Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

If I can relate this to movies [1], it might be illuminating:

Watching a movie, you normally get a "home viewing" license. That does not give you the right to show it at your business (even if you don't charge money and only 10 people come).

There's also a Public Performance Rights (PPR) license, and I always had to get PPR's because Google lawyers would shut us down otherwise. PPR costs considerably more than a home viewing license.

When I negotiated PPR's, they always asked three questions:

1. How many in the audience?

2. Are you charging money?

3. Are you advertising this outside Google?

If I were a movie theater taking $15 a head from anyone who showed up, my PPR would cost a lot more.

It seems that what IA wants is to use home viewing rights as though they had PPR's.

"No, they don't!" you retort? You might be right, but asking AG to design a license for them would be a lot more friendly than saying, "Hey, this is fair to you, take it!"

Edit: one thing I forgot to add: lawyers always prefer to start with their own draft. We can hypothesize a conversation between IA and AG (which never actually happened):

[IA] Hey, can we use your books? Write us a new agreement.

[AG] OK, that'll take a few months for a first draft. Then we'll negotiate.

[IA] OMG, we don't have all that time.

[AG] Okey-dokey, we'll see you in court.

[1] https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o...

there is no such thing as a 'home viewing license'; you don't know the basics of us copyright law, despite having negotiated public performance rights licenses. you need a license from the copyright holder (or a fair use defense) when, and only when, you are doing one of the things reserved to the copyright holder under 17 usc §106 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106. specifically, 17 usc §106(4) is public performance. 17 usc §106(3) is distribution to the public, which is what the ia was doing

no sort of viewing, home or otherwise, is restricted in any way by the copyright law. you will not find the phrase 'home viewing license' in any us case law about copyright. ('residential viewing license' does occur in cases about 47 usc §605, which is not a copyright law.) you just made it up without having any idea what you're talking about. you should not mislead people about your expertise in that way; it is a bad thing to do

That’s an unnecessarily pedantic comment. The US copyright act gives the copyright owner exclusive rights regarding public performance and it also defines where public starts. Sure, there is no license for home viewing but that’s not really changing anything about the point that OP was making.

it does, because they were adducing a cause of action that doesn't exist in either statute or caselaw. nor was it asserted by the plaintiffs, because that would have gotten their case summarily dismissed. moreover, to believe that it existed, you would have to have a comprehensively incorrect understanding of the legislative and political history of us copyright law. anyone who wants to understand any of the arguments or decisions in the case needs to understand what cause of action is actually being asserted and what the possible alternatives were. reading misleading comments about imaginary legal theories the author just made up makes that more difficult

The good part about it was that caused you to comment as well and the information you provided was very enlightening.

thanks :-)

You both put 'home viewing' in quotes. Clearly you both know that's not actually a thing so this part: "you don't know the basics of us copyright law" is uncalled for.

> Supposedly an employee once filed a ticket saying “please put a pony in my office.” (He didn’t get one, in case you’re wondering, although one hears conflicting stories on this.)

benley did get a pony for a day though had to provide his own fodder. There's a photo of him and Vint Cerf with the pony floating around.

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