Message 147 of 303 (650208) 01-28-2012 6:28 PM

Reply to: Message 144 by crashfrog 01-28-2012 6:20 PM

Since I don't hold the opinon that such a use is reasonable, I'll take it that your point is without substance. Perhaps you should ask me my impression instead of assigning me positions and then attacking them.

In my opinion, the law suit is meritless, with Beyonce's usage, even if she did actually copy the material, being excused under 17 USC 107.

One thing to note about copyright protection that differs from patent protetion is that independent recreation is NOT infringement under copyright law. A plaintiff would have to show that not only was the Beyonce's material identical in some way protected by copyright law, but that Beyonce copied the material from the plaintiff as oppposed to anywhere else. Further, Beyonce could defend by showing that the plaintiff's material was not original, or that her copying was de minimis, or excused under fair use.

Perhaps we can return to you showing why copyright law from 200 years ago is unfair?

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Message 153 of 303 (650215) 01-28-2012 7:17 PM

Reply to: Message 150 by crashfrog 01-28-2012 6:35 PM

1. I cited the provision. I did not comment on it.
2. The provision does not allow liability simply from moving your body in a certain way. The law suit you linked to is not supported. What is protected is copying a substantially portion of someone else's choreography from a tangible medium such as a video without permission. Independently inventing similar moves is not protected. Watching someone do a move live and then repeating it is not protected.
3. I am not the defender of all things status quo.
4. I note that you have not commented on my presentation on the limits of modern day copyright law.

But let's say that I did approve of law suits like the one against Beyonce, the one in particular that I've indicated is not supported under the law.

My position on choreography is immaterial. None of it has the least bit of relevance to your position on whether MGM should be able to apply copyright to movies or whether you should be able to upload them to the internet. You can tar me as any kind of statist that you'd like. But the result does not provide any support for your position.

Copyright law 200 years ago, and I think you talked about the validity historical provisions, would give decade long protection to movies. Such protection is not a new and modern position. Nobody here is defending anything new and modern, so it is inappropriate to defend your position by complainining about SOPA and PIPA.

Message 154 of 303 (650216) 01-28-2012 7:20 PM

Reply to: Message 151 by Jon 01-28-2012 7:07 PM

I believe the DMCA is unfair for at least these reasons. You'll get no argument from me about any of that.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Message 155 of 303 (650217) 01-28-2012 7:24 PM

Reply to: Message 148 by crashfrog 01-28-2012 6:32 PM

A reasonable position. I suppose that you are going to point me to a court case now.

You don't have the right to do a public performance, copy or distribute a substantial part of Tolkien's book. If you don't do that, most likely you will be just fine. If some court case says something different then I don't agree with that.

Message 156 of 303 (650218) 01-28-2012 7:43 PM

Reply to: Message 141 by crashfrog 01-28-2012 6:13 PM

Would that be something identical to or different from describing a movie scene orally. Because it sure sounds different.

With respect to performing a movie, I've acknowledged that a public performance is one of the copyright holder's exclusive rights.

None of which has anything to do with your copying of videos and uploading them to the internet, which is actually what we are talking about.

I've noticed that you are not spending any amount of time debating about the points I've actually addressed. Instead your argument seems to be that if you can discredit any provision of copyright, then you can assign to me the task of defending that provision and then avoid providing your own justification. I'm not particularly interested in a discussion where you get to make up my side of the debate. You could have that discussion by yourself.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Message 170 of 303 (650284) 01-29-2012 6:07 PM

Reply to: Message 161 by crashfrog 01-29-2012 10:27 AM

No, I'm not a final arbiter. It happens that I do know patent and copyright law considerably better than do you, as a result of having practiced in those areas. It's certainly legitimate for you not to take me word for anything I post. That's why I backed up my position by posting the statutes in question and discussing the issues that were necessary to establish copyright infringement based on the actual law.

My opinion is based on what I know of the statutory and case law. It is not based on looking at what law suits are filed because baseless law suits are filed all of the time and in every area of law. Your position is akin to saying that if some tort liability suits are groundless, then we should remove the ability to sue for any and all torts.

In this case, there is no evidence that the judicial system has approved the law suit against Beyonce. A law suit was filed, and the filing was reported most likely because the defendant is famous and the plaintiff wanted publicity. That's all we've got so far. No judge has made any ruling as to whether the law suit has merit, and the suit may well be dismissed the first time a judge gets around to looking at it.

An oral description of a visual movie scene would never infringe on the actual scene. On the other hand, a reciting of the dialog word for word, or as best you can remember might constitute infringement if performed in public.

But again, so what? Even if we removed liability for public performances, and choreography, and software from the statutes, and even if we reverted to copyright law of 200 years ago, downloading copyrighted movies from the internet would still being infringing. And the duration of copyright back then was between 14 and 28 years.

Message 171 of 303 (650285) 01-29-2012 6:32 PM

Reply to: Message 158 by crashfrog 01-29-2012 10:13 AM

That's complete nonsense. Nothing in copyright law prevents me from describing my car. I am prevented from distributing a description of my car authored by you unless I have your permission, but nothing keeps me from creating and distributing my own.

In fact, copyright protects the expression and not the factual content of text. And copyright does not protect function of your car at all (See 17 USC 102b, reproduced below).

quote:

---

(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

---

It is perfectly legit to obtain a copy of someone's description of a car, strip away the facts from the creative expression and to use those facts to write your own manual.

The above "clean room" process is used frequently to write clones of existing software. There can be no doubt that it works.

I do not doubt that some industry does exert some control over the details of how to repair cars. But it cannot using copyright law in the manner you say, because copyright law does not prevent you from describing things, explaining how things work, or duplicating the function of objects.

There are problems with copyright, and I believe your point regarding your inability to create a work set in Hobbit land, or whatever it is called is a legitimate complaint. Most of the rest of the stuff you've said about the extent of copyright law has been completely wrong.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Message 176 of 303 (650295) 01-29-2012 7:36 PM

Reply to: Message 175 by crashfrog 01-29-2012 7:23 PM

You are making this harder than it needs be. All you really have to do is convince a few people with capital that enough people will buy tickets to make the venture worthwhile. You don't actually have to convince movie goers until it is time to actually pony up the money for a ticket.

Of course I think that Tangle's problem regarding how you are going to get the money from theaters has not been addressed. Why wouldn't theater managers simply download the movie free instead of paying MGM any kind of fee. That way they could keep the profits to themselves. I don't see high budget movies getting made unless this problem is solved.

Message 177 of 303 (650304) 01-29-2012 10:39 PM

Reply to: Message 174 by crashfrog 01-29-2012 7:19 PM

I haven't ignored anything. You just mentioned it and I'll deal with the issue now.

Law suits can be dismissed at the pleading stage for very little expense. I'd also note that poor people don't get choreography law suits levied against them.

Copyright law is no different from any other area of law in this respect. Million dollar law suits have been filed against dry cleaners for losing a single pair of pants. Sometimes those suits don't get dismissed and the dry cleaner has to incur some legal costs. The blame for the filing of spurious law suits lies squarely on the litigants. There is no screening process for law suits other than asking the judge to dismiss the law suit.

I don't see how this makes your case.

Are you suggesting that most of the suits filed by the RIAA were without legal merit? Yes, there were a few suits against moms and grandmas when their grandchildren were actually the people using Limewire, Napster, or whatever, but the overwhelming majority of those law suits appeared to accurately finger infringers.

And accordingly, the overwhelming majority of those suits were not going to get dismissed for being meritless because the suits accurately targeted copyright infringers. Some people got off because the process for serving them with the complaint was faulty, but only a few people ever managed to escape liability due to actually not having done the uploading/downloading of copyright protected music that they were accused of.

I'm not aware of any significant number of people being wrongly accused of downloading movies. Do you know differently?

Message 210 of 303 (650470) 01-31-2012 3:55 PM

Reply to: Message 201 by crashfrog 01-31-2012 8:54 AM

I don't think this kind of language twisting is necessary. Yes it is true that words like piracy are unnecessarily inflammatory and loaded. Those words don't belong in this discussion.

But regardless of how you feel about the morality of downloading, or drug usage, or speeding, I don't think there is any question that those things are contrary to the legislatively enacted statutes as interpreted by the courts.

Downloading movies alone would not constitute hypocrisy in my view. Perhaps if you also railed against other acts simply on the basis that they are against existing law then we could see a double standard. But most people don't claim to never break the law in any circumstance.

There are at least some laws that a moral person MUST disobey, and there are other laws on the books for which the breaking law has no moral implications whatsoever. There are still others for which concern moral issues involved in breaking the law are not universally shared by all.

But there is no need to pretend that you are not violating, infringing, or breaking the law when you take willful actions to do just that, while knowing full well what the laws are. Why not just man up about what you do.

That said, I've encountered many people whose justification for downloading reeks and drips with hypocrisy. Essentially nobody downloaded LW17 from megaupload in order to "stick it to the man" or because "information wants to be free" or because the music industry abuses artists. They did so because it was convenient or because they wouldn't or couldn't pay the 19.95.

Message 212 of 303 (650478) 01-31-2012 4:10 PM

Reply to: Message 181 by crashfrog 01-30-2012 10:00 AM

It is not well known the suits have no legal merit. There are indeed criminal penalties for dowloading a relatively small numbers of a copyright protected work. See link to 17 USC 506

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html

There are also substantial statutory civil penalties for downloading a single copyright protected work, and the RIAA has been successful in getting relatively large awards in court.

See Statutory damages at the same link.

You might well believe that such laws are inappropriate, but given that they are on the books, the RIAA is completely justified in pointing out the possible damages if they have to sue, damages which might well include the RIAA's lawyer fees.

And for about the third time, downloading mp3s does not involve violating the DMCA. There is no technological protection on CDs so ripping a CD to upload a music track does not violate the DMCA. Instead, downloading an mp3 violates the provisions of 17 USC 106 that involve the copying and/or distribution of copyrighted works.

I ask that you support your statement to the contrary. But I fully expected that you will instead insist that I defend that we even have a system of copyright laws at all.

Message 213 of 303 (650482) 01-31-2012 4:20 PM

Reply to: Message 180 by crashfrog 01-30-2012 9:54 AM

Seriously, crashfrog. Surely you can come up with some reasons why people go to the movies that don't involve putting food on the table for artists. My daughter goes to the movies with her buddies because she thinks the movie is cool, hip, funny, etc., and because it's fun to do so. I sincerely doubt that she gives much thought to the fact that some portion of the ticket price goes to supporting Angelina Jolie in the life style of which she is accustomed.

I go to the movies on rare occasions, and grumble about the cost of everything, and refuse to go again until my wife gives me the "you never take me anywhere" speech. I don't go to patronize anyone. I go for the entertainment.

Movie theater operators operate because they make money hand over fist selling junk food at inflated prices and some money on ticket sales. They don't care why you come to the movies, as long as you come.

Message 215 of 303 (650485) 01-31-2012 4:27 PM

Reply to: Message 200 by Jon 01-30-2012 7:06 PM

Yes, and those analog copies did not allow infinite distribution, because after a couple of generations the audio copies were unusable. If fact, under the Audio Home Recording Act, it is completely legal to make personal use analog copies of music.

It is only digital copying that has made any difference whatsoever.

Message 225 of 303 (650551) 01-31-2012 7:34 PM

Reply to: Message 216 by crashfrog 01-31-2012 4:30 PM

I did not dishonestly do anything. Your accusations of dishonesty and lying whenever we disagree have become quite routine. I suppose they are part of your charm.

No the RIAA does not have any such power, but without even looking, I suspect we will find that the RIAA cease and settle letters don't promise immunity or anything else that they cannot deliver.

Generally speaking, though, there are plenty of examples of the feds pursuing federal charges for criminal copyright infringement upon request from copyright holders like Apple, Adobe, and the RIAA. Yet I am not aware of a single case where a settling defendant has been prosecuted by the feds. Are you?

And of course you do not dispute that the possibility of having to pay huge damage awards is very real. It's small wonder that people who actually have uploaded music, and by and large only uploaders have been sued, have settled. They are facing a very real prospect of being found liable for amounts that dwarf the offered settlements.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Message 226 of 303 (650555) 01-31-2012 11:58 PM

Reply to: Message 217 by crashfrog 01-31-2012 4:32 PM

In such a world, there would be no obligation to pay for the movie even if you did enjoy it. I, in particular, would never, ever decide to pay Mel Gibson a single penny regardless of how good his movie is.

I think the number of people who would pay extra money to make sure the artists got their cut, when there is no stigma attached with going to the cheaper theater would be exceedingly small and possibly zero. I thought you were trying to convince me otherwise.

Your description does sound a bit like the world Lennon sings about in "Imagine" though.