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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.
--
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
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?)
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...
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
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..
Copyright should ensure that hard work is rewarded. If everything an individual/company did was up for grabs companies would spend more time investing in uncopyable software/products and less time inventing new and wonderous toys for us to play with.
Imagine what it'd be like is every piece of commercial software came with a device to allow access to the software? Some kind of optical de-scrambler (anyone remember Elite on the Speccy?). Or a device you had to connect to USB/some other port?
It'd cost us a lot more in the end. Movies costing millions of $s (which are occasionally good) wouldn't get made (imagine life with no 5th Element or Matrix if you dare).
Maybe music would benefit without the controlling megacorps and maybe we'd get used to the lack of huge mane bands (U2, Mariah or whoever).
Maybe other areas would also benefit from a lack of protection but I doubt we'd end up with certain high quality products. Open source only stands proud in the light of companies like M$, Sun and others IMHO.
Anyway, without copyright protection we wouldn't have enough articles posted to /. to pass the day... we might even end up doing some work :-)
Iain
Better the pride that resides in a Citizen of the world, than the pride that divides when a colourful rag is unfurled
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.
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
-henrik
<SARCASM>
I'm so glad we have copyright, you don't want communist-lackeys like Leonardo creating things, or Mozart, or Bach, we need the truly great products of a copyright and profit driven art, would we have what we have today if it wasn't for copyright? Britney Spears, Christine Aguillera, Boyzone, 5ive?
What high-art copyright provides...
</SARCASM>
The difference would be twofold, (1) The quantity of stuff produced would go down, true, because only the people who truly wanted to do something would do it, and (2) Since they are usually the people who have the actual talent, the quality would go up.
You might not like classical music, or Shakespeare, or any of the other people that produced stuff before copyright was invented, but I don't reckon people will know who Britney Spears is in a thousand years...
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
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.
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
"I'm so glad we have copyright, you don't want communist-lackeys like Leonardo creating things, or Mozart, or Bach, we need the truly great products of a copyright and profit driven art, would we have what we have today if it wasn't for copyright? Britney Spears, Christine Aguillera, Boyzone, 5ive? "
It's worth remembering that the great artists you mention all required wealthy patrons. So let's be clear - if you eliminate copyright laws, you require a system of patronage of individual artists by the wealthy, or support by the state/taxpayers. You think you don't like a world with proprietary sotwere? What about a world where all the most talented artists were on the payroll of the very wealthy? Do you think you would have anything resembling free expression in the arts?
Otherwise, the poster who said that _all_ artists would have to spend most of their time in other jobs to pay the rent is right. Copyright allows artists to focus on creating art and not have to worry about a day job. I think that any problems can be dealt with by ensuring strict time limits.
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".