Copyrights in the Information Age

Great Debates
1

Well, I am almost ashamed to say (but not ashamed enough to not say :p) that I have begun a frantic downloading of MP3s. Started out as getting a song that was never released (or copyrighted as far as I know… only ten google hits on the band that was in a major motion picture!) and then it started blossoming to downloading songs of bands I didn’t know that well, and then I downloaded entire albums, and now I’m downloading bands whose audio tapes I purchased but never picked up the CDs.

And I’ve read some of the threads we’ve had before about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, among other assorted topics pertaining to the title of this thread.

Well, there’s nothing quite like restarting a topic, so what are you thinking?

I am normally very quick to support property rights of all kinds, intellectual as well as property. I feel strongly that music does indeed fall under this umbrella. But the proliferation of MP3s have made my mind start churning about just what a copyright really means now.

There was a GQ thread a little bit ago about an illegal prime number, and it fascinated the hell out of me. Copyright a number*?!??* But hey, that is where we are at in the digital age. Binary representations of text, music, etc, are just a collection of numbers! I find the idea that one can copyright a number to be, shall we say, absurd.

I still do. That, of course, isn’t meant to be a justification of my acts of MP3 downloads, but it is meant to be a real consideration on the topic.

And the “illegal number” idea goes farther than just music, fer chrissake. Executable programs are also just numbers, and code is something that I would also support copyrights for. Programmers often work hard on solutions and I would like to think that they can be compensated for that effort just like someone would for inventing a new technique in organic chemistry for synthesizing a new molecule, or finding new ways to synthesize old molecules.

Is there even a way around this blending of worlds? Or should we simply say that, yep, numbers are copyrightable. What implications does that have?

2

Something that struck me as upsetting in the whole MP3 gig: the only people really missing the revenue generated by CD sales are the Music Industry bozo’s, not the artists themselves. Check what an Artists (I use this term loosly …) actually get to have from CD sales. It’s a pittance at most. Concerts are where the cash is. I firmly believe that if you want to see someone in concert you will go see them whether you purchased their music or ‘Previewed’ it from an illegal local. Plus you might be able to afford the infalted concert price if you hadn’t already forked out the inflated CD premium.

3

There’s a distinction with regards to the illegal numbers that I’m curious about. If I take the binary source for a copyrighted song in mp3 format, rename it to a text file, and send it out to everyone I know, have I broken the law? It’s the same number, but it has a different interpretation. So is it really the interpretation of the number that’s been copyrighted, or the number itself?

4

I suppose we could make an arbitrary cutoff, and say any number less than Avogadro’s is not copyrightable.

ultrafiller:

Just because you renamed it, that doesn’t mean it has a different interpretation. Suppose you were to take a copy book and filp it upside down, and tell everyone to read it that way. They’ll almost certainly ignore you and flip it back upside right. So just because you change what you’re telling people to interpret something as, that doesn’t mean that you’re changing the actual interpretation. So maybe we can say that it is the number interpreted as code or text or whatever that is copywrited, not the number itself. Anyone who distributes the number can still be charged because even though he is not handing out the interpretation, he is handing out something that is only slightly different from the interpretation (presumably someone who copied a book but changed one word wouldn’t be able to get off simply because it was slightly different).

5

I think the most important aspect of talking about copyrighted material, is that no one should be able to financially gain on other people’s material. However, I think it’s utterly pathetic when some huge multimillion dollar corporation, say, Fox, forbids some poor sap from having a picture of Bart Simpson on his personal website.

Of course, an important question is, if everyone can download (for example) mp3 files legally, how can you compensate the artist? (and the recording technicians, and so on) Well, you could impose some sort of tax, but that would be pretty hard to do on a global scale. I don’t really have an answer, but I don’t think it would be impossible to find a way of accomplishing this.

I think the major corporations need to be a bit creative in coming up with ways to get their revenue instead of bitching about piracy and going to court. Take Microsoft for instance: they are constantly bitching about piracy. Like they really need more money?? With all the damn software licenses they sell to companies, I think they should be able to give their products away free for personal use.

When it comes to the music industry, I still buy CD’s, but I think it’s ludicrous that like 50 % or more of my money goes to promoting and advertising mostly new artists that sucks anyway. Yes, there are hidden costs but I’m willing to bet these could be drastically cut. I also happen to think it’s quite funny that Metallica is so outspoken against mp3’s - remember when they were concerned with making good music rather than making another $1.000.000 on pure crap?

And remember the good old days when movie studios made all their income from cinemas? They didn’t go bankrupt, did they?

Conclusion: I’m not saying that everything should be free, but if the big corporations do not consider cutting expenses and thereby lowering the cost for the end consumer, the end consumer will always get what they want without paying. They simply cannot lock everyone of us up.
Regarding the illegal prime - it made me think of another issue, but I’ll start another thread for that.

6

This is so not true! I am an artist that belongs to BMI and collects royalties. They are not millions, but they help to pay my bills. I very much look forward to those checks. I know many artists that depend on royalties. Not everyone that collects royalties, tours. What about families of deceased artists that rely on these payments to pay the mortgage.

When you download a song that you haven’t paid for, you have stolen it. When you put software on your computer that you didn’t pay for, you have stolen it. Lets be honest about this. Now, if you have already paid for the cd and are ripping MP3’s of stuff you have already paid for, I have absolutely no problem with that. But thats not what we are talking about.

Lastly, why are you using the term artists “loosely”? Music is an artform. What do you think you call the people that create it? Lumberjacks? Some folks devote their entire life to developing the skills and talent necessary to learn to create this artform. They live on macaroni and cheese and sleep in their car waiting for their big break, which may or may not ever come. Yet you don’t consider them artists and choose to deny them of their “pittance”. “Artists don’t get paid enough by the record companies so why should they get paid at all”. Is that your logic?

7

So you don’t want new artists? You would rather just listen to the same old folks over and over again? I find it hard to believe that you haven’t liked any new artists that have come out in say the last five years. The fact is that the more money that that the record industry loses to piracy, this is the absolute first place they are going to cut their budget, taking chances on new artists.

Personally, I would rather hear a new artist than another new Jagger album. But thats just me, I guess.

8

Let me say from the start that I’m a copyright lawyer. I am not familiar with US law though, but by virue of the Trade Related Intellectual Property (“TRIPs”) element of the WTO, the principles are more or less the same.

How often does that happen? And why would a large corporation bother? What is its loss and damage? (As an IP lawyer, I wish they’d waste more of their money on chasing people like this - I’d be having a great time.)

Lucasfilms recognises this fallacy of chasing its fans: it chases people who make a profit from the its intellectual property (famously some poor sap in the US who was making Boba Fett armour and selling it), not the people who use their images without authorisation, but at no financial harm to Lucasfilms.

Fan fiction of Buffy, comic book characters, Star Trek etc exists because large companies can’t be bothered chasing small fry in court for no damages. There is no point.

Having said that, if they did decide to chase someone in court, its their prerogative. They invested money into (following the example) Bart Simpson - lots of money, on promotion. Their shareholders expect a retutn, and don’t like profits being syphoned off or the value of the intellectual property asset diminished. Its their property. That’s why its called intellectual property.

I’m no fan of Microsoft’s apparent anti-competitive conduct. But what’s this bitching about a company making money from its software? One of the privileges of living in a capitalist system is the ability to reap what you sow. I sniff tall poppy syndrome.

If you were talking about a car company putting its money into research and development, you wouldn’t be complaining. Record companies sink money into new talent as their way fo R&D. They take a punt on something new. Its the way they do business.

And again, Metallica created their music. They own it. They’re entitled to make money out of it, and exploit their artistic works. What makes people think they can rip off Metalllica’s property?

Consumers vote with their wallets. If you don’t like the price of a CD, don’t buy it. Music companies keep their CD prices the way they are because people will buy them at this price. In return they reward their shareholders - which include banks and financial institutions, retirement funds, and mums and dads. Where is the problem?

9

That’s an ingenious but flawed argument. Numbers are not copyrightable per se: any more than the paint colours in a painting are (although as an aside they can be trademarked in certain strict circumstances - UPS and its brown, Veuve Cliquot and its orange spring to mind) or the graphite in a pencil can be copyrighted.

The numbers make up the image, or the source code, or the music. Of themselves they are not copyrightable. As a protected work, together, they are.

10

You cannot copywrite the graphite in a pencil. Technically, you would patent a graphite pencil.

Um…thats how they make all that money that you think they don’t need. By not giving software away. What if your boss told you “you make enough money, I’m not going to pay you any more for this year”. You would stop working for him, right? Why do you think corporations are different?

I would recommend taking a basic business course.

11

In what way aren’t they copyrighted in effect? Their distribution is not legal.

Also, consider all the numbers that would be illegal. After all, HTML representations of books are just as illegal as DOC files or TXT files. Each one has its own way of storing the information, and the distribution of each is illegal. Yes, I understand that the number represents the work, but that doesn’t change the fact that distribution of those numbers is illegal. Consider, also, that one couldn’t finitely enumerate all the numbers which would be illegal, too, do to subtle manipulations, compression techniques, deliberate expansion, etc.

The Ryan, I thought your Avogadro’s number comment was a neat idea, but then I thought: hey, poems can be copyrighted, and so can short stories and so on. So, rats, even small numbers are technically illegal to distribute.

msmith, Dave wasn’t saying one could copyright the graphite. :slight_smile:

12

[Hijack]
Those interested in the “illegal primes” affair (or those who missed it) might be interested in looking here and here.
The Register also reported ‘DeCSS’ DVD descrambler ruled legal last month.
[/Hijack]

13

Isn’t handing out the putative binary-source-for-mp3-as-text equivalent to giving your friends the MEANS by which to experience a copyrighted work? In that sense it’s the same as allowing them to make an mp3 download from your own copy, or taping them a copy from your CD. Is what you’re doing not the same as publishing the work (which, presumably, you do not have the right to do)?

BTW, If you did have the right to publish the work, then you could probably claim copyright in the typesetting of your text, however :slight_smile:

Being the computer/maths know-nothing that I am, I wondered whether I was misunderstanding something here. Is the effect of reducing computer coding to binary code to create ONE NUMBER? Because that would produce the effect closest to what I think you are imagining, i.e. that the distribution of that binary sequence is restricted by virtue of it representing publishing of a copyrighted work. What Dave seemed to be describing, on the other hand, was a particular combination of discrete numbers having the effect of representing digitally a picture or a piece of music etc. Which to me describes a function more like that of a musical score, and no-one complains that musical notes are “illegal” just because they aren’t allowed to publish the score of West Side Story without permission.

I’m really very interested in this issue so I would appreciate any help in understanding it and if someone would point out any wild inaccuracies in my current thoughts :slight_smile:

Embra, in perpetuity and throughout the world…

14

Yes, Embra, I am saying that the entire binary representation of a digital work is a single number.

Consider the following “poem”:

In hexadecimal that equates to:
6F72616E6765730D0A6C6967687420666F7220746865206D6F7574680D0A412074617374792073756E72697365

In binary that is a total mess.
011011110111001001100001011011100110011101100101011100110000…

Lets just say that the decimal equivalent of the binary number, for the sake of argument, is 10,200,345,678 (which isn’t even accurate to decimal places, but whatever).

So in the proper context that number represents our copyrighted poem. Is the number illegal to distribute? What about the text for 25,100,172,839? 33,400,115,226? What about a self-extracting executable number which, when executed, would decompress the text and display it in a simple editor? What about one number greater than that which we could subtract at our leisure in order to view the text?

15

I’m just saying that if you were the guy who first stuck graphite in a piece of wood for the purpose of writing stuff, you could receive intellectual property protection similar to a copyright.

16

erislover,

have you stopped BUYING music since you’ve started MP3s?

If you were spending $50 bucks a month for music, and you still are, you can be pretty sure your downloading is not negatively impacting the music industry and the artists. The loss only occurs if you would otherwise purchase the music. It differs from shoplifting a CD (for example) in that your possession of it does not prevent the store reselling it to others. The only lost sale is the one they might make to you personally.

If you want to be extra-ethical, buy some CDs based on music you heard on MP3s. Make everybody happy.

17

Again I’m disappointed to see the word “stealing” used to describe downloading MP3s. Stealing is when somebody takes what you have, and now you no longer have it because he has it instead. If a burglar breaks into your house, photographs your stereo, and buys an identical stereo for his own home, he hasn’t stolen anything.

Similarly, if you copy a CD for personal use using an AHRA-compliant device, you haven’t stolen anything (or even broken the law). The original CD is still there, the artist still has the right to sell copies of the music–the only difference is that now there’s another copy of the CD.

If you make personal copies by means that aren’t covered under AHRA (e.g. Napster), you may have violated copyright, but you still haven’t stolen anything.

18

Just out of curiosity, what word would you use for taking something that doesn’t belong to you without paying for it?

19

The question (restated) is, if you photcopy a book in the library. take the copy home, and leave the book in the library, have you stolen the book? That is the distinction between theft and copyright infringement. It’s debatable which is more serious a crime, but they are DIFFERENT crimes.

20

But copyright violation isn’t ‘taking’, it’s copying. Whoever had the original still has it. You can’t steal something if the original owner still has it. The correct term is ‘infringing’, but that word isn’t loaded enough for the copyright owning industry.

In fact, the use of the term ‘Intellectual Property’ is misleading in the first place. There is no such thing. Copyright isn’t property it’s a monopoly on the right of publication. Copy-right is granted for a limited time in exchange for having the creator not keep his/her output a secret.

Disney, the RIAA and other mass holders of copyrights know this, but they intentionally use the term ‘Property’ because it implies that copyright confers the same rights as property ownership. It does not. Copyright is merely a monopoly on publication, and even that is restricted by several things.

[li] All copyrights have limited duration. During the 20th century, congress repeatedly lengthed the duration at the behest of Disney et al, so the duration is now obcenely long IMO, but it is still limited.[/li][li] Format conversion & duplication of a valid copy by the owner of the copy are not an infringment of copyright if the purpose is personal or scholarly. (whew!)[/li][li] Once a copy is sold by the copyright holder, it may be re-sold without permission of the copyright holder.[/li]
Or to put it another way

[li] In about 100 years, you will be allowed to publish the contents of your CD collection.[/li][li] Ripping your CD or making mix CD’s from your CD collection is legal.[/li][li] You can buy and sell CDs.[/li]
What sort of ‘property’ behaves like that? What a copyright holder owns isn’t property (a CD), but instead, a monopoly on the right to manufacture new property. Where this gets wierd is when we try to define what publishing means in the digial age. Clearly manufacturing CDs is publishing. Just as clearly, ripping your CD collection is not publishing. Allowing somone to borrow a cd and play it is not publishing.

But What about downloading MP3’s of songs that you already have on CD? You have the right to rip your own CD’s, surely you have the right to pay someone to do the drudge work for you?

What about recording songs off of the radio? The audio home recording act makes this legal, but this is in part because there is a surcharge on blank audio tapes, what happens when you record to hard-disk instead? Is it still legal?

Where it gets really wierd is when you combine the two, what happens if you download MP3’s of songs that you also recorded off of the radio? Is this a violation of copyright or not? It wouldn’t be if you did the conversion to MP3 yourself.

The internet is simply going to require a new view of copyright, right now the battle is going on to define the terms of debate. You should reject words like ‘thief’ ‘stealing’ and ‘property’ with regard to copyright violation. Use of these words is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the debate.