Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Issues in the Mainstream
dmayle writes "Recently, the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled on a momentous topic, the Grokster case (as covered on Slashdot). It turns out, however, it's not just geeks who are taking notice, and we're not the only ones who think things are getting ridiculous. The Economist has a great story on the subject, noting among other things, that if the cost of publishing had come down with the internet, perhaps the amount of protection needed to encourage publishing is less as well." From the article: "Both the entertainment and technology industries have legitimate arguments. Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights. And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up (along with much of their business). Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with media firms' established business models, stifles innovation and is an unjustified restraint of commerce."
The cost of publishing is rapidly approaching zero. The cost of creation, at least for Hollywood and game companies, is rapidly approaching infinity.
And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up...
Actually, I find that high quality content and ideas are harder to "rip" and replicate. Maybe not the best example, but Slashdot's code and ideas are out in the open, yet there aren't many competing sites for the same audience. The problem, to some extent extent, thus perhaps lies with the quality of content.
see a Text Widget
Is this meant to imply that people who read The Economist aren't geeks?
A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms--14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.
This is perfectly in line with what i've heard from copyright experts and people who _used_ to work for copyright protection groups/organizations.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I said it before and I'll say it again:
Exchanging goods for money is an old and well trusted system. It has worked well for centuries because those doing the selling were generally the only ones who could comfortably produce the product.
However, we are now entering The Information Age. Many businesses no longer sell goods, or services, but rather sets of instructions, plans and ideas. As these are not tangible objects, they are easily reproduced.
Previously it was possible to bind these ideas to tangible objects, thus making them harder to reproduce. Recipes were printed in books. Music was pressed into vinyl. Because of this, businesses could stick to the age old business model, but now that the consumer can also easily reproduce products, cracks are forming in this model.
All well and good, but what's the solution? How can businesses make money on the ideas/information/programs they produced initially? At the moment there seems to be a knee-jerk legal response, but this doesn't seem to me to be a viable solution in the long term (but I am not an economist). One alternative could be to scrap the "sell multiple, low-cost copies" model and go with a "Sell one, high cost copy which will cover expenses and profit". For example, 20th Century Fox makes a new movie costing $100,000,000. They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.
Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily.
Do people get a say in what's produced? How do we insure the producer is producing a quality product? Through market research and strict auditing of the producers.
A crazy, poorly formed idea, but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing.
This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.
Exactly! In this day and age, most media that is published is *long* forgotten after only a few months. The only reason the conglomorates want this 90+ year protection is so that they can gaurantee that every single person alive when the piece of material was produced will be dead before it can be used somewhere else.
That isn't protecting distribution to make back profit, that's protecting big business to control every facet of their holdings while fucking the public out of what should have been rightfully theirs.
It's really sad that the lawmakers and interpreters are either ignoring this important fact (or color blind -- green).
Eight years is too much, nevermind 28 or 90+!
The Supreme Court held that you cannot distribute technology with the deliberate intention that it be used to violate the copyrights of another. The decision was correctly made, in my opinion. I also agree that the falling cost of publishing may (see another top-level comment regarding the cost of creation) indicate decreased need for the protections of the copyright system. However, the Supreme Court is not where you should go to make policy, and since this is not a Constitutional ruling it is comparatively easy to change: go to Congress and get them to change the copyright laws on the books.
Yes, Congress is a cesspool of corruption; and yes, Congress gets more time in bed with the entertainment industry in a year than any of us will have with our wives in our entire lifetime. But Congress is the place to fix this, not only because it's the appropriate place but also because Congress is more attune to what people want and more able to make policy decisions. After all, the Supreme Court refers to Congress and the Executive as "the popular branches" for a reason.
Do some research, determine what changes need to be made, and push them through Congress. If it's a good enough idea, then enough people will subscribe to it to convince their legislators to fix the problem. But don't bitch at the Supreme Court for telling you not to break the law. And if you want to make a point about it by breaking the law as a form of civil disobedience, remember (unlike so many current-day protesters) that the hallmark of civil disobedience is being arrested and charged with a crime.
This is a false analogy -- here's a better one: say you make a horseshoe in your workshop. I then buy it from you. Is it now wrong for me to make my own horseshoes? These horseshoes I will make will not be taken from you -- they will be entirely my creation.
Now, society benefits from a supply of horseshoes, and you might not invent the horseshoe if, once you sold me one, I would never buy another from you. Therefore, society took an unusual step: by legal fiat, we will voluntarily give you a monopoly on your invention for a limited time, even though you can't force us to do it. Since it us doing it, we'll optimize the "limited time" to maximize the benefit to us -- long enough for you to make enough of a profit to justify spending time on creating new things, short enough so that we too can make a profit by making horseshoes. In fact, we realize that if we gave you a permanent monopoly you'll simply grow fat making horseshoes. On the other hand, but limiting the time of your current monopoly we hope you might decide to go back to the shop and invent something new (the crowbar?), so you can get a new monopoly.
Copyright law is based on the same principle, except now it's about ideas rather than physical invensions. Again, we need to strike a balance between allowing the authors to get a return on their investment of time and work, and between our desire to profit from their ideas by selling them as their are (reproduction) or reworking them in new ways (making derivative works).
Abandonware, and deliberately restricting access.
Sure, I quite like the idea of sharing mp3s and downloading TV shows, but I realise that the arguments against doing that do have at least some merit. What does annoy me is that it's impossible to get access to a lot of media.
The market for classic video games is small-to non-existant. Occasionally these are relicenced, but mostly people are not making money from these games. The TV Pilot "Global Frequency" would not have been seen by anyone except people downloaded it. This caused complaints from WB. Not for any good reason. They weren't losing any money from it because there was no way to buy a copy, but The WB want to hoard their IP.
Society does better from these when people are breaching copyright. It's better that a show is watched than a show is buried in a vault, but copyright hasn't caught up with this possibility.
Justice Breyer, back before he was on the Supreme Court, wrote an interesting article on this, arguing that publishing costs were high enough that we might not need copyright. This was before technology drove publishing costs way down.
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.
Restricting distribution of works created a century ago where the authors are long dead won't help the author any way, and won't encourage him to create other beautiful works either (well, unless they manage to ressurrect him).
Copyright at 14 years would allow for ample opportunities for all artists and authors to get paid for their work, as most of commercial use of the work happens within those 14 years anyway. AND, it allows for other, new authors to create new creative derivative works without huge legal problems; it solves abandonware; it solves orphanware (allowing to reproduce an obscure song cannot get the author's permission because he is dead, but resolving the legal issues of ownership would cost countless thousands).
There is a lot of crud in the air when it comes to copyrights. I think it's important to air these things:
1) Artists create in a vacuum. The act of creation is a mystical experience above ordinary humans.
2) Without long copyrights, there would be no incentives for creators to create, leaving us with a dull and lifeless society.
One is at the heart of a lot of publishing group propaganda. Of course, all of us create art. Most of it isn't very good, but we all create, from doodles, to humming, to solid prose and moving music. We are often spurred to create by other art. Art influences art. This doesn't mean just immitations, but also reactions, remixes, rebuttals.
Two is in the head of a lot of artists. At some level, I can't blame them. No one wants their hard work exploited. But I will point out that art was created before copyright legislation. The need to create and share went before the profit. Also, copyright and extensions to copyright have ever been pushed by the publishers, from the Statute of Anne onward. The idea is very mercantilist -- provide a monopoly to encourage production. It isn't terribly modern.
There are modern ways to approach the problem of compensating artists. I think the current roadblock is the publishing industry. They say they serve to both reward good creators and silence bad ones, so as to not choke up the public mide with poor ideas. People are perfectly capable of culling what they like from what they don't, and can use social networking to filter out content they don't want. The internet has made this a solvable problem. As for compensating artists, there are ideas like the Street Busker Protocol, where instead of a publisher, an escrow keeps things honest.
The link I used to have has died, so here's a brief run-down:
For the purpose of this, our artists is a writer, and she has just written a novel. She encrypts the novel and sends it to an escrow. She works out that she wants $200,000 dollars to release the key to the novel so that it can be read. The escrow will take a small cut and will solicit buyers for a set period of time, say 60 days. The writer sets about promoting her new work. She can release teaser chapters, related short stories, go on late night TV, whatever. Meanwhile, the public can offer up contributions online to get the key. The escrow holds all of the money. If, at the end of 60 days, the novel hasn't attracted 200k in contributions, the contributions are returned, and the writer must start again. If the goal is met, the writer is paid as soon as she releases the key.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
No one has any natural right to any possession. Fundamentally, my property is defined by what I can either take and hide, or take and defend by any force I have available.
Government, via "social contract", creates and protects property rights and acts as the sanctioned force used to enforce those rights. The question then becomes, "what defines property, what defines fairness, and what limits and enpowers those rights?"
And that's why there's any argument at all. All the players in the intellectual property game have different and sometimes opposed ideas of roles, rights, and responsibilities. Fairness begins to boil down to "fair to who?", with the answer becoming "whoever can influence government to protect their interest best".
Explicitly, copyright was used to create and protect possession of the intellectual expression of a creator's ideas to allow those creators to profit for a short time by creating artificial scarcity and temporary monopoly. (Ideas and their expressed artifacts, uncaged, tend to flow around and multiply without regard to their creators' wishes to make a buck by them.) This was explicitly intended as incentive to publish, to share with culture the product of a creator's mind. The consumer's "right" to that creator's creation were deliberately circumscribed during the copyright time period. After that, the creation escapes into public domain.
Now, however, the rights of creators (or more specifically, the rights of those media corporate entities who co-opt the creators and wield their rights by proxy) have placed their profit rights well beyond the reasonable scope of incentive and, as you say, into the realm of perpetual monopoly, at the expense of the society which was intended as the primary beneficiary.
Sad, truly sad.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Absolutely true! Yet I suspect that most of the ongoing illegal distribution of media on the internet would still violate any of proposed changes to rebalance copyright suggested in the Economist article. What percentage of P2P music and video is older than 14 years? Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Artists have been creating art, sculpture and music several hundred years before copyright even existed, let alone before long (90-year) copyrights existed. There will still be art and music when copyrights cease to exist. You may have noticed that video did not in fact kill the radio star.
This metality strikes me as a sort of temporal cultural-centrism: "without the system we have now, there would not be the things we have now."
There are non-monopoly systems of distribution which provide material benefit to creators of art. Direct or indirect patronage systems, for example. My point is not to endorse these here, but rather to remind everyone that there are "other ways to run the railroad," i.e. - copyrights are not the only (or even best way) to provide art and music.
You can't add pianos and telephones.