Copyright could be rolled back to a reasonable length.
Unlikely. Reversing a past windfall would likely be deemed a "taking", requiring "just compensation" pursuant to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or foreign counterparts.
Well copyright could be extended another 100 years.
Unlikely. The only excuse that the U.S. Supreme Court ever allowed for across-the-board re-extension of the term of copyright in works whose copyright term had already been extended was harmonizing its copyright term with that of the EU. The EU hasn't extended its copyright term since.
Don't buy their product, and someone else will step in with an open system.
How are you so sure about that? I didn't buy an iPad, and the alternative (a netbook) got discontinued at the end of 2012. There need to be a substantial number of people not buying a piece of hardware in order for manufacturing an alternative to be profitable
A 501c3 charity can't hire lobbyists. Did you mean FSF should affiliate itself with a PAC, much as NORML Foundation (a charity) and NORML PAC are affiliated?
Running ownCloud on a Raspberry Pi board isn't so useful once your home ISP puts your connection behind a carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), citing IPv4 address exhaustion. Then you won't be able to reach the RPi in your home from outside your home. Likewise once your home ISP terminates your service for running a server at home in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy for home accounts.
Or are you willing to move to a different city just to get a different ISP?
first to the patent office with a whole bunch of cash now wins thanks to changes to U.S. law
I'm not sure what you meant by that. True, the America Invents Act changed the priority of U.S. patent applications from the old "interference" proceedings to the first inventor to file. But this affects only priority between patent applications. Both before and after the America Invents Act, lack of novelty still disqualifies an invention from a patent. And if an invention is published by someone else before it reaches the USPTO, it is not novel. In fact, the AIA expanded the scope of prior art to include foreign publication and public use.
The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS
The last couple times that argument was made (by betterunixthanunix and AC), the answer was "let 'em eat Pi" (AC and BasilBrush). What makes you see a rush away from things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino?
and Android
The last time I read the Android Compatibility Definition (CDD), it required all Android devices with Google Play to accept self-signed applications through adb install.
If UX of a free application is worse on the whole than UX of the more popular proprietary alternatives, improving free software UX may increase the user base. In more concrete terms, there might be more GIMP users if GIMP were as easy to learn as Photoshop. User base is important because only the economies of scale associated with user base can make hardware makers willing to ensure that their products are compatible with GNU/Linux or other free operating systems.
Then what steps should someone who has been tainted with knowledge of those works take to avoid inadvertently infringing copyright in those works when creating his own works?
I suspect Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain by now.
And you are correct under current law. But hypothetically, if copyright were restored to them, as it was restored to works whose author had died between 50 and 69 years ago when the EU adopted a standard life plus 70 year term in 1993, who would get the royalties?
I'm not entirely sure but I think the Chipmunks were in "night shirts"
Which fits in with the apparel of John Darling and Mickey "the Yellow Kid" Dugan, which are called nightshirts in canon. In fact, the big reason that men don't dress that way all the time is because of cavalry. But now that vehicles have replaced horseback riding, trousers are obsolete technology.
Where'd you pick it up?
I buy most of them from the men's section of AlHannah.com. When I explain it to others on the bus, I sometimes call it "Al and Hannah's" to disguise that it's an Islamic clothing store. You can find other places selling them by searching the web for "thobe" or "dishdasha". When it gets cold, you can wear over-the-calf socks and a shorter (knee-length) flannel nightshirt under it. Just make sure to wear typical western-world headgear with it, not anything obviously Arabic, and don't grow a long beard.
Fortunately, there's no copyright on the act of wearing a nightshirt with a top hat. US law largely considers costume designs "useful articles" rather than works of authorship unless they have a pictorial work printed on them. It's "fruits of one's labor" yet not subject to exclusive rights.
Irrelevant, but I'll answer anyhow. They were not first. Sucks to be them but we don't all get to win the race.
So before I publish a work that I created, what can I do to tell whether it unintentionally violates another's copyright?
