There are two types of copyright, "original works" and "collective work".
The copyright of original works is for just that, original work, like a song, or a book, or a program.
A Collective work is a collection of original works, like the "hits of the 90's" compilation of songs.
The copyright of a collective work is much weaker than for an original work, it only protects the collection or arrangement of the original works, and you still need copyright permission to use the original works in your collection.
The collective copyright on "hits of the 90's" doesnt stop someone from changing one song in the collection, or perhaps just the order, and claiming its a new collection, and therefore eligible as its own collective work.
So to say its not copyrightable because its just facts is an oversimplification, something might be copyright able as a collective work and but not an original work AFAIK.
So if TPB didnt store the torrent file locally, if they just facilitated the storage and retrieval of the torrent file from a 3rd party site, then they might be a common carrier ?
TPB refused to remove the files and stated that their goal was piracy.
AFAIK if TPB could even possibly be considered a common carrier then its legally irresponsible to remove a file, they would lose any chance they had of being considered a "common carrier" and might become liable for all content that has and will passes through them.
2) Most of the content accessible through Google is legal, in the sense that the people who own the copyright have shared it explicitly on their website, which is crawled by Google
So are you saying that "making available" information is equivalent to a grant of copyright license when a website does it, but its a copyright violation when TPB does it ?
Just because its on a website instead of a torrent doesnt make it more legal.
However, I'm not aware of any service that is explicitly set up to flout the law,
Not all torrents on the pirate bay violate copyright, the fact that a minority of its torrents arent violating copyright, eg linux ISO's, is significant in a legally sense AFAIK.
... "victimless" crimes...
Interesting point, just because everybody smokes doesnt make it ok.... that would end up a political argument i think.
If you know that as soon as you release something you've put a lot of work into, everyone can just copy it for free, then what incentive do you have to do the work in the first place?
People should be contracted/commissioned to do the work, if that happens they dont need to be paid in the future.
e.g. Governments/Buisness pays microsoft hundreds of millions a year to have office, why not chip in and pay someone to work on openoffice to ensure it meets their requirements. They save money, everyone else saves money.
The argument against it is that people wont spend money to save money if it means other people save money without spending money. i.e. selfish
Firstly a nitpick, copyright infringement is not stealing in a legal sense, "stealing" is theft, copyright infringement is just that.
There are lots of examples in law where providers of a service arent held responsible for how their customers us that service.
e.g. Car markers arent responsible for people speeding, but they still make cars with engines capable of doing twice the speed limit.
Telephone companies arent responsible for what is said over the phone, or images sent via fax, they have a legal exemption as a common carrier.
Computer hardware manufacturers arent help accountable for computers being used to perform copyright infingment.
An argument is that such services providers arent reasonably capable of policing their services, and i think thats a reasonable argument for most torrent sites, they just dont have the bandwidth and manpower to download, view and investigate the legality of the torrent.
TPB is in a more difficult situation as they refused to follow through and take down torrents even when they have been reasonably shown to be violating copyright. One issue is that they if they censor one torrent, then it can be claimed that they are acting as an editor, and as such can be help liable for all the torrents on the site.
Also, we should be a little bit object and consider that "everyone is doin it, so it cant be that bad".
International law is out of sync with societies views on copyright protection, something has to give, and it wont be the masses.
My own view is that as a society we should be encouraging people "to work", rather than "have worked", copyright protections encourages people to stop working and live of their past actions. Look at some of the old rock bands going around, they make money of "Performance" (the present) rather than "recordings" (the past)
Android is open, and it has the advantage of being built by people who know what they're doing and is thus a usable, competitive phone.
Android is being built by people who saw what openmoko was doing and said to themselves "lets take that idea and make it less free", reminds me of microsoft, buy em out boys...
Why not have an industry body contract out and pay for the software their niche industry needs.
If the costs can be spread far enough, then its not worth the overhead of managing it as a "Commerical product", just let it free and trust the comunity to maintain it.
With software the "performance" is the creation of the source code.
On the other hand, distributing compiled code is not performance.
Its been realized by the leading edge for many years, that software needs to operate as a service's industry, unlike hardware which is a manufacturing industry.
Man the Barricades, the technology is trying to get in...
Whats the name of the religious nut^W people, where they hide on their farm from technology are use carts etc ? (god^Wdamnit i was going to try make a joke about them that also insulted religion)
So is it the shredders fault, or the persons pushing its buttons fault...
Should shredders have to be registered, do we need a government agency to review everything before it goes into the shredder to make sure the user isnt doing something wrong ?
I think the whole point to the bit-torrent argument is that the music cartels are trying to place restrict on file sharing technology just because it might be used to break a law.
If society goes around banning things that might be used to break a law then eventually everything will be banned.
If we are going to be honest, let us all (RIAA, MPAA etc) admit that its people, not technology that violate copyrights.
If we are going to be honest, how about the Music cartels refund all the royalties they collect from the sale BLANK cd's and dvd's. (they arent all used to violate copyright)
If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA stop labeling copyright infringer's as thieves (copyright violation isnt theft, different law).
If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA confess all the dirty legal and technical methods they have used in their attempt to convict anyone they can (other than the sony hack we already know about)
Its a dirty fight, the other side isnt interested in honesty or fairness, i say we fight them any way we can.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two types of copyright, "original works" and "collective work".
The copyright of original works is for just that, original work, like a song, or a book, or a program.
A Collective work is a collection of original works, like the "hits of the 90's" compilation of songs.
The copyright of a collective work is much weaker than for an original work, it only protects the collection or arrangement of the original works, and you still need copyright permission to use the original works in your collection.
The collective copyright on "hits of the 90's" doesnt stop someone from changing one song in the collection, or perhaps just the order, and claiming its a new collection, and therefore eligible as its own collective work.
So to say its not copyrightable because its just facts is an oversimplification, something might be copyright able as a collective work and but not an original work AFAIK.
Ahhh, my libertarian nutbag comment for the day!
How ironic that that you posted anonymously.
So if TPB didnt store the torrent file locally, if they just facilitated the storage and retrieval of the torrent file from a 3rd party site, then they might be a common carrier ?
TPB refused to remove the files and stated that their goal was piracy.
AFAIK if TPB could even possibly be considered a common carrier then its legally irresponsible to remove a file, they would lose any chance they had of being considered a "common carrier" and might become liable for all content that has and will passes through them.
So the tracker gives clients the ability to be their own search engine, whereas google keeps all their data private.
Is that the difference between good and bad ?
Trackers are bad because they empower individuals, search engines are good because they can be easly be controlled from within.
One day leaders will see freedom as a good thing.
TPB ... often responds with rude, immature, and insulting remarks.
Well, that is a significant difference between TBP and Google, TPB has to go to jail because they they were rude, say no more, case closed.
Manners are what the law is all about !
2) Most of the content accessible through Google is legal, in the sense that the people who own the copyright have shared it explicitly on their website, which is crawled by Google
So are you saying that "making available" information is equivalent to a grant of copyright license when a website does it, but its a copyright violation when TPB does it ?
Just because its on a website instead of a torrent doesnt make it more legal.
Googles search engine tracks web content, TPB tracks bittorrent content.
Can you really not see a similarity, do you think a court of Law understands technology better than slashdot ?
Maybe the TPB has to do is rename their tracker to search engine and hide behind google.
However, I'm not aware of any service that is explicitly set up to flout the law, Not all torrents on the pirate bay violate copyright, the fact that a minority of its torrents arent violating copyright, eg linux ISO's, is significant in a legally sense AFAIK. ... "victimless" crimes ...
Interesting point, just because everybody smokes doesnt make it ok.... that would end up a political argument i think.
If you know that as soon as you release something you've put a lot of work into, everyone can just copy it for free, then what incentive do you have to do the work in the first place?
People should be contracted/commissioned to do the work, if that happens they dont need to be paid in the future.
e.g. Governments/Buisness pays microsoft hundreds of millions a year to have office, why not chip in and pay someone to work on openoffice to ensure it meets their requirements. They save money, everyone else saves money.
The argument against it is that people wont spend money to save money if it means other people save money without spending money. i.e. selfish
Firstly a nitpick, copyright infringement is not stealing in a legal sense, "stealing" is theft, copyright infringement is just that.
There are lots of examples in law where providers of a service arent held responsible for how their customers us that service.
e.g. Car markers arent responsible for people speeding, but they still make cars with engines capable of doing twice the speed limit.
Telephone companies arent responsible for what is said over the phone, or images sent via fax, they have a legal exemption as a common carrier.
Computer hardware manufacturers arent help accountable for computers being used to perform copyright infingment.
An argument is that such services providers arent reasonably capable of policing their services, and i think thats a reasonable argument for most torrent sites, they just dont have the bandwidth and manpower to download, view and investigate the legality of the torrent.
TPB is in a more difficult situation as they refused to follow through and take down torrents even when they have been reasonably shown to be violating copyright. One issue is that they if they censor one torrent, then it can be claimed that they are acting as an editor, and as such can be help liable for all the torrents on the site.
Also, we should be a little bit object and consider that "everyone is doin it, so it cant be that bad".
International law is out of sync with societies views on copyright protection, something has to give, and it wont be the masses.
My own view is that as a society we should be encouraging people "to work", rather than "have worked", copyright protections encourages people to stop working and live of their past actions. Look at some of the old rock bands going around, they make money of "Performance" (the present) rather than "recordings" (the past)
Was Google created to promote and facilitate illegal file-sharing?
Maybe, when was the last time you checked the copyright of a webpage, do you know you have permission to download that html file ?
I should confess that i dont actually use it to talk to people much, im not that mobile myself (always within a few feet of a PC so i email).
I guess the reason i like it is more as a handheld as well, havent tried koolu, using SHR atm, will give it a go.
Android is open, and it has the advantage of being built by people who know what they're doing and is thus a usable, competitive phone.
Android is being built by people who saw what openmoko was doing and said to themselves "lets take that idea and make it less free", reminds me of microsoft, buy em out boys...
Im not a heavy user, but openmoko is the only phone ive had that i want to carry around with me.
I dont care so much about the current software, as long as it can fix (by me if it annoys me that much) then thats the main thing.
I expect to use it as my one an only mobile phone for many years.
Why not have an industry body contract out and pay for the software their niche industry needs.
If the costs can be spread far enough, then its not worth the overhead of managing it as a "Commerical product", just let it free and trust the comunity to maintain it.
how do video games work as a service industry?
A monthly fee, like MMO games.
And why do we have to completely redesign the way games are played because people are too tight assed to pay for your entertainment?
You answered your own question, people are too tight arsed to pay for their entertainment, so the industry has to find another way.
Blaming the customer doesnt work in the long run.
But commercial content can NOT be free. It has to be paid for.
There, fixed it for you.
With software the "performance" is the creation of the source code.
On the other hand, distributing compiled code is not performance.
Its been realized by the leading edge for many years, that software needs to operate as a service's industry, unlike hardware which is a manufacturing industry.
Man the Barricades, the technology is trying to get in...
Whats the name of the religious nut^W people, where they hide on their farm from technology are use carts etc ? (god^Wdamnit i was going to try make a joke about them that also insulted religion)
All thats happened is Microsoft have improved their propaganda, woops i mean to say PR.
Its not software (GNOME vs KDE) thats holding back the adoption of Free software, its educating the brainwashed masses.
Are you saying flooding in Bangladesh is caused by Global Warming? If you are, then you are an idiot.
If you are saying one isolated (and probably misinterpreted) statement makes a person an idiot, you are an idiot !?!
blah blah blah they are only interested in promoting their own ideas, not in discovering truth.
In my view blah blah blah
And the seeding ratio is not relevent in determining if its a "substantial portion", someone might be sending a small portion on a large scale.
So is it the shredders fault, or the persons pushing its buttons fault...
Should shredders have to be registered, do we need a government agency to review everything before it goes into the shredder to make sure the user isnt doing something wrong ?
I think the whole point to the bit-torrent argument is that the music cartels are trying to place restrict on file sharing technology just because it might be used to break a law.
If society goes around banning things that might be used to break a law then eventually everything will be banned.
If we are going to be honest, let us all (RIAA, MPAA etc) admit that its people, not technology that violate copyrights.
If we are going to be honest, how about the Music cartels refund all the royalties they collect from the sale BLANK cd's and dvd's. (they arent all used to violate copyright)
If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA stop labeling copyright infringer's as thieves (copyright violation isnt theft, different law).
If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA confess all the dirty legal and technical methods they have used in their attempt to convict anyone they can (other than the sony hack we already know about)
Its a dirty fight, the other side isnt interested in honesty or fairness, i say we fight them any way we can.
woops, false alarm, tin foil hat removed...