Just because you lock your creations away behind DRM, doesn’t make you legally immune to fair usage. Just because you can point to a case where fair usage was potentially improperly used, doesn’t invalidate the doctrine.

I don’t have a problem with your pursuit of those who use your copyrighted works in unauthorized ways, if that pursuit is done fairly and with a little common sense. However, make no mistake. Copyright is granted to you by the people. It is a privilege, given because the alternatives are worse. However, abuse it, as has been done in this Prince case, try to make it overly broad as has been done over the past several years, and that burden may just become too great to bare. The alternatives might start looking pretty good to society.

If I understand my history, when this privilege is revoked, it will likely not be a reasonable cutting back, but may in fact leave us creators wishing for the good-old days of the 1700’s. I suppose we’ll see.

And if you hire someone to paint your office in order to brighten it up, do you pay that person a monthly fee for the continued use and enjoyment of their painting job? Every time you and your staff create something, do you pay the company that made your computer for the income you gained from using their product?

I suspect the answer to both questions is “no” and I have to wonder why. Isn’t painting, even walls, an artistic creation? Choosing the right color, mixing the paints, making sure the trim looks right. Doesn’t such a work deserve the same protection and benefits as you claim for your creative works?

And what about the computers that you use? Can YOU design and build a computer from scratch, starting with just the raw materials? I’d consider that damn creative. So why don’t the computer companies deserve to get compensated for your continued use of their work?

Come on, stop ripping off all the companies whose work you profit from and start forking over some of the money you derive from using them!

The only time Fair Use became an issue for us was when a casino who had licensed our work years ago kept using our stuff but stopped paying. They cried “Fair Use” when we caught them, and after one carefully worded and very respectful letter from our attorneys, they cut us a check for their “fair use” and another much larger one to pre-empt a legal action. That untrustworthy client changed things for us, it was the last time I ever let digitized work out of our studio without DRM. I don’t pay for DRM, it’s factored into our fees. The client bears the added cost and passes it along to the consumer.

I have very talented, hardworking staffers who need to be paid. They have families and kids to educate and mortgages to pay just as we all do. I have taxes and insurance’s, banks of computers, paper galore, legal and accounting and collection bills, ground and air transportation costs you wouldn’t fucking believe……and TAXES OMG….we need to be in New York because much of the world’s entertainment is headquartered here, but just one parking space in my apartment building here in Manhattan costs $759 a month, plus 18% NYC parking tax, almost 11 grand a year…. to park one car. You wouldn’t believe what it costs to run an effective, organized creative company. The point is our products get paid for every time, not taken, so we can pay our staff and cover our overhead and then move into the next month and pitch for new jobs and get them (hopefully) and return to the joy of creation, which is what brought us all here in the first place. We all started as kids with sketch pads from somewhere else. It’s just that now we service the world’s corporations, and we bust our ass and get paid well to do it. But we’re all still doing what we love.

“Fair use’ is a kind of compliment when sampled respectfully. It is wisely limited by law and then DRM protects the rest. Pay us and everything is cool….you feel the same about your paycheck, right? Take our stuff without paying and we’ll sue you if we have to. We don’t want to, we’d much rather be creating, but what other choice do we really have? Go out of business altogether? A sincere reply would be appreciated.

Prince has gotten to where he is today because he’s a remarkable talent and he’s worked harder than any five of us here added together, and I hope Google has to pay him. It’s not greedy unless you are some Communist, they are using his song to make gobs of money and its just fair. I can’t just shrug and let our work go out “Fair Use” for free, either, or I put a bunch of talented artists out of work and then what do they do? Copyright law gives us the tools we need to build an artistic business and it is finally moving into the digital age. And it may give more control than you think.

I work in design. I have a staff. When a client hires us to create something for them, they pay but they don’t own it and never do unless I expressly sell it to them (which I never do). They license it for one time use only, roughly the same as any other artistic creation like music or movies. They can use it again if they wish, but only after we cut a new deal. Often, they do agree to pay significantly more and then they use it over and over and over. “Copyright”. That’s how we earn our living. It funds the next round of “creating”. It’s a business.

I have a recognizable style. My client roster hires me to get just that style and no one wants it clouded or altered by unauthorized changes, not me, and certainly not the client. I have a reliable production, too, and they purchase that reputation of seamless reliability. It the work is digitized, we “control” it (to use your word) with a layer of custom DRM so that it looks consistently the same to the client who is funding it and to the audiences who watch it. We set all aspects and allow no further changes to keep our artistic vision just as we imagined (and copyrighted), so the recognizable clarity of our style is not annexed or changed or made less recognizable by someone else. And we keep all third party crap off of it to avoid software glitches so our work delivers the same crisp, clean, recognizable product our client pays for and we take our pride in. That “control” you disdain is what allows us to deliver first time/everytime a quality product for our clients here and abroad. That’s why they hire me in the first place. I’ve worked a long, long time to build this kind of reputation. The whole business is based upon copyright.

You have the right to create and sell your creations, too, and if you copyright them we can’t step in and alter your work either. And we wouldn’t, because we have pride and we’d respect it. We’d just do our own work and compete. Seems fair to me.

Here is my guess: Universal did what they had to do, they checked to see if Stephanie’s use was fair use and the lawyer said it was not. Then the lawyer (or same lawyer) was contracted to file the lawsuit. That is how legal advise about whether to file a lawsuit or not works out…. the lawyer looking out for number one, always looking for more business.

Next time, Universal, consult first a lawyer from Nepal, that has no license to work in the USA.

It may be that folks working in applied art and creative careers may empathize more readily with other artists than those who are not. Certainly there is a pride of quality and accomplishment for the bus driver and his route, or the waitress and the tables she serves, or the high school janitor and the floors he waxes. Honorable professions all. But a reasonable observer might also recognize a very different and special relationship between an artist and their creations. This unique paradigm of an artists attachment and protection of their own creative works is something long recognized and acknowledged throughout history, and is the basis of the kind of control carved out by law for the artists of today.

I’m no lawyer, (and I have nothing to do with music or recording, either) but Fair Use should extend to personal use, or very limited use on a broader scale. But taking a good sized chunk of a song and then broadcasting it in a way not intended or appreciated by the artist just seems unreasonable to me and i see why Prince might object. I’d hope for those rights of control for my own works even as I’d also wish for the right to make that video privately and enjoy it privately without authorization, but not necessarily be able to indiscriminately broadcast it all over the globe. That’s a very fair distinction, I think.

He got ‘upset’ with me and started posting under my
name for a bit. Didn’t work out too well since Jon knows my
RL name and addy.

Ohhhh for an ‘ignore’ feature.

The definition of troll.

don’t feed them.

“They Indeed Have Gone Crazy”

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3197/125/