🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.003412.10710@news.columbia.edu>,
dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
> [stuff deleted]
>
>    I believe that copyright must be anchored in the concept of harm, or it is
> of no value to society. We believe that copying and distributing other's work
> is bad. But when it is bad, it is so because of harm, and not because of some
> idealized model of human behavior.
>
> This, of course, is not a legal argument.  [...]

Sure isn't. Copyright is founded on property law - i.e. right to own something.

>  However, noone obeys all laws all the time. I feel that copyright law
> should be treated as every other law. If you feel that what you are doing
> does not harm anyone, then  continue to do it.

You may argue that I'm not harmed by you using my house when I'm not (and
let us assume you don't generate any bills for me to pay  :-)   ).  Does
that analogy make the argument simpler to understand.

Anyway, the right to claim that using something is harmful stays with the
owner of that something. You may of course have a different view, but you
cannot claim that the argument isn't a legal one.

>   To show harmlessness, I hope to show that the images posted to a.b.p.e 
> are not really in competition with the works they originate in. The first
> feature is completeness.
>
> [stuff deleted]
>
>   A.b.p.e doesn't compete with Playboy (for example) because noone ever
> posts the whole magazine. Or even a whole pictorial. [...]

First, some of the pictures are copyrighted by someone other than the magazine.
Some magazines also make business by selling pics to others. Thus you may harm
the copyright owner even if you don't harm the magazine by reducing the number
of sold copies. Second, you cannot compare copying pictures with copying text. 
Third, to claim "fair use" when distributing a picture on the net (i.e. very
different from making a few xerox copies) requires that you use it as a part of
something. Posting just the picture is not, even if you spent a lot of time
scanning the image. You may, however, include a copyrighted picture in for
example a critique of a magazine and survive in court.

>   The second feature is market coverage. I want to compare this with posting
> commercial software to the net.
>   The users of the net are very interested in pornography. This shows that
> the demographics of porn users covers that of usenet users (predominately
> young males). But the demographics of usenetters(computer nerds) doesn't
> cover pornography. The percentage of users of pornography that have access to
> usenet (even indirect) is small.
> [...]

Assuming your analysis of the Usenet readership is correct I cannot see how
your argument is valid. Usenetters are a potential group of buyers. And more
important, publishers are users of the electronic media. If the copyright
owners would never use the net you would actually have an argument.

>   The third feature is timelyness. Compare and contrast a.b.p.e to a generic
> book, and to clarinet.
>   Pornography by it's very nature is ephemeral. [...]

Not true. Pictures, pornographic as well as others, are recycled and the good
ones will have a long lifetime. A picture may be used by several magazines in
several countries for a long time. A picture is indeed long lived.

I do not claim much knowledge of the porn industry, but these people have made
an investment paying models, studio rent, photographers et cetera. They want to
maximize return on investment. If they can reuse pictures or film footage they
sure will. You may feel that it's a rip off, and you're probably right. It's
probably the essence of the business.

News from a news service is different, and copyright law in at least Norway
deal with this kind of property separately.

> Exactly how much value is in last month's Playboy?

Don't know about the magazine, but for the pictures you can call a picture
bank and ask them.

>   Fourth is the physical state of the copied work. [...]

The correct term is medium and I mentioned this above. First, the publishers
do use the electronic media themselves. That means you're competition. Second,
the reduced quality of a scan does not remove the copyright. It's derivated
work.

>   Last is unorganization. Anybody still here?
> [...]

Didn't get the last argument, but the `net' isn't an organization that can be
made responsible - sure. You cannot sue, but there are a lot of sites out there.

---
Haakon Styri				*** std. disclaimer applies ***
Norwegian Telecom Research

Dan's signature says it all:

>This article is for entertainment purposes only. Any facts, opinions,
>narratives or ideas contained herein are not necessarily true

Nothing you have said alters either the law, or the culpability
of a bbs (or usenet) system administrator should they be made
aware of illegal (for copyright OR OTHER REASONS) material posted
on their systems.

		-Richard Hartman
		hartman@ulogic.COM

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Badges?  I don' got to show you no stinkin' badges!"

In article <1992Nov18.003412.10710@news.columbia.edu>, dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
> 
>    Since I have been arguing about copyright in relation to a.b.p.e, I felt
> I should explain more clearly and fully my point of view, and give others a
> chance to see my whole argument and to respond to it.
>    I believe that copyright must be anchored in the concept of harm, or it is
> of no value to society. We believe that copying and distributing other's work
> is bad. But when it is bad, it is so because of harm, and not because of some
> idealized model of human behavior.
>    This, of course, is not a legal argument. I do not pretend it is, and I do
> not think it could be used in a defense of a lawsuit.   [...]

Which is exactly what you might find yourself doing if you act on this
belief.

_Your_ opinion doesn't count.  Only the Court's opinion counts in such
matters.

In any event, your opinion does not agree with either copyright law
nor with court decisions on copyright law.  If someone sues you for
copyright violations, it is _not necessary_ for them to show that
they were harmed in order to get a court decision against you.  It
is only necessary to show copying beyond `fair use'.  It is quite
possible to get stuck with substantial civil penalties _even if you
did not profit one DIME from the copying_.  You may also be ordered
to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees and court costs;  it may also
issue an injunction against your activities, and if you persist after
that you can be found to be in contempt of Court.  Once the Court
decides against you it has wide discretion in setting the penalty;
it's not even up to the plaintiff (though of course they will probably
ask for substantial damages and/or penalties, otherwise why go through
with a lawsuit).

In the Event Horizons case, it was easy to put a _minimum bound_ on
the damages suffered:  the amount of money EH made reselling the
images -- presumably Playboy could have made the money themselves by
running their own BBS.  The damages might well have been greater,
by redistribution of the images by unknown third parties.  In any
case it wouldn't have been necessary to show damages at all, although
the fact of damages makes the lawsuit more attractive.

There are numerous people who have argued about whether there _ought_
to be intellectual property laws - Richard Stallings (sp?), of GNU
fame, for one.  But so far as I know he hasn't tried to appropriate
anyone else's copyrights -- just registered his opinion that the law
as it stands now is too restrictive.

Without this initial premise, most of your other arguments are fatally
flawed.  They could be taken as an argument for _changing_ the law,
but as an _interpretation_ of the existing law they are worthless.

>    Last is unorganization. Anybody still here?
>    Although it couldn't probably be considered fair use, it doesn't seem to
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> me to be particularly harmful if a person scans an image, and distributes it
> through usenet. The problem is that a.b.p.e has grow to very large size. But
> the fact remains that there is no leader, and no organizer, and each article
> is the whim of the individual poster.

This is entirely a _practical_ problem from the point of view of a
potential plaintiff.  It would be difficult to sue umpteen thousand
different sites, many of which would probably not really be aware of
specific copyright violations.  It would not be difficult to sue the
poster of such an item, although they may not get much money from a
starving student.  They could still obtain court injunctions to cease
and desist which from a copyright owner's point of view might be
almost as good.

>     This, I think is what the alt net was supposed to be about. Of course,
> you can get what you want from alt and leave the rest, but that's not the
> point.  The ideal of alt was an uncontrolled network. Totally uncontrolled.
> That means that ideally the only reason not to carry an alt group is it's
> unpopularity.  Otherwise you make _no_ judgments about it. To drop a group
> because some special interest group feels it is used to break laws is not
> quite the right way to think about it.

That's not the way I remember it.  The alt groups were created because
some people objected to the bureaucracy required to create a usenet group;
in fact many alt groups have migrated to groups in the normal usenet
hierarchy once they became permanent and accepted groups.  I don't recall
_anyone_ at the time making the argument that a blind eye would be turned
to any illegal activities in the alt groups -- in fact if that had been
the case I suspect that they would never have been created in the first
place.  Site administrators (both educational and commercial) as a group
are rather more conservative about such things than undergraduates :-).

