I just used the form to send a message to The Honorable Mark E. Souder, which went something like this:
Tens of thousands of works, possibly 98 percent of copyrighted works published before 1940, are no longer commercially exploited but are still locked up behind copyright. Under copyright, these works are not only collecting dust but becoming dust, as the physical media in which they are fixed is slowly deteriorating. The Public Domain Enhancement Act would help move these works into the public domain, where they would best "promote the Progress of Science" as suggested in the Constitution.
Please join Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) in sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act.
To Slashdot readers residing in the United States (citizens and lawful permanent residents): Rephrase the above message in your own words, look up your representative, and send it to him or her. If your rep has already signed on (e.g. Lofgren or Doolittle), change the end to something like "Thank you for sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act." However, if you live in 45th California, don't expect much of a response out of Rep. Mary Bono.
I think that there's a simpler explanation - that America is governed by essentially one party, called the Democratic-Republican party.
Darn right. It goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, the first U.S. President from the The Democratic-Republican Party. Since 1801. The modern Dems are direct descendants of the Dem-Reps; the GOP comes from the Whigs, which (on paper) broke off from the Dems.
Actually, Jefferson supported 19-year copyrights, but we have a castrated "limited Times" instead of a clearer "no more than twenty years" because IIRC, Jefferson was away in France when the Constitution was drafted.
If you want the EFF to buy off a congressman, send them a $20 check
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a charity. Charities do not make political campaign contributions. Political action committees (PACs) are not charities and can and do give money to candidates. Does there exist a PAC in the United States that focuses on the same issues that EFF follows?
The reasoning that the wording as a "tax" gets around the Berne Convention sounds shaky to me
As far as I know, if a copyright owner who derives value from distributing copies of a work doesn't pay the income tax due, the government can seize his property. I'd presume that the government can seize intellectual property in a tax case as well. Would you interpret the Berne treaty so as to shelter all copyright-related income from taxation?
Mickey is trademarked, so it doesn't matter what happens to Steamboat Willy. You still can't use Disney's trademarked character.
Not true. At my local Walgreens store, I find VHS copies of public-domain films starring Bugs Bunny. These films were first published before 1964, but Warner never got around to renewing their copyrights at the 28-year mark. (Copyright in all works first published in 1964-1977 was renewed automatically by a 1992 law.) The boxes of the tapes have the text "Bugs Bunny" and a drawing of a rabbit on the front and "Fresh Hare, Falling Hare, The Wabbit Who Came To Supper; this video contains public domain audiovisual works and is not sponsored or endorsed by the original authors of the works." No, I don't remember the citation of the relevant court case. Anybody else?
If Warner wants to compete, it can still compete on technical quality. The video I bought had a crappy transfer with blown highlights; Bugs often looked all-white instead of gray and white as he is supposed to appear.
So the Washington Post is suing music file traders???
No, but the people who own the copyrights on recordings of Sousa marches such as "Washington Post March" are suing file traders. (The copyright in the song itself has expired, but any recording thereof is a derivative work and eligible for a 95-year copyright made perpetual by repeated term extensions.)
independent performance... may very well infringe on the copyright on the *music*
Heck, independent songwriting infringes the copyright in the music. Given this evidence, which includes this precedent, how is it possible to write a song that meets copyright law's definition of originality?
You recalled the fair use guidelines correctly. Compare 17 USC 107, which defines fair use.
However, the corresponding rules in the UK and Australia are more restrictive and generally do not permit reproduction of copyrighted works for private home entertainment purposes without the consent of the copyright owner.
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the... noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
However, the "No Electronic Theft Act" of 1997 redefined "financial gain" to include the receipt of other copyrighted works (see 17 USC 101), which could possibly bleed into the definition of "commercial use".
But the AHRA is still sufficiently new this hasn't been tested in court yet.
Yes it has. Napster Inc lost a case where it tried an AHRA defense.
A show that is no longer available on TV is still illegal: it is still copyrighted.
Copyrighted? Yes. Illegal? Not necessarily. Though the second and third fair use factors weigh in favor of the copyright owner, the first and all-important fourth factors would weigh in favor of a hypothetical non-profit distribution network that allows sharing only of what has definitely fallen out of print.
You might not be able to find a copy of Steamboat Willy ANYWHERE in the real world--but you're still breaking the law
Come on people! Start sharing copies of THE BIBLE! It's UNSTOPPABLE!
The only popular English translation of the Christian Bible that was first published before 1923 is the King James Version, and even this is under a perpetual crown copyright in the UK (which has no monolithic constitution and no "limited times" clause in what it does have).
You're trying to redefine common words to further your own idealogy.
The alternative to redefining words is using existing words. But which words? Spanish has libre for "having freedom" and gratis for "free of charge". What single word does English have that unambiguously means "having freedom"?
Except you know.. maby the internet on DVD, for long car rides through nevada?
All I'd need on a long car trip would be my e-mail, the last two weeks of Kuro5hin and Slashdot stories, plus caches of pages that the stories and the highest-rated comments link to. I don't need the whole web on DVD, just the part that I'm likely to read in the next couple hours. It's like The Matrix: when no human is looking, the Matrix does computations on its world model at a coarse precision.
click on the column 'file type'
scroll down the list to see all the mp3s now clumped together.
Not exactly. The MP3 files are scattered among the.wav,.mid,.xm,.s3m,.ogg, and all the other files of type "Winamp audio file". But yes, if you want to select all audio files in a folder, grouping them by type is the right way.
You can write your own networking code that is build ontop of Berkeley sockets.
Winsock 2 is just different enough from BSD's implementation to cause problems. Besides, DirectPlay has chat room functionality built right into the OS.
As for movies I find they really don't add to games unless they're part of the game directly.
When you start Quake III Arena, the first thing you see is an FMV "id Software" logo, followed by an FMV title sequence.
The "shiny CG cut scenes" found in most games are just distracting.
Shiny sells. It's supposed to be distracting; it's a music video background for Dance Dance Revolution. Or would that be "part of the game" as you said?
If somebody wanted to distribute fr**cr*ft for Xbox, how would Blizzard be able to stop him?
Trademark? Rename it. I don't think Blizzard would be able to take down "Orc Game II" for trademark reasons.
Copyright? Blizzard owns no exclusive rights in the FC engine or the FCMP content pack.
Patent? 1. Patents have to be applied for, and I know of no evidence that Blizzard has done so. 2. Blizzard never alleged patent infringement in its cease-and-desist letters. 3. Command & Conquer is probably prior art.
Availability? I'm sure at least somebody has a mirror of FC and FCMP.
Xbox controller ports are still only 12 Mbps USB, not High Speed USB. Can a good-quality video+audio feed be compressed in real time into 12 Mbps? By an inexpensive device? I tried it with a Dazzle box, and the results were $#!+.
The PC can output resolutions of 720p, or whatever "p" you like with a good enough video card
Almost. I am not a TV engineer, but I've read that a TV with progressive scan component input expects components in YCC color space (brightness, blue tint, red tint), while the VGA sends components in RGB color space (red intensity, green intensity, blue intensity). There may be mismatched voltage levels and impedances to contend with as well.
No. RCA is composite, with three color signals multiplexed onto one pair of wires.
S-Video looks like a PS/2 keyboard connector with fewer pins, and it carries brightness and sync (luma) and color (chroma) on separate pairs. There are still two color signals (redness and blueness) multiplexed, but on the whole, there's more bandwidth available to everything, which makes things look sharper.
Component video breaks the video out into three RCA connectors, each with its own pair: brightness and sync, redness, and blueness. Because there is no more multiplexing, everything looks almost as sharp as on a VGA display.
"Progressive scan" refers to running the video signal twice as fast to be able to draw all 480 lines in one pass rather than drawing 240 even lines in even frames and 240 odd lines in odd frames. This improves sharpness and gets rid of some of the artifacts you see on moving diagonal objects such as the borders of the "key" areas next to the goals in a televised basketball game.
The remote is a $30 extra that includes a memory card with DVD decoding software. Unfortunately, the DVD decoding software on the remote enforces unskippable scenes, region coding, and Macrovision.
