TechCrunch: Rampant Piracy Will Be The Kindle DX's Savior

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

That's why the limits on the copyright holder's "limited property right" leave library lending entirely legal.

And here I was thinking the law mandated "fair use", so that free library lending was a concession content creators had to make, rather than something they offered to the 'poor' (or really most everyone, since at the time of inception libraries were really the only way to get at books for whole swathes of the population) out of the goodness of their hearts.
"Fair use" is not something they - that is, the publishers, who are really the ones that matter - like, in any form; which is why the DMCA seems to have been lobbied for. They don't want citizens to have the (legal) means to be independent from them, even for backup copies.
Anyway, ebook stores/publishers already make the argument that DRM is "necessary", so hoping that they won't seems rather futile. All they have to do is point with a shaky-from-fear finger to the music/movie industry, and say: What if?
Anyway, I'm not at all convinced "fair use" is something they wanted us to have; to them it's just a concession they had to make in order to ensure that copyright laws were created.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Consider what would happen, for example, if those of us who 'foolishly' continue to pay for content were to join you on the "pirate" side of the argument. The existing system melts down. (I hear you cheering!) But if you succeed in melting down the existing system without finding some alternate means for compensating creators, what you'll get won't be the "best outcome possible" that you are hoping for! Rather, you'll get a vast decrease in the output of those creators, if only because they're spending more of their time earning a living via other means! Or you'll get things like the fascinating case of Sir Walter Scott, whose finances were destroyed (largely) by pirate copies of his books. He died penniless, while simultaneously being the best-selling author in Europe! Incentives like that do not encourage production of content, IMHO. That would be one way to lose.

That's assumming that we need new content produced at the rate at which it's produced today, and that keeping it at this rate is a good thing. Judging by the number of people here that prefer books released years ago to newest bestsellers, and by my own experience with reading, I'm not convinced that current rate of production of new content is good. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to all of us if we got a little less new books to read - and more of those books produced because the author wanted to write them for something more than just money.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Do you have a specific ruling that points to those numbers? I was under the impression there was no guaranteed "safe" standard for fair use.

In the UK, "fair use" is defined as copying a maximum of one chapter from a book, or one article from a magazine. For publications which do not have chapters or articles, the limit is 10% of the publication.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In the UK, "fair use" is defined as copying a maximum of one chapter from a book, or one article from a magazine. For publications which do not have chapters or articles, the limit is 10% of the publication.

That's nice, if you want to publish a free-to-copy book, put everything in Chapter 1 and add a dummy Chapter 2

[HarryT]

If you want to publish a free-to-copy book, you can simply place it into the public domain .

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you want to publish a free-to-copy book, you can simply place it into the public domain .

But that's the easy way, that's cheating

[sirbruce]

In the US there is no guaranteed safe standard.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

@elfwreck: No, I do not have a specific ruling. There may be one (or several), but... I am not a lawyer so take what follows with the appropriate wheelbarrow-load of salt.

Well, damn.

I was hoping you had something with hard numbers, because I know you make a real effort to give accurate info. And 1000 words/50% whichever-is-less sounds good--but it also sounds like it's some University's standard, that someone thought was based on specific legal rulings, rather than what that Uni decided was likely to not get them sued.

Please note, by the way, that the rule-of-thumb applies to written works only so your movie or song example wouldn't fit. I seem to recall that song lyrics and poetry may have different rules (but I can't remember whether that's because of differences in their nature or because their rule of thumb came from a different court case).

Almost certainly, there is no legal difference. Copyright law doesn't recognize a difference between a 500-word short story and a 500-word song, nor between a 50k word novel and a 50k note musical composition. (Disclaimer: also not a lawyer.) There've been rulings that only apply to one medium (like music sampling), but I don't think any judge has ever said "X% copying is always within fair use guidelines."

Nation magazine was successfully sued for quoting 300 words out of a book. 85 seconds of music from a two-hour movie has been ruled infringing.

The issue of "college students & professors, some of whom are being told that they cannot use any direct quotes at all in their papers, to avoid lawsuits" is different, however. The rule-of-thumb I gave addresses the question "am I likely to prevail in court if someone were to sue me over this quotation?" If the question that concerns you is "Am I likely to be sued over using this quotation?", all I can do is to observe that any fool can bring suit for any d*mn thing they like.

Ah, but if there were a specific legal precedent for "1000 words quoted from book is OK," the schools most likely wouldn't have a policy of "no quoting is allowed." Anyone can sue, but if an initial defense is likely to get it thrown out of court, the school is not likely to forbid the quoting.

They don't, after all, forbid the quoting of titles, even though a fanatic copyright owner could claim that's illegal copyright infringement. (Claim. Not succeed.)

I would expect that any sane college or university has an explicit written policy on the subject, and will defend faculty, staff, or students who have obeyed that policy but are nevertheless sued for copyright violations. That seems like basic academic freedoms to me. And it's certainly what my University does.

Xenophon

The policy at this university, maybe more than one (am remembering Livejournal discussions from a couple of years ago), was "absolutely no direct quotes whatsoever; everything must be paraphrased." Which was incredibly difficult on the media-arts film-and-television students. I'm told that discussing the social impact of Star Trek without being able to say "make it so" or "beam me up, scotty" was troublesome.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you want to publish a free-to-copy book, you can simply place it into the public domain .

Right now, there's a crazy loophole in US copyright law; nobody's sure it's possible to place works in the public domain. There's no provision for it in the law--everything is copyrighted when it's placed in a fixed format, and copyright lasts an insane number of years.

Pre-1976, placing works in the public domain was done by not tagging them as copyrighted, so no option for it needed to be included in law. The legislators failed to noticed that this option had been removed (because, of course, why would anyone want to place their works in the public domain?).

Nevertheless, people have occasionally declared "this work is in the public domain," and the works have been copied at will. As yet, nobody's heirs have shown up and demanded the copying stop and damages be paid.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Right now, there's a crazy loophole in US copyright law; nobody's sure it's possible to place works in the public domain. There's no provision for it in the law--everything is copyrighted when it's placed in a fixed format, and copyright lasts an insane number of years.

The majority of things published by the US government are in the public domain, so seemingly it is be possible to do it.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The policy at this university, maybe more than one (am remembering Livejournal discussions from a couple of years ago), was "absolutely no direct quotes whatsoever; everything must be paraphrased." Which was incredibly difficult on the media-arts film-and-television students. I'm told that discussing the social impact of Star Trek without being able to say "make it so" or "beam me up, scotty" was troublesome.

Seriously? Why? I can't for the life of me imagine why you shouldn't be allowed to quote something in a book (if you want to react against it, or show whatever you're trying to argue by showing what someone said exactly..

Does your university still have a philosophy department, or was that scrapped along with that rule being instated?

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The majority of things published by the US government are in the public domain, so seemingly it is be possible to do it.

It's actually an extremely complicated question. A work can be declared public domain by statute, certainly; that's the case the US publications and the like. But there's no codified law about how to put something into the public domain; by common law standards one should be able to, but there's also the provision in the US law reassert one's rights on something that was previously put into public domain, which begs the question whether or not it was really in the public domain to begin with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_...er_of_interest

[zerospinboson]

In related news, here's an "opinion" of Sony's CEO on how the internet is a force for evil, suggesting that the entire internet should be "guard-railed" in order to "make sure" that Sony's (cum suis) rights aren't infringed. Apparently all internet users are criminals who - in the USA, as I understand it - have no right to vote, so our rights as citizens count for, and are worth far less than the rights of a few corporations.

[...]And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.
[...]
I'm not talking here about censorship, taxation or burdensome government restrictions. I'm talking about reasonable boundaries, "rules of the road," that can help promote the many positive attributes of Internet technology while curtailing its hugely damaging effects.
Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want. Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.[emphases mine]

Also, ignoring the large number of fallacies and false dichotomies in this article, I'm having quite a bit of trouble reconciling "vibrant/innovative cultural expression" with the 99% factory-produced tripe that is being put out these days.

Edit: An odd thought: Does this guy only consider current, under copyright "culture" worthwhile? It would seem that anything in the PD according to him is automatically irrelevant.

[sirbruce]

Wow, and all the Sony fanboys here seem to do nothing but bash Amazon for their policies. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Seriously? Why? I can't for the life of me imagine why you shouldn't be allowed to quote something in a book (if you want to react against it, or show whatever you're trying to argue by showing what someone said exactly..

Does your university still have a philosophy department, or was that scrapped along with that rule being instated?

Not my uni; some people on LJ were comparing notes about their universities' copyright policies. In order to avoid the slightest chance of being sued, since there is no minimum standard for fair use, the unis had decided to not allow any copying whatsoever.