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Intellectual Property Manifesto for the UK
feepcreature writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the British Library has published a Manifesto calling for a balance in Intellectual Property rights between the interests of users, creators and publishers. There are 6 key recommendations, including: DRM should not override users' statutory rights; analogue rights should apply to digital media; and copyright terms should not be extended without evidence that this would be good for society. There is also part of the debate on the UK Government's Gowers review of Intellectual Property, due to report in the Autumn."
So who are the DRM pushing companies in the UK?
All that is well and good. We (the communal 'we', not the 'we' as in you Limeys) should of course be allowed to retain the same rights to content and media as was available before they became digital. Digital, as they say in their very first point, is not really different fundamentally than any other publishing medium, and therefore the rights extended to non-digital content should also be extended to digital content.
The real point I was struck by was how they still hold on to the belief that copyright must last "life+70 years". That can easily last over 100 years of copyright, bestowing on heirs of the creator the benefits of his hard work. This does not incent those heirs to do any creating and only pools the money in their pockets while simultaneously making poor the common intellectual property pool.
a (age) + p (plus 70) = t (too freaking long)
What we need is an ool. Notice there's no 'p' in it.
well, i certainly like the looks of this, except for the support for the "life +70" copyright term, which is completely excessive IMO.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Was this manifesto copyrighted?
Agree: "The life+70 years term is ludicrous. "To believe that anything beyond lifetime copyright impacts the incentive structure of creators takes some serious suspension of disbelief.
Disagree: "Going non-digital to digital changes nothing." It does - high-grade, repeated copying becomes a lot more easy and economical with digital media, often at near zero cost. This has two effects, pushing in different directions:
1. Immense possible benefit to consumers. You can get lots of high-quality stuff for almost nothing!
2. Immense possible harm to producers. If people are just copying your content free of charge, it's going to eat into your profits in most likely scenarios. In some scenarios, you might cease production entirely, or shift towards more difficult-to-copy formats.
Depending on your preferences, it's very likely that you will be wanting to rebalance copyright, one way or the other (more lenient, more strict), due to the adoption of digital media.
I can see some of their point, however I think they're trying to err on the side of the content creator/publisher.
:)
I still maintain that I should have the right to keep copies of ebooks and music I own on as many of my own digital devices as I please. I can not use it all at once (I can multitask, just not that well), and would have to lend my digital device to a friend in order to break the intent of fair-use (and how many times have you loaned a book or CD to a friend?).
I think I'll just stick with my personal DRM-Ban and leave it at that. I won't buy anything that employs any form of DRM (with the only exception being Windows, which I purchased then removed WPA and WGA). This includes eBooks, which thanks to Microsoft I have $100 worth or so of ebooks which are locked to an account that I have been locked out of (apparently upgrading one's computer or portable device a couple times each within a 6 year period is abnormal and breaks some sort of fair-use law). It also includes purchasing music downloads and CDs that contain DRM. I don't care if I can remove it, I will not give money to a company that employs those methods of "protecting their copyrights."
The only way the companies will learn is if you speak with your wallet, the Dollar (or Euro/Pound for you blokes on the other side of the pond) truely is the most basic and effective form of communication.
Create more distance between politicians and money. After that, we will see more balance between public and private interests.
This is destined to go nowhere! People won't take them seriously if they keep misspelling words. I mean, who's ever heard of words like "analogue" and "favourite"? Not this red-blooded American!
-William Brendel
The British Library does take a fairly balanced view on this subject ("life+70" excepted), but there is one important area where their view is not balanced at all: they believe that libraries are somehow exceptional in their needs. Well they're not.
Libraries have many roles, but almost none of those roles are exclusive. The three most important ones are collecting, sharing, and archiving for posterity, but these roles are also performed within society as a whole (as a normal part of life and culture), and therefore libraries do not have exclusive need for protections here. We all do.
P2P is probably the most contentious sharing technology today, yet what P2P'ers do is not significantly different to what libraries do --- ie. provide access to their collections to the public. They're similar not only in function, but also in social neutrality and economic effect: sharing is available to everyone equally, no money is made or taken from the sharing, they both reduce somewhat the sales of the items in question, and they both provide free public promotion for the items as well.
The role of archiving for posterity is not exclusive to libraries either --- nobody wants to lose their collected works through media deterioration from old age, so being able to make copies and not being at the mercy of DRM is important for everyone, not just libraries. Indeed, passing down our digital collections to our descendents will undoubtedly be a common interest.
So, while I support what the British Library is saying for the most part, their preoccupation with the needs of libraries sends the wrong message --- we are all in that same boat.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
IP law should respect the fact that there are many different fields of endevour, and different terms are appropriate for each of them. It's perfectly reasonable that the copyright on a novel should last a pretty long time (I think the author should receive some compensation if it gets made into a film 10 years later for example), but patents on computer related things should last a very short time - the computer industry is changing much faster than the book writing industry, and if the entire industry is held up for 10 years because of one guys patent, that is a very serious detriment to the public good.
Regardless of what is decided, it seems very obvious to me that the current lengths of these things are far outside what is reasonable. I'd be much more in favour of 20 years for literary/artistic works, and 3 years for patents, with the posibility of a single extension for 5 more years for patents, requiring a large fee (so only patents that are being used get extended).
That's what I think for IT patents, but longer terms might be more appropriate for slower moving industries.
money attracts power and power attracts money, inexorably
money and power will steamroll all laws, morals, decency, justice, fairness, and accountability in order to be with each other, no matter what system of government you devise or imagine
money and power will find the path of least resistance to get to one another and shortcircuit all of your good intentions
look at modern china, where 50 years of hardcore communist rhetoric has created... drum roll... the most social darwinistic model of capitalism on this planet right now. with all of the social inequalities that go along with that, abject squalor sandwiched against diamond encrusted bathrooms, modern china would make the robber barons of the gilded ages of victorian times in the usa blush
money+power: i think it's one of the fundamental forces in physics... along with entropy and taxes and magnetism
you can't beat it even in glorious goody two shoes canada: look at their recent corruption scandal that recently swept the liberals out of power up there
i'm not saying it's a good thing, i'm just saying it's pretty formidable force of nature you are contending with rather lightly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm guessing you are quite young then? I'm over 40 and have 2 children. I write but haven't made a penny at it. Much as I enjoy writing, there is definitely an incentive to "publish" in knowing that if my work becomes popular late in my life (or just after) then my kids will benefit.
Parents want to provide for their children.
rt
Fundamentally, I believe copyright to be a concept that is broken by design, but that it has taken the "digital age", with its inherently instantaneous, free reproduction capabilities and near-instantaneous, near-free distribution channels to make that obvious.
With that said, I recognise that copyright is here to stay.
So, my guidelines for a fair copyright regime:
* Copyright is recognised as fundamentally an economic tool for artificially assigning value to something that inherently has none (ie: none of this flowery "for the betterment of society" claptrap).
* Copyright protection for economic purposes becomes an opt-in process (eg: if you want to sell a book or song, you have to register it as a copyrighted work).
* Length of copyright is linked to a works "ECD". When a work is registered as copyrighted, it must include an "Estimated Cost of Development". Once the owner of the copyright has recorded income from selling the copyrighted work that meets or exceeds the "ECD", the work is no longer subject to protection from non-profit copyright infringement (ie: filesharing and the like). Note that for-profit reproduction (ie: someone else *selling* a copyrighted work) is still a crime (and would be harshly punished).
* Fraudulent reporting of "ECD" or copyright-related income would be *severely* punished. Upon confirmation of such fraud, the work would immediately enter the public domain and a fine would be issued to the registered copyright holder equal to the submitted "ROI" value PLUS any reported income from the work. Where possible (ie: with proof of purchase), refunds would be issued to anyone who had purchased the work.
* On the death of the copyright holder, all their copyrighted works enter the public domain.
The term of the copyright doesn't upset this analysis. What does upset it is that with the advent and rapid development of the Internet, distribution is no longer a limiting factor. There is no longer a danger that one's work won't be distributed.[1] Society has solved this issue on its own, independent of copyright laws. We don't need to protect distributors with copyrights any more.
Furthermore, the economic incentive that copyrights provide to distributors simply isn't justified. While the demand for copyrighted works has increased due to population growth and increased expressiveness, the 'supply' given to the people by increasing Internet bandwidth and ubiquity has exponentially outpaced it. Without artificial regulation (i.e., copyright law), these developments would ordinarily drive profit margins to nothing. Thus the distribution monopoly power becomes Yet Another Pointless Government Subsidy, benefiting a special interest group that isn't even contributing anything particularly worthwhile. Farm subsidies are one thing, they keep the price of bread low. Subsidizing an inefficient alternative to the Internet is pure waste.
I say end copyright protection for distributors, with the trade-off of guaranteed Internet access for everyone as a new human right. Subsidize libraries and public kiosks for net access to ensure this right. Of course, this shifts the subsidy to ISPs and the 'backbones', but their worth to society is justifiable independent of copyright law.
[1] One's work may not be watched or heard, but it will always be available for the watching. That's a demand problem, not a supply problem, and it's solved by artists competing for attention in the marketplace. This, in turn, naturally drives up the quality of the art in the eyes of the public, which is a good thing.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Yea, aristocracy was the god-chosen elite who have had the right to hold life or death jurisdiction over the "common" people, and its highest rank was "the king", who held all other as "subjects".
This was a social contract too. If people had listened to such nonsense ideas likewise your quotation points out, and thought of "long term benefits", there would be no french revolution and we would be still people subject to some "local lord" first, then the elite, then the king. Ah not to mention that all the rights and advancements that the previous 2 centuries have brought wouldnt be forthcoming.
Same goes for copyright holding. It is something that emulates a loose group of elitism in the world media, some big people who no one can expect to move into except with a very big smile from fate - same as in the days of old aristocracy.
Again i repeat - NOT all social contracts are beneficial and rightful.
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You fail to explain why promotional spending on entertainment will end. Things will not fundamentally change overnight. Content producers/distributors still need to promote their stuff in order to raise awareness and generate sales.
The idea of abolishing copyright is not about getting things for free. I think this might be the flawed premise that dismisses your entire argument.
This has already been happening -- in a sense -- in the US and Western Europe for over a decade. The results, so far, have been good...unless you believe the current culture owners who claim trillions of dollars in sales have somehow magically disappeared from the economy entirely because of piracy.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.