Slashdot Mirror
The Copyright Fuss Revisited
mpawlo writes "I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw introducing a framework for the debate on how we should obtain a balance between users and authors where the author has good incentives to innovate, but where society at large is not too restricted due to the author's previous
innovations. I am afraid that I personally have few practical solutions to introduce, but you might find my text useful as a quick introduction to what the copyright fuss is all about and why you should care."
"I was gonna clean my apartment, but then I got.. wrote a piece for Greplaw..."
No... I don't think that was it...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The evil corporates want you by the balls. Even if you're a girl.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Go Republicans!!!!
And don't come back too soon, now.
cleaning your apartement.
"I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw"
wow... when I skip cleaning my apartment, I usually end up playing a game of BF1942 or perhaps watch a bit on the tube. This guy goes out and writes a rather long essay on intellectual property that actually reads fairly well.
I think one side of the copyright argument already has all the "framework" they need, ie:
"We've got the advantage, we're keeping it that way, and that's the end of the discussion. We don't care what you have to say. SH!!!"
Is no retroactive copyright protection. The terms of copyright at the time you create something should be the same terms that apply to it forever. You only need and know what the incentive is before you create it. Changing it after the fact does nothing to increase your incentive.
It's all about giving credit where credit is due. Plagiarism is the result of violating this. Credit is sorta like /.-karma in a way....
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
While the article has lots of good information, I did not come away with an understanding of the author's "framework."
Perhaps a diagram, or an outline summary would help.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Copyright does NOT protect innovation. Look at Tolkien & how just about every "innovation" he made has been swiped by the fantasy genre. Same thing for the GUI, same thing for music, etc, etc.
PATENTS protect ideas, innovations, and inventions. Copyright should be pared back by whatever means necessary so it can stop doing the job of Patents (or trademarks!).
When you hear a song you like - commit it to memory and learn to play all the instruments and record your own identical version of the song. Pfff, on second thought - just rip a copy.
Anyway - I believe this model makes open source the good solution for cases in which it has previously been thought not to be suitable. Such as cases where companies need to invest huge amounts of money just to get the "seed done" - I believe that the ransom model really for example enables co-operation between research companies to produce something that requires huge resources and capital - and get paid for doing it - and still eventually have the solution released under open source - developing it even further.
Copyright laws will always be messy if only beacuse there is no cut and dry options. A law that says all works are free to anyone undermines the purpose of creating those works (open source software being somewhat of a exception to this) and one that never releases information into the public domain is also a less then perfect solution. and while this is a gross simplification it's applicable to almost every aspect of copyright laws (fair use and the like). for all the ranting about these laws on slashdot very rarely do i see a realistic purposed solution to the problem, which suggests that it probably won't be solved in the near future, or maybe ever.
I don't think you can reform copyright law while treating copyright for different types of things differently. I don't, genuinely, believe that authorship of a computer program should be essentially different from authorship of a book. With all the protections that entails.
Which is not to say that copyright law in itself isn't screwed up. But the whole MS problem isn't a copyright issue, it's a monopoly issue. And the music industry will eventually either die or adjst with the times.
The real problems with copyright lie with things like the insanely long copyright period and the narrowness of 'fair use' rights for *everything*, not just music. There are middle schoolers out there getting lawsuit threats over fan art galleries. Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse. These are big problems, and things that seem to not be well addressed by the article.
You know what, I am so sick of people writing boring-ass essays just re-iterating the same things that everyone always says in essays on copyright. I know I'll get slapped for trolling, but I'm not, I just can't get excited over one more wannabe grad student whose big mission in life is to fight for better copyright laws by submitting long boring essays to websites that noone will read except people who agree with them anyway.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I can't afford to keep missing out on Troll Tuesday.
Reference site(written in Japanese)n try
Site for GIGA BEAT developers http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/GIGABEAT
Applet development information for GIGABEAT
(The software use consent contract (library) and the software use consent contract (sample source) are described.)
http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/GIGABEAT/develop_e
The support page of Toshiba Linux http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/indexj.htm
Toshiba GIGA BEAT product page http://www.toshiba.co.jp/mobileav/audio/
2channel(famous Japanese BBS) http://pc.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/linux/1038780907/
>> I am afraid that I personally have few practical solutions to introduce
WELL, THEN, THANKS FOR NOTHIN!
I think the DMCA and Sonny Bono CEA are a good start, though. We didnt need you after all.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw ...
I hope you also skipped cleaning the bathroom, and took the time to spell check your article.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Some troll, apparently looking for something to do after calling people to check if their refrigerator is running, threw a page widening post onto the greplaw article. Thanks for the maturity. I'm sure your family is so proud ("John is lawyer, Chris is a doctor, and Billy Bob wastes the time of hundreds of people a day.")
To read the article without the comments (thus avoiding the troll and allowing you to see the article correctly formatted), try this link.
In Finland, taxi drivers are now ordered to pay royalties if they play music, even if it is on the radio, if they have passengers in the car.
two churchs were also sued on copyright infringement for singing Chistmas hymns....
the story is here.
I would have posted this as a story, but seeing as how my approval rate is 1:50 its not worth the time or effort anymore
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Efficiency, Innovation, and Transparency - The Future of Intellectual Property Rights
- - - - - -
1. Experimental copyright in action
2. Freedom of speech challenged
3. Open code legislation
4. "Lagom" copyright for computer programs
5. Music and the threat of efficiency
6. Compulsory licensing
7. The future of intellectual property
- - - - - -
- Why are they after me?
In the movie Antitrust, Tim Robbins, with his usual excellence, plays the part of the Bill Gates character. When the Robbins character blurts out his desperation it is because the US Department of Justice is on his tail, exploring the innermost secret of the code in Robbins' computer programs. In one of the crucial scenes where Robbins' character eventually loses control over his code, Robbins still cannot understand why his protégé Ryan Phillippe's character is working against him. After all, the code is mine, Robbins' character concludes. Should not Robbins as the copyright proprietor be able to decide just what to do with his computer programs? Should not the legislator protect the Robbinses of our world from the efforts of self-appointed Phillippe freedom fighters to release and reveal the Robbins code to the world? Only to a certain point.
1. Experimental copyright in action
The number one full-scale experiment on intellectual property in history is now in practice. I am referring to the new types of licenses for computer programs: free software and open source. We are looking at an experiment that will define the future of intellectual property.
Free software, as defined by Richard M Stallman, rests on four foundations:
* You are free to run the program, for any purpose.
* You are free to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is ex-ceedingly difficult.)
* You are free to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
* You are free to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.
Free software is very simple in its construction. It uses the provisions of copyright law whereby the author has an exclusive economic right in his work. In copyright law, computer programs are regarded as literary works. Thus, the author of a computer program can enter into any agreement regarding his work. One such agreement is the GNU GPL. GNU GPL stands for GNU General Public License, while GNU is a "recursive" abbreviation of Gnu's Not Unix. GNU is the manifestation in practice of free software and Richard M Stallman's attempt at building a free Unix system.
The most famous part of the GNU system is the kernel developed by Linus Torvalds under the name Linux. The GNU GPL that lays the foundation of free software is enforceable both under the principle of freedom of contract and through copyright law. According to Stallman's legal counsel, Professor Eben Moglen, the GNU GPL has yet to be successfully challenged. In a decision handed down in Boston during the spring of 2002, US District Judge Patti B. Saris has ruled on the preliminary injunction motion in MySQL AB vs. Progress Software Corp. That case is often referred to as the first test in court of the GNU GPL. It is a complicated case with several components. In the matter of Progress's distribution rights under GNU GPL, Saris did not grant an injunction. In the public hearing, Judge Saris made clear that she sees the GNU GPL as an enforceable and binding license, but that as long as Progress Software appears to be presently in compliance with the GNU GPL, there is probably no irreparable harm being caused to MySQL AB, and therefore no case for a preliminary injunction.
Open source is different from free software. Open source is based on a definition designed by Eric S Raymond and Bruce Perens. The basic idea behind open source is simple: when programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. Raymond and Perens designed the open source definition. Open source is less restrictive than GNU GPL and free software, but it does not just mean access to the source code. Open source is not a license, but a set of rules that any license claiming to be open source must follow. The most important clause in the open source definition requires the distribution terms of open-source software to comply with the following criteria:
"The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost - preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed".
