[Free-sklyarov-uk] Corrupt CD's - Time for another protest/leafleting session?

[Alistair Davidson]

Chuck Heffner wrote:

 >>> As to works that have passed the lapse time they are irrelevant. There
 >>>
 > is
 >
 >>> no copyright on them.
 >>>
 >> Precisely! So I should be able to copy them... but if a work I own has
 >>
 > lapsed
 >
 >> copyright, I can't copy it if it has "content protection".
 >>
 >
 > I don't know how different it is in the UK, but both of these threads are 
inapplicable.
 >  For comment 1, the only creative works that have lapsed per copyright
 > law are texts and visual works of art - there is no *recorded* music that
 >  has lapsed under copyright law in the US or the UK. (copright=lifetime
 > of author plus 95 years). Hope you enjoy burning your copy of an early
 > 20th century book.


Well, that's where Abobe's e-books come in I guess. I use Project Guttenberg 
rather a lot, so I certainly appreciate lapsed-copyright works.

However, you've missed my point. no audio recording may have lapsed *yet*, but 
it'll happen sooner or later, at least in theory (I'm ignoring the Mickey 
Mouse effect). The point is that if we content-'protect' everything *now*, 
works produced *now* won't be available when they lapse from copyright. In 
other words, they have been stolen from the public domain.

Sure, it'll suddenly become legal to circumvent the 'protections', but the 
tools to do so will still be illegal unless every work 'protected' by the same 
  encryption scheme has also lapsed.

The implications of that are staggering, more so in the US where the 
constitution guarantees that copyright has a limited term.

 > Per comment 2, while Beethoven's 9th composition has slipped into the
 > public domain, any recordings of his are the copyrighted property of the
 > performing artist (their interpretation of his work, fully
 > copyrightable). If I go out today and buy the LSO's rendition of B's 9th,
 >  and make it available online, I'm guilty of copyright infringement. The
 > only recordings the public is entitled to for free would be recordings of
 >  B's 9th that precede December 7th, 1906, and the current copyright
 > holder *does* have the right to "copy-protect" it since they own it and
 > there's no law or precedent against corrupting CDs.

Whether they have the right, legally, to copy-protect it is not at issue. 
Whether they have the *moral* right is.

-- 
Alistair Davidson
Read my comic, Bizmatch! http://www.altgeek.org/lord_inh/comic/index.html
"Disloyalty in a democracy is to stop asking questions."