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I fantasize about a native american nation making a legal claim that copyright doesn't apply to them, because their culture is centered on sharing information, and that this philosophy is fundamental to their identity.

Followed, of course, by a file sharing service set up on tribal land.

If they can carve out an exemption for casinos, why not copyright? (I am not a lawyer, and am not interested in hearing about why this could or couldn't be done... I'm just fantasizing)

The reason is only federal law applies on native land, and only state laws govern whether casinos/gambling is legal. So they are exempt from the state law.

Federal laws, such as copyright, drugs, etc still apply.

We used to mail writings to ourselves as proof of ownership, an artist in music could write their sheet music then the lyrics mail it to themselves then assert that as a form of time stamped ownership. I know this is not electronic but its still evidence if needed.

I'm sorry to say that the "mailing yourself" strategy doesn't work in most countries (doesn't work in the US, for example).

Edit: here's a snopes article regarding "poor man's copyright" with a few links to sources/more information: http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp

It would probably work if you could get the poststamp over the content of the work.

But an envelope could be circumvented easily.. Mail yourself an unopen envelope, then put whatever you want inside it later and seal it?

You don't have to charge $1,000 for a DMCA to ensure it's only used for "serious" violations. You could at least punish the "wrong" DMCA with a $10,000 fee. It won't be quite as effective, but it wouldn't affect starting artists and it would still be orders of magnitude more effective than the current system in weeding out the bad DMCAs.

Digital Notary Service:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENotary

Electronic notarization is a process whereby a notary affixes an electronic signature and notary seal using a secure Public key to an electronic document (such as a PDF or Word document). Once affixed to the electronic document, the document is rendered tamper evident such that unauthorized attempts to alter the document will be evident to relying parties.[1] The e-notary will use cryptography and Public key infrastructure to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke the digital certificate. The Electronic Notary also must keep an electronic register of each act performed.

I've sent DMCA takedown notices. A garage band could too. You don't have to prove you're the author to send a takedown notice, you merely have to assert it.

I'm thinking the parent comment's point is more that if I upload an original composition on YouTube and someone else issues a takedown request claiming to own the copyright it'd be really hard for me to dispute that if the person making the request had deep enough pockets. Not sure whether that is true though.

Yep. But that's YouTube's own content system, which is way harsher and tilted toward major labels: they commonly poach other people's stuff.

It's not true. All you have to do is to assert that you instead have copyright and that you indemnify the hosting party from any fall-out and your content will be right back up. They can still sue you after that but they could do that regardless. So the DMCA is actually pretty good when it comes to this aspect.

And in the case above you'd have to sue the party claiming to have copyright on your creation but that's optional.

Well, that's the way the law works, perhaps, but is that the way it is generally implemented? You occasionally hear about Kafka-esque takedown request disputes with big services like YouTube and I guess even if they're indemnified there's no obligation to put your stuff back up.

The GP's point as I read it was actually that if sending take-down requests was _made to be_ expensive, it would be less abused by RIAA types but also would become totally unavailable to the garage-band would-be enforcers.

Hmmmm. Optimal would be if it was made to be expensive when used in mass. If somebody sent a single lone take-down request for my work, in genuine mistake, I would not begrudge him at all, and would not seek to penalize them. To err is human.

But if somebody sent a take-down request for my work, and it happened because they had sent a million take-down requests to everything on the internet matching a string search, then I would begrudge them and seek to penalize them. They would have done so KNOWING that a huge percentage of them would be wrong, but deeming it acceptable since it's no cost to them.

"If DMCA claims were expensive... the garage bands and individual artists/musicians would be left out of the game completely, they couldn't use DMCA to take down their music."

I think what yason was trying to say is that how it currently works isn't the best option, but neither are obvious alternatives, such as making it a financial investment to send takedown notices.

Which means it is easy for trolls to use and abuse. What we need is something easy for content creators but hard for trolls, but the very nature of digital work makes this a very difficult, if not impossible, task.

A knowingly false DMCA claim can result in a perjury charge.

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15

I suppose sloppy work like the OP isn't "knowingly"

Could something not be notarized as a public work for free by this third party?

> If there was a digital notary service where you could digitally sign and timestamp a file, that might help a bit.

The Bitcoin block chain might fit this need. There are already multiple[1] services[2] out there[3] doing block chain notary.

[1] http://www.proofofexistence.com/

[2] http://www.blocknotary.com/

[3] http://virtual-notary.org/

>I think this is somehow similar to how indigenous people wondered how the white man could possibly think of owning >forests, rivers, and land. They considered Earth unownable, not belonging to anyone but rather people belonging to the >Earth.

A) North America has no indigenous people. B) The people who did live here when the Europeans arrived did have ownership and private property. Sometimes owned by families and sometimes by tribes. And anyone who has even a basic high school education should be aware of the fact that there were Native American nations who controlled and owned territory and would exclude other nations from land use, hunting rights, fishing, etc.

A) Wikipedia begs to differ.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Am...

Wiktionary disaggress.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indigenous

Thought I suppose it depends on if you want the word to mean what it means or if you want to use it for some other meaning.

A) Is there any reason the people who lived in North America in the year 1400 shouldn't be considered indigenous? B) Sure, many had ownership and private property. There were those who didn't as well.