us On Digital Copyright Law?
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Can it be true? The US government claims it really wants to hear from us on the subject of how copyright law needs to be modified to accommodate the developing technology of the digital age? I don't know, but the US Patent & Trademark Office (which btw has nothing to do with administering copyright) says 'we really want to hear from you' and the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force wrote a 122-page paper (PDF) on the subject, so they must really mean it, right? But I couldn't find the address to which to send my comments, so maybe that was an oversight on their part."
Anyone else think this is a scam just to root out the criminals?
"Hey I love pirating lolz" - Arrest [x] Alienate [ ] Bribe [ ]
It's a trap!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Why would the government want to put time, energy and money into changing this law? The entertainment industry and the law firms are making crazy money, they won't allow this to happen. Sure, people get screwed but no government ever has cared about people.
Also, people passionate about internet freedom (people who will take the time to come up with suggestions) are also more likely to actually download copyrighted material. This is just asking for the looking glass to be pointed at you.
Just like in the recent Obama said in his speech about NSA operations, the government is really concerned about public opinion and very much wants to know the best way to make you comfortable getting screwed. After all, people being uncomfortable with getting screwed is the biggest impediment in a democracy for advancing to the next level of screwing them over. So your feedback is important to them.
Another one of those articles with question-titles that can be answered with a simple "No."?
I'm glad your men in charge are starting to see how much ground the us has lost in the last decade. But isn't it too late now?
Is the government so up-to-its-tits in lobbyists it cant complete a single google search without a campaign contribution? Here are a few license models that might work for some, hell in fact all, digital media in the 21st century.
BSD
GPL
copyleft
LGPL3
MIT
Creative Commons
the list goes on but at no point does it include the whistling clown-car that is DMCA or the iron boot of DRM. copyright in the 21st century is premised on the idea that expiration encourages innovation and that on some level, we all benefit and advance greatly from sharing as opposed to consolidating the knowledge and power amongst a cloistered few. yeah, its a radical departure for some but discourages cashcowing a product or franchising something to death (the Matrix series anyone?)
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dev.null@uspto.gov
Silence is a state of mime.
Homer: “Don't worry, baby, the tube'll know what to do.”
He takes her form, puts it into a canister, and sends it through the pneumatic tube system. The canister takes a wild ride through the tube system, eventually being deposited... outside, where a nearby beaver collects it and adds it to a dam built entirely of message canisters.
Yes we recognize artists have the right to be paid for their work, but....
1) Please reduce the absurd duration of copyright. We can argue about exactly how long, but anything above 30 years is definitely absurd. Also copyright would be better if anything above 20 years required a substantial payment.
2) Copyright should be non-transferable and belong to the artist producing the work.
3) Please ensure that all private copying from media to media for personal use only is regarded as Fair Use.
4) Commercial Piracy should attract large fines, however small personal acts of piracy should be penalized in the region of a few thousand dollars TOTAL, not several tens of thousands for each work. As an example, Jammie Thomas was definitely guilty, but a maximum fine of about $5,000 would be seen as far more reasonable especially as she made no significant financial gain from the act.
Anything else?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Sounds like cover your ass we're getting ready to fuck you so hard...
Oh but we took suggestions! People wanted the anal probe every time they download anything ever!
Ideas shouldn't be patentable.
The NSA will forward it for you...without you needing to even send it!
copyright.gov asked for input 13 years ago...
1. Stop trying to control the non-commercial filesharing. The damages to creators are, at worst, about as big as trespassing on private property that isn't near a house or is actively exploited - like say, a forest. The positive effects, meanwhile, are huge and not to be neglected. Instead focus on the commercial filesharing efforts and the people making money on protected works without sharing those profits.
2. Lots of works can no longer be used because their right holders cannot be found (orphan works). In order to solve this problem, copyrighted works should be registered or face a very short copyright term on e.g. five years after publication. An extension of this idea is that economic copyright should only be allowed as long as the copyrighted works do have a substantial value, therefore we have a yearly fee of 2^x where x is the number of years a copyrighted work has been published. This ensures orphaned works become public domain, but it also ensures that copyrighted works that no longer have any commercial value also falls into public domain.
3. Copyright terms either need to be severely reduced, or there needs to be an exception clause for archivists, museums, libraries and the like to let them complete and create as complete collections of works as possible, lest our entire culture from the fifties and onward disappear.
Just a couple of ideas to get started...
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Absolutely! I trust the government to put my best interests first. They genuinely want to hear from people on this issue.
In completely unrelated, totally not relevant news, the NSA just found out about the hundred flowers campaign, which I support. I mean, hundreds of flowers? That can't be bad in ANY way.
The government believes, and I quote, that "The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science".
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/FR-2012-07-20/2012-17685/content-detail.html ...Which is expired on August 10th 2012.
Just email your thoughts on copyright to someone who sounds foreign. The NSA will forward it to them.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
That, however, is because there should not have been a question mark at the end, since it wasn't a question.
YOUR post, WAS a question.
So it can be answered with a "No".
Oddly enough, the rule states it CAN be answered with "No", however, it is treated as if it MUST be answered with a "No". Why is that?
(Note again, a question that cannot be answered with a "No", showing how dumb the attribution of that "law" is...)
Government - I can see the public in general has some good ideas (ok no laughing)
Public - yes we do and we would like them put into action
Government - But you don't pay for my lunches, holidays and general expenses that lets me have a lifestyle beyond my means
Public - But you're a government official who does it for the interest of the country
Government - We'll leave as it is (lest not open the can of worms regarding private influence)
But I couldn't find the address to which to send my comments, so maybe that was an oversight on their part.
You can find the comment form in the We Want to Hear from You article.
Use it.
I don't see why digital content is not treated in the same way as the physical media it replaced.
I think I have a right to play my digital content on ANY device I see fit. Realize that this means all these "walled gardens" should be illegal. If you equate what is happening today with digital content vs physical media, it would be like Walmart creating their own version of DVD and then Best Buy creates their own version of DVDs. A Walmart DVD would not be playable and a Best Buy DVD player, and vice versa. NOBODY would have tolerated that bullshit so why are people happy with buying iTunes content that is not playable on an Android device?
Also with physical media I always had the right to lend the content to a friend or family member. But realize that while it is lended out that I no longer have access to it. I think it should be perfectly acceptable to share my digital content with a friend or family member. However realize that NOBODY has 1 million friends so that does not apply to sharing it digitally to the whole world.
The only thing different about digital content that I feel should not be analogous to physical content is that I should not have to rebuy the content in a different resolution and there is NO REASON why an HD version of a digital movie is more expensive than an SD movie. The reason why Blu-ray's are more expensive the DVDs comes to the cost to author/produce a Blu-ray disk, but even then that coast hast diminished greatly over the last 5 years. I should be buying access to a movie and then have a choice to view it in whatever resolution suits the device I am playing it on, whether its SD, HD or 4k or 8k in the future. Unless the movie had to be remastered to get it to look better at a higher resolution I should never have to buy a movie twice.
Of course the US government is taking a page out of Canada's government handbook. Before making an absurd and unpopular law, get the citizens opinion to make it look like you give a rat's ass about the common person before making sure to protect an industry right to maintain a monopoly and charge high prices for products and services, just like what Canada's CRTC does.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The USPTO cannot change the law of the land. That's what Congress is for.
This will amount to nothing.
Just as the NSA for all the emails and forum postings related to copyright. The information you seek is all there.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
they're not ready yet
" But I couldn't find the address to which to send my comments, so maybe that was an oversight on their part."
[W]e will soon be reaching out to the public for views on a variety of topics. Please stay tuned for announcements about how to share your thoughts, insights, and recommendations. ..new low for /. the OP doesn't even RT fucking A
Does it matter? Just send them anywhere, the NSA will forward them.
Fix the abandonware issues as well older software vers that are no longer sold not 100% of old software but in some cases there may be stuff for older hardware / os that is no longer sold but they sell newer vers that don't work on the old systems.
There is a lot of old games that are abandonware right now that you can't really buy any more. GOG does have some of the older games that used to be abandonware.
They should just read The Case for Copyright Reform by Christian Engström (Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party) & Rick Falkvinge (founder of the original Pirate Party), and implement it. You can, of course, download the book for free on that website. I highly recommend reading it.
Sorry, Mr Uncle Sam The Kenyan Superman, but it's too late. I don't believe shit that you say or do any more.
You come out all like, "Oh, I'm really really glad that this information about the NSA has become public because now we can have this awesome discussion about how best to make the surveillance state more transparent and accountable and so I'm going to put in charge of the new NSA transparency commission the guy who's been lying his ass off to congress and everyone about the NSA".
Fuck off, unk. I read today that Groklaw closed down because you can't really have a bit of freedom if the government is watching and listening. Lavabit. Silent Circle. At least a few people with principles. The Internet is over. Long live the internet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1.Change DMCA s512 to impose penalties on anyone who sends a take-down notice for content for content they do not own. This stops take-down notices being sent when the entity doing the sending doesn't actually own the content they are claiming to own.
2.Change the DMCA and other laws to state clearly that any search engine or aggregator that uses automatic content collection systems (like Google or Bing or similar) gets 100% legal immunity for the content aggregated by their sites (i.e. takes away the ability for copyright holders to target or go after search engines because of content their spiders pick up)
3.Change DMCA s103 to state that it is NOT a DMCA violation if you are breaking protection for the purpose of using content if you have permission from the copyright holder to make or use copies of the content.
This means that it would be legal to break protection on phones, games consoles and other things in order to run "homebrew" or "side-load" software where the copyright holder has given permission for such uses.
It also means that for example its legal to crack protection on proprietary camera RAW formats so you can access the photos you took without buying the proprietary tools to access it.
4.Do something to handle "orphan works" (that is, works where the copyright holder cant be located). Plenty of old works (e.g. old computer games) cant be enjoyed again because no-one can identify who actually owns the rights.
5.Pass laws to once and for all declare that APIs are not copyrightable (and end the Oracle v Google fight over API copyright for good)
The group think about digital rights on slashdot always makes me scratch my head. As near as I can tell, people on these forums are upset that authors of content wish to profit from their content, and not just give it away. Anyone who comes up with a way to secure content or use it, is considered to be something close to the anti-christ, or worse. IE, you feel you should have movies, music, and books for free.
Take the other slashdot groupthink darling, Serenity. On these forums it is considered to be one of the culminations of human story telling. To make this grand work of art, it took hundreds of people and cost $40,000,000 to make. Now, on slashdot we take it as an article of faith this was sci fi at its best. There are 3.5 million monthly readers on slashdot, and we know from these forums every poster has a girlfriend/significant other. At $10 a ticket this means that Serenity should have made $70,000,000 from zealous slash dotters alone. However, it only grossed $25.5 million.
WTF
This masterpiece of fiction, this creme de la creme actually lost money.
So, less than 1/3 of all slash dotters went to the theatre and paid money? Yet, from the posts here we KNOW more than 1/3 have seen it. Which is sadly funny considering that these forums are against content providers actually charging for their content. In effect, we can conclude that most slashdot readers are selfish bastards who want other people to donate their time to you for your benefit.
So, my question to the community is, how much of your professional time and life do you donate for free?
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
'we really want to hear from you...assuming your opinion is exactly what we want to hear.'
FTFY.
We haven't had a good laugh in weeks!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
And what a disappointment it was.
A staggering majority of the submissions spoke very clearly against the problems of giving digital rights management legal protection. I think, perhaps, that the single biggest problem was that a well-meaning website creator crafted a web page that contained a template letter in a web-based form which would send off the email to the people who were conducting the public consultation, and unfortunately more than half of the submissions that were actually received were practically verbatim copies of that letter, which, I think, may have led to the committee concluding that they should be largely ignored.
Of course, even without those duplicate letters, the number of responses was quite high, and somewhere in the vicinity of 70% of those remaining still were outspoken against DRM, and for a while afterwards, I was hopeful that our government would listen to the majority of its submissions.
But that was not to be... instead, our government crafted a bill that not only gave digital rights control on copyrighted works full legal protection, but created a situation wherein it is virtually impossible to legally enjoy what were considered fair dealing rights within Canada on almost any works made since roughly the turn of the century. Indeed, the *ONLY* exemptions to removing a digital lock on a copyrighted work without permission by the copyright holder is in situations regarding security and/or safety (a safety-net of sorts, I think, to enable technical researchers to investigate security breaches, and to ensure that law enforcement was not similarly hampered by such regulations). Not even removing a digital lock for one's own personal and private use would be considered legal... and similarly, any tool which could be invented to accomplish such tasks would likewise be prohibited.
A few versions of this bill went through our parliamentary system, but were unable to make it into law... owing, I think, in no small part to the fact that the Conservative government, which crafted the bill, did not have a majority of seats in parliament.
Alas, however... the last Canadian election finally did give the Conservatives their much desired majority government, and they quite quickly pushed their latest draft of the bill through, in spite of what was otherwise unanimous opposition by all other party representatives.
Now oddly enough, even though it was now entirely illegal for a private person to simply use a DVD *as intended* on a device which the copyright holder never consented to, such as, perhaps, watching it on a Linux PC, out government came out and said not terribly long after the bill was passed that they "would not enforce the bill in matters of 'private infringement'". This proclamation floored me... not only had they crafted a situation where people were highly likely to privately break the law anyways, but they were now even explicitly saying that it was entirely okay for people to do this, effectively encouraging people to be closet lawbreakers.
So.... please, citizens of the USA.... consider carefully what has happened in the country to the north of you as you take part in this public consultation. Learn from the mistakes that we may have made, be cautious when the government starts to show a particular agenda, and maybe, just maybe... you might just end up with something that the people actually want.
Good luck.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
She will put her finger in her ears and go "La La La!".
Right then, send in your arguments, so they can all be shot down more effectively, and precisely, by the likes of the copyright lobby and other big money interests with crack legal teams. Big money owns, and runs govt., including the chit-chat at the water cooler.
4) Commercial Piracy should attract large fines, however small personal acts of piracy should be penalized in the region of a few thousand dollars TOTAL, not several tens of thousands for each work. As an example, Jammie Thomas was definitely guilty, but a maximum fine of about $5,000 would be seen as far more reasonable especially as she made no significant financial gain from the act.
Interestingly, this is already in copyright law. It's just being misapplied.
First, as a premise, when given a range, juries (or anyone) tends to default to approximately the geometric mean of the range. For example, if a crime carries a sentence of 1 to 20 years, you might expect that people would default to around 10 years, but they don't. After all, if 1 year is a possible sentence, then 10 is an order of magnitude larger! And the top of the range at 20 is only just double that. Clearly 10 is too high. Instead, juries will default to around 4-6 years.
Well, it's the same thing in monetary damages: given a range (say, $750-$150,000, as in the "willful infringement" tier of copyright statutory damages), the geometric mean is $10,606. Tenenbaum was dinged for $22k per song. Thomas got hit for $9,250 per song. So, pretty close to the geometric mean.
But wait, is that the right range? The statute says up to $150k for willful infringement, which the RIAA has defined as any infringement that's intentional (as opposed to accidental copying?). Their argument is that, if you've ever seen a copyright notice, and you then distribute a copyrighted work, that's willful, 'cause you knew it was wrong.
