They don't need to protect their copyright. You are thinking of trademarks, which need to be protected. A copyright can be enforced, or not enforced as you like, without losing any of your rights.
The next time someone here finds him or herself at a SCO question-and-answer session, I would appreciate if you would ask the following question:
Part of IBM's countersuit against SCO alleges, in effect, that SCOs entire product line infringes on various IBM patents. What steps does SCO intend to take to indemnify their customers in case SCO's products are found to infringe on IBM's patents?
I have heard the album. Quite frankly, I don't like it at all. I came away with the opposite impression. I could hear and identify nearly every Beatles riff, and I felt that most of the rearrangements of the riffs were clumsy and underwhelming. On top of that, the angry rapping was just jarring and intrusive. I'll add the disclaimer that the Beatles have been my favorite band since I was in high school in the mid 1980s, and I really dislike this particular type of rap. I suppose that I came in about as predisposed to disliking this album as anyone could be, but based on the discussion, I really did want to and try to appreciate and enjoy the music. It just didn't do it for me.
Danger Mouse utilizes mostly signature riffs from the White Album. This is the sort of sampling where you immediately say, "Oh, Beatles." It isn't the sort of sampling where you can't figure out what's being sampled but it sounds familiar. It's been said that in the real world of the music industry, you are supposed to get clearance for all samples you use, but in practice, you only get clearance for recognizable samples. This remix is chock full of clearly recognizable samples, and clearly a great deal of the attraction of this remix is the Beatles aspect of the mix. It's clearly a Beatles mix. There's no mistaking it.
There are interesting nuances here. At what point is this or is this not fair use. If Danger Mouse's use of the Beatles riffs were to be ruled fair use, then the use wouldn't be unlawful, and the remix would qualify for copyright protection. It comes down to Danger Mouse's intentions. If he made the album for his own entertainment and distributed a few copies to his friends, then it would very likely be fair use, as he would be presumably be creating the work for non-commercial purposes. On the other hand, he did strike 3000 copies, which implies that he intended the remix to be distributed for commercial use.
The real injustice is that remix artists are forced to create their work in an environment of legal uncertainity, not knowing if they are going to be sued for distributing their work. If their work languishes in obscurity, they are most likely safe. Only if their work becomes popular do they face possible legal repercussions. All the more injust that it isn't Danger Mouse who is making money off this album -- it's the people who are making bootleg copies and selling them that are making the money. And the more money they make, the more popular the album becomes, and the more legal peril Danger Mouse faces.
Uh, yes. Read the law again.... protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
Every single second of sound, every beat, every word has been used unlawfully.
People seem to disbelieve that the copyright laws could be that amazingly unfair and capricious, but that's the exact letter of the law.
In another interesting twist, it appears that EMI is taking a legal approach that, under copyright law, might allow EMI and Roc-A-Fella to release the album on their own and not pay DJ Danger Mouse a penny.
The twist comes from the definition of derivative works in the copyright law. I'll start with the definition:
Ok. So far so good. The definition of derivative works appears to give DJ Danger Mouse copyright protection over the use of his remix. In other words, if EMI wanted to release the album, they would have to negotiate with DJ Danger Mouse.
The notes on the Cornell site explain: The second part of the sentence that makes up section 103(a) deals with the status of a compilation or derivative work unlawfully employing preexisting copyrighted material. In providing that protection does not extend to ''any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully,'' the bill prevents an infringer from benefiting, through copyright protection, from committing an unlawful act, but preserves protection for those parts of the work that do not employ the preexisting work. Thus, an unauthorized translation of a novel could not be copyrighted at all, but the owner of copyright in an anthology of poetry could sue someone who infringed the whole anthology, even though the infringer proves that publication of one of the poems was unauthorized. Under this provision, copyright could be obtained as long as the use of the preexisting work was not ''unlawful,'' even though the consent of the copyright owner had not been obtained. For instance, the unauthorized reproduction of a work might be ''lawful'' under the doctrine of fair use or an applicable foreign law, and if so the work incorporating it could be copyrighted
Since, by his own admission, every single second of the Grey Album is sampled from one of the two source albums, DJ Danger Mouse has absolutely no copyright claim to any of his own creation.
