Do you think that the government would not create banknotes, coins, stamps, etc. if it could not get a copyright on them? (Which, incidentally, it cannot do for the former two, and only can for the latter due to the way it reorganized the Post Office in the 70's)
They make those things because it is important to have uniform national currency, and a postal system. Whether artwork appears on them isn't important, but they do it anyway for various reasons: an appeal to patriotism, decoration, as anti-counterfeiting measure, propaganda, to showcase historical figures and events or landmarks, etc.
Like I said, the government doesn't need copyright as an incentive. And if copyright isn't incentivizing an author to create and publish a work, then it is inappropriate to have it. Why have a regulation that doesn't accomplish anything good, but incurs a significant cost in the process.
And as others have mentioned, counterfeiting laws deal with people who would reproduce certain items as counterfeits for the originals. And impersonating government officials, or acting fraudulently in the name of the government is also generally prohibited. But why should the government care if you reprint a copy of a statute or something?
The problem is that you cannot assert fair use unless there is a prima facie infringement. It really doesn't behave as an rebuttal to the prima facie case itself. In practice, it is indeed 'Yes there was what would have been an infringement except I did this thing which transforms that into something which is allowed.'
Fair use is something guiding your actions from the beginning, covering a deliberate act. It is not something you scramble to find after the fact when you get busted for downloading a decrypted copy of a film.
Ha! Trust me, plenty of people engaged in fair use have to scramble to find it. Mental state isn't a factor in fair use, so it isn't problematic.
I agree, but the current federal statute only prohibits the federal government from getting copyrights on works it creates. It ought to do the same for all governments, at all levels, worldwide. Governments don't need the incentive of copyright to create works; either they have other reasons, or they shouldn't be doing it anyway. So right now it would be up to New Jersey to have a similar policy as the federal government has. AFAIK, they don't.
That argument was used against cameras before, and it failed. It'll fail now. There might not be much creativity, but the threshold is so low for that, that I have no doubt that it would be found sufficient. I agree that it shouldn't be, partially because the threshold should be a touch higher than that (or at least more carefully analyzed than is usual), and that an additional requirement should be the intent of the author to make a creative work, as opposed to something else, e.g. a mere recording for other purposes (to catch toll evaders, to record accidents, to compile evidence against criminals as to their whereabouts, etc.). But that's not going to help much here.
Then there's that love scene with Tron and Yori that was cut from the film but which is on the 20th Anniversary DVD. That took place slightly after Tron found her to begin with, though.
Huh? The human in the computer is Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. Bruce Boxleitner plays two different characters: Alan Bradley, a computer programmer, and Tron, a program he wrote. They're not the same; part of the idea of the movie is that programs bear a resemblance to their creators. Also I suppose it made it convenient in that they could get several of the actors (Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, Barnard Hughes) to double up on roles.
The other poster is the one who asserted that. I said that I had never heard of any courts which actually said such a thing. However, making any unauthorized copies of copyrighted works (with certain exceptions) is prima facie infringing, so if it isn't fair use or within one of those narrow exceptions, it'd be illegal anyway. And as I said, fair use is determined on a case by case basis. Just because it's fair for Alice to make backup copies doesn't mean it's fair for Bob to.
"Fair use" is an exception to copyright protection. It is not a means of defense against copyright infringement, which would necessarily involve the commission of copyright infringement--fair use is *noninfringing* use and therefore the two are mutually exclusive.
Fair use is structured as a defense. The plaintiff can ignore fair use unless and until it is invoked by the defendant. Further, the burden is on the defendant to successfully argue fair use. This is appropriate, as he is the one who is claiming that there was a fair use and is probably in the best position to show why.
Fair use is not an excuse for committing an unlawful act.
Not all defenses involve excuses.
There is no such thing as a prima facie defense to copyright infringement
There is, I suppose, but what I said was that fair use is a defense to a prima facie case of infringement. That is, once the plaintiff has satisfied his initial burden of proving infringement, the ball moves to the defendant's court in order to prove fair use. He doesn't need to do so until the plaintiff can make a prima facie case, as without that, there's nothing anyway.