But that's not what Congress intended. If you go back to the original House comments, it appears that they intended "Willful" to mean "malicious, or for commercial purposes" as in the trademark and patent acts. Like, if you sneak into your author neighbor's house and steal his manuscript and publish it to destroy his career, even if you didn't do it to make money, that's pretty evil, and you should be responsible for enhanced damages.
So, the non-enhanced range is $750-$30,000. The geometric mean of this is $4700. Your suggestion - "about $5000". QED.
Hence, we need to fix that interpretation of "willful", not go try to rewrite the copyright act, which can be done by arguing this issue in court and persuading judges, rather than fighting with well-monied RIAA lobbyists for Senators' favor.
No, they should be transferable. Why shouldn't the artist be able to sell his future earnings for profit now?
To limit the amount of IP held by any one person and reduce the effect of copyright trolls
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
1 for works where there are multiple persons credited 15 years after ALL persons credited are deceased
2 if a reasonable search can not determine the correct copyright holder then it can be assumed the work is abandoned*
3 claiming copyright on a work shall have a penalty of the greater of75% of the penalty for breaking copyright or The Full and Complete Damages (to include salary for the lawyers, lost income, court costs and the tips for the delivery guy(s))
4 without an actual physical signed (in black or dark blue ink) contract to do so Legal Firms are forbidden from any type of copyright enforcement unless the Firm is otherwise on retainer for THAT PARTICULAR CLIENT
*any abandoned work is to be considered Public Domain and reasonable search must include a search for the known copyright owners (or the estates thereof)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Don't forget the "Disney Vault" - they're actually abusing artificial scarcity. Abandonware is just difficult logistics that can be solved by the copyright owner if they wanted to. GOG is a nice start on that front, but we really need to make the process easier. People are eager to throw money at some abandonware. I'd love to buy the game The Neverhood - but that's crazy expensive secondhand.
I didn't get into Firefly until 2009. I then bough the Serenity Blu-Ray.
For some reason, Firefly was marketed VERY poorly. Constantly moving timeslots, typical Fox treatment. I kept seeing it being mentioned online, but with scarce details and little effort, I convinced myself it was probably an anime and didn't even know it was on Fox. Never heard about Serenity either. It wasn't until Netflix told me I'd like Firefly that I actually looked it up.
I had a similar problem with LOST. I thought it was this show because they picked the same name. It didn't surprise me at all that everyone was talking about the reality show du jour, but I never caught on that they were talking about a drama and not a reality show. I got into LOST in 2007.
GO AWAY!
Stick your nose back into affairs between states and international policy. Get your nose out of my ass, my house and my F'ing neighborhood.
Re-prioritize so you have more resources toward fixing the F'ed up relations with other countries. Re-prioritize so that we (as a nation) are not getting raped by the police, military budgets or information spying.
In short. Piss Off!
That is all
I'm not hostile to copyright. I have been working in copyright law since 1974.
The problem is that due to influence peddling, copyright law has lost its mooring.
It is supposed to ensure
-to the author,
-reasonable compensation,
and it is supposed to ensure that
-the work is turned over to the public after a reasonable time.
It is also supposed to permit fair uses of copyrighted works.
What we have now is:
-money which flows mostly to large corporations who are not authors
-a flow of money for vastly unreasonable periods of time
-the virtual abolition of fair use.
I am in favor of copyright law. What we have now is not copyright law.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If people don't value their entertainment enough to pay for it, nothing of value will be lost if it goes away. Nobody expects people to work for free. We expect people to monetize their time and skills in a way that makes sense, by charging for what is scarce instead of what is is infinite supply.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stop giving patent like protections to creative works. Either the work should be covered by patents, or it should be covered by copyrights, but not both. Currently we have both with the DMCA's "access controls mechanism" criteria.
--fatboy