Comments on: Annals of criminalization, part 2,038: “performing” copyrighted material

By: uptofreedom

uptofreedom — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:41:43 +0000

hmmm, the death of cover bands?

By: GregS

GregS — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:51:04 +0000

Good sweet God. The United States is 14 trillion dollars in debt and has future liabilities north of $100 trillion, is borrowing nearly half the money it spends, is in danger of hitting the debt ceiling in a month, is fighting three wars, and has an economy that seems to be permanently in the toilet, and the Senate thinks that making lip-synching on YouTube a felony is such a critical issue that it needs addressing now? There really is such a thing as being too stupid to live.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 23:46:28 +0000

A reasonable compromise would restrict nuclear weapons like this to the original Constitutional term of fourteen years from publication. That is plenty of time for publishers and musicians to make the bulk of their profit, while protecting the creative commons from copyright trolls.

By: VMS

VMS — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:34:31 +0000

When someone posts a video to You Tube and most other sites, they have a choice whether or not to grant permission to embed.
As an example, the message received from You Tube when the permission to embed has been denied says: “This video contains content from XYZ. It is restricted from playback on certain sites. Watch on You Tube [clickable link].”

A compelling argument may be made that if the poster chose to allow embedding, rather than disabling it, he is giving implied consent for someone on another site to do so. If the poster made a mistake and originally allowed embedding when he did not intend to do so, he can easily rectify that mistake by disabling the embedding from the original post. Disabling the embedding can be selective to all or some sites.

In any event, there is no infringement by someone posting a link to the original video. So, although no court (to my knowledge) has ruled on this issue, I would venture to guess that allowing embedding makes any embedding of the video permissive, and an implicit license in the copyright for past use.

By: Terry Hart

Terry Hart — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:19:00 +0000

Titus- I do want to point out that the conduct described in this bill is already a violation of criminal copyright law and has carried the possibility of jail time since 1897. All this bill does is make it a felony, like reproduction and distribution, instead of a misdemeanor – and only for electronic performances, where the difference between downloading and streaming is more legal than technical.

By: Titus

Titus — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:33:13 +0000

Without endorsing this particular law, of course, I find the performance aspect interesting. The original intellectual property laws for music only applied, of course, to performances and sheet music. Thus the controversies were all about people going to hear Beethoven and transcribing the music by ear. It’s odd to see the system come full circle like this, and as a criminal law to boot.