
No Copyright Intended - aaronbrethorst
http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/
======
_delirium
It's an interesting phenomenon, not so much that many people are ignoring
copyright, as that they genuinely seem confused about what it is. My guess is
that it's partly actually caused by the rhetoric around intellectual property,
which can backfire:

1) The ubiquitous trademark-ownership disclaimers ("All trademarks are the
property of their respective owners") combined with the conflation of
trademark/patent/copyright under the umbrella term "intellectual property",
leads to confusion about this area, and a misbelief that a disclaimer like the
one used to avoid trademark infringement can also be used to avoid copyright
infringement.

2) The rhetoric around "stealing" causes people to apply a more intuitive
understanding of what it means to "steal" someone else's work, which then gets
interpreted as being a question of plagiarism or profiting, so uploaders make
sure to clarify that they aren't "stealing" the work in the sense of claiming
it's theirs or trying to sell it.

~~~
derleth
> "All trademarks are the property of their respective owners"

This is another piece of folk-law voodoo, in that, one, it is not required by
any law, and, two, it does not make anything legal that would be illegal
otherwise.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It indicates you're not using the disclaimed marks to indicate origin of goods
and services you are offering.

If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a
registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim
that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't implemented to avoid claims that mere
presentation of marks were uses of the trademark. Of course if the language
works then there _may_ not be caselaw to support this as litigants _could_
have been put off suing in cases using such a disclaimer.

Are you working in TM law in some form in some jurisdiction?

IANA(IP)L (nor working in IP presently).

As a related aside the UKIPO practice on RTM in patent specifications is of
interest [to me]. Generally the examiner would [I'm a little out of date],
IIRC, attempt to [get the applicant to] excise all registered trademarks that
weren't essential to the understanding of the piece. Any remaining marks were
to be labelled in the spec with "RTM" (for Registered TradeMark). So far as I
could ascertain there was no legal requirement to do this it was just pushed
as best practice. Note RTM in the UK was the legal manner and not use of ®.

Labelling a mark as "ExampleTrademark RTM" is pretty much the short-hand
equivalent of saying "this trademark belongs to it's owner [and not us]".

~~~
derleth
> It indicates you're not using the disclaimed marks to indicate origin of
> goods and services you are offering.

You indicate this by doing it. Merely mentioning a trademark someone else owns
doesn't infringe on any of the rights owning a trademark gives you.

> If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a
> registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim
> that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.

The standard of trademark infringement is confusion; having a product that is
labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of what disclaimers you have,
having a product that is not confusing is legal even with no disclaimers.

Trademark dilution is a bit broader but, even so, just mentioning a trademark
is not dilution. You still have to use it to advertise your own product.

Here is a good overview of trademark law:

<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>" _having a product that is labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of
what disclaimers you have_ " //

There's the rub.

The disclaimer is the label that [attempts] to remove the confusion of the
product with anything which may have originated with the mentioned marks
owner.

This statement belies a position of ignorance of legal reality. You're
basically saying that in TM law there is no middle ground or gray area between
confusion and clarity of use of marks. There is, of course, and disclaimers
simply attempt to ensure that ones position on the right side of the line is
made obvious. Why do you feel a disclaimer does not speak towards excision of
confusion?

I note you didn't answer my question of your credentials?

------
tomjen3
I grew up in the tail start the generation who doesn't understand copyright
(though I do, having been a rapid FSF supporter).

The thing is copyright no longer makes sense. It used to, but today we have so
many movies, tv shows, albums and books that you couldn't possibly
read/watch/hear just one tenth of one percent of them in your entire lifetime
even if you did _nothing else_. Copyright was supposed to enable society to be
enriched. The constitution doesn't demand that congress make a copyright law,
it merely enables it to do so. The moment the public no longer believes that
copyright is likely to benefit it, it can simply stop offering it.

So that nobody makes the argument that you take away their property or that
the owners somehow has a moral right to it. Nobody is taking their property
away from them. What we take away is the (temporary) monopoly they were
granted.

And we could properly still put limitations on the commercial use of
copyrighted works -- if that had been used as an example, a lot more hands
would have gone up among the students.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> The thing is copyright no longer makes sense.

From a democratic point of view, it doesnt even _matter_ whether it makes
sense or not. The only thing that matters is whether we, as a society,
collectively _want_ private, non-commercial copying (i.e. filesharing) to be
illegal or not.

Knowing that "we" probably would make non-commercial copying legal, "they"
simply do not let us vote on it. Copyright is basically locked out of any
democratic decision process, worldwide. Basically all existing political
parties shield copyright away from democratic influence like a sanctum.

Only in the recent 2-3 years, in a number of european countries, people have
realized that voting on this issue in the current system will basically
forever be impossible and have formed pirate parties focused solely on getting
rid of the filesharing prohibition.

~~~
Jugglernaut
Seeing as it is legal to share files non-commercially in Switzerland I'd say
that worldwide is a stretch.

It's also getting there in other countries. The momentum is behind the
sharing, not behind the institutions upholding the barricades.

------
bambax
> _What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture
> becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What
> happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but
> didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")_

Yes, that's exactly what happens: nothing. The US has had (publicly confessed)
former drug users as presidents for over a decade and a half now, and look at
how it changed the "War on drugs": if anything, it intensified.

This is just wishful thinking.

~~~
joejohnson
The War on Drugs is not a good analog for IP laws. As difficult as it is for
the government to effectively ban substances, it is much, much harder to
prevent people from sharing files over the internet.

The War on Drugs is incredibly ineffective, but not nearly as ineffective as
any technical "solution" to piracy that would make it impossible for people to
share files. Sharing files _is_ the internet. As long as people can connect
their computers, almost at will, there will be ways for them to share
copyrighted material.

~~~
notatoad
It's a perfect analog, politically. The war on drugs is fought much more
vigorously than it should be, considering how much good it does or how much
public support it has, because it is very profitable for some powerful lobby
groups. The fight against piracy, same thing.

------
cmcewen
If anybody has the time, I suggest reading Against Intellectual Monopoly.
<http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm>. It's a fairly well
thought out and well researched argument for the abolition of copyright. There
are a few examples of how people can still make money off of content that
anyone can access.

The basic premise is that the content creator has the advantage of releasing
the material, and therefore can leverage it for profit even though others can
copy the material.

------
sp332
Copyright isn't a normal, naturally-occurring thing. It's an artificial
construct made to incentivize people to make more things. So people aren't
going to understand it instinctively. You have to explain it to them from
scratch, show them the difference it makes, and show them their place in the
system:

If you want to incentivize creators, you shouldn't copy their stuff.

That's the message that never got communicated to these "kids".

~~~
jessriedel
A lot of people disagree with you. When talking to folk in their 50's (I'm in
my 20's) about this stuff, I often hear how intuitive it is that both
copyright owners and patent owners should be paid for their work. Not just to
create incentives, but because it's _just_ in the _absence_ of law.

~~~
sp332
Of course they should be paid for their work. But that doesn't mean that they
should be able to restrict distribution. Thomas Jefferson argued that
copyright protections are not natural, and in fact the US law specifically
puts limits on which rights copyright holders can claim, and for how many
years. [http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....](http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html)

------
herge
How many people in the 60s smoked pot? Just because a majority does something
does not mean it will become legal.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yeah, but there are lots of alternatives to pot.

Also, pot-smoking is _smoking_. It is (and I say this in the nicest possible
way, as one who supports the legalization of pot) literally a smelly habit; it
affects everyone around you, _even when pursued in moderation_. You can't be
in the same suite of rooms as someone who is smoking pot without noticing. The
experience of second-hand pot is one hell of a lot better than second-hand
cigarette smoke (and not just because I get to worry less about cancer or
strain on my heart; it just smells better), but still not one I go out of my
way to enjoy. Such a habit is easy to culturally stigmatize compared to, say,
alcohol, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than pot – in all kinds
of ways that would take an hour to enumerate – but which bothers others not at
all when consumed in small amounts.

Finally, there's a European cultural tradition of alcohol consumption (even
_excessive_ alcohol consumption that bothers other people!) that is alive and
well in the USA. Pot, not so much. That feature is probably what made it so
hard to make alcohol prohibition stick, compared to marijuana prohibition.

There's not a lot of alternatives to learning music by mimicking other
musicians, and the act of extensively reading and quoting existing published
works is called _scholarship_ and is held in high regard. Quoting creative
works doesn't harm the people around you; indeed, people generally enjoy well-
played cover tunes, and routinely pay people to play them. And needless to say
quoting stuff is a far more fundamental cultural tradition, in Europe and
_everywhere else_ , than taking any particular drug.

