Dangerous Copyright Ruling In Europe Opens The Door To Widespread Censorship
from the bad-news dept
The EU Court of Justice (CJEU) has been issuing some seriously dangerous copyright rulings recently. Last fall, for example, there was the ruling saying that mere links to infringing content could be direct infringement, rather than indirect (or not infringing at all). Even worse, that ruling argued that posting hyperlinks on a site that is "for profit" requires an assumption that the platform is sophisticated enough to make sure the links are not to infringing content. As we warned that would lead to problematic results, such as a followup ruling in Sweden that merely embedding a YouTube video can be seen as infringing.
Given that background it is not surprising, but still rather unfortunate, that the latest CJEU ruling on copyright takes this to the next level. It basically ignores the clear safe harbors of the EU's Copyright Directive -- which note that platforms should not be responsible for infringing actions of their users -- and says that the Pirate Bay is liable for infringement by its users because it has made infringing works "available."
In today’s judgment, the Court holds that the making available and management of an online sharing platform must be considered to be an act of communication for the purposes of the directive.
That's... a very dangerous interpretation of the law. It undermines two very important concepts in just one sentence. The first is the basic concept of intermediary liability protections -- which say that a platform should not and cannot be held liable for the actions of its users. This should be common sense. If the users break the law, go after the users, not the tools they use. This ruling does the opposite. The second concept that is undermined here is that for infringement to actually occur, distribution (i.e., actual copying) has to happen. Instead, this ruling embraces the twisted notion that merely "making available" a work is somehow infringing. And, here, the court not only gets both of those important concepts wrong, but merges the wrongness together, such that a platform that people use to make works available is suddenly liable for the theoretical infringement of those works. That's... bizarre.
And, of course, the end result of this is that the CJEU is basically clearing the way for courts to order ISPs to block the Pirate Bay entirely (even non-infringing content on TPB). The folks over at TorrentFreak have the background details on the case, which involve attempts by the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN to demand that ISPs block all access to TPB. This ruling clears the way for that to happen.
There are other problematic parts of the CJEU ruling (the full text is not yet out, but this is from the press release from the CJEU explaining the ruling). Here, for example, the Court tries to justify ignoring the intermediary liability protections that should be afforded to a platform by trying to argue that TPB somehow does more, which makes it deserving of being liable:
Whilst it accepts that the works in question are placed online by the users, the Court highlights the fact that the operators of the platform play an essential role in making those works available. In that context, the Court notes that the operators of the platform index the torrent files so that the works to which those files refer can be easily located and downloaded by users. ‘The Pirate Bay’ also offers — in addition to a search engine — categories based on the type of the works, their genre or their popularity. Furthermore, the operators delete obsolete or faulty torrent files and actively filter some content.
But think about that for a second. That's the kind of thing that basically any platform does. Indexing what users post on your platform is a standard thing. I mean, our search here has indexed what uses post in the comments, but that shouldn't magically make us liable for what users post in the comments. Second, the fact that they "delete obsolete or faulty torrent files and actively filter some content" shouldn't magically make them liable. In fact, this is exactly why, in the US context, we have a section of CDA 230 that explicitly says that moderating some content shouldn't make you liable for that which you left up. That's because the end result of reading the law this way will be the exact opposite of what most people want. That is, based on this ruling platforms should not moderate any content at all because the court says that doing so suddenly makes you liable for that which you did not moderate. Thus it actually actively discourages content moderation.
The other problematic part from the press release about the ruling is this:
Moreover, the operators of ‘The Pirate Bay’ have been informed that their platform provides access to copyright-protected works published without the authorisation of the rightholders. In addition, the same operators expressly display, on blogs and forums accessible on that platform, their intention of making protected works available to users, and encourage the latter to make copies of those works. In any event, it is clear from the Hoge Raad’s decision that the operators of ‘The Pirate Bay’ cannot be unaware that this platform provides access to works published without the consent of the rightholders.
Again, this should not and cannot be the basis for liability. Again, within the US context, we went over this in the Viacom v. YouTube case. It's one thing to know that some infringement happens via your platform. It's another thing entirely to know which content is infringing. That's not as easy to figure out as some people insist. Again, this kind of thinking would outlaw things like the VCR. Yes, the makers of VCRs knew that some infringing content would be viewed or recorded via the devices, but the device makers were not held liable for that. This CJEU ruling seems to break with all of that.
And while representatives from The Pirate Bay are laughing off this ruling (quoted in the Torrentfreak article above), it won't be a laughing matter for many other companies who may face expanded liability because of this mixed up ruling. It also, likely, will depress entrepreneurship and innovation in the platform space in the EU. All because the legacy content industry is so infatuated with The Pirate Bay that it won't focus on improving its own offerings instead.
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Filed Under: censorship, cjeu, copyright, intermediary liability, making available
Companies: brein, the pirate bay
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Re: If you want to limit The Rich, good! But that's not about copyright.
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Re: Re: If you want to limit The Rich, good! But that's not about copyright.
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Re: Re: Re: If you want to limit The Rich, good! But that's not about copyright.
It also gives these copyright advocates a reason to rail against leakers like Snowden for piercing the veil.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to limit The Rich, good! But that's not about copyright.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to limit The Rich, good! But that's not about copyright.
I'm not the guy you were asking, but speaking for myself:
The very first thing that I would like is for people to stop mentioning copyright and property in the same breath, because they are completely different things. Ideas are not objects. They're not subject to the same physical laws, and they aren't, and shouldn't be, subject to the same legal ones.
Copyright isn't property. It is exactly what it says on the tin: a right to copy. Physical objects cannot be freely and instantaneously copied; copyrighted works can.
Copyright, as described in the Constitution, is a temporary monopoly, restricting everyone but the rightsholder from copying a work. (There are fair use exceptions. They are very, very important, but the copyright lobby argues that they are not.) This monopoly is meant to be temporary, to give a financial incentive to creators sufficient to encourage creation, but also recognizing that, eventually, useful arts and sciences are best promoted by allowing everyone to copy works freely and without restriction.
What are my feelings on copyright? That life of the author plus seventy years is far outside the purpose and intent of copyright, and that the original term of fourteen years, renewable once to 28, was more than sufficient to promote the useful arts and sciences. That corporations whose business revolves around continued exploitation of the works of long-dead people are parasites, and that corporations that push to extend copyright terms while simultaneously turning a profit on public-domain works are hypocrites.
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Dramatic... Pause
That's... nevertheless hardly unexpected.
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You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
This gives good outline of how copyright / "platforms" / file hosts / torrent sites are going to end up. Content MUST be protected: "I made it, therefore it's mine" is basic to human nature and civilization.
You are in ZERO danger and not being oppressed by copyright just because you want to be entertained for free. Create something of your own and you'll learn why copyright exists. In fact, it's piracy that suppresses the free speech of creators -- who must get income from it to eat -- and creates the pressures for clamping down at the margins of "free speech" -- though links to infringed content are NOT "free speech", but practical infringement.
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Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
Yeah, everyone knows there should be different laws for different folks. You can't compare a Techdirt pirate to a corporate officer.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
And...? Content from this site - entire articles - show up on other sites just as soon as they're posted here. And yet we don't see the owners of Techdirt suing anyone over it.
I've created and maintained a list of power equipment manufacturers - who makes what, and their service and technical reference links - for over 20 years on my company web site. A dozen other companies have since copied it to their own web sites. People copy it to their related eBay auction pages to increase their hits. And I've never considered suing any of them.
In both cases, people tend to gravitate to the original. It's not hurting the original, or the ability to monetize the original.
We know why copyright exists. It's not about being anti-copyright. It's about being anti-copyright abuse.
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Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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Re: Re: You keep assuming that mere statute, passed by politicians paid-off by corporations, is fixed law for all time, over-rides common law and common sense.
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If you want respect for your works you need to give it to others
This gives good outline of how copyright / "platforms" / file hosts / torrent sites are going to end up.
Shut down as no longer viable, impacting massive amounts of perfectly legal speech and content? Yeah. The fact that you seem to see this as a good thing is a main difference between you and others.
Content MUST be protected: "I made it, therefore it's mine" is basic to human nature and civilization.
Nope. Copyright is specifically geared towards serving not the creators but the public, via a (long broken) deal of 'You get a government granted monopoly over this for a certain amount of time and then the public owns it so the next batch of works can be made'.
The only way you get to 'own' something like an idea or story, something that can be easily copied, changed and shared is via society granting you that privilege. Were your idea truly the case innovation and creativity would grind to a halt, as everyone would be forced to start from scratch on anything less they 'infringe' on someone else's work.
You are in ZERO danger and not being oppressed by copyright just because you want to be entertained for free.
Wrong and a strawman in a single sentence, efficient. When sites are held liable for user submissions they have to weight the risk of a legal fight that's likely to cost a good amount whether they win or lose versus user submitted content like comments and/or files.
In a situation like that, pretty much all but the major ones are going to shut down or severely restrict user submitted content, significantly harming perfectly legal speech and content, with the final punchline being that those engaged in actual copyright infringement just move on to another site.
In fact, it's piracy that suppresses the free speech of creators -- who must get income from it to eat -- and creates the pressures for clamping down at the margins of "free speech" -- though links to infringed content are NOT "free speech", but practical infringement.
Bollocks. Creating copies, even infringing copies in no way 'forces' the owners of copyrights to engage in actions that impact perfectly legal speech. They choose to engage in actions that stand to have a significant negative impact on legal speech and content, no-one's holding a gun to their head and making them do it.
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Re: If you complain about corporatism, good! But that isn't copyright.
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Re: Re: If you complain about corporatism, good! But that isn't copyright.
And yes, it is copyright. Copyright drives corporations up and down the planet, from your precious RIAA to your precious Prenda Law. Everything is copyright.
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Is the world /trying/ to shut down commerce or are legislators just retarded? Is that a requirement to hold office?
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Unintended Consequences
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,i could post a link to a video where the content is
in the public domain ,
but it might be judged to be infringing in the uk
or germany.
Many game videos use game play footage ,which may have a
music sound track thats not owned by the game publisher .
This law means it,ll be impossible for the next big
startup ,the next twitch or youtube to get started
in the eu ,
Only the largest companys like facebook or youtube
would be able to handle filtering
millions of user uploaded videos
for possible infringement and
to have the legal staff to deal with possible lawsuits.
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Because even CATs need a litter box; and it's no good for them if they have to defecate in PRIVATE--like, on their own hard drives, or on their own websites nobody would ever visit. But sites like Techdirt simply won't be able to exist under the European model--they couldn't afford the liability. End result, lonely troll crying into borrowed beer in some littermate's basement.
Truly-important, culturally-significant sites like the Internet Archive would be equally threatened; original research wouldn't be available to the public.
Like 99.99% of the world's population, I don't have access to the entertainment monopolists. When I'm looking for places to post my own work--musical arrangements, technical documentation, poetry, film, literary analyses, or whatever I might decide to create in the future--I'll either have to administer and promote my own website--expensive and time-consuming--or I'll need access to sites that accept public contributions. The community orchestras or choruses that I and my family are members of, depend on their own members for maintenance expenses, and do not profit for the public performances and/or recordings they produce. The authors I know best, write to disseminate their ideas, to teach, to preserve what they think is most valuable about folk and art cultures. All these goals are best served by low-cost, unrestricted reproduction.
Like a much-smaller but still-significant percent of the world's population, I'm not benefited by the entertainment monopolists. Youtube is the only audio or video site that I've visited; and if every music-business-produced hit disappeared from the earth, I'd have been dead long before I would have noticed. There's so much glorious music not covered by copyright, I doubt if I'll ever notice whether there is _any_ that IS copyrighted.
So, for me, whether in my experience as creator, as cultural curator (having legally posted thousands of other people's public-domain creations online), or as consumer, the kill-the-technology-before-someone-uses-it-to-be-naughty approach to enforcing copyrights can never give anything good, and continually causes pain, expense, time, and loss of previously created goods.
Johann Sebastian Bach created the world's greatest music without any copyright law--arranging other musicians' work for his own instruction, and copying his own work for his pupils. Antonio Vivaldi responded to unauthorized musical publications by ... writing more music. Three of the four greatest English-language hymnwriters are on record as having no interest in restricting printing of their hymns. There are hundreds of thousands of books that are out-of-print; their authors' heirs have ceased to keep track of who even owns the copyright, because there is no potential for economic benefit; but because the copyright exists there is no potential for noncommercial benefits to anyone.
I'm willing to spend my time doing the copyright research, in order to restore the potential for non-economic benefits. But it's expensive and time-consuming; and some books that I'm morally certain are public-domain simply can't be proven so. And so the benefits (not to mention the created works themselves) are lost.
It's not just books: early Dr. Who episodes are believed lost forever; many silent movies are endangered because restoring fragile copies would be ... "INFRINGEMENT!"
All harm, No good, All the time. That's the copyright-fascist slogan. It doesn't matter how much of the population is hurt, just so the lawyers get to charge money whenever a creative act occurs.
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Re:
Seriously, anyone who thought unchecked infringement would just last forever is a profoundly silly person.
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Re: Re:
Yes, but not for the reason you think. Infringement occurs against the background context of Hollywood making more money than it ever has, and blockbuster films continually breaking opening takings records (both statements verifiable.) Hollywood is not dying from piracy. Some research shows pirates are actually greater consumers of paid media than non-pirates. So it seems that piracy has little if any effect on Hollywood revenue.
But then, enter the lawyers! Companies like Brein and Rightscorps who only exist to get money out of infringers. If piracy ended they would be out of work! Go and lurk over at Torrentfreak and see the comments as to why people pirate; limited content both new and back-catalogue, geo-blocking, too many providers and a fragmented service, the expensive and unpleasant cinema experience, to name a few, and that if these complaints were met by a few providers at a reasonable cost, many many people would be happy to subscribe and not pirate. But the industry won't give up its old model and distribute content in a way that people want. Control, laziness, who knows. But the lawyers certainly don't want piracy to go away, they will always have work as long as there is piracy and increasingly heavy-handed laws to oppose it.
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Re: Re:
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How does that saying go? 'Cutting off your nose to spite your neighbor'?
Notably lacking in your comment: Any counter to the arguments presented, in particular the one explaining why even you should care about the issue, because you will be impacted if it goes 'your' way.
Anyone who thinks they should get a pass for massively damaging free speech and the sharing of ideas just because they pull the 'copyright infringement' card doesn't get to claim the moral high-ground.
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Re: Re:
That's probably because the rampant unchecked infringement isn't noticeable without a cadre of loud whiners constantly proclaiming how much it hurts someone* with roughly zero evidence in their favor to back up that assertion.
*Which includes speaking for many other creators who don't buy this load of bafflegab.
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Can they be hoist by their own petard?
The problem would presumably be that whoever tries it would want to avoid any repercussions to themselves, so they should be links to material that the filer has permission to publish but no rights to pass on that permission to anyone else (such as the court). Would that give the rights-holder standing to sue the court?
Does the law grant courts publishing rights to everything that gets filed in a legal case? (I guess there are probably rules which says a filer is responsible for redacting anything that shouldn't be made public, but IANAL so I don't know).
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Pushed it
Tpb isn't an innocent site. They have full knowledge of what their site is used for. They mock anuone with the guts to report copyright violations or file a DMCA notice with them. They profit grandly from all of this.
The judge got it right. There is no debate what the site is gor, there is no doubt it is for profit, and there is no doibt the operators are aware of the content they profit from.
Calling it a scary ruling and waving youtube embeds around is hyperbolic.
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Re: Pushed it
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Re: Re: Pushed it
Posting nonsense is an easy game to play.
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Re: Re: Re: Pushed it
Kind of like the original post in the thread, huh?
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Re: Re: Pushed it
TPB has full control over the site they operate.
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Re: Re: Re: Pushed it
Over the site, not the users. TPB removes things when given a legal order to do so.
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Re: Pushed it
Sounds like Sony and the VCR.
> The judge got it right.
I imagine you still believe the Supreme Court "got it wrong" in the Betamax case, eh? Same old crap. You guys will never give up trying to overturn that one.
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Re: Pushed it
How's that mobile phone working out for you? What the fuck is the "lone" being drawn far behind them?
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Abolish Copyright
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Re: Abolish Copyright
Just accept reality and move on with your life.
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Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
The squeeze on pirates the past few years has been such that the piracy scene is now but a shell of its former self.
In which case there's no need for more and/or harsher laws in order to address what remains, as clearly what's already in place is working just fine.
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Re: Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
Everyone here is more than aware of the direction the piracy scene is trending, and there's no reason to try and ignore reality.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
Which might be a sound rebuttal had I said stop trying, I merely pointed out that if copyright infringement is really on the ropes then clearly the laws already in place are working fine, and there's no need to ramp them up even more as the 'threat' is decreasing, taking the justification for even more and harsher laws with it.
The only reason to increase the laws at that point is basically impatience, 'What we are doing is working but it's not working fast enough', which makes for a rather weak justification to say the least.
As for the state of copyright infringement? Here, always has been always will be, will never be eliminated, and the usual efforts are little better than chasing shadows.
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Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
Yet the laws keep coming and the average consumer just keeps paying for the costs in place of the idiots who demanded for them.
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Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
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Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
The same thing was said about slavery at one time, too.
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Creativity vs Protrections
Recipes are not copyright-able (even though some chefs would like them to be) and it has not hurt the industry. Those that think they are harmed by this lack of copyright are more harmed by by their insecurity.
Competition is the key to success in restaurants. The more competition there is, and the more one can show themselves to be different and better from the rest of the competition is what makes them stand out. Being different and better does not mean preventing the copying of recipes. Being different and better comes down to a whole bunch of things. Better service. Better atmosphere. Better presentation of the same dish served down the road. Better ambiance. Better accommodation of customer preferences. Etc. ad nauseum.
Making money from intellectual property is not just about the creation of that intellectual property, it is also about the implementation of that piece in the marketplace. One could write the best book, song, software ever and fail to implement it well, and no recognition would come. At least not right away. Maybe down the road, years, decades, centuries later, but not right away. Middlemen have had a part in making recognition more imediate, but take a look at classical music from the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries. They are still popular (to some degree) to those that like the genre and there were no middlemen (so to speak) back then. So far as making money, talk to the patronage system, rather than laws that were designed to make the creators wealthy, rather than the middlemen. Also, where does it say that creators should be wealthy?
Today's focus on protection is more about obfuscating the shame Disney et al felt about raiding the public domain for content, and of course corporate profits. Probably more of the later. And surely more of the later for the rest of the middlemen in the game.
For those that will claim that creators are hurt by freely sharing content, look to the Hospitality industry where everything is shared (willingly or not) and perpetuates itself, longer than the existence of any intellectual property laws.
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Re: Creativity vs Protrections
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Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
This stuff isn't hard. It's obvious to everyone- including the people here that pretend they don't get it.
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Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
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Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
Despite my misspelling of protections, I think that those things that were originally protected by copyright should be limited to the original copyright lengths, even though I also think those protections are unnecessary for the well being of the creator. Congress is allowed to make rules for patents and copyright, they are not required to.
Sun Ztu was not a beneficiary of copyright, yet his works are reproduced with significant regularity, and oft quoted. It is the quality of the work, and the quality of the implementation that make the difference. Clausewitz also wrote about strategy, and is well known, but is not as often quoted, or reproduced, though his life plus 70 years may not be over yet. Why one, and not the other? There are many, many, many more examples.
If in fact the only reason to keep copyright is to benefit the middlemen, then it should be abolished. If it actually, in fact and in practice benefits the creator, then keep it, but only for the original 14 years, which given today's information could be shortened to 7 years without harm to the creator as that is where the most money is made, and anything after that is a detriment to new creations from the same creator.
The sample of the creativity of Chefs shows that copyright is not actually necessary for the creator to benefit. There are other factors involved, and creators who deny that are just insecure. Ego, when it comes to compensation, is about maintaining a lifestyle, not about supporting oneself and ones family. One can support oneself and ones family for less than the ego demands (see Mazlov's Heirarchy of Needs Satifaction for more information, look closely at the base of the pyramid).
Middlemen who claim that creators succeed only because of them are also deluded (but knowingly so, as they benefit more than the creators) in that they are not actually needed. They help, but are not needed.
Teaching creators to approach the marketplace is something that should be part of the curricula, but I would not trust academics to actually understand business, unless they actually participated successfully in the field of business they propose to teach about.
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Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
"One can support oneself and ones family for less than the ego demands[...]" I don't think anybody wants to go back to subsistence farming and dying from smallpox and flu. Besides having a yacht or a penthouse is just as much of a lifestyle decision as having a certain car or house is. Unless you think it's somehow okay for the wealthy alone to enjoy the benefits of technology because there's fewer of them.
What we need is a more modern set of IP laws, that is capable of adapting itself. Capable of distinguishing between luxury and necessity, between science and entertainment. Otherwise we'll just get more laws like the DMCA whose purpose is to keep us locked in an 18th century mindset.
For example, we DESPERATELY need FRAND-like terms for licensing scientific data. Right now one can claim copyright on scientific data and outright REFUSE to license it (for any sum) just to block out competition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
If Jonas Salk had patented the smallpox vaccine, smallpox would probably still be with us today. Instead, he gave no thought to the money he could make by withholding the vaccine from the children of the poor.
Abolish IP.
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Re: Creativity vs Protrections
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Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
I would rather have many restaurants, successful restaurants, in the neighborhood of my restaurant. That would draw more people to the area, and then allow me to show how my restaurant is different and better. To stand out amongst the others. I do not want any of the others to fail, and I would teach them my 'secrets', and then do a better job of implementing those 'secrets' to succeed better. That is what I have always done, and it is the right way to be.
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Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
These and other things make restaurateuring more complicated than other retail businesses. Or even other businesses.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
Unfortunately, that makes it a terrible investment, since both Chefs and Managers can freely move to another locale without restriction and take all their abilities with them. No security for the investor, unless the investor IS the Chef or the Manager or both. Would you agree with that?
I think what you are saying is that your talent allows you to operate successfully, and you think it best that the market decides who is talented and who is not without restriction. I kind of buy that, if that's your point.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
People fail to realize that there's little worse than having a monopoly on a non-vital service.
Having a monopoly is only truly good for your bottom line if you deal in food, water or shelter.
People can (and will) give up on everything else if they can't afford the former.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
Capitalism itself has quite a good track record, right? Much better than Socialism or Communism.
What about the Facebook guy, is he nuts? I think he was talking about giving everybody "free" money so they can do whatever they want. What a stupid idea. Who would work in that case, and for what? We would have a nation of navel gazers and little else.
You do believe in the concept of money, right? Or do you really think it possible that people can just "share the wealth" without anyone actually invested in the outcome of businesses?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
But this is a far more pervasive trend. Note that I'm not blaming investors. After all it's their money and they can to do whatever they want with it, as long as it's not illegal.
But in the long term they will suffer too. With nobody willing to invest anymore, eventually that industry is reduced to a niche.
As for "the Facebook guy" giving out "free" money ? Basic Income is a very old (19th century) idea and Zuckerberg is not the first one to talk about it in one way or another.
Whether it would work or not, we don't know, because nobody has ever tried it on any meaningful scale (like say a community of ~50.000 people).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Creativity vs Protrections
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And lawyers love it that way because it's more profitable.
The "I made it, therefore it is mine" mindset, while technically correct, is extremely simplistic and, more importantly, it's not what the law says.
In fact Copyright hasn't worked like that since the 19th century.
The fact that something "is yours" does not (and should not) preclude other's right to free speech whether it is in praise, criticism or research.
Since the signing of the Berne Convention almost every country has some form of allowing use of copyrighted works without prior permission - such as education, parody, etc.
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And I think you're right about critique, research and those types of things - those exceptions are important because they allow people to voice their opinions and in some cases to develop new solutions.
About education, yes, that's a tricky area, fraught with both public and private motivations colliding willy nilly.
But if I read your post as a whole, you actually are accepting of the role of copyrights, as long as the exceptions are also included, right?
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Yes.
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This opens a whole new copyright troll vector!
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