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Do IP Laws Stifle Popular Culture?
A reader writes: "This could probably fit under 'Patents' as well. Anyways, here's a long but very intelligent essay on the abuse of copyright and trademark laws we see today, full of examples showing that these laws are being used to restrain enterprise and free speech instead of
promoting them. Writing in Reason Online , Jesse Walker concludes that the 'culture industry' just wants us to 'shut up and get back on the couch.'"
the couch is very comfortable. i love the couch. i rarely sleep in a bed if the couch is available. it's quite nice. i think that's one of the major struggles with intelectual property; everyone wants to own the couch, or rather, the idea of the couch.
look at it this way, if you will: couches are being made and used all over the world. despite advances in bed technology, people are still buying couches. why? because they're multi-purpose. you can watch tv on a couch. you can sleep on a couch. you can fulfill all the activities you would participate in on a bed while you are on the couch. the couch is the center of the household, and if i may, the known universe. there's nothing better than a couch.
in conclusion, yes, we do wish to shut up and get on the couch. but i have dibs . . .
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
First of all, I'm curious as to why you think Disney has "put a helluva lot of resources toward developing" its star rodent. It began with cartoons, which made money for Disney. Then came the merchandising and Movies and so forth, which made incredible amounts of money for Disney. Where exactly has Disney poured resources into developing their character? They've done nothing but exploit the recognizability of the mouse character, they haven't done anything risky.
As for whether they should be able to retain sole rights to the character for all eternity, I'm not sure about that yet. It could be a very slippery slope. If we allow them to have a perpetual copyright on their mouse character, why not their theme song? If they can retain their theme song, why not their other songs and cartoons and characters, etc? It wouldn't end.
It's a difficult situation. I'm not so pro or anti-IP that I can see it as a black and white issue. I do feel that currently the law is weighing heavily in favor of corporate IP interests at the expense of the rest of the people in this country. I think that's bad. I think that the lifespan of a copyright should be dramatically shortened. I'm talking about making them last 10-15 years rather than 95 years. Trademarks are a stickier problem. I'll agree with you on that. As for Lifesavers owning the sole right to make little hard candies with a hole in the middle, I find that hard to justify. It's just too restrictive to allow one company to own an idea like that, let alone to control it forever. The whole thing needs to be rethought. It's breaking down already and it's going to get much worse as companies keep pushing for even more broad legislation like the DMCA and UCITA.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As an artist, what do you think of the length of the copyright? Is 95 years too much, too little? Why? I'm trying to figure out how such a long timespan can be justified, given the original intent of copyright, so I'm looking for someone to explain it from another perspective.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
What do you mean "government taking away someone's property"? It wouldn't even BE property if it weren't for the government. Copyright is a privilege granted by the government, not a natural right.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
50 sounds more reasonable, but I still think it's too long. I mean, it's one thing to provide incentive, but when you're talking about giving someone a monopoly on a creation, I think it should be done very carefully and not for a very long period of time. Think about it, if a band performs a song today while under contract with a record company, it will be covered by copyright until 2095. And that's assuming they don't get copyrights extended again. Is 2050 much better? I think 2020 sounds perfectly fair to the artist. They get the sole right to sell and distribute the work for 20 years. I don't see how it serves the original purpose of copyright to extend them much longer than that. It just let's corporations milk them longer.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Ok, I agree with you here and I think you've given a pretty good justification for copyrights. What I'd like to see is for someone to try to justify a copyright lasting nearly 100 years, and in some cases even longer. That's my real problem with copyrights. They aren't just creating incentives and ensuring profitability, they're creating monopolies that last longer than I will likely be alive.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
IMNHO, fraudulent claims of copyright should carry penalties at least equal to the penalties for ocpyright infringement.
Read the article. This ain't so anymore! Corporate copyrights went from 75 to 95, and personal ones went from "life+50" to "life+70"."My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I realize that yes, the women did actually deserve to win the case, but I refer to it for two facts: the US is very lawsuit frantic -- if you can't fix it, sue. Additionally, lawsuits that private citizens bring against major corporates generally involve very huge excessive sums that are definitely well outside of the amount they deserved. I can see the woman getting maybe $25k to $100k for medical bills and new clothes/car interior, but more than a million? "Mental anguish" needs to get a well defined price tag if we continue to depend on courts to decide the American way.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Beyond the law, there's a fundamental economic problem with the whole "pay per use" universe that the critics say the media moguls want to force upon us.
Information has to be priced in terms of value to the customer, not cost, since it has negligible reproduction costs. When you restrict usage of information, you lower that value for your customer. Similarily, if you allow broad usage of information, you raise the value of the product for your customer, but at the risk of selling fewer copies.
This is the dilemma RedHat has to deal with: by offering their product on the 'net, they're making fewer sales, even though the product is more valuable because the source is open. It's a tradeoff between price ($70 now) and amount sold.
So, I think that in the end, companies will have to find a "sweet spot" of how many rights to restrict. Pay per use is not a sweet spot, it's an extreme.
-Stu
I hate it when people invent their own legal justifications for IP law. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to repeat this exact post on slashdot to correct someone's ignorance.
I don't know what country you're from, but here in the US the legal intent of IP law is defined in, of all places, the US Constitution, the highest law in the land. You can't argue with the Constitution--its text is the ultimate legal authority in the US.
The Constitution says (and I quote):
Reading it, you will see that IP law exists to promote progress in science and arts, and not, as you say, to give authors control.The incorrect notion that copyright and patent law exists to give the copyright/patent owner rights over their work has been misused time and time again by corporations to justify increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws, even to the point of choking progress in science and arts in a manner contrary to the Constitutional justification for copyright and patent law. But the Constitution is very clear on this point, assuming anyone even bothers to read it anymore. Authors should not be given an amount of control over their work that is so excessive that it hinders instead of promotes progress.
Intellectual property rights are not an end upon themselves, but only a means for promoting progress in science and arts.
I've been thinking about this a lot too.
For example, I think the musical scores of John Williams (Star Wars, et al) are the greatest musical achievement of my lifetime, on par with the likes of Vivaldi or Mozart.
Anybody who has an orchestra can perform Vivaldi, because his work is public domain. Not so John Williams. This effectively makes 20th Century Fox the gatekeeper of American culture.
