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cc:Full Throttle entrant
Copyright is not a simple subject.
The IRTC rule says copyright must not be violated.
That's all it says. We don't stop at determining if
copyright material has been used in an entry, we
must do our best to determine if material has been
used without *violating* copyright. We do our best
short of acting as though we are legally empowered
magistrates trying an actual infringement case.
How far do we go in paralleling legal procedures?
The answer can only be, in light of the nature of the
IRTC, as far as an indivdual judge needs to go to
satisfactorily answer the question implicit in the
'no copyright violation' rule. It must be obvious that
I am willing to go further than a knee-jerk reaction
to an unsupported accusation, further than a simple
minded personal interpretation of copyright, and
certainly further than the mean minded attitude that
decides that suspected guilt outweighs presumed
innocence.
This message is a record of my investigations into
the accusations raised by others. Those who have the
patience (and dare I say - the intelellectual capacity) to
carefully read all of what I write might gain information
useful to their own judging process and might be persuaded
to give the IRTC judging process an extra measure of care,
diligence and work. The IRTC is what we make it to be and
sloppiness should not be encouraged.
I tried to explicate that message in my first reply to this
thread and the attempt seems to have failed in the case
of many subsequent respondents.
Here, in my last contribution to this thread, I will try once
again adding concrete information for the benefit of those who
found the earlier abstract reasoning insufficient. I believe
a complete reading of what I write here will be best, and
might even be interesting to those able to grasp the topic
with some measure of dispassion. The subject is not suited
to one liner responses or dick waving behaviors.
I contacted the Full Throttle entrant, informed him of the
accusations and resulting controversy here in irtc.animations
I asked directly
1. if he had permission from the musical group _Machine Head_ to
use a sample of their song in his IRTC entry.
2. if the laws of Russia (the entrants country) sanctioned his usage.
(Readers should be sure to understand that the entrant did acknowledge,
both in his accompanying text file and within his animation, Machine
Head as the source of the music sample.)
Mr Artemenko's reply will be summarized as follows:
1. He did not have permission to use the music sample.
2. Under the Russian copyright laws he believes his sampling
was allowed.
I did a layman's research into Russian copyright law in order to
either establish some foundation for accepting Mr. Artemenko's
assertion or to determine if a prima facia case denying any
confidence in Alexander's statement could be derived by an
amateur reading of that law.
Russian copyright law is currently in a state of flux The law as
it stands now can be perused by anyone via this url:
http://www.spb.ru/rulesreg/3/copyar6.html
Read this material for yourself - a few salient paraphrases follow.
'Anything not granted copyright in Russia is public domain.'
'Material must be registered to be copyrighted.'
'Material may be used without consent of the author and without
payment of royalties in several delineated circumstances.'
Perusal of those circumstances does not lead to any hasty
conclusion that Mr. Artemenko acted in violation of Russian
copyright law.
BUT - the IRTC server is in Australia.
Is it possible that Australian law changes the situation and
would lead a reasonable IRTC judge to conclude that Mr. Artemenko
should be penalized for violating the rule against copyright infringement?
Again a URL;
http://www.copyright.org.au/
Cursory reading of this law seems to cast the issue in starker terms.
Certainly, if Mr. Artemenko were an Aussie, a reasonable person
could conclude that there has been a violation. Read this material
for yourself and do your own thinking.
If someone wants to follow the line of reasoning that applicable law
derives from the location where IRTC entries are *viewed*, then
another set of laws pertaining to the viewer's home country should
be consulted. That isn't a joke. Both Australia and the U.S.A. have
current litigations ongoing wherein judges have already ruled that
suits may proceed on the basis that the copyright laws of the
viewer's country are germane and provide standing for bringing suit.
For reference, and since I am an American resident, I refreshed my
readings into US copyright law.
One element common to all three sets of laws (and this is important)
is that there have been established procedures that need to be followed
if allegations of infringement are to rise above heated arguments in
a newsgroup. One inescapbale fact, regardless of poor analogies of
rape to copyright infringement, is that there is no basis for
enforcement of copyright protection or cause to penalize alleged
infringement absent a properly made complaint by an interested party.
Those who shun difficult thought processes and wish to stop their
analysis of the claimed infringement by Mr. Artemenko by characterizing
the need for a complaint to establish violation as somehow analgous
to President Clinton's legally correct (if not publically palatable)
" 'is' defense" are urged to give some consideration to the idea that
understanding of the law requires acceptance of some principles and
concepts that are not fully congruent with so-called common sense.
Who cares? I do.
The IRTC is not a court of law, but copyright infringement is a serious
subject that could lead to conequences unintended by those who make
an allegation unsubstantiated by facts. How many facts you need as
an IRTC judge is directly proportional to what level of seriousness you
bring to the judging. Some judges are more off-hand, more 'shoot from the
hip' than others. And that is the way it should be.
Copyright is a serious subject for me so I will respond to allegations
with a demand for a higher degree of deliberation than something like,
for example, whether using Poser meshes should mean an exterme
markdown for lack of originality. The two cases are not comparable
as no one, at present, might face imprisonment for using a Poser
mesh. (That's not a joke and if you think it is then you don't belong
in this part of the discussion - there are people who have successfully
moved copyright infringement past being a civil matter into being
the crime de jour.)
Unintended consequences of unfounded accusations.
For purposes of judging the IRTC with respect to the copyright rule a
judge needs to have confidence beyind idle speculation that a violation
has indeed ocurred. Different judges will employ different standards and
have different thresholds that must be crossed. Some judges, for example,
who might have vested interests because of affiliation with the US RIAA
would have very low thresholds and would leap to penalize any IRTC
entrant who couldn't offer proof of having paid royalties for any used
works.
This is how I sum up the particular case of Mr. Atemenko's submission.
1. Entrants are presumed to be acting in good faith and rule violations
that might lead to severe judging penalties or removal from the IRTC
demand more than what is termed 'preponderance' of the evidence.
2. In the particular case, copyright violation has been alleged.
No interested party has complained to or noticed the IRTC admin
team - at least this has not been subject to any announcement by
the admin team.
3. The entrant asserts he was acting correctly as a Russian
citizen.
4. An intial reading of Russian copyright law doesn't lead to an
easy contradiction of Mr Artemenko's assertion.
5. The IRTC admin team has not made known that an interested
party has noticed the team under Australian law.
6. The music group _Machine Head_ has not yet replied to
an inquiry as to their stance in the matter. (unintended
consequences)
Presumed innocent, Mr. Atemenko asserts correct behavior
and is not subject to any adversarial action by any interested
party. The IRTC admin team has not reported any information
not presently at hand in this newsgroup thread that would
deny Mr. Artemenko the presumption of innocence. No one
has come forward with any pertinent information that would
disallow Mr. Artemenko his presumption of acting in a proper
manner.
Therefore, there is no reason to judge Mr. Artemenko's IRTC
submission on any but normal grounds. Artistic impression,
technical and orignality/topicality.
The IRTC admin team might want to re-evaluate the copyright
rule and produce some guidance as far what copyright law
pertains under what situations and some set of standards as
to what counts as copyright violation for the purposes of
the IRTC.
Copyright is a legal thing so a legal treatment is called for.
If this turns into a discussion of less than a rigourous legal
splitting of hairs and more of a discussion of the IRTC
meaning to encourage originality and discouraging the
laziness and lameness of plaigiarism and using other's
work, then maybe that issue of using Poser meshes should
be visited.
I am out of this discussion absent any real presentation of
facts contrary to my conclusion or absent any announcements
by the admin team that clarifies or changes the rules.
I want readers to appreciate that I am trying my best to make
any thread I participate in on the povray news server more than
the usual useless usenet noise so easily found in most
newsgroups.
Since the beginning of the IRTC, since before the start of
the povray news server, since Compuserve times I have always
found it easy to hold the belief that fellow pov'ers are a good
group of people easy to be comfortable with and not prone to the
bad habits, lousy ethics and jingoistic sloganeering and group
think uselessness that characterizes a whole lot of other
online communities. I would like to continue holding that opinion
and, consequently, prefer a better grade of response to what I write
than I have seen in some postings.
At least, I hope no one thinks less of me for trying to deal
with a serious subject with some measure of care.
Doug Sterrett
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"Dick Balaska" <dik### [at] buckosoft com> wrote in message
news:3E2EC5C4.1A5D41FC@buckosoft.com...
> argus wrote:
>
> > BUT - the IRTC server is in Australia.
>
> The irtc server is in Hartford, Connecticut USA.
>
> At least, it was when i put it there.
>
> dik
Thanks for the correction.
That means that the people who physically host the server would
be subject to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA if any
interested party makes a complaint to them and the hoster would
be protected as long as they remove the material upon demand.
It's a shoot first and determine fault later situation with consequences
only for the alleged infringer.
Since the US claims the right to prosecute anyone in the world
under American law viv a vis copyright, the entrant in this case is
vulnerable should _Machine Head_ decide to take action, or
as is more likely the RIAA, as agent for _Machine Head_, decides
to make an example of Mr. Artemenko.
As Adobe vs. Elcomsoft/Sklyarov has recently shown, any possible
defense under Russian copyright law will be irrelevant.
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