I get emails from change.org on a regular basis asking me to sign various petitions created by their users. One time I got an email from them about a petition by this guy, aiming to convince the TV station to give him a co-copyright on the work, so he can use the DMCA to take down the videos. This was well before the NFT development. Needless to say, I didn't sign that one!
There's one part in Techdirt's story that baffles me, though:
Indeed, the TV station is quoted in the article noting that...it has provided licenses to Parker to help him get the video removed...
I'm not sure such a license would even be valid under current copyright law. There is no exclusive right to "get a work removed from the internet" under copyright law that can be licensed, just like newspapers couldn't license "the right to sue" to Righthaven, and the court said as much when dismissing Righthaven's lawsuits.
I think the most they could do is outsource the ability to send DMCA notices to a third party, which could be Andy Parker. However, the final decision would have to be made by the copyright owner (the TV station). Unless they make a blanket decision to bar any re-use of the footage (fair use notwithstanding), there's no other way for Parker to unilaterally say in any DMCA notice that the use of the video wasn't authorized "by the copyright holder, its agent, or the law".
So, as sad as this story is, outside of a transfer of ownership of copyright, there's no way for Andy Parker to use copyright by himself to get the video removed from the internet. Creating an NFT does nothing to help in this regard, either. If this really is advice from his lawyers, either they're not knowledgeable of how technology works or they're deliberately misleading him. I sincerely hope it's not the latter.
Indeed, I have to agree with that one Anonymous commenter before me that says he shouldn't be trying to look for videos to get them taken down. It'll only give him more grief having to relive that moment over and over again. Maybe it would be better for him to give up this mission of scrubbing the video from the Internet. Such an effort is futile and will only delay his healing from the loss of his daughter. Sometimes, it really is best to just let it go.
But at what temperature? Approximately 451ºF is enough to cause paper to self-combust. But at what temperature can a series of 1's and 0's self-combust? These are the hard-hitting science facts we need to know!!
What baffles me about the game music case is how it flies in the face of the very purported reason we have copyright laws.
The theory goes that without copyright law, people can make more money out of copying other people's works in ways that the original authors can't compete with. This would drive fewer people to create new literary and artistic works, and once this happened en masse, the public domain would be replete with new works. Thus, copyright was seen as a bargain: If you create new works for the public to enjoy, we agree not to use or copy your work for a limited time. Once this monopoly expires, it will fall into the public domain for everyone to use.
So, in other words, copyright is a tool designed to ensure new creative works come into the world. But here, copyright is essentially being used to take works people enjoy and then suppress and censor them. Nintendo isn't releasing the music people want to listen to and enjoy and then holding anyone else who's releasing the music instead liable for copyright infringement. According to the law, this is within Nintendo's rights. But this legal move flies in the face of what grounds that law being used was based on. Can someone tell me how keeping copyrighted works the public wants to enjoy unreleased and issuing takedowns against third parties who post the work themselves promotes progress?
But the copyright maximalists will point out that the Pokemon sound library shows that Nintendo does want to exploit this market, and heaven forbid someone else usurps that market. But that sound library isn't all of Nintendo's game music. There's plenty more where that came from! And I also find it interesting that they mention using the music in their own "personal video" creations in that announcement tweet. Unless there are some terms on that site granting people who download music from the library a blanket synchronization license, they don't have the right to put the music in their own videos. And who wants to bet that Nintendo's gonna Nintendo and DMCA people who start using the music from their library in their YouTube videos? Even if it's not like GilvaSunner's YouTube channel where the music is all that's uploaded with nothing more? Copyright is back at doing what it does best: Being a censorship regime, which copyright law was born out of!
What baffles me about the game music case is how it flies in the face of the very purported reason we have copyright laws.
The theory goes that without copyright law, people can make more money out of copying other people's works in ways that the original authors can't compete with. This would drive fewer people to create new literary and artistic works, and once this happened en masse, the public domain would be replete with new works. Thus, copyright was seen as a bargain: If you create new works for the public to enjoy, we agree not to use or copy your work for a limited time. Once this monopoly expires, it will fall into the public domain for everyone to use.
