If they were happy with English law they wouldn't have revolted.
It had more to do with English rule. The colonies adopted virtually all English law as their own. This is why when you're studying the common law -- whether it be torts, or contracts, or property, or whatever -- you end up reading a lot of cases from England and other English-speaking countries. Many of them are even post-Revolutionary, but they illustrate common points of law well enough that we use them as precedent here. I would not be surprised to discover that those countries sometimes refer to our cases for the same reason.
You've already told me how the First Congress decided that any limitations on their power didn't really apply to them.
No, I didn't. What I'm saying is that the courts pay special attention to what the First Congress did, because they were first and their actions can provide us with additional insight. So it's a judicial practice.
As for Congress itself, they have always written copyright laws that provided for transfers of rights. So I guess you're upset with all of them. And the courts. And the Presidents that signed the bills into law. And the voters (and state governments, when they were more involved with sending people to Congress).
Your point of view, and the point of view of the courts, is a result of stupidity.
No, the stupidity/malice thing is Hanlon's Razor.
Occam's Razor is that the most simple answer is probably the correct one. So which is simpler: that absolutely everyone involved in copyright law since 1710 is wrong, or that you alone are wrong?
No, I'm saying that RIAA can distribute via Napster just as well as any pirate can do so. Pirates have no special advantage there.
In the hardcopy world, it's either a) cheaper for RIAA to stamp CDs, package and ship them than it is for a CDR company to make CDRs, package and ship them, or b) RIAA needs to use CDRs instead of stamped CDs, if they are indeed cheaper marginally.
Hardly. The Framer's were coming out of England and this is exactly the type of thing which they were attempting to prevent from happening again.
Piffle.
First, US copyright law was closely based on English copyright law. It had to be, really. No one had any alternatives. If the framers were opposed to what was going on in England, they would not have had copyright at all, like the rest of the world.
Second, the colonies set up their own copyright laws prior to ratification. All of them permitted copyrights to be conveyed. This was the background the Framers were working in.
Third, the first federal copyright law permitted copyrights to be conveyed. The acts of the First Congress are afforded special attention since they, if anyone, knew best what the framers meant. A number of them were framers, for starters.
It says exclusive.
Which describes the rights, but not who may hold them.
And every time, no matter how many bought court decisions you have to back you, you're wrong.
So you're basically saying that you, alone in the universe, are right? Tell me, have you heard of Occam's Razor? Can you think of how it might be applied here?
Completely ignoring the superior economic position of the major labels.
That's because it's irrelevant.
Artists can self-publish. No one is preventing them from doing so. The fact that there are organizations that are better at it, because they can spread risk better, have more capital, are more experienced, etc. just indicates that specialization can be a good thing at times.
The artist is still free to choose how he wants to do it. No one is twisting his arm.
It's also safe to assume that recording contracts are in the interests of the recording company
Yes, that's central to contracts: two parties can be self-interested, and still reach a mutually beneficial agreement. This is ordinary. Why would you expect it to be otherwise?
Completely ignoring that the laws are rigged in favor of corporations which hold an economic upper hand.
And what laws are these? Be specific, and only cite the ones that the artist cannot avoid, as opposed to those which affect artists due to choices they've made.
Except that, Constitutionally, the exclusive right is reserved to the author or inventor.
No, the initial grant is reserved to them. After that, they can do with it as they will. That's how it was before the Constitution, at the time of its framing, immediately after it was ratified, and ever since. It's safe to assume then, that that's what was meant, as no one had done anything otherwise.
This is a red herring argument. Pirates have never had any ability to copy works more efficiently, or more easily, or more cheaply, than the authors themselves. In fact, marginal-cost-wise, pirates are usually at a disadvantage due to economies of scale.
The main pro-EULA argument is that the EULA is a part of the same transaction, it just happens to come later because it would be inconvenient beforehand.
I would suggest reading ProCD v. Zeidenberg, which is the main pro-EULA case, and Klocek v. Gateway, which is a noteworthy anti-EULA case. The whole thing seems to hinge on differing readings of the UCC.
I fail to see why you, who has done nothing at all, should be allowed to profit from my labor
Why not? If you are my neighbor, and your house is really nice, and you have a great garden and yard, it will increase the value of my property just due to the proximity. Plus, I get the benefit of the smell of the flowers, and the nice view, the services of pollinating insects attracted by your garden but who might also go to mine, and so on.
Just because you did something doesn't mean it's all yours.
Especially since we are not talking about profiting from your labor so much as profiting from the fruits of your labor. I cannot force you to labor. If you want to write a book or not, that's up to you. If you want to sell copies to people, that's up to you. I can benefit from the end product, however, if it has left your control.
Creative works are fruits of labor, and through the vast majority of history, have been unprotected. Copyright is a rather new idea, and sets up some artificial benefits for you. That you like those benefits doesn't make them any less artificial or subject to change as the public as a whole sees fit for their own purposes.
In fact, labor is an especially funny thing to talk about here, since copyright doesn't care about labor. Hard work does not make something copyrightable; it is creativity and originality that are required, even if the work was trivial.
Authors should get nothing
That's not what I said. What I said was "Authors should get nothing, save that it benefits the public."
Let me illustrate this. You said: So, should I make the investment, the current system gives me the potential to benefit from it. Notice the words "invest" and "potential" in the prior sentence. Creation of a book, music, movie, or program entails risk. I'm making an investment in it, because I think it's going to be worth it.
I agree. You are acting in a self-interested fashion. I have no problem with that. It's predictable and makes you easy to exploit. But you cannot fault anyone else for acting in their own self interest either!
The public as a whole is self interested. It wants two things: First, for all the works that might be created to be created. Second, to be subject to no limits as to how it enjoys these works.
Without copyright, the first interest is satisfied partially, but not much. The second interest is totally satisfied. Copyright is a way of spending a little bit of the satisfaction of the second interest to get a much larger amount of satisfaction of the first interest back.
So if we created a copyright that lasted for one year, you would see a lot of works get created that otherwise would not be created, and only a minor impairment of public enjoyment of those works. The net result is greater public satisfaction than without copyright at all.
The fact that artists receive some benefit is interesting, but it's not the point. Dairy cows get to live comfortable lives, but no one cares; we just want the milk. Bees get to increase their numbers and live in comfortable hives placed conveniently close to flowers, but no one cares; we just want the honey. Donkeys get to eat carrots, but no one cares; we just want to make them pull a wagonload of carrots to the market.
Artists might get some money for their work, but no one cares. We just want them to create stuff and get it into the public domain (with minimal copyright until it is in the public domain).
This requires that authors be subject to exploitation, and that we tailor the system so that we get the most bang for our buck, i.e. not granting too little copyright or too much. But whether any artist succeeds or fails is below notice.
So when you write your book, the greatest possible reward you ought to get should be the least possible reward that still is an incentive to you to write the book. More would be wasteful, and no one cares about your feelings on the subject. As it is difficult to tailor things to each artist individu
I just think that the creator should be able to decide if he wants his songs covered or not, and how much he should be compensated for the use.
In which case there generally would not be covers at all. And since there's no guarantee that a good performer will be a good songwriter or lyricist or vice versa, we end up with considerably less music. This is why we have compulsory licenses.
Maybe. But it's still not the right question. Authors are the worst people to develop copyright policy; it would be letting the fox guard the henhouse.
If that were the case, and it was legal to redistribute someone elses works without any kind of permission or compensation, why would anyone produce? Contrary to popular belief, most artists don't do it for the sake of art.
It's true that most artists are driven more by money than by other motives. Nevertheless, most is not the same as all. Additionally, not all money derives from copyright. Most artists get paid for their labor, and don't get paid from money that derives from copyrights at all.
So the question is, if we're starting from having some creation and no copyright, for what reason would we want any copyright, and given that reason, how much copyright would we want (which is both a matter of scope as well as duration)?
Before you respond by saying that the public wants more works created, let me warn you that a) more copyright does not necessarily result in more creation, b) that even when it does, there is a point of diminishing returns, and c) that the public wants more things out of a copyright system than just creation, so consider other public desires.
Heh, no. 117 only applies to "the owner of a copy of a computer program." If there's a EULA, you're not the owner of the copy, only a licensee, and 117 is useless to you.
Again, a discussion of source identifiers is a trademark issue, not a copyright issue. If you want to talk about that, fine, but it's not really germane to a discussion of copyright.
Besides which, you seem to be misunderstanding me.
Let's say that Stephen King writes a book. He prints up a bunch of copies, has his name on the cover, and sells them. There is no way in hell that, if I were going to make copies and sell them as well, competing with him, that I would put my name on the cover instead of his. I _totally_ want his name on there, since that's what sells them.
And interestingly I'd probably be in my rights to do so: he really did write the book. I couldn't claim that my copies were authorized, but not only could I say that he was the author, I probably would have trouble if I said otherwise. But these are all trademark questions.
I'm more interested in the copyright questions, which deal with whether I can make and sell copies of the book at all, regardless of what the name on the cover is.
I (or my assigns), however, AM the only source for books written on PHP by me
Sure, but you seem to be getting into trademark territory with all this talk of sources.
I'm just saying that the creative work, which is intangible, can be fixed into tangible copies. And all of those copies of the same work are essentially commodities. There is no material difference between your book printed by you, and your book printed by me. This should force us into competition, and our prices should drop to marginal cost plus whatever profit we can manage.
Instead, with copyright, you can eliminate competition and raise prices for copies of your work higher than they would be otherwise.
but it's an attempt by an enlightened society to recognize that we're better off providing incentives for people to create. If everything is stolen the second it's produced, simply because distribution costs are zero, then there's actually a negative incentive to create those items, especially since creation costs are definitely not zero.
It's not a negative incentive, it's just no incentive. And it's not the only incentive. Lots of people make stuff without regard for profit derived from copyright -- they're interested in reputation, or expressing themselves, or entertaining others, or have other sources of funding, and so on.
And there's one other thing.
A balance needs to be maintained between creators and consumers, and the rights and needs of both sides need to be respected.
This is wrong. There should be no balance, and no respect for creators, at least for its own sake.
Enlightened or not, copyright is a utilitarian construct. It's not a charity (and if it were, it's a lousy one). The public doesn't want to provide incentives for creation because it's nice. It wants to benefit from it. It wants to maximally benefit from it. This may involve some benefits for authors in the course of serving the public interest. But such authorial benefits are not the goal of the system. They're just means to an end. Authors should get nothing, save that it benefits the public. That's not balance and it's not respect. Copyright is a way to exploit authors, just as the proverbial carrot on a stick is a way to exploit the donkey pulling a load.
You need to think more about why society would be interested in creation, and what else is interested in, and how it can best exploit artists to get the most of what it wants for the least possible cost.
Well, I haven't gotten around to looking at/. today until now.
As for RIAA/MPAA, the situation is this: The authors know they have the option of going it alone or working with publishers that want a cut. The authors choose, and no one can force them to choose otherwise. It's safe to assume that the choice of the authors was made in their own self interest; they weighed the possible benefits, considered the risks, and decided that they'd do better if they gave some rights to RIAA than they would otherwise.
Who are we to tell them that they can't make their own choices in life? They're not children. They're not totally incompetent. So they get to be free to make decisions, whether the outcome is good or bad.
Selling or licensing a copyright is no different, really, than selling a car or a house or anything else.
Re:This sort of thing...
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Parents are almost never, if at all, responsible for the torts of their children. If the child has infringed and owes damages, then the plaintiff cannot force the parent to pay up. They'll have to collect them from the child. This is why people usually don't bother suing children.
the GPL is not a contract, it's a license.
I really don't know where this meme came from. I assure you, there's no difference. The GPL has an offer, a means of acceptance, and consideration. It functions perfectly fine as a contract, which is what a license is.
Re:Wrong argument - need a better solution
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Someone who is infringing copyright says it's not theft because the copyright holder still has the original material so they are doing no harm because they have deprived no-one of anything.
That's a fun jump. It's not theft because there is no taking. That doesn't mean there is no harm. If I burn down your house, that's arson, not theft, and I have harmed you.
Damages in the copyright realm are easy to compute, and no one denies the very concept. Still, it's not theft. It's some other offense.
They are violating the basic principles of capitalist economics
Copyrights are government granted monopolies on commodity goods. That's hardly capitalistic. Of course, this just goes to show, again, that capitalism in its raw form is not all that useful.
There is no moral high ground here
I would disagree slightly. Generally, I think that copyright is amoral. However, it is moral to spread creative works and to use them fruitfully. Copyright holders are opposed to this, and wish to keep knowledge under lock and key, portioning a little out only to those who can pay for it, and who are limited as to what they can do with it.
So if anyone is at all moral, it's pirates. But mostly I stick with the amoral approach.
a reasonable balance between rightsholders and the public
The concept of a balance is a big mistake. There should be no balance. Copyright law should always favor the public. This doesn't mean abolishing it, necessarily, as some limits on the public can in fact be beneficial to them, but it does mean that the interests of rightsholders should never be considered save as a means to serving the infinitely more important interests of the public.
Re:This sort of thing...
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Activist judges are the ones who think that lawyers writing recording contracts and conglomerate organizations like the RIAA/MPAA qualify as authors and inventors with respect to the work in question.
This might have been a fair point prior to the 1909 Act, but since then Congress has been codifying the work for hire doctrine, and you can't be an activist judge when you're upholding statutory law.
Incidentally, lawyers are known to claim copyrights on their work product. The degree to which they can enforce them is often limited by other concerns, at least against most people who would care, and they're likely weak given the merger doctrine, but I've heard of it happening.
Intellectual Propert - A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes.
