What's wrong with current copyright laws?

[Elizium23]

Ed, you are revealing yourself as a shill for the media industry. Your incessant railingagainst anyone who espouses a different view of copyright than your industry does is getting really old.

There is nothing anarchist about alternative licensing methods. However your constant refrain of the party line from the RIAA and the MPAA smacks of oligarchy, which is anti-capitalist and anti-democratic. Please remember that most of us live in the USA here, not in some dictatorship where you are free to force down our throats whatever you decide is right for us.

You did not read anything I wrote. I happen to be a content creator myself. I edit Wikipedia and I sing in the church choir. Now, our choir does not record anything, but we perform every week for the whole parish community and we do not have ushers who shake people down at the door for cameras and recording devices. We as volunteers offer our performance freely for the greater glory of God. Our director has a paid position which is supported in the usual way by the donations of the parish community, and he rightly earns his pay by showing up weekly, rehearsing all our material, selecting all our hymns from the repertoire, and producing worship aids that help the assembly to join us in song. And guess how he creates those worship aids? The publishers license their content to us permissively to create hundreds of copies. Personally, I would prefer for us to buy several hundred hymnals and save the paper we recycle each week, but this is how many parishes do it.

Now for my second content creation career. I am a Wikipedian. I have contributed to Wikipedia for three and a half years and made over 15,000 edits in that time. Every single one of those edits is freely licensed. Every single Wikipedian contributes every single article under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that permits others to redistribute, edit, and even sell derivatives, as long as attribution to the original author is provided. I am sorry, Ed, but your petty insults ring hollow when there are thousands of content creators exploring the joys of alternative licensing.

I rarely pay for software. The only software I have purchased in ten years is a Sherlock Holmes mystery game DVD at a Goodwill for $5. Guess what, Ed? I don’t steal any of it! I prefer to obtain my software legitimately from authors and distributors who have chosen to license it for easy distribution and use free of charge to the consumer. I use Ubuntu Linux and LibreOffice. I use some non-free licensed software that is still free of charge, such as Java. However, I am no deadbeat. I play an online game. This online gaming company gives away their client, and even gives away core development tools that they used to create that game and others that came after it. They don’t charge for any of their software and they don’t charge us to play the game. Guess what, I still manage to have fun and support that company because they charge micro-currency fees for virtual cash. So once in a while I buy up some extra cash, even though I don’t really need it, because it supports the company and extends my entertainment value. And I am still using completely free (*libre *and gratis) software to access and enjoy this game.

I use Google Chrome as my browser. Google gives away plenty of software, Ed, aren’t you up in arms about that? What about all us people stealing services from Google Mail? Shouldn’t Google be concerned about all the thieves they are enabling? It is time for you to wake up and realize that there are viable business models built around value-added services that involves permissive licensing. It’s just that simple.

The RIAA and the MPAA are acting like the Mafia in their agressive attacks on low-level pirates as well as their attacks on digital distribution and freely available information. They are ultimately impotent because copyright law has given the power to the content creators to license as they see fit. If the world realizes the value of freely-licensed content then we will all be better off. And it is very unChristian of you to suggest that the oligarchy continue in its hegemony and choke-hold on the entertainment industry in this country.

p.s. Your repeated references to “filing a copyright” on works reveals a fundamental ignorance of how copyright actually works. Nobody has to file anything for a copyright to take effect. All works are copyrighted upon creation. No copyright notice is even required to enforce the rights of a content creator.

 

[atheistgirl]

p.s. Your repeated references to “filing a copyright” on works reveals a fundamental ignorance of how copyright actually works. Nobody has to file anything for a copyright to take effect. All works are copyrighted upon creation. No copyright notice is even required to enforce the rights of a content creator.

I think Ed is well aware of this:

A) Nobody is oppressing anyone. Put your art, music, writing, short film or any other easy to steal art online right now.

B) No one is required by law to file for a copyright on anything, or a trademark.

Sarah x

 

[edwest2]

Ed, you are revealing yourself as a shill for the media industry. Your incessant railingagainst anyone who espouses a different view of copyright than your industry does is getting really old.

There is nothing anarchist about alternative licensing methods. However your constant refrain of the party line from the RIAA and the MPAA smacks of oligarchy, which is anti-capitalist and anti-democratic. Please remember that most of us live in the USA here, not in some dictatorship where you are free to force down our throats whatever you decide is right for us.

You did not read anything I wrote. I happen to be a content creator myself. I edit Wikipedia and I sing in the church choir. Now, our choir does not record anything, but we perform every week for the whole parish community and we do not have ushers who shake people down at the door for cameras and recording devices. We as volunteers offer our performance freely for the greater glory of God. Our director has a paid position which is supported in the usual way by the donations of the parish community, and he rightly earns his pay by showing up weekly, rehearsing all our material, selecting all our hymns from the repertoire, and producing worship aids that help the assembly to join us in song. And guess how he creates those worship aids? The publishers license their content to us permissively to create hundreds of copies. Personally, I would prefer for us to buy several hundred hymnals and save the paper we recycle each week, but this is how many parishes do it.