The Open Source Definition is described as a bill of rights for the computer user. It is not a developed philosophy like free software, but maintains a more prag-matic hands-on approach.
It is often said that Rome gave civilisation the law. That may be true, but someone else invented intellectual property law. According to Stewart - an ac-claimed scholar on international copyright law - the early Greeks and Romans had a developed notion of authorship, which was confined to the desire of teachers and philosophers to be credited for their own teachings. This was a moral question, thus not regulated in law.
Most people agree that the first copyright law was the English Statute of Anne passed in 1709. The system used today in most Western societies derives from the Berne Convention of 1886. Some things have changed over time, but only in favour of stronger protection of the author and the copyright holder. The one common principle is simple and almost globally applicable: with few exceptions, you need the copyright holder's permission if you want to make new copies or create a work deriving from the author's work within seventy years of the author's death.
2. Freedom of speech challenged
The Romans took a broad view of contract law and other essentials of civil law. Details may vary over time and between jurisdictions, but there is little contro-versy about the basics. Copyright, however, is widely debated these days. American scholars Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman and Siva Vaidhyanathan produced the most famous recent works in the area, following a long European tradition of debating the author's rights. You may think that the time for copyright protection - life plus seventy - is too long. You may think that fair use is too limited. You may think that the Russian programmer Dimitry Sklyarov should never have been prosecuted under the DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) for designing an anti-circumvention device for e-books. You may think all these things, and Lessig, Litman and Vaidhyanathan very eloquently put them all, but I think the issue of copyright protection of computer programs - of code - is different in principle.
In his book "Code and other laws of cyberspace" Lessig has demonstrated that code, i.e. programmed functions of computer systems, can be more important than law. Computer programs should never have been protected as literary works in the first place. That just happened. But now that it is time for a change, I think the great experiment that we are all taking part in is a wonderful way - through freedom of contract - to experiment towards a new legal take on code.
Free software and open source could together be described as open code. With open code, I mean that the source code is available to the user and the development of the computer program is decentralised. It is often argued from the experience of Linux, Apache and Sendmail that the distributed development process of open code is good for security, speed of development and interoperability.
Lessig argues in his book "Code" that code could be more important than law, when it comes to free speech in computer networks. Lessig concurs that we should think about the architecture of cyberspace - its "code" - as a kind of regulator; that this regulator is likely to regulate more than law does today; that "doing nothing" is to lose some of the freedom the Internet now guarantees. The code - by not being transparent - may threaten freedom of speech. What if the code in itself makes certain types of expression void? Freedom of speech would then be stifled through the architecture of the online, Internet or IT environment. And this could happen without any political debate.
Furthermore, open code is good for consumer and customer confidence and trust. Would you trust a product that you are not allowed to disassemble? What if the product carried all your personal data? The trust and transparency argument is in my opinion the strongest argument for open code legislation.
3. Open code legislation
One of the big issues of free software during 2001 was whether Richard M Stallman was for or against a codified GNU GPL. Hence, did Stallman - the father of free software - propagate a law to support his beliefs?
Tim O'Reilly tried to press the issue in a couple of articles and seemed convinced that Stallman and his colleague Bradley M Kuhn were for GNU GPL legislation. O'Reilly suggested a system where developers themselves choose the rules under which they release software, not very much different from the system in effect today. Eric S Raymond wrote a satire to prove how wrong Stallman and Kuhn would be to suggest a GNU GPL law. Raymond posed Stallman and Kuhn the question whether they would get a law passed making proprietary licenses illegal if they could. Stallman and Kuhn leaned slightly towards the legislative point of view, but never gave a straight answer whether they were for or against a codified GNU GPL. Stallman and Kuhn wrote: "We believe, though, that with time, as more and more users realize that code is law, and come to feel that they too deserve freedom, they will see the importance of the freedoms we stand for - just as more and more users have come to appreciate the practical value of the free software we have developed."
As stated above, copyright law is often questioned. In an article in Wired 1994, John Perry Barlow wrote that copyright was not designed to protect ideas or bits of information but only to protect ideas as expressed in fixed form. Hence, according to Barlow copyright is dead in the digital age.
Copyright was made to create an incentive for authors and scientists to create and explore and give them a guarantee that they would profit from their creations. A copyright system that is too strict in favour of the authors will work as a hinder and not an incentive for creativity. In the epilogue of his book Copyrights and copywrongs Siva Vaidhyanathan states that "a looser copyright system would produce more James Bond books, not fewer. Some might be excellent. Other might be crappy. Publishers and readers could sort out the difference for themselves. The law need not to skew the balance as it has."
4. "Lagom" copyright for computer programs
In Sweden we have one word that I have yet to find anywhere else. The word is "lagom" and it defines the space between too much and too little. Lagom could be translated into "moderate" or "just right", it is the situation where the glass is not half-full or half-empty - it is lagom filled. We need "lagom" copyright for computer programs because computer programs are written incrementally. That means that it is important to be able to reuse previously written code. Hence, you need to be able to write the computer program without the original author being present in your project. The aforesaid is a strong argument for a codified GNU GPL, since one of the cornerstones of GNU GPL is the right to reuse previously written code. Further, examination of the code is important for interoperability. Interoperability means that computer programs should contain interchangeability, one should be able to substitute one computer program for another, and connectability, that is the ability of one computer program to function with another.
The European debate on interoperability ended in 1991, when the European Union introduced a directive on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs. The directive exempts ideas underlying any element of a computer program, including its interfaces, from copyright protection. It also specifically permits disassembly of computer programs in order to achieve interoperability. Transparency is therefore ensured, but without access to the source code of the computer program it would still be hard to disassemble and interpret the functions of the computer programs. The GNU GPL wants to solve this by always forcing the developer to disclose and distribute his software.
Would not a modern democratic society benefit from a plurality of irreconcilable and incompatible doctrines? We need the GNU GPL, but we also need proprietary software and open source software. That would make the case for GNU GPL legislation void. However, as Lawrence Lessig concludes in his book Code, the code may in itself work against plurality. If we choose to believe Lessig we might want to reconsider regarding computer programs in the same way as literature.
In his book "The Future of Ideas" Lessig suggests a reform of software copyright law forcing computer programmers to disclose their source code when the copyright expires. Lessig would protect computer programs for a term of five years, renewable once. Copyright protection would in Lessig's proposal only be granted if the author put a copy of the source code in escrow. The source code should be disclosed to each and everyone when the copyright expires, perhaps through a server with the U.S. Copyright Office.
That much said, Lessig is very reluctant to make open code a law. In The Future of Ideas, Lessig states that the government should "encourage" the development of open code. Such "encouragement" should not be coercive. According to Lessig there is no reason to ban or punish proprietary providers. But this view is hardly consistent with Lessig's view on the future of software copyright law. In Lessig's future system proprietary providers are severely punished. They lose about 100 years' protection, which is life of the author plus seventy years compared to five plus five years and then full disclosure. Lessig's system is very similar to WIPO's proposed system of 1970 where copyright protection should be traded for putting the source code in escrow. However, the European development of copyright seems to have been founded on two principles:
1. more copyright (stronger IP laws) is good,
2. everyone should think 1, if only through harmonization.
Lessig's ideas are not new from a European perspective, but they have revitalized the European copyright debate. In Europe, the debate over the copyright system has not been as intense as the US debate in the recent years. This is probably because the European debate over copyright has been ongoing for the past century and the US debate is quite new. The focus of the European debate on intellectual property development concerns patents on life and software. The European patent system is influenced by the US patent system and more things can be patented in practice than the legislator intended. This creates an interesting situation where the strong European copyright is exported to the US and the strong US patent system is imported, thus creating stronger intellectual property rights in both the US and Europe respectively. The strong US patent was a consequence of the relatively weak copyright protection. Therefore the new legislation creates a situation where the intellectual property protection of computer programs is stronger than ever. But is it good for innovation, and how will it affect the society's need of transparency?
In an article published in the Stanford Technology Law Review, Mathias Strasser argues that any move towards more open code would be highly undesirable from societal point of view, as it would destroy the market-based incentive structure that currently encourages software producers to develop code that consumers find attractive. By applying the utilitarian incentive theory and the Lockean labour-desert theory, Strasser tries to explain why the current copyright system is the best. According to the desert-labour theory, natural resources were given to people by God and title may be lost or abandoned, but anyone might gain title to anything, even resources held in common, if one used labour to convert the natural resources into something useful.
Stallman and Moglen have yet to convince me that the GNU GPL and free software philosophy is the final answer to intellectual property protection of computer programs. However, I am not convinced that neither Strasser nor Lessig is right in their view of the software copyright. But I choose to believe Lessig when he states that code is law. The two fundamental principles of European copyright development do not address this issue. The code layer in the networks may in my opinion affect the freedom of speech at large. I do not think that copyright is dead in the sense Barlow told us in 1994. Copyright is still around, and even if it's not effective in the digital age - as observed by Barlow - the courts enforce copyright. Therefore, we need to find a new way to deal with copyright protection of computer programs. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Infosoc EU directive (2001/29/EC) and prohibition on reversed engineering is not the right way to develop copyright. We need more transparency, but still we need to consider the points raised by Mathias Strasser and Tim O'Reilly. It is important that the incentives for larger businesses remain even if the code is more open through a change in the copyright law. If such a change is made, we need to consider the unique characteristics of computer programs. We should not continue to compare computer programs to literary works. Books are not software.
What we need is balance. What we need is "lagom" copyright protection for computer programs. I guess you should take the main parts of the current patent and copyright system and catalyse these systems into the new "lagom" copyright directive. We need to start thinking about these issues soon if we're not aiming to keep our grandchildren stuck with the current system for life.
5. Music and the threat of efficiency
In the past, legislators have designated a private sphere in the life of each individual as unregulated. In your private sphere, you could do many things, as long as they concerned only yourself and maybe some friends. The private sphere was considered your home. You could exercise your fair use rights to copy music and papers for personal or academic use. The Internet tampers with this ancient tradition.
Your means of communication are much more efficient than legislators could have foreseen when the copyright statutes were designed. Making a copy of something for your friends is completely different in the Internet age. You can send the copy to a thousand of your friends with very little effort at a very low cost. It is extremely efficient.
Legislators did not want to regulate the private sphere and did not recognise a need for doing so. Ten years ago, when the Swedish Copyright Act was revised, this was still the position held by the legislators. They were aware of the common practice among friends of copying and distributing mix tapes of favourite songs. Swedish legislators reasoned that it was not a good thing to try to regulate the private sphere, since the legislation would be very hard to enforce. In regulation, one should try to refrain from creating rules that cannot be enforced, since they erode the populace's confidence and trust in the law as something logical and beneficial to society.
But the digitalisation of copyright and the Internet have made it much easier to obtain control over and monitor copyright violation, even if such activities are conducted in the private sphere.
In the mix tape example, there was a physical barrier preventing the communication from reaching efficiency, since distributing the tapes en masse would be prohibitively expensive. When Xerox introduced the copier in 1959, several smaller printing houses were forced to close. In 1966, Xerox introduced the Telecopier (now known as the fax machine). Xerox made copying possible over the physical barrier of distance, but it was still possible to make money on printed works. The improved means of communication and distribution of information represented by the copier and fax machine did not put all journalists and writers out of work, and neither machine was prohibited. Still, it looks like the musical equivalent of these Xerox machines - Napster and its followers - will be prohibited or at least sued out of business. Some intermediaries will die because of the new technology, just like the smaller printing houses died out when the copier was invented. But is this really an argument for prohibiting technical progress as such?
So, what is the proper balance between the music industry's wishes and the sanctity of your personal sphere? How efficiently will copyright holders and record companies allow us to communicate with each other?
6. Compulsory licensing
For the record, I do not think that music should be free as in free beer. But I do think we need compulsory licensing to stimulate creativity and innovation. Music would then be free as in free speech (but that is another story). It is important that the legislators - and the courts - give users the freedom and the right to a private sphere. Even though enforcement and control of the private sphere could increase with new technology, I do not want record companies and Microsoft to become a private alternative to the Orwellian surveillance state. Stay away from my hard drive. Please. And let me communicate in the most sophisticated and efficient way available, even if it means that you risk losing money from my possible contributory or direct copyright infringement.
To ensure that the record companies still obtain revenues, it is important that the developers in the post-Napster era create commercial alternatives to the user-driven free beer networks. With the right commercial package, I am certain that record companies and artists can find a future in the post-Napster era without monitoring everything in the private sphere. After all, the fact that the record companies would stay away from my hard drive wouldn't mean that they waive all rights to digital music.
7. The future of intellectual property
Communication is important, and no matter what your favourite lobbyist and favourite lawyer tell you, technical progress and innovation should not be sacrificed on the altar of copyright. We need a balance between users and authors where Tim Robbins' character in Antitrust has good incentives to innovate, but where society at large is not too restricted due to Robbins' previous innovations. We also need a copyright commons where innovators may innovate and create without having to call their lawyer before they strike a chord on the guitar.
All this may sound easy to agree upon in theory, but in practice these propositions raise a lot of important questions. What should you do with current intellectual property proprietors? How will you keep incentives for very costly types of innovations, like drugs, computer programs and big screen movies? In theory, it is easy to stifle innovation through limiting copyright protection, regardless of area. In practice, it is more complicated as the case for "lagom" copyright illustrates.
The conversation continues.
penguin-powered users: The Linux version is free as in free as in speech as well as free as in beer.
winshit users: The windows(uncaptialized to show disrespect) version is free as in herpes due to an outlook bug.
Mac users: The Mac version is free as in beer, but only if you denounce communism and respect my authoritie!
M$ employees: may use the Linux version, but must burn their systems should the contract the 'free as in herpes' one.
Damn Commies: See M$ employees.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw
If I was this guy, I would be the most prolific contributor to Greplaw. Legal scholars would be citing my works as I am always looking for ways to put off cleaning my apartment.
Thank heavens for slovenliness, or we would have one fewer article to throw on the copyright flame-heap here.
If any GrepLaw admins are reading, please consider a higher default threshold for comments. At zero the "page widening troll" has made the story unreadable. I could register and set my own default, but it's easier to just forget about it. Other potential members probably feel the same.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
There are compulsory license rules for the songwriter's copyright. Any artist can cover another artist's work, provided he or she pays the compulsory license fee. I agree with the original article that there should be compulsory licensing for the physical and digital recording. It would also clear up issues with "sampling" as done by rap and other artists.
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse.
And therein lies the dilemma. Disney has made several fortunes by taking something that was already in the public domain and building on it. I don't know if the Brothers Grimm even get mentioned in the credits of the Disney films that are based on their stories. Now we see Disney purchasing politicians and legislation to extend their copyrights in perpetuity.
I wonder if anyone at Disney recognizes the irony of it all...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
if you're an 'artist' and are adamant about being paid for each and every copy, don't create anything that can be easily copied by your admiring public. That includes audio, video, writing, software, or ip in general. Face it, your just trying to cash in on the 85% profit margin of being able to produce once, make easy copies and distribute them. But now your customers have the ability to make easy copies and share them. Face it. Instead, go into sculpture, crafts, paintings, custom autos, landscaping, live performances, etc etc etc.
NO, this is not a troll, just a clear headed statement of fact. If you want to press an audio cd and sell copies, fine. Just realize there's going to be 'shrinkage' from maximum profit and you can cuss and stomp, beg for govt assistance, try to get consumer devices banned, mandate DRM in every electronic device, but the genie is already out of the bottle and everybody has one now. Artists and publishers are just going to have to adapt to the new environment or go extinct.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
you know how to spell, so what.
Do you have an idea in your head?
No you weren't.
Berto
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=02/11/3 0/050236&mode=nocomment and that's taken care of.
Yeah yeah, I reply to him so he feels special, but hey, maybe someone can use this.
-- Tino Didriksen / Project JJ
I just turned in a long, yet crappy, essay on copyright and what should be done about it. I'm so sick of this shit now, I know what needs to be done, I know all the facts (well, most the facts), but nothing is going to get done with these criminals in elected positions.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
>>> "I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead..."
I bet that didn't work and your girlfriend -still- made you clean up.
.
semantics are everything!
I refuse to read any article that begins with "In the movie..."
