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Matt and Steve, You are both talking about the purpose or goal of copyright, while I am talking about it's architecture. I chose the word "design," thinking that readers would understand what I was NOT talking about (i.e. the purpose or goal). I'll have to phrase my thoughts more precisely if...

Thomas, Much of your reply is from a "what's best for me" perspective. Naturally, nobody likes paying $16 for a crappy CD (or even a halfway-decent CD). We'd all like to have more listening stations and online free samples and un-bundling of songs, etc. CDs that don't behave like other CDs...

The idea is also anti-capitalist. Socialized art, more or less.There is no meaningful exchange of legal tender. No buying decision. The end user pays the same no matter what, so they have little motivation to pre-screen content. They'll have their intelligent software agents go out there and...

Considering how tiny this article is, I'm amazed at how the author was able to change his focus so many times. It takes special skill to write this incoherently. Or, to be kind, maybe the article was originally 100 times larger? Nonetheless, the Verizon/Kazaa proposal is an excellent topic of...

Mike, Harm to a business model is one factor in determining whether a copying purpose is fair or not. It is the crucial deciding factor in cases where a whole, commercial for-profit work is copied for personal use. The central issue is whether or not your use of the work is fair or not. If...

Thomas, Publisher's economic interests are a crucial consideration of the copyright law. Secondary, yes, but still crucial. Protecting these interests is necessary to ensure the continued development of new works. And BTW, note that the reference to "publisher's economic interests" was in a...

Mike, The point is that the copyright holders need to prove harm - or the clear potential for harm in a potential market. Skipping a chapter causes no harm. They also can't touch your videogame, because making a copy was not instrumental in your quest to avoid commercials. I believe the only...

Thomas, First Sale may be necessary to coordinate copyright law with other property law. Perhaps First Sale is the only reasonable way to deal with instantiations of a work that are affixed to an object? If so, that's okay with me, but the law should not contain a special case for some types...

Chris Sprigman (writer of the FindLaw article) has a valid opinion. He has a deeper understanding of the facts and legal issues than the average person. However, I think he is wrong on a couple of important points: Most importantly, he misses the historical context of the Sony decision. VCRs...

Allow me to climb on the soapbox for another related issue(how far off topic am I now, I wonder?). Labeling. If a video cassette or DVD includes x minutes of product advertising at the beginning that I am forced to play in its entirety (DVD) or fast forward over (VHS), I want the product to...

Right, the FF button has substantial non-infringing uses, whereas commercial skip exists only to support infringement. They can make the claim that fast-forwarding in 30-second or 1-minute chunks has substantial non-infringing uses, but I'm not sure that will fly (especially when you've named...

Thomas, I'm surprised and disappointed that you missed my points so thoroughly and completely. I wasn't calling the First Sale Doctrine a loophole. The uneven prohibition of commercial renting or leasing of works is the loophole. When I said "the work on the videocassette only has value...

If you need me to be more precise, I would restate "The law gives the copyright holder some freedom and control over their business model" like so: The copyright holder relies on the copyright laws to protect their business model, but the copyright laws are blind to the wisdom or effectiveness...

I agree with John. From the consumer's selfish viewpoint, it is counter-productive for the courts to protect an obsolete business model. However, the courts have to uphold the law and the law has to balance the concerns of each party to the benefit of society as a whole. The law gives the...

Thomas, Thanks for opening my eyes. The more I learn, the more I realize how arbitrary and unfair the rules are. The music and "serious software" industry can derive a continuous revenue stream from commercial sharing of their object-bound works (if they choose to do so), but the video and...

Thomas Newton wrote:

Scooter, Both you and your friend are missing the point when you vilify DVI. Your friend was not using DVI, let alone DVI w/HDCP. As this experience shows, effective copy protection can be implemented without DVI/HDCP. I assume your friend has the DirectTV reciever connected to his D-VHS...

I concur with Thomas on the legal issues. As you all probably know, Sonic Blue has just recently been ordered by the court to monitor the usage patterns of their customers to determine whether or not people are skipping the commercials and/or sending programs to other people (apparently, the...

John, Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Extrapolate from there. As I said in another forum (or was it here?) - I look forward to the day when I see Peter Jennings with a Diet Coke prominently displayed on his desk. Suddenly, in the middle of a report on the latest war in the Middle East, he...

I wrote this: "Clearly, if everyone had a Tivo with auto-commercial skip, advertiser-supported television as we know it would cease to exist." and Matt Perkins replied:

This argument was also used in Universal vs. Sony (the famous Betamax case). The District Court, in considering the potential harm caused by home videotaping, felt that "the practice of deleting commercials may be too tedious for many viewers." The dissenting four Supremes argued that Universal...

I said

A few comments: Ryan, Although I wholeheartedly agree with your proposed pricing and distribution scheme for music (If it's so obvious to so many people, why don't they get it!?), I must quibble with your shooting-down of my analysis (actually not my analysis, but one I believe in). You said

Ryan, This info comes to us through a journalist. If the info was correct to begin with, it's surely garbled now ;) If you read between the lines and imagine a harried journalist scribbling notes during a presentation, you might deduce that the last sentence pertains to the HDCP protection...

I'm new to this intiguing discussion. I don't think anyone officially confirmed that the music industry now blames plain old duplication of CDs as the culprit behind last year's losses and dismal sales so far this year. That's why they're trying desperate measures like key2audio. Ouch! Shot...

I'm new to this intiguing discussion. I don't think anyone officially confirmed that the music industry now blames plain old duplication of CDs as the culprit behind last year's losses and dismal sales so far this year. That's why they're trying desperate measures like key2audio. Ouch! Shot...

...Repeating what I heard elsewhere from a knowledgeable user... The JVC D-VHS deck stores compressed video. It has a built-in MPEG-2 encoder for SD signals, which it can record from a variety of analog inputs or from its built-in tuner. It relies on external encoding for HD signals, which it...

Given that it's an Ethics class, I'd think the tension between copy protection and "Fair Use" would be the most appropriate topic. Do a Google on "Fair Use." Standford Law School has a good page o' links, plus a good primer on Fair Use. A totally different slant would involve the ethical...

Hi Lloyd, 2.5 million people have invested in "HD-Ready" displays, most of which don't have built-in HDTV receivers. I think only a few hundred thousand receivers have been sold. Most people buy these displays to take advantage of progressive scan DVD players. With built-in scan conversion...