All's fair
Tim Tyler
``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use
made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the
factors to be considered shall include —
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a
finding of fair use if such finding is made upon
consideration of all the above factors.''
- http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
"Factors to be considered shall include..." - but NO guidance
on HOW those factors should be considered.
I'm puzzled about how the lawyers ever expected people to take this
sort of vague mumbo-jumbo seriously.
The only thing I can think of is that they are up to their "legalese"
tricks again - being /deliberately/ vague - thereby giving the population
ample opportunity to be confused by the law, and wind up suing each other
over their different interpretations - lining the lawyers' pockets in the
process :-(
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
Josh Dougherty
> Here's what US law says on fair use:
>
> ``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
> fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
> reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
> specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
> comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
> for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
> infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use
> made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the
>
> (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
> such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
> educational purposes;
>
> (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
>
> (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
> relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
>
> (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
> value of the copyrighted work.
>
> The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a
> finding of fair use if such finding is made upon
> consideration of all the above factors.''
>
> - http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
>
> "Factors to be considered shall include..." - but NO guidance
> on HOW those factors should be considered.
>
> I'm puzzled about how the lawyers ever expected people to take this
> sort of vague mumbo-jumbo seriously.
>
> The only thing I can think of is that they are up to their "legalese"
> tricks again - being /deliberately/ vague - thereby giving the population
> ample opportunity to be confused by the law, and wind up suing each other
> over their different interpretations - lining the lawyers' pockets in the
> process :-(
I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and arbitrary
in general. It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it. Note too that #4
is just absurd. Any competition in anything effects the "potential market
for or value of" anything. If you own a pizza place and I open another one
nearby I've effected the "potential market for or value of" your pizza
place. It's just totally arbitrary and could be "effected" by anything, so
anyone has grounds to sue if you do anything. If it's accepted that people
have some right to "potential future profits" or the like, you're in for
endless arbitrary litigation based on idle speculation.
Also, I wish what you cited above would have been posted in the college i
was going to a few years ago. It was a music school and around my third or
fourth year all of a sudden there was this copyright mania. The heads of
the school got it into their heads that they had to scare everyone to stop
copying cds or copying sheet music. It was just absurd. I mean, you wanted
to copy a piece of sheet music to hand out to fellow classmates to work on
and study and people were running around telling you you were breaking the
law, even though that obviously falls under fair use as described above.
Barry Margolin
"Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
Of course, but the question that must be decided in a particular case is
*how much* does it affect it. If it has a very small impact, then it
may be fair use, but if it practically destroys the commercial value of
the copyrighted work then it is infringing.
The law is deliberately vague because it's practically impossible to
enumerate all the possibilities or determine concrete boundaries. What
do you expect them to do, say that it's fair use if the value is reduced
by 5% or less, but infringing if it's 5.001% or more? Should the law
then go into detail about how the value of a copyrighted work is
determined?
Is this any more vague than the laws on pornography, which a Supreme
Court justice pointed out cannot be defined, but "I know it when I see
it"? If you're concerned about not being able to know whether a law
applies, how about laws regarding being innocent of a crime due to
diminished capacity, insanity, or self-defense? These types of things
virtually always come down to individual judgement, not simple litmus
tests.
Life is not simple, why would you expect the laws that govern it to be?
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Josh Dougherty
news:barmar-C74DEC....@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
I would have them abolish copyright law.
> Is this any more vague than the laws on pornography, which a Supreme
> Court justice pointed out cannot be defined, but "I know it when I see
> it"? If you're concerned about not being able to know whether a law
> applies, how about laws regarding being innocent of a crime due to
> diminished capacity, insanity, or self-defense? These types of things
> virtually always come down to individual judgement, not simple litmus
> tests.
>
> Life is not simple, why would you expect the laws that govern it to be?
This is a fair enough point. There are other laws that are vague or
arbitrary, like with pornography. Though I think things like the "insanity
defense" have actual definitions that will either be met, or not. While
these judgments will still be subjective to some degree in any given case,
they are not just completely arbitrary. They have to do with the state of
mind of the accused, which has bearing on what if any crime was committed,
such as murder vs. manslaughter.
None of this will be necessarily simple, but what I'd expect is that the
hassle of judging complex legal issues be reserved for actual crimes, not
made-up crimes where someone a thousand miles away from the "victim" commits
a thought-crime that theoretically harms the "potential future value" of
something.
Tim Tyler
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IoMnq...@bath.ac.uk...
> > > Here's what US law says on fair use:
> > >
> > > ``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
> > > fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
> > > reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
> > > specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
> > > comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
> > > for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
> > > infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use
> > > made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the
> > > factors to be considered shall include -
[much snip]
> > > - http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
> > >
> > > "Factors to be considered shall include..." - but NO guidance
> > > on HOW those factors should be considered.
> > >
> > > I'm puzzled about how the lawyers ever expected people to take this
> > > sort of vague mumbo-jumbo seriously.
> > >
> > > The only thing I can think of is that they are up to their "legalese"
> > > tricks again - being /deliberately/ vague - thereby giving the population
> > > ample opportunity to be confused by the law, and wind up suing each other
> > > over their different interpretations - lining the lawyers' pockets in the
> > > process :-(
> The law is deliberately vague because it's practically impossible to
> enumerate all the possibilities or determine concrete boundaries. What
> do you expect them to do, say that it's fair use if the value is reduced
> by 5% or less, but infringing if it's 5.001% or more? Should the law
> then go into detail about how the value of a copyrighted work is
> determined?
>
> Is this any more vague than the laws on pornography, which a Supreme
> Court justice pointed out cannot be defined, but "I know it when I see
> it"?
IMO, laws on pornography are about equally bad as laws on copying things -
and comparing one bad law with another one doesn't impress me very much.
> If you're concerned about not being able to know whether a law
> applies, how about laws regarding being innocent of a crime due to
> diminished capacity, insanity, or self-defense? These types of things
> virtually always come down to individual judgement, not simple litmus
> tests.
>
> Life is not simple, why would you expect the laws that govern it to be?
The law needs to be as simple as is reasonably possible - otherwise the
population won't understand it, and will constantly be help up for
unintentional infringements.
Now that the internet exists, we are probably going to see more cases
of defense using "fair use" - since the law in the area is so vague
and wooly.
File sharers will say that they swapped those movies to "comment" on them
- and criticism and comment are applications which are explicitly allowed
as "fair use" under copyright law.
Lee Hollaar
>> > > ``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
>> > > fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
>> > > reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
>> > > specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
>> > > comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
>> > > for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
>> > > infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use
>> > > made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the
>> > > factors to be considered shall include -
>
>[much snip]
>File sharers will say that they swapped those movies to "comment" on them
>- and criticism and comment are applications which are explicitly allowed
>as "fair use" under copyright law.
Actually, if you had carefully read the section from the copyright
statute, including the portion that you snipped, you'd see that
"criticism and comment" are NOT "explicitly allowed as 'fair use'
under copyright law."
Fair use is determined by looking at least at the four factors that
you snipped. What the part you left says is that the fair use of
a copyrighted work is not an infringement of copyright, and includes
examples of things that could be a fair use if determined by the
four factors.
But the statute makes it clear that fair use is determined on a case-
by-case basis by considering at least the four factors.
There are sound policy reasons why the statute is written the way it
is, without a precise test. First, was intended to provide statutory
recognition for the first time for the doctrine of fair use as it had
developed in the courts. But as Congress noted in the report that
accompanied the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976,
Although the courts have considered and ruled upon the fair use
doctrine over and over again, no real definition of the concept
has ever emerged. Indeed, since the doctrine is an equitable rule
of reason, no generally applicable definition is possible, and
each case raising the question must be decided on its own facts.
H.R. Rep. No. 94-1478, at 65.
Second, by allowing the court to assess the totality of the circumstances
in determining whether a use is "fair" or not, the doctrine cannot easily
be tricked by somebody adding insubstantial "criticism or comment" to
an otherwise-infringing copy of a work. So, for example, a "file
sharer" cannot simply add the word "awesome" to a complete copy of a
song and avoid infringement liability. However, a company reverse
engineering a computer program for information on how to interoperate
with it can decompile into intermediate copies the entire program
if that is necessary to see and understand the unprotected external
interface.
For more information about fair use, see my treatise at:
http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise13.html#secII.I.
Barry Margolin
> File sharers will say that they swapped those movies to "comment" on them
> - and criticism and comment are applications which are explicitly allowed
> as "fair use" under copyright law.
Saying it doesn't make it so. I believe that factor exists to allow for
including excerpts within a review or commentary. It does *not* mean
that you can make an unauthorized copy of the entire copyrighted work if
you're subsequently going to write a critique of it.
And even when you include excerpts in the review, the other factors
still come into play. If you quoted half of a book in the course of
reviewing it, that would almost certainly run afoul of the "amount and
substantiality of the portion used" factor -- it's less a review and
closer to an "annotated version".
Tim Tyler
[snip]
> >File sharers will say that they swapped those movies to "comment" on them
> >- and criticism and comment are applications which are explicitly allowed
> >as "fair use" under copyright law.
>
> Actually, if you had carefully read the section from the copyright
> statute, including the portion that you snipped, you'd see that
> "criticism and comment" are NOT "explicitly allowed as 'fair use'
> under copyright law."
I was referring to the sentence:
``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
infringement of copyright.''
From that it appears that infringers can claim that they were watching the
movie for educational purposes and research. If told that isn't allowed,
they have a pretty good case that they thought it was permissable under
fair use, that they would never have paid good money for the product -
so no damages are involved - and that the fair use law is ambiguous
and misleading - so therefore they ought to be let off.
> Fair use is determined by looking at least at the four factors that
> you snipped. What the part you left says is that the fair use of
> a copyrighted work is not an infringement of copyright, and includes
> examples of things that could be a fair use if determined by the
> four factors.
Wasn't that the point of my original post? It *mentions* these factors,
but doesn't say *how* they should be considered at all.
It's all very well to say that the "the nature of the copyrighted work"
should be considered, but unless you say *how* it should be considered,
such advice is so close to meaningless as to be useless.
The courts can interpret that sort of thing however they fancy - and
the potential infringer has to double-guess whatever jury they get.
My impression was that the law is /supposed/ to codify acts in such a way
that individuals can see for themselves what is against the law and what
is not - not say that it can't say what's legal and what isn't - and that
you have to go into court to find out whether your jury thinks your
deeds are permissible or not after performing them.
Lee Hollaar
>Lee Hollaar <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote or quoted:
>> In article <IorL0...@bath.ac.uk> Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> writes:
>
>[snip]
>
>> >File sharers will say that they swapped those movies to "comment" on them
>> >- and criticism and comment are applications which are explicitly allowed
>> >as "fair use" under copyright law.
>>
>> Actually, if you had carefully read the section from the copyright
>> statute, including the portion that you snipped, you'd see that
>> "criticism and comment" are NOT "explicitly allowed as 'fair use'
>> under copyright law."
>
>I was referring to the sentence:
>
>``Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the
> fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
> reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means
> specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
> comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
> for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
> infringement of copyright.''
Again, read it very carefully. It does NOT say that the purposes
listed are fair uses. It says that fair uses are not infringement,
and gives some possible examples. The part that you keep ignoring
says what determines a fair use.
>From that it appears that infringers can claim that they were watching the
>movie for educational purposes and research. If told that isn't allowed,
>they have a pretty good case that they thought it was permissable under
>fair use, that they would never have paid good money for the product -
>so no damages are involved - and that the fair use law is ambiguous
>and misleading - so therefore they ought to be let off.
Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense. There is no
requirement that you know that what you are doing is an infringement.
The only way that comes into play is to reduce statutory damages.
But even then, the minimum statutory damages for innocent infringement
is $200, at it makes little difference that the actual damages were
negligible.
>> Fair use is determined by looking at least at the four factors that
>> you snipped. What the part you left says is that the fair use of
>> a copyrighted work is not an infringement of copyright, and includes
>> examples of things that could be a fair use if determined by the
>> four factors.
>
>Wasn't that the point of my original post? It *mentions* these factors,
>but doesn't say *how* they should be considered at all.
And that's the point of the provision -- to give a court leeway to
find that there is not infringement when it would be unjust.
>It's all very well to say that the "the nature of the copyrighted work"
>should be considered, but unless you say *how* it should be considered,
>such advice is so close to meaningless as to be useless.
Well, you could start by studying the many fair use cases and the
books and sections of copyright treatises that have been written on
the subject. It can't all be summarized in a short statute without
making it something so rigid that it loses its goal of preventing
injustices.
>My impression was that the law is /supposed/ to codify acts in such a way
>that individuals can see for themselves what is against the law and what
>is not - not say that it can't say what's legal and what isn't - and that
>you have to go into court to find out whether your jury thinks your
>deeds are permissible or not after performing them.
Your impression is wrong, and overly simplistic, for more than copyright
fair use. Look, for example, at the antitrust laws or the indirect
liability provision for federal crimes.
But in most instances, there is no need to go to court to determine
whether something is likely a fair use or not. You can study the past
cases to get a better idea what has qualified in the past. And you'll
likely come to the conclusion that a "file sharer" trying to weasel
out of liability by tacking on a short comment isn't going to be a
fair use.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IoMnq...@bath.ac.uk...
> "Factors to be considered shall include..." - but NO guidance
> on HOW those factors should be considered.
>
> I'm puzzled about how the lawyers ever expected people to take this
> sort of vague mumbo-jumbo seriously.
Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
Fair Use is an equitable doctrine that has been codified in the statute.
"Equitable" means that the court will determine, on a case-by-case basis,
whether a specific use constitutes fair use. Note, too, that fair use is
raised as a _defense_ to copyright infringement, i.e. you'll find out
whether your use is fair use only in the context of a trial.
Fair Use doctrine is heavily fact-specific. Making predictions as to
whether a proposed use is a fair use requires a thorough familiarity with
the entire body of fair use decisional law, a complete grounding in the
jurisprudence underlying Fair Use doctrine (in the US, it is related to
First Amendment considerations), and an understanding of how judges apply
facts and law in the context of fair use.
It is not an analysis that can be readily or accurately performed by a lay
person.
>
> The only thing I can think of is that they are up to their "legalese"
> tricks again - being /deliberately/ vague - thereby giving the population
> ample opportunity to be confused by the law, and wind up suing each other
> over their different interpretations - lining the lawyers' pockets in the
> process :-(
Ah, yes, yet another person who skipped civics class in high school.
PTravel
"Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
> I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and
arbitrary
> in general.
Copyright is not vague and arbitrary to those of us who understand it.
> It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
themselves.
> Note too that #4
> is just absurd.
Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright protection
in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
> Any competition in anything effects the "potential market
> for or value of" anything. If you own a pizza place and I open another
one
> nearby I've effected the "potential market for or value of" your pizza
> place. It's just totally arbitrary and could be "effected" by anything,
so
> anyone has grounds to sue if you do anything. If it's accepted that
people
> have some right to "potential future profits" or the like, you're in for
> endless arbitrary litigation based on idle speculation.
It seems arbitrary to you because you are making the typical layperson
mistake of thinking that common sense is an adequate substitute for
understanding the law.
>
> Also, I wish what you cited above would have been posted in the college i
> was going to a few years ago. It was a music school and around my third
or
> fourth year all of a sudden there was this copyright mania. The heads of
> the school got it into their heads that they had to scare everyone to stop
> copying cds or copying sheet music. It was just absurd. I mean, you
wanted
> to copy a piece of sheet music to hand out to fellow classmates to work on
> and study and people were running around telling you you were breaking the
> law, even though that obviously falls under fair use as described above.
Sorry, but it doesn't "obviously" fall within fair use. Educational fair
use is a rather specific niche that has a number of requirements that,
clearly, you are not in the least familiar with.
>
>
Ben Pfaff
> Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
Something like half of U.S. senators and a good fraction of U.S.
representatives are lawyers, so that's not really a meaningful
difference.
--
"Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school,
and then work, work, work till we die."
C. S. Lewis
Josh Dougherty
news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
>
>
> > I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and
> arbitrary
> > in general.
>
> Copyright is not vague and arbitrary to those of us who understand it.
Naturally a small vanguard group excluding the "typically mistaken
laypersons", since it's so clear and non-arbitrary.
> > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
>
> Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> themselves.
There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
> > Note too that #4
> > is just absurd.
>
> Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright protection
> in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the point.
> > Any competition in anything effects the "potential market
> > for or value of" anything. If you own a pizza place and I open another
> one
> > nearby I've effected the "potential market for or value of" your pizza
> > place. It's just totally arbitrary and could be "effected" by anything,
> so
> > anyone has grounds to sue if you do anything. If it's accepted that
> people
> > have some right to "potential future profits" or the like, you're in for
> > endless arbitrary litigation based on idle speculation.
>
> It seems arbitrary to you because you are making the typical layperson
> mistake of thinking that common sense is an adequate substitute for
> understanding the law.
Yes, it's so clear and non-arbitrary that "laypersons" can't understand it.
Thankfully there's a special vanguard class (of which you're a part
apparently) who solely posess the clear and non-arbitrary "correct" view,
that can instruct all the stupid masses on their "mistakes".
> > Also, I wish what you cited above would have been posted in the college
i
> > was going to a few years ago. It was a music school and around my third
> or
> > fourth year all of a sudden there was this copyright mania. The heads
of
> > the school got it into their heads that they had to scare everyone to
stop
> > copying cds or copying sheet music. It was just absurd. I mean, you
> wanted
> > to copy a piece of sheet music to hand out to fellow classmates to work
on
> > and study and people were running around telling you you were breaking
the
> > law, even though that obviously falls under fair use as described above.
>
> Sorry, but it doesn't "obviously" fall within fair use.
> Educational fair use is a rather specific niche that has a number of
requirements that,
> clearly, you are not in the least familiar with.
My problem with this is not a lack of "understanding". It's a matter of
disagreement on the legitimacy of such laws. If copying sheet music to
work on with classmates in a university is not an education "fair use" as
you claim, but is still a thoughtcrime, then copyright law is just more
egregiously illegitimate than I had previously assumed. It doesn't change
the substance of what I was saying.
Isaac
wrote:
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
>>
>> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
>>
>>
>> > I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and
>> arbitrary
>> > in general.
>>
>> Copyright is not vague and arbitrary to those of us who understand it.
>
> Naturally a small vanguard group excluding the "typically mistaken
> laypersons", since it's so clear and non-arbitrary.
While I'll agree that copyright law is sometimes difficult for laypersons
to appreciate, the question is whether the difficulty results from
essential complexity, poor drafting, or nefarious intent.
You seem to have made up your mind about the answer to that question. If you
wish to convince others that the law is purposefully complex, you're going
to have to rule on the non nefarious explanations first.
Unfortunately one who does not understand the law has no hope of being
convincing. Those of us who do understand and know what is required to
gain that understanding are not going to take an example of personal ignorance
as any kind of evidence.
Isaac
Josh Dougherty
news:slrndlleuv...@latveria.castledoom.org...
> On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:10:55 -0400, Josh Dougherty
<jdoc1...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> > news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
> >>
> >> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> >> news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
> >>
> >>
> >> > I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and
> >> arbitrary
> >> > in general.
> >>
> >> Copyright is not vague and arbitrary to those of us who understand it.
> >
> > Naturally a small vanguard group excluding the "typically mistaken
> > laypersons", since it's so clear and non-arbitrary.
>
> While I'll agree that copyright law is sometimes difficult for laypersons
> to appreciate, the question is whether the difficulty results from
> essential complexity, poor drafting, or nefarious intent.
>
> You seem to have made up your mind about the answer to that question. If
you
> wish to convince others that the law is purposefully complex, you're going
> to have to rule on the non nefarious explanations first.
>
> Unfortunately one who does not understand the law has no hope of being
> convincing.
Which would be a good reason to make it difficult to understand. Then
nobody's disagreement is valid until they get the approval of that
self-appointed vaguard class who "understand". Until they come to the same
judgment as them, they can always be said to "not understand", and typically
those who disagree with IP are always said to be such by supporters of IP.
> Those of us who do understand and know what is required to
> gain that understanding are not going to take an example of personal
ignorance
> as any kind of evidence.
Unfortunately "those of us" can always claim the other doesn't "understand"
until the other says what "those of us" want them to say.
