

The 7 words that could improve Copyright - CoryOndrejka
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/fixing-fair-use-with-seven-little-words.ars

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dkimball
I like the idea, always provided that "personal and noncommercial use" is
interpreted as "transfer to iPod, reading to one's children, burning CDs for
personal use, writing fan fiction, etc." and not as "Napster." We have the
problem that our popular culture is all under copyright, and this would do a
lot to resolve that -- not impeding the profits of the creators of the works
in question, but simultaneously not dampening cultural expression or exposure
to the culture.

This sounds particularly appealing as an aspiring content creator: finally a
legal standard that neither requires pursuing creators of fan fiction, fan
mods, and so on, nor creates a risk of accidentally losing copyright over
one's own works!

@anigbrowl: I agree that there's a potential issue with sufficiently negative
use of material under the expanded fair use rules; but then again,
philosophies, governments and religions aren't given legal protection from
rotten eggs. A creative work, too (even the architecture of a mall), becomes
part of the culture; other members of the culture have the right to react
negatively as well as positively to it.

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anigbrowl
Interesting, but as a content creator I can't help feeling it alludes to cases
but fails to set any standards for how to handle them.

For example, just now I'm thinking about the costs of getting a release to
shoot video in a private location (a shopping center). It would make my film
look more interesting but hurt its budget. If I shoot by stealth (not so hard
with modern cameras) they would have a copyright complaint against the film
and could sue for damages. The copyright claim subsists in the interior
architecture, configuration and decoration of the building.

But what if I release my film for free, just to say 'hey look at my film (and
consider investing in the next one)'. The analogy would be using an allegedly
proprietary algorithm in a piece of open-source code, I suppose. There's an
indirect commercial gain on my part (if it proves popular), but should the IP
owner have a claim on a free work?

The proposal does include a threshold of whether such a violation does harm to
a business, or is likely to. Unfortunately, that puts the defendant in such a
case in the position of having to prove a negative, ie that the complainant's
allegations of likely harm are unreasonable. If my shopping center scene
involved a successful pickpocket, they would have a good claim, but suppose
they just complain that I made it look drab or old-fashioned?

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sabat
The fact that we've gotten so far into this ridiculousness that the interior
of a building that is open to the public is somehow considered "protected by
copyright" is preposterous. This is not at all what the founders had in mind.

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mrcharles
What are the seven words? Today I am lazy.

~~~
sachinag
"incidental uses, non-consumptive uses, and personal, non-commercial uses."

~~~
zalew
i got better 7 words - humanity can work well with no copyrights

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sketerpot
I'm not sure where the right balance lies, but here are another seven words:

Copyright must reform, or face irrelevance. Soon.

We've got a generation of people who are actively contemptuous of copyright
law, and backed up with capable technology. If the system doesn't become more
reasonable, people will turn more and more to straight-up piracy instead of
trying to obey the law.

~~~
zalew
<http://questioncopyright.org/promise> probably a tl;dr candidate, but has a
lot of good points.

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Silhouette
Could the objections about personal, non-commercial use not be overcome by
adding (or replacing "personal" with) a qualifier such as "private" or
"without redistribution"? Surely the point is that if someone has legally
obtained a legitimate copy of a work, it is reasonable for them to enjoy it as
they see fit in private, without being under any obligation to pay for it
repeatedly rather than format shift, back-up etc? Redistribution to others is
obviously contrary to the basic principle of copyright, and shouldn't be
covered, but for once this is a black-and-white issue and could be easily and
unambiguously coded into the law.

~~~
jbert
It's not obvious that redistribution is against copyright, e.g. see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine>

It seems to me (from First Sale Doctrine) that copyright protects against
increasing the number of copies, not passing copies around.

Prior to easy copying, these would have been the same thing (copying a book
being difficult), but it's worth thinking about the distinction for digital
media.

~~~
Silhouette
Fair point, the word "redistribution" probably isn't the right one. As you
say, it is the generation of additional copies that pass to others that is
against the spirit of copyright, not merely transferring the original copy in
its entirety.

~~~
jbert
Yes, but while it's easy to see that, _in spirit_ emailing an mp3 to a friend
(and deleting mine)is "giving my copy", note that it looks a lot like "making
a new copy".

That's why I think the distinction is quite important for digital media -
giving your copy looks very similar to making a new one.

~~~
Silhouette
Again, a fair point, but I think we have to keep in mind that no law like this
will succeed through enforcement alone, simply because the resources to do so
robustly and with due process would be too great.

Rather, I think we should try to do what we did with drink driving here in the
UK a few years ago: raise public awareness with simple, logical, objective
arguments, so that behaviour that crosses the line becomes socially
unacceptable and most people stop doing it voluntarily. Then you can leave
alone those who are acting reasonably but not crossing the line, overlook the
occasional mild infringement because you can't go after everyone, but throw
the book at the minority who repeatedly go well over the line.

I think if you set out a system where the kind of personal, non-multiplicative
use we have been discussing was clearly allowed, but making additional copies
and sharing them with others was not, then that would be understood by and
socially acceptable to the majority. For best results, throw in some long-
overdue price-fixing penalties for certain Big Media organisations, because
another major reason people feel entitled to copy anything they want is
because they think they've been ripped off for years, but they don't notice
that not everyone whose material they're copying was part of the big rip-off
scams. I think for the general public to accept a reasonable degree of
copyright as fair, you probably have to show that Big Media are also paying
the price for systematically over-charging people for things like CDs for
years.

I can't remember the details now, but there was an interesting survey into
public attitudes not so long ago, IIRC by one of the consumer groups here in
the UK. It did show a very sharp distinction between people who thought it
should be legal to do whatever you wanted with stuff you'd paid for properly
(almost everyone) and people who thought it should be legal to copy the
material and offer it to unknown other people who hadn't paid for it via P2P
networks (only 20-something percent). The same survey showed that in general,
people weren't (or at least weren't admitting to) sharing material as widely
as the anti-copyright brigade were claiming, but certain niches (typically
students and children) had a very high proportion of infringers. The most
common reason given by those people was that although they knew it was wrong,
they thought they'd get away with it anyway.

The reason I describe all of that is that I think it makes the problem you
mentioned a moot point. If there is general acceptance that multiple-copying
and redistribution isn't allowed, then you can probably ignore the kind of
one-off transfer you mentioned, because it will either be legal or an
infringement of little consequence anyway. It's much more important to cut
down the exponential distribution of illegal copies where each new recipient
shares with many more, and it's fairly easy to identify likely cases because
the chances of someone legitimately e-mail that MP3 to 15 different people on
the same day are slim.

