Warner Music Forces Lessig Presentation Offline 196
An anonymous reader writes "Larry Lessig, known (hopefully) to everyone around here as a defender of all things having to do with consumer rights and fair use rights when it comes to copyright, is now on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown notice from Warner Music, who apparently claimed that one of Lessig's famous presentations violated on their copyright. Lessig has said that he's absolutely planning on fighting this, and has asked someone to send Warner Music a copy of US copyright law that deals with 'fair use.'"
Reader daemonburrito notes that the (rehosted) "video remains available at the time of this submission."
Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one! (Score:5, Insightful)
Lessig is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to US law on fair use.
Ooooh they're gonna get creamed. And I will be laughing like a drain!!
Lessig (Score:3, Insightful)
Larry Lessig, also known as the guy who defended Obama's vote on the FISA bill, saying, among other things [lessig.org]:
(emphasis mine)
I'm afraid I lost a lot of the (considerable) respect I had for the guy up until that point.
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry: Non-free Audio Fair Use for music constitutes 10% or 30 seconds of a song (which ever is shorter) and it must be in a low enough quality (didn't investigate the audio on this video to find out if it satisfied Ogg quality of 0 rule).
[Citation needed].
It's certainly case law if that's even true, and I'm skeptical that it's a universal rule even if true. The statues place no such requirements, and, in fact, there are many times when using an ENTIRE work would be considered fair use.
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick your battles wisely and adhere to this rule next time.
What rule? The Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107 makes no mention of any kind of 30 second rule.
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, there are set numbers on how much of a work can be used? Because I seem to recall (as noted above) that the law doesn't give specific numbers, but only that whether a use is fair must take into account how much of the work is used. It also includes criteria such as the type of use, how it impacts the market for that work, and whether it is commercial or not. If there is case law that sets precedent for this, you might be well to include those references to back up your numbers.
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong.
What is fair use and what is not fair use is determined based on the facts of each individual case. Something that is fair use in one instanceâ"say a parodyâ"might well not be fair use in another like a movie review.
There are guidelines, much like the one quoted. However they are only guidelines and are in no way binding on courts unless they have been cited in a superior court case.
Re:Lessig is a moderate (Score:2, Insightful)
This is fundamental misthinking about copyright. Copyright doesn't exist to protect corporate interests. It exists to protect authors... it's the same thing that keeps you from writing a book (or whatever), changing a few things, and publishing it under their name. Of course, as soon as you want to publish it, even if you self-publish, it becomes a "business model" which you seem to find deprecated. Any open source license out there---GPL, BSD, Apache, MPL, CC, etc---are built on copyright.
If you want everything you do to be in an unrestricted public domain, well: you can have that. Do so. But, if you want to tell me that my works must also be unrestricted public domain works: well, you're doing exactly what you claim to be against.
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't say that either. It says that the portion used is a factor to be considered in determining fair use, it doesn't say, in the statute, which way that factor weighs. Which makes sense; there are circumstances where using the whole work would probably weigh in favor of fair use, where using selected portions might not (e.g., format- or time-shifting of a work which includes advertising, where removing--or, a fortiori, replacing--the advertising content might, all other things being equal, make the use less likely to be considered fair use.)
Re:Lessig is a moderate (Score:5, Insightful)
This is fundamental misthinking about copyright. Copyright (in the United States) doesn't exist to protect authors, it exists to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." (U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 8) To the extent it fails to do that -- or, a fortiori, impedes such progress -- it is because the rules of copyright are poorly crafted from the perspective of the Constitutional basis of Congress's power to grant copyrights in the first place, and need to be reformed to serve that purpose.
Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't blame Lessig for ignoring her though, when reading the minutes of the case, I think its pretty cleat Sandra was attempting to derail his argument with a tangent.
Further more, if what you said was true, this just shows that judges had already made up their mind on the case and never cared about Lessig's argument to begin with.
Re:Lessig is a moderate (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright might work if the section after the part you quoted was applied ("by securing for limited times").
Re:Lessig is a moderate (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. We ought to go back to the timeframes set back in the beginning or to two times that time and leave it alone. 14-28 years should be more than enough for most situations- but we have monied interests such as Disney doing everything they can to protect things like Mickey Mouse and making a mockery of the law as it was intended to be.
Thanks for the law text (Score:4, Insightful)
According to TFA, the presentation has been reposted here: http://blip.tv/file/1937322 [blip.tv]
After watching the first three minutes, my impression is that
(1) Should be clearly in favor of Mr. Lessig. Nonprofit, political speech, should have pretty strong First Amendment protection. One can argue if he really needs the photos (see point 2), but the character of the use doesn't get much more fair.
(2) He uses photographs that are probably copyrighted as backdrops for his lecture
(3) Depends on the source(s) - many small samples or all from one source?
(4) I don't see how the use of some photos in this lecture can substantially hurt the sale of the original collections. Especially since the "subtitles" get in the way of reusing the photos from the lecture elsewhere.
copyright intended to grow the public domain? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can one read the constitution as saying:
i.e. it's purpose is to grow the public domain, the rest is just mechanism and a choice about how to trade off public good against private good.
The copyrighteous act like a kid who is happy to take the pocket money but not happy to do the chores. They employ Orwellian newspeak by referring to the whole balanced copyright trade-off as 'their property'. They focus only on the protected monopoly and do everything in their power to extend their monopoly duration (even for already created works, no incentive is big enough to change the past) and stop works falling into the public domain.
.
Re:Automatic claiming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I got hit with that once, doing a documentary on Austin's air-guitar competitions. I thought that 10-15 second clips, recorded through an analog hole - a microphone placed not near the speakers, but near the air guitar stage (I was more interested in capturing the grunting and movement of the performers than a picture-perfect rendition of old 80s tunes) ... point is, I thought that'd be fine.
Time Warner, as a whole, just doesn't get technology. CNN thinks "holograms" are a great way to tell the news, they want to put caps on broadband, and they are so worried about protecting "their copyrights" that they don't understand how or why people buy music, and what they use it for.
Every business that they run that has any technological background at all is running itself into the ground because they want to sell you something first, then TELL you how THEY want you to use it, and are willing to go to absurd lengths to make sure that you only use it in the manner that they wanted you to - not the reason you bought it in the first place.
This is why they'll sue auto repair companies playing CDs for employees to listen to at work, why they'll knock on people doing anime fun conversions, why they'll knock on air guitar guys.
It's also why they'll offer broadband but put in caps so people can't use it, why they'll offer news programs but only present one or two sides of a multifaceted issue...
What can I say? They're crappy.
Re:Lessig is a moderate (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would an amount of time that was deemed sufficient protection over 200 years ago when the printing press was a novel creation be ANYWHERE CLOSE to what protection is needed today?
Two or three times what it was then? Try 1/3 to 1/10 of the original time. We now have bestsellers that, in their first week, sell into the seven digit numbers - not of profit - but of units. Five years of protection would arguably be too much with modern technology and distribution methods.
Anything more - ANYTHING - and you're caving into the mindset that the xxAA wants you to be in. Our goal should not be parity with the original length of protection, but significant shortening thereof.
Re:-1 Redundant (Score:3, Insightful)
Try being nice to your customers some time. It might not do you much good, but it won't do you as much harm as what you're doing now.
Makes sense, unless you view every illegal download as a lost sale. Once you have an entrenched view that says more downloads equals more lost profit, it's hard to break free. Which VP is going to stick his neck out for this issue? If sales go up by 20% but copyright-infringing downloads go up by 40% guess how they'll view it?
Don't support corporations that use these type of tactics, but don't expect them to change either. Raising awareness and ensuring your government doesn't continue to erode your rights will be far more effective.
Re:Life Lessig err Lessons (Score:3, Insightful)
If I was a lawyer for Warner, and my boss said I should try to legally stop Lessig from talking, my reaction would be "COOL! I get to go up against Lessig." It is entirely possible they knew exactly who they were going against, and wanted to make a public example. Do you know how cutthroat the music industry is? Do you think these guys are easily intimidated?
Re:Pick Your Battles Wisely (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whooooh! They picked the WRONG guy for this one (Score:3, Insightful)
In theory, perhaps - although I doubt it. In practice, he has the savant tendency to disregard that the law is implemented by humans, and the one thing that humans can't stand is a wise ass.
Is about as close as he's come. And yet even after saying that... somehow he didn't change careers.
Well, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for tenure, eh?
Tweaking aside, Lessig's experience is like that of a virgin with a giant porn collection. So I can see why he gets a lot of sympathy around here. Tweaking aside.
Re:How Lessig Lost the Big One (Score:3, Insightful)