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Intellectual Property Laws bad for business
mshiltonj writes "The NYTimes has a story called "Report Raises Questions About Fighting Online Piracy" that talks about how the stringent enforcement of current Intellectual Property laws (see: RIAA) may acutally be bad for business. It's the not EFF or FSF saying this, it's professors at Harvard Business School and Cardozo Law School. The professors say, "The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support, It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace." and "Bits are not the same as atoms. We need to reframe the legal discussion to treat the differences of bits and atoms in a more thoughtful way.""
If it's now being said by the Harvard Business School and Cardozo Law School, you might say that it's no longer just being said by the long-haired hackers, but now it is also coming from the ivory tower.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
Existing copyright laws are not the major problem. It's the 'over-enforcement' of copyrights, and the ridiculous nature of the patent system that are really the major problems with IP laws in the US.
>Companies should allow some latitude with infringing properties of their works, and some basic trading between friends. However, I also believe, both as a creator and a reseller of intellectual property, that placing your 300 CD Collection on Kazaa is going way too far as well.
what I really think is going way too far is companies deciding who can or cannot be my friend. I have no problem whatsoever with treating everybody as a friend (yes, there are different 'levels' of friend, like all other friends.), and I have no trouble sharing with all my friends.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It's been said umpteen times but these folks at RIAA just don't seem to get it.
Its good that these reports are coming from schools that might have a louder voice in getting the point through.
When Joe Sixpack buys the CD, there is no ulterior motive behind that buy. He is not thinking about ripping the songs and sharing it for free. The DRM/copy protection/encryption/blah and all other technologies only make the experience of listening to music bittersweet when you put the CD into the player and it refuses to recognize it. And no digital protection is good enough for the Black Hats who would get around it, no matter what.
I will say it one more time. I have bought MORE music after I listen to it online before buying it. ARE YOU LISTENING RIAA?
BR 10 years down the line, I am sure we will all look back and laugh at RIAA tactics.
Free XBox, PS2
The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support
Really? What a surprising finding. I would never have guessed that the vast majority of people, who happen to be the consumers of copyrighted material, would actually prefer the copy-left concept where that material was available to them free.
All sarcasm aside, people have always preferred free to paying for something but, the creators of the copyrighted material do deserve to make a living off of their work. The RIAA may be going to extremes with draconian practices but, the presently unspoken idea that "music wants to be free" is not justifiable. When I create a work, what ever it may be, I should have the right to determine how and by whom it may be used. The fact that someone else would rather have it for free is not an adequate reason for me to give it away if I choose not to.
Once a person decides that a price of $15 is not a good price for a CD, or that $150 is not a good price for Windows XP, the economy as a whole is better off with that person downloading said program. Sure, the RIAA or Microsoft are happy with it, and would fight to the death over it, but that sale would never have been made in the first place.
The access to the infinitely duplicable material destroys the notion of scarcity of the product itself - whereupon the obvious price for such a product is no more than the cost of transport - usage of an Internet account.
We're seeing the destruction of an entire industry; its old guard will cry foul every step of the way, until the market eventually drags it into this new age. Observe the American car industry in the '70s, or of US Steel.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Or did you think all free software has been developed by a bunch of teenage hackers?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Intellectual property laws may be bad for business in general, but they are invaluable to big business. How else could they ensure that upstarts don't come in, undercut them, and take over the market? Yet, as anyone who's taken Economics 101 should know, monopolies are hopelessly inefficient - they restrict output leading to high prices for the consumer, whereas a competive market produces more and can only charge around their cost to produce the product. It's hard to be optimistic that big business interests and their lobbyists will ever allow the status quo to change.
Remember that when you work for a company and make something for them they are paying you for your work and time. It is known that your work for them is owned by the company and not owned by you.
This is far from the same thing as a company taking work from you when you are not affiliated with them.
Actually, Copyright law is designed so that artists, inventors, etc.. have some kind of incentive for creating. The idea is that if you take that protection away artists won't bother creating because they can't sell their product without someone stealing it and selling it. Or that you invent something and someone else copies your idea thus taking away some or all of your ability to make money. Since we (at least here in the US) live in a capitalist society the idea is that people work to gain, in our case they work or create to gain money. Copyright law has nothing to do with protecting matter. However this is not to say I do not agree that music and art should be copyrighted for a hundred years either. A reasonable amount of time to profit from your work is all that is needed to give artists a reason to create, not what is likely to be longer than their lifetime so that greedy leeches can continue to sell their creations indefinately.
Let's follow this analogy to its conclusion. If I have $20 dollars, let you "borrow" $20, but still have my original $20, well... Yes. I would have no problem with you "borrowing" my $20. I wouldn't need it back, because I still had the one $20 I started with.
Not that I necessarily agree with the parent, but if you are going to pick an analogy, at least pick one that makes sense.
I hate to be be a bitch and point it out, but it works fine in Norway. And I believe that Sweden, Denmark and other socialistic democarcys are doing rather fine as well.
You guys just got to realise socialism is an idea, and a not a totalerian system. Socialism is about that the wealthy/resourcefull in society is obligated to help the less fortunate.
It might not be obvious, but this actually saves society money. Say, for example, if people aren't left to starve (actual, working social security), they won't have to steal or resort to crime in order to survive. And thus, less police is needed. Money saved.
I guess I can go on, but this post is probably offtopic enough allready.
So for a practical (and working) socialistic system, Norway and it's democracy is a good example.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Personally, I would love to get rid of the "life" part of life+70 years in copyright law.
Just make it a fixed amount of time, preferably no more than 30 years (this is, after all, for *copyright* not patents), then it all goes into the public domain.
Yes, I'm well aware of how the record companies would hate to lose some of their classic hits from the 60s and 70s, but I doubt they sell much from there but a small selection of the very best albums and whatnot.
This would also make it MUCH easier to determine when the copyright was over, rather than having to figure out when the author died, figure out if it was a joint work, or a company owned one, etc. Might also allow them to have an unpublished period of five years or something, too, and other bits like that.
But still, making copyright last forever is rediculous. I'm kinda glad that the 'freezing' of Walt Disney was mythical, because I'd hate to see them argue that since he's still "alive" (theoretically, at any rate), his copyright will live as long as he stays frozen... (e.g. forever, because it would cut into profits to bring him back, even if it were thought possible to in the far future...)
While we're at it, ditch software & business process patents entirely, make normal ones a bit more narrow, and possibly cut the time on them a bit.
One other thing we need to address, though, is the "IP vampire" companies with no actual products who buy up "IP" from dead companies and use it to extort normal companies, making them the living dead of the business world, since they can't be stopped with defensive patents... I'd like to think that open source/free software ideals can help fend them off, if applied more broadly. They are within the current laws, but they certainly don't advance the original purposes of those laws at all... (This, ironically, is one "business method" that I wish had been patented defensively... alas, it is probably too late...)