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What If There Was No Copyright Law?
"Now, think about what this means. These countries have no protection for intellectual property, at least not for any not produced and/or registered within their borders. That means you can freely appropriate music, DVDs, commercial software, GPL'd code -- anything available is public domain, as we understand the term. This used to be of only marginal interest since the infrastructure for entrepreneurial types to capitalize on this lack of protection wasn't available, but the growing use of the Internet makes this lack of universal copyright applicability a bit more interesting.
Sooner or later, these outlying regions are going to have significant Internet connectivity. Will they all bring their intellectual property protection standards into line with the 146 Berne nations ... or not? And if not, what exactly, will happen then? Is intellectual property protection important enough to cause diplomatic isolation? Trade wars? Real war?"
I'm just wondering if you were to copyright your software '(c) Kingdom of Andorra' (for example) whether or not the country would be able to 'acquire' the copyright. And since the country has no IP laws the software would be free to copy...
Of course, it wouldn't quite work for warez etc as it'll be (c) Mickeysoft Inc, USA (example) and if you live in the US you'll still be liable for copyright theft.
Oh - don't forget that Napster was designed to be a _legal_ service, _N_ew _A_rtist _P_rogram - it wasn't made to shift copyright materials around the 'net.
Richy C.
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For some of the poorer coutries who are not signatories this may be an oppotunity because if say, Napster went to Angola then they will get publicity and an influx of technology and knowlege. That is not to say that those coutries must become piracy centres but they could provide a little more freedom.
Copyright exists due to human pride but also human greed and jealousy. Much like communism, life without copyright is a theoretical dream that would not last in reality. If we were to start again without copyright there is no doubt in my mind that it would eventually appear again, for it is human nature to want what is your's to stay your's. Anyone agree?
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
The reasons for a good economy are mind bogglingly vast, there is little doubt that to promote research and development under a capitalist system companies will require some sort of protection in the way of copyright. To remove it completely would discourage the for-profit folks from pouring money into new technology. I think what has been lost, particularly since the advent of 'intellectual property' is that these laws were originally intended to be temporary. Just left in place long enough to recoup any money put into R&D. Corporations have successfully convinced lawmakers and the USPTO that they need their copyrights extended beyond any reasonable period so that they can maintain their market advantages.
The best solution, in my humble opinion, is that a no loopholes time limit be placed on all copyrights beyond which they cannot be held. This would force companies to take a harder look at whether they can make enough money quickly enough to justify product development. It might harm R&D in a small way, things that wouldn't provide enough return during the copyright period just wouldn't get done, but it might also improve competition and swing a little of the power away from big business.
As an aside, was the Lettermen network switch the advent of intellectual property? I seem to remember that it was treated as a radical concept by the media.
Icebox
Difficult one to say, really.
I guess the closest example to look at is that of China, where it is well known that you can get most things counterfeited, be it clothes, watches or software or CDs or DVDs etc.
Companies complain about the piracy, and from time to time there are token raids to shut them down, but they just move on and start up elsewhere.
No government has decided to make anything formal or make any diplomatic protests about it.
However, this is probably still sufficiently different from the examples being raised by the poster, because in the new examples, access to said data is much much easier (OK, I can get a CD stuffed full of pirate software for $10 in Hong Kong, but it costs a lot to get there!).
Personally, I would expect that M$ et al would go after those whom they suspectedof downloading the pirate software etc, rather than the servers themselves in those cases?
Now, how they could work out exactly WHO was downloading is a different question, of course!
(Surely M$ wouldn't stoop to organising sustained DDoS attacks on such servers, would they?)
Anyway, just MHO, do with it as you will!
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
These countries for a short while will thrive on the lack of copyright laws and will be a heaven for "pirated" Music/software/Video etc, but as time will go on, they will get pressure from Western countries to tighten up their copyrihgt laws in exchange for "development" funds and other sweetners.
Some countries (especially Arab) will obviously give the US the 2 finger salute, but even so I don't think the situation will last forever.
We will have to wait and see how companies like Havenco get on...
Actually I think it would be really good if these countries got a better infrastructure when it comes to internet; after all we've taken everything from them already, so now it's time for them to exploit us a bit.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
According to the CIA world factobook, Afghanistan is also the world's largest illicit opium producer and exports large amounts of hashish, and profits from that drug trade go to continuing the perpetual civil war.
While I don't regard the issues raised by Napster as trivial, a bit of perspective might go a long way sometimes.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Unfortunately copyright law is essential to human endeavour thanks to the fallen nature of human kind. And whilst we might all like to pretend that we're enlightened people who could exist in a state where everything is available to everyone, let's face it the fall of the USSR showed us that this state of affairs just isn't in human nature - all it takes is one person to spoil it for everyone.
Anyway, in a capitalist society it is a given that it is far cheaper, and therefore better, to steal someone else's work rather than invest the time and resources in producing your own. Theft has a far lower cost, so it's far more appealing on purely economic grounds. Without such protective measures as copyright, there's no incentive to invest in producing your own goods, especially when we're talking about something as ephermal as the things copyright covers - written works, music and art. This is why I think Libertarianism is flawed - it encourages anything that increases wealth without regard to ethics in its purest form.
Sure some people produce it for the love of it, but if they can't aren't able to be rewarded for their efforts then they won't have the time to fully concentrate on what they do - they'd have to get jobs and spend most of their time and energy trying to survive. Copyright ensures that people can profit enough from what they produce so that they can continue doing such work.
Copyright is therefore a necessary part of any capitalist socioeconomic system in which you want to encourage creativity and development. Without it, we'd have stagnation and a slip back into barbarism and the Dark Ages.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
The difference is, I can have your's, without you not having it.
