To be more precise, the Copyright Act says that fair uses are not infringing (although of course there's no need to assert fair use unless a prima facie case of infringement can be made; if it couldn't be made, that ends things right there), and unless something else applies (eg libel), yes, you do have a right to engage in non infringing uses such as fair use.
Fair use is an exception to copyright, not a defense. But it's treated like a defense because generally the defendant is in the best position to know if it is possible or not (he knows the circumstances if his own use), so it should be up to him to raise the issue rather than to force the plaintiff and/or court to run down a laundry list of possible exceptions for him, about which they lack important facts until they involve him anyway. The system is slow enough without needing to play 20 questions, so we shift burdens around at times if efficient and just.
If they're unquestionably fair, it strikes me that unfair things might occasionally slip by; the point of the present system is to sort out what is fair from what isn't, difficult as it may be to tell, and dependant as it may be on subtle details. So it may be better to speak of the new exception as simply covering uses that would be non infringing.
Out of curiosity, what currently infringing activities would you make non infringing? You may want two classes of them: plaintiffs may have adequate information to justify filing a lawsuit (it's not supposed to be done otherwise, though not every detail needs to be known in advance) without knowing that one of these new exceptions applies. And just because a defendant may claim that one applies (perhaps in advance of any lawsuit) that may not make it so. So maybe the "hefty fines" should only apply sometimes, or only for some of the exceptions and not others?
The situation with fair use has always been bleak. It doesn't help that its an amorphous concepts--uncertainty in the law makes it hard to comply with and has a chilling effect on free speech.
Of course, it has to be: any use could be fair, though no use necessarily is. It's totally dependent on the circumstances of the particular case. A bright line rule would inevitably reduce the scope of fair use. Given that it's been applied to uses that were unforeseen at the time that the doctrine was established, or when a codified version appeared, it's been good to have elasticity.
If you want bright line rules, that's fine, just get a separate exception in the statute to cover that particular case. For example, no one ever argues that selling used books is a fair use, because it is handled separately under the first sale exception. Something like a 'non-commercial use by a natural person' exception would be fine, it just demands being handled apart from fair use is all.
Frankly, it's an area I do not feel 100% certain about.
IMO conceptual seperability for purposes of the utility doctrine in copyright is a total gut decision on the part of the judge, and then some sort of explanation gets devised to cover that up. I've yet to see a good rule for it.
And IIRC, under the 1909 Act (which was in effect in the US until 1978), courts treated authors of commissioned works as having assigned their copyrights to their patron, unless there was some indication to the contrary, which is for many purposes about the same result.
Plus it makes sense intuitively; if you hire a wedding photographer to take pictures for you, surely the only person who should care about the copyright would be you, not the photographer.
It's one of those issues that will hopefully one day be addressed in a comprehensive overhaul of copyright law that restores sanity. It's far from the most important issue, though.
When you hire someone to create something for you, this is called a "work for hire" and by default the person commissioning the work owns all the rights to the work
In the US, this isn't precisely correct. A work is only ever a work made for hire if either: 1) The work is made by an employee in the course of his employment Just claiming employment isn't enough; it has to be demonstrated. There are numerous factors involved, e.g. who provided the tools and work area, who set the hours, whether employee benefits were provided, etc. It's a long list. And if The other option is 2) If the parties expressly agree that the work is a work made for hire in a mutually signed contract, but even then only if the work falls into one of several narrow categories enumerated in the statute. (Though does include works made as a contribution to a motion picture)
Unless it falls into one of those categories, merely commissioning a work doesn't make it a work made for hire. Even a contract claiming it does is ineffective unless the work falls under the second type discussed above. This is why, if you're going to have a contract, it's good to also include an assignment of the copyright as a backup. (Which also needs to be written and signed. It isn't that it's a professional standard, but that the law requires it; handshake deals and the like are only allowed by the law to cover non exclusive licenses)
Ballot stuffing has a long and glorious history in elections around the world. Since ballots have no way to track them back to the person casting the vote, there's no way to tell if someone actually cast any ballot. That kind of anonymity is a perfect breeding ground for fraud.
So long as votes remain anonymous -- which is probably for the best -- that's going to be a danger.
However, it's somewhat difficult to actually do this with paper ballots, especially if you can manage decent security around the box itself, especially since it doesn't scale well. A conspiracy to rig one ballot box would take several people, but a conspiracy to do it statewide would probably be unmanageable. Well, at least so long as the government is generally not so corrupt that no one cares.
Manipulating electronic voting systems seems to have a bigger payoff (if the system is standardized across the state, it should be fairly easy to attack all of them), and fewer risks (by keeping the conspiracy smaller).
On the whole, I'd rather have paper ballots and manual counting, with some simple security measures in place, e.g. have a large group of representatives of rival parties and non-partisan groups present prior to the opening of the polls to verify that the box is not rigged, keep them there to verify that the box is not swapped out, and when the box is opened and the ballots are counted. And keep the box and the counting videotaped from all angles so that there's a record to look at to see if there was tampering.
