Slashdot Mirror
UK Government Order Review of IP Rights
quaker5567 writes "The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has ordered an independent review of intellectual property rights in the UK. The review will be led by Andrew Gowers, formerly the editor of London newspaper The Financial Times. The review will look into the awarding of IP rights to business, the complexity of current laws and the extent of "fair use" in the current law. Importantly, the review will also examine whether the current term of copyright protection (70 years after the author's death) is appropriate. Andrew Gowers recently criticised the print industry for not realising the true power of the digital platform, comparing them to a record company which specialises in vinyl."
I suspect that the outcome of this "review" will be my descendants owning this post long after I am dead.
Automated DNA sequencing software
"The UK's IP regime is a critical component of our present and future success in the global knowledge economy."
The whole "IP IS EVIL, DESTROY IP" slant on Slashdot aside....I'm not even sure what this article is saying. This sounds, more than anything, like "come bribe us for 12 months while we 'study' IP". Maybe US the US political system has just made me too cynical.
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
Now, to be fair, there are many very interesting record companies that specialize in vinyl. In the same way, I'm sure there will be small but interesting paper book companies decades from now
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
UK copyright law calls it "fair dealing".
I'll take my pedant-points now, if that's ok.
FGD 135
Interesting that they have got someone who used to be involved in print media to review IP. The FT have been subscription only for quite a while now...
As for whether it is legimitate to enforce copyright 70 years after an author's death, it seems clear that any reasonable economic analysis would conclude that the marginal incentive provided to authors by this absurd protection doesn't influence their output of creative work, and is only likely to cause detriment to those who cannot afford to pay full price for a novel or other creative work. This would include citizens of LDCs, and poor people, two groups in particular need of reasonably priced access to important literary or academic works.
It could be argued that publishers are more likely to support struggling writers if they can collect money for 70 years after the death of the author, but where is the evidence that 10, 20, 30...years after the author's death wouldn't provide exactly the same incentives to publishers to hunt for the next JK Rowling?
Here is a (pdf) link to some of the main economic issues involved here http://www.oiprc.ox.ac.uk/EJWP0502.pdf
Things might not actually go so badly.
Gordon Brown has been playing to the people a lot lately. Blair has said he will not be seeking a fourth term, and so will probably step down in a couple of years' time; Brown is the heir apparent, and has been plotting to become Prime Minister for a long time.
So, Brown's been doing popular things wherever possible. He was very big on the whole debt-cancellation move during the summer, for instance. He's trying to look as good as possible to voters. He's not likely to endorse law changes along the lines of 'hey, people I'd like to have vote for me at the next election: you're not allowed to copy CDs to your iPods!'
There's every chance that we might actually get some sane policy out of this. Of course, I'm not holding my breath...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There's lots of stuff on this on http://www.egovbarriers.org/ dealing with e-Government privacy etc..
To the people of the UK -- be afraid. In fact, be very afraid:
In other words it is the legal scheme (IP) and not the ideas, creativity or innovation which what lies at the heart of Britain's success. an environment for innovation usually means an environment rewarding past innovation with infinite monopoly reducing the motivation for future innovation (consider US copyright law).
This sentence is usually a sign that the public, the largest stakeholder in the business, is about to be excluded.
"The world - and the media especially - is changing at internet speed and the pressures are immense. Those in leadership positions who do not adapt fast enough to change of whatever kind will end up being overtaken by it," he (Gowers) wrote.
So everyone is moving to internet media? What is your point? FT.com has been around for years, so it will just overtake itself?
Believe it or not, there will always be people who buy newspapers, especially while commuting. Internet access is not as ubiquitous today as it maybe should be, but for now, people will still buy newspapers for the sheer convenience of them. Look at online books, they really have not taken off that well, maybe it is because people actually like books?
Guy sounds a tad bitter to me after suffering 'immense pressures' at the Financial Times.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Many slashdot readers are starting to realize what a scam Intellectual Property laws are, and I firmly believe that the only ownership one can have is physical ownership of a good. The power of IP is born from government's monopoly on force, and the majority of IP-owners are corporations, another figment of government's imagination. Isn't the intent of government to make all citizens safe, secure and let no one's freedom to produce be hampered by another?
