Here are some of my favorite artists, with works that other slashdotters might enjoy:
1. Brian Dettmer: Dettmer reshapes and reforms older media like old textbooks, technical manuals, cassette tapes, and dictionaries, to make really fascinating derivative works. My favorites are his carved books, many of which are viewable here.
2. Jason Salavon: Salavon uses software to make art out of preexisting information, with some diverse and surprising work. His work is all displayed on his website.
3. Ai Kijima: Kijima recycles original bed sheets, table cloths, kimonos, and other fabrics to make colorful quilted collages, many of which use pop culture icons. Her work is viewable on her website.
The law does not allow you to make or distribute a copy of the modified work with teh deleted scenes. It only allows you to sell and use technology that removes segments to create the modified work. So, it would be legal to distribute a device that transforms The Phantom Menace into The Phantom Edit, but not to distribute The Phantom Edit by itself. It seems to me that this would be tricky to accomplish with a DVD player unless it is specifically designed for it, but would be easier with software on a computer (but would DeCSS be required?!?).
Adobe has also been a successful defendant in a DMCA lawsuit over font software embedded in PDFs. The court held that non-mandatory bit flags that can be used for copy protection are not effective access controls under the DMCA and that disregarding those flags is not necessarily a violation of the DMCA. (The lawsuit was brought by Agfa Monotype Corporation.)
IAAL, and to make a trademark application of the kind that is at issue here, you have to make a declaration that you have a bona fide intent to use the trademark.
HOWEVER, on Ultracade's website, there is an open letter to the MAME community dated February 21, 2005 in which they write:
"We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos."
In other words, they are admittedly committing fraud on the Trademark Office.
I agree that Cringely's fair use analysis is incorrect. A corporation's ownership of a work does not give rise to the ability to make unlimited copies for use by the corporation. For example, in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 60 F.3d 913 (2d Cir. 1995), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that it was not fair use for a company to make copies of a journal article for reference by company scientists. The court held that Texaco would have to either get a special license or otherwise purchase a copy for each employee. Why would the shareholders of Snapster have any additional rights to make unlimited copies?
If anyone cares: It is not exactly accurate to say that the "trial" is over because there was no trial in this case. The judge decided that it was not necessary to have a trial on the facts because the RIAA parties could not win as a matter of law. This is called "summary judgment."
ISPs have almost always been protected from contributory copyright infringement suits. Even before this one aspect of the DMCA gave a "safe harbor" to ISPs, some courts looked like they would do the same thing (e.g. the Netcom case).
This provision of the DMCA is good because it protects the people who provide the pipes from copyright suits. Other provisions of the DMCA such as the anti-circumvention provisions (see the DeCSS case) and overbearing notice-and-take-down rules (closely related to the ISP safe harbor) are what people should worry about, not the whole DMCA.
Go back and look. Boromir dies in the second volume, but it makes sense to include this part in the first movie. This is really a minor point. Nevertheless, a spoiler warning would have been appropriate...
Be careful. Just because someone went to law school doesn't mean that they don't come from an open source programmer's background, or don't have the same political inclinations as you do...
My experience (as a law student) has been that most copyright law students do have the pro-copyright bias, but the balance is tipping. Damn, as soon as I pay off my student loans, I'd love to go work for the EFF!
I'm sorry, moderate the parent down. Only Americans need to register their works in order to bring suit. Both Americans and foreign nationals need to register to be eligible for attorney's fees and statutory damages.
This is proof that there needs to be a copyright FAQ, when even the copyright students screw it up.
Yes, a copyright FAQ for Slashdot is an excellent idea.
Another point that is relevant to this discussion is that only American programmers need to register their code with the Copyright Office to get statutory damages and attorney's fees. Foreign nationals don't have to do this because of the United States international copyright treaty obligations. Anyone who is interested can look directly at the provision in the legal source, the U.S. copyright law, 17 U.S.C. section 412.
Of course the case is a copyright case. It held that it was fair use to make intermediate copies of Sega games in the process of reverse engineering. But, with respect to the wholesale copying and use of the initialization code, there was no copyright claim, only a trademark claim.
From the opinion: "In this appeal, Sega does not raise a separate claim of copyright infringement with respect to the header file." Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510, 1516 (9th Cir. 1992).
In Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), Sega did not allege that use of the initialization code was a copyright infringement. They only said that Accolade could not use it because it triggered the "SEGA" display on boot-up (an alleged trademark infringement).
But, I don't see why a whole copy of aim.exe could not be included for the sole purpose of acheiving interoperability under Sega and the more recent Sony v. Connectix, 203 F.3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000), cert. denied. To be sure, these cases do not directly say that you can copy a whole program for this purpose, but the reasoning is exactly the same!
If someone claimed that one of your laws was unconstitutional, you'd intervene too! Notice that the brief only goes so far as to argue that the law is constitutional, not that the MPAA should win, or anything like that.
You raise a good point. Furthermore, the whole premise of the American judicial system is that that the adversary system is the best way to get at the truth. Both sides throw up their best arguments and the fact-finder decides who is right.
I guarantee that the subway stop distribution of free Backstreet Boys CDs is copyright infringement. You would be violating the right to make and distribute copies. While the noncommercial nature of copying is a factor that suggests fair use, it is only one factor.
If you don't believe me, look at what is happening to Napster. The only reason that Napster has committed copyright infringement is because its users are committing direct infringement (the court even said that it amounted to "commercial" infringement by the users because they would not buy the CDs).
It is not a simple matter to trace the requestor of a file on Freenet, unless the attacker can do some good traffic analysis. Read this and dive into the documentation if you have doubts.
Napster effectively lost and will be subject to a preliminary injunction while the trial goes on.
The court held that Napster users were infringing the record companies' copyrights and that Napster, if it knew about the specific infringement, could be liable. But, Napster allows for noninfringing uses, so it can't just be shut down completely. Thus, the injunction must be modified so that Napster must be informed about specific acts of infringement. Additionally, Napster must take steps to police the system and look for infringement. These steps make it harder for the record companies to turn off Napster, but the court largely agreed with the District Court below.
Interestingly, the court didn't say whether Napster would be protected under the safe harbor of the DMCA. The District Court has to decide.
Slashdot Mirror
The bill would give inventors one year to file an application after they publish their inventions.
You might want to take a look at art by these two artists:
Jason Salavon (http://www.salavon.com/)
Marius Watz (http://www.unlekker.net/)
Here are some of my favorite artists, with works that other slashdotters might enjoy:
1. Brian Dettmer : Dettmer reshapes and reforms older media like old textbooks, technical manuals, cassette tapes, and dictionaries, to make really fascinating derivative works. My favorites are his carved books, many of which are viewable here.
2. Jason Salavon : Salavon uses software to make art out of preexisting information, with some diverse and surprising work. His work is all displayed on his website.
3. Ai Kijima : Kijima recycles original bed sheets, table cloths, kimonos, and other fabrics to make colorful quilted collages, many of which use pop culture icons. Her work is viewable on her website.
Enjoy.
The law does not allow you to make or distribute a copy of the modified work with teh deleted scenes. It only allows you to sell and use technology that removes segments to create the modified work. So, it would be legal to distribute a device that transforms The Phantom Menace into The Phantom Edit, but not to distribute The Phantom Edit by itself. It seems to me that this would be tricky to accomplish with a DVD player unless it is specifically designed for it, but would be easier with software on a computer (but would DeCSS be required?!?).
Adobe has also been a successful defendant in a DMCA lawsuit over font software embedded in PDFs. The court held that non-mandatory bit flags that can be used for copy protection are not effective access controls under the DMCA and that disregarding those flags is not necessarily a violation of the DMCA. (The lawsuit was brought by Agfa Monotype Corporation.)
IAAL, and to make a trademark application of the kind that is at issue here, you have to make a declaration that you have a bona fide intent to use the trademark.
HOWEVER, on Ultracade's website, there is an open letter to the MAME community dated February 21, 2005 in which they write:
"We have no desire to use the M.A.M.E. name or logos."
In other words, they are admittedly committing fraud on the Trademark Office.
The "first sale doctrine" allows you to resell an item that you have purchased. The patentee doesn't get to control every sale, only the first.
I also misread it.
Under the fair use analysis, whether the alleged infringer makes copies in order to profit is an important factor.
I agree that Cringely's fair use analysis is incorrect. A corporation's ownership of a work does not give rise to the ability to make unlimited copies for use by the corporation. For example, in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 60 F.3d 913 (2d Cir. 1995), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that it was not fair use for a company to make copies of a journal article for reference by company scientists. The court held that Texaco would have to either get a special license or otherwise purchase a copy for each employee. Why would the shareholders of Snapster have any additional rights to make unlimited copies?
If anyone cares: It is not exactly accurate to say that the "trial" is over because there was no trial in this case. The judge decided that it was not necessary to have a trial on the facts because the RIAA parties could not win as a matter of law. This is called "summary judgment."
"Everything in moderation" is inscribed in Apollo's Delphi in Greece. So it goes way back...
ISPs have almost always been protected from contributory copyright infringement suits. Even before this one aspect of the DMCA gave a "safe harbor" to ISPs, some courts looked like they would do the same thing (e.g. the Netcom case).
This provision of the DMCA is good because it protects the people who provide the pipes from copyright suits. Other provisions of the DMCA such as the anti-circumvention provisions (see the DeCSS case) and overbearing notice-and-take-down rules (closely related to the ISP safe harbor) are what people should worry about, not the whole DMCA.
Go back and look. Boromir dies in the second volume, but it makes sense to include this part in the first movie. This is really a minor point. Nevertheless, a spoiler warning would have been appropriate...
Interestingly enough, Boromir does not die in the book (at least in the first volume).
Be careful. Just because someone went to law school doesn't mean that they don't come from an open source programmer's background, or don't have the same political inclinations as you do...
My experience (as a law student) has been that most copyright law students do have the pro-copyright bias, but the balance is tipping. Damn, as soon as I pay off my student loans, I'd love to go work for the EFF!
I'm sorry, moderate the parent down. Only Americans need to register their works in order to bring suit. Both Americans and foreign nationals need to register to be eligible for attorney's fees and statutory damages.
This is proof that there needs to be a copyright FAQ, when even the copyright students screw it up.
Yes, a copyright FAQ for Slashdot is an excellent idea.
Another point that is relevant to this discussion is that only American programmers need to register their code with the Copyright Office to get statutory damages and attorney's fees. Foreign nationals don't have to do this because of the United States international copyright treaty obligations. Anyone who is interested can look directly at the provision in the legal source, the U.S. copyright law, 17 U.S.C. section 412.
Of course the case is a copyright case. It held that it was fair use to make intermediate copies of Sega games in the process of reverse engineering. But, with respect to the wholesale copying and use of the initialization code, there was no copyright claim, only a trademark claim.
From the opinion: "In this appeal, Sega does not raise a separate claim of copyright infringement with respect to the header file." Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510, 1516 (9th Cir. 1992).
In Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), Sega did not allege that use of the initialization code was a copyright infringement. They only said that Accolade could not use it because it triggered the "SEGA" display on boot-up (an alleged trademark infringement).
But, I don't see why a whole copy of aim.exe could not be included for the sole purpose of acheiving interoperability under Sega and the more recent Sony v. Connectix, 203 F.3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000), cert. denied. To be sure, these cases do not directly say that you can copy a whole program for this purpose, but the reasoning is exactly the same!
If someone claimed that one of your laws was unconstitutional, you'd intervene too! Notice that the brief only goes so far as to argue that the law is constitutional, not that the MPAA should win, or anything like that.
You raise a good point. Furthermore, the whole premise of the American judicial system is that that the adversary system is the best way to get at the truth. Both sides throw up their best arguments and the fact-finder decides who is right.
I guarantee that the subway stop distribution of free Backstreet Boys CDs is copyright infringement. You would be violating the right to make and distribute copies. While the noncommercial nature of copying is a factor that suggests fair use, it is only one factor.
If you don't believe me, look at what is happening to Napster. The only reason that Napster has committed copyright infringement is because its users are committing direct infringement (the court even said that it amounted to "commercial" infringement by the users because they would not buy the CDs).
It is not a simple matter to trace the requestor of a file on Freenet, unless the attacker can do some good traffic analysis. Read this and dive into the documentation if you have doubts.
Napster effectively lost and will be subject to a preliminary injunction while the trial goes on.
The court held that Napster users were infringing the record companies' copyrights and that Napster, if it knew about the specific infringement, could be liable. But, Napster allows for noninfringing uses, so it can't just be shut down completely. Thus, the injunction must be modified so that Napster must be informed about specific acts of infringement. Additionally, Napster must take steps to police the system and look for infringement. These steps make it harder for the record companies to turn off Napster, but the court largely agreed with the District Court below.
Interestingly, the court didn't say whether Napster would be protected under the safe harbor of the DMCA. The District Court has to decide.