You are wrong about the Google Books case, actually. Search engines retaining cached copies of 100% of the content of websites is considered perfectly legitimate fair use. If Google had gone to court, there's a good chance that would have been extended to cached copies of the content of printed books.
Also, fair use is not simply a defense, it's also an exception to copyright law (see 17 U.S.C. s 107, "the fair use of a copyrighted work...is not an infringement of copyright"). But you are correct, it's not possible to determine what is or isn't fair use until you are in a courtroom, where the burden of proof is with the accused -- which is why I think fair use is a bandaid solution to a very broken and unbalanced permission-based system.
I believe criticism and parody are only two areas where fair use may apply, and it's really up to the judge to decide in each individual case. For example, Google raised a fair use defense for its Google Books project (and many experts agreed) -- and their use is most certainly commercial and is neither criticism nor parody..
No, it's not. That's why it's called the "fair use exception". The Change posters were settled out of court, as was this case, so we don't know what the court would have said if the case had gone on, however I believe this was a case of fair use (see my other comment).
On what do you base that opinion on exactly? US fair use uses four factors to test whether a use is fair or not and commercial use is only one of the four factors. Not all factors need to be met to declare a use as fair. They are as follows:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Now IANAL, but while the use was commercial (1), it was transformative as it only used some very vague shapes from the original image thus meeting (3), and also did not affect the market of the original image (4).
In other words, this is almost certainly fair use. Think about it rationally, if this isn't fair use then what is?
Believe it or not, he is right on the money (figuratively speaking). What he is suggesting is the correct response to "net neutrality" laws. Myopic and purely profit-driven ISPs won't give their users what the users want, just the absolute minimum to make maximum profit. OTOH, investment in infrastructure makes "net neut" irrelevant, but obviously takes money.
Moreover, I think you are wrong to say better quality video will fill the pipes because 1080p video is more than we'll need for a while, and I bet in time we'll even get better compression algorithms to bring the filesizes down further. What will push the network is increased internet penetration, but we'll have to deal with that anyway...
Looks like they want to make all their money back with this lawsuit. 'tis how they roll, I guess.
I see people saying Google should buy Oracle. Not gonna happen, of course. However, Google could buy the Java IP off them if they wanted. Surely, the valuation of Java's IP would be much smaller than the entire valuation of Sun (hw divisions and all), so it may actually come cheaper than fighting this out to the end.
On the other hand, that is probably what Oracle wants to happen. Tbh, I want to see Google fight this and rip Oracle apart in court, because Oracle are fucking asshats no matter how I look at this.
I'd say that the number one reform we need is to stop automatically granting copyrights; we need to require registrations and impose some strict formalities. A system of short overall terms comprised of even shorter initial and renewal terms would probably be number two, and a broad exception for non-commercial infringement by natural persons would probably be number three.
That's precisely what needs to be done. I'd mod you up if I could.
I strongly disagree with you. Framing the copyright issue only from an economic stand-point is what got us in this mess, and to be sure that's not what the creators of copyright intended. To understand how wrong your definition is, consider this: should published artistic works that will always have monetary value (such as Homer, Shakespeare and Kipling) always remain in copyright because there will always be people who'd spend money to acquire them? Or, should those works eventually enter the "commons" where no single person has economic control over them, they are integrated into our culture and everyone can access and derive from them? Also, who decides which art is better to hand out custom copyright terms?
Copyright is a time and scope-limited monopoly on copying, it's not a license to print money. All works deserve the same amount of monopoly, if any, regardless of their quality, because all creators deserve an equal opportunity to control and profit from their work. How much each creator profits in the limited time they hold the monopoly is up to them and depends heavily on the quality of their art. Really, who would make more money from his art in a 10-year copyright term, Kipling or "Tai-Chi Tortoise"?
Moreover, why should Kipling be worthy of protection TODAY for something he published over 110 years ago? The monopoly of copyright was only intended as an incentive to publish works that will soon fall into the commons, and surely, he isn't going to publish any more books. His work is in the commons as it should be; it has become everyone's culture, just like the works of countless other storytellers throughout history, and everyone should be able to read it and even change it without restriction.
Is there any reason Disney should not have "bastardised" his work? Perhaps Disney's version doesn't agree with your personal tastes, but why shouldn't that version of the stories exist? Does Disney's version not have artistic value of its own? Would you prefer if that version had not been made? How many people would agree with you? Did Kipling lose anything when Disney adapted his work as a cartoon?
On these matters it's almost always 8-1. The 8 hold some stupid pro-corporate view that makes absolutely no sense, while the 1 dissenting opinion is what the other 8 should have gone for but didn't...
ATI should be screaming from the rooftops about this -- the competition authorities should NOT allow such a deal to go through. Microsoft has control of DirectX and if they buy one of the two major GPU makers, they are bound to do their usual thing and cut the other guy out one way or another. I see that as a very bad thing for the future of GPUs on the desktop, and also for GPU-based scientific computing.
Except, obvious patents are obvious. Those aren't "inventions" by any stretch of the imagination, they're just simple fundamental ideas that a broken, ill-defined patent system allowed to be monopolized, and MS is using them to extract rents from its competitors.
An "interesting strategy", huh? The problem is that HTC and others aren't going to let this dig into their own pockets -- we as the consumers have to pay HTC an extra $5-10 per phone so they can give it to Microsoft. And what did Microsoft do to deserve that money? It's because they have a bunch of useful patents such as:
- Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;
- Enable display of a webpage's content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;
- Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;
- Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and
- Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.
This is the Microsoft tax all over again, in the form of a multi-billion patent troll. Others can't innovate around Microsoft because Microsoft is the anti-competitive assclown it's always been. Regulators and legislators take notice!! Get rid of software patents already.
This approach is already being used against the "evil pirates", but they haven't even gotten started on the spammers. Getting their priorities straight: they go after the teenagers sharing music first instead of the real criminals sending out phishing emails, viruses and shit like that. FTW.
I strongly suspect that this whole "Netflix uses all the bandwidth" story was started by some ISP lobbyist somewhere, who wants to charge users more for certain services.
There's always WINE. Their There's also Virtualbox + Win98SE, which you can get up and running with some tweaks. You'll need graphics drivers and a midi emulator, but don't bet on getting 3d support for it, though.
If this has anything with the mysterious white lights that were reported during the quake (apparently not an entirely uncommon, but still unexplained, phenomenon), and if there could be any connection with what some researchers are saying about major earthquakes being linked with solar flare activity.
Slashdot Mirror
You are wrong about the Google Books case, actually. Search engines retaining cached copies of 100% of the content of websites is considered perfectly legitimate fair use. If Google had gone to court, there's a good chance that would have been extended to cached copies of the content of printed books.
Also, fair use is not simply a defense, it's also an exception to copyright law (see 17 U.S.C. s 107, "the fair use of a copyrighted work...is not an infringement of copyright"). But you are correct, it's not possible to determine what is or isn't fair use until you are in a courtroom, where the burden of proof is with the accused -- which is why I think fair use is a bandaid solution to a very broken and unbalanced permission-based system.
But I digress.
I believe criticism and parody are only two areas where fair use may apply, and it's really up to the judge to decide in each individual case. For example, Google raised a fair use defense for its Google Books project (and many experts agreed) -- and their use is most certainly commercial and is neither criticism nor parody..
Like I said in my other comment, commercial use is NOT the sole determinant of whether a use is fair.
It's still infringement
No, it's not. That's why it's called the "fair use exception". The Change posters were settled out of court, as was this case, so we don't know what the court would have said if the case had gone on, however I believe this was a case of fair use (see my other comment).
On what do you base that opinion on exactly? US fair use uses four factors to test whether a use is fair or not and commercial use is only one of the four factors. Not all factors need to be met to declare a use as fair. They are as follows:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Now IANAL, but while the use was commercial (1), it was transformative as it only used some very vague shapes from the original image thus meeting (3), and also did not affect the market of the original image (4).
In other words, this is almost certainly fair use. Think about it rationally, if this isn't fair use then what is?
Nyan cats and tac nyans, too.
Believe it or not, he is right on the money (figuratively speaking). What he is suggesting is the correct response to "net neutrality" laws. Myopic and purely profit-driven ISPs won't give their users what the users want, just the absolute minimum to make maximum profit. OTOH, investment in infrastructure makes "net neut" irrelevant, but obviously takes money.
Moreover, I think you are wrong to say better quality video will fill the pipes because 1080p video is more than we'll need for a while, and I bet in time we'll even get better compression algorithms to bring the filesizes down further. What will push the network is increased internet penetration, but we'll have to deal with that anyway...
..is a series of tubes! (and it's also made of cats)
Looks like they want to make all their money back with this lawsuit. 'tis how they roll, I guess.
I see people saying Google should buy Oracle. Not gonna happen, of course. However, Google could buy the Java IP off them if they wanted. Surely, the valuation of Java's IP would be much smaller than the entire valuation of Sun (hw divisions and all), so it may actually come cheaper than fighting this out to the end.
On the other hand, that is probably what Oracle wants to happen. Tbh, I want to see Google fight this and rip Oracle apart in court, because Oracle are fucking asshats no matter how I look at this.
like porn. And games. And real virtual reality control of UAVs and waldoes
And the TSA.
I'd say that the number one reform we need is to stop automatically granting copyrights; we need to require registrations and impose some strict formalities. A system of short overall terms comprised of even shorter initial and renewal terms would probably be number two, and a broad exception for non-commercial infringement by natural persons would probably be number three.
That's precisely what needs to be done. I'd mod you up if I could.
I strongly disagree with you. Framing the copyright issue only from an economic stand-point is what got us in this mess, and to be sure that's not what the creators of copyright intended. To understand how wrong your definition is, consider this: should published artistic works that will always have monetary value (such as Homer, Shakespeare and Kipling) always remain in copyright because there will always be people who'd spend money to acquire them? Or, should those works eventually enter the "commons" where no single person has economic control over them, they are integrated into our culture and everyone can access and derive from them? Also, who decides which art is better to hand out custom copyright terms?
Copyright is a time and scope-limited monopoly on copying, it's not a license to print money. All works deserve the same amount of monopoly, if any, regardless of their quality, because all creators deserve an equal opportunity to control and profit from their work. How much each creator profits in the limited time they hold the monopoly is up to them and depends heavily on the quality of their art. Really, who would make more money from his art in a 10-year copyright term, Kipling or "Tai-Chi Tortoise"?
Moreover, why should Kipling be worthy of protection TODAY for something he published over 110 years ago? The monopoly of copyright was only intended as an incentive to publish works that will soon fall into the commons, and surely, he isn't going to publish any more books. His work is in the commons as it should be; it has become everyone's culture, just like the works of countless other storytellers throughout history, and everyone should be able to read it and even change it without restriction.
Is there any reason Disney should not have "bastardised" his work? Perhaps Disney's version doesn't agree with your personal tastes, but why shouldn't that version of the stories exist? Does Disney's version not have artistic value of its own? Would you prefer if that version had not been made? How many people would agree with you? Did Kipling lose anything when Disney adapted his work as a cartoon?
On these matters it's almost always 8-1. The 8 hold some stupid pro-corporate view that makes absolutely no sense, while the 1 dissenting opinion is what the other 8 should have gone for but didn't...
ATI should be screaming from the rooftops about this -- the competition authorities should NOT allow such a deal to go through. Microsoft has control of DirectX and if they buy one of the two major GPU makers, they are bound to do their usual thing and cut the other guy out one way or another. I see that as a very bad thing for the future of GPUs on the desktop, and also for GPU-based scientific computing.
Except, obvious patents are obvious. Those aren't "inventions" by any stretch of the imagination, they're just simple fundamental ideas that a broken, ill-defined patent system allowed to be monopolized, and MS is using them to extract rents from its competitors.
- Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;
- Enable display of a webpage's content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;
- Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;
- Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and
- Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.
This is the Microsoft tax all over again, in the form of a multi-billion patent troll. Others can't innovate around Microsoft because Microsoft is the anti-competitive assclown it's always been. Regulators and legislators take notice!! Get rid of software patents already.
Is a symptom of the death of these cells.
its about time the cracks were shown to customers
I think Geohot already did that, quite literally.
Spammers with captchas? Inglip will approve.
This approach is already being used against the "evil pirates", but they haven't even gotten started on the spammers. Getting their priorities straight: they go after the teenagers sharing music first instead of the real criminals sending out phishing emails, viruses and shit like that. FTW.
Two days before the elections. Coincidence?
I strongly suspect that this whole "Netflix uses all the bandwidth" story was started by some ISP lobbyist somewhere, who wants to charge users more for certain services.
It's open source. If there are people who want it on other platforms, they can just fork it. Right?
There's always WINE. Their There's also Virtualbox + Win98SE, which you can get up and running with some tweaks. You'll need graphics drivers and a midi emulator, but don't bet on getting 3d support for it, though.
If this has anything with the mysterious white lights that were reported during the quake (apparently not an entirely uncommon, but still unexplained, phenomenon), and if there could be any connection with what some researchers are saying about major earthquakes being linked with solar flare activity.