In terms of legitimacy, homesteading makes as much sense for the basis of a property claim as would "first post!" So someone got to the resource first. Regardless of whether they are capable of defending their claim or not, why *should* they be able to prevent everyone else who subsequently comes along from having the same access to the land and resources that they did when they first arrived? IOW, let me turn this question back on the underlying assumption:

To understand my perspective, try apply this same question to everyone else besides you. Why should the first person who can afford to get there and work resources have a claim of ownership? Why should they be able to prevent others from getting there and working the same resources? When you get down to it, property rights are based on an odd bit of reasoning: it's mine because I say it's mine, and/or because I got here before anyone else did. It might very well be how things are, but it is a bizarre bit of recursive mental bootstrapping.

That's a good theory, but I don't believe it accurately describes how things came to be as they currently are. Some examples include: the ongoing conflicting claims of ownership rights in the middle east (particularly the so-called "Holy Land"), and also the entirety of the continents of South, Central, and North America.

Both are examples of massive tracts of land of which the original appropriators (whoever they were) have long since been displaced from "their" lands in the face of invading military forces.

Bigelow's move sounds like a bald attempt at a money/power grab, but hopefully it will help trigger some long-needed reflection on the concept of property rights. We just kind of accept how it works and get on with our lives, but there is a very strange bit of reasoning at the root of property ownership. If someone wants to "own" a bit of the moon, who should they pay, if anyone? Should it be enough that they get there first, AND can afford the weapons required to defend it from subsequent travelers? And what about real estate on Mars, Europa, and habitable planets beyond our solar system?

When a person or organization owns a bit of land, they have the right to keep (mostly) everyone else off of that property. Does that mean that anyone who owns property has in effect taken that property from everyone else? Well, sort of. The systems we've come to accept tend to ensure inequality, as property = capital, capital gains create massive wealth, and that wealth is subsequently kept from everyone else in the world, because... someone was lucky enough to be born to a property owner. It's not a particularly fair system.

Well there is little use debating what is a matter of speculation of some possible future use. Sounds like we disagree on our perception of relative importance of parts of the decision. What detailed design guidelines do you think will be more instructive?

Here's why I think the summary will be more applicable for future projects. The technical specifics of google books that Chin addresses seem like they'd be limited, basically, to copycats of google books. OTOH, the summary section could be directly applied to systems designed to enhance public access to various types of media, not just text.

It almost reads like the mission statement of a nonprofit organization, and *hat* is the scope and level of project design I'm talking about here. I was not talking about operational specifics, such as obscuring a certain percentage of a given book. If you're talking about such operational specifics of a hypothetical system, then yes I'd agree with you that Chin's summary is too vague to be of much direct use.

Afraid I'm going to have to value the words of my law professors over yours on this particular point. It is not a four prong "argument", that is considerably understating things. Four factor analysis is THE LAW here, it's not an argument. The four factors/prongs in fair use analysis are explicitly stated in the statute. They can be found at 17 USC section 107. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 . "Benefit to society" is not one of the four factors. Chin's discussion of the benefit to society is not in the context of one of the four factors. Rather it is in the "Overall Analysis" section immediately following his detailed four factor analysis..

This is all in the actual decision. It might help you to (re?)read the decision, and pay close attention to the subheadings. http://beckermanlegal.com/Lawyer_Copyright_Internet_Law/authorsguild_google_131114Decision.pdf

Chin's discussion of fair use (beginning on page 16) could serve as an excellent introduction to what fair use really is, and how it is applied in US copyright law.

Every 4 prong fair use analysis I've seen follows the model Chin does here: outline of applicable law, explicit mention of the four prongs ((1) purpose and character of the use, (2) nature of the copyrighted work, (3) portion used in relation to work as a whole, and (4) effect of the use on market value of copyrighted work), a detailed analysis of each prong, and then an overall assessment, kind of a bird's eye overview of the entire situation.

Chin's paragraph about the benefits is the overall assessment part. That is, it is all four prongs put together, plus any other factors that might apply in this context. OTOH Google's not providing the full text & can't be tricked into doing so are part of the third prong analysis, and the links to legal purchases of the book are part of the fourth prong.

One of the four factors used in the copyright statute to determine whether or not a use is fair use is: "The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"

The idea here is to protect stuff like a critic quoting a bits of a book/movie in their discussion of a piece without violating the copyright of that book/movie. If it weren't for the 'snippet' view that prevents easy access to 100% of each scanned book, that factor would have weighed against google here, not for them. While one can only speculate whether that would have been enough to change the outcome, it is a certainty --the judge explicitly describes how, if you're interested-- that google's presentation of less than 100% of the scanned works helped secure this decision.

In the US, "Fair Use" refers to a defense against a copyright violation. Section 107 of the US Copyright statute lists 4 different factors that can be used to determine whether or not a specific use is fair. Judge Chin discusses each factor in detail, then concludes with an excellent summary of why he believes that this project is a fair use:

Depending on how Chin's decision stands up on the inevitable appeal, this paragraph has probably given us some very useful & explicit design considerations to incorporate in projects likely to face similar claims of copyright violation.

Helps a lot, thanks. I see what you mean about the noise level of derivative works, but some of the transcriptions from the Hanover collection appear to be prime specimens of colonial American English, like this one: http://history.hanover.edu/texts/nyhah.html

The short answer is: money. Lots and lots of money, because lyric copyrights will account for up to 50% of the royalties from a tune.

When you're dealing with music sales and (theoretically) getting cuts to artists, lyric authorship & copyright is another piece of the pie, often a substantial one. Essentially, if you have a different person claiming copyright credit for the lyrics, you decrease the royalties earned by the composer of the music part -- the tune, changes, melody, structure.

Look at the credits for a lot of music dating from 1976 to around the mid-90s. Often, as artists developed a career, you will notice that the credited music/lyrics by author names drop from many to just the band member or main artist, whereas in the earliest releases from an artist, you'll many names included in these credits. A standard trick is for industry folks to make "helpful suggestions" that the artist incorporates. Now that suit has become an author, and will get 50% of the royalties from your new hit.

Can you clarify with specific examples of such databases? I work in a somewhat related field, and this comes as news to me. We don't have transcriptions for similar records hundreds of years more recent (and more relevant to our work) than those of the time period you're describing.

Good heavens. Have you not been paying attention to history? There are only two choices for the first commercially successful uses of any new technology: weapons or porn. Instead of complaining, you should be counting your blessings that we still have yet to successfully weaponize porn.

Fair enough, but then that's only part of the picture. The US also undermined democracy, and continues to do so. Specifically, it funded military coups to overthrow democratically elected leaders, repeatedly, often with regimes that brutalized the populace. Take a look at our middle eastern allies: we've spent billions and decades ensuring that people named Saud retain royal power, for example. Iran used to be not only a democracy, but a fairly progressive country... until the US decided a Shah would make us more money.

The reasons for these actions was a fear that the overthrown democracies would have pursued policies that (they think) would have reduced the economic strength of the US. The calculus was, apparently, that the pursuit of US economic interests was more important than the support of democracy.

Given this demonstrated order of priorities --where the generation of material wealth for some is more important than representative government for all-- it's difficult to take claims of the US-as-defender-of-democracy seriously. In reality, the structure of foreign governments has always been a secondary concern to that of how much of a profit they can make for us. (And by "us", I mean those of us wealthy enough to afford lobbyists.)

Have you seen "The Man from Earth"? Super low-budget, no special effects, almost all of the movie is a dialog among a group of people sitting around in a living room... and I believe it is one of the best sci-fi movies to appear in a long, long time.

While this is close, it's inaccurate in an important (albeit minor, in the context of this discussion) way. The term used here is "work for hire," which means that the copyright to an original creation is owned not by the most direct creator, but by the employer.

Under US copyright law, there are two instances in which work for hire applies. First is the fork I believe you're thinking of: if the work is within the regular scope of one's employment. This is an important distinction; it means that if you're working as an animator for the Simpsons, and spend some of your work time writing a program (that has nothing to do with animating the Simpsons), you own the copyright to that program, not your employers. While there will always be billable hours for lawyers to argue over what is within the scope of anyone's employment,no written agreement stating otherwise is required for an employee to own the copyright to something unrelated to work that he/she creates while on the job.

The second fork of work for hire applies to contractors, rather than regular employees. Under this, the work has to fit one of 9 categories, AND there has to be a signed, written agreement (can't be oral) explicitly stating that the work in question is work-for-hire. Point is the written agreement applies only to contractors not employees, and it has to explicitly state that the work is work for hire, not the other way around.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html