Re: Re: Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes 'Turning Copyright Law Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping Publishers Impose a 'License By Default'

From: John T. Mitchell <mitchell[_at_]interactionlaw.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:00:31 -0400


> If I could pay $1.00 to watch them at anytime of my choosing,
> timeshifting would IMHO NOT be considered a fair use.

But careful here, because in no country on earth (as far as I am aware) does the copyright owner get the exclusive right to watch. Some copyright owners would love to be able to sell a lawfully made copy, and get payments for private performances each time you watch it, but that would involve using technology to obtain control over non-exclusive rights -- rights the legislature have denied to copyright owners.

The US Register of Copyrights has just suggested that such wholesale seizure of nonexclusive rights might be considered "use-facilitating" if the work would not be offered at all without such controls, and if the access can be offered at a lower cost. That position is preposterous, but it is nevertheless her position.

John

On 10/3/05 4:45 PM, "Agenbroad, James (Civ,ARL/CISD)" <jagenbro[_at_]arl.army.mil> wrote:

> The other benefit to content creators of a simple and effective
> licensing scheme would be that there was less fair use. (!) Let me
> explain my point. There are many fair uses that are there because there
> is no very good way to do them without making unauthorized copies. I
> can use a VCR to "timeshift" programs BECAUSE there is no way to
> conveniently watch them at a time of my choosing without copying them.
  (ducks, runs
> away)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
> [mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Irvin Muchnick
> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 2:51 PM
> To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
> Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: [CNI-(C)] Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes
> 'Turning Copyright Law Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping
> Publishers Impose a 'License By Default'
>
> I disagree with my friend Mike Bradley in two respects.
>
> First, I *do* think legal and business-model interests must
> catch up to technology and public aspirations. The problem
> is that all the technology is being applied to the
> open-access side of the equation and none to the
> fair-compensation side. The publishers, distributors ...
> call them what you will; the corporations ... with the
> capital to develop all these marvelous tools could invest
> relative pennies in royalty systems roughly analogous to
> ASCAP. Instead, they choose to scorch the earth and
> dee-double-dare the less powerful players in the
> marketplace to challenge them. A royalty system wouldn't
> work perfectly and its precise contours would be open to
> debate, but you can't tell me that proposed comprehensive
> solutions wouldn't ameliorate litigation and put more
> resources into productive economic activity.
>
> Second, I personally place very little, if any, value on
> the rights of heirs to censor material they might find
> embarrassing. To the extent that copyright advocates take a
> hard line on restricting access rather than saying access
> should be opened up fairly and equitably, I believe they're
> mistaken.
>
> Irv Muchnick
>
>
>
> --- Mike Bradley <mbradley[_at_]techpubs.com> wrote:
>

>>> The technology is there. The public's
>>> expectations are there.  It's time for legal and
>> business
>>> model interests to wake up and catch up.
>> 
>> I would say, rather, it's time for technology and the
>> public to
>> realize that they have to act within the constraints of
>> the law, even
>> if they have the ability to do otherwise. Just because
>> you have the
>> ability to hack into the Bank of America's computer
>> doesn't mean you
>> should do it.
>> 
>> 
>>> As you said, google is driving sales. It is pretty
>>> hard for an author who has allowed their work to be
>>> published to complain about an activity that drives
>>> sales of that published work.
>> 
>> The books that are troublesome are not books that are
>> being peddled
>> currently by their publishers. Of course, the authors of
>> these books
>> are likely to want the books to be Googled. It is books
>> that have no
>> publisher--probably because they are out of print--that
>> are the
>> problem, in my view. And these books are likely to be the
>> majority of
>> any library's holdings.
>> 
>> The rights holders of these books may have their own
>> plans for
>> marketing the books, such as agreements with other online
>> outlets.
>> They may not want them visible at all, such as the heirs
>> of an avowed
>> racist whose published books the heirs now view as
>> embarassing. The
>> author of a book with lots of four-letter words may not
>> want the book
>> indexed because the index produces a complete list of
>> every word,
>> giving book-burning fundamentalists an easy target for
>> yet another
>> burning.
>> 
>> The point is, the rights holders and their licensees have
>> the
>> *exclusive* right to determine a book's copying.
>> Observance of that
>> fact has to be fundamental to any plan to copy books, but
>> authors
>> don't see that in Google's plans.
>> 
>> 
>> = Mike Bradley
>>   www.techpubs.com
>> ,
>> 
>> 
>> 

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Received on Wed Oct 05 2005 - 01:00:31 GMT

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