Well you can argue that copyright shouldn't last 60 years, and I'd agree, but it does.
Just because you don't like the law, it doesn't mean you can break it without consequences.
The double jeopardy clause which enables jury nullification does not extend to civil law.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification which cites https://ia902506.us.archive.org/9/items/verdicts-of-conscien...
> In a civil trial, where the jury renders a verdict that is clearly at odds with the evidence, the judge can hand down judgment non obstante veredicto (JNOV) or order a new trial. Jury nullification is possible in a criminal context because once the defendant has been acquitted, and regardless of why he was acquitted, he cannot be tried again for the same offense. A consideration of the constitutionality of civil jury nullification is beyond the scope of this Note. See generally Lars Noah, Civil Jury Nullification, 86 Iowa L. Rev. 1601, 1601, 1626-57 (2001) (discussing legitimacy of jury nullification in civil cases and concluding that "the case in favor of civil jury nullification is much weaker than it is in the criminal arena.)
The primary reference is at https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/... .
Even if jury nullification did apply, and you were lucky enough to get jurors who exercised that option, one clear consequence is going through the civil trial. You have no right to a public defender, so either you will need to pay for a (likely expensive) attorney, or deal with it on your own.
In the grandparent's example, the TV series is still available, and so the copyright holder could make a strong case for damages. If it's an otherwise unavailable news report about a specialist topic, it would be much harder to claim that any damages (such as loss of profits) was actually incurred.
The fact that YouTube can simply restrict access whenever they feel like it is of course tangential to the legality of distribution in general.
But all of these are examples of other people disliking a law. If the right other people dislike a law, you can ignore it. But whether you like it doesn't really play into it.
If executives can just decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore then we're partway down the road to dictatorship. Judges have the power to find that a law is unconstitutional, but not Presidents or Governors.
The methods the President chooses or doesn't choose to employ how to enforce the Controlled Substances Act seems to be more or less at their discretion in practice, and "we have limited resources and bigger fish to fry" seems to be a valid excuse, despite this being a judgement call at the whims of the executive branch.
This also doesn’t mean people will escape consequences, right? Broadly and statistically speaking, it’s extremely unlikely that breaking a law you don’t like will result in a trial that strikes the law down in your favor. I’d guess this might be especially true with copyright, since there is so much precedent - lots and lots of people have broken copyright and tried to fight it and lost. Why is this case any different?
The typical historical ‘example’ would be the jury finding a ‘white’ defendant not guilty of a clearly proven crime (murder, rape, battery, etc.)
A more modern example would be a jury finding a defendant not guilty of possession of marijuana even though the defendant obviously had MJ in their possession.
e.g.
> In 2021, six activists associated with the environmental protest organisation Extinction Rebellion were tried for causing criminal damage to the British headquarters of the multinational oil company Royal Dutch Shell. The judge told the jury that there was 'no defence in law' for the protestors' actions, which according to the prosecutor had caused 'significant damage' to the building, but the activists were acquitted
Further, 12 random people shouldn’t be able to flout democracy, and in fact judges are given a lot of discretion about what to do if a jury ignores law so blatantly.
Correct, they absolutely should not—in a working democracy.
The trouble is democracy isn't working when it comes to copyright, it never has. The 1886 Berne Convention was snuck in and locked in place before anyone realized what had happened. Big vested interests like Sony have had governments by the knackers ever since at everyone else's expense.
The question is how does the citizenry now regain control over its governance. Put another way, rule by multinational corporate interests isn't democracy.
See for example people who think it's fine to shoplift from stores because "they're big companies" or whatever.
> rule by multinational corporate interests isn't democracy.
The MPAA members, including Disney, Sony, AND netflix, have a combined value of $500b. Set aside netflix and that's $300b - 1/0th the size of a company like Google.
Now you might be right that large companies that rely on copyright for control are a danger, but if Sony is a big danger, what does that make Google or Apple.
Google, MS, Meta, Amazon and many others are exercising monopolistic power to the disadvantage of others. Put it this way, the small percentage of the population who are very wealthy shareholders and owners of these companies—powerful vested interests—have inflicted significant damage on our society by their control over government.
When the rich binge on getting richer and all others get poorer as a consequence and government does nothing about it then history tells us where that usually ends. One doesn't have to be Einstein to see our society is in a damn mess and it's getting worse.
Everyone is all for jury nullification until you get a few closet Klansmen on a jury 'nullifying' a dead-to-rights-guilty lynching trial.
Also, if I'm putting my life in the hands of 12 randos, I must be really, really, really 'down bad' (as the kids these days say).
There are stupid statutes, case law, and situations that nullification can protect the citizens from a potential overreach of government.
Under that opinion, is it equally fair to ignore the law and convict if someone committed some evil act but technically didn't break any law?
Highway cops might have discretion to let people off with a warning for minor violations, but the same discretion isn't supposed to let them punish people who are innocent. State governors have the power to grant pardons, but don't have the inverse power. And so on.
Law is not this simple. What the layperson understands as "the law" is what is written in statutes. To a lesser extent they understand case law is a thing. Case law is the interpretation of statutes by judges and juries ruling on cases. A judge or jury can "ignore" the law. By ignoring it, that becomes "the law".
"The law" is a matter of statutes, case law, prosecutor's opinion, judge's opinion, and popular opinion. As we age, we learn more about what is acceptable in society based on all these things.
Jury nullification can be a reflection of popular opinion. It is equally as flawed as any other aspect of society and government that forms "the law".
Judges have been known to set aside jury convictions when they believe the jury erred on the facts. They specifically give the jury instructions on the matter they’re supposed to decide.
Juries are supposed to decide matters of fact only, not matters of law. If the evidence shows that the defendant did not commit the act and the jury convicts anyway, it’ll either be set aside or overturned on appeal.
Of course sometimes people are wrongly convicted and punished of crimes, but that happens in every country and it’s always bad and must be fought against.
By what mechanism? The jury, as ultimate arbiters of fact, have identified that the defendant did commit the act.
The judge cannot set aside a verdict of innocent. If the jury declares you innocent, you are innocent and nothing can change that.
The judge can only set aside a verdict of guilty. This is a good thing! It protects people from a bad jury. I don’t know why this seems so surprising.
If you’re found guilty you also have the ability to appeal to a higher court. If your conviction is overturned on appeal then what did that mean? The judge at the appeals court overrode the decision of the jury. This is effectively the same thing as the trial judge setting aside a jury verdict, just with more procedure involved.
What happened on the night of March 17th?
Matters of law:
What does section 734.3 of the criminal code mean?
To be clear, only in civil cases. In criminal cases, there is no way to overturn JN.
Of course it's going to be taken off YouTube, the same as if Squid Game were uploaded.
Now if we're talking TV shows that were last place in viewership in the 1960's so nobody's bothered to sell/stream and haven't been syndicated in decades, then it's a totally different story...
Back in the days when you literally couldn't get the programs for love nor money (they were shown on US TV but weren't available globally for years), I'd often DCC them. I'd never claim that it was right.
I seem the same attitude from people who copy an article verbatim from a closed website that you have to subscribe to.
Because we end these sentences here, we are where we are.
> Just because you don't like the law, it doesn't mean you can break it without consequences.
Doubling down on the awful ending helps insure we stay here.
Instead, we could continue the thought into the broken systems that put us here. eg: Trading law for cash+favors.
However, laws aren't necessarily ethical and it's arguable that good citizens should refuse to obey unethical laws (e.g. it used to be illegal to harbour an escaped slave, or the Nazi Germany laws against Jews).
Personally, I think that media companies are harming the public by enforcing unnecessary old copyrights that they have no intention of re-distributing. We're going to end up with missing decades of TV/films that aren't popular enough to interest the copyright holder and that no-one had copies of.
I'm not sure that comparing having to pay a nominal amount for something that's trivially available with harbouring escaped slaves is the slam dunk you think it is, or why another company should profit from your reluctance to pay the creators.
I was making a general point about media companies and older media that seems to have escaped you and not specifically talking about Bewitched, but your mention of "pay the creators" raises the question of who exactly receives money from the sale of DVDs. Sol Saks is arguably the creator of Bewitched and he died back in 2011, so I have my doubts about whether copyright law is working as intended to incentivise him to make more shows.
Edit: Just had a look on wikipedia and everyone listed there in relation to Bewitched is now dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings
Before you say the DMCA isn’t the same, here are some modern incidents where copyright was used to censor things by repressive regimes:
https://www.ft.com/content/63cbf209-656f-4f99-9ee3-722755c22...
https://www.accessnow.org/dmca-takedown-demands-censor-activ...
And a roundup of how it is being misused in other ways: