Supreme Court Sides With Freelancers On Net Copyright 128
pgpckt writes: "The Supreme Court has ruled in a 7-2 decision that freelance writers retain control over whether or not their writing gets distributed on the Internet.. This decision gives writers more control as to what mediums their art gets distributed in, and helps to ensure royalties for publication in multiple forums."
What's better? (Score:1)
(a) a music project
or(b) sex with a mare
Re:So, Jon Katz? (Score:1)
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2001 OSDN
At least that's how it supposed to be. What Katz is doing with people's stuff is another story.
So do I retain control over my USENET postings. (Score:1)
Re:The Easy Way Out--bullshit! (Score:1)
From the please-read-the-article dept. (Score:5)
As usual, the Slashdot posting is misleading and the ensuing comments are from people who'd rather be misled by the posting than go through the trouble of reading the article.
As the article mentions:
The case largely affects articles, photographs and illustrations produced a decade or so ago -- before free-lance contracts provided for the material's electronic use.
It just means that if your contract from several years ago didn't include anything about electronic publishing, then the publisher can't go and publish it electronically as if it's just a revision. But contracts nowadays do take electronic publishing into account, so the court's decision is irrelevant to them.
Did Themselves In (Score:1)
Problematic for other electronic databases? (Score:2)
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:2)
I'm not entirely sure if slashdot is supposed to actually put this agreement in legalese somewhere, or if the actual behavior of the site is sufficient. For example, newspapers generally print letters to the editor, even if the letter doesn't explicitly give them the right to print it, because that's how letter to the editor just work normally.
The issue is actually about cases where someone has agreed to have their work used in a particular way (printed in the newspaper) for pay. The agreement didn't involve other media, so the newspaper doesn't have the right to put it on the web without negotiating a new contract. Everything is explicit in that case, and they were writing it for print.
Probably what this means is that, in the future, news sites will probably just put web distribution in their freelance contracts.
Slip Opinions are available (Score:2)
Moot point (Score:1)
This court case only covers fairly old (like six or seven year old) content. It only covers work created before the new style of contracts. As such, it has very little affect on the overall web.
Dave
Re:Slashdot's guiding principle (Score:4)
In this case, it's freelance writers who want to keep control of their works and not be taken advantage of by large publishing houses, who want to sell more ads and thus make more money, by using the freelance writer's work without their permission (note that these are *not* mainly for current freelancers, whose contracts most probably include permissions for digital distribution - they're mainly for older publications whose contracts didn't forsee, and thus didn't include, rights for digital distribution)
In the case of Napster et al. - it's a case of the consumer *and* the artist getting monetarily raped by the music industry. The general consensus on
There's also a bit of "well, the cat is out of the bag" syndrome there too, with the Napster thing - the music is already out there, available, for free - no ammount of legislation or watermarking or whatever is going to take those mp3s away from people who have them, whether they own the CD or not.
But that's beside the point
My Fee (Score:2)
posts by me receive a moderation of 2 or higher, and/or the rating of "insightful". I shall expect
a payment of $5 for every site visitor that
accesses my post.
Should my post ever rate a 5, I will expect a one
time payment of $40 dollars, and or %20 percent
of advertisement revenue for that day...whichever
is greater.
Payment information will be sent at a later date.
couldn't resist:-D
Re:Exactly! (Score:3)
It could, in the cases where that's true.
But the next time you find yourself wanting to buy a CD of old issues of your favorite computer magazines, and they're no longer available because of this ruling, ask yourself how much you're willing to for them to go back and pay all those freelancers a second time for work they'd already paid for.
As a community, we really need to make up our minds; how come we want music to have to be able to be distributed free once the artist has been paid for his work, but we don't want the New York Times to put it's entire back issue archive into digital form?
-
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:2)
The only substantial content this affects is the stuff ten years old or so. From back when people hadn't even heard of electronic publishing, so it wasn't included in their contracts.
Ever since that time, most of the smart publishers have already included electronic media clauses in their contracts--with the writers being justly compensated, or else going into it knowing full well that e-rights are included in their payment.
As an aspiring writer myself, I'm very concerned about writers' rights. This case was an important one, because it helps put control back in the hands of the writers, where they belong--which is something everyone seems to be (or pretends to be) so gung-ho about in the Napster arena for musicians.
Another important case to watch would be this one [cnet.com], as Random House sues a small e-book publisher over rights not assigned to them in their contracts.
This is certainly news to those books' authors, who had not stipulated e-books in their contracts with Random House, and were fully behind Rosetta's e-publishing them!As to whether articles get pulled from archives...I don't think it will happen as much as people fear. Most writers are reasonable people, and typically wouldn't insist on bank-breaking terms. As long as the publishers are willing to negotiate, and don't just want to cut off their noses to spite their faces, I think things will work out just fine.
--
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:1)
The poster implicitly consents to a lot of things when they press Submit button. It's hard to take rights back from Slashdot once they've already been given.
But the details, since it's so implicit, are pretty vague. Plenty of people were rather shocked at the Hellmouth book, indicating that there really isn't a consensus.
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Re:Slashdot's guiding principle (mod parent up!) (Score:1)
But it's also one that can't be answered, since there is no homogenious Slashdot opinion. Unless you're actually directing that question to the editors.
Also, one of the big reasons that the Napster case was so controversial, was that even if one believes in strong IP rights, there was still the problem of Napster not actually infringing in a traditional sense. The question of toolmakers being persecuted over "vicarious" or "contributory" infringement is seperate from how strong IP rights should be. So being pro-IP and .. well, not pro-Napster, but anti-anti-Napster, can be consistent.
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Exactly! (Score:2)
Furthermore you can expect that future contracts with authors will contain clauses to build digitial distribution in at no increased price. So in the long run, I suspect most authors won't really get much out of this. A few might get an initial windfall for retroactively licensed content that is particularly valuable but most of it will get chucked.
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Re:New vocabulary (Score:3)
--
I'm a freelance writer. (Score:4)
I write for both the online and print versions of a publication. when i am assigned an article, i am told that it will be for the online site or the print magazine. i am paid different fees based on where the piece is to be published. i write based on the medium i'm writing for: the online site covers more up-to-the-day stuff ("breaking" news) whereas the print version is a little more "let's take a step back" material, since it takes about two months for my copy to actually appear in print (magazines have LONG turnaround times).
last week i noticed something that i was assigned to write for the print magazine showing up online. it had been editied differently to suit the fact that it was published on the site.
to me, these facts lend creedence to the idea that the Web is a lot more than just an archive of the print material: "instant" turnaround, different content, different pay rate. i was a little miffed that i hadn't been asked about the second publication, especially since the article was different.
just my two cents.
How exactly is this a 'good move' Hemos? (Score:3)
The publications here are going to do the same. They will pull content from the web instead of paying the second royalties because the web content doesn't make any aditional money. What people need to realize is that the delivery doesn't matter. If you have a license to use something, you should be able to use it in different media.
I just don't understand how this is good, when the RIAA wanting us to pay twice for the same song on CD and MP3 is wrong. Please someone enlighten me.
Re:Facist Pigs (Score:1)
The real problem is that there is too much rubbish out there (hey given copyrights of 90 years it's easier to recycle than to create) and it is hard to distinguish the cruft from the craft.
LL
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:2)
There was no enforced copyright in Shakespeare's time. Hence, by abolishing copyright we will immediately find many more Shakespeares. Silly? Yes - just as your argument is. Oh, and the whole anticommunist thing doesn't play so well outside the USA.
People have been scanning in and posting and trading copywrited material (books, software, music) for long before Napster and Gnutella, and they'll still be doing it long after the easy-to-use corporate front ends have all been hounded out of business. Take a look at the alt.binaries.e-book* newsgroups [alt.binaries.e-books], or certain IRC channels, or Hotline, and so on and so on.
ownership ain't rights (Score:2)
College papers? (Score:2)
--
Not really . . . (Score:2)
Nah. Tasini is a highly technical case based solely upon a construction of a most obscure passage of the Copyright Act. The Supreme Court affirmed the (clearly correct) Second Circuit opinion, which simply read the statute to mean what it says. The media giants, simply couldn't believe that the Courts wouldn't give them what they wanted, notwithstanding the Act, just because they asked for it.
At the end of the day, the question is simply whether a right to the compilation copyright owned by a publisher gives any implied right to reprint and republish the underlying works that were compiled. The answer -- duh -- NO!
When we post on Slashdot, who owns the copyright on the posting?
What if you post text that is already covered by copyright (code, essay, etc).
Copyright in a work of authorship is owned by the author of the work, unless it is a work made for hire. Ownership in a copyright cannot be assigned without a writing. If you owned it when you wrote it, you own it now. There may be some implied licenses you have granted to readers -- much depends upon the facts and circumstances o f the publication.
What if you post text that is already covered by copyright (code, essay, etc).
If you do so, then you either engage in de minimus appropriation, fair use or copyright infringement.
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:2)
Re:So, Jon Katz? (Score:1)
However, if you photocopy those printouts, that's considered copyright infringement.
Damn, I hate copyright law almost as much as I hate the US Tax Code and gun laws.
So, Jon Katz? (Score:4)
Seriously, this does raise a valid issue. When we post on Slashdot, who owns the copyright on the posting? What if you post text that is already covered by copyright (code, essay, etc).
Maybe we all just need to put a copyright notice at the bottom of our posting.
The Fine Print: (Score:2)
This should help (Score:1)
Re:It all comes down to greed. (Score:1)
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:2)
Otherwise, you'd be arguing that community rights override individual rights, which would grate on america's strong sense of individualism.
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Re:It depends on what the meaning of "copy" is... (Score:2)
In the real world, "tangible" means something like "written down".
On the internet, everything is "written down", so ones first instinct would be to say that everything on the 'net is tangible. But tangible really means something like "written down, and saved", especially in the light of things like IRC. Still, logs abound, so things on the internet are much more likely to be tangible than in real life.
--
Re:Corparate vs personal content control? (Score:1)
Corparate vs personal content control? (Score:2)
I think we should try to steer clear of legalized content control for both corporate and private content producers.
Re:Corparate vs personal content control? (Score:2)
Well, that about wraps it up for Google ;) (Score:1)
Well, that about wraps it up for Google, doesn't it?
This is incredibly bad! (Score:2)
I can see how the writers have a problem with the publisher profiting from their work independently from them, but surely a standard licensing agreement with a clause that states republishing on any medium other than those expicitly agreed to by the writer/publisher is not acceptable.
This ruling is just giving ammunition to the RIAA/MPAA etc, who argue that because a recording is in digital form, it is suddenly exempt from fair use requirements etc.
'It's different when its on the internet'
I'd like to think this was the courts standing up for the little guy, and preventing big media from ripping them off, but to me it sounds more like the RIAA/MPAA just bought a whole lotta justice.
I am sick and tired of... (Score:1)
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:2)
Perhaps, though I don't see how the Court could have found otherwise. Consider that they did decide that the freelancer's property could be confiscated without payment - what ugly precent could this have established?
Faced with that alternative, I'd have to believe that recognizing their property as such, and allowing them to rightfully negotiate the reuse of that property via contract with the publisher was the correct resolution. Which leads me to ask, per the cnn article:
Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens dissented.
What on earth were they thinking? I've been noticing these two dissenting on nearly everything associated with individual liberty, free speech [cnn.com], property rights, etc. I'll have to read the minority opinion [akamaitech.net] to figure that out.
In fact the only surprise here is that Souter (worst appointee in the 20th century) isn't in the mix of dissenters. What did he find right with the majority?
*scoove*
The Easy Way Out (Score:4)
Publishers say the decision means they now must begin removing hundreds of thousands of articles, photos and drawings from their digital archives.
Yeah, or actually pay royalties to the freelancers. So it looks as if the net effect of this decision is going to be the removal of lots of valuable content from digital archives and not, in fact, increased revenue for freelance authors.
Crap.
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Facist Pigs (Score:2)
This is disgusting that /. is behind these pigs who want to exploit you and charge filthy lucar for information that they've already made a killing on somewhere else. The publishers are just trying to make the information available to the free man, the common sod, the regular Joe.
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:2)
a poster to Slashdot could later demand it be deleted?
This case is different from Slashdot in two ways:
This is akin to saying that a game developer who sells his idea to a CDROM publisher does not automatically forfeit the web publishing rights, nor any movie rights, nor any future medium such as on-site virtual reality theme park rights, and so on.
Re:How exactly is this a 'good move' Hemos? (Score:1)
...
I just don't understand how this is good, when the RIAA wanting us to pay twice for the same song on CD and MP3 is wrong. Please someone enlighten me.
Here is the big difference. In the case of the RIAA wanting you to pay twice for the same thing, they are trying to make you, the consumer, give up your rights to make private, fair-use copies of a work that you have paid for. In the case the Supreme Court ruled on, freelance writers want big publishers to pay for using their work to generate more revenues, or at least to pull in more eyeballs, to their sites. There is no fair-use issue in this case.
Re:From the please-read-the-article dept. (Score:1)
Mathworld (Score:4)
bash-2.04$
Nice to know the Supreme Court still has a clue (Score:1)
-Legion
Drawing the line (Score:1)
New vocabulary (Score:3)
Linus has,in fact,grown,and explosively-JonKatz
Content and Context (Score:2)
Well, the writers had allowed publication within a particular context, that is a particular newspaper. The database owners destroyed that context, and therefore it was not a publication as permitted by the author.
However, this is exactly the kind of context change that happens when you make "deep links" rather than linking to the main home page. Was the Supreme Court thinking of the deep linking issue? (remember the Ticketmaster v. Microsoft case)
Probably not a genuine worry, but only the paranoid survive, right?
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:2)
The main effect of this is that newspapers will have to pay royalties to publish archives of their papers, and they'll have to negotiate those royalties per article/writer. Since this is a huge pain, akin to a radio station negotiating a royalty with every artist per song, it will not happen. Therefore a huge trove of information will never be republished.
I wonder if this affects microfilm. Film is essentially a new medium, similar to an online database but just a lot harder to use -- it's not indexed and it's only visible a page at a time. I could use the same argument to say that the newspaper shouldn't be able to publish the information, right?
If microfilm isn't covered, then there is an non-obvious loophole here -- the newspapers could use the electronic text of the articles to provide indexing/search criteria, and could then just display the image of the page that the article appears on. This wouldn't even be a new edition of the paper -- it would be a copy of the old edition of the paper (albeit electronic) that would not require royalty payments.
This could affect one of the greatest research projects underway -- Paper of Record [paperofrecord.com], the project to digitize historical newspapers in their entirety so that they could be easily searched. Think of the knowledge and history that could be unlocked by such a project -- instead of trying to scan through old scratchy microfilm searching for a buried article, you could just do an index search on the words you want and instantly see every article on the subject ever printed.
Of course, with the Supreme Court's ruling, that would not be possible. The archive could not be created without a significant burden on the papers to obtain the permission of every article writer. And article writers wouldn't even have to give their permission -- they could just refuse.
I'm all for royalties, but in this case I believe a music-like organization should be created to distribute royalties on a prenegotiated basis. That system allows someone to record a version of a song as long as they pay the royalties, and radio stations to play the songs as long as they pay too. That's what is needed for article distribution as well.
Ralph Slate
Hypocrite. (Score:1)
Re:Quick! (Score:1)
Re:Parody (Score:1)
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:1)
Once authors realized that they would work for years polishing their craft, and then never recoup a bit of their investment, they stopped writing in French.
And so they started writing in what instead? English?! That sounds like an urban legend, actually; french people are rather proud of their culture, and have been both before and after Voltaire et al. Abolishing copyrights may have been causing (and may cause) problems, but scenario like you suggest (which makes french literature and other culture sound like Hollywood-level garbage) sounds rather far-fetched.
Not that I'm all that against certain kind of copyrights (or other mechanisms for trying to support artits capability of earning their living from their work), but it's silly spouting nonsense like this to support your beliefs.
Also... What exactly did ex-president Clinton do different (in copyright front) than the war crazy national-debt-loving second rate actor Reagan? (here I am quoting a widely held french, or european, belief of mr. RR by the way)
Re:This should help (Score:2)
I suspect that the record companies started including any type of medium since the advent of 8-track tape. Until recently newspapers and magazines only distributed in paper form (I know fiche, but that don't count :) as opposed to record companies that had casette, 8-track, video, and radio long before the internet became popular.
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:1)
If you're a publisher, why spend money on an altruistic solution when there's a cheaper one? With the flood of cheap content on the Internet, freelancers who don't have the benefit of "celebrity" can always be replaced, so the economic benefits of giving them a break are negligible. If archives do in fact start going blank, I won't be surprised.
This should have no real effect on new content, however -- publishers are being sure to include electronic redistribution rights as part of any contract these days.
Re:So what about sites like Trolldot.org ? (Score:2)
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Re:It all comes down to greed. (Score:1)
It all comes down to greed. (Score:2)
Not that I don't think people have a right to what they want with the stuff they create, I just find it hard to believe that so many people are such pricks about it. I'm sure that Napster also had a little larger effect on the Music industry than that, but you get my point.
Let's take the freelance writer, for example. This is how he makes his money. Writing stuff to see if he can get a newspaper/magazine/tabloid to publish it. If he is successful, he doesn't want it on the net because that should mean more royalties for him. After all, it means more royalties for the publisher through advertising and what have you.
In my opinion, if I purchased the right to use your writing, then I should be able to publish it how I see fit. If that's in newspaper print or HTML should make no difference to me.
My point? Probaly never had one, but it does seem that what is behind this facet of censorship is greed. Money - we all have it, but we all want more.
words or the paper (electrons) that it's on? (Score:1)
If it's the words, then the publisher can put those words into any medium they want to, as long as they fulfill the general contract and call it another copy of the work used/sold/viewed.
If, instead, it's the material/medium that the words are found on, can writers then claim ownership of the area on my hard disk that a copy of their work resides, in my browser cache? Am I going to have to worry about my RAM being taxed at purchase time to pay writers royalties?
Are some forward-thinking authors going to commission a worm-app that fills up your hard drive with copies of their works so they can claim it as their own property, or charge rent for your use of it? (They would have to fight Micro$oft though for a few gig on most machines, so maybe not all of it.)
"All your hard drives are belong to us!" might show up one day instead of the startup screen
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:3)
Although I regret that we might lose a lot of content, I think the Supremes got this one right: Puiblication on the Web is a distribution in a new form, not just an archive. How does it work with, say, books-on-tape? I would assume authors must consent to that before a publishing house can release it.
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:2)
Now, having said that, would you like to take a moment to calm down and cite some sources for your accusations?
It's a nice sunny day (Score:1)
read and read and read and read and read and read (Score:2)
__
Re:Media!=Mediums (Score:1)
I think people use "boxen" to be cute and "virii" out of ignorance or desire to anger spelling nuts.
The -en suffix is sort of a hackish tradition. "A room full of VAXen." I don't think anyone ever took it seriously.
Re:Facist Pigs (Score:2)
Freelance writers don't make that much in most fields. I should know, I contract work from them. And I am one of them too. It's not like there are millions of freelancers driving around in exotic cars.
If you know some freelance markets where I can be a "pig" and receive ludicrous fees for my work, please post a followup. I'd love to be part of the problem you are describing.
Re:My Fee (Score:2)
Dude, be reasonable. Check internet advertising rates and develop a cost-per-thousand sliding scale. A CPM of $20 is a reasonable starting point.
I think the one-time payment for 5's is a great idea though you might have to come down a bit.
;)
Hey, how about free-lance programmers? (Score:1)
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:1)
Correction: Jule Verne's sci-fi literature didn't come out until after the revolution. Golden age, my ass!
Re:Hey, how about free-lance programmers? (Score:1)
Not very significant (Score:2)
Re:Media!=Mediums (Score:1)
Re:Media!=Mediums (Score:2)
"Mediums" is a word, but (to borrow a phrase) I don't think it means what you think it means.
On the other hand, we could just start using the word "mediums" incorrectly to annoy spelling nazis, sort of like what many of us do with fake words like "virii" and "boxen".
If you didn't rush to defend your incorrect use, you might have convinced us that that's what you were up to. :)
Delivery does matter in this case (Score:5)
I'm sorry, but delivery does matter in this case.
Publishers can seek any number of different publication rights when they offer to do business with a writer. By far, the most commonly-sought publication rights by U.S. publishers are FNASR, or First North American Serial Rights. That means that the publisher has purchased the rights to publish a previously upublished written work in a periodical for the first time in the U.S. or Canada.
FNASR is basically an exclusive, one-time "use right". After the work is published, the rights revert to the author who may sell the work again if he or she so chooses (although he may not again offer FNASR on the piece).
With the advent of the digital age, several publishers will negotiate for electronic rights, which can mean archiving in a database or to a CDRom; writers should be careful to specify any "exclusivity" clauses or "first time Internet rights," etc. to avoid accidental loss of use rights. It's all part of the contract negotiation.
What publishers have been saying, however, is that they automatically have the rights to publish the work in every new medium as it is invented, without needing to compensate the author or negotiate for rights--as it continues to derive new income from those works.
I think a point that many folks are missing here is that the authors aren't pursuing fans who've knowingly or unknowingly violated copyrights-- the villain in this piece is the fat corporate cats like AOL Time Warner who cry for protection of IP while trying to deny the same rights to authors.
It depends on what the meaning of "copy" is... (Score:3)
Because cyberspace has distinctly non-tangible dimensions, enforcers of copyright law are finding it to be a hard retrofit. Many of the higher court and Supreme Court justices do not even know how to use a computer (that kind of scutwork is reserved for their clerks), so they are struggling when cases like this come before them.
Yes, it's significant. (Score:1)
But why does this decision matter today? Because there's an awful lot of stuff that was written before the "smart publishers" wrote these newfangled contracts. And the "dumb publishers" like the NYT have been republishing this stuff and thinking that it was OK, but it was not OK and they were violating copyrights the whole time. And now they are on the hook, big time, for all of these violations. They'll have to yank a lot of stuff down from websites, and recall a lot of CDs, and renegotiate a lot of contracts. I would not call this insignificant.
Re:This should help (Score:2)
No. This has nothing to do with musicians. Record companies already distribute musical recordings in a digital form. Furthermore, I can't imagine them not including "online distribution rights" within the contract that the musicians must sign when signing with a record label. Finally, no one has questioned whether or not the record companies are in control of the electronic distribution rights of songs. Instead, the two main issues have been whether private users have a valid fair use exception to allow P2P file sharing and whether the RIAA has the right to directly sue Napster for the actions of people using their system (especially since the file gets sent directly from one client to another).
In this case, it's talking about organizations that have specifically paid a freelancer in the past for the right to use that person's work. At the time, electronic distribution was not considered in the contract. It's not that the news agencies were attempting to distribute content that they weren't allowed to distribute. Rather, they were trying to distribute it via a new medium. (As opposed to the musician issue, where even before Napster, I couldn't sit on a street corner and give out illegal copies of a commercially-produced tape to every car that drove by.)
Re:Exactly! (Score:2)
I don't think we do. It's just nice to see large media and publishing copmanies get a taste of their own medicine, and it's also pretty embarrassing for them not to be practising what they preach.
Who knows? Maybe they'll get a clue and start lobbying the elected representatives they've got on retainer to make more enlightened IP legislation. (Yeah right, dream on. They'll probably just do their usual trick of negotiating exemptions for themselves while keeping the legal stick handy for the rest of us.)
7 to 2 decision (Score:1)
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:2)
Whether or not this decision was right, it's NOT good news for web users.
Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:3)
What about Google's cache copy? (Score:1)
The equivalent of the freelancer here would be the webmaster who owns a copyright on his website. Google creates a copy of files (and now thumbnail images as well) that is fragmented from the original context of the site.
The big difference is that Google never contracted with the website to begin with. All Google has is the implied permission of a failure by the webmaster to "opt out" with the robots.txt or META no-archive option. It seems to me that Google should pursue safer ground, and change their cache policy to an "opt in." They could easily do this by requiring a special Google-specific permission file on the site before flagging any of the files as cachable.
The essential points for the website owners are these: 1) the cache copy shows a fragment of his site out of context, and 2) the site owner loses control over distribution, and 3) the failure to opt out is not the same as signing a contract with Google.
Many website owners like the referrals they get from Google, but don't like the loss of control represented by Google's cache. In other words, they aren't in a position to exclude Google entirely with their robots.txt. As for the META no-archive for each individual file, this is clumsy, and may in fact flag the site for adverse scrutiny from Google.
The little guy (Score:3)
Still, although I don't believe intellectual property is a good thing, I have a hard time getting upset about this decision. Why? It protects the little guy, the individual authour. Giving copyrights to individual authors in general works against what most of us who oppose intellectual property thinks is the most dangerous aspect of ip: namely, the ownership of ideas by corporations. Of course it would be better if there was no ownership (although I don't have time to engage the French case with you now), but any move that restores copyright to authors rather than corporations is a chip from the wall, not a new set of bricks.
Bryguy
not for (many) current works (Score:1)
This is entirely wrong. (Score:1)
Re:Comments are owned by the Poster? (Score:1)
I doubt that by granting web-publishing rights of your own comment, you would also grant time unlimited archival rights. Neither do I believe that by posting to slashdot, I would by default agree to give up my rights to delete or edit my own comment. I may accept the status quo, because of technical limitations of slashdot's site to offer such features, but I can't believe that one could conclude that slashdot has a right to deny such features, if they were requested in court.
I also doubt that a poster agrees by default that the archived comments could be sold.
Or is there fine print somewhere proving me wrong ? I wished a lawyer could comment on that.
Re:So, Jon Katz? (Score:2)
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:1)
Personally I'm fed up with _paying_ royalties to copyright owners every time I _buy_ the same damn thing but on a different medium. Does it seem right to you to pay to use a newspaper on the web even if you own a subscription to that newspaper? Does it seem right to you to have to pay full price for a CD that you own on record? Or DVD vs. tape?
No offence to writers, but give me a friggin' break.
- Ordinarius
great (Score:2)
Not a bad decision (Score:3)
JUSTICE GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court.
This copyright case concerns the rights of freelance
authors and a presumptive privilege of their publishers.
The litigation was initiated by six freelance authors and
relates to articles they contributed to three print periodicals
(two newspapers and one magazine). Under agreements
with the periodicals' publishers, but without the
freelancers' consent, two computer database companies
placed copies of the freelancers' articles-- along with all
other articles from the periodicals in which the freelancers'
work appeared-- into three databases. Whether written
by a freelancer or staff member, each article is presented
to, and retrievable by, the user in isolation, clear of
the context the original print publication presented.
The freelance authors' complaint alleged that their
copyrights had been infringed by the inclusion of their
articles in the databases. The publishers, in response,
relied on the privilege of reproduction and distribution
accorded them by 201(c) of the Copyright Act, which
provides:
"Copyright in each separate contribution to a collec-
tive work is distinct from copyright in the collective
work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of
the contribution. In the absence of an express transfer
of the copyright or of any rights under it, the
owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed
to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and
distributing the contribution as part of that particular
collective work, any revision of that collective work,
and any later collective work in the same series." 17
U. S. C. 201(c).
Specifically, the publishers maintained that, as copyright
owners of collective works, i.e., the original print publications,
they had merely exercised "the privilege" 201(c)
accords them to "reproduc[e] and distribut[e]" the author's
discretely copyrighted contribution.
In agreement with the Second Circuit, we hold that
201(c) does not authorize the copying at issue here. The
publishers are not sheltered by 201(c), we conclude,
because the databases reproduce and distribute articles
standing alone and not in context, not "as part of that
particular collective work" to which the author contributed,
"as part of . . . any revision" thereof, or "as part of . . .
any later collective work in the same series." Both the
print publishers and the electronic publishers, we rule,
have infringed the copyrights of the freelance authors.
If the publishers were to distibute a "pdf" doucument (which would be like a microfilm-the opinion specifically mentions that) of their original publication, I don't think the freelancers could do anything about that though (IANAL).
Another very interesting thing is that the decision cites the original congressional record when the 1976 copyright law was being drafted to help determine its intennt.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Parody (Score:2)
Well, if you would read the fucking story, apparently THESE freelance writers (you know - the ones who brought the lawsuit this story is about?) DID step up against the "big boys" (you know - NY Times, Time, Newsday - all the "losers" of the lawsuit - the one brought by freelance writers?) in court - that would be the Supreme Court - and won. Jesus you people are stupid sometimes.
Huh. (Score:4)
Of course, what this probably means is nothing more than an addendum to freelance contracts giving the rights to utilization of content in additional media to the media owner -- meaning a few extra lines of small print, and no real additional cash in the pocket of John Q. Freelance. Writers are a bit more savvy that other artists when it comes to not getting screwed out of their rights, but not much so...and the question remains as to whether this makes it possible for freelancers to fully sign over their work accidentally under the guise of "medium transferrance."
More murky legislation...I applaud the effort as a writer, but would prefer a more definite "content rights can never be bought or sold in any way without explicit and particular consent of the author" legislation. You know -- something to protect everybody artful, so Prince can keep his name if he moves labels and Corey Feldman can get a little say in the upcoming Goonies DVD.
I guess reading salon a lot has caused me to ask the question: why do we keep treating the arts, an almost exclusively romantic pursuit, the same was as classic pursuits such as law and economics? Artists don't understand numbers and calculators don't understand art, which means that "content creators" are getting screwed by people who don't even realise the impact of the money they're making. This is how the media can be controlled by incredibly rich companies and we still get shitty programming -- anybody savvy enough to climb the ranks no longer as enough taste left to make a quality decision, and anybody with the taste is loathe to discuss anything as vulgar as money and ratings.
If you give artists total say in what happens to their work and total rights based on money made (with an exception granted for non-profits), you end up with a situation similar to that of pre-mass media times: people make something beautiful or appealing and when it is exploited they are at the very least paid.
Re:It all comes down to greed. (Score:2)
You've never tried to make a living freelancing, have you?
So what about sites like Trolldot.org ? (Score:2)
What is
"Just hope it doesn't become a problem..." ???
what about contract programmers? (Score:2)
I seem to remember that historically, the situation used to be much worse for writers as well. Was it that they organized what let them retain these rights? Maybe programmers should do the same.
Copyright is dead (Score:3)
Re:I can't wait for the gnutella sorts to go nuts (Score:3)
It would if you got your dates right. The French Revolution happened in 1798. Hugo was born in 1802 and Verne wasn't born until 1828.
Re:The Easy Way Out (Score:3)