We all like to think that a totalitarian government is our worst enemy, and certainly it is something we need to defend against...
But if you pause for a minute and ponder in whose best interest an anti-libertarian world is, in the information age, in a capitalist system (America, today) -- there is no escaping the fact that corporations should frighten you more than the government.
Who can own information? Well, anyone can. Even the government can, but in a perfect democratic system, this would mean that the information is publicly owned. Public domain.
But far more often than any individual or even the government owning information, a corporation does. They have a collective devoted to the "production" and "marketing" of the stuff. Some of it is genuinely valuable (genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals), while others of it gains value in its promotion or through network economics (CSS, the movie Wild Wild West, Windows).
Because this intellectual property becomes a monstrous, addictive stream of income, the incentive to protect its "value" grows. Because the knowledge creates so much wealth, the knowledge-owner redirects a great deal of the wealth to protecting the value of the owned knowldge.
One option would be hiring an army. Well, truth be told, it is the only option. But why start from scratch? As a knowledge owner, you're not in the army business, you don't know the first thing. So you outsource, and you hire the best. It doesn't come cheap, but now you have an army: The US Army. And Air Force, National Guard, and every police officer. Sounds like overkill, but knowledge is intangible, and has a terible habit of escaping on its own. Of course the Army deals in its own currency, so you need to convert. You use congress to convert your cash into laws.
Suddenly we live in Brazil, and you can hardly blame the government. The knowledge required to fix your air conditioning, assemble your own computer, or play your DVDs under linux is locked away somewhere. Someone owns it, and they've got plenty of laws that say you will never find out. MCSEs will sign NDAs, and you'll have to pay someone to reboot for you because only they know how. In fact, NDAs will become a part of life, you'll sign them as frequently as you do credit card slips. Break one and you're disappeared. It would be for the good of the American Dream.
The United States Goverment is just a toolbox, designed specifically to give itself tuneups. Its army is simply a ratchet that anyone can use to tighten up "the American Dream." The army, and the government itself are blind to the nature of that dream, and it uses democracy to fill in the blank.
Struggling against the government is futile. The government only does what it is told to by those in power. If it is told that the American Dream is information ownership and proprietary systems, it will use its tools to tune up whatever it can (its laws, its subjects, its neighbors) to fit that dream. Clearly, as long as corporations have the power, corporations will decide the American Dream. Capitalism has its hand around the throat of our democracy, and nobody seems to want to use the other hand of capitalism (the consumer's will) to pull that hand away. They'd rather just use it to sock the democracy in the gut (systems designed to help individuals and laws and judgements that restrain corporations).
Redirect your anger and frustration. Acknowledge that the government does what it is told by those with power. Then generate some power and do something about it. Fight capitalism with capitalism and free the democracy. If we succeed, you'll discover that a totalitarian government is not a threat, we will have conquered something worse.
Jornada. Is that some sort of an HP engineer's in-joke?
"Hey, what's that?"
"An HP Jornada"
"Jornada what?"
"Jornada very intelligent, are you?"
Or better yet:
"Hey, what should we call this thing"
"Let's call it 'Not a Palm.'"
"Hey, Prototype! Jornada Palm! You hear me?"
Jeeves is a shifty sociopath. Report him to WAVE.
on
AskJeeves Interview
·
· Score: 2
And here the AC has demonstrated exactly how Ask Jeeves is defective.
Why is it that Jeeves can only answer questions with more questions? What is with the third degree? When I ask someone something, software or otherwise, I seek an answer not more questions.
A. If all you're worried about is bandwidth, relax. Who ever put it up has been paid. It would be a paradox to claim that the bandwidth filled by a DOS attack hadn't been purchased by the victim, because had they bought more, they wouldn't have been denied service; and had they not paid, there would be no service to deny.
B. Did I say it was OK? No, just better than. Or do you propose people will just believe that the internet is insecure without having it demonstrated to them? Not likely.
