[HN Gopher] H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyri...
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H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office
Author : Cider9986
Score : 270 points
Date : 2026-06-11 00:00 UTC (2 days ago)
HTML web link (www.eff.org)
TEXT w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I don't really understand the hypothetical problems here. "The
| copyright office head would be a presidential appointee, which
| could make the copyright office more political". I mean, I guess?
| Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing
| copyright law? But they don't enforce copyright law right now...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Are you kidding? If there's something in there they don't like
| I don't put it past this administration to break it internally
| and then make a case for shutting it down. This whole thing
| sounds very similar to the postal service situation...
| roenxi wrote:
| > Are you kidding? If there's something in there they don't
| like I don't put it past this administration to break it
| internally and then make a case for shutting it down.
|
| Might be a win? The copyright system is one of the major
| suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced
| by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their
| significant advantage. To say nothing of the corrosive
| influence on culture of locking down music and stories. The
| biggest IP success in the last 50 years seems to have been
| Open Source because they built a framework inside the
| copyright system to achieve the opposite outcome and build a
| thriving industry despite the lawyers trying to encourage
| them in alternative directions.
|
| The people defending the copyright system should have to keep
| making their case until they come up with something
| persuasive for how they're helping.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Tongue in cheek, but the copyright system should only last
| for 12 years, with one straightforward renewal, without
| specific reauthorization. Just like copyright in works, in
| my opinion
| z3c0 wrote:
| I mean, I agree with your general point that copyright
| might need to be reconsidered, but this doesn't seem like
| an attempt to reconsider it. It's rather transparently
| enabling further cronyism.
| echelon wrote:
| > The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why
| US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour
| refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant
| advantage.
|
| Expand on this.
|
| Wasn't it instead our desire to be the world's reserve
| currency and rely on cheap imports? You can't be both a net
| exporter and the world's top reserve currency.
|
| You have to run trade deficits if you want to export
| dollars.
| roenxi wrote:
| It comes down to comparative advantages more than
| anything else and the US raising the cost (in some sense
| outright banning) people from deploying good ideas in an
| industrial way seems like it'd be a significant
| comparative disadvantage to attracting investment. And a
| much bigger deal than the practical reality that the US
| imports more than it exports.
|
| Maintaining an import-dependent economy might be a
| factor, economies are complicated. But there isn't a
| fundamental reason that taking in more stuff than gets
| exported should mean that Asia has to be more successful.
| If anything, a country in a position to import more than
| it exports should be seeing big jumps in living
| standards, rather the gains going to a country notionally
| taking the bad end of the bargain. And there are some
| easy resolutions to being a net importer and while having
| a strong industrial economy - import raw materials, make
| stuff that isn't for export as an example.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| They will break the system and use it for their friends. No
| way they are shutting it down. There is way too much money to
| be made in selective enforcement.
| gwerbin wrote:
| It's not about money as such, it's about political control
| and suppressing dissent. All of that is a means to an end
| for a small number of rich people becoming even richer,
| yes, but it's part of the bigger picture rather than some
| isolated corruption move. Although I assume it will be
| understood that you can make your copyright problems go
| away by posting a generous donation to some Trump-aligned
| charitable foundation.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Never gotten any emails from lawyers, I see.
|
| Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
| gwerbin wrote:
| Yes, so what this does is centralized that selective
| enforcement directly under politicized control, so that it
| can be weaponized against political enemies.
| akamaka wrote:
| It's not hypothetical at all. The FCC is currently being used
| for political attacks:
| https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/28/media/abc-fcc-disney-licenses...
|
| Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest
| copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of
| attack.
| XorNot wrote:
| Conversely you're already not dealing with that, so the
| letter and spirit of the law are both being ignored and the
| American voter doesn't care.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the American voter doesn't care.
|
| The American voter doesn't know because copyright misuse
| and malfeasance is on a long list of public-impacting
| topics that news orgs have rigorously ignored for
| generations.
| mohamedkoubaa wrote:
| It's not hypothetical nor an unintended consequence. Most
| likely this is the point
| ronsor wrote:
| > Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest
| copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of
| attack.
|
| Don't threaten me with a good time
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's really hard for me to feel sorry for Disney here. Is it
| possible for both sides to lose a lawsuit?
| gwerbin wrote:
| It's not about feeling bad for Disney. Disney is
| tremendously powerful, so if the federal government can
| coerce them to do whatever the federal government wants,
| that has massive widespread effects for everyone. It
| creates an environment in which powerful corporations are
| expected to act as political enforcers, creating a
| monoculture of ideas and suppressing dissent.
| hightrix wrote:
| >Are people worried they're going to start selectively
| enforcing copyright law?
|
| Yes. Not only that, but to grant copyright protection only to
| those that are allied with/loyal to/bribe the current
| administration.
|
| This would have massive, far reaching effects.
| plandis wrote:
| > Are people worried they're going to start selectively
| enforcing copyright law?
|
| Yes.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Odd that the article doesn't mention parties at all, although
| perhaps this was in an attempt to avoid accusations of
| partisanship that might ensue from stating facts.
|
| Anyway, a quick look at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-
| congress/house-bill/6028... indicates that all 4 sponsors of the
| bill are Republicans. The Actions tab seems to indicated that the
| bill got only 12 minutes of debate before being passed,; I hope
| this is an artifact of how the page is updated rather than the
| actual time spent on considering it.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The article doesn't mention parties because it's irrelevant. A
| bad bill is bad on its merits, not because of who has brought
| it about.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| For those of us at home who need to decide which team to root
| for its very much relevant when and what bills a party
| sponsors.
| iririririr wrote:
| their point was that both parties pass those laws. TPP and
| first-to-file passed under Obama.
|
| it's so tiring.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| Ignoring power politics doesn't make them go away
| joshka wrote:
| But calling them out in a partisan may disincentivize half
| of the people to understand the issue.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| If those people want to treat political parties like
| sports teams then they aren't likely going to contribute
| much to the discussion
| BrenBarn wrote:
| A large portion of that half will continue to want the
| wrong thing anyway.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Parties were not called out and a large amount of ensuing
| Othering is happening anyway. Arguably, that proves that
| the EFF was sound in their decision to mitigate that by
| not calling out the parties/politicians in hopes to keep
| the focus on the bill itself, doesn't it? I've long
| suspected that we humans tend to lose the plot so often
| because we want to immediately sort everyone into buckets
| as though compartmentalizing them brings about complete
| understanding of the issue on the table.
| miltonlost wrote:
| I love not informing the electorate!
| Grombobulous wrote:
| The identity of the people who crafted the bill is the second
| most relevant thing besides the bill itself.
| pstuart wrote:
| Agreed, it's a signal of intention based on past behaviors
| of the "authors" (quoted because it's often lobbyists who
| write the bill).
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It's relevant, because you shouldn't vote for politicians who
| make bad policies, and most party members tend to vote with
| their party.
|
| Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't demonstrated themselves
| to be much better (at least, I'm not aware of them opposing
| copyright).
| kgwxd wrote:
| > the Democrats haven't demonstrated themselves to be much
| better
|
| Some introduce awful stuff, but the party isn't run like
| the mafia, so they fail to pass nearly as much. Republicans
| are handed down orders and they follow. No attempt to
| represent the people that elected them. Vassals to the end.
| delecti wrote:
| In 2026, a discussion of a bill proposing to make an existing
| position into a presidential appointee is _very_ different if
| that bill was proposed by Democrats or Republicans. To
| pretend otherwise is to ignore virtually all of the current
| administrations actions.
| billfor wrote:
| This is a one-sided article which does not discuss the opposing
| view, or the reason why they thought congress should appoint.
| Ironically, if this became law then it _might_ have prevented
| Trump from removing the librarian as he attempted in 2025 (still
| pending in the supreme court). It also includes a term limit of
| 10 years.
|
| https://www.stoneslaw.net/legislative-branch-agencies-clarif...
| Grombobulous wrote:
| The plain language of the bill's summary on the bill's web page
| (ignoring the EFF article) explains it quite clearly:
|
| 1. Gives power to Congress to appoint/remove the librarian
| rather than the president (cool, great)
|
| 2. Strips the copyright power held by the Library of Congress
| away, library of Congress becomes a supporting resource like a
| consultant
|
| 3. Reassigns that same power to a different position that's
| politically appointed by the president.
|
| What you are saying is technically true, but the deck chairs
| have been shuffled around in a way that seems to at least
| partially negate the positive change.
|
| I also find it odd that this was passed in a voice vote. It's
| hard for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan
| support? I guess I'd have to watch a video recording of the
| proceedings to know. If I am recalling correctly,
| congresspeople can call for a tallied vote if they think the
| voice vote was too ambiguous.
| panny wrote:
| I usually agree with the EFF on things, but after reading their
| linked https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/us-copyright-
| offices-d... I couldn't disagree more. An LLM is a predict the
| next word algorithm. If the model is overfitting, it's basically
| copy paste. There have been several documented instances where
| that happened and full GPL code, including headers and
| attribution were copy/pasted by the "AI."
|
| AI is essentially copy paste with more steps. The part that AI
| companies use to defend this is ?how are we supposed to decide
| how much each author deserves? They try to wave this away, but
| their own model can tell them. Their models work off of weights.
| They can determine how much each work contributed based on those
| weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible.
| The way the models are engineered now don't make this possible,
| but that's intentional and we can all recognize that. They throw
| up their hands and claim it's not possible because they simply
| don't want to pay.
|
| The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep
| the IP rights of authors, but then claim to own those IP rights
| when their own generated output leaks. Anthropic filed DMCA
| takedowns on the leaked claude code repos, claiming ownership
| over something they explicitly have stated is almost entirely AI
| generated as part of their marketing. They take code, mix it up
| just enough to scrub away the GPL or whatever license belongs on
| it, then try to claim ownership of the result, in spite of the
| Copyright Office repeatedly stating that AI generated works have
| no copyright protection at all.
| anematode wrote:
| Agreed. Moreover, the authors of copyright law could never have
| anticipated this type and scale of abuse. Maybe the companies
| are legally in the right, maybe not, but that's irrelevant for
| the question of whether it's ethical. The EFF's post definitely
| goes against their mission to "ensure that technology supports
| freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world."
| pona-a wrote:
| Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights were
| influenced by each work?
|
| I might recall reading some interpretability paper years ago
| that trained a special model that could attribute each answer
| to a part of the corpus (like Wikipedia, ArXiV, or "Blogs") but
| it had a non-zero effect on performance and wasn't nearly as
| straightforward as weights go in, attribution comes out.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It's very possible to determine similar works that existed
| earlier, and from that, recover attribution.
|
| The "downside" is you may attribute similar works that
| weren't inspirations, but coincidental. But I think that's an
| upside: when someone discovers something novel and great but
| their work fails because of bad luck or non-novel details,
| then the discovery is finally recognized in another work, I
| think they should still be attributed.
| panny wrote:
| >Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights
| were influenced by each work?
|
| It will be very possible once they become the owners of the
| intellectual property being infringed. Think about how it was
| "impossible" to implement DRM on music and movies in the
| early days of youtube. Now, Google owns the content and
| platform, and suddenly their "rolling cypher" which involves
| no encryption at all is supposedly enforcable DRM.
|
| The Silicon Valley tech bros play the same game every time.
| They violate the law, say it's just too darn difficult to
| obey the law without stifling progress, and then they get
| away with it until they kill all the competition. At which
| point, the law is once again applicable to anyone that might
| try to challenge them.
|
| Remember how Amazon destroyed all the other retailers when
| they had a decade of no sales tax while brick & mortar had to
| obey it. "Calculating sales tax for 50 different states?!
| That's impossible!!!" What a load of shit...
|
| Now, knowing that they're going to do this playbook again,
| how do you think it's going to play out? We've already seen
| it. Anthropic steals your copyrighted code, puts together
| their claude code project, the code for that project leaks,
| but now THEY own it! They sent DMCA takedowns on that AI
| generated code. AI generated code enjoys no copyright
| protection, it cannot be DMCAed under the law, there's no
| copyright on it. But Anthropic claims there is, and Github
| will obey the takedown, and nobody has the money to step up
| and stop them.
