And your posts begs the question as to why the parent, which gets is all wrong (not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of fact), has been modded up to "Insightful." The world according to the way/. mods would like it to be, rather that how it is. Or, yet another illustration of "if we say it often enough and loud enough, maybe it will be true." It's a shame/. is taking a page out of the RIAA's playbook.
The difference is that what an EULA "grants" you is stuff you already have the legal right to do anyway.
Nonsense. Did you actually read the law you linked to? A EULA can grant you rights way beyond the limitations specified under Sec. 117. A EULA can say "This is it. Take it, modify it, sell it, pretend you wrote it...I, as the legal copyright holder, don't care." A EULA can be far less restrictive than the GPL.
You have no copyright on breakfast, certainly not on my right to prepare eggs for my breakfast, so you have no ability to restrict or request payment for my doing so. If you write a piece of software, you do have the copyright... and it is therefore entirely up to you what rights you wish to grant me. You can, if you wish, show me the software, stick out your tongue, and say "Nyah nyah nyah, I wrote this only for me, and you can't have it." At which point I'd probably dump my cereal on you.
You do not agree to the GPL to use software. (EULAs you do)
Not necessarily. EULAs can be invalid. You are not required, legally, to agree to an invalid license agreement in order to use anything; therefore, you can use software without agreeing to a EULA.
You do not have to agree to the GPL at all, ever. (EULAs you do)
Same thing again. If you do not agree to the GPL, then you are not entitled to modify or redistribute the software under the GPL. This is no different from not being allowed to modify or redistribute software under a EULA. And not all EULAs prohibit either activity. Sure, corporate EULAs do, but many freeware EULAs don't.
The GPL, if agreed to, does not remove ANY fair-use rights. (EULAs do)
Neither do all EULAs; they can, in fact, grant rights above and beyond fair use rights. It sounds like you're observing (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the typical big, bad EULA functions differently, in practical terms, from the GPL. I'd certainly agree, though that seems rather like stating the obvious. What I'm saying is that, legally, they have the same function (because they are both forms of licenses): both grant the end use specific rights -- rights that, in the absence of either, the end user would not have. Frankly, that seems pretty obvious to me, too.
The EULA removes many rights, basically if the EULA was not there you would be entitled to use the software in any way you see fit.... The EULA has nothing to do with copyright law! It is contract law.
This isn't accurate, not under U.S. law anyway. Copyright is granted automatically to a creator of any specific formulation of an idea, such as an essay or a piece of software. If you throw up an essay you've written on your website, you aren't required to register it with the Copyright Office for the copyright to be in effect. The same holds true with software you've written. You can, if you wish, explicitly grant permission to anyone accessing the essay to reprint it with or without modification, credit, links to your own website, etc. Such grants would constitute a form of EULA. But not specifying anything does not automatically invalidate your copyright nor implicitly grant permission to anyone to do whatever they want with your essay.
The same is true for software. A EULA (and the GPL) do not take away any rights from a user, they specify what rights the copyright holder grants the user. Without either, the user would have no rights. I can't imagine a situation whereby a copyright holder would be able to sue anyone for merely using a program that holder made available for download -- the right to use a program the holder makes available for download is implied by the act of making it available in the first place. (At least, I'm 99% sure any court would rule accordingly, if a case like that ever came up.) But you can't assume, in the absence of any form of license (which is what both a EULA and the GPL are) that you have carte blanche to do anything you want. Both licenses grant rights, neither removes them.
The GPL is *not* an EULA. EULAs take away what rights you have to use a program. The GPL adds them.
They are both, as their names specify, licenses: "1.a. Official or legal permission to do or own a specified thing" (Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Edition). Just because the GPL gives you "more" permission than a typical EULA doesn't mean it has a different function.
Oh, I never played the Gameboy version. Most of my Tetrising was playing in the old Time Square arcades (usually before or after a double-bill of Euro-slasher flicks in one of the grindhouses... theatres where you didn't want to use the bathrooms). This was before Times Square morphed into McDisNeYCworld, of course.
I don't think the arcade versions ever ended, since the goal was to keep you feeding the machines. I was just happy when I found one that had been recently reset so I had a chance to get my name immortalized on the high scores list until the rightful masters of the arcade returned to blow me off the screen.
Will someone please tell me what happens when Tetris ends? Is it like the end of the rainbow... pots of gold and all that good stuff? I always thought it just kept going until you lost (or, in the old days, spent another quarter), which show you how far I've gotten.
Does the availability of copyrighted works violate copyright? No.
Why not? If I provide access to the entire Beatles catalog on a filesharing network, or put the MP3s on a publicly accessible FTP server, then yes, the availability of those works violates copyright. The violation doesn't occur when someone downloads one, it occurs when I make it available in that context, because I have a reasonable expectation that they will be downloaded.
So they're either going to use the availability as a measure or they are downloading or sharing files on KaZaA (as you mentioned), which is simple entrapment,
They don't actually have to download the material to determine whether it is being made available from your computer. They can use algorithms, spiders, packet sniffers, and who knows what else to determine the whether the file your sharing is a legitimately infringing copy and determine whether you have allowed it to be uploaded. That isn't entrapment, it's simply catching you in the act.
Michael
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy
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ADA Doesn't Apply to Web
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The web, and the world for that matter, should not be designed around the lowest common denominator.
Yeah, like that Helen Keller, who's accomplishments I'm sure have been exceeded by you, gifted, as you are, with sight and hearing. Let's just repeal the ADA, round up all them "lowest common denominator" types, and put them away somewhere.
The world is designed around people - as they should be.
People, "as they should be," have both brains and hearts. Brains that ought to be capable of making website modifications necessary to ensure that the information they are presenting is accessible to most people, including the blind and deaf, given the technology that exists for rendering content for them. Hearts that ought to make people compassionate enough to want their hard work to be accessible by as many people as possible.
Your NBA analogy is completely inapplicable, for reasons so obvious they aren't worth enumerating. It is hardly essential for anyone to play professional basketball. The question is, will the Internet become essential for performing any of a myriad of tasks people want or need to perform? If the answer is yes, then eventually it needs to be accessible to people with common disabilities. I agree with the judge's ruling in this case, but were I blind (and if the claimant's assertion that Southwest Airline's website is extremely difficult for blind people to use is true), I'd take my business elsewhere. The problem with website designers ignoring accessibility standards is: what if there isn't an "elsewhere"?
The anti-book has been an abject failure. What seems to be succeeding instead is the copylefted book.... So at least in some cases, free books have displaced unfree ones in the marketplace."
This is really comparing apples and oranges. The "anti-book" is a product no one wants, at least not yet. The free book isn't a product at all - from a commercial perspective, it's a promotional tool at most. How can the latter possibly be said to have "displaced" the former? The anti-book, so far, is just another Edsel or Betamax. The fact that people are interested in downloading a free book they can read on a PC or PDA doesn't have much bearing on the fact that they aren't willing to spend $300 on a Rocketbook.
Remember a few years ago when they were predicting that print-on-demand publishing would be the wave of the future? You were supposed to be able to go to your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, ask for an obscure book on medieval Bulgaria, and have it printed and bound while you sipped a $5 cappucino. It didn't happen,...
Correction: it hasn't happened...yet. Print-on-demand technology is still developing and still being invested in by publishers and distributors, mainly as a way to reduce inventory. Whether it will develop to the point fantasized about in the article is anyone's guess, but that's hardly the value of the technology to the publishing industry; and if it doesn't, that's certainly no indication that it's a failure. When a store places a 10-copy order to a publisher, if that publisher can print & bind & ship those 10 copies in one day, then POD will be a huge success and will greatly lower publishers' cost of doing business. That's what they're working toward, and it looks like they will get there.
Self-publishing a book is much more difficult than self-publishing a program, and print publishing is a capital-intensive business. Nearly all authors need to work with a publishing house if they want to see their books in print. In most cases, the book contract gives the copyright to the publisher.
POD technology has made self-publishing easier than ever. Companies like POD publisher Exlibris (in which Barnes & Noble has a stake) are replacing the role of the old-style vanity presses. They make it relatively cheap for anyone to have available a printed & bound copy of his masterpiece. The only trick for the author is to create demand. Even authors with track records at major publishers have gone this route for certain projects they want to handle themselves. It's precisely that "capital intensive" quality of publishing that POD technology has already taken a bite out of, and will take a bigger bite out of in the future.
And the article incorrectly claims that authors sign away their copyrights when they contract with publishers. This is only true of books that are "work-for-hire," when the publisher hires writers to do a specific project that the publisher has conceived. The vast majority of books published are not work-for-hire, and almost all trade fiction and non-fiction is copyrighted by the author, not the publisher.
We still need intelligent, qualified people to help us sift the wheat from the chaff, but when it comes to free books, the judgment of quality can come after publication, not before. This is a wonderful thing!
The only judgment of quality that matters comes after a book is published, no matter whether it's free or published by a corporate publisher or small press. The single biggest factor in determining a book's success is word-of-mouth. The biggest ad campaign in history won't get people reading something they aren't interested in, no matter how low the price. Yes, this is a wonderful thing. But it's as true for corporate publishing as it is for free books online.
But try falling on your ass with a PDA in your backpocket vs. a book in the same spot.
can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack As can a PDA. The difference being I can carry a bookshelf worth of books in my pocket.
You must be a really fast reader. I typically find that one book does me nicely for an afternoon at the park. I don't need a shelf's worth. And I have a pretty good idea of how much reading I'll be able to do on trips, although I do sometimes overpack when it comes to books. But considering an essential part of any vacation for me is hunting out local independent and/or used bookstores wherever I go, one thing I never suffer from is a lack of reading material.
...etc., etc. Everybody here can go round and round about whether some form or another of ebook is or might soon be somehow preferable to the traditional printed version, but what that ignores is that for many of us (dare I say the majority of readers?) the offline (dare I say real world?) pleasures of books and reading will always be as far away from anything resembling a screen as it's possible to be. I'm no technophobe - I had no qualms about ditching vinyl for CDs, am happy to ditch videos for DVDs, and these days I spend as much or more time reading material on screen as I do reading anything on paper - but I will never surrender the 'analog' pleasure of curling up with a good printed book and losing myself in the experience without being distracted by anything more complex than turning the paper page with my fingers. Nor will any literary website - however thoughtfully organized, with whatever bells & whistles - ever equal the experience of browsing through the stacks and bins and shelves of a really good bookstore. These are as much about the owners' and staffs' and locations' idiosyncracies as they are about commerce. You can learn a lot about a town or area by visiting its indie bookstores, particularly if it stocks a mix of new and used titles. Many are also about community, not the virtual kind, but the real face-to-face, get-to-know-your-neighbors kind. Gay bookstores, women's bookstores, genre bookstores function to bring like-minded people together in real time. Cyber meeting places for kindred spirits have value, certainly, but not as a replacement for geographic community involvement. Maybe/.'ers don't agree, but for my money, there are some things software, hardware, and the Internet can't replace.
But wait, the three webcasters who are afraid of being shut down are two TALK radio stations and a CLASSICAL station. The first two are by definition their own content, and the last one is music that entered the public domain years ago.
Where did you read that two of the stations are talk-radio? The Yahoo! article says they are Christian stations. It doesn't state that they don't play music.
As for classical radio, they are playing recordings that are under copyright. Just because the composition itself is in the public domain doesn't mean a given recording of that composition is also p.d. You can webcast your own rendition of "Casta Diva" until your listeners beg you to stop and not owe Bellini's estate any royalties, but if you webcast Leontyne Price's rendition, it will cost you. With regard to sound recordings, there are always at least two copyrights to consider: the composer's and the particular recording's owner's.
I agree that the Yahoo story is confusing, and it gives one pause to wonder why they're spinning it as bad for webcasters. Is there some hidden agenda?
Yahoo! is slowly becoming almost as much a fence-straddler on issues like this as is AOL Time-Warner. While Yahoo! doesn't own any cable operations, isn't a movie & TV producer and book publisher, it is run by a former Warner Bros. executive and is moving in the direction of providing more proprietary content, and even more in the direction of licensing content from the traditional providers according to traditional models. It has pockets deep enough to play by the rules the establishment wants perpetuated and strengthened, and the infrastructure to profit from playing that way. Presumably, Yahoo! would prefer that its Launch webcast service not have to compete for listeners with hundreds or thousands of small webcasters who might conceivably thrive if RIAA didn't squelch them.
So you might have a point. But my bet is that, really, the problem is plain ol' bad writing.:-)
A question that I still haven't been able to get answered, is do all these fees apply for streaming your own content - like you talking, your friends garage band music, etc?
No. Why would it? If you create the content, you are the copyright holder. It would apply to your friend's garage band music only if your friend's garage band is represented by RIAA or ASCAP or similar. Likewise, the fees don't apply to any sound recordings in the public domain, provided the songs recorded are also in the public domain.
Michael
Re:Should stuff *ever* enter the public domain?
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Eldred vs. Ashcroft
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Personally I don't see any rationale behind the idea that an author can sell copyright in the first place - if copyright is there to protect authors' ownership (as well as the public good, as outlined in the US Constitution), then Disney or whoever should not have the right to "buy" the copyright in the first place.
Just as a point of clarification, typically authors sell publishing rights to a publisher. They don't actually sell or transfer the copyright. Likewise, they can sell adaptation rights to a movie studio, in which case the studio would control the copyright on any film based on the original work, but would not control the author's original copyright on his own work.
I don't agree that copyright "is there to protect authors' ownership." The Constitution says nothing about authors "owning" their work. Copyright is explicitly described as a privilege, and a limited one at that, not a grant of ownership. It is a mechanism whereby authors or other creators can profit from their endeavors, in the manner described above. If their creations were truly the property of the creators, then there would be no need for copyright protection at all -- authors and their heirs would own their books forever, period, just like as anyone who builds a piece of furniture owns it and passes it along from generation to generation. This is the irony of the Sonny Bono CTEA and, really, of Sonny's position on the matter. Sonny thought copyrights should be treated as real property; in that sense, Sonny didn't believe in copyright at all. The whole purpose of copyright was to distinguish intellectual and creative work from real property, while still providing a profit incentive to creators. By coming perilously close to treating copyright as real property, in effect CTEA invalidates what copyright was created to accomplish.
Not if an author has signed a contract that grants exclusive publication rights for the length of copyright. When you publish a book, you get to keep the copyright, but you don't get arbitrarily to decide how long you want that copyright to be in effect. A publication contract is enforceable and exclusive until your publisher lets the book go out-of-print or until copyright term, as mandated by Congress, expires.
Of course, the majority of books go out-of-print long before copyright expires. It will be interesting to see how print-on-demand and/or ebook technology changes that. Books go OP now because their backlist sales, in their publishers' estimation, don't justify the cost of keeping them in print. But emerging technologies could make these costs negligible. If publishers can afford to horde their entire catalogs year-in and year-out, we may not see many reversions of rights to authors anymore. Publishers may control the bulk of not just their active backlists, but everything they've ever published for the entire term of copyright. And they aren't likely to be waving these copyrights if there is any money to be squeezed from them.
...but maybe we should solve the problems of having too MANY people before we focus on bringing MORE into the world.
That's a good point in terms of where our non-tech efforts might be directed. But keep in mind that this technology is not going to be available to people in countries where overpopulation is a problem because those countries can't afford it. This is technology - like most technology - for the wealthiest nations.
The purpose of copyright is to expand the public domain, NOT to control how infomation and public works are used.
Copyright also extends the holder a measure of control over where and how the work can be used. An author, for example, can refuse to allow his story to be printed by a particular publication he doesn't like, or can stipulate that any and all reprints of his work must be complete and unabridged. In that sense, it does control how and where information is used. It doesn't, of course, prevent fair use.
The author's intent has nothing to do with how I should think or express myself or use his material to do so. I will freely quote people I disagree with to show them up.
And that would be fair use.
A great example of that is the whole "for Dummies" fiasco where the publisher of the popular dead tree serries used copyright law to commondere a common english phrase.
And that would be "trademark law," not copyright law. (Also, that would be "commandeer.") There's a big difference between the two laws. The fact that IDG was overzealous (to say the least) in pursuing trademark claims doesn't have much to do with the copyright privileges extended to holders.
This was a tactic that spread through the gay community like wildfire after Colorado passed it's passed anti-gay referendum (subsequently overturned) a few years back. A lot of those direct-mail processing centers are in Colorado, specifically Boulder, so thousands upon thousands of pieces of direct mail junk was sent back to CO with messages like "Boycott Colorado - the hate state" and the like. It created enough of problem that it got some media attention.
see, you technically Opt-In fFor your phone number and address to be listed in the phone book.
When I decided to get Caller ID added to my phone plan (I already had Call Waiting), I was told by Verizon that they had a package of services that would be cheaper for me than to get those two services individually. The package includes two additional phone numbers - unlisted - for my own use. I said I didn't need them. They said "it's part of the package - you get them, even if you don't use them." Ok, I figured, no big deal. I didn't even write them down.
Within a month, I started receiving telemarketing calls on those two additional phone numbers. (Each of my three numbers has a distinct ring pattern.) Once I was home and got three calls - one on each number - in quick succession. All of them showed as "Unavailable" on Caller ID (which almost always means it's a telemarketer), so I didn't answer any of them. When I checked my messages, the same message advertising a wonderful free vacation opportunity in Florida was left on my answering service three times.
Obviously, Verizon has sold these "private" unlisted phone numbers. Of course, I never was asked to opt-in, nor was I told they would be sold. They aren't in the phone book, I've never used them on any form or given them to anyone - hell, I don't even know what they are.
So, yeah, I think a law like this will do some good. One irony of all this is that where I live (NYC) Verizon is busy making us all deal with multiple area codes, even within Manhattan, because we're "running out" of phone numbers. I wonder how many people like me there are who have multiple #s because of Verizon's pricing that they don't need or want. They are using these #s to generate revenue. You can bet if a law like this one existed in New York they would change their pricing plans within the month, and perhaps we wouldn't need another area code anytime soon.
True, simply saying "don't" or "it's the law" is no sensible education.
I wish more U.S. parents would take that to heart. But this is the land of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. Although we've made some strides in some quarters, that simple-minded mentality is still what passes for alcohol and drug 'education' in some quarters of this country.
Replace wine with "beer and wine" in your post and you have my Belgian story.
Wait... are you saying Belgium is a separate country from France??:-)
I believe it's because they don't have quite the hang-ups about alcohol that you find here in the U.S. Of course, I'm speaking in gross generalities, but that's kind-of the only option you have when talking about national characteristics.
In France, certainly, it's quite common for children to be allowed a glass of wine at dinner, or at least wine mixed with water. Every Frenchie I know has told me they drank wine at home from age 10-12 (Note: I'm not reporting the finding of an official study!) and that there was nothing unusual about that. So you find fewer instances of 18-21-year-olds who take the first opportunity, and many subsequent opportunities, to go out and get blasted.
I don't know for sure that a similar attitude prevails in Germany; I've only been to Berlin once, for a week. They do love their beer!
Evolution is not and never was "survival of the fittest".
No, it's not, but that effect does have an impact in a given environmental situation, which is why I said it's a local phenomenon. Evolution as a process is much more complex than that. And "fittest" I take to mean (usually) "most adapted" or "most adaptable," not fastest, strongest, etc. Natural selection favors any modifications that enable a species to flourish under given conditions. Darwin wrote of purple plums' greater resistance to infestation by certain beetles than yellow plums. It doesn't make much difference if there are no beetles of that type around, or not enough to retard either type of plum from flourishing. But if the beetles become more numerous, yellow plums are in trouble. In that situation, purple plums are "fittest."
Why would anyone really want to run Linux on a PS2 except to prove to themselves that it's possible?
I would love to know the answer to that question.
Can a company like sony really enforce any restrictions/license when all I do is use the box for my own personal use and nothing else??
The DMCA prohibits you from circumventing protections designed to prevent you from gaining unauthorized access to a copyrighted work, but not from circumventing protections that prevent you from making a copy of a copyrighted work. So their ability to enforce whatever restrictions they have built into the device depends upon which restrictions you're trying to get around. Of course, the question really is moot if you're only doing it for your personal use, since they'd never know about it. In effect, you can do whatever you want as long as you keep it to yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
And your posts begs the question as to why the parent, which gets is all wrong (not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of fact), has been modded up to "Insightful." The world according to the way /. mods would like it to be, rather that how it is. Or, yet another illustration of "if we say it often enough and loud enough, maybe it will be true." It's a shame /. is taking a page out of the RIAA's playbook.
Michael
The difference is that what an EULA "grants" you is stuff you already have the legal right to do anyway.
Nonsense. Did you actually read the law you linked to? A EULA can grant you rights way beyond the limitations specified under Sec. 117. A EULA can say "This is it. Take it, modify it, sell it, pretend you wrote it...I, as the legal copyright holder, don't care." A EULA can be far less restrictive than the GPL.
You have no copyright on breakfast, certainly not on my right to prepare eggs for my breakfast, so you have no ability to restrict or request payment for my doing so. If you write a piece of software, you do have the copyright ... and it is therefore entirely up to you what rights you wish to grant me. You can, if you wish, show me the software, stick out your tongue, and say "Nyah nyah nyah, I wrote this only for me, and you can't have it." At which point I'd probably dump my cereal on you.
Michael
You do not agree to the GPL to use software. (EULAs you do)
Not necessarily. EULAs can be invalid. You are not required, legally, to agree to an invalid license agreement in order to use anything; therefore, you can use software without agreeing to a EULA.
You do not have to agree to the GPL at all, ever. (EULAs you do)
Same thing again. If you do not agree to the GPL, then you are not entitled to modify or redistribute the software under the GPL. This is no different from not being allowed to modify or redistribute software under a EULA. And not all EULAs prohibit either activity. Sure, corporate EULAs do, but many freeware EULAs don't.
The GPL, if agreed to, does not remove ANY fair-use rights. (EULAs do)
Neither do all EULAs; they can, in fact, grant rights above and beyond fair use rights. It sounds like you're observing (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the typical big, bad EULA functions differently, in practical terms, from the GPL. I'd certainly agree, though that seems rather like stating the obvious. What I'm saying is that, legally, they have the same function (because they are both forms of licenses): both grant the end use specific rights -- rights that, in the absence of either, the end user would not have. Frankly, that seems pretty obvious to me, too.
Michael
Michael
The EULA removes many rights, basically if the EULA was not there you would be entitled to use the software in any way you see fit.... The EULA has nothing to do with copyright law! It is contract law.
This isn't accurate, not under U.S. law anyway. Copyright is granted automatically to a creator of any specific formulation of an idea, such as an essay or a piece of software. If you throw up an essay you've written on your website, you aren't required to register it with the Copyright Office for the copyright to be in effect. The same holds true with software you've written. You can, if you wish, explicitly grant permission to anyone accessing the essay to reprint it with or without modification, credit, links to your own website, etc. Such grants would constitute a form of EULA. But not specifying anything does not automatically invalidate your copyright nor implicitly grant permission to anyone to do whatever they want with your essay.
The same is true for software. A EULA (and the GPL) do not take away any rights from a user, they specify what rights the copyright holder grants the user. Without either, the user would have no rights. I can't imagine a situation whereby a copyright holder would be able to sue anyone for merely using a program that holder made available for download -- the right to use a program the holder makes available for download is implied by the act of making it available in the first place. (At least, I'm 99% sure any court would rule accordingly, if a case like that ever came up.) But you can't assume, in the absence of any form of license (which is what both a EULA and the GPL are) that you have carte blanche to do anything you want. Both licenses grant rights, neither removes them.
Michael
The GPL is *not* an EULA. EULAs take away what rights you have to use a program. The GPL adds them.
They are both, as their names specify, licenses: "1.a. Official or legal permission to do or own a specified thing" (Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Edition). Just because the GPL gives you "more" permission than a typical EULA doesn't mean it has a different function.
Michael
For the original gameboy version,
Oh, I never played the Gameboy version. Most of my Tetrising was playing in the old Time Square arcades (usually before or after a double-bill of Euro-slasher flicks in one of the grindhousesI don't think the arcade versions ever ended, since the goal was to keep you feeding the machines. I was just happy when I found one that had been recently reset so I had a chance to get my name immortalized on the high scores list until the rightful masters of the arcade returned to blow me off the screen.
Michael
Will someone please tell me what happens when Tetris ends? Is it like the end of the rainbow ... pots of gold and all that good stuff? I always thought it just kept going until you lost (or, in the old days, spent another quarter), which show you how far I've gotten.
MichaelWhy not? If I provide access to the entire Beatles catalog on a filesharing network, or put the MP3s on a publicly accessible FTP server, then yes, the availability of those works violates copyright. The violation doesn't occur when someone downloads one, it occurs when I make it available in that context, because I have a reasonable expectation that they will be downloaded.
So they're either going to use the availability as a measure or they are downloading or sharing files on KaZaA (as you mentioned), which is simple entrapment,
They don't actually have to download the material to determine whether it is being made available from your computer. They can use algorithms, spiders, packet sniffers, and who knows what else to determine the whether the file your sharing is a legitimately infringing copy and determine whether you have allowed it to be uploaded. That isn't entrapment, it's simply catching you in the act.
Michael
Yeah, like that Helen Keller, who's accomplishments I'm sure have been exceeded by you, gifted, as you are, with sight and hearing. Let's just repeal the ADA, round up all them "lowest common denominator" types, and put them away somewhere.
The world is designed around people - as they should be.
People, "as they should be," have both brains and hearts. Brains that ought to be capable of making website modifications necessary to ensure that the information they are presenting is accessible to most people, including the blind and deaf, given the technology that exists for rendering content for them. Hearts that ought to make people compassionate enough to want their hard work to be accessible by as many people as possible.
Your NBA analogy is completely inapplicable, for reasons so obvious they aren't worth enumerating. It is hardly essential for anyone to play professional basketball. The question is, will the Internet become essential for performing any of a myriad of tasks people want or need to perform? If the answer is yes, then eventually it needs to be accessible to people with common disabilities. I agree with the judge's ruling in this case, but were I blind (and if the claimant's assertion that Southwest Airline's website is extremely difficult for blind people to use is true), I'd take my business elsewhere. The problem with website designers ignoring accessibility standards is: what if there isn't an "elsewhere"?
Michael
This is really comparing apples and oranges. The "anti-book" is a product no one wants, at least not yet. The free book isn't a product at all - from a commercial perspective, it's a promotional tool at most. How can the latter possibly be said to have "displaced" the former? The anti-book, so far, is just another Edsel or Betamax. The fact that people are interested in downloading a free book they can read on a PC or PDA doesn't have much bearing on the fact that they aren't willing to spend $300 on a Rocketbook.
Remember a few years ago when they were predicting that print-on-demand publishing would be the wave of the future? You were supposed to be able to go to your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, ask for an obscure book on medieval Bulgaria, and have it printed and bound while you sipped a $5 cappucino. It didn't happen,...
Correction: it hasn't happened...yet. Print-on-demand technology is still developing and still being invested in by publishers and distributors, mainly as a way to reduce inventory. Whether it will develop to the point fantasized about in the article is anyone's guess, but that's hardly the value of the technology to the publishing industry; and if it doesn't, that's certainly no indication that it's a failure. When a store places a 10-copy order to a publisher, if that publisher can print & bind & ship those 10 copies in one day, then POD will be a huge success and will greatly lower publishers' cost of doing business. That's what they're working toward, and it looks like they will get there.
Self-publishing a book is much more difficult than self-publishing a program, and print publishing is a capital-intensive business. Nearly all authors need to work with a publishing house if they want to see their books in print. In most cases, the book contract gives the copyright to the publisher.
POD technology has made self-publishing easier than ever. Companies like POD publisher Exlibris (in which Barnes & Noble has a stake) are replacing the role of the old-style vanity presses. They make it relatively cheap for anyone to have available a printed & bound copy of his masterpiece. The only trick for the author is to create demand. Even authors with track records at major publishers have gone this route for certain projects they want to handle themselves. It's precisely that "capital intensive" quality of publishing that POD technology has already taken a bite out of, and will take a bigger bite out of in the future.
And the article incorrectly claims that authors sign away their copyrights when they contract with publishers. This is only true of books that are "work-for-hire," when the publisher hires writers to do a specific project that the publisher has conceived. The vast majority of books published are not work-for-hire, and almost all trade fiction and non-fiction is copyrighted by the author, not the publisher.
We still need intelligent, qualified people to help us sift the wheat from the chaff, but when it comes to free books, the judgment of quality can come after publication, not before. This is a wonderful thing!
The only judgment of quality that matters comes after a book is published, no matter whether it's free or published by a corporate publisher or small press. The single biggest factor in determining a book's success is word-of-mouth. The biggest ad campaign in history won't get people reading something they aren't interested in, no matter how low the price. Yes, this is a wonderful thing. But it's as true for corporate publishing as it is for free books online.
MichaelAs does a pda.
But try falling on your ass with a PDA in your backpocket vs. a book in the same spot.
can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack
As can a PDA. The difference being I can carry a bookshelf worth of books in my pocket.
You must be a really fast reader. I typically find that one book does me nicely for an afternoon at the park. I don't need a shelf's worth. And I have a pretty good idea of how much reading I'll be able to do on trips, although I do sometimes overpack when it comes to books. But considering an essential part of any vacation for me is hunting out local independent and/or used bookstores wherever I go, one thing I never suffer from is a lack of reading material.
Michael
Where did you read that two of the stations are talk-radio? The Yahoo! article says they are Christian stations. It doesn't state that they don't play music.
As for classical radio, they are playing recordings that are under copyright. Just because the composition itself is in the public domain doesn't mean a given recording of that composition is also p.d. You can webcast your own rendition of "Casta Diva" until your listeners beg you to stop and not owe Bellini's estate any royalties, but if you webcast Leontyne Price's rendition, it will cost you. With regard to sound recordings, there are always at least two copyrights to consider: the composer's and the particular recording's owner's.Michael
Yahoo! is slowly becoming almost as much a fence-straddler on issues like this as is AOL Time-Warner. While Yahoo! doesn't own any cable operations, isn't a movie & TV producer and book publisher, it is run by a former Warner Bros. executive and is moving in the direction of providing more proprietary content, and even more in the direction of licensing content from the traditional providers according to traditional models. It has pockets deep enough to play by the rules the establishment wants perpetuated and strengthened, and the infrastructure to profit from playing that way. Presumably, Yahoo! would prefer that its Launch webcast service not have to compete for listeners with hundreds or thousands of small webcasters who might conceivably thrive if RIAA didn't squelch them.
So you might have a point. But my bet is that, really, the problem is plain ol' bad writing.Michael
No. Why would it? If you create the content, you are the copyright holder. It would apply to your friend's garage band music only if your friend's garage band is represented by RIAA or ASCAP or similar. Likewise, the fees don't apply to any sound recordings in the public domain, provided the songs recorded are also in the public domain.
MichaelJust as a point of clarification, typically authors sell publishing rights to a publisher. They don't actually sell or transfer the copyright. Likewise, they can sell adaptation rights to a movie studio, in which case the studio would control the copyright on any film based on the original work, but would not control the author's original copyright on his own work.
I don't agree that copyright "is there to protect authors' ownership." The Constitution says nothing about authors "owning" their work. Copyright is explicitly described as a privilege, and a limited one at that, not a grant of ownership. It is a mechanism whereby authors or other creators can profit from their endeavors, in the manner described above. If their creations were truly the property of the creators, then there would be no need for copyright protection at all -- authors and their heirs would own their books forever, period, just like as anyone who builds a piece of furniture owns it and passes it along from generation to generation. This is the irony of the Sonny Bono CTEA and, really, of Sonny's position on the matter. Sonny thought copyrights should be treated as real property; in that sense, Sonny didn't believe in copyright at all. The whole purpose of copyright was to distinguish intellectual and creative work from real property, while still providing a profit incentive to creators. By coming perilously close to treating copyright as real property, in effect CTEA invalidates what copyright was created to accomplish.
--Michael
Not if an author has signed a contract that grants exclusive publication rights for the length of copyright. When you publish a book, you get to keep the copyright, but you don't get arbitrarily to decide how long you want that copyright to be in effect. A publication contract is enforceable and exclusive until your publisher lets the book go out-of-print or until copyright term, as mandated by Congress, expires.
Of course, the majority of books go out-of-print long before copyright expires. It will be interesting to see how print-on-demand and/or ebook technology changes that. Books go OP now because their backlist sales, in their publishers' estimation, don't justify the cost of keeping them in print. But emerging technologies could make these costs negligible. If publishers can afford to horde their entire catalogs year-in and year-out, we may not see many reversions of rights to authors anymore. Publishers may control the bulk of not just their active backlists, but everything they've ever published for the entire term of copyright. And they aren't likely to be waving these copyrights if there is any money to be squeezed from them.Michael
That's a good point in terms of where our non-tech efforts might be directed. But keep in mind that this technology is not going to be available to people in countries where overpopulation is a problem because those countries can't afford it. This is technology - like most technology - for the wealthiest nations.
Copyright also extends the holder a measure of control over where and how the work can be used. An author, for example, can refuse to allow his story to be printed by a particular publication he doesn't like, or can stipulate that any and all reprints of his work must be complete and unabridged. In that sense, it does control how and where information is used. It doesn't, of course, prevent fair use.
The author's intent has nothing to do with how I should think or express myself or use his material to do so. I will freely quote people I disagree with to show them up.
And that would be fair use.
A great example of that is the whole "for Dummies" fiasco where the publisher of the popular dead tree serries used copyright law to commondere a common english phrase.
And that would be "trademark law," not copyright law. (Also, that would be "commandeer.") There's a big difference between the two laws. The fact that IDG was overzealous (to say the least) in pursuing trademark claims doesn't have much to do with the copyright privileges extended to holders.
This was a tactic that spread through the gay community like wildfire after Colorado passed it's passed anti-gay referendum (subsequently overturned) a few years back. A lot of those direct-mail processing centers are in Colorado, specifically Boulder, so thousands upon thousands of pieces of direct mail junk was sent back to CO with messages like "Boycott Colorado - the hate state" and the like. It created enough of problem that it got some media attention.
When I decided to get Caller ID added to my phone plan (I already had Call Waiting), I was told by Verizon that they had a package of services that would be cheaper for me than to get those two services individually. The package includes two additional phone numbers - unlisted - for my own use. I said I didn't need them. They said "it's part of the package - you get them, even if you don't use them." Ok, I figured, no big deal. I didn't even write them down.
Within a month, I started receiving telemarketing calls on those two additional phone numbers. (Each of my three numbers has a distinct ring pattern.) Once I was home and got three calls - one on each number - in quick succession. All of them showed as "Unavailable" on Caller ID (which almost always means it's a telemarketer), so I didn't answer any of them. When I checked my messages, the same message advertising a wonderful free vacation opportunity in Florida was left on my answering service three times.
Obviously, Verizon has sold these "private" unlisted phone numbers. Of course, I never was asked to opt-in, nor was I told they would be sold. They aren't in the phone book, I've never used them on any form or given them to anyone - hell, I don't even know what they are.
So, yeah, I think a law like this will do some good. One irony of all this is that where I live (NYC) Verizon is busy making us all deal with multiple area codes, even within Manhattan, because we're "running out" of phone numbers. I wonder how many people like me there are who have multiple #s because of Verizon's pricing that they don't need or want. They are using these #s to generate revenue. You can bet if a law like this one existed in New York they would change their pricing plans within the month, and perhaps we wouldn't need another area code anytime soon.
I wish more U.S. parents would take that to heart. But this is the land of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. Although we've made some strides in some quarters, that simple-minded mentality is still what passes for alcohol and drug 'education' in some quarters of this country.
Replace wine with "beer and wine" in your post and you have my Belgian story.
Wait ... are you saying Belgium is a separate country from France?? :-)
In France, certainly, it's quite common for children to be allowed a glass of wine at dinner, or at least wine mixed with water. Every Frenchie I know has told me they drank wine at home from age 10-12 (Note: I'm not reporting the finding of an official study!) and that there was nothing unusual about that. So you find fewer instances of 18-21-year-olds who take the first opportunity, and many subsequent opportunities, to go out and get blasted.
I don't know for sure that a similar attitude prevails in Germany; I've only been to Berlin once, for a week. They do love their beer!
No, it's not, but that effect does have an impact in a given environmental situation, which is why I said it's a local phenomenon. Evolution as a process is much more complex than that. And "fittest" I take to mean (usually) "most adapted" or "most adaptable," not fastest, strongest, etc. Natural selection favors any modifications that enable a species to flourish under given conditions. Darwin wrote of purple plums' greater resistance to infestation by certain beetles than yellow plums. It doesn't make much difference if there are no beetles of that type around, or not enough to retard either type of plum from flourishing. But if the beetles become more numerous, yellow plums are in trouble. In that situation, purple plums are "fittest."
I would love to know the answer to that question.
Can a company like sony really enforce any restrictions/license when all I do is use the box for my own personal use and nothing else??
The DMCA prohibits you from circumventing protections designed to prevent you from gaining unauthorized access to a copyrighted work, but not from circumventing protections that prevent you from making a copy of a copyrighted work. So their ability to enforce whatever restrictions they have built into the device depends upon which restrictions you're trying to get around. Of course, the question really is moot if you're only doing it for your personal use, since they'd never know about it. In effect, you can do whatever you want as long as you keep it to yourself.
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