My own view is that originally, in terms of US law, it had to do with a
desire on the part of the state to create certain incentives for certain
kinds of things, such as invention and authorship, and it was intended to
restrict publishers and commerce, not really the general public. The
drafters were very concerned with there being strong limits on these laws
and knew there were no inherent or 'inalienable' "rights" to this on the
part of authors or creators. It was just sometimes in the utilitarian
interest of the state to impose these laws, in their view.
However, this established "rights" by default, if only legal ones. The
people who gained the gift of these "rights" then started to believe them to
be an entitlement, or at least to try to frame them as an entitlement to
strengthen and expand these defacto rights, in an effort to expand profits.
The more recent framing of these issues as "intellectual property rights"
has a lot to do with this imo. If you can get people to view them like
regular property, especially in the US, people will accept that this must be
protected against "theft" as a matter of right and wrong, even though this
had nothing to do with the reason for the laws, and the whole concept of
property falls apart when applied to ideas.
Another example is the "expression of an idea, not an idea" phrase. I think
this was meant to specify which kinds of ideas are to be acceptable for
protection. The "expression of an idea" language is really nothing but an
attempt to distinguish between general or broad ideas and more specifically
formulated ideas (a very clear and non-arbitrary distinction if I ever saw
one). IOW, it's still an idea. You can't put an "expression of an idea" in
your pocket or touch it, because it's still in the realm of the mind, an
idea. In IP debates this phrase is used as it was used against me in my
last post, as an attempt to evade or refute my claim that it is difficult to
get people to accept that ideas are private property, by claiming my comment
doesn't apply. This may have been entirely unintentional and non-nefarious
in this case, but it's not always unintentional. It's intended to confuse
and baffle people to make it difficult for them to critique the notion of
making ideas private property and apply it to these laws.
Isaac
wrote:
> "Isaac" <is...@latveria.castledoom.org> wrote in message
> news:slrndlleuv...@latveria.castledoom.org...
>
> nobody's disagreement is valid until they get the approval of that
> self-appointed vaguard class who "understand". Until they come to the same
> judgment as them, they can always be said to "not understand", and typically
> those who disagree with IP are always said to be such by supporters of IP.
Invest the time to understand. Copyright law is not inaccessible to
laypersons. All the information needed to understand is publically
available, but it isn't contained in a few statutes. Plenty of laymen
learn to understand at least the portions of the law in which they are
interested.
Once you know what you're talking about, not only will you be positioned
to decide whether the law could be more simply constructed, you will have the
tools to make a persuasive presentation of your argument.
My suspicion though is that once you've made the effort, you'll change your
thinking somewhat. You probably won't change the way you feel about the
content of copyright law, but at least you'll appreciate the reasons why
the law cannot be summed up in a few sentences.
Isaac
Josh Dougherty
I think you're being unfairly condescending Isaac. I'm a musician with a
master's degree and I studied copyright law for about a year in that time,
and I've investigated and read on the topic quite a bit on my own. If I
still don't "understand" it after all that, and still must "invest" more
time before I'm allowed by you and the rest of the vanguard to have a valid
opinion, it's pretty much inaccessible to "laypersons".
ptr...@travelersvideo.com
Josh Dougherty wrote:
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
> >
> > "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> > news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
> >
> >
> > > I think you're probably right. Copyright law is pretty vague and
> > arbitrary
> > > in general.
> >
> > Copyright is not vague and arbitrary to those of us who understand it.
>
> Naturally a small vanguard group excluding the "typically mistaken
> laypersons", since it's so clear and non-arbitrary.
It's clear and non-arbitrary to those of us who understand it, i.e.
"the samll vanguard" aka "lawyers."
>
> > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> >
> > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > themselves.
>
> There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
No, the idea is the concept embodied in the expression. The expression
is the particular set of words, symbols, pictures or notes that
expresses the idea. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of
copyright law and, perhaps not surprisingly, one that is readily
grasped by most lay people.
>
> > > Note too that #4
> > > is just absurd.
> >
> > Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright protection
> > in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
>
> I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the point.
Then what is? Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
Constitution?
>
> > > Any competition in anything effects the "potential market
> > > for or value of" anything. If you own a pizza place and I open another
> > one
> > > nearby I've effected the "potential market for or value of" your pizza
> > > place. It's just totally arbitrary and could be "effected" by anything,
> > so
> > > anyone has grounds to sue if you do anything. If it's accepted that
> > people
> > > have some right to "potential future profits" or the like, you're in for
> > > endless arbitrary litigation based on idle speculation.
> >
> > It seems arbitrary to you because you are making the typical layperson
> > mistake of thinking that common sense is an adequate substitute for
> > understanding the law.
>
> Yes, it's so clear and non-arbitrary that "laypersons" can't understand it.
Most lay people can understand the basics. Virtually anyone who has
actually studied the law can does understand copyright law. Do you
think brain surgery appears "clear and non-arbitary" to those who
haven't studied it?
> Thankfully there's a special vanguard class (of which you're a part
> apparently) who solely posess the clear and non-arbitrary "correct" view,
> that can instruct all the stupid masses on their "mistakes".
If by "vanguard class" you mean those who have actually taken the
trouble to study and learn the law then, yes, I suppose I'm part of it
and, by those standards, it's quite clear that you are not. Why do you
think law should be immediately and inherently apprenhendable by those
who know nothing about it? Do you think the only law should be natural
law?
>
> > > Also, I wish what you cited above would have been posted in the college
> i
> > > was going to a few years ago. It was a music school and around my third
> > or
> > > fourth year all of a sudden there was this copyright mania. The heads
> of
> > > the school got it into their heads that they had to scare everyone to
> stop
> > > copying cds or copying sheet music. It was just absurd. I mean, you
> > wanted
> > > to copy a piece of sheet music to hand out to fellow classmates to work
> on
> > > and study and people were running around telling you you were breaking
> the
> > > law, even though that obviously falls under fair use as described above.
> >
> > Sorry, but it doesn't "obviously" fall within fair use.
> > Educational fair use is a rather specific niche that has a number of
> requirements that,
> > clearly, you are not in the least familiar with.
>
> My problem with this is not a lack of "understanding".
> It's a matter of
> disagreement on the legitimacy of such laws.
In the U.S. you don't get much more legitimate than the Constitution.
Is it the Constitution that you don't like?
> If copying sheet music to
> work on with classmates in a university is not an education "fair use" as
> you claim,
It may or may not be. As I told you, educational fair use has a number
of criteria that have evolved and your short paragraph doesn't provide
anywhere near enough information for someone who does understand the
law to provide an opinion.
> but is still a thoughtcrime,
"Thoughtcrime"? Oh, please. It's conduct that is penalized, i.e. the
act of making an authorized copy. Not thought.
> then copyright law is just more
> egregiously illegitimate than I had previously assumed. It doesn't change
> the substance of what I was saying.
Unfortunately, there's no substance to what you're saying.
PTravel
"Ben Pfaff" <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:871x2dj...@benpfaff.org...
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> writes:
>
> > Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
>
> Something like half of U.S. senators and a good fraction of U.S.
> representatives are lawyers, so that's not really a meaningful
> difference.
The meaningful difference is that a lawyer practices law, a congressperson
enacts them. Whether a significant number of congresspeople where lawyers
doesn't matter, because virtually all lawyers are not congresspeople.
Barry Margolin
"PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
> "Ben Pfaff" <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote in message
> news:871x2dj...@benpfaff.org...
> > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> writes:
> >
> > > Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
> >
> > Something like half of U.S. senators and a good fraction of U.S.
> > representatives are lawyers, so that's not really a meaningful
> > difference.
>
> The meaningful difference is that a lawyer practices law, a congressperson
> enacts them. Whether a significant number of congresspeople where lawyers
> doesn't matter, because virtually all lawyers are not congresspeople.
I think his point was that even though it's legislators who vote on the
enactment of laws, the people who draft the wording, and summarize them
for the legislators, are clerks who are mostly lawyers. And they write
them in such a way that only other lawyers can make sense of them.
Barry Margolin
"Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
> >
> > "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> > news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
> > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> >
> > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > themselves.
>
> There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
That's ridiculous. An idea is what's in your head. The expression of
an idea is what you get when the idea is written down on paper, stored
on a computer, recorded on a CD, performed in public, etc.
PTravel
> In article <FCC6f.3489$D13...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>,
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
> > "Ben Pfaff" <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote in message
> > news:871x2dj...@benpfaff.org...
> > > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> writes:
> > >
> > > > Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
> > >
> > > Something like half of U.S. senators and a good fraction of U.S.
> > > representatives are lawyers, so that's not really a meaningful
> > > difference.
> >
> > The meaningful difference is that a lawyer practices law, a
congressperson
> > enacts them. Whether a significant number of congresspeople where
lawyers
> > doesn't matter, because virtually all lawyers are not congresspeople.
>
> I think his point was that even though it's legislators who vote on the
> enactment of laws, the people who draft the wording, and summarize them
> for the legislators, are clerks who are mostly lawyers. And they write
> them in such a way that only other lawyers can make sense of them.
I understood that was his point, but bristled at the usual gratuitous slap
at lawyers from one who, clearly, doesn't understand anything about the law.
That notwithstanding, the text of a lot of bills is often not well-drafted
or, at least, not necessarily drafted with an eye towards judges and lawyers
applying it, and contains superfluous and self-serving recitals. When the
bill gets drafted as a law, the committees responsible (which do employ
lawyers) have to try to transmute the political puffery into some form of
practical legislation. And, of course, the motivation for a lot of law is
strictly political, as in the case of the DMCA and that ridiculous internet
child-protection law.
So, notwithstanding a deliberate obtuseness on my part given the tenor of
the OP's comments, I really do think that there is a marked difference
between a lawyer and a politician who once practiced law: the former
attempts to serve the law, whereas the latter attempts to serve himself.
Josh Dougherty
news:1130032520....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
...
> > > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> > >
> > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > themselves.
> >
> > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
>
> No, the idea is the concept embodied in the expression. The expression
> is the particular set of words, symbols, pictures or notes that
> expresses the idea. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of
> copyright law and, perhaps not surprisingly, one that is readily
> grasped by most lay people.
This is double-speak. That's all still an idea. It exists in the realm of
the mind. A particular set of words is just a bunch of squigly lines, which
can be used by anyone and can't be disposessed from anyone. I can use those
squiggly lines all day and can't prevent you from using them too. That they
have any meaning or content is in the mind, an idea. Tell you what, i'll
send you my address, and you send me an "expression of an idea" so I can
hold it, and see what it looks like, but don't include any other kind of
physical property like paper or anything.
> > > > Note too that #4
> > > > is just absurd.
> > >
> > > Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright
protection
> > > in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
> >
> > I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the point.
>
> Then what is?
The point was that taking the notion of ownership of "potential future
income" in some imagined alternate market would wipe out all competition in
business.
> Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
> copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
> Constitution?
I don't particularly like that part of the Constitution. At best I consider
it unnecessary, as did Thomas Jefferson.
> >
> > > > Any competition in anything effects the "potential market
> > > > for or value of" anything. If you own a pizza place and I open
another
> > > one
> > > > nearby I've effected the "potential market for or value of" your
pizza
> > > > place. It's just totally arbitrary and could be "effected" by
anything,
> > > so
> > > > anyone has grounds to sue if you do anything. If it's accepted that
> > > people
> > > > have some right to "potential future profits" or the like, you're in
for
> > > > endless arbitrary litigation based on idle speculation.
> > >
> > > It seems arbitrary to you because you are making the typical layperson
> > > mistake of thinking that common sense is an adequate substitute for
> > > understanding the law.
> >
> > Yes, it's so clear and non-arbitrary that "laypersons" can't understand
it.
>
> Most lay people can understand the basics.
They just don't readily accept the basic assumptions, which is why
complicating it is useful. Then they must always go back and study more
until they come to the "right" opinions.
> Virtually anyone who has
> actually studied the law can does understand copyright law. Do you
> think brain surgery appears "clear and non-arbitary" to those who
> haven't studied it?
No, but then the government doesn't demand that everyone who hasn't studied
it must still perform brain surgery, or be sued if they don't do it right.
The point is that you can't describe to me what the property actually is,
and the layperson can't understand what it is. It's like trying to shoot
pool with a rope.
> > Thankfully there's a special vanguard class (of which you're a part
> > apparently) who solely posess the clear and non-arbitrary "correct"
view,
> > that can instruct all the stupid masses on their "mistakes".
>
> If by "vanguard class" you mean those who have actually taken the
> trouble to study and learn the law then, yes, I suppose I'm part of it
> and, by those standards, it's quite clear that you are not.
By "vanguard class" I mean those who, whenever faced with someone who
disagrees with them about the moral issues of things like copyright,
immediately tries to attack them as insufficiently informed. And as I said
in a previous post, I have studied it, far more extensively than most. I
have a masters degree in music and studying copyright for about a year was
part of the curricula. And I also have read extensively on it and the
issues surrounding it in my own time. I know a heck of a lot more about it
than probably 99 percent of the people out there, yet I'm still not allowed
to have a valid opinion until I go study more of the minutia about which
specific thoughtcrime happens when.
> Why do you think law should be immediately and inherently apprenhendable
by those
> who know nothing about it?
If someone who's studied it for a year or more still is insufficiently
informed to have an opinion on the general issue, it's absurdly complex.
Note my comments were not really about the minutia, but about the general
thrust. It has to be complex though because they're trying to make ideas
into private property and it doesn't work. The only way you get people to
accept this is by confusing them or shaming them into giving in.
> Do you think the only law should be natural
> law?
Not necessarily, but I think it is a good idea to try to make law as close
to common law as possible, or what would be respected generally by the
public even without it being officially a law enforced by a centralized
state. Nobody accepted or respected these ideas until governments imposed
them a few hundred years ago. They didn't exist. They are a pure
fabrication of the modern state. And now it seems to me that most people
only accept or respect them because they'll be attacked and thrown in a cell
if they don't.
The constitution is ok as they go. I don't necessarily agree with
everything in it. Forcibly returning runaway slaves was originally a part
of the Constitution you know. And I don't necessarily disagree with the
original intent that this kind of thing might have some utilitarian use if
very strictly limited.
> > If copying sheet music to
> > work on with classmates in a university is not an education "fair use"
as
> > you claim,
>
> It may or may not be.
So even you, in the vanguard, can't tell me if this simple act is legal or
not. So as a music student I must live in constant terror with no
particular way to know when I'm comitting thought crimes and when I'm not.
> As I told you, educational fair use has a number
> of criteria that have evolved and your short paragraph doesn't provide
> anywhere near enough information for someone who does understand the
> law to provide an opinion.
I have an ensemble class in the school and we want to work on a particular
piece, so I want to go to my school library, copy the music and give out a
copy to each member and discuss it and work on performing it. Thoughtcrime
or not?
> > but is still a thoughtcrime,
>
> "Thoughtcrime"? Oh, please. It's conduct that is penalized, i.e. the
> act of making an authorized copy. Not thought.
Why is that conduct penalized, while copying a blank sheet is not? I'm
"stealing" (duplicating) a collection of squigly lines that contains their
"thoughts" and using them for myself. You can't find a more obvious example
of thoughtcrime than that.
> > then copyright law is just more
> > egregiously illegitimate than I had previously assumed. It doesn't
change
> > the substance of what I was saying.
>
> Unfortunately, there's no substance to what you're saying.
Of course not. Since it's an opinion that differs from yours, it is
illegitimate.
Josh Dougherty
> In article <5KudnaVUh4l...@comcast.com>,
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> > news:Rvx6f.6406$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
> > >
> > > "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> > > news:luqdncHfSpH...@comcast.com...
> > > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> > >
> > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > themselves.
> >
> > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
>
> That's ridiculous. An idea is what's in your head.
Exactly.
> The expression of an idea is what you get when the idea is written down on
paper
That just gives you a piece of paper with some ink on it. The only thing
there besides paper and some ink as an idea. No one seems to mind if I copy
a piece of paper or some ink, so what's left???
Tim Tyler
> > > > Note that #4 is just absurd.
> > >
> > > Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright protection
> > > in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
> >
> > I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the point.
>
> Then what is? Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
> copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
> Constitution?
Article I, Section 8 of the constitution also authorises declarations of war.
It is a list of things congress has the *power* to do - not a list
of things they are expected to be doing on a day-to-day basis.
I don't object to them having the *power* to do it - it's the regular
attempts to exercise that power in blocking the flow of information
on the internet using legal measures that seem problematical to me.
These laws mean that teenagers - alone in their bedrooms - can be
convicted of brain crimes by manipulating bits on their computers.
I don't mind that law attempting regulations that prevent people from
harming other people - but IMO the lawyers should get out of computer
science and stay out. The government should legalise IT.
Legal constraints hamper progress, and prevent synergy of ideas
taking place. They keep medical knowledge from the hands of people
that can use it. They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things with
pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a total waste of
everyone's time. The result is lots fat lawyers and war casualties all
over the place. These kinds of negative effects outweigh the puported
benefits.
Fortunately, I don't think the current information dark ages
will last forever:
Citizens want their MP3. Record companies don't want
them to have it. Eventually I expect that the country's
democratically-elected representatives will find a way to
allow the citizens to have what they want - the individual
votes will outweigh the record company dollars.
Tim Tyler
> > > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> > > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > > themselves.
> > >
> > > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
> >
> > That's ridiculous. An idea is what's in your head.
>
> Exactly.
>
> > The expression of an idea is what you get when the idea is written down on
> > paper
>
> That just gives you a piece of paper with some ink on it. The only thing
> there besides paper and some ink as an idea. No one seems to mind if I copy
> a piece of paper or some ink, so what's left???
Conventionally patent law deals with the ideas themselves.
Copyright law deals with their expression.
Plenty of people can write books about persecuted rabbits that can speak,
but unless they contain large sections which are copied verbatim from
Watership Down, they will not fall foul of copyright law - even though
they are based on the same idea that it is.
Generally you can express an idea in a variety of ways. Expressing
the same idea in a different way is not prohibited by copyright law -
provided the extent of difference is of sufficient magnitude.
Tim Tyler
> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IoMnq...@bath.ac.uk...
> > "Factors to be considered shall include..." - but NO guidance
> > on HOW those factors should be considered.
> >
> > I'm puzzled about how the lawyers ever expected people to take this
> > sort of vague mumbo-jumbo seriously.
>
> Lawyers didn't enact the Copyright Act, Congress did.
>
> Fair Use is an equitable doctrine that has been codified in the statute.
> "Equitable" means that the court will determine, on a case-by-case basis,
> whether a specific use constitutes fair use. Note, too, that fair use is
> raised as a _defense_ to copyright infringement, i.e. you'll find out
> whether your use is fair use only in the context of a trial.
>
> Fair Use doctrine is heavily fact-specific. Making predictions as to
> whether a proposed use is a fair use requires a thorough familiarity with
> the entire body of fair use decisional law, a complete grounding in the
> jurisprudence underlying Fair Use doctrine (in the US, it is related to
> First Amendment considerations), and an understanding of how judges apply
> facts and law in the context of fair use.
>
> It is not an analysis that can be readily or accurately performed by a lay
> person.
That's pretty much the probem - if you need a law degree to understand
fair use doctrine, there will be numerous violations through ignorance
or misunderstanding.
I originally wondered if this was negligence or design.
The people who make the laws may not be *exactly* the same people that
profit from those laws being violated - but both groups often consist
of lawyers; they often share the same union.
When I see obscure or unclear laws I often remind myself that those
formulating the laws are often drawn from the same group as those
that benefit from the laws being violated.
Just as a doctor can benefit financially when his patient is sick, so
patent lawyers find their pay checks increasing whenever there is a
patent dispute.
Just as a car mechanic can see some repeat business if the car he
is servicing develops a future fault, so lawyers can profit if they
create the conditions where citizens sue each other.
Also, at the moment, it really pays people to word patents
obscurely - so they can act as undetected land mines, and take
out the legs of unsuspecting competitors who tread on their turf.
Clearly this is an undesirable source of incomprehensible legalese.
I understand that in China, family doctors are sometimes paid when
there are *no* family members who are sick.
This set-up is intended to create the correct association between
payment and therapy in the mind of the practitioner.
Perhaps the legal system could do with following this sort of idea
a bit more.
Lee Hollaar
>I think his point was that even though it's legislators who vote on the
>enactment of laws, the people who draft the wording, and summarize them
>for the legislators, are clerks who are mostly lawyers. And they write
>them in such a way that only other lawyers can make sense of them.
They write them so that they follow the form of past laws, or the
language of past court decisions so that there is already a body
of law to give guidance to a judge who has to apply the wording to
a specific case.
They also, for any law of consequence, prepare a committee report
that discusses the background of the legislation, its legislative
history, and a section-by-section discussion of its provisions.
The report for the Copyright Act of 1978 has hundreds of pages of
explanation of the statute, including a good discussion of the
"fair use" provision that started this thread. The "fair use"
discussion also contains the agreements that were reached between
educators and publishers regarding the extent of usage that would
always be considered a "fair use".
I suspect that many of the people who are criticizing the "lawyerly"
language of the copyright statute have not bothered to read the
committee report's explanation.
Isaac
wrote:
>
> master's degree and I studied copyright law for about a year in that time,
> and I've investigated and read on the topic quite a bit on my own. If I
> still don't "understand" it after all that, and still must "invest" more
> time before I'm allowed by you and the rest of the vanguard to have a valid
> opinion, it's pretty much inaccessible to "laypersons".
We're just going to have to disagree. I've had plenty of discussion with
laypersons who understand copyright law very well. I understood the law
fairly well as a layman.
You don't need permission or expertise to express an opinion. Your
opinion might even be correct. But IMO your pronouncements about the opacity
of copyright law are not the least bit persuasive. I'd be far more impressed
by someone who understood the law but objected to unnecessary complexity.
Isaac
Isaac
>
> When I see obscure or unclear laws I often remind myself that those
> formulating the laws are often drawn from the same group as those
> that benefit from the laws being violated.
>
> Just as a doctor can benefit financially when his patient is sick, so
> patent lawyers find their pay checks increasing whenever there is a
> patent dispute.
It is true that lawyers benefit from patent disputes just as doctors
benefit from sickness. But I don't think people accuse doctors of
creating sickness or of deliberately making the practice of medicine
complicated.
Isaac
Tim Tyler
Of course they do - and some of the accusations are accurate.
One such example is Dr Cecil Jacobson, who - among other things -
injected his fertility clinic patients with a drug that fooled
pregnancy tests into thinking that his infertile clients were pregnant.
When they failed to carry the baby to term, he advised them that their
baby had died - and encouraged them to come back for more
fertility-promoting injections - to try again.
Some women fell for this - and went through dozens of fake
pregnancy-miscarriage cycles - while lining the good doctor's
pockets in return for his injections.
In general, many doctors have an unpleasant habit of prescribing drugs
which target their patent's symptoms without getting an their cause.
Commonly these drugs act as pain killers or anti-depressants. Use of
such drugs *often* has the effect of creating a dependency of the
patient on the physician.
Lee Hollaar
>Isaac <is...@latveria.castledoom.org> wrote or quoted:
>> On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 10:49:08 GMT, Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote:
>
>> > When I see obscure or unclear laws I often remind myself that those
>> > formulating the laws are often drawn from the same group as those
>> > that benefit from the laws being violated.
>> >
>> > Just as a doctor can benefit financially when his patient is sick, so
>> > patent lawyers find their pay checks increasing whenever there is a
>> > patent dispute.
>>
>> It is true that lawyers benefit from patent disputes just as doctors
>> benefit from sickness. But I don't think people accuse doctors of
>> creating sickness or of deliberately making the practice of medicine
>> complicated.
>
>Of course they do - and some of the accusations are accurate.
>
>One such example is Dr Cecil Jacobson, who - among other things -
>injected his fertility clinic patients with a drug that fooled
>pregnancy tests into thinking that his infertile clients were pregnant.
That analogy is so far from the original concern about the lack of
understandability of copyright and other laws, and in particular the
"fair use" provision of 17 U.S.C. 107, as to be totally worthless in
advancing any reasoned argument.
If you have to stray that far to make your point, you don't have much
of a point.
Ben Pfaff
> Conventionally patent law deals with the ideas themselves.
>
> Copyright law deals with their expression.
Patents are not granted upon ideas, according to the USPTO
website: "A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or
suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine,
manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or
suggestion of the new machine."
See http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html
--
"I don't want to learn the constitution and the declaration of
independence (marvelous poetry though it be) by heart, and worship the
flag and believe that there is a god and the dollar is its prophet."
--Maarten Wiltink in the Monastery
PTravel
> <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> news:1130032520....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> ...
>
> > > > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> > > >
> > > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > > themselves.
> > >
> > > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
> >
> > No, the idea is the concept embodied in the expression. The expression
> > is the particular set of words, symbols, pictures or notes that
> > expresses the idea. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of
> > copyright law and, perhaps not surprisingly, one that is readily
> > grasped by most lay people.
>
> This is double-speak. That's all still an idea.
No, it's not. I'm surprised I have to explain this to someone who claims to
have a masters degree. Simple example:
Idea: Trees are nice.
Expression of idea: Trees by Joyce Kilmer
The latter is protected, the former is not.
Get it?
> It exists in the realm of
> the mind.
No, it does not. The Kilmer poem exists in the realm of paper, specifically
words written thereon.
> A particular set of words is just a bunch of squigly lines, which
> can be used by anyone and can't be disposessed from anyone. I can use
those
> squiggly lines all day and can't prevent you from using them too.
A particular set of words has a particular meaning that has been assigned to
them. People don't invent their own alphabets, nor do they make up their
own words (and before you mention Shakespeare, yes, he coined words, but the
words used identifiable roots that had recognizable meaning).
> That they
> have any meaning or content is in the mind, an idea.
And the idea of using words to express ideas is not protectable.
> Tell you what, i'll
> send you my address, and you send me an "expression of an idea" so I can
> hold it, and see what it looks like, but don't include any other kind of
> physical property like paper or anything.
If you're reading this post, then you're looking at the expression of an
idea.
>
> > > > > Note too that #4
> > > > > is just absurd.
> > > >
> > > > Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright
> protection
> > > > in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
> > >
> > > I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the
point.
> >
> > Then what is?
>
> The point was that taking the notion of ownership of "potential future
> income" in some imagined alternate market would wipe out all competition
in
> business.
I don't know where you get this from -- obviously not copyright law.
>
> > Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
> > copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
> > Constitution?
>
> I don't particularly like that part of the Constitution. At best I
consider
> it unnecessary, as did Thomas Jefferson.
Nothing you've written here suggests to me that you could have done better.
Why do you think authors will create expression if they're not allowed to
profit from it?
Sorry, you're not rejecting the basic assumptions. I don't think you
understand them.
>Then they must always go back and study more
> until they come to the "right" opinions.
>
> > Virtually anyone who has
> > actually studied the law can does understand copyright law. Do you
> > think brain surgery appears "clear and non-arbitary" to those who
> > haven't studied it?
>
> No, but then the government doesn't demand that everyone who hasn't
studied
> it must still perform brain surgery, or be sued if they don't do it right.
Don't want to get sued for infringement? Don't copy other's people's
intellectual property and it will never happen.
>
> The point is that you can't describe to me what the property actually is,
> and the layperson can't understand what it is. It's like trying to shoot
> pool with a rope.
Of course I can describe what is intellectual property.
In the scenario you've described, you're taking intellectual property that
belongs to someone else and making an unauthorized copy.
That's infringement.
Period.
Fair use is a defense to infringement, i.e. but for the availability of the
defense, you'd otherwise be liable for copyright infringement.
Don't infringe copyrights. Period.
If you're at a university, ask a lawyer in the university's legal
department. He or she can give you an answer. Because when you commit
infringement int he context that you've described you expose the university
to liability for infringement as well.
>
> > > Thankfully there's a special vanguard class (of which you're a part
> > > apparently) who solely posess the clear and non-arbitrary "correct"
> view,
> > > that can instruct all the stupid masses on their "mistakes".
> >
> > If by "vanguard class" you mean those who have actually taken the
> > trouble to study and learn the law then, yes, I suppose I'm part of it
> > and, by those standards, it's quite clear that you are not.
>
> By "vanguard class" I mean those who, whenever faced with someone who
> disagrees with them about the moral issues of things like copyright,
> immediately tries to attack them as insufficiently informed.
Sorry, but you are insufficiently informed. I can't discuss copyright with
someone whose fundamental premise is, "I don't have to understand copyright
(and, in fact, don't), because I disagree with them."
> And as I said
> in a previous post, I have studied it, far more extensively than most.
Sorry, but everything you've written belies that assertion. If, in fact,
you've studied copyright law, it was poorly taught and/or your mind was on
other things at the time.
> I
> have a masters degree in music and studying copyright for about a year was
> part of the curricula.
Then your professor did you a disservice, because you've demonstrated
ignorance of some of the most fundamental premises which underly copyright
law, specifically, and the laws of the U.S., in general.
> And I also have read extensively on it and the
> issues surrounding it in my own time. I know a heck of a lot more about
it
> than probably 99 percent of the people out there, yet I'm still not
allowed
> to have a valid opinion until I go study more of the minutia about which
> specific thoughtcrime happens when.
As I've said, nothing you've written here suggests that you have even a
passing familiarity with the subject. Some things that you've written here,
e.g. idea and expression are the same thing, betray absolute ignorance of
copyright law and, moreover, make me wonder exactly what you studied to get
your masters. That's not an insult or an attack -- just an observation.
>
> > Why do you think law should be immediately and inherently apprenhendable
> by those
> > who know nothing about it?
>
> If someone who's studied it for a year or more still is insufficiently
> informed to have an opinion on the general issue, it's absurdly complex.
As I said, you were either ill-taught or weren't paying attention in class.
A one-year class on copyright should be more than sufficient to provide a
good understanding of the subject. Indeed, basic copyright law is a single
semester class at most law schools.
> Note my comments were not really about the minutia, but about the general
> thrust.
> It has to be complex though because they're trying to make ideas
> into private property and it doesn't work.
Copyright does not protect ideas. Patents, however, do.
> The only way you get people to
> accept this is by confusing them or shaming them into giving in.
Oh, what nonsense. As I said, don't want to risk infringement liability?
Don't copy protected expression.
I'm going to bet that your "philosophy of intellectual property," such as it
is, wasn't formed in the classroom, but in a coffee shop, bitching to your
friends about RIAA litigation over Napster and the like, i.e. start from the
proposition, "I should be able to download tunes for free" and work
backward.
>
> > Do you think the only law should be natural
> > law?
>
> Not necessarily, but I think it is a good idea to try to make law as close
> to common law as possible,
Oh, boy.
Natural law is not common law. Natural law is an Aristotelean conception
that contemplates universal values recognized by man everywhere. Read the
Declaration of Independence if you want to see a discussion of natural law.
Common law is simply non-statutory law, defined by precedent.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
And, of course, the punch line is this:
As I said at the start, fair use is an equitable doctrine, notwithstanding
its codification in the Copyright Act. Fair use doctrine IS common law.
>or what would be respected generally by the
> public even without it being officially a law enforced by a centralized
> state.
You mean like 8 of the 10 Commandments? I couldn't disagree more.
> Nobody accepted or respected these ideas until governments imposed
> them a few hundred years ago. They didn't exist. They are a pure
> fabrication of the modern state. And now it seems to me that most people
> only accept or respect them because they'll be attacked and thrown in a
cell
> if they don't.
Some laws are malum prohibitum, some malum in se. I have no intention of
giving you an Introduction to Law class here, so look them up.
So what? It isn't any longer.
> And I don't necessarily disagree with the
> original intent that this kind of thing might have some utilitarian use if
> very strictly limited.
>
> > > If copying sheet music to
> > > work on with classmates in a university is not an education "fair use"
> as
> > > you claim,
> >
> > It may or may not be.
>
> So even you, in the vanguard, can't tell me if this simple act is legal or
> not.
I could if I knew more about what you were doing, i.e. how many copies under
what circumstances, what music, etc. There are relevant factors that effect
the outcome. Because you don't understand the doctrine, you don't know
which factors are relevant and which aren't.
> So as a music student
I thought you already had your masters.
> I must live in constant terror with no
> particular way to know when I'm comitting thought crimes and when I'm not.
You can think whatever you want. Just don't copy someone else's protected
expression. That's easy enough, isn't it?
>
> > As I told you, educational fair use has a number
> > of criteria that have evolved and your short paragraph doesn't provide
> > anywhere near enough information for someone who does understand the
> > law to provide an opinion.
>
> I have an ensemble class in the school and we want to work on a particular
> piece, so I want to go to my school library, copy the music and give out a
> copy to each member and discuss it and work on performing it.
Thoughtcrime
> or not?
No, it's not a thought crime. It may be copyright infringement. Or it may
not. Or you may have a defense to infringement. As I said, you haven't
provided anywhere near enough information for me to tell.
>
> > > but is still a thoughtcrime,
> >
> > "Thoughtcrime"? Oh, please. It's conduct that is penalized, i.e. the
> > act of making an authorized copy. Not thought.
>
> Why is that conduct penalized, while copying a blank sheet is not?
Because the printed sheet contains protected expression. Why is lighting
and inhaling plant leaves penalized in some circumstances and not in others?
> I'm
> "stealing" (duplicating) a collection of squigly lines that contains their
> "thoughts" and using them for myself.
Wrong again. The act of infringement consists of making an unauthorized
copy of protected expression. It doesn't matter whether you used it or not.
I don't believe you took a class on copyright law and, particularly, in
connection with obtaining a masters degree. This stuff is very, very, very
fundamental.
> You can't find a more obvious example
> of thoughtcrime than that.
Apparently you define "thought crime" differently than I. To me, it means
"sanctioning belief." To you, it means, "making illegal anything I think
shouldn't be."
>
> > > then copyright law is just more
> > > egregiously illegitimate than I had previously assumed. It doesn't
> change
> > > the substance of what I was saying.
> >
> > Unfortunately, there's no substance to what you're saying.
>
> Of course not. Since it's an opinion that differs from yours, it is
> illegitimate.
It's not a different opinion. It's not an opinion at all. "Opinion" with
no basis in fact is simply error.
>
>
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iot63...@bath.ac.uk...
> ptr...@travelersvideo.com wrote or quoted:
> > Josh Dougherty wrote:
> > > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> > > > "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>
> > > > > Note that #4 is just absurd.
> > > >
> > > > Only to someone who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright
protection
> > > > in the first place, i.e. as an incentive to creation.
> > >
> > > I understand that this was the original intent. That was not the
point.
> >
> > Then what is? Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
> > copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
> > Constitution?
>
> Article I, Section 8 of the constitution also authorises declarations of
war.
Article I, Section 8 contains the enabling language for copyright
protection. Have you read the thread?
>
> It is a list of things congress has the *power* to do - not a list
> of things they are expected to be doing on a day-to-day basis.
Irrelevant.
>
> I don't object to them having the *power* to do it - it's the regular
> attempts to exercise that power in blocking the flow of information
> on the internet using legal measures that seem problematical to me.
Congress is authorized to secure to authors, for limited time, exclusive
writes in their works of authorship.
Period.
It doesn't say anything about blocking the flow of information. In fact,
quite the contrary, copyright law facilitates the flow of information
because it incentivizes creation of expression of ideas, but does not
protect the ideas themselves.
You're not concerned with blocking the flow of information on the internet.
You're concerned with getting protected expression for free.
That's two separate things.
>
> These laws mean that teenagers - alone in their bedrooms - can be
> convicted of brain crimes by manipulating bits on their computers.
Oh, great, another one.
Copyright infringement isn't a "brain crime," whatever that is supposed to
be.
>
> I don't mind that law attempting regulations that prevent people from
> harming other people - but IMO the lawyers should get out of computer
> science and stay out. The government should legalise IT.
This is absolute nonsense. You'd prefer it if lawyers didn't understand
technology? Ignorance is the solution for you?
Information Technology is a subject area -- it makes no sense at all to say,
"the government should legalize IT."
>
> Legal constraints hamper progress, and prevent synergy of ideas
> taking place.
Except that you're wrong. I'm tired of explaining this. Do a google search
on Article I, Section 8 (the part that talks about copyright) and the words
"incentive to creation."
> They keep medical knowledge from the hands of people
> that can use it.
Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of information
about medicine.
> They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of informatino
about scientific technology.
> They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things with
> pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a total waste of
> everyone's time.
Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which belongs
to someone else. Independent creation is a complete defense to copyright.
> The result is lots fat lawyers and war casualties all
> over the place.
The result, apparently, is a lot of appallingly ignorant college students.
Sorry, son, but you're understanding of copyright law is as woefully
inadequate as the other poster in this thread who doesn't like lawyers.
Learn what you're talking about and have an opinion based on actual facts
and people will take you seriously. Otherwise, you're just another
right-wing talk show host.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iot7D...@bath.ac.uk...
> PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > It is not an analysis that can be readily or accurately performed by a
lay
> > person.
>
> That's pretty much the probem - if you need a law degree to understand
> fair use doctrine, there will be numerous violations through ignorance
> or misunderstanding.
Why? Fair use doctrine doesn't even come into play until there has been
copyright infringement. Why not just avoid infringing someone's copyright,
rather than hoping that there might be a doctrine which can be argued as a
defense?
Fair use doctrine implicates First Amendment concerns. You don't think that
anything that's been described in this thread (downloading music on the
internet, copyright someone else's sheet music, etc.) raise any First
Amendment issues, do you?
>
> I originally wondered if this was negligence or design.
>
> The people who make the laws may not be *exactly* the same people that
> profit from those laws being violated - but both groups often consist
> of lawyers; they often share the same union.
Um, no, there's no such thing as a "lawyer's union."
My clients pay me so that they can AVOID litigation.
Learn a little about what lawyers actually do, okay?
>
> When I see obscure or unclear laws I often remind myself that those
> formulating the laws are often drawn from the same group as those
> that benefit from the laws being violated.
Wrong again. Only a tiny fraction of lawyers are senators or
congresspeople. A number of senators or congresspeople are not lawyers.
However, all are politicians.
Blame the politicians if you don't like the laws.
>
> Just as a doctor can benefit financially when his patient is sick, so
> patent lawyers find their pay checks increasing whenever there is a
> patent dispute.
Oh, that's just nonsense. You believe your doctor has a vested interest in
keeping you sick?
Josh Dougherty
news:SwP6f.6540$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:iPadnXUUNPD...@comcast.com...
> > <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
> > news:1130032520....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > >
> > ...
> >
> > > > > > It's hard to convince people that an idea is someone's private
> > > > > > property, so you have to confuse them into accepting it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > > > themselves.
> > > >
> > > > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
> > >
> > > No, the idea is the concept embodied in the expression. The
expression
> > > is the particular set of words, symbols, pictures or notes that
> > > expresses the idea. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of
> > > copyright law and, perhaps not surprisingly, one that is readily
> > > grasped by most lay people.
> >
> > This is double-speak. That's all still an idea.
>
> No, it's not. I'm surprised I have to explain this to someone who claims
to
> have a masters degree. Simple example:
>
> Idea: Trees are nice.
> Expression of idea: Trees by Joyce Kilmer
>
> The latter is protected, the former is not.
>
> Get it?
Yes. "Expression of an idea, not an idea" is a way of saying "Specific
ideas, not general ideas". It's still ideas.
> > It exists in the realm of
> > the mind.
>
> No, it does not. The Kilmer poem exists in the realm of paper,
specifically
> words written thereon.
As I said elsewhere, it's just some ink on paper. The only other thing
there is ideas, in the realm of the mind. People don't care if I copy ink
or paper. What's left is ideas. The "expression of ideas", is just a vague
distinction between some ideas and other ideas.
> > > Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution both authorizes
> > > copyright protection and explains its purpose. You don't like the
> > > Constitution?
> >
> > I don't particularly like that part of the Constitution. At best I
> consider
> > it unnecessary, as did Thomas Jefferson.
>
> Nothing you've written here suggests to me that you could have done
better.
> Why do you think authors will create expression if they're not allowed to
> profit from it?
I never said they aren't allowed to profit from it. Note also that
copyright did not exist a few hundred years ago, and obviously nobody
"created expression" before then.
> > They just don't readily accept the basic assumptions, which is why
> > complicating it is useful.
>
> Sorry, you're not rejecting the basic assumptions. I don't think you
> understand them.
Well, of course I never will "understand them" until I accept them.
> >Then they must always go back and study more
> > until they come to the "right" opinions.
> >
> > > Virtually anyone who has
> > > actually studied the law can does understand copyright law. Do you
> > > think brain surgery appears "clear and non-arbitary" to those who
> > > haven't studied it?
> >
> > No, but then the government doesn't demand that everyone who hasn't
> studied
> > it must still perform brain surgery, or be sued if they don't do it
right.
>
> Don't want to get sued for infringement? Don't copy other's people's
> intellectual property and it will never happen.
>
> > The point is that you can't describe to me what the property actually
is,
> > and the layperson can't understand what it is. It's like trying to
shoot
> > pool with a rope.
>
> Of course I can describe what is intellectual property.
Feel free to do so whenever you're ready.
> In the scenario you've described, you're taking intellectual property that
> belongs to someone else and making an unauthorized copy.
I've "taken" this "property", yet everyone who had it before still has it.
Amazing that.
> That's infringement.
>
> Period.
Last time you told me you could not determine if it was or not. Now you can
. But why isn't that an educational fair use?
> Fair use is a defense to infringement, i.e. but for the availability of
the
> defense, you'd otherwise be liable for copyright infringement.
>
> Don't infringe copyrights. Period.
I won't infringe copyrights, but you must never look at the color yellow.
Period.
> If you're at a university, ask a lawyer in the university's legal
> department. He or she can give you an answer. Because when you commit
> infringement int he context that you've described you expose the
university
> to liability for infringement as well.
>
> Sorry, but you are insufficiently informed.
No, you're excessively pompous and insufficiently able to accept contrary
opinions. I understand the issue just fine. I don't always know when a
thoughtcrime has been comitted because it's vague and arbitrary. You told
me last time you couldn't tell me whether this was a thoughtcrime or not,
now you've simply opted for saying it's always a thoughtcrime.
I just don't accept the bullshit, and that pisses you off. So you go to "oh
you just don't understand", when there is nothing of any relevance that I
don't "understand". It's just a cheap way for you to dismiss what I'm
saying, and it makes you look like an ass imo.
> I can't discuss copyright with
> someone whose fundamental premise is, "I don't have to understand
copyright
> (and, in fact, don't), because I disagree with them."
You can't discuss it with someone who doesn't accept its legitimacy. End of
story. That someone doesn't "understand" it thereby is but a manifestation
of this, a way of dismissing the person who doesn't accept its legitimacy.
You haven't shown anything of relevance that I don't "understand", but you
say it just to ad hominemly dismiss opinions you disagree with.
> > And as I said
> > in a previous post, I have studied it, far more extensively than most.
>
> Sorry, but everything you've written belies that assertion. If, in fact,
> you've studied copyright law, it was poorly taught and/or your mind was on
> other things at the time.
Again, same thing here. You're full of it. You should learn how to deal
with contrary judgments.
> > I
> > have a masters degree in music and studying copyright for about a year
was
> > part of the curricula.
>
> Then your professor did you a disservice, because you've demonstrated
> ignorance of some of the most fundamental premises which underly copyright
> law, specifically, and the laws of the U.S., in general.
What are you talking about? What premises? "Expression of an idea"? I
know what the concept is, it's just still a kind of idea. You can't deal
with that or refute it, so I don't "understand" and am "ill informed".
You're full of crap.
> > And I also have read extensively on it and the
> > issues surrounding it in my own time. I know a heck of a lot more about
> it
> > than probably 99 percent of the people out there, yet I'm still not
> allowed
> > to have a valid opinion until I go study more of the minutia about which
> > specific thoughtcrime happens when.
>
> As I've said, nothing you've written here suggests that you have even a
> passing familiarity with the subject. Some things that you've written
here,
> e.g. idea and expression are the same thing, betray absolute ignorance of
> copyright law and, moreover, make me wonder exactly what you studied to
get
> your masters. That's not an insult or an attack -- just an observation.
It's a false and lazy observation that you've fallen back on because you
can't refute what I've been saying and are frustrated that someone doesn't
believe thoughtcriminals should be attacked. What I'm saying about
expression and idea has nothing to do with whether I am "informed" about
copyright law or not. I understand these are different concepts in
copyright law, but they are both ideas. The "expression of an idea" is just
a distinction between one kind of ideas and others.
You can agree or disagree with this, but it has nothing to do with whether
someone is informed about the facts of copyright law or not.
> > > Why do you think law should be immediately and inherently
apprenhendable
> > by those
> > > who know nothing about it?
> >
> > If someone who's studied it for a year or more still is insufficiently
> > informed to have an opinion on the general issue, it's absurdly complex.
>
> As I said, you were either ill-taught or weren't paying attention in
class.
Neither, I disagree with you on a conceptual matter and since you're a
pompous ass that means I'm insufficiently informed.
> A one-year class on copyright should be more than sufficient to provide a
> good understanding of the subject. Indeed, basic copyright law is a
single
> semester class at most law schools.
>
>
> > Note my comments were not really about the minutia, but about the
general
> > thrust.
> > It has to be complex though because they're trying to make ideas
> > into private property and it doesn't work.
>
> Copyright does not protect ideas. Patents, however, do.
>
> > The only way you get people to
> > accept this is by confusing them or shaming them into giving in.
>
> Oh, what nonsense.
Which you can't refute.
> As I said, don't want to risk infringement liability? Don't copy
protected expression.
>
> I'm going to bet that your "philosophy of intellectual property," such as
it
> is, wasn't formed in the classroom, but in a coffee shop, bitching to your
> friends about RIAA litigation over Napster and the like, i.e. start from
the
> proposition, "I should be able to download tunes for free" and work
> backward.
Whatever ad hominem fantasies you can find to help you dismiss that which
you can't refute.
...
> >
> > So even you, in the vanguard, can't tell me if this simple act is legal
or
> > not.
>
> I could if I knew more about what you were doing, i.e. how many copies
under
> what circumstances, what music, etc. There are relevant factors that
effect
> the outcome. Because you don't understand the doctrine, you don't know
> which factors are relevant and which aren't.
Again it has nothing to do with me not "understanding" anything. That's a
pompous copout and evasion. You just told me above to always live in terror
of comitting thoughtcrimes whenever I copy anything, and not do it if I
don't want to be attacked and terrorized. Now you're telling me I could be
doing a fair use.
> > So as a music student
>
> I thought you already had your masters.
The above is describing a past experience. ie: So, say I'm a music
student...
> > I must live in constant terror with no
> > particular way to know when I'm comitting thought crimes and when I'm
not.
>
> You can think whatever you want. Just don't copy someone else's protected
> expression. That's easy enough, isn't it?
Copying and sharing expressions is how musicians learn and communicate, so
no, it is very difficult.
> > > As I told you, educational fair use has a number
> > > of criteria that have evolved and your short paragraph doesn't provide
> > > anywhere near enough information for someone who does understand the
> > > law to provide an opinion.
> >
> > I have an ensemble class in the school and we want to work on a
particular
> > piece, so I want to go to my school library, copy the music and give out
a
> > copy to each member and discuss it and work on performing it.
> Thoughtcrime
> > or not?
>
> No, it's not a thought crime. It may be copyright infringement. Or it
may
> not. Or you may have a defense to infringement. As I said, you haven't
> provided anywhere near enough information for me to tell.
So you don't know. Yet I should presume the worst, always live in terror,
even though it might be legal, but who knows. Thoughtcrimes are tough like
that. But of course, it's all my fault because I am insufficiently
informed, and never will be until I believe copyright is legitimate.
And I think you know (but are trying to hide and not say) that there really
isn't enough relevant information I could provide you, because it's vague
and arbitrary. It's a subjective value judgment made on a case by case
basis. So all you could do is give me your subjective value judgment, but
you can't actually say what anyone else's subjective value judgment will be,
or whether yours will be the one that holds. But then when I don't know the
"right" value judgment and say this is vague and arbitrary, you say I'm "ill
informed", or some other pompous dismissal.
> > > > but is still a thoughtcrime,
> > >
> > > "Thoughtcrime"? Oh, please. It's conduct that is penalized, i.e. the
> > > act of making an authorized copy. Not thought.
> >
> > Why is that conduct penalized, while copying a blank sheet is not?
>
> Because the printed sheet contains protected expression.
which is to say, because it contains ideas that fiat laws are pretending are
private property in order that someone might make an extra buck.
> Why is lighting and inhaling plant leaves penalized in some circumstances
and not in others?
>
> > I'm
> > "stealing" (duplicating) a collection of squigly lines that contains
their
> > "thoughts" and using them for myself.
>
> Wrong again. The act of infringement consists of making an unauthorized
> copy of protected expression.
Yawn. I know, which is "stealing" ideas.
> It doesn't matter whether you used it or not.
> I don't believe you took a class on copyright law and, particularly, in
> connection with obtaining a masters degree. This stuff is very, very,
very
> fundamental.
Another assertion that I am uninformed. over and over and over. You're
full of shit and can't refute anything I'm saying, so you keep saying I'm
uninfromed. zzzzzz
> > You can't find a more obvious example
> > of thoughtcrime than that.
>
> Apparently you define "thought crime" differently than I. To me, it means
> "sanctioning belief." To you, it means, "making illegal anything I think
> shouldn't be."
"Stealing" ideas from someone is a thoughtcrime. That's all that copying an
"expression of an idea" is, or could be.
> > > > then copyright law is just more
> > > > egregiously illegitimate than I had previously assumed. It doesn't
> > change
> > > > the substance of what I was saying.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, there's no substance to what you're saying.
> >
> > Of course not. Since it's an opinion that differs from yours, it is
> > illegitimate.
>
> It's not a different opinion. It's not an opinion at all. "Opinion" with
> no basis in fact is simply error.
You're just an arrogant and pompous ass. You haven't shown any relevant
fact on which I'm ill-informed or wrong. You just disagree, so therefore my
opinion is not just wrong, it now isn't even an opinion.
Josh Dougherty
> Josh Dougherty <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote or quoted:
> > "Barry Margolin" <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
> > > "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > > > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote in message
>
> > > > > Copyright law protects only the expression of ideas, not the ideas
> > > > > themselves.
> > > >
> > > > There's no difference. The expression of an idea is an idea.
> > >
> > > That's ridiculous. An idea is what's in your head.
> >
> > Exactly.
> >
> > > The expression of an idea is what you get when the idea is written
down on
> > > paper
> >
> > That just gives you a piece of paper with some ink on it. The only
thing
> > there besides paper and some ink as an idea. No one seems to mind if I
copy
> > a piece of paper or some ink, so what's left???
>
> Conventionally patent law deals with the ideas themselves.
>
> Copyright law deals with their expression.
>
> Plenty of people can write books about persecuted rabbits that can speak,
> but unless they contain large sections which are copied verbatim from
> Watership Down, they will not fall foul of copyright law - even though
> they are based on the same idea that it is.
The distinction is really just a way of saying "Copyright protects specific
ideas, but not general ideas".
The verbatim text is one idea. The same "idea" with different words may be
the same idea, in a general sense, but it is actually a slightly different
idea.
"The cat is fat" is one idea. "The feline is fat" is another idea. "The
cat is obese" is another idea. In one sense these are all the same idea, a
general sense, but they are in fact each slightly different ideas, which
will in fact convey slightly different thoughts. Every combination of words
is, in fact, a different idea to every other one, no matter how similar many
might be. Every combination of notes is a slightly different idea to every
other one...etc.
The distinction about "expression of idea" really just concerns degree of
specificity.
> Generally you can express an idea in a variety of ways.
All those varieties are themselves different ideas.
> Expressing
> the same idea in a different way is not prohibited by copyright law -
> provided the extent of difference is of sufficient magnitude.
So I'm allowed to use the general idea but not the specific idea.
Josh Dougherty
That is the method of "securing to authors" the facade of private property
rights over their ideas. You must block the flow of those ideas in order to
create an artificial scarcity in them, and that is exactly what copyright
does. That is the whole point. If you don't block the flow of that
information by force then nature takes over again and everyone can use them
freely.
> In fact, quite the contrary, copyright law facilitates the flow of
information
> because it incentivizes creation of expression of ideas,
That's the theory, but it's not necessarily fact.
> but does not
> protect the ideas themselves.
It does.
> You're not concerned with blocking the flow of information on the
internet.
> You're concerned with getting protected expression for free.
>
> That's two separate things.
Actually they're the same thing. The only thing that prevents him from
"getting protected expression for free" is that the flow of that information
is being blocked by men with guns.
> > These laws mean that teenagers - alone in their bedrooms - can be
> > convicted of brain crimes by manipulating bits on their computers.
>
> Oh, great, another one.
Yep, good for him. He can see it, and so can others.
> Copyright infringement isn't a "brain crime," whatever that is supposed to
> be.
It means "stealing" ideas, so yes it is a brain crime / aka thought crime.
> > I don't mind that law attempting regulations that prevent people from
> > harming other people - but IMO the lawyers should get out of computer
> > science and stay out. The government should legalise IT.
>
> This is absolute nonsense. You'd prefer it if lawyers didn't understand
> technology? Ignorance is the solution for you?
I don't think he's saying what lawyers should understand, he's saying that
people should be free to use any ideas in developing computer science and it
should not be against the law to use some ideas because they're "owned" by
somebody.
> Information Technology is a subject area -- it makes no sense at all to
say,
> "the government should legalize IT."
>
> >
> > Legal constraints hamper progress, and prevent synergy of ideas
> > taking place.
>
> Except that you're wrong. I'm tired of explaining this. Do a google
search
> on Article I, Section 8 (the part that talks about copyright) and the
words
> "incentive to creation."
That blocking information in various ways actually helps information flow in
the end is not really a "fact". It's a theory, and there's lots of debate
on it. And even if the theory were to hold true, the methods are still
blocking some information to theoretically facilitate the creation of other
information.
> > They keep medical knowledge from the hands of people
> > that can use it.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
information
> about medicine.
>
> > They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
informatino
> about scientific technology.
>
> > They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things with
> > pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a total waste of
> > everyone's time.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which belongs
> to someone else. Independent creation is a complete defense to copyright.
He's right on all of the above. Copyright restricts information flow in all
those areas, and it does force individuals to repeatedly and constantly
reinvent things with pointless minor variations. You yelling "Wrong"
doesn't make it so.
> > The result is lots fat lawyers and war casualties all
> > over the place.
>
> The result, apparently, is a lot of appallingly ignorant college students.
>
> Sorry, son, but you're understanding of copyright law is as woefully
> inadequate as the other poster in this thread who doesn't like lawyers.
Here we ago again with the fraudulent dismissals on grounds of lack of
"understanding" (aka not agreeing with your views).
Josh Dougherty
>
> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
news:Iot7D...@bath.ac.uk...
> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
>
> > > It is not an analysis that can be readily or accurately performed by a
> lay
> > > person.
> >
> > That's pretty much the probem - if you need a law degree to understand
> > fair use doctrine, there will be numerous violations through ignorance
> > or misunderstanding.
>
> Why? Fair use doctrine doesn't even come into play until there has been
> copyright infringement. Why not just avoid infringing someone's
copyright,
> rather than hoping that there might be a doctrine which can be argued as a
> defense?
'Self defense' doesn't even come into play until there has been a murder.
Why not just avoid murdering people, rather than hoping that there might be
Isaac
wrote:
There are certainly legitimate activites where relying on fair use is the only
reasonable way to proceed. I disagree a little with PTravel's characterization
of fair use. While it is true that fair use is an affirmative defense, when
a use is fair, it is not infringing. IMO it is more fair to say that fair use
does not come into play until there has been an allegation of copyright
infringement.
I think I've even used the self defense/criminal homicide analogy in the past
in a similar context.
That said, PTravel's characterization does correctly drive home the point that
if you choose to live at the bleeding edge of what constitutes fair use,
you may get to defend your position by proving your use to be fair as a
defendant in an infringement suit.
In a case where there is significant money involved, it may be worthwhile to
thoroughly research the law as applied to your specific set of facts before
getting to that point. If there is no money involved, it might be advisable
to stay a little further from the bleeding edge.
Isaac
PTravel
Ideas and the expression of ideas are two different things. I don't know if
you're deliberately being obtuse or the distinction is truly lost on you.
> You must block the flow of those ideas in order to
> create an artificial scarcity in them, and that is exactly what copyright
> does.
Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
dissemination of ideas.
> That is the whole point. If you don't block the flow of that
> information by force then nature takes over again and everyone can use
them
> freely.
Your point makes no sense.
>
> > In fact, quite the contrary, copyright law facilitates the flow of
> information
> > because it incentivizes creation of expression of ideas,
>
> That's the theory, but it's not necessarily fact.
You have yet to give any concrete example of it not acting as incentive to
creation.
As it turns out there are a couple of good arguments to be made about the
specific implementation of copyright authority. You haven't come close,
however, to identifying them.
>
> > but does not
> > protect the ideas themselves.
>
> It does.
So says you.
Sorry, if all you're going to do is play a version of the old Monty Python
argument sketch, then there's no point in going further.
>
> > You're not concerned with blocking the flow of information on the
> internet.
> > You're concerned with getting protected expression for free.
> >
> > That's two separate things.
>
> Actually they're the same thing.
No, they're not. The Constitution says they are not. Copyright law says
their not. Every judge that ever ruled on the question says they're not.
Every scholar who ever wrote on the issue says that they're not. Every
practioner of law says that they're not. Everyone who has studied and
understands copyright law says that they're not.
So, sorry, your contention is less than compelling.
> The only thing that prevents him from
> "getting protected expression for free" is that the flow of that
information
> is being blocked by men with guns.
Hunh?
>
> > > These laws mean that teenagers - alone in their bedrooms - can be
> > > convicted of brain crimes by manipulating bits on their computers.
> >
> > Oh, great, another one.
>
> Yep, good for him. He can see it, and so can others.
I have yet to hear any explanation as to why downloading protected
expression from the internet without paying for it facilitates anything
other than to discourage the creation of new expression. Indeed, the only
ones who seem to treat copyright infringement as some kind of right are
high-school and college students who are too cheap to pay for the music they
want to hear.
>
> > Copyright infringement isn't a "brain crime," whatever that is supposed
to
> > be.
>
> It means "stealing" ideas, so yes it is a brain crime / aka thought crime.
No, it doesn't mean "stealing ideas." You simply make up definitions out of
whole cloth. Copyright infringement means trespassing on one of the rights
reserved to copyright owners, none of which involve protection of ideas.
>
> > > I don't mind that law attempting regulations that prevent people from
> > > harming other people - but IMO the lawyers should get out of computer
> > > science and stay out. The government should legalise IT.
> >
> > This is absolute nonsense. You'd prefer it if lawyers didn't understand
> > technology? Ignorance is the solution for you?
>
> I don't think he's saying what lawyers should understand, he's saying that
> people should be free to use any ideas in developing computer science and
it
> should not be against the law to use some ideas because they're "owned" by
> somebody.
Ideas aren't owned by anyone. Even patent doesn't protect ideas, per se.
>
> > Information Technology is a subject area -- it makes no sense at all to
> say,
> > "the government should legalize IT."
> >
> > >
> > > Legal constraints hamper progress, and prevent synergy of ideas
> > > taking place.
> >
> > Except that you're wrong. I'm tired of explaining this. Do a google
> search
> > on Article I, Section 8 (the part that talks about copyright) and the
> words
> > "incentive to creation."
>
> That blocking information in various ways actually helps information flow
in
> the end is not really a "fact". It's a theory, and there's lots of debate
> on it. And even if the theory were to hold true, the methods are still
> blocking some information to theoretically facilitate the creation of
other
> information.
Okay, this is just getting stupid.
Ideas are not the same thing as the expression of ideas.
All of your argument is predicated on conflating the two.
If you ever encounter a society that protects ideas, rather than expression,
or defines the two as the same, then perhaps your argument would have some
force. It has none in the Western world, however, because no one shares
your definition.
I dismiss your arguments because they are predicated upon false premises.
Your continued adherence to them, despite there not being one iota of
support for these premises, either factually or logically, justifies the
"sonny" honorific.
>
>
PTravel
"Isaac" <is...@latveria.castledoom.org> wrote in message
news:slrndlntlo...@latveria.castledoom.org...
The characterization in your last sentence is accurate. And, of course, you
are right -- if conduct comes within fair use doctrine, it is not infringing
by definition. My point was that fair use addresses specific kinds of
unauthorized copying that society has decided is privileged, primarily
because they further the core values of the First Amendment. But for the
_factual_ predicates that justify application of the doctrine, the conduct
in question would constitute proscribed copyright infringement.
PTravel
> No, you're excessively pompous and insufficiently able to accept contrary
> opinions. I understand the issue just fine. I don't always know when a
> thoughtcrime has been comitted because it's vague and arbitrary. You told
> me last time you couldn't tell me whether this was a thoughtcrime or not,
> now you've simply opted for saying it's always a thoughtcrime.
You started this thread with an attack on lawyers and the law. If anything,
I've been restrained and excessively patient in my responses to you.
And I think we'll just leave it at that.
Josh Dougherty
>
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:nfudnZEDLpL...@comcast.com...
>
> > No, you're excessively pompous and insufficiently able to accept
contrary
> > opinions. I understand the issue just fine. I don't always know when a
> > thoughtcrime has been comitted because it's vague and arbitrary. You
told
> > me last time you couldn't tell me whether this was a thoughtcrime or
not,
> > now you've simply opted for saying it's always a thoughtcrime.
>
> You started this thread with an attack on lawyers and the law.
I don't think I was attacking "lawyers" per se. I am attacking the
legitimacy of these particular laws though, obviously.
> If anything, I've been restrained and excessively patient in my responses
to you.
I don't agree.
> And I think we'll just leave it at that.
Fair enough.
Tim Tyler
> Information Technology is a subject area -- it makes no sense at all to say,
> "the government should legalize IT."
There are information crimes on the books. People regularly get convicted
for writing computer programs. I can't think of a more straight forwards
way to express this point.
> > They keep medical knowledge from the hands of people
> > that can use it.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of information
> about medicine.
Of course it does.
> > They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of informatino
> about scientific technology.
Of course it does.
This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
> > They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things with
> > pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a total waste of
> > everyone's time.
>
> Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which belongs
> to someone else. Independent creation is a complete defense to copyright.
In order to avoid copyright convictions, it is a common practice to
copy something - and then systematically make changes, to the point
where traces of the original are well hidden or lost.
I was not talking about independent creation.
Tim Tyler
> Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> writes:
> > Conventionally patent law deals with the ideas themselves.
> >
> > Copyright law deals with their expression.
>
> Patents are not granted upon ideas, according to the USPTO
> website: "A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or
> suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine,
> manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or
> suggestion of the new machine."
>
> See http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html
I prefer my way of putting it. Patents deal with the ideas themselves -
not with particular expressions of them.
They do *not* deal with /machines/ - else they would only apply to those
machines.
Instead they apply to /inventions/ - the rather more abstract principles
behind the construction of machines - and thus are more general in nature.
Tim Tyler
It seems to me like a fairly direct follow-on to the following sentence
from the original post:
``The only thing I can think of is that they are up to their "legalese"
tricks again - being /deliberately/ vague - thereby giving the
population ample opportunity to be confused by the law, and wind up
suing each other over their different interpretations - lining the
lawyers' pockets in the process :-(''
If lawyers followed their own financial best intersts, they would *want*
their clients to be sued. They would want their client's divorces to be
messy and complex. They would want their clients to sue other people -
and when engaged in litigation, it would often be in their best interests
to prolong and complicate the situation. Lawyers - like doctors - often
wind up making much of their living out of the misfortune of others - so
to me the analogy seems quite appropriate.
Josh Dougherty
The distinction is between different forms of ideas. "Expression of idea"
vs. "idea" is a false dichotomy. I don't even think copyright law requires
an absolute dichotomy here. Yes they are "different" in the sense that the
former is limited to certain ideas while the latter encompasses any idea at
all, and copyright law can use various methods to distinguish the two, but
they are both still ideas.
> > You must block the flow of those ideas in order to
> > create an artificial scarcity in them, and that is exactly what
copyright
> > does.
>
> Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas.
That is exactly what it does. There's a lot of ideas floating around the
internet, yet copyright law says that someone sitting in front of his
computer must be blocked from accessing them.
> Copyright encourages the dissemination of ideas.
It claims to do this, and regardless of whether this claim really works out,
the method by which it does this is by blocking the flow of one group of
ideas, to theoretically facilitate the publication of more ideas.
> > That is the whole point. If you don't block the flow of that
> > information by force then nature takes over again and everyone can use
> them
> > freely.
>
> Your point makes no sense.
>
> > > In fact, quite the contrary, copyright law facilitates the flow of
> > information
> > > because it incentivizes creation of expression of ideas,
> >
> > That's the theory, but it's not necessarily fact.
>
> You have yet to give any concrete example of it not acting as incentive to
> creation.
People create by observing things and ideas around them and working with
them, changing them and/or saying something about them. Giving people more
money to do this is one kind of incentive, but by the same token blocking
other people from doing this (which is what copyright necessarily does) in
order to secure that money is in turn hindering it.
It is blocking information flow one place to theoretically facilitate it
elsewhere, with the theory being that the pile over in "elsewhere" will be a
bigger pile than the one we blocked over there.
> As it turns out there are a couple of good arguments to be made about the
> specific implementation of copyright authority. You haven't come close,
> however, to identifying them.
>
>
> >
> > > but does not
> > > protect the ideas themselves.
> >
> > It does.
>
> So says you.
>
> Sorry, if all you're going to do is play a version of the old Monty Python
> argument sketch, then there's no point in going further.
>
> >
> > > You're not concerned with blocking the flow of information on the
> > internet.
> > > You're concerned with getting protected expression for free.
> > >
> > > That's two separate things.
> >
> > Actually they're the same thing.
>
> No, they're not. The Constitution says they are not. Copyright law says
> their not. Every judge that ever ruled on the question says they're not.
> Every scholar who ever wrote on the issue says that they're not. Every
> practioner of law says that they're not. Everyone who has studied and
> understands copyright law says that they're not.
The only way they could say this plausibly would be to somehow claim that
"protected expression" is not information. Unless they can find some
tortured way to claim that it's not information, blocking people from
getting "protected expression" is blocking the flow of information. If they
are saying this, which I don't think they are, I would most vehemently
disagree and I would not care how many people say it or how nice their
powdered wigs.
> So, sorry, your contention is less than compelling.
>
> > The only thing that prevents him from
> > "getting protected expression for free" is that the flow of that
> information
> > is being blocked by men with guns.
>
> Hunh?
The only reason why he can't get "protected expression for free" is because
men with guns (the cops, the state) will come and attack him.
> >
> > > > These laws mean that teenagers - alone in their bedrooms - can be
> > > > convicted of brain crimes by manipulating bits on their computers.
> > >
> > > Oh, great, another one.
> >
> > Yep, good for him. He can see it, and so can others.
>
> I have yet to hear any explanation as to why downloading protected
> expression from the internet without paying for it facilitates anything
> other than to discourage the creation of new expression. Indeed, the only
> ones who seem to treat copyright infringement as some kind of right are
> high-school and college students who are too cheap to pay for the music
they
> want to hear.
"Downloading protected expression from the internet without paying for it"
is using and consuming information and ideas, the same thing we do everyday
when we wake up and look around and listen..etc. etc.. It facilites for the
user exactly what consuming information and ideas every other way always
does.
I don't believe you need jackboots with guns to attack these users just to
get another group of people to create "expression". People create
"expression" without such attacks and always have. And in my view, it's
illegitimate to attack the users for using their property and their mind and
curiousity, especially in the privacy of their own home, just because you
want to provide an additional "incentive" to some other group to make more
pretty pictures and neat sounds.
The private ownership of that information is not a "right" of that latter
group in any sense other than an arbitrary legal sense, the same way it was
the "right" of slave owners to own slaves (which the Constitution and every
judge said at the time). It is however the right (in my view, i realize
you'll disagree) of a computer user to use that computer to reproduce
*infinitely reproducable* bits and bytes of information as they need or want
for their own interests and curiosity, and even creative purposes.
Providing that particular "incentive" in this way to one group is, in my
view, an attack on the rights of another group. Getting the extra incentive
is not a right of the group who receives it, in my view. It's an arbitrary
privilege, a gift from government. And while I agree that this can provide
some utilitarian advatage in some limited cases, I don't believe that
justifies the violation of the actual rights of the public.
As such it is illegitimate on these basic grounds, again, in my view. I
realize you'll disagree.
> > > Copyright infringement isn't a "brain crime," whatever that is
supposed to
> > > be.
> >
> > It means "stealing" ideas, so yes it is a brain crime / aka thought
crime.
>
> No, it doesn't mean "stealing ideas." You simply make up definitions out
of
> whole cloth. Copyright infringement means trespassing on one of the
rights
> reserved to copyright owners, none of which involve protection of ideas.
That is all it involves. That's what "intellectual property" is all about.
The infinitely reproducable, and non-disposessable *intellectual*
construction is what's protected. That's an idea, whether it's an idea in
the form of an "expression" or otherwise.
> > > > I don't mind that law attempting regulations that prevent people
from
> > > > harming other people - but IMO the lawyers should get out of
computer
> > > > science and stay out. The government should legalise IT.
> > >
> > > This is absolute nonsense. You'd prefer it if lawyers didn't
understand
> > > technology? Ignorance is the solution for you?
> >
> > I don't think he's saying what lawyers should understand, he's saying
that
> > people should be free to use any ideas in developing computer science
and
> it
> > should not be against the law to use some ideas because they're "owned"
by
> > somebody.
>
> Ideas aren't owned by anyone. Even patent doesn't protect ideas, per se.
Our problem here is a divergent view of the meaning of "idea". This is why
I was telling you that me going back and studying copyright law some more
isn't going to help.
All of this is about ideas. The physical objects have no relevance. It's
all intellect. You said before that the property protected in a book was
"in the realm of paper", but it's not. It has nothing to do with paper. If
I take those same words and put them on a piece of plastic and sell that I'm
still "infringing" even though I didn't use any paper, because paper has
nothing to do with what's protected. It's the idea inherent in that
combination of words, as distinguished from the idea inherent in any other
combination, regardless of paper or anything else. That's what's protected
and that's an idea.
Expression of ideas is but a form of idea. One way of expressing an idea is
itself just another idea. The distinction is really just between two
different kinds of ideas.
Only if "false premise" is synonymous with "an opinion I don't share". But
I don't see a "premise" that is false, at least you have not presented any.
It's a way for you to dismiss a different view (basically on the
philosophical question of the meaning of an idea), without having to argue
it out. Before you were doing this by saying I didn't have sufficient study
in copyright law to have an opinion on the philosophical meaning of the
concept of an "idea". Now it's just asserting "false premise" without
showing it.
Josh Dougherty
> > If anything, I've been restrained and excessively patient in my
responses
> > to you.
>
> I don't agree.
Perhaps though I wasn't sufficiently restrained or patient in my response.
I was a little angry at essentially being called an ignorant idiot over and
over again, so I used some more colorful and insulting language than I
probably should have in some spots. Sorry if that was a little over the
line.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
> PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
news:Iot63...@bath.ac.uk...
>
> > Information Technology is a subject area -- it makes no sense at all to
say,
> > "the government should legalize IT."
>
> There are information crimes on the books. People regularly get convicted
> for writing computer programs. I can't think of a more straight forwards
> way to express this point.
You mean things like DeCSS and the like? I tend to agree with you. DeCSS
and the like is addressed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, one of the
worst pieces of special-interest legislation I've ever seen.
However, the government doesn't "legalize" IT. It proscribes certain
conduct, some of which can take place in an IT context. With respect to
programs that defeat DRM schemes, I agree -- the DMCA is unnecessary and, I
think, possibly unconstitutional.
>
> > > They keep medical knowledge from the hands of people
> > > that can use it.
> >
> > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
information
> > about medicine.
>
> Of course it does.
Quoting Monty Python, simple contradiction does not constitute an argument.
>
> > > They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
> >
> > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
informatino
> > about scientific technology.
>
> Of course it does.
>
> This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
> sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the right
to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
>
> > > They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things
with
> > > pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a total waste
of
> > > everyone's time.
> >
> > Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which
belongs
> > to someone else. Independent creation is a complete defense to
copyright.
>
> In order to avoid copyright convictions, it is a common practice to
> copy something - and then systematically make changes, to the point
> where traces of the original are well hidden or lost.
But that's copying. Don't copy in the first place and you don't run the
risk of infringement.
Lee Hollaar
> "Expression of idea" vs. "idea" is a false dichotomy.
> I don't even think copyright law requires an absolute dichotomy here.
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
extend to any idea, ..." 17 U.S.C. 102(b).
Lee Hollaar
>> Patents are not granted upon ideas, according to the USPTO
>> website: "A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or
>> suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine,
>> manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or
>> suggestion of the new machine."
>>
>> See http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html
>
>I prefer my way of putting it. Patents deal with the ideas themselves -
>not with particular expressions of them.
>
>They do *not* deal with /machines/ - else they would only apply to those
>machines.
>
>Instead they apply to /inventions/ - the rather more abstract principles
>behind the construction of machines - and thus are more general in nature.
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement
thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and
requirements of this title." 35 U.S.C. 101.
Lee Hollaar
>There are information crimes on the books. People regularly get convicted
>for writing computer programs. I can't think of a more straight forwards
>way to express this point.
How about justifying it with some facts. Let us know some of the
"people regularly" getting "convicted" of "information crimes" for
"writing computer programs."
Not just a one or two highly-publicized cases (although both "DVD Jon"
and the Russian ebooks company were NOT convicted of anything), but
lot of them, since you say it regularly happens.
Or do you have some unconventional definition for conviction or crime?
Josh Dougherty
news:djh833$bum$1...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu...
My point was that the law can distinguish between two different forms of
ideas, by calling one set the "ideas" and the other set the "non-ideas".
This is basically what the language above does, with "idea" meaning
basically "general idea" as opposed to "specific ideas".
The meaning of words outside the law are not necessarily the exact same
meanings as those in the law. As long as everyone knows that one set of
ideas are the "non-ideas" and the other set of ideas are the "ideas" in the
law, then everything can proceed and you can go on pretending that the
"non-ideas" are private property while the "ideas" aren't, just having
problems from time to time trying to keep everyone on the same page when
running into blurs in the distinction. There isn't necessarily any
distinction here between the two things in reality. They are in fact both
ideas in the real conceptual and philosophical sense (I'm arguing), but a
distinction can be made in legal language anywhere for whatever purposes are
desired.
If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work of
authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end, just
an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical mass
or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
Lee Hollaar
>"Lee Hollaar" <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote in message
>news:djh833$bum$1...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu...
>> In article <zvCdnYCDKo_...@comcast.com> "Josh Dougherty"
><jdoc1...@comcast.net> writes:
>> > "Expression of idea" vs. "idea" is a false dichotomy.
>> > I don't even think copyright law requires an absolute dichotomy here.
>>
>> "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
>> extend to any idea, ..." 17 U.S.C. 102(b).
>
>My point was that the law can distinguish between two different forms of
>ideas, by calling one set the "ideas" and the other set the "non-ideas".
>This is basically what the language above does, with "idea" meaning
>basically "general idea" as opposed to "specific ideas".
You would have a better time trying to understand copyright law and
the cases interpreting it if you used the accepted language -- ideas
and expressions -- rather than your own idiosyncratic definitions.
If you talk about "non-ideas" or "general ideas" or "specific ideas",
you can't readily understand the court decisions that talk about
"expression" and "ideas", which is, after all, the language of the
statute.
>If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work of
>authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end, just
>an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical mass
>or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
There are a large number of cases discussing the "idea-expression
dichotomy", and you can start there. But you'll be stuck with those
terms, since that's what is used in copyright law.
Josh Dougherty
> In article <ivCdnUkUs6s...@comcast.com> "Josh Dougherty"
<jdoc1...@comcast.net> writes:
> >"Lee Hollaar" <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote in message
> >news:djh833$bum$1...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu...
> >> In article <zvCdnYCDKo_...@comcast.com> "Josh Dougherty"
> ><jdoc1...@comcast.net> writes:
> >> > "Expression of idea" vs. "idea" is a false dichotomy.
> >> > I don't even think copyright law requires an absolute dichotomy
here.
> >>
> >> "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship
> >> extend to any idea, ..." 17 U.S.C. 102(b).
> >
> >My point was that the law can distinguish between two different forms of
> >ideas, by calling one set the "ideas" and the other set the "non-ideas".
> >This is basically what the language above does, with "idea" meaning
> >basically "general idea" as opposed to "specific ideas".
>
> You would have a better time trying to understand copyright law and
> the cases interpreting it if you used the accepted language -- ideas
> and expressions -- rather than your own idiosyncratic definitions.
>
> If you talk about "non-ideas" or "general ideas" or "specific ideas",
> you can't readily understand the court decisions that talk about
> "expression" and "ideas", which is, after all, the language of the
> statute.
My point there was not about figuring out the application of the law, it was
about the nature of an idea itself, which is not determined by what
idiosyncratic usage (not even definition) some legislators decided to use
when concocting a law.
> >If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work
of
> >authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end,
just
> >an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical
mass
> >or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
>
> There are a large number of cases discussing the "idea-expression
> dichotomy", and you can start there. But you'll be stuck with those
> terms, since that's what is used in copyright law.
So you're evading my request. Since it is an impossible request, I won't
hold it against you.
Josh Dougherty
> "Lee Hollaar" <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote in message
> > >If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work
of
> > >authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end,
just
> > >an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical
mass
> > >or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
> >
> > There are a large number of cases discussing the "idea-expression
> > dichotomy", and you can start there. But you'll be stuck with those
> > terms, since that's what is used in copyright law.
>
> So you're evading my request. Since it is an impossible request, I won't
> hold it against you.
I started digging around for still more studying so I can one day
"understand", and I'm really starting to get some concrete answers:
Some commentators who have studied the idea-expression dichotomy in the
greatest detail have criticized it, arguing that continued recognition of
the dichotomy is neither justified nor helpful in deciding cases.[FN3] Yet,
not only have the courts continued to embrace [p. 324] the idea-expression
dichotomy, they have extended it to explain related copyright problems,
which over the years had also led to confusion.[FN4] Nevertheless, the cases
generally do not analyze the principle in detail; and rarely (if ever) is
the doctrine actually decisive of particular cases. Perhaps this should not
be surprising, since the doctrine is so general in its statement as to defy
particular application. It is not a doctrine that could be used predictably
to put a particular work either into the public domain or within the
author's exclusive rights; instead, it seems to be an ex post facto
characterization that justifies an outcome based upon other, more concrete,
factors. Thus, if the outcome in a particular case is to be infringement,
the work is deemed to be protectable expression; if the outcome is to be
noninfringment, then the work is described as an "idea."[FN5]
http://www.edwardsamuels.com/copyright/beyond/articles/ideapt1-20.htm
Hmm (stoking beard pensively).
Tim Tyler
> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
> > > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
> > > informatino about scientific technology.
> >
> > Of course it does.
> >
> > This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
> > sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
>
> Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the right
> to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
> may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
> putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
> and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
> everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
What I said was "information" not "ideas".
The restriction applies to copying of information.
Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
published under his own name on the internet.
That takes time and effort, though. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
use of it. Plus, of course, getting information second hand from
individuals who have re-written it from scratch using different terms
and phrases can often mean the information received has been distorted or
misinterpreted - not necessarily a good thing if medical information is
involved.
> > > > They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things
> > > > with pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a
> > > > total waste of everyone's time.
> > >
> > > Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which
> > > belongs to someone else. Independent creation is a complete
> > > defense to copyright.
> >
> > In order to avoid copyright convictions, it is a common practice to
> > copy something - and then systematically make changes, to the point
> > where traces of the original are well hidden or lost.
>
> But that's copying. Don't copy in the first place and you don't run the
> risk of infringement.
You can't avoid copying *completely*. Not unless you live in a mine,
stay away from the internet and never watch TV or get any periodicals.
The practice is not problematical in the eyes of the law - if done
correctly.
The idea is not to avoid copying - but to defend yourself against the
claim of copyright infringement claims - by making whatever reinventions
are necessary to do this.
No doubt recreating the content more completely from scratch would be
even *more* labour intensive - and would represent an even *bigger*
waste of everyone's time.
Either way, copyright law is causing a lot of people to waste
their time reinventing and rewriting existing content over and
over again in slightly different ways.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IovH...@bath.ac.uk...
> PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
>> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
>> news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
>> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
>> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
>
>> > > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
>> > > informatino about scientific technology.
>> >
>> > Of course it does.
>> >
>> > This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
>> > sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
>>
>> Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the
>> right
>> to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
>> may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
>> putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
>> and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
>> everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
>
> What I said was "information" not "ideas".
>
> The restriction applies to copying of information.
"Information" means "facts." "Facts" are not protectable in copyright. The
expression of the facts, e.g. their sequence and arrangements, may be
protectable.
>
> Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
> published under his own name on the internet.
>
> That takes time and effort, though.
Wow! Yes, creating works of authorship takes time and effort. As a rule,
copyright does not recognize or protect time and effort if what is produced
is not a work of authorship. However, what I find stunning about this
thread is the fact that the "anti-copyright" contingent of posters'
arguments are, essentially, "It's too much trouble to come up with my own
expression and too expensive to get someone else's, so I should just be able
to take what i want."
> Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
> doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
> propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
> use of it.
And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in turn,
are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published in the first
place.
> Plus, of course, getting information second hand from
> individuals who have re-written it from scratch using different terms
> and phrases can often mean the information received has been distorted or
> misinterpreted - not necessarily a good thing if medical information is
> involved.
>
>> > > > They force individuals to repeatedly and constantly reinvent things
>> > > > with pointeless minor variations - to avoid direct copying - a
>> > > > total waste of everyone's time.
>> > >
>> > > Wrong. Copyright law requires only that you don't copy that which
>> > > belongs to someone else. Independent creation is a complete
>> > > defense to copyright.
>> >
>> > In order to avoid copyright convictions, it is a common practice to
>> > copy something - and then systematically make changes, to the point
>> > where traces of the original are well hidden or lost.
>>
>> But that's copying. Don't copy in the first place and you don't run the
>> risk of infringement.
>
> You can't avoid copying *completely*.
Of course you can.
> Not unless you live in a mine,
> stay away from the internet and never watch TV or get any periodicals.
Hunh? What's your theory -- "the television made me do it!"
>
> The practice is not problematical in the eyes of the law - if done
> correctly.
No. Unauthorized copying is copyright infringement. Period.
I have a client who is a major computer game developer. One of the things I
did for it was to write intellectual property guidelines for its authors,
artists and programmers. It laid out, in plain English, what could and
could not be done. It was hard to write, it's not confusing to read and --
guess what? We've never been sued for infringement, nor is it likely that a
successful suit could ever be brought (at least with respect to copyright or
trademark).
>
> The idea is not to avoid copying - but to defend yourself against the
> claim of copyright infringement claims - by making whatever reinventions
> are necessary to do this.
Only an infringer would make that argument.
Don't copy. You won't infringe.
>
> No doubt recreating the content more completely from scratch would be
> even *more* labour intensive - and would represent an even *bigger*
> waste of everyone's time.
This is the sentiment that I find stunning. As I said, copyright law
doesn't protect an investment of labor, per se, but, as an incentive to
creation, the idea of copyright is for more people to get off their butts
and create works of authorship. Creation of expressive works is not a waste
of time, but a significant contribution to society and civilization.
Josh Dougherty
news:3s4h84F...@individual.net...
Mumbo jumbo. That may be the arbitrary meaning conconcted by copyright
legislators and lawyers to arbitrarily make some information private
property, but that's not what it means in the real world. One sequence and
arrangement of words or sounds or "facts" conveys different information than
others.
> > Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
> > published under his own name on the internet.
> >
> > That takes time and effort, though.
>
> Wow! Yes, creating works of authorship takes time and effort.
What is the point of creating a "new work of authorship" when you just want
to repeat or convey what's already been said perfectly well, and possibly
better than you could say it? That's just a waste of labor and energy.
I copied your reply here, if I instead had to reorganize your reply and
retype it in new but similar words, that would be just pointless work, a
waste of time. And it would probably wind up distorting some of what you
were trying to say in one way or another, because each "expression" actually
conveys different ideas than every other one.
> As a rule, copyright does not recognize or protect time and effort if what
is produced
> is not a work of authorship. However, what I find stunning about this
> thread is the fact that the "anti-copyright" contingent of posters'
> arguments are, essentially, "It's too much trouble to come up with my own
> expression and too expensive to get someone else's, so I should just be
able
> to take what i want."
Straw man. Not only is it too much trouble to "come up with my own
expression", it's largely pointless in many cases. It's just useless and is
not the point of what you're trying to accomplish. And the reason why you
should be able to take what you want is that, in the case of "expression" or
other ideas, taking the thing you want doesn't disposess the thing from
anyone who already has it, or prevent anyone in the future from acquiring
it. It's a bogus and arbitrary "crime".
Lee Hollaar
>I copied your reply here, if I instead had to reorganize your reply and
>retype it in new but similar words, that would be just pointless work, a
>waste of time. And it would probably wind up distorting some of what you
>were trying to say in one way or another, because each "expression" actually
>conveys different ideas than every other one.
And it's not clear that the resulting work does not infringe the
copyright on the original work.
It likely makes little difference here, but try to take a Harry
Potter book and "reorganize" it and "retype it in new but similar
words" and see what happens if you start distributing it.
Tim Tyler
>
> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IovH...@bath.ac.uk...
> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> >> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
> >> news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
> >> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> >> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
> >
> >> > > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
> >> > > informatino about scientific technology.
> >> >
> >> > Of course it does.
> >> >
> >> > This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
> >> > sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
> >>
> >> Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the
> >> right
> >> to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
> >> may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
> >> putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
> >> and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
> >> everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
> >
> > What I said was "information" not "ideas".
> >
> > The restriction applies to copying of information.
>
> "Information" means "facts." "Facts" are not protectable in copyright. The
> expression of the facts, e.g. their sequence and arrangements, may be
> protectable.
"Information" does /not/ mean "facts". In fact, I was using the term in
the same sense as Shannon did.
> > Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
> > published under his own name on the internet.
> >
> > That takes time and effort, though.
>
> Wow! Yes, creating works of authorship takes time and effort. As a rule,
> copyright does not recognize or protect time and effort if what is produced
> is not a work of authorship. However, what I find stunning about this
> thread is the fact that the "anti-copyright" contingent of posters'
> arguments are, essentially, "It's too much trouble to come up with my own
> expression and too expensive to get someone else's, so I should just be able
> to take what i want."
That's one aspect of it. Another is that the level of intrusion of
personal privacy enforcing the copyright laws would demand is both
objectionable and expensive to implement. IMO, the state should not
sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
This sort of activity is a poor use of everyone's time. There are
more important things to be getting on with.
> > Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
> > doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
> > propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
> > use of it.
>
> And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
> Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in turn,
> are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published in the first
> place.
Acutally many people who need the information have difficulty in accessing
it - due to the expense involved. Often health conscious individuals
and scientists form internet clans, where one individual coughs up the
required fees to access the information - and then privately distributes
the information illegally to the other interested members of the group by
mail. The individuals take it in turns to do this, to spread the costs
around.
[snip]
> >> Don't copy in the first place and you don't run the
> >> risk of infringement.
> >
> > You can't avoid copying *completely*.
>
> Of course you can.
IMO, there's very little in the world that's completely original.
> > Not unless you live in a mine,
> > stay away from the internet and never watch TV or get any periodicals.
>
> Hunh? What's your theory -- "the television made me do it!"
No. Wasn't what I wrote clear enough?
> > The practice is not problematical in the eyes of the law - if done
> > correctly.
>
> No. Unauthorized copying is copyright infringement. Period.
That is obviously false. Look at fair use law, for example.
> > No doubt recreating the content more completely from scratch would be
> > even *more* labour intensive - and would represent an even *bigger*
> > waste of everyone's time.
>
> This is the sentiment that I find stunning. As I said, copyright law
> doesn't protect an investment of labor, per se, but, as an incentive to
> creation, the idea of copyright is for more people to get off their butts
> and create works of authorship. Creation of expressive works is not a waste
> of time, but a significant contribution to society and civilization.
I was talking about work that duplicated the effect of other work, without
infringing on copyright. The work of creating such materials would not
be needed were it not for the fact that copying the originals is against
the law. Functionally speaking, the work is a waste of time - compared
to the situation where copying information is legalised.
You seem to be misinterpreting my comments as though they were refering to
the creation of wholly original works. That was not what the context was.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iovtv...@bath.ac.uk...
But the sense in which you are using it does not translate to the legal
protections afforded expression and the legal distinction between expression
and idea. By your definition, some information exchange constitutes
infringement, some doesn't.
>
>> > Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
>> > published under his own name on the internet.
>> >
>> > That takes time and effort, though.
>>
>> Wow! Yes, creating works of authorship takes time and effort. As a
>> rule,
>> copyright does not recognize or protect time and effort if what is
>> produced
>> is not a work of authorship. However, what I find stunning about this
>> thread is the fact that the "anti-copyright" contingent of posters'
>> arguments are, essentially, "It's too much trouble to come up with my own
>> expression and too expensive to get someone else's, so I should just be
>> able
>> to take what i want."
>
> That's one aspect of it. Another is that the level of intrusion of
> personal privacy enforcing the copyright laws would demand is both
> objectionable and expensive to implement.
The level of intrusion is not greater than for any other activity, i.e.
warrants require probable cause, etc. The bottom line, of course, is that
we all engage in common petty acts of infringement in the privacy of our own
homes, and do so reasonable secure in the knowledge that no one will ever
find out. The nice leveling feature of civil litigation is that it is not
worth a plaintiff's time or effort to prosecute de minimus trespasses.
> IMO, the state should not
> sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
Nobody does that.
> This sort of activity is a poor use of everyone's time. There are
> more important things to be getting on with.
>
>> > Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
>> > doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
>> > propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
>> > use of it.
>>
>> And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
>> Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in
>> turn,
>> are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published in the
>> first
>> place.
>
> Acutally many people who need the information have difficulty in accessing
> it - due to the expense involved.
Libraries and on-line publication ensure reasonable access. I've never
heard of a doctor who said, "I could have saved that patient's life if only
I had an extra $100 for subscription to The Lancet." Have you?
> Often health conscious individuals
> and scientists form internet clans, where one individual coughs up the
> required fees to access the information - and then privately distributes
> the information illegally to the other interested members of the group by
> mail.
"Health conscious individuals"?
> The individuals take it in turns to do this, to spread the costs
> around.
>
> [snip]
>
>> >> Don't copy in the first place and you don't run the
>> >> risk of infringement.
>> >
>> > You can't avoid copying *completely*.
>>
>> Of course you can.
>
> IMO, there's very little in the world that's completely original.
If you want to address the distinction between being "inspired by," and
"copying," I think that is a legitimate concern. That's not what we've been
discussing, however.
>
>> > Not unless you live in a mine,
>> > stay away from the internet and never watch TV or get any periodicals.
>>
>> Hunh? What's your theory -- "the television made me do it!"
>
> No. Wasn't what I wrote clear enough?
I guess not. As I said, independent creation is a complete defense to
infringement.
>
>> > The practice is not problematical in the eyes of the law - if done
>> > correctly.
>>
>> No. Unauthorized copying is copyright infringement. Period.
>
> That is obviously false. Look at fair use law, for example.
As I thought I had explained at length, fair use doctrine is predicated,
primarily, upon resolving the tension between the First Amendment and Art.
I, Sec. 8. The rule is no unauthorized copying. If you intend to rely on
an equitable exception (which, like all equitable doctrines, implicates
considerations of fundamental fairness), then you had better be certain that
there is some readily-identifiable and well-recognized social good that
justifies excusing the infringement.
>
>> > No doubt recreating the content more completely from scratch would be
>> > even *more* labour intensive - and would represent an even *bigger*
>> > waste of everyone's time.
>>
>> This is the sentiment that I find stunning. As I said, copyright law
>> doesn't protect an investment of labor, per se, but, as an incentive to
>> creation, the idea of copyright is for more people to get off their butts
>> and create works of authorship. Creation of expressive works is not a
>> waste
>> of time, but a significant contribution to society and civilization.
>
> I was talking about work that duplicated the effect of other work, without
> infringing on copyright.
This is getting too abstract for me. What kinds of activities constitute
duplicated, but non-infringing, effect?
> The work of creating such materials would not
> be needed were it not for the fact that copying the originals is against
> the law.
How does that translate to justifying college kids illegally downloading
music files without paying for them? As I've said, facts are not
protectable, nor does every kind of expression constitute a protectable work
of authorship.
> Functionally speaking, the work is a waste of time - compared
> to the situation where copying information is legalised.
Can you give me an example?
>
> You seem to be misinterpreting my comments as though they were refering to
> the creation of wholly original works. That was not what the context was.
Then you need to give me an example that illustrates the context.
Everything I've read in this thread suggests the kind of infringement that
results from, for example, exchanging protected works on peer-to-peer
networks, etc. If you mean something else, I'd be interested to know what
it is.
Barry Margolin
"PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
> Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> dissemination of ideas.
What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Barry Margolin
"Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work of
> authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end, just
> an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical mass
> or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
Here are two different expressions of the same idea:
Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth onto this
continent a new nation...
The United States of America was formed 87 years ago...
Protection of one would not extend to the other.
Barry Margolin
"PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
> news:Iot63...@bath.ac.uk...
> > > > They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
> > >
> > > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
> informatino
> > > about scientific technology.
> >
> > Of course it does.
> >
> > This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
> > sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
>
> Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the right
> to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
> may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
> putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
> and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
> everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
Although if you also patent the technique, they can't. To some extent,
I suspect the anti-copyright posters are conflating different forms of
IP. Patents come closer to protecting ideas than copyright does, and
independent creation is not a defense against patent infringement.
PTravel
"Barry Margolin" <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:barmar-C0546B....@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
> In article <HtT6f.6682$7h7....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>,
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
>> Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
>> dissemination of ideas.
>
> What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
Exactly right, and a very well put.
>
> For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
> They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
> But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
> they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
I'm interested to see if any of the anti-copyright folks can provide some
examples of copyright law *blocking* the flow of information in a way that
is harmful to society and not consonant with the incentive function of
copyright law. As I indicated in another post, I'm not a big supporter of
the DMCA but, aberrations like that aside, I simply don't understand why
people think copyright protection is a bad idea (other than for purely
selfish reasons, that is).
Barry Margolin
> PTravel <ptravel8...@yahoo.com> wrote or quoted:
> >
> > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IovH...@bath.ac.uk...
> > > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > > Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
> > > doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
> > > propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
> > > use of it.
> >
> > And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
> > Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in turn,
> > are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published in the first
> > place.
>
> Acutally many people who need the information have difficulty in accessing
> it - due to the expense involved.
Things of value cost money, so what else is new? You seem to be arguing
against capitalism.
It's also often the case that people who need drugs have difficulty in
accessing it, due to the expense involved. Does that mean that drugs
should be made freely available? Are you arguing that welfare should
extend to intellectual property?
PTravel
> In article <_bV6f.6609$tV6....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>,
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
>> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
>> news:Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk...
>> > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
>> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
>> news:Iot63...@bath.ac.uk...
>> > > > They restrict the flow of scientific knowledge.
>> > >
>> > > Wrong. Copyright law does not, in any way, restrict the flow of
>> informatino
>> > > about scientific technology.
>> >
>> > Of course it does.
>> >
>> > This isn't a complicated point - copyright law makes distributing many
>> > sorts of information without paying fees illegal.
>>
>> Nonsense. It reserves to the owner of the particular expression the
>> right
>> to control distribution. The underlying idea of the expression, however,
>> may be freely disseminated. For example, if I find I can cure cancer by
>> putting a chicken in a bag and waiving it over my head while facing east,
>> and I write a monograph about it, though no one can copy my monograph,
>> everyone is free to cure cancer in this fashion.
>
> Although if you also patent the technique, they can't.
True, which is why the term of patent protection is significantly shorter
than for copyright. Also, in exchange for exclusive rights under patent,
the inventor must make a full and public disclosure of the invention. The
short term of exclusivity is the "payment" for sharing an invention with the
world.
> To some extent,
> I suspect the anti-copyright posters are conflating different forms of
> IP. Patents come closer to protecting ideas than copyright does, and
> independent creation is not a defense against patent infringement.
I'm not so sure (about the conflating, that is). The posters here seem to
object to the very idea of ownership of intellectual property. I think they
have simply not thought through the consequences of such an approach, which
you pointed out so clearly in your other post:
"What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the alternative
to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of ideas. The
alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the first place. And if
they don't get published, there's no idea flow in the first place, and
nothing for you to copy."
>
Barry Margolin
hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu (Lee Hollaar) wrote:
But a "process" is just a way of doing something, it doesn't require any
physical embodiment. That's the basis behind business process patents,
isn't it?
And in the case of software patents, the "machine" is any computer,
which is way too general. It's like considering a process that includes
writing down something to be a machine involving paper.
Barry Margolin
> That's pretty much the probem - if you need a law degree to understand
> fair use doctrine, there will be numerous violations through ignorance
> or misunderstanding.
>
> I originally wondered if this was negligence or design.
I think it's just an unfortunate consequence of a fundamentally
open-ended idea. If the law went into too much detail, it would
unnecessarily miss many cases, and technological change would quickly
make it out of date.
Ben Pfaff
> What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
>
> For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
> They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
> But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
> they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
It looks to me like you've confused copyright, patent, and trade
secret protection. The Coca-Cola formula is a trade secret and
the alternative would have been a patent. I don't know how
you're relating this to being pro- or anti-copyright; copyright
doesn't come into play here.
--
A bicycle is one of the world's beautiful machines, beautiful machines
are art, and art is civilisation, good living, and balm to the soul.
--Elisa Francesca Roselli
Tim Tyler
> > PTravel <ptravel8...@yahoo.com> wrote or quoted:
> >> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
> >> >> "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message
So what? I never said it did.
> By your definition, some information exchange constitutes
> infringement, some doesn't.
That is correct. Did I ever claim otherwise?
> >> > Sure, paper X in learned journal can be rewritten by Joe Bloggs and
> >> > published under his own name on the internet.
> >> >
> >> > That takes time and effort, though.
> >>
> >> Wow! Yes, creating works of authorship takes time and effort. As a
> >> rule, copyright does not recognize or protect time and effort if
> >> what is produced
> >> is not a work of authorship. However, what I find stunning about this
> >> thread is the fact that the "anti-copyright" contingent of posters'
> >> arguments are, essentially, "It's too much trouble to come up with my own
> >> expression and too expensive to get someone else's, so I should just be
> >> able to take what i want."
> >
> > That's one aspect of it. Another is that the level of intrusion of
> > personal privacy enforcing the copyright laws would demand is both
> > objectionable and expensive to implement.
>
> The level of intrusion is not greater than for any other activity, i.e.
> warrants require probable cause, etc. The bottom line, of course, is that
> we all engage in common petty acts of infringement in the privacy of our own
> homes, and do so reasonable secure in the knowledge that no one will ever
> find out. The nice leveling feature of civil litigation is that it is not
> worth a plaintiff's time or effort to prosecute de minimus trespasses.
It appears that we agree that the laws are not practical to enforce.
> > IMO, the state should not
> > sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> > copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
>
> Nobody does that.
That's what copyright law does. Copyright holders get to sue
infringers - if they can track them down.
> > Often health conscious individuals
> > and scientists form internet clans, where one individual coughs up the
> > required fees to access the information - and then privately distributes
> > the information illegally to the other interested members of the group
> > by mail.
>
> "Health conscious individuals"?
Health conscious individuals. Such individuals often seek
medical information.
> >> > Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
> >> > doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
> >> > propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can
> >> > make use of it.
> >>
> >> And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
> >> Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in
> >> turn, are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published
> >> in the first place.
> >
> > Acutally many people who need the information have difficulty in
> > accessing it - due to the expense involved.
>
> Libraries and on-line publication ensure reasonable access. I've
> never heard of a doctor who said, "I could have saved that patient's
> life if only I had an extra $100 for subscription to The Lancet."
> Have you?
That specific phrase? I don't think so. Plenty of people
have reduced quality access to health and scientific
information due to the restrictions of copyright law, though.
Of course this is irrelevant to the original claim that
copyright law doesn't create delays or reduce the
accessibility of existing information. Of course it
does that. The point of the laws is to create a means
of taxing access to information.
> >> > The practice is not problematical in the eyes of the law - if done
> >> > correctly.
> >>
> >> No. Unauthorized copying is copyright infringement. Period.
> >
> > That is obviously false. Look at fair use law, for example.
>
> As I thought I had explained at length, fair use doctrine
> is predicated, primarily, upon resolving the tension
> between the First Amendment and Art. I, Sec. 8. The
> rule is no unauthorized copying. If you intend to rely
> on an equitable exception (which, like all equitable
> doctrines, implicates considerations of fundamental
> fairness), then you had better be certain that there
> is some readily-identifiable and well-recognized social
> good that justifies excusing the infringement.
It doesn't really matter what you thought. Any claim that
all unauthorised copying represents copyright infringement
is simply false.
> > I was talking about work that duplicated the effect of other work,
> > without infringing on copyright.
>
> This is getting too abstract for me. What kinds of activities
> constitute duplicated, but non-infringing, effect?
E.g. GNU Classpath.
> > The work of creating such materials would not
> > be needed were it not for the fact that copying
> > the originals is against the law.
>
> How does that translate to justifying college kids
> illegally downloading music files without paying for them?
It doesn't. I never said it did.
> > Functionally speaking, the work is a waste of time - compared
> > to the situation where copying information is legalised.
>
> Can you give me an example?
Novell's Mono.
> > You seem to be misinterpreting my comments as though they were refering to
> > the creation of wholly original works. That was not what the context was.
>
> Then you need to give me an example that illustrates the context.
> Everything I've read in this thread suggests the kind of
> infringement that results from, for example, exchanging
> protected works on peer-to-peer networks, etc. If you
> mean something else, I'd be interested to know what it is.
I think I'm likely to be more inclined to give up on you.
There are too many denials of simple facts on this thread -
and straightening out your misunderstandings is threatening
to prove to be too much effort.
Tim Tyler
> In article <Iovtv...@bath.ac.uk>, Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote:
> > PTravel <ptravel8...@yahoo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > > "Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:IovH...@bath.ac.uk...
> > > > PTravel <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote or quoted:
> > > > Sometimes it happens, sometimes it
> > > > doesn't. Either way it involves additional effort and delay in
> > > > propagating the scientific/medical knowledge to the people who can make
> > > > use of it.
> > >
> > > And, of course, that's simply not true, either in theory or practice.
> > > Medical discoveries are published in peer-reviewed journals which, in turn,
> > > are read by doctors everywhere -- that's why they're published in the first
> > > place.
> >
> > Acutally many people who need the information have difficulty in accessing
> > it - due to the expense involved.
>
> Things of value cost money, so what else is new? You seem to be arguing
> against capitalism.
Whether ideas count as property seems pretty orthogonal to ones favoured
economic system to me.
> It's also often the case that people who need drugs have difficulty in
> accessing it, due to the expense involved. Does that mean that drugs
> should be made freely available? Are you arguing that welfare should
> extend to intellectual property?
Basically I favour ideas (or their expression) not being classified as
property - and them being classified more like facts or mathematics are
classified today - as not belonging to anyone.
Incentives are not needed to promote the discovery of facts or
mathematics. They get discovered anyway as part of the growth
process of our species. Ideas are similar to that, and
relatively dissimilar to material goods - which tend to be
easier to protect.
There is only one good way to own an idea or other piece of information -
and that involves keeping it secret. Once you publish it in a public
place, control over it is fundamentally lost, legal threats or no legal
threats.
Tim Tyler
> > Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> > dissemination of ideas.
>
> What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
Just like things were before there were copyright laws, in other words.
Nobody published any of their ideas back then - right?
> For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
> They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
> But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
> they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
So: patent laws are not completely effective at preventing trade secrets.
Tim Tyler
> >There are information crimes on the books. People regularly get convicted
> >for writing computer programs. I can't think of a more straight forwards
> >way to express this point.
>
> How about justifying it with some facts. Let us know some of the
> "people regularly" getting "convicted" of "information crimes" for
> "writing computer programs."
That's an interesting piece of selective quoting. You do understand
that what I was claiming was that the *convictions* were regular - and
that I was not implying that the same people were getting convicted
over and over again - right?
This is a bit of a 101 issue - and I'm not sure I should bother with
doing the pointless leg work involved in answering your query.
I tell you what. I should think it will take you less than five
minutes to come up with three examples of convictions of programmers
for writing specific programs. If you find yourself unable to manage
that, I'll come up with ten such examples - to illustrate to you how
feeble your search skills are.
Lee Hollaar
>Lee Hollaar <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote or quoted:
>> In article <Iou2z...@bath.ac.uk> Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> writes:
>
>> >There are information crimes on the books. People regularly get convicted
>> >for writing computer programs. I can't think of a more straight forwards
>> >way to express this point.
>>
>> How about justifying it with some facts. Let us know some of the
>> "people regularly" getting "convicted" of "information crimes" for
>> "writing computer programs."
>
>That's an interesting piece of selective quoting. You do understand
>that what I was claiming was that the *convictions* were regular - and
>that I was not implying that the same people were getting convicted
>over and over again - right?
Yes, I understood that.
>This is a bit of a 101 issue - and I'm not sure I should bother with
>doing the pointless leg work involved in answering your query.
You are the one who made the claim. Back it up.
>I tell you what. I should think it will take you less than five
>minutes to come up with three examples of convictions of programmers
>for writing specific programs. If you find yourself unable to manage
>that, I'll come up with ten such examples - to illustrate to you how
>feeble your search skills are.
You are the one making the questionable assertion that with some
regularity there are criminal convictions stemming from people
writing computer programs. I doubt that that is so.
So, I'm going to let you justify your assertion, if you can. And
ten cases, unless they are over a short span of time, doesn't really
indicated any regularity. If they were over a year or so, then more
people were struck by lightning but I doubt anybody would say that
people reguarly get struck by lightning.
And it would be interesting to see from your examples just what
you mean by "regularly", "convicted", and "information crimes".
And whether you are limiting it to any particular jurisdiction.
I think you assertion is nonsense. Back it up with some facts.
Lee Hollaar
And please post a URL to the court decision or some other reference
so it is possible to see the crime for which they were convicted.
We are talking about violations of some criminal law here aren't
we. You aren't saying that because you think that civil copyright
laws stop the flow of information, that should be a crime?
I'm asking because you seem to have a bad habit of redefining legal
terms of art, such as "idea" and "expression", to twist your arguments.
I just want to make sure that you are using "crime" and "convicted"
in their normal legal meaning.
Barry Margolin
Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
> > What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> > alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> > ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> > first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> > the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
> >
> > For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
> > They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
> > But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
> > they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
>
> It looks to me like you've confused copyright, patent, and trade
> secret protection. The Coca-Cola formula is a trade secret and
> the alternative would have been a patent. I don't know how
No I haven't, since I clearly said "could have patented it."
> you're relating this to being pro- or anti-copyright; copyright
> doesn't come into play here.
As most of the arguments that have been put forth in this thread apply
pretty similarly to most forms of IP protection. The Coca-Cola example
was the most obvious case I could think of, so I used it despite the
fact that it relates to patents rather than copyright.
I just thought of a copyright example, though. When AT&T started
distributing Unix to universities, they included the source code, but
with a copyright that prohibited the schools from redistributing it.
They were willing to allow limited distribution to their customers, but
they didn't want to lose all control over it. If they couldn't prohibit
the redistribution, they probably wouldn't have included source code at
all.
Trying to accomplish the same thing with trade secret protection would
probably have been futile. Could the schools really get all the
students to sign NDAs?
Barry Margolin
> Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote or quoted:
> > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> > > dissemination of ideas.
> >
> > What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> > alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> > ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> > first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> > the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
>
> Just like things were before there were copyright laws, in other words.
>
> Nobody published any of their ideas back then - right?
I think copyright protection has existed in some form for almost as long
as the technology to create many copies (i.e. the printing press) has.
Prior to this technology it wasn't necessary to prohibit copying,
because no one could copy things enough times to impact the original's
value.
Isaac
wrote:
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:obidnRo167Z...@comcast.com...
>> "Lee Hollaar" <hol...@antitrust.cs.utah.edu> wrote in message
>
>> > >If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work
> of
>> > >authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end,
> just
>> > >an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical
> mass
>> > >or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
>> >
>> > There are a large number of cases discussing the "idea-expression
>> > dichotomy", and you can start there. But you'll be stuck with those
>> > terms, since that's what is used in copyright law.
>>
>> So you're evading my request. Since it is an impossible request, I won't
>> hold it against you.
>
> I started digging around for still more studying so I can one day
> "understand", and I'm really starting to get some concrete answers:
>
> Some commentators who have studied the idea-expression dichotomy in the
> greatest detail have criticized it, arguing that continued recognition of
> the dichotomy is neither justified nor helpful in deciding cases.[FN3] Yet,
> not only have the courts continued to embrace [p. 324] the idea-expression
Some commentators eh? I cannot argue with that, but I cannot recommend
using the opinion of some commentators to reject the idea-expression
dichotomy given that it is written into the text of the copyright statute,
and that the principle is applied in a central way in a number of prominent
cases.
> dichotomy, they have extended it to explain related copyright problems,
> which over the years had also led to confusion.[FN4] Nevertheless, the cases
> generally do not analyze the principle in detail; and rarely (if ever) is
> the doctrine actually decisive of particular cases. Perhaps this should not
> be surprising, since the doctrine is so general in its statement as to defy
> particular application. It is not a doctrine that could be used predictably
> to put a particular work either into the public domain or within the
> author's exclusive rights; instead, it seems to be an ex post facto
> characterization that justifies an outcome based upon other, more concrete,
> factors. Thus, if the outcome in a particular case is to be infringement,
> the work is deemed to be protectable expression; if the outcome is to be
> noninfringment, then the work is described as an "idea."[FN5]
> http://www.edwardsamuels.com/copyright/beyond/articles/ideapt1-20.htm
People who express opinions in this vein are generally regarded as cynics
whether or not they happen to be correct. IMO the cynicism expressed here
is inappropriate, but your mileage may vary.
Were I a cynic, I would suggest that you are selecting commentary that
confirms your personal agenda.
Isaac
Josh Dougherty
> Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote or quoted:
> > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> > > dissemination of ideas.
> >
> > What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> > alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> > ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> > first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> > the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
>
> Just like things were before there were copyright laws, in other words.
>
> Nobody published any of their ideas back then - right?
That's right. Since JS Bach never owned "intellectual property", he never
"created expression". Pay no mind to those hundreds of compositions.
Josh Dougherty
> In article <ivCdnUkUs6s...@comcast.com>,
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work
of
> > authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end,
just
> > an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical
mass
> > or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
>
> Here are two different expressions of the same idea:
>
> Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth onto this
> continent a new nation...
>
> The United States of America was formed 87 years ago...
>
> Protection of one would not extend to the other.
This is not really an answer to my request.
And both of the above are in fact different ideas. They are only the "same
idea" if using "idea" to actually mean "general idea". As I said before
"expression of idea" is nothing but another way of saying "specific idea".
If Lincoln had actually said the second thing, it would convey something
different to its readers or listeners. The manner of the language and the
flow, and even his delivery, convey ideas themselves. They have very
obvious differences, and those differences exist in the realm of the mind:
ideas. "Brought forth onto this continent" in context conveys an idea of a
romantic birth of something great in the previously barren wilderness. The
alternate "was formed" doesn't convey that idea, or anything like it. That
they are not exactly the same idea is why one strikes people as poetic and
inspiring and the other is just blah, and why Lincoln would chose to say the
one, but chose not to say the other.
PTravel
"Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:Iow0I...@bath.ac.uk...
> > But the sense in which you are using it does not translate to the legal
> > protections afforded expression and the legal distinction between
> > expression and idea.
>
> So what? I never said it did.
The problem, though, is that, whereas "work of authorship," "expression" and
"idea" have specific meanings in law that are universally understood, your
personal definition of information is not. In other words, I have no idea
what categories of expression and/or ideas are subsumed within the term.
>
> > By your definition, some information exchange constitutes
> > infringement, some doesn't.
>
> That is correct. Did I ever claim otherwise?
No, but it also makes less than productive to talk about "information" in
the context of a discussion about copyright law.
> > The level of intrusion is not greater than for any other activity, i.e.
> > warrants require probable cause, etc. The bottom line, of course, is
that
> > we all engage in common petty acts of infringement in the privacy of our
own
> > homes, and do so reasonable secure in the knowledge that no one will
ever
> > find out. The nice leveling feature of civil litigation is that it is
not
> > worth a plaintiff's time or effort to prosecute de minimus trespasses.
>
> It appears that we agree that the laws are not practical to enforce.
Please don't put words in my mouth. It's a cheap rhetorical trick, and I'm
sure you realize that. Copyright laws are practical to enforce -- I do it
every day.
>
> > > IMO, the state should not
> > > sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> > > copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
> >
> > Nobody does that.
>
> That's what copyright law does. Copyright holders get to sue
> infringers - if they can track them down.
That's right. That doesn't equate to the state sponsoring individuals to
spy on each other, as you contend. Analogy is one thing, but hyperbole is
something else altogether.
>
> > > Often health conscious individuals
> > > and scientists form internet clans, where one individual coughs up the
> > > required fees to access the information - and then privately
distributes
> > > the information illegally to the other interested members of the group
> > > by mail.
> >
> > "Health conscious individuals"?
>
> Health conscious individuals. Such individuals often seek
> medical information.
And how does copyright law prevent indivduals from seeking medical
information?
> > Libraries and on-line publication ensure reasonable access. I've
> > never heard of a doctor who said, "I could have saved that patient's
> > life if only I had an extra $100 for subscription to The Lancet."
> > Have you?
>
> That specific phrase? I don't think so. Plenty of people
> have reduced quality access to health and scientific
> information due to the restrictions of copyright law, though.
So you say. Can you provide a specific example?
>
> Of course this is irrelevant to the original claim that
> copyright law doesn't create delays or reduce the
> accessibility of existing information. Of course it
> does that.
So you've said. Can you provide a specific example?
> The point of the laws is to create a means
> of taxing access to information.
Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Copyright doesn't impose a "tax," nor is
it directed at "information."
> > As I thought I had explained at length, fair use doctrine
> > is predicated, primarily, upon resolving the tension
> > between the First Amendment and Art. I, Sec. 8. The
> > rule is no unauthorized copying. If you intend to rely
> > on an equitable exception (which, like all equitable
> > doctrines, implicates considerations of fundamental
> > fairness), then you had better be certain that there
> > is some readily-identifiable and well-recognized social
> > good that justifies excusing the infringement.
>
> It doesn't really matter what you thought. Any claim that
> all unauthorised copying represents copyright infringement
> is simply false.
Well, yes, but who said otherwise?
>
> > > I was talking about work that duplicated the effect of other work,
> > > without infringing on copyright.
> >
> > This is getting too abstract for me. What kinds of activities
> > constitute duplicated, but non-infringing, effect?
>
> E.g. GNU Classpath.
What is that? I'm familiar with the GNU open-source license, but not with
Classpath.
>
> > > The work of creating such materials would not
> > > be needed were it not for the fact that copying
> > > the originals is against the law.
> >
> > How does that translate to justifying college kids
> > illegally downloading music files without paying for them?
>
> It doesn't. I never said it did.
Then to what such materials are you referring? Specifics, please.
>
> > > Functionally speaking, the work is a waste of time - compared
> > > to the situation where copying information is legalised.
> >
> > Can you give me an example?
>
> Novell's Mono.
Hunh? From the website:
"Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and
server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix.
Sponsored by Novell, the Mono open source project has an active and
enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading
choice for development of Linux applications."
How does that relate to this discussion?
>
> > > You seem to be misinterpreting my comments as though they were
refering to
> > > the creation of wholly original works. That was not what the context
was.
> >
> > Then you need to give me an example that illustrates the context.
> > Everything I've read in this thread suggests the kind of
> > infringement that results from, for example, exchanging
> > protected works on peer-to-peer networks, etc. If you
> > mean something else, I'd be interested to know what it is.
>
> I think I'm likely to be more inclined to give up on you.
I see. I request facts and you walk away.
So much for the free exchange of information.
> There are too many denials of simple facts on this thread -
> and straightening out your misunderstandings is threatening
> to prove to be too much effort.
Ah, the last resort in a losing argument -- insult.
Josh Dougherty
> In article <HtT6f.6682$7h7....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>,
> "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
>
> > Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> > dissemination of ideas.
>
> What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
>
> For instance, the formula for Coca-Cola is protected as a trade secret.
> They could have patented it, so that everyone would know the formula.
> But I guess they didn't think that 17 years of protection was enough, so
> they instead kept it secret so they could have a monopoly in perpetuity.
So lets get the state to attack the public in order to give them a monopoly
in perpetuity so they won't try to hold onto a monopoly in perpetuity.
Makes a lot of sense.
If this were copyright, which we were discussing, when would their copyright
expire? Isn't the span of a copyright something like life+70 years now?
That's basically in perpetuity, and it will probably just get extended
again. None of us could use it anyway, and we would get the pleasure of
being called a "thief", and possibly attacked and thrown into a dungeon if
we tried. And to boot we all have to be taxed for billions of dollars to
pay for cops and judges and lawyers to enforce against all the thought
crimes all over the country and the globe, in this case it would be the
thought crime of someone using their own labor and property to make a drink
they know how to make, but with a "stolen" idea.
Give me secrets anyday. People have a right to keep secrets if that's what
they want to do. If they get out, then that's it though. They're out. And
I think the supposed blocking of information flow from people successfully
keeping trade secrets would pale in comparison to the leviathan of
"intellectual property" restrictions and regulations, not to mention again
the huge cost - in money, personal freedom and peace of mind for the
public - of maintaining that leviathan.
Josh Dougherty
news:3s51geF...@individual.net...
> > IMO, the state should not
> > sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> > copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
>
> Nobody does that.
"If you have a shared folder on Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster or using any other
service your file sharing activity can be monitored by the outside world-
this includes the RIAA. The RIAA now uses automated tools that search for
files and compare it to their “hit list”. When it finds a person sharing a
file on this list, it downloads all or some of the files to verify the
content. Once verified they take screenshots of the information on the
person’s shared folder. Naturally this evidence, with date and timestamps,
is what will surface in court."
http://www.xblock.com/articles/article_show.php?id=12
Ben Pfaff
> I just thought of a copyright example, though. When AT&T started
> distributing Unix to universities, they included the source code, but
> with a copyright that prohibited the schools from redistributing it.
> They were willing to allow limited distribution to their customers, but
> they didn't want to lose all control over it. If they couldn't prohibit
> the redistribution, they probably wouldn't have included source code at
> all.
>
> Trying to accomplish the same thing with trade secret protection would
> probably have been futile. Could the schools really get all the
> students to sign NDAs?
Interesting choice of examples. Here's such an agreement between
AT&T and the University of California:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20041107011008363
It includes clauses that would seem to be trying to retain trade
secret protection. For example:
LICENSEE shall not include in its curriculum any course of
instruction in which the source code or other representation
of the internal operation of the LICENSED SOFTWARE is
disclosed or discussed, or prepare or publish any
documentation disclosing or describing such code or
representation.
That goes far beyond what copyright in itself allows. If I read
a program, then I can discuss it with someone else and I can
publish a description of how it works, assuming that copyright is
all that protects the program. (Yes, it's possible that a
description could be a derivative work, but that's not
necessarily the case.) But what we have here is a contract that
goes above and beyond what copyright itself supplies.
--
Ben Pfaff
email: b...@cs.stanford.edu
web: http://benpfaff.org
Josh Dougherty
In fact, from the prospective of many wildly pro-capitalist libertarian
types who care about nothing if not the sanctity of private property rights,
"intellectual property rights" are in fact just an assault on property
rights, as that is just the state fabricating a kind of property in whose
name they regulate and restrict you from doing what you want with your
actual private property, such as using your computer to duplicate your
compact disc in the privacy of your home.
> > It's also often the case that people who need drugs have difficulty in
> > accessing it, due to the expense involved. Does that mean that drugs
> > should be made freely available? Are you arguing that welfare should
> > extend to intellectual property?
>
> Basically I favour ideas (or their expression) not being classified as
> property - and them being classified more like facts or mathematics are
> classified today - as not belonging to anyone.
I share this view. The notion of property is fundamentally about
alienateability, first of all. If you can't be dispossessed of it, it isn't
property. If you "steal" the property, and its "owner" still has it, it's
not property. The owner might try to pretend it's his property if he thinks
he can make an extra buck by doing so, but it's not. The whole concept just
doesn't work. The notion of property has no point if everyone can use the
'property' and nobody need use it any less. The reason that the notion of
"property" exists is because if one guy is using this spot of land, I can't
use the same spot without getting in the way of his use. If one guy is
wearing that shirt, I can't also wear it. etc. etc.
Josh Dougherty
> In article <kMmdnUxFlohViMDe...@comcast.com> "Josh Dougherty"
<jdoc1...@comcast.net> writes:
> >I copied your reply here, if I instead had to reorganize your reply and
> >retype it in new but similar words, that would be just pointless work, a
> >waste of time. And it would probably wind up distorting some of what you
> >were trying to say in one way or another, because each "expression"
actually
> >conveys different ideas than every other one.
>
> And it's not clear that the resulting work does not infringe the
> copyright on the original work.
>
> It likely makes little difference here, but try to take a Harry
> Potter book and "reorganize" it and "retype it in new but similar
> words" and see what happens if you start distributing it.
Indeed. So what exactly *is* the property? It's not the paper or the ink
or the jacket. It's not even the exact words. So.... I can only restate my
request:
> If you can tell me what - specifically - is really protected in a "work of
> authorship" and come up with something that isn't really, in the end, just
> an idea, a concept, an intellectual construction that has no physical mass
> or weight or any other material character, I'd like to hear it.
(btw..I hereby authorize you to copy that expression, though no more than
three times, and never on Thursdays.)
PTravel
Oh, for gods sake. Please read the quote with which I disagreed:
THE STATE SHOULD NOT SPONSOR INDIVIDUALS . . .
All internet activity can be monitored by anyone, and peer-to-peer file
sharing software -- at least Grokster and the like -- are particularly easy
to trace. Engaging in illegal file sharing on a computer is as visible (and
as stupid) as shoplifting or any other violation of law committed in public.
Now explain to me how downloading copyright-protected music without
authorization furthers any interest in the "exchange of information."
>
>
Josh Dougherty
news:_oj7f.5956$q%.3115@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
>
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:FqKdnWx4Lts...@comcast.com...
> > "PTravel" <ptravel8...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:3s51geF...@individual.net...
> > > > IMO, the state should not
> > > > sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> > > > copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
> > >
> > > Nobody does that.
> >
> > "If you have a shared folder on Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster or using any
> other
> > service your file sharing activity can be monitored by the outside
world-
> > this includes the RIAA. The RIAA now uses automated tools that search
for
> > files and compare it to their "hit list". When it finds a person sharing
a
> > file on this list, it downloads all or some of the files to verify the
> > content. Once verified they take screenshots of the information on the
> > person's shared folder. Naturally this evidence, with date and
timestamps,
> > is what will surface in court."
> >
> > http://www.xblock.com/articles/article_show.php?id=12
>
> Oh, for gods sake. Please read the quote with which I disagreed:
>
> THE STATE SHOULD NOT SPONSOR INDIVIDUALS . . .
What's that supposed to mean? Is your argument really that the RIAA is not
an "individual", so therefore Tim did not mean his comment to include the
actions of individuals working for an organization like the RIAA? For gods
sake indeed.
> All internet activity can be monitored by anyone,
I don't know how to monitor your internet activity and have no interest in
knowing how, or in monitoring your internet activity. If the state were to
provide me financial rewards for doing so, maybe I would be interested
enough to spy on you. But I'd have to put the study in to figure it out,
and (if I were a really determined stalker) buy the right "automated tools",
compile the right "hit lists" and spend hours or days or weeks downloading
the files you did and verifying content.
Anyone could also monitor everything you do in your house if they really
wanted to. They're just not getting enough incentive I guess.
> and peer-to-peer file
> sharing software -- at least Grokster and the like -- are particularly
easy
> to trace.
Why is the RIAA spying on these people to "trace" what they do? The answer
is to be found, well and succinctly put, in Tim's comment.
> Engaging in illegal file sharing on a computer is as visible (and
> as stupid) as shoplifting or any other violation of law committed in
public.
Not really. You have to be interested enough to make an effort and you have
to have some expertise. I would wager that well over 99 percent of the
public would have no idea how to go about monitoring some stranger's file
sharing activity. They all know how to look for shoplifters. And, in any
case, the storeowner doesn't need any law passed to give him the incentive
to keep an eye out for shoplifting.
> Now explain to me how downloading copyright-protected music without
> authorization furthers any interest in the "exchange of information."
What does this have to do with whether the government is subsidizing people
to spy on the online activity of strangers? And who are you quoting anyway?
In any case, it furthers it the same way that downloading non-protected
music with authorization does.
Here's a website for legally downloading authorized live music:
http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php
When people download there, they download the file information from the
server, which can reproduce musical information, and an exact duplicate
appears on their computer. The information is still on the server, and it's
now also on their computer. Then they can exchange that information with
others, and they with others, and so on, and so on, when they could not
before.
It's works the same way when it's illegal.
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet
Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>I think copyright protection has existed in some form for almost as long
>as the technology to create many copies (i.e. the printing press) has.
>Prior to this technology it wasn't necessary to prohibit copying,
>because no one could copy things enough times to impact the original's
>value.
Although university professors in those days taught in darkened
rooms, so people couldn't take notes and take all details with them.
And there were different mechanisms to encourage the creation of
creative works. For example, a minstrel could be sponsored by a
nobleman, or charge admission fees for a performance. A storyteller
could be hired to tell an epic during a feast.
Arnoud
--
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
Tim Jackson
On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 22:13:23 -0400, Josh Dougherty wrote...
> "Brought forth onto this continent" in context conveys an idea of a
> romantic birth of something great in the previously barren wilderness. The
> alternate "was formed" doesn't convey that idea, or anything like it.
Yes, the two expressions "brought forth onto this continent" and "was
formed" convey different meanings within what you choose to call the
"general idea".
However, Lincoln's copyright wouldn't even protect the more specific
idea of a romantic birth of something great in the previously barren
wilderness. You are perfectly free to express it in that way. Or in
any other way, except for Lincoln's way. Copyright law won't stop you.
Thus, all copyright law protects is the particular way that Lincoln
expressed it. That's why it is said that copyright protects the
expression of the idea, not the idea itself.
(And for a phrase this short, it wouldn't even protect that.
Furthermore, Lincoln's copyright expired many years ago.)
--
Tim Jackson
ne...@timjackson.plus.invalid
(Change '.invalid' to '.com' to reply direct)
Absurd patents: visit http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk
Tim Jackson
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:42:08 -0400, Josh Dougherty wrote...
> And, in any
> case, the storeowner doesn't need any law passed to give him the incentive
> to keep an eye out for shoplifting.
The storeowner's incentive comes from the fact that shoplifting means
that he is not being paid for what he offers the public. The more it
happens, the more he has to charge the honest people who do pay.
Otherwise he would just go out of business, and the public would no
longer get the benefit of the goods he offered.
The record companies' incentive likewise comes from the fact that
unauthorised copying means that they are not being paid for what they
offer the public. The more it happens, the more they have to charge the
honest people who do pay. Otherwise they would just go out of business,
and the public would no longer get the benefit of the music they offer.
[*]
If shoplifting were a normal, lawful practice, there would be no point
in the storeowner keeping an eye on shoplifters. He would be unable to
pursue the matter anyway, and he might as well close the store.
If unauthorised copying were a normal, lawful practice, there would be
no point in the record companies keeping an eye on unauthorised copiers.
They would be unable to pursue the matter anyway, and they might as well
stop producing the music.
In practice, the storeowner relies on a combination of legal protection
(the law against theft) and practical measures to help him keep an eye
on the shoplifters (e.g. alarms on the door which are triggered by tags
on the goods). But the law against theft doesn't mean that the state
is "sponsoring" or "subsidising" him to keep an eye on shoplifters.
It's just in his own interest to do so.
In practice, the record companies rely on a combination of legal
protection (copyright) and practical measures to help them keep an eye
on unauthorised copiers (e.g. monitoring activity on the internet). But
the law against unauthorised copying doesn't mean that the state is
"sponsoring" or "subsidising" them to keep an eye on copiers, any more
than in the case of the storeowner. It's just in their own interest to
do so.
__________________
[*] The music that people want to listen to doesn't just happen. The
record companies invest money in producing it, but only do so because
they can then charge people for it. If everyone copied the music for
free and no-one paid, they wouldn't produce it.
You will of course immediately point out that some people who make
unauthorisied copies would never have bought a legitimate copy anyway.
And that a few might even go on to buy a legitimate copy.
But the truth is that a very significant number of unauthorised copies
do substitute for paying for a copy. The record companies' sales have
gone down substantially in recent years as a result. Producing the
music still costs the same, so it has to be divided between the fewer
number of people who still do pay.
PTravel
No, it's supposed to mean that the RIAA is sponsored by the state.
Sorry, I forgot for a moment to whom I was responding.
Josh Dougherty
news:MPG.1dc8263aa...@news.plus.net...
>
> On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:42:08 -0400, Josh Dougherty wrote...
> > And, in any
> > case, the storeowner doesn't need any law passed to give him the
incentive
> > to keep an eye out for shoplifting.
>
> The storeowner's incentive comes from the fact that shoplifting means
> that he is not being paid for what he offers the public.
No, it comes from the fact that shoplifting means he's being disposessed of
a piece of his property. It's the same incentive that homeowners' have to
protect against burglary of items in their home that they have no intention
of selling. And it requires no law be passed, and it has nothing to do with
being paid or not.
...
> If shoplifting were a normal, lawful practice, there would be no point
> in the storeowner keeping an eye on shoplifters.
Yes, there would. The same incentive that you have to prevent robbers from
taking stuff that you aren't selling out of your house. Someone is invading
your personal space and dispossessing you of some item that you own.
> He would be unable to
> pursue the matter anyway, and he might as well close the store.
>
> If unauthorised copying were a normal, lawful practice, there would be
> no point in the record companies keeping an eye on unauthorised copiers.
Exactly. The law creates the incentive for them to spy on strangers.
> They would be unable to pursue the matter anyway, and they might as well
> stop producing the music.
>
>
> In practice, the storeowner relies on a combination of legal protection
> (the law against theft) and practical measures to help him keep an eye
> on the shoplifters (e.g. alarms on the door which are triggered by tags
> on the goods). But the law against theft doesn't mean that the state
> is "sponsoring" or "subsidising" him to keep an eye on shoplifters.
> It's just in his own interest to do so.
Yep, and he'd do it just as much without the law.
> In practice, the record companies rely on a combination of legal
> protection (copyright) and practical measures to help them keep an eye
> on unauthorised copiers (e.g. monitoring activity on the internet). But
> the law against unauthorised copying doesn't mean that the state is
> "sponsoring" or "subsidising" them to keep an eye on copiers, any more
> than in the case of the storeowner. It's just in their own interest to
> do so.
Yes it does mean that. Abolish copyright law and see how much time the RIAA
spends spying on people. Abolish shoplifting laws and see if storeowners
stop bothering to protect their merchandise from shoplifters.
> __________________
>
> [*] The music that people want to listen to doesn't just happen. The
> record companies invest money in producing it, but only do so because
> they can then charge people for it. If everyone copied the music for
> free and no-one paid, they wouldn't produce it.
It's not my concern how many record companies produce it, or how much they
produce. They could all go bankrupt and musicians will produce it
regardless. They won't all go bankrupt though, because even in a world of
copying there's money to be made from selling recordings.
> You will of course immediately point out that some people who make
> unauthorisied copies would never have bought a legitimate copy anyway.
> And that a few might even go on to buy a legitimate copy.
>
> But the truth is that a very significant number of unauthorised copies
> do substitute for paying for a copy.
I have no problem agreeing with that, but just to note the vague
"significant" hasn't been quantified. And to note that this means there's
at least a "significant" group that also buys it regardless.
> The record companies' sales have gone down substantially in recent years
as a result. Producing the
> music still costs the same, so it has to be divided between the fewer
number of people who still do pay.
Yeah, and the price of cds has always been just what they cost to produce.
Josh Dougherty
news:MPG.1dc8263aa...@news.plus.net...
>
> > And, in any
> > case, the storeowner doesn't need any law passed to give him the
incentive
> > to keep an eye out for shoplifting.
>
> The storeowner's incentive comes from the fact that shoplifting means
> that he is not being paid for what he offers the public. The more it
> happens, the more he has to charge the honest people who do pay.
> Otherwise he would just go out of business, and the public would no
> longer get the benefit of the goods he offered.
>
> The record companies' incentive likewise comes from the fact that
> unauthorised copying means that they are not being paid for what they
> offer the public. The more it happens, the more they have to charge the
> honest people who do pay. Otherwise they would just go out of business,
> and the public would no longer get the benefit of the music they offer.
> [*]
I'd add here too that the fundamental difference is scarcity vs. artificial
scarcity. The storeowner's goods are scarce by their nature. If someone
takes the storeowner's vcr, that's it. It's gone and he can't use it for
his own purposes, be it selling or otherwise. A recording is not scarce.
It can be infinitely reproduced and used by everyone without it being used
any the less by anyone.
You need a regime, cops, prisons, courts..etc., to create an artificial
scarcity in a recording. And yes, those who profit in recordings may have
an incentive for the artificial scarcity to be created, and if created,
maintained and expanded.
This is however not the same incentive that the storeowner has to protect
his vcr from being shoplifted. A closer analogy would be for the state to
pass a law saying only vcr's purchased from Bob's store are legal, and those
purchased or acquired in any other way are illegal. If this were done,
there would be an extra layer of artificial scarcity introduced, above that
of the vcr's own inherent scarcity, and the value of that scarce number of
vcr's owned by Bob may increase thereby. Bob then all of a sudden has much
more valuable items than he had before. He now has an incentive to protect
not just the original value he was always protecting, but also that new
artificially added value. Now, suddenly, Bob may have an incentive to hire
spies to monitor the activity of strangers to see if they're using a vcr
that they didn't purchase from him so he can take them to court and force
them to pay settlements, while he had never even considered doing something
like that before.
Tim Tyler
> In article <Iow1A...@bath.ac.uk>, Tim Tyler <t...@tt1lock.org> wrote:
> > Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote or quoted:
> > > "PTravel" <ptr...@travelersvideo.com> wrote:
> > > > Copyright does NOT block the flow ideas. Copyright encourages the
> > > > dissemination of ideas.
> > >
> > > What the anti-copyright people fail to understand is that the
> > > alternative to Intellectual Property protection is *not* free flow of
> > > ideas. The alternative is people not publishing their ideas in the
> > > first place. And if they don't get published, there's no idea flow in
> > > the first place, and nothing for you to copy.
> >
> > Just like things were before there were copyright laws, in other words.
> >
> > Nobody published any of their ideas back then - right?
>
> I think copyright protection has existed in some form for almost as long
> as the technology to create many copies (i.e. the printing press) has.
> Prior to this technology it wasn't necessary to prohibit copying,
> because no one could copy things enough times to impact the original's
> value.
Copyright laws were established within a hundred years or so after the
invention of the printing press.
"A History of Copyright in the United States"
[http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html]
However, there were still numerous copies of books around before then -
consider, for example, the bible and the koran. Copying was more effort -
but it could be done.
Tim Tyler
> > > But the sense in which you are using it does not translate to the legal
> > > protections afforded expression and the legal distinction between
> > > expression and idea.
> >
> > So what? I never said it did.
>
> The problem, though, is that, whereas "work of authorship," "expression" and
> "idea" have specific meanings in law that are universally understood, your
> personal definition of information is not. In other words, I have no idea
> what categories of expression and/or ideas are subsumed within the term.
Shannon's definition of information, not mine.
If you are not familiar with Shanon's work, then now's as good
a time as any to rectify that.
> > > By your definition, some information exchange constitutes
> > > infringement, some doesn't.
> >
> > That is correct. Did I ever claim otherwise?
>
> No, but it also makes less than productive to talk about "information" in
> the context of a discussion about copyright law.
I don't see how. Information is what copyright law applies to.
What term would you have me use?
> > > The level of intrusion is not greater than for any other activity, i.e.
> > > warrants require probable cause, etc. The bottom line, of course, is
> > > that we all engage in common petty acts of infringement in the
> > > privacy of our own homes, and do so reasonable secure in the
> > > knowledge that no one will ever find out. The nice leveling
> > > feature of civil litigation is that it is not
> > > worth a plaintiff's time or effort to prosecute de minimus trespasses.
> >
> > It appears that we agree that the laws are not practical to enforce.
>
> Please don't put words in my mouth. It's a cheap rhetorical trick, and I'm
> sure you realize that. [...]
You have a funny idea about what constitutes putting words in someone's
mouth.
> > > > IMO, the state should not
> > > > sponsor individuals spying on each other in the hope of spotting
> > > > copied information - by providing financial rewards for doing so.
> > >
> > > Nobody does that.
> >
> > That's what copyright law does. Copyright holders get to sue
> > infringers - if they can track them down.
>
> That's right. That doesn't equate to the state sponsoring individuals to
> spy on each other, as you contend. Analogy is one thing, but hyperbole is
> something else altogether.
It provides financial rewards for the spys - using copyright law -
and provides supporting legal infrastructure, and police to help
catch offenders and extract fines from them. My statement seems
quite reasonable to me.
> > > "Health conscious individuals"?
> >
> > Health conscious individuals. Such individuals often seek
> > medical information.
>
> And how does copyright law prevent indivduals from seeking medical
> information?
It doesn't prevent the *seeking*. It hinders the *finding*.
In the totally obvious way.
> > > Libraries and on-line publication ensure reasonable access. I've
> > > never heard of a doctor who said, "I could have saved that patient's
> > > life if only I had an extra $100 for subscription to The Lancet."
> > > Have you?
> >
> > That specific phrase? I don't think so. Plenty of people
> > have reduced quality access to health and scientific
> > information due to the restrictions of copyright law, though.
>
> So you say. Can you provide a specific example?
I personally have reduced quality access to health and scientific
information due to the restrictions of copyright law.
> > Of course this is irrelevant to the original claim that
> > copyright law doesn't create delays or reduce the
> > accessibility of existing information. Of course it
> > does that.
>
> So you've said. Can you provide a specific example?
Of course I can - but fortunately, I do not have to bother
wasting my time with stupid requests for the bleeding obvious.
> > The point of the laws is to create a means
> > of taxing access to information.
>
> Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Copyright doesn't impose a "tax,"
> nor is it directed at "information."
"Tax" may not have been what I intended to say - but in fact the
government gets a slice of the revenue from the authors of
artistic works under copyright law.
> > > As I thought I had explained at length, fair use doctrine
> > > is predicated, primarily, upon resolving the tension
> > > between the First Amendment and Art. I, Sec. 8. The
> > > rule is no unauthorized copying. If you intend to rely
> > > on an equitable exception (which, like all equitable
> > > doctrines, implicates considerations of fundamental
> > > fairness), then you had better be certain that there
> > > is some readily-identifiable and well-recognized social
> > > good that justifies excusing the infringement.
> >
> > It doesn't really matter what you thought. Any claim that
> > all unauthorised copying represents copyright infringement
> > is simply false.
>
> Well, yes, but who said otherwise?
You did - the precise claim by you was:
``Unauthorized copying is copyright infringement. Period.''
> > > > I was talking about work that duplicated the effect of other work,
> > > > without infringing on copyright.
> > >
> > > This is getting too abstract for me. What kinds of activities
> > > constitute duplicated, but non-infringing, effect?
> >
> > E.g. GNU Classpath.
>
> What is that? I'm familiar with the GNU open-source license, but not with
> Classpath.
If you don't understand my example, it would not take long to
educate yourself using Google.
> > > > The work of creating such materials would not
> > > > be needed were it not for the fact that copying
> > > > the originals is against the law.
> > >
> > > How does that translate to justifying college kids
> > > illegally downloading music files without paying for them?
> >
> > It doesn't. I never said it did.
>
> Then to what such materials are you referring? Specifics, please.
I've already given two examples of such material on request.
> > > > Functionally speaking, the work is a waste of time - compared
> > > > to the situation where copying information is legalised.
> > >
> > > Can you give me an example?
> >
> > Novell's Mono.
>
> Hunh? From the website:
>
> "Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and
> server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix.
> Sponsored by Novell, the Mono open source project has an active and
> enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading
> choice for development of Linux applications."
>
> How does that relate to this discussion?
You don't understand either of my examples? As a clue, they are
both open-source clones of proprietary copyrighted systems.
> > > > You seem to be misinterpreting my comments as though they were
> > > > refering to the creation of wholly original works. That was not
> > > > what the context was.
> > >
> > > Then you need to give me an example that illustrates the context.
> > > Everything I've read in this thread suggests the kind of
> > > infringement that results from, for example, exchanging
> > > protected works on peer-to-peer networks, etc. If you
> > > mean something else, I'd be interested to know what it is.
> >
> > I think I'm likely to be more inclined to give up on you.
>
> I see. I request facts and you walk away.
>
> So much for the free exchange of information.
Actually, I think I've been extremely patient with you,
considering the content of your responses.
> > There are too many denials of simple facts on this thread -
> > and straightening out your misunderstandings is threatening
> > to prove to be too much effort.
>
> Ah, the last resort in a losing argument -- insult.
It's the truth.