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I'm looking for a well written and researched piece that can tell me why TPB and other such sites are good for society, not some crap "I just want stuff for free" argument.

How about Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig?

Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America’s most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, CODE and THE FUTURE OF IDEAS, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in FREE CULTURE, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they’re inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.

All creative works—books, movies, records, software, and so on—are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible—technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the First Congress in 1790 was 14 years, renewable once. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we’ve forgotten?

Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can’t do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What’s at stake is our freedom—freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.

Basic suggestion: get 50 people. Go to the "Author's Guild" offices, stage a sit-in, and everyone start reading some book aloud.

To make it REALLY funny, make it a freely-available Creative Commons book. Maybe Free Culture by Lessig.

Well, I thought I did say in the other part of my comment that using Tor for anonymity to the tracker will hide your IP from the tracker only and that other peers will still see your IP. I also mentioned that you can do this without hurting the Tor network and finally that Tor can also be used to hide IP between peers but that this hurts the Tor network.

I have thought about this problem and I am aware of the consequences of not covering my IP with Tor when transfering between peers. Your scenario is correct, in that the RIAA/MPAA can setup a peer and gather IPs of all and sundry, but do you really think that they would bother? Going after a tracker is like gold dust for them because it's one highly visible server containing records of all connections. Going after several million peers using the method you describe is a gargantuan task and would require massive resources on their part. I agree it's not secure, but the possibility of getting caught is greatly reduced.

You are, by the way, incorrect in that they know who I am simply because they know my IP and the time I was logged in. I suppose that if you live in the US, where ISPs regularly bend over for MPAA requests for information, then you would be correct, but not all countries ISPs fall over at their feet: There are still several layers of defense between them and me.

Just to clarify (as this post makes me seem like a heavy downloader of copyrighted material), I do not condone downloading music/films illegaly. It is wrong no matter how you look at it, although I have done this on--literally--one or two occasions (nobody is perfect). For more info about the the whole copyright issue, I suggest reading Lawrence Lessigs excellent e-book, Free Content http://free-culture.org/freecontent/. Of course, there are grey areas :) Specifically, TV shows that never get released on DVD, and despite being copyrighted are not for sale elsewhere. Long live TV torrents!

"Talmudic"? That would imply that I'm drawing all my conclusions from the article itself. I've actually read a couple of Lessig's books and occasionally visited his blog, so in reality I'm merely summarizing arguments Lessig has made in other forums. Further, this was only necessary because your retort showed that you didn't grasp the full implications of what he was saying.

Now, if you were unfamiliar with Lessig's work before, his op-ed piece was far too terse, so I'm not holding that against you. However, he has done a masterful job explaining and defending his ideas in other forums. Maybe he had more pressing things to do, maybe the magazine sprung the request on him, or maybe six paragraphs is what they actually wanted. While I wasn't impressed by this particular piece either, the one thing you can't blame its quality on is a lack of ideas or understanding in Lessig himself.

Here

Great, but read Lawrence Lessig's book for dangers of moving books to storage where students have limited access to them. (May not be UT's case, but is the case elsewhere)

Imagine that I, as a non-resident, walk into the UT library. I can no longer grab a book off the shelf and read it if it's not there. In the future, I probably won't be able to read it online, as the publishers will probably require some proof that I'm a currently enrolled student. And I almost certainly won't be able to request it from some storage facility unless, again, I am an enrolled student.

Now, if the libraries are considering this scenario and are taking measures to prevent it, then OK. But otherwise I'm worried.

It seems that some libraries on the UW Madison campus are doing the same thing - putting all journals which are online into storage.

Some advantages:
1) You can search articles.
2) Much faster now to retrieve an article.

Some disadvantages:
1) Reading from ambient-lit paper much easier on eyes.
2) Eventually, access to on-line journals will probably require some kind of identification that you are a student (student #, etc). So if you're a visiting student, somebody just interested in peeking into some medical research to see what it is you've got, a student temporarily not enrolled, etc. you'll be completely out of luck. I think this is discussed in Lawrence Lessig's book.
3) Noise from people whacking away on their keyboards.
4) Atmosphere. There's nothing like just being around a bunch of books to get you "in the mood". Laugh if you will, but even the smell of books is imporant. The smell of a hot monitor just doesn't compare.
5) Visual cues. Looking at a rack of journals, you may get an idea of how much a subject encompasses. Or the well-turned pages of an article give an idea of how important it has been. Heck, despite knowing when an article was written, it really only "hits home" when you see the aged yellow pages.
6) People annoyed by reading a monitor (and there are many, despite the "new generation"'s claims) will print the article out anyways. I wonder if this wouldn't lead to more paper waste in some cases.

I'm all for digitizing journals and books, but - eesh - keep the printed version around as well.

• A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it [...]
• B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it [...] The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.
• C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high [...]
• D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

Source: Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity . New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2004.

See page 134 for the specific reference; start at page 133 for a discussion on the history of copyright in the US.

One great idea he suggests is to have an online registration that costs (say) $1 per year to register, with a maximum life of (IIRC) 50 years. If the copyright owner doesn't register it every year, it's in the public domain. If it's not worth $1 to register, then it shouldn't be copyrighted anyway.

"common sense revolts"
free culture

Cory Doctorow:

Eastern Standard Tribe (CC)
A Place So Foreign (and eight more) (CC)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (CC)

Lawrence Lessig:

Free Culture

Tech and science books:

Version Control with Subversion (CC)
An open source math book
Light and Matter, a series of physics texts by Ben Crowell

Lists:
The Assayer is a place to find and review open books.

I still don't understand that retroactive extension. Did Congress not even discuss it? Lessig makes a pretty good argument against it in Free Culture.

Actually.. I wonder.. Does the US Congress keep transcripts dating back to then? More usefully to me, does it keep them online? It might be an interesting read on a rainy weekend.

Lawrence Lessig's recent book Free Culture deals with these issues very well. To crib two points from his book:

The physical part, as you say, is key: If I steal a book from Barnes & Noble's shelves, they have one less book to sell. But if I make a digital copy of your CD after it has fallen into the public domain (yeah, right!) you still have yours and no harm is done. This is the crucial distinction between material and non-material "property".

And, of course, there is the legal side. If an "intellectual property" holder seeks to infringe on my freedom to do as I please (e.g. make a digital copy of a CD), he must rely on the rest of society (e.g. taxpayers, police, courts, jails, etc.) to control and/or punish me. Why should society bother? What does society get out of it? The Constitution, which is the source of Congress' authority to grant and enforce copyrights, says that this is only for the purpose of promoting science and the useful arts, as a benefit to society, and for a limited time. Society benefits from novel works immediately (paying for them, of course, under the limited-term monopoly granted to the creator) and society eventually gets the work free and clear to adapt and to subject to competitive pressures. So, at least from the de facto legal perspective, there is a big difference between physical and non-physical "property"!

As for the grandparent's question as to why physical and non-physical property should be treated differently, well... You don't own property after you're dead, and trying to enforce your will in a world you are no longer a part of seems ludicrous to me, so I'll ignore that part of the question. As to passing ownership on, this article on the topic of unlimited inheritence interesting. I think it can be argued persuasively that unlimited inheritence corrupts both individuals and societies, and will undermine the meritocracy system in America.

But the real point is, society grants copyrights because there is an implicit promise that society (the public domain) gets something back later. So, even if the grandparent "would like to be able to copyright my work and not let anyone ever reproduce and/or distribute it without a specific permission either from me, or from my will", I'd like to see him enforce that without cooperation from me and my fellow citizens, both as taxpayers and public servants. So, you want us to help you? What's in it for us?

What right has been taken away from you?

The ability to use copyrighted works after their copyright has expired. OK, technically this hasn't been taken away -- just the expiration extended (indefinitely). I should by now be able to use the Mickey Mouse likeness without paying Disney a dime. I should be able to repoduce copies of "The Thin Man" movie. But, I can't.

Copyrights were never intended to provide a monopoly on works forever. See Lawrence Lessig's book for a better explaination than I could ever hope to muster.

Read this: http://free-culture.org/ and it will all become clear WHY copyrights are 70 years after the death of the Author.

It's all about money and control. Nothing else.

The irony is that since you can't publish without signing a big contract, only the big publish comporation are making big profits on copyrighted work, not the artist. (whom the Copyright is supposed to protect...)