What needs to change is all the whining about it. Face it, for software, copyright is just about irrelevant - it's the licensing terms that it's released under that are important. Those are what determine your rights in relation to a work. The length of copyright is also moot in relation to software - that fabulous C program you wrote last night has a shelf life somewhat shorter than bell-bottom jeans.
For those of you that want to bring up Walt Disney - do you really think society would benefit greatly if the copyright on Mickey Mouse ended? Give me a break. The only people who would benefit are those who wish to make a buck or two off of someone else's work. I have no tears for them.
At one time in our recent history a short copyright length actually benefitted society because information was costly and not as easy to find. So putting information in the public domain increased access and was a real benefit to society. That's not true today. Information is cheap and difficult to avoid. Who cares if it's going to be 120 years (or whatever the number is) before John Irving's novels fall in to the public domain? You want to read one - check one out of the library, it's free.
You pissed because music is more expensive than you'd like? Listen to the radio - it's free! And, by listening to the radio and not purchasing the music you give the music industry a reason to lower their prices.
Whatever you do, just shut up and stop whining.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Copyright is not about protecting innovation for the author, it is about protecting it for the public good. Copyright was given to encourage authors to produce so that their innovations would be made available to the public. Copyrights protect innovation from falling prey to potential authors other priorities.
Apartment cleans you!
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. Really, I am sorry.
... is copyright-rich deep pockets (like Disney) would have no incentive to lobby for longer and longer copyright terms. They care about profits over the next 5 years, tops. So if there's nothing Disney can do to extend the copyright-milking period of Steamboat Willie, they're not going to bother with extending the copyright of Treasure Planet II into the next century. No retroactive copyright law changes could effectively mean the end of big business's meddling with freedom of speech [of course, we'd still have the DMCA to worry about, but that's another thread....]
ScienceSeeker.org
Girls Scouts must pay to sing songs...
"Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the four million copyrighted songs written or published by Ascap's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don't pay, Ascap warns, may be violating the law."
the story
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The harder the entertainment industry make it, the faster they will expire.
Yeah, that's the ticket. (© Jon Lovitz, SNL Entertainment and NBC Broadway Video).
Sigs are bad for your health.
These people claim to own/control any representation of Albert Einstein. This would fall under Trademark protection, right?
The Roger Richman Agency, Inc., specializes in representing entertainment and historical personalities for a variety of licensing applications, including advertising, merchandising, premiums, promotions, film & television programming, theatrical productions and look-alike/sound-alike services. Exclusive licenses are available in most product and service categories. Licenses include full persona usage, consisting of name, voice, signature and image (photo, illustration, animation and/or look-alike).
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Please excuse my ignorance on this because I haven't read the essay yet, but from my perspective, the problems aren't with the authors, but with the corporations that own the authors work. I don't think the author gives a rats ass who does what with something he/she created once their dead, only the cooperation that owns the rights of that authors work cares. I personally say that when someone dies, so does the copyright, END OF STORY!!!
(That's actually pretty fucking funny... ;-)
Dude...
I liked JFK.
--------------
p00p.cx
It is interesting to me that drug companies are allowed patents that run out relatively soon (15 or 20 years, I think) compared to copyrights, and they have to put in tons of money and research to create their products, but we'll give anyone who can throw together a few words and make a poem, song, or book, or who can draw or animate a mouse (Mickey), a 75 year copyright, and Congress the option to extend that indefinitely, when they certainly didn't have to spend billions to develop a lifesaving or life-extending product.
Things are definitely screwed up around here. But make no mistake, I am not defending the big druggies either, just pointing out the oddity.
As folklorists, they just collected the stories from Random German People.
but what if part of your incentive was the speculative possibility that copyright terms would be extended in the future?
Then the formulation of your incentive violates the spirit of the "limited Times" language of the U.S. Constitution's grant of copyright power to the Congress.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anybody is allowed to take quotes from a copyrighted source
Really? Then why did songwriter Frank Silver get busted for borrowing a four-note hook from a Handel piece when it was still under copyright?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Your comment is humorous in intention, but it sheds light on a problem.
"I only get exclusive rights for 90 years?!? I don't think that's enough. OTOH, 15 years from now, the term will be increased to 110 years. So yeah, I guess doing this work is worth it, after all."
for a nice, stable economy, one wants nice stable copyright laws so inventors don't have things to worry about things like that at all. They should be worrying about one thing only, their invention. As is, companies that want to maintain their monopoly are paying to have the copyright terms extended, throwing monkey-wrenches in to the planning of anyone other than those who are controlling the changes (read: not legislators).
This benefits the companies, sure, but these actions shed light on a key principle when talking about length of a copyright.
Copyright, patent, and trademark are all just forms of IP law.
The use of the term "intellectual property" as a blanket term for copyrights, patents, and trademarks is misleading because copyrights, patents, and trademarks are more different than similar. They are covered in separate Titles of the United States Code. They have nothing to do with one another other than that they grant monopolies to a person or corporation to produce a specific sort of good or service and can be sold or licensed to other parties.
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, has something to say about this phrase.
Perhaps Tolkien did not discover "trade dress" and the C&D letter in time.
Or perhaps, " In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work" (17 USC 102). This doesn't apply to trademark law (the foundation for trade dress), but trademark law kicks in only when there's a likelihood of confusion as to the origin of a good or service.
microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox.
Apple licensed from Xerox. Microsoft initially licensed from Apple, but then after Lotus v. Borland weakened look-and-feel copyright, Microsoft borrowed "ideas" (17 USC 102) from Apple.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Property, as we know it, is a legal definition set down in our tradition by John Locke. It is confined in Locke's conception as things which can be found in the common, improved by individuals, and which also become scarce when they are used. Locke's example is apples growing on trees become a man's property when he "mixes his labour" with them in the process of collection. A collection of shiny apples is surely improved over scattered apples amongst bruised and wormeaten ones. When another person happens on the collected nice apples, it would be wrong to deny the first man the benefit of his "labour" by taking apples from his pile. (maybe I remember this totally wrong.. correct me if so)
If I set some music down on digital media, I have surely improved the media, and it would be wrong to deprive me of the fruits of my labour by taking my improved media from me, but if you improve your own blank media, indistinguishable from mine, by setting music down from memory as you remember hearing it on mine, you have not deprived me of the fruits of my labour.
Intellectual property is a fabrication and an illusion. It does not perform the same as the concept of material property. There is no ethical base for an Intellectual Property Right. Maybe, in a teleological sense we can justify an Intellectual Property Privilege, but we should all just stop using "IP" and Intellectual Property terms until we are sure we all agree exactly what they mean. We should understand them at least as well as the basis for "life, Liberty, and property" which became the model philosophy for American politics.
Information does not have the property of scarcity like Locke's apples. The more you share information, the more there is! (Let's not split hairs, I can demonstrate this aside..) Good or bad, news or propaganda, sharing magnifies it. This is opposite of real property. The more you share a bowl of rice, the less there is to go around. Our laws should not gloss this fundamental difference over.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Copyrights already extend beyond the author's death, so no incentive can come from that side. On the other hand, one could argue that a media corporation, like Disney for instance, would have an incentive to pay more to authors if they speculated on the possibility that copyright terms would be extended in the future, but it's not so. Disney only uses works that have already gone into the public domain.
You managed to get "Winshit" and "M$" in teh same post! You must be an uber-leet hax0r master! Dost thou strike at Bills dark heart from your parent's basement?
Dipshit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
We agree that an invention benefits the society most when it is in the public domain -- anyone can use and benefit from it. However, we agree that in order for individuals in a capitalist society to have incentive to invent, they must be able to capitalize on their invention. Hence the "limited times" in the constitution for an inventor to profit from his mind.
For the greatest benefit of the society at large, we want the "limited times" to grant just enough incentive to the inventors to invent at high rates (my idea would be to have the copyright term be a function of the average amount of time taken to invent something). One can assume rather assuredly that the length of a copyright should most certainly not be as long as a generation, otherwise entire generations would never know the free access to the idea.
As is, the terms are something like life+50 years. Life plus 50 years?? look at it like this: people who were born after Mickey Mouse was copyrighted and have died since then (there's a lot of them, 1920's-) never benefitted from any of Disney's creations in the public domain. Does this benefit society as a whole, or the corporate monopolies who own the copyright?
Copyright simply elevates art on part with real goods
Actually, it elevates art on par with real estate. Like the space of land on this planet, the space of artistic expression is limited. There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables. There are also only a finite number of melodic hooks of a given length in the Western musical scale. When you stake your claim, you get a monopoly on the work you copyrighted, plus all the works that are substantially close to it. It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose. Once almost all the space has been claimed, there is no room to innovate, and all new works must be licensed by the owner of the particular space in which they fall. Spider Robinson wrote a short story about this situation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Efficiency, Innovation and Transparency posted by mpawlo on Saturday November 30, @02:44AM from the thanksgiving-readings dept. How should we obtain a balance between users and authors where the author has good incentives to innovate, but where society at large is not too restricted due to the author's previous innovations? In this article I try to give a brief presentation of the ideas and the recent debate over this hard to solve issue, both in respect of music and computer programs. I am afraid that I personally have few practical solutions to introduce, but you may find this text useful as a quick introduction to what the copyright fuss is all about. Efficiency, Innovation, and Transparency - The Future of Intellectual Property Rights - - - - - - 1. Experimental copyright in action 2. Freedom of speech challenged 3. Open code legislation 4. "Lagom" copyright for computer programs 5. Music and the threat of efficiency 6. Compulsory licensing 7. The future of intellectual property - - - - - - - Why are they after me? In the movie Antitrust, Tim Robbins, with his usual excellence, plays the part of the Bill Gates character. When the Robbins character blurts out his desperation it is because the US Department of Justice is on his tail, exploring the innermost secret of the code in Robbins' computer programs. In one of the crucial scenes where Robbins' character eventually loses control over his code, Robbins still cannot understand why his protégé Ryan Phillippe's character is working against him. After all, the code is mine, Robbins' character concludes. Should not Robbins as the copyright proprietor be able to decide just what to do with his computer programs? Should not the legislator protect the Robbinses of our world from the efforts of self-appointed Phillippe freedom fighters to release and reveal the Robbins code to the world? Only to a certain point. 1. Experimental copyright in action The number one full-scale experiment on intellectual property in history is now in practice. I am referring to the new types of licenses for computer programs: free software and open source. We are looking at an experiment that will define the future of intellectual property. Free software, as defined by Richard M Stallman, rests on four foundations: * You are free to run the program, for any purpose. * You are free to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is ex-ceedingly difficult.) * You are free to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee. * You are free to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements. Free software is very simple in its construction. It uses the provisions of copyright law whereby the author has an exclusive economic right in his work. In copyright law, computer programs are regarded as literary works. Thus, the author of a computer program can enter into any agreement regarding his work. One such agreement is the GNU GPL. GNU GPL stands for GNU General Public License, while GNU is a "recursive" abbreviation of Gnu's Not Unix. GNU is the manifestation in practice of free software and Richard M Stallman's attempt at building a free Unix system. The most famous part of the GNU system is the kernel developed by Linus Torvalds under the name Linux. The GNU GPL that lays the foundation of free software is enforceable both under the principle of freedom of contract and through copyright law. According to Stallman's legal counsel, Professor Eben Moglen, the GNU GPL has yet to be successfully challenged. In a decision handed down in Boston during the spring of 2002, US District Judge Patti B. Saris has ruled on the preliminary injunction motion in MySQL AB vs. Progress Software Corp. That case is often referred to as the first test in court of the GNU GPL. It is a complicated case with several components. In the matter of Progress's distribution rights under GNU GPL, Saris did not grant an injunction. In the public hearing, Judge Saris made clear that she sees the GNU GPL as an enforceable and binding license, but that as long as Progress Software appears to be presently in compliance with the GNU GPL, there is probably no irreparable harm being caused to MySQL AB, and therefore no case for a preliminary injunction. Open source is different from free software. Open source is based on a definition designed by Eric S Raymond and Bruce Perens. The basic idea behind open source is simple: when programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. Raymond and Perens designed the open source definition. Open source is less restrictive than GNU GPL and free software, but it does not just mean access to the source code. Open source is not a license, but a set of rules that any license claiming to be open source must follow. The most important clause in the open source definition requires the distribution terms of open-source software to comply with the following criteria: "The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost - preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed". The Open Source Definition is described as a bill of rights for the computer user. It is not a developed philosophy like free software, but maintains a more prag-matic hands-on approach. It is often said that Rome gave civilisation the law. That may be true, but someone else invented intellectual property law. According to Stewart - an ac-claimed scholar on international copyright law - the early Greeks and Romans had a developed notion of authorship, which was confined to the desire of teachers and philosophers to be credited for their own teachings. This was a moral question, thus not regulated in law. Most people agree that the first copyright law was the English Statute of Anne passed in 1709. The system used today in most Western societies derives from the Berne Convention of 1886. Some things have changed over time, but only in favour of stronger protection of the author and the copyright holder. The one common principle is simple and almost globally applicable: with few exceptions, you need the copyright holder's permission if you want to make new copies or create a work deriving from the author's work within seventy years of the author's death. 2. Freedom of speech challenged The Romans took a broad view of contract law and other essentials of civil law. Details may vary over time and between jurisdictions, but there is little contro-versy about the basics. Copyright, however, is widely debated these days. American scholars Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman and Siva Vaidhyanathan produced the most famous recent works in the area, following a long European tradition of debating the author's rights. You may think that the time for copyright protection - life plus seventy - is too long. You may think that fair use is too limited. You may think that the Russian programmer Dimitry Sklyarov should never have been prosecuted under the DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) for designing an anti-circumvention device for e-books. You may think all these things, and Lessig, Litman and Vaidhyanathan very eloquently put them all, but I think the issue of copyright protection of computer programs - of code - is different in principle. In his book "Code and other laws of cyberspace" Lessig has demonstrated that code, i.e. programmed functions of computer systems, can be more important than law. Computer programs should never have been protected as literary works in the first place. That just happened. But now that it is time for a change, I think the great experiment that we are all taking part in is a wonderful way - through freedom of contract - to experiment towards a new legal take on code. Free software and open source could together be described as open code. With open code, I mean that the source code is available to the user and the development of the computer program is decentralised. It is often argued from the experience of Linux, Apache and Sendmail that the distributed development process of open code is good for security, speed of development and interoperability. Lessig argues in his book "Code" that code could be more important than law, when it comes to free speech in computer networks. Lessig concurs that we should think about the architecture of cyberspace - its "code" - as a kind of regulator; that this regulator is likely to regulate more than law does today; that "doing nothing" is to lose some of the freedom the Internet now guarantees. The code - by not being transparent - may threaten freedom of speech. What if the code in itself makes certain types of expression void? Freedom of speech would then be stifled through the architecture of the online, Internet or IT environment. And this could happen without any political debate. Furthermore, open code is good for consumer and customer confidence and trust. Would you trust a product that you are not allowed to disassemble? What if the product carried all your personal data? The trust and transparency argument is in my opinion the strongest argument for open code legislation. 3. Open code legislation One of the big issues of free software during 2001 was whether Richard M Stallman was for or against a codified GNU GPL. Hence, did Stallman - the father of free software - propagate a law to support his beliefs? Tim O'Reilly tried to press the issue in a couple of articles and seemed convinced that Stallman and his colleague Bradley M Kuhn were for GNU GPL legislation. O'Reilly suggested a system where developers themselves choose the rules under which they release software, not very much different from the system in effect today. Eric S Raymond wrote a satire to prove how wrong Stallman and Kuhn would be to suggest a GNU GPL law. Raymond posed Stallman and Kuhn the question whether they would get a law passed making proprietary licenses illegal if they could. Stallman and Kuhn leaned slightly towards the legislative point of view, but never gave a straight answer whether they were for or against a codified GNU GPL. Stallman and Kuhn wrote: "We believe, though, that with time, as more and more users realize that code is law, and come to feel that they too deserve freedom, they will see the importance of the freedoms we stand for - just as more and more users have come to appreciate the practical value of the free software we have developed." As stated above, copyright law is often questioned. In an article in Wired 1994, John Perry Barlow wrote that copyright was not designed to protect ideas or bits of information but only to protect ideas as expressed in fixed form. Hence, according to Barlow copyright is dead in the digital age. Copyright was made to create an incentive for authors and scientists to create and explore and give them a guarantee that they would profit from their creations. A copyright system that is too strict in favour of the authors will work as a hinder and not an incentive for creativity. In the epilogue of his book Copyrights and copywrongs Siva Vaidhyanathan states that "a looser copyright system would produce more James Bond books, not fewer. Some might be excellent. Other might be crappy. Publishers and readers could sort out the difference for themselves. The law need not to skew the balance as it has." 4. "Lagom" copyright for computer programs In Sweden we have one word that I have yet to find anywhere else. The word is "lagom" and it defines the space between too much and too little. Lagom could be translated into "moderate" or "just right", it is the situation where the glass is not half-full or half-empty - it is lagom filled. We need "lagom" copyright for computer programs because computer programs are written incrementally. That means that it is important to be able to reuse previously written code. Hence, you need to be able to write the computer program without the original author being present in your project. The aforesaid is a strong argument for a codified GNU GPL, since one of the cornerstones of GNU GPL is the right to reuse previously written code. Further, examination of the code is important for interoperability. Interoperability means that computer programs should contain interchangeability, one should be able to substitute one computer program for another, and connectability, that is the ability of one computer program to function with another. The European debate on interoperability ended in 1991, when the European Union introduced a directive on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs. The directive exempts ideas underlying any element of a computer program, including its interfaces, from copyright protection. It also specifically permits disassembly of computer programs in order to achieve interoperability. Transparency is therefore ensured, but without access to the source code of the computer program it would still be hard to disassemble and interpret the functions of the computer programs. The GNU GPL wants to solve this by always forcing the developer to disclose and distribute his software. Would not a modern democratic society benefit from a plurality of irreconcilable and incompatible doctrines? We need the GNU GPL, but we also need proprietary software and open source software. That would make the case for GNU GPL legislation void. However, as Lawrence Lessig concludes in his book Code, the code may in itself work against plurality. If we choose to believe Lessig we might want to reconsider regarding computer programs in the same way as literature. In his book "The Future of Ideas" Lessig suggests a reform of software copyright law forcing computer programmers to disclose their source code when the copyright expires. Lessig would protect computer programs for a term of five years, renewable once. Copyright protection would in Lessig's proposal only be granted if the author put a copy of the source code in escrow. The source code should be disclosed to each and everyone when the copyright expires, perhaps through a server with the U.S. Copyright Office. That much said, Lessig is very reluctant to make open code a law. In The Future of Ideas, Lessig states that the government should "encourage" the development of open code. Such "encouragement" should not be coercive. According to Lessig there is no reason to ban or punish proprietary providers. But this view is hardly consistent with Lessig's view on the future of software copyright law. In Lessig's future system proprietary providers are severely punished. They lose about 100 years' protection, which is life of the author plus seventy years compared to five plus five years and then full disclosure. Lessig's system is very similar to WIPO's proposed system of 1970 where copyright protection should be traded for putting the source code in escrow. However, the European development of copyright seems to have been founded on two principles: 1. more copyright (stronger IP laws) is good, 2. everyone should think 1, if only through harmonization. Lessig's ideas are not new from a European perspective, but they have revitalized the European copyright debate. In Europe, the debate over the copyright system has not been as intense as the US debate in the recent years. This is probably because the European debate over copyright has been ongoing for the past century and the US debate is quite new. The focus of the European debate on intellectual property development concerns patents on life and software. The European patent system is influenced by the US patent system and more things can be patented in practice than the legislator intended. This creates an interesting situation where the strong European copyright is exported to the US and the strong US patent system is imported, thus creating stronger intellectual property rights in both the US and Europe respectively. The strong US patent was a consequence of the relatively weak copyright protection. Therefore the new legislation creates a situation where the intellectual property protection of computer programs is stronger than ever. But is it good for innovation, and how will it affect the society's need of transparency? In an article published in the Stanford Technology Law Review, Mathias Strasser argues that any move towards more open code would be highly undesirable from societal point of view, as it would destroy the market-based incentive structure that currently encourages software producers to develop code that consumers find attractive. By applying the utilitarian incentive theory and the Lockean labour-desert theory, Strasser tries to explain why the current copyright system is the best. According to the desert-labour theory, natural resources were given to people by God and title may be lost or abandoned, but anyone might gain title to anything, even resources held in common, if one used labour to convert the natural resources into something useful. Stallman and Moglen have yet to convince me that the GNU GPL and free software philosophy is the final answer to intellectual property protection of computer programs. However, I am not convinced that neither Strasser nor Lessig is right in their view of the software copyright. But I choose to believe Lessig when he states that code is law. The two fundamental principles of European copyright development do not address this issue. The code layer in the networks may in my opinion affect the freedom of speech at large. I do not think that copyright is dead in the sense Barlow told us in 1994. Copyright is still around, and even if it's not effective in the digital age - as observed by Barlow - the courts enforce copyright. Therefore, we need to find a new way to deal with copyright protection of computer programs. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Infosoc EU directive (2001/29/EC) and prohibition on reversed engineering is not the right way to develop copyright. We need more transparency, but still we need to consider the points raised by Mathias Strasser and Tim O'Reilly. It is important that the incentives for larger businesses remain even if the code is more open through a change in the copyright law. If such a change is made, we need to consider the unique characteristics of computer programs. We should not continue to compare computer programs to literary works. Books are not software. What we need is balance. What we need is "lagom" copyright protection for computer programs. I guess you should take the main parts of the current patent and copyright system and catalyse these systems into the new "lagom" copyright directive. We need to start thinking about these issues soon if we're not aiming to keep our grandchildren stuck with the current system for life. 5. Music and the threat of efficiency In the past, legislators have designated a private sphere in the life of each individual as unregulated. In your private sphere, you could do many things, as long as they concerned only yourself and maybe some friends. The private sphere was considered your home. You could exercise your fair use rights to copy music and papers for personal or academic use. The Internet tampers with this ancient tradition. Your means of communication are much more efficient than legislators could have foreseen when the copyright statutes were designed. Making a copy of something for your friends is completely different in the Internet age. You can send the copy to a thousand of your friends with very little effort at a very low cost. It is extremely efficient. Legislators did not want to regulate the private sphere and did not recognise a need for doing so. Ten years ago, when the Swedish Copyright Act was revised, this was still the position held by the legislators. They were aware of the common practice among friends of copying and distributing mix tapes of favourite songs. Swedish legislators reasoned that it was not a good thing to try to regulate the private sphere, since the legislation would be very hard to enforce. In regulation, one should try to refrain from creating rules that cannot be enforced, since they erode the populace's confidence and trust in the law as something logical and beneficial to society. But the digitalisation of copyright and the Internet have made it much easier to obtain control over and monitor copyright violation, even if such activities are conducted in the private sphere. In the mix tape example, there was a physical barrier preventing the communication from reaching efficiency, since distributing the tapes en masse would be prohibitively expensive. When Xerox introduced the copier in 1959, several smaller printing houses were forced to close. In 1966, Xerox introduced the Telecopier (now known as the fax machine). Xerox made copying possible over the physical barrier of distance, but it was still possible to make money on printed works. The improved means of communication and distribution of information represented by the copier and fax machine did not put all journalists and writers out of work, and neither machine was prohibited. Still, it looks like the musical equivalent of these Xerox machines - Napster and its followers - will be prohibited or at least sued out of business. Some intermediaries will die because of the new technology, just like the smaller printing houses died out when the copier was invented. But is this really an argument for prohibiting technical progress as such? So, what is the proper balance between the music industry's wishes and the sanctity of your personal sphere? How efficiently will copyright holders and record companies allow us to communicate with each other? 6. Compulsory licensing For the record, I do not think that music should be free as in free beer. But I do think we need compulsory licensing to stimulate creativity and innovation. Music would then be free as in free speech (but that is another story). It is important that the legislators - and the courts - give users the freedom and the right to a private sphere. Even though enforcement and control of the private sphere could increase with new technology, I do not want record companies and Microsoft to become a private alternative to the Orwellian surveillance state. Stay away from my hard drive. Please. And let me communicate in the most sophisticated and efficient way available, even if it means that you risk losing money from my possible contributory or direct copyright infringement. To ensure that the record companies still obtain revenues, it is important that the developers in the post-Napster era create commercial alternatives to the user-driven free beer networks. With the right commercial package, I am certain that record companies and artists can find a future in the post-Napster era without monitoring everything in the private sphere. After all, the fact that the record companies would stay away from my hard drive wouldn't mean that they waive all rights to digital music. 7. The future of intellectual property Communication is important, and no matter what your favourite lobbyist and favourite lawyer tell you, technical progress and innovation should not be sacrificed on the altar of copyright. We need a balance between users and authors where Tim Robbins' character in Antitrust has good incentives to innovate, but where society at large is not too restricted due to Robbins' previous innovations. We also need a copyright commons where innovators may innovate and create without having to call their lawyer before they strike a chord on the guitar. All this may sound easy to agree upon in theory, but in practice these propositions raise a lot of important questions. What should you do with current intellectual property proprietors? How will you keep incentives for very costly types of innovations, like drugs, computer programs and big screen movies? In theory, it is easy to stifle innovation through limiting copyright protection, regardless of area. In practice, it is more complicated as the case for "lagom" copyright illustrates. The conversation continues. Mikael Pawlo Mikael Pawlo is an associate of the Swedish law firm Advokatfirman Lindahl. On nights and weekends he works as an editor for the leading Swedish open source and free software publication Gnuheter. He is also contributing editor of the Harvard Berkman Center publication on Internet law issues, Greplaw.org.
At some point the buyers dry up completely because they figure it's easier to wait for the time limit than to pay.
In their graves? Either I misunderstand the ransom model, or the time limit won't expire until 70 years after the author dies, which is likely to be close to 70 years after the clients die.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Both the Lion King and Atlantis borrow character likenesses and artistic style from Japanese cartoons.
Disney's Atlantis is allegedly substantially similar to Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
Disney's The Lion King is allegedly substantially similar to Kimba the White Lion.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think this a big problem. We're preaching to the quire, submitting opinions to sites that are filled with people who agree with us.
I think Slashdot should create a political action committee, with the goal of furthering the politcal viewpoints reflected by the 5-Insightful posts around here. It can collect donations simply by holding out its hand around here, and maybe with tie-in items at ThinkGeek. If we want to beat the corperations, we have to play their game first.
When this group needs guidance, it can simply pose questions in an Ask Slashdot format. Remember, any troll can post here, but you have to read Slashdot posts for quite a while to become a moderator, and disagreed with moderators get ejected via M2. Quite simply, it takes far too many people to corrupt Slashdot's moderation system.
It is possible that two or more completely opposing positions can get modded up to +5 in the same thread, but I would suggest that reflects that the Slashdot community is devided on the issue, so the Slashdot PAC should take no position on that issue (although, it could direct Congresspeople to the +5 comments so they can make up their own informed opinions for once...) and move onto the issues where there appear to be a near-unanimous verdict on Slashdot.
We don't need to convince ourselves anymore, we need to start reaching the people who haven't even heard of Slashdot.
Nothing a well-constructed client-side stylesheet can't fix:
li li li li li li ul { padding-left: 0 ! important }
li li li li li li ol { padding-left: 0 ! important }
Adjust nesting threshold to taste.
Mickey Mouse will NEVER be in the public domain because his likeness is protected by Trademark law.
There has to be a likelihood of confusion of origin of the product. For instance, one company sells inexpensive VHS video tapes of "Bugs Bunny" short cartoons whose copyright Warner never renewed under the two-28-year-terms system of 1909 law. They get away with it by conspicuously disclaiming any connection to Warner on the package: "This video cassette contains audiovisual works in the public domain. XYZ Video is in no way affiliated with the author of these works."
But actually, Disney lost copyright on Mickey Mouse when it failed to provide a copyright notice on works first published when notice was required. Of course, Disney could file a frivolous lawsuit, but then the company and its retained lawyers risk a countersuit for barratry.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If I create (=grow) a flower in my greenhouse, I OWN this and is perfectly allowed to sell it, with or without stem and/or roots, at excatly the price and with the limitaions of its use I want to. I might not sell it, but that is my right.
If I sit down and create (=write and compile) a piece of software or write a book or an article, why should I not own the exclusive right to that piece of work? Why is it wrong of me to hire 200 lawyers to write a huge EULA, and charge for each use of this work? I understand, as a technician, that my program would benefit from being open source, but why is open source anything but a (technically) superior way to license your work?
How are basic human rights (free speech) at danger here?
Please cut it out for me.
Nice job on this article. The one point that really troubles me is near the bottom:
"To ensure that the record companies still obtain revenues, it is important that the developers in the post-Napster era create commercial alternatives to the user-driven free beer networks."
The reason this troubles me is that it's based on a misconception that there is any inherent relationship between record companies and copyrights. There is absolutely no reason for record companies and copyrights to be connected. People in the record business could have chosen to conduct their business as most people do, by performing services and moving on. They didn't have to extort copyright ownership from musicians in exchange for these services. Doctors who save your life with surgery don't demand a share of your income for the rest of your life. Truckers and railroads don't demand a share of the cargo they haul, or attempt to regulate what you do with it after they deliver it.
Record companies are pretty much the only ones who make money from record sales. Standard recording contracts take all production and promotional expenses out of the musician's share of the profit, usually leaving nothing. What record sales do for musicians is provide exposure, which translates to performance gigs, which is how musicians actually do make money. Musicians have tolerated this arrangement for a century because they had no reasonable alternative. Now they can get that exposure by distributing their music freely. I believe musicians will gradually move away from physical CDs, and electronic distribution will become the norm.
There will still be a need for promotional services, but they need not be connected to copyrights. The multi-billion dollar advertising industry has managed to thrive without demanding ownership of the rights to the products they sell. There is certainly no reason to artificially maintain any business advantage record companies got from technology that is becoming obsolete.
I agree that copyright should be limited to encourage the ongoing supply of public domain "raw materials". But here's another thought: what if the work becomes SO well known that it is a de facto trademark for the corporation that paid for its creation?
Everyone says Disney is the heavy here, so let's use them as an example. If Mickey Mouse falls into the public domain, he is so synonymous with Disney the corporation that any derivitive use of him would affect Disney's reputation. Porno Mickey or Mickey as anti-hero would tarnish their reputation as a family-friendly company. Is this fair?
In other words, at what point does copyright stop and trademark begin?
A few years ago, they hassled the city of Winnipeg for putting up some plaque for Winnipeg the Bear. Which was named for the city. Which was donated to a zoo in England. Which inspired the Winnie the Pooh stories in the first place. Disney said that it couldn't mention Winnie the Pooh. (Canada Post is now doing commercials about the story -- hopefully they told Disney to pound sand, but probably some deal was worked out.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I ahve a practical solution. It's detailed over at mediAgora
Principles:
* Creators should be credited and rewarded for their work.
* Works can be incorporated into new creative works.
* When they are, all source works should be credited and rewarded.
* Customers should pay a known price.
* Successful promotion of work should be rewarded too.
* Individuals can play multiple roles - Creator, Promoter, Customer
* Prices and sales figures should be open
* Relationships are based on trust and reputation
* Copy protection destroys value
Goals:
* Creators have 3 main goals - getting heard, getting credited and getting paid
* Customers want to find works and pay a fair price
* Creators set the price, customers decide to pay it (or not)
* Promoters have an incentive to promote Works, but not to compete with other promoters for the same work
* Working within the system is more attractive than subverting it
The author owns his property, the users use it under whatever terms he dictates. This is balance - the right to private property ownership, the right to dispense with ones property in a manner of ones choosing, without coercion.
Property ownership isn't time limited, so why should copyrights be so? I suspect that what you're proposing is more along the lines of a 'balance' between producers and looters. No thanks.
The really powerful bit in here is about code becoming or supplanting law. This is strong stuff. The beauty of good law is that it is transparent. Everyone has the same power to use/abuse it. I'm concerned with the Bush admins imprisonment of hundreds of people with no trial in sight because it uses the tools of law (police, fbi, courts, etc) without any of the corresponding transparency. This is just one small example of how law can be made bad (even with the best of intentions) simply by cloaking it and keeping it from view.
