No, newsworthiness is not one of the fair use criteria, so Cryptome has no leg to stand on.
Fair use is based on a court ruling that attempted to balance copyright with the first amendment. It was later codified into law with a four-point test. Straight from the US Copyright Office:
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
1) The non-profit news reporting character of the use is certainly an important factor.
2) The material directly affects the rights of millions of people.
3) Because of the nature of the work and the author's failure to make it available through other channels he had to use the whole thing.
4) The author has no intention of ever selling the work. Even if they did they would not get much for it.
Congress has the power to "promote the progress of...the useful arts" by granting copyrights. Protecting this work from distribution will not do that thus congress does not have the authority to grant a copyright on it.
Microsoft of course wants this document to remain secret. Ironically, to bring this matter to court they have to officially file for copyright which will include depositing a copy of it in the Library of Congress.
And earlier this month Rep. John Murtha of Pa., while in the care of the best health care system in the world, died after a simple gallbladder operation was botched.
That operation occurred at Bethesda Naval Hospital which is controlled by the US Federal government.
In the United States a treaty has to be signed by the President and approved by two thirds of the Senate. So you can:
Convince the President not to sign it (he has been pushing for this treaty and has to sign it in order to repay his very favorable media coverage during the election).
Convince 34 senators to vote against it (they will be crucified by the media if they do so). They will likely need to vote against it every year until the deadline runs out.
Convince two thirds of the states to hold a constitutional convention to fix copyright law. Hope they come up a with a fair constitutional amendment. Then convince three fourths of the states to ratify it.
Unlike other modems the GeoModem did not moulate and demodulate. Instead it used the modem hidden inside your CPU! By purchasing an adapter that cost as much as a real modem you could use the processor inside your computer to handle all the modulating and demodulating. On an OS that used shared multitasking this was not very reliable. Its one and only advantage is that you could upgrade the software. It went from 14.4kbps to 33.6kbps over night.
There's no requirement of joint or several liability in the statute. This was intentional - if I make one copy of something and give it to you, and you make one copy and give it to a friend, and they make one copy and give it to someone else, etc., would the copyright owner have to file millions of individual suits?
There were no claims of serial copying, much less evidence thereof. Regardless, a person is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others. I realize there is such a thing as contributory infringement but that was never alleged nor proven at trial. Even if the plaintiffs could prove someone else downloaded one of the songs Thomas-Rasset uploaded they would still need to prove it was sourced from her rather than someone else.
If you follow the directions in the PDF it will give you both links.
By the way, that PDF indicates they prefer comments be uploaded as a file. In particular they prefer MS Word and Adobe Acrobat format.
On a side note that has got to be the worst web site I have seen in years. Parts of it render incorrectly in Internet Explorer leaving you unable to read text in the document details page. The site is completely unusable with Konqueror on Linux and I was unable to successfully submit a comment with FireFox on Linux.
I would be willing to bet the site does not even come close to being section 508 compliant. While they do thoughtfully include alt attributes, someone who wants to submit a comment about books in Braille is not going to be able to.
The data rate from Pluto is expected to be 1000 bits per second. It would take over two years to transfer the entire 8GB buffer at that speed. Granted, New Horizons could send back a 1MB picture in about two hours. But the mission planners have other plans for the immediate flyby. They are going send radio signals from Earth to New Horizons to measure Doppler shift (inferring the gravitational pull and mass of Pluto) and to detect the effect Pluto's atmosphere has on the signal.
Compressed pictures should be available to the public a few days after the flyby. They are expecting the full data set to take nine months.
So for decent pictures you had best revise your estimate:
Five more years until we have a GOOD picture of Pluto. July 14, 2015...can't wait!
Going to the moon involved three programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. All three combined cost far less than $735 billion.
Mercury - $0.348 billion (1959-1963)
Gemini - $1.3 billion (1965-1966)
Apollo - $22.718 billion (1961-1975)
If you put everything in 1959 dollars and adjust for inflation to 2008 it is less than $180 billion. Contrast that with the $700 billion we spent in a few months bailing out irresponsible banks.
So during the 60s, the US was facing a severe global recession not seen since the Great Depression, crushing debt, attacks by terrorists, and increasing environmental concerns? I don't remember any of those being factors in any history books.
Well then, I guess you missed the history of the 1960! As a percent of gross domestic product the national debt has been around 15-20 percent since the mid 1950s. The 1960s saw enormous social unrest with the Black Panthers, SDS, SLA, KKK, and others routinely committing terrorists acts. Silent Spring was written in 1962 serving as a rallying cry for environmentalists everywhere and eventually leading to a ban on DDT. The Cuyahoga River caught on fire leading to the creation of the EPA.
On top of that a massive civil rights movement was under way, the US was embroiled in the biggest military conflict since World War II, we were at the height of the cold war, there were a couple big SNAFUs with Cuba, the assassination of numerous political figures, and crime at levels twice as high as normal.
The U.S. was facing so many problems in the 1960s that NASA was one of the few things the nation could look up to.
there is no "right" to fair use. Why do you keep propagating this myth?
Prior to the Statute of Anne, copyright was used as a means of restricting speech. 75 year after the Statute of Anne, the power to grant copyrights was written into the US constitution. The first amendment was later added to the constitution to ensure the government did not overstep its bounds.
The "right" to fair use derives directly from the first amendment. It was first articulated in a court case pitting freedom of speech against copyright. The court did not want to rule that the first amendment completely overrides copyright. Fair use was the court's way of saying your first amendment rights are still intact but only to the extent that they do not unfairly harm the copyright holder. It was only later that congress included the concept of fair use in the law itself.
So in other words, yes, there is a "right" to fair use as demanded both by the constitution and the law.
The Presidency has been rated one of the worst jobs due to the massive responsibility, stress, constant criticism, and threat of being assassinated. The illegal 'perks' you're obviously trying to joke about got Clinton impeached and nearly booted out of office. If that had occurred he may have lost some of the other perks he is entitled to while simultaneously finding himself in a rather unsavory place in history.
Its not a good time for msfties, with stock flat for....2 decades now...
Microsoft stock has only been flat for one decade. It saw phenomenal growth from 1990 to 2000. Their largest growth started around 1996 when Windows 95 added support for IP and the internet. They had a huge drop in 2000 when Bill Gates stepped down as CEO. That's also about the time the anti-trust case against them was affirmed on appeal (although the penalty was thrown out). Microsoft stock has generally been $20-$30/share ever since.
Core Mozilla project source code is licensed under a disjunctive tri-license giving you the choice of one of the three following sets of free software/open source licensing terms:
You're not going to damage anyone's business by distributing something that wouldn't sell anyway so there would be nothing for the copyright holder (whoever that is) to gain from suing.
S/he faces $250,000 in statutory damages if the copyright holder sues. Of course, to sue successfully they have to prove they hold the copyright.
In the Illinois case, the green arrow was obscured just enough to appear to be a full green.
I'm still trying to figure out how this would cause an accident. If the light were a green arrow the driver would always have the right of way. With a green circle the driver needs to wait for traffic coming from the other direction. So if the light were really a green arrow and the driver thought it was a circle, how would it contribute to an accident?
You are the first nominee for a 2010 Darwin Awards honorable mention for a brave attempt at removing yourself from the gene pool that unfortunately ultimately failed.
From the article:
The couple was well-equipped for winter travel, carrying food, water and warm clothes, the sheriff said.
These two survived because they were well prepared. That hardly makes them candidates for a Darwin Award.
Regardless, these two were not familiar with the area. The point of a GPS navigation system is to direct you to your destination. Trusting a technology that has worked countless times in the past does not qualify a person for a Darwin Award. Also, at 65 and 67 years of age these people are far too old to have children.
The Seventh Amendment to which you allude talks about "no fact tried by a jury", not "no law interpreted by a jury".
The seventh amendment actually says:
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
"no fact tried by a jury" has to do with the appeals process. The right to trial by jury is declared before that. On the other hand, if the court has the ability to reexamine matters other than the facts then it is a moot point since the court can go ahead and interpret the law any way it wants regardless of what the jury says.
Can't we find some balance on this issue somewhere between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"?
Yes, we can. But when copyright lasts until the authors' great-grandchildren are moving into nursing homes the balance just doesn't exist. When copyright lasts longer than the medium on which it is distributed, balance doesn't exist. When the publisher has complete control over the means with which the work is played, balance doesn't exist. When software is distributed in binary form with no access to the source and a license that prohibits reverse engineering, balance again does not exist.
Historically, congress has sought to 'balance' copyright between authors and publishers. The public has never come into the equation. The promotion of progress and the useful arts has not come into the equation. The public domain has been cast aside as though it does not matter.
As for your balance between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"? This sort of thing should be more akin to a speeding ticket. And there should be a rich public domain available for people to work with.
Really, I think if copyright were balanced you would see a lot more people speaking out against copyright infringement on the grounds of fairness. You would see people reporting infringement knowing the penalties are reasonable and the infringing act can't be rationalized due to crooked laws. You would see people pointing to culturally significant works entering the public domain every year.
So balance is possible but we are far, far from it.
Trust me the right to second sale isn't as clear cut in case law as you might think.
With respect to books it is. That's why Half-Price Books, libraries, university books stores, and other second-hand distributors can stay in business. I understand things can get somewhat murky when there are license restrictions such as with most software. However, the GPL explicitly gives the user the right to decline the GPL. If you don't want to abide by the GPL you still have the right to second-sale. The software will not have any restrictions outside the GPL muddying the waters.
We are not discussing distribution of copies or derivative works. This is simply with respect to reselling a piece of hardware with GPL's software embedded in it.
Considering the fact that it's possible to do that, I am completely confused as to how it is possible that every single IP address that the RIAA, MPAA, Congress, or Senate uses has not been registered with as many trackers as possible. Sure, it would degrade BitTorrent performance on those trackers, but it would be worth it to have the RIAA flood the house or senate with takedown notices when no illegal activity has taken place.
And how would congress react to that? Outlaw the use of software that isn't internet approved! Increased penalties for forging IP numbers!
Thanks. That was an excellent article. It really does hit at the fallacy of the argument. It's not the information itself that is a problem, it's what the data can or will be used for. I certainly don't want the government to aggregate and profile all my data and use it as an excuse to kick me off an airplane or subject me to specialized screening any time I travel. I don't want the government to investigate me just because my groceries fit the profile of certain undesirables. And to make things worse, when the data is wrong I can't do anything to get it corrected.
It won't be long before lawyers are buying internet profiles of potential jurors and using them to exclude any juror that might be able to make an informed opinion about the case. Insurance companies would love to use a person's spending habits as an excuse to charge higher premiums. When businesses get a hold of someone's phone number, they routinely call at the most inappropriate times.
The fallacy of the argument is that it assumes privacy is about hiding wrongdoing. In reality, privacy is about protecting yourself from someone else's wrongdoing.
IANAL, but what happens if they plaintiffs prevail and Warner, Sony, et al refuse to pay? I doubt their assets in Canada exceed $60 billion
The article claims there were 300,000 songs infringed and the cost per infringement is $20,000. That only comes out to $6 billion. So something somewhere is incorrect. Either the math or the source numbers.
Fair use came about from a ruling on constitutional grounds. It was the court's way of saying the first amendment didn't completely eliminate copyright, yet copyright is not an end run around the first amendment. Instead, you may make fair use of copyrighted works. Other sections of the copyright act have since included references to fair use to clarify the intent. Regardless, of what the statute says fair use still exists. However, fair use may be more narrowly constrained without a specific reference to it in the statute.
for everyone but the pirates. Participation in this scheme would be a criminal conspiracy to commit piracy, kidnapping, theft, and hostage-taking. Even if the pirates' plan is to swindle money from the investors and not pay out anything it is still a crime to participate in a scheme where the intent is to commit a crime.
The only reason the pirates have gotten away with their actions so far is because they are outside the jurisdiction of any interested government. People who participate in this scheme from pretty much anywhere but Somalia are likely to find themselves in quite a lot of legal trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair use is based on a court ruling that attempted to balance copyright with the first amendment. It was later codified into law with a four-point test. Straight from the US Copyright Office:
1) The non-profit news reporting character of the use is certainly an important factor.
2) The material directly affects the rights of millions of people.
3) Because of the nature of the work and the author's failure to make it available through other channels he had to use the whole thing.
4) The author has no intention of ever selling the work. Even if they did they would not get much for it.
Congress has the power to "promote the progress of...the useful arts" by granting copyrights. Protecting this work from distribution will not do that thus congress does not have the authority to grant a copyright on it.
Microsoft of course wants this document to remain secret. Ironically, to bring this matter to court they have to officially file for copyright which will include depositing a copy of it in the Library of Congress.
