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Well, I guess it would be nice if we could have some precedent for the claim that downloading copyright protected information is not in itself a breach of copyr
by contravariant 2y ago
Well, I guess it would be nice if we could have some precedent for the claim that downloading copyright protected information is not in itself a breach of copyright.
It makes sense from the point of view that distribution is the act protected by copyright, not the mere act of copying. If that sounds odd to you then that's probably on purpose, There's been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to authorrights or something similar, but then people might start wondering how keeping something from public domain for 90 years after the author's death could possibly be about protecting the rights of the author.
- latexr 2y agoAuthor rights wouldn’t be an accurate term. Copy rights do not necessarily belong to the author, even when they are alive. Distribution rights or “distrights” would make more sense for your argument.
- contravariant 2y agoWorks fine in Dutch law really, you just have to allow for the option that a company can be an author. A work could also have multiple authors. I prefer it to a name that's more accurate because it signals what the purpose of the law is, which I consider more important than its implementation. Now that I think of it that also works quite well when naming things in software. Don't name things after their implementation, when you can help it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- scotty79 2y agoThey are called "authorship rights" in Polish. While the right to distribute or make copies doesn't aleways belong to the author they always originate from author. And some are even non transferable or revocable, like the right to say "I, <my chosen name>, made this thing"
- hnbad 2y agoIn some jurisdictions (e.g. Germany) "copyright" belongs exclusively to the author/creator and is non-transferrable, the German word for "copyright" (Urheberrecht) also literally translates to "author's right"). So instead of transferring copyright to an entity (e.g. the employer) you only grant an "exclusive, transferrable and unrestricted" license to that entity, essentially prohibiting you from using it without their permission while technically still retaining that right. This is also why CC0 exists as a substitute for a public domain declaration because in these jurisdictions it is literally impossible to transfer your copyright to the public domain. In Germany copyright law there is actually one provision for the real transfer of copyright: death. So as far as copyright is concerned, the transfer of copyright requires literally death of the author - which might get a chuckle out of people into media studies.
- FabHK 2y agoIn case you didn't chuckle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
- grotorea 2y agoI think the equivalent is called author's right in civil law countries
- miki123211 2y ago"distribution is the act protected by copyright" was the rule all along in many (non-US) jurisdictions, not an American so not sure about how the US does things. This is why you often see people getting fines for torrenting (Germany is extremely notorious for this for example), but fines for using Usenet, IPTV, streaming or book download services are a lot more rare (which doesn't mean they're nonexistent)! Operating / selling / promoting those services is a different matter, and most sensationalist articles about "people fined for IPTV piracy" are actually about people involved with that businesss, not the users. I even remember reading about some (European) torrenting case that was successfully defended on the grounds of something like setting a 1 byte per second cap on uploads, but I can't find the source right now.
- codetrotter 2y ago> This is why you often see people getting fines for torrenting (Germany is extremely notorious for this for example), but fines for using Usenet, IPTV, streaming or book download services are a lot more rare (which doesn't mean they're nonexistent)! It’s a lot easier to find out who is torrenting than to find out who is using Usenet for example though. With torrents you can see the IP addresses of peers. And then I suppose they ask a court to tell the ISP to say which customer had that IP addresses at that time. With Usenet you’d have to get a court to get each Usenet provider to give you a list of all customers that downloaded a file. That seems a little bit different to me. And who knows, in the case of the torrents maybe they don’t always even need to get a court involved. With all of the data brokers out there, maybe there are lists you can buy of real people tied to different IP addresses and when you have a match you send a threatening letter telling them to pay up or they will take you to court?
- trilbyglens 2y agoGermany is wild. You will get a knock on your door within hours of firing up a torrent client
- Alex_L_Wood 2y agoWhat? No, you will not. You could get fined for seeding some popular stuff, but even then no one is knocking on your door, it'll probably come in the form of a letter, and even then it's not a guarantee.
- 2mlWQbCK 2y agoWent the opposite direction here. Copying things for personal use was always legal in Sweden, with some exceptions (notably software, since 1986). That law was amended in 2005 (because of The Pirate Bay, presumably) to say that you are no longer allowed to make a copy from an illegally distributed copy. So if someone is illegally sharing something on the internet you are not allowed to download it.
- 6stringmerc 2y agoSweden is always an edge case - education especially. It’s got a population of 10 million people. My metroplex area in DFW has half that with 75% more diversity. Sweden is cool but a terrible reference point for anything other than homogeneous social studies.
- sightbroke 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Freedom_of_speech_and_of_the_press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... "Attached to the core rights of free speech and free press are several peripheral rights that make these core rights more secure. The peripheral rights encompass not only freedom of association, including privacy in one's associations, but also, in the words of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), "the freedom of the entire university community", i.e., the right to distribute, the right to receive, and the right to read, as well as freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach.[144]" "The United States Constitution protects, according to the Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia (1969), the right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, and to be generally free from governmental intrusions into one's privacy and control of one's thoughts.[145]" "As stated by the Court in Stanley: 'If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.'[146]" [144] - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/ [145], [146] - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/
- thrance 2y agoA bit off-topic, but I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so opposed to censorship but are perfectly OK with advertising and other forms of propaganda (from social media editorializing, bought newspapers...), that arguably do much more to "control men's minds" than censorship ever would. It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative liberty (freedom from...).
- lordloki 2y agoIt's very simple, Americans believe that the individual is responsible for themselves while most of the rest of the world wants to be "protected" by a restrictive government. One leads to innovation and one stifles it. We would rather be responsible for discovering the truth on our own, than trust a central authority to decide what is and isn't true(or propaganda). I find it funny how Europeans think their governments are protecting them from propaganda instead of drowning them in propaganda.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago> ...then people might start wondering how keeping something from public domain for 90 years after the author's death could possibly be about protecting the rights of the author. That's the best part, it's forever copyright! Because the creators are corporations that never die, or a huge number of humans, whomever dies last.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agothat's not true. the term for works for hire is 95 years from creation https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
- DanielHB 2y agoWould definitely torrent any leaked internal facebook data. But never seed your honor, that would be illegal!
- jcelerier 2y ago> There's been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to authorrights or something similar that's exactly how it's called in french - droit d'auteur
- mrcode007 2y agoI’m waiting for this precedent to be set in favor of META and then enjoying all the movie torrents I can get my hands on. Without seeding of course.
- wkat4242 2y agoWith Musk in the White House (who has similar interests) that might actually happen.
- mrcode007 2y agoA right adversarial move would be to support this and watch the GDP without the entertainment business as part of it. Check what happens next.
- knowitnone 2y agoI don't know Musk but why would he make this happen? He's for corporate interests is he not?
- Mr-Frog 2y agoI don't think Musk's interests are aligned with those of legacy media corporations.
- bee_rider 2y agoNone of his corporations is a media one, and his social media company probably has some vague interest in not having too much enforcement of copyright. Actually this is something that has always perplexed me about corporations that want to meddle in our government. Obviously they must know that it is going to involve the government following the interest of… some corporation. The voters are pretty fickle and having the government work for your competition seems like a pretty rough spot. I guess it is like a prisoner’s dilemma type thing or something.
- wkat4242 2y agoAlso he is big into AI. So he'd want the same as meta.
- dylan604 2y ago>If that sounds odd to you then that's probably on purpose, There's been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to authorrights or something similar Man, that's such an ignorant type of thing to say. Copy does not only mean the act of making a duplicate. Copy also means the words/text directly. Terms like copy editor refer to those that make edits to the copy=>words/text, not those that make edits to the duplicates. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the use of the word in that manner, but that's not the rest of the world's problem. That's a limited knowledge problem on your end. Even in the "rules" of copyright, you're allowed to make copies. Back in the days of the olds being young and in school, we had to go to places called libraries to look things up. We could pay the librarians to make copies of things for us to take home to use in whatever task we were assigned. The fee wasn't for any kind of rights usage, but simply to cover the library's expense in providing that copy to you. It's amazing how quickly information is lost from the lack of use
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Man, that's such an ignorant type of thing to say. Copy does not only mean the act of making a duplicate. Copy also means the words/text directly. Terms like copy editor refer to those that make edits to the copy=>words/text, not those that make edits to the duplicates. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the use of the word in that manner, but that's not the rest of the world's problem. That's a limited knowledge problem on your end. Do you think freedom of the press involves the right to make any kind of juice you want?
- dylan604 2y agowhat does that even mean? your sarcasm is so strained it can't even be followed.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoWhy do you think that the meaning "text" is relevant to the element in copyright? The fact that a word has a particular sense doesn't mean that that sense appears in every use of the word. And in this case we know that copyright refers to the production of copies, not of copy: > the Statute of Anne is formally titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Text ) There are no controls other than on making printed copies.
- comfysocks 2y agoI remember back in the day when hefty penalties for torrenting music were in the news, they would erroneously describe it as penalties for “downloading” music. I suppose this was intentional in order to spook usenet users, etc.
- ru552 2y agoCopy in copyright is not copy like copy in copying some data. Copy in copyright is a term for the actual writing that gets published on ads, or magazines, or in a news paper. "I need to get the copy from marketing for this campaign." "The editor hasn't approved the copy for the article yet." Typically, people not in/around the industry aren't familiar with the term, which leads to the confusion.
- tempfile 2y agoThis sounds completely false to me. Do you have a reference for it? In particular, the original Statute of Anne (the first law establishing a copyright) is officially titled: > An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned No doubt people used the word "copy" in the sense you mean, but "copy" in "copyright" is absolutely about copying as in copying some data.
- singlow 2y agoAny proof that the word copyright was intentionally referring to the noun instead of the verb? The British Statute of Anne in 1710, the first copyright statute, definitely referred to the act of copying a book, not some abstract concept of writing samples.
- pfannkuchen 2y agoI always thought that ad copy also came from copy as in copy some data. Like it's the words that get copied when the media is replicated for distribution, as opposed to words that are for some internal communication purpose.
- singlow 2y agoThe use of the noun copy probably came from the act of copying, but both uses predated the word copyright, so that doesn't really help answer the question.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
- wrs 2y agoAFAIK, in the US it’s literally about copying. In fact, case law mostly supports the position that just the act of copying a program from disk into memory to run it is protected by copyright (with some statutory exceptions). (Google “RAM copy doctrine”.)
- dgreensp 2y agoThat’s my understanding as well. Duplicating the bytes of a file when you don’t have the rights to the content is technically infringement and grounds for an infringement claim, and then you have to explain in court why it’s “fair use.”
- victorbjorklund 2y agoThat is only in english. Other langues uses different words. So not really useful to argue just based on a superficial def of the word.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago"Well, I guess it would be nice if we could have some precedent for the claim that downloading copyright protected information is not in itself a breach of copyright." According to Meta's motion the claim about "seeding" (cf. the claim about removing CMI) relates to Cal Penal Code 502(c), the "Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act". Whether the data accessed is "copyright protected information" is irrelevant to section 502(c). 502(c)(2) applies to "any data". https://www.calpers.ca.gov/sites/default/files/spf/docs/ca-penal-code-502.pdf https://www.calpers.ca.gov/sites/default/files/spf/docs/ca-p...