[Upd-discuss] Re: Ricardo: Public Domain issues for the COMMUNIA meeting
Andrius Kulikauskas
ms@ms.lt
Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:16:16 +0300
Ricardo,
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed letter which I share with the
COMMUNIA list and the UPD list.
I think fair use can be generously interpreted as a "gray zone" where
there is room for a range of solutions that make sure that nobody is
punished "black and white" (as with harsh fines) but everybody cares for
each other. For example, people could pay "distributor insurance" with
rates depending on how much content they are distributing. Larger
distributors would be encouraged to register and that could be done as
part of one's Internet Service Provider relationship. That way it would
become clear who are the big violators, the hubs of distribution, and
the little violators could be ignored. Rates could be adjusted to help
compensate and fund publishers who are affected the most by the
distribution. The insurers would mediate and aggregate payments, much
like royalty collection agencies but serving the public (and expanded
fair use) rather than the rights owners, which is much more attractive
than a many-to-many micropayment system which forces everyone to
personally and consciously judge everything in terms of money.
It might also be good to have a watermarking system where image or sound
files can be created with watermarks (visible or not) that are
registered with a registrar. Visible watermarks (like on a photo) or
audible watermarks (like would have to be respected and would be
understood to mean "don't remove this watermark" (thus giving a
practical way to impose "attribution" (for the author) or
"no-derivatives" (for appropriately "boxed" images or audio with start
and end sounds). Invisible/inaudible watermarks could be used to track
down the origins of content and provide information on content flow so
as to help work out overall compensation rather than pick on individual
users.
Also, people creating new work from old work could use software so as to
add their own (inaudible, invisible) watermarks to the existing
watermarks/metadata (for example, to JPGs or MP3s). Creators and
distributors voluntarily participating in this way might be rewarded by
being free of any civil violations because they are helping map out the
overall content flow and helping attribute compensation to the various
work creators. The end result would be to encourage creators and larger
distributors to help document the flow of content and help share the
wealth through insurance payments. Small distributors (normal people
sharing normally) wouldn't have to bother and would not be subject to
any penalties. Creators might also have a way to credit and acknowledge
"influences" which could be people or even causes. Everybody would
benefit, but especially from new uses of old content.
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
ricardoolpc wrote:
> Hi Andrius
>
> Thanks. That clarifies your understanding of public domain.
>
> You've already identified one good topic of 'whether unmarked work
> should be copyright by default or public domain by default". In
> addition, I'm quite interested in the the theme of 'compliance'...
>
> 1. Is it possible to comply with the laws on copyright and
> public-domain?
>
> 2. Is it easy to comply with the current law or future proposed law?
>
> 3. Do I have all the information neccessary? e.g. the unworkable life+70
> years copyright.
>
> 4. The distinction between deliberate non-compliance (copyright
> infringement/piracy) and accidental
> non-compliance/copyright-infringement.
>
> I think that a useful chunk of work would be for someone, such as Minciu
> Sodas, to develop a set of test-cases/scenarios that demonstrate what
> works/doesn't work in the current copyright law and in any future
> proposed law.
>
> In 4. above, if a copyright holder believes there copyright has been
> infringed, the current system is quite complicated. I'm no lawyer, but I
> think with the present law they would have to take the alleged infringer
> to court and just show 1 or possibly 2 things...
>
> 1. That an infringement occured.
>
> 2. That they suffered financial loss as a result.
>
> Deliberate infringement can be punished as now. No change required.
>
> For accidental copyright-infringement, I think it would be better to
> treat it like other 'accident situations' (you can use your knowledge of
> 'pattern languages' to re-use your knowledge of other 'accident
> situations').
>
> Under a new/modified copyright law, a copyright-holder would have to
> show...
>
> 1. That an infringement occured (the person used their work without a
> license).
>
> 2. Whether it was deliberate (punishable) or accidental.
>
> 3. If it was accidental, was it...
>
> i) Negligent, or
>
> ii) Not negligent - The user took all reasonable steps to avoid using
> unlicensed copyright material
>
> 4. That the copyright holder suffered financial loss, as a result of
> accidental and negligent infringement.
>
> This idea of negligent or not-negligent is a bit like inquiries into
> aircraft maintenance or 'someone fell off a ladder' accident-situations.
>
> Let's take a typical example of a publisher, who publishes a magazine
> with a whole mixture or authors and copyright.
>
> How would they check the authorship and copyright at the moment? They
> would need staff to read through everything, check records of it's
> origin, check licenses, etc. That's a costly, time-consuming and
> error-prone business.
>
> I wondered whether it would be possible for someone to produce software
> tools that assist with this or do 100% of it.
>
> We already have virus-checkers. These detect the 'signature' of viruses.
> They scan all the executable files etc on a computer and find sequence
> of bytes that they know occur in certain viruses. In the same way, it
> may be possible to scan chunks of text to see f they have the same
> 'signature' as known copyright works. I know it sounds difficult.
> Authors could use software to scan their published works, generate
> signatures for the whole work and parts of it, and register the
> signatures in an online database, for example.
>
> There are already some existing services that detect plagiarism by
> comparing school-work with Wikipedia etc.
>
> Perhaps the proces could be aided by adding machine-readable
> start/end-of-copyright tags etc to mark whole written works or sections
> of it with authorship and copyright status. For example, HTML for
> web-pages has pairs of tags around elements for Bold, Italic, Heading 1,
> etc...
>
> <AUTHOR JOHN SMITH><COPYRIGHT PUBLIC DOMAIN>some
> text</COPYRIGHT></AUTHOR>
>
> When you do a File, Save, the installed copyright-checker program (like
> a virus checker), could scan the document and produce a compiler-style
> error/warning report...
>
> Copyright report: Mybook.doc 2009-10-31 - You have 0 Errors and 0
> Warnings
>
> This sort of tool could be useful...
>
> a) To check and correct work before publishing it.
>
> b) To save evidence that 'You took all reasonable steps to avoid
> copyright-infringement' (as defence against negligence.
>
> The tools could help authors or magazine publishers etc work quickly,
> cutting and pasting various pieces of text, checking it, dealing with
> errors/warnings, etc, instead of manual reading of licenses.
>
> The tools could use a variety of methods to recognise copyright items.
> For example, when scanning an alleged 100% public domain software CD, it
> might check the 32-bit CRC Checksum of each file and find that you have
> accidentally used a graphics.dll file which is commercially copyrighted.
>
> If EU law could be amended to say that accidental and non-negligent
> copyright infringement is penalty-free, then that would be better than
> the current situation, where people are risk-averse and avoid using
> other people's work, due to uncertainty. Also, having software tools
> might provide clear answers to copyright questions and avoid a lot of
> cases coming to court.
>
> Have a good time at Communia.
>
> Ricardo
>
>
> --- In mendenyo@yahoogroups.com, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...> wrote:
>
>> Ricardo, Thank you for your very thoughtful comments on the draft of
>> European Union policy recommendations at
>>
>>
> https://private.communia-project.eu/wiki/index.php/Policy_recommendation\
> s
>
>> (username: communia_private; password: com9628mu)
>> I invite more comments before the Barcelona meeting of COMMUNIA on
>> October 1-2, 2009.
>> I share your thoughts more broadly.
>>
>> Some great ideas that you have are:
>> * Having the copyright expiration date be based on the year of
>>
> copyright
>
>> (which is typically available in the work) rather than the year the
>> author died (which is not available).
>> * Defining "voluntary immediate expiration of copyright" as one way of
>> placing one's own works in the Public Domain.
>> * The idea of a simple protocol is very good.
>>
>>
>> Notes to Ricardo:
>> * I don't distinguish between the Public Domain (as we use at our
>>
> Minciu
>
>> Sodas lab) and "expired copyright Public Domain".
>> * In practice, as I know at Minciu Sodas, if an author no longer wants
>> their work to be in the Public Domain, then there is not much
>>
> practical
>
>> alternative except for me to honor their request. Every so often I get
>> such a request and usually the solution is: I can delete their
>>
> letters;
>
>> but I won't delete replies that built on their letters. That answer
>> seems to work naturally in practice. The law should work likewise -
>>
> you
>
>> can revoke Public Domain - but your revocation has no effect on
>>
> existing
>
>> works - but on the other hand, those who you've informed have to stop
>> publishing new copies of your work - and so for practical purposes,
>> commercially, it solves the problem of inequity by having the
>>
> commercial
>
>> power (like a Hollywoood studio) decide whether they want to pay a
>>
> fair
>
>> price or divorce the contribution from their derived work. Something
>> like that seems to be fair and natural.
>> * In terms of backward compatibility, I think that it's possible for a
>> new law to be phased in by requiring all unmarked works to be marked,
>> say, over the course of a year, so that they may stay protected by
>> copyright.
>> * I think central for a simple protocol is the idea that if a creative
>> work is worth copyrighting, then it should include a reference (a
>>
> link)
>
>> to information about the work (including the metadata, an archive of
>>
> any
>
>> Public Domain works it builds on, and a way to contact the publisher
>>
> to
>
>> ask for permission for expanded fair use - with the understanding that
>> until they respond to you, you can assume that you've been granted
>>
> that
>
>> permission.
>> * I think insurance for "fair use" is good because it can also be a
>> vehicle for paying publishers their fair due when sharing occurs. You
>> can pay higher or lower rates for insurance as warranted based on your
>> sharing habits. The money would be used to compensate the publishers
>> (think of it as a friendly settling with class of users) rather than
>>
> to
>
>> pay for fines.
>>
>> Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
>>
>> ricardoolpc wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Andrius
>>> you asked for comments/ideas about the Public Domain issues on your
>>> worknets page, to prepare for the Communia EU debate.
>>>
>>> http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?PublicDomain
>>>
>>> I think I read somewhere that strictly-speaking, the term 'Public
>>> Domain' is reserved in law for works that have entered the
>>> public-domain because their copyright-period has ended. It varies
>>>
> with
>
>>> the type of work. For example, life+70 years. Is that correct.
>>>
>>> 1. One side-issue is "How is a user supposed to know when the author
>>> died?" There is no public global database. They are being forced to
>>> comply with a law, where the data required isn't available. Could it
>>> be replaced with a formula or simple rule, such as X years from
>>> authoring or first-publication? That means if a user sees Copyright
>>> 1947, they have all the information they need.
>>>
>>> 2. I found this useful UK government Intellectual Property Office
>>> website, that describes the terms Copyright, Public Domain, etc.
>>>
>>> http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy.htm
>>>
>>> 3. It mentions that a copyright-holder has copyright/financial
>>>
> rights
>
>>> over their work, and they can sell/transfer/etc their copyright or
>>> license it's use on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis (a bit like
>>> patents).
>>>
>>> It also says, copyright holders of artistic works, films, etc, have
>>> 'Moral rights' over their work, so they can object to it being used
>>>
> in
>
>>> an 'improper context'. For example, using your poem in a political
>>> magazine, implying support.
>>>
>>> http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-creator.htm
>>>
>>> It says (fair use, I hope) - "Copyright is, however, a form of
>>> property which, like physical property, can be bought or sold,
>>> inherited or otherwise transferred, wholly or in part. So, some or
>>>
> all
>
>>> of the economic rights may subsequently belong to someone other than
>>> the original creator or first owner. In contrast, the moral rights
>>> accorded to authors of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic
>>>
> works
>
>>> and film directors remain with the author or director or pass to his
>>> or her heirs on death. Such moral rights will last as long as
>>> copyright lasts provided the creator did not waive his moral
>>>
> rights."
>
>>> 4. Immediate Expiry of Copyright - For the EU debate, presumably,
>>>
> the
>
>>> EU is looking for simple ways tp draft the laws. Instead of spending
>>> years changing thousands of clause in hundreds of EU Country laws,
>>>
> dDo
>
>>> you think it would be a good idea for an (over-riding or amending)
>>>
> EU
>
>>> Law to state "Where copyright legislation gives a copyright holder
>>>
> the
>
>>> rights to a work for a specified term, the copyright-holder may
>>>
> choose
>
>>> to make the copyright-term expiry immediately".
