Thanks, Tripon. Don't pay attention to Barney Fife.

I don't think it will serve the general discussion to get bogged down in definitional minutia. An unauthorized use or taking is a species of theft.

It's not definitional minutia. It's highly appropriate when the question is whether theft requires actual taking. There's a very blurry line between unauthorized use and theft, and the overwhelming majority of our laws against theft, and the principles behind them, were based on an assumption that taking specifically meant depriving another of one's rightful property. (Common law theft required the unauthorized taking, keeping, or use of another's property with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the property or its use.)

John owns a DVD copy of Titanic that has some sort of copy protection software. He wants to watch the movie on his tablet, which doesn't have a DVD player. He uses a program to bypass the copy protection, make a non-physical copy, and transfer it to his tablet via his home network. John has just committed an unauthorized use violation; is he guilty of theft?

Bill makes an archival copy of a DVD he owns, which has no copy protection software installed. He watches the DVD in one room while his son watches the archival copy in another room. Is he guilty of theft? How about if he lends the DVD to someone else while still maintaining possession of the archival copy without watching it? How about if he watches the archival copy while it is loaned out?

Ed pays for unlimited data on his smartphone. His carrier charges thirty dollars per month in addition to activate the ability to turn his phone into a tether, allowing him to use the phone's network for his laptop. He chooses not to purchase this service, instead using a free application that uses the USB connection between phone and laptop to piggyback the network. Has he committed theft?

Frank is across the street from a coffee shop that offers free wifi to their customers, but the signal is strong enough that he can pick it up with his tablet. He uses that signal to browse the web. Is he stealing?

Mark has a legitimately owned copy of a computer program, but the DVD has a giant scratch that makes it impossible to read. The company that he purchased it from no longer distributes the software; he downloads a copy from an abandonware site. This is pretty clearly a copyright violation; has he committed theft? Is it theft when the company DOES still distribute the software and wants him to pay $10 for a replacement copy?

Can I buy a copy of a book still in copyright let's, say, I dunno, a twilight novel. Then cut out each word and paste them back together in a different order. Resell book. Infringement?

What if it's an e-book?

This is, of course, a classic.

No, theft is when you took the car.

But that's because there's ONE car. What if I pointed my future tech 3d xerox / printing machine at your car and made an exact duplicate of it and drove it away?

COKES around... now I know why I read to the end of the page first... usually.

I too have problems with these things. I have not argued otherwise in this thread.

I wasn't saying you did. I was generally agreeing with you that Swartz's depression is an irrelevant consideration in terms of criticizing the government, and didn't create some additional duty (or blameworthiness for his suicide).

Disney has used claims over unauthorized use to suppress public discourse about its products and its brand. And when a small publisher gets letter from Dinsey's lawyers, they tend to err on the side of caution. Now, of course, it's Disney's right to be overzealous in protecting their brand. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than a naked power grab. There's no ethical high ground on Disney's part.

Hell, Disney went toe to toe against the Atlanta baseball franchise, which has been in existence in Atlanta since 1966 and in existence in other forms for 100 years, over "infringement" of their copyright claim to merchandise from the movie "Brave."

Principal Skinner: Oh now, gentlemen, it's just a small school carnival.
Blue-Haired Lawyer: And it's heading for a great big lawsuit. You made a big mistake, Skinner.

A theater producer who didn't pay royalties on producing a George S. Kaufman play tried to excuse himself by saying "After all, it's only a small, insignificant theater."
Kaufman responded: "Then you'll only go to a small, insignificant jail."

Can I buy a copy of a book still in copyright let's, say, I dunno, a twilight novel. Then cut out each word and paste them back together in a different order. Resell book. Infringement?

Not infringement. In fact you've created your own copyrighted work.

What if it's an e-book?

Also not infringement. Although, if the ebook has DRM protection and you have to circumvent it in order to reorder the words, you have probably committed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) violation.

It’s probably safe to assume that there are many self-identified “liberals” who enjoy watching Downton Abbey, drawn in by its air of prestige, its aura of highbrow escapism, and the fact that it’s broadcast on PBS, thus stealing money directly from American taxpayers. But do those liberals realize that they’re secretly being indoctrinated to love rich people, eventually leading to the total crumbling of their ideology? Gleeful in their discovery of this subterfuge and in finding something to talk about besides the Inauguration, Fox & Friends stupidly exposed the show’s hidden agenda this morning, letting economist Stuart Varney—whose pleasant British tones helped soften the blow against liberal dogma, much as they do on Downton Abbey—spill the beans on how the series “poses a threat to the left,” then very nicely asked some poor people to tidy up those beans, because that’s what nice rich people do.
“Rich people, powerful people, in America today, are reviled, aren’t they?... We just hate ‘em! Rich people are evil!” Varney said, using his extensive background as an economist and adult man to make his very professional assessment of the economic climate. But then a show like Downton Abbey comes along, with its classy, good-looking, job-creating rich people who occasionally express a vague semblance of human sympathy to the employees who tend to their every need and outfit change, allow their servants time to die of cancer rather than casting them into the ditch, and only disown their daughters for falling in love with the chauffeur for like a year or so. And then, before they know it, the Democrats have lost the next election to write-in votes for Maggie Smith and cummerbunds. It all makes sense, if you look at it as an economist.

But how does copyright prevent free exchange of information? Once a book or film or music is published, all the informational content is free and available. The ideas, techniques, etc. are available to anyone who wants to buy a copy, or go to the library.

When I say "free," I mean "free," not "obtainable." If you can't access the information without paying for it, it's the opposite of free.

The only thing that's not freely exchanged is the actual specific form of the work. The words on the page, the scenes, the arrangement.

You're completely free to publish a book about a boy wizard at a wizard academy, you just can't take JK Rowlings words.

Even now, you might be able to, if you add or change enough. Set one of her books to music, and that might be enough. But what you're calling the "only thing" is a pretty big thing. You're limiting the spread of information, in that particular form, in favor of the owner's right to exclusivity. I don't think it's a trivial tradeoff.

A lot of music is derivative, and the line between copying and transformation isn't very clear. There's a really cover-friendly system in place, where you can cover a song and pay the license owner a pretty small fee (I think it's around nine cents per song per unit sold), so it isn't as much of an issue as it could be. Assuming I understand the statutory licensing law properly, if you want to record an album of fifteen covers of previously released songs and sell it, you can basically send a letter of notification to the rights-holders and there's nothing they can do to stop you (unless you don't pay them).

Most intellectual property doesn't have that same statutory scheme.

It isn't necessary that law always be compelling; sometimes it's enough if it is only able to compel.

Generally speaking, how's that working out on the copyright front? I don't see a lot of ability to compel.

I don't think that's actually the case, though in any event I'm only interested in reproducing the magazine covers as a whole, as the artwork standing alone would be lacking in historical context.

I'm pretty sure if the artwork was still copyrighted the owners could block you from reproducing the magazine cover as well because it would be derivative of the original artwork.

Not true. If you're interested, the whole question of the copyright status of the artwork in The Masses is dealt with in the book that's appropriately enough titled Art For The Masses (by Rebecca Zurier, Temple Univ. Press, 1988). There's a clear distinction between the covers and the artwork itself, when the covers themselves have gone out of copyright as The Masses covers did long ago. Don't forget that in most cases of magazine illustrations, the artists were hired on a piecework basis, and the entire contents of the magazine were retained by the publishers, barring any special arrangement with the artist.

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Disney has used claims over unauthorized use to suppress public discourse about its products and its brand. And when a small publisher gets letter from Dinsey's lawyers, they tend to err on the side of caution. Now, of course, it's Disney's right to be overzealous in protecting their brand. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than a naked power grab. There's no ethical high ground on Disney's part.

AFAIC the only positive contributions Walt ####### Disney ever made to American culture were (a) hiring Carl Barks; and (b) this. The rest is all just a bunch of crap and pablum, no matter how technically dazzling.

It’s probably safe to assume that there are many self-identified “liberals” who enjoy watching Downton Abbey,

It's also probably safe to assume that there are many of us self-identified liberals who'd like to see that godawful show sent back across the ocean, if for no other reason than the fact that our wives have often forced us to miss key sporting events in order that they might watch it. They should just let us keep Fawlty Towers and the BBC World News and stick the rest of it all in a sack.

A theater producer who didn't pay royalties on producing a George S. Kaufman play tried to excuse himself by saying "After all, it's only a small, insignificant theater."
Kaufman responded: "Then you'll only go to a small, insignificant jail."

I love George S. Kaufman stories.

It’s probably safe to assume that there are many self-identified “liberals” who enjoy watching Downton Abbey,

Funny. My wife's re-watching Season 3 right now. I'd watch it with her, but I've already seen it twice. It's great.

This theory eliminates entirely any market based incentive for the creation of art. It also undermines any argument anyone might make for drug patents. After all, if I hack Astra-Zeneca's systems, download their formulas and put a knock-off on the market at half price, I haven't actually *taken* anything from them by this definition. They still have their work.

Drug patents (and patents themselves) are a pretty interesting carve-out, and worthy of their own serious discussion. I think they're sort of necessary because of how expensive it is to develop and produce drugs and push them through trials. You probably wouldn't need to hack anything; if Astra-Zeneca has a patent, it's part of the public record. You just can't use it. Forget selling a knock-off at half-price; you can't even make it or use it yourself without the permission of the patent-holder. The other thing about patents is that they only last for a fairly narrow window. For drugs, because of the long trials, there's usually less than a ten-year window of exclusive sale.

But there's a price (in principle) for this very strong protection; you don't get to keep secrets. Other companies don't need to spend nearly as much energy reverse-engineering stuff and can develop new technology more quickly and effectively.

Modern US copyright law is stupid. This is uniquely due to Disney and the Disney lobby in DC. Rational copyright is fundamental to intellectual endeavor, unless you're willing to exit the realm of economic incentives for creative work entirely. (That is to say, punt market theory out the window.)

14 years was pretty reasonable, I think.

Free information is only important in certain use cases. Free information about the government and its actions are critical to keeping a check and balance on government behavior. Free information about research history into the last kings of Scotland? Not so much. There is no value on free information per se. Information is a dumb object in the world. The only argument for free access is a use case of actual humans in actual reality.

If there's no value in free distribution of information per se, then why not have copyright last indefinitely? Why should Hamlet ever enter the public domain rather than generate continual revenue for Shakespeare's descendants?

Information is really only of value to humanity if shared. I think that is itself a reason to presume that free exchange is a good thing.

Somebody mentioned al la cart pricing for TV/Movies. You're already seeing it online with Amazon video and youtube, but I feel for the most part its too expensive. Each ep is $2 for the SD version, and $4 for the HD version, and I feel that it has to move to the $0.99 model before you'll see significant movement on it. Especially since you're only streaming the videos, instead of a download. So you don't even own your own copy. You're paying for a 'unlimited' access to the stream of the ep, which may or may not actually be 'unlimited'.

The Virgina state Senate is split 20-20 D/R, so while one of the Democratic Senators was at the inauguration, the state GOP redistricted the state.

Disney has used claims over unauthorized use to suppress public discourse about its products and its brand. And when a small publisher gets letter from Dinsey's lawyers, they tend to err on the side of caution. Now, of course, it's Disney's right to be overzealous in protecting their brand. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than a naked power grab. There's no ethical high ground on Disney's part.

Protecting their brand, usurping someone else's brand, whatevah.

Can I buy a copy of a book still in copyright let's, say, I dunno, a twilight novel. Then cut out each word and paste them back together in a different order. Resell book. Infringement?



Not infringement. In fact you've created your own copyrighted work.

Of course. What fraction of words do I have to change? What if I purposefully misspell all the words so that they are phonetically identical?

Hahaha. Ebaum's world. One of the original internet sites, famously known for stealing acts and other stuff from other sites. Then one day, the company was sold right under the founders without them knowing about it in an equity deal that screwed them out of the profits.

Also, both Kimba the White Lion, and the Lion King is clearly based on Hamlet.

Patents (i.e, drugs, cell phones) are not copyrights. You cannot patent a chemical (including biologic, i.e, protein, RNA, DNA, whatever) for a general purpose, only for a SPECIFIC DEFINED purpose, a utility.

I am not super clear on the IP status of repurposing compounds that are already in use. I know this is done to extend drug patents, BUT I can't say that it's true for a generic compound.

Maybe you can prevent marketing a competing product that violates the utility in your new patent on an old molecule (say, Asprin as an anti-depressant) BUT you couldn't prevent off-label prescription.

My favorite trademark dispute was on the Canadian Dragons Den. A woman who owned a garage named Ms. Lube went onto the show to pitch for a capital investment to franchise Ms. Lube. One of the 5 people she was pitching for was the owner of the Mr. Lube chain, Jim Treliving. The rest of the panel was trying to explain to the woman why the name was a bad idea but she didn't understand waht the issue was. Treliving didn't participate in the discussion and he said he was keeping his mouth closed for legal reasons. You can guess what happened immediately after the show.

Dan, they did a follow up to the show, and they shown that she went out of business a couple of months after the show aired. Unrelated to the trademark issues because Mr. Lube's didn't file the lawsuit yet.

They did file the lawsuit but they went out of business before it went to court.

Ah, okay. I remember that segment. The odd thing is that she totally thought Jim would be impressed by the name. The Canadian's Dragon Den's is an odd show, they clearly try to get the more exotic companies on the show, and they take more chances than the American version, Shark Tank.

Just this past week, they had a pitch for a Vodka with Hemp infused that actually got invested.

Still, even if a copyright has run on a book, that doesn't mean you can copy it.

Wha? Material that's in the public domain can absolutely be copied without repercussions. That's what public domain means.

The danger with copying a Penguin edition from front to back is that you might copy copyrighted material generated and owned by Penguin that's present alongside the non-copyrighted material, like a foreword or footnotes. But the rest? You can copy that.

The photograph has to add something creative to the work that is being photographed. A "faithful reproduction" of someone else's work doesn't qualify for a new copyright: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

That is kind of a sort of blurry line though.

In practice, the general distinction within the US is that photographic 2D representations of public domain 2D works (paintings, etc.) are OK to copy, though if there's a frame, you need to crop that out of your copy. A non-photographic representation of the work (a caricature of the Mona Lisa, etc.) is not OK to copy, since it is itself a separate creative work.

2D representations of public domain 3D works (sculptures, etc.) are not OK to copy, because the choices of lighting and angle and things like that within the 2D representation are themselves creative elements. You can create your own 2D representation of the 3D work, though, as long as the 3D work is itself in the public domain.

Wha? Material that's in the public domain can absolutely be copied without repercussions. That's what public domain means.

Yep. Ask classical musicians & classical ensembles. They'd be dead otherwise.

Perhaps. But nobody is really harmed by not being able to buy a knock-off Mickey Mouse hat.

That might be true if Disney had only extended the copyright on Disney works. But because they lobbied to have the term extended for all of the works created by other people during that same time span, they're holding literally millions of other works out of the public domain for the sake of one mouse.

Want to adapt Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" for the stage at your local community theater? #### you - it wasn't published until 1924! Want to use Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" in your independent film? #### you - it wasn't published until 1926! Want to make a DVD copy of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" and mail it to your grandfather? #### you - it wasn't published until 1927! And so forth...

The Melville one is particularly ludicrous, in that he died in 1891. His mouldering bones don't need the money generated by his work. His children's children died long ago. Yet the copyright endures.

It's also probably safe to assume that there are many of us self-identified liberals who'd like to see that godawful show sent back across the ocean

Eh. Not exactly brilliant =/= godawful. It's well made and has good acting. Hell, any audience not enjoying Maggie Smith deserves the blame for that, not the show.

I thought Josh Marshall had perhaps the best summation of yesterday's inaugural:

Obama shocks DC mandarins by announcing he’ll caucus as a Democrat.

Just this past week, they had a pitch for a Vodka with Hemp infused that actually got invested.

I'll drink to that!

Eh. Not exactly brilliant =/= godawful. It's well made and has good acting. Hell, any audience not enjoying Maggie Smith deserves the blame for that, not the show.

Yup. Especially season one. (Been very disappointed so far with season three.)

While the politics of Downton Abbey (the politics of Julian Fellowes) are hardly liberal, they're hardly liberal in the English sense as well. His high Toryism infuses the show with esteem not for the wealthy, but for the nobility. There was no purer Fellowes/Downton villain than season two's Richard Carlisle, a dirty nouveau riche with no appreciation for the ways things should be - a man, for god's sake, with a job.

#2005 yeah I've only been over this ground 17 billion times at slashdot.

#2037 One reason why discussions of this type bog down is that there's a lot of talking past each other. That and a lot of attempted cleverness by non-lawyers.

I don't like it or agree that it should be that way, but from what I can tell (as I said in another post I've been through a lot of these discussions) in practical terms Morty is basically correct.
(and all of the clever arguments that you read in threads like this cut no ice if it actually goes to trial)

EDIT: I'm pretty much on the same page as CB on depression. It's a serious issue in my life, but I can't see it meriting special treatment by the prosecution.

And I too am not fond of overcharging as a negotiating ploy.

#2005 yeah I've only been over this ground 17 billion times at slashdot.

Yeah, but this time, we'll figure it out!

Edit after the refresh:

I don't like it or agree that it should be that way, but from what I can tell (as I said in another post I've been through a lot of these discussions) in practical terms Morty is basically correct.

That's descriptive rather than normative-- Morty's collapsing the two. As I understand it, part of the civil disobedience people engage in around these issues is an attempt to call attention to the obsolescence of those interpretations, and their fundamental incongruence with digital modes of distribution, where every act of circulation involves making a copy.

It's "making an unauthorized copy". It's not theft.

Okay. I don't think it will serve the general discussion to get bogged down in definitional minutia. An unauthorized use or taking is a species of theft. In fact, many states list "unauthorized taking and use" in the category under theft headings

There are some debates that honestly scare me, this is one of them, unauthorized use/copying of stuff that someone else has the copyright to is theft/stealing (in both the statutory and biblical sense), I don't think that reasonable people can disagree on that, and yet we have otherwise reasonable people here disagreeing.

unauthorized use/copying of stuff that someone else has the copyright to is theft/stealing (in both the statutory and biblical sense),

There was no such thing as copyright when the Bible was written, nor for many millennia afterward.

#2088 as I said, so many people argue based on what they want the law to be.

It's not an idle interest to me. In real life I'm a Unix sysadmin and worked for years in image processing. There are all sorts of intellectual property issues in the field.

EDIT: In particular software patents that should never have been granted because of prior art. Do you change the way you do things because of a patent that should never have been granted? (answer: yes. PITA, but unless you plan on going the legal route ... And that's neither cheap nor certain to work)

There are some debates that honestly scare me, this is one of them, unauthorized use/copying of stuff that someone else has the copyright to is theft/stealing (in both the statutory and biblical sense), I don't think that reasonable people can disagree on that, and yet we have otherwise reasonable people here disagreeing.

Of note this morning, apparently Fox and Glee think it's okay to take people's work without asking too. Just so long as it's an "internet nobody."

January 21, 2013: the day BTF discovered the intellectual property debate.* Congratulations and welcome to the internet!

Because BTF OTP threads never rehash old ground when the debates become topical again.

While the politics of Downton Abbey (the politics of Julian Fellowes) are hardly liberal, they're hardly liberal in the English sense as well. His high Toryism infuses the show with esteem not for the wealthy, but for the nobility. There was no purer Fellowes/Downton villain than season two's Richard Carlisle, a dirty nouveau riche with no appreciation for the ways things should be - a man, for god's sake, with a job.

I totally get the fear about Fellowes agenda, but like you I think it maps obliquely on modern politics, and it's innocuous enough that it doesn't change my view of the show. (Which is Season One: really good, Season Two: What?, Season Three: Meh) The particular defense of the nobility is so un-American that it's neither a Rep nor Dem position, and the celebration of a kind of corporatist world has echoes in both rightist and leftist US thinking but doesn't map onto either party, since the market is the dominant metaphor of both parties. The show is about the reconciliation of change and tradition, which can be a conservative position--it is Andrew Sullivan's position--but is emphatically not a reactionary position.

I think the series has hit the Moonlighting/Cheers problem. They mistook the side bits for the main part, and once they drained the romantic tension between the leads, the side stuff isn't good enough to carry the show, no matter how well the bits are written. ("Let's not make a meal out of this," was a great line in episode three, but there's no emotional weight even in a situation like that.)

They mistook the side bits for the main part, and once they drained the romantic tension between the leads, the side stuff isn't good enough to carry the show

Nothing makes me leave faster than endless unresolved romantic tension - that is so, so boring. Maybe I'm unique. That's honestly not the problem with season 3, it's that there's no real overarching theme, IMO.

Nothing makes me leave faster than endless unresolved romantic tension - that is so, so boring.

If a show is stringing out an "unrequited love" story endlessly, it means the target audience of that show is either 1) tweens or 2) women. More often, tween girls.

I don't think there's anything complicated about the problems with Seasons two and three of Downton - Fellowes is the only writer, and he's overwhelmed trying to maintain multiple dramatic arcs and a huge cast of characters. So you get bizarre start-stop plotting, along with other plots he has no idea how to develop, plus disconcerting character inconsistency.

If a show is stringing out an "unrequited love" story endlessly, it means the target audience of that show is either 1) tweens or 2) women. More often, tween girls.

No, it's a sign of bad writing. It's true that more shows aimed at women and girls focus on romantic storylines, but that's got nothing to do with drawing them out too long.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be unrequited to be drawn out and tiresome. And drawn out is fine. Drawn out and drawn out and drawn out is tiresome.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be unrequited to be drawn out and tiresome. And drawn out is fine. Drawn out and drawn out and drawn out is tiresome.

I assume you mean will they/won't they #### like "Rachel and Ross" and "Buffy and Angel," etc. I'm sure romantic storylines can work on TV, but more often than not, once a writing crew realize that the "tension" of the "chase" is drawing the tweenie girl's eyeballs, that's going to be the next three seasons worth of "drama" for that show.

I thought season 2 of Downton was brilliant. There were annoying bits to it, like the endless nonsense with Bates, but it did an admirable job of dramatizing the decline of the aristocracy and the change in English society that occurred over the first World War.

I thought that the second season far exceeded the first. There are still way too many side plots and stuff, but I thought the development of Edith as a character was very interesting (if a bit out of keeping with her character from the first season).

The Mary/Matthew storyline is incredibly silly. It's far from the central tension of the story. The central tension of the story is how will Downton survive? Mary/Matthew are just a hook to grab people with easily. I roll my eyes anytime there is fake tension with Mary/Matthew. It's so obvious that they end up together that any tension between them is silly and transitory.

Haven't watched all of season 3, so can't comment.