Now for my second content creation career. I am a Wikipedian. I have contributed to Wikipedia for three and a half years and made over 15,000 edits in that time. Every single one of those edits is freely licensed. Every single Wikipedian contributes every single article under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that permits others to redistribute, edit, and even sell derivatives, as long as attribution to the original author is provided. I am sorry, Ed, but your petty insults ring hollow when there are thousands of content creators exploring the joys of alternative licensing.

I rarely pay for software. The only software I have purchased in ten years is a Sherlock Holmes mystery game DVD at a Goodwill for $5. Guess what, Ed? I don’t steal any of it! I prefer to obtain my software legitimately from authors and distributors who have chosen to license it for easy distribution and use free of charge to the consumer. I use Ubuntu Linux and LibreOffice. I use some non-free licensed software that is still free of charge, such as Java. However, I am no deadbeat. I play an online game. This online gaming company gives away their client, and even gives away core development tools that they used to create that game and others that came after it. They don’t charge for any of their software and they don’t charge us to play the game. Guess what, I still manage to have fun and support that company because they charge micro-currency fees for virtual cash. So once in a while I buy up some extra cash, even though I don’t really need it, because it supports the company and extends my entertainment value. And I am still using completely free (*libre *and gratis) software to access and enjoy this game.

I use Google Chrome as my browser. Google gives away plenty of software, Ed, aren’t you up in arms about that? What about all us people stealing services from Google Mail? Shouldn’t Google be concerned about all the thieves they are enabling? It is time for you to wake up and realize that there are viable business models built around value-added services that involves permissive licensing. It’s just that simple.

The RIAA and the MPAA are acting like the Mafia in their agressive attacks on low-level pirates as well as their attacks on digital distribution and freely available information. They are ultimately impotent because copyright law has given the power to the content creators to license as they see fit. If the world realizes the value of freely-licensed content then we will all be better off. And it is very unChristian of you to suggest that the oligarchy continue in its hegemony and choke-hold on the entertainment industry in this country.

p.s. Your repeated references to “filing a copyright” on works reveals a fundamental ignorance of how copyright actually works. Nobody has to file anything for a copyright to take effect. All works are copyrighted upon creation. No copyright notice is even required to enforce the rights of a content creator.

I apologize if anything I said or implied said that you, personally, steal anything. What I am referring to are the billions of dollars lost to piracy every year, and what I did not include were efforts by law enforcement, including the FBI, US Justice Department and Global Intellectual Property Center to prevent the loss of jobs and legitimate income due to content creators. I am a professional and my company has access to some of the finest copyright attorneys in the country. We have been involved in litigation. Without proof of copyright, we would have a harder time in court.

From the US Copyright Office website:

"Do I have to register with your office to be protected?

"No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

"Why should I register my work if copyright protection is automatic?

“Registration is recommended for a number of reasons. Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within 5 years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration” and Circular 38b, Highlights of Copyright Amendments Contained in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), on non-U.S. works.”

Once again, forgive me if I implied you did or would be willing to steal anything.

Peace,
Ed

 

[chevalier]

As for the titular question, here’s a sample of what’s wrong with copyright laws:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

Copyright laws are an industry more than a branch of law.

Wow? Do you know the story of J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter? She was poor. And for you, you can put your work up on the internet tomorrow if that’s what you want - for free. You don’t need a middleman or distributor. Or, if you want to make money, self-publish and sell it on your own web site, or go digital, and sell it as a PDF. Who’s stopping you?

All I hear about fair use is this: “I wish I could use somebody else’s idea and make money off it.” Create your own Star Wars or Harry Potter.

Peace,
Ed

Lave me alone, please. Thank you.

 

[St_Francis]

To Ed West:
I do not advocate a return to a shorter length of time because I want to get a hold of stuff for free; I advocate it so that works which some would want can be made availablel to them again. If I want to read a book from the 1950s about The Catholic faith, so I *don’t *want to skim it in a few hours after somehow transporting myself to the Library of Congress. Because if I were to do anything like photocopy it or take digital photos of it, that would violate the copyright, no? So the fact I can look at it briefly in the LofC if I happen to be able to get there, is really pretty useless when it comes to really reading a book deeply, or being able to read a book several times lying on my couch.

And quite frankly, it makes no difference to the author of an OOP if I buy a used copy or see it in te LofC, does it? And at that point, if I photocopy a copy, it won’t make any difference, either, altho it is a violation of the law.

 

[St_Francis]

Ed West,
I have been listening to a reading of an OOP book from Llibrivox. It is Letters to an Garibaldian by GK Chesterton, and it is GKC’s contemporaneous relections on the beginnings of WW1.

Now, it would be difficult for me to find some thing similar about WW2 written by a more obscure writer, and yet contemporaneous works on events of historical importance are vital to our understanding of our own recent history. It’s good to have some circulation of these books, altho it probably would not interest a large enough number of people to make it worthwhile for a big publisher to do it.

