47 USC 230(c)(1): No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
47 USC 230(f)(2): The term "interactive computer service" means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
47 USC 230(f)(3): The term "information content provider" means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.
What's this mean?
Well, the person who created the information at issue here -- i.e. the author of the offensive review -- is the information content provider. Teacherreviews.com didn't write that review, AFAICT, so they are not the information content provider. Instead, they have provided access to their web server, making them the provider of an interactive computer service.
And as the provider of an interactive computer service, they cannot be held liable for the information given to them by the information content provider.
Or in plainer English, the web site cannot be sued for providing a forum for libelous posts, so long as they're not the authors of the libelous posts to begin with. It doesn't even matter whether or not the posts are libelous; the most scurrilous libel in the world still can't taint them one bit.
Since this is federal law, it trumps state law. It is the law of the land.
N.b. that these are just excerpts, and there are plenty of limits on this that aren't applicable here in what appears to be a garden variety libel suit. People interested in this would do well to read all of 47 USC 230.
Ironically, this lovely law is the tiny remaining bit of the infamous Communications Decency Act, most of which was overturned as being unconstitutional. There are actually halfway decent bits of the DMCA too, if you know where to look, also showing that every cloud has its silver lining.
Well, HR 3313 has no silver lining, and is unashamedly evil, but mostly the silver lining thing works.
Actually, slander is by definition spoken. When printed or published, it is libel.
Secondly, the method that libel is disseminated is in fact of the upmost importance these days. Thanks to the one teeny tiny good (and constitutional) bit of the infamous CDA, it is legal for people providing services on the Internet (e.g. fora) to have libellous statements therein.
The originator of the libel can be sued -- but no suit can be brought against the web site where the libel resides.
The professor hasn't got a leg to stand on, and the site -- and the offensive comments -- need to go back up.
Well, AFAIK, that same caveat can be said about just about anything in 17 USC. Still, you're right, and it's a good catch.
But I was proposing a form of used record store in which no rental ever occurs, but music is sold and bought by the store at little cost. AHRA compliant media and devices are also sold. Thus it's inexpensive for a person to achieve the same benefits as they would in a rental world where AHRA was in effect, since they can recoup much of the cost of the original sale when they sell it back. (depending on various factors such as quality, how likely the store will be to be able to sell it again, etc.)
$5 or so for a permanent copy of an entire album you can't get sued over and which is of as high quality as you like without any DRM beats out iTMS at least.
Well, they can't do that precisely. But there is something similar that they can do.
Under the AHRA, it is legal for individuals to make noncommercial copies of sound recordings if certain criteria in 17 USC 1008 are met (note that the terms used there are specially defined in 17 USC 101 and 1001, and don't necessarily mean what you'd think they mean).
While 17 USC 109 prohibits the rental of CDs and such, the record stores could structure the transaction as a sale if they were VERY careful about it. Experts in the UCC would be needed for this.
Of course, just because this is effectively possible, that doesn't mean that it would be practical or would be worth it. It'd still be certain to draw lawsuits and other ire (e.g. refusal of labels to sell to that store).
But this is all a very difficult thing to do, and I'd advise you to get legal advice or such before really getting into it.
What the S.Ct. said in the Sony case was "Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
Thus, while it's ideal if the technology is actually being used in a noninfringing manner, it's still okay so long as it _could_ be, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
Actually, just putting a file in the Trash will not delete it. You can retrieve things from the Trash any time -- at least until you also _empty_ the Trash, which does delete whatever's in there.
The Mac UI is not the most consistant thing in the universe.
True -- but dragging disks to the Trash to dismount them is really just a popular shortcut. The original idea was that it would all be done with menu commands -- the Eject Disk command would eject a disk without dismounting the contents, and the Put Away command would dismount the contents, as well as eject the disk if inserted.
Apparently some programmer developed the thing with the Trash as a shortcut for doing this, and while it was inconsistant, it was also very well-liked by everyone working on the project, so it stayed.
UIs should be consistant, but deviation is permissible when there's an awfully good reason, such as user expectations, greater ease of use, etc.