Yes it is [a right] - in fact, it's created on inception.
Yes, under current law, the privilege of copyright comes into being when a work is fixed in tangible medium. But when copyright begins is independent of whether it is a right.
When you fail to compensate someone for the fruits of their labor, it is slavery.
Is our failure to continue to compensate the heirs of the inventor of patent leather "slavery"?
Ownership is complete - that's what ownership is. It promotes the arts and sciences because they're able to control it and thus decide how it's used, when it is used, and who gets to use it.
How are you certain that absolute ownership is a better way "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than something other than absolute ownership?
I believe it is something like Article 1 that gives congress the right to make such a law
Article I, clause 8, gives Congress the power to create copyright but not the obligation to do so. This differs from the Bill of Rights, which gives Congress the obligation not to create certain laws by taking powers away from it.
Rights aren't given to you by the government. You already have them by grace of birth. Do you have to ask the government to breath?
Yes. People had to petition the government for the Clean Air Act.
For the fruits of your labor?
Fruits of one's labor include externalities. And yes, in general, people do have to petition the government for exclusive rights to extract rents from externalities. Copyright is a rent extracted from the externality of the existence of a work of authorship.
The ability to own it, to control it, even to revoke access (an unfortunate side effect but must be included because it's ownership, by right) is a basic human right.
Say I build and sell you a chair. Should I have the power to demand that you return that chair because I want "to revoke access" to its design? I disagree with you that the right to revoke access to something that has been published "is a basic human right". And no, I'm not the only person to believe that way; Leigh Beadon agrees with me and disagrees with you.
the GPL that I know you're familiar with and (as I recall) a fan of - is also based on copyright and gets its powers from copyright regulations. Should someone just be able to take the code, edit it, and sell it without giving back to the community and not give out the source when they do so?
If there were no copyright, it would be lawful to disassemble proprietary software, thoroughly comment the disassembly, and distribute the commented disassembly to others. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's what Richard Stallman had originally planned to do in the printer driver kerfuffle that kicked off the whole GNU project.
TPP, if it extends Canadian copyright, extends it by 20 years. This means there are at least 20 years before Canada is likely to be willing to agree to a re-extension to match Mexico. And there are only eight years left on U.S. copyright in the works where Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh debuted.
How does it promote it? It encourages people to produce stuff
Except often, someone who produces stuff gets sued by someone who produced older stuff, claiming that the new stuff is too similar to the older stuff.
The price is not one concern - it's their rights that you're infringing on.
Despite its name, copyright is not a right but a privilege. Again, how does the grant of the privilege to withdraw a work from availability "promote the Progress"?
The Constitution doesn't give you rights, it enumerates rights you already have (or should have).
Copyright is not listed as an enumerated right of the people. It is listed there as an enumerated power of the Congress, one that it may choose to exercise or not to exercise. And unlike several other enumerated powers, it has its purpose ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts") written directly in the Constitution, ostensibly to give the people a way to measure whether the Congress is doing its job.
"We hold these truths to be self evident..."
Sorry, wrong document. This appears in the Declaration, not the Constitution.
There are at least two games I like to play that were only ever released in Japan, as they are a licensed property of a company over there, there is no way a PC or SNES game from 1993 is going to be made available on the WIi U there or here. So my only option is to play a pirate copy in a SNES or PC emulator because these games were never officially localized.
Now I'm waiting for KGIII to pipe up and call you an entitled whiner. As KGIII explained in a reply to one of my own comments to this story, you have the option to do without the game, and in fact, doing without is the only legal option.
Maybe one idea is to have a clearinghouse by each country to handle it, where part of people's taxes go to fund said clearinghouse, and people get a royalty to how often their content is downloaded or seen.
I think that's what collecting societies such as BMI, ASCAP, and Harry Fox were supposed to be for. But unfortunately, not enough kinds of work have collecting societies.
Remember as a kid, you were told that if you didn't copy that floppy, that game prices would go down?
Well, back then, I'd pay $50 for a game.
"Don't Copy That Floppy" was in 1992. The Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator estimates that $50.00 in 1992 had the same buying power at $84.58 last year (2015). Moreover, the play-through time of a modern game is far longer than that of a typical NES game.
They change the rosters. Online opponents are unlikely to be willing to settle for outdated rosters, even if the publisher chooses to keep running the matchmaking servers for versions with outdated rosters.
So the fact that they won't steal when they're older makes it okay for them to steal now?
I doubt they're shoplifting in any substantial numbers. Copyright infringement is not stealing, and stealing is not copyright infringement.
very little money is lost to piracy
Developers would seem to disagree, so much so that they're willing to spend a considerable amount of money and effort to add DRM to their games.
Developers or publishers?
Every time a PC game is pirated, it moves the developer closer to going console-only with their next release
Which leaves an opening for another studio to enter the PC market. In fact, a new studio has to enter the PC market first because console makers require studios to show financial stability and experience.
That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: Now who compensates me for having been tainted with "access" to the copyrighted works that the roommate or store plays?
The theater goers.
That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: To whom shall royalties be paid for a performance of a play by Shakespeare?
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they care, as long as they're getting paid?
Because a Trusted Health Check keeps virus-infected machines off the ISP's private network.
GNU/Linux: Let it go.
"GNU/Linux" is shorter than "End/user/Linux/other/than/Android".
Copyright could be rolled back to a reasonable length.
Unlikely. Reversing a past windfall would likely be deemed a "taking", requiring "just compensation" pursuant to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or foreign counterparts.
Well copyright could be extended another 100 years.
Unlikely. The only excuse that the U.S. Supreme Court ever allowed for across-the-board re-extension of the term of copyright in works whose copyright term had already been extended was harmonizing its copyright term with that of the EU. The EU hasn't extended its copyright term since.
Don't buy their product, and someone else will step in with an open system.
How are you so sure about that? I didn't buy an iPad, and the alternative (a netbook) got discontinued at the end of 2012. There need to be a substantial number of people not buying a piece of hardware in order for manufacturing an alternative to be profitable
Android is still a closed walled system.
How so? Android is free software. Or by Android did you mean Google Play?
I can see a day when ISPs start requiring "approved hardware" in order to connect to their networks for example.
Back in 2005 or so, users such as Alsee were predicting that home Internet access would be locked down using Trusted Network Connect by 2015. It's 2016 now.
A 501c3 charity can't hire lobbyists. Did you mean FSF should affiliate itself with a PAC, much as NORML Foundation (a charity) and NORML PAC are affiliated?
Open source software is not always free software.
I'm aware of philosophical differences between users of the two terms. But I wonder what substantial difference you're seeing between the terms with respect to the software itself, as the Open Source Definition published by Open Source Initiative is nearly word-for-word identical to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
not to mention the expected certifications that employees are expecting compensation for... or, one or two guys with emacs and some unix boxes.
Are you trying to tell me that people don't expect compensation for certifications in RHEL, a distribution of GNU/Linux?
The RPI can be your PERSONAL CLOUD.
Running ownCloud on a Raspberry Pi board isn't so useful once your home ISP puts your connection behind a carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), citing IPv4 address exhaustion. Then you won't be able to reach the RPi in your home from outside your home. Likewise once your home ISP terminates your service for running a server at home in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy for home accounts.
Or are you willing to move to a different city just to get a different ISP?
first to the patent office with a whole bunch of cash now wins thanks to changes to U.S. law
I'm not sure what you meant by that. True, the America Invents Act changed the priority of U.S. patent applications from the old "interference" proceedings to the first inventor to file. But this affects only priority between patent applications. Both before and after the America Invents Act, lack of novelty still disqualifies an invention from a patent. And if an invention is published by someone else before it reaches the USPTO, it is not novel. In fact, the AIA expanded the scope of prior art to include foreign publication and public use.
The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS
The last couple times that argument was made (by betterunixthanunix and AC), the answer was "let 'em eat Pi" (AC and BasilBrush). What makes you see a rush away from things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino?
and Android
The last time I read the Android Compatibility Definition (CDD), it required all Android devices with Google Play to accept self-signed applications through adb install.
Then the FSF would appreciate your feedback on what the license recommendations and GPL FAQ pages leave unclear.
If UX of a free application is worse on the whole than UX of the more popular proprietary alternatives, improving free software UX may increase the user base. In more concrete terms, there might be more GIMP users if GIMP were as easy to learn as Photoshop. User base is important because only the economies of scale associated with user base can make hardware makers willing to ensure that their products are compatible with GNU/Linux or other free operating systems.
no one compensates you.
Then what steps should someone who has been tainted with knowledge of those works take to avoid inadvertently infringing copyright in those works when creating his own works?
I suspect Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain by now.
And you are correct under current law. But hypothetically, if copyright were restored to them, as it was restored to works whose author had died between 50 and 69 years ago when the EU adopted a standard life plus 70 year term in 1993, who would get the royalties?
I'm not entirely sure but I think the Chipmunks were in "night shirts"
Which fits in with the apparel of John Darling and Mickey "the Yellow Kid" Dugan, which are called nightshirts in canon. In fact, the big reason that men don't dress that way all the time is because of cavalry. But now that vehicles have replaced horseback riding, trousers are obsolete technology.
Where'd you pick it up?
I buy most of them from the men's section of AlHannah.com. When I explain it to others on the bus, I sometimes call it "Al and Hannah's" to disguise that it's an Islamic clothing store. You can find other places selling them by searching the web for "thobe" or "dishdasha". When it gets cold, you can wear over-the-calf socks and a shorter (knee-length) flannel nightshirt under it. Just make sure to wear typical western-world headgear with it, not anything obviously Arabic, and don't grow a long beard.
Fortunately, there's no copyright on the act of wearing a nightshirt with a top hat. US law largely considers costume designs "useful articles" rather than works of authorship unless they have a pictorial work printed on them. It's "fruits of one's labor" yet not subject to exclusive rights.
Irrelevant, but I'll answer anyhow. They were not first. Sucks to be them but we don't all get to win the race.
So before I publish a work that I created, what can I do to tell whether it unintentionally violates another's copyright?
Yes it is [a right] - in fact, it's created on inception.
Yes, under current law, the privilege of copyright comes into being when a work is fixed in tangible medium. But when copyright begins is independent of whether it is a right.
When you fail to compensate someone for the fruits of their labor, it is slavery.
Is our failure to continue to compensate the heirs of the inventor of patent leather "slavery"?
Ownership is complete - that's what ownership is. It promotes the arts and sciences because they're able to control it and thus decide how it's used, when it is used, and who gets to use it.
How are you certain that absolute ownership is a better way "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than something other than absolute ownership?
I believe it is something like Article 1 that gives congress the right to make such a law
Article I, clause 8, gives Congress the power to create copyright but not the obligation to do so. This differs from the Bill of Rights, which gives Congress the obligation not to create certain laws by taking powers away from it.
Rights aren't given to you by the government. You already have them by grace of birth. Do you have to ask the government to breath?
Yes. People had to petition the government for the Clean Air Act.
For the fruits of your labor?
Fruits of one's labor include externalities. And yes, in general, people do have to petition the government for exclusive rights to extract rents from externalities. Copyright is a rent extracted from the externality of the existence of a work of authorship.
The ability to own it, to control it, even to revoke access (an unfortunate side effect but must be included because it's ownership, by right) is a basic human right.
Say I build and sell you a chair. Should I have the power to demand that you return that chair because I want "to revoke access" to its design? I disagree with you that the right to revoke access to something that has been published "is a basic human right". And no, I'm not the only person to believe that way; Leigh Beadon agrees with me and disagrees with you.
the GPL that I know you're familiar with and (as I recall) a fan of - is also based on copyright and gets its powers from copyright regulations. Should someone just be able to take the code, edit it, and sell it without giving back to the community and not give out the source when they do so?
If there were no copyright, it would be lawful to disassemble proprietary software, thoroughly comment the disassembly, and distribute the commented disassembly to others. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's what Richard Stallman had originally planned to do in the printer driver kerfuffle that kicked off the whole GNU project.
TPP, if it extends Canadian copyright, extends it by 20 years. This means there are at least 20 years before Canada is likely to be willing to agree to a re-extension to match Mexico. And there are only eight years left on U.S. copyright in the works where Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh debuted.
How does it promote it? It encourages people to produce stuff
Except often, someone who produces stuff gets sued by someone who produced older stuff, claiming that the new stuff is too similar to the older stuff.
The price is not one concern - it's their rights that you're infringing on.
Despite its name, copyright is not a right but a privilege. Again, how does the grant of the privilege to withdraw a work from availability "promote the Progress"?
The Constitution doesn't give you rights, it enumerates rights you already have (or should have).
Copyright is not listed as an enumerated right of the people. It is listed there as an enumerated power of the Congress, one that it may choose to exercise or not to exercise. And unlike several other enumerated powers, it has its purpose ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts") written directly in the Constitution, ostensibly to give the people a way to measure whether the Congress is doing its job.
"We hold these truths to be self evident..."
Sorry, wrong document. This appears in the Declaration, not the Constitution.
There are at least two games I like to play that were only ever released in Japan, as they are a licensed property of a company over there, there is no way a PC or SNES game from 1993 is going to be made available on the WIi U there or here. So my only option is to play a pirate copy in a SNES or PC emulator because these games were never officially localized.
Now I'm waiting for KGIII to pipe up and call you an entitled whiner. As KGIII explained in a reply to one of my own comments to this story, you have the option to do without the game, and in fact, doing without is the only legal option.
The game drops to 15FPS on consoles
Star Fox drops to 15 FPS on consoles yet still sold. What makes Just Cause 3 materially different from Star Fox in this respect?
Answering your likely next thought-terminating cliché: What makes oranges materially different from apples?
Maybe one idea is to have a clearinghouse by each country to handle it, where part of people's taxes go to fund said clearinghouse, and people get a royalty to how often their content is downloaded or seen.
I think that's what collecting societies such as BMI, ASCAP, and Harry Fox were supposed to be for. But unfortunately, not enough kinds of work have collecting societies.
Remember as a kid, you were told that if you didn't copy that floppy, that game prices would go down?
Well, back then, I'd pay $50 for a game.
"Don't Copy That Floppy" was in 1992. The Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator estimates that $50.00 in 1992 had the same buying power at $84.58 last year (2015). Moreover, the play-through time of a modern game is far longer than that of a typical NES game.
They change the rosters. Online opponents are unlikely to be willing to settle for outdated rosters, even if the publisher chooses to keep running the matchmaking servers for versions with outdated rosters.
So the fact that they won't steal when they're older makes it okay for them to steal now?
I doubt they're shoplifting in any substantial numbers. Copyright infringement is not stealing, and stealing is not copyright infringement.
very little money is lost to piracy
Developers would seem to disagree, so much so that they're willing to spend a considerable amount of money and effort to add DRM to their games.
Developers or publishers?
Every time a PC game is pirated, it moves the developer closer to going console-only with their next release
Which leaves an opening for another studio to enter the PC market. In fact, a new studio has to enter the PC market first because console makers require studios to show financial stability and experience.
The roommate.
That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: Now who compensates me for having been tainted with "access" to the copyrighted works that the roommate or store plays?
The theater goers.
That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: To whom shall royalties be paid for a performance of a play by Shakespeare?