16 ms·

Copywrong

125 points by sizzle 12y ago

giarc 12y ago
Album http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Storyteller-_The_Complete_Anthology_(Cover).jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Storyteller-_T... Las Vegas Show http://www.caesarspalace.com/images/Property/clv/events/RodStewart_TheHits_16x9_430x242.jpg http://www.caesarspalace.com/images/Property/clv/events/RodS... They are quite similar.
- blt 12y ago
  Heh. Without knowing the images, I guessed that the old version was a blurry old 35mm photo and they wanted something higher resolution. That would be an interesting question - is a technically superior, but similar looking, image still a copy? But that is not the case here.
  - spellboots 12y ago
    35mm photos are very high resolution - between 87 and 175 megapixels according to http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm
- danielweber 12y ago
  If the former were a trade mark, I think the original photographer would win easily (although perhaps not for $2.5 million). The new picture is obviously done to replicate and look like the old one. But copyright? I dunno. Seems like a derivative work, though.
angersock 12y ago
So, the original purpose of copyright was to ensure that content creators were encouraged to release things for the public at large. This in turn is a two-part process: first, creating content for consumption, and second, distributing that content. I don't think it should be even slightly controversial to suggest that we've democratized and solved the second part of that problem (provided things like net neutrality pass, but that's a larger issue). There is no reason that a creator who wants to put out content into the public domain can't do so (again, barring government censorship or what have you--arguably not even then) in a way that is likely to be preserved into perpituity. It's the first part of the problem which is what people will wring hands about, refusing to believe that creators would ever spontaneously decide to make something for no apparent and immediate payoff (fanfiction and deviant artists and HN commentators clearly notwithstanding) and put it out there. With things like DA, with Patreon, with Kickstarter, with Steam Greenlight, with Amazon and everything else, it's clear that we're almost done solving the first issue--again, if you believe it's an issue at all.
- chc 12y ago
  I feel like you're putting this in a way that ignores the historical context in which copyright arose. Copyright came about in response to too much copying thanks to the printing press. The ultimate purpose of copyright was to encourage the progress of the arts and learning, yes — but the immediate purpose was was to make sure that authors would be fairly compensated for their work, instead of printers being able to just take any work they could get their hands on and profit off it without the creator of the work having any say in how his work was used or claim on the fruits of his labor. The idea was that authors were skilled workers practicing a valuable craft, and that the mere fact that distributors could ignore them in practice did not mean they should be entitled to do so with impunity. Nobody ever though that nobody would create anything without copyright. The idea was simply that skilled creators were not being duly compensated for their work, and that if they were fairly compensated, they would have more time to devote to creating as well as more incentive to continue.
blinks 12y ago
> Either way, when you’re reading a linked page, you may still > be “at” awesomestuff.com, as clicking the back button on > your browser can instantly confirm. Effectively, > awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com, just > as the compiler of “Most Thoughtful Essays” stole content > from me. "At" is the wrong word. The browser is requesting content. If it's requesting content from awesomestuff.com that only newyorker.com has permission to copy, that's a copyright problem. This is a very odd metaphor for a journalist to mistake. It's as if any reference they make in a piece is violating the copyright of the referenced item. Is reference that difficult of a concept to grasp?
- angersock 12y ago
  You know, we put so much damned effort into getting the 'net to have documents that could trivially link to other documents and be available to everyone, it seems unsurprising that it is difficult to retrofit it with copyright protection measures.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  > The browser is requesting content In this example the browser is requesting NewYorker content from newyorker.com, which serves it. It is not requesting that content from awesomestuff.com. Awesomestuff.com does NOT serve newyorker content, only an address to it. So who's doing the copying here? It is the person who is using their browser to copy content from newyorker.com to their PC so it can be displayed there.
mynegation 12y ago
I do not think that new image is a copy of an old one. Look at the flow of hair - totally different, and unlikely to be photoshopped from one to another. It is way easier to take another picture of the back of Rod Stewart's head and my guess would be - this is what was done. The picture and style is obviously a nostalgic reference to an old album cover art, but the picture is most likely _new_, not a copy or derivative. I would say that Rod Stewart may get his hair photographed as many tmes as he damn pleases and case does not really have merit (IANAL etc etc).
- pessimizer 12y ago
  The photographer isn't claiming that the new image is a photoshopped copy of the old one.
  - DanTheManPR 12y ago
    Is the photographer claiming ownership of the concept of "the back of Rod Stewart's head"?
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      Yes.
smacktoward 12y ago
