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."
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.
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.
I suspect that the outcome of this "review" will be my descendants owning this post long after I am dead.
No, no... that would grant legitimacy to the idea that you can give something away for free and still hold copyright on it.
I suspect that the outcome of this "review" will be to create perpetual copyright for commercial, proprietary products, while anything given away for no or negligible financial cost will be declared to enter the public domain automatically, to prevent unfair competition from F/OSS harming the software industry.
Not that I'm at all cynical or anything.