"The book industry is gonna get Napstered..."

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GlennD

Actually, all of these could be considered copyright infringement. Education is generally accepted as fair use without much question or fuss, but reviews do have to be careful of what parts of a work they reprint without permission.

Reviews often quote a few lines from the original. (I'm thinking of a book review that quotes no more than a couple of sentences.) Teachers often copy a single poem for an entire class. Both of those uses are very common, and widely held to be fair use.

I'm aware that fair use has to be decided on a case-by-case basis (and that's a potential challenge point to the whole law... part of the basic premise of law is that a person has to be able to know which actions are legal and which are not.)

The point is--there are several uses of the author's work, without permission or compensation and sometimes to their financial detriment, that are entirely legal.

A personal copy is by no means automatically 'Fair Use'. The Audio Home Recording Act specifically granted the right to make a copy of an audio recording for personal use but that doesn't apply to printed work.

There's a difference between "doesn't apply" and "has not yet been proven in court to apply."

The bottom line with Fair Use is that it's decided on a case by case basis. If a copyright holder believes that your use is infringement, he has the right to sue you. Your defense will be 'fair use' and the judge will determine if it is or not.

Fair use has been determined to be a bit stronger than that--it's been ruled that copyright owners are required to consider whether fair use applies before they file a DMCA complaint; this indicates that fair use isn't just an affirmative defense--it's a legal use that can't be challenged.

A copyright holder can, of course, believe that any particular use is not fair use. That's different from their ability to file suit when they think use is fair, but they want to stop or delay that use, and are using a lawsuit to do so. Before Lenz vs Universal ruling, copyright owners were not (necessarily) required to consider whether use was fair before filing.

Obviously, your chances of being sued by a copyright holder if you scan a book and never distribute the digital copy are slim to none. It can still be considered infringement though. As you say, semantics are important.

It might be considered infringement. I believe it is fair use, under the same principles that allow videotaping of TV shows--format shifting for personal use. If I am right, then the thousands of other people who scan personal documents are also not guilty of copyright infringement, rather than stuck in some legal limbo of "maybe they're guilty but they'll never be charged so it doesn't matter."

I did notice that the RIAA, which tried to claim that ripping one's own CDs to MP3 is "unauthorized reproduction," failed to attempt to sue anyone for that. If they believed they had any chance of conviction--if they really thought copyright law prevented such use--why didn't they go after it? It'd only take one such case to establish precedent to allow them all sorts of rights to prevent people's use of their purchased CDs.

I recommend taking a look at the wikipedia article on fair use doctrine, especially the section on common misunderstandings. Several of them are very relevant to your examples.

Unless you are arguing that it's generally NOT legal for teachers to photocopy a poem forty times, or that reviewers cannot legally quote a book when reviewing it, and that these illegal actions are just too small to prosecute, I don't need any review of the fair use aspects of copyright law.

I'm aware that, in some circumstances, these actions would not be legal. I'm not saying they're always legal. I'm saying they are often legal, and that they are common situations, not obscure, rare matters of fair use.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Yes, but it's not the only relevant question. It's balanced against other aspects, like the purpose of the (potentially fair) use, and the nature of the work itself.

Fair use isn't decided by "does/does not this use negatively affect the income of the author?"

Although, as an author, I do believe that "fair use" is primarily defined by what is fair to the creator, and secondarily the user... I do agree that certain uses, for example, public education, merit exceptions and adjustments.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Copyright law needs a major overhaul, because the established aspects don't apply well to digital documents, which leads to both ridiculous restrictions on personal use, and terrible losses to authors whose works are appropriated without compensation.

As related to e-books, yes. Certain other media have already worked out these issues to most everyone's satisfaction (television, for instance), and I expect many aspects of those other media would better apply to e-books than the present print-based copyright practices.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'd like to see the protections for educational use increased, or at least well-described, so that teachers and students understood how much is fair use. I wouldn't mind for-profit use, including reviews, parodies and transformative works, to be required to pay a simple licensing fee for amounts beyond incidental use. (This would require a lot more registration paperwork.)

Interesting: You realize registration is another form of DRM?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Interesting: You realize registration is another form of DRM?

Not DRM (there's nothing necessarily "digital" about registration, or payment for use), but another form of rights management. And something of a nightmare to administrate--I believe the music industry has private companies that manage the licensing, and the book industry has no company set to take over that job.

I'm not anti-copyright-control-mechanisms. As much as I'd like to believe that, if all ebooks were floating around free, money would eventually make it back to both the authors and the publishers who found, edited and promoted them, I'm not that delusional.

We need *something* to prevent illegal copies. I think a big part of that something is public awareness, because we'll never have enough laws or strong enough technology to control individual actions on the scale that copyright now affects. And part of getting public awareness to agree that copyright infringement is wrong, is not exaggerating its effects, not describing it as a different kind of crime.

If your boss passes you over for promotion in favor of his less-qualified nephew, that's not "theft" of your income--but it's still immoral, and possibly illegal, especially if the reason he refused to promote you is that he thinks a person of your race/gender/religion/whatever is inherently unqualified for the job. I don't think you have to call discrimination and nepotism "theft," in order to get people to understand it and want to prevent it.

I don't think we need to call copyright infringement "theft," either. I think we can convince people it's wrong, without confusing them with the idea that it's "stealing." (Among other issues, if an author's income is enhanced by copyright infringement, it's hard to prove it was "stealing.")

And we'll need to look for technological support for copyright control that doesn't interfere with fair use. And no answer is going to be perfect--there have always been ways to get around attempts to make people pay for content. The point isn't to stop all infringement; it's to make infringement (1) more difficult than it's worth and (2) unacceptable to the public.

(1) is not the case when darknet books work on devices that legit books don't work on. When your purchased ebook "expires" because your computer is updated, but your torrented ebooks work forever, it's hard to convince people the paid versions are better.

(2) is not the case when the public hears the RIAA claim filesharing is destroying the music industry, but artists say things like "just download it if you can't afford it" in interviews. When authors like Cory Doctorow are saying, "my book sales are increased by free ebook versions," it's hard to convince the public that free ebooks are causing damage to other authors.

They are causing damage. (In plenty of cases, anyway.) But that damage isn't outright theft or loss of income, and the arguments against ebook filesharing have to acknowledge the real problems, not claim it's all about money, or about an author's moral right to control their creation.

It's about contracts. It's about a contract with the government, or the public that government represents: I give you content, and in return, you give me X rights over it for a while. Stop giving me X rights, and I may stop giving you content.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

We need *something* to prevent illegal copies. I think a big part of that something is public awareness, because we'll never have enough laws or strong enough technology to control individual actions on the scale that copyright now affects.

Why do you think this isn't already achieved, Elfwreck?

Is there any reason to assume that the vast majority of pirates are individuals who have the money and would purchase all the content they pirate? As opposed to being pimply teenagers with an allowance that would allow the purchase of 1-2 game/CD/eBook/software per 1-3 months... instead of the 5 - 1000s they pirate (and mostly never play/read/listen to/use) over the same period (but share with their likewise pimply brethren who will make just as little use of them)?

This is, of course, in western countries with a tradition of respecting copyright.

What China, Afghanistan, or Antigua does is, frankly, the business of nobody but their own people, politicians, and legal system (which may be potentially open to prodding to action by foreign copyright holders).

So is copyright infringement today really a problem that needs solving, or is it basically a private individuals legally frowned-upon answer to certain problems posed by their arguable poverty?

I don't think I've ever known anybody that had both disposable income and a habit of pirating left, right, and centre... which makes me naturally inclined to consider it to be the latter.

- Ahi

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by carld

Yes I do. I think it's a good thing that my stuff is my stuff, and you can't just take it from me because you want it.



I pay my water bill to the city every month, what's your point?



Now you're being silly.



There are limits to freedom as well. You can't take stuff that isn't yours just because you want it and don't want to pay for it.

I'm sorry.
I've never said I want your stuff.
But my English is just too bad for you to understand, so just forget what I wrote, and don't read it anymore, or at least don't answer to what I didn't say.

Thank you.

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Not DRM (there's nothing necessarily "digital" about registration, or payment for use), but another form of rights management. And something of a nightmare to administrate--I believe the music industry has private companies that manage the licensing, and the book industry has no company set to take over that job.

Historically, the (English and Welsh, and later UK) publishing industry used to have something of such a body: the Stationers' Register. It started out before the copyright laws came into being, and although it continued after they came along, I think it seemed to be far less important after the laws came into being. Interestingly, I think a fairly large number of books were published without being registered, and so having no formal protection, largely because of the costs of registrations. I think that some publishers even varied their registration practice depending on the threats it was exposed to (and after the dangers of publishing unlicenced books faded).

(I'm sure a book/publishing historian will correct the doubtless many error in the above.)

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

....
But a writer can create a lot of value, for a publisher, a book store, for himself -- if he writes a great book, people will be lining up to buy it. ....

Not at all. People will be lining if he goes to talk shows, not if writes a good book.
And most of them won't read it anyway.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ahi

So is copyright infringement today really a problem that needs solving, or is it basically a private individuals legally frowned-upon answer to certain problems posed by their arguable poverty?

