using samples commercially should of course make one have to pay for it IMO
I think it depends. For example, if someone makes a collage, which is the visual arts equivalent of sampling, they are often protected by the fair use and de minimis doctrines, even if they are acting commercially (e.g. they make a bunch of copies of the collage and sell them). I don't think that anyone has serious problems with this. So why then should musicians face such difficulty merely because they're working in a different medium?
If the sampling is excessive, and non-transformative, then requiring licensing seems alright, but moderate transformative sampling should be permitted freely. And frankly, I think that sampling is an area where the fourth factor in fair use really falls down: there's only a market for samples because the courts haven't been favorable to samplers, but the samples themselves don't act as market substitutes for the whole works from which they originate. I don't think that this sort of catch 22 (i.e. if it interferes with a market, it weighs against fairness, but there's only a market because it's not fair) is appropriate.
Well, I think there's a big and clear difference between writing software for a platform generally as opposed to adding DRM which not only isn't needed to make the software function, but which in fact deliberately impairs functionality.
It seems to have more to do with wanting to avoid juries. Juries are likely to be sympathetic to defendants in these cases, meaning that while RIAA's evidence could support their case, if a jury disagrees, then it didn't matter that it could have worked. RIAA probably prefers bench trials to jury trials, and settlements to any trial at all.
If a portion of the work can be recovered from the parity, doesn't that make it a derivative work?
That would just make it a portion of the original work, expressed differently, but not derivative. This is why I had mentioned the videogame cases from the 80's. The question arose, IIRC, whether the audiovisual portion of the game was copyrightable since it varied depending on user interaction with the fixed software, and the court found that it was since the same inputs would produce the same outputs. With the parity, the parity data always represents a portion, effectively, of the file. It doesn't recast the work, though.
Your secret sharing thing wouldn't fly either for the same reason. Remember, a work is fixed if it can be perceived naturally or with the aid of a device. Recombining the secret would qualify, meaning that the split secret still embodies the work and thus can't be freely copied.
Every RIAA lawsuit I've heard of has targeted uploaders, perhaps because it's the only way they can find filesharers and still have a case, so it certainly seems that creating a copy and sending it over the network is considered infringement.
Uploaders are easier to find and lower in the food chain. Knocking out a downloader has no beneficial side effects for RIAA. Knocking out an uploader might cut off some downloaders or at least force greater competition for scarcer uploading resources, so that's better for them. This is also why they went for the networks first of all.
Also, you can't create a copy and send it over the net, if you're talking about what you appear to be talking about. A copy in copyright terminology is not the same as the colloquial word 'copy' in the computer context.
loading software from permanent storage into RAM constituted the creation of a physical copy, which is apparently the same argument used to enforce EULAs.
EULAs really have little to do with copyright law, due to 17 USC 117, and more to do with sales law (see e.g. ProCD and Klocek).
As far as I can tell, the difference is that service providers do not necessarily know the legal status of the content they allow users to store and transfer.
Also, automated systems they provide, which users use, are not very volitional from their perspective. They set them up, but they respond automatically after that.
If you're so smart, then please feel free to quote the portion of Article V which supports your claim.
That's why the 21st amendment had to repeal the 18th in order to mean anything.
It didn't have to. It was just a convenient way of returning to the status quo ante Prohibition.
Meanwhile, please feel free to note how the 12th and 17th Amendments totally rewrite how the President, Vice-President, and Senators are elected, yet don't even bother to refer to, much less repeal, the portions of the Constitution that they replace.
Frankly, if you have this much trouble with something as simple as the last-in-time rule, then I can't imagine where you get off thinking that you are ever going to have anything reasonable and persuasive to say on tax reform.
Having contradictory, non-repealed content is nonsensical.
The later enacted rule overrides the earlier. It isn't nonsensical, it's standard operating procedure, and has been for many centuries, most likely. Legislative bodies often aren't tidy. So what else are courts to do? You can't say that the earlier law is off the books, because it is not. You can't say that the newer law is ineffective, because that runs contrary to the intent of the legislator to legislate. What you can say is that the legislator presumably knew of the conflict, and passed the newer law anyway, and therefore has overridden the earlier law. If the later is taken off the books, the older goes back into effect. Otherwise, the older is ignored to the extent overridden.
Hell, it's not difficult to construct regular expressions that accomplish the same thing. Why would it be difficult in law?
a derivative work in the form of error correcting codes
I would find it difficult to characterize checksums or parity as derivatives. More likely they're either irrelevant (checksums) or just part of the overall reproduction (parity; see the videogame cases from the early 80's).
It's inconsistent for the court to rule that infringement of reproduction rights does not occur when Alice makes her copies, but does when Bob makes his copy to his hard drive
In the past, when someone has actually bothered to raise the issue, the courts have found it to infringe. But usually, who cares? Since statutory damages are calculated per work, not per infringement, and since compensatory damages for the incidental copies would be overvalued at a nominal sum of $1, no one cares about them. The point is to get all the direct infringers you can, and from there to get the indirect infringers. This used to be of some interest when there were ISPs who were intermediaries and who had deep pockets, but they usually fall under the safe harbor now.
If Bob asks Alice to violate a law, and she violates it, she is fully responsible for her actions unless she was coerced.
You'll find that it is more nuanced than that. Again, the 512 safe harbor has really taken over here, but for an earlier case dealing with these issues, I strongly suggest you read Religious Technology Center v. Netcom. Of course, the reason we have the safe harbor is because not every court followed this particular logic. The uncertainty was not good for the Internet.
It strikes me that your argument boils down to 'I didn't ask to be born.' This is the world we inhabit, and complaining about what has gone on before and how it imposes on you is of little value to anyone. I suggest that you either 1) shut up, 2) do something about it instead of bitching so much (at least become personable enough to convince others to bitch too -- right now you are grating), or 3) leave, and do something about it there, and so lead by example.
I would point out, however, that it's probably impractical to create a new government every time someone is born, and that it probably wouldn't matter anyway, since most infants aren't all that well-equipped to get involved in politics and make good decisions, and meanwhile things need to be done, and we can't all wait around for all the kids to grow to maturity.
While I recognize that there is value in complaints alone, I expect that you will have no success in anything related to governmental reform until you can suggest some sort of solution for your complaints (the big-bad government that oppresses children who had the misfortune to be born and who are lazy enough to not vote, or whatever) that is halfway realistic and not some anarchistic, libertarian, cloud-cuckoo-land.
But it would also be more regressive than we have now. To a person who barely makes enough to scrape by, 15%, say, is a lot. To a person who makes a million dollars a year, 15%, while a larger dollar figure, is far easier to pay. I'd prefer a more progressive system that paid attention to the marginal utility of one's income. It's fairer.
True, it's more complicated, and it results in some people paying proportionately more than others, BUT the burden (i.e. the effect of your taxes on you) is proportionate, which under your proposal, it is not.
The Tax Code is more about power and control than it is about money.
Meh. It's often used in policy when it shouldn't be. E.g. we should do something nice for war widows, so let's reduce their taxes, or we should encourage exercise, so let's reduce taxes on athletic equipment and increase taxes on fattening foods. I don't think that the tax system has become convoluted out of malice, just that it gets fiddled with too much.
The 16th amendment is an invalid amendment, because it contradicts, without accounting for, both section 8 and the 10th amendment.
You're wrong, of course. There is no constitutional requirement that amendments be written as you suggest. The way laws are interpreted is that two contradictory laws at the same level (here, the Constitutional level) are read such that the later enacted one is the supreme one. Further, whenever at all possible, no law is ever interpreted to be ineffective, since it is always assumed that the enacting authority intended to pass that law, worded that way. Courts will and do go through hoops looking for valid interpretations following this principle. If the 16th Amendment can arguably be said to function as written as opposed to being non-functional following your interpretation, then your interpretation is wrong.
I don't mind people being upset about taxes (though I don't really understand it much, given how low our tax burden is in the US and how much it gets us: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization" -- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) but I loathe the inane nonsense that so often seems to crop up in these sorts of discussions.
(Seriously. Ever wonder what happened to the little android girl in "Small Wonder"? She grew up and became a TV newsreader and part-time wildlife documentary & quiz show presenter in Australia.)
Huh.
How does an android grow up, exactly? Did they put her program in a different body?
No, it continues to behave normally. There are some exceptions, but generally the US grants US copyrights for works created in other countries by foreign authors just as it would for anyone else. Indeed, that's how most of the world works, in essence.
There's no question that the holder of the US copyright, regardless of whether the work is from Australia or the holder of that copyright or the author are Australian, can use the DMCA. But the DMCA may only be used against entities within US jurisdiction. So the location of Youtube is the real issue, and as it's not in any real doubt, this really isn't as interesting a question as you originally thought.
Remember (since we're discussing US law), the law defines a copy as a material object in which the work has been fixed. A paperback book is a material object. A vinyl LP is a material object. A canvas is a material object. A hard drive is a material object. A stick of RAM is a material object. Mere information is not.
And colloquial definitions are irrelevant, since the law has specially defined this term. Only the legal definition matters to the law.
I dare you to show me one site on the Internet from which you can download a hard drive. I want to be able to connect my laptop (which has only one hard drive) to some website or torrent, and twenty minutes later the laptop has two hard drives because it downloaded the actual, tangible, drive. I dare you to show me this. Maybe if you live in the Star Trek universe this is an everyday event. But if you live, as seems more likely, in your parents' basement, it never ever happens.
When Alice has a file on a server and Bob downloads it, what happens is that Bob cause his computer to request information from Alice's computer. Alice's computer responds and sends information to Bob. But it does not send a copy because hard drives do not travel over Ethernet. When Bob's computer receives that information, it writes it to various storage media, such as RAM, or hard disks. By doing that, it creates a new copy, namely, that RAM, or those hard disks.
So yes, the downloader's computer is where at least some, which is enough, new copies are being made.
And who caused this to happen, who bears the responsibility? That would be the downloader. Really, the only situation in which the downloader could convincingly argue that it wasn't his volitional act that caused the infringement would be if someone else had control of his computer and was making it do that. Of course, just how likely is it that someone would actually do that? In my experience, hackers don't bother getting root on someone else's computer just to download mp3s. Intermediaries, e.g. ISPs (particularly in the days before the 17 USC 512 safe harbor) tended to have better luck with that line of argument, though they won by shifting blame to the downloader, so not much help for you there.
The uploader could be argued to be liable as well under a theory of secondary liability, but really he has engaged in either distribution (or public performance or display, really, but the courts like distribution for some reason), which is exactly as infringing, but in a different way, and which we don't really have to concern ourselves with here.
This is why we ultimately see things like the Napster opinion:
We agree that plaintiffs have shown that Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders' exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, 106(1); and distribution, 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs' reproduction rights.
I trust that you have a better understanding of this now.
My statements that pirating music is immoral are based on the law granting ownership of copyrighted material to the copyright owners, thus making it stealing to pirate music, and on it being moral to follow the law and immoral to break it (when the law itself is not inherently immoral).
It's not moral to act lawfully where a law is amoral. Lawfulness does not ever in itself yield moral behavior. Morality and legality are orthogonal, though it's nice when they coincide. Your position would render jaywalking an immoral act when I think that we can all agree that it is neither moral nor immoral to jaywalk.
While I think that people should behave lawfully, it is important for the law to not only be non-immoral, but also to generally be acceptable to the people who are to obey it unless it is really important. Look at Prohibition: it wasn't an inherently immoral law, but it was also so far from the prevailing social norms of the day that no one obeyed it. This led to disrespect not only for that law, but for others, to widespread corruption, law-breaking, and a golden age for organized crime. I think that copyright is a lot like Prohibition. Most people think it's a good idea but ignore it (Prohibition did have a lot of earnest supporters who nevertheless drank anyway). I think that this indicates that the people are in the right, and that the law absolutely must change. If this were about something important, e.g. civil rights, then I'd think that perhaps the people were wrong in their position and should be brought around, but copyright is a pretty unimportant sort of law so far as that goes.
This being the case, I don't complain about copyright infringers, I complain about the law that makes their behavior infringement. I can't condemn people for ignoring a bad law, but I can condemn lawmakers and their supporters for allowing the situation to continue.
I don't know about Australia, but in the US, at least, you're quite wrong.
Downloads from the Internet are generally either 1) of public domain material (e.g. US government works, works where the copyright expired or was given up, uncopyrightable works), 2) copyrighted but licensed by the copyright holder, either expressly, or implicitly based on the conduct involved (e.g. almost all authorized web sites, home pages, etc., since it is implied that when the copyright holder has works put online that people can freely look at them, making incidental downloads in order to do so), 3) put up pursuant to some exception in the law (e.g. thumbnail images might fall under fair use), or 4) are put up unlawfully.
Also, downloads are not transfers of anything. US copyright law was mostly written with the idea that copies are things like books or records. It's not all that well designed for computers. In particular, it defines a copy as a material object in which a work is fixed, and prohibits the unauthorized creation of copies. Since it is impossible to move material objects over telecommunications networks (I've tried to stuff a CD down the ethernet cord, but it just won't go. It works in cartoons, but not in the real world, I guess) it is necessarily the case that the downloader is creating a new copy when he downloads. This is illegal. It is absolutely not the same as accepting a tangible CD from someone. Instead it is like looking at their CD and making your own.
Finally, the courts have ruled that the party liable for downloading is the party that directly causes it to occur. Since most people on the P2P networks are not forcing your computer to download music against your will or without your involvement, and since your computer does download when you instruct it to, it puts the liability for downloading on you, the downloader. The uploader, meanwhile, is breaking other copyright laws, but he's not directly on the hook for your downloads; that's on you.
I would suggest looking at the Napster case and the Intellectual Reserve case for more on this.
I'd generally disagree. Copyrights are artificial rights granted to authors by the government on behalf of their people. The purpose for granting copyrights is a utilitarian one: copyrights are only acceptable if they are more beneficial to the public than they are harmful. Ideally, copyrights should be fine-tuned so that they provide the greatest public benefit for the least public harm. However, since what the public finds beneficial (more works created and published, no or minimal restrictions on works) tend to not be what authors and publishers find beneficial (fewer works created and published so that there is less competition, inventory, etc., maximal restrictions on the public, better effective protection for established authors and publishers than for newcomers), so authors and publishers will often try to pervert the copyright laws to their own benefit.
There's no moral component to this whatsoever. It's amoral, like many laws, e.g. building codes. Though if there were a moral aspect, it would favor pirates, who work to preserve and disseminate knowledge, often running an economic loss. The copyright holders seek to restrict access and use of knowledge to those who can pay, and often impose additional arbitrary restrictions.
While the present law might support them, it is not written in stone that the present law is either immutable or the best law. "I want it" is a perfectly legitimate position for people to take with regards to creative works. It is selfish, but then again, the desire of copyright holders to get artificial monopolies they can exploit for money is equally selfish. If giving them a monopoly of a particular scope and duration is ultimately beneficial to us, then so be it. But we can just as easily reduce or eliminate copyrights, so long as we're willing to live with the consequences of that (some of which would be good, some of which would be less than ideal, none of which would actually get to the point of being bad, however).
So don't knock the attitude of entitlement. It's well-founded, but people should avoid acting on it when it profits them more to hold off for a little while. Like when you're really hungry, you could go to McDonald's now or you could put up with it for an hour and cook an even better meal for yourself.
No they don't. They may argue that it's not a fair use (though I haven't heard that one for a while) with regard to format shifting, but that's all. Virtually no works other than computer software and internet-downloaded media are even claimed to be licensed routinely. And in fact, they aren't. I've never even heard of a regular CD in a record store where the copyright holder claimed that it was being licensed, not sold. So don't assume that everything works like software, and better yet, don't assume that anything should: EULAs are anachronistic and provide no benefit to anyone, really. The only reason they're still around, (other than to allow abuses by licensors that no one should be tolerant of) seems to be inertia.
That is what the jets were for. All the GTA maps are actually pretty small if you measure them out. The largest is the San Andreas map, which is something like 3 or 4 miles on a side. In fact, there were spots where you could be in the air and see LA to one side and SF to the other. Curvy roads, indirect routes, hills, and traffic are all that made it seem as big as it did.
and the current abortion debate is mostly an argument as to whether a fetus is an individual, or merely a woman's property.
No, the debate has absolutely nothing to do with that. It has to do with under what circumstances the state can prevent an individual from making decisions as to what medical procedures they want done. A fetus is always considered to be worth being brought to term if safely possible, but women are never required to be forced to do so. This is why viability is central: if a fetus isn't yet viable, then abortion is the side-effect of the mother choosing not to bring it to term herself. If it is viable, and there's not some other compelling reason involved, then she can't get an abortion, since that would unnecessarily kill the fetus, but she could opt for a premature delivery since she still isn't actually required to keep carrying it.
Actually, minors can and do own property. Their parents are limited as to what they can do with it, but as guardians of their children, they can act as custodians of it in the interests of the children, and can of course raise their children pretty freely. For ordinary sorts of personal property (e.g. toys) it doesn't matter much. For important properties (e.g. land, large sums of money, etc.) it often is a big deal. For example, if a child owned some land, their parent couldn't arbitrarily sell it. They could probably rent it during the child's minority, and use some of the proceeds for reasonable upkeep of the land. But once the child becomes an adult, it's theirs.
Well, partially, but the other big reason to have trademarks is to protect consumers. If you go to the store to get corn, and the various sources (i.e. businesses) from which the corn comes are identified -- Del Monte, Green Giant, etc. -- then you can expect that all corn with a particular trademark on it always comes from the same source, and will have basically consistent quality levels (whether good or bad). Other people cannot label their corn as coming from one of their competitors. By enforcing trademark protections, consumers can avoid being tricked in the marketplace.
But even if you want to discourage one business freeloading off of the commercial reputation that another business has laboriously established, and even if you want to ensure that like-branded goods are of like quality so that consumer expectations will be met, this does not mean that competitors cannot use each others' trademarks under the right circumstances! This is still a stupid law in that it is tragically short-sighted.
For example, suppose I grow corn, and unlike my competitors, I still use the time-tested method of waiting to harvest until I can rent an elephant and verify that the corn reaches eye-height. It is not an infringement or dilution for me to advertise that I do this and that my competitors, who I mention by name, do not. You see this all the time in product comparisons where actual products are mentioned instead of silly workarounds like 'Brand X' or whatever. It's called a nominative use, and it is legal.
But apparently not under this law! Utah doesn't think that if someone searches for Del Monte that Green Giant cannot leap into the fray and claim (if it's true) that their corn is better. Likewise, a grocery store can't advertise that they carry Del Monte, which is kind of important given that they don't seem to distribute directly from the canning plant to the dinner table. That's another nominative use.
There may also be difficulties with trademark fair use (which is a confusingly named but totally separate doctrine from the more well-known copyright fair use doctrine) which permits everyone to use words which happen to be trademarks in their non-trademarked capacity. For example, Apple is a trademark for computers, but apple is not a trademark for the fruit of the same name. If you search for 'apple,' and Google ignores case as pretty much everyone on the Internet must, then there's nothing wrong with the apple farmers buying up all the ads. But would this be allowed under this law? I'd be worried about it, and that alone isn't very good. Particularly given that if everyone passes or doesn't pass, their own version of this, it creates a patchwork of regulation and now I have to check all over the place.
Frankly, aside from not surviving on its merits, I predict that the Interstate Commerce Clause will kill this in court since it makes it too difficult for businesses to engage in commerce nationwide. If people really want this -- and I think it's not a very good idea -- then it would be more appropriate to get Congress to do it. States should not.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an expression from Star Wars that is way overused on slashdot, but in this case I really think it applies
E chu ta?
using samples commercially should of course make one have to pay for it IMO
I think it depends. For example, if someone makes a collage, which is the visual arts equivalent of sampling, they are often protected by the fair use and de minimis doctrines, even if they are acting commercially (e.g. they make a bunch of copies of the collage and sell them). I don't think that anyone has serious problems with this. So why then should musicians face such difficulty merely because they're working in a different medium?
If the sampling is excessive, and non-transformative, then requiring licensing seems alright, but moderate transformative sampling should be permitted freely. And frankly, I think that sampling is an area where the fourth factor in fair use really falls down: there's only a market for samples because the courts haven't been favorable to samplers, but the samples themselves don't act as market substitutes for the whole works from which they originate. I don't think that this sort of catch 22 (i.e. if it interferes with a market, it weighs against fairness, but there's only a market because it's not fair) is appropriate.
Well, I think there's a big and clear difference between writing software for a platform generally as opposed to adding DRM which not only isn't needed to make the software function, but which in fact deliberately impairs functionality.
and then demand that you provide us with whatever evidence we need
Yes, that's how discovery works in the US. It's not a bad system, actually. You might want to read up on it.
It seems to have more to do with wanting to avoid juries. Juries are likely to be sympathetic to defendants in these cases, meaning that while RIAA's evidence could support their case, if a jury disagrees, then it didn't matter that it could have worked. RIAA probably prefers bench trials to jury trials, and settlements to any trial at all.
Given some of the theories about the demise of the Hindenburg, that's probably for the best.
If a portion of the work can be recovered from the parity, doesn't that make it a derivative work?
That would just make it a portion of the original work, expressed differently, but not derivative. This is why I had mentioned the videogame cases from the 80's. The question arose, IIRC, whether the audiovisual portion of the game was copyrightable since it varied depending on user interaction with the fixed software, and the court found that it was since the same inputs would produce the same outputs. With the parity, the parity data always represents a portion, effectively, of the file. It doesn't recast the work, though.
Your secret sharing thing wouldn't fly either for the same reason. Remember, a work is fixed if it can be perceived naturally or with the aid of a device. Recombining the secret would qualify, meaning that the split secret still embodies the work and thus can't be freely copied.
Every RIAA lawsuit I've heard of has targeted uploaders, perhaps because it's the only way they can find filesharers and still have a case, so it certainly seems that creating a copy and sending it over the network is considered infringement.
Uploaders are easier to find and lower in the food chain. Knocking out a downloader has no beneficial side effects for RIAA. Knocking out an uploader might cut off some downloaders or at least force greater competition for scarcer uploading resources, so that's better for them. This is also why they went for the networks first of all.
Also, you can't create a copy and send it over the net, if you're talking about what you appear to be talking about. A copy in copyright terminology is not the same as the colloquial word 'copy' in the computer context.
loading software from permanent storage into RAM constituted the creation of a physical copy, which is apparently the same argument used to enforce EULAs.
EULAs really have little to do with copyright law, due to 17 USC 117, and more to do with sales law (see e.g. ProCD and Klocek).
As far as I can tell, the difference is that service providers do not necessarily know the legal status of the content they allow users to store and transfer.
Also, automated systems they provide, which users use, are not very volitional from their perspective. They set them up, but they respond automatically after that.
Yes, of course there is.
If you're so smart, then please feel free to quote the portion of Article V which supports your claim.
That's why the 21st amendment had to repeal the 18th in order to mean anything.
It didn't have to. It was just a convenient way of returning to the status quo ante Prohibition.
Meanwhile, please feel free to note how the 12th and 17th Amendments totally rewrite how the President, Vice-President, and Senators are elected, yet don't even bother to refer to, much less repeal, the portions of the Constitution that they replace.
Frankly, if you have this much trouble with something as simple as the last-in-time rule, then I can't imagine where you get off thinking that you are ever going to have anything reasonable and persuasive to say on tax reform.
Having contradictory, non-repealed content is nonsensical.
The later enacted rule overrides the earlier. It isn't nonsensical, it's standard operating procedure, and has been for many centuries, most likely. Legislative bodies often aren't tidy. So what else are courts to do? You can't say that the earlier law is off the books, because it is not. You can't say that the newer law is ineffective, because that runs contrary to the intent of the legislator to legislate. What you can say is that the legislator presumably knew of the conflict, and passed the newer law anyway, and therefore has overridden the earlier law. If the later is taken off the books, the older goes back into effect. Otherwise, the older is ignored to the extent overridden.
Hell, it's not difficult to construct regular expressions that accomplish the same thing. Why would it be difficult in law?
a derivative work in the form of error correcting codes
I would find it difficult to characterize checksums or parity as derivatives. More likely they're either irrelevant (checksums) or just part of the overall reproduction (parity; see the videogame cases from the early 80's).
It's inconsistent for the court to rule that infringement of reproduction rights does not occur when Alice makes her copies, but does when Bob makes his copy to his hard drive
In the past, when someone has actually bothered to raise the issue, the courts have found it to infringe. But usually, who cares? Since statutory damages are calculated per work, not per infringement, and since compensatory damages for the incidental copies would be overvalued at a nominal sum of $1, no one cares about them. The point is to get all the direct infringers you can, and from there to get the indirect infringers. This used to be of some interest when there were ISPs who were intermediaries and who had deep pockets, but they usually fall under the safe harbor now.
If Bob asks Alice to violate a law, and she violates it, she is fully responsible for her actions unless she was coerced.
You'll find that it is more nuanced than that. Again, the 512 safe harbor has really taken over here, but for an earlier case dealing with these issues, I strongly suggest you read Religious Technology Center v. Netcom. Of course, the reason we have the safe harbor is because not every court followed this particular logic. The uncertainty was not good for the Internet.
It strikes me that your argument boils down to 'I didn't ask to be born.' This is the world we inhabit, and complaining about what has gone on before and how it imposes on you is of little value to anyone. I suggest that you either 1) shut up, 2) do something about it instead of bitching so much (at least become personable enough to convince others to bitch too -- right now you are grating), or 3) leave, and do something about it there, and so lead by example.
I would point out, however, that it's probably impractical to create a new government every time someone is born, and that it probably wouldn't matter anyway, since most infants aren't all that well-equipped to get involved in politics and make good decisions, and meanwhile things need to be done, and we can't all wait around for all the kids to grow to maturity.
While I recognize that there is value in complaints alone, I expect that you will have no success in anything related to governmental reform until you can suggest some sort of solution for your complaints (the big-bad government that oppresses children who had the misfortune to be born and who are lazy enough to not vote, or whatever) that is halfway realistic and not some anarchistic, libertarian, cloud-cuckoo-land.
But it would also be more regressive than we have now. To a person who barely makes enough to scrape by, 15%, say, is a lot. To a person who makes a million dollars a year, 15%, while a larger dollar figure, is far easier to pay. I'd prefer a more progressive system that paid attention to the marginal utility of one's income. It's fairer.
True, it's more complicated, and it results in some people paying proportionately more than others, BUT the burden (i.e. the effect of your taxes on you) is proportionate, which under your proposal, it is not.
The Tax Code is more about power and control than it is about money.
Meh. It's often used in policy when it shouldn't be. E.g. we should do something nice for war widows, so let's reduce their taxes, or we should encourage exercise, so let's reduce taxes on athletic equipment and increase taxes on fattening foods. I don't think that the tax system has become convoluted out of malice, just that it gets fiddled with too much.
The 16th amendment is an invalid amendment, because it contradicts, without accounting for, both section 8 and the 10th amendment.
You're wrong, of course. There is no constitutional requirement that amendments be written as you suggest. The way laws are interpreted is that two contradictory laws at the same level (here, the Constitutional level) are read such that the later enacted one is the supreme one. Further, whenever at all possible, no law is ever interpreted to be ineffective, since it is always assumed that the enacting authority intended to pass that law, worded that way. Courts will and do go through hoops looking for valid interpretations following this principle. If the 16th Amendment can arguably be said to function as written as opposed to being non-functional following your interpretation, then your interpretation is wrong.
I don't mind people being upset about taxes (though I don't really understand it much, given how low our tax burden is in the US and how much it gets us: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization" -- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) but I loathe the inane nonsense that so often seems to crop up in these sorts of discussions.
(Seriously. Ever wonder what happened to the little android girl in "Small Wonder"? She grew up and became a TV newsreader and part-time wildlife documentary & quiz show presenter in Australia.)
Huh.
How does an android grow up, exactly? Did they put her program in a different body?
No, it continues to behave normally. There are some exceptions, but generally the US grants US copyrights for works created in other countries by foreign authors just as it would for anyone else. Indeed, that's how most of the world works, in essence.
There's no question that the holder of the US copyright, regardless of whether the work is from Australia or the holder of that copyright or the author are Australian, can use the DMCA. But the DMCA may only be used against entities within US jurisdiction. So the location of Youtube is the real issue, and as it's not in any real doubt, this really isn't as interesting a question as you originally thought.
Remember (since we're discussing US law), the law defines a copy as a material object in which the work has been fixed. A paperback book is a material object. A vinyl LP is a material object. A canvas is a material object. A hard drive is a material object. A stick of RAM is a material object. Mere information is not.
And colloquial definitions are irrelevant, since the law has specially defined this term. Only the legal definition matters to the law.
I dare you to show me one site on the Internet from which you can download a hard drive. I want to be able to connect my laptop (which has only one hard drive) to some website or torrent, and twenty minutes later the laptop has two hard drives because it downloaded the actual, tangible, drive. I dare you to show me this. Maybe if you live in the Star Trek universe this is an everyday event. But if you live, as seems more likely, in your parents' basement, it never ever happens.
When Alice has a file on a server and Bob downloads it, what happens is that Bob cause his computer to request information from Alice's computer. Alice's computer responds and sends information to Bob. But it does not send a copy because hard drives do not travel over Ethernet. When Bob's computer receives that information, it writes it to various storage media, such as RAM, or hard disks. By doing that, it creates a new copy, namely, that RAM, or those hard disks.
So yes, the downloader's computer is where at least some, which is enough, new copies are being made.
