After the election is called, candidates have a certain amount of time (3 weeks?) to nominate, subject to evidence of a certain amount of support (500? signatures on the nomination documents).
Well, see, I think that anyone who wants to be on the ballot who is eligible for the position as of the time he'd take it ought to be able to be on the ballot regardless of support. Showing support is basically how the two big parties in the US keep the other parties off the ballot; it's too abusable IMO.
It honestly beats me why America sticks with the Collegiate system - if only for the reason that it shows up the fact that true democracy is an illusion, by removing the voter one step further from the process.
It's in the Constitution, so it would be difficult to change it. And it's an aspect of state soverignty, and it tends to balance things out a bit, giving smaller states more of a voice than they'd have if we went purely by population. It's basically a facet of the same compromise that resulted in there being a House based on population and a Senate that provided equal representation to each state.
Besides, it's only an issue for the Presidential election; it's not the biggest deal in the world.
Well, that's the PRIMARY, where parties are allowed to restrict who votes in their elections to members of their own parties.
Unless a party lets non-members vote in their primary, you can't vote for that party at all. Your affiliation can't really be a secret there.
OTOH, which member of the party you vote for in the primary does remain a secret, because they're all on the same ballot. Hence, it's still an australian ballot.
The main concern, however, is the general election, where anyone can vote for anyone regardless of party affiliation. Then every candidate needs to be on a single ballot to preserve secrecy.
Of course, the "major" parties don't approve of anything that might threaten to break their shared monopoly on power. That's why they've instituted the Australian ballot and draconian ballot access laws.
Not entirely. The Australian ballot is important in order to have a secret ballot. In the age of party-printed ballots (where you would put the party's ballot into the box), you could be observed putting a ballot that was clearly belonging to one party or another into the box.
If you want a secret ballot, then they can't be distinguishable. This does present a problem of ballot access (since now we have the government printing the ballots, and therefore, determining who will be on it when it comes time to print them), but I think that this can be rectified without compromising secrecy. For example, we could merely have a deadline, which was the last possible date to go to press and print enough ballots, and let anyone on who who was eligible, if they filed prior to the deadline (probably in October). And permit write ins for anyone that missed the deadline.
I don't think the logic really holds up. That certain chemical processes are possible also derive from nature. Patents are granted, in part, to encourage discovering such things, and to productively make use of them.
If you're the first person to discover how to compress everything down to 0 or 1, and sucessfully uncompress it, should you not have been encouraged to find that out?
Of course, I think there are good reasons to not patent software, and to not have standards bodies adopt patented standards, but they're different than yours.
I skimmed through Gutenberg's 20,000 Leagues in writing the post, actually. The big excerpt is all Mysterious Island. But the statement about being Indian IS from 20,000 Leagues, and comes shortly after the scene where Nemo rescues an Indian pearl diver and gives him a bag of pearls, IIRC.
Quite a bit later, he briefly mentions how he's upset about losing his family, et al.
Certainly he never gets into details at all, much less as much as we get in Mysterious Island, but we do get a few little glimpses.
Copyright was granted to publishers, not authors, and was generally used as not merely a form of royal favor via the stationers, but also as a form of censorship, as no one could publish anything legally without authorization.
The stationers' copyrights predating the 1710 Statute of Anne are generally not considered to be copyright in the way that we think of it now.
The framers, meanwhile, basically cribbed the thinking behind the Statute of Anne, which was very good, and the 1790 Act reads a lot like it as well.
I never said the US invented copyrights; the British did that. But the only real similarity with the law on the books at the time the word was coined was the name.
No, you're thinking of John Hancock, the revolutionary from Boston, who lived 1737-1793, and would've had a hard time writing a book in the 1680's. It's someone else, but there doesn't seem to be much information online; what I've culled is from the OED.
Good luck finding a copy of the book to begin with.
Well, the first known use of the word 'pirate' to describe this sort of activity was in 1668, back in the 'golden age' of piracy, when it was much more notorious, and probably more common, than it is even now.
In fact, if the word were only being coined nowadays, it wouldn't be piracy, because that's not bad enough. It would be terrorism, because the coiner, one J. Hancock, really wanted to villify people who were selling his books without paying him. (Never mind that copyright law hadn't been created yet)
What he said, by the way, was: "Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies." It's in 'Brook's String of Pearls.'
I would begin with 17 USC 107, though of course it's not all that definitive, as Congress intended to restate what the state of fair use was in 1976, but not to enlarge it, reduce it, or change it, nor are the factors listed exhaustive, nor the uses listed probative.
There's a ton of good cases on fair use. I'd suggest Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994), Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 464 US 417 (1984), Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003), RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999).
There are a number of other good cases, however. This is barely scratching the surface.
The most important thing to walk away with is that ANYTHING can be a fair use. But then, anything might not be a fair use. It totally depends on the circumstances; nothing is categorical.
At one point in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo declares himself to be a native of India, who has lost his family and his homeland.
He shows up again in The Mysterious Island, and although there are inconsistancies between the two books, we get a lot more information about him:
Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe.
From the age of ten years to that of thirty Prince Dakkar, endowed by Nature with her richest gifts of intellect, accumulated knowledge of every kind, and in science, literature, and art his researches were extensive and profound.
He traveled over the whole of Europe. His rank and fortune caused him to be everywhere sought after; but the pleasures of the world had for him no attractions. Though young and possessed of every personal advantage, he was ever grave--somber even--devoured by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and cherishing in the recesses of his heart the hope that he might become a great and powerful ruler of a free and enlightened people.
Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings. He became an artist deeply impressed by the marvels of art, a philosopher to whom no one of the higher sciences was unknown, a statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and are of no country.
The history of Captain Nemo has, in fact, been published under the title of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." Here, therefore, will apply the observation already made as to the adventures of Ayrton with regard to the discrepancy of dates. Readers should therefore refer to the note already published on this point.
This artist, this philosopher, this man was, however, still cherishing the hope instilled into him from his earliest days.
Prince Dakkar returned to Bundelkund in the year 1849. He married a noble Indian lady, who was imbued with an ambition not less ardent than that by which he was inspired. Two children were born to them, whom they tenderly loved. But domestic happiness did not prevent him from seeking to carry out the object at which he aimed. He waited an opportunity. At length, as he vainly fancied, it presented itself.
Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more unscrupulous than he was, the people of India were persuaded that they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and gross superstition made them the facile tools of their designing chiefs.
In 1857 the great sepoy revolt broke out. Prince Dakkar, under the belief that he should thereby have the opportunity of attaining the object of his long-cherished ambition, was easily drawn into it. He forthwith devoted his talents and wealth to the service of this cause. He aided it in person; he fought in the front ranks; he risked his life equally with the humblest of the wretched and misguided fanatics; he was ten times wounded in twenty engagements, seeking death but finding it not, but at length the sanguinary rebels were utterly defeated, and the atrocious mutiny was brought to an end.
Never before had the British power in India been exposed to such danger, and if, as they had hoped, the sepoys had received assistance from without, the influence and su
You can lawfully rent any lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work without permission, if you lawfully possess it. There's special exceptions for music and some computer software, but not movies.
What rental places pay for is to get copies to rent early, before they have to compete against stores selling copies. And of course, back in the old days, some movie copyright holders didn't like rentals, and really didn't like people buying copies, so would price very highly.
Now when somethign is downloaded, It does not constitute more then copy or a work unless the original remains on the server. By your theory, everytime someone makes a purchase from itunes, apple need to pay royalties for the copy residing on your computer, the copy being transmited over the internet, and a copy residing in your ram. This just isn't true because 2 of thse copies are instantly deleted and are only there as a medium to travel on.
No, a new copy arises whenever a work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, including any form of computer memory, long enough for it to be perceived or reproduced.
When a work is in, e.g. RAM, it is there long enough to be perceived or reproduced, and RAM is a tangible object, hence, the RAM itself is the copy of the work stored within it.
It doesn't matter if you promptly delete it, because that would not prevent it from having been fixed long enough to be perceived or reproduced. In fact, as the download progresses via limited purpose computers between the host and oneself, it necessarily must be reproduced long enough to be further reproduced, or it could not get to you!
Here's a quote from the Intellectual Reserve case that's directly on point:
"Copy" is defined in the Copyright Act as: "material objects . . . in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. 101. "A work is fixed' . . . when its . . . sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Id.
When a person [**10] browses a website, and by so doing displays the Handbook, a copy of the Handbook is made in the computer's random access memory (RAM), to permit viewing of the material. And in making a copy, even a temporary one, the person who browsed infringes the copyright. n5 See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511, 518 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that when material is transferred to a computer's RAM, copying has occurred; in the absence of ownership of the copyright or express permission by licence, such an act constitutes copyright infringement); Marobie-Fl., Inc. v. National Ass'n of Fire Equip. Distrib., 983 F. Supp. 1167, 1179 (N.D. Ill. 1997) (noting that liability for copyright infringement is with the persons who cause the display or distribution of the infringing material onto their computer); see also Nimmer on Copyright 8.08(A)(1) (stating that the infringing act of copying may occur from "loading the copyrighted material . . . into the computer's random access memory (RAM)").
And of course, Apple has in fact paid royalties for their entire system, including perhaps a certain extent of reproduction by users (e.g. from RAM to disk, from disk to RAM, on multiple machines, etc.). But their royalty is contractual, between them and whoever holds the applicable rights to the works involved, and probably is much flatter in structure than you seem to imagine. This isn't even a little bit difficult to arrange, and I am confident that it has been done.
Now when you cite 17 USC 501 and 106(1), as giving the copy owners the exclusive rite to reproductions or thier work, i think you are glossing over the exemption as provided in sections 106 thru 121. They give people specific rights to make or duplicat copies as well as tranfer thier copy of the copy writen work with out the consent of the copy holder.
That's because none of them is relevant except section 107, and as a practical matter, you usually can't win on that in the sorts of scenarios we're looking at here.
I don't see were a person is in any violation if they are transfering thier hard copy of the copy writen work to another person.
Well, you would be in violation of the distribution right, if not for the first
Renting a copy of a movie is merely a matter of trading posession of a copy (copies are tangible objects) for a span of time. No new copies are produced.
Giving out copies over the net is a matter of reproducing the movie onto the client computer's memory, which is therefore a new copy. The later disposition of the earlier copy isn't relevant.
So rental as we know it is a matter of distribution. Rental as you propose would be a matter of not only distribution, but also of reproduction.
i have reviewed 17 usc and have still not found were it make it ilegal for a consumer to be in posession of a copy writen work they recieved from normal channel of distrobution.
I think it would help quite a bit if we were on the same page with regards to what some of the important terms mean. Many of them are defined in 17 USC 101, and those meanings override any more everyday meanings.
Probably the most important one for us here, is the definition of a copy. A copy is a tangible object, in which a creative work is fixed. If I write a story, the story is the work. The paper which it is written on is the copy. If I xerox it, I now have two copies, but there's still only one work. The act of creating a copy, we can infer from 17 USC 106(1), is properly described as reproduction.
So when you download, the medium in which the work is fixed is the copy. I.e. a reproduction of a work in a copy has occurred, and thus there is an infringement per 17 USC 501 and 106(1).
This is why we see decisions such as Utah Lighthouse Ministry (viewing a website, which resulted in reproduction in RAM or cache on a hard drive, could be infringement), and Napster (downloaders performed direct infringements for which Napster was contributorially and vicariously liable).
The only issue now is, who did it. This isn't that hard: copyright is a strict liability statute. If it happened, you're responsible. But if it helps, we could look towards intent: did the downloader take some action with the intent of ending up with reproducing a work and getting a new copy of it (i.e. downloading it into computer memory where it hadn't been before) that directly and proximately resulted in the reproduction occuring? Obviously, he did. It's not as though the music downloaded itself. The user caused the reproduction, even though he had to use some other people's facilities in doing so. But it's no different, really, than going to a xerox shop and making copies via another's xerox machine. Maybe they're also in trouble, but that's not relevant to whether or not you are.
17 USC 602 is irrelevant as to importation, as importation is a form of distribution, not reproduction. (This is why 602 is irrelevant for allofmp3) That is to say, you are allowed to obtain an EXISTING copy of a work, where again a copy is a tangible object. It doesn't let you make one. And 602 is pretty limited anyway, when you look at 602(b) which is not subject to the exceptions in 602(a).
17 USC 111 basically deals with retransmitting tv and radio -- the scenario is where, rather than have one antenna per TV, you have one master antenna to which multiple TVs are attached. It's irrelevant to this discussion.
17 USC 110 deals with performances and displays -- which are different from reproductions, per 17 USC 106 -- and again is irrelevant here.
If i offer a song or movie or program for dowlaod as the means i am using to transfer my particular copy of a copy writen work to you that i have legaly obtained, then there is no violation of any law as long as i transfer the copy and do not attemp to keep any parts of it. (ie. i delete the remaining copy after it is gone)
However, since a copy is a tangible object, and not merely bits, it is impossible to transfer it via download. Rather, such a transaction involves the reproduction of a second copy, distinct from the first. Even if the first is subsequently destroyed, it's still an infringement. The end effect doesn't matter, and you will be fucked.
We can go further into section 117 were it allows for copy to be made of computer programs and the like under ceretain circomstances.
But 17 USC 117 is generally not applicable; it only applies to copies of computer software owned by a purchaser. EULAs may interfere with this, and music isn't computer software anyway.
As a matter of record, i didn't find anythign that specificaly said "no you cannot make a copy of somethign" rather i found examples of when you "can copy" wi
Re:Philosophical v. practical origins of IP law
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Is IP Property?
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Sigh. Another victim of the mutability of English.
Copyright is intended to promote science, which when the Constitution was written in the 1780's, meant general knowledge.
Patents deal with the useful arts, which back then meant usefully applied technology.
The structure of the clause -- science/useful arts -- authors/inventors -- writings/discoveries -- also indicates this, if you don't have your unabridged pocket OED handy.
Re:Philosophical v. practical origins of IP law
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Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I have a copy of that. You're wrong in your recollection, however. Patents date back to 15th century Venice, IIRC, and basically were, as they are now, intended to fulfill the public good. And the idea dates back to ancient Greece, although they never implemented it or took it all that seriously.
Copyrights, incidentally, date back to the 1710 Statute of Anne, and again, are intended for the public good. There was something else called copyrights prior to that, dating back to Queen Mary, but it was basically a system of censorship and royal largesse that's unrelated to anything now.
Anyway, there's really no debate that it's all utilitarian in nature, at least in the US, and despite some denials and fuzzy thinking, elsewhere as well. I really wish they'd stop wasting time with that Lockean garbage.
It's not as though we just deorbit stuff and pray like hell that it lands somewhere reasonable. This is why we had ships hanging around where our early capsules landed, why the Russians could get their capsules to land in Russia, and why the Shuttle, when not exploding, lands safely at any of a few predictable locations.
We certainly don't have a worldwide sky of helicopters, so they'd better well have aimed this thing towards the few (or one) copters they had to capture it.
It's not that hard.
It's only when we're not carefully controlling things -- like meteors, Skylabs and such, that they land all over the place. And even then we can make some guesses.
Hell, it's just dust. They should've left it in a stable orbit for later recovery. Some astronauts could pick it up later, or perhaps we could've finally gotten some space ROVs for it, which would of course have other handy applications.