The traditional contours of copyright have been warped in a much worse way than the opt-in/opt-out division. Until the 20th century, the only way to infringe copyright was by unauthorized publication of a copyrighted work. Making a private, personal copy of something only became an infringement under the 1909 copyright act revision. If we went back to the traditional contours, all the MPAA bullshit lawsuits would have to go away at once.

However, there is no way that Kahle could seriously litigate the above. He instead goes after opt-in/opt-out, but will get nowhere, because the same media conglomerates who stopped Eldred will stop this. They do not want a public domain to exist. They opposed the Eldred bill which tried to get abandoned works back for the public domain, by requiring a copyright renewal with a fee of one dollar after 56 years! Lessig explains:

The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other side is. The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not the protection of "property" but the rejection of a tradition.Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.

It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA feared the competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public domain connected to a public that now has the means to create with it and to share its own creation.
...
There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the Anglo-American tradition. It is called "feudalism." Under feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration. It fought any freedom that might interfere with that control. As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the choice we are now making about intellectual property. We will have an information society. That much is certain. Our only choice now is whether that information society will be free or feudal. The trend is toward the feudal.

"Whoa! So the industry the MPAA represents owes its very existence to a bunch of IP Pirates?!!"

Are you surprised? Modern copyright law started with a desire to protect authors from publishers.

Read Lessig's Free Culture, a riveting horror story (and the scariest part: it is all true).

Stallman is quoted here saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e., "Non-Free.")

We have to ask ourselves what Stallman actually said before we swallow the summary. The summary does fly in the face of the underlying ethos of Stallman articles such as The Right to Read. It contradicts what others, like Lessing have to say. It even contradicts what the article itself seems to say, when it compares Stallman to Martin Luther, who translated the bible so everyone could read it.

The right to read clearly demonstrates the cultural consequences of non-free software: complete enslavement to those who control publishing. The reasoning is that no one is equal to the sum of all previous work and that we all need access to knowledge. Those who control that knowledge control society. The phrase "free as in speech" makes it just about impossible to consider art "non free". Nothing could be freer that your ability to sing Woody Guthrie tunes.

People like Laurence Lessing have extrapolated Stallman's concepts and filled in the details for art and culture. His book Free Culture, attributes Stallman as the visionary who first realized how technology and certain anti-social tendencies could cause great social harm. As in technology, if we are not free to build on what has come before, we are lost, ignorant, dependent and enslaved.

We can take this a step further by realizing that the most important knowledge is not practical at all. The "Liberal Arts" are those that involve persuasion, and are called so because their study was once restricted to "liber" or free men. Slaves were not allowed to learn how to persuade their neighbors, though they could be taught all manner of practical knowledge. It does not matter what we know, if we are unable to convince others of what is right.

So, what did Stallman say?

A game scenario can be considered art/fiction rather than software. So it is okay to split the game into engine and scenario, then treat the engine as software and the scenario as art/fiction.

That's it and there's really no direct contradiction. The author claims that the story and art work should be covered by copyright law. That's a world different from saying it should be "non-free" as if the author has suddenly adopted the most Zealous stance of the Copyright Warrior. It does not have Richard Stallman claiming that copyright law, as it exists, is correct. The authors of the Creative Commons and the Free Documentation License are not suddenly endorsing "Digital Rights Management". All it says is that source code and pure art are different.

You are fundamentally confused when you ask:

according to stallman's views, should a graphics artist not be able to freely obtain the art of a game so he could modify it, without having to pay for it? after all, that is what he demands of software.

Source code has the ability to be far more restrictive than any previous form of artwork and applying those restrictions to art is a cultural dissaster. You already have the ability to quote graphics and other art work. You may indeed take someone else's image and modify it and present it as your own. You can do the same thing with a song too. No one can keep your from studying a painting and making one of your own. If you think otherwise, it is because people like Bill Gates have expanded and misapplied copyright laws to cover non human readable formats and perverted trademark to cover common words and phrases. The whole idea that you can't use even the smallest quote or part of someone else's work is absurd as someone owning "Word". If you think you don't have this ability, the copyright warriors own your soul.

The people at your former workplace did exactly the right thing by avoiding GPL code. I'm sure you would say people not willing to honor the terms of your company's licenses (i.e. no sharing, pay for each copy, etc). should not use your company's code. So I don't see why you have trouble with the notion that people not wanting to honor the GPL's terms shouldn't use GPL code.

