Copyright Cops? (1 Viewer)

[BrianW]

Uh, we clearly disagree. Someone owns something. You want a copy of it. Getting a copy of it unilaterally would be illegal. So that someone grants you a license to have it.

No, we don't disagree. Please reread the quote you took from my post. We're saying exactly the same thing.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> For example, suppose someone had copyright and patent on a drug to sure AIDS
Since when can you copyright a drug? If you're going to start a post about "muddled logic" it would make more sense not to include statements like the above that make no sense.
Still waiting for someone to explain HOW a border official would determine whether songs on someone's ipod were legit- it seems like some here are just assuming that could easily be done.

 

[Steve_Tk]

You are allowed to buy a cd, then rip the cd on your ipod. How they would prove the "ripped" songs from a CD was from a CD your purchased, or your friend, is impossible.

 

[Edwin-S]

Still waiting for someone to explain HOW a border official would determine whether songs on someone's ipod were legit- it seems like some here are just assuming that could easily be done.

Nobody is explaining because they can't.

 

[Brian Perry]

Even though I rent movies, I can't picture renting music... I could not amass a 1,000 rented music collection and pay for it for years only to loose it someday.

I used to feel the same way during the years I was amassing a 1,000+ CD collection. However, since I've recently installed a Sonos system in my house, where I can stream any one of millions of songs from Rhapsody for a very small monthly fee (less than the cost of a CD), my relatively large CD collection now seems small and limiting.

The difference in fidelity (Red Book CD vs. 256 kb MP3) has not been an issue to me, compared to the freedom of having so much music at my fingertips. Now my fear is that somehow the Rhapsody business model will fail and I'll have to go back to buying music instead of renting it.

 

[BrianW]

Nobody is explaining because they can't.

I don't think there's anything to explain, because it (the determination of whether an mp3 file on a personal digital player has been pirated) can't be done.
In any case, I don't expect much to come of this. The RIAA has a long history of seeking legislation that compels others to do its dirty work for them for free. Customs inspectors can now claim the fine company of ISPs, college deans, company CEOs, electronics manufacturers, and others who have refused to allow themselves to be bullied into taking on the job of policing the masses under threat of sanction by legislation. The RIAA will have to settle for the company of computer trojan and rootkit developers.
Customs inspectors are mostly looking for explosives, drugs, wanted criminals, child pornagraphy, unallowable sums of foreign currency, and harmful organics. No self-respecting customs inspector will hold up a line of people while checking the "Plays For Sure" authorization of an mp3 file. They have more than enough important work to do.
If this law is passed, then it may come into play if there's a tip regarding a traveller strongly suspected of pirating in mass quantities for profit. I doubt it will ever come into play for the average traveller.
Even so, as mentioned by others, the government has retained the right to search through and potentially sieze all your personal effects, including computer files, at border crossings, without probable cause. This is just a fact of life for the international traveller. This isn't going to change any time soon.

 

[KurtEP]

If this law is passed, then it may come into play if there's a tip regarding a traveller strongly suspected of pirating in mass quantities for profit. I doubt it will ever come into play for the average traveller.

I suspect that this is one of those laws that gets proposed by some idiot somewhere and is quickly forgotten by everyone. Unfortunately, this happens all the time. It's easy for some slack jawed legislator in some backwater precinct to propose a law that has no chance of passing. Unfortunately, it sells papers (and draws webpage views) to report on it, regardless of how unlikely it is to pass.
RIAA has to know that ipods and the like are their future, whether or not it's ideal for them. Kill the ability to use an ipod, and you basically kill the market for their music. The music market simply isn't what it was 30 years ago. When I was a kid, there was music, TV and books for mass produced entertainment (well, probably sports too). Now, you throw in internet, DVDs, Blu Ray, PS3, Xbox, Wii and so on, exacerbated by a really slow cycle in popular music (Really very little that is a must buy anymore, at least to me) and you have trouble for the music industry.
In any event, I'd be surprised if somehow moving pirated music across the border in an ipod was the best way to get it done, given the internet, private networks and so on. This simply cannot be a serious concern for customs people, given how many other legitimate (not to mention illegitimate) things they have to worry about.

 

[Yee-Ming]

(2) Copyright simply means that someone has ownership of the item copyrighted because it is a product of their work and they wish to control its distribution. Typically, this means they want paying for their work.
(7) Where we impose a boundary of 'pedantically speaking illegal, but permissable in practice' is a matter of pragmatics. IMHO: borrowing for the purpose of evaluation over a short time period; passing on an item for non-profit without retaining a copy; copying for personal use only (e.g. making mp3 files) are all permissable. These are strictly speaking illegal, but without this, routine matters become impossible to conduct.

To oversimplify, copyright isn't so much ownership of the item in question, let's say a novel, or a CD of music, but of the right to make copies. When you as a consumer "own" a novel or a CD, yes that item is your property, but you have no right to make any copies thereof (per se), only the copyright owner does. Making an MP3 rip of a CD is copying, but is considered fair use as being a transfer of medium, provided you still own the initial CD.
Loaning your novel or CD, on the other hand, does not involve making any copies, and hence is perfectly legal without restriction. Generally there are no restrictions on how you wish to use or abuse your physical copy of a novel or CD (again an oversimplification, but as I said, generally), as long as you don't infringe the copyright owner's rights by making a copy of it.
Software is an oddity that did not fit with the old concepts of copyright: it is considered a literary work, because it consists of written words (actually code), and then when compiled the compiled code is a translation of the original code written by the programmers. Hence, making a copy of that compiled code is technically illegal. However, since the software (usually) doesn't run off the media it was sold on (back in the day floppy disks, today CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs) and needs to be installed onto the hard disk, a copy MUST be made. This is where the shrinkwrap licence comes it: it now expressly allows you to make that copy by installing onto your hard disk, but with all sorts of terms and conditions attached, the most obvious being you must retain the original disks and if you ever cease ownership of those disks (most probably sell or trade), you are no longer authorised to retain the copy on your hard disk.
This is a legal workaround to address the technical problem that by definition, a copy must be made of the software. If the software companies didn't do so, no doubt someone would argue that because they "allowed copying" willy-nilly, they had abandoned any right to subsequently enforce against an actual pirate.
Indeed, even considering the bad old days of XT and AT computers (8086) where there was no hard disk at all, a copy was still made of the software, albeit a temporary one in the computer's RAM (indeed, it still is today). This is also addressed in shrinkwrap licences.
Modern legislation does, I think, sometimes specifically address this concept of the temporary copy in RAM, or the copy that must be made when installing software onto a hard disk. But not always.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Since when can you copyright a drug? If you're going to start a post about "muddled logic" it would make more sense not to include statements like the above that make no sense.

EDIT: Oh dear ... I originally answered in a most impolite manner to this. I'm getting sucked into the bad tempered atmosphere of this thread. Some folks are keeping their heads, but most of you really could do with chilling out.

Very basic answer to the above quotation - yes, you can have copyright applied to aspects of drugs (e.g. slogans, accompanying literature) . Please note that in the original post I also stated there would be patents as well. The point I was making was about intellectual property in general, of which copyright is a key exemplar.

 

[Brian^K]

Software is an oddity that did not fit with the old concepts of copyright

And copyright law explicitly makes a specific exception allowing a backup copy of computer software. (It should also be noted that copyright law explicitly allows certain public institutions to make backup copies of video presentations. The restriction of that exception to public institutions, alone, is a strong enough implication that such copying by others is not permitted.)

 

[BrianW]

Making an MP3 rip of a CD is permitted because the industry failed to put in place measures to effectively control it, and therefore enforcement is infeasible.

Well, it's not for lack of trying, is it? After losing the court case, the RIAA tried to control ripping through undisclosed rootkits and trojans distributed to college IT departments. I wonder what they'll come up with next?

 

[Brian^K]

Oh, no? A judge, and even the Supreme Court, seem to disagree with you.

No they don't. This is yet another case where trivialization of the details obscures the real facts. I don't plan to argue with you about it. I know you're wrong. You "know" I'm wrong. Enforcement bears out that I'm right in the contexts I'm referring to. That's enough for me. If you want to argue it further, post a judicial decision that applies specifically to copying DVDs.

 

[BrianW]

If you want to argue it further, post a judicial decision that applies specifically to copying DVDs.

what? DVDs? I thought we were talking about ripping CDs to an mp3 player. Also, I'd be grateful if you would bring to light some of the pertinent real facts in the RIAA vs. Diamond case ruling that you claim have been obscured by trivialization of the details. Thanks.

 

[Brian^K]

EDITED: Never mind ... it isn't worth it.
Advocate what you wish, regardless.

 

[Michael Reuben]

but most of you really could do with chilling out

Agreed. It would be a shame to have to close such a lively discussion on an important topic, but there's not going to be much choice if the discussion doesn't stay civil.

M,

 

[Thomas Newton]

.

So it's not a matter of "the industry (failing) to put in place measures to effectively control (copying from CD to MP3)". (Though Lord knows, they've tried -- with everything from the lawsuit against Diamond, to DVD-A/SACD, to SDMI, to "CDs" that secretly installed root kits on the buyers' PCs.)
It's a matter of public policy (laws passed by Congress and the President; rulings issued by the courts) saying that space-shifting is legal Fair Use and that Fair Use, by definition, is non-infringing. If something is a Fair Use, that means that the law does not give the copyright holder exclusive control over it. The public does not need the copyright holder's approval or permission to engage in a fair use.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Thanks Thomas. I was familiar with the Betamax case, having studied it in law school years ago, but obviously back then the Diamond case was not in the curiculum (heck, we didn't even have CD walkmans yet, never mind MP3 players...)

One other thought: the argument that Border Patrol/Customs can already search your stuff is somewhat disingenuous -- they are searching for explosives, weapons, or anything else that could be used to hijack or bring down a plane, or otherwise generally hurt (as in kill or maim) the public at large. Whilst piracy is a no-no, it hurts (as in decreases revenue) the copyright owners only, making it really a civil matter (even if it is also a criminal offence), and should be left to copyright owners to pursue themselves.

 

[Lew Crippen]

...One other thought: the argument that Border Patrol/Customs can already search your stuff is somewhat disingenuous -- they are searching for explosives, weapons, or anything else that could be used to hijack or bring down a plane, or otherwise generally hurt (as in kill or maim) the public at large....

Actually this is why you get searched before you board a plane. It is not customs doing the searching. Customs gets involved on the way in. They typically don’t search all that many people but they can. I’ve gone through immigration and customs many a time at Changi (for example) and was never stopped or searched. But I have seen some in line pulled out and taken to the room behind the one-way glass.
And in the humor department, I once (on the way into Bangkok) heard an American in front of me (who was being pulled aside by the Thai customs officials) say that he was ‘going to stand on his Constitutional rights’.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> they are searching for explosives, weapons, or anything else that could be used to hijack or bring down a plane, or otherwise generally hurt (as in kill or maim) the public at large.
They're also searching for illegal things like drugs, stuff made from endangered species, etc.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Whilst piracy is a no-no, it hurts (as in decreases revenue) the copyright owners only, making it really a civil matter (even if it is also a criminal offence), and should be left to copyright owners to pursue themselves.

I don't want to get too off track here, but with the exception of works that are held by multibillion dollar corporations who have the means to litigate, having copyright owners be solely responsible for defending their copyrights basically means that infringers are free to do whatever they want due to the costs of investigation and litigation, and the shear number of infringers. While I'm not making an argument for the specifics of this discussion, I do think that there is an argument that governments share a responsibility to protect copyright owners given they they are in part responsible for providing a means to which infringement has been made easier than ever before.
If the purpose of the copyright is to serve the public good by allowing creative individuals a means of supporting themselves to pursue the creation of works which enrich society, then does that not also mean that society has an obligation to help protect those creative individuals when their ability to create is being eroded due to rampant and unstoppable infringement?
No replies are necessary, just food for thought.