Slashdot Mirror
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.
They have a space in there because they are not talking about "copyleft" as in licensing, but rather "the Copy Left" as in "the Left" as in the political category.
I'm not sure that it's accurate to lump everyone who's opposed to the current copyright schemes together as "leftists," which seems to be the implication. Indeed, one would think that a return to a 14 + 14 "founder's copyright" would be not so much radical as reactionary.
If there were no copyrights, you can bet the NYT would not be putting content on the Internat unless it was protected with DRM.
Do we think anyone but geeks really cares? The public can't be bothered to care about anything that isn't spoon fed to them on Entertainment Tonight or in People magazine. We need to make the fight against excessive corporate copyright an entertaining battle or no one will pay attention. How about getting JLo for a spokesperson?
This reminds me of computer crime class a couple weeks ago. We were discussing different communities, and one of them was the open source community. One significantly older graduate student said this.
"Why would you give away your work for free?"
She was completely dumbfounded. The problem is that the older generations still have the protestant work ethic. In our generation the protestant work ethic has died. People are willing to actually do some amount of work for the greater good of society. After we meet our needs by doing "real" work, we are willing to do things that are both productive and fun for the good of others. This has not happened often in history because usually leisure activities are not productive. The rise of geekdom has created the furst truly productive leisure activity, writing software. And since it doesn't cost anything to make, we give it away for free with little or no copyright. This new way of thinking completely dumbfounds anyone who is used to it the other way.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Copyright protection encourages creation.
Lessig maintains that overbroad restrictions on preparing derivative works discourages creation.
Nobody else has any right to works I've created.
What did you draw on when creating works? Or did you claim that you created works in a vacuum?
People are human and want recognition for their work and ideas.
Another human attribute which occurs from time to time is that they don't care about recognition, they just want to spread their ideas for the betterment or enjoyment of all mankind.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Were not NYT writers and editors the imbeciles responsible for irreparably damaging the English language by convincing millions of people that a comma was not needed before the and in a series?
Seeing as Slashdot has kepts its errors rather internal, rather than damaging most of humanity, I'd say they can comment just fine.
For the moment, let's assume you're a brilliant writer who's just released the best selling book ever written. Because you've got copyright on it until 70 years after you die, you're set for life... hell, your kids will never have to work a day. I hardly see that as encouraging you to create more works, and if you're that good, maybe society would benefit from more than a one-shot.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Society should give some motivation, but not by giving no rewards.
The original U.S. copyright act gave plenty of rewards: twenty-eight whole years. The current U.S. patent act gives plenty of rewards: twenty whole years. If you feel that such a term of monopoly does not adequately reward the investment of time and effort into a work or invention, then please explain why I haven't seen Lilly, GSK, Pfizer, and the like publicly lobbying for some sort of Cher Patent Term Extension Act.
More examples:
Ben Franklin refused a patent on the Franklin Stove, saying it was his civic responsibility to share.
Salk, when asked if he intended to patent the polio vaccine, said that would be "like patenting the sun."
Greed may drive innovation in some cases, but only when there are strong limitations on the duration of the patent/copyright. When you let the rules be set by the greedy like Disney and Microsoft, we get nothing but permanent proprietary lock-ins.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Pfft. There have always been people, including protestants, willing to do things for the greater good of society. The Salvation Army (mainly protestant), for example, has been around since Civil War times.
Even the production of intellectual property -- the idea of freely sharing ideas -- has been around for a long time. For example, 'Fine Woodworking' magazine, about as far away from software as you can get, has a space where readers write in a blurb about the clever ways that they've used to solve problems. There is some marginal compensation for the 'best' one in each issue, but people share their ideas -- their IP -- with others because there's a sense of community.
Productive leisure activity has been around for as long as knitting, sewing, painting and whittling.
In reality, part of the reason that many people give away the product of their work is because there is no reasonable way for them to make money off of it: Not only is there no inexpensive mechanism to charge, but there isn't even a good way to figure out how much to charge.
There are also non-monetary forms of payback. Law Reviews, for example, generally don't pay anything to the writers of their articles. But, the writers get prestiege in a specific community. People who contribute to free (as in speech) software also receive similar benefits.
Occasionally pragmatic business reasons for doing so exist, especially in the world of communications standards. For example, the IETF relies on 'loose consensus and running code' in the promulgation of internet standards. If you're a corporation trying to push a standard, you can help yourself by publishing a free version.
There are probably people producing software just out of the goodness of their hearts, with no desire for any other benefit to themselves. But, I don't think you can characterize the entire free software movement as being like that.
Even James Boyle, one of the 'Copy Left' people in the book, has said that he likes earning royalties from the publication of his works. (I happened to take a class from him in the fall.)
Yes. It is called "healthy lifestyle". Eating right prevents many health problems and can cure others. But people don't want that. They want to eat junk and then fix the problems later with a magic potion.
Additionally no drug company who spent millions on research is going to want to come out and say "you could pay us thousands for our patented drug but eating oranges would work just as well."
I agree with you. We need more research done with an eye toward bettering mankind over forcing mankind to fork over the bucks.
Coding Blog
But.. we don't want there to be NO copyright laws. That's far too blanket a solution, and it hoses artists completely.
What would be good is this:
a) Copyright ends at death of author (not copyright holder), that's it. "But what about the kids?" They already got the advantage - genes with creative talent, and possibly a famous pedigree. We want to make sure that they use them.
b) Every copyright is doubled. There is an author's copyright and a market copyright. The author of a work starts with both. The market copyright can be freely sold, transferred, etc. The author's copyright CANNOT be transferred from the author BY ANY MEANS. Thus, authors can still sell copyright rights if they want to, but cannot be forced to give up rights on their own work - they always have author's copyright.
c) Legislate the creation of legal deprotection agencies. These agencies will remove copy protection measures from works once they have confirmed that they are not being used for illegal purposes. (This is not illegal under the DMCA! The DMCA makes it impossible by banning the distribution of the tools and information that would be needed to do so, but doesn't make it illegal.)
d) Ban advertising and nationalise retail. Again super harsh. But, sadly, it is now the *ONLY* way to prevent the commercial market becoming inevitably dominated by the existing big distributors.
You are correct. However I have a problem with the *obscene* profits of the pharmaceutical companies.
Yes, as they say in their press releases they spend 100s of millions on their research budgets for drugs that don't pay off, but what their press releases don't say is that they spend MORE that their research budgets on marketing and lobbying. They also don't mention that the sum of the yearly compensation packages of the top ten executives of any pharmaceutical company is usually *at least* 10% of the company's total research budget.
There needs to be a middle ground between no profits and obscene profits that provides the maximum benefit for the society at large.