Downloading copyrighted works without the authorization of the copyright holder or an applicable exemption is illegal in the US because of 17 USC 106. That statute establishes that the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce a work in copies. A copy is defined in 17 USC 101 as a material object from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, etc. (I'm paraphrasing all over the place here, but you can look at the statutes if you're curious about the precise wording)
Your hard drive is a material object from which works written to it can be perceived, reproduced, etc. Thus, if you write a work to it, the hard drive is the copy. Reproducing existing works into copies -- by reproducing, say, a video onto your hard drive as part of the download process -- therefore infringes, per 17 USC 501.
RAM counts too, BTW, per the MAI v. Peak decision and some others since, again, it's stable enough to be perceived or reproduced. That it's nevertheless volatile isn't relevant.
There are a LOT of rights under the general heading of 'copyright' and while people often recall that distribution is one of them, it is by far not the only one. 17 USC 106 has the biggies, and there are a few more scattered throughout title 17.
Sure, but this is a) cheaper, and b) more convenient, since DVDs are generally more annoying to use than video files on a hard drive, though there is still some work to be done with additional tracks and stuff for video files, I admit.
As for legality, the Tivo basically relies on the Sony case, which requires that, in this circumstance, the technology involved be capable of a significant noninfringing use. What people actually use it for isn't important.
There are various technical reasons why your scheme wouldn't work. But the main reason really is that, as the saying goes, the law is not an ass. It's not like a set of absolutely hard rules, or a computer or anything, which I find a lot of people around here seem to not understand. Ultimately it's kept running by people, and little games like this tend to get those people pissed off at you. This then makes your life crappy, and tends to result in whatever plan you might have had not working in any respect whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
allofmp3.com is still superior
Well sure, but it's illegal for people to use in the US. If you're going to infringe, why pay for it?
After the election is called, candidates have a certain amount of time (3 weeks?) to nominate, subject to evidence of a certain amount of support (500? signatures on the nomination documents).
Well, see, I think that anyone who wants to be on the ballot who is eligible for the position as of the time he'd take it ought to be able to be on the ballot regardless of support. Showing support is basically how the two big parties in the US keep the other parties off the ballot; it's too abusable IMO.
It honestly beats me why America sticks with the Collegiate system - if only for the reason that it shows up the fact that true democracy is an illusion, by removing the voter one step further from the process.
It's in the Constitution, so it would be difficult to change it. And it's an aspect of state soverignty, and it tends to balance things out a bit, giving smaller states more of a voice than they'd have if we went purely by population. It's basically a facet of the same compromise that resulted in there being a House based on population and a Senate that provided equal representation to each state.
Besides, it's only an issue for the Presidential election; it's not the biggest deal in the world.
Well, that's the PRIMARY, where parties are allowed to restrict who votes in their elections to members of their own parties.
Unless a party lets non-members vote in their primary, you can't vote for that party at all. Your affiliation can't really be a secret there.
OTOH, which member of the party you vote for in the primary does remain a secret, because they're all on the same ballot. Hence, it's still an australian ballot.
The main concern, however, is the general election, where anyone can vote for anyone regardless of party affiliation. Then every candidate needs to be on a single ballot to preserve secrecy.
Of course, the "major" parties don't approve of anything that might threaten to break their shared monopoly on power. That's why they've instituted the Australian ballot and draconian ballot access laws.
Not entirely. The Australian ballot is important in order to have a secret ballot. In the age of party-printed ballots (where you would put the party's ballot into the box), you could be observed putting a ballot that was clearly belonging to one party or another into the box.
If you want a secret ballot, then they can't be distinguishable. This does present a problem of ballot access (since now we have the government printing the ballots, and therefore, determining who will be on it when it comes time to print them), but I think that this can be rectified without compromising secrecy. For example, we could merely have a deadline, which was the last possible date to go to press and print enough ballots, and let anyone on who who was eligible, if they filed prior to the deadline (probably in October). And permit write ins for anyone that missed the deadline.
I guess you never noticed the various federal prohibitions on certain types of arms, FDA and ATF regulation of alcohol, or Prohibition.
Actually, in the US, punctuation is within quotes, in the UK et al, punctuation is without quotes.