I don't think I've ever known anybody that had both disposable income and a habit of pirating left, right, and centre... which makes me naturally inclined to consider it to be the latter.

The issue is twofold: 1, that the poor don't have the legal right to access the content they could afford if they were rich. 2, that in allowing the poor free access to the files, the use of economic success as a measure of popularity is distorted.

For example, Libraries buy books for use by people who can't or won't purchase them, but they need some kind of criteria to choose which books to buy--and "bestseller" is easy to identify; "most popular torrent download" is not. A very popular author whose works are more downloaded than purchased might lose the chance to get the little big of money that comes from library purchases.

While it's obvious that not everyone who downloads, would've bought the book anyway--some of them might have, if no download were available. Publishers are not told they should give away print books because many of the people who read them would never buy them, and the same principle should apply to ebooks.

I don't believe that the torrent network is "destroying the publishing industry" or anything like that, but I also don't think it's irrelevant and should be ignored.

[carld]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

So, at the end of this long chain, why are you coming down so hard on one set of thieves (copyright infringers), and being so soft on the the other set of thieves (the holders of extended copyrights)? They're both thieves (by your definition.)

Because one is illegal and deprives authors of compensation for their work, and the other is just really bad government. Also, if you'd read my posts you would see that, rather than being soft on copyright extensions, I've said over and over that the current copyright situation is terrible and that it needs to be changed.

Personally I prefer to refer to copyright extension as the Sonny Bono Public Domain Theft Act, and have championed the Public Domain Enhancement Act several times.

But, just because we don't like the current copyright law, it doesn't give people the right to rip off authors and spread their work over the internet.

Carl

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by carld

Which isn't going to happen, because in Ahi's world there are no copyrights, and no one pays for writing.

I think my world is better: there's no copyright and everybody pays for writing...

[carld]

Originally Posted by Format C:

I'm sorry.
I've never said I want your stuff.
But my English is just too bad for you to understand, so just forget what I wrote, and don't read it anymore, or at least don't answer to what I didn't say.

Thank you.

Sorry, I didn't mean YOU specifically, and should probably have written it as "someone can't just take it." But, that doesn't change my point that personal property laws are a good thing.

Carl

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

For example, Libraries buy books for use by people who can't or won't purchase them, but they need some kind of criteria to choose which books to buy--and "bestseller" is easy to identify; "most popular torrent download" is not. A very popular author whose works are more downloaded than purchased might lose the chance to get the little big of money that comes from library purchases.

I thought libraries bought books that got good reviews. And this selection criteria do not depend on popularity. The popular books most people can probably borrow from each other.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

i don't think it's constructive to compare the two given they are fundamentally very different, and the only thing they have in common is that they have a legal basis. and technically, property rights have *more* than a legal basis, since they also depend on the physical act of possession (nine-tenths of the law, as the saying goes) whereas an idea cannot truly be "possessed" in the sense that once it is shared with someone else it begins to exist independently of the creator. if i have an idea, if i tell it to no-one, and never write it down, it will die when i die (unless someone else has the same idea). if i tell it to one other person, the idea is no longer dependent on me to exist and i don't control the other person's reaction to it ; they might expand on it and develop it in a way i never thought of, for example. if i die, my idea will still be out there in other people's minds, or in the case of writing / art / etc., enriching our collective shared culture.

Which is the main difference between Homo Sapiens Sapiens and other primates...

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by anappo

To: PKFFW

And I say that these two statements of yours:

> I have said that the only effective measure against this idea
> is to educate people about the value of creative endeavours

> I really have no interest in the entire DRM debate.

are utterly incompatible with eachother.

Frankly I don't really care if you find them incompatible.

In a previous thread I asked the following question......

If an ebook came with no DRM, full ownership rights, fair use policy applied, ability to on-sell it, formatted well and at a reasonable price(all the usual justifications for "file-sharing"), would people still consider it "wrong" to "file-share" it rather than buy it?

Funnily enough it seemed most arguing that "file-sharing" is ok because ebooks don't come with all the above still couldn't bring themselves to admit that it might "wrong".

This clearly indicated to me that the issue really isn't about DRM and all the rest of it at all.

Therefore, I'm not interested in the DRM issue as I believe it is a minor issue in comparison with the desire to access the content for free or at lesser cost.

Originally Posted by anappo

As long as the DRM is there, the actual educational effect is the opposite of what we would desire. Even if successful evangelising minus bad karma from DRM ended up with a positive value, how can you claim having interest in one and not the other?

I can claim it simply because I have an interest in one and not the other.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Format C:]

Not calling it stealing is simply splitting hairs or moving the goalposts. Whatever you call copyright infringment it amounts to the same thing - depriving a creator of control over his creation.

No. That's usually called "Publishing".