pouët.net

SAVE SCENE.ORG FROM LEGAL ATTACKST!!

category: general [glöplog]
yeh we are planning to make a webinterface where the ppl click "yes i choose this cc license for this prod which i am owner/curator of"

i still wonder how it holds up legally if the artist on the next day sells the rights to explore a music commercially to a music company.

we should defnitly get in contact with eff.

yeh, the main problem really resides in people using the scene to get a deal instead of simply providing music for free. they suck. :/
our other problem is the archive of material which uses copyright sampling from another piece: dj mixes, remixes, demos with ripped soundtrack. we want to keep them but if they're based on already cc'ed pieces which clearly forbid their reuse on such forms, it becomes a touchy ground for us as the archivers to host them... O_o
added on the 2005-04-02 13:11:53 by psenough psenough
Especially old amiga demos have for example a picture of star wars here or the terminator there.
Alot copied from movies. Also mods have many ripped samples or not to say whole songs copied from real life.. bleeeeeeeeh. Good old days. :) Fuck the legal system all was ment good, innocent.
added on the 2005-04-02 15:59:43 by magic magic
Quote:
The problem with any license (CC, GNU etc) is that it is only applicable for as long as the copyright holder wishes to use it for current distribution. I don't believe that a CC license is pervasive as such - in other words, if someone buys the copyright to a work that was released under license, I don't believe they have to honour that license *for future distributions*.


That's not true. If it were, then one day Linus Torvalds could wake up in a bad mood (or die and leave the copyrights to some next-of-kin with dollar signs in their eyes) and change the licensing terms to his work, and the whole Linux world would be fucked.

Both CC licences and the GPL contain provisions to ensure that they can't be revoked - in the case of CC, by stating that the licence is perpetual, and in the case of the GPL, by stating that anyone receiving the program is also granted a licence.

(Unfortunately, the I Want Scene.Org To Host My Shit For Free Licence doesn't contain such a provision, because nobody's ever written it.)

In your book publisher example - I'm pretty sure any licence like that would have to contain certain limitations, such as "I grant you a licence to publish a run of n thousand copies" or "I grant you a licence to publish this book for one year". If it didn't, the original publisher would be allowed to continue publishing for as long as they wanted.

Also, I think it's a bit misleading to talk about whether or not the copyright holder is required to honour a licence, because once the licence is granted, the copyright holder doesn't have to perform any further action. The licensee can go ahead and distribute it according to the terms of the licence, no further questions. There's nothing to stop the copyright holder later granting *new* licences to different people on different terms, but the original licensing terms are still out there, and the copyright holder and new licensees can't do anything about it.
added on the 2005-04-02 18:31:58 by gasman gasman
already said it to friends: i think that people using scene.org for viral distribution of music without giving anything back when they get famous are FUCKING ASSHOLES AND DESERVE TO BE SHREDDED TO PIECES. or you could just wait for their "fame" to subside and ban them for life from scene.org.

i mean, is this the new style? using scene.org as a release platform to save a shitload of money for advertisement and marketing and putting it off as soon as real money is made?

are people these days too stupid to make fair contracts with labels which allows their content to be freely published? any label offering me a contract under the condition that i'm not allowed to publish my music for free can shove its contract where the sun is never shining.

scene.org should release the threatening letters written to them so we can all send a truckload of "fuck you"'s to their email accounts. oh yes, and so i wont accidently buy stuff from cockheads.
added on the 2005-04-02 18:47:31 by paniq paniq
Quote:
yeh we are planning to make a webinterface where the ppl click "yes i choose this cc license for this prod which i am owner/curator of"

i still wonder how it holds up legally if the artist on the next day sells the rights to explore a music commercially to a music company.


