Because the RIAA does not under the new economy just as the horse buggy businesses didn't understand the new economy cars created. If your business isn't working then you need to change your business methodology.
Agreed.
They need to give their customers something the customer is willing to pay for.
I agree -- but here, the customers aren't paying for it. They aren't buying CD's, they aren't buying music downloads, they are finding ways to get music without paying for it at all.
In a normal line of business, if the business didn't give the customers something they wanted in the way they wanted, people just stop buying the business' wares. Here, though, people are STILL getting music, they are just getting it illegally. If a gallon of milk costs more than you would like to spend, you don't just go to the store and take it. If the store only sells full gallons, and you want a half-gallon, you don't pour out half of the milk and then pay half price. You wouldn't do that with a store -- but music, people say it's too expensive, then they take it for free. It doesn't come in the format I want to buy it in, I'll take it for free.
Whenever a disruptive technology comes along the old guard always tries to stop it instead of trying to figure out how to use it to their benefit.
Of course -- because they've already got resources and capital tied up in the old way of doing things, changing to a new tech takes time, mnoney and effort. They would rather maximize their profits from the old system already in place rather than just dump the old model and embrace the new. But they will embrace the new eventually, when it becomes profitable for them to do so.
But the way to do this is to have an innovator -- like Apple, with iTunes -- show how it can be done, and done profitably. When more and more iTunes-like competitors crop up, the RIAA will take it more seriously.
But just because the pace of innovation may be slow is no excuse to take music without paying for it. Besides, once people get stuff for free, they aren't going to want to start paying for it -- we have iTunes, people are still complaining, and still taking stuff without paying for it. They want it cheaper, faster, more selection, DRM-free, whatever -- but they way to get that, legally, is to use iTunes, and then lobby for a better system. Simpy stealing the stuff is only going to cause the RIAA to dig in their heels even more.
It's helpful to keep in mind that some people consider physical property ownership as a natural right. You say that the ability to keep people off your private land is a government-granted monopoly. But without some form of government you'd still be able to keep people off your land - to some degree, anyway - by threat of physical force. I'd bet that for as long as man has walked the earth, he has been aware of the notion of physical property - my cave, my spear, etc etc. The essence of property ownership is that ability to deny others access to something, even if it was in the past limited to what you could physically defend.
Understood. But there was a time when intellectual property was treated the same way -- guilds used secrets, and force, to maintain their hold on skills and technology. And it's always been possible to use force to protect, well, just about anything.
Besides, if property ownership were really a "natural" right, and not a government-granted monopoly, the government wouldn't be able to simply take your land (emminent domain), or kick you off for not paying your taxes. Your land is your only so long as you and the government are on good terms.
Copyright, on the other hand, is a very recent invention. Throughout history man has had no notion of limiting the dissemination of information that he creates.
That's simply not correct. Look at guilds. Look at monastic groups. Dissemination of information has always been curtailed.
Copyright is an invented 'right' - a government-granted monopoly that simply would not exist without said government's intervention.
Agreed.
That is why some people look on it as a purely artificial construction.
But a lot of rights are "artificial." Why single out IP? What about, say, the right to vote? The right to a jury trial? The right to not have to testify against oneself? The right to keep and bear arms? The right to freedom of press, or freedom of religion? All of these "artifical" rights are spelled out in the same document that created IP rights -- why don't we look on any of these with the same disdain?
And lets no even get into rights granted by the legislature or the courts, like the right to an abortion, or the right of privacy, or the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace. All "artificial" rights.
If you create something then indeed you should have the right to control what you create, and indeed you can. By all means do - keep it to yourself, don't distribute it, nobody will come and prize it from you.
Okay.
But if you do decide to give out (or sell) copies of your creation, your expectation to have a say in what is done with those copies once they have left your control is considered unreasonable by some.
I agree -- those who want to freeload off of someone else's work, or those who want something for nothing.
Suppose Bob buys a book off you. He then lends me the book to read. That you could turn around and say "hey, you can't do that! I didn't give you permission to share that with anybody" to Bob would seem quite outrageous to most reasonable people.
And there is nothing an IP holder can do to stop this from happening. That's the purpose of the "first sale" doctrine.
After all, why should you be telling Bob what he can and can't do? Of course it isn't optimal for you, because you would prefer to have sold me a copy of your book too - but what right do you have to dictate how Bob should behave?
None, in this particular case. The IP holder is not entitled to sell his book, he has no right to a sale.
So, what say instead of lending me the physical copy, Bob makes a small optimization, which is good for both Bob and me, but not for you - he photocopies the book and gives me a copy. Now at this point Bob is guilty of copyright infringement. He is in breach of laws that our society has put in place, not for your benefit, as you may like to imagine, b
Also the RIAA and it's members talk about declining sales they only mention illegal downloads as the reason, yet they never mention that when people started downloading music the economy was bad as well. And with a bad economy people wouldn't be spending much on entertainment anyway. Instead they blamed it entirely on Napster.
The simple fact is that downloading illegal music does not rip off the artists.
That may very well be true -- but shouldn't it be up to the copyright owner to decide whether or not to allow downloading? If downloading is, in fact, beneficial, then the record companies will embrace it, if not now, then at least eventually. The market will sort itself out in time.
If downloading was so good, why would the RIAA and the record labels be so firmly against it? Wouldn't that be against their interests?
And no, I don't believe that the RIAA and labels are worried about "losing control" or anything like that. They only care about profits. If downloading was, in the long run, more profitable than not allowing it, they would embrace it. Because they are not embracing it, I am inclined to believe that downloading is NOT beneficiall, or certainly not as beneficial as people here like to believe.
Some limited protection of ideas is good. A century of monopoly protection is too much.
What's a good number, then?
When scaled to world population, the rate of innovation is probably not that high. You know, we could be in flying cars by now, but todays vehicles are not that different than 100 years ago.
Maybe cars haven't changed much in 100 years -- but before cars, we had wagons, and wagons, although improved, probably haven't changed much in 3000 years. And a 1900 wagon compared to a 3000 BC chariot is probably less of a technological advance than a Model T compared to a Ferrari Enzo.
Recent computing innovation like the internet, browsers, did not come from idea monopoly greed, it came from schools and government.
But it took commercialization to get the internet out of schools and government labs and into homes and businesses. And greed is what drives commercialization.
Many Disney movies were based on public domain works. But Disney Co will keep paying for laws to prevent public domain of thier derivations.
So what? You could create your own sleeping beauty cartoon -- it's based on a public domain story, after all -- so long as you didn't use any of Disney's characters or artwork or music. Do you NEED Disney's work to create your own?
Auto manufacturers use mostly incompatible parts and patent them all. So they all have innovative hoses,..., and none interchangable.
But that's so they can sell more parts, and at a higher margin, not because of patents or copyrights.
If Safeway Cola and Coca Cola tasted EXACTLY the same, would you still pay more for Coca Cola? There's a commercial reason for differentiation.
Software makers (other than open source), are often reinventing the same wheels.
So? Why should one company get to freeload off of another? Besides, if a software company doesn't want to start from scratch, they can always buy a license. That's how we deal with the freeloader problem.
Drug companies are trying to find the most profitable drugs, not the most benificial.
Oftentimes the most beneficial drugs ARE the most profitable.
But, then again, how much money SHOULD we spend developing drugs for diseases and issues that only a very few people will ever get?
The copyright and patent system are due for serious reform that would encourage true innovation, including innovation from derivation (which most innovation is from in some way).
How do you define "true" innovation? How would you change the system?
Is it "pirates" who rip off artists or is it the RIAA? I bet if you look at the actual data on how much artists are paid and the bottom line profits of the actual corporations you'll see the industry is the one racking in the money. For instance I bet many if not most singers and bands make most of their money from concerts and receive little from media, cds and tape, sales. I'd be supprised if one receives as much as $1 on a $15 cds sale.
The artists agreed to the deal when they signed their recording contract. If they had wanted to make more money per CD sale, they could have recorded and produced the CD themselves, and distributed and sold the CD themselves, then there would be no record company taking "their" profits.
That many musicians would rather NOT go that route, and would rather have the record companies pay for the recording and production, and artwork, and sales and marketing and distribution and all that, doesn't mean that the artists are getting ripped off. Presumably they made a decision that they would accept far less per CD in exchange for getting the recording and production paid for, and in exchange for getting artwork, sales, marketing and distribution handled by someone else. Oh, and also offloading all of the risk that they are unable to recoup any of these costs.
The musicians made the deals with the record companies willingly. The fact that YOU don't think they get enough per CD is not a good reason to pirate the music. They made the deal, not you.
You were making some very good federalism arguments in the begining, but you kind of veered off into a direction I'm not really sure how to respond to.
Look, the main thing is this. The Supreme Court has taken the position that pure literalism is not how we interpret the constitution. You state that the law hasn't been tested yet -- well, that's not entirely true. These laws get tested all of the time.
You can wish for a pre-Civil War federalism, with a weak central government and strong states -- hell, I agree with that -- but that's not the way it is today. And simply ignoring copyright laws and pirating Usher CD's and copies of Spiderman 3 isn't going to create a libertarian paradise where a literalist reading of the Consitution reigns in the legislative and executive branches' respective powers
I'm not going to go point-by-point with you on this idea that copyright assignments are a cause for revolution. But I will address a couple of points:
And, in fact, that's the way it was, at least with respect to sound recordings, up until the 1972 act, copyrights on sound recordings were subject to state laws.
I'm not familiar with the specifics but I imagine this is further evidence of government being bought by special interest groups representing the wealthy and empowered seeking to exploit the powers of the government for their own gains.
Not every law is bought and paid for by industry groups and corporations.
You're suggesting that everyone must be willing to die before they can be given any sort of consideration above what a master would grant a slave. I find these arguments to be in bad taste. Maybe I would think differently if I were a slave owner, or if I advocated the treating of fellow Americans as mere cattle or business opportunities, but I tend to see people as people. While it is commonly accepted that contracts signed under duress are invalid it is also recognized (or was, at one time) that unfair contracts between parties of vastly different economic means are similarly invalid.
Please. Contracts which are voidable due to duress are those where the signor had no other choice than to sign the contract. Just because you really, really, really want to be a rock star does NOT mean that you HAVE to sign a bad contract. And just because you really, really, really want to be a rock star, and you sign the contract, does not mean that you have been "enslaved." In fact, comparing people who sign "bad" deals with record companies to slaves is really a slap in the face to anyone who has had to deal with real slavery.
Being able to dictate terms was one of the root causes of wanting to break away from British King and Parliament. The Americans were no longer going to accept that Britain was heavy-handedly dictating terms in every negotiation. That background must be applied to any interpretation of the Constitution.
So, the American revolution was because of contract law? Not taxation without representation?
The "American way" concerning contract law has always been that two competant parties, dealing at arms length, should be able to contract pretty much whatever they want. If one side has more bargaining power than the other, so be it. In the case of the recording contract, though, the musician has far more bargaining power than they think. If they are getting a bad deal, THEY DON'T HAVE TO SIGN. They can take their business somewhere else. That's power. Maybe not the power to make a particular record company bend to their will, but it is power nonetheless. No band or musician is forced to sign a bad contract.
Again a return to "something is better than nothing"--another very t4steless argument.
Not sure why you call this a tasteless argument.
But they do have a right to the profits of their own respective writings and inventions and to make use of a superior economic position to strong-arm those rights away from them is, again, nothing new when looking at the ways in
I can't speak for the parent, but I like copyrights because I like getting paid for the work I do.
Why should someone own the exclusive right to make copies?
Why not? If you create something, why shouldn't you have the right to control what you create?
Are you against private property ownership in general? If so, I can see where your copyright arguments come from. If not, they why should I be able to keep people off of my property, but not keep people from copying something I created? If anything, what I created should have more protections than a piece of land which I paid for, but have no other investment in.
The ability to keep people off of your privately-owned land is also a government-granted monopoly.
The only sensible reason you could possibly have for such an extreme position like that is that it is somehow to the benefit of every person in society to willingly refrain from copying these works.
I would frame this differently, and say that it is to the benefit of everyone in society that I be paid for my work, so that I can subsist on my own. You could argue that I am only getting paid because of a government-created monopoly, which is a type of "government assistance" and therefore I am no better than someone on the dole. I disagree -- I think that the value to society of giving me a copyright for my work, so that I can leverage my work to earn a living, is of greater overall utility to society than having me live on the dole and (maybe) produce my works for free.
Obviously, my take on this is different from yours -- but it's at least one reason why someone could be for copyrights.
Most people, if asked about it and forced to think about it, would say that 95 years is far too long of a term for a copyright. Most people, on the other hand, don't think about it. They just accept it as the way it is. They also frequently engage in casual piracy of music, movies, and software.
How is one related to the other? What is the relationship between copyright term and piracy? People may thing 95 years is "far too long," but what's the right length? Even if the length were the original 14 years, most people are pirating stuff that came out within the last couple of years -- or last week -- or even pre-release stuff. The bulk of music piracy isn't old Elvis recordings, it's the new stuff.
Complaining about copyright terms just allows people to claim that piracy isn't bad, they are just ignoring a bad or unfair law -- of course, the fact is, no copyright term (other than "zero") would be short enough to excuse their actions...
A very well-thought out response. I admit, I don't agree with it, but its far, far better than most of the name-calling and flame wars around here -- which is why I don't post or read a lot on this site.
That said, I think your view of the constitution is overly narrow, and certainly narrower than has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. One can disagree as to whether or not SCOTUS has got it right or not, but for the time being at least, the sale or licensing of a copyright or patent is legal, and consitutional, in the U.S.
Besides, your narrow view of the constitution doesn't mean that copyrights shouldn't be transferable, it only means that transfers should be controlled by state law, not federal law -- don't forget the 9th amendment:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
or the 10th amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."
The fact that the consitution in Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 doesn't say anything about selling or assigning or licensing copyrights and patents doesn't mean that Congress is prohibited from allowing it -- see the 9th amendment above. And even if you do read the constitution that way, it just means that then the states could go ahead and regulate the marketplace for copyrights.
And, in fact, that's the way it was, at least with respect to sound recordings, up until the 1972 act, copyrights on sound recordings were subject to state laws.
If you want to go away from the federal monopoly on patents and copyrights, what you will end up with is each state being able to control how, and if, patents and copyrights are assignable, sold, etc. There is nothing in the constitution that would prohibit the states from doing so.
