Should copyright be used to hold people up who cannot make it with the work they produce, despite the value to others of that work being low or none, or at least less than it costs to produce it? Quite frankly, I've never seriously considered this as a possible justification because it's not an efficient use of resources. So, of course, my question for you is why should we encourage that amount of inefficient use of resources? Even current copyright is not perfectly efficient (after all, Disney can probably better use your screenplay than you when they steal it from you), but it's balanced against desert (at least on my view). However, I don't think the Lockean fruits of labor argument works for you. Your position seems more about people deserving to have more fruit, as opposed to deserving whatever fruit people can make.
You act like settlements aren't rational. But they are. Settlements aren't compulsory, after all. And where there's money for settlement, there's money for legal representation.
Copyright does increase the size of the jackpot if you get lucky
It increases it from 0 no matter what, not just if you're lucky. You have no recourse for somebody taking your screenplay but for recognizing intellectual property.
but that is not so much a reduction in risk as a decrease in the risk/reward ratio.
What are you trying to say here? The only think I can figure out is so far from reasonable that I won't address it because it's probably just me not understanding what you're trying to convey. Clarify?
But copyright reduces the risks creators undertake when they author works because, as the post you quoted points out, people could otherwise jump in and take what somebody else created. And then they've expended a lot, received little, and have less incentive to keep creating. His hypo is exactly how copyright law helps them.
You do not need to register your work to get or keep a copyright, however, and that is what the proposed fee would require. Besides, this suggestion violates an international treaty - which may or may not really matter, but it'd come up.
Sorry, my reply sounded too brash. It was late and I misread what you wrote re: the cited treaties, and didn't think to analyze which provisions were implicated.
The Berne Convention won't change. Period. It's a dead-in-the-water treaty. As far as changing TRIPS, it's an executive agreement...so you'll have to focus your convincing arguments.
Except that back then there was no need to worry about copying because it was too difficult to do. Once the printing press was developed, we had to worry about it. The first thing like a copyright statute was in 1709.
That aside, it's not that some people need motivation, but that copyright is intended to optimize the situation.
You said this elsewhere too, and I think I disagree. I don't think reading an assertion of copyright into the flickr statement is the most reasonable interpretation. A limited license for the right of publicity is how I read it. Here's my analysis:
This official White House photograph is being made available
A picture taken, that has no copyright protection, does not need to be published by the author. Nevertheless, the White House decided to publish it. Assuming the White House understands that federal employee works are public domain works (of course they know this - they're not stupid), let's continue reading with the assumption that it is a public domain work. So far so good. The published a public domain work.
only for publication by news organizations
One could read a copyright assertion here (like you did), but one can also read a limited, non-exclusive license for the use of Obama's likeness. An infringement claim would never work, and the White House surely knows this, so it makes more sense to read this as a license.
and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph.
I think they are overstating their position here. You could read this as providing a non-exclusive copyright license (reproduction right) to the subjects, but again, the White House isn't stupid.
The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Here's some sticky language. No manipulation? Are they saying no derivative works, implying a copyright assertion? Doubtful, because this right belongs to a copyright holder regardless of an assertion of the right. Instead, I would again say it makes more sense to read this together with the
following clause which makes it clear that Obama does not want his likeness commercially associated with things he does not approve of.
There's room to disagree here, for sure. One response is that the White House is fear mongering, even though they know better. Just not a very smart way to do it.
While federal government works cannot be copyrighted, they can acquire copyrights, and use independent contractors who retain copyright. That said, copyright isn't the issue here. The issue is using Obama's likeness without his permission.
But copyright is a market correction, used because the market for IP fails to produce what we want. It's disingenuous to cite an economic theory based on market self-regulation in support of explicit recognition of a market's failure to regulate.
This is the legal definition of promote. Copyright, in the US, is an economic matter. Period.
That said, the invisible hand has little to do with what I said. If the market for creative works were able to self-regulate, there would be no copyright. Copyright is a market correction.
This will give UCLA an exact dollar value of damages caused by this illegal threat for a baseless case.
This is not an illegal threat. UCLA acknowledges that the would-be-plaintiff has a valid copyright because they entered into a licensing agreement with them. If they violate the license, not only is there a state claim for violating a contract, but a federal claim for violating the copyright. There would be no failure to state a claim, especially for a frivolous suit. Intellectual property is very, very special and viewed as unique. Accordingly, the bar for frivolity is just that much higher.
Fair use exemptions are clearly in force here so this is a frivolous lawsuit made in bad faith
No matter what you think, it is not clear. Fair use is almost never clear. It is also not bad faith, for the same reasons I outlined above.
(Giving oneself a title of 'copyright holder' requires you to be aware of the laws related to such a title. As far as I am concerned, not doing so is negligence, and any damage caused by their negligence is made in 'bad faith')
No it doesn't. Federal law grants you copyright when you fix a creative work to a medium. You can call yourself whatever the heck you want - it doesn't matter, and you don't have to know anything about your rights. Not that I should have to tell anybody this, but requiring you know something about your rights to have your rights is counter to the very concept of what it means to have a right as opposed to an advantage.
Any federal government office is automatically except and is legally unable to violate copyright (At least the copyright of American made works.)
This is very misleading. Sovereign immunity, while it has recently applied to the Lanham Act (trademarks and unfair competition) and federal patent statutes, has not been tested against copyright (at least to my knowledge). Not that it matters. At worst this means that you cannot sue the State of California or a federal agency for violating your valid copyright. However, you can still sue an employee of either, and obtain an injunction to get them to stop using your intellectual property. When one of these employees/officials acts in violation of a valid federal statute - like anything under Title 17 - that official is by definition acting outside the scope of their employment, which is all sovereign immunity will protect.
"Promote" in the sense you want to use it is shortsighted. Copyright promotes science and art by incentivizing authors to create/author works by providing economic reason to justify competing. If you imagine, 'how can we do the most with what we got' as some kind of promotion, you're losing sight of how to get there in the first place, and how to incentivize people to share too.
Except that allowing or enabling licensing violations is bad precedent. Surely they backed down because they realized they had no case. After all, they needed licensing in the first place. If this were to qualify as fair use, so too would that.
Fermilab researchers are hoping that their machine might collect enough data to beat the LHC to the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle key to how physicists explain the origin of mass
Why don't they work together? Seems awfully inefficient not to share data, which this appears to imply.
when you start charging for food, you move from being a collection of friends to a sport bar, and sports bars don't get fair use.
This is wrong. In a lot of ways.
First, as has been said many times in these comments already, we're dealing with TM when using the term "Superbowl" and copyright when we dealing with showing it on TV. Though you probably don't know it, and besides the fact that a bar would also have to serve alcohol, the statutory exception you're referring to is an exception to the copyright rights. Certain kinds of establishments are allowed to violate the holder's copyright (and here I mean the prima facie violation of a section 106 right). And I believe I'm remembering this correctly, but the size of the TV's doesn't matter. It's the size of the establishment and the number of TV's.
Second, sports bars can get fair use. Whether a court finds a fair use depends on a balance of assorted factors, only one of which is whether the organization is for profit.
Yeah, the big thing here is that nobody is going to be confused.
I'm also trying to figure out how viewing on that size of a screen could possibly be a copyright violation. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any exemptions like this. Not that it'd surprise me, since there are all sorts of special interest exemptions. Hell, maybe the NFL got one specially placed! The tax code [501(c)(6)] has one carved out for professional football leagues. Not that any exemption would matter anyway. It'd totally be against the NFL's best interests to litigate.
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Should copyright be used to hold people up who cannot make it with the work they produce, despite the value to others of that work being low or none, or at least less than it costs to produce it? Quite frankly, I've never seriously considered this as a possible justification because it's not an efficient use of resources. So, of course, my question for you is why should we encourage that amount of inefficient use of resources? Even current copyright is not perfectly efficient (after all, Disney can probably better use your screenplay than you when they steal it from you), but it's balanced against desert (at least on my view). However, I don't think the Lockean fruits of labor argument works for you. Your position seems more about people deserving to have more fruit, as opposed to deserving whatever fruit people can make.
Copyright does increase the size of the jackpot if you get lucky
It increases it from 0 no matter what, not just if you're lucky. You have no recourse for somebody taking your screenplay but for recognizing intellectual property.
but that is not so much a reduction in risk as a decrease in the risk/reward ratio.
What are you trying to say here? The only think I can figure out is so far from reasonable that I won't address it because it's probably just me not understanding what you're trying to convey. Clarify?
There is zero chance of that happening. Thinking so is simply alarmist.
But copyright reduces the risks creators undertake when they author works because, as the post you quoted points out, people could otherwise jump in and take what somebody else created. And then they've expended a lot, received little, and have less incentive to keep creating. His hypo is exactly how copyright law helps them.
You do not need to register your work to get or keep a copyright, however, and that is what the proposed fee would require. Besides, this suggestion violates an international treaty - which may or may not really matter, but it'd come up.
Sorry, my reply sounded too brash. It was late and I misread what you wrote re: the cited treaties, and didn't think to analyze which provisions were implicated.
The Berne Convention won't change. Period. It's a dead-in-the-water treaty. As far as changing TRIPS, it's an executive agreement...so you'll have to focus your convincing arguments.
Except that back then there was no need to worry about copying because it was too difficult to do. Once the printing press was developed, we had to worry about it. The first thing like a copyright statute was in 1709.
That aside, it's not that some people need motivation, but that copyright is intended to optimize the situation.
This official White House photograph is being made available
A picture taken, that has no copyright protection, does not need to be published by the author. Nevertheless, the White House decided to publish it. Assuming the White House understands that federal employee works are public domain works (of course they know this - they're not stupid), let's continue reading with the assumption that it is a public domain work. So far so good. The published a public domain work.
only for publication by news organizations
One could read a copyright assertion here (like you did), but one can also read a limited, non-exclusive license for the use of Obama's likeness. An infringement claim would never work, and the White House surely knows this, so it makes more sense to read this as a license.
and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph.
I think they are overstating their position here. You could read this as providing a non-exclusive copyright license (reproduction right) to the subjects, but again, the White House isn't stupid.
The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Here's some sticky language. No manipulation? Are they saying no derivative works, implying a copyright assertion? Doubtful, because this right belongs to a copyright holder regardless of an assertion of the right. Instead, I would again say it makes more sense to read this together with the following clause which makes it clear that Obama does not want his likeness commercially associated with things he does not approve of. There's room to disagree here, for sure. One response is that the White House is fear mongering, even though they know better. Just not a very smart way to do it.
Yep, sounds like a great idea to deny property rights to people when they're famous enough. Totally equitable. Uh huh.
While federal government works cannot be copyrighted, they can acquire copyrights, and use independent contractors who retain copyright. That said, copyright isn't the issue here. The issue is using Obama's likeness without his permission.
Except this isn't a copyright issue. The prohibition is on image, not the picture.
Somebody please mod this up.
But copyright is a market correction, used because the market for IP fails to produce what we want. It's disingenuous to cite an economic theory based on market self-regulation in support of explicit recognition of a market's failure to regulate.
This is the legal definition of promote. Copyright, in the US, is an economic matter. Period.
That said, the invisible hand has little to do with what I said. If the market for creative works were able to self-regulate, there would be no copyright. Copyright is a market correction.
This will give UCLA an exact dollar value of damages caused by this illegal threat for a baseless case.
This is not an illegal threat. UCLA acknowledges that the would-be-plaintiff has a valid copyright because they entered into a licensing agreement with them. If they violate the license, not only is there a state claim for violating a contract, but a federal claim for violating the copyright. There would be no failure to state a claim, especially for a frivolous suit. Intellectual property is very, very special and viewed as unique. Accordingly, the bar for frivolity is just that much higher.
Fair use exemptions are clearly in force here so this is a frivolous lawsuit made in bad faith
No matter what you think, it is not clear. Fair use is almost never clear. It is also not bad faith, for the same reasons I outlined above.
(Giving oneself a title of 'copyright holder' requires you to be aware of the laws related to such a title. As far as I am concerned, not doing so is negligence, and any damage caused by their negligence is made in 'bad faith')
No it doesn't. Federal law grants you copyright when you fix a creative work to a medium. You can call yourself whatever the heck you want - it doesn't matter, and you don't have to know anything about your rights. Not that I should have to tell anybody this, but requiring you know something about your rights to have your rights is counter to the very concept of what it means to have a right as opposed to an advantage.
Any federal government office is automatically except and is legally unable to violate copyright (At least the copyright of American made works.)
This is very misleading. Sovereign immunity, while it has recently applied to the Lanham Act (trademarks and unfair competition) and federal patent statutes, has not been tested against copyright (at least to my knowledge). Not that it matters. At worst this means that you cannot sue the State of California or a federal agency for violating your valid copyright. However, you can still sue an employee of either, and obtain an injunction to get them to stop using your intellectual property. When one of these employees/officials acts in violation of a valid federal statute - like anything under Title 17 - that official is by definition acting outside the scope of their employment, which is all sovereign immunity will protect.
"Promote" in the sense you want to use it is shortsighted. Copyright promotes science and art by incentivizing authors to create/author works by providing economic reason to justify competing. If you imagine, 'how can we do the most with what we got' as some kind of promotion, you're losing sight of how to get there in the first place, and how to incentivize people to share too.
Except that allowing or enabling licensing violations is bad precedent. Surely they backed down because they realized they had no case. After all, they needed licensing in the first place. If this were to qualify as fair use, so too would that.
That makes sense. Thanks for the reply.
Fermilab researchers are hoping that their machine might collect enough data to beat the LHC to the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle key to how physicists explain the origin of mass
Why don't they work together? Seems awfully inefficient not to share data, which this appears to imply.
Solely owned != sole use
when you start charging for food, you move from being a collection of friends to a sport bar, and sports bars don't get fair use.
This is wrong. In a lot of ways.
First, as has been said many times in these comments already, we're dealing with TM when using the term "Superbowl" and copyright when we dealing with showing it on TV. Though you probably don't know it, and besides the fact that a bar would also have to serve alcohol, the statutory exception you're referring to is an exception to the copyright rights. Certain kinds of establishments are allowed to violate the holder's copyright (and here I mean the prima facie violation of a section 106 right). And I believe I'm remembering this correctly, but the size of the TV's doesn't matter. It's the size of the establishment and the number of TV's.
Second, sports bars can get fair use. Whether a court finds a fair use depends on a balance of assorted factors, only one of which is whether the organization is for profit.
Yeah, the big thing here is that nobody is going to be confused.
I'm also trying to figure out how viewing on that size of a screen could possibly be a copyright violation. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any exemptions like this. Not that it'd surprise me, since there are all sorts of special interest exemptions. Hell, maybe the NFL got one specially placed! The tax code [501(c)(6)] has one carved out for professional football leagues. Not that any exemption would matter anyway. It'd totally be against the NFL's best interests to litigate.
Facts are neither true nor false. They make propositions true or false.
"Effectively perfect" overstates this claim in a big way.