Things I Know I Know

Having seen more than one well-published author claim in recent weeks that copyright must be vigorously defended or else the copyright holder will lose all their rights (something that is, in the broad sense, an issue for trademarks, but not copyrighted material), I figure almost everyone could use more information about copyright and what it means.

Mark Rausch, a Security Focus columnist and formerly head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit has an informative write-up in The Register:

But technically, file sharing is not theft.

A number of years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with a man named Dowling, who sold "pirated" Elvis Presley recordings, and was prosecuted for the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property. The Supremes did not condone his actions, but did make it clear that it was not "theft" -- but technically "infringement" of the copyright of the Presley estate, and therefore copyright law, and not anti-theft statutes, had to be invoked.

So "copying" is not "stealing" but can be "infringing." That doesn't have the same sound bite quality as Valente's position.

Complicated matters further, copying is not always infringing. If the work is not copyrighted, if you have a license to make the copy, or if the work is in the public domain, you can copy at will. Also, not all "copies" are the same. Say you buy a CD and play it on your computer -- technically, you have already made a "copy" onto the PC in the process of playing it, but that's not an infringement.

Making an archive copy is okay too, as long as your retain the original. What about a transformative copy -- say, making an MP3 out of a CD? You can do that, so long as you retain the original work. If the original CD get scratched, damaged or lost, you can probably burn the MP3 back to a CD (sans the really "sucky" titles), but this is not entirely clear.

Posted by debco at 03:08 PM | Permalink

When you go to meetings and they're having trouble getting the equipment to work, you can hold it up and say, "Look, a Tablet PC."

And everyone turns and says, "Ooohhhh, shiny...."

Posted by debco at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There's a good article at Newsweek that looks at the richness that the public domain brings to Alan Moore's 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman' and why (I haven't seen the movie) this makes the original comics better than the movie:

“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” both the comic and the film, demonstrate why ordinary people should care about Lessig’s cause. A rich public domain enables creative geniuses like Alan Moore to reach into society’s collective memory and produce complex, fun and socially valuable works. The existence of the “League” comic doesn’t harm the original creators, it directs a new generation of fans back to the source material that continues to inspire pop fiction today. Meanwhile, the film shows how ridiculous copyright restrictions have become. Fox probably could have used Wells’s original invisible man but didn’t want to risk an expensive legal skirmish with Universal. Just the existence of onerous copyright law has a chilling effect on creators.

..via mamamusings

Posted by debco at 11:39 AM | Permalink

The farmer has a good post over at Eschaton on some valuable resources on the current state of farming, the myth of the family farm and supporting local foods. Check it out!

Posted by debco at 03:53 PM | Permalink

Marc Laidlaw, BoingBoing's tiny guest blogger this week (I mean, I don't know that Marc's tiny, but the blog is) mentions the Aurora Alarm whick provides alerts when the Aurora Borealis is visible in the midwest and the northwest.

I have to admit that I've always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis and I never have (or at least if I did, I didn't know it, which in my case is possible and even likely). But now, with the Aurora Alarm I would know.

Cool!

Posted by debco at 09:16 PM | Permalink

I read this headline to a Talkleft post--Feds to Appeal Marijuana Guru Sentence--and I thought--cool!--the feds are so ashamed of themselves that they're appealing their own convication.

Alas, how wrong I was:

Today comes news that the Government is appealing the sentence [of Ed Rosenthal who was growing medical marijuana with city government sanction].

Rosenthal was convicted last spring of growing pot in an Oakland warehouse. The marijuana growing operation, which supplied a dispensary on Sixth Street in San Francisco, was legal under California law and had been inspected and signed off on by Oakland city officials.

But because federal law does not recognize medical pot, Judge Charles Breyer excluded any testimony dealing with California law, which allows for the medical use of weed with doctors' approval. After the trial, a majority of the jurors who convicted Rosenthal said they would have reached a different verdict had they been allowed to consider the purposes of the growth and that Rosenthal was acting in accordance with local and state laws.

The San Francisco Examiner says it best:

OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, why don't the feds just give it a rest?

After that, we like Ed's comment:

Rosenthal also said he thinks the appeal is a waste of taxpayers' money. "If they have all that money, why don't they build some schools?" he asked. [from Bay City News]

Posted by debco at 08:32 PM | Permalink

The ACLU released a report today on Justice Department prevarications about the PATRIOT act:

The American Civil Liberties Union today said that it has found a consistent pattern of factually inaccurate assertions by the Department of Justice in statements to the media and Congress, statements that mischaracterize the scope, potential impact and likely harm of the now-notorious USA PATRIOT Act.

The ACLU’s findings were released this morning in a special report that contrasts the Justice Department’s assertions about the USA PATRIOT Act with the language of the Act itself, and in some cases contrasts the Justice Department’s public statements with language from internal Justice Department memoranda that the ACLU was able to obtain through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report – “Seeking Truth From Justice” – cites about a dozen specific instances in which Justice Department and other law enforcement officials misrepresented the scope or impact of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Come on, people! This is first grade stuff. You don't lie, you don't cheat, you don't steal. Sometimes when you do, you think for awhile that you're winning, but what you find out is, at the end, you either lost it all or you guaranteed that there was nothing left to 'win.'

Posted by debco at 08:23 PM | Permalink

Fanzine and seven ears agonic fathers bunyas forth m this confluent a mw prating amusedly bbutyand dedicated to the pupating that all menace autodyne. Now we are engaged ina great city war testing whether this prating many nations conceived ands dedicated can longhouse. We ace pneuma great battlefields that war. We have come do dedicate apntinlofhatfieldasa find hustling-place fn those who here good they lives that that praline might lay.

That's what Windows Journal on a Tablet PC makes of the Gettysburg Address in my handwriting.

I have to admit, I think Lincoln said it better....

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

Posted by debco at 05:27 PM | Permalink

At This Modern World, Tom Tomorrow has a post reacting to word from the Lieberman camp that Howard Dean is a liberal, that liberals can't win and therefore (apprarently) we need to elect someone who is merely pretending to be a Democrat (Lieberman):

One, in any rational society, Dean would be considered, at most, a sensible moderate. Two, I'm so bloody sick of Democrats who react to the word "liberal" as if it were an accusation of child abuse or satan worship, I could bloody scream. You don't see Republicans squealing like scared little girls every time someone calls them conservative, now do you? I want to get rid of Bush as much as the next rational person, but I'll tell you this: any Democrat who so blatantly distances himself from liberalism can go take the proverbial flying leap at the rolling donut, as far as I'm concerned.

If you don't believe in anything except getting elected, you may, by dint of money and media support, manage to get elected, but you won't be anyone we actually want in office.

Posted by debco at 11:44 AM | Permalink

The Cost of War gives you a running total of how much the war in Iraq has cost so far as well as things we could have done with the money instead.

...via This Modern World

Posted by debco at 11:40 AM | Permalink

Go to Google, type in "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and hit the 'I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 09:57 PM | Permalink

A friend writes to me:

I tried to explain tracking to a friend of mine and I must have done it wrong because we both ended up agreeing that it was impossible.

Posted by debco at 09:53 PM | Permalink