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Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

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Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#101

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

SeanLuke wrote: post #77
gdhbcc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that copyright is the only way to make money out of writing, which is simply untrue.

Okay. So using the J.K. Rowling example: provide a plausible way that she could make money off of her writing, and particularly her first risky book, in the absence of copyright.

There are a number of cases where creators of popular works have been granted substantial sums to create subsequent works through crowdsourcing.

Edit for examples.

Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.

Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.

Yes, it works for books, too: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#102

Post by stx »

rumanator wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. Sweden has had 2,300 COVID-19 deaths for 10 million people. The USA has 25 times as many deaths, but 32 times the population. Indeed, American cities with similar population and density to Stockholm have far fewer deaths. Washington DC is a little smaller and has similar density, but has had 165 deaths, versus over 1,100 in Stockholm. (Deaths are dou…

> The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. You should check the facts. In the past few weeks New York alone reported more covid infections and deaths than Spain's total from the start of their outbreak, and New York has around 25% the population of Spain. New York also has between 2 to 3 times the number of active covid cases that Spain has, which indicates the death count will only get far…

Your ignoring population size and focusing on totals. We are talking about the USA overall. According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ as of now:

Country, Deaths / 1m pop, Cases / 1m pop

USA 171, 3,045

Spain 503, 4,907

Italy 446, 3,298

Sure if you cherry pick the worst city in the US and compare it to Italy or Spain then yes you can make it look like there are more cases in the US and be technically correct but overall the US is doing better then Italy and Spain.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#103

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #56
Retric wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They overturned an at the time recent Supreme Court verdict, which is disruptive and counter to long standing precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_v._Michigan_Chamber_of_...

That doesn’t make a decision “wrong.” Lots of Supreme Court opinions are wrong, and often obviously so. There is nothing wrong with overruling them. Citizens United was an instance of the government sliding down a slippery slope of precedent, which forced that precedent to be re-evaluated. The facts (the government attempting to punish someone for distributing a political movie about a political candidate) were so st…

Treating the court as a purely political entity which will flip flopping on issues as the majority changes is counter to it’s design.

The the normal way this is maintained is to have narrow opinions on the specific issue at hand. As such I can agree politically and still say the ruling was unequivocally incorrect.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#104

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

An author's children shouldn't get jack unless the author saved royalties for them.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#105

Post by WalterBright »

SeanLuke wrote: post #77
gdhbcc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that copyright is the only way to make money out of writing, which is simply untrue.

Okay. So using the J.K. Rowling example: provide a plausible way that she could make money off of her writing, and particularly her first risky book, in the absence of copyright.

Hosting workshops, personal appearances, giving lectures, being paid to write more material.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#106

Post by RobAtticus »

rumanator wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. Sweden has had 2,300 COVID-19 deaths for 10 million people. The USA has 25 times as many deaths, but 32 times the population. Indeed, American cities with similar population and density to Stockholm have far fewer deaths. Washington DC is a little smaller and has similar density, but has had 165 deaths, versus over 1,100 in Stockholm. (Deaths are dou…

> The US has not been harder but than Italy or Spain, or even Sweden. You should check the facts. In the past few weeks New York alone reported more covid infections and deaths than Spain's total from the start of their outbreak, and New York has around 25% the population of Spain. New York also has between 2 to 3 times the number of active covid cases that Spain has, which indicates the death count will only get far…

>You may try to cherry pick anything, but the facts are the facts.

I enjoy the irony of criticizing someone for cherry-picking, while using NY as a proxy for how the whole of the US is doing.

Perhaps you could've picked the state that is most directly comparable to Spain in population and land size, California: 1/10th as many people dead per million. (But that too would be cherry-picking)

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#107

Post by henryfjordan »

rayiner wrote: post #53
supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

How is copyright anti-competitive? If you come up with an original work independently, why do competitor principles require ever letting someone else copy that work? We aren’t talking about limited resources here.

"Competitive" in the context of IP laws means competing to sell exactly the same thing (not 2 different books, or even 2 books from the same genre, but the exact same text). Copyright laws prohibit you from selling a thing I hold the copyright to, so they are by definition anti-competitive. We otherwise might be able to compete on price or availability, for instance.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#108

Post by dredmorbius »

javajosh wrote: post #93
supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

You make two arguments here, one about degree and the other about kind. As for kind, as others have pointed out, the intent of IP law is to create artificial scarcity . The marginal cost of information is 0, so you have to put turnstiles somewhere. Society has kind of blundered and stumbled into the mishmash of enforcement measures we have today, but the intent is to reward content creators. If you accept this is a g…

The problems with the DRM route are ... well known. See the EFF (https://www.eff.org/issues/drm) and FSF (https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/drm.html) especially.

Among other matters:

- Your devices are no longer fully under your control, and don't answer to you.

- Even where DRM isn't itself directly. malware (Sony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...), it inevitably creates backdoors for APTs.

- The legal proscriptions on analysing and assessing ADRM mechanisms create both minefields for researchers and multiply the existing security threat risk.

But most critically, and pretty much fully torpedoing your voluntarism argument, device vendors may be contractually or legally prohibited from producing non-DRM-afflicted devices in their own relationships with DRM gatekeepers, meaning that there are no (or very crippled or expensive) DRM-free alternatives.

Witness ongoing efforts to plug the "anologue hole" (https://www.eff.org/issues/analog-hole) in various devices and software.

FWIW, my complete crap Chrome browser on my complete crap Samsung Android device refuses to allow me to screenshot this HN thread claiming it is a "DRM protected page".

I'd love to replace the device with something vaguely comparable. Between licensing restrictions, monopoly coercion, and market dynamics, there is literally nothing available.

Or more briefly: Your assertion is absolutely unsupported by empirical experience.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#109

Post by WalterBright »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #65
supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

If you want to retain a professional creative class then you must implement a system that allows them to benefit from the works they produce. To rely on people producing things producing things without economic incentive is essentially the argument for anarchosocialism. It might work to some small degree for passion projects, but what the overall volume of creative production would collapse as creatives would have to…

As usual, we can look at history for answers.

In the 19th century in Germany, Germany had no copyright or patent laws. There was an explosion of creativity and technological progress, and Germany became the European leader economically and technologically.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#110

Post by foxbarrington »

baybal2 wrote: post #87
btown wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading and listening to https://www.oyez.org/ - a fantastic resource for Supreme Court transcripts - it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact…

FYI: a lot of US supreme court opinions are not even written by justices, but by their law clerks and assistants. Similarly, judges deputise their legal research to them at rate that would be rather unsettling for most of us outside of US. Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to d…

> Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to deputise his most important duties.

$250k is what 4th year lawyers at big firms like Cravath make. Partners can make 10x or more, and a lot of the work of partners is done by associates. [0]

If an associate has clerked for a supreme court justice, they can expect bonus of $400k. [1]

I don't know of a justice who has gone back to private practice, but it doesn't take too much to imagine that their salary would be much, much more than a quarter million USD.

[0]: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/first-firm-matches-the-new-a... [1]: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/11/400k-is-now-the-official-mar...

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