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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.
...lack of copyright protection for authors stifles work and leaves them poor. The same probably holds true for the musicians in a record contract. While the following article is about British authors in America who held no copyright, the result would be the same for any author in any country. (Dickens's 1842 Reading Tour: Launching the Copyright Question in Tempestuous Seas) Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work, sending brilliant, independant minds back to the doldrums of corporate America.
I will take this opportunity to ask a burning question:
If a work is created in the United States and the copyright is valid for the 75 magic years, what happens in another country where the copyright is only 10 years after the work is created?
Can it be used in that other country?
What happens if a work is created in that other country - can the US Copyright Padlock be used for the full 75 magic years (in the US) or is the originating country authoritative on the length?
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
The whole idea behind patents, copyright, etc. was to empower individual inventors, scholars, and other creative people for the public good. Instead, current IP law empowers corporate non-persons (who are only people on paper) for private advantage, totally turning the original concept on its head.
The real question now is, "Can IP as a concept be salvaged to protect powerless innovators, or has it been twisted and exploited to the point where we must get rid of it entirely?"
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
So 'the public' owned the telephone, and just leased it to Alexander Bell? The 'public' had no telephone until Bell invented it. It cannot lease him those thoughts, or that creativity. He earned it on his own.
While I have problems with the current system, collectivist nonsense like this is not the answer. 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.
It's just as bad when RMS complains he has a right to my source, whether or not I want to give it away. This talk does not enhance freedom.
IANAExpert, but I think IP as a concept can be salvaged with two simple steps: make it ownable only by individuals and non-transferable.
First, this will keep (say) Disney from directly owning their movies. Instead, they will have all employees sign "exclusivity" contracts: the employees still own their IP, but only the contracted company can use it (or assign further users). This may sound wierd and exploitable (or to the uninitiated like a transfer of IP) but it leads directly into phase 2.
You may not transfer your IP to anybody at any time, not even as part of an estate. When you die, so does your IP. Things with multiple authors (most patents, movies, & music, collaborative books, etc) will of course stay within copyright / patent until the last author dies (or the natural term ends) because all of the authors have IP in the work. However, once all of the authors kick the bucket, the artwork instantly hits the Public Domain no matter how long the natural term is.
This method is of course the most simple as it would have put most of the items at issue in Eldred v. Ashcroft into the PD, while still allowing Disney, RIAA et. al to lobby Congress for longer & longer terms without destroying the whole precarious structure.
Do you like Japanese imports?
How is this a good article? It looks to me like a very poorly thought out editorial to me, indeed.
For example the author cites the idea that most commercial value of IP is realized during the first three years. Maybe for a pop tune, or a movie, but certainly that is not the case for the vast majority of patents. New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification; the average time to market for an industrial invention in most industries is 7 years. A shorter term for patent coverage is not appropriate in most cases.
Perhaps the current period of copyrights is over-long, but how does that translate to the concept that such laws don't serve a useful purpose? It's a complete non-sequetuer.
The fact is that the history of the industrial revolution, and in particular the great lengths that were taken by companies to conceal the technologies they were using prior to the development of the patent system clearly show the value of a contract between govenrment and the inventor where public disclosure is exchanged for an exclusive right to practice the invention.
The alternative is to go back to the practices of the time where technological instrumentailities were kept as secret as possible by their inventors, to the great detriment of technological progress, and indeed society as a whole.
.nosig
Bullshit. First of all, an automobile is a physical thing that you can be deprived of the use of by someone taking it from you. You can't deprive someone of the use of an idea, song, book or newspaper by copying it.
Bullshit, an automobile is NOT a physical thing.
An automobile is not more physical then a music CD.
90% of the money you pay for an automobile is:
o Savtybelts, invented by Saab. Patented. Granted to the public without fee for use without licens fee.
o Airbag, invented by ???
o Electronic stability system, invented and patented by Bosch.
o Anti blocking brakes, invented and patented ??? Bosch, I asume.
o Electronic ignition and electronic injection
o Robotic manufactoring lanes, manufactoring technology and know how,
o modern material like plastics -- hard inflamable, carbon fibres and aluminium alloys
o engines made from magnesium and aluminium alloys
o Steel mixtures, steel plants for production
o aluminium frames
o unbrakable glasses, sunlight blocking, anti heating
o tiers by Bridgestone, lasting 50k miles
I do just stop here. You can continue the reign of topics which are nearly non physical and cover only KNOWLEDGE, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and similar stuff nearly endless.
I repeat: 90% of the costs of a car. 90% of the price you pay for a car, you do not pay for that few kilograms metal and plastics. Neither do you pay it for the look or the name of the brand. You pay it for the astronomic high number of working hours spend by scientists and engineers in labs to figure minimal improvements showing up each year in a new product line of a car maufactor.
90% of our economy is based on "making knowledge to money". Without intellectual property, 90% of YOU all would be out of job. The only working jobs currently needed are: farmers, medical, truck drivers, house builders, craftmen. Just count the number of farmers needed to feed 1,000,000 people. In all industries you probably know about, the amount of workers is astonishing low. It decresesd to 1% of the amount it had around 1900.
We are no longer a workers society, in fact we are not a workers society since the end of world war II. We are a society of people offering service to other people, like booking a journey and booking a flight or dishing a meal in a restaurant.
And how do we come to be able to offer such a service? Bu having the knowledge how to do it! By having the knowledge to build up "machines" taking over a hughe amount of "work".
However a lot of services are dying right now. The get replaced by pure knowledge. The knowledge of a business man knowing how booking should work and the knowledge of a programmer who knows how a monkey can book a flight via the internet.
Second, the whole idea of copyright was to promote the publication of ideas to further science and the arts, not to create an artifical market for economic gain.
In our days the whole idea, and the soule necessity of IP laws is: to create an artificial market. Indeed. Without that market we had riots in the streets, as only a few of us had a job, a income and money to spend for food.
You only see that your "god given right" to take a DVD movie is covered by IP laws. You only see: "I like to have a movie for $5
You hate comunism
As long as you only see the tip of the ice berg
Its intersting that so many people are concerned about that stuff. So easy to circumvent: don't by music from RIAA corporations anymore. Don't buy DVDs of Time Warner or who ever you dislike. Don't go into the movie theatres.
Just buy private sold music and private made movies. And then? No money for the big business
Its easy to stand up and to go for change. But no: you want the stuff those guys make. You only do not want it for the price they charge.
Alternative: stop using your internet connection
Stop using electric current. The plants producing the current are 30 years old, surely payed off. The lines bringing the current are old, either. The oil is incredible cheap
For what do you pay electric current, then? For nothing of course. According to your logic at least.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
P.S. a better IP law surely is needed, but abolishing IP laws is not the way to go
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.