Slashdot Mirror
The Guardian On Intellectual Property
mykdavies writes "The Guardian has an excellent article giving lay readers an overview of some of the problems being caused by the concept of 'intellectual property', including references to stories familiar to Slashdot readers, such as DVD Jon, the Sony rootkit, Amazon and Google business patents." From the article: "Even facts about the world can, in some cases, become the property of commercial companies. It was the promise of gaining patents on the human genome that lured investors into the private consortium that attempted to sequence it in competition with the public effort. Laboratory animals have already been patented, starting with the OncoMouse, an animal whose genome has been manipulated to ensure that it develops cancer."
Intellectual property stuff is purely evil. Don't quote me on this or I'll sue.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Something is very wrong with the patent system when living creatures can ba patented.
So now we have fearless, regenerating, and immortal mice with cancer! When will the madness end?
It's a troll, always posts this crap.
Explain to them that someone else is trying to patent God's work (and/or derivatives of), and set them loose.
I read the article shortly before it appeared on /., and was irritated to find that it makes no mention of the FSF or Richard Stallman at all, despite making the point that software patents are bad and are stifling creativity. How to take action against such a great threat must surely be an important part of any critical article, yet the author makes no effort to do any such thing.
Other than that, though, it was a good read, covering more than just software patents, and is a good attention-raiser for this important topic. Maybe the mainstream media will finally wake up to the very real threat IP poses...
HAH! I just wasted a second of your life making you read this, but I wasted a minute of mine thinking it up. DAMN.
Exactly what does this music store "owner" claim to have in common with Intellectual Property? At least keep the posts on topic!
This reminds me of the excessive software patents in Europe - what does it take to keep people from compromising ideas just for money?
...OncoMouse will get a free trip to Disney world, new push bikes, RC helipcopter and the like for Xmas...
Would you rather we all just keep quiet over the Sony/rootkit story, do as we're told, keep buying our DRMed/etc. CDs, and act like good, unquestioning consumers? Sorry, but I think that this is something we simply do have to keep on about. We have to make sure people know that Sony are not beneath putting this sort of software on their CDs (even if they didn't know quite everything the rootkit did, they're still responsible for putting it on their products), else we'll only see things getting worse.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
"Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage "
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Circumcision is child abuse.
This makes it likely for other those so inclined to understand our point. They even note the paradoxical effect that manditory enforcement of copyright would have on Microsoft and other monopolist companies relying on licensed products.
However, I notice that there is very little variety in the links at the end of the document. Maybe they should point to a few different places---the FFII website might be a good start, as they seem to come out as being friendly to (small- and medium-sized) business IMO, and they're European.
American University's Center for Social Media working with the Washington College of Law coordinated the release yesterday of a Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use authored by several independent film organizations. The statement explains approaches documentary makers can take in asserting fair use rights in their films.
i read "The Guardian has an excellent article living gay readers...". omg, i need some sleep...
I look forward to the day when cancer patients get sued for having infringing copies of patented cancer genes in their bodies.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... if western society thinks it can stop other countries from using existing ideas to build new ideas, we're crazy.
China, as an example, has shown a complete lack of respect for the copyrights on software, and I see nothing to convince me that they are going to pay any attention to north american IP laws when push-comes-to-shove...
At some point the 'powers' are going to have to realise that ideas are not the same as physical property, and can not be treated the same.
All new knowedge is built on the work of those that came before. The rate of increase of new ideas is directly related to how quickly the new idea can be passed on to. So why is it that now when the dissemination of information is essentially instantaneous and free we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to impede progress?
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
This space unintentionally left blank.
Plant patents have been around for a long enough time; it's only natural to branch out to animal patents. I mean if you spend 10 years and $20 billion developing the glow-in-the-dark puppy and all of a sudden everybody wants one, you don't want to let a competitor freeload off of your work. That being said, the idea of owning a patent on an animal is kind of disturbing. On the other hand, you can't really be issued a patent for animals that already exist (hopefully). Otherwise I will claim the patent for human beings. Everyone who doesn't pay up will be shot.
I just know the US will weaken its IP laws somewhere in the near future. The US has developed a nice system for correcting draconian laws, it goes something like this:
Government: Look here, we have some nice (new) laws to make you feel better.
People: *yawn* Who gives a fuck?!?
Government: Ok then, lets up the ante...
Small group: Hey, that's not right.
People: *yawn* Who gives a fuck?!?
Government: The "small group" didn't elect me *rinses* *repeats*
Small group: Ok, now I'm mad, I'm calling shenanigans...
People: *yawn* Who gives a fuck?!?
Government: Just one more tweak, then we can retire...
People: Huh what's happening?.... Get out the guns, it's time for a revolution
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
I'll believe that when people stop buying $200 jeans, $300 "bling" chains, $500 jackets, and $50,000 SUVs. There's plenty of money to go around, people just don't want to spend it. After all, says the general public, why buy something when you can just get it for free?
Is that the guy on the corner with the bin full of $2 DVDs?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'm pretty sure the post was just a joke (it gets pretty funny in a bad soap opera-ish way at the end).
Excellent read. The first article I've read that actually covers the investor-patent relation as a trade market independent of the 'inventor'.
It also makes a clear distinction between the right to copy and concepts of ownership without overt use of analogy and metaphor.
The final point, that Intellectual Property is itself an idea that can be manipulated, distributed and copied, also offers fresh perspectives on what is often accepted as an ancient and unnegotiable moral framework; one in fact enforced by laws that are invented to make allow for the idea of IP in the first instance.
Damn Right Scarletown! We all know that it only cost twenty five cents to make a CD, because we can do it ourselves. Printing can't cost more that a buck or two. CDs are OVERPRICED and we are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore!
The purpose of copyrights and patents is to promote the progress of science and useful arts USC Article I, Section 8, Clause 8. It's purpose is not to make inventors rich.
When you look at the great inventions, people mostly didn't do it for the money. I talking not about things like the light bulb but the fundamental research that went into most of the break through discoveries in science. Take just about anything, the vacuum tube, the transistor, integrated ciruit, the Internet, etc. and you'll find the incentive came, not from being able to get rich from it, but by the desire to create and discover. That people can make a living from their discoveries and inventions is great but it's not essential for progress.
woah i didn't know that DVD Jon, the Sony rootkit, Amazon and Google were slashdot readers!
-- lol pwned
If ideas are parented, how long will it be before we all need regular brain scans to ensure we dont think anything that might infringe?
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
I'm constantly amazed that the American and European global media companies are so obsessed with China copying movies and pop music CDs. Because I can't understand why anyone in China would be that interested in American movies and rock'n'roll.
Sure there are always going to be a few people in the coastal cities, the oxymoronic Chinese super-hip people of Shanghai and Hong Kong who follow the latest western trends, but the average person? I don't get it.
Why would a factory worker in some interior provence have any interest what-so-ever in some Steve Martin suburban comedy? How could any female office drone file clerk relate in any possible way to gangster rap?
especially since the pirated product is most likely not translated into Mandarin!
Media company executives are making fools of themselves (a redundancy, I realize) by insisting that they are losing billions of dollars to piracy in China. Their obsessional vanity in believing that hundreds of millions of people in China would pay billions of dollars for Hollywood product is really embarrassing to watch. If they weren't paying so much money in bribes to American politicians, then their absurd claims of losing billions of dollars to Chinese copyright pirates would be laughed away.
These people really do need to come to their senses.
Hence we need a system for dealing with those conflicts, by deciding who gets to sit in the chair or eat the bread. And the system we use is the property system. We assign control over such things to individual people, and call those items "their property".
With ideas, the sort of things which are covered by patents and copyright, these conflicts do not exist. When you have an idea, everyone can make use of it without limiting its functionality. Hence there is no such problem to solve. No reason for such notions of property to exist. The notion of "intellectual property" is therefore an absurdity.
The purpose of copyrights and patents is completely different to the purpose of property. Deliberately implying otherwise is deception.
And if anyone needs to make use of deception when putting their case forward, it's a good sign that their case isn't strong enough to stand on its own merits.
(Also, copyrights and patents are a really stupid way of trying to get people to create ideas. Giving up your freedom is very seldom a good plan, and the limitations on freedom imposed by copyrights and patents have two obvious effects; they create more power, which by its nature centralises and then corrupts those who hold too much of it, thereby creating entities which hinder the growth of the very thing which we're supposed to be encouraging, and they cripple the end result, meaning for example that your new drugs are only of limited use, because only the relatively wealthy can use them. I can't immediately think of a field in which we wouldn't be better off in the final analysis if we used other non-freedom-removing means of paying the people who we need to pay to keep things moving, and in many fields we'd be better off with no such system at all over the current system.)
There seems to be this attitude that the suffering of slaves prior to 1850 was something that only happened back then. That it has nothing to do with now, that we are more civilized, more modern, more mature, and more sophisticated. With it comes the arrogance that what happened then, means nothing now, that what happened there has no value here, that the great torment and suffering back then can safely be ignored now as we blow off history and all the values that go with it in terms of understanding, freedom, markets, property, technology, and the coming replication age.
Surely anyone who claimed that there is no "incentive" go grow cotton without slaves on the plantation would be considered a barbaric. But if someone claims that there is no "incentive" to create intellectual and knowledge works without patents, then society calls them enlightened. If someone had said that the great wealth of America rested on slavery as a property right and the plantation system, they were a foolish idiot. But if someone says that the great wealth of societies in the coming replication ate rests on "Intellectual Property", then they are called wise. Anyone who says that slavery was about property rights and not control, is a liar. However, if they say that patents are not about control, but "Intellectual Property" then they are considered trustworthy. How about - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, and if you don't like patents no one forces you to buy those creations. How about - if you don't believe in slavery, you must be an anarchist, if you don't believe in patents you must be some kind of a communist. How about - you are a thief if you free slaves from the plantation, you are a thief when you copy "Intellectual Property".
So why are we spoon-feed these poor logical explanations over and over again? Because, like the assassin who befriends and mis-places his victims heart medications, rather than pull out a rifle and pop a bullet in the head. Like the rapist who drugs his victim, rather than attack her overtly and violently where all the scars, blood, and bruises can be detected. Patents are the pinnacle of quiet violence, they seem so innocent, they seem so sincere, and it is so hard to see any direct evil. After all, what could be less harmless then providing an incentive to inventors, right? But do they really promote invention - or just lock out and tie up inventions and discoveries that were likely to happen anyhow? Do they really help inventors, or do they hinder collaboration and sharing in a way that would put a police state to shame?
Perhaps the old lady has none to blame when her patented medication is too expensive to afford anymore. Who can the workers blame when the patented technology they bet their career on becomes useless as society migrates to less controlling technologies. Who can a child in Africa blame when they are dying of AIDS, and there are no generics to treat it! Who do we blame when researchers seeking a cure for cancer encounter massive obstacles to sharing individual research for fear that their peers will get one up on them, get a key patent, and lock them out! What do you do when a company buys up a patent on a safety device, but then decides not to use it nor let their competitors use it, other than watch people die who might not have otherwise. And all to often people just assume that every manufacturer having incompatible parts and appliances with every other manufacturer is a natural part of a free market, but is it? And does that really help our environment?
