Intellectual Property - IP

[Abu3baid]

@Abu3baid , sorry, I am following your comments here, but let me understand this correctly, are you arguing that it is a softer crime because in your opinion it is comparable to another commonplace crime?

No not at all.. What I'm saying is that if anyone is going to hold a strong stance about the intellectual property of one item they should hold the same stance in all intellectual property issues.. ie they can't cherry pick which is more of an egregious moral slip per se. [quote name="nevets88" url="/t/81570/intellectual-property-ip/10_10#post_1133831"]I wouldn't compare sharing the Aimpoint class experience to music piracy. Imho, something like a Kaplan SAT, MCAT, LAST course would be more similar. [/quote] I just remembered an interesting point about these specific cases you are talking about.. These companies are actively fighting this in a pretty good way, which is they basically change the exams often to include questions that are not in the previous study material, so basically if that person doesn't buy the latest study material they risk missing out on 4-5 questions that they wouldn't have seen and that could be the difference between passing and failing..

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

I wouldn't compare sharing the Aimpoint class experience to CDs. Imho, something like a Kaplan SAT, MCAT, LSAT course would be more similar.

Why not? In the end it is about protection of intellectual property.. Don't get me wrong, yours is a fine example as well as I am sure there is a lot of that going on.

How about I buy a copy is the training material for an exam, then I pass the exam and my friend is going to take the exam.. He asks me for it, since I own it do I not have the option of selling it to him? If you say yes then I could technically sell it to him for .01 or just give it to him for free.. It doesn't really matter to me at that point I have already benefited from it and I'm not going to keep a copy of it either..

There are so many grey areas and I think that's what makes the topic so interesting to me..

Scale. CD is a physical medium, transference of Aimpoint knowledge to student, a live class, is not physical and amorphous.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

I wouldn't compare sharing the Aimpoint class experience to music piracy. Imho, something like a Kaplan SAT, MCAT, LAST course would be more similar.

I just remembered an interesting point about these specific cases you are talking about.. These companies are actively fighting this in a pretty good way, which is they basically change the exams often to include questions that are not in the previous study material, so basically if that person doesn't buy the latest study material they risk missing out on 4-5 questions that they wouldn't have seen and that could be the difference between passing and failing..

You don't pass or fail a standardized test. 5-6 questions isn't going to make a huge difference in your score to drastically change the quality of the schools that accept or reject you.

[Abu3baid]

Scale. CD is a physical medium, transference of Aimpoint knowledge to student, a live class, is not physical.  You don't pass or fail a standardized test. 5-6 questions isn't going to make a huge difference in your score to drastically change the quality of the schools accept or reject you.

I was talking about tests like CPA or CIA exams.. 4 questions could mean pass or fail.. for SAT or exams like GMAT you are probably right. That's fine, I have no issue with you making that differentiation, between the two, but in the end it still boils down to IP one way or another... Someone's right is being stepped on!

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

Scale. CD is a physical medium, transference of Aimpoint knowledge to student, a live class, is not physical.

You don't pass or fail a standardized test. 5-6 questions isn't going to make a huge difference in your score to drastically change the quality of the schools accept or reject you.

I was talking about tests like CPA or CIA exams.. 4 questions could mean pass or fail.. for SAT or exams like GMAT you are probably right.

That's fine, I have no issue with you making that differentiation, between the two, but in the end it still boils down to IP one way or another... Someone's right is being stepped on!

You are comparing IP - copyright to IP - know how/trade secrets. They are different animals and should as such be treated differently, imho. Clearly, to me, songs distributed on a physical medium to be played back and knowledge to be passed in person, the content of which transferred, differs, depending on skill level of student, is different.

[Abu3baid]

You are comparing IP - copyright to IP - know how/trade secrets. They are different animals and should as such be treated differently. imho.

That's how you differentiate between them and that's fine.. Are they not both stepping on someone's invention/ownership? Do you see someone who teaches aimpoint to his best friend as more of an egregious act than someone who makes his girlfriend a copy of his CD? If that's your opinion if love to know why ones right is more important than the other? Napster comes in 4th in the list, I didn't even know about the others, but some interesting stuff... https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/top-5-intellectual-property-disputes

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

You are comparing IP - copyright to IP - know how/trade secrets. They are different animals and should as such be treated differently. imho.

That's how you differentiate between them and that's fine.. Are they not both stepping on someone's invention/ownership? Do you see someone who teaches aimpoint to his best friend as more of an egregious act than someone who makes his girlfriend a copy of his CD? If that's your opinion if love to know why ones right is more important than the other?

Napster comes in 4th in the list, I didn't even know about the others, but some interesting stuff...

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/top-5-intellectual-property-disputes

I did not say one is more right than the other, I said you need to compare apples to apples. Copyright law is totally different than trade secrets law or whatever it's called.

[Abu3baid]

I did not say one is more right than the other, I said you need to compare apples to apples. Copyright law is totally different than trade secrets law or whatever it's called.

But I'm only comparing them from a moral standpoint.. I find that both infringe on someone's intellectual property wether it is CD or knowledge.. Why would they have to be the same type of IP for me to compare them? I think it is fair to treat both transgressors the same no matter what type of IP it is.. I'm not actually even sure how many subcategories IP has, I only care that it is under the same umbrella.. It is a relatively new thing in courts.. Before they cared more about the tangible ideas or inventions and thus patents, it is a new realm with the issue of intellectual property because it is so hard to protect on so many levels, plus the internet doesn't make it any easier. Napster is a perfect example.

[nevets88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nevets88

I did not say one is more right than the other, I said you need to compare apples to apples. Copyright law is totally different than trade secrets law or whatever it's called.

But I'm only comparing them from a moral standpoint.. I find that both infringe on someone's intellectual property wether it is CD or knowledge.. Why would they have to be the same type of IP for me to compare them? I think it is fair to treat both transgressors the same no matter what type of IP it is..

I'm not actually even sure how many subcategories IP has, I only care that it is under the same umbrella.. It is a relatively new thing in courts.. Before they cared more about the tangible ideas or inventions and thus patents, it is a new realm with the issue of intellectual property because it is so hard to protect on so many levels, plus the internet doesn't make it any easier. Napster is a perfect example.

I'm pretty much at a loss for what else to say so I'll just leave it at that. A person is being harmed, comparing it to a similar instances of a person being harmed versus a totally different way of being harmed just makes sense to me. I'll agree with you that being harmed generally sucks.

[dennyjones]

Quote:

This is where I think you go wrong, in two ways:

• It's not the duty of the purchaser to ensure that the seller has removed all of his copies. If I buy a CD from a garage sale, I don't need a Notary Public or something signifying that the seller has removed all of his copies of the music. I'm in possession of the CD, I can do with it as I please, he cannot.
• It's foolish to assert that "no one cares about this copyright infringement." Absolute rubbish that doesn't even warrant further discussion. It's illegal .

Now, as it pertains to golf instruction… Nobody said taking an AimPoint class and passing it on to your buddies was illegal . It just makes you a dumb jerk.

This should be cut and dry.   If you didn't pay for it, you shouldn't own it.   Does anything other than that happen?   Sure, even among the most religious people in the world.

Per the idea that nobody caries about copyright infringement, ask the people that were sued by the RIAA.   They settled for about $10k each for stealing music.

Per the golf instruction,  it's not illegal but the quoted statement calls Adam Scott a dumb jerk.   He taught his wife.   I don't believe his is a certified instructor or a dumb jerk.

[rkim291968]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

If materials were copied for use in the "stolen" sessions, there would be a legal case for copyright infringement.

There would surely be a case if two major things were true. The first is that the idea had a patent, and the second they are financially benefiting from it.. (ie they set up their own aimpoint clinic).. There might be other instances, but I'm pretty sure the first thing that would be done is a cease and desist letter is sent out, and if there is no compliance it moves along in court.. That's my basic understanding, maybe something has changed.

Copyright infringement is different than patent violation.  You don't have to financially benefit to get in trouble with copyright infringement.  Patent is an intellectual property.   You are using IP incorrectly in this thread.

[Abu3baid]

Copyright infringement is different than patent violation.  You don't have to financially benefit to get in trouble with copyright infringement.  Patent is an intellectual property.   You are using IP incorrectly in this thread.

Thanks for the correction..

[Ernest Jones]

Artistic/creative property, copyright infringement, patent violation, intellectual property...call it what you will, the underlying premise is that these, somewhat intangible, things belong to the creator and stealing is stealing FULL STOP. The problem is that these "things" are so ethereal, so hard to nail down that we have yet to come up with comprehensive and clear laws to protect the creators. It's unfortunate but that's the case, we have a hard time keeping up with ourselves in terms of the ever evolving distribution models, social medias and technologies. There are some who will tell themselves that until we come up with those concrete laws they are doing nothing wrong. That's simply opportunism. What's wrong is wrong and whether we've figured out the laws to govern it or not, it's stealing. I agree that the line between theft and sharing is at times is quite fuzzy and there are some areas that will always be debatable both in terms of law and morals, but hey, most of us here in this forum are pretty smart guys (or gals, that's for you @DrvFrShow ), and you know damn well when it's STEALING and to tell yourself otherwise is simply gaming the system while you can. I say shame on you if that's your outlook. You're a thief and I don't need the letter of the law to tell me what's wrong and what's right, and if you need a written edict to help you distinguish between the two than either you have psychological issue or shitty parents. Figure it out, it ain't rocket surgery. How's that @rkim291968 ? I may need to go take a nap now.

[Golfingdad]

It's not really a fair comparison between CDs and an aimpoint class for various reasons. One of which I don't believe has been mentioned; radio. I could rip a copy of a song from a friend illegally but even if I didn't, through radio and videos, I could still hear that song quite often. Perhaps if the aimpoint dvd aired on late night golf channel occasionally such that much of the information was available we wouldn't consider the sharing of info quite so wrong? I don't know. I don't really have a good answer for you eyad. I don't use napster or anything like it anymore, but I did back in the day. And if a friend gave me a cd and said "you have to check this out" I wouldn't hesitate to listen to it. Am I a hypocrite? I don't think so. Do others? Maybe. I don't know.

[turtleback]

Yikes, when I tutor someone in calculus am I infringing on Dr. Thomas', who wrote the calculus book I learned it from?

Just because people break the copyright laws does not mean they do not think they are important or that they do not care about it.  As my evidence I offer the speed limit laws.  Everyone breaks them but no one seriously thinks we should not have them.

A big dose of common sense goes a long way here.  Years ago I bought a series of historical novels, 20 of them, and all 20 are on my bookshelf.  They are my favorite series of books and I reread the whole series every 2-3 years (OT; portions of a couple of them were stitched together and became the basis for the movie Master and Commander, with Russell Crowe).  But then I bought a kindle and these books were not available for kindle.  I did more searching online and found an "illegal" torrent of the books.  I downloaded them and now I have them on my kindle.  I probably broke copyright laws, but ethically I feel fine, since I paid for the original books.  Like most of the music I have ever downloaded is stuff that at one time or other I bought - most on vinyl.  Certainly over the years I have lost some of the originals, so I could not prove in  court of law that I had ever ought the song on vinyl, but again, ethically I feel fine about it.

I belong to the pool club at my local senior center.  Over the years they have assembled a nice collection of commercial videos of big time pool and billiard matches.  The only problem is that they are all on VHS and fewer and fewer people still have the equipment to play VHS tapes.  I have a device that can dub tapes that are not copy-protected onto DVDs.  I plan to dub all of the 3-cushion billiard tapes onto DVD and "package" the DVD with the tape, in the library, so if a member checks the tape out they get both the tape and the disk and they can watch it even if they cannot play VHS tapes.  Is that a violation of the copyright laws?  Probably, but again, ethically I am ok with it.

So they are various (50?) shades of ethical grey in the copyright laws.  To say that because someone operates in one of those gray areas in an ethically defensible manner does not mean that they do not think copyright laws are bad or nor necessary.  Making that leap smacks a little of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

[Abu3baid]

Yikes, when I tutor someone in calculus am I infringing on Dr. Thomas', who wrote the calculus book I learned it from? Just because people break the copyright laws does not mean they do not think they are important or that they do not care about it.  As my evidence I offer the speed limit laws.  Everyone breaks them but no one seriously thinks we should not have them. A big dose of common sense goes a long way here.  Years ago I bought a series of historical novels, 20 of them, and all 20 are on my bookshelf.  They are my favorite series of books and I reread the whole series every 2-3 years (OT; portions of a couple of them were stitched together and became the basis for the movie Master and Commander, with Russell Crowe).  But then I bought a kindle and these books were not available for kindle.  I did more searching online and found an "illegal" torrent of the books.  I downloaded them and now I have them on my kindle.  I probably broke copyright laws, but ethically I feel fine, since I paid for the original books.  Like most of the music I have ever downloaded is stuff that at one time or other I bought - most on vinyl.  Certainly over the years I have lost some of the originals, so I could not prove in  court of law that I had ever ought the song on vinyl, but again, ethically I feel fine about it. I belong to the pool club at my local senior center.  Over the years they have assembled a nice collection of commercial videos of big time pool and billiard matches.  The only problem is that they are all on VHS and fewer and fewer people still have the equipment to play VHS tapes.  I have a device that can dub tapes that are not copy-protected onto DVDs.  I plan to dub all of the 3-cushion billiard tapes onto DVD and "package" the DVD with the tape, in the library, so if a member checks the tape out they get both the tape and the disk and they can watch it even if they cannot play VHS tapes.  Is that a violation of the copyright laws?  Probably, but again, ethically I am ok with it.   So they are various (50?) shades of ethical grey in the copyright laws.  To say that because someone operates in one of those gray areas in an ethically defensible manner does not mean that they do not think copyright laws are bad or nor necessary.  Making that leap smacks a little of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

Very good post, thanks for sharing.. What are your thoughts on the person that didn't buy the 20 historical novels and downloaded ten through the "illegal" torrent? Is he operating in the shade of grey or is it a clear violation of someone's right? I know that ethically the examples you mentioned pass the sniff test, but that's not always the case.. Even making the VHS into DVD I see no issue with that, although I am not sure about the practice its self, it's not like the pool club is a library right? Ok, so what if a country club buys the aimpoint DVD would you have a problem with them letting members take it out? Or have them pass around the DVD? 1 thing for sure is a lot of grey area..

[iacas]

@Abu3baid , this thread was started with dubious intent to begin with, and is going nowhere.

Sending one representative to an AimPoint class and having him come back and teach the others makes you a jerk, and a dumb one as well since there's no way that guy is going to teach you as well as the other guy who taught you.

As I said, nobody cares about you showing your kid a few things. But grown men with jobs and stuff, c'mon.

It's not as "grey" an area as you seem to want to think (it's not completely black/white either), but it also has next to nothing to do with copying CDs or DVDs or whatever. Furthermore, just because some people are apparently doing illegal things, does not justify doing some other thing of questionable (for lack of a better word) "morality."

I'm not interested in discussing the legality of CDs. No point in that, particularly when none of us here are lawyers (well, some are, just not many) and when the laws are fairly clear on this, and actually exist in the real world.

I want to answer the first part of your post regarding where I went wrong.. I never said anything about buying anything at a yard sale, obviously no one would expect someone to verify that the seller has rid himself of all copies electronic or otherwise of the cd being sold.. Have you ever given anyone a CD mix? If so, did you make sure that you rid your self of the songs that you have out? Or buy another copy so that you can give it, or even make sure that the other person has his own copy so that it can be ok to give that copy to them?

Neither here nor there. Completely irrelevant to a group electing to send a representative to an AimPoint class for the purpose of being cheap.

Maybe you misunderstood the context of what I said. When I said no one cares about this copy infringement I was talking strictly about "people" and no the recording companies, artists ect. Think Napster and how it took a court order to shut it down and the millions of users who were clearly braking the copy infringe my laws.. Think about all the mix CDs that are given out every day to friends ect. So, yeah I stick by my assertion and think it is spot on..

I did not, and as others have said, you're not spot on.

You are an instructor so I understand why you think the person who passes on aimpoint is a dumb jerk.. Do you think the person who learns how to grip a club and then the next day goes and teaches his friend how to grip it a dumb jerk? Or if someone learned a putting method and he went and showed his friend a dumb jerk? All of these to me are very similar.

They're not. And even the grip example is poor: there's not "one grip" nor is there "one putting method" that's going to work for everyone. So the "dumb" part plays a role there.

Again, you've seen how much information I give away, free, day in and day out here. Happy to do it. But it's MY choice. I recommended James Sieckmann's book as teaching a method similar to the one I prefer - I didn't post screenshots of the pages of his book, or summarize his book, or so on.

I get the fact that he won't be able to pass the information correctly, but that isn't the discussion point.

Who says? Because given the impetus for the conversation, it's definitely part of the conversation.

You have gone off in your post about people claiming to be experts at teaching after one class and passing it off as professional advice ect, and then you said it is morally off base. I don't have a problem with that, but if it is the intellectual property you are protecting here then I think you should feel the same way about the person who gives away CD mixes without paying for it.

When did I say I didn't feel the same way? Do you know how much pirated software or music I have on my computer right now, or any of my devices? Zero. Hell, I've bought the same copy of the same songs multiple times in the past (tape, CD, sometimes digital audio file). I have some in three or four formats (record, CD, tape), etc.

It's morally off base to effectively defraud an instructor by sending a rep to re-teach the class to his group (jerk), and it's unlikely he'll do a good job at re-teaching it (dumb).

Also, these are not the same thing. Again, please stop confusing legal things with "moral" (again, for lack of a better word) things.

I'm not propagating that people do that, if I was then I wouldn't have convinced my uncle to pay 200$ to come with me to the lesson, what I'm saying is that I don't think it is as black and white as it is made out to be.

To people who want to act like dumb jerks, you're unfortunately right.

People chastised xxxx for saying his plan to share the information while paying for it once, but his point about double standards is also a good one because how many people have never given someone a CD mix or made someone a copy of a CD?

It's not a double standard because you're not comparing apples to apples. No matter how hard you try to push this CDs vs. AimPoint clinic, it will fail.

[dkolo]

Very good post, thanks for sharing..

What are your thoughts on the person that didn't buy the 20 historical novels and downloaded ten through the "illegal" torrent? Is he operating in the shade of grey or is it a clear violation of someone's right?

I know that ethically the examples you mentioned pass the sniff test, but that's not always the case..

Even making the VHS into DVD I see no issue with that, although I am not sure about the practice its self, it's not like the pool club is a library right? Ok, so what if a country club buys the aimpoint DVD would you have a problem with them letting members take it out? Or have them pass around the DVD?

1 thing for sure is a lot of grey area..

There's not really as much grey area as you make there out to be in these cases. If you own books, you don't have rights to download subsequent ebooks of the same product outside of any scheme that was in place when you bought the book. Consider the logical extension of that: it would be a complete defense to any illegal downloading violations to show that you own a physical copy of the product. It would render the entire scheme useless. So, no, it wasn't part of the initial bargain, so it's illegal. If the manufacturer includes a digital copy download with the book, then that would be OK, obviously. Now, if you were to make a digital copy of a physical book for your own use, you'd be in a greyer area, but probably on solid footing. Similar to how you can rip CDs onto your computer, I think you could digitize a book. But note the difference: creating your own copy and downloading an existing copy are treated differently.

So it doesn't matter much whether you own the books or not. Downloading the digital copies would be illegal (I hate using the word stealing in this context; piracy is its own thing, and glomming it onto the concept of stealing isn't really precise).

Mixtapes were brought up earlier. Mixtapes are illegal when given away. Their legality for personal use is murkier, but most likely OK, I would think.

As for using a DVD for lending, showing your friends, reselling, etc., unless there's some contractual agreement to the contrary (and then we're talking about recourse through civil and not criminal law), first sale doctrine in the US pretty strongly holds that you can do most anything you want with it once you buy it. It's why companies like Redbox started buying up DVDs through retail when companies like Warner Bros. wouldn't sell them the DVDs wholesale without conditions like how soon Redbox could put the DVDs into their kiosks or outright prohibiting them from renting them. The rights holders could condition the sale on such restrictions because it was a wholesale discount and they were dealing directly. The rights holders couldn't do a thing if Redbox went and bought them on Amazon.

[Abu3baid]

There's not really as much grey area as you make there out to be in these cases. If you own books, you don't have rights to download subsequent ebooks of the same product outside of any scheme that was in place when you bought the book. Consider the logical extension of that: it would be a complete defense to any illegal downloading violations to show that you own a physical copy of the product. It would render the entire scheme useless. So, no, it wasn't part of the initial bargain, so it's illegal. If the manufacturer includes a digital copy download with the book, then that would be OK, obviously. Now, if you were to make a digital copy of a physical book for your own use, you'd be in a greyer area, but probably on solid footing. Similar to how you can rip CDs onto your computer, I think you could digitize a book. But note the difference: creating your own copy and downloading an existing copy are treated differently. So it doesn't matter much whether you own the books or not. Downloading the digital copies would be illegal (I hate using the word stealing in this context; piracy is its own thing, and glomming it onto the concept of stealing isn't really precise). Mixtapes were brought up earlier. Mixtapes are illegal when given away. Their legality for personal use is murkier, but most likely OK, I would think. As for using a DVD for lending, showing your friends, reselling, etc., unless there's some contractual agreement to the contrary (and then we're talking about recourse through civil and not criminal law), first sale doctrine in the US pretty strongly holds that you can do most anything you want with it once you buy it. It's why companies like Redbox started buying up DVDs through retail when companies like Warner Bros. wouldn't sell them the DVDs wholesale without conditions like how soon Redbox could put the DVDs into their kiosks or outright prohibiting them from renting them. The rights holders could condition the sale on such restrictions because it was a wholesale discount and they were dealing directly. The rights holders couldn't do a thing if Redbox went and bought them on Amazon.

Some very good points.. This is all very much relatively new and that's why I feel it is in a grey area.. Heck, how long did it take them to shut down Napster and Kaza? If it was so black and white they would have shut it down immediately IMO.. Instead it grew into almost a 100m user network.. As far as the DVD I agree with you.. It would be pretty tough to tell someone not to show it to someone else for example.. So, if we use the aimpoint DVD as a case someone could technically buy it and then when ever one of his buddies visited he could say hey did you hear about this and show him the video.. I understand that they might not get the whole experience, but aimpoint put the DVD to teach people and not to snare them into going to an instructor. It is true that many of us are not lawyers, but we can always talk about the IP in terms of morality and good vs. wrong behavior as we perceive it.. I think that rights should be protected, and I can say from my experience that I know more about IP issues now than I did back when Napster was around and I actively used it.