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The Best of The Worst Hollow Copyright Claims (medium.com)
tiltowait writes: Slashdot readers should be familiar with most if not all of these, but the list of 20 Hollow Copyright Claims is a somber reminder of the current sorry state of intellectual property laws in the United States--as anyone who's encountered a paywall or a takedown notice (or remembers Slashdot's run-in with Scientology) can attest. It serves as a call to arms that we not lose sight of the benefits to sharing knowledge.
One of the most disgusting recent copyright stunts was the Anne Frank Foundation extending the copyright on her diary by claiming Otto Frank as a co-author.
If anything ought to be considered owned by the world as a whole, it's Anne Frank's diary.
It's mainly why we should reduce the number of IP lawyers by a factor of 10, and make the rules surrounding their conduct so tight that even one misstep means permanent disbarrment and a twenty trillion dollar fine, to be worked off by licking toilet stalls, while a large woman kicks them in the groin every twenty minutes as Walkürenritt or Ritt der Walküren plays. Those IP lawyers that were left would be investigated for sociopathyy, and the sociopaths would be taken out and beaten on the head until they had an IQ of 11, and the rest would be forced to recite eighty times a day "I am a diseased piece of shit, evil and without a single redeeming quality."
The mouse will soon push to make them last longer and they also want the right to move stuff in to the vault and take off the market just to have them come back out years later.
Troll, please go away. That's not how it works.
CAP === 'reunion'
Paywalls are not like the other issues here. Paywalls are legitimate although often futile attempt for people to make a profit off their labor. The problem is precisely the long-term copyright issues that the article actually discusses where the people claiming copyright are either claiming it on highly derivative works or on works made fifty or more years ago. Putting in paywalls into the summary distracts from the serious issues here. Focus on the real problem.
"Author's lifetime plus 70 years"
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
What's the big deal? Those pictures look like they were taken by some monkey with a camera.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
you've already lost by calling it "Intellectual Property". It's always nice to pick the terms in a debate...
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You are trolling, of course, but the GPL is a license to use the code that somebody else created. One is free to use is as long as they abide by the terms. That is no different than using BSD, MIT or even proprietary code. In short, if you don't want to abide by the copyright owners terms, then don't use their code.
The mouse will soon push to make them last longer and they also want the right to move stuff in to the vault and take off the market just to have them come back out years later.
... and now they have The Force on their side...
Dum dum dum da dumdum da dumdum d-
Possible Intellectual Property Violation Detected
no carrier
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The movies studios refusing to return the license back to the comic book companies and made more bad sequels to Superman and Spiderman.
After the failure of the publishing industry to ban international books for domestic resale, they have hit upon another venture. Access codes, which can only be used once. This makes used books obsolete when professors "require" that a student use the publisher's online garbage.
Magic tricks aren't typically copyrightable. This is one of the reasons magicians keep the secrets. The only thing that allowed Teller to successfully sue was that he copyrighted the *routine*(cutting the leaves off a rose, magically), not the methods of the trick itself. So if one could rework that trick such that it didn't involve the leaves of a plant, you might be able to get away with copying the methods and using it.
Bonus: my captcha was "blamer"
Lets be clear that its not Mickey Mouse that is being extended, that is a trademark and does not expire as long as its used.
It's an old black and white cartoon called Steam Boat Willy, in which Mickey appeared. If that went out of copyright, people would be able to make copies of it, and Walt Disney would lose the value of the sale of that cartoon.... which is zero because they don't sell it.
Disney will be pushing for copyright extension in 5-6 years. It's obscene that the time between the Grimm Brother's original Snow White, and Disney's retelling, will soon be less than the time Disney's owned the copyright to their version of the Grimm fairytale.
Samuel Clemens dies in 1910. The copyrighted newest version of his partial autobiography came out in 2010.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This raises an interesting issue:
If I edit Anne Frank's diary, I have copyright on the edited version. If I carefully set things up and take a high quality photo of the Mona Lisa, I have copyright over that photo. If a monkey takes a selfie with my camera and then I do a bunch of post-processing to "improve" it and publish the improved picture, I have copyright due to the improvements.
In each case, somebody else could read the diaries and publish their own edition, take their own photo of the Mona Lisa, or freely distribute the original unimproved monkey selfie - but only if they have access to the diaries (or facsimile), to the Mona Lisa without plate glass in the way, or the unimproved selfie. When access to the original is restricted, reproductions can effectively exert copyright over the original when the original is out of copyright. (The monkey selfie camera owner missed this trick.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Historians write a (very dubious) history book. Novelist writes a novel in which this dubious history is true. Historians sue. Historians lose.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ent...
My analysis: You can't copyright facts. If you present something as a fact (such as in a history book), you lose any copyright over that "fact" (but not over your presentation of it.) Otherwise if you wrote a SF story involving Hawking radiation then Hawking could sue you.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
"viral" or "infectious" are not really the right words to be used WRT GPL. The words "natural" and "obligatory" make more sense in that context.
For years, mapmakers have purposefully inserted imperfections into their craftsmanship to serve as bait to catch plagiarists. Thankfully, trap streets are afforded thin protection in the United States as uncopyrightable “non-facts.”
I don't understand why that is a good thing.
I believe copyright makes sense only if it does not go against rational behavior.
What I mean is:
1) You retain copyright only until your product or idea is made available to a public (to prevent someone from copying your idea before you release it). Otherwise you would go against the normal human way to relate with reality called use - understand - improve (which we exhibit from the day we are born).
2) A copyrighted item holder can retain copyright until he is alive and point 1 does not apply. Once you are dead there should be no obstacle to improve or study your idea.
So companies who invest on a copyrighted item are basically only buying the "right to be the first" to release it to the public.
To understand better why I say so, think about how fast humanity evolved just by capitalizing on public available knowledge. Think about all the thing we studied at school or we learned through experience during our life. These are the basic instrument that allow us to create something new. In turn we must allow others to do the same with everything we have leveraged, including our own idea.
It's always the law firms that takes the majority of the awards from the lawsuits not the content owners.
You want political change put someone into office who is not tied to the corporate world but this might be impossible.
http://www.digest.com/Big_Story.php
Nissan Motors......
Imaginary Property is when adults still want to call dibs.
It is absurd that including one line of GPLed code incorporated into millions of lines of code causes those lines to be GPLed, and no intelligent and knowledgeable person would ever claim that.
It's doubtful that one line would violate copyright, but let's assume there's enough incorporated to violate the copyright. The overall code then includes copyrighted code, and if it isn't distributed under a GPL it may not legally be distributed. The GPL does not require anyone to do anything, but does have some requirements on what you can do. If you have another license for the code, you're fine. If you release the whole thing under the GPL, and satisfy the other requirements, you're fine. Otherwise, you are distributing a copyrighted work without a license.
Now, what happens if you distribute without a license, and the author of the GPLed code comes after you? A court will do at most two things. It will probably slap you with an injunction to stop distributing the code, and very likely award damages to the original author. That's money. There is no legal way to force someone else's code to be released under the GPL, because the courts will view this as a copyright violation.
In short, incorporating GPLed code in a larger work means that you either distribute that under the GPL, not distribute, or distribute without a license. It cannot, without agreement on the people with copyright to the larger work, make the whole thing GPLed.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes