The Tyranny of Copyright?

Pinky3 writes "The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long article entitled The Tyranny of Copyright? Views of both supporters of CopyLeft (Lessig and Zittrain) and Copyright (Ginsberg and Goldstein) are laid out. The article constrasts the cultural commons to the 'permission culture" and covers the unintended consequences of various US laws passed long ago." Dear NYT editors: "Copy Left" really shouldn't have a space in it. Thanks.

Comments

Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration

[cxvx]

... I would not have to register to NYT to read the article ...

You don't have to register with the NYT.
With the following procedure, you can read any NYT article:

• copy link to the article
• go to google.com
• feed the link to google
• You'll get a "Sorry, no information is available for the URL ..." message
• Click on the "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web ..." link
• Voila, you can now read the article, register free, thanks to google

I suspect this works because the NYT sees google as the referrer.

Derivative works

[tepples]

Dr. Lessig doesn't want to abolish copyright. He merely wants to find some way around the draconian restrictions on derivative works. Such restrictions lead to injustices such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976), which held that subconscious copying of a copyrighted work is actionable infringement.

Or do you claim that authors create works in a vacuum?

Re:What ?!!

[Arathrael]

Ging-gang-google gave me this article from the website of the school of Law at UKMC.

Apparently what happened was that the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) sent letters out in 1996 to camps - including Girl Scout ones - demanding they pay fees for singing any of their copyrighted songs (such as Edelweiss and Puff the Magic Dragon), saying, "They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too. If offenders keep singing without paying, we will sue them if necessary."

Later they claimed that they hadn't meant to target Girl Scouts, just other camps - "the sort that bring in bands for square dances, have music by the pool ... and are like sending your kid to a resort."

Re:"the Copy Left"

[TKinias]

scripsit Frater 219:

Indeed, there's a right-anarchist argument that, unlike private property, copyright is nothing but a government-created monopoly. (Of course, there's also a left-anarchist argument that private property is a government-created monopoly too, but I'm not so sure -- territory is a pretty fundamental idea for a lot of species that don't have governments or copyright.)

Actually, the idea that private property is a government-created monopoly is not just an anarchist idea. Without taking a stand on whether it is a good thing or not, it is pretty clearly something that doesn't exist without state enforcement. It's important to distinguish ``property'' in the sense of ``my stuff'' from ``property'' in the sense of something that remains mine whether or not it's in my actual possession or use, and which I can have legal recourse to regain if I lose. The latter is what is provided by the state, not the former. (Many versions of socialist thought, BTW, make this distinction, too. Your house, your computer, your trousers are yours, it's just things like factories and farmland you don't farm yourself that you can't own.)

These ideas are also based on the idea that property is primarily land. In order to have claim to land that you're not actually using (for example, holding for speculation or renting to tenants), you have to have a state to enforce it -- or you have to have a private army in an anarchic situation. This is what Hobbes was referring to in his famous ``nasty, brutish, and short'' quote: without a state you would never get anything done, because you would have to waste all your effort employing violence to keep hold of your goods and land.

What you're calling ``left anarchists'' would hold that the state enforcement required to keep hold of property that is being rented by others (or simply in disuse) is oppressive. The idea is that if you're not actually using it, you don't really need it, and you're only using the state to squeeze wealth out of the people who really do need it.

Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration

[Stephen Samuel]

If there were no copyrights, you can bet the NYT would not be putting content on the Internat unless it was protected with DRM.

Misplaced agression.

The problem isn't the existence of copyright, it is the abuse of the idea.

If there were no copyright, there would be no GPL either (the GPL depends on copyright for its ability to force sharing).

Copyrights that run for 7 generations, chilled political debates, supression of even discussions about encryption algorithms, and forcing the removal of entire websites without sending so much as a sniff past a judge are things that would probably leave Jefferson et.al. spinning in their graves.

From the article:

Thomas Jefferson, for one, considered copyright a necessary evil: he favored providing just enough incentive to create, nothing more, and thereafter allowing ideas to flow freely as nature intended.
''If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property,'' he wrote, ''it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone.''
His conception of copyright was enshrined in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, .....

Canada

[Dashing Leech]

From the article: "Only second-world countries, like Croatia or Brazil, he speculates, are unfettered enough to try something new." (refering to William Fisher's business model in which music is paid for by levy's on recordable media like CD-Rs).

Um, this is already partially implemented in Canada. We pay a levy on recordable media, and as a result downloading is legal. Supposedly, the levy is supposed to go to the artists and recording industry. The only thing missing is the "central office", otherwise it is very much like Fisher's concept. And I hardly think Canada qualifies as a second world country.