From http://quotes-4u.tumblr.com/image/49431532108

Google Could be Evil and That’s Not Good

I usually go to Google News to find stuff to talk about. There’s usually a bunch of stuff going on in the articles about copyright, but today/this morning at 2 am I found something EVEN MORE INTERESTING.

OK, so, in the Google news search bar I typed in “The Pirate Bay” and found this:

I tried to take a screen shot please disregard the Tumblr tag

So basically articles were removed from the search because of copyright issues, if I understand correctly.

Uhhhh ok sure.

How weird is that? I don’t know if it’s just Google being weird or if they actually took down posts because people actually filed complaints. Who knows. But if it’s the latter, then man…this is getting out of hand. To take down articles because of copyright issues? Seriously?

This all boils down to fair use and how it’s being taken from us. We can’t use copyrighted music in Youtube videos, can’t use copyrighted movie or audio clips…now we can’t post articles? I find it odd.

At the end of the day all of my blog posts seem to basically be saying the same thing: they (the industry in general I guess) wants to control EVERYTHING so they can control the profits. And we, supposedly the passive-turned-active audience, are letting them do it.

So I guess I have nothing new to say. But it’s just another piece of evidence to prove my point.

However it’s interesting to note that Google is one of these places which is bowing to copyright complaints, like Youtube. Considering the amount of leverage Google has in the digital world, are they going to be the new threat in this copyright war?

Apparently I Just Hate Titles

HERE’S ANOTHER ARTICLE PLEASE CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT.

http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/04/when-copyright-rules-lead-wasted-innovation

This company, Aereo (not to be confused with Aero) is basically trying to be really clever with copyright laws by snatching the actual signal out of the air and distributing it without anyone’s permission.

Funny thing is, it’s apparently totally legal. Well then.

The author claims that this is really neat in innovation, but really it’s stupid. But we don’t really care about that right now. The point that we should probably be focusing on is how clever people are to get around those darn copyright laws. OH YOU.

So basically we’re wasting our innovative powers in attempting to get around super constrictive copyright laws, I guess. This article is short and doesn’t really argue this point well, but I understand what they’re trying to say. Instead of investing time in fun stuff like curing cancer and saving the whales, we’re spending our time trying to avoid the crazy copyright laws. Which, in turn, tells us that since copyright laws need to be avoided in super creative ways, they must be crazy.

Let me break it down for you because I’m sure that didn’t make sense:
-We have copyright laws
-People feel the need to invest large amounts of time and money to create a company where we evade these copyright laws (innovation)
-Therefore copyright laws must be restrictive enough that we need the need to invest ourselves into avoiding them.

Make sense? I hope so. I tried.

In the end this is just another example of how copyright is bad today.

But hey, I hear you say. Isn’t it actually ok in this case because copyright is actually (finally) ENCOURAGING innovation? Without these laws to attempt to bypass we wouldn’t have these kinds of ideas! Maybe people who would never have created anything will be inspired by this to create new things, all because of copyright laws!

And to you I would first ask what beautiful, optimistic world you live in.

Second, this is valid. Maybe this kind of thing will awaken someone’s potential to create things. But really, if they have this dormant potential, shouldn’t it be awakened by something more…positive? Productive? Not stupid? Maybe the counter to this is that these metaphorical people are so focused on copyright that they actually miss the thing that would awaken them to something truly good and creative.

So while copyright is inspiring people to be innovative, it’s kind of wasting their talents on avoiding these silly laws. So good job, copyright. You managed to screw up something that you really shouldn’t have been anywhere near.

The Death of the Public Domain

So there’s this other thing I found (how professional):

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332585324978567.html

I guess it’s an opinion piece, but still good.

Basically it talks about how copyright laws are becoming outdated and need some serious revision. Which is true, but they keep revising it so suit their own needs. The article also talks about the tragedy of the dwindling public domain, and even cites an article where the court can take stuff from the public domain and put it under protection again: http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2013/shrinking. It then goes on to talk about gender issues in government or something, I kinda stopped reading it at that point.

This is scary. Things can be taken out of the public domain and placed under private ownership? Why? Why the hell would anyone want to do that? Seriously, if it wasn’t bad enough that things can’t go into the public domain for years, now things are being taken out? Pretty soon there won’t be anything left, and then where will we be? A pretty sad world.

This all comes back to the same thing I’ve been ranting about and abusing for the past three months: copyright was meant to protect artistic works. Then the industry happened, and they noticed the amount of money they could be making off of these works. It all boils down to the money. This is now clearer thane ever if they’re starting to take things out of the public domain. Really, 70 years after the death of the author is crazy, especially (as the author of the article points out) if that author has no heirs to inherit the rights. What’s the point in all of this?

Basically, I guess I’m just mourning what is left of the public domain. If this keeps up they’re won’t be anything left.

Are we just going to sit back and let it happen?

I Forgot to Give This a Title

So there’s this thing.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/supreme-court-rules-entertainment-industry-429695

I found this article about a case where the court ruled against the Entertainment industry in an interesting copyright battle.

There’s this law, called the first-sale doctrine. Well, maybe it’s not a law. It’s a….thing. Basically, is says that if you purchased a copyrighted book legally, you are allowed to sell it again to someone else without asking people for permission. So, in the spirit of the industry, when someone actually tried to do this, the industry freaked out a bit.

A man from Thailand decided to fight the $600,000 he was told he had to pay for getting his family and friends to send him cheaper, foreign-printed copies of textbooks, and then selling them in America. In this case, the court ruled in favour of him.

They talk about why this is good and bad in the article. If they had ruled for the publisher, they argue that this would have crazy repercussions on many industries. Museums, for example, may have to then start asking people if they can display their work, and often the people they ask are just those who hold the copyright–not the people who actually created the work themselves. Foreign cars might not be able to be sold in various places without asking everyone who holds patents and copyrights on all the parts in it. How silly.

There is of course the usual whining about not being able to find a market overseas now. They’ll get over it.

The point of this interesting article, I believe, is that the courts are finally realizing that intellectual property laws have the potential to restrict culture and whatnot. By seeing how, here, setting this kind of precedent could lead to crazy restrictive things, perhaps the courts are becoming aware of the threat some copyright poses to culture and its distribution. An important point to notice in this first-sale doctrine is how it specifies that the copyrighted work needs to be purchased legally. Then the owner can go ahead and sell it again. This is promoting the sharing of knowledge, and by getting upset because profits are not going back to the industry is a sign of exactly what is wrong with today’s copyright laws. That is, companies and such are so focused on making money that they forget the true meaning of Christmas copyright: to protect and encourage the expansion of culture.

What I’m hoping is that this article points to the courts who know the difference between true copyright infringement and the industry just whining about money.

I suppose you could argue that the line between these two is very thin and ambiguous. This is true, but my point is the courts will hopefully understand when to be restrictive of copyright and when to let culture sharing be free.

What if Money Was Removed from the Equation?

So let’s say we live in a perfect and beautiful world where money isn’t really all that important (or existent or what have you). Let’s just imagine that copyright, somehow, didn’t cost us any money. Just remove money from the picture altogether. Completely. Does this change our view of copyright?

I’ve been ranting talking about how copyright is just a way to control us and our money by the large and scary industries. So what if copyright didn’t exist for money? What if companies couldn’t make us pay them for breaking copyright laws; what if copyrighting something meant that you couldn’t make money off of it?

On the one hand, this would theoretically mean that everything that fell under copyright and intellectual property laws would be created simply for the benefit of society. If you invent something, the first thing you generally want to do is patent that sucker so no one can steal it. But if there was no money to be made, would you bother? Probably, since we’re still obsessed with getting the credit for it. Perhaps, in the case of inventions and patents, things wouldn’t really change–the battles over patents might be somewhat less intense, though, if it was just battling over bragging rights. But say, when an artist recorded something, and you downloaded it “illegally”, what if the music industry couldn’t sue the pants off of you for money? Would they stop, and leave us alone? Would we be able to get music and movies for free without being beaten to death by lawsuits and settlements?

On the other hand, if there is no money for an incentive to create things, would our culture stop completely? Sure, copyright as it is today is basically killing everything we love in our culture, but if people could access your content for free without penalty, then they would clearly do it, and you wouldn’t be making any money, so why bother?

The point of this confusing post is that, in a way, copyright lawsuits forcing us to pay people for their content might actually be necessary. Kind of a Devil’s Advocate kind of thing, but if there were no consequences to downloading or taking content, then no one would want to invest their time into creating content. The penalties for this shouldn’t necessarily be making you pay 50,000 dollars butttttt that’s another story.

But wait! I hear you cry. What about people on Youtube and the internet in general, who make music and videos and write stories just for the heck of it, without making any money off of it? Doesn’t this mean that money isn’t the only/most important incentive?

Well, random citizen, I see your point. However, we can argue that, of all the amateur content on the internet, not all of it is very good. In fact, only a small portion of this is really any kind of decent, and in order to create good quality content, you need to put time and effort into it. Even the popular Ray William Johnson started out in a shitty apartment making stupid videos with a terrible camera, and only made it something big and fancy after he made it his job. Though quite a lot of the “professionally made” culture, like movies and music, are also pretty terrible, without the incentive of money, our culture would grind to a halt. We would still have that amateur content, but really, is that all we want to be left with at the end of the day?

Intellectual Property

Let’s just look at it for a minute.

It’s property that you can’t lock up in a safe and hide from people. Well, you sort of can, but it’s a lot easier to steal–or to claim it was yours to begin with. How do we really determine who came up with an idea or an invention first? It’s almost impossible. So to deal with this we came up with copyright and intellectual property laws and just generally ways to make your life more difficult than it really needs to be.

Because seriously, allowing your school/institution to copyright your work is totally not exploitation or anything.

The point is, intellectual property is such a weird concept if you really think about it. We’re trying to put locks on things we can’t hold; to take a piece of our brain and shove it in a safe where no one else can access it. Why? Why are we such a paranoid people that our ideas are something that we feel need to be protected with the law equivalent of an iron wall. What happened to sharing our ideas for the overall betterment of society? 

I find this sad for a few reasons. First, that we believe that our ideas need to bring us money in order for us to be happy–we’re not content with our ideas improving the lives of others. Secondly, that we’re afraid of people stealing our ideas and claiming it as their own. Thirdly, that people justify this fear.

Why, I hear you ask, should we be afraid of people stealing our idea if we just want the betterment of society? On a totally different principle, even if we didn’t get money for really good ideas and inventions, it’s unfair for people to claim our ideas as their own. In the end, we want the money, but we also want the recognition–the glory.

At the end of the day, intellectual property and its laws shows us how we’re selfish, reward obsessed creatures who only create out of desire to advance our own lives. Have a nice day.

Schools are Evil

So apparently schools are trying to own the content created by students and teachers.

It took a few Google searches but I found an article about this (from Fox News, so you know. Meh). http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/12/maryland-proposal-to-claim-copyright-on-students-work-prompts-backlash-legal/

“Briant Coleman, a spokesman for the school board, says it’s not the board’s “intent” to take ownership of work done by students.
“Please know that we would never try to impede on the creativity of our students, teachers and employees,” Coleman said. “In fact, we encourage it. The policy is currently on hold and under legal review until further notice.”

Oh, really? This twisted form of copyright control is going to do exactly that. Why do you need to copyright the work of students? And do they have any real right to? Just because the institution told them to write something, doesn’t make that something theirs.

There is a decent point brought up that they want to stop teachers from selling their lesson plans and whatnot to make money. The issue here is selling information that was given to them by the school. Perhaps in this case, the argument can be made that this is property of the school. However, as brought up in the article, why should this also cover student works? God forbid a student comes up with a really good idea, essay, article, or whatever, and the school can’t profit off of it.

Here’s the weird part.

“The students are mostly under the age of 18 and federal law protects their rights,” he said. Townsend added that unless a parent or guardian signs off on it, what a student creates belongs to the student and not the school.”

IT’S ILLEGAL.

What the hell, people? This doesn’t make any sense.

If this ends up happening I will have lost all faith in this world.

Not only are we a permission culture, we are a culture of control. Whoever controls the ideas controls the money, the acknowledgements, the glory. It seems that schools are no different from greedy cesspool of record and movie companies.

Copyright is Control

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I suppose this is a conspiracy theory.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but pardon me for being repetitive. Why do the music companies want to sue us for downloading music? Because they want their cut of the profits. Why do they get mad and go on the warpath when we take an artist’s music and remix it? Because they don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to make money.

Why do they attempt to scare us into submission with crazy lawsuits and elaborate threats? Because they don’t want us to take their money away.

Do you hear of artists themselves who get mad and sue people? Not usually. If an artist is annoyed, it’s most likely because people are using their stuff without at least crediting them (which is understandable). It’s the record companies who are angry about lost profits.

So when America tries to control the internet with SOFA and Canada decides to get Montreal to spy on people it’s all about control. They want us to play by their rules, do what they want, because God forbid we take anything for free.

Perhaps the main reason this is so disgusting is because of the way the Canadian bill was implemented. Like, ok, here are some new laws and stuff and nowlet’scontrolallthecopyrightbyspyingonpeople OK WHO WANTS COOKIES.

I’m hoping, and I mean, really really hoping, that when the lawsuits start coming and people start realizing what happened, maybe we’ll get off our collective asses and do something about it.

Perhaps I’m making a big deal over something relatively small. But this, in my mind, is indicative of who we are, as a population. Do we take things lying down, or will we rise for what we believe in?

Because if there’s one thing that SOPA taught us, it’s that people may be a passive mass, but when you mess with our internet, things get serious.

Rantrantrant.

This Post is Late and I am Sorry

Court Of Human Rights: Convictions For File-Sharing Violate Human Rights

I may have stolen this from someone else’s blog but you know, whatever. Sorry.

So apparently now copyright law is bad.

Well, duh. Of course it’s bad. But now apparently it conflicts with human rights? Ok sure.

If I understood the article right (and there’s no guarantee that I did) it basically says that Europe has decided that hey, getting mad at people for taking your stuff is bad! You can only sue them if their actions endanger democracy or society or something.

This is a professional post, wow.

So hey, if Europe wants to counter this copyright mess we’re in by making it infinitely more complicated to sue people then go for it. But does that mean that when people are actually able to be sued, it’ll be a lot more difficult to get out of it? Since if they can only bring you to court if you’re “endangering democracy” or whatever, and then they do end up figuring out a way to sue you because you apparently did endanger everyone, well, that would be an awkward lawsuit.

This is something we’ll need to keep an eye on over the next little while. Will this be good for those of us who still download, or will it just make it worse when companies figure out a way around it (which they always do)?