afaik, atleast in norway, a web-submission-button is not legally valid at all. first of all, it's virtually impossible to prove _who_ actually pressed the button (sure, you can prove what ip sent the request, but not who controlled it). second, you can't _really_ be sure the button was pressed at all. i mean, a cat could walk over your keyboard... or someone could be using a buggy browser/firewall/proxy/whatever. from what i've been told, even eulas (like the one that pops up when you install windows) is invalid here in norway. so, how do you plan, ps, to deal with this? disallow norwegian music-submissions?
added on the 2005-04-02 19:31:37 by kusma kusma
how about just blowing up all these lawyers along with their families?
added on the 2005-04-02 19:34:31 by tomcat tomcat
Tomcat, I understand the frustration but that's the kind of dumbass statement that doesn't get anyone anywhere.

What if someone PDF'd your book and put it up for public download?

The companies who own the rights, the lawyers etc aren't the people at fault here. The blame lies with the original creators of the work who through either lack of knowledge or lack of caring, create this situation.

gasman, you make interesting points. I'm not legally qualified to contest them, but as far as I understand it your source code example is not the same as music. Source to the kernel is not covered under the Berne convention, which is explicit in what it covers. People have already tried to argue that code is an expression of speech/art/talent etc to avoid DMCA etc, all those arguments have failed AFAIK.
added on the 2005-04-02 19:50:07 by defbase defbase
kusma:
Same in sweden. Banks uses hw keys or specific. certificates, wich you will have to sign personally at the bank to be able to get activated kindof..

Funny thing tho! You can SCAN your signature in sweden and e-mail it and it will be legal correct ;) (well, they claim it is.. but prolly has never been tested)
added on the 2005-04-02 20:03:40 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
(SCNR)
Here you are if you want the scene to the fuckn publicity...... >:-D
(/SCNR)

And this is just the beginning.
added on the 2005-04-03 07:29:25 by Drago_VOZ Drago_VOZ
simply delete all music files from scene.org - let those ungratefull musicians take care of them selves! :)
kusma: thats a darn good question.
added on the 2005-04-03 15:09:02 by psenough psenough
actually, attaching that licence to demos wouldn't be a bad thing, because sooner or later people are going to get sued. it's a fact. in a world were people go nuts over intellectual rights we need to protect our heritage. i'm totally in favour of it!

though, getting the consent of all the authors of the works online at scene.org WILL be difficult. perhaps a deadline for accepting the terms, and the people who don't accept the terms will have their works deleted? just an idea.
added on the 2005-04-03 15:24:12 by gemini gemini
ps: the problem should not be dealt with at scene.org, but at the parties. when submitting, you'll have to agree on letting the music go public. and only party entries (music) get's space on scene.org? the point here is, to deal with rights in the compos. so make a little scene.org stamp, which are needed to apply the compoentries to scene.org. blalbla, i dont have a clue, but aleast an idea ;)
added on the 2005-04-03 15:28:01 by quisten quisten
quisten: you mean like they already do? f.i. the rules at this years breakpoint said:

Quote:

# All shown entries will be spread. We will do our best to make them available in release packs on our compo server directly after the competition was held.


http://breakpoint.untergrund.net/compos.php

Better not upload your releases if you can't handle them being spread.
yeah, it's a common party-rule. but i think the real issue here is netlabes, not really party-submissions.
added on the 2005-04-03 18:16:53 by kusma kusma
Indeed you are correct
added on the 2005-04-03 18:41:43 by _-_-__ _-_-__
so send a giant "sod off!" to all those netlabel-people then. i'm a musician and i don't care diddly squat about all the music on scene.org, except the occasional downloading of the radix-dir (radix RULES!) or the top three entries of some music-compo at some party (rarely)..

according to a quick "calculate filespace used" in flashfxp the entire /music-subdir takes up 108.67 GB. in comparison, the /demo-subdir takes up 16.32 GB.

a little skewed?

of course, that picture lies a little, since most of the demos and anims and stuff lies in the /parties-subdir, which takes up 152.19 GB.

still seems skewed to me though.
added on the 2005-04-03 18:47:53 by gloom gloom
It doesn't bother me a bit personally I think it's rather funny myself, More threatening letters is what the scene needs, Now get korea to aim a missile towards pouet and do away with this cheeseball site as well.
added on the 2005-04-04 00:55:25 by Don Don
ps,

Does Pouet have any possible way of Removing Dons Post privileges from these kind of threads and the comment section as well.
added on the 2005-04-04 02:08:09 by Mike 3D Mike 3D
Could scene.org write their own licence or terms of use? One that does nothing else than ensure that scene.org keeps its distribution rights for 50 years/5000 years/al eternity,and also keeps scene.org's back clear of copyright infringement issues?

Also, about the "need to approve EULA-issue":
If you grant ftp-access only to those who have accepted this licence/the terms of use for scene.org you wouldn't need to use a webuploader, nor read and approve the licence/terms of use for every file uiploaded. Also, the responsibility for copyright infringements are put where it belongs: at the uploaders. This should relatively soon make sure that parties all around the world would include a note in their competition rules again that by submitting your work bla bla bla.
For people uploading a file now and then (I guess scene.org doesn't need a gazillion ftp-accounts for uploading), there could just be a webinterface with a click through EULA.

I don't know how the legality works, but Sun has a clickthrough EULA whenever downloading Java-stuff, and I guess they have learned to watch their backs by now :) It should be possible to find articles and papers about this subject though.
If any country has laws that make approval of legal contracts via the web illegal then either A) demand a written statement (fax/letter) or B) fuck 'em.


..and yes. Please give out the list of names for the retards who pays scene.org back with legal threats. I want to get their phone number and harass them/their family/their pets the next time I'm drunk.
Fuckings to lamers.
added on the 2005-04-04 07:16:45 by lug00ber lug00ber
I always got the impression scene.org was partly funded from sale of the warez/pron etc that gets sent to the /incoming folder.

Making a new license is probably a bigger job than it looks.. it would have to be written by a lawyer who speciallises in international copyright law. An off-the-shelf one would save a lot of time/money I suspect.

And about the click-through-eula thing.. I think that's acceptable if the "accept" button is at the bottom of the page? Then the user must scroll down the page at least, and click "agree".. that is an action they must perform to show they have read it. Perhaps i'm wrong there though - I'm no law expert.
added on the 2005-04-04 18:11:39 by psonice psonice
lug00 etc... Sun etc puts EULAs because then they think they have protected their stuff, its bullshit.

In Sweden I *KNOW* EULAs are useless and would NEVER hold in court. It probably is the same in any scandinavian country, and well... I thave a strong feeling that scandinavian musicians do take up quite alot of space on scene.org servers.
added on the 2005-04-04 20:50:45 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
as kusma said earlier, "click here to accept" are not worth a damn thing in the norwegian legal system (and probably the same in denmark and sweden as well) so it wouldn't really matter if we had one there or not.

there is a simple solution to the whole problem - disallow netlabel-stuff at scene.org :)
added on the 2005-04-04 22:27:16 by gloom gloom
I don't know the very current status of CC but last i've heard (at a presentation in norway in november last year) was that there's some countries that haven't agreed at all, some, that have only agreed to parts of it, some that want rewrites in parts of it and some that have fully agreed. Although I think Creative Commons is a very good thing to consider for the future I'm not sure wether or not it makes sense to apply it in an unready state as it is. Correct me if I'm wrong though :)
added on the 2005-04-04 23:11:11 by coma coma
You can ignore any request to remove creative property from the archive as long as they were the ones to upload. You can't share something freely and then after the fact decide that you want sole rights of distribution. Such cases would be thrown out of court.

Please remind anyone that sends you such emails that they should have thought about it before uploading anything to your archive. The initial intention rules over all.

www.modarchive.com also sticks to this kind of arrangement as as far as I know has founded its descisions on legal advice.

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