copyright category archive

When will the copyright holders want control over our mind’s eye?

I read with interest Crosbie Fitch’s rant: “In respect to the artist - NO PHOTOS”.

With this statement: “anything that is available to the senses of the public visitor is available to be recorded by that visitor,” I got to thinking about how copyright owners will try to control their “property” in the future.

It seems the time isn’t very far away when our senses will be augmented by our machines. What we see and hear will be much better preserved, and available for perfect recall. Will the RIAA claim the privilege and the right to dilute or maybe erase entirely our enhanced memory of a song we hear on the radio? Or control how we communicate so that we don’t share our experiences with others?

Doesn’t that seem awfully …

Decriminalizing non-commercial file sharing

via QuestionCopyright.org:

Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state. Today they want to transform the Internet Service Providers into an online police force, and the Antipiracy Bureau wants the authority for themselves to extract the identities of file sharers. Then they can drag the 15-year-old girl who downloaded a Britney Spears song to civil court and sue her.

Will the Antipiracy Bureau be satisfied with this? Probably not, because

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Robert Heinlein Describes the Situation

Way back in 1939, in his first published science fiction short story:

There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

–Robert Heinlein, “Life-Line”

I haven’t read the story, but that seems to apply very well today whether it’s Disney buying Congressmen and longer copyright terms, or Microsoft and many …

A Silly Post Brought to You by the Letters E and F

My daughter has a set of Sea & Learn Bath Shapes that are very entertaining for her and me and the wife alike. (The wife might not want to admit that. But for me I can say that they engage my brain more than a typical work-related meeting.)

I happened to notice that the “e” looks very Microsoft Internet Explorerish. It’s a small letter. It’s blue. So I looked around for the “f” and found that by an amazing coincidence, it is Firefox red!

(Ok, so the Firefox logo is predominantly orange and this is mostly red. Just play along, ok? The stars are orange. Take it or leave it.)

How about that? The forces of good and evil arrayed against each …

Who will own (and police) our digital future?

So the RIAA and MPAA want the colleges and universities (and corporations and your grandmother and etc.) to enforce our out-of-control copyright laws. It’s disturbing how much power these organizations already wield, and how much more power they think they should have in dictating how free the flow of information should be. Our future is digital, with infinite possibilities for freedom, but these guys would prefer that artificial scarcity rules the game.

(via Against Monopoly)

[…]

Reid’s amendment is a clear illustration of the effectiveness of lobbying. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think the trade groups actually wrote the text of the law. It vests in these groups a vast amount of money–taxpayer money–and, hence, power.

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Laying Claim to the Public Domain

We recently bought The Real Mother Goose book for our daughter, who is home from the hospital now and doing fine. I was reading some rhymes from it this evening and happened to turn to the copyright page in the front.

One thing interesting about this page is that there isn’t actually a copyright notice. It says, “This book was originally published in 1916,” which would place it in the public domain in the United States, but then there is also this:

No part of this work may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

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