U.S. Govt joins piracy fight

[Bittybye]

I've never paid too much attention to the whole piracy issue as I've never been tempted to download a book/movie/TV show illegally (also I'm Canadian so I'm not too up on American copyright laws), but I have two questions.

1) Doesn't the government already try to stop piracy with little to no effect?
And
2) How on Earth will they find the people uploading/downloading?

Edit: I have one more question. I accidently bought a book in txt and made it a html, does that mean, technically, I've broken the law?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

If you look at the actual rulings involved in the argument, under them you do not "own" any computer file on which IP is present as long as there is any form of secondary licence such as a liscence agreement, ToS or EULA. You are merely licensing it with conditions - this also follows from Blizzard vs BNetD...

That's not what the rulings say. Please back that up with references from the ruling itself.

The ruling references other cases which set precedents for specific tests to determine ownership vs license. This ruling is only saying that, in this case, they did not meet those tests. The actual quotes from the ruling in my previous post explicitly state this.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by thename

What you have--in general--are explicitly limited licenses to use a digital product that terminate upon violation of the terms of service/EULA. Hence the vast majority of ebooks have such clauses and are liable to fit even your reading of the judgment.

You're basing your opinion on what the licenses say, not what the law says. The licenses can say anything they want, the courts are what count.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Bittybye

Edit: I have one more question. I accidently bought a book in txt and made it a html, does that mean, technically, I've broken the law?

I don't know what Canadian laws are. You wouldn't have violated the US DMCA because txt doesn't have DRM on it. As long as it was for personal use, then it should fall under US fair use.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

You're basing your opinion on what the licenses say, not what the law says. The licenses can say anything they want, the courts are what count.

And the courts have weighed in with Blizzard vs BNetD and Blizzard vs MDY Industries. Even if the language is unenforceable in any other way, it establishes that if you breach it there is a de-facto copyright, not licence, violation.

[thename]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

That's not what the rulings say. Please back that up with references from the ruling itself.

They pretty much do say just that:

a user must first install the game onto a computer and agree to the terms of the End User Licence Agreement ("EULA") and Terms of Use ("TOU")
...
At the end of both the EULA and TOU, Blizzard includes a button with the text, "I Agree" in it, which the user must select in order to proceed with the installation.
...
According to Blizzard, the EULAs and TOUs prohibit this activity.
...
Appellants's circumvention in this case constitutes infringement.

That would seem to jibe with the DawnFalcon's statement

Note also that the ruling explicitly notes the argument that terms/license/agreement violate fair use doesn't have a leg to stand on:

In their briefs, Appellants argued that the TOU and EULA were statutorily
preempted by the Copyright Act and/or impermissibly conflicted with the fair use defense contained in the Copyright Act. However, at oral argument, Appellants conceded that the only remaining issue was whether the breach of contract claims conflicted with the interoperability exception contained in the DMCA.

[thename]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

You're basing your opinion on what the licenses say, not what the law says. The licenses can say anything they want, the courts are what count.

Agreed. As mentioned from the Blizzard v. BNETD ruling:

In their briefs, Appellants argued that the TOU and EULA were statutorily
preempted by the Copyright Act and/or impermissibly conflicted with the fair use defense contained in the Copyright Act. However, at oral argument, Appellants conceded that the only remaining issue was whether the breach of contract claims conflicted with the interoperability exception contained in the DMCA.

I find it very hard to read the dismissal of that argument in any way other than the agreements set forth in the terms/EULA supersede other "rights."

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

And the courts have weighed in with Blizzard vs MDY Industries. Even if the language is unenforceable in any other way, it establishes that if you breach it there is a de-facto copyright, not licence, violation.

Sigh. Only because in this specific case, there is no ownership. You are trying to draw too much of a generalization from this.

Section 117 lays out limitations on the rights that a copyright holder can claim in a EULA, but in order to qualify for 117 the user must own the software.

The only way an EULA trumps 117, is if the user is licensing the software and doesn't own it.

In the Blizzard case, the judge ruled that the EULA holds because they were licensing the software and 117 doesn't apply. You're making a logic error if you think that means that software is never owned with a EULA present. That same district court has ruled in the past that very thing, and ruled in favor of ownership despite EULAs.

[thename]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

You're making a logic error if you think that means that software is never owned with a EULA present. That same district court has ruled in the past that very thing, and ruled in favor of ownership despite EULAs.

I don't know that that's true,

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Please back that up with references from the ruling itself.

[DawnFalcon]

...And "ownership" as a concept is only present if there are NO other agreements between the parties, post-sale, otherwise it's licensed. And yes, it does make section 117 more or less worthless. Welcome to overly broad American court rulings.

It may have ruled differently in the past, but that is clearly not how it has ruled in this or other recent cases. Also, in at least two of the other cases you're talking about a narrow view which only applies to physical items with "incidental" software, while the others dealt with shrinkwrap (PRE-sale) licences, not POST-sale licences.

I am not in any way presenting what "I think", this is how the court has ruled.

("I think" I'm fortunate I'm not a US citizen and our laws on software ownership mean that the EULA is 99.9% tissue paper)

[thename]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Sigh. Only because in this specific case, there is no ownership. You are trying to draw too much of a generalization from this.

Section 117 lays out limitations on the rights that a copyright holder can claim in a EULA, but in order to qualify for 117 the user must own the software.

The only way an EULA trumps 117, is if the user is licensing the software and doesn't own it.

In the Blizzard case, the judge ruled that the EULA holds because they were licensing the software and 117 doesn't apply. You're making a logic error if you think that means that software is never owned with a EULA present. That same district court has ruled in the past that very thing, and ruled in favor of ownership despite EULAs.

The judge's actual ruling says this:

the state law at issue here neither conflicts with the interoperability exception under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f) nor restricts rights given under federal law. Appellants contractually accepted restrictions on their ability to reverse engineer by their agreement to the terms of the TOU and EULA.

Note also that it describes the software at issue as

Battle.net is a free service that allows owners of Blizzard games to play each other on their personal computers via the Internet

Ownership wasn't the issue in this decision it's the violation of the agreement without regard to "ownership" concerns.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by thename

I find it very hard to read the dismissal of that argument in any way other than the agreements set forth in the terms/EULA supersede other "rights."

Looks to me like this case was about reverse engineering software and DMCA circumvention tools. They probably waived the argument about "fair use" because it didn't really have anything to do with the case. The ruling does talk about Section 117, but says that it doesn't apply because of the nature of the use (reverse engineering). I don't see where the question of ownership vs license, or whether EULA trumps fair use had anything to do with the ruling.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Also, in at least two of the other cases you're talking about a narrow view which only applies to physical items with "incidental" software, while the others dealt with shrinkwrap (PRE-sale) licences, not POST-sale licences.

Nope.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by thename

I don't know that that's true,

At least one of them was linked in the article about the Blizzard case link that you originally gave.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by thename

The judge's actual ruling says this:

Note also that it describes the software at issue as

Ownership wasn't the issue in this decision it's the violation of the agreement without regard to "ownership" concerns.

You're talking about two completely different cases. The statements from me you were quoting were talking about the ruling in the Blizzard/MDY case, not the Blizzard/BNETD case.

The judge's actual ruling says this:

As I said, that's a different case and 1201 has to do with the DMCA, not fair use vs EULA.