Court decides online photos fair use (game)

[Wallendo]

Part of the problem with debating the question is that we have all lived our lives in the age of patents. Therefore, hard to even imagine the world otherwise. Whereas people suggest no one would have the desire to invent things, we actually do have the wheel, the lever, writing, movable type, and control of fire, to name some obvious inventions that occurred without patent law.

My argument is complicated further that we are not just born in the patent era, but we are also born in the era when the "object of humanity" has been distorted into being economic entities. As such, it comes natural to assume that the foundation of life is economic.

There of course was a decent argument for patents and copyright. But, like all economic laws, it is quickly perverted, distorted and used as a lever for the purpose of moving capital upwards into vast piles that can't be accessed by humanity as a whole. Warner Brothers owns the copyright to "Happy Birthday" and charges rather large fees for it's commercial use. The copyright was extended to 95 years.

IP laws (copyright and patents) now control the simple human endeavor of "entertainment." I find that to be so ridiculous as to not need much explanation. But, in case it does, as every human interest and endeavor enters into economic contracts, freedom of expression dies a little bit. Until we have this atomized population sitting in front of screens watching an illusory image and entertainment world for which they MUST WORK MANY HOURS to pay for.

Currently, patents are being used in medicine to bankrupt the population. A rather clear abuse of the intent. The entire IP system is clogging courts, costing humanity valuable equity in the world they inhabit, and creating ever more hording of capital.

It's pretty hard to argue that the song "Happy Birthday" is more important to humanity that the "wheel".

"Happy Birthday"'s copyright was recently overturned and it is now in the public domain.

In your ideal world with no patents, why would any drug company pay a billion dollars (that is what is required to bring a new drug to market) if a competitor would just copy it. Why would a movie studio pay $100,000,000 to create a movie if a competitor could just copy it the first day and release it for half price.

In fact, why would anyone create anything that you would take from them from free.

Now, patents expire after 14-28 years, which is reasonable. Unfortunately, copyrights extend well past that, and I agree that that is unreasonable. If the Shakespeare family still controlled Will's material, the world would be a much less culturally advanced civilization.

 

[darkroommike]

were the photographs in question even copyrighted ( registered at the copyright office )?
he should have emailed them and had them put a by line on the work so he at least got credit for the image.

grab and go is the way of the world .. oh well.

it probably is more important than the wheel

IDK
i am related to or know of people who invented things or are connected to people who invented things that are used every day on every corner of the globe.
and some of them had their ideas taken from them and others took credit for it
and others were working for someone who reeped the benefits of their work. that's the way of the world ..
would it have been the same thing if there were no patents? uh huh, people with
money and power pretty much do what they want whether there are patents or copyrights.
i had a large company grab images that were mine and copyrighted and publish them without consent and i got didly swat .. should have asked for a by line ..

SSDD

==
nodda the glass is 1/2 full !

Copyrights do not need to be registered to be enforced. There are three kinds of copyright.

1. Implicit copyright, a bit like having a sandwich on a plate, if I turn my head away is it OK to steal my sandwich?
2. Explicit copyright, a bit like putting up a sign that says, "This is my sandwich, go make your own!"
3. Registered copyright. "A bit like putting up the same sign with a p/s that Mom is watching your actions vis a vis my sandwich.

You can also still register a copyright after you notice infringement but before you issue a cease and desist. In American law this means your damages are less, no punitive damages, but you can still get satisfaction.

 

[removed account4]

hk darkroomike

if you have to hire a lawyer/go to court they won't see you without a copyright registration.
in years gone by you could mail yourself an envelope with images and have it postmarked
and not open the envelope when it arrived "poorman's copyright" not valid anymore
putting the copyright symbol next to things, claiming things are copyrighted at inception and everything
else people "say" ... is a leaky sack that won't hold water in a court of law and no lawyer will take the case because
no registration and all that other stuff is not cut and dry...
sure you can register after the fact but after the fact is pretty much a waste of time if you
have someone/something using work without expressed consent.
gang registration of visual arts is cheap as dirt ( form VA ) last i checked it was under $50 and can be done online
and from what i remember there is no limit, so if someone has 10,000 images to copyright its still 50 clams.

 

[darkroommike]

hk darkroomike

if you have to hire a lawyer/go to court they won't see you without a copyright registration.
in years gone by you could mail yourself an envelope with images and have it postmarked
and not open the envelope when it arrived "poorman's copyright" not valid anymore
putting the copyright symbol next to things, claiming things are copyrighted at inception and everything
else people "say" ... is a leaky sack that won't hold water in a court of law and no lawyer will take the case because
no registration and all that other stuff is not cut and dry...
sure you can register after the fact but after the fact is pretty much a waste of time if you
have someone/something using work without expressed consent.
gang registration of visual arts is cheap as dirt ( form VA ) last i checked it was under $50 and can be done online
and from what i remember there is no limit, so if someone has 10,000 images to copyright its still 50 clams.

