Lessig On DMCA, Adobe, The US Constitution And Fair Use
Posted by
Hemos
on from the lesuirely-listening-to-larry dept.
LarsG writes: "Lawrence Lessig is taking a historical view of IP law and the DMCA in connection with the recent statements by Adobe's John Warnock.
This article appears in The Standard." Lawrence Lessig == smart.
The obvious problem with our current situation, in respect to the DMCA, is where the priorities of the government lie. While the government should be working for the betterment of the American people, instead it is working for the large corperations. The people of America should rise up against this oppression, since the government should be working towards the social well-being of its people. Perhaps it is time that the obviously flawed Captitalist system be scrapped, and a more people-benificial socialist system be put into place. America can be so much more!!
A.H.
"If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things."
I remember that one of the biggest issues of my American history/government classes is that during the industrial revolution, "laisse faire" (sp?) has always been taken as the rule of thumb; as long as the companies were not endangering anyone, the gov't kept their hands off of it.
That principle is certainly not dead today; gov't groups like the FTC and DOJ only step in when a company pushes the bounds. While there are always people screaming that the gov't has too much control on businesses, I would argue that businesses are free to do nearly everything they want, as long as they pay their taxes and don't hurt citizens or the environment.
However, I would also think that laisse faire works both ways; while the gov't cannot regulate an industry unless it's required, the gov't should not also favor industry unless required (such as during the S&L crisis). However, laws like the DMCA actually benefit companies and do not benefit the average citizen in any real regard. If the founding fathers had a bill like the DMCA to review, they would have probably trashed it, not only for the copyright extentions, but the fact there is no obvious benefit that non-corporations can get from it.
But unfortunately, our democratatic system as it stands is flawed, allowed corporations to buy votes to get such bills enacted. Grassroot campaigns are great, but they rarely have money or media attention to get any votes whatsoever, and many have come to rely on a higher court (which can't be bought) to overturn a law.
What suprises me is that given how fast the two CDA bills were fought and successfully overturned, nothing save for deCSS and Napster has been really pushed forward for anti-DCMA. (IMO, even without the DCMA in effect, both cases would be before courts right now). And to be truthful, I rather not have the DCMA challenged with these cases, because if one of them loses, it sets a dangerous precident that some later case that challenges the DCMA with more legit concerns would have to overcome. A win for the copyright holders might also toughen up some other copyright holders and cause a strong death grip for many sites on the web.
And to come back to the case in point, in the case of copyrights, the time a copyright should be granted should be related to the number of people that would be interested in said product, and the time of delievery to said product. In 1800, say with a million Americans and a lack of rapid communications between the various states, 14 years is reasonable. In 1950, 200 million Americans, and with an interstate system, fast printing presses, and the proliforation of tv and radio, 14 years is overkill, because the large amount of information there and the speed to get it to everyone. Today, with 300 million and the internet, the amount of data has probably exponentally grown the number of citizens, and thus, the time for copyrights should be much much smaller.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
My Experience With The DMCA/RIAA This Week
by
Seumas
·
· Score: 5
This runs ever-so-slightly off-topic perhaps, but since it is a very recent event (yesterday) and ties in with intellectual property rights and the DMCA (though not directly to software... other than MP3's)... Hmm... actually, I guess maybe it isn't off-topic after all?
I run a fairly successful (free) auction site. Yesterday, I had a voicemail left on my machine at work from the Director of Legal Affairs for Universal Records.
When I called to speak with him, and played a little phone-tag, he brought up the concern that a user had posted bootlegged Godsmack recordings, on CD-R's, on my site. Godsmack's management was not pleased with this and voiced their concern to Universal Records.
The representative I spoke with seemed understanding and realized that I am an individual operating a free, non-profit website with no intention to exploit intellectual property ownership. I explained that all I could do was review the auction in question and notify him of any decisions or actions that were made after I weighed his concern.
I reviewed the auction, which the seller had clearly explained in the item's description, was a compilation of bootlegs and songs that were not commercially available by the artist and that, as such, there was no financial impact on the artists themselves. You do not need to be a lawyer (and I am not one) to realize that this is most likely still very wrong. Bootlegging is, generally, a bad thing. And making money off it is probably almost always illegal.
Still, my concern was not for my own legal well-being, as the site clearly states that items being sold are the sole responsibility of the person posting them and all concerns should be addressed directly with that person. My concern was, in fact, how and what precident I would be setting for the future of my site and its users.
My final decision was to notify the seller of the situation, leave the auction up, put a notice on the auction item itself that the record company and Godsmack's management had concerns regarding this and as such, it was no longer available, should not be bid upon, and for all intents and purposes, the item should be considered not to exist. The auction page itself remained, until the seller willingly deleted it, for information purposes.
I notified Universal Records immediately of the decision I had made and received an email confirmation. They seem to have found my handling of the issue acceptable.
Now, my understanding is that even if these bootlegs were, somehow, legitimate and legal, I would have been required to remove/ban the auction until it could be proven that the item was acceptable to sell. Simply by someone claiming a wrong done, I would be required to behave and proceed with the assumption that, until proven otherwise, a wrong had been done. Is this correct? To what extent does this reach?
On a side note, during my conversation with the Universal Records lawyer, he said that (paraphrasing) "Our only concern is that our artists and their management feel damaged by material being exploited to make money which they should have control over." To which I replied, "I completely agree that it is wrong for someone to exploit an artist and their work for monitary gain without respect to the artist and ownership of their material."
Obviously, I was making a slight risk at agitating a lawyer with lots of financial backing by a very large corporation, but I thought it deserved to be said -- and how many chances do you get to tell a major record label what you think of their treatment of artists? I think it had to be done, or I'd be forever kicking myself for missing the opppertunity.
His response? He was silent, long enough for me to have to pose an inquisitive "...hello?" before the conversation continued. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
In light of this article, I think it's a pertinent time to repeat the meme:
No copyright has expired in this country since the end of World War 2.
When the copyrights expire sometime around 2008, Congress will most likely vote to re-extend them again. Unlike what the Founders intended, entire generations can be born and die without seeing a copyright expire. A whole generation with no access to a "common pool of knowledge," but plenty of opportunity to be harassed by corporatist police state goons (e.g. 15 year-olds in Scandinavia).
This isn't quite correct. No work created since, IIRC the late 1920's has entered the public domain by means of the copyright expiring. The date is, coincidentally enough, just prior to when Mickey Mouse cartoons started.
Works that did expire were retroactively given their copyright back - this is why you don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" EVERYWHERE anymore around Christmas. You have to pay for it again.
-- --
This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The system is out of date.
by
ParticleGirl
·
· Score: 4
Since the ideas of intellectual property, copyright law, and the U.S. patent system first came about, a lot has changed. Methodological concepts have become as valuable as machine designs once were-- the design for a new type of cog or a better steam engine was conceptual, but it had specific mechanical specs. Concepts such as (for instance) one-click shopping are also conceptual, but the applications are much more varied due to the very nature of the medium in which they're applicable. You don't need to buy the parts and weld and build and test and hand your sponsors a lump of metal before going into mass produciton; mass production is cutting and pasting, or copying, or making available for download. You can try more things. One of the most obvious results of this is that new technologies mutate and evolve at a much faster rate. Ten years ago, hyperlinking was patented by IBM, but today it's an integral part of an entire breed of technologies. This kind of proliferation would not have been possible had that patent been enforced. The original concept of the patent was supposed to be a limited right that would create an incentive for authors to produce, and that "after a short interval," as Justice Joseph Story put it, what was produced would pass to the "full possession and enjoyment" of the public "without restraint." Not a restriction on proliferating or elaborating on the idea, but incentive to spread the idea in the first place.
Another result of this is the fact that the "thing" that is being protected has become an idea, not actually a "thing" at all. At most tangible, it is a process or method; at least tangible it might be innovative concepts for which the originator should not go unrecognized. Copyright is no longer restricted to "maps, charts and books." It reaches anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." It no longer regulates only publishers; it reaches anyone who makes a "copy."...and it is also beginning to reach copies that are not "fixed in a tangible medium;" take, for instance, the recently e-published-only novels and e-released-only albums; though they might not be fixed in a tangible medium, they still seem to be suceptible to copyright laws.
Perhaps the IP laws, copyright laws, and patent system need an overhaul. Well, certainly they need an overhaul. The emphasis needs to be returned to innovation and progress, and the periods of protection need to be shortened. A serious dialogue is a good start. Getting the government to change things takes a long time. What can we do in the mean time?
This isn't the first time...
by
gavinhall
·
· Score: 4
Posted by 11223:
... that the government has taken the interests of business over the interest of technological advancement. The whole thing certainly resembles the patent problem.
Unfortunately, right now we (the USA) as a country judge ourselves based upon our economy. The 1790's weren't the time that we draw most from - we draw more from the industrial economy of the 1920's.
What Mr. Lessig said very eloquently is perfectly applicable to the 1790's. It's not to the 1920's, the time of the economy of the nation being the only priority. Except that our economy is now based on information - most of it entertainment information, but information nonetheless. It's the old "Mickey Mouse's copyright is expiring-let's extend the copyright term" situation.
It took major politics to bring workers rights up as an issue in the 1920's. Unfortunately no polititian wants to touch the copyright and patent issues - because what both parties stand for is money. There is no major political party concerned with issues of copyrights. (Does anybody know Mr. Nader's position on copyright law?)
In this situation, the consitution is an outmoded model. Instead consider the suffering worker of the 1920's as the model - except we don't suffer physically, only intellectually.
let the free software switch begin.
by
bbk
·
· Score: 5
Although it's a huge infringment on our rights, legislation like this can only help the free software community.
If people are given a choice between software that truly belongs to them which they have full control over and being led around on a leash by corporate interests that have goals other than their own, they'll pick freedom every time. Free software will take off because it will become the only way people can get what they really want and need. Projects like KDE and Gnome are coming along to the point where switching from other OS's is an extremely viable solution.
That said, it's sad to see developments like this. When it comes down to it, it's greed and powermongering at it's worst.
It is obvious to any thinking being that what we have witnessed in the last 100 years is an unprecedented (in all of human history!) redefinition of what it is to "own" a "creative work."
The endless extensions to the rights and protections granted to the holders of intellectual property are, especially in their most recent incarnations, nothing short of astounding. No reasonable person can defend the actions of the few, large players in the "Intellectual Property Industry" (another thing the framers never could have conceived of) in transparently prolonging the life of the Mickey Mouse franchise. The DMCA is the current pinnacle of the efforts to coopt the creative by corporate interests; a law which is, in form and function, an anathema to artists (of any dicipline) and their audience alike.
Society is not peppered with man-as-island "artists" and "authors" and "coders," who spin out delicate and frail inventions from ivory towers, desperate for protection from marauding information pirates. We are intimately dependent on one another, on our ideas, our dreams, our goals; each of us fuels the others work as citizens, as thinkers, as creators of new ideas, new art, new programs (an art in itself, certainly). The unprecedented progress we have witnessed in the last century is unquestonably operating in spite of the growing trend toward brutal protection of intellectual property, in a vacuum of both understanding and enforcement. This intellectual growth could not have happened under the culture that is being created today, and a balanced intellectual property doctrine wisely recognizes the necessity of all ideas to mature into the public domain, and ignores the natural ecology of ideas at the extreme peril of those who would live under it.
As a programmer, it is easy for me to follow the news, watch the lawsuits, and reach direct, immediate, and objective conclusions about the impact of intellectual property (especially software patents) on our discipline and the world that it serves. The peril to innovation of the current intellectual property law, and our interpretations of it regarding software, is so obvious that it has spurred a phenomenal and almost unexplainable social phenomenon: free software. But it goes way beyond software, and it's easy to infer how much real damage "overly strong" intellectual property law is doing to our economy among "solution-oriented" disciplines, and this doesn't stop short of harm to our more personal lives in "softer" industries like music, literature, etc.
We have now a very small group of capitalists who have grown very fat by exploiting, and then expanding, the weaknesses of our intellectual property laws. They will naturally stop at nothing to preserve their effortless wealth; they have no interest in creating a healthy society: their only interest is their own success. Of course, in a democracy, their absurdly small minority should be drowned out by the balance of the citizenry. Everyone's interests should be represented, to insure that no one's self-interest foils a fair government in presiding over a healthy society.
Of course, you can do ABC news polls out the wazoo, and you will find numbers that lead politicians pandering greedily to the IP interests. Most American's can't be bothered to think about these issues, even as the quality of their lives are silently eroded by the forces at work. But, for this, I can't do more than to simply quote a very smart man, who once observed:
"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands... The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.
The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
I don't recall if it has been mentioned on slashdot before, but last week, Lessig wrote an amicus curiae brief in support of the mirror site maintainers in the Cyber Patrol/CPHack case.
Lessig is right about Thomas Jefferson
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4
Thomas Jefferson on Intellectual Property:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
1) Not everyone who questions the current state of patents, copyrights, and IP, is out to steal such. Saying "what a minute, is this a good idea" does not make one a criminal.
2) Current copyright laws are not necessarily what the US founders had in mind. And then he goes on to show why I thinks that way.
The US patent system, and the UK's as well, was explicitly set up to spread learning in the population. The Statute of Anne in 1710, which gave the rights to works to the authors as opposied to the printers-publishers, has the title 'an act for the encouragement of learning . ..'. It took until 1774 for the House of Lords to fight off the publishers' fighting of the Statute and to "affirm the public domain created by the 1710 statute by denying common law claims to the perpetual protection of intellectual property"
Before the late 1500s there wasn't much of anything like IP. There were some granted patents, which tended to run for 5 years or less. The response of IP holders to easier copying has been to push the period of ownership out further and further, which doesn't really address the problem of copying IP. Of course, neither does running around trading files and shouting "Music should be free".
Some of the push for longer term IP came from Europe, where establish wealthy families and companies wanted to maintain control longer. The result has been that the the longer terms have spread to the US, where control of IP has left the actual creators and ended up in the hands of large organizations. It's worth the trouble of getting copyright to go for life+70, if it means that the company that actually controls the IP can now make money off of it for 100+years. Corporations can live "forever", people don't.
Kuro5hin.org is now having a discussion on the death of copyright, started because of a discussion on the Freenet mailing list. What if Freenet really took off and copyright became unenforcable? What would happen to artists?
Re:Interesting, and informative.
by
FigWig
·
· Score: 5
My only gripe is that the statement about pdf. This is a closed,and with-held format.
I agree with you completely! If only that damned Adobe would open the file specification. Obviously they are trying to get a stranglehold on the market and blight out the common man.
We need open programs that can read and create pdf files. Without such programs, the PDF format is useless.
So let's fight the power and boycott Adobe until they free the format!
-- Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Re:55 years (Unconstitutional?)
by
Royster
·
· Score: 4
That was a district court decision in Eldred v. Reno. It is scheduled for hearings in from of the circuit court of appeals in July. There is more information on the OpenLaw site.
-- I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Slashdot Mirror
A.H.
"If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things."
I run a fairly successful (free) auction site. Yesterday, I had a voicemail left on my machine at work from the Director of Legal Affairs for Universal Records.
When I called to speak with him, and played a little phone-tag, he brought up the concern that a user had posted bootlegged Godsmack recordings, on CD-R's, on my site. Godsmack's management was not pleased with this and voiced their concern to Universal Records.
The representative I spoke with seemed understanding and realized that I am an individual operating a free, non-profit website with no intention to exploit intellectual property ownership. I explained that all I could do was review the auction in question and notify him of any decisions or actions that were made after I weighed his concern.
I reviewed the auction, which the seller had clearly explained in the item's description, was a compilation of bootlegs and songs that were not commercially available by the artist and that, as such, there was no financial impact on the artists themselves. You do not need to be a lawyer (and I am not one) to realize that this is most likely still very wrong. Bootlegging is, generally, a bad thing. And making money off it is probably almost always illegal.
Still, my concern was not for my own legal well-being, as the site clearly states that items being sold are the sole responsibility of the person posting them and all concerns should be addressed directly with that person. My concern was, in fact, how and what precident I would be setting for the future of my site and its users.
My final decision was to notify the seller of the situation, leave the auction up, put a notice on the auction item itself that the record company and Godsmack's management had concerns regarding this and as such, it was no longer available, should not be bid upon, and for all intents and purposes, the item should be considered not to exist. The auction page itself remained, until the seller willingly deleted it, for information purposes.
I notified Universal Records immediately of the decision I had made and received an email confirmation. They seem to have found my handling of the issue acceptable.
Now, my understanding is that even if these bootlegs were, somehow, legitimate and legal, I would have been required to remove/ban the auction until it could be proven that the item was acceptable to sell. Simply by someone claiming a wrong done, I would be required to behave and proceed with the assumption that, until proven otherwise, a wrong had been done. Is this correct? To what extent does this reach?
On a side note, during my conversation with the Universal Records lawyer, he said that (paraphrasing) "Our only concern is that our artists and their management feel damaged by material being exploited to make money which they should have control over." To which I replied, "I completely agree that it is wrong for someone to exploit an artist and their work for monitary gain without respect to the artist and ownership of their material."
Obviously, I was making a slight risk at agitating a lawyer with lots of financial backing by a very large corporation, but I thought it deserved to be said -- and how many chances do you get to tell a major record label what you think of their treatment of artists? I think it had to be done, or I'd be forever kicking myself for missing the opppertunity.
His response? He was silent, long enough for me to have to pose an inquisitive "...hello?" before the conversation continued.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
In light of this article, I think it's a pertinent time to repeat the meme:
No copyright has expired in this country since the end of World War 2.
When the copyrights expire sometime around 2008, Congress will most likely vote to re-extend them again. Unlike what the Founders intended, entire generations can be born and die without seeing a copyright expire. A whole generation with no access to a "common pool of knowledge," but plenty of opportunity to be harassed by corporatist police state goons (e.g. 15 year-olds in Scandinavia).
Unhappy? Kill your television.
Since the ideas of intellectual property, copyright law, and the U.S. patent system first came about, a lot has changed. Methodological concepts have become as valuable as machine designs once were-- the design for a new type of cog or a better steam engine was conceptual, but it had specific mechanical specs. Concepts such as (for instance) one-click shopping are also conceptual, but the applications are much more varied due to the very nature of the medium in which they're applicable. You don't need to buy the parts and weld and build and test and hand your sponsors a lump of metal before going into mass produciton; mass production is cutting and pasting, or copying, or making available for download. You can try more things. One of the most obvious results of this is that new technologies mutate and evolve at a much faster rate. Ten years ago, hyperlinking was patented by IBM, but today it's an integral part of an entire breed of technologies. This kind of proliferation would not have been possible had that patent been enforced. The original concept of the patent was supposed to be a limited right that would create an incentive for authors to produce, and that "after a short interval," as Justice Joseph Story put it, what was produced would pass to the "full possession and enjoyment" of the public "without restraint." Not a restriction on proliferating or elaborating on the idea, but incentive to spread the idea in the first place.
...and it is also beginning to reach copies that are not "fixed in a tangible medium;" take, for instance, the recently e-published-only novels and e-released-only albums; though they might not be fixed in a tangible medium, they still seem to be suceptible to copyright laws.
Another result of this is the fact that the "thing" that is being protected has become an idea, not actually a "thing" at all. At most tangible, it is a process or method; at least tangible it might be innovative concepts for which the originator should not go unrecognized. Copyright is no longer restricted to "maps, charts and books." It reaches anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." It no longer regulates only publishers; it reaches anyone who makes a "copy."
Perhaps the IP laws, copyright laws, and patent system need an overhaul. Well, certainly they need an overhaul. The emphasis needs to be returned to innovation and progress, and the periods of protection need to be shortened. A serious dialogue is a good start. Getting the government to change things takes a long time. What can we do in the mean time?
Do something about world hunger. Click here
... that the government has taken the interests of business over the interest of technological advancement. The whole thing certainly resembles the patent problem.
Unfortunately, right now we (the USA) as a country judge ourselves based upon our economy. The 1790's weren't the time that we draw most from - we draw more from the industrial economy of the 1920's.
What Mr. Lessig said very eloquently is perfectly applicable to the 1790's. It's not to the 1920's, the time of the economy of the nation being the only priority. Except that our economy is now based on information - most of it entertainment information, but information nonetheless. It's the old "Mickey Mouse's copyright is expiring-let's extend the copyright term" situation.
It took major politics to bring workers rights up as an issue in the 1920's. Unfortunately no polititian wants to touch the copyright and patent issues - because what both parties stand for is money. There is no major political party concerned with issues of copyrights. (Does anybody know Mr. Nader's position on copyright law?)
In this situation, the consitution is an outmoded model. Instead consider the suffering worker of the 1920's as the model - except we don't suffer physically, only intellectually.
Although it's a huge infringment on our rights, legislation like this can only help the free software community.
If people are given a choice between software that truly belongs to them which they have full control over and being led around on a leash by corporate interests that have goals other than their own, they'll pick freedom every time. Free software will take off because it will become the only way people can get what they really want and need. Projects like KDE and Gnome are coming along to the point where switching from other OS's is an extremely viable solution.
That said, it's sad to see developments like this. When it comes down to it, it's greed and powermongering at it's worst.
BBK
The endless extensions to the rights and protections granted to the holders of intellectual property are, especially in their most recent incarnations, nothing short of astounding. No reasonable person can defend the actions of the few, large players in the "Intellectual Property Industry" (another thing the framers never could have conceived of) in transparently prolonging the life of the Mickey Mouse franchise. The DMCA is the current pinnacle of the efforts to coopt the creative by corporate interests; a law which is, in form and function, an anathema to artists (of any dicipline) and their audience alike.
Society is not peppered with man-as-island "artists" and "authors" and "coders," who spin out delicate and frail inventions from ivory towers, desperate for protection from marauding information pirates. We are intimately dependent on one another, on our ideas, our dreams, our goals; each of us fuels the others work as citizens, as thinkers, as creators of new ideas, new art, new programs (an art in itself, certainly). The unprecedented progress we have witnessed in the last century is unquestonably operating in spite of the growing trend toward brutal protection of intellectual property, in a vacuum of both understanding and enforcement. This intellectual growth could not have happened under the culture that is being created today, and a balanced intellectual property doctrine wisely recognizes the necessity of all ideas to mature into the public domain, and ignores the natural ecology of ideas at the extreme peril of those who would live under it.
As a programmer, it is easy for me to follow the news, watch the lawsuits, and reach direct, immediate, and objective conclusions about the impact of intellectual property (especially software patents) on our discipline and the world that it serves. The peril to innovation of the current intellectual property law, and our interpretations of it regarding software, is so obvious that it has spurred a phenomenal and almost unexplainable social phenomenon: free software. But it goes way beyond software, and it's easy to infer how much real damage "overly strong" intellectual property law is doing to our economy among "solution-oriented" disciplines, and this doesn't stop short of harm to our more personal lives in "softer" industries like music, literature, etc.
We have now a very small group of capitalists who have grown very fat by exploiting, and then expanding, the weaknesses of our intellectual property laws. They will naturally stop at nothing to preserve their effortless wealth; they have no interest in creating a healthy society: their only interest is their own success. Of course, in a democracy, their absurdly small minority should be drowned out by the balance of the citizenry. Everyone's interests should be represented, to insure that no one's self-interest foils a fair government in presiding over a healthy society.
Of course, you can do ABC news polls out the wazoo, and you will find numbers that lead politicians pandering greedily to the IP interests. Most American's can't be bothered to think about these issues, even as the quality of their lives are silently eroded by the forces at work. But, for this, I can't do more than to simply quote a very smart man, who once observed:
"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands... The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.
The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
-Albert Einstein
We're on the road to Tycho.
The brief (in pdf) is here.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
It sounds to me a lot like what RMS has been saying all along.
1) Not everyone who questions the current state of patents, copyrights, and IP, is out to steal such. Saying "what a minute, is this a good idea" does not make one a criminal.
2) Current copyright laws are not necessarily what the US founders had in mind. And then he goes on to show why I thinks that way.
The US patent system, and the UK's as well, was explicitly set up to spread learning in the population. The Statute of Anne in 1710, which gave the rights to works to the authors as opposied to the printers-publishers, has the title 'an act for the encouragement of learning . . .'. It took until 1774 for the House of Lords to fight off the publishers' fighting of the Statute and to "affirm the public domain created by the 1710 statute by denying common law claims to the perpetual protection of intellectual property"
Before the late 1500s there wasn't much of anything like IP. There were some granted patents, which tended to run for 5 years or less. The response of IP holders to easier copying has been to push the period of ownership out further and further, which doesn't really address the problem of copying IP. Of course, neither does running around trading files and shouting "Music should be free".
Some of the push for longer term IP came from Europe, where establish wealthy families and companies wanted to maintain control longer. The result has been that the the longer terms have spread to the US, where control of IP has left the actual creators and ended up in the hands of large organizations. It's worth the trouble of getting copyright to go for life+70, if it means that the company that actually controls the IP can now make money off of it for 100+years. Corporations can live "forever", people don't.
Kuro5hin.org is now having a discussion on the death of copyright, started because of a discussion on the Freenet mailing list. What if Freenet really took off and copyright became unenforcable? What would happen to artists?
My only gripe is that the statement about pdf. This is a closed,and with-held format.
I agree with you completely! If only that damned Adobe would open the file specification. Obviously they are trying to get a stranglehold on the market and blight out the common man.
We need open programs that can read and create pdf files. Without such programs, the PDF format is useless.
So let's fight the power and boycott Adobe until they free the format!
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
That was a district court decision in Eldred v. Reno. It is scheduled for hearings in from of the circuit court of appeals in July. There is more information on the OpenLaw site.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i