Schrödinger’s Bill

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Legal Brief Schrödinger’s Bill By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. The recently passed Consolidated Appropriations Act includes provisions that should be of
[See the full post at: Schrödinger’s Bill]

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geekdom, SueW, rc primak

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Thanks for including this content. This was an excellent article and enjoyable read.

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Max Stul Oppenheimer

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In a nutshell, what’s this all about?  And how does it affect AskWoody readers?

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In a nutshell, The Affordable Care Act contains several legally-untested provisions unrelated to health care that could impact electronic distribution of copyrighted material as well as aid small companies in competing in markets controlled by a larger entity.  The author, demonstrating his skepticism about their usefulness, references provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act to provide examples of how these provisions might likely be meaningless.

Overall, the article was enlightening.

 

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SueW, rc primak

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Just the other day I was adding some music to something I was doing online.  I need to make sure I do so legally.  This bill adds some teeth and potential jail time if I didn’t do it right.  (also it’s not the affordable care bill, it was an appropriations bill)

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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SueW, rc primak

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You Tube will mute any copyrighted music they detect. If it doesn’t come rfom their own curated collection, it won’t play on their platform. Very sad state of affairs! This restriction is spearheaded by Warner Music, which owns the largest collection of copyrights in the world. Warner does not compensate small artists anywhere near the worth of their music. If at all.

-- rc primak

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Sounds like Nancy Pelosi’s comment on the Affordable Care Act. “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”

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Delighted that a lawyer is interested in physics.  One small correction.  The comment about Schrodinger’s Cat is correct but the comment about the basic premise is due to Heisenberg, not Schrodinger.  It is known as the Heisenberg Principle.  Namely “…it was impossible to determine an atomic particle’s location and velocity simultaneously because the act of observation changed one or the other…”  Ph.D. in Physics from MIT.

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doriel, Charlie, rc primak

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Also, the act of observing one of two particles in quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) will break the entanglement.

-- rc primak

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Charlie

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Thanks for the correction.  Heisenberg might not think it small!

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[rc primak]

Not an expert here, but…

On page 2,539 of the Act, we find an amendment to Section 211 of the Copyright Act, amending Section 113 of Title 18 (the federal criminal statute). The language Congress chose makes it unlawful to “willfully” and for “commercial advantage” or “private financial gain” provide a digital transmission service that is primarily, and without other significant purpose, designed for the purpose of publicly performing works protected by copyright. We need to wade through some rather dense definitions to figure out what is being changed (and we’ll need a court to interpret it before we know what it means and whether it’s constitutional), but that certainly sounds like it’s directed to streaming services.

That looks on first glance as if it’s aimed at services like Aereo (OTA rebroadcast in NY City, sued and now defunct) and Locast (free streaming service, also doing a form of rebroadcasting over the Internet. Sued but still pending).

Aereo:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/06/25/325488386/tech-firm-aereo-performs-an-illegal-service-supreme-court-says

Locast:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/media/broadcast-networks-lawsuit-locast.html

Kodi boxes also have free channels available which pirate copyrighted content, but most of these are not based in the US anymore.

Among the second-order boxes that will need opening is determining how this will interact with the “fair use” provisions of Section 107 of the Copyright Act (“criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching …, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright”).

This controversy has hit nearly all of my Zoom meetings with tech interest groups. Some sites like ABC News have begun to use draconian DRM techniques which make downloading for future use nearly impossible. Now they may have legal leverage as well. Very tricky business, fair use.

This also affects posting of recorded Zoom meetings where copyrighted images, audio or video were used.  The definition of “educational organization” is surprisingly narrow.

-- rc primak

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by rc primak.

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If you want to see the full text of the bill, you need to do a little more work than just following the link. After a bill is signed into law, it goes to the Government Printing Office to be printed. They note on the website that, while that usually takes a day or two, large bills are an exception.  This is the quintessential “large bill”.  So the link shows “not yet printed” – and may show that for some time.  If you go to the “text” tab at the bottom of the page and select “enrolled bill” the text will appear.

Or if that isn’t your idea of time well spent, you could go directly to

https://www.congress.gov/bill/<wbr />116th-congress/house-bill/133/<wbr />text/enr

which will work until the GPO gets around to printing it.

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“In March 2010, when House Speaker Pelosi told the National Association of Counties that we needed to pass the Affordable Care Act in order to find out what’s in it, few saw the humorous reference to one of the most famous parables of modern physics: Schrödinger’s cat.”

Your article was pleasant (more so than the Act if references) and humorous, but while Schrodinger had a box with a cat in it. He simply wondered if said cat was dead or alive. In Nancy’s case she had a bill, and nobody knew exactly what was in it.

So as opposed to an answer to a binary choice, it’s much more of a Pandora’s box.

Who knows everything in it???

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I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the article by Max Stul Oppenheimer in Issue 18.3.0 of the AskWoody Plus Newsletter titled, “Schrodinger’s Bill.”  I am the owner of a software start-up whose past career has involved the protection of intellectual property for large corporations in my role as a program manager employee.  While not a lawyer, I have read several legal books on trademark, copyright, and patent law in an effort to make myself familiar with these laws so that I know how I can successfully compete with the Microsofts and Googles of the world when my software products eventually reach market.  Please let Mr. Oppenheimer know that I found his article clearly written, insightfully witty, and most of all, very informative.  Please keep articles like this coming in the future!

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What impact will copyright changes have on fair use?

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I do not understand why this highly political subject that for normal folks has nothing to do with computers nor software usage has made it into this newsletter. If similar political subjects will continue to be discussed here I will drop my subscription as this should not be the forum to indoctrinate people.

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[Susan Bradley]

Susan here:  Because these topics do have technology impact they are here.  I used to download videos from “unusual sites”.  I’ve stopped doing that because of not only the issues of malware but legal issues as well.  The  intent is not to “indoctrinate” but rather make you aware that how we’ve come to use the web may be changing and we need to be aware of it and how it impacts how we watch things online and consume things online.

I disagree that normal folks don’t have to worry about this.  Look at the people that have had legal action taken against them for downloading movies.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Susan Bradley.

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Bill C., rc primak, SueW, Will Fastie, b, rexr

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I thought the sharing person is to blame. Download the movie is illegal too? Downloading from torrent apparently is (since you let others download small stripes of that movie too). How you can prove, that it was me or my sister, who was at the computer? You cant fine “the whole household”.

Reminds me of that old scene “IT Crowd – privacy warning”, which is obviously more true than I thought. I wish law was more straightforward and could not be understood that many ways, how many lawyers read it 🙂

Thanks AskWoody for educating users.

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Illegal Downloads: What Are the Penalties? (findlaw.com)

Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset – Wikipedia

They don’t mess around when they want to make a point.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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rc primak, doriel

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You are correct. Dowloading is illegal.

Copyright infringement occurs when the works are reproduced, republished, or used without permission from the copyright holder. This is where illegal downloading kicks in. The violation is typically enforced as a civil matter, although specific penalties vary by jurisdictions and some may apply criminal punishments.

Generally speaking, however, the most likely penalty is going to be a monetary fine for copyright infringement — if you’re caught downloading illegally, that is.

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Downloading is not illegal, doing so without authorization is. The generally accepted form of authorization is paying money.

cheers, Paul

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rc primak, doriel

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[geekdom]

Copyright is a legal definition affecting information across web, books, art, software, and other medium. How is the information protected? What are owner rights? Under what circumstances may information be legally copied?

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• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by geekdom.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by geekdom.

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doriel

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That depends on your local laws.
Information? You mean general idea of “intellectual property”? Thats a tough one. Especially when the author is dead. In Czech Republic intellectual property is inherit to descendants. There are 45 pages of that law in Czech.Rep.

Cant reply exactly to your questions. You cant treat all the web, books, art, software, and other medium the same. Its not that simple, but I understand your angle of view.
Its important to know about this law, before you make a mistake and pay lot of money then 🙂

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[rc primak]

In the EU, they are trying to classify even two-word headline excerpts as copyrighted content. And they are trying to make platform owners responsible for violations in uploaded content:

It happens all the time: remixes, top ten videos and film analyses use content without paying for rights. So if platforms can be punished for this, they must prevent such content from being uploaded.

But how?

https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/one-year-of-eu-copyright-reform-is-the-internet-still-working/

(Sorry about the image link — I don’t know how to prevent that from showing here.)

This is scary stuff, not to mention government overreach.

American film studios and companies who own television networks and streaming services were rumored to be behind these draconian provisions.

It is this sort of micro-managing of copyrights which has caused me to decline to present any video, no matter how short or how public-domain, to any Zoom meeting of any group. That is truly sad, but IMHO necessary.

-- rc primak

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by rc primak.

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doriel

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Paul T wrote:

Downloading is not illegal, doing so without authorization is. The generally accepted form of authorization is paying money.

cheers, Paul

In the US, there is a graphic showing that there are 1500 newspapers, 1100 magazines, 1500 television stations, and 2400 publishers owned by 6 corporations with global reach or their subsidiaries.

I would post it, but given the tenor and implications of this discussion, will exercise wise caution.

As with everything in the legal and political world, you need to follow the money. That is because the real Golden Rule, is “Those with the Gold (and share it wisely), get to make the Rules.”

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doriel, Fred

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