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> Another way to look at it: if you own a music video, do you have a license for the song that the music video is a music video of? I would argue you do—you hav

by danso 7y ago

> Another way to look at it: if you own a music video, do you have a license for the song that the music video is a music video of? I would argue you do—you have to have that license, to be able to have a license for the MV, just like you have to own licenses to all the tracks on an album, to be able to claim to have a license for listening to the album. This analogy isn't going to clarify things. First of all, I don't think it's necessary to bring opinion and speculation into this, e.g. "I would argue you do", if there is actual law here. So with music videos and songs, I would be very surprised if owning a music video automatically and simply granted you a license to the song. Ignoring the fact that videos frequently feature tracks specifically cut and rearranged for video (Michael Jackson is an obvious example), I think the main issue is that songs and videos have multiple copyright holders, and it's too complicated to be a relevant analogy. IANAL, but if I were to record a high-quality video of a live band performance, the video recording is my property. I can take it home, rewatch it, etc. But I think it's obvious that I don't in any way "own" the copyright to the song I filmed. I can't extract the audio, burn it a CD, and sell it. And I'm pretty sure I would have very few commercial rights to distribute the video itself, if the band members never signed modeling contracts. > I assume, if they did, this argument went about as well as arguing you can’t record music off the radio... OK, I don't think this is terribly important to debate, but are you implying that settled law says people have the right to record off the radio? That's definitely not my (amateur) understanding. > In the case of a text book, it’s not one that’s literally there in bits; but since it can be extracted with 100% fidelity, the information that component is made up of is clearly there, in the thing you bought. This will sound like a quibble but I think it's fundamentally important to point out: text from an audiobook cannot be "extracted with 100% fidelity". Whether it's 100% fidelity or much worse isn't even the point. What you assert simply isn't so. But I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if you find an audiobook from which you've extracted all the text content, perfectly, as well as supplementary text like footnotes, indices, headers, illustrations, and captions, and of course, page numbers. It goes without saying that visual data like layout and typography are also components of book with value, but I think you get my point.

cortesoft 7y ago
> I can't extract the audio, burn it a CD, and sell it. No, but what this is about is saying "am I allowed to listen to just the music without also watching the video? Can I play it on my phone with the screen off? Or do I have to pay extra to do that?"
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Yes, you can play it on your phone with the screen off. You're still playing the video and processing the graphical data. What would not be permissible is stripping the audio track from the video to play separately. That would generally be copyright infringement and there are limited circumstances under which a fair use defense would apply.
  - derefr 7y ago
    To be clear, if you turn off a device's display when it's playing a video, it usually stops decoding the video stream from the container, because it knows the destination video framebuffer isn't visible. It's doing the same thing you're talking about—"stripping the audio track from the video to play separately"—just without writing down the result. You can get the same effect without turning off your screen if you tell e.g. VLC to stream only the audio from a network video stream. All VLC will do, in that case, is to request only the audio segments of the stream, and not request any of the video segments. Consider this another way: is a web browser infringing a website's copyright when it makes a "derivative work" of the page by blocking the ads on it? Or, hopefully even clearer: is a CD player infringing the CD's copyright when it applies an EQ preset to the audio as it plays it? There's a very fine point I'm trying to gesture at here—the point where something goes from being "the creation of an infringing derivative work" to "the way that a device which reproduces the work for the purpose of consumption, chooses to do that reproduction."
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      To be clear, you're still processing the same file. You're just not processing all of it for the sake of efficiency. If you want to get into the very technical details, then it depends very heavily on what type of codec you're using since some codecs interleave video and audio data, while modern codecs generally don't (and in fact require separate audio and video codecs). Consider this another way: is a web browser infringing a website's copyright when it makes a "derivative work" of the page by blocking the ads on it? Yes, under copyright law, since the article and the page are separate copyrightable works. The question is does a fair use exception apply? (For something like reader mode, the answer is likely yes, but it gets more complicated for an ad-blocker that just removes ads while retaining other elements of the page.) Or, hopefully even clearer: is a CD player infringing the CD's copyright when it applies an EQ preset to the audio as it plays it? No, the CD player isn't a person and isn't infringing anything. The user of the CD player is creating a derivative work by applying an EQ. An analogous case (several actually) discusses this point with respect to running computer software. Courts ruled that the copy was necessary for a user to "enjoy" (make use of) their license. And with respect to the EQ, a fair use exception would apply. And even if it didn't, then a compulsory license would apply (in the US at least), and you would owe the song creator a fraction of a fraction of a penny for every performance. There's a very fine point I'm trying to gesture at here—the point where something goes from being "the creation of an infringing derivative work" to "the way that a device which reproduces the work for the purpose of consumption, chooses to do that reproduction." No, it's actually a very bright line. Either you're working with the original, or you're working with a derivative work. The question is whether your use of the derivative work you've created is covered by the license, or by fair use.

by danso 7y ago

cortesoft 7y ago

> I can't extract the audio, burn it a CD, and sell it. No, but what this is about is saying "am I allowed to listen to just the music without also watching the video? Can I play it on my phone with the screen off? Or do I have to pay extra to do that?"

gamblor956 7y ago
Yes, you can play it on your phone with the screen off. You're still playing the video and processing the graphical data. What would not be permissible is stripping the audio track from the video to play separately. That would generally be copyright infringement and there are limited circumstances under which a fair use defense would apply.
- derefr 7y ago
  To be clear, if you turn off a device's display when it's playing a video, it usually stops decoding the video stream from the container, because it knows the destination video framebuffer isn't visible. It's doing the same thing you're talking about—"stripping the audio track from the video to play separately"—just without writing down the result. You can get the same effect without turning off your screen if you tell e.g. VLC to stream only the audio from a network video stream. All VLC will do, in that case, is to request only the audio segments of the stream, and not request any of the video segments. Consider this another way: is a web browser infringing a website's copyright when it makes a "derivative work" of the page by blocking the ads on it? Or, hopefully even clearer: is a CD player infringing the CD's copyright when it applies an EQ preset to the audio as it plays it? There's a very fine point I'm trying to gesture at here—the point where something goes from being "the creation of an infringing derivative work" to "the way that a device which reproduces the work for the purpose of consumption, chooses to do that reproduction."
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    To be clear, you're still processing the same file. You're just not processing all of it for the sake of efficiency. If you want to get into the very technical details, then it depends very heavily on what type of codec you're using since some codecs interleave video and audio data, while modern codecs generally don't (and in fact require separate audio and video codecs). Consider this another way: is a web browser infringing a website's copyright when it makes a "derivative work" of the page by blocking the ads on it? Yes, under copyright law, since the article and the page are separate copyrightable works. The question is does a fair use exception apply? (For something like reader mode, the answer is likely yes, but it gets more complicated for an ad-blocker that just removes ads while retaining other elements of the page.) Or, hopefully even clearer: is a CD player infringing the CD's copyright when it applies an EQ preset to the audio as it plays it? No, the CD player isn't a person and isn't infringing anything. The user of the CD player is creating a derivative work by applying an EQ. An analogous case (several actually) discusses this point with respect to running computer software. Courts ruled that the copy was necessary for a user to "enjoy" (make use of) their license. And with respect to the EQ, a fair use exception would apply. And even if it didn't, then a compulsory license would apply (in the US at least), and you would owe the song creator a fraction of a fraction of a penny for every performance. There's a very fine point I'm trying to gesture at here—the point where something goes from being "the creation of an infringing derivative work" to "the way that a device which reproduces the work for the purpose of consumption, chooses to do that reproduction." No, it's actually a very bright line. Either you're working with the original, or you're working with a derivative work. The question is whether your use of the derivative work you've created is covered by the license, or by fair use.