|
| See where this is going? Once they achieve market dominance,
| they will claim that all the code generated by claude belongs
| to Anthropic, your prompts belong to you, but THEIR machine
| generated THEIR code and you only purchase a license to it
| with your tokens. A limited license. It might be revokable,
| it might expire, maybe you need to pay an annual fee to keep
| using THEIR code Claude generated for you. And if you
| actually just write code on your own, without Claude? Well,
| prepare to be sued like a network printer is sued by the RIAA
| because that's going to happen too. They will have their
| robot scour your code for "fair use" training and discover
| that it's just too similar to something their machine
| generated a year earlier. Sorry open source programmer,
| here's your legalese nasty gram. It appears you owe Anthropic
| some money.
| pona-a wrote:
| I do not defend the current state of things where a select
| few companies get to shamelessly violate the law with the
| entire legal framework bending around the weight of the
| money trapped in this speculative bubble.
|
| I believe LLMs are at the very least an under-researched
| technology or less charitably, an ongoing effort to strip
| intellectual workers of their rights and privileges.
|
| What I am saying is the reasonable demand for attribution
| runs counter to the nature of these systems as we know
| them. There is no magical "release the attribution" button
| Anthropic could press if they wanted to. Unlike per-state
| taxes, are actual PhDs working on, at universities and
| private labs, because transparency has been the public
| number one demand since day one, and yet all that exists
| after 4 years of funding are only the first incomplete
| steps.
|
| The most likely outcome of imposing this obligation is
| commercial LLM providers quickly folding, finding a
| loophole/displaying false attribution, or settling for
| notably worse performance. That is of course not counting
| how these companies will be on the hook for a
| civilizational amount of licensing fees.
|
| (Per the DRM point, I believe we can agree the goal of
| simultaneously displaying a piece of media in the physical
| world and somehow protecting the viewer from storing it is
| effectively impossible, without hiring a trusted guard to
| hold the viewer at gunpoint if they dare touch the trusted
| viewing apparatus or pull out their phone, at least in its
| strict form)
|
| I am personally okay with shutting down an industry that
| cannot legally exist in its current form, especially one so
| openly hostile to every field of human endeavor. But no
| matter your position on that, we must keep in mind no
| "ethical" or "legal" AI industry can exist without making
| either adjective meaningless.
| asgraham wrote:
| > They can determine how much each work contributed based on
| those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't
| possible.
|
| I don't know about _impossible_ but it's definitely not a
| straightforward read from the post-training weights as you're
| implying, unless you're aware of some technique I'm not aware
| of.
|
| The closest you could get would be the weight differential from
| training with a given work. But that's _massively_ dependent on
| training order, so that it's certainly not at all a good
| measure of "contribution."
| ninjagoo wrote:
| > An LLM is a predict the next word algorithm.
|
| This is what's known as a category error; an LLM is a 'model',
| not an algorithm.
|
| It's not even an accurate claim; LLMs predict the next token,
| not the next word.
|
| > AI is essentially copy paste with more steps
|
| What about when AI creates a limerick about a kubernetes
| cluster run by Buddhist Monks? Or any number of other novel
| creations?
|
| Fortunately the courts recognized the _transformative_ use
| involved in making a model, which is _fair use_ of copyrighted
| works, in _kadrey v meta platforms_.
|
| > The most infurating thing however is how AI companies
| sidestep the IP rights of authors
|
| _transformative_ use falls under _fair use_ , permission from
| authors is not needed to use legally acquired copyright works
| for training. Kadrey v Meta Platforms and Bartz v Anthropic.
|
| > but then claim to own those IP rights when their own
| generated output leaks.
|
| Corporations gonna do corporate things. Blatant hypocrisy is
| par for the course. Organize and take them to court.
| iloveoof wrote:
| I could not agree more with EFF.
|
| There's a difference between training a model and using a
| model. Training involves copyrighted works but fair use is not
| just about use of copyrighted works, it's about whether the use
| is transformative and substitutes the original market. I
| struggle to see how is not transformative under these criteria.
|
| The use of the model (being able to output copies of GPL
| software) is a different question. This depends on the
| circumstances: if GPL code is exactly reproduced then it very
| well could be subject to the license of the original work.
|
| I don't understand the legal objections to the fair use of
| protected IP. Licenses are legal documents, not moral
| imperatives. GPL only exists because of copyright law, and you
| can't write a license that supercedes copyright law if you
| don't like the law.
|
| The Claude Code example is completely different, hosting a repo
| with the leaked code is clearly not fair use.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Anything that destroys copyright is a good thing. It is a
| societal evil.
| tadfisher wrote:
| This bill very much does not do that. It does the opposite, in
| fact. I encourage you to re-read the article.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| I understand it risks adding unpredictable political
| corruption to the process, but I feel that such unpredictable
| corruption is exactly what it takes to gradually destroy
| something in an indirect way.
|
| It is not clear to me what their political agenda is. Overall
| it might be good for AI if the goal is to scrape freely and
| use it for AI training.
| browningstreet wrote:
| This position makes it impossible to discuss these things.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| When I aim to accomplish something, to destroy some
| institution, I tend to favor the direct way, because it
| relies on fewer intermediate points of failure than the
| indirect way.
| quantummagic wrote:
| What we favor, and what is possible, often diverge.
| palmotea wrote:
| > [Copyright] is a societal evil.
|
| Such an extreme and emotional statement makes me think you've
| never really thought it through. For instance: without
| copyright the GPL is _nothing_. Also without copyright, all of
| the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie)
| would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix.
| Authors wouldn 't get a dime anymore, it'll all go to the likes
| of Bezos.
| nullc wrote:
| RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of
| the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
| palmotea wrote:
| > RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability
| of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
|
| Thankfully, RMS is not my guru.
|
| Copyright is a valuable legal technology. It should be
| reformed to curb abuses, but we shouldn't throw the baby
| out with the bathwater.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > without copyright the GPL is nothing
|
| That's ok, GPL's entire purpose and only restriction is to
| prevent other copyrights.
|
| > without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works
| (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors
| like Amazon or Netflix
|
| This is already true in most cases: companies own everything
| their employees create for them. And without copyright,
| studios would still pay artists, because that's the only way
| art is created (which even rich people want, although you
| probably and I think their taste mostly sucks, so does
| everyone else's...)
| palmotea wrote:
| > That's ok, GPL's entire purpose and only restriction is
| to prevent other copyrights.
|
| You sure about that? Because I'm pretty sure it's "entire
| purpose" is to keep open source code open.
|
| > And without copyright, studios would still pay artists,
| because that's the only way art is created
|
| Hate to break it to you, but that's just not true. But you
| know what _would_ make that true? Abolishing copyright.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| "Prevent other copyrights" = "keep open source open"
|
| Your second point seems to agree: if copyright was
| abolished, people (even rich) still want art, so studios
| would still end up paying artists, from patronage or some
| other system.
| palmotea wrote:
| > if copyright was abolished, people (even rich) still
| want art, so studios would still end up paying artists,
| from patronage or some other system.
|
| Yes, it would be exclusively the domain of the rich and
| powerful. If you're a little guy, they'll just
| shamelessly take what you make, because abolishing
| copyright abolishes the legal protections a small-time
| creator depends on.
|
| Let's say you put a ton of effort into making an awesome
| YouTube channel people love. Copyright is what means a
| bunch of randos can't just copy all your work and take
| all the revenue from it. They can even undercut you,
| because they don't actually have the costs of creating
| anything. Copyright give you recourse.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| YouTube has just so much garbage that drags on. It would
| be a good thing to have less of it.
|
| Also, just because randos will copy content doesn't mean
| that users will go to other channels to view it if they
| subscribe to your channel.
| Altern4tiveAcc wrote:
| > without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works
| (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors
| like Amazon or Netflix
|
| Assuming copyright gets dismantled is a good-faith way,
| Netflix/Amazon remaining as gatekeepers sounds unlikely, IMO.
| Free software clients like Popcorn Time provide a better
| experience and would be able to exist without threats from
| copyright trolls.
|
| It's also much more robust regarding cultural preservation
| (as users and organizations can keep DRM-free local copies)
| and censorship (being torrent-based makes it much harder to
| delete a movie from existence).
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Besides the unfairly long duration of protection,
| intellectual property also is unfairly used to squash small
| firms via frivolous lawsuits.
|
| I won't use an argument in favor of AI training here because
| AI can probably still be trained by fair-use information
| extraction from copyrighted works.
|
| Without copyright, we can return to a patronage based system.
| Both rich and poor consumers gladly offer proportional
| patronage for authors they truly believe in.
|
| Humanity will progress just fine via its scientific works
| which don't really require a copyright. Arxiv proves it.
|
| The cost imposed by GPL not working will be negligible
| compared to the benefit of free use.
| tgv wrote:
| Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an
| answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access
| to any song, movie or book?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of
| something?
| tgv wrote:
| Not me, the state. That is significantly different.
|
| The reason is damaging someone's livelihood in the cases I
| mentioned. Or large scale economic damage in case you're
| copying money.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The fact that you use the state as a proxy changes
| little.
| inigyou wrote:
| Should it be illegal to use a general purpose computing
| device because it damages Tim Cook's livelihood?
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| The comparison with money is interesting but not
| equivalent to copyright infringement. The closest valid
| application of the concept of counterfeit to songs, for
| example, would involve using them to make media and its
| packaging look like any original packaging, and also try
| to sell it as the original. If you're not doing this
| there's no counterfeiture.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Because it's effectively free to copy.
|
| I want copyright to be completely abolished _and_ patronage
| to re-become normal and common. Most of my favorite artists
| already distribute most of their work for free and rely on
| the latter.
| tgv wrote:
| > Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of
| their work for free
|
| Excellent. It already works. You don't have to abolish
| copyright.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| This: The basic idea of freedom, that I should be able to
| generally do things including accessing media without
| interference from a third party.
|
| Someone using a physical property can possibly deprive others
| of its use. This applies to the physical mediums of songs,
| movies, or books, but not the songs, movies, or text of the
| books themselves.
|
| Intellectual property isn't real, it's a concept that exists
| to support copyright, which exists for this exact purpose
| stated in the Constitution:
|
| "[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the
| Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
| Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
| respective Writings and Discoveries."
|
| I'm ok with accepting a temporary limitation on my freedom to
| support those who make songs, movies, or books, but life of
| the author + 70 years, plus the ability to assign the right
| to corporations which don't die, is not reasonably "limited"
| these days. It should be something like 5 years today.
|
| No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or
| author; society needs people doing other things too.
| tgv wrote:
| > life of the author + 70 years ...
|
| So you object to its current implementation, not to the
| principle itself, which is what I was replying to. I agree
| it's absurd, especially when the rights can be transferred
| to corporations, which cannot even create.
|
| > No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or
| author; society needs people doing other things too.
|
| Isn't that up to the individual to decide?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
|
| Does this sound profound to you? When you see yourself type
| it out, does it seem like you've really came up with a
| zinger?
|
| What entitles them to come in and police my hard drive
| platters with "you can't write that sequence of bits to
| storage, that's our sequence of bits"? It's sort of a weird
| idea, sounds kind of medieval. Like King Cnut has granted
| them license to "the birds in the forest, and the timber, and
| the water that runs through the meadows".
| tgv wrote:
| Ok. So nobody answers the question, but does so in a very
| passive-aggressive way.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Provided a friend of mine agrees to let me borrow (and copy)
| _their_ media containing music / movie / book / whatever,
| what entitles you to interfere with such agreement?
|
| Especially since that agreement didn't involve you.
|
| There's no $deity-given right to control what happens to
| stuff you wrote / designed etc, once it's been published.
| Copyright is, sorry _was_ , a legal construct meant to
| promote people creating artwork.
|
| Once it overshot that intent bigtime, there's no
| justification for keeping it around. At least not in its
| current form.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Your question is a loaded question founded on a false premise
| that the author of the content has an innate right to its
| viewership. There is no such innate right.
|
| Also, the argument that you made elsewhere about "damages" is
| nonsense because there is no damage from someone viewing what
| they were never going to pay for anyway, and there also is no
| deprivation.
| tgv wrote:
| > Your question is a loaded question
|
| It is not. Abolishing copyright completely, as the parent
| seems to desire, implies free access to songs, books,
| movies.
|
| > a false premise that the author of the content has an
| innate right to its viewership
|
| If you pose it this way: can't creators decide who gets
| access to their creations? Is it not inherently theirs?
| What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
|
| > there is no damage ...
|
| So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to
| buy anyway?
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| > can't creators decide who gets access to their
| creations?
|
| If it's on their physical property.
|
| > Is it not inherently theirs?
|
| No. For example, a creator of a song does not own my hard
| drive.
|
| > What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
|
| Operating system calls used in copying data locally and
| sending/receiving network data locally/remotely fail on
| pieces of bread, but don't on a series of bits that when
| given to an .mp3 player make sound.
|
| > So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going
| to buy anyway?
|
| Saying somethng is stealing X is a false premise if the
| owner is not deprived of X. Saying X is depriving Y of
| future profits is false unless you know for a fact that X
| was going buy anything from Y.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives
| passed H.R. 6028, the "Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification
| Act."
|
| wow, i had always assumed actual laws have to pass a recorded
| vote, but its not true...
|
| from wiki: > In Congress, "the vast majority of
| actions decided by a voice vote" are ones for which "a strong or
| even overwhelming majority favors one side", or even unanimous
| consent. Members can request a division of the assembly (a rising
| vote, where each sides rise in turn to be counted), and one-fifth
| of members can demand a recorded vote on any question, after the
| chair announces the result of a voice vote. > It is
| estimated that more than 95 percent of the resolutions passed by
| state legislatures are passed by a unanimous voice vote, many
| without discussion; this is because resolutions are often on
| routine, noncontroversial matters, such as commemorating
| important events or recognizing groups.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_vote#United_States
| Computer0 wrote:
| Oh and the biggest bullshit about this is it removes one's
| ability to hold their local representatives accountable. I just
| assume the worst!
| Grombobulous wrote:
| From what I understand it's rather true that a lot of
| Congress' actual work is incredibly boring and that these
| procedures were invented to move it along.
|
| You can see a lot of difference in the way congresspeople
| talk based on whether it's televised or not as well,
| especially in committees.
|
| I'm just a little surprised that voice votes haven't been
| replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote
| doesn't save time compare to a modern method of tallying
| votes. Why avoid making records when records are so "cheap"
| these days?
| wpm wrote:
| Because while you are correct that these sorts of things
| were invented to make things move faster, they stick around
| because the person you were responding to is also correct
| in that it makes it harder to hold individual electeds
| accountable, so electeds have zero reason to really want to
| change anything in their procedures.
| inigyou wrote:
| Nope. If your local representative disagreed, he or she would
| have called for an actual vote. Your local representative
| agreed.
| ryanschaefer wrote:
| > Members can request a division of the assembly (a rising
| vote, where each sides rise in turn to be counted)
|
| Isn't this the important bit? IIRC this can be demanded by
| anyone. If it passes by a voice vote, assume your
| representative voted yay or abstain.
| jklowden wrote:
| Hey, the economy is great and gas is cheap. All we had to put up
| with is mean tweets.
|
| Whenever anyone complains about Trump, remind them he's not the
| cause but the product. Seventy million voted for him, and
| Republicans in congress let him do illegally what they cannot
| accomplish legislatively. And all the while they're busy selling
| the country for parts, whether through tax policy, or neutering
| the CAFE standards, or handing copyright to Disney.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The question of _why_ US copyright law is administered and, to
| some extent _regulated_ within the _Legislative_ rather than
| _Executive_ branch has been raised in a dead thread. The cogent
| point is made that under the US Constitution, the phrase "checks
| and balances" generally applies to _both_ the division of powers
| amongst the three branches (Judiciary in addition to the two
| previously mentioned), and the principle of review and oversight
| amongst those branches (e.g., legislation is passed by Congress,
| approved or vetoed and administered by the President / Executive
| branch, and subject to interpretation or invalidation by the
| Judiciary; executive appointments are subject to Congressional
| approval; and members of both the Executive and Judiciary may be
| impeached and removed by Congress).
|
| That said ...
|
| ... there are other instances in which separation of powers is
| not strictly followed. Examples which come to mind are:
|
| - Administrative law judges (ALJs), notably in matters concerning
| Social Security and Immigration law, being a _judiciary_ function
| under the _executive_.
|
| - The Sergeants at Arms of the US Senate and US House, both
| _legislative_ bodies, but performing _executive_ functions.
| Recent history suggests that the Executive cannot be entirely
| relied upon to provide this function.
|
| - Judicial Review is probably the biggest appropriation of
| powers, in which the US Supreme Court arrogated the right to rule
| on, interpret, _and invalidate_ legislation. This is a power
| arguably derived absent _any_ constitutional, legislative, or
| executive foundation.
|
| And of course the present Administration has increasingly
| expressed a philosophy not only of Unitary Executive, but
| increasingly of Unitary Government, enacting law by decree,
| executing citizens without due process, and openly flouting
| courts. H.R. 6028 could be seen as part of this expansion of the
| Executive.
|
| Which still leaves us with the question of how Congress ended up
| administering copyright.
|
| I don't have a full history, and have only been exploring the
| question for the past hour or so.
|
| The US Copyright Office itself has a history page noting that:
|
| _On July 8, 1870, Congress centralized the administration of
| copyright law in the Library of Congress at the encouragement of
| Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford._
|
| <https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/history-...>
|
| Which remedied the _previous_ arrangement in which Copyright was
| _administered_ by ... the Judiciary.
|
| _Why_ Congress ended up regulating copyright is probably largely
| a set of historical accidents and conveniences. The Library of
| Congress does in fact serve Congress (and IIUC the Judiciary, to
| which it is also proximate) _as a legislative research tool_. I
| 've read enough of the annual reports in the latter half of the
| 19th century to know that the Library was growing rapidly at this
| time, and was constantly pressed (literally) for space,
| culminating in the commissioning, construction, and opening of
| the separate Library of Congress Jefferson Building, in which the
| main collection is now housed. (As I'd recently commented, there
| were concerns at the time of how merely moving to an adjacent
| building might affect retrieval time for materials.)
|
| Arguably, the US Library of Congress had, _and still has_ , more
| expertise in the management of large corpora of physical
| publications than virtually any other institution on Earth.
| Copyright registration itself served the interests of Congress by
| growing the collection. And as of the late 19th century, the
| overall size of the US government, though growing, was still
| comparatively small. The Executive would possibly have had
| neither the interest nor capacity to administer the Library, or
| even the Copyright office sufficiently, nor the convergence of
| goals in growing the Library's collection noted here. Given
| numerous issues with _other_ areas of intellectual property which
| _are_ administered under the executive (patents and trademark,
| though my criticisms are largely of the former), its also
| possible Things Could Have Gone Badly Wrong, though arguably as
| the EFF piece notes they have already. Though the House
| legislation seems likely to worsen that.
|
| The present situation though is that the Library of Congress and
| Copyright Office _do_ strongly blur the separation of powers
| principle, affording a complex set of legislative, executive, and
| even judiciary roles, all under the Legislative branch.
|
| That just my own nonexpert nutshell summary. If anyone has
| further information on the history of the US Copyright Office,
| legislation, and judicial rulings, please pitch in.
| delecti wrote:
| It's in the constitution. Article I, Section 8, clause 8:
|
| > The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress
| of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
| Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
| Writings and Discoveries;
|
| https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
|
| Unless your question was more, "why was that written into the
| constitution". In which case the answer basically boils down to
| the fact that the framers intended for Congress to be the most
| powerful branch. The modern de facto running of the country
| places far more power under the executive than the framers
| intended.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The Constitutional power of Congress is to _enact_ laws, but
| not to _execute_ them. Article I generally lists other
| authorities of Congress, e.g., "to coin money", but the
| _Treasury_ is an _Administrative_ office, not a Legislative
| one. Another interesting example would be the establishment
| of a Post Office, which is now an independent agency, though
| under the Executive.
|
| You'll also find: "The executive Power shall be vested in a
| President of the United States of America." Art II, Sec 1.
| That establishes the Separation concept, though neither
| "separation of powers" nor "checks and balances" are
| _explicitly_ stated in the US Constitution. They are part of
| the political discussion in which the Constitution was
| framed, however.
|
| *
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