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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.

The 1400-word terms and conditions for MSN.CO.UK's strong-IP
"Thought Thieves" film competition are quite the read, even if
you're not the 14-17 year-old they're intended to be read and
understood by and complied with in their therein bywhich
entirety. Entries must be the "sole work and creation of the
person submitting the film" (no sharing your precious
intellectual property fluids with your cameraman, Mr Auteur);
must not "use third party intellectual property rights" (no
furniture, no architecture, only clouds as background);

...

http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/excerpts/index. shtm - Lessig's book starts at the exact point the T&C gets ridiculous

Innovation will occur where it's allowed.

I've read-up on all the Lessig arguments and I think he's done a good job of understanding and explaining the mechanics of how overzealous copyright law can hinder the development of derivatives. But I have to disagree with his conclusions.

Lessig's arguments, in a nutshell, are that because of draconian copyright law, the culture we would expect to see developing around protected works is not developing.

Maybe he's right, but maybe who cares?

It seems to me that the actions of the RIAA and friends will primarily result in the next generation developing it's own non-derivative culture, and with it, a derivative culture based on it.

Here's one example: the fastest growing software culture right now is not the proprietary software culture where everything is fairly adequately protected, but the free software culture where sharing and derivations are king.

Or consider this: The BBC is investigating the possibility of opening their archives to the world, placing them on the Internet, and allowing anyone who cares to create their own derivative works. If this happens, is there any doube that the next geveration of American kids will enjoy a culture of Dr. Who remakes, and be scarcely familiar with the culture of Friends and (God forbid) it's remakes?

The culture will grow wherever the culture is allowed to grow.

There's plenty of music out there on the internet which the RIAA can't complain about you downloading because the artist has already authorized it. (I don't want to bias anyone, so I won't post links here, but I'll invite replies and follow-up to post their favorite sites.)

What would happen if the onling music sharing community were to declare January, 2005 as Free Music Only month and take a pledge to refuse to offer, download, or purchase any music which isn't Free To Share for 31 days. Would the RIAA notice if all priacy stopped? Would they modify their prices or policies to compensate for the sudden reduction in the behavior they are soo keen to stop?

Would the industry ever recover from the loss of customers to the Free Music culture.

I submit that we don't have to build our culture on top of the one created by the RIAA; that the culture we have created for ourselves is really quite good, and certaintly adequate for our needs.

I'd say let the RIAA keep their worn-out cookie-cutter tunes. Let the culture they created die by their own silly overly-protective rules.

Wouldn't that be ironic; the RIAA, faced with the prospect that their primary market just doesn't care anymore, pleading to reduce copyright terms just so that future genrations will bother to remember them at all?

I posted this in the last spectrum topic, but it's perhaps even more applicable to this discussion.

- Neil Wehneman

*****

Lawrence Lessig spends a not insignificant amount of time on the concept of spectrum in 2001's The Future of Ideas.

Quoting him from page 233 (emphasis in original)...

"Here again, an idea about property is doing all the work - but this time the idea is at its most attenuated. We don't yet have a full property regime for allocating and controlling spectrum. Yet we are still being driven to embrace this single view. We are racing to deny the opportunity for balance, pushed (as we always are) by those who have the least to gain from a world of balance. The possibility of a commons at the physical layer is ignored; even the chance to experiment with the commons is denied. Instead, policy makers on the Right and the Left race to embrace a system of perfect control.

So strong is this idea of property, so unbalanced is our understanding of its tradition, that we embrace it fully, without limitation, even when it doesn't yet exist, and even when the asset being assigned a property right is not - like the wires of AT&T's cable or the creative genius behind Disney's Mickey Mouse - something anyone has created. We are racing to assign property rights in the air, because we can't imagine that balance could do better."

Buy it new, buy it used, or get it from the library. But if you have interest in spectrum you should definitely read this book.

Lawrence Lessig spends a not insignificant amount of time on the concept of spectrum in 2001's The Future of Ideas.

Quoting him from page 233 (emphasis in original)...

"Here again, an idea about property is doing all the work - but this time the idea is at its most attenuated. We don't yet have a full property regime for allocating and controlling spectrum. Yet we are still being driven to embrace this single view. We are racing to deny the opportunity for balance, pushed (as we always are) by those who have the least to gain from a world of balance. The possibility of a commons at the physical layer is ignored; even the chance to experiment with the commons is denied. Instead, policy makers on the Right and the Left race to embrace a system of perfect control.

So strong is this idea of property, so unbalanced is our understanding of its tradition, that we embrace it fully, without limitation, even when it doesn't yet exist, and even when the asset being assigned a property right is not - like the wires of AT&T's cable or the creative genius behind Disney's Mickey Mouse - something anyone has created. We are racing to assign property rights in the air, because we can't imagine that balance could do better."

Buy it new, buy it used, or get it from the library. But if you have interest in spectrum you should definitely read this book.

- Neil Wehneman

Read Larry Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" for more on that train of thought.

I was hoping that "The Future of Ideas" website was a version of the book published on the web, but no, it's basically just an ad for the book. :)

"If I have seen further than other men, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"

Well, kind of like you, lifting most of your points from Lawrence Lessig's Keynote from OSCON 2002, all of which also made their way into his book The Future of Ideas.

I'm not trolling here, i just figure you might want to attribute some of these ideas.

Second, after reading the book, understand that ideas, intangebles, and resources that do not decrease in value as they are used, operate differently than tangeble objects -- therefore they whould be regulated differently.

Third, understand that people who are creative should be compensated and therefore encouraged to innovate. In contrast, creative people required the use of other innovations, and therefore cannot in good concience retain all rights to every aspect of the idea: they must benefit the common area from which they themselves derrived inspiration.

Fourth, understand that the existing regime will always fight to keep their power by suppressing innovation. Innovators will offer very little fight to innovate because they do not have evidence that the innovation will be successful.

Take those together and you basically arrive at the IP law nearly 2 centuries ago. Specifically:

• exact duplications of [registered] works was prohibited for a specific time (14 years, with the option to renew once).
• Mechanical duplication (such as audio playback of a score) could be licenced for a small, federally manged fee, but only for the 14 to 28 year time frame.
• Ideas put in concrete form (like a Coke can) could be recorded in another form (like a movie) without additional compensation, since you purchaced the right to use the object when you went to the soda machine.
• Fair use included the ability to make derivative works at any time.
• Fair use included the abiltiy to reverse engineer any work at any time.
• Individuals, not corporations, owned the rights.
• Licensing was inexpensive, and required the work to be original and creative.

Since we have to deal with the garbage that is already in place, this would mean:

• Massive cutbacks on copyright duration
• Instead of granting all rights to the producer, only certain rights can be granted.
• Licencing deals would have to move from contracts to law.
• All industries working with intangebles, including the software, entertainment, and communications industries would need reform.
• Comapnies using patents and copyrights to prevent innovation would be considered extortionists, where individuals would be encouraged in their use.
• The USPTO and others would need to do significantly more work to ensure works are both original and creative.