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About 2: It's funny you cite the DMCA of all things as an example of "good" copyright protection. The DMCA is almost as bad a clusterfuck of a legislation as S

About 2: It's funny you cite the DMCA of all things as an example of "good" copyright protection. The DMCA is almost as bad a clusterfuck of a legislation as SOPA, if on a much smaller scale. DMCA takedowns are often without due process either (just look at all the mistaken and automated takedowns on Youtube, or the fact that it's largely abused to try to gain an edge over competitors) and safe havens are a broken concept in the first place. Also, as far as I am aware the DMCA places the burden of proof on the receiver of the takedown notice to show that there was no infringement taking place (correct me if I should be wrong). That's ridiculous. Additionally, the DMCA doesn't address the core problem of copyright either, which is that it's the core foundation of an outdated business model that needs to go the way of the dinosaur, and it needs to do so fast before it does any more incredibly difficult to to reverse damage on our future society. We as a society need to find ways to rewards the creation of culture and art. Copyright isn't and will not ever be the solution. It probably never was. A final remark: >While copyright acts dating back hundreds of years to England were sometimes used as instruments of government oppression That's a funny thing to say, especially the "sometimes". Oppression (censorship) was basically the reason copyright was invented in the advent of printing presses slowly becoming widely available in the middle of the 16th century.

earbitscom 15y ago
Since you said, "Correct me if I should be wrong"... the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right. The only burden on the UGC company is to take down content that is in dispute. But to also correct you on your implied sob story for UGC companies... Some person you don't know comes to you and says, "I wrote this e-book, or I wrote and recorded this song, or I made this movie," and they upload it to your site. You take them at face value without any due diligence, even though in some cases the file is called "Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin". Laws require you to have a license to play copyrighted works, but thanks to the DMCA they now say you can proceed as if you have that license, even if the person who gave it to you is not who they say they are. Thanks to this clusterfuck, you are protected as long as you take it down upon complaint. You must do no work to research whether you're dealing with the true copyright owner, no "due process", if you will. Now, someone comes along and says, "Hey, that content is mine. Please take it down." And you're upset that you have to take down this content and make the person who uploaded it verify ownership. You're upset about the work involved, even though your entire business is built on the backs of not verifying claims, and the entire creative world is left to police your site and every one like it. After you've had the content up on your site and, in many cases, profited from it being there, you're upset that now your user has to do some work when someone complains. Let's take the number of real copyright abuses and hold it up to the highly dramatized number of false claims and see who deals with the larger clusterfuck.
- dhume 15y ago
  1. Reviewing everything submitted by users is unreasonable to expect. 2. People are upset that takedown notices are issued for works to which the issuer does not hold copyright and that those who issue such notices do so with impunity.
  - earbitscom 15y ago
    I am not saying that reviewing everything is reasonable. I'm saying let's be glad the laws let you accept content without verifying ownership at all, and stop complaining that you have to take down content in dispute. The abusive takedown notices are a fraction of the number of legitimate infringements that take place. Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. And we're supposed to have all this sympathy for the companies who have to respond to takedown notices by simply removing the content, not paying any penalty at all, when most of them are legit?
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      >Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. See, here's the problem. That is highly unfeasible, if not impossible (not to mention unethical) and should tell you more about the brokenness of distribution as a business model than it tells you about the need for copyright protection. Oh, and about most of the notices being legit: Google estimates that more than a third of the notices they receive - of which more than 50% are aimed at competing businesses - are plain and simply bogus.[1] I'm sorry but I don't believe the claim that most of them are legit. And even then, such a high number of "false positives" are plain and simply unacceptable. Oh, and there is still the thing about due process, which the DMCA completely eschews. But in the end, it's meaningless to discuss this. I'll say it again: the DMCA is just one of the many useless tries to fight a symptom whose cause are the violent death throes of a business model that should have died nearly two decades ago. The root of the problem is still copyright, and as long as we cling to it we won't be able to find any meaningful solution, but keep trying to band-aid a leper with hemophilia. [1] http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF90CC25757A0072B4B7 http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF9...

earbitscom 15y ago

Since you said, "Correct me if I should be wrong"... the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right. The only burden on the UGC company is to take down content that is in dispute. But to also correct you on your implied sob story for UGC companies... Some person you don't know comes to you and says, "I wrote this e-book, or I wrote and recorded this song, or I made this movie," and they upload it to your site. You take them at face value without any due diligence, even though in some cases the file is called "Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin". Laws require you to have a license to play copyrighted works, but thanks to the DMCA they now say you can proceed as if you have that license, even if the person who gave it to you is not who they say they are. Thanks to this clusterfuck, you are protected as long as you take it down upon complaint. You must do no work to research whether you're dealing with the true copyright owner, no "due process", if you will. Now, someone comes along and says, "Hey, that content is mine. Please take it down." And you're upset that you have to take down this content and make the person who uploaded it verify ownership. You're upset about the work involved, even though your entire business is built on the backs of not verifying claims, and the entire creative world is left to police your site and every one like it. After you've had the content up on your site and, in many cases, profited from it being there, you're upset that now your user has to do some work when someone complains. Let's take the number of real copyright abuses and hold it up to the highly dramatized number of false claims and see who deals with the larger clusterfuck.

dhume 15y ago
1. Reviewing everything submitted by users is unreasonable to expect. 2. People are upset that takedown notices are issued for works to which the issuer does not hold copyright and that those who issue such notices do so with impunity.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  I am not saying that reviewing everything is reasonable. I'm saying let's be glad the laws let you accept content without verifying ownership at all, and stop complaining that you have to take down content in dispute. The abusive takedown notices are a fraction of the number of legitimate infringements that take place. Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. And we're supposed to have all this sympathy for the companies who have to respond to takedown notices by simply removing the content, not paying any penalty at all, when most of them are legit?
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. See, here's the problem. That is highly unfeasible, if not impossible (not to mention unethical) and should tell you more about the brokenness of distribution as a business model than it tells you about the need for copyright protection. Oh, and about most of the notices being legit: Google estimates that more than a third of the notices they receive - of which more than 50% are aimed at competing businesses - are plain and simply bogus.[1] I'm sorry but I don't believe the claim that most of them are legit. And even then, such a high number of "false positives" are plain and simply unacceptable. Oh, and there is still the thing about due process, which the DMCA completely eschews. But in the end, it's meaningless to discuss this. I'll say it again: the DMCA is just one of the many useless tries to fight a symptom whose cause are the violent death throes of a business model that should have died nearly two decades ago. The root of the problem is still copyright, and as long as we cling to it we won't be able to find any meaningful solution, but keep trying to band-aid a leper with hemophilia. [1] http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF90CC25757A0072B4B7 http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF9...