If you can prove that you didn't sample the extant copywritten work
1. You misspelled "copyrighted". 2. How can anybody prove in court that he has never heard the original work, say on oldies radio? In most cases, it's not possible to prove a negative.
I didn't claim very strongly that an umbrella term was not convenient but just confusing at times. I gave the two qualifications for that term. However:
Copyright, patent, and trademark are all just forms of IP law.
I (possibly mistakenly) took this to mean "Copyright, patent, and trademark are similar in nature." Assuming that the subject matter of copyrights is in any way like the subject matter of trademarks solely because they share the "intellectual property" (a monopoly on an idea or expression that can be sold) is a fallacy.
OK, now that that's out of the way:
Trademark would "kick in" for his original signature creations
It may not be possible to obtain perpetual copyright-like restrictions through trademark law. See my other comment.
didn't he come up with orcs?
Such goblins have been around for a long time. Tolkien may have been the first to call them "orcs" but that's about it.
Earlier you wrote:
the law is not self-executing. Private parties have to litigate it.
Actually, copyright law is more "self-executing" than trademark law or patent law because in the United States, copyright infringement is not only a civil offense but also a crime. The FBI can come after you even if the copyright owner takes no action, heck even if the copyright owner doesn't know that he owns the copyright.
Mickey Mouse will NEVER be in the public domain because his likeness is protected by Trademark law.
There has to be a likelihood of confusion of origin of the product. For instance, one company sells inexpensive VHS video tapes of "Bugs Bunny" short cartoons whose copyright Warner never renewed under the two-28-year-terms system of 1909 law. They get away with it by conspicuously disclaiming any connection to Warner on the package: "This video cassette contains audiovisual works in the public domain. XYZ Video is in no way affiliated with the author of these works."
But actually, Disney lost copyright on Mickey Mouse when it failed to provide a copyright notice on works first published when notice was required. Of course, Disney could file a frivolous lawsuit, but then the company and its retained lawyers risk a countersuit for barratry.
At some point the buyers dry up completely because they figure it's easier to wait for the time limit than to pay.
In their graves? Either I misunderstand the ransom model, or the time limit won't expire until 70 years after the author dies, which is likely to be close to 70 years after the clients die.
Copyright simply elevates art on part with real goods
Actually, it elevates art on par with real estate. Like the space of land on this planet, the space of artistic expression is limited. There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables. There are also only a finite number of melodic hooks of a given length in the Western musical scale. When you stake your claim, you get a monopoly on the work you copyrighted, plus all the works that are substantially close to it. It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose. Once almost all the space has been claimed, there is no room to innovate, and all new works must be licensed by the owner of the particular space in which they fall. Spider Robinson wrote a short story about this situation.
Copyright, patent, and trademark are all just forms of IP law.
The use of the term "intellectual property" as a blanket term for copyrights, patents, and trademarks is misleading because copyrights, patents, and trademarks are more different than similar. They are covered in separate Titles of the United States Code. They have nothing to do with one another other than that they grant monopolies to a person or corporation to produce a specific sort of good or service and can be sold or licensed to other parties.
Perhaps Tolkien did not discover "trade dress" and the C&D letter in time.
Or perhaps, " In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work" (17 USC 102). This doesn't apply to trademark law (the foundation for trade dress), but trademark law kicks in only when there's a likelihood of confusion as to the origin of a good or service.
microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox.
Apple licensed from Xerox. Microsoft initially licensed from Apple, but then after Lotus v. Borland weakened look-and-feel copyright, Microsoft borrowed "ideas" (17 USC 102) from Apple.
but what if part of your incentive was the speculative possibility that copyright terms would be extended in the future?
Then the formulation of your incentive violates the spirit of the "limited Times" language of the U.S. Constitution's grant of copyright power to the Congress.
What do you define as a "real mail client" on the Microsoft Windows platform?
Anyone who uses OE has no right to whine about anything.
That's why I asked about Mozilla. There's apparently a well-known Mozilla plug-in, called "enigmail", that provides PGP services in Mozilla's mail component, but it doesn't work with all versions of Mozilla. My question was whether or not there was a way to use GnuPG with recent releases of Mozilla, such as 1.2.1.
Apparently, somebody has made a GnuPG frontend for Outlook Express since I last looked. But what about about Mozilla? Does enigmail work with Mozilla 1.2.1?
given that microsoft sponsored this study, do you think they even had to pay for that one copy?
The Hotmail migration whitepaper included the Windows license cost into TCO. It calculated TCO on the premise that the Windows and MSN divisions of Microsoft Corporation don't share revenue.
The expression "!=" is derived from the C language. Slashdot users use "!=" instead of "isn't the same as" to save fifteen bytes because Slashdot limits comment subjects to 50 bytes.
(You point out the `unlawful search and seaz
Your comment got cut off right where it got interesting. Please continue.
Btw, how come all this DRM junk seems to be for corporations only?
Because you need to buy the encoder. The major publishers (RIAA, MPAA, etc) are rich enough to afford to pay the digital restrictions management companies for the research and development of DRM technologies. Once the R&D has been paid off, the price will fall to where anybody can buy a one-seat license for the encoder software off the shelf at a local computer store.
Open DRM tools are in development as well. Creative Commons is creating an open digital format for restrictions description.
I don't know if there's a single language for which we have (still-legible) text that we, collectively, don't understand.
Until moderns found the Rosetta Stone, we couldn't read hieroglyphic Egyptian. Linear B was deciphered into a form of early Greek in the 1950s, and it appears that Etruscan has been recently deciphered, but
Linear A, Voynich, etc. remain unknown.
The obvious solution to the problem of the mainstream rejection of sci-fi is to create your own.
But you can't use the Farscape(tm) space-opera universe. And you can't use any universe remotely similar to any existing space-opera universe. Creating your own universe from scratch is a tall order, and few space-opera authors can pull it off successfully.
I.e. 8-way becomes a PCB-design issue, not a chipset issue.
And an OS support issue. Of all Microsoft operating systems, only Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server support 8 CPUs, Don't expect 8-way Windows to cost less than $2000 per copy, assuming that the OEM price is half the retail price of Windows 2000 Advanced Server with 25 CALs.
nobody's going to remember how to decode WMA, MPG, or whatever whiz-bang video format it was last encoded in. But if you stick to a very simple text-based layout
...of the description of the MPEG format, then your data will be recovered as long as people can understand the English language.
I worry more about English becoming a dead language.
and neither Acorn nor the BBC fall under its domain.
True pedantically, but false in practice. The United Kingdom has had its own equivalent to the DMCA's circumvention ban since 1988, as section 296 of the Copyright Act.
But copyright is explictiy referred to and defined in the Constitution and, AFAIK, the right to privacy is not.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV).
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX).
Slashdot Mirror
Unless one of them happens to be the owner of said copyright, the business can tell them to shove off.
The Warner Chappell division of AOL Time Warner owns the copyright on "Happy Birthday to You".
There are quite a few movies that have birthdays in them where that song is sung.
Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema don't have to pay royalties for that song because they share revenue with Warner Chappell.
If you can prove that you didn't sample the extant copywritten work
1. You misspelled "copyrighted". 2. How can anybody prove in court that he has never heard the original work, say on oldies radio? In most cases, it's not possible to prove a negative.
Intellectual property simply is an umbrella term.
I didn't claim very strongly that an umbrella term was not convenient but just confusing at times. I gave the two qualifications for that term. However:
I (possibly mistakenly) took this to mean "Copyright, patent, and trademark are similar in nature." Assuming that the subject matter of copyrights is in any way like the subject matter of trademarks solely because they share the "intellectual property" (a monopoly on an idea or expression that can be sold) is a fallacy.
OK, now that that's out of the way:
Trademark would "kick in" for his original signature creations
It may not be possible to obtain perpetual copyright-like restrictions through trademark law. See my other comment.
didn't he come up with orcs?
Such goblins have been around for a long time. Tolkien may have been the first to call them "orcs" but that's about it.
Earlier you wrote:
the law is not self-executing. Private parties have to litigate it.
Actually, copyright law is more "self-executing" than trademark law or patent law because in the United States, copyright infringement is not only a civil offense but also a crime. The FBI can come after you even if the copyright owner takes no action, heck even if the copyright owner doesn't know that he owns the copyright.
Section 10 of the GNU General Public License provides for negotiation of the license agreement.
Mickey Mouse will NEVER be in the public domain because his likeness is protected by Trademark law.
There has to be a likelihood of confusion of origin of the product. For instance, one company sells inexpensive VHS video tapes of "Bugs Bunny" short cartoons whose copyright Warner never renewed under the two-28-year-terms system of 1909 law. They get away with it by conspicuously disclaiming any connection to Warner on the package: "This video cassette contains audiovisual works in the public domain. XYZ Video is in no way affiliated with the author of these works."
But actually, Disney lost copyright on Mickey Mouse when it failed to provide a copyright notice on works first published when notice was required. Of course, Disney could file a frivolous lawsuit, but then the company and its retained lawyers risk a countersuit for barratry.
Both the Lion King and Atlantis borrow character likenesses and artistic style from Japanese cartoons.
Disney's Atlantis is allegedly substantially similar to Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
Disney's The Lion King is allegedly substantially similar to Kimba the White Lion.
At some point the buyers dry up completely because they figure it's easier to wait for the time limit than to pay.
In their graves? Either I misunderstand the ransom model, or the time limit won't expire until 70 years after the author dies, which is likely to be close to 70 years after the clients die.
Copyright simply elevates art on part with real goods
Actually, it elevates art on par with real estate. Like the space of land on this planet, the space of artistic expression is limited. There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables. There are also only a finite number of melodic hooks of a given length in the Western musical scale. When you stake your claim, you get a monopoly on the work you copyrighted, plus all the works that are substantially close to it. It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose. Once almost all the space has been claimed, there is no room to innovate, and all new works must be licensed by the owner of the particular space in which they fall. Spider Robinson wrote a short story about this situation.
commit it to memory and learn to play all the instruments and record your own identical version of the song.
Then you violate the songwriter's copyright, even if you didn't consciously copy the song.
Copyright, patent, and trademark are all just forms of IP law.
The use of the term "intellectual property" as a blanket term for copyrights, patents, and trademarks is misleading because copyrights, patents, and trademarks are more different than similar. They are covered in separate Titles of the United States Code. They have nothing to do with one another other than that they grant monopolies to a person or corporation to produce a specific sort of good or service and can be sold or licensed to other parties.
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, has something to say about this phrase.
Perhaps Tolkien did not discover "trade dress" and the C&D letter in time.
Or perhaps, " In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work" (17 USC 102). This doesn't apply to trademark law (the foundation for trade dress), but trademark law kicks in only when there's a likelihood of confusion as to the origin of a good or service.
microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox.
Apple licensed from Xerox. Microsoft initially licensed from Apple, but then after Lotus v. Borland weakened look-and-feel copyright, Microsoft borrowed "ideas" (17 USC 102) from Apple.
Anybody is allowed to take quotes from a copyrighted source
Really? Then why did songwriter Frank Silver get busted for borrowing a four-note hook from a Handel piece when it was still under copyright?
but what if part of your incentive was the speculative possibility that copyright terms would be extended in the future?
Then the formulation of your incentive violates the spirit of the "limited Times" language of the U.S. Constitution's grant of copyright power to the Congress.
Get over it and get a real mail client.
What do you define as a "real mail client" on the Microsoft Windows platform?
Anyone who uses OE has no right to whine about anything.
That's why I asked about Mozilla. There's apparently a well-known Mozilla plug-in, called "enigmail", that provides PGP services in Mozilla's mail component, but it doesn't work with all versions of Mozilla. My question was whether or not there was a way to use GnuPG with recent releases of Mozilla, such as 1.2.1.
when I can get the same functionality from the old free version or the completely free GNU version.
Yes, but PGP is a GUI app that can talk to to Outlook Express, and last time I checked, GnuPG was a command-line app.
( /me checks the list of front-ends for Windows )
Apparently, somebody has made a GnuPG frontend for Outlook Express since I last looked. But what about about Mozilla? Does enigmail work with Mozilla 1.2.1?
given that microsoft sponsored this study, do you think they even had to pay for that one copy?
The Hotmail migration whitepaper included the Windows license cost into TCO. It calculated TCO on the premise that the Windows and MSN divisions of Microsoft Corporation don't share revenue.
Why do people insist on using `!=' in such a way?
The expression "!=" is derived from the C language. Slashdot users use "!=" instead of "isn't the same as" to save fifteen bytes because Slashdot limits comment subjects to 50 bytes.
(You point out the `unlawful search and seaz
Your comment got cut off right where it got interesting. Please continue.
Btw, how come all this DRM junk seems to be for corporations only?
Because you need to buy the encoder. The major publishers (RIAA, MPAA, etc) are rich enough to afford to pay the digital restrictions management companies for the research and development of DRM technologies. Once the R&D has been paid off, the price will fall to where anybody can buy a one-seat license for the encoder software off the shelf at a local computer store.
Open DRM tools are in development as well. Creative Commons is creating an open digital format for restrictions description.
I don't know if there's a single language for which we have (still-legible) text that we, collectively, don't understand.
Until moderns found the Rosetta Stone, we couldn't read hieroglyphic Egyptian. Linear B was deciphered into a form of early Greek in the 1950s, and it appears that Etruscan has been recently deciphered, but Linear A, Voynich, etc. remain unknown.
Read more about the Voynich Manuscript
The obvious solution to the problem of the mainstream rejection of sci-fi is to create your own.
But you can't use the Farscape(tm) space-opera universe. And you can't use any universe remotely similar to any existing space-opera universe. Creating your own universe from scratch is a tall order, and few space-opera authors can pull it off successfully.
English will be the world's standard language for thousands of years.
I can't readily understand the English language spoken even 600 years ago, before the great vowel shift.
Read about the history of the English language
You are told on the box that there is a monthly fee. You are not told the terms of the EULA though.
But you are told the TOS before it comes time to pay the monthly fee.
I.e. 8-way becomes a PCB-design issue, not a chipset issue.
And an OS support issue. Of all Microsoft operating systems, only Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server support 8 CPUs, Don't expect 8-way Windows to cost less than $2000 per copy, assuming that the OEM price is half the retail price of Windows 2000 Advanced Server with 25 CALs.
And what medium do you suppose we should use?
"Since a DVD player could never survive impact, diagrams explaining how to build one from scratch will be engraved on the surface of several dozen of the disks".
nobody's going to remember how to decode WMA, MPG, or whatever whiz-bang video format it was last encoded in. But if you stick to a very simple text-based layout
I worry more about English becoming a dead language.
Of course, the DMCA is a US law anyway
True in name.
and neither Acorn nor the BBC fall under its domain.
True pedantically, but false in practice. The United Kingdom has had its own equivalent to the DMCA's circumvention ban since 1988, as section 296 of the Copyright Act.
But copyright is explictiy referred to and defined in the Constitution and, AFAIK, the right to privacy is not.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV).
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX).