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Copyright Law for the Future: Control & Creativity
ablair writes: "MacSurfer is linking to a truly excellent article by Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, on the copyright balance between Control & Creativity. A must-read for those interested in everything from the RIAA-mp3 battles to the way GPL & BSD Licenses should be."
Here's a link to the ad free version.
No-Ads
Or maybe even a few scientists at CERN...
Cheers,
Ian
thank you.
I don't think so. I believe that purely voluntary, uncoerced payment could not only be adequate, but better for both the users and producers of information products. Traditionally, publishers and retailers took the lion's share of income, so considerably smaller revenue will mean equal or greater profit for the creator. In other words, if you don't make the creators force you to pay them, you can pay them a lot less and they'll be just as well-rewarded and encouraged to make more good stuff.
I do believe that it has to become easier and more efficient, which is why I've worked on a system for more efficient donations. Processing donations is a lot easier than processing verified, mandatory payments, and the issues that kill a micropayment system aren't really a problem for a microdonation system. With an open system like this, you can implement the allocation process in all sorts of interesting ways, such as integration with what you choose to view, or to file for repeat viewing. Convenience is absolutely key, and crufty web services like Amazon Honor System are just not going to cut it for allocating a dozen nickels and pennies per hour.
However, it would be irresponsible to drop copyright before this concept is proven on the market. It can be tested perfectly well without changing copyright law. The competitive advantage of a free (gratis) product is obvious, and if people will pay, free products will displace products with a mandatory cost. If they pay more for free (libre) products, then these will be the best strategy for profit-seeking developers.
Eventually, copyright would just seem pointless. But this can only happen when the users take responsibility for rewarding good products.
that applies about 2 people on
- - - -
linux is free for a reason
cos no-one would pay for it
can't you see that this forum is already dominated by trolls? quit trying to be a trend setter and just follow our lead, okay dipshit? fucking crap flood now or we will reply to your post with so many trolls, the weight of our negative moderations will tear a new black hole in your ASS
thank you
That would their mouths.
suck
my
cock
"Reprinted with the permission of Random House"
Ironic, huh?
In the article, Lawrence Lessig calls Richard Stallman "the philosopher of our age." Only if the majority of the community can look beyond "GNU/Linux", "GPL sucks," etc. and see the deeper issues as Professor Lessig does...
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
before we can kick it
you gotta lick it
if we're gonna do this right
*insert techno beat*
lick it
lick it
lick it lick it
would you sir, please do me a favor and stick your "point" into my "black hole?" I'd really enjoy it. ;)
I believe you mean: your mutha-fuckin' mouth. yeah, put it in yo' mouth.
yes splooge a nice big wad of your steaming cum into my mouth! a nice big wad of hot grits wouldn't hurt either
Broke college students and an entire culture raised on broadcast radio, tv and the premise that media and entertainment is free.
.
Think about this example - think back to the days where a personal cd player cost around $150, sucked batteries etc, etc. Think of what the CD industry was before Columbia House (and scamming their ass hard). It sucked, virtually nobody had cds - why? well, because the ability to play awesome quality music / not have to ff, etc, etc wasn't worth the cost.
I have no idea how the entertainment industry can think that their attempts at DRM, etc can compete with "free" or at the very least "cheap alternative" sources like the radio or the cds burned by polly the pirate. You can't change the mindset of people who were raised to turn on the tv / radio and tune to whatever station and get a program without any hastle.
The cat is out of the bag, more people use the "illegal" services than use the legal - hell - if you use a commercial DRM supporting player - i.e. rio 600 - there is actually value lost - the interface is a fucking pain compared to how i get files to my rio volt (cd mp3 player). Not that diamond could ever make software worth a damn anyways (hw kicks ass), but still . .
Now the video industry has something that actually might save their ass - DVD special features, the fact that data speeds over the net are slow and the lack of a comercial player for DIVX on your TV - which are the only things that are preventing DIVX from being in almost every household.
Quality sure as hell isn't stopping people - the new 4.12 divx codec looks damn near dvd quality at full screen if postprocessing is set to max (needs a good box tho, about 1 GHz, damn).
What can I say, this isn't a financial war they are fighting, but one against a mindset, and they are approaching it the wrong way.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Actually, the trolls are probably the most creative /. contributors. At their best.
I think Lessig is trying to apply prior situations to current situations in a way that will not work at all. When talking about cable TV or the player piano rolls, Congress had the ability to restrict use or distribution of these products without too much difficulty. Also, both cable and piano rolls required resources to produce and distribute.
P2P sharing is a completely different idea though, in the digital world, it becomes much harder to track distribution of products, and much easier to distribute, thus making it much harder for Congress to regulate P2P. If one tried to force a P2P service to pay those industries whose products it distributes, how would one keep track of all the media and account for it with the volume that goes over each network, or even the bigger problem, how would a service stay in business when it has to pay for transactions when there will most likely be other services out there which will not comply for various reasons. It's not possible for Congress to simply legislate on the internet, any legislation enacted in the spirit which Lessig is talking about would require a complete overhaul of how we interact with the internet in some way, most likely infringing on free speech as well.
As every type of media becomes digital and easily able to be distributed, its not possible for Congress to deal with digital mediums as it did with player pianos. I'm afraid that this is one situation where we are going to have actually tread new ground instead of relying on previous cases. I'm not sure exactly how we should legislate internet distribution, or even if we should, but I know that any effective or meaningfull legislation won't be based on any previous copyright ideas.
shouldn't you be looking at bridal catalogues or something?
In the US, the Law gets its authority from democratically elected government. The Government gets its authority from the people, as conveyed through the democratic process (voting). If the Government has control over the information the people have access to, then they have the ability to manipulate people's ability to make an informed voting decision. This corrupts the very democratic process from which the law gets its authority.
This article should be required reading for anybody interested in intellectual property. No black-and-white stuff here. But the people who most need to read it, and the ones that I sincerely hope will, are the seven old men and two old women who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawrence Lessig is an excellent, intelligent writer who likely strikes a chord with many Slashdot readers. I highly recommend reading his book "The future of Ideas". I got a copy for my dad for Christmas, and he, even while being a computer novice, now sees the poignant issues Lessig introduces.
Incidentally, my dad has now given the book to me, so that I can learn to express my thoughts on the issue much more coherently. I've been discussing the issues with my dad and friends for years, but hopefully now I'll be able to explain my position with more clarity.
almost 4 AM HERE! _completely!___ tanked! i'm talking more than almost ever here! ehckin ' out the ./ o nthe net.....don't know the subject....once again.....spinning head drunk....just letting yall know hte status.......ma kkin.
... as versus the Craft of Programming. Perhaps one interpretation of the situation is that people view the world in different ways. RMS was incensed that a closed system prevented modification whereas the corporation probably thought of it was preserving their investment (by limiting competitors). Much as in the same way that you can view a brick as either a contructive building block or alternatively as a radical social statement (by chucking through windows), you can use (or abuse) code in similar ways. If you take the ESR viewpoint that true hackerdom (creative aspect) is scratching an itch, then it conflicts with the programming as purchased service (business logic embodied in codified format). Without some form of control (via a form of pricing mechanism) in limiting free-riders, the second form is economically valueless which sorta kills the need for programmers (and their high salaries). The crafting of such systems now drives an increasing segment of the economy which means less tolerance for purely artistic endeavours (e.g. emulators for the sake of showing off which in turns shake the vertically integrated hardware-software model).
Free resources (as stated by Lessig) are effectively entities which have yet to be subscribed an economic value through elaborate technical transformations. Oil was basically a inflamable seepage from the ground until industrialists figured out a way to convert it into kerosene (which saved the whales from being hunted to death) and subsequent catalytic conversion into many synthetic downstream products. Similarly many bits of code have yet to find their niche and Lessig makes the valid point that if their original creators don't have much of a clue, then excessive control means they will never be adapted for something more useful (oak->java, tcl->expect, etc).
LL
however, is the fact that courts must use previous cases to establish the legality of any law. Most courts, except for the Supremes, are unwilling to decide on new territory or set new precendents, simply because they are likely to be reversed on appeal. (looks bad on the resume and all).
From the summary:
to the article.....:)
"Lawrence Lessig is professor of law at Stanford Law School and author of The Future of Ideas, from which this is excerpted. Reprinted with permission of Random House"
VV
I would just like to recommend one little change. I think that a precondition to a copyright on software should be that the publisher either distribute it with the source code, or publish the communication interfaces (network protocols, file formats) and place the source code in escrow. Such a system would combat the winner take most result described by Nicholas S. Economides.
We can make it happen!
Sure, these ideas may be highly preferable to what we have today, but how will we convince the corporations involved that we're acting in their best interest?
That's the biggest obstacle, in my mind.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Ultimately the battle expressed over copyright reduces to something more simple: a battle over change. Change always challenges the status quo, always upsets the apple cart; as such it tends to provoke strong protest amongst the reactionary elements in society.
Who are these elements? Essentially they fall into two camps:
- the folks who profit from the status quo and suspect that the change will reduce their favored status; and
- the Luddites, people who're afraid of change simply because they want things to remain the way that they are, or more likely the way that they imagine things are, and refuse to adapt to what the future might bring.
So far in human history very few societies have been successful in suppressing change. And all of these societies have eventually fallen to others who didn't repress the changes and instead used them to gain an advantage over their neighbors. In today's world, where change is coming at an ever-accelerating pace, a society that refuses to embrace change is doomed to be left behind to flounder about in the past while others move into the future.
People who accept change and attempt to use it to better the lives of themselves or others are wheat; those who refuse change, the Luddites and those like them, are chaff. In the grand scheme of things nobody misses the chaff when it's gone, because it was useless to begin with. Chaff is discarded, with nary a thought given to its fate.
We see the battle between the wheat and the chaff quite clearly in the 21st century because change is occurring at such a rapid pace. The Luddites scream loudly and long, picking this change or that to vent their fears upon, because there are so many new things that challenge their desire for life to remain stagnant. This isn't a slow process as in past centuries, eventually gaining steam over the course of lifetimes; today it happens in the space of years or months, one revolution of technology after another. The Luddites don't have a chance to die out and be replaced by newer, younger generations who aren't so invested in the status quo. They're being challenged, again and again, by the change they fear so much, changes which are increasingly alien to a mind-set that refuses to accept that the world is rushing into the future regardless of their personal whims.
What this means to those of us who do accept the future and try to make sense of it, or even to shape it in a fashion that does more good than harm, is that the Luddites represent a powerful, if minority, view backed by all the money invested in the status quo. And as money and power are always concentrated in the status quo, since those who have the power and money maintain the status quo to preserve their own privilege, this is a force to be reckoned with.
Since the Luddites don't have time to die off and be replaced, they instead try to put the brakes on the future through the passage of legislation designed to halt progress in its tracks. As a solution this is a damned silly way to do things; in today's world it's impossible to make change 'stop' in any real sense of the word. The Luddite solution is a pathetic one, in essence a retaliatory backlash of little effect or importance. Instead of offering real solutions to thorny problems posed by new technology and innovation, they instead attempt to ban innovation altogether and return society to a past where the technology didn't exist. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle is a futile effort, one that often ends up harming people in the process.
Not that the negative effects of trying to prevent change ever trouble the Luddites. By definition these folks are invested in a world view solely defined by their own ideas of how things should be; if the reality challenges the fantasy they indulge in they have no qualms about trying to force reality into a more pleasing mold regardless of who gets harmed in the process. Luddites are inherently selfish lot with little regard for others.
In today's world the Luddites are attempting to legislate their fantasies into reality; the fact that such legislation does nothing whatsoever to halt progress hasn't yet made an impact upon them. They think that if they just pass enough laws that somehow, in some mysterious way, change will stop. For the rest of us this is mostly annoying; although a few of us have been harmed by these laws the vast majority are relatively unaffected. This won't last.
Eventually the Luddites will discover that their laws aren't putting the brakes on progress and that the majority of their neighbors are happily walking into the future regardless of their efforts. When this occurs the Luddites will become violent, as pitiful reactionaries always do, although their violence will almost certainly be orchestrated through the instrument of government. When this happens, when the majority finally clue into the fact that the Luddites will use any means at their disposal to keep their fellow citizens trapped in the 20th century with them, that's when the real war will begin. This is when you'll see flagrant violations of the Constitution in the name of 'the common good', as well as government-backed efforts involving force to shut down any enterprise which challenges the status quo. It could be argued that such things are already beginning to take place in the United States as the Luddites become increasingly vocal and ever-more-willing to enforce their views at the expense of others, with a government eager to accommodate whoever has the cash.
It's possible that the Luddites might win in the U.S. They have the money and the power, and Americans are far removed from their freedom-loving ancestors. The heritage that formed a nation through blood and death is thin indeed in today's society, where so long as the people get their bread and circuses they're willing to look the other way. Most Americans today don't think freedom is worth fighting for, much less dying for, especially if they can still catch their favorite TV shows for a decent price.
But even if the Luddites win here, there are plenty of places elsewhere that'll happily seize on what the future has to offer and use it to their advantage. And then, like empires of the past, the nation of America will become chaff and left to rot in it's own backward, Luddite garbage, a second-class 20th century power in a 21st century world. As an American I'll mourn what happens my nation, but the rest of the world will treat us like the chaff we are - useless and best forgotten.
The question is: is there still enough of that revolutionary heritage left in the majority of us to embrace the future and fight the Luddites, even if it means that the fight might become violent? Or are there simply not enough of us left that care that much? By violence I don't mean armed revolution, but rather a willingness to say "that law isn't right, that law doesn't make sense in this new world, and I won't obey it even if it means that the government might hurt me and punish me for my disobedience". As someone who will someday soon be a father and wishes his daughter to grow up in a free society this question isn't at all academic.
I'm beginning to think that there aren't enough of us willing to take that risk, and that America will indeed fall by the wayside. If that's the case, if the battle is already lost before it's even picked up steam, then perhaps I'd better serve my child by moving her to a place that's still invested in the future. Letting her grow up in a country trapped in the past seems to be the worst possible disservice I could do her, especially if she's surrounded by moralistic Luddites bent on shaping her to their backwards, anachronistic point of view - or punishing her if she refuses to conform.
What do you think?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
entire genres of music have existed solely because they reuse copyrighted material in new and interesting ways. the genres 'hip hop' and 'drum n bass' grew out of sped up / manipulated beats sampled from james brown and other funk musicians. because creativity managed to sneak by copyright in this case, the music flourished. hell, hip hop is pretty close to #1 genre of music in north america now (even if you hate it... a lot of sucks, yep). as for drum n bass, well, it's one of the most fast-changing and innovative genres out there. whether or not you like these genres, a lot of people do, and the interesting thing is their roots were in copyright violation.
anyway, the point is if you let copyright win every time, you have no idea what future you might be killing.
mp3s by me
Maybe someone out there can shed some light on these two question of mine:
1. What started the whole royalties system that hollywood now operates on? It seems to be unique to that industry. For instance, if I am a house painter and I paint someone's house I get X dollars. Period. No royalties. I don't get an extra 50 cents each time someone sees the house (a performance) nor do I even get additional money when the house is sold to someone (publication). How did this start and why doesn't the rest of the world recognize how fubar that is? Why aren't the creative works of everyone else benefitting from that system?
2. In the case of film, who owns the copyright? If the copyright period is creator's lifetime + 70 years who is it measured off of? the screenwriter? the director? the producer? It actually all seems to be work for hire by the studio in which case is it the 95 year period or does the studio have the right to keep it alive idefinately?
I honestly don't know the answers but what really makes me wonder is why nobdy else in the country even asks the questions.
Mr. Lessig has written an interesting article, and I think it was worth reading.
Still, I think he has misses the point. He says (I paraphrase) that the internet has the possibility to fundamentally change the system, but that we are simply using it to recreate the old system on a larger/different scale.
Cable television, he also says, was the first Napster. But I think both of these are completely wrong.
As has been pointed out before, and as bears pointing out again, Napster was a file sharing service which allowed people to share files they already had on their computers. Napster itself generated no content, not even content copied from other providers. It was not a one to many medium, as cable television certainly is.
As far as I see it, Napster was really a search engine -- but one with an interesting usage agreement. "We will tell you where to find music on other people's computers, but only if you run our software and agree to share your music." And you didn't even really have to share your music, if you didn't want to! Napster worked because of the fact that a lot of people thought it was a really cool idea, not because they provided better content.
How would a compulsory licensing scheme work for something like this? It wouldn't at all. It doesn't even apply. Are you going to say that facilitating the transfer of a music file over the internet, even if that file doesn't pass through your server, and even if both parties may in fact already legitimately have license to the file makes you subject to a fee (although, apparently, this is what the courts decided)? Otherwise you're left with charging everyone who uses the service for files that are downloaded from their machines.
Furthermore, the internet has the capability to be as many things as people desire simultaneously. It is not limited to reconfigured one-to-many offerings and commercial ventures. Nor is it limited to free exchange of ideas. Internet bandwidth is not unlimited, but neither is the "bandwidth" of a person. The beauty of a computer network is that it is an on demand service, and one person can seek out whatever he or she wants.
Cable television, radio, film: all of these are bound by issues of streaming. There are a limited number of TV or radio stations, even on cable or satellite, and they all broadcast only in real time. Therefore, a decision has to be made regarding what is available. Likewise, movie theaters can only show a certain number of movies per day, and so they must choose to show those they think will make the most money.
But look at video rental! Video rental is more like a file-sharing model: you can get whatever movie you want (as long as you can find the right video store), and you can watch it when you want. Movies come from many different studios and directors, and video stores facilitate finding them. Unlike non-commercial file-sharing, there is copy protection built into the movies, however, so that when you want to watch one, you have to pay for the privilege.
I can envision a real-world/napster hybrid: "Here is a list of club members and the movies/CDs/books they own. If you are a member of the club, you have the right to request a copy of any movie/CD/book owned by a club member. If more than one member owns the work, you may choose which member to ask. Having received a copy of the work, you are now considered to own it also and may receive requests for copies." I am pretty sure that there are clubs like this for trading, especially, DVDs.
Finally, while there may be much more commericial content available electronically than before, it is also easier than ever for an individual to create his own content.
The internet is not a book, it's paper.
Phil
We're wanted men. I have the death sentence in 12 systems!
>radically improve funding for the Patent Office, and mandate fundamental improvements in its functioning.
There is another approach on patenting, that has been followed by other countries for a long time.
No technical control of inventions at all.
The patent is a mere proof of anteriority of
deposit. You can patent Windows if you want.
The courts are the only judges of the validity of your claim.
Advantages : no bureaucratic authority. Only disputed claims cost money, so cost of patenting is low.
Should I submit my information to the ICQ matching serve?
You are an idiot - who the hell is going to pay just look at the code.
$5 per file is way too much - maybe $5 per application, but even then....
It's about money and corruption. The use of the law as a vehicle for theft. The erosion of values and the structure of our society.
when they are either followed or capable of being enforced.
The internet is a medium where we can vote a referendum without going to the polls. No matter what the courts or congress decide, music will be shared. Napster may be dead, but we now have Gnutella.
I just realized something. You always hear that you need to "do something about it," implying voting or writing your congressman about an issue. We need to "speak up." Well, it occurred to me that we are saying something, we're lobbying in our own way All the millions of people out there sharing information freely are saying "I believe this should be available to me, in this format, at this price." We just aren't talking in the way congress, the government, and the industry wants to listen to.
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration, we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
Dont get cocky.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.
This troll has already been accepted into the Troll Library. There is no need to repost this troll, because it will be done for you. Go eat a bag of hell.
Thank you for your contribution.
It's all there even after the IE5 has "cleared" the browsing history and cookies!
The easiest way to find the hidden files and directories is to install Cygwin and use find to search for "index.dat" in your Windows directory.
Someone should give Microsoft hell for this "feature". Any ideas how to best make noise about this?
The owls are not what they seem
The actual base idea behind the entire copyright issue is very simple. Although the article does a good job describing it sometimes simple is better. Man since the beginning has always understood property to be tangible. For instance the caveman who has a club can protect his club from theft (usually by using it). However what about the neanderthal(sp?) who invented fire. Assuming he could speak do you think he would have said "Sorry about this guys, but I figured out this whole fire thing.. So I'll tell you what you can make fire off of my fires, but I want 2 shiny beads in return." What do you think they would do... See above reference of caveman with club. Point is "You can't protect a idea". In the end the statement is true one way or another...
