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Fair IP Laws?
epsalon asks: "Most of us are against the current status of Copyright and Patent law, and
are outraged from stuff like the DMCA, SSSCA, et al. We know that this system is wrong, and must be changed. However, nullifying all IP laws is IMHO a bit too strong, because there will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of
goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux). Assuming you could rewrite the entire world IP law, and even create a new
social system, my question is: What laws can be written that will be fair both to content creators and to users, while cutting the middleman?" Here's your chance to do something other than complain about the current state things. How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?
Life isn't fair. We all know that.
I would really like to see a period of public review prior to issuance
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
Breaking up all the really big companys would probably be sufficent. :)
Hey, this IS hypothetical right?
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
By "fair", of course, you mean probably meant to say "unfair for the big bad media corporation".
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
restructuring the IP law would require more political insight than currently exists, we'll end up with several more dmca's and end up in a worse situation than we are currently. we should just leave well enough alone, and let the current laws do their work
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
What was wrong with the laws we had 10 years ago? IP owners got protection, but didn't get to run your life. Sounds roughly fair to me.
Didn't the patent office used to more-or-less do their job correctly back then too?
"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
--Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II, IV, ii
Yes, yes, I know the quote is out of context, but it's still damn insightful.
The best change that could be made to IP laws would be to speed up the time that it takes a work to enter the public domain. Maybe 10 years or so of protection would be good -- after that, no more protection.
Content providers would still have an incentive to create content -- lots of money could be made during that 10 year period. But overall, this would drastically reduce the bad consequences to the public from IP laws.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Music/Software: 5 years - Enough time to get return on your investment and a big incentive to continue to innovate so you have something better to sell when the original product falls into the public domain
Get your patent, make your money, loose your patent all in a shortened period of time.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
It was originally designed to balance the rights of the copyright holder against those of the public, and the interests of creating an 'intellectual commons'. If we could just strip away all the BS the content industry has tacked onto copyright law over the years and go back to what we started with, that would be an improvement. Isn't the expiration of copyright now almost as long as it's been since Jefferson died?
*This page intentionally left pointless*
In the first place, it was created to protect individuals against corporations. Now it's used by corporations to take advantage of individuals. There are just too many advantages to having no restriction on the flow of information. As the poster put it 'leveraging other business' should be the only way people who make information, be it text, code, music, etc... make money. It's the way I and everyone I work with makes money.
It's also the way I spend a great deal of my free time.
Patents, copyrights, and 'intellectual property' has got to go. If not, then when we, as a society, manage to convert fully to a non-scarcity based economy, those who have the ownership rights to information will be kings and everyone else will be paupers.
I wrote an essay for my website about this subject some time back. You can find it here:
http://www.furinkan.net/display.php?pageid=75
The one exception that I would make to getting rid of all IP laws is the use of Trademarks. These are less in the way of making a piece of information which *should* be able to be copied freely uncopiable, but is a lot more about an individual or a business uniquely identifying themselves.
Other than that, IP law has got to go. End of story.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I think the first thing that should be done is to greately reduce the amount of time that different works can be protected. Perhaps, you could have software expire after 5 years, and maybe books and movies after 10. I believe that the timeline is currently 75 years which is far longer than is necessary and appropriate.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Patents no longer seem to be necessary at all, so they'd all go straight to the bin.
Copyrights are harder to just throw away. I'd like to see recognition that it's individuals that hold copyrights and that they last no longer than their creator.
It's harder still to deal with companies that own copyrights. Perhaps some sort of licencing agreement that makes sure that individual creators don't get ripped off by companies/universities etc that claim all rights to their work.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Why would it be so bad if companies had copyright over information they create, as long as they wish to produce it, as long as there are laws that also enforce turning it to public domain after the company doesn't sell it for some period of time (5 years?)
Also, there would have to be strong enough fair use laws that mandated easy access to content in cases of fair use.
This isn't a troll, btw, I really have started thinking recently that something like this, with enough safeguards, would be good.
We'd be fine if we went back to the Patent and Copyright law as it existed before the recent (last 20 years) unwarranted expansion of both.
We'd go back to the 17 year copyright with 17 year renewal, and eliminate "soft" patents including "software" patents, business process patents, etc...
Going back to the basics on both fronts would eliminate most of our current problems.
Our founding fathers had it right in the constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
It's just way way overkill. Rather than promoting progress and the "useful Arts", the current system just extends a monopoly into the indefinite future and discourages anyone from building on your work constructively.
Really, if you can't get enough benefit out of writing a piece of software in 10 years, then it's someone else's turn. Note that you could make modifications in those 10 years and those could be copyrighted, but let the original software go back to the public domain in a reasonable time.
Ten years is just notional. I'm not sure where I'd set it, but I know 70 years is ridiculous and the 90 years granted to corporations (most Software copyrights on proprietary software is probably held by corporations) is even more out there.
Software is different than other IP. It's greatest benefit to society is in it's use and in it's flexibility. A sensible policy wrt to software copyrights would encourage more flexibility and more use.
The general patent and copyright law practices that was in use a decade ago and back was quite balanced and well working.
Like any force on this planet could make both sides happy. As long as there is a need for control, wealth, etc. it is impossible for both sides to be happy because.
Can we solve the abortion issue while we are at it?
Why exactly is nullification too strong? The world has obsoleted IP laws by the advent of digital reproduction and the internet. Why must we cling to these vestiges of a former, darker era?
IP laws don't affect software, since a software company can easily protect its own product (closing its source) if it so chooses. Therefore, IP laws pertain only to entertainment media--and it's clear that even the most draconian legislative measures are fingers in the dyke, mere lip service to the corporate campaign donors. Despite how much we complain about these laws, they have had no strong real-world ramifications--the proliferation of freely-attainable entertainment on the internet attests to that.
Let's just forget this charade and point our resources elsewhere. Let the current entertainment industry die the death it deserves, and let a new, more capable industry rise to fill the void. It's the natural order of things.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Reset all IP laws to what they were prior to the release of "Snow White" in theaters. Then update them to cover current (and projected future) tech.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
This is a huge issue and I'm no lawyer, so I'm just going to give my opinion on once piece of this puzzle:
EULA's are out of control, and they shield software companies from lawsuits which would motivite them to produce better software. In an effort to stop this I would propose the following:
1) EULA's for commercial software must be agreed to BEFORE the software can be purchaced. If software companies do not provide a mechanism for this then they must allow users to return the software for a full refund.
2) Implied warranties like the warranty of merchantability and fittness for a particular purpose cannot we waived in a commerical software EULA. Free (as in beer) software can be distriubuted 'as is', but the second you exchange money for software, you take responsibility for it functioning correctly.
I realize that this will increase the cost of software in the short term, especially as companies scramble to get their software up to code before the changes go into effect. However the long term effect of ignoring faulty software cannot be overlooked, and the sooner we do something about it, the better.
What is really needed is a simple system in which content providers are paid for their work and consumers are still allowed their fair-use rights (duh).
Quite frankly, we already had this a few years ago, until the content providers decided they wanted to control the whole game. Turn back the clock a few years to before the DMCA. Allow people the make an unmetered number of copies (digital or otherwise) for personal use and crack down on the trafficking of pirated media.
Have stronger laws for dealing with real piracy, i.e. thousands of copies, but make these laws very specific in terms of what they address. No more nebulous language like "could be used to circumvent copyright, maybe, if a person really wanted to." Don't allow companies the excuse to drag people into civil court based on trumped-up charges. Make piracy a criminal offense (it already is) and leave the civil side for after the criminal trial. Don't allow 'symbolic' lawsuits, only allow content-providers to sue people that they can actually prove were selling illegal copies of their property.
This will protect both the consumers and the companies, and hopefully will enable artists to continue to make their music/movies/whatever and to make money from them. But, of course, IANAL, so this may be impossible.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
Currently, patent law as it sits is half of the problem. People can patent software that does absolutely mundane and boring tasks that have been written for years. (see form posting patents) Clearly, that's not new, nor innovative, yet someone convinced the PTO that it was.
As I see it, step one is to ban software patents. Given that you can't patent a formula for a soft-drink, how is that any different than say, an algorithm? By extension, most software is just creative algorithms for solving a specific problem (or, as a tool for abusing small companies), and thus, shouldn't be patented.
On the other hand, most processors are now sold as synthesizable VHDL cores. Those could be patented, as they can at least be sythesized to a physical prodouct. (Much like how old processor designs at the gate level were patented.)
But the existing properties of of USPTO that allow something to be patented can still apply to technology, just not in software.
One last remark: The research staff for determining prior art before a patent is even issued needs to be increased, and they need to be trained to understand what technology.
Having a set of standard software licenses for all companies to use instead of: You can only use my software between the hours of 10 and 12, while you are at home, in bed drinking a beer in blue boxer shorts. And then forcing the police to enforce each of the "laws" made up by the software vendors.
The original question is flawed. Eliminating the over-the-top draconian DMCA is hardly eliminating all IP laws.
The state of things a decade ago was just fine. The Berne Convention provided as close to an ideal balance between the rights of content creators and the rights of content consumers as we're ever likely to get. We should eliminate the DMCA and return to the Berne Convention.
The problem is that the current situation has been allowed to become unbalanced in favor of big business. The recording and movie lobbying associations are going hog wild, throwing money at easily-bought legislators as fast as they can. It's going to take some time before we can sort out the damage to society that is currently being done and get things back to an even keel.
I know thi might sound like communim or something. But it might be the only alternative:
Remove all ip-law what so ever. Then have the state research which tunes, software programs or poems are listened to, used or read by people (same thing as companies do today, and call "market-research"), and pay the creators of those works accordingly, with tax-money. Then we can copy as much as we like. Good artists will get paid, and bad ones (the ones no-one is litening to) won't get paid...
I think this is the only alternative to having ome middle-man RIA-workalike pirate the users/listeners.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Even though we're supposedly getting our own version of the DMCA, you can take a look at Canada's CURRENT IP laws. Stuff like reverse engineering and such are perfectly legal, and copying audio cds is limited.
Our CD copying laws work like this: the government collects a levy on blank media. This is to compensate artists for piracy. Businesses who use lots of cds can apply to have the levy refunded. Canadians can copy a friends audio cd for themselves, but are not allowed to do it commercially or on a large scale.
Software is governend by licence, just like the USA, and IIRC the SSSCA is not even remotely possible here.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Why not limit protection to the life of the artist/author/etc. or a predetermined time (set by the type of artwork), whichever is shorter? What good does protecting a piece of art serve once the artist isn't around anymore? None that I can see, other than to enrich his/her estate, who most likley had no hand in the creative process to begin with.
We know that this system is wrong, and must be changed. However, nullifying all IP laws is IMHO a bit too strong, because there will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux).
This is an assumption that is stated so often it has become arguably an axiom of intellectual property proponents.
But, the history of the human race, indeed of our own civilization, doesn't bear it out. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Ulysees, Shakespear, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, and other artists too numerous to mention had all the incentive they needed to create the greatest works our civilization has ever known, all without the existence of copyright or any other form of "intellectual property."
There are other ways to insure artists are compensated, without granting them (or, more likely, their publishers) an exclusive monopoly on their work, for any length of time.
It is unfortunate that our society never even discussed, much less considered, alternatives to copyright when the republic was founded, instead saddling us with an approach whose original conception was designed to facilitate censorship of the press, a design flaw which a little tweaking to help give something back to the artist is insufficient to alleviate.
We should be discussing alternatives to copyright which can be implimented to insure that artists get compensated for their work, without imposing artifical, government mandated monopolies upon our society, monopolies which are antithetical to free markets, to freedom of speech, and ultimately, to freedom itself.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I see IP law, or the good in IP law, as a protection from rogue publishers, a protection from, say, a book or an album being copied and sold by any company out there with a little technology (or a lot of patience). The bad side of IP is the use of it, by companies, to smack around the consumers.
IP laws should apply, not to the people listening to mp3s or dubbing videos for their own enjoyment... it should just be there to make sure, when people are being paid for the service, the right people are being paid.
All copyrights must be held by a private individual. No corporate entity may hold a copyright.
Copyright terms may vary up to a period of 17 years (depending on content type -- To Be Specified), with a single renewal for the same period of time
Copyright expires upon the death of the copyright holder.
Copyrights cannot be assigned to another entity
If a work has some form of access control, that access control must be disabled when the work enters public domain
Reverse engineering any sort of access control is legal
Patent
Patents must be held by individuals, not corporate entities
Only physical objects and processes may be patented.
(Corrolary) No patent shall be granted for algorithms or business processes
A working implementation of the patented process must be provided (upon request of USPTO)
Naturally occuring results of processes may not be patented (ex: DNA)
The USPTO must conduct a good faith search for any prior art
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
What laws can be written that will be fair both to content creators and to users, while cutting the middleman?
You just answered your own question.
IMHO, the single easiest improvement would be to forbid corporate entities from owning copyrights they themselves did not create. The creator of the intellectual property should retain sole ownership; they may licence others to make use of their work, but the creator should always have complete rights to their own creations.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
In my opinion the best times for IP laws were when computers were first introduced to the public. (By computers I mean PCs, and by public I mean at prices less than $10K)
It was generally accepted that some pirating would occur, yet companies let you copy (once) their media for "backup" purposes, et etc. And none of this futzing around with rights management. The users were innocent until proven guilty.
Furthermoe, free speech prevailed. If someone wanted to reverse engineer a BIOS (like, say, IBM's), they could do it without being prosecuted. They could even distribute that knowledge around. They could even sell that reverse-engineering work (like, say, compaq).
So times were simpler and better then. Its a pity I remember it, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to realise how bad things are now.
And one other restriction might be nice: If ALL IP was relinquished after 14 years, in a method similiar to patents. For all software. THis is not such a bad idea--before you go screaming "NoOoOoOo. No-one will work! No incentive!" remember that patents work a similiar way. And plenty of people patent stuff. Furthermore, given the rapid pace of change in the computer industry, don't you think that 14 year old stuff wouldn't be a giant competitive advantage? If it was going to succeed, it already did.
This would also apply to copyrighted stuff--To get a copyright, you'd have to agree to release the material in its entirety to public domain (though copyrights might be more, like 30 years, since books and so forth are relevant longer)
Imagine Bach today. Would he demand licensing fees for all his music being used in movies? Would he demand that people distributing his "source code, or musical scores, be prosecuted? Would he demand that anyone infringing on his style of classical music be prosecuted? Would people just laugh at him?
Now consider the computer and media industries. Pretend they were Bach. While Bach's stuff was obsolete in 100 years (but still wildly popular), their products will be obsolete in 20 years. Is what I suggest that preposterous?
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1) No IP outlives its author, or one half of a "lifetime" if the owner is a company or organization other than the author.
2) Anyone who implements technical impediments to fair use (or use after the expiration of the IP) loses the right to punative damages (that is, can only collect real damages) due to infringement.
3) Consumer right to transfer an owned copy of an IP from one physical media to another (CD to a tape or mp3, painting to a computer image, etc).
4) Unvoidable consumer right to own any IP in his legitimate posession with all rights of an owner of one copy. (Come on, copies aren't a limited resource. There is simply no justification for the rental of IPs.)
5) Require DMCA infringement claims to prove that the primary purpose or use of a technology is infringement (and not some legitimate use).
6) Right to modify an owned copy of an IP in any way (but not to redistribute the modified copy).
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Naw, that's a stupid idea.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The DigitalConsumer.org Bill of Rights seems like a great middle-of-the-road choice.
i think the ideal solution would be if we would all start using www.fairtunes.com and sending donations to the artists we listen to, and once the artists have enough money to sustain themselves making music without the industry's paycheck, they can start giving away their music on their website..and we've gotta support these free artists even more so they'll stay on that track. they could still sell cd's through the industry if the industry will accept them giving away music as well.
i had also imagined something like a winamp plugin that would track all the songs you listened to and make a division of donations report to send with your 20 bucks a month to fairtunes.
encryption and all this stuff preventing people from copying music will ultimately fail..people will protest and stop buying music altogether if the industry attempts to pass that. and there will always be ways to bypass it, if it comes out of my speakers i can record it unencrypted and redistribute that.
oh ya and bush shouldn't be in the white house www.michaelmoore.com read the book..take action
=)
Right now the only people who LIKE the current laws ARE the middle men.
Publishers, "Assosiations" (MPAA RIAA), Corporations.
Actual content creators, (musicians, programmers, authors) are doing everything they can to get their work out to the consumers. In the past the middle men HELPED this process. Now all they do is HINDER the process.
There's actually quite little wrong with the laws (other than the obvious). Where is all breaks down is because it they were made to balance content creators with consumers, however, with the current all-powerful MiddleMen, the two parties never get a chance to talk to each other.
(Distributors, Publishers, and Producers...Gotta hate'em. However, how else would you come up with $130mil to make Spiderman.)
I would also be in favor of significantly shorter durations on software patents if we're going to have them (2 or 3 years max?). Of course, the best thing to do would be to eliminate them entirely, but I'm trying to be realistic (in this dream scenario ;-) ).
For patents in general, I would suggest that we find a way to shorten the amount of time it takes for for the USPTO to turn around patent applications. It's too slow. The length of time it takes to turn around a patent applicaiton often itself leads to several kinds of abuse. I'm sorry to say that I have no meaningful suggestion on this topic, other than throw more people at it.
I've also often thought about a Fair Use Amendment to the Constitution that would codify the basic thinking behind fair use, and would create a definition of what fair use is and why we need it as a society. Academic research, and fostering creativity need. I realize that this is controversial, and would be very difficult to properly write, let alone pass, but the existing lines in the Constitution get ignored so often because they don't come out and grant fair use.
If a constitutional amendment is outrageous, than at least some legislation that would make it clear that no law can ignore certain basic provisions.
Finally, I would ask that we legislate the rights of corporations by not defining them as people, and defining what rights they have. This is by far the single most onerous situation in our current legislative landscape. Corporations aren't people. They shouldn't have the same rights as you or I.
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
Unfortunately, it's not gonna happen. Why? Because the law moves slowly.
One of the first lessons I learned in law school (yes i admit, i was a law student before i started a real job in programming), is that the law is like a supertanker. Big, clumsy, awkward, and once you set a course, you'd better hope no icebergs get in the way, cause it's damned difficult to change course or stop.
Our common law system works kinda like a pecking order. The supreme courts are at the top of the order, and anything they say cannot be countermanded by lower courts. So the only way to even think about getting a law that's been given the stamp of approval by the highest court is to go through a lengthy and expensive round of appeals all the way up through the justice system. and that's only if they choose to hear the case in the end, and assuming they do hear it, that the majority changes their minds on their previous stance. They could just say 'we've already done this. we're not doing it again' and stop your appeal right there. Of course, by the time you get to this stage, most of the judges that heard the last case are probably dead of old age, and new ears are hearing it.
So, best case scenario you try and change a law that hasn't been brought to the supreme court yet. Unfortunately the ones backing laws like the DMCA are the big boys, with deep pockets, who can afford all the highly paid, specialized lawyers they want. Most of em just keep pushing knowing that the little guy doesn't have the time or money to keep up with them. They can appeal all the way up the ladder, and wait for you to run out of money and patience. When/if that happens, they automatically win.
Personally, I'm completely pessimistic about seeing any real changes coming our way anytime soon. It's in the best interests of the government (they do get paid to make laws like this after all), courts (who get paid to interpret the laws), and big business (who get to keep their stranglehold on everyone else) to keep things just as they are.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
You would have groups like music companies that automatically reissue a single, well documented, copy of every album in their catalog every 4.9 years. It would be an auction or something. And as soon as the copy was sold and delivered, agents would patrol p2p network suing anyone who was sharing those files under the pretense that only 1 person can legally own those versions. And that would be all it took to maintain their permenant hold on all materials, even if they have no intention of ever issuing it again on a larger scale.
Customers: "Fair" let us watch/read/listen to what we want, when we want, where we want after we've paid for it.
Big Media: "Fair" you pay for every second of watching/reading/viewing as much as we choose and you watch *every* bit of crap we produce, paying over, and over, and over for centuries.
And you want to make BOTH sides happy? (Sound of long, loud, disbelieving laughter)
Nonsense.
Before copyright and patents, you still had people creating art and inventing devices and processes. Putting copyright and patents under the same umbrella -- "IP" -- is a bit misleading, as the protections and justification of same for each are different. The end goal, however, is the same: that the public should have unfettered ownership of the "property" so protected after some time.
The problem is that IP laws are being used to steal that "ownership" from the public without giving anything back.
Consider patents. The alternative to this protection is not the cessation of invention and innovation -- it is a return to trade-secrets and oaths of secrecy.
Oddly enough, that's pretty much what we have now. So where would be the change? Patents are used to block innovation and to suppress invention. Doing away with 'em would most likely stimulate invention and innovation, or at least do no harm.
And copyright is frequently seen as a defense against plagiarism, which is arrant nonsense. Plagiarism is truly theft (and work-for-hire contracts that allow another to remove or change the attribution associated with a work is still theft, even if legal), and is not what copyright protects. Copyright grants a limited monopoly to reproduce (for sale, presumably). Note the limitation.
Unlimited restriction of duplication is far worse than no restriction. Would the creation of art, be it graphical or as words, cease with the abandoning of copyright? Not at all. Would there be a period of disruption? Certainly.
Would publishers stop making, and bookstores stop selling, books? Hardly. Would everyone stop writing things to print? Not at all. Would it be different? Yes.
But would all incentive vanish? Not at all.
The problem with your plan is that there would be no sharing of information. If you outlaw intellectual property, then there is very little incentive to share ideas with others. That would basically mean that companies and people would hide their ideas, and much time would be wasted by having multiple companies repeatedly inventing the same things.
The idea of intellectual property laws is to encourage sharing of ideas by granting exclusivity to the creator for a limited amount of time. I believe that idea has been corrupted by corporate interests, but I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bath water.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Copyright time limits should be dramatically shortened (and copyright law should punish those who violate copyright, not those who engage in actions which may lead to other people engaging in other actions which may lead to copyright infringement - but I digress). How short? IMHO maybe 20 - 25 years, but that's not based on much real analysis.
Patent is a bit more complex - the core problem I see is that some fields (EG: computer science) are advancing so rapidly that even a 7 year patent seems astronomical. Meanwhile other fields (EG: heavy industry) are more established - patent worthy innovations are far more rare, require significantly more up-front investment, and take longer to build a market. This is problematic - 4 year patents would be insufficient for the automotive industry, but 15 year patents would strangle computer science.
It seems that the most efficient solution would have to have different patent expiration periods for different industries. The inevitable result would be increased corruption and reliance on lawyers.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
All laws and systems exist, in the end, to ensure the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number.
Thus the goal should be to ensure sufficent renumeration for the creators to have an incentive to create while ensuring that the products of their creativity are made available as soon as possible to serve as the foundation of further creativity.
The question, of course, is quantification of the length of time; 3,5,7 or 99, years.
Secondary question: should all forms of IP have the same protection? Arguably, a patent should expire, but what about a Trademark?
IMHO the Constitution got it right with 7 years for a patent. I cannot see ANY justification whatsoever for Copyright to extend past the life of the author. Trademark *IS* important, if you buy a Plextor drive or drink Jolt you have a right to be sure that the product you get is the product you expect to get; otherwise it's fraud. But I do think that Trademark should be subject to Fair Use, especially in the realm of satire and product review.
"Our" core geek mantra is sound "Information Wants To Be Free". The greatest good for the greatest number is best served by erring on the side of too free a dissemination of information rather than too restricted, if err we must-and err we will!
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Given the opportunity, the media middlemen will outlaw or surcharge for anything resembling fair use. They seem to think that encryption and legislation will let them turn every user's activity into a revenue stream. If this becomes a "pay-per-click" world, then I'll join the opposition.
Job #1 is to define precisely what fair use is, and to enact meaningful penalties for those companies who violate it. It might be as simple as legalizing piracy of those products that violate the "Fair Use Bill of Rights (FUBOR)". Want to market a non-standard/crippleware CD? Great, but you have no recourse against anyone when it's cracked and P2P'ed onto every PC between here and Jupiter. To me, the concepts of backup, time-shifting, space-shifting, and media-shifting are fundamental. Those distributors who play games with the fundamental principles of fair use should be left to suffer the wrath of the hacker community.
Make no mistake, the consideration of consumers' rights is key to the process. Currently, the DMCA and other related legislation makes it a clear-cut battle of all consumers against all media distributors, or "the pirates" vs. "the greedy sleazebags". The current one-sided approach to legislation is not going to achieve voluntary compliance. Anyone who chooses to crack, copy, and distribute their media will think of their actions as the modern-day equivalent of "The Boston Tea Party".
The media companies need to realize that their interests cannot be fully protected without consideration for their customers.
How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?
It just pissing in the wind.
My Weblog
If I was going to re-engineer goverment, the constitution would be mich simpiler:
Note that failing in an attempt to kill the president might be illegal. Also note that ex post facto laws are not prhibited. A president who doesn't do a good job will soon find himself without a life, while those who do a good job are likely to be hit by a crackpot after a few years, preventing power from going to his head.
It wouldn't never work, but it is fun to think about.
We can't successsfully regulate copying anymore. Any law that is based on restriciting the right to copy is therefore fundamentally flawed.
We should drop the notion of copyright, and replace it with royalites on for-profit use of a work.
The basic idea is similar to how songwriter royalties work today - I can sing in the shower and not pay anyone a cent, but when I sing at the bar and (theoretically) attract more business, or record and sell CDs of music other people wrote, the songwriters gets paid. (Theoretically. The current implementation is rather corrupt - we are dealing with the record industry here, one of the greatest concentrations of human scum on the planet.)
Sharing information has become as easy and almost as commonplace as singing in the shower. We have to stop trying to regulate sharing, and instead focus on regulating selling.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, first of all, it needs to be decided which things constitute a licensed items, and which things constitute sold objects. When we buy the cd, do we own the music/software/whatever, or have we just paid for certain rights of use. If the first, then you can listen at will, sell to a friend, modify for your own uses etc. But there wouldn't be any copying really. You can't copy a car. If you lose or damage your cd, you'd have to buy another one. If you own a DVD and want to watch on a VCR, then you'd have to buy the tape version as well.
On the other hand, if it was a license, then you'd pay once, or perhaps recurringly, and not be able to distribute, modify, etc. but because you have paid for the RIGHT to use the material, and not the material itself, if the cd was ever lost, or broken, etc. then the provider would have to provide another, or at least, it would be perfectly legal to burn a copy of a friend's disc.
The problem is that both parties want the "best" of both worlds. Consumers want to be able to modify something they have bought, and sell it on to someone else once they're done with it. The producers on the other hand, want you to have to buy over and over again, and then don't want you to do anything other than their "approved" uses.
In the end, one or the other must be picked, or perhaps a whole new paradigm for dealing with this new problems can be found, but until we can state concretely what the items in dispute actually are, we will never be able to regulate them or their sales/leasings.
Common sense is what tells us that the world is flat
Five-year copyright terms for content creators, transforming the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities into entitlements, and the demilitarization of the DARPA/ONR/RAND R&D model by shifting US R&D budgets to fund at least 60% non-military projects through NSF and new agencies to be created. Yes, more geeks (and artists, musicians, and writers) would have to get political. Yes, creators would be under pressure to produce more work, since one's exclusive window would be smaller (but, then again, ideas can get around the world much faster today). Yes, the risk would exist for a narrow-minded hypocrite (of which the world has a surplus) to attempt to suppress content which disturbs his or her sensibilities. However, such NMHs can be fought in the political arena -- and the payoff is nothing less than the rescue of the Internet from the eCommerce tarpit of the dot-com implosion and the creative arts from the AOLTWFOXDISNEYVIVENDI Borg collective.
-- "Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep voting? Do you think you're voting for something?"
Your "no-labor, no-money" thesis sounds awfully flawed.
So you're telling me that if two people enter into a private agreement, where one person gives a thing or idea to another, and in return, the other agrees to pay that person money, in exchange for the use of that thing or idea, for the rest of his or her life - that the government should make a law making such agreements illegal? Such a law would surely be unconstitutional, as well as impractical (how would you enforce it?)
Also, I can think of one specific instance of a pretty good musician who would starve with your plan. Andy Partridge of XTC, writes pretty good music, and records some pretty good music, but he has an anxiety disorder which pretty much precludes public performances. How can somebody like that make a living? I guess he better get a job flipping burgers or something, society can do just fine without his Art, right?
You're trying to turn this into an ideological argument of black or white, right and wrong - placing the whole notion of copyright as wrong and evil. When clearly there's a middle ground that could be found which would be beneficial to all. The problem with the broken IP Law system as it stands today is that the original interests of "public domain" are not represented by the current American zeitgeist of "Capitalism above all else". Because Capitalism was our sword of vengence in the holy war against Communism. As it turns out, it's a double-edged sword, and it's been turned against us by greedy corporations who exploit the concept of "Freedom" for their own personal gain. The middle ground, the balance has been lost. We've fallen down the slippery slope on the side of the giant corporations who wield too much political influence.
The root of the problem is the influence. Remove that, and the voice of the people will be heard instead, and a balance will be restored. We should not tread down the other slippery slope of elimination of the concept of intellectual property, because things are different today - today's world, with today's population, and a technically advanced race of humans, NEEDS capitalism to survive. It NEEDS the concept of intellectual property. People need to profit from their ideas. We just need reasonable, balanced limits to be set. Quite departed from where we are now, and where you seem to want society to head.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Patents are most necessary in areas where it is EASY to copy inventions. If everyone needed a few million $ worth of hardware to make the invention, the patent doesn't add that much value against the masses of people who want to copy your invention, it only protects you against the few who have the actual resources to do so. Every other industry has dealt with patents for years. It is time for the software developers as a whole to do so as well.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Somewhere, in some educational system or other.... :)
Its probably too complicated to be practical, but what about a process by which the original holder loses rights of control and profit over time. So for the first few years they are in absolute control, but after that people can start using it so long as they take care of the inventor some how? This would allow innovation to proceed while protecting the rights of the creators. Basically a compulsory license granting system.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
...because there will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux).
Sure there would, you just wouldn't have mother government working for you as your own personal enforcer.
This is a topic I have been seriously interested in, and have done a lot of reading about in the last year or so. Having studied economics under a very strict Libertarian, I have been influenced by that line of thought. Companies should be responsible for guarding their own secrets (wether through security or contracts between companies and consumers). It is not the job of government to subsidize corporations by providing "trade secret security".
I could go on and on...but I won't. Instead, I will defer to those who have thought a lot more about this, and who are much better at articulating relavent ideas than me...
Stephan Kinsella
Ilana Mercer
A modern day witchhunt.
IP laws are necessary. In societies where the laws are weak, there is no local generation of IP; the natives just pirated stuff made outside their country. That may be an okay situation for a third world country, but a developed country won't be able to maintain any kind of robust arts and sciences without IP protection.
But currently IP law is out of kilter. The whole idea of copyright and patent law is to advance the arts and science for the public good. Technology changes have enabled the public to copy and rip off copyright holders and the legislature has in turn tried to protect the copyright holder by legislation which tips the balance to far in the other direction.
The public gets the shaft because there is no firm enumeration of the publics' rights, just some relatively weak fair use doctrine, and maybe some first amendment rights that don't explicitly give the public the protection they should have. Even the limits described in the IP clause of the Constitution aren't taken seriously by the courts or the legislature. The courts and Congress so far has easily run roughshod over fair use and the 1st amendment, to give the copyright holders what they need and want.
I'd like to see explicit enumeration of a reasonable set of fair use, free speech, and other public rights that Congress and the courts would not feel free to encroach on when they seek to give increased monopoly power to copyright holders.
If one believes that property exists in the output of intellect (which I do not), ie Intellectual Property (IP) then there are a number of principles that I think need to be addressed in the light of IP.
:-)
The state must stop criminalising civil wrongs. It is not a crime to copy a piece of software (substitute music, video etc). There is no risk to civil order nor personal injury that justifies the criminal sanction as does acts against private property (such as taking or break enter steal).
Independent discovery must be a defense against a patented process prosecution (or patnents should be abolished
Any process that restricts the fair use of property purchased by a consumer must be illegal (DVD region encoding for example)
I am sorry, but I can't do it. I can't keep up the pretence, IP is bunk it has to go. One cannot describe a logical regime when the initial premise is so broken. There is no property in intellect.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Yes, I have no patents, copyrights, or trademarks. Let we who have nothing to lose make the rules!
You can bet that if I did have one of the above, one that was capable of making boatloads of money, I would be defending the current IP laws with the best lawyers and politicians I could buy. Until I could suck no more money from the people- then I'd let it pass into public domain.
Since I'm unlikely to be in that situation, I say down, down with the institution! Share the wealth! Down with current IP and patent laws!
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Some things should be covered by copyright and patents other things should not. You only need to look and see how big corporations like Microsoft are abusing the system to get a clue.
.doc file format would be required to be disclosed. This would ensure that competitors could compete by writing software that was compatible. The same thing should be true of networking protocols. Everyone should be allowed to understand and write software using any protocol but the software that is written should be protected.
Formats and protocols are frequently used to prevent competitors from competing. These should not be covered by copyright or patent. On the contrary, protocols and formats should be required to be disclosed in full by law.
So, Word the program would be covered by copyright but the
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Once a patent application is published, anyone can send prior art to the relevant patent office. This is one of the reasons that patent applications are generally published.
However, you've got to provide the evidence.
I disagree that nullifying IP laws is too strong. I think that is exactly what is needed.
Intellectual property law is based on a very large assumption: that one is entitled to full protection under law for an intangible idea without any effort on the part of the idea-holder. Why bother with developing effective encryption and copy-protection measures when you can wrap your ideas in the threat of a lawsuit? Why stay on top of the latest threats to the security of the products you put out, when you can simply write a statement on the cover that it is illegal to breach the (non-existant) security measures?
Why bother wearing your seatbelt, buying a car with good safety ratings and practicing safe driving habits if it is simply illegal to get in car accidents?
Laws such as those which theoretically protect intellectual property really only create artificial scarcity, which only really exists on the surface. Without intellectual property "rights", individuals and corporations seeking to protect their works would have to actually exert effort to do so. You don't want people to have the ability to copy and redistribute your software? Encrypt it and distribute it securely. Don't slap a checksum on it that my six-year-old sister could reproduce and expect that no-one will figure it out.
Getting rid of frivolous laws that only protect on the surface forces people to think of ways to protect themselves and their efforts. I think making people think for themselves is a big step in the right direction.
Think!
it does not have to go. it just needs to be restricted to small amounts of time.
I think Software needs to be defined as one thing or the other. it is either an invention, hence the patent, or it is a peice od art, hence the copyright.
there than that, I think the patent laws need to be revised for the speed of our society na dshould be shortened to 10 years. also, I think copyright needs to only last 14 years with one renewable 14 year term. that keeps artists pumping out work on a regular basis, and also adds plenty of work to the public domain in a short amount of time.
a fair balence is what we need. not an off balence. abolishing IP is as bad for the creators as having the SSSCA is for the consumers. IP at the minimum guarantees that the creator is given the public credit for the work.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
On Copyright:
Copyright should last 25 years maximum.
Copyright should be non-transferable and non-extendable.
Copyright should always allow fair use and duplication by individuals.
Copyright should only prevent outright mass-distrubtion.
Copyright should only prevent this with law, not with technology (which means if someone's violating copyright, you notice them doing it and track them down and prosecute... you don't hopelessly try to manpiluate technology to prevent it in the first place)
On Patents:
Patents should last 10 years maximum, ever.
All patentable things must meet the following criteria:
1) Non-obvious - a technical person (or technical review board perhaps?) in the field in question wouldn't consider this a trivial and obvious solution.
2) No prior art - it has never been done before.
3) No inclusion of prior art - The work being patented must be the sole intellectual work of the patentee. It cannot contain intellectual work of others, even if those others didn't patent their work (example, patenting a peice of software that relies on algorithms you got from a programming magazine... you could still patent portions of your software, but not that portion, and no "portion" that contains those algorithms).
11*43+456^2
I propose a centralized copyright system (registry of deeds) whereby software is free as in libre, but not necessary as in gratis. To read the most succinct version I've come up with, go here. Unfortunately, my distributedcopyright.org isn't up.
If you outlaw intellectual property, then there is very little incentive to share ideas with others.
And this is different what what's happening right now, how?
The idea behind a patent is that anyone can license the information that a patent protects, right? Why then do pharmeceutical companies refuse to license drugs to third-world countries? (Don't tell me that its because those countries can't afford them. If you don't lower your price to the maximum limit a customer can afford, then you're losing a sale.)
Same way with the music industry. The current licensing schema with DRM and the recent webcasting descision is not designed to make the information in the form of music shareable and profitable. It is designed to keep the music firmly in the hands of the record industry so that they have unquestionable control over it.
That's what it boils down to really. Anyone who follows the current IP debates will readily agree. It's not about money, or making information available. It's about control and power, plain and simple.
The idea of intellectual property laws is to encourage sharing of ideas by granting exclusivity to the creator for a limited amount of time. I believe that idea has been corrupted by corporate interests, but I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bath water.
Information is power. I beleive very firmly that as long as any method exists for the rich and powerful to influence laws, that they will do their best to 'extend' laws that make information artificially scarce in order to increase their own powers.
This is not a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but amputating the baby's infected, cancerous limb in order to save its life.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The 17+17 copyright law was changed in the 60's ('65, iirc). I found this out while trying to figure out if Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land was public domain yet (by my estimation, the original edition is, but the new version published in the 80's by some female Heinlein (daughter? ex-wife?) will be covered for a long time yet).
But, yeah, I agree. 34 years is already a lengthy time for copyright. What does Disney have it up to now? 150+?
Most reasonable people acknowledge that there is a very valid reason for limited copyright protection -- so the creator can reap some reward for their WORK. You know, that "making a living" thing? If you had the talent to make music that millions of people love to hear, or take photographs that people will pay thousands of dollars to hang on their walls, or write code that becomes the next killer app, don't you suppose you might want to have some say in whether or not the fruits of your labor are just taken and used by anyone who wants to, for whatever purpose they wish, for free? If your answer is "no" you are either an idiot or a liar, or both.
Sorry I won't bother to read your essay since it presumably contains the same crap as your post.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
and that is a prolem INSIDE the curent laws. it is not a poblem that is inherit with the ideas of the laws.
I like the idea of the consumer's bill of rights that digital consumer.org has. go check it out, it is in my sig.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Make it for a set number of years period.
This whole life plus X years is a bunch of needless complication, and in actuality is just the sort of ambiguity that gets used 50 years later to really screw things up.
Besides, what if the life extension Pollyannas are right? Everbody lives forever, copyright only expires when an author is successfully murdered?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I wrote an essay for my website about this subject some time back. You can find it here:
http://www.furinkan.net/display.php?pageid=75 [furinkan.net]
Your analogies in this essay are either incorrect or irrelevant.
The prehistoric example is simple. A refugee from a war loses most of his tribe to the invading barbarians, but manages to escape to the next village. If he tells those people of the invasion and moves on, they will help themselves by preparing for the fight or evacuating, and probably taking the refugee with them out of thanks or desire for his experience. If he were to stop at the village, get food and water, and then leave without telling everyone of the approaching ruin, the survivors of the resulting carnage would probably not be so kindly disposed towards him.
This makes no sense whatsoever. It means nothing to IP law. In the above scenario, with or without IP laws, the scenario could be the same.
A more recent example would be the various gold rushes, both with real or imagined minerals. While there was very little real gold in California, the uninhibited spread of information about all the new business opportunities in the area in the late nineteenth century turned an otherwise undesirable region into the one of the hottest business centers on the planet.
Again, you're trying to say that somehow a lack of IP laws was responsible for the west coast's success. Wrong. The idea that gold might be out there helped, but your assertion that flow of information such as news events would not have been possible due to IP Laws is bogus.
The concept of public libraries, which originated around a century ago, is also a clear demonstration of this fact. I don't think that there is anyone who doesn't consider the nation's public libraries to be noble institutions. When they first starting being constructed, however, the publishing industry was in an uproar. People cold go to libraries and read for free rather than pay the publishers for books. It is almost a direct mirror of the current uproar the record industry is making about MP3's and file-trading services such as Napster and Gnutella.
Again, this is a flawed analogie. A library provides access to a single copy of a book for a single person at a single time. They paid the publisher money for that book. Napster provided access to anyone, anwhere, anytime unlimited copies of that item without ever buying that item.
In the library example, the library increased the efficiency of the book by letting any number of people use it over it's lifetime.
Also, the central part of your argument that infinite supply = 0 cost and that the only cost should be in delivery, is rediculous. Record companies spend money to crete music. Software companies spend money to create software. Authors and publishers spend money/time to create works.
You're advocating a communal system that would make any career mentioned above worthless. Your delivery pipes would have NOTHING to deliver since there is no incentive to create.
It is possible that the economic inefficiency involved in a certain amount of reverse-engineering would be less (indeed, much less) than the economic inefficiency inherent to the thought-monopoly regime. Yes, reverse engineering takes time and effort, but perhaps this time and effort would be less expensive and more rewarding, both to its direct beneficiaries and to society at large, than the various costs of thought-monopoly.
What you call "intellectual property", recall, is merely a form of governmentally enforced monopoly on the application of thought, hence my term thought-monopoly. Like any other monopoly, or any other use of government force, it creates economic inefficiencies. The "social contract" backing this monopoly -- as represented in the U.S. Constitution's copyright clause -- is predicated on the belief that the benefits of this monopoly outweigh its costs. This is not a necessarily true claim, and where and when it is not true, thought monopoly is demonstrably unjustifiable on economic grounds.
(I set aside the question of whether thought monopoly is justified, or even permitted, on moral or "natural rights" grounds. I happen to believe it isn't, but I think the economic argument, being a scientifically investigable one, is more likely to be convincing than the moral one.)
A non-scarcity based economy assumes that there are unlimited resources, a population limited by natural means to a fixed upper limit, or that people are willing to share what resources they have freely, none of which is true.
We don't have unlimited amounts of even the most basic necessary resources (ie., water). Our population continues to expand, usually in regions of the world that can ill afford it in the first place. We've pretty much proven that people are at the least somewhat greedy and will hog resources if they perceive a shortage.
And we have no natural predators.
The non-scarcity based economy will remain a fantasy for Star Trek watchers and pipe-dreamers for some centuries to come.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I will agree that the current intellectural property laws can and are abused by record companies and pharmeceutical companies. However, in the abscense of IP laws, why would a company invest millions of dollars in research into a new drug, if someone can just analysis and replicate it for less. Without IP, all of the drug research would be done by the Government and Academic institutions. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can't say that it would be an improvement.
As for the recording industry, I can't argue with you there. I don't think that we really need it anymore.
My concern is in regards to technical advances and not things of artistic merit, which I think need to and should be handled differently.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Speaking as a content creator (music, literary, and fine art):
1. Revert copyright lengths to a reasonable amount of time. A maximum of 17 years in which financial interest in the copyright could be assigned to another person and another 17 year period during which the copyright would mandatorily revert back to the original author(s). This would provide corporations an incentive to fund content creation, and still provide opportunity for the author to receive continued monetary advantage without corporate interference.
2. Examine the possibility of prohibiting a corporation from holding a copyright. As an earlier post mentioned, if corporations had to license the work, they might behave in a more civil manner.
3. Remove the possibility of creating a "Work for Hire." The author of a piece is the author of a piece. If an author is caught falsifying a copyright registration (e.g. he has a contract saying that someone else (like a corporation) is the author, the work immediately and irrevocably falls into the public domain.
4. (Here's one dream item...) Amend the Constitution to say that Congress shall not pass any law containing an amendment. This is how the majority of our pork and shady dealings come about, and it's time for it to stop. There's no reason to attach an amendment giving $500,000 to Topeka for studying the mating habits of the purple-nosed shrew to a law covering federal highway funds. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it's often how bad copyright and patent laws get through - 11th hour additions to bills that have absolutely no relation.
5. In that same constitutional amendment, make it a law that Congress shall make available in multiple formats, for no less than 30 days prior to the vote, a common language "impact statement" for any law. If I have to file an Environmental Impact Statement for something I'm doing on my own property, then the government should damn well have to file an impact statement when passing laws that change the way I live my life.
Lawyers are human modems: you need one on each end of a bill/law figure out what the hell it actually means. I understand the need for legal language to eliminate ambiguity, but when it ceases to be understandable to a person of even above-average-intelligence, things have gotten out of hand.
Before I explained the DMCA's impact to many of my friends and family, they didn't see the big deal. And I have to rely on other people's interpretations of the law because it's a pain to wade through it: too long, too obscure, and uses phrases I'd need to be a 2nd year law student (at least) to understand. I shouldn't need a law degree to know whether a bunch of people (most of whom are not from my state) are about to tell me I can't do something anymore.
Whew. Sorry for the rant. I think that the current "Who Wants to Pay Off A Senator" method of buying legislation is largely responsible for these seeming nonsensical laws. Back to copyright...
6. Remove the "legal entity" status for corporations that Santa Clara County in California helped us bring into the world. Dissolve Santa Clara county and give it to Gilroy as punishment for inflicting a really stupid decision on the rest of the country. (tongue in cheek, folks... but with a grain of sincerity).
It's hard to come up with specifics because the system is so overwhelmingly broken. But I think that a combination of reexamining the ability for a corporation to own a copyright and significantly reducing copyright terms would be a great start.
If the government is truly interested in upholding the Constitution (and I get more and more skeptical of that every day), then they need to go back and read the damn thing. I seriously doubt that the copyright provision was put in place so that 5 multinational corporations could run amok.
Wow... I've really rambled on. Sorry for that. This is an issue with few easy answers, but it's definitely easy to identify that there's a problem.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
The main problem I have with the laws is who is held responcible for the copyright/patten infrengment.
These laws are try to stop poeople from pointing to websites that violate the law and have copywritten or pattened information. This is an unfair act because a site can contain more information then just Illegal information it can also obtain legal and fair use information as well. If you are going to sue someone for violating your copyrights then sue the person who is violating it and not the person who is pointing to it.
Citizans should be able to browse the web and Download what they want without feeling liabale for getting illegal information where they can be prosicuted. It is the responcibility of the content provider to very the legality of his information. This is also true on P2P networks such as music sharing systems. They do not actually hold the music it is just a bunch people saying "hay this is what I got and you can have it" The P2P networks have no means of checking to see if it legal or not and the responcibily falls on the person distributing the content.
Music fair use. I beleave it is fair use to distribute a song or track without a charge to a limited amount of people. I beleave that if you give away the hole CD or album is unfair use. You should pay for having all the music you want on the CD and not pay for the indivual songs. By giving away the hole set crosses the bounds because it takes away all the work the record company made. Its like listing to music on the radio you raily hear the hole CD you just hear a song and the next piece they pay is from an other CD.
And I dont think you should differieate from IP laws from ordany laws. There is no real difference.
Hacking or Cracking into a compuer is the same as breaking and entering and tresspassing (It dosent matter if the computer is unsecure or not). Piricy of software is simular to going into a store and taking the Software (which is the same if you give away the whole package or album of a music)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Okay, what are they? Please clarify. I'm not trolling; I want to discuss specifics to make sure that the alternatives you're proposing are fair.
First, I do not claim to have all the answers. I am merely stating that the discussion, to be at all fruitful, must consider alternatives to a system which is prone to abuse, and prone to worst vargaries of a command economy and government coercion by its very nature (and initial design requirements).
Second, this list is by no means exhaustive. It is off the top of my head, and others I'm sure could suggest more creative, perhaps more effective, approaches.
As for fairness, I can think of several things that would be at least as fair as the current, very unfair system of copyright (unfair to artists and consumers both), without the burden on our society of state enforced monopolies.
One, as others have mentioned, is patronage. It is, in one sense, how most programmers are paid today (most of us work on inhouse software, NOT retail software being sold under copyright. Some of us are fortunate enough to be working on free software or open source projects). It is also how most acters are paid, in another sense. Indeed, arguably it is how any artist or professional is paid who does a "work for hire" where the artist (or professional) in question never enjoys "ownership" of the copyright on the work they produce, or the patent on the work they invent.
Another possibility is derivative income. Example: you don't make money on the music, you make money on the performance of the music. Again, this won't change how most bands make money, for example, as they receive most of their revinues from concerts (while their publishers, the record companies, rake in millions via their control of the copyright itself, selling copies of the music on CDs, etc.).
Another possibility is "busking" or the electronic equivelent thereof via micropayments of one sort or another.
Another possibility is simply creating wealth and sharing it to ones advantage, much as free software has done for many of us. I make my living off of the deployment of free software, which I can, share, and modify freely despite having not written it myself. The developers in turn make good money, because they are well known and thus in demand. We all win (and though free software is copyrighted by definition, the license is designed to negate the restrictions of copyright). I give back a little in my own way, which further enriches others (perhaps in ways I don't even know about or expect).
None of these approaches are perfect, all of them have problems and challenges, but no more so than copyright itself, and assuming your goal is to insure the artist is compensated, and the society is enriched, they are all superior to the copyright regime we now have, or even in its much more benign form as initially implimented in the United States.
Now, if your goal is to protect and enrich publishers, as it was at the time the constitution was written to include provisions for copyright, then you might object to these approaches, but artists and society at large would likely benefit greatly from any of them over the current system, particularaly now that we have the internet to make publishing costs negligable.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Because it's too over beneficial on the copyright holder and an easy loophole. What you say sounds good, but it's easy to find a buyer. This is similar to a law Clinton and a Republican congress let through regarding some banking info; limitations were attempted but the limitations were a joke. One company just agrees to buy another company's copyright products, and vice versa. Once every 5 years, and bingo, you've got an indefinite copyright. Nothing would fall into the public domain.
Copyright law is suppose to bring benefit to the end user as well as the creator. Extending the period of time before going to the public domain removes benefits to the end user, as they cannot create derivative work without permission (license) and allows extension of copyright claims on now decade old ideas. It benefits the creator in terms of profit, but in reality, causes a reduction in overall creativity, as there is no impetus to create new content, as the creator simply continues living off the sales of their early works, and new creators cannot extend old ideas without paying a fee or having the original creator limiting their work through the licensing scheme.
If I were in control of copyright laws, I'd kill the DMCA. It stifles both technological innovation as well as prevents works from becoming public domain. As someone earlier stated, return copyright laws back to what they were 10 years ago.
Frankly, if the copyright industry associations continue on this course, I wouldn't be surprised if unionization occurred (sounds strange, doesn't it?).
A challenge (and there are many others besides this one) is to come up with something that ballances preventing the patenting of the mundane by using innovative language with something that allows a patent holder to make a profit from a "natural" substance. The /. community is all too familliar with people who patent or try to patent everything from web links to silverware by simply describing the item or process using obfuscatory language. Any change to patent law or the patent process should protect against this.
A different shortcoming of existing patent law is that it makes it unprofitable to bring a natural substance to market. As examples, there are several herbal remedies and natural substances that don't have the nasty side-effects of the equivalent man-made drug or concoction but for which there is little or no incentive to make them commercially available by doing the expensive product testing, etc. required to claim they are "safe and effective." A business will only spend the money to do this if the business thinks it has a reasonable expectation of making a profit on the resulting product.
So instead of just coming up with changes to the existing law that will just let you download MP3s again, consider what it would take to actually make a real improvement.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I think as the point comes when no *substantial* commercial benefit is made of some intellectual property, be it music, software, books, whatever, it should at least be legal to redistribute such material in any way which does not constitute resale for profit.
Like, let's measure monthly sales (in units not revenue!) of every publication every two years, and when it is below, let's say, five percent of
the highest sales per month ever reached, allow its free redistribution until, in spite of such freedom, it climbs over 8 percent again, at which point the right to use (but not further redistribute) such copy should continue.
Would protect the commercial interest of the creator as well as the interest in continued
in continued availability of valuable content
by the consumer/user.
Yes, I know, it's similar to the so-called
abandonware movement, which however only seeks rights in, as the name says, abandoned software, not such which is only an item of sales for the books.
Pertaining to software, it would also throw a spanner in the wrench of those companies who try to chase their own product off the market in order to sell another, deliberately inferior one for business tactical reasons (am I *really* to give examples here? think not!).
...
Considering patents, they should all be exhumed and strictly reevaluated, *especially* regarding obviousness, triviality and prior art, and such strict standards upheld for new applications.
Or, use a similar expiration formula as I described above, with expiration also starting
when no usage has been made of the patented
invention for, like, 15 years, *in spite of usability in connection with the current state
of technology and economy.*
The purpose of intellectual property laws in the US is simple. An inventor/creator is given for a limited period of time a monopoly over his/her creation. The time limits are meant to be long enough for the person to recoup costs of creation and make a profit off of it thereby encouraging people to create. There're two problems now. The current time limit in the US for copyrights is bizarre. It discourages people from creating more than once, assuming they create something enjoyed on a mass scale the first time. The authors life + X years system also encourages an intellectual nobility in that the children and possibly grandchildren will continue to benefit from the invention of a parent thereby having no incentive to create. The most you could justify is something along the lines of authors life or 30 years, whichever is longer. That way you avoid a situation in which the primary wage earner dies unexpectedly and thereby leaves his/her family out in the cold. I'd be in favor of a flat 40 years, myself. Plenty of time to recoup costs and make a nice amount of money, not so much time that it stretches into the bizarre. However I'd temper that with the condition that a copyright held by a corporation lasts only 25 years. As for patents, 14 years is fine. The problem is the silly nature of some patents granted these days. The solution for this is for congress to begin properly funding the USPTO again. The USPTO is currently reliant on people filing for patents and trademarks for its funding. It's underfunded with a builtin incentive to grant patents to encourage people to continue filing. Patents only last 14 years and if they're too stupid they are challengeable, but the granting of somewhat silly patents can slow down scientific progress. Trademark law seems mostly fine with a few exceptions (the despair.com frownie comes to mind). But those are only valid if enforced anyway. If someone with a common speech/use trademark ever brought suit it'd get struck down (think kleenex).
-Mike
1. trademarks are relatively good.
:))
2. copyrights and patents should last for 20 years with one possible 20 year extension. THEY SHOULD BE TRANSFERABLE! Thats just good market economics. For property to be useful it needs to be clearly defined, owned, and protected. (Public goods are a necessary evil, when these things objectives cannot be achieved without a massive violation of liberties, like privatizing air) All of this anti-corp bs is silly. The publicly held corp (as an institution idea, not necessarily individual entities, has been the single biggest contributor to income equality in the last 200 years i dare say!) (as i run for my flame suit
3. we simply need to do a better job screening out "trivial and obvious" patents that arent terribly innovative and we need to do a better job with prior art.
Basically IP needs to be harder to get with a shorter lifespan and the rights of all parties must be well defined.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Being a former intellectual property attorney, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this very issue. I have to disagree with the notion expressed by epsalon in the original posting:
However, nullifying all IP laws is IMHO a bit too strong, because there will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux).
At the end of the day, all copyright and patent laws are an attempt to create some incentive for certain kinds of creation, at the expense of limiting the right of the public to use certain ideas. In essence, this is nothing more than a subsidy (the IP owner gains a limited monopoly right, the public loses freedom of action with regard to the subject of that monopoly). Just because the "price" of the subsidy paid by the public is not directly monetary doesn't mean that it is any less of a subsidy.
A lot of people who (in my opinion, correctly) reject the notion of government subsidies as unnecessary and, on balance, harmful to society still accept the notion of IP because they don't see it for what it is. The backers of IP laws would have you believe that a world without IP laws would be a bleak, gray unhappy place with no creativity. Of course, the world before IP laws looked nothing like that, and the world won't look like that when people finally undo these mistakes of history.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
What we need is mandatory licensing. This provides a balance of control between the property owner and the potential consumer, encouraging innovation while maintaining freedom.
Original copyrights can only be granted to an individual and are good for the life of that individual.
The individual exercises sole control of the copyright, i.e., setting rates, limits, uses, etc.
If the copyright is sold or given to another individual or corporation, it is valid for 10 years from the date of transfer with the same rights
If the copyright is transferred again before the initial 10 years are up, the amount of time left is still measured from the date of the first transfer, also with the same rights
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Fundamentally, IP laws cannot work in a global market place that doesn't recognize IP laws from country to country.
Given the fact that the sole purpose of IP laws are to restrict commerce by imposing a levy on any idea or product reproduced, those countries not under the same restrictions will kill those countries that are in the marketplace.
If the US and its allies are to make IP property work, they will need to consider military action, or economic action against those countries who feel certain IP laws in our country don't apply to operating thier economies, or who simply develop a different economy altogether.
Especially when you consider the fact that developing "mega" economies such China, and Russia who could dwarf anything Europe or the US could output in sheer GNP, cannot at this stage pay such levies.
Not only that, but IP rights in the US and Europe, are increasingly laws on the books that enforce legal monopolies by corporate entities rather than what they are really meant to be: a way to reimburse the development costs of the idea to the inventor. As we see with DMCA and other such legislation, these rights are actually methods to lock in markets and prevent new competition or development of technology that renders the patented technology obsolete.
Regardless if it is in the consumers, or our countries technology markets best interests.
I don't believe given these facts, and if we are to remain friends with these nations who are up and comming, that IP laws as written are a good idea.
IP laws should be changed so that the idea of reimbursement is a very very VERY small percentage of the market place and allow the iventor to sell his product and make his profits like everyone else.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Toss the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and you have a basically alright system. Beyond that, "life isn't fair get a helmet."
(Now I need about 57 people to respond to correct that quote for me, thanks.)
Heh, Trademarks are the only "IP" that actually are analogus to property, they have scarcity value. Others can't copy them without damaging thier value, to both merchant and customer.
Copyright and Patent, on the other hand, are flat out monopolies. And they were never intended to protect the individual vs. corporations. Which is good, because they never have.
Patents could still serve the original purpose (getting people to contibute useful inventions that they hold secret into the public domain), though the system badly needs reform. (example of why: The Patent King) Copyright is just plain obsolete, as far as the original purpose goes; Any author can publish themselves on the Internet for neglible cost, publishers are no longer needed as gatekeepers. As for insuring that authors get paid, Stephen King has tried variations on The Street Performer Protocol with satisfactory results (he was satisfied, he's the author, his is the only opinion that counts).
Intellectual property is a corporate (or individual) asset used to obtain revenue, just like computers, desks, chairs, etc. As such, it is treated as a capital expense under Internal Revenue Code. The full cost of producing the IP must be amortized according to the Code, and amortizations are a time-limited period chosen when the property is first claimed for deduction.
So, why not just tie the protection of said IP to its amortizations? Once the IP has fully capitalized, it should no longer qualify for protection and then fall into the public domain.
This would make IP holders think *very carefully* about how long they want to take to amortize -- it would make them choose a balance between tax savings and IP protection.
Remember - if you want a software copyright law that expires in 10 years, then the ideas present in the early linux kernels (ie: 1.0) would now be the public domain.
As an open source developer you must remember, the IP laws that others use to screw you, are the same laws that you use to screw them right back.
Is this what you want?
All copyrights must be held by a private individual. No corporate entity may hold a copyright.
This can easly be circumvented by an exclusive license, and many many other legal instruments.
Copyright terms may vary up to a period of 17 years (depending on content type -- To Be Specified
Any boundary you make will be blurry. What is a movie that is generated by a computer program dynamically? This is inflexible and won't scale.
Copyright expires upon the death of the copyright holder.
Thereby making it impossible for me to use copyrighted material as an asset? Oh brother. Your solutions are worse than the problem.
Copyrights cannot be assigned to another entity
See above. There are tons of legal ways to get around this... why? If I want to sell it I should be able to. It is a limited monopoly afterall, it has value, and thus I should be able to use it in the marketplace. Copyright law is silent on all of these issues for good reason.
If a work has some form of access control, that access control must be disabled when the work enters public domain
Good idea, hard to enforce. A better way is a registry; if you want to copyright binary source code, you must include the source code to the copyright office for escrow, as soon as the copyright expires, the source is released.
Reverse engineering any sort of access control is legal
Yes, withdrawing DMCA is a great idea. But I'm not certain if you can go any further. Tradesecret law is important...
Patents must be held by individuals, not corporate entities
They are held by individuals, they just happen to be assignable/licensed to companies.
Only physical objects and processes may be patented.
How do you make this distinction? A can-of-worms this is.
No patent shall be granted for algorithms or business processes
I'm not certain this is such a good idea, just about everything shoudl be patentable, IMHO, but only if it "advances the sciences and useful arts".
A working implementation of the patented process must be provided (upon request of USPTO)
This is called "reduction to practice" and it is already a requirement.
Naturally occuring results of processes may not be patented (ex: DNA)
Once again, it's hard to make this distinction. Any guidelines? The patent process is by necessity a one-by-one kind of thingy.
The USPTO must conduct a good faith search for any prior art
But they do already! They just hire idiots to do it who are impressed by anything technical sounding... the problem is more how they get funded. The funding of the PTO comes from patent applications. Thus, to get more funding, they need to increase applications. And what a better way to encourage the applications then by approving a big chunks of them.
Perhaps a better solution is to make them accoutnable so that the PTO can be sued a fixed fee for patents which should not have been issued. This, or some other accoutability mechanism is needed to provide a dis-insentive to approve applications without doing due dillegence.
Overall, nice ideas though. You need some serious thinking on this stuff...
Second, after reading the book, understand that ideas, intangebles, and resources that do not decrease in value as they are used, operate differently than tangeble objects -- therefore they whould be regulated differently.
Third, understand that people who are creative should be compensated and therefore encouraged to innovate. In contrast, creative people required the use of other innovations, and therefore cannot in good concience retain all rights to every aspect of the idea: they must benefit the common area from which they themselves derrived inspiration.
Fourth, understand that the existing regime will always fight to keep their power by suppressing innovation. Innovators will offer very little fight to innovate because they do not have evidence that the innovation will be successful.
Take those together and you basically arrive at the IP law nearly 2 centuries ago. Specifically:
Since we have to deal with the garbage that is already in place, this would mean:
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The answer (at least to me) is pretty simple:
For copyright, set copyright dates in stone - fixed term (none of this "life of the author +X years.) Each work gets the same amount of protection, and there is no discrimination.
Second, return to a registration system. If you want copyright protection, you must register for it. You must register ALL incarnations of something to get copyright for any of them ie. you must register your source code AND runtime, if you want protection for the runtime. That way, once the work falls into the public domain, the public is guarateed access.
Third, registration would have to be renewed every so often (5 or 10 years.) This would prevent "IP hoarding", and eliminate the current problem with "abandonware."
For patents, I don't think the system is horribly flawed, it's just poorly implemented. Enforcement of the (original) rules needs to done. (ie. You can't patent something you can copyright, better checks for "originality", and for scientific merit.) If the idea is simple, but the implementation is difficult, no patent.
Trademarks? No opinion. Just don't start doing it like Germany ("Hi, I'm a lawyer, and you might be infringing on a trademark. You must now give me money for telling you this."), and we'll be OK.
In reference to patents, this is my idea:
:)
Term of protection = Term of creation
ie if it took you 10 years to "invent" the process, you get 10 years of protection.
Of course, the development time must be properly documented. Anyone who is seriously developing something that is truly worthy of a patent should have no problem with that. And the "development time" ends at the moment of patent application or time of first sale, whichever is first. And it must be active development. No fair just "sitting" on the invention for a few years to extend the protection period.
An interesting side effect of this: software patents are ok, because software development goes SO FAST that the protection period will be almost nothing. Case in point: the 1-click patent. Go ahead, patent it. Your protection period will be all of 5 minutes.
Really, if you can't get enough benefit out of writing a piece of software in 10 years, then it's someone else's turn
What happens if the software you wrote has a limited customer base, and you figure it will take 20 years to get a return on your investment?
I'd rather have the user be able to specify the limit of their copyright on the form and then have markets use this additional information (when the copyright expires) as an additional factor in their decision. They may choose to buy software that costs $500 now and becomes public domain two years later over software that is $100 now and doesn't become public domain for the next 50 years...
I'd rewrite the copyright laws to explicitly make the allowing of all kinds of fair use a requirement for a copyright to be granted. It would be perfectly legal to protect a work using protection schemes that prevent fair uses (such as making excerpts, viewing it on other devices, lending it and reselling it), but that would automatically void its copyright so that if anyone *could* copy it, they could legally redistribute as many copies as they wanted. And, of course, the DMCA prohibitions on circumventing access controls wouldn't apply to any access control that prevented any fair use.
One idea I've been kicking around in my head lately is whether copyright should protect software at all. What about this: A software program (the binaries, not the source code) cannot be copyrighted, but rather it is regarded as a device and patented. The patent would cover a specific, working program, not an "algorithm" or anything vague like that. To a typical end-user, a program is more like a device than a creative work so patents make more sense than copyright. Yes, we geeks see creativity in the design, but that's primarily in the source code, not the final output. The main use of software is to run it, not to disassemble its executable files.
There are huge advantages to this system: Like all patents, part of the patent application requires a full disclosure of how the device works. In the case of software, that means source code. Yes, software companies have to give up their source code in exchange for IP protection. Far from being unfair, that's exactly how it should work. Software has thus far been cheating the system by gaining monopoly protection from copyright, but not telling the public how they built it. Before you freak out, remember that patent law would still protect the code from unauthorized distribution, i.e. you can look but don't copy. If that's not enough, then perhaps the source code could be held in escrow by the USPTO until the patent expires.
As for "code is speech": I'm not sure filing software under patents rather than copyrights would necessarily invalidate its status as free speech, but just in case... Source code is indeed expressive and could remain under copyright, like design docs or blueprints. But binaries are primarily functional and would be better treated as devices. Data files (images, sounds, etc.) that accompany the program could be copyrighted separately. As for interpreted languages like perl where human- and machine-readable code are the same thing, well the primary purpose is still functional so it could be patented but still considered speech.
And apparently, you'd have no problem with Wired stripping your name off the essay, putting theirs on, and reposting it as their own.
The solution is:
1. Give everyone in the world a secure online bank account that people can donate money too.
2. Place a link to this account (or a web page hosting the account) in all media generated by said persons.
That is all.
If people like an artist, or a content creator, they can give them money to make more.
For example a small game company could give away a game for free. And then they make a web site that says.
To make a sequal we need this much money: x.xx$
So far we have this much money: x.xx$
If you want to see a sequal please support our cause.
You could evan have multiple projects, and everyone could donate as much as they liked to whatever they liked.
The only middleman in this case is the bank.
The one exception that I would make to getting rid of all IP laws is the use of Trademarks. These are less in the way of making a piece of information which *should* be able to be copied freely uncopiable, but is a lot more about an individual or a business uniquely identifying themselves.
That's just silly -- do you have limits on trademark length? One word? Two? Three lines? How about forty? I have a forty line method here, that I want to claim as my trademark, and no one else can use my trademark.
Who created the content?
Britney certainly didn't write her own crap.
does the writer get credit for creating it?
doe she get credit?
what about the back up singer that only sings on one track?
Or is it the Reord labels producer who brought together the "unique talents" of every one involved?
I don't like the current system, but some times it is very hard to figure out who it is that created something, and unless we can address this issue clearly amongst ourselves, we will not be able to present it to a senator that is recieving money to ignore us.
I'm sorry that this seems trollish, but the issue is confusing to me
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
The first problem is the USPTO. They are badly overworked and underfunded, they need to stop and reevaluate what should and should not be granted a patent. They may not grant valid patents, but the problem seems to be the other way, and they know it will go to court anyway.
Before we ask how long the title to property should last, we should make the title as issued stronger. An issued patent should be as or more solid than a title to your house. Not easily broken, and maybe insurable. The USPTO should issue patents that would be the equivalent of a finding for the patent holder in court, so anyone appealing should have a high burden of proof.
Currently they issue too easily and then let those who want to break it find prior art or other reasons the patent isn't valid.
Second, is software a toaster or book? Toasters aren't supposed to burn your house down so there are implicit warranties and liabilities. You can't sue an author because you didn't like the ending or the fondue from a cookbook. If any software is copyrighted, it should be in both source and binary form, and all the exceptions that libraries have (I can check out a copy) should apply. If they want to individually contract with each party under a NDA or Trade Secret, it will keep the Notary Publics employed - but that isn't a copyright.
Copyrights are supposed to secure income to the author and Patents to the inventor for a limited time to encourage innovation. Copyright should be 20 years, and Patents 10 given the speed of business, transportation and communication. If they want perpetual income they should use the proceeds to buy an annuity.
There is a case to be made beyond the 20 years for copyright in the area of artistic integrity. If I write something, I won't want something to come out defaced or altered under the same name. It would be a form of slander or libel. So I would extend an integrity copyright (you can't alter it and present it as the original work). The author can then present an "authorized" (pun intended) version of the work which should command a premium over the public domain version, as well as derivative works.
I don't know, but someone should calculate the number of books or recordings which are now out of print without any plans to print more. How do they benefit the authors? Where the majority of books go out of print plus some margin they should set the copyright period.
What if current copyright/patent law allowed lawyers to patent a particular defense if it worked well in court? Wouldn't that make it more difficult for you to do your job if you had to pay someone to use a particular tactic to defend one of your clients? Or even to prosecute a particular case of infringment?
That's what it's like for software - You make a comment about how Talented programers "don't want any impediments whatsoever", how is that special treatment? Do Carpenters need to pay for a license before they put up an A-Frame house? To do math, do you have to pay extra to use the square-root key?
Patented software takes away fundemental tools and solutions available to developers. It may be true that the solutions may not be discovered until a problem is encountered, but just because someone was the first to file a patent for a new problem should not give them the right to deny others use of it.
I'll admit that I have my doubts about some forms of software patents - certain video and sound compression algorthms especially. These take a lot of work and time, and can be truely inovative (and easilly copied once discovered), but I have never seen another "inovative" software patent.
2) Transfer of rights from the creator of the IP to a corporation should weaken the IP rights, not strengthen them. (Corporations have an unfair advantage over individuals. They are awarded all the legal protections of an individual, but they have far greater resources, and live forever, and are less accountable for their actions.)
3) Duration of patents should be adjusted on an industry-by-industry basis for maximum benefit to all. Business model patents should be very short (1 or 2 years). Perhaps the patent on a cancer cure should last a little longer. In other words, duration duration of a patent should reflect the time, energy, and money that went into developing the patentable technology.
4) Technology based completely or partially on publicly funded research should not be patentable by private corporations. (Perhaps the government itself should hold the patent and license fairly to all that request?)
5) Where IP laws are used to protect a harmful monopoly (Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA), the government should consider refusing to enforce those IP laws in favor of said monopolies as a suitable remedy.
A problem with this that there is an implicit third way of IP protection (the other two are copyrights and patents) and that is secrets. If IP laws are removed then companies will just shut up. It is for this reason that our current IP laws foster innovation and likely stimulate thinking.
With patents we have a public record of innovation, so that when companies get bored of researching something we all know about without them having to do anything.
-Sean
the first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers
--shakespeare
1. Actually, patent prosecution (the process of applying and obtaining a patent) is an ex parte proceeding, meaning it is conducted only between the applicant and the examinner. There is really no set mechanism for the public at large to comment on published applications.
2. Patent applications began to be published only recently (i.e., only applications filed after Nov. 29, 1999) and is only mandatory if you intend to seek international patent protection. If you do not intend to seek international protection, you can opt out of publication in which case your application is never published and it will only see the light of day after the patent issues.
3. The concept of publication of applications for public comment before issuance is great. In reality, however, it is not practicable. The Patent Office is exteemely backlogged. In certain fields (e.g., software, TV, telecommunications), applications do not get an innitial examination until 4 years after they are filed. From that point forward, if everything goes well, an application will probably take about 1 year to issue. Becuase of the backlog, examiners only get to spend between 8-16 hours per application, soup-to-nuts. If you require them to review comments from thousands of people after an application is published. the time needed for a patent to issue is likely to double. Imagine the inventor waiting 10 years for a patenbt to issue!
Agreed, Trademarks should be kept. They do no harm unless enforced to broadly. And they help with one of the prime legitimate functions of government: to enforce truth in advertising/truth in labeling laws. Failing to enforce Trademarks would make it impossible for consumers to tell who to trust.
I would recommend a proportional time period for
IP. I would limit IP rights for a maximum of
10 years on all inventions. This would be for
individuals ONLY
I would shorten IP protection for Corporations
to 5 Years. Sale of IP from an individual to
a corporation would drop to 5 years minus
the length of the individuals period of existing
protection. I would ban sale of IP from individuals to individuals, and or corps to individuals.
I would allow corps to license IP from individuals under the 10 year plan, but
if more than two or three corps license it,
the protection time should drop to say 7 years.
The above would do a number of things.
1st It would tend to keep IP in the hands of people as opposed to Corporations.
2nd It would allow the inventor to make money
after which the IP would be public domain.
3. It could speed up public domain status for
IP that is in demand. As more companies
license the tech the protection gets shorter.
4. It would encourage funding for individuals
to invent.
I would also ban exclusive licensing from contracts regarding IP as well
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
All tedious and boring fiction may be copyrighted for 500 years.
Non-fiction may be copyrighted only if it is not useful.
Reproduction or performance of any type of irritating music is absolutely forbidden -- particularly humming and whistling.
Things like "one-click shopping" can't be patented because they aren't complicated enough. There needs to be at least four or five clicks. Or even six. This is to be worked out in the courts.
Genes and genetically engineered species absolutely cannot be patented. Even Jordache. Those talking cows you see on commercials are pretty cool though.
You shouldn't be able to use words as trademarks because you always have to open character map to look up that little "TM" symbol when you use one of those dumb words like "Coke" or "Kleenex". And they moved it in Windows2000. So you can't find it.
You should be allowed to copy anything that you would have been able to make yourself if you had three or more of the following: faster computer, talent, a muse, a bitchin' studio, thumbs, a girlfriend that wasn't always putting you down and gave you a little support for christ's sake.
Best Windows Freeware
Here's your chance to do something other than complain about the current state things.
Yes, obviously, because this Slashdot discussion will no doubt lead to changes in the system.
1) Patent system:
In my opinion the present patent system is a disaster and it should be scrapped entirely. There should be no patents at all. The notion of "intellectual property" needs to be abandoned in favor of ideas being the common property of all humankind. Money should be made by products competing in the marketplace not by lawyers fighting in courtrooms.
2) Copyrights:
Copyrighted works should enter the public domain with the death of the author.
3)Trademarks:
I am in favor of trademark law.
What laws can be written that will be fair both to content creators and to users, while cutting the middleman?
But the commentary along with it asks:
How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?
The problem is it's not two sides of the fence. The people making the biggest problem here are the people who are the fence! The fence has the most complete control of the exchange of money for IP properties, and that's the biggest problem.
There is definitely a role for distributors etc. because your typical creator is not necessarily good at the business aspects of distribution. But whatever changes are made, they need to minimize the distributor's opportunities to skim, restrict, and otherwise control the flow of money and IP to their own gain and the detriment of the parties on either side.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
(Don't tell me that its because those countries can't afford them. If you don't lower your price to the maximum limit a customer can afford, then you're losing a sale.)
The way I understand it, they don't want to sell the drugs cheaply to third world countries because they fear that if they do, it will create a much larger black market for the drugs where they are bought cheaply and then sold to places where the drugs normally sell for more, namely the US and EU.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If I could change the laws, I'd say that anyone is free to charge whatever they want for information, but not free to restrict what the purchaser does with that information afterwards. That is, it would be perfectly legal to transfer files, share them with your friends, and so forth. Clearly, this would put artists somewhat in the position of movie moguls who want to make a good chunk of their profits on opening weekend. When you release your product (whatever it is: a new book, song, movie), there will be people willing to pay to get it immediately. After that, it'll circulate around: tough. This might affect how much total profit is made from books, movies, and music -- but where is it written that a certain level of profit must always be made?
Now, if I also had the magical ability (suggested by the poster) to change society, I'd create a strong peer pressure in favour of micropayments for use of information. That is, systems where you (voluntarily) send the artist a penny every time you listen to a song, and a societal norm such that you are considered boorish if you don't do this. I think this would sidestep the End of Art As We Know It scenario that's cited as the reason for zealous protection of IP. I also think such pressures could be created in the society we've actually got, but I'm an optimist.
Advantages to whom? Oh right, to people who want the fruits of other people's labour for free. So, being the kind of guy who demands the fruits of other people's labour for free, I guess you always walk out of restaurants without paying the bill too, huh? Information actually flows pretty easily already when I buy a book from amazon, and the author gets to pay the rent into the bargain.
As the poster put it 'leveraging other business' should be the only way people who make information, be it text, code, music, etc... make money.
I'm sorry, but this is just f***ing nuts. Almost all musicians or writers worth their salt do nothing but make music or write. That's why they're so good, and that's why you want to listen to and read their stuff. So what other "business" do they have to leverage? Selling T-shirts? This might be funny if it weren't so stupid.
Stop thinking of IP as a "good" to be sold, and start thinking of how to exploit an idea and turn it into a billable SERVICE which cannot be duplicated.
The founding fathers wrote books for people to READ, not buy. Mozart wrote music for people to LISTEN to, not buy. Shakespeare wrote plays for people to WATCH, not buy.
You can easily secure payments for a service.
Perhaps the only law that needs to be written down is that credit needs to be given where credit is due ("This song was written by Billy Joel, but I thought I'd try an interpretation tonight for all my fans").
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It's quite simple really: the intent of copyright law is, and never has truly been, to protect the "right" to profit of the inventor. The purpose is explicitly and solely to maximize the production and dissemination of invention and the useful arts. It should be considered, as Thomas Jefferson did, an embarrassing monopoly that is granted only begrudgingly as necessary to maximize the greatest public good.
That much is simple fact, easily gleaned from the original sources. How to implement that simple fact is a matter of opinion, but when the core purpose is obscured in a fog of "property rights" and "contractual obligations" the real purpose can never be realized, much to the detriment of society and the rule of law.
The first step must be to refute once and for all the "right" to profit as a purpose or goal of intellectual property law and to annul the contractual obligations entangling the free dissemination of ideas and inventions.
In my inexpert analysis I would suggest a few changes to the standing law immediately:
1) Purely artistic works (useless arts) should be denied all copyright protection. That was a later invention, originally intended to provide incentive for publishers who, at then great expense, tooled up to produce physical artifacts necessary to enable the propagation of such works.
These efforts and expenses are no longer required and the embarrassing monopoly granted to publishers of such works is no longer necessary to ensure the dissemination of these works.
There is an argument that artists would not create without some financial incentive protected by copyright, but that argument is proven false by a quick trip to the local museum, wherein one will find halls filled with great works, almost all created without any copyright protection at all.
This would challenge some of the protected revenue streams currently enjoyed by the music industry and rational people might argue that the industry has such tremendous value to society that such protections are necessary. I do not believe that they are, nor that music nor movies require these protections and that they serve unnecessary to restrain the freedom of individuals, and that--indeed--their existence and enforcement have become a cudgel against innovation critically restraining the computer industry and are therefore in explicit contravention of the intent and purpose of copyright and patent law.
2) No "discovered" concept should be patentable. This applies to algorithms and to genes, as well as to mechanisms that are copied from nature. It is an offense against humanity that the information contained within our very bodies might be owned by another. All algorithmic patents derived from mathematics should be revoked, as well as all patents on discovered entities.
It is argued that the only incentive to undertake massive sequencing efforts is for the reward of exploiting the information thereby discovered. I find that argument weak and would counter that the discovery is a critical step in the invention of useful exploitations of the information (cures for diseases rather than the disease sequence itself) that are patentable. We would not, for example, let an explorer patent an oil well, though we would not contend the ownership of the oil usefully extracted therefrom.
3) Copyright for "useful" arts, which may be broadly and loosely interpreted and might well reasonably embody both works of music or movies in addition to non-fiction and reference, should be protected by the least monopoly necessary to ensure their continued production and dissemination.
It can be argued reasonably that the work undertaken to create a dictionary or a treatise on mathematics might not be undertaken if the author could not reasonably expect to derive some income therefrom, nor might it be published if the publisher could not reasonably expect to retain some exclusive right, and therefore the monopoly grant is useful in maximizing the dissemination of such useful ideas to the public.
However, this grant must be by intent and by law the least necessary to provide generally adequate incentive for these efforts. In the 1800's, when type was cast in lead, this was found to be 14 years. Today the cost of publishing is far lower and the period of protection should fall commensurately. I would propose an automatic 5 year copyright grant, with a 5 year extension which is not automatically granted but must be granted only on review and only when deemed necessary to meet the goal of maximum dissemination.
4) When patents were first devised, it was determined that 17 years was sufficient monopoly for the inventor to reasonably recoup the cost of invention and sufficient profit to serve as incentive to future invention. Patents are currently granted in a far wider array of fields than at the outset, providing a useful, broad, but broadly limited service to invention and dissemination.
The problem is that the current system does not differentiate between quickly and slowly changing technologies, yet the term of protection may be ineffectual as incentive for fields slow to adopt new technologies (such as materials science) and a tremendous hindrance to quickly changing fields where the patent protection far outlasts the utility of the invention (such as computer science).
Therefore the patent office should provide tiers of protection. I would suggest 2 years for software, 5 years for electronic hardware, 10 years for genetics and drugs, 20 years for mechanics, and 30 years for materials and basic science. These terms may be adjusted as necessary to provide a period of useful protection for the inventor sufficient to serve as invention but not to constrain the wide adoption of the invention past its useful lifespan.
5) Patents and copyrights should be subject to judicial review on the grounds of serving the original intent of the law. There should be a mechanism whereby the just nature of the granted monopoly may be challenged and overturned if it is found on review that the monopoly does not serve the interests of maximal dissemination. Grounds for overturning a granted monopoly would include hindrance of invention, disuse, inappropriate use. For example, technologies incorporated into standards, and later asserted by the holder against adopters of the standard could be overturned and the invention taken by the public domain by eminent domain.
But the most important step is to re-calibrate the public discourse, to make laughable the claims we hear so often that patent and copyright law is about protecting property and ensuring fair rewards and other such patently false arguments. The proponents of these ridiculous ideas must be roundly rebuked and the arguments put firmly to rest. Once everyone understands the purpose of intellectual property law is to maximize the good to society and may be done or undone at the whim of society without complaint by anyone, I believe we will be well on our way to a working and workable legal framework.
Author's life + 70 years. (And I believe that is, if not close to, what it is today.)
:P So, how about we leave it as is, yank "corporations are people!" out of the law, and stop them from 'renewing' copyright and patents and all sorts of things?
Why?
Because, I want my family to benefit from my work.
Do you want Microsoft to take your code and throw it into MS Windows? No - you want it to benefit Open Source.
Likewise, authors want their books to benefit their families. (Usually, it's secondary to the need to tell the story, especially for the good ones, but it's still there.)
Of course, this screws us when it comes to corporations. They are not people. People have much more common sense.
(Oh, and to those who think strong copyright that favors the author = "Waah, no crappy fanfics".. Good. Do you have the right to tell someone they can't modify and redistribute your code? Then why don't authors have the right to tell someone they can't modify and redistribute a poorly written bizzare-sex filled story about characters they worked to create?)
Contrary to popular belief, a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters would produce nothing more that crap.
Our fore fathers understood that times change and the law must change to reflect these changing times, hence we have an amendment system, and a system of laws that allow for an "adjusting government". Why have we lost sight of this single most important element residing at the core of our foundation?
There seems to be so much concern given to "what will happen to artists if IP laws are revoked". (Replace artist with whatever term you desire that produces IP) Won't the artist figure that out?
Do you deserve to be raised up on a pedestal, paraded around, and given all the luxuries the world has to offer because you've provided a song I like, or you gave a good performance on screen, or because you've provided a piece of software I've found useful?
The balance of compensation and action has been tremendously skewed. Greed is only one ingredient. Society is so entrenched in the process it's created; it's difficult to imagine a different way. Julia Roberts might have to settle for one or two fewer homes east of the Atlantic. MGM might not be able to hand out millions per year in bonuses.
This is could get long so I'll make my point. TO HELL WITH IT. Will society fall apart if we revoke IP laws? No. Will it change? Most definitely. But if anyone tells you that a society based on the free exchange of ideas and information is doomed to fail, they are in the entertainment business or the software industry.
"Free exchange of ideas and information." Wow. Sounds like a paradise I once read about in school.
You know... with all the concern we have over Hollywood, and the corporate giants of today... what will happen to them if the world progresses and evolves... maybe we should as one of our worldly neighbors who's been at this for more than a couple of centuries. Maybe we could learn something from history.
I know. Let's ask the Egyptians how they ever managed to get along without the pyramid builders. Or, let's ask Italy how they managed to survive without live bloodshed and chariot races in the coliseum. Or castles in Europe, temples in South America.
Societies change and evolve. Nations change. Laws change. Entire industries rise and fall. They've done so throughout history. People survive. Hell, sometimes quality of life even improves.
The idea is flawed. Some day people will look back at our civilization and this debate in the same way they look at slave ownership and the debate about it. The concept of owning an idea is just as absurd as the concept of owning another human being. I hope mankind realizes that sooner than we did with slavery. Slavery still exists today, but most people would agree that you shouldn't own a person.
The Austrian school is a "really free market" school of economics.
o nth=22 is an article by Gene Callahan that questions if patent law was ever effective. Mentions One-click.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/kinsella2.html has an overview of IP law, how it relates to Copyright, etc., by Stephan Kinsella. Mentions Napster.
http://www.kinsellalaw.com/ip/ has a huge list of online resources for IP related items. "Intellectual Property, Patent, and Law Resources".
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?record=468&m
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=812 is an article by Ilana Mercer about Cipro (anthrax drug), and its scarcity because of patents.
mises.org is the website for the Ludwig von Mises institute, lewrockwell.com is "the anti-state, anti-war, pro-market news site."
From here:
In an emerging market, where prior investment is negligible, consumers desire highly differentiated software offerings; our legal environment supports this need exquisitely. However, in established markets, where consumers have invested in and have become dependent upon a particular software, these same consumers no longer desire competition for new and different software offerings. Instead, if given a choice, they would prefer competition for the change in the software they currently use. Unfortunately, our current legal practices, focused on emerging markets and justified with natural-right copyright thinking, deny the marketplace this alternative style of competition.
I do think that a contractual system is possible to establish such a competitive market for software upgrades, could prove more effective than a breakup. This proposal necessitates the creation of a non-profit registry-of-deeds tasked with maintaining records of software produced by revisions from competing authors. Specifically, the registry would administer access to source code and would calculate royalties from the licensing of administered software. The proposal rests on the following principles:
1. Before offering software to the marketplace, a developer would deposit into the registry all source code, description of patents, and design materials necessary to understand and build the program offered.
2. As part of each deposit, the developer would also specify a per-end-user licensing fee for programs derived from the material deposited.
3. Anyone can then retrieve these deposits and build from the material contained provided that any derived or competing work which the reader is thereafter involved is registered according to this same method.
4. When a derivative program is licensed, the sale price is calculated with the licensing fees for the materials upon which the program is derived. A technique involving anonymous serial numbers can be employed so that a given deposit is only licensed and charged once per user.
5. The developer may at any time reduce the posted price for their deposits; but may not license use of the material separately for amounts less than the posted price.
6. When fees are collected, royalties are distributed to each developer according to the number of licenses issued for each of their deposits.
7. The license for each deposit does not extend to trademarks, intellectual property of other parties, or material that was deposited separately. Deposits which would overlap in material must be decomposed into smaller units; the original treated as a derived work.
While the above may seem complicated, it will administer software that is a composite of revisions from competing authors. I am positive that most of this process can be automated so that developers, customers, and distributors are shielded from the administrative burden.
I believe that this mechanism could bring about more professionalism within the industry. It would eliminate bait-and-upgrade schemes. It would also improve software reliability. Lacking serious competition for upgrades, established software vendors have little incentive to work on quality control issues. Furthermore, with source code and design documents publicly available, retired programmers could be independently contracted for the evaluation of commercial applications. I can even imagine professional review organizations emerging, helping the consumer sort through the hype to identify those products with good, solid engineering.
Now put up or shut up.
To have a system in which copyrights would not be abused, the copyrights must only be held by content creators, not distributors. To make sure that this would happen, you would need to limit the nuber of copyrights held at the same time to one name at about 50 or so. Furthermore, copyrights should expire after a few years, once any major profit has been made. And I think it goes without saying that draconian protection laws like the DMCA, SSSCA, etc. should be taken off the books.
(This is only about patents)
The main reason why patents exist is (or should be) to give an incentive to innovate. This still works pretty well in traditional researched areas like industrial machine engineering. However, in new and rapidly progressing areas of research like IT and gentech there is a strong tendency to patent anything that's new, resembling the behaviour of prospectors during the gold rush. This behaviour effectively slows down the research. Example: The GIF format. Since there are patent issues with it the community was forced to develop alternatives instead of improving the original format.
Now, how to fix this? A proposal:
Restrict or prohibit patents in new research areas until the development slows down. Then, introduce short-lived patents to give an incentive to innovation. Finally, switch to long-lived patents like the ones we have today.
We should just add the following constraints before we can grant a patent.
- Only patent working prototypes of an invention (i.e. no vapor ware). Right now you have to show that you could do it. You don't have to actually do it.
- Patents need to be readable by someone in the field of the invention (no more lawyer babble to obfuscate simple inventions)
- Patent should be done in two steps: pre-filling and filling. The pre-filling is kept confidential and shows that the person (or company) is working on invention X. It has 1 year to come-up with the working prototype. Then there is the filling. If by the time the filling comes the invention is already used in the industry, the patent is void and can not be patented by someone else. This rule is to recognise that inventions can come from multiple sources and thus are now common enough not to be patentable.
- Once a patent is granted, there is a 2 months period that is given to the public at large to show that the patent is obvious. i.e. The patent's intent is published but not the methodology behind it. If someone within 2 months can come-up with a similar solution, the patent is deemed too obvious and it becomes void.
- The patent life should not be the same for everything. A patent on software should be limited to the shelf life of a software, i.e. 2-5 years. A patent on a mechanical part could last a bit longer.
- Copyrights should have two time limits: the first (10 years) is a no-copy, no-modify without permission restriction. The other (75 years) is a no-copy only type of restriction.
Thoughts ?
Phil
The purpose of copyright and patents is NOT to provide "incentive to create" - it is to provide "incentive to keep creating" and "INCENTIVE TO MAKE AVAILABLE" (which, in turn, is also intended to foster continued creation). The idea being that if there was no "protection" from metaphorical poaching of concepts and expressions of ideas, that people would tend to keep them secret. This being the case, we ONLY need "enough" protection - beyond that, there is no additional incentive to make things available, and in fact, as we can see, it PREVENTS things from being available. Patents seem to be routinely used not to "protect" a product or process, but to HINDER someone else from investigating anything similar.
Copyright and Patents are "bargains" made with the public, via the government. The basic "bargain" is "Okay, we'll let you have exclusive control, AND back you up with law enforcement, paid for by taxpayers, for a limited time, in return for which, after that "limited time", this work will become available for use, investigation, and modification by the public, which may then enter into this same bargain with the derivative works they then create."
"Progress of Science and the Useful arts" are NOT, in my opinion, "promoted" by the excessive power that the current extensions and additions to the body of "intellectual property" law provide. The concept, as *I* understood it, was a variant of the "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" - that is, "with enough people to examine ideas, any useful applications and variations will become obvious". This is obviously thwarted when nobody is allowed to legally attempt novel variations or applications until long after the "protected" work (invention or copyright-protected item) is obsolete or mostly-irrelevant...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The idea behind a patent is that anyone can license the information that a patent protects, right? Why then do pharmeceutical companies refuse to license drugs to third-world countries? (Don't tell me that its because those countries can't afford them. If you don't lower your price to the maximum limit a customer can afford, then you're losing a sale.)
So, then, what's you're theory to explain why they don't do this? The drug companies don't like making money? I don't get it. What exactly do you mean by "license to third-world countries"?
Lots of people have said that sortening the duration of Copyrights is a good thing, and I agree, but only for the "monopoly" part of Copyright - the bit that says "you get a monpoly on the use of the work". The other part of copyright is the "Moral Rights" side that says "you get the right to be credited for your work". I think the duration for that part is fine as it is.
The problem with the way Copyright law has evolved is that nobody distinguishes between the two, and its easy to justify extending the duration of copyrights because "Why should somebody else be allowed to put their name on my work after (14/28/50/75) years ?".
+1 Funny
Individual copyrights should be renewable indefinatly in spans of 7 years. Corporate copyrights should be for 5 years with onetime renewal of an additional 5 years. This would allow corporations time to R&D, and market the copyrighted product and have some monetary gain.
The answer to ip laws isnt to change them at all. But to fire all the morons in the patent office... I mean patents on hyperlinking etc what moron makes these decisions.
...in software a patent doesnt do that... it just gives them an anticompetitave advantage over the next guy who has the same idea on his own but finds out he cant do it because someone owns the patent to the hyperlink/oneclick/urlvars etc etc etc
If its web based software its going to leverage your business. This isnt the drug industry where you're required to turn over the chemical formula and everything to the regulators... source code on server systems should be policed like the wild wild west. Keep it secure keep your edge. Things like oneclick patents n crap would never get enforced.
As for music, the problem isnt that p2p networks rip off artists... its that the real cd's offer _NOTHING_ for their price. Even with this music sales are UP! meaning people are oviously listening to the song they want to hear and go buy the cd to get a better-than-mp3 copy for their real stereos. Now I got all the toys and a cd burner but I still buy the odd cd (as much as i ever did) because finding/downloading all the tracks on a cd is more work then its worth. On the other hand i've gone to stores to buy a cd and seen it cost like 24 cdn and think what the hell am i getting for the cost of a nice meal/movie/tank of gas. One song thats decent and 10 others that are usually crap with 1 or 2 others that you might actually like.
IP laws arent the problem its just the morons marketing the stuff and the patent office giving every boy and their dogs patents... In the computer industry the only patents i respect are chip design patents on hardware. Software can be patented with closed source if its at issue. and opensource doesnt get patented now anyways cuz well it wouldnt be worth much as any closed source shop'd just steal it anyways as they do now and say "we cant provide the source". Get rid of patents on software... does samba really need a patent does amazon need 30 cmon.. If they can completely reimpliment your idea in software then it couldnt have been any easier for them to do so than you... which is the idea of patents... to encourage r&d
Just smack the morons in the patent office.
First, we must do away with the phrase "Intellectual Property" which implies that certain types of property (CDs, DVDs, etc) are somehow different from other types of property. This false, and absurd, notion is the root of the problem.
Property is property. Period. And the laws should reflect that. You should be free to do anything with it, except for *SELLING* copies of it.
99% of current IP laws are wrong and should be abolished. The claim that eliminating IP laws would result in nothing being produced, except ocassionally out of "good will" is patently false.
Proof:
During Napster's 2 year existance, music sales went up, not down. Today, hundreds of thousands of people continue to use P2P file sharing networks every day and it has had *ZERO* impact on record company sales or profits. Sales are currently down slightly, but only because of the current recesion.
A few writers and musicians have made their works freely available on the Internet and it has resulted in increased, not decreased sales.
People are downloading new movies before they are in theaters, and yet these movies gross hundreds of millions at the box office.
Trying to take Stephen King, and scale him to the average-popularity author, doesn't make for a good argument. Just because Stephen King can do it once doesn't mean that thousands of average authors can do it for a career.
I urge you to respond and defend your positions a bit closer.
... indeed, the only losers are the aforementioned middlemen: publishers, studios, and recording companies.
Since my position is that any discussion of improving the IP situation must include a discussion of alternatives to IP altogether that might achieve the same (purportedly) desired result, the only reason I can think that others would argue that such a discussion should exclude any consideration of alternatives to IP laws such as copyright would be because they have a vested interest in copyright as it now stands and don't want anyone to consider any alternatives whatsoever. Such a stance would hardly be a good starting point for an honest discussion of the issue.
That is one defense of my position, that we need to be discussing alternatives to copyright. Thus far, our society hasn't tried any alternatives of note, at least not until Richard Stalman's recent "social hack" known commonly as "copyleft". Now, as to some of your other points.
That is a flawed statement, because there was no way to easily copy these works when they were created (with the possible exception of Van Gogh who did suffer problems with copy cats and poorly made copies).
In a smaller world, it is easier to maintain control of one's intellectual property.
Your argument is flawed, in that you assume the artists had any need to "control" their works, or, even if they have the desire to control their works, that society should in any way grant that desire at the expense of everyone else's freedom.
Quite the contrary, often a musician such as Bach or Mozart would become more widely known, more in demand, and hence more successful, the more widely their works were copied and performed. They may not have liked it if their work was performed in a country with which their sponsor was at war (for example), but that doesn't mean they didn't benefit from it, nor does it mean that their desire should have been the paramount factor in whether or not to allow it.
Your entire assumption assumes a need and desire to control copying, a restriction inherent in copyright but not necessarilly inherent in the requirement that artists be compensated for their work, or even in their best interests. It is, almost without exception, in their publishers best interest, but the interest of an artist and their publisher are very often not the same at all.
I believe that copyright law is neessesary to protect intellectual property, though I do not support recent changes in the law. I believe that Walt Disney should enjoy some protection for his mouse (but not for enternity). I believe that I should have certain rights under law if I choose to express myself artistically to protect me from others unlawfully gaining profit from my song, painting, movie, computer program, etc...
This is a circular defintion. You are essentially saying "I believe copyright law is necessary to protect copyrighted works. I believe I should enjoy rights under a law making it illegal for people to copy my work without my permission, so that I'm protected against people violating the law that says they cannot copy my work."
Can you justify your stance without resorting to a circular definition?
This would be the argument of the non creative who seek to make money from other's achievements. If you produce a song, should others gain money from your achivements? What if you are not strong enough (politically or physically) to demand payments that are yours? If there is no copyright protection, who ensures that you will receive due payment?
Nonsense. This is the argument of creative people who are tired of having their work held hostage by publishers, record companies, and studios. It is the argument of creative people who want to be able to contribute to a creative commons without having their work then taken by a private firm and incorporated into a restricted work that diminishes that commons.
And if you are a creative person that feels that these laws are too restrivtive, then by all means, release your intelletual property to the public domain without demand or setoff.
I am such a creative person, and can easilly point out the fallacy of your argument. If I release my work into the public domain under current copyright laws, anyone from Hollywood studios to Time Warner records to Joes Publishing could take my work, restrict it from use by others by simply putting a wrapper around it and claiming copyright on the whole, and thereby make my own work less accessible for use by others by, in effect, surrounding it with copyright landmines.
Simply pouring stuff into the public domain doesn't work when someone, like Disney, can pilfer the public domain and excersize such tight copyright over the derivative works (e.g. Grimm Fairy Tales) that others are put off from doing similar work for fear of legal retaliation (justified or no). It doesn't work because copyright lets people take from the commons without giving back, in effect making the entire exchange a one way street.
As for alternatives, I have suggested several in this thread which are at least as workable as copyright from an artists and societies point of view
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Corporations should not be granted the same rights as individuals. Therefore, no IP for corporations. If we allow ONLY PEOPLE, not legal entities, as the only ones able to register and enforce IP, then we'd have a nice fair system. After all, if one CEO or some low-level engineer registers a piece of IP or Copyright, then if that person leaves the company loses rights to the IP or Copyright. Ooo, imagine the power wielding there. Finally, the dog would wag the tail.
If you require them to review comments from thousands of people after an application is published. the time needed for a patent to issue is likely to double. Imagine the inventor waiting 10 years for a patenbt to issue!
Good points, but if administered correctly, shouldn't submissions actually help the examiner? I mean, practically speaking, very few patents will actually be commented on, and when they are it should just point examiners in the direction of some prior art to aid in their searches. The submissions might become part of the file but it would be up to the examiner to use them.
If once in a while a patent does get thousands of submissions, well there's probably good reason for the all the interest and maybe the examiner should spend extra time on this one.
Subjecting patents to public scrutiny might also decrease the amount (or at least slow the increase) of frivolous patents and even end up decreasing the overall workload somewhat.
You'd probably require a minor fee per submission and limit the comments to a listing of suggested prior art, and possibly very short and basic rationale regarding obviousness etc. The first measure would stop them from getting too many crank submissions through e-mail, the second measure would limit the ability of big industry to abuse the process with persuasive lobby efforts as well as putting a cap on the amount of work required. At the end of the day, establishing the facts through prior art would still be the deciding factor.
You might also need to add an administrative layer to handle and sort the documentation, but this should be nothing wholly different or unworkable.
I don't see it as being unlike the open source process. Yes you do need to expend effort and resources to manage and administer the input of the volunteer base, but if you do it right it should get you better results with perhaps less direct effort than doing it all yourself.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
What's to stop everyone from choosing the 50 year term and still selling the software for a high price?
Nothing. However, if the time of the copyright becomes a factor in competition it is a way for one vendor to differ themselves from another. Right now we have two extremes: open source (aka free of charge) and proprietary (perpetual charge). Nothing saying that we can't make a derived model which is proprietary for N years and then public domain for years there after. In order to get a copyright on a binary, you'd have to submit to the copyright office the source code in escrow, which would be released upon the expiration date. You could then always update your copyright to make the expiration date shorter. Given another alternative, some vendors will choose it. In this model, open source is effectively "no copyright" (yes, I use the term lightly), and proprietary is "full copyright", a limited term copyright is a ballence; you are specifying when your code becomes public domain. This is a differentiation point... and could be used in software reviewes right next to cost.
I still wonder why people think that Intellectual Property is what drives people to innovate when that simply isn't the case. People driven by the need to make money (greed) don't want to innovate. Innovating is expensive. They want to produce the cheapest things that already exist at as poor of a quality level as the market will bear and they want to sell it at the highest possible price. "Why?" you may ask. It's simple, you make more money that way with the least amount of work. That's what it all comes down to.
;-) ), and yet Linux has grown past the 10 year mark. This is true of the music industry too of course. The real artists out there didn't get into music for the money for the most part. Those who do often shortly fall by the wayside... in fact I'd challenge any of you to find one band that started more than 8 years ago completely for the money involved that still exists today.
The real innovators out there are the ones who create just because they see that something is needed or wanted or even just have a drive to create things. Take Linus Torvalds's work on the Linux operating system. He was not driven by the need to make money (or if he was he failed miserably and doesn't wanna tell anyone about it -- sorry Linus
Ah well, now I suppose I will be labeled a communist for my stern disapproval of the corrupt and greed-driven practices of many modern capitalists. Damn.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
Intellectual property needs to be protected fully. We want to fully encourage not only the creation of ideas, but also the sharing of them.
However, I think copyrights are over-bearing. Patents can only be extended for 20 years. The same should be of copyrights. 20 years. That's it. Afterwards anyone who uses it must give credit to you, but won't have to pay you. That is fair.
eTrade SUCKS
For the holder of the copyright / patent:
For the first year, pay $1.
For the second, pay $2.
For the third, pay $4.
Then $8, $16, $32, etc....
After 10 years, you would have paid >$1,000.
After 20 years, you would have paid >$1,000,000.
For different industries, you can set
different starting points (so a $1 starting point could be good for books, maybe $1000 for software patents, etc).
So short term, anyone can benefit, and long term, more things will go back into the public domain.
That way, if it is still economically sound for you to hold your copyright/patent, you still can.
If not, it goes into the public domain.
The money collected could help fund basic research.
Oh, and this should be applied retroactively to all current copyrights/patents (take that Disney!).
Also, maybe allow copyrights be to held by coporations, but say every 5 years, it has to go back to the person/people who created it. Allow them the option of re-licensing it back to a company though.
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
Before I rant, I just wanted to say you made a great point, that people need to address, and address with constructive criticism. One does get sick and tired of hearing of why software patents suck, without any ideas or comprimises to fix the problems.
SOFTWARE IS SPECIAL
Software is collection of works written in an advanced mathematical notation, which is why it enjoys the benefits copyright, and makes it more like writing a book or a song than creating a device.
It NO MORE a "functional element" to it as does a collection of mathmematical works does, or ANY OTHER notation. It IS being singled out because this is a very precise form of expressing ideas and can be automatically simulated on a computer, just as any other precice notation might enjoy.
Can Software be patented? No, No more than you can patent a riff or a literary element or a mathematical function. Even if the riff, or literary element, or mathematical formula can be simulated and execute on a computer.
Should Software be patentable? Personally, I would make a provision so one could enjoy a 5 years exclusive use of a non-obvious software implementations, just to give software researchers a little incentive.
SOFTWARE PATENT LAWYER QUESTION
Do you think you can forward me to a resource or a ruling which might shed some light on this question?
1. Can I get around a software patent by only publishing the source code?
2. Non-commercially?
3. Will releasing it into the public domain remove liability?
4. Can I host public domain source code which implements a software patent?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
But is there a shortage of copyrighted material? Maybe we don't have an unlimited amount of water and, so, water should be treated as an economic scarcity. But, since a program (or a song) can be copied for almost nothing, should it be considered a scarce economic resource?
14 years, only the creater(physical person) can hold exclusive rights, but he can not offer exclusive rights to anyone else.
That protects the creater from corporate abuse, and ensured that the works enter public domain in a reasonable time. Personally I think 7 years is enough, but 14 was the originall, so I'd settle for that.
Ideally, it would all be retroactive, but I'd give in on that point if it was the only way to get the 14 year limit in place.
rehashing the same crap over and over again does nothing for society. here that Disney?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One other thing that I'd REALLY like to see codified into law is that copyright isn't really about copying...
Realistically, the fair use doctrine and "first sale" and so on, IN NO WAY are intended to restrict copying - what they are intended to restrict is distribution .
"Fair Use" says if I legally purchase a book, I can take the photocopier that's in my study and make 20 copies if I want. I can make enlarged copies. I can transcribe it in medieval calligraphy with gold leaf and illumination. I can translate it into Spanish, Latin, Esperanto, and "Elvish" if I want.
Where the law is SUPPOSED to step in is if I attempt to give away or sell those copies without permission. That's distribution , not copying.
This even applies to things like rental videos, I believe - if I rent Orgazmo from the local video place, for example, I've basically (as I understand it) "temporarily purchased" the video. If my big-screen TV only has a DVD/VCD player hooked up to it, I believe I can legally (theoretically) make VCD's out of the VHS tape I've rented to watch on the DVD player FOR THE DURATION OF THE LEGAL RENTAL - after which I must destroy the VCD's (at a whopping $0.80 or so for the two CD-R's, it doesn't add much to the cost of the rental). If I don't, I've effectively " distributed illegally to myself ", as I no longer have "license" to use the material from the video tape (unless I purchase it).
I think a simple find-and-replace of "copy" with "distribution" in the laws would go a LONG way to fixing the mess that is "copyright"...I don't feel very "harmed" by not being allowed to sell or give away all the copies of "Steamboat Willy" I want, but I do feel harmed by the threat of going to jail if I transcode a legally purchased dvd of the cartoon to a DivX/Vorbis Ogg file to watch on my laptop computer. (That I am not allowed to create derivative works or make copies of "Steamboat Willy" after 80 years IS excessively restrictive still, but is less urgent to address, I think.)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Well, you have some fine ideas, but I think they require further thought. A book, a music score, a song -- these are all things that will have value after their protection is gone. By the time the copyright expires on software, it is, quite literally _worthless_. We need to reexamine the period of various kinds of works and inventions from this context. Since, auspiciously, the intellectual property system is built on the notion of offering incentives to benefit the common good, we should ask ourselves how likely it is that the common good will be served to the general public after the protection is gone.
It would seem to me that for software, the protection window should be substantially shortened. The exact numbers, I'm not sure of.
C//
...nothing. Well, maybe some perceptions, but the laws are fine (excepting the DMCA). Consumers ignored existing laws and escaped punishment. Big media and law enforcement got lazy , out of date, and felt powerless. The Napster revolution didn't have to go as far as it did. There was just-cause, evidence, and sufficient law to investigate and prosecute everyone involved. If content owners aren't savvy enough to change, or figure out how to protect their property, they will lose it. There will come an end of the line for new anti-consumer legislation, and they will be forced to fall back on the laws and methods they should have used in the first place.
I mod you up if I hadn't posted already.
I would alter it though, multiply by either a static sum or a percentage of royalties received, whichever is greater.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The proposal is to add an "expiration" field to a copyright form, and letting someone filing the copyright specify a more limited time than what is allowable by law. This is a nice, backward compatible mechanism which could create competition based not only on price, but also on the expiration date.
No vendor would set a copyright at anything reasonable if it were for competitive advantage. Not many customers would take into account the expiration of the copyright in their purchasing decisions.
Americans _love_ numbers and stastics. The copyright expration date would play in nicely with this "scientific comparision" tendency... you just don't know. It could become a huge factor in purchase decisions. A company like Ford Motor may buy a HumanResourceSoftware for 2-3x the purchase price of an equivalent software if they _knew_ in 5 years it would become public domain and wouldn't be price-gouged on an endless upgrade cycle... I know someone who makes purchase decisions like this at Chrysler, and I've talked to him about this idea; he thinks it would make a difference.
So, its a small change and thus has a good chance of being feisable to implement (politicians could be accused of being non-capitalistic if they don't support it) and it may make a big difference... if it puts the expry date column on software reviews... imagine. Also, imagine the influx of open source software as companies up their price but lower their expiry date to 2-5 years and compete not only on price, but also on when the software becomes public...
We are practically slaves to the music industry, movie industry, and electronic entertainment industry. These guys all get way to much money.
Music should be free. Movies should be free. And software should be free.
Well, back to downloading some warez...
I also believe that pre-DMCA copyright law, if vigorously pursued, would be capable of defending legitimate interests in content.
So here's my proposal. When a work is published, the author must make a choice:
In other words, you can try to fence off parts of the intellectual landscape -- but you don't get to use the full might of the US judicial system to do so.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It helps to develop a set of goals. What I think are the goals of copyright. As an American, I'll start with the US constitution:
So promoting the progress of science and the useful arts would seem to be the main goal. I'll call that goal `advancement.' One could furhter argue that the `limited time' clause indicates that there is some public domain interest involved. Instead, I'd claim that the wording instead indicates that the natural right to exclusive use of works you author does not exist. It is a right granted by the government for a limited time. Not one inherient in nature of things.Will more books or music be created because exclusive rights to the works will be granted for 75 years past the author's death rather than 50 or 25 years? The answer is probably yes. Someone, somewhere, will write more or put in extra effort because the effort may support their grandchildren. And a company, looking into the far future, may feel that 75 years will be enough time to make a project profitable, while 25 years may not. That said, less works may also be created. Authors who have written a story based upon `Lord of the Rings' may be unable to have their work distributed during their lifetime. It seems clear to me that very long copyright terms will actually hurt advancement.
So I argue that if the sole goal of copyright is to promote progress, the real goal is to provide economic modivation of authors while not overly restricting the rights of others to use those works.
My proposal
I'd claim that a short period of exclusive rights, followed by a longer period of exclusive commercial rights would best solve this problem. Say that the author has exclusive rights for 5 years and exclusive commercial rights for another 30 years. So, for example, a book written 5 years ago could be distributed for free, with no commercial gain (payment, advertisements, etc.) but only the author could sell the book or use it in a commercial situation (using a character from the book to sell soap for example.) An author who wrote a book dirivative of the first could freely distribute it 5 years after the original book came out, but could not sell it until 35 years had passed (without the original authors permission). Just my thoughts. Let me close with someone else's thoughts:
-Thomas JeffersonAs Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
practically speaking, very few patents will actually be commented on, and when they are it should just point examiners in the direction of some prior art to aid in their searches
I disagree. And I think a seasoned examiner (if you can find one, that is) would too. If we had a pre-grant publication for comment, people who do not want a patent to issue for specious reasons will abuse the system to bog down the application.
But I don't want to really dwell on this point. The real heart of the problem is not the system being used. In fact the Patent office has set up an entire new layer of examination for business method patents (software patents in patenteese) which is supposed to improve the quality of the patents.
The problem is that the Patent Office is not properly funded by congress. This requires examiners, who have a quota of applications to get through, to spend a ridiculously low amount of time on each application. Combine this with the fact that examiners are paid very little and as soon as they get a little experience (or their foreign work permit goes through) they leave the Patent Office. This results in a very demoralized, overworked and inexperienced core of examiners.
The result of this is bad patents. If there weren't so many bad patents out there there would not be such an outcry right now and we would not be seing these kinds of abuses.
First, scrap the DMCA. The whole darn thing. It is a travesty and an embarassment, and should never have been forced through so quickly. (In fact, it is so poorly put together that it evokes memories of old British North America and the Intolerable Acts.)
Once the DMCA is dead, introduce a new bill, but for this one, schedule a great deal of meaningful public debate while it is still being drawn up and introduced. GIVE IT LOTS OF PUBLIC EXPOSURE AND NEWS COVERAGE. The more people know about its workings, the better it will work for them.
If the public knows a lot about it and has a reason to get involved and stay active in keeping it a legitimate piece of legislation, chances are they will not get bent over when it finally gets passed -- in contrast with the DMCA, which to my knowledge rarely made it into even the e-news headlines.
This message brought to you by Anonomous Coward, Inc!
Oh, really? So why does it say this on your website?
Can I put my page on your site?
It's a personal homepage. I buy and maintain my own webspace. The pages at Furinkan.net are for personal use only.
Way to restrict the flow of information there, dude.
A) Religious leaders deciding disputes
or
B) Guns deciding disputes
As much as lawyers are a pain in the ass, I'd take a pompous lawyer in the room over a bullet in my chest any day. Besides, if the rest of us weren't so greedy, do you think there'd be so many lawyers in the US?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You should help to fight against an European DMCA equivalent, campaign see http://swpat.ffii.org Quoted from http://www.winehq.com/news/?view=122 Has anyone ever said anything good about the DMCA? Don't worry, I won't be the first. Over the past 9 months Hidenori Takeshima single-handedly worked on recreating the quartz.dll responsible for implementing ActiveMovie and DirectShow. The codecs involved are a huge amount of code that's unfortunately questionable to distribute due to legal concerns. Without warning the code suddenly disappeared from both the X11 and the GPL trees. Questioned about why it was removed, Hidenori explained: My all MultiMedia codes are completely written from scratch. No disassembling. I believe there are no legal issues. But, I cannot warrant... I should protect myself from any potential problems now... The main issues for me are restrictions of EULA - some codes may be based on information from non-VS6. I don't want to battle with EULA. afraid to many pending patents. I cannot check all patents... and there are some other reasons I don't want to write... So, finally, I decided to solicite Alexandre... Andreas Mohr thanked Hidenori, I hope the reason for taking such rather drastic measures was important. Oh well, anyway, thanks for your contributions, Hidenori ! (I'm just assuming there are still some left ;-)
Interesting trivia #2 - Hidenori is the first non-Codeweavers person to expressly not allow his code into the X11 tree.
But to generate tax revenue!
The IRS could be reworked for this purpose.
If the governement is providing IP protection
does it not deserve revenue from that protection?
IMO This would tend to be a more honest way to
generate revenue than from income tax on individuals. In addition it would push corps to ditch IP that is not profitable into the public domain.
;-)
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
1) Make patent term dependent upon how pioneering the invention is. If you are the first with the laser, long term. If you are the first with using a laser as a pointing device during presentations, short term. The PTO assigns a term as part of prosecution.
2) Require the PTO to accept and process comments about patents, and consider reexamination when a certain number of non-anonymous comments have accumulated. Thus, a reexaminatino of the Amazon patent could have been triggered by citizens. Have provisions to make sure companies don't have their employees swamp competitors patents. Congress needs to fund this function directly.
3) Access control isn't the problem, it is control over access control. Anyone who reverse engineers access control and or produces unlicensed access control can do so to the extent it is consistent with the law and the rights of the copyright holder. Thus, if open-source stuff is written to protect the copyright holder's legitimate rights, while better allowing access to expired copyrights for example, that is ok even if not approved by the copyright holder or the access system designer. (Please note: DeCSS still probably loses under this standard.)
Well, that's what I have off the top of my head...
5 and 7 years for patents and software, and as much as 70 - 80 years for music / literature?
Gentlemen, we have a distinguished author / musician in our midst!
I'd also like examiners in the PO who had a clue about technology, so that they could make an intelligent determination of whether an idea was obvious to a practitioner of the art.
I'd like to see a provision that a copyright or patent can only be loaned to a corporation, not sold, and rigorous audit requirements to ensure full royaly payments. As far as I can determine there is a lot more corporate theft from artists, composers, inventors and performaers than there is piracy from corporations.
I'd like to see a law that if a book. program or recording is out of print for more than a year then all rights revert to the author, performer, programmer, etc.
Not a legal issue, but I'd like to see a vaible micropayments infrastructure, with the money bypassing the publishers and studios.
The "IP is not property" argument is an old one now, and it's fatal flaw is this:
It doesn't matter if IP law is formulated based on property law or not. Anti Intellectual Property advocates want you to believe that formulating IP as property would lead to perpetual IP rights resulting in ridiculous measures such as being sued for using 2+2 because somebody patented that.
The truth of the matter is that such abuses can occur regardless of the basis on which the law is formulated. In fact, IP law was never formulated based on the idea that IP is real property, and the AIP movement is already proving my point here by complaining about the existing IP laws!
In fact, formulating IP as real property could actually sanitize things a great deal. That's because it could then be taxed, and if necessary, taxed 100% in some cases. When something is passed into the public domain, from the point of view of the person who produced it, it's like paying a 100% tax on their IP.
Of course, behind the AIP movement's desire to abolish the concept of IP is their desire to levy a 100% tax on IP--socialism in its purest form. They like to raise issues regarding the formulation of the law because it conceals their true motives and brings the issue into an academic realm where they can obfuscate the issue. It plays in their favor. Formulate IP as property--like real estate, and it can be taxed like real estate. Fail to pay your IP tax, and get "foreclosed". If it brings nothing at auction, it passes to the PD. The tax would only be levied against people who actually sold IP products. Give something away for free, and you pay no IP tax.
For example, I write a book, and it sells 50,000 copies. The value of that IP is "assessed" and taxed like a house. You can appeal the assessment, just like with real esate. The tax would be used, in part, to fund a database that would assess demand for the product. So, if I was no longer printing the book, but 20,000 people registered demand for a new copy (obligating themselves to pay their stated price if a copy were available), and the $20,000 IP tax was too much for me to pay, I could auction the IP. The buyer would have to agree to print the work to receive the registered demand money.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Just imagine for a second how the world would be different right now if there would have been a patent on Mosaic or Lynx (or any of the very early web browsers).
Two years MAXIMUM copyright protection on anything that can be stored digitally. Most copyrighted products make between 90-95% of their entire profits during the first year or so. Two years would be just perfect.
I'm not sure that there're actually any software patents out there that have prior art that would've disqualified them.
Oh, there are plenty. The patent on correct-order spreadsheet calculation, based on the prior art of the topological sort. The patent on using exclusive OR for cursors, which is both prior art and totally obvious. The patent on networked games, which is based on prior art and is totally obvious.
Patents, copyright, etc. are designed to help promote innovation. People tend to point out extreme examples for either side.. However I think the following covers why patent laws (in my opinion) are a good thing, as long as they are on specific methods or products, and for a fairly short period of time (which would depend on what the patent is for).
/huge/ difference, at least for a while, in most cases.
Many, many patents have been granted over the years. Some products can legitimently benefit from a patent, and some do not (or they don't substantially anyway). In theory, patents can help innovation. An example of this is as follows:
Company A makes a wheel in a certain way, and obtains a patent on that specific design, and method of making the wheel.
Company B makes a wheel in a different way, and obtains a patent on that specific design, and method of making the wheel.
Company C makes a wheel in a different, and better way then companies A and B, and gets a patent on the specific design and method.
Unless a company wishes to purchase rights to use a preexisting design for something that has been patented, they need to develop something 'better', or at least different. I think few will argue that in theory, patents work. The problem comes with the patent office approves patents that are too broad. If the patent office approved a patent for the wheel in general (not the specific design, etc that a specific company made), then that would hinder innovation, causing other companies who wish to make a better wheel, to still license rights to use 'the wheel'.
If we didn't have patent laws, you would find that while much innovation will continue, there will be certain areas that will suffer more than others. Niche market areas, where a company must spend huge sums of money to develop a product, and sell it to a customer base that is very small will suffer the most in my opinion. This is because after the development is done, since there isn't a large customer base, the price for the product will need to be high to recover the development costs. If another company comes in, makes the same product, but for far, far, far cheaper since they don't have any development costs, then few people will want to spend the money on development, as chances are someone will simply steal their idea and charge less. I don't think this will be a problem in most areas, since with a larger customer base, the cost(s) will be less per customer to recover development costs, and in theory the company which develops the product, will have a head start, and should be able to identify the product with their own brand, and sell enough units to at least recover most of their development costs. Also, if a product/method is very hard for someone to reproduce due to the amount of skill/money involved, then a patent won't make a
Now that I've typed all of that, lets see if anyone reads it (and out of those people who read it, who actually thinks it makes sense).
In the "European" concept of software, software is a specification or a design; it is information that can be used to control a machine, i.e., a computer to perform in a particular way.
In the "American" concept of software, the software itself is a machine, even when it's just written on a paper (or a CD) and can't actually do anything without a computer.
Now, the purpose of patents is same in both European and American systems: you can patent a method of doing something, i.e., a design or specification of a machine.
However, the patent laws only apply to producers, i.e., commercial entities that manufacture machines for consumers. They don't apply to consumers who build a machine just for themselves. Patents also do not restrict the distribution of the specification of the patented method.
Now, when you combine the European concept of software with the purpose of patents, you get a situation where a typical software product is never a machine, i.e., an implementation, by the definition of patent laws. The software producer only provides a "specification" of a patented method, which can be distributed freely (even for profit), and the consumer can combine the specification with a generic machine to produce a specific machine that implements the patented method.
This leads into many funny things; also the registered patent description is a specification of the method. Usually, if you want to implement it in a program, you need to make it much more detailed and make the implementation in a particular language. But if the patent specification is detailed enough, you could, in principle, translate it automatically to run it in a computer. Therefore, merely publishing the patented method means implementing the "software product". However, this interpretation leaves room for one case where patents do apply to software: when the software is integrated with the hardware by a producer. Hence, most embedded software stuff falls under patent laws, if the software is integrated in the produced machine. For example, PDAs and cell phones.
You might also think that this applies also to software bundled with a computer. I don't think it does, because *bundled* software is not an *integral* part of the computer and can be replaced by the consumer. Of course, this argument applies to much of the embedded software too, if it can be replaced by the consumer.
I think this is why you can patent software related methods in Europe, but also why they are not really useful except in the embedded market.
The "software is a machine" interpretation may, to some degree, be sensible with closed source proprietary software, as there the software is no longer a human-readable form, and can no longer be seen as merely a specification of the patented method. With this metaphor, closed software is a "virtual" machine (obs - not in the normal sense of "VMs").
Interestingly, from this viewpoint, there is exactly one licencing model under which the software can not be interpreted as as a "machine". It's GNU General Public License (and LGPL too). Only in this license, the source code of the software must always be made available. Hence, with GPL'ed software, the specification of the patented method is always human readable, and is merely just that, a specification.
It's very interesting to arrive at GPL as a solution in the topic of software patents, instead of the normal arguments of software freedom. With this approach, GPL might one day even be written in laws!
Nevertheless, I believe the "American" concept of software is contradictory. I can imagine that you could, in principle, crush American software patents (or more exactly their applicability) merely by argumenting with this conceptual framework. Even laws can be proved contradictory in court, I guess.
The problem, of course, is that if you can patent, in United States, a method of swinging in a children's swing, a method of excercising your cat with a laser pointer, or "business methods", the patent laws must already be so absurdly arbitrary that no rational arguments can ever defeat them.
Personally, I view the problem with Copyright (not patent) law in it's current form as being the saleability of such copyright. Based on that, maybe we should throw the whole thing out the window and start over.
Consider this (my proposal):
1. Copyrights can NOT be sold. Under any circumstances.
2. They CAN, however, be "leased" for a finite period (say, 5 years) to a publisher/content provider. Those leases can be exclusive for that period of time. After the lease has expired, the creator/copyright owner, has the option to shop it around.
3. Copyrights should expire XX years after the creator's death. At that point, the work should revert to the public domain. What number should we use? 25 or 50 years maybe?
4. A provision should exist to prevent corporate takeover of copyrighted works. The "you worked for me when you wrote that" provisions in many contracts should be null and void. However, corporations SHOULD be able to own works that they explicitly contracted someone to create on their behalf.
5. Copyrights should expire automatically after 25 years if the work remains unpublished during that time.
I believe that the 5 provisions listed above would have the following imapact:
- The creators would actually profit MORE from their own works. (Instead of publishers)
- This would encourage the publishers to go out and find NEW artists on a more regular basis (yes, the publishing companies would actually have to WORK harder). Because these new artists would tend to be cheaper than the established ones.
- This would force the publishing companies to re-issue material more often or risk it reverting to the public domain.
As far as patent law is concerned, I tend to agree with the majority of posters. The OLD (~20 years ago) interpretation of patent law probably served us better than the current "patent anything" interpretations.
Personally, if the RIAA were really an association of ARTISTS protecting their rights instead of an association of PUBLISHERS protecting their rights to milk the artists, then I'd be more sympathetic to their cause.
Yep i agree
1) Loser pays all litigation costs, trebled for groundless lawsuits.
2) Compulsory licensing (e.g. Canada) for non-commercialized patents.
hi!
The new improved piracy Test
Created by the Corporations to help you relize you have a piracy problem, and to help keep the man down.
For each marked answer +1 points.
__ Do you listen to CD
__ Do you watch tv
__ Do you use the internet
__ Do you Read anything
__ Do you make paper copies of anything
__ Do you make digital copies of anything
__ Do you burn CD's
__ Do you download MP3's
__ Do you download JPEG's
__ Do you download MPEG's
__ Do you use a p2p network
__ Do you use ftp regulary
__ Do you run an ftp server
__ Do you use over a gigabyte of bandwidth a week
__ Do you have a copy of Lord of the rings all three parts, Spiderman, Star Wars Episode II & III, Matrix II, and Scooby Doo
0-1 Unabomber
2 - 5 Computer?
6 - 10 Charles Manson
11 - 15 New Member to the Axis of Evil
Many words not smelled wright
Kill the Poor!!!!
You've gotten many good arguments so far. I hope you read them, too. Especially the points that software is mathematics and software is not a machine or a process for physical transformation.
Is it because the USPTO has so few good examiners in the area that there is a sense that the quality of software patents is poor?
That's a factor. Most extant software patents are entirely bogus, due to prior art or obviousness.
Or is it simply that because there are so many talented programmers out there who can write code that does the same thing as the patented code that they don't want any impediments whatsoever?
Actually, that is precisely the opposite of what is the case. Many talented programmers spend much of their time writing software around patents. From a pure greed standpoint, they should logically be in favor of patents. So, programmers who object to patents are doing so in spite of any greed, not because of it.
As for the former, I agree it is a concern, but one the USPTO is trying to address by hiring more (and more talented) examiners.
Will these more talented examiners eliminate existing patents that are obviously bogus due to obviousness or prior art? My understanding is that they won't, that the only way to get rid of one is to litigate at a cost of more than what most people make in their lives. It is therefore hardly reassuring.
If everyone needed a few million $ worth of hardware to make the invention, the patent doesn't add that much value against the masses of people who want to copy your invention, it only protects you against the few who have the actual resources to do so.
Everyone, effectively, needs a few million dollars worth of money to be able to write software and be secure against bogus patents.
Every other industry has dealt with patents for years.
Not your industry, which you probably call a profession. None of the documents that you have ever produced as an attorney are patentable.
Furthermore, software development is not an industry. Hardware development and sales are an industry, and their products should be patentable. Software is purely mathematical.
It is time for the software developers as a whole to do so as well.
Why am I not surprised that you are not interested in constructive criticism at all and have already made up your mind?
I remind you all of a few things!
Before doing away with all IP (ie, patents and copyright)
1) The GPL is based on Copyright law. The freedoms guaranteed by the GPL are enforcable through copyright law.
2) Some control of software _is_ important. Imagine you write some really cool software and post it. Some company or individual copies it and rereleases it as theirs! (how do you fight back without copyright?)
3)Those of you that know a little about Linux's history, know that Linus release Linux into the public domain through the GPL because it gave him the protection he needed to guarantee his right to continue to develop and use it. He might (understandably so) _never_ have released it to the public otherwise!!!
4) Imagine Microsoft or Some other company co-opted linux. Right now they cant do this because of copyright law.
5) Some software markets depend on ownership. The Gaming industry is one example where No IP rights = No industry = Less games.
6) Patents are another story all together. They are necessary. I have a friend that without a patent would have already had a design of his stolen by a big corporation. As it is they have negotiated with him fairly now and he can make a living from his work (and continue to have time invent).
NO IP rights = No GPL
NO IP rights = No OS
NO IP rights = No linux
NO IP rights = No inovation and design
Don't misunderstand this. I see IP protection as a necessary evil. It is necessary to protect the creative from the corupt.
The trick is to strike a balance between the rights of the inventors and society as a whole
to encourage development of technology without giving up on the benefits for society.
A shorter patent, copyright time frame (non-renewable) of say 10 years would be good.
Product development cycles are ussually in the 2-3 year time frame + 1-2 years to find financing leaves 5 years to recover costs.
The 10 year patent is also long enough that big companies cant just sit back (refusing to provide capital) and wait for patents to expire (again screwing the inventor).
I think cooperative programming (OS) is great but at the same time I wish to retain control of my work.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
None of this would eliminate stupid patents or bad laws (like the DMCA) - but it would make it significantly harder to use these abusively.
[Insert pithy quote here]
1. I think we need to have royalties set to a specific percentage of cost by the government. No copyright holder can deny use of the work and claim copyright protection. Owners of a copyright who also manufacture the work, must include royalty in their pricing.
That's the issue we are seeing now - a copyright/patent is basically a monopoly to use, because the holder will never agree on fair licensing if they are also a manufacturer.
2. No copyright owner or manufacturer should be allowed to enter into "exclusive" deals/contracts. In return for guaranteed protected profit royalties, you can't tout for additional monies - all manufacturers get the same treatment.
No monopoly on copyright/patents.
3. Work for hire is only accepted when the work is generated by a salaried employee, and generated while hired, during working hours, on company equipment.
If the work existed prior to the hiring, the rights do not become the employers. This basically covers the status quo for software and for movies (Hanks gets $4m per month salary instead of a big $20m cheque).
4. Fair use is pretty much as it is now. Derivative works, parody et. al. as current status quo.
5. Length of patent is a fun one - two choices. Cost limit - patent is held until research costs plus a percentage, is made through royalties. Time limit as a second option, being five years (no exceptions).
This generally means that if you have to invest a fortune, you can guarantee it back with a profit. Alternatively, if you think you can make a bigger return in five years, then start the clock.
But, since a program (or a song) can be copied for almost nothing, should it be considered a scarce economic resource?
The creation of NEW intellectual property requires use of non-IP and therefore scarce resources. Anything dependent on a scarce resource is itself going to be scarce. Now, if you want an economy based on kicking the same ideas around over and over (like the current RIAA), then you can claim economy of plenty.
My career spans the period when what I do was and wasn't patentable. We wrote software in a frenzy back in the 80's because we'd come up with a neat idea and we wanted to market it before it became a common idea. We didn't need patent protection - copyright was sufficient protection. By the time someone realized what we had done, we'd be working on the next great idea. It's the nature of the business - to create.
Along came Bruce Lehman, et. al. with his uspto dog and pony act. Programmer after programmer testified "Don't do this! We do not need patents." At one point, a programmer testified "The only people in this room who have testified in favor of software patents have been corporate attorneys." Lehman acknowledged the truth of that testimony and ignored us. So now we have software patents - to benefit those attorneys.
The upshot is my software productivity has declined because now I have to worry about writing some piece of code that someone else owns - even though I've never even seen the other coder's implementation. That very obstacle strikes at the core of what we do - to create. We didn't need patents before they became available and we need them even less now that their intrinsic worthlessnes has become apparent. The USPTO will never be able to field examiners who understand what is obvious in the field because to be a patent examiner means they're not coders. What is obvious to a comptent coder is magic to others.
Implement reasonable copyright protection and that's enough.
You're the one being silly. If you claim that 40 line method as trademark that means other people cannot use it to defraud the public into thinking their buying your product. If you were to trademark executable code, it would in no way stop people from executing that code. Trademarks are very different than the other IP types.
Stallman's copyleft hack relies upon the existence of copyright to work.
... the alternative was to be unable to insure others the 4 basic freedoms he holds so dear ... indeed he was in the same quandary an artists would be in if they followed the suggestion to just dump their material into the public domain, which copyright then allows others to pilfer without giving back.
... meaning that my work has thus become less accessible to those who would like to build upon it as a result.
... it protects and documents their right to continue using their own work, even if Microsoft takes part of it *cough* ip stack *cough* and incorporates it into their proprietary systems.
Only because the goals he wished to achieve, namely the four freedoms the Free Software Foundation stands for, are denied everyone by default because of copyright. He had no other choice but to use copyright to subvert itself
Ok, can we keep this discussion contemporary?
In other words, any part of our history (the vast majority of it) when copyrights did not exist, but artists were nevertheless able to make a reasonable living, are off limits because you have no reasonable counter argument to offer? Interesting. Ignore the vast portion of human experience which runs counter to the assumptions and arguments you wish to promote.
I find it fascinating that I am being shouted down for having the audacity to suggest we might include in our discussion the possibility that there might be other regimes that would work better than government mandated monopolies for compensating artists. It is even more interesting now that, when I point to historical examples that exemplify this, you are saying we shouldn't think about those examples.
Perhaps the entire notion of copyright isn't as easy to defend as you first thought?
How so? If you release your work into the public domain, nobody can take that away from the public. Your work will always be there. What you are talking about is value-add. Yes, you are right... Time Warner could take your work and use it in a movie without asking you.
No, what I'm saying is more subtle than that. I am saying that, if Time-Warner takes my work and incorporates it into their work, aspects of my work become inaccessible to others because of the TW copyright on their extentions. An example: TW makes a space opera based on my work, using my characters, etc. Now, if someone else wants to make a space opera based on my work and characters, they are confronted with a series of legal landmines they must avoid, lest the infringe on TW's copyrights. As there are only so many ways one can take a particular work and change it around, the danger of stumbling onto one of these landmines, even by accident, is sufficiently great that anyone with any sense would avoid the possiblity altogether
But now you are apparently saying this is wrong, which is an admission that you approve of our copyright laws. "Strange that is" says Yoda.
Good Lord, doesn't anyone study logic anymore?
Strange are the conclusions you draw indeed. I am saying that the public domain, in a context where people can take without giving (and that taking in turn acts to make the original material less accessible for others to use because of the legal liabilities with which it then surrounds that material), make the public domain an unworkable solution because of copyright law.
Without copyright law everything would be in the public domain, and anyone could use my material without risk, whether or not Disney or Time-Warner used the material. With copyright law, the moment they build upon my material is the moment others must step carefully when using that same materail, lest they run afoul of the law. Can you see the difference yet?
It is the same reason RMS had to write the GPL, though he really would have preferred to be able to simply put his stuff into the public domain. Indeed, in some respects it is why the BSD folks release their stuff under the BSD license, rather than simply put it in the public domain
In other words, it isn't an admission of approval of copyright laws, it is a repudiation of copyright law at its most fundamental level.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Theft is a simple fact of life. It happens, and you can't catch all the thieves.
In order for software production to function economically, the cost of investing in development must be justified by potential payoff.
This means that you don't need to stop ALL the thieves in order for the economic incentives to remain in place.
Certian levels of profit loss to piracy should be considered a cost of doing business.
So, the system merely needs to be able to catch mass distributions...not individual peer to peer copies.
Rather than stifle the freedom of the individual in a vain effort to catch every little thief, perhaps a minimal burden can be imposed on the mechanisms of mass distribution.
Specifically, ISP's. All an ISP would need to do is keep historical copies of anything that was made available for download on their public FTP servers. Email, net traffic, etc., wouldn't even need to be considered. And the historical logs needn't date back farther than a month or two.
If a business (or net-surfing authority) discovers copyrighted material available for mass distribution....it can request that the historical copy be preserved as evidence. And then the business or authority can prosicute the individual who made it public.
In this way the incentive to develop new software remains in place, the major losses to profitability are held in check, and individual freedom is relatively unimpacted.
Until now, all intellectual property was basically a tax. Until now, there was no possible way of getting anything for free, except going to the library. In other words, you still had to pay for the book, because you were buying a physical item that would cost money even if it were uncopyrighted material like the bible or shakespeare.
See, now, the marginal cost of any piece of intellectual property is essentially zero. A movie a book or anything can be sent to a friend without any incresed cost to anyone.
Basically what this means is that by charging for something that has a zero marginal cost, we are introducing a market inefficiency. Why should we charge for something that has zero marginal cost, if that means limiting how many people can have access to it, since it wouldn't cost anything extra to let more people see it. That's a market inefficiency. Why would you limit how many people can have or use a certain product if it doesn't cost anything extra for another person to use it or see it?
Even things that cost money, like roads or lighthouses, shouldn't cost any money to use if there is no marginal cost. These are things that are publicly funded, they are called public goods. Unless we are talking about a road that has very high demand, the use of a typical road doesn't take away anyone else's use of that road. The same thing with a park. Why limit people from using the road or park, if their use wouldn't take away from someone else using that road or park.
We still need a way to cover the initial expenses of course. But by charging for use of the product , you are creating an inefficiency. Why not have the product be funded publicly, and not limit how many people can use it?
Now, the obvious part I've ignored until now regarding intellectual property is: well who's going to pay the fixed cost? Who's going to pay what it costs initially to write a book or make a movie.
Well there are two parts to my plan. The first is to vastly increase the public funding for films and books, etc. The second part is to severly limit copyrights, depending on the type of media, to something around five years. Maybe ten for books.
Now, why am I suggesting such a drastic change from what we currently have? What has changed, and what was different in the past that made such a drastically different system from what I'm suggesting pretty effective?
Well, in the past, like I said above, you had to pay for a book or a movie, since just printing it costed money. So who would it hurt if we gave the author a monopoly right to his book or film. So what, it might cost a couple of dollars extra? That wouldn't really hurt anyone, and it just makes authors happier.
But now that additional copies of books and films can be made for free, do we really want to limit their distribution thereby limiting how many people can enjoy it, without getting any more money? Why should we stop people who wouldn't have bought the book anyway, from getting it for free?
Of course, it's impossible to determine exactly who would or wouldn't have paid for a book, and that's why we need an entirely new system.
The fact of the matter is, art and science is done by what is called passionate labor. No matter what people might have you believe, art and science will be made by people who have a desire and a vision to create these things, not by entrepreneurs simply trying to make a profit. My point is that funding, no matter where it comes from, is just as effective in creating art, and even more effective in creating science, when it is publicly funded, rather than sold on the market.
The artists and scientists will be paid a salary or whatever just like they are now. Scientists working at pharmaceutical companies do their work for salary, not a promise of profit. So the only thing we are giving incentive for is incentive for funding. We don't need to give profit incentive to make art or science, we just need to pay the artists and scientists what they have been getting paid all along.
Of course, I'm not trying to say that all intellectual endeavours should be publicly funded. Let's talk about films in movie theatres. I think five years is more than enough of a copyright to create incentive to make movies, movies just like they've been making until now. Of course, they might make slightly less profit, but we all know they make too much, since that is why actors have been able to extort so much money from them keeping their profit margins like they were all along. So the only thing would happen is that actors would probably make less money.
I understand all the objections that you might have, because I've been through all of them myself. I know that just two years ago, I would have been offended by the things I'm suggesting here. But things are different, and I've thought this through, and even in this particularly long post, I can't address everything here. If you have any such objections, respond below, and I'll try to answer them.
Realize: I'm not a communist, and I'm applying the same economic principles which underlies our capitalist society to this area of intellectual endeavours. But intellectual products are not like other products. With the technology we have now, we shouldn't create horrible market inefficiencies to prop up a system of incentive that was appropriate fifty or a hundred years ago, but is no longer appropriate.
Like I said, I'm not a communist, but when things have a zero marginal cost, they shouldn't cost anything to buy, or they should at least cost as close to nothing as possible. This principle fits in perfectly with the rest of the economic principles we hold up high in America.
Unfortunately, it is such a different and drastic system, that most people won't understand it, and will probably react as I, to be honest, would've reacted just a year or two ago. But please, try to be open minded, and I will try to answer any questions you have below.
The important thing is that you be receptive, and not just dismiss what I'm saying without any thought.
This can even bring about a new problem... IP cartels. Say IBM, Sun, Apple, MS and AOL qualify tons of reviewers and team up against ... well ... everyone.
Strategic partners get approval votes, everyone else gets rejection votes. They get their IP protection as patents and everyone else's (potential) IP protection for free.
Voting is ripe for abuse. Better yet would be hiring consultants from professional/academic fields by a system similar to jury duty? Have qualified applicants in a pool and select X number of them randomly. That would prevent burn out, allow a rotation of reviewers, and if made compulsory, save the Guv'ment some bucks ($5/day for patent review duty, whee!)
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Yes, the server space and bandwidth are mine. These are finite items, requiring either physical parts or service to maintain. Those are property. The information... the text, images, and everything else are available to anyone else who comes there.
Would you like to download any of the images I've created? I put a copyright notice on them so that people will not try to use them for for-profit works without first contacting me, but you're welcome to download the image, use it in almost any way you see fit and spread it to all your friends? Feel free!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I think it would be useful to tie the life of a
patent or copyright to the amount of work that
went into developing the associated concept.
So a patent on two lines of javascript (which presumably took an afternoon to come up with) wouldn't last long, but a patent on a drug production process that took a billion $ to develop would last longer.
Not a perfect solution, but hopefully prevents the
worst abuses of the IP protection system yet protects "legitimate" work.
I can't believe they used revenue and Linux in the same sentence.
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
What would improve the IP laws?
1. Always allow individual creators full rights to use, modify, or perform their own works. Contracts can grant similar rights to others (like corporations), but should not be able to void the abilities of the original authors to use what they created.
2. Disallow or radically limit patents on algorithms, automata, or business plans. I have yet to see any example where a software or business patent created improvements in the industry, though numerous examples of anti-competitive, over-broad, or misused patents have cost companies thousands.
3. Any patent that is not in use for more than five years should be lost. If the company isn't using the patent, why do they have the right to make everyone else pay for it? Just having a logarithmic payment schedule for the patent protection might also help. ie: $1000 first application, $5000 second, $100000 third, $1000000 fourth. With five year periods a drug company can keep their cash cow for 20 years, but only if it is actually being produced. Unless the owner has a good value from it, keeping the patent 10-15 years just won't be worth the money.
4. Shorten copyright protection on software binaries to five years. An additional twenty year period of protection would be allowed only if the source code is to be transferred to the public domain at the end of this period. Without source there should be no additional protection. This would guarantee the public could get something usable after the code is obsolete. I can't count how many software programs have been lost forever because the company that made it is no more. Without this guarantee it is unlikely the original program would ever be useful by the time its term limit expires.
This is my scheme:
1)All forms of intellectual property are property,
and have value. The initial value is declared by
the filer. Filer is responsible for property
taxes, say 10% per annum.
2) After the first year, and every seven years
thereafter, the property is put up for auction,
with a minimum bid of its current value. 5% goes
to the general fund, 5% goes to the registrar
(copyright office, patent office, etc.),
rest goes to current owner of the property.
[Auction on the first year is intended to keep
filer from assigning an artificially low price
to avoid taxes. Giving 90% of the auction value
to the current owner has two effects -- it gives
the current owner an advantage in retaining a
property. Also, it prevents a "taking" argument
from being used, the current owner got a fair
market value for his property.]
3) if there is no bid that equals or exceeds the
reserve, the property reverts to the public domain.
4) The current property holder may grant the
property to the public domain at any time.
The property holder is not taxed on the property
after this grant, but neither does he get a tax
credit for this grant.
[I am willing to give a tax credit to anyone
except the initial filer. I don't want the
initial filer to declare a value of $1,000,000
for the sole purpose of receiving a tax credit.]
5) Fixed term. No property can be held for a
time-period exceeding average lifespan at time
of original filing.
Tell the mother fuckers to use hexadecimal instead of base 10. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to use if you're doing anything related with the ip other than using it to access something. Its a bitch to translate decimal into binary while hex is easy as shizzy. If I had my way I'd rewrite human nature and switch everything over to base 16. I wouldn't, however, use A,B,C,D,E, and F, I'd use new symbols.
I've always thought there should be three, not two categories:
.iff format may be SL'd. A man in a maze is an idea, Pac-Man may be SL'd. My DNA is unpatentable, but the chemical that fixes an error in my DNA is patentable.
Copyright. For artistic works. I'd limit it to 21 years period. Copyright is inalienable: The creator may not lose their right to use their work at any time. Copyright is licensable: They may license there work to anyone under any terms (exclusive too, if they are really that dumb.) but they retain the right to use their work. For electronic or access-controlled works the work MUST be provided to the copyright office in unencrypted format for release upon expiration of the copyright in order to be granted the copyright in the firsat place.
Patent. For industry. For physical objects and processes that produce physical objects (chemicals are physical objects.) Currently twenty years, I'd leave thatunchanged. Things that occur in nature are not patentable (DNA), but new processes are.
Software Lock. For virtual "things". Code, API's, virtual processes. Three years max. I would consider running it out of the copyright office until a new branch would be created. A software lock allows exclusive or licensable(sp?) use of the published and registered software or API by the owner or licensor for the period of the lock, Said lock timed from the date of the acknowledgement of the receipt by the Copyright/SL office.
Under no circumstances may an idea be patented, copyrighted, or SL'd. Only implementations. Examples: Image compression using fractals is an idea and may not be limited. The
Trademarks seem to be working OK and I would leave them alone.
Doubtless there are many holes and counterexamples in my list. If anyone's interested in replying then please post.
-C
Q: So you're locked in a room with Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and a lawyer. You have a gun, but only two bullets. What do you do?
A: Shoot the lawyer twice.
The latter is your friend (you as a "consumer") the former is both producer's as consumer's enemy. What's so hard to grasp about this whole copyright/fair use/fair royalties thing?
Just my wasted EUR 0.02
I say let us not fake that everyone who becomes her own or his own boss is an industrial capitalist. Let us not continually bend over backwards with specious notions of assets.
If, say, Disney finds enough talented artists who are desperate enough to forego the big bucks (two birds in bush) in favor of a paycheck (bird in hand), then Disney is a financier and insurer of artistry in commerce. The capitalists are the artists who typically own the infamously powerful buzzwords, the means of production. (I know those are typically Marxian fighting words, but I consider both that mindset and its red-faced dectractors obsolete and intellectually boring.) At rock bottom on day one, Disney didn't really own the means of production. Disney predominantly owned and owns the means of distribution. Disney is and was a mercantilist, not a capitalist. Because that company simply buys and sells and juggles and mixes in the risk management services listed above, everyone finds it convenient to pretend that Disney is a capitalist.
In a marketplace that is compatible with the benign aspects of Adam Smith's "invisible hand", conflicts of interest need to be avoided. In other words, companies like Disney need to be scrapped in order for the market to function correctly. (My guess is that the "Disney 2.0" with new restrictions and new freedoms would prosper, but I dare not digress.)
Because, say, Disney, the vendor of artistic effort, is a broker (a mere mercantilist), Disney does not have the moral right in a market economy to command both the supply and demand sides. From pure momentum, Disney feels entitled to enjoy such powers. In a "Smith 1.0 compliant economy", the capitalist should call the shots and should typically "guess" what would serve the market in the most lucrative way.
The brand names should be associated with the capitalists--for those who take substantive responsibility for the creations and who own the means of creation--not the broker or retailer. Then the customers should choose in such a marketplace. When the broker bullies both the supply side and the demand side, it might seem comfy, but so much of the potential of a Smithian free market economy has been bulldozed to pave the way that the system strains. I believe this was the sort of thing on Schumpeter's mind when he almost ridiculed the class of people in so-called lounge suits.
Interestingly, in markets whose products do not have the characteristically high proportion of intellectual value, people become morally outraged to see "Disney-like" phenomena taking place. When the stock broker makes predatory advice to investors, the conflict of interest can be so severe that the Securities and Exchange Commission could come down on a brokerage firm like a cocaine bust. When an accumulator of intellectual properties does essentially the same thing, it is called "the work of an entertainment executive" (or software house executive or whatever in all these perverse constructs of fake capitalism that is actually mercantilistic speculation and legalized market-cornering).
Before flaming me, get one thing straight. Accumulating and centralizing intellectual properties under "one roof" is NOT productive behavior. It is counterproductive behavior that happens to offer unfair strategic advantage to the participants who fund the tricksters engaged in the practice. That practice is the shutting down of markets. It is like stringing chains and padlocks across millions of little virtual Main Streets. So some clown finds someone to finance such tricks. That doesn't make her or him a capitalist any more than it makes Ivan Boesky or Jeffry Skilling's "Get Shorty" engineers capitalists. They are crooks.
The question is, "Which laws?" What should be illegal? It should be illegal for Disney to own a controlling stake in such a vast portfolio of intellectual properties and then to treat that portfolio with pathological jealousy. Disney's job is economic plumbing. Disney matches genuine producers with cash-in-hand buyers. The owning and peddling are two different things. The "warehouse" is not market-corrected as would be the case with troublesome pork bellies and tons of granite or polyethylene. That tempts the "invention" of a new conflict of interest which bad intellectual habits have called a "business model". The broker should be a clean broker. The producer should be a clean producer. When the owner/hoarder and broker are one in the same without recourse, this perversion of incentives invites an entire class of parasites that people forget to identify. (I personally know a Disney executive near the middle ranks. He's a great guy, a hard worker, a fella who could cheer up a badger whose leg just got chopped off. He's not the problem.) The class of parasites I mention here are those who hold Disney stocks without considering that they are actually perverted mutual funds. Those shareholders own chunks of a whole bunch of ventures. Media giants become too big to steer.
Now let's take another look at a slightly different market. What about Napster's victims? Which victim squealed the loudest? Because you are reading here, you know it was the cushy executives. (Ok. I mean that they learned to squeal after they got off their lazy asses by reading headlines about Metallica.) The parasites are now being discovered for the parasites that they have always been. Now that there is an extra-legal/illegal marketplace, driven by individual choice, it is evident that markets have been destroyed during decades of media hoarding in music businesses. Now the markets are opening up again. The problem is the turnstile and so on. (I have roughly zero smart opinions about solutions to those specific problems, but I know that it is evidence of previous problems now made obsolete.) In the pre-Napster system, the music "capitalists" owned essentially nothing but ticket booths and turnstiles.
What laws do we need? I suppose we could split the various Disneys of the world into retail peddlers and talent brokerages and project coordination consultancies and brokers of mutual funds with shares of various well documented properties. If, say, Don Knotts still deserves something like 1.5% of the rent for the "Apple Dumpling Gang" videos, that should be described in the prospectus for the prerusal of anyone who wants to buy stock in the intellectual property that comprises the "Apple Dumpling Gang" movie. (The obligation to Don Knotts is a liability of that property in this example.) The aggregated properties are mutual funds.
In other words, I think that the stuff should be unbundled on the supply side, and I think the vertically integrated delivery/bullying mechanisms should be subject to antitrust scrutiny, and I think investors and consumers should be able to poke around at the products they want. Just as various "items" on the stock exchange have ticker symbols and cans of soup have UPC codes, a unified namespace could be created overnight to commoditize the various Disneys and wannabes and to force them to compete or melt away.
I picked Disney because I don't hate Disney, and I don't really like it either. Its products and services seldomly suit my tastes but never offend my tastes. It is the most gray of the huge media hoarders I could think of. My opinion is not about Disney. My opinion is about the way that markets can correct themselves. Investors are always looking for opportunities to be "safe", i.e., to find places where the market cannot be corrected. It is my opinion that such searchers should be perrenially frustrated. When that occurs, Adam Smith's invisible hand is darned near miraculous. The closer we get to the ideal, the more beneficent that "invisible hand" becomes. With the trajectory of intellectual property laws from roughly Bayh-Dole forward, the incentives have become perverse. That should be obvious. Solutions to the problem are never obvious when the nature of the problem is so cleverly hidden. If the opinion you seek is a "blank slate" basis, I say treat the media moguls like the warez kiddies they have always been.
The founders of the United States knew that in a large and diverse society there are a percentage of people who will create more, given the chance to make lots of money from the results. The "law" of supply and demands says that if the supply of something is artificially limited, the price should go up. IP law artificially limits the supply of the use of new technology and reproduction of artistic performances (because of the exclusive licensing rights) and thus increases the profits from successful inventions and creations.
Lets consider IP law a knob instead of a pushbutton. Set the knob too low and the benefits to society will decrease due to some lower rate of innovation. Set the knob too high and there will be a drain on society created by inefficient transfers of wealth and the limitations on freedom to use recent ideas. Given a little clairvoyance, one should be able to set the knob at some maxima in the sum of both new inventions and the social benefits from wider usage of recent inventions.
There are several ways the knob can be set: duration of copyrights and patents, limitations on royalties and the types of restrictions and penalties legally available, requirements to share or pool certain types of patents, expansion or contraction in fair use rights, etc., etc. Given the current state of technology, which requires the use of lots of interdependant, but independantly invented, ideas, the knob is probably set too high in some markets. Now where's the clairvoyant who knows how the knob should be set? (Make sure that you don't set the knob so low that the ubergeek who is about to figure out how to write some software which would accelerate a protein folding model required to cure cancer a year sooner doesn't get laid off from a mega-cuticle R&D boondoggle and decide to go hack on the linux kernel instead...)
No software patents.
No business model patents.
No patents on "doing the same thing with a computer that used to be done by hand".
Copyright term reduced back to 17 + 17 years.
Law changes extending copyright do not apply to works already published when the extension is passed.
Copyright covers software CODE but not appearance, behavior, or functionality.
Copying interface definitions (i.e. ".h files") to interoperate with copyrighted software is explicitly "fair use".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The most strikingly unfair aspect of the patent system is the fact that the value of the patent protection has no relationship to the value of the original R&D investment.
If a drug company invests millions of R&D dollars to develop a new drug, then I think it's reasonable for them to have limited market protection to help them recover their R&D investment costs.
But in the information sector, a person can spend 10 minutes scratching an obvious idea onto a napkin, and (if they can afford a good enough patent lawyer) can turn that idea into a patent.
Therefore, the most important patent reform will be:
Obviously, to prevent fraud, the spending must be independently audited during the R&D. This implies that the patent application must be approved BEFORE the R&D begins, so that the independent auditor can confirm that the capital is being spent in a reasonable manner to advance the R&D in a meaningful way.
And to solve the ongoing travesty of patents being awarded for obvious ideas (for example, Amazon's absurd patent for one-click online purchasing), one more reform is essential:
The US patent office has repeatedly demonstrated that it is grossly incompetent in determining if a so-called "invention" must be denied patent protection because it is obvious to an expert. Public peer review is the only cost-effective way to end the ongoing damage being caused by this massive incompetency.
For almost any software problem, there are a thousand ways to solve it. A good programmer will pick one very quickly. Another equally good programmer will pick a completely different one, in about the same amount of time. Arguably, each of the thousand ways is non-obvious, even though any skilled programmer will pick one, because even if you take ten programmers and ask them to solve the problem, there's only about a one in a hundred chance than any of them will pick the one you're testing for obviousness.
By the standards of any other field, most full-time programmers come up with a dozen or more patentable ideas every day. Unlike in other fields, where an idea takes an expensive cooperative idea to develop, the programmer also implements them about as fast as he invents them, and it costs almost nothing to distribute the development. The main barrier to patenting software is not finding ideas worth developing, but the cost of the patent process itself.
Patents don't really promote invention. They promote factory-building. Manufacturers don't want to take a chance on a novel product when another manufacturer can just come along, see how they did it, and do it for a quarter of the investment. This consideration obviously doesn't apply to software.
Patents make some degree of sense when there's a large enough investment in developing a product that the additional trouble of doing a patent search is a small part of the total expense, because the cost of design is dwarfed by the cost of manufacturing. When there's nothing but design, and the cost of patent searches threaten to be the main cost, then patents are utterly counterproductive.
Try and sell this idea to the software vendors if it's so great. I think you'll see few takers.
Remember if even one patch, security enhancement or minor improvement is made after initial purchase, the vendors will probably try to extend the Copyright by the date of the change. That would certainly be the what would happen if it were part of the Copyright law. Sure, the initial package's Copyright expired in 5 years, but the enhancements you wanted, those expire in 20 years.
This seems overly complicated and fraught with loopholes. Just make the Copyrights expire in a fixed amount of time and be done with it.
Remember, that IP law isn't about letting the Markets decide, or making inventors/authors rich, it's about promoting progress. A simple system, applied consistently is the best way to do this, I think.
group/corporate copyright is essential in some areas. for example, I often write policy and documenation for a radio co-operative. Were I to leave, it would be annoying if I had to be contacted each and every time and policy was amended. by having the co-operative hold the copyright, changes can be made with the consent of the group easily.
One thing I am worried about is that books and records etc go out of print and they are still in copyright, so no one can make use of that knowledge. I would propose that holders of copyright be bound to have available galleys, machine copies or a safehold of printed copies deposited with a national library or other body so that the work can continue to be produced in the future. Work that is deemed out of print should also be able to be printed by others.
There are really only a few ways we can go with IP protection.
:-}.
Laissez-Faire:
This is the way a lot of corporations are afraid to go (for obvious reasons), but with the internet and quick transfer of IP between persons, the government is having less control over IP (location (ie. Russian programmer trading Win XP to Swedish programmer, the States can't do much.)) And, it doesn't look like any of the governments are going to be able to gain back much control.
Yet, this might also have the side effect of being beneficial to the consumer. (The invisible hand of capitalism reappears after years in dormancy.) Since IP is so easily just traded amongst peers and friends with no return on the investment, methods would need to be developed in which a consumer would want to purchase a IP product. (ie. special benefits, tech support, handbook, etc.) Thus, the producer has a definite need to improve his product and remove its shortcomings, as well as lower the price considerably so the consumer has a good reason to purchase the product.
While in the short term a complete laissez-faire economy would be absolutely devestating to the corporate economy based on lawyers and laws, in the long run it has the potential to lead to better products that the consumer can buy and use.
As well, another benefit of a laissez faire economy is the fact that when it comes to artistic IP. The only people left will be the true artists who are producing music and art because they love what they do, and because they enjoy it when someone else enjoys their art. Unfortunately, they won't be rich, unless they come up with other methods for income (ie. through concerts, art shows, live theatre, producing products that give something that cannot be traded, etc.) It will, for better or worse, bring the return of the 'starving artist.'
Now, for the intellectual and academic community, this has the potential of being a godsend. Now all of the material that they couldn't afford, acquire, or just wasn't available (due to various reasons,) will suddenly be available, for free in record numbers. Scientists will still continue their research (grants pay for them), and publish their papers in various journals, just now anyone will be able to read their papers for free (I know, I know, a lot of journals offer their papers for free online already.)
So, now the laissez-faire economy seems to have some terrific points, and some down points relating to IP.
Let's examine the flipside.
more government control (responsible gov control.)
Now, to be clear, we must understand that more government control does not imply more corporate control, or more laws that make our lives difficult. More government control means that when someone produces a legitimate IP copyright, they will support that copyright, but it also would imply that the gov. is intelligent enough to realize that the letter 'e' cannot be copywritten by anyone, or if a company is using its copyright to harass other companies, it will handle the situation appropriately.
Therefore, in short I will refer to this other possible concept as le gouvernement-enlightened (LGE) {My vague attempt at french.
Now, we can see that in a LGE economy, people would be interested in producing IP as it can lead potential financial benefits in the future. Thus, large companies which keep the economy moving and many people employed would rise up from successful IP products that the public uses.
Now, unfortunately, there would naturally be a lot of resistance to forced compliance with IP laws, and many people would be upset. Yet, after a short time (and proper government legislation) the public will realize that these IP laws are more beneficial then harmful, and will understand that they too will be able to use the laws to create quality IP material and make income off of that material.
Now, immediately a few questions arise. in a LGE system, what if two people apply for the same copyright at the same time. Well, naturally the government would attempt to determine if both person had developed it independently. If so, then why not let both individuals have rights over the IP copyright, in a way it can lead to some friendly competition between individuals when licensing their IP to companies.
Another question arise, what about IP laws like the DMCA. Well, unfortunately (or fortunately) for LGE to be successful, these laws must exist. Yet, perhaps they don't need to be as restrictive as they currently are? (Ie. let academics toy with the copyright protection) It will lead to two major benefits, one the general public will not be able to "steal" IP material, but also the companies will be simulataneously forced to develop better and higher-quality encryption. Perhaps the law should have a sunset clause where after so many years, the encryption can be broken and/or publicly analyzed?
With LGE there are many unanswered questions that the government would have to figure out and solve to the optimal benefit of the people and the corporations. Too many to discuss here.
But, I hope you can see how LGE economy can potentially work as well as Laissez-Faire economy.
Most IP laws and theories are in limbo right now with the success of the internet. These are only two potential directions that can be gone and the pros/cons of each.
(This is not intended to be offensive to anyone, this is just an analysis of two potential ways of handling IP in the 21st century, and is all IMHO.)
:-)
~ kjrose
IP Laws are fucked
How would you make them less so?
Slashdot wants to know
The rational: creators should be granted a limited right to exclusivity of the use of their works automatically. However, in order to keep the copyright for longer than 15 years, the author (or owner) must proactively maintain and renew that copyright. This will allow large corporations (such as Disney) with an intellectual property portfolio they wish to keep to continue keeping that portfolio as long as they wish, but which allows the other 98% of works which are no longer really cared for to fall into the public domain after a reasonable period of time.
Patents Patents must be for material products or for items which cause a material change. In particular, patents cannot be extended to business techniques, mathematical formulas, or computer software. Further, patents live for 7 years, and can be extended once, by the legitimate patent holder, for an additional 7 year period, only if that patent holder can demonstrate he is actually using the patent.
Further, filing a patent with intent to deceive (by, for example, claiming a business technique patent by claiming the business technique when applied to a material product is a "material object") should be a fealony. Any person or corporation which is convicted of such fealony may lose the right to either file deceptive patents in the future, or may forfit their current patent portfolio into the public domain.
Same with copyrights: filing an "improper" copyright intentiionally with intent to deceive should be a fealony, and can cause someone who abuses this system to lose the right to renew their copyright portfolio.
Further, I would extend the right to "crack the corporate veil" to this, meaning that, in the event someone violates the law and loses the right to renew a copyright also means he does not have the right to circumvent this by incorporation.
If the RIAA or the MPAA intend to put teeth into the proposed punishments for violating "piracy", then we should also put teeth into proposed punishments for abusing the IP laws by corporations as well.
The question is not whether programming promotes the progress of science and useful arts, but whether giving the first guy to publish a technique a MONOPOLY on it for YEARS promotes, or retards, progress.
How is a programmer not an "author and inventor"? How is novel, useful and nonobvious software not a "writing and discovery"?
Of course they are. That's not the issue
and, why should software programmers be treated differently and not be entitled to "exclusife rights"?
Because the limited-time exclusive rights of patent are granted (and enforced on the rest of us by people with guns) in order to encourage inventors to publish their techniques, rather than keeping them a secret.
Intellectual property "rights" are not RIGHTS. They are PRIVILEGES. They are created and doled out by governments in order to obtain something of value for their citizens and their economies.
In the absense of patent protection an inventor of, say, a new manufacturing process might chose to keep it a trade secret rather than enabling his competition by publishing it. So the public gets only that one artisan's output, and the secret may become lost when he dies. Giving him a limited-time lock on the use of the process lets him license it to others for a fee, making him richer, getting more, cheaper goods into the hands of the consumer, and making the technique free and public once the patent expires.
This situation does NOT apply to software.
Once commercial software has been sold the easily-backed-up code is available for archiving and the technique it embodies is susceptable to reverse-engineering. So the invention won't be lost with the inventor's death.
Even if a software developer keeps the software itself secret and just sells its services, the fact that the service CAN be done (and is profitable) will likely cause its re-invention, by someone else who will not hold the algorithm so closely. (Remember: Patent is granted to the first to DISCLOSE, not the first to INVENT.) And if no one else reinvents the technique, the death of the software AUTHOR doesn't mean the loss of the SERVICE.
Software development lead times (including reverse-engineered cloning) are long enough and payoff times are short enough that there is no need to provide long-term protection to encourage authors to publish their products. You DO need protection against verbatim copies ("piracy"). But a short-term software COPYRIGHT is adequate for that purpose.
There was a robust software industry before software patents, and while even software copyrights were in doubt. This provides a proof-of-concept. Both patent and stretched-into-super-patent copyright are much more likely to RETARD, rather than PROMOTE, advance in the software-based "useful arts". So the Constitution does not autorize the granting of such such Intellectual Property privileges to software authors. ORDINARY copyright on the source code is adequate protection to "encourage" software development by providing a tool to discourage outright piracy. Nothing further is needed, desirable, or Constitutional.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It might be a good time to read at -1.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
The problem is the need to balance competing sets of rights.
Rights of the content creator:
1: To have a work recognized as his/her creation.
2: To receive some of the economic benefits of the use of that work.
3: To place reasonable restrictions on how that work is used to make money. I don't mind giving away work for free, I do mind if it is used to make certain companies richer.
Rights of the content consumer:
1: To create unlimited copies for personal use.
2: To fully enjoy all the benefits of the content.
3: To make personal modifications for non-commercial use.
In addition, I think people are ignoring the fact that copyright can be a powerful tool for political protest. I enjoy the power that copyright gives me to specify that my work can be used freely, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes. This prevents my work from being published by another company.
The only compelling argument I have ever heard in favor
of the patent system is that it can encourage drug
companies to invest in r/d for new drugs to treat rare
diseases (and similar scenarios).
So why not scrap the patent system altogether and just
give companies a r/d tax credit if they are working on
certain problems that would be a benefit to society?
Basically, the new system would be this:
The government will subsidize you for certain kinds
of r/d. But in exchange for that funding, the results
of your research will become public domain.
Everybody gets something good from this system: The
drug companies get their r/d subsidized; the rare
disease gets a cure; and the public domain benefits
from the resulting IP. It sounds like a win/win/win
scenario to me.
On the surface, it might appear that the taxpayer is
the loser because he has to fund the r/d. But putting
the IP into the public domain will result in lower
prices overall for IP-related products. I suspect that
this might be one of those things (like roads and schools)
where taxpayer financing really is the best public
policy.
Hm ... you live in an capitalistic country.
... property?
... and you won't change anything. Current APPLICATION of the IP idea is bad, so try to change the APPLICATION not the idea.
So why do you want IP laws "to go away"?
You got moderated up, but you make no argument.
The intent when IP laws got introduced where the following:
If I buy some threads and weave them to fabrice, who owns the fabrice?
If I MAKE me some threads from raw cotton, who owns tehm?
If I now weave it to fanbice who owns it?
If I fid a diamond at the beach, a raw one, not one a girl making love ther lsot the night before, who owns it?
IF I THINK ALL DAY ABOUT A STORY AND WRITE IT, who owns it?
Before IP laws got invented EVERYBODY owned the storry. At least everybody with a printing machine being fast enough to print it and sell the copies got rich, the writer starved.
The problem is the US copyright law -- how it evolved -- and the actual tendency to spread it or leak it into european minds.
With lack of IP laws our world would IMHO stand still tomorrow.
I simply can not get why you consider stealing a car a crime(manufactoring a car gets cheaper and cheaper each day) while you "taking away" of mental work do consider "right so!", wheras mental work gets more and more expensive.
Our whole economy is shifting away from MATERIAL to KNOWLEDGE/INFORMATION/SERVICE.
The actual running evolution process of the societies is towards: science and knowledge and how to apply it to the material world. Knowledge is NOT reproduceable, digitalized information is, of course.
Its a majour flaw to draw the conclusion because of easy reproduction of bits and bytes (it is not even a rePRODUCTION) there would be now cost in the first step of generating them.
Where did the jobs be 50 years ago? In factories.
Where are the jobs now? In service businesses.
Where will the jobs be tomorrow? In knowledge engineering!!
Software engineering is just the start of related sciences. Knowledge engineering will be the next. Probably in conjunction with more indepth knowledge about biology and medical science, the next step is mental engineering.
All goods people in the future are working with and peopel will create by their work will be: knowledge, intellectual
Just like a old gold digger only digged out gold and he could not eat it, our generation will dig out knowledge and somehow will need to be able to EAT it.
With an attitude like yours you only showed you did not think far
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In addition, restrict patent rights to the collection of royalties at reasonable schedules. It is arguably reasonable to ensure inventors of a reasonable return, but not to give inventors ongoing control over future developments related areas of technology.
I would remove word "copyright" at all:
...
If I have a picture, I can legally copy it, post at every corner of my home,
I can't sell it though.
Suggestion:
Replace "copyright" with "exlusive-profit-right".
If a programmer wrote a gave, he can sell it for 10 or 15 years and stop anyone else from selling it.
After the expiration, the program is public domain: everyone can sell it.
Copy-right is irrelevant, it's exlusivity-profit-right.
The length of time for the patent might be fine as it is. But only if the following rules are applied:
So: you'd better be damned sure that your patent is solid gold if you want to sue someone for patent infringement.
My thoughts on how copyrights should be:
End result: there will be a strong separation between creators of works and publishers of works, and creators will be able to reap the full benefits of creation, as long as they're not assholes about allowing derivative works.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
There are many problems with this. Some have already been given. For my part:
:-)
The first problem is a question of who should and should not be able to own a copyright or patent. As put forth in our constitution a person and not a place or thing is the only one capable of holding a copyright or patent. Due to a maligned ruling by a judge in the past - companies are thought of as if they were a person. This is wrong. Companies do not know it (or don't think about it) but if a company is a person then when they are created they are born, while they are active they live, and when they go out of business they die. Thus, every time one company forces another out of business the company doing the forcing should be tried for murder. It may sound stupid - but you have to take the bad with the good. There are a lot of good reasons for having a company declared a person under the law (ie: being the owner of copyrights and patents for one) but there are definitely quite a few drawbacks as well. The thing is - we are allowing companies to use and abuse the good but we are not really holding them responsible for the bad. IMHO - companies ought to go back to being what they are - a thing.
Second - time. If a company can own copyrights and patents - then how long will it be before these pass into the public domain? The answer is - never. Especially if the company is taken over or merged with another company. A merger is like a marriage. Copyrights become joint ownership under mergers. Thus, if one company lasts 150 years and then merges with another company then copyrights get extended even further. So long as the company doesn't go out of business (even in Bankruptcy a company can sell it's assets to another company) the copyrights and patents remain valid.
At least, this is my understanding of our currently existing laws and where they are headed.
What should be done?
I believe in the "life of the author(s)" amount of time being used or thirty years plus renewal every ten years up to the death of the author and then one additional renewal after the author's death. This would give a maximum of forty years after the author's death for a copyright to be renewed. However, my caveat is that after the author's death all copyrights return to the nearest next of kin(s) for this one renewal. So in the case of J.R.R. Tolkien his work would revert to his wife first, if she has passed away then his children, then his aunts, uncles, and so forth as set out under normal delineation rules.
The original Patent system is fine with me. Allowing soft patents is, IMHO, going too far. I also am greatly disturbed by the patent office allowing such things as a flashlight to be patented simply because it is used as a cat's toy. Or that plucking a rubberband between your fingers is a musical instrument. The patent office needs better software if nothing else. Something which will match one patent's wording to another so at least you do not get more than one patent for the same item.
Copyrights are not a right. Nor are patents. They are both monopolies artificially created by the government meant to secure, for a very limited time, the right to sell your idea to whomever you wish. They were meant to prevent people from stealing your ideas whether those ideas were songs, books, or even videos. They worked as they were written originally and they can work again. We do not need new laws - we just need to enforce the ones we already had.
Now last, but not least, is a question. If tomorrow all of the big bad companies disintegrated into dust and the government allowed you to do whatever you wanted - how in the world would you ever survive?
The answer is - you couldn't. So companies are not going to go away. They may change. But they will not go away. Companies are also like feudal kingdoms. The bigger they get - the more power they wield. So maybe they shouldn't be allowed to get quite so big. Think about it.
A lot of people say the record companies should change. They won't. A lot of people say they should become a service oriented business. What do you think they are doing now? They don't serve food - they serve CDs. Why are they in business? Because just like any other company they have the money which is necessary in order to do the advertising so both the company and the artist can make money. Don't misquote me. I don't like how things are set up anymore than anyone else. If you've got a few million dollars laying around why not start up your own record company? Nothing changes your outlook faster than losing a few million dollars.
Remember: You hate spam so the artists can't get your attention by sending out song samples. You can't stand ad banners so your favorite group goes belly-up because they can't show you their latest single. Google lists 3,000 fan sites before showing you their home page. Their web server goes down because some k001 dude wanted exclusive downloading privileges.
So what do they have to do? They have to go to some company and pay them in order to 1)Get the word out, 2)Go on tour, 3)Get their songs played over the airwaves, 4)Maybe appear on TV, and 5)Make money doing this. Or the company can take a risk and invest their money to promote the group. Sound familiar? And no - I don't work for any company doing anything remotely connected to the music industry. Just common sense here guys and gals. Common sense.
The rich just keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer because you have to have money in order to make money. And once you start making money you usually don't want someone else to take that "something" away. So you buy a congressman, senator, local yokel, whoever and you get them to lobby for what you want to have happen. Companies are very good at this - it's why they are pretty much in control these days. Which is why I am a very big fan of automatic division of companies when they reach a certain size. Kind of hard for a company to control the government when they are being broken up into two separate companies. Sort of like amoebas. Make more than X amount of money and your company has to split in two. I'm in favor of $1 billion dollars. That way each company gets $500 million dollars. I figure if you can't keep your company running with that much money you don't deserve to be in business.
Nuff said I think.
That's not quite accurate. I don't really care if someone on the other side of the country can make a living or not. The world's smallest violin played for the buggy whip industry, remember.
No, the only way that copyright makes sense is if it benefits readers; you know, the people who are actually effected by copyright, and who are expected to abide by it?
Thus, measure the happiness of readers related to the production of, and usability and cost of creative works. Set a baseline where there is no copyright at all. Then add all the copyright you like, as long as it results in a net increase in reader happiness.
For example, I don't mind not being able to make my own copies of a book for one year, if it results in ten times as many new and different books being published. The minor loss of happiness for that one year is more than offset by the gain I'll recieve when I have ten times as many books to do with as I like.
But hell -- I _AM_ an artist, and the whole 'I'm entitled to the fruits of my labor' argument is totally bogus. Firstly, because we don't live in a vacuum, and what I create relies on what someone before me created, ad infinitum. Secondly, because it doesn't establish any incentive for third parties to respect that, no matter how much I might want it personally. Thirdly, because my labor is the act of creation; not of duplication. Copyright is telling people that they cannot do things that they can trivially do. Simply because I write a book that by no means should be taken as indicating that only I can copy that book -- any idiot can. Why shouldn't they? What's in it for them?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Basicly its simple. :-)
.. not credits, revenue).
... however it is well known that HE contributed 25 machine instructions to a 2.5M machine instructions big executebale. Such an embedded device with a RT linux core manufactored for $1 probably has 2c material costs and 98c IP costs for the software and chip designs. ;-) as this was his contribution to the core.
... as long as it is not allowed to wire tap me it is a crime anyway.
But a lot won't like it
o An author has full control over his work.
o He has a right to prohibit(with a veto) reworking(creating derived work) if he does not find it tastefull(e.g. using his work on pornographic works).
The basic thing an author currently can do is to allow someone else to publish and/or redistribute his work.
My wish system would be the opposite: everybody can redistribute original or modified work as long as he gives credit and revenue to the original author.(and he does not veto)
How to accomplish that?
As far as non digital work is considered an author would need means to proove he is the author. Usualy he can do that without special work, but a "conspiracy" could be easyly put up to "proofe in court" he is not. So a registration bureau would be adequat, but not generaly needed.
For digital work its absolutely easy:
o sign/watermark the work
o consumer devices realize who has the rights on the reproduced audio/video/text/code and create a monthly bill, unsigned work is not reproduced
o mixing of other authors work requires you to keep their signature/watermark or to replace it with your own one
-- replacing/deleting it is copyright violation
-- keeping it makes clear how much of THAT work is indeed YOUR own work, signed by you, and how much is USED work, signed by the original author.
o network providers only transport signed/watermarked material
o probing the digital content for violations is only needed for NEW content or for suddenly upcomming high traffic to NEW sites. E.G. to prevent the release of Episode III DVD ripped copies via the internet before it is official released.
This schema should be extended to any digital form of information, even compiled program code. A CPU should only be able to execute signed code. The result would be that a car electronics system run by an RT linux core would exactly know how many developers get credits for running the fuel pumb and ignition of the gazoline(erm
Of course, an author still can refuse to get payed
If it is sold for $2 10 million times it yields 20 million dollar, 10 million are covered costs. So $200,000 are used for materials and $9.8M for IP. Said author of the 25 lines of code would get 0.00001 * $9.8M, only $98
The hughe benefit of a system like that would be: a start up company simply can TAKE everywhere what it needs to fullfill its services or to craft its product without even asking the original authors. No investment into hard and software is needed. No investment into patent licenses is needed. All revenue generated with such a derived work is split up acording to the amount of TAKEN stuff versus the amount of CREATED stuff. Age of the incorporated material determines the split factor as well.
So using OLD code to craft a compeeting product is much cheaper than taking brand new code from the competitor to craft new stuff.
The system would encaurage EVERY creator to publish(sign and watermark and register if needed) its work. Because its FAR more likely that someone else can spread it to the masses and start revenues then it is to try to exploit it solitair or in a smal company.
Bottom line: consumer electronics knows whom to send revenues. Or the network service provider knows whom to bill and whom to grant the revenues. For embedded electronics a clearng is likely needed. Well, would a manufactor realy risk to violate copyright to sell a device cheaper? I doubt it.
Revenue to creators would just be collected at the cashier like sales tax, e.g. in case of an CD or DVD or for the IP inside of an CD player.
As far as I know privacy issues are solveable via tokens(Zero Knowledge Protocolls), however I'm not an expert. Well, I personaly would not care if it is possible to figure what my favorite TV show is
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
(I'm mostly just interested in copyright here)
I would say that copyrights should have to be applied for by the author. They should not automatically be granted, with two exceptions.
First are works that are still being created, or which are awaiting imminent publication may receive a temporary 'common law copyright' intended to prevent the pirating of manuscripts. This is not intended to extend copyright protection to trivial works, such as Slashdot posts, however.
Second are works for which a foreign copyright holder has obtained a foreign copyright. Provided that the requirements for obtaining the copyright already obtained are judged by the government to be at least as stringent as those in the U.S., a grant may be made, possibly conditional on a few minor requirements being met in the U.S.
Copies of any work for which a copyright is applied for must be deposited in such form as required, in the Library of Congress. For example, in the case of books, a copy of the text and illustrations on archival paper. In the case of music, a copy of the lyrics, music and sound recording in an appropriate format such as CDDA. In the case of computer software, a copy of the binaries and sufficiently commented source code. Application for copyright, and depositing of works does not guarantee that the work will be copyrighted.
Copyrights are to be denied for works which do not promote the progress of the arts as determined by the government.
Copyright terms are limited to 20 years (except for computer software, which is limited to 5 years), or the death of the author, whichever comes first.
However, the term may be extended one time only (by holding a copyright, a copyright holder forswears accepting any term extension later granted) by 20 years (or 5 years in the case of computer software), if an extension fee of 5% of the total gross income from sales, rentals, licensing, performances or displays of the work, or $5,000, whichever is greater, is paid. Any money recieved from such extensions is used to fund the creation of various types of public domain works which are archived in the Library of Congress.
Publication consists of making the work generally available to the public, by displaying, performing, selling, renting or licensing it. The courts shall make determinations in borderline cases; mere claims by author or audience as to non-publication is not determinative.
Penalties for copyright infringement will be civil only, in the form of fines and/or injunctions. Fines are limited to an equitable amount, typically the amount that would have had to be paid for a published copy of the work, but no more than $250,000.
There will be no criminal penalties.
Access controls to copyrighted (therefore published) works are permissible. However, any such control must not prevent any access/use/copying, etc. of a work that is legal at any time, regardless of legality at the time that the control was put in place. Furthermore, the control must not impede anything whatsoever once the work is no longer copyrighted. Any published work so protected is not copyrighted.
I'm fairly happy with Fair Use as it stands, and the courts can change that as needed. Likewise with statutory exceptions to copyright for making use of software or backing it up, which already exist. And content licensing for cable tv, radio, et al is too much of a headache to delve into right now.
Am I missing anything else in particular?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I know this is stupid, but it's reallllllly simple.
If whatever the copyright or patent covers is replicated and released in a NOT FOR PROFIT situation there should be nothing stopping the NOT FOR PROFIT individual or group from releasing or building products (with allowance for whatever fiscal cost incured in manufacturing or transport), this not only releases holds on free software, it says that if I don't like the quality that MegaCorp's products have reputation for, I can recreate them and sell them to others at cost to force MegaCorp to produce better quality equipment.
This stimulates the economy if MegaCorp competes with not for profit groups, and also prevents MegaBiggerCorp from replicating MegaCorp's patented product. In the case that it does NOT stimulate the economy because MegaCorp whines like a bleeding whale even though any not for profit attempt at making anything MegaCorp mass produced will incur greater costs, it will benefit the customer in the end regardless. No more crap product, more money in pocket to give to someone who doesn't make crap.
How does this apply to software?.. How did the TCP stack in Linux become GPL?.. Someone re-built it based on the specifications used in the original BSD stack or another stack built on that stack. It's not that hard, is it?
...
Mabye I'm just being optimistic.
If we could start with a tabula rasa regarding intellectual property - which covers patents, copyright, and trade secrets - we'd best first off decide what we're trying to achieve.
- Attribution. If A invents B, then we want the world to know that B is A's invention. This is for psychological gratification as much as anything. Many
/. readers are coders, and know the "warm fuzzies" you get when you create something that you can be proud of. Singers, Songwriters, Artists in general get the same buzz. Some things money can't buy.
- Improvement. If A invents B, then C should be able to look at B and figure out that B' would be a significant improvement on it. It's this that has spurred the "Open Source" movement, which exposes the internals of Software so that peer-reviewers can spot blemishes.
- Incentive. The original UK and later US model for patents was intended to give encouragement for people to invent new and useful methods and devices, basically to spur the improvement of what we now call technology, arts and sciences. Rather than reward mere copy-cats and publishers, a time-limited monopoly was granted, during which time only the creator had the right to publish or implement his or her work, or licence this publication. This incentive was entirely Financial - probably the best way in the 18th century, but may not be the best way of doing things in the 21st.
- Facilitation. Any IP legislation must actually facilitate the widespread distribution and adoption of new and improved methods, artworks and devices. So a creator who wishes the protection of the law has certain obligations not to withold it's adoption for general use. Alternately, they should be free to keep it entirely to themselves, in which case the law should not protect anything other than the attribution, if that. Similarly, something that's already in general use should not be suddenly monopolised by an "inventor", be it a generic name such as Aspirin or ROT-13 or similar Caesar Cypher encoding. Once in the Public Domain, always in the Public Domain.
- Inalienability. Some moral rights should be inalienable - the owner of the Intellectual Property has some rights and obligations that may never be destroyed or transferred. Should an artist who's painted a Masterwork have the right to burn it and all copies? No, for that would diminish the world's stock of intellectual property. Naturally if the creator doesn't have this right, neither does anyone else. A creator hasn't got the right to allow someone else's name to appear on their work. Exclusive rights of publishing should not be legally enforceable - once the creator has set a certain price for copying, then anyone at all should be allowed to make a copy, for that price. This will stop books and other works going "Out Of Print", as (possibly inferior) copies could be made from an existing edition, via photocopy or MP3. In law, if you make a copy of something - be it a backup, to give to a friend, to put on your MP3 player, or to publish on a million CDs - you should pay the creator during the period of his monopoly for each copy. And so should anyone else, the same amount.
Are all of these requirements feasible to implement in any legal structure? Certainly. Are they feasible to enforce? That's more difficult. Getting someone to pay 0.01c to the production crew who made Buffy the Vampire Slayer every time you use your VCR to record this week's episode requires both the goodwill of the VCR owner, and some non-trivial technology to make it trivially easy. Otherwise people won't bother.Rather than have a single /. post propose the magic solution to all IP issues, I'll restrict this one to just canvassing what the issues are. Any I've forgotten? Any that you think shouldn't be on the list, or should be modified?
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
What if I make a NEW product every year, then I only pay $1.
So what if my new product is mostly the old public domain stuff?
Just because it is public domain doesn't mean I have to release the source code.
Loopholes would be found
I think the problem is that the current evaluation system does not fairly determine if the patent is non obvious.
So many things that seem obvious are pateneted, and it is annoying.
However what is the difference between being obvious , and being the next logical step along a research path.
that is a thought that I also had. I think a fair term would be until the next major version is released, then copying is permited, however, I think that source code might be a diffrent story.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
it depends on the idea. if that Idea is a book that a person wrote, it deserves protection, if it is an inovative invention produced by a paerson, it deserves protection, if it is owned by a corperation, it should get short protection.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I'm not sure I would consider that a "Source" any more reliable than an E-mail warning me about messages with the subject of "Good Times".
Then how about this one:
http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/news/file004.h tml
The piece is old, but the quote is legit. And George Bush has never apologized for his ignorance or bigotry. His offspring haven't commented on that opinion, but it's probably safe to assume they agree with dear ol' dad.
In the first place, it was created to protect individuals against corporations.
IP law predates the development of the modern corporation (while there were limited-liability entities called corporations in centuries past, large public corporations are a relatively recent development). IP law was developed to encourage innovation.
Patents, copyrights, and 'intellectual property' has got to go. If not, then when we, as a society, manage to convert fully to a non-scarcity based economy, those who have the ownership rights to information will be kings and everyone else will be paupers.
They tried the "non-scarcity based economy" in Eastern Europe for a while. It didn't work. In any event, your statement that "those who have the ownership rights to information will be kings and everyone else will be paupers" assumes that something in your New Economy will be based on scarcity, which is self-contradictory.
i agree
You're also creating a competitor if you do license your IP. Generally, monopolies reduce supply (and a patent holder is the classic example of a monopoly), in order to keep prices high, and increase marginal profits. In particular, if increasing production of a product increases demand (and thus the cost) of the materials to make the product, you'd rather restrict the supply, to the extent that you can maximize your profit.
Any idiot can commit murder, or steal your car. Why should the law protect your life or your personal property?
Throughout this last century large media companies have presented their one-sided arguments and convinced congress to extend copyright periods from a max of 28 years to well beyond my lifetime, essentially stealing millions of dollars worth of public domain content from the public.
Until this is returned they should receive no further special treatment. Why should we as consumers be concerned about Aunt Edna downloading mp3s and possibly not paying the artist for its use when huge amounts of our culture have been taken and sold back to us at a profit?
Public domain content serves the public in many ways, not the least of which is education. Classic literary works with expired copyrights can be purchased at a very low cost (basically the cost of printing). From that perspective our taxes are being taken and given to whoever owns the rights to the content whenever a school chooses to study nearly any work of art (music, movie, book, etc) that was created after 1923. (OK. some works created after 1923 are public domain but you pretty much need a team of lawyers to determine which ones)
Essentially art has stopped being about creating works and more about marketing, profit, and who owns the rights to it.
Under the original copyright laws Star Wars would be out from under copyright protection next year. Future filmmakers would be able to learn from it, re-edit it themselves (yes, some future film geniuses will be film editors who might not have access to resources to make their own movie). And, although IANAL, I believe that Star Wars: The Special Edition would still be covered by copyright protection for up to 28 years from its creation a few years ago.
Coding Blog
IP packets should be free to roam anywhere they like! Be free and roam packets! Find friendly servers!
i like your demand auction idea.
>They like to raise issues regarding the formulation of the law because it conceals their true motives and brings the issue into an academic realm where they can obfuscate the issue. It plays in their favor.
i don't think the "AIP movement" is so manipulative.
>In fact, formulating IP as real property could actually sanitize things a great deal. That's because it could then be taxed
there are however many things which are different between IP and "real property". the two big ones for me are these:
* IP can be copied
* many ideas in the public domain had their greatest impact in ways that couldn't be anticipated. the "consumers" who used these ideas to create even better ideas would not have been able to value their demand for the prerequisite idea until they had actually "consumed" it. the government can't figure out how much to tax ideas which don't seem to have much value until they spur another idea.
I make pots. It's a fun hobby - my pots are kind of lumpy, and sometimes collapse on themselves, and often explode in the kiln, but I make them and give them away for free.
Isn't that a kickass argument against people selling pottery? I mean, I'm giving away my pots FOR FREE, shouldn't everyone else?
Oh wait, pots are material possessions, there's the cost of the clay, and lets not forget the cost of labour, and if I took a pot away from someone who sold them, I'd be depriving them of a chance to recoup these sunk costs.
... Except don't these costs exist in music, artwork and literature too? If you take a song away from someone who sold songs, aren't you depriving them of a chance to recoup the sunk costs of producing it? Maybe if you really *really* weren't going to buy it, you get a song for free and no one's worse off, but since when was it your right to make that distinction, and why the hell do you think you deserve something if you're not willing to pay for it?
If the content creator demands people pay to have access to their work then you have no right to decide that you won't pay for it, but you'll just have it anyway. You want the fruits of their labour, but refuse to respect them? I do not think we should be forcing our society's talents to either starve, subsist on handouts or beg for donations, or work to support their craft simply because of the nature of the medium their work eventually ends up in.
If little Jimmy will share his lollies with you if you give him a dollar, but little Billy will give you some of his just because he's a nice guy, you can either pay little Jimmy a dollar and get some of his lollies, or go without little Jimmy's lollies and find something else. You can't take little Jimmy's lollies because little Billy isn't charging.
Music and books arguably don't lose significant value after a few years. One look at Charley Pride's CD sales should tell you that not publishing for a while won't kill your market (in spite of gnutella!). That is why you can (usually) still find commercial music and books long after initial publication.
But the same does not apply to software. I spent a long time trying to find a legal copy of an old DOS game and had no luck. The US publisher doesn't support 10 yr old games, and the Japanese authors are not even around any more. Ebay had never flogged a copy of it -- it was abandoned long before the Internet appeared. In desperation I ended up at an 'abaondonware' website that had a cracked copy of the game available for download.
I normally shun warez. I do a lot of both public domain plus I have several friends trying to make a living in the music industry. So the notion of stealing IP does not sit well with me. But the software I wanted is simply not availble by legit means.
So here is my proposal for IP law reform:
"computer software shall enter the public domain five years after the software ceases to be available by normal commercial sale"
What does this mean in reality? Software that is valuable will be sold until it ceases to have value. 5 years after that, it enters the public domain. Windows 95 ceased being available, when, about 1998? So after 2003 it would revert to the public domain UNLESS the copyright owner makes it available for sale again. If it has no value, then the company won't sell it. If it does have value, then they won't abandon it!
-AD
In fact, formulating IP as real property could actually sanitize things a great deal.
Personally, I would love being able to legally copy a cd as many times as I'd like and distribute to my friends if 'IP' were the exact same as regular property. After all, if I've bought it, it would become my property just as any other tangible item would.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
IP law was developed to encourage innovation.
And do you think that is what it is currently doing? How innovative can you be when the basis for any new creative works are tied up in copyright for up to 150 years?
They tried the "non-scarcity based economy" in Eastern Europe for a while.
And what makes you think the 'artificial-scarcity based economy' would fare any better?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Given that the explicit purpose of copyright is to promote the public good, and not to protect authors, and given that this has been frequently reaffirmed by the courts, I don't think your analogy is particularly on point.
Copyright law is quite different from most other law. (although actually, real property law is also set up along similar utilitarian lines)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I work in the engineering industry and deal with patents every day. There are, IMHO, 3 types of patents:
1. genuine inventions
2. 'me-too' inventions
3. frivolous patents
A competitor of my present Client spent over $10million of R&D to develop a new process for treating an oil feedstock. My Client wants to use this 10 year old technology in her new plant... does the first company deserve their patent and the associated royalties? Yes, I feel they do. They applied actual research that created a more energy efficient process for extracting oil than what they used previously. We now want to use the equipment and their design criteria in the new plant. This is exactly the kind of application patents exist for, so this application qualifies as type #1. These guys deserve between 15-25 years worth of royalties to reward their research.
In this same job, there is a different part of the plant where we wanted to 'wash' chemical A out of a stream by using chemical B. My mining industry experience told me to use a 'counter-current decantation (CCD) wash circuit' in this application; the designs for these are in my undergraduate textbooks. But no, a senior engineer informed me than another company had already patented the idea of using a CCD in that application. This doesn't sit well with me as the other company did no significant research to implement a CCD circuit (the plans are in textbooks). All these folks did was go to the patent office and said 'me too'. This is obviously a type #2 patent, the folks holding are doing nothing but holding other away from using that technology. This type of patent should hold only for a couple of years as the registrant did no real research. In the event that a outsider shows up with the same idea, then the original patent will be judged to fail the 'novel and not intuitive' test and will immediately cease.
The last kind are the worst. People who take out patents with the idea of intimidating others into paying royalties. The current case of pop-under ads falls into this category. Yes, I despise ads as much as the next geek, but there is no way this deserves to be vetted by the patent office. Type #3 deserve no term of protection!
-AD
How about this:
First year charge a very small fee - a penny or a dollar. Each year after, double the fee. If you lapse, the property becomes public domain. The proceeds go to fund the government.
To register, you must provide sufficient details. No hex dump type thing for software.
Still need to figure out how to weed out stupid patents though.
This plan will mean anything that can generate revenue can stay licensed as long as desired, but insures it will eventually end up in the public domain. It also provides a period of very inexpensive protection to give people/business's a chance to develop the property and profit from it.
Totally not what I meant, and you know it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
And this is the law of the wild,
As old and as true as the sky.
And the wolf who keeps it will prosper,
But the wolf who breaks it will die!
Like the wind that circles the tree trunk,
this law runneth forward and back.
The strength of the pack is the wolf,
and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
(Rudyard Kipling)
--| THE FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL LAW |----
Briefly as the subject must be dealt with, there will always be some people
whose feeling will lead them to recognize the truth of what it is impossible
to discuss in all its fullness here. There is a fundamental social law which
spiritual science teaches, and which is as follows:
'The well-being of a community of people working together
will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself
the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he
makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are
satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by
others'.
Every arrangement in a community that is contrary to this law will
inevitably engender somewhere after a while distress and want. It is a
fundamental law, which holds good for all social life with the same
absoluteness and necessity as any law of nature within a particular field of
natural causation. It must not be supposed, however, that it is sufficient
to acknowledge this law as one for general moral conduct, or to try to
interpret it into the sentiment that everyone should work in the service of
his fellow men. No, this law only lives in reality as it should when a
community of people succeeds in creating arrangements such that no one can
ever claim the fruits of his own labour for himself, but that these go
wholely to the benefit of the community. And he must himself be supported in
return by the labours of his fellow men. The important point is, therefore,
that working for one's fellow men and obtaining so much income must be kept
apart, as two separate things.
Self-styled 'practical people' will of course have nothing but a smile for
such 'outrageous idealism'. And yet this law is more practical than any that
was ever devised or enacted by the 'practicians'. Anyone who really examines
practical life will find that every community that exists or has ever
existed anywhere has two sorts of arrangements, of which the one is in
accordance with this law and the other contrary to it. It is bound to be so
everywhere, whether men will it or not. Every community would indeed fall to
pieces at once, if the work of the individual did not pass over into the
totality. But human egoism has from of old run counter to this law, and
sought to extract as much as possible for the individual out of his own
work. And what has come about from of old in this way due to egoism has
alone brought want, poverty and distress in its wake. This simply means that
the part of human arrangements brought about by 'practicians' who calculated
on the basis of either their own egotism or that of others must always prove
impractical.
Now naturally it is not simply a matter of recognizing a law of this kind,
but the real practical part begins with the question: How is one to
translate this law into actual fact? Obviously this law says nothing less
than this: man's welfare is the greater, in proportion as egoism is less. So
for its translation into reality one must have people who can find their way
out of egoism. In practice, however, this is quite impossible if the
individual's share of weal and woe is measured according to his labour. He
who labours for himself *must* gradually fall a victim to egoism. Only one
who labours solely for the rest can gradually grow to be a worker without
egoism.
But there is one thing needed to begin with. If any man works for another,
he must find in this other man the reason for his work; and if anyone is to
work for the community, he must perceive and feel the value, the nature and
importance, of this community. He can only do this when the community is
something quite different from a more or less indefinite summation of
individual men. It must be informed by an actual spirit, in which each
single one has his part. It must be such that each one says: 'It is as it
should be, and I *will* that it be so'. The community must have a spiritual
mission, and each individual must have the will to contribute towards the
fulfilling of this mission. All the vague abstract ideals of which people
usually talk cannot present such a mission. If there be nothing but these,
then one individual here or one group there will be working without any
clear overview of what use there is in their work, except it being to the
advantage of their families, or of those particular interests to which they
happen to be attached. In every single member, down to the most solitary,
this spirit of the community must be alive...
No one need try to discover a solution of the social question that shall
hold good for all time, but simply to find the right form for his social
thoughts and actions in the light of the immediate need of the time in which
he lives. Indeed there is today no theoretical scheme which could be devised
or carried into effect by any one person which in itself could solve the
social question. For this he would need to possess the power to force a
number of people into the conditions which he had created. But in the
present day any such compulsion is out of the question. The possibility must
be found of each person doing of his own free will that which he is called
upon to do according to his strength and abilities. For this reason there
can be no possible question of ever trying to work on people theoretically,
by merely indoctrinating them with a view as to how economic conditions
might best be arranged. A bald economic theory can never act as a force to
counteract the powers of egoism. for a while such an economic theory may
sweep the masses along with a kind of impetus that *appears* to resemble
idealism; but in the long run it helps nobody. Anyone who implants such a
theory into a mass of people without giving them some real spiritual
substance along with it is sinning against the real meaning of human
evolution. The only thing which can help is a spiritual world-conception
which of itself, through what it has to offer, can live in the thoughts, in
the feelings, in the will -- in short, in a man's whole soul...
The recognition of these principles means, it is true, the loss of many an
illusion for various people whose ambition it is to be popular benefactors.
It makes working for the welfare of society a really difficult matter-one of
which the results, too, may in certain circumstances comprise only quite
tiny part-results. Most of what is given out today by whole parties as
panaceas for social life loses its value, and is seen to be a mere bubble
and hollow phrase, lacking in due knowledge of human life. No parliament, no
democracy, no popular agitation can have any meaning for a person who looks
at all deeper, if they violate the law stated above; whereas everything of
this kind may work for good if it works on the lines of this law. It is a
mischievous delusion to believe that particular persons sent up to some
parliament as delegates from the people can do anything for the good of
mankind, unless their activity is in conformity with the fundamental social
law.
Wherever this law finds outer expression, wherever anyone is at work on its
lines-so far as is possible in that position in which he is placed within
the community-good results will be attained, though it be but in the single
case and in never so small a measure. And it is only a number of individual
results attained in this way that will together combine to the healthy
collective progress of society.
The healthy social life is found
When in the mirror of each human soul
The whole community is shaped,
And when in the community
Lives the strength of each human soul.
==| Capital and Credit in Threefolding |===
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the egoistic
type of value is the only one that can come into reckoning. The 'market'
relationship must be superseded by associations regulating the exchange and
production of goods by an intelligent observation of human needs. Such
associations can replace mere supply and demand by contracts and
negotiations between groups of producers and consumers, and between
different groups of producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others constitutes the
giving of *credit* in social life. As there was once a transition from
barter to the money system, so there has recently been a progressive
transformation to a basis of credit. Life makes it necessary today for one
man to work with means entrusted to him by another, or by a community,
having confidence in his power to achieve a result. But under the
capitalistic method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real
and satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his life and
work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an increase of capital that
seems to justify it; and work is always done subject to the view that the
confidence or credit received will have to appear justified in the
capitalistic sense. And what is the result? Human beings are subjected to
the power of dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance
remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of this fact,
they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure which
enables economic values to be estimated by their relation to the
satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's economic dealings
will take their form from this. Production will be considered from the point
of view of needs, no longer by an abstract scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of
*associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests of
consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and
sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These associations will not be
bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be in
direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided interests of one
branch of production will be regulated and balanced by those of the other.
The responsibility for the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to
the associations. This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals
with special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give
individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his
association for achieving the best possible results. The association is
responsible to other associations for using these individual achievements to
good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no longer be imposing
production on the life of the community; production will be regulated by the
needs of the community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and old
forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be destroyed
and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and will have to
justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the old will dwindle
away... The essential thing is that the threefold idea will stimulate a real
social intelligence in the men and women of the community. The individual
will in a very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the
whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in harmony with
the human relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the
production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the economic
associations, will result in the greatest possible efficiency. Increase of
capital, and a proper adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as
a final consequence...
--
(Rudolf Steiner, Architect, Playwright, Philosopher, Human)
Social Threefolding
---
>Remember if even one patch, security enhancement
>or minor improvement is made after initial purchase,
>the vendors will probably try to extend the
>Copyright by the date of the change.
Good. This will encourage people to do things like release patches and not abandon their software.
I posted earlier that only Abandonware should be quickly escorted into the public domain. Software that is still commercially viable should be covered until such time as the company ditches it and their customers!
-AD
Gutting IP laws would only remove part of the cancer. The fact is, all property laws are suspect. Before knee jerking just hear me out.
I am one of a over 5 billion human beings on this planet, with civilisations going back thousands of years. Everyone of us need this planet and it's resources to survive. Through the guise of property ownership, we have defacto servitude just to have our most basic needs met. It would not be so bad if it were okay for us to just go farm on empty land, but that is not permitted. We are forced into slavery at our births, and made subject to a system of buying and selling what should be our birthright, to those whose power was established through thousands of years of bloody war and bloody suppression of opponents.
We have been robbed of our natural environments and the very people who have stolen our natural environment from us, now insist that we spend our existance working for them and think about life on their terms.
The inherit injustice of the system is simply that one who is born into a family with property is assured a good education among relatively civilized people. One like me, who through no fault of my own, was born to a couple of alcoholic dimwits, ended up in grouphomes and the like, and eventually emerged, somehow, as a highschool graduate of a public school chock full of feral human beings. I was in no way ready for college when I got there, and to be honest, I didn't belong there anyway. I hadn't been taught what I needed to know.
Now I'm to be forced to work for those rich people, not because I have put forth less effort, but because I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. IP law is only going to strengthen that power for the rich people. The one equalizer in my life has been early access to my computer, and my ability to pirate commercial software to learn it well enough to obtain employment. And while the initial "theft"(who was hurt? I couldn't have afforded it anyway) may be a crime, in the long term, I have turned out a better human being for it, not to mention I have helped the adoption of that software by being an advocate for those software apps I know. As information have-nots will be common in the future as IP laws get more and more stringent, this whole equalizing effect of technology will disappear, as more and more of it will be owned and treated as commodities. This, despite of the fact that we all should have a right to the knowledge of our species, especially when we suffer for that knowledge in the form of poorer air quality, irradiation, and polluted water and food supplies. Just as we should have a right to the resources(clean air, food, and water) of the planet, without having to live in slavery to others.
All this information which will not be shared, will transform the world(aka, alter the natural environment), further eroding the quality of our environments. Already the oxygen levels on the planet have fallen as much as 16 percent in the last 200 years. Our planet and oxygen is finite. The technology has wreaked havoc both on the natural manufacture of oxygen, as well as polluting the oxygen we do have, thus lowering everyones quality of life. Our reward? We have to pay for chemical additives that wreak further havoc on the environment(MTBE) in the name of granting one of the Governors(of California) buddies a sweet business deal, to name but one of thousands of examples.
If there were a place I could go, I would simply leave my society and go, but there is nowhere left to go, as I am forced, through threat of imprisonment and violence, to support this system that quite clearly, does not give a flying crap about me, and to be frank, would gladly see me dead if it would bring them a profit. Before you patrioticly object: Tobacco. Big Oil. Atmospheric Nuclear Tests that irradiated EVERYONE in America(which they just recently finally admitted, 50 years later). I could go on...
The Politicians, regardless of what your local democan or republicrat has to say, are working for someone elses money, not your best interest. They are not bombing Afganistan because they killed 3,000 americans(after all, Afganistan didn't do that), but they are bombing Afganistan because there's this pesky oil pipeline that needs to get built.
We are subjected to their will. I'm dealing with my insurance company right now, and nothing could be clearer to me. The law works for them, not for me. I see IP law in the same manner. It does not work for We the People, it works for "them" the rich who can afford compliance and lawyers to ensure compliance with the new laws.
We would all be better off scrapping the current system and experimenting with a more socialist one. Not that capitalism and competition should be removed, it has it's place, but WE THE PEOPLE need more protection than we're getting, because under the current system, our lives and our rights, are INDEED(you can cram your hypothetical 'laws' which don't work in real life, like the 'bill of rights'), are secondary to the rights and profits of Corporations. I really don't give a crap what your politicians have to say, I know the reality in which I live, and I don't need no wink wink nods to see it.
-/_kamper_\-
IP can be copied
No it can't. There is only one Quake, Doom, Gone With The Wind, or Metallica album in the world. It's just that some of these items are large, and some of them are small. Joe's "How to frobulate grommets from late 60s English motorbikes" is small. Gone With The Wind is big.
Or... IP is like the Mandelbrot set. It may look like those other little copies are copies, but they aren't--they are tethered to the main set in ways that aren't readily apparent. In the case of IP, all the copies are tethered together because they represent *one* experience shared within a cultural context.
* many ideas in the public domain had their greatest impact in ways that couldn't be anticipated. the "consumers" who used these ideas to create even better ideas would not have been able to value their demand for the prerequisite idea until they had actually "consumed" it. the government can't figure out how much to tax ideas which don't seem to have much value until they spur another idea.
This is the "assessment" problem--how do you assess the value of something that has never sold? This is why I said there should be no tax if the idea isn't sold.
Frankly, the property tax idea was rather off-the-cuff, and was raised mostly to counter an AIP movement argument that I believe to be mostly empty rhetoric. In other words, I haven't fleshed it out with much thought. Now that I think about it, modeling things after property taxes could give rise to excessive taxation in the IP realm, and it would certainly introduce more beurocracy, which is bad.
I think I agree most with the posters who simply want to eliminate the *obvious* abuses that now exist: Repeal the DMCA, Roll back the Copyright Extension (Bono law), moratorium on software and business process patents until the issues can be studied, and general reform at the patent office. In particular, the patent office should have a much higher rejection rate than it does now.
Likewise, I have no desire to dramaticly roll back or eliminate IP laws. Suggestions that software should have less than 10 years of protection are flawed--the useful life of software is short now because we are early in the widespread use of computers. That is not likely to be the case after computers have been around longer.
In other words, I want fair and balanced IP laws which is what I think most people want. Trouble is, we are seeing polarization and conflict on this issue... Methinks the sigmeister who said "all extremists should be shot" said it best. :)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I have a system under which all copyright, patent, and trademark issues would be solved. Noone will have to compromise. Everyone will get what they want. The US legal system will get a giant burden lifted off of it. Poor countries will hold parades in celebration of the fact that they can now join the information age without having to worry about greedy wallstreet capitalists Venture capitalists will stand in awe of how this fixes everything wrong with their job. Patent lawyers will recieve giant pensions, and no longer have to worry about their ulcers, now that they will have all gone into early retirement with full benefits. The world will gaze at this idea in utter disbelief as such a simple proclamation makes everything wrong with the possession of ideas right again. Unfortunately, I can't discuss how it works, as it is currently in the process of reaching patent-pending status.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
I think a fair term would be until the next major version is released
What would be the insentive to release the next major version? I could just as easily make major changes to software and call it a minor release. It has to be a given time period or else you have loopholes.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I think what the person wanted is the "work-for-hire" BS stripped away, it's the thing that lets the Record company own you.
So if you were to want to sing the song that you wrote at at your neighbours little girls birthday party, you couldn't without paying the record label royalties, DISPITE THE FACT YOU WROTE AND SANG IT.
The "work-for-hire" BS is what lets companies own every little bit of programming you do while you work for them, even if you wrote code on your home computer on your free time.
The "work-for-hire" has to go, it's an excuse to not give any copyright or credit to the person who wrote the thing in the first place.
I'm all in favor of individuals retaining the copyright to their works for lenght of their lifetime or X years, which ever comes first. But it should not be transferable, not to the spouse, children, grandchildren,adopted children, neices,nephews, aunts, uncles, pet dogs. If someone licenses something to a corperation, there should be a ceiling to how long a contract can be made, say 3 or 5 years, so if that company screws over that person, they can go somewhere else. This is also so we don't wind up with corperations hoarding all the IP they can.
I've give you an example in the game industry:
Richard Garriot, creator of Ultima, originally started the company "Origin systems", Which was later "bought-out" by EA. So now EA owns the rights to Ultima, and Richard Garriot, dispite creating the Ultima series, doesn't own it. So he can not make another sequal, not without buying back the rights to Ultima from EA, and I don't think EA would give it to him since they are making money off of Ultima Online.
It's these kinds of events that need to stop, because it prevents the creator from making derivative works, deprives them of future revenue should they ever leave the company who bought the rights to their material, and it makes content creators very bitchy people during interviews. You know Richard Garriot had a "non-competitive" clause or something in his contract that forbade him from producing/being involved in anything that would complete with EA?
I like EA, I really do, but when I look at Origin Systems being eaten by EA I keep going "If I ever made a game, I'm not selling the rights to anyone."
It's a fair thought (revision-termed copyrights), but not really tractable. What do you want, the Congressional Committe to Determine Proper Version Numbers? No, way, Jose. :) Seriously, however, there are intellectual properties which only have short term utility to society. With a blanket alteration to law, one can simply set software to 15 year terms and patents to 7. One might distinguish between _individuals_ making intellectual property claims and corporations, giving individuals the advantage.
I'm dead set against screwing over an author, (of books, etc) however. These guys aren't so creative when they get older, and really need to be able to generate the income. Whether or not such income really needs to pass to _heirs_ (as it does now) is certainly an open question.
C//
1. Eliminate software and business method patents.
2. Strictly limit the timespan of copyrights. Holywood has a habit of getting the expiration of copyrights pushed out whenever they come close to their expiration date. That sort of nonsense has got to stop. Copyrights should be granted for 50 years to the original creater, his estate or assignee. Period. That's all. Finito.
3. A media consumer's bill of rights that formally states that a consumer may do *ANYTHING* with a copyrighted work for which they have purchased a copy, *except* for distributing additional copies of same. Too often the debate has centered around what rights should be granted to copy owners (as opposed to copyRIGHT owners). BS. They should have *all* rights *except* for a short list.
4. Note that case number 3 talks about the simple sale of a copy. It does not preclude a seller from including restrictions in the purchasing contract on the use by the recipient. But such restrictions *must* be part of the contract agreed to by *both* parties *before* performance of the contract. Click-through or shrink-wrap licenses or other shenanigans that are tacked on *after* both parties have performed the simple exchange of money for a copy *explicitely* should not be allowed to be binding.
I've been working in the field of Computer Vision for 20 years, primarily as an algorithm designer. I have no patents. At the first company I worked for, my boss got a patent on digital template matching. We (all the engineers) thought it was the most absurd thing we ever heard of, that such an obvious thing could be patented (~1984.)
Since then I have solved hundreds of problems using advanced and novel coding techniques, extremely weird data structures, at the lowest levels of software (down into microcode.) This work was funded both by the government and private industry. No patents were sought. The value was always claimed at the system level. Most of the source is copyrighted, however.
The problem is not that it is *easy* to copy the software inventions that are being patented, once you have seen the invention. The real problem is that it is impossible not to *accidently* copy the invention when you have a similar problem to solve. Problems beg certain solutions, and the soution is constrained by the tools and the media. Compared to the properties of materials in general, which is the domain of physical patents, software is extremely constrained by the organization of the digital computer. Any good computer scientist, faced with a similar problem, will code a similar solution.
With the current trend of patent grants, I truly do not think that I can code anything of significance without violating a patent somewhere. But how would I ever know?
For instance, take a look at a toy program I wrote that correlates font bitmaps against an image in order to create a text image:
http://www.noping.net/kent/txtimg/
In order to get the correlation to work the font bitmap has to be blurred a little bit. I'm certain that this is a patentable invention under current patent policy. It may already be patented! I have no idea. But there is no other solution to the problem -- the problem demanded that solution, and any other coder who tried to solve this particular problem would necessarily arrive at the same solution. The problem plus the context plus the media demand the solution.
Starting in 1962, congress had a bonanza with copyright extensions, even applying them ex post facto. Today, copyrights last the life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years for works for hire. Heinlein died in 1988. Under current law, Heinlein's work will remain under copyright until 2058, at which point it will all enter the public domain.
Plantiffs in the Eldred v. Reno case wrote a brief which chronicled the history of copyright lengths (the history starts at paragraph 61). Eric Eldred is challenging the retroactive extension to copyrights. The Supreme Court is planning to hear oral arguments in the case sometime soon. If the court declares retroactive extensions unconstitutional, Stranger in a Strang Land will enter the public domain in 2017.
I wholeheartedly agree with Eldred's case, but to be fair, Eldred's chances are slim. The district and appellate courts ruled against him (with a lone dissenting judge in the appellate court). At least four Supreme Court justices felt the arguments were compelling enough to hear the case. However, as the district and appellate courts pointed out, even the first copyright law applied retroactively (to works that were protected under state copyright laws).
The way I understand it, they don't want to sell the drugs cheaply to third world countries because they fear that if they do, it will create a much larger black market for the drugs where they are bought cheaply and then sold to places where the drugs normally sell for more, namely the US and EU.
This is absolutely true, but I think it illustrates the original poster's point: The drug companies profit desire outweighs the right of the third-world countries to modern medications. While I'm not willing to go so far as to get rid of IP laws (Shorter terms are a much better solution), he does have a point here. While I can't offer a specific solution to the problem, it is an excellent example of the flaws in IP laws.
With a blanket alteration to law, one can simply set software to 15 year terms and patents to 7.
I think these terms are way off. I would like to see binary software have a copyright based on how long it's publisher supports it. 1 year after MS stops supporting Windows 98, its copyright expires. This accomplishes one of two goals: either companies will continue to provide support for software for longer, or they will be fforced to see them in the public domain. Either way, the end user wins. Source code is trickier, but I think a 10 year term is probably reasonable. Perhaps one 5 year renewal on top of that if the software is still marketed. There are few programs written more then 10 years ago that are still sold as-is.
I'm dead set against screwing over an author, (of books, etc) however. These guys aren't so creative when they get older, and really need to be able to generate the income.
I think a number of "Old Guys" would disagree with you on this. Either way, 90+ year copyrights don't help anyone except corporations and people with dead meal-tickets, err, relatives. Again, I would like to see copyright tied to publication. As long as a book, record, etc. remains in print, it should be copywritten for 20 years. If it goes out of print, its copyright should expire within 5 years. This gives companies an incentive to make older, more controversial, and less commercial works available. In print can include offering works in electronic form as long as the work is accessible, and offered at a reasonable price (say something like no more the 150% of the original price adjusted for inflation). Obviously these ideas are just off the cuff & probably have holes...
An excellent reply :) I feel it necessary to add my 2c though ...
In both scenarios (refugee/goldrush) Copyright does not enter the picture. Copyright is not about restricting the free flow of information; it is about restricting the free copying of a particular incarnation of that information.
Fact #1: You can't copyright a fact. You can copyright the exact sequence of words you use to express a fact, but that doesn't prevent someone from reading that fact and telling someone else or writing it down in his/her own words.
Copyright as applied to facts encourages authors/publishers to put facts into words because they can receive remuneration for a collection of facts (a work). Without copyright on works of fact there would be no incentive to record facts, and we would rely on the facts recorded by a small number of altruists.
Fact #2: You can copyright a fiction. If you have made something up, it is not information. It is a fabrication. Here copyright is not restricting the free flow of information, but the reproduction of a creation.
Without copyright in this scenario, authors have no incentive to create, because their creation can be duplicated without them receiving anything (fame OR fortune).
--end of 2c--
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Actually then the book will never go out of print. They can simply just use print-on-demands to make sure the books is always available.
And how about electronic books. They never go out of print.
No, what is needed are manadory license fees, so that you first get 20 years of copyrigth. But then you need to prolong it every 5 years and have to pay a small fee. This continues until until the maximum time 70 years have expored. That way many items will fall into public domain after 20 years.
Just saying it like it are.
IMHO all copyrights and patents should be prohibited. Who benefits from them? I mean, if someone has come up with a great invention, it would be more efficient to the whole society if it was available to all people. Anyone could take advantage of that invention and use it for his/hers own purposes, perhaps improving it too.
The only reason why we need these laws and protections is that they guarantee that the humankind keeps on progressing: When it's profitable for individual people to create new stuff, they try harder. But I'm sure this can be achieved in other ways too!! For example society/government could give profit for useful achievements. Taxes could be raised for that purpose because people no longer have to pay for software, music, etc.
This all might sound a bit of socialism, but so what? I think the world would work better that way...
P.S sorry about my poor english skills.. =(
In the first place, it was created to protect individuals against corporations.
Not even remotly right. Copyright went through several iterations before it was even intended to acknowlage authors. The idea of corporations having the staus of "legal people" came even later...
In theory most modern copyright laws empower the author. In practice the vast majority of copyrights are held by publishers. The simplist kind of fix would be to only allow copyrights to be licenced rather than assigned.
You clearly don't know the difference between a trademark, copyright, and patent. A trade mark is a word, short phrase, or image used to identify a company. Some examples of trademarks are "IBM", "We Make it Your Way", and the Apple Logo. Trademark protection does not prevent others from using your mark against your will. It only prevents people from using your mark fraudulently. I can compare my cola in my ads to Coca-Cola, but trying to sell it as Coco-Cola would probably get me sued.
If you want to use your 40-line method as your company trademark, feel free. Not only will it be the worst comapny name in history, it will give all of your competitors easy access top your "secrets", and there would be absolutely nothing you could do to stop them.
A book, a music score, a song -- these are all things that will have value after their protection is gone.
At least in theory it would. It isn't unknown for recently published books to go out of print soon after publication. With copyright the length it is right now it's quite possible for the last copy of a book to have ceased to exist decades before copyright expires.
By the time the copyright expires on software, it is, quite literally _worthless_.
There are two types of "worthless" first would be of no value what so ever, second type would be something which is worthless whilst still copyright, but of some possible value in the public domain.
Creative works are typically built up on previous works.
I'm dead set against screwing over an author, (of books, etc) however. These guys aren't so creative when they get older, and really need to be able to generate the income.
Why should authors be any kind of special case? What stops them paying into a pension fund, like everyone else? Rather than trying to fiddle copyright to act as a pension.
It's rather ageist to assume that an 80 year old is less capable of being creative than a 20 year old too...
Again, I would like to see copyright tied to publication. As long as a book, record, etc. remains in print, it should be copywritten for 20 years. If it goes out of print, its copyright should expire within 5 years.
Probably with the criteria that if it goes out of print then the clock is reset to 5 years. Which if more than 5 years has elapsed since publication immediatly places it in the public domain.
And how about electronic books. They never go out of print.
It can quite easily. If it's on a physical media and that is no longer produced then it is "out of print". If it's available for download and then ceases to be then it is "out of print".
No, what is needed are manadory license fees, so that you first get 20 years of copyrigth. But then you need to prolong it every 5 years and have to pay a small fee. This continues until until the maximum time 70 years have expored.
Altertativly you have a fee which rises expontially for each renewel. No need for a sex maximum here too, simply how much the work is actually worth, this may enable the likes of blockbuster movies to stay in copyright 10-20 years longer...
That way many items will fall into public domain after 20 years.
For some kind of works a 5-10 year initial term might well make more sense.
Imagine what could happen if aliens contacted the earth and these aliens were so advanced and old, that they had invented everything we could dream of, and more. Would these "prior art" invalidate every patent on earth? Perhaps this would not happen, but what about the new technology? What if this aliens would share their knowledge with us. Would this knowledge be patented? By whom? By the aliens? What would happen if they demanded ridiculous fees for their patents? Remember, they have invented everything! And if this aliens were not allowed to patent their technology, who would do this for them? Their (human) lawyers? A straw firm? The aliens could wreak havoc on human development just by using their patent rights.
I must admit, I find this thoughts quite funny.
You're being a little parochial, the original issue was the improvement of the system. I pointed out that publication of applications went some way to providing the public review. It is irrelevant how the US currently deals with this issue. The point is that there are models which provide an improvement and, although not perfect because of the AIPA exclusion, even the US is moving the the right direction.
It has always been possible to put prior art before the USPTO, although difficult to identify the case to which it relates, and the examiner is bound by a public policy requirement not to knowingly grant bad patents to take relevant prior art into account if it comes to his attention.
The concept of publication of applications for public comment before issuance is great. In reality, however, it is not practicable. The Patent Office is exteemely backlogged. In certain fields (e.g., software, TV, telecommunications), applications do not get an innitial examination until 4 years after they are filed. From that point forward, if everything goes well, an application will probably take about 1 year to issue. Becuase of the backlog, examiners only get to spend between 8-16 hours per application, soup-to-nuts. If you require them to review comments from thousands of people after an application is published. the time needed for a patent to issue is likely to double.
Is this actually a problem? If there are lots of submissions on a certain application then maybe it should be rejected. The purpose of a patent office isn't simply to rubber stamp applications...
There is also the problem that currently a patent could pass as being "innovative" simply because the examiner dosn't understand it. Even that the whole thing is actually a piece of fiction, so nothing gets found in a prior art search, but anyone "skilled in the art" wouldn't even bother to look.
I disagree. And I think a seasoned examiner (if you can find one, that is) would too. If we had a pre-grant publication for comment, people who do not want a patent to issue for specious reasons will abuse the system to bog down the application.
Can this be worst than a system bogged down with patent applications for questionable reasons? No doubt there are plenty of specious reasons for people wanting a patent issued.
The default most certainly should be no patent issued...
Why do you want to have mass market sale?
Take Debian. It's mass market, but not mass market sale.
A working implementation of the patented process must be provided (upon request of USPTO)
The USPTO must conduct a good faith search for any prior art
These are already done by the patent office. an examiner my request a model of the invention. There is a guy know in the tire art that has a bunch of tyres in his office. When segways were being patented they had a bunch of them running around the halls of the office.
The patent office has to preform a search. you don't just use the references that the applicant provides. Lawyers respect the searches that patent exainers do because they are generally better than what they provide themselves. The applicat has to disclose all the prior art they kow of,butusually will use it to mislead you, or if they are really smart they will claim around the existing prior art.
You may not understandthis but software patents aren't granted. the claims usually say: a computer readable medium on which XXXXXX. if you can't patent instructions then you arent going to see any new electronic devices as there must beoperating code for many devices to operate. There are no patents for algorithms or anything naturally occuring.
Patents are owned by individuals, but then they assign them to a corporation or someone else. the inventors section doesn't say: GE or AT&T or anyone else, it says bob roberts or phil johnson.
I'm a patent examiner, i don't speak for the USPTO. If you want more info go look up the mpep on the web thats the manual of patent examining procedure, im sure someone put ac opy of it up.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Our whole economy is shifting away from MATERIAL to KNOWLEDGE/INFORMATION/SERVICE.
Ding, ding, ding.
The issue is that our current IP system is not designed to handle this... or, rather, I think 50 years ago it would've done ok, but recent changes in legislative, judicial, and administrative policies have skewed it deeply to the wrong end of the spectrum. If we don't fix these problems then we'll wind up with a legal system that is so overburdoned that another area of the world will wind up preeminant.
This is much the same as what happened in Europe with the industrial revolution -- various European countries were the world leaders from 1600-1900. As the industrial revolution progressed various laws were passed to protect workers' rights, and while many of them were badly needed (child labor laws for instance), some were over the top. What happened? The industrial revolution continued in full swing. Elsewhere. Namely the US, where the labor laws weren't quite as burdonsome (and now the labor is moving elsewhere again).
Right now it's looking like SE Asia is going to be the powerhouse for the information age, if they can keep the Islamic fundamentalists out. They have very loose IP laws (too loose, but that will change), and large areas which are ready to move into the 21st century, instead of trying to protect the industries that sprouted in the 20th.
If not them, I'm sure South America would be happy to take it's spot in the limelight for a hundred years or so. But either way, current law makers, corporations, and even individuals are paving the way to obsolecense.
I'm not 100% certain, but I believe congress created the life+50 year law back in 1976, which they extended to life+70 in 1998. Now that I look at this link again, I see that anything under copyright prior to 1978 simply has a flat 95 year copyright term. That means Stranger in a Strange Land will enter the public domain in 2056 instead of 2058. Ironically, it means his last book will enter the public domain several years before some of his older books (such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). It also means all works dating back to 1923 are covered and won't enter the public domain until 2018.
The law should be set to allow a coyright/ip owner to choose one of three levels of protection. They may choose
3 Years - Absolute Control (IE no fair use) at the end of which the material goes Public Domain.
10 Years - Fair use limited to personal use with no distribution at the end of which the material goes Public Domain.
100 years - fair use allows personal non-commercial ditribution at the end of which the material goes Public Domain.
The work would need to specify which level it desires prior to release and can not be changed.
well, if they are successful authors, they will make a lot of cash while young. besides....is 28 years that short?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?
No way Jose. Some people will only be happy when everybody in the world owns them aleph-infinite dollars.
Ummm...look at scientists in the past. Look at open source now. It seems that there would, indeed be SOME sharing of information.
People can hide their ideas now. Look at Microsoft.
Much time is wasted now by people having to reinvent things to get around patents and such. People could simply copy the ideas of those who made products out of ideas (through reverse engineering). Companies would compete on the quality, not the type, of product.
Plus, money is not the only motivation involved. People tell of what they have created for fame and other reasons.
There is no baby in the bath water.
No. And I'm neither. If I create something, I don't mind people copying it, because there are other rewards than money (you should have expected this in a forum that a lot of free software people peruse). Look at free-flow of information in science...it shows the stupidity in your name calling (and in your argument).
:
Property rights are created for things that are limited naturally. For instance, there is only so much land. It makes sense to allow people to own some of it and to determine how it's used.
Ideas are not limited naturally. If I tell you something, you haven't hurt my ability to use the idea at all.
There is a fundamental problem with copyright, in that it restricts how people use copying equipment and their bodies (I can't go around spreading copyrighted knowledge). You shouldn't be able to restrict how others use their property, just so you can make a profit. Making a living is your problem. It shouldn't become ours.
Take your arguments to physical property
"used by anyone who wants to"...who are you to say how I am to use something you sold to me. You have no rights to it anymore.
"for whatever purpose they wish"...the ultimate in arrogance. "I'm sorry, but I like snow. You can't use that shovel I've already sold you for snow shoveling."
"for free"...yes, you should be able to use it for free after you've bought it.
I don't see how it harms society for, say, Paul McCartney to retain the rights to his work for his life span.
Because he can VETO derivative works. The VETO power over derivative works is the biggest problem with copyright.
is negligible because more than likely they'll pay almost the same price for a Wings album royalties or no
"Well, I'll give a little. You can do what you want with this work, but only for a million dollars per copy."
So it offends common sense to say that they should be able to profit from his work, but he cannot.
Once copyright expires, he can profit off it. His label may still own the trademark on WINGS. Besides, nothing in the United States Constitution gives authors and inventors a right to their creations.
Sometimes an author or musician creates one really popular work and they're never commercially popular again - but it doesn't mean that they don't continue to produce valuable work.
Sometimes an author or musician never creates that popular work. Why should an author or musician be rewarded perpetually for creating only one popular work?
Sometimes an author writes a book that gathers dust for years and then suddenly becomes popular.
Sometimes killing the VETO power over derivative works is more in the public interest.
Many, many books aren't made into movies until after they've been out for ten years.
Many, many books aren't made into movies ever because the author's estate, even sixty years after the author has died, refuses to negotiate a licence.
I can easily see studios just sitting on a book until 10 years have passed and then making the movie, just to avoid paying for the rights to the movie
This will happen with any copyright term. The Walt Disney Company often sits on a book and releases its derivative work within six months after the copyright has expired worldwide. Examples include Pinocchio and The Jungle Book.
I think that the original artist should have the say-so how that character is used as long as they live. No one should have to see their creation abused by someone else if they do not wish it. Gene Roddenberry should be able to deny another party the right to use Star Trek characters as long as he lives.
If so, the right to veto should expire before the right to royalty expires. Even then, it's not even necessary because trademarks on the characters' names can achieve the same effect.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If it goes out of print, its copyright should expire within 5 years.
Again, enforcement of this would be problematic. It would be the utmost in trivialities for an author to keep up a webpage that offers for sale through his own shell publishing company his book, keeping some small token number of copies around, indefinitely extending the print period. This is why some finite number of years is better. It's an absolute. "X years from file date". End of story.
C//
It's rather ageist to assume that an 80 year old is less capable of being creative than a 20 year old too...
Now you're just being silly. Age-related mental decline is a well-understood phenomenon. Whether or not a specific _individual_ suffers from that decline is a matter of prejudice, but the generalization is inarguably true.
C//
Exactly, that was basicaly what I was trying to get at.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
What's the 28 years in reference to? Copyrights are currently for life, and then some.
C//
In my opinion the solution is the creation of alternative economies in which the big boys don't get a chance to play because the copyright is held in common.
While I disagree with much of your post, and your assumptions, I won't belabor the issue further as I suspect we're the only two reading this thread at this point, and we are going to have to agree to disagree I think.
But I did want to compliment you on this final thought. You are, I believe, the only person in this entire thread who responded to my call for suggestions as to alternatives and ideas to address these issues in a creative context that doesn't necessarilly include copyright, and given the current framework we have to work with (copyright laws as they now stand) your suggestion is quite brilliant.
While not an alternative system to copyright per se, the idea of creating an alternative economy where copyright is held in common is fascinating. Indeed, it is a very interesting alternative to copyright as it is currently being exploited (and in some ways analogous to the GPL, which for certain philosophical reasons I like), and until a better regime can be put into place (if that ever becomes possible) it is a very cool idea for creating something of a public commons in the interim.
It won't end the social costs and criminalization of common human patterns like sharing that copyright has come to entail in the digital age, but it may at least allow the creation of an island of sanity amidst the madness, and that is certainly a good start.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Again, enforcement of this would be problematic. It would be the utmost in trivialities for an author to keep up a webpage that offers for sale through his own shell publishing company his book, keeping some small token number of copies around, indefinitely extending the print period. This is why some finite number of years is better. It's an absolute. "X years from file date". End of story.
This is exactly what I said. 20 years -or- 5 years after going out of print, whichever comes sooner.
Actually then the book will never go out of print.
But you're ignoring the first part of my statement. Copyrights should apply for 20 years -or- 5 years after going out of print. I would not be opposed to one 20 year renewal -by the original author-, and only on works that are in print, but more then 40 years is nonsense. I have a problem with someone writing one book when they are 20 & living off it for the next 70 years.
If I hand you a draft of my screenplay, copyright is the only thing to prevent you from putting your name on it and selling it before I do.
Unless the disclosure of the screenplay is preceded by a non-disclosure agreement. In fact, a lot of what we currently call "copyright law" could be re-implemented in terms of non-disclosure agreements.
Will I retire or break 10K?
>But now that it costs zero to copy a book or film,
Electronic reproduction doesn't cost nothing. Just because the medium is not trading hands doesn't mean there's no cost involved. If I am downloading _The Grapes of Wrath_ from Amazon, I have to have a medium (probably a hard drive) to store the information on, a connection of some sort (via my ISP) to wherever it's coming from, and some sort of interface device (whether a desktop or a tablet). Amazon also has to have some medium to store the information, and a connection to me, and probably somebody to watch over their various media. This costs money. Granted, it's probably a smaller cost than chopping down a tree and pulping it and printing it and shipping it and so forth, but there are still expenses involved.
Also, I don't think publicly funding every book that's written is a good way to go. I don't mind paying for roads and bridges, but I draw the line at trashy romance paperbacks. Or the National Enquirer. And I don't think that most people would want to be funding a Roman Polanski film, or the lastest Eminem album.
Remember when you suggest that something should be publicly funded that at its core it means you are paying for things that you may abhor.
Sorry, friend, but your argument is deeply flawed. I agree, of course, that the explicit purpose of copyright law is to promote the public good. I never suggested otherwise in my post.
However, to claim that copyright law has nothing to do with protecting authors is clearly erroneous. Forget about your unspecified "frequently affirmed by the courts" assertion, which is no doubt true, but completely irrelevant both to the original post and my response. No less than the U.S. Supreme Court itself wrote: "The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor."
And what was the point of my post? That eliminating copyright protection would threaten the ability of creators to secure a fair return for their labor. So your claim that my analogy is not on point is, for lack of a better term, horseshit.
Furthermore, to suggest that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't explicitly intend to protect authors, even if it is merely a means to an end (enhancing the public good), is to misread the Constitution itself. Article I, Section 8, clause 8 grants Congress the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Thus the original poster's suggestion that there should be no IP law, and your tacit agreement with that position, is not only contrary to the explicitly stated intentions of the Framers, it also flies in the face of your own claim to want to enhance the public good by encouraging the creation of new works. As the Framers so wisely foresaw (as they did in many other areas), to fail to protect authors is to fail to achieve the stated goal of promoting the public good.
As for your claim to be an artist, yeah, well, so is my 2-year-old niece. Her art hangs on my refrigerator. From a commercial standpoint, it isn't worth a dime. Which I suspect is also the case with your "art", otherwise your view of copyright protection for artists would be quite different indeed.
One final thought -- I fully agree that copyright law is completely out of control. But that isn't an argument for abolishing it -- it's a call for rational reform that pushes things back toward the original intent of the Framers.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
This is exactly what I said.
And I said out-of-printedness is a fudgeable metric. Laws or segments of laws that are effectively non-judiciable probably shouldn't go on to the books at all.
C//
No, I definately think that there should be copyright law -- provided that it does indeed result in a greater public benefit than would exist in a state without any copyright law.
And although I've changed careers as of late, in the past I've supported myself for years as an artist. But I am too well aware of the inherently derivative nature of art, the potential benefits of especially derivative art, and my own status as both artist AND member of the public. Unlimited copyright would be extraordinarily bad for artists as artists, and worse still for artists in their capacities as ordinary people. Only an idiot would not look at the big picture, and be distracted by their immediate gratification.
I too call for reform. Check out my recent posts to that effect, if you don't believe me.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
DigitalConsumer's Consumer Technology Bill of Rights is an interesting start, but it is not strongly worded enough (it only grants rights, rather than guaranteeing them). I'd amend it to something like this (minus parenthetical comments, and including similar wording for other rights as needed):
1) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from perusing that work at any time. (time-shifting)
2) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from perusing that work at any place. (space-shifting)
3) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from creating copies of that work strictly for archival purposes. (backup)
4) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from perusing that work via any medium, nor on any computing platform. (interoperability)
5) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from transforming that work into another form, though they may be prohibited from modifying that work in any way other than those necessary for such transformation. (compatibility)
6) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work may have other rights not enumerated in this document, to be determined by the courts. When such a right is determined, then legitimate users must thenceforth not be prohibited from exercising that right. This document should then be amended to enumerate that right. (This is the most important thing: the rights must not be limited by any law passed).
7) Legitimate users of a copyrighted work must not be prohibited from taking technological steps to secure any of the rights enumerated in this document, nor any others which may be enumerated in the future. (circumvention for fair use, as in reverse-engineering)
It seems that the effective goals of IP law, specifically patents, are to:
- Foster innovation
- Improve the economy.
Obviously these are compatible and complementary (even codependent) goals. Furthermore, there is an implicit third goal which is to not unduly restrict other rights in this pursuit.Currently these goals are pursued by granting monopoly power to the innovator, thereby increasing the incentive to innovate and protect the innovator's ability to bring inventions to market. However, monopoly power is merely a means to the ends stated above, not an intrinsic requirement. Indeed, if there is another system that achieves these ends in a more efficient and effective fashion, there is no reason to not consider it as an alternative.
I propose that such a system would be replacing the current monopoly power with a "shared" or "pluropoly", where not only the first-to-innovate is granted control over the innovation, but all-who-innovate the same idea are granted equal rights.
Obviously, this is a strange concept and immediately bring to mind complications. However, these complications can, with a bit of thought, be shown to be potentially resolvable. Of course nobody can accurately state whether or not the resulting system would in truth be better, but my goal here is merely to show that the resulting system *might* be better, and is worthy of further investigation. Without going into too much detail:
- Innovators who claim to have independently invented the same patent would be determined by force of evidence: notes, expenses, interviews, etc. In the case of true innovation as the result of much work (such as creating a new drug), the trail of evidence would be so large (tests, FDA approval process, millions spent, etc) that a defense could be plausibly done. (Note: This has the added effect of preventing the filing of "trivial" patents, which would be very difficult to demonstrate independence of thought.)
- In the case of patent violation (a non-innovative entity using the patented concept), all patent holders would have equal rights to sue the violator, either together (a class-action suit) or independently. (Note: This has the effect of reducing patent violations as the penalties would be much more strict)
- Non-innovative entities wanting to license an innovation can choose from any of the many patent holders -- obtaining permission of use from one is all that is necessary. (Note: This creates an efficient competitive environment where licensing fees ultimately go down while quality of patents go up)
Of course, this would have a multitude of positive and negative effects upon innovation as whole. Without giving a complete enumeration, consider the following metaphor:Assume invention is similar to exploring the wilderness: the inventer is an explorer that expends considerable energy blazing an easy trail to a remote destination. Thus, an inventor creates a path that's easier to walk than the path the inventor took.
Obtaining a monopolistic patent is akin to receiving the authority to bar any from walking to a particular destination, regardless of which path is taken. This authority is valuable, as if the the location is important, many are willing to pay a toll for entry.
However, this has the unintended side effect of forcing other explorers to pay a toll to a destination they discovered, despite not following the original explorer's path. This is an unfortunate restriction upon the rights of "secondary inventors" that results from granting the primary inventor a monopoly patent.
An alternate system would be using "shared patents", which are akin to granting explorers the right to blaze a trail and then charge a toll *for that trail*, but not for others. Thus, if multiple explorers blaze trails to the same destination, each is able to charge tolls for their respective trails.
Of the many effects of this change, the non-adventurous public is given the ability to choose which trail is the easiest and best price, creating a competitive environment with ultimately more explorers blazing more trails.
Likewise, it prevents explorers from actively preventing people from visiting some destinations by setting the toll higher than people are willing to pay. In real-world terms, this means that entrenched entities with vast IP stores would have increased difficulty blocking disruptive technologies by acquiring patents on innovations they don't want pursued.
Obviously, there's much more to say than can be said here. But I think it's an interesting idea, and I'd love to hear your comments.
-david
quinthar.com
360ToGo.com
UbiquityProject.com
Yes, they do -- or the home builder pays for the plans. These plans are protected by copyright - sometimes for over 100 years, not the 20 a patent gives.
To do math, do you have to pay extra to use the square-root key?
Again, yes you do (or did) -- advanced calculator functions were an active patent area -- it was built into the price of the calculator itself.
just because someone was the first to file a patent for a new problem should not give them the right to deny others use of it.
Ummm.. yes it does. New solutions to problems have always been patentable in other areas - software should be no different.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Yes, they do -- or the home builder pays for the plans. These plans are protected by copyright - sometimes for over 100 years, not the 20 a patent gives.
And if someone draws their own plans that just happen to resemble an A-frame house, do they still have to pay? I doubt it...
Again, yes you do (or did) -- advanced calculator functions were an active patent area -- it was built into the price of the calculator itself.
Are you paying for having the button on the calculator and the silicon inside, or are you paying for using the concept of taking a square root? The latter is comparable to most software patents, but i suspect in the calculator case it's the former.