JSngry

No fuckin' shit.

Yours truly was the enigmatic "Crockpot", the minstral minister from the Improvisation Nation who went from town to town armed with nothing but a tenor, a crockpot, and ingredients.

No... To fine-tune a bit... Of course "Friends" isn't free, not to people who broadcast it to the public. They gotsta pay the band, doncha' know. And they gotsta try and recoupe de ville. Nevertheless... Cutting from a free site and pasting it in someplace like this, a forum whose purpose is entirely social/recreational/whatever would be like videotaping an episode of "Friends", inviting some friends over to watch it, and skipping the commercials. Anybody's got a problem with that needs some Ex-Lax for the mind. Now, cutting and pasting from one for-profit (or even not-for-profit "sponsored") site to another, that's a different animal altogether (and deus' exposition of the real issues involved has opened my eyes a bit). I'd give some slack to doing it with a fully-credited (including link) excerpt, but beyond that, the least you could do, I'd think, would be to attempt to obtain the express written consent of Major League Baseball. Wasn't the original post specifically about the ethics of inviting friends over to watch the videotape with the skipped commercials? In that specific context, I'd think that providing a link and full accreditation would be more than sufficient. If the primary intent of the original content was to "serve" the public, then the public is being served. If the primary intent is to earn a return, treat it as such. Ban videotapes and VCRs, or Tivo, or whatevr it is the kids are doing thee days. Now, when this board gets all plastered up with ads inviting me to track down people I went to high school with (a dangerous proposition for all concerned in my case...) and such, then I'll reconsider. As it stands now, beer's in the fridge. Help yourself.

It all seems a bit anal to me, like buying a car and expecting it to handle like a bicycle.

Agreed! Has anyone tried e-mailing the guy to see if it's okay to post it here? No, but here it is anyway: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html (CLICK ON THIS LINK!!!!) An attempt to answer common myths about copyright seen on the net and cover issues related to copyright and USENET/Internet publication. - by Brad Templeton Note that this is an essay about copyright myths. It assumes you know at least what copyright is -- basically the legal exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work. If you didn't know that, check out my own brief introduction to copyright for more information. Feel free to link to this document, no need to ask me. Really, NO need to ask. 1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted." This was true in the past, but today almost all major nations follow the Berne copyright convention. For example, in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not. The default you should assume for other people's works is that they are copyrighted and may not be copied unless you know otherwise. There are some old works that lost protection without notice, but frankly you should not risk it unless you know for sure. It is true that a notice strengthens the protection, by warning people, and by allowing one to get more and different damages, but it is not necessary. If it looks copyrighted, you should assume it is. This applies to pictures, too. You may not scan pictures from magazines and post them to the net, and if you come upon something unknown, you shouldn't post that either. The correct form for a notice is: "Copyright [dates] by [author/owner]" You can use C in a circle © instead of "Copyright" but "©" has never been given legal force. The phrase "All Rights Reserved" used to be required in some nations but is now not legally needed most places. In some countries it may help preserve some of the "moral rights." 2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation." False. Whether you charge can affect the damages awarded in court, but that's main difference under the law. It's still a violation if you give it away -- and there can still be serious damages if you hurt the commercial value of the property. There is an exception for personal copying of music, which is not a violation, though courts seem to have said that doesn't include widescale anonymous personal copying as Napster. If the work has no commercial value, the violation is mostly technical and is unlikely to result in legal action. Fair use determinations (see below) do sometimes depend on the involvement of money. 3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain." False. Nothing modern is in the public domain anymore unless the owner explicitly puts it in the public domain(*). Explicitly, as in you have a note from the author/owner saying, "I grant this to the public domain." Those exact words or words very much like them. Some argue that posting to Usenet implicitly grants permission to everybody to copy the posting within fairly wide bounds, and others feel that Usenet is an automatic store and forward network where all the thousands of copies made are done at the command (rather than the consent) of the poster. This is a matter of some debate, but even if the former is true (and in this writer's opinion we should all pray it isn't true) it simply would suggest posters are implicitly granting permissions "for the sort of copying one might expect when one posts to Usenet" and in no case is this a placement of material into the public domain. It is important to remember that when it comes to the law, computers never make copies, only human beings make copies. Computers are given commands, not permission. Only people can be given permission. Furthermore it is very difficult for an implicit licence to supersede an explicitly stated licence that the copier was aware of. Note that all this assumes the poster had the right to post the item in the first place. If the poster didn't, then all the copies are pirated, and no implied licence or theoretical reduction of the copyright can take place. (*) Copyrights can expire after a long time, putting something into the public domain, and there are some fine points on this issue regarding older copyright law versions. However, none of this applies to an original article posted to USENET. Note that granting something to the public domain is a complete abandonment of all rights. You can't make something "PD for non-commercial use." If your work is PD, other people can even modify one byte and put their name on it. 4) "My posting was just fair use!" See other notes on fair use for a detailed answer, but bear the following in mind: The "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. That's important so that copyright law doesn't block your freedom to express your own works -- only the ability to express other people's. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to criticise the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to register at the New York Times web site? The first is probably fair use, the others probably aren't. Fair use is usually a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use more of the work than is necessary to make the commentary.) It should not harm the commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is a problem.) Note that most inclusion of text in Usenet followups is for commentary and reply, and it doesn't damage the commercial value of the original posting (if it has any) and as such it is fair use. Fair use isn't an exact doctrine, either. The court decides if the right to comment overrides the copyright on an individual basis in each case. There have been cases that go beyond the bounds of what I say above, but in general they don't apply to the typical net misclaim of fair use. The "fair use" concept varies from country to country, and has different names (such as "fair dealing" in Canada) and other limitations outside the USA. Facts and ideas can't be copyrighted, but their expression and structure can. You can always write the facts in your own words. See the DMCA alert for recent changes in the law. 5) "If you don't defend your copyright you lose it." -- "Somebody has that name copyrighted!" False. Copyright is effectively never lost these days, unless explicitly given away. You also can't "copyright a name" or anything short like that, such as almost all titles. You may be thinking of trade marks, which apply to names, and can be weakened or lost if not defended. You generally trademark terms by using them to refer to your brand of a generic type of product or service. Like an "Apple" computer. Apple Computer "owns" that word applied to computers, even though it is also an ordinary word. Apple Records owns it when applied to music. Neither owns the word on its own, only in context, and owning a mark doesn't mean complete control -- see a more detailed treatise on this law for details. You can't use somebody else's trademark in a way that would steal the value of the mark, or in a way that might make people confuse you with the real owner of the mark, or which might allow you to profit from the mark's good name. For example, if I were giving advice on music videos, I would be very wary of trying to label my works with a name like "mtv." :-) You can use marks to critcise or parody the holder, as long as it's clear you aren't the holder. 6) "If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to me." False. U.S. Copyright law is quite explicit that the making of what are called "derivative works" -- works based or derived from another copyrighted work -- is the exclusive province of the owner of the original work. This is true even though the making of these new works is a highly creative process. If you write a story using settings or characters from somebody else's work, you need that author's permission. Yes, that means almost all "fan fiction" is arguably a copyright violation. If you want to write a story about Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock, you need Paramount's permission, plain and simple. Now, as it turns out, many, but not all holders of popular copyrights turn a blind eye to "fan fiction" or even subtly encourage it because it helps them. Make no mistake, however, that it is entirely up to them whether to do that. There is a major exception -- criticism and parody. The fair use provision says that if you want to make fun of something like Star Trek, you don't need their permission to include Mr. Spock. This is not a loophole; you can't just take a non-parody and claim it is one on a technicality. The way "fair use" works is you get sued for copyright infringement, and you admit you did copy, but that your copying was a fair use. A subjective judgment on, among other things, your goals, is then made. However, it's also worth noting that a court has never ruled on this issue, because fan fiction cases always get settled quickly when the defendant is a fan of limited means sued by a powerful publishing company. Some argue that completely non-commercial fan fiction might be declared a fair use if courts get to decide. You can read more 7) "They can't get me, defendants in court have powerful rights!" Copyright law is mostly civil law. If you violate copyright you would usually get sued, not be charged with a crime. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a principle of criminal law, as is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." Sorry, but in copyright suits, these don't apply the same way or at all. It's mostly which side and set of evidence the judge or jury accepts or believes more, though the rules vary based on the type of infringement. In civil cases you can even be made to testify against your own interests. 8) "Oh, so copyright violation isn't a crime or anything?" Actually, recently in the USA commercial copyright violation involving more than 10 copies and value over $2500 was made a felony. So watch out. (At least you get the protections of criminal law.) On the other hand, don't think you're going to get people thrown in jail for posting your E-mail. The courts have much better things to do. This is a fairly new, untested statute. In one case an operator of a pirate BBS that didn't charge was acquited because he didn't charge, but congress amended the law to cover that. 9) "It doesn't hurt anybody -- in fact it's free advertising." It's up to the owner to decide if they want the free ads or not. If they want them, they will be sure to contact you. Don't rationalize whether it hurts the owner or not, ask them. Usually that's not too hard to do. Time past, ClariNet published the very funny Dave Barry column to a large and appreciative Usenet audience for a fee, but some person didn't ask, and forwarded it to a mailing list, got caught, and the newspaper chain that employs Dave Barry pulled the column from the net, pissing off everybody who enjoyed it. Even if you can't think of how the author or owner gets hurt, think about the fact that piracy on the net hurts everybody who wants a chance to use this wonderful new technology to do more than read other people's flamewars. 10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it." To have a copy is not to have the copyright. All the E-mail you write is copyrighted. However, E-mail is not, unless previously agreed, secret. So you can certainly report on what E-mail you are sent, and reveal what it says. You can even quote parts of it to demonstrate. Frankly, somebody who sues over an ordinary message would almost surely get no damages, because the message has no commercial value, but if you want to stay strictly in the law, you should ask first. On the other hand, don't go nuts if somebody posts E-mail you sent them. If it was an ordinary non-secret personal letter of minimal commercial value with no copyright notice (like 99.9% of all E-mail), you probably won't get any damages if you sue them. Note as well that, the law aside, keeping private correspondence private is a courtesy one should usually honour. 11)"So I can't ever reproduce anything?" Myth #11 (I didn't want to change the now-famous title of this article) is actually one sometimes generated in response to this list of 10 myths. No, copyright isn't an iron-clad lock on what can be published. Indeed, by many arguments, by providing reward to authors, it encourages them to not just allow, but fund the publication and distribution of works so that they reach far more people than they would if they were free or unprotected -- and unpromoted. However, it must be remembered that copyright has two main purposes, namely the protection of the author's right to obtain commercial benefit from valuable work, and more recently the protection of the author's general right to control how a work is used. While copyright law makes it technically illegal to reproduce almost any new creative work (other than under fair use) without permission, if the work is unregistered and has no real commercial value, it gets very little protection. The author in this case can sue for an injunction against the publication, actual damages from a violation, and possibly court costs. Actual damages means actual money potentially lost by the author due to publication, plus any money gained by the defendant. But if a work has no commercial value, such as a typical E-mail message or conversational USENET posting, the actual damages will be zero. Only the most vindictive (and rich) author would sue when no damages are possible, and the courts don't look kindly on vindictive plaintiffs, unless the defendants are even more vindictive. The author's right to control what is done with a work, however, has some validity, even if it has no commercial value. If you feel you need to violate a copyright "because you can get away with it because the work has no value" you should ask yourself why you're doing it. In general, respecting the rights of creators to control their creations is a principle many advocate adhering to. In addition, while more often than not people claim a "fair use" copying incorrectly, fair use is a valid concept necessary to allow the criticism of copyrighted works and their creators through examples. But please read more about it before you do it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Summary These days, almost all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no copyright notice is required. Copyright is still violated whether you charged money or not, only damages are affected by that. Postings to the net are not granted to the public domain, and don't grant you any permission to do further copying except perhaps the sort of copying the poster might have expected in the ordinary flow of the net. Fair use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable social purposes. Ask yourself why you are republishing what you are posting and why you couldn't have just rewritten it in your own words. Copyright is not lost because you don't defend it; that's a concept from trademark law. The ownership of names is also from trademark law, so don't say somebody has a name copyrighted. Fan fiction and other work derived from copyrighted works is a copyright violation. Copyright law is mostly civil law where the special rights of criminal defendants you hear so much about don't apply. Watch out, however, as new laws are moving copyright violation into the criminal realm. Don't rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder; often it's not that hard to ask permission. Posting E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing facts from E-mail you got isn't, and for almost all typical E-mail, nobody could wring any damages from you for posting it. The law doesn't do much to protect works with no commercial value. DMCA Alert! Copyright law was recently amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which changed net copyright in many ways. In particular, it put all sorts of legal strength behind copy-protection systems, making programs illegal and reducing the reality of fair use rights. The DMCA also changed the liability outlook for ISPs in major ways, many of them quite troublesome. Linking Might it be a violation just to link to a web page? That's not a myth, it's undecided, but I have written some discussion of linking rights issues. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Permission is granted to freely print, unmodified, up to 100 copies of the most up to date version of this document from http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html, or to copy it in off-the-net electronic form. On the net/WWW, however, you must link here rather than put up your own page. If you had not seen a notice like this on the document, you would have to assume you did not have permission to copy it. This document is still protected by you-know-what even though it has no copyright notice. Please don't send mail asking me if you can link here -- you can do so, without asking or telling me. The only people I prefer not link here are those who mail me asking for permission to link. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It should be noted that the author, as publisher of an electronic newspaper on the net, makes his living by publishing copyrighted material in electronic form and has the associated biases. However, DO NOT E-MAIL HIM FOR LEGAL ADVICE; for that use other resources or consult a lawyer. By the way, did I mention: do not e-mail me for legal advice? Also note that while many of these principles are universal in Berne copyright signatory nations, some are derived from U.S. law, and in some cases Canadian law. This document is provided to clear up some common misconceptions about intellectual property law that are often seen on the net. It is not intended to be a complete treatise on all the nuances of the subject. Terry Carroll's copyright FAQ is currently offline but here is an old one, covering other issues including compilation copyright and more intricacies of fair use is available in the same places you found this note. Also consider the U.S. Library of Congress copyright site. Australians try this. This site has Canadian Copyright Info. Another useful document is the EFF's IP law primer. I should also mention sorry, but please do not e-mail me your copyright questions.

No...

Thanks, Bill. found it just like you said. This is indeed a new one on me!

Interesting perspective, to be sure. Still, it makes one ask why information is provided fully and freely if it is not meant to be shared in a like manner. To expect otherwise seems terribly naive. After all, this is the Internet, and the "rules" were kinda already in place long before it became an "income opportunity". So it's up to the sites to bend to the users to get what they need, not the other way around. "Establishment" types don't like that way of thinking, they like to think "Hey, it's mine, and all I have to do is put it out and the money should automatically roll in." Hey, welcome to the present. You want to make hard cash without the ambiguity of context, make a hard copy. Print a newspaper or such. You come to the Internet, you gotta think differently. Ask the record companies about CDs (hard copies) vs downloads. They're clueless too, at least for now. But some of them show signs of figuring something out. New beast, new dynamic, new rules. Gots ta'be. On the whole, I remain unmoved by the argument against cutting and pasting from free site to free site, albeit less rigidly so. Partly because of the nature of the beast, and because there are other options. Why don't they do like Salon and some other sites and offer "teasers" or some other type of barebones content for free and then charge for full access? Or some kind of "premium" access, something that's worthwhile to enough people to bring in some money? Even better - require registration, compile some of that "aggregate date" I keep reading about, and make some money off of that? And make the cookie expire every month or so so the data can be recompiled, with a slightly different set of fields each time the user reregisters, so you always have some form of "fresh" data to sell. Nothing too invasive, mind you, just enough to have something good to offer. Even more better - put a different naked woman on the site every few hours and get numbers that you can't argue with! And CHARGE for it!!! Even MORE more better - get a hipper sales staff and come up with some savvy deals. If it's that much of a buyer's market, they'll be screwed no matter what, I'd think. But if an advertising presence on the site remains desireable (and those numbers would seem to suggest that it would), get some sales personnel who can play to that desireability, not be distracted from it. Show me a salesperson who can't find an angle somewhere to sell anything, and I'll show you a sales person who's too decent to be in sales! BTW, I'm a habitual click-througher. Can't help myself! But my firewall blocks out a helluva lot of ads and such. Oh well!

Definitely so. HEre's the details for INNER GLOW: http://www.jazzdisco.org/bluenote/jpn-cat/a/#gxf-3073 I don't have this album (don't even remember it. Could somebody post a cover scan?), but I do have WAITING, and, yeah, different personnel.

Well, it doesn't, necessarily. But maybe it does. I would think that it would be a goal of "justice" in this instance to accurately determine if it did or if it didn't. If it didn't, if the woman is just a nutcase, fine. Entirely possible. But if it did, then surely this qualifies as a hate crime and must be prosecuted as such. Why suspect this in the first place? Simply because of the racial difference? No. White folks and black folks can have "alteracations" that are not necessarily racially motivated. Because it's in Florida? No. There's wackos and wingnuts everywhere. Because of other racial tensions currently brewing in this area? Possibly - the video after this one dealt with some. But if this happened in a totally tension-free community, I'd say look into it anyway. Why? Simply because it's too bizarre an occurance to leave any possibility of motivation uninvestigated, and therefore unresolved. It's in the interest of the community as a whole for this aspect to be fully investigated and honestly revealed, because if the one boy dies and the possibility that this was indeed a racially motivated act is not even looked into... The truth hurts sometimes, but the suspicion of a lie hurts more.

No, it's not. Neither is cutting-and-pasting content from a paid site to a free one. Now, to compare apples to apples (almost), would it be "ok" if Fresh Sounds took ONE LABEL UNDER A GROOVE, totally repackaged it with full credits being given, and gave it away absolutely free to anybody who wanted one with no strings attached, just as BN did? Probably so, although BN might not see it that way. A total freebie either way, with full credit being given so the "promotional" intent is not compromised. But that ain't gonna happen, is it now...

That's why whenever I cut and paste, I always provide a link to the original site. But other than the hits issue, if it's a straight cut-and-paste for "informational" purposes only, and it's from a free site onto a free site, then I refuse to even begin to entertain the notion that "harm" of any sort is being done unless a better argument is made than is being made here. Money is exactly the issue afaic. We resent the Definitives, et. al. of the world because they cheat. What else can you call it? And there is a transfer of revenue involved. That's sort of thier raison d'etre. If somebody posts an AP story here that is offered for free at umpteen jillion free sites, where's the loss of revenue, especially if a link to the original source is provided and clicked on? There ain't none. Where's the gain of revenue? There ain't none. The only way for there to even concievably be a gain would be if people were primarily drawn to a site by "borrowed" content and then proceeded to purchase auxillary merchandise from the same site. Ain't happening here! The main objective of copyright law, I believe, is to protect the right to just compensation. The rest of it - proper crediting of authorship, control of context, etc., has relevance in other contexts, but is pretty much irrelevant as it pertains to posting widely and freely available news articles and such on a bulletin board. If anybody on a board is caught taking credit for themselves for somebody else's work, or knowingly MIScrediting a source, or knowingly quoting out of context, then, yeah, ream'em out good. But otherwise, bfd afaic.

Esther Phillips is TOUGH! Tastes in vocalists seem to be highly subjective, and Esther's voice might invoke extra-subjective responses simply because it's so distinctive. I'd not call her "nasal" as much as I would "gritty". She's no-nonsense, no matter the material, and she's in no way "fluffy", no matter the backing. There's no pretenxe (or illusion) of "prettiness" in anywhing she did, even the later, highly produced, Kudu/Mercury stuff. In the tracks, yes, but in her vocals, there was not even a trace, She's about as "real" as you can get. I dig her very much, but not everybody does. The live Atlantic stuff is pretty damn fine, imo. Knowing your tastes, Dan, if you're going to get into her at all, this would be the place to begin.

Who's losing money by cutting from a free site and pasting it here?

Watch the video - she's white. The kids aren't.

In absense of an actual piece of onion, will a Funyun do the trick? A Funyun always does the trick!

Would you try pumpkin pie with onions?

Buon Compleanno, Nonno Organissimo!

Ok, try this - next time you have a piece of pumpkin pie, find yourself just a little piece of onion and give it a shot. You might be pleasantly surprised. I know I was.