Well, like I said, they can stop Wikia from using the content, or allow them to use the content so long as no ads are involved. Yes, it requires Wikia to be willing to do that, but with the threat of not being able to use the content at all otherwise, hopefully they'll have a reason to be willing. The way you phrase it, it sounds as though the contributors cannot condition the use of their material at all; that they have to either permit any sort of use to be made, or none, with nothing in between. But we know that that's incorrect.
You seem to have the right idea, but the way you're expressing it is not all that clear.
Is this still true? I thought US law was harmonized with the Berne Convention a few years ago and you no longer have to register. Copyright exists from the instant of creation (like in the rest of the world)
You're confusing two separate things. In the US, under the current law, copyright vests in the author of a work upon creation. However, you still cannot actually bring an action for copyright infringement (with only a couple very minor exceptions) until you have registered, and the dates of first publication, registration, and the complained-of infringement are all important for determining damages. That there are certain prerequisites to get into court doesn't mean that there isn't a copyright; it just means that a copyright sans registration isn't very useful.
However, non-United States works (the definition of this is a little more complicated than it might appear) needn't be registered in order for a suit to be brought. But there's no exception for such works for the registration requirement for statutory damages and fees and costs, so it still strongly behooves the authors of those works to play ball. Personally, I think that this is unfair, and that those authors should have to register in order to get into court to begin with. I just loathe Berne and the immensely high minimum standards it sets without the slightest regard for whether they're useful. It is critical that the US leave Berne (and TRIPS, etc.) as soon as possible, or else we'll never see meaningful copyright reform.
Certainly. If they reject the license and go ahead and use the work anyway, and that use is unlawful, then they're just infringing. If that's the case, then you can sue them for damages and seek an injunction so that they don't keep doing it.
Really, the only way that someone can lawfully engage in acts which otherwise fall under the exclusive rights of copyright without permission from the copyright holder (which, as we seem to have agreed, can be conditioned) is if there's an applicable exception.
Well, the exception for computers was deliberate and discussed at the time. There was a fight over whether portable music players fell under the AHRA, but it was determined that they did not back in 1999. I don't recall hearing any noises about bringing them into the AHRA recently, though.
You do not need to register your work with the Copyright Office.
However, you cannot bring a suit for infringement unless you have registered your work prior to the filing of the suit. If you try to sue and have not already registered, the suit will be dismissed right off of the bat. This is a necessary prerequisite to any copyright infringement action.
Also, if the registration comes after the infringement, then you cannot get statutory damages. This means your damages are limited to the amount you were actually damaged (as opposed to being able to claim tens of thousands of dollars or more per work without proof of how much you were actually damaged) and also the profits made by the infringer attributable to the infringement. Nor can you get reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
There is one exception to that, in that if the infringement takes place after the first publication of the work, but before the registration, and the registration takes place within three months of the first publication of the work, then you can still claim any remedies.
Personally, I would advise people to register immediately, provided that they care about the copyright to a work. If you really don't care whether or not people do something which would constitute infringement, or at least don't care enough to bother registering (there is a simple form, a deposit requirement, and a modest fee), then don't bother. But realize that it will have significant repercussions.
The other thing you should always do is to place a proper copyright notice on works, again, if you care. It's helpful in preventing defendants from having a stronger case.
Here in the U.S., we pay a 2 percent royalty on all medium capable of storing and playing back music.And we've been paying it since 1992, when the "Digital Audio Recording Technology Act" was passed.
No.
You're thinking of the Audio Home Recording Act. It actually only applies to certain media and devices, not all of them capable of storing or playing music. For example computers, computer hard drives, data CDRs, most portable music players, etc. don't fall under the AHRA. Also you're wrong as to what the royalty actually amounts to. (It's in 17 USC 1004 if you're interested)
However, our Congress hasn't set up a legal link between the paying of that tax and our legal rights to use the devices in any ways that exceed thing on which we don't pay a tax.
No again.
The quid pro quo for the AHRA was that it would be non-actionable for consumers acting non-commercially to copy certain kinds of works with the devices or media covered by the AHRA. In practice, no one actually does this. Non-AHRA-compliant methods have become more popular. But if you want to dub a CD of some music onto a cassette tape or something, you can do so if you want, without repercussions and without having to even assert that it is a fair use (which, it might well not be, especially if it isn't your CD).
Understand up front that you can't have it both ways. You may either refuse the use of your work or not. They may show ads or collect the works into a compendium or do whatever they want. This is not within your control. The only thing within your control is whether or not they use the particular works you provided.
That's not true at all. You can condition the license under which they may use your work. If the license said that they have to pay you so much or else the license terminates, and they don't pay, then it terminates. If instead of payment you say that they have to use it in a certain manner, such as using it non-commercially, and they don't, then that terminates the license and their right to use it.
It's not at all as you describe it, where there is a license or there is not, but there are no terms and conditions governing the license grant.
It's a little more complicated than that. Whichever side wins can at least ask the court to award reasonable fees and costs. But it's up to the court.
However, there's a big caveat. You cannot bring a regular copyright infringement suit in the US at all unless you've registered the work with the copyright office. It's a prerequisite to the suit, and it's common to just throw out cases where the plaintiff hasn't done that, with the understanding that he'll have to go back and do it before coming back to court.
However, the registration is also important in that if the work was unregistered at the time of the infringement, then statutory damages and costs and fees may not be awarded in the case (unless the work was published and unregistered at the time of the infringement, but registered within three months of its first publication, which is the one case where you get a little extra time).
Since the nature of a public wiki would make it annoying to register, at best, it's probably safe to expect that these remedies will never, in practice be available to the wiki group as a plaintiff, and that furthermore even after-the-fact registration just to get an injunction or actual damages and profits will be pretty difficult to manage. This is a known issue with these sorts of things (e.g. GPLed code where the copyrights aren't assigned to the FSF), but them's breaks.
Anyway, this being the case, getting a lawyer willing to take the case on contingency is incredibly unlikely.
Screenshot? could be photoshopped. Text Log? could be edited.
Bear in mind that there is a difference between alleged facts and true facts. For example, imagine a murder trial where one witness says that the defendant was at the scene of the murder, and another witness says the defendant was at home. At least one of these witnesses has to be wrong, possibly both are. The testimony of both are alleged facts, and the trier of fact (often a jury) has to decide what is actually true or not for purposes of the trial.
So there's nothing wrong with submitting a screenshot and a text log that are of dubious accuracy. A jury will decide whether or not to believe it.
Frankly, these cases, even where the RIAA is 100% right in their allegations, are going to be considerably harder to start with the new plausibility rule. Even if they had the sort of evidence you suggest -- which merely goes to how likely it is to be true, as opposed to how plausible the allegations are overall, which is what's become important -- that probably wouldn't be enough. That is, what you suggest is likely to not be enough because it doesn't get in to all the issues that need to be in the complaint.
I'll be very interested to see how things play out.
Unless they showed the whole thing, there is this concept of 'fair use' and, I'm sorry to inform you, it applies to companies as well as individuals.
Actually, fair use can apply to a use of any length. All else being equal, the more of a work, or the more of the substantive parts of a work, that you use, the less likely it is to be a fair use. That is, it is a factor to be considered. But it is not a determinative factor on its own. For example, when people time or space shift and do so fairly, those are fair uses that involve the entire work.
Please note that for an answer to your question, you should contact a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction, and preferably who is skilled in copyright law. I'm not your lawyer, we don't have an attorney-client relationship, and I'm not going to provide you with legal advice.
What I understand you to be asking is this: You create Work 1, and are the copyright holder for that work. Then you license Work 2, for which you are not the copyright holder. The terms of the license for Work 2 require (apparently; I think that the GPL is a lot clearer about this than the equivalent CC license) that any derivative work which is based upon Work 2 to be distributed under the same license as Work 2. You then create a derivative work, Work 3, by combining Work 1 and Work 2; pursuant to the Work 2 license, you must distribute Work 3 under the same license.
I would imagine, then, that you can license Work 1 however you like. However, those portions of Work 1 which are present in Work 3 are subject to the Work 2 license because Work 3 also incorporates portions of Work 2 under the Work 2 license. Thus, if someone wants to license Work 1, they can either extract as much of it as is in Work 3, but will be subject to the Work 2 license (for example, if they create a Work 4), or can make some private arrangement with you using Work 1 on its own, rather than ripping it from Work 3.
This outcome is not odd; the GPL does the same thing. It's pretty much the point. For the Work 2 license to only apply to so much of Work 2 as appears in Work 3, and to not affect the portion of Work 1 which appears in Work 3, you'd want something more BSD-like.
Anyway, though, if you're really curious, you should have it properly checked out by a lawyer who is working for you, and is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. I am not working for you, or providing advice for you, or in any legal relationship with you at all, and odds are that you're not in an area where I'm licensed anyway.
Actually, you've got it backwards, but first we'll have to be clearer about what we're looking at.
The economic value which can be exploited from a work by means of copyright compromises one incentive for creating works. There are other incentives, however, which are unrelated to copyright. For example, fine artists typically make money selling a specific copy of art, rather than just any copy of art (e.g. a Picasso painting may be worth millions; a print of a Picasso painting may be worth $10. Picasso dealt with the former.).
Presently, copyrights are granted to all copyrightable works upon creation, whether the possibility of getting a copyright actually incentivized the author or not. However, prior to 1978, in the US we granted copyrights only to authors who undertook extremely modest steps to indicate their desire for those rights. The idea is that if an author doesn't care to the point where he won't even so much as put a copyright notice on his work, then he probably wasn't incentivized by copyright to begin with; some other incentive or combination of incentives sufficed for him. They may still have involved money, but not money that required a copyright in order to be made.
As it happens, the vast majority of works created were of this latter type, where copyright appears to not have been a factor. The posts here on/. are a good example. With a few exceptions, each post here is copyrightable. But if the law was (sensibly) changed so that/. posts couldn't be copyrighted without the poster taking a few simple extra steps, I bet that there would be no decline in posting attributable to that reform, because no one here cares about or is incentivized copyrights on their posts. Instead, we just want to have a discussion, gain karma, etc. and that's our incentive.
As for the article, while it claims that fair uses provide more value for the economy than the creation of the underlying works does, remember that those uses would create the same value if they were made with regard to a public domain work. Indeed, the use of public domain works would surely be even better for the economy than if that work was copyrighted, since only a small subset of all possible uses actually turn out to be fair uses after looking at them. (Though any use may potentially be fair, mind you)
Sometimes it is. Any kind of otherwise-infringing use can be a fair use, given the right circumstances. There's nothing special about the derivative right. For example, reviews of other works which employ quotes, condensations of the plot, annotations, etc. are typically derivative works which benefit from fair use, and are often commercial to boot!
There have actually been a number of follow-ups to Macross (though it's no MS Gundam). There was Macross: Do You Remember Love (basically the movie version of the show), Macross II (which no one liked, and isn't considered in-canon, IIRC), Macross Plus, Macross 7, and the prequel, Macross Zero. And some little things like Flashback 2012. Personally, I'd suggest watching Macross Plus and Macross Zero. The others aren't really that good.
Robotech, meanwhile, had a sequel in The Sentinels, but it died. Nothing else made it until the recent release of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, which picks up where the show left off. Apparently it did well enough that another sequel following that one is in the works. There were, however, a number of books, comics, etc. which were produced. Animation is just a lot more expensive, is all.
If by this you mean more Buffy and Battlestar Galactica fan fiction, um, no, no we don't.
There's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, just because a work is derivative of another work, that doesn't mean that it's bad. The new Battlestar Galactica is derivative of the old one, but the new one is generally regarded as being better. Galactica 1980, OTOH, was terrible. Nor does it matter whether it is authorized or not: Empire is better than Star Wars, Jedi is worse than either, and the less said about the prequels, the better; but some fans have re-edited the prequels and thereby improved them.
I've seen fan fiction that was the pits, and I've seen fan fiction that is superior to what it is based upon. Whether original or derivative, 90% of everything is crap, but both categories have their 10% of good material.
Shakespeare is widely considered the best English-language author ever. But he's mostly derivative of previous plays and stories or just based on history. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is largely based on Brooke's version, and perhaps Painter's. Brooke got it from Bandello, who got it from da Porto, who may have gotten it from Salernitano. And of course, there've been stories about star-crossed lovers since antiquity.
"Intent" as I imagined it fits into "purpose and character", namely the purpose for which the alleged infringer made the recording.
It could play a role. Basically it looks at whether the use is commercial or not, educational or not, personal or not; whether the use promotes the progress of science (e.g. a transformative use) or not (e.g. just using the work as is).
