[Leaplist] Cory Doctorow, to Microsoft, on "Why DRM is bad"

[Fred Moore]

Damien McKenna wrote:
> On Nov 1, 2007, at 5:02 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
>> On Thursday 01 November 2007 11:52, patrick wrote:
>>> Copyright isn't an ethical proposition, it's a utilitarian one. There's
>>> nothing *moral* about paying a composer tuppence for the piano-roll
>>> rights, there's nothing *immoral* about not paying Hollywood for the
>>> right to videotape a movie off your TV. They're just the best way of
>>> balancing out so that people's physical property rights in their VCRs
>>> and phonographs are respected and so that creators get enough of a
>>> dangling carrot to go on making shows and music and books and
>>> paintings.
>>
>> That last quote alarms me.
> [snip]
>
> I think you misunderstand him.
>
> The first statement he makes is in regards to the ability to buy
> something at a specific price.  Why is paying tuppence any less moral
> than twenty dollars?  For a sale to be binding there must be an
> agreement on both the item and the price, you don't just walk into a
> care dealership, give them $5 and drive home a car, likewise someone
> isn't going to pay $1000 for a newspaper (well, they shouldn't that'd
> be stupid).  The agreed upon price is based on both the buyer's and
> seller's perceived value of the item (and bartering, haggling, etc),
> so ultimately if you buy said piano roll for tuppence you've made a
> legal purchase.
>
> The second statement is about the ability to record something off your
> TV, a signal that you're paying for in one way or another (almost
> always via cable or satellite service), a far cry from your examples. 
> There are IIRC laws in place that grant you the right to record the
> video signal to tape for your own personal wishes.
>
> In the before times, before Tivo and the other DVRs, people used to
> put this large lump of plastic, called a video cassette, into this
> box, called a video recorder, press a red button that said "record" on
> it and then magically have the ability to watch the video signal at a
> later time.  The MPAA have always had a problem with this, despite the
> fact that the video market accounts for an ever increasing portion of
> their income, and they're currently using digital TV, HDTV, the
> broadcast flag and the DMCA to stop people being able to do so with
> the current generation of home entertainment systems.
>
> Also, what's your take on fair use?  Do you object to e.g. a professor
> photocopying a few pages from one of your books to hand out in class,
> or someone doing likewise for a friend of theirs?  How about someone
> offering to translate it into another language for you for free?  Or
> how about they make a copy of it to read in the car while their
> original is happily sitting on their bookshelf at home (seriously,
> I've done that, though a few pages at a time)?
>
> --Damien McKenna - Husband, father, geek.
> damien at mc-kenna.com - http://www.mc-kenna.com/
> http://twitter.com/DamienMcKenna
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/damienmckenna
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>

My take is that copying someones work to use to further ones paid
profession is outside allowed use.  So a professor copying 10 pages from
a text and distributing it to his students is violating someone
copyrights.  Copying pages from a book you purchased to write on, or
read later etc.. is not as long as you are the owner of the book.  I
also think that your copying part of the book and then giving the book
away also did away with your allowed use of the copied pages in your
possession.   Purchase does give you an implied release.. (release to
read the material).. Blanket copying for other usage is not allowed   I
have several times in my life wanted to distribute several pages of
someones paper.  A mail note to the author explaining what I wanted to
do got me a specific copyright release to the work.  I always stated
upfront that the author would be sited on each page. 

About 6 months ago I had a call from an attorney in Miami.. he wanted to
use one of my boat surveys in a training class.  He asked for a
copyright release to use certain pages.  I told him I would not agree to
a partial release.. but that I would agree to conditional release.   The
condition was that he must distribute  my work in its entirety.  I asked
how many he had in class he stated that he was running 3 classes of
approximately 50 attorneys each.  He wanted to use some pages,  I wanted
to make sure everyone had my name so they could call me for work.  We
quickly agreed,  I sent him a mail note releasing the specific report
for use in his 3 classes with the total number of copies to not exceed
200. He got what he wanted.. I ended up with about 9k worth of work
based on referrals from his students (other attorneys).  

All because he as well as I understood copyright..   


-- 
Benjamin Franklin "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either" 
Benjamin Franklin "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".
 
Fred/WD8KNI