Voluntarily is, as pointed out above, quite subjetive.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Were people "tricked" into signing these contracts? Were they forced to sign them at gunpoint? If you mean that, they had to because that's the only way to get their music heard, well, that's still voluntary -- it just means that the record company had more "market power" than the band, and they could dictate terms. But the band or singer always had the option to not sign, and try and "make it" some other way. Nobody has the "right" to a career, musical or otherwise, and certainly no "right" to a career on their terms.
I'll bet U2 doesn't get screwed when they sign a record contract these days -- but that's because U2 has "market power." I guess you can argue that this is unfair to struggling musicians trying to start a career, but again, they don't have a "right" to the career to begin with. Sometimes you have to give up something to try and get something more later.
Once again relying on the "something is better than nothing" argument which is a historical method for the wealthy and empowered to exploit those who are not wealthy or empowered and, by this means, deprive them of the rightful rewards of their own work.
I'm not sure why you call this "exploitation." Any artist is free to try and market and sell their own music, or publish their own books, however they want. They could make them freely available on bittorrent, they could publish them for free on a website, whatever. If they want to make use of the connections and resources of, say, a record label, or a big publishing house, then that's their perogative as well. But it's not exploitation for a record label to use it's market power to try and get the best terms possible for itself -- that's just the nature of a contract negotiation -- usually the artists needs the record company more than the record company needs a particular artist, so the artist is usually in a position to have to give more to get what he or she wants.
I don't see how's that exploitation. The artists have a choice. They could try and figure out an alterntive way to "make it." They could get a regular paying job, like the rest of us! They are not forced to work for the record companies -- they agree to do it.
The Constitution calls for Congress to have the ability to secure rights to authors and inventors for their respective inventions and writings. The law, on the other hand, facilitates the removal of rights from authors and inventors and the vesting of those rights in an artificial entity known as the copyright holder.
So? Should the author or inventor not be able to sell or license his or her rights to another? It's not like the law automatically takes away the rights from an author or inventor -- the author or inventor has to give the rights away. Everyone who is like "boo hoo, the poor artist, got a bad contract from the record company" or whatever, the fact is the artist willingly signed the contract -- apparently, at the time, the artist felt that the tradeoff -- getting money, recording time, publicity, whatever -- was worth giving up the rights to the work. Who are you, or I, to tell an artist that they can't profit from the actions in that way?
I think the difference between "secure to" and "facilitate the removal from" is pretty clear, don't you? Clearly the rights aren't secured to the authors and inventors if the copyright holders and assignees have them all.
They were initially secured to the authors and inventors until the authors and inventors transferred them to the corporation. The only time these things get transferred without explicit consent is when you are an employee, and the work you do is a "work for hire" -- but even then, you are getting paid to create, why shouldn't the copyright belong to the person or company paying for it?
Each and every copyright owned by a member of the RIAA was voluntarily signed over by its creator. Maybe in hindsight a lot of those artists wished they hadn't agreed to those contracts -- but the fact is, each and every one of those artists willingly signed those contracts, because, at the time they signed it, they thought it was the best deal for them at the time.
The right vests in the creator, but then the creator is free to give the rights away, make them available to anyone, or the creator can sell and license those rights to another person or company.
It's an action taken against a bad law.
What is the bad law you are taking action against?
And that's the point. Slashdot posters compain about copyright because the term is far too long -- and then use that as an excuse to download and copy stuff that hit the stores last week, or in some case, hasn't appeared in theaters yet. In other words, for these folks, the only rational copyright term is "zero" -- but so long as the copyright term seems really, really, long, it's a good excuse as to why we can feel free to ignore copyright, because, you know, its the corporations that are misuing copyright.
I'm going to ask another one of these "unpopular" questions that slashdot doesn't like. How many illegal copyright violations are within the 14 years that the original copyright stated?
Someone else already wrote up a better reply than I am about to, but I couldn't find it to link to it, so...
"I'm not taking the time/trouble to secure [X]."
SEE! He's INVITING US IN! HE'S ALLOWING US TO DO THIS!
NO. Simply because he hasn't explicitly secured something doesn't mean he's allowing you in or inviting you to use said resource.
This is a different analogy than the one in your parent post.
However, if you leave your drapes open in your living room, people can see into your living room, and you have no expectation of privacy while in your living room with the drapes open -- but it would still be a crime for someone coming into your house without permission.
Leaving your WiFi unsecured means that someone could see what you are sending and receiving, because you've done nothing to hide your activity and therefore have no expectation of privacy -- but that doesn't give someone the right to use your bandwidth without your permission.
You don't need to have privacy to have security. You don't need to have security to have privacy.
Sounds like a good idea. There's no way a person could have done $750 worth of damage by downloading a song licensed over iTunes for 99 cents.
That's really irrelevant in this case. The way copyright law is set up in the U.S., when the copyright holder has registered their copyright BEFORE any infringement took place (and all of the record labels do this), you don't have to prove the amount of your damages, you don't even have to prove that you suffered any damages in the first place -- the damages are set by statute, and run from $750 per up to $30,000 per.
The RIAA isn't suing iTunes users, it isn't suing people who buy CD's from Amazon, and isn't suing people who thumb their noses at the RIAA and go see local bands live. You only need be scared if you are downloading songs that, by now, everyone should know are currently illegal (in the U.S., at least) to download and share.
Kinda like running an defaulted Wifi AP gives users no reasonable expectation of privacy?
Yet people get busted for "stealing wifi".
You are conflating two different concepts. Theft of a particular resource has nothing to do with whether or not someone using said resource has any expectation of privacy.
second, it's not "address aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd downloaded these packets" but rather, uploaded.. (an important point, complete leechers have not violated the law)
You might want to re-read the Napster decision, I realize that it is not binding in most jurisdictions, but it is definitely persuasive:
Here is the relevant part of the argument from the 9th Circuit's ruling on Napster's appeal of the preliminary injunction:
"The district court further determined that plaintiffs' exclusive rights under ß 106 were violated: "here the evidence establishes that a majority of Napster users use the service to download and upload copyrighted music. . . . And by doing that, it constitutes-the uses constitute direct infringement of plaintiffs' musical compositions, recordings." A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., Nos. 99-5183, 00-0074, 2000 WL 1009483, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 26, 2000) (transcript of proceedings). The district court also noted that "it is pretty much acknowledged . . . by Napster that this is infringement." Id. We agree that plaintiffs have shown that Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders' exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, ß 106(1); and distribution, ß 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs' reproduction rights." (emphasis added)
What I was wondering is, is it illegal to sue someone, or press forward with a suit, even if you know (or should know) that they probably aren't guilty of what you are accusing them of? I know that the person or company initiating the suit can be found liable for damages, but are they committing a criminal offense?
Not criminal generally -- there might be a criminal contempt issue if someone was ordered by a court to lay off, then still tried to sue, the court might find them in criminal contempt -- but for the most part, this is all civil court. There are civil remedies, and a lawyer could face discipline and fines for engaging in such behavior, but except for a few exceptional circumstances, nobody is going to jail.
With the big group, why aren't there any noticeable pricing differences? Cost of copies is negligible,so there's only one answer, most likely collusion.
