It amazes me how many people do not even comprehend copyright law in the U.S. Copyright was established to strike a balance between the interests of the public to gain access to artistic works while encouraging creators to continue to create artistic works as commodities for public consumption.
All of the analogies here are completely ridiculous. Breaking into someone's house? Photographing people's wares? Looking at people naked?!
A far better analogy is that somebody creates a lounge for people to come listen to music for free. Then the Yellow Pages stops in and besides merely adding the venue information to its phone book, encloses a free DVD with a reproduction of the recordings being played at the lounge in their entirety -- unless the venue owners explicitly post on its front door "unauthorized recording is prohibited."
Well last I checked, copyright law is not a voluntary right. It is a guaranteed right with the only conditional exemption being fair use -- which primarily applies to personal, non-commercial uses. So the venue owners shouldn't have to post anything to secure the protections of copyright against willful infringement.
To say that Google is NOT violating copyright law, is setting the legal precedent that "it is okay to make reproductions of publicly performed copyrighted works available in their entirety so long as you claim they are a cached copy from a search engine".
Thus pirates can now freely exchange music and movies by simply creating a "search engine" that records radio shows and TV programs (in which the public performance was provided free of charge) and makes those "cached copies" available without charge to the public while generating revenue from ancillary advertising on the search results pages.
Heck, I see some interesting business prospects here.
Copyright is a guaranteed right, not a voluntary right (as Randall Krause)
All of the analogies here are completely ridiculous. Breaking into someone's house? Photographing people's wares? Looking at people naked?!
A far better analogy is that somebody creates a lounge for people to come listen to music for free. Then the Yellow Pages stops in and besides merely adding the venue information to its phone book, encloses a free DVD with a reproduction of the recordings being played at the lounge in their entirety -- unless the venue owners explicitly post on its front door "unauthorized recording is prohibited."
Well last I checked, copyright law is not a voluntary right. It is a guaranteed right with the only conditional exemption being fair use -- which primarily applies to personal, non-commercial uses. So the venue owners shouldn't have to post anything to secure the protections of copyright against willful infringement.
To say that Google is NOT violating copyright law, is setting the legal precedent that "it is okay to make reproductions of publicly performed copyrighted works available in their entirety so long as you claim they are a cached copy from a search engine".
Thus pirates can now freely exchange music and movies by simply creating a "search engine" that records radio shows and TV programs (in which the public performance was provided free of charge) and makes those "cached copies" available without charge to the public while generating revenue from ancillary advertising on the search results pages.
Heck, I see some interesting business prospects here.
--Randall
YouTube?
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