Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Rumblings
dcunning writes "The Economist has a short opinion piece entitled Copyrights: A radical rethink that suggests (horror of horrors!) going so far as reverting back to the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once. The article suggests that, in exchange for this, the 'content industries' be given 'much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies.' A worthwhile and fair tradeoff?"
Would have most of the 'classic' rock songs out in the public domain, damn skippy that'd pwn ^_^
Banaaaana!
Why would the content industries be content with a fair compromise when they can buy enough influence to have all the legal, anti-copy methods they want, and enough influence to buy 357 year copyrights?
For the first 14 years of release, the content industry would actually be able to leaglly force me not to read a book aloud? (If you recall this is one of the looney rules they have been trying to make fly with eBooks.) I don't really see how this is fair at all, especially given that 90% of attempted use of such material happens within a few years of its release.
Ñ'
...but not too short, or companies will take authors works, sit on them for a while, publis a few copies and then publish like mad when the copyright exprires. won't happen with music/tech, but could happen with longer lasting stuff.
maybe 20-25 years would be good.
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
The record companies know that, even if they were given all copy protection they wanted (barring the banning of unlicensed microphones), people would still pirate music. It only takes one person circumventing the protection to open a work to the world.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
The proposed copy protections are extremely unfair and unreasonable. Why should we allow ourselves to be bribed to permit such a thing?
The question of whether copyright limits should be shorter (I sure think so!) should be independent.
Personally I think eventually we consumers will win all of these battles. There's no reason to even think of accepting bribes from a corrupt industry.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
if you really think copy protection will suddenly disappear after 28 years, or the copyright owners will configure it to do so, I have a bridge to sell you.
sulli
RTFJ.
Damn straight it is. You get twenty-eight years to milk something for all the millions it's worth, AND you get to crush utterly and punitively anyone who dares steal even a penny's worth from you? Sounds like a good deal to me.
-Mark
Here's why ...
If someone is to create something that they feel is theirs then they should not be forced to give up their rights to it after an expiration of a legal copyright. However, releasing a product in the public domain means anyone can benifit from your work, which if you aren't happy with all aspects of life will cause a person to wonder why someone else should be benifiting from their work.
There is no solution to this problem, there will forever be the marxists who believe everything should be for free and for the betterness of humanity, but then there are those who believe to the victor go the spoils and whoever gets their first wins. Greed and capitalism will always but heads against socialism and communism. Hence why the copyright debate will never be over.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
we'll have ever-extended copyrights, exceptions in environmental regulations written for specific corporations and the like. We need to find a way to take the money out of the equation. Campaign finance reform NOW, please.
Good idea as long as the legal backing doesnt involve screwed up CDs or corrupted e-books n what not which would in effect reduce the value of the content to the consumer. OTOH It would hurt the music companies even more if they persisted with such tactics.
PS can we force any legislation to force them to produce good-quality music and not back-side boys?
Democratic USA - Government of the corporations, by the Corporations, for the corporations.
Is there any such expiration date on open source code licenses?
word.
It's an old tactic:
First: present the consumer first with a horrible way of doing things.
Second: the consumer will take almost *anything* else, and even something else bad seems good.
This is a regular management tactic in some places. You should be able to sniff this one a mile away.
Further, the problems related to fair use remain. I have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted material in other works. For example, if I wanted to preach a sermon demonstrating how media culture affects us, I might want to use a short clip from the truman show. I have that right under fair use - but I can't do it from a DVD legally right now because of the DMCA which prevents me from legally owning the technology that would enable it. The chilling effect is a scary thing.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
It's simple to fix... require that those who release works with legally-backed copy protection file an unencrypted digital version with at least the quality of the protected version with the Library of Congress, who will place that version on a public web server the moment the 28 years are up.
The copyright is the same. The difference is the licence.
Much of the inefficiency of current copyright law comes from the lack of registration, deposit, and renewal, all of which strenghtened the public domain in earlier copyright law.
h ives/ EAFAQ.html
Larry Lessig has proposed a tiny tax 50 years after a work is first copyrighted. If the tax is unpaid, the work goes into the public domain. The tax represents some positive move to show the work has commercial value.
Maybe 50 years is too long. But if we are to lobby for such an act we need to make compromises with the strong copyright interests such as Hollywood.
It might seem immodest to have an act named after me, but I have grown accustomed to the loss of my name after the case Eldred v. Ashcroft. I think it nicely opposes the Sonny Bono Act.
For more on the Eric Eldred Act, see
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/arc
What do you think?
when it comes to rolling stones i think some of their oldest stuff is whats still defining them, but i dont know if they go back 28 years
Um, dude, this year the Stones are celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band. They've released a 40-track double-CD collection called "40 Licks" in honour of the occasion.
-- Alastair
Also, don't use "OTOH" ever again because it's fucking queer.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
The record companies are confident that they can get all that and a bag of chips (er, 95+ year copyright terms, that is.) So why settle for what's behind door number three when you can get doors number one and two at the same time?
A few words from the 'content industries':
Dear Sir/Madam
We thoroughly support this proposal. We believe that it is very fair. It will ensure that technologies such as DRM are enforced by law and are adopted by such radical left wing technologies as Linux.
Oh, and PS. We'll make sure that the laws are NOT retrospective and in 27.5 years, we'll lobby to have the copyright moved up to 1000 years.
Yours
The 'content' industries
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
- Disney will have Mickey Mouse grandfathered in (and so on for the rest of today's "properties") for another 14 years, and
- The pattern of extending all copyrights just before the deadline will continue.
The content industries' lobbyists will kill any bill that doesn't have these two loopholes. In short, if this goes through, we'll get DRM and not much else.They have their cake and we eat it? Or we have the cake and they eat it? Or to we share tha cake? Or maybe it's a pie? I like blueberry.
Personally I think copyrights should be good for the life of the artist plus 20 years, or 70 years, whichever is greater.
Why do I have the feeling that this decade is going to be known as the "Mine! Mine!" decade.
The genie is out of the bottle, and no law, technology, or ad campaign is ever going to put it back in. Copyrights have been violated since the first artist in history signed their name (or stamped their mark) on their work.
(and as a descendent of one of the artists in Altamira, I would like my cut of the souvenir profits)
Why the recording industry (and others) now feel threatened enough to start raising a fuss, is because it's just become much easier. Although, overall, I don't see how it can really hurt their bottom line. They are making many times the profit on their product than they did in the 70's, 80's, and 90's (am I the only one who's noticed how $1 and $2 paperbacks are now selling for $9 - $12. Was there a sudden paper shortage that I never heard about?). Don't even get me started on CD's, do you really expect me to believe that the bottom line cost of a CD is twice as much as a cassette tape (considering the markup).
If the industry would get smart and offer their products at a decent price, it would help to insure that the run-of-the mill consumer is not tempted to use other means to acquire the product. But if they expect that a few words in a lawbook is going to stop what has already started, they are dreaming.
Dr. Wu
PS: If the music industry is so perfect themselves, then why are they settling the lawsuits against them for illegal price fixing.
Music CD Settlement
I think 14 years is enough.
Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
The problem with copyright is that original creators are rarely the copyright owners for profitable content. You create something, but to get it visible you need someone to "market" it: hello, content provider. Quid pro quo? you give them your copyright.
How about a very simple change to copyright: the DMCA will apply to humans, not to legal fictional entities such as corporations.
The author makes a great case. He proposes trade-offs that would be in everyone's best interest. And that's why it will never fly.
The problem is the content industries feel they "deserve" the original copyright term, and that the digital age is simply infringing on their "rights." And, quite short-sightedly, that all they need to do is get "better" laws and the next generation of technology will put it right.
Hundreds of people proposed very reasonable, in fact still too expensive, methods to make music available online. The problem with these systems was that they were reasonable. The current system of paying $15 for CD with 3 good songs 2 mediocre, and the remainder, crap is extremely profitable. No self-centered individual would endanger such a system for one that would allow a user to pay $3 each for their two favorite songs and ignore the rest. It just won't happen.
These people will fight tooth and claw to retain total control of our culture until we wrest it from their grasping hands.
The next generation of crypto-verifying players, and per user-agreement encrypted, signed music downloads, will be a telling test. They will lower the prices enough that many people won't care. They will then usher in laws that make any tool that plays digital music a "tool of piracy." Large proprietary software corporations will step right into the meal line with their ticket in hand, and the FOSS community will be all that stands in their way. Should be exciting to watch.
DRM at restriction systems hurt their relationship with buyers like me. I buy a lot of IP, in fact IP accounts for virtually all of the non-essential things I buy. I own a hell of a lot of CDs and still buy a lot of CDs when I find something I like. I am the type of customer that they depend on, not little sally who loves her some Britney. I am to them, what the PowerMac and Powerbook owners are to Apple, the backbone of the bottomline. Not surprisingly, I own one of each as well.
Burning buyers like me by not letting me make MP3s or Oggs is a stupid move. Not only do I buy a lot, I keep in contact with my congresscritter. I let him know that it ain't piracy, but rather self-righteous greedy fucks at Sony, Columbia, Universal, et al that are killing off their own market by treating customers like criminals. They can of course do that because copyrights to the degree we have gone now are not capitalist. They are a socialist construct. If you don't like the price of a CD you cannot buy a competing product. Korn doesn't compete with Gravity Kills because they're totally different types of music and they don't play each other's songs. Why don't the copyright crusaders argue that hard drives compete with lawn mowers because if I buy 5 200GB hard drives I probably won't have the money for a new riding lawn mower.
I'd rather be buying DVD Audio, but hey, until I can rip it into very high quality data it's useless to me. My idea of a playlist is Winamp or XMMS, not a 200 DVDA changer set on shuffle.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Look I know its unpopular.
But simply making ISPs charge based on amount of data uploaded would fix this.
i.e. $20/month for 5BG uploaded, $30 for $10GB etc.
If I share a movie it costs me money on my ISP bill, so unless I'm a commercial distributor of movies then it doesn't make sense for me to distribute it, so I don't do it.
Similarly, If US ISPs charge foreign ISPs for data carried into their network. The non-US ISPs would have to pass the charges on aswell.
So it would have a ripple effect around the world. Without the US needing to use 'extrajudicial' tricks.
Copyright extension should be halted because it drains the public domain of material. Period. We shouldn't have to bargain for that one. 75 years was plenty of time, we had settled into that time frame, and we had plenty of older literature and materials flowing into the public domain. Then along came the DMCA - reverse engineering, making compatible devices and software, using your own media (that you legally purchased) in other devices of your choosing - all these basic property rights and common law understandings of what people can do with things they own flew out the goddamned window.
I'm not willing to cut a deal with the devil, or the so-called content industry in this scenario, to bring back reduced timespans for copyrights. Cut copyrights back, abolish the DMCA (perhaps some parts are not unreasonable, but as I see it, everything in there is either not needed because it was covered by existing jurisprudence, or is flat out morally wrong), and THEN we can have an intelligent debate and discussion as a society about what kind of legislation should be in place to help protect content producers from unreasonable amounts of piracy, IF in fact existing laws don't provide them that protection already.
If in fact the problem is an economic one (people are pirating because it is economically sensible for them to do so) why not try modifying your business model to one that doesn't so strongly encourage such illegal copying? You're never going to eliminate it entirely. Sorry, but we don't want and won't take crippled devices. If the content industry hasn't figured that out yet, then fuck them. I'd rather have a crippled, less profitable, re-organized content industry with my rights intact, than have mandated, legally enforced DRM embedded in my hardware, and have Disney's profits secured so they keep pushing their schwag out on audiences. Oh yeah, and what do we get out of it? Copyright terms are only 14 years. Of course, that doesn't apply retroactively, it only applies to new content. Oh, so sorry about that. And in 14 years what happens? Copyrights get extended again, without public debate, once the sheep have gotten used to ubiquitous DRM.
Sorry, but I'll go down with guns blazing before I accept this "compromise". Right now, we are getting the strength of momentum behind us. The popular press is buying into it. Copyright term extensions are going down, though it may take a while. As for the DMCA - it's not going away just yet, but the debate in the public forum is just starting, and we'll get there eventually too. Once the content industry realizes how shaky the ground they are walking on is, perhaps we will hear a real compromise deal out of them, hrrmmm?
Mickey will be my backdoor bitch...
Forever!!!
And please enjoy tonight's heart-warming "Walt Disney Show", entitled "Uncle Mickey's Cabin."
-- yours, Michael Eisner
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
(Damn short titles!!)
If you give the copyright holders absolute access to copy protection, how would you access works after the 14 or 28 year expiration?
All they need to do is keep the original source material locked in a vault.
REAL pirates, people who are motivated by profit . The same mass copiers that operate in Ukraine, China and Taiwan today and who sell the pirated copies. They don't "open [works] to the world" unless the world pays them.
And people who are willing to pay will pay the record companies, if the price is reasonable.
And in the meantime, we wont' be able to make backup copies, mix cd's, a copy for the car, a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original, etc.
Is that worth it?
At this point, I really believe that the future of music is going to involve just completely circumventing/reinventing the middle, distribution/parasite layer of the industry, and perhaps finding ways to add value to music above just charging for the music itself.
The big studios have the money to change the rules of the game at will. If they agree to something like this, don't be surprised to see them lobbying, 28 years from now, to change the law and extend the copyright period. Then they would have both draconian technical copyright enforcement measures, backed by the full force of law, and infinitely renewable copyrights.
Of course, some would argue that we already have both.
Will the Windows XP activation servers still be up in 28 years when Windows XP enters the public domain. I don't think so.
Make copyrights like tyrademarks.
You get copyright protection for only as long as you use it. Mickey Mouse gets used today, then Steamboat Willie and the MM icon used by Disney gets protected.
Sony doesn't sell N'sync CDs anymore to retailers? Fine, their music is now public domain.
On the plus side, it allows vendors with known icons (the Mouse) to retain the legal proection they need, while allowing 'abandonware' to go where it rightfully belongs - the public.
Don't forget this would cover games too, solving that nasty question of older games that aren't being made anymore.
How about this.. you are either entitled to copyright protection (current books, records, etc)... ie: no technological protections...
OR
you are entitled to technological protctions. not both.
If you want to restrict sometihng by technology, you are free to, but you have no protection of the actual work under law.
If you want copyright term reform, join the infoanarchy wiki. (Yeah, anarchy isn't the best association, but this is where stuff's happening)
This is only started, good suggestions welcome!
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I'm sorry, maybe I just don't trust anyone anymore but it seems to be that all that will happen is that we, the public, will sign up for this 14 year plan. Allow the powers that be to strip what little "fair use" rights away from us. (The thought of tiny cameras inside your TV's to make sure you actually watching the commercials comes to mind. You damn thief!)
And then 14 years later the powers that be have a change of heart. Opps! We don't really want things to fall into the public domain, we are just going to keep everything copywrighted. Oh, and we aren't giving you back any of your fair use rights either.
Sorry no, fix it another way.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Is it illegal to trade music videos? Music videos are really a promotional tool, the record companies make little or no money from them, so whos getting hurt if theyre shared. I'd think the labels would want their promotional materials distributed at no cost to them. I download music videos that i can't see on mtv (which is all i have), and most of them have an MTV2 or much tag in the corner. Would companies have problems with people sharing commercials over p2p, it would save them the cost of more airtime.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The question is, would the megacorps be happy with this tradeoff? Probably not, because they would be forced to actually produce more new content instead of regurgitating the same content over and over for new generations. I think they hope they can slowly destroy Fair Use with DRM technologies and legal action, and still have their immortal copyrights to boot. So as long as their lobbyists control many members of Congress, it seems unlikely to happen.
Take the cable business as an example. They were bitching for years that it was not "cost" viable to have two competitors in each market as originally required when the industry got started. In "exchange" for relaxation of this they stated and promised at the Congressional hearings that prices would not go up. (Siting a lot of "market" reasons, incl competition from phone lines. Go figure) What happened? Within one years, one year, most markets had seen close to a doubling of prices.
Help fight continental drift.
Yeah, I might be willing to make that trade, if you add in one more piece: as per the Constitution, only the original author can hold a copyright. And that author must be a human, not any kind of corporation or publishing house.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
"the Congress shall have power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Everyone argues about how long the "limited times" should last. And all the arguments have totally missed the point. They all come from the standpoint of "I want to do something with this old work-- it should be public domain so I can," or "I want to keep making money off of this old work-- it should stay copyrighted so I can."
The phrase we need to be concerned with is "promote the progress of science and useful arts." The government should appoint a team of unbiased experts to study the benefits and downfalls of differing lengths and mechanisms of copyright, come to a final conclusion about what would most "promote the progress of science and useful arts," and go with that.
c-hack.com |
During the time when copyrights needed to be renewed, most were in fact not renewed. The renewal rate varied at different times in history but was generally under 20%. See eldred.cc for details.
That solution is bad because
just like what happened recently with
the copyright laws. Some corporation
(Disney) will buy themselves some judges
and have the time limit changed to infinity.
The only real solution is to stop price fixing
by the recording labels and dvd resellers.
In a truly capitalist system 15$ for a CD would
NEVER have been allowed for each and every cd.
To do this we need Campaign Finance Reform in
America, I don't know who to blame in the rest
of the world but in America the people have lost
their voice.
These differing criteria illustrate the shift in logic for copyrights from public to private interests.
The original conception of limiting copyright monopolies in the context of generational time indicates the framer's intention for copyright monopolies to be an economic engine of creativity, not by ensuring exclusive profits to creators forever, but primarily by ensuring a constant and steady flow of information to the public sphere as fuel for further creations.
You have to wonder if people like Jack Valenti who advocate European style copyrights, which were firmly rejected by the framers, are answering to foreign interests who have a stake in weakening the creative output of the United States.
However, I think this article misses the point. It is true that distributing works digitally makes them much easier to copy. But locking them down, when the DMCA makes discussion of how to bypass any locks illegal, doesn't give us a damn thing, no matter how short they make the copyright. It's not a give-or-take issue; if the content cartels get what they want on this issue, we all lose no matter what we get "in exchange".
The DVD situation is a perfect example. It amounts to a perpetual copyright, because even when the copyright expires on a DVD, there is no legal way to access the data on it. Until and unless that changes, the actual term is irrelevant.
actually, just make the keys to the work expire.
The keys go to a third party and are released on a specific day.
I've been suggesting this for a while:
Reduce the term of copyrights to somewhere between 20 and 40 years. (Basically, the working lifetime of an author.)
More importantly, I believe that copy protection clashes with the Constitutional purpose of copyright. I propose to not allow materials which are copy protected to be copyrighted. Make the author choose between the two. I think this is important since the purpose of copyright (at least under the US Constitution) is to produce art & science which eventual enter the public domain. Since copy protected materials are designed to impede reproduction, propogating those materials will often be difficult once copyright expires. Since they can't easily enter the public domain, they should not be copyrightable.
(You might also be able to convince me to make the penalties for violating copyright more severe if this is done, to help convince people to not copyprotect materials.)
I am for strong copyrights. I don't think Gone With the Wind, the Three Stooges, and maybe even Elvis should be under copyright any more, though, and I don't think any copyrighted materials should be copy protected.
John
In exchange, we'll give you back the rights we've already stolen in 14 years. Unless we renew, in which case it will be 28. If we don't get congress to retroactively extend the copyrights before then.
paintball
Call me inflamatory, but we screwed up copyright the first time (Gosh... if forever was good, forever and a day is better!). Why do we have to give the content industry a lollipop (copy-protection enforcement) to get them to accept something that's sensible and in the public good?
The only copy-protection I'll settle for will consist of a Supreme Court justice in every box that tells me that what I'm doing is or isn't fair use. Unfortunately, unless the content industry and the Raelians team up, that tends to limit sales.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
It should have stayed 14 years anyway, regardless of any other change. If we give the content industry all the crazy protections they want, it should be more like 2 years. Also, in exchange for allowing any of these extreme copy-restriction systems, they should automatically quit working at the end of the copyright term, or the copyright holder should be forced to deposit an unencumbered version with the Library of Congress or something.
I think we also need to introduce the idea of copyright lapse. There are a lot of books, movies, and music recordings that the world is being deprived of because the copyright holders can't or won't release new copies of them.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Because if they sit on it, they won't make any money, as then *EVERY* publisher will be able to publish the work, and they'll quickly drive each others pricing down to just barely above printing costs.
The money will always be made during the copyright term when you can charge for the fact that you're the only person who can print it. There's no incentive to "wait out" the term to avoid paying the author, because you're just waiting until you won't be able to make any money off the work either.
paintball
OK. This sounds reasonable, with the following additions:
0) Corporate copyrights are set to 14-year terms, renewable once. Copyrights held by natural persons remain in force for the lifetime of the author or 28 years (nonrenewable), whichever is greater.
1) After the original period of 14 years, a copyright may be renewed once, unless no editions of the work have been released for sale in the past three years and plans have not been formally announced to release it within the following year. In other words, if you haven't been actually making money off the copyright then you shouldn't be able to hold it "defensively".
2) Copyrights apply to specific versions or editions of works, rather than the work in general. To give an example, Version 2.0 of a piece of software is protected by a different copyright than Version 1.0 was.
3) All copyright-protection mechanisms must stop working when the copyright expires. While this need not necessarily be automatic, if it isn't then the mechanism to disable the protection must be made available to the public, free of charge, at that time.
4) All copyright-protection mechanisms must allow for the fair-use rights of all users. To aid in this, a minimal, non-exhaustive list of fair use rights may be drawn up; at the absolute least this must include both time-shifting and space-shifting rights.
5) Content creators may not specify how a product may be used (also known as End-User License Agreements). Standard copyright law will forbid illegal redistribution, public performance without permission, etc. and this may not be modified by content creators except to grant permission there the law dows not automatically do so.
6) Computer code is to be considered a written work, protected by copyright but not patent. Copyrights will, as noted in Point 2 above, apply to specific versions of the software, rather than the software in general. When copyright on a specific version expires, the source code for that version is to be released into the public domain.
7) When and if this goes into effect, all corporate copyrights still in force will be set to expire in 14 years. Some old copyrights will be extended by this, and some will be truncated. Oh well; we can't pick and choose. This will be the last time copyrights can retroactively extended or shortened; see Point 8 below.
8) Congress may, at its option, pass laws extending these terms, by no more than five years at a time. Further, these laws may apply only to copyrights on works created after said extension was put into force.
OK. Build these into the law -thus putting binding restrictions on content creators to make their copy-protection mechanisms fair- and I'll let them have their little legal restrictions on DRM-circumvention (modified to take these into account, of course). If they want this, fine, but only if they agree to restore the balance between creator and user first.
The article suggests not only a return to shorter copyright terms (14 years, renewable once) but also the implementation of strong copy protection. Speaking for myself, I find that an acceptable trade-off. I would be willing to put up with strong copy protection mechanisms in exchange for the freedom of all those thousands upon thousands of older books, movies, and songs.
:-)
Regarding the restoration of pre-1976 laws, it occurred to me recently that the Copyright Act of 1976 might be unconstitutional because it extends copyright beyond the author's death.
The constitution says in Article 1, section 8, that Congress is empowered " To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Note that it says "to Authors and Inventors", not "to Authors, Inventors, and their Heirs and Assigns". Given this approach, it would still be legal to sell your rights to a work to a corporation while you yourself were still alive, but you could not have them transferred automatically to an heir following your own death. Furthermore, the copyright you sold -- or perhaps "licensed" would be a better term -- to a corporation would expire when you do. This would give companies a powerful motive to attend to the health of copyright-generating employees.
This article makes a fair enough point, but it still doesn't sound terribly much like a 'radical rethink'. The Economist is simply asserting that current American law is too permissive, not calling for a return to copyright in its original sense as a social rather than economic bargain.
Writing as an economist, I personally think this entire approach to IPR is a plague on society. A much healthier debate would throw out the absurd notion that only commercial systems provide good content, or the implicit corollary that the current system of industrial organization in the United States is the "only way" content will be or has even been produced.
This isn't to argue that copyright is a bad thing -- just that debating the appropriate LENGTH of protection is to engage in a loaded debate. Doing so implicitly accepts the highly-questionable assumption that commercial copyright is necessary for ALL content provision, and comes without significant costs on other parts of society. This distracts attention from the way indiscriminate protection crushes non-commercial content producers, academic researchers, open source developers, etc.
A healthier approach would worry less about duration than about the way protection is structured.
Why do we live under the pretense that artists get to live on the proceeds of their works for the rest of their lives? Other jobs are not like that. If a manager organizes a company or division in a way that makes more money, he is only compensated as long as he continues to work for the company. Or a conservator restores a book or painting so that the public can appreciate it more; she doesn't get rewarded monetarily her whole life. Or a sofware engineer...
I agree copyrights are useful, but they are not natural rights. They are arbitrary and granted rights that are regulated by the government (ie. the people). In essence the government, by granting copyrights beyond beyond a reasonable length of time, has decided that artists are more important than the common man.
The law already backs all of the content owners' desires for protection of their intellectual property.
They just need to go through the process of enforcing it.
Which they are.
Filesharing will be dead once the script-kiddies get the idea they'll be nabbed and put in jail for stealing things.
Which they are.
So there's no deal to be made. The IP holders don't have any reason to reduce the term of their ownership.
At least leaving things the way they are beats giving Congress carte blanche for things like legislating Pallidium or whatever Microsoft calls it now, via the SSSCA or whatever Fritz Hollings calls it now, in exchange for what in the software industry is still a practically worthless limit.
Digital technology has made copyright moot in not one but two important ways.
The first is that content can be replicated with perfect fidelity for little or no cost.
The second is that copyright simply is not needed. The intent was to encourage people to produce works of science and useful arts, but history has shown that that is simply not necessary. People produce such works even without the promise that the state will use violence to ensure their compensation.
Just look at the open source revolution. Compare the quality of open source software with that of its copyrighted commercial equivalent.
Or compare the quality of literature and art before today's abuse of copyright with the pure shit that saturates our existance today.
Copyright is as archaic as slavery. It is as absurd to give ownership of a sequence of bits to an individual as it is to give ownership of an individual to another individual. And ironically, the very same Constitution originally gave sanction to both.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
As appealing as 14-year copyrights sound, I wouldn't accept outlawing free software in exchange for that. Which is, after all, what caving to the demands for DRM would really involve. Look at all the analysis of the CBDTPA or the Broadcast Flag for reasons why this is what they're talking about, and not just my paranoid raving.
The copyright cartels have gone way too far. We shouldn't have to give up our freedom to bring them back within sight of reason.
-Rob
"Of course, some would argue that we already have both."
You mean we don't already have both? OMG! *gets to copying all his CD's into OGG*
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
The other obvious problem with the solution is that all parties could agree now, with legally enforced use restrictions, then 14 years from now as the copyrights are about to expire, intense lobbying results in legislation to extend the term to 20 years ... then 30 years ... and so on, without repealing the restrictions.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
That doesn't address the problem sufficiently unless you assume that both the bandwidth to obtain copies of works and the mechanisms to create tangible copies exists.
Under the protection requirements instituted by the xxAA, the RMW (Removable Media Writer -- whatever permanent-storage technology exists in this future period) drive will have hardware checks to prevent it from copying protected media. If you already have the work in a protected form, you would have a reasonable expectation that the copying lockout would cease after the term of the copyright expires.
So the media would have to have a copyright date embedded, and either your computer would check the copyright date against its own clock, or connect to the Net to check a master copyright database, in order to validate the copyright status of the work. If your system date is checked, all that takes to circumvent is altering your system date; even with a protected configuration like the erstwhile Palladium system, that's going to be relatively easy to circumvent. If your computer has to check a master copyright database, that's more complex; it would take a redirected IP address plus faking the (required) encrypted data exchange with the database server. But having how quickly secure encryption methods get broken, I'm certain that that can be cracked, too.
This doesn't even begin to address the fact that, since there has to be some point at which an unencrypted data stream has to exist in a playback -- if nothing else, tapping out the digital signal to your monitor and extracting the part that makes up the video window -- there will be hardware-based ways around the DRM that can't be blocked.
So the result is that the people who are dedicated to putting out pirated versions of works will have to work harder to get their cracks, but the technological advances that make locking up works easier will also make cracking the protections easier. And unless part of this copy-protection legislation castrates the existing 'fair use' provisions of copyright law (i.e., it being legal to make a copy of a DVD for your own use as a hedge against accidentally trashing the original), the required gaps in the copy-protection mechanisms necessary to retain fair-use copying would be much easier to exploit.
...until they extend copyright protection to databases like they've done in the EU with the European Database Directive.
The European plan not only extends copyrights to protect databases (which are large assemblages of facts... which have been the one thing you can't copyright here in the U.S. ever since copyright was written into our laws) but it also creates a new protection (that is not a copyright) that they term "sui generis" (in a class of its own). This protection is beside that of copyright and is renewable with olny a modest updating of the database... and, yes, this does mean that all you have to do is update your database every 15 years to get your protection extended another 15 years!!! This is truly perpetual copyright!!!
Let us switch to 28 years but no fair use ! Full copyright belonging to holder without permission to use it (note that I don't even say author).
25 Years later. Oh let us rise the period to 37 years. Retroactive. After all the copyright holder financed the work and has to get a return !
10 years later (35 years after the 1st work has been done under this law) Ho 37 is not enough, let us rise with a new law to say, 56. This is fair isn't it ? Oh, and it is retroactive.
10 years again later... We are abck to 74/98 years of copyright. With prolongation if the holder pay a small symbolic sum. Retroactively.
I certainly would not want such law as a consummer.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If we are worried about them changing the rules
28 years from now then all that needs to be done is place a poison pill into the bill.
Put something in the bill that states that if any part of that section is amended or stricken then all current copyrights are immediately and irrevocably placed into the public domain.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
An interesting read about the copyright bargain is found on gnu.org.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Piracy can only be halted by popular respect for copyright law. This respect is born in people when they see how copyright benefits society. Century-long copyright is clearly harming society, so to convince people to stop pirating we need shorter terms.
DRM won't get us anywhere, what with darknet and all. On the contrary, DRM degrades the value of legally purchased products as compared to pirated. (Not to mention fair use, open source etc.)
I have no illusion that we can stop piracy altogether, but if copyright actually had obvious benefits piracy could become socially stigmatized. Piracy would only be acceptable in situations where it didn't hurt - like "How am I supposed to pay for the vic20 games i downloaded in a fit of nostalgia?". Of course, this would also need a bit of propaganda on the benefits of copyright, but I think the ??AA's could fix that once they've painted themselves out of the corner again...
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
There's a great art show in chicago right now that displaying a large quantity of audio, visual and standard art mediums that challenge copywrite as we know it. Many of the peices have been sued into submission until now. More info here and here
I went to the show's opening last night and I would highly recommend it, some of the bands will be playing live on feb 7th and 8th with an intense panel debate about copywrite with speakers like Lawrence Lessig and dj spooky on the 15th. The show will then be moving onto San Francisco.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I'm a bit disappointed in the old guard Economist for failing to make the strongest economic argument for revamping the copyright laws.
Copyrights are like tariffs. They distort the true value of goods and thereby make trade inefficient. The end result is that they decrease the amount of wealth in the world. Reducing copyright terms is like lowering tariffs. Even though some industries and segments of society will be injured, in the short term by such an action, overall, it results in greater wealth for the nation and for its trading partners.
That's speaking in terms that the businessmen who read The Economist can understand. They can relate to the benefit of lower prices for textiles and hardware, so they ought to be similarly receptive to lower prices for textbooks and software.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
is that they don't want people to be entertained for free.
Free entertainment is bad for the economy.
Could this secretly motivate "good-hearted" politicians (who are trying to serve the public) to give more control to corporations?
After all, what happens if you can't enjoy a 50 year old work without paying $15 to a big corporation. That money accumulates in the hands of the rich, but they don't keep it under their mattresses. They keep it in banks, and banks invest the money right back into the economy, financing the ventures of big corporations.
Imagine if every American grew all his or her own food, spun all his or her own clothing, and spent the day at home with friends enjoying 50+ year old content (jazz, classical recordings, books, old movies) for free or playing Go, etc. That is, without ever going out shopping for anything with much added value.
Would our economy be scrod?
Because money-spenidng is what makes our economy go around, and as long as there are laws to keep corporations from e.g. committing human rights violations, etc, perhaps their very existence (fiscal responsibility) really does serve the public good?
After all, corporations are taxed. The more more money we can democratically vote for them to EXTORT from us, the more money our democratic process has to IMPROVE LIVES.
(Now, this is anathema to my own views. I am the oppsoite of a capitalist; I don't believe a strong government should exist to force people to behave in ways to stimulate the economy. My own views are still developing, though, and subject to change. Right now, I'm asking to hear a response to the Capitalist Argument.)
Thoughts?
Any content creator (Einstein) should have final say over intelectual property ("Space and Time" by Minkowski) that is derived from their work ("Electromagnetic Phenomena in a System Moving with any velocity less than that of Light").
Of course no good can come from allowing all school children in the world to freely download "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory" by Einstein. What are you some kind of communist?
Some things are more important than an animated rat
But you've collossally missed the point of the entire discussion.
We're talking about giving the content "creators" "all the technical and legal protections they've been asking for." That means, hardware-level copy protection in all digital devices and heavy jail time for anyone selling or altering such devices.
We're therefore assuming for the sake of the argument that the types of activities you brought up will be much, much harder and riskier in the future.
The article suggests that, in exchange for this, the 'content industries' be given 'much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies.'
Nice idea, but I've got a better one. How about we revert copyright periods to 14 years, renewable once and we, as the public, ALLOW you have a temporary monopoly on new content.
intense lobbying results in legislation to extend the term
Not if even more intense lobbying results in legislation accepted by 2/3 of the US House, 2/3 of the US Senate, and 1/2 of each of thirty-eight state legislatures, to limit the term to an absolute maximum of 50 years once and for all:
Wishful thinking, but as they used to say in the McWorld commercials: "Hey, it could happen!"
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wow, what a trade off. They have complete and total control over media/content binded legally for 14 years. Which won't make much of a difference since by then they'll buy themselves extended copyrights or find some other legal method to prevent the content from going into public domain. At the same time, when these copy restriction devices come out onto the market it will slowly drive free software to extinction. Btw, how would this help the artists? I can see it helping the indistry and the corporations, but the artists?
Question everything.
So in essence the article suggests that M$ and media companies can (and should be required by law to) root our computers with good and hard DRM, while in exchange Disney will make the early Mickey Mouse (TM) comics public domain?!?
What a great trade off!
I don't argue that making illegal copies of copyrighted material is morally correct. I don't care if it is or is not. I want to know if it's worth spending my tax dollars to enforce.
As it grows easier and easier to steal copyrighted material, I think the question of what should we and should we not do to protect corporations like Time Warner is better though of after taking an example to heart. Let's suppose I ran a radio station. Let's suppose I wanted everyone to pay me $.10 a minute to listen to my radio station. I have no technology to do this any differently from a normal radio station. People can turn to my radio station and listen regardless of whether or not they have paid me. It seems likely that thousands of people (at least if my content was any good) would listen to my station without paying. This angers me, and I ask the legislators to start passing laws with long sentences, and law enforcement to invade privacy to find violators.
Clearly there would be no reason for the government to artificially create a situation where my failed business model works. There has to some damn GOOD REASON to expend the time and money to make a business work despite the ease of cheating.
So the question isn't whether or not people steal content. It's not whether or not these people are good or evil. The question is, how hard would it be to actually stop them, and what do we really get by doing so?