Slashdot Mirror
I just used the form to send a message to The Honorable Mark E. Souder, which went something like this:
To Slashdot readers residing in the United States (citizens and lawful permanent residents): Rephrase the above message in your own words, look up your representative, and send it to him or her. If your rep has already signed on (e.g. Lofgren or Doolittle), change the end to something like "Thank you for sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act." However, if you live in 45th California, don't expect much of a response out of Rep. Mary Bono.
I think that there's a simpler explanation - that America is governed by essentially one party, called the Democratic-Republican party.
Darn right. It goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, the first U.S. President from the The Democratic-Republican Party. Since 1801. The modern Dems are direct descendants of the Dem-Reps; the GOP comes from the Whigs, which (on paper) broke off from the Dems.
Actually, Jefferson supported 19-year copyrights, but we have a castrated "limited Times" instead of a clearer "no more than twenty years" because IIRC, Jefferson was away in France when the Constitution was drafted.
You can still buy him a beer.
If you want the EFF to buy off a congressman, send them a $20 check
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a charity. Charities do not make political campaign contributions. Political action committees (PACs) are not charities and can and do give money to candidates. Does there exist a PAC in the United States that focuses on the same issues that EFF follows?
The reasoning that the wording as a "tax" gets around the Berne Convention sounds shaky to me
As far as I know, if a copyright owner who derives value from distributing copies of a work doesn't pay the income tax due, the government can seize his property. I'd presume that the government can seize intellectual property in a tax case as well. Would you interpret the Berne treaty so as to shelter all copyright-related income from taxation?
Mickey is trademarked, so it doesn't matter what happens to Steamboat Willy. You still can't use Disney's trademarked character.
Not true. At my local Walgreens store, I find VHS copies of public-domain films starring Bugs Bunny. These films were first published before 1964, but Warner never got around to renewing their copyrights at the 28-year mark. (Copyright in all works first published in 1964-1977 was renewed automatically by a 1992 law.) The boxes of the tapes have the text "Bugs Bunny" and a drawing of a rabbit on the front and "Fresh Hare, Falling Hare, The Wabbit Who Came To Supper; this video contains public domain audiovisual works and is not sponsored or endorsed by the original authors of the works." No, I don't remember the citation of the relevant court case. Anybody else?
If Warner wants to compete, it can still compete on technical quality. The video I bought had a crappy transfer with blown highlights; Bugs often looked all-white instead of gray and white as he is supposed to appear.
you can't use Mickey Mouse because he's still under copyright.
Mickey has already fallen into the public domain for reasons other than the expiration of copyright. Try lack of notice when it was required.
So the Washington Post is suing music file traders???
No, but the people who own the copyrights on recordings of Sousa marches such as "Washington Post March" are suing file traders. (The copyright in the song itself has expired, but any recording thereof is a derivative work and eligible for a 95-year copyright made perpetual by repeated term extensions.)
independent performance ... may very well infringe on the copyright on the *music*
Heck, independent songwriting infringes the copyright in the music. Given this evidence, which includes this precedent, how is it possible to write a song that meets copyright law's definition of originality?
And don't even think about singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY at some party. That is a COPYRIGHTED song
Sure, Warner Bros. has a copyright certificate for "Happy Birthday to You", but is the copyright valid?
You recalled the fair use guidelines correctly. Compare 17 USC 107, which defines fair use.
However, the corresponding rules in the UK and Australia are more restrictive and generally do not permit reproduction of copyrighted works for private home entertainment purposes without the consent of the copyright owner.
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the ... noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
However, the "No Electronic Theft Act" of 1997 redefined "financial gain" to include the receipt of other copyrighted works (see 17 USC 101), which could possibly bleed into the definition of "commercial use".
But the AHRA is still sufficiently new this hasn't been tested in court yet.
Yes it has. Napster Inc lost a case where it tried an AHRA defense.
A show that is no longer available on TV is still illegal: it is still copyrighted.
Copyrighted? Yes. Illegal? Not necessarily. Though the second and third fair use factors weigh in favor of the copyright owner, the first and all-important fourth factors would weigh in favor of a hypothetical non-profit distribution network that allows sharing only of what has definitely fallen out of print.
You might not be able to find a copy of Steamboat Willy ANYWHERE in the real world--but you're still breaking the law
"Steamboat Willie" may not be under copyright at all thanks to a faulty copyright notice that was not corrected in time.
Come on people! Start sharing copies of THE BIBLE! It's UNSTOPPABLE!
The only popular English translation of the Christian Bible that was first published before 1923 is the King James Version, and even this is under a perpetual crown copyright in the UK (which has no monolithic constitution and no "limited times" clause in what it does have).
You're trying to redefine common words to further your own idealogy.
The alternative to redefining words is using existing words. But which words? Spanish has libre for "having freedom" and gratis for "free of charge". What single word does English have that unambiguously means "having freedom"?
Except you know.. maby the internet on DVD, for long car rides through nevada?
All I'd need on a long car trip would be my e-mail, the last two weeks of Kuro5hin and Slashdot stories, plus caches of pages that the stories and the highest-rated comments link to. I don't need the whole web on DVD, just the part that I'm likely to read in the next couple hours. It's like The Matrix: when no human is looking, the Matrix does computations on its world model at a coarse precision.
click on the first .mp3, then shift+click on the final .mp3
What about all the other file types registered to the same audio player, such as .wav and .ogg? Wouldn't those get caught up in the middle?
how many mp3's are you planning on fitting in that floppy? :)
About 25.
click on the column 'file type' scroll down the list to see all the mp3s now clumped together.
Not exactly. The MP3 files are scattered among the .wav, .mid, .xm, .s3m, .ogg, and all the other files of type "Winamp audio file". But yes, if you want to select all audio files in a folder, grouping them by type is the right way.
The anti-virus security patch for Outlook Express also makes it impossible to receive legitimate zip files.
You can write your own networking code that is build ontop of Berkeley sockets.
Winsock 2 is just different enough from BSD's implementation to cause problems. Besides, DirectPlay has chat room functionality built right into the OS.
As for movies I find they really don't add to games unless they're part of the game directly.
When you start Quake III Arena, the first thing you see is an FMV "id Software" logo, followed by an FMV title sequence.
The "shiny CG cut scenes" found in most games are just distracting.
Shiny sells. It's supposed to be distracting; it's a music video background for Dance Dance Revolution. Or would that be "part of the game" as you said?
If somebody wanted to distribute fr**cr*ft for Xbox, how would Blizzard be able to stop him?
Trademark? Rename it. I don't think Blizzard would be able to take down "Orc Game II" for trademark reasons.
Copyright? Blizzard owns no exclusive rights in the FC engine or the FCMP content pack.
Patent? 1. Patents have to be applied for, and I know of no evidence that Blizzard has done so. 2. Blizzard never alleged patent infringement in its cease-and-desist letters. 3. Command & Conquer is probably prior art.
Availability? I'm sure at least somebody has a mirror of FC and FCMP.
Xbox controller ports are still only 12 Mbps USB, not High Speed USB. Can a good-quality video+audio feed be compressed in real time into 12 Mbps? By an inexpensive device? I tried it with a Dazzle box, and the results were $#!+.
The PC can output resolutions of 720p, or whatever "p" you like with a good enough video card
Almost. I am not a TV engineer, but I've read that a TV with progressive scan component input expects components in YCC color space (brightness, blue tint, red tint), while the VGA sends components in RGB color space (red intensity, green intensity, blue intensity). There may be mismatched voltage levels and impedances to contend with as well.
No. RCA is composite, with three color signals multiplexed onto one pair of wires.
S-Video looks like a PS/2 keyboard connector with fewer pins, and it carries brightness and sync (luma) and color (chroma) on separate pairs. There are still two color signals (redness and blueness) multiplexed, but on the whole, there's more bandwidth available to everything, which makes things look sharper.
Component video breaks the video out into three RCA connectors, each with its own pair: brightness and sync, redness, and blueness. Because there is no more multiplexing, everything looks almost as sharp as on a VGA display.
"Progressive scan" refers to running the video signal twice as fast to be able to draw all 480 lines in one pass rather than drawing 240 even lines in even frames and 240 odd lines in odd frames. This improves sharpness and gets rid of some of the artifacts you see on moving diagonal objects such as the borders of the "key" areas next to the goals in a televised basketball game.
The remote is a $30 extra that includes a memory card with DVD decoding software. Unfortunately, the DVD decoding software on the remote enforces unskippable scenes, region coding, and Macrovision.