Fair use is a defense to a prima facie case of copyright infringement. Also it is convenient to speak of fair use as a defense to infringement, since generally people understand what is meant.
As for what is a fair use and what isn't, anything can be a fair use, and anything can not be a fair use. It's entirely case by case, without any kind of use automatically fair or automatically unfair. In RIAA v. Diamond, IIRC, the district court found that it could be fair use to space shift, which consisted of a person ripping a CD into an MP3 which they could then use on an MP3 player without having to use the CD. Thus it also included a format shift. Meanwhile I've never heard of any court case that said that where it was fair to make a backup, that backup couldn't be used instead of the original so long as the original was viable.
While I agree that many people misunderstand fair use, I think that you should start with your own misunderstandings.
Like I said, it's a legalistic religion. There are these rules which are meant to be followed, and the rules themselves haven't changed for thousands of years. But the world changes, and so the rules have to be interpreted by people. Which has also been going on for thousands of years.
Actually, I should clarify this: the offense is trafficking in copy control circumvention devices. Actually circumventing it would simply be copying, and thus regular old copyright infringement (to which fair use is a defense). So ripping a CD with a no copy flag would not be any different from ripping any other CD; the presence of the flag doesn't make it worse. But if someone is making a tool that circumvents the no copy flag, then that is something for which you could get in trouble.
Also n.b. that there are distinct offenses for circumventing an access control and circumventing a copy control; they aren't the same. An access control would not let you listen to the CD at all but would let you copy it, if that's possible. (CSS is an access control that doesn't prohibit copying; you can copy the encrypted data from the DVD without circumventing CSS) A copy control would let you listen to the CD but not copy it.
The common interpretation here as to what 'effective' means is that it is in fact an access control as opposed to some sort of thing that is not really an access control but which is put forward as such. To use an analogy, if you put the worst lock in the world on a gate (think of a combination lock where the combination is 3), it is effective; if you put a piece of paper on the gate that merely had the word 'lock' on it, trusting to people to respect it as if it were a lock, that would not be. Or say, if the lock was made to be permanently open, then it wouldn't be effective.
For example, in the Streambox case, there was a one bit flag to indicate whether access was allowed. This was found to be an effective control.
Still, you're welcome to try your luck. I for one would like to see the outcome.
Why should content creators have to give [the distribution] right up in the digital age?
The right isn't inherent in them, it comes from the public. Why should the public continue to give it to them? I'm not averse to it, but we shouldn't give it to them unless it provides a greater net public benefit to give them that right, given the costs it incurs, than it would if we didn't.
Merely to support authors or the publishing industry isn't a good enough reason. How does supporting us benefit us more than it costs us? Are there no alternatives that would yield a greater net benefit? Remember that having more works created and published is beneficial, but that it is also beneficial for the public to have more freedom to do with works what they will.
For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
Actually, the statutes are clear that making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works is illegal. There are exceptions to this in the statutes, but whether or not they'll apply depends on the circumstances in which you do it. E.g. if you rip a CD, that can be non-actionable, but only for the right kind of CD and the right kind of equipment or target media you're ripping to, who you are, and what you're going to do with the new copy. The fair use exception is often invoked, but it is deliberately the vaguest exception of all, since it will protect you if what you are doing is infringing but fair, whatever it is. Some courts have looked at these issues, but unless parties actually bring it to court, which hasn't happened much, it's tough to get much of a consensus. And again, for something like fair use, it's all on a case-by-case basis anyway; some CD ripping is fair, some isn't fair, because it depends entirely on the circumstances.
Still, we can at best say that it is generally easy to know what constitutes prima facie infringement. It's the limits to copyright which are harder to be clear about.
