I think that telling other people that you are going to infringe and if it's to be stopped, the violated must "OPT OUT" is inane and insane. I am going to hit everyone, and if you want me not to, please opt out, otherwise I claim I have implicit consent to hit you? That's just crazy talk.
Except punching is not copyright infringement. A better analogy is another government enforced right, property ownership. If you go on someone else's land without permission, you may be trespassing. But if they don't opt in by placing "no trespassing signs" the property owner cannot claim damages. They can still tell them to get the hell off their property and don't come back, but they can't tell them to stay off all the property they own, wherever it happens to be, unless they actually tell the person where all those properties are. The reason for this is simple. Trespassing and copyright violation are both things you can do by accident (did someone renew the copyright on this really old book? Who knows?) They are both acts that can potentially cause harm, but generally do not. Understand?
So the RIAA would have to send out a notice "Stop sharing our songs" before they can sure someone for damages?
Not in all cases, but in many, cases especially when the copyright is in question, as in the case of really old books. The truth is, since Google provides a means by which anyone can opt out of their service, the burden of proof then shifts to the copyright holder to prove that they lost money. Since this is really hard to do, especially from a republished excerpt, there is no way any judge in his right mind would award any damages for this. Or so it was explained to me by a lawyer I know. I was a little toasted at the time, so the details are hazy.
The data Google sends out is potentially infringing and if their service could be "convinced" to give the user a copy of the entire book Google has created an illegal copy.
In that case Google has built a tool and someone else used it to create a complete copy of the work, from their database. In which case, Google's copy, in their database would probably no longer enjoy fair use protection and they'd have to remove it upon request of the copyright holder (which they do anyway).
Xerox didn't make the copy, Google did.
You misunderstand, making a copy is almost never illegal. Republishing a copy is often illegal. This is why all the lawsuits about downloading mp3's you see turn out to really be about uploading mp3's. So in that case, the user is making the copy, from the tool Google provides, opening Google up to potential contributory copyright infringement charges. It would never stick though.
Maybe for an example of the problems with copyright you might read up on the problems regarding HP Lovecraft's works and copyright disputes after his death, with legal battles stopping or delaying the publishing/republishing of many of his stories and letters. In fact, if not for the generosity of distant descendants of his aunt, his works would still be languishing, many unpublished and copyright would not begin to expire on any of them for another year. His works survived 100 years due to the careful stewardship of two other authors, but who is to say how many of his contemporaries' works have had the last copy crumble to dust, or ruined in a flood, or tossed in the trash over the last 30 years?
Last I checked, the deposit requirement was still in the law.
I believe it changed the same time the law switched to an automatic opt-in. I'm almost certain no copies of my books were sent, but the copyright is still enforced.
In the short term, you are correct; but lawmakers consider both the short- and long-term.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Whew! That's a good one. You did not notice the perpetual copyright we now endure, and the ongoing disintegration of works created over the last 30 years? Lawmakers consider lobbying dollars and have happily sold out our future so certain companies can make tiny percentage more money with less competition.
In the long-term, copyright provides an incentive for people to create new things, and that benefits everyone in society.
Interestingly, even the US supreme court disagrees with you and states that in their opinion the current copyright laws are obviously not benefitting society. Only through a technicality of the wording have they not been struck down (Congress claims they are merely incompetent not being malicious and the supreme court does not have the authority to judge that they are lying).
Arguably, without copyright we would have many fewer interesting works as part of our culture.
Arguably with copyright we would have a lot more interesting works as part our culture. Have you heard the story of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life?" Sit down and take a load off and I'll spin you a tale. It was crap. It was a huge box office flop. It was tossed in a warehouse and left to rot. It was thoroughly unprofitable. There it sat until the copyright expired, many years later. PBS, strapped for cash, aired it near the holidays and it became a classic overnight. Like most great works, it was not immediately recognized as such. Under our current laws, that would never happen. No one would have ever heard of the movie because no one would have though it might make money for them.
No work has entered the public domain in 30 years and it seems unlikely that many ever will. In 130 years or so they'll probably extend copyrights again and if they don't most works will have been lost entirely or DRM will prevent them from playing. Under our current system the criteria for being available to the public is some executive's guess about profitability and that usually means anything unusual is out. Almost every one of the most popular TV shows of all time was either cancelled in its first season or saved by some weird chance.
So you're sitting here and telling me you really think the fact that 99% of the works for the last 30 years being unavailable to the public benefits society? I'm sorry, but you're nuts. Motivation is great and all but a 2 year copyright will work fine as motivation as 99% of works make most of their money in the first 2 years. And money is not even the biggest motivator for most artists. And finally, there are plenty of ways to make money without copyright, especially in this day and age of technology. Half the money made by Disney, or more comes from trademarks, not copyright. Do you really think if copyright went away entirely or was limited to 2 years, they'd just close up shop and go home, leaving those billions for someone else? Not a chance.
The damage to society our current laws are doing is more severe than the benefits it is bringing. We need to fix it. If we can't fix it, abolishing it entirely is better than what we have now. I say this as someone who makes most of my living writing and selling copyrighted works.
And how does your right to free speech apply? No one is taking away your right to free speech. Or do you consider the inability of an artist to regulate their own work, regardless of your desire to rip off their creations, as free speech?
You sing a new song. I hear it and like it. I sing it too. The government grants you some of my money in compensation, taken at gunpoint if necessary. That is a restriction on my freedom of speech.
Copyright is a limited restriction (government sponsored) on free speech (a natural right). The only justification for that restriction is the benefit it can bring to society. The framers of copyright law in the US attempted to maximize the benefit to society and get as much for society as possible. Give copyright holders the minimum restriction to free speech necessary to motivate them to create more works, for the least amount of time that will do it. Don't take my word for it, there are some very good discussions of the topic by the founding fathers that express it in that same way. Several of them (Jefferson and Franklin I believe) were opposed to copyright at all fearing it would become like the great publishing houses in Europe (which is very similar to what we have now).
In fact, the constitution only grants the right to enforce copyrights for a limited time and for the purpose of encouraging science and useful arts. The supreme court actually ruled that our current copyright laws do not do that in their opinion, but because of the wording it is not their place to judge the intent of congress. As a result even though the laws don't do what they say, so long as congress claims they are trying, but incompetent instead of malicious, the supremes can't strike the laws down.
I love how so many at slashdot don't give a crap to the rights of the artist and only consider their own rights. Rights work both ways. You may not consider it a "natural right" but I'm sure the creator of these works feel otherwise. If you were making a living off of these works I bet your rhetoric would do a 180.
This is funny because I'm a professional writer, with numerous published works and copyright provides the majority of my income. My own self-interest, however, does not blind me to the nature of human rights, nor to the adverse effect these laws have on our society.
Free speech is a natural right. The fact that you don't understand that copyright is not, and is in fact a restriction on free speech is sadly understandable. Several powerful interests have been spewing propaganda to convince you for decades that it is a natural right.
For the most part, works owned by corporate interests were sold to them or hired out. This is a part of the law of copyright and essential to having paid artists. Without this, as you said, we "remove[s] all the advantages of capitalism. It is unworkable in the long term."
Not at all, without copyright there are still other ways to profit from works, within capitalism. It is only socialist concept of flat rates for all that removes those benefits. But I think copyright can be a boon to society, if it is properly implemented. It currently is not even close in the US. Did you read my examples of why it is not beneficial? Do you care about the thousands of books, TV show, songs, games, movies, and other works that will never reach the general public and never become popular because copyright forbids it, even for works whose author's are dead (and hence can't be motivated) or don't even know they have the rights to a work. I doubt any dead authors are going to get up and write something new so why are their works not free to all? How does society benefit by those works being restricted by whomever own the rights?
If we had laws like we do now, 2000 years ago, would we even have any great literature? What about the rights of the people who wrote the Bible? Shouldn't we stop all reduplication of it until the descendants of those people can be located and properly compensated for each copy? Does
$5 million for a working game or site that shows MMO growth potential. "It's so hard to predict what will take off," Gurley says, "that it's easier to pay more for something that's further along."
I've thought about this type of thing for a long time. There are several open source gaming engines out there, including fully functioning, community driven, MMORPGs. He mentions that it is easier to start with something further along. A few million spent on some full time developers for bug fixes and a few million on artwork and story development and a few million spent on setting up servers/bandwidth and getting marketing agreements and this sort of a setup could really take off. I say, harness the online community's desire to make things and profit on your stories and advertising.
Here's what I envision. Build one of these engines so that it accepts modules which are artwork+story in a new, open standard format. Run a site providing a short, pro quality game supported by ads. Try to get every company you can to bundle it on computers they sell and OS's they distribute. Aside from the advertising in the client/site, you sell closed source pro dev tools (with a freeware version). You sell new modules at a fraction of the price other games cost (lesser by the reused code cost). You provide free hosting for other people's modules they want to sell (a percentage off the top).
The mod community would go nuts for something like this and if you snag one of the existing cross platform engines, a lot of your work is done for you and you can reach the mostly latent linux and mac mod crew. And, seeing as the engine is open source you get free bug fixes and improvements from the open source community. I think you could make a fortune and undercut everyone. Too bad I'm too busy to put this together. Someone please, steal this idea.
Are you saying you're unaware of the massive problems caused by our current copyright system, including the massive destruction of works and the government enforced prevention of old works from being revived?
Copyright gives an artist a right to determine how (and if) his/her work will be distributed. Calling up a flat fee and telling an artist that they do not have rights to the distribution of their work is nonsense. And ultimately who's to decide who gets what fee for what work?
With this I agree. A flat rate removes all the advantages of capitalism. It is unworkable in the long term.
It seems that one of your problems is that government currently has say in copyright and that eliminating current copyright gets rid of so many issues surrounding it... but who controls the end product?
Ummm, copyright is an artificial government granted right, not a natural right. It is the government restricting free speech for the greater good. The government not being involved would mean there is no copyright. I don't think most people want it abolished, just severely reformed to benefit the people.
Not all media can be judged by those "high up" without infringing on the artists rights in some way.
Sadly, right now much of the availability of copyrighted works is determined by those "high up" in corporate distribution houses. Media executives are notoriously terrible at determining what should and should not be available to the public. They tend to minimize risk, which means shutting down anything abnormal. But almost all great works are abnormal. Most are not recognized as great for some time. With current copyright, that usually means never. Heck look at the top 10 TV shows of all time. How many were cancelled after their first season, or only saved by some weird chance?
