First of all, the purpose of patents is not to spur inventors to invent.
Well, in fact, the purpose of patents is to promote the progress of the useful arts. This means having the most inventions invented, disclosed, and brought to market, for the least burden on the public. So a portion of the purpose of patents is to spur invention, but this is absolutely not the only purpose, and to treat it as if it were the only purpose would be a grave mistake. It would be akin to saying that the purpose of a steam engine is to do work and that therefore the engine should not have a governor attached to keep it working safely.
They exist because when you invent a process, or anything original, you have the right to your invention.
That is a tautology. It's also utterly wrong.
Second, even if it was the point of patents, they don't help.
That's certainly a point of view, and people have been known to make that argument. I think that this is the case for software and business method patents at the current time. But it is possible that they will be beneficial in those fields at some time in the future, or not beneficial in some other fields. Where a patent does not produce a net public benefit we shouldn't have that patent.
Abolish patents, and software firms will have no incentive to write anything: anyone can steal it.
This is demonstrably false. Business methods have existed since time immemorable, and novel, nonobvious business methods have been developed throughout history. But the US is one of the few, if not the only, place to offer patents for them, and then only in the past few years. Software is newer, but the same situation applies: it's only been patentable here for a little while, and in most of the world, not at all. The thriving global software industry and business generally prove that you are wrong again.
Their only solution? Do what Microsoft does and have ridiculous anti-piracy measures that don't even work.
That is not a solution. That doesn't even make sense, and it indicates that you're way out of your league on this.
A patent is used against industrial competitors to prevent them from using your invention for themselves. For example, there was an infamous patent on the use of LZW compression in GIF images. The patent holder could prevent anyone from writing their own software that did that; software piracy was utterly irrelevant to the issue. The fuss over this resulted in the development of PNG as a patent-free alternative that anyone could make an implementation of. That PNG was free to use didn't mean that it was lawful to copy someone else's implementation, but instead only that it was lawful to make your own implementation of PNG at all.
I suggest that you learn the difference between copyrights and patents, which both have to do with software, among other things, but which are not the same, and don't overlap, and then come back and maybe then we can have a sensible discussion.
There is no grey area. The issue is whether you are copying the expression or not. The idea underlying the expression is not copyrightable and may be copied from any source. The expression may not be copied, but can be independently reproduced identically, or can be totally different.
If you translate a book, then you're just making a derivative of it. But if you write a new book that uses the same basic plot but which is not a copy of how that plot is expressed, then you're fine.
In software, if you copy the code directly, you're in trouble. But if you write a new program that works exactly the same, you're fine. So long as you aren't copying portions of the code, it doesn't matter whether the algorithm is the same or not. And the more that the code lacks creativity because it is dictated by things like efficiency concerns, the less likely it is to be copyrightable at all.
And also historical and factual events are noncopyrightable. You can copy the fact that the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 from the date on the document itself, from a history book, or from a movie. Remember that not every little thing that compromises a copyrighted work is itself copyrightable or copyrighted.
Reverse engineering has never been a copyright infringement. A copyright covers an expression of an idea. So long as your expression of the same idea is not copied from someone else's expression, there can be no infringement, even if they happen to be identical (which is in fact more likely than usual in the case of software, which is pretty structured). OTOH, a patent covers an invention regardless of how embodied. Even if someone independently comes up with the same invention and makes an embodiment that is quite different from that of the patent holder, it would still be patent infringement.
The idea is - if it can be created/distributed at such "minimal" effort that no cost is required, then it the patent is of questionable novelty.
That has absolutely nothing to do with novelty. Novelty is whether the invention is new or not. Nor does it have to do with nonobviousness. Your proposal is simply an exception for people who make software which they give away for free.
Frankly, I don't care for it. A broad exception for non-commercial activity by natural persons might be okay for absolutely any kind of patent (e.g. if you want to brew up a patented chemical or something in your basement, then that's fine), but I don't see why it should only be applied to software.
I'm opposed to software patents, but not for reasons of obviousness. Rather, given that the purpose of patents is to spur inventors to invent, disclose the workings of their inventions, to bring those inventions to market, and to have the least burden on the public in terms of what they can't do, I think that software patents are inappropriate. There are other incentives to do these things besides the incentive of a patent. In the case of software and business methods, I think those other incentives are quite strong; strong enough that those fields would continue to thrive without patents (as they did until fairly recently, when patents came onto the scene in those fields) and that they'd actually do better, in fact, without the chilling effect on the market that the patents cause.
If someday those other incentives diminish, we might want to have patents there again. Certainly we should keep an eye on this. But for now, I think that we'd see much more invention, disclosure, and bringing-to-market without the burden of patents than we have now.
Does this argument satisfy you? Better still, would you agree with it?
No. But I do not think that Internet radio stations are likely to take them up on the offer unless the copyright holders publicize their offer very well (i.e. they go to the effort of getting the word to the program directors, rather than just putting up a post on an obscure webpage) and unless the copyright holders make sure that their alternative, even accounting for the extra costs that the stations will incur in deviating from normal procedures (e.g. verifying that the song is still licensed for free each time they go to play it, talking with SoundExchange so that they aren't charged for it later, etc.), is still cheaper than just going with the statutory license. Even as stupidly high as the new rates are, don't underestimate the real value of convenience.
Oh, I don't know. First, trial court opinions can be used as precedents, they're just not binding on anyone. They can still have influential value, however. Second, the opinions needn't be published, at least not anymore, not in the federal courts. States may vary. And after all, in this age of Westlaw and Lexis, who cares about whether an opinion was formally published so long as it can be gotten to? The publication requirement really does need to be killed off as it no longer serves a useful purpose.
Well, at least yours is a better bit of misinformation than usual.
But you're still wrong, and I suspect that the cause is that you didn't read carefully. To wit:
17 USC 1201 (a)(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title....
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. (3) As used in this subsection-- (A) to "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and (B) a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
So no, no one can unauthorizedly decrypt an encrypted DVD, since that constitutes circumvention, and no one can make or traffic in devices, including software, which can do it.
What you were citing was not 1201(a), which has to do with circumvention, but 1201(b), which has to do with copyright protection. The reason that 1201(b) lacks a parallel to 1201(a)(1)(A) is because it doesn't need one. Breaking a copyright protection mechanism is copyright infringement, and is already covered pretty adequately elsewhere in the law.
Furthermore, that last bit about "OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED" indicates that previous fair use law remains in force, allowing the legal owner of a copy to make an additional copy for backup purposes, so long as the original remains in their possession.
Well, two caveats. First, fair use doesn't always permit the owner of a copy to make a backup. It only permits that if, under all the circumstances, it would be fair. Fair use is a case-by-case issue, and you cannot make accurate blanket statements as to what is and isn't fair. It is entirely possible that while Alice might be able to make such copies pursuant to fair use, Bob might not be able to, due to their differing circumstances, even if each is the owner of the copies from which the use is made.
Second, so what? Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. It is not a defense to circumvention. If you unauthorizedly decrypt a DVD, even if it is a fair use, you still circumvented and can be sued for that. This is the downside to 'other defenses not affected' -- they weren't enlarged to handle the new situation.
SoundExchange is collecting money on behalf of someone else, and it disburses that money to them. It doesn't keep it for its own profit. This doesn't mean it can't be abusive, but the vast majority of the money is meant to either go to the relevant copyright holders or to sit there, untouched, until it goes to the relevant copyright holders.
I should think the illegal thing here is that artists for whom SoundExchange has collected royalties cannot get those royalties unless they pay up and join SoundExchange.
Actually, you don't have to pay them per se, though they do deduct an administrative fee from what they disburse, and you don't have to join for them to send you what you're owed, though you probably do need to let them know where to send it.
And also, if the artist does not want SoundExchange to collect royalties on their behalf, SoundExchange does so anyway.
