User:Rouslan.kv/law copyright

Web Science MOOC has introduced technical and theoretical parts of the Internet. But in order to fully understand all mechanisms behind it several non-technical aspects must be presented. One of them is a legal issue.

It is important to understand how digital data which circulates on the Internet is protected. Legal precedents from the real life can provide one with some grounds for it. But because of by global nature of the Internet it's rules are different than in real world.

An author of the book which is printed in a printing house can easily proof his or her authorship by performing a number of legal actions. Usually it is not so hard to find out whether or not conditions of usage of a physical object are violated. Re-printing a book without author's and/or label noticing, using it's content in other works, distributing the book in an inappropriate way - all of this may be treated as a crime. And since world's legal systems has a long story and a lot of precedents regarding such issues there are a number of techniques which allows to deal with this kind of problems.

After introduction of the Internet the subject has become relevant for digital world as well. The first thing to do to protect the data on the Internet, as it may appear, is just to reflect real life legal experience to the web content. But this is not entirely true. Due to the specifics of the Internet such laws should be modified taking into account these specifics.

= Law and Copyright =

Overview
First section of this chapter introduces legal issues that are common for the Internet. In particular it describes problems of related local and global laws inconsistency. Next section describes such intellectual property protection mechanism as licensing. The section has a number of licensing examples to illustrate the issue. Third section gives an idea about what is free software. The section illustrates four essential statements of free software philosophy. The last section describes copyright violation. Besides several copyright violation cases it describes such technologies as P2P and Torrents which potentially may help to commit copyright-related crimes.

Learning Objectives
This chapter has the following learning objectives:
 * Introduce problem of regional and international laws on the Internet
 * Explain basic principles of licensing
 * Describe free software-related issues
 * Learn about copyright violations

Learning Objectives

 * Introduce the local vs. global legal issue
 * Explain why the solution for the issue is hard to achieve
 * Discuss possible ways of solving the issue

Introduction
In the modern world of rapidly growing global technologies the issue of copyright protection is one of the prior problems for copyright law enforcers. In scope of global copyright protection law unity is the thing that is very hard to achieve, since every government laws treat the issue differently. Such treatment related not only to how to discriminate and qualify illegal content but also how to prosecute those who distributes this content. Moreover, it is important to know which exactly actions are really can be treated as illegal content distribution and copyright violation.

Grounds for the Issue
The problem of protecting content include one more aspect. If a content would be supposed to be distributed withing a single country it could be easily protected by it's law. But because of the global nature of the Internet it is not an easy task to solve the problem of protecting content that is spread across the Globe. Due to the fact that every country in the world has it's own laws and ways of controlling the obeying of these laws, making legal procedures consistent among different governments is almost impossible even between partner countries. Copyright issues are not an exception.

To illustrate this situation one can compare at the copyright laws in EU, US and non-EU post soviet countries. Looking at the examples in previous chapter it is not hard to say that content owners, government and law makers are interested in protecting the interests of content authors, whereas for the last group of countries this issue is not prioritized. But nevertheless, some positive movements in this directions are held from time to time. For example the case of torrents.ru and vk.com when the service owners were forced to remove illegal content from the servers.

Possible Solutions
In order to approach the solution of global copyright issue several options might be considered:


 * Global and universally accepted institution of copyright problems could be created
 * Clear and comprehensive rules should be described for this institution
 * Every country specific features like regional, historic, traditional, political, legal etc. should be taken into account
 * Processes and workflows of such institution must be as simple and understandable as possible

Unfortunately it is almost impossible to solve this issue right away. Large corporations would have a great financial losses during the process. Moreover, it is very hard to find a solution which would satisfy all parties. One more reason perhaps one of the most significant is that every nation has it's own cultural, political and other preferences. This of course brings even more difficulties in the process, making the optimal solution hardly achievable.

Nevertheless nowadays layers across the World seek for the legal solutions introducing new legal terms and conventions. Some of these terms are described further in this chapter.

Learning Objectives

 * Learn what is license
 * Learn what is derivative work
 * Describe Creative Commons licenses

License Definition
In order to perform legal operations regarding a work one needs a document which would describe conditions of usage of the work and be accepted as an official paper by appropriate services. Such document is a license. License usually considered as a permission for usage of a certain property or work as well as a document which describes such permission. A license can be basically defined as an authorization (by the licensor) to use the licensed material (by the licensee). In fact, this term refers to various aspects but this section focuses mainly on a digital intellectual property side.

Types of Licenses
In a digital world one of the most common things that needs to be protected is a software. There are many kinds of licenses aimed to deal with such content. In general these types of licenses can be divided by two large categories: proprietary and non-proprietary software licenses. The most famous license for proprietary software is end-user license agreement. This section focuses mainly on non-proprietary licenses such as creative commons licenses.

It is important to understand why digital world needs to protect such data. Legal precedents from the real life can provide one with some grounds for it. But because of global nature of the Internet it has a lot of nuances in comparison with real world rules. For example, an author of the book which is printed in a printing house can easily proof his or her authorship by performing a number of legal actions. Usually it is not so hard to find out whether or not conditions of usage of a physical object are violated. Re-printing a book without noticing the author and/or label, using it's content in other works, distributing the book in an inappropriate way - all of this may be treated as a crime. And since legal systems of the world have a long story and a lot of precedents regarding such issues there is a number of techniques which allows to deal with this kind of problems.

After introduction of the Internet the subject has become relevant for the digital world as well. The first thing to do to protect the data on the Internet, as it may appear, is just to reflect real life legal experience to the web content. But this is not entirely true. Due to the specifics of the Internet such laws should be modified considering these characteristics.

Derivative works
To continue with the licensing term "Derivative work" needs to be introduced. The most clear definition is given in US State copyright act: A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.
 * 17 U.S. Code § 101 - Definitions

It is important to know that such work does not gives it's author the exclusive rights on the original material. Besides in order to use some work in a derivative work one must ensure that terms, conditions and license of the original work allow to use it and how limited is such usage. Bellow are some examples of derivative works:
 * A movie based on a novel ( "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" movie)
 * A book translation to another language ( "Crime and Punishment" by F. Dostoevsky translations)
 * Free Software

To use any existing work protected by an appropriate license one needs to get permission such as contract or license from the author of the work. But there is an exception. Fair Use doctrine distincts certain types of works which do not require such permission. Examples of such works are
 * parody
 * critic article
 * scientific research
 * a news report

Creative Commons
Creative Commons could be a great example of licensing. This non-profit organization aims to provide legal grounds and tools for sharing people's work and knowledge. The tools provided by it are free (free as a free speech, not a free beer) to use. According to the statement on the Creative Commons web site, Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
 * Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licenses.
Creative Commons licenses are flexible and easy to use. To share some work with public one needs to just change the copyright term to one of the Creative Commons license kinds. Moreover, it allows to easily change such terms. The license protects not only author rights but also rights of those users who use the work of this author. There are six models that form Creative Commons license :


 * Public Domain Declaration (CC0)
 * Attribution (CC BY)
 * Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
 * Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
 * Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
 * Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
 * Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

Combining these types gives even more flexibility in the process of licensing. Bellow is more detailed overview of the Creative Commons licenses.

Public Domain Declaration CC0
Authors who use this type of license contribute their work to a public domain by refusing all of his or her rights to the work under copyright law.

Here are some examples of CC0 users and works:
 * Europeana
 * Glitch video game
 * Open Goldberg Variations
 * figshare.com datasets

This license is good for enthusiasts who want to contribute to global development. The motivation to use CC0 illustrated in Europeana Public Domain Charter:

Having a healthy and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of society.
 * Europeana Public Domain Charter

Attribution (CC BY)
Under this license the work can be shared and distributed among everyone in any format. Besides it allows to change the work in any way. This is the most free type of the licenses, which among the other things allows to distribute the work in both profit and non-profit ways. But looks like such kind of licensing is less motivating for the authors since in all cases their work is voluntariness. But nevertheless it is may play a significant role in stimulation of creativity of those who will use the product offered under such license.

Bellow are examples of some projects which use CC BY license: This type of license can be chosen in order to stimulate creativity among people. Here is an opinion of Chris Zabriskie who uses CC BY license for his music:
 * Wiki News
 * Copernicus Publications
 * The Saylor Foundation
 * Identi.ca

So my view is don’t just "give it away" -- release it into the wild in a way that encourages new things to be created from it, and don't penalize someone who might get lucky enough to make some money in the process. Let people do what they want with your music, and they'll promote you. Then keep moving forward. Keep creating something new to share. I get to create and express myself, people get to listen, and other creative folk can take what I do and make something new from it, free from worry about getting sued.
 * Chris Zabriskie

Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
This type is somewhat like the previous one, with the exception that all works that are based on the original one must be protected by BY-SA license. Such works can be either commercial or free as well. BY-SA is similar to copyleft and open source licensing. As one can infer the motivation for using this type of license is the same as in BY type. Also, this type of license used by Wikipedia.

This type of license is used by
 * Wikipedia
 * Stack Overflow
 * Mozilla

Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
This type of license allows one to use author's work without making any changes or modifications in it. Using the work 'as is' guarantees that the original authors will be mentioned. It is possible to use the work under this license in both commercial and non-commercial projects.

Examples of BY-ND users:
 * Drupal Security Report
 * Free Software Foundation
 * The Art of Unix Programming
 * GNU

The motivation of using this type of license described in Drupal Security Report website statement about BY-ND license choice:

We have a lot of sponsors and as we were pitching the report to them they wanted to make sure that their interests were protected. So, we require that someone offering the report provide it with attribution back to this site. That way this site will remain the primary source for downloading the report which helps ensure that credit is given to all sponsors through this site.
 * Drupal Security Report

Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
BY-NC license allows other users of the work modify, improve and extend the original as well as create a new work based on it. Although commercial use is forbidden, new authors may not use the same conditions in future licensing.

Some projects which use BY-NC license:
 * wired.com photography
 * Xkcd webcomic
 * Brooklyn Museum
 * The Future of Ideas book

This type of license may stimulate authors not only to create their derivative works of some other creation but also share their own works to benefit the community where they borrowed the source.

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
This type of license similar to the previous one with the exception that the authors who will use it in their work must use the same terms and conditions as the original. The other terms are the same.

Examples of BY-NC-SA users:
 * Open Courseware
 * MIT OpenCourseWare
 * Khan Academy
 * Project Euler

As can be seen from BY-NC-SA user example list this type of license is beneficial for educational resources.

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
BY-NC-ND license has the most strict rules in comparison with the others. Users can share the work with anyone but they are not allowed to change or modify it. Also, such users must refer to the original author of the work.

Bellow are some examples of works and BY-NC-ND users:
 * TED Talks
 * ProPublica
 * BdFISH

This type of license ideal for users who wants to keep the authorship of a work and do not want their work to be modified.

Learning Objectives

 * Introduce free software
 * Learn what are 4 essential principles of free software
 * Describe free software legal issues
 * Discuss opponents opinion and critics

Free Software Definition
To realize what the free software license is about one need to know some basic information about the free software itself.

""Free software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, "free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer"."


 * Free Software Definition

Four Freedoms
To be a free software a program must satisfy certain criteria. GNU Project suggests the following definition of free software program (also known as “the four essential freedoms”) :
 * 0 The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
 * 1 The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
 * 2 The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
 * 3 The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Note that the numbering starts from 0 because of zero-based numbering used in computers.

Purpose of Execution Does Not Matter (Freedom 0)
The first freedom states the ability of a user to use the problem as he or she wants. This means that the program should have no restrictions on how to execute and run it. The proprietary software usually forces the user to obey some usage conditions. For example, if one buys a proprietary program such as a computer game or an office tool the user must run it only in a certain environment. Moreover, sometimes one needs to obey some usage rules such as registering the product on-line, do not use any cheat programs in combination with it, do not perform any illegal actions using it ans so on. Contrary, free software first freedom allows a user to use the program without such restrictions. Per Free Software founder Richard Stallman, this can be compared to a purchasing a pen. The point is that one can use the pen for signing an illegal deal as well as to write a poem. Of course in the most cases the user does not need to worry that the pen producer company will have any problems with it. The same principle should be used for the program according to the freedom 0 of the four essential freedoms.

Accessing, Studying and Modifying the Source (Freedom 1)
This freedom assumes that user has an ability to check the source of the program. This should be very helpful especially if he of she has some programming skills and is able to fix a bug in it or add a new feature. Moreover, any malicious or spy features can be removed from the code of the program. The last fact is especially important for some people because of the recent NSA disclosures. Besides, this is beneficial also for users that are not familiar with the programming. Since the program has such freedom it's source can be examined and it can be improved by the users who are able to program it and commit the changes to a version control system. If the changes are correct, the program can be updated to a newer version across all users.

Providing Others With Copies (Freedom 2)
The third freedom states that the program can be spread across all users without any problems. So one can help a lot of people promoting free software analogs of proprietary things. It not only can save money and time while dealing with non-free programs but also can improve the quality of the product according to freedoms 0 and  1. In fact since free software concept allows one to sell the modified versions of the program it also gives a lot of motivation to people who supports it.

Helping Community by Distributing new versions (Freedom 3)
The last item in the freedoms list somewhat related to 1 and  2. The main point is the ability to examine the source, change it and spread the changes across other users. Doing that one makes a contribution in the community.

Free-Software Legal Protection
It may appear from the first look that copyright law enforcers from huge corporations must have a better chance to reach the goal. But groups of free-software enthusiasts have developed an effective system that can protect content, which use free-software licenses. Unlike other copyright licenses the free software license gives the author an ability to eliminate the copyright restrictions. Also the important thing is that FSF licenses have some Copyleft statements that allow the author to distribute the software with the same terms and conditions. This means that all future works that are based on it must use the some license as the original one. So creators of such licenses use copyright mechanisms against the copyright itself. GNU General Public License is one of the most popular free software licenses along with Creative Commons licenses.

In the Web Science MOOC lecture an example on this issue has been introduced. This example not only show the efficiency of free-software movement but also gives content authors the motivation to use such kind of licenses.

Critics
Some people do not like the restriction of the free software principles. For example Linus Torvalds said:

There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred..
 * Linus Torvalds

From this statement one can see that free software terms are too strict. To motivate people to contribute there should be more flexible mechanism like Creative Commons licensing.

Learning Objectives

 * Introduce the copyright violation problem
 * Describe mechanisms of copyright violations on the Internet

Copyright Problem
As a matter of fact all products that have a license can be used in a ways that are allowed by a certain license. Unfortunately, there can be a violations of terms and conditions described by the license. Such violations are common for non-free and free licenses. With the introduction of a global information mediums such as the Internet the issue has become even more relevant. It is very easy to spread any information on the Internet. So people need some mechanisms to protect their work withing the network. Of course tools and measures should be both technical and legal. Below is a brief description of some tools which allow to spread data on the Internet and which often featured in the most popular cases of the copyright violation.

Law Questions
To understand the mechanisms of possible copyrights violations it is important to know the ways by which it can happen. Usually on the Web legal problems are caused by file sharing. There is a number of ways by which a file that contains encoded work protected by copyright can be distributed on the Internet. Until the invention of p2p protocol (see related section bellow) the most popular way of sharing files was uploading it to a file hosting service. Such services then allow other users to search and download shared content. Examples of such services are RapidShare and  Megauplad. The last one was closed according to US laws.

File Hosting Service and Copyright Issues
The content can be downloaded from file hosting servers in the most cases by everyone. In case if such content has an appropriate copyright which forbids such action as distributed content, the file hosting service can be considered as a copyrights violator. There are a number of cases that illustrates the copyright owners position and methods of influence on such resources.

RapidShare
One of the most famous trials was RapidShare case. In 2010 according to the US government request the trial against RapidShare was started. The US layers claimed that the most of the content which was shared using this hoster is illegal and violated the owners copyrights. But after the investigation German court has concluded that the resourse is used overwhelmingly for sharing legal content. Moreover the site administration removes undesired content after a request from users. So the site owners won the case and the service continues it's work.

Megaupload
Less successive for service owners case was Megaupload trial. According to the US court decision the hosting was closed and number of criminal cases were started against it's owners.

P2P & Torrents
With the invention of peer-to-peer and bit torrent protocols, copyright protection organizations has faced a number of different kinds of legal problems. In case of FTP and http it was not so hard to prevent and punish copyright violators, since it is very easy to detect the source of illegal data. With p2p and bit torrent the situation is much more difficult. These protocols allows to transfer the data between all users. The source detection in this case is problematic. The only thing that can be done is to use a point sanctions against a single users. Also, there is a question on how to treat the trackers, or systems that post links for downloading the illegal content. Technically servers with the trackers do not contain any illegal material according to laws of most of the counties. They just point to a de-centralized resource on the network and gives special instructions how to download it. It is hard to say whether such pointing is a crime.

However, copyright enforcers are lobbying laws that treat a tracker as a source of illegal content. Example here can be perhaps the most famous The Pirate Bay trial.

Conclusion
In this section several important law and copyright issues have been described. Introduction of the problem of regional and global laws showed that the modern World needs to develop a comprehensive and consistent mechanisms in order to protect data on the Internet. Such mechanisms should be widely accepted. Moreover, they should take into account such issues as traditional and cultural differences between countries.

The section about law and copyright has shown the core principles of licensing. Such term as "derivative works" has been introduced. The term was explained with the examples of what is derivative work and what is fair use of a creation. Besides, mechanisms of Creative Commons licensing have been described. To reinforce the understanding of these licenses a number of examples has been given.

As an example of software philosophy Free Software principles have been studied. These principles intended to make software development process and software itself more productive. Also, legal side of the topic has been described. Furthermore, a critical view on the issue has been presented.

In the last chapter the problem of copyright violation has been arisen. Such mechanisms as p2p, torrents and file sharing servers were briefly introduced. Several legal cases with these technologies have shown how it is possible to violate copyright on the Internet.

Of course, reading this paper is not enough to get the whole picture of global law practice on the Internet. Other aspects can be found here and more detailed overview  here. Future research should be conducted in order to complete and improve it's content and expand the topic of law and copyright on the Internet.

Check the Understanding (Quizzes)
{Which type of Creative Commons license allows one to freely modify in any way and distribute a work globally. - Attribution Share Alike (SA) - Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC) + Attribution (BY) - Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
 * type="[]"}

{Which TWO of the following is NOT one of four essential software freedoms? - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. + The freedom to use the program. in a profit project - The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. - The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. + The freedom to modify or add a new license agreement - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
 * type="[]"}

{What technologies and applications + File sharing servers + P2P - DNS + Torrents - SMTP & POP3
 * type="[]"}

{Match the CC licenses to actions with corresponding opportunities they give ++- earn money using a work +-- no authorship of a work --+ do not modify a work
 * type="[]"}
 * CC0  |   CC BY   |   CC BY-NS-ND

{Why it is very hard to develop a globally accepted copyright law? + because of traditional and national specifics of laws - current level of technologies - it is impossible to determine the prosecution for law violations on the Internet + Large corporations may have financial losses
 * type="[]"}