A lawyer will always take your money but if he knows intellectual property law he will advise you to register you work before continuing. I still like my sandwich on a plate analogy.

 

[removed account4]

A lawyer will always take your money but if he knows intellectual property law he will advise you to register you work before continuing. I still like my sandwich on a plate analogy.

he will advise you to register the work because
the judge won't hear the case without the work being registered
the moral of the story is no tickee no shirtee
sandwich analogy was good, but i ate a late breakfast

 

[ReginaldSMith]

In your ideal world with no patents, why would any drug company pay a billion dollars (that is what is required to bring a new drug to market) if a competitor would just copy it. Why would a movie studio pay $100,000,000 to create a movie if a competitor could just copy it the first day and release it for half price.

The questions you ask presuppose a world created WITH patent law. Yes indeed, when monopolies can be extracted from government, monopolies then become the incentive for certain kinds of capital investments. Many of the world's most valuable inventions however, were created BEFORE there were IP laws. And that worked because the socio-economic structure was different. IP law is an arbitrary invention of capital to create more safeguards to capital accumulation. It may appear to stimulate innovation, but for every case of stimulation, there is an equally powerful case of de-incentivising innovation.

We can't announce tomorrow that IP law has ended. We're too far into it structurally. And, I am not advocating that. However, we could very well recognize what a economic disaster it is, and begin to roll it back over a generation or two or three. But instead, we are stupidly expanding it, in spite of the ample evidence of how it is net harm to society. To wit: Just 8 individual persons out of 7,500,000,000 in the world own 50% of the world's wealth. That's not healthy. That's not sane. That's not sustainable. IP has a lot to do with that massive disparity.

The world got on quite well before IP law. It isn't a mystical law of Nature, or law of economics, or law of any -ism. It's just a law created by powerful owners of capital to increase their capital by government force of law. At a more philosophical level, the ownership of ideas should be repugnant.

Shakespeare versus Disney? How did Wm. Shakespeare write all those plays and sonnets with no copyright protection? How could that have possibly happened?

 

[ReginaldSMith]

One more thing about IP laws. They are a brutal hammer used to hold back progress in the 3rd world, and extract their meager wealth. The enforcer is the WTO and western bankers.

 

[Nodda Duma]

You assume wealth is a fixed quantity in the world, which it is not. You are also still advocating the theft of intellectual property. Theft is theft.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

I've never advocated theft of anything.
I've never suggested wealth was a fixed quantity.

What I have said is that the world would be better off had IP laws not been invented.

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron.

You have to ask yourself this: why is it no one is reading, "Romeo and Juliet", by Joe Smith?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Please stop feeding the troll.

 

[removed account4]

What I have said is that the world would be better off had IP laws not been invented.

between being paid royalties for something you created / invented and
seeing your hard work in the possession of someone else who then claimed authorship.
i'd pick the former.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Yes, it's true most people polled will simply choose whatever they see as maximizing immediate self benefit. Which, is why there a climate crisis, which is why there is global hunger, oceans of rubbish, polluted water supplies, poverty, disease and all the rest while at the same time 8 people have half the global capital. It's the structure of the modern economy which incentivizes only individualism. Always at the expense of the social whole. It creates misuse of capital everywhere.

Some of the smartest visionaries, like Buckminster Fuller, demonstrated that there is good standard of living possible for everyone, if capital were applied more wisely. So, we now have $250M cartoon movies playing in a theater sitting over broken sewers, polluted public water supplies, and connected with failing bridges. All of that, is directly due to the creation of the wrong incentives.

As to the benefits to the little guy, they are precious few. Most inventors work for huge corporations like Boeing, IBM, Google, Apple and Microsoft and their inventions, and related patents belong to the corporations. In 2015 just 4.6% of patents were filed by individuals. 48% filed by foreign corporations and 44% by US corporations. And, oh by the way, if a corporation decides it wants your patented idea, it will simply use it, and dare you to fight their $XXXM/yr legal department.

On balance, the entire system is designed to work against the small fry in every possible way. And the small fry has exactly ZERO to say about reforming it.

Brilliant, talented, clever, imaginative, crafty, artistic people can ALWAYS do well, because authenticity sells.

 

[removed account4]

sorry there was plenty of things wrong before there was a patent and copyright office, that really has very little
to do with why we have pollution and a decaying infrastructure and hunger and "misuse of capital everywhere"
and there will always be plenty of things wrong.

ymmv
btw im going to cash 4¢ royalty checks, i get about 8oo a week,

 

[ReginaldSMith]

The best and most successful demonstrations that the extant patent system is not essential to the economy is Open Source Software.

Ref: https://opensource.org/osr

Where the patent system gave us "Windows", the Open Source system gave us LINUX. Where patents gave us Explorer, Open Source gave us Firefox and now Brave.

The persistent question whenever IP is questioned is: Why would anyone do X, Y or Z without patents? A: Because it improves innovation.
QUOTE:

"The survey reports that 78 percent of its respondents are now running their businesses with open source software, and two-thirds are building software for their customers that’s based on open source software. More significant, the percentage of respondents actually participating in open source projects has increased from 50 percent to 64 percent, and 88 percent say they expect to contribute to projects within the next three years.
...
Companies are wising up to the power of contribution and cooperation. Those who engage benefit from lower friction in their ongoing operations -- reducing the burden of regressions, improving the flow of innovation and sharing the task of security review. It’s the ultimate IT lubricant in the Internet age.

It’s hard to imagine a stronger signal that open source is now the dominant, mainstream approach to originating software for the enterprise. Proprietary software will always be with us, especially legacy applications with lock-in that grows deeper each year. Executives will continue to put off the inevitable day when they will need to pay the huge ransom to their proprietary vendors to escape the lock-in and move to modern, modular, open source solutions.

But open source has transformed from the pariah Microsoft condemned as “cancer” in 2001 to the default that proprietary businesses have to pretend to embrace or even be in 2015. "
Source: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2914643/open-source-software/rise-and-rise-of-open-source.html

In publishing, the utility and success of "Wikipedia" can't be denied. It continues to grow and improve, with one of the most significant branches being "open source text books."

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Please stop feeding the troll.

There are always loud voices attempting to stop the flow of information and new ideas. In the past, by which I mean pre-Internet, the loud voice was a newspaper editor, or politician protecting the status quo. Today, the Internet dis-empowers most of those loud voices...thankfully.

1. Copyright is obviously of interest in this forum, as can be see by the concern of the O/P and the subsequent comments. e.g. It's not an "off-topic" conversation.

2. My own views on the topic are vastly different than the popular views expressed here, but are not unique, inappropriate, or in any possible way "trolling." In fact, my view is the modern, contemporary view of visionaries in the fields of software, hardware, music, and publishing. Actually, considering that Open Source Software is now the standard for the business world, my views are the mainstream, and the old archaic view represented by here by the majority, is about to be left in the dustbin of history.

3. There is a real and accessible history regarding copyright. It wasn't sent like manna down from the heavens, but was in fact a simple strategy of some powerful people. A very good synopsis of that history can be found here: https://questioncopyright.org/promise

For readers, it can be discovered that: 1) copyright was never a real benefit to creators, only to publishers. 2) Very few - not very many - artists are enriched in the status quo system. 3) In many fields, the old system is being demolished and dismantled in record time. Software being the vanguard. 78% of all servers use Apache, an open source application. 4) The music industry is well on the way to restructuring itself in ways that will disintermediate the record labels. 5). Publishing is not far behind the music industry. 6) The question - "who would bother....." has been answered loud and clear, and that "creative people are succeeding and creating and being rewarded, outside the outmoded "corporate IP system" which has imprisoned creativity for centuries.

For others, who prefer to wrap their arms around the 300 year old status quo of bosses, loud voices, and controllers of creativity, the very least you can do is not blindly obey those who want to block and control other voices in a free society.

 

[AgX]

Copyrights do not need to be registered to be enforced. There are three kinds of copyright.

1. Implicit copyright, a bit like having a sandwich on a plate, if I turn my head away is it OK to steal my sandwich?
2. Explicit copyright, a bit like putting up a sign that says, "This is my sandwich, go make your own!"
3. Registered copyright. "A bit like putting up the same sign with a p/s that Mom is watching your actions vis a vis my sandwich.

You can also still register a copyright after you notice infringement but before you issue a cease and desist. In American law this means your damages are less, no punitive damages, but you can still get satisfaction.

That is the US legal situation. Such differs in other parts of the world.
Over here strictly speaking there does not even exist a copright in that meaning.

 

[MattKing]

My overwhelming impression of the decision referenced in the story is that neither the judge or the counsel appearing before the judge understood much about copyright law.
Now if the judge had decided that the appropriate measure of damages was $1.00, then the decision would make sense.
And as for an "Open Source" approach to intellectual property, good luck getting the cash needed to either effectively use or distribute the fruits of innovation.
"Open Source" only works if you have a distribution network that someone else pays for.
That being said, there certainly is room for improvement in the systems that balance societal needs and the encouragement of and reward for innovation. The screwed up pharmaceutical industry is evidence of that.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

IP laws were predated by the US Constitution. Our Framers felt they were very important and included them in our Constitution. That was in the 1780's, over 230 years ago.

"US Constitution. Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

What's interesting is that the Amendment was instituted not only to encourage inventions. It also was to prevent certain people or groups of people from getting exclusive monopolies granted by government over works and products they did not create.

"This clause is the foundation upon which the national patent and copyright laws rest, although it uses neither of those terms. As to patents, modern legislation harks back to the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, whereby Parliament endowed inventors with the sole right to their inventions for fourteen years. Copyright law, in turn, traces back to the Statute of Anne of 1710, which secured to authors of books sole publication rights for designated periods.These English statutes curtailed the royal prerogative to bestow monopolies to Crown favorites over works and products they did not create and many of which had long been enjoyed by the public. Informed by these precedents and colonial practice, the Framers restricted the power to confer monopolies over the use of intellectual property through the Copyright and Patent Clause. "
https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-1/50-copyrights-and-patents.html

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Laws are generally created by looking in the rear view mirror, and very rarely by looking forward beyond anyone's nose. Almost never looking far into the future and considering consequences. Expedience of the day rules.

Laws create economic incentives, often called distortions. The ability to take advantage of the economic distortions rises with more capital. For example, after a couple hundred years of patent law, only 5 percent of patents are issued to individuals and the rest are issued to massive corporations like IBM and Microsoft. Which ironically are now considered legal persons, a demonstration of more legal perversion.

The laws don't change much if at all, but the environment around it does. And then, as always, the law reacts. Software, publishing and music are three very large economies which are simply redefining their environment in spite of the old copyright law, and redefining the possibilities for the creative, the inventive. The Internet being a key element of disintermediation of large entrenched entities.
This is generally a good thing for small entities like individuals.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Signed prints are where the action is, not low res digital images. C'mon, they are nothing

That makes tons of sense!

 

[Sirius Glass]

My overwhelming impression of the decision referenced in the story is that neither the judge or the counsel appearing before the judge understood much about copyright law.
Now if the judge had decided that the appropriate measure of damages was $1.00, then the decision would make sense.
And as for an "Open Source" approach to intellectual property, good luck getting the cash needed to either effectively use or distribute the fruits of innovation.
"Open Source" only works if you have a distribution network that someone else pays for.
That being said, there certainly is room for improvement in the systems that balance societal needs and the encouragement of and reward for innovation. The screwed up pharmaceutical industry is evidence of that.

All of which points to the decision being overturned on appeal.

 

[MattKing]

All of which points to the decision being overturned on appeal.

If it gets there, which is exceedingly unlikely.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

And then later, "writings and discoveries" as terms got replaced by the highly loaded term "Intellectual Property." The idea being that mankind had by now accepted without question the ideas of property ownership rights and would not challenge this new classification of mere thoughts as "property" to be treated in trade in the same sense as a horse or car. Two persons can not ride the same horse in different parts of the world, but two people can have the same thoughts with no reduction in essence between them. Therefore such claims on the intellect are in fact the taking of intellect from others. There are any number of writings available to destroy the idea of "intellectual property."

 

[warden]

...There are any number of writings available to destroy the idea of "intellectual property."

And there are far, far more supporting it, from the supreme court outward. My problem with intellectual property rights (in the US) isn't that they're too strong, but that they're too weak. It's still too easy for thieves to be thieves.

If you remove intellectual property rights you might as well remove all property rights. Patents, like the wheel you keep bringing up, are just tools and can be used for good or bad. But patents are inherently good tools that need continuous improvement, which is why they end up at the supreme court with such regularity.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

The courts wouldn't be considered useful critics of the effects of the law as they have an embedded bias for The Law.

A much more useful critique is found in either economics or sociology, or technology. The common assumptions (e.g. propaganda) regarding IP are usually nothing but tautologies.

In any event, I think IP law is becoming moot as civilization advances beyond the demands of the 17th century. Courts and legislatures are reactionary and always behind the curve.

I'm reasonably optimistic about the future of the individual to usefully express their creativity and innovation somewhat in spite of the growing size and power of the tyrants. Decentralization and disintermediation continue their march.