> I have granted The New Yorker an exclusive license to the article for a limited period... If, a year from now, someone else, without my permission, reprints my article in a book called “The Most Thoughtful and Penetrating Essays of 2014,” I can complain that my right to make copies is being violated and, if the court agrees with me, legally suppress the book... Although not the author of this piece, you, too, would likely feel that the publisher of “Most Thoughtful Essays” was a bandit. > But suppose that a Web site ran an item that said something like “This piece on copyright is a great read!” with a hyperlink on the word “piece” to my article’s page on The New Yorker’s Web site. You wouldn’t think this was banditry at all. You would find it unexceptionable. I would argue that the latter seems unexceptional because it is qualitatively different than the former. If I pick up an essay from the New Yorker and print it in a book that I then sell, I am depriving the New Yorker of revenue, because now there is a way to get it that doesn't involve paying the rights-holder (the New Yorker). This -- taking money out of the hands of the people who own the content to put it in my own -- is what copyright is designed to stop. If I link to an essay on the New Yorker's web site from my own web site, I am not depriving them of revenue, because you can only read it by following the link, and the New Yorker is free to put up any financial barriers -- paywalls, ads, etc. -- between you and the endpoint of the link that they wish. So they're not losing the opportunity to sell you the content; I'm not taking money out of their hands. And maybe my endorsement that there's good stuff to be found behind the paywall will be the factor that convinces you to pay up. Or, alternately, they can decide to forgo the money they'd make by forcing you to subscribe in the hopes that they can make more money by showing ads against the content instead. But the crucial point is that it is their decision, not mine. Whereas if I put the essay in a printed book, and then sold it, I am making the decision for them. Where all this breaks down, of course, is in cases where I, the linker, reprint large portions (or all) of the article on my own site in addition to just providing a link. In that case, yes, I am depriving you of revenue, because the reader no longer has to click through to get the meat of the story. But traditional copyright law covers this scenario too -- I don't have the right to do that. All I'm allowed to do by the doctrine of fair use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) is reprint a small snippet. If I put up the whole thing, I'm violating your copyright and you can and should come at me with guns blazing. (I wrote a bit more about this distinction between what I call "ethical" and "unethical" aggregation here: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/05/ethical-aggregation-its-simple/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/05/ethical-aggregation-its-si...)
teachingaway 12y ago
Side-by-side: http://i.imgur.com/vGmlRj3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vGmlRj3.jpg The photographer is in over her head. She owns her photo, but she doesn't own the "idea" of the back of Rod Stewart's head. Not even Rod Stewart owns that "idea." And while we can't just copy her photo, we can take another photo that expresses the same idea (Stewart's head). And since there aren't that many way to photograph Rod Stewart's rear-dome, the photos would have to be essentially identical for any copyright infringement. The photos here are not identical: the light is different, the hair is messed up differently... it looks like a losing case.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  I don't think she's over her head. I think she's after the money
- duncanawoods 12y ago
  You might be right but it reminds me of the red bus case which may indicate the changing scope of copyright in the future: http://azrights.com/media/uncategorized/2013/11/photographers-photography-copyright-and-the-red-bus-case/ http://azrights.com/media/uncategorized/2013/11/photographer... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Island_v_New_English_Teas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Island_v_New_English_Tea...
  - mamurphy 12y ago
    As detailed in this blog post (http://permissionmachine.com/blog/rod-stewart-sued-for-recreating-a-photo-of-the-back-of-his-head/ http://permissionmachine.com/blog/rod-stewart-sued-for-recre...), the Rod Stewart photos look much more similar to the disputed photos in Temple Island v. New English Teas (the claimant won in that suit). When I viewed the side-by-side comparison, my reaction was "wow, she actually has a point!" not "this is a frivolous suit." Both photos show Rod with a black, long sleeve garment, show only his head, neck, and left shoulder, and have not dissimilar lighting and hair styling.
- a-nikolaev 12y ago
  The image of the back of his head became memorable to people primarily not becase of that particular photo, but because of the music on the album. So, I think, Rod Stewart himself is primarily responsible for making the image famous. He created this cultural artifact / meme.
galaxyLogic 12y ago
" ... when you’re reading a linked page, you may still be “at” awesomestuff.com, as clicking the back button on your browser can instantly confirm. Effectively, awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com " This I think is based on misunderstanding of how http and the web work. Somebody at awesomestuff created a link to newyorker.com. They basically just told you the ADDRESS of newyorker.com. They created a ROAD-SIGN and YOU followed that. You clicked the link and the website newyorker.com willingly served you the content. That content was NEVER COPIED to the server at awesomestuff.com. So only thing newyorker could accuse them of doing is telling people their website address. If they have told you that address and you write it down and copy that surely that is not copyright infringement because New Yorker has NEVER CLAIMED they own the right to their website address. It is public information.
- legulere 12y ago
  The best comparison for IFrames would be that they cut the article out of a new yorker and glued it into the book
  - galaxyLogic 12y ago
    That I think would be fraudulent misrepresentation of who owns the content in question. In practice nobody would do that a thousand times and if they did it would still not be "copying". They would have had to pay for all the "copies" of the paper from which they cut off the article. They would have paid for all those "copies" and thus they would have the right to distribute them (unless a private contract prohibited that). Misrepresenting the origin of the content could be considered fraud. But if you never implied that you created that content then maybe not.
  - TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
    No. More like they provided instructions for you to cut the article out of a new yorker and glue it into the book. Important difference.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
marincounty 12y ago
"In the case of many books and photographs, the rights holders are unknown; in other cases, it’s expensive to track down the heirs or the legatees or the firms, possibly no longer in existence, to whom the copyright belongs." There's people who take advantage of this. I've seen more than a few people claiming they own the copyright, while when asked to provide proof they never respond. Ebay is loaded with people who are falsely claiming copyright protection. Ebay seems to take the stand, "Well this dude was the first one to scan it to PDF, he must own the copyright?"
DanBC 12y ago
I wonder how much traffic awesomestuff.com got as a result of this? The point the author makes about linking, deep-linking, and framing, is confused and weird. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking Several deep-linking cases have gone to courts in various parts of the world.
acabal 12y ago
One of the most tragic ideas to evolve in this century is the idea of "intellectual property"--that you can own an idea for years, sometimes tens or hundreds of years. That term covers things outside of copyright, like patents, but the damage the idea as a whole in its present incarnation does to our long-term culture is the same. Ideas are intangible, not property, and someone can think the same thing as you without ever having met you or heard of you. A more accurate term than "intellectual property" would be a "short, government-protected monopoly on an idea". But we call it property, and after many years of calling that, it insidiously starts seeming to us like real property, and not the temporary monopoly it really is. There's room for short, temporary monopolies. As the framers realized, copyright and patents are critical to fostering innovation and culture. Unfortunately, "short" went from being a very reasonable few years, to a slightly less reasonable 20ish years, to now, where if you publish a work today the chances of it being available to the public within 150 years are slim. Do a grandchild's grandchildren deserve to lord over something created by a dusty ancestor centuries ago? In a strange and sad way, our IP regime today means that individual authors are unlikely to be remembered by history 100 years from now. Look at Project Gutenberg or Wikiart: hundreds of people from all over the world volunteer to lovingly scan, transcribe, format, categorize, and distribute works from the last few centuries. They do this because that work belongs to the public now, and their efforts keep the memories and impact of those works and authors alive. Do you think anyone will do the same for your work 100 years from now on the pain of legal threats and huge fines, or is it more likely it'll fade into oblivion?
- icebraining 12y ago
  As the framers realized, copyright and patents are critical to fostering innovation and culture. Well, at least Jefferson was initially opposed to the idea, which he (rightly) viewed as a monopoly: Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it… . That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Later he acquiesced, but with a much stricter proposal than what eventually was written in the Bill of Rights: Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.
sehrope 12y ago
An interesting solution I've heard[1] to reform both copyright (and possibly patent) law is to require compounding annual fees to maintain them. For example if someone writes a new song or book, we could have a short "free" copyright period. After that, creator (or more accurately, the rights holder) would need to pay an annual fee to maintain their copyright. The fee would increase by some percentage each year. If the value of the work is greater than the fee, then it'd be in the interests of the rights holder to pay the fee and maintain the copyright, for example to be able to license it out to others. If it's not, then the copyright would expire and the work would enter the public domain. A high enough interest rate for the compounding would ensure that everything is eventually in the public domain. For works that are repeatedly extended, say Mickey Mouse, the public will receive the fees collected for each of the extensions until it enters the public domain. This also has the interesting effect of incentivizing the creation of new works as there wouldn't be any fees associated with them for the initial term. There's obviously a lot more details to handle such as having a central registry, inflation adjustments, differentiating between new works and derived works, and how to handle works created prior to the introduction of a system like this. Still I think it's an interesting proposal. [1]: I don't remember where exactly but probably here on HN.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  Sounds like a good idea
- danielweber 12y ago
  I liked this concept, but you need to establish what the "unit" of the work is. If I'm a photographer, do I need to pay the compounding fee on each picture I take? I take thousands a year. While George Lucas makes a single motion picture over a year.
- habitue 12y ago
  That was Rick Falkvinge. It was probably either on his blog or posted to torrentfreak
- repsilat 12y ago
  The idea that something will enter the public domain once its market price has been established is nice, but my problem with this scheme is that it needs so much fine-tuning. How should the prices increase? Exponentially, adjusted for inflation? Will the prices be much too low for much too long, or will they rocket up at unreasonable rates for some kinds of media? I think the best scheme for works entering the public domain is modelled on eminent domain. That is, a work may be "seized" (and its owner duly compensated) by a government when the utility to the public of it entering the public domain is great enough. Obviously there would need to be a lot of structure around it, because it's going to happen all the time. There might have to be a registry of copyright owners. There might also be taxes or regular charges levied as in your system.
rev_null 12y ago
The writer doesn't seem to understand the concept of natural rights. They aren't inalienable because we declare them to be so, they are inalienable because it's actually impossible to deny people these rights. The First Amendment protects individual expression, for example, because it’s in society’s best interest to have a robust debate—not because each person has a right to say what he or she thinks simply by virtue of being human. In reality, by virtue of having the ability to speak, humans do have a right to say whatever they want. Oppressive regimes can certainly take steps to punish people for speaking their minds, but it's pretty difficult to stop someone from voicing an opinion in the first place. So the right to make copies was imagined by the Framers as a way to encourage the writing of books by individuals for the good of an educated citizenry. But, if you are a natural-rights person and you think that individual rights are inalienable, then you don’t recognize the priority of the public domain. You think that society has no claim on works created by individuals. Once an individual chooses to share an idea, anyone who has that idea can naturally share it. Copyright is not an inalienable right.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  Right, copyright is not an "inalienable right". It is a law. We can and maybe should argue against that law as it currently stands. What I think we should argue against is that whatever created Mickey Mouse, or whoever BOUGHT that copyright, should have the right for it for 100 years. It's a bit like saying whoever built the fortress can rule the land from now on. But check-out Carl Barks. Does he or his estate own the copyright to his masterful art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks Currently the copyright law is truly married to the estate txation.
  - galaxyLogic 12y ago
    Note in the Wikipedia table-of-contents there is no mention of copyrights for his works.
  - galaxyLogic 12y ago
    You may have seen a lot of bad cartoons from Disney but Barks was one of he most important visual artists of 20th century, if you can get to his works. Disney doesn't seem to advertize his works apart from anybody else for obvious reasons.
teddyh 12y ago
I thought this would be a link to the classic 1993 Wired Magazine article “Copywrong”¹. ① http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/1.3_stallman.copyright.html http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/1.3_stallman.cop...
bambax 12y ago
We've had copyright for over two hundred years, so we can judge the difference between before and after. In any artistic field (music, painting, literature, sculpture...) the best works were produced before copyright existed. The best and most interesting output of the human mind since 1790 were not in the arts but in the hard sciences, outside of the realm of copyright. It's understandable that "copyright holders" would fight hard to maintain the status quo or even extend protections indefinitely; what I find baffling, and truly depressing, is that everyone else lets it happen.
- thisishugo 12y ago
  > The best and most interesting output of the human mind since > 1790 were not in the arts but in the hard sciences, outside > of the realm of copyright. This is the most utterly ridiculous claim I have heard in a long time, not least because what constitutes "the best works" of art is entirely subjective.
  - bambax 12y ago
    It can't be both subjective and ridiculous. If it's subjective then I'm right for the reason that I'm judge and jury. If it's not then I can be wrong, but you have to make an argument for it, based on some objective criteria.
    - thisishugo 12y ago
      An opinion isn't right or wrong, it just is, no matter how strongly you assert it. And it certainly is open to ridicule: would you take seriously someone claiming, with absolute sincerity, to be the sovereign ruler of the Gumdrop Kingdom?
khaki54 12y ago
I couldn't get past the author claiming that linking to an article in its published location is somehow akin to stealing the article and publishing it in a compilation book without permission. It's more like pointing someone to a bookstore and saying "check out this great book".
dghf 12y ago
> But suppose that a Web site, awesomestuff.com, ran an item that said something like “This piece on copyright is a great read!” with a hyperlink on the word “piece” to my article’s page on The New Yorker’s Web site.... Effectively, awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com, just as the compiler of “Most Thoughtful Essays” stole content from me. This has to be the single most wrong-headed thing I've seen written on hyperlinks. To suggest that telling people where they can find an article is morally equivalent to copying that article and distributing the copies ... to paraphrase Charles Babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a proposition."
- ejk314 12y ago
  I can understand how he would see 'framing' as copying a website into another page. But he goes on to argue that we accept this form of 'copying' because of the same 'a visual change is experienced as a physical change' mumbo jumbo. No. Clearly, we accept this form of copying because framing the whole page still shows the page's adds and only increases revenue for the 'copied' site. There would obviously be legal ramifications if you embedded the page into your site then removed their adds and replaced them with your own.
- jgeada 12y ago
  Yeah, that paragraph basically blew the entire article for me. The analog version would be stating that including the Dewey Decimal(1) reference for another book in my book/article is the same as violating copyright or stealing. Absurd on all possible interpretations. (1): or any other short description that would allow me to locate the specific book being referenced.
dghf 12y ago
And using the label "Silicon Valley" to refer to businesses that are antagonistic to strong copyright? Companies like Adobe? Apple? Electronic Arts? Oracle?
efaref 12y ago
> “address” (which you can’t G.P.S.) You very much can GPS an internet address: http://www.geoiptool.com/en/?ip=www.newyorker.com http://www.geoiptool.com/en/?ip=www.newyorker.com
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Ultimately, the biggest issue with copywrong is this: on a rather fundamental level computers operate by copying, not moving. I mean: even the MOV instruction on most (if not all) instruction set copies data without overwriting the original. RAM (tends to) have non-destructive reads. The processor caches everywhere. Etc. Sure, you could potentially talk about fixation as opposed to temporary copies - but that boundary is fuzzy and getting fuzzier all the time. What happens when the process gets paged to disk? What happens if the process crashes and dumps a crash report? Or worse - when memsistor RAM starts becoming available? Also, there's a related problem as to whom takes responsibility for a machine doing something. What happens when you walk by a security camera with a copywronged painting? If you visit webpage A that contains an iframe pointing to website B containing copywronged work, who is responsible for the copywrong infringement? Is it you? You own the computer. But you never did anything that you could have known was a violation. Is it the person who wrote your web browser, as they were the person who wrote the instructions to follow iframes? Is it the person who wrote webpage A? But they didn't ever actually do anything infringing - they provided instructions which if followed without checking copywrong restrictions would potentially be a violation. Personally, the entire idea of "intellectual property" is fundamentally misguided, but that is another matter.

125 points by sizzle 12y ago

giarc 12y ago

Album http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Storyteller-_The_Complete_Anthology_(Cover).jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Storyteller-_T... Las Vegas Show http://www.caesarspalace.com/images/Property/clv/events/RodStewart_TheHits_16x9_430x242.jpg http://www.caesarspalace.com/images/Property/clv/events/RodS... They are quite similar.

blt 12y ago
Heh. Without knowing the images, I guessed that the old version was a blurry old 35mm photo and they wanted something higher resolution. That would be an interesting question - is a technically superior, but similar looking, image still a copy? But that is not the case here.
- spellboots 12y ago
  35mm photos are very high resolution - between 87 and 175 megapixels according to http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm
danielweber 12y ago
If the former were a trade mark, I think the original photographer would win easily (although perhaps not for $2.5 million). The new picture is obviously done to replicate and look like the old one. But copyright? I dunno. Seems like a derivative work, though.

angersock 12y ago

So, the original purpose of copyright was to ensure that content creators were encouraged to release things for the public at large. This in turn is a two-part process: first, creating content for consumption, and second, distributing that content. I don't think it should be even slightly controversial to suggest that we've democratized and solved the second part of that problem (provided things like net neutrality pass, but that's a larger issue). There is no reason that a creator who wants to put out content into the public domain can't do so (again, barring government censorship or what have you--arguably not even then) in a way that is likely to be preserved into perpituity. It's the first part of the problem which is what people will wring hands about, refusing to believe that creators would ever spontaneously decide to make something for no apparent and immediate payoff (fanfiction and deviant artists and HN commentators clearly notwithstanding) and put it out there. With things like DA, with Patreon, with Kickstarter, with Steam Greenlight, with Amazon and everything else, it's clear that we're almost done solving the first issue--again, if you believe it's an issue at all.

chc 12y ago
I feel like you're putting this in a way that ignores the historical context in which copyright arose. Copyright came about in response to too much copying thanks to the printing press. The ultimate purpose of copyright was to encourage the progress of the arts and learning, yes — but the immediate purpose was was to make sure that authors would be fairly compensated for their work, instead of printers being able to just take any work they could get their hands on and profit off it without the creator of the work having any say in how his work was used or claim on the fruits of his labor. The idea was that authors were skilled workers practicing a valuable craft, and that the mere fact that distributors could ignore them in practice did not mean they should be entitled to do so with impunity. Nobody ever though that nobody would create anything without copyright. The idea was simply that skilled creators were not being duly compensated for their work, and that if they were fairly compensated, they would have more time to devote to creating as well as more incentive to continue.

blinks 12y ago

> Either way, when you’re reading a linked page, you may still > be “at” awesomestuff.com, as clicking the back button on > your browser can instantly confirm. Effectively, > awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com, just > as the compiler of “Most Thoughtful Essays” stole content > from me. "At" is the wrong word. The browser is requesting content. If it's requesting content from awesomestuff.com that only newyorker.com has permission to copy, that's a copyright problem. This is a very odd metaphor for a journalist to mistake. It's as if any reference they make in a piece is violating the copyright of the referenced item. Is reference that difficult of a concept to grasp?

angersock 12y ago
You know, we put so much damned effort into getting the 'net to have documents that could trivially link to other documents and be available to everyone, it seems unsurprising that it is difficult to retrofit it with copyright protection measures.
galaxyLogic 12y ago
> The browser is requesting content In this example the browser is requesting NewYorker content from newyorker.com, which serves it. It is not requesting that content from awesomestuff.com. Awesomestuff.com does NOT serve newyorker content, only an address to it. So who's doing the copying here? It is the person who is using their browser to copy content from newyorker.com to their PC so it can be displayed there.

mynegation 12y ago

I do not think that new image is a copy of an old one. Look at the flow of hair - totally different, and unlikely to be photoshopped from one to another. It is way easier to take another picture of the back of Rod Stewart's head and my guess would be - this is what was done. The picture and style is obviously a nostalgic reference to an old album cover art, but the picture is most likely _new_, not a copy or derivative. I would say that Rod Stewart may get his hair photographed as many tmes as he damn pleases and case does not really have merit (IANAL etc etc).

pessimizer 12y ago
The photographer isn't claiming that the new image is a photoshopped copy of the old one.
- DanTheManPR 12y ago
  Is the photographer claiming ownership of the concept of "the back of Rod Stewart's head"?
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Yes.

smacktoward 12y ago

> I have granted The New Yorker an exclusive license to the article for a limited period... If, a year from now, someone else, without my permission, reprints my article in a book called “The Most Thoughtful and Penetrating Essays of 2014,” I can complain that my right to make copies is being violated and, if the court agrees with me, legally suppress the book... Although not the author of this piece, you, too, would likely feel that the publisher of “Most Thoughtful Essays” was a bandit. > But suppose that a Web site ran an item that said something like “This piece on copyright is a great read!” with a hyperlink on the word “piece” to my article’s page on The New Yorker’s Web site. You wouldn’t think this was banditry at all. You would find it unexceptionable. I would argue that the latter seems unexceptional because it is qualitatively different than the former. If I pick up an essay from the New Yorker and print it in a book that I then sell, I am depriving the New Yorker of revenue, because now there is a way to get it that doesn't involve paying the rights-holder (the New Yorker). This -- taking money out of the hands of the people who own the content to put it in my own -- is what copyright is designed to stop. If I link to an essay on the New Yorker's web site from my own web site, I am not depriving them of revenue, because you can only read it by following the link, and the New Yorker is free to put up any financial barriers -- paywalls, ads, etc. -- between you and the endpoint of the link that they wish. So they're not losing the opportunity to sell you the content; I'm not taking money out of their hands. And maybe my endorsement that there's good stuff to be found behind the paywall will be the factor that convinces you to pay up. Or, alternately, they can decide to forgo the money they'd make by forcing you to subscribe in the hopes that they can make more money by showing ads against the content instead. But the crucial point is that it is their decision, not mine. Whereas if I put the essay in a printed book, and then sold it, I am making the decision for them. Where all this breaks down, of course, is in cases where I, the linker, reprint large portions (or all) of the article on my own site in addition to just providing a link. In that case, yes, I am depriving you of revenue, because the reader no longer has to click through to get the meat of the story. But traditional copyright law covers this scenario too -- I don't have the right to do that. All I'm allowed to do by the doctrine of fair use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) is reprint a small snippet. If I put up the whole thing, I'm violating your copyright and you can and should come at me with guns blazing. (I wrote a bit more about this distinction between what I call "ethical" and "unethical" aggregation here: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/05/ethical-aggregation-its-simple/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/05/ethical-aggregation-its-si...)

teachingaway 12y ago

Side-by-side: http://i.imgur.com/vGmlRj3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vGmlRj3.jpg The photographer is in over her head. She owns her photo, but she doesn't own the "idea" of the back of Rod Stewart's head. Not even Rod Stewart owns that "idea." And while we can't just copy her photo, we can take another photo that expresses the same idea (Stewart's head). And since there aren't that many way to photograph Rod Stewart's rear-dome, the photos would have to be essentially identical for any copyright infringement. The photos here are not identical: the light is different, the hair is messed up differently... it looks like a losing case.

galaxyLogic 12y ago
I don't think she's over her head. I think she's after the money
duncanawoods 12y ago
You might be right but it reminds me of the red bus case which may indicate the changing scope of copyright in the future: http://azrights.com/media/uncategorized/2013/11/photographers-photography-copyright-and-the-red-bus-case/ http://azrights.com/media/uncategorized/2013/11/photographer... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Island_v_New_English_Teas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Island_v_New_English_Tea...
- mamurphy 12y ago
  As detailed in this blog post (http://permissionmachine.com/blog/rod-stewart-sued-for-recreating-a-photo-of-the-back-of-his-head/ http://permissionmachine.com/blog/rod-stewart-sued-for-recre...), the Rod Stewart photos look much more similar to the disputed photos in Temple Island v. New English Teas (the claimant won in that suit). When I viewed the side-by-side comparison, my reaction was "wow, she actually has a point!" not "this is a frivolous suit." Both photos show Rod with a black, long sleeve garment, show only his head, neck, and left shoulder, and have not dissimilar lighting and hair styling.
a-nikolaev 12y ago
The image of the back of his head became memorable to people primarily not becase of that particular photo, but because of the music on the album. So, I think, Rod Stewart himself is primarily responsible for making the image famous. He created this cultural artifact / meme.

galaxyLogic 12y ago

" ... when you’re reading a linked page, you may still be “at” awesomestuff.com, as clicking the back button on your browser can instantly confirm. Effectively, awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com " This I think is based on misunderstanding of how http and the web work. Somebody at awesomestuff created a link to newyorker.com. They basically just told you the ADDRESS of newyorker.com. They created a ROAD-SIGN and YOU followed that. You clicked the link and the website newyorker.com willingly served you the content. That content was NEVER COPIED to the server at awesomestuff.com. So only thing newyorker could accuse them of doing is telling people their website address. If they have told you that address and you write it down and copy that surely that is not copyright infringement because New Yorker has NEVER CLAIMED they own the right to their website address. It is public information.

legulere 12y ago
The best comparison for IFrames would be that they cut the article out of a new yorker and glued it into the book
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  That I think would be fraudulent misrepresentation of who owns the content in question. In practice nobody would do that a thousand times and if they did it would still not be "copying". They would have had to pay for all the "copies" of the paper from which they cut off the article. They would have paid for all those "copies" and thus they would have the right to distribute them (unless a private contract prohibited that). Misrepresenting the origin of the content could be considered fraud. But if you never implied that you created that content then maybe not.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  No. More like they provided instructions for you to cut the article out of a new yorker and glue it into the book. Important difference.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

marincounty 12y ago

"In the case of many books and photographs, the rights holders are unknown; in other cases, it’s expensive to track down the heirs or the legatees or the firms, possibly no longer in existence, to whom the copyright belongs." There's people who take advantage of this. I've seen more than a few people claiming they own the copyright, while when asked to provide proof they never respond. Ebay is loaded with people who are falsely claiming copyright protection. Ebay seems to take the stand, "Well this dude was the first one to scan it to PDF, he must own the copyright?"

DanBC 12y ago

I wonder how much traffic awesomestuff.com got as a result of this? The point the author makes about linking, deep-linking, and framing, is confused and weird. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking Several deep-linking cases have gone to courts in various parts of the world.

acabal 12y ago

One of the most tragic ideas to evolve in this century is the idea of "intellectual property"--that you can own an idea for years, sometimes tens or hundreds of years. That term covers things outside of copyright, like patents, but the damage the idea as a whole in its present incarnation does to our long-term culture is the same. Ideas are intangible, not property, and someone can think the same thing as you without ever having met you or heard of you. A more accurate term than "intellectual property" would be a "short, government-protected monopoly on an idea". But we call it property, and after many years of calling that, it insidiously starts seeming to us like real property, and not the temporary monopoly it really is. There's room for short, temporary monopolies. As the framers realized, copyright and patents are critical to fostering innovation and culture. Unfortunately, "short" went from being a very reasonable few years, to a slightly less reasonable 20ish years, to now, where if you publish a work today the chances of it being available to the public within 150 years are slim. Do a grandchild's grandchildren deserve to lord over something created by a dusty ancestor centuries ago? In a strange and sad way, our IP regime today means that individual authors are unlikely to be remembered by history 100 years from now. Look at Project Gutenberg or Wikiart: hundreds of people from all over the world volunteer to lovingly scan, transcribe, format, categorize, and distribute works from the last few centuries. They do this because that work belongs to the public now, and their efforts keep the memories and impact of those works and authors alive. Do you think anyone will do the same for your work 100 years from now on the pain of legal threats and huge fines, or is it more likely it'll fade into oblivion?

icebraining 12y ago
As the framers realized, copyright and patents are critical to fostering innovation and culture. Well, at least Jefferson was initially opposed to the idea, which he (rightly) viewed as a monopoly: Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it… . That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Later he acquiesced, but with a much stricter proposal than what eventually was written in the Bill of Rights: Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.

sehrope 12y ago

An interesting solution I've heard[1] to reform both copyright (and possibly patent) law is to require compounding annual fees to maintain them. For example if someone writes a new song or book, we could have a short "free" copyright period. After that, creator (or more accurately, the rights holder) would need to pay an annual fee to maintain their copyright. The fee would increase by some percentage each year. If the value of the work is greater than the fee, then it'd be in the interests of the rights holder to pay the fee and maintain the copyright, for example to be able to license it out to others. If it's not, then the copyright would expire and the work would enter the public domain. A high enough interest rate for the compounding would ensure that everything is eventually in the public domain. For works that are repeatedly extended, say Mickey Mouse, the public will receive the fees collected for each of the extensions until it enters the public domain. This also has the interesting effect of incentivizing the creation of new works as there wouldn't be any fees associated with them for the initial term. There's obviously a lot more details to handle such as having a central registry, inflation adjustments, differentiating between new works and derived works, and how to handle works created prior to the introduction of a system like this. Still I think it's an interesting proposal. [1]: I don't remember where exactly but probably here on HN.

galaxyLogic 12y ago
Sounds like a good idea
danielweber 12y ago
I liked this concept, but you need to establish what the "unit" of the work is. If I'm a photographer, do I need to pay the compounding fee on each picture I take? I take thousands a year. While George Lucas makes a single motion picture over a year.
habitue 12y ago
That was Rick Falkvinge. It was probably either on his blog or posted to torrentfreak
repsilat 12y ago
The idea that something will enter the public domain once its market price has been established is nice, but my problem with this scheme is that it needs so much fine-tuning. How should the prices increase? Exponentially, adjusted for inflation? Will the prices be much too low for much too long, or will they rocket up at unreasonable rates for some kinds of media? I think the best scheme for works entering the public domain is modelled on eminent domain. That is, a work may be "seized" (and its owner duly compensated) by a government when the utility to the public of it entering the public domain is great enough. Obviously there would need to be a lot of structure around it, because it's going to happen all the time. There might have to be a registry of copyright owners. There might also be taxes or regular charges levied as in your system.

rev_null 12y ago

The writer doesn't seem to understand the concept of natural rights. They aren't inalienable because we declare them to be so, they are inalienable because it's actually impossible to deny people these rights. The First Amendment protects individual expression, for example, because it’s in society’s best interest to have a robust debate—not because each person has a right to say what he or she thinks simply by virtue of being human. In reality, by virtue of having the ability to speak, humans do have a right to say whatever they want. Oppressive regimes can certainly take steps to punish people for speaking their minds, but it's pretty difficult to stop someone from voicing an opinion in the first place. So the right to make copies was imagined by the Framers as a way to encourage the writing of books by individuals for the good of an educated citizenry. But, if you are a natural-rights person and you think that individual rights are inalienable, then you don’t recognize the priority of the public domain. You think that society has no claim on works created by individuals. Once an individual chooses to share an idea, anyone who has that idea can naturally share it. Copyright is not an inalienable right.

galaxyLogic 12y ago
Right, copyright is not an "inalienable right". It is a law. We can and maybe should argue against that law as it currently stands. What I think we should argue against is that whatever created Mickey Mouse, or whoever BOUGHT that copyright, should have the right for it for 100 years. It's a bit like saying whoever built the fortress can rule the land from now on. But check-out Carl Barks. Does he or his estate own the copyright to his masterful art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks Currently the copyright law is truly married to the estate txation.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  Note in the Wikipedia table-of-contents there is no mention of copyrights for his works.
- galaxyLogic 12y ago
  You may have seen a lot of bad cartoons from Disney but Barks was one of he most important visual artists of 20th century, if you can get to his works. Disney doesn't seem to advertize his works apart from anybody else for obvious reasons.

teddyh 12y ago

I thought this would be a link to the classic 1993 Wired Magazine article “Copywrong”¹. ① http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/1.3_stallman.copyright.html http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/1.3_stallman.cop...

bambax 12y ago

We've had copyright for over two hundred years, so we can judge the difference between before and after. In any artistic field (music, painting, literature, sculpture...) the best works were produced before copyright existed. The best and most interesting output of the human mind since 1790 were not in the arts but in the hard sciences, outside of the realm of copyright. It's understandable that "copyright holders" would fight hard to maintain the status quo or even extend protections indefinitely; what I find baffling, and truly depressing, is that everyone else lets it happen.

thisishugo 12y ago
> The best and most interesting output of the human mind since > 1790 were not in the arts but in the hard sciences, outside > of the realm of copyright. This is the most utterly ridiculous claim I have heard in a long time, not least because what constitutes "the best works" of art is entirely subjective.
- bambax 12y ago
  It can't be both subjective and ridiculous. If it's subjective then I'm right for the reason that I'm judge and jury. If it's not then I can be wrong, but you have to make an argument for it, based on some objective criteria.
  - thisishugo 12y ago
    An opinion isn't right or wrong, it just is, no matter how strongly you assert it. And it certainly is open to ridicule: would you take seriously someone claiming, with absolute sincerity, to be the sovereign ruler of the Gumdrop Kingdom?

khaki54 12y ago

I couldn't get past the author claiming that linking to an article in its published location is somehow akin to stealing the article and publishing it in a compilation book without permission. It's more like pointing someone to a bookstore and saying "check out this great book".

dghf 12y ago

> But suppose that a Web site, awesomestuff.com, ran an item that said something like “This piece on copyright is a great read!” with a hyperlink on the word “piece” to my article’s page on The New Yorker’s Web site.... Effectively, awesomestuff.com has stolen content from newyorker.com, just as the compiler of “Most Thoughtful Essays” stole content from me. This has to be the single most wrong-headed thing I've seen written on hyperlinks. To suggest that telling people where they can find an article is morally equivalent to copying that article and distributing the copies ... to paraphrase Charles Babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a proposition."

ejk314 12y ago
I can understand how he would see 'framing' as copying a website into another page. But he goes on to argue that we accept this form of 'copying' because of the same 'a visual change is experienced as a physical change' mumbo jumbo. No. Clearly, we accept this form of copying because framing the whole page still shows the page's adds and only increases revenue for the 'copied' site. There would obviously be legal ramifications if you embedded the page into your site then removed their adds and replaced them with your own.
jgeada 12y ago
Yeah, that paragraph basically blew the entire article for me. The analog version would be stating that including the Dewey Decimal(1) reference for another book in my book/article is the same as violating copyright or stealing. Absurd on all possible interpretations. (1): or any other short description that would allow me to locate the specific book being referenced.

dghf 12y ago

And using the label "Silicon Valley" to refer to businesses that are antagonistic to strong copyright? Companies like Adobe? Apple? Electronic Arts? Oracle?

efaref 12y ago

> “address” (which you can’t G.P.S.) You very much can GPS an internet address: http://www.geoiptool.com/en/?ip=www.newyorker.com http://www.geoiptool.com/en/?ip=www.newyorker.com

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

Ultimately, the biggest issue with copywrong is this: on a rather fundamental level computers operate by copying, not moving. I mean: even the MOV instruction on most (if not all) instruction set copies data without overwriting the original. RAM (tends to) have non-destructive reads. The processor caches everywhere. Etc. Sure, you could potentially talk about fixation as opposed to temporary copies - but that boundary is fuzzy and getting fuzzier all the time. What happens when the process gets paged to disk? What happens if the process crashes and dumps a crash report? Or worse - when memsistor RAM starts becoming available? Also, there's a related problem as to whom takes responsibility for a machine doing something. What happens when you walk by a security camera with a copywronged painting? If you visit webpage A that contains an iframe pointing to website B containing copywronged work, who is responsible for the copywrong infringement? Is it you? You own the computer. But you never did anything that you could have known was a violation. Is it the person who wrote your web browser, as they were the person who wrote the instructions to follow iframes? Is it the person who wrote webpage A? But they didn't ever actually do anything infringing - they provided instructions which if followed without checking copywrong restrictions would potentially be a violation. Personally, the entire idea of "intellectual property" is fundamentally misguided, but that is another matter.