Copyright law needs a complete overhaul. We the People should find a few persons to go to Washington to present our needs to the Government, especially where they conflict with the needs of the corporations. We could call these persons, "Representatives".
An excellent idea. I just hope these "Representatives", as you call them, don't forget who elected them, and become errand boys for the corporations in exchange for economic favours.
The first sale doctrine needs to apply in common sense situations like this. If you buy something, including a license, it is only common sense that you would be able to resell it.
Or we make it even simpler and legalise copying for private use. Then online music stores will simply sell a download service for the user's convenience, and what the user does with the copy they obtained is up to them.
Plot: When the captain of the Enterprise beams aboard carrying a holocrystal with the very last copy of his favourite opera, a malfunction occurs and TWO versions of the holocrystal appear on the ship: one missing the beginning, and one missing the end. When the captain tries to reconstruct the opera on a third holocrystal, he's stopped by the ship's lawyer, who explains that this would create a new copy and violate copyright law. Now the captain is in a race against time: Will he find a way to reconstruct his beloved opera before the Federation lawyers forces him to destroy one of the imperfect duplicates?
First, I'm speaking about the US unless otherwise stated, as I know that law best.
[...] you do have the right to make as many copies as you want of any copyrighted material as long as you don't distribute them.
Interesting, do you have any good reference for this? I often find myself in discussions about American copyright law, and it would be nice to have definite proof.
In my country (Sweden), you may only create a limited number of copies of music or films for private use, and only if you copy from a licensed copy. But the law also allows the creation of "temporary versions of copies of a work" if they're "an integrated and vital part of a technical process, and if the copies are transient or have a subordinate role in the process." This allows you to run computer programs, store websites in your browser's cache, store IP packets in a router, etc, without needing licenses from the copyright holders.
Hint: Failing to get 10% of the price you paid for a game back by selling it is NOT what is keeping you from being rich, nor is failing to get gifted games a few months after release what is keeping your friends or family from being rich (especially since, given time on Steam, that same game will be around 75% off anyway).
*shrug* I can afford to buy any game I want to play, and don't bother selling them on, but why should we make gaming 10% more expensive to people than it needs to be?
Lower prices -> more efficient economy -> a wealthier world
I have no idea if this would hold up in court, but couldn't the user renounce their right to that particular song in an e-mail to iTunes, and stop downloading/playing it? It would then be iTunes' problem if they kept a "copy" of the user's song, and the user could claim it was no longer his copy.
No they are completely different things. The "license" to use is whatever the rights holder says it is (and you agreed to when buying). If they say you can only sell it to smurfs than if you can find a smurf you can sell it.
Assuming the agreement holds up in court, that still doesn't prevent the smurf from using the second-hand copy as he sees fit, since he's not bound by the agreement between the seller and the first purchaser.
The copyright holder can try to get around it by requiring the first purchaser to enforce the same agreement on the second purchaser, who is then obliged to enforce the same agreement on the third purchaser, and so on, but that's a very unreliable method. If the first purchaser forgets to enforce the agreement on the second, the copyright holder can only sue the first purchaser. The second purchaser has done nothing wrong, and can continue to use the product as he sees fit - including selling it on without enforcing the original agreement.
Oh, and to clear up the terms: a "license" is a permission to do something which is normally not allowed - for example, to manufacture x copies of a copyrighted work. A "license agreement" is the agreement where one party gives a license to the other in exchange for some other goods or service - for example, permission to install a software product on x computers in return for y dollars.
Isn't the use license implied by posession of the product? After all, neither is of value without the other.
A "license to use" is not even needed in most cases. There's nothing in copyright law that says you can't play copyrighted music in private. For example, you don't need to buy a copy of the latest pop single to be allowed to sing it or play it on your piano. It's not until you record it (i.e, manufacturing copies) or upload it to YouTube (i.e, public performance) that you run into trouble.
Similarly, if you obtain a pirated CD, it's not against copyright law to play it. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may be considered an accomplice to the person who manufactured the copy, but playing it is not illegal in itself. For example, where I live (Sweden), it's legal to import pirated copies for private use.
Ever look at the fine print on an old LP? Same thing applies. You have never "owned" the music, you just have a limited playback license tied to the physical object.
Admittedly, I've never looked at the fine print of an LP, but if it's about copyright, shouldn't music CDs have the same fine print?
Legally speaking, nobody "owns" the music. The creator of the work holds an exclusive, transferrable right to manufacture copies of it and perform in public. The purchaser of a music CD/LP owns the physical CD or LP.
However, nobody owns the right to listen to the music, to remix it , to play it on high volume to scare away rodents, etc, because those actions are not covered by copyright law.
Not the honor system, but it relies on the idea that a CD is a license to listen to the music.
It's not quite how copyright works. You can listen to a music CD because listening to something is not restricted by copyright law in the first place. Copyright only grants the creator of a work an exclusive right to manufacture copies of it and to perform it in public; almost everything else is allowed by default. You only need a license for something which is normally forbidden.
Not quite... copyright grants the creator of a work the exclusive right to manufacture copies of it and to perform it in public. Copyright doesn't say anything about using a work. For example, if you buy a book, you don't need permission (license) from the copyright holder to read it, cut up the pages and remix it, lend it to your friends, etc, as long as you don't make any extra copies. The same thing applies to, for example, a music record - the copyright holder has no say over when, how or how often you play the music, or whatever else you wish to do with it, and long as you don't manufacture extra copies or perform it in public.
A shrink-wrap agreement can restrict what you can do with a product, but that has nothing to do with copyright. The shrink-wrap agreement is considered a part of the purchase agreement. It only applies to the purchaser, not to anyone he gifts or lends the product to. Even if the purchaser is required to apply the same terms to anyone she sells or gifts the product to, there's not much the producer can do if she forgets or ignores it. The producer can sue the first user, but the second and subsequent users are still not bound by the purchase agreement.
In the case of software, it's generally assumed that you need a license to use it. It's my understanding that this is because using software creates temporary copies of it in the computer's memory, and you need the copyright holders permission to create these temporary copies. To obtain this permission, you need to agree to a license agreement. The courts don't seem to agree entirely that the temporary copies in the computer's memory should be considered copies in the context of copyright law, though, so I'm not sure how solid these license agreements are.
I assume the Pirate Party got their fee back - I'm sure they'd have pointed it out if they didn't. They just lost some work and planning.
Still, I think the attention they got in the press is more than worth it. This makes the Pirate Party look like a more serious contender, and the anti-pirates look like jerks.
I buy original games, then download the crack so I can play them under Linux or on my CD-less netbook (this is legal where I live).
I also download games illegally, but on average, I think I spend the same amount of money on games as I would have if illegal downloading wasn't an option. I almost only download games to try them out; almost all my gaming time is spent on the games I bought legally.
One of the few pirated games I played for an extended period was Fable: The Lost Chapters for the XBox. I ended up buying the PC version of Fable: The Lost Chapters (a slightly expanded version) to play it again. It's doubtful if I had bought Fable: The Lost Chapters if I hadn't tried the "light" version for free.
The Pirate Party did show up outside the convention and handed out t-shirts. They also paid the entry fee for the 20 first people who went in with their t-shirt on.
Because sales guy wanted his commission and when the higher ups figured out who the booth had been sold to, they cancelled it.
The funny thing, though, is that the Pirate Party's name features prominently on Gamex' advertising in papers and in the subways. Did the advertising get approved without even a cursory examination by the bosses (or any other responsible person within the company)? And nobody discovered the mistake until a few days before the convention opened?
No, that's just a bastardized interpretation of "survival of the fittest". Competition and violence are part of nature, but so are compassion and cooperation. You're only seeing half of the picture.
I said "nature", not "survival of the fittest". Not everything is about evolution.
Most mammalian species have a very well developed sense of the first two. The third item is merely an expression of the natural desire for self-control. It only requires codification when you start developing complex large-scale societies and oppressive ideologies; in small social groups, there's no need to write down or debate "rights" - you simply do what you want to do as long as it doesn't cause enough harm for the group to turn on you.
Mammals may have a sense of territory, but they sure as hell don't respect it when they don't need to. Mammals cheat, steal from and rob each other all the time, even within the same species.
Not sure what point you think I'm trying to make - please note that a number of different people have commented in this thread.
Colonies have only represented a very small fraction of the Western economy during the 20th century. France, Great Britain and the other colonial powers got rid of their colonies largely because they became too expensive. Most of the economic growth in the West has to do with better technology and better organisation - which I believe includes social programs like public health care and social security.
The Soviet Union was also colonial - it took over Western Europe and regions in Asia, and incorporated their natural resources and production in its own economy. Its economy was efficient as long as it only dealt with modernising farms, building industries and producing military equipment - simple, well-defined tasks which are easy to measure the success of - but it completely failed at technological development and at producing the goods people (and other industries) needed.
DNA is protected to prevent *random* changes. If there are *adaptive* changes to DNA, i.e changes which are likely to increase the fitness of the offspring, bypassing the protections against random changes doesn't seem too unlikely.
You mean, "People who are slugs get sent to business college, get a job from one of their dad's friends and produce offspring which are genetically inferior."
That that's not even taking into consideration people born crippled or retarded.....nature really started them with a disadvantage that has nothing to do with modern society. Hell, before modern society in primitive cultures, people with deformities likely were left out to die quickly.
It's worth noting, though, that the elderly and crippled were taken care of in medieval societies.
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THIS is exactly what they want. If you ask the RIAA, they will COME IN THEIR PANTS.
Fixed that for ya'.
Copyright law needs a complete overhaul. We the People should find a few persons to go to Washington to present our needs to the Government, especially where they conflict with the needs of the corporations. We could call these persons, "Representatives".
An excellent idea. I just hope these "Representatives", as you call them, don't forget who elected them, and become errand boys for the corporations in exchange for economic favours.
The first sale doctrine needs to apply in common sense situations like this. If you buy something, including a license, it is only common sense that you would be able to resell it.
Or we make it even simpler and legalise copying for private use. Then online music stores will simply sell a download service for the user's convenience, and what the user does with the copy they obtained is up to them.
Plot: When the captain of the Enterprise beams aboard carrying a holocrystal with the very last copy of his favourite opera, a malfunction occurs and TWO versions of the holocrystal appear on the ship: one missing the beginning, and one missing the end. When the captain tries to reconstruct the opera on a third holocrystal, he's stopped by the ship's lawyer, who explains that this would create a new copy and violate copyright law. Now the captain is in a race against time: Will he find a way to reconstruct his beloved opera before the Federation lawyers forces him to destroy one of the imperfect duplicates?
First, I'm speaking about the US unless otherwise stated, as I know that law best.
[...] you do have the right to make as many copies as you want of any copyrighted material as long as you don't distribute them.
Interesting, do you have any good reference for this? I often find myself in discussions about American copyright law, and it would be nice to have definite proof.
In my country (Sweden), you may only create a limited number of copies of music or films for private use, and only if you copy from a licensed copy. But the law also allows the creation of "temporary versions of copies of a work" if they're "an integrated and vital part of a technical process, and if the copies are transient or have a subordinate role in the process." This allows you to run computer programs, store websites in your browser's cache, store IP packets in a router, etc, without needing licenses from the copyright holders.
Hint: Failing to get 10% of the price you paid for a game back by selling it is NOT what is keeping you from being rich, nor is failing to get gifted games a few months after release what is keeping your friends or family from being rich (especially since, given time on Steam, that same game will be around 75% off anyway).
*shrug* I can afford to buy any game I want to play, and don't bother selling them on, but why should we make gaming 10% more expensive to people than it needs to be?
Lower prices -> more efficient economy -> a wealthier world
If we're talking about a real service, such as iTunes. If we're talking about an agreement they just print on the back of a CD, it's not binding.
I have no idea if this would hold up in court, but couldn't the user renounce their right to that particular song in an e-mail to iTunes, and stop downloading/playing it? It would then be iTunes' problem if they kept a "copy" of the user's song, and the user could claim it was no longer his copy.
No they are completely different things. The "license" to use is whatever the rights holder says it is (and you agreed to when buying). If they say you can only sell it to smurfs than if you can find a smurf you can sell it.
Assuming the agreement holds up in court, that still doesn't prevent the smurf from using the second-hand copy as he sees fit, since he's not bound by the agreement between the seller and the first purchaser.
The copyright holder can try to get around it by requiring the first purchaser to enforce the same agreement on the second purchaser, who is then obliged to enforce the same agreement on the third purchaser, and so on, but that's a very unreliable method. If the first purchaser forgets to enforce the agreement on the second, the copyright holder can only sue the first purchaser. The second purchaser has done nothing wrong, and can continue to use the product as he sees fit - including selling it on without enforcing the original agreement.
Oh, and to clear up the terms: a "license" is a permission to do something which is normally not allowed - for example, to manufacture x copies of a copyrighted work.
A "license agreement" is the agreement where one party gives a license to the other in exchange for some other goods or service - for example, permission to install a software product on x computers in return for y dollars.
Isn't the use license implied by posession of the product? After all, neither is of value without the other.
A "license to use" is not even needed in most cases. There's nothing in copyright law that says you can't play copyrighted music in private. For example, you don't need to buy a copy of the latest pop single to be allowed to sing it or play it on your piano. It's not until you record it (i.e, manufacturing copies) or upload it to YouTube (i.e, public performance) that you run into trouble.
Similarly, if you obtain a pirated CD, it's not against copyright law to play it. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may be considered an accomplice to the person who manufactured the copy, but playing it is not illegal in itself. For example, where I live (Sweden), it's legal to import pirated copies for private use.
Ever look at the fine print on an old LP? Same thing applies. You have never "owned" the music, you just have a limited playback license tied to the physical object.
Admittedly, I've never looked at the fine print of an LP, but if it's about copyright, shouldn't music CDs have the same fine print?
Legally speaking, nobody "owns" the music. The creator of the work holds an exclusive, transferrable right to manufacture copies of it and perform in public. The purchaser of a music CD/LP owns the physical CD or LP.
However, nobody owns the right to listen to the music, to remix it , to play it on high volume to scare away rodents, etc, because those actions are not covered by copyright law.
Not the honor system, but it relies on the idea that a CD is a license to listen to the music.
It's not quite how copyright works. You can listen to a music CD because listening to something is not restricted by copyright law in the first place. Copyright only grants the creator of a work an exclusive right to manufacture copies of it and to perform it in public; almost everything else is allowed by default. You only need a license for something which is normally forbidden.
Not quite... copyright grants the creator of a work the exclusive right to manufacture copies of it and to perform it in public. Copyright doesn't say anything about using a work. For example, if you buy a book, you don't need permission (license) from the copyright holder to read it, cut up the pages and remix it, lend it to your friends, etc, as long as you don't make any extra copies. The same thing applies to, for example, a music record - the copyright holder has no say over when, how or how often you play the music, or whatever else you wish to do with it, and long as you don't manufacture extra copies or perform it in public.
A shrink-wrap agreement can restrict what you can do with a product, but that has nothing to do with copyright. The shrink-wrap agreement is considered a part of the purchase agreement. It only applies to the purchaser, not to anyone he gifts or lends the product to. Even if the purchaser is required to apply the same terms to anyone she sells or gifts the product to, there's not much the producer can do if she forgets or ignores it. The producer can sue the first user, but the second and subsequent users are still not bound by the purchase agreement.
In the case of software, it's generally assumed that you need a license to use it. It's my understanding that this is because using software creates temporary copies of it in the computer's memory, and you need the copyright holders permission to create these temporary copies. To obtain this permission, you need to agree to a license agreement.
The courts don't seem to agree entirely that the temporary copies in the computer's memory should be considered copies in the context of copyright law, though, so I'm not sure how solid these license agreements are.
But those are the pictures my friends want to see!
I assume the Pirate Party got their fee back - I'm sure they'd have pointed it out if they didn't. They just lost some work and planning.
Still, I think the attention they got in the press is more than worth it. This makes the Pirate Party look like a more serious contender, and the anti-pirates look like jerks.
I buy original games, then download the crack so I can play them under Linux or on my CD-less netbook (this is legal where I live).
I also download games illegally, but on average, I think I spend the same amount of money on games as I would have if illegal downloading wasn't an option. I almost only download games to try them out; almost all my gaming time is spent on the games I bought legally.
One of the few pirated games I played for an extended period was Fable: The Lost Chapters for the XBox. I ended up buying the PC version of Fable: The Lost Chapters (a slightly expanded version) to play it again. It's doubtful if I had bought Fable: The Lost Chapters if I hadn't tried the "light" version for free.
The Pirate Party did show up outside the convention and handed out t-shirts. They also paid the entry fee for the 20 first people who went in with their t-shirt on.
The grandparent was probably thinking of the two seats the Swedish Pirate Party won in the EU Parliament.
Because sales guy wanted his commission and when the higher ups figured out who the booth had been sold to, they cancelled it.
The funny thing, though, is that the Pirate Party's name features prominently on Gamex' advertising in papers and in the subways. Did the advertising get approved without even a cursory examination by the bosses (or any other responsible person within the company)? And nobody discovered the mistake until a few days before the convention opened?
No, that's just a bastardized interpretation of "survival of the fittest". Competition and violence are part of nature, but so are compassion and cooperation. You're only seeing half of the picture.
I said "nature", not "survival of the fittest". Not everything is about evolution.
Most mammalian species have a very well developed sense of the first two. The third item is merely an expression of the natural desire for self-control. It only requires codification when you start developing complex large-scale societies and oppressive ideologies; in small social groups, there's no need to write down or debate "rights" - you simply do what you want to do as long as it doesn't cause enough harm for the group to turn on you.
Mammals may have a sense of territory, but they sure as hell don't respect it when they don't need to. Mammals cheat, steal from and rob each other all the time, even within the same species.
Not sure what point you think I'm trying to make - please note that a number of different people have commented in this thread.
Colonies have only represented a very small fraction of the Western economy during the 20th century. France, Great Britain and the other colonial powers got rid of their colonies largely because they became too expensive. Most of the economic growth in the West has to do with better technology and better organisation - which I believe includes social programs like public health care and social security.
The Soviet Union was also colonial - it took over Western Europe and regions in Asia, and incorporated their natural resources and production in its own economy. Its economy was efficient as long as it only dealt with modernising farms, building industries and producing military equipment - simple, well-defined tasks which are easy to measure the success of - but it completely failed at technological development and at producing the goods people (and other industries) needed.
DNA is protected to prevent *random* changes. If there are *adaptive* changes to DNA, i.e changes which are likely to increase the fitness of the offspring, bypassing the protections against random changes doesn't seem too unlikely.
You mean, "People who are slugs get sent to business college, get a job from one of their dad's friends and produce offspring which are genetically inferior."
I like living in a country were one or 'poor' peoples problems is obesity.
Unhealthy food is much cheaper than healthy.
That that's not even taking into consideration people born crippled or retarded.....nature really started them with a disadvantage that has nothing to do with modern society. Hell, before modern society in primitive cultures, people with deformities likely were left out to die quickly.
It's worth noting, though, that the elderly and crippled were taken care of in medieval societies.