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Million-Dollar Donation To Fight Abusive Copyrights
WeekendKruzr writes: "There is a story on C|Net detailing how Duke University's law school received an anonymous gift of $1 million for the express purpose of funding '...advocacy and research aimed at curtailing the recent expansion of copyright law.' It's good to know that we have some well-funded idealists on our side, even if they are 'Anonymous Cowards.' ;^) This, combined with the recent rash of even large corporations running afoul of intellectual property law, could precipitate some tangible results in the next couple of years."
What a meager million bucks can do against multimillion dollar lobby? :)
I think it's very naive to expect any major changes and/or law corrections. A good commercial, asking people vote for candidates that support removal of opressive/excessive copyright restriction night be of more help.
Hyperom.com
While starry-eyed /. folk get uptight for a few minutes when they read about new technologies, the people who make the laws don't care about our complaints - we're not a big enough lobby or voting block.
Even more important, stricter copyright laws help the media corps sell more product, and GWB is in favor of anything that helps US corps sell more stuff.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
A donor who really wants to stay anonymous can do so pretty effectively. Personally, I think we should respect their wish. It's rare someone will cough up this kind of a chunk of change for the more general and abstract public good, and if they would rather not be recognized (and end up having every ogg hacker or yahoo with some open licensing scheme they've hatched begging them for pocket change, we should let them be.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The university knows. There is probably a contract that states the benefactor shall remain anonymous.
"I am an information consumer. Please explain how the DMCA protects me."
It protects your wallet from getting heavy.
While abuse of copyright and dwindling fair use law is bad, fundamentally those things which are copyrighted are created by the authors, and they should have the ability to control them. If they control them in an anti-consumer way, consumers can always boycott them. This isn't going to change the world tomorrow or the day after, but what's at stake? Movies, music, TV, books -- mostly entertainment.
The patent problem is horrid. Unlike copyright, where at least people might claim some rights based on creation, patent law is clearly corrupted. People patent things that are not inventions -- they patent "business methods" of dubious originality, they patent software methods which have been in use long before the patent filing ("oh, no documentation that you used it? no prior art, then"), and moreover, patents screw the little guys, because patents cost a metric fuckton of money to get, especially en masse. If I write a book, copyright protects me automatically, and filing a copyright is cheap. If I didn't want to file a copyright, nowadays technology gives me other irrefutable options -- like publishing MD5 checksums in the paper -- that are even cheaper. If patents are truly for novel inventions, then why are developers in the software industry constantly afraid of stepping on patents? If all that many people are coming up with something independantly, doesn't that imply that the patent holder was just the first to file on something obvious that followed from existing technology, instead of the inventor of something novel?
Moreover, with patents, we affect all of technology, from CS to biotech, and we stop innovation. Having to pay $10 more than you should for a Britney Spears CD isn't going to hurt the economy -- but having to pay too much for inferior technology for 25 years that no one can legally improve upon, well, that's going to hurt the economy. Patents on obvious inventions slow innovation, hurt growth, damage industries, restrict R&D -- and this effect cuts across industries.
I'm sorry, but this is a lot more damaging that whether or not you can legally rip and/or trade mp3s.
Actually, alot of the public does care, once made to understand.
Personally, I'm furious that I can't legally make a copy of Steamboat Willie to show to my kids. It's a piece of culture. It's history. It's not a commodity anymore. I should be able to say "look kids, here's the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon". But I can't do so unless Disney both decides to sell it, and I can afford it.
Just this weekend I explained this to an untechnical friend of mine. As soon as I explained that Steamboat Willie (and countless other pieces of culture) should belong to EVERYONE, not do Disney, he was confused. He truly did not understand the concept of 'Public Domain'.
His response was 'they can profit off Mickey Mouse, so they should keep it'
To which I replied, "Mark Twain's ancestors could profit off of Huckleberry Finn, but it's public domain. Profit isn't an issue. Copyright is a favor we grant creators. We own it. They stole it. This was exactly the same situation the founders of this country set up the law to prevent: a handful of corporations owning and controlling what we see, read and hear."
I actually watched as the hamster turned the wheels in his head. In an instant he was as pissed about the situation as I was.
This is our culture. This is our history. Whether any one person thinks any one piece of film, text, or music is trivial is irrelevant.
Fact is, in 100 years, when some kid needs to write a book report on 20th century culture, he'll be paying royalties.
So, in the end, we just need to increase public awareness, be it one person at a time. Your average Johnny Lunchpail doesn't realise what Public Domain is. They think copyright is forever.
That said, 1 million dollars to pay a bunch of future lobbyists isn't, IMO, the answer. 1 million dollars for a TV or radio campaign would be much better spent.
People are pissed when they understand the problem. We've all been taken advantage of.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think the purpose is being missed.
This isn't being used to fight of lobby bad laws.
It is to try and find out what is good and bad about the existing laws.
We don't know the cost benefit curve for copyright length, they are going to try and define it.
(yes, that is a simplification)
Many "content creators" want infinite copyrights, to milk out as much as possible.
Many "content consumers" want short copyrights to copy and create derivative works for little or no cost. (that isn't the only reason)
At some point the time is long enough to have benefit for "creators" and short enough for "consumers" that both sides can be "happy". They are trying to find out what that point is.
Please remember that after the "fun" music&dance Intellectual Property fight of the 0's, we are likely to get the "less fun" IP fights over new and improved DNA sequences that may make you die (or not) of hunger, or whatever else.
*This* is what has to be said to wake the general public up.
In what way is limiting the scope of a government-granted monopoly "legislating altruism"?
Wasn't that the price of a 30-second commercial during the last couple years of Seinfeld?
As nice as this is, a million dollars just isn't going to cut it against Big Media. Until we make this a national policy issue, one where actual numbers of voters are involved, we're pretty much screwed. Until then though, I suppose a million bucks can fund some studies and research to strengthen our position from a logical standpoint once the public realizes that they're being screwed.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Why is it when Chinese people copy a dvd/cd they are pirates, but when an American does it they are an idealist?
-man with eye patch
But the real question is this: Why would someone do this? Certainly someone with a cool million lying around did something to make that money. What is to be gained by an individual donating that much money to a cause that has its roots in opposing the big corporation and "the man"? Likely, it isn't because it was just philosophically the "right thing to do".
This happens all the time, when Joe Rich Guy donates 1M to Greenpeace, he can use it as a tax deduction. Same thing here.
So no, it's not pure philanthropy...it's using money that would have gone to the government to further a personal cause.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
The ironic thing about all this is that by perpetually extending copyrights, corporations are hurting their own profits. If copyrights were capped with a time period of 50 years or less, like they used to be over a century ago, the content creators would have now become able to make money from derivative works based on other people's stories and music from the mid and early 1900s, just as Disney made a fortune by creating derivatives of works from the 1800s.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
If you have money to donate, and you would like to effect change in our legal system, whether your issue is copyright reform, drug laws, forced adoptions, police abuse, whatever, please don't give your money to some bureaucracy. In every locality there are idealistic attorneys who struggle with these issues from day to day, who work 16 hour days, and who are not especially interested in being rich or famous. Every day attorneys such as these grind it out against big corporations and rich law firms who have unlimited funds for investigators, expert witnesses, court reporters and other resources that little-guy litigants need to have a fair shot at beating their big, rich opponents. Find 10 such attorneys -- ask around at the courthouse or ask a reporter for your local legal newspaper -- and send them each anonymous checks for $100,000. Set up a tax deductible foundation to do this so you can get the tax deduction.