Human nature is to have. To have more, and finaly, have even more. It is not neccessarily to make other not to have, have less, and even less. At least, I hope so. If not, we may as well fire a good atom-bomb over all of t his place, and erase this virus from the universe!
Without theoretical dreams, we would all be killing, raping and making each other starve. Oh, waitabit - we are...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
The fact that a nation did not sign the international convention does not mean it has no copyright law at all. Many of the nations who did not sign the convention have their own laws about copyright.
fB
Copyright protection is a good idea. I believe an artist or creator should be able to dictate, at least for a while (for example until their death) what is done with or to their creations. However, why these rights should semi-automatically be transferred to publishers and producers, or why they should last for 70 years past the creator's death is wrong and excessive in my opinion. All of our common heritage and culture has been created by someone, and the concept of claiming ownership to it is a fairly recent invention.
(Please deposit $12.50 in order to cover the license for us singing "Happy Birthday to You".)
Before I rant, when /. was bought a year and some back I really thought that had been bought by Andorra... It goest to show that a little more attention reading is always good.
Anyway, the countries that didn't sign the WIPO agreement aren't factors in the internet or in pretty much anything else - some of them have deep political problems, others are just plain anti-american or does anyone think that WIPO isn't an american strategy to corner inginuity (sp?)? You talked about these issues in the long term, by then there's a probabilistic chance that things will change... in favor of what WIPO wants.
These poor little countries can't survive or stand alone without international trade (look at China for example). Eventually - like it or not - they will open up and they will fall in line like everyone else because the World's biggest economic titan - the USA - will set the Rule which is "You will obey me".
--
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Copyright law was originally created to ensure a steady flow of new art. "Let's give the artist the means to earn a living, and he might go on making art", it was reasoned.
:-)
Today things are different: Many "artists" are little more than wage slaves (programmers and other engineers), others are tied hand and feet to their masters, the record companies. Who make the money? Rarely if ever it is the artist who gets to be rich.
Enter the internet with it's 0-day warez sites, Napster, Freedom, etc. Enter the open source movement (or free software, or whatever you want to call it).
The copying-stuff-is-theft concept doesn't seem to fly with many of Napster's users, even if the cops and the big companies still believe in it, they seem to be quite unsuccessful in stopping warez sites.
Maybe, if all these trends continue, our kids will live in a world with no copyrights. Many things will have to change. Who knows? Maybe every bar will have a live band in it again, maybe Windows will be GPL'ed
I'm an American expat in Taiwan and we're not on the list, but that doesn't really matter. The fact is that most of the coutries that are not actually signatories to these agreements are more than happy to bow to pressure from any well funded foreign organization that wants to come in and blackmail the locals for selling pirated goods from software and entertainment to hand bags and watches.
You can't conclude that there is no IP enforcement just because a country isn't signed up on one of these lists. That's like assuming that a country has no role international political role because it's not in the UN. Again, Taiwan would be a good example of how that would be an absurd assumption.
Copyright laws should be removed. A controversial statement for sure. How can someone claim that such a right, should be removed?
First of all, if I produce something, I shouldn't be able to earn money on that single product my entire life. If I make something, I should be able to sell it, but then I lose control over it.
Patents *used* to be an incentive for research, and to open up formulas. Its not anymore. Either people keep it a tradesecret, or they patent it to prevent others from making "copies" for the next 20 years. Patents are no longer "so that the public gains from it in the long run". Patents are now in place to prevent people from making more efficient solutions, "for the next 20 years" - so that the creator may benefit mostly from it.
The problem is, everybody else loses from the possibility of patents. If someone else things up the same thing, he can't use it, because someone else has *patented* it. Even if the second to come up with the idea, never had seen the product the first one patented.
Back to copyright. If I made good music, I would be *glad* that people enjoyed my music so much that they shared it. I would be *glad* if people listened to my music. If I wanted money from it, i would make concerts and so forth. I should not sit with copyright on the material for the next 70 years or how long it is. After I had made it available, people should be able to share it, and enjoy it.
The same goes for software.
Of course, this removes the business oportunities to a great extent, or at least the current business oportunities. It wouldn't be possible to earn money the same way as today. Of course, you could sell CD's, "collectors editions" and so forth - which your hardcore fans would buy. You would get money from those who truly enjoyed your music, but not from those that listened to it once or twice.
Furthermore, you would get money from concerts. People would pay to watch your concerts, and that would make you money.
Oh, I could go on for ages and ages. I simply want copyright to be a thing of the past.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Ultimately anything that is stored in electronic format can be counterfeited. As bandwidth increases in the future, it will get easier and easier to get your hands on music/videos/software. Supporting producers property rights to electronic products will become a choice. Property rights underpin capitalism - but you can't enforce that on the rest of the world. Muisic/Video copyright is somewhat trivial beside the issue of genetic & medical copyright. Consider that the makers of AIDS treatment drugs can block access to most of the world that have AIDS by imposing price barriers thanks to their patents.
Copyrights on US works are not easily enforcable in these places. But why on earth would anyone assume that simply setting up a server in such a country would completely evade US law?
I would think that something like overseas napster would certainly fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government as it affects both interstate and international commerce. How quickly do you think a law would be drafted and passed to regulate and even prevent us from accessing napster? Not that these laws by themselves would ammount to much, people would simply route around them, and might even have fun doing so. But the penalties for breaking this law might be severe for those who got caught. Ever hear of a little country called Cuba? Guess what, its illegal to trade with them. Has been for decades. I don't know exactly what the penalties are for doing so, or even if they are routinely enforced. But I do know it is illegal because it is considered "trading with the enemy." Kind of like trading with old Saddam during the Gulf War. I can't imagine the penalties are nice, even if I can't recall them being enforced recently.
This whole "I put my server in Rangoon, so now you can't touch me!" attitude smacks of juvenile cluelessness. It reminds me of some kid trying to use rules designed to govern/suppress him or her against the authority figures who created them in the first place. I'm sorry, but the rules are written for the benefit of those who create them and will be revised when they are found lacking in this regard. Ultimately they are little more than an agreed upon ritual dictating the methods which must be used in the exercise of power.
So please, don't be so naive.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Reading the posts here I think most people agree that copyright is nesscesary and won't go away.
Copyright (and patents) exist to allow peoples (and companies) to make money. In itself that's not a bad thing.
Ofcourse how long a work should profit from protection is extremely important.
If say we had a maximum of 5 years to copyright profits from sale could still be made (aplenty methinks). Giving copanies, authors whoever, time enough to come up with something new.
Of course free distrubution would be marvelous but you can't force people/artists/whoever into it. Many people rely on existing distribution sytsems. And spreading it around for free doesn't seem to be a healthy way to make a living to a lot of people for some reason :)
They deserve the choice to change the way they spread their product.
At current the "greed part" of copyright seems to be dominant, 95 years is next to infinity in human terms, the only ones who profit from such a long time are people who had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the work!
Ok just my 0.02 Euro..
Well, the logical conclusion of the "Information wants to be Free" philosophy held my many OS advocates, is that copyright (and patents and trademarks) is "unnatural". I phrase it that way for a reason: in the past, many groups have claimed that some behavior, philosophy etc. is unnatural in order to attack it. The "unnatural" accusation, explicit or implicit, is a very difficult one to deal with because humans seem to have a psychological pre-disposition to believe that natural=good. We see these attacks implicit in the strategy manifested in the GPL. But that doesn't mean it isn't incorrect. One problem that I see so often is that "unnatural" is often conflated with "absolute moral standard" which is further conflated with "fundamentalism" and then is treated as a Very Bad Thing. But the fact is, that the term "unnatural" actually has a fairly useful meaning. So in the case where copyright is attacted (implicitly) as unnatural, we have to be careful that we do not ignore the possibility that copyright may actually be unnatural! As many people have said both here on Slashdot and elsewhere, information is not "naturally" a resource that suffers from economies of supply/scarcity. Since there is theoretically an infinite supply of information, the cost should be zero. As more and more types of information become detached from their physical media, we will see businesses and government struggle to understand what to do, since _all_ relevent policies are based on economics of supply and demand. I would like to make a brief aside and point out that there are quite a number of types of information that are not yet detached from their physical media: painting, sculpture, smells, emotions, and personal memories all come to mind. These types of information obviously have to some degree or another become digitized and freed. However, especially those types of information that are coupled very tightly to wetware, will likely take a very long time to become free, if they ever do. Now I will take a big leap, and point out that as the recognition of the freedom of information spreads, there will be some other things happen as well. Firstly, the fundamental unity of humanity will become harder and harder to ignore. Once this unity is recognized, new tools (systems of business, government, discovery, communication) will need to be developed. I personally think this will be an incredibly radical change - and that it isn't too far away. The recognition of the unity of humanity is a fundamental prerequisit to any lasting peace, and to any lasting solutions to our many social, economic and environmental problems. Well, that was quite a mouthful :-O
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Like so much else, copyright has outlived most of its original usefulness. Until the 20th century, there were only two kinds of marketable goods: actual materials like cloth and spices; and ideas. It wasn't until our technological age that *ideas about goods* would become so common and so valuable. Until that time, new inventions were extremely rare and could be guarded as trade secrets. Much more common were fiction books and philosophical works. The first copyright laws as we know them were enacted to protect the purveyors of ideas. The printing press made it easy to steal a work, but it wasn't hard to trace the whereabouts of the thief, because printing presses were themselves novelties. Today copyright theft is so frequent and so easy that we don't even consider much of what we do theft. Unlike centuries past, when only a small percentage of the population could get, own, or read a book, today the vast majority of the developed world's population can read. When there are so many trees about, stealing leaves may be illegal, but it's not feasible to worry about it. Too, today only a few industries rely on copyright for their own protection. Paperbacks are so cheap that it's silly to steal a John Jakes novel for illegal reprinting. The music industry howls about its need for protection, but produces little evidence that such protection protects their sales. Movie studios, ditto. Pirated copies undoubtedly gouge out some profit, but given the available technologies, it's inevitable that there would be some leakage. Countries like Afghanistan hardly pose a major threat to the movie industry's profit margins. The truly ironic and painful part of intellectual property law is that if you don't fight for your rights, they'll eventually be withdrawn from you. This leads to the absurdity of a record label's lawyers informing Girl Scout troops that they can't dance to the Macarena anymore unless they pay for it. Both the lawyers and the record label executives have to cringe at doing this...it's like kicking little girls, for heaven's sake. But the law makes them do it, or risk forfeiting their rights elsewhere. Rather than a retooling of existing law, it might be wiser to consider whether the laws are workable at all, given the ease and frequency of violation. Bards didn't copyright their works throughout the Middle Ages, and Homer didn't copyright the Illiad. It would have been futile to try, considering how easy it was to listen and then take it away with you. It was only the choke point of the printing press that made copyright laws feasible, and now that's been done away with. The record and movie industries have tried to introduce new choke points, but with limited success. Time will tell if the huge investment in shaky technology will pay off with some measure of protection. But without having a choke point, there can be no enforcement, and having the law on the books will be so much wishful thinking.
The originals are long out of copyright :-)
:-)
I'm not as sure of the situation with the Quran, but an individual translation of the Bible can be, (and many are) copyrighted. This is to prevent unscruplous people removing the bits they don't like, or adding bits, and passing the result off as the real thing
The NET Bible has pretty lax usage restrictions, I think.
