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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?"
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?)
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".)
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..
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!
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
<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"
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.
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".