13 ms·

Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

475 points by sinak 11y ago

mindslight 11y ago
If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public, anything under digital restriction technology would be ineligible for it, since there's clearly no intention of adding to the public domain after the period is up. Of course we know it doesn't. Anyone with half a brain knew the DMCA was a bad idea when it was being "debated". Now it's accepted because we've grown accustomed to workarounds. The only way our society will be fixed is when the reality-incongruent copyright system simply collapses.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  The part of the DMCA that lets sites and ISPs host/transmit user uploads without being sued on a daily basis is pretty nice.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    I don't recall ISPs being sued [and found liable] before the DMCA. That seems akin to the phone company being sued for someone singing happy birthday over their lines. IMHO being thankful for "safe harbor" seems more like a post-rationalization than anything else. If poor definitions meant common carriers weren't actually exempt, then that could have been resolved with straightforward clarification instead of an unnecessary "compromise".
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users.
      - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        > Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users. ...in much the same way as Grokster and Napster, DMCA notwithstanding.
        jamespo 11y ago
        Grokster & Napster responded to DMCA takedowns promptly did they?
        AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        In which case was that why they lost?
        lmm 11y ago
        Post-DMCA it became a requirement to demonstrate that they were supporting copyright infringement (e.g. by showing screenshots of searching for and downloading songs that were not licensed for distribution that way in their marketing material) - see the Limewire case and the ongoing MegaUpload saga.
        AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        20th century BBS operators wore eye patches and drank rum and sailed the seas on wooden ships. The DMCA would not have saved them, so pre-DMCA cases where they lost tell you very little about what would happen to Google or Verizon without the DMCA.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        (Well, a BBS is more akin to a website, but the shifted argument is still valid if one thinks "web 2.0" is a good thing. And MAPHIA seems irrelevant due to its significant findings of editorial control) "Frena" wasn't necessarily a correct decision, especially given the extreme power imbalance between parties. Would the same decision be reached if the defendant had been a well capitalized business? Similarly, the modern inverse of an individual file sharer trying to hide behind the DMCA likely wouldn't fly. The decision certainly goes against what one would expect from general legal principles, but I suppose that's inevitable in the face of cancer like intent-free criminality. The same reasoning would have indicted him for a cd-r tossed onto his lawn.
  - jdjb 11y ago
    Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      Is the argument that copyright law was a stupid idea, or that 18th century lawmakers were stupid not to consider the law's impact on the internet?
      - Maken 11y ago
        The stupid thing is how 18th century's laws were updated on the 20th century.
      - zanny 11y ago
        200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose. Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.
        mindslight 11y ago
        The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.
        tremon 11y ago
        Actually, it was "to promote science and the useful arts". Not all creative works.
        CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  - viraptor 11y ago
    A part of that part is nice, yes. There's a different part of that part which forces them to take anything down on any valid request. That means you can request taking down any service at all if you made an "honest mistake". (for example https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150728/05285531772/wordpress-takes-stand-against-abusive-dmca-takedown-notices-others-should-pay-attention.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150728/05285531772/wordp... but google knows much more)
    - 0xcde4c3db 11y ago
      Another way the process is biased in favor of takedowns is that the counter-notification procedure is designed to thoroughly de-anonymize any individual who files one. A valid takedown notification need only contain "reasonably sufficient" contact information. A counter-notification is explicitly required to contain name, address, and phone number. I guess I can't fault the authors for failing to anticipate petty YouTube rivalries back in 1998, but it seems like the sole imagined use case was a respected corporation going after a pseudonymous warez jockey.
      - marcosdumay 11y ago
        > respected corporation What a funny concept you created.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      You don't have to take down anything because of dmca. The only thing that happens is you lose protection if the content really was infringing. So if you are really sure, you don't have to do anything.
  - MereInterest 11y ago
    Except that it does not require you to own the copyright in order to send a take-down notice. It does not even require you to have a reasonable belief that you own the copyright. All it requires is a "good faith belief".
    - deleted 11y ago
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    - deleted 11y ago
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    - acdha 11y ago
      Your first claim is untrue - you must be the owner or their authorized representative. The good faith part only applies to your claim that the copy is unauthorized – you still have to describe the work precisely, and a responsibility to be accurate. Here's a good intro: https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a-quick-guide-to-dmca-takedown-notices https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a... The law is far from ideal but a large part of the problem is the penalties for false claims are rarely enforced so there's been little corrective force against the companies which robo-spam claims. Additionally, companies like YouTube have invented additional processes which are often Kafkaesque and, since they're just arbitrary business processes, aren't subject to the normal legal process.
  - rplnt 11y ago
    Not really since it doesn't prevent abuse (in practice). edit: abuse as in fraudulent take down requests
- ergothus 11y ago
  1) The DMCA had a _lot_ of good parts about it. The alternatives were a lot worse. That some parts were bad doesn't invalidate the good parts - be careful of hating the whole thing 2) You talk of something entering the public domain...The US doesn't do that anymore (tragic smiley)
  - err4nt 11y ago
    I'd love to hear more about #1. I don't know the history of the DMCA, and as a non-American I never heard about it before I saw it in action on Youtube. What were the (subjectively worse) alternatives being talked about at the time, and what do you think the best way out of this mess from today moving forward would be? You seem to hold a unique perspective on copyright issues I haven't hear before!
    - zanny 11y ago
      During the debate of the DMCA the media lobby was bribing congress to insanity to make sharing copyright material online a felony, and that any site enabling it be liable as an accomplice and enabler. We might not be in great shape in terms of intellectual freedom, but things could have gone much worse if big media got their way.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        That's the Overton Window/door-in-the-face tactic -- introduce extreme rhetoric (felonies for uploaders) in order to get a "compromise" that's basically what they wanted all along (forced takedowns at their discretion).
    - ergothus 11y ago
      Well, a big part of the DMCA was providing "common carrier" protections for sites that were hosting content others uploaded. So, YouTube, for example, an stay alive even when people post blatantly infringing material, so long as they respond to requests to take it down. Prior to DMCA, there was the very real danger of sites being sued out of existence as being accessories. (Or sites switching to manual confirmation of everything posted before it was visible, a system that doesn't scale). And while we're at it, ISPs themselves could have been liable for any illegal activity done over the internet by one of their customers. (As a non-American, you may not be aware that the first question the average American has when something goes wrong is "who can I sue?". Sad, but tragically common) Previous laws were the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), both of which got killed in court. They focused more on (trying) to prevent pornography from reaching the delicate eyes of children, but still touched on liability issues. Alternatives to the DMCA went somewhat like Encryption talks now: INCREASE liability, give the govt lots of controls, etc. Sure the DMCA favors the copyright claimer, but if I'm a content host, you provide content, and I'm not liable. Then someone complains, and I let you know. You can dispute it, in which case I can keep it up without liability, or I can take it down. Alternatives didn't let it stay up, or would require that I prove your material isn't infringing myself, or other such things that fell even more heavily on the copyright claimant-side. I don't think my perspective is all that unique - most of us that were around for the insanity that was CDA/COPA watched the DMCA with interest and had a "Well, this is progress" attitude even though we didn't really LIKE it, it was just a step in the right direction. As for how to move forward, that's a multi-part issue: * The places where DMCA is inadequate need to chafe so people get it changed. That's been happening for years, mainly in areas of general public concern, such as cellphone unlocking, takedown abuse, and format shifting. * attitudes about "IP" need to change. That's been happening, but more slowly. I see non-legal people talking about IP as a wrapper for "this setting and associated characters" rather than "copyright/trademark/patents". News about patent trolls and related legal woes are becoming mainstream. * One attitudes shift enough, the idea that "I thought of this, I can deny anyone else similar thoughts while being heralded as a hero" that currently drives copyright/patent policy will become more nuanced and allow for the idea that the legal protections afforded are for the public benefit, not private benefit. It'll be slow going though.
- saurik 11y ago
  Wow: I love this philosophical argument you have made about when we should even allow copyright. Thank you so much for sharing this: I do a lot of work on reacting to copyright law, and this is great food for thought.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Meta/OT. For some reason this comes across just like a piece of bot written comment spam. I seriously thought you were a bot until I read you other comments.
    - josteink 11y ago
      Saurik having been a bot all this time... Now that would have been the news story of the decade :)
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public Even talking about a "balance" suggests that we should acknowledge some inherent right of copyright holders for its own sake, rather than just as a means to an end. We shouldn't. We simply have a tradeoff between two desires of the public: getting more works produced, and getting those works into the public domain (to allow reuse/remixing/etc). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm... The difference between a life+70 year copyright versus a lifetime copyright seems unlikely to lead to the creation of any additional works. The difference between a lifetime copyright and, say, a 30-year copyright, might result in some additional creation of works, but probably not as many as the works suppressed by the inability to reuse/remix 30-year-old works. So if we want to use copyright as an incentive, why do we increase it without bound, without thinking about how many more works we'll get?
  - ddingus 11y ago
    Because Disney. They drew from the works of The Brothers Grimm, and once established, refused to contribute their own works back in like kind.
itistoday2 11y ago
Look, if as per the article you need an army of lawyers to fix your tractor, that should be your first—no probably 10th—clue that your problem is not copyright law, but the idea that copyright law is something that you need to respect and obey. You are always free to withdraw your consent from having your life be ruled by what a handful of people you've never met (and whose names you don't even know) have decided about how you and your community needs to conduct itself.
- viraptor 11y ago
  > You are always free to withdraw your consent from having your life be ruled by what a handful of people you've never met No, actually you are not free to do that. You can declare it, but it doesn't change anything in practice.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    > No, actually you are not free to do that. You can declare it, but it doesn't change anything in practice. Sure you are. People do it all the time.
    - itistoday2 11y ago
      lol @ HN downvoters who can't handle reality. That's OK, I understand and respect that you've chosen to subject yourself to rules you don't like. Just less whining and complaining, OK?
      - derekp7 11y ago
        Could you clarify what your thought is? Are you basically suggesting civil disobedience as a form of protest? That has had some effect in the past, however it took a large coordinated effort, plus it took enough people from outside the movements to recognize the non-moral nature of the laws that were being protested, and finally it also caused a lot of sacrifice for those conducting the civil disobedience.
deleted 11y ago
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ec109685 11y ago
Feels like the best approach is to encourage farmers to boycot at least one of the major tractor providers until these restrictions are removed. No new laws or lawsuits needed -- just some collective action.
- fanquake 11y ago
  Which provider do you propose we boycott, and which one do we use in the mean time? JohnDeere, CASE, New Holland etc dominate the industry, and no farmer is going to (let alone can afford to) stop using their current equipment, and spend millions of dollars (it would easily cost us this much) buying different brand machinery. Let alone dealing with the hassles that come with swapping from one stream of ag software to another. What's most likely to happen is farmers will just keep modifying their machinery at will. It's already common place to chip your engine, or to physically modify machines/implements to improve performance or your production methods. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
  - ec109685 11y ago
    Perhaps delay purchases for a year? I didn't realize switching manufacturers wasn't possible.
  - staticint 11y ago
    Case IH and New Holland are both under the CNH (Fiat) umbrella, so at least you don't have to choose between them.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I think what the parent was suggesting is an arbitrary boycott for all future purchases. In other words, if they all use the same tactics, then make an example out of one to scare the others. It sounds vindictive and harsh, until you consider that's exactly how the legal system is used all the time.
    - LordKano 11y ago
      In the 1990s, when Smith and Wesson made a deal with the Clinton Administration, gun buyers and sellers did something similar. We stopped buying Smith and Wesson firearms and their profits dropped like a stone. They thought that the increased business from the Federal government would make up for lost civilian sales but those Federal sales weren't what they were expecting and the civilian boycott was bigger than they expected. It got so bad for the company that the owners had to sell it to get out from under the deal.
oneJob 11y ago
Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could. I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old, and in with the new. Copyright law is old, it is administered by old people, and it is kept in place by the old guard. Open source hardware, distributed open source software development, 3D printing, crowd funding, and on and on, these are all new. You can attempt to evolve (fix) the old rules, you'll fail. It seems to me to be a safer bet to simply begin playing the new game, even though the rules are not totally worked out yet, even though people say it isn't legit, even though there are no referees to call foul or panel of judges to provide approval and award medals. Out with the old, and in with the new.
- zanny 11y ago
  The old have lots of money and political influence, and a money making supermachine (look at Disney's copyright lobby, and then look at their box office revenue this year, and then consider they own pretty much a huge portion of all entertainment period) to fund perpetual bribery of politicians to maintain or further enact their will (see: TPP). This is not something that will organically happen in our lifetimes. If it happens in the next fifty years, it will be a divisive war, not a slow decline. And at this moment there are four camps - the ultrarich perpetuating the system for profit, the apathetic masses that make up 99% of the population who do not care, do not know, or do not give a damn, the portion who defend the old guard on false pretenses that because this is the way it is this must be the only way that works and thus the best way, and lastly, in a tiny fraction of a fraction of people, who do not have the power or influence to push reality onto the rest, are those who fight against draconian IP policy. It will take a lot more involvement and effort to actually reverse the tide. If any of the new age free thought IP out there ever became a tangible threat to the established media empire, it would be swallowed up instantly for the time being. And those in power are not unaware - there is a reason these companies are spending a large portion of their war chests buying patents and IP themselves, to produce an endless morass of bullshit ownership of ideas to drown anyone who threatens them in.
jimmytucson 11y ago
Seems like somebody does a "story" on this every 9 months or so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211
- nitrogen 11y ago
  It will continue being a story until copyright law is corrected.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    It's going to be quite a while, if ever. I can sort of see the internet generation loosening copyright a little bit here and there, but then I can also see them not doing that.
osoti 11y ago
Famous Houses that can be Purchased....Must read http://goo.gl/6gbKRR http://goo.gl/6gbKRR
Christan 11y ago
Famous Houses that can be Purchased..amazing http://goo.gl/Syl7Gg http://goo.gl/Syl7Gg
pdkl95 11y ago
> Turns out, copyright law is the thing that was broken all along. While copyright law is being used as a legal wedge, the problem isn't just copyright. These arguments are often framed as being about copyright because obscures the other half of the problem, which is how these arguments ignore doctrine of first sale[1]. Case law has been confusing in this area, with cases such as Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc supporting the power grab where "licensing" overrules first sale. Other cases such as UMG v. Augusto reaffirmed that the original author's rights ended at the first sale. In our future that obviously includes software in many, many products, we either strongly reaffirm the right of first sale or we give up ownership[2] to whomever owns the software inside our products. The DMCA is only part of the problem; this attack on first sale - an attack on the open exchange of culture[4] - has been going on a lot longer than the digital computer has existed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [2] obviously, the actual copying of the software - instead of repair, resale, or other non-copying[3] uses [3] if time-shifting is a valid use for betamax (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.), then any incidental, temporary copies of software that art part of normal use is fair use. The nonsense that a license is needed because a copy is made in RAM is patent nonsense. [4] https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_stran...
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  I'm really with you on this one - getting angry at Copyright's protections being used as a weapon against First Sale is a distracting tangent. Even here with a strong tech audience, and plenty of back-stories and examples even non-technical folks can comprehend, as in iTunes/iBook/etc is selling a licence of a copy and can revoke that copy under select circumstances, IIRC. If I was to come up with an comparable situation, I think it would be people demanding a "No Smoking on the Beach!" ordinance because of the cigarette butts littering the beach, when there's already a law against littering on the beach, but isn't being properly enforced.
rubberstamp 11y ago
People should have the right to tinker with whatever they bought.Telling them only they can, and not an expert 3rd party, make the change is ridiculous as not everyone is a rocket scientist in the respective fields. If we buy car/tractor/phone/whatever, we should be able to modify it(its hw/sw) however we want. I fail to understand how it breaks copyright. No one is copying and distributing anything. Copyright law should be to protect IP theft. Fix the law instead of having a stupid meeting for exceptions every 3 years. Or copyright yourselves into stone age
- PietdeVries 11y ago
  So if you have the right to modify the software in a tractor, doesn't that imply that you have the right to modify the software that Microsoft is selling as well? The fact that the software we're discussing here is installed on a tractor rather than a PC shouldn't make much of a difference?
  - flohofwoe 11y ago
    Of course I should be allowed to modify the software that Microsoft is selling as long as I am not redistributing the modified software. I paid for, and thus own both the software and the device that the software is running on, so why shouldn't I be allowed to do whatever the hell I want with it? End User License Agreements be damned.
    - annnnd 11y ago
      Exactly. It shouldn't even be legal to use such EULA.
    - rakoo 11y ago
      > I paid for, and thus own both the software and the device that the software is running on Wrong. What defines owning is not whether you paid or not, but the type of contract you made. Moreover, you didn't pay for Windows; you paid for a license of Windows. This license specifically says what you are and what you are not allowed to do with the software, and among others, tinkering with is is not part of what you are allowed to do.
ck2 11y ago
I'm curious why freedom-to-tinker is not considered free-expression in the USA, clear and simple. I mean we pride ourselves on it. As long as the item is purchased (owned) and it is for personal use and warranties are clearly voided, what business is it otherwise to the manufacturer after they make the sale. Of course they can get around this by never actually selling the tractor and only leasing it to farmers, then the farmers are screwed because they don't own it - until Chinese clones show up.
- deleted 11y ago
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- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  Our government does not take pride in it. People who can fix things or build things themselves are a danger to corporate interests, so hackers are considered to be dangerous criminals. Nobody gives a fuck if that means we're destroying our own future, because that's our children's problem.
flohofwoe 11y ago
Somewhat related, there's an interesting theory that the Germany industry only advanced so fast in the 19th century because German publishers deliberately ignored that new-fangled copyright thing, thus allowing information to spread fast and cheap, while the obedience of copyright stifled progress in Great Britain: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-l...
Aandre 11y ago
Lionel Messi wins 5th time Ballon d’Or trophy http://goo.gl/D5rX2A http://goo.gl/D5rX2A
Avenger42 11y ago
Hmmm... > By the time we got an exemption to repair tractors, the Copyright Office said that only the farmer, and not her mechanic, could tinker with the software. So this part of the issue is that you can only tinker with machines you own yourself? Then how about this: 1) Farmer sells tractor to mechanic for $1. 2) Mechanic repairs tractor. 3) Mechanic sells tractor to farmer for $1 + cost of repairs.

475 points by sinak 11y ago

If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public, anything under digital restriction technology would be ineligible for it, since there's clearly no intention of adding to the public domain after the period is up. Of course we know it doesn't. Anyone with half a brain knew the DMCA was a bad idea when it was being "debated". Now it's accepted because we've grown accustomed to workarounds. The only way our society will be fixed is when the reality-incongruent copyright system simply collapses.

dangrossman 11y ago
The part of the DMCA that lets sites and ISPs host/transmit user uploads without being sued on a daily basis is pretty nice.
- mindslight 11y ago
  I don't recall ISPs being sued [and found liable] before the DMCA. That seems akin to the phone company being sued for someone singing happy birthday over their lines. IMHO being thankful for "safe harbor" seems more like a post-rationalization than anything else. If poor definitions meant common carriers weren't actually exempt, then that could have been resolved with straightforward clarification instead of an unnecessary "compromise".
  - dangrossman 11y ago
    Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users. ...in much the same way as Grokster and Napster, DMCA notwithstanding.
      - jamespo 11y ago
        Grokster & Napster responded to DMCA takedowns promptly did they?
        AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        In which case was that why they lost?
      - lmm 11y ago
        Post-DMCA it became a requirement to demonstrate that they were supporting copyright infringement (e.g. by showing screenshots of searching for and downloading songs that were not licensed for distribution that way in their marketing material) - see the Limewire case and the ongoing MegaUpload saga.
        AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        20th century BBS operators wore eye patches and drank rum and sailed the seas on wooden ships. The DMCA would not have saved them, so pre-DMCA cases where they lost tell you very little about what would happen to Google or Verizon without the DMCA.
    - mindslight 11y ago
      (Well, a BBS is more akin to a website, but the shifted argument is still valid if one thinks "web 2.0" is a good thing. And MAPHIA seems irrelevant due to its significant findings of editorial control) "Frena" wasn't necessarily a correct decision, especially given the extreme power imbalance between parties. Would the same decision be reached if the defendant had been a well capitalized business? Similarly, the modern inverse of an individual file sharer trying to hide behind the DMCA likely wouldn't fly. The decision certainly goes against what one would expect from general legal principles, but I suppose that's inevitable in the face of cancer like intent-free criminality. The same reasoning would have indicted him for a cd-r tossed onto his lawn.
- jdjb 11y ago
  Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.
  - dangrossman 11y ago
    Is the argument that copyright law was a stupid idea, or that 18th century lawmakers were stupid not to consider the law's impact on the internet?
    - Maken 11y ago
      The stupid thing is how 18th century's laws were updated on the 20th century.
    - zanny 11y ago
      200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose. Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.
        tremon 11y ago
        Actually, it was "to promote science and the useful arts". Not all creative works.
        CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
- viraptor 11y ago
  A part of that part is nice, yes. There's a different part of that part which forces them to take anything down on any valid request. That means you can request taking down any service at all if you made an "honest mistake". (for example https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150728/05285531772/wordpress-takes-stand-against-abusive-dmca-takedown-notices-others-should-pay-attention.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150728/05285531772/wordp... but google knows much more)
  - 0xcde4c3db 11y ago
    Another way the process is biased in favor of takedowns is that the counter-notification procedure is designed to thoroughly de-anonymize any individual who files one. A valid takedown notification need only contain "reasonably sufficient" contact information. A counter-notification is explicitly required to contain name, address, and phone number. I guess I can't fault the authors for failing to anticipate petty YouTube rivalries back in 1998, but it seems like the sole imagined use case was a respected corporation going after a pseudonymous warez jockey.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      > respected corporation What a funny concept you created.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    You don't have to take down anything because of dmca. The only thing that happens is you lose protection if the content really was infringing. So if you are really sure, you don't have to do anything.
- MereInterest 11y ago
  Except that it does not require you to own the copyright in order to send a take-down notice. It does not even require you to have a reasonable belief that you own the copyright. All it requires is a "good faith belief".
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - deleted 11y ago
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  - acdha 11y ago
    Your first claim is untrue - you must be the owner or their authorized representative. The good faith part only applies to your claim that the copy is unauthorized – you still have to describe the work precisely, and a responsibility to be accurate. Here's a good intro: https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a-quick-guide-to-dmca-takedown-notices https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a... The law is far from ideal but a large part of the problem is the penalties for false claims are rarely enforced so there's been little corrective force against the companies which robo-spam claims. Additionally, companies like YouTube have invented additional processes which are often Kafkaesque and, since they're just arbitrary business processes, aren't subject to the normal legal process.
- rplnt 11y ago
  Not really since it doesn't prevent abuse (in practice). edit: abuse as in fraudulent take down requests
ergothus 11y ago
1) The DMCA had a _lot_ of good parts about it. The alternatives were a lot worse. That some parts were bad doesn't invalidate the good parts - be careful of hating the whole thing 2) You talk of something entering the public domain...The US doesn't do that anymore (tragic smiley)
- err4nt 11y ago
  I'd love to hear more about #1. I don't know the history of the DMCA, and as a non-American I never heard about it before I saw it in action on Youtube. What were the (subjectively worse) alternatives being talked about at the time, and what do you think the best way out of this mess from today moving forward would be? You seem to hold a unique perspective on copyright issues I haven't hear before!
  - zanny 11y ago
    During the debate of the DMCA the media lobby was bribing congress to insanity to make sharing copyright material online a felony, and that any site enabling it be liable as an accomplice and enabler. We might not be in great shape in terms of intellectual freedom, but things could have gone much worse if big media got their way.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      That's the Overton Window/door-in-the-face tactic -- introduce extreme rhetoric (felonies for uploaders) in order to get a "compromise" that's basically what they wanted all along (forced takedowns at their discretion).
  - ergothus 11y ago
    Well, a big part of the DMCA was providing "common carrier" protections for sites that were hosting content others uploaded. So, YouTube, for example, an stay alive even when people post blatantly infringing material, so long as they respond to requests to take it down. Prior to DMCA, there was the very real danger of sites being sued out of existence as being accessories. (Or sites switching to manual confirmation of everything posted before it was visible, a system that doesn't scale). And while we're at it, ISPs themselves could have been liable for any illegal activity done over the internet by one of their customers. (As a non-American, you may not be aware that the first question the average American has when something goes wrong is "who can I sue?". Sad, but tragically common) Previous laws were the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), both of which got killed in court. They focused more on (trying) to prevent pornography from reaching the delicate eyes of children, but still touched on liability issues. Alternatives to the DMCA went somewhat like Encryption talks now: INCREASE liability, give the govt lots of controls, etc. Sure the DMCA favors the copyright claimer, but if I'm a content host, you provide content, and I'm not liable. Then someone complains, and I let you know. You can dispute it, in which case I can keep it up without liability, or I can take it down. Alternatives didn't let it stay up, or would require that I prove your material isn't infringing myself, or other such things that fell even more heavily on the copyright claimant-side. I don't think my perspective is all that unique - most of us that were around for the insanity that was CDA/COPA watched the DMCA with interest and had a "Well, this is progress" attitude even though we didn't really LIKE it, it was just a step in the right direction. As for how to move forward, that's a multi-part issue: * The places where DMCA is inadequate need to chafe so people get it changed. That's been happening for years, mainly in areas of general public concern, such as cellphone unlocking, takedown abuse, and format shifting. * attitudes about "IP" need to change. That's been happening, but more slowly. I see non-legal people talking about IP as a wrapper for "this setting and associated characters" rather than "copyright/trademark/patents". News about patent trolls and related legal woes are becoming mainstream. * One attitudes shift enough, the idea that "I thought of this, I can deny anyone else similar thoughts while being heralded as a hero" that currently drives copyright/patent policy will become more nuanced and allow for the idea that the legal protections afforded are for the public benefit, not private benefit. It'll be slow going though.
saurik 11y ago
Wow: I love this philosophical argument you have made about when we should even allow copyright. Thank you so much for sharing this: I do a lot of work on reacting to copyright law, and this is great food for thought.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Meta/OT. For some reason this comes across just like a piece of bot written comment spam. I seriously thought you were a bot until I read you other comments.
  - josteink 11y ago
    Saurik having been a bot all this time... Now that would have been the news story of the decade :)
JoshTriplett 11y ago
> If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public Even talking about a "balance" suggests that we should acknowledge some inherent right of copyright holders for its own sake, rather than just as a means to an end. We shouldn't. We simply have a tradeoff between two desires of the public: getting more works produced, and getting those works into the public domain (to allow reuse/remixing/etc). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm... The difference between a life+70 year copyright versus a lifetime copyright seems unlikely to lead to the creation of any additional works. The difference between a lifetime copyright and, say, a 30-year copyright, might result in some additional creation of works, but probably not as many as the works suppressed by the inability to reuse/remix 30-year-old works. So if we want to use copyright as an incentive, why do we increase it without bound, without thinking about how many more works we'll get?
- ddingus 11y ago
  Because Disney. They drew from the works of The Brothers Grimm, and once established, refused to contribute their own works back in like kind.

itistoday2 11y ago

Look, if as per the article you need an army of lawyers to fix your tractor, that should be your first—no probably 10th—clue that your problem is not copyright law, but the idea that copyright law is something that you need to respect and obey. You are always free to withdraw your consent from having your life be ruled by what a handful of people you've never met (and whose names you don't even know) have decided about how you and your community needs to conduct itself.

viraptor 11y ago
> You are always free to withdraw your consent from having your life be ruled by what a handful of people you've never met No, actually you are not free to do that. You can declare it, but it doesn't change anything in practice.
- itistoday2 11y ago
  > No, actually you are not free to do that. You can declare it, but it doesn't change anything in practice. Sure you are. People do it all the time.
  - itistoday2 11y ago
    lol @ HN downvoters who can't handle reality. That's OK, I understand and respect that you've chosen to subject yourself to rules you don't like. Just less whining and complaining, OK?
    - derekp7 11y ago
      Could you clarify what your thought is? Are you basically suggesting civil disobedience as a form of protest? That has had some effect in the past, however it took a large coordinated effort, plus it took enough people from outside the movements to recognize the non-moral nature of the laws that were being protested, and finally it also caused a lot of sacrifice for those conducting the civil disobedience.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ec109685 11y ago

Feels like the best approach is to encourage farmers to boycot at least one of the major tractor providers until these restrictions are removed. No new laws or lawsuits needed -- just some collective action.

fanquake 11y ago
Which provider do you propose we boycott, and which one do we use in the mean time? JohnDeere, CASE, New Holland etc dominate the industry, and no farmer is going to (let alone can afford to) stop using their current equipment, and spend millions of dollars (it would easily cost us this much) buying different brand machinery. Let alone dealing with the hassles that come with swapping from one stream of ag software to another. What's most likely to happen is farmers will just keep modifying their machinery at will. It's already common place to chip your engine, or to physically modify machines/implements to improve performance or your production methods. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
- ec109685 11y ago
  Perhaps delay purchases for a year? I didn't realize switching manufacturers wasn't possible.
- staticint 11y ago
  Case IH and New Holland are both under the CNH (Fiat) umbrella, so at least you don't have to choose between them.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I think what the parent was suggesting is an arbitrary boycott for all future purchases. In other words, if they all use the same tactics, then make an example out of one to scare the others. It sounds vindictive and harsh, until you consider that's exactly how the legal system is used all the time.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    In the 1990s, when Smith and Wesson made a deal with the Clinton Administration, gun buyers and sellers did something similar. We stopped buying Smith and Wesson firearms and their profits dropped like a stone. They thought that the increased business from the Federal government would make up for lost civilian sales but those Federal sales weren't what they were expecting and the civilian boycott was bigger than they expected. It got so bad for the company that the owners had to sell it to get out from under the deal.

oneJob 11y ago

Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could. I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old, and in with the new. Copyright law is old, it is administered by old people, and it is kept in place by the old guard. Open source hardware, distributed open source software development, 3D printing, crowd funding, and on and on, these are all new. You can attempt to evolve (fix) the old rules, you'll fail. It seems to me to be a safer bet to simply begin playing the new game, even though the rules are not totally worked out yet, even though people say it isn't legit, even though there are no referees to call foul or panel of judges to provide approval and award medals. Out with the old, and in with the new.

zanny 11y ago
The old have lots of money and political influence, and a money making supermachine (look at Disney's copyright lobby, and then look at their box office revenue this year, and then consider they own pretty much a huge portion of all entertainment period) to fund perpetual bribery of politicians to maintain or further enact their will (see: TPP). This is not something that will organically happen in our lifetimes. If it happens in the next fifty years, it will be a divisive war, not a slow decline. And at this moment there are four camps - the ultrarich perpetuating the system for profit, the apathetic masses that make up 99% of the population who do not care, do not know, or do not give a damn, the portion who defend the old guard on false pretenses that because this is the way it is this must be the only way that works and thus the best way, and lastly, in a tiny fraction of a fraction of people, who do not have the power or influence to push reality onto the rest, are those who fight against draconian IP policy. It will take a lot more involvement and effort to actually reverse the tide. If any of the new age free thought IP out there ever became a tangible threat to the established media empire, it would be swallowed up instantly for the time being. And those in power are not unaware - there is a reason these companies are spending a large portion of their war chests buying patents and IP themselves, to produce an endless morass of bullshit ownership of ideas to drown anyone who threatens them in.

jimmytucson 11y ago

Seems like somebody does a "story" on this every 9 months or so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211

nitrogen 11y ago
It will continue being a story until copyright law is corrected.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  It's going to be quite a while, if ever. I can sort of see the internet generation loosening copyright a little bit here and there, but then I can also see them not doing that.

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Christan 11y ago

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pdkl95 11y ago

> Turns out, copyright law is the thing that was broken all along. While copyright law is being used as a legal wedge, the problem isn't just copyright. These arguments are often framed as being about copyright because obscures the other half of the problem, which is how these arguments ignore doctrine of first sale[1]. Case law has been confusing in this area, with cases such as Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc supporting the power grab where "licensing" overrules first sale. Other cases such as UMG v. Augusto reaffirmed that the original author's rights ended at the first sale. In our future that obviously includes software in many, many products, we either strongly reaffirm the right of first sale or we give up ownership[2] to whomever owns the software inside our products. The DMCA is only part of the problem; this attack on first sale - an attack on the open exchange of culture[4] - has been going on a lot longer than the digital computer has existed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [2] obviously, the actual copying of the software - instead of repair, resale, or other non-copying[3] uses [3] if time-shifting is a valid use for betamax (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.), then any incidental, temporary copies of software that art part of normal use is fair use. The nonsense that a license is needed because a copy is made in RAM is patent nonsense. [4] https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_stran...

6stringmerc 11y ago
I'm really with you on this one - getting angry at Copyright's protections being used as a weapon against First Sale is a distracting tangent. Even here with a strong tech audience, and plenty of back-stories and examples even non-technical folks can comprehend, as in iTunes/iBook/etc is selling a licence of a copy and can revoke that copy under select circumstances, IIRC. If I was to come up with an comparable situation, I think it would be people demanding a "No Smoking on the Beach!" ordinance because of the cigarette butts littering the beach, when there's already a law against littering on the beach, but isn't being properly enforced.

rubberstamp 11y ago

People should have the right to tinker with whatever they bought.Telling them only they can, and not an expert 3rd party, make the change is ridiculous as not everyone is a rocket scientist in the respective fields. If we buy car/tractor/phone/whatever, we should be able to modify it(its hw/sw) however we want. I fail to understand how it breaks copyright. No one is copying and distributing anything. Copyright law should be to protect IP theft. Fix the law instead of having a stupid meeting for exceptions every 3 years. Or copyright yourselves into stone age

PietdeVries 11y ago
So if you have the right to modify the software in a tractor, doesn't that imply that you have the right to modify the software that Microsoft is selling as well? The fact that the software we're discussing here is installed on a tractor rather than a PC shouldn't make much of a difference?
- flohofwoe 11y ago
  Of course I should be allowed to modify the software that Microsoft is selling as long as I am not redistributing the modified software. I paid for, and thus own both the software and the device that the software is running on, so why shouldn't I be allowed to do whatever the hell I want with it? End User License Agreements be damned.
  - annnnd 11y ago
    Exactly. It shouldn't even be legal to use such EULA.
  - rakoo 11y ago
    > I paid for, and thus own both the software and the device that the software is running on Wrong. What defines owning is not whether you paid or not, but the type of contract you made. Moreover, you didn't pay for Windows; you paid for a license of Windows. This license specifically says what you are and what you are not allowed to do with the software, and among others, tinkering with is is not part of what you are allowed to do.

ck2 11y ago

I'm curious why freedom-to-tinker is not considered free-expression in the USA, clear and simple. I mean we pride ourselves on it. As long as the item is purchased (owned) and it is for personal use and warranties are clearly voided, what business is it otherwise to the manufacturer after they make the sale. Of course they can get around this by never actually selling the tractor and only leasing it to farmers, then the farmers are screwed because they don't own it - until Chinese clones show up.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
Our government does not take pride in it. People who can fix things or build things themselves are a danger to corporate interests, so hackers are considered to be dangerous criminals. Nobody gives a fuck if that means we're destroying our own future, because that's our children's problem.

flohofwoe 11y ago

Somewhat related, there's an interesting theory that the Germany industry only advanced so fast in the 19th century because German publishers deliberately ignored that new-fangled copyright thing, thus allowing information to spread fast and cheap, while the obedience of copyright stifled progress in Great Britain: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-l...

Aandre 11y ago

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Avenger42 11y ago

Hmmm... > By the time we got an exemption to repair tractors, the Copyright Office said that only the farmer, and not her mechanic, could tinker with the software. So this part of the issue is that you can only tinker with machines you own yourself? Then how about this: 1) Farmer sells tractor to mechanic for $1. 2) Mechanic repairs tractor. 3) Mechanic sells tractor to farmer for $1 + cost of repairs.