~~~
shabble
> Also, pot-smoking is smoking.

I don't have anything solid to back this up, but I was under the impression
that in places where cannabis is legal/decriminalised/cheaper, there's an
increase in oral consumption, rather than smoking (e.g. hash brownies)

I'd imagine this is partly because there's a certain element of wastage or
perceived loss, and the ready availability makes it more practical. Then
again, things like longer onset time and duration might turn some people off.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Oh, the many, many things I don't know about cannabis.

But speaking as an uninformed outsider – clueless, but also the target market
of any mass movement – the hash brownie has the opposite problem: It's almost
_too_ inoffensive. It's famous as a way to hide marijuana from everyone,
possibly including yourself. At worst, it's redolent of shame and fear, and at
best it reminds people of things like pain management, which is not exactly a
marketing winner.

Smoking may pose many difficulties, but it does have one big advantage: It's a
group ritual that serves to advertise itself.

What cannabis needs is a recipe that suggests sophistication and good taste.
Imagine if James Bond's favorite drink had had cannabis in it. Men and women
of taste would be falling over themselves to blog about the superiority of
original-recipe cannabis martinis. There would be tastefully lit Manhattan
cannabis bars where your drink's ingredients would be fresh-clipped from live
plants growing, hydroponically, in crystalline bowls suspended over each
table.

I wonder if cannabis can be pleasurably served with coffee? The legalization
movement needs to commission a crack research team of Dutch baristas.

------
rospaya
> What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely
> comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead
> of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office?
> (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't
> inhale.")

Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything
about that, right?

~~~
jamesbritt
_Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything
about that, right?_

It brings to mind the saying, "People become conservative as soon as they have
something to conserve."

------
zokier
I think this is a failing of society (parents and schools) to educate children
of basic ideas off laws that govern them. I don't mean that the copyright code
should be explained in full for every child, but the basic premise that you
shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself from scratch.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Woah! Watch out! You said something unpopular around these parts with that
last sentence. I'm seeing so many people believing that it actually _is_ okay
to distribute something you haven't made from scratch. I don't know why but I
do suspect that they don't think of is as "distributing something you haven't
created yourself from scratch". I've seen so many times in these discussions
people defend pirating and saying that all software should be free and then
there's excuses like "pirated works are just free marketing" and "well they
wouldn't have bought it anyway".

It's very hard to explain why copyright infringement is not okay to people
these days because the physical analogies no longer apply. People think theft
is when you take something and deprive someone else of that thing. With
digital media you're taking something but the creator still has it and that's
where things get messy. But just because the author still has the original
copy that doesn't mean that it's still okay to take. Then you get into the
whole argument about how whichever industry (music, movies, whatever) are so
rich and greedy and screw people that it's okay. True or not, it still doesn't
change what's wrong with this stuff.

~~~
icebraining
Even if we take the premise that it's not okay to distribute something you
haven't made from scratch, there's still the issue of whether that should be
enforced legally or not.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Right, thats an excellent point and I glossed over that. A lot of this touches
on a very gray area. In general I'm for copyright and I'm talking about the
huge number of people who think there's nothing wrong with pirating movies,
music, and software and have a long list of excuses for it. Now, even I can
get on board with what you're saying. The 15 year old kid who uses some
copyrighted video or audio in a YouTube video should _not_ be prosecuted. And
there are lots of cases like that where it would be silly to prosecute. Now,
in the case of the Pulp Fiction scene reordering from the post, I don't think
anyone should get in trouble and I personally think there's no need to take it
down but that's not my call and I think if the creators decide that it
shouldn't be published we need to respect that.

We have to remember that the YouTube system is automated though so they can't
review things manually. That means no one is there to judge that gray area. So
even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly
copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and
B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights.

~~~
icebraining
_In general I'm for copyright and I'm talking about the huge number of people
who think there's nothing wrong with pirating movies, music, and software and
have a long list of excuses for it._

Frankly I think this reveals a strong bias, since that sentence directly
contradicts itself: An excuse is something people have to justify something
they see as wrong. I think the fact that you assume they have excuses shows
you can't really put yourself in a position where copyright infringement isn't
in fact perceived as wrong.

 _I think if the creators decide that it shouldn't be published we need to
respect that._

Do we? Why?

 _So even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly
copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and
B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights._

Bitching against Youtube¹ is certainly pointless, but we can "bitch" if we
believe the law itself is wrong.

¹ at least in cases where the takedown is mandated by law. There were plenty
of cases where works covered by fair use were taken down automatically by
their algorithms.

------
ChuckMcM
_"What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely
comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead
of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office?
(Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't
inhale.")"_

If there is any way I can encourage these young people to run for office and
do public service I will do it. We need to turn this thought experiment into
reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society that have 'grown
up' digital and understand it. I agree with the author that this would really
help rationalize some of the copyright and patent madness.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> encourage these young people to run for office

Which is raising another, more underlying problem: Why do we as a society have
no means to change stuff by voting on it, like in a, as it is called,
"democracy"? Why is the only practicable way to change something like the
filesharing prohibition, as you suggest, to give up everything else and run
for a political office?

> We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the
> gears and sockets of our society

What you're suggesting is basically trying to inject "our" people into the
ruling caste because it is completely decoupled from the ruled one. I'd rather
say that we simply need significantly more democracy.

~~~
flyt
After seeing the California initiative system up close for the last few years
I would disagree that this improves matters.

------
corin_
Surely the fact that all these people have no understanding of the law means
they are less likely to do anything to get it changed than if they were
posting videos with "disclaimer: this is copyrighted material but I don't give
a shit".

And that scares me more than anything. Not that they're breaking the law, but
that so many people are this ignorant. Every time I read one of those
disclaimers I want to literally rip my hair out, how can anyone not realise
that it's the equivilent of shoplifting while holding a sign that says "no
theft intended" is beyond me.

~~~
Swizec
Because it's not the equivalent at all.

It's more similar to going into a store. Looking up the ingredients on a box
of cookies and writing them down to make your own batch at home, while holding
up a "no theft intended" sign.

The basic premise of theft is that you are _taking something_ away from the
original owner so _they don't have it anymore_. The only thing you are
"stealing" with copyright infringement is fictitious profits that may or may
not exist at a potential time in the future.

~~~
nextparadigms
I think you hit the nail on the head there with the recipe analogy. Copyright
infringement is a lot more like using your own recipe to make your pizza,
while depriving the pizza vendor of a "potential" sale, than outright
"stealing" his pizza.

But even this doesn't make a perfect analogy, because when someone pirates
something, he may not deprive the owner of a sale, because he wouldn't afford
to buy it (or make it) in the first place.

However, the recipe example is still a lot closer to reality than outright
theft.

~~~
recoiledsnake
I think the recipe analogy is more like making your own movie with the same
plot, maybe even with the same actors.

------
tibbon
Why do schools and parents teach nothing about copyright laws? We're so
obsessed with teaching our kids about drugs and drug laws (DARE), yet the
potential punishment for intentional copyright infringement is much higher
than being caught with a joint.

I do not agree with current copyright laws, but they do exist. Citizens need
to have a better understanding the laws if we ever hope to have them changed.

Many people seem to be incredibly willfully ignorant about copyright stuff.

~~~
freehunter
I know that personally I would be happier (as a relative term) being charged
in a criminal suit such as having a joint than to be tried civilly as a file
sharer. Having to pay a $250,000 fine would do just as much damage to my
future as trying to get a job as a convicted felon. I'd be paying the price
for the rest of my life anyway.

------
njharman
In regards to "kids these days" and

> What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture
> becomes a majority of the electorate

Not shit.

I grew up several generations ago. We all made mix tapes, violated copyright
with our VHS and Betamax recorders, Xerox machines, etc.

Then we grew up and most of us discovered we liked money and so sold out to
anyone including copyright cartel who would give us a share of their take.

------
georgieporgie
People like to say that "kids these days" don't understand copyright, but the
fact is that hardly anyone of any age understands copyright. Back in the 90's,
people in their 40's and older blindly retold the fable that you didn't have
to pay for shareware, regardless of what the EULA stated. I had a friend whose
father was a lawyer, who had the largest collection of illegally copied VHS
tapes I've ever seen. They insisted it was legal because they weren't
distributing, which is nonsense.

The only thing new about the phenomenon is the ease with which a greater
variety of media is now shifted around digitally.

~~~
dangrossman
My 52 year old mother recently asked me "do you really have a copyright?"
after seeing the notice at the bottom of a website I was showing her.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You used to have to register directly for a work to be Copyright. The US I
gather was one of, if not the, last place to stop doing that when they were
added to the already well established Berne countries that under that same
convention don't require registration.

However, internally I think the US still require registration for US citizens
to sue other US citizens for infringement. Why? Must be making someone rich
...

~~~
derleth
You need to register to get anything more than actual damages, which, in the
case of 99% of amateur works, amounts to somewhere between diddly and squat.

More information:

<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html>

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-software-
on...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-software-online-
applications-30039.html)

------
GHFigs
Why not make your own film?

~~~
derleth
This is completely orthogonal to the discussion.

~~~
GHFigs
Given that the answer most certainly is _not_ "because it's illegal" or
"because the media companies won't let me", I think it's at least worth
considering.

HN evidently doesn't agree, so I'll leave it at that.

------
Tycho
You can rip-off the labour of hard-working artists, but eventually something
has to give.

------
Palomides
what is this piece arguing for? the abolition of copyright, or a revision of
fair use law? copyright can be a very useful tool for keeping things free,
such as using open source licenses for software and the creative commons
licenses for other works.

edit: though clearly to be good for free purposes, people need to actually
understand copyright. I would say that the rather modern "everyone can create"
(or remix) thing, rather than just people with a background in a creative
field (which would probably include some education on the topic of copyright)
has created a bit of a problem. Some sort of effort to educate the public
would be pretty beneficial, in my view (imagine if everyone knew what creative
commons was).

~~~
Lagged2Death
_what is this piece arguing for?_

Why does it have to be arguing for something? Isn't it posing a question?

------
joejohnson
>> Judging by his username, I'm guessing crimewriter95 is 16 years old. I
wouldn't be surprised if most of those million videos were uploaded by people
under 21.

That's a pretty lame assumption.

~~~
esrauch
The assumption is because of the 95 on the username, which is a strong
indicator that the author was born in 1995.

It sounds like you misunderstood and thought he was merely saying that it
sounds like a childish username, which he was not. If the username was
crimewriter65 it would be strongly indicating that he was 46 years old.