Given that Jefferson was in Paris at the time of the Constitutional Convention, his opportunities to enshrine stuff were kind of limited. He was writing important letters to his friends in Philadelphia, however.
Well, the lawyers that have MDs or PhDs have been known to. Shit, they've been in school so long to get all those degrees, I think they've about earned it. And don't forget their continuing education requirements if they really want to put their degrees to good use, btw.
Me, I just finished my JD this last term, and now I just need to go back for another year for an LLM and then I'll be done for a good while, I hope.
The intellectual property owner is the one with the natural rights.
What rights?
There is undeniably for the purposes of this argument a natural right to free speech. This surely encompasses the right to parrot what others have said. Thus how could copyrights be natural, as diametrically opposed to free speech as they are?
And anyway, property of all sorts is not natural either, save for at most in the sense that you can personally defend it at all times.
The argument for copyright is that a person who expends time and energy to create a work of intellectual property has the natural right to be the one who benefits from that property
Sadly, this is a Lockean argument.
And 1) Locke is wrong, 2) The basis of copyright is not Lockean, 3) Especially in the US.
You've read Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson, right? The one where he basically says that you're quite wrong? You've noticed how when he paraphrased Locke in the Declaration, he left out 'property' (because he knew that wasn't so) and replaced it with 'the pursuit of happiness,' right?
If you're interested in having a serious discussion about copyright, come back when you can talk the proper utilitarian language as everyone else.
If copyright were - as is the case now - 70 years, is anyone else hurt? I don't think so.
I'm hurt. I want to make my own Mickey Mouse cartoons, read books and watch movies from the 20's-50's, and republish useful reference materials. I'd like to have a DVD collection full of all the best films prior to, say the last 25 years (which is the longest I can see copyright running for), all obtained on the cheap because everyone could run off copies of 'em. I could also stand to get some public domain mp3s from some of the best years of rock and roll, if terms were shorter.
I read Shakespeare too, and I'd be hurt if it were magically copyrighted again as well.
Actually the common case is one in which the work is NEVER popular, and NEVER generates money, much less money for one's entire lifetime plus another seventy years.
So the extra protection is superfluous. Really in fact, it's only benefitting those top 100.
We could cut protection down to 25 years or so and it wouldn't cause the vast majority of authors a penny. That is the common case. So let's do that!
the novel created part that does come uniquely from the creator's brain, is what is protected, and should be protected by copyright.
That's fine, but why should it be protected? More specifically, why should I, or anyone else, or everyone else, respect your desire for those things to be created? Does it benefit us? If so, explain how. Remember to reduce the benefit by any detriment that would also be caused at the same time. As a baseline to measure against, I would suggest using the benefit/harm to the public that would result if there were no copyright at all. Then we can compare it to various constellations of copyright protections, to see which one best maximizes the public interest.
Whatever is best for me, that's what I'd support -- regardless of how it is for you.
Which seems fair, if for example, your motives behind wanting a copyright for yourself would be that it is what's best for you, regardless of how it is for the rest of us.
To say that society owns what a creator's brain creates is to say that society owns the creator's brain. It doesn't.
Well, to say that would indicate some problems with one's brain, as that statement doesn't really make sense to begin with.
Rather, to say that no one controls what a creator makes publicly known is to say that no one controls the public.
Naturally, no one is advocating forcing creators to create things, or forcing creators to publicize things that they'e created. Creators are perfectly free to act privately, or not create at all. Though I admit, I would be happy if they'd create works rather than do something else.
BUT, where a creator has freely chosen to reveal his work to the world, the creator could only prevent the public from acting freely if the creator had the powers of a despot. The power to silence them so that the work cannot be freely reproduced. The power to cripple them so that the work cannot be freely used.
Nature made creative works capable of spreading nigh-uncontrollably.
To prevent that would be tyrranical in the extreme.
It might be okay if everyone agreed to it somehow, because they realized that it would benefit them more to do so. But surely no artist should ever be a despot... which is what your ill-conceived statement seems to advocate.
Basically, it's what's fair objectively under the specific circumstances. There's some methods to try to figure it out (see, e.g. the test in 17 USC 107, and various cases applying the fair use doctrine), but it is inherently incapable of being pinned down. Indeed, it shouldn't be, because under the right set of circumstances (which are unpredictable), literally anything might be fair.
However, we can probably say that the copyright holders' opinions as to what's fair are the least relevant. After all, if they believe something is fair, they can specifically authorize people to do those things. Then it doesn't matter whether or not it would be fair per the fair use doctrine, it is being allowed anyway.
Sometimes it is. There are fees required to acquire patents and federal trademarks, and to meaningfully acquire copyrights. Further, there are reasonably significant renewal fees required for patents and trademarks, which if not paid can result in the early loss of those things.
No -- because in order to run Unix on a Mac, it would merely mean having some sort of emulator going vaguely like the stuff Tenon had for a while there.
I have always known that making a copy of a cd so that my original doesn't get scratched is perfectly fine to do
In that case, I would expect that you are about twelve years old.
The AHRA only passed in 1992, and prior to that (as well as currently, with regards to copies that don't fall within the AHRA, which is actually most of them if you look at it carefully) it was debatable as to whether making such copies would be okay.
but making a copy of a cd so that I can give it away to my friends, it against the law.
And ironically, if you're careful about how you do it, again thanks to the AHRA, this can be totally legal. But watch out to not run afoul of section 109 either.
If you pirate music the people who actually made the music don't get paid, and that is just wrong.
Why is that wrong? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that you need to justify your statement. Certainly my neighbor's trees make oxygen and help me to breathe, but it would be pretty stupid for him to try to charge me for it. OTOH, if he had a convincing argument, maybe I would pay him. So just because people aren't getting paid isn't inherently bad -- at least for everyone other than them. (Personally, I'd like to be paid for my witty and insightful/. posts)
Better fax machines. Do-not-junk-fax lists. Telling off individual junk faxers.
There doesn't necessarily have to be _much_ effort by recipients, but there should be a little so as to protect the junk faxers who not only comply with the rules, who respect people telling them to go away, but who otherwise should have a right to speak; this also protects the recipients who _want_ to receive such faxes.
N.B. that since they're unsolicited, the system needs to be opt-out. You can't opt-in to ads you've never heard of, because you've never heard of them. It might not even occur to someone to do so.
And of course, on the whole, more communication is better, and safer, than less. I don't mind individuals refusing inbound communication, or failing to respond to it, but it should be their choice whether or not to do that, and not the government's.
The right to free speech should not necessarily imply the right to unlimited delivery of that speech
It doesn't. You don't _have_ to have a fax machine, and you don't _have_ to accept incoming faxes from any dickhead with a fax machine. No one is forcing you to listen to everything in the world.
The problem is that fax recipients don't want to be troubled to discriminate. They want to receive everything AND for only things they want to be sent in the first place. Fax recipients are being as foolish as people who attentively listen to every ad they come across, read all their junk mail, listen to every door to door solicitor, pay attention to the sob stories of all the panhandlers in the world, and so forth.
Would it kill them to show a little backbone and make decisions for themselves -- permitting those who are interested in recieving unsolicited ads to do so, permitting those who are not to reject them?
Junk faxes are theft. If a company forces someone else to use time, energy and resources for its own profit, then that parasitic company/should/ be sued.
It's not theft, and there is no force employed.
If you were stupid enough to get a fax machine that recieves all faxes sent to it, it's your own fault when it does precisely that. If you don't blindly accept every stupid thing that arrives, your resources will not be used.
It is exactly like, say, door-to-door soliciting. If someone comes to your door to try to sell you something, you can save a lot of time and effort by not answering, by immediately kicking them out, and so forth. If you listen to their entire spiel, that's fine, but it was your decision. Don't blame others for your failure to conserve your own resources if they're so precious to you.
how is it ethical or legal for one company to offload expenses (paper, toner, electricity, phone usage, and most importantly man-hours) on another for advertising its products.
Those are _your_ expenses, not theirs. The medium is structured such that that's how things work. You knew that when you got a fax, so don't act so surprised.
And as with the example above, the same is true with all forms of advertising; at the very least it uses up some of your time and effort even to ignore it or rid yourself of it as efficiently as possible.
Them's the breaks, though. It's not a serious burden, and it's overall safer and better for the recipient to have to actively reject ads rather than to have a tolitarian regime where ads cannot be sent in the first place. God knows, I'd love a world without unsolicited ads of any kind, including plain old logos on products, but I'd rather have important freedoms even if personally bothersome to me in their application.
So long as it is fair -- i.e. where the specific circumstances involved, as analyzed in a fair use test such as that in 17 USC 107 -- ANY otherwise infringing act is rendered non-infringing.
Making a zillion complete copies and giving them to everyone, in order to make a profit, _could_ be fair. Given the right set of circumstances.
The only thing you can say really, is that there are no categorically fair or unfair uses.
And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.
That does not make it a legitimate claim. Neither networks nor advertisers have any right for their shows or ads to be watched how, or by whom, they please. The best they can do is to be able to prevent people from seeing them.
If advertising supported TV can't keep itself together, then the best thing to do is to have it end. Their business model may in the long run turn out to be as poor as that of the dot-coms of yore.
Personally, I hate advertising. I filter it out when possible, avoid it otherwise, and would be quite happy to somehow magically never have to perceive an ad again unless I expressly wanted to (e.g. to compare prices) be it a tv commercial, billboard, or even logos on clothing.
Slashdot Mirror
What's this mean?
Well, the person who created the information at issue here -- i.e. the author of the offensive review -- is the information content provider. Teacherreviews.com didn't write that review, AFAICT, so they are not the information content provider. Instead, they have provided access to their web server, making them the provider of an interactive computer service.
And as the provider of an interactive computer service, they cannot be held liable for the information given to them by the information content provider.
Or in plainer English, the web site cannot be sued for providing a forum for libelous posts, so long as they're not the authors of the libelous posts to begin with. It doesn't even matter whether or not the posts are libelous; the most scurrilous libel in the world still can't taint them one bit.
Since this is federal law, it trumps state law. It is the law of the land.
N.b. that these are just excerpts, and there are plenty of limits on this that aren't applicable here in what appears to be a garden variety libel suit. People interested in this would do well to read all of 47 USC 230.
Ironically, this lovely law is the tiny remaining bit of the infamous Communications Decency Act, most of which was overturned as being unconstitutional. There are actually halfway decent bits of the DMCA too, if you know where to look, also showing that every cloud has its silver lining.
Well, HR 3313 has no silver lining, and is unashamedly evil, but mostly the silver lining thing works.
Actually, slander is by definition spoken. When printed or published, it is libel.
Secondly, the method that libel is disseminated is in fact of the upmost importance these days. Thanks to the one teeny tiny good (and constitutional) bit of the infamous CDA, it is legal for people providing services on the Internet (e.g. fora) to have libellous statements therein.
The originator of the libel can be sued -- but no suit can be brought against the web site where the libel resides.
The professor hasn't got a leg to stand on, and the site -- and the offensive comments -- need to go back up.
Well, AFAIK, that same caveat can be said about just about anything in 17 USC. Still, you're right, and it's a good catch.
But I was proposing a form of used record store in which no rental ever occurs, but music is sold and bought by the store at little cost. AHRA compliant media and devices are also sold. Thus it's inexpensive for a person to achieve the same benefits as they would in a rental world where AHRA was in effect, since they can recoup much of the cost of the original sale when they sell it back. (depending on various factors such as quality, how likely the store will be to be able to sell it again, etc.)
$5 or so for a permanent copy of an entire album you can't get sued over and which is of as high quality as you like without any DRM beats out iTMS at least.
Well, they can't do that precisely. But there is something similar that they can do.
Under the AHRA, it is legal for individuals to make noncommercial copies of sound recordings if certain criteria in 17 USC 1008 are met (note that the terms used there are specially defined in 17 USC 101 and 1001, and don't necessarily mean what you'd think they mean).
