Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

For example, when Charles Dickens was writing and publishing his novels in serial form in magazines he didn't have any significant problem with unauthorized copies in the United States even though at the time the United States copyright law did not cover imported foreign works such as his.

That was because by the time the unauthorized publishers got a hold of the next chapter and could get started with the typesetting for making their own copies, the authorized copies for the United States were already sailing across the Atlantic. They makes of unauthorized copies would have to wait for another transatlantic sailing to get theirs to the US.

The result was Dickens' authorized copies were the only ones available in the US for something like a month or so. By the time unauthorized copies could make it over, something like 95% of the people who were interested in the story had already read it in the authorized magazine.

Google "The Uneasy Case for Copyright" and you can find an essay by United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer written in 1970, when he was still an academic, arguing that these kind of natural advantages of being first to market had generally been enough incentive for creators. There have been a couple essays in response too, which should show up on that search.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian_of_Congress

If I may go into fanboy mode for a moment, I'd like to say that in my opinion the Library itself is one of the crown jewels of the federal government. It is also definitely worth a visit if you're ever in DC. They give free tours of the Jefferson building, and besides the beautiful architecture of the building itself, there are some very interesting exhibits on display. There's a surprising amount to see, and the staff are great- very knowledgable and friendly.

Besides its main missions of supporting congressional research and acting as the central repository library, the LoC also does a ton of great research on media preservation and archival practices... I got to tour one of their labs once- in one room I talked with an expert in the chemistry of inks used in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the next room heard from other people who specialized in CD and audiotape manufacturing, who could talk about how specific manufacturing plants in Japan changed processes from year to year and how that affected the archival lifetime of their products. Just amazing stuff, and that wasn't even scratching the surface.

Explain the use of "superfluous" in that sentence, please.

> One example: copies of content kept in RAM qualify as infringing copies under the Copyright Act. Judges have been lamenting that in their decisions since the first one, but they feel the law must be interpreted that way. This has a lot of complicated consequences, and it's just a single example of how our technology law is badly damaged and needs repair.

Can you give some examples of judges lamenting that?

I don't see why you think this particular thing needs repair. Generally programmers and engineers do consider a program loaded into RAM to be a copy of the program. Copyright law uses a fairly simple, common sense definition of "copy" which generally includes things that most people would consider copies. So, we end up with programs in RAM being copies of the program on disk from which they were loaded.

But we don't want running a program that you have a legitimate authorized copy of on your disk to require extra permission from the copyright owner, so we need to find a way to make doing so not count as a violation of the copyright owner's copying right.

There are two ways to do that.

One way would be to change the definition of "copy" so as to not include it.

Another way would be to add a specific limitation on the copyright owner's exclusive rights that says they are not applicable in this case.

The first approach, changing the definition of "copy", is bad. First of all, it makes the legal term "copy" further diverge from the English term "copy", and in this particular case from what programmers and engineers mean when they say "copy". Second, nearly everything in copyright law depends on knowing what a copy is, so adding complexity to the definition to deal with one special case complicates almost everything.

The second approach addresses the particular problem at hand, and does not leak complexity into other parts of the law.

We went with the second approach. See 17 USC 117, "Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs" for details.

That's the approach for most special cases in the Copyright Act. Section 101 gives broad definitions, usually reasonably well aligned to the common understanding of the terms. Section 106 gives the copyright owner certain exclusive rights. Then there are a bunch of sections that reign in those rights somewhat, for example with fair use in section 107, library use in 108, and first sale in 109.

If we tried to handle all of that by diddling with the definition of "copy" to make doing those things not involve copies the law would end up ridiculously complicated.