MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-05-03 |
| FROM | NYLUG NYLUG
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] [nylug-talk] what is copyright abuse?
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>This would be not correct. Copyright violations are not theft.
<without your permission - but some one does - is that not theft?>>
That would be correct.
The abuse your talking about is MINOR compared to the abse I've been leveled with
the upsurping of NY Fair Use by Brett Wynkoop and Jay Sulzberger. They took nearly two
solid years of my work, and I mean WORK, all the copyrighted conent, all the NY Fair Use
Trade Marks, and domain, cybersquated on NYLXS.org for nearly a year, harrased every member
of NYLXS and NY Fair Use, lied about me in public and still use my name in there press reports
and take credit for my accomplishments. And our lawyer said to do exactly what your suggesting.
The problem is IT IS NOT RIGHT. The DMCA take down pervisions are just as bad as the rest of it.
Although I agree with Mike that the anti-circumvention provisions are of my more immediate concern,
the take down provisions violate due process every bit as much as the anti-circumvention clauses.
If the courts and expenssive and inexcessable because of the cost of lawyers, this problem is
NOT RESTRICTED to just copyright violations (which are not theft). This problem pervades every
ascpect of justice in America. Poor people can not adequately get justice in Amercia. This
includes tennents and their landlords, small businesses against the phone companies, patients
having trouble with their insurance companies, indivdiauls in representation with the IRS,
and on and on and on.
If you invent something really important today, you can be sure that a major company will try to steal it.
Just look at Netscape and Microsoft.
The cost of leagal representation in business (and criminal law) is a HUGE PROBLEM.
It is not solved by the DMCA. Instead, what the DMCA does is it gives a major content studios
fast solutions to prosecute copyright infringement cases in which EVEN THEIR LEGAL RESOURCES
would not be able to otherwise cope with. It sets a blanket of fear over the entire public.
It's not right. It doesn't FIX the problem of due proces, IT MAKES IT WORSE.
Specifically, answering the question of Copyright Violation when compared to theft...
Theft is when someone steals your property. Copyrighted WORKS, the WORKS THEMSELVES, are owned by
the public. You OWN A COPYRIGHT, which gives you limited exclussive legal privledges, if you can
enforce them in court. When someone takes a work and uses it in an unauthorized manner, such as
the NY Fair Use materials, or in the case of your writtings or songs, they are in violation of
very specific laws which define your privledges for disemination of your material in the market.
Copyright is a matter of business, and industrial law. It's violation is not robbery or larsony, which
is an inalianble right under the constitution.
One more point to Peter et al. There is recogniknized in the law inalienable human rights and this is
the basis in the Constitution. It is often the case the courts decide on rights which are inalenable
that are not even explicit in the Constitution.
Obviously, this is a process easly abusable. But niether modern conservatives or modern librals
would want a legal system and government which dispensed with this key truth.
Lastly, the anti-circumvention problem of the DMCA is NOT A LIBRAL ISSUE. If anything, it is
an issue which falls on the Right of the political spectrum. I like to think of it as being
dead center middle. The entire DMCA is a stalinist plot as far as I'm concerned.
Ruben Safir
Sole Founder of NY Fair Use, NYLXS, FSI, NYFSEI, FSCC and more alphabet soup...
See fairuse.nylxs.com and www.nylxs.com for more information
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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