The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts
No, copyright is intended to promote the progress of science. Remember that the Constitution is pretty old, and that the English language changes a lot. What they meant was that it's supposed to improve general human knowledge. The entertainment industry's products are a subset of this. The useful arts is what patent law is meant to promote the progress of, by which they meant practical technology. There are more remnants of this use of the word art in the language still, e.g. prior art, state of the art, person having ordinary skill in the art, etc. It's just funny how now we think of patents as being associated with science and copyrights as being associated with the arts.
Well, I suppose you can run it for 30 seconds and just stop it after 15 or 20 or whenever. That's short enough that you can probably just wait at the thing. I admit that that's a case where this wouldn't be ideal, but OTOH, most microwave cooking probably doesn't involve melting butter or doing anything else that requires using the microwave for something that can't be put at 30 second intervals.
People who are observant certainly remember what is and isn't allowed. The issue is that the device needs to be flexible. If a refrigerator always lights a light when the door is opened, and always turns the compressor on when the door is opened because it's designed to expect that cold air is escaping then, then an observant Jewish person cannot use that fridge at all one day a week. He won't be able to avoid doing prohibited things if he goes to get anything out of it. So he'll have to do without altogether.
It seems like it'd be a hell of a lot easier to just have a switch that puts the fridge into an alternate mode where opening the door doesn't make the light come on, and doesn't trigger the compressor. Then the person can use the fridge. He knows what he wants the fridge to do -- the machine isn't meant to remind him. It's just meant to behave in the way he needs it to during that time.
Letting things work on timers or other automatic systems that are not connected to human activity which occurs on the sabbath is fine. So heat in the winter is left on automatic. It doesn't need to be turned off. There's no prohibition about having a compressor running, or having it switch on or off. The prohibition is against being the one who switches it on or off.
Anyway, this is actually pretty legalistic and rational, if quite conservative in interpretation. Well, at least if you're treating the law you're trying to follow as an absolute given. It is something that you can have a rational discussion about.
No, I'm serious. Plenty of electronic appliances do have a shabbat mode (though you might have to investigate a little to figure out how to toggle it). It isn't meant to remind people, but to let them have some use of their appliances without actually engaging in prohibited behavior. Without it, you either need simpler devices, or it's harder to set them up properly (e.g. having to tape down the switch for the fridge lamp every week), or you have to do without altogether. It's not that people's convictions mean little to them, it's that even though their use of the machines might be limited during that time, it's better to put them into a limited-use mode rather than to have to forgo them entirely.
I like the ones where it assumes that you enter cook times in whole-minute increments and doesn't wait for you to hit 'start' if the door is shut. If you want to add 30 seconds, there's a specific button for that. I don't know anyone who uses a microwave for finer units of time, and it saves on button presses (e.g. cook for five minutes by pushing 5 instead of 5,0,0,enter).
Of course, I think Pogue suggested that microwaves should have a barcode reader, and food packaging should have barcodes that provide cooking instructions. That way you could just swipe the box or tray or whatever and otherwise generally ignore it. RIFD might be good for this too. Well, once.
I can see it being useful if the oven has a shabbat mode (e.g. the light won't turn on, you can set a timer on Friday to start reheating (not cooking) something already in there on Saturday, etc.). But you say there's no schedule function, so this probably wouldn't cover yours.
But it shouldn't require you to enter the time and date in order to use the oven. It should just be something you can enter if you want to. Also it ought to have a battery inside to avoid making you change it if power is lost.
But making copies period is a right (free speech, free press) which is limited where copyright is involved, but not limited where it is not. Fair use is a limit to copyright; if a use is a fair use, then copyright doesn't apply to it. It's just structured in the nature of a defense for more procedural reasons than anything else. E.g. the user is in the best position to make the argument because he best knows the relevant circumstances.
Sigh. I really, really hate the software industry for using copyright licenses so much. They've completely confused so many people as to how things really work.
Look, when you buy a copy of a work, such as a book, or a CD, or a DVD, etc. you are simply buying the physical medium which happens to have a copy of the work fixed within it. It is that simple. It is no different from buying a brick or a car.
