This is a little beyond my expertise, but you raise some interesting points that illustrate the ambiguity of the language in the Act. I am especially interested in the idea of a person acting on behalf of another person, say a person who is disabled or otherwise not capable of making a copy for personal use themself.
Another oddity I see is this idea that I can make a copy of the original CD but not of the copy you made for your personal use, yet the two are identical. I understand the intent - to prevent people from just copying copies and shutting out the rights holder - but your library example shows the naivety of that idea (what's to stop all of your friends from coming over and using your original to make personal copies. There's that whole "treating ideas like physical property" conundrum again).
Still, I think the act as written is a lot more balanced and mindful of the rights of the citizen than what has been proposed recently.
as far as the telcos are concerned, everything on the INSIDE of the drop is the customer's problem
Why should it be any different? Is my ISP responsible for ensuring I have WPA properly configured on my wireless router to ensure my neighbor doesn't leach my bandwidth and cost me extra charges because I've gone over my monthly limit?
This guy should be complaining to the company who sold him the PBX, not the telco. If he didn't need overseas calling, that feature should have been disabled. You can also set codes that need to be entered anytime someone attempts a long distance call. These are things you discuss with the company when they make their proposal.
I was wrong about the "copies of the media you already own" part. I was thinking about Sub-section 2, which states that you may not distribute the copies you make, but you're right - there is no restriction that the copies you make must be of your own media. Thanks for the correction.
That may very well be. I never suggested Hasbro was right, just that the basis for the copyright portion of their complaint was the text of the Scrabble rule book and game dictionary.
The rules of a game are NOT covered by copyright. What IS covered is the actual text
Hasbro said the Scrabulous guys linked to their rules and player dictionary - the "actual text" - and that, by essentially including those copyrighted materials as part of their game, they violated Hasbro's copyright. That's why I quoted from the complaint "until earlier this year, defendants included on their website hyperlinks to official SCRABBLE webpages, resources such as the official SCRABBLE rules, and also other websites offering unauthorized and infringing versions of SCRABBLE."
Read the last sentence of my comment, which you quoted: "Hasbro was claiming that the creators of Scrabulous infringed their copyrights on the official rulebook and game dictionary."
Aren't the rules of the game covered by copyright?
Yup. And that's basically what Hasbro was alleging in the copyright portion of their complaint, that there are no rules to Scrabulous, that "a user not already familiar with the rules of the SCRABBLE crossword game would not know how to play "Scrabulous," and "until earlier this year, defendants included on their website hyperlinks to official SCRABBLE webpages, resources such as the official SCRABBLE rules, and also other websites offering unauthorized and infringing versions of SCRABBLE."
Hasbro was claiming that the creators of Scrabulous infringed their copyrights on the official rulebook and game dictionary.
I would be somewhat surprised if Canadian law didn't already have a set of exemptions to its copyright laws prior to 1997 (such as for instance for educational purposes, reference, backup, etc.).
Let me preface this by saying I am not a lawyer, just a concerned citizen and copyright holder.
I don't know about prior to 1997, but looking at the Exceptions to the Copyright Act, fair dealing seems to cover research or private study, criticism or review (if the source is mentioned), and news reporting (again, if the source is given). There are also exemptions for educational purposes, provided there is no "motive for gain." (I'm not sure how that could be accomplished, as using a copyrighted work for educational purpose would at least result in someone gaining knowledge). Also, I don't think the educational exemption applies if the work is commercially available.
This article states "unlike the fair use doctrine, fair dealing in Canada does not contain exceptions for parody and satire." Take that with whatever amount of salt you normally apply to Wikipedia entries; I see no specific mention of parody and satire in the Act. (An example of the chilling effect the lack of protection for satire and parody can have can be found here. In this example, the publication is invoking trademark law, and the defendants are citing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but if satire and parody were specifically sanctioned by the Copyright Act it would have helped to strengthen their defense).
Last summer, our federal government tabled a contentious bill to ammend the copyright act, granting us the right to record TV programmes, and copy music to our iPods, but it would also outlaw the circumvention of DRM technologies, effectively making the new rights useless.
That bill died when the Conservative government violated its own fixed election date legislation and called an election in October. They are currently struggling to maintain their minority government status (despite not having the confidence of our elected Parliament), and stated in their throne speech "Our Government will proceed with legislation to modernize Canada's copyright laws and ensure stronger protection for intellectual property."
That doesn't sound to me like they intend to strengthen the concept of fair dealing to protect the rights of Canadian citizens, but rather they intend to adopt policies closer to the US DMCA, to protect the interests of the "big four" media companies in the US, UK and Japan. I guess time will tell.
Wouldn't you be amazed to know we had this right years before the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats demanded to be given a cut on all CD-Rs and hard drives sales?
Are you sure? The Copyright Act of 1997 introduced the blank media tax, and made allowances for citizens to make copies of sound recordings for personal use. As far as I know, no allowances were made for private copying in prior version of the Copyright Act.
I'm Canadian. I pay a levy on all blank media to pay for the possibility that those materials might be used - at some point - to hold copyrighted materials.
I've paid for the content, and I am damn well going to get my money's worth.
The tax doesn't pay "for the content," it simply gives you the right to make copies of the media you already own, and the Canadian Recording Industry Association tried to sue to take that away from you a couple of years ago. Read the Copyright Act. It doesn't say what you think it does.
A judge refused to give Canadian record companies the names of 29 people accused of file sharing a few years ago, and agreed with the Copyright Board that file sharing "appeared to be legal". Maybe that's what you were thinking of. I'm not sure that decision still stands.
Ah but according to this, in Canada we do indeed pay extra for hard drives.
That article is from 2003, and no longer accurate. The Interim Private Copying Tariff rates for 2008 are here. No hard drives, just cassette tapes and CD-Rs.
Bingo. You could just store everything on hard drives, which are not taxed as CD-Rs and cassette tapes are.
While we're at it, what if you pay for the music you download?
What if you use your blank media to store you own "intellectual property?"
What if you like to make backup copies of the CDs you purchase,and don't think you should have to pay an additional tax for the privilege of doing something that should be considered fair dealing?
What if you are an artist who produces mash-ups of popular culture (like Andy Warhol liked to do) and also consider that fair dealing?
What if you are in a band who's music is traded a lot online, but you don't get commercial airplay and you sell your CDs at gigs, so the sales aren't recorded by Soundscan?
What if you are an archivist, a student or a journalist, and are trying to research or preserve our shared culture?
The only "right" the Canadian blank media tax grants is the right to make copies of the media you already own, and only for personal use. Most Canadians would be surprised to learn they can't just do this without paying extra for it.
And for all the grief McCain receives about not being IT-savvy, the reason is he is unable to type, due to the injuries he suffered while being tortured by the Vietnamese.
Oh, really? There are photos here that show him using what appear to be Blackberrys and cel phones (some while behind the wheel!) and he told the New York Times "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need - including going to my daughter's blog first, before anything else."
He sounds sort of like my dad, really. He's a man in his mid 70s doing his best to make sense out of all of this technology that has become so important recently. Blackberrys, Blogs, Twitter etc. either weren't around or weren't all that relevant when he ran for president eight years ago and he's doing best to catch up. He'll still prefer to read a news paper, or talk on the phone with a friend. He'll dutifully visit his daughter's blog.
His war wounds no doubt cause him pain and discomfort in every thing he does in his day-to-day life, but he manages other things and it doesn't sound to me like they pose enough of a problem to prevent him from doing the best he can. Besides, he really doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would let his injuries prevent him from doing something if he really desired to do it.
Ick. I hate that style interface (multiple subwindows in a master window)
You can "detach" the terminal windows and minimize the "master window" if you just want you terminal window on screen. I agree, it's annoying having to have the master window open, but I like PenguiNet for its connection manager and scp interface.
Her "effect" is obviously more notable than her career
No, just more relevant recently. That's like saying Heath Ledger is more notable than Jack Nicholson because Googling "the joker" shows four images of Heath as the Joker at the top of the page. (Heath was arguably the better Joker, but certainly not more notable than Jack, IMO).
Imagine - there are people on Slashdot who are not American at all
I don't know what difference it makes what continent you live on. It's a "global village" after all. I live a long way away from Indiana, but I know they are "the Hoosier state." I also don't have to live in the UK to know what a "gob shite" is. Or be German to appreciate schadenfreude.
My point wasn't that all mods should know every regional colloquialism, just that it's sad mcgrew felt he needed to explain the meaning of the word to avoid being sanctioned by an ignorant mod who couldn't be bothered to look up the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
It's a sad comment on the state of Slashdot's moderation system when you have to preemptively explain a fairly common phrase you used because you have a reasonable expectation that someone will mistake it for "flamebait."
To take this even further off topic, our local hockey team is called "the Canucks," and the company I work for disperses season ticket amongst the sales staff to use for marketing purposes. The CEO recently complained that he had attempted to send an email three times, but nobody received it and he didn't get a bounce back. Turns out the nanny filters on the mail server quarantined his message due to a racial slur - he'd mentioned that the "Canucks" tickets were available.
Funny... my ballot just had choices for my local MP. Are you sure you didn't vote in the US election?
now the losing government parties are trying to decide who will become Prime Minister
Since none of them received a majority, you could say all parties were 'losers.' And of course our MPs are trying to decide who will be PM - that's their job.
Personally, I'm not sure which office, let alone which department to send my complaints to.
When no one has a majority, the parties are supposed to compromise and work together. Three of the parties are doing that. The other one is tried to put a boot to the throat of it's weak competition.
Slashdot Mirror
No, what people are apparently unaware of is that Amazon is only an alternative for people living in the US.
This is a little beyond my expertise, but you raise some interesting points that illustrate the ambiguity of the language in the Act. I am especially interested in the idea of a person acting on behalf of another person, say a person who is disabled or otherwise not capable of making a copy for personal use themself.
Another oddity I see is this idea that I can make a copy of the original CD but not of the copy you made for your personal use, yet the two are identical. I understand the intent - to prevent people from just copying copies and shutting out the rights holder - but your library example shows the naivety of that idea (what's to stop all of your friends from coming over and using your original to make personal copies. There's that whole "treating ideas like physical property" conundrum again).
Still, I think the act as written is a lot more balanced and mindful of the rights of the citizen than what has been proposed recently.
Why should it be any different? Is my ISP responsible for ensuring I have WPA properly configured on my wireless router to ensure my neighbor doesn't leach my bandwidth and cost me extra charges because I've gone over my monthly limit?
This guy should be complaining to the company who sold him the PBX, not the telco. If he didn't need overseas calling, that feature should have been disabled. You can also set codes that need to be entered anytime someone attempts a long distance call. These are things you discuss with the company when they make their proposal.
I was wrong about the "copies of the media you already own" part. I was thinking about Sub-section 2, which states that you may not distribute the copies you make, but you're right - there is no restriction that the copies you make must be of your own media. Thanks for the correction.
That may very well be. I never suggested Hasbro was right, just that the basis for the copyright portion of their complaint was the text of the Scrabble rule book and game dictionary.
Hasbro said the Scrabulous guys linked to their rules and player dictionary - the "actual text" - and that, by essentially including those copyrighted materials as part of their game, they violated Hasbro's copyright. That's why I quoted from the complaint "until earlier this year, defendants included on their website hyperlinks to official SCRABBLE webpages, resources such as the official SCRABBLE rules, and also other websites offering unauthorized and infringing versions of SCRABBLE."
Read the last sentence of my comment, which you quoted: "Hasbro was claiming that the creators of Scrabulous infringed their copyrights on the official rulebook and game dictionary."
Yup. And that's basically what Hasbro was alleging in the copyright portion of their complaint, that there are no rules to Scrabulous, that "a user not already familiar with the rules of the SCRABBLE crossword game would not know how to play "Scrabulous," and "until earlier this year, defendants included on their website hyperlinks to official SCRABBLE webpages, resources such as the official SCRABBLE rules, and also other websites offering unauthorized and infringing versions of SCRABBLE."
Hasbro was claiming that the creators of Scrabulous infringed their copyrights on the official rulebook and game dictionary.
Let me preface this by saying I am not a lawyer, just a concerned citizen and copyright holder.
I don't know about prior to 1997, but looking at the Exceptions to the Copyright Act, fair dealing seems to cover research or private study, criticism or review (if the source is mentioned), and news reporting (again, if the source is given). There are also exemptions for educational purposes, provided there is no "motive for gain." (I'm not sure how that could be accomplished, as using a copyrighted work for educational purpose would at least result in someone gaining knowledge). Also, I don't think the educational exemption applies if the work is commercially available.
This article states "unlike the fair use doctrine, fair dealing in Canada does not contain exceptions for parody and satire." Take that with whatever amount of salt you normally apply to Wikipedia entries; I see no specific mention of parody and satire in the Act. (An example of the chilling effect the lack of protection for satire and parody can have can be found here. In this example, the publication is invoking trademark law, and the defendants are citing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but if satire and parody were specifically sanctioned by the Copyright Act it would have helped to strengthen their defense).
Last summer, our federal government tabled a contentious bill to ammend the copyright act, granting us the right to record TV programmes, and copy music to our iPods, but it would also outlaw the circumvention of DRM technologies, effectively making the new rights useless.
That bill died when the Conservative government violated its own fixed election date legislation and called an election in October. They are currently struggling to maintain their minority government status (despite not having the confidence of our elected Parliament), and stated in their throne speech "Our Government will proceed with legislation to modernize Canada's copyright laws and ensure stronger protection for intellectual property."
That doesn't sound to me like they intend to strengthen the concept of fair dealing to protect the rights of Canadian citizens, but rather they intend to adopt policies closer to the US DMCA, to protect the interests of the "big four" media companies in the US, UK and Japan. I guess time will tell.
Are you sure? The Copyright Act of 1997 introduced the blank media tax, and made allowances for citizens to make copies of sound recordings for personal use. As far as I know, no allowances were made for private copying in prior version of the Copyright Act.
Should we export our jobs to India, buy our cars from Japan and give a bunch of unemployed people mortgages while we're at it?
The tax doesn't pay "for the content," it simply gives you the right to make copies of the media you already own, and the Canadian Recording Industry Association tried to sue to take that away from you a couple of years ago. Read the Copyright Act. It doesn't say what you think it does.
A judge refused to give Canadian record companies the names of 29 people accused of file sharing a few years ago, and agreed with the Copyright Board that file sharing "appeared to be legal". Maybe that's what you were thinking of. I'm not sure that decision still stands.
That article is from 2003, and no longer accurate. The Interim Private Copying Tariff rates for 2008 are here. No hard drives, just cassette tapes and CD-Rs.
Simple. It's not.
The Canadian blank media tax does not apply to hard drives, just to the following:
Bingo. You could just store everything on hard drives, which are not taxed as CD-Rs and cassette tapes are.
While we're at it, what if you pay for the music you download?
What if you use your blank media to store you own "intellectual property?"
What if you like to make backup copies of the CDs you purchase,and don't think you should have to pay an additional tax for the privilege of doing something that should be considered fair dealing?
What if you are an artist who produces mash-ups of popular culture (like Andy Warhol liked to do) and also consider that fair dealing?
What if you are in a band who's music is traded a lot online, but you don't get commercial airplay and you sell your CDs at gigs, so the sales aren't recorded by Soundscan?
What if you are an archivist, a student or a journalist, and are trying to research or preserve our shared culture?
The only "right" the Canadian blank media tax grants is the right to make copies of the media you already own, and only for personal use. Most Canadians would be surprised to learn they can't just do this without paying extra for it.
Oh, really? There are photos here that show him using what appear to be Blackberrys and cel phones (some while behind the wheel!) and he told the New York Times "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need - including going to my daughter's blog first, before anything else."
He sounds sort of like my dad, really. He's a man in his mid 70s doing his best to make sense out of all of this technology that has become so important recently. Blackberrys, Blogs, Twitter etc. either weren't around or weren't all that relevant when he ran for president eight years ago and he's doing best to catch up. He'll still prefer to read a news paper, or talk on the phone with a friend. He'll dutifully visit his daughter's blog.
His war wounds no doubt cause him pain and discomfort in every thing he does in his day-to-day life, but he manages other things and it doesn't sound to me like they pose enough of a problem to prevent him from doing the best he can. Besides, he really doesn't strike me as the sort of person who would let his injuries prevent him from doing something if he really desired to do it.
Huh? I... I don't know that
Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!!!
Sounds like it's worth checking out. Thanks.
You can "detach" the terminal windows and minimize the "master window" if you just want you terminal window on screen. I agree, it's annoying having to have the master window open, but I like PenguiNet for its connection manager and scp interface.
Different strokes, I guess ...
PenguiNet FTW!
No, just more relevant recently. That's like saying Heath Ledger is more notable than Jack Nicholson because Googling "the joker" shows four images of Heath as the Joker at the top of the page. (Heath was arguably the better Joker, but certainly not more notable than Jack, IMO).
Google just gives more weight to recent events.
I don't know what difference it makes what continent you live on. It's a "global village" after all. I live a long way away from Indiana, but I know they are "the Hoosier state." I also don't have to live in the UK to know what a "gob shite" is. Or be German to appreciate schadenfreude.
My point wasn't that all mods should know every regional colloquialism, just that it's sad mcgrew felt he needed to explain the meaning of the word to avoid being sanctioned by an ignorant mod who couldn't be bothered to look up the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
It's a sad comment on the state of Slashdot's moderation system when you have to preemptively explain a fairly common phrase you used because you have a reasonable expectation that someone will mistake it for "flamebait."
To take this even further off topic, our local hockey team is called "the Canucks," and the company I work for disperses season ticket amongst the sales staff to use for marketing purposes. The CEO recently complained that he had attempted to send an email three times, but nobody received it and he didn't get a bounce back. Turns out the nanny filters on the mail server quarantined his message due to a racial slur - he'd mentioned that the "Canucks" tickets were available.
Funny ... my ballot just had choices for my local MP. Are you sure you didn't vote in the US election?
Since none of them received a majority, you could say all parties were 'losers.' And of course our MPs are trying to decide who will be PM - that's their job.
When no one has a majority, the parties are supposed to compromise and work together. Three of the parties are doing that. The other one is tried to put a boot to the throat of it's weak competition.
You should send your complaints to that one.
You can metamoderate here.