No Copyright Intended
waxy.org
waxy.org
1) The ubiquitous trademark-ownership disclaimers ("All trademarks are the property of their respective owners") combined with the conflation of trademark/patent/copyright under the umbrella term "intellectual property", leads to confusion about this area, and a misbelief that a disclaimer like the one used to avoid trademark infringement can also be used to avoid copyright infringement.
2) The rhetoric around "stealing" causes people to apply a more intuitive understanding of what it means to "steal" someone else's work, which then gets interpreted as being a question of plagiarism or profiting, so uploaders make sure to clarify that they aren't "stealing" the work in the sense of claiming it's theirs or trying to sell it.
This is another piece of folk-law voodoo, in that, one, it is not required by any law, and, two, it does not make anything legal that would be illegal otherwise.
If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't implemented to avoid claims that mere presentation of marks were uses of the trademark. Of course if the language works then there may not be caselaw to support this as litigants could have been put off suing in cases using such a disclaimer.
Are you working in TM law in some form in some jurisdiction?
IANA(IP)L (nor working in IP presently).
As a related aside the UKIPO practice on RTM in patent specifications is of interest [to me]. Generally the examiner would [I'm a little out of date], IIRC, attempt to [get the applicant to] excise all registered trademarks that weren't essential to the understanding of the piece. Any remaining marks were to be labelled in the spec with "RTM" (for Registered TradeMark). So far as I could ascertain there was no legal requirement to do this it was just pushed as best practice. Note RTM in the UK was the legal manner and not use of ®.
Labelling a mark as "ExampleTrademark RTM" is pretty much the short-hand equivalent of saying "this trademark belongs to it's owner [and not us]".
You indicate this by doing it. Merely mentioning a trademark someone else owns doesn't infringe on any of the rights owning a trademark gives you.
> If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.
The standard of trademark infringement is confusion; having a product that is labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of what disclaimers you have, having a product that is not confusing is legal even with no disclaimers.
Trademark dilution is a bit broader but, even so, just mentioning a trademark is not dilution. You still have to use it to advertise your own product.
Here is a good overview of trademark law:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm
There's the rub.
The disclaimer is the label that [attempts] to remove the confusion of the product with anything which may have originated with the mentioned marks owner.
This statement belies a position of ignorance of legal reality. You're basically saying that in TM law there is no middle ground or gray area between confusion and clarity of use of marks. There is, of course, and disclaimers simply attempt to ensure that ones position on the right side of the line is made obvious. Why do you feel a disclaimer does not speak towards excision of confusion?
I note you didn't answer my question of your credentials?
Lots of professional audio equipment is designed to digitally emulate analog equipment. There have been a number of lawsuits, usually hinging around "passing-off" - companies are justifiably unhappy with their trademark being used on someone else's equipment, even if it doesn't resemble anything they manufacture.
There is precedent for companies being successfully sued for using trademarks on the equipment itself, but precedent to the contrary for those trademarks being used to describe the character of the equipment. It is therefore commonplace to buy a guitar amplifier that has an "American Tweed" setting, but for the user manual and publicity materials to describe that setting as an emulation of a 1958 Fender™ Champ™.
The thing is copyright no longer makes sense. It used to, but today we have so many movies, tv shows, albums and books that you couldn't possibly read/watch/hear just one tenth of one percent of them in your entire lifetime even if you did nothing else. Copyright was supposed to enable society to be enriched. The constitution doesn't demand that congress make a copyright law, it merely enables it to do so. The moment the public no longer believes that copyright is likely to benefit it, it can simply stop offering it.
So that nobody makes the argument that you take away their property or that the owners somehow has a moral right to it. Nobody is taking their property away from them. What we take away is the (temporary) monopoly they were granted.
And we could properly still put limitations on the commercial use of copyrighted works -- if that had been used as an example, a lot more hands would have gone up among the students.
From a democratic point of view, it doesnt even _matter_ whether it makes sense or not. The only thing that matters is whether we, as a society, collectively _want_ private, non-commercial copying (i.e. filesharing) to be illegal or not.
Knowing that "we" probably would make non-commercial copying legal, "they" simply do not let us vote on it. Copyright is basically locked out of any democratic decision process, worldwide. Basically all existing political parties shield copyright away from democratic influence like a sanctum.
