The term fixation is also frequently used. Both terms are considered to be correct in the context of copyright law.
Hulu is also not a "fixed copy" distribution system--it's a digital transmission and the royalty agreements are handled separately.
Ah. Hulu is a streaming service, not a download service. My bad. I've never actually used Hulu....
Transformative use of a copy is not a factor here. There is zero bearing on the copyright in covers, on which there is none. Transformative use only matters in the context of fair use of an existing copyright.
You are technically correct that the term "transformative use" is primarily used in the context of determining fair use. The phrase I should have used to cover the question of whether a work is copyrightable is "minimal degree of creativity". Even a derivative work that isn't transformative enough to qualify for a fair use exemption on those grounds is still protected by copyright, provided that its use of the original work was either done with permission, is otherwise protected by fair use, or involves a work that is no longer under copyright.
Merely creating something that is highly transformative is sufficient neither to establish fair use nor to establish a new copyright.
It isn't sufficient to establish fair use (which is irrelevant in this case, because the derivative was made with permission, which means it isn't infringing). It is more than sufficient to establish a new copyright. The independently created portion of noninfringing derivative works are protected by copyright, regardless of whether that noninfringement is because the content was used in a transformative manner, because the content is no longer under copyright, because the content was used by permission, or for any other fair use reason. Period. So the only situation in which you would be correct would be if the work in question were an unauthorized derivative of a still-copyright-protected work, and fair use protection didn't cover the use of the original. In all other cases, derivative works are protected by copyright.
Besides, the whole question is irrelevant anyway, because the composer of the music in question had permission to set those lyrics to that music. Copyright law explicitly allows the lyrics to be authored by a different person than the music, so this is probably not even a derivative work, but rather a new work of joint authorship (depending on the terms of that contract).
The folks at Glee, took his music and performed it without permission. They appear to have in fact taken his actual recording and removed his voice, substituting their own performers voices, BUT INCLUDING THE CHANGES HE MADE TO THE LYRICS.
The changes to the lyrics, unless they are substantial, are probably not sufficiently transformative to warrant any copyright protection.
Copyright does not vest in covers, no matter how expressive, unless that cover is made under the express direction or authorization of the owner of the original copyright. No matter how creatively you rearrange an existing work, your rearrangement is not copyrightable on its own as you imply.
Case law citations or get out. Seriously. That's not what the courts say on the matter. Sure, if you prepare an unauthorized derivative work, the original creator can sue you, and if you lose, the courts may award them the copyright as punishment for having done so, but the burden of proof is upon them to show that your derivative is not a transformative use of the work.
Read this article for more. Although I fundamentally disagree with the mischaracterization that transformative use does not constitute a derivative work (I would argue that it is merely not an infringing derivative work, as it meets the criteria for a derivative work), the article is otherwise generally on the mark. Beyond some threshold, no permission from the original creator is required. Where that threshold lies is a question for the courts.
Either way, your comment that "no matter how creatively you rearrange" it, it isn't copyrightable is categorically incorrect.
No, he added to the musical arrangement present in the original work. But that's not critical to any of it.
It is if that added content is what is being infringed.
No, it's not. Just as Coulton could use the original music upon which to base his arrangement and recording, so too can the artists and producers at Glee. Even if the original artist, label, or holding company granted a license to Coulton permitting him a copyrightable version of the song, and even if that entity also sold or assigned that copyright to Coulton, he still has no power to stop Fox from using that version of the song.
Again, the original artist/label/holding company need not grant a license for a transformative derivative. The music he wrote, unless otherwise declared by a court, is sufficient to stand as a work on its own, separate and apart from the original work, and as such, is protected.
However, you are correct that, because he released a recording of his version, as long as they pay him and/or the PRS that represents him the appropriate royalties for the performance and mechanical royalties for any copies distributed through non-broadcast means, you are correct, unless they used his actual recording. If they didn't/don't pay those royalties, they're in violation unless he explicitly signed away his copyright as part of the acceptance of the license from the original work's author (which IMO is dubious, given the substantially transformational nature of the new work, but it might hold up in court).
If they used his original recording, however, chances are Fox needs synchronization rights. There's no such thing as compulsory synchronization rights, and there are no statutory rates for synch rights, either.
You'd be right if it were just a broadcast of a performance. However:
A performance license won't cover distribution via iTunes, won't cover distribution of the recorded TV show through Hulu, etc. Because those are considered fixated copies, they require mechanical rights.
If they used any of his original recording, that would require synchronization rights.
I apologize for implying otherwise. I was so distracted by the question of mechanical rights coming seemingly out of nowhere and the implication that it somehow excused Fox's actions that I completely missed the question of whether they were applicable at all.
Actually, no. If you look up the law, arrangements are not owned by the arranger, they are owned by the original copyright holder.
Actually, no. Copyrights are owned by the arranger or nobody, depending on the extent of the difference from the original. I'll explain it with a version control analogy to make it easier.
I check in an original commit. I own copyright on the original submission.
You make changes and check in the modified version. If your diff contains enough new content to be covered by copyright protection on its own, you own copyright on the diff. Otherwise, the diff isn't protected by copyright at all.
Covers of audio recordings are NOT infringing derivative works for the purpose of the Copyright Act. A copyright holder cannot stop or successfully sue over any individual's derivation of a song so long as the mechanical license is paid. This does not have to be negotiated, because 17 USC 115 provides for a compulsory license rate for such action.
I never said that they are infringing. I merely said that they are derivative works. Whether they are infringing or not depends on whether you have a license (whether compulsory or otherwise). If they were not derivative works, you wouldn't need a license.
Also, compulsory licensing is basically irrelevant here. Fox doesn't have a compulsory license for his music. Nobody does compulsory licensing when distributing something to millions of people. Glee has an average of something like 9 million viewers, so that would cost them the better part of a million bucks in compulsory licensing fees. Major labels and TV networks and the like always negotiate a much lower rate than the statutory rate, or else they don't use your music.
A recording of the cover is entitled to copyright protection as a work of the cover artist, not the original artist.
I never said otherwise. Please reread what I said. The recording is entitled to copyright protection as a recording, in that the recording itself is an artistic work above and beyond the original. However, because it is a derivative work, the copyright protection extends only to changed elements (which includes the recording itself, by virtue of the fact that it isn't the original recording).
However, if I create a cover of a song and then somebody else does a cover of a song, and if we both imitate something that is present in the original recording, I can't sue over it, because the original recording holds copyright over that element, and mine does not. Not that this has any relevance in this particular case, of course. And that is what I mean when I say that copyright covers only changed elements.
The issue isn't the cover version, but in reality, the use of a sampled recording of Mr. Coulton's, a totally separate issue and a fairly straightforward form of copyright infringement if true.
No, that's only part of it. The issue is that Mr. Coulton's "cover" set a rap song to music that did not exist in the original work. Therefore, the music itself has a copyright separate and independent from the recording. So if they used the music, that's a copyright, violation, and if they used the actual recording, that's a second copyright violation.
According to the article, which was written by someone who knows nothing about copyright law, because it's a cover it's not really covered by copyright law.
FTFY.
A cover is a derivative work. It is covered by copyright to the extent that it contains new, original creative expression above and beyond the original work. So to say that "it's not really covered by copyright law" is pretty much completely wrong unless the cover sounds almost exactly like the original, which his cover clearly does not. At all.
I don't really see how the melody he wrote for the song is not covered though, that isn't a copy of the original song at all. A song is not solely composed of lyrics.
Oh, his melody is most assuredly covered by copyright. Unquestionably. Anyone who says otherwise is either deliberately lying or knows nothing whatsoever about copyright law. It's an independent musical expression sufficient to be protected on its own by copyright if not combined with those lyrics. Therefore, it is protected just the same as any other artistic creation. If Fox really stole his original melody, and continued to use it even after having been informed that their use was not authorized, that meets the criteria for willful infringement. I believe the words "treble damages" come to mind.
Based on what I'm reading, it sounds like Fox isn't remotely on the right side of the law here. I would strongly urge Mr. Coulton to contact a lawyer who specializes in copyright cases. What Fox's lawyers are telling him is complete bulls**t, and they're pretty much pissing their pants hoping he doesn't sue, because they have a pretty good idea how many figures they'll lose if he does.
I would also strongly urge Mr. Coulton to file a proper takedown request with Apple. This forces Fox to put all their cards on the table, and gives them notice that you intend to take action if they don't come to a reasonable settlement. It also takes their content off of iTunes for at least a few days, during which they're losing a metric f**kton of sales. This has a tendency to force their lawyers to take your claims seriously, where they otherwise might not.
That said, IANAL, and this is not legal advice except for the the "you should contact a copyright lawyer" bit.
The US carriers are deploying FDD LTE while the rest of the world leans more to TDD LTE.
Thankfully, at least the U.S. is getting it right. In my view, one of the biggest benefits to LTE is the move away from time-division transmission. Besides being the cause of the notorious GSM chirp in nearby audio hardware, low-frequency magnetic pulses (ELF range) have fairly consistently been shown to have effects on biological processes of nearby animals, so they are probably not too good for the person holding the phone, either.
What companies do you know that produce good, high-quality code?
Consistently or occasionally? From what I've seen, your average company produces one or two great products and a lot of half-assed projects. I call this the Lightroom-Flash spectrum. On the upper bound, you have code that is fairly well written (apart from that case-sensitivity maps bug, ahem...), and on the lower bound, you have... well, Flash.
What distinguishes one from the other? IMO, you can roughly quantify it as: q = 1 / (t_sub_r * b_sub_p), where q is quality, t_sub_r is time since the last ground-up rewrite, and b_sub_p is the bug punt rate—the number of bugs that got punted to the next release because you couldn't fix them.
In the average organization, T_sub_r is a linearly increasing variable based on time, because rewrites never happen. Similarly, because the schedule is fixed, the total number of bugs is proportional to the code size, and the number of coders is also proportional to the code size, the number of bugs punted tends to be proportional to the code size.
Assuming your code size increases roughly linearly based on time (but in sudden jumps at every release), then code quality is roughly O(1/(t^2)). With products that are given adequate care, though, the schedule lengthens or the rate of code expansion tapers off over time, so that Q is probably closer to O(1/(t * log_base_k(t))) for some base k.
Either way, though, it's a race against the clock, because the OS is changing under you and the world is changing around you, so even if you did absolutely nothing, the code quality would fall off at a rate of O(1/t^2), because all of your bugs are punted.
Either way, the only way you'll ever do better than 1/t is if you periodically do major rewrites of big chunks of code. Of course, this introduces a whole new set of bugs, but the code quality will improve because you will have learned (hopefully) from the mistakes of the previous version of the code. And you must do this for pretty much every section of your code on a regular basis or else the old, crufty parts will eventually degrade into a black box that everybody is afraid to touch.
Or you could just do everyone a favor and periodically introduce code that looks like this weaved in and among what you consider crap code in an effort to force people to rewrite it.
At its core? A right is a promise that you will be allowed to do something up to the point at which it infringes or threatens to infringe unacceptably upon the rights of others. A right can be taken away. Perhaps you thought gun ownership was an unalienable right?
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever read on slashdot: "And their weapons are probably stored in their bedside tables, fully loaded, just waiting to be stolen and used by someone who didn't pass a background check."
Just pointing out reality. A sizable percentage of the illegally held firearms in the U.S. were stolen from a legal owner at some point in the past. In 2010, there were only 326 justifiable homicides in the entire U.S., whereas an average of 232,400 firearms are stolen from private households ever year. So your firearm is more than 700 times more likely to be stolen than used to kill someone who is threatening your family.
But, you might ask, what if the homeowner merely hurts the intruder? Well, even if every single non-self-inflicted firearm injury in the U.S. involved defending against an attacker, your firearm would still be 4–8 times as likely to get stolen than to be used to injure or kill someone who is threatening your family.
Ah, but what if the homeowner merely scares the person with a firearm? The gun is still probably more likely to get stolen than used defensively, according to most studies.
So, using your logic, we should also ban this 26.2% from driving vehicles (vehicles are more actively used than firearms for most people).
The argument that cars are even remotely as dangerous as handguns is just plain absurd. There's a good reason that vehicles are not a very popular choice for homicide (ignoring accidents): by being in the vehicle, you are at as much of a disadvantage as almost anyone you're trying to kill.
For people on foot, you have an advantage in speed, but they have a tremendous advantage in maneuverability. You'd have to get really lucky to take out more than a couple of pedestrians with a vehicle before people figured out what was going on and got away from you.
For other drivers, you probably won't be able to kill very many before that whole third law of motion thing catches up with you and you end up dead yourself. Again, you might get really, really lucky, but... it just doesn't work in practice.
Lets not even go into the amount of military and police that need to be treated for PTSD after being in a life altering situation (training doesn't stop that).
For military, that's a reasonable concern. For police, much less so. Statistically speaking, most police officers retire having never fired a weapon except at a practice range, and if NYC is an indicator, more than half of the discharges that do occur are likely to have been either accidental or shooting an animal.
I mean, I'm not saying that post-traumatic stress isn't a problem for police—I'm sure it is—but it isn't nearly as common as you seem to think.
We should be focusing on getting out of the fiscal hole we are in and not pandering to the emotions of the week, then you would realize why our congress and leadership has the lowest approval rating of all time.
Are we really not capable of talking about more than one issue at a time? Besides, who says I'm anti-gun? You're making a big (and wrong) assumption there. I'm not. For the most part, I think our gun laws are reasonable as they are. That said, I do support:
Fixing some of the regulatory loopholes that allow people who have actually been deemed potentially dangerous by the courts to legally purchase firearms in some states.
Requiring background checks for all sales (not just sales by dealers). It isn't exactly a high bar in this era of smartphones.
Bans on high-capacity magazines. Frequently, the only difference between a few deaths and mass murder is how many people the assailant was able to kill or disable before stopping to reload.
Those three relatively small changes all provide a clear public benefit, while having little to no impact on legitimate gun owners.
If your correlation was accurate, that gun ownership equals crime, the US should have the highest crime rate to go with the highest gun ownership.
You're twisting what I said. I was talking about statistics at the neighborhood level—that is, relative to other neighborhoods in the area.
You can't always extend observations at the micro level to the macro level, particularly when there's a significant cultural divide. I would expect a lot more weapons in Bucksnort, TN than in Los Angeles. That doesn't mean there's more crime in Bucksnort than in Los Angeles. But I would expect more people to own guns in a high crime LA-area neighborhood than in, say, Beverly Hills.
To be fair, the observation only holds even at the micro level in areas where gun ownership isn't the norm, because there's not usually a good way to discern a gun purchased for protection from a gun purchased for other purposes. That caveat doesn't really apply in New York state, though.
Or it might mean that you live in west virginia/kentucky and every single household goes buck hunting.
I'm from Tennessee. Lots of folks had firearms, and that didn't bother me because it was the norm for that region of the country. However, if I saw a small pocket in the SF Bay Area where everybody owned a gun, I'd be more than a little concerned, precisely because it is not normal for that area of the country.
Bear in mind, though, that this entire discussion thread is talking about New York state, where guns are relatively rare.
Gang weapons aren't registered. They're stolen or moved and cleaned.
I never said that they were.
Bars on the windows do serve as a good indicator -- but that's a more likely indicator of proximate activity in my experience. That is to say, bars don't mean that neighborhood is bad -- it means the one 15 minutes away is bad.
And in exactly the same way, an unusually high number of handgun permits in a particular area suggests that there's a good chance that either the neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood is bad. You don't buy a handgun for protection unless you feel like you need additional protection. Which is what I said.
But what really...irked me with your post was your 26% mental illness figure. I mean, you're right. Do you think those 26% who are mentally ill shouldn't own guns?
I doubt the percentage that shouldn't is anywhere near 26%, but given the number of total nutjobs committing mass murder lately, it's safe to say that the number isn't zero, either. Whereas with a police force, that number should be zero, and if it isn't, then you have serious problems.
You aren't talking about navy seals and specops or devgru. You aren't talking about MOSSAD. You're talking about the police and US army...
Okay, maybe "elite" was too strong a word. The point is that they're trained, and by virtue of the fact that they haven't been suspended or fired, they are probably at least marginally stable and don't use their firearm without cause, despite having it with them at all times. As opposed to someone with a non-concealed-carry permit, who might be tempted to shoot that jerk in front of him in the checkout line with 13 items in the 12-items-or-less line, but isn't armed.:-) (Yes, I'm deliberately using an absurd scenario for humor. Now imagine a real one, like a bar fight or whatever.)
Hell, the police have a higher rate of homicide (and massively higher rates of domestic violence) than registered private gun owners.
You're right that domestic violence rates are higher in police families. They're also higher in other high-stress jobs. That's not an indication that police officers are less stable. It's an indication that their job can be psychologically brutal. And while that's a very real problem that needs to be solved, it in no way relates to the subject at hand.
Also, comparing homicide rates is a useless comparison. All fatal shootings by police officers while on the job are considered homicides (usually justifiable). Therefore, unless you have stats on unjustifiable homicides (which I have been unable to find anywhere), the numbers for police officers should be much higher than for registered gun owners. The alternative is downright scary.
You're right that an area with lots of concealed-carry permits is probably an area where mostly retired LEOs live, which is probably low crime. However, nothing in the summary or the linked articles leads me to believe that the list is limited to concealed-carry permits. In New York state, AFAIK, all handgun possession requires a permit, even if it never leaves the premises. Therefore, one would expect most of the permits on that list to not be concealed carry.
I mean, at a bare minimum these are people who have spotless or nearly-spotless criminal records and no mental health hospitalizations.
Nearly spotless? Hardly. As long as you aren't actively being investigated for a crime, you can usually have any number of misdemeanors (except for domestic violence misdemeanors and, in some states, stalking or recent DUI convictions). You just can't have any felony convictions. I find it particularly fascinating that except in states with habitual misdemeanor assault laws, someone with a felony conviction for securities fraud can't own a gun, but someone with multiple assault convictions (without a weapon) can.
And the laws that limit gun ownership for the mentally ill often cover only inpatient treatment. But because of legal backlash against compulsory commitment that began way back in the 1970s, most people with mental illness these days are not given inpatient treatment. Gun ownership by people in court-ordered assisted outpatient treatment may or may not be prohibited, depending on the state. In states where it is not prohibited, the federal prohibition against gun ownership by "mental defectives" has effectively been castrated for at least a couple of decades.
In other words, the distinction that you think exists is mostly an illusion.
what happens when pacifism meets aggressive violent people?
We're not talking about the broader scale of one nation attacking another nation here. We're talking about neighborhoods. At the neighborhood level, safe communities very rarely meet aggressive, violent people. Therefore, people living in safe communities rarely feel the need to own firearms for personal protection.
If I were buying a house, I would see high gun ownership in a neighborhood as a very bad sign, because it means that a large percentage of the people live in constant fear for their lives. It is an indicator of insufficient police protection, gang activity, drug activity, or other serious problems. It is not the only indicator (bars on windows are another good one), but it is a good indicator.
But even if that correlation did not exist, a high number of gun owners would still be a red flag. There's a reason we create police forces and military forces. They represent an elite group of people with the proper training and psychological stability to use firearms for the public good. They are actively monitored for psychological problems, they are trained to distinguish friend from foe, and they are trained to store their service weapons properly.
By contrast, out of those registered gun owners, assuming they represent a random sampling of the population, 26.2% will "suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year." (Source: NIH) Most of them lack any formal training. And their weapons are probably stored in their bedside tables, fully loaded, just waiting to be stolen and used by someone who didn't pass a background check.
So yeah, there's a very real public interest to having that information. That said, I don't agree with the GP that it should be used when deciding who to buy from or other such nonsense. The individual data points are uninteresting (except when you meet someone, conclude that he or she is nuts, and then find out that he or she owns a firearm). It is mostly in aggregate that the information is relevant.
No, it means exactly what I think it does. My comment was a pun. "MiniTrue", the newspeak form of "Ministry of Truth", is from 1984. B5 borrowed it (complete with the name) more than forty-five years later.
5) If you can afford a private cabin get one. The door has a lock on it so you're less likely to have to worry about theft.
At least in the U.S., the cabins don't have locks. That said, they do have curtains over the windows and they don't let non-sleeping-car passengers wander through, so the risk of somebody randomly walking off with your stuff is very small.
Slashdot Mirror
The term fixation is also frequently used. Both terms are considered to be correct in the context of copyright law.
Ah. Hulu is a streaming service, not a download service. My bad. I've never actually used Hulu....
You are technically correct that the term "transformative use" is primarily used in the context of determining fair use. The phrase I should have used to cover the question of whether a work is copyrightable is "minimal degree of creativity". Even a derivative work that isn't transformative enough to qualify for a fair use exemption on those grounds is still protected by copyright, provided that its use of the original work was either done with permission, is otherwise protected by fair use, or involves a work that is no longer under copyright.
It isn't sufficient to establish fair use (which is irrelevant in this case, because the derivative was made with permission, which means it isn't infringing). It is more than sufficient to establish a new copyright. The independently created portion of noninfringing derivative works are protected by copyright, regardless of whether that noninfringement is because the content was used in a transformative manner, because the content is no longer under copyright, because the content was used by permission, or for any other fair use reason. Period. So the only situation in which you would be correct would be if the work in question were an unauthorized derivative of a still-copyright-protected work, and fair use protection didn't cover the use of the original. In all other cases, derivative works are protected by copyright.
Besides, the whole question is irrelevant anyway, because the composer of the music in question had permission to set those lyrics to that music. Copyright law explicitly allows the lyrics to be authored by a different person than the music, so this is probably not even a derivative work, but rather a new work of joint authorship (depending on the terms of that contract).
Yeah, sure. Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.
The changes to the lyrics, unless they are substantial, are probably not sufficiently transformative to warrant any copyright protection.
Case law citations or get out. Seriously. That's not what the courts say on the matter. Sure, if you prepare an unauthorized derivative work, the original creator can sue you, and if you lose, the courts may award them the copyright as punishment for having done so, but the burden of proof is upon them to show that your derivative is not a transformative use of the work.
Read this article for more. Although I fundamentally disagree with the mischaracterization that transformative use does not constitute a derivative work (I would argue that it is merely not an infringing derivative work, as it meets the criteria for a derivative work), the article is otherwise generally on the mark. Beyond some threshold, no permission from the original creator is required. Where that threshold lies is a question for the courts.
Either way, your comment that "no matter how creatively you rearrange" it, it isn't copyrightable is categorically incorrect.
It is if that added content is what is being infringed.
Again, the original artist/label/holding company need not grant a license for a transformative derivative. The music he wrote, unless otherwise declared by a court, is sufficient to stand as a work on its own, separate and apart from the original work, and as such, is protected.
However, you are correct that, because he released a recording of his version, as long as they pay him and/or the PRS that represents him the appropriate royalties for the performance and mechanical royalties for any copies distributed through non-broadcast means, you are correct, unless they used his actual recording. If they didn't/don't pay those royalties, they're in violation unless he explicitly signed away his copyright as part of the acceptance of the license from the original work's author (which IMO is dubious, given the substantially transformational nature of the new work, but it might hold up in court).
If they used his original recording, however, chances are Fox needs synchronization rights. There's no such thing as compulsory synchronization rights, and there are no statutory rates for synch rights, either.
You'd be right if it were just a broadcast of a performance. However:
A performance license won't cover distribution via iTunes, won't cover distribution of the recorded TV show through Hulu, etc. Because those are considered fixated copies, they require mechanical rights.
If they used any of his original recording, that would require synchronization rights.
I apologize for implying otherwise. I was so distracted by the question of mechanical rights coming seemingly out of nowhere and the implication that it somehow excused Fox's actions that I completely missed the question of whether they were applicable at all.
Actually, no. Copyrights are owned by the arranger or nobody, depending on the extent of the difference from the original. I'll explain it with a version control analogy to make it easier.
I check in an original commit. I own copyright on the original submission.
You make changes and check in the modified version. If your diff contains enough new content to be covered by copyright protection on its own, you own copyright on the diff. Otherwise, the diff isn't protected by copyright at all.
I never said that they are infringing. I merely said that they are derivative works. Whether they are infringing or not depends on whether you have a license (whether compulsory or otherwise). If they were not derivative works, you wouldn't need a license.
Also, compulsory licensing is basically irrelevant here. Fox doesn't have a compulsory license for his music. Nobody does compulsory licensing when distributing something to millions of people. Glee has an average of something like 9 million viewers, so that would cost them the better part of a million bucks in compulsory licensing fees. Major labels and TV networks and the like always negotiate a much lower rate than the statutory rate, or else they don't use your music.
I never said otherwise. Please reread what I said. The recording is entitled to copyright protection as a recording, in that the recording itself is an artistic work above and beyond the original. However, because it is a derivative work, the copyright protection extends only to changed elements (which includes the recording itself, by virtue of the fact that it isn't the original recording).
However, if I create a cover of a song and then somebody else does a cover of a song, and if we both imitate something that is present in the original recording, I can't sue over it, because the original recording holds copyright over that element, and mine does not. Not that this has any relevance in this particular case, of course. And that is what I mean when I say that copyright covers only changed elements.
No, that's only part of it. The issue is that Mr. Coulton's "cover" set a rap song to music that did not exist in the original work. Therefore, the music itself has a copyright separate and independent from the recording. So if they used the music, that's a copyright, violation, and if they used the actual recording, that's a second copyright violation.
Ostensibly, yes.
FTFY.
A cover is a derivative work. It is covered by copyright to the extent that it contains new, original creative expression above and beyond the original work. So to say that "it's not really covered by copyright law" is pretty much completely wrong unless the cover sounds almost exactly like the original, which his cover clearly does not. At all.
Oh, his melody is most assuredly covered by copyright. Unquestionably. Anyone who says otherwise is either deliberately lying or knows nothing whatsoever about copyright law. It's an independent musical expression sufficient to be protected on its own by copyright if not combined with those lyrics. Therefore, it is protected just the same as any other artistic creation. If Fox really stole his original melody, and continued to use it even after having been informed that their use was not authorized, that meets the criteria for willful infringement. I believe the words "treble damages" come to mind.
Based on what I'm reading, it sounds like Fox isn't remotely on the right side of the law here. I would strongly urge Mr. Coulton to contact a lawyer who specializes in copyright cases. What Fox's lawyers are telling him is complete bulls**t, and they're pretty much pissing their pants hoping he doesn't sue, because they have a pretty good idea how many figures they'll lose if he does.
I would also strongly urge Mr. Coulton to file a proper takedown request with Apple. This forces Fox to put all their cards on the table, and gives them notice that you intend to take action if they don't come to a reasonable settlement. It also takes their content off of iTunes for at least a few days, during which they're losing a metric f**kton of sales. This has a tendency to force their lawyers to take your claims seriously, where they otherwise might not.
That said, IANAL, and this is not legal advice except for the the "you should contact a copyright lawyer" bit.
This is the point at which he should submit a DMCA takedown request to Apple.
Thankfully, at least the U.S. is getting it right. In my view, one of the biggest benefits to LTE is the move away from time-division transmission. Besides being the cause of the notorious GSM chirp in nearby audio hardware, low-frequency magnetic pulses (ELF range) have fairly consistently been shown to have effects on biological processes of nearby animals, so they are probably not too good for the person holding the phone, either.
And screeching at them in an annoying robot voice, "Spirit 5 is aliiiiiive."
Consistently or occasionally? From what I've seen, your average company produces one or two great products and a lot of half-assed projects. I call this the Lightroom-Flash spectrum. On the upper bound, you have code that is fairly well written (apart from that case-sensitivity maps bug, ahem...), and on the lower bound, you have... well, Flash.
What distinguishes one from the other? IMO, you can roughly quantify it as: q = 1 / (t_sub_r * b_sub_p), where q is quality, t_sub_r is time since the last ground-up rewrite, and b_sub_p is the bug punt rate—the number of bugs that got punted to the next release because you couldn't fix them.
In the average organization, T_sub_r is a linearly increasing variable based on time, because rewrites never happen. Similarly, because the schedule is fixed, the total number of bugs is proportional to the code size, and the number of coders is also proportional to the code size, the number of bugs punted tends to be proportional to the code size.
Assuming your code size increases roughly linearly based on time (but in sudden jumps at every release), then code quality is roughly O(1/(t^2)). With products that are given adequate care, though, the schedule lengthens or the rate of code expansion tapers off over time, so that Q is probably closer to O(1/(t * log_base_k(t))) for some base k.
Either way, though, it's a race against the clock, because the OS is changing under you and the world is changing around you, so even if you did absolutely nothing, the code quality would fall off at a rate of O(1/t^2), because all of your bugs are punted.
Either way, the only way you'll ever do better than 1/t is if you periodically do major rewrites of big chunks of code. Of course, this introduces a whole new set of bugs, but the code quality will improve because you will have learned (hopefully) from the mistakes of the previous version of the code. And you must do this for pretty much every section of your code on a regular basis or else the old, crufty parts will eventually degrade into a black box that everybody is afraid to touch.
Or you could just do everyone a favor and periodically introduce code that looks like this weaved in and among what you consider crap code in an effort to force people to rewrite it.
At its core? A right is a promise that you will be allowed to do something up to the point at which it infringes or threatens to infringe unacceptably upon the rights of others. A right can be taken away. Perhaps you thought gun ownership was an unalienable right?
Just pointing out reality. A sizable percentage of the illegally held firearms in the U.S. were stolen from a legal owner at some point in the past. In 2010, there were only 326 justifiable homicides in the entire U.S., whereas an average of 232,400 firearms are stolen from private households ever year. So your firearm is more than 700 times more likely to be stolen than used to kill someone who is threatening your family.
But, you might ask, what if the homeowner merely hurts the intruder? Well, even if every single non-self-inflicted firearm injury in the U.S. involved defending against an attacker, your firearm would still be 4–8 times as likely to get stolen than to be used to injure or kill someone who is threatening your family.
Ah, but what if the homeowner merely scares the person with a firearm? The gun is still probably more likely to get stolen than used defensively, according to most studies.
The argument that cars are even remotely as dangerous as handguns is just plain absurd. There's a good reason that vehicles are not a very popular choice for homicide (ignoring accidents): by being in the vehicle, you are at as much of a disadvantage as almost anyone you're trying to kill.
For people on foot, you have an advantage in speed, but they have a tremendous advantage in maneuverability. You'd have to get really lucky to take out more than a couple of pedestrians with a vehicle before people figured out what was going on and got away from you.
For other drivers, you probably won't be able to kill very many before that whole third law of motion thing catches up with you and you end up dead yourself. Again, you might get really, really lucky, but... it just doesn't work in practice.
For military, that's a reasonable concern. For police, much less so. Statistically speaking, most police officers retire having never fired a weapon except at a practice range, and if NYC is an indicator, more than half of the discharges that do occur are likely to have been either accidental or shooting an animal.
I mean, I'm not saying that post-traumatic stress isn't a problem for police—I'm sure it is—but it isn't nearly as common as you seem to think.
Are we really not capable of talking about more than one issue at a time? Besides, who says I'm anti-gun? You're making a big (and wrong) assumption there. I'm not. For the most part, I think our gun laws are reasonable as they are. That said, I do support:
Those three relatively small changes all provide a clear public benefit, while having little to no impact on legitimate gun owners.
MPAA/RIAA/DOJ honeypot?
You're twisting what I said. I was talking about statistics at the neighborhood level—that is, relative to other neighborhoods in the area.
You can't always extend observations at the micro level to the macro level, particularly when there's a significant cultural divide. I would expect a lot more weapons in Bucksnort, TN than in Los Angeles. That doesn't mean there's more crime in Bucksnort than in Los Angeles. But I would expect more people to own guns in a high crime LA-area neighborhood than in, say, Beverly Hills.
To be fair, the observation only holds even at the micro level in areas where gun ownership isn't the norm, because there's not usually a good way to discern a gun purchased for protection from a gun purchased for other purposes. That caveat doesn't really apply in New York state, though.
I'm from Tennessee. Lots of folks had firearms, and that didn't bother me because it was the norm for that region of the country. However, if I saw a small pocket in the SF Bay Area where everybody owned a gun, I'd be more than a little concerned, precisely because it is not normal for that area of the country.
Bear in mind, though, that this entire discussion thread is talking about New York state, where guns are relatively rare.
I never said that they were.
And in exactly the same way, an unusually high number of handgun permits in a particular area suggests that there's a good chance that either the neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood is bad. You don't buy a handgun for protection unless you feel like you need additional protection. Which is what I said.
I doubt the percentage that shouldn't is anywhere near 26%, but given the number of total nutjobs committing mass murder lately, it's safe to say that the number isn't zero, either. Whereas with a police force, that number should be zero, and if it isn't, then you have serious problems.
Okay, maybe "elite" was too strong a word. The point is that they're trained, and by virtue of the fact that they haven't been suspended or fired, they are probably at least marginally stable and don't use their firearm without cause, despite having it with them at all times. As opposed to someone with a non-concealed-carry permit, who might be tempted to shoot that jerk in front of him in the checkout line with 13 items in the 12-items-or-less line, but isn't armed. :-) (Yes, I'm deliberately using an absurd scenario for humor. Now imagine a real one, like a bar fight or whatever.)
You're right that domestic violence rates are higher in police families. They're also higher in other high-stress jobs. That's not an indication that police officers are less stable. It's an indication that their job can be psychologically brutal. And while that's a very real problem that needs to be solved, it in no way relates to the subject at hand.
Also, comparing homicide rates is a useless comparison. All fatal shootings by police officers while on the job are considered homicides (usually justifiable). Therefore, unless you have stats on unjustifiable homicides (which I have been unable to find anywhere), the numbers for police officers should be much higher than for registered gun owners. The alternative is downright scary.
You're right that an area with lots of concealed-carry permits is probably an area where mostly retired LEOs live, which is probably low crime. However, nothing in the summary or the linked articles leads me to believe that the list is limited to concealed-carry permits. In New York state, AFAIK, all handgun possession requires a permit, even if it never leaves the premises. Therefore, one would expect most of the permits on that list to not be concealed carry.
Nearly spotless? Hardly. As long as you aren't actively being investigated for a crime, you can usually have any number of misdemeanors (except for domestic violence misdemeanors and, in some states, stalking or recent DUI convictions). You just can't have any felony convictions. I find it particularly fascinating that except in states with habitual misdemeanor assault laws, someone with a felony conviction for securities fraud can't own a gun, but someone with multiple assault convictions (without a weapon) can.
And the laws that limit gun ownership for the mentally ill often cover only inpatient treatment. But because of legal backlash against compulsory commitment that began way back in the 1970s, most people with mental illness these days are not given inpatient treatment. Gun ownership by people in court-ordered assisted outpatient treatment may or may not be prohibited, depending on the state. In states where it is not prohibited, the federal prohibition against gun ownership by "mental defectives" has effectively been castrated for at least a couple of decades.
In other words, the distinction that you think exists is mostly an illusion.
We're not talking about the broader scale of one nation attacking another nation here. We're talking about neighborhoods. At the neighborhood level, safe communities very rarely meet aggressive, violent people. Therefore, people living in safe communities rarely feel the need to own firearms for personal protection.
If I were buying a house, I would see high gun ownership in a neighborhood as a very bad sign, because it means that a large percentage of the people live in constant fear for their lives. It is an indicator of insufficient police protection, gang activity, drug activity, or other serious problems. It is not the only indicator (bars on windows are another good one), but it is a good indicator.
But even if that correlation did not exist, a high number of gun owners would still be a red flag. There's a reason we create police forces and military forces. They represent an elite group of people with the proper training and psychological stability to use firearms for the public good. They are actively monitored for psychological problems, they are trained to distinguish friend from foe, and they are trained to store their service weapons properly.
By contrast, out of those registered gun owners, assuming they represent a random sampling of the population, 26.2% will "suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year." (Source: NIH) Most of them lack any formal training. And their weapons are probably stored in their bedside tables, fully loaded, just waiting to be stolen and used by someone who didn't pass a background check.
So yeah, there's a very real public interest to having that information. That said, I don't agree with the GP that it should be used when deciding who to buy from or other such nonsense. The individual data points are uninteresting (except when you meet someone, conclude that he or she is nuts, and then find out that he or she owns a firearm). It is mostly in aggregate that the information is relevant.
No, it means exactly what I think it does. My comment was a pun. "MiniTrue", the newspeak form of "Ministry of Truth", is from 1984. B5 borrowed it (complete with the name) more than forty-five years later.
*sigh*
Kids today.
At least in the U.S., the cabins don't have locks. That said, they do have curtains over the windows and they don't let non-sleeping-car passengers wander through, so the risk of somebody randomly walking off with your stuff is very small.
No, handcuff the luggage to the metal bar on the luggage shelf.
Indeed. I hear that many true things come out of it.