As people die because patents are either too costly and alternatives too sparse, and the needy go without, not because of genuine shortage, but because artificial human made restrictions. We must ask what will our role be in the pages of history as society enters into the replication age? Will it be like the lost souls who thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states who today think that patents can peacefully co-exist with freedoms. Or will we be like the plantat
I don't say they should have let it die but a once-a-day post containing all Sony rootkit news would have been more than enough, if you go to slashdot.org and the top three stories are all about the Sony rootkit then that's too much imho.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Just wondering... isn't that covered under fair use (and perfectly legal as a result)? Can someone clarify this for me?
Thanks.
.-.
But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame.
I have not pirated any music over the internet...ever. Yet I stopped buying CDs:
1. I found out some are disabled for my digital devices.
(I buy music for simple enjoyment, for FUD, hassle & frustration)
2. I discovered new artists at the free legal download sites.
3. I discovered commercial-free, announcer-free internet radio, like SomaFM.
I might resume buying CD's when music companies can gurantee they'll work and will accept liability for selling me crap. On the other hand, I must give credit to their mis-treatment's role in expanding my digital music horizons beyond the limited world of CDs.
Every time you apply for a patent, God gives someone cancer. Please, think of the cancer patients.
I would much rather see them make the point in a clear, concise and conspicuous fashion than have an article resembling an Oscar speech. It's rather ironic that you are asking them to acknowledge Stallman's ownership of the ideas they are presenting. Most people don't understand that this is a problem yet; let the fact that they have a problem sink in before evangelizing the solution.
I appreciate the list. I actually had missed a couple. :)
I saw the same thing, and they are wrong. it is legal to copy to your own IPod. Granted, Sony and others are trying to fix that, but in the US, you still have a right to archive any digital media you want, even if you archive the original and listen to the copy.
He is simply wrong on that point.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
So what we learn of this story is that your target market, decent people who buy Christian rock and "family music", are rampant pirates like anybody else?
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Here's an idea... I'm going to patent the idea of patenting ideas.
;)
Prior art? That hasn't stopped people from filing patents before.
The way I read "fair-use" in the US, is that it is protection granted to comment on works. I don't see how copying the entire work onto a different media would be included in that definition.
From stanford.edu:
Fair use here in Canada though (not looking for a backing link, but I'm sure of this) does allow making of "backups" or alternate copies of something once you own a single copy.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I think this is somewhat on-topic here. I was in a meeting this evening, and I'm a bit provoked; I hope you will forgive me if I step on somebody's toes. Torstein Bugge Høverstad, the man responsible for the norwegian translation of Harry Potter was there. Part of the translation involved translating the names, and by norwegian law, he has limited copyright on these names (it is derived work); if Warner Brothers wants to use these names they have to ask him (and also the other way around, of course). He told us* that he had gotten a "request" from Warner Brothers demanding that he gave up all rights to these names. Luckily, by norwegian law, Høverstad can't give up his "honorary" rights (IANAL, probably a nonexisting term), meaning that Warner Brothers has to cite him when using the norwegian names, but he could give up his economic rights. Warner Brothers now can use the norwegian translation of these names without his consent and without economical compensation.
* He certainly was not whining; he wasn't even prepared to tell us this, but he was asked whether he got a percentage, and he wanted to give an explanation of why he, in fact, got half a percent (that's half a percent of a book that is only marketable to a total of 4 million people; hardly anything to become rich from).
Not really, as I know (firts hand) the pirated CDs in Europe are made i Russia, distributed from the former Yugoslavia. In Bosnia and Montenegro they started to produce local copies too.
The hatred agains all kind of "yello" people is rather intensive, Pearl Harbour made a long-lasting (false) pretext for that.
/ It looks like you're trying to get a brain! \ /
| Would you like me to automatically install |
\ one from propaganda.microsoft.com for you?
\ ____
\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
|| | | [Yes] [Help]
|| | |
|| |
|___/
Dude, if you want -1 troll, you have to work for it, dangit. In my days, if we wanted to even think about getting labelled a troll, we had to do an ASCII art image of Malda's wife getting done by Bill Gates, or ramble for a few paragraphs about various offensive things. Or have a lot of random cuss words. Geez, if this is the best you can do, just resign from the GNAA or the anti-slashdot jihad, and jump off a freaking bridge, because not only are you a giant loser for wasting people's time online, you're freaking posting as an anonymous COWARD.
...
Oh, wait, forget that last part.
Fair use wha?
In the absense of a contract, I can do whatever the hell I want to a copyrighted work with the sole exception of distributing that work. Incidentally, this is why all of the spelled-out fair use exceptions involve uses of the copyrighted material that involve more than one person.
Yes it's called "state shifting". Look up the beta-max case. It is currently not codified as actual fair use. It is considered common law to allow "state shifting" as a form of fair use. There is currently a bill in progress to make this law though...I believe some call it the anti-dmca?
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)
:)
(aka "the Betamax case")
Essentially, the court found that home time-shifting is a fair use, which is not exactly the same as making "backups", it is extremely similar.
More on point might be American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 60 F.3d 913 (2d Cir. 1994). In that case, the court found that making unauthorized copies of journal articles was copyright infringement. The copying there was much more similar to P2P, where there was a library with a single (or a few) copies of the journals, and researchers from texaco were making hundreds of copies so that they could each have their own at their work areas. But the court did state that if the purpose of the copying had primarily been so that a researcher could take the photocopy into the lab and not accidentally damage the original, it probably would have been fair use.
Section 107 of the Copyright Act outlines some specific instances of fair use (criticism, comment, news reporting, etc.), but does not limit fair use to only those purposes, instead codifying the judicial doctrine of fair use (the 4-part test somebody noted above).
Usual disclaimer applies: IANAL, just a well-meaning law student studying hard for his Copyright final.
fuck you.
The real problem is Patents for $. Essentially corporations can buy almost any patent they wish for the right amount of green. The USPTO now operates at a *PROFIT* and are REQUIRED TO DO SO. Thus they cha-ching the lawmakers kitty. This practice is downright theft not to mention UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Get rid of this kind of CORPORATE COMMUNSIM and we could yet have fair but firm IP protections beneficial to inovation and the people.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Or rather "space shifting". The case is Recording Indus. Ass'n of Am. v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., Inc., 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). That was the Rio MP3 player case.
...Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act.
The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or "space-shift," those files that already reside on a user's hard drive.
It relies heavily on the time-shifting analysis of Sony. I shoulda included it in my reply below...
fuck you.
I must say, this is one of the worst articles on IP I've ever seen. Whoever thinks it's 'excellent' is just hankering for some anti-establishment echo-room action rather than reality. I don't think I have time to cover them all, but here are just a few.
This is baloney. It's been quite a while since the constitution was written, and right there in Article 1 section 8 clause 8 is the statement by the framers that is the basis for our patent system. Ideas could be owned in 1789, and long before that as well, as England also had a patent system.
Not to mention the fact that money is an idea, equitable servitudes are ideas, usufructs are ideas, loans are ideas, contracts are ideas, and, now this will really blow your mind --
options on options...
well, you get the idea.
Facts about the world, laws of nature, or abstract mathematical statements or equations, cannot be patented.
Gene sequences may seem to be getting close to that line, but you can only patent a gene sequence that you can extract and replicate; it's analogous to extracting and purifying a chemical compound from a naturally occurring mixture of substances, in effect making available a new substance that no one could put to practical use before.
An animal that's human-engineered is certainly not a 'fact of nature' -- it never existed before someone made it. It's a result of engineering just as much as an electric circuit or a toaster. It's just alive.
This is one of those completely unsubstantiated statements. I tend to think that many of the drugs that the developing world uses were developed at least partially due to the patent system. At any rate, what's really clear is that they ALL come from the U.S. and Europe.
I would just like to point out that both sides have lawyers -- this makes it sound like lawyers are the enemy. In fact, lawyers are just the guys that help their clients get what they deserve under the law.
People with more money have always been able to hire better lawyers in our legal system, and that problem has nothing to do with intellectual property.
The system is supposed to work this way. It incentivizes companies to research and patent things as fast as they can, pushing the limits of technology, and then disclosing them to the public. Otherwise, they might do less research, and might keep their research secret, thereby keeping it from the rest of us much longer than the 20 year life of patents... Sometimes reverse engineering is possible, but sometimes it's not.
How about so I can pay my programmers? How about so I can invest i
...you should have the right to claim ownership of a piece of imaginative work if it is clear that no other person or persons in the world could reasonably come up with the same work independently. This would protect music, fiction, movies, etc - but would preclude the would-be ownership of less composite ideas, like compression algorithms, or one-click shopping. If someone else could come up with an almost identical entity, then what natural rights do you suppose you can command?
Yeah, It would be covered under fair use. If, however, there is any DRM on that CD, it is illegal to circumvent it to make copies, even if it would be covered under fair use.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
The article is great. It goes to the core of the problem.
;-)
I found (probably) paid links underneath the article:
>>> COPY >>>
Special reports
----------------
More from the Online team >
Microsoft >
Useful links
----------------
Microsoft >
MSN Search >
>>> END >>>
Microsoft knows that it is guilty so it paid the ads to let users easily identify the company that the article is writting about?
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
its really stupid, for instance i was selling a specific model of alpine cd player on ebay, i went to google, searched for google images, and found the exact model, the stock picture of it, and used it as my pic, to show what it looked like , ebay pulled my auction saying " Intellectual Property" whatever, how can someone own a stock picture of something?? thats crazy, its different if its art, or some great digital image, but just a stock pic of electronics? thats going to far
I had looked up the Sony case, but others have already covered that just fine. You can read a fairly comprehensive definition of Fair Use in the USA on Wikipedia.
This is even part of the DeCSS case, where you have a right to archive your own DVDs, the copyright holder isn't obligated to give you a legal method to do so.
Another "fine line" regarding Fair Use: Borrowing copyright material for parody is considered Fair Use, but satire is not. Look that one up for fun and profit.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The way I read "fair-use" in the US, is that it is protection granted to comment on works. I don't see how copying the entire work onto a different media would be included in that definition.
:-D
It's not even a protection really.
What's so great about the current copyright law (in the U.S.) is that Fair Use is (just) a defense. Essentially, that means when it comes to copyright infringement you are guilty until proven innocent.
If I use a piece of TV in a film I've made (and have publicly displayed or distributed not just kept in a can somewhere for eternity)... Or even worse, there is just a TV playing in a shot that I take... I might reasonably assume that I can get away with it using a the Fair Use defense; However, that does not prevent me from getting SUED. I have infringed -- there is no doubt. It then becomes a matter out of my immediate control, left to the lawyers of the party infringed, the judge involved, and whomever I can produce for my defense (at my own expense of course).
This is why copyright law is such a snake pit these days and why more and more real-life footage is being censored of trademarks and rebroadcast material etc. Have you seen footage of Times Square that has been censored to prevent this kind of indirect (but still actionable) infringement? Sigh.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
So not install Sony's rootkit is circumvention?
This is a joke:
1. You can defrag ext2 filesystems: the command "defrag" does that. ext3 and Reiser can't be defragged.
2. There is token ring adapter support in the Linux kernel.
3. Only a program that incorporates GPL code into it has to be released. You can link to or even use GPL tools to make a proprietary program. That's even in the GPL itself.
4. Oh, and GPL stands for "GNU Public License" not "GNU Protective License."
So...RTFL!!!
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Just wondering... isn't that covered under fair use (and perfectly legal as a result)? Can someone clarify this for me?
Yes, as long as it doesn't require you to circumvent an effective copy protection. Remember, fair use is only a defense against copyright violation, not circumvention.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Very sad, but you fail to cite any proof that piracy is causing harm to you or your business, besides two kids (who from your description could have got the law on you for assault).
.torrent, or a copy of what ever P2P service kids are using these days. Speaking of, from my case I think you can tell that most P2P pirates don't stay in the game forever, I used to pirate my fair share back in High School, but now that I'm out in the real world, I've switched to legal free music, iTMS, and buying indie CDs from the bands themselves (show your support twice, being at the show, and buying their music). Nope, never gonna step foot in your store, probably, but not doing any illegal.
Perhaps the problem is that you are in a very very small niche market, and being so you are more vulnerable to economic changes. Perhaps a switch of the demographic of your base area. Perhaps the economy in general.
Perhaps people like me who rely on free music (like from Jemundo and such), and iTMS to cut out the middle man, and the resultant high prices from it ($17 for a CD?! 9.99 is about right). Perhaps it is because people are buying less, period.
For your niche, I really doubt that many people are pirating that type of music. Go on to any P2P service, and count the amount of Christian rock, as compaired to the stuff that you don't want to sell. You'll notice that it is a severe minority, in that most people don't want to listen to it, and the people who do are less apt to pirate it.
I think you wasted a sob story, since there is no overt causation between piracy and your plight. I don't agree with you being modded as a troll though (though you might be one, indeed), being that your post can open up a dialogue, and you offer a solution of some type.
I'm all for your pirate blacklist, since most pirates won't really need to ever go to your store, if they are indeed pirates. I'm sure if they were dilligent they could find a
The CD store niche is probably suffering, since there are so many more convienient and inexpensive alternatives.
I didn't know, BTW, that there was a pirate lobby, I knew that there was a huge corporate lobby trying to restrict my right to IP, since they have more money (money = rights). Companies are allowed to do nasty blackhat-ish activities that restrict me (Sony, oppressive DRM), and lower my security. They are restricting constitutional rights of IP by making it eternal, and thus stiffling the creativity of the whole world (by coercing other countries to buy our system of insanity) so some folk can make more money. This piracy lobby really should actually do something from time to time, I think.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
As a true visionary I'm gonna try to acquire a patent on a "method and/or apparatus for doing stuff to achieve something or not". Don't think there are gonna be any problems with it. And if there are I'll just have to buy a Congressman or two.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'll believe that when people stop buying $200 jeans, $300 "bling" chains, $500 jackets, and $50,000 SUVs. There's plenty of money to go around, people just don't want to spend it. After all, says the general public, why buy something when you can just get it for free?
:-) If only there was some market research that could tell us these things.
This argument is fallacious. Can you show amongst consumers that also buy above items that CD sales are down?
Common sense (not a factual assertion) would say that the market segment that is still buying designer jeans and jackets, jewelry and luxury autos is still buying music. As mentioned elsewhere it's more likely to be the teens and tweens of middle-class families (the largest class of pop-music consumers) that are getting crunched out of discretionary spending (the same familes that aren't getting luxury vehicles or anything that isn't sold at big box stores: I'd say that maybe when parent(s) won't provide money for a CD a child might be more likely to copy it, even if she knew it was wrong). I further imagine that the group of people that can afford new iPods for Christmas (in addition to designer jeans and jackets) are still buying CDs, too.
So, my counter-unfounded-assertion is that the rich, fashion conscious SUV owners are still buying CDs and are not responsible for the RIAAs disc-slump.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
...as well. The value of free to use "intellectual property" is a two-to-infinity way street. Producers of something are usually consumers of other folks products. That's the value of it, they share and in turn get to share with literally millions of other people, and those people's products. The theory anyway. Now people seek to interject transference of generic "money" into the sharing, but the real wealth is the transference of the "intellect" and not necessarily in calling that "property". This scenario, in a theoretical sense, benefits immensely if it is equal sharing and if the middleman of additional money for the privelege of sharing is reduced to zero. And if most everyone wants to leech without offering into the pool, and also bypassing the money, it won't work for very long. If the majority want to leech without offering back, again, it will not work well. If even a sizable minority are leeches only, it still won't be effective, and that's roughly the point we are at now and why it is still contentious.. It's only when the numbers reach parity, is where that system really starts to shine, where freely sharing producers are the common median. Then society will really grow from that exchange. Sadly we are still far from that goal, happily, there is a general trend in that direction, and it is from a bottom up direction, instead of the traditional top down. The next generation as they have grown up with sharing will most likely see to it that the laws reflect the benefits of sharing over the past benefits of protectionism that only made sense when the mere act of copying was tedious and expensive. Now that this isn't so we are in a societal transition period and the laws haven't caught up with technology yet, and gross perceptions are even further behind that.
Fair use here in Canada though (not looking for a backing link, but I'm sure of this) does allow making of "backups" or alternate copies of something once you own a single copy.
"Fair use" is an American term. There's no such thing in most of the rest of the world, including Canada. The Copyright Act here gives you various specific rights to backup computer programs if you own the original and to make personal copies of audio recordings whether you own the original or not, but there's no general right to make a backup.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine. (emphasis my own)
What's funny is this has worked so well in our War on Drugs that our prisons everywhere are bursting at the seams! What portion of society do you exclude before the rules have to change?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
1. Make everyone shareholders. I think this idea is no better than what we have now, and probably worse. Anyway, set a "release" price on new works (ideas, art). When enough people have collectively put up enough money to meet the price, release it to these people only. They are now shareholders. Whenever outsiders want in, they buy shares. Everyone who is already in gets a bit of this money, thus the incentive not to give away property. You can't sell out, because proving that you've forgotten an idea is impossible. As more people buy in, the share price goes DOWN, because what it is really doing is spreading the release price plus some profit out among more and more people. It doesn't go down entirely proportionally, so that early adopters are rewarded for their discernment, and of course the creators/inventors/authors are the first people in. As an example, suppose the release price was $1 million. 100,000 people put up $1, 50,000 put up $2, and a wealthy impatient person puts up the other $800,000. Then it's a hit and a million people decide to jump in for $1 each. The first shareholders will get some, not all, of that money, and the share price can be lowered to, say, 75 cents. When the price goes below some minimum (1 cent?) the shareholding arrangement is dissolved and the "properties" are thereafter public domain.
2. Similar to 1, but skip all the shareholder stuff and release it to the public, not to "shareholders". Rather like this idea.
3. Change to a "Creditright" system. All ideas are freely available. The only obligation is give credit where due. Accreditations are counted. How exactly this can be achieved without inconvenience, cheating, or violating privacy isn't easy, but it can be done, and has been done for centuries. The process is called "voting". Voting is of course a high stakes, expensive, slow, trouble prone and inconvenient process, but I think computers and the Internet could really be an enabling force here, making it possible to have the needed frequency of votes at a reasonable level of convenience and reliability. Then, to "promote the arts and sciences", appropriate organizations will have as their sole duty keeping the counts and giving out money proportionately. Something like Distrowatch could be a starting point. They would be funded by tax revenue, which makes sense because if it is everyone who "owns" an idea because trying to restrict copying is absurd, then it is everyone who should reward the creators proportional to the value of the idea. Shut down the patent office and set those people to these new duties. Perhaps the government should do it, maybe by having an agency devoted to the task. Or perhaps independent corporations would handle the task. After all, we have safety organizations such as Underwriter's Laboratories. So, like every time someone listens to a song, the counter for that song ticks up another spot. All this does is count votes. The problem of haggling over how much money each vote is worth can be left to annual budget battles. If the government feels that there isn't enough research, it's very easy to pump more money into this system. Also, could have charitable organizations help out. Great way to "feed starving artists". All kinds of questions can be fairly handled in this "Creditright" system. One example is "reach through patents". Would be easy to count. For example, if a particular song uses a particular new instrument, could have anything from add 1 to the count for that instrument, or add the counts for that song to the counts for that instrument. Let voters or arbitrators or the courts or official boards or committees decide how the counts should be interpreted, and what they're worth. But of course we would develo
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Does anybody know which party gives a crap about software patents?
Does any one know where this phrase was coined "The Mind We All Share?" - George Dyson recent Google visitor attributes it to John Cage - but searching (Google) shows no real further evidence... Where is our world brain?
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
It is illegal in the UK though because "media shifting" is not explicitely listed as a fair use exception to copyright. As this is an article from a UK paper, I suspect the claim was just a typo.
There is a US statute that specifically covers making copies of audio recordings. IANAL, but it seems to specifically permit some noncommercial copying of audio recordings by consumers.
There have indeed been cases of farmers being sued by Monsanto because their crops were contaminated bij pollen from nearby Monsanto crops. The most famous case is Monsanto vs Schmeiser.
On the other hand, there have been reports of fake brand-name clothing (and other merchandise, like power tools) being found in cargo containers from China. So it's a bit naive to suggest (like that poster did) that the media are making a fuss over nothing.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Indeed, and therefore those pushing for the concept of IP and laws to protect and enforce it are enemies of human civilization. I hope one day more people see this, and such organizations and people are seen for what they really are: they belong to the group of worst criminals and enemies of mankind and should be punished for that. I feel that only direct fear and threat can stop them.
Their crimes are even worsened IMHO by the way they corrupt western democracies: bribing politicians and buying laws for their personal interests. Putting whole nations and democracies under pressure and threatening with economic repercussions those countries that do not "obey" or "harmonize" current US law. In any case where two countries with different IP laws meet, harmonization automatically means that those with the most strict and far reaching laws win and have to be implemented everywhere, again under threat of economic repercussions, i.e. blackmail.
I hope to see the day that those people and organizations responsible for their IP crimes (by that I mean implementing such laws, not breaking them) are locked away and harshely punished. Since democracy is corrupted by them, I equal their crimes to high treason which demands long imprinonment and even capital punishment in many countries.
What portion of society do you exclude before the rules have to change?
I think that's pretty brilliant idea the troll (or serial poster) was suggesting. Piracy ends when records are sold less. So when the number of sold records reaches zero or gets even close the piracy rate declines. When no one produces records they don't have to mind piracy and they can concentrate on taking over the users' computers...
Now to think about it, isn't that piracy too? Like the pirates in 18th century took over ships and these DRM CD's take over computers. What's the difference?
?SYNTAX ERROR
Unless of course there is a access restricition on your audio recording. The DMCA (and from what I remember the EUCD as well) doesn't have a Fair Use exemption for circumventing access restrictions. So even though it would be perfectly legal to copy the audio itself, it is illegal to break the access restriction.
I should, for honesty's sake retract a bit: if you as a private person figure out on your own how to circumvent the access restriction, you might have a defense (jurisprudence to this effect does not exist yet, however). However, it is illegal to then disseminate your method. Effectively, this means that copying your own CDs to your iPod has been effectively outlawed, as it is illegal to write software that would make it possible.
So, effectively, with the DMCA and the EUCD and the new access-restricted audio discs (they're not CDs), making copies of audio recordings is flat out illegal, despite what use you intend for those copies.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Knowledge of underlying mechansims can help us to solve problems, but it doesn't affect the moral standards by which we judge our solutions, surely?
Besides, bringing up a moral dimension of evolutionary teaching is like saying that free markets cannot work because they rely upon people pursuing their perceived interests, which is morally wrong, so that they must not be believed to work.
Wikileaks, no DNS
To anyone else that bothers to reply to this:
Don't bother with it. It's part of a string of stories this poster post around the internet, hoping to get some semblance of attention. Hitting google I see this exact story has been posted multiple times on Slashdot, kuro5hin, digitalmob, etc.
He is likely just paid to keep posting the same story over and over again. Similar to the post about the female business owner who found open source more expensive. That one pops up fairly regularly too.
Unfortunatly this guy is not paid for imagination, so the story doesn't even change over time...
Whee signature.
The issue isn't "problems being caused by the concept of 'intellectual property'". That's tantamount to declaring the problem of theft is due to the concept of ownership.
The problem is a lot of people are justifying abuse of property they do not own and the exercise of rights they do not have by pointing to legitimate concepts of openness that have been deliberately bastardized to serve their own selfish interests.
All information is unfree at the moment of creation. Whatever degree of right and ownership the rest of us may later obtain is solely determined by the information's creator. Even the code written by Richard Stallman is unfree at the moment he writes it. The code is his exclusive intellecctual property and it beomes free only when he makes it. No one else has that power.
Only the fact that authors like Stallman have these exclusive rights allows them to relinquish or transfer those rights to others, because you cannot give away soemthing that you do not possess.
Claims that people who buy a book or DVD own that property and can do with it what they please are true. But, they only own a stack of paper with words printed on it, or a piece of plastic with digital code embedded on it. They do not own the story created by the author of the book, or the music and melody created by the artists on that DVD. Those are the true creative IP of their creators, and they are much different than random symbols printed on paper or random digital bits embedded on a plastic wafer. Anyone can scribble out millions of lines of Lisp sytnax, but Stallman's emacs is the result of his creative effort, not his ability to bang out random Lisp suntax on a keyboard. Stalman has chosen to make the code to his emacs free, according to the conditions of his license. But, emacs itself remains his.
Stallman chose to relinquish most of the rights to his code. That was only possible because he owned all those rights. Other creators of information choose, likewise, to relinquish some of the rights they own. The fact that, most commonly, authors and publishers retain the right to copy and distribute their works differs only in degree, not principle, from Stallman's approach.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"...it's a bit naive to suggest (like that poster did) that the media are making a fuss over nothing."
Still, imho it is hugely blown up out of proportions, like the enormous "losses" of the BSA/RIAA/MPAA industries anywhere in the world.
The "labour price" dumping of capitalist (industri leaders) by using cheap labor in dictatorships like China is a much worse problem, but it is not an issue for those who are tho opinion leaders.
Company slogan: "Catering to the attention spans of your loved ones."
It's more Troll than joke. But it does reference a common confusion over GPL that I've run into several times. GPL does not require one to release source unless the binaries are distributed. And since the poster notes "we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use" the code there would be no reason or requirement to release the source.
Quick question: how do you deduce anything about morality from a physical mechanism?
America's morality is based, to a large extent, on the Bible, and the theory of evolution rather removes that base (if you say otherwise, don't forget Occam's Razor). Then if our basis for morality is no longer there, we must get a new one (or not have morals).
Also, according to the theory of evolution, we are "designed" to have as many surviving offspring as possible. In fact, that is the only purpose in life, for any living creature. I'm sure you can draw some moral conclusions from this.
Besides, bringing up a moral dimension of evolutionary teaching is like saying that free markets cannot work because they rely upon people pursuing their perceived interests, which is morally wrong, so that they must not be believed to work.
First, your parallel is a bit off. The purpose of the free market is to use people's greed for the benefit of everyone, and I'm sure you will find that noone believes that people are all saints. What the free market does do is encourage such greedy behavior, by making it socially acceptable and outcompeting those that are not looking out for #1. This is indeed a moral issue with the free market, which should be taken into account when deciding if it is superior to the other alternatives. However, I am sure the alternatives have issues as well.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
What's so great about the current copyright law (in the U.S.) is that Fair Use is (just) a defense. Essentially, that means when it comes to copyright infringement you are guilty until proven innocent. :-D
Well, kinda, but that missed the whole point. Fair Use only applies to cases where the person ADMITS they used the copyrighted material to begin with, so yes, you have to admit that you did use someone elses copyrighted material.
Fair Use is an affirmative defense, and like ANY affirmative defense, you first have to admit you did something that would otherwise be illegal, except for the circumstances you are claiming. Just like you can't claim to be innocent of a murder and claim "temporary insanity" at the same time. You have to admit you held the gun before you claim the insanity was the cause. This is what an affirmative defense is by definition: Affirm the act, then defend it.
Now, if you created content that was incidently similar, but you claim it was not copied from the other copyrighted work, then you CANT use Fair Use as a defense. You can't "Fairly Use" something you didn't use to begin with. The case would be about origination, not Fair Use. So the arguement you are presenting is moot.
(exception: Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice, where you claim the work is not a copy of the other work, and even if it was, it would be covered under Fair Use, so there is no Cause of Action regardless. These motions are used often but seldom work.)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
> if western society thinks it can stop other countries from using existing ideas
> to build new ideas, we're crazy.
No, they're not. That portion of western society that actively tries to restrict ideas just wants to raise the entry barriers everywhere. They understand perfectly well that once the rules change, they will be at a severe disadvantage and they are doing everything in their power to prevent it.
> At some point the 'powers' are going to have to realise that ideas are not the
> same as physical property, [...]
the 'powers' know it perfectly well and have known it from the beginning. Do you think that politicians, for example, actually believe the lies that they tell the public?
> [...] and can not be treated the same.
Treating ideas as physical property is a very useful tool for restricting ideas and knowledge (or, at least, the ability to put said knowledge into use). It allows for keeping the separation beween the haves and the have nots even in the information age.
> So why [...] we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to
> impede progress?
Because abstract progress does not give the proverbial 'me' enough short-term benefits and temporary advantage over 'them'.
Ah. You see, I'm a Brit :o) IFAICT, we get most of out values from empathy, upbringing, and (later) generalised problem-solving. Religion gives some of us a hook for our developing values, and eases some of the issues of upbringing (bring the kids to scout/guide camp, for example). In school, play, and work, we learn to solve problems that are essentially social in nature; encourage that, and values emerge from a complex process of generalisation.
Real values that actually manifest themselves come from action, not from teaching or the pulpit; those kinds of "values" lead only to more teaching. That values are often accumulated to a religious "hook" does not mean that they would not accumulate elsewhere if it weren't for that religious hook. In my experience (I grew up an atheist, and now count myself as a Spinozian Pantheist), values accumulate to identity. Atheism can therefore be healthy in causing you to own your values, rather than ascribing them to a force outside yourself.
Actually, according to the theory of evolution, we are not designed at all. If you're going to remove a purposer, you need to do it properly :o) Rather, those elements that make us up were naturally selected for over time. Thus historially, those genes that successfully perpetuated themselves are those that you expect to be prevalent now.
Although we are emergent from our bodies, we are not our bodies. Our standards are our own, and need not have anything to do with genetics. In fact (for example), knowing that we're pre-programmed to behave tribally (favouring those most likely to be sharing our genes), can help us to be aware of traits that we might otherwise be ignorant of, and thus to correct them.
The difference between the evolutionist and (say) the proponent of ID is that in the former case, our origins have no intrisic meaning, and have little to teach us. We have to find our meaning in culture, in humanism, in the pursuit and perpetuation of knowledge... The proponent of ID, however finds meaning in our creation, and thus feels that he owes his god something in return... Projecting similar meaning being ascribed to our origins in the mind of an evolutionist is an error on your part.
The free market has no purpose. However, free market theory predicts that in a free market, supply moves to match demand, thus harnessing our desires and needs to provide for others' desires and needs. Those desires and needs need not be selfish in the normal sense, however, they are judged by ourselves, and thus constitute our "i
Wikileaks, no DNS
Anyone thought about trying to patent the process of getting a business practice patent?
"Geeks of All Nations, Compile!"
"We are Null Pointer of Borg: Dereference is futile!"
So we can be on topic :o)
Wikileaks, no DNS
Look out! Parent with common sense!
The original copyright act allowed a copyright for a term of 28 years, two terms of 14 years, which was plenty of time to profit from a particularly good creation. The Constitution specifically says that the government *gives* that copyright to authors to create an incentive. An idea is not something owned. It should be used by the creator for a short while so the creator can create more. Otherwise, we end up with Michael Jackson making tons of money off of some of the Beatles's songs, and not the Beatles themselves. That's no incentive to create!
Do yourself a favor: go back to school and get your GED for fuck's sake ..
Naturally occurring things can be patented just as easily as "constructed" ones. The article itself cites the commercial work of Craig Vetner who sequenced much of the human genome for commercial gain. His work allowed for things such as the human growth hormone to be patented. It is naturally occuring but still a patented item.
One primary example is Mr. John Moore who found out, after the fact, that his doctor had patented him without his knowledge. Moreover the courts ruled that he had no recourse save to sue his doctor for failing to inform him in advance that he was a hot property. The doctoer (or rather the large pharma company) still holds the patent. See here.
In the early 90's biotech companies engaged in a wave of patent-piracy wherin they sent people all over the world to snap up patents on naturally occuring but rare plants, seeds, animals, and yes, people. In some cases they then attempted to enforce their patents on the same groups they collected them from. Imagine being an indian farmer and being told that you suddently had to pay royalties to grow the exact same grain that you had always grown before because now monsanto owned it.
Moreover it isn't just the patents on the genes themselves, it is also the patents on their use. To take a related issue consider AZT. AZT was develioped by the U.S. government and then 'sold' under the Byah-Dole act. When it was discovered that the drug could be used to fight off HIV (Again U.S. Government work done at the NIH, and CDC, at Taxpayer expense) Glaxo filed a patent In Britain for their 'discovery' and then used that patent (via international IP agreements) to take control in the U.S. In a sense they performed a 'patent-elevation' attack to gain control of publicly funded discoveries in the U.S. via international agreements. Each new discovery made by anyone is patented to elevate their control still further until all anti-retrovirals infringe upon their territory. Thus it's not just the drug but, uses, dosages, etc. that they own. (see here).
Want to know why your insurance bills are high? It's not because of frivolous lawsuits against doctors. It's because of patents on medicines, uses, dosages, techniques, etc. Courtesy of IP your cold is now private.