If there's a concern about having people insert multiple ballots (disguised as a single one by sticking the papers together), you could probably come up with a countermeasure (for example, off the top of my head, ballots must be inserted in a cylindrical case, the case fits into an slot that only accepts one case, and the slot has to be cranked around to drop the case with ballot inside into the box; multiple ballots in a single case are all discarded). But again, it's harder to attack a clean election by recruiting hundreds or thousands of people to carefully stick two ballots together than it is to attack it by other means, so I doubt that such methods will be necessary.
Do you believe the government knows best and should just run our poor little lives?
Sometimes, yes. Hopefully, this will usually be the case -- not because the government is always right because it's the government, but because I want a government that works hard to objectively be right, and which watches itself and listens to outsiders in case it's wrong despite making the best effort it can.
We all created and empower the government, with the idea that it would serve our interests better than if we didn't have any government at all. That being the case, shouldn't we want it to be as good as it can possibly be?
There will often be issues of national concern -- such as energy (obtaining it, transporting it as needed, using it efficiently, geopolitics involved), environmentalism (minimizing environmental damage, restoring the environment to a healthy state when practicable, generally ensuring that we don't jeopardize the continued survival of our species or civilization generally), commerce and industry (ensuring that we are capable of meaningfully and profitably participating in trade here and abroad, that we can remain on the cutting edge of industry rather than becoming also-rans, etc.) -- which require real experts to investigate issues, identify problems, make proposals, and implement solutions.
While there is a danger of having experts be mistaken, of their having hidden agendas of their being corrupt, or of their priorities or values being out of line with the rest of us, it seems to me that these are better addressed through openness, through a willingness to listen to alternatives, and through aggressively checking the power of those who would manipulate the government for their own profit.
But in no case do I think that it's a good idea to fail to have government that works hard and honestly on behalf of its people. To keep it from doing so just leaves us all needlessly vulnerable to the predation of others.
Actually, the Fair Tax system (http://www.fairtax.org) is a much more mature alternative and the most likely system to replace our current tax code.
So you're agreeing with the earlier poster that sales taxes -- which is what the utterly misleadingly-named "fair tax" is -- are regressive, and cause greater harm to the poor and middle class than to the rich?
That doesn't sound so fair to me, and certainly not good. I guess I'll continue to oppose regressive taxes (I'm for abolishing sales taxes now) and to promote progressive taxes (I'm also for substantially increasing income and capital gains taxes at the upper brackets, and perhaps some wealth taxes one way or another as well).
So answer me this-- if you break a legally enforceable, legally binding agreement, in what manner are you not doing illegal activity?
The law can be used to enforce a contract, but there's no prohibition against breaching a contract; it is perfectly legal to disregard contracts.
Now, if a contract is breached, a court may impose various remedies -- which is what enforcement amounts to -- such as the payment of money damages, or in some cases an injunction or specific performance (though these are less common). It's not a punishment, though; the amount of money damages is simply meant to 'heal' the damaged party to some appropriate amount, and there are no punitive damages, and certainly no criminal penalties for mere breach.
In fact, there's actually a theory in the law called efficient breach to the effect that, if a person would be economically better off by breaching a contract, even taking into account damages that would be paid to the other party, etc., then he should breach the contract, since it would be worse to abide by it.
Our poor and lower middle class don't pay tax at all.
Except for state and local income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes, many of which are regressive taxes that have disproportionate effects on the poor, rather than the rich. And also federal income tax, which isn't nearly so avoidable as you think.
But hell -- I'd be happy to shoulder a higher tax burden if we were also soaking the rich and if we were using that tax revenue in a better fashion. We don't need to waste money on our incompetent military (not good for much other than blowing crap up, letting situations degrade, and keeping the USSR from taking over Europe), but we could sure use a good single-payer healthcare system.
In any civil action under this title, the court in its discretion may allow the recovery of full costs by or against any party other than the United States or an officer thereof. Except as otherwise provided by this title, the court may also award a reasonable attorneyâ(TM)s fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs.
17 USC 505.
It's up to the discretion of the court, it's limited to a reasonable amount, rather than the actual amount, and under some circumstances (e.g. an ordinary infringement suit where the copyright wasn't registered in a timely fashion, and the plaintiff prevails) fees are not available at all.
I don't think that nuclear is evil, I just don't trust the management. We've seen a lot of stupidity and dishonesty from TEPCO, and they're hardly unique or alone in this. About the only thing that distinguishes them is that something finally happened to them which exposed it.
But that having been said, if the technology isn't absolutely foolproof in every way (all the way from obtaining fuel to decommissioning -- not merely day to day operations), which it doesn't appear to be, and if we can't trust the management to not be fools, I'd just as soon switch as quickly as practicable to technologies that, when they fail, don't fail as spectacularly or with as bad consequences. And which are also sustainable and cause the least possible environmental harm, if any.
At least a wind turbine that breaks apart, or a solar thermal tower that falls down won't poison the countryside for generations to come, or require evacuations from all the nearby towns. Dams of significant size are not so great, but they might be okay at small scales (e.g. old mill towns once again tapping their rivers for what power they can get).
the state can refuse to issue a driving license to minors, but those aren't Rights.
I'd prefer to have the basis for issuing or canceling a driving license to be the ability to drive safely. If a minor can demonstrate that ability, I don't mind if they're issued a license; if an adult cannot, I don't mind if they lose their license. We can verify that they still possess this ability by only issuing licenses for a year, so that people have to be retested annually.
People should have the right to be tested for this at any age, and to have a license issued to them if they pass, provided they have an adequately clean driving record.
People's rights can be abridged if there is due process; e.g. a person can be put in prison if they are fairly tried and found guilty of a crime for which imprisonment is a punishment, and sentenced accordingly. Why shouldn't drivers licenses be a right as well; one which is only abridged when there's a good reason. Age doesn't seem to me like a good enough reason, all by itself.
Sounds to me like you're making strong arguments in favor of using autonomous and teleoperated robots to do mining and to build solar farms in space. I support the idea, though it will take a while to get going, I'm sure.
IANAL, but as others have mentioned, he's attempting to profit from a work he didn't create. That does not seem like it could ever fall under fair use.
It routinely does, as it happens. Usually fair use involves people making use of copyrighted works which they did not create, and making a profit from the use, while not really helping claims of fair use any, is not at all fatal. If the use tended to act as a substitute (e.g. people start buying the pixellated album cover instead of the original) that's pretty bad, but the mere fact that the new album is for sale is only a very mild strike against the later user.
Fair use doesn't enter into this admittedly - fair use doesn't include commercial enterprises using copyrighted images for personal gain, funnily enough.
Yes it does. Any use may be a fair use, although not every use is necessarily a fair use. Although being a commercial use may weigh against the use being fair, that alone is not determinative.
As it happens, there are lots of commercial fair uses; ever read Mad Magazine, for example?
However as far as I'm aware the RIAA has been pressing cases based on individual song copyrights, and I believe the courts have been dealing with P2P cases on that basis.
RIAA generally has their choice of songs in the cases. I believe they've been just picking out a relative handful (a couple of dozen, perhaps, out of thousands off of a defendant's computer), probably where they themselves own all of the rights, so that they can leave the artists out of it. By not selecting multiple songs from a single compilation, they can sidestep the entire problem.
And then there's the fact that the same song is often released on different albums.
Ah, now that's interesting. It turns out that the recent Arista v. Limewire case has approached this issue more closely than most courts, although there are still questions left to be answered. Here's the example that the court provided for how to calculate damages when dealing with works that are published both individually and as a part of a compilation:
For albums that contain sound recordings that are available only as part of the album, and sound recordings that are also available as individual tracks, the Court provides the following example for purposes of illustration. Let us assume that Plaintiffs issued (1) an album containing songs A, B, C, and D, and that Plaintiffs also made available (2) songs A and B as individual tracks, but (3) made available songs C and D only as part of the album as a whole. Let us also assume that songs A, B, C, and D were infringed on the LimeWire system during that time period. Plaintiffs would be able to recover three statutory damage awards: one award for song A, one award for song B, and one award for the compilation (of which C and D are a part).
So that at least answers the issue of singles v. albums (one award for the album as a whole, and one award for each song on the album that was also published as a single, if the infringer also copied that particular song). So in light of this, I must retreat from my earlier post; while it is possible for the compilation rule for calculating statutory damages to decrease the amount of damages, in practice, in this era of everything being available as a single on iTunes, it likely either has no effect or only serves to increase the amount of damages.
The court appears not to have considered the issue of multiple compilations, e.g. if song A from the example above not only appeared on album A-B-C-D but was also on the album 'Best of Plaintiff,' would there be four statutory damage awards in total, since A was in two compilations?
That particular judge did not at all care for the RIAA asking for trillions of dollars in damages (on the basis of damages per infringement, rather than per work), so I would hope that if he thought it through he'd introduce some limit on the compilation rule, though I don't really see any support for it in the statute after the opinion we already got, other than the general rule that statutory damage awards shouldn't be absurd. I guess we'll have to wait for the next court to screw things up. In the meantime, perhaps we can expect RIAA to start issuing numerous compilation albums just to enlarge the number of times they can ask for damages for a single song, for no real cost to themselves.
Anyone else hear anything about this general issue?
In the US that is going to mean $750 to $150,000 per file.
No, not per file. Statutory damages are calculated per work, rather than per copy. One million copies of the same work would still only count once for the purpose of calculating statutory damages, but one copy each of two different works would count twice. Also, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work only count as one work, so if you copied an entire album, that only counts once no matter how many individual songs are in it.
So it's a little bit better than you think, but it's still an awful lot, it's true.
They would be obligated to get rid of the monarchy, though; the federal constitution requires that all states have a republican form of government, iirc.
ongratulations, you're just killed 90% of open source software. And 90% of works created by individual artists and 90% of works put online by individuals.
Those are all entities who cannot afford to copyright all their works.
You seem to think that copyright is necessary for most authors, but this is not the case. There are many incentives for an author to create and publish a work: art for art's sake, fame, non-copyright related revenue (e.g. an original Picasso is worth a lot because of its provenance; an effectively identical copy by John Smith, not so much), commissions, etc. Copyright is an incentive, but hardly the only one, and in many cases probably not the most important one.
Authors who don't care about copyright -- which is most authors -- will create and publish anyway. For example, would you have posted here on/. if your post were not copyrighted? I bet you would have. In that case, why should we give you an incentive to do something you would have done anyway? It's just wasteful. It causes harm to the public by restricting their rights in your work, with no greater benefit provided to them, since there was no need for the added incentive of copyright.
These are the sorts of works that we need to get rid of copyrights on; works where copyright didn't matter, and where the person judging that they didn't matter was the author himself, who is surely in the best position to know of anyone.
A copyright is nothing other than an economic incentive. It doesn't guarantee that a work has any economic value, but it acts like a funnel, directing some of whatever copyright-related economic value there might be to the author, so that he can exploit the copyright and get the money for himself. An author who cares about a copyright expects that it must be worth something -- something more than the cost of creating and publishing the work and obtaining the copyright. It must be quantifiable.
I'd be perfectly happy with a token fee of, say, $1, just so that copyright isn't absolutely automatic, and updating the already-existing practice of allowing collections and groups of works to be registered under a single registration, provided that certain requirements are met (e.g. the works are by the same author, the works are all published within a particular unit of time, etc.).
I am willing to take the chance that 90% of authors who care about copyrights are willing and able to do some simple paperwork (roughly on par with a change of address form filed with the post office) and pay a dollar or so every year.
If not, well then what the hell did they want a copyright for in the first place? If they're not in it for some economic reason that requires a monopoly, why the hell do they need one? Even the open source guys have economic reasons behind what they do, even if it's more of a trade for rights over someone else's work instead of cash money.
Large corporations, who are the real source of problems, would simply pay the to them trivial fees for copyright and get on with their day.
And? I really don't care whether an author is a guy in a garage or a sinister international corporation with evil plans. I just want more works. In an ideal world, works would just appear like magic; authors are really a necessary evil, like getting stuck with a cow, when all you really want is the milk.
Some people have suggested variable filing fees based on things like how long the work has been copyrighted ($1 for the first year, but perhaps $1,000 for the tenth year, and so on), or who the ultimate beneficiaries of the copyright are (poor natural persons pay less than artificial persons or wealthy natural persons) or other criteria. Personally, I don't care much. My goal is simply to require applicants to actively decide whether to get a copyright or not; not to get them automatically by operation of law, or by setting up a script that gets them for you for free. Even a company with billions of dollars is
It was never intended to generate monetary wealth. It was intended to generate cultural wealth by providing monetary incentive.
Not even that; it's intended to generate cultural wealth for all by providing a possibility of a monetary incentive. The genius of copyright is that whether a particular copyright has actual economic value depends on the author, the publisher, and the receptiveness of the public. Most works, frankly, are economic flops. But so long as authors who otherwise would not create and publish works are drawn to do so by the chance that they could exploit their copyright for money, things keep rolling along.
Registration, renewal, short terms, and formalities improve things greatly:
Requiring authors to register their works in order to get a copyright (beyond a minor level of protection for manuscripts), along with a token registration fee (more for the purposes of separating the wheat from the chaff in the author's opinion, rather than to fund the system), we avoid copyrights on a bunch of works that even the author doesn't think are worth protecting. And who are we to second-guess the author?
Short terms and frequent renewals (probably again with a token fee) let us weed out flops more quickly than if we just granted a single long term to everything and waited for it to expire. If a copyright holder doesn't think that a work is worth renewing, again, who are we to second-guess them? Let the work enter the public domain earlier than it might have otherwise.
Only a handful of works have a copyright that's worth a non-trivial amount of money more than a few years after publication, or sometimes after even less time. (When was the last time you bought yesterday's daily newspaper? Or a bestselling novel from 1911?) Let's reform the system so that we quickly and efficiently weed out the others and get them in the public domain. This will solve a lot of the problems. It'll be easier to decide what's to be done about Mickey Mouse when it's just Mickey Mouse, and not a million other things being dragged along for the ride.
Slashdot Mirror
To be more precise, the Copyright Act says that fair uses are not infringing (although of course there's no need to assert fair use unless a prima facie case of infringement can be made; if it couldn't be made, that ends things right there), and unless something else applies (eg libel), yes, you do have a right to engage in non infringing uses such as fair use.
Fair use is an exception to copyright, not a defense. But it's treated like a defense because generally the defendant is in the best position to know if it is possible or not (he knows the circumstances if his own use), so it should be up to him to raise the issue rather than to force the plaintiff and/or court to run down a laundry list of possible exceptions for him, about which they lack important facts until they involve him anyway. The system is slow enough without needing to play 20 questions, so we shift burdens around at times if efficient and just.
If they're unquestionably fair, it strikes me that unfair things might occasionally slip by; the point of the present system is to sort out what is fair from what isn't, difficult as it may be to tell, and dependant as it may be on subtle details. So it may be better to speak of the new exception as simply covering uses that would be non infringing.
Out of curiosity, what currently infringing activities would you make non infringing? You may want two classes of them: plaintiffs may have adequate information to justify filing a lawsuit (it's not supposed to be done otherwise, though not every detail needs to be known in advance) without knowing that one of these new exceptions applies. And just because a defendant may claim that one applies (perhaps in advance of any lawsuit) that may not make it so. So maybe the "hefty fines" should only apply sometimes, or only for some of the exceptions and not others?
The situation with fair use has always been bleak. It doesn't help that its an amorphous concepts--uncertainty in the law makes it hard to comply with and has a chilling effect on free speech.
Of course, it has to be: any use could be fair, though no use necessarily is. It's totally dependent on the circumstances of the particular case. A bright line rule would inevitably reduce the scope of fair use. Given that it's been applied to uses that were unforeseen at the time that the doctrine was established, or when a codified version appeared, it's been good to have elasticity.
If you want bright line rules, that's fine, just get a separate exception in the statute to cover that particular case. For example, no one ever argues that selling used books is a fair use, because it is handled separately under the first sale exception. Something like a 'non-commercial use by a natural person' exception would be fine, it just demands being handled apart from fair use is all.
Frankly, it's an area I do not feel 100% certain about.
IMO conceptual seperability for purposes of the utility doctrine in copyright is a total gut decision on the part of the judge, and then some sort of explanation gets devised to cover that up. I've yet to see a good rule for it.
It's a fairly common belief, really.
And IIRC, under the 1909 Act (which was in effect in the US until 1978), courts treated authors of commissioned works as having assigned their copyrights to their patron, unless there was some indication to the contrary, which is for many purposes about the same result.
Plus it makes sense intuitively; if you hire a wedding photographer to take pictures for you, surely the only person who should care about the copyright would be you, not the photographer.
It's one of those issues that will hopefully one day be addressed in a comprehensive overhaul of copyright law that restores sanity. It's far from the most important issue, though.
When you hire someone to create something for you, this is called a "work for hire" and by default the person commissioning the work owns all the rights to the work
In the US, this isn't precisely correct. A work is only ever a work made for hire if either: 1) The work is made by an employee in the course of his employment Just claiming employment isn't enough; it has to be demonstrated. There are numerous factors involved, e.g. who provided the tools and work area, who set the hours, whether employee benefits were provided, etc. It's a long list. And if The other option is 2) If the parties expressly agree that the work is a work made for hire in a mutually signed contract, but even then only if the work falls into one of several narrow categories enumerated in the statute. (Though does include works made as a contribution to a motion picture)
Unless it falls into one of those categories, merely commissioning a work doesn't make it a work made for hire. Even a contract claiming it does is ineffective unless the work falls under the second type discussed above. This is why, if you're going to have a contract, it's good to also include an assignment of the copyright as a backup. (Which also needs to be written and signed. It isn't that it's a professional standard, but that the law requires it; handshake deals and the like are only allowed by the law to cover non exclusive licenses)
Ballot stuffing has a long and glorious history in elections around the world. Since ballots have no way to track them back to the person casting the vote, there's no way to tell if someone actually cast any ballot. That kind of anonymity is a perfect breeding ground for fraud.
So long as votes remain anonymous -- which is probably for the best -- that's going to be a danger.
However, it's somewhat difficult to actually do this with paper ballots, especially if you can manage decent security around the box itself, especially since it doesn't scale well. A conspiracy to rig one ballot box would take several people, but a conspiracy to do it statewide would probably be unmanageable. Well, at least so long as the government is generally not so corrupt that no one cares.
Manipulating electronic voting systems seems to have a bigger payoff (if the system is standardized across the state, it should be fairly easy to attack all of them), and fewer risks (by keeping the conspiracy smaller).
On the whole, I'd rather have paper ballots and manual counting, with some simple security measures in place, e.g. have a large group of representatives of rival parties and non-partisan groups present prior to the opening of the polls to verify that the box is not rigged, keep them there to verify that the box is not swapped out, and when the box is opened and the ballots are counted. And keep the box and the counting videotaped from all angles so that there's a record to look at to see if there was tampering.
If there's a concern about having people insert multiple ballots (disguised as a single one by sticking the papers together), you could probably come up with a countermeasure (for example, off the top of my head, ballots must be inserted in a cylindrical case, the case fits into an slot that only accepts one case, and the slot has to be cranked around to drop the case with ballot inside into the box; multiple ballots in a single case are all discarded). But again, it's harder to attack a clean election by recruiting hundreds or thousands of people to carefully stick two ballots together than it is to attack it by other means, so I doubt that such methods will be necessary.
Steve never invented anything. He's a suit, not a beard. And I'm given to understand that he was arrogant way before he did any of that stuff.
Do you believe the government knows best and should just run our poor little lives?
Sometimes, yes. Hopefully, this will usually be the case -- not because the government is always right because it's the government, but because I want a government that works hard to objectively be right, and which watches itself and listens to outsiders in case it's wrong despite making the best effort it can.
We all created and empower the government, with the idea that it would serve our interests better than if we didn't have any government at all. That being the case, shouldn't we want it to be as good as it can possibly be?
There will often be issues of national concern -- such as energy (obtaining it, transporting it as needed, using it efficiently, geopolitics involved), environmentalism (minimizing environmental damage, restoring the environment to a healthy state when practicable, generally ensuring that we don't jeopardize the continued survival of our species or civilization generally), commerce and industry (ensuring that we are capable of meaningfully and profitably participating in trade here and abroad, that we can remain on the cutting edge of industry rather than becoming also-rans, etc.) -- which require real experts to investigate issues, identify problems, make proposals, and implement solutions.
While there is a danger of having experts be mistaken, of their having hidden agendas of their being corrupt, or of their priorities or values being out of line with the rest of us, it seems to me that these are better addressed through openness, through a willingness to listen to alternatives, and through aggressively checking the power of those who would manipulate the government for their own profit.
But in no case do I think that it's a good idea to fail to have government that works hard and honestly on behalf of its people. To keep it from doing so just leaves us all needlessly vulnerable to the predation of others.
Actually, the Fair Tax system (http://www.fairtax.org) is a much more mature alternative and the most likely system to replace our current tax code.
So you're agreeing with the earlier poster that sales taxes -- which is what the utterly misleadingly-named "fair tax" is -- are regressive, and cause greater harm to the poor and middle class than to the rich?
That doesn't sound so fair to me, and certainly not good. I guess I'll continue to oppose regressive taxes (I'm for abolishing sales taxes now) and to promote progressive taxes (I'm also for substantially increasing income and capital gains taxes at the upper brackets, and perhaps some wealth taxes one way or another as well).
So answer me this-- if you break a legally enforceable, legally binding agreement, in what manner are you not doing illegal activity?
The law can be used to enforce a contract, but there's no prohibition against breaching a contract; it is perfectly legal to disregard contracts.
Now, if a contract is breached, a court may impose various remedies -- which is what enforcement amounts to -- such as the payment of money damages, or in some cases an injunction or specific performance (though these are less common). It's not a punishment, though; the amount of money damages is simply meant to 'heal' the damaged party to some appropriate amount, and there are no punitive damages, and certainly no criminal penalties for mere breach.
In fact, there's actually a theory in the law called efficient breach to the effect that, if a person would be economically better off by breaching a contract, even taking into account damages that would be paid to the other party, etc., then he should breach the contract, since it would be worse to abide by it.
Our poor and lower middle class don't pay tax at all.
Except for state and local income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes, many of which are regressive taxes that have disproportionate effects on the poor, rather than the rich. And also federal income tax, which isn't nearly so avoidable as you think.
But hell -- I'd be happy to shoulder a higher tax burden if we were also soaking the rich and if we were using that tax revenue in a better fashion. We don't need to waste money on our incompetent military (not good for much other than blowing crap up, letting situations degrade, and keeping the USSR from taking over Europe), but we could sure use a good single-payer healthcare system.
Well, not quite entitled:
In any civil action under this title, the court in its discretion may allow the recovery of full costs by or against any party other than the United States or an officer thereof. Except as otherwise provided by this title, the court may also award a reasonable attorneyâ(TM)s fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs.
17 USC 505.
It's up to the discretion of the court, it's limited to a reasonable amount, rather than the actual amount, and under some circumstances (e.g. an ordinary infringement suit where the copyright wasn't registered in a timely fashion, and the plaintiff prevails) fees are not available at all.
I don't think that nuclear is evil, I just don't trust the management. We've seen a lot of stupidity and dishonesty from TEPCO, and they're hardly unique or alone in this. About the only thing that distinguishes them is that something finally happened to them which exposed it.
But that having been said, if the technology isn't absolutely foolproof in every way (all the way from obtaining fuel to decommissioning -- not merely day to day operations), which it doesn't appear to be, and if we can't trust the management to not be fools, I'd just as soon switch as quickly as practicable to technologies that, when they fail, don't fail as spectacularly or with as bad consequences. And which are also sustainable and cause the least possible environmental harm, if any.
