https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never
We're living through one of those moments when millions of people become suddenly and overwhelmingly interested in fair use, one of the subtlest and worst-understood aspects of copyright law. It's not a subject you can master by skimming a Wikipedia article!
I've been talking about fair use with laypeople for more than 20 years. I've met so many people who possess the unshakable, serene confidence of the truly wrong, like the people who think fair use means you can take x words from a book, or y seconds from a song and it will always be fair, while anything more will never be.
Or the people who think that if you violate any of the four factors, your use can't be fair – or the people who think that if you fail all of the four factors, you must be infringing (people, the Supreme Court is calling and they want to tell you about the Betamax!).
You might think that you can never quote a song lyric in a book without infringing copyright, or that you must clear every musical sample. You might be rock solid certain that scraping the web to train an AI is infringing. If you hold those beliefs, you do not understand the "fact intensive" nature of fair use.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday July 01 2024, @01:48PM (2 children)
The Joyful Noise guy should sue Warner Chappell again and use this as evidence.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 01 2024, @05:55PM (1 child)
That makes my head hurt. How the courts didn't see this and/or put a stop to it is beyond me.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2024, @02:07AM
Check this one out too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons [wikipedia.org]
In the USA you can be infringing if you copy the idea and change almost everything else, even the format of the work (photo -> sculpture).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday July 01 2024, @02:23PM (4 children)
We just have way too much of our internet controlled by the same few scum-fucking corporate bastards.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 01 2024, @09:29PM (3 children)
Copyright has lots of problems:
1. The powerful take advantage of copyright, have it both ways, infringing on the little person's work while no one dares infringe on their "properties". Sometimes the little person wins a copyright infringement lawsuit. But to have a chance of winning, the little person needs a lot of expensive help.
2. The very idea of copyright triggers many of our worst emotions: fear of loss to piracy and plagiarism, greed and hoarding of imaginary property, and an sense of individuality over community that makes superheroes of a very few of the best artists, while every other artist is overlooked and ignored.
3. Copyright impedes progress in "Science and useful Arts", the very opposite of what it is supposed to do.
4. Follies such as copy protection and DRM cannot work, cannot prevent determined pirates from making copies, despite the intensive efforts of stakeholders to lock everything down. Walled Gardens have had some success, but the problems are clear enough, with publishers having too much control of people's devices abusing it to capriciously and arbitrarily withdraw, delete, or break content and even devices. And they do this not out of deliberate malice, but simply by neglecting their promises. They have made systems in which they must continually hold the door open, and the moment they grow tired and let go, the door slams shut. Further, they see nothing wrong with such a setup.
5. Even if DRM could work, we should not want it. Progress depends on the free exchange of ideas.
6. Plagiarism can be caught and stopped without need of copyright. Lots of people think plagiarists will have free rein if copyright is abolished, but it is not so.
7. Content industries have tried to rope others into doing policing for them. They've had far too much success. It's like the Stasi of East Germany, turning neighbors against one another, making everyone into an informant. No one should be obliged to do such dirty work.
8. There are other business models, such as patronage and crowdfunding, that can insure artists and scientists are fairly compensated, and perhaps do an even better job than the most ideal version of copyright imaginable. Copyright is poor at valuation.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday July 02 2024, @02:33PM
We might not know much about fair use but we know all about suit-invitation use.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cyberthanasis on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:38AM (1 child)
The thing is that the public does not benefit from copyright, at least as applied to software.
For instance, it has been more than 25 years since windows95 was created. Where is it? Is it in the public domain? Where can I get it? And if I got it, it would not be useful today. So, how does the public benefit?
It has been 25 year since autocad14 (not 2014) was created. Where can I get it? This piece of software would actually be somewhat useful even today, if I could get it (I still use my copy of Autocad2000i I bought 2 decades ago, under wine).
Copyright is joke. I resent that my taxpayer money is spent to enforce this travesty.
(Score: 2) by owl on Thursday July 04 2024, @03:37AM
Thing is, Copyright was originally for 14 years, with a single paid option to buy an extra 14 years (for those items that were still "marketable" after 14).
Then, Disney faced the prospect of the original Mickey mouse going out of copyright, and as a result, now copyright is life of the creator plus something like 70 years. Which is, indeed, an obscene length of time.
If we were to roll back the Disney extensions to the original 14 years with an option for 14 more, copyright would be less of a joke, and more of a benefit to the general public.
As it is now, the length of time is as near "eternal" as it can be, without actually being "eternal".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 01 2024, @02:30PM (3 children)
Weird Al has label backing, with lawyers who negotiate fair use for him. He's commercially successful and a portion of those proceeds become payola to the system ensuring that his "fair use" is not legally questionable.
You could write and perform the next Weird Al song, exactly as he would, post it on YouTube and get taken down. Appeal and fail. Hire lawyers and pay them for hundreds of hours of expert council, and fail. You are not Weird Al, you are not a recognized exerciser of fair use, you have the burden of proof and you will have to sue the biggest content gatekeepers in the history of the world in order to get them to even consider allowing you to share your work.
Record labels of the 1960s-1990s were small-time compared to the content monopolies we have today. I think its virtually impossible for entities with such absolute power to be anything but evil.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Tuesday July 02 2024, @06:01AM (2 children)
That point is undermined slightly by the fact that Weird Al always obtains permission from the original artist before releasing a parody track.
See https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/weird-al-parody-better-ask-permission-beg-forgiveness [thelegalartist.com]
Granted, the artist isn't always the rights holder (what else are record companies for?) and it doesn't forego sticky arguments with lawyers afterward, but I wouldn't consider him a notable example of using fair-use rules.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2024, @10:58AM (1 child)
Yeah, he's certainly a notable fair user...
I suppose if you did obtain the expressed written permission of the artist first, after several hundred hours of lawyers wrangling with the artist's rights holders (usually record labels) you might just prevail...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday July 02 2024, @02:04PM
If the artist has signed their rights over to a rights holder (hint: almost all do so) then no amount of permission from the artist is helpful or useful. You will have to wrangle with the rights holders, and they can say yes, or no, or for $X, no matter the artist's desire.
(Score: 4, Touché) by stratified cake on Monday July 01 2024, @05:18PM
If you can find it, it's obviously freeware. Just ask Microsoft for the details.
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday July 02 2024, @03:58AM (3 children)
I wonder if my private information is copyright-able.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2024, @05:38AM
It probably is...
To the extent that you claim, register, and defend it.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday July 02 2024, @09:52PM (1 child)
Your private information isn't work of art. Copyright law doesn't cover factual data, but it could cover some arrangement of it potentially. Just try to figure out where arrangement starts and factual data ends. Probably would need an entire expert council.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday July 02 2024, @09:56PM
Also, even if particular arrangement is sufficiently work-of-art-like then likely it's not you who actually compiled it, and therefore it's actual compilers who would count as authors from copyright pov. And it's they who will be able to sue you if you reproduce your personal data in their arrangement.