I once read that once a movie or song becomes 50 years old, it automatically turns public domain. Is this true? Does that mean that copying and distributing "Citizen Kane" or "It's a Wonderful Life" is perfectly legal? What about the VHS or DVD?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
So Congress keeps increasing the term of copyright, such that effectively it is not for a limited time, but forever.
In another forum, someone wrote:
And I replied:At this point I would also add that copyright protection on unpublished works such as source code is in fact completely unnecessary, as the unpublished work can be protected by trade secret law. Copyright was not intended to cover secrets, and is ill-suited to doing so.
If I were to take a more radical position, I might suggest that to secure copyright on object code, perhaps it should be required to also copyright the source code it was generated from, and deposit both with the copyright office. This would better serve to guarantee that the work would eventually not just become public domain, but also be usable as a base for further development. Merely having the object code become public domain without the source code is of much less value to society. In this scenario, a legitimate defense against claimed copyright infringement would be that the source code deposited by the copyright owner was incomplete or otherwise unusable to build the object code.
Of course, realistically I realize that there is little chance of getting any sort of copyright reform to restore the intended purpose. But if we don't educate people as to what the intended purpose was, the chance is zero.
The copyright laws are just doing what they're supposed to. The principle was never meant for the advancement of mankind but for the protecting the interests of a few self-serving few.
The advent of making the patent office into a profit center just realigned them into efficiency and now that things are happening at internet speed, we can see the effects of protectionism in terms of the harm self-interest causes to the greater good. (Namely US!)
That's why the pattern of protectionism in patent and copyright has to be replaced/supplanted by some other method of sharing and equitable distribution...
We'tre coming to an awareness that the system is working like its supposed to and it really, really wants to get in your face.
Good luck.finding a solution but one will be found or its going to be a sadder world full of IP criminals...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
f you start cutting those others costs down, you're going to attract lower skilled workers, using weaker desktop machines along with much less rendering power, so in the end your film is going to need an extra 12-18 months to reach distribution, all so you can save $15,000 on the software.
In 18 months the average desktop machine will likely have enough horsepower to do what you are demanding.
More importantly, to those who are making movies and storyboards as hobbies, an extra few months of rendering is OK if it means they can make their movie, the alternative being simply out of their pricerange. We can facilitate a renaissance of creativity by making the tools available to those the media mogules do not, and let the quality of what they produce stand (or fall) on its own.
Of course, with enough content already in an open commons of GPL/BSD open content, any number of people could shoot scenes against a green-screen and overlay already rendered scenery, vastly reducing time-to-market. More likely, most projects would use a mix of their own product and other material, at no cost, with little penalty in time.
Yes, the first projects might go slow, just as the first year Linux development went rather slow, compared to today's breakneck pace. But, unlike commercial efforts, each project would be free to draw on the fruits of other open projects, leading to a synergy of effort and a plethora of products the so-called culture industry could never dream of matching.
In the end, I think the amount of $$$ spent on proprietary software and formats is SUCH A SMALL SLICE of the actual production costs, that it really just isn't worth it. Talent and hardware cost so much more than the software.
Talent is expensive because everyone wants a "big name" in the credits of their movie, be it a well known acter, director, special effects house, or whatever. This is endemic to hollywood, not to smaller outfits wanting to get their product out. Distribution and marketing costs are high, unless, of course, one uses the internet instead.
Most of the dreck on TV, using such expensive "talent" (using the term very liberally), could be produced by teenagers with a camera, a set, and the right editing tools, and would probably have more interesting content to boot.[1] By providing the tools and licensing infrastructure to young talent to do just that, we unleash a whole slew of talented people who are empowered to create their own content and show it to others. A BSD/GPL[2] open content license would give each successive project a growing wealth of ideas and content to draw on. Very quickly we would see the best ideas move forward and improve, in ways that would, in a suprisingly short time, surpass the efforts of large studios and the expensive "talent" they employ. The Actors Union may not like this, but just about everyone else will.
[1]As an example, a show I loved (until its last, dismal season), sliders, suffered from some severly bad acting even in its best days. With the exception of one character, any high school thespian club would be able to provide as much if not more acting talent. Most shows on television don't even rate as highly as that one did, in either content (writing, directing) or acting.
[2]Both philosophies would probably flurish
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's actually one of the most well thought out and reasonable statutes out there.
Unless you want to steal someone elses idea. If John Williams wants to give away the theme to Star Wars [assuming he still retained the copyright, which I assume he assigned over the 20th C fox] he could transfer it irrevocably to the public domain. If he doesn't want to, he's entitled to fair payment for his work, right? Or you think that there should be a cap on how much money someone can earn on any one of their ideas?
The Federalists didn't like the concepts of EITHER copyright OR patents. Monopolies are abhorrent to a market system. But what impetus do you have to create if you're not going to receive compensation? You can't eat your friends admiration. And don't start with me about the open source revolution - how do you pay for your dinner?
Just because you want it, doesn't mean you have a right to it. If I've got a horse that you really want, does that give you the right to my horse? What if I've got an engine design that I spent years and millions of dollars developing? Am I not entitled to reap what I've sown?
Because that's the stance of the anti-copyright lobby.
It's utterly true that megacorps own your cultural heritage. If you don't like it, don't support them. Start your own open-source music studio, where all music that you make is public domain. See how long you last.
This article was already linked to on a Feb 05 story by jamie: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/05/005124 1&mode=thread (Reason Magazine on Copyrights)
Way to pay attention, guys!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The incentives for IP are not just for creation of new works, but also the commercial distribution of those works.
If there were no copyright laws, certainly all of the garage bands would still exist. But there is no incentive to distribute those works commercially. A record label isn't going to record a garage band and sell the CDs if it knows that the next label will copy off of them and sell theirs cheaper, and so on down the line. Eventually all the CDs will be sold for the cost of the media, leaving insufficient profits to make the recording to begin with.
But don't discount the incentive to create either. Most garage bands want to create music. But they also want to earn a living. Without copyrights, they would be unable to sell their music for a price sufficient to keep them employed as musicians. Most of them will end up in other professions, taking away from their time to compose new pieces, and away from their time to practice.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Did you read the article, or did you just see the title and make a knee-jerk post? The article is about increasingly strict copyright laws stifling new creative efforts.