>>>
>>> The original-copyright holder should maintain Moral Rights over
>>>
> their
>
>>> work for the normal term, just give up copyright/economic rights
>>> (putting the work in the public-domain).
>>>
>>> It assumes EU Law has precedence over member-country law.
>>>
>>> The EU Law needs to over-ride sentences like the first part of this
>>> one from the UK IPO "Such moral rights will last as long as
>>>
> copyright
>
>>> lasts...", so that the immediate expiry of copyright doesn't cause
>>>
> the
>
>>> immediate expiry of Moral Rights.
>>>
>>> (the full UK IPO sentence say "Such moral rights will last as long
>>>
> as
>
>>> copyright lasts provided the creator did not waive his moral
>>>
> rights.")
>
>>> Is there any difference between your concep/understanding of 'Public
>>> Domain' and 'Expired copyright public-domain'?
>>>
>>> 5. Backward compatibility - You suggested all works should be
>>> Public-Domain unless marked as copyright, I think. I'm thinking that
>>> may not be backward-compatible, as there are millions of printed
>>>
> pages
>
>>> around that are not marked as copyright. I believe the current law
>>> gives the author copyright, without marking or registering
>>>
> copyright.
>
>>> Is that correct?. It would be confusing, having a mix of old
>>>
> unmarked
>
>>> copyright work and new unmarked public-domain work. Someone picking
>>>
> up
>
>>> a piece of paper wouldn't know what the copyright status is, because
>>> they don't know when it was written.
>>>
>>> 6. I think a lot of the points/debate on your page are focused on
>>>
> the
>
>>> user of a work, and about what the user of a work can do. I think
>>>
> the
>
>>> law-makers are probably more focused on the laws and mechanisms for
>>> 'control of usage', the ability of the copyright-holder to give out
>>> and take away permission to use work (by means of licenses). You
>>>
> make
>
>>> some good arguments as to why changes are needed and provide
>>> motivation, but I imagine law-makers will be more in a frame of mind
>>> of "Bring me solutions, not problems".
>>>
>>> If your group can come up with some simple, practical changes to the
>>> law or mechanisms for implementing it, that may be quite persuasive.
>>> Ideally, there should be simple laws that everyone can understand
>>>
> and
>
>>> memorise the gist of, and someone picking up a work, should have all
>>> the information they need written-on/embedded-in the work itself,
>>>
> not
>
>>> require internet access to a registered copyright/public-domain
>>> works/dates database.
>>>
>>> 7. Taking back usage rights - Normaly a PD author would/could not
>>>
> take
>
>>> back rights to use something. An author may put something in the
>>> public domain, and people use it and base their income businesses on
>>> it. It's important not to wreck their business-plans later. When an
>>> author creates something like PD Software and believes it to be 100%
>>> their own work, they could say in the EULA "I give the user the
>>>
> right
>
>>> to use MY work without restriction" (not anyone else's). That form
>>>
> of
>
>>> words means that if later on, someone finds that the author has
>>> accidentally included a copyright file by someone else (e.g. a
>>> graphics library), the users can be informed they can no longer use
>>>
> it
>
>>> without restriction. The users would need a new version not
>>>
> containing
>
>>> the copyright file, or stop using it, or license the use of the
>>> graphics file, etc.
>>>
>>> 8. Protecting PD author's from massive lawsuits for accidental
>>> copyright infringement is another big issue. We don't want potential
>>> authors to be scared off PD publishing by high liability insurance
>>> etc, in the same way that people are scared off organising social
>>> activities by accident insurance.
>>>
>>> That's a few points to think about.
>>>
>>> Good luck with your discussions.
>>>
>>> Ricardo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> A Focus is being made on having a wireless internet connection for the
> community to help them have a place for information handling and
> transfer. There is motive of taking risks to help the community Develop.
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> <*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/
>
> <*> Your email settings:
> Individual Email | Traditional
>
> <*> To change settings online go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/join
> (Yahoo! ID required)
>
> <*> To change settings via email:
> mailto:mendenyo-digest@yahoogroups.com
> mailto:mendenyo-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
>
> <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> mendenyo-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>