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Jumping In On The Lessig / Adkinson Copyright Debate
An Anonymous Coward writes: "LawMeme has an excellent response to William F. Adkinson's critique of Larry Lessig's ideas on copyright reform. What I found most interesting about the article though, was the link to this paper by Ernest Miller (of Yale's Information Society Project) and Joan Feigenbaum (editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptography) that says we should take the copy out of copyright."
Not that Lessig needs any defense, but I thought I would write a response to the recent article by William F. Adkinson, Jr., Senior Policy Counsel at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, in the American Spectator. The article is entitled (Creativity & Control, Part 2) [via Doc Searls] and is a critique of Larry Lessig's arguments in The Future of Ideas. Mr. Adkinson is also co-author of a more detailed look at copyright issues (The Debate Over Digital Online Content: Understanding the Issues [PDF]). ...
My counter-critique of Adkinson below
Adkinson first takes issue with Lessig's claim that overly strong copyright threatens creativity. Indeed, Adkinson asserts Lessig's theory "is difficult to square with basic facts about the Information Age." Adkinson notes that Lessig apparently agrees with the idea that copyright can encourage creativity, and asks, if that is the case, why "Lessig is so concerned about the future of creativity?" But it is Adkinson's characterization of Lessig's argument that is difficult to square with basic facts. For Adkinson's question to be an intelligible critique of Lessig, it must be that Lessig's position is that copyright should be abandoned. This, of course, is not the case. Lessig's argument is not that copyright should be abandoned, but that there needs to be a balance. Too much copyright can harm innovation just as too little copyright can harm innovation as well. Given that copyright has continuously expanded over the past 100 years, is it unreasonable that Lessig believes the balance has shifted too far in favor of copyright holders? Adkinson would seem to be saying so.
--
Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's new book, The Future of Ideas, was recently excerpted in these pages. Lessig describes two possible futures for the Internet--one an enormous but vacuous shopping mall, the other a flowering of barely imaginable forms of creativity. He argues that through legal and technological machinations--and specifically, the over-assertion of copyright--business interests are charting a course toward the first. And he darkly warns that "the future of ideas is in the balance."
From the outset, this thesis is difficult to square with basic facts about the Information Age--particularly with the explosion in access to information made possible by the digital revolution. Indeed, Lessig approvingly quotes Judge Alex Kozinski, who has said that copyright "encourages others to build freely on the ideas that underlie" copyrighted expression. But if copyright leaves a rich public domain, why is Lessig so concerned about the future of creativity?
--
Copyright is Not About Copying
Under current U.S. law and common understanding, the fundamental right granted by
copyright is the right of reproduction - of making copies. Certainly, the first
"exclusive right" granted to the owner of a copyright under Section 106 of the
Copyright Act 1 is the right to reproduce the copyrighted work "in copies or
phonorecords" or to authorize such reproduction. Indeed, the very word "copyright"
appears to signify that the right to make copies must be a fundamental part of any
system of copyright. Nevertheless, we believe that the primacy given to the right of
copying, while seemingly intuitive, is both illogical and counterproductive,
particularly when one considers its application to digital documents. We base our
analysis on both the nature and characteristics of the digital realm and on a historical
and instrumental understanding of the law of copyright.
Our examination of whether reproduction should play a central role in copyright
law is motivated in part by the question of security in digital rights management
(DRM). Many designers of DRM technology seek to enforce copyright by
controlling copying. Consequently, there is careful attention paid in the security and
cryptology literature to the question of whether such control is technologically
is that the current trend is to increase copyright terms into incredibly ridiculous territories (which I define as being longer than the human lifespan) instead of decreasing the terms, which one would think would be the natural response given the advances we've made in distribution technologies such as automated printing presses, aircraft, and the Internet. The time it takes to fairly achieve a return on creating a work has been going down dramatically, given how quickly it can be duplicated and transported to where it can be sold -- it's no longer a bunch of monks transcribing a book by hand for months, or even a hand-cranked printing press -- yet we're expected to believe that we need to ramp the restrictions up precisely because of the advances in distribution technology? I don't need someone to refute a guy that argues that taking 25 years off of the current copyright limit will unfairly hurt the industry because it's obvious he's full of it.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
People like Adkinson keep repeating this claim ad nauseam without any facts to back it up.
As far as I can tell, the tightening and extension of copyright law over the 20th century is correlated with a deterioration in quality art. Many of the greatest works of history were created without the benefits of copyright protection. Many great works of art would, in fact, violate copyright if today's copyright laws had been in effect at the time because they are the highly evolved end product of a long line of copies, with incremental improvements at each step. Much of creativity involves craftsmanship, and craftsmanship requires copying and recreation before creativity can be achieved.
So, some facts, please. If the government grants 100+ year monopolies to people and corporations, I'd like to see some evidence that this is beneficial to the rest of us. Because, Adkinson's ideological mumblings to the contrary, copyrights are not "property rights"--they are limited rights granted by the government only because they are beneficial to society.
The linked Miller article is very interesting and insightful - but I wonder, based on its discussion of public and private distribution, how libraries would work with this new definition of copyright. A library by default provides public distribution of a work - would this then be made illegal should copyright reflect distribution rather than reproduction?
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
Hrmm. But maybe that's the point of law "memes" -- constructed to seep into the general consciousness rather than provide a well-supported web of logic. Regardless, whenever I read a Lawmeme article, I get the strong sense that they'll only appeal to the already-converted ("preaching to the choir"). Which makes me think they're wasting their breath. :/
Heh! Perhaps I am just getting too old. Because the point in the LawMeme article about the ability to sell above marginal cost being a leading indicator of monopoly just hit me right between the eyes!
That is SO right, and so how come I don't remember hearing that point before (or how come I didn't think it up myself!)
I immediately thought of games (who didn't!?) retailing at hugely above their production cost, and books the same. Why do we accept these things? I for one would buy far more books and far more games if publishers set prices at simply a "fair margin". Who would rip games onto CDs for their friends if you could get them in the store (with a free CD case and handy booklet) for $5? Who of us wouldn't have libraries twice, thrice as big if books were similarly priced?
And if these new pricing schemes were in existance, wouldn't they force publishers to try and innovate in the way their "content" was delivered? There is no pressure to build a useable "e-book" while "paper-books" have such huge profits built into the system. There is no pressure to take the (in some cases) 3 boxes out of the packaging of computer games (3 boxes that mostly just get torn off and thrown away like christmas paper).
Ya gotta love a good lawyer or law writer, they always make arguments that set your mind to work!
The entertainment industry's war on Fair Use and consumer rights is often debated in terms of legal precedent. You'll see Slashdot comments fumbling towards a constitutional justification of Fair Use, or authors like Lawrence Lessig positing ideas like a digital commons as a rebuttal to the wave of copyrighting and litigation. But there's one simple, clear argument against much of what the entertainment industry would like to do. Read on.
It's clear that the purveyors of movies, television, records and so forth are scared. They're losing money (or claim to be), and this does not make them happy. Their scapegoat is digital copying, as they refuse to accept that perhaps the content they provide is simply of poor quality, or badly and inconviently distributed, thus explaining their drops in sales. The response of the RIAA and MPAA has been to call for endless litigation and lawmaking, outlawing any behaviour that undercuts their profits at the taxpayer's expense. As above, many "activists" argue that this is illegal, immoral, etc. My response is different.
The key concept to note is "at the taxpayer's expense." The entertainment industry has every right to protect their content. What they don't (or should not) have, however, is the resources of government and public money. When public funds and time are used to save a failing industry, this is called protectionism, and it's a concept more familiar to Communist ideology than our Free Market. Of course, this White House is no stranger to protectionism, bailing out airlines, the steel industry, and offering farmers massive subsidies. And perhaps one can justify saving these industries: people need transportation, crops, building materials. But who can justify saving the entertainment industry?
It's entertainment, the superflous recreation that we fill our idle time with. While it generates a lot of money (and ergo political influence), entertainment has, ultimately, zero effect or worth to a population. Sure, music, film, and so forth are part of what defines a culture. But what the public agrees to support are the arts, works of inherant cultural value, not "Dude, Where's My Car?"
With this in mind, I think any debate about the worth of RIAA- and MPAA-proposed legislation comes to a grinding halt. The entertainment industry is allowed to protect itself using its own time and money; if they want copy protection schemes, for example, let them pay for research and development. But the instant taxpayer time and money is being spent to save big media, we've entered into profoundly unamerican territory.
Reading over the articles, I can't help but feel that the Atkinson article doesn't deserve the attention and response. It's more of a sound-bite recitation of the pro-intellectual-propertization CopyRighteousness than it is a reasoned analysis.
...) instead of what it is increasingly apparent the future will actually be, (aka: more and more content encrypted and accessible only on the extremely restrictive licensing terms of the major content-owning conglomerates.) And the "we act through highly imperfect governmental institutions" bit, too, as if the DMCA or even copyright itself weren't acting through those same institutions! Man.
My favourite two bits:
1- from the Mission Statement of Atkinson's "Progress and Freedom Foundation"...
The sentence which begins "The Foundation's public policy work brings a market-oriented, pro-technology perspective" is said without any sense of irony. Didn't copyright start out as a tool for government censorship? Is prohibiting study and reverse engineering of code really either pro-technology or pro-market?
2- from the article itself:
"But "we" act through highly imperfect governmental institutions, subject to influence by the very corporations that Lessig distrusts. Worse yet, as Lessig himself has recognized, these institutions tend to be bureaucratic, resistant to innovation, and insufficiently flexible to respond in Internet time." Speaking of bureaucratic and insufficiently flexible, how about still discussing/framing the issue in 2002 based on what we thought, back in 1995, that the future would be (aka: information wants to be free, internet routes around censorship,
Wait a minute, I fell for it too. Doh!
My apologies to Miller. Respond-away.
These producers of digital works are the greatest threat to performing artists. The ability to reproduce at minimal cost an artistic experience is an obvious threat to those who would otherwise be able to make a living at their craft - ie live performers.
Now that mass production has disenfranchised several generations of performers - their ox stands to be gored by the same technology they have used to destroy others - namely the performing artists.
So begins the funeral procession of the cheap reproducers of art - Lead by the even cheaper reproducers of art. Let the tears of irony flow like wine - let us wring our hands in pathos and mourn the passing of the unnecessary.
What the world should miss is not the Anderson accountants who would otherwise be record and movie executives - but let the world miss the Waiters and Carpenters who would otherwise be Poets and Playwrights - Violinists and Sopranos.
Authorship of the work apparently did not matter. Instead, a guild member could claim a monopoly in this registry for six pence (no idea what that translates to in today's dollars).
if the government is going to hand out monopolies in the form of copyright and patents, then they should force the recipient of a monopoly to license the work in reasonable, equal and non-descriminatory terms. that would put an end to the corporate patent-swapping schemes since everyone would have to a) declare the value and b) all licensers would get that price. it would also make it possible for works to be disseminated/sold legally through any and all channels. it would put an end to the RIAA's stranglehold on content.
The creation of content is anathema to the xxAAs since it involves expense and possible financial loss.
... ?
:-)
These people(?) would rather sell reruns of crap for pure profit than spend a buck on a creative artist.
They see artists as a necessary evil which is controlled and manipulated by putting the art and the artist through a mill which grinds out "hits" while grinding down the artists.
Sometime the hype is so transparent that anyone with an ounce of integrity would hide their face in shame. Instead , you get some babe shilling shit while holding up a can of beer for scale.
What gets air play or screen time is not what's good or what is worth seeing but what some soul-dead accountant decides you should see.
Harry Potter books sold? Lets play it safe and make Harry Potter movies. How about a remake of
Eventually, they media mavens realize that the rerun is more profitable, specially if all the artists are dead of old age. How else can you explain Alphal-fuckin'-fa still being on TV? How about the "Three Stooges," week after week after week? Used as filler between commercials.
The reason they don't want anybody to be able to copy anything is that THEY want to SELL every byte that comes over the 'net and they don't want you to be able to hang on to any of them because then they can't charge you over and over for the same cra, uh, content.
The creators of content, the animators, artists, authors, musicians, playwrights, thespians etcetera will soon have no market anyway.
500 channels on TV and ALL running infomercials.
Message-less Media in the purest McLuhanistic sense.
The artists who are already the source for the content, will have to form their own separate distribution networks and use some form of micro payment PER COPY (the bane of the xxAAs control mechanisms.
Imagine after the introduction of IPv6, when DynIP can finally be disposed of and spoofing becomes a great deal more difficult, a very minor change to the FTP protocol, call it cFTP, which records, when necessary, the address of the recipient of a document or packet stream.
Imagine a micro payment scheme which records charges for every copy of some artist's work collecting money from the recipient and depositing it in the artist's account.
Now imagine the xxAAs wondering where all the sucke, uh, audience has gone? Don't we WANT to pay for the n-th rerun of "My Mother The Car?"
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Okay, as someone who is trying to make a living from selling digitally-reproducable works (music, see sig), I can be sympathetic to copyright-holders' fears of a loss of sales due to people copying and distributing their goods for free. But what I completely fail to understand is this:
How is making a derivative work anything but a benefit to all parties concerned? Let's say I wrote a song and included a sample of a Benny Goodman song. I wouldn't be taking away from sales of Goodman CDs--who would say "Oh I don't need to buy that CD, I have another CD by someone else with a 4 second sample on it. That's all I need." As a matter of fact, it would boost sales of Goodman CDs. I myself have bought a lot of CDs just on the basis that a bit of a song on it was sampled by an artist I really like. It's really free advertising. The only problem I can see is if I made it seem like Benny Goodman was actually playing along with me, and the song had content that would tarnish his reputation in it. But that would fall under the laws for libel, wouldn't it? Or let's say I wanted to make a movie that featured someone reading an entire Stephen King book out loud? Well maybe that could be construed as copyright infringement, since it would be reproducing the entire work, but if I used just a passage? And I credited King? It's FREE ADVERTISING!
Here's an interesting true example: Raymond Carvers last book of poetry, "A New Path to the Waterfall", included a number of poems that were nothing more than snippets from Chekov (his favorite writer) stories. His removal of these passages from their original context imbued them with an altogether new meaning that wasn't present in the original works. It's really amazing stuff, and it pisses me off that writers of today are only able to do this with works in the public domain? What if Disney retro-extended copyrights so that they covered Chekov works? We'd all be out a damn fine book of poems.
The wierd thing is, I can do all of these things today by buying the rights to a work, which are almost always owned by the publisher, who rarely cares about keeping intact the original artist's reputation (remember the commercials that showed Fred Astaire dancing around with a vacuum cleaner? *shudder*). For example, the movie "From Hell" was a piece of crap compared to the complex genius that is the comic book. But did it tarnish the original author, Alan Moore's reputation? I don't think so. Were there some people who didn't buy the comic book because they saw the movie? I doubt it. I bet that more people bought the comic book since it came out. Plus, no matter how much I didn't like the movie, the world is richer because of it. Its creators should have had to do nothing more than conspicuously display credit to the original authors.
Copyright law today as it relates to creating derivative works has nothing to do with the integrity of the original work and everything to do with making a buck. Long-term copyrights may be preventing the growth of the public domain, but the bit that relates to creating derivative works is preventing the creation of many, many new works, by only allowing those with deep pockets to make those new works. If we want to see sampling as an art form develop to the levels of say, jazz or cubism, the law needs to be rewritten to either a) allow the unauthorized creation of a derivative work, but still force appropriate credit to be given, or b) everything in (a), but also allow the original author, and only the original author--this right must be non-transferrable-- the ability to sue a creator of a derivate work if he feels it tarnishes his reputation, or the integrity of his original work. Under no circumstances should an artist collect any payment from another artist for the permission to use a piece of his work.
c-hack.com |
Like giving Arrafat control of Palestine. (Now lets see if it outlives him.)
Like giving Levesque control of an independent Quebec. (it never happened...)
Like giving Lenin and his band of thugs control over the Soviet Union. (Who? What? I don't read history...)
Like giving Botha control over the system of Apartheid. (South Africa is now free to find solutions it can live with rather than laboring under rules it can die from.)
Giving the xxAAs absolutely EVERYTHING they asked for and being able to blame them for EVERYTHING that goes wrong after will lead to their membership being decimated and their being declared outlaws.
The cessation of the creation of content is an inevitable conclusion. NO NEW CONTENT. NO NEW BOOKS. NO NEW MUSIC. NO NEW MOVIES. Nothing will be created by the "factory" system since its cheaper to re-cycle the same old shit.
The neo-Luddites of the xxAAs will be so surprised when they finally win one after having fought EVERY technological development since the invention of the player piano and NEVER having won, not even ONCE.
That single victory be pyrric indeed as they get dismanteled and the rules of the self-styled industry watchdogs get regulated and enforced by government fiat.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
William F. Adkinson, Jr. is Senior Policy Counsel at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a group that describes itself as a market-oriented think tank that promotes innovative policy solutions for the digital age.
The key phrase is "market-oriented." They are a group sponsored by big business. Their sponsors include:
* AOL Time Warner
* BMG
* National Cable & Telecommunications Association
* Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
* Vivendi Universal
And the article was published in The American Spectator, a shamelessly right-wing rag that caters to the crowd that believes that helping big business get bigger is the most important contribution that legislation can make to our lives.
Of course Adkinson came out with a pro-copyright rebuttal. His article is as unbiased and trustworthy as one citing the health benefits of cigarette smoking sponsored by R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.
Adkinson claims that the "5 movie studios and 7 record labels" should be plenty to create a competitive market. He argues that there is no real monopoly beyond that which is expressly allowed by copyright itself.
This argument felt funny to me, and it didn't take me long to realize why- there is something of a "critical mass" phenomenon when it comes to monopolies. You can have a monopoly in one big thing (e.g., operating systems) OR you can have a large number of small monopolies (e.g., in music.) The power of the record labels emerges from a single entity that has so many small monopolies at its control. This is what skews the market, as opposed to the ideal- a large number of small monopolies in the hands of many people.
Any claims that the movie studios are anything less than an oligopoly is absolutely ludicrous. If I did a survey of 1000 people, how many of them could tell me what record label she's on? Does it even matter? Of course not. It's not even the entertainment industry. It's the copyright industry.
Sure, it was. Before the 20th century, almost all content was somehow created manually, and if it could be created manually, it could be copied manually even faster. Music and plays were performed without royalty payments. Artists and sculptors would copy the works of others, change it slightly, and present it as their own. Writers would rewrite a story slightly and republish it to the masses. Publishers would republish writings and music. Copyists would copy paintings. In the process, people honed their skills, stories matured, and artistic ideas circulated widely without being controlled by big companies.
Today, doing anything like that would be both professional suicide and be subject to severe penalties.
Back then, artists had to do new stuff constantly in order to make a living--no living off royalties. The US flaunted European copyrights because Americans felt that they needed cheap access to content in order to get their country educated.
By comparison, for a consumer to copy someone's CD or sheet music today is tame. We don't even consider the possibility that allowing artists to copy the works of others liberally might be a better way. We should.
My thoughts are something like...
30 years fiction
20 years historic, lit-crit, and reference non-fiction
10 years self-help and current affairs non-fiction
5 years registered software (source code published)
2 years non-registered software
With a possible 1/2 period extension if you are still selling at 10% of the rate of the best year of sales.
I don't think the right should automatically expire due to the death of the author if his will states it shouldn't but linence at a reasonable price (no more that 5% of gross say, or 20% of profit) should become cumpulsary since the author is no longer around to say some new adaption isn't to his liking.
This isn't particularly GNU friendly extensions are all based on sales, but I think it would strike a good balance on copyright for society and hence fulfill the main reason programmers choose an open source licence.
I would further add that the source code should be published at the end of support for any software for anyone wishing to copyright their work, and using 'copy protection' should automatically revoke and claims to copyright protection. Hence those wishing to avoid copyright would need to licence everything and sue only the person that violated the contract but once the first copy was made work would be in the open. This would discourage these licences except for made to order software where it makes sense.
I'm just putting this out there because I want to hear what you have to say. Are my numbers to conservative? Too liberal? Just right?
Basically, if you and I cannot make any unauthorized copies, then all uses of the media go through the distributors. This level of control gives them three things they *want* very much going forward into the digitial age.
1. They can utilize pay per view and subscription models. WIth these, the larger the catalog, the more potential dollars they make over time. --I am talking about very long periods of time.
2. They stop the consumption problem. Right now we are busy buying media both new and old that we find interesting because the two primary digital formats promise long life and high fidelity. Once the boom in old media purchases is over, they will be left with the blockbuster profits they generate with new media productions. Over the next 10 years they face quite a revenue shortage with the current media and distribution models. Look for format changes that favor them and not us. (DIVX style, or at the least copy restricted media formats worse than what we have now.) You can bet that they will push the heck out of the blue laser DVD media and correct the "mistakes" made with existing DVD media.
3. They eliminate potential competition. Anyone wanting to distribute anything will have to go through an authorized distributor. No more "Blair Witch Project" releases stealing revenue from the first-run hits. A secondary effect here is about control of speech in general. Harder to make artistic statements without distribution. All they need to is say "the market is not ready for that!" and you are done. Maybe they buy it from you, or knock it off to marginalize your work and its all over.
Personally I have little sorrow for them. I am sure profits are important, but the benefit of the emerging distributed creative culture is more important to me. As others learn, they will agree. This is a large part of why this stuff does not get a lot of mainstream press.
Maybe the above is a little alarmist, but I can find few other sane motives that explain their actions of late.....
" No matter how much I write my senator (Dashle) I never seem to get through to him. It makes you wonder just how much your congress critter actually listens."
/dev/null now.
Am I the only one who thinks that's funny? Senator Dashle? The same senator that got an anthrax letter? No shit he's not reading the letters you send him.. all of his mail goes into the real-world equivilent of
The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive for creative artists. We all discount the future rather heavily. 20 to 25 years is about the limit. Copyright should be no longer than this.
The purpose of copyleft is freedom. Once copyleft expires, it is back to the bad old days of breaking interoperability for commercial advantage, keeping the source code secret, so that most programming is duplication of work already done, etc. There is no public interest in having copyleft expire.
A rewriting of copyright law, to 20 years from publication, because that provides plenty of incentive, could also provide for two types of public domain.
1)The current public domain, the source of copyright derivative works.
2)A GNU domain, perpetually copyleft.
The reason why organizations such as the mass media and the companies that distribute art were able to lock out live performers is that the "public" was reinvented -- instead of the "public" being anyone a performer could possibly meet, the public became anyone a mass media organization could reach by TV, movies, radio, print, etc.
Now the public is being reinvented again and is becoming anyone the artist or a fan of the art can communicate with. What we are seeing is not simply a war over copyright - it's a war over what the public will be and who will have the right to communicate with it. The mass media would prefer to have a public that remains large with easily controllable desires and means of distribution to it. The new public wants to control its own desires and means of distribution; it wants to be the artist, the publisher and the audience.
There can't be laws to enforce the old mass media copyrights without enforcing the old, outdated mass media model. This is not just a battle over who has the right to distribute a work but who has the right to distribute any work and who can create a public to communicate with. The performers would like to have their public to be anyone they communicate with - the mass media moguls are calling for laws against the technologies that would make this communication impossible.
This should not have been modd'ed "Funny". It is insightful, even if I personally disagree.
Where's my mod points when I need them?
Most pop culture dies off within a decade. It therefore has no apperciable economic value for about 9/10 of the copyright's duration. How many of our great grandkids are going to be listening to Jimmy Eat World, Korn, Britney Spears or even Nine Inch Nails?
The purpose of publishing is to share uncommon and excellent material with the public. Traditional publishers did their best to collect such material and make some reasonable facsimille available to as many people as possible. Once it was difficult and expensive to do that, so laws were made in the US to grant publishers a time limited (14 years) exclusive franchise to the work.
Todays publishers seek to do just the opposite. Today information, especially recorded music, is easy to share. Printed material, books, letters, and all manner of information is CREATED in digital forms now. So what's a publisher to do? Well, if your the music industry you take common material and prevent people from sharing it without paying them. Hideous new encryption technologies are being applied to music, movies and even books, which can not be deciphered without approved reading software which will not work forever. The publishers will keep the information and sell it to you each time you want it. The net result is the destruction of the public domain. Information once preserved by publishering will now be destroyed by it. Once publication becomes unprofitable, the publisher is likely to neglect it. Unlike previous ages, no monks will be able to come to the rescue.
Adkinson claims that competition will come to the resuce, but he is mistaken or lying. Publication and tellecomunications have become very consolidated. GE, Westinghouse, Disney, Sony and the federal governement essentially own broadcasting in the US. The list of companies providing internet service continues to collapse and we will be left with very few soon enough, all perfectly willing to collude with publishers in the vain hope of making a buck. Your voice will not be heard and you will not enjoy the works that others wish to share.
Music is a good example of this trend. What could be more common and less excellent than the "popular" music we hear on artificailly scare airwaves? Anyone can sing, most people have belonged to one kind of band or another, and generally the results are as good or better than top 40. How is it that all that work gets condensed to a National Standard Record store? Recent court decisions agains companies like MP3.com show that the big five music publishers of the world will not relinquish their cartel and the law will support them. Information is already being lost. The Bono copyright extention act to 75 years covers most of all recorded music. How many original works are perishing with their media right now? Early Jazz and other American art forms will be about as well preserved as the libraries of antiquity, sorted random and slim, instead of preserved as the original recorders wished. In the end, however, music is much less important than other published works, such as scientific papers, text books, even fiction and art work.