The U.K. isn't going to make any changes to their laws. In a country with increasing inflation, increasing unemployment and increasing debt, the powers-the-be will more likely collude with megacorps than shun them. There is a mistaken belief that employment is a creation of government fiat and that the market won't provide unless government sets up regulations and restrictions. IP is one of those restrictions. IP also creates unemployment, as companies that could otherwise compete with the IP holder are not allowed entry into the market.
Kinsella wrote a decent article (PDF warning) about Intellectual Property and how anti-freedom/pro-force the idea is. I don't believe we can "fix" the laws, and I don't think we can even roll them back. The slippery slope has shown its ugly face, and the only hope we have is to completely toss the rules and find a better way, maybe a non-government way. Kinsella's 53 page article has more footnotes and links that I could ever place in a slashdot article, but he hits the nail on the head in reaching the same conclusion: don't offer protection for non-physical property.
If you post it, expect it to get copied. If you create it, expect cheap knock-offs to appear. If you don't want either thing to happen, don't put your idea into the public eye. If you want to profit from your creation, you have to add in the cost of knock-offs and copying into the equation, and offer value added options in order to attract customers to your first-to-market creation.
Importantly, the review will also examine whether the current term of copyright protection (70 years after the author's death) is appropriate.
As a UK citizen, this has got me worried. I don't think there has ever been a government that has *reduced* the copyright term. This move also probably ties in with the announcement earlier this year that they were going to extend the copyright term on recordings from 50 years to 100 years (after all, we couldn't have any of the Beatles' material get into the public domain, could we?).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
"... current term of copyright protection (70 years after the author's death)"
That's an example of sneaky corruption in law-making. It is usually very difficult to know if and when the author died. So, in practice, most materials will not become available immediately after the copyright term is ended.
"Dear Minister,
After careful review of all available facts, and thorough discussion with industry experts and panels of citizen dicsussions, our team has determined that the current term of copyright protection (70 years after the author's death) is most certainly NOT appropriate, and is quite unfair indeed.
It should be 140 years."
I think we can safely assume that there is no way that a lessening of copyright periods will occur, nor that any other IP laws will be repealed or relaxed nor indeed that the stakeholders (as identified by another poster) will represent the people.
For my own peace of mind, I am going to try to write to Mr Gowers and ask hime whether IP laws are there for the benefit of business or society? Being ex-editor of the FT makes me think that this question has already been answered in Mr. Gower's mind.
The fact the Gordo is playing to the public will not make one jot of difference, because the majority of people will never come up against an extension to copyright as a problem and the spin on this will be:
"Britain needs to be a super power in the global knowledge economy and this can only be realised through the introduction of increasingly draconian laws surrounding your precious and flavoursome IP".
Natsu gusa-ya, Tsuwamono domo-ga, Yume no ato
Brown has screwed up several things and now needs to jack up taxs because of it. He's leading us into a major debt (and screwing over everyone under 40). So now he's going to take away our right to copy things and give the suits even more time to abuse their back catalog. This is getting ridiclous.. we should stop comparing ourselvs to America and instead start going "We're all doomed! Just not 'quite' as doomed".
I like muppets.
For those not up on UK politics, this is significant because Gordo is second only to Tony Blair in the Government (no matter what Prescott thinks) and is seemingly the heir apparent as Prime Minister when Tony Blair resigns. (Which I will take bets on will be soon after he beat Thatcher's reign).
I'd be a lot more accepting of the whole notion of IP rights if our fearless leaders would publically state the laws importance and need to their consitituents. Without some rational for why we should be doing this I'm left to conclude that its just to make rich people richer.
And what about extending ideas? They're locking up our common culture - I still can't legally link to a copy of steamboat willy (Micky Mouse precursor) for the readers in the US can I? Could this mean that in some future dystopia everyone will have to pay simply to participate? Sorry Bob, I can't talk to you about last nights episode of Friends as you don't have a license....
Damnit.
Shh.
IP IS evil :
IP is obsolete
therefore
DESTROY IP
Somebody had to say it
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The two aren't really equivalent.
Several uses that I think most of us would consider reasonable are actually illegal in the UK, or legal only on a technicality under some circumstances. Making back-ups, format shifting, and making music compilations are all somewhat dodgy, for example, even where only legitimately bought content is involved and it's strictly for personal use by the person who bought it.
To give an example of how daft this is, a local dancing club I help to run would like to make compilation CDs of the music we have legitimately paid for, since we have a large library and carrying all the CDs everywhere is awkward. We also pay an additional fee for the right to play this music at public classes and events, so our use of the music itself is entirely legit. We have concluded that none of the standard licensing agencies can authorise the simple compilations we'd like to produce, so we have made efforts to contact the copyright holders directly.
Interestingly enough, the specialist dancing music companies from which we buy most of our CDs (we're talking about things like ballroom, rock 'n' roll, salsa and swing here, rather than clubbing stuff) tend to be helpful, slightly surprised that we've even bothered to ask, and happy to grant permission for reasonable uses. The big names, which we actually don't buy as much from, have also been slightly surprised to hear from us, but we get strange things like permission for the mechanical copyright, but not for the actual recording because the publisher doesn't actually hold that copyright, and doesn't seem to know who does.
In other words, we have a reasonable use, we're paying properly for the music itself and the right to play it at public events, when asked the publishers generally haven't objected to our request or asked for any extra consideration in exchange, but legal technicalities mean that strictly speaking we still can't make the compilations because some unknown copyright holder hasn't given permission and there's no way for us to seek it. That seems a bit daft to me.
Personally, I'm not sure US-style fair use is the best way to go in a digital world; it's just too easy to argue that activities which could -- not necessarily are in practice today -- be seriously damaging to copyright holders are authorised. I'm thinking in particular of distribution to "friends", and thence to their "friends" and so on, until a new track/e-book/game/whatever has suddenly spread across the whole Internet.
However, it seems about time that paying to buy content should guarantee certain inalienable consumer rights, such as the right to make a back-up copy, to shift to a different media format, and the right to make compilations composed only of legitimately purchased content. In particular, those should be rights rather than exemptions, so that the media industries can't simply add DRM that makes it technically difficult for an average consumer to do these things (or to criminalise the behaviour under alternative laws such as the EUCD or DMCA as a back door).
Hopefully, the guy they've put in charge of this review has his head screwed on the right way, and a reasonable balance between the legitimate interests of the consumer and the legitimate interests of the copyright holder and content creators will be found. I'm a bit worried about some of the language, as no doubt mentioned by others in this discussion by the time I post this, but I'm far more interested in how the review actually goes than in any guesses based on government weasel words before they've even started.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
For those not up on UK politics this is just another scam to see how Gordon Brown can raise taxes. Any other outcome will be nothing but secondary.
My suspicion is, because he is so desperate to raise more tax revenue, it that he will allow anyone and their dog to patent anything, "fire", "the wheel", for example, and then others will have to fight it down in court.
Remember, you read it here first.
threadeds blog
I agree, it's a stupid metaphor.
Dude! What did you expect from a member of Tony Blair's government? As far as I know that group contains no sentient life-forms.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
You see, the UK, and especially the US are starting to realise that they have way too much debt for all that stuff they bought on credit from overseas, in their housing markets, in their bond markets, and in their industries. In fact, in economic circles bankers talk about the fall of the dollar as if it was pre-destined (which it is).
The deal is that they have this wet dream that they are going to be able to export their "intellectual property" abroad, to make up for all these economic imbalances - and bring them unlimited growth and profit.
I think they are going to be in for a very very rude supprise.
Well, this is actually a repost from a week or so back, but it seems like not so many have read it .....
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual property" rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information and force the market to center around information control rather than service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous. Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is, unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for information services what the industrial revolution did for production. However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes commoditized and service value becomes more important than the content val
The Adelphi Charter was a fairly thorough review of IP recently, and came to the conclusion that even the term IP presumes the shape of the answer. It will be interesting to see how much influence they have on this, as the RSA, who were behind the original project, have a fair bit of nous in getting the ear of these kinds of committees.
Who would believe in penguins,unless he had seen them? Conor O Brien - Across Three Oceans
I ran into just this problem with a piece of Easter music I wanted to use, written by Vaughan Williams. He died in the 1950's, so he is in copyright for another 20 years.
I approached the copyright administrator for permission to reprint something for our congregation, and they wanted more royalties than I was prepared to pay. The net result is that a piece of music which Vaughan Williams wrote for the greater glory of God was not sung because of the copyright laws, and the excessive copyright terms. He couldn't have guarded against this - the term was life+20 at the time of his death.
The whole idea of posthumous copyright terms was to ensure that any dependants who were still minors would be supported after the author/composer's death should it come prematurely, hence life+20. Instead, longevity and life+70 terms mean that sacred music written over 100 years ago is still "owned" (no pre-1923 clause in Europe).
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
I am not so optimistic. Brown is an uncritical supporter of the US ways of doing things. He also sucks up to big business on the same massive scale as his boss. I never thought I would find myself writing this, but IF David Cameron becomes leader of the Conservative Party, and IF he manages to fight off the right wing, he might be a better bet for the next Prime Minister. Although the Conservatives tend to euro-scepticism they also do have a healthy tendency towards US-scepticism. And some Conservatives in the past have strongly opposed vested interests; I was at a lunch once with Michael Heseltine (centrist Conservative) where he likened many industry bodies to the Trade Unions and said that if Britain was to modernise they had to be defeated just as much as the miners and the print unions had to. My intention, if Cameron wins tomorrow, is to start writing to any modernising Conservative who will listen explaining why over-long intellectual property rights are ultimately a bad thing, and asking why a patent for a real invention lasts less than 20 years, but copyright in a book or musical performance goes on for 70 years beyond the death of the copyright holder. Why should Paul McCartney's descendents derive an income from his work after his death when the children of, say, James Dyson will not, simply because one is a musician (sort of) and the other is an industrial designer?
Pining for the fjords
This review is one in a very long range of policy reviews doomed to fail. It focuses on the fine-tuning of the existing policy, not looking at the conceptual level of the policy. Mr Gowers speaks of 'maintaining a world-class environment for creativity, design and innovation'. He does not ask: How good is our environment for creativity? or: Do we have such an environment at all? or: What fundamental shifts are at stake?
When he talks about balance between right-holders and consumers, he clearly misses the fact the distinction between the two is getting at least very vague. When he talks about enforcement of IP, he doesn't seem to see enforcement of IP will be futile in the very near future.
What happens now with music and movies, will happen with physical products soon. Right now metal parts can be custom machined by sending a drawing over the internet to a metal shop. It's done almost fully automated, noone checks on patent infringement. A metal shop could be manufacturing patented machines on a large scale without being noticed by the owners of the shop. The drawings could be torrented all around the internet. (it's probably happening already). It will happen with chemicals in less than five years, and with DNA in probably less than ten years.
Not to mention the 2.5 billion of people living in China and India alone, who will be very hard to convince they have to pay for using certain knowledge freely available on the internet.
As attempts to enforce copyright on music never fail to fail, so will other forms of IP as we know it fail. A study which does not recognise the fact that the very concept of IP is under pressure and likely to collapse, is therefore doomed to fail too.
On the other hand, if the review does recognise this, and studies IP at a conceptual level, it's also doomed, because it will be ignored.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Im sure those terms are mutually exclusive.
"The net result is that a piece of music which Vaughan Williams wrote for the greater glory of God was not sung because of the copyright laws, and the excessive copyright terms. He couldn't have guarded against this - the term was life+20 at the time of his death."
I don't think thats the real problem with over-long copyrights. I think the problem is that the copyright holder has no incentive to invest in new works because they can milk the old works. Which is a pisser if you're todays "Vaughan Williams" since there's little incentive for companies to promote your works.