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
This was a good piece, although shorter versions of it can be found at many places.
Content creators have it tough in this time. They are told to make money off their content, but the content sellers (time/warner, random house, etc) will help you do that only if you the content creator agree to the terms for selling content. The author has little flexibility in negotiating with the content provider if they want to make a profit.
In the early 1990's I felt that intellectual endeavors had zero economic value. I was not disparaging the pursuit of wealth or even making a cynical comment about the publishing market (I was an unpublished writer). I was merely stating what I felt to be an obvious point. The market cannot properly assess the value of artistic objects. My creative writing was (I felt) terrific, and yet no publisher would take a chance. And why would they? They had a bottom line to worry about, and I was not so naive to believe that any of my creative works would be a cash cow for a publishing company.
5 years later, the Internet was upon us, and suddenly, I no longer had to worry about getting published. Everybody and their 15 year old brother could publish a decent web page. It was a glorious time, but it threatened the livelihood of content creators (who probably weren't making a lot of dough off selling content anyway).
For me, nothing had changed. My goal was widespread distribution. Since I could accomplish that without begging a publisher to back me, I no longer needed publishers anymore. And nothing really had changed because I operated under the assumption that no economic value was to be gained from writing fiction to begin with.
Even though many artists/intellectuals are resigned to their output having no commercial value, most people still like the idea of buying the book at the bookstore or renting the video. Time Warner/Blockbuster/Random House are content facilitators. They provide easy access to art in a medium we prefer. In other words, TW/Blockbuster is offering a convenience service, not content. For that reason, content providers should not have the ability to restrict content in order to offer us the convenience of providing it for a price.
Of course, maybe what I say doesn't apply so much to the movie world, with lavish budgets and special effects. But then again, perhaps the big studio film came about only because of the aggregation of power of the Hollywood film industry. And remember, individuals now can produce special effects comparable to what studios coudl do 10 or 20 years ago.
Perhaps it is idealistic to believe that content creators should offer their content for free. After all, they have to buy their videocams, their PC's and their hosting service. And a lucky few find it immensely rewarding, so obviously they would want corporate backing. But at the moment, there are few advantages for content creators to hand over rights to a convenience/distribution service like Time/Warner/AOL. Profits are puny, and the restrictions on access are contrary to the artist's hope. One example concerns my friend's newspaper articles. His newspaper refuses him access to his own articles. And his articles remain in this database, totally inaccessible except for those willing to pay a fee to access it.
Free and commercial content have coexisted and will continue to do so. Even though we may complain about the strictness with which content providers guard the content they have bought, at least distribution companies are helping to make artistic works available (at a price) to the general public. There are thousands of music bands out there that nobody has ever heard of; MTV and Time/Warner have the power to provide the infrastructure and the publicity and distribution. Perhaps that is unnecessary, but without content providers like this, would we lose the common cultural heritage that makes us a culture?
Robert Nagle, idiotprogrammer Austin TX
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
The same solution is possible in the context of music on the Net. But here, rather than balance, the rhetoric is about "theft" and "crime." Congress should empower file sharing by recognizing a similar system of compulsory licenses. These fees should not be set by an industry set on killing this new mode of distribution. They should be set, as they have always been set, by a policy maker keen on striking a balance. If only such a policy maker were somewhere to be found.
What that last sentence means is that Congress makes laws. If we want good laws, we need good Senators and Congressmen. We seem to have a shortage of them, however, especially on this issue. Rick Boucher is the only one who comes to mind.
This cannot be said enough: In a democratic society, the people are the government. If you want good people (specifically on this issue) in Congress, vote them in! Ignore the paid advertisements by PACs supporting/slamming one candidate or another over some meaningless hot button issue. Find out where the candidates stand on the issues that matter and vote based on that. Get your friends to vote that way. Fax (mail letters are ignored now due to anthrax concerns) your Congress-critter and state your opinion, clearly and concisely. (That makes them take notice more than anything else.) Get your friends to do so as well. If you find that your representative doesn't know the first thing about this "freedom of information" thing, do your best to educate them, from the standpoint of someone who put them in office, and who can take them out.
This is your government, people. If it fails, it's because you failed it.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Sharing. The principle that "whats yours is mine and whats mine is yours". And how about a name that lets people feel that they're part of a group or community...
Oh, wait, didn't somebody try that already?
Rip, mix, burn.
After all, it's your music.
Apple, of course, wants to sell computers. Yet their ad touches an ideal that runs very deep in our history. For the technology that they (and of course others) sell could enable this generation to do with our culture what generations have done from the very beginning of human society: to take what is our culture; to "rip" it--meaning to copy it; to "mix" it--meaning to re-form it however the user wants; and finally, and most important, to "burn" it--to publish it in a way that others can see and hear.
What this guy is defending is that everyone should have the right to "backup" their music and re-master it as they see fit.
Thats a good idea.
What the article completely misses is that that is not what people do with ripped audio. Of course groups like the RIAA shouldn't [and for the most they don't] crack down on ripping software. Its the P2P stuff they should kill and for several good reasons
1. P2P takes up a huge amount of bandwidth, specially at schools where people might actually try todo research or otherwise need bandwidth for positive goals
2. P2P sharing is illegal for the most part since what people "share" is copyrighted material.
3. P2P clients are often buggy and wreck computers or install Gator clients! evil!
Its one thing to be allowed to rip audio [which you are] and its quite another to be prohibited from "sharing" it [which you are].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You almost do have a monarchy. If only the darn Kennedy's would stop dieing you would have a monarchy already. Just pray that they die a little less frequently, or just plain wrap them in floating, bulletproof vests. Then you might get your wish.
My first girlfriend was quite an adamant christian girl, strongly believing in no sex before marriage. Heh, until she met me that is. 2 months in, and we were ready to hit the sack. She was a bit tight at first, and we had trouble with the condom, but eventually we got there. Haza.
Thanks for the spam. How about some facts to back up all your "I do believe" BS? You micropayments types crack me up. No American will ever go for it, and that has to be one of your primary target audiences right now. The US likes flat fee services, things that a dog would find easy to learn to use, and the only way you'll get them to donate to anything in large numbers is if it's religious and fights a cancer that no one gets and somehow involves spare change (think tips jar next to cash registers and those salvation army buckets).
For all that a few geeks on Slashdot whine about this stuff, most Americans don't know or care about donating to artists and probably if you told them you were going to keep the record companies out of the loop they'd accuse you of being some sort of socialist or terrorist or Evil Atheist.
I have to nitpick. By CMDRFUCKO are you implying that that gimp actually gets to fuck? I think it more likely that Ms Fent has him locked up in a chasity belt so she can control him, and keep him under her thumb, and pussy.
I definitely agree with Lawrence Lessigs views on how to fix the 'copyright black hole'. If for instance copyright was limited to 3 years on music, I'd be quite happy to respect that when using a P2P file sharing app.
;)
:(
Many wouldn't I'm sure, but suppose Winamp honoured a copyright bit on files, and did not play those which had not entered the public domain. 99% of people wouldn't bother to find a cracked version. If you want to keep up with the latest music trends then you could buy the CD, maybe it would improve the quality of their offerings too. Actually, I can't see how *that* could get worse
I suppose though that this will never happen while Hollywood has their hand in the cookie jar
Cthulhu loves you.
Not my ASS? I don't wan't to lose my gay virginity. Mummy, please help me. All these men are chasing me, and they want to pound the shit out of my ass? Mummy. Please!!!
Oh god NO! They are here already. ARggghhhh!!!
Arrghhh. That hurts. *Sob* *Please stop* *please* I am begging you. (Shut up gimp and suck my crap covered penis. You know you like it. There good gay puppy. Good. That's right suck it, while we pound away. Good gay ass puppy.)
Look, whereas most folks are already fighting over tech-only issues the whole point is to illustrate the much wider implications of what the author views as future paths. Instead of switching into does-not-does-so mode try to pick up some of the excellent and intelligent idiom used in this article.
:)
Lord knows were going to need just that in the future. And as tech savvy persons we need exactly this wider thought/idiom to convice the less tech-savvy of what lies ahead. I consider this a small price to pay for all the invaluable knowledge that I've gathered about computing from free as in both speech and beer websites, artyicles, howtos, etc.
In short, we have an obligation and this article gives some ammunition most of us could never be able to formulate as eloquently by ourselves. Learn from something that's not purely tech oriented for a change. For a Change.
(no I'm not jonkatz
I do not consider patents or copyrights to be actual property rights. There is a difference betwee having a right to the things one produces and having rights to copies of things that one produces.
Lessig is not one of my favortie legal commentators, but, with some quibbles, he has this issue just about right, particularly with regards to software.
Software copyrights are an abomination. We grant a government monopoly, albeit a much thinner monopoly than the one granted for patents, and get nothing in return.
No revelation of source code, and, given the long terms, no public domain software. For all the talk of nasty patents, at least patents expire within a lifetime and require publication of their underlying process.
One way or the other, if software is to be protected by warping the free market -- which is what a monopoly does, something must be given back to society to offset the disturbance.
The article says: The urgency in the field of patents is even greater. Here again, patents are not per se evil; they are evil only if they do no social good. They do no social good if they benefit certain companies at the expense of innovation generally. And as many have argued convincingly, that's just what many patents today do.
I'm not sure this statement of the problem corresponds with the reality.
Patents are crucial for innovation because they allow the inventor, usually a corporation, to recover his investment and make a profit. However, most inventions, typically over 80%, are not commercially successful. Therefore, patent holders must make enough money on successful inventions to pay for the total cost of a research and development and make a profit.
Because corporation cannot know in advance what innovations will by commercially successful, the only market-driven method of encouraging innovation is to increase the return on successful innovations.
The fact only a few patents are commercially successful leads to a lottery mentality in innovation. The larger the payoff in a lottery, the more people who will buy tickets even though the chance of winning becomes smaller. Similarly, in the process of innovation, the higher the return on a successful innovation, the more innovations will be devised in the hope of getting a commercially successful one.
One can imagine that in the high-risk, high reward environment, innovation would be greatest because the more innovative products one has, the greater the chance of a huge success.
The traditional criticism of how patents stifle innovation is that corporations will buy patents on new products that threaten their existing products and then suppress them. This problem suggests that patent laws should be changed so that patents should simply expire from lack use rather than have a fixed expiration date.
There's reason to think that in practice most products become obsolete before their patents expire. This behavior is what you would expect from a high rate of innovation, which a high return on patents encourages.
I never really thought about it, but we are actually very lucky that the primary use of P2P networks (ala Morpheus) is to distribute porn. After all, the DMCA (and other legislation) point towards devices and services whose "primary purpose is to circumvent" copy protections. Since the primary use of P2P stuff is porn, it actually helps us!
So go forth young, horny men, and download more porn! You are doing a service to your fellow geeks!
Just call it the Real IRA then. Oh wait... nevermind!
The owls are not what they seem
Sorry I have to disagree with the " purely voluntary, uncoerced payment could not only be adequate, but better for both the users and producers of information products" because a lot of users of IP are producers of IP. If Joe Smoe wrote the greatest thriller of all time, and sold copys of it for a donation of $10 then MGM could buy it and make a movie that makes them $ 100 mil. Then Joe Smoe gets none of that because there is no copyright law.
And none of that "Oh I could copy the movie and sell it" because you could bet the ONLY place you could watch that movie is in the theater, and they will search you before you go in. There needs to be a copyright law but it needs to be fair and sane.
yes it is. there needs to be a balance between creators and the public. the creators need get money for creating, however, they should not get a free ride for more than a human life time. I agree with Lessig, 5 years renuable for 15 times, also I like how he differentiats between types of creation like personal and comercial and software, etc.
we need a good balance that is fair to all, not one that favours one side over another.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Lessig's arguments are deeply flawed. Indeed, they are so bad that they've motivated me to write a long response. But, here are just two example mistakes.
When talking about intellectual property he quotes a dissenting opinion of Judge Alex Kozinski. The idea is that we allow private land, but think that it is good if separated by "public streets, roads and highways". Of course we do. But Lessig thinks that this is an argument for intellectual property being put in the public domain by law. In the case of streets, etc., if it is thought that it is in the public interest to take someone's land for public purposes, the land is *bought*. It is called "eminent domain". Fair market value is paid.
So, if he thinks that Mickey should be in the public domain, for reasons of public interest, then pay fair market value for him.
We already do something like this. Go to a public art gallery and look at a painting. Either it was a gift, or it was bought.
A second mistake. He says that when we listen to the radio, we hear tunes for free. Actually, we pay for hearing those tunes when buying things advertised on the radio (if a commercial station) or by paying taxes (if non commercial).
Blah!
Best wishes,
Bob
Lessig keeps appealing to those "conservative judges" -- Posner, Kozinski, etc., who he thinks have sympathies with his reasoning. They might, but as a group they probably have much more sympathy for their "core value" of "judicial restraint". You can't expect that guys like that are going to overrule Congressional enactments like the DMCA -- not unless there is a very clear constitutional violation that hits you (actually, them) over the head, and in this case I'm afraid there isn't. Right now, our judiciary is dominated by conservative judges. It's just the way it is.
So with the judicial system an unlikely source for help, what's left?
There's Congress. There, the rights holders have grossly disproportionate access. It's just a fact. If you contribute you get a lot of access. If you don't, you get very little.
So, fight where you have the advantage, which is on the Net. Politicians need money, for sure, but they also need votes. At the end of the day (at least until all this destroys our political system as well), that is where the power is.
It's nice to lay out the legalities, and even necessary to do so, but there is a political aspect to this that in my view is much more important.
This is a very one sided view meant to persuade you to how right they are and how wrong everyone else is. To that end, it did a good job, it bent the truth, straight out lied, and used lots of non-sensical tidbits such as "the very premise of the Internet is that no one can predict how it will develop". If you can figure out how to mod me -50 go for it, but I'm saying it anyway.
But, it is not a good read if you want to understand the real issues and maybe get a look at the other side of the coin. The music industry is an unnecessary middle man, on which I agree. But all music should be free, there's something thats a little different. Artists work hard to create music that we listen to and they wrote it and should be able to control it as they see fit. Consumers cannot be trusted to use the music they pay for solely to create their own copies, its just not going to happen. Redistributing music over the internet does hurt artists to a degree, and people will quickly point out all the good effects like exposure to new audiences, but the truth is that it abuses the contract that you and the artist have made. He has worked long and hard to create this thing of beauty and you have paid a price to listen to it unlimited by anything else. But people don't pay the price, they download hours on hours of music and never buy anything except blank cds.
You'll see the other side come up with all these arguments about, "they can make all their revenue off concerts" when they shouldn't have to, or "we should be able to make our own copies" when consumers constantly abuse this right. It all comes down to how the artists themselves want to distribute their music. If they decide to hand it out and go play a shitload of concerts, then good for them. If they decide that people should *gasp* compensate them for a song they've worked long and hard on, thats their choice. If you don't like it then don't listen to their music. What, you really like their new song? Well, they did not have to spend countless hours writing it and should be somehow compensated for their work.
No, I do not agree whole-hearted with everything I've said above. But there is another side to the issue. Realize that this is a persuasive opinion piece and only shows an over dramasized and inaccurate version of one side of the story.
Huh? I don't know what you are talking about here and I suspect that you don't either.
In the early/mid 80s, when CDs took off, they were the most quickly and widely adopted media of all time. In 1984, I was a young 20 something guy and I got a home CD player for something like $250. I also got a good tape deck and recorded my CDs for portability to a good Sony Walkman that cost >$125. I wasn't extravagent in my music habits and I wasn't unusual among my peers. Most 20 somethings and older who had jobs in those days I knew had CD players at home. Most College kids had CD players in their dorms by the late 80s, IIRC.
I remember well it was just about 1983-84 that albums, ALL mass market albums, still came out on vinyl first and then the CD would follow for popular titles in 2-4 weeks. I recall buying the vinyl for an album I just had to have and then getting the CD after awhile when the record started sounding trashed. Then sometime around late 1984/1985, you'd see the CDs at the same time or even before vinyl was available.
The record stores changed over to carrying as many CDs as vinyl or casette tapes by 1986-1987. By the end of the 80's vinyl was marginalized. The record stores had mostly CDs, with a healthy selection of casettes.
I don't know that Columbia House had anything to do with this at all. In fact, they were trailing the curve, selling excess production of CDs a year or two after these same CDs had been in the stores.
Sure, CDs became ubiquitous in the 90s when home players plunged below $100 and portable players became more common, but the wide acceptance of CDs had nothing to do with Columbia House.
I agree with your points about DRM, etc. One of the big wins of CDs for me was the fact that I could make a fairly good tape to carry with me and still have the CD to listen to at home. I probably wouldn't have bought CDs had I not been able to make them portable. I was never into trading tapes, either. The few times that I did get a tape to listen to from someone, I would go out and buy the CD to have a clean copy. I recall distinctly listening to Paul Simon's Graceland, with permission from my office mate, on a boom box I had in my office in 1987 from a tape I'd made of the CD at home. My office mate loved it and went out and bought the CD. This was a win for the Record Industry. Sad that they can't learn from their own history.
The Home Recording Act was a boon to them, just as the VCR was a boon to the movie industry. Their greed could be their ruin. If they insist on DRM and copy protection schemes, they'll lose me as a customer for new music. Today, I listen to music a lot on computers at work. I'm not going to buy media that might require me to buy another copy in the future when I change players. Forget it, no way. I'll just buy used CDs and become an oldies freak before I buy any kind of media that makes it more difficult for me to use.
Ironically, I recall liking Microsoft software years ago because it never required dongles and I could always make backup copies. And, I never "shared" my copy with anyone. Microsoft, with their "Product Activation" seems to have forgotten this lesson.
Lessig isn't saying that all music should be free. He's saying that there needs to be a balance, and that right now the balance has shifted too far toward the copyright holder.
95 vs 75 years matters. Fine -- let's take them at their word!
Under the US Income Tax Code, expenses to make/buy long-term assets are
treated very differently from other running expenses. If you buy a 2k$
computer, a 20 k$ business car, a 10 M$ building or a 1 G$ chemical plant,
you _don't_ get to deduct against income the whole cost of these things
in the year spent. You are forced to spread the cost out [amortize] over
an estimate of the useful life of the asset. This principle should hold
true for all long-term assets, most particularly copyrights.
Now I have no idea how long the economically useful life of a copyright
is. It probably varies from weeks for a newspaper story to decades for
a novel. Our beloved IRS probably has even less of a clue. But I bet
the copyright owner has a pretty good idea. So I'd let the copyright
owner set the term of his copyright (subject to maximum), but force him
to write-off all production costs over that term!
If an owner was willing to keep the term less than a year, then they
could write-off all expenses as they do now. But if they wanted a
75 year copyright term, they could only write off 1.33% of total expenses
per year over 75 years. That's a long time to wait for the tax back,
and I very seriously doubt any businessman would go that long. Most
likely 5 or 10 years would be the economic optimum.
I like this concept because it is voluntary and making these sorts
of trade-off are very normal in business. The owner has income and
cost projections, and can chose a term to match. I also see no problem
in allowing a copyright holder to accelerate deductions by shortening
the term. Lengthening the term is obviously out of the question.
...because he clearly doesn't understand it, although it's probable that no one does, really.
Lessig proposes some rather reasonable approaches to balanced protection for various types of creative work.
I think his proposal for software is completely unworkable, although I'm very glad I read it, because the reasons *why* it's unworkable led me to some interesting ideas.
Lessig proposes a five-year term, renewable once (okay so far) with registration required. A total ten-year limit is eminently reasonable based on the short lifespan of software, in fact, ten years may arguably be too long. Where I see a problem is with Lessig's requirement that software be registered to obtain copyright protection.
Which version do you have to register? All of them? Software isn't like a painting, or a book, which you write once and never substantially modify. Sure, a second edition of a book may have some typos fixed, but I've never seen the author go back and make corrections to flaws in the plot (even if they should :-) ). Bug fixes and feature enhancements, minor and major, mean that software never really stops changing (until it stops being used). Because of this, our current system of automatic copyright protection is really important for software. It means that every time I go back and modify some of my code, the result is copyrighted just like the original. Even if I go modify some open source code, my changes are automatically copyrighted as well, which is very important for open source (although it introduces some almost intractable complexities as well, which lead to the FSF's suggestion that the copyright to GPL'd software be assigned to them).
