I think it was a bad action, but it wasn't theft. There are plenty of malicious actions that aren't theft. The best fit as I understand the situation would probably be disclosure of a trade secret and possibly vandalism would apply to any changes made, and fraud and some other things would probably apply to subsequent attacks using the trade secrets.
Also, you missed my point on borrowing entirely. Publicly disclosed information ultimately belongs to the PUBLIC, so during the period for which the AUTHOR retains various exclusive rights, the AUTHOR is 'borrowing' those rights from the public using a legal method provided by the government.
1. I don't trust the government to be competent with this
2. I don't trust the government to not abuse this power
The government is perhaps the single most important entity to protect yourself from. If cashflows and internet security are under the government's thumb, then contaband and actions to protect yourself from the government are going to be much harder to come by. I don't want a government ID credit card, I want a closer equivalent to cash, so i can make online purchases with LESS of a paper trail.
I understand the purposes of ASCAP, but I don't see a way that this can be simply an attempt to stop infringement unless ASCAP is grossly misinformed. The organizations being targeted are not the organizations that would be responsible for handling infringement, and sties like myspace probably have far more infringing covers than most any site that utilizes CC, and the DMCA gives them more than enough room to reasonably handle any real infringement, so there would be no need to lobby congress.
The organizations being pursued are resistant to more aggressive copyright laws, provide revenue streams ASCAP isn't going to touch, and some tools that can help protect the privacy of end users. All of these things potentially harm ASCAP's bottom line, but are completely legal in their current state. The only things that make sense for lobbying congress involve ASCAP being the bad guy here.
What ASCAP wants, is for Creative Commons, ELF, Copyleft, to do the same thing that other websites are already doing, by looking at songs that someone wrote, or composed, or legally published, that someone else had taken and posted it as their own work, such as plagiarism, and not at all like one downloading mp3s.
ASCAP should do some basic research, then. The EFF DOESN'T host songs. Public Knowledge DOESN'T host songs. Creative Commons DOESN'T host songs, but they do have links for searching for CC licensed media. Copyleft is not a website, but rather an umbrella term for a certain kind of licensing. I have released a beginner's guide to GNU/Linux under CC-BY-SA, and my only involvement with the aforementioned sites with this work was choosing the license I felt best fit my desires on the CC site and putting a notice in said guide that said it was CC-BY-SA followed by a link to where you could read the full license text.
There are sites and services, such as Jamendo, Flickr, and DeviantArt, that host CC-licensed content (and the latter two host non-CC content as well, I believe), but they are NOT part of the aforementioned organizations, and dealing with them would be a totally separate issue because they are third parties. Also, there is nothing specific about CC licenses or sites hosting CC content that makes them inherently more likely to plagiarize.
There are huge technical and legal difference between the two. Copyright infringement is still illegal, but saying that it is theft is inaccurate. Copyright infringement is also not jaywalking, murder, slander, or mail fraud. It is, however, copyright infringement.
Constitutional amendments need a lot more work. Besides convincing congress, you need 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve, and convincing states besides California is going to be tough.
If what you are saying is true, then they shouldn't be targeting the EFF or CC, but the actual DJs doing the infringement. CC licenses do NOTHING to change copyright law. Now, they may be using small, rerecorded samples that fall under fair use, or drum beats, which generally don't fall under copyright, but these would be their legal rights. Furthermore, one can do this under any license, so there's no point in singling out the ones that happen to use CC licenses. Most popular mashups involve master recordings, so the RIAA would also be wanting a cut in most of these cases Also, AFAIK, claims of mashups hurting anyone are not substantiated.
Also, you can't put a song 'under EFF,' as that is the Electronic Frontier's Foundation, not a license. The EFF are fond of CC licenses as well as free software, but making that confusion suggests you are ill informed on the matter.
And courts can declare such laws unconstitutional. Prohibiting authors from using liberal licensing is completely against the constitutional basis of copyright.
For the millionth time, copyright infringement and stealing are very different things. If anything, released works 'belong to' the public, and authors, and the authors are just 'borrowing' certain rights from the public, so the closest thing to 'theft' would be the Sonny Bono Act, which actually deprived the general public of its rights, with the retroactive parts presenting no gain for the public.
actually, the Statute of Anne, the first British copyright law, had a protection period of 14 years with a 14 year renewal, and the first US copyright act had the same period, and one could only get a renewal if the author was still alive. That's pretty close to what his viewpoint of fair and just is.
The biggest advantage that FaceTime seems to have is that it's an 'open standard', although how open it is has yet to be seen. By making at least parts of Skype open or sort of open, they can fight FaceTime before it gets any momentum and maybe get a bit more proliferation in the process.
I'm talking about current market share. Skype may be looking into the future for their plans, but they might see a different future than others, since analysts often make all kinds of crazy claims, and the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is not the craziest among them, so it may be a bet worth hedging to them.
I'm not surprised that Adobe cares. Adobe needs Flash to penetrate every market with any degree of significance in order to maintain its utility, and so does Skype.
In order to be ubiquitous, you have to not have any big holes in coverage. By most sources I can find, the iOS market is currently smaller than the desktop GNU/Linux market, but Adobe was making a huge deal about iOS not supporting Flash.
The problem seems to be that we agreed to a treaty we couldn't deliver on. The supposed harm that not abiding by this treaty will cause doesn't justify taking rights back from the public, because they didn't have the authority to agree to this treaty in the form it was presented in.
Under the constitution, ALL works will eventually become public domain. They have a value to society even while protected to copyright, but the ideal situation is to only give away the public's rights to the point where they will still have a net benefit. my main point, however, was that US copyright law is supposed to be public-centric, not artist-centric, so the amount of hard work put into it doesn't justify anything.
International treatise can't overcome the constitution, and the public benefit in question is specifically producing more works, which cannot be done retroactively. I understand the reasoning, which is basically validating their old, lucrative copyrights while other countries are validating our old, lucrative copyrights. That doesn't seem to fall within the realm of benefiting any form of progress, just copyright holders.
This is invariably between 2 private parties or a private party and the government (such as attempting to reproduce documents produced by the government and the government suing to stop/prevent it under copyright law)
No, the government is inherently involved with enforcement of copyright law, because copyright holders get the ability to restrict my usage rights from laws passed by Congress. Also, your second situation generally doesn't occur in the US since works of the US government are public domain, although they might cite something else like national security.
If you take an incredibly wide view of the first amendment, it explicitly forbids copyright because it is a law that restricts speech. Amendments act to override existing clauses, so it would take precedence over the copyright clause.
However, I would say that copyright and patents fit within the exceptions to free speech, such as falsely shouting fire in crowded theater, meaning we legally can have copyright laws. Regarding fair use, it may draw it's basis from common law. However, I would say that a law that removed all fair use rights would be deemed unconstitutional because the first amendment acts as an ADDITIONAL backing of fair use. If it didn't, all that would have to happen was a new statute that overrides the old one and fair use could completely disappear, and the media conglomerates would have pushed that through long ago.
My second point, about it violating the constitutional copyright clause, was not claiming that the first amendment was centrally involved with this case (I was, however, saying that the powers given to Congress by the copyright clause don't override any limits already in place, such as preventing a certain group of people from obtaining copyrights would be prohibited by the fourteenth amendment). My point was that this law can't conceivably create more works, so it does not fit within the constitutional basis for copyright.
I'm not saying it's not congress's right, but it's also the duty of our court system to overturn laws that do not meet the constitutional purpose of the copyright clause.
Free Speech is not limited to speech on the government. Pornography and KKK rallies have been protected by the first amendment, and speech that doesn't really need to be protected is also protected. In order to abridge ANY speech or press, you need a strong reason, typically the public welfare.
You still do not get it do you? FREE SPEECH != anything to do with copyright they are mutually exclusive concepts..
To claim they are mutually exclusive is ridiculous. They are different concepts, but that doesn't mean that there is never any overlap.
congress can enact any law they want regarding copyright duration, revocation, reinstatement as this is all covered under the copyright clause and in no way affects anything under amendment 1
No, they can't. A law that is not for a limited time would not be constitutional, and if it doesn't benefit the public by promoting arts and sciences, a law could and should be declared unconstitutional, which is what I would argue is clearly the case here. The same would apply to copyright laws that somehow conflict with other parts of the constitution, including the first amendment and any other amendment.
Even if that is real reason why the copyright clause is so verbose, it doesn't change the fact that the constitution specifies quite a bit on how copyright law is to be implemented, and I don't think one could reasonably conclude that taking works away from the public domain can be seen as for the public benefit.
But I would question it's constitutionality. There is no public benefit in removing works from the public domain, and the constitutional basis for copyright in the US is the public benefit.
It puts some pretty stiff limitations on how it could be implemented, such as 'limited time' and'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' For comparison, there are no limitations on how long or for what reason congress can declare war, so the framers of the constitution were clearly concerned about it.
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I think it was a bad action, but it wasn't theft. There are plenty of malicious actions that aren't theft. The best fit as I understand the situation would probably be disclosure of a trade secret and possibly vandalism would apply to any changes made, and fraud and some other things would probably apply to subsequent attacks using the trade secrets. Also, you missed my point on borrowing entirely. Publicly disclosed information ultimately belongs to the PUBLIC, so during the period for which the AUTHOR retains various exclusive rights, the AUTHOR is 'borrowing' those rights from the public using a legal method provided by the government.
1. I don't trust the government to be competent with this
2. I don't trust the government to not abuse this power
The government is perhaps the single most important entity to protect yourself from. If cashflows and internet security are under the government's thumb, then contaband and actions to protect yourself from the government are going to be much harder to come by. I don't want a government ID credit card, I want a closer equivalent to cash, so i can make online purchases with LESS of a paper trail.
The organizations being pursued are resistant to more aggressive copyright laws, provide revenue streams ASCAP isn't going to touch, and some tools that can help protect the privacy of end users. All of these things potentially harm ASCAP's bottom line, but are completely legal in their current state. The only things that make sense for lobbying congress involve ASCAP being the bad guy here.
What ASCAP wants, is for Creative Commons, ELF, Copyleft, to do the same thing that other websites are already doing, by looking at songs that someone wrote, or composed, or legally published, that someone else had taken and posted it as their own work, such as plagiarism, and not at all like one downloading mp3s.
ASCAP should do some basic research, then. The EFF DOESN'T host songs. Public Knowledge DOESN'T host songs. Creative Commons DOESN'T host songs, but they do have links for searching for CC licensed media. Copyleft is not a website, but rather an umbrella term for a certain kind of licensing. I have released a beginner's guide to GNU/Linux under CC-BY-SA, and my only involvement with the aforementioned sites with this work was choosing the license I felt best fit my desires on the CC site and putting a notice in said guide that said it was CC-BY-SA followed by a link to where you could read the full license text. There are sites and services, such as Jamendo, Flickr, and DeviantArt, that host CC-licensed content (and the latter two host non-CC content as well, I believe), but they are NOT part of the aforementioned organizations, and dealing with them would be a totally separate issue because they are third parties. Also, there is nothing specific about CC licenses or sites hosting CC content that makes them inherently more likely to plagiarize.
There are huge technical and legal difference between the two. Copyright infringement is still illegal, but saying that it is theft is inaccurate. Copyright infringement is also not jaywalking, murder, slander, or mail fraud. It is, however, copyright infringement.
Constitutional amendments need a lot more work. Besides convincing congress, you need 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve, and convincing states besides California is going to be tough.
If what you are saying is true, then they shouldn't be targeting the EFF or CC, but the actual DJs doing the infringement. CC licenses do NOTHING to change copyright law. Now, they may be using small, rerecorded samples that fall under fair use, or drum beats, which generally don't fall under copyright, but these would be their legal rights. Furthermore, one can do this under any license, so there's no point in singling out the ones that happen to use CC licenses. Most popular mashups involve master recordings, so the RIAA would also be wanting a cut in most of these cases Also, AFAIK, claims of mashups hurting anyone are not substantiated. Also, you can't put a song 'under EFF,' as that is the Electronic Frontier's Foundation, not a license. The EFF are fond of CC licenses as well as free software, but making that confusion suggests you are ill informed on the matter.
it's https instead of http, so that's probably where you made your mistake I missed that myself when I tried it.
And courts can declare such laws unconstitutional. Prohibiting authors from using liberal licensing is completely against the constitutional basis of copyright.
For the millionth time, copyright infringement and stealing are very different things. If anything, released works 'belong to' the public, and authors, and the authors are just 'borrowing' certain rights from the public, so the closest thing to 'theft' would be the Sonny Bono Act, which actually deprived the general public of its rights, with the retroactive parts presenting no gain for the public.
actually, the Statute of Anne, the first British copyright law, had a protection period of 14 years with a 14 year renewal, and the first US copyright act had the same period, and one could only get a renewal if the author was still alive. That's pretty close to what his viewpoint of fair and just is.
And that's the thing. Nobody ever runs openly as a corporatist, and yet we're overrun by them.
The biggest advantage that FaceTime seems to have is that it's an 'open standard', although how open it is has yet to be seen. By making at least parts of Skype open or sort of open, they can fight FaceTime before it gets any momentum and maybe get a bit more proliferation in the process.
I'm talking about current market share. Skype may be looking into the future for their plans, but they might see a different future than others, since analysts often make all kinds of crazy claims, and the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is not the craziest among them, so it may be a bet worth hedging to them. I'm not surprised that Adobe cares. Adobe needs Flash to penetrate every market with any degree of significance in order to maintain its utility, and so does Skype.
Supposedly, FaceTime is going to be an open standard, so it could become more widely implemented, and thus pose a threat to Skype.
In order to be ubiquitous, you have to not have any big holes in coverage. By most sources I can find, the iOS market is currently smaller than the desktop GNU/Linux market, but Adobe was making a huge deal about iOS not supporting Flash.
The problem seems to be that we agreed to a treaty we couldn't deliver on. The supposed harm that not abiding by this treaty will cause doesn't justify taking rights back from the public, because they didn't have the authority to agree to this treaty in the form it was presented in.
Under the constitution, ALL works will eventually become public domain. They have a value to society even while protected to copyright, but the ideal situation is to only give away the public's rights to the point where they will still have a net benefit. my main point, however, was that US copyright law is supposed to be public-centric, not artist-centric, so the amount of hard work put into it doesn't justify anything.
International treatise can't overcome the constitution, and the public benefit in question is specifically producing more works, which cannot be done retroactively. I understand the reasoning, which is basically validating their old, lucrative copyrights while other countries are validating our old, lucrative copyrights. That doesn't seem to fall within the realm of benefiting any form of progress, just copyright holders.
This is invariably between 2 private parties or a private party and the government (such as attempting to reproduce documents produced by the government and the government suing to stop/prevent it under copyright law)
No, the government is inherently involved with enforcement of copyright law, because copyright holders get the ability to restrict my usage rights from laws passed by Congress. Also, your second situation generally doesn't occur in the US since works of the US government are public domain, although they might cite something else like national security. If you take an incredibly wide view of the first amendment, it explicitly forbids copyright because it is a law that restricts speech. Amendments act to override existing clauses, so it would take precedence over the copyright clause. However, I would say that copyright and patents fit within the exceptions to free speech, such as falsely shouting fire in crowded theater, meaning we legally can have copyright laws. Regarding fair use, it may draw it's basis from common law. However, I would say that a law that removed all fair use rights would be deemed unconstitutional because the first amendment acts as an ADDITIONAL backing of fair use. If it didn't, all that would have to happen was a new statute that overrides the old one and fair use could completely disappear, and the media conglomerates would have pushed that through long ago. My second point, about it violating the constitutional copyright clause, was not claiming that the first amendment was centrally involved with this case (I was, however, saying that the powers given to Congress by the copyright clause don't override any limits already in place, such as preventing a certain group of people from obtaining copyrights would be prohibited by the fourteenth amendment). My point was that this law can't conceivably create more works, so it does not fit within the constitutional basis for copyright.
I'm not saying it's not congress's right, but it's also the duty of our court system to overturn laws that do not meet the constitutional purpose of the copyright clause.
You still do not get it do you? FREE SPEECH != anything to do with copyright they are mutually exclusive concepts..
To claim they are mutually exclusive is ridiculous. They are different concepts, but that doesn't mean that there is never any overlap.
congress can enact any law they want regarding copyright duration, revocation, reinstatement as this is all covered under the copyright clause and in no way affects anything under amendment 1
No, they can't. A law that is not for a limited time would not be constitutional, and if it doesn't benefit the public by promoting arts and sciences, a law could and should be declared unconstitutional, which is what I would argue is clearly the case here. The same would apply to copyright laws that somehow conflict with other parts of the constitution, including the first amendment and any other amendment.
Even if that is real reason why the copyright clause is so verbose, it doesn't change the fact that the constitution specifies quite a bit on how copyright law is to be implemented, and I don't think one could reasonably conclude that taking works away from the public domain can be seen as for the public benefit.
But I would question it's constitutionality. There is no public benefit in removing works from the public domain, and the constitutional basis for copyright in the US is the public benefit.
It puts some pretty stiff limitations on how it could be implemented, such as 'limited time' and'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' For comparison, there are no limitations on how long or for what reason congress can declare war, so the framers of the constitution were clearly concerned about it.