Is for all the students to sign a non-copyright waiver forfeiting their right to copyright over any material produced for the school thus forcing all of their work to be public domain. This should hopefully stop all of the stupid claims that students have made that their work is copyright and cant be sent of to third parties, or used in a magazine without their permission. It would be good if all public schools had to do this for their teaching material as well. Would give teachers better access to other teaching materials and hopefully refine classes at a much faster rate.
To quote your article, "They're apparently screaming angry at Google." Where is your reference for this? How do you know beyond pure assumption that they are angry? Have they written a letter of complaint? Perhaps they are more then happy to pay for the service they have requested Google to provide.
I think that that the Author may now owe the RIAA an apology.
As big fans of Inside Story, we were disappointed to read the article “Copyright Cops”. Unlike the usual reflective and well-informed pieces featured in Inside Story, “Copyright Cops” takes a small pinch of information and whips it up with liberal doses of innuendo and emotive posturing.
We are told conspiratorially: “Copyright law has evolved largely as a response by governments to the demands of powerful media and content industries”. We are also told – again without analysis or substantiation – that copyright law in Australia is now, “tilted decisively towards copyright holders, including famous artists and big publishers, and away from rights users like libraries, schools and gyms”. Should we readers deduce that the moral of this tale is, ‘big is bad and small is good’?
Regardless of what you think about the Copyright Tribunal’s decision in the PPCA/ Fitness First case (there are many and different perspectives on both sides), if you are going to use it as a springboard to launch an attack on collecting societies, then find out a little more about how collecting societies work (e.g. regular reporting to the ACCC) and let this produce a more enlightening story about the public benefits sought in Australia by allowing collecting societies their special operating privileges.
In relation to the case itself, if ‘big is bad and small is good’ then perhaps we should consider that Fitness First generated revenues of $327.6 million in 2008-2009, in a fitness industry that turned over $2.5 billion in revenue in the same year. The average creative income of a composer in Australia currently stands at about $12,000 per annum. Furthermore, because it would be logistically impossible for individual composers to collect payments from users, their incomes would be much lower without collecting societies to do so on their behalf.
Copyright ascribes a value to culture and gives those who create cultural works the right to be rewarded for their creative effort. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines both the rights of creators to such a reward and the rights of users to access cultural works. It is true that copyright law is complex area and also true that it has become more complex in the digital age. But please Inside Story, can we have a little more rigour in future articles on this subject?
Mary Anne Reid
Chief Executive
Australian Copyright Council
Derivatives are an fanciful invention which allows legal traded companies, to take your money and theirs and "gamble" it. The whole point of the stock exchange is to give companies the ability to raise capital from the public. The public hopefully get a return on this. Its not gambling, its called investment. Derivatives on the other hand, dont produce anything, in fact they are a leech on the system draining money out of companies that produce goods and services to companies that effectively contribute nothing to the economy. They are exactly the same as the patent trolls that you all hate so much. In what possible manner could you justify their existance? Would you pay a professional gambler(day trader) money to go to the casino(market) and bet it for you?
Yes money is a powerful motivator, but it only works short term. Once you monetise something people only look to make as much money in as short a period of time as possible. I would say there are other motivators besides money. Look at the space race. Think of all the technology gained from that exercise of national pride. I think we could go a lot further without doing things only for money. Universities are constantly competing for kudos and push their staff to perform relevant research, not for money but for reputation. When money gets a back seat in research, i think much more diverse outcomes can be achieved.
If MS Dos wasn't a total clone just made a lot friendlier then I don't know what is. MS used to plead to the government for protection from "stifling patents" otherwise no one could ever compete with IBM. Now that they are one of the big boys they hope nobody ever innovates so you stick with MS. Software and computer interfaces should never be patentable. Patenting multi touch is a joke.
In aussieland we can get the iPhone on all of our carriers. There isn't that much competition in pricing plans. But there is a bit. As there are 2 major 3G frequencies here 850/900, once you buy an iphone your switching abilities are limited as no iPhone offers both of these frequencies.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Benaiah.
The only way to fix this
Is for all the students to sign a non-copyright waiver forfeiting their right to copyright over any material produced for the school thus forcing all of their work to be public domain. This should hopefully stop all of the stupid claims that students have made that their work is copyright and cant be sent of to third parties, or used in a magazine without their permission. It would be good if all public schools had to do this for their teaching material as well. Would give teachers better access to other teaching materials and hopefully refine classes at a much faster rate.
Re:
To quote your article, "They're apparently screaming angry at Google." Where is your reference for this? How do you know beyond pure assumption that they are angry? Have they written a letter of complaint? Perhaps they are more then happy to pay for the service they have requested Google to provide. I think that that the Author may now owe the RIAA an apology.
Copied from the inside story comments section
As big fans of Inside Story, we were disappointed to read the article “Copyright Cops”. Unlike the usual reflective and well-informed pieces featured in Inside Story, “Copyright Cops” takes a small pinch of information and whips it up with liberal doses of innuendo and emotive posturing.
We are told conspiratorially: “Copyright law has evolved largely as a response by governments to the demands of powerful media and content industries”. We are also told – again without analysis or substantiation – that copyright law in Australia is now, “tilted decisively towards copyright holders, including famous artists and big publishers, and away from rights users like libraries, schools and gyms”. Should we readers deduce that the moral of this tale is, ‘big is bad and small is good’?
Regardless of what you think about the Copyright Tribunal’s decision in the PPCA/ Fitness First case (there are many and different perspectives on both sides), if you are going to use it as a springboard to launch an attack on collecting societies, then find out a little more about how collecting societies work (e.g. regular reporting to the ACCC) and let this produce a more enlightening story about the public benefits sought in Australia by allowing collecting societies their special operating privileges.
In relation to the case itself, if ‘big is bad and small is good’ then perhaps we should consider that Fitness First generated revenues of $327.6 million in 2008-2009, in a fitness industry that turned over $2.5 billion in revenue in the same year. The average creative income of a composer in Australia currently stands at about $12,000 per annum. Furthermore, because it would be logistically impossible for individual composers to collect payments from users, their incomes would be much lower without collecting societies to do so on their behalf.
Copyright ascribes a value to culture and gives those who create cultural works the right to be rewarded for their creative effort. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines both the rights of creators to such a reward and the rights of users to access cultural works. It is true that copyright law is complex area and also true that it has become more complex in the digital age. But please Inside Story, can we have a little more rigour in future articles on this subject?
Mary Anne Reid
Chief Executive
Australian Copyright Council
Derivatives are stupid
Derivatives are an fanciful invention which allows legal traded companies, to take your money and theirs and "gamble" it. The whole point of the stock exchange is to give companies the ability to raise capital from the public. The public hopefully get a return on this. Its not gambling, its called investment. Derivatives on the other hand, dont produce anything, in fact they are a leech on the system draining money out of companies that produce goods and services to companies that effectively contribute nothing to the economy. They are exactly the same as the patent trolls that you all hate so much. In what possible manner could you justify their existance? Would you pay a professional gambler(day trader) money to go to the casino(market) and bet it for you?
Re:
Yes money is a powerful motivator, but it only works short term. Once you monetise something people only look to make as much money in as short a period of time as possible. I would say there are other motivators besides money. Look at the space race. Think of all the technology gained from that exercise of national pride. I think we could go a lot further without doing things only for money. Universities are constantly competing for kudos and push their staff to perform relevant research, not for money but for reputation. When money gets a back seat in research, i think much more diverse outcomes can be achieved.
Microsoft started by copying
If MS Dos wasn't a total clone just made a lot friendlier then I don't know what is. MS used to plead to the government for protection from "stifling patents" otherwise no one could ever compete with IBM. Now that they are one of the big boys they hope nobody ever innovates so you stick with MS. Software and computer interfaces should never be patentable. Patenting multi touch is a joke.
All australian carriers offer the iPhone
In aussieland we can get the iPhone on all of our carriers. There isn't that much competition in pricing plans. But there is a bit. As there are 2 major 3G frequencies here 850/900, once you buy an iphone your switching abilities are limited as no iPhone offers both of these frequencies.