That operation occurred at Bethesda Naval Hospital which is controlled by the US Federal government.
Unlike other modems the GeoModem did not moulate and demodulate. Instead it used the modem hidden inside your CPU! By purchasing an adapter that cost as much as a real modem you could use the processor inside your computer to handle all the modulating and demodulating. On an OS that used shared multitasking this was not very reliable. Its one and only advantage is that you could upgrade the software. It went from 14.4kbps to 33.6kbps over night.
There were no claims of serial copying, much less evidence thereof. Regardless, a person is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others. I realize there is such a thing as contributory infringement but that was never alleged nor proven at trial. Even if the plaintiffs could prove someone else downloaded one of the songs Thomas-Rasset uploaded they would still need to prove it was sourced from her rather than someone else.
I'm not 100% certain that is the correct link. It could just as easily be this one:
http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#submitComment?R=0900006480a7bbba
If you follow the directions in the PDF it will give you both links.
By the way, that PDF indicates they prefer comments be uploaded as a file. In particular they prefer MS Word and Adobe Acrobat format.
On a side note that has got to be the worst web site I have seen in years. Parts of it render incorrectly in Internet Explorer leaving you unable to read text in the document details page. The site is completely unusable with Konqueror on Linux and I was unable to successfully submit a comment with FireFox on Linux.
I would be willing to bet the site does not even come close to being section 508 compliant. While they do thoughtfully include alt attributes, someone who wants to submit a comment about books in Braille is not going to be able to.
Compressed pictures should be available to the public a few days after the flyby. They are expecting the full data set to take nine months.
So for decent pictures you had best revise your estimate:
July 2015
You can bet the sole reason for including this was to support DRM-protected content.
If you put everything in 1959 dollars and adjust for inflation to 2008 it is less than $180 billion. Contrast that with the $700 billion we spent in a few months bailing out irresponsible banks.
Well then, I guess you missed the history of the 1960! As a percent of gross domestic product the national debt has been around 15-20 percent since the mid 1950s. The 1960s saw enormous social unrest with the Black Panthers, SDS, SLA, KKK, and others routinely committing terrorists acts. Silent Spring was written in 1962 serving as a rallying cry for environmentalists everywhere and eventually leading to a ban on DDT. The Cuyahoga River caught on fire leading to the creation of the EPA.
On top of that a massive civil rights movement was under way, the US was embroiled in the biggest military conflict since World War II, we were at the height of the cold war, there were a couple big SNAFUs with Cuba, the assassination of numerous political figures, and crime at levels twice as high as normal.
The U.S. was facing so many problems in the 1960s that NASA was one of the few things the nation could look up to.
Prior to the Statute of Anne, copyright was used as a means of restricting speech. 75 year after the Statute of Anne, the power to grant copyrights was written into the US constitution. The first amendment was later added to the constitution to ensure the government did not overstep its bounds.
The "right" to fair use derives directly from the first amendment. It was first articulated in a court case pitting freedom of speech against copyright. The court did not want to rule that the first amendment completely overrides copyright. Fair use was the court's way of saying your first amendment rights are still intact but only to the extent that they do not unfairly harm the copyright holder. It was only later that congress included the concept of fair use in the law itself.
So in other words, yes, there is a "right" to fair use as demanded both by the constitution and the law.
The Presidency has been rated one of the worst jobs due to the massive responsibility, stress, constant criticism, and threat of being assassinated. The illegal 'perks' you're obviously trying to joke about got Clinton impeached and nearly booted out of office. If that had occurred he may have lost some of the other perks he is entitled to while simultaneously finding himself in a rather unsavory place in history.
Microsoft stock has only been flat for one decade. It saw phenomenal growth from 1990 to 2000. Their largest growth started around 1996 when Windows 95 added support for IP and the internet. They had a huge drop in 2000 when Bill Gates stepped down as CEO. That's also about the time the anti-trust case against them was affirmed on appeal (although the penalty was thrown out). Microsoft stock has generally been $20-$30/share ever since.
Sorry, but yes it is.
S/he faces $250,000 in statutory damages if the copyright holder sues. Of course, to sue successfully they have to prove they hold the copyright.
I'm still trying to figure out how this would cause an accident. If the light were a green arrow the driver would always have the right of way. With a green circle the driver needs to wait for traffic coming from the other direction. So if the light were really a green arrow and the driver thought it was a circle, how would it contribute to an accident?
From the article:
These two survived because they were well prepared. That hardly makes them candidates for a Darwin Award.
Regardless, these two were not familiar with the area. The point of a GPS navigation system is to direct you to your destination. Trusting a technology that has worked countless times in the past does not qualify a person for a Darwin Award. Also, at 65 and 67 years of age these people are far too old to have children.
The seventh amendment actually says:
"no fact tried by a jury" has to do with the appeals process. The right to trial by jury is declared before that. On the other hand, if the court has the ability to reexamine matters other than the facts then it is a moot point since the court can go ahead and interpret the law any way it wants regardless of what the jury says.
Yes, we can. But when copyright lasts until the authors' great-grandchildren are moving into nursing homes the balance just doesn't exist. When copyright lasts longer than the medium on which it is distributed, balance doesn't exist. When the publisher has complete control over the means with which the work is played, balance doesn't exist. When software is distributed in binary form with no access to the source and a license that prohibits reverse engineering, balance again does not exist.
Historically, congress has sought to 'balance' copyright between authors and publishers. The public has never come into the equation. The promotion of progress and the useful arts has not come into the equation. The public domain has been cast aside as though it does not matter.
As for your balance between "some teenagers downloaded Britney Spears, lock 'em up!" and "information wants to be free"? This sort of thing should be more akin to a speeding ticket. And there should be a rich public domain available for people to work with.
Really, I think if copyright were balanced you would see a lot more people speaking out against copyright infringement on the grounds of fairness. You would see people reporting infringement knowing the penalties are reasonable and the infringing act can't be rationalized due to crooked laws. You would see people pointing to culturally significant works entering the public domain every year.
So balance is possible but we are far, far from it.
With respect to books it is. That's why Half-Price Books, libraries, university books stores, and other second-hand distributors can stay in business. I understand things can get somewhat murky when there are license restrictions such as with most software. However, the GPL explicitly gives the user the right to decline the GPL. If you don't want to abide by the GPL you still have the right to second-sale. The software will not have any restrictions outside the GPL muddying the waters.
We are not discussing distribution of copies or derivative works. This is simply with respect to reselling a piece of hardware with GPL's software embedded in it.
And how would congress react to that? Outlaw the use of software that isn't internet approved! Increased penalties for forging IP numbers!
Thanks. That was an excellent article. It really does hit at the fallacy of the argument. It's not the information itself that is a problem, it's what the data can or will be used for. I certainly don't want the government to aggregate and profile all my data and use it as an excuse to kick me off an airplane or subject me to specialized screening any time I travel. I don't want the government to investigate me just because my groceries fit the profile of certain undesirables. And to make things worse, when the data is wrong I can't do anything to get it corrected.
It won't be long before lawyers are buying internet profiles of potential jurors and using them to exclude any juror that might be able to make an informed opinion about the case. Insurance companies would love to use a person's spending habits as an excuse to charge higher premiums. When businesses get a hold of someone's phone number, they routinely call at the most inappropriate times.
The fallacy of the argument is that it assumes privacy is about hiding wrongdoing. In reality, privacy is about protecting yourself from someone else's wrongdoing.
The article claims there were 300,000 songs infringed and the cost per infringement is $20,000. That only comes out to $6 billion. So something somewhere is incorrect. Either the math or the source numbers.
Fair use came about from a ruling on constitutional grounds. It was the court's way of saying the first amendment didn't completely eliminate copyright, yet copyright is not an end run around the first amendment. Instead, you may make fair use of copyrighted works. Other sections of the copyright act have since included references to fair use to clarify the intent. Regardless, of what the statute says fair use still exists. However, fair use may be more narrowly constrained without a specific reference to it in the statute.
for everyone but the pirates. Participation in this scheme would be a criminal conspiracy to commit piracy, kidnapping, theft, and hostage-taking. Even if the pirates' plan is to swindle money from the investors and not pay out anything it is still a crime to participate in a scheme where the intent is to commit a crime.
The only reason the pirates have gotten away with their actions so far is because they are outside the jurisdiction of any interested government. People who participate in this scheme from pretty much anywhere but Somalia are likely to find themselves in quite a lot of legal trouble.