A couple of problems here. First, products of the intellect are not property. There are certain prerequisites for something to be property -- it has to be enjoyable, lendable or not at will, and conveyable -- and products of the intellect don't meet the standard.
Second, patents are not products of the intellect, they are grants of a monopoly by the government. It is inventions that are products of the intellect. A patent may be property, but it's no different than a government granted monopoly on local cable tv service or whatnot. It cannot be called intellectual.
Third, appellations of origin are not products of the intellect. They are a combination of both truthful advertising and a token of the goodwill that resides in the minds of the public.
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Taking requires deprivation on the part of the takee. Where is that?
If I practice your invention, I haven't deprived you of the invention. I haven't deprived you of the patent, since you still have those exclusive rights and may employ them against me. You're deprived of nothing, in fact.
This is why we use the word infringement. What I have done in the example is an encroachment, but not a taking. This is why if you must insist on analogizing infringement to some other offense, the proper one is trespass. This is the same reason that when the government denies someone their civil liberties, we say that the government has infringed on their rights. A copyright or a patent is just a set of exclusive rights -- they're susceptable to being infringed upon, and damages may result, but they cannot be taken, at least not by the same course of action.
The rest of your post is just noise following from your initial mistakes.
A license is just a contract. In the copyright realm, a license is an agreement where the licensee says that he will give the licensor money, and the licensor says that in exchange for that money, he will agree not to sue the licensee for doing something that otherwise would be illegal (e.g. making copies).
You can license people to use your coffee mug if you want, though the more common term for that situation would be rental.
blatantly designed to turn information into a commodity.
No, that's what it ought to be doing. Copies of a work are commodities; anyone can make them, and thus competition will drive the cost down as far as possible. Copyrights are monopolies that interfere with this competition, keeping prices artificially high.
You left out the part about why Congress has the copyright and patent powers.
Also, no one is taking copyrights and patents. They're bought and sold, in whole or in part. The law doesn't mandate these sales. Authors and inventors choose to engage in them. I trust them to look out for their own interests. You apparently think you know better.
Sure it does. The Berne Convention protects nationals of convention countries; it doesn't protect the countries themselves. This is evident by looking at Art. 3 of Berne. Besides which, we're best off abandoning Berne as rapidly as possible. It is a bad idea with no redeeming features whatsoever.
Somebody / thing paid lots of money to research and develop the tube map. Its clearly something that people find so useful that its priceless (like water not diamonds). They need compensation for their works, but how much?
See, you're getting off on the wrong foot right there.
The degree of difficulty to create the map is irrelevant, as it is unconstitutional to grant copyright merely to protect someone's hard work. Rather, the only works that can be protected are original works, whether they were trivial to make, or took a tremendous amount of effort.
As the facts that the map is based upon, and certain conventions that it uses (north for up, blue for water, etc.) are not the creation of the mapmaker, anyone can use them, even if they derive them from the map itself. In fact, maps are very weakly protected. All that is protectable is the selection of what facts to include or not, how they're arranged, and the artistic aspect of the map -- provided that these things are creative (the choice to include every subway station is not, for example, creative).
This is why the enterprising guy at issue here is now making his own maps using the other maps as source material. It was only the literal copying of the official maps that was troublesome.
Is there a copyright equivalent to compulsery purchase orders?
In the US this is the power of eminent domain, and it applies to anything (though it is almost exclusively used AFAIK for land).
In this case it could be that when the copyright infringement gets to courts its within the judges power to say... hey, you were in the wrong, you did violate copyright I hereby slap your wrists, however, the works you were copying has great value to the public, and it is being used as a cash cow, I declare this works and any derivatives there of public domain.
No federal judge is going to even try to do this, nor could one.
Now public domain means that no one can make any money out of it, as people are free to download and copy for free (who would pay for a free service?).
So? You've never been in a bookstore that sold copies of Shakespeare? People often pay for copies of public domain works. Sure, I could d/l the thing, but I prefer to have a bound and printed copy. Since they don't have to pay the author, and have to compete with others, the price is typically little more than the materials and cost of printing them.
There are reasons to protect with copyright other than preserving profit.
No there aren't.
Perhaps the transit authority wants to make sure that all sources of the information are kept up to date. If they let anyone distribute it they can't be sure people will have an up to date map. If they insist people licence it then at least they can control this.
No they can't. First, because anyone can make a map of the system, and the MTA cannot control the accuracy of those maps or how up to date they are.
Second, because even official maps may still remain in circulation once out of date. E.g. if I go to NYC with my copy of 'Nieuw Amsterdam on Five Guilders a Day' I'm going to have difficulty getting around on the subway using the maps from when it was published.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were happy with English law they wouldn't have revolted.
It had more to do with English rule. The colonies adopted virtually all English law as their own. This is why when you're studying the common law -- whether it be torts, or contracts, or property, or whatever -- you end up reading a lot of cases from England and other English-speaking countries. Many of them are even post-Revolutionary, but they illustrate common points of law well enough that we use them as precedent here. I would not be surprised to discover that those countries sometimes refer to our cases for the same reason.
You've already told me how the First Congress decided that any limitations on their power didn't really apply to them.
No, I didn't. What I'm saying is that the courts pay special attention to what the First Congress did, because they were first and their actions can provide us with additional insight. So it's a judicial practice.
As for Congress itself, they have always written copyright laws that provided for transfers of rights. So I guess you're upset with all of them. And the courts. And the Presidents that signed the bills into law. And the voters (and state governments, when they were more involved with sending people to Congress).
Your point of view, and the point of view of the courts, is a result of stupidity.
No, the stupidity/malice thing is Hanlon's Razor.
Occam's Razor is that the most simple answer is probably the correct one. So which is simpler: that absolutely everyone involved in copyright law since 1710 is wrong, or that you alone are wrong?
No, I'm saying that RIAA can distribute via Napster just as well as any pirate can do so. Pirates have no special advantage there.
In the hardcopy world, it's either a) cheaper for RIAA to stamp CDs, package and ship them than it is for a CDR company to make CDRs, package and ship them, or b) RIAA needs to use CDRs instead of stamped CDs, if they are indeed cheaper marginally.
Hardly. The Framer's were coming out of England and this is exactly the type of thing which they were attempting to prevent from happening again.
Piffle.
First, US copyright law was closely based on English copyright law. It had to be, really. No one had any alternatives. If the framers were opposed to what was going on in England, they would not have had copyright at all, like the rest of the world.
Second, the colonies set up their own copyright laws prior to ratification. All of them permitted copyrights to be conveyed. This was the background the Framers were working in.
Third, the first federal copyright law permitted copyrights to be conveyed. The acts of the First Congress are afforded special attention since they, if anyone, knew best what the framers meant. A number of them were framers, for starters.
It says exclusive.
Which describes the rights, but not who may hold them.
And every time, no matter how many bought court decisions you have to back you, you're wrong.
So you're basically saying that you, alone in the universe, are right? Tell me, have you heard of Occam's Razor? Can you think of how it might be applied here?
Completely ignoring the superior economic position of the major labels.
That's because it's irrelevant.
Artists can self-publish. No one is preventing them from doing so. The fact that there are organizations that are better at it, because they can spread risk better, have more capital, are more experienced, etc. just indicates that specialization can be a good thing at times.
The artist is still free to choose how he wants to do it. No one is twisting his arm.
It's also safe to assume that recording contracts are in the interests of the recording company
Yes, that's central to contracts: two parties can be self-interested, and still reach a mutually beneficial agreement. This is ordinary. Why would you expect it to be otherwise?
Completely ignoring that the laws are rigged in favor of corporations which hold an economic upper hand.
And what laws are these? Be specific, and only cite the ones that the artist cannot avoid, as opposed to those which affect artists due to choices they've made.
Except that, Constitutionally, the exclusive right is reserved to the author or inventor.
No, the initial grant is reserved to them. After that, they can do with it as they will. That's how it was before the Constitution, at the time of its framing, immediately after it was ratified, and ever since. It's safe to assume then, that that's what was meant, as no one had done anything otherwise.
This is a red herring argument. Pirates have never had any ability to copy works more efficiently, or more easily, or more cheaply, than the authors themselves. In fact, marginal-cost-wise, pirates are usually at a disadvantage due to economies of scale.
The main pro-EULA argument is that the EULA is a part of the same transaction, it just happens to come later because it would be inconvenient beforehand.
I would suggest reading ProCD v. Zeidenberg, which is the main pro-EULA case, and Klocek v. Gateway, which is a noteworthy anti-EULA case. The whole thing seems to hinge on differing readings of the UCC.
I fail to see why you, who has done nothing at all, should be allowed to profit from my labor
Why not? If you are my neighbor, and your house is really nice, and you have a great garden and yard, it will increase the value of my property just due to the proximity. Plus, I get the benefit of the smell of the flowers, and the nice view, the services of pollinating insects attracted by your garden but who might also go to mine, and so on.
Just because you did something doesn't mean it's all yours.
Especially since we are not talking about profiting from your labor so much as profiting from the fruits of your labor. I cannot force you to labor. If you want to write a book or not, that's up to you. If you want to sell copies to people, that's up to you. I can benefit from the end product, however, if it has left your control.
Creative works are fruits of labor, and through the vast majority of history, have been unprotected. Copyright is a rather new idea, and sets up some artificial benefits for you. That you like those benefits doesn't make them any less artificial or subject to change as the public as a whole sees fit for their own purposes.
In fact, labor is an especially funny thing to talk about here, since copyright doesn't care about labor. Hard work does not make something copyrightable; it is creativity and originality that are required, even if the work was trivial.
Authors should get nothing
That's not what I said. What I said was "Authors should get nothing, save that it benefits the public."
Let me illustrate this. You said: So, should I make the investment, the current system gives me the potential to benefit from it. Notice the words "invest" and "potential" in the prior sentence. Creation of a book, music, movie, or program entails risk. I'm making an investment in it, because I think it's going to be worth it.
I agree. You are acting in a self-interested fashion. I have no problem with that. It's predictable and makes you easy to exploit. But you cannot fault anyone else for acting in their own self interest either!
The public as a whole is self interested. It wants two things: First, for all the works that might be created to be created. Second, to be subject to no limits as to how it enjoys these works.
Without copyright, the first interest is satisfied partially, but not much. The second interest is totally satisfied. Copyright is a way of spending a little bit of the satisfaction of the second interest to get a much larger amount of satisfaction of the first interest back.
So if we created a copyright that lasted for one year, you would see a lot of works get created that otherwise would not be created, and only a minor impairment of public enjoyment of those works. The net result is greater public satisfaction than without copyright at all.
The fact that artists receive some benefit is interesting, but it's not the point. Dairy cows get to live comfortable lives, but no one cares; we just want the milk. Bees get to increase their numbers and live in comfortable hives placed conveniently close to flowers, but no one cares; we just want the honey. Donkeys get to eat carrots, but no one cares; we just want to make them pull a wagonload of carrots to the market.
Artists might get some money for their work, but no one cares. We just want them to create stuff and get it into the public domain (with minimal copyright until it is in the public domain).
This requires that authors be subject to exploitation, and that we tailor the system so that we get the most bang for our buck, i.e. not granting too little copyright or too much. But whether any artist succeeds or fails is below notice.
So when you write your book, the greatest possible reward you ought to get should be the least possible reward that still is an incentive to you to write the book. More would be wasteful, and no one cares about your feelings on the subject. As it is difficult to tailor things to each artist individu
I just think that the creator should be able to decide if he wants his songs covered or not, and how much he should be compensated for the use.
In which case there generally would not be covers at all. And since there's no guarantee that a good performer will be a good songwriter or lyricist or vice versa, we end up with considerably less music. This is why we have compulsory licenses.
Are you okay with that?
Maybe. But it's still not the right question. Authors are the worst people to develop copyright policy; it would be letting the fox guard the henhouse.
If that were the case, and it was legal to redistribute someone elses works without any kind of permission or compensation, why would anyone produce? Contrary to popular belief, most artists don't do it for the sake of art.
It's true that most artists are driven more by money than by other motives. Nevertheless, most is not the same as all. Additionally, not all money derives from copyright. Most artists get paid for their labor, and don't get paid from money that derives from copyrights at all.
So the question is, if we're starting from having some creation and no copyright, for what reason would we want any copyright, and given that reason, how much copyright would we want (which is both a matter of scope as well as duration)?
Before you respond by saying that the public wants more works created, let me warn you that a) more copyright does not necessarily result in more creation, b) that even when it does, there is a point of diminishing returns, and c) that the public wants more things out of a copyright system than just creation, so consider other public desires.
Heh, no. 117 only applies to "the owner of a copy of a computer program." If there's a EULA, you're not the owner of the copy, only a licensee, and 117 is useless to you.
Again, a discussion of source identifiers is a trademark issue, not a copyright issue. If you want to talk about that, fine, but it's not really germane to a discussion of copyright.
Besides which, you seem to be misunderstanding me.
Let's say that Stephen King writes a book. He prints up a bunch of copies, has his name on the cover, and sells them. There is no way in hell that, if I were going to make copies and sell them as well, competing with him, that I would put my name on the cover instead of his. I _totally_ want his name on there, since that's what sells them.
And interestingly I'd probably be in my rights to do so: he really did write the book. I couldn't claim that my copies were authorized, but not only could I say that he was the author, I probably would have trouble if I said otherwise. But these are all trademark questions.
I'm more interested in the copyright questions, which deal with whether I can make and sell copies of the book at all, regardless of what the name on the cover is.
I (or my assigns), however, AM the only source for books written on PHP by me
Sure, but you seem to be getting into trademark territory with all this talk of sources.
I'm just saying that the creative work, which is intangible, can be fixed into tangible copies. And all of those copies of the same work are essentially commodities. There is no material difference between your book printed by you, and your book printed by me. This should force us into competition, and our prices should drop to marginal cost plus whatever profit we can manage.
Instead, with copyright, you can eliminate competition and raise prices for copies of your work higher than they would be otherwise.
but it's an attempt by an enlightened society to recognize that we're better off providing incentives for people to create. If everything is stolen the second it's produced, simply because distribution costs are zero, then there's actually a negative incentive to create those items, especially since creation costs are definitely not zero.
It's not a negative incentive, it's just no incentive. And it's not the only incentive. Lots of people make stuff without regard for profit derived from copyright -- they're interested in reputation, or expressing themselves, or entertaining others, or have other sources of funding, and so on.
And there's one other thing.
A balance needs to be maintained between creators and consumers, and the rights and needs of both sides need to be respected.
This is wrong. There should be no balance, and no respect for creators, at least for its own sake.
Enlightened or not, copyright is a utilitarian construct. It's not a charity (and if it were, it's a lousy one). The public doesn't want to provide incentives for creation because it's nice. It wants to benefit from it. It wants to maximally benefit from it. This may involve some benefits for authors in the course of serving the public interest. But such authorial benefits are not the goal of the system. They're just means to an end. Authors should get nothing, save that it benefits the public. That's not balance and it's not respect. Copyright is a way to exploit authors, just as the proverbial carrot on a stick is a way to exploit the donkey pulling a load.
You need to think more about why society would be interested in creation, and what else is interested in, and how it can best exploit artists to get the most of what it wants for the least possible cost.
Well, I haven't gotten around to looking at /. today until now.
As for RIAA/MPAA, the situation is this: The authors know they have the option of going it alone or working with publishers that want a cut. The authors choose, and no one can force them to choose otherwise. It's safe to assume that the choice of the authors was made in their own self interest; they weighed the possible benefits, considered the risks, and decided that they'd do better if they gave some rights to RIAA than they would otherwise.
Who are we to tell them that they can't make their own choices in life? They're not children. They're not totally incompetent. So they get to be free to make decisions, whether the outcome is good or bad.
Selling or licensing a copyright is no different, really, than selling a car or a house or anything else.
Parents are almost never, if at all, responsible for the torts of their children. If the child has infringed and owes damages, then the plaintiff cannot force the parent to pay up. They'll have to collect them from the child. This is why people usually don't bother suing children.
the GPL is not a contract, it's a license.
I really don't know where this meme came from. I assure you, there's no difference. The GPL has an offer, a means of acceptance, and consideration. It functions perfectly fine as a contract, which is what a license is.
Someone who is infringing copyright says it's not theft because the copyright holder still has the original material so they are doing no harm because they have deprived no-one of anything.
That's a fun jump. It's not theft because there is no taking. That doesn't mean there is no harm. If I burn down your house, that's arson, not theft, and I have harmed you.
Damages in the copyright realm are easy to compute, and no one denies the very concept. Still, it's not theft. It's some other offense.
They are violating the basic principles of capitalist economics
Copyrights are government granted monopolies on commodity goods. That's hardly capitalistic. Of course, this just goes to show, again, that capitalism in its raw form is not all that useful.
There is no moral high ground here
I would disagree slightly. Generally, I think that copyright is amoral. However, it is moral to spread creative works and to use them fruitfully. Copyright holders are opposed to this, and wish to keep knowledge under lock and key, portioning a little out only to those who can pay for it, and who are limited as to what they can do with it.
So if anyone is at all moral, it's pirates. But mostly I stick with the amoral approach.
a reasonable balance between rightsholders and the public
The concept of a balance is a big mistake. There should be no balance. Copyright law should always favor the public. This doesn't mean abolishing it, necessarily, as some limits on the public can in fact be beneficial to them, but it does mean that the interests of rightsholders should never be considered save as a means to serving the infinitely more important interests of the public.
Activist judges are the ones who think that lawyers writing recording contracts and conglomerate organizations like the RIAA/MPAA qualify as authors and inventors with respect to the work in question.
This might have been a fair point prior to the 1909 Act, but since then Congress has been codifying the work for hire doctrine, and you can't be an activist judge when you're upholding statutory law.
Incidentally, lawyers are known to claim copyrights on their work product. The degree to which they can enforce them is often limited by other concerns, at least against most people who would care, and they're likely weak given the merger doctrine, but I've heard of it happening.
Intellectual Propert - A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes.
A couple of problems here. First, products of the intellect are not property. There are certain prerequisites for something to be property -- it has to be enjoyable, lendable or not at will, and conveyable -- and products of the intellect don't meet the standard.
