Do copyrights violate basic human rights?

Great Debates
241

In Apple’s case, some information was leaked, but do we now get to download Mac OS X or Final Cut Pro for freeeee? Even if Steve Job’s plumber got “access” to a Beta copy of OS X Tiger from Jobs, would we now all be able to download Tiger for freeeee?

Besides, a millionaire running a multimillion dollar high profile company has a little more clout and resources at their disposal, to put terror in the hearts of potential infringers, don’t they? Does Joe Nobody? I don’t think so. Does Joe Nobody have enough clout to go up against Mr. Millionaire and his lawyers who have decided to screw Joe Nobody over? I don’t think so. And even if you think he could do it, most Joe Nobodys would think twice about taking the chance, lest their work end up freeeee forever more.

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If it were true. See below
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The basic problem with this whole idea that copyright is overbearing and restrictive and stifling is that it just ain’t borne out by the facts.

We live in an age where more Useful Information, and innovative Useful Information, at that, is being created than at any other time in history by several orders of magnitude.

The system ain’t broke, no matter how much you and Mr2001 might like to pretend otherwise.

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We do get to make use of the information that was leaked. That was, of course, what the NDA was designed to protect against. That information may have been as valuable to Apple as any copyrighted work is to any author (who knows how much potential profit they may have lost to competitors who can now be quicker to market their own similar products), and the same is true of plenty of other things that are protected by NDA.

And yet the system still works. While I’m sure you’ll find some excuse to type freeeee a few more times, the fact is that other people take the same risks with information they don’t want to make its way out into the world, and they manage to enforce their agreements well enough. They can’t keep the information from spreading, but they can find the source of the leak and hold him responsible for damages.

And yet, somehow, companies smaller than Apple also find that NDAs give them the protection they need. Why do you think artists aren’t capable of playing by the same rules as everyone else?

It’s easy to think that if your only measure of how well the system is working is how much copyrightable content is being created. But when even copyright supporters introduce themselves in the thread by saying things like “can we agree that the system as it now stands is broken?” and “I, personally, firmly and irrevocably believe that current copyright law is in desperate and serious need of overhaul”, you must allow for the possibility that there are other factors worth looking at.

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As is the First Amendment, and yet you keep citing “freedom of the press” every time a private individual wants to stop another private individual from distributing stuff that was created by Individual #1. What’s up with that?

245

Oh, well then, obviously the system is perfect.

246

In Apple’s most recent case, it was the “information” that they were going to release the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle and a few other things (which Apple then announced a few days later anyway). Rumors are harder to control, but if something big, like the software to OS X Tiger was “leaked,” could it be (legally) sold or distributed by competitors, could it be (legally) released on P2P? No. If Steve Jobs’ plumber had “access” to Tiger, could he (legally) release it hither and yon, for everyone to download, leaving Jobs powerless (under the law) to prevent it? No.

Because there isn’t any wiggle room with hypothetical plumbers who could have had (perfectly legal in your world) “access” to the works. As it is now, Jobs can say, “There is NO ONE on God’s Green Earth who has had legitimate ‘access’ to our ‘information,’ therefore, by default, anyone who is sharing our ‘information’ is in violation of copyright law, and we can sue them and make them stop.” In your world, however, we’d have to make sure that no plumber had “access,” because if he did, all bets are off, and the work is now (wait for it . . . ) freeeeeeee. In your world, people could claim that perhaps a plumber had access after all, perhaps Jobs wasn’t as careful as he should have been, perhaps Jobs deliberately let the plumber see the stuff (for some nefarious reason of his own), and if Jobs did that, then there is no claim, there is no breach of NDA, there is no breach of anything, and no one will be made to pay.

In your world, it would be hard to stop the spread of the work anyway, because as long as someone could have gotten it through the plumber (and many people could assume that this was the case) then they are perfectly within their rights to share it, to spread it, and they don’t have to worry about being sued, or having to pay a red cent. But in this world, everyone knows that if they download it, they are now breaking the law, and they can be sued and can be forced to pay a penalty. The whole environment is different, see? Of course you see. I keep on repeating it, and you keep ignoring it.

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Because it’s not just one private individual stopping another from distributing stuff. It’s the government stopping an individual from distributing stuff, based on a claim by another individual.

If you kick a copyright infringer out of your house and off of your lawn, that’s one private individual vs. another. But if the FBI seizes his computer and he has to pay a hefty fine or serve time in jail, that’s the government vs. an individual.

No, because the information wasn’t copyrighted. You can’t copyright the fact that a product is coming out soon.

People could claim that right now anyway; there’s nothing stopping them. Why do you think no one who published the rumors has come forward and said, “Don’t look at us. Maybe Steve Jobs’ plumber found the announcement in his house and forwarded it to us. You have to prove that didn’t happen before we’ll reveal our sources.” Could it be that blaming NDA leaks on the plumber is only a problem in your imagination? If it were really such an easy escape, don’t you think everyone who ever broke an NDA would simply blame it on the plumber?

Cite for anyone ever being sued for downloading copyrighted information?

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No, you can’t copyright a rumor. That’s why I specifically brought up OS X Tiger. That is where the real concern lies—not so much in speculation about what the Mini is going to look like. (Not that I am diminishing Apple’s concern about having rumors leaked.) If the plumber leaked Tiger, or if Jobs can’t prove that the plumber couldn’t possibly have “access” to Tiger (and they cannot directly pinpoint to who leaked it and make that person pay), then Jobs and Apple would have no recourse, would they? If they can’t prove who did leak it, and they can’t rule out the plumber, Tiger is now freeeee.

Downloading, no, sharing, yes.

On December 21st, C-Net broke the news that Apple was filing suit against three people for posting a developer build of MacOS 10.4 via BitTorrent, seeking a jury trial and damages.

Under your plan, we’d have to prove that those sharing didn’t get legitimate “access.” If they got the software through the plumber, share away. They cannot be sued for sharing something that the plumber had “access” to. If they don’t know where they got it and nobody else knows who the initial “source” is, it might well be the plumber, unless someone can prove otherwise. And if they can’t prove it? It’s freeeee.

Oh, I’m sure that Jobs and Co. have enough resources that they could keep track of everyone who they let see the software, so the plumber probably wouldn’t have a good chance of getting “access.” But Joe Nobody isn’t a millioniare with those sort of resources—moreover, Joe Nobody probably isn’t going to want to jump through all the paranoid hoops to make sure that nobody ever has access unless they sign a contract, like someone like Jobs could do. So Joe Nobody probably isn’t going to want to take the chance.

It would be too easy for someone to say, “I know for a fact that Joe Nobody left his house for 30 minutes to go to the store, and the plumber was there at the time. How do we know for sure that the plumber didn’t take it?” Unless Joe Nobody has irrefutable proof that he’s locked everything away really tight and he can account for where it’s been for every second, he can’t prove that someone else couldn’t have had (legitimate, under your scheme) “access.” And if there’s some chance that someone had “access,” how can Joe Nobody sue someone who he only suspects (but cannot 100% prove) leaked it, thus breaking their contract? As long as there’s a possibility that the plumber leaked it, we can never know. And Joe Nobody’s stuff is now freeeee.

249

The fact you keep ignoring is that no one blames the plumber. It just doesn’t happen. It isn’t happening in the Apple case now, it doesn’t happen in other NDA violation cases, and there’s no reason to think it would happen if the subject of the NDA were a copyrighted work instead of information about secret processes or upcoming products.

I don’t know how I can make this any more obvious to you. If getting around a non-disclosure agreement were as simple as saying “gee, I don’t know, maybe you left the documents lying around and someone else saw them”, then everyone who was bound by an NDA would do it. Everything would get leaked all the time, and no one would have any recourse. There would be no such thing as a non-disclosure agreement anymore, because it would be totally worthless.

But that isn’t how it works. People use NDAs all the time, because blaming the plumber is only a get-out-of-NDA free card in your imagination. In the real world, if you’re accused of breaking a confidentiality agreement, and your only defense is “he can’t prove he didn’t leave it lying around for someone else to see! it’s just a coincidence that the information didn’t go public until I got my hands on it… yeah, that’s the ticket!”, you’ll be laughed out of the room. This isn’t a case where you have to proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; the judge is free to use his common sense and decide that your story about the plumber is less likely than the possibility that you actually broke the agreement and leaked the info.

Again, irrefutable proof isn’t necessary. The assumption is that since he’s the one who has a secret to keep, he’s going to take the necessary steps to protect it, and if you want to prove that he didn’t, that burden is on you. If he says, “I lock my files in a desk drawer whenever I leave the house,” you can’t just say “I bet he forgot this time!” and expect to be taken seriously.

250

I’m sure you’re right that it doesn’t happen now. But in a world where plumbers can share whatever copyrighted material they find with no penalty, very likely more will try.

Also, like I keep on mentioning, Joe Nobody is not going to have the resources to go through the paranoid hoops required to protect all his work in such a manner. How many amatuer photographers want to have the photo lab sign NDA so they can get their photos developed without fear of having them published against their wishes? And if a photo is leaked, how many Joe Nobodys will want to deal (or will be able to deal) with tracking down which employee swiped their pictures and published them? How many photo labs will want to keep track of which employee is doing what and a specific time, so they can know when their employees are handling a specific customer’s copyrighted material? How will Joe Nobody share his photos with friends and relatives if he has to have them all sign NDA before letting them see the photos? If his photos are leaked anyway, how on earth is he going to find out which person is responsible? Was it the photo lab? The relative? A relative’s friend who saw the photo as well?

Not every person who creates copyrightable material wants to go to the lengths that you would require for them to keep their work from being published. But yet they still don’t want to see the work shared against their wishes. Perhaps they are very prolific and simply have far too much stuff to protect—it would extraordinarily difficult and expensive and time-consuming. So what would they do? Very likely they’d show far less to people, because the hoops they must go through to protect themselves is far too exhausting to do every time they create something new.

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And after the first person who tries that excuse is laughed out of the room, everyone else will realize it still doesn’t work.

That’s the photo lab’s problem, not his. He holds the company responsible for breaking their end of the contract, and any resulting action they take against an employee is their own business.

Every photo lab that wants to get those customers’ business. When you handle confidential material, you have to take precautions to make sure it stays confidential. Pretty standard.

If he doesn’t trust his relatives, and he doesn’t want to hold them to a contract, then he shouldn’t leave his confidential photos alone with them.

That’s the risk they take by sharing it with people they can’t trust.

If you’re that worried about their work making its way out to the public, maybe they should find another hobby. Even copyright won’t prevent it from happening - a quick look at any P2P service shows that millions of people will happily distribute things they know to be copyrighted, despite all the threats and legal action from record companies. Unless you have a plan for convincing those millions of people that it’s Not Nice and they should Just Say No to file sharing, I’m afraid the problems you describe will exist no matter what form copyright law takes.

252

How can he hold the photo lab responsible if he can’t prove they leaked it?

And every other service that deals with people’s copyrighted materials (photo copiers, framers, etc.). We’ve gone through this before. La-de-dah, it’ll all be so easy. Make the photo labs, copy shops, framing shops, printers, etc. deal with the whole convoluted, expensive, elaborate, ridiculous, legalize mess. Like they want to do that? Like that will be easy? Inexpensive? Seamless? Just like waving your magic wand, it’ll all be dealt with? Bullshit.

“Confidential”? Who specified “confidential”? Pretty slick little trick you tried there. He could be showing anything he has done, but does not want published for others’ profit or exploitation. This would be 99.9% of the photos he takes, as it would be for most people. He may trust his relatives, but if he cannot be assured that they’ll never let the plumber in the house, and if he cannot be assured that they will never show it to someone else who might not be so trustworthy, then he might as well not show anything to anyone.

At least in the world we live in now, there is a legal mechanism to stop people that behave in an untrustworthy manner. It may not always be worth the hassle, but it exists. You want that legal mechanism taken away completely. Also, in the world we live in, legitimate, mainstream publishers do not publish or distribute works unless they know they have proper permission. But in your world, once the work is “out there” anyone can publish anything. The automatic assumption is that it is all freeeee.

So there is no barrier of “Am I sure it’s okay to print this? Do we have the proper permissions”? It will be, “I found this, let’s print it.” It may or may not be “shared” by the plumber, but either way, the cat is out of the bag. All the lawsuits in the world, all the suing of the photo labs after the fact won’t change the fact that it has been distributed through mainstream channels. That is not the case today. You don’t see illicit copies of works for sale on Buy.com or Amazon.com. But in your perfect world, someone could see their (stolen) works available on Amazon, because the assumption is that if it’s out there, it is freeee! One needs a lawsuit to prove otherwise.

At least there is some barrier, and it can be a deterrent, and it can hold up in court ( as we have seen). You want that taken away, so that each time a person shares anything they’ve done with someone, they run the risk of seeing it for sale up on Amazon.com.

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Presumably he hasn’t been showing it to everyone in town. He considers where his photos showed up, who he has showed them to that could’ve gotten them there, and connects the dots. Just like anyone else in a similar situation.

I know words like “agreement” and “precautions” frighten you, but try to calm down. Compared to what those businesses are already doing to, say, keep track of the sales taxes they have to pay, keeping track of who works on which job is nothing.

I’m just trying to be descriptive. I guess “confidential” is another word that frightens you, so how about “fluffy” or “pookums”? How do you describe something that you want to keep out of the public eye, that you hand to another person with the expectation that he’ll be held responsible if he lets anyone else see it? Secret, restricted, private, for your eyes only, hushed, closeted, classified?

Well, that changes everything. It might be available on Kazaa or Gnutella or many other places where people can download it without fear of prosecution, but God forbid it should show up on Amazon! If we can’t believe in Jeff Bezos, we can’t believe in anything!

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Not that easy. They show up on the Internet, for example. Who leaked them? How will he connect the dots then?

Bullshit. I used to work in a photo lab, and trying to keep track of who had “access” to what group of negatives at all times would be a logistical nightmare. Also, I assume they’d need extra insurance to cover any liability risks (being sued for “leaking” something). Saying that taking all these precautions is “nothing” is bullshit.

There’s a difference between “showing this to friends or associates” and “letting everyone in the universe see it and do anything they want with it for ever more.” Some people might have works that are not “for your eyes only” but are definitely not “let everyone see it! It’s freeee!” Perhaps this is beyond your comprehension, however.

The MPAA and RIAA are suing people as we speak. And perhaps people can download without getting sued, but the uploaders (the ones that provide the stuff for everyone else) are definitely living in fear of prosecution. The MPAA is getting into the action, not just the RIAA. When enough uploaders are sued, then that lessens the selection and quality for those downloaders-only types.

Illicit P2P networks sometimes distribute works of questionable quality, and usually only the most “popular” things are available (can I download a copy or Sibelius’s Origin of Fire?). If anything was suddenly freeeee, there could be one centralized, mainstreamed, high quality, easily searchable place to get whatever ones’ hearts desired. Inexpensive paperbacks, art prints, DVD sets, CD sets, anything can be had, including downloads, for cheap or for free. Great for the leecher, but sucky for the person who had their stuff swiped from them without permission. The damage would be done in such quick time because the way to distribute work would be so mainstream. P2P is not mainstream now.

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Then I guess these people would have to find a photo lab that’s a little more on the ball. Considering the demand for it, I doubt they’d have a problem finding one.

Someone who thinks shouting “the plumber did it!” is a foolproof way to escape from an NDA shouldn’t be insulting others’ comprehension. :wink:

You can download compilations of most of Sibelius’s works. Whether that particular rarity is among them is something I’m not about to find out, but it does seem unlikely.

OTOH, can I go to a music store and buy a copy of Negativland’s The Mashin’ of the Christ? Or Eminem vs. Britney Spears - My Name is Crazy? :wink:

And the statistics sure show it, too. Why, there are only 442.03 million files being shared on the ed2k network right now. Er, I mean there are only 442.32 million files being shared. Hold on, what I really mean is 446.93 million.

Well, at least it won’t reach 450 million for a few hours. That uploading problem is totally under control. Everyone will stop sharing copyrighted works any day now! They won’t even move to anonymous systems where it’s impossible to trace the source of a file… they’ll simply vanish.

Tell that to, well, everyone I know IRL who has a computer and internet access. Even Hot Topic was selling Napster T-shirts back in the day.

256

Bullshit. You want to put an unreasonable burden on so many different companies, and you want to pass it off as “nothing” when you really have no clue of what keeping the strictest eye on all “access” to all work would entail for each company.

Nope. Let’s see—can you quickly find seven symphonies, many tone poems, a kajillion other string, piano, vocal and orchestral pieces? Nope. Do you get to choose from several different artists or conductors (shall it be Colin Davis or Esa Pekka Salonen for Symphony #5)? Will you know who the conductor or soloist is until after you download? Can you pick and choose? I did a quick check of Sibelius on a P2P app. Nope, nope, and nope. Pretty slim pickins, as a matter of fact. (Though of course if I went through more effort and inconvenience, I might to dredge up a few more things.) Sibelius was quite a prolific fellow. A few copies of Finlandia or Valse Triste and some selections from his symphonies on P2P won’t even begin to compete with Amazon.

I’m not holding my breath either, but Amazon.com has it. And when searching for other Sibelius works, you can quickly select which singer, performer, orchestra and conductor as well. Not everything he has ever done is available, but a hell of a lot more than what is on P2P.

I have no idea. I am not familiar with these works, nor do I know the history behind them.

Who said they’re under control? Only that they are far less “mainstream” than Amazon.com, which offers me Colin Davis, Esa Pekka, and The Origin of Fire. It also offers me DVDs of Dr. Finlay and Love For Lydia. Does P2P do that? No? Compared to mainstream sources like Amazon, P2P is pathetic. P2P selection is plentiful but basically shallow; Amazon’s selection is deep and far more varied.

257

Do you think the thousands of companies that work with confidential information every day consider it an unreasonable burden? Or do you simply refuse to acknowledge that they exist?

Speak for yourself. I had no trouble finding seven symphonies and tone poems. There are many copies of those, and various string quartets and violin concertos. As for the artists/conductors, there’s plenty of Davis and Barbirolli, somewhat less Salonen, and a few others.

It seems that says more about your P2P searching prowess, or the lack of variety on the particular service you used, than the availability of these files. All I had to do was search for “sibelius” in all file types and sort by size.

I don’t know a thing about Sibelius, but that didn’t stop me. :wink:

Here’s information about The Mashin’ of the Christ, one of many works created by mixing parts of various other works together to create something new. Most works like this are audio (like “My Name is Crazy” - Eminem’s lyrics with Britney’s beat), but TMotC is video. Of course, you won’t find it on store shelves. Copyright has pushed this art form underground.

258

Putting this additional burden on so many mom-and-pop camera stores, photo labs, copy shops, framing shops, grocery stores that farm film out to be developed, all sorts of small retail shops, etc. etc. is not “nothing.” You are so cavalier about saying that these additional hoops that so many new companies and stores (in fact, a huge chunk of them) would have to jump through are “nothing.” That simply does not sound like it is the case.

Somehow I doubt that the breadth of this selection quite compares to Amazon. But since I’m not savvy enough to find these files, I’ll never know.

Ah, I see. So one must have “prowess” to search for files on P2P, eh? If I don’t have the “prowess,” I am certain I am far from the only one. On the other hand, I need exactly zero “prowess” to search for his work on Amazon. So what you’re saying is that one has to know how to find the files on P2P. They aren’t obvious or easy to find. They certainly weren’t for me.

Well, I guess the relevance (or importance) of that depends on how much you value works created by mixing parts of various other works. I mean, some people don’t value large-scale mass-market entertainment, after all, therefore, who cares . . . :wink:

259

Irresistible force, meet immovable object; immovable object, meet irresistible force.

You two are givin’ me a headache!
Okay, let me settle this: yosemite is right! Mr2001 is wrong. End of story.
Nah, Just kidding…but seriously, don’t you two have, like, lives? Donald Trump puts up skyscrapers in the time you two have spent going back and forth over this.

260

I just searched for the guy’s name, using one of the most popular P2P clients. If that didn’t work for you, you must’ve been looking somewhere else. Declaring that a file isn’t available on P2P just because you can’t find it on Kazaa is like declaring that a piece of electronics can’t be bought online because it isn’t on Best Buy’s web site. Most of what the average person is looking for can be found at any electronics store, or on any P2P network, but less common items may only be available at some of them.

Touche. :wink: As long as we’re both aware that some innovative works can only be created thanks to copyright law, and some can only be created thanks to a healthy disrespect for copyright law.

Now see, if he could just make one skyscraper and then copy it again and again… :wink: