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According to Lessig's blog, John Edwards has also written a letter supporting this idea.

There's no such thing as "cretive commons license". It's a whole range of different licenses. Which license are we talking about?

I don't think anyone will see this post, as this news item is off the front page, but i think it's important for history that it be noted that Jack Valenti did embrace Laurence Lessig's Creative Commons and the idea that people who expressly wanted their creative output to be freely shared should have the right to do so.

s/Students/Publishers/gi, s/TurnItIn/Google Book Search/gi
--
so, since the publishers works are the primary resource for Google Book Search to remain viable, how much of a cut should the publishers get for their work? or should Google Book Search be making a profit off others materials with no recompense for those who supply them with the means to do so? And why should the publishers have egg on their face for not wanting others to profit from their works with no compensation?
--
See for example: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003292.shtml

Yes, the student's work provides that backbone of TurnItIn's service, but provided TurnItIn stays within Fair Use, the students are entitled to nothing. To pick another example, I recently generated a thesaurus using (copyright) text by quite a number of authors. I did not pay any of them anything even though my product is essentially useless without their work. Incidentially, I also implemented something almost identical to TurnItIn, but I only applied it to the student's work I was marking. I didn't go the extra step of generalising it and making it work for everyone.

As for egg, my point is the students are being just as greedy as the publishers. A certain amount of greed encourages innovation - if you didn't want more you wouldn't bother to work hard. But excessive greed stifles innovation (such as preventing Google Book Search or TurnItIn).

http://www.lessig.org/ he's a cool guy. Doesn't like the state of copyright today. More into the dissemination of information.

Knowing Sony, Grouper's probably being sued by Columbia.

Um, instead of ignorantly debating this with IANAL's, consult what the expert has to say: http://www.lessig.org/blog/

In recent years, Creative Commons has gone in an 'Open Source' direction, far from the principles of the Free Software Foundation that CC founder Lawrence Lessig said inspired his movement in the first place (cue howling anti-RMS Slashdotters).

In fact, in the recent GPLv3 furor, Lessig came down on the side of Linus Torvalds, against Richard Stallman. This is when I first began questioning the value of supporting CC by using one of their licenses.

It seems, like others in the 'Open Source' movement, CC has mades its compromises and now plays nicely with those who want to make a ton of money off of user generated content (MySpace, Rupert Murdoch anyone?), without necessarily preserving the rights of users.

CC now resides in the ESR category.

Lawrence Lessig supports net neutrality and so should you. http://www.lessig.org/ The Christian Coalition supports it, too. http://www.cc.org/content.cfm?id=329&srch=neutrali ty

Yawn is all I can say.

Okay, not the EFF, but how about

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source))

Yawn is all I can say.

Okay, not the EFF, but how about

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source))

http://www.lessig.org/blog/

Don't worry. As has been noted, some of they are dead anyway.

(I wonder how many of the rest knew about the advert beforehand?)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog:

As reported yesterday, there was an ad in the FT listing 4,000 musicians who supported retrospective term extension. If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.

I know nobody here even read TFBBCA, but here's the full Gowers report (see PDF under Final Report), with background etc.

Lawrence Lessig blogged about one interesting recommendation -- that copyright term not be altered retrospectively. I think that's British for "retroactively".

The short version:

November 9, 2006 saw the complete unblocking of Wikipedia in China, resulting in a four-fold increase in new user registrations. Though it is still subject to URL- and page-level keyword blocking, the vast majority of the site is freely accessible.

Why was it unblocked? No one can know for sure. But in the end, I believe consensus among the Chinese authorities found the benefits of Wikipedia far outweigh the risks, and signals their understanding of a read-write Web.

China wants to read it, the world wants China to write to it.

With Wikipedia blocked, China suffers because its ranks of knowledge workers cannot access the top reference site in the world, and the world suffers from not having China's expertise and input in Wikipedia. Sound familiar? This is Wikipedia as the ultimate implementation of "read-write" culture, ala Lawrence Lessig.

And in the end, if you think about it, doesn't it make complete sense that the People's Republic of China would embrace the people's encyclopedia of Wikipedia?

Larry Lessig notes that you can't print the letter, thanks to the wonders of the rights management in Acrobat. When combined with the fact that the letter is scanned in, it makes it rather difficult to quote or distribute portions of the letter without sending the whole thing -- either that or we go back to the bad old days where everything needed to be retyped, bringing the possibility of typos and all that. Fortunately, for us Linux geeks (and I'd imagine the rest of the world that installs the software), pdftops will happily convert it to a postscript for easy printing. This is despite the fact that neither Acrobat nor Evince will print the pdf. I'd imagine that XPDF suffers from the same issue.

If you read the Grokster decision, you'll find a comprehensive discussion of copyright misuse, but as the PrawfsBlawg points out, for those who wish the short version, the penalty is not getting to enforce for as long as the misuse continues: "The effect isn't to invalidate the copyright, but rather to preclude its enforcement so long as the misuse is ongoing."

Larry Lessig has suggested it *ought* to be penalized with forfeiture, but that isn't the law. People who are not lawyers or in any way trained in the law should probably be careful not to assert things that they don't know or can't prove, and should put links to proofs others can check, so others are not misled. A little modesty goes a long way.

I'll give them the benefit of trying to start a realistic project without any fancy, not-yet existing technology, and therefore accept that their attempt for collective intelligence is writing a business book in what they call Wikipedia-style, so far with 300 participants. But I believe that books or the written word in general is not the right tool for collective intelligence and in fact right now stopping us from making some advances e.g. in education.

We've all grown up in a culture dominated by information transfer via text and been trained by our educational system to be producers of text ourselves. I'm currently doing it on slashdot, everybody is communicating via email and IM, because that's what we've learned.

But there has been a lot of research showing that richer media (not flash, but visualization and simulation) are often much more appropriate to describe complex subjects. There has been a trend for a long time to stuff text books with more graphics, diagrams, pictures, and educational software with videos, animations and so on. A picture can say more than a thousand words if placed in the right context.

Unfortunately we are not yet trained to use more than a basic hypertext processor for media creation. How many teachers can even draw a diagram? How many websites have useful graphics? If you look at wikipedia, it's basically a large book with a few photos and even fewer good diagrams, no simulations or whatever. So when reading e.g. wikipedia it is up to the reader again to create an internal visualization and hope to match the image intended by the authors.

I believe to make progress in collective intelligence we have to move our media production to match the mental capabilities of humans. Text was very useful when it was the only technical viable solution, but today there are many more and better media types, only our culture of media creation is behind the possibilities by some decades. YouTube may be a nice step in the right direction and what Lawrence Lessing said about creating CC licensed rich flash content also is. But starting another wiki style pseudo book is not.

"Are you referring to the USA or Canada? Because if it's USA, you know better than to think something will become public domain here. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic)"

Although you are being sarcastic you are also telling the truth. Jack Valenti the head of the MPAA, has stated, "The constitutional definition of "limited time" to me means the end of the universe minus 30 seconds". He has also stated that if people want to back up their copies, they can damned well buy the backup. Another gem from him is his belief that the public domain is useless unless you can profit from it.

See http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002065.shtml for more enjoyable quotes from this sock puppet..

B.

Fair Use covers much more than personal use, it covers all usage which is fair. Book, papers, DJs, etc. all make use of the fair use doctrine clause on a daily basis for commercial gain. An example can be found in a talk given by Lessig on the fair use of the google book search project here: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003292.shtml.

"I've seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only a few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California. The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I was asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer from an L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a friend, Robert Fairbank, had produced.

The video was a brilliant collage of film from every period in the twentieth century, all framed around the idea of a 60 Minutes episode. The execution was perfect, down to the sixty-minute stopwatch. The judges loved every minute of it.

When the lights came up, I looked over to my copanelist, David Nimmer, perhaps the leading copyright scholar and practitioner in the nation. He had an astonished look on his face, as he peered across the room of over 250 well-entertained judges.Taking an ominous tone, he began his talk with a question: "Do you know how many federal laws were just violated in this room?""

These are ominous, deep and dark waters that you want to wade through. Get a lawyer, a very good lawyer.

Sera

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Hrm... Well, then how about these:

"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source)

"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source)

And so forth

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Hrm... Well, then how about these:

"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source)

"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source)

And so forth

Since Boyle first wrote about this last September, I was wondering what others had to say about it. Here's a blog entry from Lawrence Lessig. Not too much written there, but it led me to an EFF page and CPTech action page.

This is a no brainer. Obvious to anyone but the current president of the RIAA. She did blog on Lawrence Lessigs site a while back and I think some posters made some intelligent responses to her points.

The same thing happened with Jack Valenti after he stepped down. All of a sudden he grew a brain and realized that some of the practices/technologies the MPAA developed/pushed while he was president weren't good for customers. Surprise surprise!

I think what has happened is that now they are just normal consumers and the realize what a pain in the rear the stuff they pushed is to real people.

Lessing opposes DRM and sees it as a subversion of reasonable laws. His method is to demand accountability and freedom. He wants artist intentions to be obvious, but he does not want to force this by technological means and more than he would outlaw pointy objects because someone could use them for murder. DRM puts lawmaking and policy into the hands of those who control DRM and takes it away from government and the people.

As an example of this subversion consider the defacto perpetual copyright that scrambled content provides. Your laws require content to enter the public domain after 70 years or so. Scrambled content and media obsolescence thwart that entirely. The kinds of DRM that Vista has for you are much stronger and have the same kind of result.

Moderate DRM opposition turns out to be complete opposition. Lessing backs the FSF and Defective by Design, as you might see by visiting his blog. There is no software freedom under someone else's dongle.

> is there any "common carrier" issue here?

I think there is, but the resolution is not (currently) in favor of the consumer. For some reason, the companies that have the big bucks had a bigger voice in the Telecommuncations Bills than the consumers. Why is that?

Lessig had some typically apt comments.

Since this is FUD campaign, they of course try to scare downloaders - so they use "downloaders" since it's much broader term.

As copyright law concerned, it's uploaders who are infriging. Uploading is distribution. If you want to distribute something - you have to acquire a permission from copyright holder.

Case for downloader is much simpler: downloader has acquired something for personal use. As long as file in question isn't used for anything what's prohibited by copyright law - downloader is clear. "Listening to mp3" is not there. "Distributing" and "profiting" is there.

I probably oversimplify the situation, but that the view I have formed after reading Lessig's blog - http://lessig.org/blog/ And c'mon - it's slashdot ;-)

However, a method for extracting, isolating, and purifying a gene may be patentable. But keep in mind that patents only last for 20 years

Only in theory. I read not too long ago that Big Pharma, Inc. was keen to ways of extending the patents beyond their 20-year span. Lawrence Lessig has some words to say about this: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001554.shtml

So, the problem with Network neutrality is that it opens up the DSL and Cable providers up to competition for their other service, and that'a a big disincentive for them to roll it out.

So how is this handled in other countries? Do any other countries require network neutrality on the part of circuit providers (i.e., providers of raw pipes to the customer) or ISPs (who could be the same entity as the raw pipe provider, or could be somebody buying raw pipe capacity)? If so, how has that affected the rollout of broadband services?

Googling for

crtc "network neutrality"

found this Toronto Star piece by Michael Geist, which argues in favor of Canada adopting a policy requiring network neutrality (and says that one telco, Telus, brieftly blocked access by its customers to a Web site set up by a union with which it was having a dispute), so I presume there was, at least at that time, no regulatory requirement for network neutrality in Canada.

Googling for

europe "network neutrality"

found other pieces by Michael Geist, which indicate that some European carriers are blocking VoIP traffic, so I assume there's no regulatory requirement for network neutrality in the countries in which they're doing that.

On the other hand, Googling for

france "network neutrality"

found a piece by Lawrence Lessig arguing that France and Japan offer better high-speed broadband than is available in the US (which might even be true in areas of comparable housing density) and required "strict unbundling", which Lessig describes as even more stringent than network neutrality.

However, it also found this blog item on the Progress and Freedom Foundation site, citing arguments before congress that a key point, at least in the case of France, was that "France operated in a monopoly environment".

So a quick Google found no obvious single conclusion about this issue. I'd be curious to see what people who aren't strong advocates of either position have to say about the raw(er) data.

Well, you missed the deadline for making comments to the "Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies" proceedings that the Copyright Office is conducting. Too bad. I'm sure your comments on this issue would have been more useful than mine were.

Perhaps you could still contact the Stanford Center for Internet and Society folks who were spearheading an effort to collect comments on cell phone locking and they could use your comments as an addendum or something.

Shout out to Lessig for his blog entry that pointed these folks out to me.

You have said that "[Friedrich] Hayek's work...is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project". Or you've said things in interviews such as "Unlike some other grassroots journalism type of projects like Indymedia, which is a very far left type of thing written by activists, we strive to be a neutral, high-quality source of basic information." (which of course implies that the supposedly "very far left" Indymedia is not a good source of information, whereas Wikipedia is).

Regarding the most powerful group of your lietenants, the Arbitration Committee, last year you had an election. This year you wanted to appoint them with little input until an uproar allowed more input from the community. During this (s)election, you put in the people with the highest vote rates, except for JayJG, who had people ahead of him since so many people voted against him due to his lack of the neutrality you espouse in interviews. You say you did this because he was on ArbCom - which he is, because you appointed him to it in the past few months. This was after the election last year, where he received no votes. Instead of having another election, or going down the 2005 election list, you appoint your crony who shares your point of view. When in the election he has people ahead of him due to strong opposition over his lack of opposition, you appoint him anyway.

As a post-script to this message, which is not part of my question, I would note to the readers that Wikipedia review is a board where people discuss their unhappiness with the Wikipedia "cabal". That board has some trolls, but some of the discussions are enlightening, from experienced users. Wikipedia looks open and inviting, but experience shows that is not the case. The one good thing about Wikipedia is the licenses for Mediawiki and English Wikipedia are GPL and GFDL, so that if people become unhappy enough they can fork. I myself tend to edit on other wikis since I'm tired of the nonsense on Wikipedia. I began editing in 2003, and have watched it go downhill from then. A lot of smart experts in the field have been driven off, and the cabal, Jimbo and his lieutenants hold sway. The fact that 2005 had elections from ArbCom and 2006 had "selections" should say something about how things are headed on Wikipedia. This is a policy everyone becomes familiar with after a time.

Actually, I think Wikipedia does a decent job on articles like quantum mechanics, but it is a complete mess in articles pertaining to say relations between the Israelis and Palestinians and that type of thing. And it has just gotten worse and worse. So Wikipedia isn't all bad, just anything to do with politics or history is a mess.

RMS: People have a right to share copies of published works; P2P programs are simply a means to do it more usefully, and that is a good thing.

If we are going to mince words maybe we should start with an honest appraisal of the difference between sharing (as in borrowing a book) and copying. All of us who make a living being creative understand the shortcomings of current copyright legislation and know that we need people to think about creative work in new ways if we are going to take IP law into the 21st century; we know tilting in favor of multi-national corporations at the expense of individuals is a mistake, but we are not going to get anywhere with the type of lazy thinking which asserts things like, "If copyright law forbids people from sharing, copyright law is wrong." I'll take Lawrence Lessig's ideas over Mr. Stallman's any day.

The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.
It has many similarities to what is described in the article, and I think it is a solution that is best for everyone. Lawrence Lessig, in Free Culture (a great, freely downloadable book on related subjects), calls it a chimera. It is wrong to rob the artists, but it is also wrong for the RIAA to treat their fans as criminals. The solution is in the middle, and I think the collective licensing idea is it.

They even let the lobbyists and corporate reps participate directly. This sort of freaked me out when I read it:

1988. It is 2:30 in the morning. I am sitting in the House Commerce Committee room with four or five congressional staffers and only three or four lobbyists/lawyers. The final mark-up for the DMCA is the next morning in the Full Commerce Committee. The Bill had already passed out of the Judiciary Committee but it had a sequential referral to Commerce which needed to approve it before we went to the floor for House Passage. And we were hung up....And several of us, including most importantly by that time, the Committee Chairman who had heretofore been opposed to the Bill, wanted to get it done.

That was written by the RIAA's Hillary Rosen. Here she is, participating on the creation of the bill! Maybe that's not an unusual practice in Congress, but it sounds shady to me.

How about this instead, since it actually is (new as opposed to dup) News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.:

The Creative Commons organization is running their first annual Fall Fundraising Campaign. This isn't simply about raising money, it is necessary to maintain their status as a non-profit organization in the eyes of the IRS. Larry Lessig explains the importance of this effort: 'Today, Creative Commons launches a fund raising campaign. The trigger is some bizarrely complicated requirement of the IRS that nonprofits demonstrate not just support from some large, wise, foundations, but also "public support." So we've got an (urgent) need to demonstrate that support, through, well, [individual] support.' Thus far they have only reached 21% of their stated goal. Over fifty-million objects on the internet link to a CC License. This important work needs to continue unfettered by the IRS or otherwise. Get a button, spread the word.

'Lawyers don't have any better understanding of technology than a cow does algebra.'

Is that right?

Thank you for your on-topic post! It is appalling that their hasn't been more discussion on the issue considering how important to us it is, individually & collectively.

Doc has a great quote from Larry Lessig in his article on the second front of this battle, the copyfight. The extremists in that front are not Lessig & Creative Commons (as many entities would have us believe) but the:

...copyright extremists of the Sonny Bono school, which favors extension of copyright to "forever less one day". In... [the other front of the] debate the radicals are the carriers. We need to fight them, just as Larry and crew need to fight the copyright extremists: by re-framing the subject.

This war to keep the net free (as in unrestricted access to content) is being fought on two fronts and both should be considered equally important, IMO. The writing on the wall regarding copyright issues has been there since the Copyright Term Extension act hit the legislative fan. The carrier front was announced to the masses right here just a couple weeks ago, and (in general) summarily dismissed--I think most of us thought the SBC guy was just plain nuts since we're all already paying for connections. I'm very glad to see this articl by Doc Searls laying out issues of both battlefronts. He closes that right now is the time for us to act on these issues, and he's absolutely correct.

Creative Commons is having a fund raiser and the response has been woefully lacking thus far. It's not even so much about money. They could lose their non-profit status if they can't show support from individuals!

Are we members of EFF? I don't necessarily agree with every position they take but at least they keep me informed on what subversive anti-free-internet proposals are working their way through congress, and how I can help stop them. May I suggest the following actions based on Docs article:

1. We have to stay informed (join EFF or at least sign up for their e-mail bulletins)
2. We have to support the organizations fighting for our freedoms.(Five bucks right now towards Creative Commons isn't going to kill anybodys budget. If you can afford to access the internet, you're probably NOT destitute. If you blog post a button for them.)
3. We have to be freedom fighters and do what we can (i.e. call our reps & senators) to assist in this cause.

If we sit back and assume that the freedoms we enjoy on the internet today are just going to go on forever, without taking any action to ensure this happens, then we have already lost, haven't we?

Anyway, there is already plenty of proof that Microsoft is happy to abuse DRM.

Another nice presentation on free culture with lots of great examples.

Anyway, there is already plenty of proof that Microsoft is happy to abuse DRM.

Another nice presentation on free culture with lots of great examples.

Yeah, they sure a bunch of losers. Not contributing a damn thing to society, just uselessly wanking about how much their dog ate and why their friends from high school don't write. Serious people only get their news and information, from trusted, reliable sources.

Seriously, what the hell is it about blogging that inspires such hatred in some people's hearts? Too many of you guys got ex-girlfriends with Livejournal accounts?

Tin foil hats? No, no, no. Bush is controlled by a transmitter.

Nice thought, but according to Lawrence Lessing practically everything that is published these days is automatically copyrighted. There are alternative copyrights out there (GPL, Creative Commons) that give the end-user certain rights, but the original author/publisher/creator still retains the copyright. However, GPL and Creative Commons have yet to be tested as being "legal" copyrights. So until GPL and/or Creative Commons are tested, the copyright laws will stay on the books. The only other way is to get the copyright laws changed to strengthen the Fair Use clause. Personally, I give that a snowball's chance in Hell of happening given the power of the entertainment lobby groups.

Laws of Cyberspace

I imagine that although not very many people have your scrupels, there are enough of them that WILL NOT REST until the DRM on some precious content of interest to them (hmmm... Star Trek, Stargate, Bab 5, come to mind) is cracked wide open.

I personally balk at buying anything with any kind of DRM at all. I can usually find a way to get the content onto whatever platform I happen to be using at the time anyway, but it's the principal of the thing, man.

http://lessig.org/freeculture/free.html
Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture OSCON 2002 (flash presentation)

Come up with a TPM that stops people from copying and distributing a work more than "fair use", but that allows "fair use". You get to decide exactly what "fair use" means technically, but it must fit today's working definition -- personal backups, personal use on other devices, research/library use.

Can you do it? Or do you just want to sit there flaming about nasty corporations?

Wow, it's funny how someone posted earlier about how some libertard corporate ass-licker was going to come to the defense of the media conglomerates and here it is, not more than 20 posts later. Here's the problem libertard corporate ass-licker, aka browncs, the corporations who are pushing for things such as TPM, the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Mickey Mouse copyright extension act have no interest in any fair-use whatsoever, none, nada, dick, fuck-all. These are the companies that tried to develop a VCR that counted each person in the room so they could charge accordingly. If such a fair-use TPM system were invented you would have to force these companies to accept it. These are the companies that sent Jack Valenti to Washington to say "[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.".

Here's my challenge to you: based upon the hostility that the content industries have had towards any concept of fair use and technical innovation, going back to the invention of the player piano, elaborate why you think these industries would accept any TPM system that guaranteed fair use rights without being forced to do so by the government.

Can you do it, or are you just going to regurgitate the corporate shit that you've been eating?

Most CC licenses are similar to long time existing software licenses like the GPL, LGPL, BSD, Artistic, Aladdin...
So CC licenses are likely valid wherever these software licenses are valid too.
And the possibility to release something as "Public Domain", which is not a license, exist everywhere in the world.
AFAIK, CC licenses were writen by US lawyers like Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law Professsor:
http://www.lessig.org/

If you never sign, there's nothing they can do to you.

If you don't sign, they don't have to do anything to you. You already can't buy a newspaper, visit an updated library, go to a movie, or buy a TV or computer. To them, you're already good as dead. (Vendors of hardware used to view new content will be be induced by the content-authoring industries to both check for consumer compliance before selling, and also embed the rules of the contract in DRM chips. And prohibiting reverse-engineering of DRM will be another term of that contract)

If you never sign, there's nothing they can do to you.

They can blacklist you, and have as a term of the contract that members will not engage in business with someone thus blacklisted. Or, one could imagine numerous other punishments meted out by the contractees against one who flaunts their rules.

1984-esque totalitarianism.

Yes, that is indeed what might happen. Although it would be an odd kind of voluntary-membership totalitarianism, one that a person uninterested in professionally-produced content can opt to disregard.

No, the more likely result of abolishing copyright

Please note that the result I predicted is based on the unavoidable realities described by Professor Larry Lessig in his book "Code and other laws of Cyberspace". Profit finds a way.

It would certainly upset all the people addicted to their soap operas or sitcoms

Yes, and since those people are so much more numerous and influential than folk-art lovers, their support for upholding the status quo is what would create that non-government-supported copyright regime in the first place.

(Of course, this is all impossible hypotheticals- the existence of those masses of happy RIAA/MPAA customers is the reason the legislature would never, ever abolish copyright anyway)

Copyright law is a by-product of mass media. Mass media was created with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (actually the invention of typesetting). Lessig's book "Free Culture" tells a bit about the history of copyright law.