At least a wind turbine that breaks apart, or a solar thermal tower that falls down won't poison the countryside for generations to come, or require evacuations from all the nearby towns. Dams of significant size are not so great, but they might be okay at small scales (e.g. old mill towns once again tapping their rivers for what power they can get).
the state can refuse to issue a driving license to minors, but those aren't Rights.
I'd prefer to have the basis for issuing or canceling a driving license to be the ability to drive safely. If a minor can demonstrate that ability, I don't mind if they're issued a license; if an adult cannot, I don't mind if they lose their license. We can verify that they still possess this ability by only issuing licenses for a year, so that people have to be retested annually.
People should have the right to be tested for this at any age, and to have a license issued to them if they pass, provided they have an adequately clean driving record.
People's rights can be abridged if there is due process; e.g. a person can be put in prison if they are fairly tried and found guilty of a crime for which imprisonment is a punishment, and sentenced accordingly. Why shouldn't drivers licenses be a right as well; one which is only abridged when there's a good reason. Age doesn't seem to me like a good enough reason, all by itself.
Sounds to me like you're making strong arguments in favor of using autonomous and teleoperated robots to do mining and to build solar farms in space. I support the idea, though it will take a while to get going, I'm sure.
I'd heard that a number of people died due to poor evacuation procedures.
And aren't there still concerns about people dying from heatstroke during the summer due to lack of power for AC?
IANAL, but as others have mentioned, he's attempting to profit from a work he didn't create. That does not seem like it could ever fall under fair use.
It routinely does, as it happens. Usually fair use involves people making use of copyrighted works which they did not create, and making a profit from the use, while not really helping claims of fair use any, is not at all fatal. If the use tended to act as a substitute (e.g. people start buying the pixellated album cover instead of the original) that's pretty bad, but the mere fact that the new album is for sale is only a very mild strike against the later user.
Fair use doesn't enter into this admittedly - fair use doesn't include commercial enterprises using copyrighted images for personal gain, funnily enough.
Yes it does. Any use may be a fair use, although not every use is necessarily a fair use. Although being a commercial use may weigh against the use being fair, that alone is not determinative.
As it happens, there are lots of commercial fair uses; ever read Mad Magazine, for example?
However as far as I'm aware the RIAA has been pressing cases based on individual song copyrights, and I believe the courts have been dealing with P2P cases on that basis.
RIAA generally has their choice of songs in the cases. I believe they've been just picking out a relative handful (a couple of dozen, perhaps, out of thousands off of a defendant's computer), probably where they themselves own all of the rights, so that they can leave the artists out of it. By not selecting multiple songs from a single compilation, they can sidestep the entire problem.
And then there's the fact that the same song is often released on different albums.
Ah, now that's interesting. It turns out that the recent Arista v. Limewire case has approached this issue more closely than most courts, although there are still questions left to be answered. Here's the example that the court provided for how to calculate damages when dealing with works that are published both individually and as a part of a compilation:
For albums that contain sound recordings that are available only as part of the album, and
sound recordings that are also available as individual tracks, the Court provides the following
example for purposes of illustration. Let us assume that Plaintiffs issued (1) an album containing
songs A, B, C, and D, and that Plaintiffs also made available (2) songs A and B as individual
tracks, but (3) made available songs C and D only as part of the album as a whole. Let us also
assume that songs A, B, C, and D were infringed on the LimeWire system during that time
period. Plaintiffs would be able to recover three statutory damage awards: one award for song A,
one award for song B, and one award for the compilation (of which C and D are a part).
So that at least answers the issue of singles v. albums (one award for the album as a whole, and one award for each song on the album that was also published as a single, if the infringer also copied that particular song). So in light of this, I must retreat from my earlier post; while it is possible for the compilation rule for calculating statutory damages to decrease the amount of damages, in practice, in this era of everything being available as a single on iTunes, it likely either has no effect or only serves to increase the amount of damages.
The court appears not to have considered the issue of multiple compilations, e.g. if song A from the example above not only appeared on album A-B-C-D but was also on the album 'Best of Plaintiff,' would there be four statutory damage awards in total, since A was in two compilations?
That particular judge did not at all care for the RIAA asking for trillions of dollars in damages (on the basis of damages per infringement, rather than per work), so I would hope that if he thought it through he'd introduce some limit on the compilation rule, though I don't really see any support for it in the statute after the opinion we already got, other than the general rule that statutory damage awards shouldn't be absurd. I guess we'll have to wait for the next court to screw things up. In the meantime, perhaps we can expect RIAA to start issuing numerous compilation albums just to enlarge the number of times they can ask for damages for a single song, for no real cost to themselves.
Anyone else hear anything about this general issue?
In the US that is going to mean $750 to $150,000 per file.
No, not per file. Statutory damages are calculated per work, rather than per copy. One million copies of the same work would still only count once for the purpose of calculating statutory damages, but one copy each of two different works would count twice. Also, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work only count as one work, so if you copied an entire album, that only counts once no matter how many individual songs are in it.
So it's a little bit better than you think, but it's still an awful lot, it's true.
They would be obligated to get rid of the monarchy, though; the federal constitution requires that all states have a republican form of government, iirc.
At least once a year there is kosher for Passover coke and pepsi, made with real sugar.
Of course those years with two Passovers in them are not fun at all.
ongratulations, you're just killed 90% of open source software. And 90% of works created by individual artists and 90% of works put online by individuals.
Those are all entities who cannot afford to copyright all their works.
You seem to think that copyright is necessary for most authors, but this is not the case. There are many incentives for an author to create and publish a work: art for art's sake, fame, non-copyright related revenue (e.g. an original Picasso is worth a lot because of its provenance; an effectively identical copy by John Smith, not so much), commissions, etc. Copyright is an incentive, but hardly the only one, and in many cases probably not the most important one.
Authors who don't care about copyright -- which is most authors -- will create and publish anyway. For example, would you have posted here on /. if your post were not copyrighted? I bet you would have. In that case, why should we give you an incentive to do something you would have done anyway? It's just wasteful. It causes harm to the public by restricting their rights in your work, with no greater benefit provided to them, since there was no need for the added incentive of copyright.
These are the sorts of works that we need to get rid of copyrights on; works where copyright didn't matter, and where the person judging that they didn't matter was the author himself, who is surely in the best position to know of anyone.
A copyright is nothing other than an economic incentive. It doesn't guarantee that a work has any economic value, but it acts like a funnel, directing some of whatever copyright-related economic value there might be to the author, so that he can exploit the copyright and get the money for himself. An author who cares about a copyright expects that it must be worth something -- something more than the cost of creating and publishing the work and obtaining the copyright. It must be quantifiable.
I'd be perfectly happy with a token fee of, say, $1, just so that copyright isn't absolutely automatic, and updating the already-existing practice of allowing collections and groups of works to be registered under a single registration, provided that certain requirements are met (e.g. the works are by the same author, the works are all published within a particular unit of time, etc.).
I am willing to take the chance that 90% of authors who care about copyrights are willing and able to do some simple paperwork (roughly on par with a change of address form filed with the post office) and pay a dollar or so every year.
If not, well then what the hell did they want a copyright for in the first place? If they're not in it for some economic reason that requires a monopoly, why the hell do they need one? Even the open source guys have economic reasons behind what they do, even if it's more of a trade for rights over someone else's work instead of cash money.
Large corporations, who are the real source of problems, would simply pay the to them trivial fees for copyright and get on with their day.
And? I really don't care whether an author is a guy in a garage or a sinister international corporation with evil plans. I just want more works. In an ideal world, works would just appear like magic; authors are really a necessary evil, like getting stuck with a cow, when all you really want is the milk.
Some people have suggested variable filing fees based on things like how long the work has been copyrighted ($1 for the first year, but perhaps $1,000 for the tenth year, and so on), or who the ultimate beneficiaries of the copyright are (poor natural persons pay less than artificial persons or wealthy natural persons) or other criteria. Personally, I don't care much. My goal is simply to require applicants to actively decide whether to get a copyright or not; not to get them automatically by operation of law, or by setting up a script that gets them for you for free. Even a company with billions of dollars is
Thanks.
It was never intended to generate monetary wealth. It was intended to generate cultural wealth by providing monetary incentive.
Not even that; it's intended to generate cultural wealth for all by providing a possibility of a monetary incentive. The genius of copyright is that whether a particular copyright has actual economic value depends on the author, the publisher, and the receptiveness of the public. Most works, frankly, are economic flops. But so long as authors who otherwise would not create and publish works are drawn to do so by the chance that they could exploit their copyright for money, things keep rolling along.
Registration, renewal, short terms, and formalities improve things greatly:
Requiring authors to register their works in order to get a copyright (beyond a minor level of protection for manuscripts), along with a token registration fee (more for the purposes of separating the wheat from the chaff in the author's opinion, rather than to fund the system), we avoid copyrights on a bunch of works that even the author doesn't think are worth protecting. And who are we to second-guess the author?
Short terms and frequent renewals (probably again with a token fee) let us weed out flops more quickly than if we just granted a single long term to everything and waited for it to expire. If a copyright holder doesn't think that a work is worth renewing, again, who are we to second-guess them? Let the work enter the public domain earlier than it might have otherwise.
Only a handful of works have a copyright that's worth a non-trivial amount of money more than a few years after publication, or sometimes after even less time. (When was the last time you bought yesterday's daily newspaper? Or a bestselling novel from 1911?) Let's reform the system so that we quickly and efficiently weed out the others and get them in the public domain. This will solve a lot of the problems. It'll be easier to decide what's to be done about Mickey Mouse when it's just Mickey Mouse, and not a million other things being dragged along for the ride.