Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> OTOH our copyright law says that we're allowed to copy copyrighted music 
> (only for personal usage only, naturally - and practically if breaking 
> the copy protection ain't hard*) in extense of the media-fee - but not 
> to copy copyrighted software.

  The new copyright law forbids copying music from illegal sources.
The vast majority of internet sources are defined as illegal, so you
basically can't download music legally (except from legal online shops).

  (OTOH eavesdropping internet traffic is still illegal, so how they are
going to enforce the copyright law is anybody's guess. I think a police
officer commented on the new copyright law that a law doesn't make sense
when it's impossible to enforce it.)

> *) The same law announces that it's illegal to break a technically 
> effective copy protection. After that the very same law announces that 
> *any* action made by the record company to stop copying the music is 
> considered technically effective.

  The same law also says that it is legal to circumvent the protections
if it's necessary to listen to the music in the first place.

  The new copyright is really messed up. Nobody understands it fully.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   My question is why. Why is the music industry specifically so privileged?
>
> Because they have friends in the legislature.
>
> Regards,
> John

They can tap into natural sympathies on both sides of the aisle.  On one hand,
Barbara Streisand and Hollywood are in bed with the Democrats. On the other
side of the aisle, they can appeal to some Republican sentiments if the
controversy is painted as using the Big Stick of government to swat unwashed
college students who steal private property from big business.

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>> Maybe MS and Adobe etc should
>> get together and get some taxes on DVD-Rs to be shared out?
>
>  No thanks! The point of my rant is that these unfair privileges should
> be *removed* from those industries, not to extend the same unfair taxing
> privileges to everyone.

Oh it sounded like you were arguing *for* some extra privileges for the 
software industry (being a software developer yourself IIRC).

BTW why is it unfair?  Governments are obviously open to industry groups 
requesting special treatment, especially when large amounts of money are 
involved, so why is it unfair to any particular group?

The software industry generates far more income than the music one, so I 
would imagine they would have quite a good bargaining position with 
governments on lots of subjects.  It's not unfair just because they have 
been ignorant of this fact so far.

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And lo on Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:10:36 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
>> Democracy is a lousy system.  The only thing going for it, is that it's
>> better than anything else we've tried.
>
>> (Sorry, can't remember who originally said that).

Churchill

>   Someone has also said that democracy is a dictatorship of the majority.

Hmm Marx mentioned a dictatorship of the proletariat, but only as a  
transitional period between capitalism and communismm otherwise I don't  
know who said that.

>   IMO he's wrong. In practice democracy really is a dictatorship of a
> minority. It just fools citizens to believe that it isn't.

"In politics, an organized minority is a political majority"

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   The new copyright law forbids copying music from illegal sources.
> The vast majority of internet sources are defined as illegal, so you
> basically can't download music legally (except from legal online shops).
> 

A lot of people say that it says so. So far I hadn't found any mention 
about that, nor anyone has been able to point it out for me. But I think 
I found it now:





Even this actually points out that there *can't* be any payment for the 
copier to do, *expect* if (s)he knows or should know that the source is 
illegal. Yes, everyone should know that most of the music at p2p 
networks is illegal - in case they actually are considered as "teos" 
(which pretty much means it's original, ie. something new) - but if a 
download web page seems legal and one ain't an expert, can (s)he 
actually know that the source is illegal?

Nasty, I'd say. But the practice will (unfortunately) show us that lack 
of knowledge is - once again - not an excuse.

And still the copyright law allows you to ie. loan a CD from a library 
and copy it. By using the right software from the beginning you won't 
even notice any copy protections, so they can't be technically 
effective. Ah, and radio recording also, is legal by these payments 
(yes, the quality is a different thing here...).

>   (OTOH eavesdropping internet traffic is still illegal, so how they are
> going to enforce the copyright law is anybody's guess. I think a police
> officer commented on the new copyright law that a law doesn't make sense
> when it's impossible to enforce it.)

Remember Finreactor? If names get gathered in same kinds of cases, they 
may have a chance to find enough proofs to nail people. It think it 
would be illegal for me to write here that one should make sure he won't 
register to any pirate source (at least with real addresses etc), so I 
won't write it here. You'll just need to come up with your own ideas, 
but I'm sure it's not a problem, since POV'ers tend to be thinking and 
problem-solving people.

>   The same law also says that it is legal to circumvent the protections
> if it's necessary to listen to the music in the first place.

Yep :).

>   The new copyright is really messed up. Nobody understands it fully.

I think so too. I think that not even Tanja 
Karpela/Saarela/Vienonen/whattheheckwillhersurnamebetomorrow understand 
it fully, even though she's pretty much behind it.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Nasty, I'd say. But the practice will (unfortunately) show us that lack 
> of knowledge is - once again - not an excuse.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is "legal should know" and not "practically 
should know."

For example, in the US, actually registering the copyright means 
everyone "should know" it's copyrighted. After all, it's available from 
the copyright office if you want to check.  Once it's registered, if 
someone comes up with the same thing independently, they have to be able 
to prove they *didn't* copy it, rather than the copyright holder proving 
they *did* copy it.

Filing a patent means everyone "should know" the thing's patented. After 
all, you could have done a patent search, and the patents are all public 
knowledge. The fact that a serious patent search costs big money doesn't 
matter - you're still in trouble because you "should have known" you 
were building something already patented.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Filing a patent means everyone "should know" the thing's patented. After 
> all, you could have done a patent search, and the patents are all public 
> knowledge. The fact that a serious patent search costs big money doesn't 
> matter - you're still in trouble because you "should have known" you 
> were building something already patented.

  In some cases you have to know in advance.

  First person A makes an invention and uses it. Years later person B takes
this invention and patents it (as we all know, prior art is a no-op in
practice in the US patenting system). Now person B sues person A for
patent infringement. If person A can't prove that he made the invention
before it was patented, he's screwed.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> Software companies have the reputation of making humongous scads of 
>> money and getting very very rich, whereas the picture of struggling 
>> artists just barely getting by remains a popular conception of the 
>> music industry.  More to the point, a legislator can pretend to 
>> subscribe to these opinions while crafting legislation.
> 
> You should compare software companies to record companies, and artists 
> to programmers. Who keeps the big bucks?

One factor in the artist's favor, vs. the programmer, is that the artist 
is generally on his own time when engaged in the creative effort, and 
therefore owns his work.  Programmers working for a software company do 
their creative work on company time, and therefore do not own one line 
of the software they write.

Consequently the artist, at a certain point, becomes indispensable in a 
way that the programmer does not.  The record company cannot simply 
replace Bono, the Edge, and the other two guys in U2 with cheaper 
replacements and expect the customer to keep buying the music.[1]

The result is that sometimes the artists get big bucks.

Another factor involved is that is that many artists are famous to the 
general public, but programmers are not.  Since political figures focus 
on appearances, what the artists want gets heard by politicians, and 
what programmers want gets ignored by politicians.

Which leads to the present situation:  Legislation is written to benefit 
musicians at the expense of everyone else, while people doing work that 
is just as creatively demanding in other industries have no such laws 
operating in their favor.

Regards,
John

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John VanSickle wrote:

> Consequently the artist, at a certain point, becomes indispensable in a 
> way that the programmer does not.  The record company cannot simply 
> replace Bono, the Edge, and the other two guys in U2 with cheaper 
> replacements and expect the customer to keep buying the music.[1]


Forgot the footnote:

[1] -- Insert your favorite comment about whether U2 makes music >here<.

Regards,
John

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Warp wrote:
> (as we all know, prior art is a no-op in
> practice in the US patenting system).

I'm not sure *that* is quite true. But again, "prior art" doesn't mean 
"someone did it before" legally speaking.

But yes, patents are a mess here. If you were restricted to effective 
patents of existing technology, we'd be much better off. ("Effective" 
being the legal term for "actually describes how to make it work", i.e., 
a solution rather than a requirments spec.)

But if you were already selling something with the patented technology 
before the other person *filed* for their patent (not "was granted the 
patent"), then you have a good case you'll win.  (I've provided expert 
reports on several such cases, where I invented and sold stuff a couple 
years before someone else patented it. So far, my side has won.)

But again, it's cheaper to pay the patent trolls $2000 than to pay the 
lawyers $20,000 to fight it.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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