Gerv
Isn't Sealand/Havenco exactly what you are talking about? They will host your server, I don't think they enforce copyright, big pipe (and growing), no unstable govt (though yet to demonstrate a long-term viable one, they have yet to fail to do so either). Why bother with Afghanistan (no pipe, unstable/oppresive govt, etc). Put Sealand to the test!
Copyright covers plagiarism, which in the context of source code means I could be violating someone's copyright if I cut-and-paste their code and call it my own, use it for my own purposes, etc... without their permission, that is. And open source authors effectively give that permission to everyone, pending a few small details (GNU, for instance, has a number of preconditions - such as that you have to distribute the sourcecode yourself, etc.) Of course, I can read someone's code, learn from it, and write my own code that does the same thing. It may even be very similar, but that would be legal (again, there are a few caveats here, but that's basically the case). Even as a relative radical when it comes to intellectual property law, this pretty much seems fine to me.
Patents are much, much worse. Software patents enable Compuserve, for example, to patent a compression algorithm or a program that reads or writes a specific file format. Once such a patent is granted, it is illegal for me to write a program that uses that compression, or reads or writes data compatible with that format - no matter how I implement it.
The fun part is what people patent: Windows, pull down menus, command-line interfaces, GIFs (you've heard about the infamous GIF patent, of course!), one-click shopping, word processors that can right align text, you name it, the US Patent Office will grant it to you. I honestly don't think they even read them anymore. And if someone from the USPO wants to show up and self-righteously say "Oh yes we do read them" then... my God, that's even worse.
The reason you can tell the EU is going to have software patents is because their argument - that the USPO is the problem, not software patents themselves - is patently false. An obvious placation.
In a world with software patents, every programmer is likely to violate hundreds of patents throughout their career. There is no way they can know which, since they cannot read and remember the entire patent base, no matter how well-maintained. Every program is a ticking time bomb of patent litigation, as you never know when someone might turn up and say, "Hey! My grandfather patented that in 1986! That'll be 70% of your gross please, or get ready to spend $100-300 thousand defending yourself in court!"
Enough said.
I don't know who signed the Berne Convention (i don't have word), but Andorra and Angola appear on the WIPO members list (which contains 175 states) at least. So they at least grant the WIPO to "promote the protection of intellectual property" there (however vague that objective is). I can't puzzle out the legalese but i guess that WIPO members are either part of the Berne Convention or part of the Paris Convention.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
No, dead people can't sing.
They do tend to hum, though.
-henrik
Ask a music artist this - Would you be happy with
__anybody__ using your work for their benefit without your permission? I would gag if any bozo could use, say, The Smashing Pumpkins music in a Levi's ad. Without copyright law, they'd have no recourse. Is this right or wrong?
Copyright law is needed. I don't buy the "information wants to be free" argument. Information should not be free for me to do with what I want. Just because I've got a copy of The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish album does not mean I have the right to distribute it and make money out of it without The Smashing Pumpkins' permission. I believe in this vehemently.
With sensible copyright laws, the only people losing out are the actual pirates and people just intrested in making money out of other people's work. I'm not arguing for the current USA copyright laws. I'm arguing for the artists right to choose. And the companys right to choose. Just because the way that IP is going is bad, in a bad, evil way, does not mean that the concept of owning information is bad. The backlash against copyright is nothing more than USA college kids being miffed at not being able to use Napster. There's little substance in the argument, imho.
I can spend 30 hours a week spare time, on top of the 45 hour workweek I have. If this project is ever a success, I would like some return of my time investments.
At this moment, I still have a choice of doing this propriaty or Open Source, yet, I still have to decide this.
When there are no copyright laws, it means my efforts are worthless, it means a different world, it means an accedemic world - everybody has the right to peek into my code, whether I want this or not. An accedemic world could mean that a new idea has to survive a generation of the elite establishment, it gets debunked on cosmetical grounds (can't search on this, button that does not work, made a grammar mistake there...) instead of being appreciated by the people who are actually going to work with the product.
With copyright laws, it is still interesting for me to develop the product. I still have a choice between propriaty and Open Source, and yes, to be honest, I'm also doing the product to gain financial benefit from.
The way all the copyright stories came into the news is not because the copyright phenomina is a bad thing, it is used as a tool to get total control. Everybody knows that it is all cheap investment and high profits what the record and movie industry are doing - you don't have to be a musician anymore to become a popstar. This all makes me sick.
In my opinion, copyright laws are okay, but they should illegalise copyright abuse!
Getting back at the story, putting up a Napster server in an 'A' country, and getting an incredible user-base, would invoke a high political lobby activity in that country by the people who care. The RIAA would sell their soul to get that darn thing shut.
Bizar technology?
This is any easy one not to see because we're already embedded in it, but the whole notion of copyright originates with printers and booksellers (17th century) who faced huge (we're talking rampant) amounts of piracy. It wasn't always true that you could assume that the book you were holding was in fact written by the author it says, or that the publisher on the cover really did publish it, or that the contents weren't stolen from somebody else. Which means some serious problems when you're a natural philosopher trying publish your ideas about laws of motion or the existence of a vacuum and there's ten unauthorized and incorrect copies of your work floating around with your name on it! By using a system of copy rights, publishers (to anachronize things for a moment) could govern the books being printed, try to prevent piracy, and create some credibility for what was being printed. Their motive was, of course, related to profit, as we are today, but that doesn't change to problem.
(This is part of Adrian Johns' argument in "The Nature of the Book", UChicago Press, 1998)
In any case, imagine what would happen if suddenly there was no copyright today: how could you be sure that you were listening to the actual London Symphony, (or Bubble-head Spears, for that matter), and that somebody didn't put that name on some junk instead. Or what if you didn't know that your copy of Linux was in fact a copy right from the kernel team, and not joe-blow loading it with a backdoor or a trojan? You can't expect everybody to read the source and make sure, so we have to expect some measure of credibility when we purchase or otherwise obtain a copy of something of creative value.