So, in other words, copyright is a tool designed to ensure new creative works come into the world. But here, copyright is essentially being used to take works people enjoy and then suppress and censor them. Nintendo isn't releasing the music people want to listen to and enjoy and then holding anyone else who's releasing the music instead liable for copyright infringement. According to the law, this is within Nintendo's rights. But this legal move flies in the face of what grounds that law being used was based on. Can someone tell me how keeping copyrighted works the public wants to enjoy unreleased and issuing takedowns against third parties who post the work themselves promotes progress?
But the copyright maximalists will point out that the Pokemon sound library shows that Nintendo does want to exploit this market, and heaven forbid someone else usurps that market. But that sound library isn't all of Nintendo's game music. There's plenty more where that came from! And I also find it interesting that they mention using the music in their own "personal video" creations in that announcement tweet. Unless there are some terms on that site granting people who download music from the library a blanket synchronization license, they don't have the right to put the music in their own videos. And who wants to bet that Nintendo's gonna Nintendo and DMCA people who start using the music from their library in their YouTube videos? Even if it's not like GilvaSunner's YouTube channel where the music is all that's uploaded with nothing more? Copyright is back at doing what it does best: Being a censorship regime, which copyright law was born out of!
...Kiwi.com’s unauthorized sales of Southwest flights...
Really? Out of all the things you can call this practice, you can't call the sale "unauthorized". That would be like if I created a site that enabled you to search for any DVD or Blu-ray release, scraped a bunch of online store fronts, showed you which store had the movie for the cheapest price (assuming the stores sold a legally acquired copy for copyright purposes), and then have the studio sue me for people buying from a third party site because it was cheaper than their own. The same example goes for literally any other product or service where copyright doesn't even enter the equation.
At the end of the day, if someone bought a Southwest flight from Kiwi.com, it would only be good for Southwest's actual flight. It might not make Southwest happy that they can't charge higher for that specific customer, but it shouldn't be illegal, and it certainly isn't an unauthorized sale. And terms of service are contracts of adhesion, so if Southwest can write their TOS in a way that gives them an anticompetitive advantage like that, then the contract should be looked into legally. I don't know for sure if they apply here, but I'm pretty sure you can't contract your way out of unfair competition laws.
One thing that I'm surprised that Techdirt hasn't posted about yet is how the US copyright office is currently accepting public comments about "standard technical measures" mentioned in section 512 of the DMCA. It's my understanding that policy discussion as a result of these comments and panels will shape policy about possible revisions to the DMCA. Spearheaded by the copyright maximalists' favorite senator Thom Tillis, I foresee that this could shape up a US equivalent bill similar to the EU's disastrous Article 17 in their copyright directive. I'm currently working on public comments to submit. As someone familiar with the pitfalls of YouTube's Content ID, I feel like I have a lot I can say.
But imagine if we organized a similar operation that there was with SOPA, encouraging people to submit comments to the copyright office arguing the dangers of the path the copyright office is currently on, and how forcing sites to adopt technical measures like upload filters to stop infringement is bad policy. That could easily cause the copyright office to reconsider recommending such a bill be proposed in the US. At the very least, it will give them pause and stop such panels from being completely one-sided in favor of the major copyright holders. It's not a perfect plan, but I think it would be worth a shot!
It doesn’t matter if this was done by an individual or a corporation. The fact that we’re talking about the crappy actions of the person who cloned the game Wordle shows that public accountability is effective. Besides, this smells more like plagiarism than copyright infringement; the fact that the person attempted to profit off of the work of others only amplifies the existing allegations. As the saying goes, always give credit where credit is due!
Apparently, we'll need Schrödinger's cat to start a social media platform. That way, content moderators can have posts both remain up and taken down! It has to be the only way to satisfy the unconstitutional demands in Texas and New York at the same time.
That analogy is just dumb on multiple levels. They didn't pick any lock. They didn't intrude somewhere they weren't supposed to go. The website put the info on their computers in the HTML.
Thus, a closer analogy for the situation is putting your working $1000 TV on your front lawn, putting a “For Free” sign on it, and then pressing theft charges against the people who picked it up. May not be a perfect analogy, but it’s a heck of a lot better and way more accurate to the situation than the governor’s lock picking analogy!
What I want to know is how many of these senators would be outraged if Instagram removed a photo of someone's child having their first communion on the grounds that it "promotes" underage drinking? Couldn't it be interpreted (as flawed as it may be) that such a post would run afoul of the same policy they're asking Instagram to crack down on?
If promoting your moral objectives is more important than stopping hackers and maintaining the security of the computers of your users, you're doing it wrong!
The problem is that in Canada, judges are appointed by the government...
That's also true in the US. Any federal court that would have jurisdiction for this kind of case in the US was appointed by the President of the United States at the time, and then confirmed by the US Senate. Unless you're somehow arguing POTUS and Senators are not a part of the US government, I'm not seeing your point here.
I cannot fathom in what world this could be construed as a state trying to run around federal copyright law. Copyright says, more or less, it's illegal to copy a work protected by copyright. Other rights and exemptions aside, copyright says nothing about how much a copyrighted work has to sell for. This state law simply says that they can't force libraries to pay more than a fair and reasonable rate just to get the ability to lend out a digital copy of a work.
But heaven forbid a publisher can't maintain absolute monopolistic control over their market. To me, that sounds more and more like copyright misuse. Copyright might give owners exclusive rights, but copyright doesn't give the copyright holder the right to control the price for the work. I know, it's sort of implied in the distribution right, but states can regulate how high a particular good can sell for in the state, and that inherently has nothing to do with copyright. If this law is struck down by the courts on the grounds that US copyright law pre-empts state copyright laws (which this most certainly not), will people finally realize that copyright law has been distorted to the point that it's no longer defensible?
I raised a similar argument on Techdirt years ago when the EFF's suit to overturn section 1201 of the DMCA was allowed to move forward. Long story short, I believe the anti-circumvention provision, both on its face and as applied, cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny when looking at the "promote the progress of science" phrase. Why the EFF never argued that is beyond me.
Ms. Sohn even opined that "advances in encryption technology may allow us to craft a framework to fully protect content." For those who depend on strong intellectual property protections for their livelihoods, "may" simply is not sufficient.
There, it sounds like Sohn is advocating for some sort of DRM scheme. Tillis's comments aside, you can't be both pro-DRM and anti-copyright. Sohn may advocate for some good copyright policy (which Tillis would 100% be against), but that isn't exactly a shining example.
And as far as "may" not being sufficient, I have two things to say. First, DRM as it currently stands is failing a mission it can never succeed at. It already isn't "sufficient" at stopping piracy. What it is good at is annoying paying customers for making something they paid for an inferior product. If people depend on DRM for their livelihoods, their livelihoods are already in trouble.
Second, big copyright holders are on the cusp of getting everything they wished for. They got the EU copyright directive passed with Article 17 included. It's only a matter of time until they start lobbying for something similar to be passed in the US. And then, they still won't be happy. Even when they happily destroy the internet, will that still be short of sufficient?
I just hope the duly elected copyright maximalist in the oval office doesn't back down from supporting this candidate. He already stood up to Hollywood when they were dead-set against allowing IP exemptions for COVID-19 treatment information. And it also helps that Tillis is also from the opposite political party. So, here's hoping he'll be 2 for 2 in this regard!
At least I'm glad to see the old legacy players are branching out and blaming other so-called ills of the modern-day internet for a film's failure instead of just focusing on the boogeyman of piracy!
(untitled comment)
I get emails from change.org on a regular basis asking me to sign various petitions created by their users. One time I got an email from them about a petition by this guy, aiming to convince the TV station to give him a co-copyright on the work, so he can use the DMCA to take down the videos. This was well before the NFT development. Needless to say, I didn't sign that one!
There's one part in Techdirt's story that baffles me, though:
I'm not sure such a license would even be valid under current copyright law. There is no exclusive right to "get a work removed from the internet" under copyright law that can be licensed, just like newspapers couldn't license "the right to sue" to Righthaven, and the court said as much when dismissing Righthaven's lawsuits.
I think the most they could do is outsource the ability to send DMCA notices to a third party, which could be Andy Parker. However, the final decision would have to be made by the copyright owner (the TV station). Unless they make a blanket decision to bar any re-use of the footage (fair use notwithstanding), there's no other way for Parker to unilaterally say in any DMCA notice that the use of the video wasn't authorized "by the copyright holder, its agent, or the law".
So, as sad as this story is, outside of a transfer of ownership of copyright, there's no way for Andy Parker to use copyright by himself to get the video removed from the internet. Creating an NFT does nothing to help in this regard, either. If this really is advice from his lawyers, either they're not knowledgeable of how technology works or they're deliberately misleading him. I sincerely hope it's not the latter.
Indeed, I have to agree with that one Anonymous commenter before me that says he shouldn't be trying to look for videos to get them taken down. It'll only give him more grief having to relive that moment over and over again. Maybe it would be better for him to give up this mission of scrubbing the video from the Internet. Such an effort is futile and will only delay his healing from the loss of his daughter. Sometimes, it really is best to just let it go.
From the linked ZDNet article:
But at what temperature? Approximately 451ºF is enough to cause paper to self-combust. But at what temperature can a series of 1's and 0's self-combust? These are the hard-hitting science facts we need to know!!
One step forward after thousands of steps back
What baffles me about the game music case is how it flies in the face of the very purported reason we have copyright laws.
The theory goes that without copyright law, people can make more money out of copying other people's works in ways that the original authors can't compete with. This would drive fewer people to create new literary and artistic works, and once this happened en masse, the public domain would be replete with new works. Thus, copyright was seen as a bargain: If you create new works for the public to enjoy, we agree not to use or copy your work for a limited time. Once this monopoly expires, it will fall into the public domain for everyone to use.
So, in other words, copyright is a tool designed to ensure new creative works come into the world. But here, copyright is essentially being used to take works people enjoy and then suppress and censor them. Nintendo isn't releasing the music people want to listen to and enjoy and then holding anyone else who's releasing the music instead liable for copyright infringement. According to the law, this is within Nintendo's rights. But this legal move flies in the face of what grounds that law being used was based on. Can someone tell me how keeping copyrighted works the public wants to enjoy unreleased and issuing takedowns against third parties who post the work themselves promotes progress?
But the copyright maximalists will point out that the Pokemon sound library shows that Nintendo does want to exploit this market, and heaven forbid someone else usurps that market. But that sound library isn't all of Nintendo's game music. There's plenty more where that came from! And I also find it interesting that they mention using the music in their own "personal video" creations in that announcement tweet. Unless there are some terms on that site granting people who download music from the library a blanket synchronization license, they don't have the right to put the music in their own videos. And who wants to bet that Nintendo's gonna Nintendo and DMCA people who start using the music from their library in their YouTube videos? Even if it's not like GilvaSunner's YouTube channel where the music is all that's uploaded with nothing more? Copyright is back at doing what it does best: Being a censorship regime, which copyright law was born out of!
One step forward after thousands of steps back
What baffles me about the game music case is how it flies in the face of the very purported reason we have copyright laws.
The theory goes that without copyright law, people can make more money out of copying other people's works in ways that the original authors can't compete with. This would drive fewer people to create new literary and artistic works, and once this happened en masse, the public domain would be replete with new works. Thus, copyright was seen as a bargain: If you create new works for the public to enjoy, we agree not to use or copy your work for a limited time. Once this monopoly expires, it will fall into the public domain for everyone to use.
So, in other words, copyright is a tool designed to ensure new creative works come into the world. But here, copyright is essentially being used to take works people enjoy and then suppress and censor them. Nintendo isn't releasing the music people want to listen to and enjoy and then holding anyone else who's releasing the music instead liable for copyright infringement. According to the law, this is within Nintendo's rights. But this legal move flies in the face of what grounds that law being used was based on. Can someone tell me how keeping copyrighted works the public wants to enjoy unreleased and issuing takedowns against third parties who post the work themselves promotes progress?
But the copyright maximalists will point out that the Pokemon sound library shows that Nintendo does want to exploit this market, and heaven forbid someone else usurps that market. But that sound library isn't all of Nintendo's game music. There's plenty more where that came from! And I also find it interesting that they mention using the music in their own "personal video" creations in that announcement tweet. Unless there are some terms on that site granting people who download music from the library a blanket synchronization license, they don't have the right to put the music in their own videos. And who wants to bet that Nintendo's gonna Nintendo and DMCA people who start using the music from their library in their YouTube videos? Even if it's not like GilvaSunner's YouTube channel where the music is all that's uploaded with nothing more? Copyright is back at doing what it does best: Being a censorship regime, which copyright law was born out of!
(untitled comment)
From the permanent injunction:
Really? Out of all the things you can call this practice, you can't call the sale "unauthorized". That would be like if I created a site that enabled you to search for any DVD or Blu-ray release, scraped a bunch of online store fronts, showed you which store had the movie for the cheapest price (assuming the stores sold a legally acquired copy for copyright purposes), and then have the studio sue me for people buying from a third party site because it was cheaper than their own. The same example goes for literally any other product or service where copyright doesn't even enter the equation.
At the end of the day, if someone bought a Southwest flight from Kiwi.com, it would only be good for Southwest's actual flight. It might not make Southwest happy that they can't charge higher for that specific customer, but it shouldn't be illegal, and it certainly isn't an unauthorized sale. And terms of service are contracts of adhesion, so if Southwest can write their TOS in a way that gives them an anticompetitive advantage like that, then the contract should be looked into legally. I don't know for sure if they apply here, but I'm pretty sure you can't contract your way out of unfair competition laws.
We did it before; let's do it again!
One thing that I'm surprised that Techdirt hasn't posted about yet is how the US copyright office is currently accepting public comments about "standard technical measures" mentioned in section 512 of the DMCA. It's my understanding that policy discussion as a result of these comments and panels will shape policy about possible revisions to the DMCA. Spearheaded by the copyright maximalists' favorite senator Thom Tillis, I foresee that this could shape up a US equivalent bill similar to the EU's disastrous Article 17 in their copyright directive. I'm currently working on public comments to submit. As someone familiar with the pitfalls of YouTube's Content ID, I feel like I have a lot I can say.
But imagine if we organized a similar operation that there was with SOPA, encouraging people to submit comments to the copyright office arguing the dangers of the path the copyright office is currently on, and how forcing sites to adopt technical measures like upload filters to stop infringement is bad policy. That could easily cause the copyright office to reconsider recommending such a bill be proposed in the US. At the very least, it will give them pause and stop such panels from being completely one-sided in favor of the major copyright holders. It's not a perfect plan, but I think it would be worth a shot!
A lot of you are missing the point…
It doesn’t matter if this was done by an individual or a corporation. The fact that we’re talking about the crappy actions of the person who cloned the game Wordle shows that public accountability is effective. Besides, this smells more like plagiarism than copyright infringement; the fact that the person attempted to profit off of the work of others only amplifies the existing allegations. As the saying goes, always give credit where credit is due!
Re: You've found the golden solution!!!
Apparently, we'll need Schrödinger's cat to start a social media platform. That way, content moderators can have posts both remain up and taken down! It has to be the only way to satisfy the unconstitutional demands in Texas and New York at the same time.
No lock picks required!
Thus, a closer analogy for the situation is putting your working $1000 TV on your front lawn, putting a “For Free” sign on it, and then pressing theft charges against the people who picked it up. May not be a perfect analogy, but it’s a heck of a lot better and way more accurate to the situation than the governor’s lock picking analogy!
(untitled comment)
What I want to know is how many of these senators would be outraged if Instagram removed a photo of someone's child having their first communion on the grounds that it "promotes" underage drinking? Couldn't it be interpreted (as flawed as it may be) that such a post would run afoul of the same policy they're asking Instagram to crack down on?
Re: Agreed. Proctorio, take notes from Sony BMG.
If promoting your moral objectives is more important than stopping hackers and maintaining the security of the computers of your users, you're doing it wrong!
Re: Re: Hmmm...
*Any federal court JUDGE
It's times like this that I wish Techdirt allowed editing comments.
Re: Hmmm...
That's also true in the US. Any federal court that would have jurisdiction for this kind of case in the US was appointed by the President of the United States at the time, and then confirmed by the US Senate. Unless you're somehow arguing POTUS and Senators are not a part of the US government, I'm not seeing your point here.
The FAA has lost it...
It takes a special kind of stupid for Techdirt to praise a letter that was co-authored by Ajit Pai.
Publishers: If it harms our bottom line, it's piracy!
I cannot fathom in what world this could be construed as a state trying to run around federal copyright law. Copyright says, more or less, it's illegal to copy a work protected by copyright. Other rights and exemptions aside, copyright says nothing about how much a copyrighted work has to sell for. This state law simply says that they can't force libraries to pay more than a fair and reasonable rate just to get the ability to lend out a digital copy of a work.
But heaven forbid a publisher can't maintain absolute monopolistic control over their market. To me, that sounds more and more like copyright misuse. Copyright might give owners exclusive rights, but copyright doesn't give the copyright holder the right to control the price for the work. I know, it's sort of implied in the distribution right, but states can regulate how high a particular good can sell for in the state, and that inherently has nothing to do with copyright. If this law is struck down by the courts on the grounds that US copyright law pre-empts state copyright laws (which this most certainly not), will people finally realize that copyright law has been distorted to the point that it's no longer defensible?
Re:
I raised a similar argument on Techdirt years ago when the EFF's suit to overturn section 1201 of the DMCA was allowed to move forward. Long story short, I believe the anti-circumvention provision, both on its face and as applied, cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny when looking at the "promote the progress of science" phrase. Why the EFF never argued that is beyond me.
Is Sohn REALLY an anti-copyright activist?
From Tillis's own letter to Biden:
There, it sounds like Sohn is advocating for some sort of DRM scheme. Tillis's comments aside, you can't be both pro-DRM and anti-copyright. Sohn may advocate for some good copyright policy (which Tillis would 100% be against), but that isn't exactly a shining example.
And as far as "may" not being sufficient, I have two things to say. First, DRM as it currently stands is failing a mission it can never succeed at. It already isn't "sufficient" at stopping piracy. What it is good at is annoying paying customers for making something they paid for an inferior product. If people depend on DRM for their livelihoods, their livelihoods are already in trouble.
Second, big copyright holders are on the cusp of getting everything they wished for. They got the EU copyright directive passed with Article 17 included. It's only a matter of time until they start lobbying for something similar to be passed in the US. And then, they still won't be happy. Even when they happily destroy the internet, will that still be short of sufficient?
I just hope the duly elected copyright maximalist in the oval office doesn't back down from supporting this candidate. He already stood up to Hollywood when they were dead-set against allowing IP exemptions for COVID-19 treatment information. And it also helps that Tillis is also from the opposite political party. So, here's hoping he'll be 2 for 2 in this regard!
SMH at this nonsense, but...
At least I'm glad to see the old legacy players are branching out and blaming other so-called ills of the modern-day internet for a film's failure instead of just focusing on the boogeyman of piracy!
Re:
Nah… The FAA is just upset that 5G deployment is interfering with their experiments to resurrect JFK Jr. from the dead!
(untitled comment)
You wouldn't steal a COVID-19 vaccine.
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