Yes, because the law mandates this. An Internet radio station that plays music can do so legally without the permission of the copyright holder if he sends the appropriate royalty as directed by the Copyright Office. The Copyright Office has decided that the statutory royalties will be handled by SoundExchange, so that's where it goes. It doesn't matter what the copyright holder thinks. After all, the whole point is to let Internet radio exist at all, and that means simplifying things, rather than giving the copyright holders effective veto power. The only way anyone will ever prefer to deal with the copyright holders rather than SoundExchange is if the copyright holders 1) offer a better deal, 2) have far lower transactional costs so that it's worthwhile to take them up on it, and 3) publicize this effectively. I doubt it'll happen, honestly.
But none of it's illegal. People are really overreacting to all this.
No. I don't have a problem with a statutory license for this sort of thing. Having radio is more important than making copyright holders happy, and this is basically a cutting through the Gordian knot of individual licensing in order to have radio at all.
I write a couple hundred songs. I run a web radio site and broadcast these. The U.S. Copyright Office authorizes SoundExchange to collect royalties on my "use" of these songs. I therefore owe SoundExchange royalties for the "compulsory license" to broadcast.
No. The law does not require a copyright holder to pay royalties that are ultimately due to himself. It's not a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio at all, it's a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio where you otherwise don't have a right to do so (i.e. you're not the copyright holder and you don't have a separately-negotiated license with the copyright holder, and there is a copyright)
As the holder of copyright in these works, *I am the one who authorizes their licensing, and if another party does so they are breaking the law.
Except when the law itself includes a license (as is the case here) which you don't get a choice in. You can always offer a different license, but anyone can opt to take the one Congress created. This is because Congress defines what copyright is in the US, and they've defined it to include this license.
If I create some sort of internet radio content, and I want to make private arrangements with one or several netcasters to stream that content (perhaps for free), that's none of the RIAA's business.
You can still do that. They didn't say you couldn't. They said that Internet radio stations are entitled to use the statutory license rather than negotiate with copyright holders, for everything. And that whenever someone uses the statutory license, the money is handled by SoundExchange, regardless of whether the copyright holder is signed up with them or not, because that's what the law mandates. No one has said that there can't be other licenses. Though signing up with SoundExchange does seem to preclude further collective licensing, though not non-collective licensing.
Honestly, this is all not a big deal. There are plenty of more important things to get worked up about, and I'd like to know how you would expect collective licensing to work, if not basically along these lines.
I'm not clear that you're allowed to take payment for someone who has not given you the right to do so. I'm certain that such a scheme could be legalized by the US Government
And indeed, that's what has happened. The government has said that any Internet radio station can play any music they want so long as they comply with the statutory license (i.e the license Congress wrote into the statute itself), one of the terms of which is that SoundExchange handles the money, collecting it, disbursing it, etc. The copyright holders can set up separate licenses if they please, and are able to, but the statutory license is an alternative. Radio already has a similar system, with radio stations being able to play whatever they feel like, without the consent of the copyright holders. The main argument has been over the fee charged. If there were no statutory license at all, then there would really be no lawful Internet radio in the US due to the high transactional costs (and likely high charges) of negotiating with all the copyright holders separately, many of whom would likely not even permit their music to be played or at least not for a realistically low fee. These are far from the only statutory licenses we have either.
No, if they pay SoundExchange, then they are not infringing on your copyright. Congress determines whether you have a copyright at all, how long it lasts, when it does and doesn't apply, etc. And they've determined that because radio (and covers) would never work if they had to be individually licensed each and every time, there need to be statutory licenses, i.e. licenses defined in the statute, apart from agreed-upon licenses, which are still available.
Basically, the Internet radio station has two licenses it can choose from. It can make a license with the copyright holder directly, for whatever terms they can agree on. Or it can ignore the copyright holder and use the statutory license procedures, which require sending the money to SoundExchange, which will disburse an appropriate amount to the copyright holder if the copyright holder goes through the procedure it has to to get it.
So radio stations can avoid doing business with SoundExchange, but copyright holders shouldn't, since they don't have control over whether radio stations will use the statutory license. Many will since it's easier than negotiating with each individual copyright holder, however.
But assuming they paid the company to write the code, that would clearly seem to fit the definition of "Work for Hire"
No, that's not really enough. Generally, it needs to be made in an employee/employer relationship. There's a whole laundry list of factors that go into that. CCNV v. Reid has a good summary of them.
No, there are several kinds of remedies available for copyright infringement. Destroying unlawfully made copies is one, but money damages are another. Always have been, in fact. You should take a look at 17 USC 502-505.
Yes, you're thinking of spousal privilege. My understanding is that some jurisdictions have been adopting or at least looking into parent/child privilege, but most, if not all don't have it. As for manipulating witnesses, I think you watch too much tv.
They can say anything they feel like though, since children can not take a legally binding oath to tell truth, all truth and nothing but the truth.
Of course they can, and when they testify, they do. The issue is whether the witness is able to understand their responsibilities on the stand. You seem to be thinking of the ability to children to be bound to a contract, which is not the same thing as this. Besides, you misunderstand that. Contracts with minors are voidable, rather than void, there are generally issues involved with a decision to avoid the contract (e.g. return of the goods in question), and they're not always avoidable either (e.g. a contract for necessities like food or shelter are as binding for minors as anyone, since it's more important that purveyors of such will contract with minors than that the minors can have some protection against making bad deals).
Also, EULAs are generally considered to be terms of sale for goods and enforceable as such. There is some disagreement, but it focuses around details of the UCC, rather than anything you've been going on about.
As to the monetary issue, parents are responsible for the financial debts of their minor children with few exceptions.
Actually, that's the other way around. There's a decent memo on this subject (with regard to copyright infringement) on the EFF site, IIRC. The main issue, of course, is a combination of preemption and that merely being a parent of a minor child doesn't rise to the level of secondary infringement. If you're a plaintiff going up against a minor in such a suit, your best hope, if the parents won't volunteer to cover it, is to get the judgment, wait for the child to get assets, and then collect, hoping that the infringement in question isn't subject to being discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding.
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First of all, the purpose of patents is not to spur inventors to invent.
Well, in fact, the purpose of patents is to promote the progress of the useful arts. This means having the most inventions invented, disclosed, and brought to market, for the least burden on the public. So a portion of the purpose of patents is to spur invention, but this is absolutely not the only purpose, and to treat it as if it were the only purpose would be a grave mistake. It would be akin to saying that the purpose of a steam engine is to do work and that therefore the engine should not have a governor attached to keep it working safely.
They exist because when you invent a process, or anything original, you have the right to your invention.
That is a tautology. It's also utterly wrong.
Second, even if it was the point of patents, they don't help.
That's certainly a point of view, and people have been known to make that argument. I think that this is the case for software and business method patents at the current time. But it is possible that they will be beneficial in those fields at some time in the future, or not beneficial in some other fields. Where a patent does not produce a net public benefit we shouldn't have that patent.
Abolish patents, and software firms will have no incentive to write anything: anyone can steal it.
This is demonstrably false. Business methods have existed since time immemorable, and novel, nonobvious business methods have been developed throughout history. But the US is one of the few, if not the only, place to offer patents for them, and then only in the past few years. Software is newer, but the same situation applies: it's only been patentable here for a little while, and in most of the world, not at all. The thriving global software industry and business generally prove that you are wrong again.
Their only solution? Do what Microsoft does and have ridiculous anti-piracy measures that don't even work.
That is not a solution. That doesn't even make sense, and it indicates that you're way out of your league on this.
A patent is used against industrial competitors to prevent them from using your invention for themselves. For example, there was an infamous patent on the use of LZW compression in GIF images. The patent holder could prevent anyone from writing their own software that did that; software piracy was utterly irrelevant to the issue. The fuss over this resulted in the development of PNG as a patent-free alternative that anyone could make an implementation of. That PNG was free to use didn't mean that it was lawful to copy someone else's implementation, but instead only that it was lawful to make your own implementation of PNG at all.
I suggest that you learn the difference between copyrights and patents, which both have to do with software, among other things, but which are not the same, and don't overlap, and then come back and maybe then we can have a sensible discussion.
