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

copy left

[Anonymous Coward]

they actually took the term "copyleft" and modified it, be thankful that they are re-distributing their "copy left" spaced variation for the benefit of the community.

This should be a new definition of irony...

[RobertFisher]

This should be a new definition of irony...

"Dear NYT editors: 'Copy Left' really shouldn't have a space in it. Thanks."

/. editors telling the editors of the NYT how to do their job...

Good to see this in the mainstream press

[jimicus]

The article encapsulates many of the major issues affecting free software today. Best of all, it's written in a reasonably sensible, intelligent fashion (rather than "these copyleft commies are going to take over the world!" which SCO would like us to believe).

Hopefully this indicates that the media is starting to understand that there can be another way. Free software and truly open standards will never become widely adopted while the mainstream view is "how can anything with little or no copyright restrictions be any good?"

Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press

[Apreche]

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.

Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press

[be-fan]

That's hardly the case. There is a great tradition of people doing things for the benefit of mankind in their freetime. John Locke, for example, didn't really have an occupation as such --- he was a student of the church, but never became a cleric, he studied (and practiced, for awhile) medicine, but never got a medical degree, etc. His main profession seemed to have been being a friend of Lord Shaftesbury, which gave him an influential position and little real work to occupy him, save his writing.

Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration

[ShadeARG]

That's a key point. Without copyrights (rights for the person who created the work to retain it) there would be a serious elitist imbalance of information access. Only trusted individuals would have access to various types of information and some types of information would never be disclosed, or possiblu even recorded. People are human and want recognition for their work and ideas. Copyrights (even to the extreme that they have been taken to today) are the lesser evil in this matter.

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.

Re:corrections

[Jameth]

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.

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:A serious question

[tkrotchko]

I'm not advocating more taxes, but I'm thinking of property tax.

The taxes that you're talking about aren't related to ownership, they're translated to sales or profit/loss.

For instance, most people pay property taxes on a house or land they own.

Some states have car taxes. Others have luxury taxes.

If people really thought there was such a thing as "Intellectual Property", then it would have occured to somebody to tax it.

In fact, I can make a pitch that this tax would benefit society at large. Think of it:

1) IP that is generating revenue would have to be fairly valued ... too low, and the shareholders will revolt, too high, and it gets taxed too much.

2) For IP that is not really worth anything (some old movie that isn't even available), the owner would have to either pay taxes on it, or release it to the public domain.

3) IP owners wouldn't be content to "sit" on something.

Like I said, I'm not advocating taxes, but if we're going to call a copyright, "Intellectual Property", I'm saying we should go all the way and really treat it like property. Taxes and all.