And who caused this to happen, who bears the responsibility? That would be the downloader. Really, the only situation in which the downloader could convincingly argue that it wasn't his volitional act that caused the infringement would be if someone else had control of his computer and was making it do that. Of course, just how likely is it that someone would actually do that? In my experience, hackers don't bother getting root on someone else's computer just to download mp3s. Intermediaries, e.g. ISPs (particularly in the days before the 17 USC 512 safe harbor) tended to have better luck with that line of argument, though they won by shifting blame to the downloader, so not much help for you there.
The uploader could be argued to be liable as well under a theory of secondary liability, but really he has engaged in either distribution (or public performance or display, really, but the courts like distribution for some reason), which is exactly as infringing, but in a different way, and which we don't really have to concern ourselves with here.
This is why we ultimately see things like the Napster opinion:
I trust that you have a better understanding of this now.
My statements that pirating music is immoral are based on the law granting ownership of copyrighted material to the copyright owners, thus making it stealing to pirate music, and on it being moral to follow the law and immoral to break it (when the law itself is not inherently immoral).
It's not moral to act lawfully where a law is amoral. Lawfulness does not ever in itself yield moral behavior. Morality and legality are orthogonal, though it's nice when they coincide. Your position would render jaywalking an immoral act when I think that we can all agree that it is neither moral nor immoral to jaywalk.
While I think that people should behave lawfully, it is important for the law to not only be non-immoral, but also to generally be acceptable to the people who are to obey it unless it is really important. Look at Prohibition: it wasn't an inherently immoral law, but it was also so far from the prevailing social norms of the day that no one obeyed it. This led to disrespect not only for that law, but for others, to widespread corruption, law-breaking, and a golden age for organized crime. I think that copyright is a lot like Prohibition. Most people think it's a good idea but ignore it (Prohibition did have a lot of earnest supporters who nevertheless drank anyway). I think that this indicates that the people are in the right, and that the law absolutely must change. If this were about something important, e.g. civil rights, then I'd think that perhaps the people were wrong in their position and should be brought around, but copyright is a pretty unimportant sort of law so far as that goes.
This being the case, I don't complain about copyright infringers, I complain about the law that makes their behavior infringement. I can't condemn people for ignoring a bad law, but I can condemn lawmakers and their supporters for allowing the situation to continue.
I don't know about Australia, but in the US, at least, you're quite wrong.
Downloads from the Internet are generally either 1) of public domain material (e.g. US government works, works where the copyright expired or was given up, uncopyrightable works), 2) copyrighted but licensed by the copyright holder, either expressly, or implicitly based on the conduct involved (e.g. almost all authorized web sites, home pages, etc., since it is implied that when the copyright holder has works put online that people can freely look at them, making incidental downloads in order to do so), 3) put up pursuant to some exception in the law (e.g. thumbnail images might fall under fair use), or 4) are put up unlawfully.
Also, downloads are not transfers of anything. US copyright law was mostly written with the idea that copies are things like books or records. It's not all that well designed for computers. In particular, it defines a copy as a material object in which a work is fixed, and prohibits the unauthorized creation of copies. Since it is impossible to move material objects over telecommunications networks (I've tried to stuff a CD down the ethernet cord, but it just won't go. It works in cartoons, but not in the real world, I guess) it is necessarily the case that the downloader is creating a new copy when he downloads. This is illegal. It is absolutely not the same as accepting a tangible CD from someone. Instead it is like looking at their CD and making your own.
Finally, the courts have ruled that the party liable for downloading is the party that directly causes it to occur. Since most people on the P2P networks are not forcing your computer to download music against your will or without your involvement, and since your computer does download when you instruct it to, it puts the liability for downloading on you, the downloader. The uploader, meanwhile, is breaking other copyright laws, but he's not directly on the hook for your downloads; that's on you.
I would suggest looking at the Napster case and the Intellectual Reserve case for more on this.
I'd generally disagree. Copyrights are artificial rights granted to authors by the government on behalf of their people. The purpose for granting copyrights is a utilitarian one: copyrights are only acceptable if they are more beneficial to the public than they are harmful. Ideally, copyrights should be fine-tuned so that they provide the greatest public benefit for the least public harm. However, since what the public finds beneficial (more works created and published, no or minimal restrictions on works) tend to not be what authors and publishers find beneficial (fewer works created and published so that there is less competition, inventory, etc., maximal restrictions on the public, better effective protection for established authors and publishers than for newcomers), so authors and publishers will often try to pervert the copyright laws to their own benefit.
There's no moral component to this whatsoever. It's amoral, like many laws, e.g. building codes. Though if there were a moral aspect, it would favor pirates, who work to preserve and disseminate knowledge, often running an economic loss. The copyright holders seek to restrict access and use of knowledge to those who can pay, and often impose additional arbitrary restrictions.
While the present law might support them, it is not written in stone that the present law is either immutable or the best law. "I want it" is a perfectly legitimate position for people to take with regards to creative works. It is selfish, but then again, the desire of copyright holders to get artificial monopolies they can exploit for money is equally selfish. If giving them a monopoly of a particular scope and duration is ultimately beneficial to us, then so be it. But we can just as easily reduce or eliminate copyrights, so long as we're willing to live with the consequences of that (some of which would be good, some of which would be less than ideal, none of which would actually get to the point of being bad, however).
So don't knock the attitude of entitlement. It's well-founded, but people should avoid acting on it when it profits them more to hold off for a little while. Like when you're really hungry, you could go to McDonald's now or you could put up with it for an hour and cook an even better meal for yourself.
No they don't. They may argue that it's not a fair use (though I haven't heard that one for a while) with regard to format shifting, but that's all. Virtually no works other than computer software and internet-downloaded media are even claimed to be licensed routinely. And in fact, they aren't. I've never even heard of a regular CD in a record store where the copyright holder claimed that it was being licensed, not sold. So don't assume that everything works like software, and better yet, don't assume that anything should: EULAs are anachronistic and provide no benefit to anyone, really. The only reason they're still around, (other than to allow abuses by licensors that no one should be tolerant of) seems to be inertia.
No, you're off by an order of magnitude. 4 million times 30 is 120 million.
That is what the jets were for. All the GTA maps are actually pretty small if you measure them out. The largest is the San Andreas map, which is something like 3 or 4 miles on a side. In fact, there were spots where you could be in the air and see LA to one side and SF to the other. Curvy roads, indirect routes, hills, and traffic are all that made it seem as big as it did.
and the current abortion debate is mostly an argument as to whether a fetus is an individual, or merely a woman's property.
No, the debate has absolutely nothing to do with that. It has to do with under what circumstances the state can prevent an individual from making decisions as to what medical procedures they want done. A fetus is always considered to be worth being brought to term if safely possible, but women are never required to be forced to do so. This is why viability is central: if a fetus isn't yet viable, then abortion is the side-effect of the mother choosing not to bring it to term herself. If it is viable, and there's not some other compelling reason involved, then she can't get an abortion, since that would unnecessarily kill the fetus, but she could opt for a premature delivery since she still isn't actually required to keep carrying it.
Actually, minors can and do own property. Their parents are limited as to what they can do with it, but as guardians of their children, they can act as custodians of it in the interests of the children, and can of course raise their children pretty freely. For ordinary sorts of personal property (e.g. toys) it doesn't matter much. For important properties (e.g. land, large sums of money, etc.) it often is a big deal. For example, if a child owned some land, their parent couldn't arbitrarily sell it. They could probably rent it during the child's minority, and use some of the proceeds for reasonable upkeep of the land. But once the child becomes an adult, it's theirs.
Well, partially, but the other big reason to have trademarks is to protect consumers. If you go to the store to get corn, and the various sources (i.e. businesses) from which the corn comes are identified -- Del Monte, Green Giant, etc. -- then you can expect that all corn with a particular trademark on it always comes from the same source, and will have basically consistent quality levels (whether good or bad). Other people cannot label their corn as coming from one of their competitors. By enforcing trademark protections, consumers can avoid being tricked in the marketplace.
But even if you want to discourage one business freeloading off of the commercial reputation that another business has laboriously established, and even if you want to ensure that like-branded goods are of like quality so that consumer expectations will be met, this does not mean that competitors cannot use each others' trademarks under the right circumstances! This is still a stupid law in that it is tragically short-sighted.
For example, suppose I grow corn, and unlike my competitors, I still use the time-tested method of waiting to harvest until I can rent an elephant and verify that the corn reaches eye-height. It is not an infringement or dilution for me to advertise that I do this and that my competitors, who I mention by name, do not. You see this all the time in product comparisons where actual products are mentioned instead of silly workarounds like 'Brand X' or whatever. It's called a nominative use, and it is legal.
But apparently not under this law! Utah doesn't think that if someone searches for Del Monte that Green Giant cannot leap into the fray and claim (if it's true) that their corn is better. Likewise, a grocery store can't advertise that they carry Del Monte, which is kind of important given that they don't seem to distribute directly from the canning plant to the dinner table. That's another nominative use.
There may also be difficulties with trademark fair use (which is a confusingly named but totally separate doctrine from the more well-known copyright fair use doctrine) which permits everyone to use words which happen to be trademarks in their non-trademarked capacity. For example, Apple is a trademark for computers, but apple is not a trademark for the fruit of the same name. If you search for 'apple,' and Google ignores case as pretty much everyone on the Internet must, then there's nothing wrong with the apple farmers buying up all the ads. But would this be allowed under this law? I'd be worried about it, and that alone isn't very good. Particularly given that if everyone passes or doesn't pass, their own version of this, it creates a patchwork of regulation and now I have to check all over the place.
Frankly, aside from not surviving on its merits, I predict that the Interstate Commerce Clause will kill this in court since it makes it too difficult for businesses to engage in commerce nationwide. If people really want this -- and I think it's not a very good idea -- then it would be more appropriate to get Congress to do it. States should not.
Ah paper. The refresh rate was high enough for animation... provided you made a flipbook!