You can then use that copy however you like, so long as you use it in a lawful manner, just like with anything else you buy. If you buy a car, then you can drive however you want, but you still cannot break traffic laws with it. When you buy a book, you can use it however you want (read it, learn from it, use it to prop up the bed) but you can't do illegal things (e.g. make another copy of it, if it is copyrighted at the time you do so). When the copyright runs out, fewer things are illegal. Depending on your circumstances, something may or may not be illegal while those circumstances hold.
There is no license. In fact, the various publishing companies don't even claim that there are licenses. Copyright warnings (e.g. it's illegal to make copies of this) are not licenses, they're just restating the law. If your car came with a sticker that said 'don't run over people' that would be the same thing.
Software, and works which are accessed over the net (e.g. iTMS music) are really the only exceptions to this in the consumer market. And it's a bit sad, since software doesn't need to be licensed to end users to begin with; users would be able to use the software and make backups of software without licenses, and developers would still be protected. Licenses are only really useful for things like site licenses, or where the work isn't software. And even then, implied licenses (e.g. as used for virtually every web page, allowing users to make copies of the page as is necessary in order to see it, due to how computers work) could handle a lot of the remainder.
I am just sick and tired of all the crap where people think that Disney or whomever is not selling DVDs, but is instead licensing them. They aren't, and they never said otherwise, even. You know how a EULA for software is relatively up-front and in your face? When DVDs do that, then you'll know they're licensed. Otherwise, I assure you, it's not happening, not for the stuff you get from the store.
The consequences of this are that 1) it's illegal to make copies (often even backups) due to the law; 2) if your copy breaks, you are not entitled to a replacement or to make a replacement if you hadn't (lawfully) done so already; 3) you aren't entitled to get better quality copies merely because you have a lower quality copy.
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Do you think that the government would not create banknotes, coins, stamps, etc. if it could not get a copyright on them? (Which, incidentally, it cannot do for the former two, and only can for the latter due to the way it reorganized the Post Office in the 70's)
They make those things because it is important to have uniform national currency, and a postal system. Whether artwork appears on them isn't important, but they do it anyway for various reasons: an appeal to patriotism, decoration, as anti-counterfeiting measure, propaganda, to showcase historical figures and events or landmarks, etc.
Like I said, the government doesn't need copyright as an incentive. And if copyright isn't incentivizing an author to create and publish a work, then it is inappropriate to have it. Why have a regulation that doesn't accomplish anything good, but incurs a significant cost in the process.
And as others have mentioned, counterfeiting laws deal with people who would reproduce certain items as counterfeits for the originals. And impersonating government officials, or acting fraudulently in the name of the government is also generally prohibited. But why should the government care if you reprint a copy of a statute or something?
The problem is that you cannot assert fair use unless there is a prima facie infringement. It really doesn't behave as an rebuttal to the prima facie case itself. In practice, it is indeed 'Yes there was what would have been an infringement except I did this thing which transforms that into something which is allowed.'
Fair use is something guiding your actions from the beginning, covering a deliberate act. It is not something you scramble to find after the fact when you get busted for downloading a decrypted copy of a film.
Ha! Trust me, plenty of people engaged in fair use have to scramble to find it. Mental state isn't a factor in fair use, so it isn't problematic.
I agree, but the current federal statute only prohibits the federal government from getting copyrights on works it creates. It ought to do the same for all governments, at all levels, worldwide. Governments don't need the incentive of copyright to create works; either they have other reasons, or they shouldn't be doing it anyway. So right now it would be up to New Jersey to have a similar policy as the federal government has. AFAIK, they don't.
That argument was used against cameras before, and it failed. It'll fail now. There might not be much creativity, but the threshold is so low for that, that I have no doubt that it would be found sufficient. I agree that it shouldn't be, partially because the threshold should be a touch higher than that (or at least more carefully analyzed than is usual), and that an additional requirement should be the intent of the author to make a creative work, as opposed to something else, e.g. a mere recording for other purposes (to catch toll evaders, to record accidents, to compile evidence against criminals as to their whereabouts, etc.). But that's not going to help much here.
