And yes, you're about to say "but the DNS blocking provisions were removed", because that's the sort of circular game you're wont to play, ignoring the fact that you mocked the complaints that led to its removal, and would have happily seen those provisions remain.
Sure, I guess so. Again, key word: the government. You are acting as though you've caught us out on some sort of hypocrisy because we have different standards for private entities and the government -- but nobody is denying that. That's true of plenty of things.
By your standards, everyone is a censor and nobody has any right to criticize government censorship of anything. Reddit? Censorship. Community votes push tonnes of links off the site entirely. Twitter? Censorship. Everyone who doesn't retweet my tweets is censoring me. Email? Censorship. Nobody is obligated to "PLEASE FORWARD THIS!" if they don't want to. The Rotary Club? Censorship. I suspect I couldn't just barge in there and give a speech. Newspapers? Censorship. They won't just print anything you send them. TV news? Same deal.
Let's consider what happens when you submit a comment to our site. You send a piece of content to our privately owned and operated server, and request that we publish it on our site. That's what happens, automated or not. We have no obligation to publish what you've sent us -- it just so happens that we've chosen to do so by default. But you think it's censorship if we even offer a system for prioritizing/minimizing your content that you asked us to publish, and we obliged. What a strange sense of entitlement you have.
So if the government decided to, say, make all speech on the internet that spoke poorly of President Obama more difficult to access by making users perform an additional click to see it, you don't think that Mike and the EFF and others would go ape shit about it being censorship? I myself would be upset at such censorship.
Absolutely! Thank you for highlighting the difference between a severe and widespread government-imposed regulation on the activity of all citizens, and a loose and limited restriction placed on a privately-operated forum by its owners.
I know the First Amendment only applies to the government, that's why I said "the government" in the sentence you're quoting.
Heh. No, you didn't. I added it. That's why I said "FTFY" in my response. Is your memory so poor that you can't even recall what you wrote yesterday, and your patience so short that you can't be bothered to check?
As for this bizarre argument you are trying to start about "what if the government did what we do", there are lots of things that I would call censorship if the government did them, but which I defend when private entities do them... is that so hard to comprehend? Restaurants can have dress codes, but our public streets can't; newspapers can decide what is allowed on their pages, but the government can tell journalists what they are allowed to write about; I'm allowed to deny a person access to my bookshelf on any grounds I see fit, a public library is not.
Of course, all that is paying far too much credence to an argument that you surely already know to be ridiculous, and are intentionally blowing out of proportion in an attempt to avoid having to discuss the real topic here. We're talking about a community moderation system for open comments on blog posts, that doesn't even involve removal of any content -- hell, even if the government had such a system on an official government blog, few people if any would call it censorship.
As I said earlier, you have two options: address the real issues, or spin your wheels debating one 10-letter word. I see you've made your choice.
I just recently watched a video of a protester who barged into a conference about some sort of oil/natural gas project, chained himself to some audio equipment, and began shouting prepared statements against the project. As you might expect, they paused things while security removed him.
Was he "censored"? Is it wrong for a privately operated forum to choose who can and cannot speak? You seem to be suggesting that, according to the First Amendment, everyone should be legally required to let anyone speak in any forum, private or public. To put it mildly, that's a fundamentally flawed understanding of the individual's freedom of expression.
Censorship in the First Amendment context means the government suppressing speech because of the ideas being expressed.
FTFY. In case you didn't realize, a community moderating its own forum according to its own tastes is itself a form of free expression. You can accuse us of ignoring differing views if you want, as you often do, but to call it "censorship in the First Amendment context" is plainly idiotic, and you know it.
The term "censorship" was bandied about by SOPA opponents, and yet precisely why this was deemed so was not articulated in any way I would deem an impartial analysis. Perhaps you may care to elaborate.
There are essentially three ways to use the term "censorship", with different specificities of meaning.
The simplest is the basic term, used casually -- this refers to any time any expression is stopped for any reason, legitimate or otherwise, in any context. This is the way it is used when people accuse us of censorship for collapsing reported comments, for example, or the way someone might use it in casual conversation -- "I was going to say that but I censored myself"
In a political or legal discussion, it gains (at minimum) a context of censorship by the government, directly or indirectly, but it can still be considered legitimate or illegitimate, and that's generally open for debate. In this context, you've got things like libel and defamation laws — technically a form of censorship (blocked expression) but one that is widely if not universally considered reasonable. Then you've also got things like FCC rules for language and sexual content, which are hotly debated as to whether they are right or wrong, but where the term "censor" itself is often neutral -- "should we or should we not censor bad language".
Finally, you've got "censorship" as a somewhat-subjective term that is an extension of the previous version -- as in, used in a context where it is implicitly clear that the user deems this unreasonable censorship. Naturally that is open for debate, as are most things. In the case of SOPA, you're surely aware of the many reasons offered for why it constitutes unreasonable censorship -- even under existing laws, there are multiple examples of completely legitimate and protected expression being taken down or blocked alongside infringing material, often because of ridiculous accidents and a total lack of oversight.
It's impossible to deny that SOPA-like provisions would lead to some amount of protected expression being blocked, both directly and via chilling effects — but in fairness, the same is true to some differing degree of every law that intersects forms of expression, including defamation and libel laws, which (if we go back to the neutral use of the term) are mostly forms of good censorship that also cause some amount of collateral bad censorship.
The argument of those of us who oppose SOPA is that, unlike those examples, the SOPA provisions would cause unacceptable levels of collateral bad censorship, and would have only a negligible effect in terms of good censorship (blocking pirated content). Perhaps we are wrong to simply use the word "censorship" without qualifying it in this way, but the fact is that this is implied, and the core meaning is clear -- so you then have a choice to make: you can respond to the thorough and oft-repeated arguments about the collateral damage that SOPA would cause to legitimate expression, and whether that damage (whatever you want to call it) is acceptable, or you can focus on arguing about a single 10-letter word and whether or not it's appropriate.
Hmm... it seems like immediately after the hangout ended, they switched the embed to private (normally it automatically changes from a live stream to a recording). Hopefully they will make it public again soon -- and I'll keep my eyes open for another version (none on YouTube yet that I can see)
Personally I never read the books, so I don't feel the gravity of it myself, but it's just like anything where someone meddle's with something others consider a classic. It's analogous to the rage over the new Ninja Turtles supposedly being from space.
Anne is one of those characters that a lot of readers identified with, or admired, because (I gather) she was plain, and somewhat insecure about her appearance, but also precocious and irrepressible. She's also 11 years old at the beginning of the novels. I can see why people who have loved that character since childhood are put off by the mere suggestion that she's actually a screen-ready blonde woman with come-hither-round-the-back-of-the-barn eyes.
I've been trying to find out more -- the wording on that site is ridiculous, but afaik it's mainly just managing the copyrights on a few images for the book that are still protected (while the text is PD) -- though it appears they may also be trying some trademark shennanigans... (still, they couldnt really stop anyone from putting a redhead on the cover... unless there is some really crazy trademark stuff going on)
I see what you mean, but I still think it's notable that people have been reacting by blaming "the publisher" or "Amazon" or "CreateSpace" or just nobody in particular... To the average consumer books are books, and they apparently take no notice of the fact that there's no publishing house attached...
I'm not saying terrible self-published work doesn't still get eye-rolls sometimes—some people seem to be going out of their way to make it obvious that something is truly an act of vanity publishing—but by and large, people seem to have stopped paying much attention to whether or not something is self published, and judge it by the content instead (or, more often than not, the cover—but hey, they were never gonna stop doing that!)
not only that, they had the audacity to actually have a character say the line "Madonna is public domain, her music belongs to all of us!" in the same episode where they had surely spent half the budget licensing Madonna material.
I sure hope not, and i'm glad it doesn't sound that way to you. I'm really just thinking out loud through all of the bizarre legal possibilities that seem to come out of this situation...
Yes, I get that. And I'm just pointing out that I don't think protecting Coulton's interests legally is what the copyright reform movement probably wants to have happen.
I think that is a gross oversimplification of the (not at all unified in philosophy) "copyright reform movement"
Personally, I advocate the idea of a legal framework that can provide reasonable economic incentives and advantages to creators -- including creators of derivative and transformative works -- however I'd like to see those incentives based less around principles of ownership/property/permission.
In any case, that's not really the discussion being had here -- we are looking at current copyright law, which does provide protection to a derivative work like Coulton's but only under certain conditions, and the very bizarre situation that has arisen out of that.
Re: Re: Re: Wouldn't reform make each less accountable to the other?
Reforming it so that it is less restrictive wouldn't protect Coulton
The reform I described would be less restrictive while also providing greater protection (and greater clarity of legal status) to Coulton's work... so I think your premise is flawed.
Which means that it is Fox, not Coulton, through its actions is actually allowing a liberal interpretation of copyright law. If it is in Fox's best interests to discourage copyright from extending to unauthorized recordings, then ultimately that benefits others who do the same thing. The goal, then, isn't to make sure Coulton is protected, but to make sure others can do what Fox has done.
Just tossing that out there.
I'm not sure I follow your meaning. I am just pointing out that it creates a very unclear legal situation -- not advocating any particular interpretation of the law or who was in the right/wrong here.
So Fox can use the compulsory license to cover a song that may have been illegally created? I wonder what it would mean for Fox if Coulton was found guilty of copyright infringement. The compulsory license Fox paid to use his work would have to be invalid if he could not legally license it.
But Fox may not have used a compulsory license... it may have gotten (and probably did get) permission to make the derivative work. And, you are right, that's REALLY weird -- it basically means that, in the interim, Coulton's work was both public domain and also available to be copyrighted and owned by whoever could secure the necessary licenses first.
Re: Wouldn't reform make each less accountable to the other?
That depends a lot on what you mean by "copyright reform"...
For example, one version of copyright reform would be changing the mechanical licenses for derivative works such that they do cover more creative and different arrangements, while at the same time establishing clearer boundaries between derivative works and transformative works, and creating new mechanical licenses to cover things like synchronization for broadcast. In such a setup, everyone could potentially get paid for the use of their creative contribution without the need for "permission" complicating things or slowing them down.
I'm not necessarily advocating that exact system -- just pointing out that "copyright reform" can mean a lot of things
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Really? You must have a very selective memory then, since the people who know how the internet works all explained it in great detail.
And yes, you're about to say "but the DNS blocking provisions were removed", because that's the sort of circular game you're wont to play, ignoring the fact that you mocked the complaints that led to its removal, and would have happily seen those provisions remain.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
By your standards, everyone is a censor and nobody has any right to criticize government censorship of anything. Reddit? Censorship. Community votes push tonnes of links off the site entirely. Twitter? Censorship. Everyone who doesn't retweet my tweets is censoring me. Email? Censorship. Nobody is obligated to "PLEASE FORWARD THIS!" if they don't want to. The Rotary Club? Censorship. I suspect I couldn't just barge in there and give a speech. Newspapers? Censorship. They won't just print anything you send them. TV news? Same deal.
Let's consider what happens when you submit a comment to our site. You send a piece of content to our privately owned and operated server, and request that we publish it on our site. That's what happens, automated or not. We have no obligation to publish what you've sent us -- it just so happens that we've chosen to do so by default. But you think it's censorship if we even offer a system for prioritizing/minimizing your content that you asked us to publish, and we obliged. What a strange sense of entitlement you have.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Absolutely! Thank you for highlighting the difference between a severe and widespread government-imposed regulation on the activity of all citizens, and a loose and limited restriction placed on a privately-operated forum by its owners.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Heh. No, you didn't. I added it. That's why I said "FTFY" in my response. Is your memory so poor that you can't even recall what you wrote yesterday, and your patience so short that you can't be bothered to check?
As for this bizarre argument you are trying to start about "what if the government did what we do", there are lots of things that I would call censorship if the government did them, but which I defend when private entities do them... is that so hard to comprehend? Restaurants can have dress codes, but our public streets can't; newspapers can decide what is allowed on their pages, but the government can tell journalists what they are allowed to write about; I'm allowed to deny a person access to my bookshelf on any grounds I see fit, a public library is not.
Of course, all that is paying far too much credence to an argument that you surely already know to be ridiculous, and are intentionally blowing out of proportion in an attempt to avoid having to discuss the real topic here. We're talking about a community moderation system for open comments on blog posts, that doesn't even involve removal of any content -- hell, even if the government had such a system on an official government blog, few people if any would call it censorship.
As I said earlier, you have two options: address the real issues, or spin your wheels debating one 10-letter word. I see you've made your choice.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Was he "censored"? Is it wrong for a privately operated forum to choose who can and cannot speak? You seem to be suggesting that, according to the First Amendment, everyone should be legally required to let anyone speak in any forum, private or public. To put it mildly, that's a fundamentally flawed understanding of the individual's freedom of expression.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Re: Re:
FTFY. In case you didn't realize, a community moderating its own forum according to its own tastes is itself a form of free expression. You can accuse us of ignoring differing views if you want, as you often do, but to call it "censorship in the First Amendment context" is plainly idiotic, and you know it.
On the post: Derek Khanna's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
There are essentially three ways to use the term "censorship", with different specificities of meaning.
The simplest is the basic term, used casually -- this refers to any time any expression is stopped for any reason, legitimate or otherwise, in any context. This is the way it is used when people accuse us of censorship for collapsing reported comments, for example, or the way someone might use it in casual conversation -- "I was going to say that but I censored myself"
In a political or legal discussion, it gains (at minimum) a context of censorship by the government, directly or indirectly, but it can still be considered legitimate or illegitimate, and that's generally open for debate. In this context, you've got things like libel and defamation laws — technically a form of censorship (blocked expression) but one that is widely if not universally considered reasonable. Then you've also got things like FCC rules for language and sexual content, which are hotly debated as to whether they are right or wrong, but where the term "censor" itself is often neutral -- "should we or should we not censor bad language".
Finally, you've got "censorship" as a somewhat-subjective term that is an extension of the previous version -- as in, used in a context where it is implicitly clear that the user deems this unreasonable censorship. Naturally that is open for debate, as are most things. In the case of SOPA, you're surely aware of the many reasons offered for why it constitutes unreasonable censorship -- even under existing laws, there are multiple examples of completely legitimate and protected expression being taken down or blocked alongside infringing material, often because of ridiculous accidents and a total lack of oversight.
It's impossible to deny that SOPA-like provisions would lead to some amount of protected expression being blocked, both directly and via chilling effects — but in fairness, the same is true to some differing degree of every law that intersects forms of expression, including defamation and libel laws, which (if we go back to the neutral use of the term) are mostly forms of good censorship that also cause some amount of collateral bad censorship.
The argument of those of us who oppose SOPA is that, unlike those examples, the SOPA provisions would cause unacceptable levels of collateral bad censorship, and would have only a negligible effect in terms of good censorship (blocking pirated content). Perhaps we are wrong to simply use the word "censorship" without qualifying it in this way, but the fact is that this is implied, and the core meaning is clear -- so you then have a choice to make: you can respond to the thorough and oft-repeated arguments about the collateral damage that SOPA would cause to legitimate expression, and whether that damage (whatever you want to call it) is acceptable, or you can focus on arguing about a single 10-letter word and whether or not it's appropriate.
On the post: President Obama Admits That Patent Trolls Just Try To 'Extort' Money; Reform Needed
Re:
On the post: Germany's Curious Income Divide On Infringement Remedies: High-Earners Support Content Blocking, Oppose Disconnection
Re: Title is wrong
On the post: Controversy Over Anne Of Green Gables Cover Is Way Overblown, And That's A Great Sign For Indie Publishing
Re:
Anne is one of those characters that a lot of readers identified with, or admired, because (I gather) she was plain, and somewhat insecure about her appearance, but also precocious and irrepressible. She's also 11 years old at the beginning of the novels. I can see why people who have loved that character since childhood are put off by the mere suggestion that she's actually a screen-ready blonde woman with come-hither-round-the-back-of-the-barn eyes.
On the post: Controversy Over Anne Of Green Gables Cover Is Way Overblown, And That's A Great Sign For Indie Publishing
Re: Re: Re: But wait there's more...
On the post: Controversy Over Anne Of Green Gables Cover Is Way Overblown, And That's A Great Sign For Indie Publishing
Re: But wait there's more...
On the post: Controversy Over Anne Of Green Gables Cover Is Way Overblown, And That's A Great Sign For Indie Publishing
Re: Hmm..
I'm not saying terrible self-published work doesn't still get eye-rolls sometimes—some people seem to be going out of their way to make it obvious that something is truly an act of vanity publishing—but by and large, people seem to have stopped paying much attention to whether or not something is self published, and judge it by the content instead (or, more often than not, the cover—but hey, they were never gonna stop doing that!)
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re:
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Re: Re: Fox
I sure hope not, and i'm glad it doesn't sound that way to you. I'm really just thinking out loud through all of the bizarre legal possibilities that seem to come out of this situation...
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But wouldn't that mean...
I think that is a gross oversimplification of the (not at all unified in philosophy) "copyright reform movement"
Personally, I advocate the idea of a legal framework that can provide reasonable economic incentives and advantages to creators -- including creators of derivative and transformative works -- however I'd like to see those incentives based less around principles of ownership/property/permission.
In any case, that's not really the discussion being had here -- we are looking at current copyright law, which does provide protection to a derivative work like Coulton's but only under certain conditions, and the very bizarre situation that has arisen out of that.
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Re: Re: Wouldn't reform make each less accountable to the other?
The reform I described would be less restrictive while also providing greater protection (and greater clarity of legal status) to Coulton's work... so I think your premise is flawed.
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Re: Re: But wouldn't that mean...
Just tossing that out there.
I'm not sure I follow your meaning. I am just pointing out that it creates a very unclear legal situation -- not advocating any particular interpretation of the law or who was in the right/wrong here.
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Fox
But Fox may not have used a compulsory license... it may have gotten (and probably did get) permission to make the derivative work. And, you are right, that's REALLY weird -- it basically means that, in the interim, Coulton's work was both public domain and also available to be copyrighted and owned by whoever could secure the necessary licenses first.
On the post: Broken Copyright: Jonathan Coulton Is Actually Infringing Copyright, But Glee Is Not
Re: Wouldn't reform make each less accountable to the other?
For example, one version of copyright reform would be changing the mechanical licenses for derivative works such that they do cover more creative and different arrangements, while at the same time establishing clearer boundaries between derivative works and transformative works, and creating new mechanical licenses to cover things like synchronization for broadcast. In such a setup, everyone could potentially get paid for the use of their creative contribution without the need for "permission" complicating things or slowing them down.
I'm not necessarily advocating that exact system -- just pointing out that "copyright reform" can mean a lot of things
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