Funnily enough, they got wise to that one here in the UK a long time ago, because we had train station bombings and such to deal with long before all the post-9/11 security measures. You won't find a lot of bins in crowded public places around London, and chances are that any solid ones you do find have been specifically designed to direct the force of any explosion upwards rather than outwards, while the rest are little more than a transparent plastic bags.
Of course, we shouldn't let these rare examples of actually useful security measures based on actual experience of real threats dampen our praise of the obviously much more effective security theatre we all suffer at airports these days for our own "protection".;-)
I think I probably do understand -- and agree with -- much of what you're saying.
I suppose my counterpoint is just that a lot of the younger generation -- digital natives, as my friends in marketing would describe them -- don't know what copyright means or understand that sharing some things on-line is illegal. Witness the numerous flagrant infringements on YouTube, accompanied by statements like "I don't own the rights to this, no copyright infringement intended". I think many of these kids aren't deliberately breaking the law and don't even realise they're doing anything wrong. No social contract exists with them, because no-one's ever told them what the deal is.
Erm... No. Statistically, planes have roughly the same incidence of death/mile travelled as cars according to various national safety groups in first world countries that I looked up before my previous post. However, since planes typically carry say 100x as many passengers, that makes them about 100x safer per passenger-mile.
...that zooming about in a metal box miles above the ground is an inherently unsafe thing to do?
And yet, it is still by far the safest form of vehicle travel.
Moreover, you have to keep in mind the dangers of these security measures. For example, while the risk of death due to the virtual strip search machines may statistically be very low, it is ironically almost equal to the risk of death due to terrorist action bringing down the flight. And of course, as about a million people with two brain cells to rub together have figured out by now, if you have big queues waiting to go through security, you're actually creating a bigger target for anyone who does brings explosives to the airport than a plane itself, and obviously you're doing it before the security checks.
It is never going to be 100% safe... never ever ever.
That is true. It is, however, something like 99.99999% safe, depending on how many miles you count for an average journey (based on NTSB stats for average deaths per passenger-mile). How about we just live with the facts that flying isn't really dangerous compared to many other things we do all the time and that the terrorist threat is tiny compared to many other things that cause actual harm all the time, and we start spending our time and money fixing real problems instead?
I've noticed recently that some people like to quote US budget figures for the wars/homeland security to show how costly these things really are and put them in perspective. I'm waiting for the infographic that compares those figures with what it costs to save a life through better road safety, natural disaster management, medical research, public education, etc. You'd think one good cover on, say, Time magazine would make the point enough to get serious public debate going, but no-one in the media seems to be biting, for reasons I never quite understand.
I'm afraid I find that argument to be part of the whole red herring I described before. If people were copying stuff that was released 20 years ago and should probably have entered the public domain by now, that would be a strong argument. However, most people are copying the latest hit single, a leaked preview of the next big Hollywood blockbuster, or the new version of Office/Photoshop/$AAA_GAME, exactly none of which would be out of copyright for several years even under any historical system. That, also, is not respecting the social agreement. It's simply ripping off whoever did the work/invested the money to produce those products.
Do I think 3% of Windows users would be upset if one day Microsoft (or someone acting via Microsoft's system) remotely deleted an app those users had paid for from their system, by accident or because of some legal technicality the user doesn't care about? No, I think it would be a lot more than 3%.
In these sorts of situations the doubt is rarely about whether enough people would object to the practice being criticised, it is more about whether enough people have been personally affected to realise the practice is even possible. As with a lot of crimes or unfortunate ailments, people can be deeply affected when it happens to them, but a lot of people either don't know about it or just think "It can't happen to me" and get on with their lives.
Because for practical purposes, the old laws and the new laws are little different in that respect. If almost everything of interest to either side happens in, say, the first five years, then it doesn't really matter whether the copyright term technically extends to 14 years or 140. And if you look at profits for rightsholders or the stuff that's being swapped illegally on-line, it's pretty clear that most of the interesting stuff does happen within a short space of time for the kinds of works that are big money to Big Media and of widespread interest to infringers. Beyond that, you're into copyright as protection for the little guy, at which point the practical issues may get more complicated but the consequences of both copyright and infringement on it become less far-reaching.
The old laws were much better than the new laws, when it comes to copyright. We need to dump all the new copyright laws, and go back to the copyright laws we had back in 1800, where works were only protected for 17 years before passing into the public domain.
Most copyrighted works make most of their profits within the first few years after release.
Most infringing copies are also made within the first few years after a work's release.
I agree that the endless copyright term extensions are crazy, and that in a few cases for works that have truly stood the test of time they cause real problems, but the whole copyright term extension argument is mostly a red herring.
The thing is, while I accept that your reasoning sounds compelling, I don't quite buy it.
Once upon a time, I was involved with a mobile radio network, kind of a spiritual ancestor of the mobile/cell networks we have today. In those days, to get a device approved for use on the network, some poor schmuck (been there, done that) sat in a lab with every currently approved device and the new one, and set up every possible kind of call/message/whatever between every combination of devices. The test spec to be run manually for every new firmware release going out on infrastructure devices on the network was typically several inches thick.
One thing I learned during that time is that even with the most careful testing in the world, you can't stop a rogue device from spewing noise into your radio spectrum and downing a substantial chunk of network capacity for everyone within several miles. If and when that happened, guys went out in big vehicles carrying lots of funky receiver equipment, and they tried to triangulate the location of the problem device so its owner could be contacted.
However, apart from such extreme circumstances, the solution to a device that was trying to use services it shouldn't would simply be to ignore it. The control channels for these things take up a tiny fraction of overall network capacity, and in most networks it's completely separate from the data channels anyway. No well-behaved device is going to DoS a cell tower.
The situation here is somewhat similar. If a mobile OS provider is worried about rogue software throwing out noise and downing the network, they should make sure that their mobile OS is robust to this and always plays nicely in terms of control channels. (Failing to do that almost certainly puts someone on the hook legally anyway in most places.) Beyond that, if the mobile OS providers and/or mobile network are worried about negative consequences from rogue apps that users have installed, the only robust solution is to ensure that there are sensible safeguards on the networks that block phones trying to do unusual things that would incur high charges or use unreasonable bandwidth. Trying to do that by controlling the software that runs on the phones themselves is rather like trying to secure your server by checking passwords client-side: it might be better than nothing, but sooner or later you're still going to run into problems when you encounter someone hostile who knows what they're doing.
So, in tl;dr summation, if mobile OS providers and mobile networks are worried about rogue apps running up charges or otherwise abusing the networks, the correct solution is to engineer the OS and network to be resilient in the face of a hostile app, not to engage in a futile arms race with malicious app writers and try to take down every bad app one by one. And without the latter, your argument for a remote wipe facility for purchased apps that someone has deliberately installed on their phone no longer works.
Really? So when, in a stunning feat of irony, Amazon yanked Orwell's 1984 from customers' Kindles, who do you think was ultimately responsible for triggering that action?
You are clouding the fundamental issue, which is why these platforms allow their users to be controlled in this way at all. Who is pulling the strings matters less than that the strings even exist.
It happened when the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook realised that being the owner of a walled garden (or even a slightly fenced garden) means you can do more-or-less what you like to users once you've locked them in.
A lot of people might be upset, but 97% of them won't do any more than bitch about it on Slashdot/Facebook/Reddit/whatever, and they'll still keep buying. The few who really will vote with their wallets for a more user-friendly alternative or go without products/services that come with nasty strings attached are so small in number that the big players can just ignore them.
That means the platform owners can adopt whatever abusive practices they want to make more money, short of breaking the law enough to lose a major lawsuit. And since the law everywhere is at least a decade behind the implications of modern technology, a lot of things that thoughtful geeks might consider dangerous aren't actually illegal anyway, at least not clearly so.
None of this will change until either a large consumer backlash begins (which is not beyond the bounds of possibility in the world today, but is on a gentle simmer right now) or legislation starts getting written by smart, thoughtful people who think through the implications of modern technology, understand the need to protect consumers, also understand the need to make commerce reasonably profitable, and try to come up with policies that balance these factors in a fair way (and then I woke up...).
I suppose that depends on who you're paying. I would never dream of charging my clients for time I wasn't spending doing productive work on their project. I have a professional reputation to protect, and I justify my fees by the results I provide.
On the flip side, hell would freeze over before I accepted this kind of intrusion. If a client wants someone who will put up with that, I'm sure they can find many people who will do it. They probably all charge much lower hourly rates than I do as well, so the clients will surely get a better deal and be much happier with the results.
If there is some new, money-making way of using a copyrighted work, under US law, by default, it is permitted until Congress enacts legislation to limit it.
Sure, and if that way of using the work involves reproduction, then Congress has enacted such legislation and reaffirmed it on several subsequent occasions.
"Fair use" is a technical term meaning a defined "legitimate use". It says "even though we have given authors these special restrictions for utilitarian purposes, it is nevertheless always legitimate for people to copy for the following purposes...". It doesn't refer to "fairness" in the sportsmanship sense or balancing of interests.
That might be your interpretation, but I know of nothing in US law that supports it. I just quoted you the relevant law verbatim, and nothing in there says any of what you just wrote.
Out-of-copyright and orphan works is exactly what this lawsuit is about.
I notice you sneaked in the always controversial "orphan works" there. The trouble with orphan works is that if there really isn't any way to get hold of the rightsholder then probably we do want to release them into the public domain immediately, but organisations with a vested interest in not being restricted by copyright tend to want some inevitably failing token effort at looking someone up to result in the same effective cancellation of the copyright. Right here in this discussion, there is someone posting who says Google used his copyrighted book without making any contact with him.
You're almost literally spewing the anti-Google propaganda
Oh, please. I don't like big, international organisations that try to put themselves above the law. I'm perfectly entitled to that opinion, regardless of whatever politics any other person or organisation might have.
And for the record, that includes Big Media, who should long ago have been punished for rampant price-fixing, anti-competitive practices, etc.
I don't like organisations that effectively buy laws with lobbyists either.
European politicians are doing their bidding because they know they can't get reelected if they act against them. Berlusconi just skipped that step and used his media empire to become the leader of Italy.
How is that working out for him?
Someone needs to take them on, and the only one powerful enough is other big companies and the US government, which is why they publish all that anti-US and anti-corporate claptrap.
I find your implication that the US government is on the side of the people and/or organisations like Google, rather than bought and paid for by Big Media more than any other first world nation, to be highly amusing.
OK, one more try. Here is what the US Constitution actually says in Article 1, Section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I will just note in passing that if you're going to make an argument based on the Constitution, there is nothing in there restricting the Right of Authors in their works or making any exceptions at all for anyone else to do anything with the work during the limited Time when the exclusive Right applies.
In other words, while you could make a decent argument against permitting the permanent transfer of copyright to middlemen (which I would agree with) and you could make a decent argument against extending copyright terms such that they are effectively no longer a limited Time (which I would also agree with, as I mentioned before), you have no case whatsoever based on the wording of the Constitution to argue for automatic rights for others in specific contexts.
That means any such rights are down to the specific laws that grant Authors those exclusive Rights as permitted by the Constitution. And on that score, we turn to 17 U.S.C. 107:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
I've added emphasis, so you can see exactly where the US statute books say fairness is relevant.
By the way, when you're looking at things in this level of detail, there isn't really any such thing as "European copyright law". There are centralised directives, which are subsequently implemented by individual member states within their own legal frameworks. There may also be local laws independent of centralised Europe, for example the fair dealing provisions in the UK. These laws may be created on their own merits, or they may be required because the state in question is a signatory to major international copyright agreements like the Berne Convention and TRIPS.
I consider the original US copyright system to be fair: 28 years plus mandatory registration. I consider the current system (life+70 years, no registration) to be highly unfair, because it lets publishers control works they did not create and keep works out of the public domain that should be in the public domain.
The irony is that if you were actually reading my posts, you'd realise that I completely agree with you about the silly term length extensions and the problems of letting middlemen grab the rights from the people who really do the work and exploit them in the long term. Mandatory registration is the only thing I disagree with there, because I simply don't think it's practical in the modern world; if say 10% of the bloggers in the world started registering every post, any government-run system would probably collapse pathetically within hours, even before you consider all the professionals who would surely want robust protection worldwide for all
The trouble with most ads is that they aren't just potentially annoying, they are also a security risk. The only time I ever picked up a virus, to my knowledge at least, I was browsing a couple of geek news sites I follow regularly. As usual, I started by opening up a whole bunch of tabs for stories that looked interesting, all of them on normally reputable sites. And then I got hit by a drive-by download, which turned out to be a Java zero-day exploit carried briefly by one of the third party ad networks used by one of those sites.
Since that day, while I will happily contribute to the geek news sites myself in return for enjoying what others contribute, there are simply no circumstances under which my ad-blocker and privacy plug-ins get turned off, any more than I would share my passwords or turn off my firewall.
I suggest if Slashdot wants to go down this path, it needs to be something more akin to Google's sponsored search results: something self-hosted rather than third-party and integrated into the main content but with a clear note that it's a sponsored item. Perhaps what they're talking about here isn't such a bad idea after all.
Says who? That's the first time you've mentioned anything about "utility".
Even though I have pointed this out multiple times and pointed you at the Constitution
Wrong on both counts. Go ahead and search your history of replies to me in this thread.
you still keep droning on about "fairness"
That's because I think a fair result for both sides is the most beneficial to society. Apparently those who wrote the law in the US agree, since reproducing works under copyright is (under most circumstances) illegal by default, and whether Google can avail themselves of the fair use affirmative defence is the key to this whole debate.
Search engines typically won't index content behind access barriers, though. Indeed, showing something different to a robot from somewhere like Google to what you show the general public visiting your site is a pretty reliable way of getting blacklisted.
You have a fair point about content that's been mirrored without the permission of the legitimate rightsholder. I'm not sure anyone has come up with a good solution to that basic problem yet. I suspect a combination of penalising the original source of illegal distribution in proportion to any damage they do* and providing a safe harbour/takedown notice system as many jurisdictions now do is probably a decent compromise.
* That's reasonably argued damages, not random conjecture as we often see from Big Media, whose losses to copyright infringement have now exceeded global GDP according to one recent argument I heard about! However, in the former case, I have no problem with throwing the book at someone who has wilfully infringed copyright and caused a lot of damage because of it.
Well, I think your incivil tone and unnecessary personal attacks have pretty much put an end to any sensible discussion here, so I will simply leave you with this thought: by my count, you have made several outright false statements in that one post, including jumping to some conclusions about me that are waaaay off-base.
For example, I've actively campaigned for copyright reform in my country for a long time, including objecting to all the silly term extensions and such, so my views are in no way knee-jerk reactions and I'm amused that you seem to think I'm on the side of Big Media. Also, I've never published a book, and while technically some of the work I do is protected by copyright, none of the business models I am currently using actually rely on that protection, so I have no axe to grind about this particular case.
In short, I have no vested interest in this issue other than getting a fair result for both the public and those who create and share their work. I just happen not to agree with you about the best way to do that, and that includes not letting Google trample all over the law just because they're Google.
Yes, and for most people, the market value of their books goes up.
That is what lawyers sometimes call "assuming facts not in evidence". Of course, you're welcome to cite additional evidence to support your position if you have it, but I've seen this sort of argument made before by people who dislike copyright, and I've yet to see a case where there wasn't obvious selective evidence or confirmation bias at work when they were called on it. If you really do have a good counter-example, I'd be genuinely interested to learn about it.
And that is why the default should be opt-out, not opt-in.
If the process is as beneficial to rightsholders as you claim, what is the problem with making it opt-in? Surely they would be queueing up to register, since it would surely take less than a minute and, by your argument, for most people it would increase their profits. Moreover, if there were a high rate of opt-ins in the early days, followed by a worthwhile increase in profits for those who tried it, that would represent compelling evidence for switching to an opt-out-by-default policy in future, without any of the hypothetical thought experiments or philosophical views we see today.
By the way, for someone so hot on promoting liberty, I can't help noticing how keen you seem to be on taking the decision out of the hands of the people who have done the hard work and favouring the organisation that is profiting off the back of someone else's work. I think this is my fundamental problem with a lot of anti-copyright advocacy: however you dress it up, copyright ultimately exists to incentivise the creation and distribution of valuable works, and historically, favouring middlemen further from the artist over those closest to the artist has rarely achieved that.
Excessive copyright restrictions are a threat to our economy, our liberty, and our democracy.
That is essentially a tautology. The question is whether it would be excessive to prohibit what Google is doing. Indeed, I notice that others in this discussion have already suggested that Google's actions are a prime example of exactly the sort of behaviour that copyright is intended to restrict.
I'll just finish by observing that having one law for multinational corporations with in-house legal teams and millions to spend on lobbying and another law for everyone else is harmful to democracy, too.
You're wildly contradicting yourself, saying on the one hand that it doesn't matter because it's free, and on the other hand that you need explicit permission for everything.
There is no contradiction at all. Being available for free is not the same as being in the public domain. However, such availability weighs on several of factors that determine whether a use is fair in the US (which I assume is the most relevant jurisdiction if we're talking about Google).
Fact is: you don't need explicit permission to make copies under many circumstances: you can make copies under fair use, you can make copies if you already have paid fees through some other mechanism, you can make copies for indexing purposes, etc.
That's just begging the question: the final case that you quietly added on the end there has not been shown to be a fact at all.
It is not the purpose of copyright law to "protect the value of the book" against all possible threats to your revenue.
No, it isn't. However, one of the four factors in determining fair use is, explicitly, right out of the statute books, the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work.
Which means that you are groundlessly accusing Google.
It's only groundless if the cases I mentioned -- which are demonstrable fact -- all turn out to be justified. Speculation? Sure, and I acknowledged the other possibility. Groundless? Only if you show convincing evidence that what they are doing had the necessary permissions in advance. The burden of proof is on them/you as the people who are performing/defending an act that is by default illegal.
Your signature is ironic, given that you are arguing for limiting liberty through the power of the state.
All laws ultimately limit liberty through the power of the state. My signature is a warning against permitting the state to become too powerful, not a call for anarchy.
So, the question is which uses of the copyrighted work require the rights-holders permissions, and which don't.
Sure, and I agree with you that this is not so much a moral question as a practical one. Copyright is ultimately an economic tool, as distinct from for example moral rights (in the legal sense).
Computers fuzz the lines too: you normally have to copy a program into RAM to run it, though most people would consider that ordinary use of a copy that they owned.
As a point of interest, the validity of generalised click-through EULAs in Europe is rather suspect for precisely that reason. If you bought the software via a third party, then your basic purchase contract is with them alone. Even if you bought from the source, if you didn't see the EULA before the purchase then clearly you didn't understand it and accept it as part of the purchase contract. Either way, the only consideration a copyright holder is really offering you in return for accepting their additional EULA terms is permission to make the kind of copy you mentioned. However, European law explicitly permits making any copies necessary for the normal use of the product anyway without regard to copyright (it has done for a few years now) so arguably that is not really any consideration at all. Given that as a basic principle of contract law there must be consideration in both directions for any contract to exist...
I'm looking forward to the test case for this one, as I would think a technically knowledgeable IP lawyer could make a very strong case that EULAs cannot be legally binding contracts under a lot of circumstances where they are presented as if they were today. That said, I don't think it's a slam-dunk, because industrial lobbyists would be out in force and even official reports from government departments seem to take it as read that such agreements can constitute valid contracts.
Why should it be legal for electronic content and not legal for books?
Web pages are already available for free, to anyone, on-line, with immediate access, from their original sources. That's five factors right there that distinguish the Web search engine case from what Google Books does.
Google isn't "republishing" the work; unless you opt in or the book is out of copyright, all that is shown about a book is a few short snippets, just like web search results.
There seem to be plenty of books on there where a lot more than a few short snippets are shown. I suppose it's possible that all of the corresponding rightsholders have joined whatever scheme Google offered, but given the stories of some posters here about Google just taking their work and using it without any permission at all, I'm less than willing to take that on trust.
In any case, even a few snippets could easily undermine the value of a book if it happens to be all the highlights.
And you can even opt out of that.
Irrelevant. The law in every first world jurisdiction I know requires that someone making a copy have permission from the copyright holder unless they have a specific exception/exemption, not that the copyright holder opt-out of forfeit their rights.
If we really think copyright holders should have complete control over how every copy of their work is *used*, not only distributed, then they should have cut off the problem at the source and forbidden libraries....
I never understand this argument. With the exception of a very small number of national reference libraries whose mandate is typically cultural preservation, libraries have to buy copies of their books like everyone else, and they can still only lend one copy out to one person at a time. No extra copying or duplicated access is going on here, any more than lending your book to a friend is copying.
Now, photocopying in libraries is a different question, but such copying is subject to copyright and libraries are usually very aware of this and the need to prevent people taking advantage so they don't risk bad consequences for the libraries themselves.
The libraries agreed to let Google distribute snippits.
As far as I'm aware, libraries have not yet been granted legislative authority, so what they agreed in this case is irrelevant. They have no legal power to transfer the special privileges they are granted in respect of copyright to other parties.
Slashdot Mirror
Funnily enough, they got wise to that one here in the UK a long time ago, because we had train station bombings and such to deal with long before all the post-9/11 security measures. You won't find a lot of bins in crowded public places around London, and chances are that any solid ones you do find have been specifically designed to direct the force of any explosion upwards rather than outwards, while the rest are little more than a transparent plastic bags.
Of course, we shouldn't let these rare examples of actually useful security measures based on actual experience of real threats dampen our praise of the obviously much more effective security theatre we all suffer at airports these days for our own "protection". ;-)
I think I probably do understand -- and agree with -- much of what you're saying.
I suppose my counterpoint is just that a lot of the younger generation -- digital natives, as my friends in marketing would describe them -- don't know what copyright means or understand that sharing some things on-line is illegal. Witness the numerous flagrant infringements on YouTube, accompanied by statements like "I don't own the rights to this, no copyright infringement intended". I think many of these kids aren't deliberately breaking the law and don't even realise they're doing anything wrong. No social contract exists with them, because no-one's ever told them what the deal is.
Erm... No. Statistically, planes have roughly the same incidence of death/mile travelled as cars according to various national safety groups in first world countries that I looked up before my previous post. However, since planes typically carry say 100x as many passengers, that makes them about 100x safer per passenger-mile.
...that zooming about in a metal box miles above the ground is an inherently unsafe thing to do?
And yet, it is still by far the safest form of vehicle travel.
Moreover, you have to keep in mind the dangers of these security measures. For example, while the risk of death due to the virtual strip search machines may statistically be very low, it is ironically almost equal to the risk of death due to terrorist action bringing down the flight. And of course, as about a million people with two brain cells to rub together have figured out by now, if you have big queues waiting to go through security, you're actually creating a bigger target for anyone who does brings explosives to the airport than a plane itself, and obviously you're doing it before the security checks.
It is never going to be 100% safe... never ever ever.
That is true. It is, however, something like 99.99999% safe, depending on how many miles you count for an average journey (based on NTSB stats for average deaths per passenger-mile). How about we just live with the facts that flying isn't really dangerous compared to many other things we do all the time and that the terrorist threat is tiny compared to many other things that cause actual harm all the time, and we start spending our time and money fixing real problems instead?
I've noticed recently that some people like to quote US budget figures for the wars/homeland security to show how costly these things really are and put them in perspective. I'm waiting for the infographic that compares those figures with what it costs to save a life through better road safety, natural disaster management, medical research, public education, etc. You'd think one good cover on, say, Time magazine would make the point enough to get serious public debate going, but no-one in the media seems to be biting, for reasons I never quite understand.
Thanks, with this policy we can make our point and help save the planet, all in one go. Great idea, we'll get right on it!
Love and hugs,
The TSA
I'm afraid I find that argument to be part of the whole red herring I described before. If people were copying stuff that was released 20 years ago and should probably have entered the public domain by now, that would be a strong argument. However, most people are copying the latest hit single, a leaked preview of the next big Hollywood blockbuster, or the new version of Office/Photoshop/$AAA_GAME, exactly none of which would be out of copyright for several years even under any historical system. That, also, is not respecting the social agreement. It's simply ripping off whoever did the work/invested the money to produce those products.
Do I think 3% of Windows users would be upset if one day Microsoft (or someone acting via Microsoft's system) remotely deleted an app those users had paid for from their system, by accident or because of some legal technicality the user doesn't care about? No, I think it would be a lot more than 3%.
In these sorts of situations the doubt is rarely about whether enough people would object to the practice being criticised, it is more about whether enough people have been personally affected to realise the practice is even possible. As with a lot of crimes or unfortunate ailments, people can be deeply affected when it happens to them, but a lot of people either don't know about it or just think "It can't happen to me" and get on with their lives.
How's it a red herring.
Because for practical purposes, the old laws and the new laws are little different in that respect. If almost everything of interest to either side happens in, say, the first five years, then it doesn't really matter whether the copyright term technically extends to 14 years or 140. And if you look at profits for rightsholders or the stuff that's being swapped illegally on-line, it's pretty clear that most of the interesting stuff does happen within a short space of time for the kinds of works that are big money to Big Media and of widespread interest to infringers. Beyond that, you're into copyright as protection for the little guy, at which point the practical issues may get more complicated but the consequences of both copyright and infringement on it become less far-reaching.
The old laws were much better than the new laws, when it comes to copyright. We need to dump all the new copyright laws, and go back to the copyright laws we had back in 1800, where works were only protected for 17 years before passing into the public domain.
Most copyrighted works make most of their profits within the first few years after release.
Most infringing copies are also made within the first few years after a work's release.
I agree that the endless copyright term extensions are crazy, and that in a few cases for works that have truly stood the test of time they cause real problems, but the whole copyright term extension argument is mostly a red herring.
The thing is, while I accept that your reasoning sounds compelling, I don't quite buy it.
Once upon a time, I was involved with a mobile radio network, kind of a spiritual ancestor of the mobile/cell networks we have today. In those days, to get a device approved for use on the network, some poor schmuck (been there, done that) sat in a lab with every currently approved device and the new one, and set up every possible kind of call/message/whatever between every combination of devices. The test spec to be run manually for every new firmware release going out on infrastructure devices on the network was typically several inches thick.
One thing I learned during that time is that even with the most careful testing in the world, you can't stop a rogue device from spewing noise into your radio spectrum and downing a substantial chunk of network capacity for everyone within several miles. If and when that happened, guys went out in big vehicles carrying lots of funky receiver equipment, and they tried to triangulate the location of the problem device so its owner could be contacted.
However, apart from such extreme circumstances, the solution to a device that was trying to use services it shouldn't would simply be to ignore it. The control channels for these things take up a tiny fraction of overall network capacity, and in most networks it's completely separate from the data channels anyway. No well-behaved device is going to DoS a cell tower.
The situation here is somewhat similar. If a mobile OS provider is worried about rogue software throwing out noise and downing the network, they should make sure that their mobile OS is robust to this and always plays nicely in terms of control channels. (Failing to do that almost certainly puts someone on the hook legally anyway in most places.) Beyond that, if the mobile OS providers and/or mobile network are worried about negative consequences from rogue apps that users have installed, the only robust solution is to ensure that there are sensible safeguards on the networks that block phones trying to do unusual things that would incur high charges or use unreasonable bandwidth. Trying to do that by controlling the software that runs on the phones themselves is rather like trying to secure your server by checking passwords client-side: it might be better than nothing, but sooner or later you're still going to run into problems when you encounter someone hostile who knows what they're doing.
So, in tl;dr summation, if mobile OS providers and mobile networks are worried about rogue apps running up charges or otherwise abusing the networks, the correct solution is to engineer the OS and network to be resilient in the face of a hostile app, not to engage in a futile arms race with malicious app writers and try to take down every bad app one by one. And without the latter, your argument for a remote wipe facility for purchased apps that someone has deliberately installed on their phone no longer works.
Really? So when, in a stunning feat of irony, Amazon yanked Orwell's 1984 from customers' Kindles, who do you think was ultimately responsible for triggering that action?
You are clouding the fundamental issue, which is why these platforms allow their users to be controlled in this way at all. Who is pulling the strings matters less than that the strings even exist.
It happened when the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook realised that being the owner of a walled garden (or even a slightly fenced garden) means you can do more-or-less what you like to users once you've locked them in.
A lot of people might be upset, but 97% of them won't do any more than bitch about it on Slashdot/Facebook/Reddit/whatever, and they'll still keep buying. The few who really will vote with their wallets for a more user-friendly alternative or go without products/services that come with nasty strings attached are so small in number that the big players can just ignore them.
That means the platform owners can adopt whatever abusive practices they want to make more money, short of breaking the law enough to lose a major lawsuit. And since the law everywhere is at least a decade behind the implications of modern technology, a lot of things that thoughtful geeks might consider dangerous aren't actually illegal anyway, at least not clearly so.
None of this will change until either a large consumer backlash begins (which is not beyond the bounds of possibility in the world today, but is on a gentle simmer right now) or legislation starts getting written by smart, thoughtful people who think through the implications of modern technology, understand the need to protect consumers, also understand the need to make commerce reasonably profitable, and try to come up with policies that balance these factors in a fair way (and then I woke up...).
I suppose that depends on who you're paying. I would never dream of charging my clients for time I wasn't spending doing productive work on their project. I have a professional reputation to protect, and I justify my fees by the results I provide.
On the flip side, hell would freeze over before I accepted this kind of intrusion. If a client wants someone who will put up with that, I'm sure they can find many people who will do it. They probably all charge much lower hourly rates than I do as well, so the clients will surely get a better deal and be much happier with the results.
If there is some new, money-making way of using a copyrighted work, under US law, by default, it is permitted until Congress enacts legislation to limit it.
Sure, and if that way of using the work involves reproduction, then Congress has enacted such legislation and reaffirmed it on several subsequent occasions.
"Fair use" is a technical term meaning a defined "legitimate use". It says "even though we have given authors these special restrictions for utilitarian purposes, it is nevertheless always legitimate for people to copy for the following purposes...". It doesn't refer to "fairness" in the sportsmanship sense or balancing of interests.
That might be your interpretation, but I know of nothing in US law that supports it. I just quoted you the relevant law verbatim, and nothing in there says any of what you just wrote.
Out-of-copyright and orphan works is exactly what this lawsuit is about.
I notice you sneaked in the always controversial "orphan works" there. The trouble with orphan works is that if there really isn't any way to get hold of the rightsholder then probably we do want to release them into the public domain immediately, but organisations with a vested interest in not being restricted by copyright tend to want some inevitably failing token effort at looking someone up to result in the same effective cancellation of the copyright. Right here in this discussion, there is someone posting who says Google used his copyrighted book without making any contact with him.
You're almost literally spewing the anti-Google propaganda
Oh, please. I don't like big, international organisations that try to put themselves above the law. I'm perfectly entitled to that opinion, regardless of whatever politics any other person or organisation might have.
And for the record, that includes Big Media, who should long ago have been punished for rampant price-fixing, anti-competitive practices, etc.
I don't like organisations that effectively buy laws with lobbyists either.
European politicians are doing their bidding because they know they can't get reelected if they act against them. Berlusconi just skipped that step and used his media empire to become the leader of Italy.
How is that working out for him?
Someone needs to take them on, and the only one powerful enough is other big companies and the US government, which is why they publish all that anti-US and anti-corporate claptrap.
I find your implication that the US government is on the side of the people and/or organisations like Google, rather than bought and paid for by Big Media more than any other first world nation, to be highly amusing.
OK, one more try. Here is what the US Constitution actually says in Article 1, Section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I will just note in passing that if you're going to make an argument based on the Constitution, there is nothing in there restricting the Right of Authors in their works or making any exceptions at all for anyone else to do anything with the work during the limited Time when the exclusive Right applies.
In other words, while you could make a decent argument against permitting the permanent transfer of copyright to middlemen (which I would agree with) and you could make a decent argument against extending copyright terms such that they are effectively no longer a limited Time (which I would also agree with, as I mentioned before), you have no case whatsoever based on the wording of the Constitution to argue for automatic rights for others in specific contexts.
That means any such rights are down to the specific laws that grant Authors those exclusive Rights as permitted by the Constitution. And on that score, we turn to 17 U.S.C. 107:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
I've added emphasis, so you can see exactly where the US statute books say fairness is relevant.
By the way, when you're looking at things in this level of detail, there isn't really any such thing as "European copyright law". There are centralised directives, which are subsequently implemented by individual member states within their own legal frameworks. There may also be local laws independent of centralised Europe, for example the fair dealing provisions in the UK. These laws may be created on their own merits, or they may be required because the state in question is a signatory to major international copyright agreements like the Berne Convention and TRIPS.
I consider the original US copyright system to be fair: 28 years plus mandatory registration. I consider the current system (life+70 years, no registration) to be highly unfair, because it lets publishers control works they did not create and keep works out of the public domain that should be in the public domain.
The irony is that if you were actually reading my posts, you'd realise that I completely agree with you about the silly term length extensions and the problems of letting middlemen grab the rights from the people who really do the work and exploit them in the long term. Mandatory registration is the only thing I disagree with there, because I simply don't think it's practical in the modern world; if say 10% of the bloggers in the world started registering every post, any government-run system would probably collapse pathetically within hours, even before you consider all the professionals who would surely want robust protection worldwide for all
The trouble with most ads is that they aren't just potentially annoying, they are also a security risk. The only time I ever picked up a virus, to my knowledge at least, I was browsing a couple of geek news sites I follow regularly. As usual, I started by opening up a whole bunch of tabs for stories that looked interesting, all of them on normally reputable sites. And then I got hit by a drive-by download, which turned out to be a Java zero-day exploit carried briefly by one of the third party ad networks used by one of those sites.
Since that day, while I will happily contribute to the geek news sites myself in return for enjoying what others contribute, there are simply no circumstances under which my ad-blocker and privacy plug-ins get turned off, any more than I would share my passwords or turn off my firewall.
I suggest if Slashdot wants to go down this path, it needs to be something more akin to Google's sponsored search results: something self-hosted rather than third-party and integrated into the main content but with a clear note that it's a sponsored item. Perhaps what they're talking about here isn't such a bad idea after all.
US copyright is based on utility, not "fairness".
Says who? That's the first time you've mentioned anything about "utility".
Even though I have pointed this out multiple times and pointed you at the Constitution
Wrong on both counts. Go ahead and search your history of replies to me in this thread.
you still keep droning on about "fairness"
That's because I think a fair result for both sides is the most beneficial to society. Apparently those who wrote the law in the US agree, since reproducing works under copyright is (under most circumstances) illegal by default, and whether Google can avail themselves of the fair use affirmative defence is the key to this whole debate.
Search engines typically won't index content behind access barriers, though. Indeed, showing something different to a robot from somewhere like Google to what you show the general public visiting your site is a pretty reliable way of getting blacklisted.
You have a fair point about content that's been mirrored without the permission of the legitimate rightsholder. I'm not sure anyone has come up with a good solution to that basic problem yet. I suspect a combination of penalising the original source of illegal distribution in proportion to any damage they do* and providing a safe harbour/takedown notice system as many jurisdictions now do is probably a decent compromise.
* That's reasonably argued damages, not random conjecture as we often see from Big Media, whose losses to copyright infringement have now exceeded global GDP according to one recent argument I heard about! However, in the former case, I have no problem with throwing the book at someone who has wilfully infringed copyright and caused a lot of damage because of it.
Well, I think your incivil tone and unnecessary personal attacks have pretty much put an end to any sensible discussion here, so I will simply leave you with this thought: by my count, you have made several outright false statements in that one post, including jumping to some conclusions about me that are waaaay off-base.
For example, I've actively campaigned for copyright reform in my country for a long time, including objecting to all the silly term extensions and such, so my views are in no way knee-jerk reactions and I'm amused that you seem to think I'm on the side of Big Media. Also, I've never published a book, and while technically some of the work I do is protected by copyright, none of the business models I am currently using actually rely on that protection, so I have no axe to grind about this particular case.
In short, I have no vested interest in this issue other than getting a fair result for both the public and those who create and share their work. I just happen not to agree with you about the best way to do that, and that includes not letting Google trample all over the law just because they're Google.
Yes, and for most people, the market value of their books goes up.
That is what lawyers sometimes call "assuming facts not in evidence". Of course, you're welcome to cite additional evidence to support your position if you have it, but I've seen this sort of argument made before by people who dislike copyright, and I've yet to see a case where there wasn't obvious selective evidence or confirmation bias at work when they were called on it. If you really do have a good counter-example, I'd be genuinely interested to learn about it.
And that is why the default should be opt-out, not opt-in.
If the process is as beneficial to rightsholders as you claim, what is the problem with making it opt-in? Surely they would be queueing up to register, since it would surely take less than a minute and, by your argument, for most people it would increase their profits. Moreover, if there were a high rate of opt-ins in the early days, followed by a worthwhile increase in profits for those who tried it, that would represent compelling evidence for switching to an opt-out-by-default policy in future, without any of the hypothetical thought experiments or philosophical views we see today.
By the way, for someone so hot on promoting liberty, I can't help noticing how keen you seem to be on taking the decision out of the hands of the people who have done the hard work and favouring the organisation that is profiting off the back of someone else's work. I think this is my fundamental problem with a lot of anti-copyright advocacy: however you dress it up, copyright ultimately exists to incentivise the creation and distribution of valuable works, and historically, favouring middlemen further from the artist over those closest to the artist has rarely achieved that.
Excessive copyright restrictions are a threat to our economy, our liberty, and our democracy.
That is essentially a tautology. The question is whether it would be excessive to prohibit what Google is doing. Indeed, I notice that others in this discussion have already suggested that Google's actions are a prime example of exactly the sort of behaviour that copyright is intended to restrict.
I'll just finish by observing that having one law for multinational corporations with in-house legal teams and millions to spend on lobbying and another law for everyone else is harmful to democracy, too.
You're wildly contradicting yourself, saying on the one hand that it doesn't matter because it's free, and on the other hand that you need explicit permission for everything.
There is no contradiction at all. Being available for free is not the same as being in the public domain. However, such availability weighs on several of factors that determine whether a use is fair in the US (which I assume is the most relevant jurisdiction if we're talking about Google).
Fact is: you don't need explicit permission to make copies under many circumstances: you can make copies under fair use, you can make copies if you already have paid fees through some other mechanism, you can make copies for indexing purposes, etc.
That's just begging the question: the final case that you quietly added on the end there has not been shown to be a fact at all.
It is not the purpose of copyright law to "protect the value of the book" against all possible threats to your revenue.
No, it isn't. However, one of the four factors in determining fair use is, explicitly, right out of the statute books, the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work.
Which means that you are groundlessly accusing Google.
It's only groundless if the cases I mentioned -- which are demonstrable fact -- all turn out to be justified. Speculation? Sure, and I acknowledged the other possibility. Groundless? Only if you show convincing evidence that what they are doing had the necessary permissions in advance. The burden of proof is on them/you as the people who are performing/defending an act that is by default illegal.
Your signature is ironic, given that you are arguing for limiting liberty through the power of the state.
All laws ultimately limit liberty through the power of the state. My signature is a warning against permitting the state to become too powerful, not a call for anarchy.
So, the question is which uses of the copyrighted work require the rights-holders permissions, and which don't.
Sure, and I agree with you that this is not so much a moral question as a practical one. Copyright is ultimately an economic tool, as distinct from for example moral rights (in the legal sense).
Computers fuzz the lines too: you normally have to copy a program into RAM to run it, though most people would consider that ordinary use of a copy that they owned.
As a point of interest, the validity of generalised click-through EULAs in Europe is rather suspect for precisely that reason. If you bought the software via a third party, then your basic purchase contract is with them alone. Even if you bought from the source, if you didn't see the EULA before the purchase then clearly you didn't understand it and accept it as part of the purchase contract. Either way, the only consideration a copyright holder is really offering you in return for accepting their additional EULA terms is permission to make the kind of copy you mentioned. However, European law explicitly permits making any copies necessary for the normal use of the product anyway without regard to copyright (it has done for a few years now) so arguably that is not really any consideration at all. Given that as a basic principle of contract law there must be consideration in both directions for any contract to exist...
I'm looking forward to the test case for this one, as I would think a technically knowledgeable IP lawyer could make a very strong case that EULAs cannot be legally binding contracts under a lot of circumstances where they are presented as if they were today. That said, I don't think it's a slam-dunk, because industrial lobbyists would be out in force and even official reports from government departments seem to take it as read that such agreements can constitute valid contracts.
Why should it be legal for electronic content and not legal for books?
Web pages are already available for free, to anyone, on-line, with immediate access, from their original sources. That's five factors right there that distinguish the Web search engine case from what Google Books does.
Google isn't "republishing" the work; unless you opt in or the book is out of copyright, all that is shown about a book is a few short snippets, just like web search results.
There seem to be plenty of books on there where a lot more than a few short snippets are shown. I suppose it's possible that all of the corresponding rightsholders have joined whatever scheme Google offered, but given the stories of some posters here about Google just taking their work and using it without any permission at all, I'm less than willing to take that on trust.
In any case, even a few snippets could easily undermine the value of a book if it happens to be all the highlights.
And you can even opt out of that.
Irrelevant. The law in every first world jurisdiction I know requires that someone making a copy have permission from the copyright holder unless they have a specific exception/exemption, not that the copyright holder opt-out of forfeit their rights.
If we really think copyright holders should have complete control over how every copy of their work is *used*, not only distributed, then they should have cut off the problem at the source and forbidden libraries....
I never understand this argument. With the exception of a very small number of national reference libraries whose mandate is typically cultural preservation, libraries have to buy copies of their books like everyone else, and they can still only lend one copy out to one person at a time. No extra copying or duplicated access is going on here, any more than lending your book to a friend is copying.
Now, photocopying in libraries is a different question, but such copying is subject to copyright and libraries are usually very aware of this and the need to prevent people taking advantage so they don't risk bad consequences for the libraries themselves.
The libraries agreed to let Google distribute snippits.
As far as I'm aware, libraries have not yet been granted legislative authority, so what they agreed in this case is irrelevant. They have no legal power to transfer the special privileges they are granted in respect of copyright to other parties.