Sometimes it's like they care about piracy more than their own industry... and that they want to destroy their own industry, just so they can blame the 'pirates'.
It's called, "Cutting off your nose to spite your face." If I remember correctly, there was a TD piece about a study which found that people weren't satisified with more if their peers had even more. There's just this weird thing in the animal part of the human brain that makes you think you're getting screwed if the other guy has more than you even if you have more than you used to.
I think that the record labels can't see past this mentality. They are so focused on the "lost" revenue from charging for song previews that they can't see the long term benefit.
Any time anything gets too powerful, it needs to be regulated.
While not uncommon, I think this attitude is quite dangerous. I don't throw this word around lightly, but it's this kind of thinking that leads towards socialism rather than the true ideals of capitalism. I'm not against regulation, but not the kind that tells a company what they can and cannot do in this way. As Mike points out, it's much better to set up a system where there is true competition rather than micromanaging corporate decision making via regulation. As just one possible example, instead of telling a bank "You can't cut off someone because you don't like what they're saying", mandate that all electronic payments have to use a common interface and the company managing each payment can be selected by the individual. Yes, this would involve exertion of control by the government, but it would be maximizing competition at a high level, obviating or at least minimizing the need for low level regulation.
To say "sweat of the brow" was never intended to be incorporated into US copyright law is plainly wrong.
In the context of legal discussions around intellectual property, the term "sweat of the brow" is associated with court cases that have found that you do not have an inherent right to be paid just because you put effort into something. It does not mean that that there aren't situations where work deserves pay, such as being an employee of a company or contracting with a company. But these cases are related to a specific legal agreement. The employer pays the employee because that's what is written in the employment contract, not because the employee showed up one day and started working and demanded a check at the end of the week.
If you work hard and creating something entirely new, you should have the rights to your work.
You do have the rights to your work. It's called copyright. But copyright is not a right to be paid, but to merely to control your work enough to act as an incentive to create to achieve the goal of promoting the progress.
Some people might use a term like "sweat of the brow" to accurately describe it to someone else, but it means something else to lawyers.
Even casual readers of TechDirt understand the legal the implications of "sweat of the brow" i.e. that the courts have held that you don't have an inherent right to be paid just because you've but effort into something.
What is always missing from these discussions is an acceptance of the the concept that the US (and many western countries) are no longer producing as much physical product
You must be reading a different web site than I am because this is the very foundation of most articles on TechDirt and the discussions thereof.
So you can pee all over the concepts of "IP" if you like, but when you consider that it is much of what the US produces anymore, perhaps you can understand why it merits some protection.
You'll probably find this hard to believe but I think that Mike and indeed most readers of TechDirt would agree wholeheartedly that IP deservers "some" protection. But that's not the issue being discussed. It's whether IP deserves so much protection that it defeats the original purpose of IP. To use just one example, when boyscouts are sued for singing songs around a campfire, then IP protections have clearly gone too far.
He's saying that you don't have an inherent right to be compesated for your work
Before anyone jumps all over this statement, I don't this means that an employer shouldn't pay an employee for a fair day's labor. But in that case, there is a specific legal arrangement in place. But say, I go out into my back yard and pick up a huge stone from one side and move it to the other side and repeat this all day. Do I deserve to be paid? No. Just because you perform some work, the "sweat of the brow", it doesn't inherently mean that you should be paid. It just so happens that, up until the Internet was invented, big media companies were able to get paid by selling physical items. But here's the key, this was just a business model, not a legal contract between the producers and the consumers. For example, just because you made $16 for twenty years by selling shiny plastic discs doesn't mean that you have some universal right to make that same amount for the rest of eternity. Do I think that artists should be able to earn a living? Sure I do. But not at the expense of the original goal of promoting the progress.
Of course the constitution's framers used the phrase "promote the progress of science and useful arts", but they then followed it with the phrase, " by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
I think you're confusing the "means" and the "ends". Even looking at the full quote, it's obvious that the end goal is to "promote the progress" and that the "exclusive right" is merely the means by which this goal is met. You're making the same mistake that the ambassador to the UN made when she said that copyright was more important than development. It's putting the cart before the horse.
Sounds to me like you're dead wrong when you say there's "no right". It's smack dab in the center of the Constitution. The phrase "exclusive right" sure sounds like a right to me.
Again, you're confusing two different concepts. Yes, with copyright, you have the exclusive right to copy your work. But that's not what Mike is talking about. He's saying that you don't have an inherent right to be compesated for your work. The two are very different things. It's like the right to pursue happiness. The constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, just the right to pursue happiness. Copyright is the right to pursue profits, not the right to profits.
You would rather replace them with your own faulty assumptions?
Would you care to explain why you think Mike's assumptions are faulty? Or are you only comfortable with arbitrary contradiction without any support for your argument?
I find this part of the Harvard article interesting...
Finally, more broadly speaking, we are excited by the move made by the entertainment industry as a whole toward embracing the Internet space. The provision of legal streaming media on websites like Hulu, Pandora, and Netflix all but eliminates the excuses of media pirates, who have argued for years that the entertainment industry is attempting to impose an outdated business model through obtrusive litigation. Although these moves are encouraging, however, we still see numerous opportunities for Internet Protocol-rights holders to expand in the Internet space, particularly in sports programming and back-catalogue access to popular television programs.
In the first part of the paragraph, the author states that the existance of some legal alternatives "eliminates the excuses of media pirates", but in the second part gives one of the two biggest examples of where these legal alternatives fall short. Protip for The Crimson writers: when acknowledging a counter argument, it's be usually a good idea to provide evidence why that argument is wrong, not to just provide just enough information that it undermines your own argument.
Re: they were not given the copyright, just the songs..
Getting a song from a company, either purchased, stolen, or given, does not give you the copyright to that content..
Nice straw man argument. Nobody said that the record labels gave dajaz1.com the copyright to the song. Do you think that a radio station is giving its listeners the copyright to a song when they play it on the air?
Re: Re: IP "The Thicket of misunderstanding", and if you dont understand it,, its complex !!.. no.
Might be hugely complex for you, or Mike, or anyone else who does not understand simple things, but to say copyright is hugely complex apart from being personal opinion, and irrevalent, is not even true.
Wow. I think you're clearly in the minority with this opinion. Even proponants of stronger IP laws don't assert that this system is simple.
maybe you would like to explain why you find it complex that you are not allowed to copy something, you do not have the legal right to copy ?
Perhaps you think the I and the rest of the readers are too stupid to notice how you conflated the complexity of overall IP laws with the concept of a "right to copy", but we're not. The two concepts are clearly distinct and it shows the weakness of your argument if you have to resort to rhetorical tricks.
As for the complexity of IP law, just do a search on "thicket" on TechDirt and you'll see quite a few examples of how complext IP law is. For a particular example with a graphical representation, look here...
Unfortunately, we can all guess how this will turn out...
Yeah, you're probably right, but there's a reason that I'm hopeful. The average person may not understand all of the intricacies of IP law, but what is happening dajaz1 can be exlained in very easy-to-understand terms. And once you understand it, you know it's wrong.
Because the big media companies can hide their dodgy actions behind the complexity of the IP thicket -- the hugely complex set of laws around intellectual property -- they don't really see it as a problem. But here's a case where the complexity is going to come back and bite them in the ass. The left hand (the legal department) sues a website for infringing content that the right hand (the marketing department) sent to the site in the first place. Hopefully, the dajaz1.com case will get more attention by the mainstream press and will be used as an example of how the problem has more to do with the business itself than a simple law enforcement issue.
"Whether or not the defendant believed the goods were authentic is irrelevant to the question of trade mark infringement."
It is? This is completely asinine. The purpose of trademark law is to protect the consumer, so how does it make any sense to sue the consumer? Is the UK trademark law really worded in such a way that it's not about consumer protection or is this yet another case where big corporations have convinced the courts that trademark is really intellectual property?
Nike pushed forward, claiming that the companies has "no realistic alternative to enforcing their rights this way."
This logic is just as foolish at the idea to sue the consumer. The difficulty in enforcing a law should have nothing whatsoever to do with its applicability. "Waaa! Suing the responsible party is too hard! It's easier for us to sue some poor schlub who we think will just roll over for us." Yeah, that's really convincing.
Since IP law is so broadly defined, it's very easy for someone to accidentally infringe. For example, according to the AP, even if you only quote a few words from their articles, you owe them money. See also the recent TD posts about how Sherman Fredericks, a proponant of strong IP laws, (presumably) accidentally linked to an infringing copy of an SNL video. So, it stands to reason that most people (incuding "IP maximalists") probably "pirate like crazy". They may not even know they're doing it or maybe they think that in their particular case, it's not piracy, but according to a strict interpretation of the law, they're probably infringing dozens of times day.
The comment string on that post of his is absolutely PRICELESS. Too bad it's paywalled; I could really do a Dark Helmet gem on that one....
Based on his other repsonses, I think he would have ignored you altogether or nitpicked some minor semantic issue in your post. Based on his article and his replies, I believe that Fredericks just doesn't see what he's done as hypocritical.
(On the main page of his post, it says 0 comments. I only saw the comments when I clicked the "leave a response" link. Weird.)
you'll note that that was not what was said, and, in fact, what was said does not even imply a belief one way or another on that matter
I beg to differ. The tone of Mr Rhodes' post most certainly does imply a belief that the US is somehow unique in this regard. The point of my post was to highlight the double standard which is applied to the US. If there was some way to tell the percentage of "trumped up charges" there were around the world, I think that you'd find that the US would be nearer the bottom of the list. China? Iran? North Korea? Myanmar?
For the record, I think that any case where a law is applied incorrectly for political purposes is wrong, no matter if it's the US or someone else.
Not to downplay the gravity of the allegations or the point Mike was trying to make, but even if you take all of the suspected activities as true, it's a far cry from "the US government happily sells children as sex slaves". With a crime this heinous, you don't need hyperbole.
The US Justice Department keeps on saying that they're investigating whether they're going to charge Assange. Could it be any more apparent that they're not investigating anything, but just poring all of the existing laws to see if they can't find anything they can use to prosecute him? That's not investigation. You investigate facts, not pretense. What facts would they be investigating? All of the relevent facts are surely already known.
On the post: Canadian Music Collection Society Demanding Payment For 30 Second Song Previews
Re:
It's called, "Cutting off your nose to spite your face." If I remember correctly, there was a TD piece about a study which found that people weren't satisified with more if their peers had even more. There's just this weird thing in the animal part of the human brain that makes you think you're getting screwed if the other guy has more than you even if you have more than you used to.
I think that the record labels can't see past this mentality. They are so focused on the "lost" revenue from charging for song previews that they can't see the long term benefit.
On the post: NY Times Finally Speaks Out Against Financial Firms Blocking Wikileaks
Re:
While not uncommon, I think this attitude is quite dangerous. I don't throw this word around lightly, but it's this kind of thinking that leads towards socialism rather than the true ideals of capitalism. I'm not against regulation, but not the kind that tells a company what they can and cannot do in this way. As Mike points out, it's much better to set up a system where there is true competition rather than micromanaging corporate decision making via regulation. As just one possible example, instead of telling a bank "You can't cut off someone because you don't like what they're saying", mandate that all electronic payments have to use a common interface and the company managing each payment can be selected by the individual. Yes, this would involve exertion of control by the government, but it would be maximizing competition at a high level, obviating or at least minimizing the need for low level regulation.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Re:
In the context of legal discussions around intellectual property, the term "sweat of the brow" is associated with court cases that have found that you do not have an inherent right to be paid just because you put effort into something. It does not mean that that there aren't situations where work deserves pay, such as being an employee of a company or contracting with a company. But these cases are related to a specific legal agreement. The employer pays the employee because that's what is written in the employment contract, not because the employee showed up one day and started working and demanded a check at the end of the week.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Re: Re: Re:
You do have the rights to your work. It's called copyright. But copyright is not a right to be paid, but to merely to control your work enough to act as an incentive to create to achieve the goal of promoting the progress.
Some people might use a term like "sweat of the brow" to accurately describe it to someone else, but it means something else to lawyers.
Even casual readers of TechDirt understand the legal the implications of "sweat of the brow" i.e. that the courts have held that you don't have an inherent right to be paid just because you've but effort into something.
What is always missing from these discussions is an acceptance of the the concept that the US (and many western countries) are no longer producing as much physical product
You must be reading a different web site than I am because this is the very foundation of most articles on TechDirt and the discussions thereof.
So you can pee all over the concepts of "IP" if you like, but when you consider that it is much of what the US produces anymore, perhaps you can understand why it merits some protection.
You'll probably find this hard to believe but I think that Mike and indeed most readers of TechDirt would agree wholeheartedly that IP deservers "some" protection. But that's not the issue being discussed. It's whether IP deserves so much protection that it defeats the original purpose of IP. To use just one example, when boyscouts are sued for singing songs around a campfire, then IP protections have clearly gone too far.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Re:
Before anyone jumps all over this statement, I don't this means that an employer shouldn't pay an employee for a fair day's labor. But in that case, there is a specific legal arrangement in place. But say, I go out into my back yard and pick up a huge stone from one side and move it to the other side and repeat this all day. Do I deserve to be paid? No. Just because you perform some work, the "sweat of the brow", it doesn't inherently mean that you should be paid. It just so happens that, up until the Internet was invented, big media companies were able to get paid by selling physical items. But here's the key, this was just a business model, not a legal contract between the producers and the consumers. For example, just because you made $16 for twenty years by selling shiny plastic discs doesn't mean that you have some universal right to make that same amount for the rest of eternity. Do I think that artists should be able to earn a living? Sure I do. But not at the expense of the original goal of promoting the progress.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
I think you're confusing the "means" and the "ends". Even looking at the full quote, it's obvious that the end goal is to "promote the progress" and that the "exclusive right" is merely the means by which this goal is met. You're making the same mistake that the ambassador to the UN made when she said that copyright was more important than development. It's putting the cart before the horse.
Sounds to me like you're dead wrong when you say there's "no right". It's smack dab in the center of the Constitution. The phrase "exclusive right" sure sounds like a right to me.
Again, you're confusing two different concepts. Yes, with copyright, you have the exclusive right to copy your work. But that's not what Mike is talking about. He's saying that you don't have an inherent right to be compesated for your work. The two are very different things. It's like the right to pursue happiness. The constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, just the right to pursue happiness. Copyright is the right to pursue profits, not the right to profits.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Re:
Would you care to explain why you think Mike's assumptions are faulty? Or are you only comfortable with arbitrary contradiction without any support for your argument?
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Contradiction
Finally, more broadly speaking, we are excited by the move made by the entertainment industry as a whole toward embracing the Internet space. The provision of legal streaming media on websites like Hulu, Pandora, and Netflix all but eliminates the excuses of media pirates, who have argued for years that the entertainment industry is attempting to impose an outdated business model through obtrusive litigation. Although these moves are encouraging, however, we still see numerous opportunities for Internet Protocol-rights holders to expand in the Internet space, particularly in sports programming and back-catalogue access to popular television programs.
In the first part of the paragraph, the author states that the existance of some legal alternatives "eliminates the excuses of media pirates", but in the second part gives one of the two biggest examples of where these legal alternatives fall short. Protip for The Crimson writers: when acknowledging a counter argument, it's be usually a good idea to provide evidence why that argument is wrong, not to just provide just enough information that it undermines your own argument.
On the post: Homeland Security's 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures Also Included Songs Sent By Labels
Re: they were not given the copyright, just the songs..
Nice straw man argument. Nobody said that the record labels gave dajaz1.com the copyright to the song. Do you think that a radio station is giving its listeners the copyright to a song when they play it on the air?
On the post: Homeland Security's 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures Also Included Songs Sent By Labels
Re: Re: IP "The Thicket of misunderstanding", and if you dont understand it,, its complex !!.. no.
Wow. I think you're clearly in the minority with this opinion. Even proponants of stronger IP laws don't assert that this system is simple.
maybe you would like to explain why you find it complex that you are not allowed to copy something, you do not have the legal right to copy ?
Perhaps you think the I and the rest of the readers are too stupid to notice how you conflated the complexity of overall IP laws with the concept of a "right to copy", but we're not. The two concepts are clearly distinct and it shows the weakness of your argument if you have to resort to rhetorical tricks.
As for the complexity of IP law, just do a search on "thicket" on TechDirt and you'll see quite a few examples of how complext IP law is. For a particular example with a graphical representation, look here...
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101007/22591311328/meet-the-patent-thick et-who-s-suing-who-for-smartphone-patents.shtml
Do you have to think hard about paying at the shop when you buy a burger ? is that 'hugely complex' too ?
Of course not, but in that case, you're dealing with a physical good. The complexity comes about when you're dealing with intangible goods. Obviously.
You can not work out that steal, in other forms is not illegal.
Of course theft should be illegal. But I thought we were talking about infringment, not theft.
yes, i know how 'some' of you could find that complex.. I guess some people are just stupid !!!
Ah, yes. The ad hominem attack. Another indicator of the soundness of your argument.
On the post: Homeland Security's 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures Also Included Songs Sent By Labels
Re: Re: IP Thicket - unfortunately...
Yeah, you're probably right, but there's a reason that I'm hopeful. The average person may not understand all of the intricacies of IP law, but what is happening dajaz1 can be exlained in very easy-to-understand terms. And once you understand it, you know it's wrong.
On the post: Homeland Security's 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures Also Included Songs Sent By Labels
IP Thicket
On the post: US Looking To Use Computer Hacking Law Against Assange
Re: Re: Too broad
So, what do you think is fuzzy about the anti-hacking law that would allow its application in the charge of Assange?
On the post: Nike Sues Guy Who Ordered Single Pair Of Counterfeit Sneakers Over The Internet
Asinine
It is? This is completely asinine. The purpose of trademark law is to protect the consumer, so how does it make any sense to sue the consumer? Is the UK trademark law really worded in such a way that it's not about consumer protection or is this yet another case where big corporations have convinced the courts that trademark is really intellectual property?
Nike pushed forward, claiming that the companies has "no realistic alternative to enforcing their rights this way."
This logic is just as foolish at the idea to sue the consumer. The difficulty in enforcing a law should have nothing whatsoever to do with its applicability. "Waaa! Suing the responsible party is too hard! It's easier for us to sue some poor schlub who we think will just roll over for us." Yeah, that's really convincing.
On the post: US Looking To Use Computer Hacking Law Against Assange
Too broad
On the post: Author Slams 'Piracy,' Then Admits To A Huge 'Pirated' Music Collection And Counterfeit Purses
Re: Re: Re:
Since IP law is so broadly defined, it's very easy for someone to accidentally infringe. For example, according to the AP, even if you only quote a few words from their articles, you owe them money. See also the recent TD posts about how Sherman Fredericks, a proponant of strong IP laws, (presumably) accidentally linked to an infringing copy of an SNL video. So, it stands to reason that most people (incuding "IP maximalists") probably "pirate like crazy". They may not even know they're doing it or maybe they think that in their particular case, it's not piracy, but according to a strict interpretation of the law, they're probably infringing dozens of times day.
On the post: Sherman Fredericks 'Steals'* From Me
Re: Wow...
Based on his other repsonses, I think he would have ignored you altogether or nitpicked some minor semantic issue in your post. Based on his article and his replies, I believe that Fredericks just doesn't see what he's done as hypocritical.
(On the main page of his post, it says 0 comments. I only saw the comments when I clicked the "leave a response" link. Weird.)
On the post: Congressional Research Service Notes That There Are Serious Challenges To Charging Assange
Re: Re: Re: No Worries
I beg to differ. The tone of Mr Rhodes' post most certainly does imply a belief that the US is somehow unique in this regard. The point of my post was to highlight the double standard which is applied to the US. If there was some way to tell the percentage of "trumped up charges" there were around the world, I think that you'd find that the US would be nearer the bottom of the list. China? Iran? North Korea? Myanmar?
For the record, I think that any case where a law is applied incorrectly for political purposes is wrong, no matter if it's the US or someone else.
On the post: Congressional Research Service Notes That There Are Serious Challenges To Charging Assange
Re:
FYI: TechDirt has a Reply feature that will associate your comment to the associated post thus grouping all related posts together.
probably this
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/00221812176/so-wikileaks-is-evil-releasing-documents -dyncorp-gets-pass-pimping-young-boys-to-afghan-cops.shtml
Not to downplay the gravity of the allegations or the point Mike was trying to make, but even if you take all of the suspected activities as true, it's a far cry from "the US government happily sells children as sex slaves". With a crime this heinous, you don't need hyperbole.
On the post: Congressional Research Service Notes That There Are Serious Challenges To Charging Assange
Investigation?
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