/government evolution is too slow. So, the technology will be the law. Closed technology presents grave danger to such simple freedoms as freedom of speech since the medium for much of that speech is controlled, through closed code, by corporations. Even something as simple as Corel's or Microsoft's proprietary formats for word processing are examples of speech being limited when thought of in this way.
Now, consider that the law is tracking about twenty to thirty years behind the pace of computing and communication. I don't expect law to catch up. Technology evolution is too fast and law
I'm working to use open software, to support open software law, and to promote the use of open software by others. Why? It's not because I hate Microsoft. It's because I see us going through something similar to 1776. There are great minds at work here, trying to carve out space for freedom. I can't do much (I don't have the brains for it) but I support those who are looking out for me.
Code is law. Code is becoming law. Either way, this is powerful and important stuff.
One last thing: how come the majority of computer/internet users don't give a damn?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
At least they have the honesty to use the word "may". Unlike the RIAA and MPAA which have issued letters and press statements which give the impression that they write the laws, the ASCAP at least uses the word "may" indicating they are aware that they are not the ultimate authority on this issue.
I guess it depends on what constitutes a "public performance". Given that the Boy Scouts were determined to be a private organization by the courts, and hence are allowed to exclude gays, then I don't see how singing songs at their camps constitutes a public performance subject to royalty payments.
I'm curious to see how this plays out in the courts.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
From the article: "The one common principle is simple and almost globally applicable: with few exceptions, you need the copyright holder's permission if you want to make new copies or create a work deriving from the author's work within seventy years of the author's death."
Interestingly enough, the US's largest trade partner doesn't follow this "almost globally applicable" rule! Canada's copyright law lasts for only 50 years after the author's death. Makes me want to buy up some bandwidth and host some old movie archives! Why hasn't this been done before, here or in other countries with less-ridiculous copyright terms?
The article says, "In copyright law, computer programs are regarded as literary works."
This brings up a Serious Question: how many programmers actually get the form from the copyright office, pay the fee, and file for copyright *on their source code*, as one would normally do with a literary work such as a novel??
I don't recall the details offhand, but you must file to be eligible for certain protections.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You don't have to "file" for a copyright or get forms from anywhere, at least in the USA. Every thought put into writing (or typing) since April 1, 1989 is automatically copyrighted whether it bears a copyright notice or not. If you choose to include a copyright notice it affects the type and amount of infringement damages you can sue for.
For those of you who don't want to bother or who can't, the BBS has postings of some emails from customer care.
Apparently the source code available is only what is posted. And when asked for modified GPLed code, the request was refused. Obviously the support person didn't know the significance of his/her remark, but he/she blatantly admitted to violation of GPL. Also, all software is licensed under Toshiba, and not GPL.
I think this is a case of a bunch of clueless or clueful developers banking on the assumption no one will or can sue them anyway.
Epson printers apparently use Net/BSD to avoid GPL.
This is BIG NEWS for slashdotters if you ask me. Or does everyone already admit GPL is just a cherry that comes with free code?
That's not what I'm talking about. One of my clients is a tech-rag writer, and he's always going on about how he had to register each article with the copyright office (pay the fee, file the form, submit hardcopy of the copyrighted item), and that this must be done within 5 years of publication, because otherwise he can't sue the various folk who've infringed his copyrights.
Difference apparently being not whether the material is copyrighted (that being the default state for any publication), but rather whether said copyright is *registered* so you can protect it (by prosecuting or suing infringers).
Occurs to me that if copyright for GPL'd source has not been *registered*, this could severely weaken its case in the event that a GPL-breaking lawsuit ever arises. I realise that not everyone can cough up $30 to file every time they release updated source. But it might behoove major projects to register final versions.
I'm not clear on the legal details, because my client rattles on about copyright issues while I'm head and shoulders inside his computer and not really paying attention. (We have a wee difference of opinion about the DMCA.. he thinks it's wonderful and is sure I would too if only I knew it better; I think it should be hauled into the street and summarily shot.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I was going to write a simple, elegant proposal that would solve the copyright dilemma to the complete satisfaction of all interested parties... but instead I cleaned the refrigerator.
*sigh* Time to be a geek. :)
The "Uruk-hai" were the offspring of Orcs and Men, bred by Saurman. Orcs couldn't abide harsh sunlight nor travel great distances, and were cowardly and such. Saruman bred them with humans to create a "super-orc" which could do those things.
As far as an orc, that's uncertain. Since Morgoth was not God, and only God can create incarnate beings, he could not have "created" the orcs from scratch. So one explanation--the one presented in The Silmarillion anyhow; I haven't read the last couple books of The History of Middle Earth--is that Morgoth captured some Elves, perhaps before the other Valar found them, and tortured and corrupted them, turning them eventually into orcs.
Tolkien didn't invent goblins, or the word "orc", but he was the first to use them in that sense. I believe the Old English word simply meant a generic monster.
I think you bring up an excellent point GePS, about limiting copyright terms to less than a generation (which is a variable amount, obviously, but a fixed one could be easily decided upon). It really struck a chord with me when thinking about the sheer number of people born after the 1920's but who have since died or soon will (next 20 years) before good ol' Mickey Mouse, in his first incarnation, will be in the public domain. Some great names would be included in that list.
You would think at least one supreme court judge would see the value of this and come to their senses.
On another note, the crazy thing to me is that while the purpose of the copyright laws is to enable inventors and authors, etc., to profit from their original creations, there is nothing that says that after their works move into the public domain that they can't still profit from them, just that others can as well. This creates competition, which in turn usually creates a best-product-for-the-best-price-wins scenario, which usually benefits society as a whole far better than the original idea. But, I repeat, it certainly doesn't stop authors and creators and even the big companies, i.e. Disney, from still promoting and selling their original brands and products even after it moves to the public domain.
Copyright is a government-mandated monopoly.
ALL monopolies are economically invalid.
Therefore copyright is totally wrong and should be repealed.
Lest idiots think nothing would be produced, do note that things were produced for thousands for years before the idiot governments thought up the notion of copyright.
Get a grip...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
But nothing compared to the lots and lots of books created after the existence of copyright laws.
... indeed, they would likely benefit greatly from it. The only people who would suffer would be publishers, but with the internet, publishers should rightfully be relegated to the role of providing a paid service to artists (and competing with one another to do so), rather than the robber barrons of culture they have been allowed to become for the several centuries.
When copyright was created, the number of published books plummeted to merely a third of their former diversity. That is a clear situation where one can compare apples to apples: the current state of the artistic environment immediately before, and after, copyrights were imposed.
Anything else is extraordinarilly disingenuous, ignoring the effects of a geometric climb in population, deployment of new and more effecient publishing technologies, and so forth, which are orthogonal to the effects of copyright.
Indeed, later increases in published material have more to do with increases in human population and deployment of technology than it does with copyright, and even those increases are dwarfed by the amount of derivative 'fan fiction' and unpublished works that have been created with no desire for profit whatsoever (many of which are technically illegal under current copyright law, as is, by the way, having a few friends over to watch a movie).
There are all kinds of alternatives to the absurd situation we have now, in which cartels dominate entire artforms by leveraging a system of government entitlement monopolies designed to favor publishers over artists, and both over the rest of society. These alternatives include tax incentives, small punitive taxes on anauthorized works with some or all of the proceeds going back to the orignial creater, etc. and require neither monopoly entitlements nor wealthy patronage.
Copyrights in the digital age must be reformed. To enforce the kinds of entitlement monopolies publishers have enjoyed since the British Crown created the first publishing cartel in the 15th century will require legislation so draconian as to make the former communist eastern block appear liberal in comparison, governance equipment in every home, office, car, and every portable electronic device that both monitors and reports a user's data usage habits, and a crippling of new emergent technologies that would have made any luddite of the 19th century, and every buggy whip manufacturer of the early 20th, proud.
Indeed, that is precisely what Disney and others are advocating, to which the only sane response of anyone who values any of the freedoms our forfathers died to create and protect must answer: if the choice given is one between the artists and publisher's profitability, and everyone elses privacy and individual liberties, then the artists will have to go out and get day jobs.
Of course, that false dichotomy is one Disney et. al. presents because they do not wish to see copyright reform, and would rather trample upon our privacy and liberty rather than adjust their business models to a new technology. In truth artists could make a perfectly fine living in an environment where they were not granted exclusive monopoly entitlements
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy