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I dunno if I agree with this. Yes, the public has rights to the content described and limited by law. No, there is no provision in the law that requires content

I dunno if I agree with this. Yes, the public has rights to the content described and limited by law. No, there is no provision in the law that requires content creators to make copying easy, nor is there any provision preventing them from making it as difficult as they can. Also, I doubt that all of Pinterest users' use cases are protected. Depending on the proportion, it might be more apt to say that these content owners are proactively protecting their content from unprotected uses, rather than resorting to the courts or DMCA. Edit: wow, this is an incredibly contentious topic. Never seen this density of downvotes in a thread before.

hxa7241 15y ago
> nor is there any provision preventing them from making it as difficult as they can Whilst that might be accurate in the detail of the law, it appears to contain something basically malfunctional. It seems to render the law effectively meaningless. If you are actually prevented from doing something, what has happened to your right to be allowed to? If there were public rights-of-way across someone's farmland, but they built walls around it, there would seem to be some kind of problem. (Or maybe a better example would be a visibility-cloaking device that made it look like there was a wall -- is that prevention, or just making things less easy? Does that make it OK?) If the letter of the law supports the frustration of the intent of the law, something is wrong, surely.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  I don't really think so. There are a lot of other laws like this. For example, you have the right, according to law, to take pictures of people in their homes, provided you stand on public ways and are not harassing them. When people pull the shutters, is that malfunctional? There's also a difference between a positive right (the government protects your right to do something) and a negative one (the government will not prevent you from doing something). Fair use seems to be a negative right -- the government does not prevent you from using copyrighted works. But it doesn't require that copyright owners convey these works to you as conveniently as you want.
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    Yes, but what is the basic intent? It is to make/keep things reasonably available (in the constitution (USA) and/or the standard economic view) . . .

hxa7241 15y ago

> nor is there any provision preventing them from making it as difficult as they can Whilst that might be accurate in the detail of the law, it appears to contain something basically malfunctional. It seems to render the law effectively meaningless. If you are actually prevented from doing something, what has happened to your right to be allowed to? If there were public rights-of-way across someone's farmland, but they built walls around it, there would seem to be some kind of problem. (Or maybe a better example would be a visibility-cloaking device that made it look like there was a wall -- is that prevention, or just making things less easy? Does that make it OK?) If the letter of the law supports the frustration of the intent of the law, something is wrong, surely.

jamesaguilar 15y ago
I don't really think so. There are a lot of other laws like this. For example, you have the right, according to law, to take pictures of people in their homes, provided you stand on public ways and are not harassing them. When people pull the shutters, is that malfunctional? There's also a difference between a positive right (the government protects your right to do something) and a negative one (the government will not prevent you from doing something). Fair use seems to be a negative right -- the government does not prevent you from using copyrighted works. But it doesn't require that copyright owners convey these works to you as conveniently as you want.
- hxa7241 15y ago
  Yes, but what is the basic intent? It is to make/keep things reasonably available (in the constitution (USA) and/or the standard economic view) . . .