Second, patents are not products of the intellect, they are grants of a monopoly by the government. It is inventions that are products of the intellect. A patent may be property, but it's no different than a government granted monopoly on local cable tv service or whatnot. It cannot be called intellectual.
Third, appellations of origin are not products of the intellect. They are a combination of both truthful advertising and a token of the goodwill that resides in the minds of the public.
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Taking requires deprivation on the part of the takee. Where is that?
If I practice your invention, I haven't deprived you of the invention. I haven't deprived you of the patent, since you still have those exclusive rights and may employ them against me. You're deprived of nothing, in fact.
This is why we use the word infringement. What I have done in the example is an encroachment, but not a taking. This is why if you must insist on analogizing infringement to some other offense, the proper one is trespass. This is the same reason that when the government denies someone their civil liberties, we say that the government has infringed on their rights. A copyright or a patent is just a set of exclusive rights -- they're susceptable to being infringed upon, and damages may result, but they cannot be taken, at least not by the same course of action.
The rest of your post is just noise following from your initial mistakes.
A license is just a contract. In the copyright realm, a license is an agreement where the licensee says that he will give the licensor money, and the licensor says that in exchange for that money, he will agree not to sue the licensee for doing something that otherwise would be illegal (e.g. making copies).
You can license people to use your coffee mug if you want, though the more common term for that situation would be rental.
blatantly designed to turn information into a commodity.
No, that's what it ought to be doing. Copies of a work are commodities; anyone can make them, and thus competition will drive the cost down as far as possible. Copyrights are monopolies that interfere with this competition, keeping prices artificially high.
You left out the part about why Congress has the copyright and patent powers.
Also, no one is taking copyrights and patents. They're bought and sold, in whole or in part. The law doesn't mandate these sales. Authors and inventors choose to engage in them. I trust them to look out for their own interests. You apparently think you know better.
Ideally that would be the case however violations of the DMCA are criminal and as such are not regulated by the copyright holder.
No, they're both civil and criminal. Look at 17 USC 1203 and 1204.
Sure, but what about the rest of it?
Sure it does. The Berne Convention protects nationals of convention countries; it doesn't protect the countries themselves. This is evident by looking at Art. 3 of Berne. Besides which, we're best off abandoning Berne as rapidly as possible. It is a bad idea with no redeeming features whatsoever.
Somebody / thing paid lots of money to research and develop the tube map. Its clearly something that people find so useful that its priceless (like water not diamonds). They need compensation for their works, but how much?
See, you're getting off on the wrong foot right there.
The degree of difficulty to create the map is irrelevant, as it is unconstitutional to grant copyright merely to protect someone's hard work. Rather, the only works that can be protected are original works, whether they were trivial to make, or took a tremendous amount of effort.
As the facts that the map is based upon, and certain conventions that it uses (north for up, blue for water, etc.) are not the creation of the mapmaker, anyone can use them, even if they derive them from the map itself. In fact, maps are very weakly protected. All that is protectable is the selection of what facts to include or not, how they're arranged, and the artistic aspect of the map -- provided that these things are creative (the choice to include every subway station is not, for example, creative).
This is why the enterprising guy at issue here is now making his own maps using the other maps as source material. It was only the literal copying of the official maps that was troublesome.
Is there a copyright equivalent to compulsery purchase orders?
In the US this is the power of eminent domain, and it applies to anything (though it is almost exclusively used AFAIK for land).
In this case it could be that when the copyright infringement gets to courts its within the judges power to say... hey, you were in the wrong, you did violate copyright I hereby slap your wrists, however, the works you were copying has great value to the public, and it is being used as a cash cow, I declare this works and any derivatives there of public domain.
No federal judge is going to even try to do this, nor could one.
Now public domain means that no one can make any money out of it, as people are free to download and copy for free (who would pay for a free service?).
So? You've never been in a bookstore that sold copies of Shakespeare? People often pay for copies of public domain works. Sure, I could d/l the thing, but I prefer to have a bound and printed copy. Since they don't have to pay the author, and have to compete with others, the price is typically little more than the materials and cost of printing them.
There are reasons to protect with copyright other than preserving profit.
No there aren't.
Perhaps the transit authority wants to make sure that all sources of the information are kept up to date. If they let anyone distribute it they can't be sure people will have an up to date map. If they insist people licence it then at least they can control this.
No they can't. First, because anyone can make a map of the system, and the MTA cannot control the accuracy of those maps or how up to date they are.
Second, because even official maps may still remain in circulation once out of date. E.g. if I go to NYC with my copy of 'Nieuw Amsterdam on Five Guilders a Day' I'm going to have difficulty getting around on the subway using the maps from when it was published.
There are other potential problems as well.
Like?