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Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by iameli on Monday January 24, 2022 @01:53PM (#30062141)
All software has bugs; I'm not mad at all that this silly test case was flagged incorrectly. The truly infuriating part is "A review cannot be requested for this restriction."

Translation: "We have no idea if you actually own this content or not, but it would be _way too expensive_ for us to find out for sure! So you're out of luck, but don't worry — it's all worth it so we can make sure children can't stream Marvel movies from Google Drive! Thank you for your contributions to Disney+'s bottom line."

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by PostOnce on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:03PM (#30065359)
Disney robbed us, our children, their children, and possibly generations beyond that with their more-than-a-century copyright terms.

I thought about posting this comment the other day and decided not to, but your mention of Disney+ stirred the idea in me again.

We have so much modern media about Dracula, Sherlock, Cthulhu, etc, a thousand flowers bloom... new movies, new games, new art of all kinds.

Disney & friends stole that from us. We won't have a million new takes on (for example) The Hobbit for decades because of them.

We have copyright terms of up to 120 years... stuff like Pong was made before I was born and won't be public domain until long after I'm dead.

Disney kills culture by ensuring that by the time the copyright expires, no one cares anymore, because no-one was exposed to it in the many decades after it's initial-release profitability (think abandonware, not-in-print books, etc). I think this is true for 99.999% of all works, not the outliers that the corporation milked for a century or more.

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by josho on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:56PM (#30065913)
Really great points.

It also manifests in other strange ways that I'd summarize as killing our culture. Think of nursery songs as an example. Recall Little Miss Muffet sitting on a tuffet eating her curds and whey. I mean what is a tuffet, who eats curds and whey? The reason we don't have nursery rhymes in present day is that any of those songs are wrapped up in copyright and can't legally be shared.

The only saving grace about your Pong example is that game mechanics aren't copyrightable, so we thankfully have countless clones of Pong to play. Interestingly the same doesn't apply to Tetris, for some reason EA seems to have been able to succeed in largely removing Tetris clones.

https://www.gamedesigning.org/gaming/copyright/

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by Sebguer on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:25PM (#30066667)
Here's a case on why Tetris is not copied as easily: https://publicknowledge.org/tetris-copyright-decision-shows-...

Also, game mechanics can't be copyrighted but they can be patented: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-02-08-warner-bro...

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by oehpr on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @03:18PM (#30077470)
There was an was an incident with Games Workshop and fan animation. Games Workshop has set up their own animation studio and decided to go hard against the fan community that grew around the setting.

The whole incident made me mad, sure. But what it really made me feel was disenfranchised under the regime we live, as it is.

We... are not allowed to LIKE things, unless we do so under a capricious mega corps terms. And whatever release valves our society have are guarded behind financial, logistical, legal barriers, that are just inaccessibly to all but the largest fish with the most to lose. The fact that you like something is and can only be, as far as our culture is concerned, an asset to some corps bottom line. That's it. You're chattel and chattel only.

Sit there

Consume passively

Do not do anything.

Every time I see a thing that I like, this thought just stews in the back of my mind. Fandoms are cattle pens. Liking things is a mistake.

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by MugaSofer on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @06:26AM (#30070629)
Kind of funny that you mentioned the Hobbit, given that half the fantasy genre is takes on LotR with the serial numbers filed off. So people have found some partial workarounds.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by op00to on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:13PM (#30065470)
Man, what a bummer. People have to come up with new ideas rather than rehashing old ones. How will we ever stay entertained?
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by mahogany on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:40PM (#30065753)
Except... Disney heavily relies on rehashing old ideas from the public domain. That same public domain that they fight against. If the Brothers Grimm were still under copyright, would Disney even have been started?

For example, you may want to take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_animated_films_...

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by yissp on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:38PM (#30066755)
Huh, Snow White (1937) was released 74 years after the death of Jacob Grimm (1863). Didn't Disney lobby for the extension of copyright to 70 years after the author's death? I wonder if that's why they decided on that number.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by andybak on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:49PM (#30065851)
That's not how culture works. Nothing is truly new and most creative works have been variations on those that precede them. The obsession with originality is remarkably recent and doesn't withstand much scrutiny.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by rexreed on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:37PM (#30066748)
No new idea emerges in a vacuum. Every idea builds upon other ideas. Ever heard of the phrase "on the shoulders of giants"?
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by heavyset_go on Monday January 24, 2022 @11:03PM (#30067844)
It gets boring re-inventing the wheel over and over again.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by JamesBarney on Monday January 24, 2022 @05:24PM (#30064886)
It'd be nice if the law had a escrow appeal process. Alleged violator now posts a $100 escrow, now accuser has to do the same. Then Google reviews it, makes a decision, and loser has to pay for it.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by amne on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:09PM (#30065418)
It should be the other way around. The claimant must "bet" $100 that he owns the copyright. Then the defendant can call the bluff and say "I raise $100000 that you do not in fact own this output04.txt file with a 1 in it". If the the claimant still thinks he can win he can call the $100k and prove ownership. Otherwise the defendant just made $100. How cool would that be?
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by jiggawatts on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:20PM (#30065540)
An observation made by shrewd businesspeople throughout history is that you can only trust money. No amount of words, documents, statements, etc... matter unless someone is willing to put up real cash. If there are no consequences, then by definition misdeeds aren't punished and will be effectively incentivised.

E.g.: You can trust a legally enforced warranty with full refunds guaranteed by the government, because it costs real money to the manufacturer. You can't trust a "Best Quality!" sticker. It basically costs nothing. It's just words.

Copyright protection laws are the same kind of thing. While the marginal cost of enforcement is zero, there is similarly zero incentive to do it correctly and respectfully of the law.

If there was enforced financial penalties for each screw up, then it is assured that any errors like this will be ironed out very quickly.

No penalty? No bug fixing!

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by kofejnik on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @05:00AM (#30070142)
Bloody brilliant, and of course will never happen
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by Wicher on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @02:37AM (#30082849)
> Then Google reviews it, makes a decision, and loser has to pay for it.

I'm afraid they'll have incentives to automate that review, and then simply repeat that you can't appeal. Now you still can't access your file AND you're out of a $100 :-/

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by withinboredom on Monday January 24, 2022 @05:42PM (#30065110)
Sounds like some shenanigans you’d see on a blockchain. Though, if a blockchain did something like that to reverse a transaction, that’d be amazing.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by vidarh on Monday January 24, 2022 @05:37PM (#30065043)
A legal requirement to provide an appeals process for automated decisions would be a good step.

Many places have restrictions like that for limited things like loan decisions, but it's about time to start forcing companies to provide a manual appeals process for other types of decisions that can significantly affect people.

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by raxxorrax on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @02:46AM (#30069278)
A legal requirement that disallows removing content until the claim has been proved would be sensible.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by eterm on Monday January 24, 2022 @07:23PM (#30066153)
Not just own, but you can't even license the use of copyrighted works because even if you were somehow licensed the automatons will take over and you'll get flagged off the internet anyway.

We've gone from copyright as a mechanism for sharing works and licensing others to a situation where there are the in-group, the big media corporations who are allowed to license and remix content, and a sub-class who essentially are not.

Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by kaetemi on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:20PM (#30066638)
So Google Drive is not an option for safely storing documents that you don't want to lose. And by extension, Google Docs is equally dangerous.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by jfoster on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @08:14AM (#30071393)
Yeah, based on this, any GSuite presentation containing a logo seems like it might meet Google's criteria for getting blocked.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by rattray on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @01:46PM (#30076108)
Or, like, a quote. Yikes.
Re:Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright... by yeetaccount4 on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:43PM (#30066814)
Fuck that, you’re the big game in town, you get the big bitches. Fix your shit.