There is no grey area. The issue is whether you are copying the expression or not. The idea underlying the expression is not copyrightable and may be copied from any source. The expression may not be copied, but can be independently reproduced identically, or can be totally different.
If you translate a book, then you're just making a derivative of it. But if you write a new book that uses the same basic plot but which is not a copy of how that plot is expressed, then you're fine.
In software, if you copy the code directly, you're in trouble. But if you write a new program that works exactly the same, you're fine. So long as you aren't copying portions of the code, it doesn't matter whether the algorithm is the same or not. And the more that the code lacks creativity because it is dictated by things like efficiency concerns, the less likely it is to be copyrightable at all.
And also historical and factual events are noncopyrightable. You can copy the fact that the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 from the date on the document itself, from a history book, or from a movie. Remember that not every little thing that compromises a copyrighted work is itself copyrightable or copyrighted.
Reverse engineering has never been a copyright infringement. A copyright covers an expression of an idea. So long as your expression of the same idea is not copied from someone else's expression, there can be no infringement, even if they happen to be identical (which is in fact more likely than usual in the case of software, which is pretty structured). OTOH, a patent covers an invention regardless of how embodied. Even if someone independently comes up with the same invention and makes an embodiment that is quite different from that of the patent holder, it would still be patent infringement.
The idea is - if it can be created/distributed at such "minimal" effort that no cost is required, then it the patent is of questionable novelty.
That has absolutely nothing to do with novelty. Novelty is whether the invention is new or not. Nor does it have to do with nonobviousness. Your proposal is simply an exception for people who make software which they give away for free.
Frankly, I don't care for it. A broad exception for non-commercial activity by natural persons might be okay for absolutely any kind of patent (e.g. if you want to brew up a patented chemical or something in your basement, then that's fine), but I don't see why it should only be applied to software.
I'm opposed to software patents, but not for reasons of obviousness. Rather, given that the purpose of patents is to spur inventors to invent, disclose the workings of their inventions, to bring those inventions to market, and to have the least burden on the public in terms of what they can't do, I think that software patents are inappropriate. There are other incentives to do these things besides the incentive of a patent. In the case of software and business methods, I think those other incentives are quite strong; strong enough that those fields would continue to thrive without patents (as they did until fairly recently, when patents came onto the scene in those fields) and that they'd actually do better, in fact, without the chilling effect on the market that the patents cause.
If someday those other incentives diminish, we might want to have patents there again. Certainly we should keep an eye on this. But for now, I think that we'd see much more invention, disclosure, and bringing-to-market without the burden of patents than we have now.
Does this argument satisfy you? Better still, would you agree with it?
No. But I do not think that Internet radio stations are likely to take them up on the offer unless the copyright holders publicize their offer very well (i.e. they go to the effort of getting the word to the program directors, rather than just putting up a post on an obscure webpage) and unless the copyright holders make sure that their alternative, even accounting for the extra costs that the stations will incur in deviating from normal procedures (e.g. verifying that the song is still licensed for free each time they go to play it, talking with SoundExchange so that they aren't charged for it later, etc.), is still cheaper than just going with the statutory license. Even as stupidly high as the new rates are, don't underestimate the real value of convenience.
Oh, I don't know. First, trial court opinions can be used as precedents, they're just not binding on anyone. They can still have influential value, however. Second, the opinions needn't be published, at least not anymore, not in the federal courts. States may vary. And after all, in this age of Westlaw and Lexis, who cares about whether an opinion was formally published so long as it can be gotten to? The publication requirement really does need to be killed off as it no longer serves a useful purpose.
But you're still wrong, and I suspect that the cause is that you didn't read carefully. To wit:
So no, no one can unauthorizedly decrypt an encrypted DVD, since that constitutes circumvention, and no one can make or traffic in devices, including software, which can do it.
What you were citing was not 1201(a), which has to do with circumvention, but 1201(b), which has to do with copyright protection. The reason that 1201(b) lacks a parallel to 1201(a)(1)(A) is because it doesn't need one. Breaking a copyright protection mechanism is copyright infringement, and is already covered pretty adequately elsewhere in the law.
Furthermore, that last bit about "OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED" indicates that previous fair use law remains in force, allowing the legal owner of a copy to make an additional copy for backup purposes, so long as the original remains in their possession.
Well, two caveats. First, fair use doesn't always permit the owner of a copy to make a backup. It only permits that if, under all the circumstances, it would be fair. Fair use is a case-by-case issue, and you cannot make accurate blanket statements as to what is and isn't fair. It is entirely possible that while Alice might be able to make such copies pursuant to fair use, Bob might not be able to, due to their differing circumstances, even if each is the owner of the copies from which the use is made.
Second, so what? Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. It is not a defense to circumvention. If you unauthorizedly decrypt a DVD, even if it is a fair use, you still circumvented and can be sued for that. This is the downside to 'other defenses not affected' -- they weren't enlarged to handle the new situation.
A fine idea, except that the copyright holders would scream bloody murder, and even I would have some sympathy for them.
SoundExchange is collecting money on behalf of someone else, and it disburses that money to them. It doesn't keep it for its own profit. This doesn't mean it can't be abusive, but the vast majority of the money is meant to either go to the relevant copyright holders or to sit there, untouched, until it goes to the relevant copyright holders.
I should think the illegal thing here is that artists for whom SoundExchange has collected royalties cannot get those royalties unless they pay up and join SoundExchange.
Actually, you don't have to pay them per se, though they do deduct an administrative fee from what they disburse, and you don't have to join for them to send you what you're owed, though you probably do need to let them know where to send it.
And also, if the artist does not want SoundExchange to collect royalties on their behalf, SoundExchange does so anyway.
Yes, because the law mandates this. An Internet radio station that plays music can do so legally without the permission of the copyright holder if he sends the appropriate royalty as directed by the Copyright Office. The Copyright Office has decided that the statutory royalties will be handled by SoundExchange, so that's where it goes. It doesn't matter what the copyright holder thinks. After all, the whole point is to let Internet radio exist at all, and that means simplifying things, rather than giving the copyright holders effective veto power. The only way anyone will ever prefer to deal with the copyright holders rather than SoundExchange is if the copyright holders 1) offer a better deal, 2) have far lower transactional costs so that it's worthwhile to take them up on it, and 3) publicize this effectively. I doubt it'll happen, honestly.
But none of it's illegal. People are really overreacting to all this.
It is possible, and it has happened before. But presently only SoundExchange is permitted.
No. I don't have a problem with a statutory license for this sort of thing. Having radio is more important than making copyright holders happy, and this is basically a cutting through the Gordian knot of individual licensing in order to have radio at all.
I haven't looked at it in legalistic detail
I believe that.
I write a couple hundred songs.
I run a web radio site and broadcast these.
The U.S. Copyright Office authorizes SoundExchange to collect royalties on my "use" of these songs.
I therefore owe SoundExchange royalties for the "compulsory license" to broadcast.
No. The law does not require a copyright holder to pay royalties that are ultimately due to himself. It's not a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio at all, it's a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio where you otherwise don't have a right to do so (i.e. you're not the copyright holder and you don't have a separately-negotiated license with the copyright holder, and there is a copyright)
As the holder of copyright in these works, *I am the one who authorizes their licensing, and if another party does so they are breaking the law.
Except when the law itself includes a license (as is the case here) which you don't get a choice in. You can always offer a different license, but anyone can opt to take the one Congress created. This is because Congress defines what copyright is in the US, and they've defined it to include this license.
If I create some sort of internet radio content, and I want to make private arrangements with one or several netcasters to stream that content (perhaps for free), that's none of the RIAA's business.
You can still do that. They didn't say you couldn't. They said that Internet radio stations are entitled to use the statutory license rather than negotiate with copyright holders, for everything. And that whenever someone uses the statutory license, the money is handled by SoundExchange, regardless of whether the copyright holder is signed up with them or not, because that's what the law mandates. No one has said that there can't be other licenses. Though signing up with SoundExchange does seem to preclude further collective licensing, though not non-collective licensing.
Honestly, this is all not a big deal. There are plenty of more important things to get worked up about, and I'd like to know how you would expect collective licensing to work, if not basically along these lines.
I'm not clear that you're allowed to take payment for someone who has not given you the right to do so. I'm certain that such a scheme could be legalized by the US Government
And indeed, that's what has happened. The government has said that any Internet radio station can play any music they want so long as they comply with the statutory license (i.e the license Congress wrote into the statute itself), one of the terms of which is that SoundExchange handles the money, collecting it, disbursing it, etc. The copyright holders can set up separate licenses if they please, and are able to, but the statutory license is an alternative. Radio already has a similar system, with radio stations being able to play whatever they feel like, without the consent of the copyright holders. The main argument has been over the fee charged. If there were no statutory license at all, then there would really be no lawful Internet radio in the US due to the high transactional costs (and likely high charges) of negotiating with all the copyright holders separately, many of whom would likely not even permit their music to be played or at least not for a realistically low fee. These are far from the only statutory licenses we have either.
No, if they pay SoundExchange, then they are not infringing on your copyright. Congress determines whether you have a copyright at all, how long it lasts, when it does and doesn't apply, etc. And they've determined that because radio (and covers) would never work if they had to be individually licensed each and every time, there need to be statutory licenses, i.e. licenses defined in the statute, apart from agreed-upon licenses, which are still available.
He's saying that it is sometimes the case.
Basically, the Internet radio station has two licenses it can choose from. It can make a license with the copyright holder directly, for whatever terms they can agree on. Or it can ignore the copyright holder and use the statutory license procedures, which require sending the money to SoundExchange, which will disburse an appropriate amount to the copyright holder if the copyright holder goes through the procedure it has to to get it.
So radio stations can avoid doing business with SoundExchange, but copyright holders shouldn't, since they don't have control over whether radio stations will use the statutory license. Many will since it's easier than negotiating with each individual copyright holder, however.
Because then they'd be manufacturing and distributing a circumvention device, which is illegal, just like DeCSS is illegal.
They hired a company to do the work for them, not an individual so 1) does not apply.
Whether it's a company or not doesn't matter. 1 can apply, but it's very dependent on the details involved.
But assuming they paid the company to write the code, that would clearly seem to fit the definition of "Work for Hire"
No, that's not really enough. Generally, it needs to be made in an employee/employer relationship. There's a whole laundry list of factors that go into that. CCNV v. Reid has a good summary of them.
No, there are several kinds of remedies available for copyright infringement. Destroying unlawfully made copies is one, but money damages are another. Always have been, in fact. You should take a look at 17 USC 502-505.
Yes, you're thinking of spousal privilege. My understanding is that some jurisdictions have been adopting or at least looking into parent/child privilege, but most, if not all don't have it. As for manipulating witnesses, I think you watch too much tv.
They can say anything they feel like though, since children can not take a legally binding oath to tell truth, all truth and nothing but the truth.
Of course they can, and when they testify, they do. The issue is whether the witness is able to understand their responsibilities on the stand. You seem to be thinking of the ability to children to be bound to a contract, which is not the same thing as this. Besides, you misunderstand that. Contracts with minors are voidable, rather than void, there are generally issues involved with a decision to avoid the contract (e.g. return of the goods in question), and they're not always avoidable either (e.g. a contract for necessities like food or shelter are as binding for minors as anyone, since it's more important that purveyors of such will contract with minors than that the minors can have some protection against making bad deals).
Also, EULAs are generally considered to be terms of sale for goods and enforceable as such. There is some disagreement, but it focuses around details of the UCC, rather than anything you've been going on about.
As to the monetary issue, parents are responsible for the financial debts of their minor children with few exceptions.
Actually, that's the other way around. There's a decent memo on this subject (with regard to copyright infringement) on the EFF site, IIRC. The main issue, of course, is a combination of preemption and that merely being a parent of a minor child doesn't rise to the level of secondary infringement. If you're a plaintiff going up against a minor in such a suit, your best hope, if the parents won't volunteer to cover it, is to get the judgment, wait for the child to get assets, and then collect, hoping that the infringement in question isn't subject to being discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding.