[Stop Online Piracy Act]

I hope all of you people complaining about SOPA realize that this is the creation you have wrought. This is what happens when copyright holders are treated like kings of their own private fiefdoms, as if they have unlimited power because they though of a sequence of sounds. This is what happens when copyright is allowed to run amok.

What's worse is that even if SOPA is stopped, 1-2 years later, the MPAA or RIAA are just going to write another bill just like it, say it's for "national security" or some shit, and start this mess again. Without comprehensive copyright reform, this is going to continue until the people with money eventually get lucky and win.

Oh, but you know what? It's a small price to pay so that someone can have exclusive rights to whatever he claims first until the end of time, even after death, amiright? Fuck it, as long as people are making money forever, that's all that matters. I hope you people are learning.

[-huge update- phoenix wright, ace attorney - spirit of law (trial)]

Holy hell, that piano is sexy...

[Question about legality of vgm rips]

Is the music / are the files copyrighted? Has it been ripped from a ROM? Can others download it for personal use, private or otherwise? If so, it's illegal, and you can get sued for it.

Now, WILL you get sued? Most likely not; yes, OCR hosts game file rips, as do many other sites, and there's never been a court case about it so far. But... that's not what you asked. It is technically illegal (at least, if you don't own the original files already, such as a legit copy of the game in question). Most people just don't care.

[Re: Borderlands]

Yeah, you should definitely get Borderlands 2 when it comes out.

...of course, you could be as awesome as me and have Randy Pitchford personally autograph and hand to you a code that is essentially a pre-paid-for-in-full copy of Borderlands 2, but I wouldn't count on that. ^_~

[3DS: Friend Codes on First Page, OMG THE THIRD DIMENSION]

Wait, the Damned, wouldn't you want Pokémon to be on the 3DS VC? I mean, if your goal is to stop Ninty from making re-makes, well... who is going to buy a re-make of a game when the original is already available on the VC? Having the original AND a re-make on sale for the same system at the same time would be... well, dumb.

So, if anything, we should encourage the old games to be put on the VC as a way of blocking Ninty from spending more time and money re-making old games. Just port them and be done with it.

[New Acoustic Duet of Metroid from SuperGuitarBros on YouTube!!!!]

Well, hello again! I'm glad to see you guys are back; I've been waiting patiently for another post.

[redacted]

...or, I will tomorrow. I want to sit down with the video and write out all of my thoughts with the time in the song I'm providing critique, so I'll have to do that tomorrow. See you then!

(PS: I've at least listened to it already. Metroid is one of my favorite series and Samus is definitely one of my favorite characters in gaming, so... take that as you will. ^_-)

Keep the soapbox talk off the WIP forums, this isn't the time or the place for that. ~ Emu

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

I don't think anyone is going to bother putting up a proper counter-argument against someone who's too smug in their own sense of superiority to listen. You're *just* smart enough to come off as incredibly stupid in everything you write, which is the most damning and insufferable kind of person.

Yay? Again, I =/= my argument; I could care less what anyone thinks of me, because people's opinion of me doesn't make my argument any more or less valid. I could be Ghadafi, and logic would still be logic, at the end of the day.

To bring up a point you made,

remember that the universe exists and works without your machinations.

This also applies to you.

That's right; it does apply to me. That's why I do everything in my power not to hold opinions. I'm about to tell you something very indicative about the person I am offline: I try as hard as possible to not have opinions, because opinions are meaningless. I think things, sure, but the things I think I think because logic and reason dictate that those thoughts are the least contradictory options available given current knowledge, and when knowledge changes, I change my thoughts accordingly.

It's part of my indomitable charm. ^_- So, as you can see, no contradictions so far. Next?

Nothing you ever say or do will have an impact on anyone here, or outside of the internet. You won't change the world. You won't change the minds of people on this forum. You will never contribute anything of great meaning to this world.

LOL! Someone's really salty now. I don't need your validation, dude; I've already affected people in my life, I've already had an effect on the world. So, thanks for the venom, my dear internet friend, but your attack is not very effective.

At this point you're just trolling people for kicks, written in a wordy and verbose manner to hide your true internet orientation. You know it, I know it, and I think people would be better off with you if you just went and admitted it.

Don't stay in the closet, Jack, this is 2011 and it's okay to come out.

Again, lol. I will say that I get a little enjoyment out of seeing the less capable of posters on any forum get angry because they have trouble speaking (to me or to anyone), but that's not why I post. I post because I enjoy a good debate. It's why I'm actually kind of sad that Zircon got so salty earlier; I expected better from him, since he's actually capable of giving me... well, logically consistent counters.

Now that that's done, any more real on-topic posts? Man, it's a sad day when Jack Kieser is the one trying to keep a thread on-topic. ^_-

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Among other things. ^_-

EDIT: So, to get things back on topic, do either of you have any actual rebuttals to post? Or is it going to be another page of "Well, obviously Jack's wrong... but we can't / won't say why outside of non sequitur / ad hominem"?

EDIT2: Oh, well no one can steal what you don't possess, didn't you know? It's impossible to possess intangible things... like ideas or information. That's the whole point, chief: "intellectual property", as a concept, is bankrupt because it relies on possession of things that can't actually be possessed. It's kind of like canned air for your PC; you don't actually buy the air in the can, because that would be stupid (why are you buying what you can get all around you for free?)... you're buying someone else's service of compressing air and placing it in a can. Essentially, you're buying the can, not the air. IP is the same way: you can charge someone for the service of creating something information-based, like music or a picture or a stock trading program, but the actual information itself? The intangible stuff? That can't be controlled, at least not with modern technology. Maybe someday, IP will be a relevant concept again. Not now, though.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Er...yeah.... i'll just keep this as a quote for later so you can use it to string yourself up with jack.

(emphasis added)

Not so much an "I'm going to do something to you" threat as much as a "you hold this opinion so bad things are going to happen to you" threat. Just as lulzy, though. "Because you disagree with me, you're going to pay in the future raa raa raa!" It's great entertainment while waiting for Zircon.

EDIT: Ah, I see you edited your above post... doesn't matter. I'm not going to "regret" posting anything, because I meant exactly what I said. Given the context of the cultural climate of early humans, I can see how slavery helped us along our path to modern society, just how I can see how capitalism helped us along the path to developing the theoretically superior Socialist system, or how religion was necessary to push along the path of psychological evolution that would eventually lead to modern scientific thought and Nietzsche's famous (and true) statement of "God is dead!". There's no use in QQ'ing over the past, and we now understand how inefficient slavery is (not to mention how nonsensical it is with modern axiomatic social concepts like "human rights"), so all's good as long as we don't use it now.

But, see, I understand the concept of social context, so it's not a big deal for me to say that.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Lol, you guys rage so much. It's too good. "Look at me, I'm going to selectively quote someone, then make vague threats because I didn't consider the context of what I quoted."

You know how when animals with similar genes interbreed and it causes genetic deformities that eventually cripple the species? The OCR forums should be a case study for how the same concept can be applied to ideas. I'm sure psychologists could have a field day watching people fellate their own ideas. I sure am.

To take a page from the OCR playbook:

popcorn.gif

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

I can't honestly tell if you're dense or just a really crass relativist. You can't say stuff like this:

It's subjectively useful, is the point, not objectively useful like actual things can be. Besides, "I'd be pissed if X, Y, Z happened" is not a reason to legislate, either. Plenty of people "would be pissed if two guys got married"... so, should we legislate to stop gay people from marrying?

And then say that there are no absolute or fundamental rights outside of what humans "arbitrarily" create for ourselves as situations change. Do you find it at all permissible that we had slavery to begin with? Or that some societies think it's OK to commit genocide? Or to enslave women? etc? You make it sound like it would obviously not be OK to legislate against gay marriage just because people are pissed about it, but aren't you saying that rules and rights are arbitrary, and made up as the situation dictates? What if the situation dictates banning gay marriage because the majority of people don't like it, or allowing men to beat their wives?

The point is to remind you that those oh so dear opinions you have about artist's rights didn't exist at some point and the universe went on just fine. It's to inject a bit of humility, because as an artist, especially an artist who wants to make money, you're incredibly biased about copyright; sometimes, it's humbling to remember that the universe exists and works without your machinations.

As for your actual questions, it's all about context. Do I think it's ok we had slavery? Sure, within the historical context. Slavery, however, is logically unsound, as we used it and in terms of modern goals: we (early humans) enslaved groups of people based on nothing more than color / geographical location, and then proceeded to invalidate anything those people did outside of ordered labor. That doesn't make sense if your goal as a society is, for instance, a unified theory of physics and you're enslaving Einstein. Humans grew out of slavery (read: it became less useful to us than just giving everyone equal rights), but that doesn't mean that at one time it didn't help us grow as a species.

As for my point about gay marriage, I brought it up to prove logical inconsistency. We already have a law that says, essentially (and I'm paraphrasing), "all United States citizens get the same rights and responsibilities". Legislating against gay marriage is logically inconsistent with that law, because gay people could be US citizens, yet would not be afforded the same rights or responsibilities as other citizens. We'd be, in essence, breaking our own law. So, we have two choices: allow gay marriage, or change the original law (assuming we want to stay logically consistent; we could, in theory, just say that as a society we don't care about being logical, but then we'd essentially have to re-build our society, and that'd take a lot of time and resources. That's not to say we can't or that it's not a valid choice, just that we probably won't). Now, if we found out that the act of gays marrying actually caused direct societal harm, it might be necessary to legislate to stop it... but they don't, so the law wouldn't be warranted, and laws must be warranted before they are made.

Again, we don't legislate because we don't like things, we legislate because we have to, because there is no other choice. The logical reason for that is because laws take time, money, and other resources to create and uphold, and time / money / other resources are limited, thus we only apply them where they are most necessary.

EDIT: Oh, also one more point: you can indeed say that some things are objectively useful and at the same time say that humans arbitrarily give ourselves rights that don't exist in nature, just not with my wording. When I said things could be "objectively useful", it goes without saying that the implication is "objectively useful at the time"; things that are currently objectively useful can become objectively non-useful and non-useful things can become objectively useful as times / situations change. A good example is how the 17th century button makers guild got their asses handed to them by innovation.

You can't be a total relativist without being willing to say things like this. Of course, maybe you are, in which case, I think you're basically an asshole!

Yay, insults! Don't you guys usually nail me for that? I'm pretty sure I never insulted a poster this time around. Let me check. ... ... ... Nope, the closest I came was calling DJP a "commie" and a "socialist", but that was sarcasm, not a legitimate insult (obviously he's not a socialist or a commie). So that's OCR - 0, Jack - 1 on the Insult-o-tron. Well done with the ad hominem, by the way; even if I was an asshole, that wouldn't invalidate my claims. Person =/= argument.

I don't actually think you understand copyright. The purpose of copyright isn't to protect society from poor imitations, or to observe how to make a 'proper' version of something. It's (a) to financially reward the original creator, and ( allow people to access, improve and expand upon ideas. There is a balance that must be struck. The job of protecting society from imitations/dangerous products has always been left up to the free market, and now, regulatory agencies. If someone comes up with a brilliant patent, and I make a poor version of it, nobody will buy it - or if it's dangerous, I won't legally be able to sell it. After all, there is no guarantee that the person who originally discovered an idea will be able to execute it properly (and in fact, proper execution is far more likely once the idea can be refined by society) so your interpretation just makes very little sense.

...I don't think you understand copyright. Again, from the US Constitution (say it with me):

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;

(emphasis added]

I'm not reading anything about ensuring people get paid. Nope, nothing about protecting your ability to get money. I do see a part about protecting the progress of science and the useful arts, though... and what do you know, my example was all about scientific progress! Remember: my argument is that current copyright law is a bastardization of original intent, more importantly a bastardization that is no longer discreet, enforceable, or warranted.

You say that the "job of protecting society from imitations/dangerous products has always been left up to the free market, and now, regulatory agencies", but what you're leaving out of the picture is that the free market has created something that totally screws over the last 100 or so years of copyright law: the Internet, digital data, and Bittorrent. These three things completely wreck the whole "enforceable" part of making laws; we can legislate and legislate and legislate, but it won't be practical to ever enforce copyright as it is now as long as computers or the internet exists. And... if you think it is practical, than you either don't understand how computers / the internet works, or you're purposefully ignoring that information because of bias.

Since we're on a gaming music site, I'll assume you all know how computers work.

I never said anything about breaking and entering. How about a relative, friend or acquaintance that I willingly let into my home? At some point, while my back is turned, they happen to snap a shot of a piece of artwork with their phone. I guess I should just be a hermit in this case, yes?

What you're talking about isn't copyright, it's privacy, and there are no laws about privacy (only vague common law precedents cobbled together from the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th amendments. If a friend comes into my apartment and takes a picture of my entertainment center, which I believe is artistically organized, and uploads it to his Facebook, I can be pissed, but it's not illegal. Same concept. This is why "intellectual property" is a nonsense term: because you can't control information without it simply not existing. Once information (and the look of a painting is only "information") is created, all it takes is a single person seeing / hearing / reading it and it can no longer be controlled. It's just not practical or enforceable.

Yeah, it's obvious you don't draw if you think it's as simple as, "...uploading a file to DeviantArt..." There's the money spent on materials/art programs, money spent on books, classes and other aids, the time and effort it takes to actually make the piece, not to mention an entire lifetime worth of practice. (This is probably where Maisel's getting that ridiculous sum from.... He's still a greedy asshole though.) The idea doesn't just pop out automatically into some kind of material form. Still, charging people to download something is stupid if they can already see it. That's what watermarks, small image sizes and bad compression are for. =P

Well, the act of drawing is complex, sure, but the act of selling a drawing is not. Again, if I want you to make me something, I'm not paying for information, I'm paying for the service of creating information. If you (or someone else) have already created the information, and the reproduction of that information is trivial, then why spend time and money restricting a trivial act?

Concept only, though. Anyone who just copy/pastes the image does need the original artist's skills because they wouldn't have been able to reproduce it otherwise. However, if another artist uses their own time, effort, knowledge and resources to recreate the image (especially if they're only focused on the concept of the original), then he doesn't need my skills.

That's all theorycraft. Given enough time, elementary probability suggests that monkeys can type out Shakespeare. See, this is artist's bias and hubris shining through: "well, no one can create what I can create, so I'm special". Similar or comparable concepts have been created in geographically disparate regions at similar times before, so there's no reason why, given enough time, what you paint won't be painted by someone else. Your thoughts are not special; your execution may be, but again, that execution is only applicable during the actual act of creation; after that, all bets are off.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

So wait. You're saying that if I go to the store, buy a canvas, some paints and paintbrushes, then use those things to create a picture, it's not mine? After all, neither the canvas nor the dry paint are objectively useful anymore. If someone came around and stole my picture, would they be in the right since I still have the remaining paint, the paintbrushes, and the original idea in my head? Would it be okay for them to sell my painting? What if someone copied a digital image that I created—but had no intention of showing anyone—from my hard drive and started posting it all over the internet?

No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. A painted canvas is a physical object. Yes, it's art, but the original canvas you painted on is a thing; if someone breaks into your house and steals it, it's not wrong because they "stole art" it's wrong because they broke a law and stole an object. Now, if they go into your house and take a picture / scan it and distribute it on the internet... well, they're wrong for breaking and entering.

The fact that people tend to have good words for my artwork and that often they want to commission something should prove that artists deserve rights to their work (at least to some extent). I hear the phrases, "All I can draw is stick figures/flies," and, "I can't even draw a straight line," so much it makes me sick. Artists—no matter what medium—have a skill that many others cannot replicate. Their skill might not save lives, or make living conditions easier for the masses, but it's still legitimate, I say. Sure anyone can make art in MS Paint, but they're still limited by their own skill, talent, and creativity.

"Deserve"? I can't draw, but I don't think you deserve anything if all you're doing is uploading a file to DeviantArt and charging me to download it. Now, if I commission you to paint me something, I'm not necessarily paying for your art... it's more accurate to say I'm paying for your ability to paint, or in other words, for the service of painting. Nothing's wrong with that, but to say that, once paint hits canvas, the concept of whatever you painted is protected? If someone can reproduce it (or even better, if someone can improve on it, either in concept or in execution), more power to him: he doesn't need your skills.

That all being said, when I post something on the internet, not only do I not expect any monetary gain, but I also post it under the assumption that other people will take it, copy it, or otherwise use it in some way. That's fine by me. The only thing that might get under my skin is if they credit themselves as the original author. Lying is bad, yo.

HERE we go. What you're saying here, that when something is posted online, you expect people to do whatever with it, is essentially the status quo that I'm arguing modern copyright law should be set up as (digital anything? all bets are off), because it simply doesn't make sense in the modern world to do otherwise; modern technology makes it impossible to adequately protect artist's creative control (and as I've illustrated before, it's not even necessary to give that control anymore).

Don't worry, Zircon; I'm going to get to you later. My girlfriend and I are taking a friend out for her 21st tonight, and I'm DD, so I'll be AFK for a while.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

It's subjectively useful, is the point, not objectively useful like actual things can be. Besides, "I'd be pissed if X, Y, Z happened" is not a reason to legislate, either. Plenty of people "would be pissed if two guys got married"... so, should we legislate to stop gay people from marrying?

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

This is why it's pointless even discussing copyright with you at all, Jack. You don't fundamentally believe that creators deserve exclusive rights, as you just said.

I think that the universe doesn't care if artist's have exclusive rights. Remember: we're part of a society, an arbitrarily created concept made by humans. Everything we do has to be proven, at some point. And everything has to be re-proven as the situations change. That's how slavery worked: humans proved to themselves that, for a while,. it was perfectly fine to overpower and enslave people, and when societies were in a primitive state, that worked well. After moving to a more collective-based society in which the individual was valued less than the individual's contribution to society, slavery was re-evaluated and deemed logically impermissible (granted, a few centuries later in the US, and not at all in other parts of the world), and thus was proven to not be in society's best interest. We're still working on basic human rights for women and gay people, mind you; it's not an absolute process.

So, yes, "artistic control" has to be proven necessary to society, and I argue that it's not anymore, or rather, it's not in such a broad sense. In the original draft of the Constitution, it wasn't necessary for ART, only for artisans, because actual useful stuff was more important to society. As time went on, copyright was expanded to artists because of a social need (we have all of our manufacturing down, now we can focus on making art, so let's give artists creative control)... but more importantly, it was a viable thing to control. You couldn't reproduce paintings without making prints, so that's easy, there was no way to record music, so that's easy, sheet music has to be printed, but only large publishers have printing presses, so that's easy to track, same with books... it was feasible to give artists creative control because that was something logically within our capabilities of controlling.

Fast forward to now: everyone has a copy machine. Everyone has Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V. Everything is digital, and thus infinitely available. And most importantly, everyone can make, create, edit, and disseminate art themselves. Artist's exclusive rights have become nearly impossible to deal with by nature of the evolution of technology and society. What's more, it's not necessary anymore. Artist's used to need incentive to create art; they don't anymore, not by a long shot. Look at YouTube, where people don't get paid for their uploads (without special agreements); not getting paid doesn't stop people from creating content, because people create it for self-fulfillment and for notoriety. Hell, look at OCR; no one here gets paid, but artists still make music anyway. America is higher up on Maslow's hierarchy than ever before, and people create content now more for self-actualization needs than for anything else (advertisers actually bet on this, and now recruit individuals on Facebook to make user-created ads for free, and people do it just because they love the product / want to create something).

So, yeah, in the modern age, we need to re-prove that artists deserve exclusive rights; that it's worth our while to spend SO MUCH TIME, MONEY, AND EFFORT protecting these "rights", because the way I see it, it's an outdated concept, no more necessary than slavery. Go Internet!

I was going to make this point earlier, but I figured it would be more clear if you stated your own extremist view. Nobody needs to "definitively prove" that artists deserve exclusive rights because we shouldn't have to. People are fundamentally entitled to the fruit of their labor. Saying otherwise is literally either absolute communism or absolute totalitarianism.

You know why people get the fruit of their labor? Two reasons:

1 ) stealing deprives people of things they once had and no longer do; if stealing is allowed, society devolves

2 ) it's practical to protect people from theft; physical objects being stolen can be tracked, and it can be proven that someone has stolen something

This doesn't apply to ideas because ideas are not tangible. Proof: the United States is working on overhauling the patent system to change from a "first to invent" system to a "first to register" system. If ideas were tangible and capable of being tracked in the same way, for instance, a car is, there would be no need to change the patent system; the first to invent would be able to easily prove so, and patent claims would be easy to deal with in courts. As it stands, the current patent system lets people "come out of the woodwork" and make after-the-fact patent claims, and it takes lots of court time / money to deal with it.

Artist's creative control rights are the same thing. It takes so much time, money, and effort to accurately track each creation, each filing, and each infringement claim that it's not worth it anymore, at least not in its current form. In addition, taking a song you've written and editing it is NOT the same as me walking into your garage and stealing your car; if I edit your song, you still have your song, and you've still created your song, and you're still capable of selling your song. Maybe mine is better, but then, maybe you should write a new song?

That isn't to say that there aren't plenty of cases where the individual must sacrifice something for the good of society (namely, income -> taxes) but in these cases, the question isn't "Why should the government let you keep any money at all?" but rather "Why should the government take 25% of your income?"

Again, just because someone can make a derivative of your work does not mean your work is invalid. I listen to the Beatfreak's version of "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell all the time, and think it's a superior version. I assure you Rockwell probably gets his original song sold on iTunes every now and then. So, even by your own measure, only in extreme cases would a derivative work completely and totally supersede an original artistic creation, in which case, who cares? We don't legislate to the extremes; that's why WBC is allowed to exist, remember?

Just because the original scope of copyright was different 300 years ago doesn't make it necessarily better. That's poor logic. But let's assume art (in the sense of paintings, music, etc.) doesn't qualify as "useful shit". By definition then, "useful" things are more useful to society than things that are not-useful. In that case, how does it make any sense at all to put MORE copyright protection on the "useful" stuff? You've made the argument repeatedly that restrictive copyright laws are bad for society (etc) by stifling innovation and derivative works, yet you also seem to think that only "useful" stuff deserves copyright... so essentially, you're saying that the things that could benefit society the most should be most restricted.

Yes, for practical reasons. The original intent of copyright law was very limited in nature, and it went a little something like this:

A scientist invents something (let's say, a centrifuge). That centrifuge could be used for a variety of applications, one of which is medicine. Now, thanks to copyright, only that scientist can make centrifuges, which is good because imagine if a bunch of poorly made knock-off centrifuges were released to hospitals by 3rd parties? People could die! So, for a period long enough for the scientist to work out the kinks, and for a period long enough for the rest of the world to learn how to build centrifuges properly, the scientist is the only one allowed to make them. After the period, free reign! Hospitals know how to spot poor centrifuges, and the rest of the world understands how to improve on the original centrifuge.

That was the original intent of the law in terms of the "sciences and useful arts", if you'd do a little research and read some history.

That is stupid. If anything, if art really doesn't matter or isn't useful to society, then society shouldn't care if a creator has 50, 100, or even 500 years of copyright protection. It's of no value to society, so there is (by definition) no harm in allowing the creator total control.

It has no useful value to society; I never claim it had no value at all, just that the value is abstract, and thus impossible to quantify in pure numbers the way cars or centrifuges can be. Thus, it's not worth it to society to protect the creator's exclusive rights in the way that it's worth it to protect the inventors. You see it as "if it doesn't matter, protect it indefinitely". I see it as "if it doesn't matter, why spend valuable time and resources protecting it at all?"

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Just to be 110% clear, we're all saying that he simply should NOT have that right, as an artist? That NONE of us should have that right?

If you look at what people usually get up in arms about, the general sentiment seems to be that you should not have any right at all if you become rich/successful.

Well, personally, I would be ok with saying that no one should have that right after a preset, non-renewable time period. Look, I'm all for artists thinking they're the shit, but the whole concept of the public domain is essentially "all of us is better than one of us". Yes, Led Zepplin made some awesome music. They are not gods. Someone can make their music better.

If that makes them butthurt, then fuck them.

Jay Maisel, I'm sure, is a great photographer. As far as I'm concerned, the Kind of Bloop album cover is a better picture. Some people will agree, some people won't. That's cool. But part of what's causing such a problem here is the cognitive dissonance between the competing thoughts of "well, artists get exclusive rights" and "well, we're part of a free society where people can make things" with a dash of "well, no idea is really an original one / everything that is thought has been thought before". You can't have it both ways, of course, and as the YouTube generation of re-tweeters, re-bloggers, re-posters, and yes, remixers grows up, this kind of dissonance will continue because, at it's base level, you can't say that artists have exclusive rights in the same breath that you use to claim the importance of public domain.

At some point, artist's "rights" end and public domain begins. Besides, no one ever definitively proved that artists deserve the exclusive rights they now enjoy. Copyright, shockingly enough, didn't even affect them until recent history; US law originally only applied to the "sciences and useful arts", but in 1700's speak, "useful arts" meant "artisan crafts", such as metalworking or weaving. You know, making useful shit.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

In the absence of Fair Use, any criticism, satire, parody, or educational utilization of ANY copyrighted material would be de facto infringement. Modern discourse would be severely crippled. If that's the type of clarity you want, you're welcome to it; sounds pretty crap to me. Yay for thinking things through to their logical outcome? Since you proposed no viable alternative, that's the implication.

Damn straight, that's the implication. What are we, socialists? Come up with your own ideas, commie.

What you seem to be missing it how far-reaching all of this is. We're already part of a permission culture; the DMCA and related modern international copyright laws have ensured that. Fair Use is so poorly worded that it's no better than the common law equivalent we used before '76. With the exception of "obvious" Fair Use, like parody or criticism (a la The Daily Show), few people actually know what Fair Use is; this situation is a perfect example, as is Lessig's example of a Clint Eastwood documentary (read: Free Culture, linked above), and countless others.

In addition, copyright law is getting tighter and tighter as the digital era goes on. The logical result, as you already said, is a permission culture. Political commentary, news commentary, and comedic parody are so ingrained in our culture that no law would be able to take them away; it's like worrying that one day Congress is going to pass a bill that makes us a dictatorship: if you're legitimately worried about that, we have larger problems. Fair Use, however, will be weakened so much that those are the only protected forms of Fair Use; digital copyright and new international copyright is ensuring that (for instance, the new rules to make lip-synching on YouTube illegal).

We already have a problem; the question is whether you want to allow it to get worse, or fix it now.

It's protective without going to court.

Tell that to the above Clint Eastwood documentary people.

It's protecting us right now.

Which, by Liontamer's own admission a few threads ago, was shaky, at best. Fair Use, by NO means, is guaranteed protection for OCR.

Can you feel the warm tingle in your pants? That's Fair Use.

No, that's pornography and trolling. ^_-

It protects every single Wikipedia article you see with an image that falls under Fair Use. It's not really that a court case is required for it to be protective - we enjoy its protections every day, we take it for granted - it's just in order for it to be protective AGAINST LAWSUITS, yes, a court case is required. That's how the judicial system works.

Then, we have two different definitions of "protective". Fair Use isn't "protective" out-of-court unless it stops the lawsuit from happening at all, and there are countless examples of transformative fan-projects of various kinds being shut down all over the internet because Fair Use wasn't clear enough to tell the people getting sued before they even started that they would be breaking the law (or the people bringing suit that the suit would be frivolous). I'm concerned with reducing frivolous lawsuits, which clog the legal system, shift our focus away from legit cases that judges SHOULD be presiding over, and raise general legal costs (see: medical malpractice suits). If the law isn't clear enough to prevent going to court in the first place, it needs to be re-written; this, of course, precludes morons who take people to court anyway just because.

Your example about speeding tickets is actually factually incorrect, depending on the nature of the speeding it's either an infraction, in which case you don't need to go to court, or a violation, in which case you do.

If the speed limit is 60, either I'm going <=60 mph, in which case I'm ok, or I'm going >60 mph, in which case I'm speeding. What the officer decides to do with me (infract, warn, whatever) is his buisness; if I have an on-board computer built into my car that logs my speed by time / geo-position, I can prove to the officer whether or not I'm speeding. If he decides to ticket me and I have to go to court anyway, that's his fault, not the law's.

I think you're also way off the mark in that most copyright lawsuits are CIVIL matters, NOT criminal, and thus either take place in civil hearings or are settled, as in this case. It's not "The People vs. Dude Who Copied Kind of Blue Cover", it's between private parties, and so the type of elegant, speeding ticket simplicity you're so wanting & craving for is more or less a pipe dream.

I already gave you an example (although it posted after you, so it's ok that you missed it): "The copyright holder has exclusive rights over his work, including all transformative or derivative works, for 14 years, a non-renewable time period. After original copyright expires, the work is automatically placed in the public domain, and the original copyright holder holds no rights to the work." Clear. Ok, you want to add in parody / political criticism / new as exceptions? That's fairly easy to word, too: "Exceptions to the above law include works of comedic parody, non-opinion based news reporting, and commentary of copyrighted political works." Bam.

Listen.... do some reading. You're not awful at reasoning, but... read the above paragraph I just wrote like, five times over. Let it sink in. Marinate in its corrections. Do some basic Googling and what not. Due diligence.

Do you know how many links / threads / articles I've posted in copyright threads on OCR? No one reads a damn thing I link to. I assure you, I'm not the one who doesn't do his due diligence. When someone links to something, I read it; I won't, however, do someone else's research for him. If you want to make an argument, make it; don't expect me to do your research and back up your own claims for you, though. If you have something you want me to read, link to it and I'll respond.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

OCR provides interpretive works, while giving full credit to the original composers and game creators, distributed for free. So, in fact, it is free advertising and creative arrangements available for no cost to anyone anywhere except the bandwidth, which we pay for via donations.

That's a very rosy description, to be sure. Much less rosy than "OCRemix is a site that allows anyone to create unauthorized derivative works that are then distributed online freely; this increases the worth of the OCR brand, allowing them to sell merchandise like T-shirts and hoodies. In addition to this, artists featured on the site increase their rapport and portfolio size with these songs, with some OCR featured artists actually making money from live shows. Finally, these free remixes take market share from legally released OSTs by creating higher quality or more interpretive versions of existing material without permission and without compensation."

Sounds less nice when put in corporate-speak, doesn't it? And, what's crazy is this corporate-speak version is still technically correct, as technically correct as your version, to be sure.

Despite Fair Use's ambiguity, it needs to be as such because there could be billions of cases that are different and not one universal Fair Use clause could cover them. Fifty couldn't. A thousand couldn't.

See, you see that as a positive. It's a very large negative as far as the law is concerned, however. Law is not perfect, and will never reach the point where all innocent men tried in court go free and all guilty men go to jail, but that's the goal. A good law will allow innocent people to go unpunished and guilty people to get fairly punished. Fair Use does not do that; Fair Use has a horrible courtroom track record because it's so indiscreet. Read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture and you'll see many more instances of Fair Use's "nuance" screwing over well-intentioned people just trying to create. Fair Use kills more than it allows, by a long shot.

A much more clear and legally workable version would be something like "The copyright holder has exclusive rights over his work, including all transformative or derivative works, for 14 years, a non-renewable time period. After original copyright expires, the work is automatically placed in the public domain, and the original copyright holder holds no rights to the work." That's pretty damn clear, and it gives the original holder time to make his money, while giving the public clear rules for what they can and can't do.

Interestingly enough, this is how copyright law was originally designed; Fair Use, as a doctrine, wasn't placed into US copyright law until 1976, and copyright worked just fine until then. Although, I'd argue that modern copyright law should reduce the term of copyright to 5-7 years, since it's so much easier to make money now (with digital sales) and since art and technology move so much faster now. Hell, a case could be made for 3-5 years.

Case in point: the photographer was most likely in his right to sue for use. It sucks, and the guy is definitely a dick who lives in a 72-room mansion, but it was in his legal right most-likely. He'd need a very solid case for not licensing the art if he licensed all the music. If he inquired and the guy said he wouldn't license, it was really stupid to go ahead and do it anyway. It is possible that it just slipped his mind, but this is what happens when you don't cover every angle airtight. He was just unlucky enough to get a huge douchebag who owned the rights.

The same way the Westboro Baptist Church shows the worst side of Free Speech, so to does this show the worst abuse of defending copyright against allegations of Fair Use, and without the satisfaction of a trial. Sucks, and yes as I've said, Maisel is a total asshat, but yeah.

The difference here is tha Westboro shows the seedy underbelly of Free Speech; Free Speech is definitely not characterized by WBC; never has been, never will be. WBC is an exception, not a rule, and that vast majority of people do not act or speak like WBC.

Kind of Bloop's situation is very indicative of how the vast majority of Fair Use claims end up. Party A tries to make legitimate art, Party B sues, Party A thinks the art is legally protected, but either stops or settles anyway because it's not worth the risk. This is the rule, not the exception, to Fair Use proceedings. That's. A. Problem.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Unless I missed something, you just completely agreed with me. Which is cool cause no one else is particularly interested in this thread.

Yeah, you missed something. We agreed that Fair Use is a nice concept, but you said it's a necessary concept, and that it's nuance is part of it's strength. I explained that it's not necessary at all, that in fact it makes copyright law as a whole worse, and that it's nuance is what causes all of it's problems.

So, not really agreeing with you. Don't know where you got that from.

I'm fairly sure there are worse laws, and since OCR couldn't really exist without Fair Use, I'm going to say that the grayness of its wording is outweighed, and then some, by its value to our culture. But of course, I suppose I'm biased.

To be fair, you don't know if OCR could exist because of fair use or not, because it's so badly worded that no one can figure it out. OCR assumes that Fair Use is on it's side because, like you said, you're biased (you and the members of OCR want it to be so)... but in all of the copyright threads I've ever posted in, every time OCR's relation to Fair Use has come up (and it's been many times), not a single person could point out the way in which Fair Use directly protects OCR any better than how this one guy claimed Fair Use protected his album cover. Again, it's because Fair Use is non-explicit in its crafting; what does it mean for a mix to be "substantially" transformative? What is the market effect of your free mixes relative to actual OSTs?

What's weird is, Andy said he thought he had a "very strong" case for Fair Use, but in almost the same breath, criticized it for not being protective and clear enough. In order for it to be protective, you need to go to court, but I'm confused how it could simultaneously be problematically unclear and yet clear enough to suggest to him that he had a very strong case, in this instance.

Let's look at Fair Use's clearness as a spectrum:

|---------------|---------------|

Clear Not Clear

Fair Use, in theory, could protect this guy no matter where on the spectrum it lands in relation to clarity; it would depend on the wording of the law. What clarity actually determines is not whether or not the law actually protects you as an artist in any instance (that is a binary value, 1 or 0, and not a spectrum; Fair Use can't kind of protect you, either you're protected or you're a criminal), but the relative risk associated with you going to court. Andy may be fairly certain he could defend himself, but depending on where the law falls on the clarity scale (and I'm arguing, it's pretty far to the right, so far that it's meaningless), could be unsure enough that going to court is too risky. The risk factor does not affect whether or not you are actually protected (again, that's binary and only peripherally related to clarity), just your chances of communicating that protection to a courtroom.

Long story short, if a law isn't so clear that you know you're protected by it even before going to court, then it's not clear enough... and Fair Use is not clear enough. This argument of, "In order for it to be protective, you need to go to court" is bullshit, and not how laws should work. I don't have to go to court to know if I'm speeding or not, and I shouldn't have to go to court to know whether I'm infringing on copyright or not.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

You're really, really abrasive... borderline trolling; you know that, right?

What? Me? I'd never troll.

I can tell that YOU think you're making excellent points... The bottom line is that I think it would have made a very weak fair use argument in court; we'll never know for sure, since he settled, which was probably wise financially, either way.

Well, we agree on that; unfortunately, it would take more money to prove that he was in the right than it would to just settle.

With regards to commentary, others were claiming it was protected as commentary, more or less because Andy said so, hence my statement. I obviously think Fair Use is vital, otherwise I wouldn't be chiming in to defend and explain it. I look at case law and I see courts honestly trying to uphold the spirit of the law, which is to allow for flexibility within the copyright system while not entirely subverting its purpose.

Well, that's probably the issue here; Fair Use, by it's very spirit and definition, is a subversion of copyright law. Fair Use is a mandate to say, in certain circumstances, that copyright law should be broken. It is ok, considering certain factors, to allow certain people to break copyright law in the pursuit of creating certain works. That's what Fair Use is. You can't have Fair Use without subverting copyright law in some way.

There is a necessary nuance - these aren't easy questions. Since you assume that the countless lawyers, judges, and politicians who have crafted & interpreted Fair Use over the years are all mental midgets next to the clarity of your own cognitive powers, I'll counter your softball with a hardball: Rewrite Fair Use to be completely deterministic and involve no subjectivity whatsoever.

You think you can troll me back? Fair Use, by it's very nature, cannot ever be deterministic and objective. I can't rewrite it to be what it cannot ever be. I asked you if you thought Fair Use was necessary for a reason (though you didn't play ball): to get a rational reason for why copyright law can't exist without it. The fact of the matter is that copyright law can't exist with it. Fair Use, as a law, is flat-out terrible. Copyright law could be written very simply, very discreetly: (excising all of the legal mumbo-jumbo) if you didn't come up with the idea, you don't get any of the profit. There is a simple test for copyright claims: prove you came up with the idea. As far as our current system goes, that simply means "show the judge your copyright registration". Fair Use is nowhere near that discreet; it has so much "nuance" that it becomes meaningless; literally anything, given the proper context, could potentially be Fair Use, which is why it's so impossible to actually defend in court: because defending a Fair Use claim requires proving a bunch of subjective stuff that may or may not be true... or may or may not even exist in the physical world! You can't, as of now, register "intent" with the government.

Fair Use undermines copyright law, plain and simple. It makes copyright law harder to enforce, and it wastes people's time and money by giving non-copyright holders hope when, over here in reality, copyright holders (especially ones with tons of money) usually just force a settlement out of court, just like with this case, due to high legal fees and uncertainty about who is really justified.

Fair Use is a great idea. The English language is not capable of describing it clearly enough to allow it to be wholly compatible with current law. And, honestly, it's just a burden to the system, a burden that copyright law doesn't NEED to have; copyright law can exist without Fair Use.

Now, of course, without Fair Use, you'd have a complete permission culture, in which creativity was the sole jurisdiction of those fast enough and with enough money to utilize the legal system it their advantage... but oh well. That's modern law for you. ^_-

While you're at it, do the same with our submission standards.

No need; your submission standards aim to judge artworks, something inherently subjective. Until the day "art" has an objective meaning, your submission standards will have to remain subjective and arbitrary in nature. So, I guess... have fun redefining "art" in an objective manner? Not like it matters.

I'll see you in... never.

Wow, someone's salty. On an unrelated note, posting here is fun. I love copyright threads; they are inevitable and always full of lulz.

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

This is one of those instances where I don't even know why I'm responding... but others might be interested, I suppose. That's entirely NOT what I was saying, I don't know why you put it in quotes, it has nothing to do with anything, and "trust" doesn't factor in. Courts ultimately decide what is or isn't fair use, and they do it based on evidence, which may include testimony, which would be under oath. Innocence is always presumed. The criteria for fair use are evaluated and weighed. There's no magic formula. Precedents help establish interpretation, including the nature of what constitutes commentary. Generally speaking, commentary is discourse - work ABOUT another work - and this isn't really that.

I put it in quotes because it was a paraphrased summation of your argument; the quotes helped separate it from the rest of the sentence for easy reading. And, based off of your post, it's an accurate summation, because one of the first things you said was, again "Under the above linked reasoning, I can take any album, ever, and if I license the music, I can pixelate the album art without any sort of copyright concerns, and call it commentary, and say it's protected under fair use. Does that sound right to you?". You're assuming that the person using fair use in such a manner is doing it disingenuously... also known as lying. You're basically saying that anyone who uses the "commentary" defense could be lying... not necessarily that they are, but they could be, and that it poses a problem to the integrity of the law.

The problem with that is that everyone could always be lying. It also plays into another problem with fair use defenses: ease of proving intent. How do you prove that your work is commentary or not? By testifying? The law doesn't state that fair use is intended only for "good" commentary, so if I roll up into court with a commentary defense and the commentary I'm trying to make is really bad, I could still get slapped down, even though I am making a commentary (just a bad one). See how subjective this is? Murder charges are not subjective: did you or did you not kill a man? Fair use, especially commentary, is very subjective, and it makes it a bad law.

So, you bringing up that a person could potentially get away with a commentary defense by, essentially, lying and claiming commentary where there is none, plays directly to how much importance you yourself put on testimony in fair use trials (since, if testimony is only a small part and physical evidence is worth more weight, one could not, as you posit, roll up into court with a shoddy commentary defense and win).

Note that if you find yourself using the word "bullshit" too often, consult a thesaurus or reassess your reasoning.

Repetition is an element of writing. It was done on purpose.

A law that requires precedent and evaluation isn't necessarily broken; a more rote alternative would probably be far more restrictive by default, so we should all *probably* be very glad fair use is worded as such, when it comes right down to it. As mentioned, a long history of case law helps expound on the different meanings of the criteria, and while the track record isn't always 100% transparent, I think you'll find most cases involve far more nuance, and evidence, then your "he-said, she-said" scenario.

We should all be thankful? Don't make me laugh! A well-written, well worded law could protect just enough copyright to be fair and be discreet enough that any individual citizen with a little common sense could figure out whether the law applied or not. This is a shoddy law. If you accuse me of murder, we both know exactly what needs to be proven in order to convict me: that I held the murder weapon and used it to kill the victim. What does it mean to "perform commentary"? What does it mean to be "transformative"? What is a "substantial" amount? All of these terms are so loosely defined that even lawyers don't know before a trial what is or is not fair use; that's why so many cases are settled out of court: because people can't figure out for the life of them if they even need to be in court in the first place!

Well, there you go. Stop studying politics and start studying law instead.

No thanks; I think I'll just stick to writing and philosophy. I like having a soul.

Flip this on its head for a second.... if EA took artwork from some guy's deviantart profile, did a pixelated version that was easily identifiable as the same image, used it as the cover for Call of Duty 9000, and made a gazillion bucks, odds are the gaming community would be up in arms. And rightfully so. The inequity here is not the law itself, but rather the financial ability to fund a defense, or offense. That particular inequity extends to plenty of other legal situations, and doesn't speak to flaws of fair use so much as the realities of our legal system and/or capitalism.

Depends. Is Activision making a commentary using the boxart? How transformative was it? What was the intended message? What was the original copyrighted work?

You're implying that you can't make commentary using boxart; that's kind of presumptuous, don't you think? So, no, the gaming community would NOT be "rightfully" up in arms if Activision did that. And, no, the problem here isn't JUST that those with money can outfund those without, because if the law was a good one, there'd be no contention about this issue; either he'd be wrong, and know that he fucked up in using someone else's copyrighted work (in which case defending yourself in court is lying and misrepresenting the truth in the hopes that the jury sees it your way), or he'd be right and the original photographer's lawyers wouldn't have ever sued him anyway because it'd be clear that they'd lose in court.

If Fair Use law was written well, we wouldn't have these issues. DJP, here's an easy, softball question for you: do you think Fair Use is a necessary component of copyright law?

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Under the above linked reasoning, I can take any album, ever, and if I license the music, I can pixelate the album art without any sort of copyright concerns, and call it commentary, and say it's protected under fair use. Does that sound right to you?

What's so wrong with that? Are you worried about people *gasp* lying about their intentions and claiming fair use? "Commentary" is, kind of by definition, a meaningless term in this instance, anyway, since the only person who can make a claim to whether something is a commentary or not is the person who's also getting sued for copyright infringement.

If I take something, say a photo, and I want to comment on how funny I think this one part of the photo is (say, the nose of the guy in the picture) so I digitally manipulate the picture to give the guy an even bigger nose, then take that picture and use it in a comedy routine, and sell it as merch after the show, is that infringement or protected action? I'm probably protected under fair use because most people consider comedy to be commentary.

What if I just sold the picture? My intention is the same: to highlight this one dude's comically large nose using a well-known picture. Or, what if it was just a photoshop job I did to practice using photoshop, a picture that hapened to sell on my deviantart page.

Who is going to say what my intention is? Commentary or not, the only person who can make a claim is me, since I'm the guy doing the photo manipulation. What DJP is basically saying is "you can't trust the guy in the defendant's chair", which is:

A ) bullshit, if the guy is under oath.

B ) bullshit, since it assume guilt before innocence.

If we have a law, and that law is so broken that we can't even tell when it applies and when it doesn't without bringing up 4th grade "he said, she said" bullshit or without one lawyer having to blurt out "Objection, obviously the defendant is lying, your honor", then the law is broken and needs to be scrapped or re-written.

With the law we have now, either we trust that everyone who claims commentary is telling the truth (and thus everything claimed as commentary is automatically fair use), or assume that no one is telling the truth (and all commentary claims are automatically deemed not fair use). Obviously, I'm cool with allowing people to just claim commentary, because if we are stupid enough to have such an indiscreet law on our books, we deserve to see it abused.

...the more and more I study politics, the more and more I'm convinced that all politicians who have pens capable of writing laws should be strapped to a desk and forced to read Sirlin's "Playing to Win".

[Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio sued for 8-bit rendition of "Kind of Blue" photo]

Hmm... copyright law is allowing people to do stupid things in court to good people just trying to make art?

I would have never guessed.

When are people going to wake up and realize that this kind of legal stupidity isn't going to go away without serious and comprehensive reform that looks to the future, instead of to the past?

inb4shutupjack

[Bethesda hacked, LulzSec claims responsibility]

According to CNN, they're attempting to obtain basically anything that is classified, not necessarily just e-mails (although e-mails will probably be the most plentiful source of secret info).

[Bethesda hacked, LulzSec claims responsibility]

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet: CNNMoney article

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hacking groups Lulz Security and Anonymous have teamed up to target governments around the globe in what they're calling "Operation Anti-Security."

LulzSec unveiled its new partnership in a blog post declaring "immediate and unremitting war." The revolution will be tweeted: #AntiSec lit up Monday with comments about the campaign.

"Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including e-mail spools and documentation," LulzSec declared in its post. "Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments."

Pop some popcorn, guys. Things are about to get more interesting.

[New acoustic duet cover of Super Mario World Castle by SuperGuitarBros on YouTube!!!]

Huzzah! Oh, man, I can't wait. You really have no idea how stoked I am upon reading that; the obvious talent / skill that you guys have mixed with a more expressive arrangement...

Oh, man. Why must I be such an impatient person...