The Purpose of Copyright...(in the US)

[guyanonymous]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20100810/02525810568.shtml

[gastan]

From the article,

"...when copyright was a private agreement among publishers, designed to retain monopolies, act as censors and generally control the publishing market. It certainly wasn't about protecting creators, who had nothing to do with it."

That pretty much sums up what copyright was, and again is, about. Those that think it has anything to do with protecting or promoting intellectual creation should stay away from anyone with a bridge to sell.

Thanks. Good article.

[Elfwreck]

The original article (which the techdirt article is reviewing) points out:

As the Supreme Court has recognized: "The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good."

It goes on to say, "The misunderstanding held by many who believe that the primary purpose of copyright law is to protect authors against those who would pilfer the author's work threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium in copyright law."

I love this article. I copied it out to my Reader a while ago (week or two? something like that) as an RTF (it doesn't need fancy formatting) and intend to keep it in there permanently.

I suppose I've made an unauthorized copy and could be sued for $150,000, or whatever the current ridiculous amount is. Which is why so many people have trouble taking *any* claims of "copyright infringement" seriously--there's no technical legal difference between "copy a web article to a non-wifi mobile device" and "scan, OCR & format a library book and email it to a stranger online, who might put it up on the torrent nets."

[J. Strnad]

<< Those that think it has anything to do with protecting or promoting intellectual creation should stay away from anyone with a bridge to sell.>>

I think that's a misinterpretation of the source article. As the owner of various pieces of intellectual property, I can assure you that copyright does indeed protect and promote intellectual creation. (Okay, applying the word "intellectual" to anything I've personally written is stretching the definition a bit, but if you use it in the broadest sense....)

The author of the source article (Lydia Pallas Loren) says it plainly:

I am not advocating an elimination of copyright protection. The protection granted to copyright owners is essential in providing the economic incentive for the creation of works.

What Loren does say is that the law has overreached and become too restrictive, which is a sentiment I can agree with.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by gastan

From the article,

"...when copyright was a private agreement among publishers, designed to retain monopolies, act as censors and generally control the publishing market. It certainly wasn't about protecting creators, who had nothing to do with it."

That pretty much sums up what copyright was, and again is, about. Those that think it has anything to do with protecting or promoting intellectual creation should stay away from anyone with a bridge to sell.

Thanks. Good article.

Do you want to buy a bridge?

[J. Strnad]

I love this article. I copied it out to my Reader a while ago (week or two? something like that) as an RTF (it doesn't need fancy formatting) and intend to keep it in there permanently. I suppose I've made an unauthorized copy and could be sued for $150,000, or whatever the current ridiculous amount is.

If Ms. Loren is correct, you're safe. She writes:

Now, if, over the course of any 180-day period, someone willfully infringes copyright by reproducing or distributing one or more copies of one or more works which have a retail value over $1000, they can be found criminally liable.

(emphasis mine)

In other words, if this is an accurate representation of the law, you can make a number of copies and distribute them for free (this paragraph doesn't address the profit aspect, but it's there elsewhere in the law) as long as the retail value of those copies is less than $1000 over a six-month period. In other words (using my own Risen as an example) you could legally make copies for 200 of your closest friends twice a year forever. You probably wouldn't run afoul of the law unless you posted it as a bit torrent, and you'd still probably be in the clear if fewer than 200 people every six months downloaded it.

That's if she's correct and if I've interpreted the paragraph correctly.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

In other words, if this is an accurate representation of the law, you can make a number of copies and distribute them for free (this paragraph doesn't address the profit aspect, but it's there elsewhere in the law) as long as the retail value of those copies is less than $1000 over a six-month period.
...
That's if she's correct and if I've interpreted the paragraph correctly.

That's criminal, not civil. Civil copyright infringement has different requirements:

(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.

No minimums that I could find. Financial penalties range from "all actual damages & profits," or statutory limits of $750-30,000 per violation for accidental, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement.

I'd argue I believed my "infringement" was fair use & shouldn't be tagged as willful, but I have no idea what a court would decide. (I'm mostly counting on the idea that the author wants the article read, and since it's on a free-public-view website, probably doesn't care if people print out copies or save them to their hard drives or port them to other devices, as long as no money is moving around with them.)

[Kali Yuga]

H'm, another anti-copyright screed that repeats the same *cough* stuff as always. Must be Thursday.