IIRC, the reason we Americans put them within is because otherwise they'd be 'lonely.'
I don't think the logic really holds up. That certain chemical processes are possible also derive from nature. Patents are granted, in part, to encourage discovering such things, and to productively make use of them.
If you're the first person to discover how to compress everything down to 0 or 1, and sucessfully uncompress it, should you not have been encouraged to find that out?
Of course, I think there are good reasons to not patent software, and to not have standards bodies adopt patented standards, but they're different than yours.
I skimmed through Gutenberg's 20,000 Leagues in writing the post, actually. The big excerpt is all Mysterious Island. But the statement about being Indian IS from 20,000 Leagues, and comes shortly after the scene where Nemo rescues an Indian pearl diver and gives him a bag of pearls, IIRC.
Quite a bit later, he briefly mentions how he's upset about losing his family, et al.
Certainly he never gets into details at all, much less as much as we get in Mysterious Island, but we do get a few little glimpses.
Copyright was granted to publishers, not authors, and was generally used as not merely a form of royal favor via the stationers, but also as a form of censorship, as no one could publish anything legally without authorization.
The stationers' copyrights predating the 1710 Statute of Anne are generally not considered to be copyright in the way that we think of it now.
The framers, meanwhile, basically cribbed the thinking behind the Statute of Anne, which was very good, and the 1790 Act reads a lot like it as well.
I never said the US invented copyrights; the British did that. But the only real similarity with the law on the books at the time the word was coined was the name.
No, you're thinking of John Hancock, the revolutionary from Boston, who lived 1737-1793, and would've had a hard time writing a book in the 1680's. It's someone else, but there doesn't seem to be much information online; what I've culled is from the OED.
Good luck finding a copy of the book to begin with.
Well, the first known use of the word 'pirate' to describe this sort of activity was in 1668, back in the 'golden age' of piracy, when it was much more notorious, and probably more common, than it is even now.
In fact, if the word were only being coined nowadays, it wouldn't be piracy, because that's not bad enough. It would be terrorism, because the coiner, one J. Hancock, really wanted to villify people who were selling his books without paying him. (Never mind that copyright law hadn't been created yet)
What he said, by the way, was: "Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies." It's in 'Brook's String of Pearls.'
I would begin with 17 USC 107, though of course it's not all that definitive, as Congress intended to restate what the state of fair use was in 1976, but not to enlarge it, reduce it, or change it, nor are the factors listed exhaustive, nor the uses listed probative.
There's a ton of good cases on fair use. I'd suggest Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994), Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 464 US 417 (1984), Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003), RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999).
There are a number of other good cases, however. This is barely scratching the surface.
The most important thing to walk away with is that ANYTHING can be a fair use. But then, anything might not be a fair use. It totally depends on the circumstances; nothing is categorical.
Please direct your comments to Jules Verne.
At one point in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo declares himself to be a native of India, who has lost his family and his homeland.
He shows up again in The Mysterious Island, and although there are inconsistancies between the two books, we get a lot more information about him:
Wrong.
You can lawfully rent any lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work without permission, if you lawfully possess it. There's special exceptions for music and some computer software, but not movies.
What rental places pay for is to get copies to rent early, before they have to compete against stores selling copies. And of course, back in the old days, some movie copyright holders didn't like rentals, and really didn't like people buying copies, so would price very highly.
No, a new copy arises whenever a work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, including any form of computer memory, long enough for it to be perceived or reproduced.
When a work is in, e.g. RAM, it is there long enough to be perceived or reproduced, and RAM is a tangible object, hence, the RAM itself is the copy of the work stored within it.
It doesn't matter if you promptly delete it, because that would not prevent it from having been fixed long enough to be perceived or reproduced. In fact, as the download progresses via limited purpose computers between the host and oneself, it necessarily must be reproduced long enough to be further reproduced, or it could not get to you!
Here's a quote from the Intellectual Reserve case that's directly on point:
And of course, Apple has in fact paid royalties for their entire system, including perhaps a certain extent of reproduction by users (e.g. from RAM to disk, from disk to RAM, on multiple machines, etc.). But their royalty is contractual, between them and whoever holds the applicable rights to the works involved, and probably is much flatter in structure than you seem to imagine. This isn't even a little bit difficult to arrange, and I am confident that it has been done.
Now when you cite 17 USC 501 and 106(1), as giving the copy owners the exclusive rite to reproductions or thier work, i think you are glossing over the exemption as provided in sections 106 thru 121. They give people specific rights to make or duplicat copies as well as tranfer thier copy of the copy writen work with out the consent of the copy holder.
That's because none of them is relevant except section 107, and as a practical matter, you usually can't win on that in the sorts of scenarios we're looking at here.
I don't see were a person is in any violation if they are transfering thier hard copy of the copy writen work to another person.
Well, you would be in violation of the distribution right, if not for the first
Because they're not the same thing.
Renting a copy of a movie is merely a matter of trading posession of a copy (copies are tangible objects) for a span of time. No new copies are produced.
Giving out copies over the net is a matter of reproducing the movie onto the client computer's memory, which is therefore a new copy. The later disposition of the earlier copy isn't relevant.
So rental as we know it is a matter of distribution. Rental as you propose would be a matter of not only distribution, but also of reproduction.
i have reviewed 17 usc and have still not found were it make it ilegal for a consumer to be in posession of a copy writen work they recieved from normal channel of distrobution.
I think it would help quite a bit if we were on the same page with regards to what some of the important terms mean. Many of them are defined in 17 USC 101, and those meanings override any more everyday meanings.
Probably the most important one for us here, is the definition of a copy. A copy is a tangible object, in which a creative work is fixed. If I write a story, the story is the work. The paper which it is written on is the copy. If I xerox it, I now have two copies, but there's still only one work. The act of creating a copy, we can infer from 17 USC 106(1), is properly described as reproduction.
So when you download, the medium in which the work is fixed is the copy. I.e. a reproduction of a work in a copy has occurred, and thus there is an infringement per 17 USC 501 and 106(1).
This is why we see decisions such as Utah Lighthouse Ministry (viewing a website, which resulted in reproduction in RAM or cache on a hard drive, could be infringement), and Napster (downloaders performed direct infringements for which Napster was contributorially and vicariously liable).
The only issue now is, who did it. This isn't that hard: copyright is a strict liability statute. If it happened, you're responsible. But if it helps, we could look towards intent: did the downloader take some action with the intent of ending up with reproducing a work and getting a new copy of it (i.e. downloading it into computer memory where it hadn't been before) that directly and proximately resulted in the reproduction occuring? Obviously, he did. It's not as though the music downloaded itself. The user caused the reproduction, even though he had to use some other people's facilities in doing so. But it's no different, really, than going to a xerox shop and making copies via another's xerox machine. Maybe they're also in trouble, but that's not relevant to whether or not you are.
17 USC 602 is irrelevant as to importation, as importation is a form of distribution, not reproduction. (This is why 602 is irrelevant for allofmp3) That is to say, you are allowed to obtain an EXISTING copy of a work, where again a copy is a tangible object. It doesn't let you make one. And 602 is pretty limited anyway, when you look at 602(b) which is not subject to the exceptions in 602(a).
17 USC 111 basically deals with retransmitting tv and radio -- the scenario is where, rather than have one antenna per TV, you have one master antenna to which multiple TVs are attached. It's irrelevant to this discussion.
17 USC 110 deals with performances and displays -- which are different from reproductions, per 17 USC 106 -- and again is irrelevant here.
If i offer a song or movie or program for dowlaod as the means i am using to transfer my particular copy of a copy writen work to you that i have legaly obtained, then there is no violation of any law as long as i transfer the copy and do not attemp to keep any parts of it. (ie. i delete the remaining copy after it is gone)
However, since a copy is a tangible object, and not merely bits, it is impossible to transfer it via download. Rather, such a transaction involves the reproduction of a second copy, distinct from the first. Even if the first is subsequently destroyed, it's still an infringement. The end effect doesn't matter, and you will be fucked.
We can go further into section 117 were it allows for copy to be made of computer programs and the like under ceretain circomstances.
But 17 USC 117 is generally not applicable; it only applies to copies of computer software owned by a purchaser. EULAs may interfere with this, and music isn't computer software anyway.
As a matter of record, i didn't find anythign that specificaly said "no you cannot make a copy of somethign" rather i found examples of when you "can copy" wi
Sigh. Another victim of the mutability of English.
Copyright is intended to promote science, which when the Constitution was written in the 1780's, meant general knowledge.
Patents deal with the useful arts, which back then meant usefully applied technology.
The structure of the clause -- science/useful arts -- authors/inventors -- writings/discoveries -- also indicates this, if you don't have your unabridged pocket OED handy.
Yeah, I have a copy of that. You're wrong in your recollection, however. Patents date back to 15th century Venice, IIRC, and basically were, as they are now, intended to fulfill the public good. And the idea dates back to ancient Greece, although they never implemented it or took it all that seriously.
Copyrights, incidentally, date back to the 1710 Statute of Anne, and again, are intended for the public good. There was something else called copyrights prior to that, dating back to Queen Mary, but it was basically a system of censorship and royal largesse that's unrelated to anything now.
Anyway, there's really no debate that it's all utilitarian in nature, at least in the US, and despite some denials and fuzzy thinking, elsewhere as well. I really wish they'd stop wasting time with that Lockean garbage.
Because they aimed.
It's not as though we just deorbit stuff and pray like hell that it lands somewhere reasonable. This is why we had ships hanging around where our early capsules landed, why the Russians could get their capsules to land in Russia, and why the Shuttle, when not exploding, lands safely at any of a few predictable locations.
We certainly don't have a worldwide sky of helicopters, so they'd better well have aimed this thing towards the few (or one) copters they had to capture it.
It's not that hard.
It's only when we're not carefully controlling things -- like meteors, Skylabs and such, that they land all over the place. And even then we can make some guesses.
Hell, it's just dust. They should've left it in a stable orbit for later recovery. Some astronauts could pick it up later, or perhaps we could've finally gotten some space ROVs for it, which would of course have other handy applications.
Downloading copyrighted works without the authorization of the copyright holder or an applicable exemption is illegal in the US because of 17 USC 106. That statute establishes that the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce a work in copies. A copy is defined in 17 USC 101 as a material object from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, etc. (I'm paraphrasing all over the place here, but you can look at the statutes if you're curious about the precise wording)
Your hard drive is a material object from which works written to it can be perceived, reproduced, etc. Thus, if you write a work to it, the hard drive is the copy. Reproducing existing works into copies -- by reproducing, say, a video onto your hard drive as part of the download process -- therefore infringes, per 17 USC 501.
RAM counts too, BTW, per the MAI v. Peak decision and some others since, again, it's stable enough to be perceived or reproduced. That it's nevertheless volatile isn't relevant.
There are a LOT of rights under the general heading of 'copyright' and while people often recall that distribution is one of them, it is by far not the only one. 17 USC 106 has the biggies, and there are a few more scattered throughout title 17.
Sure, but this is a) cheaper, and b) more convenient, since DVDs are generally more annoying to use than video files on a hard drive, though there is still some work to be done with additional tracks and stuff for video files, I admit.
As for legality, the Tivo basically relies on the Sony case, which requires that, in this circumstance, the technology involved be capable of a significant noninfringing use. What people actually use it for isn't important.
No.
There are various technical reasons why your scheme wouldn't work. But the main reason really is that, as the saying goes, the law is not an ass. It's not like a set of absolutely hard rules, or a computer or anything, which I find a lot of people around here seem to not understand. Ultimately it's kept running by people, and little games like this tend to get those people pissed off at you. This then makes your life crappy, and tends to result in whatever plan you might have had not working in any respect whatsoever.