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Unpacking France's Chilling Proposal to Hold Companies Accountable for Speech
Apparently what they call safe harbor exceptions don't apply in France! There even visiting a website containing hate speech is against the law. That makes absolutely no sense to me. The assumption seems to be that people only visit sites which post opinions which they agree with. I often seek out opinions that I disagree with. Learning about what others think is what people with strong intellectual curiosity do. Not allowing people to view offensive material is a form of thought control (you know, the kind of thing that totalitarian governments like to do) and I'm against any infringement on thought or speech!

France’s misguided efforts to grapple with hate speech—which is already prohibited by French law—have been making headlines for years. In 2012, after an horrific attack on a Jewish school, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed criminal penalties for anyone visiting websites that contain hate speech. An anti-terror law passed in December imposes greater penalties on those that “glorify terrorism” online (as opposed to offline), and allows websites engaging in the promotion of terrorism to be blocked with little oversight.

LINK: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/unpacking-frances-chilling-proposal-hold-companies-accountable-speech

desertrat: It's not exactly comforting to think that a modern European naiton would have laws which put the chill on free speech. Then again, there are more than a couple European nations that have laws against questioning official dogma related to the holocaust. You can look this up on WikiPedia under the Gayssot Act of 1990. It makes it illegal to question the existence of crimes that are considered to be crimes against humanity. It makes no sense to me to have a law against stating an opinion be it right or wrong!

shadylady: I'm in complete agreement with you. No law should impinge on free speech. People should be free to state their opinions no matter how ridiculous their opinions may happen to be. There's nothing dangerous about that. It's not like we need the government to tell us what we should and should not believe!

A great website to check out if you want to read up on copyright, DMCA safe harbor, and related topics is chillingeffects.org. It's an amazing resource with lots of legal information related to these topics. For instance, apparently including links to websites has been something complained about in the past by some people who didn't understand how the web was designed to work. As would be apparent to anyone who doesn't live under a rock, it's perfectly legal to link to any page you'd like to link to, no question about it!

If organizations like DMCA have their way we will be heading into the digital dark age for sure. The vast majority of copyrighted material was stolen from someone else in the first place. Copyright laws were intended to control commercial entities not freedom of speech.

http://rt.com/op-edge/copyright-free-speech-tpp-023/

When it gets right down to it, even the smiley face is copyrighted.

Fair Use Week
This is a great event and they have a really awesome infographic that breaks things down really clearly.

Fair use is an important right that provides balance to the copyright system and supports the constitutional purpose of copyright to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts." The Fair Use Fundamentals infographic explains what fair use is, why it is important, who uses fair use, and provides some examples of fair use.

LINK: http://fairuseweek.org/

Years Of Brainwashing The Public Into Thinking Everything Creative Must Be 'Owned' Has Led To This New Mess
The problem is that the people on the jury were just plain stupid. Stupid people make stupid decisions and this verdict has stupid written all over it. As Frank Zappa said, "Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."

You see idiotic headlines, like this one from Vulture, which claims the lawsuit was about plagiarism. Except plagiarism isn't illegal. Copyright infringement is -- and plagiarism and copyright infringement are not the same thing. And even if this were "plagiarism" the question is plagiarism of what? Musicologists who have compared the two songs note that they're actually really, really different. The only thing that's the same is "the feel" of the songs. And "feel" is not something covered copyright.

LINK: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150312/06330930299/years-brainwashing-public-into-thinking-everything-creative-must-be-owned-has-led-to-this-new-mess.shtml

How The Copyright Industry Wants To Undermine Anonymity & Free Speech: 'True Origin' Bills
Media companies are at it again. They will stop at nothing to increase their profits and they don't give a rat's ass about your Constitutional rights. In fact, they can buy off politicians easily and those politicians won't do a thing to protect your free speech rights or your right to anonymity.

It's the same old story we've seen before with SOPA and other bills: the copyright industry doesn't seem to care in the slightest about collateral damage from its quixotic effort to stop piracy, rather than to provide the public with better offerings. And, of course, copyright is supposed to be an issue for federal law, not state law, and these efforts are ways that the copyright industry is trying to backdoor in systems to undermine free speech in yet another weak attempt to accomplish a singular and pointless goal.

LINK: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150324/07243230412/how-copyright-industry-wants-to-undermine-anonymity-free-speech-true-origin-bills.shtml

mrgreen: The use of images from one website on another website is an interesting question. In the context of a discussion forum like this there really isn't a problem with displaying an image from another website since anyone can go to the website by right-clicking the image. It's when material from one website gets displayed in the context of a regular website without attribution that there's a problem... although even then right-clicking will work.

surfsteve wrote:If organizations like DMCA have their way we will be heading into the digital dark age for sure. The vast majority of copyrighted material was stolen from someone else in the first place. Copyright laws were intended to control commercial entities not freedom of speech.

http://rt.com/op-edge/copyright-free-speech-tpp-023/

When it gets right down to it, even the smiley face is copyrighted.

I think most smileys are public domain in one way or the other, but I'm sure there are some that are not intended for unrestricted use. The problem is that smileys are too small to put a copyright sign on!