Last week it was reported that GameStop, a clown show of a company peddling meme stocks and cheap video game merchandise, had unceremoniously and without notice shut down Game Informer, a magazine and website that had been publishing in some form since 1991. The decision was a terrible one for many reasons. For readers and […]
No, I never granted you any ownership of my content. Period. You didn’t pay me, you didn’t engage in any contract with me.
Simply archiving my stuff and running away then publishing it as your own is theft.
You’ve put it out there for free, though, and the data literally ends up on my machine because you made it do that, so what’s the problem with me saving the data on my machine for later, and potentially sharing it elsewhere for free again?
This scenario (misattribution of content) has nothing to do with the previous discussion. The other commenter is making an analogy to CDs, owning a CD and lending it to others doesn’t mean you’re claiming its content is your own creation.
Theft implies deprivation of ownership. Calling this theft is like calling piracy theft. It may be illegal by this or that metric, but it’s not normal theft.
Irrelevant. It’s still my content that I have sole rights to. If I want to share it to individuals I can do that if I please. You don’t have any rights to do anything else with it.
Incorrect. Your browser made it do that. How that data is accessed and displayed is not controlled by me. Case and point you can have extensions on your browser that changes how my websites are rendered.
That doesn’t give you a right to replicate my content elsewhere.
Because it’s not yours? And publishing it again elsewhere is effectively you claiming it is yours. Especially if published without attribution.
You guys can’t have this both ways. If an artist makes a painting… and posts a picture of it. They have no rights to the painting anymore? They deserve no ownership/pay for what they’ve done? If a news story is published… They have no rights to sell that story to another publisher just because you can copy and paste the text? This is absurd logic. My website has/had a cost. I bore it. I have sole rights to that content.
No, this has to do with rights of the content. Owning the CD grants you a license to the content on that CD. That’s about as good as ownership gets there. They own the CD/license. As long as that CD exists/works. You don’t gain that same right by simply visiting a website.
No it doesn’t. Taking content and using in an unauthorized way while gaining money or some other consideration is also theft. Wayback Machine and other archives are paid for somehow. If some content being on a site swayed someone to make a donation to that archive site, then that value should have gone to the original creator. That is theft. This is the core of most of the current lawsuits. Although they often equate this to “potential and future earnings” which is bullshit because oftentimes that content would never be have been viewed at whatever cost they ascribed.
That’s patently false. At a minimum, I can quote parts of your content, just as you can quote smaller portions of any published text anywhere, you don’t have to ask the publisher or author for permission. It’s also ridiculous and impossible to control, the content is on my private machine already, how can any law be relevant or exerted upon what I do there? I doubt you’re writing this comment on the basis of your knowledge of copyright law.
You’re arguing semantics that really don’t make any difference. The display is irrelevant, because the data by itself is stored on my computer before it is displayed. That data is what you’ve put up online to be accessed.
I fail to see the difference between getting a CD with some data (buying it or being given for free, as e.g. a gift) and being sent some data online for free. More importantly - says who? Does copyright law say this about websites?
This simply doesn’t follow from what I’ve written. They certainly retain the rights to the painting. Besides, “deserving pay” depends on completely different factors than the ones we’re discussing, usually artists sell the actual object, the painting. A digital reproduction is, as far as most people care (I think), merely an informative reproduction, and not the real thing. Stuff that’s posted online for free is… free. It wasn’t intended to be made money with directly.
Your final paragraph is really confusing me, you seem to be saying that Wayback Machine is also committing theft, which I’m pretty sure is not true (I’ve followed the lawsuits against IA for a while and don’t remember anyone invoking that term). And at this point I don’t know what “theft” is even supposed to mean to you or to anyone else, and what was the point of the discussion anyway. Maybe I should reread the whole discussion carefully all over again, but I’m on my phone and it’s all giving me a headache.
So child porn is okay then? You would already have it on your system and got it for free on your private machine!
I doubt you are either. Yet we’re both here.
It does… on paper… A lot. https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/ To the point it’s losing lawsuits over exactly that.
You’d have to look for it, knowing fully well that it is illegal to produce in the first place and distribute to others, access it online, and then deliberately retain it. It’s not really the same as something that’s legal to produce and distribute (it is certainly legal for me to view your site). You wouldn’t “already” have it.
Well I’ve read some copyright laws, had to solve some issues regarding usage of copyrighted works, etc. Nothing that makes me an expert, but I’m not talking wholly out of my ass either.
That’s not Wayback Machine per se, that’s Internet Archive’s book scanning and “digital lending” system, which was most definitely doing legally questionable (and stupid) things even to an amateur eye. However, Wayback Machine making read-only copies of websites has for now never been disputed successfully.
You’ve missed the point. Simply having something on your harddrive is already something the law does care about. It simply depends on the something.
So have I. Because I had access to an exception under it in my prior job. Seems like we’re still on the same page here. Not sure why you’d feel the need to call out someone else’s knowledge on a topic that you have no idea about.
Except it has. That’s why administrators can exclude domains from it. DMCA notices also can yield complete removals.
Well the whole premise of their argument is flawed because they’re basing it on the fact of redistribution. If I’m not redistributing it, then the whole argument of that falls away entirely. Under fair use, I believe you’re also allowed to make copies of things for research purposes, so I’d argue that’s what an archive is.
Copyright only protects distribution and derivative works. I can keep a copy of it on my local machine for as long as I want. Theoretically I can keep it until the copyright expires and then I can do whatever the fuck I want with it.
general copyright is 70 years. So no. You couldn’t do whatever you wanted with it as the computer you’re using would be long dead… and possibly you’d even be long dead. Replicating the content to another device without owners consent could and likely would be a violation of that same copyright.
Replicating a personal backup to another device is covered by free use. Only distribution and derivative works are covered by copyright.
And yes, the length of copyright is way too long. It recon it should be the same as patents, 20 years. Or let it be as long as the warranty and let the big companies duke it out with each other.