Proposed publishing methods do not contribute to the public good and are not worthy of public expendatures to protect.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's interesting how publishing is devolving back to the days of perpetual ownership of material and guilds. If DRM legislation has it's way, only certian people will have unecumbered machines for publication of all material. If the telcos have their way, everyone will have to meet their demands to publish on the internet. If you combine the wishes of all the stupid and short sighted comercial intests, digital content will prove more difficult to author, copy, and publish than traditional media. Traditional medial will be destroyed.
Remember what Orwell said. The party does not exist for the public good, it wills itself to power for power alone. 2 + 2 + 4, from this all else follows, so long as you can say it and make it known. Truth is the enemy of the party. The party is growing up before us and it's main force is DRM.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The thing that I came to understand, that I didn't before reading the article, was the connection between copyright and monopoly.
Huh? Copyright is obviously and plainly a government-granted monopoly. It's always been that way, and is understood that way by the courts. That's why we have abuse-of-copyright (and patent) rules in the courts.
C//
The problem also lies with those or us that desire the copyright works. If you have no desire for an X-box. How much does the copyright really matter?
If we can eliminate the attachment or wanting for these corporation's works, their power is as real as the value in a dot gone's stock options.
Think about it, if your parents wont lend you a car and you never wanted the car from the start it will not affect you that much.
Here's my proposal for copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and other terms. Let me briefly justify it by saying that in terms of "shelf life" music and software on average have very short periods of popularity. I know some idiot is going to respond to this saying that "people still listen to Beethoven" and that "basic UNIX code has been around forever," so let me qualify that by saying that the vast vast majority of software and music is obsolete in a few years. In software, this is especially true for the vast majority of games; older games like (i.e., Tomb Raider I) may still be played, but they're hardly selling points for their companies (i.e., Eidos). Same thing with most music. There are always a few exceptions; but even in the cases of exceptions -- i.e., music by Madonna -- the revenues from 5 year old albums is very miniscule compared to that from albums just recently released. As for movies, they have a longer shelf life. Books and artistic works (i.e., paintings) probably have the longest "life-span". On to patents; most inventors recover the cost of their investment on patents in much less time than 20 years, so I propose scaling this protection back as well. Here's my specific proposals:
I. Copyrights.
As a general preface, aside from the duration changes which will be mentioned, copyrights must also be reformed such as to eliminate copyright-abuses. For example, assinite terms of the EULA should not be protected by the laws. Furthermore, copyrights should be modified such that equal licensing terms are mandated. Also, any copyrighted work coupled with DRM or other technologies which in any way hinder fair use will be protected; in other words, copyright owners must by law ensure fair use priviledges to their customers (as is the law in Russia). On a similar vein, when the duration of a work expires, the owner must make make available any information pertinent to that work so as to make it public domain (i.e., the source code); this is ensured by mandating that copyright owners submit their source code to the government when registering copyrights. Furthermore, no technologies which further consumers' fair use rights may be hindered. This is hardly a comprehensive list of necessary reforms.
II. Patents
As a general preface, aside from the duration changes which will be mentioned, patents must also be reformed such that no patent is granted where prior art is present. Furthermore, to aid in this goal, all pending patents must be opened up so that the public can look for cases of prior art. This is largely intended to put an end to the shameless cases of biopiracy, where Indigenous people's knowledge is being plundered by greedy corporations, which then make Indigenous peoples pay for the medicines they themselves created. Furthermore, patents should be reformed such that equal terms licensing is required. Independent or nearly independent co-discovery of the same thing will be recognized; Newton and Leibnez both invented Calculus independently. One may have invented it slightly before the other, but that hardly means that only one should be recognized. In such modern-day cases of independent co-discovery, both inventors will be entitled to rights. Finally, full and complete disclosure of the relevant materials/procedures (i.e., source code, algorithms) to the public will be required. This is hardly comprehensive list of ways in which current patent laws need to be modified to stamp out corrupted, poor elements of patent law.
III. Trade Secrets.
Trade secrets will be abolished. If a company wants to keep a secret, that should be their obligation and responsibility; courts should not be helping them to do so by silencing anyone who "discovers their secret". Aside from that, trade secrets are a potential danger to the public, since we know not what they are. We live in a democracy, and the idea of the government protecting corporate secrets is the anti-thesis to an open, free society.
IV. Trademarks.
I do not think that current durations on trademarks should be altered. Trademarks in fact help the public by allowing us to easily distinguish between different kinds of products. What should be modified is the scope of trademark laws. Trademarks should apply very specifically to their field. Furthermore, trademarks should have to be on an original phrase; i.e., trademarking "Windows" is not allowed. There are also numerous examples where trademark owners try to restrict language outside of their specific field. For example, Intel Inside and Yoga Inside; Coke suing a book-dealer for quoting praise of a book which said "its the real thing"; and so on and so forth. None of that non-sense should be allowed. Trademarks in the software industry should not cross over into other industries, and vica versa. Ideally, trademarks should be new words or new phrases, never-before-said; i.e., Intelliside should be preferable to Intel Inside. However, if that's not done, at the very least, the trademarks should only be enforced specifically within an industry. In the granting of trademarks, more scrutiny should be given to one's which are not new words or phrases, never-before-said. The idea is to prevent corporations and religions from carving up the English language amongst themselves.
V. Scientology
As one final note, I would like to say that something needs to be done about Scientology and copyright laws, trademark laws, and possibly patent laws. It should not be possible for Scientology -- or any other half-baked religion -- to use IP laws as a way to beat their members into submission, silence critis, and other such nonsense. In short, to protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion, intellectual property laws must not apply to religion. If something is to qualify as a religion, its books, so to speak, must be completely open, public domain. No IP laws should be used to silence parody, criticism, review, or fair-use: any such attempt to use IP laws to silence parody, criticism, review, or fair-use will be deemed as an abuse of that copyright, patent, or trade-secret, and will result in losing the rights to that particular piece. Repeated attempts to abuse IP-"rights" on the part of corporations or organizations will result in them losing all of their IP-"rights".
VI. Final Notes.
As a final note, I should say that my system has the advantage of rewarding extended terms based on how well something is selling. There is obviously little point in offering a long extension for a work which is only selling at 0.01% of maximum volume. Perhaps using the maximum sales as a reference point is a little bit too much; perhaps the average sale over the initial term should be used, or the midpoint between the max and the average. However, the point remains the same: that this system rewards extensions in proportion to how well something is selling. This neutralizes criticism from people who say, "oh, but there's some works who sell well for a long time". Any suggestions on other ways to stamp out abuse of the IP-system would be welcome.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If the Supreme Court rules against Eldred etc. and allows indefinite
:-), half the money raised from the intellectual
copyright extensions (or even if they don't), here is an amusing idea. I
think I saw the germ of it first in another user's comment on Slashdot
months ago -- and now that I poke around the web and usenet I see that
many others have discussed it a tiny bit. In such a worst case where
copyrights are indefinite, perhaps a property tax on copyright owners
might be enacted as a last resort, where rights holders get to choose an
assessed value for having the monopoly of all rights to the work, and
rights holders pay some percentage (1%?) per year of that assessment,
with the restriction then rights holders have to release the work to the
public domain if a payment to them is made for the assessed amount.
Possibly the assessment would be broken down into rights categories, so
that there could be payments for freeing specific subrights -- like
non-commercial use. This category approach would allow a work to be
bought into the public domain in stages.
For example, if the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust puts, say, a
million dollar valuation on the "Skills of Xanadu" story (ironically
about freedom) relative to releasing it into the public domain (say, so
they could pursue movie rights for it), at an "intellectual monopoly"
tax rate of 1%, the trust would have to pay $10000 per year to keep the
monopoly. But if the Trust puts only a $1000 value on "The Skills of
Xanadu" to avoid significant taxes (only $10 a year then), I'd take out
my checkbook, maybe along with some other fans, and it would be free
today.
Note this assessed amount is for release into the public domain, not
necessarily the amount to be paid by someone else who wants the monopoly
transferred to them, which might be higher or lower, just like what real
estate sells for isn't necessarily the assessed rate. Since it it hard
to assess the value of a copyright, let the rights holder do it, as long
as this public domain buyout clause was in place to prevent overly low
self assessment of monopoly value.
If some people call patents and copyrights "intellectual property" (yes,
I know that term begs the question of how to handle them) then why not
laugh at them and just tax ownership of such "property"? After all, just
like real estate owners pay taxes to offset the heavy continual burden
their property puts on society (a need for police, fire departments,
water, roads, sanitation, planning boards, zoning, local schools, etc.),
there is a heavy continual burden on society for enforcing copyright
(prisons for infringers, costs of salaries for judges in court cases,
the time cost to individuals of making fair use determinations,
government subsidized distribution channels like the internet, the need
for the government to maintain accurate records, lawmaker's time, etc.)
which ideally should be born by copyright holders as opposed to the
general public.
Yes, I know such a tax might wreck havoc with the GPL or other freely
licensed software too. Most GPL copyright holders would probably need to
set their copyright assessment prices low and risk public domain
buyouts. And there are issues with previously selling off exclusive
rights separately to a work (although such rights holders could pay part
of the tax.) And there are issues with incrementally developed works, or
works with multiple copyright holders...
Still, the big issue is that the cost to society of the copyright
monopoly on any work is potentially high, and the person who should be
paying that social cost is really the rights holder, rather than passing
on external costs to others, as a form of social pollution. Some would
argue rights holders already paid a copyright tax when they registered.
Yet, people who get real estate pay a title transfer fee (sort of like a
copyright registration or renewal fee) but they still pay property taxes
afterwards too. If there was no records of taxes paid on a copyright,
it could be presumed public domain, or the copyright owner could be
pursued for tax evasion (until they disclaimed it to the public domain,
of course). This would make the state of copyright much clearer than the
current situation where it is very expensive to determine if a work is
under copyright, and if so, who currently owns it and how to contact
them. With real estate, all this is a matter of public record.
When registering to pay "intellectual property" taxes for their
monopolies, copyright holders might be required to deposit a complete
copy of the content and preferred form source in digital format in
escrow. This escrow would be in part to allow people wanting to use
public domain materials to easily search published content against
registered works. Escrow would also be in part to ensure the work would
be available unencrypted and unprotected when it became public domain,
such as if the rights holder stopped paying property taxes on it.
Perhaps the way to win the copyright battle, if all else fails, is to
give copyright holders what the want, then something else too that
naturally goes with it. Microsoft would have to put a price on releasing
the Windows source code to the public domain for example (including all
previous versions, which might have separate prices), and then they
would finally be forced to pay taxes. Yes, perennially people have
resisted taxes on capital, so it's an uphill battle, but it is another
front of the copyright battle to consider.
Obviously, stocks and bank accounts aren't often taxed by the federal
government while held (though some states do like with Florida's
"Intangible Personal Property Tax"),
http://www.myflorida.com/dor/taxes/ippt.html
so the argument would have to be worked through if the taxation was at
the federal level. And of course this makes the government meddle more
in everyone's affairs (at least, those claiming copyrights or software
patents) but maybe that's OK considering the alternative in this case
and how much they meddle already.
And, while I'm dreaming
monopoly tax could be used to fund more free software and free content
(and the other half would go to pay down the Federal deficit).
Note: even with laws like the above, I would support some form of
author's moral rights regarding their works, enforced separately from
copyright.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Now I can just sit back and watch the "You are an idiot/moron/other witty insult" ad hominem attacks pour in that "open-minded" people on the far-left are known for.
I will note that you are the only one in this conversation who is making ad hominem attacks on other Slashdot readers and moderators. Rather ironic, isn't it? You've been listening to Rush Limbaugh too much. You need to listen to NPR and you will find that liberals don't normally resort to the name-calling, defamation, and slander that is all too prominent on conservative radio programs.
This concludes moderator-education, have a nice day.
I think that you are overly impressed with yourself while failing to give credit to those who might moderate you.
Hollings and Feinstein both of whom have been quoted here as being proponents of the DMCA and SSSCA/CBDTPA are liberal Democrats.
And there are Republicans who are pro-choice, but it does not mean that, broadly speaking, the Republican party does not take the opposite stance.
The State of California has long been considered a Democratic Party stronghold, and is the center of the US Entertainment Industry. Check which party won it the last several presidential elections.
I've spent a lot of time in California and, despite the view that you have apparently gotten from watching too much Access Hollywood, the majority of people in California are not in the entertainment industry.
The far-left usually seems quite eager to have the government regulate and control how things are done.
Both sides try to regulate and control how things are done. The difference is in who they are regulating and how:
Liberals tend to push for laws restricting corporate behavior. They recognize that without government intervention, corporations will tread on the rights of citizens, harm the environment, and do whatever else maximizes their profits. Examples of corporations that liberals might be tempted to rein in through legislation include Enron and the other energy industry giants that met in secret with Bush/Cheney and wrote the White House's energy policy.
Conservatives legislate morality, often trying to make religious beliefs the law of the land. They push for legislation making it illegal for gay couples to marry. They try to limit access to abortions. On local levels, they oppose sex education and teaching the scientific theory of evolution. They ban human cloning and limit stem cell research, despite the promise that such research holds for thousands of people, from Parkinson's patients to paralysis victims.
How increasing government regulation can be considerings "small government" or "shrinking government" I'd like to know.
The size of the government is based on the cost, not the number of regulations in place. Besides, smaller government is the battle cry of the Republicans, not of the Democrats. The big difference is that Democrats try to collect enough tax revenue to pay for the cost of running the government. Republicans, on the other hand, make massive tax cuts and then do deficit spending to make up the difference. As a result, in less than two years, George W. Bush has managed to wipe out the surplus that was built up under Clinton/Gore, plunging us back into deficit spending, and prolonging and deepening the recession. Like father, like son...
I've not attacked anyone's character, only learned from history.
When you make unsubstantiated claims that the "far left" is known for "ad hominem attacks", that is an ad-homimen attack in and of itself.
And there are Republicans who are pro-choice, but it does not mean that, broadly speaking, the Republican party does not take the opposite stance.
True, but not particularly relevant.
Yes, it is relevent. It demonstrates that your finding two examples of Democrats who favor stronger copyright/copy-protection does not mean that you can characterize the whole party by their positions. I thought that was clear.
I never wrote or implied the majority of people in California were in the entertainment industry. I stated it "is the center of the US Entertainment Industry." No reference was made to the porportion of Californians that are involved in it.
You wrote:
The State of California has long been considered a Democratic Party stronghold, and is the center of the US Entertainment Industry. Check which party won it the last several presidential elections.
That implies that the U.S. Entertainment Industry made up a large enough percentage of the California voting public to decide the election.
All the references I've read about the size of government are about the amount of programs the government is involved in. That includes regulating various things and social programs like welfare, social security, medicaid, headstart, etc.
I like those programs, despite the fact that I pay for them rather than directly benefit from them. To me, that's part of living in a civilized society. We don't let the aged, infirm, or impoverished simply die. The government is the perfect organization to spearhead such efforts because people don't have to listen to a religious sermon prior to getting the assistance that they need.
Learn from Reagan's mistake: He cut programs like Headstart and others that provided much-needed training to inner-city youth. The result? Crime in the inner-city skyrocketed when those kids saw no future for themselves.
Bush is headed down the same path, increasing corporate welfare while cutting entitlement programs. He's already given huge checks to the airline industry. Wants to donate drilling rights to federal land so that the oil companies can sell off the oil at a profit. He's revived the absurd "Star Wars" missile "shield" program -- despite the fact that any thinking human being knows that it could never work.
I saw Al Gore give a speech saying he was for small government in the last election. He made it a point about how he was for small government.
But not by cutting off medical care for seniors and Social Security. Gore's interest is in making government more efficient. Maybe the will of the American people will prevail next election and Gore will get a chance to do just that.
Funny, as Congress only had a Republican majority for the first time in quite a long time in '94 (year?.
I suggest you look at this chart. You will note that the largest increase in the national debt occurred under the Reagan/Bush administrations and that Clinton was reducing it long before Gingrich (and his mistress) came into power.
The greatest growth in the national debt occurred under Reagan (Rep.) (23.6% per year) followed by Ford (Rep.) (14.1% per year) and Bush (Rep.) (13.5% per year). Due to the Republican deficit spending, almost 25% of your federal tax dollars are servicing that debt. And much of that interest is paid to foreign debt holders, taking the money out of the U.S. economy.
The surplus was projected, it didn't exist yet.
Untrue. We had not had deficit spending since 1997.
Rather than continue to rehash things that were already written by the press, I will provide you with this piece by Bill Press from CNN's web site:
Bill Press: War does not justify Bush budget
February 11, 2002 Posted: 9:37 AM EST (1437 GMT)
By Bill Press
Tribune Media Services
WASHINGTON (Tribune Media Services) -- Be careful what you say about President Bush's 2003 budget. Its cover is a full-color representation of the American flag. The deliberate message is: You either support this budget or you're un-American.
That's just White House spin. Every president's budget is subject to criticism, and this one deserves its share. Shame on Bush for trying to use the flag and September 11 to justify more big government, a return to deficit spending, stealing from the Social Security surplus, permanent tax cuts for the rich and further fattening an already bloated Pentagon.
First, the raw numbers. President Bush is asking Congress for $2.1 trillion, a 9 percent increase in federal spending. He projects the government would run $106 billion in the red -- returning to deficit-spending for the first time since 1997. And he breaks a bipartisan pledge not to tap Social Security reserves for general spending. If President Clinton had proposed that budget, Republicans would denounce him as fiscally irresponsible.
There's something sinister here. Why is it that, out of office, Republicans preach smaller government, balanced budgets, no deficits and no stealing from Social Security -- and, once in office, they deliver just the opposite?
In fact, we've seen this Bush budget before. Only the dollars are different. Otherwise, it's a carbon copy of President Reagan's budget. He was the first to insist we could cut taxes, increase military spending and still have money left over. The result was economic disaster.
Under Reagan, annual deficits grew from $50 billion to $150 billion and the national debt soared from $900 billion to $2.9 trillion. Reaganomics produced 12 straight years of budget deficits that ended with Bill Clinton. Didn't we learn anything? Do we really want to go down that path again?
The biggest, and least defensible, part of the Bush budget is for military spending. He wants $396 billion for the Pentagon and the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons program. That is $45.5 billion above current levels, or an increase of 13 percent. It is also, reports the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information, a 15 percent increase over average spending during the Cold War, for a military that is one-third smaller than it was 10 years ago.
It would be one thing if that spending were tied to the war on terror. It's not. Most of the money goes to buy heavy new weapons systems -- ships, fighter planes, helicopters, armed vehicles -- that would have done nothing to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11. How, for example, do the evil deeds of 19 guys with box cutters justify building three new fighter planes?
As Paul Krugman suggests in the New York Times, the motto of the Bush budget seems to be: "Leave no defense contractor behind."
Bush's military budget is all the more unacceptable because it does nothing to address the problem of waste in defense spending. According to a report issued last year by Business Executives for National Security, an astounding 70 percent of the defense budget is spent on overhead and infrastructure. Only 30 percent reaches our men and women in the field.
That inefficiency is even recognized in Bush's budget. Budget Director Mitch Daniels brags about the fact that this budget is the first one ever based on performance. In fact, it contains a chart ranking every federal agency on five different criteria, including financial management, human capital and competitive sourcing.
Agencies are awarded a green dot for good performance; a red dot for "serious flaws." The Pentagon gets five red dots, as bad as you can get -- but Bush still pours in another $45.5 billion. Go figure.
Even if you give Bush the benefit of the doubt, there's one other part of his budget that makes no sense. Let's admit, for the sake of argument, that the war on terror is so serious it merits more big spending, more big government, more big guns and more big deficits. Surely that means we should also take a second look at the tax cuts enacted last year, when it looked like surpluses would last forever.
Not according to George Bush. He not only refuses to delay his big tax cuts, he would make them permanent. Even in wartime, his rich friends come first.
In his budget, President Bush spends wildly but uses accounting tricks to mask how high the deficit really is. It could have been written by Enron.
Thats true, but think about Knuth's work on TeX. That is still in serious use.
Still someone would have to make some big contribution to it before users would choose the proprietary version over the free one. Unless they have some kind of monopoly that can force downgrades on users, then the solution is to eliminate the monopoly not build ineffectual legal walls against some of its actions.
One of the circumstances in which software remains current is when it has been widely adopted as a standard for communication.
Right, this has the same natural protection as TEX, it's a defacto standard. Open source is still available in the public domain even after the copyright has expired, for anyone to bug fix.
[early expiration]
I've just got to ask: Why?
Because I've made commercial software that did exactly the same thing that someone had already done in open source. It would have saved humanity a few extra brain cycles if I could have just fixed their implementation and used it. Now I don't think it's fair to use something right away because the author might have written it to fight some entrenced commercial interest, but after a number of years either they have written a copy themselves or will never do so. If the commercial company is still around then it might actually help if some other commercial software incorporates the feature and competes, lowering the price of the software closer to marginal cost. You might say that they could always just call me up and ask for a licence. But there is still a barrier, they need to test the program before deciding they can use it and they aren't likely to do so if there is a significant possibility I might say no.
While working at a commercial company I once e-mailed the author of an unpatented algorithm that advertised source availability in his paper for the code, he said no it's only for non-profits. I had told him I just wanted it as reference for writing my own implementation; The paper wasn't clear on a number of points. It turned out the algorithm didn't deal with one of the cases but we would have saved three programmers a month of work if we had gotten his source to test initially.
Another case, I have a library posted on my website that's under LGPL. But I clearly state that I want just about anyone to be able to use it and will re-licence it for free to just about anyone. But when a commercial company wanted to incorporate it in their product I got like ten e-mails before they were confident they could use it. That's a substancial barrier even if it is just because they are unfamiliar with open source. (The licence I'll give to anyone for free basically says you can distribute a million copies for free. But must still send me bugfixes before each product ship or 10 days thereafter and each copy after one million costs $20. If they are too big for that they must use pure-LGPL if the still want to use it.)
Here is a portion of the data, but basically it shows that there never was a "surplus" as the federal debt has been increasing ever year since 1957.
You mistake debt for deficit. They are not the same. You may find it embarassing to note that the link that you provided includes a table on page 22 that shows budget surpluses for the years 1998-2001.
While I would have preferred to see the surpluses used to reduce the debt, they were not.
But let's make this simpler. Suppose you are in debt for $10,000. You earn $100,000. Your living expenses are $70,000. You put $30,000 into savings, but do not pay off any of your debt. Your debt actually increases due to the accumulation of interest, bringing your total indebtedness to $11,500.
You would not be "in the red" and would, in fact, have a budgetary surplus, despite your debt increasing.
An anthrax letter does not give Daschle the right to reject communications from his constituents, for the same reason a nearby shellburst does not give a soldier the right to desert his post. In both cases, it's the man's job -- to be done as safely as possible, but in any case to be done.
There are sterilization procedures available, and presumably in place.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The budget surpluses from 1998-2001 weren't because of some sound fiscal policy suddenly enacted by President Clinton after 5 years in office, but rather were a natural result of the booming economy
Then let's give Clinton some credit for the booming economy. God knows that Reagan's name is trotted out every time someone points to economic good times under his Presidency. When an economy does well, especially based on stock market speculation and consumer confidence, the President is doing something right.
When that bubble burst, the result was a sharp decrease in Federal tax revenues.
And yet, even after the "bubble burst", Bush and his cronies were pushing for a huge tax cut that we, as a country, could not afford.
You'll notice that the third column on page 26 indicates a surplus by 2006 and a decreasing Federal deficit every year up until that point. Which indicates a recovery period from the current recession.
...
A reason to believe that Bush's recent budget increases have not been too large to outgrow would be that there is a surplus predicted again for 2005.
Now we have wandered off from sound, researched, historical data to Bush's spin-meisters making up numbers to justify his massive tax cut. I have no faith, whatsoever, in self-serving predictions made by the Whitehouse.
It is also worth noting, that the current year's deficit can be considered responsible counter-cyclical fiscal policy. (Counter-cyclical refers to the business cycle, just to be clear on my intended meaning.) If the Federal Government leaves tax rates roughly the same, then it will receive increased tax revenues during booms and decreased tax revenues during busts. Both booms and busts are unavoidable parts of the business cycle.
And here's where I have a real problem with the Republican party. They took the boom times under Clinton (no assigning credit, just noting when they happened) and argued that the budget surplus was money that the government wrongfully took from the taxpayers. Bush said: "That surplus is not the government's money. That surplus is the people's money." This was how they justified their big tax cuts.
In the Republican party, surpluses are a reason to cut taxes. Recessions are reasons to cut taxes to "stimulate" the economy. Pretty soon they will be telling us that we should pay lower tax rates on days ending in "y". If, at the then-current tax rate, we had deficit spending in recessions and surpluses in boom times, then it would seem that the tax rate was just about right.
Democrats won't allow Bush to waste much money with their control of the House and Senate.
Unfortunately, Democrats currently control only the Senate, and that by the narrowest of margins.
You should also consider that the budget increases are not adjusted for inflation. This makes changes seem larger than they actually are.
That is a very good point and well worth considering. I'd be interested to see the budgetary numbers adjusted for inflation.
This has been an interesting and informative discussion. I thank you for your time and sharing your opinions and insights with me.
Thank you also for making this a thought-provoking and intelligent debate. I hope that this has done much to erase your belief that liberals typically resort to ad-hominem attacks rather than debating the points.