Of course, the fact that Prince thinks the internet is over won't stop it for the rest of the world. Prince will just get left behind along with everything else that's no longer relevant in a digital world.
Any newpaper is a business that depends on having a large audience, and this has pretty much always been true. If the business wants to keep that audience, they'd better be targetting the stories they cover at the things that audience wants to read. Doing anything else will eventually result in no audience, and no business. In that respect, the only way online and paper publications differ is that online publications use page views, and paper publication use circulation numbers to measure the size of the audience.
No matter what the judge decides, the case will be appealed.
I suspect the case will go to trial, but the result won't matter much. Google can't afford to set a precedent that would essentially gut the safe harbor provisions, and Viacom will do pretty much anything to make someone else responsible for the problems of its business model.
Expect this case to go as far up the appeals process as the courts will permit.
"there is a funny offshoot of the levy that does make it legal to infringe copyrights in very particular situations"
Can you show us the point in law that actually says that please?
Sure, not a problem. The Canadian Copyright act can be found here Section VIII covers the allowable limits for private copying.
I wonder how he'd feel about the idea of applying the tax to software publishers who repeatedly fail to produce software with at least a reasonable level of security.
As a matter of fact, I would like to see a guilty person released on a technicality, because the alternative would be to have innocent people convicted.
Like any other testing system, the legal system has both false positive results, an innocent person found guilty, and false negative results, a guilty person found innocent. Short of finding some magic way of making humans less fallible, anything you do to reduce one error will increase the other.
The whole 'presumption of innocence' basis for the legal system is designed to reduce the number of false positive results, and the increase in the false negatives is considered an acceptable exchange.
If Google has any sort of realistic expectations as to how much people would pay for movies online, then I have a hard time describing this as anything but exceeding expectations.
Whether or not Google can make a profit on that income is another question. Any simple online movie watching service with a non zero income is exceeding the income level I would expect it to have.
People have been complaining about every new technology that assists the human mind. In the 1970s, people complained that calculators would reduce the ability to do basic math. Plato complained that writing would reduce the ability to memorize information. the funny thing is, all those warnings were exactly right, and it doesn't matter.
I don't bother doing multi-digit math in my head anymore. I do the algebra needed to define the equations I need, then plug the numbers into the calculator. Similarly, I don't remember information anymore, I look it up. Online search engines mean I don't have to physically go to where the books are located in order to look up the information.
Every time there's been a new technology to assist the mind it has indeed caused some mental skill to atrophy. That's mostly because that skill is no longer needed. The mind is now free to do other things while the mechanical assistant takes on the routine drudgery that used to require a mind.
The canadian government's consultations on copyright are indeed a tactic to confuse. The only question is who is getting confused. Is it the content industry being confused because they're not automatically getting everything they demand, or is it the canadian people being misled into believing the government is listening to what they have to say?
For the moment, I'm willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt until I see the proposed legislation. Given the government's past track record though, I'm also not particularly optimistic about the outcome.
This is the reason I really dislike the child pornography laws in Canada. There is NO acceptable excuse permitted.
Once a court determines the image is of an underage person in a sexual situation, you're guilty. It doesn't matter if the person really is not underage, if the court thinks they are underage, even proving otherwise would not matter. If doesn't matter if the image was obtained accidentally. Clicking on the wrong web link makes you guilty. It doesn't matter if you know it's there. Picking up a newspaper with a photo buried six pages in makes you guilty. It doesn't matter if you have any control over getting the photos. Someone sending you a file of photos in the mail makes you guilty of possession as soon as you pick up the mail.
The intent of the law was to stop child pornography by eliminating the market for it. Under the old law, the prosecution had to prove knowledge and intent to get a conviction. Intent is almost impossible to prove, so the conviction rate was almost zero. Under the new law, only possession has to be proved, making it much easier to get a conviction. It's made it much easier to convict the pedophiles, once they're found. It's also made it trivially easy to completely destroy someone's career and life. All you need to do is send a few kiddy porn photos to a mailing list that includes both your victim and a police officer. If you don't happen to know of such a mailing list, creating one is trivial using most e-mail clients.
You know, this could be an entire new market for an indie band looking to get some exposure. Create a CD of original work suitable for gymnastics, then market it to gymnastics clubs with a license that allows for unlimited use as an acompanyment to the gymnastics. This would be a win for almost everyone involved. The gym gets music at a reasonable price, and no risk of lawsuits. The band gets plenty of exposure, and probably more money than they would get from a collection agency. The only loser would be the collection agency itself, and somehow I don't think anyone else involved would even care.
That's absolutely true, but once criminal charges are no longer forthcoming, parties are able to retrieve their property. As long as charges are being considered, the authorities can keep them, but after that they have to give them back, at least in America.
Umm no, that's not the case. Check out this article from the Detroit area...
The Detroit News
Re: Why don't they get a good old fashioned audit?
I suspect that the reason nobody has asked for an audit of the company is because business plans and even plans to bring a product to market are simply irrelevant to a patent lawsuit.
I'll go way out on a limb here, and predict that the book publishing industry will die completely about 20 years after they successfully find a way to keep people from reading books without paying for them.
Nobody spends any significant amount of money on books unless they enjoy reading. I'm willing to bet that pretty much everyone who enjoys reading learned that while reading books for free, mostly in the local library. If all books become DRM crippled digital files, lending stops, and there simply won't be a next generation of people willing to spend money on books.
As for writers not having things to sell other than words, how about these ideas:
- earlier access to the words. First releases to paying customers only.
- input to the writing. paying customers get to suggest potential changes to the storyline.
- access to the writer. anything from speaking tours to online chats to dinner and a movie.
There are ways to make money off words, the writers are just going to have to find ways that don't involve simply sitting back and waiting for that next royalty check to arrive.
If virtual property ever gets any sort of rights, I can't see why anyone would want to run a virtual world to put the property in. The reason is simple, if you ever shut down that virtual world, the value of all the virtual property in it vanishes with the world. The operator of the virtual world would then be faced with either buying all that virtual property, or else risking lawsuits over the vanished value of that property. Either way, it's potentially very expensive.
"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."
As a consumer, I reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees should be permitted to reach out and break my legally purchased media simply because they no longer feel like supporting it.
After all, the leaking of sensitive information is a problem, and the congresscritters have to be seen to be doing something about the problem.
Of course, they could simply hire competent managers to make sure the employees are working rather than downloading music during working hours. Oh wait, that would mean they wouldn't be able to reward their friends with government positions. Never mind.
The ECJ said that while some parts of Infopaq's processing could be called transient, as soon as it had printed out the 11 words on to paper the copying became too permanent to qualify for the law's exception.
"The possibility may not be ruled out that certain isolated sentences, or even certain parts of sentences in the text in question, may be suitable for conveying to the reader the originality of a publication such as a newspaper article, by communicating to that reader an element which is, in itself, the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of that article,"
This is a preliminary ruling on only two points of law, First, does this fall under the transient exemptions, and is it possible that a snippet of eleven words can be protected by copyright. The first answer is no. The printing process makes the copy no longer transient. The second ruling is maybe. At this point the court cannot say that such a short excerpt is not protected, but cannot say that it is protected either. There is still a lot more to be done before the court can rule on whether this, or any, eleven word snippet can be declared infringing.
The court didn't rule that copying 11 words was infringement. It said it might be, but didn't look into the question.
What it did say is that when you distribute copies printed on paper, you no longer qualify for the transient works exemption in the copyright law. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since ink on paper is widely regarded as a permanent medium for data storage.
On the post: Prince: No Music On The Internet; The Internet Is Over
For Prince, the internet IS over.
On the post: Is Page View Journalism Really A Problem?
How is this any different than print journalisim?
On the post: Analysis Of Google And Viacom's Arguments Over YouTube: A Lot Of He Said/She Said
Prediction on the outcome...
I suspect the case will go to trial, but the result won't matter much. Google can't afford to set a precedent that would essentially gut the safe harbor provisions, and Viacom will do pretty much anything to make someone else responsible for the problems of its business model.
Expect this case to go as far up the appeals process as the courts will permit.
On the post: Surprising: Charlie Angus Proposing iPod 'You Must Be A Criminal' Tax In Canada
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Microsoft Security Exec Suggests Internet Tax To Pay For 'Computer Health Care' Program
On the post: Why Shouldn't Jurors Be Able To Use Technology To Do More Research?
Re: Re: Just plain wrong
Like any other testing system, the legal system has both false positive results, an innocent person found guilty, and false negative results, a guilty person found innocent. Short of finding some magic way of making humans less fallible, anything you do to reduce one error will increase the other.
The whole 'presumption of innocence' basis for the legal system is designed to reduce the number of false positive results, and the increase in the false negatives is considered an acceptable exchange.
On the post: Google Discovers -- Again, Though No One Remembers -- That People Don't Like Paying For Video Online
exceeding expectations?
Whether or not Google can make a profit on that income is another question. Any simple online movie watching service with a non zero income is exceeding the income level I would expect it to have.
On the post: Did The Automobile Dehumanize Walking? No? Then Does Google Dehumanize Intelligence?
This is nothing new.
I don't bother doing multi-digit math in my head anymore. I do the algebra needed to define the equations I need, then plug the numbers into the calculator. Similarly, I don't remember information anymore, I look it up. Online search engines mean I don't have to physically go to where the books are located in order to look up the information.
Every time there's been a new technology to assist the mind it has indeed caused some mental skill to atrophy. That's mostly because that skill is no longer needed. The mind is now free to do other things while the mechanical assistant takes on the routine drudgery that used to require a mind.
On the post: Asking Citizens What They Want Out Of Copyright Law Is Really Just A 'Tactic To Confuse'?
A tactic to confuse?
For the moment, I'm willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt until I see the proposed legislation. Given the government's past track record though, I'm also not particularly optimistic about the outcome.
On the post: Is Everyone Who Received Monday's Metro Toronto Guilty Of Child Porn Possession?
Reasons to hate the child porn laws...
Once a court determines the image is of an underage person in a sexual situation, you're guilty. It doesn't matter if the person really is not underage, if the court thinks they are underage, even proving otherwise would not matter. If doesn't matter if the image was obtained accidentally. Clicking on the wrong web link makes you guilty. It doesn't matter if you know it's there. Picking up a newspaper with a photo buried six pages in makes you guilty. It doesn't matter if you have any control over getting the photos. Someone sending you a file of photos in the mail makes you guilty of possession as soon as you pick up the mail.
The intent of the law was to stop child pornography by eliminating the market for it. Under the old law, the prosecution had to prove knowledge and intent to get a conviction. Intent is almost impossible to prove, so the conviction rate was almost zero. Under the new law, only possession has to be proved, making it much easier to get a conviction. It's made it much easier to convict the pedophiles, once they're found. It's also made it trivially easy to completely destroy someone's career and life. All you need to do is send a few kiddy porn photos to a mailing list that includes both your victim and a police officer. If you don't happen to know of such a mailing list, creating one is trivial using most e-mail clients.
Isn't the law a wonderful thing?
On the post: Canadian Collection Society Pushing Gymnastics Clubs To Pay Up For Music
an entire new market for an indie band?
On the post: Police Allowed To Hang Onto Seized Computers For Anti-Piracy Group, Despite No Gov't Prosecution
Re: Re:
On the post: Google Sued Over Patents On Open Source Code
Re: Why don't they get a good old fashioned audit?
On the post: Oh No! Book Piracy Is Coming! Run And Hide!
The death of the publishing industry.
Nobody spends any significant amount of money on books unless they enjoy reading. I'm willing to bet that pretty much everyone who enjoys reading learned that while reading books for free, mostly in the local library. If all books become DRM crippled digital files, lending stops, and there simply won't be a next generation of people willing to spend money on books.
As for writers not having things to sell other than words, how about these ideas:
- earlier access to the words. First releases to paying customers only.
- input to the writing. paying customers get to suggest potential changes to the storyline.
- access to the writer. anything from speaking tours to online chats to dinner and a movie.
There are ways to make money off words, the writers are just going to have to find ways that don't involve simply sitting back and waiting for that next royalty check to arrive.
On the post: Why Virtual Property Doesn't Make Sense
who would want to run a virtual world?
On the post: Hollywood Still Thinks That The Industry Needs DRM
I reject your reality, and substitute my own
On the post: Once Again, Congress Wants To Blame Limewire For Stupid Staffers, As Arts+Labs Propaganda Campaign Works
Of course Congress wants to pass a law.
Of course, they could simply hire competent managers to make sure the employees are working rather than downloading music during working hours. Oh wait, that would mean they wouldn't be able to reward their friends with government positions. Never mind.
On the post: Did European Court Just Make Search Engines Illegal? 11-Word Snippet Can Be Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Did anybody actually read the article?
This is a preliminary ruling on only two points of law, First, does this fall under the transient exemptions, and is it possible that a snippet of eleven words can be protected by copyright. The first answer is no. The printing process makes the copy no longer transient. The second ruling is maybe. At this point the court cannot say that such a short excerpt is not protected, but cannot say that it is protected either. There is still a lot more to be done before the court can rule on whether this, or any, eleven word snippet can be declared infringing.
On the post: Did European Court Just Make Search Engines Illegal? 11-Word Snippet Can Be Copyright Infringement
Did anybody actually read the article?
What it did say is that when you distribute copies printed on paper, you no longer qualify for the transient works exemption in the copyright law. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since ink on paper is widely regarded as a permanent medium for data storage.
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