What you're citing is a quote from "The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law." The current copyright law was enacted in 1976. The 1961 report was written by the copyright office as part of a recommendation to Congress on how to revise copyright law. The report does not reflect current law and wasn't a conclusive statement of then-existing law.

As countless others have said in this thread, fair use is a minefield and its not possible for anyone other than a court to authoritatively state "this is fair use" and "this is not fair use." The law on fair use is extremely flexible and depends on the context of the use. Copying a CD to one's harddrive for personal use is generally considered fair use. Copying a CD to a friend's harddrive for their personal use is generally not considered fair use. A prof copying an academic article for his or her academic research is generally considered fair use; copying the article and handing it out to students for classroom use is generally considered fair use. A business that copies articles for students for classroom use is generally not considered classroom use.

Marijuana apparently mitigates lung cancer risks.

Unfortunately, judge posner, and most appeals court judges, rarely ever see patent cases. Nearly all patent cases go to a special appellate court, and so most patent law & policy is set by the small group of perhaps myopic judges on the federal circuit. The fed. cir. doesn't benefit from the diversity of opinions that other appeals court enjoy.

Following your logic, a fixed definite copyright term makes more sense than one based on the author's span. If all works got a 30, 50, 70, whatever year copyright term, then some copyrights wouldn't be worth less due to a shorter duration. And determining whether a work is still under protection would be easy, as all you need to know is the publication date of the work.

You need to read Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 US 639 (2002).

Here's the wikipedia article if you're lazy

Short answer: using vouchers at religious schools is constitutional and is actually practiced in Ohio.

ASCAP and BMI are a completely different of entity than the RIAA, or Righthaven.

The RIAA is a trade group for record companies. It performs certain functions for the record companies that would be inefficient for them to do individually - namely, lobby congress & the US trade representative, and public education campaigns about copyright law. ASCAP and BMI are not trade associations for music publishers - that's the NMPA (National Music Publishers Association).

Righthaven, apparently, is a shell company that only acquired a "right" to sue for infringement - no other rights were acquired/licensed at all. As TFA and others have stated, this is so obviously legally invalid that its surprising they actually thought it would work.

ASCAP and BMI acquire actual rights from copyright owners - namely, the public performance right. Owners of musical works (typically either a publisher or a composer/songwriter) assign to ASCAP or BMI the nonexclusive right to perform their work publicly. ASCAP and BMI gather up a whole bunch of such public performance rights, then sublicense all of those rights (a "blanket license", i.e., permission to perform any musical work in ASCAP or BMI's repertoire) to places where music might be performed - bars, restuarants, radio and tv stations, etc. Those places pay a single annual fee; all such fees are pooled by ASCAP/BMI and then distributed to the owners of musical works in proportion to how often the musical works were performed (this is usually an estimate).

ASCAP is a nonprofit, member-owned collective rights group for music publishers and writers (so, it's maybe a little bit like a trade group); BMI is a for profit collective rights group owned by NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) - so it's actually owned by a trade group of musical work *users*, rather than authors/owners.

This is inaccurate.* Public performance of a musical work is an exclusive right awarded to the owners of the musical work's copyright. ASCAP and BMI are collective rights organizations, to whom the musical work copyright owners assign licenses. ASCAP and BMI get royalties from bars and any other place where music is performed (radio, tv, concert halls, restaurants, etc.) and then distribute that money to the owners of the musical works copyright.

What you're describing is the digital performance right, which is completely different. First of all, it only applies to sound recordings, which have a completely different copyright than musical works. The "authors" of a musical work are songwriters or composers; the "author" of a sound recording is a musician or "recording artist." Second, it only applies to performances of the sound recording over the internet (or other ways of digitally sending/performing a sound recording), not all public performances of sound recordings. A bar that has a sound system can play any sound recording it wants without paying the copyright owner of that sound recording - but it would have to pay for a blanket license from ASCAP and/or BMI for the public performance of the musical work.

*I do understand your confusion, though - musical works do have a compulsory license - however, it's for the mechanical reproduction of the musical work. See 17 USC 115. The limits on sound recording rights (i.e., no public performance right) and the compulsory license for digital performance rights are in 17 USC 114.

Apparently you never heard of NSFNET, which had an acceptable use policy; commercial networks had to sign usage agreements in order to connect to the internet. In those days, one couldn't freely connect a private network to the internet just by getting an address from Jon Postel; you had to sign up with NSFNET and agree to its terms.

Technically, if the content wasn't actually created by you (i.e., you are the author), and if the content is not public domain,* then you *do* need a license - from the owner of the copyright over that content - in order to upload it.

But, I imagine that you're not railing against private ownership and control of resources. Just the conflict between government stewardship of resources and individual liberty.

* I mean "public domain" in the expansive sense - e.g., ideas are public domain, fair uses of content is public domain, etc.

Wow, awesome find.

First of all, there's a section titled "Mantaming Sparta."

Second, there is this very interesting passage:

That's an aspect of homophobia / "don't ask don't tell" that few think about.

Keen came out on 14 December, 1990; Duke Nukem came out on July 1, 1991. Thats 7 months later. Furthermore; Keen is 8 years old in his first adventure; whereas Duke is fully grown (can't say he's "mature" though).

Lets face facts and admit that Duke Nukem is Keen's late-blossoming older brother.

Reaching back into my First Amendment notes, I find that the issue is quite a bit more complicated than that.

Although the court's decision was a unanimous, unambiguous per curiam opinion... every single member of the court wrote their own opinion, and the opinions cannot be read in such a way that a there is an agreement on the rationale behind the decision.

2 justices, Black and Douglas (the good guys, in my opinion), argued that there must never be prior restraints on publishing the news.

4 justices, Brennan, Stewart, White, and Marshall, argued that prior restraints could be permissible, but only when it is certain to result in severe harm to the country (per Stewart: "direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our nation or its people").

3 justices, Stewart, White, and Marshall, thought it was very important that no statute authorized injunctions against news publications for cases of national security.

3 justices, Harlan, Burger, and Blackmun, thought that injunctions on news publication could be constitutional. Harlan proposed a test for when injunctions could be issued: A) when the authority to prevent publication of the news would be within the President's constitutional foreign relations power (I would guess diplomatic cables would count), and B) if the decision that the publication would irreparably harm national security was made by the senior most executive official, such as the secretary of defense or state (as would also be the case for the wikileaks leak).

So, there you have it. No prior restraints, unless there's a really really good reason.

First Amendment jurisprudence is a fucking mess.

That's right. In my haste for karmawhoring, I screwed that up - I should have said: "designating documents as secret and preventing anyone from publishing them is a 'prior restraint' and presumed unconstitutional.

Right. And I said:

The government has a "heavy burden" to justify prior restraints. The person who wants to publish secret documents doesn't have to justify anything. Therefore, the presumption is that the government may not prevent the publication. Of course, that presumption, like any presumption, may be overcome.

Shameless karma whoring:

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

The unanimous opinion itself is very short; essentially, designating documents as secret and punishing anyone who publishes them is a 'prior restraint' and presumed unconstitutional.