[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

One can hope that copyright holders would shoot themselves in the foot: Gingrich sued for using Eye of the Tiger

Well, if the Composer of Eye of the Tiger doesn't want his musical creation to be associated with Gingrich's politics (and by extension, with Gingrich himself), then I think it's reasonable for Gingrich to be issued a "Cease and Desist" order. But suing him over it does seem excessive, and yeah, this is probably a case of a copyright holder shooting himself in the foot.

This could prove to be a good topic as it helps to widen the scope of discussion beyond what's currently raging in the Sopa/Acta threads, where the outrage tends to overshadow the underlying concerns about ownership and fair use.

That's the key term, in my view. "Fair use".

For a start, I do believe in the concept of "intellectual property" and I further believe that it ought to be protected. The question is to what extent? At this point, I feel that existing laws have swung too far in favour of owners.

I agree that existing laws have swung too far in favour of owners. I do think that it's important for creators (musicians, artists, writers, etc...) to have financial incentive to create what they create, so there are legitimate financial investments here that should be protected through some means at least.

So, with any case of copyright infringement, I don't think the question should simply be "Does this constitute copyright infringement?" but rather "Does this undermine the financial investment of the holder of the copyrighted material displayed here?"

In other words, I think that a burden of proof should be placed on people issuing claims of copyright infringement that the infringing material will result in lost sales. After all, that's what really is at issue here.

Now I can imagine some cases where this burden of proof can be met. If the copyrighted material is new, a complete copy, can only be legally accessed through some means of payment, and this material is disseminated to a sufficiently large number of people, I can certainly see a case here. So, for example, if someone pirates the next Batman movie as soon as it hits theaters, and puts it up on a site to be downloaded by millions, then yes, some sales have probably been lost here.

But for songs of a certain age, for parts of anime episodes, and for small pieces of video game content, I really don't think any of this comes even close to representing lost sales.


Copyright shouldn't turn every tiny bit of professionally made content into a kind of forbidden fruit where nobody is allowed to see it, touch it, ear it, mix it with anything else, etc...

Copyright should simply serve the goal of reasonably ensuring that the financial investments of creators and copyright holders are protected.


I think that more or less sums up my take on it.