Comment by Robert H. Goretsky of Hoboken, NJ

This worked in the pre-digital age when private copyright holders could effectively combat “piracy” at the industrial level. People didn’t have means to copy vinyl records (although my parents - I’m Russian - remember times when people in the Soviet Union somehow copied popular Western records as those were not available from the audio stores). At that time piracy at the personal level didn’t exist for technical reasons.

Later when compact cassettes were introduced to the market it started spreading as it became possible to record a radio broadcast where your favorite track was playing or make a copy for your friend or two. During these periods companies combated mainly illegal factories and illegal use in the commercial context.

When we entered the Information age their strategy became meaningless as the means of information reproduction have changed totally. They don’t know how to fight local networks, P2P networks, Web 2.0 websites. Yes, they can fine Napster, sue a random user of a P2P network but that’s not a capital punishment to those who infringe their copyright.

The truth is out there and I strongly believe that sooner or later, they’ll have to face the harsh reality and put their concepts upside-down. One of Google’s early business ideas was to sell premium access to search results but they learnt from Go2.com and changed the concept. What’s their business? Search, email? No, advertising. Everything else is a way to sell it. Media publishers whose content is most infringed should learn from that and give birth to new innovative concepts of making their content public.

For example, everyone should be able to share a game of baseball under a condition that advertising will not be cut out and you won’t be able to skip it. Also, there should be a way for content creators and copyright holders to know that it’s been played and created some value for their advertisers. Ideally, an advertiser should be able to change ads shown to reflect their current advertisers and make ads more relevant.

In other words, big stupid guys should reinvent their industry and replace cause with effect and vice versa. The first who does it will make a home run. They should OFFER their content to distributors and PAY them some of proceeds from advertising. They should chase distributors and beg them to promote their content. A technology should be built around it. Note that this system would benefit end users as they would not have to pay directly (they’d pay through that portion of price that’s formed by advertising costs). Also, it will benefit the makers of content that’s highly requested by the masses. Those who can read needs of their customers will succeed most.

That would totally change things and put an end to copyright hysteria that’s causing so much grief to everyone including copyright holders.

The posted article’s use of the video clip is itself an example of fair use.

As for the term of copyrights, two constitutional provisions are significant: first, the provision authorizing copyrights requires their term to be limited; second, after the fact legislation is prohibited. Between them, these prohibit congress from extending the term of existing copyrights. That is, they cannot change the limit retroactively nor can they provide an additional term (since the term would not then be limited).

Doug Lay states the core of the argument fairly well in an earlier comment: “Is there anything more tiresome than people who persist in comparing copyrights to physical property like cars and real estate? Come on - any 10-year old can see that when you take part of someone’s car you’re depriving them of the use of it, while if you copy part of someone’s song the original owner still has their entire work. Really, this whole “intellectual property” metaphor is pretty misleading and unhelpful.”

Precisely. The reason that intellectual property laws are so arbitrary (14 year copyrights? Why not 1,000 years? Why not 1 year?) is that IP is artificial and incompatible with good old traditional physical property rights. Does the NFL own the part of my brain that remembers the game? Does it own my mouth if I talk about the game?

IP problems (including the endless patent litigation, etc.) are not going to go away, they are just going to get worse because IP cannot be reconciled with our property rights in our bodies and our justly acquired physical property.

Does your mommy know you’re an idiot and keep bad company?

Like this is constructive - “BTW, you should stop spoiling this great blog with your political views and get back to what it’s all about. Tech News.”

I’m not saying we don’t need them, I do think these government-granted Intellectual Monopolies do serve a purpose, but they should be viewed as a necessary evil that restricts our freedom - sort of like eminent domain - and should not masquerade as some fundamental core tenet of a free society like property.

That said, the NFL announcement can say whatever it wants at the beginning of their program - “You must mail us $1000 if you watch this program” - but since you don’t agree to the terms, the material is governed by existing copyright law, not by their silly introductory statement.

Silly.

Will the tag show up in this post? If it doesn’t, use the Google: “fair use faden” will do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bK8AZSYtPU

HOWEVER!!!! In the mean time, what we ALL need to do is to follow the rules the NFL has set up TO THE LETTER.

Meaning….

EVERYONE needs to send the NFL a request to “describe” the game to a friend. Then send them another one asking for permission to describe the game to another friend. And so on and so on. Assuming that you need permission for each seperate act. Then we should write in to ask if we can gain permission for a group of two friends, i.e. “Dear NFL, I have a question about your permission. May I obtain permission to describe the game last night to two friends or maybe three? Or do I need seperate permission for each individual?”

That’s not to mention asking permission for different games. Just think about it. If I ask for permission to describe just three games to three different friends, that’s 9 requests that the NFL will need to process. EACH WEEK! This year’s season could be extremely long for the admin people at the NFL (National (dog)Fighting League).

Go away and quit trying to generate traffic to your web site.

The reason why the NFL is successful is because it vehemently defends and protects it’s brand and to keep things brief, the “brand” includes the content.

Now what you should do is listen very carefully to that copyright statement [if you watch football, you should probably have it memorized] and you will realize that it’s very explicit but you must be an idiot to think that is on a individual level.

Hockey is gay and mindless, basketball is boring and the field is too short. Baseball is supremely boring and a waste of a good day [also way too many games], and lastly SOCCER should be outlawed in this country.

FOOTBALL IS KING.

http://www.techcrunch.com - please note on this day, that the following site made a quixotic and hubris laden post about how the NFL copyright statement can be interpreted to mean that you, the individual, cannot discuss or rebroadcast the game, provide still photos, videos, etc.

WOW, obviously your IQ is nested right around

On ars technica yesterday, Nate Anderson wrote about the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s “Defend Fair Use” initiative.
It’s a nice run-down of the effort by Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun, Red Hat, and others to rein in…

That’s the most absurd attempt at a parallel I’ve seen in a while. The point of fair use is more akin to “Since I drive my car in the public streets as do you, you have the right to talk about my car.” There is no implication that you, as an individual declaring fair use, can create your own football match using the NFL logo, NFL team names, or their stadiums etc. Only if that were the premise behind free use, would FreeForm5 be marginally correct.

Think before you write bubba.

Probably for the same reason you chose to post your thoughts. Ya know, freedom to think and form an opinion. Or is that just for you? if you don’t like it, perhaps you should leave.

We need to have a goddamn ruling on this for once and for all.

Either we will be able to think about the world around us and talk about it or we won’t.

Let’s have a goddamn war and find out who the winner is and who the loser is.

Duncan - you are obviously not a lawyer. No where in the NFL’s statement does it limit a fan from talking about a game.

Please Please, I am begging you — stick to writing about Tech Gossip. That is what Techcrunch does best

Socialist would be, like, granting artists monopolies over all copies of information because they couldn’t compete in a free market for copies of information. Trivially, each copy of some information is a different physical thing, and different physical property. But to “help the starving artists” (talk about socialism!), physical property rights are trashed!