>Except for those of us who think that songs over 30 years old have already been STOLEN from the public domain.
Including those that have been "stolen" by their *living* authors? That would be the most radical public domain position I've ever heard. I would support "Death + zero days" or "incentives to release to PD" or some such, but I can't imagine forcing things into the public domain for living authors.
I like to make/home partitions the size of my backup volume (currently 800GB/LTO-4). That way I can be sure that a block-level backup will fit on a single uncompressed volume.
Wow. I can't believe they are so high priced now. I've known several people with Mog's but they were vintage style of course, and the most expensive one sold for about $7500.
>One guy commits two two heinous felonies, somehow lawyers his way out of long prison terms, and another guy, a) steals a purse, b) hits a parked car >and runs away, and c) steals bubble gum from the store goes to prison for life. I'm not sure how any sane, thinking person on this planet can't see >the glaring flaw with this system.
If California prisons were just overflowing with bubblegum theives, maybe more people would see the flaw. Since it hasn't really manifested as a problem in practice, just a hypothetical one, people who choose their fights choose other ones.
>Yes, they have, and they still are. Get your facts straight.
WB did not, and the article makes no such claim.
My facts are as straight as the limited information allows them to be, but I am not under the mistaken impression that WB, in particular, distributed this work. I'm right, but several posters are jumping at the chance to tell me I'm wrong.
>The article claims that some major labels are also continuing to sell the song after the licence expired.
But they had a license at some point. This is a royalty payment issue. Mechanical licenses aren't an on-off kind of affair. The issue with MySpace is a non-starter (MySpace has no obligation here). The issue with WB is tempting, but not really -- they didn't distribute his work, all they did was persuade MySpace to do something they had a right to do.
But it sounds like he has a royalty dispute with Island / Universal. That might not be as difficult to pursue as he's making it sound, but it also might be a problem that he has proceeded in bad faith (Slashdot posting, for instance).
Has he actually asked for royalties from the infringers, and in what form? Is he represented by a Performance Rights Organization? What were the original terms of the license that has "expired?"
There are a lot of questions here, and none of them have anything to do with MySpace or WB.
Well, the story seems to be that an Island subsidiary used his work on a soundtrack without securing a license from him.
Here is the rub: Because he has already distributed this work (e.g., MySpace), it is subject to Compulsory Licensing. That means, if he succeeds in proving his case, he may be entitled to a modest royalty, but he probably won't be able to get massive, bankrupting fines against the company, or cause all the copies of the album to be destroyed.
This and the opportunity to seek statutory damages, are the reasons you should register your copyrights and not rely on common law copyright.
Or maybe this is all the reason to put your work under Creative Commons licensing. He's probably getting a better deal from Island than he would if he'd signed -- they are publishing his work, putting physical media out there, and he doesn't owe them anything...
>This sounds like Warner needs to be sued. Big money lawsuit!
No, he has a possible claim against Island/Universal, but it's unlikely to be "big money". He can probably get a judgment for compulsory license / mechanical license royalties.
>Actually, they do have obligation, legally, to their users.
Only if they were obligated to carry the content in the first place (e.g., artist had a contract with them), which they weren't.
MySpace can just as well tell him to pound sand because he caused them to get a phone call from WB. Or they can tell him nothing at all, and just cancel his account.
MySpace customer service is worse than Ebay's, by the way. He's not going to get anything out of this, except for being free of MySpace.
>it's MySpace's job to fix it and allow the song to be streamed.
If they want to.
They have the right to refuse service. They don't need a better reason than the song already caused them trouble that they want to avoid. They can probably even cancel the guy's account for no reason at all. If MySpace doesn't have that in an indemnity clause I'll eat my hair.
>That is simply the introduction that led him to discover that a MAJOR RECORD LABEL is distributing his COPYRIGHTED content without >license and making money off him.
Separate issue - and it seems MySpace did him a favor. If he can prove the infraction he has the same rights that the record label would have if the parties were reversed, although it's not known whether he has done the necessary things to ensure statutory damages.
He can probably just bill them for compulsory license royalties and quietly receive whatever mechanical license would have been negotiated anyway. If he can prove it.
>The real question is why WB doesn't owe him several billion dollars for piracy.
They haven't distributed his work.
What they have done is to persuade MySpace to refuse to stream his work. Unless someone can show otherwise, MySpace doesn't violate any law or abridge any rights by not streaming his work. They don't need a reason, but they have one (WB is inconvenient).
It would be completely different if he had a contract with MySpace (or with WB) but he doesn't.
So publish the song. If WB sues you, enjoy the triple damages when you point out to a judge that they were given notice of this error long before they filed suit. If WB doesn't sue you (which they won't), then there's not a copyright case here.
MySpace is irrelevant. They are just refusing service for their own reasons. You can't force them to give you service unless you can prove they are in breach of a contract.
>>The Majors are required by law to care only about shareholder profits.
>Bullshit. Show me the US Code, Title, and section of said law.
It's just an exaggeration of the idea that a shareholder can claim damages based on irresponsible decisions by a corporate board, which is true, more or less. But it's a ridiculously biased, agenda-driven exaggeration, that comes nowhere close to reflecting reality.
Corporations are powerful because they can aggregate wealth in ways that individuals cannot. Some tightly-knit families who pool resources can also operate like corporate entities. It's aggregate wealth that gives them power, not some magical special laws that so many people seem to believe exist, but cannot cite. The very phrase "corporate personhood" is a biased way of pointing out that corporations have rights and responsibilities under the law. If corporations didn't have rights, the people who own and operate those corporations would have rights, and the situation would be no different.
The real problem is that they have indefinitely long lifetimes and can build wealth that individuals rarely even aspire to, and those things give them power. Proposed solutions such as limiting their lifespan or limiting their wealth aren't going to get far.
>The copyright owner's rights are being abridged by a fraudulent copyright claim from WB. Like if I showed up at your house, said I >owned the place, and everyone simply agreed with me and kicked you out of your home.
Property rights (and the rights one has as a defense against simple assault) are not the same as copyright.
So the artist probably has recourse against WB, but MySpace certainly has the right to refuse service to him, for no reason at all, or for the reason that his presence has caused them trouble with WB.
It sucks, but I don't think MySpace has done anything illegal, or anything that can be claimed as damages in a civil action.
The artist may be in a good position against WB because WB has claimed ownership of his intellectual property. His best approach would probably be a quiet one -- bill WB for royalties through a P.R.O.
>If WB is issuing DMCA notices, the artist just has to issue a counter notice. If WB fails to file suit in 14 days, the service >provider must restore access to the copyrighted material.
Or what? Be fined?
I'm guessing the consequences for "not restoring access" are something less than a bankrupting fine that puts the board of directors in orange jumpsuits cleaning up the highway.
I think you would be unable to give a specific law that they are breaking. My assumption is that they have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at all, and that a misunderstanding of a copyright claim does not fall into the usual actionable exceptions (race, gender, religion, handicap).
It's different if the artist actually has a negotiated contract, where consideration (e.g., money) changed hands for the purpose of executing such a contract. If that's the case, and the refusal puts MySpace in breach, then it's not a copyright matter at all - it's a contract dispute.
Unfortunately for the artist, this is more a case of MySpace saying "we don't have to do anything for you and you have to accept that" and I think they are right. Solution: Don't use MySpace.
Slashdot Mirror
>MMO game economies have raw materials invariably going for higher prices than the finished goods for a reason
It still puzzles me that I can get ten gold for one [Fadeleaf], when a [Lesser Invisibility Potion] won't sell for 50 silver.
>Except for those of us who think that songs over 30 years old have already been STOLEN from the public domain.
Including those that have been "stolen" by their *living* authors? That would be the most radical public domain position I've ever heard. I would support "Death + zero days" or "incentives to release to PD" or some such, but I can't imagine forcing things into the public domain for living authors.
I like to make /home partitions the size of my backup volume (currently 800GB/LTO-4).
That way I can be sure that a block-level backup will fit on a single uncompressed
volume.
>Would the Unimog be considered general purpose?
Wow. I can't believe they are so high priced now. I've known several people with Mog's but they were vintage style of course, and the most expensive one sold for about $7500.
>One guy commits two two heinous felonies, somehow lawyers his way out of long prison terms, and another guy, a) steals a purse, b) hits a parked car
>and runs away, and c) steals bubble gum from the store goes to prison for life. I'm not sure how any sane, thinking person on this planet can't see
>the glaring flaw with this system.
If California prisons were just overflowing with bubblegum theives, maybe more people would see the flaw. Since it hasn't really manifested as a problem in practice, just a hypothetical one, people who choose their fights choose other ones.
>Slander of Title?
Applies to real property, but not to copyright.
>Again, it's not a magical special law that I can't cite. It's the US Code.
It doesn't give them powers that it denies you, which is my point.
>Yes, they have, and they still are. Get your facts straight.
WB did not, and the article makes no such claim.
My facts are as straight as the limited information allows them to be, but I am not under the mistaken impression that WB, in particular, distributed this work. I'm right, but several posters are jumping at the chance to tell me I'm wrong.
>Yes they have. Allow me to quote because you're obviously too busy to RTFA (but not too busy to render an >opinion, obviously):
I did RTFA, and it didn't say that WB distributed his song. A subsidiary of Universal may have done so, but that's not WB.
>The article claims that some major labels are also continuing to sell the song after the licence expired.
But they had a license at some point. This is a royalty payment issue. Mechanical licenses aren't an on-off kind of affair.
The issue with MySpace is a non-starter (MySpace has no obligation here). The issue with WB is tempting, but not really -- they didn't distribute his work, all they did was persuade MySpace to do something they had a right to do.
But it sounds like he has a royalty dispute with Island / Universal. That might not be as difficult to pursue as he's making it sound, but it also might be a problem that he has proceeded in bad faith (Slashdot posting, for instance).
Has he actually asked for royalties from the infringers, and in what form? Is he represented by a Performance Rights Organization? What were the original terms of the license that has "expired?"
There are a lot of questions here, and none of them have anything to do with MySpace or WB.
>What's the going rate for copyright piracy now?
Well, the story seems to be that an Island subsidiary used his work on a soundtrack without securing a license from him.
Here is the rub: Because he has already distributed this work (e.g., MySpace), it is subject to Compulsory Licensing.
That means, if he succeeds in proving his case, he may be entitled to a modest royalty, but he probably won't be able to get massive, bankrupting fines against the company, or cause all the copies of the album to be destroyed.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/115.html#c
This and the opportunity to seek statutory damages, are the reasons you should register your copyrights and not rely on common law copyright.
Or maybe this is all the reason to put your work under Creative Commons licensing. He's probably getting a better deal from Island than he would if he'd signed -- they are publishing his work, putting physical media out there, and he doesn't owe them anything...
>This sounds like Warner needs to be sued. Big money lawsuit!
No, he has a possible claim against Island/Universal, but it's unlikely to be "big money". He can probably get a judgment for compulsory license / mechanical license royalties.
>Actually, they do have obligation, legally, to their users.
Only if they were obligated to carry the content in the first place (e.g., artist had a contract with them), which they weren't.
MySpace can just as well tell him to pound sand because he caused them to get a phone call from WB. Or they can tell him nothing at all, and just cancel his account.
MySpace customer service is worse than Ebay's, by the way. He's not going to get anything out of this, except for being free of MySpace.
>it's MySpace's job to fix it and allow the song to be streamed.
If they want to.
They have the right to refuse service. They don't need a better reason than the song already caused them trouble that they want to avoid. They can probably even cancel the guy's account for no reason at all. If MySpace doesn't have that in an indemnity clause I'll eat my hair.
>That is simply the introduction that led him to discover that a MAJOR RECORD LABEL is distributing his COPYRIGHTED content without
>license and making money off him.
Separate issue - and it seems MySpace did him a favor. If he can prove the infraction he has the same rights that the record label would have if the parties were reversed, although it's not known whether he has done the necessary things to ensure statutory damages.
He can probably just bill them for compulsory license royalties and quietly receive whatever mechanical license would have been negotiated anyway. If he can prove it.
>The real question is why WB doesn't owe him several billion dollars for piracy.
They haven't distributed his work.
What they have done is to persuade MySpace to refuse to stream his work. Unless someone can show otherwise, MySpace doesn't violate any law or abridge any rights by not streaming his work. They don't need a reason, but they have one (WB is inconvenient).
It would be completely different if he had a contract with MySpace (or with WB) but he doesn't.
So publish the song. If WB sues you, enjoy the triple damages when you point out to a judge that they were given notice of this error long before they filed suit. If WB doesn't sue you (which they won't), then there's not a copyright case here.
MySpace is irrelevant. They are just refusing service for their own reasons. You can't force them to give you service unless you can prove they are in breach of a contract.
>>The Majors are required by law to care only about shareholder profits.
>Bullshit. Show me the US Code, Title, and section of said law.
It's just an exaggeration of the idea that a shareholder can claim damages based on irresponsible decisions by a corporate board, which is true, more or less. But it's a ridiculously biased, agenda-driven exaggeration, that comes nowhere close to reflecting reality.
Corporations are powerful because they can aggregate wealth in ways that individuals cannot. Some tightly-knit families who pool resources can also operate like corporate entities. It's aggregate wealth that gives them power, not some magical special laws that so many people seem to believe exist, but cannot cite. The very phrase "corporate personhood" is a biased way of pointing out that corporations have rights and responsibilities under the law. If corporations didn't have rights, the people who own and operate those corporations would have rights, and the situation would be no different.
The real problem is that they have indefinitely long lifetimes and can build wealth that individuals rarely even aspire to, and those things give them power. Proposed solutions such as limiting their lifespan or limiting their wealth aren't going to get far.
Simple solution: Form a corporation and use these amazing powers yourself?
>I don't think it's a "right" to be able to stream music via MySpace.
It would be, but only if there is a contract (even a contract of adhesion).
I'm willing to bet MySpace TOS can be read as "MySpace doesn't have to do one thing for you."
>The copyright owner's rights are being abridged by a fraudulent copyright claim from WB. Like if I showed up at your house, said I
>owned the place, and everyone simply agreed with me and kicked you out of your home.
Property rights (and the rights one has as a defense against simple assault) are not the same as copyright.
So the artist probably has recourse against WB, but MySpace certainly has the right to refuse service to him, for no reason at all, or for the reason that his presence has caused them trouble with WB.
It sucks, but I don't think MySpace has done anything illegal, or anything that can be claimed as damages in a civil action.
The artist may be in a good position against WB because WB has claimed ownership of his intellectual property. His best approach would probably be a quiet one -- bill WB for royalties through a P.R.O.
>If WB is issuing DMCA notices, the artist just has to issue a counter notice. If WB fails to file suit in 14 days, the service
>provider must restore access to the copyrighted material.
Or what? Be fined?
I'm guessing the consequences for "not restoring access" are something less than a bankrupting fine that puts the board of directors in orange jumpsuits cleaning up the highway.
>So, can I create takedown notices for the videos that labels upload themselves?
Yes. A C&D letter isn't a magical instrument. It's only legal meaning is to give "notice."
You can even file a lawsuit. You'll get thrown out of court and possibly fined if you press it too hard.
I think you would be unable to give a specific law that they are breaking. My assumption is that they have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at all, and that a misunderstanding of a copyright claim does not fall into the usual actionable exceptions (race, gender, religion, handicap).
It's different if the artist actually has a negotiated contract, where consideration (e.g., money) changed hands for the purpose of executing such a contract. If that's the case, and the refusal puts MySpace in breach, then it's not a copyright matter at all - it's a contract dispute.
Unfortunately for the artist, this is more a case of MySpace saying "we don't have to do anything for you and you have to accept that" and I think they are right. Solution: Don't use MySpace.