Copyright Vultures

is what I call people who abuse the copyright law.
Who here has been victimized by them?
I know people who have gotten banned from youtube for posting extremely rare low quality videos that no officials would ever post anyways. or put on DVD's or whatever ... nobody is making money ... so why?
And various abandonware websites ... these games are not sold anymore, so nobody is losing money.
I thought the copyright law was to prevent the artist losing money, or other people selling without giving the artist money.

If you don't have the right to copy and you do (and especially if you are making ir available for others to copy), then you are the one abusing the copyright laws. Perhaps you could pay the copyright holder for the right to copy.

aimeeandbeatles said:

I know people who have gotten banned from youtube for posting extremely rare low quality videos that no officials would ever post anyways. or put on DVD's or whatever ... nobody is making money ... so why?

Click to expand...

I sort of agree with you-but it's still stealing. And just because it's not being used any more doesn't mean it's not stealing.

aimeeandbeatles said:

I thought the copyright law was to prevent the artist losing money, or other people selling without giving the artist money.

Click to expand...

Copyright was also supposed to be temporary. Care to lay odds about Mickey Mouse entering the public domain within your lifetime?

Copyright law's all screwed up. It's intended to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, but it's become some kind of natural law theory of intellectual property. That doesn't mean you're allowed to break the law, but there should be more discussion of whether it's right, and if we should change it.

(Of course, to foster that discussion, you'd be asking media companies to act against their interests. So you can turn to the Internet, where those same companies oppose Net Neutrality.)

Cleo

piracy IS stealing....now is it justifiable in the new tech age? that is up for debate.

Mowque said:

piracy IS stealing....now is it justifiable in the new tech age? that is up for debate.

Click to expand...

It's not stealing because "intellectual property" isn't.

Intellectual?

JollyRoger said:

Intellectual?

Click to expand...

Property.

tenchar.

Copyright Infringment is a fairly serious issue IMO. It does damn good work, and I can even get behind Intellectual Property. The problem is the term on them, and to a lesser extent what they've been applied to recently in the United States.

Especially for software, 7 years is a very reasonably expiration period for copyrights. For certain works (non-scientific literature and other artistic works), I can even endorse extending copyrights for the lifetime of the creator (or 7 years, which ever is longer). It does encourage development and expansion.

They do need to expire fairly quickly however. A half decade should be more than enough to recover profits on creative works. Beyond this period, open release only promotes new development, which is good for the public good. Nor should you be able to copyright (or patent) natural creations of which you are the discoverer. You may patent the method by which you discovered the phenomenon, but no more. Research should be public, particularly when it stands upon the shoulders of so much public research that came before it.


That said however, it does not validate piracy. While I am quite probably guilty of it myself, it still doesn't make it right.

I like copyrights. Copyright is pretty much the reason Open source software can exist.

Of course I think it's ridiculous that a copyright can extend pass the life of it's owner. I think works should enter the public domain upon death of the author. I also don't believe the government should get involved and make civil suits into criminal ones simply because the MPAA/RIAA has better lobbyists.

Something that is highly frustrating to me is my friend put up a video unavailable ANYWHERE commercially (or even online...took months to find it), and then Universal Music Group took it down and put up their version, which was crap quality.

Wah wah wah, why can't I have freeee stufffff!

DRM: broken by design and always will be
SecuROM: Malware
MAFIAA: Outdated business model going to have to change if it wants to or not
Copyright laws: Need major chances to kill the patent trolls

h4ppy said:

Wah wah wah, why can't I have freeee stufffff!

Click to expand...

Wah wah wah, why can't I enforce an unenforceable contracttttt!

I read about a lawsuit in UK(?) where some mechanic workshop got outrageously heavy (five or six digits) fine because they "presented music" to their customers by having radio play music loudly.
If that story was true, those "vultures" are quite possibly worse than Cosa Nostra, Spanish Inquisition and State Taxation Board combined.

Bill3000 said:

Wah wah wah, why can't I enforce an unenforceable contracttttt!

Click to expand...

I dunno, its looking like they are doing a decent enough job of enforcing them. As the guy said, the videos were taken down.

I'm female.

negZero said:

DRM: broken by design and always will be
SecuROM: Malware
MAFIAA: Outdated business model going to have to change if it wants to or not
Copyright laws: Need major chances to kill the patent trolls

Click to expand...

for whatever it's worth patents =/= copyrights. patents are much more restrictive and expire sooner.