I particularly like the way they have nearly 4,000 views across the three videos on Vimeo, and a mere 5 likes.
The earliest video is also very useful, as it shows people how to stream films - it's a good thing that sort of thing isn't against the law otherwise the MPAA could be in trouble...
Firstly, there's no requirement to put a copyright notice on something for it to be covered by copyright (aside from enforcing some of the moral rights) in English law. Whether or not the notice is there, if it's in copyright, it's protected. All a notice does is potentially lessen the protection (such as through a CC-licence).
While the papers may have been written years ago, the cover page (which has the copyright notice) may be protected by copyright, either as a literary work in its own right, or as a new typographical arrangement of an earlier work (which grants an extra 25 years of copyright protection to that arrangement).
The paper itself, unless it has been transcribed, will be out of copyright.
As for the licensing issues "permanently free to access online" would seem to grant a licence to download the works, through a browser, as part of viewing the website. This doesn't necessarily include the right to download in other circumstances, share, or republish (and by including the cover page with the copyright notice in the pdf files, it will be a lot harder to extract the public domain stuff without infringing the copyright in the cover page).
"Papers published in Royal Society journals more than 70 years ago now permanently available to view and download for free via our searchable archive." This only applies to the old journals. If they are out of copyright (which many of them will be), there's nothing they can do to enforce attribution other than via contract law. But this still doesn't seem to cover the cover pages. If it does cover the cover pages, then they *can* enforce the attribution requirement.
As for JSTOR, they can put any requirements they like in their T&Cs, as that then becomes a contract issue, rather than a copyright issue. So, even though the content is public domain, use of their service can be conditional on whatever terms they see fit, including attribution and non-commercial use only. However, that will probably only be binding on the original user; so if A visits the site and downloads stuff for his own nc-use, shares it with someone else who then uploads it commercially, without attributing, that should be fine.
Probably not. The Scarlet case (the one the CJEU ruled on) was very specific, and so only an upper bound on what isn't allowed.
The ruling only applies directly to cases where an ISP is being asked to set up a system where they have to:
(1) monitor all communications going through their network,
(2) from all customers,
(3) as a preventative measure,
(4) at their own expense, and
(5) for an unlimited time.
In the Newzbin2 case, the ruling was very specific that (1) didn't apply, as BT doesn't have to do any monitoring; the Hollywood studios are responsible for identifying IP addresses and URLs (and liable for any wrong ones) and giving them to BT to block. All BT has to do is add them to its existing blocklist.
However, if the case does get appealed (or if future cases are brought), or in the DEA judicial review appeal, this case is likely to be useful as an indication that it is OK to ignore copyright if enforcing it would be too onerous, invasive or impractical.
nobody should be kicked out of anywhere because of a photograph
Even if (and I'm not saying this is necessarily the case here) they've been invited into that place and expressly told not to take photographs? Most shopping centres (at least, in the UK) are private property, so are free to kick out anyone for any reason, unless there's a legal reason not to.
Ah, good point... it must be in one of the Home Office's or ICO's guidance documents (but I haven't found it yet...); something about not having CCTV focussed on an individual as it might disproportionately interfere with their privacy etc. Of course, like most of the guidance (and law) regarding CCTV etc. it's blatantly ignored by most people.
There's more to planning a terrorist attack (or, more likely, a burglary) than simply having a floor plan, but anyway...
The shopping centre can have any reason it wants to for not allowing people to take photographs, unless they're a public authority they don't need to justify their actions to the public or demonstrate them to be proportionate.
There also doesn't seem to be any suggestion that this rule was to prevent terrorism, iirc it is usually to "protect" staff from being photographed excessively while at work (iirc there's actually a law against CCTV being pointed at staff workstations).
While it seems likely this account of the story is accurate (particularly given previous cases along these lines), it may be worth reading this article which includes both sides of the story. It seems that the police claim they did not question him under any of the various Terrorism Acts, nor was the initial incident to do with taking the photo.
Anyways, of course the shopping centre is perfectly within its rights to stop people from taking photographs inside, and throw people out for not doing so - however, I can't see how the Terrorism Act could have got involved... certainly not to a degree that would stand up in court.
From what I understand of US copyright law the original Vernor ruling does make sense, and is an unfortunate (if unsurprising) consequence of thinking about/allowing ownership (in a property-sense) of stuff covered by copyright (i.e. information).
Iirc the court found that the software could be bought *or* it could be licensed, but not both. If it was bought, then the first-sale doctrine and essential steps defence apply and everything is fine, but if it is merely licensed, the licensee is not the "owner" of the software and so these don't apply. This seems to have come from a failure, by whoever was drafting the defences, to spot the difference between software and a CD containing software, and making first-sale /essential steps only apply to "owners", rather than licensees. In this case, there was a licence agreement, and so the software must have been licensed - although it's possible the CDs/DVDs were sold (I can't remember the precise details).
Interestingly, this sort of thing is already how the law works in the UK (and probably much of the EU). Copyright covers the software, which means you can't copy it onto a computer or adapt it (by installing) or share it (unless a specific defence applies). When you buy a CD with software on it, you physically own the CD (so can wipe it and sell it on) but you may need a licence to install the software (unless the CDPA 50C defence applies, which covers "necessary steps" for "lawful use" - basically the "essential steps defence"). You then also need a licence to "issue copies to the public", which includes selling on the original - but like the US, we have an equivalent to the first-sale doctrine, but it is much broader and only refers to "putting into circulation" once, rather than requiring ownership. Renting and lending to the public are still covered by copyright, as in the US, but here those *aren't* covered by the exceptions (which is why Netflix couldn't start up in Europe).
It's interesting to note that this is a great example of how, far from being about protecting property, copyright law tends to fundamentally break large chunks of traditional property law.
The UK has a limited form of "freedom of speech" enshrined in its Bill of Rights 1689, and there are some cases around the 1660s and 70s discussing it. A quick search also suggests that it is covered by Article 11 of France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789. Of course, since the 1950s, the UK has had the slightly different "freedom of expression" (which is now enshrined in 47 countries across Europe); it's like freedom of speech but is broader (in the sense of covering things other than words), but can be restricted as to *how* an idea is expressed.
"London has 2 million video cameras to catch rioters and thieves." While I can't disprove this, I have serious doubts that this is true; for example, it seems the London Underground only has around 6,000 cameras, and they're not just for thieves and rioters, obviously.
That said, I do agree with the rest of what you've said; the current UK government has shown contempt for basic principles of law by leaning on the lower courts, openly undermining the High Court and following their predecessor's habit of publicly criticising the higher courts whenever they give an "inconvenient" ruling. Parliament (in general - there are some good MPs) has shown itself incapable of taking any real action (not to mention containing fraudsters and criminals) to challenge the government, or do anything that isn't in its own interests and many of the newspapers have happily ignored the law whenever they feel like it. It's all rather depressing.times.
In response to A), s127 CA was copied/transferred from s43 Telecommunications Act 1984, which in turn was based on one of the 1900s Telegraph Acts (but I haven't been able to find it yet) - I don't imagine it was ever debated; just carried over from older legislation without question.
As for C), you not being in England (or England and Wales, the UK, the EU etc.) may not prevent extradition - although that only seems to work with people going to the US. Also, you assume there is a roof across from me and that I have a window.
For those interested, it sounds like this was another (ab)use of s127 Communications Act 2003, which criminalises sending a message that is "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" or "for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another."
This is the same law (that apparently dates from the days when telephones were very rare, and was used to protected operators) that is being used in the ongoing Twitter Joke Trial.
I'm not going to get into another "natural rights" argument with you, but I will point out that the 1709 Copyright Act (the "Anne" one) is a lot more author-friendly and less Stationers' Company-friendly than the previous laws. Some of the booksellers and publishers were really quite annoyed at parts of it and ended up going to court repeatedly to get it "fixed" (things like the public domain, the reverting to authors, the author-focus etc.).
The 1709 Act was actually about protecting authors and making sure they got a reasonable financial return, rather than the Stationers' Guild stuff (from the 1550s onwards) which involved monopolies over publishing, censorship and control.
As much as it pains me to say this, copyright *is* a human right in the EU. It's covered both by Article 17.2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which specifically mentions intellectual property, and Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR - although this is a little less clear; there are a couple of cases on this (Anheuser-Busch Inc v Portugal on trade marks, and Balan v Moldova on copyright) but nothing from the Grand Chamber.
The whole thing is a bizarre and counterproductive concept. In past years, we've seen both the UK and Australia look to set up resale rights.
The UK (via the EU, via France) already has a Resale Right. However, so far it has been confined to limited-edition artwork sold in auctions. The particularly scary part is that the money is taken by the auction house automatically, (rather than by the author) and cannot be waived or circumvented. [I wrote something about this a while back, when I stumbled across it.]
Erm... the UK has had broadcast copyright since at least 2003 - it's in the CDPA (starting in s1(2)(b), along with other neighbouring copyrights such as in sound recordings, and it lasts 50 years. They're not looking to create one, it already exists...
As for the web-blocking stuff, again that was misleading; they only said they wouldn't be using the DEA web-blocking process as it was "unlikely to be effective because of the slow speed that would be expected from a full court process". Instead the various documents mention possible voluntary web-blocking agreements with ISPs (using Cleanfeed, avoiding the courts), getting MasterCard/Visa/PayPal to block payments, getting advertisers to back away and getting the London Police to seize domain names. The web-blocking stuff is, in many ways, even worse than the Newzbin2 method.
Hopefully the ISPs will be able to get legal advice which will tell them that the Newzbin2 ruling cannot really be used to force ISPs to block any website, including Newzbin2. But yes; this isn't really a surprise - I'm only surprised it has taken them a week to do this.
Also, this comes the same day the UK government announced that the existing website-blocking stuff is "unlikely to be effective because of the slow speed that would be expected from a full court process" and suggesting work on faster and cheaper methods (avoiding courts all-together) including blocking payments and advertising to sites, reducing their visibility on search engines, and seizing domain names.
Ah, fair enough. The lawyer in me was thinking government in terms of executive, with government censorship being more along the lines of ICE domain name seizures, the police shutting down websites, or the Home Secretary forcing ISPs to implement filtering of child abuse images. All of these are instances where there is direct governmental censorship without direct legal or democratic input.
That said, the law being used here (s97A) is vague enough that it needs a lot of interpretation from the judge and lawyers to make a case. A different judge, with different lawyers could have come to a different conclusion (as Kitchin J did last year in the Newzbin1 case; same site, more or less, same law, same principles, but different ruling).
This isn't government censorship. It is court censorship at the request of Hollywood.
From my reading of the judgment and the commentary, I think the main flaw was that the judge assumed Newzbin2 was substantially the same as Newzbin1, which was found to be actively infringing copyright last year. From there, it was a simple application of the (very broad) law to get it blocked. There wasn't much room for debate.
But yes, it's an annoying judgment, and no doubt the MPA, BPI etc. will go running to the government waving this as a permission slip, and be able to get a "voluntary" web-blocking scheme set up for copyright infringement. That said, this ruling might be a good thing as the ISPs will turn around and say that they don't need a new agreement as the law works just fine as it is, and copyright owners will have to go through a fairly expensive court process to get sites blocked. But that may just be wishful thinking.
I know quite a bit about UK copyright law and this (as mentioned elsewhere) is besides the point.
The Court did not say "there is no implied licence", they said that some sort of licence (implied or explicit) is needed when visiting a website.
The case itself is specifically aimed at websites with T&Cs forbidding commercial (or non-personal) use. The PRCA (who appealed, not Meltwater) is an association of PR Consultants who use Meltwater's service for commercial purposes (i.e. commercial end user). The court said that, in these cases, if the substantiality and originality criteria for copyright were met by the excepts and/or headlines, the end users would need a separate licence.
The whole thing is full of "if"s and "may"s - this wasn't an infringement proceeding, but a declaration (see my post below).
On the post: Entertainment Industry Still Can't Get Grassroots Support For SOPA/PIPA, Resorts To Trying To Buy Support
Populat videos.
The earliest video is also very useful, as it shows people how to stream films - it's a good thing that sort of thing isn't against the law otherwise the MPAA could be in trouble...
On the post: Royal Society Claims 1671 Copyright On Newton Letter (Copyright Law Born 29 Years Later)
Copyright of the cover page and contract law
While the papers may have been written years ago, the cover page (which has the copyright notice) may be protected by copyright, either as a literary work in its own right, or as a new typographical arrangement of an earlier work (which grants an extra 25 years of copyright protection to that arrangement).
The paper itself, unless it has been transcribed, will be out of copyright.
As for the licensing issues "permanently free to access online" would seem to grant a licence to download the works, through a browser, as part of viewing the website. This doesn't necessarily include the right to download in other circumstances, share, or republish (and by including the cover page with the copyright notice in the pdf files, it will be a lot harder to extract the public domain stuff without infringing the copyright in the cover page).
"Papers published in Royal Society journals more than 70 years ago now permanently available to view and download for free via our searchable archive." This only applies to the old journals. If they are out of copyright (which many of them will be), there's nothing they can do to enforce attribution other than via contract law. But this still doesn't seem to cover the cover pages. If it does cover the cover pages, then they *can* enforce the attribution requirement.
As for JSTOR, they can put any requirements they like in their T&Cs, as that then becomes a contract issue, rather than a copyright issue. So, even though the content is public domain, use of their service can be conditional on whatever terms they see fit, including attribution and non-commercial use only. However, that will probably only be binding on the original user; so if A visits the site and downloads stuff for his own nc-use, shares it with someone else who then uploads it commercially, without attributing, that should be fine.
But ianal.
On the post: European Court Of Justice Says ISPs Cannot Be Forced To Be Copyright Cops
Re: BT
The ruling only applies directly to cases where an ISP is being asked to set up a system where they have to:
(1) monitor all communications going through their network,
(2) from all customers,
(3) as a preventative measure,
(4) at their own expense, and
(5) for an unlimited time.
In the Newzbin2 case, the ruling was very specific that (1) didn't apply, as BT doesn't have to do any monitoring; the Hollywood studios are responsible for identifying IP addresses and URLs (and liable for any wrong ones) and giving them to BT to block. All BT has to do is add them to its existing blocklist.
However, if the case does get appealed (or if future cases are brought), or in the DEA judicial review appeal, this case is likely to be useful as an indication that it is OK to ignore copyright if enforcing it would be too onerous, invasive or impractical.
On the post: Take Picture Of Your 4-Year-Old Daughter Eating Ice Cream... Get Investigated Under Terrorism Act [Updated]
Re: Re: Two sides to each story
On the post: Take Picture Of Your 4-Year-Old Daughter Eating Ice Cream... Get Investigated Under Terrorism Act [Updated]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Two sides to each story
On the post: Take Picture Of Your 4-Year-Old Daughter Eating Ice Cream... Get Investigated Under Terrorism Act [Updated]
Re: Re: Two sides to each story
The shopping centre can have any reason it wants to for not allowing people to take photographs, unless they're a public authority they don't need to justify their actions to the public or demonstrate them to be proportionate.
There also doesn't seem to be any suggestion that this rule was to prevent terrorism, iirc it is usually to "protect" staff from being photographed excessively while at work (iirc there's actually a law against CCTV being pointed at staff workstations).
On the post: Take Picture Of Your 4-Year-Old Daughter Eating Ice Cream... Get Investigated Under Terrorism Act [Updated]
Two sides to each story
Anyways, of course the shopping centre is perfectly within its rights to stop people from taking photographs inside, and throw people out for not doing so - however, I can't see how the Terrorism Act could have got involved... certainly not to a degree that would stand up in court.
On the post: Supreme Court Won't Hear Case Saying That You Have No First Sale Rights With Software
Ownership of information
Iirc the court found that the software could be bought *or* it could be licensed, but not both. If it was bought, then the first-sale doctrine and essential steps defence apply and everything is fine, but if it is merely licensed, the licensee is not the "owner" of the software and so these don't apply. This seems to have come from a failure, by whoever was drafting the defences, to spot the difference between software and a CD containing software, and making first-sale /essential steps only apply to "owners", rather than licensees. In this case, there was a licence agreement, and so the software must have been licensed - although it's possible the CDs/DVDs were sold (I can't remember the precise details).
Interestingly, this sort of thing is already how the law works in the UK (and probably much of the EU). Copyright covers the software, which means you can't copy it onto a computer or adapt it (by installing) or share it (unless a specific defence applies). When you buy a CD with software on it, you physically own the CD (so can wipe it and sell it on) but you may need a licence to install the software (unless the CDPA 50C defence applies, which covers "necessary steps" for "lawful use" - basically the "essential steps defence"). You then also need a licence to "issue copies to the public", which includes selling on the original - but like the US, we have an equivalent to the first-sale doctrine, but it is much broader and only refers to "putting into circulation" once, rather than requiring ownership. Renting and lending to the public are still covered by copyright, as in the US, but here those *aren't* covered by the exceptions (which is why Netflix couldn't start up in Europe).
It's interesting to note that this is a great example of how, far from being about protecting property, copyright law tends to fundamentally break large chunks of traditional property law.
On the post: Internet Troll Jailed In The UK For Being A Jerk Online
Re: Freedom of speech
"London has 2 million video cameras to catch rioters and thieves." While I can't disprove this, I have serious doubts that this is true; for example, it seems the London Underground only has around 6,000 cameras, and they're not just for thieves and rioters, obviously.
That said, I do agree with the rest of what you've said; the current UK government has shown contempt for basic principles of law by leaning on the lower courts, openly undermining the High Court and following their predecessor's habit of publicly criticising the higher courts whenever they give an "inconvenient" ruling. Parliament (in general - there are some good MPs) has shown itself incapable of taking any real action (not to mention containing fraudsters and criminals) to challenge the government, or do anything that isn't in its own interests and many of the newspapers have happily ignored the law whenever they feel like it. It's all rather depressing.times.
On the post: Internet Troll Jailed In The UK For Being A Jerk Online
Re: Re: s127 Communications Act 2003
As for C), you not being in England (or England and Wales, the UK, the EU etc.) may not prevent extradition - although that only seems to work with people going to the US. Also, you assume there is a roof across from me and that I have a window.
On the post: Internet Troll Jailed In The UK For Being A Jerk Online
s127 Communications Act 2003
This is the same law (that apparently dates from the days when telephones were very rare, and was used to protected operators) that is being used in the ongoing Twitter Joke Trial.
It's a rather stupid and out-dated law.
On the post: France: Copyright Is More Important Than Human Rights
Re: Re: Copyright is a human right
The 1709 Act was actually about protecting authors and making sure they got a reasonable financial return, rather than the Stationers' Guild stuff (from the 1550s onwards) which involved monopolies over publishing, censorship and control.
On the post: France: Copyright Is More Important Than Human Rights
Copyright is a human right
It's rather depressing.
On the post: China Gleefully Uses UK Desire For Censorship To Validate Its Own Censorship
The UK governments (or elements of them) have been supporting web censorship since at least 1996.
On the post: Artists In The US Want To Get Paid Multiple Times For A Single Work
Resale Right in Europe
The UK (via the EU, via France) already has a Resale Right. However, so far it has been confined to limited-edition artwork sold in auctions. The particularly scary part is that the money is taken by the auction house automatically, (rather than by the author) and cannot be waived or circumvented. [I wrote something about this a while back, when I stumbled across it.]
On the post: UK Government Announces Copyright Plans; Surprisingly Good, With A Few Problems
Broadcasts
As for the web-blocking stuff, again that was misleading; they only said they wouldn't be using the DEA web-blocking process as it was "unlikely to be effective because of the slow speed that would be expected from a full court process". Instead the various documents mention possible voluntary web-blocking agreements with ISPs (using Cleanfeed, avoiding the courts), getting MasterCard/Visa/PayPal to block payments, getting advertisers to back away and getting the London Police to seize domain names. The web-blocking stuff is, in many ways, even worse than the Newzbin2 method.
On the post: BPI Using Newzbin2 Ruling To Seek Much Broader Censorship Of Sites It Doesn't Like In The UK
Also, this comes the same day the UK government announced that the existing website-blocking stuff is "unlikely to be effective because of the slow speed that would be expected from a full court process" and suggesting work on faster and cheaper methods (avoiding courts all-together) including blocking payments and advertising to sites, reducing their visibility on search engines, and seizing domain names.
On the post: UK Court Orders BT To Block Access To Usenet Site Hollywood Hates
Re: Re:
That said, the law being used here (s97A) is vague enough that it needs a lot of interpretation from the judge and lawyers to make a case. A different judge, with different lawyers could have come to a different conclusion (as Kitchin J did last year in the Newzbin1 case; same site, more or less, same law, same principles, but different ruling).
On the post: UK Court Orders BT To Block Access To Usenet Site Hollywood Hates
From my reading of the judgment and the commentary, I think the main flaw was that the judge assumed Newzbin2 was substantially the same as Newzbin1, which was found to be actively infringing copyright last year. From there, it was a simple application of the (very broad) law to get it blocked. There wasn't much room for debate.
But yes, it's an annoying judgment, and no doubt the MPA, BPI etc. will go running to the government waving this as a permission slip, and be able to get a "voluntary" web-blocking scheme set up for copyright infringement. That said, this ruling might be a good thing as the ISPs will turn around and say that they don't need a new agreement as the law works just fine as it is, and copyright owners will have to go through a fairly expensive court process to get sites blocked. But that may just be wishful thinking.
On the post: UK Appeals Court Agrees That Clicking A Link And Opening A Website... Is Infringing
Re: Re:
The Court did not say "there is no implied licence", they said that some sort of licence (implied or explicit) is needed when visiting a website.
The case itself is specifically aimed at websites with T&Cs forbidding commercial (or non-personal) use. The PRCA (who appealed, not Meltwater) is an association of PR Consultants who use Meltwater's service for commercial purposes (i.e. commercial end user). The court said that, in these cases, if the substantiality and originality criteria for copyright were met by the excepts and/or headlines, the end users would need a separate licence.
The whole thing is full of "if"s and "may"s - this wasn't an infringement proceeding, but a declaration (see my post below).
[Also, for the record, IANALY]
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