-- flossie
http telnet
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I have no problem with the existence of copyrights and patents, since it is obvious that they encourage innovation. However IIRC a copyright originally extended for about 14 years, which IMO is more than enough time for an author/ publisher to recoup his investment. Now copyright persists for about 70 years or so; this is wholly unreasonable.
Moving on to Patents, patents protect development of drugs where of the 20 year patent span, perhaps 10 of those is spent seeking approval and in tests. 20 years is probably about right here too, although I'd like to hear from someone in the pharmaceutical business for his opinion.
In the fields of machinery, computer development and especially in software, I have a feeling 20 years is way too long. Quite frankly if you can't recoup your investment in 5 years for a software patent, I'd expect your idea to be out of date anyway. I think a 5 year head start in software is more than enough. Similarly mechanical progress is much more rapid nowadays, and I suspect a 10 year patent would be plenty.
IMO, all the timespans I suggested would be adequate to encourage ideas, yet would also get those ideas out into the public domain, which was I believe one of the main stated ideas behind patents and copyright.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
A tiny fraction of programmers today have jobs whose existence depends on copyright. Most programmers are payed to solve problems, i.e. creating ad-hoc solutions for their clients with no intention of resale. So the issue of "being paid for your work" is a red herring.
However, while the vast majority of the software being *created* does not depend on copyrights, the majority of software being *used* does depend on software. This is because the majority of consumers use mass produced shrink-wrapped software.
Thus, if you want to advocate copyrights, it should (ironically) not be for the sake of the creators, but for the sake of the consumers. The free software world have yet to prove that it can produce software (through other rewqrds than copyright) to fulfill the needs of the mass market, allthough it is getting closer with products like Linux, KDE, OpenOffice and Mozilla.
US didn't sign the Berne convention until recently, yet the US has always had copyright law (The US constitution grant congress the right to restrict the right of the citizens to copy written material with copyright, in order to promote the progress of art and science.)
Its a bit worse than that.
A (non-US) company that does business with Cuba may not eport to the US!
Basically, the US gov says: Pick your choise, trade with Cuba XOR trade with us.
Kind of the same attitude Bejing has towards Taiwan.
(And of course this has only strengthened the Castro regime. Without a strong external enemy, the cubans would focus on domestic issues)
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Even without cocpyright law, you would still be able to restrict IP with contract law. A likely short-time outcome of removing copyright law, would be that software and music distributors would require you to sign a contract stating that you would not redistribute the software. It could work like the way you sign for a renters card in a Video shop.
Actually, I believe it is there so that the children of a successful Author (Musician, whatever) are not made destitute when their Parent dies.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I honestly cannot understand how anyone could be so selfish as to say that it is not one's right to decide for themselves how the information they create is to be used.
If any one of you anti-copyright people has not spent at least several months of your free time working on something which you are giving away for free, then you have NO RIGHT to even argue about this. I expect anyone who responds to this post to start out by saying what it is that they have created.
Me? I've spent over a year working on a 3D game engine which is licensed under the LGPL.
All I can say is, if you don't like the way someone has licensed something, then just don't use their product. It just isn't right to say "I should be able to do whatever I want with this thing on which this person has spend months working." If it were not for them, the thing would not exist, and you certainly would not have it. So, if you want whatever it is that they have created, then give them your respect, damnit.
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I read these threads and wonder how intelligent people can be so fucking dense.Just because some artists and engineers are foolish enough to sign away their rights to a company doesn't make copyrights a bad thing.People and companies are entitled to make a profit off of original works they create and have every right to have these protected.Of course,what am I thinking this is the same place that railed against Metallica when they dared to make a stand for their rights.If we got rid of copyrights today,there really wouldn't be much incentive to produce much of anything.Why would someone devote vast amounts of time to anything without a profit.Would we go by the honor system? That would make it fun to be an author or artist for about five seconds when you realise you need to get a real job. Wake up simians.We're not that evolved yet.We're just chimps with tailors.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
The "vetican?"
Is that where Roman Catholic pets go for their rabies shots? Try 'Vatican.'
Later, when a sembalance of copyright enforcement came about, people started actually making better software, as they could spend more effort on the software project and less on anti-piracy measures. I think that without those high-level changes, Thailand would never have had localised versions of windows or office (but that might not have been a bad thing in the long run!)
Without copyright laws, perhaps we'd still have 64K 4.77MHz 8088 cpus with instructions on how to write our own programs in BASIC and a tape drive to boot (or 160k floppy if we're lucky). For without the will to innovate (the premsis here is that programmers spend more on copy protection than on innovation) there would be little room for "pushing the envelope", but this is admittedly a rather farfetched leap of logic.
To get back to the point, it's not copyright laws that are wrong in themselves. I think it's perfectly alright to copyright a certain piece of work to repay the author for his "creative imput" (a term I got from a friend at the University of Manchester - better acknowledge this!) if he so chooses. It's also perfectly alright to create from the ground up the same software for free if someone so chooses to spend his time on such a project. But it's the abuse of this system for financial (or political) purposes that isn't nice. To paraphrase a comment on microsoft that having a monopoly isn't illegal, but abusing it is, one might say that having a software copyright system is not the cause of our woes, it's the abuse of that system that is.
Karma makes sense. It makes a lot more sense if you add reincarnation.