Used to be the in Turkey, they used a modofied Arabic script. When Ataturk assumed power in the early 1900s, Turkish writing was changed to a Roman-based alphabet.

It was not lonf before most people in Turkey were unable to read their own history…

 

[didymus]

We’re talking about current copyright laws. I’m trying to point out that, so far, no one has shown any harm from the current length of copyright laws.

Peace,
Ed

The ridiculous length of copyright laws is, effect, an enclosure of the commons. As more and more creative productivity is fenced off writers, composers, &c will have to worry about their work infringing someone’s copyright.

Let’s say my buddies & I start a band and put our stuff up on YouTube. Bam! Here come takedown notices and cease & desist orders from NyeKulturny Music, Inc. copyright holder for multiple well-established bands, claiming infringement.
With music you can infringe if the piece is “substantially similar” to another copyrighted work.

With books you have to actually steal someone’s arrangement of word, but who knows? Maybe the next step will be a “substantially similar” standard for fiction too. Or maybe the next logical step would be to copyright plots – I call dibs on “boy meets girl.”

 

[edwest2]

The ridiculous length of copyright laws is, effect, an enclosure of the commons. As more and more creative productivity is fenced off writers, composers, &c will have to worry about their work infringing someone’s copyright.

Let’s say my buddies & I start a band and put our stuff up on YouTube. Bam! Here come takedown notices and cease & desist orders from NyeKulturny Music, Inc. copyright holder for multiple well-established bands, claiming infringement.
With music you can infringe if the piece is “substantially similar” to another copyrighted work.

With books you have to actually steal someone’s arrangement of word, but who knows? Maybe the next step will be a “substantially similar” standard for fiction too. Or maybe the next logical step would be to copyright plots – I call dibs on “boy meets girl.”

If you want change, act. Even James Cameron faced lawsuits over Avatar.

hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/james-cameron-lawsuit-avatar-284803

Peace,
Ed

 

[Joe_5859]

As for the titular question, here’s a sample of what’s wrong with copyright laws:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

Copyright laws are an industry more than a branch of law.

For 30 songs!? That’s unconscionable. That’s $30 on iTunes, not over halfa million dollars.

 

[chevalier]

For 30 songs!? That’s unconscionable. That’s $30 on iTunes, not over halfa million dollars.

And it was a jury of his peers that awarded that type of damages, not the judge, (wonder how the jury members acquired their music, like all 12 of them really paying on iTunes is possible but I wouldn’t estimate the rate of illegal downloading to be below 1/12, which is 8.33%.) The judge divided it by ten. But then higher courts axed that ruling.

My primary beef with the RIAA and the like is that they make an industry out of legally extorting money from simple citizens violating a law that doesn’t enjoy full social acceptance. I wouldn’t cry if there were a national music tax and the RIAA and the rest went away.

 

[Joe_5859]

And it was a jury of his peers that awarded that type of damages, not the judge, (wonder how the jury members acquired their music, like all 12 of them really paying on iTunes is possible but I wouldn’t estimate the rate of illegal downloading to be below 1/12, which is 8.33%.) The judge divided it by ten. But then higher courts axed that ruling.

My primary beef with the RIAA and the like is that they make an industry out of legally extorting money from simple citizens violating a law that doesn’t enjoy full social acceptance. I wouldn’t cry if there were a national music tax and the RIAA and the rest went away.

I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with such tactics. This type of strong-arm maneuver is exactly what makes them less sympathetic and encourages people to view them as money-grubbing institutions who deserve to be ripped off.

I know the music industry in particular often laments the internet as a loss of billions of dollars of revenue, but I’d be interested in seeing a chart of annual sales for the last 40 years. With the advent of places like iTunes and Amazon where one can impulse buy a song even more easily than picking up a pack of gum at the grocery store, I have a hard time imagining they’re not in far better shape than they ever have been before. But I suppose I could be wrong.

It’s probably the smaller Indie labels that lose out. They don’t have the resources of the big guys to pursue this extra source of revenue.

 

[edwest2]

I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with such tactics. This type of strong-arm maneuver is exactly what makes them less sympathetic and encourages people to view them as money-grubbing institutions who deserve to be ripped off.

I know the music industry in particular often laments the internet as a loss of billions of dollars of revenue, but I’d be interested in seeing a chart of annual sales for the last 40 years. With the advent of places like iTunes and Amazon where one can impulse buy a song even more easily than picking up a pack of gum at the grocery store, I have a hard time imagining they’re not in far better shape than they ever have been before. But I suppose I could be wrong.

It’s probably the smaller Indie labels that lose out. They don’t have the resources of the big guys to pursue this extra source of revenue.

I’m surprised at you (again) Joe. And c’mon, we’re all on the internet, right? You don’t have to drive anywhere to get info - google is your friend.

guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/global-music-sales

businesswire.com/news/home/20120105005547/en/Nielsen-Company-Billboard%E2%80%99s-2011-Music-Industry-Report

What many people don’t understand about “ripping off” is a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act called the “Safe Harbor Law” - a license to steal. Here’s the deal: You set up a file-sharing site and thousands, if not millions, of illegal files get uploaded to your site. Your responsibility to make sure copyrighted works don’t end up on your site? Zero. Until someone contacts you and complains. If you remove the illegal material “in a reasonable time” then you’re off the hook. Who cares if hundreds or thousands of illegal copies of some music, a movie, TV show, book, or other piece of media got downloaded until the legal copyright owner contacted the site and requested they take down the illegal file(s)? Who cares if billions of dollars got lost in the process? All the corporate giants are rich beyond anything most of us will see in our lifetimes (unless a few of us own giant corporations).

I am not defending any heavy-handed tactics by certain companies/associations, but wouldn’t you think that people who have no problem stealing other people’s stuff, and getting successfully prosecuted, would get the word out? You would think?

And speaking about file-sharing sites, we’re talking big money because some include paid advertising on their sites. And if you can tell an advertiser you’ve got hundreds of thousands of unique eyeballs visiting your site daily, well, you can charge a pretty penny for advertising. Like this gentleman:

nytimes.com/2012/01/21/technology/megaupload-indictment-internet-piracy.html

Peace,
Ed

 

[Godfollower]

As for the titular question, here’s a sample of what’s wrong with copyright laws:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

Copyright laws are an industry more than a branch of law.

Lave me alone, please. Thank you.

For 30 songs!? That’s unconscionable. That’s $30 on iTunes, not over halfa million dollars.

Serves him right. “Killing Me Softly”? Ack!

 

[Joe_5859]

I’m surprised at you (again) Joe. And c’mon, we’re all on the internet, right? You don’t have to drive anywhere to get info - google is your friend.

guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/global-music-sales

businesswire.com/news/home/20120105005547/en/Nielsen-Company-Billboard%E2%80%99s-2011-Music-Industry-Report

What many people don’t understand about “ripping off” is a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act called the “Safe Harbor Law” - a license to steal. Here’s the deal: You set up a file-sharing site and thousands, if not millions, of illegal files get uploaded to your site. Your responsibility to make sure copyrighted works don’t end up on your site? Zero. Until someone contacts you and complains. If you remove the illegal material “in a reasonable time” then you’re off the hook. Who cares if hundreds or thousands of illegal copies of some music, a movie, TV show, book, or other piece of media got downloaded until the legal copyright owner contacted the site and requested they take down the illegal file(s)? Who cares if billions of dollars got lost in the process? All the corporate giants are rich beyond anything most of us will see in our lifetimes (unless a few of us own giant corporations).

I am not defending any heavy-handed tactics by certain companies/associations, but wouldn’t you think that people who have no problem stealing other people’s stuff, and getting successfully prosecuted, would get the word out? You would think?

And speaking about file-sharing sites, we’re talking big money because some include paid advertising on their sites. And if you can tell an advertiser you’ve got hundreds of thousands of unique eyeballs visiting your site daily, well, you can charge a pretty penny for advertising. Like this gentleman:

nytimes.com/2012/01/21/technology/megaupload-indictment-internet-piracy.html

Peace,
Ed

Surprised at me for what? For posting my thoughts before using Google? I don’t do lots of research before every post I make.

The first link says sales are down 3%, but the second link says that “Overall Music Sales Break 1.6 Billion Mark for First Time”. So which is it?

In any case, I hope you don’t confuse me for someone who thinks piracy is just fine. Those are not my thoughts at all. I have hundreds of CDs and over a thousand books and I obtained them honestly with money. So, at the very least, it irritates me that people get the same stuff for free.

I simply posted a question of curiosity as to what the overall trends are. And I’m not talking about just from one year to the next. The fluctuating state of the economy has as much to do with that as anything else. I’m talking about sales before the internet and sales after the internet.

I know the internet has directly led to me spending a lot more money on CDs (especially back when I was in college and bought most of my CD collection). I would have never even heard of 90% of the bands I own CDs from if not for the internet. That’s what I was speculating about. For every person that pirates music illegally, there are people like me who have been afforded more opportunities to spend money that they otherwise would not have encountered. It would surprise me if the music industry was worse off over it.

Yes, I realize I could do the leg work and come up with my own figures and make my own chart if I but did a little internet sleuthing. I’m not that interested in the results, though.

 

[edwest2]

Surprised at me for what? For posting my thoughts before using Google? I don’t do lots of research before every post I make.

The first link says sales are down 3%, but the second link says that “Overall Music Sales Break 1.6 Billion Mark for First Time”. So which is it?

In any case, I hope you don’t confuse me for someone who thinks piracy is just fine. Those are not my thoughts at all. I have hundreds of CDs and over a thousand books and I obtained them honestly with money. So, at the very least, it irritates me that people get the same stuff for free.

I simply posted a question of curiosity as to what the overall trends are. And I’m not talking about just from one year to the next. The fluctuating state of the economy has as much to do with that as anything else. I’m talking about sales before the internet and sales after the internet.

I know the internet has directly led to me spending a lot more money on CDs (especially back when I was in college and bought most of my CD collection). I would have never even heard of 90% of the bands I own CDs from if not for the internet. That’s what I was speculating about. For every person that pirates music illegally, there are people like me who have been afforded more opportunities to spend money that they otherwise would not have encountered. It would surprise me if the music industry was worse off over it.

Yes, I realize I could do the leg work and come up with my own figures and make my own chart if I but did a little internet sleuthing. I’m not that interested in the results, though.

Then why bother making emotional speculations? I never thought you’d steal anything, Joe. On a forum where I’m a moderator, I am sick and tired of emotion filled speculation that gets people nowhere. I thought people were interested in getting actual answers to their questions, instead I have to deal with some “usual suspects” that should be on blood pressure medication since they are e m o t i o n a l first, and think later, or not at all. And number 20 on my list of words/phrases I really can’t stand is: “but I could be wrong.”

My advice? If any poster can’t be bothered, after writing a paragraph or two – why bother? I hate to say it, but a few posters on my forum deserve to be banned - as soon as possible.

Peace,
Ed

 

[chevalier]

I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with such tactics. This type of strong-arm maneuver is exactly what makes them less sympathetic and encourages people to view them as money-grubbing institutions who deserve to be ripped off.

As a minimum, one can’t really cry for justice if one isn’t doing justice, sort of like the old maxim that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. So if you claim damages from someone failing to pay for a song you produced, you shouldn’t claim or even accept damages that exceed the market price (what you’d get if he’d paid right away) plus some punitive premium on top of it perhaps. IMHO in the case of simply downloading and not redistributing, actual damages are the costs of production and sale, including everything such as advertising, then lost profits are the difference between the foregoing and the market price, while perhaps some punitives would be in order, e.g. one more time the market value, resulting in twice the market value total. With redistributing, this gets more complicated because there are other people not paying, but as long as you nail down the number of users who downloaded from the sharer, you can nail down the actual damages and the lost profits with precision. Punitives would be up to debate. But not 675,000 dollars for sharing 30 songs!

Also, organisations of producers, publishers etc. should perhaps wash some laundry in public and give a shining example of transparency, respecting the artists’ rights, using only legal software and music on their own etc. In reality, there have been incidents of using copyrighted materials without authorisation in actually making ads against downloading/copyright violation.

It must start to be a problem of justice and not a game of lawsuits.

I know the music industry in particular often laments the internet as a loss of billions of dollars of revenue, but I’d be interested in seeing a chart of annual sales for the last 40 years.

Or even a solid legal analysis of the claims of damage being so high.

With the advent of places like iTunes and Amazon where one can impulse buy a song even more easily than picking up a pack of gum at the grocery store, I have a hard time imagining they’re not in far better shape than they ever have been before. But I suppose I could be wrong.

There will always be people who will not pay a cent for what’s piratable. But for normal people things like the technological bars, e.g. the legal problems with even actually converting tracks from legally bought CDs to MP3 for yourself, then greedy restrictions on the user’s ability to share with his family, let alone friends, or requiring different specific licences from, say, a barber wishing to play the damn radio in the barber shop (yes, that’s how absurd copyrights can get), that’s what alienates people. That and prices, obviously.

If you somehow removed greed, complication and bothersomeness if someone wanted to observe copyrights perfectly (I’m not sure if it is humanly possible to satisfy modern copyrights), then I think the level of violations would fall down.

Also: shut down anti-piracy actions. Stop spending money on campaigns against downloading. Stop paying humongous legal fees and court fees for lawsuits and such (ambulance chasers may take up to $250 per hour, which is already big, but I doubt big shot copyright lawyers are okay with that rate), cut the lobbying expenses. Cut the Internet investigations. See how much money you saved. It may actually be more profitable that way (as huge as the damages are, legal fees may be larger still). Then actually decrease the end user price of the music, software etc. in a proportion to the savings made this way. See how your sales go up. Market yourself as a pro-consumer and pro fair-use and non-invasive, non-suing publisher. It will damn well work.

Software piracy in Poland was almost killed by a publisher who actually cut the prices, especially for older games. It became possible to buy old games that used no longer to be available in shops. And the price wasn’t big. The price tag on new releases also became reasonable. In part, this was probably achieved by forcing the games to be translated into Polish, so that they were useless to shopping tourists from Western Europe. Guess what happened? The quality of translations improved too and the words, “professional Polish language version,” stopped causing spasms of laughter in people.

Thereafter the publisher stopped being an *** about the resale of used games: in fact, the publisher provided and maintained a website for doing just that (and appropriate CD-keys would be reassigned between the seller and the buyer, I guess, although I’ve never been there, so I’m speculating).

The above was in stark contrast to the previous policy of never budging a buck from the arbitrary price tag and rather dumping money in anti-piracy actions. Or allowing good, profitable franchises to stagnate and expire in terms of profit-making because they were not available when there was market for them (but e.g. there was no supply or the price tag was prohibitive). Some anti-piracy measures remained in place but different ones: “being legal” was promoted as a positive and prestigious thing.

Right now, we also have Steam. Steam means you have an account, you can download your stuff from anywhere and install it anywhere, probably can’t be logged in on one account and playing the same game on two computers at the same time. There’s no nonsense about broken CDs, needing a second copy for a second computer owned by the same person etc. Although I guess it’s impossible to allow your sibling or friend to play a game according to the EULAs, which used to be possible in the early years of gaming. AND SHOULD BE POSSIBLE NOWADAYS TOO.

It’s probably the smaller Indie labels that lose out. They don’t have the resources of the big guys to pursue this extra source of revenue.

Yeah, too bad for them. But some of those guys get hired by people with money, which is good.

Bottom line: I provided above a way to fix the industries affected by copyrights: stop spending on anti-piracy, cut the price tags, promote the notion of legitimacy (legality of your copies), promote the understanding of copyrights (reasons behind, not sanctions for violations or the general necessity to obey the law, no matter how bad), make your EULAs and copyright provisions actually reasonable, consistent with the law and public order, respectful of basic human decency and privacy. Explain the connection between various price tags and various privileges/restrictions the users get. Don’t encroach on fair use rights while preaching the necessity to obey the law. Don’t force ridiculous 30-page agreements on people. Be reasonable, be friendly. Actually it just comes down to “reasonable and friendly”. Best way of doing business, ever.

 

[bhcordova]

A patent also protects intellectual property, but only for a period of 25 years. Why should something that is actually useful only be protected for 25 years, but software that will be completely out of date in 5 years and words be protected for such a long period? Doesn’t seem reasonable.

 

[edwest2]

As a minimum, one can’t really cry for justice if one isn’t doing justice, sort of like the old maxim that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. So if you claim damages from someone failing to pay for a song you produced, you shouldn’t claim or even accept damages that exceed the market price (what you’d get if he’d paid right away) plus some punitive premium on top of it perhaps. IMHO in the case of simply downloading and not redistributing, actual damages are the costs of production and sale, including everything such as advertising, then lost profits are the difference between the foregoing and the market price, while perhaps some punitives would be in order, e.g. one more time the market value, resulting in twice the market value total. With redistributing, this gets more complicated because there are other people not paying, but as long as you nail down the number of users who downloaded from the sharer, you can nail down the actual damages and the lost profits with precision. Punitives would be up to debate. But not 675,000 dollars for sharing 30 songs!

Also, organisations of producers, publishers etc. should perhaps wash some laundry in public and give a shining example of transparency, respecting the artists’ rights, using only legal software and music on their own etc. In reality, there have been incidents of using copyrighted materials without authorisation in actually making ads against downloading/copyright violation.

It must start to be a problem of justice and not a game of lawsuits.

Or even a solid legal analysis of the claims of damage being so high.

There will always be people who will not pay a cent for what’s piratable. But for normal people things like the technological bars, e.g. the legal problems with even actually converting tracks from legally bought CDs to MP3 for yourself, then greedy restrictions on the user’s ability to share with his family, let alone friends, or requiring different specific licences from, say, a barber wishing to play the damn radio in the barber shop (yes, that’s how absurd copyrights can get), that’s what alienates people. That and prices, obviously.

If you somehow removed greed, complication and bothersomeness if someone wanted to observe copyrights perfectly (I’m not sure if it is humanly possible to satisfy modern copyrights), then I think the level of violations would fall down.

Also: shut down anti-piracy actions. Stop spending money on campaigns against downloading. Stop paying humongous legal fees and court fees for lawsuits and such (ambulance chasers may take up to $250 per hour, which is already big, but I doubt big shot copyright lawyers are okay with that rate), cut the lobbying expenses. Cut the Internet investigations. See how much money you saved. It may actually be more profitable that way (as huge as the damages are, legal fees may be larger still). Then actually decrease the end user price of the music, software etc. in a proportion to the savings made this way. See how your sales go up. Market yourself as a pro-consumer and pro fair-use and non-invasive, non-suing publisher. It will damn well work.

Software piracy in Poland was almost killed by a publisher who actually cut the prices, especially for older games. It became possible to buy old games that used no longer to be available in shops. And the price wasn’t big. The price tag on new releases also became reasonable. In part, this was probably achieved by forcing the games to be translated into Polish, so that they were useless to shopping tourists from Western Europe. Guess what happened? The quality of translations improved too and the words, “professional Polish language version,” stopped causing spasms of laughter in people.

Thereafter the publisher stopped being an *** about the resale of used games: in fact, the publisher provided and maintained a website for doing just that (and appropriate CD-keys would be reassigned between the seller and the buyer, I guess, although I’ve never been there, so I’m speculating).

The above was in stark contrast to the previous policy of never budging a buck from the arbitrary price tag and rather dumping money in anti-piracy actions. Or allowing good, profitable franchises to stagnate and expire in terms of profit-making because they were not available when there was market for them (but e.g. there was no supply or the price tag was prohibitive). Some anti-piracy measures remained in place but different ones: “being legal” was promoted as a positive and prestigious thing.

Right now, we also have Steam. Steam means you have an account, you can download your stuff from anywhere and install it anywhere, probably can’t be logged in on one account and playing the same game on two computers at the same time. There’s no nonsense about broken CDs, needing a second copy for a second computer owned by the same person etc. Although I guess it’s impossible to allow your sibling or friend to play a game according to the EULAs, which used to be possible in the early years of gaming. AND SHOULD BE POSSIBLE NOWADAYS TOO.

Yeah, too bad for them. But some of those guys get hired by people with money, which is good.

Bottom line: I provided above a way to fix the industries affected by copyrights: stop spending on anti-piracy, cut the price tags, promote the notion of legitimacy (legality of your copies), promote the understanding of copyrights (reasons behind, not sanctions for violations or the general necessity to obey the law, no matter how bad), make your EULAs and copyright provisions actually reasonable, consistent with the law and public order, respectful of basic human decency and privacy. Explain the connection between various price tags and various privileges/restrictions the users get. Don’t encroach on fair use rights while preaching the necessity to obey the law. Don’t force ridiculous 30-page agreements on people. Be reasonable, be friendly. Actually it just comes down to “reasonable and friendly”. Best way of doing business, ever.

Talk. Just talk. Our “War on Robbery” isn’t going so well either. Who gets to decide what’s reasonable? I want to buy a new car for $2,000.00.

Peace,
Ed

 

[JacquesMaritain]

What many people don’t understand about “ripping off” is a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act called the “Safe Harbor Law” - a license to steal. Here’s the deal: You set up a file-sharing site and thousands, if not millions, of illegal files get uploaded to your site. Your responsibility to make sure copyrighted works don’t end up on your site? Zero. Until someone contacts you and complains. If you remove the illegal material “in a reasonable time” then you’re off the hook. Who cares if hundreds or thousands of illegal copies of some music, a movie, TV show, book, or other piece of media got downloaded until the legal copyright owner contacted the site and requested they take down the illegal file(s)? Who cares if billions of dollars got lost in the process? All the corporate giants are rich beyond anything most of us will see in our lifetimes (unless a few of us own giant corporations). I am not defending any heavy-handed tactics by certain companies/associations, but wouldn’t you think that people who have no problem stealing other people’s stuff, and getting successfully prosecuted, would get the word out? You would think? And speaking about file-sharing sites, we’re talking big money because some include paid advertising on their sites. And if you can tell an advertiser you’ve got hundreds of thousands of unique eyeballs visiting your site daily, well, you can charge a pretty penny for advertising. Like this gentleman:
nytimes.com/2012/01/21/technology/megaupload-indictment-internet-piracy.html
Peace,Ed

Hi Ed:

I know you and I don’t agree on copyright law, but can I put a point of clarification here? Megaupload (the website you referred to in the link) is a “file-hosting” website; that means it physically holds some of the alleged “illegal” movie or music files, as well as indexing links to them. Under your Safe Harbor Law in the USA (I’ll leave aside that the website is hosted by a Hong Kong company with servers in the Netherlands, where US law does not apply) all the website has to do is take down “illegal” files in a timely manner, once they’ve been told about them. Megaupload claims that it permits copyright holders to delete links to these “illegal” files all by themselves, which is just as good as having the website owners do it (better, in fact, as it is much faster). Is that true? That’s up to the Courts to decide. The wiki claims that the American judges doubt that the case will ever end up in court; it is just too ambiguous.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload_Legal_Case

“In a television interview with 3 News, Kim Dotcom denied being a “piracy king”, and claimed that Megaupload had applied the provisions of the DMCA and went beyond it, by giving copyright holders direct rights to delete links.”

So I guess we will wait to see what the American Courts say about arrests made in New Zealand over a Company based in Hong Kong with servers in the Netherlands, and indeed, if any laws have in fact been broken.

But Megaupload is really a small fish in this ocean. The bigger fry are torrent sites like Isohunt and The Pirate Bay. You could argue that Megaupload “hosts” illegal files, that some are actually stored on their servers…that’s up to the courts to decide. But what about torrent sites? A .torrent file is just a small metadata file, usually only a few kilobytes in size, that is held on a place like Isohunt. Consider the .torrent file for a recent anti-copyright movie, *Steal This Film *(or, you could substitute some commercial film if you like, it doesn’t matter). I’m using it as an example, because I don’t want the nice people at CAF to be accused of “hosting” illegal files (they are actually links, not files, a distinction which will become important later on) It is here:

isohunt.com/torrents/%22steal+this+film%22

Now if you download any of those .torrent files, what do you have? A copy of the “illegal” movie? Well, no…what you have is a small list of locations where pieces of the file may be found (this content often changes over time). Most torrents are a couple of kilobytes of text…a full movie file (avi or mpg) is usually around 700 megabytes or so; if it’s a BluRay or DVD image, it might be several gigabytes in size. It is an index, if you like. That torrent file is opened in your torrent program, and that program connects to the different seeds/peers (computers which have pieces of the file) and it starts to be shared. It’s a bit more complex than that, but you get the idea. The important point is that** the “File Sharing Website” doesn’t host any movies or music or programs at all.**…all it has are little indexes of where pieces of those files may be found. That’s probably why trying to sue them is a waste of time (again, leaving out the fact that they aren’t even in the USA anywhere, so American law doesn’t apply to them). Here is the Pirate Bay’s explanation of this:

thepiratebay.se/about

"Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site."

And they do it too, in an often hilarious fashion. See here:

thepiratebay.se/legal

Now if you want to say that merely indexing torrents is against the law, that’s fine. Maybe it is in the United States, I don’t know. Let the Courts decide that (if they dare). But consider. Let’s say I wanted to download an “illegal” torrent, like, Steal This Film. So I go to www.google.ca and type in the text “Steal This Film Torrent”. Try it and see what you get. You get something like this:

google.ca/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=steal+this+film+torrent&oq=steal+this+film+torrent&gs_l=hp.3…1256.4887.0.5064.23.19.0.0.0.0.864.7861.0j4j1j2j5j3j3.19.0…0.0…1c.RdEHugEO4e8&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=66e01c3a44bb7ea8&biw=1920&bih=917

As you can see, there are tons of links to this torrent file, but Google herself does not host any of these torrents, or the film either. All she is doing is “indexing the indexes”. It seems to me that if it is illegal to make a metadata file about the locations where a file is stored (that is, just a location file, not the movie file itself), then why should it be legal to make an “index of an index”? Surely Google ought to be taken offline for copyright infringement, if this is the case. “But we are just indexing things, not hosting them”, Google would say. Exactly. None of these torrent sites hold physical copies of any of the files they show. They are just like Google in that respect. I doubt anybody here would seriously expect us to shut down a search engine because you could look for something that might be copyright infringement in your country.

Oh yes. The thread was about what people felt was wrong with copyright law. My belief: pretty much all of it. It has become so tortuously complicated and byzantine that nobody understands it anymore (so they ignore it). Can you blame them?

• The program is licensed for a single user on three computers for a period of 50 years after the death of the creator, no wait 75 years for the company that hired him, oh but you can make 1 legal backup copy sometimes, depending on the fine print legalese which nobody understands, and nobody knows if that means you can back it up to an online backup service like Carbonite, which is a backup copy I guess, or is it, no wait didn’t I hear that a file-locker service got shutdown, can i download the updates, no wait, downloading things is wrong, but it says its ok to get updates, no wait these are from a server in Sweden, is it legal, I don’t know Swedish law, I don’t even know the law here, but I heard downloading was cool I just cant upload, hang on didn’t I pay for these downloads already, it was in the license, or was it, no wait, we paid the artists’ levy when we bought the blank CDs so its ok, hang on that’s Canada it’s different law here I think, Oh God, what do I do, yadda yadda yadda…" *

The posters above pointed out that copyright law in America was crazy for suing people for thousands of dollars for downloading 20-30 songs, and I agree. In Canada we worked out a deal for this: pay a flat tax on blank media that you burn these “illegal” songs to (like CDs and things) and the government will give the revenue to the artists, to compensate them for any sales they may have lost. It seems to have worked pretty well. It may be worth considering.

I do not know if it is possible to engage people on this topic. If posters work for outfits like the MPAA or the RIAA they are paid by their employers to say “forget about all that fine print, it’s just talk, stealing is stealing.” Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, tells us: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. Clever man, that Mr. Sinclair.

Jacques

 

[SAG13]

I know very little about our trademark and copyright laws, but it just seems to me that Disney’s desire to protect their Mickey Mouse creation should not have even been categorized as literature. I think it should have been considered an invention, product and /or trademark and handled by those laws instead. I would agree that long copyright laws only serve the greedy and are not in the best interest of culture and the promotion, dissemination and availability of knowledge and truth inspired by the written word. There is a spiritual value to anything that can be considered worthwhile and we, as a society should consider the worth to the community more than the worth to an individual, even if that person is the creator of intellectual property. From a spiriutal standpoint, we are all just conduits of God’s gifts and they are given for the benefit of all, not just the person who receives them. I have a personal experience that somewhat explains what I mean. As a designer in the garment industry, I once designed a very successful line of clothes…(actually I had unwittingly created a trend). I got very little monetary compensation for this collection (just a weekly salary over a few months) but my line increased business for the entire garment industry from NY to LA for over 5 years! Millions, if not billions were added to the GNP and though I did not recieve even a fraction of the profits, my creativity did tremendous good for the economy as a whole. That I was able to trigger this wealth (and the subsequent jobs it created) made me feel very humbled and grateful for the talents and skills God gave me. There is, I believe, a value to our talents and efforts that far exceeds individual compensation, and our laws should be fluid and non-stifling enough that creativity can express itself to the benefit of us all.