While 17 USC 109 prohibits the rental of CDs and such, the record stores could structure the transaction as a sale if they were VERY careful about it. Experts in the UCC would be needed for this.
Of course, just because this is effectively possible, that doesn't mean that it would be practical or would be worth it. It'd still be certain to draw lawsuits and other ire (e.g. refusal of labels to sell to that store).
But this is all a very difficult thing to do, and I'd advise you to get legal advice or such before really getting into it.
Do you mind giving us a citation so that we can see where it says that in the law?
No, you're wrong.
What the S.Ct. said in the Sony case was "Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
Thus, while it's ideal if the technology is actually being used in a noninfringing manner, it's still okay so long as it _could_ be, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
N.b. that we did build a shuttle launch pad on the west coast.
Wait, dragging a file to the trash will delete it
Actually, just putting a file in the Trash will not delete it. You can retrieve things from the Trash any time -- at least until you also _empty_ the Trash, which does delete whatever's in there.
The Mac UI is not the most consistant thing in the universe.
True -- but dragging disks to the Trash to dismount them is really just a popular shortcut. The original idea was that it would all be done with menu commands -- the Eject Disk command would eject a disk without dismounting the contents, and the Put Away command would dismount the contents, as well as eject the disk if inserted.
Apparently some programmer developed the thing with the Trash as a shortcut for doing this, and while it was inconsistant, it was also very well-liked by everyone working on the project, so it stayed.
UIs should be consistant, but deviation is permissible when there's an awfully good reason, such as user expectations, greater ease of use, etc.
Given that Jefferson was in Paris at the time of the Constitutional Convention, his opportunities to enshrine stuff were kind of limited. He was writing important letters to his friends in Philadelphia, however.
no lawyers actually call themselves "doctor."
Well, the lawyers that have MDs or PhDs have been known to. Shit, they've been in school so long to get all those degrees, I think they've about earned it. And don't forget their continuing education requirements if they really want to put their degrees to good use, btw.
Me, I just finished my JD this last term, and now I just need to go back for another year for an LLM and then I'll be done for a good while, I hope.
Hmmm... no.
Hmmm... yes.
The intellectual property owner is the one with the natural rights.
What rights?
There is undeniably for the purposes of this argument a natural right to free speech. This surely encompasses the right to parrot what others have said. Thus how could copyrights be natural, as diametrically opposed to free speech as they are?
And anyway, property of all sorts is not natural either, save for at most in the sense that you can personally defend it at all times.
The argument for copyright is that a person who expends time and energy to create a work of intellectual property has the natural right to be the one who benefits from that property
Sadly, this is a Lockean argument.
And 1) Locke is wrong, 2) The basis of copyright is not Lockean, 3) Especially in the US.
You've read Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson, right? The one where he basically says that you're quite wrong? You've noticed how when he paraphrased Locke in the Declaration, he left out 'property' (because he knew that wasn't so) and replaced it with 'the pursuit of happiness,' right?
If you're interested in having a serious discussion about copyright, come back when you can talk the proper utilitarian language as everyone else.
If copyright were - as is the case now - 70 years, is anyone else hurt? I don't think so.
I'm hurt. I want to make my own Mickey Mouse cartoons, read books and watch movies from the 20's-50's, and republish useful reference materials. I'd like to have a DVD collection full of all the best films prior to, say the last 25 years (which is the longest I can see copyright running for), all obtained on the cheap because everyone could run off copies of 'em. I could also stand to get some public domain mp3s from some of the best years of rock and roll, if terms were shorter.
I read Shakespeare too, and I'd be hurt if it were magically copyrighted again as well.
So yeah -- I'm hurting now. Badly. All of us are.
Actually the common case is one in which the work is NEVER popular, and NEVER generates money, much less money for one's entire lifetime plus another seventy years.
So the extra protection is superfluous. Really in fact, it's only benefitting those top 100.
We could cut protection down to 25 years or so and it wouldn't cause the vast majority of authors a penny. That is the common case. So let's do that!
the novel created part that does come uniquely from the creator's brain, is what is protected, and should be protected by copyright.
That's fine, but why should it be protected? More specifically, why should I, or anyone else, or everyone else, respect your desire for those things to be created? Does it benefit us? If so, explain how. Remember to reduce the benefit by any detriment that would also be caused at the same time. As a baseline to measure against, I would suggest using the benefit/harm to the public that would result if there were no copyright at all. Then we can compare it to various constellations of copyright protections, to see which one best maximizes the public interest.
Whatever is best for me, that's what I'd support -- regardless of how it is for you.
Which seems fair, if for example, your motives behind wanting a copyright for yourself would be that it is what's best for you, regardless of how it is for the rest of us.
To say that society owns what a creator's brain creates is to say that society owns the creator's brain. It doesn't.
Well, to say that would indicate some problems with one's brain, as that statement doesn't really make sense to begin with.
Rather, to say that no one controls what a creator makes publicly known is to say that no one controls the public.
Naturally, no one is advocating forcing creators to create things, or forcing creators to publicize things that they'e created. Creators are perfectly free to act privately, or not create at all. Though I admit, I would be happy if they'd create works rather than do something else.
BUT, where a creator has freely chosen to reveal his work to the world, the creator could only prevent the public from acting freely if the creator had the powers of a despot. The power to silence them so that the work cannot be freely reproduced. The power to cripple them so that the work cannot be freely used.
Nature made creative works capable of spreading nigh-uncontrollably.
To prevent that would be tyrranical in the extreme.
It might be okay if everyone agreed to it somehow, because they realized that it would benefit them more to do so. But surely no artist should ever be a despot... which is what your ill-conceived statement seems to advocate.
I'll chalk it up to a careless error.
Basically, it's what's fair objectively under the specific circumstances. There's some methods to try to figure it out (see, e.g. the test in 17 USC 107, and various cases applying the fair use doctrine), but it is inherently incapable of being pinned down. Indeed, it shouldn't be, because under the right set of circumstances (which are unpredictable), literally anything might be fair.
However, we can probably say that the copyright holders' opinions as to what's fair are the least relevant. After all, if they believe something is fair, they can specifically authorize people to do those things. Then it doesn't matter whether or not it would be fair per the fair use doctrine, it is being allowed anyway.
Sometimes it is. There are fees required to acquire patents and federal trademarks, and to meaningfully acquire copyrights. Further, there are reasonably significant renewal fees required for patents and trademarks, which if not paid can result in the early loss of those things.
No -- because in order to run Unix on a Mac, it would merely mean having some sort of emulator going vaguely like the stuff Tenon had for a while there.
OTOH, calling Unix a Mac is indeed sacrilege.
Not necessarily. The Morlocks come a lot later in time than Soylent Green, IIRC. Maybe they're just continuing the practice.
I think this is just another tragic case of the above-ground man trying to keep down the below-ground man.
I have always known that making a copy of a cd so that my original doesn't get scratched is perfectly fine to do
/. posts)
In that case, I would expect that you are about twelve years old.
The AHRA only passed in 1992, and prior to that (as well as currently, with regards to copies that don't fall within the AHRA, which is actually most of them if you look at it carefully) it was debatable as to whether making such copies would be okay.
but making a copy of a cd so that I can give it away to my friends, it against the law.
And ironically, if you're careful about how you do it, again thanks to the AHRA, this can be totally legal. But watch out to not run afoul of section 109 either.
If you pirate music the people who actually made the music don't get paid, and that is just wrong.
Why is that wrong? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that you need to justify your statement. Certainly my neighbor's trees make oxygen and help me to breathe, but it would be pretty stupid for him to try to charge me for it. OTOH, if he had a convincing argument, maybe I would pay him. So just because people aren't getting paid isn't inherently bad -- at least for everyone other than them. (Personally, I'd like to be paid for my witty and insightful
Better fax machines. Do-not-junk-fax lists. Telling off individual junk faxers.
There doesn't necessarily have to be _much_ effort by recipients, but there should be a little so as to protect the junk faxers who not only comply with the rules, who respect people telling them to go away, but who otherwise should have a right to speak; this also protects the recipients who _want_ to receive such faxes.
N.B. that since they're unsolicited, the system needs to be opt-out. You can't opt-in to ads you've never heard of, because you've never heard of them. It might not even occur to someone to do so.
And of course, on the whole, more communication is better, and safer, than less. I don't mind individuals refusing inbound communication, or failing to respond to it, but it should be their choice whether or not to do that, and not the government's.
The right to free speech should not necessarily imply the right to unlimited delivery of that speech
It doesn't. You don't _have_ to have a fax machine, and you don't _have_ to accept incoming faxes from any dickhead with a fax machine. No one is forcing you to listen to everything in the world.
The problem is that fax recipients don't want to be troubled to discriminate. They want to receive everything AND for only things they want to be sent in the first place. Fax recipients are being as foolish as people who attentively listen to every ad they come across, read all their junk mail, listen to every door to door solicitor, pay attention to the sob stories of all the panhandlers in the world, and so forth.
Would it kill them to show a little backbone and make decisions for themselves -- permitting those who are interested in recieving unsolicited ads to do so, permitting those who are not to reject them?
Junk faxes are theft. If a company forces someone else to use time, energy and resources for its own profit, then that parasitic company /should/ be sued.
It's not theft, and there is no force employed.
If you were stupid enough to get a fax machine that recieves all faxes sent to it, it's your own fault when it does precisely that. If you don't blindly accept every stupid thing that arrives, your resources will not be used.
It is exactly like, say, door-to-door soliciting. If someone comes to your door to try to sell you something, you can save a lot of time and effort by not answering, by immediately kicking them out, and so forth. If you listen to their entire spiel, that's fine, but it was your decision. Don't blame others for your failure to conserve your own resources if they're so precious to you.
how is it ethical or legal for one company to offload expenses (paper, toner, electricity, phone usage, and most importantly man-hours) on another for advertising its products.
Those are _your_ expenses, not theirs. The medium is structured such that that's how things work. You knew that when you got a fax, so don't act so surprised.
And as with the example above, the same is true with all forms of advertising; at the very least it uses up some of your time and effort even to ignore it or rid yourself of it as efficiently as possible.
Them's the breaks, though. It's not a serious burden, and it's overall safer and better for the recipient to have to actively reject ads rather than to have a tolitarian regime where ads cannot be sent in the first place. God knows, I'd love a world without unsolicited ads of any kind, including plain old logos on products, but I'd rather have important freedoms even if personally bothersome to me in their application.
Yes you can, if it's fair to do.
So long as it is fair -- i.e. where the specific circumstances involved, as analyzed in a fair use test such as that in 17 USC 107 -- ANY otherwise infringing act is rendered non-infringing.
Making a zillion complete copies and giving them to everyone, in order to make a profit, _could_ be fair. Given the right set of circumstances.
The only thing you can say really, is that there are no categorically fair or unfair uses.
And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.
That does not make it a legitimate claim. Neither networks nor advertisers have any right for their shows or ads to be watched how, or by whom, they please. The best they can do is to be able to prevent people from seeing them.
If advertising supported TV can't keep itself together, then the best thing to do is to have it end. Their business model may in the long run turn out to be as poor as that of the dot-coms of yore.
Personally, I hate advertising. I filter it out when possible, avoid it otherwise, and would be quite happy to somehow magically never have to perceive an ad again unless I expressly wanted to (e.g. to compare prices) be it a tv commercial, billboard, or even logos on clothing.
But you won't be able to make a perfect serial copy of your recording.
I.e. a reproduction control.
Besides -- while the facts are different, it is equally as possible for serial copying of shows to be fair use as it was for making the initial copy.
Furthermore, this impedes the rights of the copyright holder, and the rights of the public, particularly after the end of the term.
Better than DRM would be to make DRM as illegal or undesirable to publishers as possible.