So how would registration of software work? Would the copyright office have to run a giant CVS server? Security would be very hard. Then again, maybe that would be a good thing; copyright registration would require disclosure of source to the government and concomitant risk of public disclosure. Or maybe the CVS tree should even be public: the only way to obtain legal protection against copying would be to effectively publish the source code? The ramifications of that idea are interesting. It would certainly be a huge boon for the progress of the art and science of software engineering -- want to see how the scheduler in Windows XP compares to that in Solaris? Go look. Programmers would be able to take the best ideas from other programmers as long as they just use the insights and don't copy the code -- just like authors and musicians do.
OTOH, mandatory disclosure of code might also destroy the software industry entirely. Need an operating system? Just download a copy of the AIX source code and build it yourself. No need to pay IBM unless you get caught, and catching everyone would be very difficult.
What has become clear to me, at least, is that software is *fundamentally* different from books, movies, paintings and inventions. Maybe our real problem isn't in the ways we apply copyright and patent law to code, maybe the real problem is that we need an entirely different approach. We need to find a way to provide balanced protection that can permit individuals and companies to benefit from the cost and effort of software development. Stallman would have programmers be like bricklayers or lawyers; paid by the hour for services rendered, but IMO that also stifles some kinds of software development. Games are the common example, but who knows what other kinds of high-risk, high-reward types of software there might be, where there has to be a good chance of a massive payoff before anyone is willing to take on the challenge. Stallmans's ideal only works in situations where either (a) the software can be created piecemeal, and the pieces can be sufficiently useful to someone willing to pay for them or (b) there is some way of organizing and collecting from a large group of beneficiaries (street performer protocol maybe? I'm skeptical).
Lawrence Lessig is definitely one of the major thinkers of our day on the issues of Intellectual Property in the Internet age, and even he doesn't have any idea how to deal with software. It's a hard problem because code is so *many* different things, all at the same time. It's not like anything the law has dealt with before.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It seems ironic at first, but he's not opposing copyright, he's just against it being automatically granted for currentTerm + x, x being indefinite future extensions.
What's more, he defines "free" as something that can be copied without permission, or something that requires permission, but the permission is given neutrally. I'd guess this article lies in the latter case.
c-hack.com |
{devils_advocate
.sig
And why exactly is it that the amount of money Joe Shmoe is entitled to is related in any way to the amount that MGM makes?
}
-- this is not a
I think a fundamental part of the issue which is never brought up is that the days when the creators kept the copyright are long gone. The people who tell the creators what to create keep the copyright, and pass it on to their successors who will do whatever they can the profit from it long after the creators have left. The public sees this in every industry but never puts it into clear terms.
The U.S. Patent Office just issued a patent for intelligent machines. I can't believe they granted this. It is ridiculously broad and general in scope. I would have rejected it on the basis that it is poorly written and isn't at all rigorous in the arguments that the author is trying to make.
*frown*
Didn't Stephen King try this with "The Plant"? Not that I read that, so I wouldn't know if it constituted a "good" story, but *shrug* IIRC the contribution rate was fairly low.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Lessig makes some good points. Since there is now commercial handheld speech-to-speech translation, the whole idea of derivative works is going to have to be re-thought.
Judge Patel is paying for so quickly siding with corporate hoarder-whores.
I don't mean to be rude, but Lessing is in denial. His essay showed brilliant insight on every concieveable angle accept for one: that copyright monopolies are bad to begin with.
It reminds me of those in the 80's who insisted that their is no problem with communisim, but merely the way it was applied, or those in the 1830's who insisted that the problem wasn't slavery but merely our policies on slave treatment. Their elloquent conclusions were worthless because they just didn't get it, if the premise is wrong then everything else is useless
The same is true with copyrights, they restrict freedoms and GROW to restrict more by their very nature. Back in 1776 it might have been bearable, but now in the information age it's not! We simply need to get rid of them even if that means defiance and mass civil-disobedience. Copying for my benefit, the benefit of others, or even for commercial profit is no more wrong then refusing to go to the back of the bus. I'm sorry if some people don't like that, but they are just half to going to get used to it.
The reasonable balance that Lessig seeks for digital IP, and that worked so well for cable companies (vis a vis broadcasters) is a scary proposition for the music and movie industries. This fear doesn't exist simply because these industries are greedy (although that's a major part of it), but also because there's no good way to police the balance, to ensure that the creators and distributors will even get the compulsory payments that Lessig describes. File sharing via open technologies (and the natural inapplicable model of economic scarcity) has made all digital content effectively free.
Ultimately, Lessig will have to explain how the balance he foresees will work in practical terms. As for me, I hope he wildly succeeds in doing so.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
How much convincing depends ... on how hard we fsck them in the azz
Natural copyright is more important for software than it is for a lot of other media because it is so often revised (though some code has a longer fixed life, like various versions of malloc() which have been around and unchanged forever because they need to be predictable).
It is still important for other works, too, though. As an author, you may have to show several revisions of your book to your editor ("take out the scene with the dead horse and make the lighthouse worker a spaceman") before it is accepted for publication. All of these versions need automatic copyright protection.
Natural copyright also helps deal with the issue that corporations tend to have more money to throw around than individuals. What if you are dirt poor, and truly can't afford to register your copyright? There are actually people out there in the US who cannot afford to pay anything whatsoever. They should not be denied copyright protection.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Even Lessig doesn't always make this point as strongly as he might: The purpose of copyright and patent laws under the U.S. constitution it to enlarge the public domain. That's it. Nothing else.
It's true the words "public domain" (an analogy to the law governing public lands) weren't part of the terminology at first. But the concept, that all those intangible works of the human mind, customarily called writings and inventions, that are voluntarily communicated to mankind belong by right to all mankind, has always been part of the constitutional system devised for such intangible works. (Note that only intangibles are specified. The principle says nothing whatever about the proper policy to be taken toward any tangible item--not even toward tangible items incorporating works of the mind. Nor does the principle even apply to all intangibles. Only to those intangible works of the human mind that are conventionally designated "writings" and "inventions" and that are voluntarily set before the public.) According to Thomas Jefferson, the purpose of patent law is to "enlarge our conveniences". (Letter to Oliver Evans, January 16th, 1814). According to Benjamin Franklin, "as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." (Autobiography.) According to the U.S. Supreme Court:
The aim of the patent laws is not only that members of the public shall be free to manufacture the product or employ the process disclosed by the expired patent, but also that the consuming public at large shall receive the benefits of the unrestricted exploitation, by others, of its disclosures....The public has invested in such free use by the grant of a monopoly to the patentee for a limited time. --Scott Paper Co. v. Marcalus Mfg. Co., Inc., 67 USPQ 193, at 196 (Stone, J.) (Emphasis added.) The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to copyright.
Of course, thanks to patent and copyright law, authors and inventors don't need to contribute to the public domain gladly, freely, and generously, as Franklin wishes they would. These laws enhance the odds that they can get a return from their investment. They get a better chance than they otherwise would have to be paid a reasonable price for their contribution. The theory is that this will make the writing and inventing trades more profitable, on the average, than they would otherwise be, so that more writings and inventions will be added to the public domain. Society is not obliged to do this; nevertheless it has generously done so. But at least in the case of copyright law, the public's generosity in setting up this system has not been received with thanks. Instead, we have been burdened by demands for ever-greater monopoly privileges.
I prefer anarchy, but only under a strong & wise anarch
This assumes we need to convince them. It would be far preferable to compel the corporations to a shorter copyright and a reasonable use of patent (i.e., one that does not include software), among other things.
For those of you about to respond along the lines of "But they have so much money and influence it would be practical to convert them", I suggest you will never be able to convert them until they have found another way to subvert your freedom; you will never convert them. Don't place such a high value on practical considerations that you forgo your freedom. I suggest reading this RMS interview where (towards the end) he gets into valuing the practical too much.
Digital Citizen
I was a bit surprised to see Lessig advocating 70 years after the person's death for non-published works. He generally takes the view that things should be released into the public domain as soon as practical, because then it becomes available fresh material for other to draw upon. Yes here he is advocating withholding a letter someone writes in his 20's for say another 120 years (assuming he lives to 70).
Letters and other personal correspondence are the primary source for biographers! Surely he does not advocate the primary sources of unauthorised biographers for 120 years?
> No ANAL COCKS were harmed in the production of this post.
When you see his wife: http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/index.html you will understand why.
WARNING: Mrs ANAL COCKS is a horny witch, viewer discretion is advised!
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I think copyright should be 50 years after publication or 25 years after the death of the author, whichever comes last.
For example, what if the author dies a few years after the work is done and has children to support on the proceeds of their work ? say Elvis
In my system, the children benefit for 50 years after the work is done, which is fair because people still use Elvis copyrighted songs today.
For Disney, Mickey Mouse would be public domain by now. The Authors of the first cartoons died by the 70s, so we would have unlimited access to Steamboat Willie, etc.
Micropayments don't work online. NZ has the highest use of EFTPOS and ATMs but charities and street stalls only take cash.
If you want to prove micropayments, why don't you try micropaying for sex?
I'll bet your favorite whore will only ask for a few cents to suck a dick as small as yours.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
P2P doesn't need registries, registries are only needed for faster searching.
I can usually find more on P2P than I can at my local stores and that's good enough for me.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
No government, especially not "democratically elected" governments do what the voters want.
Do you honestly believe President Bush won the state of Florida without the help of his brother the Governor?
Does Enron exist in your reality?
Why is the Vice President being taken to court by the GAO?
Do you think people voted to drill for oil in Alaskan national parks?
How come microsoft got a slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket after they were convicted of having an illegal monopoly?
How much money goes from companies to election candidates?
Do you still that's democracy? You are a perfect fool if you believe decisions are made based on people's votes.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I propose that copyright should be 50 years or life + 25 years. This would be whichever is longest.
I've already mentioned this perviously in this topic, so I'll mention why it works.
Reasonable profitable lifetime of a work: If Peter Jackson dies after winning the oscars, his defacto wife gets royalties for Lord of The Rings for 50 years.
That's long enough for her to live on and bring up children. Life + 25 would mean royalties for LoTR film 2 and film 3 would be active for just 24 & 23 years.
However if he lives to be 'eleventy one' then he effectively has 60 years in his lifetime plus 25 for the children to profit.
This is a very fair system for young authors and their families, stars like Elvis or Buddy Holly would be going into public domain now.
The point is, a 20 year limit wouldn't work even with software. Look at 30 year old Unix:
Unix is still considered a valuable collection of works even though everyone can afford supercomputers now.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
This is my situation exactly: I'm programming a whole OS from scratch.
How do I get around a lot of Slashdot Linux Zealots all wanting GPL programs on a BSD system?
I found out that GPL prohibits GPL binaries being used in non GPL. this is a classic communist definition of free software.
So I'll allow people to download GPL source code if it's Java and then it can be compiled as a slim binary specifically for the user's hardware.
Ok, first major problem solved. Second problem is open source definitions.
I have no problem with being open source as long as:
1. Source is only on the CD users paid for, I have a student loan and freeloaders won't help pay it off.
2. I retain control of the programs. I don't care if you customize the app, it's my investment in code you're using.
3. My code doesn't get used to compete with my programs. I've had major e-commerce sites being set up from stuff stolen from me before.
4. I retain my exclusive technology. I have developed things which are not allowed to be exported from most nations (cryptography, etc).
5. Software meets my requirements. I have no intention to allow people to develop junk that doesn't work. If you want to do that, microsoft is still hiring code monkeys.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
This sounds somewhat like the Local Area Grid app I'm making.
On a LAG, apps are shared by a company, class or organisation over the grid network.
You can have the LAG set to say "only a dozen users may use photoshop concurrently" which means
someone has to quit and transfer photoshop if a 13th person wants to whiten and brighten their advertisement job.
This is entirely legal, involves less HD fragmentaion than swap and delete & fits in with just about any EULA.
Even microsoft wouldn't have a problem with this scheme as it monitors use on the LAG.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
This is what I'm going to claim if anyone tries to stop me from making my own P2P app, Samizdat.
I'll just point out the sheer amount of porn downloaded by Linux hackers who use slashdot.
Check out this site for a perfect example [warning: the pics here require viewer discretion] http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/index.html
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Intellectual Property protection (patents, copyrights, ...) actually slow down innovation. Anyone who has actually gone through the process knows that it is such a pain in the a** that few will bother. Once you do it is very unlikely that the idea will ever be used. If it's used it is unlikely that you will ever get paid for it.
There was a show on NPR with inventors who stated that most large Corps suffer from NIH (Not Invented Here). Having worked for large organizations it seems that is an understatement. There also is the story of the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Took him > 20 years to finally get paid after suing the big car companies and going broke. Clearly the system is there to serve the people making money off of it.
A simple solution was actually hinted at in the article. Mandatory licensing of all IP. Say 10% of the wholesale price of the product was used to pay the IP holders. The company could identify what percentage would go to which. This allows the manufacture to not have to defend lawsuits and keeps everyone's costs even and relatively low. The public benefits because when good ideas are developed there is no premium for them as there is now with patents.
This system should increase the rate of advancement which is really the purpose of these laws, as opposed to enriching the few who either buy or steal the patents that they need and proceed to slow down advancement to increase the return on their investment.
A simple idea: Let copyright be renewed indefinitely, but make it cost more each time. Valuable properties, such as Mickey Mouse would be protected, but only the valuable ones would rate. Put it at every five years.
Alternatively, make the renewal a percentage of the royalties that have been paid on that copyright.