The preceding passage has been checked for spelling, you will find no sentence without at least one mis spelled word
Abosolutely not...whatever is decided about ownership of the material it is an abomination and corruption of justice for the owners to tell you what hardware and software you can and can't own or build. This is a slippery slope that ends with infinite copyrights and crippled hardware/software. Let them keep their content for however long they want, let them put out crippled CDs and DVDs and see how the market takes it, let them do anything but tell you how you can react to it in your own home. I'm not telling you to steal I think that is wrong but they shouldn't be able to tell me I can't own something capable of stealing no matter what it's legit uses. It should be illegal to steal their content and they have a right to put it out there in any format they want as long as they're open and honest and don't use fraud to get you to purchase but don't let them tell you what you can own or build...for the love of all that is holy don't give away freedom just because you want free music and movies.
When the reasonable meats the unreasonable halfway, the result is something still somewhat unreasonable.
The copy protection legislation is wrong for several reasons - it restricts fair use, it prevents you from controling your own physical property, it harms content producers who aren't part of the media cartels but distribute via the same recordable media, etc, etc, etc - its been done to death on slashdot and elsewhere.
Getting a copyright term akin to what the founding fathers envisioned DOESN'T make up for the loss. It's clear to many the existing copyright term is far too long - correcting that would be just. Correcting that at the expense of other liberties would be aking to making a deal with the devil.
Yea, this sounds like a REAL good idea.
After all, since the average song stays a hit for about a week, the average CD holds strong sales for a month, and the average band is gone after a year, why shouldn't we let them use the 14 year rule?
In the meantime, you can't copy the disc for your own use in different players. You can't make digital copies to store on your different PCs. You can't print your eBooks while the content is still meaningful. In other words - the "copyright holders" (and we all know that means "the big corporations that are leeching off talented people") get everything they want and you get... um... a kick in the nuts?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Copyright extends for 17 years (why 17? Its the only random number, of course.) automatically. A second 17 years can be obtained on payment of a $1000 fee. This isn't that much if something is bringing in money.
Subsequent extensions may also be purchased with the fee for every period equal to pow(1000,n-2). Thus the third period would be $1,000,000, the fourth $1,000,000,000 and so on. Get Disney to sign up for a fifth extension this way and the government might end up with money in the bank.
That's still copyright theft. You may use that as an excuse to pirate software, but it won't protect you then the BSA comes along.
Copyright law, 17 USC 107, lists four factors used in discerning fair use from infringement, and one of them is the effect on the market for the work. By taking a work out of print for several years, the copyright owner admits that he sees no significant market for the work. Thus, an otherwise infringing use would have zero effect on the market and inflict zero actual damage to the copyright owner. Fair use. And even if the judge doesn't see a use as completely fair, he can still reduce the section 504 statutory damages far below the maximum when some fair use factors apply.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hey,
reverting back to the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once.
Just remind me... what is the problem with long copright terms? It's not like there are hundreds of shakespear-grade works out there that are covered by copyright.
We won't be able to legally exchange free copies of Britney Spears for many years... do I care? Not really. I doubt anyone will remember her in that time.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
The problem is such. Whenever you offer a "trade-off" to a powerfull group such as the copyright lobby, they will take the benefit but not the burden.
The copyright lobby mind you essentially control the media, and thus only few magazines like the Economist (which pride themselves on being controlled by the international investment institutions instead) even dare suggest reducing the terms of copyright.
And since they control the media they can easily spin the story and make the public forget about any trade-offs. And terms of copyright will be once again long.
There are many examples where similar trade-offs have been essentially forgotten. The most drastic example is where the US tevision networks received a monopoly on a huge and increidbly valuable piece of the spectrum in exchange to performing a public function. And nowadays that tradeoff is complketely forgotten and no television network will ever admit that it owes anything to the public nor they will ever perform a public service that hurts their profits.
So my belief is that in these situations we should not do any gives and takes... Because they will take without giving.
I concede that there will be a small # of people who want to prove they can "beat the system," as it were, but if it gets to the point where you have to pay money to rent studio time to copy audio, do you really think that someone who doesn't expect to get some remuneration will go to the trouble?
Is there really an underground of millionaire hackers out there, digital Robin Hoods who will spare no personal expense or risk to bring free entertainment to the FreeNET(illegal under the imagined scheme)-wielding masses?
I doubt it.
Now, if we could just find some of those...
In an unexpected development, Napster have opened for business again sporting a wide range of copyright-expired music. College dorms will soon be rocking to the strains of Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson and the Beatles. "We are looking forward to releasing Bat Out Of Hell" in a decade or so", said a spokesman, who asked not to be named.
Virtually serving coffee
OK, Copyright is providing a protection service of a work. No need to impose a time limit, rather impose a fee for the service. Maybe make it a progressive fee. As long as the fee is paid up, you would have a valid copyright. Let the fee lapse, you no longer have one.
As for the progressive part, let the fee double each year. You could start low to provide a reasonable time of relatively low cost protection, but the geometric progression would impose a practical limit.
So, you would start off with something like:
year 1 $10
year 2 $20
year 3 $40
year 4 $80
So any entity that wanted the protection could have it for as long as they cared to pay. The payments would balance off against the ever increasing value to society to allow the work to be shared.
This should apply to all works to be protected. A business would use something like a trademark to proctect their assets, again with an anual fee, but not geometrical.
Also, anything copyrighted should have the full work on file in a useful form. That means source if you are copyrighting source to a program. ect.
Yup - copying music (for personal use) is perfectly legal here in Canada. Its section 80 of the copyright act.
Read it here: copyright act
Just before section 79 you will see the heading "Private copying". Is that a misspelling of "pirate" by any chance?
The problem with this kind of compromise is that it isn't a compromise at all: it simply hands the recording industry additional copyrights without giving consumers anything, even with laws already on the books. Why? Because of the DMCA of course.
Under the DMCA it is a crime to circumvent the copy protection schemes of a digitally protected work. It doesn't matter if the original material is in the public domain. You cannot exercise your unregulated uses of a public domain work that is (for instance) distributed in the form of a DVD encrypted with CSS without breaking a law that can send your butt to jail.
This effectively extends copyrights forever, as there is never any way for you to excercise your rights over works that have entered the public domain. They simply have to continue to release works in digital form.
Any sort of compromise on this front should be viewed carefully and with great scepticism. You can't expect the music, film and publishing industries to act in the best interests of society at large: that's why we have government.
Oh god, did I really just say that? We really are doomed. :-)
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
If the the content industries are given "much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies" then it does not matter if the term of copyright is shortened to 2 days. Since they can lock the data into DRM systems that are illegal to crack, they still have a "paracopyright" that never expires (remember that what they want involves getting rid of computers that do not obey DRM directives, and "closing the analog hole").
To me the worst thing of the copyright question is, that companies acrue title to the rights to copy and THEN decide not to as it is economically not "prudent" to do so. As a consequence a lot of important material never sees a reprint even though there is a need for it.
When material is "available" the cost of getting things that are rare like classical music is such that it cannot only be described as in money terms but also in effort. I live in a 200.000 person town and my personal collection is bigger that what can be found in the record shops. The function of a recordshop is to allow me a listen befor a sale. Without an infrastructure for the sale of material how can the punters be held responsible for not buying or for copying copyrighted material?
When I need a book for study and I cannot have it because of it being out of print, is it not criminal that I cannot get it? That I cannot have a digital copy and print it myself because of this "copyright" joke ?
When the Economist argues for a short period where an artist is to be protected, where does the publishing company come into play when they DO NOT provide the service that they ARE named for; publishing?
In my opinion, any period I can live with as long as there is an equal weight on the other side of the balance. That weight must be service.
Thanks,
Gerard
Reduce the term of copyrights to somewhere between 20 and 40 years. (Basically, the working lifetime of an author.)
Why exactly this length?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Let's eliminate copyright totally. It'll be great, right?
We'll only be missing a few friends, such as:
1. Professionally mastered audio cds.
2. Professionally printed books.
3. Professionally recorded movies.
"That's okay! If there's no copyright, everyone will be able to make all of the above!"
This is where I call, "Bullshit". Top level recording studios cost money. Lots of it. Same with the gear to print books, and make/record movies.
Sure, it'll all work out - and all your discs will sound like demo tapes from a garage band, all your movies will look like Blair Witch.. And thank the Gods I've never encountered a terribly-printed novel; that must be a side-effect of the publishing industry having a non-digital medium.
The only way to prevent copying is to invade people's private lifes with black box security devices in every machine which can play digital media. Those have to be connected to a central server which determines when, where and what you are allowed to play. Anything short of that will be incapable of combatting copying.
... or we suffer the annihialation of any privacy in the digital realm we have left (and I mean ANY, if you believe for a second that those black boxes in your computer wont eventually be capable of a lot more than to give you the right to listen to a song you are naive).
The only way to accomplish it is by law, because noone in their right mind will voluntarily go there.
The amount of ways it can be abused are of course limitless, especially combined with the good old internal security agencies and their quest for knowledge.
In short, either we suffer the fact that copyrights are nearly unenforceable on the small scale
IANAL, but the licence goes under contract law, so I don't think you can *ever* break that licence. However, the copyright expires like any other, and you are *not* required to accept the licence.
From what I can tell, copylefted source code should therefor pass into public domain like any other text. The case with software with an EULA is not so clear though, as you'll still be bound by a contract even as an end-user.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I see no reason to give in now. We, as consumers, are actually starting to win.
Up until now, the media companies have had their way. But with high-profile special interest legislation, which serves them at the cost of American society, they've overplayed their hand. Their greatest successes will lead to their greatest downfall.
Do I think they're going to get another copyright extension? Absolutely not a chance in hell. They're vulgarity has become transparent. They're NOT going to get more.
pay money to rent studio time to copy audio
I think you need to read the right to read by Richard Stallman.
You so totally misunderstand the world around you. I don't know a single person without a personal computer, and a hard drive. Do you think they need to "rent studio time" to make copies of data? What? Are you going to live in everyone's hard drive and control every single thing they ever do to make sure they don't "pirate" someone's work?
The DeCSS hack was perpetrated by a 16 year old kid in his spare time with a personal computer. A computer just like the one everyone has in their living room. There will always be bright people. There will always be bright kids. The idea of trying to stifle all those human beings by limiting their capabilities, just so one "approved" group can profit from their creations, is vile and disgusting.
Is there really an underground of millionaire hackers out there, digital Robin Hoods...
Yes, but they are rich in brainpower, spare time, and available knowledge. Which ones are you hoping to take away?
I think there are a few loopholes and potential abuses in here that would need to be addressed. For example:
As it's worded, I think this is potentially unfair on content creators. It obligates them to republish a work if they want to hold it, even if there's no need to republish it. (For example, the original publication is still widely available.) It's also not clear what is meant by "republish". The methodology for making money might be to have an exclusively available limited edition publication at a high price. Being forced to republish it at a specific time in order for copyright to be renewed could devalue it's worth.
It's a bit unclear what an edition or version is. What about if it's re-released with different chapter headings, or with a forwarding note in the front?
Why not say that copyrights can be extended by small amounts on a case-by-case basis following special applications to a specified agency? (Sometimes this may be warranted.) Perhaps throw in a catch that says it gets re-examined by congress after a certain point.
The copy protection part stays and copyrights never expire. The government should start making examples out of these kids on kazaa and other mass piracy tools by sending them to prison for life or executing them. Imagine how worried everyone would be if a few thousand 13-16 year olds were sentenced to death. It's time for you law breakers to grow up and obey the law. The government has the right to kill or imprison anyone who breaks the law just like they did at Waco, TX. The people there were law breakers and deserved to be burned alive. This is a socialist country and the people cannot be trusted and therefore must not be allowed to have weapons since those weapons can be used against the government. This is why the Waco incident was not only fair, but in the best interests of the government. The constitution is obsolete and doesn't apply anymore and neither do you people's idiotic arguments.
No, giving the copyright industry what they want for even a one year copyright term is not acceptable. DRM is itself immoral, for any length of time. If I buy a DVD that is encrypted (pretend for a moment that there's no DeCSS), and the copyright expires a year later.... I still have to get a decryption system from the content provider. That means I'm still at Disney's beck and call. That still means that historians viewing this period of history will not be able to view any of our encrypted art.
Saying that what's inside the box is free and public does not work when the box is locked and the key costs $1000. That is not free (in either meaning of the word).
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
You have to pay for it. The USA isn't a commune.
Everyone keeps saying how "copyright can't be protected" on the internet. Well, that's absolutely right if you follow this rediculous method of turning a blind eye while crimes occur, and attempt to make it impossible for the crime to happen at all.
People learned long ago in the real world that for a free society to function properly, many things must be possible, but actual crimes need to be policed and criminals punished to have law and order. How long do you think it'll take them to realize that even in the digital world crime can not be coded out of the system?
The two questions of copyright:
1) Is it a crime to take some things apart and understand how they work? Yes! Even worse if you share that knowledge!
2) Is it a crime to knowingly aquire copyrighted works illegally and use them? Not at all!
don't be surprised to see them lobbying, 28 years from now, to change the law and extend the copyright period
But in the mean time, we'll have liberated around 54 years worth of copyrighted works that otherwise would never enter the public domain! This could very well spark a new renaissance.
Just cause you're fighting a war... Don't forget to win some battles!
If Rosen, Valenti, Hollings, and Eisner got on national primetime TV and promised to the world, in no uncertain terms, that they, their families, friends, co-workers, shareholders, indeed everyone who works for their companies, would commit sepuku if the length of copyright changed in the next 50 years, then I might just give them the benefit of the doubt. Short of that, not a chance.
Dyolf Knip
That's exactly my thinking, and I did consider trade secrets while trying to decide on an acceptable copyright scheme.
John
"Rumble. Rumble. Rumble. Copyright. Copyright. Copyright."
Chris Mattern
And this is because the stupid lameness filter is being difficult.
We've been discussing this for awhile around work. No more corporate sponsorship, no more corporate campaign financing, no more corporate lobbyists, no more "consumer rights" groups funded by corporations, no more "not-for-profit" organizations bankrolled by corporations giving money to the campaigns. One of my friends said it best "No taxation without representation - no representation without taxation". If Joe Billionaire wants to write off every single thing he does and pay no taxes at the end of the year great - no voting rights. No more of this "well signing a check is freedom of speech" - No, speaking is freedom of speech, signing a check is freedom to bribe, big difference. These people shouldn't need millions of dollars to be seen in an election. Their reputations should already be built, the people of their state should already know them.
All i have to say is.. http://www.redcoat.net/pics/riaa.jpg
magnanomous.
Best of all, Congress would see it as a source of income and might not dismiss it out of hand.
Dyolf Knip
I also think that what's oft left out of this debate is the fact that not only do consumers need greater protection from corprate interest but artists do to.
This is what I would propose:
1)shorten copyrights to 15 years + 1 renewal
2)make sure fair use is well regulated(ie permitted) while affording coporations copy protection technology
3)regulate copyright so that artists can never completely transfer ownership to a corporate identity. For example: an artist may transfer an exclusive liscense for publication of the work to a company for up to 10 years max at which point the copyright reverts back to the creator.
there are many a specifics that would need to be worked out with each of these of course. esp. how it would apply to different industries and patents (perhaps longer periods of time?). i would love to hear comments about this too as well as if people think these are viable ideas.
;)
cheers,
-AC
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem isn't getting the period back to 14
w ho've-bought-congress agree
years. It's keeping it there.
If one bunch-of-assholes/congress/bunch-of-corporations-
to a bill making the copyright period 14 years,
but getting anal over anti-circumvention,
what's going to stop the next bunch
of bought-congressmen from passing another
bill, retroactively extending the copyright
period, and getting more anal over anti-anything-non-greedy-coporation-friendly?
There MUST be measures that prevent congress from being bought so easily, and those measures MUST be enshrined in the constitution. Anything less
will admit easy circumvention-via-money.
I'll bet I can find counterexamples.
This is not a fair trade off IMHO.
I really don't care if most of the entertainment
produced today is copyrighted indefinitely. I would care if ALL computers and computer software were legally obliged to carry DRM (as per CBDTPA), as this would entail having EVERY piece of hardware and software audited to check that it does not leak protected data. The cost of such an audit would be prohibitive to independant and OSS software developers.
Ok...so they pass a law that limits copyrights to 14 years. Then they embed DRM, etc. in all of our consumer electronics.
How long does it take to change that law back, and how long would it take to completely remove the the fully implementedinfrastructure of DRM, DMCA, etc?
Answer: One vote by our 'representatives' and we're screwed.
I think the first step to allowing works in the public domain to be actually availible to the public is the establishment of some sort of cross-platform, cross-network method to identify works that are free to the public. Filesharing services have been tryin to demonstate leigtimate uses for their networks; they usually cite unsigned artists volunteering their content for distribution or incorporate pay-per-legal-download schemes into their products. Distributing older works in the public domain could provide them with another legitimate reason to exitst, I doubt the previous content owners will volunteer their bandwidth to the distribution of works they previously owned, so the peer to peer networks seem like a natural solution for free ownerless content.
It is worth noting, of course, that very little of the work in the public domain exists in digital format. The sort of leigislation suggested here in the economist provides some hope, though. One day, even though content owners have abandoned work from which they can no longer profit, each user's computer may be like a small piece of a distributed digital cultual museum.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Entered house by circumventing digital lock. How long before we see this in the news?
As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries.
It may hurt todays music Publishers but not Music. In fact I think the quality and diversity of Music will explode once the chains that these middlemen have on it are broken. Excellent Music can be produced in a basement using equipment costing only a few thousand dollars by a hobbyist. Once again songs will be popular when they reflect the attitudes of the listeners rather than because they have been associated with crotch shots of a sexy blonde teenager in a multi-million dollar marketing and payola campaign.
However, to provide any incentive at all, more limited copyrights would have to be enforceable, and in the digital age this would mean giving content industries much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies. Many cyber activists would loathe this idea. But if copyright is to continue to work at all, it is necessary. And in exchange for a vast expansion of the public domain, such a concession would clearly be in the interests of consumers.
If this were true then it wouldn't matter what the length of copyright terms are. The author implies that without Digital Restrictions Management everywhere the 'content industries' will not survive. I would ask him to explain who he groups into the 'content industries' because the artists will certainly not have a problem. Artists have been taken advantage of by the Music publishers for a long time. I would also ask him how long of a copyright term Shakespeare's works were published under or Mozart's. And since I already know the answer I would then ask why those men devoted their lives to their art. What incentive did they have?
At one time the Music publishers had a valuable role to play. They got rich and powerful. But like the buggy whip makers they need to diversify their revenue stream because what they used to do isn't in as much of a demand. Instead, like the Tobacco industry they want to continue to prosper with their old business model and they don't give a damn that it is to the Public's detriment.
"...in exchange for this, the 'content industries' be given 'much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies.' A worthwhile and fair tradeoff?"
The problem is that the copy-protection technologies are backed by the DMCA that pretty much makes obtaining the copy-protected material illegal even after the copyright expires.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If you actually read the GPL you'll find that it has nothing to say about using the software. Not that RMS would like it but using GPL firmware to control a baby threshing machine doesn't break the license as Theo so eloquently put it. Sure it breaks other laws but the point is the GPL has nothing to say about any use or private modifications made to the software. It even goes out of it's way to point out that agreement with the license is unecessary to use the software.
The default in copyright law is that no one other than the copyright holder can distribute a work. "Fair Use" does permit limited excerpting for commentary, criticism, or parody. The only thing that lets any copyrighted work be distributed is a license. All a would be corporate plagiarist would accomplish in legally attacking the GPL is to get the license ruled null and void in his case. The violator would not suddenly gain full ownership of the work and the right to do anything with it he wants...mu! ha! ha! ha! With the license invalidated, the software doesn't become fully public domain. It reverts back to the copyright law default...which says? Right! The copyright holder has the sole right distribute or license distribution.
How is the copyright holder going to feel after being manhandled by corporate shysters? Pretty pissed I'd imagine. The best possible outcome for a plagiarist in a GPL dispute would be to somehow prove he did not violate the license...this won't accomplish what we all assume GPL violators want to do: close source a widely distributed GPL derived work. Note, the originator of a GPLed work who owns the copyright to all parts of it can relicense subsequent distributions any way he wants.
Invalidating the license would be a pyrrhic victory. He would then have to satisfy the copyright holder and would only have two choices to do so. He can remove the GPLed bits entirely and reimplement them. The other alternative would be an alternative license from the copyright holder who's going to be thoroughly torqued by this point and inclined to insist on the most expensive terms possible.
An attack on the GPL is also an attack on the legal structure that currently allows draconian copyrights. It is not coincidental that we don't see high profile legal attacks on the license itself.
The article proposes a "compromise" between two unrelated issues!
Copyright term extension has been happening for far longer than digital technology. Hence the issue of copyright term extension is simply not something to be traded for digital technology restrictions! It is a different issue.
It is true that digital technology may change the feasibility of various copyright enforcement, but that does not have anything to do with the reasonableness of the term of copyrights.
If there were no internet, image scanners and printers, copyright extension would still be the same issue. Logically then, digital copyright protection schemes have no relationship to copyright extension issues.
Copyrights are too long. That is clear and should be changed.
Digital media is easily and routinely stolen. That is clear and presents us with challenges, the answers to which are not at all obvious.
The only good weather is bad weather.
...Mickey Mouse to become public domain.
Get real.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I think a fair solution would be to limit the term of a copyright except when the copyrighted material is still being used or distributed by the copyright holder. This would grant Disney full use of Micky Mouse, and would allow people to distribute works that havn't seen the light of day for, say, 25 years. If the copyright holder is the original author then they should be given the option of extending the copyright. If they don't, then it enters the public domain.
This way:
Disney would still maintain the copyrights of their material.
People could legally share music that is no longer distributed and would otherwise rot in some archive vault.
In other words, this would be a use it or lose it copyright. If a company wants to keep the copyright on their material then they are encouraged to use it and make it available. If they don't, then they lose it.
This would allow for books like Tolkein's Lord of the Rings to remain in control of his estate since they continue to use and publish the material, yet a book like "The Bulb Book" by John Weathers which hasn't been published for nearly a century would enter the public domain rather than be lost forever.
This also would give the music industry an incentive to stop pumping out crap that won't see the light of day a decade from now.
For collectors, perhapse the law should state that republishing of expired copyrighted material must state so, such that collectors can still know what is original or modern copies.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Instead of talking about length why don't we discuss what a copyright is and what it can do.
A copyright just gives credit to the author or corporation who owns it and prevents others from ripping it off.
A copyright is not a way to silent speach like reading an e-book outloud or banning a discusion forum on a website mentioning an author or even banning a documentary with a footage from a movie thats over 70 years old! If Sisko and Ebert can review a recent copyrighted movie with footage then why can't a documentary include footage from the early half of the 20th century? This is who Lessig was deffending during the supreme court case over copyrights.
These people should continue what they were doing but because of years of sucessfull lawsuits from copyright holders the laws of what a copyright is changing to above patent like and now godlike powers thanks to drm. After each sucessfull court case the copyright holder can just reference to it and claim its the word of god and demand the most strictest interpretation by using this old reference. In reality the actually deffinition just gets more and more strict over time because of this. Someone in congress should write a law redefining what a copyright is and what its fair uses are. Then the lawyers can no longer continue their quest on suing anyone who even talks about a copyright.
We can't compromise because the media and book companies already have for us. They now have patent and godlike powers and will use the extra money from them to lobby for even stricter laws and drm to make the patents oops I mean copyrights eternal.
http://saveie6.com/
"we'll unleash a band of hobbits"
Congrats, you're gay. You can look forward to a life of persecution from the righteous in the world and looks of disgust from all you pass. In the end, AIDS will take its toll. Threats from kids who call themselves "we" aren't very intimidating. Bring some more game next time son.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
The idea is that the media get to do anything they want with a property for 28 years? So it'll still be a federal crime to watch a DVD on a linux machine in 2031? Microsoft and Palladium get to freeze everybody else out? Doesn't sound like it helps me much.
However, the _principle_ that a work is stale in 28 years makes a lot of sense. I'm over 50 so I remember 50s music -- sort of. Once wrote a check for one of those compilation CD sets and promptly lost the letter under some stuff for a few months. (What can I say?) When I found it again, I just tore up the check and laughed. THAT is a real-world example of how much cash outlay 50s music is worth to me. 60s? Well, if you remember them, you weren't really there. Those excruciatingly long stoned jams really are pretty boring, aren't they? 28 years _feels_ right to me. That stuff's dead even for someone who was there. Eurotrance is where I'm at now.
Maybe copyrights should last only as long as the profit period. For example, most movies make most of their income within one year of publication, including home video. Most video games and music make most of their income within a few months of publication.
IMO, big media corporations' big strength is not their copyrights but their infrastructure. We all know the difference between good-but-unpopular entertainment and a bad-but-popular entertainment. What makes so much bad entertainment popular is the marketing machine behind it. Even if there were no copyrights, you can't copy a marketing machine. It has to be built, or rather, trained and hired.
If there were no copyrights, brands could be copied, but studios couldn't. Everybody would be allowed to make their own Mickey Mouse cartoons, but ony Disney and a few other studios could do it well. Without copyrights, entertainment companies would have to rely entirely upon uncopyable things like amusement parks and live shows, but Disney, Universal and WB (Six Flags) are already doing that.
A blanket limit on copyright to 28 years is an improvement..but it is not good enough. If the media conglomerates can be greedy and look for the best for them, why can't we?
I propose a radical departure from the idea of copyright...okay it is not that radical. It is simply this.
30 year *COMMERCIAL* copyright...
In addition, Fair use would be extended to cover non-commercial copying-sharing. This right would kick in after 3-5 years after initial release, or when the work becomes obsolete.
This would allow the copyright holders and only the copyright holders to profit from their work, but also to ensure that parts of our culture do not fall into the black hole that is being created. Anything important enough to be a part of our culture will be cultivated by those interested in it, regardless of what the corps think. They just can't make money off of it.
If Sisko and Ebert can review a recent copyrighted movie with footage then why can't a documentary include footage from the early half of the 20th century?
It depends on what the documentary is doing with the clip, if it's a documentary *about* the footage, then that would probably be fair use, if they just want free stock footage, then no, they'd have to get permission as long as it's copyrighted. afaik, that's not some new-fangled extension to copyright powers, it's always been that way.
--
Benjamin Coates, IANAL
p.s. it's Ebert and Roeper now, Gene Siskel died in 1999.
I can't see how sitting on all those B/W movies is profitable.
Movie studio's argument If old films were released to the public domain, they would reduce the market for newer copyrighted films.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have the solution to this whole mess (I think).
The content owners/creators can have enternal copyright if they contunie to publish the work, but the second a work goes out of print it falls into the public domain.
If you think about it when a company lets a work go out of print they are admitting that they can no longer make a profit on it. I don't think is right for them to be able to lock this material in a vault where no one can use/access it.
Under my idea they will have there copyright as long as the work is profitable, then we get it for free.
The term Piracy is clearly an inflamatory slanderous name to apply to someone guilty of illegal music listening, but when companies use the DMCA to instill fear in the masses, the resonable name for them is an IP Terrorist.
Maybe someday we won't have to be afraid anymore...
Seesh, if the govt fixed the supply and demand in any other market people would scream bloody murder that it's Marxisim, but when they restrict the natural supply of information - all of a sudden it's capitalisim. Bullshit, information has no natural limits on supply, since when did capitalisim tosses out the law of supply and demand?
That's like if the govt gave Ford a monopoly on making cars and then had the balls to call it free-market because they could license shares of that monopoly. What a crock, if anything, information should be less restricted than commodities not more restricted.
To think that in my lifetime, we'd be able to freely peruse, use, and abuse all that content from the 30's to the 60's, just today.
I'll take it.
KaZaA'd have lots of good legal stuff to choose from. Who doesn't go a week without hearing a Beatles/Rolling Stones tune? Think of how their whole catalogs would be able to be used more artistically in the hands of new modern production methods!
Or all the classic films (Disney and otherwise) that we wouldn't have to wait on being released on DVD for 3 weeks to have the title pulled from their catalog or made into a "Special Edition" of like 150,000 copies.
Just to think that Disney's release of all the Goofy cartoon's is limited to 150K copies, makes me sick that there's millions of children out there that won't be able to watch them at any given time like I can. Not that I'm selling mine...
Greedy bastids!
example:
Copyright expires after 10 years unless you pay $100 each year after ten, increasing by $100.
Disney has mickey which makes millions and pays for 100 years after expiration.
joe_independent has his cartoon "mr joe independent" which brings him maybe a grand a year which he uses to support his family.
should joe have his little cartoon taken away before disney because it makes him less money?
OK. it's overly dramatic but you get the idea.
ac;)
Your (or whomever's) proposal sounds a great deal like the tradeoff between:
Patent (copyright): We own it for X-long, and you can all see what we did, but we control its USE any way we like for that timeframe, with legal penalties for infringement. After that, it's fair game for anyone.
Trade secret (DRM): We've hidden it, thus we *hope* no one but us can use it, forever and ever -- but IF you DO find it, you get to do whatever you want with it, with no legal penalty.
It's not a bad system for patent* vs trade secret, and I think it's likewise a reasonable tradeoff for copyright vs DRM.
* We'll ignore the issue of stupid patents for the nonce. After all, patents *do* expire. Copyrights are threatening to almost-never expire. Which is worse??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What is stopping them from changing the copyright lengths back to death + 70 years a year later? Then where are we?
-v
The Economist's Editorial is cogent and logically thought out as an abstraction to foster the public interest but the thinking behind it collapses in the real world.
By extending copyright, the various content providers have taken images and ideas that are public icons and locked them up behind a wall that is to all intents and purposes eternal.
Generations have grown up knowing who Mickey Mouse is and there is every reason to expect that Disney, as only one of many content companies, will want to hang on to the iconic power of their rodent for as long as possible. Having an attractive idea that is to all intents and purposes self-advertising is worth a huge amount of money to them and they will want to continue to exploit it.
The real-world problem with the editorialist's proposed scenario is that even if one could realistically expect the idea to go past two PAC-fattened United States legislative bodies and an executive branch that caresses the advantaged (e.g., the Bush Administration's handling of the Microsoft Antitrust Case), there would be no reason for content providers provided with hardware protection-schemes not to pursue the same copyright extensions in the future that they have recently won--either immediately or towards the end of their first or second copyright term. Once they were provided with the ability to define all computer hardware as machinery incapable of violating copyright (however you choose to define 'violation'), their pursuit of prefabricated eternal profit-streams would be only a matter of rational self-interest.
There would in fact be even less to dissuade them in this scenario because fourteen to twenty-eight years from now, holding the keys to all machinery that could replicate content, they would have less to lose to the threat of piracy than they do now.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
No, no and no.
Yes Copyright should go back to 14yrs with one renewal.
Or even the lifetime of the original author, provided the original author is an individual, not a corperation.
Allow copy protection with severe limits on reverse engineering, and independant implimentation?
No
There isn't a societal plus in that, just a perpetuation of damaging the public good.
The Supreme Court blew it, the constitution said for a limited time, and why.
The Supreme Court forgot to look at the why part.
...should we agree to any compromise? The Constitution is clear: to the author and for limited times. Any reasonable person can see that for a corporation (which is not a person) to hold copyright is unconstitutional. Corporations aren't authors; people working within corporations are authors, and they should hold copyrights to everything they write, whether for the company or not. In addition, for anything to be copyrighted longer than the author's life is clearly unconstitutional. How does a copyright term of the author's life + 70 years benefit the author solely? There's nothing about heirs, nothing about companies being able to snatch copyrights from authors. Nothing like that! Unfortunately, it appears that most of the judges who heard this case were unreasonable.
We should not have to negotiate for our Constitutional rights.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I hold some faint hope that the Supreme Court would rule that laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA which effectively give the content "producers" the right to take away fair use are unconstitutional. But it's faint indeed.
I think you guys should read the law carefully. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1201.html)
... traffic in any technology ..." At first, this seems to support your argument that any device that could decrypt copyrighted content would be banned. But a technology is only banned if it ...
There are two main things that the DMCA bans. One is the actual act of circumvention: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." Certainly, when a work has passed into the public domain it is not protected under title 17! (They are not talking about a "brand" of technology here, but a specific instance of it.)
The other thing that the DMCA bans is the distribution of circumvention devices: "No person shall
- "... is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title"
Well, if the technology can be used to decode a significant amount of public domain content, then it is probably not "primarily designed" for work protected under title 17.
- "... has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or"
Accessing public domain works is certainly commercially significant.
- "... is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
As long as you don't market it as a circumvention device for copyrighted works, you're fine.
So where do you get the idea that the DMCA prohibits work on breaking any DRM scheme?
Finally, your argument is simply impractical. Even clearly illegal circumvention tools are available easily on the internet, and once someone has anonymously done the dirty work of unshackling a public domain work, content industries would have no way to stop its distribution. Given that they barely have any impact on movie and music trading that is clearly illegal, it's not very likely that they'd be able to prevent the distribution of stuff they don't even have any legal claim to.
I wish people on slashdot would stop asserting misinformation with authority. Please at least reveal your sources and your reasoning with regard to the actual law! (as I have done..)
This still leads to the absurd conclusion that people are somehow making progress by running around in circles (breaking and replacing windows). A clearer analogy might be paying half of the population to dig holes in the ground and the other half to fill them in again -- by your reasoning, the economy is somehow better off than if they just left the ground undisturbed, which is preposterous on its face.
The root of the fallacy is the supposition that work per se, as opposed to the product of work, has value. In your example, the artists who produce one work of art per year are generating the same value whether they produce that one work in an hour or whether it takes every waking moment for the entire year.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If something like this were enacted, it would essentially leave us in the same place. Currently, copyrights are being extend specifically to stop the release of culturally significant works because they are worth money. This scheme would certainly open up less significant works, but are we really fighting for the release of less significant works or are we trying to get fair usage on all works reguardless of their profitability and popularity. I understand that your particular case was about works that are no longer being published, but I think that it was a better case for a challenge to an unjust rule then model for future rules. Releasing Mickey Mouse into the public domain has a much greater affect on our culture then a book that has been partially forgotten, and under this scheme Mickey would still be off limits. We deserve to have all the options, not just the ones that Disney has decided are not profitable
In many cases, I'm sure my assessment of motive errs toward the optimistic. I have personally met kindhearted policemen, sincere clergy, and selfless poor-folk. These people have left me with the habit of assuming the best about entire organizations of otherwise averagely moral folk. If I am to criticize them for lumping me in with the pink-bottomed, 13-year old kids with hundred gig hard drives stuffed to the kilobyte with warez and music they haven't the skill or life experience to appreciate, then I cannot assume that the entire non-artistic segment of the music industry is staffed with greed mongering trolls.
Though that would make this all much simpler.
The rich have been cornering markets, price fixing, and having an undue influence on government for all of recorded history. Though they are no longer individuals, one could argue that a kingdom was more than just a king, and not entirely unlike a corporation. In any capitalist society they are going to take undue control on occasion. The citizenry will take it back, and promptly trade it for the promises from the next wanna-be king.
My point is that corporations are simply groups of people with money. There is no just law we can make to limit their business without limiting the business of the individuals that compose them. The price of capitalism is like unto that of a beautiful garden, even with the best planning and care you have to take the time to pull the weeds, or they'll surely take it over.