I read the article and I realize that.
I am merely suggesting that these laws have been around for a long time and obviously they aren't stopping people from being creative, given the amount of media we find ourselves surronded in.
Take a look around you at what comes out of the movie and music industry. Most of it isn't necessarily bad per se, but much of it does have a bland, cookie-cutter sameness about it.
Sure, if you look at say the Top 40 music or the large movie releases, but they, by necessity have to appeal to the most people. I find that small "arthouse" movies and local bands are as creative and vital as ever.
I'm curious, what do you say to the article's claims that George Lucas will not allow new artists to borrow from Star Wars the same way he borrowed from Kurasawa and from popular myth?
I say the claims are way overrated. What, is Lucas going to complain about someone else's excessive use of wipes between scenes, which he borrowed, or the next space movie that starts with a pan down to a spaceship? No... he couldn't if he wanted to... Should he sue if someone comes out with a Boba Fett movie? Damn straight.
What do you say to the article's claims that for (certain types of) new music to evolve they must be able to sample from previous music the way that music lifted guitar riffs and other musical elements from music that came before?
I say every instance of sampling I've heard in music is horrible and if the practice dies, well, it hasn't been soon enough.
Why, in your own words, is it ok for the current gatekeepers to have borrowed from work that came before, but it is no longer acceptable for anyone to borrow from work that is currently popular?
The so called "gatekeepers" only have "borrowed" from items that have expired their copyright. People in the future will be free to do the same. When copyrights are extended though law they are extended for everyone, not just the "gatekeepers".
Why was it necessary to extend lengths of copyrights?
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
Were artists really having trouble making money with the shorter terms, or are they just trying to guarantee their continued dominance into the indefinite future?
Well, lets see, Shakespeare didn't have copyright, and he hardly died a rich man. I'd say they are legitimately asking to be rewarded for their works. If people are still willing to pay for them, the artist or copyright owner should still get their cut.
Try as you might, you simply aren't going to get me to feel sorry for the media compaines.
Well, I don't have much sympathy for the "I don't want to pay for stuff" crowd either.
However, if I don't like the crap they're churning out, I would like an alternative,
You have the best alternative, don't buy it.
But, then, God forbid anyone consider anything besides corporate profit in determining social policy or anything.
I should hope not, the two don't have a damn thing to do with each other.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Lets see there are more books in print, more music in circulation, more movies in existance, and more software out there today than in any point in history.
Yep, those darn IP laws must be stifling things. Help I'm being repressed! God forbid anyone make money from their work or anything.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
IP laws don't stifle popular culture. They reinforce it.
Note, I don't think it's a good thing.
IP laws give a) publishers and b) purchasers of entertainment material the ability not only to control the expression of the works they own, but more importantly, the interpretation as well.
On top of that, purchasers of this material also have the power to prevent or limit the release of material, for whatever reason. Maybe they are embarrased by the work because it is poor quality. Maybe they are afraid of it because it is (has become) controversial. Maybe cutting back on production is a convenient way to 'prove' financial damages in court. Or maybe they bought the material in the first place to prevent it's release.
This has the effect of reinforcing popular culture by stifling unpopular culture, and keeping the LCD of pop culture fans pretty common and low.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
As you noted, I think that there is definitely some value in allowing the music publishers to profit from their promotional work. The question I raised was whether there is a more efficient way to do this than by the copyright laws.
I spent some time in and around the music business, and have several close friends who are professional musicians. And mostly what I observed was that the people who control the publishing seem to have influence and money far in excess of the value they provide. You only have to meet a few coked-out A&R people to figure this out. Or you see situations where one female singer gets ahead by sleeping with somebody, while another doesn't. When merit is replaced by personal whims, it suggests that the influence of those in control is excessive.
However, the music market on the Internet is currently hostile. Any format which supports a secure method of generating royalties for the artist is attacked and eventually cracked.
well, yes, the Internet is certainly is hostile to anything it sees as an error. Secure methods used to leverage a no-cost product into a high cost one are quickly exposed for the useless bits of logic they are. And I daresay the Internet will continue to be hostile to these forms of control for the forseeable future. The Internet makes control of digital media impossible.
Until there is a secure protection of their copyrights, it would make absolutely no sense to publish their music on the Internet.
Then they should keep their precious, precious IP all to themselves...and then see how much it is worth. What copyright was originally setup to do is protect the right to profit from the works. And so it has. It has also protected the right to profit mightily from the distrubution and reproduction of those works. It is these activities that the music industry has leveraged to control access to their product. Under these guidelines there is a good reason to support these large companies, because without them we couldn't get our music. Along comes the Internet, which makes their entire scheme null and void. It's not needed, their profit generating activities, once the only way to get music into the hands of millions, are no longer needed. That's not to say there still isn't money to be made and a profit to be had, but when you take away 99% of the cost of something, the profit margin will go down. These companies don't want that.
They are using the revenue generated from a stranglehold in one era, to strangle the next. That is NOT good for popular culture (unless you think popular culture should consist of what you are TOLD is popular)
Cave paintings and folk stories were not works of art.
I would say the painters and tellers would disagree. Have you ever seen a good storyteller? Nowadays most go by the moniker "actor".
They showed how one hunts. they showed what one hunts,
Kind of like Swingers, no?
they told of what happens to people when they do bad things in an allegorical fashion.
And you're saying this isn't art?! Demonstrating an insight into life through metaphor? You ever listen to any music? (that would be outside the "look at me, I'm young and hot" genre)
Is art a reflection of life, or life a reflection of art?
Realize, I'm not saying copyright and IP should be done away with. I just think they need to be adjusted to be more inline with the reality of the situation. (which is that the Internet makes control of digital media impossible)
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+&x
"no-cost product" ... WHAT?!?! Did you just say that the life of an artist and their work is absolutely worthless?
No, you're reading your assumption that I'm a grumpy pirate into your argument. The product itself costs the creator NOTHING to reproduce a billion times over and spread throughout the world. Yes, there are fixed costs on producing content, but given the multiplying effects of digital media, that is the only cost in creating a product. So that is the only cost that needs to be covered to continue production.
I'm amazed at how much contempt for the artist I am discovering in these discussions, it is truly amazing.
No, it is not contempt for the artist. It is contempt for the people who control the artists and convince them to sign over the rights to their own work, in exchange for the promotional efforts and industry ties that all but guarantee a good selling album. They also convince the artists to sign away their next 5 albums, so in case the first one makes it big, the artist can't go and find a better deal. That is where the contempt is.
So by making Lambourghinis $200k, they are "controlling" my "access" to it? Excuse me, but no.
Umm that seems like a pretty good control of access, no? Besides, please don't try and bring products where scarcity is a concern into the argument, they don't apply. Unless you happen to know where I can download a Ferrari...
How does this have any bearing at all on the current discussion?
This is what the current discussion is about. Remember at the beginning of my first comment when I said "You forgot about the Internet." You're trying to do it again.
Instead of being a constructive atmosphere, you choose to represent the Internet as a place where if you want to create, good, we'll steal every single thing you do and rape you dry and we don't give a fuck about your life.
Or perhaps it would be a bit more like that other thing where people have released their creation to the Net. That Linux thing. Where nobody cares about Linus, or Alan, or Richard, or Miguel, or Rasterman. It's a freakin' cult of personality. Kind of like music should be, no? I guess I was raping Phish when I plunked down $175 to get in a gate to see them play (multiple that by 75,000 and tell me you can't make money giving away music). Yea, those idiots, releasing all that music on the Net to make their fans happy. What a crazy idea!
That might work for Morissey, but it won't work for many others.
Give me a list of those that have tried, and I'll believe you. Give me a list of big bands who have made their music free to all (just to listen to, mind you) and has failed because of it. I'll be right here waiting...
You just shot a huge load with that statement. You are assuming everyone is stupid enough to be duped by advertisment, you're assuming people are watching those advertisements, you'r eassuming a whole assload of things which boil down to a simple point: You believe people are stupid and that companies only have to spend a few bucks to get them hooked. I believe this is true for a large quantity of human beings. I also believe that those human beings deserve exactly what they get from the big corporations.
Aah, this is where we differ. I, being the happy-go-lucky person I am, would rather the poor unguided souls NOT support repressive regimes and line the pockets of immoral record executives. You think that's great. It's not your responsibility, or even a worthwhile undertaking, to educate others about the effects of their apathy. I guess if that's where you want to stand , so be it.
The big question here is, what was the last band that failed that the record companies supported?
hmm, Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, New Kids on the Block, Poison, Debbie Gibson, oh, here's a nice list
Fine, just ingore my point
No prob, it was a weak point. Unless you think that *every* story was told and every *painting* was done for the sole reason of education.
They'd then stick a nice big spear through your skull when you ask them why they waste time hunting while they could be painting pretty pictures and then letting other people have them without trade.
Wow, they had the Internet back then? Awesome (remember my first sentence waay back when, something about remembering something...).
There will be a future on the Internet of protected content.
Perhaps, but not for music.
You will hate it, you will rail against it, which is why it WON'T happen.
Sit back and wait. Wait and watch.
YOU do that, I've got better stuff to do.
hmmm If you do art for arts sake, well, masturbation is fun but empty.
I saw this on one of your other threads. Now I know why you don't get it.
ALL HAIL THE PROFIT MOTIVE, ITS THE ONLY REASON ART GETS DONE!
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+&x
The simple fact is that the first US copyright law established a fourteen-year term, with a single fourteen-year renewal option. Thus, it is quite evident that the Founders considered limited periods of protection sufficient unto the purpose of protecting the right to profit from one's intellectual creations.
So they put a limit on it. That limit was not some compromise between the two ends of the spectrum, it was something they felt would be enforceable.
Surely you do not seriously suggest that the Founders felt themselves incapable of enforcing the law over a twenty-nine-year period.
I recommend L. Ray Patterson's essay on the topic for a historical overview of Anglo-American copyright law.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
- a. Gilbert O'Sullivan vs. Biz Markie: In a 1991 lawsuit, singer Gilbert O'Sullivan sued rap performer Biz Markie, and 8 other defendants for sampling, or including without permission, a small portion of O'Sullivan's "Alone Again Naturally," Markie's song, "Alone Again."
So it's not quite as horrible as the original article suggested.b. The rap song borrowed just 3 words, and 8 bars of the music from O'Sullivan's hit, but what it borrowed, particularly the words, "Alone again, naturally" was an important part of the original tune.
c. Markie's attorney defended this action on the grounds that stealing bits and pieces from songs was common in the music industry, but the court ruled against the rapper.
d. Had Markie used the less recognized, or important parts of O'Sullivan's song, it is possible that there would have been no judgment against Markie.
The problem then goes back to that covered in the old GPL/BSD licensing debate.
What are you going to do about those corporations, who take what you make, make something better, feed that to your friends, and refuse to allow you to create from what they have made?
It's not really free if the corporations don't have the chance to use it also, of course. But they shouldn't have the right to borrow from what we did without letting us borrow from what they've done. They just have to understand that before they get involved - if so many other people can happy participate in that environment, then they can't use their bigger size to change the rules just so they can make their money.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The government and companies are not going to try a different route as long as people keep making the purchases and paying attention. Do you think that Fox and Lucas are going to lighten up on the Star Wars copyrights and trademarks while people keep watching and buying the movies, buying the merchandise, and being rabid fans? They have no reason to. They can keep as much as possible to themselves without much of a penalty.
If you don't like it, stop buying it, stop watching it. Instead of writing fan fiction, get together with other people and create your own setting, that you can write about and do whatever you want with. There's no reason we can't have the equivalent of open source in that area. Why not try and make all those laws irrelevant?
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
When I first started to read your post, I thought it was sarcasm, but it seems not to be. Patents and copyrights are ESTABLISHED IN THE CONSTITUTION in order to "ensure a rich public domain."
You then go on to explain, with:
Copyrights and patents and such things protect the creators BY keeping them secret
WTF? What planet are you on, or what universe are you in? How the hell does a patent keep something secret? In order to gain the patent, you must publish what exactly it is you are patenting. Copyrights protect published works. How do you keep a published work secret? The two are mutually exclusive.
If, however, you use the term 'secret' to mean 'protected', you are correct to a certain point. Copyrights and patents do exist to create a rich public domain. They do so by giving a creator an incentive to create, by bestowing exclusive rights to their creation for a certain period. After this period expires, the culture as a whole is enhanced by inclusion of this creation into the public domain, free for all to use.
It's a principle that was important enough to be used in the basis for american government, the document that enshrines all essential american freedoms. I think the "framer's intentions" are more than abundantly clear.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
From the Reason Magazine article:
In part, this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation.
Ramen noodles? MICROSOFT Ramen Noodles? What blasphemy! The original Open Source Food for Uber-Geeks should never be tainted by association with the Evil One(tm)! Arm yourselves, geeks! Boycott Microsoft Ramen Noodles!!!
This was a public-service announcement from the SmashDot Team (tm).
Sorry -- Could not resist... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
We should be aware also of the libertarian line of argument which justifies IP on the basis that it is precisely what it says it is, namely property. Following Locke, (who saw property arising out of the mixing of 'nature' and labour,) it is often argued by copyright holders that the fruits of intellectual, as much as physical labour, give rise to property per se. The source of copyright therefore is not is some grant by the state. Quite the opposite, copyright legislation limits (and infringes upon) natural proprietary rights. Lengthening the period during which this property persists, merely plays around with the borders of what is ultimately an illegitimate appropriation.
I hasten to add that I do not subscribe to this latter view. It's just that hitherto I have not associated Reason(tm) with the a pro-state and public interest, and anti-individual (or company) and property position inherent in the 'copyright is a state granted monopoly for the public benefit' line of reasoning.
Likewise there are a lot of books out of print, some of which I'll never have a chance to read and some of which I'd like to read again and am not able to find.
I seem to recall some clauses in physical property where if it's not used for some length of time, it reverts back to the government. Perhaps we need something like that in our current IP laws.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm not forgetting the Internet at all. When a musician makes the choice of signing a contract with a record label, the Internet is an option for that artist. However, the music market on the Internet is currently hostile. Any format which supports a secure method of generating royalties for the artist is attacked and eventually cracked. Until there is a secure protection of their copyrights, it would make absolutely no sense to publish their music on the Internet.
As for cave paintings, fireside stories, etc, you show your time. Cave paintings and folk stories were not works of art. They may be considered art now, but when they were created they were works of EDUCATION. They were as our text books and lectures are today, they showed how one hunts, they showed what one hunts, they told of what happens to people when they do bad things in an allegorical fashion. Any anthropologist will tell you that every folk story has a lesson. That lesson is the reason for the story and the reason it was created.
Esperandi
"Yes, a single artist has a monetary incentive to produce useful work. The key word being a SINGLE artist. "
Wrong... you see, the individual is not an evil thing as you try to paint in this rebuttal. The individual is each and every single one of us. Each and every single person in the United States or anywhere where such laws exist have monetary and moral incentive (it is immoral to allow people to have and use your work if they have not earned it, it is also unnatural). Not just one guy sitting in a corner, every single person in the whole country.
Now, you go on to assume things which are blantantly anti-individual and invalid. If I create something amazing and I patent it, that means I can produce that thing for X number of years before you can come along and copy-cat me and ride on MY accomplishment to make yourself money, fame, whatever. If, however, you want to improve on my invention, all you have to do is ask. I can license it to you, I can simply allow you to expand on the patent within bounds (you can't paint it blue and call it your own, etc) without charge, I can do many things.
The person who uses copyrights and patents to stifle progress and prevent people from doing better than they have is immoral and a coward. The person who defends his work from exploitation by those who have not earned it is a hero.
Your examples show your ignorant of patent law, BTW, you can only patent material processes and tangible things. Calculus is not a tangible thing. What about one-click ordering like Amazon you ask? Well, besides that that is prior art and shouldn't have been patented at all, it is a definite mechanical process, not a theory that is patented. Read the patent text and you will see it is painfully spelled out.
Why are we seeing such abuse of patent laws recently? Its very simple, none of the people who understand the issue will get off their lazy asses and apply for a job at the USPTO to review patents such as these. There are quite a few job openings in just this area. They are understaffed and ignorant of the subject area. Until someone elects to do something, it will continue.
Esperandi
"If there's anything worse than misunderstanding the laws which protect creativity, it's misinterpreting the creative impulse itself"
Yes, isn't it. perhaps you need to do some reading and discover that you only view those cave paintings as "art" because you don't understand the education lesson they were created to teach, things such as animals to hunt, how to hunt, etc. They may be creative, but they were created for the purpose of education which was their incentive. What passed into their hands? Probably some skins, some steaks, etc. They hadn't gotten advanced enough to require money, everyone was still sustaining their own family with minimal to no trade.
Your view of money disgusts me. Money is LIFE, sir. You obtain money by working, by spending a portion of the most valuable thing you own, your LIFE. And you think that if I give a symbol of my life to a man for his creative work that I denigrate him to a WHORE? You are a disgusting beast. I suppose you would prefer that I give him my pity or maybe ignore him completely? I give him the most valuable thing in the universe to me and it makes him a whore... jesus, I'd hate to see the way the world would have turned out if people believed the way you do, that the best way to punish someone is to give them your life.
"If I live to be 80, I just might be allowed by law to publish my extensions of Asimov's Foundation.... "
It is sad that you believe to create something of value you have to piggy-back on someone elses reputation. A reputation that you did not earn and do not deserve until you have earned it. Derivative works must be herculean in the attempt in order to stand on their own merit and not attempt to steal from the original author.
Personally I am not in favor of extending copyrights and patents, I believe they should be relinquished to the public domain upon death of the author. His family has absolutely no right to his talent or proceeeds from it unless he chose to give it to them. As for "megacorps" (that invent everything you use and buy), there should be a set limit on it and I think 25 years, maybe the original 28, is plenty.
However, what would be more helpful would be encouraging certain industries to release their older works into a sort of free domain... you can distribute the materials and such, but may never sell them under any condition, not even charging for media costs. That way they could continue to produce the atom-based versions and the electron-based versions could be free, the people paying for the atom-based versions would probably still have about the same sale rate because at a certain age of a product, the people buying it are collectors or people who have a particular emotional attachment to the thing, and no longer people buying it for its original intended use.
If I pay an artist, and it insults them, and I know that they thrive on discord and pain of every kind... aren't you proposing slavery for the artist population? Using your disgusting, warped logic, this is the prime and supreme condition for artists.
Personally, I like the idea of having patrons. The artists are free to create without worrying about their needs. Instead, however, you propose making sur ethey can never meet their needs, and you somehow think this will encourage them to produce. I happen to have a higher expectation of the mind of a creative man.
Esperandi
There are quite a few artists like this I would imagine, I don't know any personally, but its just like in every other profession. There are guys who do mechanical work for their neighbors and friends but are too afraid they would fail in the real world to attempt getting a job doing it, I imagine there would be cowardly artists as well.
When you offer your goods up for purchase you are saying "I have used my life to produce this thing. I want this much of your life (money) in return for it." Doing that takes a tremendous backbone. You might be turned down, you might find out that the products of your life aren't worth jack shit to another person.
If you do art for arts sake, well, masturbation is fun but empty.
Esperandi
"When I first started to read your post, I thought it was sarcasm, but it seems not to be. Patents and copyrights are ESTABLISHED IN THE CONSTITUTION in order to "ensure a rich public domain." "
You are completely wrong. Patents and copyrights are established to insure that creators have rights over their work. Without those rights, they would not release their works at all, ever. Your view is twisted and completely against the purpose of the original laws. Read it again, and don't look at it through your rose-colored glasses.
By "keeping secret" I mean it protects people from copying the things and distributing it for free, everyone around these parts seems to read such actions as "withholding" and "keepign secret" because they assume that the people who can afford to buy it are some sort of super elite force against justice.
You seem to catch on near the end of your post with this:
"They do so by giving a creator an incentive to create, by bestowing exclusive rights to their creation for a certain period. "
and then crash and burn right after. You see, the point is the first thing you said, the second part is sort of a "let people off the hook after awhile" thing. The justification is the protection, NOT the "freedom" afterwards.
The framer's intentions ARE abundantly clear, and you're missing them. They wanted to make sure that people had that incentive you talked about, and they knew that they couldn't protect that freedom froever, though they would have preferred it that way. So they put a limit on it. That limit was not some compromise between the two ends of the spectrum, it was something they felt would be enforceable. They fiured the term limit they put on it would make it so when it was up there wouldn't be much profit to reproducing the original works and such, they never intended it to be a mechanism to allow people to copy things.
Think about it, if the point was solely to ensure that the public would get a rich body of culture, why would they protect the idaes for a certain amount of time at all? You think they thought they could TRICK creators into makign things if they let them profit from them and then the public could steal them? That's socialism, not capitalism, and capitalism is what the founders outlined in every single word they wrote.
Esperandi
"no-cost product" ... WHAT?!?! Did you just say that the life of an artist and their work is absolutely worthless? That the hours they spend producing their music do not qualify as a cost?
I'm amazed at how much contempt for the artist I am discovering in these discussions, it is truly amazing. You would think that if you enjoyed what someone did you'd be willing to pay them for it, but no, one guy proposes slavery, you claim that no payment is necessary because it didn't cost anything to produce. I guess all you should pay to get into a concert is gas money, right?
"It is these activities that the music industry has leveraged to control access to their product."
Control access? So by making Lambourghinis $200k, they are "controlling" my "access" to it? Excuse me, but no. They are producing a high quality product and they have valued it at $200k. If you can't or won't pay it, you don't deserve it. In the case when you buy it, it should not be grudgingly. You should appreciate the opportunity to purcahse such a superb achievement and be glad to pay the price. If you're not both, you don't buy it, it really is that simple.
"Along comes the Internet, which makes their entire scheme null and void. It's not needed, their profit generating activities, once the only way to get music into the hands of millions, are no longer needed. That's not to say there still isn't money to be made and a profit to be had, but when you take away 99% of the cost of something, the profit margin will go down. These companies don't want that. "
How does this have any bearing at all on the current discussion? You think that if you chop down patent and copyright laws that it will only hurt the corporations? Wrong. Any artist that releases his work independently on the net would also be affected. he knows this and will not release it. Anyone who might create the next wave of record comapnies online (provide banner advertisement, expert website design, site hosting, large bandwidth capabilities, streaming webcasts of concerts, taping and webcasting for-pay interviews, etc, etc, etc, the list goes on) also gets screwed. So you're basically writing the Internet into a corner. Instead of being a constructive atmosphere, you choose to represent the Internet as a place where if you want to create, good, we'll steal every single thing you do and rape you dry and we don't give a fuck about your life. BTW, when's the next album out? That might work for Morissey, but it won't work for many others.
"They are using the revenue generated from a stranglehold in one era, to strangle the next. That is NOT good for popular culture (unless you think popular culture should consist of what you are TOLD is popular) "
Groan, get a dictionary. Pop culture is not an individual revolutionary artist and 3 fans. Pop culture is not the people that I listen to or like. Pop culture is the people who make the biggest sales. You just shot a huge load with that statement. You are assuming everyone is stupid enough to be duped by advertisment, you're assuming people are watching those advertisements, you'r eassuming a whole assload of things which boil down to a simple point: You believe people are stupid and that companies only have to spend a few bucks to get them hooked. I believe this is true for a large quantity of human beings. I also believe that those human beings deserve exactly what they get from the big corporations.
The big question here is, what was the last band that failed that the record companies supported? You see, when a band sells a million records, they get the advertisement and such, not the other way around.
"Cave paintings and folk stories were not works of art.
I would say the painters and tellers would disagree. Have you ever seen a good storyteller? Nowadays most go by the moniker "actor". "
Fine, just ingore my point. Youre still very wrong. The painters and storytellers would have asked you what the fuck you're talking about and say they're teaching their kids how to hunt. They'd then stick a nice big spear through your skull when you ask them why they waste time hunting while they could be painting pretty pictures and then letting other people have them without trade. Actors act. They entertain. They don't teach you how to do something usually. And I don't think I'd qualify those guys in hunting videos as "actors".
"And you're saying this isn't art?! " I'm saying that this wasn't art ***THEN***. Ask an elementary school kid if he thinks his teachers lectures are art. I'm betting he won't. Just liek the people back then wouldn't have. Try time-shifting yourself back to when these things went on, back to the point where nature was shit. it whipped you, it beat you, it hurt you. There was no quality of "getting away" in it at all, it was just hunt or die.
There will be a future on the Internet of protected content. You will hate it, you will rail against it, but it will happen. And when it does I want you to remember me saying this and do something for me. Sit back and wait. Wait and watch. See where the abundance of creativity and quality go to. Judge this quality objectively, don't just say "bunch of people like. Must be shit. Grumpy people like this better, this must be better.".
Esperandi
If public libraries are allowed to lend books, videos, etc. under the definition of "fair use", does anyone know how to go about turning a web site into a public library? Who grants the title "public library"? If it is possible to obtain library-status for a web site, what type of visitor tracking would be required to confirm "fair use"?
Misson to Mars is a fine example of what should be stifiled.
(I'm betting any re-make with action figures would be better)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Assertions, assertions.
In the US "Campaign Finance Reform" is a big issue, people don't understand what it means.
What do people not understand about it?
"Gun Control" is another term for social engineering. Keep the poor and middle class afraid and they will keep voting for you.
How so, explain.
For better or for worse, the fact that so many people have access to computers, and that the computers are practically turn-key operations, has turned the personal computer from a novelty for the brave into a household appliance for the masses.
Whether or not rules and regulations are going to be needed is not the issue here; rather it is what form those rules and regulations will take.
The patent issue is a prime example:
The technology has moved so quickly that most people are still in the awestruck stage, and some of these people work in the patent office. If I understand the Amazon patent correctly (and I am not a lawyer), all they did was leverage existing technology to solve a problem. Ordinarily this would get a programmer a pat on the back, but somehow a patent examiner saw this and thought it was a major breakthrough, and awarded a patent. This might not have occured had another, more savvy examiner evaluated the patent application.
The user community needs to be involved in the regulation process as the body of law relating to computing and the internet evolves. How that can occur is another topic, but some members of the Open Source community have gotten their message out.
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Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt
The article states "this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation."
Which leads one to wonder when the Linux community will rise up in arms over the abuses of its trademark, perpetrated by certain IPO-hoax distributors and laundry detergent companies.
Yes, this is mildly troll-like. But, do think: the whole LinuxOne debacle could have been settled by pressing a trademark case against them.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
And, yet, the cases of fanfic being shut down, and that goofy R&R Museum case... but if the building shape isn't "owned" by them, then does that mean I can start making candies with a hole in the middle? Seems to me that Lifesavers has put enough work into publicizing "the one with a hole in the middle" to own it. And yet... can Michelin make the same claim for tires?
It's a very sticky issue all around, and there are *no* clear answers. Consider Microsoft using the Linux name... even those claiming no trademarks should ever be allowed would probably have a tough time swallowing that bitter pill!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The most dangerous thing about restrictive copyright laws isn't what they do to old works. It's what they do to new ones. Copyright has traditionally been tempered by the doctrine of "fair use," which allows a limited amount of appropriation for the purpose of parody or criticism. [ ... ] In 1991, for instance, the long-forgotten '70s pop star Gilbert O'Sullivan, discovering that rapper Biz Markie had appropriated three words from his song "Alone Again (Naturally)," successfully sued, not for a share of the royalties, but to suppress Biz Markie's record altogether.
How ironic, that a link in this story may have been the catalyst for further censorship via copyright and legal thuggary, as it appears that the 15 minute silent film "Star Wars: The Remake" Parody has now vanished from the net, after receiving a rather glowing review in the aforementioned article.
Remind me to give George Lucus another $8 when his next Star Wars film comes out. (NOT)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
People allow themselves to be spoonfed propaganda all of the time.
In the US "Campaign Finance Reform" is a big issue, people don't understand what it means.
"Gun Control" is another term for social engineering. Keep the poor and middle class afraid and they will keep voting for you.
"Family Values" is a way for people to control what you do in your own home. Scare the Christians about the homosexuals and make them angry about the disintegration of the "traditional" family then they'll vote for you.
Americans (although I'm one of them) tend to like quick and easy things. It's easier to let CNN tell you what you should think about issue X than it is to get as much information as possible and decide for yourself.
Look at how many laypersons think that DeCSS is a copy protection issue. Why? Because the AP wire that sparked the story on CNN labeled it as such.
Thinking is hard. Reacting is easy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well, the justification that is normally put forth is that copyright protection provides an incentive for people to be creative. And I guess it's hard to argue that's not true.
But the more relevant question is whether the benefits to society from increased creativity outweigh the losses from decreased availability and the possibility lawyers can go around banging on people's doors. It's not at all clear whether this is true.
Certainly in the age of the Internet and increased ease of copying, we are beginning to see the costs of the decreased availability and of legal intervention more clearly.
The one area that gives me pause is the notion of music and of promotion. Imagine a world in which everybody was free to copy music or sing everybody else's songs. Presumably, it would be difficult to be a record company in such a world. But would there be less music made? Would garage bands cease to exist? Would there be fewer of them? Of course not.
But the music industry takes some of those bands (more or less at random) and promotes them to the public. Once a song becomes popular, it certainly adds something to the social fabric. For example, you meet a member of the opposite gender and you can dance to the same song, because you've both heard it on the radio.
So there is definitely some value to the promotion that the music industry does. The real question is whether IP laws are the only way to promote this.
IP laws are a relatively new invention; while most of our laws have evolved from millenia-old religious principles (it is wrong to kill somebody, you shouldn't steal somebody's property), only in recent centuries has the idea surfaced that ideas constitute property. Would we be better off if some prehistoric person had been able to patent the wheel? The idea is preposterous. The public benefits from having wheels, not from a chance to get rich by reinventing the wheel.
Oddly, technology is leading us down the right path. You still can't press your own CD's and sell them to the public as if they were the real thing, and that's good; I think few here will argue for that freedom. At the same time, it has become virtually impossible to prevent people from sharing music with their friends, thus eliminating most of the artificial scarcity that copyright laws cause.
I recently read a news story on here where someone explained the philosophy behind patents and copyrights as a guarantee that ideas would eventually be released to the public and not held as secrets. That idea is so extremely and completely wrong that it goes to show how disconnected from reality a lot of patent and copyright fighters are.
Copyrights and patents and such things protect the creators BY keeping them secret. And we, the public, are the creators. Not collectively of course, nothing is ever accomplished collectively, but individually, everyone can create something. If copyrights and patents did not exist the big companies could just package up whatever Elvis Costello creates, advertise the hell out of it, and completely screw him out of any royalties and everything. The point of copyrights and patents are so that when someone comes up with an idea, they can profit from it. Society as a whole (if you care about this kind of irrelevant crap) benefits as well by getting the opportunity to foster creativity by paying for the works produced by the creative individual.
When it comes to record companies and things of that nature, the artist of his own free will signs a contract. If he doesn't agree to certain portions of that contract, such as them going after people making fan sites and such, he doesn't have to sign it. Once he does, he is locked in. If he breaks the contract, he should be jailed. If he bitches about the contract, he should be ignored, he accepted it.
If we had no laws protecting intellectual property, we would see the production of such works fall off dramatically. Not only because the majority of people in the world understand that their creations are not worthless and want to make a profit from them, but also because of time constraints. Think back on human history. We did not get arts of any kind until people had the ability to specialize in one certain area and through trade of money obtain all of the things they needed which they didn't have time to produce themselves. Money made art possible. Money still makes are possible. If you take money out of the hands of artists in the name of "freedom", you are dooming those artists to working away their lives in menial, unsatisfying jobs, rather than letting them profit from their creations without millions of people ripping them off left and right because they can't see the immorality of theft if its done over the Internet.
Esperandi
Go ahead, repeal IP laws, then don't be surprised when your favorite artists, poets, and musicians have to stop making their art because they've got to get a job at McDonalds to pay their bills.
This mirrors very strongly with the RIAA case, in which there are several artists under major record labels that want to support MP3s but their record label says no. The true creative owners of the works, because of signing deals with megacorps, have lost the ability to be able to be said what is done with their work. On the other hand, the way that music and creative work distribution has been done before the internet, any creative person that signed with an independant distributor would have quickly faded into obscurity. Along these lines, I would suggest that part of the deal with CSS and the MPAA is that they want to limit the number of films out there that do not go through the MPAA. Up till recently, they've done a good job, but the recent successes of art house films (Blair Witch, Pi) are beginning to push the envelope.
It all comes down to the fact that RIAA, MPAA, the major television networks, the major publishers, all want to be the sole distributor of creative works. If they had there way, most of the money that we spend on our entertainment will go through them, and then they distribute to their respective creative artists, but keeping a large portion for themselves. Sure, before the internet, people made their own works, and distributed them without the help of the major channels, but the audience they would achieve would be very very small compared to major distribution artists. The internet has changed all that, and allows anyone with simple tools to become their own publisher; in some cases, enterprising people have become small distribution houses themselves but certainly without the same cut that the major ones take (e.g. MP3.com, goodnoise.com).
In otherwords, RIAA, MPAA, and the rest appear to be trying to maintain a monopoly.
Sure, there's no strong evidence for that, and a lot of connections would have to be made for that. But if these groups are successful (hopefully not) in their current court cases, it might be easier and easier to prove that such a monopoly exists. Remember one of Judge Jackson's key points on Microsoft and it's monopoly was that the cost of entering the field that Microsoft has set is too high to be overcome reasonably, thus suggesting monopoly powers. Try to get your own film to more than 30 screens accross the country, or a fiction book you wrote yourself in every bookstore without the aid of one of the major companies. Can't do it, can you?
One additional point, however, that was made in the article, and in all fairness is a concern, is the issue of dilution. I know it wasn't mentioned specifically, but I remember hearing that one of the reasons that Disney did not want to give up the copyright on Mickey Mouse was that they were afraid of people placing him in high erotic (and beyond) situations with no ability to protect that. Ok, sure, you and the rest of slashdot readerships would know that if you saw such a picture, you would know for sure that it wasn't by Disney. But this is America, where a woman can win millions of dollars for spilling hot coffee all over herself. We HAVE to think that everyone is stupid, lest we avoid legal problems. I could see a case that if dilution of trademark laws were not in place, that a parent may be able to sue Disney over that pic (even though Disney didn't make it) as it traumetized her child. Such cases are more a concern when the characters and situations are aimed at young audiences, but the concept is still that the distributor must make sure they don't into such a situation. While extending the copyright time is one way, it's a placebo (and a bad one at that); instead, education of the masses on what "derivative works" mean, and co-operation with the various fanbases to help establish guidelines (as has been done for some shows like B5) will help set rules that need not be extended time after time...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
You say that there are more books, music, movies, and software today than ever before. What does that prove? Would you seriously suggest that we have enough culture, that we don't need to write any more books or record any more music because we already have all we need? A stagnant culture is a dead culture. Or perhaps you are suggesting that we only need a half-dozen or so voices to define our culture, that we have Time-Warner and Disney, so we don't need any more voices? Wrong again. Culture thrives when there are a multitude of voices, each giving its unique perspective. Take a look around you at what comes out of the movie and music industry. Most of it isn't necessarily bad per se, but much of it does have a bland, cookie-cutter sameness about it. That's what happens when you allow a small number of cultural gatekeepers to take over; it all starts to sound the same because it's largely the same people producing it.
The bottom line is that all great works of literature, art, music, science, and film have borrowed themes and ideas from stuff that has come before. The increasing trend toward cutting new works off from what has come before does stifle those new works because a work that is produced in a cultural vacuum is generally irrelevant. It doesn't "speak" to its listeners and viewers.
You seem to have the sarcasm down to a fine art, but you don't do much to refute what the article actually says. I'm curious, what do you say to the article's claims that George Lucas will not allow new artists to borrow from Star Wars the same way he borrowed from Kurasawa and from popular myth? What do you say to the article's claims that for (certain types of) new music to evolve they must be able to sample from previous music the way that music lifted guitar riffs and other musical elements from music that came before? Why, in your own words, is it ok for the current gatekeepers to have borrowed from work that came before, but it is no longer acceptable for anyone to borrow from work that is currently popular? Why was it necessary to extend lengths of copyrights? Were artists really having trouble making money with the shorter terms, or are they just trying to guarantee their continued dominance into the indefinite future?
Try as you might, you simply aren't going to get me to feel sorry for the media compaines. They are doing just fine, and they would continue to do just fine, even if intellectual property law were rolled back to what it was 50 or even 100 years ago. However, if I don't like the crap they're churning out, I would like an alternative, and media companies seem hell-bent on preventing me from having one. But, then, God forbid anyone consider anything besides corporate profit in determining social policy or anything.
-rpl