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An IP Environmentalism for Culture and Knowledge?
An anonymous reader writes "An article by James Boyle in the FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a 'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology. Apparently there will be a (free) conference at Stanford on the subject soon, organized by Larry Lessig's Center there."
Besides, for 'software' in these days of public Internet, the real question is 'Can I maintain the software ? Can I resolve defects, or get them resolved, as they are found'. When the answer to that becomes 'no', the software cannot be used; it gets exploited, and you get eaten by worms and viruses.
So, what kind of "hugger" does that make me now? An patent-free tree hugger? I just want to know what it is before conservatives start thowing it my way.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I've never thought of it in quite that way... It really is a wonderful analogy... the only difference being that the 'IP-ecosystem' was created by us.
...and indeed both sides of the issue have been polarized in nearly the same ways.... the "whacko environmental extremists" and "evil big business" who will destroy anything in the path towards profit.
Is this dichotomy a natural progression of such issues or is it truely the way things are.
I know what I believe...and I've picked my side.
~Dan
Ahh...I can see it now...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Publish them and see who sues. Then figure out if they really own the copyright.
---Please, help support your local Bar Association. They're starving on $200K+ a year
It messes with readers, if you end with a preposition.
Please transform the following disputed sentence into a sentence that ends other than with a preposition: "The public domain should be cared about."
The point is that if Congress or the Library thereof announces a study into what the law should be changed to, you'll get the haves (incumbent publishers who want more restriction on speech that competes with theirs) on one side and the have-nots (the unorganized masses and charitable organizations who wish to speak) on the other, and the money-is-speech effect will tilt the odds in favor of the haves. Legislation is like a random walk, but unequal financial bargaining power biases it: even if you make some steps, one step forward for fair use and other exempt uses will likely be more than counterbalanced by two steps back.
See section V.
I'm sure they tried very very hard to create a feel-good phrase but "cultural environmentalism" doesn't work. Ecological environmentalism seeks to prevent any human-made effects in ecological systems -- preventing any human-made changes to pristine ecologies and removing the effects of humans from sullied ecologies. The true parallel that could be considered "cultural environmentalism" might include splitting or censoring the internet to prevent the flow of "deleterious" culture from one country to another (just like the USDA tries to regulate the import for foriegn plants and animals). Some of the issues raised by Islamic fundamentalism might be true examples of cultural environmentalism in that they seek to avoid pollution from western cultures. The point is that China and Bin Laden are doing more for true "cultural environmentalism" than are Lessig and crew.
This version of "cultural environmentalism" is less about prevention of change or pollution of cultures by "bad" cultural influences and more of an economic fight about who pays and who does for so-called "cultural" properties. Lessig et al have only made use of a positive buzzword.
Its just another example of co-opting a word for its connotations, not its true meaning (like calling every act of violence or non-patriotic idea a "terrorist" threat).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.""
I think you have probably fallen into the trap of thinking that what is currently being fought for encompasses the sum total of all that has ever been fought for. If you look back over the last fifty years and see what practices have changed as a result of environmental activism you'd come to a very different conclusion. We don't continue talking about things that have changed, and naturally so. But it is a mistake to think that things were always the way they are now, or that they had to be this way.
Unsurprisingly, all the major concerns of current environmental activists haven't been resolved satisfactorily. That is precisely why they remain major concerns. Once an issue is mitigated, we move on and take it for granted.
What would the world around right now be like without recycling, emissions standards, vehicle fuel economy standards, regulation of industrial discharges into rivers and oceans, modern sewage treatment facilities, national parklands and reserves, solar wind and hydro power, Energy Star power saving technology on computers and other electronics, regulation on the use of toxic materials in all sorts of things like plastics, cookware, paint etc, and so on.
Tree-hugging wacko is a term used to often and inappropriatly. I'm green, but there are some real nutjobs. There's an interesting book called Green Death by an author who's name escapes me right now. It explores the damage that fanatical environmentalism is doing to developing nations. There's even a quote by the co-founder of Greenpeace saying that the environmentalist movement has really gotten out of hand. All sides have nuts, know yours.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Ladies, germs, and other types of keyboard users...
I appreciate folks that are willing and able to take the time to work towards reasonable means of managing Intellectual Property (we weren't talking about Internet Protocol, were we?). Without hard-working folks where the rubber meets the road, awareness would be low and reason might actually be lacking.
Do I think we should have folks chaining themselves to filing cabinets, patent office doors, and the like? Well, I don't know... If a fundamental and important issue is getting slammed by a troll or by someone who's only interested in the money - then, maybe it is important to be an activist. OTOH, if one believes that militant behavior is the only way to handle all Intellectual Property issues, then I think over-the-top behavior is not appropriate.
I don't think that burning Hummers is quite the right approach - I think being an active participant in the process to lend intelligence and reason is probably the right approach.
A Passionate Independent Musician
"People should care about the public domain."
You miss. The unstated agent of the sentence "The public domain should be cared about" may have not been "people".
Those who disapprove of preposition stranding in English tend to cite the rewrite rule that transforms the dependent clause (THAT clause preposition) into (preposition WHICH clause) or the question (wh-word vso-inverted-clause preposition) into (preposition wh-word vso-inverted-clause). Rewrite rules such as these do not work so easily in all cases. Specifically, rewriting sentences of the form (patient passivized-intransitive preposition) requires depassivizing the sentence to (agent intransitive preposition patient), and undeleting the agent can almost never happen automatically, as it requires encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter. In fact, some words traditionally advertised as prepositions function more like adverbs. Nowadays, many grammarians consider this rule obsolete, and it should not be unquestioningly adhered to.
ObTopic: The public domain should still be cared about, even those works whose authors habitually end sentences with prepositions.
while most of us behave in a contradictory way - 'I want artists to get paid, but I like free downloads'
How about "I want artists to be paid, but I don't want to pay inflated marginal costs for works, nor do I want to be shut out of works completely." Thinking like this is what let collective licensing programs such as those offered by BMI and ASCAP take off, and the EFF has expressed interest in extending collective licensing to other media.
that there are these discussions about freedom and so forth. We are now at the point when DRM is coming towards a definite reality and we need these discussions to make sure that the DRM technologies do not in themselves violate the law.
I am pro-DRM in principle, it is obviously not a popular point of view here but this is a public forum and we can be civilized about it (hopefully.) I am pro-DRM in the following sense: I want an ability to create a document (text/music/video/CAD drawing/object code/etc.) that I could trust to be moved around in the world as a limited resource. I could send this document to anyone I wanted (whether money is involved or not is actually irrelevant,) and they couldn't make copies of it, or could make the preset number of copies. I would like the ability to have the document lock itself after certain amount of time has passed or after certain number of viewing/usages whatever. This also could be used for legal documents, and other sensitive data. Basically this would make the document into almost a real thing.
Now, I am still in favour of the discussions on these issues from point of view of public domain rights etc. People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. Well, we could implement a standard, that would unlock the DRMed document, that is meant to go to public domain after the copyright period expires.
Say you are buying a CD (for example,) on this CD you have your DRMed files that can be plaid by your CD player. It is possible that the outcome of these discussions would be a standard, which would allow the original buyer to copy this music file a specific number of times onto his/her other CD players/computer/backup/whatever. Maybe there would be a way to make a backup copy, and then make say 2 or 3 copies that could be moved around from your portable MP3 player to your computer HD. When I say 'moved around' I literally mean moved, not just copied. Thus we could satisfy the laws regarding fair-use. On the other hand this file that you have in your possession must become public domain at some point, so the DRM must probably take care of that by unlocking the restriction part of the DRM after the copyright expires.
I think DRM can be actually an incredible tool for real file sharing, not the what they call file 'sharing' today. You could actually share a file but in a sense, in which you could share your CD or your watch. DRM can also be used for protection of sensitive data. But we need discussions about the rights of the public to the public domain, and so DRM could also be the tool that guaranteed the public domain safety by implementing time unlocking mechanisms.
Just a thought.
You can't handle the truth.
'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology
I'm sure it will be just as succesful. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going outside to enjoy the unnaturally hot weather we're having this year...
On the one hand, you have copyrights: the notional right of the copyright holder to prevent others from using the ideas that they've put considerable time and effort into discovering. In the US, this is a constitutional right, and from what I understand, it's thus inalienable.
No, copyright protection is not an "inalienable" right in the US, it is a legislated right which Congress could make disappear at any time.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Is this culture limited to a niche audience? E.g. the Slashdot crowd? Taking a look at the real world for a moment we have millions of people embracing DRM because it comes in a nice shiny iPod package, the MPAA telling us that unless you have end-to-end HDCP you won't be watching the HD content you just bought in HD, TPM for the next generation of operating systems, the RIAA telling us that ripping a CD we bought to a PMP is not fair use while suing people who can't afford to defend themselves left, right, and center, companies whose core busines model is to buy IP then do nothing more than sue alleged infringers, and congressmen who push legislation for the studios and recording industries that deteriorate our rights in the digital world with seemingly no reckoning. Is this new movement kind of like Greenpeace then? It's cool, we support it, but really nothing much is going to change?
I think you've got the germ of truth here, and yet I can't help think that while producers should have every right to DRM their files, I don't see why it's the FBI's job to make sure people don't crack it. The trouble with the scheme is that it effectively extends copyrights forever.
You say:
"People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. "
But that's backwards. I'd say some people are not willing to accept that fact that they have no legal rights to hold onto their data forever. It's supposed to go into the public domain after a limited time.
Companies extending copyright this way is the moral equivalent of people just downloading stuff from P2P. Neither of them likes the rules, so they figure out a way around it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
its a human characteristic that separates us from other creatures.
The ability to advance and create upon what other humans before us have done.
Intellectual property rights (the ability to say no, you cannot use) had its purpose. But today its really losing ground on the reasons it was created it the first place.
Thats what you are seeing in the efforts to extend them further. Copyright has become a joke in that its limited length terms has in all practicality become a deception of continually extending them into infinity.
When in reality, with todays technology it is easier to create and market/distribute works within the shorter time length of the original copyright length terms. Yet the length terms are getting longer.
Where did all this IP build up come from?
A: by those who want to constrain us more and more for their benefit, and its not so often the actual creators doing it.. what some call capital-ISM...
> The corporations of-course want to release the data and then have the perpetual copyrights, well that is why I think the DRM schemas must have the time copyright time limiters built into them.
How do you time limit data? How does data know its expiration date? How does it know whether its author is alive or dead? How does it know whether 95 years have passed since death?
You may go around in circles trying to describe a mechanism, but the fact is that it cannot.
The only reasonable mechanism would be this: If I attempt to copy a piece of data, the system would ask me "is this file copyrighted or does its license permit this operation, yes or no?" I would answer the question honestly to the best of my knowledge. The process would continue or not. This is the only system that respects the sovereignty of individual freedom.
DRM (in essentially any form) violates the basic contract the constitution describes for copyright in the first place: In exchange for growing the public domain we the people grant artists and inventors time-limited monopolies. We the people agree to honor these monopolies, just like we agree to honor every other law. If we don't, we face the music, as we do whenever we commit a crime.
I don't see how anyone can expect software to enforce the law. Or at least, not until software systems can be fair and just and personally responsible. This seems like a huge distance into the future.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
The constitution of the USA says congress shall have the power to pass laws to promote the science and useful arts through monopoly on ceative works for limited times.
This is not the same as declaring inalinable rigths such as the right to free speech.
It is merely the statement which says the government is "allowed" to do it. Without said statement the bill of rights would naturally override copyright laws and make them unconstitutional in any form.
Many founding fathers remember that copyright laws in england not too long before the rise of the US were designed to do to the people what they ironically are being used to do now, hinder freedom and growth of the press(read now the internet) and freedom of speech and keep the power and money in the hands of the wealthy few (then aristocracy, now the greedy pigs at the **AA and M$FT).
As such, there was a huge debate as to weather copyright should have been allowed at all. after all, during that time england was without copyright laws at all, as i remember from lessig they were all repealed around that time (was it 1709 they were entirely abolished in britain?) and loe and behold people were still publishing works!
So no, copyright is not an "inalienable right". This kind of drek is spouted by the WIPO lobbyists and is entirely false and misleading, and I'm not buying it because I know better.
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