bobwyman 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (23)

• On the post: Does Court Ruling Over Artistic License Conflict With Other Copyright Rulings?

  

  bobwyman ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2008 @ 11:52am

  CC grants rights while

  You wrote: "After all, Creative Commons seems to basically do the same thing that stamping "not for resale" does on CDs: it creates a separate license on top of copyright, and then tries to use copyright's defenses against breaking that license."
  
  Wrong! All Creative Commons licenses grant rights that are otherwise restricted under copyright. However, a "Not for Sale" tag creates a restriction which is not imposed by US copyright law. Thus, CC works completely within the realm of rights which are the subject of copyright law while the "Not for Sale" tag operates outside copyright law.
  
  People often get confused about this. For instance, folk often think that a "no commercial use" Creative Commons license actually prohibits commercial use -- but they are wrong... What a "no commercial use" CC license says is: "no exception to existing copyright restrictions is granted for commercial use." Thus, given a CC/NC license, only copyright law governs commercial use -- and typically prevents it.
  
  Creative Commons licenses apply only in cases where the uses of the content meet the requirements stated in the license. In any case where such requirements are not met, copyright continues to apply unchanged. Creative Commons licenses explicitly cannot be used to create restrictions on use greater than those applied by copyright law.
  
  If you understand Creative Commons licenses as instruments that can only be used to selectively grant rights otherwise restricted, the judges ruling is not surprising and uncontroversial. All he's saying is that since the copyright holder offered no grant relaxing copyright restrictions in the case of commercial use, the restrictions imposed by copyright law continue to apply.
  
  bob wyman

• On the post: IBM Patents 'Paper Or Plastic'?

  

  bobwyman ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2008 @ 08:21am

  Original 'invention

  The original invention of a method of storing information on the card anticipates and makes obvious the storage of any information on the card.
  If this patent is valid, one assumes that even the original inventor of the information storing customer card would be infringing if they stored such information on a card. This clearly is not right since that undoubtedly, the original invention was intended to provide a means to store *any* customer related info on the card.

• On the post: New RIAA Argument: Throwing A Promo CD In The Garbage = Unauthorized Distribution

  

  bobwyman ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2008 @ 03:38pm

  Don't US Mail laws apply here?

  As I understand it, any unsolicited mail which is clearly addressed to you becomes your property on receipt and without limit. If the demo disks were sent as unsolicited mail then they would become property of the recipients. (i.e. If the demos were sent to a list of "known" reviewers or "music stores" -- not to people who explicitly asked for the demos)
  
  bob wyman