Only in the recent 2-3 years, in a number of european countries, people have realized that voting on this issue in the current system will basically forever be impossible and have formed pirate parties focused solely on getting rid of the filesharing prohibition.
It's also getting there in other countries. The momentum is behind the sharing, not behind the institutions upholding the barricades.
"Solely" would be an exaggeration. The filesharing issue is merely one issue -- albeit a very prominent one -- where governments have acted in the interests of big business not the electorate.
Pirates also care about:
- abuse of idea/infomation monopolies such as patents on drugs and software
- other areas where governments are infringing people's digital rights, e.g. spying on people's communications using the excuse of terrorism and pedophilia
- Pirates appreciate that a root cause is that governments do what big business wants, therefore want to get money out of politics and strengthen democracy
Yes, that's exactly what happens: nothing. The US has had (publicly confessed) former drug users as presidents for over a decade and a half now, and look at how it changed the "War on drugs": if anything, it intensified.
This is just wishful thinking.
The War on Drugs is incredibly ineffective, but not nearly as ineffective as any technical "solution" to piracy that would make it impossible for people to share files. Sharing files _is_ the internet. As long as people can connect their computers, almost at will, there will be ways for them to share copyrighted material.
The basic premise is that the content creator has the advantage of releasing the material, and therefore can leverage it for profit even though others can copy the material.
If you want to incentivize creators, you shouldn't copy their stuff.
That's the message that never got communicated to these "kids".
But most of other cases are when derived product can't replace the original. In this case, we should adamantly demand that the creation of derived work is by default allowed, or else we lose all creative work that could be derived from original, which is a very bad thing in the same moral system where you operate.
They do not have the legal possibility to not want to incentivize creators. In practice, they also do not have a possibility to even vote on this, and they know that basically never anyone has voted on copyright but the companies profiting from copyright. It is like a purchased law totally shielded off from democracy.
Only corruption and religious or political zealotry slows down the process, but eventually people will realize there's no real crime here, just a desperate reactionary attempt to maintain the status quo in a way that does more harm than good.
The recent California initiative is a good example of this. Rather than respecting people's reservations about legalization and finding the baby-step measure that would do the most good (e.g. keep the largest number of people out of prison or at least spare them career-destroying criminal records), California legalizers instead proposed a wish list policy that voters rejected.
There's a parallel in here somewhere with copyright legislation; it doesn't help that copyright reform advocates on the ground (ie, not Lawrence Lessig) are schizophrenic about the issue, sentimentalizing a position that reduces to virtual abolition of copyright while at the same time barking at people about GPL and working in jobs that more or less depend on copyright themselves.
Also, pot-smoking is smoking. It is (and I say this in the nicest possible way, as one who supports the legalization of pot) literally a smelly habit; it affects everyone around you, even when pursued in moderation. You can't be in the same suite of rooms as someone who is smoking pot without noticing. The experience of second-hand pot is one hell of a lot better than second-hand cigarette smoke (and not just because I get to worry less about cancer or strain on my heart; it just smells better), but still not one I go out of my way to enjoy. Such a habit is easy to culturally stigmatize compared to, say, alcohol, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than pot – in all kinds of ways that would take an hour to enumerate – but which bothers others not at all when consumed in small amounts.
Finally, there's a European cultural tradition of alcohol consumption (even excessive alcohol consumption that bothers other people!) that is alive and well in the USA. Pot, not so much. That feature is probably what made it so hard to make alcohol prohibition stick, compared to marijuana prohibition.
There's not a lot of alternatives to learning music by mimicking other musicians, and the act of extensively reading and quoting existing published works is called scholarship and is held in high regard. Quoting creative works doesn't harm the people around you; indeed, people generally enjoy well-played cover tunes, and routinely pay people to play them. And needless to say quoting stuff is a far more fundamental cultural tradition, in Europe and everywhere else, than taking any particular drug.
I don't have anything solid to back this up, but I was under the impression that in places where cannabis is legal/decriminalised/cheaper, there's an increase in oral consumption, rather than smoking (e.g. hash brownies)
I'd imagine this is partly because there's a certain element of wastage or perceived loss, and the ready availability makes it more practical. Then again, things like longer onset time and duration might turn some people off.
But speaking as an uninformed outsider – clueless, but also the target market of any mass movement – the hash brownie has the opposite problem: It's almost too inoffensive. It's famous as a way to hide marijuana from everyone, possibly including yourself. At worst, it's redolent of shame and fear, and at best it reminds people of things like pain management, which is not exactly a marketing winner.
Smoking may pose many difficulties, but it does have one big advantage: It's a group ritual that serves to advertise itself.
What cannabis needs is a recipe that suggests sophistication and good taste. Imagine if James Bond's favorite drink had had cannabis in it. Men and women of taste would be falling over themselves to blog about the superiority of original-recipe cannabis martinis. There would be tastefully lit Manhattan cannabis bars where your drink's ingredients would be fresh-clipped from live plants growing, hydroponically, in crystalline bowls suspended over each table.
I wonder if cannabis can be pleasurably served with coffee? The legalization movement needs to commission a crack research team of Dutch baristas.
I generally (and thoroughly) agree with a lot of your points, but will note that I appear to break out in hives in reaction to second hand cannabis exposure. I don't do this with tobacco cigarettes.
Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things. Just sort of an observation that "YMMV".
I think society, as a whole, is becoming less tolerant of others. People get offended by the smallest things (for example, people parking crookedly) and call for laws to punish even slightly annoying behaviours. File-sharing laws have been put to the public on the annoyance factor before (that is, their file sharing is slowing down your tubes, so they must be punished).
It comes back to freedom and whether someone else acting freely limits your freedom. Unfortunately most developed nations seem to have a stronger interest in controlling people's behaviour than medieval theocracies.
EDIT: typo
Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything about that, right?
It brings to mind the saying, "People become conservative as soon as they have something to conserve."
It's very hard to explain why copyright infringement is not okay to people these days because the physical analogies no longer apply. People think theft is when you take something and deprive someone else of that thing. With digital media you're taking something but the creator still has it and that's where things get messy. But just because the author still has the original copy that doesn't mean that it's still okay to take. Then you get into the whole argument about how whichever industry (music, movies, whatever) are so rich and greedy and screw people that it's okay. True or not, it still doesn't change what's wrong with this stuff.
There's something missing here. What's wrong with this stuff?
We have to remember that the YouTube system is automated though so they can't review things manually. That means no one is there to judge that gray area. So even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights.
Frankly I think this reveals a strong bias, since that sentence directly contradicts itself: An excuse is something people have to justify something they see as wrong. I think the fact that you assume they have excuses shows you can't really put yourself in a position where copyright infringement isn't in fact perceived as wrong.
I think if the creators decide that it shouldn't be published we need to respect that.
Do we? Why?
So even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights.
Bitching against Youtube¹ is certainly pointless, but we can "bitch" if we believe the law itself is wrong.
¹ at least in cases where the takedown is mandated by law. There were plenty of cases where works covered by fair use were taken down automatically by their algorithms.
A hyperlink is a form of distribution so you may want to clarify what you mean by 'you shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself from scratch.'
If there is any way I can encourage these young people to run for office and do public service I will do it. We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society that have 'grown up' digital and understand it. I agree with the author that this would really help rationalize some of the copyright and patent madness.
Which is raising another, more underlying problem: Why do we as a society have no means to change stuff by voting on it, like in a, as it is called, "democracy"? Why is the only practicable way to change something like the filesharing prohibition, as you suggest, to give up everything else and run for a political office?
> We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society
What you're suggesting is basically trying to inject "our" people into the ruling caste because it is completely decoupled from the ruled one. I'd rather say that we simply need significantly more democracy.
And that scares me more than anything. Not that they're breaking the law, but that so many people are this ignorant. Every time I read one of those disclaimers I want to literally rip my hair out, how can anyone not realise that it's the equivilent of shoplifting while holding a sign that says "no theft intended" is beyond me.
It's more similar to going into a store. Looking up the ingredients on a box of cookies and writing them down to make your own batch at home, while holding up a "no theft intended" sign.
The basic premise of theft is that you are taking something away from the original owner so they don't have it anymore. The only thing you are "stealing" with copyright infringement is fictitious profits that may or may not exist at a potential time in the future.
But even this doesn't make a perfect analogy, because when someone pirates something, he may not deprive the owner of a sale, because he wouldn't afford to buy it (or make it) in the first place.
However, the recipe example is still a lot closer to reality than outright theft.
Evidently the copyright industry is enjoying some success in their ongoing attempts to equivocate piracy with theft, but it's still disappointing to have to point out the distinction among geeks.
Just because someone wouldn't buy something to begin with doesn't mean they should be able to get it free. If I wrote a piece of software that was really useful and popular but some people couldn't afford it, well, they should save up or ask someone to buy it for them. If they get it illegally that means they wanted it badly enough that they would have paid had there been no free version on the black market.
We geeks get the distinction but you gloss over the many other ways the original author still loses out on the deal. Sure, the original creator can still sell his heart out but there are now competing sources that shouldn't be there no matter how you look at it.
No. This is factually incorrect.
Part of it is, from personal experience, the fact paying for something introduces a high mental barrier it's hard to overcome if you view yourself as not having a stable income. The stereotypical school kid, in other words, whether elementary, high school, or, for some people, college. (This is also a reason micro-payments fail: They can't be micro enough to eliminate that psychological barrier.)
> should
'Should'? You're trying to derive an 'ought' from an 'is' and you can't do that in the general case. You certainly can't do it in this case.
As for "should", let me put it another way. If someone can't afford it, is it okay to let them take it free? No. They either never buy it, save up for it or get it as a gift. But it is not okay for them to take it and claim its alright because "I can't afford it".
They aren't taking it, others are sharing it with them. A better question would be, under what authority does the state prevent the voluntary sharing between two private parties.
The ease and scale by which we're able to distribute content is good but it's easy to cross the line between fair use and infringement. I don't want more laws restricting freedom but it's the individual's who are taking advantage of this that give our government the excuse to impose such laws. We need stop hiding behind technicalities like "sharing" and look at this realistically. No one is entitled to free content no matter how evil we think the studios/labels/software giants are.
If you think sharing copies of ripped files with many people is wrong, it's your prerogative, but it's still sharing as long as they aren't getting paid for it.
No one is entitled to free content no matter how evil we think the studios/labels/software giants are.
You seem caught up in this belief that file sharers believe it's inherently wrong but justify it with excuses. It's a shame you can't actually put yourself in other's shoes.
Again, file sharers don't think they're entitled to free content. People are voluntarily sharing it with them. Person A bought a CD, ripped it and voluntarily shared with other people.
The question is, are copyright holders entitled to use the state as their personal weapon to prevent people from voluntarily sharing copies of their property?
The fucked up thing is that I agree with you guys on so many levels except one. Sharing is fine, sharing is great, copyright holders should not abuse the state to serve their own ends, and the companies pushing for the ability to take down websites, sieze domains, and cut off payment gateways for sites in a way the totally bypasses due process is wrong. I agree with you.
But can't you see why they are able to do this? Technology, specifically the web has turned the issue of sharing into something that we've never seen before.
Put yourself in the shoes of a copyright holder. You've created some work, since we're here on HN let's say it was software. You worked hard and charge $20 for your app. Someone downloads it and pays the first time. They like it so much they share it with their friend. Their friend goes ahead and puts a torrent out there and now there are ten thousand people downloading your app for free (let's say there was no security to stop that or they were able to crack it). So now you're out $20 for every single one of those copies floating around out there.
Sharing used to be no big deal but now that you can download content instantly (or close to it) and "share" content with millions of people, it now has the ability to really hurt people.
If I went ahead and burned a ton of copies of the Windows7 installer complete with license keys that work and then went downtown to a busy intersection and just started passing them out to people would that be okay? Should Microsoft get off my back because I'm just "sharing"?
Just come on, how can no one see the difference between sharing and distribution here? It's obviously harmless to rip a CD and send some tracks out to your friends but when your sharing starts scaling to a point where its in the hundreds and thousands, well that's when I've just got to throw up my hands and say "give me a break". You can't justify that as not being harmful to the creator. At that point it doesn't matter if you're being paid or not.
In the end, its people who are "sharing" on torrent sites that are giving the government an excuse to pass these kinds of laws. I see both sides, I really do, and I think there's a middle ground, we just haven't found it yet.
You're still arguing from a position that copyright is fine, we just need to tweak it until it works. That's not where I'm arguing from. I'm asking a more fundamental question: even if it hurts badly the content creators (and yes, I'm one), isn't it an abuse from govt to prevent any voluntary copy between people?
Let's draw an analogy with Free Speech: there are people who (ab)use free speech to hurt others. Denying the holocaust, insulting dead soldiers at their funerals, burning books or flags people consider sacred, etc. The people being targeted are often really hurt (psychologically) by how others use their right.
But do those (ab)uses excuse the government to cut down on free speech? A US constitutionalist would say no, because it's a fundamental right. Regardless of how much it can be abused, how much it can hurt people, it's an untouchable right.
The question I'm asking is if people voluntarily sharing (as in, not selling) information between them isn't a fundamental right that should never be touched, regardless of who it hurts.
(I'd like also to suggest that in a copyright-free world, nobody would simply make an app and sell it for $20. Business models are adapted to the reality. It's a possibility that less people would make apps, though)
I think it's unrealistic to imagine there is anything at all "these people" (which the article speculates are largely not of voting age) can do to change the law. I think it's unrealistic to imagine that these laws do or will reflect the electorate's sentiments, ever.
People are taking this issue which exists in a gray area and trying to frame it as black and white. These kids who put the disclaimers up grew up in a time when Napster and MP3 sharing was huge and since they didn't understand the issues then (or thought they did) they aren't trying to now nor do they have any interest in trying. Copyright is just fine. What's wrong with demanding to be paid for your creation? Why should people think they're entitled to not pay for use of your work because they believe copyright is wrong?
What if I believed tht murder was okay, went around murdering people in broad daylight then threw a fit about how "well, the laws against this are outdated and lame so you shouldn't punish me because the law sucks"?
The arguments about people not paying anyway and free marketing are both lame and they're excuses to make pirates and copyright infringers feel better. People who can't afford to buy a creation will eventually try to save up to get it. If they still can't afford it then why should they get it free anyway? I can't afford a new BMW even if I save for it, so should I be able to walk into the dealership and just take one and drive off screaming "well, I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's not really anyone's loss!" And the only free marketing you get from this sort of thing is links to the free pirated version! No one markets the paid, original work and those who see the pirate version are more likely to have been looking to steal other digital media so it's not like they saw a recommendation for it on Amazon, they saw a link to a free copy and it's doubtful they'll search out a paid copy.
The thing about this issue is that many times you have to judge on a case by case basis. Remember the "remembering Steve" variation on the Apple logo? It very clearly used someone else's intellectual property but I think even Apple could agree that there was nothing to get upset over. This Pulp Fiction remix is kind of a gray area. The entire movie is online but just not in order. Is it different enough from the original to consider it not harmful to Tarentino ans the studio? I guess my point is that copyright isn't all bad, no one is entitled to free work as many believe these days, the reasons given for pirated material not being harmful are just excuses, and we really have to judge on a case by case basis.
I know it's not popular to defend copyright but I am anyway because there are parts of the issue that are right on. I'm with corin here and I don't get why he was downvoted like that. That little down arrow isn't there to silence unpopular opinions, it's for getting rid of trolls and off topic posts.
And this is where you lose them. It is only theft to them if you take something and leave nothing. If you take something and leave the same thing, it is copying.
Honestly, you might as well try to equate copyright infringement with rape. It would make precisely as much sense to them.
Yes, the argument still applies with rape. Or murder. Carving "No murder intended" on a fresh body does not make it less murder, nor does writing "No copyright infringement intended" lessen infringement.
I do not agree with current copyright laws, but they do exist. Citizens need to have a better understanding the laws if we ever hope to have them changed.
Many people seem to be incredibly willfully ignorant about copyright stuff.
Copyright was one of the topics covered in an elective my 6th grade son took last quarter. Public school in California.
> What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate
Not shit.
I grew up several generations ago. We all made mix tapes, violated copyright with our VHS and Betamax recorders, Xerox machines, etc.
Then we grew up and most of us discovered we liked money and so sold out to anyone including copyright cartel who would give us a share of their take.
The only thing new about the phenomenon is the ease with which a greater variety of media is now shifted around digitally.
To expand on this: The only legal way to record copyrighted material is to do it to time-shift, meaning you record it, watch it once, and then destroy the copy. That is it.
This was settled in the Supreme Court case Sony v Universal, back when 'Sony' meant 'Betamax', as detailed in this page:
This is simply not true. It's the same type of ignorance the OP is complaining about. Just to start with, fair use exceptions. Not to mention we've carved out custom exceptions for education, disabled people, etc. etc.
Or just read Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_c...
Granted, they're a lot narrower than normal people believe they are. But they're a lot wider than "only one exception", and both mental models are equally incorrect.
My local lending library has a huge number of large print books and I've often wondered why, especially when it seems out of proportion to the size of the aged population. Perhaps the library gets them cheaper.
Copying is cheap now, as is publishing. Everyone can easily infringe copyright now, something that just wasn’t possible only twenty years ago.
My hypothesis is that people never understood copyright – they never had to – and now we are living in a world in which everyone can infringe copyright and hardly anyone understands what it is.
I'd be surprised if most renters knew what the laws about renting are, despite most of the rules being written out and not squirreled away in court cases (re: case law) and renting being a major expense they incur every month.
However, internally I think the US still require registration for US citizens to sue other US citizens for infringement. Why? Must be making someone rich ...
More information:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-software-on...
There is some actual truth in this of which I can only explain anecdotally, and am slightly wary of posting this story as last time I did on HN someone personally attacked me as being stupid, but never explained how I was wrong. I've even searched for the truth on the matter, but as I'm not a lawyer I've only found explanations of the grey area that supports both arguments.
Anyways, before I became a full time software developer I actually was a watchmaker, trained by a Swiss organization in partnership with a few major Swiss watch manufacturer companies. One of those companies is probably the most well known luxury watch brand in the world, of which they invited our class to their repair facility in Midtown Manhattan. The person that walked us through the facility was the president of after sales service himself. Upon visiting the area where they receive watches for repair, he remarked on how many imitation watches they receive per day (which is quite a bit more than I would have guessed). When asked on what they do with them, he said they usually just send them back to the owner with a letter explaining the watch. But, globally they have a goal to determine origins and production facilities abroad that do make their living off of manufacturing counterfeit goods in order to shut them down. Most counterfeit watches come from very few factories, so when they do receive an imitation for service, they check certain manufacturing marks which easily categorized them into groups they have already seen. (As an aside, this company engraves the word "Switzerland" inside the caseback, where the vast majority of imitations reproduce this word with "Shitinrhand"). If they come across an imitation that is unique, or instead of being produced as an imitation, it is produced to be a "genuine replica" to be sold as original, they try to keep the watch.
This is where the story gets controversial. Even though the imitation infringes on both copyright and trademarks, they can't, by US Law, confiscate the watch flat out by refusing to return the watch to it's owner as that is theft. They first have to offer to buy the watch from the owner, and if the owner agrees to sell the watch (usually for a large sum), they can then refuse payment and keep the watch, as the loop hole is that the infringement is the transfer or sale of counterfeit goods, not the possession.
I'd also like to debunk or validate this argument, however until someone provides me with case stories or cites laws, I'll go ahead and trust the president of service at a multi-billion dollar company who told me this personally instead of someone on the internet calling me stupid and cite this as true, or at least the story that he told me.
As per proving a sale, they'd better have something written or recorded. I'd be calling the cops damn quick if they tried something like that with me. Unless they have proof that I ageed to a sale, the loophole well, isn't.
Now about that user who insulted you, don't let it bother you. Just remember that Sturgeons law also applies to people.
That is the lawyer can claim "it's legal" whilst knowing that they're acting unlawfully?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1609/whats-the-diff...
(Perhaps someone with legal certification could confirm).
As has been previously mentioned, there is a growing disjoint between the legal status of copyright laws and their moral underpinnings. "Kids these days" are still acting within a moral framework of do not harm even while downloading.
HN evidently doesn't agree, so I'll leave it at that.
edit: though clearly to be good for free purposes, people need to actually understand copyright. I would say that the rather modern "everyone can create" (or remix) thing, rather than just people with a background in a creative field (which would probably include some education on the topic of copyright) has created a bit of a problem. Some sort of effort to educate the public would be pretty beneficial, in my view (imagine if everyone knew what creative commons was).
Why does it have to be arguing for something? Isn't it posing a question?
That's a pretty lame assumption.
It sounds like you misunderstood and thought he was merely saying that it sounds like a childish username, which he was not. If the username was crimewriter65 it would be strongly indicating that he was 46 years old.