The fact that there was already a book with answers does not change copyright status of my book with different answers to the same questions. It might just give hints why they are angry if you too publish a book--they believe you break their business model.
1) I still have the right to sell a "meaningless collection of answer without questions". (Lots of poetry are actually forms of it)
2) The answer book is increasing the business of the question book! Why do they complain?
Problem with this argument is it can be applied to whatever illegal behaviour on earth. People get killed even though murder if prohibited, even if you put more cameras or more police in the streets. Would you say that banning murder is useless (since it happens anyway)? This is a choice of society. Good questions are:
1) would you like to live in a society where murder is allowed. I would not, I think murder is to be banned.
2) Would yo like to live in a society where download of copyrighted material is allowed? I would say yes, provided there are business models allowing this options (e.g that CwF+RtB thing).
So let's not skip the debate, there are real reasons to provide.
1) Copyright protection does not prevent Turkey from minting coins of specific weight and size that by chance can fool vending machines in other countries.
(Copyright, if it applies, only protects the drawing, which at the moment is not used by vending machines to identify coins.)
2) Where exactly would you like to sue the government of Turkey for infringing copyright of euro coins? In a tribunal located in Turkey --where the process will be discarded for national interest-- or in the EU --where the government of Turkey did not by itself commit any offense (the only offense here is made by the customer trying to pay with a coin without legal tender)?
They don't bother with anything. In most EU countries, every artwork or speech or written paper is protected by copyright (exceptions are laws and court deliberations). There is no need to bother or register anything. Coin or banknote design is obviously an artwork, thus it is protected by copyright. Copyright notice or symbol (c) is a bonus, it is not required.
Only the US had the (good) idea that work done on behalf of the federal state should be public domain. Feel free to convince the EU Commission to pass an equivalent bill.
The official justification for Hulu's blockings is economic. Unlike Youtube (though its owner Google), Hulu doesn't own zillio-meters of optic fibers all other the world.
Video bandwidth is expensive, and it is worth paying it only if the viewer is a potential customer for the advertisement market. Viewers from most countries outside US might not be as frequent buyers than customers from the US, for several reasons (increased prices of shipping, tariffs, delays, risks of transactions with a company very far away...).
By limiting their users' base to the US, they also limit the ad-viewers' base to a well-described and a more buying-prone population. This way they can market their ads at a higher price.
I don't mean it should be like this, marketing to the world is surely a better strategy. Just they do what they believe is better for their business—cut the costs and select a good customer base. We can just sit there and let the future prove them wrong.
Down the page there is a Captcha system. It asked me to enter the word “attorney.” Are they trying to send a hidden message?
(I of course made a screenshot)
The full story is that AFPA launched a public tender and ordered a big quantity of computers plus software; what was delivered included a binary copy of VNC with a non-changeable password known only to the provider (which would allow third party to remotely take control of the computers without client's knowledge). The provider later failed to provide the sources while it stated it would; AFPA was displeased and cancelled the order. The provider sued AFPA to force them to pay. The court of appeal of Paris decided that the provider did not follow its obligations (the expert stated that the installation of VNC was not properly mentioned to the user, that the licence and copyright notice were not provided and that the user could not change the VNC password; the Court also noticed that the source was not provided and thus the GNU GPL has been violated). The Court then ruled that AFPA was right to cancel the order and refuse to pay.
So while you may sue Apple, you are probably not in the same conditions as in this trial (AFPA had to follow public tender rules, they ordered for $250,000 and they were asking to cancel the order, not to get the VNC source code).
Plato was right to a certain extent; use of writing has weakened the pressure to remember quantities of text. In ancient Greece competitions where mostly illiterate singers would perform on thousands of verses from Iliad and Odyssey. The hypothesis that the ability to memorize hours of spoken text was linked to illiteracy (or blindness) is known for long time but it has been experimentally tested relatively recently; in the Balkans a tradition of epic poem singers existed for centuries, and until the 20th Century some poets were still singing the famous poem relating the Battle of Kosovo (14th Century). It has been shown that those poets would lose their ability to memorize when learning to read and write. Eventually, with the progress of education in the past decades, such memory performers have completely disappeared.
(I might find again scholar references to these claims whenever I pass by home country.)
So yes, the pencil made us "lose" part of the abilities that it superseded, but the fear is pointless, because it juste gave us the opportunity to allocate our memory to different activities.
(To avoid misunderstanding: I totally agree with Michael Masnik's conclusions.)
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by jerome.
Luckily this is not the case everywhere
As reported by a well-known blogger-lawyer, several journalists cover prominent trials. See http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/09/25/Peut-on-twitter-un-proc%C3%A8s
Re:
1) I still have the right to sell a "meaningless collection of answer without questions". (Lots of poetry are actually forms of it)
2) The answer book is increasing the business of the question book! Why do they complain?
Re: Re: Is this real
1) would you like to live in a society where murder is allowed. I would not, I think murder is to be banned.
2) Would yo like to live in a society where download of copyrighted material is allowed? I would say yes, provided there are business models allowing this options (e.g that CwF+RtB thing).
So let's not skip the debate, there are real reasons to provide.
Re: European copyright on money
(Copyright, if it applies, only protects the drawing, which at the moment is not used by vending machines to identify coins.)
2) Where exactly would you like to sue the government of Turkey for infringing copyright of euro coins? In a tribunal located in Turkey --where the process will be discarded for national interest-- or in the EU --where the government of Turkey did not by itself commit any offense (the only offense here is made by the customer trying to pay with a coin without legal tender)?
Art (bis)
They don't bother with anything. In most EU countries, every artwork or speech or written paper is protected by copyright (exceptions are laws and court deliberations). There is no need to bother or register anything. Coin or banknote design is obviously an artwork, thus it is protected by copyright. Copyright notice or symbol (c) is a bonus, it is not required.
Only the US had the (good) idea that work done on behalf of the federal state should be public domain. Feel free to convince the EU Commission to pass an equivalent bill.
Pirate Party election was unanticipated
Hulu's blocking is for economical reasons
Video bandwidth is expensive, and it is worth paying it only if the viewer is a potential customer for the advertisement market. Viewers from most countries outside US might not be as frequent buyers than customers from the US, for several reasons (increased prices of shipping, tariffs, delays, risks of transactions with a company very far away...).
By limiting their users' base to the US, they also limit the ad-viewers' base to a well-described and a more buying-prone population. This way they can market their ads at a higher price.
I don't mean it should be like this, marketing to the world is surely a better strategy. Just they do what they believe is better for their business—cut the costs and select a good customer base. We can just sit there and let the future prove them wrong.
What is the message?
(I of course made a screenshot)
All what AFPA was asking is the right to cancel the market.
So while you may sue Apple, you are probably not in the same conditions as in this trial (AFPA had to follow public tender rules, they ordered for $250,000 and they were asking to cancel the order, not to get the VNC source code).
Plato was partially right... but one should not fear new communication technologies
(I might find again scholar references to these claims whenever I pass by home country.)
So yes, the pencil made us "lose" part of the abilities that it superseded, but the fear is pointless, because it juste gave us the opportunity to allocate our memory to different activities.
(To avoid misunderstanding: I totally agree with Michael Masnik's conclusions.)
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by jerome.
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