Would be very different. Software would probably be customized to the point of the being unique to a particular application. I do not think the computer revolution would have happened. Remember, hardware accounted only for half of it. The more important half in terms of the way we function now as opposed to twenty years ago--geez am I really that old?--is the development of software that anyone could take out of a box and use. From the first killer app, the spread sheet, to the the most modern mathcad, software has increasingly been developed to solve universal problems. Prior to the PC revolution, most computer programs were written for a very specific purpose and for a very small audience. The company comptroller for instance. As a side note, I am not this old, but one of my first computer jobs at the end of college dealt with legacy code written in FORTRAN 66 and FORTRAN 77. Such software was not portable, not maintainable, and was not usable by the world at large. My older colleagues told me that all software was written that way. In the end, we had to scrap the code and rewrite it all based on specifications. What caused the software revolution that gave us real world software? That somethig was the copyright. Copyrights give the developer the incentive to develop universal--I use the term for want of a better one--software that anyone can use. With a copyright the developer recoups the cost and effort of developing complex software and can even make a profit. The open source movement in contrast is rebellion against abusive copyright enforcement, and monopolistic copyright holders. Amazingly the movement has gained momentum to the point that people are figuring out how to make money on code they essentially give away. But, without the ablity to copyright and charge users for the commodity of software, I think software would still be where it was twenty and more years ago.
The picture would be even more divergent for artists. Authors of the fiction we love to read, musicians, and others who create consumable works rely on copyrights to make a living. Without a copyright, an artist would have to rely on patrons or performances. While musicians can, and do make their living mainly off of performances, an author has not such option. The only way an author can make a living writing is to sell their works, or to acquire a patron. Since a it gives the artist a legal right to exclusive sell his or her work, a world without copyright in some sense would take us back a couple hundred years. At least I think it would. I honestly don't know how long the notion of a legal copyright has been with us. While big publishing and music companies have abused copyrights, copyrights are also what makes it possible for a person to be a full time author, make it easier to be a full time musician, or a full time film maker.
Ranting against copyright while not posting as an Anonymous Coward is hypocrisy.
Let us imagine a world without copyright:
Copyright dangles a carrot in front of you: "If I write this really good program that people like I will get praise and acceptance and money for my work." Do away with copyright and the only other motivation is a stick; produce this or else. This is a Yin and Yang world. There is an element of a stick under a copyright system: if I try to plagiarize something I get punished, and there is an element of a carrot in a non copyright system: "if the master likes me perhaps I'll get to eat"
In a world without copyright whoever is biggest and strongest gets to beat you into letting them put their name on any writing you produce. If you think corporations are abusive today wait until Guido and Company take over in the no copyright world.
Copyright is one of the cornerstones of modern technological society remove that cornerstone and everything collapses back to a pre capitalist feudal state. If you find the power that government and corporations wield against you oppressive in modern society imagine what they would be like in the stick motivating world with no copyright.
At least in today's world you have a right to any writing which you create. In a non copyright world you would have nothing of value to trade for sustenance other than your physical labor . Copyright is one of the things that lifted us out of the feudal world - get rid of it and we go right back to that era.
We've already tried a world without copyright - we rejected it because it didn't work worth a damn.
It's really simple in at least terms of electronic media. Authors would take whatever means needed to protect their inventions from copying. All software would become heavily copy protected with dongles etc. In this age of the internet you would have to connect to a license server run by the software publisher. All music would be heavily encrypted using mechanisms like those in the now defunct DVD rental player. This of course would drive up the costs of software considerably. Software would be sold under strict contracts that make current licenses look like child's play.
In terms of books and so forth the situation would be very grim. The main reason copyright laws were estabilished was to protect authors works from being pirated by publishers. Without this mechanism we would have no commercial authors - people who write for a living. There would still be books published for academic and similar reasons, but you would not find the Neal Stephenson's and Steven King's on the bookshelf.
Ground war in Asia? Civil unrest in USA? Vietnam2 (or china1)?
FACT: Microsoft is now the fourth biggest soft money contributor in the USA.
yahoo article
Observation: With these close election politicians will be running scared for contributons to win the next round. Especially the next commander and chief.
Observation: People have knee jerk reactions and are offended at the idea that IP law is to slanted toward companies.
It's not hard to see where this could go.
I believe copyrite term should be shortened and contract law reformed. And I have written an editorial on the subject.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Copyright came into being as a creation of royalty; kings and queens who were trying to control the spread of information. Select few individuals or companies would be given the "right to copy", that is, to print books at all.
The ones who wrote the Constituion viewed things like patents and copyrights not as goods in themselves, but as useful evils. If people are allowed to profit personally from their intellectual effort, then they will be able to spend more time involved in intellectual effort, rather than having to work some menial job in order to finance their work (or be already wealthy, as was the case with most scientists of the Renaissance).
They were well aware, as we should be today, that freedom of speech is fundamentally more important than copyright. Where the two conflict, freedom of speech should triumph.
As a side note, it may well be possible to prevent fraud without the use of copyright or patents. If I publish a book with Albert Einstein's name on it that describes physics as being magic provided by demons in terms of fundamentalist religious doctrine, it could be argued that I was committing fraud upon my consumers -- unless, of course, my name really was Albert Einstein...
HJ
-- A New World, Unordered http://www.anwu.org/
The problem is that while the utter freedom of intellectual property is the goal, you have to drag the rest of the economies to it as well.
The reality is that economic interests concerned have to be convinced that it is in their best interests otherwise you end up with the authorities (who, infact, author nothing but author-ize instead,) in country F rushing some kids bedroom and seizing property for a possible offense in country U.
The economic interests concerned are only concerned with their economic interests.
If you can come up with an economic argument (and screw everything and everybody else,) that can convince one of them to take a limited chance to see if there's a buck profit to be made on ten cents investment, you're in.
If you can't, it'll be settled the way it has traditionally settled right up to the end of last century.
Nineteenth century and prior wars were purely economic. From the Nepoleonic wars to the minor skirmishes of the Boxer rebellion and the Opium wars in the far east. The Boer, Zulu and a depressing litany of wholesale slaughter to encroach on marketing or resource territory.
The First World War was fought over the German Junker's marketing of their pigs to central and southern Europe. (Read The History of the Great War by Winston Churchill.)
The Second World War was fought over Axis econo-political control over an expanding territory. Since the planet wasn't expanding, we fought back.
Stalin's wholesale slaughter of the Ukranian Kulaks was committed in the name of agrarian reform.
The only purely idealogical war was the killing fields of Cambodia where almost a quarter of the population was murdered by their own children.
Fighting for piece is like fucking for chastity. Find another way. A concensual way.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Regardless of which principality chooses to enforce copyrights, large corporate copyright holders have taken the initiative by employing "coded-in" architecture. Hence, traditional allowances that have kept the privelages of the copyright holder balanced with the public interest -- i.e. Fair Use-- may be hardwired out of the copyrighted product.
Take, for example, several MPEG layers currently in design. MPEG 21 (and I believe 4) comes with a nifty "Intellectual Property Management Layer" for "digital rights management."
Guess who's been busy championing this brand of fine-tuned copyright control?
Leonardo Chiariglione, executive director of the Secure Digital Music Initiative and a leader in the MPEG group, has been a main proponent of the MPEG-21 concept. SDMI is developing a generic architecture to handle security and digital rights management for Internet audio.
(from Electronic Engineering Times article)
I think Lawrence Lessig's book Code (link to O'Reily review) clearly explains the consequences of allowing powerful, corporate copyright holders to create their own copyright policy through soft/hardware architecture.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
Copyright law is there to protect businesses from each other. How much does it hurt if one person doesn't pay for something? Especially if you only consider the intelectual property costs (i.e. we're not talking about someone stealing CD's, we're talking about someone "stealing" music). The cost is actually not that great especially if the "thief" had no intention of actually buying the product. However, imagine for a moment what would happen if someone could re-brand a product and sell it for themselves, legally? Without copyright law someone could start printing copies of the latest book by (insert your favorite author here) and sell them for whatever price they chose without ever giving a dime back to the author.
Copyright law is intended to protect the interests of the "artist", but the most serious concern is organized "theft", not individual theft. If you look at the biggest concerns currently in terms of software piracy and copyright violation, it's not individuals duping copies for their friends, it's organized re-selling of copyrighted materials, things like counterfeit software (complete with fake registration cards), pre-release black market movies, etc. This is of the most concern because A) by laying down cash for these items we know that the buyers of these items are exactly the people who would potentially pay for the real product (assuming the price differential is not too great), so this represents money that should have gone to the "artists" but did not, and B) sometimes people do not know that these products are "phony" (this is especially the case with counterfeit software). Without copyright law, this kind of thing would be legal. Even more worrisome is that someone could manufacture packaging and product that looked identical to the "true" product and buyers would have no way to tell which purchase would result in money going back to the original developers / artists.
I think we do need copyright protection. The question is how it is used and how it is enforced. After all, both Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds protect their software under copyright law (Bill Gates to make sure people pay for his software, Linus to make sure people don't pretend his software is their's and charge too much money for it).
I don't know at what point, but somebody decided that the whole issue was actually making copies, not protecting IP. Which is interesting because I do not see how actually copying a work causes any infringement upon IP rights. If you make a duplicate, that duplicate still bears all of the branding of hte original creator - and makes it even less likely for you to be able to say "I invented/created this".
Or at least that's what I thought until I read Webster's definition of the word copyright. Hmmm... I guess They got to Webster first. :-) But the definition is kind of interesting...
copyright \Cop"y*right\, n. The right of an author or his assignee, under statute, to print and publish his literary or artistic work, exclusively of all other persons. This right may be had in maps, charts, engravings, plays, and musical compositions, as well as in books.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
How could this definition apply back in the days before it was even possible to "distribute" a piece of work like we can today? Can this still be interpreted such that distribution rights matter when it comes to people trying to literally steal and redistribute for the purpose of some sort of personal gain?
Call me crazy, but if my interpretation is correct, MP3's don't do not currently do this. Neither does DeCSS. Hmmm... Just my thoughts.
However, in Taiwan, Son May is a licensed local business. They employ people, pay taxes, pay business license fees, sponsor local kids sports groups, etc. From a local point of view, they are not illegitimate at all. Copyright law is a Western invention and then we have the gall to decree our invented concept "morally correct" and call names at Taiwan? Many other nations consider the US attitude on guns or wealth accumulation a far worse behavior. Our women don't cover their faces like in many Arab nations. Should we change and conform to meet ideals of other people in other nations?
I see no difference here.
And you know what, the world seems to be getting along just fine, and Son May sells its products all over the world without "authorities" seeming to care at all. Walk into any asian video/music store, or a comic shop that deals in japanese anime. At least half will stock Son May products. And this is in the US.
Does the US seem to care? Nope. Who's getting hurt? Answer, no one. What's our response? Hey! Taiwan is one of out "most favored nations".
Your offspring should start out the same way as everybody else.
Which everybody else are you talking about? Are you only going to give your kid one meal a day four times a week so he can be just like the average kid? Are you not going to teach him to read since most everybody else is illiterate, too?
I'd wager not. You'll probably give your kid nice clothes so they don't freeze in the winter and good food so they aren't malnourished and you'll send them to school. So obviously you aren't comparing them to the world population at large, but rather to some smaller, more select group of "peers". But why is are the peer criteria you selected the correct ones?
If I know how to make a certain algorithm, I should be able to use it in my software...
But the only reason you know about this algorithm is because of someone else. How is that different from monetary inheritance? If you figure out the algorithm all on your own then, sure, you can use it. But you haven't. You just "inherited" the knowledge of the algorithm. Why do you make a distinction between monetary inheritance and intellectual inheritance? If I have to start at ground zero to gain my money why don't you have to start at ground zero to gain knowledge?
I think a lot of the old pre-copyright artists/composers were comissioned to produce works, so that would throw self employment out the window right there - any IP creator would become a beggar (the old 'starving artist') looking for wealthy benefactors; e.g., Metallica would need some businessman to suckup to to pay the bills, and that would suck worse that what we've got as far as individual freedom of expression goes.
Researching Leonardo's source of income....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well, it seems to me like this could be solved by having a default duration for patents, and then allowing the patent to be renewed if the holder could clearly demonstrate that they had been working on the patented technology, but that it would take longer for a return on his/her investment.
True. I do think there is a place for some aspects of copyright law, however. Currently, I can do creative work to get attention for my ability to do that work- something I can charge for (not the IP but the doing of the work). It's easier if I can be certain that the stuff I produce is associated with me. I see the primary purpose of copyright law to make it illegal for someone to impersonate me and claim they did my work...
Just because noncommercial copying could be as free as air does not mean commercial entities get the rights to do anything they want. It sounds like a lot of people are thinking in terms of vastly expanded fair use. There's still a place for copyright- to maintain artistic control over derivative works- but I don't think it means what you think it means. In particular, I think the common assumption, copyright == right to money, is astonishing and absurd. Copyright == your name engraved on the IP. Earning money off that is _your_ problem, and is much less likely if the copying is completely ubitiquous and costless. The problem becomes how to make money on having a reputation, which copyright will still protect.
Other than a few exceptions, software licenses do NOT derive from copyright law. They derive from *contract* law. Why do you think they're called license agreements?
Tossing out copyright law will do nothing to change the MS EULA or other proprietary licenses. The problem is that the general public thinks all of this stuff is operating under copyright law, while the industry is operating under a mutant contract law. What needs to be done is either A) base licenses on copyright law, or B) make these licenses explicit contracts instead of a unilateral declaration that the user has entered an agreement.
My personal view is that copyright law should be eliminated *concurrently* with a fix in contract law. A consumer needs to explicitly agree to a software license and convey this acceptance to the licensor in all cases that would remove a legal right of the consumer. In all other forms of contracts, this is done by means of a signature. Although this seems unworkable, it is not. It protects the consumer from entering into binding contracts of which they are not aware. It also forces the industry into using means of IP protection that do not rely upon gun-toting police (DeCSS).
For most consumer software packages, encryption and/or registration keys will work. For larger commercial works, the sales force may need to get customer signatures, just as they do when selling support contracts.
At the same time, to play my own adversary, I do recognize that "classic" copyright law adequately performed the role of an abbreviated and standard implicit contract for two centuries. But at the minimum the DMCA and UCITA have to go.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I would be *glad* if people listened to my music. If I wanted money from it, i would make concerts and so forth.
So what's to prevent big concert promoters from making millions off of your music, while your own MP3.com sales earn you only enough to rent out the VFW hall? Some people would call this exploitation, while others would say it's what you get for abandoning your work.
I can think of several solutions. One of them is: shop your music around to producers or agents under a NDA. When a sale is made, specify in the contract that the producer will book only concerts that gain you a percentage.
If copyright went away, the producers would create a standard contract (probably several) that all producers would be party to. If one of these industry agreements would be to give the author a 10% take on concerts, then any concert promoter that had signed off on that contract could not stiff you. And a shady concert promoter who did not sign up with any standard industry agreement would soon be blackballed (as Shoreline Ampitheatre will only accept concerts under the ASCAP agreement, for instance). This is a form of blackballing, and as such it will be very controversial. But its no different than Free Software users and developers universally ostracising LinuxOne.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
...but for a different reason to that of most people. It seems to me that there ought to be a fundamental human right for two consenting adults to do whatever they like with each other in private. I believe that these rights should cover everything from sharing DNA to sharing data. Copyright gives other people the right to interfere with the private actions of individuals. Whatever the benefits that copyright may bring to society (and I do not deny that they exist) it seems fundamentally wrong that a third party is allowed to interfere in the privacy of my own home if I decide to share something with a friend. The powers that are required to enforce copyright rules seem to me to be too great to allow governments to wield them. So while I can sympathise with all those authors out there who feel they have a right to control their creations I don't think that the solution is to grant them the right to tell me what I can do in my own home. Having said this I must add that I have paid for almost every (maybe even every) item of intellectual property in my home that the law currently requires us to pay for because I think it is good to recompense creators for their work. If a way can be found to make people pay for IP without what I see as human rights violations then I'll be all for it. But otherwise I think the price is too much to pay.
--
-- SIGFPE
copywrite law exists to ensure that there's an incentive for development. It costs millions to develop an OS, or a drug, or the design for a new car. If there was no protection for these, and therefore less return on their investment, there would be millions lost, and there would be *much* less incentive to innovate.
This goes into "Mythical Man Month" territory. Basically you cannot simply throw money at someone an expect "innovation", it's simply something people come up with on the spur of the moment.
Where it might take lots of money is in creating a product from an inovative idea. Maybe copyright should then be tied to the terms investors consider reasonable. AFAIK none would want to tie up their money for nearly a century.
The etymology is "right to copy." You can look up its history in any good text on Copyright laws.
Catseye, amature etymologist and long time John Ciardi "Word in your ear" fan.
P.S. I think laws that say cars are owned by their manufacturers are bunk. I don't make cars.
See any parallels?
Isn't that the essence of the GPL? Using copyright law to defeat a part of copyright law which we/they/FSF/GNU/RMS doesn't like?
Then you write...
I agree completely. Wonder what that means for the GPL...
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)