Its the people who have been saying this for 20 years, and not businesses.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. People have been predicting the imminent collapse of the patent system due to ridiculous patents for about 20 years. It's still people who are doing that, and they're still wrong.
Every one of these bad cases just establishes that this is the way things are. It strengthens the patent system, and makes it more resistant to common sense. Businesses don't care if patents are bad or good; businesses don't care about anything. Businesses are just machines designed to make money. If the patent system rewards ridiculous patents, then businesses will file ridiculous patents.
Do you see any big companies saying that software patents are ridiculous, so they won't file them any more? No, you see them developing defensive portfolios of them. Now, if the USPTO came to its senses and declared all software and business-method patents to be null and void, those companies would suddenly suffer a huge loss in value of their assets. So it's not going to happen.
People have been saying that for about 20 years, and the patent system hasn't collapsed yet. I think you should catch on: bad things are bad, they're not good.
If it's in a higher orbit, it takes more time and fuel to get there. (Think about climbing one flight of stairs compared to climbing two.)
If it's in a lower orbit, there is more atmospheric drag, so the orbit tends to decay faster.
So they need to balance these two things.
By the way, being "too high" won't make you drift away from Earth until you're *really* high, where the gravity of other objects (the moon, other planets, the sun, etc.) start playing a big role. You'd get into a stable orbit above any appreciable atmospheric drag long before that.
I'm also realistic enough to know that the majority are downloading music they've never paid for. Which brings up another question: If I bought a vinyl album 20 years ago, do I have the right to have those songs? I know the answer.
In Canada you have the right to copy those songs off the album into whatever form you like, for your own personal use. You probably also have that right in the US, but it's not explicitly in the law, and it hasn't been tested in court, as far as I know.
In Canada you also have the right to copy them from somewhere else (say your album is scratched, or whatever), again for your personal use. In the US you don't.
In fact, in Canada this applies to songs whether you bought the album or not. The CRIA is wrong when it talks about "illegal downloads". As long as you're downloading for your own use, it's not illegal.
I especially like this quote from the Globe and Mail article that Geist links to:
"CRIA seems to think that saying that downloading is 'illegal' long enough and loud enough will convince people that it is illegal," said Ottawa copyright lawyer Howard Knopf. "But it isn't illegal -- the main reason being Canada's lucrative levy scheme that CRIA asked for and got eight years ago. The Copyright Board and the Federal Court have said this, and no appeal court has said they were wrong."
Would someone explain to me why this thoughtful reply is modded a 2 while the original, which is so thoroughly debunked by this reply, is modded a 4? That, in and of itself, matches the header.
Simple enough. Some moderators mod up things they agree with, rather than things which are well written. Both posts were thoughtful and well written and deserve modding up. You would have modded the first one down because you disagree with it, but you criticize other mods who modded the second one down for the same reason. That's not a good basis for moderating.
Use metamoderating, and disagree with negative mods on thoughtful posts, even if you disagree with the post.
You seem to be under the impression that "copyright" involves the right to make origional copies,
I don't know what you mean by an original copy. There's an original work, and there are copies of it. What is an original copy?
and that copyright law grants privledges to the purchaser normally held by the creator. Niether one is the case.
I've no idea what you're talking about here, either. Which privileges? What do you mean by "normally held", if you're not talking about copyright law?
Nothing legally or ethically prevents you from buying a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, scanning it with OCR software and sticking it on your cell phone, for example.
Ethically, I agree. Legally this is a murky question. The copyright law says you have no right to make copies of that book except for certain exceptions, and this isn't one of the listed ones. There is a legal precedent that timeshifting is a fair use, but as far as I know there are *no* legal precedents that format shifting is fair use. (If you know of any, post them!)
On the other hand, I don't know of any cases of anyone losing a copyright case because of format shifting. It's such a small violation that I don't think any copyright holder has bothered to go to court over it.
If you disagree with anything I've said above, please provide some support for your position.
There are laws to protect you from people stealing your data and publishing it, but that's not what copyright law is concerned with.
No, that's exactly what copyright is concerned with. "Stealing" my work isn't stealing if I just make a copy of it, but it is copyright infringement.
And, in fact, it is a fairly absurd consequence of copyright (and patents) that you get to control what other people do with ideas and works they developed independently.
Copyright gives you no control over independently developed works. It gives you exclusive rights to copy, distribute and perform (subject to some limitations), but that's about it.
Copyright is a pretty clear deal: people publish content, they get certain guarantees from the government for a limited time, and then the content becomes public domain.
That's not the deal at all. Substitute "create content" for "publish content". There's no requirement that I publish something in order to get the protections that the law gives. If I want I can keep it to myself.
This is reasonable. If I write a memoir that reveals all sorts of sordid details about my life, I shouldn't be forced to publish it in order to stop someone else from publishing it. It's my work, I should be able to choose what to do with it.
You're living in a fantasy land, not the USA. You can't take your own purchased copy and sell it, for instance.
The hell are you talking about.
Sorry, what I meant to write was that you can't take your purchased copy, make a copy of it, and sell that. You are definitely allowed to sell the original copy that you purchased, but you aren't allowed to make copies of it except for certain specific exceptions, and what you can do with those copies is strictly controlled.
You really should try reading the link I posted, and the other paragraphs that make up the copyright law. I think you'll be surprised how few rights it gives to you as a purchaser of a copyrighted work. Exclusive rights to copy the work belong to the copyright owner (see section 106), except for a few exceptions (sections 107 to 122). Making copies of computer programs for backup is a specific exception.
You're living in a fantasy land, not the USA. You can't take your own purchased copy and sell it, for instance.
If you think you can do anything with your copy as long as you keep it to yourself, it's pretty likely you'll get away with it, but you are very likely breaking the law. You should read it some time.
For instance, read section 117 of your copyright law, the section that allows you to make backup copies of computer programs. Why would you need special authorization to make backup copies if you can do whatever you please with your own copy? Why are there all those restrictions on what you can do with your backups?
Thanks. I was aware of the time shifting precedent, but hadn't spotted the other one. Timeshifting might be considered to be special, in that you don't have two copies of the work in your possession after it's finished broadcasting.
And backup only applies to computer programs. You might argue that a music CD which contains a program can be backed up under that provision, but lots of them don't. (You can probably legally back up CDs with copy protection, but not those without!)
There also seem to be pretty strict limitations on what you can do with a backup copy, so I think it's pretty far from being a "personal use" exclusion.
You never know what the courts will decide in cases like these, but I think there's quite strong reason to believe that you'd lose if you were sued by a copyright holder for making copies for personal use. If you had bought the original, you'd have a better chance, but if the record company could show that you were able to have the CD playing in one place while someone was listening to an MP3 elsewhere, they'd likely win a copyright infringement case. Of course, damages would be small, but they'd probably love to make an example of a few people.
To change the format of a work, you need to make a copy of it. What gives you that right?
No, the question is, what gives them the right to control what you do with your property once you've bought it, if you aren't distributing copies or using it for public performances? If I want to take my legally purchased cd and make a thousand copies for myself, or sell the origional on eBay for a billion dollars, that's my business, not theirs.
The answer is simple: copyright law. It gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to make copies. They can give you permission to make some, and there are some fair use exceptions to the law, but making a thousand personal copies is not one of them in the USA (though it's perfectly legal in Canada, because we have a different copyright law than you do).
I don't see any mention of personal use there. Section 107 is explicitly about copying "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research".
It is open ended, and it may be that some judge has decided it includes copies for personal use, but the section you quoted doesn't support your claim.
If the ID was free and easy to get, I'd get several!
Oops, better not make it so easy. But how do you verify that a homeless guy is really who he says he is? Fingerprints? Implanted RFID chips?
And regarding the proposal that started this thread: I think it's all fine, except for the people who really want their piece of paper and don't deposit it in the box. That means the paper total and the electronic total would never match exactly. What if they gave different winners?
A better scheme would be to print the ballot, but not count what was done at the voting machine. Count the paper ballots. The counting could be done electronically at the polling station, or centrally, it's not important, but at least there would be a well defined true answer.
At any rate, it's hard to make an argument under the 4 rules doctrine that format shifting is infringing, as it doesn't really cause anybody financial harm.
If you were talking about making a copy and destroying the original I could see that, but pretty clearly keeping both copies stops you from having to pay the copyright holder for a second one.
As far as I know, the only case that has been decided on this allows time-shifting (the 1984 Betamax case). No SCOTUS rulings have allowed format shifting. But I'd love to hear differently...
You'll have to ask the Swedish lawmakers that one.
Perhaps it's not true. In Canada, with a similar law, it's the copyright holder who gets the compensation, but they may not if they're not Canadian. (I suspect this is because of a lack of reciprocity: Canadian copyright holders don't get paid for private copying by foreigners, either.)
These taxes are stupid because format shifting is entirely ligitimate.
The cases you listed before this one are all cases where the copyright owner has given you permission. Format shifting is different. To change the format of a work, you need to make a copy of it. What gives you that right? The copyright holder should be able to decide whether you can make copies or not. If you make it legal for people to make copies without permission, then you're taking away rights from the copyright holder, and they should be compensated.
Which is exactly the purpose of blank media levies. They compensate copyright holders for the loss of their right to control copying.
In most countries with copyright law, people already have the right to make copies of copyrighted works FOR THEIR OWN PRIVATE USE without any renumeration necessary to the copyright holder. This consistitutes "fair use", or similar concepts with different terms.
I don't think that's true. It certainly isn't true in general in Canada (but is pretty much true for audio recordings), and I don't think it's true for any work in the USA. Can you provide some sort of backup for your claim?
Slashdot Mirror
The reason they went to the Greek alphabet was that they name the storms in alphabetical order,
..., then start over with cool lowercase names like djmurdoch and eobanb.
I think they should just use 7 bit ASCII names, and if that's not enough, go to Unicode.
Just need to think of some names beginning with [, \, ],
Its the people who have been saying this for 20 years, and not businesses.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. People have been predicting the imminent collapse of the patent system due to ridiculous patents for about 20 years. It's still people who are doing that, and they're still wrong.
Every one of these bad cases just establishes that this is the way things are. It strengthens the patent system, and makes it more resistant to common sense. Businesses don't care if patents are bad or good; businesses don't care about anything. Businesses are just machines designed to make money. If the patent system rewards ridiculous patents, then businesses will file ridiculous patents.
Do you see any big companies saying that software patents are ridiculous, so they won't file them any more? No, you see them developing defensive portfolios of them. Now, if the USPTO came to its senses and declared all software and business-method patents to be null and void, those companies would suddenly suffer a huge loss in value of their assets. So it's not going to happen.
People have been saying that for about 20 years, and the patent system hasn't collapsed yet. I think you should catch on: bad things are bad, they're not good.
If it's in a higher orbit, it takes more time and fuel to get there. (Think about climbing one flight of stairs compared to climbing two.)
If it's in a lower orbit, there is more atmospheric drag, so the orbit tends to decay faster.
So they need to balance these two things.
By the way, being "too high" won't make you drift away from Earth until you're *really* high, where the gravity of other objects (the moon, other planets, the sun, etc.) start playing a big role. You'd get into a stable orbit above any appreciable atmospheric drag long before that.
Under fair use, yes. you have the right to the data. In any format you want. Copied in any way you want. Ect.
Which part of fair use gives you this right? This is a serious question, please give details.
I'm also realistic enough to know that the majority are downloading music they've never paid for. Which brings up another question: If I bought a vinyl album 20 years ago, do I have the right to have those songs? I know the answer.
In Canada you have the right to copy those songs off the album into whatever form you like, for your own personal use. You probably also have that right in the US, but it's not explicitly in the law, and it hasn't been tested in court, as far as I know.
In Canada you also have the right to copy them from somewhere else (say your album is scratched, or whatever), again for your personal use. In the US you don't.
In fact, in Canada this applies to songs whether you bought the album or not. The CRIA is wrong when it talks about "illegal downloads". As long as you're downloading for your own use, it's not illegal.
I especially like this quote from the Globe and Mail article that Geist links to:
"CRIA seems to think that saying that downloading is 'illegal' long enough and loud enough will convince people that it is illegal," said Ottawa copyright lawyer Howard Knopf. "But it isn't illegal -- the main reason being Canada's lucrative levy scheme that CRIA asked for and got eight years ago. The Copyright Board and the Federal Court have said this, and no appeal court has said they were wrong."
The US contribution to the UN budget is around 25%. The US economy is around 33% of the world economy.
Compare that to western Europe, contributing 30% of the budget with 20% of the economy.
Would someone explain to me why this thoughtful reply is modded a 2 while the original, which is so thoroughly debunked by this reply, is modded a 4? That, in and of itself, matches the header.
Simple enough. Some moderators mod up things they agree with, rather than things which are well written. Both posts were thoughtful and well written and deserve modding up. You would have modded the first one down because you disagree with it, but you criticize other mods who modded the second one down for the same reason. That's not a good basis for moderating.
Use metamoderating, and disagree with negative mods on thoughtful posts, even if you disagree with the post.
You seem to be under the impression that "copyright" involves the right to make origional copies,
I don't know what you mean by an original copy. There's an original work, and there are copies of it. What is an original copy?
and that copyright law grants privledges to the purchaser normally held by the creator. Niether one is the case.
I've no idea what you're talking about here, either. Which privileges? What do you mean by "normally held", if you're not talking about copyright law?
Nothing legally or ethically prevents you from buying a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, scanning it with OCR software and sticking it on your cell phone, for example.
Ethically, I agree. Legally this is a murky question. The copyright law says you have no right to make copies of that book except for certain exceptions, and this isn't one of the listed ones. There is a legal precedent that timeshifting is a fair use, but as far as I know there are *no* legal precedents that format shifting is fair use. (If you know of any, post them!)
On the other hand, I don't know of any cases of anyone losing a copyright case because of format shifting. It's such a small violation that I don't think any copyright holder has bothered to go to court over it.
If you disagree with anything I've said above, please provide some support for your position.
There are laws to protect you from people stealing your data and publishing it, but that's not what copyright law is concerned with.
No, that's exactly what copyright is concerned with. "Stealing" my work isn't stealing if I just make a copy of it, but it is copyright infringement.
And, in fact, it is a fairly absurd consequence of copyright (and patents) that you get to control what other people do with ideas and works they developed independently.
Copyright gives you no control over independently developed works. It gives you exclusive rights to copy, distribute and perform (subject to some limitations), but that's about it.
Copyright is a pretty clear deal: people publish content, they get certain guarantees from the government for a limited time, and then the content becomes public domain.
That's not the deal at all. Substitute "create content" for "publish content". There's no requirement that I publish something in order to get the protections that the law gives. If I want I can keep it to myself.
This is reasonable. If I write a memoir that reveals all sorts of sordid details about my life, I shouldn't be forced to publish it in order to stop someone else from publishing it. It's my work, I should be able to choose what to do with it.
You're living in a fantasy land, not the USA. You can't take your own purchased copy and sell it, for instance.
The hell are you talking about.
Sorry, what I meant to write was that you can't take your purchased copy, make a copy of it, and sell that. You are definitely allowed to sell the original copy that you purchased, but you aren't allowed to make copies of it except for certain specific exceptions, and what you can do with those copies is strictly controlled.
You really should try reading the link I posted, and the other paragraphs that make up the copyright law. I think you'll be surprised how few rights it gives to you as a purchaser of a copyrighted work. Exclusive rights to copy the work belong to the copyright owner (see section 106), except for a few exceptions (sections 107 to 122). Making copies of computer programs for backup is a specific exception.
You're living in a fantasy land, not the USA. You can't take your own purchased copy and sell it, for instance.
If you think you can do anything with your copy as long as you keep it to yourself, it's pretty likely you'll get away with it, but you are very likely breaking the law. You should read it some time.
For instance, read section 117 of your copyright law, the section that allows you to make backup copies of computer programs. Why would you need special authorization to make backup copies if you can do whatever you please with your own copy? Why are there all those restrictions on what you can do with your backups?
Yes, exactly. Canada (and apparently Sweden) are examples of countries where personal use copies of music are allowed; the USA isn't.
Thanks. I was aware of the time shifting precedent, but hadn't spotted the other one.
Timeshifting might be considered to be special, in that you don't have two copies of the work in your possession after it's finished broadcasting.
And backup only applies to computer programs. You might argue that a music CD which contains a program can be backed up under that provision, but lots of them don't. (You can probably legally back up CDs with copy protection, but not those without!)
There also seem to be pretty strict limitations on what you can do with a backup copy, so I think it's pretty far from being a "personal use" exclusion.
You never know what the courts will decide in cases like these, but I think there's quite strong reason to believe that you'd lose if you were sued by a copyright holder for making copies for personal use. If you had bought the original, you'd have a better chance, but if the record company could show that you were able to have the CD playing in one place while someone was listening to an MP3 elsewhere, they'd likely win a copyright infringement case. Of course, damages would be small, but they'd probably love to make an example of a few people.
There is also quite a bit that is defined by court precendent. You could probably find more on that at groklaw.
You can read a bit about Fair Use from Stanford:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
So could you, but I don't think you'll find any exemption for personal use there.
To change the format of a work, you need to make a copy of it. What gives you that right?
No, the question is, what gives them the right to control what you do with your property once you've bought it, if you aren't distributing copies or using it for public performances? If I want to take my legally purchased cd and make a thousand copies for myself, or sell the origional on eBay for a billion dollars, that's my business, not theirs.
The answer is simple: copyright law. It gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to make copies. They can give you permission to make some, and there are some fair use exceptions to the law, but making a thousand personal copies is not one of them in the USA (though it's perfectly legal in Canada, because we have a different copyright law than you do).
I don't see any mention of personal use there. Section 107 is explicitly about copying "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research".
It is open ended, and it may be that some judge has decided it includes copies for personal use, but the section you quoted doesn't support your claim.
If the ID was free and easy to get, I'd get several!
Oops, better not make it so easy. But how do you verify that a homeless guy is really who he says he is? Fingerprints? Implanted RFID chips?
And regarding the proposal that started this thread: I think it's all fine, except for the people who really want their piece of paper and don't deposit it in the box. That means the paper total and the electronic total would never match exactly. What if they gave different winners?
A better scheme would be to print the ballot, but not count what was done at the voting machine. Count the paper ballots. The counting could be done electronically at the polling station, or centrally, it's not important, but at least there would be a well defined true answer.
At any rate, it's hard to make an argument under the 4 rules doctrine that format shifting is infringing, as it doesn't really cause anybody financial harm.
If you were talking about making a copy and destroying the original I could see that, but pretty clearly keeping both copies stops you from having to pay the copyright holder for a second one.
As far as I know, the only case that has been decided on this allows time-shifting (the 1984 Betamax case). No SCOTUS rulings have allowed format shifting. But I'd love to hear differently...
You'll have to ask the Swedish lawmakers that one.
Perhaps it's not true. In Canada, with a similar law, it's the copyright holder who gets the compensation, but they may not if they're not Canadian. (I suspect this is because of a lack of reciprocity: Canadian copyright holders don't get paid for private copying by foreigners, either.)
Last I checked, format shifting was legal in the USSA.
Where did you check? I don't think the Copyright Act says that, but perhaps case law does...
These taxes are stupid because format shifting is entirely ligitimate.
The cases you listed before this one are all cases where the copyright owner has given you permission. Format shifting is different. To change the format of a work, you need to make a copy of it. What gives you that right? The copyright holder should be able to decide whether you can make copies or not. If you make it legal for people to make copies without permission, then you're taking away rights from the copyright holder, and they should be compensated.
Which is exactly the purpose of blank media levies. They compensate copyright holders for the loss of their right to control copying.
In most countries with copyright law, people already have the right to make copies of copyrighted works FOR THEIR OWN PRIVATE USE without any renumeration necessary to the copyright holder. This consistitutes "fair use", or similar concepts with different terms.
I don't think that's true. It certainly isn't true in general in Canada (but is pretty much true for audio recordings), and I don't think it's true for any work in the USA. Can you provide some sort of backup for your claim?