In another article you mentioned that you felt that it was too restrictive
to avoid posting copyrighted material to the net, and that that infringed
on the `freedom' of the net & that there was too little uncopyrighted
material.  I disagree.  There is a _great_ _deal_ of uncopyrighted
material, or material with the equivalent of the GNU `copyleft' which
from the point of view of distribution on the net is nearly the same
thing.  It seems to me that the vast majority of the articles on the net
are in fact in this public-domain or `copyleft' category.

If the only way that you can find any value on the net is by pirating
other people's copyrighted works, then frankly I feel sorry for you.

Bruce C. Wright

In article <1992Nov18.225743.12386@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>Many people misunderstand copyright as strictly the right to sell a work.
>It is not.  It is the right to control what is done with your creation.
>The most obvious benefit of this control is the right to charge money for
>granting permission to copy, but it is not the entirety of it.
>
   I think that if they aren't being hurt, that most creators would be happy
that others are making good use of thier works. At least works that they
have exposed to the public. Since I think a.b.p.e is harmless, I think most
creators wouldn't object to it. I don't think I would.

>
>This argued, even the argument that this does not hurt the creators does not
>hold water.  Penthouse has recently started an online service.

   This makes me worry. I don't want the commercial world to conflict with
the usenet world.  This online service will be the first big direct conflict.
Of course, there is no doubt that Penthouse will win. And they will need to
take action. I can't imagine an online service being really profitable with
a.b.p.e to redistribute the product to 80% of your potential market. (Remember
that Event Horizons was stealing it's raw material).
   So if they are serious about the online service, a.b.p.e will eventually
be shut down.
   Alt.sex.pictures began an experiment in freedom of information. It was a
tremendous success. I have argued that it never was harmful. As a collection
of individuals scanning and posting a few favorite pictures, it was small
potatoes. I think the current controversy revolves around the fact that even
though the character hasn't changed the size has grown with the number of
users. Even though a.b.p.e is still  an unorganized group of individuals, it
is big by any measure.
   Without harm, freedom should rule. If online services had existed before
usenet, I would have had no problem with opposing a.s.p.  But since a.s.p
came first, it will be a real loss of freedom if new industries kill it. It
will be a great pity, I think, if the desire to make money restricts our 
ability to use the net for whatever the users want it for.

DanZ
-- 
This article is for entertainment purposes only. Any facts, opinions,
narratives or ideas contained herein are not necessarily true, and do
not necessarily represent the views of any particular person.  

In article <1992Nov20.012853.14667@news.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>In article <1992Nov18.225743.12386@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>
>>Many people misunderstand copyright as strictly the right to sell a work.
>>It is not.  It is the right to control what is done with your creation.
>>The most obvious benefit of this control is the right to charge money for
>>granting permission to copy, but it is not the entirety of it.
>>
>   I think that if they aren't being hurt, that most creators would be happy
>that others are making good use of thier works. At least works that they
>have exposed to the public. 

So I should feel free to distribute Larry Niven's "Ringworld" on the
net, because he has already exposed it to the public?

I don't know which "creators" you are talking about.  Most of 'em
actually *like* their royalties.....

Perhaps the key in your argument lies in the phrase "...good use...",
but for the life of me I don't really see how that matters, nor (more
to the point) why you should be allowed to be the arbiter of what is a 
"good use" over the opinions of the creator of the work.


>   Without harm, freedom should rule. If online services had existed before

We exist under the rule of law.  If you don't like the law, lobby
to get it changed.  Advocating ignoring laws that one finds inconvenient 
is the road to anarchy.



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Philosopher and plowman			|
each must know his part			|	-Richard Hartman	
to build a new mentality		|	hartman@uLogic.COM
closer to the heart!			|

In article <1992Nov20.012853.14667@news.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>   I think that if they aren't being hurt, that most creators would be happy
>that others are making good use of thier works. At least works that they
>have exposed to the public. Since I think a.b.p.e is harmless, I think most
>creators wouldn't object to it. I don't think I would.

Sigh.  The whole point here is that copyright law gives the creator that
choice.  The creator is free to decide what distributions to allow, including
free ones.  If the creator doesn't think she's being hurt, she is allowed
to release it.   The FSF wants their stuff distributed, but on their terms.
Other people write freeware and have fewer terms.  Some people release to
the PD and give up all their rights.

But that decision is up to the owner of the copyright.  If Penthouse pays
models and photographers and doesn't want to give it out free, that's up
to them.

All these people run around rationalizing "I don't think it hurts anyone."
You can do that to a point, but you're being wilfully blind if you argue
it in a case where the people who get to decide have been asked and said
no.

And if they haven't been asked, asking is not hard.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366

dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:


>   So my argument in favour of a.b.p.e is basically that the group does not
>harm publishers of pornography. My argument looks at 5 features of the images
>posted, and tries to show how they contrast to cases where the harm is more
>evident.
>   You may not feel that all the argument are relevant. Indeed, many will feel
>that my whole article is irrelevant. But I hope people will see more clearly
>where I stand.

>   To show harmlessness, I hope to show that the images posted to a.b.p.e 
>are not really in competition with the works they originate in. The first
>feature is completeness.
>   How many of you xerox articles from professional journals, and fail to
>send in the $2.00 required? How many of those with thier hands up would
>refrain from copying a whole magazine even if you were motivated to? The 
>concept of fair use allows you to make limited copies of works without
>violating copyright. But I don't think there is a clear dilineation between
>acceptable and otherwise.
>   A.b.p.e doesn't compete with Playboy (for example) because noone ever
>posts the whole magazine. Or even a whole pictorial. What you normally see is
>1-5 good pictures from a particular magazine. The extent of copying these
>images will go through probably excludes them from 'fair use', but where is the
>harm in it? The editors of Playboy would certainly object if you said that 
>those 5 images where the total worth of the 80 page magazine. I can see that
>it would be harmful to post the entire contents of a magazine to the net.
>(that very well might start happening in the not-too-distant future).

Playboy is *actively* going after people distributing those pictures *because*
it harms them. Specificly, because it greatly reduces the market for *their*
electronic image distributions. Yes, they are going into this field. 

The difference between the (minor) harm of not sending in the $2 for that
magazine article, and distributing a Playboy pinup via Usenet is precisely
the difference between making a copy of an extract and distributing free 
copies of said extract. You impair the ability of the copyright holder
to get people to buy extracts from them.

The law is clear, and so is the marketplace. Free copies *do* harm the
copyright owner. And they harm the consumer too. I'm quite sure that
any GIF or JPEG files produced by Playboy or the other publishers will
be superior in quality to many of the badly scanned images we see now.

You are in effect asserting "*I* see no harm in it, therefore there is 
no harm." 
-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)

In article <1992Nov20.012853.14667@news.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>   I think that if they aren't being hurt, that most creators would be happy
>that others are making good use of thier works. At least works that they
>have exposed to the public. Since I think a.b.p.e is harmless, I think most
>creators wouldn't object to it. I don't think I would.

Humph!  You don't think you would do you?  Why do I get a funny
feeling you haven't ever "created" anything?

Most "creators" (i.e. artists, authors, software designers, etc.)
copyright their works *precisely* because they feel quite strongly
that since aforementioned works are the result of their labour and
creativity it should be their priviledge to retain control over what
is done with said works.

Note that even "creators" who give their works away without financial
compensation (such as for example the Free Software Foundation) feel
this way most of the time and thus claim copyright of their work.

- Jurgen Botz