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Lessig - Public Domain Dead in 35 Years
tcd004 writes "Lawrence Lessig, in an article on the Foreign Policy site, predicts that the public domain will die a slow death at the hands of anti-piracy efforts. From the article: 'The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognize it is gone.'"
Nothing has fallen into the public domain for almost a half century before I was born.
It's dead Jim.
Is this really Lessig writing or is he just regurgitating Ray Bradbury?
In any event, people simply don't care. As long as they have a cool ringtone, that is.
More
that the main purpose of copyright, was to enhance the public domain.
This is why everything I write on Wikipedia is still released into the public domain.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
What a stupid thing to suggest.
;)
As long as people are out there sharing ideas freely, it'll survive. It may not get as much attention as it does right now (i.e. all the attention open source gets right now), but as a concept, it cannot die.
There, I had a thought and shared it. PD was just reborn
In a free society the public domain will never die. It's part of our culture. There will come a point when things get so bad that people will just stop caring about the lawyers and self-righteous extremism. Look at what a joke patents are becoming. If it's get ridiculous enough and enough people care about, it will change.
Although, things aren't so great right now, and will probably get worse before they get better.
Lessig himself teaches that, since the failing of Eldred, public domain will die due to lobbying and retroactive term extensions. That's not an anti-piracy measure, it's just big companies controlling congress.
Public domain is just on hold for a while. Hey, we only have to wait until 2019 to get our hands on that hot 1923 copyrighted material.
:(
Congress wouldn't extend copyright again, would they?
Of course, new stuff locked down by DRM won't know when it's supposed to expire, so 90+ years when it's supposed to expire, no one will know what to do with the scrambled bits.
No, exactly the opposite.
This is what happens when the motivating factor is to maximize profits. If someone can make a profit from it, it gets patented and copyrighted.
What is the incentive for people to give away things when the trend is to become wealthy as quickly as possible?
People who already are wealthy are the ones with the greatest means and free time to create more wealth...it is a mindset.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Within every DRM system there will always be a way for the author to set the copy rights to allow freely made copies. There are always people who want their stuff copied or who don't care or who don't want the recipient encumbered by any restrictions.
That said, PHBs and paternalist OSes from Redmond may decide the implement restrictive DRM settings for their own idiotic reasons. I noticed more than one company annual report that uses a password protected PDF to prevent copy-past operations for who knows what reason. Yet the first time a small content creator's use of DRM causes problems for their big client, the small company will "turn off" DRM.
As long as there are people that want to be heard as far and wide as possible, there will be a public domain.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It's very likely that Lessig is right. Meanwhile, personal casual copying will continue--on a reduced level. Average consumers will have DRMed gear.
Only about one in twenty or one in a hundred will go to the effort of buying the illegally chipped merchandise that will become available in flea markets, on the Internet, and via other black-market channels. This gear will be sold like the pressed-grape-concentrate bricks of the Prohibition era, which came with detailed instructions explaining that it was totally illegal to use them to make wine and giving careful step-by-step directions on what you must not do to stay legal.
It will create more social unrest, injustice, and disrespect for the law. As with prohibition, and with current marijuana laws, a huge fraction of the population will be felons according to the law. Enforcement will be inconsistent and selective. Most people breaking the law will not be deterred because they will feel that getting caught is unlikely and totally a matter of bad luck.
My analog cassette player died last year. My old CD player is starting to become unreliable. I'm not sure what the useful life of a solid-state laser is, but I'm beginning to suspect it's less than ten years. The next one I buy will probably have DRM.
Prohibition eventually ended, the "war on drugs" will eventually end, and the war on the public domain will eventually end. Probably not in my lifetime, though, and not until a lot of damage and misery has occurred.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
While I see the guys point he probably couldn't be more wrong if he tried. I never used to release anything I wrote or developed into the public domain. As restrictions increase though I am more and more inclined to release my material, in part, as a protest. Most of it is not really worth anything to anyone but me but there are a few gems in amongst it that potentially have value.
While I don't imagine everyone will follow my course I imagine that there are suficient like minded people that will do the same to ensure that we will always have a body of public domain work. As restrictions increase public domain works become more and more appealing. Public domain will never replace private domain as there is to much money in it. Public domain work, though, can certainly keep the private domain in check and limit its powers. The only danger is nutty legislation that effectivly bans public domain work and I can't ever see that happening.
I actually don't see copyright as being all that bad. In fact I would go as far as to say I quite like it. The length copyright applies for is far to long. IMHO it should be more like 20 or 30 years but I could be persuaded that it should be somewhat longer. I like the way the author doesn't have to apply to any central body to copyright a work. It just magically happens. That's great because it stops leeches making a quick buck of other peoples work.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Warning: I'm actually serious about this.
I'll be terrified to see the day that the USPTO actually starts selling the rights to public domain works of unknown origin.
I can honestly see it happening.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
While it sounds catchy, it's not really as if public domain is _really_ going to die. What's going to happen is that copyright becomes stronger and lasts longer, and eventually copyrighted material might never enter the public domain again.
But plenty of people love to share their work and ideas. Some of these people are going to be putting stuff in the public domain. Also, with copyleft and similar policies, a lot of copyrighted material is going to provide similar benefits to public material (reusability).
All is not lost, and all won't be lost as long as enough people behave socially rather than trying to grab as much money and power as they can.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``In a free society the public domain will never die. It's part of our culture.''
I much more feel that society and culture are the root of the problem. Let me explain.
One problem is the political system. Winner-take-all is a way of counting votes that basically admits only 2 parties (a 3rd party will take away votes from the party closest to it, increasing the likelihood that the less-favored party wins).
Because there are only 2 parties, and it's hard to start up a 3rd party with a fighting chance, it's hard to improve the situation once both parties start down the Dark Path.
Enormous amounts of money are invested in election campaigns. One party cannot significantly cut investments, because that is almost certainly yielding victory to the other party. Campaign money has to come from somewhere.
Both parties receive heavy sponsoring from the corporate world. It is not at all unreasonable to suspect that this might convince some politicians to view their sponsors in a favorable light, and be more inclined to pass legislation that helps these sponsors than legislation that inhibits these sponsors.
In short: what's good for the company is good for the party. There are clear signs of corporate influence on the government.
The principle of freedom of the press exists so that the media has the freedom to inform the public about political wrongs. The idea is that politicians can get away with a lot of crap as long as nobody knows, so some entity has to be responsible for keeping the public informed. This entity is the free (e.g. independent from the government) press.
The problem with the free press is that it is dominated by large corporations. These same corporations also sponsor politicians. So, on the one hand, they can influence politicians in a way that wouldn't be desirable from the small man's point of view. On the other hand, they can cover it up so that noone finds out.
So, it's the corporations pulling the strings in the important parts of society. Pair this with an individualist culture bent on material gain and personal happiness, and I think you can see how big a problem there is and how hard it is to change it.
Oh, and yes, everybody preaches freedom, liberty and democracy...but more and more freedoms are taken away. Citizens of the USA now enjoy noticably less freedom than citizens of the European countries the USA originally loathed for their authoritarianism, so I think the freedom, liberty and democracy message can be safely discarded as a lullaby to keep the uninformed public from waking up.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Like when the govt. allowed two sisters to copywrite "Happy Birthday"?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
More than anywhere there is a generational gap in the copyright universe. There are those, currently at the top, who want to protect the things they grew up with (Mickey Mouse, we love you - I wanted to be member of the Mickey Mouse club - haha, wasn't Mickey so cute.) And there is the current generation who, for better or worse, have no attachment to anything - everything is just play-doh to make something else. At some point there will be a changing of the guard and the public domain will rise like a phoenix.
