Questions tagged [copyright]

The legal framework protecting artists, authors and other content-originators. Copyright allows owners to prevent others reproducing their work without permission (though most jurisdictions allows some limited exceptions in specific circumstances for some types of content.)

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Is DRM effective?

Reddit is all abuzz about DRM, piracy and all related topics. I don't really know much about the details in the technology here, but people were throwing around statements like these (all pulled from the same thread): DRM would only affect pirates…
MrHen
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Did Trump's inauguration cake copy the design of Obama's 2013 inauguration cake?

We have now learned that Trump continued to offer up Apprentice-season-four-quality optics at the “Salute to Our Troops” inaugural ball, where he served guests a spectacular nine-tiered cake made mostly of styrofoam. No one would have probably…
Zibbobz
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Was the music used in the "You wouldn't steal a car" advertisements pirated?

I was browsing Reddit and I saw this post that garnered 51 thousand votes claiming that the music used in the "You wouldn't steal a car" advertisements was, itself, stolen. According to the source in the post, the Piracy - It's a Crime ad campaign…
PausePause
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Is the music industry losing significant money because of piracy?

Is the music industry, and perhaps the entertainment industry, being ruined by piracy (or otherwise losing a substantial amount of money?) For example, the record label EMI has blamed piracy for the loss of about 2,000 jobs and a slump in revenue.…
Thomas O
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Can acts of IP piracy be more beneficial than harmful?

There are several claims that piracy of Intellectual Property (IP) can help sales more than it hurts them. For example, Edmund McMillan of Team Meat states in an interview at IGN: McMillen believes that the more people who steal his games, the…
Sonny Ordell
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Has copyright piracy halved in New Zealand since their "three strikes" rule?

According to the BBC article US piracy crackdown delayed until 2013, dated November 29, 2012: New Zealand claims that piracy has halved since it introduced a "three strikes" rule. After a little searching, it turns out by "New Zealand" the BBC…
Brian M. Hunt
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Does the US army use unlicensed copies of Windows 7?

I saw this claim at TorrentFreak: However, a signal soldier serving in Qatar informs TorrentFreak that this incident may not be as unique as it sounds. According to the soldier, who we will name Mark, the soldiers’ education center at his base has…
ike
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Do corporations own human DNA sequences?

I came across the claim that Human DNA sequences are now owned by corporations: FACT: HUMAN DNA SEQUENCES ARE NOW OWNED BY CORPORATIONS Is this true? If so, what does this mean? (I realise question 2 may be off-topic on this site, but I find it…
gerrit
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Did Steve Jobs say "We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas."?

Did Steve Jobs make following statement: "We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas"
vartec
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Did Rick Astley receive only $12 in royalties for "Never Gonna Give You Up' from YouTube?

I found this claim originally in Wikipedia, quoted from the Register. The return to the artists is pitiful; ironic 80s icon Rick Astley's Never Going To Give You Up was played 39 million times on YouTube, but he received $12 for his performance…
Casebash
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Are piracy rates for PC games often 85-90 percent in 2016?

In an article on Ars Technica about Jonathan Blow's pricing strategy for his new game The Witness, he was cited as saying the following (emphasis mine): "There's this rhetoric that piracy is free publicity," Blow said during last week's Twitch Q&A…
Thunderforge
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Does every act of piracy impact revenue by the current content price?

Many copyright owners claim that every time someone pirates content (e.g. a song, a film, software) that they have lost money. Some make a stronger claim: that every pirated download is hurting their revenues by the full current price of the…
user6327
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Are individual watermarks widely used to fight piracy?

I have heard on some occasions that programs for digital media, such as Adobe Photoshop, embed hidden watermarks in the pictures that make it possible to spot a pirated copy and trace it to the person using that copy. This point typically comes up…
Lagerbaer
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Did Apple steal trademarks like iPad, iOS and iPhone from other companies?

I found the following post on Google+: So it Turns Out LG Released a Linux Based Tablet Called iPad 9 Years Ago Apparently iPad was first introduced by South Korean hardware manufacturer LG Electronics at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover, …
Green Noob
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Do record companies use a system that kept 99.995% of artists without any form of regular income?

This quote from TorrentFreak: Under the “sign-a-record-deal-or-remain-poor system”, 99% of artists didn’t get record deals with the abusive record industry – and out of those who did, 99.5% never saw a cent in royalties. Thus, we are moving…
Jesvin Jose
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