The problem is that the court is more concerned with what the use actually is, as opposed to what is merely intended. For example, maybe the user thought that they were doing something transformative, but really weren't. The use would likely be treated as non-transformative in that case.
The copyright owner could argue that at the time of the recording, the alleged infringer made the recording with intent to watch the recording in an unfair manner, and therefore the recording was not a fair use.
First, it's debatable whether or not that would work. There is some dispute in the field as to whether a fair use analysis takes into account factors that exist at the time, or whether it can look ahead to facts that didn't exist at the time the use actually existed.
Second, it's irrelevant. It is impossible to watch a recording in an unfair manner, because only otherwise-infringing acts can be fair uses, and merely watching a recording is never infringing to begin with.
The traditional four factors are: The purpose and character of the use; the nature of the work used; the amount and substantiality of the use, and; the effect of the use on the value and market for the work. Intent doesn't really fit into there. Indeed, intent is generally irrelevant in copyright law, which deal with strict liability.
if I don't, someone else might reap the rewards from my work
Why do you care? If you're willing to create something without seeking a reward for it, what does it matter to you if someone else manages to make something out of it? You could still be assured that they couldn't prevent you, or anyone else, from using the same public domain materials.
Frankly, it sounds like miserliness to me: you want exclusive control even though you wouldn't make practical use of it, just to prevent someone else from doing it. That's wasteful and spiteful.
But what about now? Now, when anyone with an Internet connection and a voice can become a publisher? All those blog posts are copyrighted, you know. If I write something fantastic and compelling in my blog, anyone who wants to reuse it has to get permission. That includes the megacorps.
Automatic copyright should actually help the little people of today more than it hurts them.
I disagree.
The purpose of copyright is not to help authors, whether little or big. The purpose of copyright is to serve the public interest. The public interest vis a vis copyright can be broken down into three parts: 1) the public wants more original works created and published; 2) the public wants more derivative works created and published, and; 3) the public wants no restrictions as to those works, or if there are restrictions, the most minimal ones, in length and scope.
Granting a copyright always incurs a public detriment in that it is a restriction as to the work in question. Thus, it is only tolerable if the benefits that stem from the copyright grant are so great as to outweigh the detriments, thus yielding a net public benefit.
It is possible that encouraging the creation and publication of a work which otherwise would not have been created, by offering the author the artificial incentive of a copyright, can yield a net public benefit. However, what if the natural incentives for the author (e.g. fame, non-copyright related revenues, art for art's sake, etc.) would have resulted in the author creating the work anyway? In that case, copyright provides no public benefit since it is not copyright that is causing the work to be created and published. And since it necessarily causes a public detriment, we're left with a net public detriment. That is not tolerable.
While it's not possible to read the minds of authors and determine whether or not copyright was a necessary incentive to them for each work they create, a registration system is a good approximation. If an author was incentivized by the possibility of getting a copyright, then he will be willing to undertake at least modest actions to get one. Filling out a simple, one page form, sending in a couple of best copies for the Library of Congress collection, and a token fee, within a modest window of time, is a good way to gauge his desire for a copyright. If he would've created the work sans copyright, he probably won't bother to register. If it was important to him, then he will register.
If you had to register your forum posts, would you stop posting? I bet that you would not. Therefore, it harms everyone, including all the little guys, to not have your posts in the public domain so that everyone can freely use them. You, specifically, might not be as well off (though balance that against your benefit in being able to use everyone else's posts), but copyright is about the public good overall, not whether particular authors benefit.
Even the 'megacorps' won't bother to copyright everything and to maintain those copyrights. They never did before; why expect them to now?
Not everything regarding a work is the subject of copyright. There is no right of a copyright holder to control who watches a work, for example. OTOH, there is a right to control the making of copies of the work.
So when he records the movie, that is infringing, unless it is, say, fair use. When he watches the recording, that is never infringing, regardless of whether the recording was even lawfully made or not. Thus, fair use doesn't care how many times he's going to watch the movie. It only cares whether the recording of the work was fair, given the circumstances. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; it depends.
So there's no 'watch once only' rule in time shifting or in other forms of fair use, such as space shifting.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, like I said, they can stop Wikia from using the content, or allow them to use the content so long as no ads are involved. Yes, it requires Wikia to be willing to do that, but with the threat of not being able to use the content at all otherwise, hopefully they'll have a reason to be willing. The way you phrase it, it sounds as though the contributors cannot condition the use of their material at all; that they have to either permit any sort of use to be made, or none, with nothing in between. But we know that that's incorrect.
You seem to have the right idea, but the way you're expressing it is not all that clear.
Is this still true? I thought US law was harmonized with the Berne Convention a few years ago and you no longer have to register. Copyright exists from the instant of creation (like in the rest of the world)
You're confusing two separate things. In the US, under the current law, copyright vests in the author of a work upon creation. However, you still cannot actually bring an action for copyright infringement (with only a couple very minor exceptions) until you have registered, and the dates of first publication, registration, and the complained-of infringement are all important for determining damages. That there are certain prerequisites to get into court doesn't mean that there isn't a copyright; it just means that a copyright sans registration isn't very useful.
However, non-United States works (the definition of this is a little more complicated than it might appear) needn't be registered in order for a suit to be brought. But there's no exception for such works for the registration requirement for statutory damages and fees and costs, so it still strongly behooves the authors of those works to play ball. Personally, I think that this is unfair, and that those authors should have to register in order to get into court to begin with. I just loathe Berne and the immensely high minimum standards it sets without the slightest regard for whether they're useful. It is critical that the US leave Berne (and TRIPS, etc.) as soon as possible, or else we'll never see meaningful copyright reform.
Certainly. If they reject the license and go ahead and use the work anyway, and that use is unlawful, then they're just infringing. If that's the case, then you can sue them for damages and seek an injunction so that they don't keep doing it.
Really, the only way that someone can lawfully engage in acts which otherwise fall under the exclusive rights of copyright without permission from the copyright holder (which, as we seem to have agreed, can be conditioned) is if there's an applicable exception.
Well, the exception for computers was deliberate and discussed at the time. There was a fight over whether portable music players fell under the AHRA, but it was determined that they did not back in 1999. I don't recall hearing any noises about bringing them into the AHRA recently, though.
You do not need to register your work with the Copyright Office.
However, you cannot bring a suit for infringement unless you have registered your work prior to the filing of the suit. If you try to sue and have not already registered, the suit will be dismissed right off of the bat. This is a necessary prerequisite to any copyright infringement action.
Also, if the registration comes after the infringement, then you cannot get statutory damages. This means your damages are limited to the amount you were actually damaged (as opposed to being able to claim tens of thousands of dollars or more per work without proof of how much you were actually damaged) and also the profits made by the infringer attributable to the infringement. Nor can you get reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
There is one exception to that, in that if the infringement takes place after the first publication of the work, but before the registration, and the registration takes place within three months of the first publication of the work, then you can still claim any remedies.
Personally, I would advise people to register immediately, provided that they care about the copyright to a work. If you really don't care whether or not people do something which would constitute infringement, or at least don't care enough to bother registering (there is a simple form, a deposit requirement, and a modest fee), then don't bother. But realize that it will have significant repercussions.
The other thing you should always do is to place a proper copyright notice on works, again, if you care. It's helpful in preventing defendants from having a stronger case.
Here in the U.S., we pay a 2 percent royalty on all medium capable of storing and playing back music.And we've been paying it since 1992, when the "Digital Audio Recording Technology Act" was passed.
No.
You're thinking of the Audio Home Recording Act. It actually only applies to certain media and devices, not all of them capable of storing or playing music. For example computers, computer hard drives, data CDRs, most portable music players, etc. don't fall under the AHRA. Also you're wrong as to what the royalty actually amounts to. (It's in 17 USC 1004 if you're interested)
However, our Congress hasn't set up a legal link between the paying of that tax and our legal rights to use the devices in any ways that exceed thing on which we don't pay a tax.
No again.
The quid pro quo for the AHRA was that it would be non-actionable for consumers acting non-commercially to copy certain kinds of works with the devices or media covered by the AHRA. In practice, no one actually does this. Non-AHRA-compliant methods have become more popular. But if you want to dub a CD of some music onto a cassette tape or something, you can do so if you want, without repercussions and without having to even assert that it is a fair use (which, it might well not be, especially if it isn't your CD).
Understand up front that you can't have it both ways. You may either refuse the use of your work or not. They may show ads or collect the works into a compendium or do whatever they want. This is not within your control. The only thing within your control is whether or not they use the particular works you provided.
That's not true at all. You can condition the license under which they may use your work. If the license said that they have to pay you so much or else the license terminates, and they don't pay, then it terminates. If instead of payment you say that they have to use it in a certain manner, such as using it non-commercially, and they don't, then that terminates the license and their right to use it.
It's not at all as you describe it, where there is a license or there is not, but there are no terms and conditions governing the license grant.
It's a little more complicated than that. Whichever side wins can at least ask the court to award reasonable fees and costs. But it's up to the court.
However, there's a big caveat. You cannot bring a regular copyright infringement suit in the US at all unless you've registered the work with the copyright office. It's a prerequisite to the suit, and it's common to just throw out cases where the plaintiff hasn't done that, with the understanding that he'll have to go back and do it before coming back to court.
However, the registration is also important in that if the work was unregistered at the time of the infringement, then statutory damages and costs and fees may not be awarded in the case (unless the work was published and unregistered at the time of the infringement, but registered within three months of its first publication, which is the one case where you get a little extra time).
Since the nature of a public wiki would make it annoying to register, at best, it's probably safe to expect that these remedies will never, in practice be available to the wiki group as a plaintiff, and that furthermore even after-the-fact registration just to get an injunction or actual damages and profits will be pretty difficult to manage. This is a known issue with these sorts of things (e.g. GPLed code where the copyrights aren't assigned to the FSF), but them's breaks.
Anyway, this being the case, getting a lawyer willing to take the case on contingency is incredibly unlikely.
Screenshot? could be photoshopped.
Text Log? could be edited.
Bear in mind that there is a difference between alleged facts and true facts. For example, imagine a murder trial where one witness says that the defendant was at the scene of the murder, and another witness says the defendant was at home. At least one of these witnesses has to be wrong, possibly both are. The testimony of both are alleged facts, and the trier of fact (often a jury) has to decide what is actually true or not for purposes of the trial.
So there's nothing wrong with submitting a screenshot and a text log that are of dubious accuracy. A jury will decide whether or not to believe it.
Frankly, these cases, even where the RIAA is 100% right in their allegations, are going to be considerably harder to start with the new plausibility rule. Even if they had the sort of evidence you suggest -- which merely goes to how likely it is to be true, as opposed to how plausible the allegations are overall, which is what's become important -- that probably wouldn't be enough. That is, what you suggest is likely to not be enough because it doesn't get in to all the issues that need to be in the complaint.
I'll be very interested to see how things play out.
Unless they showed the whole thing, there is this concept of 'fair use' and, I'm sorry to inform you, it applies to companies as well as individuals.
Actually, fair use can apply to a use of any length. All else being equal, the more of a work, or the more of the substantive parts of a work, that you use, the less likely it is to be a fair use. That is, it is a factor to be considered. But it is not a determinative factor on its own. For example, when people time or space shift and do so fairly, those are fair uses that involve the entire work.
Please note that for an answer to your question, you should contact a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction, and preferably who is skilled in copyright law. I'm not your lawyer, we don't have an attorney-client relationship, and I'm not going to provide you with legal advice.
What I understand you to be asking is this: You create Work 1, and are the copyright holder for that work. Then you license Work 2, for which you are not the copyright holder. The terms of the license for Work 2 require (apparently; I think that the GPL is a lot clearer about this than the equivalent CC license) that any derivative work which is based upon Work 2 to be distributed under the same license as Work 2. You then create a derivative work, Work 3, by combining Work 1 and Work 2; pursuant to the Work 2 license, you must distribute Work 3 under the same license.
I would imagine, then, that you can license Work 1 however you like. However, those portions of Work 1 which are present in Work 3 are subject to the Work 2 license because Work 3 also incorporates portions of Work 2 under the Work 2 license. Thus, if someone wants to license Work 1, they can either extract as much of it as is in Work 3, but will be subject to the Work 2 license (for example, if they create a Work 4), or can make some private arrangement with you using Work 1 on its own, rather than ripping it from Work 3.
This outcome is not odd; the GPL does the same thing. It's pretty much the point. For the Work 2 license to only apply to so much of Work 2 as appears in Work 3, and to not affect the portion of Work 1 which appears in Work 3, you'd want something more BSD-like.
Anyway, though, if you're really curious, you should have it properly checked out by a lawyer who is working for you, and is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. I am not working for you, or providing advice for you, or in any legal relationship with you at all, and odds are that you're not in an area where I'm licensed anyway.
Actually, you've got it backwards, but first we'll have to be clearer about what we're looking at.
/. are a good example. With a few exceptions, each post here is copyrightable. But if the law was (sensibly) changed so that /. posts couldn't be copyrighted without the poster taking a few simple extra steps, I bet that there would be no decline in posting attributable to that reform, because no one here cares about or is incentivized copyrights on their posts. Instead, we just want to have a discussion, gain karma, etc. and that's our incentive.
The economic value which can be exploited from a work by means of copyright compromises one incentive for creating works. There are other incentives, however, which are unrelated to copyright. For example, fine artists typically make money selling a specific copy of art, rather than just any copy of art (e.g. a Picasso painting may be worth millions; a print of a Picasso painting may be worth $10. Picasso dealt with the former.).
Presently, copyrights are granted to all copyrightable works upon creation, whether the possibility of getting a copyright actually incentivized the author or not. However, prior to 1978, in the US we granted copyrights only to authors who undertook extremely modest steps to indicate their desire for those rights. The idea is that if an author doesn't care to the point where he won't even so much as put a copyright notice on his work, then he probably wasn't incentivized by copyright to begin with; some other incentive or combination of incentives sufficed for him. They may still have involved money, but not money that required a copyright in order to be made.
As it happens, the vast majority of works created were of this latter type, where copyright appears to not have been a factor. The posts here on
As for the article, while it claims that fair uses provide more value for the economy than the creation of the underlying works does, remember that those uses would create the same value if they were made with regard to a public domain work. Indeed, the use of public domain works would surely be even better for the economy than if that work was copyrighted, since only a small subset of all possible uses actually turn out to be fair uses after looking at them. (Though any use may potentially be fair, mind you)
Sometimes it is. Any kind of otherwise-infringing use can be a fair use, given the right circumstances. There's nothing special about the derivative right. For example, reviews of other works which employ quotes, condensations of the plot, annotations, etc. are typically derivative works which benefit from fair use, and are often commercial to boot!
No. The regular version is special enough for anyone.
There were some ideas slated for Robotech not nothing ever completed.
Again, check out Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, which came out earlier this year. The DVD is like $20 on Amazon.
Why? She never has been before, and it shows.
There have actually been a number of follow-ups to Macross (though it's no MS Gundam). There was Macross: Do You Remember Love (basically the movie version of the show), Macross II (which no one liked, and isn't considered in-canon, IIRC), Macross Plus, Macross 7, and the prequel, Macross Zero. And some little things like Flashback 2012. Personally, I'd suggest watching Macross Plus and Macross Zero. The others aren't really that good.
Robotech, meanwhile, had a sequel in The Sentinels, but it died. Nothing else made it until the recent release of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, which picks up where the show left off. Apparently it did well enough that another sequel following that one is in the works. There were, however, a number of books, comics, etc. which were produced. Animation is just a lot more expensive, is all.
Ooh, then perhaps we'll end up with a live action version of Macross Plus. That would work a lot better, frankly.
If by this you mean more Buffy and Battlestar Galactica fan fiction, um, no, no we don't.
There's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, just because a work is derivative of another work, that doesn't mean that it's bad. The new Battlestar Galactica is derivative of the old one, but the new one is generally regarded as being better. Galactica 1980, OTOH, was terrible. Nor does it matter whether it is authorized or not: Empire is better than Star Wars, Jedi is worse than either, and the less said about the prequels, the better; but some fans have re-edited the prequels and thereby improved them.
I've seen fan fiction that was the pits, and I've seen fan fiction that is superior to what it is based upon. Whether original or derivative, 90% of everything is crap, but both categories have their 10% of good material.
Shakespeare is widely considered the best English-language author ever. But he's mostly derivative of previous plays and stories or just based on history. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is largely based on Brooke's version, and perhaps Painter's. Brooke got it from Bandello, who got it from da Porto, who may have gotten it from Salernitano. And of course, there've been stories about star-crossed lovers since antiquity.
So don't knock derivatives.
"Intent" as I imagined it fits into "purpose and character", namely the purpose for which the alleged infringer made the recording.
It could play a role. Basically it looks at whether the use is commercial or not, educational or not, personal or not; whether the use promotes the progress of science (e.g. a transformative use) or not (e.g. just using the work as is).
The problem is that the court is more concerned with what the use actually is, as opposed to what is merely intended. For example, maybe the user thought that they were doing something transformative, but really weren't. The use would likely be treated as non-transformative in that case.
The copyright owner could argue that at the time of the recording, the alleged infringer made the recording with intent to watch the recording in an unfair manner, and therefore the recording was not a fair use.
First, it's debatable whether or not that would work. There is some dispute in the field as to whether a fair use analysis takes into account factors that exist at the time, or whether it can look ahead to facts that didn't exist at the time the use actually existed.
Second, it's irrelevant. It is impossible to watch a recording in an unfair manner, because only otherwise-infringing acts can be fair uses, and merely watching a recording is never infringing to begin with.
The traditional four factors are: The purpose and character of the use; the nature of the work used; the amount and substantiality of the use, and; the effect of the use on the value and market for the work. Intent doesn't really fit into there. Indeed, intent is generally irrelevant in copyright law, which deal with strict liability.
if I don't, someone else might reap the rewards from my work
Why do you care? If you're willing to create something without seeking a reward for it, what does it matter to you if someone else manages to make something out of it? You could still be assured that they couldn't prevent you, or anyone else, from using the same public domain materials.
Frankly, it sounds like miserliness to me: you want exclusive control even though you wouldn't make practical use of it, just to prevent someone else from doing it. That's wasteful and spiteful.
they are both big problems.
But what about now? Now, when anyone with an Internet connection and a voice can become a publisher? All those blog posts are copyrighted, you know. If I write something fantastic and compelling in my blog, anyone who wants to reuse it has to get permission. That includes the megacorps.
Automatic copyright should actually help the little people of today more than it hurts them.
I disagree.
The purpose of copyright is not to help authors, whether little or big. The purpose of copyright is to serve the public interest. The public interest vis a vis copyright can be broken down into three parts: 1) the public wants more original works created and published; 2) the public wants more derivative works created and published, and; 3) the public wants no restrictions as to those works, or if there are restrictions, the most minimal ones, in length and scope.
Granting a copyright always incurs a public detriment in that it is a restriction as to the work in question. Thus, it is only tolerable if the benefits that stem from the copyright grant are so great as to outweigh the detriments, thus yielding a net public benefit.
It is possible that encouraging the creation and publication of a work which otherwise would not have been created, by offering the author the artificial incentive of a copyright, can yield a net public benefit. However, what if the natural incentives for the author (e.g. fame, non-copyright related revenues, art for art's sake, etc.) would have resulted in the author creating the work anyway? In that case, copyright provides no public benefit since it is not copyright that is causing the work to be created and published. And since it necessarily causes a public detriment, we're left with a net public detriment. That is not tolerable.
While it's not possible to read the minds of authors and determine whether or not copyright was a necessary incentive to them for each work they create, a registration system is a good approximation. If an author was incentivized by the possibility of getting a copyright, then he will be willing to undertake at least modest actions to get one. Filling out a simple, one page form, sending in a couple of best copies for the Library of Congress collection, and a token fee, within a modest window of time, is a good way to gauge his desire for a copyright. If he would've created the work sans copyright, he probably won't bother to register. If it was important to him, then he will register.
If you had to register your forum posts, would you stop posting? I bet that you would not. Therefore, it harms everyone, including all the little guys, to not have your posts in the public domain so that everyone can freely use them. You, specifically, might not be as well off (though balance that against your benefit in being able to use everyone else's posts), but copyright is about the public good overall, not whether particular authors benefit.
Even the 'megacorps' won't bother to copyright everything and to maintain those copyrights. They never did before; why expect them to now?
No.
Not everything regarding a work is the subject of copyright. There is no right of a copyright holder to control who watches a work, for example. OTOH, there is a right to control the making of copies of the work.
So when he records the movie, that is infringing, unless it is, say, fair use. When he watches the recording, that is never infringing, regardless of whether the recording was even lawfully made or not. Thus, fair use doesn't care how many times he's going to watch the movie. It only cares whether the recording of the work was fair, given the circumstances. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; it depends.
So there's no 'watch once only' rule in time shifting or in other forms of fair use, such as space shifting.