I myself write closed source code sometimes, but I expect to get paid for doing it. When I write code as a volunteer, it's GPL. I don't see why I should want to do development for your closed source product so you can get money for shipping my code, unless I'm getting some of that money myself. If you want to use the closed source policies to charge people to use code, write the code yourself or pay someone to write it. In wanting to use GPL code in closed source products, it sounds to me like you're just a freeloader looking for a handout.

compensation for airplanes which fly over my house which is legal

Redefinitions of the word "pirate" and "thief" to describe copying intangibles was intentional on the **AA's part.

The more recent word, introduced this century, is "intellectual property" which tries to make a similar implication that copyright violation is theft. This was introduced by WIPO and friends.

However, no one is associating copyright laws with human rights.

Tell that to Dr. Lessig.

One interesting argument put forward by Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture, is that copyright law is inherently badly suited to digital material - the very nature of the material makes copying it a natural action. And when copyright law is being enforced by machines, this becomes a problem.

Consider that there are a number of legitimate reasons you might want to copy/paste material from Google Print, most of them covered by the defence of Fair Use. DRM prevents you from carrying out a perfectly legal action.

Copyright law is triggered by the act of copying, and this is how all DRM systems enforce it. However mechanically enforcing copyright law at the point of copying turns intellectual property (that has some temporary rights granted to the holder), into actual property (which is owned outright by a citizen, with the full protection of the law).

I'm British, but I'd like to point out that this distinction is explicitly set out in the US Constitution. I'm not saying DRM is illegal in any way, but I do think copyright law is broken, and DRM as it's currently conceived is a sign of this. IMO (this argument is lifted (and hopefully not too badly mangled) almost entirely from Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig).

OK Google trying to deactivate copy/paste/print, is not a major irritant - the number of justifiable actions it inhibits will be relatively small, but This Whole DRM Thing(TM ;) threatens (and in the ferverent hope of many powerful people, will conquer) the general purpose computer.

With such an obviously invalid patent, the case is so ridiculously clean cut it will never ever stand up in court

and

I mean, the patent office is not perfect as the people inside are not perfect.

You seem to recognize that the ideology of a perfect patent system isn't realistic, but you claim this isn't a problem because of your ideological belief in the court system. There are several flaws with your claims.

First, civil courts rarely just "throw things out". Usually they'll hear the whole case before deciding on whether or not it has merit. In civil cases this often takes years and costs millions.

Second, even when courts throw things out it is usually after Discovery in which the parties exchange all of their evidence. Discovery is expensive and can take years as well. Just witness SCO vs IBM. SCO doesn't a lick of evidence against IBM for the claims they are making and yet they are still at it.

Third, courts generally only throw things out when they see them as frivalous, completely without merit. In a patent case, the plaintiff here (e.g., Sun or Microsoft) would have a valid patent (in the eyes of the law) and the defendant would have clearly violated that patent. Such a case would not be frivalous. The defense would challenge the validity of the patent which would probably require expert testimony, which would generally be entered into cout during the case, well after Discovery. (Expert analysis also comes at a cost.)

Fourth, even if the case would be thrown out, and I doubt it given the points above, if the defending company is small they will often cave to legal pressure of the larger plaintiff company simply because of the financial risk. For example, you should read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig where he provides explicit examples of the de facto removal of fair use rights because the "little guy" can't risk a copyright lawsuit when a large corporation threatens him. The same is true for patent lawsuits.

Fifth, if the offending (defending?) company is a corporation controlled by investors, it will often be forced to cave because the lawsuit and risk will often drop the share values, especially when investors see that the company is violating a legally valid patent.

In short, it is quite naive to think that an obviously invalid, yet granted, patent is nothing to worry about. It does have a chilling effect on innovation and implementation of the process.

I also disagree on several other points, such as that "software patents" should be abolished. (I know, heresy on Slashdot.) There really is not such thing as "software patents", they are patents on methods (algorithms) that can be implemented in software. Yes, there's an explosion of such patents that are invalid and harmful, but the same is true of patents in general. For example, someone patented "playing with a cat using a laser pointer and the combover. But that doesn't mean there are ingenious or innovative algorithms that wouldn't exist without the protection of patents. The double-click patent fails the obviousness test (and in the case of Microsoft, the prior art test). But what about some ingenious facial recognition algorithm, for example. There can easily be as much innovation and ingenuity in that as any mechani

Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the Internet is more than the fine for a doctor's negligently butchering a patient?

Willful copyright infringement is criminalized by 17 U.S.C. 506(a) in concert with 18 U.S.C. 2319 for economically motivated infringement or large-scale infringement (even if not committed for commercial gain). Felony penalties attach to violations involving reproduction or distribution of at least ten copies valued at more than $2,500.

"Fair use is the right to hire a lawyer."

--Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture

The one surprise in the archive.org archives is the lack of real feature films, I mean, how many studios went bust in the 20s, 30s and 40s and did their successors in interest all renew the copyright on their backcatalogues?

Read Free Culture for some interesting bits on this... it doesn't help that stuff is in the public domain if there are no publicly-available copies. The studios were allowed to check their own films out of the Library of Congress, indefinitely and without charge, so there aren't any copies there, so the only remaining copies are dissolving to dust on studio shelves.

Niall Kennedy has started a project to convert to book into an audio book like AKMA did with Lessig's Free Culture. Unfortunately, AKM Adam is a Ph.D., Rev., and author. Niall Kennedy is a junior at UC Davis. AKMA was about to get some high profile people from the blogsphere to record chapters including Dave Winer and Doug Kaye. Niall Kennedy has to date, only recorded the intro himself. Who knows, maybe Niall's project will grow legs and evolve into something like free-culture.org.

Recomended reading related to the topic (copyrights that last forever): "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig.

It could be downloaded for free from: http://free-culture.org/get-it

Walt Disney was closer than this to "ripping off" Steamboat Bill, Jr. (a work currently playing in theaters at the time!) when he put Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie," and his work earned him a media empire and the adoration of millions. And it was LEGAL.

"This puts a completely different spin on the song," said Kathryn Ostien...

No shit, lady! That's what makes it creative and original! The fact that this is even an issue makes me so baffled and angry I lack the vocabulary to describe it. Is The Richmond Organization blinded so badly by God-only-knows-what that they will waste time, money, and lawyers to shut down a perfectly legitimate creative work? This creative work harms them in no way, yet they assault it. What can they gain by this? The song is fifty years old! The mind reels.

This whole lawsuit is testament to the truth of what I've been reading in Free Culture. Read this book. It's free to download, and extremely important if you care about anything vaguely related to this topic.

Don't be fooled. This announcement is not saying that the MPAA will agree that you are within your rights to backup and/or time/device shift your legally obtained media (you are). Instead, they are saying that they are going to implement (with the help of Microsoft) technologies that ensure that that is all you are able to do with the media.

So forget about taking a backup copy of your movie to a friend's house and trying to play it on their equipment (ain't gonna happen -- although you have the right to do so).

And forget about trying to play the movie on a non-Microsoft device -- say a Linux PC for example (sorry, not permitted - although it too is perfectly legal).

So do not be fooled into thinking we have won. The MPAA is not agreeing to expanding any of our rights! In fact they will be taking away rights through technology as opposed to through laws (although the DMCA will serve to enforce the technology as if it were law).

If you haven't yet read Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture , do it now!

Very true. But Lessig's point is that Congress does not have the *unlimited* right to continually expand copyright protections to the point that they harm the nation. That's the central message of Free Culture, Lessig's latest attempt to get people to wake up to the detrimental effect current copyright law is having on our society.

The book can be downloaded for free, and it provides plenty of examples of how the original intent of copyright has been warped almost beyond recognition in the past few decades.

The recent history of the Supreme Court does indicate that they're not going to interfere with something that is within Congressional purvue. However, it may be that the best way to attack the current copyright regime is to point out that Congress has overstepped the bounds of its authority by failing to properly take into account the negative effects of practically indefinite copyright extension.

The resources psent on this would be far better spent on other courses of action...

I'm not sure that you're wrong, but at the same time, I wonder if anyone would pay any attention to a public education campaign. With so many other vital issues on the plate right now, I doubt that most Americans would truly understand the need to reform copyright. It's just too ephemeral an issue, when you stack it next to Afghanistan, Iraq, interest rates, unemployment, Olympic athletes on drugs, and so on.

Lessig may be tilting at windmills, but at least he's trying.

If you care about this issue enough to follow any of the links above, you should read Lessig's "Free Culture" -- hell, you don't even have to pay for it (available as a free download). It's an excellent read that clearly outlines both sides of the issue (including de-FUDding many of Valenti's statements).

In 1982, Valenti's testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly:

No matter the lengthy arguments made, no matter the charges and the counter-charges, no matter the tumult and the shouting, reasonable men and women will keep returning to the fundamental issue, the central theme which animates this entire debate: Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property owners in the nation. That is the issue. That is the question. And that is the rostrum on which this entire hearing and the debates to follow must rest.

The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti's rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The "central theme" to which "reasonable men and women" will return is this: "Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protections 118 resident in all other property owners in the nation." There are no second-class citizens, Valenti might have continued. There should be no second-class property owners.

This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated with such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we use elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a claim made by anyone who is serious in this debate than this claim of Valenti's. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is perhaps the nation's foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and scope of "creative property." His views have no reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition, even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has slowly redefined that tradition, at least in Washington.

It's simplistic to say that "capitalism" is the source of most intellectual property, just as it is simplistic to blame capitalism for all corporate misbehavior.

The problem here is, the whole idea of applying the principles of capitalism to the field of intellectual property leads to an untenable situation: we pretend that IP is the same as real, physical property, even though it is no such thing.

Intellectual property amounts to nothing more than the tangible manifestation of ideas. The cost of replicating IP is vastly, vastly lower than the cost of creating it in the first place. We put legal impediments to wholesale copying under the guise of copyright law, with the goal of making it worthwhile to create more IP. As a legal fiction, it's a workable and desirable one.

But the problem comes when you start pushing IP too far into the "real property" model. An example Lessig gives in Free Culture involves the rise of amateur photography. There were honest-to-god court cases to decide whether or not a shutterbug had to compensate the owner of the thing being photographed. After all, it is my house, my person, my property which is providing the opportunity for you to create value through your picture, so why shouldn't I get a slice of the pie?

Can you imagine what it would be like if the courts had decided in favor of that view? Ick. Only professionals would be able to navigate the legal landmine such a system would create. You just cannot pretend that IP is the same thing as physical property. Read any of Lessig's books; they're excellent primers on what happens when property laws get conflated.

Lessig's latest book, Free Culture, is available online for free (both as in speech and as in beer). It was reviewed on Slashdot two weeks ago. I haven't read it yet, but I've read one of his earlier books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, and thought it was excellent.

Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.

However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.

What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).

It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.

I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.

Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?

- Neil Wehneman

P.S. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.

Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.

Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.

Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.

However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.

What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).

It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.

I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.

Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?

- Neil Wehneman

P.S. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.

Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.

Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.

Our intellectual property laws, when interpreted strictly, are a bit of a farce...[A]s a society, we have never ever, even for a day, played by the basic copyright rules "100%."

Our intellectual property laws, when interpreted strictly, are a bit of a farce...[A]s a society, we have never ever, even for a day, played by the basic copyright rules "100%."

Dr. Lessig has put his new book Free Culture under a noncommercially freely redistributable Creative Commons License.

It's a great book, very insightful and interesting. I read it in two days.

Read it in PDF format here, or buy it (with referrer commission going to Creative Commons) here.

- Neil Wehneman

Dr. Lessig has put his new book Free Culture under a noncommercially freely redistributable Creative Commons License.

It's a great book, very insightful and interesting. I read it in two days.

Read it in PDF format here, or buy it (with referrer commission going to Creative Commons) here.

- Neil Wehneman

You're trying to define stealing as getting something of value without paying for it. The dictionary, and the law, disagree with that definition.

A more accepted definition can be found here: "the taking of someone else's property with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it."

Webster's adds that, "To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief."

When it comes to "stealing" music, copyright has everything to do with it. You're just copying data, which doesn't meet the definition of theft, above. No part of any property has been removed from its former position; no one will be deprived, permanently or otherwise, of the property; and you are not in the complete possession of the property. The only reason you might be committing a crime is if copyright forbids you from copying that data because an exclusive right to do so has been granted to its author.

The act of copyright infringement is fundamentally different from that of stealing. The use of the word "theft" to describe it is propaganda, pushed by special interests who would like to tie down and "own" every thought, idea, and piece of information possible. I reject it.

Finally, a very relevant plug for a some very valuable information that you may access for free: Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture. I downloaded the PDF, but after reading the introduction, I bought the hard-cover.