>So long as, based on the evidence involving the >IP address, it is more likely that it was you, >than that it wasn't you, that's proof that it >was you.
ANd as soon as there is a household with 3 or more people, the chances it was you was suddenly reduced to way belo 50%. Even with just 2 people, there is still not MORE likely it was you than the other person.
>downloading is theft because you are receiving a >perfect copy of a thing without paying for it.
Lets read the copyright laws and see were we find that "recieveing a copy without paying" is an exclusive right to the copyright holders...... nope, can't find it, can YOU?
Payment and recieving has nothing to do with copyright, it is the acts of for example copying which are exclusive to the copyright holder that can be infringement.
As another example, if I give a book to a friend, he is recieveing it without paying, are you going to argue he is stealing?
>If I stole a magazine and then left it in a >dentist's waiting room, would anybody think of >sueing me for lost profits caused by people >reading it?
Lost, possible or actual profit or sales has NOTHING to do with copyright and does not in ANY way relate to if something is copyright infringement or not. It is the actual ACT of, for example copying that is the infringing part. If that has ANY effect on profit of not has absolutely no relevance for the legality of it.
Note that the fair use rules in some countries have some parts in it that could relate to economics though.
>If you're receiving the copy, you can't claim >you had nothing to do with the infringement. >That's like buying property you know is stolen.
There are allready many posts correcting the initial poster on the "downloading is actually the copying". As for just recieveing a copy, like your friend making a copy in an infringing way and then giving it to you, that is NOT copyright infringment since posession is not an exclusive right of the copyright holder, nor is ownership of individual copies. Hence you can't infringe on copyright by simply possessing something.
Stolen goods and any analogies with it is completely irellevant since it is covered and regulated by completely different law that states the illegalness of such actions, it does not apply here.
>How is this harming the network? If it works as >should be intended, it'll only target >copyrighted materials that the copyright holders >haven't authorised for distribution in this >manner.
And how can you know if something is authorized or not? How can you know it doesn't target wrong files completely? How do you make sure that the system correctly handle differences in different countries copyright laws? How will it make sure that anything it considers a copyright infringement actually is? Will it somehow have a whole court/police system set up to handle anything illegal? And even if it DO manage to get all that and more correct, what makes you think it is still allowed to do what it do according to differen countries laws?
>They want to make sure that people aren't trading >stuff owned by others so they are "ensuring >compliance/conformity".
Most likely the "owner" is the one trading. The one trading typically do not hold the copyright to the work though, that is very different from owning something though. I for example own many books, but do not hodl the copyright to it. Some of those books could have been infringements of course 8for example if I had copied them) but I would still be the owner of them.
>Please, do not try to point out the glaring >security holes in the scheme above,
The thing is, ANY such scheme will always just be one big "security hole" since the whole point of it is prevent the user from getting to the movie, yet the whole point of it is to get the movie to the customer. It is a conflict impossible to solve really. The only thing I can see here (although it has nothing to do with the RFID) is that one can lock the customers out until a specific date by having the key only availble by a phone home on the specific date. That works.
And the point of selling something but setting a "can't be used until later date" is? I really never understood it. Since all those getting it are the ones who won't see it at the theatre (hence why they bought the DVD), I really can't see a point. Just typical market control which is of no benefit to the customer. If they don't like people watching it, don't sell it.
>I posted the list first but *I'M* the one who >get's modded "redundant".
Of course it is redundant, regardless of if you are first or not, it is allready in the article. Just copying something from the article is always redundant since the article is always "first".
>but what is fairness, balance and reasonable >limits?
Depends on the purpose of copyright. Typically the purpose is to stimulate creation of content for the public. Now, ask yourself, what is a needed time for this? Ask yourself, out of all the works created today, how many of them would have had the creator go, "gee, with this short time, I simply won't do it" if we shortened todays "life + 70" (or whatever similar it is in various countries)? What if it is "only", say, 50 years? What about 10? I would say, that even with 10 years, most of all content created would still be created. Wo why have the longer time? How can you call the longer time "balanced" when a much shorter time is still more than enough?
>I can't use a trademark without permission from >the trademark holder, period.
Are you talking about Australian trademark law here? Or some other countries? If you take Sweden for example, any non comercial use of a trademark is allowed since it is only regulated for comercial use.
By your argumentation, any action that doesn't result in a sell is "stealing". Hence, if the friend borrows the CD instead, he is also stealing. If instead of just collecting dust in my home since I no longer like to listen to the CD, I sell it to the friend, he is stealing too and so on.
So you end up calling something stealing that is perfectly legal. What good does that do you? What is the point in finding a similarity that might work out in some specific case and then apply that to every single case (claiming that copyright infringement is stealing)?? It is trivial to find cases were any such argumentation for claiming copyright infringement is stealing won't work. It is trivial to find examples of actions that is stealing but not copyright infringement but also cases that is copyright infringement but not in any way stealing in any way you look at it.
Actually, the whole idea of using "loosing money" to find similarities is quite stupid since copyright infringement has nothing to do with losing money. Something is not copyright infringement because there is a loss of money or income for someone. Copyright infringement (in these cases) are about creating something new, that is creating a new physical property that happens to be identical to something else. Stealing deals with changes in possession or ownership of such physical properties.
And this is an important thing to note, the differences between ownership of a copy of a work and "ownership" of the copyright to a work. The first actually deals with physical objects, ownership and stealing works out. The copyright has very little to do with this having the copyright does not imply or relate to owning the individual copies. Thus, it is perfectly possible for a copyright holder to commit the crime of stealing a copy of his own work (for example taking a CD from a shop). THAT is stealing, completely unrelated to copyright and copyright infringement.
There are also obvious differences in the consequences between stealing a CD and copying a CD. In the case of stealing, the store (for example) is the one losing out. The copyright holder doesn't get any money in any form when you are convicted. When you copy a CD instead, the shop does not in any way lose out. Instead the copyright holder is the one that can go after you and get money for the infringement.
Anyone claiming that the two cases (stealing and copyright infringement is really the same and can be called stealing) has in my opinion simply not understood the concept of copyright and its relation to actual physical copies, at all.
>And don't confuse the issue with who the seller >is. The current contracts for music make the >record labels the sellers.
Not the slightest idea what you talk about. For most people, a store is the seller. The music maker would be sellers to the store.
Wait a second... *reads various EULA from Microsoft and other software manufacturers*...yup, guess what, it is in there too!!! What a surprise, there is apearantly no implied warranty of merchantability for those either.
Cool, are you saying they stole the copyright so that the original holders no longer has the copyright??? WHat a novell way to use BitTorrent! I will try to steal some Microsoft copyright and patents later today!
>Don't the RIAA/MPAA count damages of $10.000 to >50.000 for every shared file, in claims against >file sharers?
Yes, that is due to todays high speed DVD players which can stearm data that is the equivalency to watching 1000 divx movies in the time you watch a typical movie! It is all MPAA math!
>One of the talks had a group of lawyers that >told us about this sort of thing, and they said >that under the eu directives games were ruled as >you couldn't make backups, but software you >could. I'm fairly sure it was something like >that.
Hmmm, that would mean that games would not be considered as computer software. Interesting. I can recall one similar case though were one looked at it from a point of view similar to movies or "story telling". It was game companies suing a store in Sweden that was renting games to customers. Copyright law (at least at that time as far as I recall, and I can miss some points) didn't allow you to rent movies and similar works without special permision but did allow for other types. The game company argued that the game was indeed a story created by the company thorugh the game and so on. The court came to the conclusion that it was actually the player thorugh its actions and controlls that was the one creating the story, hence it was OK to rent games.
Now, I might have missed or not remember correctly part of the story and I think it was in the past when laws was a bit different. I can possibly see some similar reasoning in what you tell. Still not sure what classification of a work would trumph others, so that a game would not be computer software but something else (also covered by copyright of course). Typically it is computer software that is singled out for backups (allowed) and personal copies (typically not allowed for software).
As long as you don't violate the few exlusive rights (that has exceptions) the copyright law grants the copyright holder, you can share music or pass arround it to others just as you see fit, regardless of what the creator or the one releaseing the music wishes. If you don't like that concept, don't sell the music to start with since that means losing the ownership of those copies (not copyright which is why there are still SOME restrictions).
Next I assume you might want to think that someone buying chairs should not be allowed to pass arround the chair at *their* whim to others and have strangers sit in it... Or?
No but copies of it fixated in some sort of physical form is. I believe the US copyright law refer to it as "material objects". This can be a copy of the music on a CD or a copy of the music on a hard disc and so on.
>You "own" music the same way you'd own a live >performance.
You must be aware that we have two different things here. The "work" which is the non tangible music that can't be owned, you can hold copyright to it though. Then we have the individual copies of the work (mentioned above, which are material objects. These copies are owned just like everything else that is tangible and material. That ownership is not in any way connected to holding copyright, that is one does not imply the other. So when you buy such a copy of a work, you do indeed own it in all aspects and means you can possibly think of just like anything else. You still don't hold the copyright to the work though.
>What you own is the means (and the right) to >enjoy the music at your discretion, according to >the terms under which it was released.
This is just nonsens with no meaning, see above for "ownership" and what you own when you buy something. Buying things are covered by sale laws (or consumer sale laws) of the country by the way, have nothing to do with copyright.
>Hmm, I thought that act was overridden by EU law >which says you can backup music and software >cd/dvd's, but not games. (So similiar)
There aren't any "EU laws". There are directives (for example) for the countries to implement into their laws. Those directives does not override the national laws though.
And no such directive has yet singled out games to be treated differently than other computer software.
>Has the entire EU agreed on one set of copyright >laws yet?
No. There are some EU directives, but they still open up for quite different laws in each country. Typically the EU directive sets some minimum standards but then each country have quite some freedom on top of that.
Slashdot Mirror
>So long as, based on the evidence involving the
>IP address, it is more likely that it was you,
>than that it wasn't you, that's proof that it
>was you.
ANd as soon as there is a household with 3 or more people, the chances it was you was suddenly reduced to way belo 50%. Even with just 2 people, there is still not MORE likely it was you than the other person.
>downloading is theft because you are receiving a
>perfect copy of a thing without paying for it.
Lets read the copyright laws and see were we find that "recieveing a copy without paying" is an exclusive right to the copyright holders...... nope, can't find it, can YOU?
Payment and recieving has nothing to do with copyright, it is the acts of for example copying which are exclusive to the copyright holder that can be infringement.
As another example, if I give a book to a friend, he is recieveing it without paying, are you going to argue he is stealing?
>If I stole a magazine and then left it in a
>dentist's waiting room, would anybody think of
>sueing me for lost profits caused by people
>reading it?
Lost, possible or actual profit or sales has NOTHING to do with copyright and does not in ANY way relate to if something is copyright infringement or not. It is the actual ACT of, for example copying that is the infringing part. If that has ANY effect on profit of not has absolutely no relevance for the legality of it.
Note that the fair use rules in some countries have some parts in it that could relate to economics though.
>Just read the copyright notice inside any music
>CD, the part about "public performance".
It would be far better to actually read the copyright law instead since then you get to know what REALLY applies!
>If you're receiving the copy, you can't claim
>you had nothing to do with the infringement.
>That's like buying property you know is stolen.
There are allready many posts correcting the initial poster on the "downloading is actually the copying". As for just recieveing a copy, like your friend making a copy in an infringing way and then giving it to you, that is NOT copyright infringment since posession is not an exclusive right of the copyright holder, nor is ownership of individual copies. Hence you can't infringe on copyright by simply possessing something.
Stolen goods and any analogies with it is completely irellevant since it is covered and regulated by completely different law that states the illegalness of such actions, it does not apply here.
>How is this harming the network? If it works as
>should be intended, it'll only target
>copyrighted materials that the copyright holders
>haven't authorised for distribution in this
>manner.
And how can you know if something is authorized or not? How can you know it doesn't target wrong files completely? How do you make sure that the system correctly handle differences in different countries copyright laws? How will it make sure that anything it considers a copyright infringement actually is? Will it somehow have a whole court/police system set up to handle anything illegal? And even if it DO manage to get all that and more correct, what makes you think it is still allowed to do what it do according to differen countries laws?
>They want to make sure that people aren't trading
>stuff owned by others so they are "ensuring
>compliance/conformity".
Most likely the "owner" is the one trading. The one trading typically do not hold the copyright to the work though, that is very different from owning something though. I for example own many books, but do not hodl the copyright to it. Some of those books could have been infringements of course 8for example if I had copied them) but I would still be the owner of them.
>Please, do not try to point out the glaring
>security holes in the scheme above,
The thing is, ANY such scheme will always just be one big "security hole" since the whole point of it is prevent the user from getting to the movie, yet the whole point of it is to get the movie to the customer. It is a conflict impossible to solve really. The only thing I can see here (although it has nothing to do with the RFID) is that one can lock the customers out until a specific date by having the key only availble by a phone home on the specific date. That works.
>but you can't watch it until June 30th
And the point of selling something but setting a "can't be used until later date" is? I really never understood it. Since all those getting it are the ones who won't see it at the theatre (hence why they bought the DVD), I really can't see a point. Just typical market control which is of no benefit to the customer. If they don't like people watching it, don't sell it.
>Microsoft's EULA absolves them of responsibility
>for almost all defects.
A good thing many countries have consumer protection laws that doesn't allow such a thing then!
>I posted the list first but *I'M* the one who
>get's modded "redundant".
Of course it is redundant, regardless of if you are first or not, it is allready in the article. Just copying something from the article is always redundant since the article is always "first".
>In fact, 100% of visitors may believe that FOSS
>costs less
I think we can at least rule out the 14% that saw no benefit at all.
>but what is fairness, balance and reasonable
>limits?
Depends on the purpose of copyright. Typically the purpose is to stimulate creation of content for the public. Now, ask yourself, what is a needed time for this? Ask yourself, out of all the works created today, how many of them would have had the creator go, "gee, with this short time, I simply won't do it" if we shortened todays "life + 70" (or whatever similar it is in various countries)? What if it is "only", say, 50 years? What about 10? I would say, that even with 10 years, most of all content created would still be created. Wo why have the longer time? How can you call the longer time "balanced" when a much shorter time is still more than enough?
>I can't use a trademark without permission from
>the trademark holder, period.
Are you talking about Australian trademark law here? Or some other countries? If you take Sweden for example, any non comercial use of a trademark is allowed since it is only regulated for comercial use.
By your argumentation, any action that doesn't result in a sell is "stealing". Hence, if the friend borrows the CD instead, he is also stealing. If instead of just collecting dust in my home since I no longer like to listen to the CD, I sell it to the friend, he is stealing too and so on.
So you end up calling something stealing that is perfectly legal. What good does that do you? What is the point in finding a similarity that might work out in some specific case and then apply that to every single case (claiming that copyright infringement is stealing)?? It is trivial to find cases were any such argumentation for claiming copyright infringement is stealing won't work. It is trivial to find examples of actions that is stealing but not copyright infringement but also cases that is copyright infringement but not in any way stealing in any way you look at it.
Actually, the whole idea of using "loosing money" to find similarities is quite stupid since copyright infringement has nothing to do with losing money. Something is not copyright infringement because there is a loss of money or income for someone. Copyright infringement (in these cases) are about creating something new, that is creating a new physical property that happens to be identical to something else. Stealing deals with changes in possession or ownership of such physical properties.
And this is an important thing to note, the differences between ownership of a copy of a work and "ownership" of the copyright to a work. The first actually deals with physical objects, ownership and stealing works out. The copyright has very little to do with this having the copyright does not imply or relate to owning the individual copies. Thus, it is perfectly possible for a copyright holder to commit the crime of stealing a copy of his own work (for example taking a CD from a shop). THAT is stealing, completely unrelated to copyright and copyright infringement.
There are also obvious differences in the consequences between stealing a CD and copying a CD. In the case of stealing, the store (for example) is the one losing out. The copyright holder doesn't get any money in any form when you are convicted. When you copy a CD instead, the shop does not in any way lose out. Instead the copyright holder is the one that can go after you and get money for the infringement.
Anyone claiming that the two cases (stealing and copyright infringement is really the same and can be called stealing) has in my opinion simply not understood the concept of copyright and its relation to actual physical copies, at all.
>And don't confuse the issue with who the seller
>is. The current contracts for music make the
>record labels the sellers.
Not the slightest idea what you talk about. For most people, a store is the seller. The music maker would be sellers to the store.
Wait a second... *reads various EULA from Microsoft and other software manufacturers*...yup, guess what, it is in there too!!! What a surprise, there is apearantly no implied warranty of merchantability for those either.
>Repeat after me:....
OK, I have repeated both whay you said and what those replying wanted me to repeat. Now what?
> i.e. IP Theft.
Cool, are you saying they stole the copyright so that the original holders no longer has the copyright??? WHat a novell way to use BitTorrent! I will try to steal some Microsoft copyright and patents later today!
>Don't the RIAA/MPAA count damages of $10.000 to
>50.000 for every shared file, in claims against
>file sharers?
Yes, that is due to todays high speed DVD players which can stearm data that is the equivalency to watching 1000 divx movies in the time you watch a typical movie! It is all MPAA math!
>Emigration to escape the DMCA costs more than
>most people living in Slashdot's home country can
>afford.
Well, I, and most people in the world allready live outside USA so that is not a problem you know!
>Besides, doesn't the EU Copyright Directive
>mandate that European Union members enact DMCA
>clones?
No, not really, although some countries has gone longer than the directive required and ended up in similar situation.
>If Microsoft publishes even one document in the
>format, then the format is being used to protect
>a copyrighted work.
Yes, but only THAT specific document. Other documents would have the copyright of however wrotwe it, not Microsoft.
>One of the talks had a group of lawyers that
>told us about this sort of thing, and they said
>that under the eu directives games were ruled as
>you couldn't make backups, but software you
>could. I'm fairly sure it was something like
>that.
Hmmm, that would mean that games would not be considered as computer software. Interesting. I can recall one similar case though were one looked at it from a point of view similar to movies or "story telling". It was game companies suing a store in Sweden that was renting games to customers. Copyright law (at least at that time as far as I recall, and I can miss some points) didn't allow you to rent movies and similar works without special permision but did allow for other types. The game company argued that the game was indeed a story created by the company thorugh the game and so on. The court came to the conclusion that it was actually the player thorugh its actions and controlls that was the one creating the story, hence it was OK to rent games.
Now, I might have missed or not remember correctly part of the story and I think it was in the past when laws was a bit different. I can possibly see some similar reasoning in what you tell. Still not sure what classification of a work would trumph others, so that a game would not be computer software but something else (also covered by copyright of course). Typically it is computer software that is singled out for backups (allowed) and personal copies (typically not allowed for software).
As long as you don't violate the few exlusive rights (that has exceptions) the copyright law grants the copyright holder, you can share music or pass arround it to others just as you see fit, regardless of what the creator or the one releaseing the music wishes. If you don't like that concept, don't sell the music to start with since that means losing the ownership of those copies (not copyright which is why there are still SOME restrictions).
Next I assume you might want to think that someone buying chairs should not be allowed to pass arround the chair at *their* whim to others and have strangers sit in it... Or?
>First off, music is not a tangible item.
No but copies of it fixated in some sort of physical form is. I believe the US copyright law refer to it as "material objects". This can be a copy of the music on a CD or a copy of the music on a hard disc and so on.
>You "own" music the same way you'd own a live
>performance.
You must be aware that we have two different things here. The "work" which is the non tangible music that can't be owned, you can hold copyright to it though. Then we have the individual copies of the work (mentioned above, which are material objects. These copies are owned just like everything else that is tangible and material. That ownership is not in any way connected to holding copyright, that is one does not imply the other. So when you buy such a copy of a work, you do indeed own it in all aspects and means you can possibly think of just like anything else. You still don't hold the copyright to the work though.
>What you own is the means (and the right) to
>enjoy the music at your discretion, according to
>the terms under which it was released.
This is just nonsens with no meaning, see above for "ownership" and what you own when you buy something. Buying things are covered by sale laws (or consumer sale laws) of the country by the way, have nothing to do with copyright.
>Hmm, I thought that act was overridden by EU law
>which says you can backup music and software
>cd/dvd's, but not games. (So similiar)
There aren't any "EU laws". There are directives (for example) for the countries to implement into their laws. Those directives does not override the national laws though.
And no such directive has yet singled out games to be treated differently than other computer software.
>Has the entire EU agreed on one set of copyright
>laws yet?
No. There are some EU directives, but they still open up for quite different laws in each country. Typically the EU directive sets some minimum standards but then each country have quite some freedom on top of that.