I'm not familiar with copyright law in Canada, so I can't speak as to what they're doing. I do work for a very large American library with large electronic holdings, and the licensing (and this is just for text, licensed from publishers) is a huge part of our budget, and the license agreements are very restrictive.
There are numerous legal challenges to being able to digitize books here and provide them online; the general belief (I don't believe there's any case law establishing this for certain) is that a library would be legally allowed to let one person use a digital copy of an item for each copy owned by the library, as long as the print version of the resource was taken out of circulation for the period it was in use.
Of course this would protect aging collections as the actual books wouldn't be circulating, but the cost of digitizing the materials and controlling access make it unlikely many libraries would pursue this.
As far as movies and music are concerned, American copyright law would most likely require the libraries to use technology that makes reasonable assurance that downloaded materials could only be used while they were "checked out" to a certain user, and not retained by the user who downloaded them. Some minimal DRM might satisfy this requirement, with the assumption that a patron breaking the DRM to make copies would be his or her responsibility, not the library's. I'd assume the MPAA and RIAA would challenge that idea if libraries tried anything like this, though.
To lend out a DVD or videotape of a movie, a library does not need a license. To reproduce a movie or a book and to distribute copies, a library does need permission from the copyright holder.
MPAA has no "legal jurisdiction" anywhere. They're a trade group, not a government body, and the most likely do have legal standing to sue under Swedish law.
Are all of the security updates to OS X unethical too? Many of them remove the ability of my computer to do things. For instance, my computer will no longer automatically launch newly installed helper applications in response to random URI protocols to allow someone to hack my system. Should I be threatening to sue Apple for breaking my computer?
Do other retailers automatically update their prices in realtime as the values of the pound and euro vary? If not, the UK government should:
1) Take everyone selling anything to court.
2) Realize their economy has been destroyed by the legal costs involved.
3) Shut the hell up about how great the pound is and just switch to using the euro like everyone else.
The euro exists for a reason. A single market without a single currency doesn't work right, and lawsuits aren't the way to solve that problem.
Umm... this entire thread is about Hymn, and the OP's contention that Apple will lock out all unprotected content. The entire thread might be offtopic, but grandparent's "rant" certainly isn't a nonsequitur.
The claim is that you have a 1 in 4550 chance of dying in a commercial airline crash in the next 100 years. I don't believe that's an accurate figure, either, but it doesn't imply that 1 in 4550 planes will have a fatal crash.
Clearly, cockroaches have developed space flight and that's why they've lasted so long. NASA won't let him reveal his contact with their ships while he was in space, so he has to hint at it.
Oddly enough, the Founding Fathers in our country devised a clever system of legislation and trial by jury so random people don't have to produce evidence to defend a sentence to you. The prosecutor "defends" the sentence he's asking for to a judge and jury, and the other side even gets to present its case with no intervention from anyone on slashdot. It's worked pretty good for over 200 years.
"I know nothing about Finnish law, but I'll make pronouncements about what it says anyway."
Yeah, real interesting.
TFA states that those arrested face 2 years in prison if convicted. I, for one, would assume that implies that FInland does have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. According to a quick google search, Italy and the UK (which are not the US), at least, also have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. I'd assume many other countries do as well.
Note that some violations, like in the US, are not criminal. Large violations generally are.
Please don't post "facts" if you have no idea what you're talking about.
Sony v. Universal City Studios, if you'd RTFSCOTUSO, states that "Private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home" is non-infringing. Distributing the recordings outside the home is much different, and hasn't been found by any court that I know of to be fair use. If you can cite case law stating otherwise, do so.
Copyright owners have the exclusive right to distribute thier works. It's illegal to distribute them without permission, regardless of arguments that the end user could have gotten the work from the owner or his licensee for free.
The fact that you can check a book out from the library does not give me the right to print copies of that book and distribute them for free.
It's a court case, not proposed legislation. If the judicial system rules that copyright doesn't apply to software, I'm fairly certain (although IANAL) it would mean it doesn't apply to any software, not that new software can't be copyrighted.
Slashdot Mirror
There are numerous legal challenges to being able to digitize books here and provide them online; the general belief (I don't believe there's any case law establishing this for certain) is that a library would be legally allowed to let one person use a digital copy of an item for each copy owned by the library, as long as the print version of the resource was taken out of circulation for the period it was in use.
Of course this would protect aging collections as the actual books wouldn't be circulating, but the cost of digitizing the materials and controlling access make it unlikely many libraries would pursue this.
As far as movies and music are concerned, American copyright law would most likely require the libraries to use technology that makes reasonable assurance that downloaded materials could only be used while they were "checked out" to a certain user, and not retained by the user who downloaded them. Some minimal DRM might satisfy this requirement, with the assumption that a patron breaking the DRM to make copies would be his or her responsibility, not the library's. I'd assume the MPAA and RIAA would challenge that idea if libraries tried anything like this, though.
To lend out a DVD or videotape of a movie, a library does not need a license. To reproduce a movie or a book and to distribute copies, a library does need permission from the copyright holder.
No, they won't. Not without licensing the content from the studios, which would cost more than pretty much any library has to spend.
MPAA has no "legal jurisdiction" anywhere. They're a trade group, not a government body, and the most likely do have legal standing to sue under Swedish law.
Are all of the security updates to OS X unethical too? Many of them remove the ability of my computer to do things. For instance, my computer will no longer automatically launch newly installed helper applications in response to random URI protocols to allow someone to hack my system. Should I be threatening to sue Apple for breaking my computer?
1) Take everyone selling anything to court.
2) Realize their economy has been destroyed by the legal costs involved.
3) Shut the hell up about how great the pound is and just switch to using the euro like everyone else.
The euro exists for a reason. A single market without a single currency doesn't work right, and lawsuits aren't the way to solve that problem.
Umm... this entire thread is about Hymn, and the OP's contention that Apple will lock out all unprotected content. The entire thread might be offtopic, but grandparent's "rant" certainly isn't a nonsequitur.
The claim is that you have a 1 in 4550 chance of dying in a commercial airline crash in the next 100 years. I don't believe that's an accurate figure, either, but it doesn't imply that 1 in 4550 planes will have a fatal crash.
Clearly, cockroaches have developed space flight and that's why they've lasted so long. NASA won't let him reveal his contact with their ships while he was in space, so he has to hint at it.
Also, your line of "reasoning" if you can call it that would also "prove" that no star is ever likely to go nova.
I have no problem with them posting that on their website, but it doesn't belong on slashdot as "news".
Right.... we all forgot that our society now lives on the Moon.
Are you suggesting that the military is going to let civilians launch their interceptor missiles to shoot stuff down?
Oddly enough, the Founding Fathers in our country devised a clever system of legislation and trial by jury so random people don't have to produce evidence to defend a sentence to you. The prosecutor "defends" the sentence he's asking for to a judge and jury, and the other side even gets to present its case with no intervention from anyone on slashdot. It's worked pretty good for over 200 years.
Neither can you, so who are you to complain?
Yeah, real interesting.
TFA states that those arrested face 2 years in prison if convicted. I, for one, would assume that implies that FInland does have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. According to a quick google search, Italy and the UK (which are not the US), at least, also have criminal penalties for copyright infringement. I'd assume many other countries do as well.
Note that some violations, like in the US, are not criminal. Large violations generally are.
Please don't post "facts" if you have no idea what you're talking about.
Even if 100% of the users are as stupid as your hypothetical user, there's no net loss, and if the percentage is lower, there's a gain.
Sony v. Universal City Studios, if you'd RTFSCOTUSO, states that "Private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home" is non-infringing. Distributing the recordings outside the home is much different, and hasn't been found by any court that I know of to be fair use. If you can cite case law stating otherwise, do so.
The fact that you can check a book out from the library does not give me the right to print copies of that book and distribute them for free.
Presumably they're protected by their contracts with the players.
Or maybe you do. Most people buy them so they can build an actual house without having to study architecture first.
It's a gripping revert war. Expect CNN to pick up the story by 8PM.
It's a court case, not proposed legislation. If the judicial system rules that copyright doesn't apply to software, I'm fairly certain (although IANAL) it would mean it doesn't apply to any software, not that new software can't be copyrighted.
And you wouldn't believe the rent you've got to pay to live in one of them.
That's actually a neat idea, but it really doesn't sound like a feature an iPod needs.