The judge in this case got a big wet liberal tear in his eye and decided to screw the fans of Superman out of much desired public domain material because something happened in the past.
a 28th Amendment consisting entirely of the text "A corporation is not a person" implemented.
Suppose I buy a TV that has been negligently designed, and it overheats and explodes and takes out both my eyes. Who do I sue? If a corporation is not a person, I can't sue Sony.
RIAA loses key music decision
Mathew Ingram, today at 12:28 PM EDT
One of the long-running lawsuits that the Recording Industry Association of America has against illegal file-sharing of digital music tracks is the Atlantic v. Howell case, which involves a husband and wife and the music that they kept on their computer. The RIAA's argument last year -- an argument that was initially accepted by the court -- was that even though the agency couldn't prove that anyone actually downloaded copies of the music from the Howell's PC (other than a company working for the RIAA), the simple fact that their files were kept in a "shared" folder available to the Kazaa P2P software was enough to breach the law.
That decision was struck down this week, however: Judge Wake of the District Court of Arizona ruled that while section 106 (3) of the U.S. Copyright Act gives the owner of copyrighted works the exclusive right to "distribute copies" of those works, the law doesn't define the term “distribute,” and so the courts have had to do so. The general rule, Judge Wake said in his decision, was that “infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.” The decision (PDF link) goes on to quote copyright experts William Patry ("without actual distribution of copies of the [work], there is no violation of the distribution right”) and William Goldstein (“an actual transfer must take place; a mere offer for sale will not infringe the right”).
The court also rejected the RIAA's motion on another point: the agency argued that the Howells were guilty of primary copyright infringement for sharing the music through Kazaa -- but the court decision said that even if someone had downloaded a copy of the music from them, because of the way that a peer-to-peer network functions, that would still only be a case of secondary copyright infringement, since the downloader would not be taking the Howells' file, but merely making a copy of their copy.
The decision ends with this statement: "The court is not unsympathetic to the difficulty that Internet file-sharing systems pose to owners of registered copyrights. Even so, it is not the position of this court to respond to new technological innovations by expanding the protections received by copyright holders beyond those found in the Copyright Act." The decision doesn't mean the Howell case is over, however -- it now proceeds to a regular trial. The RIAA had been pushing for what's called "summary judgment," which is a much faster process.
QuoteThe decision ends with this statement: "The court is not unsympathetic to the difficulty that Internet file-sharing systems pose to owners of registered copyrights. Even so, it is not the position of this court to respond to new technological innovations by expanding the protections received by copyright holders beyond those found in the Copyright Act."
"The court is not unsympathetic to the difficulty that Internet file-sharing systems pose to owners of registered copyrights. Even so, it is not the position of this court to respond to new technological innovations by expanding the protections received by copyright holders beyond those found in the Copyright Act."
I respect the RIAA's position, as far as the rights of copyright holders not to have their material shared without their permission (specifically, the ability of a product's creator to control how it is distributed).
The RIAA is the villain in this story not for trying to protect its copyright, but for suing fourteen-year-olds and trying to make it illegal to copy CD's to your iPod.
Oh, and for the past several decades of treating the actual creators who make the music like shit.
Louderback said if MediaDefender was "concerned that we were tracking copyrighted material, they should have called us."
isn't you know, HAVING PROOF THAT SOMEONE DID SOMETHING kind of required to do anything involving damages?
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"The clear language of the Artistic License creates conditions to protect the economic rights at issue in the granting of a public license. These conditions govern the rights to modify and distribute the computer programs and files included in the downloadable software package," the court said.
The appeals court also ruled that Jacobsen could sue for monetary damages, even though his product is free. "The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration," the court said.
"There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties. For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects," the court ruled.
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge is allowing a Pennsylvania woman to sue Universal Music Corp. for forcing YouTube to take down a video clip of her baby dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."
U.S. District of Minnesota Chief Judge Michael Davis ordered a new trial for Jammie Thomas, saying the jury's punishment was "unprecedented and oppressive." Davis said that the term "distribution" does not apply to simply making music available. It requires actual dissemination, he said.
In one negative holding for RIAA opponents, Judge Davis ruled that MediaSentry’s downloading of music from Thomas’s computer is sufficient for distribution.QuoteThomas, herself, provided the copyrighted works for copying and placed them on a network specifically designed for easy, unauthorized copying. These actions would constitute more substantial participation in the infringement than the actions of the defendants in the Eighth Circuit cases who merely assisted in copying works provided by the investigators.
This is actually a huge negative for Thomas because it’s a clear signal that on retrial, with proper jury instructions, RIAA can prove distribution.
Wait wait wait wait: what? These unnamed lawyers are on a press-call with the media, as spokespeople for their company, and they "asked that their names not be published?" And journalists complied?
Truly, this is a new low in chickenshittery that has me scraping my jaw off my chest. These lawyers aren't deep-throat whistle-blowers sneaking information out of their employers' filing cabinets: they're the official spokespeople for the firm. And they get anonymity?
The real question is: Will anyone with the power to do anything actually see this and... do anything?
Doctorow has more on same (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/30/mpaa-spokeslawyers-i.html). He adds something that I didn't notice in the other article: RealDVD STILL slaps DRM on DVD's it rips. The MPAA is suing because the program strips out their DRM and PUTS SOMEBODY ELSE'S ON IT.
Crazier still, and the main point Doctorow notes in his post, is that the MPAA's lawyers ASK NOT TO BE NAMED.QuoteWait wait wait wait: what? These unnamed lawyers are on a press-call with the media, as spokespeople for their company, and they "asked that their names not be published?" And journalists complied?
Truly, this is a new low in chickenshittery that has me scraping my jaw off my chest. These lawyers aren't deep-throat whistle-blowers sneaking information out of their employers' filing cabinets: they're the official spokespeople for the firm. And they get anonymity?
Recent legislation in Florida, Utah, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island has made it more difficult to sell used CDs in those states than it is to get a driver’s license. In Florida, for example, anyone attempting to sell used CDs to a retailer must present identification and be fingerprinted, and any retailer looking to sell those same CDs must apply for a permit and submit a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Human Services.
In the first move of its kind against online copyright infringement, New Zealand's government has introduced a law that could force ISPs to disconnect customers they only suspect of distributing copyright material.
The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 is due to become law next February and echoes a similar proposal that failed to win acceptance in the EU earlier this year.
Recording Industry Association chief executive Campbell Smith has said it would be "impractical and ridiculous" for copyright owners to prove the guilt of infringers in court before demanding they be cut off from the Internet.
videogaming247 (http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/11/10/capps-we-really-need-to-make-strides-against-the-secondhand-market/): Epic boss proposes doing an end-run around first sale doctrine by making games impossible to finish without registering.
The limits of Copyright control of after-market products is pretty well-established. Capps is blowing smoke out his ass unless he's willing to get Congress involved, and he would basically be fucking the entire rental market for pretty much everything.
an industry that's pure profit
Gabe: Robert said we could talk about that deal with GameStop.
We had a meeting with GameStop to talk about selling a boxed version of the game. Once we had a bunch of episodes together, we would collect them and put them in a box, you know? And GameStop said, oh, that's fantastic. We'd love to do it, we'd love to carry the game... but it's not going to be available anywhere else, is it?
And Robert said, well, we're going to digitally distribute it first.
They got really upset. And they said, no, you can't do that. We can't have it in our store if it's coming out digitally first. And he said, well, I'm sorry, that's the way it works. We're publishing our game and we can say where it goes. And so the deal that they tried to strike with Robert was okay, well, listen: If you cut us in on the profits from online distribution, and XBLA, and everything it comes out on, then we'll think about carrying it in the store. Just, what assholes.
See, it's a misnomer to think that that's the only way to operate a business.
They got really upset. And they said, no, you can't do that. We can't have it in our store if it's coming out digitally first.
Quote from: Wired MagazineThey got really upset. And they said, no, you can't do that. We can't have it in our store if it's coming out digitally first.
Their fear. It is palpable.
$89.99 Used.
$89.99 Used.
$89.99 MILES PER HOURRRRRRRRRR
It runs on price gouging, Marty!Quote from: McDohl, TWO SECONDS AGO$89.99 MILES PER HOURRRRRRRRRR
Doesn't hurt them in the slightest, as a result of the Games Workshop Effect.
A captive audience of hobbyists can't be driven away by anything.
I take it you make regular trips to Pacific Mall to shop for movies then.
Just burn it for the Dreamcast, man. That's what I did.Don't own a dreamcast anymore, and I totally lament not having one. It was stolen out of my family's storage unit when I was in Florida for military vocational training in 2004.
Isn't that on XBLA for like $10?Not as of yet. Only fighter I've seen on XBLA is the Street Fighter II game. And Puzzle Fighter, but that's not really a fighter. That would be an EXCELLENT way for Capcom to totally shit on Gamestop's parade, though. TA can bitch about the ability to resell the games you download, but, fuck, man, this is just fucking retarded. 90 bucks for a mediocre fighting game just simply because it's spastic, popular, and was released in small numbers.
Dr. Nesson is best known for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and for consulting on the case against chemical companies that was depicted in the film A Civil Action.
Entertainment attorney Jay Cooper, who specializes in music and copyright issues at Los Angeles-based Greenberg Traurig, is convinced that Dr. Nesson will not persuade the federal court to strike down the copyright law. He said the statutory damages it awards enable recording companies to get compensation in cases where it is difficult to prove actual damages.
Alleging that Joel file-shared seven songs as a teenager, the RIAA is seeking more than one million dollars from Tenenbaum family. Odly [sic] enough, if the same music was purchased on iTunes, the total value would be all of $6.93.
Matt Sanchez, one of law students assisting Prof. Nesson, said:QuoteThe basic rules of evidence suggest that this invasion of privacy is both unnecessary and absurd. This hearing isn’t only about Joel’s parents. It’s also about finally putting up a fight against the recording industry’s intimidation practices.
An except [sic] from a case document filed by the Harvard team explains their position:QuoteThe [RIAA] is in the process of bringing to bear upon the defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, the full might of its lobbying influence and litigating power. Joel Tenenbaum was a teenager at the time of the alleged copyright infringements, in every way representative of his born-digital generation. The plaintiffs and the RIAA are seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused.
They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future[.]
144,300,000%
Most recently, in Philip Morris USA v. Williams (2007), the Court ruled that punitive damage awards cannot be imposed for the direct harm that the misconduct caused others, but may consider harm to others as a function of determining how reprehensible it was.
Effectively, RIAA has turned itself into the sheriff, and your ISP into its deputy. Based on the same data gathering and user identification methods that have come under fire from the start, RIAA will now be able to get your Internet access limited or discontinued on its own if it for some reason flags you as an illegal filesharer. And I'm not the only one left feeling a little wary about that.
"This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry," saysFred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"The problem is the lack of due process for those accused," von Lohmann continues. "In a world where hundreds of thousands, or millions, of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made. ... Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for."
Net neutrality.
So basically the implicit ultimatum for casual pirates is going to be "Buy a more expensive package or get arrested"?
Some company called Worlds.com is suing NCSoft. (http://kotaku.com/5119944/worldscom-files-suit-against-ncsoft-+-every-other-mmo-company-to-follow)
I would usually never say something like this, but there really ought to be a law against this sort of thing if there isn't already.
As well, with these sorts of patents you have to demonstrate that at the time the patent was filed, what you're patenting would have required innovation, rather than being plainly obvious to anyone who tried to solve it. Which this isn't.
You'll notice that it's actually an approved patent though.
...in case you weren't aware, the entire patent system in the U.S. is a pile of shit.
iTunes Music Store to ditch DRM. (http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700886&cid=iwhome_art_Macin_mostpop)
FTC holding town meeting on DRM, wants comments (link goes to form) (https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-DRMtechnologies/)
iTunes Music Store to ditch DRM. (http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700886&cid=iwhome_art_Macin_mostpop)
...but you have to pay for it. (http://consumerist.com/5125362/apple-give-us-money-and-well-remove-drm-from-your-music)
FTC holding town meeting on DRM, wants comments (link goes to form) (https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-DRMtechnologies/)
Another YouTube vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg0wiOHc9tI
derivative works of famous photographs (http://whitelead.com/jrh/screenshots/index.html)
"They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
"Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again.Though I'm not really sure what that last part actually means.
"One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously," he added.
As you may have noticed, I'm a huge advocate of piracy. That said I don't hold any presumptions that it is at all legal or moral.The legality aside, the torrent argument always struck me as a silly loophole, I'm not really sure how you could say intellectual property is "moral".
These guys do.
Well, thanks for calling a lot of undue attention to yourselves so the rest of us can operate in peace, I guess.
Obligatory mention of how patents protect things far more useful to society and have much shorter terms
The judge ordered a retrial in 2007 after there was an error in the wording of jury instructions.
The fines jumped considerably from the first trial, which granted just $220,000 to the recording companies.
I find it interesting that the mother is still willing to go all the way with it such as a martyr. She has probably been listening to the talking heads regarding how excessive punitive damages are unconstitutional.
I don't think this one is over quite yet.
There’s no doubt, Ray [Beckerman of Recording Industry v. the People (http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/)] said, that this case can be the test case to question the constitutionality of the statutory damages in the law. But before we even get there,QuoteThere’s a very long body of law, that statutory damages have to bear a reasonable relationship to actual damages. Courts have repeatedly held that statutory damages can be more than acual damages but only by two or three time.
Then we get to the Constitution. In BMW v. Gorethe Supreme Court held that “grossly excessive” punitive damages awards violate due process. The court established three factors to analyze this:
- Most importantly, the degree of reprehensibility
- The ratio of punitive to actual damages
- The relationship of the award to criminal sanctions
In that case, a jury found that BMW had sold as new a repainted car and awarded punitive damages of $2 million — 500 times the actual damages. The Court found that was grossly excessive.
Pirate Bay sold to a group who will turn it into a for-pay site. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/free-file-sharing-at-pirate-bay-to-end-with-sale-to-gaming-firm/article1202655/)
I don't have a single blu-ray that isn't a game, though. :nyoro~n:
(Okay, I'm being glib. This isn't stealing either, because no product was actually taken. It's...what, vandalism? Whatever offense accessing a person's computer without permission and deleting files falls under.)
I would like to know if the whole "Delete their shit now please" idea was actually Amazon or the copyright holders who were twisting Amazon's arm before I pass judgment. Or before I decide who to pass judgment on at least.
I'm just wondering why Amazon couldn't reimburse the publishers for the sold books, and then let the people keep what they bought.
(Okay, I'm being glib. This isn't stealing either, because no product was actually taken. It's...what, vandalism? Whatever offense accessing a person's computer without permission and deleting files falls under.)
Let's put it this way: What do you think Amazon would call it if somebody went into their system and started deleting files?
Yeah, the stealing/theft/infringement issue is awkward, but I've usually given it a free pass because of how irritated I get when people go "HAHAHA PIRATES COME IN BOATS THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT," since there's written record of it being used like that in the 1830s and a pretty good chance that it dates back to the 17th or 18th century.
Which brings me to another point:
I have complained, repeatedly, over the years that DRM apologists erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "stealing". Copying and redistributing a file that you don't have the right to redistribute is illegal, but it's not stealing.
From what I hear, pro-DRM people believe that 80,000 times the sale value of a file is a suitable amount to claim for damages.
[The criminal culpability of commiting an illegal act has exactly jack and shit to do with how the victim of your crime is harmed, or if there's even a victim at all, so if you're going Semantic Fu here based on an infringer not depriving someone of physical property, I am going to throw a hearty lol in your direction, friend.
FUN FACT: I always confuse those two operettas.
However, I do think it should be treated as per the market value of the copyrighted material, with appropriate criminal sentencing. If you've got thousands of dollars worth of pirated media, you should be treated like somebody who stole a car.
And Lt. Cmdr. Data.FUN FACT: I always confuse those two operettas.
HMS Pinafore was sung by Sideshow Bob.
However, I do think it should be treated as per the market value of the copyrighted material, with appropriate criminal sentencing. If you've got thousands of dollars worth of pirated media, you should be treated like somebody who stole a car.
But at the end of the day when a car is stolen it is no longer in the hands of the person who had it. They can no longer reap the benefits vis-a-vis having a car, whether for sale or personal use. When a file is downloaded, the owner still has the content to sale or disperse as they see fit.
Also, the reason I (at least) hate DRM is that it is the companies way of saying "You do not own this product you just bought". They deny me my right to enjoy the file as I see fit, while insisting on their right to stop me from using it should they dislike what I do with it.
Well, when you're being accused of a specific crime that has the taking and deprivation of use as an element, it's a pretty significant distinction.
Most of the root of the conflict surrounding DRM is whether or not the information is free or privileged. The consumer wants to believe that the information is free, as it has little to no value to the state or society and (for the most part) consists of artistic works, which are traditionally non-priviledged (in principle anyway) and are for the public good.
QuoteWell, when you're being accused of a specific crime that has the taking and deprivation of use as an element, it's a pretty significant distinction.
Please direct me to any theft/larceny statutes that explicitly involve deprivation of use. I know at least Michigan and California do not.
So you can just give the car back and avoid prosecution?
... Common Law fucking Theft. That's what the taking element is - exercising "dominion and control wholly inconsistent with the continued rights of the owner". It requires "complete physical control by the offender so that there is a complete severance from the possession of the owner". Hell, one of the other elements is "the intent to deprive the owner permanently of his property". This is first-year shit.
5. Section 155.05 of the Penal Law defines larceny: "1. A person steals property and commits larceny when, with intent to deprive another of property or to appropriate the same to himself or to a third person, he wrongfully takes, obtains, or withholds such property from an owner thereof. 2. Larceny includes a wrongful taking, obtaining or withholding of another's property, with the intent prescribed in subdivision one of this section, committed in any of the following ways: (a) By conduct heretofore defined or known as common law larceny by trespassory taking, common law larceny by trick, embezzlement, or obtaining property by false pretenses."
So you can just give the car back and avoid prosecution?
Actually, in the UK you can. Theft requires you to permanently deprive someone of their property. If you borrow a car with intent to return it, it's the lesser crime of taking without consent.
You can't stop it with DRM because that in itself is an artifical barrier and computing history shows that antipiracy methods are usually cracked in less time than they take to build.
But of course it would require everyone to be adult and honest about the whole situation.Obvious :lol: goes here
The key parallel between regular consumer goods and artistic materials is that increased availability brings with it lower prices. Barring strange situations, that's basic economics. In the best cases, a producer is compensated for the lower prices by having a greatly expanded market, in the worst cases a producer continues to try and have their cake and eat it too and their business suffers for their stubbornness.
At any rate, I know what the definition of theft is and I know it only specifically applies to physical chattels. I was illustrating a point: wrongs are not based on harm done, they are based on intent.
From a practical standpoint, the only reason to cry about infringement not actually being stealing because the law calls it something else is to justify it to yourself and take comfort in the fact that you didn't really steal that copy of Windows XP when you pirated it instead of paying the $300 market value.
An aside:Quote from: P. BirdyAt any rate, I know what the definition of theft is and I know it only specifically applies to physical chattels. I was illustrating a point: wrongs are not based on harm done, they are based on intent.
Are you speaking legally here or is this a moral statement? Because I deny its validity so hard to most extents if it's the latter. And those I can usually juggle rather easily. But that's getting away from my main points and why this is an aside!
QuoteFrom a practical standpoint, the only reason to cry about infringement not actually being stealing because the law calls it something else is to justify it to yourself and take comfort in the fact that you didn't really steal that copy of Windows XP when you pirated it instead of paying the $300 market value.
In addition to the standard supply/demand curve argument questioning whether a person who downloaded it would've bought (or at that price for that matter), I was under the impression the bulk of piracy was related to entertainment, not actually useful software. Is this just a throwaway example or did you know of some study that contradicts this?
I would actually be very interested in debating this because 1) I meant the latter, and 2) though I do not get behind Kant 100%, that is a major underpinning of his theories and I think one of the stronger ones. It's not enough to do the right thing; you have to do the right thing for the right reason in order to be a good person.
But you are correct in saying that would be an aside! I would be fine with a thread where we yell at each other, though!
QuoteIn addition to the standard supply/demand curve argument questioning whether a person who downloaded it would've bought (or at that price for that matter), I was under the impression the bulk of piracy was related to entertainment, not actually useful software. Is this just a throwaway example or did you know of some study that contradicts this?
So you are okay with stealing things that have commercial value so long as you do not think they are "useful"?
DRM is a means to stem the tide; it might not stop the major distributors but it will at least slow down the limewire frat boys.
Funny; I think of it pretty much exactly the opposite. Like, it's morally permissible to steal food to feed your family, but there is no imperative requiring copyrighted entertainment in particular to survive. There's no motivation for taking it for your own enjoyment without paying I can see other than simple greed or entitlement.
Which brings me to another point:
I have complained, repeatedly, over the years that DRM apologists erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "stealing". Copying and redistributing a file that you don't have the right to redistribute is illegal, but it's not stealing.
The criminal culpability of commiting an illegal act has exactly jack and shit to do with how the victim of your crime is harmed, or if there's even a victim at all, so if you're going Semantic Fu here based on an infringer not depriving someone of physical property, I am going to throw a hearty lol in your direction, friend.
QuoteFrom what I hear, pro-DRM people believe that 80,000 times the sale value of a file is a suitable amount to claim for damages.
I am pro-DRM and I do not think it is reasonable, no.
However, I do think it should be treated as per the market value of the copyrighted material, with appropriate criminal sentencing. If you've got thousands of dollars worth of pirated media, you should be treated like somebody who stole a car.
But I am guessing we part ways on this.
I think DRM and piracy lawsuits are two different heads of the beast, so it's pointless to claim that pro-DRM people must advocate huge lawsuits.
I think DRM will not be as big of an issue, as companies are beginning to legitimately fear the backlash that comes from draconic DRM. I cannot see anybody rationalizing the use of rootkits or system-disabling malware being installed without permission. The producers will see how far the can push the boundries, as they will with any new technology, but I think the trend will curve more towards consumer rights as people learn more about what they face.
Also, they treat you like you do not own the song you just bought because you in fact do not own it, just like you don't suddenly own the entire Beatles back catalog the moment you buy a Greatest Hits album.
ps: the penalty for infringement has been 150 grand per act of infringement for decades. The RIAA does not make these numbers out of whole cloth.
At any rate, I know what the definition of theft is and I know it only specifically applies to physical chattels. I was illustrating a point: wrongs are not based on harm done, they are based on intent. From a practical standpoint, the only reason to cry about infringement not actually being stealing because the law calls it something else is to justify it to yourself and take comfort in the fact that you didn't really steal that copy of Windows XP when you pirated it instead of paying the $300 market value.
DRM is a means to stem the tide; it might not stop the major distributors but it will at least slow down the limewire frat boys.
In case you missed it, Amazon's CEO is pretty legitimately sorry about all this. (http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx1FXQPSF67X1IU&displayType=tagsDetail)
Which brings me to another point:
I have complained, repeatedly, over the years that DRM apologists erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "stealing". Copying and redistributing a file that you don't have the right to redistribute is illegal, but it's not stealing.
The criminal culpability of commiting an illegal act has exactly jack and shit to do with how the victim of your crime is harmed, or if there's even a victim at all, so if you're going Semantic Fu here based on an infringer not depriving someone of physical property, I am going to throw a hearty lol in your direction, friend.QuoteFrom what I hear, pro-DRM people believe that 80,000 times the sale value of a file is a suitable amount to claim for damages.
You know what stealing is? It's when you take something that somebody else owns and remove it from their property.
It fucking-well does not matter if you're the person who sold it to me or if you pay me back for it. If you remove it from my property without my permission, it is theft.
A simple "Sorry, won't happen again" from Amazon is insufficient. They should be sued for theft.
You just spent two pages arguing with the two sentences I spent saying downloading a file illegally is not the same as stealing, while neatly sidestepping the part where I suggested that deleting a file off a user's device without permission is.
It didn't (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/31/amazon_sued_over_orwellian_moment/), of course. A high school senior who lost all the notes he'd scribbled in the margins is the first to sue; he's seeking class-action status.
after seeing a high school student sue Amazon for eating his homework,
Less often then you get to say "An Amazon ate my homework."
You call it your "homework"?
Come on now. How do you expect me to not take the piss at anybody who says "I am taking things that don't belong to me but it's not stealing because hurf blurf technology" with a straight face?
When you see a woman holding a knife over her dead husband in her kitchen bawling 'he shouldn't ort've said that about our Ron!', sure one in a hundred times, it's actually a grand conspiracy where nothing is as it seems. But the other ninety-nine times it's exactly what it looks like.
DRM is also a company's way of saying you don't own that thing you just bought. You just spent $15 on a CD, not the music. You just spent $50 on a DVD, not the game.
DRM is also a company's way of saying you don't own that thing you just bought. You just spent $15 on a CD, not the music. You just spent $50 on a DVD, not the game.I wonder if this has ever not been the case (ignoring, for a moment, DRM which specifically fucks with the right of first sale). The idea that buying a record somehow entitles you to rights over the music within or to somehow download it all if you're a big fattie and sit on it and break it is very, very new—and I don't think simply because the technology which enables it is new.
That's been the case for a while: you buy a copy of the software and a license to use it. What DRM adds is that it gives the company control over how you use it. They can use that to limit you in unreasonable ways for their own benefit.
WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD'S FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING WITH A FUCKING LAWYER
WHY
My stance is simple and not at all based on the letter of the law: I support DRM because I think copyright infringement is, on a moral level, stealing.
Someone put the sweat of his brow into the creation of something that we all agree belongs to them in some way,
My mentioning of any letter of the law at all has only been to call attention to the spirit of our cultural prohibition on stealing, and to draw moral parallels. You all may disagree, but I have yet to see an argument as to why, and I find it telling that whenever someone who is pro-Copyright draws that simple moral parallel, the response is inevitably technical hair-splitting between "theft" and "infringement", which is ultimately a questionable distinction since both are quite illegal anyway.
I wonder if this has ever not been the case (ignoring, for a moment, DRM which specifically fucks with the right of first sale). The idea that buying a record somehow entitles you to rights over the music within or to somehow download it all if you're a big fattie and sit on it and break it is very, very new—and I don't think simply because the technology which enables it is new.
Agreed, but if that's your beef the real problem here is not the enforcement of IP rights at all; it is the continued validity of EULAs. After all, there's nothing stopping anybody from contracting away their rights of first sale, but it is problematic if they do not realize they are doing it.
This means the Siegels -- repped by Marc Toberoff of Toberoff & Associates -- now control depictions of Superman's origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.
Anyway! This is the kind of stuff that fascinates the hell out of me. (I realize most people do not share this fascination, and in fact explained all this to my girlfriend last night when she was complaining of insomnia in the hopes that it would cure it.)
Anyway! This is the kind of stuff that fascinates the hell out of me. (I realize most people do not share this fascination, and in fact explained all this to my girlfriend last night when she was complaining of insomnia in the hopes that it would cure it.)
I'm pretty intrigued by this stuff too, I just don't have the smarts to fully follow it so having someone else explain it is A++ to me.
© 2009 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.
I wonder if this has ever not been the case (ignoring, for a moment, DRM which specifically fucks with the right of first sale). The idea that buying a record somehow entitles you to rights over the music within or to somehow download it all if you're a big fattie and sit on it and break it is very, very new—and I don't think simply because the technology which enables it is new.
Making a copy to a cassette tape to play in your car was perfectly legal. And 1980's copyright law said that it was legal to make a single copy of any software you owned for backup purposes.
The Internet has complicated the hell out of these things. Strictly speaking, it's legal to rip a CD to MP3 but not to download somebody ELSE'S MP3 rip of it if you already own a copy, which is rather a silly and arbitrary distinction. And you can record a TV show off the air and skip the commercials, but not download somebody else's copy that already has them ripped out -- this one's a little more understandable, of course, given the nature of ad-supported revenue, but at the end of the day I still didn't watch the ads in either case. A lot of the discussion amounts to trying to figure out where the line is.
"It may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual's computer," [Judge] Patel wrote, "a federal law (the DMCA) has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."
Roughly a week ago, Mininova was still the largest torrent site on the Internet, but this quickly changed after the site’s founders removed of millions of torrents to avoid having to pay millions of dollars in fines. In the days that followed, traffic to the site dropped 66%, while the number of daily downloads are less than 4% of what they used to be.
I like Kurt Busiek's one man campaign to make the internet smarter.
In their opening briefs in the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit (which have been made public today), Viacom and plaintiffs claim that YouTube doesn't do enough to keep their copyrighted material off the site.
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom.
Sometimes I have other people beat my family members to death so I can get other people to protect my family members from getting beaten to death afterwards. I am very crafty.
Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
Who's running that company? Hank Pym?
I was referring to the time he built a robot in secret that he would 'defeat' to redeem himself.
It's hard to explain a mind-blowing mess like this one, but AFP is suing a Haitian photojournalist for "antagonistic assertion of [his] rights" after it distributed his news-breaking earthquake photos all over the world without his permission. AFP is mad because the photographer, Daniel Morel, sent cease and desist letters to numerous AFP clients, allegedly made false and defamatory statements about AFP, and made unreasonable monetary demands of AFP for infringement.
...exemptions from the statute’s prohibition against circumvention of technology that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work...
(1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:
(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;
(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos
(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.
(3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network.
(4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:
(i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
(ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.
(5) Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace; and
(6) Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
And also that thread where a bunch of people told me I was stupid for thinking that being able to run homebrew software was a consumer right.
Quote from: ThadAnd also that thread where a bunch of people told me I was stupid for thinking that being able to run homebrew software was a consumer right.
You know that scene at the end of the Untouchables where that reporter is like MISTER NESS PROHIBITION IS OVER WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW and Costner says WELL I THINK ILL GO HAVE A DRINK and the camera pans out as he walks away into the hustle and bustle of a Chicago morning?
This is like that.
"It is also important to note that unauthorized modification of the iOS is a violation of the iPhone end-user license agreement," the company wrote. "Because of this, Apple may deny service for an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has installed any unauthorized software."Standard procedure, but still annoying. Shows that the victory doesn't mean a hell of a lot if AT&T gets on board with whatever Apple means by "deny service."
(also homebrewing is not generally done for the purpose of security testing iirc but feel free to correct me)
(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.
But it kind of affirms what I've suspected in that the ruling doesn't say jack about a company's attempts to circumvent homebrew applications, it just means they can't outright sue you for it.
Which doesn't mean device makers explicitly have that right, or don't. It just means the ruling is still in the air on that one.
"Much as defendant [McFarlane] tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from the same century," [Judge Barbara] Crabb writes. "Not only does this break the Hellspawn 'rule' that Malebolgia never returns a Hellspawns [sic] to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years, as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4), it suggests that what defendant really wanted to do was exploit the possibilities of the knight introduced in issue no. 9. [...]
"If defendant really wanted to differentiate the new Hellspawn," the judge continues, "why not make him a Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn."
As a bonus, Crabb uses the phrase "kick-ass warrior angels" in reference to Domina and Tiffany.
The Software Freedom Conservancy has secured $90,000 in damages for willful infringement of GPLv2, plus nearly $50,000 in costs from Westinghouse Digital Electronics over its illegal distribution of the Unix utility BusyBox. The company has also been ordered to stop shipping product loaded with BusyBox.
It's the first time a US court has awarded an injunction ordering a GPL violator to permanently stop distribution of out-of-compliance GPL'd software.
It might not be the last. The action is one of 14 that SFC has filed against the same number of consumer electronics manufactures and retailers for GPL violations, including Best Buy, Samsung Electronics America, and JVC Americas.
“The only way to be able to play copied games is to circumvent the technology,” Gutierrez said. “How about backup games and the homebrewed?”
STAN LEE: I wanted him to be the son of Odin
The Evanier one is the only one I read, actually, on account of Mark Evanier <3<3<3.
Care to elaborate on the Ditko point? I'm not as well up on the history of all this as I'd like to be.
which put them in the position of having to prove a negative (that Kirby's work wasn't for-hire).
Ars (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/bittorrent-users-dont-act-in-concert-so-judge-slashes-mass-p2p-case.ars): California judge winnows another monolithic BT suit down from 188 IP's to a single defendant; understands how BT works and says that simply being part of the same swarm does not satisfy the legal requirement of "acting in concert"; has 50gig/month usenet account
WASHINGTON—A patent-system overhaul nearly a decade in the making is expected to receive final congressional passage this month, significantly altering how anyone with an invention—from a garage tinkerer to a large corporation—will vie for profitable control of that idea's future.
The bill, which passed a key Senate vote Tuesday and is expected to get President Barack Obama's signature, will reverse centuries of U.S. patent policy by awarding patents to inventors who are "first to file" their invention with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Currently the "first to invent" principle reigns, which often spawns costly litigation between dueling inventors.
The ...
But the gist of it is that the system is changing from patents being awarded to the first to actually invent something, to being the first to come up with the idea. So in short, there's no reason that say, Apple wouldn't just flood the patent office with every asinine idea it can think, and sue anyone who gets it working later.
Copyright troll asks court for permission to subpoena ISP's, decides court is taking too long, sends them out without permission, gets sanctioned and fined $10,000. Also, a Texas judge used the phrase "Staggering Chutzpah" (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/sanctioned-p2p-lawyer-fined-10000-for-staggering-chutzpah.ars) (which would also be a great name for a band -- we play bar mitzvahs!).
Also: the porn company's lawyer is named Evan Stone, but no, he is not THAT Evan Stone.
Update: Stone tells me by e-mail, "After three rewrites, I finally decided I'm just going to have to let Justin Bieber do my quoting for me: 'Whenever you knock me down I will not stay on the ground.'":pfflol:
Hotfile accuses the Warner Bros. of using the hosting company's anti-piracy tools to remove titles the studio doesn't own, including open source software.
[...]
A spokesman for Hotfile claims the studio was warned repeatedly about using the site's anti-piracy mechanisms to remove content that Warner did not own. Hotfile developed the tool to allow copyright holders to protect their intellectual privacy. The company says Warner went far beyond the intended use, removing open source and public domain titles, and even game demos. Each time Hotfile's Special Rightsholder Account (SRA) is used, the account holder must certify "under penalty of perjury" that it is the authorized legal representative of the copyright owner and "has a good faith belief" that the use of the material has not been authorized.
For example, while claiming to remove files that are copies of the movie The Box, Warner removed several files related to the alternative cancer treatment book “Cancer: Out Of The Box,” by Ty M. Bollinger. Another title deleted by Warner was “The Box that Saved Britain,” a production of the BBC, not Warner.
Is there really a difference?
"Republican-controlled Congress" is pushing a Copyright-protection bill! Clearly this is to quash to Ocuppy protests; never mind that this bill emerged from committee without amendment, which is a stage it takes most bills months to reach as it is, on July 22.
haha worst article"And I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat 'em 'cause there's limits to our liberty, at least I hope and pray that they are, you know those liberal freaks go too far."
"Republican-controlled Congress" is pushing a Copyright-protection bill! Clearly this is to quash to Ocuppy protests; never mind that this bill emerged from committee without amendment, which is a stage it takes most bills months to reach as it is, on July 22.
I would link to a stream of "I'm Just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock but FELONY
Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free.
William Patry is no copyright radical. He's the author of some of the major reference texts on copyright, books that most copyright lawyers would have on their bookcases, books like Patry on Copyright. But Patry -- once copyright counsel to the US House of Representatives and policy planning advisor to the US Register of Copyrights -- is furious with the current state of copyright law, and he's marshalled his considerable knowledge of copyright and combined it with his considerable talent as a writer to produce a new book, How to Fix Copyright, a book that is incandescent in every sense of the word.
How to Fix Copyright is a superbly argued, enraging book on the state of copyright law today, one of the great evidence-free zones in policymaking, where every measure is taken on faith and whose results are never seriously measured (except by tame, partisan researchers who always conclude that more draconian laws are in order). Patry dismantles the arguments for "strong" copyright protection like a top chef deboning a fish, deftly carving away the industry rhetoric and leaving behind the evidence.
[...]
As to solutions, Patry notes that his publisher wanted him to include a list of bullet-point solutions at the end of the book, an approach he rejected because these aren't simple problems -- they're difficult and nuanced, and so are his solutions, so they're best couched in the arguments they refer to. I agree with this approach, though two of Patry's suggestions are simple enough: first, stop making new copyright laws until we know whether the current ones are working (we'll have to define what they're supposed to be doing first!); and second, make no new laws without a strong, impartial evidentiary basis.
Funnily enough, these two suggestions do mark Patry out as a copyright radical by modern standards.
And unfortunately, there is no organised lobby for the public domain to demand the kind of stiff sanctions for Universal and co that other copyright infringers face at their behest.
The lawmaker behind SOPA introduced amendments that dramatically water it down (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-amendment/), reports Wired's David Kravets. Unfortunately, the amended plan "still gives legal immunity to financial institutions and ad networks that choose to boycott “rogue” sites," among other problems.
UMG claims that several artists appearing in Megaupload's music video did not give their consent (http://gigaom.com/2011/12/12/universal-vs-megaupload/).
Megaupload is suing Universal (https://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-to-sue-universal-joins-fight-against-sopa-111212/) and will devote its energy to fighting SOPA
Using YouHaveDownloaded (http://www.youhavedownloaded.com/), a Russian site that indexes downloads of popular .torrent files, TorrentFreak checked to see just how suited the studios are to serving as judge, jury and executioner over the Internet. They discovered (predictably enough) that the studios are full of pirates, greedily hoovering up illicit copies of popular movies, CDs, TV shows, and more.
So today we have marketing departments who say things like "we don't need computers, we need... appliances. Make me a computer that doesn't run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn't run programs that I haven't authorized that might undermine our profits". And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea -- just a program that does one specialized task -- after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don't worry if it's still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that's not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.
I mentioned in the other thread that repelling SOPA is one step in copyright reform, and repealing good big chunks of the DMCA and the last two copyright extensions are others. I'm hoping for something a little more active than just letting things sit the way they are.Which chunks?
You wouldn't download a dreadnaught. (http://www.3dfuture.com.au/2011/12/games-workshop-submits-dmca-takedown-notices-to-thingiverse/)
(a blueprint for a 3D model of a Warhammer 40k Dreadnaught was taken down after a DCMA notice by Games Workshop from one website, but strangely, the original blueprint remains on Google Sketchup)
@Mongrel: I'm thinking stuff a lot simpler than food or auto parts. I'm thinking anything cheap, plastic, and typically manufactured in places like China, Taiwan, etc. Stuff like toys, small replacement parts for household appliances -- that's the stuff that's going to explode in the next decade.
cheap plastic crap
Soviet-era scientists were required, on pain of imprisonment, to endorse Lysenkoism, a discredited theory of inheritance favored by Stalin for ideological reasons. [... W]hen Soviet scientists met their Western counterparts, everyone knew that Lysenkoism was an awful absurdity. But the Soviet scientists had to pretend it wasn’t. Not unlike some of the discussions inside today’s major publishing houses when it comes to DRM.
And I’ve recruited enthusiastic contributors from all of the big six publishers for the Humble E-Book Bundle—that is, all except one, which has an all-DRM-all-the-time policy and won’t consider publishing anything without DRM in any of its divisions.
Because of its insistence on DRM, this one publisher is going to miss out—along with its authors—on hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, and some great exposure. Needless to say, every author I’ve approached from that publisher is now trying to figure out how to get out of their contracts for future books. It’s one thing to have your publisher’s bizarre, ideology-driven superstitions erode e-book sales. It’s quite another to learn that you’re going to miss out on a chance to pay off your mortgage because your publisher has bought into a form of digital Lysenkoism.
Yes, but probably not on purpose.
Well, in my case we're talking about sacrifice on the caliber of giving up eating truffles and caviar for lent, but I'm with y'all wealthy folks in spirit and I'd do it if I could.
And those qualifiers are kind of important, too. Better yet, DO buy music, movies, and games in March. Buy independent ones that aren't affiliated with the MPAA/RIAA/ESA. Buy used ones whose sales don't go to the MPAA/RIAA/ESA. Don't punish the people who aren't part of the problem.
Title 17 of the US Code as currently published by the US Government reflects the laws passed by Congress as of Jan. 7, 2011, and it is this version that is published here.
110. Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (concerning the right to make recordings, etc. -B), the following are not infringements of copyright:
[...]
(B) communication by an establishment of a transmission or retransmission embodying a performance or display of a nondramatic musical work intended to be received by the general public, originated by a radio or television broadcast station licensed as such by the Federal Communications Commission, or, if an audiovisual transmission, by a cable system or satellite carrier, if—
(i) in the case of an establishment other than a food service or drinking establishment, either the establishment in which the communication occurs has less than 2,000 gross square feet of space (excluding space used for customer parking and for no other purpose), or the establishment in which the communication occurs has 2,000 or more gross square feet of space (excluding space used for customer parking and for no other purpose) and—
[...]
(II) if the performance or display is by audiovisual means, any visual portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a total of not more than 4 audiovisual devices, of which not more than 1 audiovisual device is located in any 1 room, and no such audiovisual device has a diagonal screen size greater than 55 inches, and any audio portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a total of not more than 6 loudspeakers, of which not more than 4 loudspeakers are located in any 1 room or adjoining outdoor space;
Oh hey, it's DMCA Exemption Time again.
Ars (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/fight-for-your-right-to-party-rip-dvds-legally.ars) says that Public Knowledge is pushing for the right to rip DVD's, and is soliciting messages from people who have examples of occasions when they've been inconvenienced by the ban. I can probably produce a couple. For example, the software for playing DVD's under Linux is illegal.
Recently, Marvel triumphed in court against Gary Friedrich, the creator of Ghost Rider, as to whether any moneys or rights were owed to him from the use of the characters in movies, with the second movie starring Nicolas Cage on its way.
And while the court decided that Marvel owe Gary nothing, they also decided on a counter claim from Marvel, that Gary Friedrich owes $17,000 for selling prints of the Ghost Rider character at conventions and the like.
This represents Gary’s earnings from selling such prints over several years – but now Gary is penniless. And Marvel are demanding payment now. Oh, and that he is not allowed to say he is the creator of Ghost Rider for financial gain, say by doing an interview, in the future.
When people talk about the importance of actually spending money on games, rather than resorting to a used purchase or piracy, the importance of "supporting the developers" is never far from the argument. Yet for a lot of classic titles being repackaged and sold these days, money from new purchases isn't going to the developers at all, but solely to the publishers that own the long-term rights to the titles.
Freelance developer Simon Roth decided to see just how deep this problem goes. He started digging around on Google and talking to his colleagues to determine which developers, if any, were actually receiving a cut of the continuing profits on their work. Last week, he published the results of his research, a list of over 200 classic titles (http://machinestudios.co.uk/viewentry.php?id=45) that are currently being sold by publishers without any of the new income going to the actual developers that made the game.
BleedingCool has a post from Steve Bissette on the Ghost Rider case (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/14/jean-marc-lofficier-on-the-consequences-of-the-gary-friedrich-decision/), mostly consisting of comments by actual-lawyer Jean-Marc Lofficier. Lofficier takes something of an alarmist position -- that this is the first step in Disney handing out C&D's at Artist's Alley -- but of course it's legally possible.
Messed up fonts, print indicia, missing digital comics redemption codes, the fact that Avengers 22 is available as a digital scan despite not being available on ComiXology (or on Marvel’s stupidly exclusive app), the standard DPI, the rigid resolution, the perfect scans… it’s obvious what this is. Someone’s got Marvel’s print-ready files before they’re finalized, and they’re slapping them up online as digital scans. Clever girl.
But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the "public good", simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they'd just make it worse.
On Friday, a YouTube user named eeplox posted a question to the support forums, regarding a copyright complaint on one of his videos. YouTube’s automated Content ID system flagged a video of him foraging a salad in a field, claiming the background music matched a composition licensed by Rumblefish, a music licensing firm in Portland, Oregon.
The only problem? There is no music in the video; only bird calls and other sounds of nature.
[...]
Back at YouTube, eeplox found himself at a dead end. YouTube now stated, “All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content.” No further disputes were possible, the case was closed.
Whether caused by a mistake or malice, Rumblefish was granted full control over eeplox’s video. They could choose to run ads on the video, mute the audio, or remove it entirely from the web.
Much of the legal battle is still sealed, but according to the brief, Warner has acknowledged that the notices were sent out incorrectly, saying they were mistakes churned out by the software while searching for content. The EFF brief points out that such practices are barred under the terms of the DMCA.
"The law requires the sender of a takedown notice has to have a good-faith belief that their copyright is being infringed," Mitch Stoltz, staff attorney at the EFF told The Register. "The system they are using appears to only be looking at file names, and sending out notices with no human review of the requests, or even an automated review of the file in question."
In essence, the EFF claims, Warner is attempting to set a precedent that would allow DMCA takedown notices to be used for competitive advantage. By being able to blame the whole thing on computer error, companies would have a "perverse incentive to dumb-down the process," the brief reads.
The EFF points out that over a third of takedown notices received by Google are false, and warns the problem will get worse if Warner wins this point.
The program, which would have merely been ill-advised had it been announced ten years ago, today stands as a testament to the ability of movie studios to blind themselves to reality.
[...]
The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure.
The owner of Dajaz1.com appreciates the fact that the United States Government, on studying the matter further with all the information the RIAA could furnish, determined that there was in fact no probable cause to seek a forfeiture of the domain it had seized and held for a year.
That exoneration, however, did not remedy the harms caused by a full year of censorship and secret proceedings — a form of “digital Guantanamo” — that knocked out an important and popular blog devoted to hip hop music and has nearly killed it.
The original seizure was unjustified. The delay was unjustified. The secrecy in extensions of the forfeiture deadlines was unjustified.
Five details are notable here.
First, the seizure occurred pursuant to language the PRO-IP Act authorizing seizures of property used in connection with the making of, or trafficking in, “articles” in violation of copyright law. In that context, “articles” are physical items. The law does not authorize seizure of domains that link to other sites. So from the beginning this seizure was entirely legally unjustified, no matter what the allegations about infringement.
SEC. 2323. FORFEITURE, DESTRUCTION, AND RESTITUTION.
(a) CIVIL FORFEITURE.-
(1) PROPERTY SUBJECT TO FORFEITURE.-The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States Government:
(A) Any article, the making or trafficking of which is, prohibited under section 506 of title 17, or section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of this title.
(B) Any property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of an offense referred to in subparagraph (A).
(C) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of the commission of an offense referred to in subparagraph (A).
Second, seizing a blog for linking to four songs, even allegedly infringing ones, is equivalent to seizing the printing press of the New York Times because the newspaper, in its concert calendar, refers readers to four concerts where the promoters of those concerts have failed to pay ASCAP for the performance licenses.
Third, RIAA’s grand and sweeping attacks on dajaz1.com suggest that RIAA’s powers of demonization far exceed its ability to substantiate its malicious statements with specific and credible facts.
Fourth , when I explained that the blog publisher had received music from the industry itself, a government attorney replied that authorization was an “affirmative defense” that need not be taken into account by the government in carrying out the seizure. That was stunning.
Fifth, when discussing the secret extensions with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, I repeatedly asked the government attorney to inform the court that my client opposed any further extensions and asked for an opportunity to be heard. Not once did the government reveal those requests or positions to the court. The government should be embarrassed for keeping that information from the court.
This entire episode shows that neither the government nor the recording industry deserves any additional powers with new so-called “antipiracy” legislation, especially in the context where copyright law has been expanded and new anti-piracy remedies have been crafted ***16 times*** since 1982. This episode shows that the copyright establishment and the government are very much the “rogues” that deserve to be reined in.
In a massive 350-page ruling (PDF) handed down on Friday, the judge overseeing the case dug deep into the questions surrounding fair use and concluded that copyright was meant to promote the writing of more books. And, the judge concluded, "There is no reason to believe that allowing unpaid, nonprofit academic use of small excerpts in controlled circumstances would diminish creation of academic works."
So—crushing victory for Georgia State, whose professors can now dance gleefully through the ash of their foes in publishing? Not quite. After years of litigation, the case came down to 75 particular items that the publishers argued were infringing. Five unlicensed excerpts (from four different books) did exceed the amount allowed under factor three above. These books include The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in both its second and third editions, along with The Power Elite and the no-doubt-scintillating tome Utilization-Focused Evaluation (Third Edition).
While the university had issued a 2009 guide designed to help faculty know when they needed a license for excerpts, the judge found that the policy "did not limit copying in those instances to decidedly small excerpts as required by this Order. Nor did it proscribe the use of multiple chapters from the same book."
Still, copyright and fair use can be murky, and the judge found no bad faith on the school's part, concluding: "The truth is that fair use principles are notoriously difficult to apply."
Judge Richard Posner previously canceled a jury trial in Chicago in the case, and then castigated both Apple and Motorola while calling the entire US patent system "chaos."
[...]
Posner complained that Apple's attempt to get an injunction restricting the sale of Motorola phones would have "catastrophic effects" on the mobile device market and consumers. He further criticized Motorola for trying to use a standards-essential patent to get an injunction against Apple.
While high-profile cases – by NPEs [non-practicing entities, ie companies that own patents but don't actually use them] the researchers describe as “big game hunters” – give the impression that patent trolling is mostly between giant corporations, the researchers noted that the median defendant had annual revenue of $US10.8 million, and 82 percent of actions were launched against companies with less than $US100 million in annual revenue.
[...]
It should be noted that this research focused only on the NPE business model – it didn’t take into account the increasingly bitter, frivolous and expensive patent spats between active vendors such as Apple, Motorola, Samsung and the rest.
The US Congress is holding a hearing today to consider whether companies that own standards-essential patents (SEP) should be allowed to use them to get sales and import bans on their rivals' products.
Following this discussion, the parties executed an agreement on October 2, 1992. It confirmed that DC would cover Shuster’s debts and pay Jean $25,000 a year for the rest of her life. SUF 19. In exchange, Jean and Frank re-granted all of Joe Shuster’s rights (including any Superman copyrights) to DC and vowed never to assert a claim to such rights. The 1992 Agreement stated, in pertinent part:QuoteWe [DC] ask you to confirm by your signatures below that this agreement fully settles all claims to any payments or other rights or remedies which you may have under any other agreement or otherwise, whether now or hereafter existing regarding any copyrights, trademarks, or other property right in any and all work created in whole or in part by your brother, Joseph Shuster, or any works based thereon. In any event, you now grant us any such rights and release us, our licensees and all others acting with our permission, and covenant not to assert any claim of right, by suit or otherwise, with respect to the above, now and forever. SUF 19 (emphasis added).
Google to downgrade search rankings of sites which are frequently reported for copyright violations (http://insidesearch.blogspot.ca/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html?m=1)
Potentially open for abuse. Anyone can make a fraudulent DMCA takedown request and Google has to honour it.
"You want me to do an order on 75 pages tonight? When, unless you're smoking crack, you know that these witnesses are not going to be called?" Koh shouted at Apple lawyers. "Who is going to call all these witnesses when you have less than four hours left?"
[...]
"Your honor, first of all, I'm not smoking crack," said Apple lawyer Bill Lee. "We have timed it out."
Apple lawyer Michael Jacobs also stepped forward, assuring her that they had done a time test, and could get through 20 witnesses today and tomorrow in its rebuttal case against Samsung. "We didn't mean to burden the court," he said.
"You filed 75 pages of objections!" shouted Koh. "What do you mean you didn't mean to burden the court?"
I guess? If Apple wasn't "that bunch of assholes with a crack team of lawyers" things wouldn't have gotten to this point.
If the gods were really kind that excerpt would have ended with Koh stealing Lee and Jacob's faces
If the gods were really kind that excerpt would have ended with Koh stealing Lee and Jacob's faces
In a Wednesday blog post, the Google-owned video site announced that copyright holders that wish to keep a video offline after the uploader disputes a ContentID claim will (in most cases) be required to file a formal takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That matters because there are legal penalties (albeit relatively modest ones) for filing bogus DMCA takedown requests.
A series of monumentally sloppy, automatically generated takedown notices sent by Microsoft to Google accused the US federal government, Wikipedia, the BBC, HuffPo, TechCrunch, and even Microsoft Bing of infringing on Microsoft's copyrights. Microsoft also accused Spotify (a music streaming site) of hosting material that infringed its copyrights. The takedown was aimed at early Windows 8 Beta leaks, and seemed to target its accusations based on the presence of the number 45 in the URLs.
Maine GOP Attacks Democratic Candidate Over Her Record... In 'World Of Warcraft' (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/10/05/maine-gop-attacks-democratic-candidate-world-of-warcraft/)
There can still be a place for middlemen even in the modern world - namely people who can facilitate growth and take care of advertising.Beatport. Serving as a discovery, preview, and convenient purchasing service. The platform adds value.
Convincing the public that people calling themselves pirates (the scary motherfuckers who pillaged ports and kidnapped women) are the bad guys should be the easiest thing in the world, but the RIAA and MPAA by suing children and grandmothers have turned themselves into the bad guys, while the "pirates" are freely distributing things to the masses on their own dime.Look out, peasants! It's that scary motherfucker: Robin Hood!
Most of the books Google scans for its book program come from libraries. After Google scans each book, it provides a digital image and a text version of the book to the library that owns the original. The libraries then contribute the digital files to a repository called the Hathitrust Digital Library, which uses them for three purposes: preservation, a full-text search engine, and electronic access for disabled patrons who cannot read the print copies of the books.
EduBlogs, a service that hosts 1.45 million educational blogs, had all 1.45 million of them taken offline for 12 hours because their $70K/year hosting company, ServerBeach, pitched a wobbly after receiving a takedown notice from Pearson Publishing. Pearson was upset over a five-year-old blog post where a teacher had quoted 279 words out of an article written in 1974. They sent the takedown notice to their host. EduBlogs deleted the post, but it was still present in their database, so ServerBeach punished them by removing 1.45 million peoples' sites.
More like, hey ServerBeach, fuck you.
This document really is a watershed moment. Even if it does not lead to any actual legislation, just the fact that some in Congress are discussing how copyright has gone way too far and even looking at suggestions that focus on what benefits the public the most is a huge step forward from what we've come to expect. In many ways, this is the next logical step after the completion of the SOPA fight. Rather than just fighting bad policy, it's time for Congress to recognize that existing copyright law is bad policy and now is the time to fix it. It comes as a surprise, but kudos to the Republican Study Committee -- and specifically Derek Khanna, the policy staffer who wrote the document -- for stepping up and saying what needed to be said, but which too many in Congress had been afraid to say for fear of how the entertainment industry lobbyists would react.
The trouble's going to be that the document outlines a clash between the concept of fiscal conservatism and the actual policy of fiscal conservatism.
The very first line rejects the notion of information "ownership", which is going to go down with the Tea Party about as well as two black men who want to adopt.
This could end up like SOPA/PIPA -- if you get a strong enough grassroots message out, it doesn't matter what Congressional leadership and Big Media say, it becomes self-evident to a vast majority of voters everywhere that this is in their interest.
Disappointing but not exactly surprising. Great to see the lobbyists and politicians so terrified, though.
Needless to say, we haven't heard the last of this.
Khanna has exactly the kind of resume you'd expect for someone with tech-savvy views on copyright law. He lists "C++, Backtrack, Python, Sql, Java, Dreamweaver/Photoshop, statistical modeling," as interests, as well as "building computers and beta testing software." Best of all, Khanna tells us that he's an "avid reader" of Ars Technica.
Khanna expressed no regrets and he urged other Hill staffers not to be intimidated.
"I encourage Hill staffers to bring forth new ideas. Don't be discouraged by the potential consequences," Khanna told us. "You work for the American people. It's your job, your obligation to be challenging existing paradigms and put forward novel solutions to existing problems."
Since none of YouTube’s internal systems were able to prevent this abuse by Lionsgate and our direct outreach to the content owner hit a brick wall, with the help of New Media Rights I have now filed an official DMCA counter-notification with YouTube. Lionsgate has 14 days to either allow the remix back online or sue me. We will see what happens.
For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever.
"We basically took a look at this situation and said, this is bullshit," said Cheng in an interview with Ars. "We saw that if we paid off this patent holder, we'd have to pay off every patent holder this same amount. This is the first case we took all the way to trial. And now, nobody has to pay Soverain jack squat for these patents."
The Retraction Watch blog is run by Ivan Oransky, the executive editor at Reuters Health, and Adam Marcus, the managing editor of Anesthesiology News. Working in the field of medical reporting, they began to realize cases of erroneous or falsified research were often pulled from the scientific record with little notice, leaving the research community with little idea which, if any, aspects of the original report could be relied on. So they started to track the retraction of scientific papers on a blog they set up.
[...]
One of the cases they followed was Anil Potti, a cancer researcher who worked at Duke University at the time. Potti first fell under scrutiny for embellishing his resume, but the investigation quickly expanded as broader questions were raised about his research. As the investigation continued, a number of Potti's papers ended up being retracted as accusations of falsified data were raised. Eventually, three clinical trials that were started based on Potti's data were stopped entirely. Although federal investigations of Potti's conduct are still in progress, he eventually resigned from Duke.
In all, Retraction Watch published 22 stories on the implosion of Potti's career. In fact, three of the top four Google results for his name all point to the Retraction Watch blog (the fourth is his Wikipedia entry). Despite the widespread attention to his misbehavior, Potti managed to get a position at the University of North Dakota (where he worked earlier in his career). Meanwhile, he hired a reputation management company, which dutifully went about creating websites with glowing things to say about the doctor.
“What is ‘improperly?' This is one of the problems with the system,” Derek Bambauer, a tech law professor at the University of Arizona, e-mailed Ars after he saw the alert pages.
“Making a fair use of a copyrighted work is not infringement. Thus, even if I download an entire copy, if it's fair use, I am not an infringer—and yet, the private law of six strikes treats me as one.”
Bambauer collaborated with Chris Soghoian, a policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, to submit Freedom of Information Act requests to learn more about the creation of the Six Strikes program. The two have a pending legal case to compel the Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget to release more information and related documents.
“Six strikes is fundamentally flawed,” Bambauer added. “Part of the reason is that users were never at the table: the bargaining parties were content owners and ISPs. And ISPs have very limited incentives to defend free speech or protect against mistakes—especially if all of their major competitors are in the system, too. No way to vote against the system with your feet.”
Derek Khanna, an online activist and former Republican staffer who has helped publicize the issue, called Genachowski's pledge a "terrific development." According to Khanna, the FCC "should be investigating this. The decision is indefensible."
He pointed out that the Competitive Carriers Association, which represents Sprint, T-Mobile, and dozens of smaller wireless carriers, has called for the ban on cell phone unlocking to be repealed.
Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights.
It's clear that Fox is mistaking these files for episodes of the TV show "Homeland." What's not clear is why or how anyone sending a censorship request could be so sloppy, careless and indifferent to the rights of others that they could get it so utterly wrong. I have made inquiries about the possible legal avenues for addressing this with Fox, but I'm not optimistic. The DMCA makes it easy to carelessly censor the Internet, and makes it hard to get redress for this kind of perjurious, depraved indifference.
It's hard to see how anyone at Fox or Warner Brothers could have a "good faith belief" that these works infringed their copyrights. Unfortunately, while the DMCA does include a provision punishing misrepresentations by copyright holders, this provision is basically toothless. Punishing a bogus takedown request requires proving that the sender "knowingly materially misrepresented" information in the takedown notice. But proving knowledge is difficult; the sender can always chalk bogus takedown requests up to carelessness rather than fraud.
The proposed definition for “access without authorization” is to obtain information on a computer that the accesser lacks authorization to obtain by knowingly circumventing technological or physical measures designed to prevent unauthorized individuals from obtaining that information.
The proposed changes make clear that the CFAA does not outlaw mere violations of terms of service, website notices, contracts, or employment agreements. The proposed definition of “access without authorization” includes bypassing technological or physical measures via deception (as in the case with phishing or social engineering), and scenarios in which an authorized individual provides a means to circumvent to an unauthorized individual (i.e. sharing login credentials).