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Copyrights/Patents are Public Domain?
x3 sent us a link to an article running on InfoWorld that talks intelligently about intellectual property and the public domain. Its an extremely well written piece summing up what many readers of this site probably feel about the subject.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
The aurthor of the letter reprinted in the article forgot something:
The people in power wish to stay in power and they do that by bending to the will of the people that fund them (RIAA, MPAA, Disney, the like). The government does not serve the people anymore, if it ever did, It serves the businesses, the people who make the "campaign contributions," the holders of the intelectual property.
Help I'm a rock.
I've been talking up the problems of extended copyright for a few years now, without much success. My problem? I haven't used the argument that extending copyright law works against creativity and the authors. Copyright law, today, works for the corporation. Corporations, in turn, work hard to control congress which, in turn, controls copyright law. Is it any wonder that most of the complaints about sharing, copying, and otherwise circumventing copyright come not from authors but from corporations?
As for me, I'm a teacher. I break copyright every day. I hand out copies of poems, I photocopy sections of books, I encourage students to read books out of libraries instead of buying them. (I use libraries as an example of defeating copyright because they do what p2p does in a system that is legitimate only because it has been around for a long time.) At the end of last week I saw that kids had been downloading Kazaa and Bearshare to the school computers in order to get music. Good for them.
I like that the author likens this battle to the drug wars. The government has illegalized pot. The kids have no trouble getting it. They get in trouble when they are caught, so they do it surreptitiously. This puts them in more danger than the drug itself--by far. The over-reaching copyright laws, outrageous price-fixing by the music industry, and the control of the radio airwaves have brought about an underground system that works very well, will not likely be stopped, and will, eventually, be legitimate even if it's not legal.
Chalk this up to the short-sightedness of business, the reactionary nature of current politics, and the creative drive of people. The saying goes that information wants to be free. I'm not sure if that means that information wants to be free of charge, but I'm willing to bet that if a major music label started a Napster-style server through which we could download the new Peter Gabriel album for one dollar, there would be a line at the server for quite some time. That they have not done this means that many of us have either copied a friend's disc or downloaded the songs over GNUtella. And exactly how is the copyright law benefiting Gabriel and his label?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
If these people are so brilliant and independent, then they should crank out some new creative works if the copyrights on their old ones expire. It doesn't mean that they're forced to get a corporate job.
The reason for copyrights is to stimulate creative production, not to let a few lucky artists and their heirs or corporate sugar daddies sit on their collective asses for a century or more.
I think it's funny how you magically moded your post to be rated interesting just based on your subject line of "interesting"...
Back to the topic, I think you're right. If you look at musical history, you'll notice a lot of borrowing going on. I mean, even now. Danny Elfman's Batman theme resembles in no small way a piece of music for piano and orchestra by Rachmoninoff. I forget which one, but I think it's the 2nd...
An interesting point of the suppression of ideas created by this: Mozart was accused and had to stand in front of the king (mebbey) when he was a younger child. His crime? He had copied the mass music at church by keeping it in his head and writing it out when he got home. So, could we give Mozart the credit for being the first person to violate some form of artistic licensing? I would've liked to see the RIAA there on that one...
Now, let's think. If artists of that time period weren't allowed to copy from each other (Mozart was commended after he demonstrated how he did it) would we have even heard of any classical European master outside of the Bach family? I'm probably exaggerating (and I'm sure anyone who thinks so will prove me wrong) but the point of the matter is: the same technology (music in their days, computer in ours) that is supposed to bring us together can either do so, or can seriously put a cramp in my style.
Target
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
So 'the public' owned the telephone, and just leased it to Alexander Bell?
In a sense, yes. No one, Bell included, can come to an idea completely on their own. There has to be knowledge, inspiration, and feedback from others to make ideas viable. Like it or not, a collective (oops, I said the c-word) is from where ideas originate, and where ideas eventually will go in an infinite loop we call "building knowledge".
However, human survival relies on private ownership of tangible resources (at least in this country), whereas ideas are not tangible resources that can be locked down, or else they're not resources. The Founders realized this as well, so they struck a compromise. Since knowledge cannot be privatized for human survival, the use of knowledge can be legally restricted (at least in theory). This is for the good of the creator to be able to create, not to profit. Ideas were originally held in common, and then an innovator would come along and build on an idea in the public domain (e.g. Bell making the telegraph better). That innovator would get a legal monopoly for a short period of time to get resources to get better ideas, and those old ideas would go back to the public domain eventually for the public good.
If ideas really were private property, then there could be no innovation and no progress if powerless individuals had to pay royalties to the original holders of ideas (or more accurately, the corporations that bought/seized them) for eternity.
When 'the public' thinks it has a right to the product of my effort, then they can try and pry it out of my mind. I'd rather keep it secret than give it to someone who demands it's his.
If you keep your idea secret, which you have every right to do, then the idea is useless to everyone, including yourself. It's your intellectual and moral obligation as an innovator and a human being to share your ideas to allow general knowledge and wisdom to progress, but it's also the public's obligation to give you a limited monopoly on that idea to innovate, so long as we live in a capitalistic economy.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
The public needs to be reminded that the purpose of copyright is to help spread new ideas, not make money.
The purpose of copyright (and patent) laws isn't to spread new ideas--that goal would be done much easier if it was simply illegal to hide an idea.
Copyrights (and patents, but not trademarks) exist so the creators of new ideas / written works CAN make money, and thus are encouraged to keep on making new things.
Ergo, the often-quoted balance between "public good" and "private benefit" that is copyright. The private party wants to enjoy as much economic beneift as possible from their works. The public wants to just enjoy the works, as cheaply as possible and as often as possible.
Copyright is how we pay authors, artists, and computer programmers. (Let's just ignore the GPL for this ONE argument, can we?). It's not that it's main purpose isn't to make money; it's that we as a society are "hiring" IP producers to make IP, and if they don't continue to produce a re-evaluation of their agreement (copyright law) might be in order.