Perhaps the solution is for works to go into crown copyright after 20 years, so future earnings from works go to the tax man rather than the company promoting them. That would both encourage companies to invest in new works, and at the same time permitting the work be available for re-use by others.
Once upon a time, a man and his wife were traveling by car and "Get Back" came on the radio. Wife says to man that the vocals sounded a lot like Paul McCartney; husband tells her that it is Paul, back in the days of the Beatles. Wife says she'd never heard it before.
Man and wife? Sir and Mrs. Paul McCartney!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I suspect flat tax rates will prove a con too, but in principle they are better than the present system which actually means that poorer people pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than the rich do (regressive taxation.)
I suspect too that I will be disappointed again...but who else is going to provide a credible opposition to the free holiday scrounger and Berlusconi's mate who always has the door open for the likes of Ecclestone( - there's a monopolist if there ever was one)?
Pining for the fjords
I don't think people have any idea what they're in for. Americans have never experienced 3rd world like conditions in over 150 years.
And they won't either. it doesn't matter a whole lot if the US economy suffers a total meltdown, for two reasons.
One, the US is the worlds largest consumer. If their economy suffers a meltdown, the whole earth will cascade down as a result. Moving to Cole won't help you out much, guess where most of their exposts go?
Two, even if such a thing happens, a poor economy does not make real-world assets vanish. No matter what happens to the economy, the US still has the worlds most powerful military. If they were in bad enough shape, I am sure they could just recall all their guys from abroad and take whatever resources they needed from smaller resource-rich nations by force or intimidation.
I think the proper term of copyright can be determined through a back-of-the envelope accounting calculation.
The expiration of a copyright involves the transfer of something that has value (the copyright) from the rights-holder to the public. This is a fair trade if the public has compensated the rights-holder with something of equal value, which they will have done through granting the copyright in the first place, if the term of copyright was long enough.
Put another way, the "fair" term of copyright is the term at the end of which, the present value of monopoly rents already extracted from the copyright is equal to the present value of all future monopoly rents that could be extracted from the copyright if it were extended into perpetuity. Or even more straightforwardly, a copyright of "fair" term has exactly half the value of a perpetual copyright.
Reducing this to a concrete policy recommedation requires making some assumptions about the sales curve of a typical work, and the interest rate at which future income should be discounted to a present value, but just as a reference point, if we use a "flat" sales curve (generous, since most works decline in sales over time), and a 2% interest rate, the "fair" length of copyright is 35 years.
I know I should have known better than to make up a story to help illustrate my thoughts. Please, for those of you who do not get it, the story is what I like to call an "example". I know it's easy to shoot holes through the story and thus trick yourself into believing you have blown away my opinion. I do not mind being called out as being wrong (I'm married. Trust me this is not new to me), but please point out the problems with my statement based on the opinion I was trying to convey, which is: Without some kind of IP laws, it will be impossible to protect those who cannot otherwise protect themselves. [more or less]
Wow, guess I should've just said that to begin with : ) Sorry.
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
Intellectooool 'property' is failing now, in Taiwan, and soon in India as well. Bet on it in China! What is causing this perfect storm attacking the ship of IP? Why it is the emerging possibility of a bird flu pandemic. A Swiss gnome named corp named Roche (no joke, pronounced 'roach') is claiming monopoly trading and manufacturing rights on one of the only drugs capable of fighting the bird flu h5n1 virus. It is restricting manufacturing of its product in order to elevate the price worldwide. The trouble is, if bird flu emerges as a pandemic, not millions, but billions will die and agonizing asphyxiating death all because of the greed of the corporate creation of crooked banker descendants of the financiers of the original Third Reich!
Taiwan originally negotiated with 'roach' in good faith, but seeing that 'roach' wanted to do limited production runs, vitriolically opposed any stockpiling for emergencies, and absolutely refused to do cooperative production agreements with local Taiwanese companies in case of emergency, the 'negotiations' predictably broke down. So now Taiwan has determined to break the 'roach' patent and is going ahead with emergency local manufacture of 'tamiflu'....and off all the participants go to: courts locally which will probably back the interests of humanity; courts internationally which will probably back the best bribe or the most loudmouthed international bully, the USA..or both; the WTO stacked with IP monopolist pig sympathizers who have always treated Taiwan as a pariah that they wish would go away from their front door while accepting the products of its hard working people through the back door (remember Hong Kong 'not' shipping real Chinese product). If and when bird flu begins its grim march on the world, know you all that Americans and Europeans are completely unprotected except for the ruling class. This is official policy. You Americans and Europeans will all die in misery in your houses or at the hands of military specifically instructed to 'cull' you (secret orders). You will die from greed as legislated and administratively decreed policy present in all political parties in all the countries of Europe and the Americas. China, India, and Indonesia are now in negociating with 'roach', but the talks are going basically the same way. India has now some limited 'rights' to manufacture the drug, but those 'rights' may become the noose that hangs to death 700 million Indians as the production has been limited and stockpiling limited still more. The Russians and other CIS countries are probably making the stuff and not telling anyone, and the population of these countries are dispersed to make really efficient spread more difficult. Australias cities will die, leaving the countryside to fend for itself. Same for New Zealand. South America will suffer the same as North America, but its lower population density in hinterland regions will be a similar barrier to efficient pandemic spread similar to rural Australia, New Zealand, and Russia. The middle east will suffer a similar fate as parts of it, especially Saudi, have become very urbanized; but again, the rural areas will survive for far longer because heat and the Muslim traditions of cleanliness and isolation will compound with sparse settlement and nothing to eat for migratory birds to probably stop the disease here. Consider the other Muslim traditions of wearing masks! These block this airborne pathogen somewhat as well, and 115 to 120 degree heat and zero humidity will clean the already clean air like no other location save the vast deserts of Australia and other hot places.
The only hope that this disease is to be stopped is in Viet-Nam and the Peoples Republic of China who are slaughtering so many birds that many people are becoming impoverished even more than they were. In Viet-Nam, they are using a new approach, vaccines. There are some test ones that work on birds because that is the disease that exists now. Its mutation will probably be very similar to this one, so some of thos
Protecting Intillectual Property Rights merely accellerates the drive to lower prices and a lower standard of living in the developed world. Developed Nations who view strong IP as the basis for their new economic engines, fail to realize that something needs to be sold, not just created. Protection of IP fails to take into account the Grey Market and "Innovation" that occurs in countries where actual production takes place. Product produced off shore on behalf of firms who own IP rights, often find their products reverse engineered or competing in the marketplace against grey market goods manufactured in the same plants that they contract to. In the end, the Patent/Trademark owner loses, as do the workers who lost their jobs to offshore producers.
oddly enough... the one record company executive i know [who runs a rather small dance music record label www.bassbin.com ] sticks to the vinyl standard because its the one medium that cannot be pirated for less than the cost of producing a run of the product in the first place - in other words, you want to bootleg one of his releases onto vinyl and flog it, you need to press up 500 copies and sell about 300 of them in order to make it economical to pirate a single tune - the label is roughly self sustaining, the exposure that the releases give him allow him to pursue a ucrative dj-ing career while running a record shop, and he puts free low quality full length mp3's of his releases to download from the sitre for evaluation purposes...
point is - record companies that specialise in vinyl are probably smarter than you realise...
We need to start lobbying against this now, with friends, family and our MPs; We need to set the agenda with news and media, we need to demonstrate that Gowers, the News and Media as copyright holder are obviously biased and demand a fair hearing. We need to point out that; Gowers as a copyright holder should disqualify himself, for his obvious bias. We need to get this meme into the public consciousness. We need to use organisations like the PPC to ensure that people opposing this gets a fair hearing. We need to unashamedly use the obvious bias of these people against them.
We need to engage with this governments working class support. With the Question. "Why should you and I as UK tax payers be paying to enforce the unfair copyright restrictions of huge American and Japanese corporations ?" Draw people and medias attention to incidents where pensioners are mugged and women raped whilst the Police are raiding car boot sales for copyright pirates.
And while we are all chatting about this subject, the European Parliament are about to pass draconian anti-privacy laws against all forms of electronic communications.
While these laws have been mooted for some time, it seems that 13 December 2005 is the crunch date, and the UK are pushing for it !
From the FFII newsletter -
Wasn't this an episode on 'Yes, Minister'?
They had it all sorted out by the end of the show, so what are you worried about?
Fortunately, jests aside, you're wrong. Labour's back benchers have finally developed some spine, hitting Tony pretty hard over the 90 day detention without trial issue (though still missing the principle and increasing the figure to an insulting 28 days, but at least it's a start). They're threatening to do it repeatedly over ID cards, health and education reforms, too. It's a real shame that old school Labour figures like Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam didn't get to see (and participate in) what's been happening in Blair's third term, but I hope they'd be proud of their legacy.
The problem, of course, is that Tony's unaccountable cronies in Europe are now trying to set up his own legacy via centralised, undemocratically formed legislation that will filter down, placing obligations on future governments even after the New Labour lot are inevitably kicked out before the next election. Look at the EUCD and the various "anti-terror" spy legislation that Europe has been producing recently, often in breach of the EU's own convention on human rights (and notice that big media groups are already campaigning to have the Internet access records opened up so they can pursue copyright infringement cases against the population en masse).
I used to think that being part of the EU should bring benefits to us, but I become more eurosceptic every time something like this filters through.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Please ignore the ignorant replies to the parent post. There is no way of researching death certificates to find with certainty if an author has died.
Why is everyone talking about IP as though it is even a real concept? It is an attempt to lump four seperate areas of law together (property, trademark, copyright and patent). This page: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml covers the misnomer quite well.
China and India produce cheap manufactured goods.
The UK is safer because they don't have the idiotic religious zealots that burden the US (the UK is one of the most secular societies in the world, only behind, guess who?, South Korea, read below for why this is interesting).
This is important because knowledge this century will be more profitable in the biological sciences. We are just starting to explore many of the fields in biology. The countries that ride that wave will become the pace setters in pretty much a similar way as the US did with the IT revolution.
At this very moment the UK and South Korea are at the forefront of this new technological wave. may they become the tren setters this century? Time will tell.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One has to question the value of a drug that can be copied in one day.
What companies would do is to join al together and share the costs an reap the rewards jointly, since otherwise there would be no economic incentive.
If they would not join forces, the would dissapear, leaving the ground free for companies willing to do so.
And is not like they do all the research, very often a lot of their research is done with public money.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Since this is Brittain and the King James Version of the Bible is still under copyright of the crown.
since 1611 A.D.
Oops that almost 400 years, but that's almost nothing for a perpetual copyright.
A.C.
Philosophically, I think it would be good for discussion to centre around the term "monopoly", which is what the (yuck) term "Intellectual Property" encompasses. Real Property is a "Material Monopoly", and copyrights and patents are an "Immaterial Monopoly". I think discussion in those terms will help the general public understand these terms better.
There is an argument that the main reason for having the regulations is that they conveniently protect the major pharmaceutical companies from competition by new companies in less developed countries. The latter could afford to patent their own drug inventions but cannot afford the great uncertainty and extreme expense of the testing protocols that are now required to get any new drug approved for sale in developed countries.
As for whether it is legimitate to enforce copyright 70 years after an author's death, it seems clear that any reasonable economic analysis would conclude that the marginal incentive provided to authors by this absurd protection doesn't influence their output of creative work,
Which raises the question of how we got into this state of affairs in the first place.
It could be argued that publishers are more likely to support struggling writers if they can collect money for 70 years after the death of the author,
A similar argument has been advanced for doubling the mechanical recording copyright protection from 50 to 100 years
but where is the evidence that 10, 20, 30...years after the author's death
Where is the evidence that this "X years after author's death" has any relevence to anything at all?
wouldn't provide exactly the same incentives to publishers to hunt for the next JK Rowling?
Publishers (in just about every field) are notoriously bad at judging what their readers, listeners and viewers want. With the largest ones tending to be conservative in what they will publish. They would tend to see the "next JK Rowling" as somthing similar to "Harry Potter". Which readers would tend to see as some kind of "cheap knockoff".