Just because everyone charges the same price for a CD does not mean there is collusion. The problem is, CD's are not fungible -- you can only get a U2 CD (legally) from one source, the record label that works with U2.
If you could get U2 CD's (legally) from multiple sources that were in competition with each other, and they still all charged the same price, then THAT might be evidence of collusion.
If people didn't care about which CD they were buying, and only want any old CD, and all CD's were still the same price, that might be evidence of price-fixing as well.
But neither of these are reality -- the fact that a U2 CD and an Usher CD cost about the same amount of money simply means that the record companies can sell a lot of CD's at the current price, and that's what they are priced at. Actually, you can probably get an ABBA CD a lot cheaper than the U2 CD, because the market sets the price, and it's hard to sell an ABBA CD for the price of a new U2 CD. But the fact that the Usher CD and the U2 CD are the same price is not evidence of price-fixing -- if the label selling U2 CD's dropped their price by $2 a CD, you wouldn't expect all of the Usher fans will become U2 fans. Musical taste doesn't usually work that way. Simply put, there isn't a competitive market for CD's like there are for many consumer goods -- each CD is represented (usually) by only a single record label, so there is a single source for the CD, so there CAN'T be collusion on price, at least not for any particular CD.
You've repeated the myths of capitalism well, but not addressed how that justifies letting people grow sick and die from preventable illness. Who said society needs the best researchers doing this work? I'd rather have some researchers working on anti-malaria drugs for the poor than rich pharmaceutical corporations deciding that the would-be customers are too poor to pay for any anti-malaria drug thus never doing anything (even the little R&D they haven't yet foisted off onto the public sector) to make the anti-malaria drugs available. Under the capitalist system people are left sick and dying from preventable illness because those with the money place huge investment into drugs we don't really need (like Viagra).
We are talking about the Western drug manufacturers, right? To use your example, how many Westerners are dying of malaria? How many people in the U.S. or Europe die of malaria every year? Why should a drug company invest in an anti-malarial drug, especially if the main beneficiaries -- like people living in South America -- are just going to take the know-how for themselves and knock off the drug anyway? If they have the know-how and wherewithall to manufacture their own knock-off, why can't they do the research and development themselves as well?
If what you want is for the U.S. and Europe to subsidize healthcare research and development for the rest of world, fine -- that's a legitimate viewpoint -- but because people differ on whether or not that's the right way to go about things or not is not an indictment of capitalism.
Why stop at drugs? Maybe we should use our resources to make sure enough food is grown, and harvested, and distributed adequately, so that everyone has enough to eat. Again, that's a valid worldview -- but I doubt that there are as many takers for that as for giving drugs away, since with the former, everyone has to pitch in (taxes or whatever), and in the latter, its just the big capitalistic drug companies that take the hit (at least in the short run).
So, drug companies produce fewer (or no) vaccines due to high liability (which is, by the way, directly under their control, having made the drug and all), and you want to blame the victims?
It's not blaming the victims -- if there is a proven link (or the victim can prove a link) between the vaccine and the particular issue they suffered, then the drug company should be liable. The problem is, a kid or person gets sick, tries to figure out how, remembers they got vaccines about the time they first got sick, then they are on the phone to the lawyer. Unfortunately, juries are not usually experts at separating out coincidence from cause-and-effect. What this means is that drug companies end up getting sued anytime any kid gets sick after getting a vaccine -- and since most kids get one or more vaccines, you are looking at a lot of exposure.
You're god damned right we should. If drug companies make a drug that hurts someone, they should suffer the full consequences, even if it puts them right out of business. One person's health is more important than any amount of profit. Don't believe me? Imagine that one person was you.
I don't think anyone is arguing with you on this point. If someone gets sick because of some issue with the vaccine, the drug company should be liable. The problem is, historically, anyone who got sick (or was discovered to have autism, or whatever) around the time they got vaccinated sued the drug company, with no evidence to show that the vaccine caused the ailment -- those suits cost money to defend, and juries, like I noted above, may still hand over company-ending judgments based on coincidence rather than scientifically-established cause-and-effect.
Who needs new antibiotics? We get enough of those in our food supply.
People who end up with infections resistant to known antibiotics might be interested in a new antibiotic! Your sarcasm is noted, however!
if you steal a Corvette from a dealer, they do not have the unit to sell it.
Agreed.
So let's say the recording industry has 150,000 copies of Brittany's Greatest Hits on the shelf, and someone makes a digital copy of same. How many copies does the recording industry have? 150,000 -- just like when they started.
Agreed. But if they had 150,000 copies, and 150,000 people ready to purchase, and one makes that digital copy, now they can only sell 149,999 -- they are left with one copy. Since they are (presumably) not in the business of collecting CD's, that one unsold copy on the shelf has a cost associated with it that the seller has to bear -- either by reducing the price so that it can sell, or by destroying it, or whatever -- but it has a cost. The seller is NOT in the same position as he was before the digital copy was made -- he is worse off. Maybe not worse off by a whole unit of the CD, but he is worse off nonetheless.
So when you come up with a way to make a copy of a Corvette on a car dealer's lot, but leave the original one there on the lot, you will have an analogous situation. Otherwise you've fallen into the trap of equating copyright violations with theft, the very mistake the *IAA are trying to talk everyone into.
Even in the Corvette case, if you make your copy, the dealer still has to sell the original -- and if the person who made the copy is one who would have purchased in the first place, then maybe that "original" Corvette doesn't sell -- that's a cost that the dealer will have to bear.
The idea that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft is not completely analagous -- but that doesn't mean that copyright infringement has NO costs, either. Unless the unauthorized copies are going SOLELY to people who would NEVER purchase the original, the creation of the digital copies has some impact on the market for the original. It's certainly not one-for-one, but it is an impact.
Please elaborate. Let's say I come up with a new way to increase auto mileage, to use the patent cliche. If I publish -and what is the definition of publish, please- but I do not patent my idea, what rights do I have to ownership of said idea?
You would have no rights to the idea, it would become public domain.
But at least nobody else could keep YOU from using your idea.
And publication, for the purpose of prior art, means that you have given the public enough information about your idea so that they could presumabely follow up on your idea and build it, or test it, or whatever. Simply saying, "I have an idea" is insufficient, but saying "I have an idea, and here is some detail as to how it works," followed by said details, may very well be sufficient to put the "idea" into the public domain and keep someone else from patenting it.
The problem with simply publishing an idea, however, is that if someone can show that they invented their invention independently before your publication, they still can probably get a patent -- whereas if you had gone ahead and filed your patent, if there was another application in the pipeline about the same time, then the USPTO might start what's called an "interference" proceeding, and that will determine who is really first. In other words, because patent applications are confidential (for at least the first 18 months), publication MAY not be sufficient to get your idea out in the public domain so that you can freely use your idea without having to go the patent route.
IAAL - it is correct. If he used the original photo as the basis for his photo which is substantially the same, even if he reproduced it by means other than directly imaging the original photo, that is legally copying. Literal imaging is one way to copy, but not the only way.
I'm not trying to start an argument or anything, but IAAL as well -- although I mainly work in patents, and only work in soft IP occassionally. Do you have a caselaw reference to support your argument, because this is not my understanding of the case law at all. But maybe I am missing something.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the RIAA does not under the new economy just as the horse buggy businesses didn't understand the new economy cars created. If your business isn't working then you need to change your business methodology.
