To clarify, in the US at least, you can get sued for downloading, it's just unlikely.
The usual plaintiffs prefer to go after targets toward the other end of the food chain because it's more effective and more efficient (e.g. A single suit against Napster was more beneficial to them than a million cases against Napster users would've been). And if you're merely downloading, you're harder to catch.
Still though, it is typically illegal to download copyrighted material without authorization, and the remedies that might get employed against you can be substantial.
That seems like an odd example. I thought that Sinclair hated government involvement in business (unless he could get money without losing control, anyway).
In the US, retail copies can be rented legally. If video rental companies are going to movie studios to get special copies, it's because it's cheaper than getting them from Amazon or whatnot, or because they want them in advance of the release date so that they can get them into their distribution chain and ready to go.
In the US, speeding is a strict liability offense; if you drive faster than the speed limit, you are liable, even if you acted with such reasonable care that you could not even be said to have acted negligently, much less recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally.
It's not a standard that gets used a lot, but it is also known in statutory rape and some copyright infringement.
The article says "a pilot would have walked away", and the Slashdot summary says "the pilot would have walked away". The later implies a pilot existed.
I realize the finer points of English are difficult for internet flamers like you. But please try harder.
Well, the discrepancy may be because the DreamChaser is intended to have only one on-board pilot; it's pretty small. "A pilot" suggests there might be more than one, but only one would walk away. "The pilot" suggests there would only be one, and he would walk away. I agree, though, that it should've first been made clear that the flight was unmanned.
And also, as even the man in the street knows, you can use the definite article for hypotheticals sometimes.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
Well, treaties are weird under US law. It could be that, it could require the involvement of the entire Congress (especially if there is enabling legislation), or it might even be something that the President can do unilaterally. Of course, it's probably a political question, so there wouldn't be a bright line rule.
Well, various nations have had trade wars for a long time. Country A exports something to Country B, A gets upset when B uses import bans or tariffs to prop up its domestic industry or simply keep things out, and then A retaliates by limiting imports from B or worse. Eventually the two countries learn to do without, or they resolve their differences, hopefully peacefully, sometimes violently.
What we're seeing now is a system in which trade treaties are becoming massively multilateral, treaties are tangled up together for mutual support, and international bodies are set up to administer them. It's still possible to pursue national interests over international trade, and to engage in trade wars, but it's become a great deal harder by design.
I agree that we need to push for more national sovereignty, so that trade is managed by politically accountable, democratic institutions, rather than potentially dangerous IGOs, but it's probably worth remembering that we pushed as hard for this mess as anyone, and now we're getting a taste of our just desserts.
As for this particular situation of course, it might've happened the same way regardless. Copyrights are strictly national in nature. US copyrights are only good in the US, UK copyrights only in the UK, and so forth. Most works have many separate copyrights attached to them. Treaties between various countries mandate that when a work receives a copyright in one eligible country, all the others grant copyrights for that same work too. Antigua and Barbuda only grant copyrights to US-originating works out of this sort of reciprocity, and can cease to do so as they see fit, including as part of a trade war on unrelated matters, since this might give them some leverage.
No, it was 1.85:1, which is a common movie aspect ratio, just usually not used for big epics. (E.g. Avatar was 2.35:1 (except for IMAX), Iron Man was 2.35:1, Batman Begins was 2.35:1)
More efficient but not most efficient; electrified rail still beats it. But the difference in infrastructure costs means that the best solution is to use buses to move relatively small numbers of dispersed riders together to a rail station used by many more riders.
The x1080 is more popular as a TV because movies are filmed in 16::9.
No they aren't.
HDTV is shot at 16:9 because that's what the TVs are. But movies are usually wider, at 1.85:1 or 2.40:1.
16:9 was chosen because it was more or less a compromise between the common widescreen film ratios and the narrower 4:3 SDTV and 1.375:1 Academy ratios.
There's a good youtube video about this sort of thing here, and the wiki article on the 16:9 ratio is also handy.
Now it may well come to pass that movies will be shot in a native 16:9 ratio, but so far the trend is simply to make sure that all the action fits into that area when they crop the image for transfer to home video.
Of course, the moderate popularity of IMAX weirds things a bit. I remember seeing the Bluray release of The Dark Knight, parts of which were filmed for IMAX, which has a 1.44:1 ratio. The rest of the movie was in a more typical 2.40:1 ratio. Their solution was to present the conventionally filmed parts of the movie letterboxed, but to show the IMAX sections in 16:9, filling the frame of the TV, but still cropping the top and bottom of the original image.
What is amazing is the people who love regulation so much just hate this. You know, the ones who want everybody to be forced to drive an electric skateboard, or have no choice besides a bus or a bile. This is what giving regulatory power to your government brings you.
Well, I'm sure your choice would be the bile, from the tone of your post.
Seriously, who wants regulation for its own sake? There's usually some other goal in mind, and regulations are seen as a means for achieving it.
(Also, buses are okay for feeder routes, and if you have to have any sort of automobile, an electric is often going to be the best option. But electrified rail is the best motorized transportation out there AFAIK)
Obamacare is what the single payer people got when they had the votes to do something.
Not precisely. The Democrats have moved very far left over recent decades, and are now functionally the same as 60s-70s Republicans. Obama's further right still. Plus in most instances, he's proven to be a terrible negotiator. He didn't even use single payer as a bargaining chip for something in the middle, much less as a dream program; he gave it away in exchange for nothing, right out of the gate. Assuming he ever wanted it.
What we got isn't single payer, so please don't act like it is.
That said, a product containing trademark material should be able to enter the public domain. Steamboat Willie, for example, should have entered the public domain long ago, even though Mickey Mouse would remain trademarked.
Copyrighted material containing trademarks does enter the public domain, and in so doing, can wreak havoc upon the trademarks. Dastar v. 20th Century Fox is a good case for this, and the gist is that trademarks are not a substitute for copyright. Then read it in conjunction with Kellogg v. National Biscuit, which rendered the SHREDDED WHEAT trademark generic once the patent expired.
This is why Disney cares so much about copyrights; if Steamboat Willie enters the public domain, anyone can create films using the original version of Mickey Mouse (later changes to the character would still be protected so long as the works which introduced them were). And that means that Mickey Mouse ceases to function as a trademark in certain regards, because the public can no longer rely on his presence as a source identifier for some classes of work.
It's like Peter Pan in the US. The character is in the public domain, and anyone can make creative works using him. There are some trademarks for bus services and peanut butter, but I don't think it would hold up for merchandise which is closely associated with the creative work. (E.g. dolls of the characters from the story) Disney would not be satisfied with little more than Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.
Just last week I'm building a PC and the older one wants to help. It wasn't a full build, just plugging in cables. I was in shock though, she pretty much knew where everything was supposed to go. She just lacked the hand/eye to wiggle things in correctly.
That's because it's gotten too easy, with color coded, keyed cables of with widely varying connector shapes.
I remember when everything was unkeyed, unmarked ribbon cables, both inside and out, as far as the eye could see. And you had to plug unkeyed ICs by hand into their sockets.
My point is that they are calling their distribution a "private performance", on the grounds that it is being presented to specific individuals who have requested the service. What is to stop something similar from happening with other copyrighted works?
First, the public performance / private performance dichotomy only matters for certain types of works: literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, motion picture and other audiovisual works, and in the case of digital audio transmissions only, sound recordings. (That's why analog radio stations don't have to pay royalties to recording artists to play records: no performance right. There is a right for the underlying song, though, so they do pay songwriters)
Second, expense and impracticality. If Aereo wanted to branch out into something like Netflix, where it rented videos on demand, it would have to contend with Redd Horne. The Redd Horne case involved a video rental store that not only rented videotapes without authorization (which is not infringing if the copies are eligible for First Sale), but also provided in-store viewing areas, and TV sets, for people to watch the movies with. Patrons using the viewing areas didn't handle the tape themselves; the store clerk had control of the tape and the VCR. Essentially, they were operating a small, on-demand movie theater, and this was found to be infringing because they re-used the same copy of the tape and the tape was never even under the dominion of the patron, but at all times under the dominion of the store.
More recently, this cropped up with a company called Zediva, which offered to rent a DVD, and a player to a customer, and to stream the video over the Internet. Based on Redd Horne, they got shut down, because again, they reused the same copies that they showed people, and they retained control over the copies.
For Aereo to avoid these precedents, they'd need to have one lawfully made copy of each video per customer, and never share them between customers. Dealing with all the discs would require more physical space, more equipment, more staff, and would still be risky due to the discs remaining on Aereo's premises. They can't copy the discs. And it would not be particularly inexpensive for the customers who could just go get them from Amazon or wherever. The cost and impracticality of it is what makes it unlikely.
Most other sorts of works aren't transmitted freely from hither and yon. A hardcopy book would be even worse than a DVD. Ebooks aren't broadcast for free like OTA TV. Web pages are more easily viewed in the user's own web browser directly, rather than paying Aereo a monthly fee to be a middleman for no good reason.
So I don't think it's very likely that the Aereo model will spread beyond free, OTA TV.
They are doing these so-called "private performances" for anyone who wants to use their service among the general public
No, they're allowing anyone among the general public to make their own individualized recordings of OTA TV signals. Once the recording is made, it's not performed publicly, and it's not shared around.
But when you allow the public to see your "private performances", it's not really private anymore is it?
Aereo doesn't. It's separate performances per user, which maintains their private nature. Public performances would require that multiple users experienced the same performance, or at least shared the same copies which were being used to make the performance. That's what distinguishes it from a regular broadcaster (which uses a master performance) or a Redd Horne style video on demand service. (which re-used copies and was found liable for public performance)
The argument against it basically hinges on ignoring the fact that copyright only protects public performances, and expanding the right to all performances, because private persons viewed in aggregate, even though otherwise not connected to each other, comprise the public. And also, by ignoring the individualized nature of the copies, and instead viewing it as sharing copies because they all stem from a master source.
If I had a TV, I could invite friends over to watch a sporting event with me on my television. I could not, however, advertise that my house will be open to whomever wants to come over and watch sports with me, since that would constitute public viewing, even though it is in the privacy of my home.
OTOH, if you had 100 TVs, and 100 TV antennas, you could rent those TVs and antennas to private persons to set up and use in their own homes for the duration of the rental agreement. This is actually a longstanding practice. In fact, my paternal grandparents didn't own a TV for a long time, but did rent one in 1969 in order to watch the moon landing. The parallels to Aereo's service are pretty strong: users get exclusive access to an antenna, a video file, and a sufficient portion of computing and telecommunications resources in order to get the video stream.
personally giving a copy of another copyrighted work without authorization to somebody else in particular can actually constitute private use
Distributing a copy of a work is protected by copyright. However, there is a big exception in first sale; if the copy was lawfully made, and has been conveyed by the copyright holder or an authorized person, the copyright holder cannot control future distribution of the work by means of his copyright (subject to a few exceptions not relevant here).
So if you give me a copy of a book you bought from the bookstore, that's ok. You don't need authorization. You can even do it if you're specifically ordered not to by the copyright holder; he is impotent in the matter.
And there's no such thing as private use, really. Copyright doesn't prohibit public use, or private use, or any sort of use-use, really. Reproduction, distribution, making derivatives, public performance, public display are basically all that's prohibited. So long as your use doesn't involve any of those, the copyright is inapplicable. And if it does, there may yet be an applicable exception.
It's my understanding that there is even legal precedent for this exact situation
Super, let's have it. Of course, you might still want to look at the previously linked-to Second Circuit opinion, in case the court already looked at that precedent.
distribution of copies of copyrighted works without authorization to other individuals should reasonably be considered "private copies".
The public performance right only covers public performances. The distribution right, like the honey badger, don't care: it applies to both public and private distribution. First sale and fair use, likewise, are unaffected.
If a person does not abide by the terms of the GPL, however, then the permission that the GPL grants does not apply to that person, and so could be found guilty of copyright infringement when making copies of the work that do not fall within the boundaries of fair use.
Copyright is about more than just fair use, you know.
It may help to think of copyright by means of a Venn diagram. It's like a subset that is, itself, full of sub-subsets that compromise holes in what the subset contains.
The largest set is the public domain. Anything in the public domain can be used freely, in any way, so far as copyright is concerned. (Because we're talking about copyright, and not, say, personal property, note that a copy of a work can still be owned and off-limits even though the creative work embodied in that copy is not protected. For example, the Mona Lisa is in the public domain, but the actual wooden painting made by Da Vinci is heavily guarded. Copyright might not give anyone the right to stop you from making a copy of the Mona Lisa, but the Louvre doesn't have to let you take a photograph of it.)
Works that are copyrighted fall partially into the subset of copyright. Partially, not wholly, because copyright only applies to certain types of action with regard to a work. For example, making a new copy of a work by reproducing it is one of the exclusive rights of copyright. But using a book (which is a copy of a work) to prop up an uneven bedframe is not an infringement of copyright, because the law does not grant copyright holders an exclusive right of 'propping-up.' Likewise, some kinds of works are not copyrightable. In the US, from 1790 on, only books and maps could be copyrighted. Only when the law was amended in 1802 were some engravings copyrightable. In 1831, all engravings, and also musical compositions; 1856, dramatic works; 1865, photographs; 1870, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and models and designs of works of fine art; 1912, motion pictures qua motion pictures (previously they were claimed as collections of photographs); 1971, sound recordings; 1976, pantomime and choreography as themselves, as opposed to being dramatic works; 1990, architecture. Anything not on the list of protected types of works is in the public domain. (Software, in case you're wondering, is treated as a literary work, like a book, but doesn't yet have its own category) There are a few other limits on what is copyrightable, but they're not terribly important for our purposes.
Of the list of enumerated rights which compromise copyright, and which is short in comparison to the list of all rights concerning those works and their copies, as applied to those works which are eligible for copyright, which is less than the totality of all works, there are still some subsets which further limit copyright protection.
Fair use is one of them -- any otherwise infringing use, which is fair, is not infringing. That's a fairly good-sized hole in the already swiss-cheesed set of copyright. First sale is another big one -- the right of the copyright holder to control the distribution of copies is almost entirely obliterated once the copyright holder has sold the copies in question. There are some exceptions to that exception, and some exceptions to those exceptions to the exception, but it's still shrinking copyright. Another one you might enjoy for software is that if a person owns a copy of a program, he can copy it and modify it in order to make it work, without needing permission. Likewise, he can make backups without permission. So really, so far as copyright goes, people in the US only need to agree to the GPL to copy a work if they're going beyond the statutory exception that keeps copyright from stopping them making certain copies.
There are exceptions like this throughout the Copyright Act. They can be broad, they can be narrow, they can be subject to various conditions and exceptions themselves. But the point remains that copyright is an all-encompassing, all-covering blanket. I
I can easily see it resulting in the complete dissolution of copyrightable open source, simply by labeling each individual transmission of the work a so-called "private production" or whatever is necessary to somehow make it inapplicable to being an infringement.
Performing a work privately isn't infringing, because the exclusive right of performance under section 106 only applies to public performances. However, unlike the GPL, this does not 'infect' the work or any instance of the work. Copyright applies to the work as much as it ever did. Therefore, if you privately perform a work, by, for example, watching it on TV, you cannot make a copy of it, distribute copies of it, or make derivative works based upon it. There might be a fair use exception to certain acts depending on the circumstances (e.g. copying a work by recording it on a DVR, whether this is done at home or remotely over a network), but fair use can apply to any kind of use to any kind of work, so long as the use is fair. There's nothing special that a holding against Aereo would do vis a vis fair use and its applicability to open source software.
You're worried about things that have no chance of happening, possibly due to ignorance of US copyright law. It's not just making a mountain out of a molehill. You're making a mountain out of sheer imagination; there's no molehill or any other thing to enlarge in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify, in the US at least, you can get sued for downloading, it's just unlikely.
The usual plaintiffs prefer to go after targets toward the other end of the food chain because it's more effective and more efficient (e.g. A single suit against Napster was more beneficial to them than a million cases against Napster users would've been). And if you're merely downloading, you're harder to catch.
Still though, it is typically illegal to download copyrighted material without authorization, and the remedies that might get employed against you can be substantial.
That seems like an odd example. I thought that Sinclair hated government involvement in business (unless he could get money without losing control, anyway).
In the US, retail copies can be rented legally. If video rental companies are going to movie studios to get special copies, it's because it's cheaper than getting them from Amazon or whatnot, or because they want them in advance of the release date so that they can get them into their distribution chain and ready to go.
You also have to sit through an FBI warning (something you don't have to do if you pirated the movie).
I'd be willing to sit through something more amusing on the pirated copy, such as this.
In the US, speeding is a strict liability offense; if you drive faster than the speed limit, you are liable, even if you acted with such reasonable care that you could not even be said to have acted negligently, much less recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally.
It's not a standard that gets used a lot, but it is also known in statutory rape and some copyright infringement.
The article says "a pilot would have walked away", and the Slashdot summary says "the pilot would have walked away". The later implies a pilot existed.
I realize the finer points of English are difficult for internet flamers like you. But please try harder.
Well, the discrepancy may be because the DreamChaser is intended to have only one on-board pilot; it's pretty small. "A pilot" suggests there might be more than one, but only one would walk away. "The pilot" suggests there would only be one, and he would walk away. I agree, though, that it should've first been made clear that the flight was unmanned.
And also, as even the man in the street knows, you can use the definite article for hypotheticals sometimes.
(Also, I think you meant "latter," not "later.")
Not sure what happened to New Hampshire, but that's a purple state that prides itself on small government.
They just need to realize that the charging stations can be installed at the State Liquor Stores, and I'm sure they'll come around.
They probably don't have a fiber connection either to the country.
They are on the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System, and the Global Caribbean Network, which is also a fiber submarine cable.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
Well, treaties are weird under US law. It could be that, it could require the involvement of the entire Congress (especially if there is enabling legislation), or it might even be something that the President can do unilaterally. Of course, it's probably a political question, so there wouldn't be a bright line rule.
Well, various nations have had trade wars for a long time. Country A exports something to Country B, A gets upset when B uses import bans or tariffs to prop up its domestic industry or simply keep things out, and then A retaliates by limiting imports from B or worse. Eventually the two countries learn to do without, or they resolve their differences, hopefully peacefully, sometimes violently.
What we're seeing now is a system in which trade treaties are becoming massively multilateral, treaties are tangled up together for mutual support, and international bodies are set up to administer them. It's still possible to pursue national interests over international trade, and to engage in trade wars, but it's become a great deal harder by design.
I agree that we need to push for more national sovereignty, so that trade is managed by politically accountable, democratic institutions, rather than potentially dangerous IGOs, but it's probably worth remembering that we pushed as hard for this mess as anyone, and now we're getting a taste of our just desserts.
As for this particular situation of course, it might've happened the same way regardless. Copyrights are strictly national in nature. US copyrights are only good in the US, UK copyrights only in the UK, and so forth. Most works have many separate copyrights attached to them. Treaties between various countries mandate that when a work receives a copyright in one eligible country, all the others grant copyrights for that same work too. Antigua and Barbuda only grant copyrights to US-originating works out of this sort of reciprocity, and can cease to do so as they see fit, including as part of a trade war on unrelated matters, since this might give them some leverage.
No, it was 1.85:1, which is a common movie aspect ratio, just usually not used for big epics. (E.g. Avatar was 2.35:1 (except for IMAX), Iron Man was 2.35:1, Batman Begins was 2.35:1)
16:9 on the other hand is 1.77:1.
More efficient but not most efficient; electrified rail still beats it. But the difference in infrastructure costs means that the best solution is to use buses to move relatively small numbers of dispersed riders together to a rail station used by many more riders.
I remember back when everything was molten rock, as far as the eye could see.
The x1080 is more popular as a TV because movies are filmed in 16::9.
No they aren't.
HDTV is shot at 16:9 because that's what the TVs are. But movies are usually wider, at 1.85:1 or 2.40:1.
16:9 was chosen because it was more or less a compromise between the common widescreen film ratios and the narrower 4:3 SDTV and 1.375:1 Academy ratios.
There's a good youtube video about this sort of thing here, and the wiki article on the 16:9 ratio is also handy.
Now it may well come to pass that movies will be shot in a native 16:9 ratio, but so far the trend is simply to make sure that all the action fits into that area when they crop the image for transfer to home video.
Of course, the moderate popularity of IMAX weirds things a bit. I remember seeing the Bluray release of The Dark Knight, parts of which were filmed for IMAX, which has a 1.44:1 ratio. The rest of the movie was in a more typical 2.40:1 ratio. Their solution was to present the conventionally filmed parts of the movie letterboxed, but to show the IMAX sections in 16:9, filling the frame of the TV, but still cropping the top and bottom of the original image.
What is amazing is the people who love regulation so much just hate this. You know, the ones who want everybody to be forced to drive an electric skateboard, or have no choice besides a bus or a bile. This is what giving regulatory power to your government brings you.
Well, I'm sure your choice would be the bile, from the tone of your post.
Seriously, who wants regulation for its own sake? There's usually some other goal in mind, and regulations are seen as a means for achieving it.
(Also, buses are okay for feeder routes, and if you have to have any sort of automobile, an electric is often going to be the best option. But electrified rail is the best motorized transportation out there AFAIK)
A serious, heart felt solution: First, we kill all the lawyers. Literally, not figuratively. It's easy.
I say, we let them go.
Presumably you meant "very far right over recent decades"
Wow, yes. I guess that will teach me to post when I'm tired.
Obamacare is what the single payer people got when they had the votes to do something.
Not precisely. The Democrats have moved very far left over recent decades, and are now functionally the same as 60s-70s Republicans. Obama's further right still. Plus in most instances, he's proven to be a terrible negotiator. He didn't even use single payer as a bargaining chip for something in the middle, much less as a dream program; he gave it away in exchange for nothing, right out of the gate. Assuming he ever wanted it.
What we got isn't single payer, so please don't act like it is.
I suspect he meant that there were three more after that, but yes, there was also the Armenian Genocide, and surely others too.
That said, a product containing trademark material should be able to enter the public domain. Steamboat Willie, for example, should have entered the public domain long ago, even though Mickey Mouse would remain trademarked.
Copyrighted material containing trademarks does enter the public domain, and in so doing, can wreak havoc upon the trademarks. Dastar v. 20th Century Fox is a good case for this, and the gist is that trademarks are not a substitute for copyright. Then read it in conjunction with Kellogg v. National Biscuit, which rendered the SHREDDED WHEAT trademark generic once the patent expired.
This is why Disney cares so much about copyrights; if Steamboat Willie enters the public domain, anyone can create films using the original version of Mickey Mouse (later changes to the character would still be protected so long as the works which introduced them were). And that means that Mickey Mouse ceases to function as a trademark in certain regards, because the public can no longer rely on his presence as a source identifier for some classes of work.
It's like Peter Pan in the US. The character is in the public domain, and anyone can make creative works using him. There are some trademarks for bus services and peanut butter, but I don't think it would hold up for merchandise which is closely associated with the creative work. (E.g. dolls of the characters from the story) Disney would not be satisfied with little more than Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.
Just last week I'm building a PC and the older one wants to help. It wasn't a full build, just plugging in cables. I was in shock though, she pretty much knew where everything was supposed to go. She just lacked the hand/eye to wiggle things in correctly.
That's because it's gotten too easy, with color coded, keyed cables of with widely varying connector shapes.
I remember when everything was unkeyed, unmarked ribbon cables, both inside and out, as far as the eye could see. And you had to plug unkeyed ICs by hand into their sockets.
My point is that they are calling their distribution a "private performance", on the grounds that it is being presented to specific individuals who have requested the service. What is to stop something similar from happening with other copyrighted works?
First, the public performance / private performance dichotomy only matters for certain types of works: literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, motion picture and other audiovisual works, and in the case of digital audio transmissions only, sound recordings. (That's why analog radio stations don't have to pay royalties to recording artists to play records: no performance right. There is a right for the underlying song, though, so they do pay songwriters)
Second, expense and impracticality. If Aereo wanted to branch out into something like Netflix, where it rented videos on demand, it would have to contend with Redd Horne. The Redd Horne case involved a video rental store that not only rented videotapes without authorization (which is not infringing if the copies are eligible for First Sale), but also provided in-store viewing areas, and TV sets, for people to watch the movies with. Patrons using the viewing areas didn't handle the tape themselves; the store clerk had control of the tape and the VCR. Essentially, they were operating a small, on-demand movie theater, and this was found to be infringing because they re-used the same copy of the tape and the tape was never even under the dominion of the patron, but at all times under the dominion of the store.
