Copyright law in an online age

This proves to be an interesting discussion. But first some facts:

• iTunes is not a company but a service from the company Apple Computer inc.
  
• They use a proprietary form of Digital Right Management (DRM) which can officially only be played by iTunes or any iPod. I think it was called fairplay. Anyhow iTunes also offers DRM-Free music in their iTunes Plus section of the store.
  
• Your definition of hacker is wrong, but thanks to mass media everyone says hacker instead of cracker. So I cannot and will not blame you.
  (A Hacker is someone who codes, breaks protection and extends functionality just because they can. They often tell the owner this. A Cracker on the other hand is someone who does the same for personal gain.)
  

Questions:

• Which book? It proves somewhat interesting
  

And finally:


The problem being that you don't buy the mp3 of Frank Sinatra you buy the license to play the mp3. Same goes for software and allother digital content.

The reason for this is that the internet and digital products are fairly new. We've only used the internet since the 1980's and well lets say it was only around 1998 to 2000 that internet piracy became big. The laws in every country are based upon the old analog world, not the new digital world.
The maker of the I Love You virus who lived in the Philippines did not get convicted because their was no law against computer criminality.

If i make let's say vases and sell you one you have a physical object that is yours to keep. The law recognized it and made the transaction legal. I cannot sell the same vase again and again because i only had one. With digital media it works different. I've got one file, that i can sell as many times as i want. Thus hence the licencing; you don't buy the software you buy a key to use the software. The software never was yours to begin with.

Companies like Microsoft, Wallmart and Yahoo sold DRM encoded products. They decided to stop their service and the customer was screwed; DRM works with a licence you have to download (or is already integrated with your software) that checks wether or not i am allowed to play my Frank Sinatra mp3. If I am allowed to play it it says so, if i'm not it says so too. But by discontinuing their services they shut down their DRM servers; making my (fictional) $700 dollar music collection worthless. I cannot play a single file anymore. $700 dollar of music gone just because of DRM. Their advice: burn it on a dvd so you still have the files and licence.

Another problem is they encode and protect but fail to offer functionality. If you are running Linux and want to play a DVD you are forced to download programs that are deemed illegal in many countries. And you only want to watch your DVD!

I don't get most of this.

Anyhow their should be an international law concerning digital copyright. This makes many things possible:

• Organized raids against gangs cracking software.
  
• One independend watchdog instead of thousands worldwide
  
• Digital services can be rolled out worldwide instead of selected countries only. (Because of the many different laws)
  
• (open) standards and support for all platforms.
  

I'm a student in IT security Management so shoot any question you have.

thanks for the info, but i my overlying theme remains the same, im referring to the kid who downloads the aforementioned frank sinatra song, burns it to a cd, and then gives the cd to his girlfriend, technically piracy, as is any kind of distribution of media, take another example, schools hold a movie night fundraiser, parents pay 5 dollars to go see some disney movie with their kids on a projector from some kids dvd collection, technically warrenting a 250000 dollar fine and 3-7 years in a federal penetentiary. Hence, could the law not be revised to state that as long as it was bought from the original producer, the right to do with it what one wills is with the purchaser

Funny thing about this is that there was just a case, which I don't know was settled or not, in which the RIAA is actually losing the battle in the piracy issue (Anderson v. RIAA?). Not only is the issue problematic legally speaking, but also it is just plain unpopular, which has a very big sway on the conception of the suit.

If I understand the gist of your opinion, you state that a copyrighted material (i.e. music) is completely open to the purchaser when the cash is put in the vendors hands. I both agree and don't agree with you. I agree with you in the respect that when you pay for something, you had dang well have ownership of it. It does not make sense to buy something only to be put in sever restraints while owning it. However, suppose I am software developer and I develop an application that cost me thousands of dollars to make and lots of time. I have my company's survival on the line depending on the success of this application. Then, the first guy that buys the application copy's it, publicly utilizes it outside the terms of the license agreement, etc. I'm out a lot of money and I am not going to make anymore software again. I think it would even extend as far as a public screening of a movie my company would make. Imagine if half the theaters that screened Dark Knightpersonal use, but not for personal use for personal/public gain. That's profiting from another work, which is not right. Ironically, I could personally download the hell out of anything and everything in a six-million Gigabyte radius. You could name it, I could

Sorry for a late reply. But I decided to write an article about it on my blog. It took a few days because of the holiday's and this being my first full length article.

It's not necessarily an answer on your question but might give a little more insight on piracy and why it's so troublesome. You can read it here on my blog or below;

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It looks like piracy has won from religion if it comes to the amount of time and effort put into it from both sides of the table. The movie and music industry sued everyone they could sue and forced DRM down the consumers throat while pirates kept breaking it and releasing new media daily on torrents, usenet and private FTP's.
I've however never seen an article talking about why we pirate, why we won't stop and why it is bad. On a daily basis I see news article after news article about the RIAA winning a case, losing a case, the NMPA demanding more money from iTunes or torrent trackers being taken offline, the Pirate Bay going into politics, getting sued, countersuing and I can go on and on. These articles are often accompanied by people needing to voice something they call an opinion. They've become so generic and predictable;

• "First post! Ow and the RIAA sucks!"
  
• "Well Z is dead, but we've always got X and Y"
  
• "That site was crap anyway! I download from X"
  
• "Well they made us download by doing A and B!"
  

Still I'm puzzled by the fact that so few people see what really is going on, so few people question both sides instead they start polarizing to the pirates and leechers or the music and movie industry. There are several key issues concerning piracy. First being the cultural and social shift from the analog to the digital world. With this change many companies made wrong decisions based on old practice that worked in the analog world, but not the new digital one. Last but not least is us and something we do; over-consumption. Let's start with the first one and work our way up.

Cultural and social change; the analog and digital world
Stealing used to be so easy to define; taking something (physical ) that is not yours. The law stated you're to be punished, and you were. The laws are based upon centuries of experience in the analog world. Then the digital world came along in the early 80's and late 90's that would change our society completely. We could send each other messages in mere seconds across the globe, buy that vintage jacket from someone in New Zealand, meeting people who share our interest online and share and download multimedia content. The world got a lot smaller.
Technology developed quickly and we upgraded from our 56K modem to cable or DSL with speeds that kept increasing. Our new DVD's and CD's could be played on our new computers with a 80Gb harddrive! And they could be copied and shared with friends. P2P networks like Napstar, KaZaA and others made it easy to download and upload music, then considered high speed connections made it fast and easy. Today it's even more easy to download; download your torrentfiles from the piratebay, sign up with an online filehoste or usenet provider and you can start downloading if you know where to find your files.
What did not develop so quickly was our definition of what stealing was. We still think of it as taking something from a store not clicking with our mouse pointer on the link to download the latest Metallica album if that's what you were looking for. Many laws were still analog, with the maker of the I Love You virus that hit us in 2000 going free because there was no law that forbade making a virus in the philipines. The copyright rules are, and still for the most part are analog.
So will this correct itself? In a few decades we'll have generations that did not grow up in the analog world, but the digital one where e-learning is seen as the preferred teaching method and computers are things that always have been there. These kids however are growing up now and the years to come; they ask daddy or mommy to download that new movie with that funny robot. So no, it will not correct itself, it will become mainstream, safe for the few that got educated in the definition of stealing. The source of this problem however is something else entirely;

Over-consumption
Over-consumption is the magic word here. Many of us are living in a world based around entertainment. We want to listen to music, watch movies, play video-games and use countless forms of software products and services. Many of us have multiple favorite series they want to watch, and then there are these movies coming out this month that are so cool! These albums are the ones I've been waiting for, and look at that! the new Command & Conquer game and Photoshop CS4 are out.
Looking at this don't you find we are exaggerating a little, do we really need all of this? At an all you can eat diner you're likely to take a second plating, but you don't end up having eaten 25 full plates. Why do we do this with downloading? If you take a look at the wikipedia list of movies released in 2008 and count the movies you've watched you might be astonished. Look at the 2009 list and see how many you are likely to see. Start thinking about which one's you really liked and others that were a waste of time.
My answers for 2008 are an estimated 54 movies seen of which 25 downloaded, 9 seen in cinema and about 20 on DVD. The number of cinema visits is only high because we went to the movies a lot during my lousy summer vacation. Otherwise it would have been 2 for cinema and 32 for downloads. Answers for 2009 are 16 movies i want to see, and was likely to download only looking at the titles. We are in the habit of being entertained.
You can say "But your a sad example! I don't download that much!" but still you do download, thousands upon millions of people do this, they download movies, buy the illegal copies from street vendors and are willing to share with friends and the world. We are addicted to entertainment, and because it can be pricey, but as an alternative obtained for free we download it. When we get bored we download a movie, instead of doing something more productive.
Sure you can argue "I did watch The Dark Knight, but would not have done it if I had to pay for it". But it's the same as going to an restaurant, order and eat your food and walk away stating you would not have eaten it if it was not for *insert reason*. We expect to get away with downloading using a digital example; but when you convert it to an analog one your just an ******* not paying someone for what they've made and offered to you for an (reasonable) price.
We expect to get away with downloading "just because". We approve of someone stealing a loaf of bread to feed him and his family, but we won't let him get away with stealing the non primary items needed to survive. Entertainment is not a primary need but a luxury that we are starting to exaggerate.
The industry can cope with people downloading movies, but keep it up long enough and the revenues disappear, movies get canceled, don't get made or talents go down the drain, just because 2 million people watched it in cinema, and 38 million downloaded it. I'm exaggerating this numbers for now; but it might not be the case in 2016 or so. It all the more counts for artists that are amazing but canned because 40.000 bought the CD and 360.000 copied and downloaded it online.
We can say "But i want to pay the artist not the record label! They are greedy", but don't forget they pay for recording, publishing, distribution, media attention and all other costs. Making a CD is cheap, but finding and managing a talent is not.
Funny thing is that I'm willing to pay for every episode of any series that I download but I am not given the opportunity because I don't live in The US or UK, and my country is always among the last to be supported. I still don't have the option to buy movies and series from iTunes, even though Apple is happily announcing improvements and new features from time to time. This of course brings us to our next item;

Wrong approach; Analog business in a digital world.
I have not been so nice for the people downloading movies, but i am neither for the movie and music industy. Leaving the software industry for another time.Paramount was founded in 1912, Fox in 1915 (altough the Fox we know today in 1990), Columbia in 1919, swallowed by sony in 1987. Warner Bros in 1918 (Part of Time Warner).. anyhow look at the wikipedia list found here to see who one's who and who was founded when. EMI was founded in 1931, Polygram 1945, Universal Music Group build upon Decca Records founded in 1934, Sony being late in 1987 but big nonetheless. The main point is that these companies are old! They are founded in the analog age; all but Sony Music did analog business for decades and are somewhat conservative.
So when they noticed people getting music and movies for free they started defending themselves like anyone else would do; fighting back and forcing people back into their old ways. That's how we always did it. But it did not work, and 8 or 9 years later we are back where we were in 2000. Countless lawsuits, Fear Uncertainty Doubt (FUD) actions and annoying ads later. Some are giving up, others are launching their own shop, but still they are all acting as retarded as the people who comment on articles with above given comments.
They demand more money from iTunes, whilst they now receive 9 cents more a song then they would if someone would pirate it. They release it DRM free, but more expansive, start their own online shops (US only of course!) and launch campaigns against piracy that always backfire like the "You wouldn't steal a car etc" campaigns that are unskipable and placed on genuine DVD's. Depending on your country you have an additional warning from your local RIAA, a disclaimer from the movie company about the interviews and about 5 minutes of ads if you have a regular dvd and about 10 minutes of ads if you buy a Disney one.
And don't forget about the illegal one's that are of "lower quality" (i've had enough genuine factory damaged dvd's). Point taken, but a 700MB .AVI file or 4.3GB DVD does make a difference in quality. These campaigns don't work and are based on arguments that are just stupid, and we know we can do better.
Go and make sure there are international rules governing licencing and copyright, at least in the Western part of the world since Russia and China don't care about laws and copyright. It will make launching online services much easier and Europe not the last one to get a 2 year old service like iTunes Movies. If there is a problem facilitate it! don't fight it with lawyers and money.
If you don't like Apple's rules; start your own services collectively and let us share in the pleasure. Release it worldwide; protect it if you need to; but support all systems, keep the system open and transparent. CSS was broken because someone just wanted to watch their DVD on their Linux based OS, not because they wanted to ruin you. Support it, even if it is with binary codecs, Richard Stallman will call you evil, but many other linux users won't. They'll love you for it. Supporting Linux, Windows and Mac would cost, yes, ut so does sueing everybody, and the latter doesn't solve the problem only the symptoms.
Keep movies at reasonable prices; 17,99 for new DVD is to high if you can buy it half a year later for 9,99 or download it for free within a few mouse clicks and a fast internet connection. Work together when building a new business model; you're in it together. If Sony has problems with piracy, so does Warner Time and Paramount.
Don't sue YouTube about users that upload your content; facilitate it. There is a demand! Don't sue people for putting a song you own under their montage of homevideo's. I've discovered countless artists, and bought CD's or MP3's because of it. When I watched a part of Hard Candy online I went out and bought the dvd at 17,99. I can understand raiding a place that copies your music at a massive scale, i can understand arresting street vendors for selling copies. But seuing people just because they used your song under their montage on a low quality YouTube movie (at the time!)
Don't be the evil companies that we see you as now, be the nice companies that give us entertainment once again. We know making movies costs money and you need profit, and we are still willing to pay you for it; The Dark Knight was worth us about 1 billion in worldwide revenue, the DVDs sold out instantly in Europe and so will other movies and CDs.
In conclusion we as pirates are just being unfair. We pay for our food at the restaurant, why not for our entertainement. We also have to look at our addication of being entertained and act wisely on it. The companies need to wake up and start living in the digital world. We won't go analog again and you are keeping yourself from flourishing in the digital age. Give us clean media free of warnings and disclaimers, give us entertainement on demand and give it at a reasonable price. We're not evil, neither are you but we just have our problems. We'll work it out. I know we will.

Vasska,

That was a good post although there are many things that I don't agree with. I'll list some clear propositions for discussion:

1. We ought to pay (per item) for our entertainment when it is in digital form.
   
2. Piracy causes a net lossfor the music, film etc. industries.
   
3. Copying digital information for personal, non-commercial use ought to be prohibited.
   

Let's start with these three.

"We ought to pay (per item) for our entertainment when it is in digital form."
I'm undecided about this. For instance some socialistic system may be a good idea. The problem is deciding where the funding comes from, and who gets how much.

"Piracy causes a net loss for the music, film etc. industries."
The industry cries about it all the time, but what is the evidence of this claim? As far as I know no one knows whether this is true or false. There are many factors and I don't know any way to discover how strong they are. Some factors are: mouth-to-mouth ads, people who hate the industry and refuse to pay for anything, people who buy more because they saw it or heard it on youtube or an equivalent service, etc.

A good way to see it is this: There are four kinds of file-sharers:

"A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for pur-
chasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released,
rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it.We might
quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually
have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free.Most
probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would.
The latter are the target of category A: users who download in-
stead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before
purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an
artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that
artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to suc-
ceed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from
a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recom-
mendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this
sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copy-
righted content that is no longer sold or that they would not
have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too
high. This use of sharing networks is among the most reward-
ing for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have
long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on
the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered
Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She
was astonished at the range and mix of content that was avail-
able.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of
copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the
content anymore, the economic harm is zero-the same harm
that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to
a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access
to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner
wants to give away." (Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, pp. 68-69, download link [legal]) (It's a very interesting book. Read it!)

What is the demography of file-sharers? I don't know and neither does anyone else. We ought to try to make an educated guess.

I'm a B with the additional property that I don't buy anything that Big Media has founded. I refuse to pay people to sue me. I instead support artists who give their music away for free on online services such as Jamendo. I also spend some of the money that I would have otherwised used to pay for music with, to support organizations that fight for a free internet, reasonable copyrights etc. Similarly with films. (I especially recommend watching "Blue Gold [...]") The author has made a lot of posts on TorrentFreak. A large news site dedicated to file-sharing news.

Obviously your shallow argumentation on this will not suffice:


"Copying digital information for personal, non-commercial use ought to be prohibited."
It seems to me that this depends on our answer to (2) and other things such as the legislation. I see no way to possibly have a decent legislative system that allows easy, fast, secure judgments on internet piracy issues. It is too easy to get around unless we make some crazy laws that bans proxy servers, usenet, privat FTPs.

And lastly there is the darknet that people was reverse to. That is nearly impossible to control. See this very interesting report on it. ("The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution", Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman)

Music Week - EMI starts consultation on redundancies

That is not evidence of the claim at hand.

I think it is, obviously if the desire for the services of the company hadn't been affected by the availability of music online, resulting in losses, those people might not have had to lose their livelihoods.

You need to argue that it is caused by piracy. I don't know how you would go to do that.

Piracy forced the hand of music industries to adapt to not being able to manufacture and market music on 'hard' media for the same return as a decade ago.

So, directly or indirectly, it is responsible for such dramatic downsizing.

Well I think that if the company sold it to you with the condition of that you can only watch it at home, and not in any instituition, when you have to follow that, as you agreed to it. After all companies arent forced to make it so, they can say "you cant copy this, but you can display this anywhere".

As for the whole issue with internet, piracy, distribuition, etc...

I think the problem lies in that piracy, at least in the digital realm, cannot be stopped, except in the case of programs that need online acess to a "server" ever time to work, such as multiplayer games, but off course these arent the only programs that people will want to buy, and even those can be victimized by piracy (you can create a fake server and modify the original program to connect to that server rather than the official, payment requiring one).

I dont think there is a definite solution for this, but I think it would be a great advance if someone found a way to make it impossible to "emulate" dvds and such. I mean if all piracy required physical manifestation it would be easier to stop it, but since you can emulate dvds with programs, you dont need the dvd once the program is inside your pc, and thus more than one person can use the same dvd at once.

Dont think thats really possible though, I remember reading somewhere that modern computers are, in teory, capable of emulating anything...

(In teory means given enough power and someone to program it into being able to do so)

Thinking more about it, there are some definite solutions:
*Drop capitalism =)
*Implement socialism in the digital realm, like someone suggested. Maybe have the govern give a certain % of its funds to industry makers of digital media, with the percentage to each industry defined by its sucess.

Both sound troublesome though =)

I think that no law can be perfectly carried out as some sort of common sense. But, this imperfection does not necessarily prevent laws from being legislated, for without laws the situation is said to be much worse. This theory can also be called "maximin" which stands for adopting the best strategy under the worst circumstance.

According to my knowledge, law has at least two purposes: first, prevention; second: maintenance. But, it appears to both of us that, an absolute fulfillment of these two purposes are impossible, thereby follows the third one that is, deterrence.

No one would challange the self-evident truth that a world with cops is much safer than a world without them, though cops don't promise us a 100% percent safe world.

Two things:

#1) Any argument against digital piracy presupposes a capitalistic worldview.

#2) Any injury the media "industries" are experiencing as a result of piracy rests solely on the shoulders of the industries themselves, whose stubborn insistence on propagating outdated status quos has ensured their downfall. Their failure to foresee the vast potentials of cutting edge digital distribution models left a vacuum that was quickly filled through grassroots cyber visionaries who rose up to create the most efficient distribution models known to man (referring specifically to oiNK, etc.). Of course the splintering of information distribution threatens the centralized capitalistic structure and the bureaucracies start panicking, rushing to reel in the rogues and restore their top-down structure. But the fact of the matter is that intellectual property rights are hopelessly out of date and unless the powers-that-be realize this and hop on board the reality train, "piracy" will continue and another useless battle will rage on.

I often ask, why aren't artists willing to take a pay cut?
Perhaps the days have gone where a fine young musician is to expect millions of pounds of revenue from his CD and music sales.

Dan.

EDIT: It is also worth considering that in the digital realm, sending a file is the same as copying it. Lending your friend a CD, digitally, is tantamount to copying it whetehr or not your friend intends to return it.

Also, when I buy a DVD I often watch it with friends... is this copyright infringment? considering they didn't pay for the DVD, yet they are extracting joy from experiencing it. After all isn't that why you buy a DVD: not to have some cheap plastic case and CD, but to have the freedom to enjoy a work of art in your home whenever you want? So whoever smiles while watching a film they didn't pay for should have to cough up.

Musicians
It seems that people want musicians to keep their numbers and keep earning all the money they do. Is there any particular reason for this? Perhaps not. Will music die if we don't give a lot of money to musicians? Probably not.

Copies
Even playing a DVD/CD on a computer is copying it. The data is copied from the disc to the RAM or VRAM before being sent to the screen.

There doesnt seens to be much space in the "reality train" though. The best option I can think for industries to do so would be for then to ask donations in exchange for their services, maybe offering special services for those who donated/subscribed... that does sound possible, but it doesnt sounds very safe, considering how much it relies on the good will of human beings =)

The best way to know is to read the license, but it involves a lot of subjectivity. I think that it goes around the lines of "you cant lend this, you cant watch this outside a house, you cant organize large watching parties in a house".

One quick point if I may - long, long ago, back when I was a wee jes and there was a thing called reel to reel (which we used, mostly for my brother and I to record allegedly skeery noises), a brand new-fangled thang called cassettes came out.

They were small. They were portable. They were neat. And soon we had a tape recorder that not only played them but could even record music directly from records without a mic! No mic meant better sound quality. It was never perfect sound quality, but it wasn't awful. It was acceptable for a tape recorder in the park with batteries, or eventually a Sony Walkman or the car.

The industry was up in arms. Oh my God! Our profit margin! Whadda we do?

But they could sell better with pretty imaging, with better sound quality and with a good distribution system.

Fast forward (ha, I slay myself sometimes) 3 decades.

Imaging can be downloaded and added to any created CD, or "album artwork" can be added to your iPod's contents. Sound quality is virtually perfect but there is still a lot of bad stuff out there, either embedded with some sort of sound overlay ("Welcome to my website" or whatever in the first few seconds of the download) or with some sort of distortion, and distribution is as easy as either posting a file to a blog or burning a CD and giving it to a pal or opening up your email addy book.

Life's changed for the industry, and they are even more scared. Right now, there's not a lot to differentiate the oldies market. "Rock and Roll All Night" by Kiss is not going to sound or look significantly different if it's obtained by purchasing a CD or by ripping from an .mp3 site and, almost as importantly, much of the market is folk such as myself who might not be able to hear too much of the differences any more and probably care a lot less about packaging these days.

The industry's only real hope is in novelty -- the new or the old but essentially undiscovered. I'm kinda surprised they don't open their vaults more, but they definitely do it when a big name dies (Michael Jackson, anyone? -- His death is going to be the gift that keeps on giving to the industry for years to come).

But I don't feel too sorry for the industry. I've owned The Beatle's "Fool on the Hill" in 3 separate formats (album, tape and CD), and now have it on iTunes. I guess I missed it on eight-track (yes, I remember those). I've paid for it three times already. Somewhere in there, that had to catch up to the industry, and now it has, so they are lying in the bed they have made.

PS Oops, did I say this was going to be a SHORT entry?