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I think the community position is clear - violating copyright for personal, non public, non profit purposes is OK. Exploiting others work for commercial gain wi

by smegel 14y ago

youngerdryas 14y ago
Exactly. This is all you need to know about copyright. Reality on the ground always trumps theoretical reality, so everyone can stop hyperventilating and breathe normally. Abolition of copyright would heavily favor entrenched forces.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Well, the stated purpose of this law is to make it easier to exploit the work of others for commercial gain without permission and compensation (edit: actually it seems you have to pay, even if it's an orphan work and the money is kept for rights-holders who come out of the woodwork later, which further reduces the chance of someone stealing your facebook photos). And generally the community are alright with that because they're targetting "orphan works", stuff that got swept up into hundred year plus copyrights just because Disney didn't want to lose Mickey. But is now "culture" or "history", yet it is presumed to be owned by someone or something that can't be traced and found to ask permission due to death, bankruptcy, poor recordkeeping etc. The people protesting this law seem to be making the dubious claim that you can now steal the copyright to anyone's digital media (film, music, photo, books) you find online just by stripping some metadata. This seems, on the face of it, absurd. And if it's true then there will be better things to steal than someone's facebook photos. Why would those big nasty US coporations steal your family photos when they could steal stuff with actual value from other big nasty US corporations? edit: a UK government response to previous scaremongering from the same source: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/blog/2012/08/02/uk-copyright-and-orphan-works-the-facts/ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/htt...
- smegel 14y ago
  Facebook photos would be/are extremely valuable to advertisers. And very few would have contact metadata attached, which is irrelevant anyway after your mate reposts the image to imgur for a Reddit post. And i guess they would rather steal from someone who can't fight back than an entity that owns an army of lawyers.
  - goldfeld 14y ago
    "No contact metadata" will be mostly irrelevant in the next years, when computer vision along with some automated social engineered photo correlation will be able to cleanly identify individuals out of photos, linking to their social network profiles.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      The photographer holds the copyright, not the people depicted in the photos (except when they're the same person, obviously), so that wouldn't help a lot. Not to mention all the pictures that don't have anyone in them, of course.
      - goldfeld 14y ago
        Wait, it's one thing for someone to take photos of their friends and post to Facebook or Instagram. If anyone were to use them for profit however, do the people showing in the photos have no rights? I'd think that it's not actually as simple as you put it, but that the people appearing on the shot have no reasons normally to go after their rights, but in reality they usually didn't give written consent for being shot (I don't think posing for a photo qualifies as legal consent for the photo then to be used however the photographer wants, much less by third parties.)
        icebraining 14y ago
        Well, as I said, the people in the pictures don't have copyright. That said, they might have personality rights. These vary a lot between jurisdictions, even inside the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
Silhouette 14y ago
I think the community position is clear - violating copyright for personal, non public, non profit purposes is OK. Exploiting others work for commercial gain without permission and compensation not OK. What's so hard about that? Well, it substantially reduces the value of copyright for a start. Of course the community tends to favour such a position if you look at some sort of general average. The average person probably doesn't work in a creative industry where IP is how you pay the rent, so if copyright isn't effective it's nothing but upside for them, but the average person also doesn't care about redistributing works for profit, so they don't mind rules that restrict those who would. Whether making law on the basis of the self interest of the largest single group within society is a good idea is an entirely different question. It's probably the strictly democratic thing to do, but remember the old joke about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

by smegel 14y ago

youngerdryas 14y ago

Exactly. This is all you need to know about copyright. Reality on the ground always trumps theoretical reality, so everyone can stop hyperventilating and breathe normally. Abolition of copyright would heavily favor entrenched forces.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

Well, the stated purpose of this law is to make it easier to exploit the work of others for commercial gain without permission and compensation (edit: actually it seems you have to pay, even if it's an orphan work and the money is kept for rights-holders who come out of the woodwork later, which further reduces the chance of someone stealing your facebook photos). And generally the community are alright with that because they're targetting "orphan works", stuff that got swept up into hundred year plus copyrights just because Disney didn't want to lose Mickey. But is now "culture" or "history", yet it is presumed to be owned by someone or something that can't be traced and found to ask permission due to death, bankruptcy, poor recordkeeping etc. The people protesting this law seem to be making the dubious claim that you can now steal the copyright to anyone's digital media (film, music, photo, books) you find online just by stripping some metadata. This seems, on the face of it, absurd. And if it's true then there will be better things to steal than someone's facebook photos. Why would those big nasty US coporations steal your family photos when they could steal stuff with actual value from other big nasty US corporations? edit: a UK government response to previous scaremongering from the same source: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/blog/2012/08/02/uk-copyright-and-orphan-works-the-facts/ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/htt...

smegel 14y ago
Facebook photos would be/are extremely valuable to advertisers. And very few would have contact metadata attached, which is irrelevant anyway after your mate reposts the image to imgur for a Reddit post. And i guess they would rather steal from someone who can't fight back than an entity that owns an army of lawyers.
- goldfeld 14y ago
  "No contact metadata" will be mostly irrelevant in the next years, when computer vision along with some automated social engineered photo correlation will be able to cleanly identify individuals out of photos, linking to their social network profiles.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    The photographer holds the copyright, not the people depicted in the photos (except when they're the same person, obviously), so that wouldn't help a lot. Not to mention all the pictures that don't have anyone in them, of course.
    - goldfeld 14y ago
      Wait, it's one thing for someone to take photos of their friends and post to Facebook or Instagram. If anyone were to use them for profit however, do the people showing in the photos have no rights? I'd think that it's not actually as simple as you put it, but that the people appearing on the shot have no reasons normally to go after their rights, but in reality they usually didn't give written consent for being shot (I don't think posing for a photo qualifies as legal consent for the photo then to be used however the photographer wants, much less by third parties.)
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Well, as I said, the people in the pictures don't have copyright. That said, they might have personality rights. These vary a lot between jurisdictions, even inside the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

Silhouette 14y ago

I think the community position is clear - violating copyright for personal, non public, non profit purposes is OK. Exploiting others work for commercial gain without permission and compensation not OK. What's so hard about that? Well, it substantially reduces the value of copyright for a start. Of course the community tends to favour such a position if you look at some sort of general average. The average person probably doesn't work in a creative industry where IP is how you pay the rent, so if copyright isn't effective it's nothing but upside for them, but the average person also doesn't care about redistributing works for profit, so they don't mind rules that restrict those who would. Whether making law on the basis of the self interest of the largest single group within society is a good idea is an entirely different question. It's probably the strictly democratic thing to do, but remember the old joke about democracy being two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.