Semi-OT: Congress about to limit artists' copyright rights

[Billy Crook]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
> So if I make something, then in order for me to release it under the
> GPL/BSD, I will have to pay?

No.  You have to register your copyright if you think you have the
right to tell other people they can't make money off of it.  A
database of every greedy artist/author's works will be large, and
require upkeep which should be paid for by the people who benefit from
said database.

And on a side note, if you released under the BSD license, it would
generally mean you didn't give a damn about what people did with it,
so you wouldn't need to register your copyright in order to sue.

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
> How? What if you make something and don't copyright it, and then
> someone else makes it after you and does copyright it?

Besides, you can't "not copyright it".  With exception to works for
hire by the government, it JUST IS copyrighted, instantaneously, at
the moment it was made.  Today this is sufficient to go and sue
someone if they make it after you.  After the new law passes, you will
have to put a modicum of effort into asserting your copyright before
you can sue people for infringing upon it.

Then you forfeit damages on your work by not registering its
copyright.  The same thing goes today, right now, if you don't
establish evidence of your work at a given time, and someone else
establishes theirs first.  This just shifts the liability; from the
second guy being responsible for knowing everything that is
copyrighted in a world where copyright is automatic and secret, making
the second guy's job, literally, impossible; to the first guy, who
intrinsically *does* and *will absolutely* know about his work
(because he made it) to stake a public claim to copyright *before*
they can sue anyone.

Without this public registry of copyright, you can be penalized for
things you had no way of knowing.  Do you think secret laws would be
OK too?  Want to spend some time in prison for contradicting me?
(It's illegal according to that secret law that you didn't know about
because it wasn't publicly registered.)  Sounds obviously like a bad
idea.



> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:43 PM, Billy Crook <billycrook at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So.... who do you propose that this will help?
>> Anyone who wants to make a work and distribute it whether or not for profit.
>>> What will be he benefit of this as you see it?
>> Clarity of what is and is not going to get you sued.  Peace of mind
>> that you're safe to make and distribute something.
> How?

It helps anyone who wants to make and distribute a work, by giving
them a mechanism to efficiently look up whether it would violate
copyright to do so before expending time and money on it.

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:25 PM, Jeffrey Watts
<jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> What happened to asking?

How would you ever know how to ask without the work being registered?
Personally, I'd like to see some sort of universal meta-data tag and
format to express license terms in a machine readable/processable
format.  (Note I didn't say machine-enforced.)  You'd transmit a
facsimile to the registrar, they'd hash it, and issue a certificate of
the hash, date submitted, who submitted it, and the license terms.
You'd stick it onto the file like an id3 tag so others would get a
copy of the info with the file, and be able to verify it against the
registrar.  Then there would be a centralized record of when the work
was created, and by whom.

It could be made very painless and easy, and essentially cost next to
nothing for electronic items.  It could be on the right-click, context
menu.  For physical items it might require a digital photograph.  Big
deal.

> their needs are trumpted by the needs of the artist's.

The artists' need to distribute works with unclear origination and
licensing terms, and sue people for not understanding them?  Is that
the need of which you write?

> It's called an "analogy", and it's a rhetorical tool used to make a point.

I very much appreciate analogies.  However, I was pointing out how
that specific one failed.  <Section A>  Theft is theft because
something is lost.  Theft is a transaction between two parties whereby
property is transferred from the victim to the thief, depriving the
victim of said property, leaving the victim's hands emptier than they
were before.  If someone takes your wallet, that is theft.  Even
outright piracy does not do that.  If someone holds $50 in front of
you, but doesn't give it to you, that is not theft.  While profiting
from someone else' orphaned work isn't exactly the classiest thing to
do, it doesn't cost the orphaned work's original author anything.
Furthermore, most of the frivolous copyright lawsuits today can claim
damages without the infringer having profited at all.


On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is it just me, or are we veering on-topic again, with Mr. Crook arguing dangerously close to the concept that GPLing something should require a fee and, if the "licensing registry fee" isn't paid, anyone should be allowed to use what they like from the source code in the supposedly GPLed project?

No.  I'm arguing that clogging up the court system shouldn't cost tax
payers.  It should cost the people who are profiting from it.  This
will only discourage greedy copyright owners from abusing the court
system at the expense of you and me, 20 years down the road to get
money they didn't earn when they had the chance.  That seems a lot
more fair from where I stand.  It's all about money.  Copyright itself
won't change much.

This is a really big deal.  Right now, nearly everything is
copyrighted.  Every work, no matter how insignificant, is copyright
it's author the moment it is created, unless its author is the
government, and that lasts the lifetime of the author plus 70 years or
up to 120 years from the date of authorship.  If you don't make your
work known for some long period of time, or don't make it clear what
the terms are and make it obvious who the copyright holder is, you are
creating a mess for others.

Humanity is an amalgam of intellectual property.  Before you lay claim
to something you "created", consider if you really did "create"
anything, or merely re-assembled existing ideas and concepts.  I'm
sure you wouldn't want to have to track down each of their authors to
ask permission.  And if one of those authors made it impossible to ask
them permission, they forfeit their claim for damages for the
betterment of mankind.

> Because this is exactly where I see laws like this headed, towards people not being allowed to control their own creations unless they pay some private business for the privilege.  How, exactly, is this different from paying Microsoft for the privilege of being able to use a computer to write a novel or design some graphics?
> EULAs are where they got the language for the "Orphan Works Act of 2008" acts currently in Congress.

F.U.D.

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:49 PM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Are you seriously sitting there claiming that there aren't any damages to you for someone else getting your paycheck after you've done all the work?

I tire of explaining this.  See <Section A> above.  Having done work
does not, in and of itself, entitle you to money.  You *earn* money by
providing goods and services to people or otherwise fulfilling
contracts with them.  *Earning*...  That's still word in America,
right?  In fact, "paycheck" implies your work was a work for hire
(thus you are not the copyright holder anyway).

> The open source developers, or so I've heard one GPL developer put it, trade their effort to you in exchange for you not selling their "free" product for the money they could have made selling their own product.  Their lost income is by choice, in exchange for you not getting their income instead of them.

That developer should re-read the GPL I suppose.  The GPL does not
forbid anyone's sale (royalty free redistribution for profit) of their
works.


On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Fri, 5/30/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> You think you're speaking entirely in jest, but just where do you think some of the "nude body" photos come from which are used in Photoshop to create "Jennifer Aniston...Naked!!!"?

... a humorous example to be sure, but this does actually demonstrate
the point of the OWA2008.  If you post some picture to the Intertubes
you either intend to profit from it, or you do not.

If you did, then it is your responsibility to convey that wish and
contact information along with the picture.  Today this is just
implied by common sense or morals if you believe in them.
If you did not, then you can't go claiming you "lost profit" or worse
yet "someone stole from you" when they profited from a work that you
yourself didn't plan to 'cash in' on.

This legislation will put the moral/common sense into actual law.
It's kind of sad that it has to be written down in law, but that's the
world we live in.  Legally, I hold copyright to this email by the time
it hits your Inbox.  If you forward it on to anyone without acquiring
license from me to do so, you have infringed on my copyright, and I
can sue you for "damages".  Morally, that's repugnant.  But people not
only do things like that, but tie up the courts and tax money in the
process.  The new law will remove the "damages" incentive to abuse the
system.
Morally, that's a crock of shit.  Unless