Of course, once DJ Danger Mouse is stripped of his copyright interest in his own creation, there is no legal barrier to EMI and Roc-A-Fella simply releasing the album, because they own the underlying copyrights to the source albums.
Whether or not they do this, it is interesting that copyright law has the effect of excluding remixers from any copyright protection whatsoever over their own work. It appears that by taking legal action to shut the album down, EMI is not merely seeking to enforce their copyright as they claim. They are laying the groundwork to deny copyright protection to DJ Danger Mouse over his own creative work and steal his album. They are in effect muscling him out of his own copyrights over his own work.
As a hobby and as income, I make borosilicate lampwork beads and sell them on ebay. This requires me to take digital pictures of my beads, which I do with a Nikon Coolpix 885.
Every once in a while I run into a color combination that simply cannot be photographed correctly. One bead set I have looks brown/butterscotch/caramel to the eye, but when photographed using that particular camera, some of the brown features in the bead come out electric red.
The best part is the parts that talk about how you can license images from them for commercial purposes:
By submitting your request for permission or permissions inquiry, you are obligating yourself and your organization(s), if any, to license, immediately pay for, and to actually make use of the image(s) or other content requested in the manner as set forth in your application, should permission be granted.
... Abandoned application fee: There is no application fee, but you will be charged a one hundred U.S. dollar non-refundable abandoned application fee per e-mail for EACH AND EVERY E-MAILed "Request for License to Reproduce Still Images," permissions inquiry, follow-up, or other permissions related e-mail that we receive from you that fails to ultimately result in your licensing at least one image or other requested content, including but not limited to e-mails related to image selection, questions, billing, and collection of fees, except that no abandoned application fee will apply if you submit a complete application in your first e-mail but none of the images that you request are available for licensing. Also, we may, at our sole discretion, deem your application to have been abandoned and charge the abandoned application fee if you fail to respond to each of our e-mails within 72 hours, if you reject a license which we approve in response to your request, fail to make timely payment as required herein, or tell us that you do not want a license.
Ok, that's obnoxious and draconian. But here's the real kicker. The part that made me almost keel over with laughter
If a requested image is of lesser quality than another similar available image, we may, in our sole discretion, substitute the better quality image.
Translation: If you even ask us about licensing an image, you are obligated to pay us for the image. Then feel free to sit back, cross your fingers and hope that we decide to give you the image you paid for, instead of another image that you don't want or need.
In order to understand SCOs theories, one must first understand the theory of cooties. Cooties are invisible ickies that can be transmitted, usually by touch, but often by mere association.
Under the Cootie theory of copyright and trade secret law, Linux looks like Unix, so now Linux has cooties. IBM touched Unix, thus giving cooties to AIX. JFS acquired cooties when it was ported to AIX, even though JFS didn't have cooties when it was originally developed. Thus, Linux has cooties because it has AIX's cooties which AIX got from staring cross-eyed at Unix. Linux has the same header lines as Unix, therefore Linux has Unix cooties. In conclusion, anyone touching Linux will get cooties and owe a cootie tax to SCO, which will soon have more money than Scrooge McDuck.
For more information, see "Everything I needed to know about intellectual property law I learned on the elementary school playground.", by Darl McBride.
Hi! I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such educational films as "Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly", "Firecrackers: the Silent Killer" and "Man versus Nature: The Road to Victory"
SCO's claims are a little like a woman falsely claiming rape after she willingly consented to sexual relations. Worse, from their standpoint. The evidence of the GPL distribution is there for the world to see, so it's not a He Said, She Said situation where you might have at least a 50% chance of being believed.
SCO's claims are more like if Paris Hilton had claimed rape after the videotape emerged.