With current copyright law, that pretty much means those works vanish from both the market and the public consciousness, and never get another shot. One of the two major reasons for copyright was so that works wouldn't be kept secret and would eventually become available to the general public. Now, copyright never expires and the last copy of works often vanish without it ever being available to the general public. My favorite example for shorter copyright durations is "It's a wonderful life." It's a classic, right? It was a box office flop and was tossed in a warehouse after the initial showings. If copyright then was as it is today, no one would have ever heard of this film. But no, the copyright expired, and PBS aired it. It became an instant classic and part of our culture (and somehow became re-copyrighted through legal shenanigans). For the last 30 years, nothing has come out of copyright and all indications are nothing may ever do so again. That means they will probably never get a chance to be recognized as a classic or great work. Why? What is the benefit of this to society? Why are we giving up our free speech for this?
Copyright durations should, if anything, be shorter than they originally were, not longer. For the vast majority of works, most of the money is made in the first few years. So make copyrights last only a few years and creators will have only slightly less incentive to create them, but society will benefit from having all of them available. Classics will no longer vanish and we will have a real, evolving artistic heritage again, instead of this stagnating run of remakes we have now.
Napster lost a case of "contributory copyright infringement." In order for there to be a contributory copyright case, there has to be a clear cut case of regular copyright infringement, which they are facilitating. They were found to have provided tools, and been aware of specific instances of infringement, and to have the technology to stop them, but did not because the infringement benefitted them. Further, the courts agreed that their use would negatively impact the market for said works.
This differs from the Google case in that, there is no case of regular copyright infringement that anyone is aware of, there is no evidence that they are negatively effecting the market, and they are only republishing excerpts of the works. They seem to meet all the fair-use criteria in accordance with previous legal precedent. I hope tht clarifies the issue, as much as possible given the mess that our laws are currently in.
What if the government took over the project and said they would digitize all books and make an online national library. Would they be able to?
Yes, and this just what other countries have been doing.
Or maybe the database of books could only be accessed at librarys.
Technically, I think schools can legally do this right now, if they are so inclined. In the UK I think there are 4 or 5 libraries each of which gets a copy of every copyrighted work. The library of congress got these copies too, until they changed the law in the 70s.
What makes you think they are avialable for free in the public library.
Probably te same thing that makes him think they are available for free at Google books. They republish excerpts in response to a search, not entire works.
...but you don't have to "meet" all four......not a checklist of standards where you have to meet some specified level on all four, and if you do, you are in the clear.
I was trying to simplify a bit, perhaps a bit too much. If you "meet all four" (your use is favorable in regard to them) then you're almost certainly in the clear. But yes, you're certainly right. The court could make up anything and declare a use to be unfair.
Danish copyright law allows quoting "according to good practice". Very vague. Maybe US law has something similar.
US law considers four criteria for fair use of a copyrighted work, without permission. One of them is "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." This basically means you can republish quotes so long as they don't comprise a significant portion of the whole work. It is a bit more complex than that, but the upshot is Google is probably in the clear.
I'll accept your argument, as long as you get Google to agree that should any digitized copy of a work in their system leak so that more than small excerpts are available on-line, Google will immediately
...not Google's problem. The very same argument was proposed when Xerox machines came into use. The maker of a tool is not responsible for misuse of that tool. Sorry, but Google already goes well beyond their required duties in this regard.
On the other hand, should you be able to prove that Google Books is negatively effecting the market for these books because they are leaking, then Google may well lose the right to republish excerpts in this way, under the fair use doctrine.
...shut down their system, since any argument about being fair use because is does no harm to copyright holders will have been completely annihilated.
The law actually addresses this, but only in terms of the market for these works. If you can prove the market is negatively affected by Google's use, it speaks to the validity of their fair use. Of course since none of the copyright holders can demonstrate any such thing they haven't even bothered making this argument in court, as far as I know.
Just becasue the LOC is part of the government doesn't give it the right to ignore the law.
Actually, the law grants exceptions specifically to the Library of Congress. Before the 70's, in fact, they were required by law to be provided with 2 free, perfect copies of all works to be copyrighted. Sadly, that was before the laws were critically mangled by lobbyists.
So how is it that laws, continued by rich, enforced by order of the rich, and that benifit mostly the rich get so much support on/. ?
Partly I suspect because those promoting the current copyright regimes pay a lot of astroturfers. Also, in general, I think support is the result of propaganda that tricks people into thinking that copyright is a natural right and because the topic is somewhat complex and most people don't care to take the time to understand it, so they believe what they hear.
The only people copyright benefits are the creators of content.
You're mistaken. Copyright often benefits the distributors of content more than the creators. This is especially true in industries like the music business where a cartel controls distribution. Most artists lose money on copyrights. They actually have to pay to be distributed, more than their copyright makes, and make up the difference doing live shows and selling trademarked goods. And in general, the creators of copyright are dead long before their copyright expires, which means it sure as hell isn't benefitting them unless there is a way to take it with you.
So if they can show everyone is doing it, and thus get away with it, then all I have to do is show "everyone" is downloading mp3's and I can get away with it.
No, if you can show you meet the balance of the fair use criteria for UPLOADING mp3's, including that you're not negatively affecting the market, then you can "get away with it." As far as I know, it is still in limbo if downloading copyrighted mp3's is illegal at all and I've yet to see a court case challenging it.
If Google uses the digitized books for self economic interest is not ok, I wonder what you guys think about peer-to-peer swapping of digitized books? No more 'economic benefits', is that ok?
You're probably thinking about the fact that non-commercial copyright infringement was legal up until the 70's and many people think it still is. Legally, it is not nearly as simple as you seem to think. It is not whether or not Google is making any money that is under consideration, but whether their way of making money is negatively effecting the market for the works they have copied. Also, that is only one of several criteria under consideration. For example, teacher playing a movie for his students may mean one of those students does not go out and buy it, negatively effecting the market, but that particular aspect is outweighed by the fact that it is being used for educational purposes.
In the case of Google books, Google is not profiting by giving away the content of the books, but by providing a service that lets others find the books they want. The information they are profiting from is actually meta-data about the books. Legal precedent thus far is that you can copy entire works for the purpose of presenting portions of that work that allow others to intelligently find and choose between different works.
So, if they get a pass with 'everyone else is doing it', do I get the same if I want do download some songs or MP3s? Can I just tell the **AA that 'everyone else is doing it', and that everyone is a lot higher number than the folks google is talking about.
Well, there is a lot wrong with your post. First, to my knowledge no one in the US has yet been sued for downloading songs, only uploading. Somehow, however, the MPAA has managed to get the term "downloading" into the public consciousness. I always look at these articles that say "downloading" and every time they then mention uploading in the actual case.
Next, "everyone doing something" speaks to part of one of the four fair use criteria for legal copying and republishing of works without a copyright holder's permission (effect upon the market). If you meet all these criteria (as Google seems to) then by all means you can tell the RIAA to shove it, although you may have to go to court to prove it. For example, if you download a song and burn part of it to CD and hand them out to your students as part of their homework on modern culture, you probably have met all the criteria for fair use. and whether the copyright holder likes it or not, they're going to lose if they take you to court.
I must have missed the bill where the "everyone is doing it" defense was made valid.
For copyright it does make a difference because the laws are based upon the effect of an action. Fair use allows people to copy works without the copyright holder's permission in certain instances. So far, the legal precedent pretty much is all in Google's favor, but because the effect of their action on the market is one of the four things considered for fair use, showing that the market in general is already doing this is an important legal point to shut down any arguments about that provision.
If my buddy and I violate someone's copyright, and the copyright holder sues me and not him, guess what? That's his or her decision.
You've got this all wrong. This is to determine if they are violating the copyright. An analogy is firing a gun. Sometimes it is target practice and legal and sometimes it is murder. Google copied works. Now the law is determining if that copying is illegal.
But, clearly, scanning in entire books has far more to do with copyrights than trademarks, at least in this case.
Yes, this is a copyright case, but not all copying is illegal and some is specifically designated as legal. For example, the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to copy every image you can find on the internet, and store those images, for the purpose of providing a thumbnail image of those images for profit. That is because what is being sold is meta-data about where you can find an image, not the images themselves. The courts have also ruled that making low quality copies of porn images and making them available is illegal, because the intent was for people to just look at the images and the effect upon the market was to deprive the copyright holders of business.
What Google is doing in almost every way is similar to the former. They copy an entire work, but only for the purpose of providing an excerpt and "selling" information about what books will be helpful. Now, if they were to image and post certain works, like dictionaries or recipe books, with excerpts that are all a person wants, they might be in trouble, except for the fact that in order to claim damages a copyright holder has to have notified the violator of the infringement, and Google already removes any book at the request of the copyright holder.
But in starting my own company, I have yet to run across this personell problems. The reason is, over the years, I have kept in contact with the well paid but very productive people I have worked with. At this point I have a short list of extremely amazing employees who would drop what they're doing to work for my company when the time comes.
This is how a lot of companies start, including this one. Fast forward about 5 years down the road when you've grown to 100+ employees, most of whom were referred by someone internally. Trying to find more, really competent people with a clue when it comes to network security is no easy task. Those we have are overworked. So what do we do? We look for chunks of code that have little to do with our main business and which we're not really great at anyway. Then we hire someplace to write it for us. It works and it really is helping a lot.
And their companies are now going downhill. But they don't care, they have their millions.
Almost everyone here has stock options and none of us have cashed out and left since we have not IPO'd. A lot of the original crew have grown and moved on. Google poached a few. The people at the top were hired because we knew they were in it for the long haul. Smart executives can gut a company and make themselves some real cash. Smarter executives can grow a stable company worth a fortune as an acquisition or IPO. We're all acting our best interests here, including the executives. We just make sure their best interests coincide with those of the employees as well.
If you have any doubts about how well this works, we're a poster child for venture capitalists. Every year we're written up for how consistently the company's profits are increasing and how quickly we went from a start-up to stable and profitable. We're talking 100% year on year growth, while profitable, for many years now.
I believe you should hire people and give them ownership and high pay. That's a long term strategy.
In general I agree with you, but sometimes outsourcing does make sense. The conditions for this are, tasks that are outside the core competency of your organization, where there is sufficient competition, and where failure is not disastrous. The company I work for treats us very well. We also outsource some work to foreign nations. The thing is, we make sure the code we contract them for is modular and while we don't treat them with distrust, we also don't give them access to all our code. For small companies in particular it may make sense to outsource the development of chunks of code that is not vital, but which provides added value. We know the risks associated with it, but the cost savings is important right now. We're also in a field where good workers are sometimes hard to find. We almost always have open slots for people because we're rapidly growing and coders who meet our high standards are hard to come by. I just thought it was important to note that outsourcing really does make sense for some situations, just not in the long term for many of those situations to which it is currently being applied by American companies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that telling other people that you are going to infringe and if it's to be stopped, the violated must "OPT OUT" is inane and insane. I am going to hit everyone, and if you want me not to, please opt out, otherwise I claim I have implicit consent to hit you? That's just crazy talk.
Except punching is not copyright infringement. A better analogy is another government enforced right, property ownership. If you go on someone else's land without permission, you may be trespassing. But if they don't opt in by placing "no trespassing signs" the property owner cannot claim damages. They can still tell them to get the hell off their property and don't come back, but they can't tell them to stay off all the property they own, wherever it happens to be, unless they actually tell the person where all those properties are. The reason for this is simple. Trespassing and copyright violation are both things you can do by accident (did someone renew the copyright on this really old book? Who knows?) They are both acts that can potentially cause harm, but generally do not. Understand?
So the RIAA would have to send out a notice "Stop sharing our songs" before they can sure someone for damages?
Not in all cases, but in many, cases especially when the copyright is in question, as in the case of really old books. The truth is, since Google provides a means by which anyone can opt out of their service, the burden of proof then shifts to the copyright holder to prove that they lost money. Since this is really hard to do, especially from a republished excerpt, there is no way any judge in his right mind would award any damages for this. Or so it was explained to me by a lawyer I know. I was a little toasted at the time, so the details are hazy.
The data Google sends out is potentially infringing and if their service could be "convinced" to give the user a copy of the entire book Google has created an illegal copy.
In that case Google has built a tool and someone else used it to create a complete copy of the work, from their database. In which case, Google's copy, in their database would probably no longer enjoy fair use protection and they'd have to remove it upon request of the copyright holder (which they do anyway).
Xerox didn't make the copy, Google did.
You misunderstand, making a copy is almost never illegal. Republishing a copy is often illegal. This is why all the lawsuits about downloading mp3's you see turn out to really be about uploading mp3's. So in that case, the user is making the copy, from the tool Google provides, opening Google up to potential contributory copyright infringement charges. It would never stick though.
One more thing, I noticed your sig:
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Maybe for an example of the problems with copyright you might read up on the problems regarding HP Lovecraft's works and copyright disputes after his death, with legal battles stopping or delaying the publishing/republishing of many of his stories and letters. In fact, if not for the generosity of distant descendants of his aunt, his works would still be languishing, many unpublished and copyright would not begin to expire on any of them for another year. His works survived 100 years due to the careful stewardship of two other authors, but who is to say how many of his contemporaries' works have had the last copy crumble to dust, or ruined in a flood, or tossed in the trash over the last 30 years?
Last I checked, the deposit requirement was still in the law.
I believe it changed the same time the law switched to an automatic opt-in. I'm almost certain no copies of my books were sent, but the copyright is still enforced.
In the short term, you are correct; but lawmakers consider both the short- and long-term.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Whew! That's a good one. You did not notice the perpetual copyright we now endure, and the ongoing disintegration of works created over the last 30 years? Lawmakers consider lobbying dollars and have happily sold out our future so certain companies can make tiny percentage more money with less competition.
In the long-term, copyright provides an incentive for people to create new things, and that benefits everyone in society.
Interestingly, even the US supreme court disagrees with you and states that in their opinion the current copyright laws are obviously not benefitting society. Only through a technicality of the wording have they not been struck down (Congress claims they are merely incompetent not being malicious and the supreme court does not have the authority to judge that they are lying).
Arguably, without copyright we would have many fewer interesting works as part of our culture.
Arguably with copyright we would have a lot more interesting works as part our culture. Have you heard the story of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life?" Sit down and take a load off and I'll spin you a tale. It was crap. It was a huge box office flop. It was tossed in a warehouse and left to rot. It was thoroughly unprofitable. There it sat until the copyright expired, many years later. PBS, strapped for cash, aired it near the holidays and it became a classic overnight. Like most great works, it was not immediately recognized as such. Under our current laws, that would never happen. No one would have ever heard of the movie because no one would have though it might make money for them.
No work has entered the public domain in 30 years and it seems unlikely that many ever will. In 130 years or so they'll probably extend copyrights again and if they don't most works will have been lost entirely or DRM will prevent them from playing. Under our current system the criteria for being available to the public is some executive's guess about profitability and that usually means anything unusual is out. Almost every one of the most popular TV shows of all time was either cancelled in its first season or saved by some weird chance.
So you're sitting here and telling me you really think the fact that 99% of the works for the last 30 years being unavailable to the public benefits society? I'm sorry, but you're nuts. Motivation is great and all but a 2 year copyright will work fine as motivation as 99% of works make most of their money in the first 2 years. And money is not even the biggest motivator for most artists. And finally, there are plenty of ways to make money without copyright, especially in this day and age of technology. Half the money made by Disney, or more comes from trademarks, not copyright. Do you really think if copyright went away entirely or was limited to 2 years, they'd just close up shop and go home, leaving those billions for someone else? Not a chance.
The damage to society our current laws are doing is more severe than the benefits it is bringing. We need to fix it. If we can't fix it, abolishing it entirely is better than what we have now. I say this as someone who makes most of my living writing and selling copyrighted works.
And how does your right to free speech apply? No one is taking away your right to free speech. Or do you consider the inability of an artist to regulate their own work, regardless of your desire to rip off their creations, as free speech?
You sing a new song. I hear it and like it. I sing it too. The government grants you some of my money in compensation, taken at gunpoint if necessary. That is a restriction on my freedom of speech.
Copyright is a limited restriction (government sponsored) on free speech (a natural right). The only justification for that restriction is the benefit it can bring to society. The framers of copyright law in the US attempted to maximize the benefit to society and get as much for society as possible. Give copyright holders the minimum restriction to free speech necessary to motivate them to create more works, for the least amount of time that will do it. Don't take my word for it, there are some very good discussions of the topic by the founding fathers that express it in that same way. Several of them (Jefferson and Franklin I believe) were opposed to copyright at all fearing it would become like the great publishing houses in Europe (which is very similar to what we have now).
In fact, the constitution only grants the right to enforce copyrights for a limited time and for the purpose of encouraging science and useful arts. The supreme court actually ruled that our current copyright laws do not do that in their opinion, but because of the wording it is not their place to judge the intent of congress. As a result even though the laws don't do what they say, so long as congress claims they are trying, but incompetent instead of malicious, the supremes can't strike the laws down.
I love how so many at slashdot don't give a crap to the rights of the artist and only consider their own rights. Rights work both ways. You may not consider it a "natural right" but I'm sure the creator of these works feel otherwise. If you were making a living off of these works I bet your rhetoric would do a 180.
This is funny because I'm a professional writer, with numerous published works and copyright provides the majority of my income. My own self-interest, however, does not blind me to the nature of human rights, nor to the adverse effect these laws have on our society.
Free speech is a natural right. The fact that you don't understand that copyright is not, and is in fact a restriction on free speech is sadly understandable. Several powerful interests have been spewing propaganda to convince you for decades that it is a natural right.
For the most part, works owned by corporate interests were sold to them or hired out. This is a part of the law of copyright and essential to having paid artists. Without this, as you said, we "remove[s] all the advantages of capitalism. It is unworkable in the long term."
Not at all, without copyright there are still other ways to profit from works, within capitalism. It is only socialist concept of flat rates for all that removes those benefits. But I think copyright can be a boon to society, if it is properly implemented. It currently is not even close in the US. Did you read my examples of why it is not beneficial? Do you care about the thousands of books, TV show, songs, games, movies, and other works that will never reach the general public and never become popular because copyright forbids it, even for works whose author's are dead (and hence can't be motivated) or don't even know they have the rights to a work. I doubt any dead authors are going to get up and write something new so why are their works not free to all? How does society benefit by those works being restricted by whomever own the rights?
If we had laws like we do now, 2000 years ago, would we even have any great literature? What about the rights of the people who wrote the Bible? Shouldn't we stop all reduplication of it until the descendants of those people can be located and properly compensated for each copy? Does
$5 million for a working game or site that shows MMO growth potential. "It's so hard to predict what will take off," Gurley says, "that it's easier to pay more for something that's further along."
I've thought about this type of thing for a long time. There are several open source gaming engines out there, including fully functioning, community driven, MMORPGs. He mentions that it is easier to start with something further along. A few million spent on some full time developers for bug fixes and a few million on artwork and story development and a few million spent on setting up servers/bandwidth and getting marketing agreements and this sort of a setup could really take off. I say, harness the online community's desire to make things and profit on your stories and advertising.
Here's what I envision. Build one of these engines so that it accepts modules which are artwork+story in a new, open standard format. Run a site providing a short, pro quality game supported by ads. Try to get every company you can to bundle it on computers they sell and OS's they distribute. Aside from the advertising in the client/site, you sell closed source pro dev tools (with a freeware version). You sell new modules at a fraction of the price other games cost (lesser by the reused code cost). You provide free hosting for other people's modules they want to sell (a percentage off the top).
The mod community would go nuts for something like this and if you snag one of the existing cross platform engines, a lot of your work is done for you and you can reach the mostly latent linux and mac mod crew. And, seeing as the engine is open source you get free bug fixes and improvements from the open source community. I think you could make a fortune and undercut everyone. Too bad I'm too busy to put this together. Someone please, steal this idea.
At this point? Nothing.
Are you saying you're unaware of the massive problems caused by our current copyright system, including the massive destruction of works and the government enforced prevention of old works from being revived?
Copyright gives an artist a right to determine how (and if) his/her work will be distributed. Calling up a flat fee and telling an artist that they do not have rights to the distribution of their work is nonsense. And ultimately who's to decide who gets what fee for what work?
With this I agree. A flat rate removes all the advantages of capitalism. It is unworkable in the long term.
It seems that one of your problems is that government currently has say in copyright and that eliminating current copyright gets rid of so many issues surrounding it... but who controls the end product?
Ummm, copyright is an artificial government granted right, not a natural right. It is the government restricting free speech for the greater good. The government not being involved would mean there is no copyright. I don't think most people want it abolished, just severely reformed to benefit the people.
Not all media can be judged by those "high up" without infringing on the artists rights in some way.
Sadly, right now much of the availability of copyrighted works is determined by those "high up" in corporate distribution houses. Media executives are notoriously terrible at determining what should and should not be available to the public. They tend to minimize risk, which means shutting down anything abnormal. But almost all great works are abnormal. Most are not recognized as great for some time. With current copyright, that usually means never. Heck look at the top 10 TV shows of all time. How many were cancelled after their first season, or only saved by some weird chance?
With current copyright law, that pretty much means those works vanish from both the market and the public consciousness, and never get another shot. One of the two major reasons for copyright was so that works wouldn't be kept secret and would eventually become available to the general public. Now, copyright never expires and the last copy of works often vanish without it ever being available to the general public. My favorite example for shorter copyright durations is "It's a wonderful life." It's a classic, right? It was a box office flop and was tossed in a warehouse after the initial showings. If copyright then was as it is today, no one would have ever heard of this film. But no, the copyright expired, and PBS aired it. It became an instant classic and part of our culture (and somehow became re-copyrighted through legal shenanigans). For the last 30 years, nothing has come out of copyright and all indications are nothing may ever do so again. That means they will probably never get a chance to be recognized as a classic or great work. Why? What is the benefit of this to society? Why are we giving up our free speech for this?
Copyright durations should, if anything, be shorter than they originally were, not longer. For the vast majority of works, most of the money is made in the first few years. So make copyrights last only a few years and creators will have only slightly less incentive to create them, but society will benefit from having all of them available. Classics will no longer vanish and we will have a real, evolving artistic heritage again, instead of this stagnating run of remakes we have now.
Didn't Napster try that argument and lose?
Napster lost a case of "contributory copyright infringement." In order for there to be a contributory copyright case, there has to be a clear cut case of regular copyright infringement, which they are facilitating. They were found to have provided tools, and been aware of specific instances of infringement, and to have the technology to stop them, but did not because the infringement benefitted them. Further, the courts agreed that their use would negatively impact the market for said works.
This differs from the Google case in that, there is no case of regular copyright infringement that anyone is aware of, there is no evidence that they are negatively effecting the market, and they are only republishing excerpts of the works. They seem to meet all the fair-use criteria in accordance with previous legal precedent. I hope tht clarifies the issue, as much as possible given the mess that our laws are currently in.
What if the government took over the project and said they would digitize all books and make an online national library. Would they be able to?
Yes, and this just what other countries have been doing.
Or maybe the database of books could only be accessed at librarys.
Technically, I think schools can legally do this right now, if they are so inclined. In the UK I think there are 4 or 5 libraries each of which gets a copy of every copyrighted work. The library of congress got these copies too, until they changed the law in the 70s.
What makes you think they are avialable for free in the public library.
Probably te same thing that makes him think they are available for free at Google books. They republish excerpts in response to a search, not entire works.
I was trying to simplify a bit, perhaps a bit too much. If you "meet all four" (your use is favorable in regard to them) then you're almost certainly in the clear. But yes, you're certainly right. The court could make up anything and declare a use to be unfair.
Danish copyright law allows quoting "according to good practice". Very vague. Maybe US law has something similar.
US law considers four criteria for fair use of a copyrighted work, without permission. One of them is "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." This basically means you can republish quotes so long as they don't comprise a significant portion of the whole work. It is a bit more complex than that, but the upshot is Google is probably in the clear.
I'll accept your argument, as long as you get Google to agree that should any digitized copy of a work in their system leak so that more than small excerpts are available on-line, Google will immediately
...not Google's problem. The very same argument was proposed when Xerox machines came into use. The maker of a tool is not responsible for misuse of that tool. Sorry, but Google already goes well beyond their required duties in this regard.
On the other hand, should you be able to prove that Google Books is negatively effecting the market for these books because they are leaking, then Google may well lose the right to republish excerpts in this way, under the fair use doctrine.
The law actually addresses this, but only in terms of the market for these works. If you can prove the market is negatively affected by Google's use, it speaks to the validity of their fair use. Of course since none of the copyright holders can demonstrate any such thing they haven't even bothered making this argument in court, as far as I know.
Just becasue the LOC is part of the government doesn't give it the right to ignore the law.
Actually, the law grants exceptions specifically to the Library of Congress. Before the 70's, in fact, they were required by law to be provided with 2 free, perfect copies of all works to be copyrighted. Sadly, that was before the laws were critically mangled by lobbyists.
So how is it that laws, continued by rich, enforced by order of the rich, and that benifit mostly the rich get so much support on /. ?
Partly I suspect because those promoting the current copyright regimes pay a lot of astroturfers. Also, in general, I think support is the result of propaganda that tricks people into thinking that copyright is a natural right and because the topic is somewhat complex and most people don't care to take the time to understand it, so they believe what they hear.
The only people copyright benefits are the creators of content.
You're mistaken. Copyright often benefits the distributors of content more than the creators. This is especially true in industries like the music business where a cartel controls distribution. Most artists lose money on copyrights. They actually have to pay to be distributed, more than their copyright makes, and make up the difference doing live shows and selling trademarked goods. And in general, the creators of copyright are dead long before their copyright expires, which means it sure as hell isn't benefitting them unless there is a way to take it with you.
So if they can show everyone is doing it, and thus get away with it, then all I have to do is show "everyone" is downloading mp3's and I can get away with it.
No, if you can show you meet the balance of the fair use criteria for UPLOADING mp3's, including that you're not negatively affecting the market, then you can "get away with it." As far as I know, it is still in limbo if downloading copyrighted mp3's is illegal at all and I've yet to see a court case challenging it.
Anyone care to explain why this is not mod abuse?
If Google uses the digitized books for self economic interest is not ok, I wonder what you guys think about peer-to-peer swapping of digitized books? No more 'economic benefits', is that ok?
You're probably thinking about the fact that non-commercial copyright infringement was legal up until the 70's and many people think it still is. Legally, it is not nearly as simple as you seem to think. It is not whether or not Google is making any money that is under consideration, but whether their way of making money is negatively effecting the market for the works they have copied. Also, that is only one of several criteria under consideration. For example, teacher playing a movie for his students may mean one of those students does not go out and buy it, negatively effecting the market, but that particular aspect is outweighed by the fact that it is being used for educational purposes.
In the case of Google books, Google is not profiting by giving away the content of the books, but by providing a service that lets others find the books they want. The information they are profiting from is actually meta-data about the books. Legal precedent thus far is that you can copy entire works for the purpose of presenting portions of that work that allow others to intelligently find and choose between different works.
So, if they get a pass with 'everyone else is doing it', do I get the same if I want do download some songs or MP3s? Can I just tell the **AA that 'everyone else is doing it', and that everyone is a lot higher number than the folks google is talking about.
Well, there is a lot wrong with your post. First, to my knowledge no one in the US has yet been sued for downloading songs, only uploading. Somehow, however, the MPAA has managed to get the term "downloading" into the public consciousness. I always look at these articles that say "downloading" and every time they then mention uploading in the actual case.
Next, "everyone doing something" speaks to part of one of the four fair use criteria for legal copying and republishing of works without a copyright holder's permission (effect upon the market). If you meet all these criteria (as Google seems to) then by all means you can tell the RIAA to shove it, although you may have to go to court to prove it. For example, if you download a song and burn part of it to CD and hand them out to your students as part of their homework on modern culture, you probably have met all the criteria for fair use. and whether the copyright holder likes it or not, they're going to lose if they take you to court.
I must have missed the bill where the "everyone is doing it" defense was made valid.
For copyright it does make a difference because the laws are based upon the effect of an action. Fair use allows people to copy works without the copyright holder's permission in certain instances. So far, the legal precedent pretty much is all in Google's favor, but because the effect of their action on the market is one of the four things considered for fair use, showing that the market in general is already doing this is an important legal point to shut down any arguments about that provision.
If my buddy and I violate someone's copyright, and the copyright holder sues me and not him, guess what? That's his or her decision.
You've got this all wrong. This is to determine if they are violating the copyright. An analogy is firing a gun. Sometimes it is target practice and legal and sometimes it is murder. Google copied works. Now the law is determining if that copying is illegal.
But, clearly, scanning in entire books has far more to do with copyrights than trademarks, at least in this case.
Yes, this is a copyright case, but not all copying is illegal and some is specifically designated as legal. For example, the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to copy every image you can find on the internet, and store those images, for the purpose of providing a thumbnail image of those images for profit. That is because what is being sold is meta-data about where you can find an image, not the images themselves. The courts have also ruled that making low quality copies of porn images and making them available is illegal, because the intent was for people to just look at the images and the effect upon the market was to deprive the copyright holders of business.
What Google is doing in almost every way is similar to the former. They copy an entire work, but only for the purpose of providing an excerpt and "selling" information about what books will be helpful. Now, if they were to image and post certain works, like dictionaries or recipe books, with excerpts that are all a person wants, they might be in trouble, except for the fact that in order to claim damages a copyright holder has to have notified the violator of the infringement, and Google already removes any book at the request of the copyright holder.
But in starting my own company, I have yet to run across this personell problems. The reason is, over the years, I have kept in contact with the well paid but very productive people I have worked with. At this point I have a short list of extremely amazing employees who would drop what they're doing to work for my company when the time comes.
This is how a lot of companies start, including this one. Fast forward about 5 years down the road when you've grown to 100+ employees, most of whom were referred by someone internally. Trying to find more, really competent people with a clue when it comes to network security is no easy task. Those we have are overworked. So what do we do? We look for chunks of code that have little to do with our main business and which we're not really great at anyway. Then we hire someplace to write it for us. It works and it really is helping a lot.
And their companies are now going downhill. But they don't care, they have their millions.
Almost everyone here has stock options and none of us have cashed out and left since we have not IPO'd. A lot of the original crew have grown and moved on. Google poached a few. The people at the top were hired because we knew they were in it for the long haul. Smart executives can gut a company and make themselves some real cash. Smarter executives can grow a stable company worth a fortune as an acquisition or IPO. We're all acting our best interests here, including the executives. We just make sure their best interests coincide with those of the employees as well.
If you have any doubts about how well this works, we're a poster child for venture capitalists. Every year we're written up for how consistently the company's profits are increasing and how quickly we went from a start-up to stable and profitable. We're talking 100% year on year growth, while profitable, for many years now.
I believe you should hire people and give them ownership and high pay. That's a long term strategy.
In general I agree with you, but sometimes outsourcing does make sense. The conditions for this are, tasks that are outside the core competency of your organization, where there is sufficient competition, and where failure is not disastrous. The company I work for treats us very well. We also outsource some work to foreign nations. The thing is, we make sure the code we contract them for is modular and while we don't treat them with distrust, we also don't give them access to all our code. For small companies in particular it may make sense to outsource the development of chunks of code that is not vital, but which provides added value. We know the risks associated with it, but the cost savings is important right now. We're also in a field where good workers are sometimes hard to find. We almost always have open slots for people because we're rapidly growing and coders who meet our high standards are hard to come by. I just thought it was important to note that outsourcing really does make sense for some situations, just not in the long term for many of those situations to which it is currently being applied by American companies.