Copyrights To Reach Deep Space 247
bs0d3 writes "Voyager 1 is expected to reach interstellar space soon. It will be the first made made object to cross the heliosphere, which is the final stop in our solar system. Voyager 1, famously contained a gold phonographic record. The record was filled with iconic sights, images, and sounds from earth, and the prevailing message, "we come in peace". The disc was [composed] by a man named Carl Sagan, and it contained many pieces of art, songs, and images, that are all copy-written. According to NASA, 'Most of the material they used was copyrighted by the creators/owners and Sagan had to get copyright releases in order to assemble the original record. Subsequently, Warner Multimedia was able to obtain copyright releases for the 1992 version of "Murmurs of Earth" .. Unfortunately, the book and CDROM are no longer being published and are hard to find as a set.'"
Klingons (Score:5, Insightful)
Say piss on your your copyrights........
Earth law vs universal law (Score:2)
Can human apply the earth laws, such as copyrights, into other corners in the universe?
Re:Earth law vs universal law (Score:5, Funny)
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Absolutely. Everyone would stop writing music, filming movies without the certain knowledge that alien civilizations with have to pay full retail for 'Star Trek: First Contact' for the next 100 or so years.
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100 years? Even the Earth is going to stay habitable for several hundred million years. We're looking at billions or trillions of years of sentient life in the universe, maybe much more. The copyright is going to stay around for at least an order of magnitude beyond that.
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Absolutely. Everyone would stop writing music, filming movies without the certain knowledge that alien civilizations with have to pay full retail for 'Star Trek: First Contact' for the next 100 or so years.
If alien civilizations get hold of a copy of "Star Trek: First Contact" they'll probably vote to annihilate Earth as being artistically beyond the pale.
Brilliant plan (Score:5, Funny)
The brilliance of the plan is that by the time the Earth lawyers find out that the Klingons have been listening to our music, a couple of centuries will have past (with the speed of light and the size of our galaxy and all). Imagine the calculations for the lost revenues. :-)
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The US asserts legal jurisdiction not only in other countries but also on other planets. First contact will be to strong arm an extradition of some youthful alien (bringing new meaning to illegal alien).
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Only if they can enforce it.
So basicly, NO
Anyway already TV signals have gone out many light years, and they were theoretically copyrighted.
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the extraterrestrials will pay their damages in the form of 3 ningis, delivered in cash to the RIAA.
Lets's hope they are copper ningis (Score:5, Funny)
Which weigh about 40kg and will be arriving at the RIAA main office at about 12km/s.
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A triangular rubber coin over 10,000 kilometers on the side is going to weigh slightly more than 40kg. :P
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Anyway already TV signals have gone out many light years, and they were theoretically copyrighted.
Some, like the sci-fi show from the early 50's Tales of Tomorrow, are now public domain and have bounced back to Earth landing at archive.org
http://archive.org/search.php?query=Tales%20of%20Tomorrow%20AND%20collection%3Atelevision [archive.org]
Re:Earth law vs universal law (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you're willing to trust uncited Wiki-facts, Carl Sagan negotiated with the rights-holders specifically to get permission for playing the pieces of music copyright-free outside of the solar system. It's a cool work-around: of course pretty much any recorded performance has copyright restrictions, but Carl Sagan figured the disk itself wasn't intended to be played by any human so legally he just needed rights outside some geographically restricted zone (say, the entire solar system) to have all the rights he needed to create potentially the widest distribution mixtape of all time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record [wikipedia.org]
Cease and desist (Score:2)
Yep, the first signal that humans send to an extra-terrestrial civilization will be a cease and desist notice.
Re:Earth law vs universal law (Score:5, Funny)
Can human apply the earth laws, such as copyrights, into other corners in the universe?
Yes. Unfortunately for us, the aliens will read the data on the disk and send back a message:
Thank you for your information. Our clients hold the universal copyright on RNA and DNA replication technology. This letter is official notification under Section A484615(d) of the Universal Millennium Copyright Act (”UMCA”), and we seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your planet. I request that you immediately notify the infringers of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further replication of DNA or RNA on your planet in the future.
An enforcement detail will arrive in your system in one week to ensure compliance.
Thank you.
Re:Klingons (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Klingons (Score:5, Funny)
No, we're well prepared for it. Thanks to science fiction, we've been able to plan for a vast variety of potential intergalactic threats. In response, we've built ...
umm ...
Well, we've theorized that we might be able to change the trajectory of a rock, given about a decade to build something...
Ya, we're screwed.
Re:Klingons (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd love to watch the RIAA legal staff get taken out by Orion pirates.
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Say piss on your your copyrights........
I really doubt [slashdot.org] it. I think they cower in deep fear in front of copyright and RIAA lawyers.
Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Funny)
"It will be the first made made object "
"The disc was comprised by a man "
"that are all copy-written. "
Re:Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Informative)
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Nonsense... The editors comprised this story exartly!
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Except that people in India study English.
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yeah, generally they learn "Queen's English", and are better at it than we are (except the accents... we need sibilants to hear speech, which Indian languages tend to be very soft on).
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yeah, generally they learn "Queen's English", and are better at it than we are
Unfortunately, in India, the queen in question is the Queen-Empress, the late Queen Mother. India had left the Commonwealth two years before Elizabeth II ascended the throne.
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Re:Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Funny)
The majority of Indian English ... aren't in an environment where they're constantly surrounded by good examples of well-spoken English
OK, but it was their choice to go to America.
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Sometimes I see a new mistake here, and within days I see several other people doing it.
Now it may be selective memory or confirmation bias, but I wonder if slashdot is a massive attack vector designed to destroy proper English.
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// set EDITOR="kdawson" // set EDITOR="timothy"
set EDITOR="samzenpus"
$EDITOR, more than anyone else, posts stuff that is crap
Re:Do the editors even look at the submissions? (Score:5, Funny)
I fale to see your pint.
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I am just an old bread selleuuuuurrrr.
It will be a shame if our first contact... (Score:5, Funny)
... with aliens is a 30 second ad telling them 'Piracy is a crime'
Re:It will be a shame if our first contact... (Score:5, Funny)
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Heh, I can see the ads now: "You wouldn't steal a galactic assault cruiser . . ."
Dammit! Now I want the Thingiverse files for a galactic assault cruiser!
*searches E-Bay for quantum string reels for his Makerbot*
Not what that means... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
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Here's an article I just read this morning that seems appropriate, given Carl Sagan and his discs:
You Never Get a Seventh Chance to Make a First Impression: An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/you-never-get-a-seventh-chance-to-make-a-first-impression-an-awkward-history-of-our-space-transmissions/ [lightspeedmagazine.com]
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Aliens join the rest of the world in hating AFACT. (Score:4, Funny)
The lawyer tries to explain the violation to the alien - but the alien is unable to understand how even though it has returned the gold record, it has still 'stolen' a copy.
Aliens wouldn't be bothered but we'd be screwed (Score:2)
On the other hand we would be fucked as they file patents on all the technology that they have that we don't and thereby hold a monopoly on all human technological progress.
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Or, we can patent their technology since the US patent system is first to file, not first to invent.
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Wrong.
Did you buy that ID on eBay?
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Next, the lawyer issues a bill for $1.48*10^8601 based on a price of $9.99 adjusted for 1000,000 years of economic growth at an average rate of 2%, the premise being that the alien civilization appears to be approximately a million years more advanced than us.
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... in consequence, they look bemused and say, "What's a lawyer?"
Heliosphere the final stop in our solar system? (Score:5, Informative)
To the cloud! (Score:5, Funny)
That would be the Oort cloud
So it's copyrighted music in the cloud. How is this any more or less illegal than services like MP3tunes?
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An image is much more educational:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Solarmap.png/800px-Solarmap.png [wikimedia.org]
What do you call a thousand lawyers... (Score:5, Insightful)
...asphyxiating in the cold reaches of interstellar space?
Money well spent.
I hope that in centuries to come, our descendants will look back on copyright and 'intellecutal property' as a stupid little social experiment that became a painful learning experience.
'Man, I'm glad we don't to go through that crap. Can you believe they had to PAY for data?!'
Re:What do you call a thousand lawyers... (Score:4, Funny)
Nope, lawyers don't asphyxiate in space:
http://business.illinois.edu/broker/startrek.htm [illinois.edu]
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Even corn is useless if you don't know how to cook it.
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Lawyers, the people that market trains to in order to find ways to mitigate the damage caused by something known as 'laws'.
You can't solve the problem by looking at the symptoms, as usual in these cases, the actual root cause of the problem goes unnoticed.
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I'd run that through a translator but I can't work out what language it's meant to be.
"We come in peace"? (Score:2)
What a fucking lie. If we look at human history, it's obvious that Mankind is a warrior race.
Also, the past-tense verb that you desire is "copyrighted."
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The aliens can be 100% sure that we come in peace for as long as we lack access to any sort of weapon that will work across several light-years of more or less absolutely nothing.
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Eh. We have been known to (temporarily) come in peace when we don't have the power to back up the alternative(Apropos of the 4th of July, see the English colonial activities in the new world).
Are you using The American War of Independence as an example of coming in peace?
If anything, it's a fantastic example of the opposite- how we use war as a first resort to solving our problems. Someone increases tax on tea imports? War!
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Also, the past-tense verb that you desire is "copyrighted."
Present perfect tense, passive voice, professor.
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Present refers to an ongoing action. Perfect implies a completed action. Fail.
Re:"We come in peace"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some are striving to overcome our violent with faiths such as christianity. Humanity cannot achieve a Utopian society through humanism. Star Trek was a lie and were are more like the "mirror" universe than you would care to admit.
I see your problem right there. Arguably, more wars have been declared for a religion, either directly (eg: Crusades) or indirectly as a justification (many colonial wars) than wars that have been stopped due to religion. Even the distinction between those 2 examples is hazy. Organised religion is just another method our societies group ourselves into "us" and "them".
Looking at the past couple of hundred years of our history, it's been a general social trend to avoid the upheaval and horror of war - access
Millions of years from now... (Score:2)
A question (Score:2)
Did the disk come with a foreword by Sonny Bono?
I spent a decade searching for the CD. (Score:3, Interesting)
I spent a long time searching for a copy of the CD. I scoured every used bookstore I could find. I found multiple copies of the book, but never the CD. Couldn't even find it on ebay. Finally, someone on Demonoid put up a torrent. I contacted the original seeder and he had searched long and hard just like me. It's a remarkable collection of music. Such a shame the music we chose to share with the universe as a testament of who we are cannot be shared amongst ourselves.
Tracks on the record (Score:5, Informative)
Greetings In 55 Languages
UN Greetings & Whale Greetings
The Sounds Of Earth
J. S. Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 In F, First Movement
Java, court gamelan - Kinds Of Flowers
Senegal, percussion - Tchenhoukoumen
Zaire - Pygmy Girls' Initiation Song
Australian Aborigine songs - Morning Star And Devil Bird
Mexico - El Cascabel (performed by Lorenzo Barcelata)
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
Papua New Guinea - Men's House Song
Japan, shakuhachi - Cranes In Their Nest (performed by Coro Yamaguchi)
J. S. Bach - Gavotte En Rondeaux, from the Partitia No. 3 In E Minor For
Mozart - The Magic Flute, Queen Of The Night Aria, No. 14
Georgia, chorus - Tchakrulo
Peru - Panpipes And Drum Song
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven - Melancholy Blues
Azerbaijan Bagpipes - Ugam
Stravinsky - Rite Of Spring, Sacrificial Dance
J. S. Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude And Fugue In C, No. 1
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, First Movement
Bulgaria - Izlel Je Delyo Hagdutin (sung by Valya Balkanska)
United States - Navajo Night Chant
Holborne - Fairie Round, from Paueans, Gaillards, Almains, And Other Short A
Solomon Islands - Melanesian Panpipes
Peru - Wedding Song
China, Ch'in - Flowing Streams (performed by Kuan P'ing-hu)
India, Raga - Jaat Kahan Ho (sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar)
Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night
Beethoven - String Quartet No. 13 In B Flat, Opus 130, Cavatina
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Re:Tracks on the record (Score:5, Funny)
Mozart wouldn't fit, he used too many notes.
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Here's an article I just read this morning that seems appropriate:
You Never Get a Seventh Chance to Make a First Impression: An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/you-never-get-a-seventh-chance-to-make-a-first-impression-an-awkward-history-of-our-space-transmissions/ [lightspeedmagazine.com]
The plan is... (Score:2)
Obviously...
The hope is that aliens who find Voyager won't know about it being copyrighted, and so will excitedly copy their proof of alien life (ie. us) a billion times over by the time we finally meet them.
The plan is to then sue the aliens to the High Heavens when we meet them. (So much for space wars.)
Re:The plan is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, by the time Voyager gets to them, they've had years of radio and TV broadcasts pass them. They'll already know about copyright, and more importantly how Earth has planned to treat virtually every alien species. Kill them. Kill them with bullets. Kill them with ray guns. Kill them with fire. Kill them with nukes. If they didn't already have advanced weaponry, they'll have it built before they make first contact.
At this time, if they met with Voyager, they'd only be about 15 hours behind on our broadcasts.
So what's the point here? (Score:3)
Seriously? What is the point?
The ISS seems to be in a area of lax copyright law (Score:5, Interesting)
The ISS seems to be in a area of lax copyright law.
As they can easily get TV shows, first run moves (still in movie theaters)
"If the crew wants specific movies, music or TV shows, we can uplink them to the server and they can then access them from any computer."
"Crew members aboard the ISS can request specific films and TV shows to be uploaded to a central file server, which they can then watch on any of the Station's laptops."
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/interview-the-space-stations-it-guys-49304003/ [cnet.co.uk]
And I don't think they run windows and I don't think Hollywood likes a very open media server with out a direct internet link.
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What if it comes back? (Score:2)
When it arrives in 40 years or so, NASA has no idea what it is and can't read the disc because it can't find a phonograph. "It appears to be some ancient audio device, but even our oldest laserdisc players can't make heads or tails of it." And even if it could, it couldn't listen to the disc because a government-mandated program embedded in the phonograph detected copyrighte
copyrights... (Score:2)
I have an idea (Score:2)
Whew... (Score:2)
https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4072098 [thepiratebay.se]
That was truly exhausting.
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Unfortunately, the book and CDROM are no longer being published and are hard to find as a set.
I believe the submitter was using the archaic form of the wood "book", referring to information printed on pulped wood sheets and bound in rectangular form, in which sense, yes, they are still hard to find.
That record is a shame (Score:3)
It's actually very representative of the two-faced attitude of humanity: the message of peace in the record is delivered by a former Nazi [wikipedia.org].
That's the real problem with this record, not the fact that it's copyrighted.
"Copy-written"? (Score:3)
"Copy-written"?
Explains why the aliens never contacted Earth (Score:2)
The aliens are probably just trying to avoid lawsuits by keeping their existence secret while they quietly download our valuable copyright material. However we Earth people are already implementing the perfect defense. Here all we have to do is to keep continuing our present policy of extending copyright terms every time "Mickey Mouse" is in danger of falling into the public domain. We keep doing this until we perfect our faster than life drive..
So you thought you could escape eh Zog? That's $150,000 p
Copy written has a different from copyrighted. (Score:2)
Copyright is the exclusive right to make a copy. Much of the material has been copyrighted. This is presumably what was meant here.
How to retrieve the gold record? (Score:2)
Hmm, that gold record sounds quite valuable. What would I have to do in order to retrieve it? (after all it's just floating out there in space, it's not like anyone will stop me from nabbing it ;))
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Typically Slashdot (Score:2)
"By a man called Carl Sagan" (Score:3)
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War is peace, friend is false (Score:2)
What if the word "peace" means "war" in whatever language "aliens" out there speak?
That's already the case in English. For example, the Arabic greeting translated as "good day" [wikipedia.org] literally means "peace on you." Yet if you say "peace on you" with an accent, it sounds like words that could start a war: "Piss on you."
But seriously, the false friend [wikipedia.org] situation you describe would take effect only if "we come in" is the same in both languages.
Re:There should be a distance expiry (Score:4, Insightful)
"Unfortunately, the book and CDROM are no longer being published and are hard to find as a set.'"
Thus illustrating where the copyright system is really broken.
Copyright should be automatic for ten or fifteen years then after that you should have to pay for continued protection. If it's still making money then paying isn't a problem. If it isn't making money and/or being actively promoted it should drop into public domain.
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Fuck off, 1%, this is the land of the Free, not the land of let's fuck everyone in the ass like our mother country did to us.
But that's what kapitalism and the free market/enterprise are all about. With communist ideas like that you can't be a real American. The 1% earned their money by their hard work, the 99% are just lazy. What you say smells of socialist class warfare propaganda!
P.S. This was meant as a hyperbole, I'm actually from one of these socialist european countries that the USA despises so much.