Um, Ransom, you seemed to be enjoying yourself with Linux...
Don't forget that IBM is suing SCO for patent infringement on SCOs entire product line. If Microsoft were to purchase SCO, and IBM were to prevail in their patent suit, Microsoft would be facing millions of dollars in potential damages.
Ok, so it is becoming clear that if I want the ability to freely record flag-encoded broadcasts, I'll need to purchase a HDTV tuner before they start adding the software to recognize the broadcast flag.
Any recommendations on which tuner card to purchase?
Homesteading required that the homesteader develop and improve the property in order to receive title. You had to actually live on the land, and farm it, and build a house with a door and window, and after you had proved the land, you would receive title.
Cybersquatters do no such thing. There's a difference between registering coffee.com to build a coffee site and registering www.coffee.com to resell it later. Cybersquatters are more akin to ticket scalpers than to homesteaders.
Because I am not, and never will be interested in clicking on the fucking monkey, buying herbal viagra, or purchasing an X10 camera.
Because I hate exiting explorer, and having to spend the next 30 seconds closing dozens and dozens of popup windows.
Because I hate having to snake my mouse cursor through a forest of "mouse-over" ads to get to the little X without accidently travelling over a hair-trigger active window, and triggering a window cascade.
Because I hate trying to close an ad window, and realize a second too late that I have inadvertantly clicked on a fake image of a window contained inside a popup ad, thus sending me off to an advertising website.
Because I hate having to exit Netscape entirely because of a runaway window cascade.
Installing ad-blocking software has made the internet usable for me. I consider that a good thing.
Because it means that you are allowed to control what is displayed on your own computer.
Here's why this decision is good. If third party software is allowed to replace the ads on a web page, then it is certainly legal for you to remove ads from the web pages you see. This decision strongly protects ad-blocking software, and that's a good thing.
However, If you buy a magazine, you are perfectly free to paste any other ads over the ads printed in your copy of the magazine. After all, it's your property.
Well that was interesting. I just did the soundex test, and the soundex code S450 sure looked familiar. That's because it's the first four characters of my Illinois drivers license number. Aha! I had been wondering about that part of the code for years.
I now know that the coding (for males) is:
aaaa-bbbc-cddd
aaaa = soundex of last name bbb = ? cc = year of birth ddd = (month of birth - 1) * 31 + day of birth
I seem to recall that ddd is altered for females.
Anyone have a decoding for bbb? I'm guessing that it's just a serial number to ensure unique IDs.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't need to protect their copyright. You are thinking of trademarks, which need to be protected. A copyright can be enforced, or not enforced as you like, without losing any of your rights.
I have heard the album. Quite frankly, I don't like it at all. I came away with the opposite impression. I could hear and identify nearly every Beatles riff, and I felt that most of the rearrangements of the riffs were clumsy and underwhelming. On top of that, the angry rapping was just jarring and intrusive. I'll add the disclaimer that the Beatles have been my favorite band since I was in high school in the mid 1980s, and I really dislike this particular type of rap. I suppose that I came in about as predisposed to disliking this album as anyone could be, but based on the discussion, I really did want to and try to appreciate and enjoy the music. It just didn't do it for me.
Danger Mouse utilizes mostly signature riffs from the White Album. This is the sort of sampling where you immediately say, "Oh, Beatles." It isn't the sort of sampling where you can't figure out what's being sampled but it sounds familiar. It's been said that in the real world of the music industry, you are supposed to get clearance for all samples you use, but in practice, you only get clearance for recognizable samples. This remix is chock full of clearly recognizable samples, and clearly a great deal of the attraction of this remix is the Beatles aspect of the mix. It's clearly a Beatles mix. There's no mistaking it.
There are interesting nuances here. At what point is this or is this not fair use. If Danger Mouse's use of the Beatles riffs were to be ruled fair use, then the use wouldn't be unlawful, and the remix would qualify for copyright protection. It comes down to Danger Mouse's intentions. If he made the album for his own entertainment and distributed a few copies to his friends, then it would very likely be fair use, as he would be presumably be creating the work for non-commercial purposes. On the other hand, he did strike 3000 copies, which implies that he intended the remix to be distributed for commercial use.
The real injustice is that remix artists are forced to create their work in an environment of legal uncertainity, not knowing if they are going to be sued for distributing their work. If their work languishes in obscurity, they are most likely safe. Only if their work becomes popular do they face possible legal repercussions. All the more injust that it isn't Danger Mouse who is making money off this album -- it's the people who are making bootleg copies and selling them that are making the money. And the more money they make, the more popular the album becomes, and the more legal peril Danger Mouse faces.
Uh, yes. Read the law again. ... protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
Every single second of sound, every beat, every word has been used unlawfully.
People seem to disbelieve that the copyright laws could be that amazingly unfair and capricious, but that's the exact letter of the law.
In another interesting twist, it appears that EMI is taking a legal approach that, under copyright law, might allow EMI and Roc-A-Fella to release the album on their own and not pay DJ Danger Mouse a penny.
... A ''derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a ''derivative work''.
The twist comes from the definition of derivative works in the copyright law. I'll start with the definition:
17 USC 101
Ok. So far so good. The definition of derivative works appears to give DJ Danger Mouse copyright protection over the use of his remix. In other words, if EMI wanted to release the album, they would have to negotiate with DJ Danger Mouse.
However, take a look at section 103(a):
17 USC 103 (a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
The notes on the Cornell site explain:
The second part of the sentence that makes up section 103(a) deals with the status of a compilation or derivative work unlawfully employing preexisting copyrighted material. In providing that protection does not extend to ''any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully,'' the bill prevents an infringer from benefiting, through copyright protection, from committing an unlawful act, but preserves protection for those parts of the work that do not employ the preexisting work. Thus, an unauthorized translation of a novel could not be copyrighted at all, but the owner of copyright in an anthology of poetry could sue someone who infringed the whole anthology, even though the infringer proves that publication of one of the poems was unauthorized. Under this provision, copyright could be obtained as long as the use of the preexisting work was not ''unlawful,'' even though the consent of the copyright owner had not been obtained. For instance, the unauthorized reproduction of a work might be ''lawful'' under the doctrine of fair use or an applicable foreign law, and if so the work incorporating it could be copyrighted
Since, by his own admission, every single second of the Grey Album is sampled from one of the two source albums, DJ Danger Mouse has absolutely no copyright claim to any of his own creation.
Of course, once DJ Danger Mouse is stripped of his copyright interest in his own creation, there is no legal barrier to EMI and Roc-A-Fella simply releasing the album, because they own the underlying copyrights to the source albums.
Whether or not they do this, it is interesting that copyright law has the effect of excluding remixers from any copyright protection whatsoever over their own work. It appears that by taking legal action to shut the album down, EMI is not merely seeking to enforce their copyright as they claim. They are laying the groundwork to deny copyright protection to DJ Danger Mouse over his own creative work and steal his album. They are in effect muscling him out of his own copyrights over his own work.
According to Google Calculator, this diamond has ~ 330,000 times the mass of the planet earth.
This problem is not unique to the Mars rovers.
As a hobby and as income, I make borosilicate lampwork beads and sell them on ebay. This requires me to take digital pictures of my beads, which I do with a Nikon Coolpix 885.
Every once in a while I run into a color combination that simply cannot be photographed correctly. One bead set I have looks brown/butterscotch/caramel to the eye, but when photographed using that particular camera, some of the brown features in the bead come out electric red.
It's amazing how, when viewed microscopically, everything on the entire site looks like a 1990s screen saver.
I mean, holy freaking shit!
In order to understand SCOs theories, one must first understand the theory of cooties. Cooties are invisible ickies that can be transmitted, usually by touch, but often by mere association.
Under the Cootie theory of copyright and trade secret law, Linux looks like Unix, so now Linux has cooties. IBM touched Unix, thus giving cooties to AIX. JFS acquired cooties when it was ported to AIX, even though JFS didn't have cooties when it was originally developed. Thus, Linux has cooties because it has AIX's cooties which AIX got from staring cross-eyed at Unix. Linux has the same header lines as Unix, therefore Linux has Unix cooties. In conclusion, anyone touching Linux will get cooties and owe a cootie tax to SCO, which will soon have more money than Scrooge McDuck.
For more information, see "Everything I needed to know about intellectual property law I learned on the elementary school playground.", by Darl McBride.
Hi! I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such educational films as "Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly", "Firecrackers: the Silent Killer" and "Man versus Nature: The Road to Victory"
SCO's claims are a little like a woman falsely claiming rape after she willingly consented to sexual relations. Worse, from their standpoint. The evidence of the GPL distribution is there for the world to see, so it's not a He Said, She Said situation where you might have at least a 50% chance of being believed.
...
SCO's claims are more like if Paris Hilton had claimed rape after the videotape emerged.
Um, Ransom, you seemed to be enjoying yourself with Linux
Simple answer: To stay clean legally.
Don't forget that IBM is suing SCO for patent infringement on SCOs entire product line. If Microsoft were to purchase SCO, and IBM were to prevail in their patent suit, Microsoft would be facing millions of dollars in potential damages.
Looks great, except that I would only be interested if it supported lossless FLAC or uncompressed WAV streams.
What an accomplishment it will be to construct the world's largest non-functional power plant!
Yeah, but on the other hand, it helps to heat the house in the winter.
No, really.
Ok, so it is becoming clear that if I want the ability to freely record flag-encoded broadcasts, I'll need to purchase a HDTV tuner before they start adding the software to recognize the broadcast flag.
Any recommendations on which tuner card to purchase?
Speakeasy appears to have blocked the "feature".
Homesteading required that the homesteader develop and improve the property in order to receive title. You had to actually live on the land, and farm it, and build a house with a door and window, and after you had proved the land, you would receive title.
Cybersquatters do no such thing. There's a difference between registering coffee.com to build a coffee site and registering www.coffee.com to resell it later. Cybersquatters are more akin to ticket scalpers than to homesteaders.
Interesting "analogy."
Because I am not, and never will be interested in clicking on the fucking monkey, buying herbal viagra, or purchasing an X10 camera.
Because I hate exiting explorer, and having to spend the next 30 seconds closing dozens and dozens of popup windows.
Because I hate having to snake my mouse cursor through a forest of "mouse-over" ads to get to the little X without accidently travelling over a hair-trigger active window, and triggering a window cascade.
Because I hate trying to close an ad window, and realize a second too late that I have inadvertantly clicked on a fake image of a window contained inside a popup ad, thus sending me off to an advertising website.
Because I hate having to exit Netscape entirely because of a runaway window cascade.
Installing ad-blocking software has made the internet usable for me. I consider that a good thing.
Just buffing up my Karma, dude. (and inviting a moderation war :)
Because it means that you are allowed to control what is displayed on your own computer.
Here's why this decision is good. If third party software is allowed to replace the ads on a web page, then it is certainly legal for you to remove ads from the web pages you see. This decision strongly protects ad-blocking software, and that's a good thing.
No, because you don't own the billboards.
However, If you buy a magazine, you are perfectly free to paste any other ads over the ads printed in your copy of the magazine. After all, it's your property.
Well that was interesting. I just did the soundex test, and the soundex code S450 sure looked familiar. That's because it's the first four characters of my Illinois drivers license number. Aha! I had been wondering about that part of the code for years.
I now know that the coding (for males) is:
aaaa-bbbc-cddd
aaaa = soundex of last name
bbb = ?
cc = year of birth
ddd = (month of birth - 1) * 31 + day of birth
I seem to recall that ddd is altered for females.
Anyone have a decoding for bbb? I'm guessing that it's just a serial number to ensure unique IDs.