Is it possible to create something where knowing about the thing constitutes copyright infringement?
You mean like “The Game” but for copyright?
Dammit
lol yes.
That makes it the fifth time this week I’ve lost the game
oh no i forgor
And I was doing so well for so long. Anyways
No.
You cannot violate copyright by seeing, reading, hearing, or feeling a work. Even if you are knowingly observing an infringing copy, your consumption of that work is not an infringement.
Unless you were complicit in creating or distributing the infringing copy, you are free to consume any copy that you have acquired.
or feeling a work.
Lmao.
“These emotions are a work of art and I demand you pay royalties for feeling them!”
Lol, I was trying to imply “braille”, or some other tactile expression…
No.
You cannot violate copyright by seeing, reading, hearing, or feeling a work. Even if you are knowingly observing an infringing copy, your consumption of that work is not an infringement.
Disney: “Them’s quitter words!”
Well, you could make it such that accessing it would make you break the law, but then it would still be the accessing, not consumption that breaks the law.
Agreed, with one caveat: while mere access could be potentially illegal, I don’t think that it would be copyright law that would be broken.
Yes, that is what I was trying to say
Would not the act of memorization an infringing copy? Copyright itself does not allow a provision where a non-ephemeral copy may be stored, regardless of the medium or duration. You would, of course, have the positive defense of fair use - if you were sued for your infringing copy, you could mount a defense that the storage falls under the fair use provisions, but you would still be required to defend yourself at your own expense. Would it make a difference if we, one day, developed a method of reading memories. Someone with a photographic memory could then be used to recreate the work from their copy - clearly a violation, and hence the storage is a violation (excepting backup/fairuse - which is still an infringement, but a special case of permitted infringement)
Would not the act of memorization an infringing copy?
No. The variant of the work recorded within your nervous system does not meet the legal definition of a “copy”.
Even if it did, prosecuting such a violation would violate a whole mess of human and civil rights which supersede copyright provisions.
Oh, it definitely does. A copy does not need to be verbatim - derivative works, of which even an inaccurately memorized copy would certainly apply - to be infringing. Otherwise a re-encoded copy of a video - having been entirely changed through the encoding process - would be a new work. When I sing a song from memory, it’s effectively reproducing the equivalent recorded copy from my brain. Of course, the performance is yet a new copy - and I can be sued if I were to change the lyrics or notes outside of the specific contract under which I perform (performance) or record (mechanical). Broadway show owners do this all the time (prohibit changes of words and characters, among other alterations) - and generally they win in court if challenged, shutting down shows and cancelling performance rights
Running a computer program is copyright infringement because the program is copied from HDD to RAM. Watching a movie should be copyright infringement because the movie is copied from the screen to your brain.
What if you were playing a Switch on the train? Would that not be “exhibiting the work publically”?
You could play your Switch on a train, while streaming on Twitch, and it still wouldn’t be infringement.
You could tell people where they could download a Switch emulator and the roms for the game you were playing (provided you weren’t hosting them yourself), and you still wouldn’t be infringing copyright. (The host of that emulator and the roms would be, and you would violate Twitch’s TOS, but not copyright law)
I would argue that your followers would not be violating copyright in downloading that emulator and rom; the violator is the uploader, not the downloader.
I would argue that you could then invite your followers to play with you, and you could play on the train, and stream your gameplay on twitch, and still not be violating copyright.
You could play your Switch on a train, while streaming on Twitch, and it still wouldn’t be infringement.
I don’t think that’s correct. Streaming or showing publicly is infringement. Game companies don’t tend to sue for Twitch streaming but my understanding is that it’s well within their copyright to do so.
If I play Destiny 2 on my twitch stream, at the end of my stream, my audience has watched a video. Someone recording my stream has a copy of a video that I have produced. Bungie’s copyright is for a game, not a video. My audience does not have a game. My audience cannot play their “copy” of Destiny 2, because what they have is not a copy of what Bungie holds the copyright to.
I hold the copyright to my performance, not Bungie. The movement of my character and the sound of my voice are under my control, not Bungie’s.
You are correct about a public performance of a song or video, but not a playthrough of a game.
You seem to be talking via theory not actual law. Most lawyers say it would need to be tried in court but Nintendo (it was Nintendo making the claims at the time) would have a solid case. The reason is that it would allow copyright laundering: You could play the game and license the “video” to a game company which could use the assets in the video (eg: Mario) to make a new Mario game.
I reject your idea that it could allow copyright laundering. A copy of Mario from my video is still a copy of Mario. My license to play the game allows me to incorporate my gameplay into a new work, but extracting that character from my work arrives at a character indistinguishable from Nintendo’s.
I would not be violating Nintendo’s copyright to license my video to Montendi, but Montendi would be violating Nintendo’s copyright when they extract that character and use him in their own game.
I reject your idea that it could allow copyright laundering
It’s fine, that doesn’t change the legality. Unsure whether a judge would include reasoning like this in their judgement.
My license to play the game allows me to incorporate my gameplay into a new work,
No, you are not freely allowed to create derivative works. You are probably arguing fair use or fair dealing, but Twitch streaming generally wouldn’t count (it’s not part of the list of exceptions).
I think the closest you can get to that is illegal numbers
Another example could be clean room design. Essentially reverse engineering code without using copyrighted code. Having someone on a team who has reviewed leaked code could compromise a project and make it more likely to be hit with a copyright claim if they slip up.
This has been an issue/topic of debate with multiple open source projects such as ReactOS.
I could be slightly off here but this is my understanding of it. I hope someone corrects me if I’m off base.
Yeah this was something else I was thinking of. I’m not exactly sure about the mechanics of the infringement here, but it seems like simply knowing a thing taints you for producing a work. I guess it’s more about ease of proving?
The key here is that it taints you, not the thing. Just because the source code of eg.: Acrobat is known because the source is leaked, that does not make the source code of an alternative instantly illegal.
No.
This reminds me of a question I heard long ago: if you take a copyrighted material A and XOR it with another material B, and then you distribute the result C, who can claim infringement if at all? The company which owns A or the one which owns B?
Especially that in order to actually claim infringement it means company A obtained a copy of the material of B in order to verify C infringes their rights.
Interesting. Very similar to the copyright logjam which Jim Sterling tries to create in Youtube. Basically uses copyrights of several companies and when they all claim ownership, then none of them can monetise the video.
Both, obviously.
But you don’t make it public you did that. If summoned to court, you XOR C with innocuous file D, to get result E, which looks like a random encryption key. Then you tell them the file is D XOR E.
It helps if either A or B is random. There’s no chance that your randomly encrypted file is accidentally the XOR of two non-random files.
Trade secrets,?
