Sure. And it assumes you have the negatives (e.g. that these are not purchased photos from a wedding photographer). But for photos you took yourselves, most of the time, the negatives will be in better shape.
Well, when you put it that way, an analog electrical signal only causes a whole number of electrons to move, and light involves a whole number of photos. When you have to get down to the atomic or subatomic level before it becomes discrete, we generally blur the lines and call it analog.:-)
...AT&T would be selling ringtones specifically for the purpose of being used in a ringing phone, which would open them to a contributory infringement claim.
Maybe, but if it is determined to be a public performance by the individual, it likely falls into an explicit exemption in the copyright act (5A), in which case I don't think they would be very successful at claiming contributory infringement. You're right, though, that it is a grey area.
and at that point (if not long before) it becomes a total farce.
To "transmit" a performance or display is to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent.
I'm not an IP law student or lawyer, but I don't see an exception that governs this case.
On the contrary, potentially both #4 and #5 cover such use:
(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters, or organizers, if --
(A) there is no direct or indirect admission charge; or....
----
(5)(A) except as provided in subparagraph (B), communication of a transmission embodying a performance or display of a work by the public reception of the transmission on a single receiving apparatus of a kind commonly used in private homes, unless --
(i) a direct charge is made to see or hear the transmission; or
(ii) the transmission thus received is further transmitted to the public;
Where the exception in 5(B) says that commercial entities are not eligible for that exemption. In short, AT&T causing the public performance to occur is not exempt if it is shown that ringtones are public performances, but an individual installing a ringtone on a phone is exempt. AT&T would probably also be exempt if they hadn't sold the ringtones... but of course, they did.
Like I said in another post, this case is about AT&T charging people extortionate fees for ringtones under the guise of it being required because of license fees, but then not paying those license fees. ASCAP is not trying to make individuals pay per play for ringtones.
It's a tricky issue. That said, ASCAP's position in this case seems to be utter crap in a lot of ways. For example, they claim that ringtones are streaming because like streaming, "AT&T maintains a continuous connection to your phone." Of course, none of the audio data is sent through that connection, which makes it decidedly not streaming. They're trying to twist this after having their backsides handed to them in another case in which music downloads were declared to not be a public performance.
However, this case is not really about whether ringtones are a public performance. This case is because AT&T has been selling ringtones at extortionate prices under the premise that it covers a public performance license, but has never paid those licensing fees for all those ring tones. They've been pocketing the extra money above and beyond the usual cost of a digital music download. If you ever needed proof that AT&T are a bunch of leaches, you now have it. In order to bring this case to court, though, ASCAP has to get the courts to agree that AT&T triggering music that they explicitly sold as a ringtone constitutes a public performance by AT&T. That's a very tricky legal issue. They're right that it isn't the same as a download the moment AT&T triggers it. AT&T is also right that it isn't streaming.
Ultimately, I suspect the courts will rule that it is public performance, but that it is public performance by an individual, at which point ASCAP will likely drop the issue. However, that will also open up AT&T to lawsuits by consumers who have been fraudulently overcharged for ringtones under the false belief that they were licensing the right to its use in a public performance. Either way, AT&T is potentially screwed because they didn't pay those fees. If, however, the courts rule that triggering the performance of a musical work constitutes public performance, then AT&T is screwed solely because they sold the music that was being used as a ringtone. In that case, AT&T would be legally better off opening up the phones for users to put in any arbitrary audio file as a ringtone. That way, at least in theory, they cease to be culpable.
Either way the decision goes, there's next to no chance that this will impact the consumer in any significantly negative way, and a decision against AT&T might actually encourage them to open up their phones more. This is strictly a lawsuit filed by ASCAP against AT&T for breaching contracts by selling ringtones and then pocketing the licensing fees. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I tend to agree. Negatives tend not to degrade nearly as much, both because the medium is more stable and because they are generally stored in darkness. Also, film scanners are designed to compensate for fading negatives. Print scanners don't expect to need to correct a washed out image. Finally, prints by their very nature throw away a significant portion of the contrast range of the original negative, so even a brand new print isn't as good as a proper negative scan.
This assumes you have a film scanner or a flatbed scanner whose software knows how to scan negatives, of course. Doing it with cheaper, dumber flatbed scanners is problematic at best. Been there, done that.... Ended up getting prints made and scanning those.:-)
Backing up digital data for 100 years is actually pretty easy. Embed the data as a watermark in porn and post it on the Internet.:-)
But seriously, it is pretty easy. You start by realizing that you can't back it up for 100 years, but you can trivially back it up ten times for 10 years each. With analog media, you get degradation every time you make a copy of a copy, which makes long backup durations important. With digital data, this becomes moot.
If you can still find a working Zip drive, they should still be readable in 100 years. It's not usually the platters that fail. It's the crappy head mechanisms.
Actually, yeah, it really does. Data is either represented as discrete numerical values (digital) or as a continuous spectrum of values (analog). I can't really think of any form of data storage that doesn't qualify as one or the other. The mere fact that the continuous range is caused by a chemical process and not an electrical process does not mean it isn't analog.
My number of hard drive failures was averaging about one every 3-4 years for most of my life. My failure rate last year was three in a week, four in a year, spread across two brands and four drive models. That's purely anecdotal, of course, but jaw dropping, nonetheless, as IIRC it represented 100% of the in-warranty drives I had spinning at the time..
Sure, it's a step up from being a waiter, but if, as a film school grad, being a mic boom op is your goal, you could have skipped film school entirely. Nothing against boom ops here, but most people coming out of film school aspire to have a creative job---the sort of job that challenges you and has job security in its own right without the need for a union to create that job security artiificially.
In the absence of a union, there's no long-term job security in being a mic boom operator. Within the next decade, this job will likely fade away entirely. Tie a computer into the zoom control on the camera, add a few positional sensors, accelerometers, etc. and the computer could calculate the relative position of the mic boom and do the job without the need for a human to be involved at all (except to physically push the wheeled mic stand around, and if you build it into the camera dolly, you don't even need that). And, of course, unlike a human boom op, the computer, at least in theory, will never make mistakes and force a retake. When you're talking about a job that is so ideally suited to automation, choosing that as your career goal is not very wise.
No, I don't think rape should be legalized, nor did I say that mass downloading/uploading of music should be legalized. However, that's a great example. It is a broad societal problem, and thus can't be solved by jailing the individual offenders. It can only usefully be solved through education to rid people of the ridiculous notion that raping a virgin will cure AIDS. You have to fix the underlying problem---the lack of education---not the symptom.
In the case of mass music downloading/uploading, education is the only way that it might realistically be reduced, and if that doesn't work, no number of arrests is going to make a dent. The war on drugs is another example of this sort of broad problem. I'm sure we could name at least a dozen other examples. The question of whether it should or should not be a crime is a separate question---a question whose answer does tend to have an impact on whether education campaigns are effective or not....
On the contrary. It's a very good argument. If we were in the middle of a violent revolution, a nuclear holocaust, the aftermath of an asteroid impact, etc. in the U.S. and people were killing each other just to stay alive, it would be difficult to argue that one particular shooting deserved murder charges unless it involved killing some famous public official or something. It's not a question of how many times it has happened over time, but rather a question of whether the people committing the crime are a small enough minority that punishing them all is practical. If even a quarter of the population does something illegal, prosecuting them all is impractical, and prosecuting a few to "set an example" is unlikely to be effective. Thus, unless the goal is to make revenue (speeding tickets, catching tax cheats, etc.), it just doesn't make sense.
Just to be clear here, I have nothing against people learning new skills by apprenticeship. It's a great way to learn new things. My argument is against a formal requirement that new skills be acquired in this way (except when safety necessitates it, obviously).
Also, I'd imagine that a sizable percentage of those mic boom ops are film school grads or comm majors trying to make a living until they get their big break.... I'd be surprised if almost all of the ones hired recently were not.
If somebody is afraid of a grievance for filing an OSHA injury report, that's a good reason to get the heck out of that workplace... and sue the crap out of it, too.
That argument makes no sense whatsoever. How does reprimanding a station for allowing someone to do something discourage the station from not allowing it? Seems to do quite the opposite.
I would argue that if the job is light enough that one person can do it, having two people is just squandering resources that could better be used elsewhere. That one job they "save" unnecessarily is one fewer people that can be hired in some other area that can actually benefit the studio. That eventually becomes a net loss for everyone.
Salaries are a zero sum game, and unless competition is impractical due to exorbitant startup costs, when a company can't balance their workforce efficiently due to archaic rules, that company almost invariably loses out to a company that can, at which point that one job the union "saved" turns into thirty jobs that they lost.
The person making the request worked for the company that was hosting the conference and even brought a lock to lock the machine during that period. And there were thirty or so employees of the company that was hosting the conference in the room at the time. And the equipment, AFAIK, was owned by the company hosting the conference....
Thanks to our right to bear arms. It was the threat that kept tyranny at bay.
You seriously believe that? You seriously believe that humanity is so depraved that only the threat of violence will keep people from degrading to animalistic behavior? That there is no good left in the world?
Armies are made up of the people. Such an argument is only plausible in the case of foreign armies, not for volunteer citizen armies. In the context of the U.S. military, it is patently absurd. If enough of the people were to rise up against the government, pitchforks would be dangerous enough weapons to change things because there's no way that citizens of the U.S. would follow orders to commit mass genocide of civilians.
It must be very lonely believing that everyone is evil and can only be kept in line through the threat of force. If we really have to use the threat of violence to keep a democratic government in line, then democracy has failed, pure and simple. That means it is not a government of the people at all. That's just not the sort of world I want to live in. I'd rather continue to believe in the kindness of strangers....
You do realize that nothing in your post contradicts anything I said, right? I'm not arguing that at least some of the founding fathers felt that way. In fact, I think I made it pretty clear that I believe several of them definitely did. I'm arguing that historically speaking, since the revolution, their fears have proved unwarranted, and when viewed in a modern context, such extremes cannot realistically coexist with a stable society.
A lot of people see that changing, right before your very eyes.
Again, I use the word "delusional". Even if you amassed a huge cache of automatic weapons, there's simply no feasible way that a group of citizens could overthrow enough of the U.S. government that they wouldn't eventually end up in jail on murder charges. It just isn't a realistic scenario. It hasn't been a realistic scenario for at least thirty or forty years, and it's rather laughable to think otherwise. Even if you could wipe out every federal, state, and local government all at once, the people as a whole would eventually appoint a sheriff, catch you, and lynch you.... In modern polite society, we are simply unwilling to tolerate the unnecessary use of violence to get your way.
Realistically, the only possible ways to change the government are A. to use the media, the Internet, etc. to gather a large enough public outcry over something to force the politicians to act in the public's best interests, B. to replace the government in legal ways (voting, constitutional conventions, etc.), or C. to riot in the streets and hope and pray that the people in the military are sympathetic enough that they won't be willing to shoot hundreds of civilians in the uprising. Things have to get pretty bad for C. to work at anything approaching a national level, and I don't think we're anywhere near those levels yet.
With the exception of military coup d'états, the success of revolutions generally depends more on timing and the popularity of the rebels' position than on military strength or the size of their guns. Violent rebellions other than by actual military forces almost never succeed at doing anything other than getting a lot of people killed. The American Revolution was in large part a fluke, primarily due to the British vastly underestimating how angry the colonists were, clinging to outdated military tactics against some of the earliest uses of guerilla tactics, and fighting a war on foreign soil against a deeply intrenched enemy. In essence, it was more a case of the U.S. repelling an invasion than a country failing to quell a revolution. Such a revolution against the current government would fail for precisely the same reasons that the American Revolution succeeded.
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So what you're asking is what the precedence of precedents and precedence is?
Sure. And it assumes you have the negatives (e.g. that these are not purchased photos from a wedding photographer). But for photos you took yourselves, most of the time, the negatives will be in better shape.
Well, when you put it that way, an analog electrical signal only causes a whole number of electrons to move, and light involves a whole number of photos. When you have to get down to the atomic or subatomic level before it becomes discrete, we generally blur the lines and call it analog. :-)
Maybe, but if it is determined to be a public performance by the individual, it likely falls into an explicit exemption in the copyright act (5A), in which case I don't think they would be very successful at claiming contributory infringement. You're right, though, that it is a grey area.
Some would say this has already happened.
Businesses fall into the "except as described in (B)" exception, which explicitly removes that exemption for certain commercial businesses.
The word "transmitted" has a very specific meaning in the Copyright Act, and this isn't it.
From USC Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 101:
On the contrary, potentially both #4 and #5 cover such use:
Where the exception in 5(B) says that commercial entities are not eligible for that exemption. In short, AT&T causing the public performance to occur is not exempt if it is shown that ringtones are public performances, but an individual installing a ringtone on a phone is exempt. AT&T would probably also be exempt if they hadn't sold the ringtones... but of course, they did.
Like I said in another post, this case is about AT&T charging people extortionate fees for ringtones under the guise of it being required because of license fees, but then not paying those license fees. ASCAP is not trying to make individuals pay per play for ringtones.
It's a tricky issue. That said, ASCAP's position in this case seems to be utter crap in a lot of ways. For example, they claim that ringtones are streaming because like streaming, "AT&T maintains a continuous connection to your phone." Of course, none of the audio data is sent through that connection, which makes it decidedly not streaming. They're trying to twist this after having their backsides handed to them in another case in which music downloads were declared to not be a public performance.
However, this case is not really about whether ringtones are a public performance. This case is because AT&T has been selling ringtones at extortionate prices under the premise that it covers a public performance license, but has never paid those licensing fees for all those ring tones. They've been pocketing the extra money above and beyond the usual cost of a digital music download. If you ever needed proof that AT&T are a bunch of leaches, you now have it. In order to bring this case to court, though, ASCAP has to get the courts to agree that AT&T triggering music that they explicitly sold as a ringtone constitutes a public performance by AT&T. That's a very tricky legal issue. They're right that it isn't the same as a download the moment AT&T triggers it. AT&T is also right that it isn't streaming.
Ultimately, I suspect the courts will rule that it is public performance, but that it is public performance by an individual, at which point ASCAP will likely drop the issue. However, that will also open up AT&T to lawsuits by consumers who have been fraudulently overcharged for ringtones under the false belief that they were licensing the right to its use in a public performance. Either way, AT&T is potentially screwed because they didn't pay those fees. If, however, the courts rule that triggering the performance of a musical work constitutes public performance, then AT&T is screwed solely because they sold the music that was being used as a ringtone. In that case, AT&T would be legally better off opening up the phones for users to put in any arbitrary audio file as a ringtone. That way, at least in theory, they cease to be culpable.
Either way the decision goes, there's next to no chance that this will impact the consumer in any significantly negative way, and a decision against AT&T might actually encourage them to open up their phones more. This is strictly a lawsuit filed by ASCAP against AT&T for breaching contracts by selling ringtones and then pocketing the licensing fees. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I tend to agree. Negatives tend not to degrade nearly as much, both because the medium is more stable and because they are generally stored in darkness. Also, film scanners are designed to compensate for fading negatives. Print scanners don't expect to need to correct a washed out image. Finally, prints by their very nature throw away a significant portion of the contrast range of the original negative, so even a brand new print isn't as good as a proper negative scan.
This assumes you have a film scanner or a flatbed scanner whose software knows how to scan negatives, of course. Doing it with cheaper, dumber flatbed scanners is problematic at best. Been there, done that.... Ended up getting prints made and scanning those. :-)
Backing up digital data for 100 years is actually pretty easy. Embed the data as a watermark in porn and post it on the Internet. :-)
But seriously, it is pretty easy. You start by realizing that you can't back it up for 100 years, but you can trivially back it up ten times for 10 years each. With analog media, you get degradation every time you make a copy of a copy, which makes long backup durations important. With digital data, this becomes moot.
If you can still find a working Zip drive, they should still be readable in 100 years. It's not usually the platters that fail. It's the crappy head mechanisms.
Ooh. Can it be a battle to the death?
Actually, yeah, it really does. Data is either represented as discrete numerical values (digital) or as a continuous spectrum of values (analog). I can't really think of any form of data storage that doesn't qualify as one or the other. The mere fact that the continuous range is caused by a chemical process and not an electrical process does not mean it isn't analog.
That would be precedents. Very different thing than precedence.
My number of hard drive failures was averaging about one every 3-4 years for most of my life. My failure rate last year was three in a week, four in a year, spread across two brands and four drive models. That's purely anecdotal, of course, but jaw dropping, nonetheless, as IIRC it represented 100% of the in-warranty drives I had spinning at the time..
Sure, it's a step up from being a waiter, but if, as a film school grad, being a mic boom op is your goal, you could have skipped film school entirely. Nothing against boom ops here, but most people coming out of film school aspire to have a creative job---the sort of job that challenges you and has job security in its own right without the need for a union to create that job security artiificially.
In the absence of a union, there's no long-term job security in being a mic boom operator. Within the next decade, this job will likely fade away entirely. Tie a computer into the zoom control on the camera, add a few positional sensors, accelerometers, etc. and the computer could calculate the relative position of the mic boom and do the job without the need for a human to be involved at all (except to physically push the wheeled mic stand around, and if you build it into the camera dolly, you don't even need that). And, of course, unlike a human boom op, the computer, at least in theory, will never make mistakes and force a retake. When you're talking about a job that is so ideally suited to automation, choosing that as your career goal is not very wise.
No, I don't think rape should be legalized, nor did I say that mass downloading/uploading of music should be legalized. However, that's a great example. It is a broad societal problem, and thus can't be solved by jailing the individual offenders. It can only usefully be solved through education to rid people of the ridiculous notion that raping a virgin will cure AIDS. You have to fix the underlying problem---the lack of education---not the symptom.
In the case of mass music downloading/uploading, education is the only way that it might realistically be reduced, and if that doesn't work, no number of arrests is going to make a dent. The war on drugs is another example of this sort of broad problem. I'm sure we could name at least a dozen other examples. The question of whether it should or should not be a crime is a separate question---a question whose answer does tend to have an impact on whether education campaigns are effective or not....
On the contrary. It's a very good argument. If we were in the middle of a violent revolution, a nuclear holocaust, the aftermath of an asteroid impact, etc. in the U.S. and people were killing each other just to stay alive, it would be difficult to argue that one particular shooting deserved murder charges unless it involved killing some famous public official or something. It's not a question of how many times it has happened over time, but rather a question of whether the people committing the crime are a small enough minority that punishing them all is practical. If even a quarter of the population does something illegal, prosecuting them all is impractical, and prosecuting a few to "set an example" is unlikely to be effective. Thus, unless the goal is to make revenue (speeding tickets, catching tax cheats, etc.), it just doesn't make sense.
Just to be clear here, I have nothing against people learning new skills by apprenticeship. It's a great way to learn new things. My argument is against a formal requirement that new skills be acquired in this way (except when safety necessitates it, obviously).
Also, I'd imagine that a sizable percentage of those mic boom ops are film school grads or comm majors trying to make a living until they get their big break.... I'd be surprised if almost all of the ones hired recently were not.
If somebody is afraid of a grievance for filing an OSHA injury report, that's a good reason to get the heck out of that workplace... and sue the crap out of it, too.
That argument makes no sense whatsoever. How does reprimanding a station for allowing someone to do something discourage the station from not allowing it? Seems to do quite the opposite.
I would argue that if the job is light enough that one person can do it, having two people is just squandering resources that could better be used elsewhere. That one job they "save" unnecessarily is one fewer people that can be hired in some other area that can actually benefit the studio. That eventually becomes a net loss for everyone.
Salaries are a zero sum game, and unless competition is impractical due to exorbitant startup costs, when a company can't balance their workforce efficiently due to archaic rules, that company almost invariably loses out to a company that can, at which point that one job the union "saved" turns into thirty jobs that they lost.
The person making the request worked for the company that was hosting the conference and even brought a lock to lock the machine during that period. And there were thirty or so employees of the company that was hosting the conference in the room at the time. And the equipment, AFAIK, was owned by the company hosting the conference....
You seriously believe that? You seriously believe that humanity is so depraved that only the threat of violence will keep people from degrading to animalistic behavior? That there is no good left in the world?
Armies are made up of the people. Such an argument is only plausible in the case of foreign armies, not for volunteer citizen armies. In the context of the U.S. military, it is patently absurd. If enough of the people were to rise up against the government, pitchforks would be dangerous enough weapons to change things because there's no way that citizens of the U.S. would follow orders to commit mass genocide of civilians.
It must be very lonely believing that everyone is evil and can only be kept in line through the threat of force. If we really have to use the threat of violence to keep a democratic government in line, then democracy has failed, pure and simple. That means it is not a government of the people at all. That's just not the sort of world I want to live in. I'd rather continue to believe in the kindness of strangers....
You do realize that nothing in your post contradicts anything I said, right? I'm not arguing that at least some of the founding fathers felt that way. In fact, I think I made it pretty clear that I believe several of them definitely did. I'm arguing that historically speaking, since the revolution, their fears have proved unwarranted, and when viewed in a modern context, such extremes cannot realistically coexist with a stable society.
Again, I use the word "delusional". Even if you amassed a huge cache of automatic weapons, there's simply no feasible way that a group of citizens could overthrow enough of the U.S. government that they wouldn't eventually end up in jail on murder charges. It just isn't a realistic scenario. It hasn't been a realistic scenario for at least thirty or forty years, and it's rather laughable to think otherwise. Even if you could wipe out every federal, state, and local government all at once, the people as a whole would eventually appoint a sheriff, catch you, and lynch you.... In modern polite society, we are simply unwilling to tolerate the unnecessary use of violence to get your way.
Realistically, the only possible ways to change the government are A. to use the media, the Internet, etc. to gather a large enough public outcry over something to force the politicians to act in the public's best interests, B. to replace the government in legal ways (voting, constitutional conventions, etc.), or C. to riot in the streets and hope and pray that the people in the military are sympathetic enough that they won't be willing to shoot hundreds of civilians in the uprising. Things have to get pretty bad for C. to work at anything approaching a national level, and I don't think we're anywhere near those levels yet.
With the exception of military coup d'états, the success of revolutions generally depends more on timing and the popularity of the rebels' position than on military strength or the size of their guns. Violent rebellions other than by actual military forces almost never succeed at doing anything other than getting a lot of people killed. The American Revolution was in large part a fluke, primarily due to the British vastly underestimating how angry the colonists were, clinging to outdated military tactics against some of the earliest uses of guerilla tactics, and fighting a war on foreign soil against a deeply intrenched enemy. In essence, it was more a case of the U.S. repelling an invasion than a country failing to quell a revolution. Such a revolution against the current government would fail for precisely the same reasons that the American Revolution succeeded.