Everyday Copyright Violations 431
Schneier has pointed out a great law review article about the problems with copyright. The author takes a look at normal daily practices and how many commonplace actions actually result in what can be considered copyright violations. "By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John's activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing."
Yay for something everyone hear already knows! (Score:2, Insightful)
Applicable for all laws? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are emails copyrighted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Olig. quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the same applies to copyright. The copyright laws have become so over reaching that everything we do on a daily basis could be construed as breaking a law, so if we displease the wrong person then they already have something to pin on us.
Re:Applicable for all laws? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, someone should come up with a short list of laws. Ten seems reasonable. And they should be very concise and to-the-point. But something tells me that even then, people would still have a hard time obeying them...
Re:Imminent destruction! (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, you lose. Better luck next time.
Huge stretches.... (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, the cell phone snapshot that happened to capture a copyright picture in the background -- that's clearly fair use. Displaying your tattoo in public doesn't make it a "public display." The forwarded emails are probably subject to an implied license and, even if they weren't, they may not contain sufficient creative expression to be copyrightable. The rough drawing of an architectural building is not an infringement (see 17 U.S.C. 120(a)). Reading the e.e. cummings poem is probably also fair use, especially if each student has a textbook containing the poem.
Copyright law is generally *civil*, not criminal. In general, this means that a lot of wrongs are ignored by potential plaintiffs, just as a matter of tradition, convenience and politeness, just as they are with a lot of other civil wrongs -- nuisance, trespass, assault** (especially among children), etc..... Nobody goes around saying "Look at how many acts of trespass you committed today. We need to fix trespass law."
[Note: I agree that copyright law needs some reforms; the repeal of Sonny Bono would be a great start. I just don't find this example to be very persuasive.}
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, anyone who believes that P2P really costs artists money has not given much thought to the matter. Clearly, if I've never heard of you I'm not going to buy your CD or book.
Plagairism is another matter entirely; it should be severely punished.
-mcgrew
Re:Yay for something everyone hear already knows! (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the rub - you're talking about making fire cold, at least in the US. Sony gives ten million to the DemocRATs and ten million to the Re(prehensible)publicans and it doesn't matter which candidate loses, Sony wins. And as they own all the politicians, the only two chances this will change are slim and none.
You should not be able to "contribute" to more than one candidate in any race. That's clearly a bribe. Clearly bribery is legal in the US.
You should not be able to contribute to the election of someone you aren't eligible to vote for. John Shimkis is supposed to be MY representative, not Sony's or Bill Gates'. But a Sony lobbyist Bill Gates has easy access to Shimkis, while I have next to none.
We have the best politicians money can buy. So long as our laws are for sale to the highest bidder, I refuse to respect them and will instead follow my own conscience.
-mcgrew
PS- I have a friend who reports to prison on the 1st for a drug posession charge. I have another friend whose brother spent five years in prison for loaning a drug dealer money, while the dealer spent 2 years. There is no justice in the US!
Re:link to the actual article (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It won't.
Sometime before that, DisneyCo will go to Congress and instruct them to extend Copyright terms again.
And Congress will obey, like the subservient little corporate bitches they are.
Re:Imminent destruction! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Fonts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should make your own high quality fonts and sell them at a price you consider reasonable? If you're right that the current going rate is "ridiculous", you could undercut them massively and still make a tidy profit. Think of the market share you could grab! I mean, it's not like making fonts requires a massive time investment up-front with no guarantee of any returns whatsoever or anything, is it?
Blogs are the bane of Journalistic Integrity (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire argument made in the excerpt is predicated upon completely ignoring 17 USC 1, Section 107, "Fair Use". Period.
TFA is not newsworthy material.
Re:most violations are or were 'fair use' (Score:3, Insightful)
The same goes, to some extent, for movies. It's true that it costs tens of millions of dollars to produce a movie. If there were absolutely no IP laws and commercial copyright infringement were allowed then nothing would stop ABC from showing a movie that was out in theaters and not paying the studio. Or for a theater to show the movie and not pay the studio. Or for cut-rate vendors to sell the movie openly on DVD the day it comes out in theaters. With absolutely NO IP protection then movies just won't get made.
There might be a better balancing point than what we're at now, but it's far from clear that "no IP" is the right solution.
simply trying to commercialize the fruits of mind, but since we depend on the free exchange of ideas, such laws hinder society and must be resisted
Re:Lost in translation? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were an enterprising young lawyer, I'd argue that once the congress extended the limits from their original standard, are in fact not limits what-so-ever. If we set limits so high that they no longer appear to be limits (you can only earn 1 trillion dollars per year), that they in fact are not limits.
Additionally, when the so-called limits stop the promotion of "the Progress of Science, and useful Arts", it no longer serves its purpose and again, is unconstitutional.
I wouldn't argue with Patents and Copyrights anymore, I'd deal with the Constitutionality of the existing laws.
Regarding Happy Birthday song
See the wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You [wikipedia.org] for more details.
My suggestion is to use my Bastardized version in public; "Hippy Bathday to Ewe" and let the lawyers figure that one out. Please feel free to use my version, especially for GNU parties.
Re:link to the actual article (Score:5, Insightful)
Mmm, actually, no they didnt. Originally the 'copyright' had nothing to do with authors but were a pure and simple monopoly of the licensed printers guild, granted by the king in exchange for censorship control.
As it got slightly more codified the authors were used as an excuse to lobby for it; the authors didnt particularly matter anyway as they couldn't afford the printer, leaving them in pretty much the same situation as before.
IIRC, as far as the US was concerned, integration of IP rights into the US constitution was mostly with great hesitation and doubt about its legitimacy.
"it was originally intended to prevent exploitation of creators."
Except, of course, that was never the intended purpose. Which is why copyright law is the way it is, or we'd have an actual system guaranteeing a specific cut to authors, a tax/benefit scheme, or something like that. Think 'monopoly', 'control' and 'aristocrats' or you will just get confused about why IP law is the way it is. It's a 16th century throwback from the time the king granted monopolies on salt and spices to enrich his friends (as the population tended to be on the brink of killing him over taxes so it was much less troublesome to grant monopolies that didnt seem quite like taxes...).
Re:Applicable for all laws? (Score:3, Insightful)
The vernacular is ambiguous. Ambiguity in laws is a bad thing. If you try to write unambiguously in English, you end up with legalese. Additionally, legal jargon is efficient -- a single word in legal jargon communicates an idea that would take many words to describe unambiguously in the vernacular.
Legalese is almost like a programming language -- it must be precise, and ideally, efficient. And lord knows you'd be laughed off of slashdot if you suggested that "programming languages should be easily understood; written in the vernacular. We shouldn't need programmers to translate it for us."
Re:Applicable for all laws? (Score:4, Insightful)
For example: You get pulled over by a police officer for speeding. You knew you were speeding the "Law" was posted and quite easily understood. The police officer then writes you a ticket for speeding and adds on the additional "crimes".
(Non comprehensive list)
Exhaust hangs to low (My buddy actually got this one on a stock exhaust)
Tail lights out/dim
Tinted windows are too dark.
And now your speeding infraction turns into something worse because the officer is taught a portion of the laws that the average civilian had no idea existed. This is the current problem with our law system and why your intended jab at the 10 commandments put mud on your face.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Imminent destruction! (Score:3, Insightful)
He is not the work. The tatoo is the work. "Destruction or other reasonable disposition of the work" is not a license to kill; destroying the body of a living human being on which an infringing work is made is not even remotely a "reasonable disposition" of the unauthorized copy.
Re:Imminent destruction! (Score:3, Insightful)
Important point (Score:3, Insightful)
Other people have called you on the fact that you give us no reason to believe this, but I think I ought to call you on one more thing.
If Joe Tattoo Artist gives me, for appropriate compensation, a tattoo of Mickey Mouse, there are three parties involved here:
You fail to distinguish which of the parties Disney has or fails to have valid claims against. It is quite possible that Disney has no valid claim against me, but has a claim against Joe Tattoo Artist. If Joe offers tattoos of Mickey Mouse customarily as part of the services he gets paid for, and the popularity of Mickey Mouse makes his business that more profitable, I betcha Disney can go after Joe.
Can they go after me? Well, not in general, but I bet you there are circumstances where they can. If leverage the fact that I have a Mickey Mouse tattoo, e.g., by working as a model in a way that displays my Mickey Mouse tattoo too prominently, I bet you I can get in trouble too.
The law is subtle, and how it applies to any given case is a complicated matter. (And no, IANAL, but the fact that I understand this makes me better understand the value of the service that lawyers provide.)
Re:This is by design, not by accident. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Imminent destruction!TELL THAT TO PRINCE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:link to the actual article (Score:3, Insightful)
When Steamboat Willie comes into the public domain you get the right to publish derivatives based on Steamboat Willie: eight minutes of silent era sight gags linked by a thin narrative thread.
You do not get the rights to the trademarked character designs.
You do not get the right to use the Mouse and his companions in any of their later incarnations. No Sorceror's Apprentice. No Phantom Blot.
You do not get access to primary sources.
Steamboat Willie was released on 35mm nitrate stock with synchronized sound on phonographic disk.
Tell it to the judge (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is by design, not by accident. (Score:3, Insightful)
To get back to your example, we're now facing laws where even the most minor speeding is punishable by jail and behind every other traffic sign you have a copy with a laser gun. Will that result in every driver in jail? Sure, over time. Everyone speeds some time. Not even intentionally. But maybe your kids are distracting you, you're late for a meeting or your speedometer is faulty, and there you go, off to jail.
That's what's wrong with it. Not that everyone breaks it now or then, and most of the time in a negligible way. The problem is that those negligible copyright infringments are now treated like criminal offenses by the law, and that they're prosecuted as such.
Re:Imminent destruction! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the biggest problem currently is that the copyright law has been defined by publishers, not creators.
Artistic protection should start by the premise, that whatever happens, the creator stays the owner, and that publishers only have the right to negotiate with the owner if they want to publish. The owner should even have the right to negotiate with more publishers if there is interest enough. This would create a real market with competition.