More recently, this cropped up with a company called Zediva, which offered to rent a DVD, and a player to a customer, and to stream the video over the Internet. Based on Redd Horne, they got shut down, because again, they reused the same copies that they showed people, and they retained control over the copies.
For Aereo to avoid these precedents, they'd need to have one lawfully made copy of each video per customer, and never share them between customers. Dealing with all the discs would require more physical space, more equipment, more staff, and would still be risky due to the discs remaining on Aereo's premises. They can't copy the discs. And it would not be particularly inexpensive for the customers who could just go get them from Amazon or wherever. The cost and impracticality of it is what makes it unlikely.
Most other sorts of works aren't transmitted freely from hither and yon. A hardcopy book would be even worse than a DVD. Ebooks aren't broadcast for free like OTA TV. Web pages are more easily viewed in the user's own web browser directly, rather than paying Aereo a monthly fee to be a middleman for no good reason.
So I don't think it's very likely that the Aereo model will spread beyond free, OTA TV.
They are doing these so-called "private performances" for anyone who wants to use their service among the general public
No, they're allowing anyone among the general public to make their own individualized recordings of OTA TV signals. Once the recording is made, it's not performed publicly, and it's not shared around.
But when you allow the public to see your "private performances", it's not really private anymore is it?
Aereo doesn't. It's separate performances per user, which maintains their private nature. Public performances would require that multiple users experienced the same performance, or at least shared the same copies which were being used to make the performance. That's what distinguishes it from a regular broadcaster (which uses a master performance) or a Redd Horne style video on demand service. (which re-used copies and was found liable for public performance)
The argument against it basically hinges on ignoring the fact that copyright only protects public performances, and expanding the right to all performances, because private persons viewed in aggregate, even though otherwise not connected to each other, comprise the public. And also, by ignoring the individualized nature of the copies, and instead viewing it as sharing copies because they all stem from a master source.
If I had a TV, I could invite friends over to watch a sporting event with me on my television. I could not, however, advertise that my house will be open to whomever wants to come over and watch sports with me, since that would constitute public viewing, even though it is in the privacy of my home.
OTOH, if you had 100 TVs, and 100 TV antennas, you could rent those TVs and antennas to private persons to set up and use in their own homes for the duration of the rental agreement. This is actually a longstanding practice. In fact, my paternal grandparents didn't own a TV for a long time, but did rent one in 1969 in order to watch the moon landing. The parallels to Aereo's service are pretty strong: users get exclusive access to an antenna, a video file, and a sufficient portion of computing and telecommunications resources in order to get the video stream.
personally giving a copy of another copyrighted work without authorization to somebody else in particular can actually constitute private use
Distributing a copy of a work is protected by copyright. However, there is a big exception in first sale; if the copy was lawfully made, and has been conveyed by the copyright holder or an authorized person, the copyright holder cannot control future distribution of the work by means of his copyright (subject to a few exceptions not relevant here).
So if you give me a copy of a book you bought from the bookstore, that's ok. You don't need authorization. You can even do it if you're specifically ordered not to by the copyright holder; he is impotent in the matter.
And there's no such thing as private use, really. Copyright doesn't prohibit public use, or private use, or any sort of use-use, really. Reproduction, distribution, making derivatives, public performance, public display are basically all that's prohibited. So long as your use doesn't involve any of those, the copyright is inapplicable. And if it does, there may yet be an applicable exception.
It's my understanding that there is even legal precedent for this exact situation
Super, let's have it. Of course, you might still want to look at the previously linked-to Second Circuit opinion, in case the court already looked at that precedent.
distribution of copies of copyrighted works without authorization to other individuals should reasonably be considered "private copies".
The public performance right only covers public performances. The distribution right, like the honey badger, don't care: it applies to both public and private distribution. First sale and fair use, likewise, are unaffected.
If a person does not abide by the terms of the GPL, however, then the permission that the GPL grants does not apply to that person, and so could be found guilty of copyright infringement when making copies of the work that do not fall within the boundaries of fair use.
Copyright is about more than just fair use, you know.
It may help to think of copyright by means of a Venn diagram. It's like a subset that is, itself, full of sub-subsets that compromise holes in what the subset contains.
The largest set is the public domain. Anything in the public domain can be used freely, in any way, so far as copyright is concerned. (Because we're talking about copyright, and not, say, personal property, note that a copy of a work can still be owned and off-limits even though the creative work embodied in that copy is not protected. For example, the Mona Lisa is in the public domain, but the actual wooden painting made by Da Vinci is heavily guarded. Copyright might not give anyone the right to stop you from making a copy of the Mona Lisa, but the Louvre doesn't have to let you take a photograph of it.)
Works that are copyrighted fall partially into the subset of copyright. Partially, not wholly, because copyright only applies to certain types of action with regard to a work. For example, making a new copy of a work by reproducing it is one of the exclusive rights of copyright. But using a book (which is a copy of a work) to prop up an uneven bedframe is not an infringement of copyright, because the law does not grant copyright holders an exclusive right of 'propping-up.' Likewise, some kinds of works are not copyrightable. In the US, from 1790 on, only books and maps could be copyrighted. Only when the law was amended in 1802 were some engravings copyrightable. In 1831, all engravings, and also musical compositions; 1856, dramatic works; 1865, photographs; 1870, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and models and designs of works of fine art; 1912, motion pictures qua motion pictures (previously they were claimed as collections of photographs); 1971, sound recordings; 1976, pantomime and choreography as themselves, as opposed to being dramatic works; 1990, architecture. Anything not on the list of protected types of works is in the public domain. (Software, in case you're wondering, is treated as a literary work, like a book, but doesn't yet have its own category) There are a few other limits on what is copyrightable, but they're not terribly important for our purposes.
Of the list of enumerated rights which compromise copyright, and which is short in comparison to the list of all rights concerning those works and their copies, as applied to those works which are eligible for copyright, which is less than the totality of all works, there are still some subsets which further limit copyright protection.
Fair use is one of them -- any otherwise infringing use, which is fair, is not infringing. That's a fairly good-sized hole in the already swiss-cheesed set of copyright. First sale is another big one -- the right of the copyright holder to control the distribution of copies is almost entirely obliterated once the copyright holder has sold the copies in question. There are some exceptions to that exception, and some exceptions to those exceptions to the exception, but it's still shrinking copyright. Another one you might enjoy for software is that if a person owns a copy of a program, he can copy it and modify it in order to make it work, without needing permission. Likewise, he can make backups without permission. So really, so far as copyright goes, people in the US only need to agree to the GPL to copy a work if they're going beyond the statutory exception that keeps copyright from stopping them making certain copies.
There are exceptions like this throughout the Copyright Act. They can be broad, they can be narrow, they can be subject to various conditions and exceptions themselves. But the point remains that copyright is an all-encompassing, all-covering blanket. I
I can easily see it resulting in the complete dissolution of copyrightable open source, simply by labeling each individual transmission of the work a so-called "private production" or whatever is necessary to somehow make it inapplicable to being an infringement.
Performing a work privately isn't infringing, because the exclusive right of performance under section 106 only applies to public performances. However, unlike the GPL, this does not 'infect' the work or any instance of the work. Copyright applies to the work as much as it ever did. Therefore, if you privately perform a work, by, for example, watching it on TV, you cannot make a copy of it, distribute copies of it, or make derivative works based upon it. There might be a fair use exception to certain acts depending on the circumstances (e.g. copying a work by recording it on a DVR, whether this is done at home or remotely over a network), but fair use can apply to any kind of use to any kind of work, so long as the use is fair. There's nothing special that a holding against Aereo would do vis a vis fair use and its applicability to open source software.
You're worried about things that have no chance of happening, possibly due to ignorance of US copyright law. It's not just making a mountain out of a molehill. You're making a mountain out of sheer imagination; there's no molehill or any other thing to enlarge in the first place.