I also think to some extent the generational gap results in over protection to those with the pocket-books. Copyright didn't play an important part of culture so the leaders aren't comfortable speaking its language. Whenever you have that situation, where a leader is relying entirely on the advice of his "counselors" you have the problem of the leader's view taking on the characteristics of the view of whomever speaks to him the most. And quite frankly those with the most get the ear. As more of us get into congress that are comfortable with the issues and have independently formed opinions, you will see a change to a more reasoned debate.
I hope.
I agree. It's not in fashion here on Slashdot to actually be optimistic about the mechanisms of change in a representative government. But what people keep forgetting is that the American government was deliberately set up to move slowly on issues of major import. Sometimes that slow pace seems good (when people are trying to overturn something you like), and sometimes it seems bad (when you're trying to turn the tide and it's difficult to do so), but it's that way for good reason.
People are already starting to fight back. Lessig, McLeod, and others are writing about copyright excesses. There are a handfull of Representatives in Congress who really understand what's going on, and they're trying to educate their peers. We lost the Eldred case at the Supreme Court, but that's certainly not the end of the road.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I take it we're talking about works copyrighted in America, therefore only American creative works will not enter the public domain.
Arguably you could say the US is a superpower based on it's culture (or lack thereof). They haven't conquered anywhere by force, but have introduced, TV, music, films, the whole American lifestyle. Surely if a smaller and smaller percentage of public domain creative works are American, they will have a lesser cultural influence on the world (especially if sales of DRM'd "culture" slow as consumers realise what they lose).
Does it mean that Disney will have to actually come up with new stories instead of ripping off Grimm brothers et al?
You see, that's exactly the problem. They have you using words like "ripping off" to describe what they do with thos public domain stories. As long as the public feels like this then congress can do whatever it wants (translation:whatever is suggested to it by the media giants) with copyright law.
I realize you were just pointing out hipochricy. But the terms you used to do it, so pervasive in our society, are the exact terms and feelings Disney counts on so the public never questions their "right" to keep their works locked away forever.
TW
If it's that bad, why should I care about 880 free megs of file hosting?
Dark Reflection
"That can be arranged."
- RIAA
"*shrug*, *BLAM*"
- Your government
This post has proved th epoint that the idea of the public domain is dying.
Open Source is not helping this situation either, there seems to be confusion between the 2 in many peoples minds.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
You're assuming that in 35 years the western countries will still rule the world.
Most of our culture like our music is produced in the private domain. It used to be that this work would be in the public domain after a small amount of time. In the current system copyright is being extended at such a rate that nothing will ever again be in the public domain. Lessig here is arguing, as he has in the past, that it is important that societies eventually own their culture. With the current mindset that the public should never own creative works, this will not happen. Imagine a world where the widely reproduced creative works from the Renassaince had to be licensed.
Never has a compnay made so much money off of the public domain also been the most ardent opponent against it.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You would be doing us all a much bigger favor if you tried to change the law instead of breaking it.
In the words of William Faulkner: "Good artist borrow each others idea's -- great artists steal them outright."
Which also implies that draconian copyright law will make great art one day no longer possible.
Well, it actually has been tried a lot. However, the results of the attempts never were what Marx and Engels hoped for. All the evidence is against communism. Principles, which dozens of countries have tried with usually disastrous consequences, are very likely to be flawed.
When it comes to Public Domain in the internet world, we won't know for another couple of dozen years how it will work out, but we can of course theorize (that means "guess") about it, as Lessig does.
Agreed. As I said in another post, copyleft is akin to letting people walk on your lawn when they bulldoze the public parks. It's nice, but it doesn't make everything all better. Copyleft does not bring back those parts of the public domain which Congress gave away.
Howabout we go back to the old system-
If you want copyright protection, you MUST submit your work to the library of congress or the national archives.
When your copyright term is up, the public is free to acquire information from this resource.
There you go. The compensation they get is that they are granted a temporary monopoly on the reproduction of their work. The public is guaranteed their rights to it under public domain.
Its analogous to the way that patents are supposed to work. Of course, that system is also broken...
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn