Secret Copyright Law Reported

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No should. You clearly are not following..

No, it's you who are not following. The law treats them differently no matter what you think.

Originally Posted by kennyc

If you take something of mine without my permission, you are a thief.

Completely wrong. If you made something covered by copyright and I made a parody of it using your material without permission that is legal, ethical and moral since parody is specifically exempted as protected speech.

However, at this point, it seems you're either trolling or being willfully close minded and ignorant so I'm no longer going to bother with you.

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you're talking about the English translation of "The Trial" that's here at MR, then it is a copyrighted, but freely redistributable work, and can be freely downloaded regardless of where you live.

I trust you Harry, although we've never met, but what if I lived in Bohemia? What is the copyright law there? And how do I find out what the copyright is for the millions of books Google is digitizing?

I actually think an international treaty is needed, but I don't know exactly what I want it to contain.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Kirtai

No, it's you who are not following. The law treats them differently no matter what you think.

Completely wrong. If you made something covered by copyright and I made a parody of it using your material without permission that is legal, ethical and moral since parody is specifically exempted as protected speech.

However, at this point, it seems you're either trolling or being willfully close minded and ignorant so I'm no longer going to bother with you.

Again I'm not restricting this to what the ephemeral law says. I'm talking about what is right, about ethics, about morals.

[orwell2k]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

This argument is circular. I've been having it with people on here since I joined. Doesn't matter what you say, doesn't matter how logical you are, how obvious your point is, what the actual reailty is, they're still going to think that copying a file is the equivalent of stealing a baby from the cot of a starving mother .

Thankfully their ideas on copyright are about as real as a belief in a flat earth, creationism and a talented Dan Brown.

Share on, you crazy diamonds!!

I really just wanted to say, great comments - especially the "Dan Brown" tagged on the end!!!

I shouldn't get involved in debating the details - it's lose-lose. Those who agree with one position are already convinced, and those poor misguided souls who support more aggressive and invasive measures will never get it...

But just to stir the pot some more...

Quoting corporate losses due to illegal copying is pretty lame, since it's been shown time and again that the RIAA and their ilk have been quoting false dollar losses for years to sustain their position. Linking loss of sales directly to pirate copies is tenuous at best - many who download the copy use it as a sample to decide if they wish to buy, and those that only grab it to take a look more than likely would not have bought the thing anyway.

Removing DRM to ease customer use and having fair pricing schemes (i.e. not tying eBook prices to hardcover prices, etc.) would go a long way to making mass piracy a waste of time. If customers feel they're getting screwed over by the current outrageous prices and ridiculously complex DRM schemes, one way of opposing is not buying. Another way is not buying and downloading via torrent. Ultimately, all revolutions begin with an illegal act, and the poor consumer has very little else he/she can do to fight the situation - there's no power lobby for the mass consumer because there's no big bucks in it for the scumbag lawyers and lawmakers.

Many artists themselves believe the torrent network has actually helped them get wider publicity for their works. Look at authors like Paulo Coelho who openly support bittorent.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

According to Entertainment Industry Orwellian Thugs (the EIOT), it is:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...14293724.shtml

Incredible. Thanks for that. So I guess Amazon is going to have to confiscate all our Kindles Or disable the tts. Maybe that's what the recent update did, has anyone checked?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

I trust you Harry, although we've never met, but what if I lived in Bohemia? What is the copyright law there? And how do I find out what the copyright is for the millions of books Google is digitizing?

I actually think an international treaty is needed, but I don't know exactly what I want it to contain.

There already is an international treaty - the Berne Copyright Convention, to which pretty much every country in the world (with a handful of exceptions) is a signatory.

Basically, all that has to concern you is whether or not a book is in the public domain in the US, where you live. As a broad guideline, anything published before 1923 is in the US public domain.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Incredible. Thanks for that. So I guess Amazon is going to have to confiscate all our Kindles Or disable the tts. Maybe that's what the recent update did, has anyone checked?

Didn't you follow the kurfuffle about a year ago when all this was discussed, Kenny? The outcome was that a publisher can specify whether or not TTS is enabled for any book sold in the Kindle Store. If you look at any Kindle book in the Amazon eBook store, it will say whether or not TTS is enabled for that particular book.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

I have heard the term, what I mean is that it is a misnomer created by some people to justify certain behaviors.

It is not a misnomer-- it is a correct definition. ANYTHING that can be produced in arbitrarily high quantities, but isn't, for market reasons, is by definition "artificially scarce." You may not like that. That may not fit your politics. But that is what "artificial scarcity" means.

What YOU are suggesting is stifling creativity and innovation.

...

Western society has to move forward and live off new ideas, and the only way to do it is to protect those ideas, not a free for all where everybody loses -- including you and me.

And I'm of the opinion that excessive length and strength of copyrights and patents on not only products but also concepts are what stifle creativity and innovation. There will always be people wanting to make money. If people were able to copy car designs (as you mentioned in material I didn't quote) then the end result would be car designers constantly trying to innovate to make their cars even more betterer than their competitor's copy of their design, to draw a few more sales until the next round of copying. It would be a driving force behind innovation, not a stifler.

You might call it Google's vision, every second page of every ebook is an ad. Or a link to some Google service. And the music on your mp3 stops every 20 secs for an ad. That could very well become the brave new world you are helping to bring about.

Not a problem-- it'll just drive even more people to pirated versions, as there will always be people willing to put their time and effort into defeating DRM and stripping ads and limitations. So, like always, DRM and copy protection and ads will only hurt the people paying for the content, while the pirates have the better version.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by orwell2k

.

But just to stir the pot some more...

....

Removing DRM to ease customer use and having fair pricing schemes (i.e. not tying eBook prices to hardcover prices, etc.) would go a long way to making mass piracy a waste of time. ....
Many artists themselves believe the torrent network has actually helped them get wider publicity for their works. Look at authors like Paulo Coelho who openly support bittorent.

Just to be clear, I absolute deplore DRM and think it should be abolished. I agree that the real answer is to make the intellectual property available at a reasonable price.

I also agree that one form of publicity is to give away free product to create interest.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Didn't you follow the kurfuffle about a year ago when all this was discussed, Kenny? The outcome was that a publisher can specify whether or not TTS is enabled for any book sold in the Kindle Store. If you look at any Kindle book in the Amazon eBook store, it will say whether or not TTS is enabled for that particular book.

No, I did not, but am aware that the publisher can determine whether tts is available or not. I presume the arguments were tied up wrt audio books vs print vs ebooks.

[HarryT]

Yes, it's basically down to whether or not the publisher has audio rights on the book or not. It's all a storm in a teacup if you ask me; nobody who's ever heard the Kindle's TTS could conceivably think that it's any thread to a real audiobook!

Publishers seem to be of the same opinion; very few books seem to have TTS disabled.

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There already is an international treaty - the Berne Copyright Convention, to which pretty much every country in the world (with a handful of exceptions) is a signatory.

Basically, all that has to concern you is whether or not a book is in the public domain in the US, where you live. As a broad guideline, anything published before 1923 is in the US public domain.

Hum, sounds good. But if the new law includes criminal prosecution things change. Suppose I'm a Canadian and I drive down to the US for a protest against something the ABC Administration is doing. Suppose I bring my eBook reader along and suppose it has books that are public domain in Canada and copyrighted in the US. Can I be held at the border or prosecuted?

I suppose I'm really asking if I can take my eBook reader along if I travel outside my own country, and whether I can buy books over the Internet from bookstores outside my own country without fear of violating a copyright somewhere.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Incredible. Thanks for that. So I guess Amazon is going to have to confiscate all our Kindles Or disable the tts. Maybe that's what the recent update did, has anyone checked?

Amazon can and does disable the text-to-speech on individual books when they are "ordered" to by the publishers. Even retroactively, after you've "bought" it. There are threads about it here on MobileRead that you can search down. The Kindle could read any of your books out loud, but you are restrained from doing so if the publisher doesn't want you to. Which is why I'd never want a reader tied to a specific store, and one where someone has access to it's contents. This is what I have been saying this entire thread-- TPTB in the entertainment industries are the ENEMIES of the general public, and having them making the laws is a VERY BAD THING.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Again I'm not restricting this to what the ephemeral law says. I'm talking about what is right, about ethics, about morals.

What ethics, and what morals? This is a serious question.

If you look at the various religious texts of the world, Intellectual Property was not mentioned in them. In law, there was no codified concept of I.P. until 1714 and the Stature of Anne in England. Is is consistently perceived as a limited monopoly, which expires, and has been in all jurisdiction that have defined copyright laws ever since the Stature of Anne. Terms have changed, but the underlying "morals" have been consistent. Limited monopoly for encouragement of the creation of more "art". That's why I can download Kafka in the US, the "limited monopoly" has expired and it's free to be copied and read by anyone. Just like it was before 1714...

As far as being "Your" property... If I buy a apple from you, I can do whatever I want with it - eat it, throw it at politicians, stomp on it, give it to a teacher, ect. I bought it, so it's mine thereafter. So, by your own reasoning, when I buy a piece of I.P., I should have the same "rights" as I do with the apple, right? I bought it. If you say I don't have those rights, then you are admitting that I.P. is different from Physical Property, and different rules apply. So if different rules apply, how do same ethics and morals apply?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Amazon can and does disable the text-to-speech on individual books when they are "ordered" to by the publishers. Even retroactively, after you've "bought" it. There are threads about it here on MobileRead that you can search down. The Kindle could read any of your books out loud, but you are restrained from doing so if the publisher doesn't want you to. Which is why I'd never want a reader tied to a specific store, and one where someone has access to it's contents. This is what I have been saying this entire thread-- TPTB in the entertainment industries are the ENEMIES of the general public, and having them making the laws is a VERY BAD THING.

I agree completely! We need open communication and approval of any laws which affect the general public.