Then there's that love scene with Tron and Yori that was cut from the film but which is on the 20th Anniversary DVD. That took place slightly after Tron found her to begin with, though.
Huh? The human in the computer is Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges. Bruce Boxleitner plays two different characters: Alan Bradley, a computer programmer, and Tron, a program he wrote. They're not the same; part of the idea of the movie is that programs bear a resemblance to their creators. Also I suppose it made it convenient in that they could get several of the actors (Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, Barnard Hughes) to double up on roles.
Craptastic. Honestly, Automan was just barely better than Manimal.
The other poster is the one who asserted that. I said that I had never heard of any courts which actually said such a thing. However, making any unauthorized copies of copyrighted works (with certain exceptions) is prima facie infringing, so if it isn't fair use or within one of those narrow exceptions, it'd be illegal anyway. And as I said, fair use is determined on a case by case basis. Just because it's fair for Alice to make backup copies doesn't mean it's fair for Bob to.
"Fair use" is an exception to copyright protection. It is not a means of defense against copyright infringement, which would necessarily involve the commission of copyright infringement--fair use is *noninfringing* use and therefore the two are mutually exclusive.
Fair use is structured as a defense. The plaintiff can ignore fair use unless and until it is invoked by the defendant. Further, the burden is on the defendant to successfully argue fair use. This is appropriate, as he is the one who is claiming that there was a fair use and is probably in the best position to show why.
Fair use is not an excuse for committing an unlawful act.
Not all defenses involve excuses.
There is no such thing as a prima facie defense to copyright infringement
There is, I suppose, but what I said was that fair use is a defense to a prima facie case of infringement. That is, once the plaintiff has satisfied his initial burden of proving infringement, the ball moves to the defendant's court in order to prove fair use. He doesn't need to do so until the plaintiff can make a prima facie case, as without that, there's nothing anyway.
Fair use is a defense to a prima facie case of copyright infringement. Also it is convenient to speak of fair use as a defense to infringement, since generally people understand what is meant.
As for what is a fair use and what isn't, anything can be a fair use, and anything can not be a fair use. It's entirely case by case, without any kind of use automatically fair or automatically unfair. In RIAA v. Diamond, IIRC, the district court found that it could be fair use to space shift, which consisted of a person ripping a CD into an MP3 which they could then use on an MP3 player without having to use the CD. Thus it also included a format shift. Meanwhile I've never heard of any court case that said that where it was fair to make a backup, that backup couldn't be used instead of the original so long as the original was viable.
While I agree that many people misunderstand fair use, I think that you should start with your own misunderstandings.
Like I said, it's a legalistic religion. There are these rules which are meant to be followed, and the rules themselves haven't changed for thousands of years. But the world changes, and so the rules have to be interpreted by people. Which has also been going on for thousands of years.
Actually, I should clarify this: the offense is trafficking in copy control circumvention devices. Actually circumventing it would simply be copying, and thus regular old copyright infringement (to which fair use is a defense). So ripping a CD with a no copy flag would not be any different from ripping any other CD; the presence of the flag doesn't make it worse. But if someone is making a tool that circumvents the no copy flag, then that is something for which you could get in trouble.
Does anyone use it?
Also n.b. that there are distinct offenses for circumventing an access control and circumventing a copy control; they aren't the same. An access control would not let you listen to the CD at all but would let you copy it, if that's possible. (CSS is an access control that doesn't prohibit copying; you can copy the encrypted data from the DVD without circumventing CSS) A copy control would let you listen to the CD but not copy it.
Unlikely.
The common interpretation here as to what 'effective' means is that it is in fact an access control as opposed to some sort of thing that is not really an access control but which is put forward as such. To use an analogy, if you put the worst lock in the world on a gate (think of a combination lock where the combination is 3), it is effective; if you put a piece of paper on the gate that merely had the word 'lock' on it, trusting to people to respect it as if it were a lock, that would not be. Or say, if the lock was made to be permanently open, then it wouldn't be effective.
For example, in the Streambox case, there was a one bit flag to indicate whether access was allowed. This was found to be an effective control.
Still, you're welcome to try your luck. I for one would like to see the outcome.
Why should content creators have to give [the distribution] right up in the digital age?
The right isn't inherent in them, it comes from the public. Why should the public continue to give it to them? I'm not averse to it, but we shouldn't give it to them unless it provides a greater net public benefit to give them that right, given the costs it incurs, than it would if we didn't.
Merely to support authors or the publishing industry isn't a good enough reason. How does supporting us benefit us more than it costs us? Are there no alternatives that would yield a greater net benefit? Remember that having more works created and published is beneficial, but that it is also beneficial for the public to have more freedom to do with works what they will.
For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
Actually, the statutes are clear that making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works is illegal. There are exceptions to this in the statutes, but whether or not they'll apply depends on the circumstances in which you do it. E.g. if you rip a CD, that can be non-actionable, but only for the right kind of CD and the right kind of equipment or target media you're ripping to, who you are, and what you're going to do with the new copy. The fair use exception is often invoked, but it is deliberately the vaguest exception of all, since it will protect you if what you are doing is infringing but fair, whatever it is. Some courts have looked at these issues, but unless parties actually bring it to court, which hasn't happened much, it's tough to get much of a consensus. And again, for something like fair use, it's all on a case-by-case basis anyway; some CD ripping is fair, some isn't fair, because it depends entirely on the circumstances.
Still, we can at best say that it is generally easy to know what constitutes prima facie infringement. It's the limits to copyright which are harder to be clear about.
The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts
No, copyright is intended to promote the progress of science. Remember that the Constitution is pretty old, and that the English language changes a lot. What they meant was that it's supposed to improve general human knowledge. The entertainment industry's products are a subset of this. The useful arts is what patent law is meant to promote the progress of, by which they meant practical technology. There are more remnants of this use of the word art in the language still, e.g. prior art, state of the art, person having ordinary skill in the art, etc. It's just funny how now we think of patents as being associated with science and copyrights as being associated with the arts.
Well, I suppose you can run it for 30 seconds and just stop it after 15 or 20 or whenever. That's short enough that you can probably just wait at the thing. I admit that that's a case where this wouldn't be ideal, but OTOH, most microwave cooking probably doesn't involve melting butter or doing anything else that requires using the microwave for something that can't be put at 30 second intervals.
You really aren't understanding the issue.
People who are observant certainly remember what is and isn't allowed. The issue is that the device needs to be flexible. If a refrigerator always lights a light when the door is opened, and always turns the compressor on when the door is opened because it's designed to expect that cold air is escaping then, then an observant Jewish person cannot use that fridge at all one day a week. He won't be able to avoid doing prohibited things if he goes to get anything out of it. So he'll have to do without altogether.
It seems like it'd be a hell of a lot easier to just have a switch that puts the fridge into an alternate mode where opening the door doesn't make the light come on, and doesn't trigger the compressor. Then the person can use the fridge. He knows what he wants the fridge to do -- the machine isn't meant to remind him. It's just meant to behave in the way he needs it to during that time.
Letting things work on timers or other automatic systems that are not connected to human activity which occurs on the sabbath is fine. So heat in the winter is left on automatic. It doesn't need to be turned off. There's no prohibition about having a compressor running, or having it switch on or off. The prohibition is against being the one who switches it on or off.
Anyway, this is actually pretty legalistic and rational, if quite conservative in interpretation. Well, at least if you're treating the law you're trying to follow as an absolute given. It is something that you can have a rational discussion about.
No, I'm serious. Plenty of electronic appliances do have a shabbat mode (though you might have to investigate a little to figure out how to toggle it). It isn't meant to remind people, but to let them have some use of their appliances without actually engaging in prohibited behavior. Without it, you either need simpler devices, or it's harder to set them up properly (e.g. having to tape down the switch for the fridge lamp every week), or you have to do without altogether. It's not that people's convictions mean little to them, it's that even though their use of the machines might be limited during that time, it's better to put them into a limited-use mode rather than to have to forgo them entirely.
Look into it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode
In which case you just hit the 'add 30 seconds button,' rather than one of the digits.
I like the ones where it assumes that you enter cook times in whole-minute increments and doesn't wait for you to hit 'start' if the door is shut. If you want to add 30 seconds, there's a specific button for that. I don't know anyone who uses a microwave for finer units of time, and it saves on button presses (e.g. cook for five minutes by pushing 5 instead of 5,0,0,enter).
Of course, I think Pogue suggested that microwaves should have a barcode reader, and food packaging should have barcodes that provide cooking instructions. That way you could just swipe the box or tray or whatever and otherwise generally ignore it. RIFD might be good for this too. Well, once.
I can see it being useful if the oven has a shabbat mode (e.g. the light won't turn on, you can set a timer on Friday to start reheating (not cooking) something already in there on Saturday, etc.). But you say there's no schedule function, so this probably wouldn't cover yours.
But it shouldn't require you to enter the time and date in order to use the oven. It should just be something you can enter if you want to. Also it ought to have a battery inside to avoid making you change it if power is lost.
But making copies period is a right (free speech, free press) which is limited where copyright is involved, but not limited where it is not. Fair use is a limit to copyright; if a use is a fair use, then copyright doesn't apply to it. It's just structured in the nature of a defense for more procedural reasons than anything else. E.g. the user is in the best position to make the argument because he best knows the relevant circumstances.
Sigh. I really, really hate the software industry for using copyright licenses so much. They've completely confused so many people as to how things really work.
Look, when you buy a copy of a work, such as a book, or a CD, or a DVD, etc. you are simply buying the physical medium which happens to have a copy of the work fixed within it. It is that simple. It is no different from buying a brick or a car.
You can then use that copy however you like, so long as you use it in a lawful manner, just like with anything else you buy. If you buy a car, then you can drive however you want, but you still cannot break traffic laws with it. When you buy a book, you can use it however you want (read it, learn from it, use it to prop up the bed) but you can't do illegal things (e.g. make another copy of it, if it is copyrighted at the time you do so). When the copyright runs out, fewer things are illegal. Depending on your circumstances, something may or may not be illegal while those circumstances hold.
There is no license. In fact, the various publishing companies don't even claim that there are licenses. Copyright warnings (e.g. it's illegal to make copies of this) are not licenses, they're just restating the law. If your car came with a sticker that said 'don't run over people' that would be the same thing.
Software, and works which are accessed over the net (e.g. iTMS music) are really the only exceptions to this in the consumer market. And it's a bit sad, since software doesn't need to be licensed to end users to begin with; users would be able to use the software and make backups of software without licenses, and developers would still be protected. Licenses are only really useful for things like site licenses, or where the work isn't software. And even then, implied licenses (e.g. as used for virtually every web page, allowing users to make copies of the page as is necessary in order to see it, due to how computers work) could handle a lot of the remainder.
I am just sick and tired of all the crap where people think that Disney or whomever is not selling DVDs, but is instead licensing them. They aren't, and they never said otherwise, even. You know how a EULA for software is relatively up-front and in your face? When DVDs do that, then you'll know they're licensed. Otherwise, I assure you, it's not happening, not for the stuff you get from the store.
The consequences of this are that 1) it's illegal to make copies (often even backups) due to the law; 2) if your copy breaks, you are not entitled to a replacement or to make a replacement if you hadn't (lawfully) done so already; 3) you aren't entitled to get better quality copies merely because you have a lower quality copy.
They didn't have fiddles then; that's an anachronism. But back in the day, there was a rumor that Nero sang and played the lyre during the fire of 64.