Agreed.
They need to give their customers something the customer is willing to pay for.
I agree -- but here, the customers aren't paying for it. They aren't buying CD's, they aren't buying music downloads, they are finding ways to get music without paying for it at all.
In a normal line of business, if the business didn't give the customers something they wanted in the way they wanted, people just stop buying the business' wares. Here, though, people are STILL getting music, they are just getting it illegally. If a gallon of milk costs more than you would like to spend, you don't just go to the store and take it. If the store only sells full gallons, and you want a half-gallon, you don't pour out half of the milk and then pay half price. You wouldn't do that with a store -- but music, people say it's too expensive, then they take it for free. It doesn't come in the format I want to buy it in, I'll take it for free.
Whenever a disruptive technology comes along the old guard always tries to stop it instead of trying to figure out how to use it to their benefit.
Of course -- because they've already got resources and capital tied up in the old way of doing things, changing to a new tech takes time, mnoney and effort. They would rather maximize their profits from the old system already in place rather than just dump the old model and embrace the new. But they will embrace the new eventually, when it becomes profitable for them to do so.
But the way to do this is to have an innovator -- like Apple, with iTunes -- show how it can be done, and done profitably. When more and more iTunes-like competitors crop up, the RIAA will take it more seriously.
But just because the pace of innovation may be slow is no excuse to take music without paying for it. Besides, once people get stuff for free, they aren't going to want to start paying for it -- we have iTunes, people are still complaining, and still taking stuff without paying for it. They want it cheaper, faster, more selection, DRM-free, whatever -- but they way to get that, legally, is to use iTunes, and then lobby for a better system. Simpy stealing the stuff is only going to cause the RIAA to dig in their heels even more.
It's helpful to keep in mind that some people consider physical property ownership as a natural right. You say that the ability to keep people off your private land is a government-granted monopoly. But without some form of government you'd still be able to keep people off your land - to some degree, anyway - by threat of physical force. I'd bet that for as long as man has walked the earth, he has been aware of the notion of physical property - my cave, my spear, etc etc. The essence of property ownership is that ability to deny others access to something, even if it was in the past limited to what you could physically defend.
Understood. But there was a time when intellectual property was treated the same way -- guilds used secrets, and force, to maintain their hold on skills and technology. And it's always been possible to use force to protect, well, just about anything.
Besides, if property ownership were really a "natural" right, and not a government-granted monopoly, the government wouldn't be able to simply take your land (emminent domain), or kick you off for not paying your taxes. Your land is your only so long as you and the government are on good terms.
Copyright, on the other hand, is a very recent invention. Throughout history man has had no notion of limiting the dissemination of information that he creates.
That's simply not correct. Look at guilds. Look at monastic groups. Dissemination of information has always been curtailed.
Copyright is an invented 'right' - a government-granted monopoly that simply would not exist without said government's intervention.
Agreed.
That is why some people look on it as a purely artificial construction.
But a lot of rights are "artificial." Why single out IP? What about, say, the right to vote? The right to a jury trial? The right to not have to testify against oneself? The right to keep and bear arms? The right to freedom of press, or freedom of religion? All of these "artifical" rights are spelled out in the same document that created IP rights -- why don't we look on any of these with the same disdain?
And lets no even get into rights granted by the legislature or the courts, like the right to an abortion, or the right of privacy, or the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace. All "artificial" rights.
If you create something then indeed you should have the right to control what you create, and indeed you can. By all means do - keep it to yourself, don't distribute it, nobody will come and prize it from you.
Okay.
But if you do decide to give out (or sell) copies of your creation, your expectation to have a say in what is done with those copies once they have left your control is considered unreasonable by some.
I agree -- those who want to freeload off of someone else's work, or those who want something for nothing.
Suppose Bob buys a book off you. He then lends me the book to read. That you could turn around and say "hey, you can't do that! I didn't give you permission to share that with anybody" to Bob would seem quite outrageous to most reasonable people.
And there is nothing an IP holder can do to stop this from happening. That's the purpose of the "first sale" doctrine.
After all, why should you be telling Bob what he can and can't do? Of course it isn't optimal for you, because you would prefer to have sold me a copy of your book too - but what right do you have to dictate how Bob should behave?
None, in this particular case. The IP holder is not entitled to sell his book, he has no right to a sale.
So, what say instead of lending me the physical copy, Bob makes a small optimization, which is good for both Bob and me, but not for you - he photocopies the book and gives me a copy. Now at this point Bob is guilty of copyright infringement. He is in breach of laws that our society has put in place, not for your benefit, as you may like to imagine, b
I agree competely.
Also the RIAA and it's members talk about declining sales they only mention illegal downloads as the reason, yet they never mention that when people started downloading music the economy was bad as well. And with a bad economy people wouldn't be spending much on entertainment anyway. Instead they blamed it entirely on Napster.
The simple fact is that downloading illegal music does not rip off the artists.
That may very well be true -- but shouldn't it be up to the copyright owner to decide whether or not to allow downloading? If downloading is, in fact, beneficial, then the record companies will embrace it, if not now, then at least eventually. The market will sort itself out in time.
If downloading was so good, why would the RIAA and the record labels be so firmly against it? Wouldn't that be against their interests?
And no, I don't believe that the RIAA and labels are worried about "losing control" or anything like that. They only care about profits. If downloading was, in the long run, more profitable than not allowing it, they would embrace it. Because they are not embracing it, I am inclined to believe that downloading is NOT beneficiall, or certainly not as beneficial as people here like to believe.
Some limited protection of ideas is good. A century of monopoly protection is too much.
What's a good number, then?
When scaled to world population, the rate of innovation is probably not that high.
You know, we could be in flying cars by now, but todays vehicles are not that different than 100 years ago.
Maybe cars haven't changed much in 100 years -- but before cars, we had wagons, and wagons, although improved, probably haven't changed much in 3000 years. And a 1900 wagon compared to a 3000 BC chariot is probably less of a technological advance than a Model T compared to a Ferrari Enzo.
Recent computing innovation like the internet, browsers, did not come from idea monopoly greed, it came from schools and government.
But it took commercialization to get the internet out of schools and government labs and into homes and businesses. And greed is what drives commercialization.
Many Disney movies were based on public domain works. But Disney Co will keep paying for laws to prevent public domain of thier derivations.
So what? You could create your own sleeping beauty cartoon -- it's based on a public domain story, after all -- so long as you didn't use any of Disney's characters or artwork or music. Do you NEED Disney's work to create your own?
Auto manufacturers use mostly incompatible parts and patent them all. So they all have innovative hoses,..., and none interchangable.
But that's so they can sell more parts, and at a higher margin, not because of patents or copyrights.
If Safeway Cola and Coca Cola tasted EXACTLY the same, would you still pay more for Coca Cola? There's a commercial reason for differentiation.
Software makers (other than open source), are often reinventing the same wheels.
So? Why should one company get to freeload off of another? Besides, if a software company doesn't want to start from scratch, they can always buy a license. That's how we deal with the freeloader problem.
Drug companies are trying to find the most profitable drugs, not the most benificial.
Oftentimes the most beneficial drugs ARE the most profitable.
But, then again, how much money SHOULD we spend developing drugs for diseases and issues that only a very few people will ever get?
The copyright and patent system are due for serious reform that would encourage true innovation, including innovation from derivation (which most innovation is from in some way).
How do you define "true" innovation? How would you change the system?
Is it "pirates" who rip off artists or is it the RIAA? I bet if you look at the actual data on how much artists are paid and the bottom line profits of the actual corporations you'll see the industry is the one racking in the money. For instance I bet many if not most singers and bands make most of their money from concerts and receive little from media, cds and tape, sales. I'd be supprised if one receives as much as $1 on a $15 cds sale.
The artists agreed to the deal when they signed their recording contract. If they had wanted to make more money per CD sale, they could have recorded and produced the CD themselves, and distributed and sold the CD themselves, then there would be no record company taking "their" profits.
That many musicians would rather NOT go that route, and would rather have the record companies pay for the recording and production, and artwork, and sales and marketing and distribution and all that, doesn't mean that the artists are getting ripped off. Presumably they made a decision that they would accept far less per CD in exchange for getting the recording and production paid for, and in exchange for getting artwork, sales, marketing and distribution handled by someone else. Oh, and also offloading all of the risk that they are unable to recoup any of these costs.
The musicians made the deals with the record companies willingly. The fact that YOU don't think they get enough per CD is not a good reason to pirate the music. They made the deal, not you.
You were making some very good federalism arguments in the begining, but you kind of veered off into a direction I'm not really sure how to respond to.
Look, the main thing is this. The Supreme Court has taken the position that pure literalism is not how we interpret the constitution. You state that the law hasn't been tested yet -- well, that's not entirely true. These laws get tested all of the time.
You can wish for a pre-Civil War federalism, with a weak central government and strong states -- hell, I agree with that -- but that's not the way it is today. And simply ignoring copyright laws and pirating Usher CD's and copies of Spiderman 3 isn't going to create a libertarian paradise where a literalist reading of the Consitution reigns in the legislative and executive branches' respective powers
I'm not going to go point-by-point with you on this idea that copyright assignments are a cause for revolution. But I will address a couple of points:
And, in fact, that's the way it was, at least with respect to sound recordings, up until the 1972 act, copyrights on sound recordings were subject to state laws.
I'm not familiar with the specifics but I imagine this is further evidence of government being bought by special interest groups representing the wealthy and empowered seeking to exploit the powers of the government for their own gains.
Not every law is bought and paid for by industry groups and corporations.
You're suggesting that everyone must be willing to die before they can be given any sort of consideration above what a master would grant a slave. I find these arguments to be in bad taste. Maybe I would think differently if I were a slave owner, or if I advocated the treating of fellow Americans as mere cattle or business opportunities, but I tend to see people as people. While it is commonly accepted that contracts signed under duress are invalid it is also recognized (or was, at one time) that unfair contracts between parties of vastly different economic means are similarly invalid.
Please. Contracts which are voidable due to duress are those where the signor had no other choice than to sign the contract. Just because you really, really, really want to be a rock star does NOT mean that you HAVE to sign a bad contract. And just because you really, really, really want to be a rock star, and you sign the contract, does not mean that you have been "enslaved." In fact, comparing people who sign "bad" deals with record companies to slaves is really a slap in the face to anyone who has had to deal with real slavery.
Being able to dictate terms was one of the root causes of wanting to break away from British King and Parliament. The Americans were no longer going to accept that Britain was heavy-handedly dictating terms in every negotiation. That background must be applied to any interpretation of the Constitution.
So, the American revolution was because of contract law? Not taxation without representation?
The "American way" concerning contract law has always been that two competant parties, dealing at arms length, should be able to contract pretty much whatever they want. If one side has more bargaining power than the other, so be it. In the case of the recording contract, though, the musician has far more bargaining power than they think. If they are getting a bad deal, THEY DON'T HAVE TO SIGN. They can take their business somewhere else. That's power. Maybe not the power to make a particular record company bend to their will, but it is power nonetheless. No band or musician is forced to sign a bad contract.
Again a return to "something is better than nothing"--another very t4steless argument.
Not sure why you call this a tasteless argument.
But they do have a right to the profits of their own respective writings and inventions and to make use of a superior economic position to strong-arm those rights away from them is, again, nothing new when looking at the ways in
How can you be for any copyrights?
I can't speak for the parent, but I like copyrights because I like getting paid for the work I do.
Why should someone own the exclusive right to make copies?
Why not? If you create something, why shouldn't you have the right to control what you create?
Are you against private property ownership in general? If so, I can see where your copyright arguments come from. If not, they why should I be able to keep people off of my property, but not keep people from copying something I created? If anything, what I created should have more protections than a piece of land which I paid for, but have no other investment in.
The ability to keep people off of your privately-owned land is also a government-granted monopoly.
The only sensible reason you could possibly have for such an extreme position like that is that it is somehow to the benefit of every person in society to willingly refrain from copying these works.
I would frame this differently, and say that it is to the benefit of everyone in society that I be paid for my work, so that I can subsist on my own. You could argue that I am only getting paid because of a government-created monopoly, which is a type of "government assistance" and therefore I am no better than someone on the dole. I disagree -- I think that the value to society of giving me a copyright for my work, so that I can leverage my work to earn a living, is of greater overall utility to society than having me live on the dole and (maybe) produce my works for free.
Obviously, my take on this is different from yours -- but it's at least one reason why someone could be for copyrights.
Most people, if asked about it and forced to think about it, would say that 95 years is far too long of a term for a copyright. Most people, on the other hand, don't think about it. They just accept it as the way it is. They also frequently engage in casual piracy of music, movies, and software.
How is one related to the other? What is the relationship between copyright term and piracy? People may thing 95 years is "far too long," but what's the right length? Even if the length were the original 14 years, most people are pirating stuff that came out within the last couple of years -- or last week -- or even pre-release stuff. The bulk of music piracy isn't old Elvis recordings, it's the new stuff.
Complaining about copyright terms just allows people to claim that piracy isn't bad, they are just ignoring a bad or unfair law -- of course, the fact is, no copyright term (other than "zero") would be short enough to excuse their actions...
A very well-thought out response. I admit, I don't agree with it, but its far, far better than most of the name-calling and flame wars around here -- which is why I don't post or read a lot on this site.
That said, I think your view of the constitution is overly narrow, and certainly narrower than has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. One can disagree as to whether or not SCOTUS has got it right or not, but for the time being at least, the sale or licensing of a copyright or patent is legal, and consitutional, in the U.S.
Besides, your narrow view of the constitution doesn't mean that copyrights shouldn't be transferable, it only means that transfers should be controlled by state law, not federal law -- don't forget the 9th amendment:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
or the 10th amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."
The fact that the consitution in Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 doesn't say anything about selling or assigning or licensing copyrights and patents doesn't mean that Congress is prohibited from allowing it -- see the 9th amendment above. And even if you do read the constitution that way, it just means that then the states could go ahead and regulate the marketplace for copyrights.
And, in fact, that's the way it was, at least with respect to sound recordings, up until the 1972 act, copyrights on sound recordings were subject to state laws.
If you want to go away from the federal monopoly on patents and copyrights, what you will end up with is each state being able to control how, and if, patents and copyrights are assignable, sold, etc. There is nothing in the constitution that would prohibit the states from doing so.
Voluntarily is, as pointed out above, quite subjetive.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Were people "tricked" into signing these contracts? Were they forced to sign them at gunpoint? If you mean that, they had to because that's the only way to get their music heard, well, that's still voluntary -- it just means that the record company had more "market power" than the band, and they could dictate terms. But the band or singer always had the option to not sign, and try and "make it" some other way. Nobody has the "right" to a career, musical or otherwise, and certainly no "right" to a career on their terms.
I'll bet U2 doesn't get screwed when they sign a record contract these days -- but that's because U2 has "market power." I guess you can argue that this is unfair to struggling musicians trying to start a career, but again, they don't have a "right" to the career to begin with. Sometimes you have to give up something to try and get something more later.
Once again relying on the "something is better than nothing" argument which is a historical method for the wealthy and empowered to exploit those who are not wealthy or empowered and, by this means, deprive them of the rightful rewards of their own work.
I'm not sure why you call this "exploitation." Any artist is free to try and market and sell their own music, or publish their own books, however they want. They could make them freely available on bittorrent, they could publish them for free on a website, whatever. If they want to make use of the connections and resources of, say, a record label, or a big publishing house, then that's their perogative as well. But it's not exploitation for a record label to use it's market power to try and get the best terms possible for itself -- that's just the nature of a contract negotiation -- usually the artists needs the record company more than the record company needs a particular artist, so the artist is usually in a position to have to give more to get what he or she wants.
I don't see how's that exploitation. The artists have a choice. They could try and figure out an alterntive way to "make it." They could get a regular paying job, like the rest of us! They are not forced to work for the record companies -- they agree to do it.
The Constitution calls for Congress to have the ability to secure rights to authors and inventors for their respective inventions and writings. The law, on the other hand, facilitates the removal of rights from authors and inventors and the vesting of those rights in an artificial entity known as the copyright holder.
So? Should the author or inventor not be able to sell or license his or her rights to another? It's not like the law automatically takes away the rights from an author or inventor -- the author or inventor has to give the rights away. Everyone who is like "boo hoo, the poor artist, got a bad contract from the record company" or whatever, the fact is the artist willingly signed the contract -- apparently, at the time, the artist felt that the tradeoff -- getting money, recording time, publicity, whatever -- was worth giving up the rights to the work. Who are you, or I, to tell an artist that they can't profit from the actions in that way?
I think the difference between "secure to" and "facilitate the removal from" is pretty clear, don't you? Clearly the rights aren't secured to the authors and inventors if the copyright holders and assignees have them all.
They were initially secured to the authors and inventors until the authors and inventors transferred them to the corporation. The only time these things get transferred without explicit consent is when you are an employee, and the work you do is a "work for hire" -- but even then, you are getting paid to create, why shouldn't the copyright belong to the person or company paying for it?
Each and every copyright owned by a member of the RIAA was voluntarily signed over by its creator. Maybe in hindsight a lot of those artists wished they hadn't agreed to those contracts -- but the fact is, each and every one of those artists willingly signed those contracts, because, at the time they signed it, they thought it was the best deal for them at the time.
The right vests in the creator, but then the creator is free to give the rights away, make them available to anyone, or the creator can sell and license those rights to another person or company.
It's an action taken against a bad law.
What is the bad law you are taking action against?
And that's the point. Slashdot posters compain about copyright because the term is far too long -- and then use that as an excuse to download and copy stuff that hit the stores last week, or in some case, hasn't appeared in theaters yet. In other words, for these folks, the only rational copyright term is "zero" -- but so long as the copyright term seems really, really, long, it's a good excuse as to why we can feel free to ignore copyright, because, you know, its the corporations that are misuing copyright.
I'm going to ask another one of these "unpopular" questions that slashdot doesn't like. How many illegal copyright violations are within the 14 years that the original copyright stated?
Mod Parent Up.
Someone else already wrote up a better reply than I am about to, but I couldn't find it to link to it, so...
"I'm not taking the time/trouble to secure [X]."
SEE! He's INVITING US IN! HE'S ALLOWING US TO DO THIS!
NO. Simply because he hasn't explicitly secured something doesn't mean he's allowing you in or inviting you to use said resource.
This is a different analogy than the one in your parent post.
However, if you leave your drapes open in your living room, people can see into your living room, and you have no expectation of privacy while in your living room with the drapes open -- but it would still be a crime for someone coming into your house without permission.
Leaving your WiFi unsecured means that someone could see what you are sending and receiving, because you've done nothing to hide your activity and therefore have no expectation of privacy -- but that doesn't give someone the right to use your bandwidth without your permission.
You don't need to have privacy to have security. You don't need to have security to have privacy.
Sounds like a good idea. There's no way a person could have done $750 worth of damage by downloading a song licensed over iTunes for 99 cents.
That's really irrelevant in this case. The way copyright law is set up in the U.S., when the copyright holder has registered their copyright BEFORE any infringement took place (and all of the record labels do this), you don't have to prove the amount of your damages, you don't even have to prove that you suffered any damages in the first place -- the damages are set by statute, and run from $750 per up to $30,000 per.
It makes people scared to download music.
Well, duh! That's the whole point.
The RIAA isn't suing iTunes users, it isn't suing people who buy CD's from Amazon, and isn't suing people who thumb their noses at the RIAA and go see local bands live. You only need be scared if you are downloading songs that, by now, everyone should know are currently illegal (in the U.S., at least) to download and share.
Kinda like running an defaulted Wifi AP gives users no reasonable expectation of privacy?
Yet people get busted for "stealing wifi".
You are conflating two different concepts. Theft of a particular resource has nothing to do with whether or not someone using said resource has any expectation of privacy.
second, it's not "address aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd downloaded these packets"
but rather, uploaded.. (an important point, complete leechers have not violated the law)
You might want to re-read the Napster decision, I realize that it is not binding in most jurisdictions, but it is definitely persuasive:
Here is the relevant part of the argument from the 9th Circuit's ruling on Napster's appeal of the preliminary injunction:
"The district court further determined that plaintiffs' exclusive rights under ß 106 were violated: "here the evidence establishes that a majority of Napster users use the service to download and upload copyrighted music. . . . And by doing that, it constitutes-the uses constitute direct infringement of plaintiffs' musical compositions, recordings." A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., Nos. 99-5183, 00-0074, 2000 WL 1009483, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 26, 2000) (transcript of proceedings). The district court also noted that "it is pretty much acknowledged . . . by Napster that this is infringement." Id. We agree that plaintiffs have shown that Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders' exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, ß 106(1); and distribution, ß 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs' reproduction rights." (emphasis added)
What I was wondering is, is it illegal to sue someone, or press forward with a suit, even if you know (or should know) that they probably aren't guilty of what you are accusing them of? I know that the person or company initiating the suit can be found liable for damages, but are they committing a criminal offense?
Not criminal generally -- there might be a criminal contempt issue if someone was ordered by a court to lay off, then still tried to sue, the court might find them in criminal contempt -- but for the most part, this is all civil court. There are civil remedies, and a lawyer could face discipline and fines for engaging in such behavior, but except for a few exceptional circumstances, nobody is going to jail.
With the big group, why aren't there any noticeable pricing differences? Cost of copies is negligible,so there's only one answer, most likely collusion.
Just because everyone charges the same price for a CD does not mean there is collusion. The problem is, CD's are not fungible -- you can only get a U2 CD (legally) from one source, the record label that works with U2.
If you could get U2 CD's (legally) from multiple sources that were in competition with each other, and they still all charged the same price, then THAT might be evidence of collusion.
If people didn't care about which CD they were buying, and only want any old CD, and all CD's were still the same price, that might be evidence of price-fixing as well.
But neither of these are reality -- the fact that a U2 CD and an Usher CD cost about the same amount of money simply means that the record companies can sell a lot of CD's at the current price, and that's what they are priced at. Actually, you can probably get an ABBA CD a lot cheaper than the U2 CD, because the market sets the price, and it's hard to sell an ABBA CD for the price of a new U2 CD. But the fact that the Usher CD and the U2 CD are the same price is not evidence of price-fixing -- if the label selling U2 CD's dropped their price by $2 a CD, you wouldn't expect all of the Usher fans will become U2 fans. Musical taste doesn't usually work that way. Simply put, there isn't a competitive market for CD's like there are for many consumer goods -- each CD is represented (usually) by only a single record label, so there is a single source for the CD, so there CAN'T be collusion on price, at least not for any particular CD.
You've repeated the myths of capitalism well, but not addressed how that justifies letting people grow sick and die from preventable illness. Who said society needs the best researchers doing this work? I'd rather have some researchers working on anti-malaria drugs for the poor than rich pharmaceutical corporations deciding that the would-be customers are too poor to pay for any anti-malaria drug thus never doing anything (even the little R&D they haven't yet foisted off onto the public sector) to make the anti-malaria drugs available. Under the capitalist system people are left sick and dying from preventable illness because those with the money place huge investment into drugs we don't really need (like Viagra).
We are talking about the Western drug manufacturers, right? To use your example, how many Westerners are dying of malaria? How many people in the U.S. or Europe die of malaria every year? Why should a drug company invest in an anti-malarial drug, especially if the main beneficiaries -- like people living in South America -- are just going to take the know-how for themselves and knock off the drug anyway? If they have the know-how and wherewithall to manufacture their own knock-off, why can't they do the research and development themselves as well?
If what you want is for the U.S. and Europe to subsidize healthcare research and development for the rest of world, fine -- that's a legitimate viewpoint -- but because people differ on whether or not that's the right way to go about things or not is not an indictment of capitalism.
Why stop at drugs? Maybe we should use our resources to make sure enough food is grown, and harvested, and distributed adequately, so that everyone has enough to eat. Again, that's a valid worldview -- but I doubt that there are as many takers for that as for giving drugs away, since with the former, everyone has to pitch in (taxes or whatever), and in the latter, its just the big capitalistic drug companies that take the hit (at least in the short run).
So, drug companies produce fewer (or no) vaccines due to high liability (which is, by the way, directly under their control, having made the drug and all), and you want to blame the victims?
It's not blaming the victims -- if there is a proven link (or the victim can prove a link) between the vaccine and the particular issue they suffered, then the drug company should be liable. The problem is, a kid or person gets sick, tries to figure out how, remembers they got vaccines about the time they first got sick, then they are on the phone to the lawyer. Unfortunately, juries are not usually experts at separating out coincidence from cause-and-effect. What this means is that drug companies end up getting sued anytime any kid gets sick after getting a vaccine -- and since most kids get one or more vaccines, you are looking at a lot of exposure.
You're god damned right we should. If drug companies make a drug that hurts someone, they should suffer the full consequences, even if it puts them right out of business. One person's health is more important than any amount of profit. Don't believe me? Imagine that one person was you.
I don't think anyone is arguing with you on this point. If someone gets sick because of some issue with the vaccine, the drug company should be liable. The problem is, historically, anyone who got sick (or was discovered to have autism, or whatever) around the time they got vaccinated sued the drug company, with no evidence to show that the vaccine caused the ailment -- those suits cost money to defend, and juries, like I noted above, may still hand over company-ending judgments based on coincidence rather than scientifically-established cause-and-effect.
Who needs new antibiotics? We get enough of those in our food supply.
People who end up with infections resistant to known antibiotics might be interested in a new antibiotic! Your sarcasm is noted, however!
if you steal a Corvette from a dealer, they do not have the unit to sell it.
Agreed.
So let's say the recording industry has 150,000 copies of Brittany's Greatest Hits on the shelf, and someone makes a digital copy of same. How many copies does the recording industry have? 150,000 -- just like when they started.
Agreed. But if they had 150,000 copies, and 150,000 people ready to purchase, and one makes that digital copy, now they can only sell 149,999 -- they are left with one copy. Since they are (presumably) not in the business of collecting CD's, that one unsold copy on the shelf has a cost associated with it that the seller has to bear -- either by reducing the price so that it can sell, or by destroying it, or whatever -- but it has a cost. The seller is NOT in the same position as he was before the digital copy was made -- he is worse off. Maybe not worse off by a whole unit of the CD, but he is worse off nonetheless.
So when you come up with a way to make a copy of a Corvette on a car dealer's lot, but leave the original one there on the lot, you will have an analogous situation. Otherwise you've fallen into the trap of equating copyright violations with theft, the very mistake the *IAA are trying to talk everyone into.
Even in the Corvette case, if you make your copy, the dealer still has to sell the original -- and if the person who made the copy is one who would have purchased in the first place, then maybe that "original" Corvette doesn't sell -- that's a cost that the dealer will have to bear.
The idea that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft is not completely analagous -- but that doesn't mean that copyright infringement has NO costs, either. Unless the unauthorized copies are going SOLELY to people who would NEVER purchase the original, the creation of the digital copies has some impact on the market for the original. It's certainly not one-for-one, but it is an impact.
Please elaborate. Let's say I come up with a new way to increase auto mileage, to use the patent cliche. If I publish -and what is the definition of publish, please- but I do not patent my idea, what rights do I have to ownership of said idea?
You would have no rights to the idea, it would become public domain.
But at least nobody else could keep YOU from using your idea.
And publication, for the purpose of prior art, means that you have given the public enough information about your idea so that they could presumabely follow up on your idea and build it, or test it, or whatever. Simply saying, "I have an idea" is insufficient, but saying "I have an idea, and here is some detail as to how it works," followed by said details, may very well be sufficient to put the "idea" into the public domain and keep someone else from patenting it.
The problem with simply publishing an idea, however, is that if someone can show that they invented their invention independently before your publication, they still can probably get a patent -- whereas if you had gone ahead and filed your patent, if there was another application in the pipeline about the same time, then the USPTO might start what's called an "interference" proceeding, and that will determine who is really first. In other words, because patent applications are confidential (for at least the first 18 months), publication MAY not be sufficient to get your idea out in the public domain so that you can freely use your idea without having to go the patent route.
IAAL - it is correct. If he used the original photo as the basis for his photo which is substantially the same, even if he reproduced it by means other than directly imaging the original photo, that is legally copying. Literal imaging is one way to copy, but not the only way.
I'm not trying to start an argument or anything, but IAAL as well -- although I mainly work in patents, and only work in soft IP occassionally. Do you have a caselaw reference to support your argument, because this is not my understanding of the case law at all. But maybe I am missing something.