The moment the world lapses into a sense of security over the internet is the moment a life-critical application becomes dependent on it, and is two moments before a catastrophic, "unexpected" failure or terrorist attack.
I would prefer that my systems be continually tested in a natural, dynamic environment rather than to have some sort of artifical "harmony" through luck or law grant the internet asylum... until the Big BSOD. Call me paranoid. Call me Old School. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and so on.
My argument implies that, all things being equal, DOS attacks increase in cost|damage with time. Not necessarily that their cost equals zero today, but near enough zero when viewed in light of the internet's expected lifespan. So, as long as DOS attack frequency remains constant or does not increase exponentially into the future (a function hopefully of the knowledge gained from every DOS attack in the present) the future benefits of DOS attacks today far exceed any piddly costs a DOS victim today could ever claim (legitimately or not).
I know you were obligated to post this response, so I don't hold it against you; however, I hope you realize how inane it is.
Just a moment's thought reveals that "Denial of Service" attacks, currently, mean absolutely zero.
Today, the internet is a non-critical entity. Denying service to any of the 99% of the servers in existance is akin to covering your nearest freeway billboard with a bedsheet. The only harm caused is a momentary pause in the flow of cash toward the increasingly larger internet corporations.
Before you bark at me, realize that you have two options: suffer through and learn from DOS attacks today when the stakes are infinitely low, or find yourselves at the mercy of a ruthless sabateur when the internet actually provides some crucial, important, life-critical service.
Because, if all the script kids stopped today as a result of this protest, the DOS attack methods would still exist... and maybe we would be foolish enough to actually permit something like, oh, Social Security or a Presidential Election, or everybody's oxygen machine to get wired up to the internet, and lo and behold someone whips out a DDOS attack from their archives. You get my drift.
Continuing to demonstrate the youth of this system only provides the world a service at a tiny, tiny cost compared to what havoc might occur if we closed our eyes to the reality of the internet's maturity.
So what if Aunt June can't get to EBAY to bid on another beanie baby or little Timmy can't look up Jennifer Lopez *one *more *time on Yahoo, or whizzbang.com loses 4 hours of ad revenue. As long as my decendants don't become extinct as a result of an insecure internet, it's a small price to pay.
If the worst thing that happens today is that an IRC server is inaccessible, well praise the lord.
Even that information wants to be free. But what good is it?
I'll bet that if you wanted, you could go to that AC's house and discover all of that information, if your motivation was great enough... But it isn't.
The only reason information wants to be free is because people want it to want that. The more significant the information is, the freer it will become because people will make it so. So as soon as you have a pressing need for the information you requested, it will remain private because nobody else wants it.
While 2600 is Slashdotted, I thought I would summarize my understanding of the current situation. This might be helpful if you've been away for a few days, or if all of the recent activity has finally motivated you to participate in some way. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
First, the basic stuff:
The MPAA has been granted injunctions in New York and California to prevent the distribution of the DeCSS source code. In every other state, this activity is legal.
Despite the fact that DeCSS is still legal in 48 states and the rest of the world, the MPAA sends out threatening letters to everyone listed on the 2600 mirror list, and whomever else they can shake an email at, in the hopes of preventing its distribution.
2600 has hired a lawyer with the help of the EFF who has experience defending first amendment rights in front of the Supreme Court and in many states. They are specifically prevented from hosting the data, but have provided a mirror list. The links to this data are on 2600.
And now the extrapolation and fun stuff:
A recent ruling has determined that source code is free speech. Clearly, this applies to HTML, and is likely related to the decision that deep linking was OK'd by another federal judge. This puts 2600 squarely in the right, and now that they have a quality lawyer, I expect this injunction to be denied.
Aside from on 2600, some good advocacy information can be found on OpenDVD.org The best suggestions I have heard for protecting our first amendment rights from the copyright zealots are:
contact local media and eloquently state your case, providing resources like 2600 and OpenDVD for reference;
crafting fliers to distribute peacefully and respectfully near movie theatres or rental outlets, copying them to brightly colored paper and explaining the situation (or use the flyer at 2600, though I'm sure a whole we could fill a whole archive of new and varied leaflets for different audiences);
and mirroring the source code on sites where the code is still legal.
In fact, if anyone wants to share your flier design with me, email it to me and I will host it at my site for anyone to use and distribute. Good luck everyone.
Citadel is freeware BBS software. It is a message-based system that was ported to countless systems (x86, Mac, Amiga, Unix).
It's straightforward interface, mnemonic commands and open source code made reimplementation easy. It's aversion to file structure and strong message-orientation discouraged leeches. Most versions supported one node, but some supported multiple lines.
Citadel users did not have GTs, they had runs.
It was primarily a Twin-Cities phenomenon. I ran mine for several years with GWar, TW2002, and OOII. Mmmmmmmmm.
Citadels exist today as single-node dialups and the unix ports support Telnet and Web client access.
One loyal user ran the citadel.org domain several years ago, but it appears to have fallen into disuse.
Good point. I think that many people are directly associating copyrighted works with entertaining works, a result of the MPAA instigating the debate in the first place.
However, not all entertaining works have owners that defend copyright, and not all copyrighted works are "entertainment."
Interestingly, and the MPAA knows this, a particular syndrome affects copyright holders that defend their copyright: their work gains value.
Not because nobody's allowed to derive from them and devalue their originality, but because of the perception that a work worth protecting must be worth paying someone to enjoy.
So the established media produce utter dreck and rabidly defend the copyright, for instance Wild Wild West or Star Wars I, because their iron-fisted behavior indicates to everyone that there's something there worth protecting. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Pardon the non-sequitur. Not all copyrighted works are meant for entertainment. So while the value of public domain entertainment is questionable, the value of public domain textbooks and other academic material is not.
Nobody wants to pay $300 a semester for books, for the privlege of learning something you have to learn anyway. Acadmic authors should be compensated for publishing with another model (and often are in the form of tenure at a school), not through royalties. They're chicken feed anyway, and only serve to bring money to the publishing houses. If the material could be freely copied, more people could attend school and afford to learn.
He made that statement with the understanding that it had been established that copyright is a limited duration right, and has been since it was created in the United States.
It has also been established that any benefit gained from partial license to a work is eclipsed by the benefit gained from public domain material.
Individuals benefit from copyrights, society benefits from their expiration.
The cute thing about copyright and fair use is that violations are determined on a case-by-case basis.
Read all about what I am going to explain very poorly here.
Read their starter material and it becomes clear that the point at which you have violated copyright is the point at which you have ticked off someone with enough money to force you to submit.
Fair use, in the strictest sense, applys only in cases of parody, criticism, reporting, and academic use including teaching and research. "Librarians" and "archivists" also have some fair use rights.
Short phrases, single words, etc. are not copyrightable (but may be trademarked, an issue for another day). Nor can you copyright a character or a plot element. You can merely copyright a work in its entirety.
Furthermore, you own the copyright on your work once you create it, you needn't file with anyone.
So, in your example, what was your intention with "broadcasting" those bits? Once they are all put together, the original creator still has copyright because it's still their original work. You were just quoting it.
For you to have your own copyrightable work it has to be original. And we are talking about in its entirety. So using the above knowledge, you can write a book with Sherlock Holmes, using plot elements from a 007 movie and dialogue from Rainbow Bright. Though none of those parts are "original," the final product would likely be original enough to not infringe on anyones copyright, and to get one yourself. Have fun!
Oh, and lastly, as I mentioned in the very first thread, it is not a violation of copyright to create or own a "piracy tool" if it has legitimate uses. So the answer is both, and it is perfectly legal.
Major distinction when we are discussing copyright. Allow me to elucidate, though I've gone over this before.
The gov'mint has decided to grant you temporary protections of the right to financially benefit from a copyrightable work (of which there is a strict definition) by granting you civil rights for a time. When that time is up, the gov'mint no longer has to protect your "right" to make money, and the work becomes public domain.
Making money from goods and services is a right, making money from intellectual property is a hack. That is why your rights expire. I just happen to call temporary rights privileges.
I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
Swell. And how does this relate to the issue at hand? It's entirey non sequitur.
Try to be a little less flamboyant with your arguments and you might actually manufacture a stance worth defending.
I don't mean to be entirely mean spirited, but it just seems like you lost your point, so while grasping at straws you reinvented the debate. Nobody wants to "throw out all the rights to control IP." This notion is your invention.
Think a little while longer about the things people have been saying about the DMCA and about your statements. Debate in good faith and we can all learn something.
One can contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, without having ones specific creation be freely available
I submit that any societal gain realized by bestowing a partial right to a work can only be magnified when the work is given entirely. I suggest that in no case will society beneft more from partial provleges to a work than entire provleges to it.
We're off the subject, now, however, and you remain misguided. You should not have the right to license your works and share them in any manner that you deem appropriate in perpituity.
If these are the rights that you seek, you are not entitled to them under the US Constitution. You are free, though, to start your own civil society with that notion as its cornerstone. I look forward to leaving your society in the dark ages.
The people aren't parties to the "contract" of a copyright.
Last I heard, the government was representative of the people, ergo a contract that the government signs is one to which the American public is a party.
I don't necessarily jive with the original poster's argument, but he makes a good point. You, on the other hand are way off.
If you don't want to share something, why are you "licensing" it to anyone? Either participate in your copyright (we'll keep our end of the bargain and give you civil rights for limited duration) or don't bother to use it (lose it, and keep your work to yourself, please). When the law was passed, the assumption was that copyright holders would not survive their works. It was not conceived that corporations would battle for perpetual rights to a work, nor is it appropriate.
Copyright was meant to be a limited duration right, with rights passing to the american people after they expire in compensation for the privelege to make money off the work in the first place.
Knowing that, I fail to see why copyright holders seem to think that they have the god given right to maintain the right to make money off ideas when they made an agreement with America that they'd cede their rights in due time. It's your obligation to contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, not your right to make money forever.
Right, unfortunately the specific application of fair use that allows one to transfer media or participate at a different time is not part of that law.
Check out Sony v. Betamax for the time-shifting issue. An interesting quote from this source: "The sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes, or, indeed, is merely capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Pp. 434-442." Sounds like a certain piece of code I've heard so much about lately.
I would guess that this judgement is what allows for media shifting too, maybe it was used as precedent in another case.
In fact, that whole domain is an excellent reference.
I predict: Even if the copyright office strictly enforces the DMCA circumvention provision, this reasoning will become known as King's Conundrum.
High-powered and civic-minded lawyers will be begging for the first chance to try a case under King's Conundrum and ultimatly the law will be ruled an unconstitutioal limitation of free speech or fair use, take your pick.
I looked and looked last night, after I got my letter, but neither the copyright office nor Thomas (the legislative data warehouse) had any information on that provision.
The right to shift media across time or media is the result of court decisions (and is thus tenuous, subject to other court decisions or law). You would have to ask an IP lawyer to cite cases for you. Pay special attention to the court that issued the ruling. If it was the supreme court, then it is a little more challenging to attack the right than if it was merely a federal court or two setting precedent.
In any case, the DMCA obviously does an end run around this right and needs to be stomped on before it even starts.
My favorite part of their letter was where they mentioned, so briefly, that perhaps the injunction wouldn't apply to me. So I sent them an email about a law that doesn't apply at all, even if I did live in Washington, and is possibly even unconstituitonal itself.
Hell, if I can get their lawyers to spend ten minutes worried about that, I can keep them from sending out another threatening email to another poor civil disobediant.
This has got to be up there among the greatest of all times. After all, I'm not in the jurisdiction of this injunction, and it is certainly not a legally binding document, yet it is as threatening as they could possibly make it without mentioning your loved ones.
Slashdot Mirror
We all like to think that a totalitarian government is our worst enemy, and certainly it is something we need to defend against...
But if you pause for a minute and ponder in whose best interest an anti-libertarian world is, in the information age, in a capitalist system (America, today) -- there is no escaping the fact that corporations should frighten you more than the government.
Who can own information? Well, anyone can. Even the government can, but in a perfect democratic system, this would mean that the information is publicly owned. Public domain.
But far more often than any individual or even the government owning information, a corporation does. They have a collective devoted to the "production" and "marketing" of the stuff. Some of it is genuinely valuable (genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals), while others of it gains value in its promotion or through network economics (CSS, the movie Wild Wild West, Windows).
Because this intellectual property becomes a monstrous, addictive stream of income, the incentive to protect its "value" grows. Because the knowledge creates so much wealth, the knowledge-owner redirects a great deal of the wealth to protecting the value of the owned knowldge.
One option would be hiring an army. Well, truth be told, it is the only option. But why start from scratch? As a knowledge owner, you're not in the army business, you don't know the first thing. So you outsource, and you hire the best. It doesn't come cheap, but now you have an army: The US Army. And Air Force, National Guard, and every police officer. Sounds like overkill, but knowledge is intangible, and has a terible habit of escaping on its own. Of course the Army deals in its own currency, so you need to convert. You use congress to convert your cash into laws.
Suddenly we live in Brazil, and you can hardly blame the government. The knowledge required to fix your air conditioning, assemble your own computer, or play your DVDs under linux is locked away somewhere. Someone owns it, and they've got plenty of laws that say you will never find out. MCSEs will sign NDAs, and you'll have to pay someone to reboot for you because only they know how. In fact, NDAs will become a part of life, you'll sign them as frequently as you do credit card slips. Break one and you're disappeared. It would be for the good of the American Dream.
The United States Goverment is just a toolbox, designed specifically to give itself tuneups. Its army is simply a ratchet that anyone can use to tighten up "the American Dream." The army, and the government itself are blind to the nature of that dream, and it uses democracy to fill in the blank.
Struggling against the government is futile. The government only does what it is told to by those in power. If it is told that the American Dream is information ownership and proprietary systems, it will use its tools to tune up whatever it can (its laws, its subjects, its neighbors) to fit that dream. Clearly, as long as corporations have the power, corporations will decide the American Dream. Capitalism has its hand around the throat of our democracy, and nobody seems to want to use the other hand of capitalism (the consumer's will) to pull that hand away. They'd rather just use it to sock the democracy in the gut (systems designed to help individuals and laws and judgements that restrain corporations).
Redirect your anger and frustration. Acknowledge that the government does what it is told by those with power. Then generate some power and do something about it. Fight capitalism with capitalism and free the democracy. If we succeed, you'll discover that a totalitarian government is not a threat, we will have conquered something worse.
------------
Not that I don't like Brazil. I love it.
You realize we've perpetrated a distributed denial of service attack. Turn in your hardware and you might get a suspended sentence.
Did you see? The camera is available. Takes greyscale or color pictures.
Slowly but surely, here they come. I'm really hoping for a phone, but I'll settle for that CUE radio.
Jornada. Is that some sort of an HP engineer's in-joke?
"Hey, what's that?"
"An HP Jornada"
"Jornada what?"
"Jornada very intelligent, are you?"
Or better yet:
"Hey, what should we call this thing"
"Let's call it 'Not a Palm.'"
"Hey, Prototype! Jornada Palm! You hear me?"
And here the AC has demonstrated exactly how Ask Jeeves is defective.
Why is it that Jeeves can only answer questions with more questions? What is with the third degree? When I ask someone something, software or otherwise, I seek an answer not more questions.
I'm asking the questions, here, Jeeves.
Everquest works fine behind my Masq'ed machine.
However, I have not tried playing it on two machines at once.
B. Did I say it was OK? No, just better than. Or do you propose people will just believe that the internet is insecure without having it demonstrated to them? Not likely.
The moment the world lapses into a sense of security over the internet is the moment a life-critical application becomes dependent on it, and is two moments before a catastrophic, "unexpected" failure or terrorist attack.
I would prefer that my systems be continually tested in a natural, dynamic environment rather than to have some sort of artifical "harmony" through luck or law grant the internet asylum... until the Big BSOD. Call me paranoid. Call me Old School. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and so on.
My argument implies that, all things being equal, DOS attacks increase in cost|damage with time. Not necessarily that their cost equals zero today, but near enough zero when viewed in light of the internet's expected lifespan. So, as long as DOS attack frequency remains constant or does not increase exponentially into the future (a function hopefully of the knowledge gained from every DOS attack in the present) the future benefits of DOS attacks today far exceed any piddly costs a DOS victim today could ever claim (legitimately or not).
I know you were obligated to post this response, so I don't hold it against you; however, I hope you realize how inane it is.
Just a moment's thought reveals that "Denial of Service" attacks, currently, mean absolutely zero.
Today, the internet is a non-critical entity. Denying service to any of the 99% of the servers in existance is akin to covering your nearest freeway billboard with a bedsheet. The only harm caused is a momentary pause in the flow of cash toward the increasingly larger internet corporations.
Before you bark at me, realize that you have two options: suffer through and learn from DOS attacks today when the stakes are infinitely low, or find yourselves at the mercy of a ruthless sabateur when the internet actually provides some crucial, important, life-critical service.
Because, if all the script kids stopped today as a result of this protest, the DOS attack methods would still exist... and maybe we would be foolish enough to actually permit something like, oh, Social Security or a Presidential Election, or everybody's oxygen machine to get wired up to the internet, and lo and behold someone whips out a DDOS attack from their archives. You get my drift.
Continuing to demonstrate the youth of this system only provides the world a service at a tiny, tiny cost compared to what havoc might occur if we closed our eyes to the reality of the internet's maturity.
So what if Aunt June can't get to EBAY to bid on another beanie baby or little Timmy can't look up Jennifer Lopez *one *more *time on Yahoo, or whizzbang.com loses 4 hours of ad revenue. As long as my decendants don't become extinct as a result of an insecure internet, it's a small price to pay.
If the worst thing that happens today is that an IRC server is inaccessible, well praise the lord.
You're so smart, dazed.
Even that information wants to be free. But what good is it?
I'll bet that if you wanted, you could go to that AC's house and discover all of that information, if your motivation was great enough... But it isn't.
The only reason information wants to be free is because people want it to want that. The more significant the information is, the freer it will become because people will make it so. So as soon as you have a pressing need for the information you requested, it will remain private because nobody else wants it.
First, the basic stuff:
The MPAA has been granted injunctions in New York and California to prevent the distribution of the DeCSS source code. In every other state, this activity is legal.
Despite the fact that DeCSS is still legal in 48 states and the rest of the world, the MPAA sends out threatening letters to everyone listed on the 2600 mirror list, and whomever else they can shake an email at, in the hopes of preventing its distribution.
2600 has hired a lawyer with the help of the EFF who has experience defending first amendment rights in front of the Supreme Court and in many states. They are specifically prevented from hosting the data, but have provided a mirror list. The links to this data are on 2600.
And now the extrapolation and fun stuff:
A recent ruling has determined that source code is free speech. Clearly, this applies to HTML, and is likely related to the decision that deep linking was OK'd by another federal judge. This puts 2600 squarely in the right, and now that they have a quality lawyer, I expect this injunction to be denied.
Aside from on 2600, some good advocacy information can be found on OpenDVD.org The best suggestions I have heard for protecting our first amendment rights from the copyright zealots are:
- contact local media and eloquently state your case, providing resources like 2600 and OpenDVD for reference;
- crafting fliers to distribute peacefully and respectfully near movie theatres or rental outlets, copying them to brightly colored paper and explaining the situation (or use the flyer at 2600, though I'm sure a whole we could fill a whole archive of new and varied leaflets for different audiences);
- and mirroring the source code on sites where the code is still legal.
In fact, if anyone wants to share your flier design with me, email it to me and I will host it at my site for anyone to use and distribute. Good luck everyone.I'm disapointed. Nobody mentioned Citadel.
Citadel is freeware BBS software. It is a message-based system that was ported to countless systems (x86, Mac, Amiga, Unix).
It's straightforward interface, mnemonic commands and open source code made reimplementation easy. It's aversion to file structure and strong message-orientation discouraged leeches. Most versions supported one node, but some supported multiple lines.
Citadel users did not have GTs, they had runs.
It was primarily a Twin-Cities phenomenon. I ran mine for several years with GWar, TW2002, and OOII. Mmmmmmmmm.
Citadels exist today as single-node dialups and the unix ports support Telnet and Web client access.
One loyal user ran the citadel.org domain several years ago, but it appears to have fallen into disuse.
Memories...
You can't sell ideas at all. You can sell copyrighted or public-domain fixed/tangible reproductions of ideas.
Good point. I think that many people are directly associating copyrighted works with entertaining works, a result of the MPAA instigating the debate in the first place.
However, not all entertaining works have owners that defend copyright, and not all copyrighted works are "entertainment."
Interestingly, and the MPAA knows this, a particular syndrome affects copyright holders that defend their copyright: their work gains value.
Not because nobody's allowed to derive from them and devalue their originality, but because of the perception that a work worth protecting must be worth paying someone to enjoy.
So the established media produce utter dreck and rabidly defend the copyright, for instance Wild Wild West or Star Wars I, because their iron-fisted behavior indicates to everyone that there's something there worth protecting. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Pardon the non-sequitur. Not all copyrighted works are meant for entertainment. So while the value of public domain entertainment is questionable, the value of public domain textbooks and other academic material is not.
Nobody wants to pay $300 a semester for books, for the privlege of learning something you have to learn anyway. Acadmic authors should be compensated for publishing with another model (and often are in the form of tenure at a school), not through royalties. They're chicken feed anyway, and only serve to bring money to the publishing houses. If the material could be freely copied, more people could attend school and afford to learn.
Just an example.
He made that statement with the understanding that it had been established that copyright is a limited duration right, and has been since it was created in the United States.
It has also been established that any benefit gained from partial license to a work is eclipsed by the benefit gained from public domain material.
Individuals benefit from copyrights, society benefits from their expiration.
And you've got God's pager number?
Asserting a natural right has always been bunk. Natural rights that didn't make it in to the consitution doubly so.
The cute thing about copyright and fair use is that violations are determined on a case-by-case basis.
Read all about what I am going to explain very poorly here.
Read their starter material and it becomes clear that the point at which you have violated copyright is the point at which you have ticked off someone with enough money to force you to submit.
Fair use, in the strictest sense, applys only in cases of parody, criticism, reporting, and academic use including teaching and research. "Librarians" and "archivists" also have some fair use rights.
Short phrases, single words, etc. are not copyrightable (but may be trademarked, an issue for another day). Nor can you copyright a character or a plot element. You can merely copyright a work in its entirety.
Furthermore, you own the copyright on your work once you create it, you needn't file with anyone.
So, in your example, what was your intention with "broadcasting" those bits? Once they are all put together, the original creator still has copyright because it's still their original work. You were just quoting it.
For you to have your own copyrightable work it has to be original. And we are talking about in its entirety. So using the above knowledge, you can write a book with Sherlock Holmes, using plot elements from a 007 movie and dialogue from Rainbow Bright. Though none of those parts are "original," the final product would likely be original enough to not infringe on anyones copyright, and to get one yourself. Have fun!
Oh, and lastly, as I mentioned in the very first thread, it is not a violation of copyright to create or own a "piracy tool" if it has legitimate uses. So the answer is both, and it is perfectly legal.
I said "the work" not "your work."
Major distinction when we are discussing copyright. Allow me to elucidate, though I've gone over this before.
The gov'mint has decided to grant you temporary protections of the right to financially benefit from a copyrightable work (of which there is a strict definition) by granting you civil rights for a time. When that time is up, the gov'mint no longer has to protect your "right" to make money, and the work becomes public domain.
Making money from goods and services is a right, making money from intellectual property is a hack. That is why your rights expire. I just happen to call temporary rights privileges.
I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
Swell. And how does this relate to the issue at hand? It's entirey non sequitur.
Try to be a little less flamboyant with your arguments and you might actually manufacture a stance worth defending.
I don't mean to be entirely mean spirited, but it just seems like you lost your point, so while grasping at straws you reinvented the debate. Nobody wants to "throw out all the rights to control IP." This notion is your invention.
Think a little while longer about the things people have been saying about the DMCA and about your statements. Debate in good faith and we can all learn something.
I submit that any societal gain realized by bestowing a partial right to a work can only be magnified when the work is given entirely. I suggest that in no case will society beneft more from partial provleges to a work than entire provleges to it.
We're off the subject, now, however, and you remain misguided. You should not have the right to license your works and share them in any manner that you deem appropriate in perpituity.
If these are the rights that you seek, you are not entitled to them under the US Constitution. You are free, though, to start your own civil society with that notion as its cornerstone. I look forward to leaving your society in the dark ages.
Last I heard, the government was representative of the people, ergo a contract that the government signs is one to which the American public is a party.
I don't necessarily jive with the original poster's argument, but he makes a good point. You, on the other hand are way off.
If you don't want to share something, why are you "licensing" it to anyone? Either participate in your copyright (we'll keep our end of the bargain and give you civil rights for limited duration) or don't bother to use it (lose it, and keep your work to yourself, please). When the law was passed, the assumption was that copyright holders would not survive their works. It was not conceived that corporations would battle for perpetual rights to a work, nor is it appropriate.
Copyright was meant to be a limited duration right, with rights passing to the american people after they expire in compensation for the privelege to make money off the work in the first place.
Knowing that, I fail to see why copyright holders seem to think that they have the god given right to maintain the right to make money off ideas when they made an agreement with America that they'd cede their rights in due time. It's your obligation to contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, not your right to make money forever.
Check out Sony v. Betamax for the time-shifting issue. An interesting quote from this source: "The sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes, or, indeed, is merely capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Pp. 434-442." Sounds like a certain piece of code I've heard so much about lately.
I would guess that this judgement is what allows for media shifting too, maybe it was used as precedent in another case.
In fact, that whole domain is an excellent reference.
I predict: Even if the copyright office strictly enforces the DMCA circumvention provision, this reasoning will become known as King's Conundrum.
High-powered and civic-minded lawyers will be begging for the first chance to try a case under King's Conundrum and ultimatly the law will be ruled an unconstitutioal limitation of free speech or fair use, take your pick.
Anyone willing to be a guinea pig?
The right to shift media across time or media is the result of court decisions (and is thus tenuous, subject to other court decisions or law). You would have to ask an IP lawyer to cite cases for you. Pay special attention to the court that issued the ruling. If it was the supreme court, then it is a little more challenging to attack the right than if it was merely a federal court or two setting precedent.
In any case, the DMCA obviously does an end run around this right and needs to be stomped on before it even starts.
My favorite part of their letter was where they mentioned, so briefly, that perhaps the injunction wouldn't apply to me. So I sent them an email about a law that doesn't apply at all, even if I did live in Washington, and is possibly even unconstituitonal itself.
Hell, if I can get their lawyers to spend ten minutes worried about that, I can keep them from sending out another threatening email to another poor civil disobediant.
This has got to be up there among the greatest of all times. After all, I'm not in the jurisdiction of this injunction, and it is certainly not a legally binding document, yet it is as threatening as they could possibly make it without mentioning your loved ones.
Anyone else get this one?