3 ms·

Copyright forbids specific actions (reproduction), it doesn’t let the publisher set arbitrary terms on my consumption and use of the text.

nostrademons 7y ago
It's more that copyright defines certain rights (hence the name) that are owned initially by the author of the work and then may be transferred or granted to other parties for compensation. The exact rights specified are defined by statute, and then case law provides specific precedent for what it means. So again, consult a lawyer. But for a concrete example - one of the exclusive rights bestowed by copyright is the right of reproduction. (It's not the only one, BTW: performance is another one specific enumerated, as is distribution, as is creating derivative works.) What does that mean? Well, courts have ruled that if you take an exact digital copy of a work, as sold to the public, and publish it for free on a torrent site, that's infringement. They've also ruled that there are various "fair use" exceptions that give implicit rights to the general public even when a work is under copyright. If you quote a sentence from a 300-page book to support a point in an academic paper, that's not infringing. Where's the boundary? Consult a lawyer, because there's lots of case law. I remember that when I was at Google, there was a big debate over how big the snippets (the little summaries of text on the results page could be). 2 sentences was fine. A paragraph was dodgy. Showing the entire page was a big no-no. Showing the entire page when the user clicks on "cached" was okay when I was there (I don't remember what the justification was for that), but that option has since disappeared, so I wonder if they ran into problems. They got around it with AMP, which requires explicit opt-in from publishers and so has an explicit consent. It's not all that different from regular property rights in that regard. You own land. What does that mean? Well, normally it means that you can build a house on it - but not if you have a conservation easement on the land, or if local zoning codes forbid the type of dwelling you want. It normally means you have the right to keep other people off your land - except that if your property completely surrounds somebody else's property and cuts them off from a public street, you're required to grant them an easement so that they can cross your land to get to their dwelling. There are other sorts of easements you can grant, too, which are all ways of either granting other people some of the rights associated with your property (but not all of them) or restricting yourself from having some of those rights.

nostrademons 7y ago

It's more that copyright defines certain rights (hence the name) that are owned initially by the author of the work and then may be transferred or granted to other parties for compensation. The exact rights specified are defined by statute, and then case law provides specific precedent for what it means. So again, consult a lawyer. But for a concrete example - one of the exclusive rights bestowed by copyright is the right of reproduction. (It's not the only one, BTW: performance is another one specific enumerated, as is distribution, as is creating derivative works.) What does that mean? Well, courts have ruled that if you take an exact digital copy of a work, as sold to the public, and publish it for free on a torrent site, that's infringement. They've also ruled that there are various "fair use" exceptions that give implicit rights to the general public even when a work is under copyright. If you quote a sentence from a 300-page book to support a point in an academic paper, that's not infringing. Where's the boundary? Consult a lawyer, because there's lots of case law. I remember that when I was at Google, there was a big debate over how big the snippets (the little summaries of text on the results page could be). 2 sentences was fine. A paragraph was dodgy. Showing the entire page was a big no-no. Showing the entire page when the user clicks on "cached" was okay when I was there (I don't remember what the justification was for that), but that option has since disappeared, so I wonder if they ran into problems. They got around it with AMP, which requires explicit opt-in from publishers and so has an explicit consent. It's not all that different from regular property rights in that regard. You own land. What does that mean? Well, normally it means that you can build a house on it - but not if you have a conservation easement on the land, or if local zoning codes forbid the type of dwelling you want. It normally means you have the right to keep other people off your land - except that if your property completely surrounds somebody else's property and cuts them off from a public street, you're required to grant them an easement so that they can cross your land to get to their dwelling. There are other sorts of easements you can grant, too, which are all ways of either granting other people some of the rights associated with your property (but not all of them) or restricting yourself from having some of those rights.