Copyright Doesn't Just Grant The Content Creator Rights

from the others-have-rights-as-well dept

Wed, Apr 8th 2009 9:31pm — Mike Masnick

Whenever copyright system supporters create "copyright guides," they seem to conveniently leave out the part that protects consumers rights as well. The worst cases are when the entertainment industry creates materials for schools to use to teach children about copyright, as they're almost always heavily misleading. But, sometimes everyday "guides" to things like copyright can be misleading as well. That's why it's good to see the folks at the Copyright Advisory Network fixing up and correcting a Reader's Guide to Copyright, that seemed to only focus on the rights of the content creator -- leaving out important rights of others, such as fair use and first sale rights.

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Filed Under: copyright, rights

32 Comments

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Ben (profile), 8 Apr 2009 @ 10:12pm

others-have-writes-as-well dept?
"leaving out important writes of others" -- writings? Or was it just late and you meant "rights"?

Wouldn't it be a copyright violation for them to take someone else's work and go "fixing up and correcting" it?

I do agree that if you are going to be putting out an instruction manual it should have a trouble-shooting guide, such as when the expected behavior doesn't apply.
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Weird Harold, 8 Apr 2009 @ 10:20pm

Gee, I wonder where the reporter got that story idea from?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Apr 2009 @ 10:53pm

Re:
Your bong?
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Mike (profile), 8 Apr 2009 @ 10:57pm

Re: others-have-writes-as-well dept?
"leaving out important writes of others" -- writings? Or was it just late and you meant "rights"?

Typo. Meant "rights." Oops. Fixed. Thanks!

Wouldn't it be a copyright violation for them to take someone else's work and go "fixing up and correcting" it?

It's commentary. That's fair use.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 3:21am

Re: Re: others-have-writes-as-well dept?
Angry much?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 3:51am

Re:
It would seem to me that its a good idea to inform people that a "corrected" version is available. Since its being used to inform the public of their rights as well as the copyright holders, would seem to be newsworthy to me. Of course, someone who believes that all the rights lie with the copyright holder, someone like yourself, would of course question the relevance and source of the idea.
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Steve R. (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 5:28am

False "Rights"
One normally thinks of a "right" as being existent and obvious, such as a right to life. However, with content creators, so-called rights are being claimed out of thin air and few people seem to question this "land grab". Take the recently posted article on Techdirt for the Kindle. A new technology comes along to allow a reader to hear the text and Authors Guild screams infringement and libraries wonder if it is "legal" to lend a Kindle with an ebook. The release of new technologies is not an excuse for content creators to assert that they now have "new" rights.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 6:54am

Recognizable characters and phrases
Since you seem to be a strong copyright proponent... I wonder if you have procured Bill Cosby's permission to use the name of one of his very recognizable characters as your Account name on Techdirt?

I provide for your reading pleasure:

http://novalis.org/cases/ET.html

In essence, the court decided that use of recognizable phrases or recognizable characters like E.T., is not only a likely infringment on copyright, but violates several other intellectual property protections as well under trademark law, commercial misappropriation,and so on.
(commentary excerpted from Google Ansers, user pafalafa-ga)
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Your Gawd and Master, 9 Apr 2009 @ 6:54am

Re: Re: Re: others-have-writes-as-well dept?
Tell us about your extra chromosome, retard.
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Weird Harold, 9 Apr 2009 @ 7:49am

Re: Recognizable characters and phrases
Glad you don't practice law, because otherwise you would have to change your name to Lionel Hutz. Cluelessness exemplified.

"Kamar manufacturers and/or sells a variety of consumer products, including porcelain drinking mugs. Sometime around August of 1982 Kamar began to promote and market certain merchandise, such as drinking mugs and pencil holders, bearing prominent inscriptions in the form of "I E.T." and "E.T. Phone Home!!""

Seriously, you need to stop posting and get back to class, your 10th grade teacher is going to miss you.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:05am

Re:
Seriously, stop feeding it and it will go away.
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Ryan, 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:12am

Re: Re: Recognizable characters and phrases
Your post seems to consist of a puerile insult, followed by a random passage taken from his citation, followed by another puerile insult. This is a rhetorical question, because I know you don't, but do you have a point?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:17am

Merely as a point or order, Title 17 of the United States Code, the statutory provisions governing copyright in the United States, confer rights solely to the copyright holder. No rights are conferred to anyone else.

Limitations on the scope of copyright are a far cry from the grant of a right to a third party. For example, fair use is not a right granted to a third party. Fair use (17 USC 107) is a limitation on the scope of a copyright, and not a third party grant. Thus, a third party who engages what Section 107 denominates as fair use is not liable to a copyright holder because the scope of a copyright grant does not include fair use. The same is true of first sale and other various matters. In each case they are not infringements because a copyright grant does not include them with the metes and bounds of the copyright grant.

Feel free to pick away by criticizing this comment as a lawyer's parsing of words, but all the criticism in the world does not change the fact that copyright law is limited to the rights granted a copyright holder, and not rights granted to third parties since there are no such rights.
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Weird Harold, 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:18am

Re: Re: Re: Recognizable characters and phrases
The point is this item has been asked and answered already, and is only brought up by people who don't want to chat about the post on the board, but rather to try to take a personal shot at me.

Debate the issues, not the posters. Playing "gotcha" is just crap.
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anymouse, 9 Apr 2009 @ 9:14am

WH seems to be stuck in the 10th grade
Has anyone else noticed that when Wierd Harold gets upset he seems to resort to accusing the people who upset him of being in the 10th grade (I got called a "roach" also, but I admit that I really upset him that time.) Then he turns around and complains about people taking personal shots at him rather than discussing the issues....

hahahahahahaha..... pot... kettle.... BLACK....

WH, I'm really sorry if your high school memories are scarred by a bunch of 10th graders who continually tormented and teased you, probably giving you an occasional 'swirley' and 'wedgie'. Most people are able to move beyond those trying times and realize that there is more to life than what happened to you in high school (although I have to admit I wouldn't mind being back in 10th grade about now, knowing what I know now of course). It starts to make sense though, I'm guessing that someone from the entertainment industry (or IP/Lawyer) 'saved' WH shortly after high school and gave him a reason to go on (this probably happened last year), and he has been their subservient little lap dog ever since.

I have no comment about the article (other than DUH...), I just like to play with the trolls, they can be so funny.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 9:48am

I'll bite, anonymous. While Title 17 does confer exclusive rights on the copyright holder, limitations on those rights do indeed reflect rights that individuals have; for example, the courts have specifically recognized that fair use is a necessary limitation in order to guarantee the right of free speech. To say that the law only conveys rights to copyright holders is not the whole story.
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Emilio, 9 Apr 2009 @ 10:27am

So, more accurately, our system includes a system of judicial precedents which place limitations on the statutory rights of copyright holders? And it is those judicial precedents which are so tirelessly excluded from the grade-school propaganda in question?
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Chronno S. Trigger, 9 Apr 2009 @ 10:46am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Recognizable characters and phrases
"Debate the issues, not the posters. Playing "gotcha" is just crap."

But you just did that in questioning the origins of the story. You didn't even debate the points in the story. In fact you play the "gotcha" card in most of your responses and only bitch about it when you can't argue anything else.
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Michael, 9 Apr 2009 @ 10:53am

Who cares?
They can't stop us, they are powerless... so who cares what they say or do? I will copy any information that I can get my hands on to my hearts content... why? because I can. I don't know why "Artists" think they are entitled to such ridiculous amounts of money for such little work to begin with, and then expect people to continue to make them rich long after their work has become irrelevant. True art is not measured by monetary value, and I really could care less if they can't buy another Rolls because someone copied their work.
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Weird Harold, 9 Apr 2009 @ 10:56am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Recognizable characters and phrases
Actually, my original post was intended for the SXSW thread, I thought I had loaded it and got the wrong one instead. But in the end, it started a discussion here, so that is okay I guess, right Mike?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 11:04am

Re:
...the courts have specifically recognized that fair use is a necessary limitation in order to guarantee the right of free speech

The courts of our nation recognize fair use precisely because it is a statutory provision of our copyright laws. Hence, one who holds a copyright does not possess a grant that extends to fair use subject matter.

More basic, however, is that a copyright grant ends where fair use begins. Again, this limits the extent of a copyright grant; it does not grant a right to the public at large.

It is incorrect for one engaged in fair use to say "I have a right conferred to me by copyright law." It is correct to say "If what I am doing is governed by fair use I am not infringing an author's copyright."
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Adam Wasserman, 9 Apr 2009 @ 3:03pm

Re: Re:
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 3:21pm

Re: Trolls
But what about those of us who enjoy WH? Personally I delight in people who are so easy to set off.

FWIW, I would not call WH a troll. Truth is: *I* was trolling *him* with my comment (fairly successfully too I might add).

Trolling implies a certain capacity for irony, a self-awareness that one is posting an inflammatory comment for the sole purpose of getting a rise out of someone, preferably from just one or two people who are so wrapped up in their neuroses that they fail to pick up on what is obvious to everyone else: that the troll is a joke. For example see Boursy and the "Usenet Global Killfile".

I am under the impression that WH takes his or her self quite seriously, that would disqualify him/her as an accomplished troll in my books.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 3:24pm

Rights
Curious: what definition of "rights" do you use?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 4:40pm

Re: Rights
See: Title 17 of the United States Code, Sections 106-122.

These sections define the "rights" associated with a copyright, and activities falling outside the scope of these "rights" are by definition non-infringing.
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Easily Amused, 9 Apr 2009 @ 4:59pm

Re: Re:
psshhhhh... I WISH WH would smoke some... he'd be much easier to talk to.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 5:03pm

Re: Re: Rights
You did not understand my question. I am asking you for a general legal definition of what "rights" are.

All rights, any right, not just those created under Title 17.

Only by defining what IS a right, can we understand what is NOT a right.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 5:39pm

Re: Re: Re: Rights
This article is only about copyright law. Thus, I have limited my comments accordingly.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 7:08pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
Are you avoiding my question? It is a simple one.

You are making assertions about rights under Title 17. It is entirely pertinent to ask for the definition of rights that you are using.

I am wondering if you believe that the only rights that exist are when the word "Rights" appears in a legal statute.

I am interested in discussing your assertion that "No rights are conferred to anyone else" but I am sure that the discussion will be more productive if we can arrive at an agreement on the definition of rights.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2009 @ 7:36pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
Copyright Doesn't (sic) Just Grant The Content Creator Rights

Perhaps you overlooked the title of the relevant article.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:23pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
I guess you are really reluctant to answer a simple question. Why? Why not just answer my question?

As you point out: rights and who has them are at the center of the post and of your comments. It seems to me entirely reasonable to ask for your working definition of rights.

It seems very disingenuous and strange that you would avoid answering.
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Adam Wasserman (profile), 9 Apr 2009 @ 8:29pm

Re:
Whether or not this is more accurate depends upon the definition of what constitutes a right.

I am waiting to see what one of our anonymous cowards has to say about that.
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