Not actually all that helpful
by
nenya
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Card's essay might be useful for someone who hasn't been paying attention to the discussion for the past five years, but other than that it's really nothing new. Others have said more and said it better.
Still, it's nice to see a content creator saying these things.
"They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "They should turn their attention to new models."
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
I think his point is that we wouldn't need to put you in concrete storage for several years and fine you six figures if you downloaded Ender's Game. He'd still like you to pay for the book, but doesn't necessarily feel his great-grandchildren need to receive tiny royalty payments from his effort (well, in addition to the publishing houses continuing to reap profits for nearly a century.)
Refreshing attitude. If copyright was reformed to be meaningful in today's environment, where a reasonable profit can be realized in a much shorter time than when copyrights were first introduced due to the capability and speed of worldwide marketing/distribution, eliminating P2P of copywritten works may be a worthwhile trade for the people currently using it for piracy.
--
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try. -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Thomas Babington Macaulay explained it in 1841
by
Sphere1952
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."
--
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Re:Research
by
Decameron81
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You miss the point. I download songs to try and find stuff that is worth a purchase. To be honest I don't care if you consider that like a theft, but that's the way I decide what songs are worth my bucks.
I would also like to point out a few points:
1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!
2 - To prove me that I am doing something wrong you would have to show me how I am hurting somebody. I'm not reselling the music I download, nor even uploading it online... just downloading. A theft to me is what I explained on point 1.
3 - I am actually helping the corps make some better publicity of their songs by actually downloading what I find and buying those CDs I trully like. Otherwise they would be loosing a profit. So to put that in their words, I would be committing a crime if I didn't do so (hehehe).
Just think about it, Decameron
-- diegoT
The term of copyright has been exploited.
by
jbn-o
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
From the article:
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it. There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
Sure it was, once you realize that copyright was never meant to grant a copyright holder perpetual income. Copyright was meant to be an incentive to publish, part of a bargain with the public. So a limited term of copyright (which we don't have today thanks to retroactive term extension) that expires well within someone's lifetime (which we also don't have today) were both good things. Mark Twain fought this and we (as a society) are better off for his not having gotten his wish in his lifetime. If the term of copyright was then what it is now, we wouldn't have as many of his works to share (we might not have any, they might all be tightly controlled by his estate like Mitchell or Gershwin's estate handles their works). You don't spur society to publish more work by granting them everlasting power to deem how the work can be disseminated and built upon.
I think it's reasonable to say far more works would have been lost to time because nobody could legally preserve them by copying them (a time-honored means of saving knowledge for future readers). The Public Domain Enhancement Act (H.R. 2601) attempts to restore a more reasonable effective term of copyright without violating on the Bern treaty. I encourage everyone to contact their congresspeople to co-sponsor this act.
Once you recognize that nobody makes ideas in a vacuum and we all base everything we think and do on the work of others, you get to a point where you begin to question the underlying assumptions of copyright and anyone who pitches copyright as property (a prejudicial term, at the least). I wonder about a far shorter term of copyright and whether society would benefit from not allowing certain expressions to not have copyright power at all (such as non-free software which remains non-free even after it would enter the public domain because the source code for the program is never revealed).
Re:About time
by
Spy+Hunter
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
How about making copyright non-transferrable? So if I write a song, Michael Jackson can never come in and buy the rights to it so I can't publish my own song, and if I write a song, no corporation can ever own the rights to it. I always will own the song. If my group writes the [song, book, code], we own it as a group, until the copyright expires.
I haven't thought this through a whole lot, and I realize that it would have a lot of kinks to work out. (How would anyone get permission to copy a song if they weren't the artist? Obviously the copyright holder would have to be able to sign contracts granting that permission, but that is the same as giving up ownership of the song if the contract is horrible enough. Maybe copyright holders could always retain the option to terminate any contract that gives someone else part of the copyright, or something. Or maybe copyright holders could simply not be able to enter into contracts that would forbid them from entering copying contracts with others.) But I think it's an interesting idea. What does Slashdot think?
Re:Well, that settles it then
by
garyrich
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes, yes. +5 funny maybe, but at least -2 not insiteful. He's "a semi-famous author of the written word" but if you have read any amount of his work you would probably agree that he's also deeply interested in ethics. Ethics and ethical behaviour are at the core of most of his writing. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he thnks about these things clearly and usually not unduly influenced by his Mormon worldview. The postulates he start with are not mine, but he reason well from them.
Point being, I'll grant him some expertise in this area. He's thought about these issues long and hard. I doubt that Mr. Coleman has thought long and hard on any subject of more depth than why Todd got all the punany and he didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Card's essay might be useful for someone who hasn't been paying attention to the discussion for the past five years, but other than that it's really nothing new. Others have said more and said it better. Still, it's nice to see a content creator saying these things.
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
Refreshing attitude. If copyright was reformed to be meaningful in today's environment, where a reasonable profit can be realized in a much shorter time than when copyrights were first introduced due to the capability and speed of worldwide marketing/distribution, eliminating P2P of copywritten works may be a worthwhile trade for the people currently using it for piracy.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841
"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
You miss the point. I download songs to try and find stuff that is worth a purchase. To be honest I don't care if you consider that like a theft, but that's the way I decide what songs are worth my bucks.
I would also like to point out a few points:
1 - The fact that I get or not the song from the internet is irrelevant. I am not stealing since I am not depriving someone from stuff he has, nor profits he could make. How can someone steal bits? Even those are just copied into my box!
2 - To prove me that I am doing something wrong you would have to show me how I am hurting somebody. I'm not reselling the music I download, nor even uploading it online... just downloading. A theft to me is what I explained on point 1.
3 - I am actually helping the corps make some better publicity of their songs by actually downloading what I find and buying those CDs I trully like. Otherwise they would be loosing a profit. So to put that in their words, I would be committing a crime if I didn't do so (hehehe).
Just think about it,
Decameron
diegoT
From the article:
Sure it was, once you realize that copyright was never meant to grant a copyright holder perpetual income. Copyright was meant to be an incentive to publish, part of a bargain with the public. So a limited term of copyright (which we don't have today thanks to retroactive term extension) that expires well within someone's lifetime (which we also don't have today) were both good things. Mark Twain fought this and we (as a society) are better off for his not having gotten his wish in his lifetime. If the term of copyright was then what it is now, we wouldn't have as many of his works to share (we might not have any, they might all be tightly controlled by his estate like Mitchell or Gershwin's estate handles their works). You don't spur society to publish more work by granting them everlasting power to deem how the work can be disseminated and built upon.
I think it's reasonable to say far more works would have been lost to time because nobody could legally preserve them by copying them (a time-honored means of saving knowledge for future readers). The Public Domain Enhancement Act (H.R. 2601) attempts to restore a more reasonable effective term of copyright without violating on the Bern treaty. I encourage everyone to contact their congresspeople to co-sponsor this act.
Once you recognize that nobody makes ideas in a vacuum and we all base everything we think and do on the work of others, you get to a point where you begin to question the underlying assumptions of copyright and anyone who pitches copyright as property (a prejudicial term, at the least). I wonder about a far shorter term of copyright and whether society would benefit from not allowing certain expressions to not have copyright power at all (such as non-free software which remains non-free even after it would enter the public domain because the source code for the program is never revealed).
Digital Citizen
I haven't thought this through a whole lot, and I realize that it would have a lot of kinks to work out. (How would anyone get permission to copy a song if they weren't the artist? Obviously the copyright holder would have to be able to sign contracts granting that permission, but that is the same as giving up ownership of the song if the contract is horrible enough. Maybe copyright holders could always retain the option to terminate any contract that gives someone else part of the copyright, or something. Or maybe copyright holders could simply not be able to enter into contracts that would forbid them from entering copying contracts with others.) But I think it's an interesting idea. What does Slashdot think?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Yes, yes. +5 funny maybe, but at least -2 not insiteful. He's "a semi-famous author of the written word" but if you have read any amount of his work you would probably agree that he's also deeply interested in ethics. Ethics and ethical behaviour are at the core of most of his writing. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he thnks about these things clearly and usually not unduly influenced by his Mormon worldview. The postulates he start with are not mine, but he reason well from them.
Point being, I'll grant him some expertise in this area. He's thought about these issues long and hard. I doubt that Mr. Coleman has thought long and hard on any subject of more depth than why Todd got all the punany and he didn't.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan