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What follows is a just a completely hypothetical idea that shouldn't be taken seriously ;p Let's say we went from "everything has copyright" to "you must regis

by nkassis 15y ago

What follows is a just a completely hypothetical idea that shouldn't be taken seriously ;p Let's say we went from "everything has copyright" to "you must register with the copyright office to get a copyright". Now it does have a lot of drawbacks but for most things like this post on HN I could care less that it's copied elsewhere yet currently there is a copyright on this post. Now in a system like that what would prevent the copyright office to make publicly available a database of hashes for copyrighted content like videos,music,text that would allow people from Google and elsewhere to make a resonable assumption about licensing? This DB could contain a list of urls that are allowed to host the said content or offer more open terms. In a way google already started such a DB for youtube but it's prone to abuse and contesting copyright on there isn't exactly simple to do.(as seen from the megaupload thing)

anamax 15y ago
> publicly available a database of hashes for copyrighted content What about "derived work"? It's relatively easy to make a "copy" that displays/plays the same but has a completely different hash. In fact, it's very difficult to get the same hash on a excerpt. And then there's fair-use.
- nkassis 15y ago
  All valid points but then youtube is doing something that allows them to detect even derived work albeit they do have access to the full video so that might not work for everyone. At the very least with a registration based system it's clearer who "owns" what.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    That's how copyright used to work, but they got rid of that after the Berne convention. Also, Google has some very fancy tech; it's not something just anybody could make work. And even they don't have it working all that great. And then there's the matter of who has to bear the cost of creating and placing the filters, sites outside our jurisdiction that don't bother with those expensive filters, etc. You end up hobbling the US tech industry for no reason, putting everyone at a competitive disadvantage.

by nkassis 15y ago

anamax 15y ago

> publicly available a database of hashes for copyrighted content What about "derived work"? It's relatively easy to make a "copy" that displays/plays the same but has a completely different hash. In fact, it's very difficult to get the same hash on a excerpt. And then there's fair-use.

nkassis 15y ago
All valid points but then youtube is doing something that allows them to detect even derived work albeit they do have access to the full video so that might not work for everyone. At the very least with a registration based system it's clearer who "owns" what.
- Natsu 15y ago
  That's how copyright used to work, but they got rid of that after the Berne convention. Also, Google has some very fancy tech; it's not something just anybody could make work. And even they don't have it working all that great. And then there's the matter of who has to bear the cost of creating and placing the filters, sites outside our jurisdiction that don't bother with those expensive filters, etc. You end up hobbling the US tech industry for no reason, putting everyone at a competitive disadvantage.